Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic The Ruse, Chapter 1/?

This is my first time ever posting here! I might be doing this wrong, as I have no idea what I'm doing. Summary: Lois receives an invitation to her college reunion. When she doesn't want to attend stag, it's Clark to the rescue. Set just after Chi of Steel. Absolute shameless, frothy concoction of tropes and I'm not apologising for any of it.

Notes: The period between TOGOM and Phoenix - where they're basically dating but don't know it - will forever be my favorite. This started out very innocently, I was just wondering how the night ended after Lois has dinner with Clark and his parents, so I began writing a scene with him walking her home. Had no idea where it was going. I was playing around with the writing style, wanting to try something present tense with an active flow that lent a bit more intensity to their burgeoning feelings. And then she opened her mail, and it took on a life of its own from there.

I'm totally not responsible for this pretend dating slow burn reveal fic! These two do what they want. It's finished, but each chapter needs a little spit-shine so posting might happen a bit sporadically. Thanks to ksarasara for doing the heavy lifting on posting our last story, and for all the lovely FDK you left there! This is gifted to her with gratitude.

The Ruse, Ch. 1
Lois rifles through her purse, searching for her keys. “Clark, you really didn’t need to walk me home."

“It’s late, Lois; I didn’t mind. It's not really safe for you to be walking through Centennial Park at night." While this is true enough, lately they both seem to be taking any excuse to extend their time together.

"Oh Clark, you worry too much. Besides," she retrieves her keys in a victorious jingle, "I like to live dangerously."

"Yes, so I've noticed," he replies. Although on the list of dangerous things Lois has done in the last year, walking through the park at night probably wouldn't crack the top 50.

"I just feel bad keeping you from your parents,” she says with a guilty grimace.

"You really shouldn't. They’re already getting ready for bed - I’m not missing any time with them. They’ll be asleep by the time I get home,” He pulls open the door to her apartment and trails behind her as she stops in the mail center.

Her keys dangle from her mouth as she sifts through her mail. “Ah, farmersh keep early hoursh. How could I forget,” she smiles up at him through her keys. He marvels at her ability to look adorable doing, well, everything.

Clark takes the keys from her mouth in a gesture that after the fact feels more intimate than it has a right to, in part because when he does, their eyes meet and he is inches from her face in the silence of the small alcove.

”Yeah, and not to mention Dad was particularly tired after all that hard work cooking dinner,” he winks.

She laughs, giving his chest a playful push, and begins sifting through the contents of the mailbox.

“I have a confession,” she says.

“Hmm?”

She drops several pieces of junk mail and a few catalogs into the wastebasket by the door before turning against the mailboxes and looking up at him. “I adore your parents, you know that. And I do love House of Hunan, but my favorite Chinese is actually the kind you always get us from your mystery restaurant,” she casts him her doe-eyed, flirtiest smile, a vain attempt to tantalize his secret Chinese takeout source out of him.

“I’ll never tell,” he teases, “I revel in confounding the country’s best investigative reporter.”

She frowns in mock annoyance, but her eyes betray her, sparkling in reply. The electricity of the silence buzzes between them, in that way it has with increasing frequency over the last few months. Could he pinpoint the moment when she began looking at him – Clark – in this adoring way more often than she did him, Superman? He could offer up a handful of moments here and there before Christmas. The Charity Ball, when Mayson cut in. His apartment, when she was hiding out from Kyle Griffin. Nearly every moment for days after he was “shot” by Capone’s gangsters and brought back to life. But it was Christmas Eve when hope took hold in his heart and grew wings and nearly took flight, bursting straight from his chest. When, if he didn’t think too hard about it, he could almost have sworn he kissed her, there under that scraggly Charlie Brown tree. Because he knew without a doubt that she wanted him to.

And oh, how he wanted to.

He is a coward, he thinks. Her flirty smiles and loving touches and knowing Looks – the ones she has just for him – are almost enough for him. He will lay down happily in the middle of this road between friendship and love, stand at her side watching her dangle her keys from her mouth and flirt for information and babble a brilliant light onto the shadows of injustice for the rest of his natural alien life if it means his relationship with her is safe. If he doesn’t have to risk losing her.

An elderly woman clears her throat behind him, making her presence known.

“Oh – excuse us,” Clark apologizes, stepping aside in awkward haste. His face flushes from the charged exchange with his partner, as it always does when he’s realized they wandered into the danger zone.

“Good evening, Mrs. Beyer,” Lois says, “We’ll just get out of your way.” She follows Clark out of the alcove, shuffling through the un-rejected mail. He already has an elevator car waiting; she steps inside, ripping open one of the letters with a scowl. “Ugh, this must be about my five-year college reunion. I’m sure it’s a letter asking for money, I don’t even know why I bother opening them anymore.”

“Are you going?”

“To what? The reunion? Absolutely not. It’s just an opportunity for people to gloat about what a big success they are. It’s…not my sort of thing.”

He looks at her under skeptical raised eyebrows – he is the only one who can challenge her like this – and she rolls her eyes in reply. They both know she enjoys reveling in her hard-earned position as the best reporter at the Daily Planet, which by default made her one of the best reporters in the world.

She tears open the envelope then thwats his chest. “All right, you got me, Linda King is going and truly, twice in one year is two times too many,” she admits. The elevator chimes as she unfolds the letter. “Plus, she just got married to the most obnoxious man.”

“Obnox - have you met him?”

“No,” she mutters, scanning the letter.

“Then how do you know he’s obnoxious?”

“How can he not be obnoxious? He’s married to Linda.”

—------------

She groans in dramatic dismay as they reach her door, slumping against the wall. He chuckles lightly at her. “What? What is it?” he asks, and she notes with annoyance that his tone is totally devoid of concern, not at all matching the level of duress she’s affecting.

She holds up the letter in disgust. “Now I have to go to the reunion.”

The keys are still in his hand, and he begins unlocking the locks one by one. There's something comforting about the way he deftly selects the correct key each time, unlocking the door as if it is his own. They hadn’t even discussed him coming in for a nightcap, but she’s glad he’d assumed it.

“Why?” he asks, pushing open the door for her.

She sighs with more dramatic flair. “They’re honoring me with Distinguished Alumna of the year.”

“Lois…that’s incredible. At your five-year reunion? Can you even comprehend what a huge honor that is at a university as high-caliber at Metropolis U?”

“Thank you, you’re right, I know. I’m really honored.” she says, realizing she sounded ungrateful. “They’re calling it the Trailblazer award. They want me to give a speech,” she says, her eyes scanning the letter. “And the journalism department is asking me to participate in the ethics symposium lecture about…Superman?”

His eyebrows raise again at that. “Well that should be…interesting.”

He strolls over to her kitchen and pulls a corkscrew from the drawer, then retrieves two wine glasses from the cabinet. He strides back into the living room.

“I’m not sure I want to participate in that,” she frowns.

He twists the corkscrew into the bottle, wincing a little at the effort. “I can certainly understand that,” he replies.

“You can? Why?” She asks, her voice betraying a little sting. Why does it bother her that he understands it? She watches him struggle a bit with the cork, then work a little harder to pull it out with one smooth pop.

“Well…” she can tell he’s proceeding with caution here, “you get more Superman exclusives than any other reporter. And your close relationship with Superman isn’t exactly a…secret. So it feels like a setup. Although to their credit, when it comes to experts on Superman, they certainly can’t do any better than you.”

“Hmm, you think so?” she asks sincerely. She doesn’t really consider herself an “expert” on anything.

“Lois,” he is almost laughing at her. “You named the man for starters…you basically created him. You get all the important Superman exclusives. Half the time you’re *in* the story you’re writing. He saves you what…once, twice a week? There is no one who knows Superman better than you.”

“Oh, I’m sure there is, Clark. I hardly know him.

“I think that’s the point, Lois. No one really does. But you know him better than most.”

“Surely there are others. Henderson?”

He shakes his head with a slow smile.

“You?”

“I’m not…” he trips over his thoughts and mumbles lamely, “I’m a guy, Lois.”

“I don’t have that kind of relationship with Superman, Clark,” she says, her voice suddenly a bit of a throaty wobble. “We aren’t involved. We’ve never been…involved. No matter what the tabloids say.” She wonders why she feels so defensive, and why it feels more protective of Clark’s feelings than her own. Why it’s important that he knows this. “But I know, I know. I used to have a little…crush on him. And he does seem to seek me out, or have some sort of homing device for when I’m in trouble. He has sought me out from the beginning. I never knew why.”

“Well that one’s easy. You’re the best reporter in town. Of course he’s going to seek you out.”
She smiled at his honest compliment. “You know what I mean. It’s…complicated,” she admits honestly. “But it isn’t ethically out of bounds. I only ever see him for minutes at a time. He’s a friend, and a source. We both have a relationship with him that gives us an advantage.”

He nods, telling her he understands. On this, she realizes, he is the only other person in the world who does. “So why didn’t you want to go?” He seems relieved to change the subject. “This is stating the obvious here given the award, but even without it, you are one of the very successful ones - you’re already a household name, especially in Metropolis. And I know you don’t mind a little gloating.” His eyes are warm, teasing. Sometimes how well he knows her is downright irritating. She averts her gaze.

“Well, all my college friends are going, but I’m the only one who isn’t…with someone. Attached. And, well, Linda just got married. It seems like everyone is suddenly paired off. I just didn’t want to be the only one there alone.” Admitting this to Clark feels pathetic, like some sort of lame ploy to get him to join her. When really, she wasn’t ever planning to attend.

“Well…you don’t have to go alone, Lois. You know I’ll go as your date.”

“Well it isn’t that kind of thing, Clark. I mean, if it was I probably would have asked you, but it’s a whole weekend thing, on campus – you know, outside the city. Everyone’s staying at the Grand Metro Hotel. And well, I guess we could drive in every day, but it’s clear across the city – almost an hour from here. Given the dinners run well past ten, I’d probably plan to stay there. So it's more like, a date function for serious couples. I couldn’t ask that of you –” the babbling is fully out to sea, and she’s frantically seeking solid ground.

“I really don’t mind, Lois,” he says, in that easy, nonchalant way that settles her. "We can pretend we're a couple."

Flashes of them dancing under the stars at the Ruins creep in. She feels flushed and conflicted, desperate for him to come and equally desperate for everything to remain exactly the way it is between them. Warm and effervescent and safely something more, but securely undefined. “I don’t think…”

With one foot casually propped on his leg, and an arm slung along the back of the seat, Clark looks as if he belongs there, as comfortable as one can be on her rigid mistake of a sofa. She softens as he says, “Lois, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Just a ruse. We do it all the time undercover.”

It’s true, they do use this all the time. Oh, how easily she and he can play pretend.

It dawns on her that she walked right into this and she’s mortified; it looks like she was setting him up. “Oh no Clark, I couldn’t ask that of you,” she rushes to say, then fumbles. “Reunions are so miserable when you don’t know anyone, and they’re bad enough if you have to go with someone because they’re your spouse, or your partner,” she says.

“It just so happens that you are my partner, Lois,” he smiles, his eyes shining at her in that way that made her insides feel like they were catching fire. Really, would it be much of a stretch to pretend?

Her mouth twitches, in that way it always does when he’s teasing her. “You know what I mean,” she says. But she knows he’s right. He isn’t just her reporting partner anymore. He’s her partner in everything, her best friend. The person she looks to for reassurance and resolve, security, comfort. The only person she’s ever allowed herself to rely on for anything, her parents included. The person who has taken a bullet for her, given up Christmas Eve with his family for her, and even sidestepped all the defensive traps she set to encourage him to give up, to abandon her. Always full-on rejecting the coded message she’s trying to send him that she isn’t loveable, she isn’t worth his time.

Instead, he dug in, fixing that enchanted gaze on hers as they worked through impossible deadlines, calculating fiances, cold-blooded thugs, reassuring her of his commitment to their partnership. And along the way, he managed to unravel the knots of internalized rejection and loneliness – the holdovers of her dysfunctional childhood – patiently showing her she is worthy of someone who loves her like this.

Oh, Clark. She needs to tell him. She wishes she could bottle up what they have, tuck it safely on a high shelf in the cellar of her heart, and then find the words to tell him how much his many alternative definitions of partner mean to her. How much he means to her.

“Well if you want to come, come,” she says instead, in a way she hopes sounds like she’s teasing him, and not sincerely indifferent. God, she’s terrible at this. Much safer to deflect.

He grins at her, broad and delighted, as if her half-hearted utterance has set his whole being breathlessly alive. “I can’t wait. Especially because,” he says, handing her a glass of wine, “I really want to hear your speech.”

She utters a small groan, defeated. His smile grows, now reflecting that of a self-satisfied cheshire cat.

“This will be fun,” he says with a wink, leaning in to clink his glass to hers. She takes a sip then sighs, slumping heavily into the sofa, against the familiar cradle of his outstretched arm.

“Depends on how you define fun,” she grumbles.