Convincing Lois

Lois had just stepped out of the shower, long, wet hair dangling in her face, when she heard knocking on the door.

"Hold on!" she called, bundling herself into her oldest, most comfortable robe and twisting her hair into a towel.

The knocking, rather than stopping, only got louder, and Lois rolled her eyes.

"Hold your horses, Smallville," she bellowed at the door.

Swinging by the kitchen, she snagged the chocolate ice cream out of the freezer and grabbed a spoon out of the drawer, before sauntering over to the door.

But, opening it, she saw Oliver on the other side, not Clark, like she'd been expecting. Oliver raised an eyebrow as he took in her shabby robe, tie-dye towel, and half-full carton of melting chocolate ice cream.

"That's certainly an interesting look for you," he commented, and Lois sighed.

"I thought you were Clark," she admitted, standing back to let Oliver move past her into the apartment.

"Finishing your wedding plans?" Oliver asked. "You and Chloe bouncing ideas off one another? Hey, you could have a double wedding!"

"Ollie," Lois protested, wondering how she'd lost control of the conversation when she hadn't even had a chance to enter it.

"When you first told me," Oliver continued, oblivious to Lois's discomfort, "I'll admit that I was, well, shocked, would be putting it lightly, but the more time I have to think about it, the more I'm okay with it."

"Wait, what?" Lois stammered, incredulously. "You are?"

"I was jealous at first," Oliver said, honestly. "I kept telling myself you were on the rebound. My ego wouldn't let me consider anything else," he said, with a self-depreciating eye-roll. "But, when I stopped and really let myself think about it, I realized that you and Clark really are perfect for one another."

"What?" Lois repeated, still stunned. The carton of ice cream sat forgotten in her hands, and the spoon tumbled to the carpet.

"You and Clark," Oliver told her, "you are – you're just right together. Clark smiles more when he's with you, he laughs and he's more open. And you – Lois, you light up whenever Clark comes into the room."

"I do?" Lois asked, weakly, and Oliver nodded.

"Sometimes, I see the two of you together, and it's like there's no one else in the room," he continued. "Clark's the luckiest man in the world, you know."

"I'm pretty lucky to have him," Lois admitted, softly, looking over at Oliver in shock once the words were out of her mouth.

"What'd I tell you?" Oliver said, grinning. "You're perfect for each other.

"Ollie-" Lois tried again to protest, but Oliver interrupted her.

"Now, Lois, I know your whole attitude toward presents, which you're going to have to change, by the way, since people are going to want to give you wedding gifts, but I thought, what could I give my two best friends that they wouldn't already get a dozen of? So, these are my present to you and Clark."

He handed over two slim strips of paper with a flourish, and Lois stared down at the plane tickets in shock.

"You guys probably haven't even started thinking about a honeymoon, yet, or maybe you have, I don't know-"

"Clark and I aren't getting married!" Lois blurted out, stopping Oliver in the middle of his sentence.

"Well, why not?" Oliver demanded, indignantly, after a moment of shocked silence. "What did Clark do?"

"Clark didn't do anything," Lois explained. "We were never getting married. Clark and I were undercover."

"Then what was that little display at the jewelry store?" Oliver pressed her.

"We couldn't risk blowing our cover," Lois said, apologetically.

Oliver was silent for several seconds as he digested everything Lois had told him, and then he offered a grudging, "Good acting."

"Thanks," Lois muttered.

"Does your undercover assignment have anything to do with those bruises?" Oliver asked, nodded at Lois's wrists.

Lois looked down at the dark bruises from where she'd struggled against the shackles binding her to the chair, and she nodded.

"That jeweler," she told Oliver, "he was kidnapping engaged couples and torturing them, putting them through his sick little games. He called it a test."

"He got you and Clark," Oliver said. "He put you through that test."

"He had Chloe and Jimmy," Lois corrected him, "and four other couples before that. Three of those couples ended up in the morgue."

"So, how did you and Clark wind up in his clutches?" Oliver prompted, when Lois had fallen silent.

"He shot me with a tranq dart," Lois said, angrily. "And Clark, that idiot, had to come in after me and get himself knocked out."

"You'd rather he'd have left you alone with that madman?" Oliver asked.

"I'd rather he not put himself in a position to get hurt!" Lois exploded, jumping up from her chair to pace across the small living room.

The long-forgotten carton of ice cream fell to the carpet, and Oliver grabbed it and set it on the table before Lois stepped in it. And then he wisely stayed out of Lois's way as she continued ranting.

"He came charging in there like he was invulnerable, and he got strapped into that chair, and then that son of a bitch electrocuted him!" Lois was practically yelling at this point. "You know, he never thinks before he does these things! That underground fight club, the Black Creek facility, and now this! He keeps running after me into these places, and one of these days he's going to get hurt. Don't you dare trivialize this!" she snarled, turning on Oliver when a hint of a smile ghosted over his face.

"I'm not," he said, quickly, as he held his hands up in surrender. "It's just – Lois, don't you think this is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black?"

"It's not the same thing," Lois protested, hotly.

"Isn't it?" Oliver asked. "You don't think Clark doesn't worry about you when you go charging into those places?"

"That's different," Lois repeated, stubbornly. "It is!" she exclaimed, when Oliver continued to look at her, skeptically.

"Just how is it different?" he demanded.

"Because Clark's not in love with me!" Lois shot back, triumphantly.

Then, what she'd said hit her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes going wide with shock.

"I – I didn't – I meant," she stammered.

"I think you said exactly what you meant," Oliver said. "The question is, when are you going to say those words to Clark?"

"I already did," Lois told him, so softly that Oliver almost didn't hear her.

"You did?" he asked. "When?"

"That jeweler," Lois reminded him, "he hooked those couples he kidnapped up to a lie detector. Wrong answers got the other person electrocuted, and he'd already hurt Clark, once. I couldn't let him do it, again."

"So, you told Clark you loved him," Oliver hazarded a guess.

"The guy asked, 'Do you love him," and I said yes," Lois admitted, softly.

"What did Clark say?" Oliver asked.

"He got the same question, but he didn't say anything," Lois replied.

"He what?" Oliver demanded, and Lois looked up at his sharp tone.

"He was too busy getting us out of there," she said, defending her absent partner. "His straps were loose, so he got the guy over by him and he knocked him out. Then, he got me out of that chair, and we called the cops and waited for them to show up."

"Clark's straps were loose," Oliver repeated, an incredulous note in his voice.

"They had to be," Lois said. "Otherwise, we'd have been stuck down there until that maniac either let us go or shot us."

"Getting back to my original question," Oliver prompted, "what are you going to do about Clark?"

"The only thing I can do," Lois replied, quietly. "I'm going to deny the whole thing."

"You can't do that!" Oliver exclaimed, indignantly. "Did you miss that whole 'perfect for each other' speech I gave you? That was a good speech. I worked on it all night."

"Ollie, Clark doesn't love me," Lois said. "And, you know, that's fine. We'd be better off as friends, anyway."

"So you're running away," Oliver said.

"I'm not running away," Lois hedged. "But, it's not fair for either of us, knowing how I feel when he doesn't feel the same."

"You're really going to tell Clark that you were lying," Oliver said. "Lois, you were hooked up to a lie detector!"

"I'll think of something," Lois protested. "I work well under pressure."

"You're really not going to change your mind about this?" Oliver asked.

Lois shook her head. "I appreciate you coming over, Ollie, and here's your plane tickets back-"

"Keep 'em," Ollie interrupted, dismissively.

"Ollie, even you can't just write off the cost of two plane tickets to-" She broke off, studying the tickets with a puzzled frown. "There's no destination on these. There are no dates, either."

"They're for the Queen Industries jet," Ollie said. "I whipped them up on my computer."

"I still can't keep these," Lois insisted.

"Keep them," Ollie repeated. "Save them for when you finally come to your senses about Clark."

He walked over to the door, and Lois caught the door as he opened it.

"You're wrong about one thing," he said, as he stepped out into the hallway. "Clark does love you."

"Ollie," Lois groaned.

"You said it yourself," Ollie continued, undaunted. "He keeps running after you."

Then, he kissed Lois on the cheek and walked down the hall, leaving her stunned in his wake.