Okay. You all remember the disclaimers I put in part 1 - right? They apply even more to this part.
I ask for Sue's forgiveness if I have misrepresented her in any way
Also remember this was just for fun.
I tried to keep it as realistic as possible, though. There were several ways I could have gone and throwing Sue into Clark's arms, just didn't seem the way to go (sorry Sue) not to mention this is the PG folder. <g>
Well, I suppose that's enough of a further disclaimer. Here we go!
Here's part one in case you missed it:
Part One **********
Sue felt a slightly damp cloth being applied to her face. She opened her eyes and then proceeded to immediately shut them. Oh god. It wasn’t a dream. Clark Kent was sitting next to her – on her bed no less - blotting a damp cloth against her forehead.
“Are you okay?” the voice that was distinctly ‘Clark’ asked her. “I tried to catch you when you passed out, but with my hands tied, I’m afraid I didn’t make it. You sort of slid down, though, so I don’t think you hit your head. I checked you over and you didn’t seem to be hurt.”
Oh god, he had checked her over? All blood, and cognitive thinking ability with it, left her brain.
She took a deep breath trying to clear her mind so that when she opened her mouth something semi-coherent would come out. Unfortunately, what came out was a cough instead. After the fit passed, she noticed Clark watching her. He looked a little concerned.
“Are you okay? You sound awful.”
She *sounded* awful? What about how she looked?
She didn’t want to know. “I’m just sick. I’ll be fine.” She had finally managed to find her voice, even if it did come out sounding like she had been a lifetime chain smoker. She could think of better days to receive an unexpected visit from Clark Kent.
She watched as he folded the washcloth he had been blotting her with and handed it to her. Oh, those hands. Up close and personal, she realized everything she had ever written about them paled in comparison with the real thing.
Wait a minute... “You told me your hands were tied?” She looked into his gorgeous brown eyes just long enough to meet his gaze and then she found herself right back looking at his hands again. Those hands had touched her, had picked her up - had laid her down gently in her bed...
Her mind swam with the thought of Clark Kent carrying her and putting her in bed.
She felt a kind of light-headed, floaty feeling and realized she was breathing a little faster and harder than she should be. Slow down, don’t hyperventilate, she told herself.
The extra boost of oxygen to her brain seemed to clear her thoughts a little bit, though. This couldn’t be Clark Kent. That was impossible. Wasn’t it? Yes, yes it was. He was a fictional character. This had to be some kind of Dean Cain imitator or look-alike that one of her friends had hired to play a prank on her.
But the resemblance was remarkable, downright unbelievable.
“The scissors,” he answered. “You dropped the scissors when you fell. I got down on the floor and managed to get my hands on them and cut the ropes.”
Hah. If he really was Clark Kent, then he could have broke through a few silly ropes without batting an eyelash.
Wait! What was she saying? She was actually speaking in terms as if there was a possibility that this ‘person’ could be Clark Kent – Superman? How ridiculous. She was obviously still high on Nyquil.
She let an irritated smirk crawl across her face. “Okay. Mr. Whoever-you-are, a joke’s a joke, but I’m sick, and tired, and I’m in no mood to deal with this. So, I tell you what. I’ll get my purse and pay you whatever money you’re owed for this little stunt and then you can be on your way. Okay?”
The Clark look-alike furrowed his brow, frowning. “Kent. Mr. Kent. But you can call me Clark. And I really don’t know what ‘stunt’ you’re referring to. Can you tell me where I am?”
Sue reached up and rubbed her forehead. Her head hurt and not just from being sick. This guy wasn’t going to make things easy on her, was he? “What do you mean ‘where are you’? You’re in my house, for one thing. You know, I ought to call the police right now and have you arrested for breaking and entering.”
She wouldn’t really do that, though. For one thing, Dean or Clark or whoever he was, he was cute. But for another, he hadn’t caused her any trouble, and he seemed genuinely confused about what was going on.
She bet this whole little mix-up – whatever it was – hadn’t been in the job description.
“No, please. I’ll leave,” he said in a voice that reminded her of that ‘soothing’ voice Clark used on Lois sometimes. Heh, this guy was good. “I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble. But if you could please tell me where I’m at, I would really appreciate it. Are we still in Metropolis? When I looked out your window I didn’t recognize the area.”
Sue almost snorted. “Metropolis? You’re kidding, right? Look, you can drop this whole ‘Superman’ act, okay?” The guy caught Sue off guard when he jumped up out of his chair at the mention of Superman.
“What do you mean ‘Superman act’? I didn’t say anything about Superman. I just asked how far Metropolis is from here.” His nervous demeanor was unsettling. Who knew if this guy was even emotionally stable or not? Putting his good looks aside – what if he was some kind of nut job?
“Listen, buddy, this is getting old, real fast. But if answering your question means I’ll get you out of my house that much sooner, then...” Sue shook her head slightly, amazed that she was actually going to say this. “Okay, Metropolis isn’t a real city. Depending on which Superman myth you prefer it either takes the place of New York City or else it’s located in New Troy, which isn’t a real state, either. Either way, assuming Metropolis was actually real, it would be located on the east coast. You, my friend, are in Wisconsin.”
“How much of that stuff did you drink?” the man asked her, pointing at her bottle of Nyquil. “Metropolis isn’t a real city...? Wow! I’ve heard some whoppers, but that one takes the cake. If you didn’t want to answer my question, all you had to do was say so.” He was frowning at her and, for the life of her, Sue couldn’t figure out why that made her want to smile. Probably because she’d seen that frown before – but it was usually directed at Lois. “Wisconsin, huh? Are you sure that’s where you live? Maybe you really did hit your head when you passed out.”
She actually wasn’t sure of anything at the moment. She pushed herself up into a sitting position and took a better look at him. He was dressed just like Clark – down to that crazy tie he was wearing. In fact, she recognized the tie. The top half of it had a white background with colored diamond shapes on it. It was separated by a diagonal line and below that the tie was solid black. One of his more bizarre ties. The only reason she recognized it was because she had watched ‘Just Say Noah’ the other night doing some research for her latest fic and that was the tie Clark had been wearing for that episode.
She continued her examination up, to take a closer look at his face. A small freckle just above his upper lip caught her attention. Oh god – the freckle. She had spent more time than she would admit to, looking at that freckle.
Okay. There was no faking *that*. So much for a look-alike. “Um, could you excuse me? I need to use the restroom.”
**********
Sue looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, frowning at her reflection. Okay, get a grip. That man out there can’t possibly be Clark Kent. Clark is a fictional character for heaven’s sake!
Maybe she was dreaming.
Grabbing hold of some skin on the back of her arm with her thumb and forefinger, she pinched it – hard. “Ouch!” she hollered, following up with a curse.
“Are you okay?” *Clark’s* voice asked from the other side of the door.
“Yeah. Fine.” Except she wasn’t fine. She was losing her mind.
She knew she really ought to just order the man out of her house... and she was more than certain that if she did, life would simply return to normal. But some perverse part of her wanted to beat this. It was some kind of sick game and she didn’t want to give whoever was responsible the satisfaction of getting to her.
She thought for a moment. Fine, if he wanted to pretend he was Clark Kent, she could play along. In fact, she would let him prove himself to be a fraud. No one knew Clark Kent better than she did, except maybe a few of her FoLCdom friends.
Sue splashed a little cold water on her face and grimaced at the face looking back at her from the mirror. She looked like hell. She really needed to be in bed, sleeping, instead of playing games. But the sooner she exposed him for who or what he really was, the sooner she could get back to resting.
She walked out of her bedroom to find ‘Clark’ leafing through the notebook on her bed – her writing notebook.
“Hey! Put that down. That’s personal!”
‘Clark’ jumped and dropped the book back on the bed, backing away from her. “Who... who are you?” he asked her, holding a hand out in front of him, as if to protect himself.
“I don’t think I want to tell you that... Clark. For now, you can call me Sue. Now, who are you?”
“I told you who I am.” He pointed towards her notebook. “You’ve written things in there about me. How do you know me?” His face blanched. “How do you know I’m Superman? How do you know so much about Lois and me? Who do you work for?”
His questions were making her increasingly less and less comfortable. He really was off his rocker. Part of her wanted to check recent news stories to see if perhaps Dean Cain had been diagnosed with amnesia or something bizarre like that. Not that those kinds of things ever happened in real life – they only happened to Lois and Clark.
“Slow down,” she ordered him, sitting down on her bed. “You’re making my head hurt worse. Before I answer any more of your questions, I want you to answer a couple of mine. Then I’ll answer a couple of yours, okay?”
He nodded at her, keeping his distance.
“If you are Clark Kent, as you say you are, then you’ll know yourself way better than I do.”
“How do you know me?”
“No. Wait for your turn.” Sue tried to concentrate – hard to do with a cold and ‘under the influence’ – what was she going to ask him? Oh, yes. “Clark Kent had to go undercover on assignment with Lois Lane once at the Lexor Hotel. While working undercover they played some games. In one of the games Lois tried to make up a fake word. What was the word?” Only hardcore fans of the show would know the answer to that question – or Clark Kent himself.
“You’re serious?”
She smirked at him, realizing that she had him. “That’s what I thought. Okay, ‘Mr. Kent’, I’ll show you to the door,” she said, getting up from where she was sitting on the bed.
He frowned for a second and then a small smile tugged at his mouth. “Chumpy.”
Sue stopped dead in her tracks. She felt like ice water was running through her veins. “Okay.” She took a deep breath. A harder question. She needed a harder one. “What restaurant did Lois eat at when the two of you were on your almost-date at the marina and she got...”
“Ralph’s Pagoda. I did finally manage to get her to try that restaurant again but it took some doing. It’s okay if you’re in the mood for fast food, but House of Hunan is much better if you have the time – although my mom complains about the heavy garlic.”
Sue grabbed hold of the bed frame to steady herself. She was feeling a little woosy again. How could this be possible? “What was the name of Lois and Superman’s therapist?”
“Dr. Friskin, and that’s more than a couple of questions. It’s my turn.”
Sue nodded mutely at him, feeling like she had followed the white rabbit down the rabbit hole.
“How do you know all these intimate details about me? About Lois?”
How did she explain? What did she say? She glanced down at her TV remote – maybe she didn’t have to *say* anything. “Um, maybe you should sit down.”
Clark eyed her warily and sat on the corner of her bed.
“I want you to watch my TV for a moment.” She grabbed her DVD remote and pressed play. She held her breath as the images in the menu portion of the DVD played across the screen.
Clark visibly paled. “How is this possible?” he asked, reaching out as if to touch the screen.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted.
“So who do you work for?”
She gave him a small grin. “That’s more than ‘a couple’, but I’ll allow it. I’m not sure I understand the question though. You want to know where I work?”
“No. I want to know *who* you’re working for - if you’re working for Luthor, or Tempus, or maybe just for the National Whisper. *Who* put you up to this?”
“No one. Believe me. I sit at a desk and troubleshoot computers.” She actually did a lot more than that, but didn’t need to get into the details. She forced a smile at him. “Nothing evil about that – unless you’re one of those people who believe that Microsoft is the root of all evil.”
He gave her a blank look.
He obviously wasn’t in the mood for humor. Okay...
She watched him get up from her bed and run a hand through his thick, dark hair – the same way Clark would when something was troubling him. This really was Clark Kent!
She couldn’t believe it. Clark had been tied up in her hall closet. Sue smiled remembering all the times she had joked about that online. No one would ever believe this.
Not really sure what else to say – it wasn’t often that she found herself speechless but this was one of those times - she sat back down and indulged her darker fantasies by watching him pace back and forth a few times. Every movement that he made accentuated his well-defined physique. He had a dark blue dress shirt and that wild tie on, but no coat – and his shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.
Sue licked her lips, realizing that they felt a little dry. “Do you roll the *suit* sleeves up too?”
Clark stopped pacing and turned to look at her with an incredulous look on his face. “What?”
“You know.” She pointed at his sleeves. “Whenever you wear a short-sleeved shirt or roll the sleeves of your shirt up, I always wondered if you rolled the sleeves up on your suit also, or if you just weren’t wearing it when you were dressed like that.” She had the decency to blush a little at her brazenness.
“Uh. Yeah. I usually roll the suit sleeves up if I’m going to wear my shirt sleeves rolled up.” He glanced away from her, looking uncomfortable, and he picked up the season four ‘Lois and Clark’ DVD box from where she had left it laying beside her TV.
“Do you have the suit on now?” she asked hesitantly. Oh, if her mother were here right now. She’d be appalled at Sue’s audacity.
Clark looked back at her, the rosy color in his cheeks clearly visible. “Uh, yeah,” he stammered.
“Can I see it? I know that’s a pretty bold request, but you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to see Superman – you know, up close. I mean, I personally always liked you better as Clark and thought Lois was completely blind to ignore you like that...”
Clark cleared his throat. Sue couldn’t believe it – she had actually babbled. Like Lois! How embarrassing.
“I can’t really show it to you at the moment.”
“Why not? Just a peek? You could just do a real quick spin...”
“I can’t ‘spin’.” He sighed and sat down on her bed again. “My powers don’t seem to be working properly right now.”
“What do you mean not ‘working properly’?”
He winced. “Not at all.”
“Really? I guess that would explain why you couldn’t get out of that closet by yourself then.”
“Yeah.” His wince turned into a grimace. “I don’t understand any of this.” He spread his hands in front of him, gesturing at the DVD box. “But putting that to the side, what happened to my powers? How did I get here? And how do I get back?”
Sue’s head was beginning to hurt again. This situation was a little more difficult to solve than just your every day, run of the mill, plot hole. She could write herself out of a corner any day of the week, but take her pen away from her and where did that leave her? She was used to writing *about* Clark, not conversing with him. And he had caught her off her game.
She needed a shower to clear her head – in more ways than one. When she was sick, she always felt a little more human after she had a shower.
“Clark, stay put, I’m gonna take a quick shower and then we can try to figure this out.”
***********
To Be Continued...
