(5/14)
Nothing had been going well before, but in the week since their meeting with Lex things had been even worse between Clark and Lois, and he had no idea why she had taken that encounter so hard. There were the obvious reasons, but he still felt like there was something bothering her that he had no clue about.
That was usually his problem, but at least he'd come to realize it since he was a teenager. Now that he was picking up on things, he couldn't get her to tell him what was wrong. She went about her business, and that was that. The old Kent charm didn't seem to go far at all where Lois Lane was concerned. He had never met anyone that stubborn in his life. Not even the best friend he couldn't forget.
He finally cornered her in her office, which he had entered without knocking.
"Lois, we need to talk."
"There's nothing to talk about."
Clark gave her a frustrated look.
"Do you need help with something?"
He rolled his eyes. "No."
"Then there's nothing to talk about, is there?"
"You haven't been the same since -" He stopped at the glare she shot him. "Since the other day."
"Look, Kent, we haven't really known each other long enough for you to determine what the 'same' is for me. So don't you worry your pretty little head about it, and everything will be just fine."
"As much as I love being patronized," he said with an unfriendly smirk "maybe I should be worried about it."
Lois finally stepped out from behind her desk. "Clark, let's get one thing straight, okay? We are not friends. We are here to work together because the Chief made it so. It wasn't my choice and it wasn't yours. So let's keep it professional, all right? I don't need you sticking your nose where it doesn't belong. That may be your job, but not when it comes to me. Got it?"
She was rather intimidating for such a little thing... But he backed down, knowing he'd gone too far. "Got it."
"Thank you," she said, retreating back to her chair. "Now, if there isn't anything else..."
"Nope," he said with a shake of his head.
As he left her office, his mind wasn't any more at ease. In fact, he was more muddled than ever if she had something to hide, and it appeared she did. She'd never been totally comfortable with him, and he only found that odd because that was usually his role with new people. He needed to find out if it was the ghost standing between them, or something more, that was making their partnership a total misfire.
Lois leaned her head back on the edge of the bathtub and took a deep breath. It had been a long day and Clark's questioning at every turn was taking its toll. She cursed him every day for not finding a position somewhere else. Another newspaper, another city, she wouldn't have cared. She did care that he was breathing down her neck all day every day.
Which wouldn't be an unpleasant prospect if only...
She smacked herself in the forehead with a wet palm. Things couldn't be that way, and she knew it. Unfortunately, the one thing that hadn't changed were the feelings he stirred inside of her, and it was like she had reverted to her teenage brain all over again. She couldn't figure out exactly why she had ever loved him to begin with, but it was something that had never let go. If he would just stay out of her life, she wouldn't have so many issues. She had lived like a nun for the last seven years, and she would be perfectly content to go on in the same fashion if he would just go away.
Nothing could ever be simple for her, that much she knew.
Her wallowing was interrupted by a dull thud that seemed to originate from her balcony. She thought about ignoring it considering her apartment was on the fourteenth floor, but it was weird enough that she felt the need to check it out.
Quickly emerging from her bath, she grabbed a towel and dried off as best she could, then grabbed her blue terrycloth robe from the hook on the back of the bathroom door. She carefully entered her bedroom, and drew her handgun from the drawer of the nightstand. She had never had to use it, but technically someone could still want her dead, so she never saw the harm in getting the permit and having it on hand.
As she entered the living room, she told herself she was being silly. The only thing that could possibly be on her balcony was a bird, or someone with serious skyscraper-scaling repelling equipment. If someone was that desperate to get to her, she would give them a surprise welcome.
The only lighting in the room was a lamp in the corner, but she could see the room was clear. She made sure the sliding door that opened to the balcony was latched, then pulled the curtain back completely. Something whooshed past so fast at that very moment that she couldn't tell what it was, but she definitely determined it was bigger than a bird. She stepped back behind the curtain and tried to catch her breath.
When had Metropolis become infested with pterodactyls?
That had definitely been weird. She hadn't missed Smallville that much.
Lois peeked out again and didn't see anything at first. Then a silhouette caught her attention out of the corner of her eye, and she gasped, clutching her pistol tighter.
She squinted through the darkness and saw what looked like a man perched on the concrete wall. If he was a jumper she needed to call the police, but how the hell had he gotten all the way up there? She could tell he was facing the window, so she had already been seen. She might as well check out what was going on.
Sliding the safety off the gun, she opened the door and slowly stepped out. The man made no move. The city lights surrounding them cast odd shadows, and didn't seem to illuminate any place she needed to see. She stopped and held the gun out in front of her. Maybe she should have called the police first...
"Who are you and what are you doing?" she said, sounding far steadier than she felt.
Silence.
"How did you get up here?" she asked firmly, but he still refused to answer. Groaning inwardly, she realized she would need to get closer if she were ever going to identify him for the police. She wasn't afraid to shoot him if he tried anything, but she didn't want to have to shoot anyone.
"I don't know who you are," she said, taking two steps, "but I am hardly amused." No one would be, trapped out on her balcony with a possible psycho, wearing nothing but a robe.
Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she cursed herself for never replacing the bulb in the outside light. That could have been helpful.
She could make out that he was wearing a cape, which she thought was weird until it registered fully.
Holy crap...
She put the gun down at her side, and the man stepped down off the edge almost effortlessly. Almost like he was... floating.
Her eyes widened, but she didn't dare say what she was thinking, because she saw his face and she knew.
Superman was on her balcony.
Superman was Clark Kent.
"I... I -" She really had to stop gaping and get a hold of herself. "I don't know why you're here, but I have a front door."
"I don't usually use them," he said with a raised eyebrow, in a voice more confident than she had ever heard from him.
He looked like Clark, but he didn't sound like Clark. At least not the one she had grown up with, and definitely not the hapless upstart reporter she had been working with the past couple of months. This was insane. Or she was dreaming. At that moment she couldn't decide between a sleeping delusion or a completely stressed out hallucination.
She was speechless. He was acting as if he didn't know her, so she pretended not to recognize him.
"You can put away the gun. I'm not going to hurt you."
Lois glanced down at the gun now dangling in her hand, and she put the safety back on. It wouldn't have done her any good if she had needed it. From what she had heard, he was indestructible.
The last twelve years were starting to make sense. It wasn't any less surreal, but it definitely made more sense.
"You're, um, Superman. I kinda got that not hurting people thing." She felt a little queasy, and she was starting to shiver in the cool night air. "You never told me why you were here."
"I just thought I'd pay a visit to Metropolis' most intrepid reporter. I'm not very easy to get in contact with, and I just wanted to put the city's fears to rest. It would seem there are some who don't trust me or my motives."
She didn't know what was going on, but she certainly intended to play along until she could get to the bottom of it. That is, if she hadn't fallen asleep in the bathtub after all and was having the strangest dream in history. The fact that she was freezing cold and all but naked in the early October chill made her doubt such a thing. "Oh, sure. A flying superhero, what's so odd about that?" Hard to reach. That's funny, seeing as you're ten feet outside my door every day, she thought. "And how do you know who I am?" she asked suspiciously for the sake of the charade.
"I know everybody, Lois. But I'm sorry if I scared you." He looked around, and raised his hands. "There really wasn't any other way."
"Mmm," she said absently, scanning him up and down. Clark was standing in front of her wearing what amounted to a leotard, a speedo, a cape, and tights of all things, and she had nothing. There was absolutely nothing she could say that would make the situation any more or less absurd.
She finally found her tongue, which she had figuratively reeled in from the floor. "One day, when I actually have, you know, clothes on, I want an exclusive."
"Done," he said far too easily.
"And you'll keep dodging the press and the photographers till then?"
"That won't be a problem."
"How's tomorrow night?" Normally she wouldn't have put it off for twenty-four hours, but there would be no interview if she didn't have time to gather herself. A late night intrusion wasn't the best scenario and this had to be good.
"Barring any emergencies, I'll be here," he said, and with a wave of his hand he rose in the air and flew away.
"Un-freakin'-believable," she muttered as she watched him get smaller and smaller.
There was no way that what just happened had happened. She re-entered her living room, somehow remembering to re-latch the door, and headed back to her bedroom to replace the handgun in her nightstand.
All of the things she had never been able to explain about her best friend came down to the fact that he had been a meteor freak all along, and he had never told her. He'd never trusted her with the one piece of information that could have brought them so much closer. She had never been one to harp on secrets and lies like a certain brunette bane of her existence, but he should have known he could trust her with that. If he'd wanted it to remain a secret, it would have.
Then again, considering she had made certain mistakes, she wouldn't have been able to blame him for thinking twice about revealing his secrets. That was just one more thing she had added to her ever-growing list of regrets.
TBC