Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout
Clark turned in the article on the foiled bank robbery and a second one on the international hunt for Lex Luthor. Lois had taken off for the afternoon and the bullpen was buzzing with rumors and speculation.
'Their first day back from a honeymoon assignment and she's in tears and takes off?'
'Whodathunk Kent had it in him, leaving Mad Dog Lane in tears?'
'It's the quiet ones that surprise you…'
This was so bad. He had hoped no one had noticed their discussion in the conference room. He had hoped that no one would notice him. He was a nobody in the newsroom, one bee in a busy hive. He worked hard to be unnoticed and underestimated.
He sighed, even though he knew the people at the desks closest to his would notice and assume it had something to do with Lois.
"Kent!" Perry yelled from his office door.
Clark collected his notepad and a pen and hurried to the editor's office. He avoided tripping over trash cans that peeked into the aisle. At least one of them had deliberately been shoved in his way but he didn't feel like playing that game at the moment.
Perry shut the door behind him. "Take a seat," the older man ordered.
Clark did as he was told. He looked up at Perry, eyes wide with concern as the older man moved to lean against his desk, arms crossed over his chest.
"What the hell happened up there?" Perry began.
"I don't…"
"Don't even try to con me, Kent," Perry warned. "I've been in this business for longer than you've been alive. I want the truth and I want it now."
"Um… 'Up there' meaning Niagara Falls?" Clark asked.
Perry just stared at him.
"Things got a little 'strange'," Clark told him.
"Define 'strange'," Perry ordered.
"Just…" Clark began. He stopped and reconsidered his words. "It's not my place to say," he said after a moment. "But I think it would be better if you didn't assign Lois and me to work together anymore."
"And why should I break up a winning team?" Perry demanded.
"Mister White… I just don't think we can work together anymore… I…"
"Did you sleep with her?"
Clark didn't respond. No matter what he said, it would be a lie. He had slept with her, but she didn't remember. What happened could well be interpreted as date rape, even though she had been fully complicit at the time.
Perry was waiting for an answer.
"I wanted to," Clark said finally.
"Nearly every man around here wants to," Perry told him. "But that's not what I asked."
Clark nodded once, afraid to meet the older man eyes. Everyone at the Planet knew that Perry White considered Lois Lane his protégé. He even treated her like the daughter he'd never had. And Clark had just admitted to screwing the boss's daughter.
"That's what I thought," Perry said softly. He sighed. "I'll take your request under advisement. But the two of you need to get this worked out. I won't have your personal problems affecting my newsroom, understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"So, I'll have that story tomorrow?"
Clark nodded again.
Perry studied him for another long moment. "You look like hell. Go home, go get drunk, find a hooker and get laid, I don't care. But be ready to hand that story in tomorrow. With Lois."
"Yes, sir."
-o-o-o-
Richard White wasn't hard look at, Lois admitted to herself. But like many, if not most, good-looking men, he knew he was good-looking and expected the world and everyone in it to appreciate the fact. He hadn't taken no for an answer.
Despite her qualms, she spent the afternoon showing Perry's nephew around Metropolis. When he had visited the Big Apricot before he hadn't had a chance to see the city. They walked through the Metropolis Art Museum and the Museum of Natural History.
"So what have you been doing since that Christmas party?" Lois asked.
"Got out of the Air Force that spring," White told her. "Since then it's been here and there. Haven't found a place to settle yet."
"Staying in Metropolis long?"
He smiled. "You ask a lot of questions."
"Nature of the business. Reporters are natural born snoops."
Superman had been spotted cruising above the city. People on the sidewalk waved to him and he waved back, smiling. Lois tried to ignore him, tried to ignore the flutter in her stomach at the sight of him overhead. Tried to ignore the despair at having loved and lost him.
"So, what's he like?" White asked.
"Who?"
"Him. Who else?"
Of course White would ask about Superman. Everyone visiting the city tried to catch sight of him, asked the natives about him. In the four years since Superman's arrival, violent crime had gone down and tourism had gone up. Superman was good for the city.
"He's beautiful, charming…" she answered. "Alien."
"The tabloids say you're one of his favorite people," White said.
"I thought so too, once," Lois told him. She hated the tabloid articles linking her to Superman but they were simply jumping to the natural conclusion – Lois Lane was one of the few journalists Superman said more than two words to and was female. Superman was undeniably male. One plus one made for an interspecies affair.
"Once?" White asked.
"I haven't talked to him in some time," Lois said. "I don't know if he's avoiding me or he's just been busy."
"Why would he be avoiding you?"
She gave White a speculative look. He was asking questions like a reporter or detective.
"You ask a lot of questions for someone not in the business," she pointed out.
"I never said I wasn't in the business," White told her. "I said I'd been here and there. I've spent the past five years covering Europe and the Middle East for the International section of the Daily Planet. I'm hoping my uncle will let me stay in Metropolis for a while."
Lois stared at him. Another man she'd misjudged. It seemed to be a bad habit.
"So, why would Superman be avoiding you?" White asked.
"To distance himself. Because it's not safe to be someone known to be close to him," she explained.
"You mean you could be held as a hostage against him?"
She nodded. White was as fast on the uptake as his uncle. She was going to have to be careful around him.
"But wouldn't anyone fit that bill?" White continued. "It doesn't have to be you, specifically, that's the one targeted."
"Lex Luthor was making threats from prison," Lois told him.
"Then prove him wrong," White suggested. "Tell Superman to start spreading his interviews around and that you need a less exclusive relationship… I assume the idiot ex-boyfriend you mentioned is…?"
"You assume wrong," Lois told him. "But you're right about one thing. Maybe a loud public break-up is exactly what I need to get the tabloids and the other idiots off my back."
-o-o-o-
'Maybe a loud public break-up is exactly what I need to get the tabloids and the other idiots off my back,' Superman heard Lois say to the man with her. He wasn't certain who she was referring to as her 'idiot ex-boyfriend'. As far as he knew Lois hadn't been dating anyone. In fact, in all the time he'd known her, she hadn't mentioned seeing anyone although he knew from other people in the Planet newsroom that she'd had an active social life before Superman came on the scene.
'Maybe that's what she does need,' he mused. 'She needs me out of her life so she can have a normal life.'
Another call for help, this one not too far from where Lois and her new friend were walking. He hurried to check on it. Two thugs were holding an older couple at knife point. The matter was handled in seconds and a panda car with uniformed officers arrived within minutes.
Superman didn't need to stick around and normally didn't. But this time he waited for Lois to appear.
The sound of police or fire sirens echoing in the streets was always a lure for her. He wasn't disappointed. She rounded the corner of the alley with her companion a few minutes later.
She stopped and gazed at him levelly but he could hear that her heart rate was elevated. "Why have you been avoiding talking to me?" she demanded.
The two police officers shut the door of their car behind their prisoners then stopped to listen. The older couple looked astonished at Lois's audacity.
"I wasn't aware that…" Superman began, keeping his tone formal yet cordial.
"And what were you doing at Niagara Falls last Friday afternoon?"
"I go where I'm needed," he said. "You know that Miss Lane."
"But why there? Why not the Grand Canyon or Disneyland?" she asked. "Were you checking up on me?"
There was nothing he could say to answer her accusation so he didn't say anything. A small crowd had gathered including Gil Truman, another reporter for the Daily Planet, and some tourists with cameras. If Lois wanted media coverage of her tiff, it wasn't going to be a problem.
"You were!" she accused. "You were checking up on me! Do you really believe that I'm so reckless, so out of touch with reality, that I need you to keep me out of trouble?"
He opened his mouth to answer but she barreled on.
"I'm not a child. I don't need you to babysit me," she said, her voice becoming shrill. She was in full Mad Dog mode. It both was fascinating and terrifying to watch. And even though he was physically invulnerable, he knew his heart rate had jumped. He was fighting to stay on the ground.
"I'm a grown woman, perfectly capable of taking care of myself and I was doing it a long time before you showed up," she spat. "I don't need you watching over me like some perverted… alien watchdog!"
At the word 'alien' a gasp had gone up from the watching crowd. She had said it like it was an epithet and he hadn't been able to stifle his own hurt reaction. He had to force himself not to ball his fists in impotent anger.
"As you wish, Miss Lane. I won't trouble you again," he managed to get out before he launched himself into the air. He knew the sonic boom would rattle windows for blocks around, maybe even crack a few, but at the moment he didn't really care.
'Maybe a loud public break-up is exactly what I need…' she had said, so he had obliged by staying until she was present. But he hadn't expected her attack to feel so personal. She had sounded like she actually hated him.
'Maybe it would be better if I left Metropolis,' he mused as he hit the upper atmosphere. 'Start over in Gotham or Star City, or maybe London or Tokyo. Or maybe I can just start traveling again.' But he didn't want to leave the city he had come to love. He didn't want to leave the Daily Planet, the first place aside from Smallville where he'd been able to put down roots, have friends. And he didn't want to leave Lois, even if she didn't want him around her.
-o-o-o-
Lois allowed White to get her a cab and take her to her apartment building even though she didn't invite him up. She knew he was disappointed but she really didn't care. She had completely ignored Gil in the alley but knew he would report the incident to Perry, as well as documenting it for the next edition. She could see the headline now: 'Lois Lane calls Superman 'perverted alien watchdog'.
Once home, she unplugged all her phones. If anyone wanted to talk to her, they were going to have to come to her. And she didn't want to talk to anyone. She especially didn't want to talk to Perry about her actions. He was going to be furious with her for breaking her ties with the Man of Steel. The bean counters up in sales and in accounting loved the fact that Superman was associated with the Daily Planet. Superman articles sold papers.
"Now look! "We're sitting on top of the story of the century here! Our only problem is how to get it - exclusively!" Perry had yelled at his top reporters as they stood in the conference room the day after Superman's first appearance. It was hard to believe it was four years ago.
"I want the name of this flying whatchamacallit to go with the Daily Planet like bacon and eggs, franks and beans, death and taxes, politics and corruption!" Perry had continued.
"Well, I shouldn't think he'd lend himself to any cheap promotion schemes..." Clark had managed to say. It was the most words he'd strung together verbally since he started at the Planet. Most of the people in the newsroom hadn't even heard his voice before that.
"Who's talking cheap? I'll make him a goddamn partner if I have to! I want the inside dope on this guy. Does he have a family? Why did he show up last night? What's he got beneath that cape, batteries? Who is he? Where's he from? What's his favorite ball team…? And I'll tell you one thing, boys and girls," he shook his hand at them, pointing. "Whichever one of you gets it out of him will have the single most important interview since God talked to Moses."
Lois had gotten the story – or rather Superman deigned to give her an interview and in that moment they had been linked in the minds of the media. She was the expert on him. She was the one he gave interviews to.
But not anymore. Perry was going to go ballistic.
And poor Clark, always in Superman's shadow even though it was a role he had created for himself. The invisible man, the naïve farm boy in the big city. The clumsy shy oaf who Perry White had hired and assigned to her. The sweet, innocent man whose favorite words seemed to be 'gee, golly, and swell.' The stiletto sharp intellect that no one saw outside of his research and writing. And no one in the bullpen ever bothered to wonder at the contrast, not even her and she worked beside him everyday. No one ever thought about the fact that he was an award winning journalist – he had won his first Kerth during his first year at the Planet, beating her out on the award. Everyone looked at his shy, stooped demeanor and dismissed it as a fluke.
'So much for the brilliant investigative reporter, Lane.' She sat on the edge of her filling bathtub and poured in lavender bath salts. They were a birthday gift from Clark after she'd told him she loved the smell of lavender. He knew her tastes in fragrances just like he knew the way she liked her coffee, her favorite authors, her favorite beer, her favorite restaurants. If it had been any other man in the newsroom she would have thought that level of attention creepy. From Clark it was sweet and charming.
'Took you four years to figure it out and then it was purely because he slipped up.' When talking to Jimmy Olsen about something or other Clark had straightened to his full height and crossed his arms over his chest. Jimmy hadn't noticed, but Lois had. It had been Superman's iconic pose. Even the cant of his head had been the same. Then, when Clark realized she was watching him he seemed to shrink in on himself. It had reminded her of an actor putting on a role and that was when everything fell together like a puzzle that she hadn't known what the picture was. Until that moment of crystal clarity.
Then she simply made a fool of herself, trying to force him to admit what she already knew. Twice she put herself in danger to force him to reveal himself and when that didn't work, she shot at him at point-blank range. He had straightened up and she watched the transformation from clumsy, geeky Clark to Superman as he removed his glasses and stood tall.
"You realize, of course, if you'd been wrong... Clark Kent would have been killed," he had told her, the timbre of his voice dropping to Superman's baritone.
Another slip – he hadn't realized the gun was loaded with blanks. She wasn't foolish enough to actually risk a man's life on a theory, although she did wonder a little that Clark thought she was that foolish, or that certain.
He had confessed to being in love with her. He had given up his powers to be with her as plain ordinary Clark Kent, an ordinary man with a job at the Daily Planet who didn't run off at the drop of a hat to handle emergencies. Only they both knew the world needed Superman. She had seen the grief in his eyes at the disasters he could have prevented had he not given up his 'superness'.
"I want the man I fell in love with," Lois had told him after he'd taken a beating protecting her from a thug.
"I know that, Lois," he had responded. "And I wish he were here..."
She hadn't argued when he decided to return to Superman's northern fortress to see if he could reverse the process that had made him human. The world needed Superman – it was as simple as that.
And now everything was a mess. She didn't dare have a relationship with Superman and he wasn't convinced she could love Clark.
'Maybe I should just get the hell out of town,' she mused as she slipped into the steaming tub. 'Move to Gotham or Star City, or maybe London or Tokyo. Or maybe I can go traveling, see the world, become a roving reporter.' But she didn't want to leave the city she loved. She didn't want to leave the Daily Planet, the closest thing she had to a real family. And she didn't want to leave Clark, even if he was a lunkhead who thought he knew more than she did what was best for her. Even her father knew better.
'Poor Clark. From the look on his face when he flew off, he had no idea what hit him... Perry is going to be so mad.'
