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Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found Here

Author’s Note: When writing this story, (or, technically Another Lois) I placed approximately 45 minutes north of Smallville a larger town called Lawrence. It was only recently that I discovered that there actually IS a Lawrence, Kansas (home to the University of Kansas, no less, and to the east of Topeka, not south like my make-believe town). The Lawrence, Kansas in my story is NOT that Lawrence. I apologize for any confusion for any of you who know of the real Lawrence, Kansas.

Where we left off in Part 47 …

Now, that the signal watch wasn’t drowning out his eardrums, Clark could finally hear Lois. She was quarreling with Perry about a new story.

“Perry, I’m seeing a Planet special investigation: The Poisoning of America,” Lois was saying in her hard sell mode.

“Really, I’m seeing my best reporter falling off a cliff into an abyss,” Perry said.

“Private property rights versus the public good,” Lois countered.

“We’ve got that story here in Metropolis,” Perry retorted.

“Urban versus rural is the same story. It’s the same problem,” she said as Clark walked up to them. “Except sometimes it’s easier to understand in a smaller setting, a microcosm, for example.”

“Afternoon, Kent,” Perry said, a smile broadening across his face. “Here to talk some sense into your partner?”

“Is that possible?” Clark asked, stepping away before Lois back-handed him.

“That’s it, Lois, I’m done arguing,” Perry said, turning back to her and getting to his feet.

“I got it, Perry. I understand,” Lois said, holding up her hands. “I’m probably just confusing this story with that one down there at… oh, what was the name of that Pulitzer Prize winning story?” She started snapping her fingers, before grinning her ‘I’ve got him in the palm of my hand’ smile. “Love Canal.”

Perry pressed his lips together in defeat. “Promise me that there’s a story here, and I’m not just financing your and Kent’s…” He coughed. “— vacation.”

“I guarantee it,” Lois said, crossing her arms in victory.

“Fine. Go! But you better come back with some results,” Perry said, double-pointing at her.

“I will,” she said, turning to Clark with a dazzling smile. “Let’s go pack, Chuck. We’re going on a trip to the farm belt.”

Clark’s brow furrowed. “We are?” For some reason, he couldn’t picture Lois being excited about such a trip.

“Yep, an innocent farmer is being held against his will by federal agents,” she explained. “They told his son that he was thrown off the property, but he saw his dad tied to a chair inside the house. Meanwhile, the feds are tearing up his property with bulldozers looking for pesticides. The son is currently hiding out at the neighbors in fear.”

“Sounds like a job for Superman,” he murmured.

“Funny. That’s just what the neighbor who called in the story said,” Lois replied, patting his arm and heading to her desk to grab her briefcase. “Come on. If we hurry, we can catch the four thirty flight to Topeka.”

Clark froze. “Topeka?”

***

Part 48

Lois didn’t let him out of her sight. They went to Clark’s apartment to grab his clothes. Clark offered to have her drop him off and meet up with her at her apartment later. No such luck.

“Time is of the essence, Chuck,” she reminded him.

After he had packed his valise, they went to her apartment to pick up her suitcase. He thought he could sneak out while she was packing, but instead, she actually brought him into her bedroom under the guise of getting her suitcase out of the closet.

He had even volunteered to wait in the living room for her modesty’s sake, while she packed.

“We’re partners and dating now, aren’t we?” she teased, her innocent expression not at all convincing. “No secrets, right? Anyway, that’s my emergency assignment suitcase; it’s all packed with all the essentials and ready to go.”

Either she had planned in advance a romantic getaway to Kansas, which he highly doubted, or her story about the captive farmer was on the up-and-up and they were headed to somewhere near Smallville. After they finished this assignment, she’d probably be interested in doing a drive-by to his old stomping grounds. Either way, he was toast.

Lois remained by his side at the airport as well, not letting him go away further than the restroom. He couldn’t even make a phone call, although he wasn’t exactly sure who he would call. It wasn’t like he had the Kents’ phone number, and what he would say if he called? No, calling was out. He needed to fly in and make sure they were all right.

“Maybe we should contact Superman and have him check out this hostage thing before we go all the way out to Kansas,” Clark had suggested as they waited for their plane.

Lois raised a brow. “Well, I’ve been thinking about that. Federal agents, or men acting as federal agents, doing things that they shouldn’t. Sound familiar?”

“Lois, you’ve seen Bureau 39 behind everything in Metropolis since we met them,” Clark said, trying not to let it show that she had actually made him nervous with her ridiculous paranoid theory. Was Bureau 39 in Kansas? Had they found the Smallville file?

She shook her head. “I refuse to take that chance with Superman. We’ll check it out first, and you can call him if it’s something we can’t handle. Not everything is a ‘job for Superman’, you know.” Then she wiggled her eyebrows suggestively and leaned in to kiss him, stopping short. “Oh, sorry, I just took a bite of my candy bar, and I taste like chocolate,” she said, covering her mouth for a second before taking another bite of her Double Fudge Crunch bar.

If Lois was right, and Bureau 39 was in Smallville, what were they doing holding someone captive? It wasn’t the Kents, was it? No, they didn’t have a son to send to the neighbors. He gulped, and shut his eyes in pain as to why they didn’t have a son. Still, he wished Lois would give him a moment to himself so he could rush over to the farm and double check that everything was okay.

He had just visited the farm last week or, technically, Jerome had. He’d been trying to stop by several times a week or at least on the weekends since he brought the canning supplies for Martha, because fall was harvest time when farms needed more hands than usual and the Kents were already shorthanded with Jonathan stuck in that wheelchair.

The Kents had greeted him warmly each and every time he saw them, and had even offered him supper on the odd occasion. He had thought their friendship was making great progress. They were always glad to see him and never asked probing questions. Visiting Smallville had become sort of a rest pit from dealing with Lois’s recent inquisitiveness into his past and, not to mention, her mood swings.

Clark wasn’t quite sure what this whole trip was about. He became more anxious the closer they came to Smallville. It didn’t help that they were flying in a tin can. He hated flying in planes, though he had, on occasion, with Lana. Flying on planes, she had no problem with. Flying without planes, though, had been a taboo subject and rarely discussed unless Lana had caught him, like she had the day they met that Lois from the other dimension.

He gulped and glanced over at this Lois. She was flipping through the in-flight magazine with disdain and eating yet another candy bar. Did she hate flying in plane as well? She seemed to do okay out of them. Was she annoyed by the time it was taking to get there or was it just the lack of reading material? She stopped flipping on a page and actually sighed. It wasn’t a hopeful kind of sigh, more a regretful one, so Clark looked over to see what she was looking at.

She had the magazine open at a ninety degree angle and he could only see one of the two pages. It was an advertisement for a new kind of baby monitor, and showed an adorable brown haired, brown eyed baby lying in a crib. Was Lois sighing about babies? Lois?

His anxious heart that was already beating at a thousand miles a minute, doubled its speed and lodged itself into his throat. Did she want one? Already? Lois and babies? He hadn’t really thought about her as a mother before, round with child, caring for a little bundle of joy, but now that he knew she wanted to be one, the idea excited him.

Lois set down the magazine and reached into her briefcase to pull out a bottle of water.

On the page opposite the baby monitor ad was a travel article on Tahiti.

Clark’s heart dropped out of his throat and landed with a thud into his shoes. She hadn’t been sighing about babies. She had been sighing about Tahiti. He remembered how she had wanted Superman to fly her there after he had rescued her from the Metropolis Sewage Reclamation Facility.

Suddenly, a new set of images raced through Clark’s mind, and none of them had to do with how she had looked that night. Lois at the beach, lying in a skimpy bikini on the sand, splashing in the waves, all wet, wearing flowers in her hair, kissing him at sunset as the water lapped at their feet, making love in a cabin on the beach with a gentle breeze moving the gauzy curtains of their room. He gulped, and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

Lois glanced over at him, but didn’t say anything.

“Tahiti, huh?” he said, trying to cover up the fact that he desperately wanted to kiss her at that moment, but couldn’t. He set his hand on hers, and raised it to his lips. “Maybe we can go there someday.”

She frowned and shut the magazine. “I don’t think so, Clark. That was another dream, for another time,” she said, letting go of his hand to return the magazine to the seat pocket in front of her. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

Lois had told Superman that she wanted to go to Tahiti, and Superman had said he would take her there someday. The sigh had probably been for the trip she’d now never take there with Superman.

Clark hated that he was still jealous of that fake side of himself. He hated that Lois wasn’t completely over her love for Superman. He hated that he, Clark Kent, wasn’t enough for her. The fact that he was Superman should have made a dent in his current bout of self-loathing, soothing his bruised ego, but it didn’t.

Lois only loving Superman was almost as bad as Lana only having loved Clark Kent. A part of his mind tried to remind him that it had been him, Clark Kent, that she had been kissing, teasing, and cuddling with on Sunday, but this dark side of him smothered that hope with the thought that he doubted she ever sighed about him in that manner.

***

Lois grabbed the keys off the counter.

“I’m driving,” she said, leaving the rental car counter.

“I’m from Kansas,” Clark replied weakly. Everything Clark had said since he had found out their assignment was in Kansas had sounded weak. Did he know the jig was up and that she was about to shove it down his throat that she knew he had lied to her? She still hadn’t informed him of her coup de grace – the Kents. She couldn’t wait until she saw his face when they knocked on that front door.

“I’m driving, Clark, because the car was rented under my credit card. Who doesn’t have a credit card in this day and age?” she couldn’t resist tagging on. Liars, that was who!

“The financially responsible,” Clark responded, taking the keys from her.

Lois raised a brow. “Or the financially irresponsible, Chuck,” she retorted, taking the keys back. “Anyway, I know where we’re going.”

“How about you tell me, and I navigate?” he suggested.

“How about you sit back and relax and let me drive?”

He chuckled. “Have both ever been accomplished by any of your passengers?”

Lois shot him a scowl. “You could always walk.”

“I choose sit back and relax,” Clark said, picking up their suitcases with apparent ease. Those darn country boy muscles.

Soon they were on their way and heading south. Clark was looking more and more uncomfortable and antsy. She wondered if he had figured out where they were headed yet. Eventually to fill the silence, Lois asked Clark about his favorite class at Midwest.

He shrugged. “Professor Carlton’s class probably. He had some great stories about his days as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune.”

She had done some checking on Professor Carlton after getting off the phone with Martha Kent. He indeed had worked at the Chicago Tribune before joining academia. Professor Carlton didn’t answer the phone when she tried to reach him at the University though. Then she remembered Perry’s comment about the two of them being embedded together. “He ever tell any Perry White stories?”

Clark grinned. “One or two, but he made us promise they wouldn’t leave his classroom.”

“Convenient,” Lois grumbled. She wondered if Clark had blackmail on Perry, which would explain why their boss wasn’t interested in her sub-investigation on who her partner really was.

When Lois pulled off on the exit to Lawrence, Clark finally posed the question she knew he had been dying to ask for the previous hour, but his optimism hadn’t allowed it.

“Are we going to Smallville?”

She turned and looked at him, responding wryly, “I don’t know, Chuck, are we headed towards Smallville?”

“It sure looks that way to me,” he replied.

Well, that answered that question. Clark Kent knew his way to Smallville. He had either been telling the truth about being from there, or near there, to recognize it. “Yes, Clark, we’re going to Smallville.”

“Lois, why didn’t you tell me? You know I’m from there,” he asked, and his fingers started drumming on his thigh.

Lois smiled and answered truthfully, “I wanted to surprise you.”

“Well, I’m certainly surprised, Lois.”

The cars in front of them slowed and stopped. She waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, she leaned out her window. “What’s going on? Is there an accident or road construction?”

Clark chuckled as they heard a loud whistle. “It’s just the train crossing.”

She brought her head back inside the car. After another minute, she asked, “How long is this going to take?”

“It takes as long as it takes, Lois.”

“I didn’t realize Zen was so popular in the…” She leaned across him and pointed out the passenger window into the dark. “Is that a cornfield?”

“Why, yes, Lois, it is,” Clark replied with a smile, both his words and expression appeared to be mocking her. “Actually Smallville is known for its corn. We even have a corn… Oh, my gosh, it’s the second weekend in October, isn’t it? Lois, did you bring me here to attend the Smallville Corn Festival?” He looked at her with an impressed grin.

“The Smallville what?” she sputtered. “You mean like celebrating corn-on-the-cob, creamed corn, popcorn, cornmeal, um… candy corn?”

He laughed. “Well, all except for the last one. You might as well turn off the engine. It might take a while.”

Lois pressed her lips together in annoyance, switching off the engine and lights before facing Clark. “So, what happens at a ‘corn festival’?”

“Well, let’s see. There’s the corn queen pageant, games, contests – like the husk-off, barbeques, dances, the corn-o-rama, that sort of thing,” he replied with a wink. “Good family fun.”

“Lovely,” she said in a tone that read sarcasm in a banner headline.

“You can joke, but take away middle America and what have you got?” Clark asked.

“Art, music, theatre,” Lois answered smugly. She already missed the noise from the city.

“Crime, drugs, poverty,” he retorted as if those things didn’t happen in the country.

“Yeah. Yeah. If it’s so great out here, why are we still waiting for this train to pass?”

He laughed. “It always takes people from the city a while to decompress, but fortunately for you, you’ve brought along a native son. I’ll be able to translate.”

“Ha ha, farm boy, be still my beating heart,” Lois said with a roll of her eyes. Maybe she was wrong about Clark lying to her after all. He didn’t seem as nervous anymore. Zen, ha!

“All the hotel rooms in town will have been booked up months in advance by people coming for the festival, so where are we going to stay?” he asked with a nudge of his elbow.

“Home stay. A family from town has offered to house us as their guests. Apparently Mr. Earwig is a pillar of the community, and people are worried. Oh, look, we’re finally starting to move again,” she said, switching back on the engine and headlights and thankfully putting her foot on the gas.

***

Mr. Earwig? Clearly, Lois meant Mr. Irig – I-rig, not earwig. Clark smiled, remembering how much Walt Irig had hated being called that.

What were a bunch of EPA guys doing digging up Mr. Irig’s farm? Sure, the farmers in this dimension hadn’t joined the ReEarth movement, because it hadn’t happened here. The farmers of Smallville hadn’t gone organic in the 1960s, but Clark couldn’t believe that this dimension’s Wayne Irig had used so much pesticide that the EPA would shut down his farm. So what were they doing there? If it wasn’t pesticides, what were they looking for?

He gulped as the enormity of what that could mean sunk in.

Wayne Irig’s property was bordered by the Kent farm, Rocky Creek, the county road, and Shuster’s field where his folks had found Kal-El’s spaceship. He bet this dimension’s Kal-El had landed in the same spot.

Could Lois’s off the wall theory about Bureau 39 coming to Smallville actually be accurate? They already had Kal-El’s spaceship, what else could they want? He reassured himself that there was no reference to the green meteorite in the Bureau 39 file on Smallville. If Trask had known about Kryptonite, he would have already used it on Superman. No, they – whoever they were – must be looking for something else. The question was: did what they were looking for have anything to do with Superman? Was there something else about his arrival that day in May so long ago that he didn’t know about?

Wayne Irig was hardly the pillar of Smallville community as Lois had suggested. Just like in his dimension, Mr. Irig had become a bit of a loner after his wife Barbara had died. Other than his friendship with Jonathan Kent, his best friend, he kept to himself. The only people who would be worried, or even noticed, if Mr. Irig disappeared would be his son, Thomas, and the Kents.

Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no! Lois knew. Lois knew about Martha and Jonathan Kent. She must. That would explain her strange behavior since he returned to the Daily Planet after dropping Cat off in Paris. She knew about the Kents. Oh, God, how did she know about the Kents? What must she think?

Clark cleared his throat. “Lois?”

“Mmmmm,” she responded, lost in her own thoughts.

“Tell me again how you learned of Mr. Irig’s disappearance,” he requested.

“Do you know Mr. Irig?” she returned, not answering his question.

“We’ve met,” he said vaguely. He knew the Wayne Irig of his dimension very well indeed, having lived with the Irigs during his junior year in high school. The Wayne Irig of this dimension, he had only met once, briefly. Thomas had introduced them. Actually, neither Clark Kent nor Superman had met Wayne Irig, Jerome had.

Oh, crap!

He started drumming his fingers on his leg, feeling decidedly trapped inside that car. He wished Lois had opted for the convertible that had been available. The open air would have done wonders for this feeling of being a caged animal. If they were in a convertible, he could just unbuckle his seatbelt and escape into the dark night’s sky.

No.

No, he couldn’t.

That would be the worst possible way to tell Lois that he was Superman.

But, man, that sure was tempting at this moment.

Clark unrolled his window all the way instead and let the wind blow him in the face.

“Was he into pesticides?” Lois asked.

He shook his head. “Nobody is into pesticides, Lois.”

“You know what I mean,” she countered.

“Not any more than anyone else in Smallville, I expect.”

“How did you meet?” she asked.

“I know his son Thomas,” Clark answered honestly. Only, he didn’t. Jerome did.

What had Lois said? He closed his eyes and brought the memory to the forefront of his mind:

“Yep, an innocent farmer is being held against his will by federal agents. They told his son that he was thrown off the property, but he saw his dad tied to a chair inside the house. Meanwhile, the feds are tearing up his property with bulldozers looking for pesticides. The son is currently hiding out at the neighbors in fear.”

So, the farmer was Wayne Irig. The son must be Thomas, being that Walt had died somehow. Clark never had taken the time to find out how. If the son was hiding out with neighbors, that would surely be the Kents. Why hadn’t they just gone to Rachel? As Sheriff of Lawrence County she was the person they should have called, not the press. He buried his face in his hand. It had been a neighbor who had called in the tip.

The Kents had called the Daily Planet, and talked to Lois.

Lois pulled a piece of paper out of her jacket pocket and handed it to Clark. “You’re going to have to tell me how to get there, Clark. I can’t read the directions in the dark.”

He glanced down at the paper and saw that it was indeed directions to the Kent farm.

“You can turn on the overhead light for a moment… actually, it would be better if you took out my mini flashlight from my briefcase,” Lois went on.

Of course Lois didn’t know that he could read the paper just fine in the dark.

Clark reached into the backseat and pulled Lois’s briefcase forward. He flipped it open and dug around until he found a flashlight.

“Not that one,” she said. “There should be a penlight in there.”

He dropped the big flashlight back inside the bag and grabbed the penlight instead. “How in the world did this bag pass security?”

Lois tossed him a decidedly evil grin, and his stomach sank.

“Never mind,” he murmured. He didn’t want to know.

He pressed the button on the end of the penlight and saw that in the bright light the instructions were still leading them to the Kent farm. He removed his thumb and dropped them back into darkness again. “Lois, you want to turn right, up ahead.”

She nodded.

Clark knew that one of two things was going to happen when they arrived at the Kent farm. Neither of them were acceptable in his book. Both would require lying to someone he loved to protect Superman’s secret identity. Either he would have to tell the Kents that his name really happened to consist of both of their last names (Martha Clark and Jonathan Kent) and that he wasn’t really Jerome, and chance losing their friendship forever. Or… he would have to tell Lois that, for some reason that he hadn’t yet thought up yet, these people knew him as Jerome.

He loved Lois with all of his heart. He knew that if he told her the truth about his double – or was it triple? – identity that she wouldn’t go off and tell Luthor or publish a Pulitzer Prize winning story announcing it to the world. Not only because Clark believed that Lois would guard this information more tightly than a source, but because it would probably embarrass the hell out of Perry and Daily Planet if it got out. They had been lucky in his dimension that when Tempus revealed that Clark was Superman, a flying alien from another now-defunct planet, it hadn’t blown up in the mayoral candidate’s face that he had worked with Clark for over three years and hadn’t suspected a thing.

Superman had been out and about for almost six months now in this dimension, and the backlash against Perry if it was revealed that Superman had been working there under the Editor-in-Chief’s very own nose could be deadly. The Daily Planet, Perry White, and Lois Lane would be ridiculed in both the tabloid and serious press alike. All the stories Clark had worked on, especially his stories on his alter-ego Superman, would be considered suspect. It was very distinct possibility such a revelation might even free some of the bad guys from jail, if for no other reason than a judicial technicality. So, no, he didn’t think Lois would reveal his secret to the world, no matter how angry she could get, and the possibility of Lois accepting this without even a little bit of ire was practically null and void.

“There,” Clark said, pointing to a driveway in the trees that led to the Kent farm.

Unfortunately, telling her that he was Superman wasn’t in the cards just yet. Clark wanted to tell her the secret, but for her protection he had decided that he should only do so when he was absolutely certain of her heart. Okay, it was also partly for his protection. If she loved Clark, well and truly loved him, she was more likely to forgive him for keeping this secret from her. Until then, not so much.

He knew that she had once loved Superman unconditionally, but Clark? He wasn’t so sure of her feelings now. He knew that she liked him, or had before she had learned about the Kents. There was part of her that still wanted to be with Superman, and there was also that part of her who went behind his back to talk to Luthor and then lied to him about it.

And, truthfully, there was another reason he didn’t want to tell her he was Superman. Would knowing that Superman was her partner make her more cocky? Would knowing that Clark was right there to save the day if she screwed up, which, sadly, happened often enough already without her knowing, make her feel like she could take bigger risks? Would Lois chance her life for a story, knowing that her back-up was Superman?

As they pulled up in front of the Kent’s house, the headlights landed on the wheelchair ramp leading to the front porch. She stopped the car suddenly, causing him jolt against his seatbelt. Her arm flung out and grabbed his shirt. “Clark? What’s that doing there?”

“What?” he asked, unsure what she was talking about.

“That ramp. That’s not supposed to be there,” Lois told him decidedly.

Clark agreed completely. “Jonathan is in a wheelchair,” he said, refraining from using Jonathan’s last name on purpose, trying to put off the inevitable as long as possible.

“Right. He fell off the ladder while painting the barn last October,” she said.

Had it been a year already?

Clark shouldn’t be surprised that she had done her homework. She was Lois Lane, after all, but still he was surprised that she knew.

She opened the car door and he set his hand on her arm to stop her.

“Lois?”

“Yes, Clark.”

“Can you do me a big favor and trust me?” he asked.

“Trust you?” she scoffed.

Yep, she knew about the Smallville Kents and she was angry about it. Big ol’ whopping surprise there.

“Can you let me take the lead?”

“Take the lead?” Lois echoed in disbelief. “Why should I do that?”

“I’ll explain later. I promise,” he said, still not knowing what he would say to either of them. “Just trust me.”

“Uh-huh,” Clark heard her grumble. Lois hadn’t promised she would, but that was the best he could hope for.

***

There was a flick of the curtain as an older woman with strawberry blond hair and glasses glanced out the window. Lois’s chest began to throb with pure misery. She knew that woman. Her first desire was to wrap her arms around the woman – whom she knew in her heart to be Martha Kent – and cry. This feeling was both overpowering and confusing. Why would she feel such a kinship to a woman she had never met? Seeing this woman made Lois both want to cry and to kiss Clark. She was suddenly so thankful that he was alive.

These feelings made no sense, especially after her anger from a moment before when Clark had asked that she ‘trust’ him. Was this her sixth sense again telling her that Clark was in danger? In actual physical danger from someone other than her? Was this the reason Clark had never told her about the Smallville Kents?

Lois hung back as she steeled her emotions, under the guise of removing the luggage from the back of the car.

“We can get those later, Lois,” Clark suggested, lightly touching her arm.

He was probably right. Better make sure they were welcome before unloading the car.

The front door opened, and the woman from the window stepped out. “Can I help you?” she asked warily.

This was it. The moment of truth.

“Hi. We spoke on the phone. I’m Lois Lane from the Daily Planet, and this is my…” Lois said, turning to indicate Clark.

“Husband. Jerome. Jerome Lane,” Clark said, wrapping one hand around Lois’s waist and holding out his hand.

What the hell?

“Oh?” Martha said with curiosity. “Nice to meet you. I’m Martha Kent. Welcome.”

He was her what? Lois stared at Clark with her jaw hanging open.

“Oh, sorry about that… uh… Lois. She hates it when I interrupt her. Bad habit,” Clark said, giving her an apologetic smile and ‘help me’ expression.

Damn straight, he needed help. That, there, was the deadest man she had ever laid eyes on. Trust him? Ha! Lead her to the wolves, he did. Husband? Jerome Lane? Bet his tuchus he’d explain later. Oh, this was the biggest doozy she had ever seen, and coming from the worst liar she’d ever known. This would be good. She wondered if he knew these people already knew that Clark Kent was her partner.

Lois followed Martha inside the house and Clark tried to walk by her side. Instead Lois elbowed him and mouthed ‘husband?’

“Jonathan,” Martha called to her husband, who was waiting just inside the front door. “This is Lois Lane, and her husband Jerome.”

Lois didn’t miss the startled expression that crossed the man’s face. How could she miss it? She was staring at him. For some reason, at the moment she first saw him she could picture him in an apron, chef’s hat, and lady’s flower-print dress managing a barbeque on the village green. She shook this ridiculous thought from her head, and held out her hand.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lane, this is my husband, Jonathan Kent,” Martha went on.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Lane,” Jonathan Kent replied, shaking her hand.

Lois shivered with disgust at the name. “Lois, please. Mrs. Lane is my mother,” she corrected and then with a sharp expression from Clark, she added, “— in-law. Mother-in-law.”

Technically, if she and Clark were to get married, Ellen Lane, Lois’s insane mother, would become his mother-in-law. That in itself was almost punishment enough to play along with this ruse. She grinned at the thought of what her mother would do if they had pretended to be married to her. Lois wouldn’t have to kill him, her mother would do it for her. Clark – Jerome or whatever his name really was – would regret this.

“Jerome, I didn’t realize you had a wife,” Jonathan said, turning to Clark. “Congratulations.”

“Oh?” Lois said, turning to Clark. “You know each other?”

He gave her his best sheepish smile. “I am from Smallville, remember?”

Yeah, right. She wasn’t placing money on that bet.

Martha grabbed the handles of her husband’s wheelchair and jerked him towards the kitchen. “I’m sure these two are hungry after their long trip from Metropolis. Jonathan, why don’t you help me?”

As soon as the Kents were in the other room, Lois stuck her finger in her partner’s face, hissing. “I knew you were lying to me. I just knew it. You better start explaining who ‘Jerome’ is, buster.”

“Later, not now,” he begged with a glance back towards the kitchen.

Lois put her hands on her hips and waited with a scowl.

Clark caved, and taking her arm led her to the couch, where they sat down. “Remember how you once asked me what the ‘J’ for my middle name stood for?” he whispered.

She pressed her lips together. “I’m beginning to think ‘Jester’ fit pretty well, or maybe ‘Jerk’,” she said, pulling away from him. Jerome? Ha!

He took her hand in his and brought it to his lips. “No matter what you call me, it doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

“Lucky you,” she said, jerking her hand away. “I, myself, don’t like being lied to. Is anything I know about you real?”

He winced. “Everything about me is real, Lois.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she retorted.

“Could you just play along until I can explain in private?” he asked.

“I’m playing. Just because we’re ‘married’ doesn’t mean we’re happily so,” Lois countered. “Take my parents, for example, married for years while loathing each other.”

Clark groaned and rubbed his brow.

Was she giving him a headache? Good! The feeling was mutual.

***End of Part 48***

Part 49

Enter Clark Kent... er... Jerome Lane?... The Lunkhead. Comments ?