A/N: This story is part 2 in the Pizza Run series and directly follows
Pizza Run.
“Clark…?” she said as neutrally as possible.
Clark stopped in his tracks and tipped his head, clearly hearing something in her voice besides a greeting.
“Where’s the pizza?” she asked dangerously.*****
Clark’s eyes widened, as he stopped dead in his tracks.
“Oh, uh, they, um— it was going to take a while, so I thought I’d come back and just, uh, review a couple more pages, you know, since you were worried about getting through it all tonight, and then it’s just a few blocks down, so I thought I’d just go back and pick it up.”
Silence.
Clark looked at Jimmy.
Jimmy watched Lois.
Clark looked back to her.
The clock on the wall had never ticked so loudly.
“So…” she said calmly.
“So…?” he asked, as if waiting for a guillotine to fall.
“So go review them,” she said, gesturing to his desk.
“Oh! Right! Yeah, I, uh, I will,” he stumbled, making an attempt at a partial smile.
Lois watched him, unmoving, as he crossed past her back to his desk and sat down.
He picked up a page and gestured at her with it, proof that he was reviewing, an uneasy smile on his face, before looking down at the page.
Lois continued to watch him as he scanned down the first page on his desk and shifted to the second.
Then she walked purposefully to her own desk, heels clicking with every step, and sat.
Jimmy looked from Lois to Clark and back again.
The tension in the room somehow escalated in the silence.
“Lois, aren’t you going to—“ the gopher started.
“Jimmy, don’t you have a bank account you’re supposed to be hacking into?” she interrupted sweetly.
Jimmy stopped speaking immediately and tucked his head down, focus diligently on his computer screen.
Clark looked back and forth between them before he, too, directed his focus back to his own desktop.
A few minutes went by.
Every person in the room counted them.
“Uh, Lois?” Clark finally ventured.
She looked up at him.
“Yes, Clark?”
“You ok?”
She considered. “Shouldn’t I be?”
“Yeah,” he said with a hesitant smile. "Just checking.”
They all went back to their re-election research.
The clock continued to tick.
The scanner, which had been quiet, suddenly crackled to life. “All available units, there is a 211A at Fen Wick Jewelry and Gold on 3rd Avenue.”
Lois froze, but Clark immediately stood, his chair scraping the floor overly loudly in the pregnantly quiet room.
“That pizza must be ready by now. I’ll just head over and pick it up.”
Jimmy smirked, but smothered it succinctly before looking back over at Lois.
“What was the name of the place?” Lois asked casually, her eyes tracking him across the newsroom.
“Oh, uh, I can’t remember. I just remembered it had a red sign,” he said, heading up the ramp toward the stairs and elevator bay.
“Where did you say it was?” she followed up.
“Just uh, a couple of blocks down.” He gestured weakly in one direction, then the opposite, backing toward the stairwell door.
“Two blocks down?” Lois tried to pinpoint.
“Three, um, maybe four. I’ll be right back, before you know it,” Clark said as he escaped out the door.
As soon as the door clanged shut, Lois was on her feet.
“Jimmy, get me the number and address of every pizza place in a six block radius.”
“What?!”
“Just do it!” she barked.
“Lois, this is crazy! What are we going to do, spy on Superman?”
“No, we’re going to catch him. And we need to hurry up if we’re going to make it before he gets back!”
“Lois…” Jimmy groaned.
“Get a move-on!” she ordered, picking up her phone and punching in numbers.
***
Fifteen minutes later, they’d managed to go through Jimmy’s entire list of Italian restaurants in the nearby area.
Not one of them was still open at one in the morning.
Lois listened to the voicemail for “The Mozzarella Fellas,” which was confirming, in a heavy and cheesily false Italian accent, that the last pizza place near them, seven blocks out, had also closed two hours ago.
As she hung up, Jimmy piped up, “Lois, what are you going to do?”
She smiled at him like a cat that had gotten the canary. “I’m not sure just yet. What would you do if you found out your best friend had been lying to you for over a year?”
“I guess I’d want to know if it was a good reason,” Jimmy replied warily.
She seemed to think about that.
“Well, that’s what
you would do. That’s not what I would do.”
He gulped at her tone. “What would
you do?”
Lois leaned back in her chair, still smiling in a feral way, as if she had feathers between her teeth.
“I think I’d make him pay,” she said, as if relishing the idea.
Jimmy winced.
At just that moment, the elevator dinged.
Jimmy’s eyes shot to the opening double doors.
Clark stepped out, pizza in hand.
Jimmy groaned out loud.
“You ok, Jimmy?” Clark asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Jimmy said, off Lois’ look. “Just fine.”
“Have any trouble with the pizza, partner?” Lois asked with a saccharine smile.
“Uh, nope. It was all ready when I got there.”
“Oh, well, that’s great! Isn’t that great, Jimmy?” she asked enthusiastically.
“The greatest,” Jimmy answered without matching her level of enthusiasm.
“Remind me where you went again?” she asked Clark, who was headed down the ramp into the bullpen.
“Oh, it was a place just a few blocks down.”
“The Mozzarella Fellas?” she asked.
“Uh, no,” he hedged.
“Mama’s Pizzeria?” she prodded.
“Ah, n—nope,” he stuttered.
“De Luca’s?”
He shook his head.
“The Mona Pizza? Dough Re Mi? Slice of Life? Little Italy? Pie Hole? Slice, Slice, Baby? Cheesy Does It?”
“Uh, wow, Lois,” Clark said, depositing the box on his desk. “You’re really up on the local pizzerias, huh?”
“I order out a lot,” she demurred before zeroing back in. “So which one was it?”
“Um, I’m not sure I remember the name.”
“Maybe one of them sounds familiar?”
“Not—not really,” he said, the words tripping off his tongue.
“Maybe you could look at the receipt?” she suggested helpfully.
“The receipt?”
Was his a voice a little higher than it had been?
“Yeah,” she pushed, as if she’d hit on something. “The receipt. I’m
sure the name would be on the receipt.”
There was a stack of napkins still in Clark’s palm and his hand tensed around it.
“Uh, I don’t think I grabbed it,” he stuttered.
“That’s a shame,” she replied dryly, intentionally not looking at the pile of napkins she was now sure the receipt was hiding under. “Then how will we know what we owe you?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said at once. “It’s on me.”
“Well, that’s just so nice,” she said, nodding. Her eyes slid over to Jimmy. “Jimmy, isn’t that
so nice?”
“Definitely nice,” Jimmy echoed, looking for all the world like a kid in class that didn’t want to be called on.
She stood and sauntered over to Clark’s desk.
“This place must be really authentic,” she guessed.
Because if there wasn’t a pizza place open in Metropolis, she had a good guess as to the next logical place to find a pizza was.
Clark nervously ran his hand though his hair and she had to force her facial muscles to remain still.
“Why do you say that?” he asked in a tight tone.
“The box,” she said innocently. “All the writing on it is in Italian.”
Clark’s eyes dropped down to the box in front of him.
Behind him, Jimmy closed his eyes and dropped his head in commiseration.
“Huh,” Clark said. “They must have really gone all out on marketing.”
He looked back up at her, presumedly to see if she bought it, and she had to resist the urge to laugh.
“Must have,” she repeated, eyes not leaving his.
“Uh, anyway,” Clark said, opening the pizza box. “Come and get it.”
Jimmy was beside them in a flash, obviously interested in a pizza direct from the place where it had first originated.
“Cool! Pepperoni! Thanks, CK!”
Lois shot him a quelling look.
He grabbed two slices and high-tailed it back to his desk.
“Half pepperoni, and half pepper and mushroom,” she observed, looking down at the pizza he’d brought.
“Uh, yeah, I got what I knew you guys liked.”
For some reason, that just made her even more mad.
She reached for the stack of napkins, aiming for the whole bunch so that she could have the satisfaction of uncovering the receipt.
But, reading at least some of her intent, he pulled one off the top of the pile and handed it to her.
Not wanting to even look at him anymore, she took the napkin, snatched a slice and walked back to her desk fuming.
Dropping into her chair, she bit into the pizza like it had betrayed her.
It tasted so good that she nearly forgave him on the spot.
Instead, she settled for biting back an actual moan at the perfectly seasoned sauce and gratuitously creamy cheese.
“Wow, that’s a great slice!” Jimmy exclaimed somewhere in the background.
She didn’t even have the ire left to shoot him the look she usually reserved for traitors.
“Glad you like it Jimmy,” Clark replied to him.
He’d probably gotten them his own favorite pizza, knowing Clark.
Lois swallowed and took another bite, grudgingly letting herself be soothed by the best version of her favorite comfort food she’d ever had.
“Is it ok, Lois?” Clark asked tentatively.
She opened her eyes, pulled out of the overly indulgent moment she was sharing with her straight-from-Italy-slice-of-pizza and looked at him.
He was really asking.
About the pizza.
But also about the tension he’d felt from her since he’d gotten back from putting out that fire.
God, the man had just put out an apartment fire, responded to a burglary alarm, and then gotten her the best pizza she’d probably ever had.
Her emotions were now betraying her, too.
Because this was
Superman.
But it was
also, apparently, Clark.
“It’s ok,” she allowed, letting him off the hook.
He smiled, genuinely for the first time in hours, and she took another bite of her perfectly palatable pizza.
Maybe there were some perks to having Superman in the newsroom, she decided.
She wouldn’t make him miserable tonight.
In a good mood, she knew, Clark would get much further in reading through all those boring financial documents that she hated putting so much time into.
And having resolved their tension, he might even talk himself into using super speed.
She’d have to keep an eye on him, surreptitiously, of course.
Lois flicked a glance at Jimmy, who was looking relaxed until he caught the glint in her eye.
She wouldn’t torture Clark tonight, she decided, thinking ahead to the long run.
Because there was always tomorrow.
*****
