Archive of Our Own

When Clark picks up Lois from the airport, Lana is in the passenger seat.

He does a double take every time he glances to his right. That seat has really been Lois’s for months, if not years, and it’s become second nature to meet her eye and let her grin prompt his own. He keeps looking at the empty space above Lana’s head.

He’s not sure what to expect now that Lois is back in town. Technically, nothing happened between them, but he can’t forget how it almost did. He kissed her, almost, She told him she loved him, almost. They acknowledged there was something between them, almost. Then he blinked and Lois was in Star City and Lana was back in his bed.

And Lana is great, but she isn’t Lois. Clark doesn’t know quite when that started to matter so much.

They pull up to the curb where Lois is already waiting and step out of the car. Circling the cab of the truck, he seeks her out immediately, a sunflower turning towards the light. She sees him, and he feels the world around him go still.

Clark has thought a lot about how this part might go, about apologies and fights and resolutions. And there were other thoughts too, ones he only allowed himself when he was alone with a hand down the front of his pants, ones that clung to his skin like smoke until he stayed up all night working off his karmic debt in Suicide Slums.

In the end, it’s just two people who aren’t sure if they’re allowed to hug anymore, blocking airport traffic. He doesn’t know whether to hold her around her waist or tuck her under his arms. Both options feel wrong. He wants to touch her so badly he feels dizzy with it, but he can’t bring himself to cross the Rubicon. Lana watches them like a chaperone. Like she’s going to pull out a ruler and snap at them to save room for the holy spirit.

“I’m so glad you’re back in town,” Lana says, breaking the silence and squeezing Lois’s shoulder. “We didn’t get a chance to catch up at the wedding.”

“Everything worth catching up about happened after the wedding,” Lois replies dismissively. She hugs Lana with the body language of a kid whose mom told them to be nice. Then she turns to Clark.

“Hi,” he says. His voice comes out weird and gravelly, and he clears his throat. Lois studies him, maybe waiting for him to say more, but all he can do is stare. You’re back, he wants to say. He wants to touch her face and prove it’s real. You’re here.

When Lois decides she’s waited long enough, she purses her lips. “Hey,” she offers in return. For a second, maybe less, her body sways towards him and her hazel eyes gleam with the promise of something thrilling.

If she comes closer, he thinks, unbidden, I’m going to kiss her. They’re in public, and they’re in front of Lana, and as far as he knows, she’s furious with him, and he still feels himself pulled to her like a riptide around his ankles. He doesn’t know if his self-control is truly that thin, but it scares the shit out of him. His eyes drop to her mouth, her lips quirked into a curious smirk.

A car honks at them, and Clark jumps back. The moment passes. Lois, flustered, turns towards the truck, reaching blindly for the door handle, only to find Lana already holding it.

Lana’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes, “Let me know if you need any more leg room,” she says, cool and implacable, and slides into the front seat.

Lois frowns, which Clark recognizes as her masking embarrassment with annoyance. He opens the back door and offers her a hand. Lois looks at him, then Lana, then down at his open palm. She doesn’t take it. She uses the grab handle to swing herself into the back seat instead.

He’s out of excuses to stand next to her, so he returns to his spot behind the wheel. As he navigates them back onto the highway, Lana turns her head towards Lois. “How was your flight?”

Lois shrugs. Clark tracks the movement in the rearview mirror. “It was fine,” she says. “Ollie got me upgraded to first class. Hot towel and everything.”

“Are you guys…” Lana trails off, throwing a meaningful look at Lois. Clark feels himself grip the steering wheel a little harder, and he has to force himself to ease up so his fingers don’t dent the plastic.

“Me and Oliver?” Lois laughs. “I love the guy, but that ship sailed a long time ago.”

“Sorry,” Lana says awkwardly, “I just — I think I saw you two talking at the wedding?”

Lois shifts, uneasy, in her seat. “Yeah, I ran into him outside the barn. We were just having a little heart to heart.”

“About what?” Clark’s voice comes out weird; a little strained, a little too loud for the moment. Lana shoots him a sideways look.

“Oh, you know,” Lois deflects. “Weddings are emotional. But like I said, that’s ancient history.”

A complicated expression crosses Lana’s face. “History has a way of repeating itself,” she says flatly.

Clark can practically hear Lois’s voice in his ear, making fun of him. You would know, wouldn’t you? He can imagine it so clearly. But Lois doesn’t say anything to him, because Lois isn’t in his passenger seat anymore.

In the mirror, he sees her grimace. “I try not to make the same mistakes twice,” she says with finality. It’s probably not an insult. Clark winces anyways.

***

He doesn’t offer to help Lois with her suitcases because he knows she’ll refuse. He just gets out of the car and pulls them from the bed of the truck before she notices.

“I got it, Smallville,” she insists, making a grab for one of the handles. She’s so close, and he could just take her hand again. Pull her against him and finish what he started months ago.

“Let me,” he says. Slowly, Lois withdraws her hand.

“I can carry my own bags,” she complains, but steps out of his way all the same.

He moves past her towards the back door of the Talon. “You had a long flight,” he says casually. She follows him inside without arguing, but he hears her mutter something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like fuck my life.

He reaches the door to the apartment first, and she elbows him out of the way to unlock it. “Chloe’s in Metropolis with Jimmy,” she explains, “so I get one more night of living alone.” She says it like it’s a good thing, but Lois is a perpetual motion machine, a miracle of infinite energy, and Clark knows that the solitude has taken a toll on her.

“Do you want me —” Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea — “Do you want us to stay for dinner?”

Lois gives him a tight-lipped smile. “It’s time to get back to real life,” she says. “See you around, Smallville.”

On the other side of the closed apartment door, he can’t help himself; he X-rays through the wall and watches as she collapses backwards onto the couch. “Fuck my life,” she says to herself. Clark grins, feeling it stretch through muscles that have sat, unused, since the day Lois left.

He blurs back down to the truck. Lana smiles at him as he slides back into the driver’s seat. “I made reservations for seven,” she says, checking the time on her phone. “I’m going to swing by the Isis Foundation, but I’ll meet you at the restaurant?”

Reservations. He and Lana had a dinner date planned, and it hadn’t even crossed his mind since he left for the airport. “Right,” he replies. “Sounds good to me.”

With one last look up towards the apartment, he watches as Lois watches the car pull out of the alley.

***

Lana was never much of a drinker, but she’s stopped completely since adopting the Prometheus Suit. She tells Clark it’s unrelated. He remembers, though, the look in her eye when he first told her that alcohol doesn’t affect him. There was a hunger there that he suspects had little to do with drinking.

Now, every difference between Clark’s powers and her own has turned into a personal challenge. She barely sleeps. She holes up in the Isis Foundation office until the sun rises. She spends hours trying to teach herself Kryptonian, and bristles when Clark questions it. When they have sex — if they have sex — it’s fast and perfunctory, like they’re machines learning how to optimize their performances. It’s not bad, per se, but didn’t sex used to make him feel more human? Didn’t he like that?

After their dinner out, once they’re in bed, Clark rolls to his side to face Lana. “What were you working on at the Isis Foundation?”

Her eyes flit over to his, then away. “Nothing important,” she says, with a tone that suggests the conversation has already ended.

Clark doesn’t have the energy to push. He just flops back over to stare at the ceiling. He’s dozing off when he hears Lana’s voice again. “Clark,” she begins, “can I ask you something?”

“Mhm,” he grunts, pulling himself back from the edge of sleep.

“Have you ever thought about coming out as The Red-Blue Blur?”

He turns his head to look at her, but she’s staring dutifully out the far window. “Telling the world that Clark Kent has superpowers, you mean?” Lana nods, and Clark shrugs. “I’ve thought about it, sure. It would be nice to not worry about hiding my face. But it would put people in danger, too. My mom, you, Chloe, Lois —”

“Lois?” Lana questions. She’s still looking out the window, but her voice is sharp.

“I’m pretty sure she’d kill me if I didn’t let her break the story,” he says carefully. “But even if I didn’t, she’s still my partner at the Planet. There’d be a target on her back.”

“But you wouldn’t keep working at the Planet if you were a vigilante full time,” Lana protests.

“Of course I would,” he says. Lana is looking at him strangely, like he’s grown a second head. “I like working there,” he adds, chagrined.

Lana doesn’t reply for a while, just frowns and looks out the damn window again. Eventually, her voice breaks the uneasy silence. “You can do such incredible things,” she says, sounding almost resentful. “I just don’t understand why you want to be normal.”

***

Lois bites down on the end of the pen caught between her teeth. It’s a nervous habit she picked up right around when she met Clark, back when she was still quitting cigarettes. A few months ago, when they were both working late, Lois had caught him staring at her mouth and winked at him. Clark had blushed every time he looked at her for the rest of the night.

She’s not winking at him today. Today, the weight of his gaze makes her feel like a radio stuck between stations, but asking him to stop is admitting defeat. All she can do is focus on her computer screen and pretend not to notice.

Clark, as far as she’s concerned, is the victim of his own decisions. He’ll get over her as quickly as he became interested in the first place. And Lois — Lois is moving on. When Oliver dropped the bomb about Clark and Lana getting back together, Lois had reactivated her online dating profile and told herself, in no uncertain terms, that she was moving on from Clark Kent. A couple months does not a heartbreak make. Not if she has any say in it.

Lois rolls out a sore spot in her neck and finally takes the pen out of her mouth. A cigarette craving has been tailing her since she woke up this morning. There’s an emergency pack in her middle desk drawer, one that she’s only opened a handful of times, and it whispers to her like a devil on her shoulder. Looking for a distraction, she sends a document to the printer and makes for the copy room. There’s another Planet writer already there, a woman named Emma from the sports desk. Lois likes Emma — she’s the only person who beat Lois in last year’s office Fantasy league — so they’d grabbed a drink on Lois’s first weekend back in town. Now, Emma turns to her with a conspiratorial smile.

“Spill it,” she says. “Did you ever text that guy from the bar?”

The door to the copy room opens behind her, and somehow, she knows it’s Clark. He doesn’t say anything and she doesn’t turn around to confirm it, but she knows.

“I did,” Lois confirms, leaning one hip against the counter. In her peripheral vision, Clark passes her and Emma, so he’s standing at the far end of the room with his back towards them. He shoots a furtive look over his shoulder. She’s seen him sneak through restricted government facilities, but he’s about as unsubtle as an elephant right now.

“So? Did you guys go out?”

“Yup.” They did go out, and the date was horrible. Jaden had tipped so poorly that Lois stuck an extra twenty under the check on their way out, and she’d spent most of the time distracted by a waitress with aquamarine eyes the same shade as Clark’s. “It was amazing,” she lies. “He took me to that Italian place on the waterfront. God, he’s gorgeous.” Feeling vindictive, she adds, “great kisser, too.” Lois wouldn’t know, but she would not put money on that being true.

Behind Emma, Clark’s shoulders tense and his hands stop moving. Classic, Lois thinks. Clark has never let something like having a girlfriend stop him from being jealous.

“Oh my god, I knew it,” Emma cheers, oblivious to the war brewing on either side of her. “He was so hot. Are you going to see him again?”

Absolutely fucking not. “Oh, definitely.”

Clark coughs, seemingly having choked on a mouthful of coffee. Emma turns while Lois just tilts her head and smiles serenely at him. “You alright there, Kent?”

“I’m fine,” he says. “I, uh. I didn’t know you had a date last night.”

Lois snorts in dry amusement. “You want to be my social secretary?” She looks over at Emma, smirking: Can you believe this guy? Emma just laughs and glances suspiciously between the two of them.

“I’ll catch up with you later,” Emma says, taking her exit. As she walks away, she raises her eyebrows and smirks when Lois rolls her eyes. She’ll have to run some interference later.

Clark watches Emma leave, then turns his attention back to Lois. “You usually mention stuff like that,” he says awkwardly. “That’s all I meant.”

“I did mention it,” she replies cooly. “To Emma. Chloe, too. And Oliver knows, and Jimmy –”

“Everyone but me,” he says. “I get it.”

He starts to walk towards her. The sleeves of his dress shirt are rolled up to his elbows and the fabric is a dark purple that Lois thinks should be outlawed. Every step he takes in her direction makes her lungs feel a little shallower. You’re moving on, she reminds herself sternly.

Clark stops a safe distance away, but close enough that Lois can’t seem to look anywhere but his face. “I really missed you, Lois,” he says. “I tried to call you while you were in Star City.”

Four texts, twelve missed calls, and two voicemails. Lois remembers them all. “I was pretty busy.”

“And now,” he continues, “you’ve been back for two weeks and I still miss you.”

They’ve entered dangerous territory. Lois could look down and see the cliff crumbling under her feet. Silently, Clark takes a loose lock of her hair and tucks it behind her ear, and it knocks the fucking wind out of her. She finds a reckless impulse to lean into the warmth of his palm, but before she can follow it, she snaps, “what the hell are you doing?”

She watches as Clark blinks slowly, like he’s regaining consciousness, and pulls back. “I don’t —” he looks down at his own hand and frowns. “Sorry. I don’t know what that was.”

The spark of desire inside her catches, and blazes straight into anger. “In case you don’t remember, you and Lana are back together.”

“I know,” he says immediately. He crosses his arms, defensive.

“So whatever we’re doing — whatever we were doing,” she corrects, “we aren’t doing it anymore. You got the girl, Smallville. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“It is what I wanted.” His voice sounds far-away, his eyes sad and searching. It reminds her of when she used to catch him brooding in his loft. She doubts that he ever laughed up there if she wasn’t dragging it out of him.

“So you can’t…” She gestures vaguely between the two of them, unsure of what to say.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I wasn’t thinking. I just —”

“Look,” she interrupts, “let's just keep the game on the field, okay?”

“Okay.” He still looks a little dazed.

She extends her hand towards him. “Friends?” It’s more of a demand than an offer.

His sad eyes dart between her outstretched palm and her face. “Friends,” he confirms. His hand dwarfs hers when he shakes it, and his fingers drag against her palm when they separate. She feels goosebumps break out on her skin.

Quickly, she grabs a stack of drafts from the printer tray and shoves them at his chest, making him jump. “Great,” she says, forcing a cheerful tone. “Can you proofread these by the end of the day? You’re a lifesaver. I’m going to take a break.”

She doesn’t give him a chance to respond, just breezes out of the copy room. She stops at her desk and reaches to the very back of her middle drawer, fingers closing around a lighter and a single cigarette, which she slips into her pocket. Emergencies only, but she thinks this qualifies.

There’s a window on one of the top floors that looks over a small patch of rooftop. It’s something that Lois learned about on her third day, after the night custodian caught her smoking into a vent in the bathroom. Most employees took their smoke breaks on the sidewalk in front of the building, but the custodian, a grizzled but sympathetic man who shared her love of Whitesnake, had wordlessly led her to a rarely-used storage room and nodded at the window on the far wall. “Figure you might want some privacy,” he’d said gruffly. “Just lock it when you’re done.”

No one pays her any attention as she makes her way to the storage room and climbs through the window. She perches on the low concrete wall at the edge of the roof. The top floors of the Planet are tiered, capped with the spinning globe, so the building still looms above her for a few dozen yards. She stares up as she fiddles with the lighter.

Her phone beeps. She pulls it out of her pocket.

From: Clark Kent
12:09 PM
How has your spelling gotten worse?

She fits the cigarette between her lips, lights it, and takes a long drag.

***

A lead on The Red-Blue Blur comes in a few days later. It’s not a lead so much as it is a vague description, but all distractions are good distractions. There’d been an accident at a construction site near the Planet, and he’d sped through to get everyone to safety. Still, the only real evidence she had was a few blurry photos and word of mouth. He was getting better at evading her, and she was getting more impatient.

She must be wearing her eagerness on her face, because Clark quirks an eyebrow at her across the desk. “Something good?”

“Something great,” she says. “The Red-Blue Blur was spotted on 7th last night. I’m heading over there this afternoon to talk to some of the construction workers.”

“Did they actually see anything?”

Lois narrows her eyes at him. “I mean, they didn’t see his face. But he was definitely there.”

Clark looks uneasy. “How do they know it was him, though?”

There’d been reports recently of another superhero operating in Metropolis, one with similar powers. A lot of people thought it was the same person as The Red-Blue Blur, but Lois could tell the difference right away. This new hero operated differently. The Red-Blue Blur cleaned up messes; the newcomer seemed to revel in them. Never at any human cost, just displays of strength that Lois knew, in her gut, weren’t The Red-Blue Blur’s. She was proven right a few days later, when they were seen on opposite sides of Metropolis at the same time.

“I know it was him,” she says, shrugging off his doubt. “It’s got Red-Blue Blur written all over it.”

“You must really like this guy,” Clark says. His voice is sharp, a little accusatory.

Lois glares at him. “Maybe I do.” It’s just like him, to be jealous of a guy who no one’s even seen.

Clark looks like he’s about to say something, but he just shuts his mouth and turns back to his work.

***

Lois sits with her back against a tree, right on the line where the woods give way to the shore of Crater Lake. It’s a clear night, and the moon lights the whole clearing up with a silver glow. She leans her head back against the trunk of the tree and lets out a tired exhale. It’s been a long week — work was busy without being particularly interesting, and Clark is still pissing her off, and she’s hit another dead end with The Red-Blue Blur, since her conversation at the construction site didn’t lead to anything new. Now it’s Friday, and she’s ditched her fair-weather friends to sit by the water and sulk.

The annoying thing is, Clark isn’t pissing her off on purpose. He’s just… being himself. He’s the same person he always has been, which is why her moving on plan has gone so poorly. She can’t move on when his eyes still follow her around the room like he can’t remember how to look anywhere else.

At least Clark’s been careful to keep physical distance between them. For the best, probably; she doesn’t trust herself, and after their run-in in the copy room, she’s not sure she trusts him either. Whatever. His confusion is not her problem. She’s all too familiar with the futility of a crush on Clark Kent.

A crush. She laughs dryly to herself. It’s a juvenile substitution for what she really feels, but getting over a crush sounds a hell of a lot easier than falling out of love. Less pathetic, too. She doesn’t like thinking of herself as someone who’s in love. When she was a kid, maybe ten or eleven, The General took her and Lucy on a boat trip. She fell asleep in the cabin as they were leaving the pier, and when she woke up, they were so far out that she couldn’t see shore. She doesn’t know exactly when she fell for Clark, just that there’s no sign of land.

A cold breeze rolls off the water and raises goosebumps on her skin. Crater Lake is small enough that you can see clear across to the far side. There’s something comforting about that. The busyness of Metropolis may be more her speed, but at least in Smallville, she always knows exactly where she is.

She hears footsteps behind her and scowls. She’d been looking forward to being alone. She’s peering down the shoreline, looking for somewhere else to sit, when she feels the presence of someone standing a few feet behind her.

“Lois,” Clark says. His voice is barely audible, her name coming out on an exhale.

She turns around and glares, ignoring the way her heart leaps into her throat. “Are you stalking me?”

Clark frowns, off balance. “No. I saw your car in the lot.”

“So you crashed my party?” She pushes herself up to standing.

“I wanted to see you,” Clark says, approaching each word carefully, like following slick stones across a river. He seems unusually restless.

Lois gestures to herself. “Okay, well, here I am.”

Silently, he looks out over the water. So he’s here to brood, she surmises. “Penny for your thoughts,” she tries.

Clark doesn’t respond for a few long moments. Solemnly, he says: “I should have kissed you at Chloe’s wedding.”

His words move through her like a shockwave, like the rolling echo of a firework.. She allows herself a startled laugh, and he furrows his brow, offended. “Oh, come on, Clark,” she scoffs. “We both know it’s better that you didn’t.” If he had — the idea terrifies and captivates her in equal measure.

He walks towards her, a little more assured, keeping his hands tucked safely in his front pockets. “I think about it all the time,” he says, stopping when he’s close enough that she has to tilt her head back to look at him.

She swallows hard, and his eyes flit down to her throat and back. “You’re standing sort of close,” she whispers. His hands find her waist and her eyes flutter closed against her will.

When she opens her eyes again, Clark looks mesmerized, his gaze hungry and devoted. She knows, in that moment, that she’s a goner. Lois grips his shirt collar. To push him away, she thinks, a lie that no one else can call her on. “Smallville…”

He leans in, and his breath is warm against her lips. “You can tell me to stop,” he offers.

“So I get to take the blame?” She does shove him then, just a little. It feels good to pretend. “No, Clark. That’s not how this is going to work. Do you want to kiss me?”

“I — shit,” he swears, and isn’t that something. “Yes. Of course I do.”

Some fierce feeling roars up inside her — rage or desire, she can’t tell, but it overrides any good decision-making she’s still capable of. “Fine,” she says. “Then do it.”

His lips meet hers, and the first thing Lois thinks is: Oh?

She expected desperation. Something that tasted like self-sabotage and regret, a kiss that felt as dirty as it really was. But Clark is gentle everywhere he touches her; even his proprietary hold on the small of her back is tender in the way it pulls her body to his. His warm hands are a delicious contrast to the cool night air, and he cradles her face like it will protect her. Like her fate hasn’t been sealed since she got off the plane.

In the distance, there’s a loud noise — a car backfiring, maybe? Clark pulls away quickly and drops his hands to his sides. Lois catches her breath as she watches his dazed expression fade.

This is the part, Lois thinks, where it all goes to shit. The part where Lois hates herself, and Clark hates himself, and Lana hates them both, and they’re all just miserable until Clark and Lana decide to legally tie themselves to their dysfunction and Lois has to flee somewhere even farther than Star City. They’ll have their church wedding. Clark will invite her out of guilt and Lois will send her regards and a fucking toaster.

“I’m sorry,” he says, for the thousandth time. It’s starting to lose its meaning, coming from him.

Lois takes several steps backwards. “Stop saying that,” she snaps. “Just go home.” She can already feel the shame start to creep in, like water through the hull of a sinking ship.

“Lo —”

“Go home, Clark,” she demands, fixing her gaze on the far edge of the shore.

Clark’s eyes go all sad-puppy-dog again. Even when he isn’t apologizing for something, his face is. “Okay. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“You shouldn’t,” she warns.

“Yeah,” he says, ghostly quiet. “I shouldn’t.”

***

When Clark gets back to the farm, Lana is sitting in the dark, focused intently on her laptop screen. She and Chloe both have these crazy, high-tech things that can access whatever government secrets they need for their work at the Isis Foundation. Clark doesn’t really understand them, and Lana doesn’t seem eager to fill him in. She likes having secrets from him, he supposes.

Just like he drove to the lake with the intention of talking, he drove home with the intention of confessing, and he abandoned it just as quickly. Lana barely pays him any mind, nodding distractedly when he tells her he’s going to do some work in the barn. Would she even hear him if he told her right now? Would she care?

He drops onto the loft couch and groans. He’s kissed Lois before, but not like this. He can’t get her out of his head. What scares him the most is that he keeps uncovering new depths to these feelings for her. The pull in his gut that told him, the day they met, to stick by her side as long as he could — he’s never had that with anyone else. He’s starting to suspect there’s a bigger word for that, one that could make things even more complicated than they’ve already become. It dangles like a loose thread, calling him to tug and let everything else unravel.

He’d gone back to Lana because he thought it was the right answer. The Last Son of Krypton answer, the one that would earn him his place in history. She knew his secret, after all, and her sudden reappearance in his life must have meant that the stars were finally aligning for them. But he thinks over the last few months and swears she’s never understood him less. Their lives are more parallel than ever, but it’s only served to make the space between them more pronounced.

There are times where I think you don’t know me at all, he’d said to Lois once, and others where I think you know me better than anyone. He can admit now that he’d lied. He’d felt known by Lois since the day they met.

The memories of their kiss by the lake start to slip past his defenses, and he lets them. Tomorrow, he’ll file them away in the same place he keeps other memories of her: her bare skin, fresh from the shower, or crimson lipstick smeared across her mouth. He doesn’t let himself access those very often. But tonight, he closes his eyes, unzips his jeans, and relives all of it.

***

In Washington, in some town a few hours outside Seattle, a school bus skids off the road and halfway into a river. Clark and Lana are both on the scene in a matter of seconds.

“Get the kids to land,” she tells him. “I’ll get the bus.”

He glances towards the bus. She’s still adjusting to her super-strength, and the river isn’t going to make it any easier. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she insists. “We’re wasting time, Clark.”

He speeds through the wreck, depositing passengers safely on the road, a ways away so they don’t see Lana with the bus. Clark watches from a distance as the kids look around in disbelief. He really does wish that he could talk to them as the Red-Blue Blur, but even states away, it's too risky. He just wants them to know that someone is looking out for them.

Turning his attention back to Lana, he sees her struggle with the weight of the bus, and runs over to help. It’s a two-person job, in the end, with him pushing from down in the ravine and Lana standing as far up the hill as she can go without getting spotted. Clark takes a second to haul up the backpacks and other belongings that have spilled out into the water. When he’s done, he notices Lana has disappeared. He waits near the group of kids and their teachers until emergency services make their way in from the closest town, then focuses his hearing to see if she’s nearby.

He finds her a few miles away from the crash. She stands at the edge of a cliff overlooking the river. “Lana,” he calls, holding her gently by the shoulders, “are you alright?”

She frowns and shrugs him off. “I’m fine,” she says, a little short. “I had it handled.”

“I’m sorry, it just looked like you could use some help —”

“Well, I didn’t,” she snaps. Clark flinches, and her expression softens slightly. “Sorry, it’s just…” She gestures towards her body, the invisible second skin she’d so quickly accepted as her own. “We’re equals now. You can trust me.”

Lana leans in to kiss him, and Clark accedes. “I do trust you,” he says when they pull apart. In the silence that follows, he’s not sure that either of them believe him.

***

One of Clark’s hands hovers an inch from Lois’s apartment door. The other holds a paper bag with a maple donut. He kissed her on Friday, tomorrow is Monday, and if the first time they see each other again is in the office, he’s afraid he’ll do something stupid. There’s a good chance he’ll be stupid today, too, but at least he won’t have witnesses.

He’s about to knock when the door swings open. Lois stands in front of him, glaring. Her hair is in two loose braids, clearly slept in, and the black Whitesnake shirt is a stark contrast against her powder blue pajama bottoms.

“You’ve been shuffling around in front of my door for five minutes,” she grumbles. “You’re not subtle.”

He holds the donut bag in front of him like a shield as he follows her into the apartment. “Wasn’t sure if you wanted to see me.”

“I don’t.” She snatches the bag from his hand and peers inside, nodding in approval. She doesn’t tell him to leave, so he sits at one of the kitchen stools and watches her reach for a plate. He carefully averts his eyes from the narrow strip of skin that appears when she stretches her arms above her. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, but it all feels more loaded now that he’s thought about how it would feel to put his hands there, to pull the fabric up a little higher, to chart the territory of her midriff with his mouth. He’d entertained the thought as a teenager — who wouldn’t have? — but now desire gnaws at him like a starving dog on a bone.

Clark realizes, belatedly, that she’s talking to him, and he tears his gaze away from her body. She fixes him with a glare. “Pervert,” she says, taking a bite of the donut and crossing her arms over her chest.

He frowns. “I just —”

“You kissed me,” she interrupts, pointing an accusatory finger at him and lowering her voice in a mocking imitation of his own. “You were all, ‘Oh, Lois, I’m so angsty and tortured, I should have kissed you at Chloe’s wedding,’ and then you planted one on me.”

He almost laughs, because she hardly has to remind him. It’s all he’s thought about since Friday. “I don’t sound like that,” he objects. “And you kissed me, too. Doesn’t that mean something to you?”

Lois pushes her bangs off her face and presses her fingers to her temples. “Means I’m a lot stupider than I thought I was,” she says, half-muttering like he’s not supposed to hear it. Then, to him: “I don’t even know why you’re here.”

“To see you,” he says immediately.

She rolls her eyes, turning her back to him to put her plate in the sink. “We talked about this at the Planet, Clark, remember? You got what you actually wanted.”

Before he can think better of it, Clark moves in, until his chest is just inches away from her back. He knows she can sense it by the way her shoulders tighten and her breath hitches. Cautiously, he touches her bare arm, and feels goosebumps break out under his fingertips. Her heartbeat is hummingbird-quick. He peers over her shoulder and takes in the pink flush in her cheeks.

“No,” he says lowly, dragging his fingers back and forth across the smooth skin. “I didn’t.”

It’s disgraceful, how much he needs her, but he’s finally remembering how it feels to be human. He thinks that maybe, the real Clark Kent has been in stasis, waiting for her to come wake him back up.

It would all be so simple if she just told him to leave. He brushes her hair behind her shoulder and presses his lips, brief and chaste, to her neck.

“We aren’t doing this,” she hisses through gritted teeth.

“I’ve heard that one before,” he says.

“Fuck off.”

“Lois,” he says, “I’d really like to kiss you again.”

She turns, finally, and pulls his lips down to hers with a firm hand on the back of his neck. His tongue slides against hers and he could be flying, or drowning, or burning alive, he wouldn’t know. All that he can feel is the million little points of contact of her body pressed up against him and all he can think is Lois, Lois, Lois.

She pulls away first, but he tightens his hold on her, and she lets out a little gasp that he muffles with his own mouth. They stumble into the counter, and she rolls her hips up against his. His hand falls to her ass to encourage the movement. Even through the layers of clothing, the friction makes them both moan. He pants against her parted lips, asking, “what do you want?”

“Smallville,” is all she says. He leans back down to kiss her again, and she’s hiking her leg up around his hip when his phone buzzes in his back pocket.

He pulls back just far enough to lean his forehead against hers. “Ignore it,” he tells her, but she reaches behind him and fishes the device out, holding it up so they can both see the name Lana Lang flash across the screen.

It’s like a bucket of ice water has been dumped down the back of his neck. He takes a heavy step back from Lois, taking the phone out of her hand and silencing the ringer. The hurt is clear on her face.

“I’m sorry,” he says. A crease appears between her brows. “You’re right. I should go.” He can’t drag her into this — his relationship, his double life, any of it. Her bottom lip wavers. He wants to brush his thumb against it, or bite it, but he shoves his hands deep into his front pockets. She just shakes her head at him, disappointed.

“You and Lana are still together,” she says. Statement, not question, because she’s never expected him to be any better than he really is. Lois Lane is the only one who knows that Smallville’s golden boy cheated on his high school sweetheart. She’s the only reason he did, too.

There’s something comforting about being known like that.

“I was — I mean, I am —

“No.” She slides out from between his body and the countertop, retreating to the far side of the room. “Get out of my apartment.”

“Lois, please.”

“Oh my god,” she exclaims, throwing her hands in the air and sending him a venomous look. “You are the most frustrating fucking person I have ever met. You’re all over me, and then Lana shows up and you forget about me. Again.”

“I could never forget about you,” he insists. “When you were in Star City, you were all I thought about. It was torture.”

She laughs, short and unamused. “Why do you think I left in the first place, Clark? I couldn’t be around you after you chose —” she clamps her mouth shut on the end of her sentence. The unspoken after you chose Lana hangs heavy in the dead silence that follows.

Which, to Clark, doesn’t feel fair at all. Life chose Lana for him, and he still doesn’t want her, not like he’s supposed to. If it were up to him — with all the time and grace and freedom that would be afforded to anyone but him — he thinks he would have seen things clearly a long time ago.

He can’t explain any of that to Lois. The way she’s looking at him hurts worse than Kryptonite ever has.

His phone rings again. He picks up without taking his eyes off Lois. He’s worried that if he lets her out of his line of sight, she’ll bolt. “Hello?”

“Hi,” Lana says through the speaker. “Do you want to get coffee with Chloe at the Talon? She’s almost back from Metropolis.”

Clark clears his throat. “Uh, sure.”

There’s a pause while Lana talks to someone off to the side. Clark realizes, with growing horror, that she’s ordering something. “Great. I’m already here getting some work done. Come by whenever you’re free.” She hangs up without another word, and his phone returns to his pocket.

“Sounds like you should go,” Lois says warily, nodding towards the apartment door. She’s retreating, and Clark pursues her on instinct.

“I think,” he stammers, “I should stay here.”

She looks at him incredulously, like she’s not sure whether to laugh or cry, so he kisses her again before she can decide either way.

Her hands are warm on his chest, radiating through his t-shirt. After a few long moments, she gathers the fabric into her fists and pushes at him until she has space to meet his eye. “This is your last chance, Clark,” she says, with a sobering firmness. “We do this now, or we don’t do it at all.”

And not having her, not doing it at all — Clark can’t think of any fate crueler than that. She could ask for anything right and he’d be helpless to resist it. But she isn’t asking. She’s not even offering. She’s just stating facts. I’m here, Clark. I want you, Clark. This is your last chance, Clark.

He cups her jaw, brushes his thumb over her bottom lip. She fixes her gaze on his mouth. Right now, he’s the weakest man in the world. He fumbles blindly for self-control and comes up empty.

He backs her into the wall and kisses her filthily. This time, there’s no hesitance from either of them. She rolls her hips forward again, and he sucks a bruise into the side of her neck as she tugs at his shirt. He pulls it off before she hooks her fingers in his belt loops and leads him across the room to the bed. They land with a thud, her on her back and him above her, and he wastes no time in pushing up her shirt and cupping her breasts reverently in his hands.

Impatient, Lois redirects his attention to kiss her, her fingers working at the fly of his jeans. Before she can finish, he gathers her wrists in one hand and pins them above her head, relishing her gasp and the way her hips buck up at the action. “Not yet,” he says, moving to kneel between her legs. If he only has one shot at this, he has a priority.

Lois leans back into the pillows as he pulls off her pants, then her underwear. She pushes her disheveled hair off her face and stammers out, “Clark, we don’t have time —”

He doesn’t let her finish before he lifts one of her legs over each of his shoulders, opening her up for him. “Please,” he says raggedly, “I’ve wanted to do this for years.” It’s a horrible, honest thing to say, and Lois’s eyes open wide, her expression softening just slightly. She nods, and Clark leans in.

Clark had discovered years ago that he technically didn’t need to breathe. It comes in handy sometimes, but usually he doesn’t notice. He likes breathing. It regulates him. It isn’t until now, locked between Lois’s thighs, that he starts to appreciate the full potential of his powers. He could happily spend the next three hours without coming up for air. He loses track of everything besides the way she tastes, the way she smells, the little noises she’s making as she clutches at his scalp. He keys into her heartbeat and lets it guide his movements, delighting in the quiet “God” she chokes out when he spreads her thighs wider. As he feels her orgasm approaching, he opens his eyes to find her already looking at him. He laps at her intently, devotedly, and she lets out one last gasp before tumbling over the precipice

“Clark,” she whimpers. “ I need — fuck —”

“What do you need, baby?” He shouldn’t slip into pet names, he knows, but he’ll have to forgive himself for it later.

“I need you,” she whispers.

He almost doesn’t want to take his mouth off of her, in case he never gets another chance, but when has he ever been able to deny Lois? He shucks off his jeans and boxers, letting Lois maneuver him until he’s seated against the headboard and she’s straddling him. When she wraps her fingers around him, he practically shouts, and she playfully covers his mouth with her free hand. “Quiet,” she chides, poking her tongue between her teeth as she grins at him. “They’ll hear us.”

And that should kill the mood, shouldn’t it? The reminder that Clark’s girlfriend is downstairs? They should spring apart, horrified by what they’ve done, ready to bury this whole night in the past. If it were anyone but Lois, it would be easy; if it were anyone but Lois, though, he wouldn’t have done this at all. She’s been the exception to all his rules since the day they met.

He gently bats her hand away from his mouth and pulls her back in to kiss her. Slowly, she lowers herself onto him, her nails digging into his shoulders as she shudders in his arms.

“Jesus Christ,” she breathes, pausing to let herself adjust. Clark didn’t know it could feel like this, and the pleasure makes his brain go fuzzy. When he bottoms out she lets out a loud whine and throws her head back, threading her fingers through Clark’s hair as he mouths messily at her neck and down her chest. She starts moving her hips, he holds her waist to help guide her, and they set a devastating rhythm. She clutches the sides of his face and locks eyes with him as the pressure builds. When his lips find hers again, she lets out a soft moan that Clark wants to record and replay until the tape wears out.

He’s so close, but he’s set on getting her there again before he finishes. He wraps his arms around her waist and flips her onto her back, then hitches one of her legs high against his shoulder. Increasing the speed of his thrusts, his other hand strokes against her center. “God, Lois.” He loves how it feels to say her name. “You’re perfect. This okay? You have one more in you?”

She nods, too overwhelmed to form a sentence. She’s practically chanting his name now — Clark, Clark, fuck, Clark — and God, he wants to tell her everything. That he’s an alien, that he’s The Blur, that he’s the stupidest man alive, that he thinks he’s in love with her. That nothing has felt right since their dance at Chloe’s wedding. That he’s afraid he’s made the biggest mistake of his life and won’t get the chance to fix it.

His free hand grabs one of hers and he kisses her hard, roughly working her closer with his thumb. It doesn’t take long, as sensitive as she is, and she finishes hot around him. He realizes too late that they hadn’t bothered with a condom, which is the most irresponsible part of an already irresponsible choice, but she presses her calf into his back as he prepares to pull out.

“It’s 2009, Clark,” she says, by way of explanation, and that’s good enough for him. He presses tender kisses against her mouth as they tumble down from their high. He rolls off of Lois, who smiles up at him, almost shyly.

“I’ll get dressed in a second. I just — I don’t think my legs work yet,” she admits with a laugh. Clark feels a swell of pride that he knows Lois would mock ruthlessly if she knew about. He likes seeing her like this, though: rumpled and satisfied, still vulnerable in the afterglow. As she slides off the bed in search of her clothes, his mind catches on the idea of waking up to this version of her every day. It’s an unforgivably selfish thing to daydream about. Lois hadn’t agreed to anything beyond what she’d already given. One shot. One perfect afternoon, more than Clark deserves and nowhere near as much as he wants, and he knew before they started that it would never be enough. Even just watching her get dressed, his heart aches worse than before.

He pulls his own clothes back on as she sweeps her long hair up into a ponytail, a half-assed attempt to disguise its dishevelment. The scarlet marks on her neck stand out like blood in the snow. Her eyes flutter shut when he brushes his fingers against them.

“Sorry,” he whispers. He hadn’t been able to hold himself back, in the moment. He feels a little sick seeing them now.

She just glares at him, then nudges his jaw with two fingers so he has to meet her eye.. “Did it seem like I was complaining? You don’t need to apologize.” She purses her lips. “Not to me, at least.”

“Lois —”

“Not now, Smallville.” She rolls her eyes. “Read the room.”

As if on cue, loud laughter floats through the open window. They’ve been gone too long. For all he knows, Lana’s been listening on the other side of the door.

Lois grimaces. “You go ahead,” she tells him briskly. “I have to work some magic with my concealer.” She tugs a pair of jeans on, bracing one hand against his shoulder for balance. Once both her feet are on the ground, he dips his head and finds her lips with his own, heart soaring when she responds by sliding her other hand to his neck and kissing him back. She presses her body into his and he feels like he’s floating, but all too soon she untangles herself from him and backs squarely out of his reach.

“We should talk about this,” Clark says as she retreats.

She nods, but she keeps heading for the bathroom door. “Tomorrow,” she says briskly.

Clark has a sick, irrational feeling that if he lets her leave, he’ll never see her again. “Wait. Should I — should we tell them?”

Lois stops in her tracks. “Should we tell Chloe and Lana that we had sex? I don’t know about you, Clark, but that’s not my ideal way to spend the evening.”

“I mean, I have to tell Lana. I have to end things with her.”

Clark knows Lois well enough to know when she’s putting on a front, and he watches her construct it in real time. It’s cool detachment; the calculated hardening of her gaze, tension returning to her brow, a stockpile of witty deflections on hand. A mask of her face so precise that by the time most people catch it, the real Lois has already run off, leaving it behind like molted skin. She rolls her shoulders back into a casual, disaffected stance. “Come on, Smallville, we both know you’ll end up getting back together with her in a few months. Why bother?”

“Because of you,” Clark replies. It’s glaringly obvious to him now, like waking up from a bad dream. “I want to be with you.”

Lois takes a shaky breath. She looks close to tears, but she forces a neutral smile. Puts on the mask. “Clark, don’t lie to yourself,” she begs. “We did something stupid. We got it out of our systems.”

“Out of my system? Lois, I didn’t do this to get it over with, I did it because I —”

“Don’t,” she spits, a hair too desperate to be threatening. “Don’t do that.”

He has to bite down on his tongue to stop himself. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he says instead.

She strides angrily back into his space. He feels his body light up at her proximity. “I don’t want anything from you, Clark,” she hisses, poking hard at his chest with one finger. “Break up with Lana, don’t break up with Lana, I don’t care. But don’t pretend it’s for my sake, and don’t pretend anything is going to change. I’m not falling for that again.”

As she leaves, Clark desperately grabs at her hand. She turns, and for a moment, it’s like they’re at Chloe’s wedding again; there's a guarded kind of optimism in her eyes, a crack in the mask. Maybe, if he’s the luckiest person in the world, and she is the most gracious, this is how they start over.

Then she wrenches her arm away like he’s burned her and leaves him alone in the apartment.

He waits a few minutes before speeding to the alley, reentering the Talon through the front door. Chloe’s arrived already, and she and Lana look up in surprise when they see him. “Hey, do you know if Lois is alright? She just ran out of here,” Chloe asks.

If she notices the way Clark freezes, she doesn’t comment on it. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her today.”

“Weird,” Chloe says, frowning and glancing out the door. “I invited her to join us, but she said she had to go.”

He clears his throat awkwardly as he pulls out a chair. “Yeah, well. Maybe next time.”

Lana just drinks her coffee.

***

Lois avoids him. Obviously.

She can’t completely ditch him in the office, since their desks still face each other, but she does her damn best. She buries herself in work and doesn’t share bylines. She begs Randall for assignments that take her away from her desk. The barista at her usual coffee shop across the street asks if she wants anything for her partner, so now she goes to a different coffee shop three blocks away.

Four days after doing the worst thing she’s ever done in her life, she sits on the fire escape of her apartment at the Talon, scrolling through rental sites. There’s a heavy blanket draped across her shoulders and her laptop sits perched on her bent knees. It’s sort of freezing — she has to stop every few minutes to rub the circulation back into her fingers — but the Talon is the place she and Clark had sex, so it’s one of the places she can’t be for too long without feeling sick. Hence the rental sites.

Leaving Smallville makes sense. For a lot of reasons, not just Clark. Chloe and Jimmy need space to repair their relationship, and Lois should live closer to work, and she’s tired of sleeping on a couch half the time. Smallville was never supposed to be the first and only place where Lois put down roots, anyways. It just so happened that she was eighteen and totally lost in life and the only people in the world that she trusted lived in this town in the middle of nowhere.

She bookmarks apartments at random, just to feel productive. She’ll probably end up asking Ollie to ask his realtor to find her something, assuming Ollie has dried out enough to carry on a conversation. She hasn’t really spoken to any of their mutual friends since that afternoon with Clark. Not even Chloe and Jimmy, who are thankfully too preoccupied with their own drama to worry about hers. Clark is the only thing she can think about and the last thing she wants to discuss. She’s terrified that one off-hand mention of him would break the dam and every treacherous thought she has will come spilling out of her and she won’t be able to stop it.

Lois has made a lot of bad decisions in her life, a few of them related to dating or sleeping with people she shouldn’t be dating or sleeping with, but she has never knowingly been the other woman. Earlier that day, Lana waved at her from across the street and she’d had to lock herself in the Talon bathroom with her head between her knees. And she can’t act like it was all Clark’s fault, no matter how much she wants to. Lois told him it was his last chance and knew he’d take it. She propositioned him and kissed him and fucked him and sent him home to his girlfriend. The home that Lois didn’t live in anymore, because when Clark asked her to move back in, she told him no.

She’s wondered — because she’s wondered about everything, as far as Clark is concerned — what would have changed if she’d taken him up on that offer. Would they have reached their boiling point earlier, admitting their feelings before Lana reentered the picture? Would they have gone to Chloe’s wedding together? Would the dance floor have been their tenth, twentieth, hundredth kiss? And the one Lois really agonizes about, the one that keeps her up the latest at night: would Clark have still pulled away when Lana walked in?

She doesn’t want to know the answer.

***

Martha Kent calls her on Friday morning and invites her to dinner at the farm. “I know it’s a little last minute,” she says apologetically, “and I know you’re busy with work. But I’m only in town one night and I’d love to catch up.”

Lois lets out a slow, deep breath. “That’s so sweet of you, Mrs. K —”

“I’m making the pot roast you like,” Martha adds. “It’ll be a shame if you aren’t there to take home the leftovers.”

I’d love to, but I actually fucked your son behind his girlfriend’s back. “Well, how can I say no to that?” She glances up at Clark’s empty desk. He’s out on some assignment somewhere in Bakerline. The idea of sitting across from him and Lana at family dinner makes her want to puke. An idea occurs to her — a stupid, petty, immature idea that will end badly for everyone, but what else is new? In for a penny, in for a pound. “Do you mind if I invite Oliver, too?”

“Of course, he’s welcome to come,” Martha replies. “I’ll see you two later. Does six work?”

“Six is great.” After they say goodbye, she taps out a text to Oliver: need a favor, u get free dinner.

i am a millionaire, he responds. She dials his number instead, ducking into one of the phone booths in the lobby of the Planet.

“Legs! What’s up?”

She bites nervously at her thumb. He sounds sober enough. “Are you busy tonight?”

“Depends on what this favor is,” he says. “Like, do you need me to spot you a twenty? Or do you need to break into the White House?”

“Somewhere in between,” she says evasively. He lets out a loud laugh.

“Alright, hit me.”

She takes a deep breath. “I need you to come to dinner at the farm tonight.”

There’s a long pause on the other end, and Ollie says, “Clark and I aren’t exactly on the greatest terms right now. Am I even invited?”

“Yes. You’re my plus one. I already asked.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “I need you to make sure I’m never alone with Clark. Or Lana. Or both of them together.”

“Wow.” She hears him shift positions. “You guys must have really gone at it, huh?”

She freezes. “What?”

“You and Clark had some kind of fight, right?” Lois doesn’t reply, so Ollie continues, “Chloe said that last week, you stormed out of the Talon and then Clark showed up all weird and jumpy.”

“A fight,” she echoes. She doesn’t like lying to Ollie, but she can and she will. “Yeah. It was pretty intense.” He came inside me, you know, that kind of intense.

“What was it about?”

Lois opens and closes her mouth around a few different answers, before saying, dumbly, “uh, work.”

She can tell from Ollie’s silence that he’s skeptical. “Right. Well, you can fill me in after dinner.”

“So you’re in?” She taps her fingers nervously against her leg. Her intentions are largely selfish, but she thinks this would be good for Ollie, too. He’s been withdrawing in his own way, too. One that involves private jets and the twenty most eligible bachelorettes from Gotham to Star City.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m in,” he sighs. “What time should I pick you up? I’ll bring wine. I’ll tell Martha it’s from both of us.”

***

A few hours later, Lois is sitting in the passenger seat of Oliver’s Crossfire in the driveway of the farmhouse. He takes a handful of steps before he realizes she isn’t with him, then turns and frowns. “Lois?” His voice is muffled through the glass. “You coming?”

Stiffly, she nods, wills her body to move, but nothing happens. She feels like a prisoner about to walk to the gallows. Oliver doubles back and opens her car door for her.

“What, suddenly you’re all about chivalry?” His laughter dies when he sees whatever expression is on her face. “Jesus. You look like you’re gonna hurl.”

“I’m fine,” she insists. She steels her nerves and climbs out of the car, crossing her arms defiantly. “See?”

“Alright.” He raises his hands in surrender. “Just don’t puke in the car. Or on these shoes.”

“I’ll puke wherever I want,” she grumbles, but she follows him towards the house.

Martha comes out to hug her before they can even knock on the door. “I’m so glad you could make it!”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” she says, holding out the bottle of wine that Oliver had brought, something unpronounceable that probably cost more than her rent. Martha thanks her and winks at Oliver. In the kitchen, Clark stands with his back to her at the sink. His spine straightens when he hears them approach, but he doesn’t turn.

Ollie glances at Lois before speaking. “Clark! Good to see you, man.”

Clark’s smile is tight when he faces them. “Hey guys,” he says. He tries to catch Lois’s eye and she just stares at the wall behind him.

Suddenly, Lana appears at her shoulder, and Lois practically jumps out of her skin. Lana just laughs lightly. “Sorry to scare you,” she says. She has an apron tied around her waist and a basket on her hip, looking like she came straight off the cover of Good Housekeeping. “I was just doing some laundry upstairs.”

Oliver gives a cheery wave that Lois does her best to mimic. She can’t take her eyes off of Lana, the effortless way she sweeps in to help Martha with cooking. Back when Lois still lived at the farm, she had helped Martha organize the whole kitchen. She has to keep herself from frowning when Lana reaches for a fork in the wrong drawer, then frowns at herself for noticing.

“You’re being fucking weird,” Ollie mutters under his breath, leaning his head towards her.

She glares up at him. “You’re being weird.”

“Yeah? Let’s be weird over here.” He grabs her around the elbow and pulls her into the living room. In the corner of her eye, she sees Clark fix them with a displeased look, and she feels a sick sense of accomplishment.

Oliver sits on the couch and looks expectantly at her until she joins him. “Seriously. Lois, what the hell is going on? I thought the fight Clark and I had was bad.”

Her shoulders draw tight. “I told you. We just had an argument.”

Oliver considers her for a couple seconds, then glances behind her at the kitchen. Something seems to dawn on him. “Is this about what happened at the wedding?”

Lois just blinks at him. It’s not what she expected to hear, and she’s not sure if it’s better or worse. “What do you mean?”

“C’mon, you weren’t that drunk,” he laughs, nudging her arm with his elbow. “Your whole my feelings snuck up on me speech? It was great! You could pivot to writing romance novels if journalism ever gets boring.”

“Shut up,” she hisses, throwing a careful look over her shoulder. “Clark doesn’t fucking know about that, obviously. Why would we fight about it? I told you, it was about work.”

“Uh huh.” Ollie is clearly unmoved. “And a work fight is the reason you’re staring at Lana like she’s holding you at gunpoint? And why Clark has been chopping the same onion for five minutes?”

She feels her throat closing up, her ship taking on more water. “You know Clark. He’s… bad at chopping onions.”

“Look, you don’t have to tell me the truth,” Oliver says, “just… you can talk to me, you know that?”

“I know.” She catches his eye meaningfully. “And you can talk to me too. I’m serious, Ollie. I know you prefer to confide in your pilot over champagne and caviar, but I’m here.” Oliver rolls his eyes, but she’s satisfied he understands her meaning.

“Alright,” he calls to the room, standing up from the couch and clapping his hands together. She watches as he strides back towards the kitchen, his performance of dinner-party-Oliver in full swing. “Who wants wine?”

Lois’s hand shoots up. She notices as Clark’s eyes catch on the movement, then on her face. Lois forces herself to hold his gaze. Slowly, the pain in her chest fades, like wading into freezing water until your toes go numb. Then Lana lays a gentle hand on his shoulder to get his attention, and Clark turns to her instead, and Lois is reminded, for the millionth time, why falling in love with him is the stupidest thing she’s ever done.

***

“So, Lois,” Martha says over dinner, “you sure got busy last week!”

Lois almost chokes on her bite of pot roast. She takes a gulp of water before she manages to say, “sorry, what?”

Martha looks confused. “At the Planet! I see your name on the front page almost every day.”

“Right!” She traces the pattern in the metal handle of her fork with one finger. “Yeah, I’ve been working hard.”

“Well, don’t work yourself too hard, sweetheart,” Martha tuts, patting her arm. “Clark says you’ve been falling asleep at your desk.”

Lois narrows her eyes at Clark, who takes a sudden interest in his mashed potatoes. “That’s sweet of you to worry, Mrs. K, but I’m fine. Maybe Clark just needs to keep up with me.”

Clark looks up at her abruptly, a laugh caught behind the line of his mouth. She's struck, all of a sudden, with how badly she misses making him laugh.

She stands up fast enough to rattle the silverware on the table and squeaks out a quick “excuse me.” She darts up the stairs to the bathroom and locks the door.

Maybe she can lie and say she has the flu, or there’s a work emergency. She just can’t be in this house any longer. It was naive of her to think she could, even with Ollie as a human shield; she can’t sit down at the table where Lana probably serves Clark homemade meat loaf, the table where they talk about baby names and rings and the long, long history between them.

She studies herself in the mirror. She looks tired — she hasn’t been sleeping well, so it’s hardly a surprise — and Ollie had a point about her looking like she might puke. She doesn’t wear shame well, evidently. It’s almost annoying that after a lifetime full of rash, irresponsible decisions, this is the one that will be her undoing. It’s not even a particularly interesting one. If only she could have picked something less cliched as the mistake that ruined her life, like high treason, or cave diving.

Lois might be stupid enough to have slept with Clark, but she still knows this: she is just a footnote in the story of him and Lana. The detour he took before he rekindled his first love. Maybe one day, those two will even laugh over stupid, desperate Lois throwing herself at Clark, chalking it up to a mistake he made when he was young and didn’t know any better.

You know better, Lois thinks, bitterly, to herself. You’ve known better this whole time, and you did it anyways. She knows better, because ever since she met him, Clark has been dragging around the dead weight of his relationship with Lana Lang. Every time she had to confront her growing feelings for him, she reminded herself: don’t get involved in this. You’ll get hurt.

She got involved, she got hurt. She knew better.

A soft knock on the door makes her jump. “Just a second,” she chokes out. She wipes the stray tears off her face and undoes the lock. The door swings inwards before she even touches the handle. Clark steps into the bathroom.

Neither of them speak. Lois doesn’t think she could if she tried. She knows she should move back, but his body pulls hers like a magnet.

He’s breathing heavily, which she doesn’t see often, and it’s a little gratifying. “You and Oliver are getting back together?”

“Maybe.” Sometimes, he’s the most predictable man she’s ever met.

“You shouldn’t.”

“I don’t think you’re in any position to tell me who I should get back together with, Smallville.”

“That’s exactly why I’m telling you,” he says, exasperated. “I know what it’s like to be with one person when you’re — when you want to be with someone else.” He takes a purposeful step towards her. “And you don’t want to be with Oliver.”

“You don’t know what I want —”

“I did last week,” he says slyly, and God, Lois could fucking slap him. He gives her another beat to be angry at him before he cups her face in both hands and kisses the remaining air out of her lungs.

If she wasn’t so distracted, she’d be embarrassed by how quickly she folds. Lois clutches at his shoulders, parts her lips against his and lets herself get lost in his push and pull. His hands slide down from her jaw to her waist and he lifts her onto the counter. He rucks her skirt up around her hips, presses one hand into the small of her back and uses the other to pull her underwear to the side. His mouth muffles the noises that escape her as he works into her with two fingers, and she pushes her hips forward, chasing the pleasure that rolls through her like water breaking around a tossed stone.

His lips never leave hers, except once, right before she falls over the edge, when he gasps out “Lois” like it’s a relief to have her name back in his mouth. They kiss for longer than they should. Long enough that it almost stops feeling like a crime and starts feeling romantic. She both loves and hates the easy way she melts against him, the gentle brush of his thumb against her jaw. They pull apart, slow and reluctant like taffy. She shivers a little when he smiles against her.

You know better.

Lois goes back downstairs first. Lana and Martha don’t react to her long absence, but she sees the question in Ollie’s eyes when she sits down and gives him a look that she hopes says please shut up the fuck up until we’re in the car. Clark comes back a few minutes later. “Dryer was on the fritz,” he tells them, motioning vaguely towards the stairs. “Took a couple minutes to turn it on.”

The conversation at the table continues, and Lois lets herself get left behind. She’s caught between the need to get as far away from Clark as she can, and the untenable urge to drag him upstairs by his stupid flannel sleeve and tell him to fuck her again until she forgets why it was such a bad idea in the first place. She can feel the ghostly pressure of Clark’s fingers against her jaw. Her lips are still warm from where they were caught between his own.

Under the table, the side of Clark’s foot presses against hers.

***

Oliver tolerates her silence until they pull into the alley behind the Talon. Before she can even unbuckle her seatbelt, he turns to her and says, firmly, “tell me what’s going on.”

She bites down hard on her tongue and sinks into the expensive leather seat. “There’s nothing to tell.”

Ollie sighs and kills the engine. “Well, I’ve got all night. I can be patient. You wanna hear about my trip to Cabo last week? My friend Shannon — you’ve gotta meet Shannon, Legs, you’d love her, plus I’m pretty sure she’s also a switch-hitter, if you know what I mean —”

“I hooked up with Clark,” she says, spitting the words out like a too-hot bite of food; half reflex, half force.

That shuts Ollie up. He raises his eyebrows at her. “Shit, really? Like, before the wedding?”

“No,” she says, squeezing her eyes closed. “A week ago.”

“But that's —”

“And also today, sort of,” she mutters.

“Today? When? You barely even —” he cuts himself off and his eyes go wide. “Oh my god.”

She leans forward and buries her face in her hands. “You were supposed to make sure we weren’t alone together!”

“I’m sorry for not following you into the bathroom,” Ollie deadpans. “I knew you guys were obsessed with each other, but I didn’t think you’d be getting busy at family dinner.”

Lois frowns and folds in on herself. “We are not obsessed with each other.”

“Sure. Whatever. I’m just saying, I’m not surprised that it happened.” He flicks his eyes down to hers. “I’m a little surprised at the timing.”

“Oliver Jonas Queen, you are not going to lecture me on infidelity.”

“Not the middle name,” he groans, clutching his chest in fake offense. “No, it’s just… I’m an asshole. You and Clark aren’t.”

She hugs herself tighter. “Clark isn’t, at least.”

“Come on, you’re alright too.”

“Ollie,” she implores, “I fucked someone who has a girlfriend. They make movies about this sort of thing, and I’m the villain.” She needs him to understand, because she needs someone to see how guilty she feels; to check the box next to her name that says repentant and give her some selfish sense of absolution. Maybe, if everyone else starts hating her, she can hate herself a little less, like it’ll even out the load.

But Oliver just shrugs. “Not your best decision. But it doesn’t make you evil. You didn’t do it out of spite, right? To hurt Lana?”

“No.”

“And you don’t have some secret fetish for homewrecking?”

“No.”

“So you just… did something shitty,” he finishes. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“I don’t know,” she says, her voice breaking around a sudden sob. “It kind of feels like it is”

She knows Oliver’s right. It’s not the end of the world. But somehow, Clark Kent has become part of the bedrock of her life, and the tectonic plates are shifting under her feet. Lois fought hard for the life she has now, finding a family that always picks up the phone and a career that makes her feel alive. She has integrity and courage and a salary that enables her caffeine addiction. For once, she can prove The General wrong when he chews her out for not going back to college, or for failing to keep Lucy in check. Look what I built. Look how much I can do.

The version of Lois who earned all of that can’t be this selfish, naive wrecking ball of a girl. If she still does this, still makes mistakes big enough to swallow her whole, what else will she ruin? How long until she loses everything else?

When she runs out of tears, she accepts a tissue from Oliver. “I think I’m in love with him,” she admits, sullenly blowing her nose.

Oliver rubs her shoulder and smiles sadly down at her. “You finally figured that out, huh?”

***

Instead of thinking about Lois, Clark goes on patrol.

It’s not his turn, technically, but he needs the distraction. He doesn’t think about her when he stops a robbery, or puts out a house fire, or saves a dog from getting hit by a car. He doesn’t think about her when he sees a tree with leaves the same shade of brownish-green as her eyes, or when he hears a Whitesnake song through the window of a dorm at Metropolis University.

In between saves, he thinks about everything else. He thinks about work, how he hasn’t written anything halfway decent in almost two weeks. He thinks about his lonely nights as The Red-Blue Blur and the phone that doesn’t ring. He thinks about Lana, about this relationship that feels like a too-small set of clothes they’ve both outgrown, about the ways they perform being right for each other and how it only makes everything feel more wrong. All the things that fill the space around the Lois-shaped hole in his life, now that every thought he has can be summarily categorized as Lois and Not Lois.

It’s an unusually quiet Friday night in Metropolis, and he gets antsy for distractions. He blurs to Star City, then Blüdhaven, eventually helping with a fishing accident off the coast of Peru before he makes it back to Smallville.

Lana isn’t home when he gets back to the farm. Even if she was, he doesn’t know what he’d say. They need to have the we should break up conversation, but now that’s been all mixed up with the I slept with Lois conversation, and the idea of dealing with both of those at once makes him feel like he’s swallowed Kryptonite.

What he wants, more than anything else, is to talk to Lois. He barely even tried at dinner, since her voice is still ringing in his ears from their fight in the barn. I don’t want anything from you. I’m not falling for that again. He wasn’t even sure she wouldn’t kick his ass the second he walked into the bathroom. As soon as he realized she wouldn’t, his only objective became to hold onto her as long as he could, and the quickest way to get Lois to leave a room is to talk to her about her feelings.

Ignoring the guilt that gnaws at him, he focuses his hearing on the Talon. He feels his whole body relax when Lois’s familiar heartbeat fills his ears. It’s active right now, dynamic and alert, just like her. He wishes he were there. Not for any reason, just in her space, watching her wear holes in the carpet when she paces across the floor.

He folds his arms on the kitchen table and leans his forehead to rest on them, shutting his eyes. He tunes out everything but the rhythmic pulse of her heart, eventually letting his own breathing slow to match it. The tension seeps out of his body and into the solid butcher block wood of the table.

“Clark? Honey, are you alright?”

For a second, he thinks he’s accidentally tuned his hearing to Lois’s voice, and he looks around, startled. His mother stands on the landing of the stairs, a concerned look on her face. “I’m fine,” Clark lies. “Sorry if I woke you.”

“You didn’t wake me at all, I was just getting water.” Martha comes into the kitchen and sits at the table. “Were you patrolling? I thought Lana was on duty.”

“She is,” he says. “I went out for a bit, too. Couldn’t sleep.”

Martha nods. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’m alright. I just needed to clear my head,” he says. He doesn’t have to tell her that he failed miserably.

“Is it —” Martha stops herself, drumming her fingers lightly on the surface of the table. “Is this about Lois?”

Clark starts to deny it, then stops himself. It’s his mom. There’s no point. “How’d you know?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Martha says, covering his hand with her own. “I’ve known for a while.”

He focuses his eyes on a spot just over her shoulder and breathes deep. “I really messed up, mom.”

He doesn’t tell his mom about the barn, or the bathroom. He thinks he can spare them both that embarrassment. But he tells her, as best he can, everything else. He tells her about Lois encouraging him to apply to the Planet, their ordeal after Chloe’s engagement party, their trip to the Phantom Zone. How he realized he was falling for her and was slowly working up the nerve to do something about it, too protective of what they had to move any faster. How, when Lana interrupted their dance at the wedding, he took the easy way out.

“I can’t lose her,” he says, speaking of Lois. “But I’m afraid I already have.”

“Clark,” Martha chides, “do you really think Lois gives up that easily?”

He thinks about Lois’s iron will and smiles. “No, but I don’t know if she still — uh, if she still likes me,” he says awkwardly.

That makes Martha laugh. “Well, I don’t think she brought Oliver to make me jealous.”

Clark feels his cheeks heat up. “I wasn’t jealous.”

“You saw them talking and chopped the cutting board in half,” she retorts. “Either way, I’m sure you’re both torturing yourselves trying to figure out what the other one is thinking. You can’t read her mind.”

“She won’t talk to me,” he whines, cringing at how pathetic it sounds. “I mean, I tried. She doesn’t trust me anymore.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like the last time she opened up about her feelings, you got a little distracted,” she says. Clark opens his mouth to defend himself, but she raises a hand to interrupt him. “I know, I know, you had your reasons. I understand. But you can’t be surprised that she’s a little hesitant about all this, Clark. I mean, you’re still with Lana.”

He swallows thickly. “I know.”

Martha rubs the back of his hand with her thumb, like she used to when he was little and woke up with nightmares. She studies his face. “You’re happier when you’re around her, you know that? You’re more relaxed.”

“She makes me feel normal,” he says quietly. Not a God or a weapon or a freak or a saint. In Lois’s eyes, he’s just himself. That comes with a different kind of expectation.

“Are you going to tell her your secret?”

“Do you think I should?”

Martha hums in thought, then nods. “I know it’s a big decision, but she’s strong. She understands you, even if she doesn’t know everything yet.”

Clark manages a weak smile. “That’s what Kara said too,” he admits. “She said I never would have let her get so close if I didn’t think she could handle it.”

“I know she can handle it,” Martha says. Gently, she adds, “you both can.”

***

Lana gets home as the sun rises. Clark is standing in knee-high grass, watching the light spill over the horizon. He listens as she walks up to him and stands at his side, her eyes trained on the sky. Clark opens his mouth a few times, but the words keep dying in his throat.

Eventually, Lana crosses her arms protectively over her chest and sighs. “I thought the Prometheus Suit had finally solved the last problem in our relationship. But that’s not it, is it?”

He shakes his head slowly. “No, it’s not.”

Lana is quiet for a moment. “I want you to be happy, Clark. I mean, I want that for both of us. I spent a long time thinking it couldn’t happen unless we were together,” she confesses, squinting against the light. “So I never really tried to be happy when we were apart.”

Clark considers what she’s said. “I didn’t really try,” he admits, thinking of the easy way Lois had coaxed him into his new life. “It just happened. I didn’t realize it until…” he trails off.

“Until we got back together?”

Until Lois was gone, is what he’d been stopping himself from saying. They stand in silence for a while, looking out over the field as the sky paints it with bright pinks and oranges. Clark’s stomach churns like gravel under tires. “I need to tell you something, Lana.”

Lana closes her eyes and squares her shoulders, like she’s bracing for impact. “Yeah,” she says, “you do.”

Once upon a time, Clark had told Lana that he couldn’t stand Lois. She’d smiled knowingly and said that the best ones always start that way. “I slept with Lois,” he says. The words catch in his throat like burrs as he forces them out. “Um, a couple weeks ago. I’m so sorry, Lana, I didn’t plan to, I just —”

“You’re in love with her,” Lana interrupts with a heavy sigh. “I know.”

He feels like he’s talking around a mouthful of sand. “I am so sorry,” he repeats.

“Don’t,” she says tiredly. “I’m not saying what you did is okay. But I’d rather forgive you now than carry it around forever.”

It hurts, but there’s a kind of sharp relief, like cleaning an open wound. “How did you know?

“I didn’t know that you… I knew you had feelings for her. I saw you at Chloe’s wedding. I was clearly interrupting something. And then she came back from Star City, and — God, the way you looked at her…” Lana laughs, dry and humorless. “Did you know you’ve been looking at her like that since high school?”

Clark shakes his head and finally turns to her. “I’m such an idiot.”

Lana nods in quiet agreement, worrying at her bottom lip with her teeth. “I’m leaving Smallville,” she says with finality, after a few moments.

“You don’t have to —”

“Yes,” she insists. “I do. It’s not just because of us, it’s for me. Every time I feel lost, or uncertain, I come back here. It’s become a crutch.

He takes a second to really look at her. She’s so different from the girl he fell for when he was fourteen. This Lana is battle-hardened and calculating, self-actualized in a direction he never would’ve expected. She’s right — Smallville doesn’t suit her anymore. Even when she was in Metropolis, she never settled there as easily as he and Lois had. “Are you going back to Paris?”

She shrugs. “For now. I want to try a new continent soon. Maybe Africa.”

“I think you’re going to do really incredible things,” he says honestly. “Wherever you end up going, they’ll be lucky to have you.”

“So are you. I have a feeling The Blur is only the beginning.” Lana lets out a long, steady breath. “I’m going to go pack my stuff. Just… I meant it when I said I wanted you to be happy, Clark, and I’ve never seen you happier than when you’re with Lois.”

She reaches out and squeezes his hand. Then she turns and walks back to the farmhouse, leaving Clark alone in the field.

As soon as the door closes behind her, he blurs to the Talon.

***

The smoke alarm goes off five seconds after Lois hears a knock at the front door.

“Shit,” she hisses, turning off the burner and grabbing a spatula. If she stretches, she thinks she can turn the alarm off with the handle. “One second!”

“Lois?” Clark’s voice, unmistakably, from the other side of the door. “Is something on fire?”

Chloe hadn’t locked the door when she left for Metropolis that morning, since Lois was already awake, so it swings open without resistance when Clark tries it.

“I’m fine, Smallville,” she insists, getting as high as she can on her tippy-toes. The beep-beep-beep of the alarm continues to blare. There isn’t even that much smoke, just a little burnt bacon, so she’s not sure why it’s being so dramatic about it. She gets one knee up on the counter before Clark crosses the room, takes the spatula from her hand, and turns off the alarm. He doesn’t even extend his arm all the way. Show off.

Awkwardly, she climbs down from the countertop and clears her throat. “Thanks,” she mutters.

Clark’s eyes cut over to the pan sitting on her stove. “Did that used to be bacon?”

“What are you doing here, Clark?” She can’t deal with the whole Lois-and-Clark-flirty-banter thing today. She can barely deal with him being here at all.

“I need to talk to you.”

“I don’t think we have anything to talk about,” she deflects, busying herself with moving her burnt bacon to a plate.

“We do,” he responds, his voice unusually stern, which is a little hot. Fuck. She needs to focus.

Lois squeezes her eyes shut. If she looks at him, she’s going to want to touch him. She doesn’t know why he is so dead-set on fucking up his own life, but she’s not going to indulge it. “What could we possibly have to talk about? It was dumb and selfish and I would go back and stop myself if I could.”

“I wouldn’t,” Clark argues, stupidly. “I don’t regret it, Lois.”

“Yeah, good for you, you got your rocks off,” she snaps.

Immediately, Clark’s face falls. “Is that all it was for you?”

“I — no, but —”

“Because it was more than that, for me,” he adds quietly.

She clenches her jaw tight enough that it hurts. “It shouldn’t be,” she tells him. It’s too late to save her soul, but Clark can still be absolved, if he stops being so goddamn obtuse about it.

Clark makes an incredulous noise. “That’s all you have to say?” Lois doesn’t respond, because if she opens her mouth, she thinks she’s going to throw up. Clark takes in a breath like he’s about to argue with her again, but stops himself. Instead, he circles around her so they’re face-to-face. “Don’t do this, Lois.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “Don’t do what?”

“Don’t — don’t sabotage this because you’re scared that —”

“I’m not scared,” she tosses back. “I’m just not an idiot. You walked away from me, Clark. To get back with your ex girlfriend for, like, the fiftieth time. You don’t get another chance just because I was stupid enough to fall in love with you.”

The expression that crosses Clark’s face is familiar, because she’s seen it twice before. The first was when he was saving her from the psycho engagement ring salesman, right after she’d been forced to admit her feelings for him; and again when he’d read Jimmy’s vows out loud and she’d turned, foolishly, thinking the words were for her. It’s the expression that lets her down easy. I’m sorry, it says. I think you misunderstood. How unfortunate. Her heart curdles in her chest.

“I broke up with Lana,” Clark says.

Lois takes a breath and holds it.

“I broke up with Lana,” he continues, “because I’ve known since the minute you got back that I want to be with you. I love you, Lois. I know I messed up, but I will do whatever it takes to make it up to you.”

She wants to believe him. She wants it so bad her body aches with it, which means it’s too good to be true. “A week ago you were in love with Lana and now, all of a sudden, you’re in love with me?”

“No,” he says, “no, not all of a sudden. It’s been months, Lo. Before Star City. Before the wedding. I just didn’t realize. And there were —” he hesitates. “Complicating factors.”

That makes her narrow her eyes. “What kinds of factors?”

Clark paces a couple steps across her kitchen. “I’m the Red-Blue Blur.”

Which is not what she expected.

For a few seconds, she stares at him. “What the fuck?”

“I’m the Red-Blue Blur,” he repeats, a little more confidently, as if that clarifies anything.

“No, I heard you.” She leans on the counter behind her. Her head swims. “Why are you telling me?”

He blinks at her. “I love you, Lois, and I know that if there’s any chance for us, I need to tell you everything.”

“Stop.” She holds both hands in front of her. Clark, obediently, shuts up. “Just — one thing at a time, please.”

“Okay,” Clark says. He stands and waits for her cue.

Lois takes a deep breath, then another one. In through the nose, hold for five seconds, out through the mouth, just like that yoga instructor taught her. When she’s done, she gives Clark a once-over. “So. You’re the Red-Blue Blur? The super… guy?”

He nods. “Yeah,” he confirms, a little breathlessly. Can he even be out of breath? She has so many questions she doesn’t know where to begin.

“Prove it,” she demands, more out of curiosity than disbelief. Disbelief, strangely, hadn’t even occurred to her.

Then Clark disappears. He’s standing in front of her in her kitchen, and then there’s a rush of wind and he just… isn’t. Three seconds later, he’s back. In his hand is the mug she always keeps on the corner of her desk at the Planet.

“Holy shit,” she breathes.

“I have super-strength, too,” he adds, grinning.

“Can you fly?”

He frowns, almost childishly. “No. Not yet. My cousin can.”

“Your — Kara?”

“We aren’t from here,” he says hesitantly. “Like… Earth.”

Lois isn’t speechless often. Usually, if she’s not talking, it’s on purpose. But right now, she’s coming up empty. “Just to be clear,” she manages eventually, “you’re telling me that you’re an alien?”

“Yes.” He looks at her warily.

“You’re the Red-Blue Blur, you’re an alien, and you’re in love with me,” she says. She leans heavily against the counter. “That’s a lot for a girl to take in, Smallville.”

“I know.” He leans on the counter opposite her. They aren’t touching, but their feet sit companionably beside each other on the tile floor.

She doesn’t want to ask, but she has to, or it’ll drive her insane. “Why didn’t you.. At Chloe’s wedding, I mean. When we…” she waves off the end of the sentence. All this, and she can’t even say why didn’t you kiss me.

Clark frowns and looks at the floor, chagrined. “At first, I was just surprised. But I think mostly I was scared. I was scared of ruining our friendship. I was scared of change. When people get close to me, close enough to find out my secret, they always get hurt. I was so scared of hurting you. I thought the best thing I could do for you was to ignore my feelings. But when you came back from Star City… I don’t know, I just couldn’t. As soon as I picked you up from the airport, I knew I’d made a mistake.”

God, Lois thinks, fighting to keep her smile contained, because neither of them are really off the hook yet. He really is so stupid, sometimes.

“I bet Lana hates me,” she says quietly. She and Lana have had their differences, but this is a hell of a lot worse than anything Lana had ever done to her.

Clark shakes his head gently. “I mean, she’s not thrilled. But she understands, I think.”

Lois scoffs. “Understands? Understands what?”

Slowly, Clark leans forward and takes one of Lois’s hands in both of his. “That you’re the one,” he says earnestly. “I should have realized it sooner, but I know now. I’m not letting you go this time, Lois. I’m never making that mistake again.”

She doesn’t deserve this. Karmically, she doesn’t deserve to get what she wants here. Clark senses her distress and cradles her face.

“Lois,” he repeats. “Breathe.”

In through the nose, hold for five seconds, out through the mouth. Clark’s eyes don’t leave hers for a second.

“I think,” she says, “I need, um, a little time. To process everything.”

“Okay,” he says gently, his thumb sweeping across her cheek.

“I’m not running away,” she assures him. “I just — it’s a lot. Not in a bad way.”

“Right.” He looks like he’s about to laugh at her, which is a relief. He kisses her softly, not lingering long enough to let it get heated, then lets her go. “I’ll be at the farm, whenever you’re ready.”

***

She doesn’t run away, but she runs. Whitesnake in her earbuds, sneakers kicking up dust on an unpaved road somewhere in the arid Kansas wilderness. Two miles in, she can’t tell the difference between her runner’s high and the adrenaline from Clark’s confession, so she finds a long-neglected bench and takes a breather.

He’s the Red-Blue Blur. It certainly recontextualizes the last four years, but it’s not as hard to believe as she would’ve expected. It’s just a new headline for the Wall of Weird. And even if this is a revelation, it’s still Clark. She’s surprised at how little this changes her feelings about him, or her feelings for him. And his feelings for her, despite all her misgivings, keep making themselves known. He keeps showing up. Sometimes late, but always with the best intentions.

Everything she’s asked for has suddenly fallen into her lap. Clark, an inside scoop on her story, closure from the last six months of yearning. But her skin itches with the knowledge that she had to cheat to get it. Hurting Lana, using Oliver — hell, using Martha — she can’t justify that, just because she got what she wanted. And what would her dad say, and Chloe and Jimmy? She feels their imagined disappointment pressing in on all sides.

She pushes off the bench and continues running. She figures she’ll do another half mile before she starts looping back around towards town. She just needs to keep moving until she can talk herself out of going back to the barn. Because really, all she wants is to go see Clark, but if she goes now, she’s just going to tell him the awful truth, which is that she loves him, too.

She comes to an abrupt stop, feet skidding in the dirt. It doesn’t sound so awful anymore, now that Clark is single and their secrets have all burst through to the surface. She tries it out in her head: I love you, Clark. When the first wave of panic subsides, it feels surprisingly okay. It feels solid, like it can hold her weight without collapsing.

All month, she’s been waiting for someone to put her on trial, but she’s her own sole accuser. Even Lana, who she’s been fearing as her judge, jury, and executioner, doesn’t seem to hold any contempt for her.

She feels like a radio signal that’s finally broken through the static. The sudden clarity is overwhelming. She turns on her heel and sprints, full-speed, back to the farm.

***

Clark is in the loft when she arrives, poring over a beat-up journal she’s always wondered about. She adds it to her mental list of things to ask him about tomorrow. He smiles when she appears at the top of the stairs, standing and making his way over to her. “Hi,” he says, with a flash of his dimples.

As soon as she leans in to kiss him, he clutches at her waist like a life preserver. A giddy kind of pleasure fizzes through her body.

“I love you too,” she says, and then her mouth is too preoccupied to say any more because Clark is kissing her back with a ferocity that makes her squeal. Together, they manage to pull his shirt over his head and she chucks it somewhere behind her. She runs greedy hands across his chest as he grabs her thighs, just under the curve of her ass, and lifts her in his arms.

“I’ve missed you,” he says between kisses, carrying her across the loft to the couch, where he sits with her on his lap. He slides a hand up her torso, under the Metropolis Meteors sweatshirt she jogged in, and makes a pleased noise when he traces the edge of her sports bra.

“Prove it,” she breathes against him.

He grins at her, mouthing at her neck while he rucks up her sweatshirt and bra. Once it’s off, he moves down her chest, wrapping his lips around one nipple and circling the other with his thumb. “I missed these,” he murmurs as he laves the sensitive skin with his tongue. “It’s so distracting when you wear those little tank tops.”

Lois clutches weakly at the back of his head and laughs breathlessly. “I knew you were ogling me.” Clark tilts so that she’s on her back and pulls her running shorts off.

“Look at you,” he says, placing kisses in a hot trail down her stomach. “Can you blame me?” He licks a wide stripe over the wet crotch of her panties, and she hears him chuckle when her hips buck up against him. He rests a hand on her lower stomach, holding her in place, while his free hand pushes her panties to the side. Lois strains against the pressure of his arm when Clark brushes his thumb against her, his touch almost torturously light. His eyes flick up to hers. “I’m sorry, can I help you with something?”

“No,” she lies, somehow managing to get the word out in between the uneven staccato of her breathing.

He gives her that infuriating smirk, the one she only sees when he’s caught her in the act of wanting him, then tugs off her underwear and tosses it somewhere on the floor. He takes his time kissing up her thigh to her center, laughing when she kicks at his shoulder in an unspoken demand for him to hurry up already. “Patience is a virtue, you know,” he teases.

She glares at him with as much vitriol as she can manage, given their position. “I don’t give a fuck about virtue, Smallville.”

“Good,” he says, grinning and hooking his hands underneath her thighs. Then his mouth is on her and she’s crying out something that sounds vaguely like his name. She pushes herself up on one elbow so she can see him, her free hand landing in his dark hair. He hums happily and she feels it vibrate through her. Lois is a grown woman, and she’s had plenty of good sex, but she has to admit that Clark’s almost meditative enjoyment of eating her out is new. New and good. He moves his tongue at just the right angle and she lets out a whine that should embarrass her, but only seems to encourage him.

Lois feels her climax building and presses her hips forward, seeking friction. Clark eases a finger into her, looks into her eyes, and laps intently at her until her body draws taut like a bowstring and shoots. She collapses, boneless, onto the mattress. Clark’s smile is wide and unapologetic, and he kisses down line of her jaw while she recovers. Clark’s jeans come off next, and his boxers, and they kiss lazily while she takes him in her hand. It’s nice to do this without the unspoken time limit. The only person waiting on them is Shelby, and he owes her one, for saving him from being named Krypto.

When Clark does push into her, it’s unhurried and decadent, with a stretch that makes her body burn at a fever pitch. Their fingers lace together where her hand is pressed into the sofa cushions. She lets herself relish in the romance of it all: the gentle pressure of his mouth, the roll of his hips, the words in her ear when they both reach their peak at the same time.

And later, he makes her dinner. He brings her clean towels for her shower and lets her pick a movie. When she yawns, he gallantly offers to drive her home, but adds, sheepishly, I’d really like you to stay.

So Lois stays.

***

One month later

Lois’s phone lights up with an unsaved number. After a glance, she picks up instantly, holding the phone between her shoulder and ear while she continues writing. “Lois Lane,” she says, by way of greeting.

“Miss Lane,” the Blur says. “I’d like your help with something, if you don’t mind.”

“I’m a very busy woman,” she says dismissively.

He laughs. “Well, if you can find time in your day, could you look into the name Bruno Mannheim for me? He worked for Ron Milano.”

“The mobster?” She scribbles the name on a piece of scratch paper and squints at the spelling. Manhime?. She’ll figure it out later. “He owns the Ace of Clubs, right? What’s he up to?”

“Milano’s dead,” the Blur says lowly. “I think Mannheim had something to do with it.”

Lois’s mind is already a mile ahead of her with this story, and she jots down a couple thoughts before remembering who was on the other line. “While I have you,” she says, “could you do me a favor too?”

“Anything.” He sounds more like Clark than the Blur, which is how she prefers it, if she has a say. “I’ll do anything.”