I just really like writing Lois Lane.

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Chapter Three: Balls of Brass

To Lois's horror and ongoing appall-ment, there were three apartments available for rent in the building where Homer Colon claimed residency. Which meant there were three apartments, owned by a slumlord, that Clark was declaring his intention to consider as potential living areas.

In another life, the building must have looked like an excellent place to live. It was an old industrial factory once owned by a car manufacturer, renovated and remodeled until it featured middle-class apartments available to those who could afford it. In this section of town, that wasn't many people. It exactly didn't take a genius to know when entropy had begun to reclaim the building.

"They did try to gentrify the area once before this. Back when the Slums was self-destructing. " Lois explained, while they both stood on the building's front walk. "The Slums used to be a great area, but with so many people just killing themselves, the city figured it was a lost cause. So they turned their attention to the West River. They made all these nice apartments and offices and tried to attract the comparatively wealthier class to the area and inject some life back into the neighborhood."

"I can see that it didn't work." Clark commented.

Lois made a sound akin to a harsh, disparaging laugh but it sounded halfway closer to a small scream.

"Yeah, it didn't work. West River fell back to the slumlords within months." she said. "A sad neglected little Hooverville right here in the City of Tomorrow."

Her lips were pursed, her eyes were narrowed, and her expression was calculating, but Clark was in a better position to hear the faint note of dismay in her voice. Like she had expected better from the City of Tomorrow. He couldn't exactly disagree with her. He had been halfway around the world. He had seen some of the most prominent cities in Europe and Asia and part of the United States. In the glamorized hustle and bustle that distracted your every sense and the flow of traffic that carried your feet to the best destinations populated by tourist and sight-seers that impressed and awed the masses, sometimes it was hard to remember that these rundown, neglected places still existed.

Even in cities like Metropolis.

The thing was, big cities like Metropolis went out of their way to make sure that word of their dirty little neighborhoods didn't get around. They weren't advertised in the visitors' pamphlets. There were no brightly colored flyers crowing about visiting this grotty little restaurant that hadn't changed its interior design since the thirties where roaches did breast-strokes in your drink, or walking down this street lined in strip clubs where bums occupied every other sidewalk square and asked you for your spare change. The slums were not places to be advertised as loudly or as frequently as the shiny, sleek areas of downtown.

It was the classic avoidance maneuver. Cover your peripheral vision and pretend that because you couldn't see it, it wasn't there and had never existed and no one would ever know about it.

And maybe, if you just ignored it long enough, it would actually go away.

When people thought of Metropolis in particular, they didn't imagine that it would have a dirty slum neighborhood like the West River or Metrodale. It was just so sleek and bright and clean. The city of straight lines. The City of Tomorrow. No one wanted to imagine that there was even a single part of the city that existed underneath the poverty line. Not Metropolis-- Oh yes, Gotham, the worst city in the continental United States. But not Metropolis.

Never Metropolis.

Metropolis did not fully live up to its reputation, but no one wanted to admit that.

Clark looked at the building again. It must have been nice, in those days just after renovations had been completed. When the paint had dried and you could still smell the sawdust in the air. They had taken the fence down and returned most of the parking lot to dirt, seeding it with grass and planting trees. There had been an effort to plant flowers. Deep in winter now, the trees looked forlorn and neglected, their naked branches shivering in the cold and the flower-beds were full of dead weeds. There was an air of sad neglect hanging around the entire building.

"Are you actually serious about looking for an apartment here?" Lois asked, breaking the moment of thoughtful silence.

"I need to start somewhere." Clark admitted. He was currently staying at what the politically correct called a "single room occupancy" hotel and what he knew was actually a flophouse. He had seen a few of those personally.

It was definitely not meant for long-term occupancy. It was noisy and kind of smelly from there being too many small children and inadequate bathing facilities. And noisy. As much as Clark wanted to, he couldn't turn off his enhanced hearing and earplugs weren't as effective as he would have liked.

"Yeah, but here?" Lois wrinkled her nose.

"Ms. Lane, you brought me here to do a job, not to criticize my apartment-hunting." Clark pointed out. If they could just get on with it...

"I'm not done arguing about this, but I'm done for now." Lois informed him. She made a 'follow me' gesture and they both made their way up the front walk. It was buried in snow from the last two storms. In a building this large, there probably would have been at least one on-site janitor who mopped the floors and cleared the sidewalks of snow and leaves in exchange for rent-free living. But slumlords like Homer Colon cut the corners wherever they could to save the money for themselves.

There was no discernible difference in temperature inside the building than out. It was only a few degrees warmer out of the wind and the presence of a homeless hobo huddled up in the corner shouldn't have surprised Clark as much as it did. Spotting the pile of rags passing for a human being, Lois turned and gave Clark a very meaningful look. She kept a comment to herself this time, but the raised eyebrows said enough. Then she went over and knocked on the door emblazoned with a little brass plate reading: "Landlord".

Clark thought he should tell her just to get it off her chest, or perhaps tell her that things would be alright. Or remind her that it had been her idea to come down this way in the first place -- he was just giving them an excuse. But when the landlord's door opened, he just couldn't, for all words fled his mind at what he beheld in the doorway.

Homer Colon, slumlord, was fat.

Not beer-belly large or just a little pudgy around the middle, but fat. Fat like his clothes didn't fit properly and he didn't bother looking for ones that did. Fat in that there was an entire wad of god-knows-what hanging over his struggling belt. Fat in that his neck-rolls appeared to be eating his shoulders. Incredibly fat in that way that made you wonder how in the name of gravity he was still standing upright. He was shorter than Lois by a good three inches (in bare feet), but he had oozed outwards to a circumference of roughly four feet. His age was impossible to guess.

And the smell...

Clark couldn't describe the smell that was emitting from Mr. Colon's body. It was something unfortunate -- like cottage cheese that had begun to go bad, unwashed gym clothes sitting in the back of a hot car, something that was exactly like the barn after the cows had spent the night inside, and a festering moldy stench that seemed to accompany meat that was far past bad and into putrefying. It was enough to say that the stench made his stomach turn over and begin tying itself in knots.

In his own way, Homer Colon was a magnificent beast. Truly, it took dedication to reach such rotund proportions that your stomach had oozed out of its restraints, yet still remain able to stand upright.

Clark glanced over at Lois, half-expecting her to be wearing a cool expression of disinterest. But Lois looked half a breath away from screaming, her entire posture a rigid frame of physical revulsion, her body scrunched up and trying to make itself a smaller target. Something about her stance told Clark she was standing completely on her toes and was ready to bolt if the slumlord so much as wheezed in her direction.

"Mr. Colon?" Clark quickly attracted attention to himself, before the slumlord could notice Lois's horrified revulsion.

"What you want?" Mr. Colon inquired, his beady eyes squinting on the younger man. His voice was a ragged grunt, his speech patterns indicative of either a lacking education, English being his second language, or he had discovered that getting the proper syntax out was just too much trouble and had decided it was much less effort to speak in a sort of pidgin English.

Clark held up the newspaper in both hands. "I saw listin's for available apartments here. The ads said to inquire with you, the landlord." he explained, effecting a thicker version of the Kansas country accent he already had, playing up the image of being a trusting small-town boy who had barely seen the wider world.

"You wanna see 'em apartments?" Mr. Colon asked, eyes sweeping over Clark's cotton suit and polyester tie and coming to rest on the scuffed tops of his imitation leather loafers. Clark heard the man's laboring heartbeat picked up a little in what usually signified excitement or fear, but the tip of a large pink tongue flicked quickly over his lips and a little gleam came into his eyes, so excitement.

"Yes. Today, if possible." Clark nodded.

"Lemme get 'em keys." Mr. Colon said. Then he retreated like the ocean tides back into his lair and closed the door. It wasn't until the deadbolt clicked home that Lois made a small squeaky noise and shuddered, finding her voice again.

"Oh my god..." she whimpered.

"Are you alright?" Clark asked.

Lois's dark eyes slid over to meet his, her pupils dilated.

"How much do you think he weighed? Three-fifty? Four hundred? How much grease do you think is in his arteries? Did you hear him wheezing? Tell me you could smell that?! I think his fat rolls are rotting!" she squeaked in a rapid-fire way.

"Ms. Lane, it's alright. Mr. Colon might be unsightly," Clark couldn't think of a better word. "But he's not going to hurt you."

"Are you kidding me? A man like him has his own gravitational pull! Have you ever been broadsided by a planetary body before?!" Lois demanded.

Clark shrugged. There had been the Watermans before they had moved out of Smallville. The parents had been almost comically oversized and vile in temperament, and their daughter Priscilla had been in Clark's grade. In kindergarten she had outweighed her classmates by anywhere from thirty to fifty pounds. By second grade, she had been a good eighty pounds heavier than anyone else in the grade. Clark knew this because the school nurse had attempted to take the rotund parents aside and gently explain to them the possible health concerns of an eight-year old girl already weighing nearly one hundred and forty pounds. The parents had made a considerable production of storming out screaming loudly about their daughter's perfect health and how it was of no concern to some backwater school nurse. Smallville Elementary was both a small school and an old building that had carried the echoes of the screaming Watermans to the corners of every classroom.

Priscilla had been nice enough, but completely unaware of how big she had been and how much it hurt to get slammed with over hundred pounds of person. Clark had been indestructible since the age of four and not exactly a small fry to begin with.

But Lois wasn't so indestructible and she was much smaller. Mr. Colon could really hurt her just by falling on her.

"I'll be your human shield?" he offered politely.

Lois seemed to relax a little. "You're a rare gentleman, Smallville."

"I was raised to be one." Clark replied, smiling.

The door opened again to reveal Mr. Colon. Lois tried not to make it look like she was diving behind Clark for safety.

"I got 'em keys." the slumlord announced, waddling out of his apartment and jangling the key-ring. His knees creaked audibly and seemed as though they might buckle under him. "Let go look at 'em apartments."

Lois was quite right in the sense that the apartments were among the worst Metropolis had to offer. They were in horrible disrepair. The first two on the ground floor suffered noticeable structural damage in the load-bearing beams. They were splintering like large objects had been repeatedly thrown against them. A light fixture swung freely from the ceiling by several wires. Clark got the feeling that the first two apartments had never been occupied, going by the three-inch deep layer of dust on the floor, littered with mice droppings and roach corpses. Lois tested the sink spigot, getting nothing more than the hollow sound of air being pushed through the pipes. Clark tried to turn on the lights, but the only bulb exploded with a loud pop. The windows were clouded over from years of not being cleaned. All the while, Mr. Colon told them it was a rustic fixer-upper.

The third apartment was on the top floor (it took them twenty minutes to get up there; the slumlord insisted on stopping at every landing to catch his breath) and it was in no better shape than its predecessors. The floor seemed to creak and sway ominously, and Lois reported that she definitely felt it wobbling in a few sections. Over the top of his glasses, Clark peered into the walls to catch glimpses of gnarled electrical wiring, shoddily done, and long sections of water pipes were simply not there. The duct-work was mangled and the windows were ill-fitting. There was a cold draft coming from the broken window in the bathroom and Lois hastily told him not to look in there for any reason.

"What you think?" Mr. Colon asked, once they had finished their perusal of the dreadful place. He sounded hopeful, like they might actually take it, and he seemed completely unaware that he had shown them what life after the apocalypse might look like.

Clark shrugged. "It's not bad. I kind of like it." he said.

Lois made a choking noise.

"How much does it run?" Clark asked.

"Seven hundred." Mr. Colon grunted.

"What?! That's robbery!" Lois snapped angrily, shaking a finger at the slumlord to play the role of the clueless apartment hunter. "No one would pay seven hundred for this dump! If I wanted to sleep with rats, I'd go to a fleabag motel! And that would cost me forty bucks!"

"Even I gots to eat, missy." Mr. Colon said, spreading his hands helplessly like there was really nothing he could do about the state of the place.

"You could eat less!" Lois growled.

"Uh--" Clark moved in front of her before she could upset the man. "Don't insult him." he requested in a whisper.

"Insult him? I'd be doing him a favor!" Lois hissed, her eyebrows drawing together. "Look at this place! Look at him! It rings the cherries, Smallville! Don't pretend for a second that you actually like it!"

There was a coughing, phlegmy, and very wet sound that they realized was Mr. Colon clearing his throat.

"Yous ain't from 'round here." he said, looking pleased like he had hit the jackpot. He gave a slow, oozy smile that had to jockey against the fat for position on his face.

"No, we're from Central City." Clark answered, lying instantly. If this was going in the papers, lying was the best policy.

"Yep! College chums!" Lois agreed, going along with the charade. She punched him on the arm, too hard to be one of those friendly punches. "I moved here first. Then this lug decided to follow me. Can't live without me, this dolt!" Another punch on the arm. "I'm just helping try to find a place. I've got to get him off my couch. My bathroom hasn't been the same since he moved in."

She landed a third hit on Clark's arm, being extra sure to dig her knuckles in as deep as she could. Not very deep, as it turned out. It didn't look like it from the outside, but Clark's arm seemed to be made entirely from muscle.

"You thinkin' you move in?" Mr. Colon asked, looking at Clark.

"I've got a few other places to look at before I make any decisions." Clark started, but the slumlord waddled forward, shaking his head. He clapped his dish-plate sized hands on Clark's elbows.

"No. no. You found home here, sir, yes you have." he said. "I got best view in the city. You love it here, I promise. You come move in. I get you sign lease today! Move in tomorrow!"

Lois's fingers snaked suddenly around his wrist and squeezed in warning, and Clark was almost distracted by the feel of her bare skin on his wrist (pen-callused fingers, smoother than he'd imagined, the angle bringing in a whole slew of sensations--).

"I'd like to talk it over with my friend, first." he said.

"What there to talk 'bout?" Mr. Colon asked, possibly making an unhappy face, but it was hard to tell. Muscle movement was lost under the fat. "It simple. I get lease, you get good living. We both win--"

He was cut off by the sound of a phone ringing from somewhere in the depths of his fat rolls. The slumlord patted around the vicinity of what had once been his waist, then he lifted up a fold of flesh and extracted the ringing phone (Lois couldn't hide the look of terror and disgust this time). He shuffled away from them and answered the call.

"What you want?" he demanded into the phone.

Clark listened in.

Growing up, Clark had always been told that eavesdropping was impolite. But when his senses had started to increase and enhance beyond even peak human parameters, not eavesdropping had become unexpectedly hard. Without trying, he could hear everything in an eighty-foot radius, forcing him to zero in on just a handful of sounds, usually his own heartbeat and footsteps and breathing. Becoming selectively deaf had taken work. It required active concentration on his part; not something he could do when he was trying to sleep.

But if he was going to be an investigative reporter, he might as well do the thing properly and make up excuses later.

"It's Kyle." said the person on the other end of the line; a man who sounded more intelligent and just as impatient. His voice was tinny and buzzy, but loud and clear like Clark was standing next to the man. "The shipment's in, but there's a problem."

"What wrong with it?" Mr. Colon asked.

"Nothing, but the big boss is coming up for an inspection." Kyle explained. "She's already back in the city. She'll be here in thirty minutes."

Mr. Colon made a huffing sigh as though he was being inconvenienced. "Be there inna minute." he said. There was a beep when he ended the call and Clark quickly quelled his hearing back to normal levels. Mr. Colon coughed out that phlegmy wet sound again and turned to the couple.

"Gotta take care of summat. Gotta step out." he told them. "If you still interested, come back later?"

Clark nodded. "Sure."

Lois didn't need any prompting to bundle herself up and leave. She flicked her head in a gesture that was almost imperious, telling Clark to follow her out. She was surprisingly quick-footed on her two-inch heels. They well ahead of Mr. Colon getting down the stairs and were nearly out the door by the time they the top flight of steps creak heavily under the landlord's prodigious weight.

"Are you actually really interested in that dump?" Lois questioned, wrapping her coat more tightly around her as they ventured back out into the cold.

"No, not exactly. I suppose if it was in better shape and the landlord wasn't a part-time criminal." Clark said, shrugging. "I did like the terrace balcony."

"What was so special about it?"

"It faces south, meaning it gets the most sun. I could grow tomatoes, peas, spinach--"

"Whoa!" Lois threw up a hand impatiently. "My god, Smallville, don't get all farm boy on me. Seriously, you could do way better than -- this." She jerked a thumb to the building behind them. "Check all your options before you settle on this. Actually, don't settle on this. I will kill you if you settle on this."

Clark frowned. "We just met."

"I don't care." Lois shook her head. "You just showed me a bad choice and I'm not afraid to tell you that it's poorly informed. If a little garden space is what you're after, then Little Bohemia is your best bet. You hear me, Smallville?"

"Yes, but--"

"Don't 'but' me, farm boy. I do not accept buts as excuses." Lois told him firmly, waggling a finger at him. She fisted a handful of his coat and started to tug him down the sidewalk. Clark staggered; she was deceptively strong. "C'mon, Jupiter is going to make its daily orbit around the great red giant McDonalds, it sounds like. I can't think of any other reason he'd be leaving his dank lair--"

"Actually..." Clark started tentatively, but it didn't matter because the dark-haired woman already had a plan in mind.

"I hope you can run in those shoes, Smallville. We might have to make a dash for it." she said.

"Uh, Ms. Lane? What exactly are you planning to do?" Clark asked. He was starting to suspect that he might not like the answer. He had read some of Lois Lane's articles before and some of the information she'd gotten didn't seem like something the police would have released to the press.

Lois came to a sudden stop and Clark almost bounced off her back. She barely gave him any stopping room before she spun around just as abruptly and somehow managed to get up in his face despite her shorter stature.

"Have you ever done anything illegal before?" she asked.

The dark-haired man blinked. "Is the answer relevant?" he wondered. "And how are you defining 'illegal'? Because I did help toilet-paper a neighbor's house on Halloween, once. Does that count?"

"Rebel without a cause, you are." Lois murmured. And I'm sure you didn't bend a few Russian laws. Pure as the driven snow on an angel's ass. She added in her head.

"Why, have you ever done something illegal?"

The question caught Lois off-guard, judging from the way her heart-rate increased a little. But then her eyes narrowed and she stood up on her toes.

"Listen to me, Clark Kent." she started, his name snapping out of her mouth like a rubber band. "I don't know what rumors you've heard of me, but they're probably all true. I have have been around the 'illegal' block a few times, I'll admit, but if you want the story-- the real story, you have to be prepared to do a few things that the law might not agree with."

Clark frowned. "I'll admit I don't know what you're proposing." he said, but there were only so many ways to interpret her statement.

"Something that'll get the cops called on us if anyone spots us." Lois nodded. "You are, of course, free to back out now if you're not comfortable with this, but fair warning. You'll need someone else to teach you the ropes, got it?"

"Understood." Clark agreed. "But Perry told me that you were one of the best and I'd like to learn from the best. So it would benefit me if I stuck with you. No matter what you're planning."

For a second, Lois appeared to be at a loss for words. She had looked ready to deliver a stinging retort, no doubt because that was always what she had to do. Her last partners always told her she was crazy. They always took off, leaving her at something of a loose end, and usually right when she stuck a finger in the face of the law. They had never really been able to handle a little trespassing (and they called themselves reporters, bah!).

They didn't agree. They didn't follow her down to the breach and back. Especially never on the first spin out. Clark Kent stood at the end of a very long line of potential partners and and he was the first to not call her crazy or suicidal. He was the first who had declared his intentions to stick with her.

She was starting to think that she might owe Perry a box of cookies if his hunch turned out to be one of the better decisions he'd made. Clark Kent hailing from Smallville, a place in Kansas so insignificant that she couldn't even imagine where it was on a map, might just turn out to be one of the better reporters in the Planet. Perry had seen something from the then-teenaged Mr. Kent and his reporting skills.

Apparently, he had guts that were more solid and balls that were bigger than any of those other losers at the Planet, the ones who were scared of her.

"Y'know, Smallville," she started, grinning. "I might just learn to like you."

"Is that a good thing?" Clark wondered. It sounded like a rare thing.

Lois shrugged. "I don't know. I've never really gotten to the point where I actually realize that I might like a person." she admitted. She glanced at the building and groaned. "C'mon fatty, how long how does it take to get down a flight of stairs?"

"He's got a lot of weight to move. Why don't we take a walk around the block?" Clark suggested. "It's too cold to be standing still."

"Yeah, that sounds good." Lois agreed, pulling her coat a little tighter. It was becoming official; she needed to invest in a new one.

They set off down the sidewalk, looking like nothing more than a couple out for a winter stroll, albeit on the wrong side of town. However, they didn't pass anyone and though Clark spotted a few down-on-their-luck folk lurking behind the shadows of the doorways who eyed them like they were an opportunity, nobody made a run at them.

"So while we're killing time on a side of town that might kill us, tell me about yourself." Lois suggested, to fill in the silence. "We've got nothing else to do right now."

"What do you want to know?" Clark wondered.

"Oh, anything. Doesn't matter. The basics. What everyone talks about when they're doing the 'getting to know you' stuff." Lois shrugged. "Like your parents, friends, siblings, family, pets, past relationships." She nudged him with an elbow and bobbed her eyebrows suggestively. "Any relationship skeletons in the closet? Messy break-ups? Drama? Jealous girlfriends? Boyfriends are okay too."

"No boyfriends. My parents are farmers, I'm adopted with no siblings, three dogs, my friends are all busy pursuing careers, and relationships..." Clark thought it over for a moment, if he wanted to air out the laundry on his one-time stalker, and decided against it. "No, no relationship drama at all, really. I guess I didn't date much."

"I don't believe that for a second. Handsome man like you never went on dates?" Lois tried not to let her hand linger when she tapped him on the chest. "You're educated, attractive and well-traveled. Believe me, some women find those traits very desirable."

Clark cleared his throat loudly like he was also trying to clear out the embarrassment and the weirdly pleased feeling he had from Lois's assessment. It wasn't that he had never considered himself attractive, but he had never flaunted it like bright plumage. It just wasn't his style. It seemed that as a result of not flaunting himself, he was regularly overlooked.

It was nice, though, to hear someone tell him that he was, in fact, attractive.

"You should straighten your back and fix your tie." Lois suggested.

"Why?" Clark blinked, pretending to be completely bewildered. He touched a hand to his tie, like he was trying to figure out what was wrong with it.

"For one thing, the tie is already ugly enough. The horrible knot just makes it worse." Lois said. She tapped his hunched shoulders. "And this is bad posture, Smallville. Didn't you have to take a typing class in high school? They're always extolling the merits of good posture at the computer to prevent carpal tunnel and bad eyesight." She eyed his glasses sideways. "And yours probably doesn't need to be any worse."

Clark saw the very beginnings of a blush start to creep into her cheeks. No doubt feeling the rising heat, Lois cleared her throat loudly and looked straight ahead.

"Besides, it's a matter of presentation." she said. "If you're going to be stuck with me for the week, you should know that I wade into some pretty deep situations and I interrogate people who aren't intimidated by sloppy dressing habits and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. It's the serengeti out here on the streets, Smallville. You can't show weakness for even a second. You gotta be tough, firm, and you have to keep your armor up at all times. So fix your tie and stand straight, or no one will take you as seriously as they should."

"I can take care of myself." Clark said, a little indignant for reasons he could not immediately pinpoint.

"So can I. I didn't ask for a bodyguard." Lois said, shrugging. "But like I said, you're stuck with me this week. And I have a reputation to salvage; the Metropolis Star has been printing slander about me for the sake of it. If you're going to be representing me, essentially, you're going to look nice while doing it."

She looked at his tie again, what she could see of it; the lumpy knot sticking out above his coat lapels.

"I'll even teach you how to tie that thing correctly." she offered.

Clark touched the knot again. "Dad tried."

His dad just hadn't worn a tie in years. Living life out on a farm meant that Johnathan had few reasons to gussy up nice and neat. He rarely attended events where ties were part of the dress code. Tying a tie again after two decades of not having to wear one was not like riding a bike.

"Well, some people actually tell me I'm a good teacher." Lois said. She made a face like she couldn't believe people actually thought that about her.

"Thank you, Ms. Lane." Clark said. "Despite all the rumors about you, I think you're a decent person." he added.

Lois shrugged. "You still have time to change your mind." she said.

Something about the way she said that gave Clark the somewhat unsettling feeling that she was not talking about his decision to accompany her on whatever illegal jaunt they were about to take, but rather the fact he had decided that she was a decent person.

Had she been told otherwise so many times that she believed it?

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