Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Undercover Reporter: Resurrection (8/17)

“So where are the guns coming from?”

“And where are they going?”

There were only a couple of real options. While weapons were a popular commodity basically everywhere, only a few places in the world were in a position to smuggle American artillery like this right now.

She would know. She’d caught wind of a rumor like this back when Lex had been running the Metropolis underworld, before Clark had joined the Planet. But after starting some initial research, she could never pin it down. Most of the receiving ports she’d looked into were remote, hard to get into, and harder still to get out of. You’d have to basically be untraceable and invulnerable to investigate there.

…untraceable and invulnerable, she thought, her eyes settling on the yellow S shield.

“Clark…” Her mind was suddenly moving a thousand miles a minute, faster even than a speeding bullet. “I have an idea.”

“Oh, no,” he said on a groan. “I know that look.”

She grinned at him.




He watched as she launched herself out of his arms and stomped into her bathroom, half-blindly grabbing for a clean towel. “Humidity is one thing,” she complained loudly, “but I have never been that hot in my life!” She tried to wipe her face with the towel, then tsked. “Ugh! This mud is so caked on, I’ll never get it all off.”

He stifled a chuckle.

“You know, you didn’t have to follow that guy into the jungle,” he said glibly.

“Well, you looked busy with the guys firing at us from the truck.”

“Not so busy that I didn’t have time to stop that guy from holding your head down in the mud.” The guys with the guns hadn’t bothered him much. They’d all been concentrating their fire on the big red and blue target. He’d been so much more afraid of Lois suffocating as the courier they’d been trailing held her face down in a shallow pool of muddy water for what seemed like an immeasurable amount of time.

She glowered at him through the dirt on her face. “I got his shipping lists, didn’t I?”

He knew when to stop pushing his luck. She had tackled and disarmed the guy in the first place, anyway.

“You did,” he agreed peaceably.

Casting him a look almost as dirty as she was, she said, “Since not all of us can super-spin, I’m going to have to shower to get this off.” She threw the towel to the ground in defeat. “Good news, though – we don’t have to go back to the Congo,” she said sarcastically. “I brought half the rainforest home on me! I’m sure the next package of diamonds is just buried in this mud somewhere.”

He absolutely did not grin at that.

“Are you hungry?” he asked instead.

She made another sound of disgust, scraping something wet and slimy off her upper arm. “I think I will be, once I feel like a person again instead of a living riverbed. Thai?”

He glanced at the little digital clock on her oven; timekeeping was the appliance’s single use. “I think it’s a little early for lunch in Thailand.”

“Chinese, then?” she substituted, trying to extricate a long prickly frond leaf that was determinedly tangled in her mud-drenched hair.

He walked over and gently pulled it out for her.

It amazed him daily that he was living his life with Lois Lane as his partner, especially now, after everything they’d been through. It might not be exactly the way he’d always pictured it, but it defied his expectations nevertheless.

He bent to kiss her, and she stepped back.

“Don’t,” she said in a grumpy tone, “You’ll just get mud all over yourself again.”

In response, he leaned closer and gently rubbed his thumb slowly over her lower lip, brushing away the single speck of mud there. His breath hitched. He marveled at his response to her, even covered in mud, looking and smelling like she’d been dragged through a burnt-out jungle in the middle of the night.

Which, of course, she had.

Her breathing had unconsciously synced with his, and he caught the moment when her eyes darkened. He bent to kiss her again, then teasingly stopped just short of touching his mouth to hers. She closed the distance, and he grinned into their kiss, thrilling as a spark ran down his spine. He felt her smile against his mouth before he pulled away.

She opened her eyes, and his heart constricted at the emotion he found there.

“Get extra dumplings,” she said, heading back toward the bathroom.

His smile didn’t diminish as he obediently headed for the window, content to use his powers for once not just for the preservation of the endless masses, but solely to make her happy.

*****
Two weeks later.

“Based on the scale of this, whoever’s behind it has to be as rich as Midas,” he said, landing just inside her window, as his cape billowed out and then settled around him.

“Or as rich as Lex,” she rejoined.

“What do you mean?” His brow furrowed as it always did when that name was mentioned. He couldn’t help it. He’d hated the man.

She was sitting on the floor crossed-legged, surrounded by stacks of paper. A couple of them were at least three feet tall.

Tonight, he’d been following a cargo ship that had originated in Metropolis, but sailed to Angola by way of Suriname. He’d watched as the ship docked in Luanda, just a stone’s throw from the Congolese rainforest and the place where they’d nabbed the shipping manifest in the first place, before heading back to her for the night. In the meantime, she’d dove into research, looking for a paper trail that would connect the transit lines he’d been following back to the person behind this whole mess.

Reaching for a page from a short stack beside her, Lois said, “When I did the cost analysis on the transport for the shipping containers you’ve been tracking, it occurred to me that there are only a few people in the world that can afford this. Lex was one of them.”

“And we already think this was his operation to begin with,” he completed her thought. “Luthor was the third richest man in the world, and he lived in Metropolis. He’s the perfect fit.”

“Right, but he can’t be running this operation from beyond the grave.” He didn’t miss her light shiver or the moue of distaste that flashed across her features.

“Someone had to take it over or the shipments wouldn’t keep coming,” she went on, continuing to sort pages and gesturing to the paper castle surrounding her. “I think the top fifty-five richest people in the world could manage this. Luthor supplied the ship and the fake inventory for the initial buy-in, but there’s still someone out there now paying the crew, buying up his old properties, hiring the thugs to transport the stuff from the docks, bribing port officials,” she looked to him for confirmation here, and he nodded, affirming the cash he’d seen changing hands tonight, “and keeping the whole thing running. When I cross-reference the millionaires with who’s been in and out of Metropolis in the last year, and narrow that down to the people with sole interests — meaning they aren’t in a partnership — that leaves us with five.” She cleared her throat. “Four, taking into account Luthor’s death.”

Sour as any mention of Luthor made him, he was impressed. She’d gotten a lot done on her end. “Four is a lot easier than fifty.”

“You’re telling me,” she said, shuffling the pages in her hand.

“Who are they?” he asked, starting to speed-read through her piles of research.

She gestured to a different pile as she ticked each off her list. “Arthur Chow, who has lived in Metropolis since his wedding; Carol Ferris, the airline heiress; Simon Stagg, who seems to pass through town an awful lot; and Bruce Wayne, the Gotham playboy. Wayne’s on the board of two of Metropolis’ orphanages, and he’s in town often enough.”

A memory surfaced of the first time he’d met Luthor. “What about Elena Pappas? Luthor was always lumping her in with Chow as his next two business conquests.”

“She’s not worth nearly as much since the divorce. Her husband managed to get on the board and they voted her out.”

“Ouch,” he replied with a wince.

“Misogynistic business practices at their finest,” she said wryly.

From her tone of voice, he had a feeling he’d be seeing that exposé soon.

He kept them focused. “Ok, so, Chow, Ferris, Stagg, and Wayne. Do you know any of them?”

“We both met Chow the night of that fundraiser magic show. If you could call that a meeting,” she said acidly, remembering Cat draped possessively across the man as she threw thinly veiled, gloating barbs at Lois. “I’ve done a couple of stories on his businesses tangentially, but I really don’t know much about him.” She shrugged. “It’s probably worthwhile trying to line up an interview, even if it’s a puff piece. Maybe I can sneak a peek into his desk drawers while I’m there.”

He fidgeted, knowing that his expression was bordering on grim.

Of course, she noticed his change in demeanor.

“What?” she asked.

“It’s just… tracking down an exclusive interview with a millionaire, breaking into his office… that’s how it all started with Luthor. I don’t know if it’s such a good idea.”

The whole thing felt ominous.

Like history repeating itself.

He sighed.

Luthor’s ghost wasn’t only haunting Lois.

Still, he knew he was being overprotective, and he also knew that she hated when he did that -- so he braced for a classic Lois blow-up.

“Things are a lot different now than they were when I met Lex,” she said instead, surprising him.

Their eyes met and he read something warm and reassuring there.

This had happened a few times since she’d found him again. He’d said or done something that would have once created an explosion that rivaled the Kryptonian sun. But now, he’d watch her take him into consideration, reading him before she responded in a more measured way. She must have been paying attention that first year, even when she’d pretended she wasn’t. Because she was masterfully applying her knowledge of how to handle him now. In the past few weeks, she’d de-escalated a couple of tense moments when they’d stumbled into sensitive spots.

It was yet another reason his heart was irrevocably bound to the small woman sitting on the floor in oversized sweatpants in front of him. She’d not only survived what he’d put her through, but come out of the experience with more compassion for her tormentor. He felt a rush of appreciation for her.

“Anyway,” she was saying, “I’ve never seen Ferris or Stagg in person. I did meet Wayne once at a charity gala. He was cute for a billionaire, I guess, but he wasn’t the story I was after that night.”

For a woman that didn’t actually care much for material wealth, she somehow gravitated toward men that had made it their specialty. He felt his hackles rise again.

She was still sorting the pages she held into the piles to her left. “What did you come up with tonight?”

He chose to let her taste in millionaires go. After all, she’d picked him.

...Well, what was left of him, his subconscious nagged. This couldn’t have been what Lois had imagined for her life – what she’d wanted in a… partner? Paramour? Gentleman caller? But now wasn’t the time to define their definite but murkily demarcated relationship. They had a story to work on and Lois was in the zone.

“They made port in Luanda, just like you thought they would.”

“Ah-ha!” She dropped the pages in her hand and twisted behind her to snatch up a different file folder. “Perfect!”

“What does that mean for us?”

“It means I’m taking Carol Ferris off our list. She’s the only one without any interests or known affiliates in Angola or Suriname.”

“Down to three, then,” he said.

They shared a look. This was good. This was progress.

It was more than he could say for the rest of his life, that vicious little voice in the back of his head reminded him.

“I think with these three, we can start chasing them down. We should divide and conquer,” Lois said, tugging his attention back.

He frowned. “More than we already are? It’s the middle of the night and I’m just getting back from Africa while you’ve been…” his eyes roved over the scene in front of him again and he suppressed a grin, “…building yourself a fort out of printing paper.”

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“I don’t really like splitting up any more than you do,” she shrugged, “but it’s the best plan. We should do with these three what we’ve been doing to track the shipments. I’ll start researching and track their movements on paper. When I find something interesting, you can track them down from the air and see if that something interesting is something incriminating.”

His frown deepened. That sounded like a lot of time away from Lois.

“We’re usually better when we work together,” he pointed out, crouching down to her level, just beside a paper parapet, cape pooling at his feet.


“But splitting up has been working for us on this investigation,” she said, leaning forward. “We’ve never been able to cover this much ground this fast before.”

“It doesn’t leave much time for anything else.”

Her expression was immediately conciliatory. “I didn’t mean — You should still prioritize rescues—“

“That’s not exactly what I meant,” he said slowly, his voice pitched lower. He reached out and tucked an errant strand of hair back behind her ear.

The air thickened between them.

He was rewarded with a faint blush pinking her cheeks.

“Well… anyway, I’m not sure how much further I’d get with the rest of this tonight,” she said, gesturing to the mountains of printed sheets organized around her. “I’ve been at it since I got home.” Standing unsteadily, she groaned, “Ugh, of course. My leg’s asleep.” She shook her left leg.

She hadn’t replied directly, but Clark couldn’t hide his delight that she’d called off work for the evening. She’d essentially put their relationship before the story, he realized. If he didn’t know her this well, he’d have missed how meaningful that was.

But he did know her well.

It was a big shift for them.

It felt good.

Like everything else about Lois, he found that her undivided attention was addicting.

He stood, too, but found that his eyes dropped low again as she bent down to rub the sense back into her calf muscle.

“Just how were you planning to get out of there?” he asked, dragging his eyes from her curves to the paper-ream castle with one eyebrow raised.

“Well, I was hoping my boyfriend would be chivalrous and scale the walls,” she said, testing her weight on both legs again.

“Boyfriend?” he asked, stunned at her casual use of the appellation. He hadn’t known that word was in her lexicon.

“Chivalrous,” she reinforced tartly, gesturing to him.

He floated above the file folder moat she’d enclosed herself in, and held out a hand to her.

She took it, and together they stood on air, gently turning in place.

He shifted so that his arms came around her.

A much-replayed memory surrounded him, and he heard the faint strains of Fly Me To The Moon echoing through his consciousness from a year past. Back then, he’d never thought they’d get this far.

“Pizza tonight?” she asked hopefully.

“Boyfriend?” he repeated, knowing there was a goonily happy look on his face.

Her lips curved into a soft answering smile.

“Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he answered immediately. He wasn’t stupid, after all.

He felt a rush of gratitude. Lois found ways to articulate what he wouldn’t dare. It made their relationship somehow more tangible, something he’d needed sorely after every other anchoring aspect of his life fell away.

“So, then, boyfriend, pizza tonight?”

He nodded, still lost in the intimate moment they’d carved out, and she grinned impishly up at him.

“Can I pick the toppings?”

Of course she could.

He’d give her just about anything.