“Ok! So we’ll add your name back to the byline,” she said, reaching across him toward the keyboard.

“Lois,” he caught her hands in his before they could reach the keys, “It’s plausible, but it’s still not possible. I just – I can’t risk my parents. They gave me everything. I can’t repay them this way, by taking chances with their safety.”

“Have you asked them?” she asked, watching his face carefully.

She’d been deeply curious what his parents thought of their son’s new relationship to the world, living solely as a benevolent god instead of a favored small town son. But since this conversation always ended in an argument, she never got to ask. Actually, she was surprised they’d gotten this far tonight. Usually, she’d be standing alone at her open window long before this. In fact, this long after the start of their usual argument, she’d be standing over her kitchen sink, cursing Clark’s name into a carton of rocky road.

After all, just because she’d learned caution over the last year didn’t mean that extended to patience with her boyfriend when he was behaving with the IQ of an absolute walnut.

In the meantime, said walnut was stubbornly not answering her last question.

“Clark?” she pushed gently.

“They agree with you,” he said on an exhale. “But they don’t understand!” he protested quickly. “They haven’t lived in Metropolis for years watching the villain of the week go after you just because you might be on a first-name basis with me.”

“Clark,” she said as patiently as she could. “That’s not because of Superman. That’s just me. It’s because of me. They’d be coming after me anyway.”

He frowned at that.

“They were coming after me before you and I ever met, and they still are now, without anything to do with Superman,” she said, thinking of tonight’s mess. And last week’s. And… She forced her mind to focus. “I think that this plan will work. And it sounds like your parents do, too. You made the choice for all of us last time. Don’t we get to decide, now that we have another chance?”


*****



The Clark Kent pout was in full effect now as he felt this conversation, and his own resolve, slipping away from him.

He met her eyes again, considering.

He saw care reflected back in them. Compassion. Love.

For him.

He never thought he’d get this lucky.

…And that was exactly why he couldn’t risk losing it.

“I’m sorry, Lois. But no,” he said with finality.

Lois sighed, her shoulders drooping. “Ok, then,” she said, as if recalibrating. She released his hands and shut the laptop.

“Ok?”

“Ok,” she nodded.

He’d missed something.

She took a sip of her coffee. “I’m still pretty wound up after all this. Do you want to watch a movie?”


He shook his head, as if that would make her behavior clear. “Lois, what?”

“A comedy, maybe. Something light?”

“No, I mean — I — that’s it?”

“That’s it,” she said with an easy shrug, leaning back in her chair.

“And that’s alright with you?” He couldn’t be understanding her correctly.

But she was nodding, and calm. “That’s alright, Clark.” Too calm.

“So we can just keep going as we have been? The star reporter of the Daily Planet, and her secret undercover reporting partner, Superman?”

“Oh, that. No.”

There it was, he thought. The catch.

“What part?” he asked.

“Well, all of it, really. Except the Superman part.”


He parsed that. “You’re not going to let me be your partner anymore.”

He couldn’t help but feel a certain crestfallen despair start to amplify and take control. Ever since Capone and his gangsters had shot Clark Kent, a big part of him felt like they’d severed his life more completely than Luthor had tried to do with the kryptonite cage. Working with Lois had brought him back in so many ways that he’d never be able to articulate them all. The idea of losing that all over again cut him.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said, finally taking the reins of the conversation after stringing him along. “You act as if you’re well and happy to sacrifice your daily life for those around you, but I can’t pretend that everything is fine. I need more than that.”

He felt his heart stop, something he hadn’t known it could do. “Lois, please—“ His panic came quick and harsh. “I can’t lose y—“

“You won’t,” she assured. “But we can’t live like this anymore, barely seeing each other and only in secret. We need to figure something else out if we’re ever going to have a chance at the normal life you’ve been wanting. You have to know that,” she said, looking to him for confirmation.

“It’s been working,” he argued weakly.

“It’s worked so far and it hasn’t been easy,” she corrected. “And it hasn’t been enough. It’s not a forever kind of plan.”

“Forever?” he caught the one word that didn’t usually pop up in their conversations.

The way his life had turned out, they’d had to focus on the ‘here’ and the ‘now.’ He’d thought that was what she’d wanted. Lois had always shied away from commitment.

But then again, she’d always had the option to choose before, he thought with a pang of guilt. They hadn’t been able to get to a point where they’d needed to consider a real commitment before he’d been shot in front of her, severing any hope for a future for them.

But now she was using a word like ‘forever.’

He would give just about anything for a ‘forever’ with Lois Lane.

He decided this was one turn in the road that he could roll with.

Meanwhile, she’d reopened the computer and signed online. “Here,” she said, showing him a website she’d pulled up in Netscape Navigator. “There’s a modern cabin for sale on a mountainside in Colorado. The chance is low we’d ever run into anyone we knew there. Two bedrooms, new kitchen, big back deck. It’s got a high tree line behind it, and it’s pretty secluded,” she said, scrolling down to a photo of a wooded, picturesque property. “It’s perfect cover for unnoticeable comings and goings from the air. It’s a 7-hour drive to your parents house, so it should take you about 2 seconds to get there. Maybe a couple of minutes with a passenger. And it’ll probably take you about 3 seconds to get back to Metropolis for patrols. …though I’ve been wondering if you shouldn’t take some random patrols across the country, just to throw people off in case they’re ever looking to pin down your location.”

He pulled his gaze from the screen back to her, shocked.

“When did you research this?”

“On and off, the last few weeks."

He glanced at the computer screen again. She’d put a lot of thought into this.

“I think we should see it before we take it, but it could work.”

She’d shocked him again. “Before we take it?” he echoed dumbly, willing his mind to catch up to her.

“Well, it’ll have to be in my name, but…” she said, suddenly seeming shy about her plan. “But, well, yeah.”

“Lois…” This wasn’t how he’d expected his night to go. He would never have guessed they would have ended up here. She was offering him exactly what he’d longed for these past few months. It would be so easy to say yes. Still… “You really mean this? This is what you want?”

“I’ve spent enough time without you,” she sighed. "And I’m running out of excuses to find time with you! Jimmy’s already worried that the extra nights a week I spend at ‘tae kwon do classes’,” she added air quotes to support her meaning, “are just a bad coping mechanism for your death. Perry gives me looks every time I leave the office on another Luthor story, so that talk is brewing. Henderson has been all over me about that fuse box you melted when the laser alarms came on last month. And don’t start on that one again —” she cut off his instant grin as she referenced his favorite of her recent misadventures.

At the reminder of that investigation, his mind caught up with the implications of what she was suggesting. “But this would mean…” he shook his head. “No. You can’t give up reporting.”

“I’m not giving up reporting,” she said with an eye roll so dramatic that she usually only reserved it for Jimmy. “This doesn’t have to be the all or nothing you’re imagining. Perry will print anything I send in as long as it’s well written and the facts are straight. Besides, it’s called the Daily Planet, not the Daily City. I don’t have to work in Metropolis to write the news. And lately I’ve been thinking that the stories I write are, well, a little small. I think I can make a bigger impact if I look at the whole world, not just one city. Like the article we wrote tonight. We got onto it because it started in Metropolis, but it stretched into the crisis in the Congo and unveiled the corruption of people who could afford to change millions of lives across the globe for the better. With a little help,” she nudged his shoulder with hers, “I can chase a story anywhere. And maybe now the next millionaire will think twice about stoking the fires of a war if they know I’ll be watching.”

“I didn’t realize you’d been thinking about all of that,” he replied.

She shrugged. “It just feels like there’s more out there. For both of us.”

“Well, in that case, this is exactly why you should send this article to Perry,” he argued, gesturing to her laptop. “This can start you on the road to those global stories.”

“I told you,” she insisted, “I’m not sending it in without your name on it.’

“Lois, this is your chance for the Pulitzer. You said so yourself.”

“The only Pulitzer I want is one with both of our names on it.”

She was bringing stubborn to a whole new level. He felt his temper flare uncharacteristically, and he stood as his voice rose. “You are so stubborn!”

She laughed.

She actually laughed.

“Look who’s talking!” she fired back without heat.

He felt his jaw drop. If he was being stubborn, it was only to protect her!

“Lois, Clark Kent can’t put his name on —”


“I know you don’t think you can. That’s why we have the cabin plan.”

“Lois,” he started, still staggered that she’d even dreamed that up, “I can’t –”

“We can! And we should at least try.” She stood and walked over to him. “If this plan doesn’t work for us, in a year or two we’ll just come up with something else. We’re good at that.”

He shook his head again, and he heard her tone shift to explain it to him in a way he didn’t know how to refuse.

“There are only two options. I can either live my life here in Metropolis with a Pulitzer and Clark Kent, or I can have a cabin in the mountains with Superman. Take your pick.”

Living with Clark Kent was out of the question. But living as a recluse didn’t sound like her, either. It was Lois Lane 101 that she belonged in a major city newsroom. Now she was flatly denying that as a necessary component of her happiness.

But they’d both changed since that heart-rending night in the casino.

Maybe Clark Kent’s death had affected her as much as it had affected him.

He wondered briefly whether or not she was telling the truth. No. She wouldn’t lie. Not about this. Lois had grown while they were separated, and he’d seen her strength grow, too, now that they had come back together. She’d evolved in so many other ways in the last year – maybe this version of Lois who could flourish outside a newsroom was true now, too?

Plus… It would be so, so easy to go along with her plan.

But he was Superman now, his mind argued against the easy temptation of a life with Lois. Only Superman. He glanced down to look at the S emblazoned across his chest, his constant reminder.

It startled him when it wasn’t there, and he belatedly remembered that Lois had talked him into changing into sweats while they wrote.

Without the Suit, he wasn’t Superman.

But he couldn’t be Clark, either.

Was he anyone?

The thought shook him, and he felt the need to gasp air.

He tried to get a hold of their conversation again, to get back on track.

He was Superman, he reinforced to himself.

And he was Lois Lane’s boyfriend.

And he needed to protect her.

Sometimes even from herself.

Because she really deserved the Pulitzer she’d been hunting for. They’d been working for this, he reminded himself. Tonight she’d almost died in a warehouse for this!

“If you don’t submit that story, Chow will get away!” he tried to reason.

She shrugged. “Probably not. We already gave all of our evidence to the DA’s office. And Henderson knows what’s going on. They’ll handle it.”

He looked at her, struggling for words. “But the story… You would give up your chance at the Pulitzer for me? No, Lois, no.” How could she be so calm when she was suggesting that they just give up what little remained of their lives from before… before he’d lost his?

She stepped closer, her hands coming to rest on his chest. “For most of my life, chasing a Pulitzer was the most important thing in the world to me,” she acquiesced, her voice low. “Until the night I thought you died.”

A cold feeling gripped his insides as he recognized the emotion she was battling. It hit too close to home, and his hands flexed imperceptibly as he stopped himself from reaching for the comfort of the cape he was no longer wearing.

It had been a real possibility that he could have lost her tonight, the way she thought she’d lost him in the casino. His own ‘death’ had sent a wave of complicated emotions over him, all urging him to reevaluate his entire life and make her the singular focus. But at first he’d tried to spare her from being wrapped up in that mess, and then later he’d tried to preserve her from harm that could come from proximity to him. Trapped as he was, with so many of the world’s catastrophes on his shoulders, he couldn’t change much. It had left him indulging in yet another fantasy that they could just live apart from everything that plagued them and just –

And that’s when it struck him.

He’d been holding onto the ghost of his old life through her.

And it had been killing him.

It had been killing them both.

He’d been grieving for a life he couldn’t have, unable to see that he was holding them both back.

Lois had seen what he couldn’t.

She’d found a way to create a new life.

Together.

Maybe he would be just Superman to the rest of the world, but Lois had figured out how to give Clark Kent a safe, secluded home. With her.

She shrugged again, in answer to his argument over the article.

“Things change,” she said.

Just when he thought he couldn’t love her more, his heart expanded. His hands came up to close over hers.

She looked at him with shining eyes. “It turns out I’d rather have you than a Pulitzer.”

“I love you,” he said on impulse, all tenderness and devotion.

“Clark…” she breathed.

“You don’t have to say it back,” he said quickly. He felt himself blush. “I just— You mean so much to me, Lois. I just wanted you to know. I mean, you have to have known already. But I wanted you to hear it. I love you.”

In response, she kissed him.

Deeply.

It felt like a promise.

Her hands threaded through his hair as his came up to cup her face, one thumb brushing against her cheek. The affectionate touch made her heartbeat speed, the sound pounding in his ears as she pressed herself against him. His hands moved down to grip her waist in response. He’d started things off so sweetly, but she was nudging them into a higher gear, picking up where they’d left off outside the warehouse.

She gently bit his lower lip, and he felt the sensation all the way down to his feet.

This time he would let things get a bit away from them, he decided.

Now that they had forever to look forward to.

He couldn't be luckier. The bravest, most beautiful, most intuitive woman on Earth – and on Krypton, too, he’d wager – had offered to run away with him. They would go on investigating and fighting the bad guys and putting the whole world right one corrupt plot at a time.

The hottest team in town.

…A title that Lois was currently trying to earn in a completely different context, he mused, as she ran teasing fingertips along the waistline of his sweats, a tantalizing new boundary to cross now that he wasn’t in the one-piece Suit. He leaned into her, hands running beneath her shirt and up her arching back.

She was literally his dream come true, he thought, kissing her more deeply.

And he was hers.

She’d said so.

But…

But he knew Lois’ dreams, what she wanted most, what made her tick – better than he knew himself, it turned out.

Her dreams had been about setting the world right, stamping out injustice and fighting for equality.

That was what had been behind the whole Superman crush, hadn’t it? And her infatuation with Luthor, the proclaimed do-gooder philanthropist. And it must have been what had drawn her to the Planet, too, Metropolis’ beacon of truth and hope made tangible in print.

Her hips slid against his as she ran her tongue over the suddenly sensitive shell of his ear.

But his mind stubbornly refused to sway from thoughts of their future and the path he was accepting for them.

Because he knew Lois Lane.

And he knew that her dream had never been to live in hiding as a superhero’s sidekick.

She needed Metropolis.

She needed the Daily Planet.

And they needed her.

“Wait,” he said, pulling away. “This isn’t right.”

She looked up at him with darkened, hazy eyes and kiss-crushed lips.

“Clark?”

“You would give up your entire life here for me, your chance at your lifelong dream, your career, Jimmy and Perry? You love this city. You love being a reporter. You love that life more than anything.”

“I love you,” she said, pressing herself back against him.

His heart beat wildly against his chest at hearing it for the first time. This was what he’d been chasing his entire life, and been bereft of for just as long. Hearing her speak it out loud put his world into a focus that he’d been missing for a year.

“And I love you,” he promised. “That’s why I can’t let you give this all up for me.”

Her hazy look was sharpening.

“Let me?” she said, clearly choosing indignation to dissuade him from where he was going.

He recognized the trap she was setting with that question. “Yes,” he plowed forward, knowing she expected him to backpedal. “What you’re offering now is that you give up basically everything that I gave up when Clark Kent was shot. Lois, I know what that’s like. It’s been–” he shook his head, unable to come up with an equivalent descriptor. “I could never do that to you.”

He took a deep breath, and he felt something that had been gripping him for a whole year release, as love and courage finally overcame it. “Loving you means trusting you and knowing that we’ll beat anything we come up against. Together. So if you think that people will buy the ‘undercover reporter in Africa’ line, I think we should do it.”

For the first time in his life, he saw Lois Lane speechless.


*****