Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Between Floors 7 and 8 by Jessi Mounts - June Fanfic Club Discussion **Spoilers**

He glanced at this gorgeous, bewitching woman, only feet away
from him, who seemed so fascinated by the interior of the
elevator and utterly uninterested in him. No, he wasn't in love.
There was a perfectly logical explanation why he was still
fighting off the urge to soar into the air. Or sweep her into his
arms. Or soar into the air with her enveloped in his arms. That
would be good too.

But not in love. And this feeling that he'd finally found what
he'd been searching for his whole life? That these few minutes
would decide whether he'd never be lonely again, or he'd be
more alone than he ever had? That wasn't love. It was...it
was...relief that he'd survived the vulture salespeople of
Metropolis? Okay, that was a pathetic excuse, but it was the only
excuse he could come up with because he was *not* in love. He
wasn't! He couldn't...possibly...be...

His overworked defiant voice wavered as he turned to catch just
one last look at her, and his eyes met hers. She seemed so
stubborn, so independent. So unneeding of anyone, least of all
him. It didn't matter. No amount of stubbornness could hide the
warmth and passion he was sure he saw behind it all. He loved
her. Later he might laugh at this fairy-tale idea or be terrified
for his sanity. Right now, there was no doubt in the world. He'd
fallen in love at first sight with a stranger in an elevator.

"That's not a fortune!"

Lois's eyes sparkled as she went into a parody of the infamous
Mad Dog Lane mode. Lois would have been appalled if she had
realized her eyes were showing anything at all, let alone
sparkles, but at the moment, she was having too much fun to care.
It turned out that her mysterious stranger, though maybe a little
odd, was certainly not a serial killer. Or if he was, at least he
was a charming and thoughtful one on his off time. Anyway, once
he'd- they'd- relaxed enough to share the Chinese food that had
almost made her miss the elevator in the first place, she'd
discovered there wasn't anyone else she'd rather have been
stuck in an elevator with. For some reason completely beyond her,
she actually *liked* debating the authenticity of fortune
cookies.

"Oh, it is so a fortune," she said stubbornly. "'Your life
will be taking an interesting turn.' It comes from a cookie. It
tells the future. That is a fortune." With each of her closing
arguments, she rhythmically snapped the offending slip of paper
to punctuate the phrases.

Clark slowly shook his head, partly in disagreement, but mostly
in amazement at this complex, wonderful woman. After those first
awkward few minutes, he'd discovered he was more than justified
in falling in love with her. Oh, it was still a crazy fairy tale
notion, but now, at least, he wouldn't have to tell his parents
he was in love with someone who hadn't spoken ten words to him.

The passion he'd sensed in her wasn't imaginary. Each word
she'd said, every gesture she made was done with all she had.

He was still trying desperately, and failing miserably, to break
the intimate mood. She met his gaze for the thousandth time that
evening, the face only inches from hers, and her careful denial
of true love fizzled. Oh god, she thought, feeling a sharp stab
of panic, he's going to kiss me. The panic sharpened as she
realized that's exactly what she wanted him to do. Would it be
such a bad thing to let herself go, to let him hold her and feel
his lips against hers? Would that be so wrong?

And now she was entirely sure it couldn't be, as her face was
already cradled tenderly in his hands and his lips were-

-smashed unceremoniously into the cheap carpeted walls as a
deafening clap of gunshot tore through the air and a bullet burst
up through the floor. Well, she'd wanted someone to kill the
mood, hadn't she?

"Uh," she stuttered, trying to recover at least some composure
after the startling change in atmosphere, "you're squishing
me."

The pressure enveloping her lessened instantly. Her protector's
voice came from behind her sounding half-frantic. "Oh, I'm so
sorry. Are you all right?"

Lois giggled, finally recognizing the absurdity of the situation.
She'd only wanted to buy a gift for her little sister. Instead,
after spending hours having an amazing conversation with a man
who'd tried to kiss her, she'd found herself wrapped entirely
in that man's protection as he dodged the bullets whizzing
around him. And *he* was the one apologizing? Yup, just another
day in the life of Lois Lane. "I'm just fine," she said,
surprised to find herself laughing good-naturedly. "But just
what makes you thing that *you've* got the right to protect
*me*?"

"Well, I'm, uh, bigger than you, and -- and there's really no
sense in putting both of us in danger."

"So," he said, sounding for all the world like someone still
having a leisurely conversation over Chinese take out. Just a
Kansas farm boy, huh? "Are you shot at often?"

Lois smiled, unable to resist her chance to tease him again.
"And just what makes you so sure they're not shooting at you?"
He wasn't so easily thrown off balance this time. "Oh, darn. I
forgot. I never should have robbed that bank. Those Smallville
cops will track to the ends of the earth. No, really, the mall's
closed, so it's gotta be me or you, and I seriously doubt it's
me. Why *are* they shooting at you?"

"I'm a reporter," Lois stated matter-of-factly.

There was a beat of silence from his end of the conversation,
broken only by the sound of yet another gunshot ripping through
the air. "Uh huh," he finally said. He paused for another beat
and then asked brightly, "So, have you seen any good movies
lately?"

Lois responded by probably confusing the poor man half to death
with a laugh and gentle elbow in the ribs. "Shh!"

"Why shh?" came the whisper in her ear.

"Because--" she whispered, doing her best to be insistent while
her grin stretched from ear to ear, entirely with her permission.
Since when did she have *fun* being shot at? -- "if our shooters
can somehow hear anything at all over that racket, we want them
to think that they've got us, mission accomplished, and go
home."

"Oh, but you forget," he said, managing to sound sly in a low
whisper. "Those aren't just the run-of-the-mill shooters out
there. That's the Smallville police force, not to fooled by such
amateurish tactics as-"

Lois cut him off with another good-natured elbow and a "Shh!"
"Yes ma'am," he whispered and obediently fell into silence.

He didn't have to for long. With his silence came one last,
lonely gunshot, a few muffled shouts, and then nothing. Lois
waited a good thirty seconds, and then turned to face her
unlikely hero. His arms were still wrapped protectively around
her. She could get used to that, she reflected. She tilted her
face to smile up at him, and was greeted by an adoring grin. Oh,
she could definitely get used to this.

"Well, sir," she teased, playfully resting her hands on his
shoulders, "you've just survived your first attack by the bad
guys. Welcome to Metropolis. Now--"

Later on, Clark realized there were probably other ways to handle
what was to happen next. What exactly those ways were, he wasn't
sure, but there had to be something, anything, less obvious and,
well, less idiotic, that he could have done. At the time, he was
only conscious of a pang of horror as he realized the floor was
literally falling out from beneath him and the desperate thought
that he'd finally found the woman of his dreams and he would
*not* lose her now. From there, his subconscious took over and he
suddenly found himself soaring into the air with her held tightly
in his arms.

The woman of his dreams didn't seem to realize exactly how
romantic the situation was.

Lois gasped as the elevator she'd been in a half a second before
was demolished at the ground dozens upon dozens of feet below,
followed by what she recognized as the remnants of a bomb. Of
course. they could just cut the elevator's supports like normal
villains, could they? Oh, no. They had to show off and use a
bomb. What else?

Her shocked gaze lingered on the scattered wreckage and then
shifted back to the dozens and dozens of feet of empty space.
Very empty space. In fact, there was nothing at all between her
and the ground. Absolutely nothing to stop her from plummeting to
that ground. Nothing but...

Lois suppressed a panicked shriek and instead snapped her head
upwards to sputter, "You...how...you put me down!"

He had the nerve to give her an irritating, smug grin. "Sorry.
Can't do that." How dare he! When they were...when she was...

"Oh, yes you can!" she screeched, not caring in the least bit
how panicky she sounded. She had a right to be panicky. "You got
us up here; you can get us down. So put me down!"

He only smiled cheerfully and announced. "Sorry. Can't. I'd be
happy to, but," Lois stifled a gasp as she felt one of his hands
leave her to motion to the empty space beneath him, "it'd be a
long way down. Wait a second and--"

"No, I will not wait!" she snapped, whatever cool she had left
going out the window. "I don't care who or what kind of thing
you are. You get me down now!"

Lois wanted desperately to steal back the words the second she'd
said them. She'd always known exactly what to say to more than
get her point across, and she'd certainly done it now. She
wanted to frantically assure that he was not a "what" or a
"thing". Unique, intriguing, amazing, wonderful, yes, but
never, *never* a thing. The stiffening of his once-playful hold
told her it was too late, and the damage was done.

Lois looked into his face in time to watch it crumble. His
expression froze into a pale blankness, only his eyes betraying
how badly she'd just hurt him. Then his eyes, too, iced over,
hiding every trace of emotion and of the joyful man she'd
known.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice cracking a bit and then
falling into awful, stiff formality. "I'll have you down as
soon as possible."

Lois watched numbly as they both glided down to the elevator door
she'd walked through hours before. He effortlessly pried it open
with one hand, set her on the solid ground of the dark, deserted
food court, and then disappeared to the wreckage at the bottom of
the shaft. She barely had enough time to wonder what he was doing
before he reappeared, silently holding out her tattered purse.

Hovering just above the building, Clark Kent couldn't block out
the sound of her sobs, and his heart broke with every one of
them. Fighting off every instinct in him, which told him to go to
her, *now*, and never leave her again, he shot aimlessly off into
the night sky to leave her behind forever.
.
.
He should leave Metropolis. His dramatic promise to leave her
behind forever had only lasted the five minutes it took to
realize he'd left her in an abandoned building with people who
wanted her dead. Then he'd gone hurtling back to find the thugs
making their escape and gloating over how well they'd done their
job. Apparently, the job had been to scare the nosy reporter as
much as possible before killing her, and they figured leaving her
stranded for hours before shooting her and ultimately sending her
crashing to a violent death had been a brilliant touch.

He had never in life wanted to hurt someone more than he had at
that moment. He hadn't. He hadn't even tried to stop them from
leaving, since he wanted them away from her as quickly as
possible.

He had no doubt that she was more than capable of taking care of
herself once they realized they'd failed, but he still couldn't
leave Metropolis.

He tried to tell himself that it was only because he wanted to be
there for her when they came after her again, but the truth was
that was only half of it. Leaving would involve giving up any
chance of seeing her again, and he couldn't do that.

But he should leave. Whisking someone into the air was never a
good idea. He'd known that someone was a reporter, one who'd
apparently risk anything for a story, if the bullet holes in his
clothing were any indication. He'd whisked her into the air
anyway, and that had been a worse idea.

"Son, if you want this job, you've gotta come to the interview
too."

The gruff voice jolted him rudely out of his thoughts. Clark
struggled to get her out of his head for just a minute and focus
on the reason he'd come to Metropolis in the first place, his
interview with the Daily Planet's editor-in-chief, Perry White.
If he didn't pull himself together, the decision of whether to
remain in Metropolis would be made for him. If nothing else, he
had to pay the rent.

As the man regarded Clark intently, his look of irritation gave
way to one of amusement. "You didn't hear a thing I just said,
did you?" Clark groaned inwardly and forced himself to smile
apologetically.

"No, I'm sorry, sir."

Mr. White afforded him a sympathetic smile and began again.
"Now, son, I'm sure these are fascinating stories, but this
is-"

"All right, Chief, I fixed the horn on your golf car!"

"Not now, Jimmy," Mr. White didn't bother to raise his voice
at the young man throwing himself through the door. The tone of
his growl said plenty.

Jimmy didn't get the message. "The tone's still off."

The editor's growl escalated to a roar as he shouted, "Jimmy,
not now!" The scared-looking kid got it that time and hastily
retreated through the open door.

Clark wished he could follow his example. He'd heard enough of
what Mr. White had said to know what was coming next.

The man focused his attention back on Clark and shook his head.
"The boy never learned to knock. Now where was I? Oh, yeah.
Kent, you've gotta understand, this is the-"

"Chief!"

Clark leaped to his feet at the sound of the word. He would know
that voice anywhere. That was her voice. Her voice! That did it.
She really was driving him crazy.

He found himself hopelessly frozen in place as the owner of the
voice burst through the door and proved she was no dream. "I
know there's a story here, and we should have...this...guy..."
She trailed off as her flashing eyes widened into shock, and her
expression began to mirror Clark's.

What explosion would have come from the editor was diffused by
the sight of his unshakable star reporter standing motionless in
the doorway. "Uh, Lois, honey," he began tentatively, "I'm
really in the middle of this here."

If Lois heard a word of it, she gave no indication. Her eyes
never left Clark's.

Thoroughly baffled, Perry tried a different tactic. "Uh, Lois
Lane," he said, feeling an introduction was somehow redundant at
this point, "Clark Kent."

That, at least, she heard. The word "Clark" formed in a whisper
on her lips, and then she went right back to gazing.

Oh, well, this was getting ridiculous. He looked between Lois and
the young man who appeared to have forgotten the world existed at
all outside of Lois and tried his final course of action.
"Lois," he sighed, doing his best to sound exasperated, "can I
help you with something, or are you just going to stand there and
decorate my office?"

Lois's focus snapped abruptly back to Perry. "Yes, Perry. Yes,
you can help. Can I borrow him for a second?"

"Lois Lane," he'd say, and now he knew her name. Her name was
Lois! "I have fallen in love with you. I know it's crazy, and I
keep trying to tell myself that, but nothing ever changes. I'm
still in love with you and terrified at the thought of losing
you. Please don't be afraid of me. I'll explain whatever I can.
Just don't be afraid of me."

And then, ideally, she'd declare her undying love in return. Or
something like that. Well, he hadn't worked out exactly what it
was he was hoping she'd do, and now it didn't matter. He
discovered that any chance at all of forming coherent phrases had
left him, leaving him with only a delirious grin. She was here;
she was smiling; he knew her name; he had not lost her!

And even if he'd had the presence of mind to make his grand
speech, Lois began speaking soon enough to beat him to it.

"Clark," she began, smiling almost shyly at the name before
starting again. "Clark, I never meant to hurt you. I need you to
believe that. But I felt something for you I didn't understand
and didn't have any control over, and that scared me. I'm not
very good at being scared. I wasn't ready to be swept off my
feet, and believe me, mister, you were doing a pretty good job of
it. So really being swept into the air and dangling there was a
bit more than I was ready to deal with."

She smiled again, and Clark tried desperately to kill the hope
brought on by that smile. He didn't really know where she was
going with this, and he didn't know how he'd survive thinking
his world was finally in one piece, only to have it shatter
again.

"I have no idea how you did whatever it was you did," she went
on, "and we're going to have a long talk about that sometime
soon."

We. She said "we". That had to be a good sign, didn't it?

"But what matters more to me than anything right now is that you
understand I didn't mean to hurt you. I couldn't. And I'm not
going to tell you I'm in love with you, because I just met you,
and that kind of thing only happens in sappy love stories,
right?"

Without waiting for his opinion on that, she pressed on.

"But I do know that if you walked out of my life right now,
because I was too afraid to let you stay, I don't think I'd
ever forgive myself."

"And I can't promise that I'm not going to panic sometimes and
try to push you away again, but Clark, I want to try. So I guess
the point is," she took a deep breath and looked intently into
his eyes, "do you?"

She was asking him if he wanted to try? He had to be dreaming.
Did he want to try?

"Yes!" he said, surprising even himself at the intensity of his
response. "Yes, of course I want to try! I-" He stopped himself
at the last second from saying, "I love you," and finished more
softly with, "I don't want to lose you."

Lois's cautious smile widened into a broad grin. "Okay. Well,
then, I'd say we pick up where we left off."

Clark eyed her warily. He could think of several places they'd
left off, not all of them particularly pleasant. "And that would
be...?" he asked carefully.

If the mischievous glint in her eye didn't tell him exactly
where she intended to pick up, her comment and the actions that
followed left no doubt. "Clark," she teased, wrapping her arms
around his neck as she raised her face very pleasantly close to
his, "I thought you had a better memory than that."

"Twenty bucks says she's in there, ah, welcoming the new
employee." "Dylan, this is *Lois* we're talking about. You
know, Lois. As in everyone, especially rookies, are possible
sources for her next brilliant story. Period."

"Don't care. I saw that look."

"So did I. And it said, 'Ha! Now I've-'"

Jimmy broke off in mid-sentence as the elevator announced the
arrival of the topics of conversation. He turned to see the two
standing side-by-side, looking decidedly pleased with themselves,
wearing wide grins and...lipstick?

No way. He rubbed at his eyes in hopes that his obviously faulty
vision would fix itself. Miraculously, it did. Sort of.

When he ventured to look up again, Lois was marching purposefully
off towards Perry's office and the guy, entirely lipstick-free,
looked pretty thrilled to be following.

And he was sure his hearing couldn't have been playing tricks as
he heard her announce, "Chief, you just can't brush this guy
Kent off!" "Well," a voice said over his shoulder, "I'd say
you owe me twenty bucks."

Had it been anyone else, he would have paid up on the spot.
Anyone else and, after one look at the way she looked at that
guy, he would have had to agree that of course she was in love
with him. But Lois? Lois Lane?

Mike did a great job of quoting almost the entire story in his post, which reminded me of the funny conversation they had while the crazy villains thought that killing Lois instead of just scaring her was the way to go.... er... sorry, the Smallville police force, that was.