Hi Evie!
Today might just be businesses usual for him. But for her,
/Psst/ business, singular?
who could apparently fabricate falsehoods as easily as flying.
So, best not sleep with him. He might misappropriate story notes or find his interest wander to more flaxen-haired maidens who’s body shape indicates a greater propensity for producing and nourishing healthy offspring?
And the unsteadiness resulting from that fracture made her furious.
Nice angle. She’s mad he disrupted her sense of how the world works, not because of the actual falsehood.
“I’m using it,” she replied tersely.
Translation: I’m fine.
.
.
.
Translation: You’re in deep doodoo. Figure it out fast.
buried under a cascade of other folders and loose papers.
“You’re using it?” he asked, clearly seeing that she wasn’t.
She needs it to prop up the other papers.
She’d succeeded.
He was inconvenienced.
It wasn’t enough.
She wanted him as unsteady as she felt.
Vindictive Lois is fun! She could try to be more Cat-ish, that would…inconvenience him a lot.
“You have a stain on you shirt,”
/Psst/ your
“You have a stain on you shirt,” she said lightly, executing her premeditated plan before he was out of earshot.
No way, she actually is going to Cat him?
“It’s right there,” she said, gesturing to the center of his chest where the red ’S’ crest usually sat.
Oh. Wait, is she being coy?
“I thought I saw a red patch there. I guess I just imagined it.”
She would have missed the flash of panic across his eyes if she hadn’t been looking for it.
Oh. Also, she could send Jimmy on a coffee run, plunk herself into Clark’s lap, and start kissing him while unbuttoning his shirt. This would result in the most interesting conundrum for Clark.
It looked like the Man of Steel didn’t have nerves of steel.
/Points at Cat-strategy/
She smirked and decided to make it a full barrage of unsettling him, instead of drawing it out the way she’d planned.
Poor dear. You almost have to feel sorry for him. Almost.
“Where was that Chinese place you picked food up from?”
Uuu…just around the corner from the Italian place.
“I was going to order Chinese for lunch,” she said. “What was that restaurant’s name?”
Master Foo Man Chew’s House of Delights. Be careful not to order at Master Foo Man Choo’s House of Delights. They…cater to a different appetite.
“Right,” she said, switching tactics. “Anyway, where was it? I’ll just go walk over.”
Possible, given how she can walk on water as far as Clark’s concerned.
It was getting easier to see the lies.
“Do you have it?” she asked.
“Huh?” he asked, stopping just before he could pass her by.
“Do you have it with you? Your gas bill?” she spelled out.
“Oh, yeah, right here,” he replied, patting his jacket’s breast pocket, which she was sure was empty.
On the plus side, with this much practice she can be sure he won’t be able to lie to her about important stuff, like what he does with blondes.
“You don’t even know what I want,” she said, trying to hold back a laugh.
Delectable foods she can pop into her mouth with her fingers so she can then proceed to lick those fingers clean of sauce while looking at him through lidded eyes.
Run away, little boy, she thought triumphantly.
Title! The title hunt continues!
Oh, this was going to be fun.
Such a meta thing so say by the author!
That look on his face when she’d said she saw red across his chest was going to get her through at least the next hour of reading through the teeny, tiny font on the account reconciliations she was parsing.
It’s fun how she uses torturing him to give herself pick-me-ups. It’s also very mean of her. Should we feel sorry for him? /considers earlier remark/ Apparently not.
“Or maybe that Bruce Wayne is actually the Batman and you’ve tracked him to his super-secret Gotham lair?”
/watches as Jimmy freezes and stammers/
LOIS:
“You’d have figured it out soon!” he said desperately.
Actually…
“You’re Lois Lane!” he said encouragingly. “Of course you would have figured it out! I even thought you already knew, remember?”
Not helping yourself there!
“Oh, I remember alright,” she shot back, choosing to start ignoring him again.
See?
She forced down the grin. She wasn’t trying. She was succeeding. And she was about to get the best shrimp shumai she’d ever had out of it, to boot.
She really should be hosted at a criminal mastermind exhibition.
Something more important than what I’m doing, or what you’re doi”—at her sharp glare, he redirected his sentence—“something no one else can do.”
Also, does this mean Lois now gets to be mad at Jimmy not just because he’s more perceptive than her but also because Jimmy’s more reasonable?
“You’re comparing what Clark does with what Luthor did?” Jimmy asked incredulously, voice low and eyes wide.
They both want Lois Lane to be their girlfriend. They both are tall and have a full head of dark hair. They both jump off the balconies of tall buildings. They both have a strong interest in Kryptonite. They both place no value in money itself. They both got the key to the city.
Jimmy shook his head but rebut didn’t her.
/psst/ did you mean “didn’t rebut her”?
She dropped her focus back down to the page of rows and rows of numbers, all lined up like they were in front of a firing squad.
It’s cool how you use her accounts sheet as an anchor and emotional mirror.
Sullenly, she realized that it wasn’t as good as she remembered.
What’s up with that? Is it a metaphor? Is it her knowing the truth behind the mystery tainting the taste? Is her ire actually changing her perception?
It was some kind of garlic-infused, shredded pork and a thick noodle, all smothered in a lush and spicy, almost too spicy, chili oil. It was savory and heavenly, and her mouth actually watered as she ate it.
Not a metaphor. Not a metaphor. Not a metaphor!
Clark had said he’d known what she’d liked. She wasn’t sure she could have ordered whatever this was, and it was exactly what she’d wanted.
Another great metaphor!
She didn’t need to keep to tormenting him today if she didn’t feel like it, she decided reasonably.
The “reasonably” makes it so deep. And so much fun!
She'd come up with a new game plan for tomorrow.
Another fun outing!
Michael
