2 Hours Later
Clark wondered how long he could stand outside Lois' door without her actually knowing he's there.
It had been about fifteen minutes already.
He just couldn't bring himself to knock.
Ollie, of course, had begged off, insisting that Clark needed to talk to Lois alone. Which, had led to the guys hysterically laughing at the Green Arrow being afraid of Lois Lane, an accusation which Oliver didn't exactly deny. Clark warned him he was just delaying the inevitable, but Ollie had said he was more than willing to delay it as long as humanly possible.
So, he stood there alone. After having procrastinated by wandering around Metropolis. And grabbing dinner. And calling his mother in Washington.
He felt that, really, this whole thing hadn't been completely deliberate on his part. It was just that, when he had told her about the red K, and she hadn't questioned him further, he figured it was just better to let it drop. What was the harm? It might only serve to make things awkward between them and he didn't want that. He'd grown so dependent on their relationship, on being around her, he couldn't stand the thought that finding out the extent of their adventures that night might make her uncomfortable.
Or worse, it might stall whatever it was that was growing between them. And he knew there was something there. There were times that he was surer of it than others, certainly, but there was something. Something he didn't want to screw up before it even got started.
Of course, he thought glumly to himself, he may have done that anyway.
But honestly, he had forgotten about the whole thing after that one conversation. Plus, Ollie had promised him the DVD would never see the light of day after he had gleefully shown it to Clark when he arrived back in Metropolis. Of course, he also refused to destroy it, which should have been Clark's first clue that he was keeping it for a reason.
Taking a deep breath and bracing himself for the upcoming confrontation, Clark raised his hand, about to knock on the door.
He just hoped Lois hadn't decided to stock up on kryptonite on her way home.
Meanwhile, in Lois' Apartment…
Wow.
What? NOT 'Wow'! 'Wow' is not a pissed off, angry word, Lane! He doesn't deserve a 'wow'!
That little argument with herself had been going on for a good solid hour.
She wanted to be angry with him. She wanted to be irate that he had known exactly what happened that night and didn't tell her, and worse, knew that there was actually recorded evidence of it and had kept it from her.
But then she had watched the damn thing. And faced with a very confident, sexy, and rapidly losing his clothing Clark who was apparently making her a very happy woman if her image on the security DVD was any indication, she was having a hard time mustering up anything other than a longing feeling to remember what she had missed.
Which totally ticked her off. Because Clark Kent absolutely deserved her wrath for this.
But watching this? All it made her want to do is kiss him. Repeatedly. While he was shirtless.
So far, she had only watched up to the point where he had picked her up in his arms and carried her over to Oliver's green (naturally) chaise. Granted, she had watched up to that point about a hundred times.
She wasn't entirely sure what had stopped her from going beyond that point though. It wasn't that she didn't believe him. Clark was generally the most honorable guy she knew, and if he said they didn't sleep together that night, she felt pretty safe in believing at least that.
She knew she needed to see it though. To see exactly how far they'd gone.
With an air of determination, she hit the 'play' button, setting the freeze frame into motion. Despite herself, she grinned at what she saw.
So THAT'S what happened to my shirt.
And, then, just like that? She sees Clark stop. He reached over and grabbed what appeared to be a folded piece stationery out of the jacket he had only moments before taken off of her and tossed away.
"What the hell?"
She froze the frame, moving closer to the TV to try and see what the paper was exactly. When that was fruitless, she unpaused it, hoping to get some answers from whatever happened next. She saw a clearly much broodier Clark and a still very amorous version of herself, as she appeared to be trying to coax him back to their previous activities.
She paused the DVD again, trying to recall her conversation with Chloe, who had filled her in on some of the evening. Aphrodisiac laced lipstick, loveslave over Clark…
and crashing Lana's engagement party.
Lois narrowed her eyes. She had received an invitation to said party.
Was that what he was holding?
Was that what changed sexy, confident, and fun Clark back into mopey, brooding Clark?
Was that what had stopped them?
She knew that at some point in the night, they'd stopped before things went too far. And she knew that they had ended up at Lana's engagement party.
But until this moment, she hadn't realized just how that had happened.
For some reason Lois couldn't quite explain, instead of feeling relieved that they had, in fact, stopped, she felt angry. And worse, at least in her mind? Jealous.
As she sat there, replaying those last few moments on the DVD over and over, she felt her face flush once again. Only this time, the redness coloring her cheeks had nothing to do with the feelings watching Clark put the moves on her so assuredly stirred inside her, but because she was becoming more livid by the second.
It was, therefore, extremely unfortunate for him that that was the exact moment Clark Kent finally got up the nerve to knock on her door.