Hi Evie!
Maybe, just *maybe*, I can catch up!
You know, it kind of feels like there’s two separate stories here. I don’t mind, it’s just that we went from hanging on a gutter for half the story to jumping forward week by week as it is now. And Lois is still no closer to tricking Superman into her boudoir.
LOIS: Clark? I found a bug in my bedroom. Could you come over and help me remove it?
talking over Clark Gable’s antics as he tried to teach the already quite capable Claudette Colbert how to hitchhike.
Funny how Lois’s POV shows the mansplaining.
I never saw the movie but I’m now thinking he’s telling her to hike up her skirt some more.
cuddled closely enough that somehow even her loveseat was comfortable.
Maybe they’re floating?
He’d taken the time to pick up her weekly supply of Swiss chocolate while he’d been on the continent, too.
Oh, that’s most adorable!
LOIS: He died. It’s the least he can do now.
And, of course, Superman was always pulled away at some of the truly most inopportune times.
Oh? “Inopportune” times?
She forced down a blush at the thought of his last late-night rescue.
Is Lois indeed getting catty?
Things had just been getting interesting when that faraway look crossed his face.
Yes, she is!
Happy to hold her all night while Claudette Colbert walked all over Clark Gable.
No one had even shot at her in weeks, which had to be a record.
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.
Yes. Lois considers Superman in her bed something she would like to try. Superman considers Lois in his bed as something that isn’t to be considers.
There was no way they could explain Superman locked in a cozy embrace with Lois Lane while watching It Happened One Night.
Well…they could. It’s just, the explanation would be printed in Love Fortress International.
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.
Oh, that’s just Lois Lane. She’s probably collecting her 100th rescue reward from Superman.
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.
It does not sound like a *completely* healthy relationship they’re having. Also, she should *really* start considering how to talk him out of his spandex uniform if she wants to move things further.
She wondered again if he was taking some of them too far. Checking the water level was one thing. Avoiding water altogether was another.
“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.”
*what*?
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.
She’s definitely channeling Perry. She should be channeling Cat if she wants things to get somewhere.
Well, she had a few things that Perry didn’t.
Oh? She’s not *actually* referring to her assets, is she?
She ran her fingers through his hair in a caress.
Perry could do that, too, with Superman, after the man rescues him from an office chair bombing.
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.
Poor dear. She does sound stressed.
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.
Like, when Superman puts his cape in with her white blouse and she ends up with a pink blouse?
“What if you’d been in Africa this whole time?” she asked gently, cautiously.
She did not just…?
You did not just…?
You *sneak*!
“How did I get to Africa when I had three holes in my chest?” His voice was dull.
He was transported there and revived by a Voodoo priest. After a year of learning to speak and bathe again, he was fit to return to civilization.
Her jaw nearly dropped at his quick turn to anger. She was supposed to be the one with the short temper, wasn’t she?
Yes, well,…he’s…frustrated because he wouldn’t put out.
MARTHA: Maybe that baseball bat to the head during the Nightfall incident wasn’t the best idea after all.
Imagine what they would do if we flat out told them you were dating Superman! The way things are now, you’re safe.”
Yes, swaddled in cotton and stuffed into a gilded bird cage locked in a tower somewhere on a lost island in the middle of the Pacific.
He looked heavenward for a moment before amending, “Safer."
Could she perhaps start risking her life more until he comes to his senses?
on the chance that one of your impulsive schemes nabs us a more exciting story!”
Danger. Danger. Danger.
She wasn’t the one with heat vision, but she saw red anyway.
Cautious, my foot, she thought.
See?
me, and not that I didn’t, in fact, watch you die in my arms, all while you were protecting me.”
Maybe he should stop talking now because he might find out just how deep the direct route to China is.
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.
ELLEN: She’s not married yet. She’ll learn.
Well, Lois Lane had been forged in messy.
Cute.
He muttered into his hands.
“One more time for those of us without super-hearing?” she asked gently.
Cuter.
Awww…
“I can’t bring you coffee in the morning or take Jack to a movie or give Jimmy advice on girls.”
The coffee could appear, Jack already knows, and Jimmy, he could just send Jimmy anonymous notes in the form of horoscopes.
“I bet Jimmy would love advice about girls from Superman.”
First, you make sure Lois isn’t around. Then, you flash your cape.
“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.”
He could call himself “Bruce Wayne”, dig up a couple gold mines, show up as a rich playboy and then don a black rubber suit and go out only at nights.
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.
Awwww
Some jobs were for Superman.
But it looked like sorting Superman was a job for Lois Lane.
/eyes calendar/ Say, when’s H.G.Wells gonna show up? Couldn’t they say that a time traveler saved Clark?
Michael
I'm glad that Lois is being patient, but she's not letting it go. She knows it's up to her to save Clark, but to do so she needs to wear down the walls he's put up to protect himself. It looks like finally she's making some progress with him. 
