Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Stardust (5/?)

From Part 4:

He again turned to go, realizing that the conversation was futile. She wasn’t going to give him her blessing, and he didn’t need it anyway. “I’ll try to stay out of your way,” he repeated, with his hand on the door. “And…I’m sorry.”

He wasn’t sure why he even said it, but just then, the regret was so powerful that it threatened to overwhelm him, and something made him put words to the feeling. How could he have been so incredibly wrong about everything? How could he have messed up this badly? And she was right – this was never going to work. He wasn’t even sure why he was so determined to try. She had lied to him, deceived him, pretended to be someone she wasn’t, and now she obviously wanted nothing more than to cost him his job. He should be running away from Lois Lane – running as far and as fast as he possibly could, which was very far and very fast. He was almost afraid to analyze the impulse that was making him stay, but he was pretty sure it didn’t have as much to do as it should with wanting to be a reporter for the Daily Planet.

The only thing he was absolutely sure of was that he was sorry – sorry for both of them – that the fleeting pleasure they’d found together now had the power to cause them so much pain.

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Part 5:

Lois waited until Clark had made his way from the conference room before she swiped at the tears that were making hot tracks down her cheeks. Even after he was gone, she could still see the hurt that had flared in his eyes when she had dismissed their night together so cruelly. He had looked...shattered, and she had been the one who shattered him. She had been the one who, with a few brutal words, had sucked the light and hope out of his eyes.

She’d had to do it though. However painful it was for both of them right now, she couldn’t let him think that their night together had been real. She couldn’t live with seeing him every day, knowing that he was searching her for signs of the woman he’d loved and finding her wanting. He would never see Lois Lane as anything more than a pale and cranky shadow of Wanda Detroit, and it was easier for both of them if he realized that now.

So she’d driven him away from Lois Lane, but she’d failed in her attempt to drive him away from the Daily Planet. Why couldn’t he see that it would never work? Why couldn’t he get a job somewhere else? He’d even told her that he had a job waiting for him back in Smallville. Why wouldn’t he do the right thing and take it? She was very proud of the thick walls of defense she’d built between her work and her personal life, such as it was. It just wouldn’t do to let a man like Clark Kent – or any man – breach those walls. Why couldn’t he see that?

“Lois?” Perry appeared in the doorway.

“Yeah?” She tried to paste on an expression of cool professionalism, but she knew it was a wasted effort. She had wiped away the tears, but she was still huddled like a cornered rat on the far side of the conference room – a fact that Perry was unlikely to miss.

“You all right? I saw you come in here with Kent.”

Her mouth was dry. She wished she had a drink of water. She wished she had anything at all to drink. And while she was at it, she wished she were somewhere else drinking it. Somewhere very, very far away from the corner of the conference room, which was dusty and cobwebby and starting to feel a little humiliating, she’d been huddled there so long.

“Lois?” Perry prompted, sounding impatient.

“I’m, uh...I’m fine.”

Perry shut the door and turned to face her. She was desperate for comfort, but one glance told her that she wasn’t going to get it from Perry. She could tell that he wasn’t interested in being her friend and mentor at that moment; he was her boss, and he looked like he needed that blood pressure monitor he’d bought the week before.

“I’m gonna ask you a question,” he said flatly, “and I want an honest answer.”

She nodded, feeling her stomach twist with dread. He was going to ask her about Clark. He was going to say something – and it wouldn’t take all that much – that was going to break the fragile hold she had on her emotions.

“This problem you have with Kent – I don’t need the details, but I want to know: is it personal or professional?”

She stared down at the floor. Definitely dusty.

“It...was personal,” she admitted, not trusting herself just then to construct a believable lie. “Now it’s professional.”

“Now that I’ve hired him, you mean.”

She nodded and dared a peek at her boss. She immediately wished she hadn’t; Perry’s face had flushed an alarming shade of red.

“So what you’re telling me is that yesterday, when you came into my office and told me that Clark Kent was ‘bad news’ and that you’d quit if I hired him...what you’re telling me is that you didn’t have a thing to say against him professionally. Is that right?”

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t. She clenched her hands into tight fists, trying to focus on the small pain of her nails biting into her palms.

“Lois, do you know how close I came to sending that man packing this morning?” Perry exploded. “I consider myself a man of integrity, and I’d made that fellow an offer – an offer based on his professional abilities and the initiative he showed in going out and getting me a damn fine story. I nearly compromised that integrity this morning by sending him away without giving him a fair shot. And now I find out that it’s personal?”

“I can’t work with him, Perry,” she said desperately, emerging a step or two from her corner and meeting his eyes for the first time. “Please don’t do this to me.”

He heaved a deep sigh and his face softened for the first time since he’d come into the room. “Are you afraid of him, honey? I mean, he seems like a nice enough fellow to me, but looks can be deceiving. Has he threatened you? Harassed you?”

Yes!

She wanted to say it so badly. Perry was giving her the perfect out, and all she had to do was to say that Clark Kent was dangerous. All she had to do was weep a little and say that she was afraid of Clark, afraid to be in the same room with him.

She couldn’t do it, though.

Clark Kent was the most dangerous man she’d ever met, but not the way Perry meant. Never like that. And as much as she wanted him gone, she couldn’t bring herself to tell that particular lie. Not when she could still remember the gentle touch of his hands on her body and the sweet nonsense he’d whispered in her ear. Not when she could still remember how safe and content she’d felt in his arms.

She swallowed hard and wished again that she had something to drink. Her throat was aching and her mouth was dry and Perry was waiting...waiting for her to tell him the truth.

“No,” she said in a low voice. “As far as I know, he’s exactly what he seems.”

“I see.”

There it was again. Another ‘I see.’ And she knew he was expecting some sort of explanation from her – some reason why she’d tried to scuttle a decent man’s job opportunity, some reason why she’d lowered herself to issuing ultimatums. But she couldn’t. It was too personal. Too embarrassing. And way, way too painful.

“Should I be expecting your resignation, then?” he prodded.

“Clark said....” How strange it seemed to say his name out loud to someone else. Even his name seemed personal and private somehow, as if it were meant just for her. But it wasn’t, of course. It was just his name, and now she had less right to it than anyone. “He said you made the job provisional.”

“Whatever is going on here, I need to know that it isn’t going to disrupt my newsroom. If it does, then obviously one of you will have to go.”

“One of us?” she exclaimed. “Perry, you can’t seriously be suggesting...”

“What I’m suggesting is that you and Kent find a way to keep your personal problems out of my newsroom,” he said firmly. “And I’m also suggesting that if you ever hit me with an ultimatum like that again, you’d better have your resume up to date. I’d hate to lose you, Lois, but no one is irreplaceable. Remember that.”

She nodded, hugging her arms tighter around herself and wishing Perry would just leave her alone so that she could cry or be sick or somehow fall into a thousand pieces right there in her dusty, cobwebby corner. She had suddenly remembered that Clark was outside the conference room somewhere, and now that corner seemed like the perfect place to spend the rest of her career.

Perry, of course, had other ideas. “All right, then. Get back to work.” He turned and waded into the newsroom, bellowing questions and orders at other reporters – his own special brand of motivation.

Lois unfolded herself from the corner and made her way back to her desk on wobbly knees, deliberately not allowing herself to look for Clark. If she didn’t see him, he wasn’t there, right? She sank into her chair and took a big gulp from her coffee cup, nearly spitting it right back out again when the cold, bitter coffee hit her taste buds. She poured the remainder into her bedraggled African violet and got up to get some more, slamming to a halt when she caught sight of Clark sitting at a desk on the direct path to the coffee pot.

“All right there, Lois?” Jimmy asked, coming up right behind her.

“Fine.” She veered off in the direction of the ladies’ room, still clutching the coffee mug in her hand, and once inside, she barricaded herself in the same stall to which she’d fled the day before. She felt sobs tearing at her throat, but she refused to let them escape. She couldn’t be caught crying. Not at the Planet. A few tears leaked past her defenses, and these she quickly attacked with a wad of toilet paper.

She took several deep breaths and tried to figure out how she was going to get through this. She could either hand Perry her resignation – and in the mood he was in, he was likely to accept it – or she could find some way to work in the same newsroom as Clark Kent for as long as his ‘provisional’ employment there lasted. She needed her job, so the latter was the obvious choice, but she had no idea how she was going to manage it. Just the brief glimpse she’d had of him sitting at a desk had been enough to stop her in her tracks and send her on a headlong flight to the ladies’ room. He hadn’t even been looking at her – just dark hair and broad shoulders had been enough to unnerve her. And she hated that. She hated any man having such power over her. She wanted to hate him, too, but couldn’t quite manage it – and then she hated her own susceptibility to him most of all.

She froze in place when she heard the door open and a pair of chattering voices entered the restroom. She could only place one of them – a recently hired copy editor she’d butted heads with only two days before – but the subject of their discussion was quickly apparent.

“…see him?” the copy editor said with a giggle. “Oh my God.”

“Shame about the glasses,” the other woman said as she entered the stall next to Lois’s. “Otherwise…yum.”

“I think the glasses are kind of cute.” The copy editor stopped in front of Lois’s stall, facing the mirror. Lois could see the heels of a pair of black pumps beneath the door.

The other woman laughed. “Like you’d know. You were too busy looking at his butt to notice them.”

“Well…yeah,” the copy editor admitted. Lois heard the sound of running water; the editor was apparently washing her hands. “But can you blame me?”

A flush came from the stall next door. Good, Lois thought, gritting her teeth. Leave already.

“Not at all.” Lois heard the sound of the-woman-she-didn’t-know arranging her clothing. “Whoever he is, he has one of the world’s most perfect butts. It should be in a museum somewhere. There should be poems written about it. I may write one myself.”

Her friend burst out laughing. “I want to read that.”

Lois heard the door next to her open. “You can help me write it if you want. We’ll call it ‘Ode on the New Guy’s A**’ and become rich and famous.”

“But then women everywhere will want to see it. I’m not sure I want to share.”

“You can’t keep a tush like that a secret, Shari.”

Shari…that was her name! Shari Thomas. I should have bludgeoned the little tart with a stapler when I had the chance, Lois thought viciously.

“Well, but there’s no point in advertising it either,” Shari argued. “Has Cat seen him yet, I wonder?”

Oh, God. Lois wished there were an oven nearby so she could stick her head in and be done with it. She’d thought it couldn’t get any worse than hearing these two twits having raptures over Clark’s as…sets, which as far as she was concerned were absolutely off-limits to all women, including herself.

Especially herself.

But the thought of Clark in Cat Grant’s clutches ranked right up there with moving back in with her mother, disaster-wise. If Cat even thought about hitting on Clark, Lois wasn’t sure if she’d be able to keep herself from scratching the gossip columnist’s eyes out…and of course Cat was going to hit on Clark. Cat hit on everyone. A man didn’t have to be nearly as good-looking as Clark was to become another notch on Cat's garter belt.

You wanted a guy for one night, and you got him. Clark’s voice echoed in her head, and her conscience whispered that he was absolutely right. She’d done the very thing for which she’d always scorned Cat Grant. So why was Cat able to get away with it, time after time, with no apparent repercussions? Lois had tried it once and now she was hiding in a toilet.

“I doubt she’s in yet,” the other woman replied, “but then, I was only in the newsroom for a minute myself. If she puts on a good show, promise you’ll call me upstairs and tell me about it.”

Upstairs. That meant that Other Woman was in advertising or accounting. Lois tried to peek through the crack in the door to see if she recognized the woman, but all she could see was a white sleeve and a sliver of blue skirt. She would just have to start hating all of the women upstairs on principle. Or maybe it would be easier just to hate all of the women in the whole building. She didn’t like most of them much anyway, so it wasn’t like it would take a lot of extra effort.

“I will,” Shari answered. “Right now I’m going to head back. I wanted to watch the shuttle launch.”

“Oh, I forgot that was this morning,” Other Woman said.

She didn’t sound particularly interested, but the reminder of the launch hit Lois with a jolt. Normally, she wasn’t all that interested in shuttle launches either. She’d covered them before and at first had found them exciting, but now they all seemed pretty much the same. There was the countdown, and then the shuttle would go up, and afterwards the talking heads at EPRAD would say the same old things about it: new frontiers...coup for the space program...blah blah blah. She hadn’t even been assigned the story, but she could write it in her sleep. The only thing that distinguished this launch from any other was that a couple of days before, Samuel Platt had burst into the newsroom insisting at the top of his lungs that the Messenger shuttle had been sabotaged and was likely to explode.

She hadn’t believed him, but she’d been interested enough to hold on to the notes he’d thrust into her hands, and she’d spent some time since then trying – and failing – to make sense of them. She’d decided that Platt was probably a crackpot, but Shari’s mention of the shuttle launch was enough to distract Lois – at least a little – from her jealous anger at the two women and her consuming dread of working in the same newsroom with Clark Kent. She had a mystifying pile of notes on her desk that could lead to a story…and if it did, the story just might keep her out of the newsroom and away from Clark. That thought alone was enough to inspire her, and the minute the women had left the restroom, their cheerful voices fading away down the hall, Lois freed herself from her stall, filled her coffee cup with water from the sink, and then charged back into the newsroom with renewed determination.

A crowd had formed around the television to watch the countdown to the shuttle launch, and this time Lois couldn’t seem to keep her eyes from automatically seeking out Clark, who was standing nearby with Jimmy. He had taken off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his crisp, white shirt, and Lois could see exactly why he’d caught the eyes of the women in the restroom and probably of every other woman in the building. The jacket had hidden the broad shoulders and tapered waist – as well as that other part of his anatomy the women had been so impressed with – but without it, Clark Kent would draw the eye of any living, breathing woman, and probably quite a few men as well. He had certainly caught her eye that night at the Stardust.

But there was so much more to Clark than that, and among the many other confusing emotions he was arousing, she felt offended on his behalf that women in the building were jokingly composing poems to his physique without knowing anything about his sweet spirit and quick wit. She’d only had time to catch glimpses of those things herself, but she knew instinctively that they were what made him special. She admired broad shoulders and a perfect behind as much as the next woman, she supposed, but they were not the reasons she had found Clark so irresistible that night at the Stardust. Still, she was baffled by this odd feeling of...was it protectiveness? possessiveness?

Maybe it was both.

Whatever it was, she knew it was outrageous for her to be feeling that way, in light of her own outright attack on Clark. She had no claim on him and no obligation to protect him.

With an effort, she forced her attention away from him and to the television screen. The countdown was already in progress, and as soon as the shuttle lifted off, Lois planned to go back to her desk and sift through Platt’s notes one last time.

But then a panicked voice broke in, interrupting the countdown, and suddenly the Messenger launch wasn’t routine at all, and Samuel Platt didn’t seem like quite such a crackpot. “Wait a minute...there’s something wrong...there’s a fire! There’s a fire!”

She and her coworkers all surged forward with a collective gasp just as the Messenger exploded on the launch pad. While many of the women around her covered their eyes, Lois stared at the screen, the horror of witnessing such a thing accompanied by the prickle of excitement she always felt when she knew she was on to a good story. She welcomed the feeling without a shred of guilt, having made her peace with that aspect of herself long before. It didn’t make her a bad person. She didn’t want terrible things to happen, but when they did, she wanted to be there to report them – as honestly and fairly as possible.

As the murmur of shocked conversation began to fill the newsroom, she turned and sought out Perry, pulling him to one side. “I knew there was something to Platt’s story! I just knew it.”

“Lois, just because one madman’s prediction came true doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy to sabotage the entire space program.”

The words were right – the words of an editor trying to ensure that she didn’t go off on a wild goose chase – but Lois knew Perry, and she could see that he, too, had caught the scent of a story the minute the Messenger had gone up in flames. Their earlier altercation was forgotten. This was business. This was what they did – what was in their blood – and she knew that it wouldn’t take much convincing for Perry to back her all the way.

“Maybe not,” she agreed. “But with more than a hundred colonists going up in the next launch, are you willing to take that chance?”

“I guess not,” Perry conceded, just as she’d known he would. “So what have you got?”

“Right now just a lot of confusing notes. But I’ll get more. I need a task force, though. I can’t cover this alone.”

“Take Jimmy.”

She gave him a look of disbelief. “Chief, we’re talking about the space program.”

“Too bad. Take Jimmy.”

“What about Myerson?”

“Busy.”

“Burns?”

“Budapest.”

“Chief, Jimmy is a kid.”

“Fine. Then take Kent. He’s free.” Perry gave her a challenging look. Maybe their earlier altercation hadn’t been completely forgotten.

“Jimmy’s fine,” she said quickly. Except it wasn’t true. Not only was Jimmy ridiculously inexperienced, but he was also still standing with Clark Kent, chattering and gesturing wildly as if they were new best friends. She let her eyes flicker in their direction and saw that Clark was still staring at the television, looking somber as he took in the sight of the emergency vehicles swarming over the scene.

Then, as if he could feel her eyes on him, he turned the look on her – a look so full of sorrow and regret that she sucked in a breath at the sight of it. Had she put that look on his face, or was it the tragedy unfolding on the television screen? For a few seconds she was caught, unable to look away as something achingly painful passed between them. She even took an instinctive step forward, in an insane urge to offer comfort, before remembering that she was the last person on earth from whom he would want it.

“Lois?” Perry asked. “You change your mind about Kent?”

“Uh, no.” She dragged her eyes away from Clark. “I’ll take Jimmy.”

“Fine. Get him and get out of here. If there’s a story in this, I don’t want some other paper beating us to it because you were too busy staring at Kent to be bothered.”

“I wasn’t...” she protested, but she broke off when she realized she was talking to Perry’s retreating back. “Oh, all right, I was,” she muttered to herself as she worked up her nerve to approach Jimmy and Clark.

She steeled her expression into one of icy professionalism and walked up to the two men. She could feel Clark’s presence, like a shiver over her skin, but she was careful to give no hint of it. Instead she locked her gaze on Jimmy, who looked slightly alarmed at the sight of Lois bearing down on him.

“Let’s hit it,” she told him, giving his arm a tug and turning her back on Clark as quickly as she could.

“Uh, where are we going?” Jimmy asked, scrambling to catch up with her.

“To interview Samuel Platt.” She snatched her purse from the drawer of her desk. “He’s convinced the Messenger was sabotaged.”

“Wow! Really?”

“Yes, really,” she said in her most scathing tone. “Listen, you just stand there and be quiet. If I need you to do something, I’ll tell you, all right?”

“Right. Fine.” Jimmy was practically dancing beside her as they headed toward the elevator. “Seriously, Lois, you won’t regret this. I’ve thought all along I might have a knack for investigative work. I just needed that chance, you know? And it’s so cool that you’re willing to give me that. I can’t tell you what it means to me to know that you have that much faith in me.”

“Everyone else was busy,” she snapped, and then she felt a little guilty when she saw his face fall. It wasn’t Jimmy’s fault that her nerves were in shreds that day. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn something,” she added, a little more gently.

A smile broke through the clouds on Jimmy’s face as he hurried to press the elevator button for them. “I will,” he chirped. “You can count on it. So who is this Platt guy, anyway? Is he the one who came in here the other day? ‘Cause he seemed like a kook to me. Of course, what do I know?”

What indeed, Lois thought, gritting her teeth as Jimmy kept up a running line of excited blather. Usually she liked Jimmy...mostly...or at least she tolerated him better than she did most of the rest of the people at the Planet, but if she was able to keep from choking him that day, it would be an absolute miracle. But then, she was getting out of the newsroom, and if time was on her side, she might not have to see Clark again until tomorrow. She would focus on her story, on the-man-who-might-not-be-a-crackpot-after-all, on not killing Jimmy...it was all surely enough to distract her from Clark Kent.

But as the elevator chimed its arrival, she couldn’t help letting her eyes slide toward the place where she’d last seen Clark standing. He was still there, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, and he was making no attempt to hide the fact that he was watching her. She felt the bottom drop out of her stomach at the intensity of his gaze, and she turned quickly away, stepping into the elevator and releasing a ragged sigh of relief when the doors closed between them.

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A/N: I'm going back out of town this week and thought that since I had this ready, I would post it while I had the chance. A huge thank-you to all who offered feedback on the last chapter! I'm sorry I haven't had the chance to respond to comments yet, but I do read and appreciate each one. Hope you enjoy this latest part