Chapter Text
After spending all her vacations over the last six months being hosted by the Kents, Lois experienced a tiny bit of a culture shock when she attended Owen’s birthday party at David’s parents’ house. No excitable canines greeted her at the door, no Gen Xer parents broke out the edibles and acoustic guitars. Captain and Mrs. Weber arranged to have the shindig catered and a college student with a black bow tie took her and her dad’s coats and their presents (a gift bag from Lois and a check from the General), then directed them to the open bar set up in the dining room.
Lucy said hi to her dad and sister when they arrived, but they only had time for a quick hug and air kiss because David’s mom was riding her ass hard about some kerfuffle with the catering - too many blinis, too little caviar, something deeply inconsequential. Lois wasn’t clear on the specifics and didn’t want to get involved, she just grabbed a glass of rosé and skulked off to find a place to sit when the Captain nabbed the General and the two of them started talking politics.
Lois had no desire to get into a screaming fight with the fam at Owen’s birthday (not that the birthday boy would care, he and the other littles had been corralled into the den by David’s sister Amy, where she was keeping them occupied with Simon Says and other boring kid games). Her plan to ensure a smooth-sailing kind of day was to drink just enough to maintain a modest buzz, confine her remarks to the weather, and leave as soon as cake and presents were over. Armed with her wine and sitting in an armchair in the Webers’ uncomfortably white living room, Lois figured her chances of escaping with her sanity and dignity intact were fairly high. The guest list was comprised almost entirely of people she didn’t know who had no reason to talk to her.
Hell, she didn’t have much reason to talk to the people she knew - she and the General hadn’t exchanged more than a few sentences since she Ubered up to his house the day before. It wasn’t because of lingering resentment (they both got their licks in during her shitty birthday dinner, so they were even), Dad simply wasn’t home to talk to, which suited Lois fine. She settled in with her laptop, ordered dinner with the $100 DoorDash gift card he left on the kitchen island, got some work done, and simultaneously re-watched Queen Charlotte while scrolling her phone.
Dad showed up during the whole naked-in-the-garden scene, prompting Lois to hastily exit the show. Turned out they were both employing the same ‘keep it chill’ strategy - no sooner did he come in, than he started talking about the weather.
“It’s a good thing that storm blew out before it got this far north,” he observed. “Lucy’s lucky she didn’t have to cancel - it’s too bad about Georgia.”
Lois responded with a vaguely affirming grunt. She almost texted Clark when the clickbait articles started popping up alleging a “confrontation” between state law enforcement and Superman, but decided against it. He was already in his feelings about her Superman article and whatever she had to say would probably rub salt in the wound - Clark did a pretty good job maintaining a neutral, Ken doll-esque expression when he was Supermanning, but at this point she knew him well enough to recognize butthurt when she saw it, no matter how quickly he shored the mask back up when it slipped.
Also he probably wouldn’t love that she was firmly on the side of highway patrol. Like, boo-hoo about the roads, but it was a completely avoidable situation! They dropped the ball when they didn’t treat the pavement and, in Lois’s (correct) opinion, it was way better for them to admit they fucked up and deal with the fallout of poor emergency planning than pull a Geraldine Taylor and run off to the first second-rate talk show host who’d have them, crying crocodile tears about how Superman should have been there the night before, scooping road salt up in his cape and sprinkling it on their major roadways, like the Tinkerbell of ice storm prep.
Take it down a notch, Lane, Lois reminded herself. You can’t come in this hot when you interview her next week.
Like Walt Whitman before her, Lois was vast and contained multitudes; she could simultaneously think Geraldine Taylor was essentially a slimy grifter while also knowing that her story was deeply important to understanding the cultural shift in the perception of superpowered beings and their role in shaping the world. She could think Clark Kent was basically the greatest guy ever, while simultaneously casting doubt about the utility of relying on metahumans to intervene in every conceivable crisis people found themselves facing, individually or collectively.
Whatever. When her article came out, Clark would get it. He probably would have gotten it when she explained it to him the first time only he was deep in the winter sads and she was…not the best equipped person to help him deal with that. Like, yes, she contained multitudes, but being a human pacifier was a little beyond her skillset.
To be clear: Lois did not blame Clark in the slightest for sinking into the winter doldrums when the world went dark mid-December. SAD was a thing and it wasn’t like he could waltz into a psychiatrist’s office and get a prescription for an SSRI - or, like, he could, but it wasn’t likely to do anything for him beyond a placebo effect. Overall, he covered it up fairly well, and it was mostly not noticeable except for when he gave her sad puppy dog eyes and asked her to stay the night with him.
Admittedly, from her current position, sitting alone in a living room surrounded by retirement-age military personnel, Lois could have done with some company. And it wasn’t like she wanted to send him home early Thursday night (fortifying herself for the trip with some funtimes in her bedroom would have been a great way to kick off a tedious weekend), but she stayed the night at his place the week before and she didn’t want to make a habit of it.
It would be hypocritical, right? To be drafting an article about the real-world cost of being dependent on superhumans while diving headfirst into codependency herself? In that way she could think of Clark the same way she wanted the world to think of Superman (or other metahumans, like she told him, this wasn’t specifically about Superman): they were nice to have around, but no one should need them in their lives. Clark was a great coworker, a fantastic friend, and a lot of fun in bed, but Lois didn’t need him. And he shouldn’t need her either.
So yeah, vast. Multitudes. It was simultaneously true that Lois didn’t need anyone around to live her best life…but also, it was deeply boring to be perched on a Restoration Hardware living room set with only a glass of wine for company. She pulled out her phone and a photo memory in the upper right hand corner immediately caught her eye and made her smile.
It was a still from a video she’d taken at the Ross house on Christmas when the dads (plus Pete and Clark) serenaded Maisie with a rousing rendition of ‘Lydia the Tattooed Lady,’ a staple in the Ross family repertoire. The Kansas crew would literally take any opportunity for a singalong which, at one time Lois regarded as corny, but in her current sterile environment, Lois thought a Depression-era novelty song might be just the ticket to livening things up.
Impulsively, Lois clicked on the photo which opened the video which played without sound. Clark had Maisie tucked up in the crook of his arm and the two of them were swaying along to the music.
Christmas was such a vibe, Lois recalled, sinking down in the chair and taking another sip of wine. There was no Lane family drama to ruin the festivities (David’s parents surprised him and Lucy with a Disney holiday cruise, so any expectation that Lois might spend the holiday with her family vanished as quick as you could say Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo) and there was no lingering awkwardness between her and Clark about the whole Superman thing. Fuck, Lois was so comfortable that she agreed to go to Christmas Eve Mass with the Rosses and she was not a church girl. Mama Ross and Pete’s middle sisters were singing in the choir, so Lois conceptualized it as attending a concert more than anything else; Clark and his parents did the same, they were totally respectful, but they didn’t cross themselves, didn’t get Communion and sat rather than knelt, which felt like a deliciously badass rebellion to Lois’s lapsed-Catholic self -
“Hi, Lola, who’s that?”
“Jesusssssssophie. Um. Hi.”
The Webers were very much not lapsed Catholics and would not have taken kindly to Lois breaking the Second Commandment when greeting her niece. Sophie’d snuck up behind her and had apparently been watching Lois’s phone video over her shoulder for untold seconds before she announced herself.
“Hi,” Sophie repeated, walking around the front of the chair and climbing up into Lois’s lap, taking her phone out of her hand, turning the volume up and restarting the video. “Who are those people?”
“Um, that’s my friend Clark and his…uh…family,” Lois settled on since explaining the Smallville group’s relation (or lack thereof) to each other was a long and complicated conversation that she didn’t feel like getting into with a little kid. Especially a little kid Lois only saw a handful of times a year.
“Do I know them?” Sophie asked, scrolling past the video to some more quiet still images.
“Uh, no?” Lois replied, a question mark in her voice, which was stupid because there was no way that Sophie, a kid who Lucy was considering homeschooling instead of sending to Kindergarten next year because she didn’t want to ‘lose her to the system’ would have met anyone who lived in Kansas. She didn’t even know all the kids on their block. Little kids were so weird. “They live…far away.”
“Oh,” Sophie replied, eyes on the screen as she scrolled. “Who’s that?”
The photo was of Maisie and Pete on Christmas Eve, after she gave him a “makeover” which consisted of clipping about fifty barrettes into his hair. He hadn’t quite managed to get all of them out before they got to church and Lana discreetly removed two during the homily when she noticed them glittering in the back of his head.
“Um, that’s Maisie,” Lois replied, “and her uncle Pete Ross.”
“Do I know them?”
“No.”
“Okay. Who’s that?”
“My friend Lana.”
“She’s pretty! Do I know her?”
Had Lois been wishing for company a few minutes ago? Going her camera roll with a four-year-old while clarifying that she didn’t know anyone featured in the photos was not her idea of a good time. And she wasn’t sure it was any better than sitting alone with her wine for company. The glass was getting perilously empty and Lois was thinking about how to get out from under Sophie so she could get back to the dining room, when Sophie stumbled upon a new video featuring Clark romping around with the dogs and started peppering Lois with a new line of questions.
“What are their names? What kind of dogs are they? Are they nice? Are they boys or girls? Can they come over my house?”
The last question did make Lois smile; apparently while Sophie doubted her ability to remember human acquaintances, she seemed confident that she wouldn’t forget a dog. She and Clark would probably vibe.
Speaking of Clark he jogged into frame not a second later; it was lightly snowing and he was paying zero attention to the weather; he’d come out of the house barefoot in a t-shirt and jeans to chase the dogs around the yard. Not that Lois would ever complain, that man could wear the hell out of a t-shirt.
“That’s your friend Clark!” Sophie said, looking up at Lois with a big smile. “Is he nice? He looks nice.”
“Uh, he’s…” Lois trailed off because…well, not to get all Into the Woods about it, but Clark wasn’t nice, he was...good. Kind. The closest thing to a Disney Princess Lois was likely to meet in her lifetime. Equally as apt to hold a door open and let someone in ahead of him at a coffee shop as he was to fly around the world to stop a train collision.
Of course, he wasn’t perfect. He could be needy. Overly emotional. Baldly insecure and his unabashed love of professional wrestling was objectively cringe. And, as the Taylor family situation proved, even Superman could do too little too late. Despite his good intentions, he was only one person and…well. As a Millennial/Gen Z cusp baby, Lois knew that intentions didn’t matter as much as impact and generations way older than her already established that good intentions were what paved the road to hell.
Yeah, she was definitely not saying any of that to Sophie, but the kid was looking up expecting an answer so Lois smiled back and nodded, “The nicest.”
“Ahh, stop being so cute, it's not fair!” Lucy exclaimed, having escaped from Blinigate to pounce on her sister and her daughter, camera app open and ready on her phone. “Lola, Sophie, smile!”
Sophie looked up at her mom and grinned, saying, “CHEEEEEEESE!”
Lois didn’t show quite so many teeth as she gave her sister a smile and held up her wine glass in what she intended to be a festive ‘Cheers!’ gesture. Lucy frowned and lowered her camera.
“Um, maybe let’s not highlight the booze at my baby’s birthday party?” Lucy suggested, lowering the phone and making a shooing gesture with her left hand. “At least stash it for the shot.”
Any teeth that Lois might have shown vanished as her smile tightened up, but she dutifully hid the wine behind the chair. Just in time for Mrs. Weber to appear out of nowhere, immediately clocking the nearly empty glass sitting on her spotless white carpet.
“Oh, my goodness!” she exclaimed, snatching it up and looking at Lois with an expression of horror and asking Lucy. “Why did you let her put her drink on the carpet? I just had them steamed!”
Aaaaand, that was it. Whatever potential the moment had for a cute family memory was dashed as Lucy stashed her phone in her pocket and started stammering an apology to her mother-in-law.
“I’m so sorry Lynne - ”
Mrs. Weber didn’t want to hear it. She shook her head, literally clutched her pearls in her free hand ,and took Lois’s glass back to the kitchen, muttering about people being raised in barns.
Lucy flinched and activated the Protect Baby Sis center of Lois’s lizard hind-brain. She put her arms on the chair, fully ready to shove Sophie off so she could chase after her grandmother, both to reclaim her last sip of wine and to advise Mrs. Weber that if she was going to stroke out over stains on the carpet, maybe don’t host toddler parties in the future - but then Lucy opened her eyes and fixed her gaze on Lois. The expression on her face shifted from apprehensive to anticipatory. And Lois recognized that, rather than jumping into to play the hero, she was about to become a target. Fuck. So much for taking refuge in the safety of weather talk.
“Speaking of barns,” Lucy said, drawing the word out and scanning her eyes around the room. “I never asked how your Christmas with the Kansas people was. David! David! Come here, do your impression of the mom for Lois! It’s so funny.”
David was posted up with a group of generic men in generic polo shirts, but he peeled off with a smile and a laugh. He deepened his voice and delivered the following monologue in an accent that vacillated wildly between Reba McEntire and Goofy:
“Well, there y’all done did call us right in the middle of our gawrsh-darn dinner!” he said while Lucy laughed the super shrill fake-sounding laugh that she did whenever her husband thought he was being funny and she was humoring him. “We’re cookin’ up a whole mess of squirrel and raccoon - fresh off the side of the road! I scraped it up myself! The asphalt’s where all the flavor comes from, hyuck!”
If Sophie wasn’t sitting on top of her, looking at her dad with a confused expression that indicated she thought he was out of his mind (and therefore a child of taste and discernment), Lois might have done something that would have definitely stained his mom’s precious carpets. As it was, she stayed seated and fuming and was therefore not fast enough to stop David from grabbing her phone out of his daughter’s hand, holding it up to Lucy with a laugh.
“Oh, my God, is that Cletus?” he asked, referring to the video of Clark and the dogs, which started replaying. “In the flesh?”
“Are we calling him Cletus?” Lucy asked with a snort. “I’ve been calling him Lennie.”
“His name is Clark,” Sophie spoke up, holding her hand out for the phone, which her dad kept well out of the reach of her fingers. “He’s the nicest.”
“Whatever you call him, don’t call him late for dinner, I mean, that’s a Newfoundland isn’t it?” David shook his head in disbelief. “Jesus Christ, where the hell did you find this guy, Lois? Did the circus come to town?”
“He’s a reporter. Or so I’ve been told.”
The siren song of people giving Lois a hard time summoned the General into the conversation and he smirked down at his eldest daughter, rolling his eyes.
“Now, according to one news source, despite appearances he’s ‘very smart,’” Sam Lane said, with a patronizing sarcasm that Lois could swear she felt in her bones. “I’m sorry, honey, I know you like this kid, but you start saying stuff like that and I don’t wonder that the American people have lost faith in the mainstream media.”
“Yeah?” Lois shot back. “You sure about that? Or are you maybe listening to people whose media literacy begins and ends with insisting ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ is a patriotic anthem?”
“You’re going to talk literacy when my man here looks like he’s one barroom brawl away from vegetable status?” David shot back. “I don’t know, Lois, most certified morons have the common sense to wear shoes in the snow, so I'm guessing your guy lands somewhere on the spectrum between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon.”
“Sophie, go play with Auntie Amy, will you?” Lucy interrupted. Sophie listened to her mom, though she did give Lois a hug before she clambered off her lap. That took the edge off of Lois’s anger enough that she didn’t go for David’s jugular, but she did stand up, just so the family wasn’t looming over her.
Lucy rolled her eyes when her sister got up and, once her daughter was out of earshot said, “Oh, I’m sorry, did we hit a nerve? Calm down, Lois, everyone’s kidding, stop being so sensitive about your big, dumb boyfriend.”
Lois kept her mouth shut for one reason and one reason only: she might be willing to tell her family to fuck off in the middle of a crowded, high-end restaurant, but she wasn’t going to throw hands at a kid’s birthday party. Not even one that had fucking caviar and white carpets, and, presumably, a note on the guest list that Lois overlooked, requesting that, in addition to presents, each party guest please bring along a single stick, lodged discreetly up their asses.
Fuck you people, was the first and only thought in Lois’s head, followed up by the less vulgar, but no less ardent, He’s not my boyfriend.
He demonstrably wasn’t. If Clark was her boyfriend, Lois wouldn’t feel a stab of panic right between her ribs whenever the term was used in connection with Clark. If he was her boyfriend, she wouldn’t feel the need to shore up her walls when she sensed they were getting a little too dependent on each other. If he was her boyfriend, she would have dragged his ass into her bedroom herself and let him send her off with a kiss before she left for the airport.
Clark wasn’t her boyfriend. He was her Friend with Specific Benefits. And she couldn’t say that at a kid’s birthday party either.
“He’s a friend,” Lois grumbled instead, holding her hand out so David would give her the damn phone back. He obliged and she swiped up, banishing the video back to her camera roll and cursing herself for being stupid and sentimental and tempting fate by looking at Christmas pictures in the first place. “Period. And he is smart, like, he reads poetry and - ”
“Wow, poetry,” David said, wide-eyed and sarcastic. “Let me guess: one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish? I bet that’s his favorite.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” the General chuckled, shaking his head. “This reminds me, your sister wanted to ask you - ”
“Oh, yes!” Lucy said, with a smile that was no longer mocking, but genuinely excited. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, but it got so busy - David’s taking me to Metropolis at the end of the month for my birthday - ”
“Early birthday,” he clarified, since it was still January and Lucy’s actual birthday was in March.
“Late birthday, technically,” she snapped, excited smile evaporating instantly. It did nothing to lighten the mood, but the redirection of her bad mood from Lois to David was a welcome reprieve. “Since you didn’t do anything last year.”
“It was too much,” David replied dismissively. “Between planning Owen’s party in January and my dad’s retirement in February, it was one more thing on my plate that - ”
“My birthday’s just a thing, got it,” Lucy whined, tears welling in her eyes.
“Long story short,” the General interrupted before Lucy could actually start crying. “David and Luce are going up to Metropolis for the weekend to see a show - ”
“With how much those tickets cost, I’m settled up for two birthdays,” David muttered under his breath.
“I was going to join them,” the General continued, like he couldn’t hear him. “I’d like to take you all out for dinner, if you’re free.”
Oh, hell no, was Lois’s immediate reaction. The last family dinner she and her dad attempted ended with her swearing at him and storming out of the restaurant, shoes cutting blisters into her heels that took forever to scab over. She and the General struggled enough with basic civility without the added stress of David and Lucy and their passive-aggressive and aggressive-aggressive dynamic giving everyone indigestion before the appetizers hit the table. Lois would prefer to skip the whole thing, but, of course, she couldn’t say that without raising the shade of The Great Thanksgiving Betrayal.
That was the thing about the Lanes: they never forgave and they never forgot. A casual observer of her family dynamics might have assumed that the extended Weber crew having a holiday on the high seas and pointedly not inviting Lois might mean they were square (true!) and therefore bygones were bygones (untrue!). The reality was that if Lois straight-up turned down the invite without even pretending to think about it, all the bad feelings from November would come roaring back only Lois would be dealing with David and Lucy ganging up on her in person rather than over the phone. And there was no Mama Kent to come to her rescue this time.
“I’ll check my calendar,” Lois hedged. “I’ve got a deadline coming up for an article I’m working on, so - ”
“Are you really saying you’re going to blow me off for work?” Lucy asked, incredulously, ending Lois’s break from being on the receiving end of her ire entirely too soon. “It’ll be three hours. You don’t have a problem flying off to Kansas on a whim for strangers.”
Aaaaaand, there it was. Baby Sis wasn’t even going to wait for an out-and-out know before she started laying the guilt on. Lois really should have seen that one coming.
“I’m not surprised,” David said, putting an arm protectively around Lucy’s waist as she allowed herself to be drawn against his side, adding a sniffle for good measure. David shook his head and tightened his jaw like he was posing for the cover of GQ. “Typical Lois. Well, if you can find time in your very busy schedule to squeeze in your sister’s birthday, let us know.”
“Says the guy who straight-up ignored her birthday last year?” Lois retorted and David was clearly about to lay into her when the General literally stepped between them, keeping his back to his son-in-law and radiating all the brunt of his displeasure directly at Lois, like a beacon.
She tilted her chin up and met her dad straight on. Lois was tough. She could take it.
“Lois, that’s enough,” the General declared firmly. “I don’t think three hours will be the make or break difference in whatever little story you’re writing. I’d suggest putting in some extra effort earlier, but I stopped hoping procrastination was something you’d mature out of a long time ago.”
“I don’t understand how you live like that, I can’t do things last minute, it stresses me out,” Lucy declared, extricating herself out from under David’s arm to walk around her dad so she was practically nose to nose with her sister. Lucy blew out a sigh and said, eyes no longer shimmering with tears, “Look, you know the plan, you can come or not - um. Also, I was going to say this earlier before you decided to make this a whole ordeal, but Clark can come. He’s invited! I want to meet him. So does Dad!”
It’s a trap.
The voice of Admiral Ackbar in her head was maybe being a little melodramatic, but the whole conversation up until this point had Lois’s hackles up and the extension of the invitation to include Clark only served to make her more on-edge, not less.
“Why?” Lois asked, folding her arms, then unfolding them because she didn’t want to look defensive. She wanted to go on the attack, not brace for impact. “It seems like you guys have a pretty solid idea of what he’s like - a completely unhinged idea of what he’s like, but, you know. Solid.”
“I told you, we were kidding,” Lucy insisted. “I’m serious about this, though, I want to meet him! It can be my birthday present! You to me, letting me meet your - your friend. For real, Lola, I don’t think I’ve met any friends of yours since college, I didn’t think you were capable of making friends. You can prove he’s real once and for all! Please? For me?”
Lucy turned her own version of puppy dog eyes on Lois and, because she wasn’t made of stone, she felt some of her reservations wear away. After all, it’d only be a few hours. If she refused to let her family meet Clark, they’d probably assume it was because he was every bit the embarrassing idiot they assumed he was. And…fuck, maybe the Lanes would be more likely to behave themselves with the addition of an impartial third party.
Eh. Not totally impartial. Although Clark had never met any of her family before, he definitely had opinions about them.
I don’t like the way your family talks to you. It’s not right.
Maybe she could work this to her benefit - prove both of these divergent pieces of her life wrong about each other. Her family thought Clark was some kind of slack-jawed yokel, but if they met him they’d know that wasn’t true. And Clark thought the Lane family was excessively nasty to each other which…okay, yeah, compared to the borderline angelic conduct of the Kents and Rosses, her family could be a little harsh with each other, but the Smallville crew was the exception to all the established rules of human conduct. If he actually met them, he could see that they weren’t that bad. And even if they were, whatever they dished, Lois could take. And give as good as she got.
“I’ll ask him,” Lois agreed, finally. “And clear my calendar. I’ll let you know what Clark says, but…yeah, I’m in.”
Lucy grinned, a genuinely happy smile, then lunged forward to give her sister a hug.
“Thank you, God, that was like pulling teeth,” she said as she straightened up. “I’m going to check on the buffet - and get you more wine. Um, do me a favor, though - f you’re going to put it down, leave it on a table next time - and use a coaster!”
The rest of the party proceeded fairly normally, with David and the General rejoining their previous conversations and leaving Lois the hell alone. Lucy did get her another glass of wine and eventually David’s sister Amy extricated herself from the kids long enough to grab a plate of food, which she ate sitting by Lois.
Lois didn’t exactly vibe with Amy, but she was fine, Lois only had to ask her one question about the family’s Disney cruise and that provided enough conversational fodder to last as they ate their way through their bland chicken marsala and limp green beans. She showed Lois a bunch of very cute pictures of the kids with various characters and having fun on the beach. Reading between the lines, it was pretty clear that Amy was invited primarily for her skills as a babysitter, but she didn’t seem to mind; Lois didn’t detect anything but genuine happiness and gratitude for the time she got to spend with the niblings.
Lois found herself thinking about midway through their lackluster dinner and the photo montage that Clark would probably like Amy a lot. Which made her like her a tiny bit more than she had when they started talking.
Owen blew out his candles (spitting a lot in the process, so Lois helped herself to a third glass of wine rather than partaking in any cake), and opened presents. Owen was pretty neutral on the record player and the book, but he absolutely LOVED the train sweater and insisted on putting it on over the shirt he was already wearing.
“Good job, Lola!” Lucy called, giving her a thumb’s up.
Lois returned the thumb’s up and declined to share any of the credit for the sweater selection with her present concierge. Lucy wouldn’t get the joke and Lois would always take a win where she could get one.
All in all, mission accomplished: Lois hadn’t caused a scene, the drama had been minimal, and Owen liked his presents. Little did she know that achieving these personal triumphs was the universe’s way of setting her up for a professional setback.
There was a message from Geraldine Taylor in her inbox - well, not exactly. There was a message sent on behalf of Geraldine Taylor from a lawyer which read in part:
Mrs. Taylor has declined to speak with the press at this time, to focus on her family and their continued journey of healing. She requests privacy at this difficult time.
Lois had to re-read the message twice before it sank in. This wasn’t the first time she’d had a potential interviewee cancel on her. Sometimes it was due to a scheduling conflict, sometimes it was cold feet. But it was the first time she had someone’s lawyer email to cancel an interview - especially for such a bullshit reason.
Privacy? Really? The woman was barely out of traction before she started working the talk show circuit. Recently she’d started shilling doorbell cameras for LuthorCorp. Not exactly the actions of someone who wanted to lock in on healing and focusing on the family.
Lois immediately looked up the sender, whose email signature read ‘Mercy Graves,’ a name that sounded like it came straight out of the Salem Witch Trials and which Lois automatically assumed was fake. Maybe, now that their Zoom meeting was a week away and Geraldine Taylor realized she wouldn’t be answering a bunch of softball questions lobbed at her by a talking head, but agreed to speak with a real journalist who was going to grill her on the specifics of the situation she’d been milking for profit for months.
What all the talk show dipshits uniformly focused on Superman’s failure to get to the car before the crash, implying a kind of malice, or at least negligence to him. They would juxtapose Geraldine Taylor’s tearful story with the image of Superman taken during a hurricane in Metropolis, blasting police camera drones out of the sky with his heat vision, looking like the immovable object and unstoppable force all rolled into one. It was drama, it was spectacle, it was not news.
Lois didn’t give a fuck about the Taylor family. She wasn’t particularly fussed about how much jailtime the dad was looking at, didn’t need to know all the gory details about the kids’ emergency surgeries, and she dismissed Mrs. Taylor’s claims about Superman’s supposed apathy out of pocket. All of that was irrelevant to her and didn’t factor into her prepared questions at all
What she wanted to know was what happened before they got in the car.
Was this a typical thing for them? Relying on Superman to be their DD? Or was this something they decided that night? Maybe while the family was at the restaurant which over-served Mr. Taylor. Were they in view of a television? Was it playing footage of Superman snatching vehicles out of danger, putting himself between fenders and guardrails, absorbing the impact of 5,000 pounds of car going at 70 miles an hour like it was nothing, while the occupants of said cars walked away without the airbags deploying. Did Dad order another martini while Mom relaxed and made no offer to take the wheel, assuming their safety was ensured because Superman was out there, with noting better to do with his time than wait for them to monumentally fuck up so he could swoop into action?
Like she kept telling Clark, this wasn’t about Superman. It was about dependence. Even if Geraldine Taylor was bullshitting the talk show hosts, the fact was, their audiences were eating it up. She was creating a whole-ass career out of insisting that a Superman or a Wonder Woman or a Latern or a Batperson or whoever the fuck should swoop out of the sky to save humanity from themselves. Her words resonated with people in a way that was significant, and, in Lois’s mind, should serve as a huge wake-up call for humanity as a whole.
Only now there was no interview and with no interview, there was no article. There was no source. Instead of a piece of hard-hitting investigative journalism into humanity’s metahuman crisis, there was an op-ed. One Perry probably wouldn’t put into print.
To Lois’s mounting frustration - and mild suspicion - Mercy Graves turned out to be a real person, a member of the legal team at LuthorCorp. That was weird. Why would a corporate lawyer be tapped by a spokesperson to send an email to a reporter?
Lois’s phone pinged with a text from Cat. She almost ignored it until she saw the preview message. Hey Lois, are you seeing Clark tonight? No worries if not, I can…
The rest of the message continued: …Instacart him some soup and meds, if he doesn’t have any. Let me know!
It wasn’t hard to parse the message. Lois knew Cat and Clark were attending some art show at MetMA, and if she thought he was sick, he probably had to bounce to do some Super shit. No big deal, Clark would have felt a little bad, but even he knew that Cat could handle a puff piece for the arts and leisure section by herself. A glance at her newsfeed talked about an apartment fire that had broken out that afternoon, he probably helped out with that.
…except the articles about the fire made no mention of Superman. They did talk about how the building was a total loss, all residents were alive, but displaced, and six first responders were being treated at the hospital.
Lois’s unshakable belief in the fallacy of dependency wobbled slightly. Uneasily, she shut her laptop and sat on the edge of the bed in the guest room. After a momentary hesitation, she called Clark. FaceTimed, technically. She wanted to see him.
It took him a while to answer. At first, Lois wasn’t sure that he had answered; the screen was almost entirely black, but she did hear Clark’s voice groggily mumble, “Hey Lois, how was the party?”
She’d never heard his voice sound like that, infused with the growly, froggy quality of someone who’d woken up out of a deep sleep (it was actually kind of sexy and momentarily distracted her from her concern). Then he yawned and every alarm bell in Lois’s head started going off. Clark didn’t yawn. He slept, she’d seen him sleep, but he always popped into wakefulness fresh as a daisy and ready to get on with his day. And he never yawned.
“Are you okay?” she asked, a horrible question from Lois Freaking Lane, Professional Question Asker, when it was so obvious that Clark was not okay.
“Um…” he leaned over and turned on a light - yikes. He looked awful. Lois had seen Clark stressed out, but as he sat up and scrubbed a hand over his face, she saw that there weren’t just lines of strain around his eyes and mouth. There were bags under his eyes and he looked pale. Like he was actually sick. “No? I don’t know. It feel like flu, maybe? But I haven’t had the flu in…shit, like, fifteen years? I think I’m better though? I feel better than before.”
If this was better, Lois would have hated to see what before looked like.
“Okay,” she said, trying to be calm and not freak out. “Um. Do…is this a winter thing? Has this happened before?”
“...no,” Clark said, after a pause. “Not…no. Not since…uh. Everything…started with me.”
Lois’s mind was whirling a mile a minute, trying to compute everything she knew about Clark’s abilities with this latest development. He told her once he hadn’t been sick or injured since he was twelve or thirteen. That this apparent invulnerability was one of the first of his abilities to manifest, but it was such a subtle change that he wasn’t totally aware of it at the time and couldn’t pinpoint a day when it began. He said once that his dad noticed that when he developed a new ability that it tended to coincide with longer stretches of daylight…but also that his abilities weren’t diminished at all by the lack of sunlight in the winter.
“I don’t know,” Clark sighed, dropping his head into his hand and rubbing his eyes. “It…stuff just happens sometimes. New stuff. Bad stuff. It’s like, just when I think it’s over and I’m…settled, something else happens. It’s scary.”
The last he added almost inaudibly and all of Lois’s previous stance on boundaries and want versus need flew out the goddamned window. Right now she physically needed to be able to crawl through her phone, feel Clark’s forehead and buy him chicken soup. Of course she couldn’t. All she could do was try to make sense of what was happening and that felt almost as impossible as teleporting through her phone screen.
“Did something happen?” she asked him. “Like, a trigger? Have you been feeling off at all? Recently? Or did this come on all of a sudden?”
“All of a sudden,” Clark said, then frowned and shook his head. “Kinda? I was totally fine before I got to the museum, I had…I think I maybe had a headache? Before we went into the exhibit hall, during the opening ceremony. I thought it was stress. By the time we got up to upstairs, I was…really, really, dizzy and I felt like I was gonna puke - sorry, that’s gross.”
“That’s fine,” Lois replied automatically, never mind the fact that none of this was fine it was…scary. Like Clark said.
“At the same time, though,” he continued, sounding a little steadier the longer he went on. “It…it might’ve been… I don’t know, it could be stress. A winter thing, like you said. Cat thought I was having a blood sugar crash and…last time I ate was yesterday lunch, and I’ve been…it’s been a rough few weeks. I used to get really bad stage fright as a kid, I’d freak myself out and…like, anxiety vomit? If that’s a thing? So I might not be sick, you know, it might just be…that. Does that… does that sound right?”
Once again, Lois had the sense that Clark was looking to her for comfort. Like she was a life preserver. It was a role she didn’t want to take on, it was too much, too far outside her comfort zone…but she was willing to do it now. Needed to do it, in fact. Because as uncomfortable as she felt, she could stomach it if giving Clark a little reassurance helped him feel better. Hypocrisy, thy name is Lane.
“Yeah, maybe,” she said, hoping she sounded a little more confident than she felt. “It…it could be stress. Doctor Google always tells me it’s stress when my period is being weird. Uh, sorry if that’s gross.”
“Girlie, I would not be my mother’s son if I didn’t make noise about how shitty the medical establishment is about knowing what all the fuck is up with periods,” Clark said, the corner of his mouth quirking up slightly. “Here’s my noise: grrrrrr. Anyway, not everything’s stress.”
The longer Clark talked, the better he looked. If the video quality on her phone was better, Lois would swear the dark circles under his eyes were lightning up by the second.
“This might be stress,” Lois pointed out since, the more she thought about it, the more she started to believe it. Clark told her he couldn’t go without sleep or breathing indefinitely, but that he’d never tested out how long he could go without eating - maybe, especially if there was no sunshine to soak up, the guy really shouldn’t skip a meal. “Probably is stress. Have you eaten anything since yesterday?”
“Cat gave me a mini Snickers,” Clark replied. “But, outside of that…nah. I went home and got into bed, I’ve been out since before noon. I feel better, though, now, really. A lot better.”
“That must be me!” Lois declared brightly. “I’ve been told I have a…soothing bedside manner.”
Clark burst out laughing and Lois grinned, feeling a little better herself.
This is just a weird blip, she told herself. Winter stuff. Stress. He’s okay. How could he not be okay?
“I’m gonna get up and fix something to eat,” he said, face flashing out of view as Clark got to his feet. “Can you stay on the phone?”
Lois didn’t hesitate, “Yeah, of course.”
Clark propped his phone up on the countertop and she watched him as he went through the motions of heating up a frozen pizza. By the time he was eating said pizza, he looked totally normal. Clark-like. The color was back in his face and he didn’t yawn again
“Owen loved your sweater,” Lois told him. “He made Lucy put it on him basically immediately. I took all the credit, so thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome,” Clark said, giving her his biggest, best goober smile. "I told you to take the credit! You gave the gift, I just guided you to the gift. I did tell you the train sweater was elite, though, I remember you needed some convincing there."
He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about. He told you before winter makes him weird. This is fine. It’s fine. He’s fine.
“Also, Sophie loves your dogs,” Lois continued, getting a little louder in an attempt to silence the doubts swirling around her brain. “She was watching videos on my phone, she’s obsessed.”
“Uh, yeah, obviously, they’re the best,” Clark agreed. “Sounds like y’all had a good time, I’m glad.”
‘Good time’ was overstating things slightly, but Lois didn’t correct him. Honestly, given the emotional rollercoaster of the last few hours, Owen’s birthday party was a far-away fading memory. Lois did remember one thing that was relevant to Clark, though.
“Yeah, it was nice,” she said. “Uh, no rush to get back to me, I know you’re usually at your parents’ place on the weekends, but on the off-chance you’re free…would you - no pressure! But. Um. I was wondering...actually, my sister and dad were wondering...not that I wouldn't want you to come! I'm totally down for you to come or not come, whatever works for you and I get if it doesn't work for you, just let me know either way - "
"Lois," Clark cut in, with a gentle smile. "You haven't asked me anything yet. What am I supposed to be letting you know?"
"IFYOUCANHAVEDINNERWITHMYFAMILYWHENTHEY'REINTOWN," Lois blurted out. When Clark didn't reply instantly, she groaned and shook her head, "Never mind, I know, you've got the farm stuff, I told them it would be a longshot, so it's good, no worries, I'll let them know you can't - "
"I wasn't refusing, I was parsing!" Clark clarified. After another hesitation (though that might have been the app glitching, they'd been talking for almost an hour), he nodded then said, "Yeah, that'd be...sure. Sure, that sounds nice. Let me know the day, I'll put it in my calendar."
There was that word again. Nice. After the day she'd had, Lois would take it.
"Okay, cool," she nodded, hearing the sound of her dad getting back and moving around in the house. "I might have to get off the phone soon - are you better? You seem better?"
"Oh, yeah," Clark replied at once, no hesitation this time. "I feel fine - totally normal. Uh. Me-normal. Ha. But...yeah, it was stress, I think. Probably."
"Definitely," Lois agreed. "Luckily, I'm home tomorrow night and I think having my aura back in Metropolis will be just the thing to calm you down.
"Oh, I don't know," Clark replied teasingly. "You get me all worked up, darlin'. But I'll be glad to see you Monday. Have a good rest of your trip. Lo - hmm - Lois."
He cleared his throat and Lois was briefly worried he was getting sick again, but Clark smiled at at her and gave her a reassuring wave before ending the call.