Chapter 43:
"I don't want to hear it, Miranda."
"I have proof," she whined.
Lex turned to roll his eyes at her before crossing the space to a cabinet. "Oh, you have proof? Then why didn't you say so? Show it to me."
He heard the crack of hesitation in her voice and knew he was right to harp her on it. "I... I don't have it with me. But I can get it for you. I'm running my first test in an hour."
"Your first test?"
"First public test, let's say. I've conducted some other experiments already, in-lab."
He didn't like that he felt the need to ask this, but Miranda could be unpredictable at times. "No animals, or humans, were harmed in the making of this project, I'm assuming?"
"Absolutely not.” She shook her head affirmatively. “No humans, anyway."
Lex stopped in his tracks to frown at her.
"I'm kidding! You don't have to look so concerned." He raised an eyebrow scorchingly. "I mean, there were pheromones involved, and one has to go about getting them some way... but yeah. No animals were harmed."
His eyes drifted shut lightly and he shook his head. He pulled out a folder and turned back to his desk to grab some more papers. "Why am I suddenly regretting bringing you back onboard?"
"Aw, Lexy, you don't mean that," she crooned, bounding forward to perch on the edge of his desk. "I'm helping you with your little problem, remember? Better keep me on your good side."
"You," he pointed at her with a piece of paper sharply, "do not get to threaten me. I have no need for unnecessary opponents right now. My roster is full."
She pushed the paper aside and craned her neck to look at it. "Who's the stiff?"
Lex snatched the paper back and gave her a simpering smile. "He's for my eleven o'clock. Now, are we about done here? Go off and run whatever 'experiment' you're working on and come back when you have some actual results to share." Miranda daintily lifted the corner of the folder on his desk, but he slammed his hand down atop it before she could get a good look. He pointed back across the room with his pen. "There's the door."
She scowled, flipped her blonde locks over her shoulder and turned sharply. "Fine. You'll see." She flung the doors to his office open and paused midstep. "Looks like your eleven o'clock is early. Hello, sir, your uniform is impeccable. Say are you looking—"
"Miranda."
She shot him a dirty look and ran into the officer's shoulder as she brushed past him and out of his office. Lex couldn't contain the sigh of relief at her leaving. She's but a means to an end, he reminded himself, trying to keep it all in perspective. Soon enough, he'd have his Lois back, he'd have leverage on Kent, and this would all be just a bad dream. He smiled at the man who walked in. "Colonel Fane! So glad you could make it on such short notice."
The officer closed the office doors behind him, and Lex noted the stern look on his face. He frowned. "Is everything all right?"
"What have you gotten me involved with?"
Lex tilted his head in question and sat back down behind his desk. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know where you heard the name Jason Trask, but you need to stop repeating it around."
His mouth went dry. His eyes darted back and forth across the room, trying to come up with an explanation. "I didn't even give you all the information yet; I have his file right here—"
"Look, I know I said I'd help if you ever needed anything, but all I did was run a search on the name you gave me, and suddenly I have superior officers I haven't even met before coming out of the woodwork to talk to me. Not even talk, more like interrogate me."
"What do they," Lex licked his lips, mind racing. What had he literally stumbled into, almost twenty years ago? "What do they want to know?"
The man refused to sit down, and it was starting to make Lex uncomfortable. "Where I heard that name, if I knew anything else about him, if I knew where to find him, if I knew anything about his branch of service."
"I can answer some of those—"
The man cut him off with a raised hand. "I don't think I want to know. I just want to know how you know the name. That's it."
Lex ran a hand across his face and debated how much he should tell him. Clearly there was something more to this Trask character than the dishonorable discharge story that he and the rest of the courthouse had been fed. He toyed with how much he should really reveal to the man... No. He refused to not have the whole story for one more second. Nothing made sense without it. "That's easy. I testified at the man's murder trial."
A little of the anger drained out of Fane's face, as his words sunk in. Fane plopped himself gracelessly into one of his chairs opposite his desk and Lex let him think things through for a moment.
"I'm pretty sure he was cremated at the end of the day, so there's nowhere really to find him. I'd hazard that was a trick question from one of your superiors."
The officer's eyes closed gently. Lex gave him a moment to collect himself before continuing on. He leaned forward over his desk anxiously and pinned his finger on the file folder. "This case is old. Maybe eighteen years old? I'm not asking about any current government projects. It has nothing to do with that. I just want to know a little more information about the dead body I found."
Fane shook his head and shot him a patronizing glare. "And it took you eighteen years to decide to look into this?"
Luthor squared his jaw. "There have been... exigent circumstances. It's imperative that I find out who Jason Trask was. If I don't... let's just say this case has come back to haunt me."
"Look, I'm as curious about this guy as you are," the man sighed and slumped over slightly, "but this is my job you're talking about. I've worked really hard to get where I am in my career, and I'm just not sure it's worth jeopardizing all that."
"Charlie, I'm begging you. You don't understand what will happen to me if I don't figure this out."
The man shot him a skeptical glance, but Lex maintained eye contact— intent on swaying his opinion. Fane scratched the back of his head nervously. Lex didn't understand why he was hesitating still. The colonel tore his gaze away guiltily, and his eyes swiveled about the room in a blatant effort to look anywhere except at Lex himself.
Lex nearly flinched. The realization took less than a second.
He ran his hand through his hair nervously, trying not to pull. The good colonel was holding out for something more. He pursed his lips before trying another tack. "I can compensate you for your efforts, of course."
And there it was. The glint of green in his eyes, the stiffening of his posture. Lex swallowed past the queasy feeling in his gut. Fane slowly made a show of protesting, leaning back in his seat, gesturing broadly, trailing his sentences off without ever quite finishing one. He smiled to mask the fact that his eyes were stinging. So much for cultivating friendships. "It's fine, trust me. I wouldn't want to jeopardize your job and not give you anything to fall back on."
The colonel accepted his offer quickly, offering only his thanks in return. Lex barely noticed. The telltale pull under his right eye began and Lex smiled sadly. He had to snap out of it. "How soon do you think you could get me this information?"
Fane held out his hand with a questioning expression, and Lex passed the file over to him. He studied the man carefully as he in turn studied the file. The thought flitted through his mind that perhaps nobody really liked him for him, only his money. Lois wasn't like that, he knew, but just because she claimed she wasn't interested in him for his money didn't mean she had any interest in him. The more he thought about her, the more he felt she really didn't care at all. And this from the woman he proposed to nearly three times.
Clark Kent might be the only person that really cared, and that thought scared him stiff.
"Ten gunshot wounds? That seems excessive."
Lex soothed a hand over his tic again and nodded. "Extremely."
"Usually a man who took that amount of bullets earned that amount of bullets," he looked across at Lex with an arched eyebrow. Lex swallowed thickly, pushing down the small panic that ran up his spine at that thought. "You sure you want to know where this road goes? You could be in the wrong. Just sayin'. What if he was a molester or something?"
He shook his head firmly. "In for a penny, in for a pound. I need answers, Colonel."
Fane shut the file with a satisfying snap and jumped to his feet. "It won't be easy, but I can do some digging. I'll call you in a few days, let you know what I've found."
He grimaced what he thought to be a passable smile at the man and stood up to go escort his colleague to the door.
*****LnC*****
He couldn't get the feel of her lips on his out of his mind. She was an amazing kisser. The fact that it was all of her own volition only tortured him more— no pretense of a cover up, no drunken sloppy kisses peppered over his face, like the ones he wasn't about to tell her she gave him after he brought her home that night from the Metro Club. He didn't mind either of those scenarios, and those drunk pecks were the most downright adorable thing he'd ever experienced. But to share another, real moment of passion with Lois Lane, in his apartment this time?
"Earth to Kent! Were you even listening?"
Clark blinked and uncrossed his eyes from their hazy focus to land on Cat Grant's face. "Hmm?"
"I hate to ruin a perfectly good daydream," she drawled sarcastically. Clark rolled his eyes. "But some of us have day jobs to get to. Now, were you interested in my pitch or not?"
He craned his neck around to see if Perry was back to bail him out of this, but he knew it was wishful thinking. Perry's board meetings couldn't have had worse timing, and having to make all these mundane decisions was starting to get to him. Cat's dramatically timed scarf-toss over her shoulder grabbed his attention and he realized she was still waiting for an answer. "Uh, yeah. Yes. Run with it."
Her eye roll wasn't quite as dramatic as Lois' but it nearly lived up. "Gee, thanks for the advice. Tell Dream-Lois I said to get back to work."
His jaw dropped open to protest, but once again Cat was on point with her logic. He let her saunter off proudly, not ready to deal with yet another rebuttal—
Oh- there she was. He sat up ramrod straight in his seat as he finally clocked her entrance. She was late, but he didn't care about that beyond the fact that it kept him apart from her for a few moments longer than he wanted. She was in a bit of a mood already, he could tell. She stubbed her toe on the corner of her desk and cursed. Clark jumped to his feet, only to force himself to sit back down. He couldn't be at her side every time she stubbed a toe or broke a nail— people were talking about them enough as it was, and it wasn't just Cat.
Clark drilled his fingers against the desk before him slowly, trying to focus on the noise of that and not the voices of office gossip floating around the room. Mad as Perry had made him, he was right about the fact that his feelings for Lois were obvious. He was sure the whole office knew of his little crush before even she did.
"Help! Oh, help me!"
He shook his head firmly and shut his eyes. He didn't feel much like playing hero today. He wanted to follow Lois around, he wanted to investigate his own cases, he wanted to fish around in Lex Luthor's finances for any sign of this new angle of Deadshot Research Facilities and possibly manipulate the situation so it ended up as more evidence planted on the man—
"Help!! Fire! Please, oh!"
Clark ran his tongue over his teeth and glared at the clock stubbornly. Damn it, Perry wouldn't be back for another hour. But what if it had something to do with Aymee and he chose to ignore it...
"Help—"
Casually, with a small sigh, he made his way over to the window in Perry's office and leaned against it. He cast his gaze around the bullpen, ensuring that nobody had their eyes on the office. Ralph slammed his palm against the copy machine, Cat glaring at him as though she were ready to slam a palm across his face as she waited behind him impatiently. Jimmy fiddled with the aperture of his camera, accidentally setting it off right in Lombard's face and in turn getting berated for it. Lois still hadn't had enough coffee to look away from her own computer screen yet.
In a flash, Clark sped out the window faster than the eye could see.
It didn't take long to locate the source of his morning interruption. He honed in on the dulcet sound of the woman's voice and dropped onto the balcony of the apartment building as she waved him down like a one-woman flight crew.
"My hero!" she gushed, almost a little too excited to see him. Clark wrinkled his nose for a split second before neutralizing his expression.
"What seems to be the problem, ma'am?" A slight frown pulled around her face at the term, and Clark smirked. He couldn't help but get a little enjoyment out of putting her in her place. Not to mention, he didn't see any obvious signs of a fire.
She gestured into the apartment behind her. "There's a fire in the kitchen, and I don't know where my fire extinguisher is! I figured you could solve this better than me running around like a chicken with my head cut off—"
He rolled his eyes and moved past her into the apartment. He found the flames immediately. It was lucky he'd gotten here when he did. The stove, engulfed in flames, seemed to be the source of the blaze, but it had already spread halfway across the room to the curtains and the kitchen table. He breathed in deeply and loosed a long breath of cold air to quell the flames.
A blast from the fire extinguisher hit him from behind, and he turned with a questioning eyebrow raised. The woman covered her mouth in shock as she realized he'd put out the flames already. "Sorry— found it."
Clark smiled and shook his head in amusement when the smell suddenly accosted his senses. He coughed a few times, but the thick scent wouldn't leave his throat. He frowned at the blonde woman who had her nose buried in her shirt collar. "What— ahem— what the hell was that?" He hacked into his elbow heavily, perhaps a little too loudly, if the way the end table next to him shook was to be any judge.
The woman backed out of the apartment and onto the balcony again, trying to get away from the smell. He didn't blame her. It was atrocious. Her voice was muffled by the material over her mouth when she spoke. "Oh my god, it must have been expired! Can you do something— anything— to get it out?"
He sighed, and turned back towards the smokey mess— it must have really been expired, it didn't even foam properly, just spewing this acrid gas everywhere. He sucked it in with a deep heaving breath, deodorizing the apartment as he went. He held his breath and launched out into the sky, shooting high above the clouds before releasing his breath and dispersing the chemicals where it wouldn't risk drifting down again.
The blonde woman bounced on the balls of her feet as he touched back down on her balcony. "Thank you, thank you, thank you! You're the best!"
"Don't mention it," he brushed away her gratitude, feeling like he was missing something here.
Suddenly she launched her arms around his neck in an enthusiastic hug. He nearly stumbled back a step with the force of her body, but he managed to stabilize. His right hand hovered over her shoulder for a moment before giving her a quick pat and pushing her back. "It's..."
Her blue eyes sparkled at him, almost in an unnatural way. He swallowed past the lump of uneasiness that her lovesick gaze put in his stomach and gave her as neutral a smile as possible. He pulled her arms off his shoulders, gave her a jaunty salute and launched off the building, unable to shake the feeling that something was off kilter.
He landed on the roof of the Daily Planet building in a huff. His fingers pulled at the elastic material around his neck and he gagged. He was assaulted with another wave of that pungent odor... He ought to shower.
Perry's voice cut across the floors of the building and Clark winced. Speed or no, he didn't have time to go catch a quick shower when Perry White was on the warpath. Technically, he was supposed to be in charge. He whirled rapidly around out of his suit and shook himself to dissipate what he hoped was most of the smell before racing down the stairwell.
One deep breath and he pushed the door open, quietly making his way back into the bullpen as though he'd been there all along. Clark shook his hair out a bit and casually made his way to Lois' desk. She turned to look up at him just as his shadow crossed her workspace. "Hey, where'd you sneak off to just now?"
He planted his hands squarely on the corner of her desk and leaned down with a smile. "Just took a quick break on the roof."
She wrinkled her nose in distaste, and it was adorable. "I'd say I should have joined you, but you reek. What were you smoking?"
Clark felt his grin vanish, and he leaned away a little. "I do not reek," he defended pointlessly.
"You do, trust me. If anybody says you don't, they're lying to you. You know, 'cause you're rich."
He tsked at her. "Well, I don't know what you're talking about. It was just me and a pretty nice blonde I like to call Gitanes."
The expected response was a laugh, but instead all he got was her attention. She frowned and rolled her chair out from the desk a bit. He cocked his head at her inquisitively before she found the right words. "You don't smoke blondes."
Clark was taken aback by her attention to detail, although he shouldn't have been. She was the best reporter in the city. Why did he ever imagine he could pull a fast one on her? Blondes just rolled off his tongue because of that ridiculous lady and her not-so-burned-down apartment and now he was in too deep all because he was trying to be clever.
And yet, part of him was flattered. "You know what cigarettes I like?"
It was Lois' turn to stammer a bit, but she was saved by the loud clap of Perry's voice. "Kent! Don't think I didn't see you slink in here just now!"
Clark winced and turned to shoot Perry a self-deprecating smile. "Sorry, Perry. I was taking a quick smoke break."
"Quick isn't the word I'd— phew!! You smell like my son's old gym bag when we found it under his bed three weeks after he moved out."
He gaped and felt his neck getting hot all the way to the tips of his ears. Nervously, he clapped a hand over the back of his neck and scrambled for an explanation as Perry swiveled away from him exaggeratedly. "I, uh, a kid selling something on the streets sprayed me with it— some "hot" new scent or something. It's real bad."
Lois' brow furrowed in his peripheral, and drat, he'd told her he was on the roof, hadn't he?
"Well, get out of here. Thanks for covering for me this morning, but I've got it from here."
He wanted to protest, but he knew he couldn't hang around here like this. Clark nodded at the man and rocked on the balls of his feet for a second, before shooting a quick smile to Lois and turning back to the elevators.
