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Author's Note: This story's journey is as strange for me as it has apparently been for my kind readers… The scenes just aren't flowing in a traditionally linear sequence. Thank goodness it's all really starting to come together now!

Thank you all for joining me on the ride! Ready for the next twisting curve? Up, up, and away! :P

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Act Three: Too Close for Comfort, And Not a Moment to Spare

Friday 4:20 p.m.

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{Skip, skip, skip the A-plot! On with the ship we go!}

The elevator car jolted abruptly, sending Lois crashing into Clark. Then gravity forcefully reasserted its presence and the lift began to plunge—fast. Lois flashed panicked eyes at Clark. He looked upward to the ceiling of the plummeting death trap for a split second, then back to Lois. She met his eyes with an even stare, gave him a quick nod and half a smile before wrapping her arms tight around him and burying her face against his chest.

Clark jumped up through the light fixture, tearing through all the plastic and glass and metal as though it were rice paper and landing on top of the free-falling elevator lift. They were more than half way down the hundred-plus story shaft and the bottom of the shaft pulled them more greedily with every passing micros-second. And then they stopped. She felt the moment the lift lost contact with their feet as it continued to plunge down to its inevitable demolition. They came to a quick smooth halt somewhere in the dim shaft just as the shockwaves of energy and sound from the crash ripped up through them.

Lois slowly lifted her head to assess their situation. Through the low emergency lighting, she saw that Clark was holding her suspended with one arm; his other arm was latched onto an access ladder, and his feet were balanced between a rung of the ladder and the ledge of a doorway on a level that was roughly a third of the way up the building from the ground floor.

"That was close," Lois finally said as she brought her head back up to meet Clark eye to eye.

For a moment, just the briefest split second in time, she gave Clark exactly what she had asked of him. She held nothing back.

It was one of those rare, perfect life-moments that are never forgotten, preserved in crystal clear detail for all time. Everything she was thinking and feeling exploded from her eyes and into Clark's in a cosmic burst of emotions that was as phenomenal as it was brief.

Clark smiled, slowly, but intently. His gaze never wavered, didn't even flicker the slightest. As the beating of their hearts slowly synchronized their rhythm, Clark's eyes opened before her, and finally—finally!—he held absolutely nothing back as he fully acknowledged every last profound ramification of the experience they had just shared.

They had precious little time to savor the moment, though. Lois's lips quirked in a wry smile, her brows arched sharply as she glanced down at the devastation beneath them. "We're gonna have fun explaining that miraculous little escape."

As she returned her focus to Clark, he gave her an answering smirk. "I'm sure we'll figure out something." She shook her head softly, a light chuckle slipping past her lips before she pressed them to his. "Grab the ladder," he told her after she pulled back. She did so and Clark unwrapped his arm from her waist to single-handedly force the elevator doors open. Lois climbed over him, treating him to a saucy wink as she pressed her body firmly into his while she moved to the safety of the landing.

Clark groaned as he swung himself onto the landing behind Lois. He wrapped his arms around her and lowered his head to her ear. "You are determined to drive me completely out of my mind, aren't you?" His voice literally came out a low growl.

Lois shivered once before breaking from his embrace. "Turn about's fair play," she retorted. She kept one hand entwined with his as she began to pull him with her in a break-neck march down the corridor. "So, just for the record," Lois tossed over her shoulder as they approached the door to the stairwell, "how did we escape?"

Clark pushed the door open from behind her and they quickly slipped inside. Then Clark began unbuttoning his dress shirt.

Lois gaped. "Seriously, as much as I'd otherwise love your full frontal exposure, what does your shirt have to do with how we…" She faltered completely when Clark pulled his shirt open to reveal not bare flesh, but a black t-shirt—one with a very familiar symbol front and center. "...escaped," she finished in a breathy whisper. Clark promptly tore off the front of the shirt and handed the crest to Lois.

"That should answer anyone's questions." He stared down at her with a soft smile she couldn't quite tear her eyes from the symbol to see.

Lois stared at that symbolic physical evidence in her hand for a long quiet moment. "Yeah. That ought to do the trick," she finally said, still mesmerized by the torn fabric in her grasp.

"Think it's real and tangible enough?" Clark asked gently. He reached out and softly guided her head back up.

When their eyes met, she simply smiled for several heartbeats, freely giving him her open love and appreciation. "Thank you," she finally said aloud. She stretched up on her toes to gift him with a soft, brief kiss. Of course, she had to place her hands on his now-partially bare chest for balance, and couldn't quite resist trailing her hands across his taut flesh for just one lingering little moment before pulling his dress shirt closed over the torn remains of the t-shirt. "Ready to go save the world so we can finish this conversation properly?"

Lois spun out of Clark's arms and began trotting down the stairs. Clark followed close behind, buttoning his shirt as they descended. "Would that be conversation as in talking, or were you referring to the Shakespearean definition?"

Without missing one ever-quickening beat, she answered, "Both."

{End Scene, Back to A-is-for-Action!-plot}

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