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PART III: A CHANGE OF CLOTHESAfter watching Lex’s presentation about the proposed Space Station Luthor, Clara and Lou took a cab back to Cat’s place so that Clara could get her things. Lou insisted on waiting in the cab and seeing Clara all the way back to her hotel. Clara tried to wave him off, saying she’d be fine, but Lou just looked grumpy and mumbled, “If some guy left my sister to fend for herself in the city at this time of night, he’d be getting a visit from me the next day.”
Since there seemed to be no way to change Lou’s mind, short of revealing her superpowers, Clara agreed.
Cat held Clara’s purse hostage until Clara promised to have lunch the next day and ‘dish the dirt.’ Some good natured teasing followed when Clara revealed that Lou was waiting for her downstairs, and then she was trotting outside and sliding back into the cab next to Lou.
When she gave the address of her hotel, Lou stared at her.
Feeling exposed, Clara fished her glasses out of her purse and put them on, taking refuge behind the thick lenses. It didn’t help much. Finally, she couldn’t take the look Lou was giving her anymore.
“What is it?”
Lou didn’t bother to pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about. “You’re really staying in that part of town?”
“Yes. I haven’t had a chance to find an apartment yet.”
“By yourself?”
Clara crossed her arms, huffing. “Yes, Lou. By myself. I’ve traveled all over the world by myself, a stay in an admittedly shady Metropolis motel isn’t going to kill me.”
Lou’s brow furrowed. “No, but the gangs having a turf war two blocks down the street might.”
There was nothing Clara could say to that that would make any sense, so she didn’t. The rest of the ride to the hotel was achieved in silence.
When she got out of the cab, Lou insisted on walking with her to her room, which would be sweet if she wasn’t so worried that
he would get hurt. After all, a stray bullet couldn’t do much to Clara, but Lou was a different story. And what if they got mugged? Would Lou try to protect her?
They made it to her door without incident, Clara unlocking the single deadbolt and Lou slipping inside the room uninvited, prowling around like he expected ninjas to be hiding behind the curtains. He pointed to Clara’s suitcase, the battered old thing with her initials engraved on it. She’d had that suitcase since the very first time she left Smallville to go to dance camp in Wichita.
“Is that everything?” Lou asked.
Clara blinked, not sure why he wanted to know. “Just that and my laptop.”
Lou nodded, one of those stubborn looks Clara was starting to recognize crossing his face, and then he picked up the suitcase. “Get your laptop and anything else you need. You’re coming home with me.”
Clara’s mouth fell open.
Seeming to realize what he’d just said, Lou looked away, clearing his throat. “Not like that, Farm Girl. It won’t just be us. My little sister Lucy lives with me. You can bunk with her until we find you a place to stay that isn’t going to end with me identifying your corpse.”
Wow.
Lou really was a softy underneath all that macho posturing. But Clara frowned. Staying with people would mean she had to be more careful of using her powers, and she had promised her parents she would fly out soon…
“I don’t know, Lou. I don’t want to impose on you or your sister.”
Lou let out a gusty sigh. “Look, Kent, here’s the deal. I’m not leaving here tonight without you. Now, you can walk beside me, or I can throw you over my shoulder. Your choice.”
Clara started to protest, terrified of what would happen if Lou tried to pick her up and discovered she weighed close to two hundred pounds, but Lou kept talking.
“And if you really don’t want to stay with me, you can find somewhere else, so long as it’s not here.” He scowled. “Maybe if you call Luthor he’ll give you a room at the Lexor.”
Clara rolled her eyes. “Lou-is! I can’t afford the Lexor until my first paycheck, and I couldn’t just ask Lex for a free room.”
Lou snorted. “From what I saw tonight, you could ask Luthor for a lot of things.”
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were jealous.”
Lou gave her a hard stare, and then he turned toward the door. “Don’t flatter yourself. Now get your stuff and come on. The cabbie won’t wait forever.”
And that was how Clara Kent found herself going home with Louis Lane.
-l-
Louis really wasn’t sure how he’d ended up ushering Little Miss Supermodel Sunshine into his apartment, but here he was, carrying her suitcase and her laptop, and telling her where the kitchen and bathroom were.
“There’s a pull out mattress under Lucy’s bed for guests, so we’ll get you set up there.”
Clara lightly touched his arm, smiling up at him. She was a disconcerting mixture of mousy farm girl and scarlet siren, wearing her glasses with that evening dress. “You’re a good man, Lou,” she said to him, a curl from her updo flopping onto her forehead.
Not sure what to say, Louis just nodded and set Clara’s suitcase down by one of his sofas. He was just about to go see if Lucy was still awake, when she came bounding into the room.
“Louie! I stayed up because I want to hear all about the ball and – ” her eyes lit on Clara, and she stopped mid-sentence, looking between them and giving Louis a not-so-subtle grin. “Oh, should I make myself scarce? I could totally be sleepwalking right now.”
Louis rolled his eyes, not daring to look at Clara. “Lucy, this is a colleague from the Daily Planet, Clara Kent. She’s helping me with some stories, and she’s going to be staying with us a few days until she finds her own place. Clara, my sister Lucy.”
Clara stepped forward and shook Lucy’s hand. “I’m new at the Daily Planet and Lou didn’t approve of my hotel,” she said.
Lucy giggled, but she was looking at Louis out of the corner of her eye, and he knew she’d noticed that he let Clara call him ‘Lou.’ “Louie doesn’t approve of a lot of things. Let me guess – ‘No woman should be out this late on her own, the rapists and gangs and mobsters will get you.’”
Clara laughed. “Pretty much.”
“God, he is such a
big brother.”
“Tell me about it.”
“He,” Louis butt in, “is standing right here.”
It didn’t matter. They were already chattering away, Clara collecting her suitcase as Lucy led her to the bedroom they would share. “This is going to be so fun! I’ve never had a roommate before. Louie won’t let me stay in the dorms because he’d worry where I was all hours of the night, and I haven’t had a sleepover since high school! Oh, and you can tell me about the ball. You went, right? I mean, why else would you be dressed like that. I bet you had more fun than Louie, he’s always working. Who did you dance with?”
“Believe it or not, I danced with Lex Luthor.”
“Oh wow! What’s he like? Did he step on your feet? Did you feel like Cinderella? I’d have felt like Cinderella.”
“He was very charming, a very good dancer, and yes… I did feel a little like Cinderella.”
“Did you dance with anyone else?”
“Your brother.”
An excited squeal drifted down the hallway. Louis sank down onto one of his admittedly uncomfortable sofas, and put his head in his hands.
He could just make out Lucy asking Clara whether she preferred him to Lex Luthor, and Clara replying, “You know, I think I do.”
Wincing, Louis thought back to how he’d treated her tonight, concluding that she was probably too polite to badmouth him to his sister. On the heels of that thought came the realization that he didn’t want Clara to have to lie to Lucy about his behavior towards her.
He’d never been in this position before. He’d always been very careful to keep the women in his life away from Lucy, not wanting to put her through anything at all resembling their parents’ divorce when the inevitable breakups occurred. Of course, Clara was a colleague, not a girlfriend. But still.
He’d treat her better from now on. For Lucy’s sake.
So long as she kept her mitts off his stories, that is.
-l-
With two women in residence, getting ready for work in the morning turned into something resembling an Olympic sport. There was the hundred yard dash to the bathroom, the obstacle course of feminine paraphernalia that had been scattered across the apartment, and the fight to the death for the first cup of coffee.
Louis won the bathroom first, on the grounds that he’d be done in ten minutes, tops, and then Lucy went next because she had an early class. Clara got the bathroom last, and was still showering when Hurricane Lucy went through the kitchen on her way to the front door.
“Do you have your keys?” Louis asked, watching Lucy shove a piece of toast in her mouth and fill a thermos with coffee.
“Yes, Louie.”
“Bus pass?”
Lucy grabbed her books and slung her messenger bag over her shoulder. “Yes, Louie.”
“Subway tokens?”
“Yes, Louie!”
Louis smiled. “Pepper spray?”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Yes, Louie. Anything else? In case you’re wondering, yes, I am wearing underwear.”
Louis made a show of looking her up and down, inspecting, and then frowned. “I don’t remember you having that shirt.”
“It’s a blouse, and it’s Clara’s. She said we could share while she’s here.”
Louis sighed. “And of course, you immediately took her up on it.”
Lucy grinned an unrepentant grin, and kissed him on the cheek. “See you later, Louie.”
Louis watched Lucy leave, finishing his coffee and choking down a frozen breakfast burrito while he waited on Clara.
When the microwave clock ticked over to eighteen after nine, he started to get antsy. He went and knocked on the bathroom door. After a second, Clara opened it.
In nothing but a towel.
The terry cloth hugged her breasts, and left her long, long legs completely bare.
Damn, those were some long legs.
Clara cleared her throat, and Louis dragged his eyes back up. “I said nine, I thought you’d be naked. Ready! I thought you’d be ready.”
Clara smiled somewhat shyly and Louis turned his back, already imagining the sexual harassment complaint she could bring.
But Perry! I couldn’t help it, those were the longest, shapeliest legs I’ve ever seen.Yeah.
“I was putting my make-up on,” Clara said. Louis still didn’t turn around. “I just need to go get dressed. I’ll only be a minute.”
He heard her footsteps padding down the hall, and released a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. He needed to find her somewhere else to live, pronto.
Maybe Cat would take her.
But Lucy seems to enjoy having her here…
He could delay asking Cat a few days. Purely for Lucy's sake, of course.
He wondered if Clara would notice if all his towels mysteriously shrank, then he shook himself and returned to the kitchen.
-l-
Clara and Lou decided to walk to the Daily Planet. Normally, Clara would have flown, but on such a pretty day, walking with Lou was even better.
Seeing him with Lucy had done a lot to help her understand him. It was clear to her that he loved his little sister very much, and that he was taking care of her as best he could. She wondered where their parents were, but after what Cat said didn’t want to broach a potentially touchy subject. Not when she and Lou seemed to be getting along.
She couldn’t imagine Lou ever treating Lucy badly, or even like the way he’d treated Clara yesterday. So she concluded that the way he acted at work was just that, an act. A veneer of seen it-done it-wrote-the-story-got-the-t-shirt that he used to protect the sensitive guy who let his sister live with him rent free, and paid part of her college tuition so that she wouldn’t have to get too far in debt.
“Dad’s got money,” Lucy had confided. “But he’ll only pay if I go to medical school. Louie said I should do what I want, and he’ll help me. Right now I’m just taking the core classes. I’m not really sure what I want to do yet. Maybe advertising or something, so I can work at the Daily Planet, like you and Louie.”
There was a commotion ahead of them, and Clara looked up, looking over her glasses so she could use her special vision.
“Help! He fell in, we can’t get to him!”
Through the rising smoke and crumbled concrete, Clara saw a city worker trapped below street level, curled in on himself and coughing. Glancing around, Clara made sure no one would see, and then super sped over to a manhole cover and disappeared down it.
A quick burst of strength shifted the debris from the collapsed section of road, and then she had the trapped worker by the waist and she was lifting him up through the hole. Once his coworkers had a good grip on him, Clara went back the way she came, reappearing beside Lou.
The whole rescue took only a few seconds.
“An angel!” the rescued man was gasping. “An angel appeared and saved me!”
He looked up and saw Clara in the crowd. “Her! That woman! She’s my angel!”
Beside her, Lou snorted. “He must have hit his head.”
He looked at Clara. “What happened to you? Did you get caught in the smoke?”
Clara looked down and saw that her suit was covered in road grease, and her shoes were absolutely ruined.
“From now on, do what I do,” Lou advised. “Keep a change of clothes at work.”
Like lightning striking from above, Clara had a dangerous idea.
-l-
“And the man, he recognized you? Did anyone believe him?” Jonathan Kent demanded.
As soon as she’d gotten a chance, Clara had sequestered herself in one of the Daily Planet’s conference rooms to call her parents, keeping half an ear out to make sure no one would overhear her talking about her powers.
“Well what was she supposed to do, Jonathon, let the man die?” Martha Kent interrupted. “Clara, how was the ball, honey? Did Louis like your dress?”
“Don’t change the subject!”
“Daddy, I know you’re worried,” Clara interjected before her dad could get into his ‘dissected like a frog’ speech. “But I’ve been thinking about this. Something Louis said, after the thing with the manhole. A change of clothes. I think I need some kind of uniform or disguise or something. We could make it together, Mom.”
Jimmy knocked on the conference room door. “I’ve got to go, Mom. But I’ll fly out later, and we can look through that big bundle of fabric left over from when we made Halloween costumes for the Irigs’ grandkids.”
With that, she hung up the phone and gestured for Jimmy to come in the conference room. “What’s up, Jim?”
“Luthor’s proposal for a private space station has been rejected. They just announced it on LNN. Louis is going nuts trying to make sense of Platt’s report. You’d better get out here.”
“Okay, on my way.”
Clara wondered how Lex was taking the news. He was probably upset. He’d seemed pretty excited about Space Station Luthor. But in spite of his feelings, Clara was glad the proposal was rejected. It just seemed to her that it would be better if the space station wasn’t privately owned. That way, any medicines developed would be under the public domain.
Of course, Lex was a great philanthropist, and he had employees to pay, but still. He was a businessman, and Clara had always felt that health care shouldn’t be about business.
Maybe she’d take him some cookies or something, if she saw him again. Then she smiled, shaking her head at the idea. Maybe she’d do it just to see the look on his face.
-l-
An interminable number of hours later, Clara and Lou were still no closer to deciphering Dr. Platt’s report. Clara had even snuck into the conference room to thumb through the pages at super speed, but she understood just enough of the science to continually question what order she’d tried to put the pages in.
With a sigh of frustration, Clara pushed back one of the tendrils of hair that had escaped from her braid, and stood up. “I’m going to go get some Chinese. You want anything?”
Lou looked up from his piles of papers, and then checked his watch. He’d long since taken off his suit jacket, and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Clara tried not to stare at his muscular forearms.
“It’s after nine,” Lou observed.
Clara waited to see if there was more to that statement. “And you don’t eat Chinese after nine?”
Lou frowned at her like she was being purposefully obtuse. “No, you shouldn’t be going out in the city at this time of night by yourself. Look, Kent, this isn’t Nebraska – ”
“Kansas.”
“Whatever. The point is, this is Metropolis, and you are a petite, attractive woman. You go out on these streets alone at this time of night, and sooner or later someone is going to hurt you. And then, if by some miracle you live through it, instead of trying to catch your attacker the authorities are going to keep asking what you were wearing and why you were out alone, like it’s your fault.”
Clara raised her eyebrows, touched by Lou’s concern. “This sounds personal for you.”
“I wrote a series on crimes perpetuated against women after one of Lucy’s college friends was mugged,” Lou said gruffly, shuffling the papers in front of him. He cleared his throat. “If you’re hungry, have something delivered here. I do it all the time.”
Smiling, Clara crossed to Lou’s desk and patted one of his enticingly bare forearms. “I know a Chinese place that delivers. I’ll order something for both of us and wait for our order in the lobby.”
With that, she headed for the elevator.
“Don’t you want to know what I want?” Lou called.
“I’ll get an assortment!”
There was a pause. “And you won’t go out?” Lou’s eyes were narrow with suspicion. Clara wondered if Lucy often broke promises not to venture out after dark.
“My feet will not touch the ground outside this building,” Clara said.
She took the stairs instead of the elevator, so she could go up to the roof without Lou noticing. From there, it was a quick flight to China.
-l-
Fifteen minutes later, Clara exited the elevator with a stack of bamboo boxes filled with her favorites from Shanghai. Setting the boxes down on a corner of Lou’s desk, she retrieved her chair so that she could sit close enough to share with him, watching as he opened the boxes and ate a dumpling.
“This is out of this world.” Lou closed his eyes in bliss and Clara couldn’t stop the sappy smile that crossed her face.
Lou had to be one of the most complicated men she’d ever met. Every time she thought she had a handle on him, he revealed another side. At first she’d been awed, maybe had a case of hero worship when she met the great Louis Lane. She’d always admired his work, but when she first saw him it was like… well not exactly like a lightning strike. It was gentler than that. A sudden sense of recognition, like something inside her had said
Oh, there you are. Where have you been?Then she’d been disappointed with his personality and apparent dislike of her, though still grudgingly respectful and impressed by his resourcefulness. And then Lou had insisted that she come home with him – for her own safety – and he’d been a perfect gentleman, and Clara had met Lucy, and just now he’d taken the time to make sure she was safe again…
He wasn’t exactly Prince Charming. He was too prickly for that. But maybe, just maybe, he could be Clara’s White Knight.
Lou met her eyes, and Clara realized she’d been staring at him. She blushed, but didn’t look away.
A teasing note in his tone, at odds with the serious expression on his face, Lou said, “Don’t fall for me, Farm Girl. I’m no good for you.”
Clara’s blush intensified, but somewhere she found the gumption to say, “That’s exactly the wrong thing to say to girls if you don’t want them to fall for you, Lou. Don’t you know we can’t resist bad boys?”
Lou snorted. Clara leaned forward eagerly, waiting for his comeback.
“Is that what I am? A bad boy?”
Clara giggled. “I was thinking White Knight. But now… Maybe you’re more Black Knight.”
Lou’s brows rose into his hairline. “You’re a strange one, Clara Kent.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. It works for you though.” Lou rustled around in the last bamboo box, pulling out a fortune cookie and cracking it open. “Hey, this is in Chinese…”
Clara took it from him, feeling a spark of electricity where her fingers brushed his. “A Good Horse is Like a Member of the Family.”
Lou gave her a blank stare. Then he blinked, snapping out of it, and started to gather up the pages of Platt’s report. “Get your coat, Farm Girl. I think the only person who’s going to be able to make sense of this is Platt himself.”
-l-
When they arrived at Dr. Platt’s apartment, the front door was cracked open. Lou held a finger to his lips, and then he looked between the door and Clara, clearly torn between taking her inside or leaving her alone on the stoop. He couldn’t know that Clara was far safer than he would ever be.
“I’ll stay behind you, I promise,” Clara whispered to put his mind at ease. She was fast enough that she’d be able to get him out of harm’s way if there was something wrong inside.
Together, they crept into the dark apartment.
“Dr. Platt?” Lou called, his body angled to protect Clara.
No answer.
Lou found a switch and flipped it, flooding the apartment with harsh yellow light.
And revealing Dr. Platt, his face set in an expression of horror, his feet in a tub of water and a bare wire in his hands, still throwing sparks.
Clara gasped and started toward the man, but Lou held her back, pointing out the water on the floor. She hadn’t even considered the possibility of electrocution – she couldn’t be electrocuted. She’d learned that the time she’d accidentally flown into a power line.
“Don’t look, Clara,” Lou said, pulling her into his arms, pressing her face against his broad chest. From the tremor in his voice, Clara thought he was just as shaken as she was, but his first instinct was to be strong for her.
So Clara let him hold her. His arms felt nice around her shoulders, and she wrapped hers around his waist, inhaling his scent. He smelled like ink and some kind of cologne.
One of them was trembling. Clara didn’t know which one.
Eventually, Clara said, “We should call the police.”
“Yes, we should.” But Lou still didn’t let go of her. That was okay. Clara wasn’t ready to let go either.
They held hands on the way to the payphone, during the call to the police, and all the way back to the crime scene, neither of them commenting on it. They didn’t let go until two squad cars pulled up and some uniformed officers got out, followed by a plainclothes detective who introduced himself to Clara as Henderson, and a forensic tech.
They followed Inspector Henderson back inside, answering questions about what they were doing there and how they’d found Platt.
“Looks like suicide,” Henderson said, taking in the room. “There’s no sign of forced entry, no sign of struggle, no one saw anyone coming in or out…”
Lou scowled. “But we were on the verge of proving that something he was working on was right. It makes no sense that he would – ”
“Man’s gonna barbecue himself, he should use sauce,” one of the uniformed cops said, laughing at his own joke.
“The man’s name was Samuel Platt!” Clara burst, outraged. How dare this man make light of the loss of a life? How dare he act like it didn't matter? Like it was fine that no one had saved Platt.
Fine that Clara hadn’t saved Platt.
“He was a brilliant scientist and he cared about others,” Clara went on, needing to say it out loud, needing everyone to hear who this man was. “Under the circumstances, I don’t think that kind of humor is appropriate.”
The cop looked taken aback, and the he glanced past Clara, at Lou. “Hey buddy, you wanna come over here and get your girlfriend? She’s hysterical.”
For one terrible fraction of a second, Clara wanted nothing more than to slap the grin off the cop’s face. Her hands clenched into fists.
“Calm down, Farm Girl,” came a soothing voice in her ear. “He’s not worth it.”
Lou.
Clara took a deep breath. She couldn’t slap this man. She couldn’t lose her temper. She could
never lose her temper. It would be so easy for her to hurt, or even kill someone accidentally.
Lou put a hand on her shoulder, and Clara leaned back against him, letting him be the protector, the Black Knight he seemed so eager to be. “Make another remark like that,” Lou said acidly to the cop, “and I won’t save you from her.”
There was a beat of silence, and then Henderson said, “Sorry about that. Some of my guys really are pigs. Anyway, we tracked down Platt’s wife and kid. You know about them?”
Clara thought of the insensitive attitude of the cop. “If it’s alright, I’d like to contact them myself.”
Henderson eyed her for a minute, but he nodded. “Never was one of the perks of the job.” He looked at Lou. “Check back with me after the autopsy.”
Then he was gone.
Lou slipped an arm around Clara, gently guiding her out onto the street. Clara let herself be led, her thoughts racing. She wanted nothing more than to escape into the sky, to fly so hard and fast that maybe, if she went fast enough, she could turn back time.
“You okay?” Lou’s voice was gentle. Who knew he could be that gentle?
“We should have done something.”
I should have done something.“What should we have done?”
“We should have known! We should have protected him.”
“How?”
Clara paused, at a loss. Even with her powers, she hadn’t suspected Platt was in danger.
Lou grabbed her chin, tilting her face up. “Look Clara, all we can do now is prove him right. Whoever did this blew up the Messenger, and they’re probably going to try to do the same to the colonist transport.”
Clara took a deep breath. Lou was right. “Okay.”
Lou seemed surprised by her easy acquiescence. He checked his watch to cover the moment. “It’s six. Let’s go back to the apartment and try to get a few hours of sleep before we get started.”
-l-
As soon as Lou was asleep, Clara slipped out a window and flew high and fast. But no matter how fast she went, time moved stubbornly forward.
