Title: Alchemical Attraction
Rated: PG
Summary: In this alternate beginning, Lois and Clark meet four years prior to the events of the Pilot episode while investigating villainous chemists at a journalism workshop in upstate New Troy.
Part 3
Lois was quite ready for a break by the time it came to stop for lunch. The lower level of the dormitory where they were staying contained the cafeteria. Breakfast and lunch were served in the cafeteria each day as part of the Workshop. Since she wasn’t really a breakfast person anyway, Lois hadn’t paid much attention to the quality of the breakfast food. Eyeing the wilted lettuce salad and the coagulated macaroni and cheese ‘special’ being served for lunch, she decided that a Pop Tart left over from the breakfast buffet looked like the most appetizing item on the menu. She couldn’t believe that she had voluntarily agreed to live like a starving college student again. Maybe she would lose a few pounds this week, Lois thought.
Grabbing the Pop Tart and a Styrofoam cup of coffee, Lois stepped out of the cafeteria, heading towards the single phone available in the dorm. She planned to call into the office and see what she was missing at the Planet. Surely Perry wouldn’t have given up any of her plum assignments to one of the other reporters during her absence. Maybe she could put Jimmy to work on some of her ongoing stories?
As she turned the corner to walk toward the phone, she saw Clark sneaking out the back door of the building. He had been standing by the phone one minute, and in the next second, she watched his back as he made a swift exit. Curious about why he would leave so suddenly, and (jealously?) thinking that maybe it related to a phone conversation with his fiancée, Lois tossed out her coffee cup and decided to follow him out the door.
Clark was sauntering up the sidewalk, with his hands in his pockets and a casual air about his gait as she quickly caught up with him. Not wanting to be seen yet, she hung back and watched as he walked up to the side door of the old science building. He glanced around, then, holding the padlock in his hand, it suddenly pulled apart, allowing him to push open the door. Lois couldn’t stifle her startled yelp before Clark heard her and turned.
“Lois, I thought you were eating lunch,” he said.
“How did you know it was me? And I am eating. See,” she said, holding up a Pop Tart. “Um, what are you doing?”
“Nothing. I just thought I’d check out this old building. You know. Nice woodwork.”
“Try again,” said Lois. “What’s going on? That padlock was on there for a reason. It looks like you’re breaking in.”
“Okay. Okay. Last night, I thought I heard someone working in here. The guard said the building isn’t currently used for anything, so I thought I would stop by and see if I could find any signs of someone having been inside the building.”
“And you deliberately waited until everyone was busy with lunch so you could break in and check the place out for yourself?" Lois asked, then jumped up with a grin, " I love it! What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”
“Fine, you can join me, but be quiet,” Clark said.
Stepping inside the door, Lois immediately was hit with a chemical smell, causing not so pleasant memories of her high school chemistry lab. Wrinkling her nose, she tucked her Pop Tart inside her blazer pocket and moved forward to open one of the doors labeled Laboratory 101.
“Lois,” Clark hissed. “I thought I saw a light from the basement. Let’s look there first.”
“Clark, check this out. This lab looks like it hasn’t been touched in a hundred years. I’d expect Marie Curie to come walking in to explain what all this is.”
The room was filled with rows of lab tables, still covered with old equipment and each with its own gas jet hookup. Porcelain crucibles, still filled with darkened powder, sat untouched on the tables next to racks of dust covered test tubes. A pair of rubber gloves, cracked and hardened with age, lay next to a glass beaker whose gradations had faded with time into bare smudges.
“Hm. It does look pretty old fashioned. I guess the students who attended college here weren’t much for studying science.”
Noticing that Clark had pulled his glasses down his nose and was sweeping a look around the room, Lois asked, “Are you nearsighted?”
“What? Oh, yeah. I was noticing that cabinet over there,” Clark said as he walked forward and slid open the cabinet door. “Look. There are some missing spaces here where it looks like someone took some of the chemicals from the shelf.”
“So, that could have happened years, heck, even decades ago. What makes you think it’s recent?”
“See the dust around the jars and on the shelf? There’s no dust in the rings where the missing jars were sitting. If they had been removed long ago, it would have filled in with dust.”
Reluctantly realizing that Clark was right, Lois said, “Humph. Maybe. What were you saying about the basement earlier? We don’t have that much time until lunch is over.”
Cautiously closing the laboratory door behind them, Lois tiptoed down the narrow stairs leading to the basement level. This floor had obviously not been used for student classrooms. The dark, narrow hallway was filled, floor to ceiling on both sides, with wooden cabinets of varying sizes, some stacked atop one another. Some of the cabinets had doors that hung crookedly open. Others contained shelves that were warped to the point where they didn’t all sit flush against the cabinet any longer. Every so often, there was a gap between the cabinets where the different sized storage didn’t match up. Moving forward, Lois saw a gap in the cabinets for now apparent reason and looked down at the floor to see scuff marks along the faded tiles.
“It looks like somebody moved this cabinet from this empty space over to here instead. Is that a door behind it? It is! Clark, somebody is hiding something behind that door and put the cabinet here to keep people out. Quick. Help me push this cabinet out of the way.”
“Lo-is. Be careful!”
Grasping with both hands, Lois tried but wasn’t able to even budge the heavy wooden cabinet. She stepped aside to watch Clark walk up and easily push it out of the way, revealing an unmarked door from behind. Yes, Clark definitely had spent some time working out, Lois thought, admiring the way his shirt pulled across his broad shoulders to reveal the muscles underneath. Oh, girl, get a grip! Wait, no, don’t go there. She shook off her daydreaming to notice Clark turning the handle and gingerly opening the door. She peered over his shoulder to get a peek into the mystery room. Fumbling around on the wall, her fingers encountered the light switch and, without a thought, she flicked it on.
***********
Clark had listened to be sure that no one was nearby before opening the door. When the lights came on, he slid his glasses down his nose and took a long look around the room to see if there were any other hidden rooms or closets where someone could be hiding. Feeling that all was clear, he stepped into the room, hearing Lois follow eagerly behind him.
“Wow, it’s a modern laboratory in the middle of this old, rundown building,” said Lois, noticing the bright metal-topped lab tables and new beakers and test tubes lined up along the wall.
“From the look of things, I would say someone has been in here recently. These look like the missing chemical jars from upstairs along with some newer samples. And this Bunsen burner is still warm,” Clark stated, his hand on the burner.
“I wonder why they have these old metal scraps piled up on that table.” Lois asked.
“I don’t know,” Clark said, looking around a noticing a large metal box with smaller metal pieces piled around it. He pulled down his glasses and realized that he couldn’t actually see through the box. Walking over to it, he tapped it, and then picked up a corner. Judging by the weight, it must be made of lead. That was an interesting revelation. He looked again and noticed that he could see through to the table below, except for where the lead box was located. What could be in the box that caused his vision to be off, or maybe it was just because it was lead, and he couldn’t see through lead. Clark had turned to open the box when Lois called to him.
“Look at this! Can you understand this chemical formula? What does this mean—alchemy?” asked Lois.
“Alchemy. That’s the science of turning base metals into gold,” Clark said, walking back to Lois, “Hundreds of years ago, people tried to find a method to get rich this way. Can you imagine if someone actually uncovered the secret of making gold from ordinary metals like iron or tin? Imagine how much just one scrap yard of old cars, crushed and turned into gold, would be worth. A person could have more gold than the U.S. Treasury.”
“Well, it looks like someone is busy working on the formula, although since I don’t see any gold lying around, I’m not sure how successful they are,” Lois pointed out. “We should—”
“Quick! Someone’s coming. Hit the light.” Clark said, as he spun around and dragged Lois out of the room, quietly closing the door and sliding the cabinet back in front of the room in nothing short of super speed. He barely had time to push the cabinet in place and pull Lois into a crevice between two other cabinets down the hall before the footsteps that he had heard stopped at the cabinet in front of the room they were just inside. He caught a glimpse of an arm, clad in a white lab coat, with a gun clutched in the outstretched hand.
There was barely room for both Lois and him to fit between the cabinets, and he had pushed Lois in first, with her back against the wall. He pushed forward, leaning into her, trying not to be visible to whoever was standing only a few feet away in the hall. Obviously not understanding why Clark had behaved this way, Lois opened her mouth to speak. Clark saw her start to talk and clamped his hand over her mouth, leaning into her ear and whispering to her to be quiet.
The sound of someone else moving the cabinet aside must have penetrated Lois’s brain at that point, because her eyes grew wide, and Clark could hear her heart start to race. Standing practically in a lover’s embrace, with her breath on his neck and her heart pounding in his ears, Clark started to panic a bit himself, but not from fear of their visitor. He could feel her lips beneath his palm, and her tongue had flicked out as she tried to speak, briefly licking his hand. Instinctively, his other hand reached for Lois, intertwining his fingers with hers and giving a squeeze of reassurance.
The softness of her curves pressed into his chest was making his own breathing heavy. When she shifted slightly, causing her leg to brush against the inside of his thigh, Clark could feel his heartbeat suddenly go into overdrive. Her breathing was shallow, and he could feel her excitement as if it vibrated directly from Lois' body into his own.
Hearing the door open, then close, Clark waited until he heard the mystery person start to work with the metal scraps that had been sitting out on the lab bench before removing his hand from Lois’s mouth and stepping aside for her to move from between the cabinets. After a quick touch of his finger to his closed lips, he pointed towards the exit, and Lois cautiously followed him, continuing to hold his hand to keep herself steady as she climbed the rickety stairs.
Once they were outside and into the sunlight, Clark finally let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Lois pulled away from him, gasping a bit herself.
“Well, Farmboy, this looks like something worth investigating to me.”
“Yeah. I guess we should alert someone at the Center that their building is being used for outside purposes,” Clark said.
“Oh, no. I’m not about to give up this lead until I know exactly what’s going on. This,” she said, brandishing the paper with the unknown formula, “This could be big. Let’s do a little more research and see what we come up with on our own, first.”
“Lois, are you crazy? They’re bound to know that someone was in there and took that formula now.”
“As if the broken padlock wasn’t enough of a giveaway that they had an intruder?” Lois practically spat at Clark. “Come on, Clark. Let’s at least look into it. If you aren’t up for it, I’m happy to check it out myself.”
“Fine. Let’s work together on this. But I don’t want you going back there by yourself. That guy who came into the lab just now was carrying a gun.”
Completely ignoring the mention of the gun, Lois replied, “I knew you’d see it my way! Let’s find Jimmy and let him test out his computer skills on something that really matters,” as she skipped ahead of Clark, in a happier mood than any he had seen on her so far.
******
The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully. As predicted, Jimmy attacked the research problem with youthful enthusiasm, promising to work on it during the evening to see what he could uncover. Greg and another journalist, Terry, from Seattle, invited Clark to join them for dinner at the local diner. Knowing that he couldn’t put off calling Lana any longer, he politely declined and offered to meet up with them afterward. Pausing to be sure that no one else was using the dorm’s phone, Clark walked down to the lower level phone and dialed Lana’s number.
“Clark, I’ve missed you,” said Lana.
“I miss you, too, Lana. It’s just been really busy here. I’ve hardly had a chance to stop and catch my breath.”
“Well, I have you all to myself for a few minutes now,” Lana purred. “I was actually calling earlier because I found the perfect house.”
“Lana, I’ve already said that I don’t want to buy a house right away. Who knows where I’ll be working in another year,” said Clark. “I’m meeting a lot of contacts at this Workshop, and it could lead to another job.”
“But, Clark, Smallville is my home. I don’t want to move. Daddy would be lost without me, and all your friends and family are here. Don’t tell me you’ve met some city girl who’s got your head filled with dreams of a great job in Metropolis.”
“Ah…no, nothing like that. If you want a house, you should have your father buy you one. It’s just that I don’t want to rush into anything.”
“Rush! We’ve been dating off and on since high school. If we move any slower I’ll be wearing Depends under my wedding gown.”
“Lana! It’s just that a house means permanence to me, and I’m not ready to settle permanently in Smallville. There’s so much of the world that I want to see.”
“Clark, you haven’t been, you know, flying off somewhere again, have you? You know how dangerous that is, in case you get caught.”
“No, I took a plane to New Troy, and I promised I wouldn’t fly back to see you this week.”
“That’s good. You know that I just want a place for you, for us, to be safe, and together.”
“Lana, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. Someone else needs the phone. I’m really sorry. I’ll call you later.”
“Love you,” Clark heard as he hung up the phone. He felt guilty about hanging up on her, but he didn’t want to get into the house conversation, again, on a public phone. He did eventually want to settle down with a house with a picket fence and children playing in the backyard, but he wasn’t sure that Lana and Smallville were what he wanted. Why did everything seem so complicated?
After grabbing a sandwich from the deli near the campus, Clark returned in time to meet Greg and Terry after their dinner. They had visited the local video store and picked up a couple of movies to watch on the TV in the basement lounge of the dorm.
While debating which film to see that evening, Lois and two other journalists, Eve and Sarah, walked into the lounge, obviously looking for something to occupy their time. Clark was surprised when Lois and the other women agreed to stay and watch the movie with them. He had wanted to take a closer look at the laboratory after dark, but he was hesitant to miss an evening in Lois’ company.
Pulling two couches and a couple of chairs in front of the television, the group sat down to watch Lethal Weapon II. Lois had run up to her room to get a blanket, and when she returned, the only open seat was on the couch next to Clark. He was pleasantly surprised when she sat next to him with only a brief, stinging glance. He watched her tuck her legs underneath and wrap the blanket around her shoulders, leaning against the couch to enjoy the movie. Clark had put his arm on the back of the couch, above her shoulders but not touching her. Lana’s ‘city girl’ comment hit a little too close for comfort. Of course, when Lois offered him a corner of the blanket for himself, he didn’t hesitate to accept, scooting a little closer to her so that they could share its warmth. Clark senses made him very aware of the heat from her legs as they pressed softly against his own.
As the video played, Greg and Terry would occasionally make some remark during an especially rough car chase scene. Eve and Sarah were idly chatting to one another at points throughout the movie. Whether or not this was related to the film, Clark didn’t really know. Clark tried to pay attention to the action on the screen instead of the steady beat of Lois’s heart. He suspected the lack of sleep from the night before was catching up with him as he felt his eyelids droop and his breathing grow steady. Or was it Lois, whose steady breaths were lulling him to sleep. He willed himself to stay awake so that he could enjoy every moment of his time next to Lois, but the tension of the day finally caught up to him. He never even woke when Lois leaned into him, tipping them both over to lie together on the couch, fast asleep.
