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Working at the Daily Planet is…interesting.
Clark hadn’t been totally sold on the idea when he’d filled out the application, but most days he’s glad he did. Metropolis is growing on him, slowly but surely, and he knows that being here, where the action is, well, maybe that’s what his destiny will require of him.
What has surprised him, thoroughly, is how much he likes working with Lois.
Lois is still Lois, sure. But that’s the thing - he knows Lois, almost alarmingly well after the years they’ve spent in each others’ orbits, so he’s fully aware of the best practices in sharing space with Lois Lane. He has found he doesn’t mind it - sure, she still likes to bust his chops every chance she gets but that’s just what they do. Outside of that, she’s actually a great teacher, and seems committed to helping him get better at a job he’s quickly come to like (definitely more than he ever expected he would).
And it’s because of Lois that he finds himself in his current predicament, washing his hands in the men’s room and fighting the urge to start swinging as he hears the conversation happening just outside the heavy wooden door that leads out into the hallway and down to the bullpen.
He’s so close to flying off the handle that all he can do is stare at his reflection and try his level best not to speed through that door and wring Steve Lombard’s neck.
Listen, boys, I’m just saying, she’s got a big mouth but I’d give my right fucking leg to give Lane my ‘Morning Edition’, you know what I mean?
Steve works at the Sports desk and while he has a tendency to make any number of off-color remarks under his breath, his most lascivious are directed towards Clark’s (kind-of) partner, and, well, it’s just wrong, that’s all.
It’s those tits, man. I’d love to get my hands on those things, can you imagine?
It’s wrong to talk about Lois the way Steve is, like he knows her, like he would ever stand a chance, like Lois is nothing more than some object to be ogled and drooled over and Clark knows full well that if Lois overheard she’d knee Steve right in the groin.
Clark thinks he’d very much like to see that.
You know what, though, she’s got those mile-long legs. Imagine having those things wrapped around you. Man, the things I would do to her.
Picturing it is the only thing that’s helping to curb the rage that’s building in his chest, and he needs to get control of himself quickly, because through the wall he sees it: Steve is heading in Clark’s direction and he isn’t sure he trusts himself at this very moment.
He dries his hands and makes to leave but Steve is there, in the doorway, flanked by Ray and Joe, two of the other sports reporters, and Clark tells himself to count to ten, slowly.
“Kent, right?” There’s something a little too smooth about Steve, the way he feigns confusion when Clark’s pretty sure the man remembers meeting him. Clark’s been at the Planet for a few months now, after all. “Hey, fellas, let’s ask him, huh?”
He exhales slowly, closes his eyes briefly, and prays for calm.
“Ask me what?” It comes out more menacing than he’d like, but Steve and the others don’t seem to notice.
Ray nudges Steve knowingly, then gives Clark a cocky grin. “You know Lane pretty well, right?”
Clark doesn’t respond, just stands there and stares, waiting.
“What’s it take to get her out of those tight little skirts, man? You got any tips?” It’s Joe who continues, his beady little weasel eyes glinting in a way Clark doesn’t care for.
So he doesn’t really think he should be blamed for it when he closes the distance between himself and the idiot trio blocking the exit. And is it actually his fault when his fist grabs Joe’s collar and he shoves the man against the wall with more force than he should. “Here’s a tip,” he hisses out, and he feels so out of control in that moment, the words pouring out before he can stop them. “Don’t talk about her.”
Steve is watching him with interest when he releases Joe, who is just staring at him wide-eyed and trying to fix the new wrinkles in his shirt. “Or what, farm boy? You gonna run us over with your tractor?”
Steve should’ve just kept his mouth shut, because the thing is, Clark hasn’t liked him since the day he was first introduced, and he knows better than to do this, he does, but it’s just that he can’t stop. He’s advanced on Steve before his mind can really process what his body is doing, and his hand is around the man’s throat, and the next thing he’s cognizant of is that he’s picked Steve up, by the throat, and pinned him against the white and black tile of the bathroom wall.
Gasping for air, hands trying to loosen Clark’s fingers, Steve starts to turn red.
“You stop talking about her, or I’ll make it so you can never talk again. How about that?”
Steve makes a choking noise and nods.
“Deal?”
He’s almost tomato-colored, but Steve nods again and Clark releases him. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s been so angry but he hates it, the way they look at Lois sometimes, the things they say when they think no one is listening. But Clark is always listening, and he always hears, and he may still be new but he knows that Lois is more than just a pretty face. She’s a great reporter, and she deserves respect.
Clark glares at the other two who are now gaping at him. “The same goes for you,” he mutters at Ray, then swings his head around to give Joe a narrow-eyed look. “And you. Got it?”
Ray steps back, his hands up in surrender. “Hey, man, we don’t want any trouble, alright?”
“Good.” His jaw feels tight and tense as he wheels back around, one more warning there on the tip of his tongue, dying to be released. “Next time I won’t be so polite.”
He’s still angry (and he feels so confused about this, about this visceral reaction still welling inside him because yes, of course Lois is his friend, and it’s only natural that he would come to her defense but should it make him seethe so much?) as he stalks back to his desk, Lois none the wiser as she taps away at her keyboard with a slight frown.
For a few minutes they both work in silence, then he catches the movement as she pokes her head around her monitor to look at him. “You okay?”
Clark huffs out a quick breath. “Yeah,” he says tightly, because he might not be okay at all. He could very possibly be getting fired, any minute now, and he knows he’d probably deserve it. He shouldn’t have grabbed Joe and he definitely shouldn’t have choked Steve and now who knows what will happen?
And what would Lois say?
She’d probably jab a finger into his chest, hard, and tell him she could fight her own battles. That’s what she likes to do, no matter how much danger it puts her in, and he wonders if she knows what tools those guys are. She’s been here longer than him, maybe she’s already squared off with Steve.
Clark thinks that’s unlikely, since Steve doesn’t walk with a noticeable limp, and isn’t missing any fingers.
He keeps his head down, begging off lunch when Lois heads out by complaining about a stomach ache that can’t possibly exist, but somehow does. It’s dread, he thinks, making his gut churn. He’s ashamed, yes, because he usually isn’t so quick to resort to violence, and he has to be careful; Metropolis isn’t Smallville and he has to watch his every move if he wants to keep his secret under wraps.
He’s so gonna get fired. It’s just a matter of time.
“Uh, Kent?”
His head whips up and he sees Ray standing there nervously, shuffling on his feet a little as he shoves his hands in his pockets, eyes darting everywhere but Clark’s face. “Yes?”
Ray shifts a little closer. “Listen, I’m sorry about earlier, we were way out of line about,” he nods towards Lois’s empty desk, “you know…”
Clark opens his mouth to apologize, even if he doesn’t totally mean it, but before he can Ray keeps talking.
“Hey, so, you won’t say anything to Lane, right?” There is something perversely funny about the way the slim man gulps and gives a mildly frightened glance back to Lois’s desk. “I mean, I’d like to have kids one day and-”
Clark holds up a hand to halt the man’s tirade. “Just don’t let it happen again and we’re square, okay?”
With an audible sigh of relief, Ray’s shoulders seem to sag. “Thanks. Oh, hey,” he stalls out as he begins to walk away to step back towards Clark’s desk. “What’s your workout routine, man? I’ve never seen a dude pick another dude up by the neck like that.”
For a brief moment Clark panics, but inspiration strikes, and he’s suddenly glad he’s had years worth of lies to draw from. “I throw a lot of hay bales around, Ray. You know, when I’m not out driving the tractor.” There’s more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice, and to his credit the other man isn’t oblivious to it.
Ray just chuckles, and heads for the elevator, calling over his shoulder, “Good one, Kent. That’s fine, don’t tell me, I get it, I get it.” Then he’s gone, and Clark’s not sure he’s ever been so simultaneously swamped with relief and regret in his life.
Maybe he’s not getting fired, after all.
He decides to just keep his head down for the rest of the day, not looking up from his monitor at all until Lois returns in a whirlwind of activity that makes him smile. He’s not sure he’d ever admit it to her, but things tend toward the boring end of the spectrum when she’s not around. They go to City Hall and sort through old building permit records for a story lead she’s chasing and he listens closely, hangs on every word, files away every little nugget of advice she offers in his mind.
She really is good at this, and he nearly tells her so, but he knows Lois almost too well, and knows how she downplays compliments. She’d probably just tease him, anyway.
By the time they make it back to the Planet it’s nearly 7:00 at night, and she stretches and winces as she stands beside her desk, her back likely aching from hours spent hunched over dusty files.
She looks tired, too, so he’s surprised when she perches on the edge of his desk, his eyes only lingering for a second on her legs as she crosses them and regards him with an inscrutable expression. “C’mon, let’s go eat. My treat.”
There’s something odd about her tone, and he realizes there’s something else going on here, but his bank of Lois knowledge runs incredibly deep so he just sighs and nods, feeling something approaching exhausted after being on high alert all day. “Sure.”
They don’t go far; There’s a diner Lois loves two blocks over from the Planet, and he feels her eyes on him the entire walk there, but she doesn’t say anything else until they’ve got their orders in front of them and they’ve settled into a booth nestled against a wide window that faces the street.
“So, Clark,” Lois says, and she’s trying to sound nonchalant but her heart is beating pretty quickly, giving her away, so he braces himself. “I heard you had an incident today.”
He freezes where he sits, nearly choking on his chocolate milkshake. “Hmm?”
Lois just smirks and puts entirely too much ketchup on her fries. “Did you or did you not choke Steve Lombard out in the men’s room?”
He doesn’t dare look up because the problem with knowing Lois so well is that the reverse is true, too. She knows him better than almost anyone, and most of the time Clark feels like she can see right through him. Several heartbeats pass in silence before he says anything, his eyes trained squarely on the bacon cheeseburger slowly cooling in the basket on the table.
“There might have been some slight choking,” he allows, only daring to glance up when he hears her make a strange, strangled sound. He wonders briefly if she’s going to try to choke him, but that notion is dispelled quickly when he realizes she’s laughing into her hand.
Maybe she won’t kill him for trying to fight her battles for her, he realizes, but she’s definitely going to tease him. With a resigned smile, he shrugs, then takes a big bite of his burger, mustering up an appetite at last.
“So, Clark,” she drawls slowly, once she’s collected herself, “you wanna spill how you ended up ‘slightly choking’ one of our coworkers in the bathroom?”
He chews, eyeing her thoughtfully for a moment, hesitance returning as he swallows. “Not really.”
She eats a few fries, her eyes glued to his face, lips still turned up in a tiny, knowing smile. “Is this about the pool?”
To the best of his knowledge there is no pool at the Daily Planet, though there is a fitness center on the fifth floor that he probably should’ve directed Ray to if he was really all that interested in stepping up his workout routine. “What pool?”
Lois snickers softly then cuts her patty melt in half, one triangle of the sandwich perched in her hand as she gives him a wry smile. “The one about my underwear.”
His confusion, he assumes, is crystal clear, because Lois wrinkles her nose at him and he tries really hard not to think about the fact that it’s kind of cute when she does that, it reminds him of a rabbit, and she would definitely make about a million jokes over that confession so he keeps it to himself.
“Those turds in Sports have a running thing about trying to make bets on what color my underwear is on any particular day.”
There it comes again, that oddly protective anger, and he hears the thick, frosted glass around his milkshake crack from the sudden pressure he is applying. “Wait, wait, wait,” he says, pushing the glass to the side and turning it away from her field of vision so she won’t see the liquid starting to seep from the hairline fracture he’s caused. “You mean to tell me that you know they’re running a pool.” She nods. “Specifically about what color your underwear is.” Another nod. “And you haven’t cut anyone’s brake lines yet?”
That makes her laugh out loud, and he grins, because he likes it when Lois laughs. Her laughter has always been contagious, even when it’s at his expense (or hers), and so he joins in as she tries to muster up a scowl.
“No,” she says, her teeth peeking out to tug at her bottom lip briefly. “About once a week I have Jimmy place a bet, instead. I mean, it’s not like I can stop them from wondering, but,” he’s amazed at her air of indifference as she waves a fry in his direction, “I can absolutely profit from it.”
Clark just sits there for a moment, wondering how one person can so consistently amaze him. He blinks, and tilts his head, eyeing her as she takes a bite of her sandwich. “How much have you made?”
She grins at him again around a mouthful of food. “Nearly a thousand bucks since I started working at Daily Planet, Ace.” Then she leans forward, her smile turning decidedly devious. “Why? You want in?” She arches a brow at him and he’s starting to think he’ll never figure her out, and he wonders briefly why he finds that idea so entertaining. “I’ll give you the same cut I was giving Jimmy, and I gotta be honest, I was probably going to have to change tactics soon anyway. It’s been kind of awkward having to give Jimmy that particular info, seeing as he’s engaged to Chloe now.”
Clark finds he can’t do much more than squint at her. Every time he tries to respond nothing comes out, and his stomach feels kind of tingly, like he’s riding a rollercoaster, his mind racing as he realizes that she’s been telling Jimmy what color her underwear is and now she intends to tell him and he doesn’t know if he’s ready to own that kind of information.
Over the years he’s learned his mind cannot be trusted to keep things on the straight and narrow when it comes to Lois. Probably due to all the various states of dress (and undress, because there’s a zero percent chance he’ll ever rid his brain of that image, even if he wanted to. Not that he thinks about Lois naked all that often. Not on purpose. Most of the time.) he’s seen her in. No, he thinks, this isn’t something he should do, because he is Lois’s friend, and last time he checked friends didn’t disclose that information to each other.
His mind says no but then his dumb mouth goes and says ‘Sure’, and she claps her hands together in excitement before taking a huge bite of her sandwich.
“Thanks, Clark,” she says around a mouthful, eyes dancing as she chews. “You’re the best.”
No, he’s not, because now that the door has been opened he can’t stop thinking about what underwear she might be wearing right this minute, and he’d assumed he was past the urge to peek, well past it, but the temptation is growing and he needs to knock it off, and quickly.
“Yeah, well,” he forces out, voice light and friendly, “We’ll see if you still feel that way when I tell you I want five percent more than whatever you were paying Jimmy.” Lois rolls her eyes and snorts, finishing the first half of her sandwich while he leans back against the upholstered booth, considering her anew. “I just can’t believe you’re okay with that.”
Lois props her chin on her hand and stares at him for a beat. “Clark, I figured out a long time ago that the world isn’t fair. Sometimes assholes are going to be assholes, and if you want to level the playing field you have to be creative. Do I like those creeps perving on me? Of course not. But hey, taking their money is revenge enough for me. For now, anyway.” Her eyes flick to his face then back to her food before she speaks again. “So, if I’m going to loop you in on my current subterfuge plot, I need you to go ahead and come clean on what it was that made you choke another grown man this morning.”
He feels remarkably more ashamed than he did when he thought she had no idea what was going on, so he twists his paper napkin around his fingers a few times before he answers. “He was saying inappropriate things.”
Her eyes narrow speculatively. “About me?”
He grimaces slightly, then nods. “Yeah.”
She waits a second, then another, then raises her brows questioningly. “Well? Are you going to tell me what it was?”
There’s no way, not a snowball’s chance in Hell that he’s going to repeat what was said, so he shakes his head and gives her an apologetic look. “Nothing I’m going to say out loud.”
He can see Lois bite the inside of her cheek, her finger tapping against her bottom lip thoughtfully. He prepares himself for an inquisition but it doesn’t come. Instead, she takes a sip of her soft drink and smiles at him with softness he rarely sees in her eyes. They eat in relative quiet, until she takes the check and slips money into the server’s hand. “You ready?”
Lois’s oddest personality trait, by far, is for all her curiosity she doesn’t push him when she really should, when everyone else has. But she just lets it be, as they walk back to the Planet, to where her car sits waiting in the underground garage, and for once he realizes she doesn’t fill the dead air between them.
He guesses this silence isn’t an uncomfortable one, and he fights a chuckle at the memories the thought prompts as she pushes through the door. Lois heads for the elevator and he's right behind, trailing after her as they stop at the bank and she pushes the down button. Then it’s a frown he keeps buried because he’s going up, not going home, a night of patrolling ahead of him. He reaches forward and presses the other button on the display, and then, finally, she speaks.
“Thanks, Clark.”
He turns his head to find her worrying her bottom lip again, unreadable. “For what?” She's already thanked him once tonight and as far as he knows he hasn't agreed to any other devious plans between the restaurant and here, so he's a little confused.
The chime dings and the doors part in front of her. “For having my back.” Then she punches his shoulder lightly and steps into the car. “Partner.” With a smile and a wink she’s gone again, disappearing behind the metal doors, and he can’t help but watch her smile to herself as she rides the car down, his eyes fully capable of peering through the layers of concrete and rebar that separate them now.
“Partner,” he whispers to himself. He likes the sound of that.
He smiles, too, all the way up to the top floor, stepping out onto the roof and realizing the night sky seems a little bit brighter than it had.
—-------------
Clark arrives before Lois the next morning, a half dozen donuts warming his hand as he carries the box to his desk only to find she isn’t there.
“Hey, CK!” Jimmy rushes over and claps a hand on his shoulder. “Lois said to tell you she’s gonna be at Centennial Park covering the Mayor’s press conference this morning.” Then the young man leans in and intones quietly, “And I hear I’m off the hook on the office pool.”
His meaningful, earnest look makes Clark sigh. It isn’t like he’s forgotten; No, he’d spent the better part of the prior night wondering exactly what he was getting himself into. “Right.”
“Thanks, man. I really wasn’t looking forward to explaining that one to Chlo, you know?”
“Sure, Jimmy.” Clark drops the donuts on his desk and decides some coffee is in order, inwardly debating on whether he ought to just head down to the park anyway. They were partners, right? That’s what she’d said.
His phone beeps in his pocket, and he pulls it out, waving to Jimmy with friendly dismissal as he pulls up the text she sent him.
LL: I thought punctuality was an important farm skill, Smallville. You gonna drag your giant hayseed body down to Centennial or am I once more going to be pulling all the weight in this partnership?
LL: Oh, and by the way? Red. In case Steve is accepting wagers today.
He feels his face growing hot but he doesn’t care, just grabs the donuts and his work bag and races up the stairs.
CK: On my way.
CK: Partner.
He gets one last text message, one that makes a barking laugh escape and no doubt makes the people passing him on the sidewalk think he’s crazy.
LL: Don’t let it go to that enormous head of yours. You’re the junior partner. I want to make sure you’re clear on that.
Clark almost responds, but then he shoves his phone in his pocket and lengthens his stride, whistling as he goes.
He’ll just tell her in person, and try his very hardest to pretend he doesn’t know what color her underwear is.