Disclaimer: I do not own Smallville.
A/N: This chapter is dedicated to DragonCurse4 who prompted me to continue with this story. Been a while since I started this story, I hope the characters are still true to the start of the story! This is a bit of a filler chapter…there will be further crime solving and romance to come I promise!
Two days. It had been two days since Lois had yelled at him. Two days since he realised just how important she was to him. Two days since he got himself into the biggest mess of his life. Well, his emotional life. Actually, come to think of it, he had dug himself into a hole many a time when he was with Lana. Clark was starting to realise a pattern. But that pattern didn't matter right now, because Clark was just about ready to superspeed his way to work, and he had to admit, he was scared at what would be facing him once he arrived. Clark quickly downed his glass of milk and then took off before the glass had even touched the bottom of the sink.
Lois had gotten to work early. She figured she had nothing else better to do with her morning, and she had already gone for a jog at 6am to run off the copious amounts of rocky road ice-cream she had downed over the past couple of days. She really needed to find some healthier comfort food. So instead of spending another minute moping over a certain sorry excuse for a farm boy, Lois decided to further investigate the happenings at the warehouse that she had already written a page two story on. She didn't want page two. She didn't want to share a by-line. She wanted the front page, her own name and a Pulitzer. She wanted a distraction from the person she knew would be sitting across from her in…she looked at the clock…about five minutes time. She decided to start with interviewing the father. While the police had given her the scoop at the time, she couldn't help but feel there was more to the story. After living in Smallville for so long, Lois knew when something wasn't what it seemed.
As Lois dialled the number for the police station and put the phone to her ear, she saw a familiar tall figure exposed by the opening elevator doors. Lois didn't have time to react as she was connected through to the sergeant.
"Sergeant Wallis? Lois Lane, Daily Planet,"
There was a pause on Lois' end as the sergeant replied. Lois started to talk again as Clark cautiously made his way to the desk opposite.
"As you know I'm covering the Warehouse fiasco and want to interview your accused. How does 10 o'clock sound?"
Lois left no room for arguments, she wanted to interview the father and if the sergeant didn't let her, she would find another way. She had contacts. During the pause at her end, Lois quickly braved a glance across her desk as she heard Clark's chair shift under his weight as he sat down. Lois suddenly stopped listening to the sergeant as her thoughts overpowered any environmental stimuli. Why hadn't she thought about a plan of attack to seeing him again? That's what every good soldier does, plans out their attack and defensive lines so they are prepared for any onslaught. But she hadn't. She could have planned to give Clark the silent treatment, to give him pointed death glares all day, to make sure to alienate him from her work and personal life, or to act completely nonchalant. But she hadn't. Lois realised that both ends of the phone had gone silent and figured that to follow the common laws of conversation, it was her turn to speak.
"So I can interview the parental figure at 10 o'clock then? Sounds great, see you then." Lois finished the conversation, completely ignoring the sergeant's cries of disapproval over the phone. Sometimes accidentally not listening to someone on the phone had its perks. She knew whether the sergeant liked it or not, he would let her interview the witness. As Lois smirked to herself, Clark decided to attempt the impossible and have a conversation to her.
"Lois…um, so how are you?" Lois looked up at him with raised eyebrows. She still hadn't decided her line of attack.
"Great, I just got an interview with the father of little miss feisty. Gonna see it from the accused side of the story." Apparently Lois was playing it nonchalant. Clark was worried she was covering for how hurt she really was.
"You got an interview with the father? I thought they'd as good as convicted him." Which in Clark's mind said I'm sorry for what I did, but I wasn't myself and I don't want to hurt you.
"Smallville, you of all people should know when something just doesn't seem right. I think there's more to the story, I mean, a father attacking his daughter," Lois made air quotes with her fingers on the word 'attack', "for no apparent reason and screaming that she's evil just isn't kosher. We may be a long way from Smallville but I have a suspicion that a certain intergalactic rock is responsible for this one." Lois said this all while writing down what appeared to be something of importance on her notepad. In reality she was scribbling random words that came to her head. Clark was confused. This seemed to be their usual pre-story banter and problem solving routine. There were no pained expressions, shy glances or tense words. Lois appeared to be the epitome of calm and focus. He was confused.
"Lois, are you sure you're –" Clark suddenly stopped worrying about why things were so normal and took notice of what she had actually said, "Hang on, why do you think that meteor rocks have anything to do with this?" Lois looked at him with a glint in her eye. Clark knew she was just about to wow him with her formidable and most likely illegal research skills.
"Well, I decided to use this thing called the internet to search what the warehouse was associated with, you know, which companies were involved, what trading was taking place, storage blah blah blah. Anyway, I found out that the warehouse stocks some special breed of fertilizer. It's a combination of compost, manure and, get this, crushed stone. I'll give you one good guess at which company supplied the stone."
Clark's eyes widened.
"Luthorcorp?"
"Bang on! Luthorcorp's fertilizer plant in Smallville bargains out tonnes of low grade quarry stone to external corporations. Apparently this batch was considered low grade due to the presence of not green, but red meteor rock. Chloe, being the knowledge source of all things weird and wonderful told me that under that crazy lot of green meteor rock that bides its time under Smallville farms sometimes a layer of apparently low quality red rock is hiding away. You think they call it low quality because it doesn't seem to have the same wonderful effects as the creepy green stuff…or because its worse?"
Clark was taken aback by Lois' research. Today was Monday and the first day of the working week which meant that she either came in extraordinarily early this morning or she had been researching all weekend. Clark was conflicted between thoughts of rejection that Lois possibly spent the entire weekend working on a story rather than being upset over what he had done, and thoughts that maybe she forced herself into her work in order to forget the hurt he had caused her. He hadn't even reacted to the news of the red kryptonite. As Clark mused upon Lois' behaviour, she had grabbed her bag and sculled the last of her coffee.
"Where you going?" Clark asked, genuinely interested.
"Following up on my story. You want to be involved, meet me at the police station at 10 sharp."
Clark scoffed at her as he normally did and in that moment he felt that everything was going to be okay. This was their usual banter.
"If you're there on time Lois, I'll buy you café quality coffee every workday for the year."
Lois glanced at him and furrowed her brow slightly but smiled.
"You're on."
Lois walked briskly away as if on a very important mission. The truth was that she had nothing to do until 10 for her interview. As she got into the lift and the doors closed, Lois pressed the emergency stop button. Alone, she slid down the wall and put her hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. He hadn't tried to talk to her about what happened. He hadn't tried to apologise for what he did. He was acting as though nothing was wrong and it killed her. He was supposed to be either walking on eggshells around her or apologising profusely. He wasn't supposed to act as though nothing was wrong. That was her game plan. What saddened her most was the thought that maybe it wasn't even his game plan, but how he actually felt.
Clark had a few hours to kill before he needed to meet Lois at the police station. Given his current conflicting thoughts he decided the best person to go and see would be Chloe. Not only was she the one who he often went to when dealing with his own personal traumas, she had been in contact with Lois over the weekend and could give him further insight into the inner workings of her confusing cousin. Papers on Chloe's desk shuffled as his super speed stopped abruptly. Chloe's well trained arm caught her work before it could all float to the ground.
"Clark, to what do I owe the pleasure, its not even lunch time?" She asked with a smile. She was wary of Clark's current conflicts and was worried for her self-pitying friend.
"What? I can't come and see my best friend during the day? It takes me all of 5 seconds to get here." He said, returning her smile.
"Hm, 5 seconds? You're getting slow." Chloe replied in jest. She shook her head and looked Clark square in the eye. "This visit wouldn't happen to be related to the feisty one I'm related to would it?"
Clark's gaze faltered slightly.
"No?" He answered with a rising inflection, as if he hadn't even convinced himself. Chloe sighed and gestured for him to sit opposite her.
"Alright, what happened? You've been at work all of 2 hours, something major must have gone down. Spill."
Clark put his head in his hands and released a frustrated sigh.
"Urgh, no that's the point. Everything was normal. Normal greeting, normal banter, normal…everything!"
Chloe looked at him confused.
"So if everything is normal, why the visit?" Clark looked at her with an exasperated look on his face.
"Because she yelled at me Chloe! I kissed her, I hurt her and she yelled at me. She was so mad the other night, I practically told her that kissing her was a mistake! I couldn't even come up with anything to explain the situation to her! She stormed out on me Chloe."
"First of all, you were doing more than kissing, I should know, I was a witness. Second of all, you're upset because you didn't have to face the Lane wrath this morning? Clark, I'd thank your lucky home planet that you skipped out on that one. Super hearing can't be good with that kind of shrill tone." She stated, half confused by his predicament and half amused.
"Yes, I'm upset because she's not mad. She's acting like nothing happened at all. I tried to talk to her about it but she cut me off by being all…normal and telling me about the warehouse story. She was so angry the other night and now, now she doesn't even seem to care."
"Shouldn't that be a good thing though? If nothing else, your friendship seems not to have suffered at all. Wasn't that was you were most afraid of?"
"I was most afraid of hurting her. Now I've done that and I had proof, but now she" he paused. "It's just that if I had meant anything to her, shouldn't she still be upset now? Not pretending like nothing happened?"
Chloe resisted the urge to roll her eyes and groan. She truly loved the boy in front of her, but his twisted lines of thinking made her head hurt at times like these. She sighed inwardly and decided to console her lonely hearted friend.
"Clark, have you thought that maybe she values your friendship over everything else that has happened and is putting up a farce just so she doesn't have to deal with feeling so hurt?"
Clark looked horrified.
"So you think I really did hurt her?"
Chloe resisted the urge once again to roll her eyes.
"Clark, you have to understand that you stuffed up. Yeah the Red K wasn't your fault entirely, but Kal kissed Lois without any concerns or consequences. It was Clark that chose not to explain things to her because he was too scared. Either way, you are going to have to deal with her reaction, whether that be good or bad."
"So you think I should just go along with it and-"
"Be grateful that she is still talking to you and that everything is back to 'normal'? Yeah. I know you don't want normal and you want her to be able to trust you and even one day maybe see if a relationship is in the works but for now, just thank your speedy ass that you still have her friendship. Even if it is forced on her behalf."
"But do you think she's okay?" Clark asked with bated breath.
"I spoke with her over the weekend about the story she's working on. She seemed determined as ever but, yeah I'd say she was doing it tough. You mean a lot to her Clark, you should know that. Don't let your own insecurities get in the way."
"Thanks Chlo"
"You're welcome. Wow, seems like these chats are all we do now. How bout we change the subject. Did creepily normal Lois tell you what she found out about the warehouse?"
Clark rubbed his forehead and answered.
"Yeah, that's what we were talking about this morning. She's going to interview the dad. I'm meeting her at the police station."
"Well I'm sure she told you that the warehouse was home to that evil ruby rock that seemed to start this whole mess?"
"Yeah, she said Luthorcorp were contributors to supplies at the warehouse. Fertilizer."
Chloe looked at his nonchalant reaction in surprise.
"Okay, she's really done a number on you hasn't she? Red K Clark, aliens, superpowers! You're normally all over these stories."
"What do you mean?"
"Come on Clark, where's your usual enthusiasm. You just found out Red K was involved in this story. You should know that Lois is probably right about her lead, because where there's Red K, there's Green K."
"I know that Chloe. What exactly is your point?"
Chloe didn't hold back her eye roll this time.
"That you, my alien friend, need to work closely with her on this and find out if her hunch is right." She took a sideways glance at Clark. "And for god's sake, stay away from the pallets at the warehouse. We don't need a rampant Kal or debilitated Clark to deal with. You're hard enough to deal with as it is…"
Clark smiled.
A/N: Please please please review! I will be so much more motivated to finish the story if people are reading! Constructive criticism welcome!!!