I found this on my hard drive. It's not finished yet. I seem to be stuck. But I can post it in two parts at this point. I also have no idea if it will be a g/nfic. So here is part 1.
A Little Privacy Please?
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Clark Kent was not in a good mood. And just like every other time that both the best news and the worst news ever came his way, it had to do with a certain pain in the neck brunette.
It hadn't just been what she had said, oh no, it had been the way she had said it too. And he should have expected it.
The dishes he was trying to wash in the sink, broke under the pressure his hands were exerting on them. He tossed the pieces in the garbage and turned the water off.
It had been the end of the day - not Clark's most favourite time of day because it usually meant either saying goodbye to Lois till the next day or trying to come up with an excuse to spend some time with outside of work. Weekends were the worst - she was becoming like a drug and he was addicted but the weekends were now giving him something akin to withdrawal symptoms.
But as he stood there in front of the elevator doors, trying to figure out if there was any legitimate reason two co-workers could spend their non - working hours together that wouldn't sound too desperate coming out of his mouth, she had spoken first.
And she had asked a favour. A favour for Lois was never an issue - unless it was one particular favour: passing messages to Superman. And she had asked as if it had been something you expect people to do - "Pass the salt, please?" As if she knew he'd do it anyway no matter how incovenient it might be. Almost a command.
"Oh, Clark? Could you ask Superman to drop by tonight at around eight? Thanks!" and the door had closed on him and his automatic nod before he had even processed what she had just said. Before anyone else watching from the floor in the newsroom could comment, he had just marched to the exit door to the stairwell and walked up to the roof and flown straight home. It had been a completely automatic reaction - he was on autopilot now - he couldn't react in public and give away anything.
And here he was, breaking dishes in a desperate bid to stay in autopilot mode till he had been to Lois' apartment to find out exactly what she wanted of his alter ego this time.
Therein lay the problem. He could never refuse her.
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Of course, it was all Perry's fault, Lois thought as she dejectedly sat on the couch in jeans and a varsity jumper she had unearthed from the back of her closet. Only he would think it prudent to send some of his reporters to a conference on Journalism Law and Ethics and not only insist that she be one of the chosen few but also that she attend the seminar on privacy issues.
And she had fussed and complained and ranted and raved but had gone anyway. She had tuned out most of the repetitive arguments but had enjoyed it in a very odd way that she couldn't even put her finger on. Well, she had enjoyed herself right up until she had shown up for the privacy lecture.
At first, she hadn't really noticed the stares that she had got when she walked in. She had by then considered herself to be on a jaunt of sorts - she wasn't expected to report on the conference after all, just brush up on things should she need to. But then she had realised that there was something odd and it was something to do with her.
And when she had found out, she hadn't known whether be angry or frustrated or to cry and she had opted for shutting herself in her thankfully single hotel bedroom and doing all three for a good half an hour till she had felt sufficiently composed.
She knew journalists gossiped - who didn't? But she had laboured under the delusion that even if people in one newsroom gossiped to people in a rival one that loyalty and a competitive drive would ensure that not much was said or shared. Why give someone else a scoop? She was a fool though - obviously that might work for newsworthy items that might end up on the front page or hot tips and scoops but it didn't ensure that the journalists themselves weren't gossiped about.
And would she have cared a year ago? Probably not, but things had changed. Things had changed so much.
So it hadn't been nice to finally find out in the women's bathroom that she was a joke amongst her fellow reporters across the country. And that she was a joke not just because of the way she got her scoops and broke the law while investigating but also because she had Superman - a man who could see through walls and had super hearing - hovering around her and her apartment at all times. And that if you needed any further proof that Mad Dog Lane was indeed extremely rusty on what privacy meant both to her and others - then you only had to ask yourself why her editor would think it prudent to handpick and send her along with a bunch of rookies and demand that she attend the lecture on privacy issues? Perhaps he was tired of appearing to be totally trusting of her ability to get information that couldn't have been obtained legally and defending her to the police each time?
That had been the gist of it. She had waited till they had left and then gone out and stayed through the rest of the lecture before retreating to her room.
The worst part of it was that it actually made sense. There were issues of privacy even if you were breaking into a lab, warehouse or house of someone you suspected was committing a crime - because it was only suspicion even if all the proof you needed was just behind the door. She had known those rules and had broken them flippantly each time, confident that she would find something to justify the decision. But did finding such proof really justify anything?
Why had Perry decided to send her along anyway? Sure, he had used the "Everyone needs to brush up and I can't send everyone at once." argument which she had fervently believed till she had walked into the lecture hall. Had that been why he had sent her? Or had it been because he desperately wanted her to play by the rules?
After all, it wasn't just her. How many times had she dragged Clark along with her? How many times had he protested: "Lois, it's illegal!", "Lois, we have no proof!" and how many times had she claimed senority or informed him of how long he was going to be a rookie with an attitude like that and dragged him along? She was senior partner - 'top banana' as she had put it - she was responsible for making sure he got the hang of everything including making ethical decisions in real situations rather than in debates and in essays in college. And she had failed him.
Clark. She had failed him again today. She would apologize tomorrow for the way she had vanished today so abruptly with a plea for a favour sounding like a directive. Was she always like that? She didn't mean to be - maybe because Clark was just so nice, it hadn't been so easy to prevent herself from pushing him around.
She had gone to work today hoping that maybe she would get a new perspective on all this while she was there but she had found herself watching everyone, wondering what they were saying and to whom and feeling thoroughly depressed about it all. And if she was being perfectly honest, she didn't know whether it was the idea that she did her job without thinking about ethical consequences or the fact that her carefully cultivated reputation of Mad Dog Lane seemed to have done the unthinkable of both shattering itself to pieces and going to an extreme. People were laughing about her for being so eccentric as to have no clue of her own personal privacy with allowing Superman to come by.
She hadn't understood that bit at first when it had been mentioned. Surely Superman only came by when she requested him to or when he needed to see her urgently? But, according to this woman and supposed common knowledge, Superman's nightly patrol always seemed to end with a flyby visit to her apartment building. Sometimes he just hovered and sometimes he flew down onto the balcony. The other residents in the buildings across the road and her own neighbours had noticed. One of their kids even refused to go to sleep at night till he had heard the swoosh of the hero's cape, two windows down and three floors above his.
He's free to do what he likes, she had told herself. But what does he do when he comes here? She didn't think - she knew he wouldn't spy on her but ... why did he come by especially when she would be asleep or not expecting to see him at all? Other people didn't know whether he was likely to spy on her or not and both of them were going to become a laughingstock soon. And despite her personal opinion that she didn't really need to care about it too much, she needed a good reputation or people wouldn't trust her and she'd lose her snitches and informants and her credibility. People needed to trust that she would do the right thing by them or they would not be comfortable giving her information.
And so she sat here on her sofa, looking at the clock. At eight, he would come, they would talk about this and sort it out and then tomorrow she would apologize to Clark and try to figure out how to silence the newsroom's flapping tongue. But even that plan of action didn't make her feel any better.
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Hope you like it. The Little Tornado.
