Disclaimer: I do not own Big Blue ( I'd only get him dirty) and no infringement of copyright is intended. Unbetaed so mistakes are mine. This is a repost due to technical difficulties. And thanks to Dragonfire27 (dear god let me have gotten your name right!) for alerting me to said technical difficulties…

CHAPTER ONE: LITTLE OLE WINE DRINKER ME

It took an awful lot of alcohol to get Clark Kent drunk. Despite the fact that he was the universally recognised definition of "nerd," young Mr. Kent could hold his drink with the best of them. Better than most, actually. Some might have said that it was his height and build, which despite his clumsiness would not have looked out of place on an NFL opening line-up. Some might have said that it was his Irish ancestry, which was well attested to in the area around Smallville. Some might even have claimed that it was just one of those things, a gift that some people had and some people didn't.

All of those people would have been wrong.

Because the real reason that Clark Kent could hold his liquor was the shining sun above him, and the fact that he was the last living member of a long dead race. Which put him, he sometimes mused in his darker moments, in a bit of a pickle. That time-honoured way for human beings to get rid of their troubles, ie buying the biggest bottle of whatever diesel they fancied and putting it to their head until it was empty, along with their wallet, their heart and (hopefully) their memory, was impossible for him. He couldn't get drunk. He was reasonably sure he couldn't get stoned either, though he'd never had any particular desire to test that out. The only way he was heading into blessed oblivion would involve once again lifting several hundred thousand tonnes of irradiated Kryptonite into the upper atmosphere and then falling to earth like a stone.

And darn it, he'd done that last weekend.

Clark took another swig from his beer and tried very hard not to think about Lois. He screwed up his face in the effort, ignoring the looks from passers-by. Lois and he had been through a lot, with the cape and without it, and he thought he knew her pretty well. He thought that even though she saw Clark Kent as a light-weight, and someone who just had a little crush on her, she would have been happy to see him again. Maybe not Superman, since he'd left her (he now knew) pregnant and alone. But surely she would want to see Clark; they'd always gotten along. She'd taught him a lot about life in the big city, and about journalism. She'd taught him how to catch a cab the Metropolis way, and to always listen to your gut when it comes to an informant. They'd been a team, even if he was only the junior partner for most of it.

He thought she would want to sit down like they used to do and he could tell her his (entirely fictional but well-thought-out) adventures in foreign lands. He'd even been nervous that she'd ask too many questions. And what had she done instead? She'd foisted some files on him and snickered about him behind his back with her fiancé. What had really hurt was that Richard White had defended him. Time was-

Time was your dad was alive, Lois and Superman were an item and you were her best friend. But those times are gone, Kent, long gone.

"Is anyone sitting here?" A female voice intruded. He looked up and smiled politely at the young woman sitting down beside him, not having even waited for him to answer her question. She looked about his age, maybe a couple of years younger. She was messily pulling off a soaking three-quarter length white leather coat and fluffy scarf, drenching everyone within a ten mile radius. In fact everything about her seemed to be either black or white: black skin-tight jeans, white skin-tight t-shirt, black boots. Her skin was white as alabaster, and her peroxide white hair glistened with the rain. She was wearing heavy eye-makeup and blood red lipstick; without the Goth war-paint Clark thought that she would have been quite pretty.

She noticed him. Her eyes narrowed, and her lithe thin frame tensed as if she was expecting a fight. As if she was ready for a fight. Clark did his best don't-mind-me-my-mom-still-dresses-me smile and looked back down into his beer.

"Hey stretch, ya do a favour for a girl?" He looked back up. Her eyes met his, daring him to say no. He'd never seen a pout look so… aggressive.

"Well that depends what it is, Miss," he answered good naturedly, pushing his glasses back up onto his nose for good measure.

"I have a tag caught on the back of my shirt; could you get it off for me please?" She batted her eyelashes as she said it, though the gaze itself remained cold. Again without waiting for his response she twirled slowly around on her stool and presented him with a mainly uncovered expanse of muscled white back. Clark was surprised at how toned it was; he guessed she must be an athlete, maybe a swimmer or a gymnast. He grabbed the offending tag and tugged lightly at it, pulling it off. While Clark Kent seldom had women throwing themselves at him Superman dealt with it all the time, and he would deal with this one too. He'd just make sure he was polite…

"Hey honey, this guy bothering you?" A huge skin-headed man, wearing the universal uniform of the body-builder (white vest, jeans, sneakers) placed a beefy hand on the young woman's shoulder. She swivelled around to eye him balefully.

"Oh yeah, baby. The dude I just asked to help me out is bothering me. The gorgeous, quiet, mannerly dude who just pulled off the tag on my shirt is bothering me. The gorgeous, quiet, mannerly dude WHO ISN'T YOU is bothering me." Clark glanced nervously about him at her last screech. "Go home to your momma and ask her why she dropped you on your head as a baby, creep!"

"Hey!" the beefy man snapped, grabbing her arm and trying to pull her to her feet. "You little bitch! You can't talk to me like that!"

"Hey now," Clark tried to interject, uncomfortable with where this was going "There's no need to use language like that around a lady-"

"Lady," Beefy sneered "This one's nothing but a two bit Gotham tramp-"

The punch came from nowhere to land squarely on his nose, shattering it and spraying blood all over his face. The girl pushed herself up on the foot-rest of the bar-stool and with one swift motion whipped both her legs around the man's chest, simultaneously locking her arm around his throat. She began to squeeze unmercifully hard, and within seconds the man's face was turning blue. Everyone jumped back from the spectacle, knocking their drinks over.

"I was just asking a nice guy to do me a favour and now look what you've gone and made me do!" she was muttering vindictively into his ear. Beefy wheezed in response. "I mean, this guy was just bein' nice and you have to go and get all macho on his ass, and that Mr., is just a case of bad manners!" She looked apologetically at Clark. "I'm real sorry, Mr. I didn't mean to start any trouble for ya, but some people," (at this she gave another nasty looking twist against his throat) "just aint got no class!"

"Oh, that's quite alright Miss, Miss?" Clark really hoped he wouldn't have to wrestle her off Beefy. She might get the wrong idea.

"You can call me Harli. COS MY FRIENDS DO!" Another unmercifully hard squeeze. This was the last straw for Beefy: Harli let his body fall to the floor, releasing her legs' grip on his torso and swinging herself up onto the bar in one smooth motion.

Definitely a gymnast, Clark thought.

"We should call a doctor," he began, bending down to check the man's pulse.

"Nah, don't bother. I didn't do anything permanent, just made sure he'll wake up with a headache. It'd take a lot more pressure than that to kill, trust me." She shot him a brilliant smile. "I just hurt his pride." Nonchalantly she leaned behind the bar and pulled a slice of lemon out from storage. She popped it in her mouth, sucking on the flavour, before offering one to Clark. He shook his head, pushing his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose again. She seemed to like the gesture. "So we should bail, cos when he wakes up he's gonna be totally pissed 'bout this." She swung down onto the floor and grabbed her coat. "C'mon, you can help me get barred from Club Stomp, it's the only place I'm still allowed into." And here Clark had been unaware that Metropolis had a Club Stomp.

"Miss, Miss," he began as she all but dragged him outside, "Miss, I think I should maybe call you a cab home or something-"

"Why? I feel fine," she answered breezily as she dragged him, and though he could have stopped her at any time he didn't want to cause a scene in front of the entire City Desk Bar.

"But Miss, I mean Harli, I think maybe I've given you the wrong impression-"

She stopped dead. Suddenly Clark felt monumentally thankful that he was Kryptonian. She was about to try the same routine on him as on Beefy. He steeled himself (no pun intended he thought despondently)-

And suddenly, she… burst into tears. For a moment Clark was stupefied. It's a trick, It's a trick, It's a trick! his mind chanted. But it didn't seem to be. Harli looked up at him through her mass of platinum hair, her eyes wide as Bambi's, and Clark felt his heart melt. She must have had a hard day or something. It couldn't be easy being gorgeous and tiny and easily hit-upon. She was just a poor, misguided kid, and now she was crying-

She sniffed, her mascara running, her lips trembling. "That's the nicest thing anyone's EVER said to me!"

Clark tried the old patting-her-hand routine. "Oh I'm sure that's not true!"

She gulped and nodded earnestly, hiccupping just a little. "It is! You're trying to be all gentlemanly and nice, and not, not, take advantage!" Her face screwed up with tears, she gave a cute little yowl of anguish, her hand fluttering like a fan around her face. "My last boyfriend just used to tell me to shut up and get on with it, and now you're, you're-" she couldn't finish.

Clark decided to risk the old awkward-half-hug he occasionally used on Jimmy at the Planet Christmas party. Clearly this ex-boyfriend of hers had been a grade-A jackass, talking to her like that. Maybe it was old-fashioned, but nastiness towards woman really bothered him.

"You're just so nice. What's your name?" She looked up at him, twitching her nose against the rain like a cute little post-punk squirrel.

Uh oh, he thought. Nobody ever gets mugged in Metropolis when you need them to…"Em, it's Clark," he answered hesitantly.

She blinked. "Like the movie star?"

He had to smile. "No, it was my mom's maiden name."

"Oh. And you work in the Daily Planet?"

Now he was getting suspicious. "How'd you figure that?"

"You're wearing a Daily Planet ID badge."

Oops. "So I am."

A beat.

"So you wanna maybe get a coffee or something? I mean, if you're not a Club Stomp kinda guy." Again the batting eye-lashes, though he couldn't be completely certain that that wasn't just one of her mannerisms, something she did without realizing that it was provocative. She shivered slightly, and he realized that they were both getting drenched. Kryptonian bodies didn't register cold the way human bodies did, but then again Kryptonian bodies couldn't catch pneumonia either. He opened his mouth to respond, when suddenly a familiar voice cut across him.

"Clark, what are you still doing here?" Lois dodged through the traffic like a quarterback, causing several cabbies to put on their breaks with a screech of tyres and some colourful language. Lois, being Lois, ignored them. She hurried up to him, somehow managing to avoid getting drenched despite the fact that she had no umbrella, and looked expectantly at Harli.

"Hi, have we been introduced?" she asked in a business-like (bossy) tone. Harli immediately straightened up.

"No, I'm Harleen Quinzel. I'm new in town, just moved here from Gotham." The air seemed charged with something, an unspoken challenge, and once again Clark wished that he spoke Woman-Speak. "Clark here was just helping me out, got a spot of bother in the bar over there."

"Oh and Clark was being a good Samaritan, was he?"

"More like a knight in shining armour, actually." She smiled sweetly at him, and despite himself he smiled back. "Oh, I didn't quite catch your name Miss..?"

"Lane. Lois Lane." She made a show of patting Clark's arm. Harli cocked a decidedly adversarial-looking eyebrow. "I'm Clark's partner."

"Oh." It wasn't a knowing "oh," it was… an unimpressed one.

"We work together," he elaborated, drawing an annoyed glare from Lois.

"Oh." Harli smirked.

The silence stretched out. "Well. We've got to be going-" Lois began briskly.

"We do?"

"Yeah Clark, we do." Her tone brooked no disagreement. "It was nice meeting you, Holly-"

"Harli," the girl corrected, trying belatedly to dry her eyes. Clark gave her his handkerchief. Lois glared. Harli grinned. She handed it back to Clark. They turned to move away.

Well I suppose she looks better now, he thought…

"Oh, and Clark?"

He turned back. "Yes, Harli?"

Suddenly she seemed shy. "Thanks for, for what you said. I'll make it up to you some day." She leaned forward, and blushing furiously, gave him a tiny peck on the cheek. Then she turned tail and all but ran into the oncoming traffic, disappearing into the busy city.

Lois had her cynical face on. "You can thank me later," she informed him.

"For what?" he almost sounded annoyed, something he never sounded with Lois. She blinked.

"For saving you from that little Lolita wannabe." He rolled his eyes.

"She was harmless, she's just trying to get over a bad break-up."

"Sure she is."

"Lois!"

"Clark, the last time I saw a woman eyeing something the way she was eyeing you, it was Sister Mary Francis in a candy store three days before the end of Lent."

Clark shook his head. "You sure do have some weird ideas Lois."

She grinned. "I'm sure she's really swell, but you listen to your Aunty Lois and stay away from temptation."

Chance'd be a fine thing.

"Clark are you listening to me?"

He forced himself to nod. "Yes, Lois, I'm listening." As usual.

"Great! You wanna get a coffee or something? You're soaked." He opened his mouth to agree, but she was already brushing him off. "Oh shoot, I have to meet Richard at Fabiano's! Rain-check, ok?" She was already making her way off, pulling out her cell-phone. "Night Clark," she called distractedly as she dialled.

"Night, Lois," he muttered, feeling crestfallen. He closed his eyes, willing the mask of indifference back onto his face. It was for the best, it really was. Somewhere, about twenty-five blocks away, an alarm pierced the night sky. Back to the day job, he thought resignedly, wondering whether he'd ever have a night when he didn't end up feeling miserable. He jogged off, already searching for somewhere to change into his suit.

Harli stepped out from the shadows, head cocked to one side. So little Miss Lane was where his heart lay, was it? And the stupid dame hadn't even realised yet. Harli shook her head to herself; if there was one thing she knew about, it was unrequited love. Love where one partner treated the other partner like crap. She'd been through it and she'd survived. And now, now she would help Clark with his problem. She'd meant it when she'd said she'd make it up to him. She would just have to figure out the best way to do that.

A slow smile split her face. Mr. J. always did say I liked a challenge…

A/N If you liked then please review. It's a loooooot lighter than my other Superman fic... But it's all about unrequited love... Fear I may be spotting a pattern, hmm...