Here's the third chapter. Thanks for hanging in with me and reading.
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After the dishes had been washed and dried, Lois ambled to the living room and pressed her face against the glass. Her warm breath frosted the cold pane and Lois smiled to herself as she began to doodle her initials in the mist.
She thought of her poor car, buried in the snow. Lois sighed and rested her forehead on the cool glass. How long would she have to impose on the Kent’s? She hated being so dependent on their kindness, yet the thought of driving the final ten hours of the trip alone filled her with trepidation. It was probably time to discuss logistics with the them. They had things to do, and those surely didn’t include an extra teenager. Tilting her head slightly as she sensed another prescence in the room, Lois turned around.
“Martha?”
She bit back a strangled gasp of shock when she saw the tall form of Clark instead. He was leaning against the fireplace staring thoughtfully at her.
“I’m sorry to startle you. My mom’s in her room, can I get you anything?” He moved toward her hesitantly.
“Oh… I just wanted to tell her that I’ll be out of her hair as soon as the roads clear,” Lois managed to get out. It was a lie. She didn’t want to leave. The long road home loomed depressingly before her. “I hate imposing.”
Clark’s face seemed to fall slightly. “I can speak for us all when I say that we love having you. It gets kind of quiet up here; it’s nice to have someone to talk to.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at the floor. “But I’m sure you’re anxious to get back home. You really have to drive that whole way alone?”
Lois nodded and Clark frowned. “Are you sure? It’s a long way.”
“I can take care of myself,” Lois said, a bit more vehemently than she planned. She hated condescension.
Instead of recoiling as most of her acquaintances did at her sharp tone, Clark merely nodded. “You’re right, I bet you can.”
Lois suspiciously analyzed the sentence for any sarcasm and finding none, was slightly ashamed. Clark had been nothing but nice to her.
“I’m not.” She said offhandedly, turning back to the window.
Clark moved a few paces closer to her, his head tilted slightly to one side.
“You’re not what?”
“Anxious to get home,” Lois replied, still staring out the window. “Anxious to get back on the road.” She shrugged casually, though her mind was screaming at her to stop revealing so much to this relative stranger.
She turned to look him in the eye and found him merely a foot away.
“I--” It was a lot harder to talk when he was so close. “I don’t have the best relationship with my family. Not like yours, anyway. I can’t remember the last time we all had breakfast together.”
Clark murmured a soft noise for her to continue. She took the opportunity, though she still had no idea why. “My father wanted a boy… I tried so hard to impress him. But I was never good enough; there was always room for improvement. My mom started drinking a few years back, and after that, well…” She drifted off and looked up into Clark’s face. He was close, very close. His gaze was soft behind his glasses, but he didn’t look at her with the pity she hated so much. It looked more akin to… respect.
She broke off. She couldn’t deal with this. The air was so thick, so heavy. Lois desperately tried to reclaim some of the earlier ease.
“But you don’t want to hear about that. So what do you think?” Lois assumed an offhand voice, secretly unnerved by how much she had let slip. “How long do you think I have before I have to leave?”
Clark masterfully controlled his shock at the abrupt change and glanced out the window.
“Well it stopped icing about an hour ago, but we probably have another two days stuck on the farm. But after that, the roads will be clear enough to head into town, but I doubt my mother will let you drive off in that weather.” He gave her a quick smile to ease the domineering statement and she seemed to accept the offering. “After the ice clears, we can bring your car in for the necessary repairs, so however long that will take. I reckon you might be stuck with us for a week or more though. Jim McKinley, the mechanic, is good, and he’s very prompt. If he’s in the middle of something he finishes it. Booked solid for weeks. But he’ll take your car in when he hears about your situation.”
Lois took in the new information and methodically categorized the name and description. It was a habit she had been trying to get into. She had picked up some tricks from her journalism teacher and now was desperately trying to engrain them in her mind. Her teacher had told her that a keen memory was next to godliness when it came to reporting and she had taken the advice to heart.
Unfortunately she wasn’t very good at it yet. She repeated the name Jim McKinley softly a few times, reconciling the words mechanic, determined with the surname.
Clark looked at her curiously. “What are you doing?”
Slightly defensive, Lois snapped at him. “I’m categorizing the name.”
“Why?”
Clark looked genuinely interested and she rebuked herself yet again. She had to stop being so distrustful. It wouldn’t be good to alienate what looked like her only companion for the next week or so.
“It’s a trick my journalism teacher taught me. He told me to try and categorize every person I meet: name, job, habits. It’s just something to sharpen my memory.”
A bright smile flitted across Clark’s face for a moment. “You’re in journalism too?”
Lois nodded. “I’m the editor of the school newspaper.” She couldn’t keep some of the pride from creeping into her voice. She had fought tooth and nail for that prestigious position. It was nice to tell someone who hadn’t heard it five times already.
“Me too.” The pride was evident in his voice as well, though he seemed slightly humbled. “But I’m sure the paper in Metropolis is a bit of a bigger deal than the Smallville Press.” He frowned slightly and then brightened. “But I’ve done some freelancing for the Kansas Star.”
“Really?” Lois was impressed. The Kansas Star was no small time paper. “What did you write?”
“Just a piece on some of the local thefts around Smallville,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Not anything big, but they were looking for a filler piece.”
“Can I see it?” Lois was interested. None of her close friends were interested in journalism. Most of her partners on the paper were mere acquaintances, some less than that. She ran a tight ship, which didn’t exactly endear her to most of the staff
“You—you’d really want to read it? Are you sure?”
Lois nodded again, a small smile teasing the corners of her lips. “What, you scared Kent?”
That seemed to jerk him out of his bashfulness. He met her steely eyed glance with one of his own, though his was tempered by a playful glimmer.
“Not in this lifetime, Lane.” He ducked into his room and came out with his yearbook. Flipping open the hardbound copy, he fished out a yellowed page of a newspaper and handed it to Lois.
“Third page? Not bad Kent. I was expecting something by the obituaries.” The harsh words were countered by a teasing tone and he instinctively relaxed. This seemed so incredibly normal to him; he was at a loss to explain why. He was no stranger to being teased, but these lighthearted jabs didn’t wound him. Instead he felt… invigorated. Sharp. Being around Lois Lane was certainly keeping him on his toes.
Lois eased herself onto the sofa and he sat in the chair across from her, watching her as she read his story.
It was his first investigative piece. The high school paper usually called for features and editorials, but he loved the thrill of reporting hard news. When his father had told him about a string of robberies that hit the normally sleepy town of Smallville, he had jumped into his truck and headed into town. He interviewed every shop owner who was hit, mapped out the similarities and staked out the likeliest spot for the robber to his next.
Clark didn’t think he’d ever forget the feeling when his hunch had paid off. He had phoned it into the police, gotten the exclusive and then bartered the story off to the Kansas Star, earning a tidy 100 dollar sum for himself. Not back for a then seventeen, green, wannabe reporter.
He was pulled from these pleasant memories by the sound of the paper rustling as Lois set it down.
“Clark that was great! You really nailed those guys!” Admiration shone in her brown eyes and Clark was momentarily rendered speechless. For some reason, he had the impression that her admiration wasn’t freely given.
“Thank you. It really wasn’t too much work to figure those guys out, but the feeling when the Star called me back and said they’d take it was pretty incredible.” He leaned back in his chair and looked at the girl across from him thoughtfully. She was smiling, something that heightened her already pronounced beauty. The fact that she was smiling at him… well he couldn’t keep the goofy grin off his face, though he valiantly tried.
Folding up the paper along its worn creases, Lois picked up the yearbook that lay innocuously on the coffee table.
For a moment the movement didn’t register in Clark’s mind. Then the horror dawned.
“You don’t need to read that Lois,” he started talking quickly, trying to grab the yearbook from her hands. “It’s nothing, old news. I know, want to go ice skating? There’s a pond in the back. Or we could make some cookies. I like the chocolate chip kind, though we could make peanut butter ones. We have some peanut butter in the freezer, but it’s the all natural kind. I know, that’s disgusting, right? I like Jif, but my mom’s on a health kick so…” He drifted off at Lois’ stunned expression. She burst out laughing a moment later.
“And people tell me, I babble.” She gave him an affectionate grin that didn’t completely alleviate the worry he felt at her holding his yearbook. “What’s so terrible about this yearbook Clark?”
Her laughter subsided when she saw the genuine fear in his eyes. She loosened her death grip on the book, something she normally wouldn’t have done. When Lois Lane was curious, she went to the ends of the earth to find answers. Why was she letting him win?
Clark noticed this concession and his shoulders slumped. If only she had tried to keep it from him, he could have stolen it back with no further worries. But that hangdog look she was giving him… he sat next to her on the couch and took the book into his lap. Lois leaned next to him as she watched him open the cover.
When the book was finally opened, she couldn’t help but gasp.
The inside cover was filled with writing. It was all the same; a spiky hand that pressed into the page so deeply it nearly reached the other side of the thick cover. She read some of the print, her mind violently revolting to the sentiments.
It was crude, jeering. Clark was called a barrage of names that she only heard shouted from the Metropolis cabbies in the worst of traffic. It didn’t stop there though. She flipped through the first couple of pages and saw that they had been horrible maimed by a black Sharpie.
She finally looked from the book to the stiff form of Clark Kent beside her. He was a deep shade of red, one hand clenched rigidly against his side.
Lois had no idea why anyone would write such things about the man beside her, especially when they so obviously still cut him to the quick. She hesitantly reached up to put a gentle hand on his shoulder. The muscle underneath was unyielding, but she gently smoothed her fingers over the soft film of his T-shirt and he seemed to visibly unwind. It obviously still hurt him to open the page.
“Who would do that to you?” She asked softly, still running a comforting hand idly on his shoulder and upper back.
“Just about any kid at school,” he said with a self deprecating smile. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m not some kind of antisocial loser or anything… I just… I made a powerful enemy a couple years back and he’s turned a lot of people against me.”
Lois wanted to press more, but the stiffness in his shoulders had returned, and for once she let it go. She lightly raked her fingernails over his back and stood.
“Come on, Farmboy, you said something about ice skating?”
