Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Undercover Reporter: Resurrection (9/17)

“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.






“I had a thought,” she said cautiously, talking over Clark Gable’s antics as he tried to teach the already quite capable Claudette Colbert how to hitchhike.

“Hmmm,” came Clark’s contented reply.

They were curled up on her couch together, his cape hugging her shoulders, limbs entangled under a quilt, cuddled closely enough that somehow even her loveseat was comfortable. A black and white movie flickered on the television across the room. Crumpled napkins and cold pizza slices sat on an open, grease-stained box in front of them. They’d been on a pizza-around-the-world kick this week. Having made it through New York and Chicago, they’d gotten to northern Italy tonight, much to Lois’ delight. He’d taken the time to pick up her weekly supply of Swiss chocolate while he’d been on the continent, too.

It was a rare night for them.

Truth be told, the gun runners had such an immense head start that she was pushing herself and Clark harder than she would have on an average story. She was trying to keep busy and gain ground on them, rather than sit paralyzed, overanalyzing her response to Lex’s involvement in it. She knew she’d never fully let go of the guilt and embarrassment over that mistake of a relationship, and there wasn’t much point trying.

And, of course, Superman was always pulled away at some of the truly most inopportune times. She forced down a blush at the thought of his last late-night rescue. Things had just been getting interesting when that faraway look crossed his face.

But tonight he seemed relaxed. At peace. Happy to hold her all night while Claudette Colbert walked all over Clark Gable.

His mere state of relaxation was a rarity in and of itself these days.

On the surface, it seemed that all was right in their world. Lex was gone. Their investigation was progressing. No one had even shot at her in weeks, which had to be a record. And, most importantly, they were together. After a year of tension and clumsily stumbling past each other’s subtle attempts to get closer, and after another six months of forced separation, they were finally, finally on the same page.

...Mostly.

She glanced at her tightly drawn drapes. She was always double checking them, now. There was no way they could explain Superman locked in a cozy embrace with Lois Lane while watching It Happened One Night.

At Clark’s insistence, they had to be careful in public, too, even more careful than when he’d been living in the world as Clark Kent. If either of them acted like Lois-Lane-and-Clark-Kent instead of On-the-Job-Superhero-and-Daily-Planet-City-Beat-Reporter, someone could put the pieces together.

Secretly, she wondered if anyone -- except her, of course -- could make the connection. But she kept that speculation to herself. She was choosing her battles with Clark more carefully these days – a large factor in why she held herself back from talking Clark out of his newfound, perplexing, and singular dedication to the spandex uniform.

While she had learned to be more circumspect during their time apart, Clark had learned lessons, too. She wondered again if he was taking some of them too far. Checking the water level was one thing. Avoiding water altogether was another. Something in their time apart had made him edgy, almost anxious, and much more wary than he’d ever been before.

She didn’t want to ruin the cozy atmosphere tonight, but her brain had been working their problem over anew since they’d uncovered that first cache of guns at the old Luthor Corp warehouse. Their field trip to the Congo had given her another brilliant idea – the one she’d been waiting for.

Now, she just needed to talk Clark into it.

She started off innocuously, “I was just thinking… If either of us had gone alone to the Congo chasing this story, we would have had a hard time reporting in.”

“Mm-hmm,” he replied into her hair, still mostly focused on Claudette Colbert flagging down a ride by flashing some ankle.

“…And whichever of us went down there would have to be off the grid almost entirely to make it work.”

That sounded like she was just thinking it through, right?

“Mmm-hmm,” he said again, taking the time to gently nuzzle her temple.

Right.

She leaned into his touch encouragingly, but didn’t let it distract her.

“And we’d probably have to be down there for months, right? Maybe even a year.”

Slowly, she told herself, slowly. This was a sensitive topic for him, she knew.

“And we’d have to be completely untraceable.”

The nuzzle had turned into soft kisses.

“And, well, if we put all that together, well… I think this story could be our page eight story,”

She felt him tense.

“Not tonight, Lois…” he said, pulling her closer.

Dammit.

“We need to talk about it, Clark,” she said softly.

“We’ve been through this before,” he said, burying his face in her neck as if he could hide from the conversation.

Great Ceasar’s Ghost, he was at least as stubborn as she was! It almost made her wish she had an Elvis allegory to reach for. It always seemed to work for Perry.

Well, she had a few things that Perry didn’t.

She ran her fingers through his hair in a caress.

“I miss you,” she said, not having to fabricate the emotion that came with it.

Her other hand moved down to trace the line of blue spandex at his wrist, before gently tugging at it. The Suit had been fashioned to create distance, protecting Clark’s identity and therefore those closest to him. But it had somehow morphed into a boundary line that was preventing Lois from becoming closer to him, preventing them from both from moving into a real relationship that could go anywhere beyond what the metaphor of the Suit allowed.

“I’m right here,” he responded, tightening his arms around her.

It would be so easy to just lean into that embrace and let him distract her tonight. They’d been content to be together, on the couch, dissing American pizza, watching Clark Gable use every trick in the book.

It had been achingly simple.

But the in the next moment, she knew, the phone would ring, or the door would buzz, or her mother would inquire her if she was seeing someone yet — or Lucy would ask her how she was doing, in that transparently pitious tone — or Perry would walk past Clark’s desk with his singularly somber look — or Jimmy would accidentally say Clark’s name out loud and the entire newsroom would still, as if bracing for her eventual breakdown — or any of the hundred situations that she had to survive on a daily basis, and that he never had to see, would happen — and it would all get complicated again.

It had already been a month since she’d had this specific burst of an idea, and over two since she’d lost the first fight about the topic in general. If he didn’t want to talk now, another day would go by. Followed by another. And another.

And those days would add up.

A week.

A month.

A year.

A lifetime.

A lost lifetime of what could have been for them.

Now that she’d gotten him back, she wanted that lifetime — a whole lifetime, one that was properly complicated, not by his assumed death, but by a host of other daily domestic issues. She wasn’t content with living for the scraps of their days anymore. And based on everything she’d known about her traditional, upstanding, chivalrous, family-oriented, farm-raised do-gooder, she suspected that it would eventually bother him, too.

So instead of indulging in the easy distraction of his comforting embrace, she lightly pushed back, “You know what I mean.”

He made a non-committal noise.

“What if you’d been in Africa this whole time?” she asked gently, cautiously.

She felt him sigh and then he was sitting up, moving away from her. The look on his face made her think this wasn’t going to go well, in spite of how softly she’d led them into it.

“How did I get to Africa when I had three holes in my chest?” His voice was dull.

She’d been working the problem from the other end, so this part wasn’t as fully fleshed out as it should have been. “Maybe you had a little super help with just that one thing?”

“'Super help,'” he practically spat, at once irritated. “I’ve spent the last nine months acting like Clark Kent doesn't exist so that no one could ever guess that he could be alive, that he could be Superman. And you’re throwing them together again! Not only that, but you want to publish it!”

Her jaw nearly dropped at his quick turn to anger. She was supposed to be the one with the short temper, wasn’t she?


He’d gone on without pausing. “You know how many people hate me. You know what someone could do if they held you or my parents as leverage? What they could make me do?”

He stood, pacing in fear or agitation, she couldn’t tell which. What had happened to him in the six months they'd been apart? She thought she'd seen what his death and subsequent isolation had done to him, thought she'd given him a reprieve and a path to heal. But this paranoia felt fresh, and not healed at all. How did he keep so much of this bottled up?

“I did this for them,” he said, gesturing broadly to the past. “To protect them! To protect you!”

“Clark—“ she cut in, hoping to calm him before he said something she couldn’t let lie.

But he didn’t even hear her.

“We have enough trouble with criminals and crazies targeting you, and that’s with just a tenuous, professional connection to me. Imagine what they would do if we flat out told them you were dating Superman! The way things are now, you’re safe.”

He looked heavenward for a moment before amending, “Safer."

Gaining steam again, he went on, “I won’t just throw away the last nine months now, on the chance that one of your impulsive schemes nabs us a more exciting story!”

She wasn’t the one with heat vision, but she saw red anyway.

Cautious, my foot, she thought.

“Listen, you overgrown boy scout,” she snapped, not letting herself feel guilty about the wounded look that immediately crossed his face.

She stood, squaring off with him, her voice rising to forestall any rejoinder. “Don’t even think of putting that on me. You’re the one with the hero complex," she rightly accused, tugging at the corner of his now ever-present cape before snapping it back at him sharply, "but you’ve been forcing it on all of us – me, your mom, your dad. You made this choice for all of us! Not me! I would never, ever have let you get into this mess if you’d let me know what was going on when everything happened. But you didn’t tell me. You didn’t tell me anything! Not that you were Superman, not how you felt about me, and not that I didn’t, in fact, watch you die in my arms, all while you were protecting me.”

She could have kicked herself for letting her voice break on those last words. She didn’t want to win this fight out of pity! She wanted to win out of sheer, overbearing rightness.

“You could have asked for my help and you didn’t,” she continued, in a tone that was much steadier.

Watching his face, she could see that his own fury had fled, and she thought he might finally be ready to listen.

“But you’re a lucky man,” she said, still stiff but magnanimous, “Because I’m offering to help anyway.”

The resistance seemed to go out of him entirely. He sat down heavily in the nearest chair, aside her kitchen table.

“I know you don’t seriously believe that I’m trying to use our lives and your identity to get a better story,” she said.

He shook his head, then slumped forward to let it rest in his hands.

“So, do you want to tell me what this is really about?”

He sighed, but was quiet.

A moment later, she wondered if he intended to answer. Clark always did have difficulty articulating the more difficult emotions with her, and it hadn’t gotten better since he’d decided to reduce his identity to the super-suit. Once she’d realized the truth about his identity in tights, she’d started to suspect his reluctance had come because he’d never spoken his deepest thoughts aloud at all. Tonight was confirming that he instead chose to shield his loved ones from his messiest emotions.

Well, Lois Lane had been forged in messy.

“Clark?” she prodded, keeping her voice soft and open.

He muttered into his hands.

“One more time for those of us without super-hearing?” she asked gently.

“I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t,” she assured him firmly, familiar with this litany.

She’d always imagined that Superman’s deepest fear was an accidental application of his powers, hurting someone inadvertently. But every action he’d taken and every worry he’d voiced since she’d found him again somehow came back to staying near her and keeping her safe.

It made her wonder...

“But I could,” he said darkly. “And I’ve lost… so much already… and everything else…”

Oh.

Her ears perked. This part of the conversation usually just diverged into a warning about her and his parents needing to be more cautious and to stay away from him in public.

He didn’t talk about this part, about how Barrow’s shots had really affected him.

She crossed the room and perched on her kitchen table beside his chair, hand moving soothingly to his back.

“Perry, Jimmy, everyone in Smallville, my job, working with you. My life.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I can’t bring you coffee in the morning or take Jack to a movie or give Jimmy advice on girls.”

“I bet Jimmy would love advice about girls from Superman.”

He chuckled in spite of himself and looked up at her. “You know what I mean. I can’t get a pager or walk you home or rent my own place or get married or have a job.” He looked helpless. “I can’t have a life.”

Privately, she agreed with him. It was killing him to try and contain all of Clark Kent’s empathy, wit, passion and life into this superhero’s two-dimensional form – and that, in turn, was killing her. But right now, his pain pulled at her, and she reassured herself that the last few months together shouldn’t be discounted, that even if the other trappings of Clark's life lay by the wayside, she was still there. And she wasn't going anywhere.

She put a hand to his cheek. “You have a life,” she insisted with quiet resolution.

His hand covered hers. The look in his eyes was grateful, at once forgiving and apologetic, adoring.

How could you be so deeply sure that someone was being an addle-brained lunkhead, and still be willing to follow them to the ends of the earth?

Love, the answer came clearly.

The thought was so vivid it shook her for a second.

But, well… obviously. Otherwise, what in the world had they been doing? She pushed all that away to deal with later. One major emotional landmine at a time.

“Clark, if you really want all those things, why not just live under another identity? Louie can get you papers. Good ones. You can start over in another city. You can rent a place, get a job, do anything there, if that’s what you really want.”

“I really just want you.” Her heartbeat sped up as the intent in his gaze intensified. He sighed, and something in his eyes broke. “…But sometimes I get overwhelmed that I’ll never have a chance at the other stuff, too.”

“You can have it back,” she nudged, resuming her train of thought from earlier.

He reached for her, and she slid closer to him, still sitting on the table as his arms wrapped around her waist, burying his head in her lap.

“Can we please talk about this another night? I don’t want to fight about it anymore.”

She could hear the pleading tenor of his tone and realized, not for the first time, that she wasn’t immune to Clark Kent.

She held him tighter.

“Just promise me you’ll think about it,” she stipulated.

She felt him nod weakly and smoothed her hand across his hair.

Looking down at his slicked hair, she realized how much had changed between them. A year ago, she’d have pushed him until he’d left or they’d imploded again, sending them back to their separate corners until the bell signaled the next round. Tonight she’d stood her ground but taken a much softer approach.

And it had worked.

Instead of separate corners -- separate hemispheres -- he was curled around her as if drawing strength from the contact. So maybe she had learned something worthwhile from the whole lonely, six-month nightmare without him, after all.

The man holding her sighed, finally relaxing into her touch.

Clark learned his own lessons during our time apart, she thought again, fretting anew.

His fear and reticence tonight sparked a deeper concern in her that they hadn’t been the right ones. It wasn’t like Clark to be angry. It wasn’t like him not to have hope.

She held him tighter as her mind worked over her fresh worries for him, for their future. She would figure out a way to save him, the way he’d saved her countless times.

Some jobs were for Superman.

But it looked like sorting Superman was a job for Lois Lane.