Chapter 14.
"Oh come on you damn mutt, get off!" complained Lois as Shelby made to lick her hand as she attempted to shoo him away. Her memories had returned, triggering the return of epic sneezing fits and her annoyance with the dog. Shelby ignored her and continued to play. Chloe and Clark were sat on the couch in the loft, laughing. It was only yesterday that Lois was going ga-ga over the family pet.
"Lois, why don't you just admit you love Shelby. He knows it already, and clearly he thinks the world of you," said Chloe.
"Please! I do not love this walking hairball!" replied Lois adamantly, stifling another bout of sneezes and wiping her nose with a tissue.
"Hmm. The lady doth protest too much," said Clark. He was getting a kick out of Lois' annoyance.
"And you! What was I doing in your arms anyway? You'd better not have tried anything while I was Memento'd by that Grady kid," she retorted.
Clark felt a snarky comeback was in order. "Lois, I had amnesia once before and I didn't try anything. Memory or no memory, I don't think that's gonna happen, which is more than I can say for you!"
"Right! Next you'll be telling me I made a pass at you. In your dreams, Smallville!"
Chloe and Clark looked at each other, and Chloe gave the tiniest nod so Clark took his cue to fill Lois in on her history over the past 9 months.
"Let me start from the beginning. When you found me in that cornfield, I believe your exact words were 'Look at his face!' I know for a fact you did not just look at my face. Your eyes went a little south of there."
Lois' eyes went wide and her mouth had blurted out a response before she'd engaged her brain. She wished she'd kept quiet.
"You heard that?"
Chloe was intrigued. This was a story she was unfamiliar with because Lois and Clark had been bickering buddies from the first moment she'd seen them together. This anecdote suggested something altogether different.
"What did you-?"
"He was naked when I found him in that field Chloe," said Lois as her mind wandered back to that rainy night and the billion stalks of corn. She had looked a lot further south of his face. For several seconds.
Clark was on a roll so he felt no embarrassment about sharing that little anecdote. "The next day, you walked in on me while I was in the shower. I told Chloe about that one already."
Lois was beginning to squirm and blush.
"At Chloe's birthday party when you guys were possessed by witches, you eyed me up and down and told me you loved the view," Clark continued.
Lois didn't know where to look.
"You insisted on me taking you to my own high school prom. You bought that pink dress, did your hair up and made me pin that ridiculous corsage on you. It was only later that night that I found out you and everyone else had been possessed by Dawn Stiles. I didn't cotton on immediately because I thought you were just being your normal bossy self."
Lois needed to gain some traction in this one-sided discussion. "What's your point?"
Clark stood up. "My point, Lois, is that when you aren't able to hide behind your attitude, and when you aren't yourself, you can't keep your eyes off me. When you lost your memories, you were all over me. At Summerholt, I had to pick you up before that steel column came crashing down on you, and that's why you were in my arms. At that point, you got all your memories back. Face it Lois, I've never made a pass at you."
Lois bristled at the insinuation that she wasn't good enough for Clark to make a pass at. "That's because you don't have the guts, but mainly because you only have one type, and that type's name is Lana."
All of a sudden, they both stopped bickering and turned to Chloe who was sat with a big smile on her face, just lapping all this up. It hadn't taken long for them to assume their usual position of trading barbs to mask a mutual affection. As they looked at her unamused, she struggled to remove the smile.
"Well, much I'd love to hear more about this, I…think I'd better head off to the Torch. I wanna lay down some notes for an article about memory loss before I forget," she offered, getting up and making her way down the steps. They failed to acknowledge her little attempt at levity.
As Chloe left the barn, it was Lois' turn to speak.
"I think I'm gonna grab a shower. One hour ought to do it."
Clark watched Lois descend the steps and cursed that he'd have no hot water for a shower of his own again. His mind briefly wandered to the previous night and Lois in her underwear with her fabulous body but he quickly shook his head and cleared that thought. No way, under any circumstances, would he ever make a move on the bossy, outspoken and brash girl who'd taken over his bedroom and burrowed her way into his life.
Shelby was padding around the loft with a Frisbee in his mouth so Clark decided to run outside to the small pasture behind the barn and have a little fun with his new best friend. It was one way to forget everything else.