When Virginia proposed the challenge of taking a first season story and having it result in Lois and Clark being married I took up the challenge and "The Green, Green Glow of Home - Matchmaker Style" was the result.
That was all well and good, but then I started thinking - What about future episodes? How would the fact that they are now married affect the dynamic? For instance, how would "Pheromone My Lovely" have been changed by the marriage? How would it affect "Honeymoon in Metropolis" and "All Shook Up", "Witness", "Illusions of Grandeur", "Ides of Metropolis", "The Foundling", "The Rival" and "Vatman"?
In the previous stories, you've seen my take on the answer. So, now, to answer the question - ‘What if Lois and Clark were already married when Fly Hard happened?' I offer the following.
As with the series as originally aired the episodes build on one another making a contiguous story. It is recommended that if you are reading this story out of sequence you will miss some references. Please go back and start with the first episode of the set "The Green Green Glow of Home - Matchmaker Style and take the episodes in broadcast order from that point.
Fly Hard- Matchmaker Style
Rated PG-13
Disclaimers: The characters in this story are property of DC, December 3rd productions and Warner Bros. No Copyright infringement is intended. I have just borrowed the characters for a short time.
In this, the sequel to Vatman- Matchmaker Style, Lois and Clark have been back from the assignment in Smallville for a few months. The events of PML were delightful; however, Lois really has no recollection of what happened. Clark finally had a chance to give Lois a real honeymoon. Then her life had been threatened because she had witnessed a murder. Next they investigated the kidnappings of the children of wealthy families. They have dealt with a murder and a threat to the internet and the messages regarding Clark's origin. Now they have dealt with a rival paper and a Superman clone.
Lois and Clark have returned to Clark's ‘old' apartment.
In this particular story a lot of the dialogue is taken from the script text. I wish to express my thanks to my Beta readers Artemis and Ray Reynolds for their invaluable help. This was a VERY rough draft when it first landed in their hands. This story is another cross-over to a Morgana story. She loaned me a character - George Amundsen from her "Stranger in Our Midst" story and also beta'd the sections that he was in for this one so that I kept him true to the character she created.
* * denotes emphasis
< > denotes thoughts
As always comments are welcome. (ken.janney@kjanney.com)
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Chapter 1
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Universal Locator Designation
Alpha -34 x Gamma 255 x Tau -225
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It was Saturday afternoon, March 26th and Lois was getting ready to go meet Lucy so that they could have some sister time and retail therapy. "Are you sure that this is okay, Clark?" As she said this she looked at her husband with appreciation, taking in his T-shirt and jeans clad form. She always marveled at the fact that she had never tumbled to his secret identity in the months before their trip to Smallville, but then most of the time he was wearing a suit. There had been that one time and her heart still raced at the thought. She had been scheduled to pick him up at his hotel, the Apollo, talk about a prophetic name. When she had arrived, there he was, her own personal Apollo come down to Earth, dressed in nothing more than a towel. Her heart still raced at the thought of that bare chest and six-pac. The T-shirt he was wearing did little to hide his musculature and it made her juices start to flow just to look at him.
Clark looked up from collecting their tax documents and said, "It's fine, Lois. Go have some fun with your sister. I'll miss you, but slaving away on all of this tax stuff will take my mind off of it. Trying to stay awake will help."
Lois knew that he was teasing her, but she still felt bad about sticking him with all of the work on their taxes. "If you want me to stay and help, I will. After all, this is the first year we are filing a joint return." She smiled and said, "You know, if no other way, I now really feel like we're married. Filing a joint tax return. It almost gives me goose bumps."
"If you really want goose bumps I'll let you do the taxes and I'll take Jack to a movie."
Clark had been going out of his way to do things with Jack and slowly the young man had been coming out of his shell. He was doing well in his job at the Planet and slowly the chip was coming off of his shoulder. The fact that Denny was in a good family situation and that Jack had regular contact with him helped a lot.
She knew that he was teasing her and decided not to respond in kind, "You know, I think Jack really appreciates the time you spend with him like a big brother. It's a good thing that we were able to convince him that we were just holding the globe for Superman. He doesn't suspect anything."
"He should be finishing up on his schooling and testing for his GED in a few months. That kid has come a long way."
"He's doing a good job at the Planet too."
"Yeah, he got off to a rocky start, but he's settled in. Didn't Perry say something about cleaning out his office today?" Clark asked.
"Yeah. I think he asked Jimmy to give him a hand. Why?"
"It might be amusing to watch. Maybe I'll pack this stuff up and go work in the conference room where I can spread it all out."
"If Jimmy is going to be there then Jack probably will be also. He's been hanging around with him recently."
"Okay, I'll do it. When you finish with Lucy, why don't you come on down. If I'm finished, we can go out for dinner."
Lois smiled and said, "I like that idea. It's a deal." She helped him box up the tax info and said, "I'll drop you off and then go pick up Lucy." She grabbed her bag and her keys, opened the door for him and after he had passed through locked up.
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The clock on the desk read 8:00 P.M. Lois and Clark were huddled together in the conference room with their receipts scattered across the surface of the conference table. That was the only problem with doing this where there were others to observe. Clark had to operate at normal human speed. He hadn't taken that into account when he'd had the idea. Lois had joined him a little over an hour earlier, foot-sore but happy from spending the time with her sister.
A noise in the pit attracted their attention. They looked up and saw Jimmy dropping a large faded cardboard cutout of a red, white and blue elephant that had an arrow across the middle of its stomach on a pile of what appeared to be discarded items.
Following on Jimmy's heels was Perry and he wasn't happy. He shouted, "No, not that!"
Jimmy turned to Perry and exasperation was written all over his face. He was obviously overwhelmed.
As Perry picked up the cutout he explained, "This marked the way to the GOP hospitality suite at the '76 convention. Gerry Ford tripped over it, for criminy sakes. It's
history."
As Jimmy took the cutout from Perry's hands and dropped it back on the discard pile, he snickered and gave Perry's words back to him, but with a different meaning, "You're right. It's history."
Perry, irritated at this disregard of historical artifacts, shouted, "Olsen …"
Jimmy stopped him, "Look, Chief, if you want me to help you Spring-cleaning, you're going to have to be willing to part with some of this stuff."
Perry was still irritated, "But -"
Jimmy interrupted again, "Chief, it's -"
Perry interrupted him in turn, "I know, Jimmy, but it's
my junk."
Jimmy looked Perry in the eye and said, "You know, this isn't exactly my idea of an exciting Saturday night. Jack and I were going to go see a movie so why don't I just …"
Perceiving the implied threat, Perry caved, somewhat, "All right, all right. Keep going. But I'm warning you. Touch the
Elvis box and you're a dead man."
Jimmy looked over at Jack in apology. Jack was absorbed in a computer game so Jimmy didn't feel as bad as he might have.
As Jimmy started to turn back to Perry's office the chime of an arriving elevator attracted everyone's attention and they all turned to see just who could be coming in at that hour on a Saturday night.
Stepping out of the elevator was the auburn-haired beauty that wrote Cat's Corner for the Planet. Cat was dressed in a slinky, long, scarlet gown, slit up the left to reveal her leg with spaghetti straps and no back that happened to be her date's favorite gown. She had a stole thrown casually over one shoulder. Following her out of the elevator was a tall, somewhat balding man with blond hair. He was dressed in a tuxedo and looked very debonair. His athletic build filled out the tux like it was custom tailored.
Cat made a beeline down the ramp and headed for her desk. Her date took the time to look around interestedly at the bull pen. He casually followed Cat to her desk and in a gentle voice, reminded her, "Red, the opera starts in thirty minutes."
Cat was waiting for her computer to boot and as she did, she turned to her date and said, "George, I just have to insert this little tidbit into my column for the next edition. Only take a second." She turned back to her computer.
Clark and particularly, Lois were interested in the new arrival. One of Lois's eyebrows raised as she whispered under her breath, "George?" She and Clark looked at each other and by mutual consent left the conference room and approached the couple. "Hi! I'm Lois Lane. I work with Cat."
George smiled a shy, disarming smile and held out his hand, "Hi. I'm George, George Amundsen." He thought only for a second before he said, "Lois Lane, Red's told me about you. You're married to …"
Clark stepped forward and introduced himself, "Clark Kent. Have you known Cat, uh, Red for a long time?"
"We met a few months ago, back when we were under the threat of Nightfall, before Superman saved us all. We happened to both be at the church at the same time. As we were exiting, we started to talk. All of my close family is in Seattle so neither of us had anyone to be with … if Nightfall … well, you know."
Lois saw a tender look in his eyes as he looked over at Cat and felt compelled to explain. "We were going to have her over, but Clark's parents were with us and our place is kinda small. We would have needed a shoehorn to fit her in."
Looking around, George took in the fact that Perry, Jimmy, Jack, Lois and Clark were all present and asked, "Hey, I don't mind. That way I had her all to myself. Is this normal for a weekend? Do you all spend all of your free time here?"
Clark smiled and said, "Not normally. We're working on our taxes. We decided to use the conference room table to spread everything out."
Without even looking up from his computer game, Jack piped up, "Jimmy and I
were going to a movie."
Jimmy replied, "We can still make the late show."
Eying the gown Cat was wearing, Lois addressed her, "Aren't you a little overdressed for a night at the office?"
Cat looked a Lois and took in her attire, comfortable, casual clothes, jeans and a sweat shirt. She heard her computer beep that it was awake so as she turned to it, she said, "Those aren't exactly working clothes either."
As Cat started to furiously type, George explained, "We were going to see Madam Butterfly. We were in the lobby, waiting to go in when she spotted something or someone and just had to make a change to her next column." Over his shoulder he said, "We have about twenty-five minutes now, Red."
Back over her shoulder, Cat said, "Ten minutes. Just ten minutes. That's all I need."
Suddenly, Perry came out of his office. He was wearing a hard hat that had a basket shaped arrangement attached to each side, suitable for holding a can of beer in each one. There was a flexi-straw arrangement that dipped into each one that led to his mouth. He was jubilant as he said, "Super Bowl Twenty, Bears and the Pats. What a blow out."
George was amused and asked, "Is this actually a party?"
Perry seeing this stranger in his bull pen was somewhat embarrassed by his headgear and taking it off and tossed it to Jimmy to be added it to the pile for discard.
Once Jimmy had done just that he headed back into Perry's office.
Perry looked at George questioningly. Lois took pity on him and performed the introductions, "Perry White, our editor. Perry, this is George Amundsen, a friend of Cat's."
Perry took a step in his direction and held out his hand, "Pleased to meet ya."
While they shook, Jack moved over to the pile and rescued Perry's drink hat and started to examine it. As he did, he exclaimed, "This is cool." He set it on a desk, away from the discard pile and asked, "Anybody want pizza?"
As Jack was asking that, Jimmy came out of Perry's office with a large cardboard cutout of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark in all her low cut, slinky, black gowned glory. He answered Jack's query, "Sure. Fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers, olives -"
Jack interrupted his litany, "Hey, if it goes on a salad, it doesn't go on a pizza."
Jack turned and headed for the phone while Perry gave Elvira the eye and said in a musing, almost worshipful tone, "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark." Perry stepped up and took the life sized cutout from Jimmy and as he did he lovingly caressed it, moving his hands all over her torso.
Jimmy had dropped another item on the discard pile and overhearing him turned and saw a dreamy expression on Perry's face and his hands drifting over the picture's cleavage and breasts and commented, "A little dark and scary for me."
Perry, realizing what he had been doing, jumped, jerked his hands away and replied, with feeling, "Not to me, son. She's the reason I've seen Godzilla a hundred and sixteen times. You know, before she got this gig she was a porn star and she did a spread in one of those girlie magazines. She's actually a red head, but you could never tell under the makeup and wig."
As soon as Perry finished speaking, Jimmy picked up a double-armful of stuff and headed for the storeroom.
Just as Jimmy disappeared into the storeroom the elevator chime sounded once again. When the doors opened an old man in a guard's uniform locked out the elevator and then stepped out. Seeing a number of people in the bullpen he asked, suspiciously, "What's going on here?" Nervously he pulled out a pocket watch and checked it.
Clark spoke up, "Hey, Willie. It's just us."
Obviously disturbed by their presence, Willie looked around and said, "You're not supposed to be here now."
Seeing that Willie was obviously nervous and supposing that it was simply related to the break in his routine, Perry tried to calm him, "Everything's fine, Willie, don't you worry about a thing. Keep up the good work."
Shrugging it off, Willie replied, "Yes, sir, Mr. White." The exchange had happened quickly and turning, Willie shambled back on board, unlocked it and pushed a button.
As the doors closed behind Willie, Jack suddenly shouted, "Hello? Hello? Anybody there?" He looked around to try to find the culprit. "All right, who cut me off?"
Suddenly, Cat let out a grunt of frustration and shouted, "The system just went down! I lost my story!"
Concerned, George moved to her side and said, "I know something about computers. Let me check."
As George arrived at Cat's desk to check her workstation the lights flickered and the elevator chime sounded.
Everybody was startled by the simultaneous occurrences and was looking around in confusion. The confusion ended abruptly when a group of five strangers stepped out of the elevator. There was a woman in the lead and as she stepped out onto the platform she unleashed a burst of automatic fire into the ceiling.
That got everyone's attention. Reacting instinctively, Clark pushed Lois behind him so that he was between her and the gunmen. Out of the corner of his eye he saw George do the same thing with Cat and smiled.
Within seconds, Clark had decided on a course of action that had a chance of working while still preserving The Secret and was in the act of sliding his glasses down his nose so that he could use his heat vision on the firearms to jam up their works when Perry stepped in between him and the invaders.
Perry challenged, "What in the Sam Hill is -"
He was silenced by one of the invaders when he grabbed him and jabbed the barrel of the weapon at his face, almost touching his nose.
An individual dressed in black leather, the apparent leader in an icy tone said, "The Daily Planet building is now ours. I suggest you cooperate and everything will go smoothly." He directed the next command at his associate, "Let him go."
The man released him and Perry staggered over to stand with the others.
Jimmy had heard the gunfire and cautiously opened the door to the storage room. When he did he saw the tableau of the gunman holding his gun in Perry’s face and the rest standing in a couple of clusters. Cat and George were still at Cat's desk while the rest were clustered near Perry's office door. He muttered, "Holy -" He cut himself off, afraid that the invaders would hear him. As silently as he could he reclosed the door and slunk back into a corner to think.
The woman in the group shouted, "Hey, Fuentes!"
When the leather clad leader turned, he replied, "Yeah, Remy." She threw a nylon bag to him. He caught it and unzipped it. Delving into the bag he brought out a black device with several buttons that resembled a cell phone.
Holding the device aloft he finished his earlier statement, "And in case any of you feel the need to contact the authorities or your friend Superman ..." He punched a button on the device and when a light on it lit up he said, "... you can tell him I'm holding the trigger for a small but dirty nuclear device and if I catch so much as a glimpse of a red cape, this building and the gene pool of Metropolis will pay the price."
Seeing that there was nothing that he could do immediately Clark decided to play a waiting game and turning his back on the gang pulled Lois into a protective embrace. They were able to whisper to each other.
Lois whispered, "Can you use your heat vision on that controller?"
"I'd have to know how it was wired and if it has a dead man switch. Better to just go along and play for time."
"Okay. I just wish there was something you could do."
Fuentes tried to ease their worries, "Relax. By morning this will all be over, one way or another."
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