Summary: Thanks to a slow news week, Lois has had way too much time on her hands. Clark quickly finds himself in over his head when her game of twenty questions starts to get a little too close to the truth.
Author’s Note: Happy One Year Anniversary of Ficlet Friday! In celebration, I present a not-so-ficlet ficlet! A doublet? Thanks to KSaraSara for the read through and encouragement! And thank you to everyone who has kept Ficlet Friday going for a whole year! Hope y’all enjoy. Leading Questions
By Bek“It doesn’t make sense, Clark. I mean what
does he do when he’s not making a rescue? He can’t live in that suit. He has to sleep, eat?”
Clark groaned inwardly and tried not to roll his eyes. For two weeks now, Lois had been going on and on, insistent that Superman
had to have some sort of other life. He could blame it on the slow news week—or month, really. It had both given Lois’s mind time to wander and left his alter ego with not much really to do. And his lack of appearances had further added to her speculation.
The truth, however, was that he’d made some random comment one afternoon. Something about the fact that Superman couldn’t be rescuing people 24/7. And she’d latched onto that and hadn’t let go. Typical Mad Dog style.
He wanted to kick himself. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair, then looked up at her. She’d settled on the corner of his desk like she sometimes did, her legs crossed and a pencil tucked behind her ear.
“You know, Lois, maybe you’re right. Maybe he lives most of his life doing…something else,” he said. And he wanted to kick himself again. Why would he even give her mind more fodder? Validate her argument?
“Right? Maybe…” Her eyebrows scrunched together as she seemed to drift off into some deep thought, and he had a hard time concentrating for a moment, too distracted by the way her fingers rested on her knee. He tore his eyes away and looked up.
“Maybe…?”
“Well, if he’s not out rescuing people all day, and he needs a place to go to sleep and eat, and… What do you think Superman would do as a career? But…oh, he’d have to have…a, uh, real name—he didn’t call himself ‘Superman’ before I—”
Clark coughed. Why? Why, why, why?
“Before?” He pretended to be uninterested, and he lifted his coffee mug to take a sip.
“Oh my God.”
He paused with the mug just millimeters from his lips, raising one eyebrow.
“What if he didn’t just show up on Earth that same day he arrived in Metropolis? What if—what if he grew up here? And then he just decided to start helping publicly that day of the Messenger launch?”
The cup shattered in Clark’s hand, and he pushed his chair back and jumped to his feet as coffee spilled all over his shirt and slacks. With a heavy sigh, Clark looked up at Lois.
“Uh, defective cup, I guess?”
She frowned and then stood and moved over to his side of the desk, and together they worked to pick up the pieces of the broken mug. Clark then excused himself to go clean up in the bathroom.
When he came back out a few minutes later, Lois was still sitting at his desk, only now, she was seated in his chair and seemed to be rifling through his drawers, looking for something.
“Lois?”
“Hmm?”
“Lose something? In my desk?”
She finally looked up at him, but the fire in her eyes was a bit intense—and intoxicating—and he stepped backward involuntarily.
“You can contact him, I’ve seen it,” she said. “He must have…a cell phone?”
Clark groaned audibly this time, shaking his head. “Lois, if he had a cell phone, where would he carry it? It’s not like his suit has any pockets.”
“Oh, right.” She sighed and closed the drawer she’d been looking through. But her thoughtful expression lingered, and Clark found himself holding his breath, wondering…what he’d said this time. When her eyes lit up and she tilted her head and grinned at him, his stomach sank. “And
that only supports my assertion that he doesn’t wear the suit all the time!”
Of course.
She stood up, still smiling, and took a small step toward him. “You have his number? How would you contact him otherwise?”
“Lo-is, can I just…get back to work now? Please? And…don’t you have
something to do? Didn’t Perry assign you to cover, I dunno, the Home and Garden Convention?” It was a good attempt at a redirect, he thought. But Lois set her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows.
“Really, Clark. Do you call him?” She stepped closer again. “And…how did
you get his number? Why wouldn’t he give it to me?”
“No, I don’t call him. No, I don’t have it. And if you want to know, you’ll have to ask him yourself,” Clark retorted, feeling a bit irritated now as he moved around Lois so he could get back to his chair.
“Ask him myself?”
Oh God, he’d really just said that, hadn’t he? He closed his eyes and slumped back into his chair, hoping for some sort of emergency to get him out of this.
“You know, that’s a good idea, Clark. I mean, he’s a friend, right? It’s not… God, is it too personal? To ask him those questions? I guess if he thinks so, he can always just say he’s not comfortable telling me. But—”
He heard her inhale sharply, and her hands set down loudly on his desk, making him jump…again. His eyes darted up to meet hers. “What now, Lois?”
“You know his name!”
Maybe he should just tell her the truth to get finished with his interrogation. Yep. That’s what he should do. So why was he shaking his head?
“Lois, his name is Superman. You named him, remember?”
“That’s the whole point, Clark!”
He glanced around, suddenly aware that the volume of her voice had increased substantially. But thankfully, everyone seemed to be either used to her ranting or too into what they were working on to care much.
She straightened back up and continued. “He’s what, your age?”
“Yeah, pretty much. So?”
She shot him a fiery glare. “Is he?”
“Is he…what?”
“Your age? Do you know?”
“Lois, how would I know?”
“I don’t know, you just seem to know things!”
He sighed and ran his hand through his hair, then took a steadying breath and decided to try a different approach. Calm and logical. “He seems like he’s close to my age. That’s what I meant.”
Lois scowled at him, but then took her spot again on the corner of his desk.
“So, if he’s your age, where did he grow up?”
“He said he was from a planet called Krypton, right?”
“But he looks and acts one hundred percent human, like he was raised here. On Earth. He’s familiar with…everything. Like he’s just like me…or you.” She let out a sort of whimsical sigh. “Well, I mean, he’s more like you, of course, because he’s a man, and—”
She stopped a bit abruptly, and Clark glanced up at her. She was staring at him, her cheeks a bit flushed, and when their eyes met, she looked away quickly and jumped up off his desk. He didn’t even have time to ask what she’d been about to say before she mumbled something under her breath and then took off toward her desk, grabbed her coat, and hurried up the ramp toward the elevators.
Thoroughly confused, but also relieved that the current “interrogation” was over, Clark slumped into his chair and let out a long, shaky breath. He couldn’t believe how close he’d been to just hauling her off to the nearest conference room and telling her the truth. And he knew if he was going to get through the rest of the day, he’d better learn to keep his mouth shut. Almost thirty years of keeping his secret, and she was about to force it out of him just by sheer persistence.
He shook his head and then reached over to turn his computer on, hoping that maybe he could get his work done early and take off before she returned for round two.
***
Apparently, Lois had other plans. It wasn’t twenty minutes later when he heard her heartbeat, fast and unsteady, coming off the elevator. His eyes darted up from his computer screen and almost immediately locked with hers. They had that same intensity they’d had earlier, and he suddenly wanted to run—or fly—away as fast as he could.
But when she grinned at him and then motioned to the conference room, he just sighed, resigned himself to having to listen to whatever she had to say, and then stood and headed over to meet her.
No sooner had he closed the door behind him than she launched into…whatever it was—a ramble? a rant? a rambling rant?
“Okay, so, here’s what we know—well, really, what I know because
you know more than you’re telling me, and I guess I can respect that since obviously, you’re closer to Superman than me, and you’re probably just trying to be a good friend and respect his privacy—which I totally get, and I can’t
really be mad about, I guess.” She paused only long enough to take a breath, and then she recited…a long list of every little hint she’d ever heard about Superman’s…personal life.
Clark had to admit that she had…an excellent memory of anything even remotely Superman-related, although some of the items on her list were just slightly colored by her obvious feelings for his superhero persona, and he found himself trying to keep his expression neutral-ish as she continued.
When she finally finished, her eyes gleamed, and she took a step closer to him. “So?”
“So…?” He must have missed something. A question or…something. He had gotten just a little distracted at the end of her rant—ramble—whatever. He swallowed hard as she took another step toward him.
“You’ll talk to him for me?”
“What? No. Why would I—”
“You’re his friend, right?”
“Well, um, I-I guess? I guess you could say that.”
She grinned again. “And you know more than you’re telling me, right?”
“Lois, I—”
“You can contact him right now, can’t you?”
“Wh-what do you mean by contact him? I already told you he doesn’t carry a cell—”
“Ah ha!”
Clark groaned out loud this time. “I’m afraid to even ask.”
“He doesn’t
carry a cell phone, but he
has one?”
Clark moved to one of the chairs at the conference room table and sat heavily. He didn’t want to either confirm or deny—one way would be too much of a giveaway, and the other would be too much of a lie. Although he’d already been lying to her for how long now?
Lois continued as though she’d never even paused. “And if he has a cell phone, then he has some way to pay for that cell phone, which means he has a job, which means he has—”
“—a real name, which means he has a whole life that you don’t know about,” Clark finished for her…for some reason. And he kicked himself again. What was wrong with him? Did he…just
want to tell her?
He actually…did. But he’d imagined something a little bit different. Not quite yet. And not like this. Certainly not like this.
He looked up at her and saw her watching him again, her expression intense, just like earlier. Intense and…beautiful and brilliant and… His heart skipped a beat, but he shook his head and looked away.
Not like this. And certainly not here, in the middle of the newsroom.
“Clark?”
He sighed. “What if…he does have a normal life, Lois? Don’t you think he’d…tell you if he was…ready to? What if he has a reason for…waiting?”
“Clark…” She sat down next to him, and when he looked up, her expression had softened considerably but was still filled with…curiosity? Or triumph. Like she’d finally worn him down enough. She scooted her chair closer, and his heart started racing—for more than one reason. “I guess I can understand if he might be scared… He’s obviously lived here—on Earth, I mean—for a long time without telling anyone. Except you, for some reason. And that—hey, that’s right. Why
you, Clark? You never answered that earlier. Why you and not me? Come to think of it…”
Her eyes widened, and she straightened up in her chair. “Ohhh, I see! It makes perfect sense now!”
It was almost comical, really. Because he had absolutely no idea what conclusion she’d brought herself to this time.
He didn’t really want to know, but he asked anyway. “What, Lois? What makes perfect sense?”
“You knew him before he was Superman!”
Briefly, he wondered if maybe he just sat here long enough and didn’t
really answer any of her questions, just kept skirting around them, she’d figure it out all by herself. She should be…so close by now.
“You…came to Metropolis at the same time. You can contact him. You know his real name—”
“I didn’t ever actually say any of that,” he corrected.
But she just kept going, again.
“You always seem to know things about him that no one else does. And you
always get all the good stories. And…and you’re…”
He raised his eyebrows skeptically. “What, Lois? I’m what?”
“You two must be…” Her hand came up to cover her mouth, and her eyes widened even more, suddenly filled with some sort of understanding.
His stomach lurched. Yep, she’d figured it out. She’d finally put the pieces together—he’d probably given her way too many clues, really, and he was honestly surprised it had taken her this long, what with how close they’d gotten.
It was probably better this way. Well, not that this had been the ideal way for her to figure it out. And he really had wanted to tell her himself, when he was ready. But at least he wouldn’t have to keep lying to her.
He closed his eyes and ran a nervous hand through his hair. “Lois—”
“Are you jealous?”
Jealous? What?
“Jealous? Why would I be—”
“Because he got the superpowers and you didn’t.”
Clark narrowed his eyes. “Because…what?”
“Well, I mean, I don’t have a twin, but I bet you two were always competing growing up together, and it must have been hard, having him as a brother.”
Clark started laughing then, unable to hold back. When he finally got himself under control again, he shook his head, grinning. “Lois, I—I’m not—he’s not—he’s not my brother. What on Earth made you think that?”
She just glared at him, clearly not amused, and then she scooted her chair back and stood as she waved her hand toward him. “
You made me think that,” she began. And then she started pacing. And ramble-ranting. “Obviously! I mean—all the things I already said. You two came to Metropolis at the same time, you’re both the same age, you can contact him
whenever, you always know things about him no one else does. He gives you
all the good exclusives! You know he said his mom made him his suit, right? Martha’s a great seamstress, I bet. Should I call her and ask? Maybe she’d be honest with me. Not to mention, you look exactly like him! Same height, same hair, same…eyes…and smile and…and… Oh my God…”
She trailed off and spun back around to face him, her mouth partway open and frozen in disbelief.
His lips quirked up in what he hoped was an apologetic smile, though he was really just…reeling with lots of mixed emotions, and he jumped to his feet.
“So, um, that was…fun!” He hooked a thumb toward the door. “I’m just gonna head on out to, you know… Uh…call me…on my cell if you…need to. You…have my number!”
The End.
