TRIGGER WARNING- There is a small and joking reference to homosexuality in this chapter.

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A week passed.

Lois slammed the phone down after yet another fruitless phone call attempting to discover Superman’s whereabouts.

“Where is he?” she muttered exasperatedly. She’d tried everything she could think of to track down the elusive superhero̶—with the exception of throwing herself off the building. And she’d come up dry every time. For all she knew, he’d returned to his home planet.

There was no consolation in knowing that no one else was having any luck, either. Not even Clark, with his previously-valuable connection to Superman. Though, she sometimes got the feeling that Clark was just going through the motions.

Clark was acting strangely lately. Strangely even for him, she amended mentally. For all his good points, Clark Kent could be one weird guy.
He was quieter than before, his previously cheerful manner replaced by an air of sadness and frustration. And he was spending more time in the newsroom lately, his odd, poorly—explained absences having dropped to almost nil. Lois had put the change in manner down to the loss of his friend, but that didn’t explain his increased presence.

A thought occurred to her. Had Clark and Superman perhaps been lovers? The disappearances due to Clark slipping away to secret rendezvous? She contemplated it for a moment before snorting in amusement, inhaling and almost choking on her coffee in the process. Both men were straight as dies, She’d bet a year’s supply of Double Fudge Crunch bars on it. She’d seen the way Clark had looked at Toni Taylor and herself, and the two kisses she and Clark had shared were seared into her memory. As was the look in Superman’s eyes when he’d told her she didn’t have to bid for his attention after the bachelor auction.

There had to be another explanation. Something she hadn’t thought of yet. Which meant she didn’t have the full story.

Lois hated that feeling.

She sat back in her chair, considering. All of the obvious methods of tracing Superman had been tried, both by her and by every other reporter in the city—- and probably the world by now. So what she needed was an obscure method.

Mentally she ran over the events leading to Superman’s disappearance. The heatwave. The half-baked theory that Superman was responsible for the unseasonable temperatures. His arrest and subsequent exile. Clark’s departure. Then Superman had disabled the leaking power plant, and Clark had returned—but a very different Clark to the one that had left.

Why did she keep coming back to Clark, as if he was the key?

As if she’d summoned him telepathically, the man himself interrupted her train of thought.

“Bad?” He’d left to cover a fire in an apartment building downtown.
One look at his face was enough to tell the story; that look of sadness and frustration was back, though this time it was mixed with anger.

“Three apartments were completely destroyed. Three more have smoke damage, so that’s six families who are currently homeless.” He heaved a sigh. “A mother and her four-year-old daughter have been taken to hospital with smoke inhalation; they’re in critical condition.”

“This is why we need Superman back, Clark. To help. Okay, so maybe him being there wouldn’t have stopped those apartments from burning; but at least he could’ve gotten the mother and daughter out faster.” She paused. “We need him, Clark.” Something about the expression on his face struck her as familiar; as she tried to place it, he made a non-committal sound and went to his desk. Attempting to shrug off the momentary sense of déjà vu, she turned her attention back to trying to find a way to contact Superman, but the expression on Clark’s face niggled in the back of her mind. Finally, she gave up with a disgruntled snort. She’d seen that look once before, but when?

Then it hit her. It had been only a week or two after Clark had come to Metropolis; he’d attended a drive-by shooting and come back with that heart-wrenching look on his face. That had been the first time Superman had disappeared; he’d come back right after she’d had that conversation with Clark…

Now that she thought about it, it really had been right afterward. Clark’s story about Superman’s return had been in the very next edition. She stilled for a moment, then shook her head. No, surely that was pure coincidence. And how egotistical of her, to think that a comment she made had had any impact on Superman’s return.

Still… the timing was awfully convenient. To get that story filed in time for the next edition, Clark must’ve seen Superman within a few minutes of their conversation. Which meant… Clark knew where Superman had gone.

If he’d known then, chances were he knew now. Had Superman forced Clark to come back to Metropolis and leave him behind? No, she couldn’t see Superman doing something like that. But there was definitely an odd connection between the two men. She eyed her partner speculatively. Both men had come to Metropolis around the same time, but how did a farm boy from Smallville, Kansas, meet a Kryptonian superhero? Had Superman arrived on Earth far earlier than everyone— including her— had assumed? He was certainly familiar with human customs and standards of behaviour He’d had to have learned them somewhere. Was it possible that Clark had been Superman’s teacher? They both exhibited the same slightly old fashioned courtesy. Whatever the connection was, one thing was clear.

Clark was holding out on her.

Movement caught her eye, and she looked up in time to see her partner slip unobtrusively towards the stairwell, tugging at his tie as he went. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Where was he going? There was no way he could’ve written up the apartment fire story so quickly.
Pushing her own chair back, she followed his path across the newsroom to the stairwell door, waiting a beat before she shoved it open.

There was no one there. Puzzled, she walked to the handrail and looked up and down the flights of stairs. No sign of Clark. A distant clang reached her ears— one that she was positive was the sound of the door to the roof closing. She knew Clark was fit— you only had to look at him to see that, and she would certainly never forget the sight of him clad only in a towel—but even the fittest person on the planet wouldn’t be able to make it up that many flights of stairs in such a short time. Only Superman could have managed it. But why would Superman come to the Daily Planet to pick up Clark when he’d been absent for well over a week now? She shook her head. There was an old saying in medicine that her father had taught her, back before he’d realised she was deadly serious about not following in his footsteps. If you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras. In other words, the obvious answer was usually the correct one. And the obvious answer here wasn’t that Superman had collected Clark for some unknown reason.

It was that Clark was Superman.


"It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It's basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating."- Simon Pegg