Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
Here Part 64 Author's Note: I have placed "Witness", due to its Christmas decor, after "Man of Steel Bars" and before "Pheromone, My Lovely". I apologize if this causes any confusion.
Part 65Lex had claimed at their interview that he and LexCorp were blameless. Nevertheless, winter returned to Metropolis a few days after the nuclear plant was shut down. Snow began to fall, despite Superman continuing to fly overhead and rescue people from their lack of winter driving skills. Needless to say, Lois wasn’t one of them. She loved being proven right, especially over arrogant men like Lex and that scientist, who had blamed Superman for the heat wave.
It was
possible that Lex hadn’t known that he had hired shoddy contractors for his LexCorp Nuclear Power Plant, but Lois remained skeptical. Clark – surprise, surprise – thought Luthor was guilty as sin. Although the city didn’t bring legal charges against the billionaire, Clark felt he should be held responsible. Lois found it hard to believe that Lex had purposely created an environmental disaster, even with Clark showing her that the LexCorp Air Conditioning division had a two thousand percent increase in sales in November. Profit wasn’t everything, she had countered. Lex and LexCorp had paid for the entire clean-up of the nuclear site. Clark had merely rolled his eyes and reminded her that the courts had mandated it. In the end, she and Clark had decided to agree to disagree. Clark continued to believe that Lex Luthor was the end-all be-all of evil. Lois stood by the opinion that many factors caused the meltdown of the reactor, and Lex Luthor should not be held personally responsible.
Lois stood by that opinion, but she didn’t stand behind it. The way Lex had brushed her aside, when she had gone to him with the news that the reactor could blow up, had left her with some doubts and a bitter taste in her mouth. Despite the fact that Lex continued to be the same suave, charming man he had always been, Lois started to take what he said with a few more grains of salt.
Clark had scoffed when Lex announced that they would be turning the old site of the nuclear plant into a bird sanctuary. While the old her would have found such a move proof of how Lex cared about the environment, the new even-more skeptical Lois realized that the land probably couldn’t be used commercially or residentially for anything else in the near future.
This new side of her that looked at Lex with a little less rose-tinted glasses was a silent side. Agreeing with Clark vocally would only give credence to the opinion that, in this matter and this matter alone, Clark had been right, and she had been W-R-O-N-G. Lois wasn’t ready to admit that to anyone, least of all Clark, especially on the topic of Lex Luthor.
She discovered that if she looked at Clark’s lies in the light that Superman said he looked at them, they didn’t appear so patently horrible. True, she had to admit to herself that this might technically be a placebo cure for her anger because in all other things she still found Clark as he had always been: good, kind, honest, faithful, hardworking, and law-abiding. It also helped that he was one sexy gentleman. Damn him.
Since that night that Lois had embarrassingly begged Clark not to leave her, which he kindly never brought up again, he had changed. She couldn’t place her finger on exactly what it was about him that had altered. Perhaps it was that he wasn’t as flirtatious. Had he become resolved that there would never be a relationship between them more than friendship? If so, why hadn’t he moved on? Thank goodness he hadn’t because try as hard as she might, she couldn’t move on past him either. No other man, not counting Superman, came close to the ideal Clark. The ‘ideal Clark’ being Clark when he wasn’t lying.
Clark still teased her, joked with her, and stood up to her in that way she had always adored, but he no longer seemed to be coaxing her to forgive him. Had he realized that by giving her the space that Martha had recommended, he would get what he wanted all the more quickly? Not that she wanted to forgive him for lying to her, and everyone else, but there was just something about Clark that made it hard to stay angry with him.
On the other hand, it was possible he had given up hope entirely. That would explain the sadness she kept seeing in his eyes whenever he gazed at her. She was sure it was unintentional because, despite doing so since she met him, Clark didn’t seem to be the type of man who liked wearing his heart on his sleeve.
Either way, she missed Clark’s hope. There wasn’t anything quite like Clark’s optimism in his chances, in her forgiveness, and in the future. She loved that Clark never gave up on her. Not ‘love’ loved, just really,
really liked it.
Knowing how horribly she had treated Clark, and the Kents, while they had been in Smallville the month before, Lois had declined Clark’s invitation to fly with him out to Smallville for Thanksgiving. She didn’t want to give Clark too much hope for a reconciliation by accepting such a date, even though he had phrased the invitation ‘as friends’. Since she had already told the Kents that she and Clark weren’t married, there was no need to keep pretending that they were. It was probably better to let Clark have some one-on-one bonding time with the Kents anyway. That was before she knew that the Kents had invited the Irigs to join them. She didn’t know, or care, what the Irigs thought of her and Clark’s relationship, but she was sure Clark could easily explain his wife’s absence with a ‘she had to work’ excuse.
Although, after having picked at a microwave turkey dinner and hearing how Superman had flown Clark out to Lawrence, where Martha picked him up, Lois wished she had changed her mind and gone. Apparently, Martha had prepared mountains of food in anticipation of all the men coming. She had sent Clark home with some leftovers for Lois and a note, which informed her that Lois was welcome at their home at any time, even if for no other reason than to even up the male/female ratio. Lois vowed Martha must have been using her powers of temptation to get Lois to forgive Clark by Christmas, so Lois could have more access to the love and home-cooked food that filled the Kent house. She had to admit, it was a pretty good tactic. Lois
had invited Clark to share the leftovers with her, hadn’t she?
According to Clark, people hunting for Superman souvenirs still plagued the Kents and Irigs. Despite the two dogs each, which both families had adopted, and the foot of snow on the ground, they kept finding the occasional ‘innocent’ trespasser, claiming to be merely hiking. That was the main reason why Superman didn’t take Clark directly to the farm. So much for trying to separate Superman from the Kents by having the Man of Steel pick up and leave with his ship before printing the article.
Martha’s pumpkin pie, which Clark said she had made from scratch, including homegrown pumpkin, was melt-in-her-mouth delicious. Even Clark had eaten a sliver, but that was because Martha had told him it was sugar free. Lois was doubtful about the truth of that statement, but if Clark couldn’t tell, she wasn’t going to rat Martha out and halt Clark’s progress.
When Clark left for the night, Lois had given him a kiss on the cheek and a hug, which she insisted that he pass on to Martha the next time he saw her. With his hand upon his cheek, he had stared at her with such longing for a moment, which had then stretched into two, before Lois had stepped away. She hadn’t wanted to ruin the evening by allowing Clark to try to kiss her… or not. She figured it best not to give him the opportunity… or her. She didn’t trust herself to do the right thing should he ever embrace her. She hated that with Clark the ‘right thing’ felt so wrong.
That haunted longing expression on his face, after Lois had kissed his cheek, had been so melancholy that, here she was weeks later, still trying to find meaning in it.
Maybe Clark had discovered that, like Superman, a relationship with Lois was just too dangerous for her due to the people who were after him. Lois scoffed at this thought. She had no idea what sudden transformation she had gone through that summer to become this woman men had this innate need to protect, as some fragile vase or flower, but it was becoming damn annoying. True, she had started dressing a bit more stylishly and femininely since she had met Superman, but if that were the case, she would be more than willing to return to her more masculine pantsuits. Although, frankly, in her opinion, that seemed a bit on the side of “blame the victim,” which was unfair to her, because she wasn’t a victim in any way, shape, or form.
It was continuing to be difficult to convince Clark and Superman of this though, especially after she had witnessed Vincent Winninger’s murder that morning. Clark had been following her around all day, like a puppy, afraid that some killer was after her. True, he had saved her from that skateboarder pushing her into traffic that afternoon, but there had been no need for Clark to send Superman or tell
him that she was in danger. The last thing she needed was him to hang out on her roof like some eagle hunting prey.
“That’s why you should let Clark watch you,” Superman said in response to her joke that he shouldn’t dress in such flashy outfits if he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. Personally, she liked the suit. It left both little and plenty to the imagination.
“Okay,” Lois replied, almost before she realized what she was doing. “Find Clark and tell him he can stay the night here… with me…
in my apartment.”
Shock, and then surprise, flashed quickly across his face.
“Unless you’d rather stay,” she murmured.
Superman pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “I have some errands to run,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Of course you do,” Lois said with a nod. Her brow furrowed in confusion as his words sunk in. “Errands?”
“I
do have a life, you know,” he countered.
“Do you?” she asked. It wasn’t entirely fair that he had a life, when she didn’t.
Superman cleared his throat. “Not really, no,” he said as she stepped closer. “A community watch meeting tonight and then prison tomorrow. That sort of thing.” He moved back towards the window he had entered.
“I hate that you’re alone,” she said.
“I’m not alone, Lois. I have you,” he replied, brushing her hair back behind her ear once more. “I’ll always have you.”
“And, yet, at the same time, you’ll never really have me,” she said, speaking the unspoken words hanging between them.
Superman approached one of her large windows, and instead of exiting, he shut it and locked it. He headed towards her front door. “Keep your doors and windows locked,” he said, disregarding her statement of the bald truth. “I’ll send Clark by shortly.”
She nodded, going to shut the door behind him as he left. He paused just outside her door.
“No, Lois, I’ll never really have you,” he echoed. “You belong with Clark.”
Lois grabbed his cape, dragged him back inside the apartment, and slammed her door. “I’m only going to say this once, Superman,” she said, pointing her finger in his face. “I don’t belong to Clark any more than I
belong to you or Luthor or any other man for that matter. I belong to
me and to me alone. Only I get to decide with whom I belong, got it?”
Superman took hold of her hand and placed a soft kiss on the tip of her pointed finger. “I meant only that he was your true soul mate, not me,” he said, brandishing her with one of his rare smiles, sad that it was. “I’m sorry, Lois.” He opened the door and left.
The Man of Steel thought Clark was her soul mate? Was that the real reason behind Superman’s belief that they shouldn’t have a relationship? Moreover, why had he phrased it in the past tense? “Was.” Did he think she was too stubborn to ever forgive Clark too? Men!
Lois was still frozen solid with disbelief when Clark arrived some minutes later.
He knocked once, then twice, then a third time, before Lois finally reached for the knob.
“Don’t do that,” Clark said with relief. “I almost burst in here.”
She smiled at that thought. Clark would probably do more damage to his shoulder than to the door.
“Superman said that you had changed your mind,” he continued, warily explaining the valise he had in his hand.
She stepped back, allowing him to enter. Clark glanced at her hard loveseats and nodded, accepting his fate.
“You may sleep in my guest room, Clark. It’s a bit messy, and the bed needs to be made, but…” Lois said with a shrug. “That’s what you get for peace of mind.”
“I appreciate it. I do,” Clark replied. “I’ll be able to sleep now, knowing that you’re safe.” He approached her tiny Christmas tree, stared at it for a moment, and then sighed.
Lois rolled her eyes. He had better not expect that they would spend Christmas together. She had a tradition of working on Christmas, and she wasn’t going to break it for any man, even one who erroneously thought he was her soul mate. “This way,” she said, heading down her hall.
***
Clark awoke at dawn, amazed he had gotten any sleep at all. Of course, with Lois’s heartbeat in the next room lulling him to sleep, how could he not? He could still hear it and he closed his eyes again to commit it to memory.
It wasn’t quite six a.m., and they had that Rainforest Consortium press conference at nine. Lois wasn’t up yet, and Clark liked starting the day with a shower. He stepped across the hall in his pajama bottoms and entered the bathroom. He had just stripped when he heard Lois’s alarm go off.
Oh, no. He decided to make it a super quick shower since he didn’t want Lois to walk in on him by accident. Clark turned the knobs and got a drizzle of water before the pipes started banging and the water stopped.
Now what?“Lois!” he called to her at the same moment he heard a knocking on the bathroom door and her grumbling, “Clark.”
“My apartment. I get the shower first,” she went on, calling through the door.
Clark grabbed the light blue towel off the rack, which she had designated “his” the night before, and wrapped it around his waist, coming to the door. “I’m sorry, Lois, I thought I’d be finished and dressed before your alarm went off,” he said. “Um… there’s something wrong with your water.”
“What did you do?” she groused.
“Nothing!”
“What’s wrong?” Lois asked.
“There isn’t any,” he said, bracing for her next outpouring of annoyance.
“Terrific. Looks like we’re showering at work, then. I’ll call my landlord,” she said from the other side of the door, and he could hear her walk off to her kitchen.
Clark exhaled in relief. He picked up his pajama bottoms and checked his face for obvious stubble. He would go back and heat vision it off at his place. Opening the bathroom door, he heard Lois on the telephone with the landlord’s wife and took the opportunity to cross over to his room, not really wanting Lois to catch him with just a towel around his waist. Once he was back in the guest room with the door shut, he spun into his suit. As he went to straighten his tie, he realized that in his haste to dress, he had spun back into the same clothes as from the day before. He shook his head. If he wore the same suit as the day before it wouldn’t be as noticeable if he changed the shirt and tie. Wouldn’t that start the rumor mill at work, if they ended up going straight into work? He had gotten as far as removing his tie and shirt, when he heard a knock on Lois’s front door.
“Mr. Tracewski, your wife said it would be a couple of hours,” Lois said to her visitor. “As you can see the water is not exactly working. Not that I’m complaining. I’ve not been able to…”
Clark buttoned up his clean shirt and stepped out of the room. “Good morning.”
Lois looked adorable in her old sleep shirt and shorts. It reminded him of when he used to rub vitamin E cream on her arm at night while she was recovering from being shot.
“Morning, Clark. Mr. Tracewski is putting the super back in superintendent,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him and laughing at her own pathetic joke. “You got dressed fast,” she observed, before turning back to her landlord.
Mr. Tracewski shot a panicked glance at Clark and inched backwards towards the door. Clark could hear the man’s heart rate accelerating.
“Mr. Tracewski, are you all right?” Lois asked, and then her eyes widened. “This isn’t what it looks like. Clark is my partner at work. He spent the night… in my spare room… as a guest. One time deal, I promise.”
Mr. Tracewski spun on his heel and ran from the room.
“That was odd,” Lois said, turning back to Clark. “You don’t think he thought you had moved in here, do you?” She shook her head with annoyance as if another problem had been added to her pile.
Clark shrugged. The landlord had certainly looked spooked though. “Why don’t you grab some clothes and come back to my place to shower and change? I’ll make breakfast,” he added in a coaxing tone.
Lois looked at her microwave clock. “I guess we have time, especially if we take my Jeep.” She headed towards her bedroom.
Meanwhile, Clark cleaned up the guest room, hung up the towel he had borrowed, and returned to the living room with his valise to wait. He sat down on one of her loveseats and ran his fingers over the material. He remembered that first time she had been able to convince Superman to enter her apartment, when Cat had sent her to the Sewage Reclamation Facility. Lois had twisted her ankle, and he had blown cold air onto it to make it feel better. They had sure come a long way since then.
With an overnight bag slung over her shoulder, and now dressed more warmly in sweats and her overcoat, Lois emerged from her bedroom. “So, Smallville, it looks like your bodyguarding services weren’t needed after all. Five bucks.”
His brow furrowed. “Did we have a bet?”
She scowled. “Didn’t I make a bet with you about this? Damn. Just my luck.”
On the front stoop, they saw Mr. Tracewski returning to the building.
“Mr. Tracewski, I just wanted to apologize for this morning,” Lois said to him. “I think you got the wrong idea.”
Her landlord looked at Lois with confusion. “It is I who should be apologizing, Ms. Lane. These pipes,” he said, gesturing in frustration. “I left first thing this morning to go the plumbing supply store to get this part…” He held up the part for her inspection. “I should have remembered that they don’t open until eight, and it was barely six when I got there.”
Clark distinctly remembered that Lois’s alarm clock had gone off at six that morning, shortly before Lois’s landlord had knocked on the door. “You were at the hardware store at six?” he asked.
“Fat lot of good it did me,” Mr. Tracewski grumbled. “I’m just getting back. I’ll have some breakfast and head right back out, Ms. Lane. I promise to have those pipes fixed before you return home tonight.”
“Thank you, Mr. Tracewski,” Lois said with a smile as the man continued up the stairs.
“Wait!” Clark called to him, knowing the answer to his question before he asked it. “Did you stop by Lois’s… er… Ms. Lane’s apartment earlier?”
Lois rolled her eyes and shook her head, appearing as if she was about to denounce him. “Of course…”
“No. As soon as I spotted the problem, I left for the plumbing supply store. I didn’t want to bother the tenants until I had definitive timetable for the repairs. Ms. Lane, is there something else wrong?” Mr. Tracewski asked in earnest.
“Weren’t you just up in my apartment, some ten minutes ago?” Lois sputtered, finally grasping at what Clark was suggesting.
“No, Ms. Lane, I was at the plumbing store. I haven’t seen you since you paid rent at the beginning of December,” Mr. Tracewski said. “Is there anything else?”
Lois slowly shook her head.
Mr. Tracewski nodded and continued inside the apartment building.
“Then who was…?” she said, flinging out her hand. “He looked exactly like Mr. Tracewski? How?… how?... how?”
Clark shrugged. It was indeed perplexing.
“I thought the killer was Dr. Hubert, and it wasn’t. I thought that was Mr. Tracewski in my apartment this morning, but it wasn’t him. I’m not going insane, so there must be someone going around impersonating people and…?” Lois said, thinking through the facts. “— and what? Killing them?” She paled. “Oh, God. Was that Dr. Winninger’s killer earlier?”
That seemed like a pretty good bet. Speaking of which… “What was that about five dollars?” Clark said, taking hold of Lois’s elbow and leading her towards her car’s passenger door. He loved being right almost as much as Lois did, but he just didn’t usually brag about it when it happened. Times like this, though, he would be more than happy to fork over five dollars for being wrong. “I’ll drive.”
She turned into his chest. “Clark, if you hadn’t been here…”
He wrapped his arms around her. “But I
was here,” he murmured against her hair. He even would have been here even if she hadn’t asked him inside.
Lois gulped. “Clark, if he can make himself up like anybody…” She snapped her fingers and pointed at Clark. “Sebastian Finn!”
“Who?” he wondered aloud.
“‘Mr. Make-Up’ Winninger called him. Winninger lived with this Finn guy and Trevino on some commune in the 60s. It all ties back to her. Dr. Winninger said something about not wanting her to take over the Rainforest Consortium. I need to get Jimmy on this right away, and we’ve got to get to that press conference,” she insisted.
“Lois, why don’t you come to my apartment, shower, and change first?” Clark suggested. “You can call Jimmy from there. It’s not even seven. I bet Jimmy isn’t even in yet.”
Lois grinned and climbed into her Jeep. “I’ll take
that bet.”
***
“I’ll wait,” Clark said, folding his winter coat over his arm and sitting down next to Lois’s desk.
“There’s no need. We caught Finn, Clark. He’s in jail,” Lois reminded him. “I’m fine. You can stop playing bodyguard now.” She waved him off with a ‘shoo’ gesture.
Clark opened his mouth to state his opinion and then thought better of it. She was right, as usual. Telling her he wanted to walk her home because he needed to spend as much time with her as possible, though true, did make him appear as if he were coming on too strong. He nodded. He only had two months left to spend with her. It would be best if he didn’t make his neediness
too obvious, or he wouldn’t get even that.
“Good night, Lois,” Clark said instead. It would be good practice letting go.
“Good night, Clark,” she replied with a flash of either concern or surprise, or maybe a combination of both. Had he been coming on too strong lately? “And don’t be hanging around outside waiting for me.” Lois didn’t even look up when she said that last part.
How did she know he was going to do that? Clark wondered as both his shoulders and face fell at being caught. He forced one foot in front of the other to the stairwell. He hated that he worried about Lois every moment he wasn’t with her, and even a few of the ones when they were together. She
was a grown woman after all, not a child. She
had survived twenty-five years without a Clark in this dimension before he arrived, and according to Herb, she would have survived just fine for several more. He had to come to grips with the fact that Lois could find her way home safely without him watching over her.
Clark stopped halfway down the stairs. Still… she
was Lois. He walked back up the stairs to the newsroom floor. It wasn’t until he was standing once more at the stairwell doorway and could see that Lois had indeed survived the last two minutes without him that he released his breath and continued down the stairs. He needed to trust Lois. She was only going to finish her work and then go home. Of course, someone could put a bomb on her car. Clark stopped. Moreover, someone could be waiting for her at her apartment. Had Trevino hired someone else after Superman had caught Finn?
He groaned and turned to climb the stairs once more.
***
“Big story, huh?” Cat asked from down at her desk.
Lois glanced up and saw that Cat was once more wearing less than a dress. Couldn’t the woman do her job
while clothed? “Uh-huh,” she replied non-committedly. Of course, it was a big story if Lois was working on it.
“You must have been terrified,” Cat said.
“It was a little scary,” Lois admitted. She really didn’t need this now.
“You want to talk scary? I covered the governor’s wife’s speech today at the museum volunteer’s luncheon.
Her dress…” Cat said with a grimace and a shiver. “
That was scary.”
Lois nodded in agreement and hoped that Cat would leave her alone. She had just gotten rid of one hovering co-worker; she didn’t need another. She wanted to finish her work and head home. Paranoia was exhausting. Of course, Mr. Make-Up had been able to get into her apartment that morning dressed up as Lois’s landlord, but Finn had been caught. She would be fine.
“Hey, but you can tell me,” Cat said, walking slowly from her desk and over to Lois’s until she was leaning up against it, her arms cross. “You were really scared, right?”
“Like I said, ‘a little’,” Lois replied, not encouraging her in the conversation.
“A lot,” Cat corrected.
“Little.”
“Lot!”
Lois threw down her pencil and turned to the gossip. “Why is it so important to you that I admit how scared I was?”
“It just makes you more human, all right?”
Whatever. Lois thought with a roll of her eyes, picking up her pencil and returning to her notes.
Cat sat down on her desk. “Okay, I write as well as you do. I’m vastly more fun at parties, but you are the star here. Chief’s little favorite,” Cat said snidely. “In on all the action. Oh, and when you get in trouble look who’s hanging around. Not only a cute guy, but a god in a cape!”
Lois felt the need to respond, but Cat interrupted her with an upheld hand.
“You asked, I’m answering,” Cat said with patent annoyance.
O-K-A-Y, Lois thought.
“Lois,” Cat sighed with exasperation. “You’ve got something that the rest of us just don’t have, all right? So, it would be nice, for once, just… just… just
for once, that you can admit that you have bad days, and problems, and fears, just like the rest of us!” She stomped to the coat rack that the two of them shared, and pulled off her animal skin coat, draping it over her shoulders.
Cat thought Lois had ‘something’ that the rest of them didn’t have? Cat envied her? Cat, whom she had always thought hated her, actually thought Lois acted super human? “Cat!” Lois called to her. Was that really what her co-workers thought of her? Would it kill her to admit that she had been scared? “I was a lot scared.”
Cat smiled, not a ‘gotcha’ smile, but a ‘thank you’ smile, a smile of friendship, and headed up the stairs towards the elevators. Cat wasn’t so bad. Wow, that was shocking news. Clark always defended his friendship with the gossip queen, but Lois had never given it any credence. She assumed it was some male hormonal thing, but maybe not. Perhaps Cat wasn’t as bad as Lois thought. Hmmmm. Who knew? It was just like Clark to see through someone’s façade and see the real person underneath.
Her phone rang. “Lois Lane,” she answered.
*
Clark was standing in the doorway of the stairwell when Cat passed on her way to the elevators.
“Go home, Clark,” Cat told him. “Give Lois her space.”
“You’re right, but…” He just couldn’t walk away. Not now. In two months maybe, but not now.
Cat stopped and approached him, pushing him back out into the stairwell. “Of course I’m right. Stop it! You’re hovering.” She rolled her eyes. “If it were physically possible you’d be doing it literally,” she said, and then winked.
“I know,” he agreed, and looked away. Lois
had made him hover in the past. Now he was too depressed to float with happiness.
“She’s fine.”
He tossed his hand towards the newsroom. “You heard her, she just admitted to being scared.”
Cat set her hand on his arm, pushing it down. “Just proves she’s human after all.”
Clark gave her a sour look. “Of course she’s human.”
“Stop dwelling, Clark. Lois will forgive you. So, you lied about your past. Show me a man, and I’ll show you someone who’s lied about his past,” Cat replied. “It’s your future that’s important, and Lois is your future, right?”
Clark hadn’t told Cat that he was leaving. How could he? He doubted, if the Clark from this dimension was anything like he had been back in his old dimension, that they had been as close of friends as he and Cat had become. He was sure that Lois’s Clark would have been better at hiding his ‘I’m totally in love with you’ face, and Cat never would have figured out
his secret identity. Clark hadn’t told anyone else. He couldn’t tell the Kents either. How could he tell them that he was working on a way to rescue their true son, because if something happened and it didn’t work out, he didn’t want them to regret that he was the one who still remained. If it
did work, none of them would remember him anyway.
“I can only wish…” he murmured, feeling guilty at the words the moment he spoke them. How could he wish that Lois wouldn’t be with the man with whom she belonged, the man who completed her, the man who would love her almost as much as Clark himself did, the man who would finally make Lois happy.
Cat play punched him in the shoulder. “Buck up. Have you figured out a nice Christmas gift for her yet? Because I’ve got to tell you ‘lamp’ doesn’t really spell romance in my book.”
Clark sighed. The lava lamps, he had forgotten about them. He had been so hopeful that everything would turn out just right when he had bought them. Now, he knew their light would never glow.
Cat wrapped her fingers around his arm and guided him down the stairs. “Clark, do you have a place to celebrate Christmas? Nobody should be alone for the holidays. I know that you’ve become friendly with this childless couple back in Kansas, whose son’s identity you stole, but would you like to spend Christmas with me and my family, here in Metropolis?” she asked.
His jaw dropped in shock. Cat was inviting him home for Christmas?
“Not for Christmas Day, of course, otherwise my family would think we were more than friends, and let me tell you, I don’t need that idea to enter into my mother’s head. She’s given up all hope on grandchildren from me, and I’d like it to remain that way. No, I mean, for Christmas Eve dinner. We all get together. My parents, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, everyone. Friends are always welcome. It’s a huge potluck; everyone brings a dish. You could make something Kryptonian. Unless you ate bugs or something icky like that back home. Do you even celebrate Christmas or something like it? I know to fit in with your cover story, you probably do, but do you know what it entails? This is what we do…” Cat continued to yammer on about the Grant family Christmas traditions until they were outside on the sidewalk and a block away from the Daily Planet. She stopped and patted him on the arms. “You’ll be okay now, Clark. Go home.”
Cat was right. As soon as he was a block away, the anxiety that had been building inside of him slid back to its normal level. He kissed her cheek. “I don’t deserve a friend as great as you, Cat.”
She grinned. “Sure you do. You deserve a girlfriend as great as me, but I’m currently unavailable. This is my busy time of year. I have a charity event to attend every evening, sometimes two, sleep in every morning, and that’s because I don’t rest most nights.” She bounced her eyebrows in case he missed her blatant explanation. “Oh, I’ve got a new tape for you,” she said, dipping her hand into her bag and removing a videotape.
Clark took the tape with trepidation. “Is this one like the last one, on the heat wave? Because, personally, that one made me uncomfortable.”
Cat grinned and patted his cheek. “That’s what I love about you, Clark. No matter who you are, you’re always
you.”
“Who else would I be?” he countered.
“No one else, I hope. Don’t worry. This one is more up your alley. It’s about truth and justice, a court case,” she reassured him, yet somehow he was still unsettled. It was probably the sly glint in her winking eye.
“A court case?” he asked skeptically.
“A theft.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay.”
“It takes a little while to get there, but that’s the meat of it. It will get your mind off your brunette troubles,” Cat went on.
“I don’t want my mind off Lois.”
“Of course you don’t, but for your sanity, and hers, it would be a good idea to do so every once and a while,” she recommended. “I keep hoping to have some development on who Luthor does his horizontal rumba with, but the man’s slicker than oil and not in a good for the gossip business sort of way. I don’t know how he does it. I know he must be doing almost as many women as I do men, but not one of them is talking,” Cat told him, as she lifted a hand to flag down a passing cab. It pulled instantly over to the curb. “I wonder if that’s because he had them sign a non-disclosure form or because he’s so bad that they all feel sorry for him.”
Clark couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped at that explanation as he waved good-bye to her. After what had happened with Monique Kahn, Clark was happy that Cat’s investigation into Luthor’s sex life had stalled. More than happy.
***
Lois set down the phone. Barbara Trevino had just threatened her. Not in so many words, but she sure had implied it. Moreover, Lois had just sent Clark home.
Good going there, Lane. Not that she was scared. Of course not. It was just an idle threat. Lois was threatened by the people she wrote about all the time. She was fine. She took a deep breath. Fine.
Just as she told Cat, she wasn’t scared. Finn was in jail, and it was doubtful that Barbara Trevino would come after her personally, being who the woman was, but still…
Lois picked up her phone, wondering if Clark was home yet. Then she set it back down again. She was being paranoid. Barbara Trevino wasn’t coming after her. She was only trying to scare Lois, and it wasn’t going to work because Lois didn’t scare easily. No, not at all. She was fine. More than fine. A lot fine.
Crap.
Suddenly, Lois didn’t want to be in the office any longer, but she didn’t want to go home either. Sebastian Finn had found her at home. She could go to Clark’s apartment. She dropped her head into her palm. She
couldn’t go to Clark, not after all she had said about not needing him to protect her. No, she could handle this. She was just nervous, that was all.
Of course, if she had
another reason to go to Clark’s besides needing his protection, she wouldn’t feel so weak about going there. She could
tell Clark that was the reason… well, not in so many words… but it was a great excuse to go to Clark’s apartment. She nodded as she started to pack her briefcase. Yes, she would go to Clark’s apartment. He would let her stay the night, right? Of course, he would. He’d have her move in, if he could. Moreover, while he was asleep, she would be able to search his apartment for clues on his identity. It wasn’t like she was going to get any sleep anyway. That would be the true reason for her going to Clark’s, not because she was scared, because she wasn’t scared.
Yeah, right, Lane.***End of Part 65*** Part 66 Where do you think Lois will spend the night? Post
Comments here.
