a/n: Short and sweet little story with the basic mythos intact, no spoilers (unless you didn't know Clark is Superman. Whoops! Cats out of the bag!) This is an oldie that I never got around to finishing until now, I hope you enjoy it.
Cape's Out of the Bag
x
Clark quickly stole a look across the span of their desks before glancing just as quickly back at the monitor as soon as she looked up. He began to fiddle with the knob on the police scanner, always missing the proper signal by just a smidge; ensuring that the audio was staticky and difficult to comprehend.
Deftly Lois reached out hand a without taking her eyes off the editorial she was proofreading and nudged his fingers out of the way. Her long digits spun the knob with a delicacy that he had once been surprised could come from her and settled the radio frequency to a clear, static-free setting. He smiled softly and turned the interceptor towards the center sliver between their desks so she could better hear it.
"Is there an 'i' after the 'a' in infiltrate?"
"No."
"In exacerbate?"
"Still no."
"Is there an 'e' at the end of it?"
Clark sighed, grabbed a red pen from the cup on his desk, gently pulled the sheaf of paper from her fingers and began rewriting all the painfully misspelled words.
Looking very pleased with herself, Lois smirked. With an overzealous sigh she leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms as far as they would go. "Smallville, you are my hero."
He knew he shouldn't have blushed at such commonplace, charmingly teasing words, but the order of the words and the way she said them felt genuine. She had never said that to him before, Super-fied or otherwise. He felt electricity spark under his skin, pricking his fingertips; a distracting numbness that had everything to do with the noisy bass drum in his chest.
Meanwhile, their exchange was interrupted by a bulletin on the radio. 'Unit 343 headed to 66 11thstreet, apartment 4a- Missing person- male, mid-forties, bald, brown eyes.'
"Clark?"
"Already on it." He typed the address into the yellow pages site. "The Hallots."
Lois smacked her forehead in irritation, "I know that name! Where do I know that name from?" she spun her desk chair around and slid it over to the filing cabinet that they shared. She yanked open one of the drawers (which always got stuck) once, twice, then it came free. "Think think think." She fingered through the files at high speed.
"Aha!" she grabbed a file and slid back towards him while wearing a triumphant grin. "Remember a while back, the crime spree?" he nodded, "And we thought it might have been someone recently released from prison?" again he nodded. "Well, it clearly wasn't Hallot, he's a small fish. But he was on the list. And-"
Lois' eyes widened and she searched under the impossible mess of assorted papers of various colors and degrees of crumpled-ness. She came up with a blue post it, a napkin from Subway and a loose-leaf paper with only two words- names –scribbled on each. She handed him all three. "All convicts that were released early on 'good behavior'. All missing."
"I'll call Jim."
Jim Harper, an officer for MPD, had been their contact within the force for over a year now. Clark very shrewdly left out that this was mostly because of his dual identity as the 'Guardian' and Superman had asked him very very nicely.
x X x
"You aren't supposed to be here." Jim groused as he followed Lois around Hallot's apartment, wringing his hands.
"Is it a crime scene?"
"Well, no."
"Any tape?"
"Well I-"
"Blood?"
"Not exactly-"
"Then we're fine."
Clark smiled at her tolerantly. Lois was …unique was probably the nicest way of putting it. Jim, on the other hand, wasn't as taken with her as the Superman was and called her something much less flattering. But only in his head. He was too polite and not nearly dumb enough to say it out loud.
The intrepid reporter blew past them both, armed with a pencil, notepad and sharp eyes.
xXx
The next few days are a blur of long hours spent sifting through nonsense to find the breadcrumbs along a paper trail.
"I've drank so much coffee in the last three hours that caffeine is seeping out of my pores," she says. "Seriously, if you lick my face you'll get a buzz."
"You know you need sleep when…"
"I dunno, too tired, when?"
"When you ask your co-worker to lick your face."
Eventually he's the one who finds the last piece of the puzzle. For a minute he contemplates letting her find it just to see her face. He likes her 'eureka' face. It's manic and breathtaking and showcases every little thing that he loves about her.
He decides against it because if she knew he didn't think she'd appreciate it much. She had only begun to really respect him in the past year, when he'd really begun to talk to her like himself.
It was silly of him. He shouldn't have given in; he should have listened to his baser instincts, which dictated that he should protect himself. And in protecting himself, tell her nothing. He should have shielded his identity, most especially from her. Because who knew Superman better than Lois Lane?
He blinked. Thinking back, he hadn't seen as much of Lois as Superman lately. She still got into the spots of trouble, in which he so often found her, but recently she'd either been able to get out of them herself or he'd been able to come to her aid with the glasses firmly on.
He hadn't noticed because he'd seen more of her as Clark.
A slow smile spread over his face.
He shows her the highlighted paragraph and as her wide, excited eyes skim the paragraph and she looks at him simultaneously grave, proud, frustrated and elated, he thinks that he might like this look even better. He isn't on the outside looking in. He's sharing this.
xXx
They needed access to Luthor's personal computer.
"Can't you hack it?"
She pauses from her work and looks up at him, eyebrow jumping into her bangs and brow furrowed into cornrows. "Clark, old pal, as touching as your unequivocal belief in my apparently intrinsic mad skills is, I majored in journalism, I only just learned how to download music by torrenting. I am not actually a hacker."
He sighed and contemplated the long list of vigilante professionals he knew. He supposed he could suggest one, but having all of these specialized connections on hand at the drop of a hat could begin to get suspicious. Now how to broach the subject of getting Oracle involved…
"We could just sneak into his office and download everything manually then stick it on a USB key."
Or they could do that.
xXx
Just as they were cracking the case, a Justice League alert signalled him at a frequency human ears couldn't hear. "Hey Lois, I uh, forgot that I left my stove on, can we do this another day?"
Blink. Once. Twice. "Sure Clark." No arguments? Ok then, he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth if he didn't have to.
xXx
"KAL!"
"DIANA, GET OUT OF THE WAY!"
A loud 'oomf' as the princess was bowled over by the giant robot's kick. She went flying through the air and crashed through the side of a building, careening out the other end with just as much momentum and finally skidded to a bumpy, jarring stop. Slowly the high rise began to crumble, piece by piece. The bat plane zoomed in, Batman reading out and grabbing her by the belt just in time for a large piece of granite from the archway to narrowly miss them both.
"ENOUGH!" Superman declared, faster than a speeding bullet he zoomed at the beastly contraption. Air whistled past him in a keening cacophony. He drew back his fist and-
Open came a set of doors in the robot's chest, the infamous green glow of one of Superman's many weaknesses shone from within. He felt sick, his heart fluttered weakly in his chest and his mind fogged over with vertigo. He fell to the ground like a fly that had just been zapped.
Having apparently recovered Wonder Woman had her vengeance face on. With her formidable strength she punched it right in the chest, just above the opening, then ripped off large chunks of mettle, crunching it together like tinfoil into a makeshift cover for the kryptonite. He instantly felt a little better.
It was a short lived victory. Laughter came over the loudspeakers from the robot's helmet. "Three….Two…"
Realizing what it meant Batman hightailed it out of the blast range, Wonder Woman, knowing what would happen next would make Superman vulnerable again, covered him with her body. She knew she was not as fast as he was, and would not be able to get out of the way in time.
"One."
Boom.
The heat singed his hair and burned his cheeks. He looked up at Diana, whose arms were around him, doing her best to cover as much as him as possible, but she was not so large as she would have you believe. And she was not invincible.
"Thank you," he whispered from beneath her.
"Any time my friend," she replied with a wince and groan.
He saw it before he felt it.
Green dust fogged the area, it hovered and swirled in the wind. He had to stop breathing, but it was too late. The sick feeling in his stomach intensified and a savage cough wracked his entire body. When he removed his hand from his mouth blood was spattered in his palm.
"We have to get you out of here," said Wonder Woman with a warrior's calm.
She flew them high above the green dust clouds and settled him outside of the crater that had once been a main street.
The Batplane settled beside them, the roof popped up and Batman leapt out in a graceful summersault.
"I might need a ride home," said Clark.
X
Clark tossed his keys in the dish by the door and had to lean against the doorframe to steady himself. He had just walked up four flights of stairs to get to his apartment. Flying had not come back yet and likely wouldn't for hours, if not another day. Looking at his bloodied cuff, he thought it best to err on the side of caution.
The exhausted hero called upon his reserves of strength, pressed the play button on his answering machine and poured the contents of the ice tray into a towel to press against his forehead.
"Hey Clark," Lois' garbled voice sounded from the machine. He sighed with relief as the bruise on his forehead began to heal itself under the lovely numbness of the makeshift icepack. "So I figured this couldn't wait, so I decided to go to Lexcorp by myself and well…"
Ooooof course she did.
"Everythings fine," she was saying. "It's currently 11:00pm and only like one security guard has walked by. He's making this too damn easy. See you in the morning, if not well… guess you know the first place to look."
Two minutes later he was hailing a cab.
x
"Why?" He demands, cupping the back of her head with one hand while putting pressure on the wound with his other one.
How did it all get so wrong? The unconscious security guard had been far more armed than had warranted. Clark had been tired, out of sorts, still woozy from inhaling kryptonite. He had been slow to react, hadn't been as quiet as he should have been.
"Why would you do that?"
She coughs and sputters and gurgles on inky red fluid. "You're not bullet proof."
Clark moans and lays Lois' head in his lap so he can clench his fist. He concentrates all the hurt into the nails breaking otherwise impenetrable skin. "I know Lois, if I were-" What a time to bring him and his shortcomings compared to his other half up.
"No," she lays a hand on the fist and squeezes as hard as she can. "No. I mean you're not bulletproof."
"I know, I-"
"Clark. The attack today. They used Kryptonite on you. I don't know what comes back first but I couldn't be sure that it was –cough- imperviousness."
He feels cold all over. "How long have you known?"
"Long enough that it would be embarrassing for you if I told you." She laughs but it turns into a cough. And she's staring straight ahead like she does when she's trying not to cry.
She's known all along and she jumped in front of that bullet anyway, on the off chance that he might be hurt. He clenches the fist tighter. "Why would you do that?" he doesn't tell her that he would have been fine. He doesn't admit that the bulletproof skin is the first to come back. He doesn't tell her just in case. What if she dies? He doesn't want it to be for nothing. At least this way she'll think that she saved him. She'll die a hero.
If he can't stop it from happening.
"Did I save you?" she asks in her Lois-Voice. The serious, chastising 'what are you, stupid?' voice that he hatesloveshates.
"Yes," he lies while at the same time he's never said anything truer.
"Then I did what I was supposed to do."
Sirens wail outside and meanwhile Lois is still glaring at him. "Stop being such a baby, I'm not gonna die." A huff, "and even if I do, it's none of your business-"
"How can you-?"
"-Did you really just interrupt a dying woman?"
"But you just said-!" he sighed. "Sorry."
"Even if I do, it's none of your business and it's not your fault. I chose this."
There was a stretch of silence interrupted only but the keens of the ambulances.
"I can't die now." She says, not melancholy, but sardonic. "If I do, you'll remember me for this silly melodramatic death scene that went on much longer than is actually reasonable and who wants the people they love to remember them like that?"
"Love? What?" He did a double take but Lois chose that precise moment to pass out from blood loss.
If he weren't so worried he would have laughed. That was so like her.
X x X
Lois groans and arches her back like a kitten before quickly recoiling and clutching at her chest. The whiteness seems to blind her and she retreats into the circle of her arms, wrapping them around her face, hiding herself. Gently, he pries her arms away from her face and strokes her cheek soothingly. "Lois? Can you hear me?"
A sigh, "Yeah Clark I'm-" She bolts upright and stares wide eyed at him before launching into him and wrapping her arms around his neck in a vice. "You're okay."
"Thanks to you," he says with a sad smile.
She nods and he nods too and she says, "You're lying. You would have been completely fine."
Clark's mouth gapes open like a fish's and he wonders when she learned to read him so well.
"What comes back first?"
"Bulletproof skin, then hearing, then vision, strength and speed come next and flight last."
"Cool," she says plainly, looking perplexed. "Very evolutionarily efficient."
Silence reigned once more and he found himself thinking of her words on the cold linoleum floor of the lab. 'Who wants the people they love to remember them like that?' He gulped. "Can I kiss you?"
A blink and a laugh. A fist wrapped around a tattered tie. And a pair of lips meeting his.
X x X
In the beginning, Clark fell in love with her fire, with her firm stance against injustices. He fell in love with the way she carried herself and spoke to him. And smiled. Her smile was the most beautiful thing about her. For the first two months he kept count of how many times he could coax one out of her tight lips.
He fell in love with the way she looked.
Her hair isn't curly so much as wavy, and the waves aren't so much curls as kinks in the flowing lines arching around her face. One spiraling whorl leads the gaze to wide, unclouded, clear eyes that mirror his reflection. In her eyes he can see himself exactly as he is, not a detail changed.
It came to be that Clark continued to love Lois ardently, helplessly and silently. Because she was everything that he wanted to be. She was strong-willed, uncompromising and brave. She stood up for every downtrodden soul, to every lie she heard uttered. But most of all, she was open. Everything that Lois was was right there for the world to see. Every word that came out of her mouth she meant, unedited. Every emotion was true. Lois never lied. She wasn't a hypocrite. She lived to expose truths, because she was the embodiment of what that meant. To be an open book was what he had always wanted, because that was the only thing in the world that he could never be.
Clark would continue to love Lois unendingly, forever. Because she let him be exactly who he was, and she was willing to be everything he needed. This wasn't too difficult because all she needed to do was love him back. And she did so with absolutely no objections, inhibitions or qualifiers.