A/N: Lol, remember this story?
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Pride, Prejudice & Jimmy Choos
[-7-]
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Clark wiped his hands on his jeans as he exited the barn. As per usual, he had gotten up earlier than anyone else so he could get the brunt of the farm work done using his secret speed under the cover of darkness. Once dawn began to lighten the colors of the sky, he had slowed to a normal speed, finishing up just as the lights turned on in the kitchen. He flicked a glance over to the little white cottage as he stepped through the porch door.
“Morning,” he greeted, seeing his mother pulling coffee filters out of the cabinet.
“Good Morning, Sweetheart,” she replied with a smile. “I hate that you have to get up so early all of the time,” Martha commented while measuring Arabica beans.
Clark smiled. “Mom, you know I don’t need as much sleep as everyone else. My energy level is fine.”
She frowned in response. “It may not bother you, but it bothers me. How would you know how fine your energy level could be if you’re always limiting how much sleep you get. You need to sleep.”
Knowing that nothing he could say would convince her otherwise, he just nodded. “Yes Ma’am.”
He turned and looked out the window for a moment before speaking again. “It’s been really quiet around here lately,” he commented.
Martha chuckled. “It usually is at four thirty in the morning.”
Clark turned back around. “No, I mean, overall… since Chloe left.”
“Oh? How so?” Martha asked without looking up from her coffee preparations.
Rubbing a hand along his jaw, Clark considered how to frame what he was thinking. “Well, Lois, for starters,” he said. “For the last three days she hasn’t been nearly as abrasive as usual.”
Clark wasn’t sure if it was Chloe’s departure itself or something Chloe had said to her in a private conversation, but Lois’s demeanor had drastically dimmed after his blonde friend had left town.
“Abrasive?” Martha repeated. “I guess I haven’t really noticed. You spend more time with her than I do…”
“Yeah, I do, and that’s just it. She just gets up, does her chores with hardly a complaint—I mean, that in itself is pretty strange, right—and then she retreats to her room until dinner. Even then, she’s barely there. You’ve seen that right? It’s like she’s preoccupied or something.”
Flipping the switch on the machine to start its percolating, Martha shrugged and placed her hands on the kitchen island, giving her son her full attention. “Well, Honey, maybe she just has a lot on her mind.”
“Like what?”
A slight crease appeared on Martha’s forehead and she tilted her head to the side.
Seeing his mother’s look, Clark jumped to add to his question, “I mean, I don’t care… I just… am curious.”
One of Martha’s eyebrows inched higher.
“I don’t,” he insisted at the expression change. “I’m just concerned in case it wears off and she needs another dose of whatever it is that makes her tolerable.”
Martha nodded, her face at once disturbingly unexpressive. “Maybe you should ask her.”
“Yeah,” Clark agreed half-heartedly before glancing down at his soiled clothes. “I’m just going to go clean up.”
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Thirty minutes later, Lois wordlessly sidled up to Clark in the stables, taking her preferred pitchfork and setting to the task at hand with determination. He had taken some of the worst of the farm chores off of the duty roster—which wasn’t really a stretch since he had invented them to make sure her dad got his money’s worth in the first place.
On a normal day, they’d spend about an hour after waking to do some of the pre-breakfast stuff, and then after eating would get into the rest. Lois had once complained about how farm work was a twenty-four seven taste of hell, but in Clark’s opinion, she had appeared to figured out the secret. If you did right the first time, and did it well, then it wouldn’t take as long and you’d have more free time than you knew what to do with.
After a few minutes, Clark paused his own labor and looked over the wooden wall of the stable he was in to address her. “Morning.”
Looking up from the hay she was strewing, Lois seemed to just realize that he was there. “Oh, yeah. Hey.” With a nod, she turned back to what she was doing.
The dismissal made his eyes narrow. Sure, he had been annoyed during that first week when she talked incessantly about herself and made passes at him, but now that she wasn’t even acknowledging his presence—and he was barely able to acknowledge his next thought—he was starting to miss it.
His eyes widened as he tried to mentally retrieve those thoughts from the universe. He didn’t even want it out there. Recapturing his resolve to be annoyed, he let his back stiffen and tightened his grip on his own pitchfork.
Hell, if she could ignore him and not be bothered, he could too. Besides, it made for a quieter existence.
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“Thanks, Mrs. Kent,” Lois said, setting her lunch plate next to the sink where Martha was rinsing dishes to be put into the dishwasher.
“Oh, you’re quite welcome, Honey,” Martha replied with a wide smile. Her thoughts flitted to Clark’s observations that morning. She couldn’t say for sure that Lois was what was bothering him now, but he had finished lunch in a hurry and left the kitchen to the two women.
Lois was heading toward the kitchen door when Martha returned her focus to the here and now. “Lois, wait,” she called, pulling her hands from the water and wiping them on a nearby towel.
Lois turned back toward the older woman expectantly.
“I have something that I want to show you,” Martha explained, crossing toward the archway to the den and waving for Lois to follow. “Have a seat,” she told Lois once they were in the room. “I just have to grab it.”
Lois lowered onto the couch and watched as Martha went to the large chest that was sitting in the corner of the room and pulled the large knitted doily from the top of it. Kneeling down, Martha opened the chest and moved some unseen things around before pulling out what looked like a photo album with a dark blue cover.
Smiling, Martha rose to her feet and settled on the couch next to the younger woman. She flipped the book open and went forward a few pages. “Recognize anyone?”
Lois looked over at her quizzically before turning her attention to the album. First she merely looked at the first of the two pictures on the page, then she narrowed her eyes and leaned forward.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “That’s Sam… with hair!”
Martha laughed. “Yes, that is your father with hair. You didn’t think he was always bald, did you?”
Still in mild shock, Lois slid the book fully on her lap while gazing at the picture. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t, but there was never any evidence to prove otherwise,” she answered with a smile pulling at her lips.
Shaking her head, Lois took in the other person in the photo. “Who is this?”
“My husband, Jonathan,” Martha replied, unconsciously lifting a hand to smooth down a stray lock of Lois’s hair. “We all met during college.”
“You all?” Lois questioned, seeing that the second picture was also of the two men before flipping the page. Her thoughts stuttered to a halt when the pictures on the next page revealed to her just who ‘all’ was. “You knew my mom?”
“She was my roommate,” Martha answered in a wistful tone. “Freshman year, there I was headed to business school and some housing mixup ends up with my assigned roommate being a music major.”
Lois just blinked at the information and continued to look through the photos. Two young women—one with blonde hair and one with auburn hair—standing arm-in-arm and smiling as if the weather man never predicted rainy days.
“We were totally different, but I think that’s what made it last, oddly enough,” Martha continued, watching Lois run her fingers lightly over one picture after another. “We weren’t roommates after that year, but we remained friends. It wasn’t until junior year that your dad became a prominent figure in the group.”
Lois looked up at her, not really understanding what that meant.
“Your father was in the business school too. We had a couple of classes together here and there, but it wasn’t until we started the MBA fasttrack program that we actually met. For the next three years, we were in the same cohort, so same classes, occasional group projects… you know.”
When Lois’s eyes narrowed slightly, Martha laughed and shook her head. “No, no. By that time I was already engaged to Jonathan,” she explained. “Highschool sweethearts. But eventually, all those group meetings led to Sam meeting Ellen.”
She pointed at a picture that showed Sam posing with a possessive arm wrapped around Lois’s mother’s shoulders as he stood behind her. “I think that they had known each other a week when he decided that the music industry was going to be his focus.”
Lois paused as some straggling pieces of information started to mesh in her mind. “You have an MBA?” she asked, frowning at the image of a business woman in a power suit and pumps working on a farm.
“Yes, I do.”
“Oh,” Lois answered. She was getting better at the whole ‘think before you speak’ thing… “Congratulations.” ...No one said she had mastered it.
Martha’s eyebrows raised in amusement at the comment. “Thank you.”
Focusing back on the book, Lois turned the page to see older versions of her parents.
“After college, we went our separate ways a bit, but they came out once and spent some down time at the farm a few years before…” She trailed off and returned to stroking Lois’s hair.
Knowing what was being left unsaid, Lois released a short breath and turned the page, gasping in surprise when she saw a picture of herself. In a group shot, an around two-year-old version of herself was being held in the arms of her mother, while flanked on the sides by her father and Martha and Jonathan Kent.
Arching an eyebrow, she addressed what was missing. “Where’s Clark? He’s not taking the picture, is he?”
“No,” Martha said with a smile. “We didn’t have him yet.” At Lois’s confused expression, she went on, “We adopted Clark when he was three.”
“Huh.” Lois said, looking back to the pictures. She turned another page and found a black-and-white photo of her mother sitting at a piano on a small intimate stage, gazing out at her audience as if she were experiencing pure joy. It was an image that Lois was quite familiar with. Gracing many a tribute cover, it was usually shown with the addition of two years and a dash; a short line that was supposed to mark a journey’s beginning and end.
Her dad had an enlarged copy of it hanging in the ‘trophy’ room. Seeing it here was bittersweet.
“Your mother was an incredible singer,” Martha said quietly. “She loved performing and music to her was like a red-blooded person, but she would have hated the way that your life is public fodder once you become famous today.”
Lois startled at the words and replayed them in her head. *My life?* she silently questioned. That first day when she’d met Martha at the cottage, the woman had claimed to know everything. Could ‘everything’ include the little known fact that Lois Lane and Lola Dakota were really one and the same?
Straightening in her seat, Lois turned her head to look Martha in the eye. “You know, don’t you,” she said, more statement than question.
Martha merely favored her with a soft smile and tilted her head before responding. “Know what, Dear?”
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Clark Kent didn’t like mysteries.
Well, he didn’t like unsolved ones at least. He was an avid reader; desiring to know everything he could about the things that existed in his world. When at age 15, you start exhibiting strange powers and are told that you were found in a spaceship, you tend to want to understand the universe. When at 18, you learn that your ‘home planet’ was destroyed and you are the only one left, you tend not to welcome surprises.
So Clark didn’t like not knowing exactly what was going to happen. When he was a kid, he used to read the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ stories backwards.
He liked to think that he was just an outcome kind of guy. His mom seemed to think that it was a trait that made him afraid of the world. Oh, she didn’t say it like that, but he swore that sometimes he could hear her think it. He wasn’t afraid of the world—he just didn’t like it when things were out of his control or unpredictable.
The farm was definitely one place where he knew how things were going to happen. Harvest came after sowing; spring came after winter. There was a natural rhythm to his life, and he was comfortable with that.
But the addition of Lois Lane to the farm had upset the dynamics and upset the flow. He was upset that just when he had gotten her pegged, she’d changed. He didn’t like that he’d been thinking about it all morning, and he didn’t like it that his mother seemed oblivious. A few hours after lunch, he’d gone to the cottage to finally confront Lois and get to the bottom of it. He refused to be intrigued.
“Lois?” he called, knocking on the door to the cottage. “I want to ask you something.” When no answer came, he hopped off of the porch and walked around to the side. Mindful of his promise to his mother that he wouldn’t use his special hearing or vision to eavesdrop on their guest, he peeked through the open window and frowned when he saw that no one was there.
Moving back to the front of the house, Clark looked around with suspicious eyes. His mom’s truck was parked in its usual spot next to the barn and nothing else seemed out of place, but he wouldn’t put it past her to hijack the tractor.
A quick use of his ability to see through walls disconfirmed that theory.
He continued to look around the grounds, convinced that Lois Lane was up to no good. She’d complained so much about her feet the last time she’d snuck off to town that he could say with confidence that she wouldn’t do that again. Without transportation, Princess Lane had to still be near. The fact that she was nearby but quiet left him unsettled. For all he knew, she could be setting up a Meth lab in the cellar—he’d heard those things were happening more and more in the city.
Narrowing his eyes as he scanned for anything out of the ordinary, he started walking again when he noticed the farm’s rooster pacing near the fence on the eastern border of the property. The only thing beyond that fence were some untamed woods and he’d never seen the rooster go out that far.
“What are you doing way out here?” he asked, addressing the rooster when he arrived at the fence. While he wasn’t expecting a response, he was quite surprised when the cock lifted its wings and crest and began to attack him.
“Hey!” he shouted, dodging the animal’s thrusting beak. “Don’t make me hurt you!” He finally escaped the flurry of feathers when he hoisted himself over the wooden cross beams. Given the rooster’s presence—and apparent guard dog personality—he now had an idea of where Lois could be.
He quietly approached the tree that held his childhood hideaway; a tree house that he and his father had built one summer when he was ten.
Approaching the large tree that held the wooden structure, he was about to yell to get her attention when he heard something strange.
She was singing.
Well, it was mostly singing—there was some humming mixed in, and she wasn’t really singing full verses accompanied by chords from a guitar.
“I don’t know what…” Clark heard her sing as a chord sounded. Then came another. “I don’t know what I’m feeling… No, hmmm.”
It sounded to him as if she were either trying to remember a song or create one. Either way, it sounded really… good.
He stood there motionless for another twenty minutes listening to the sounds before his enrapture was disturbed by a squawk.
Looking down, he saw that the rooster had followed him.
“Erruarrk!”
Briefly glancing up at the tree house before looking back at his attacker, Clark moved closer the tree so he wouldn’t be easily seen by anyone inside the fort. “Shh,” he admonished to the bird that continued to flap and caw at him.
“Erruarrrrrk!”
As a result of the commotion, the sounds of the guitar that were coming from above trailed away. “What the heck?” came Lois’s voice.
Clark lifted his leg and shoo’d the rooster away with his foot. “Shh!” he tried again. He glanced up in time to see a shadow approach the entryway. Moving quickly, he stepped clear of the structure on the back side and jumped up.
When Lois leaned out the open space that served as a door, Clark was safely hidden from view, watching from where he was perched on a thick branch above her.
“Rosco? How in the world did you get out here?” Lois asked, peering down at the ground. “I swear I’m going to have to get a restraining order if you can’t honor our agreement on boundaries,” she teased.
Chuckling and sitting down so her legs could hang over the side of the platform, she reached behind her and pulled a guitar into her lap. “Well, since you’re here, maybe you can help me with something.”
Clark watched as Lois situated her fingers on the instrument and strummed a chord progression.
“The idea is this,” she said over the strumming, “I want to get kind of a slow soulful intro, you know?”
“Rwrak.”
“Exactly!” Lois replied, and Clark had to fight the urge to smile. “But the lyrics don’t feel right yet, so bear with my humming,” she added.
She continued, “Do, do, do do do, do do…”
“Rwrak-eurrak!”
“Yeah, you’re right… that does make it sound like Elmo’s song.” Then she shrugged. “What the heck, I like that song. Let’s jam!”
Somehow, the tempo of the song matched the neck thrusts of the rooster on the ground below, and if Clark didn’t know better, he’d have thought the blasted bird was dancing.
“This is the song, La, La, La La, Rosco’s song. La, La, La La. La, La, La La, Rosco’s song…”
Sitting in the tree and watching Lois play a Sesame Street tune to a strutting chicken, Clark wasn’t sure what to make of it all. Lois had become more of a mystery to him than before.
And to make matters worse, he was already half in love with her voice.
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tbc...
