Welcome back, Janet! We haven't see much of you since you finished your long and brilliant "The Girl Next Door", where Lois as well as Clark is from Krypton. That is a wonderful story!

And this one is great too. I had this huge smile on my face as I read it, at least as I read most of it:

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After all, how exquisite is a quote like this one?

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She was furious.

Furious with them for grabbing her.

Furious with herself for walking into a trap.

And furious that they'd gagged her right after they'd grabbed her.

It was one thing for these louts to tie her to a chair – that was bad enough, but to take away her ability to express her opinion about it…!
clap clap

Or this one?

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Even so, uncharacteristic hesitation had kept her from yelling immediately. And from yelling not-so-immediately, as well.

And here Clark was always accusing her of jumping in without checking the water level first.

Well, she'd stopped and checked it this time. It looked deep enough, but the guys who'd filled the pool – to carry the metaphor to a totally annoying degree – looked awfully shady. Like they'd stolen the water and somehow just made the pool look deep enough to dive into.

Oh, for God's sake – enough about pools and water. Although she was certainly going to point out to Clark when she saw him that she did too check the water level first…
clap

Or this one:

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Lois Lane was not used to inactivity. She preferred to be doing something - anything - chasing a story, getting into Clark's stash of Double Fudge Crunch Bars, which she knew he kept for her, or… cleaning her grout, or whatever.
clap clap

Or this?

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Kissing Clark made her feel exactly the way heroine in those romance novels she read clandestinely, in the safety of her apartment late at night, felt when the hero kissed her. The way Lois was convinced didn't actually happen in real life. Well, the way she had been convinced didn't exist, before Clark had come along and changed her mind.

If he ever did kiss her for real, she probably wouldn't object very much.

If at all.

Okay, that was enough thoughts along these lines. She yanked her attention back to the immediate moment, where it was not Clark who knelt at her feet.

It was Superman – and no matter how kind he was, no matter how much he might consider her his friend, or she his, he was still the remote superhero who belonged to the world. Who did not kneel at her feet.
notworthy sloppy

All these quotes are so pricelessly, darlingly, perfectly Lois!!!! Ah, happy sigh. I just love them!!!!

After this, however, I enjoyed myself slightly less. I think you redefined kryptonite radiation as well as other forms of radiation to us, so that your ideas don't square with what most of us may think that we know about Superman. I would have sworn, for example, that Superman could fly straight into a nuclear furnace and remain totally unaffected by the gamma radiation blasting him, and yet exposure to kryptonite, which is mostly harmless to humans, is deadly to him. But that is not what you told us here. Oh, well. I found it a bit confusing, but really it was just another take on what hurts Superman, I suppose!

I'm afraid I didn't like this very much:

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Was she angry? The inclination was there, but really, why should he have told her? Just because he was her best friend, and they hung out together all the time, and they worked together, and… There were so many reasons why he should have told her. But she could see why he hadn't, really. As embarrassing as it was to admit, she hadn't exactly made it easy for him. She cringed a bit, remembering how she'd almost… fawned over Superman while dismissing Clark, especially in those early days.
Well, sigh. I've spent so many years being angry at Clark for lying to Lois, so I always want her to feel at least some kind of anger when she finds out how he's been deceiving her.

So all in all, the ending here wasn't altogether my cup of tea...

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(I found this when I googled "Ann's cup of tea", so...)

...but the first half of this fic was like a magnificent meal at a lovely five star gourmet restaurant!!!

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Ann