Kickin' it in quarantine, my peeps.

This chapter's only been in existence for about three weeks, but I have total confidence in its ability to survive in the wild.

Chapter Four: A Warning Shot Across the Bow

Clark had spent enough time in the American education system that he knew to keep his expectations low. That way, he could still be surprised. Teachers with a dedication to their subject and something like a sense of humor was all that he had ever asked for.

Monday disappointed him, even with his already low expectations.

Feature Writing sucked for obvious reasons. Editing wasn't anything exciting; he hadn't expected it to be, though. The professor was a small bland little man who reminded Clark of a library's card catalog and came in just about the same color and smell. He had started class with the assumption that they had all forgotten the specifics of grammar and punctuation.

That was not incorrect.

Clark couldn't remember the last time he had been concerned specifically about grammar.

So, Feature Writing was a wash and Editing was destined to be merely mediocre. By the time he was trying to smother himself with his pillow, there wasn't much doubt that Lois Lane's prickly personality was the highlight of Clark's Monday.

Was that... depressing?

That seemed like it should be depressing. Like, at least a little bit.

Well...

Well...

Lois Lane was interesting.

And pretty. She had a very nice smile. And--

No. He wasn't going to think about that.

Monday extinguished itself overnight like it was glad to be gone and the dark hours stayed quiet and undisturbed, at least within the range of Clark's prodigious hearing. On the far side of town, a pair of tiny street gangs got into a scrap over some trivial piece of territory and took to beating the snot out of the other. But even while they wailed on each other, they glanced around cautiously in between punches and retreated quickly from the street once they felt a significant thrashing had been delivered.

Clark didn't know it yet, but rumors were starting to do some of the work for him.

The sun rose on Tuesday morning over a Metropolis that didn't look any different than it had yesterday. Clark slept through his house-mates moving about. Birds made a raucous cacophony in the tree outside, but he slept through that too. He also slept through his first alarm and then the second. There wasn't a third because he'd never needed a third. The morning sun crept around to his bedroom window and into his eyes, finally waking him up. Then he caught sight of the time.

"Shit!"

Late, late, it was late!

He leapt out of bed, shedding clothes and grabbing the first things closest to him; his clothes from yesterday. No one would notice. He used the bathroom as fast as he could, dressed, and stuffed everything back into his bag. He didn't so much as sprint down the stairs as he leapt, going from the top landing to three-quarters of the way down in one large step.

"I can't believe it! I don't even need that much sleep!" he complained to the empty house as he banged backwards out the door, bike and everything else firmly in hand.

Lulled into a false sense of complacency because his only class of the day didn't start until ten. Well now it started in thirty minutes and it took twenty-five minutes just to get from here to the other side of the campus!

Breakfast was going to have to wait.

All the same, nine-thirty in the morning was a much more reasonable and sensible time to be out and about. The humidity hit like a pillow case full of doorknobs. A pall of gray clouds had begun to stretch across Metropolis from the west and there was the scent in the air that heralded rain. Peering above and sometimes through the buildings, Clark saw the distant profile of anvil clouds far back on the horizon. It looked that an end was in sight for the city's annual August drought. But that might not be for another couple of days yet. For now, the air was full of sticky humidity that made it feel six or seven degrees hotter than it actually was. There wasn't much of a breeze to stir things up.

There wasn't much traffic either, thankfully, because Clark tore through intersections with reckless abandon. A least a few people on the sidewalks shouted after him to slow down. Two years worth of instincts had kicked in; his job expected him to ignore red lights and other traffic safety things in the name of excellent customer service. Back across campus, on the paths that wound between green lawns, dormitory housing, and people who had to be encouraged to make room for a madman on a bike.

Clark wondered fleetingly if he would make better time just got off the bike and ran.

Nah, being late for class isn't a life-threatening thing.

In any case, he hit the journalism corner of the campus with enough spare time to lace up his shoes properly.

The Culture of Social Media was conducted in the Merton Building, which was less of an uninspired brick and more an undefined amoeba shape. It pre-dated a period of sweeping architectural reform in which Metropolis had briefly done away with neat details and embraced extreme minimalism. The result was that the Merton Building was much more pleasing to the eye. It had symmetry, but it had all the neat little details that made it so nice to look at. The interior had that old British secondary school aesthetic going on; high ceilings, wood-paneled walls, and exposed rafter beams with an occasional window of stain-glass.

Clark didn't notice much of it, too busy lunging up the stairs to the next floor to take in the charming Old World aesthetic. He caught up with the back end of the stragglers just off the landing and slowed down to a normal walking pace. He had never had a class with the Weed Professor before, but he had heard positive things about the man and his teaching style. The general consensus was that he was pretty chill and probably didn't mind when his students came in just a minute or so late.

The only downside was that the Weed Professor was known as that for very obvious reasons. Clark sneezed several times in succession just entering the hallway leading to the classroom; so loudly and explosively that several of his year-mates ahead of paused to stare at him in alarm. He waved them off and, up ahead, saw some people turning around away from the classroom door.

The closed classroom door.

"Yo, what's going on?" a year-mate ahead of Clark called out; someone a greased back duck's ass hairstyle.

"Class is cancelled." one of the turn-arounds replied, with a resigned shrug.

"On the first day?!" was the general gist of the reaction from the rest of the stragglers.

Wait, I rushed all the way here to not be late and class is cancelled? Clark thought incredulously, walking forward to see for himself. The sign taped to the door informed everyone that class was indeed cancelled today and that they should start reading the first three chapters in their textbook, very sorry.

"Damn, that wasn't on his page. I coulda slept in." Duck Butt Hair complained, clearly frustrated. "What kinda prof cancels on the first day and doesn't update?"

"He's the Weed Professor. People call 'im that cuz he like, broke his entire pelvis this one time so the doctor gets him the good stuff for the pain, so he's always kinda stoned." the other year-mate explained, shrugging some more. "I had 'im last year for this class on building a brand through social media. He told us 'bout it then."

"Must have been a bad morning." Clark commented.

"Yeah, musta." Other year-mate agreed. He shrugged one more time. "Comes and goes with him. Ah, well. Next week."

He walked away with a vague wave. Clark turned to leave too and had to pull up short. Duck Butt Hair had stepped up right behind him, grinning like he was about to make a new friend.

"Hey. It's Clark, right? I'm Marcus." he said, the handshake happening on automatic. "I was hoping I'd run into you today. Heard you walked away from a lunch date with the Mad Dog."

Clark blinked. "With the what?"

"Mad Dog. Y'know, Mad Dog Lane." Marcus elaborated, waving a hand.

For a moment, Clark was mystified. The only person he had really spoken to yesterday was Lois and-

Oh.

"Her first name is Lois." he said pointedly. "And that only happened yesterday, how does everyone know already--"

"It's Lane. Word gets around quick when it's her." Marcus said, waving his hand again, more dismissively and more firmly. "Listen, I'm with the newspaper club. We were chatting in group last night and we figured that anyone who walks away from her with their dick still intact has got balls of steel. And someone with balls of steel is exactly the kind of person we want."

He opened his wallet and handed Clark a business card. A real, actual business card with fancy gold-embossed letters and a silver satin finish.

"That's got all my contact info. You can get a direct link to the paper right off the school's website. You should check out our work, see if you're interested. We have got some great plans in the works and we would love to have you on board. I read that piece you submitted to the essay contest a while back, the whole thing about GMOs. Pretty stirring stuff."

"Oh, that. That's old." Clark said. Only by a year and a half, but he felt that he had improved significantly since then.

"Well, I was surprised it didn't place higher. It was good." Marcus said sincerely. "Anyways," He tapped the edge of the business card pointedly. "Newspaper club always need some new forward thinkers. I'd love to see what you'd contribute. So think about it?"

"Oh yeah, of course, I'll- I'll think about it..."

"Cool. Also, gonna need a reply by the end of September. That's when recruitment closes. We can't take anyone on after September thirtieth."

"Right, right, I'll definitely get you an answer." Clark said assuredly, shuffling several steps away in an effort to close this conversation.

"First meetings next Thursday afternoon, if you wanna check us out." Marcus added, shuffling after him.

"I might have work that day."

"We can reschedule. Really, really love to get you in on the ground floor. Newspaper club members usually get first pick at the internships. It's great if you're looking for opportunities."

"I'm really not. Not yet."

"Clark, that's no way to get ahead in the world--"

"My parents told me not to go anywhere with pushy strangers."

Marcus stopped advancing abruptly, a look of consternation crossing his face, because wasn't that a thing to hear from an adult. Clark took the opportunity to loudly declare "Okay bye thanks!" and power-walked back towards the stairs, leaving Marcus and his duck butt hair behind.

He considered the business card along the way, running a finger over the slightly raised letters. The offer to join the newspaper club had come up in the first year. He had declined, uncertain about his schedule and his time management skills coupled with living on his own for the first time. But this time? Maybe...

Maybe.

But he didn't know anyone in the newspaper club well enough to want to spend more time with them. If Marcus was just one example of the sort of people that populated it, it would probably be less stressful to avoid the whole thing altogether.

Clark turned the business card over in his fingers several times, thinking. It seemed to rude to throw it away outright and it seemed even ruder to try and hand it back. Finally, he placed it on top of the banister at the bottom of the stairs.

You're not being social, son. Chided a voice that always sounded like both of his parents put together.

No. No he wasn't.

Outside, he collected his bike and put some distance between himself and the Merton Building first (in case Marcus was feeling energized this morning), before he pulled off onto the side and considered his options for breakfast. That little shopping street off the campus had plenty of them, from all-day cafes, coffee shops, that crepe place, and assorted fast food joints. Whoever had written the top-rated reviews had given more focus to the coffee than the food, since obviously, if you were getting breakfast, the quality of your morning brew was at least the number two thing to consider.

Clark ended up going with the cheapest option on the street; a vividly orange fast food joint that looked like it was a ninety-degree angle away from a trademark law suit. The foodies didn't rate it too poorly, though there was plenty of low-scored comments about the color scheme. Entering the place felt a lot like walking face-first into a furnace. There was so much orange. The walls, squares of tile on the floor, the lampshades, the bench seats, etcetera. Where it wasn't white or off-white or poster-sized advertisements, it was either orange or a somewhat darker shade of orange. So he almost didn't see the staff member behind the counter at the first register, since they also wore a searing orange shirt and a matching visor, and blended in unusually well with the tiled wall behind them-

Clark did a double-take.

"Lois?"

"Oh. Hey Smallville." Lois replied in this unimpressed sort of way, wearing a delighted smirk.

Clark had to look away and then look back, just to make sure his visual cortex wasn't being thrown off by the egregious color scheme that was being stabbed mercilessly into his eyeballs. When he looked back, it was still Lois behind the counter, albeit clashing with the background so badly it looked like she'd been photoshopped in.

"Lois, you--" Look terrible in orange, Clark did not say. He wrestled those words back and finished with: "Work here."

"Gal's gotta be able to buy her own groceries." Lois quipped. Then she cleared her throat, banished the smirk from her face and recited dully: "Welcome to Happy Burger Smile, home of the five-patty stack. We've always got a happy smile for you."

Clark winced. "You say that every time?"

"Sometimes I say it in my sleep." Lois said flatly. Then her expression brightened, the smirk resuming its place. "What'll it be?"

"Er, are you still serving breakfast?"

"Yep. 'Til ten-thirty."

"Okay..." Clark peered at the menu board. "A number two?"

"Good choice. The imitation sausage actually tastes like it could be the real thing." Lois said. "You want fries with that?" She grinned like she hadn't been able to resist. "No one ever gives me the opening anymore. But seriously, you want fries or hash browns?"

"Onion rings?"

"A man of excellent taste." Lois commented. "Coffee or no? Foodies rate it being pretty good. I've never had it, though. I like to know where my beans come from. I mean, I try not to eat here very often if I can help it."

"No, no coffee. I think I'll be unhealthy and take a soda."

"Yolo." She totaled up the order. "Heading to class after?"

Clark shook his head. "No, it was cancelled."

"On the first full week? Who have you got?" Lois asked, gesturing him to the card reader in front of the register.

"The Weed Professor."

"Oh, that makes sense. Probably overdid it at the skate park. I heard something about him breaking a hip a few years ago."

"One of my classmates said it was his entire pelvis."

"Well, he did some damage to it, whatever bone it was." Lois slid a tall paper cup at him. "So, if you're planning not to run away too quickly, I'm off in about fifteen minutes." she added in a somewhat lower voice, like she was trying not to be overheard in the kitchen.

Clark nearly dropped his card when he pulled it from the reader.

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

Were two incomprehensible cosmic forces fighting each other over whether or not Clark Kent and Lois Lane should become more than just passingly acquainted individuals? Had one cosmic force arranged for him to oversleep so there was no way he could possibly be tempted to stop in for breakfast on the way? Had the other arranged for the professor to cancel the class so he would go for breakfast at this particular fast food joint? Was he about to have another meal in the company of Lois Lane in the span of just less than twenty-four hours?

Was this the universe firing a warning shot across the bow?

"It's nice outside." Clark said.

Lois grinned. "I'll see you outside, then."

She waved him aside to make space for the next customer. Clark grabbed the tall paper cup and shuffled off to the drink station. It seemed this was actually going to happen. Another meal-- Another breakfast type meal in Lois's company, at just about the same hour of the day too.

Weird. He had gone two years without ever crossing paths with Lois once, but now he was spending out-of-class time with her twice in the same span of twenty-four hours. With plans to meet up on Thursday night (and probably get into some serious trouble).

The universe was plotting something. The universe was definitely plotting something.

In short order, Clark's meal was delivered across the counter and he took it outside to the dining area there. He absolutely was not going to sit in this chromatic hellscape if he didn't have to. He fetched his bike from the rack so he could keep an eye on it more directly and then sat down to his breakfast.

It looked sad and yet, weirdly appetizing.

And the imitation sausage did almost taste like the real thing.

Not quite fifteen minutes after Clark had sat down, Lois joined him, sliding a tray of her own along the table top. She had taken the first opportunity to banish the orange shirt and had replaced it with a dark blue one. The visor had similarly vanished as well, likely stuffed into the bottom of the bag she had stowed between her feet.

For a moment, the pair of them sat awkwardly and silently across from each other.

"Don't tell anyone I work here." Lois said suddenly, breaking the silence.

Clark jumped. "Why-- Why would I tell anyone?"

"Good question. But where I work is supposedly a big mystery to everyone and I want to keep it that way. I don't want to get harassed by idiots." Lois said. "I don't want to have to quit. This job gives me vision and dental."

"You get vision and dental? That's not fair; my job doesn't even give me bike insurance. I have to pay for that." Clark complained. At Lois's raised eyebrow, he added: "Dash N Dine Delivery."

She went "hrrgh" like physical pain had accompanied the brand-name. "Well, that four-to-midnight schedule makes sense. I hear the pay is garbage."

"It is. It's garbage. At least people don't mark down tips anymore, so I get to keep it all. And since I'm outside pretty much the entire time, I don't have to put up with any annoying co-workers. It's just my manager doesn't seem to care whether we live or die as long as the delivery gets there on time."

Lois started laughing. It wasn't funny, really, being expected -- encouraged even, to put your job above your life and health. But was a problem that was generally shared among employees of the service industry and they all could sympathize, so it was darkly funny.

And it was a very nice laugh with no obvious hints of sarcasm.

She has a nice smile and a nice laugh when it isn't sarcastic how come everyone wants to focus on the bad things? Clark wondered, trying hard not to stare.

Lois stopped laughing just as quickly as she had started and stared at the table in a vaguely shell-shocked kind of way. "We both need better jobs." she said.

"I'm worried if I quit, I won't be able to find another one."

"Yeah, that part sucks."

Happy Burger Smile had gotten the coveted corner spot at the end of the shopping plaza road, so the patio overlooked more retail outlets across the wide intersection. The cars idling noisily at the intersection beside them kept the ensuing silence from getting too weird.

"I figured it out." Lois said, breaking the silence again first. "Where I saw you before. We sat next to each other during freshman orientation."

Clark blinked. "Oh, we did?" He couldn't recall the gender who had been sitting on either side of him, much less anything specific about their appearances. All he remembered was being jittery and experiencing the worst 'fish out of water' sensation ever.

"Yeah. I remembered at like, three in the morning last night." Lois added, tearing off a piece of largely unadorned burger. "Jawline like a diamond-cutter and glasses like coke bottles. Those new ones look better. You sounded like an extra who ran off the set of some gosh golly jeepers old timey Old West production. Thickest Southern accent I'd ever heard in my life."

"I've heard thicker." Clark commented. "Some of the older folks in Smallville have accents so thick you practically need a professor of dead languages to work it out. Chikashshanompa in a southern accent is incomprehensible, you have no idea..."

"Chika what now?"

"The Chickasaw language."

Lois's eyebrows crept of her forehead. "You can speak some of that?"

Clark shrugged. "Sort of? I couldn't take the class officially because there was no room left, but the teacher did some after-school tutoring. I don't think I got very good at it -- I mean, there's not a whole lot of chance for exposure -- but I did okay enough to parse out sentences."

Lois tore off another piece of burger, the yellow cheese stretching briefly, and shoved it in her mouth like it was the only thing preventing her from sticking her foot in there as well. For the amount of time it took her to chew and swallow and then wash it down with some soda, she stared intensely at Clark like she was trying mentally to strip back the layers and peer directly at his brain.

"Okay, what kind of town is Smallville? I keep picturing this cute little Norman Rockwell meets Thomas Kinkade nineteen-fifties kind of wholesome places, but then you mention meteor showers and learning Chickasaw and your horny town founder which are just not things that a person normally associates with cute little Norman Rockwell meets Thomas Kinkade nineteen-fifties kind of wholesome places-- Actually, no. That last one I can believe, the horny town founder. I can believe that. I just can't get my head around the rest of it."

"Smallville's a normal small town, Lois. I promise."

"Well then, tell me something normal about it."

Clark thought for a moment. "Well, there's a statue of Ezra Small."

"Is it a nice statue?"

"It's very, um, virile."

Lois blinked. Waited a moment to see if Clark would use a different word. He didn't.

"Virile." she repeated.

"Mm, the sculptor wanted to commemorate Ezra's best qualities, so I guess that included his only stand-out physical quality. He wasn't all that attractive."

"Stand out... As in?..."

"As in, the aforementioned physical quality is very visible. My parents avoided walking in front of that statue for years. They laughed about it when they thought I couldn't hear, though."

"He must have had an enormous schwanzstucker."

"We used to shoot spitballs at it. There was this story that went if you wrote your name on a scrap of paper and got it right on the, uh, the upper bit, Ezra would show up in your bedroom at midnight ready to go, if you know what I mean."

"Country kids have to make do." Lois giggled. "Do you ever try it?"

Clark went "ehhhh" in a very noncommittal kind of way and there was a vague pink color in his cheeks.

"You tried it?" Lois laughed a little more loudly this time.

"I was fifteen, it was one those things everyone tried." Clark said, both self-consciously and defensively. "And no, the town founder did not manifest physically in my bedroom."

"Shame. If he managed to foster two percent of the present day population, he must have had some mad game." Lois commented, nodding to herself. "Any other sort of small town shenanigans from your misspent youth?"

"My youth was not misspent." Clark said. "Just the usual stuff, I guess. You know, like weed and car-surfing and we may or may not have set up an illegal still in the old orchard. I am not at liberty to confirm that."

"That sounds pretty misspent." Lois pointed out. Then she frowned. "Car surfing?"

Clark shrugged. "A bunch of us would get together, get drunk, and go driving on the dirt roads and the driver would fish-tail around while the rest of us would try to hang on on top." he said. And when it was said out loud, he realized just how utterly dangerous it sounded. How had his very normal teenage human classmates lived to see graduation?

"Illegal still in the orchard?" Lois questioned with a knowing quirk in her smile.

"Yeah, the only place to buy alcohol was the general store and Mr. Fordman knew exactly how old all of us were and it was all behind the counter, and we could never really justify to our parents a reason to drive all the way into Edge City, so we made our own. The orchard itself was shut down but all the trees were still there. It was kind of this apple scumble. We got pretty good at it." Clark admitted. A handful of teens and all the knowledge of high school chemistry they could muster.

Something about the apple scumble got Clark very, very drunk. The apple scumble also got his (biological) grandfather very, very drunk. But nothing else did, so it was definitely something about the soil composition of the orchard that had leaked into the trees and then the apples in turn. However, his grandfather did not have the necessary scientific background to figure out the specifics.

"You never got caught with the under-age still?"

"Oh no, we definitely got caught a few times. We just hid it better the next time."

Lois laughed again and startled herself with how easy the sound came out. For a second, she thought Too easy very suspiciously. Things that were too easy were generally worthy of suspicion. She didn't laugh easily around guys she had known less than a day--

Don't ruin the moment! She thought fiercely, mentally shaking away the notions. This is a very nice moment of platonic human interaction. Be chill.

It was just too soon to get herself all worked up over how easy and effortless it was to talk to him, before she had felt him out properly. He did seem like a genuinely nice guy, however. While Lois hadn't had high expectations for the likes of Mr. Kent, she'd also been careful not to cultivate any low expectations. Although honestly, she could set the bar at its lowest possible point and a man would still yell "Hold my beer!" and grab a shovel to start digging.

At the least, Clark wasn't trying to limbo under the bar.

Anyways, keep the conversation going. There's still Thursday. Lois thought to herself. "So what else can you tell me?"

"About...?"

Lois shrugged. "Whatever comes to mind. Parents, friends, siblings, family, pets, past relationships, etcetera. All that basic getting to know you stuff. Uh, don't expect me to reciprocate. The military thing turned my dad into a hard-ass, so uh... We don't get along very well." she admitted, though it sounded like it had taken some effort to wrench the words out of her mouth.

"Okay..." Clark decided to stay well away from that one. "I don't have any siblings. I'm adopted, but my maternal grandfather lives nearby. Uh, I live on a farm, actually, so we've had a lot of dogs for herding and stuff. I guess Krypto is mine specifically. He's huge, like up to my ribs tall. We had to guess at his breed, but he's definitely a wolf-hybrid. Lots of training, but he's a great herder and livestock guard dog. Haven't seen a coyote around the farm in years. Uh, my friend Pete wants to run for councilman in Edge City and Lana is in Paris studying fashion. And I didn't actually date in high school."

"I don't believe that for a second. Handsome man like you never went on dates in between car surfing and apple orchard ragers?" Lois snorted.

Clark blushed. "You think I'm handsome?" His voice squeaked like it was breaking all over again. He had to clear his throat like it was the only way to get rid of the embarrassment and the weirdly pleased feeling he had from Lois's comment. It wasn't that he had never considered himself attractive, but he had never flaunted it like bright plumage. It just wasn't a thing he did.

It was nice, though, to hear someone tell him that he was, in fact, handsome.

"Er, no. I didn't date. I mean, we all knew each other since kindergarten and I guess it was a little awkward to date someone you knew used to eat crayons or stuck glue in their hair because they wanted a mohawk." he added.

Lois snorted a giggle, her gaze flitting up to his hair like she was imagining him with the glue stick mohawk. "Slim pickings in the middle of nowhere." she commented. "Must have been a culture shock to come here and leave behind all that flat land."

"It's not actually flat out there." Clark said. "Smallville's in the southwest corner and Colorado is also about two hours away so it starts getting hillier the further west you go. And it's not really the middle of nowhere either. The Santa Fe Trail wasn't too far off and the Elbow River is a tributary of the Cimarron which empties into the Arkansas. According to Ezra Small's personal accounting, he didn't like the idea of crossing the mountains -- they were headed for California -- and decided that he was staying right there and everyone else just sort of agreed with him. They went south to avoid crossing the Missouri River and went too far so they were sandwiched between the Arkansas and the Cimarron, so there wasn't any good way to get around the Elbow River and I guess everyone else just considered trying to make the crossing an unnecessary risk. The wagon leaders were pretty gung-ho about fording the river, but Ezra basically told them to fuck off and suck his dick. I think he was using some eighteen-thirties slang. The ladies running the historical society kept trying to tell me that he wasn't talking about his penis, but the sentence was clearly referencing dick-based sodomization."

"Your town founder sounds like someone I would have liked to meet." Lois said, almost thoughtfully.

"He was colorful." Clark said. "I got a lot of extra credit on my project for including some of the lesser-known details. Like, he was actually a cobbler and I think he had some background in general repair-work. I think that was the only reason the wagon train leaders let him come along. According to the other journals, he was just really irritable all the time, but he also had a useful skill. The historical society really tries to paint him as having been someone important, but he wasn't. He was just the cobbler. I had to break into the museum after dark to get the entries they wouldn't let me see."

Lois blinked. "You had to do what?"

Clark squirmed a little. "Mrs. Phillips wouldn't let me read a few of the journal entries and the copies she did give me were edited so I... broke into the museum through one of the basement windows and downloaded the files off her computer."

He wasn't totally proud of that, but Mrs. Phillips shouldn't have shorted him on the information in the first place.

Lois looked him over with an appraising expression, like she was re-evaluating her opinion of him. Dare he say there was a touch of approval in those purple-ish blue eyes?

"Did you delete them? The files?"

"No, I kept them and forwarded copies to all of my classmates later. I was trying to force Mrs. Phillips into acknowledging her bias."

Lois nodded in clear approval now. "You know, Clark. I'm starting to think you've got an enormous schwanzstucker of your own. What did your parents think?" she asked. "Or was that another case like the illegal beer still?"

"Oh. No, they found out. Mrs. Phillips told them." Clark said, smiling at the memory. "She just couldn't prove it was me; I used a throwaway email and I put all the files on a thumb-drive so they weren't on my computer. My parents grounded me only for show. I was usually the good one, so that helped."

"Wait... You broke into a museum for a school project, participated in the brewing and drinking of apple liquor, and went drunk car-surfing on the regular, and you were the good one?" Lois asked incredulously.

"...Yes?"

It was just that, it wasn't easy for Clark to get drunk (unless it was the aforementioned apple scumble, then he was three sheets to the wind) and he was very durable. Theoretically, he was bullet-proof (but he wasn't about to test that), so falling off the car had never hurt him much. His parents were more than just passingly acquainted with the whitewash that was history. And -- if this was honesty hour -- it had been his pa who'd told him how to jiggle open that basement window.

Across from him, Lois had started smiling, albeit in a decidedly different tone than previously. Clark wasn't sure if it was smug, delighted, satisfied, or all three at once. She nodded vigorously, pointing back and forth between them and looking like all of her dreams had come true.

"You and me, Smallville. You and me." she said, delighted. "You and me, we're gonna be just fine. We are going to get along great."

That sounded ominous.

I think I've started something I can't take back. Clark thought, chills going down his spine. He was stuck with Lois Lane, infamous campus cryptid and all-around madwoman, for the foreseeable future. And she had decided that he was a good guy. Being Lois's bad side was reportedly unpleasant, but being on her good side? Well, no one had ever been there before, so Clark was in uncharted territory. Did that mean he was going to get hauled along on every mostly dangerous endeavor she could think of?

"So, uh... If we're sharing..." Clark started, a little nervously. "I've heard like, four or five arson stories about you. I was just..."

"Wondering which ones are true?" Lois finished, with a bit of a smirk. "Well, the Wallace Luthor tree happened. I was protesting."

"By burning down a tree?"

"It needed to be a visible statement. The Luthors are full of shit. Besides, it was infested with emerald ash borers. It was dying anyways." she added, like that justified it. "And the one with Professor Crawford, that happened too."

"You actually set his car on fire." Clark said flatly.

"First, he was a pervert who got horny over children, okay? Second, I was not originally planning to do that." Lois started in a very reasonable tone while not making eye contact. "I was just going to loosen the battery clamps a bit so the car wouldn't start so the police would catch him at home after the anonymous tip about his kiddie porn stash, but I think there was a bomb wired to the alternator." she explained, her voice dropping with every word until it was a whisper.

"You-- You blew up his car?" Clark asked incredulously, because that part wasn't in the story.

"I just wanted him in jail, not dead. So I delayed the fuse and tripped it and hit the deck. It got the job done either way." Lois looked a touch ashamed of this, covering her cheeks with both hands. "The rumor mill really downplayed that one."

"You blew up a car."

"Seeing that I prevented an unnecessary tragedy and Professor Crawford got convicted, I think it cancels out."

Clark thought about that one for a moment. Sure, blowing up a car was not a good way to get things done -- bombs were never a solution to a problem -- but Professor Crawford had indeed been convicted and right now was probably sharing a wing (if not a cell) with Stryker's serial rapists. One less pervert to traumatize small children.

"I guess." he conceded. He blinked. "I just realized I don't have your phone number."

Lois choked and visibly spewed a mouthful of drink back into her cup.

"Not like that!" Clark corrected hastily, his cheeks flushing. "Not like that, that's not what I meant! Just in case an emergency pops up before Thursday! We should be able to get a hold of each other! That's what I meant! Not-- Not anything else!"

"Jeezus," Lois thumped her chest, coughing once to clear her throat. "Don't spring that on a girl."

"Sorry."

"No, I know what you mean, just don't say it like that. Phone. Gimme."

"I can do--"

"Phone. Gimme, gimme."

Lois made a grabby hand at him and, seeing that she would probably not be deterred, Clark unlocked the home screen and turned his phone over.

"Ooh, a Pearl. You know, WayneTech makes the best smartphones. These suckers can survive a six-floor drop." Lois commented, holding her phone side by side with his and displaying excellent ambidexterity with her thumbs.

"My parents really like that they don't listen in one your conversations." Clark commented, absently noticing that her phone case had the stylized eagle-like W representing Wonder Woman. "They made sure. Talked about buying seeds and didn't get any targeted ads at all."

"I think LexCorp is getting sued over something like that." Lois said, most of her attention on the phones. "Emotional distress over targeted ads or something. They'll only settle because Luthor won't let any bad publicity get up to his level. Okay, done."

Clark glanced at the new contact and slid the phone back into his pocket. "Okay, I think it's your turn." he said, picking up his breakfast sandwich.

"My turn for what?"

"Tell me something neat about Metropolis."

Lois's intrigued expression turned into a sharp, smirky grin.

-0-

The trouble I ran into with the first version of this story was the pacing. The pacing was absolutely blistering and it was starting to feel like I was squeezing out character development and worldbuilding for action. So, Clark and Lois get another chapter to get to know each other before I yeet them off the deep end.

I don't believe in filler chapters.