Please do not hate me for being way too late with this. We should celebrate the fact that I got it up at all. It's fairly long since I didn't want to bother with more chapters and I hope those of you that waited will be so glad there is an ending that you won't care about silly things like chapters and line breaks.

Anyway, if you're still reading this, thank you for sticking around and I hope you enjoy. . .

(oh and there may be an epilogue sometime because I still have some stuff I want to put in but I'm marking this as complete in case I don't get to it.)

Disclaimer: I wouldn't bet my life that I own anything but the plot and neither should you.

It was with the promise of a more upbeat sleepover (with at least one full day's advance warning) that Lois left the next morning, leaving Chloe to sleep in before heading over to Watchtower. Clark pounced on her not ten minutes after she arrived. Chloe used his proffered coffee to mentally prepare herself for a day full of mediating between the grown children she called her friends.

"Don't you have an actual job to get to?" She asked, putting off the impending therapy session. "And I'm not talking about the one where you zoom around with no mask expecting me to scrub your face off all the cameras that catch you."

"I'm still officially in Gotham. Speaking of, I think we should look into crimes in Metropolis that are similar to how the Gotham mob operates; if you come across any sites I can check them out today. And I apologized for that already, it was one time."

"I can still complain about it if I want. All right, let's put you out of your misery. Anything special happen last night?" Chloe asked with a knowing grin.

"You could at least pretend you're interested."

"I am!"

"Pretending or interested?"

"Do you really want me to answer that? Just get to the good stuff."

Clark pursed his lips and shot her a glare before speaking.

"I was patrolling when I heard Lois's 'you'll never get away with this' speech. I double-checked her heart rate to make sure she wasn't just practicing in front of the mirror again and then went to find her. Naturally, she's being frog-marched off a roof and screaming bloody murder. I caught her and I kept waiting for the trip back down to start so I could get her out of there but by the time I noticed that we were flying," his voice dropped at the word, though there was no one around to hear them. "-she'd kissed me."

Chloe went slack jawed and choked in surprise but Clark was too caught up to notice.

"I was too surprised to do anything but return it. And now she's going to obsess even more over the Blur while Clark Kent gets shoved aside. This whole thing is messed up. I never should have come out as the Blur."

"Hold up, you flew? Not just floated but real, cognizant, fully-in-control-of-your-body flying?" She asked, complete with emphatic gestures to confirm she had not misheard and he was not merely talking about a bird or a plane.

"I was as surprised as you are. But before she kissed me, we were definitely gaining altitude, not just floating. And then I flew her back to her apartment and dropped her off."

"What did you do after that? How far up can you go? Do you even need to breathe in space?"

"I tried to fly back to Gotham, but I crash landed after a couple blocks and ran there instead. I practiced flying the whole time I was waiting for Batman but apparently I can only fly when Lois is in mortal peril," he said dryly.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"I want you to know that I'm doing this for your own good," Chloe prefaced. "I really don't mind playing therapist for you and Lois but all this beating around the bush has got to stop. So, unless you and Lois come to some sort of emotional agreement in the next, let's say . . . two weeks? Unless there's a resolution of some sort, emotional or Blur-related or, so help me, both, in the next week, I'm taking matters into my own hands."

Clark gulped as Chloe smirked and held his gaze. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it once more and paused like that before asking what she meant, voice squeaking a bit at the end. Chloe was pleased that she was still able to manipulate him. But hey, if they were going to act like they needed someone to walk them through life, then they were going to learn to walk at her speed.

"If you don't come to an understanding, Lois is going to get an email from you. An email that goes into great depth about how you feel about her and what you do every night. And we'll see how it goes from there," she shrugged.

Clark was starting to look a bit green and if Chloe didn't know better, she'd think someone had snuck a chunk of kryptonite in. As it was, she patted Clark on the shoulder.

"Stop thinking about it so much, get her alone and just get it out in the open. There's no wrong way to do this. Okay? Okay."

Chloe herded Clark out of Watchtower and off towards the Daily Planet. She wasn't intending to follow through with her threat but Clark needed an impetus. And now that she was involved, she was going to see this through to the ending she wanted.

Clark held out for thirteen days. He got increasingly nervous and jumpy around Lois each day and Chloe watched her cousin get more and more annoyed at that.

On the fourteenth day, due to circumstances beyond anyone (other than the building janitor's) control, the Daily Planet's air conditioning broke. In the middle of a heat wave. Lois, always one to take advantage of the situation, decided that if she couldn't tell Clark her feelings, she'd just have to make him reveal his. He was busy working on their article about how the drought would affect both the city and the surrounding farmland, happily oblivious to Lois's scheming looks. She would have to get his attention somehow. But inconspicuously.

Lois unbuttoned the first two buttons on her blouse and made sure it was open enough, thinking that she really should have worn a skirt rather than her dress pants. Then, reaching for a file on her desk, she bumped the cup of pens off her desk with her elbow.

At the clatter of the pens Clark looked up to see Lois cringing as the pens rolled off in several directions.

"Don't suppose you want to help me pick them up, Smallville?" she asked.

Clark just smiled and went off to get the pens that rolled the farthest.

He's such a gentleman, Lois thought, as she admired the view of him bending over. Then she pulled herself out of her daze and got on her hands and knees collecting the pens. He knelt down to put the pens in the cup she had righted on the floor as Lois, still on the floor, turned around to do the same.

Perfect timing. It's a good thing I wore the lacy undershirt today.

Clark's eyes must have intended to travel up from the cup to Lois's eyes, but on the way they were sidetracked by the way her blouse opened up to reveal a lacy red undershirt and a black bra.

She smirked and counted off a good ten seconds before his eyes reached their original target. Hiding the smirk and looking at him worriedly, she said innocently, "You look a little flushed. The heat's not getting to you, is it?"

"No, no. I'm fine." He retreated back to his chair and began to once again work on the article. When he had finished, she bent over his desk to read it over, giving him another chance to look down her shirt. To her dismay, he calmly kept his eyes on her face and the computer the whole time. Not once did he even glance at her shirt. A little annoyed, she made a few corrections and returned to her seat.

She continued writing her own article, pulling out one of the lollipops she had stashed in her snack drawer and sucking on it obscenely. That brought his attention back to her. He watched her dazedly, mouth slack and eyes unfocused. He kept staring even after she finished the lollipop.

"Uh, Lois, can I talk to you in the hall?"

"Sure, Smallville. What's up? Something on your mind?" Lois asked, as if the last hour had not been spent trying to get a rise out of her partner.

He didn't answer but lead her to the stairwell.

"Lois, I'm the Blur," Clark blurted.

Not exactly the confession she thought she'd be getting but progress was progress.

"Took you long enough, I thought I'd get wrinkles before you said anything," Lois mock chastised, unable to control the happiness that radiated from her, powering Clark's heart like a miniature sun.

"Wait, you knew already and you didn't tell me? When did you find out? How did you find out?"

"Don't you think it's my turn to ask questions now, Smallville?"

"I don't know how this is supposed to go. I'm not in the habit of telling people who I am. And mostly, people just tend to find out. Especially when there's no time to answer questions."

"You could definitely use some lessons in secret-keeping. Particularly in making sure your secret identity is actually a secret."

"Is that an offer, Ms. Lane?"

"It might be. But I expect to be paid for my consulting time. I'm a very busy woman, Mr. Kent. I can't go off willy-nilly to help superheroes on a whim."

"You do know that's exactly what you do most days?"

She punched him in the arm, grinning.

"So do you want get an early lunch and talk more about this now? I have a lot of questions you know. I've been saving them up and I've waited long enough but I can wait a little longer now I know I'm going to get answers. I want to know about your powers, what you do with them, where you got them, when you got them, who else you work with, what really happened all those times you acted weird or left suddenly, basically as much of your whole life story as you want to share," Lois listed.

"How about we stick to the work now and let me get used to you knowing and we can talk tonight over dinner?" Clark chuckled.

"I don't see what you need to get used to, it's not like you just found out your best friend is from another planet. But I suppose we can wait."

"You're trying to guilt trip me into talking now, but it's not going to work. We have a deadline, we can talk later."

"Promise? No going back on this or erasing this from my memory or something?"

He shifted uncomfortably, not looking her in the eyes.

"Clark, you didn't," she groaned.

"Not this time, I can promise you'll keep all your memories of this. But there were a couple times where some manipulation was absolutely necessary, for your own protection really," Clark protested.

"You're telling me everything eventually," she growled. "Everything. From A to Zod. Don't think I'll forget about this."

He smiled weakly at her threat.

"What are they doing?"

"I can't see anything."

"That's cause you're a shrimp."

"Who you calling shrimp, green bean?"

"Watch it Impulse, Arrow, or you'll both be on dish duty. They're not doing anything, they're just standing there, gazing into each other's eyes like two idiots. Now shut up or they'll hear you," Chloe scolded.

Strictly speaking, this was not part of the League's business, but as it involved one League member and one hopefully soon-to-be League member, Chloe unabashedly used her resources at Watchtower to spy on her friends. The hallway camera unfortunately only had video, and she had sent Oliver on a recon mission to provide the missing audio. As he was planting the microphone, Bart found out and invited himself along. Currently the two were blasting their location to any being with super-hearing that cared to listen in to the childish bickering. Chloe sighed. The League was hard to manage, but she hoped that was one of the reasons they were the best.

Bart's voice crackled through the radio. "I don't know about this mission, 'Licious. I mean, it's a little unfair that you tell me to leave them alone, then turn around and get the jolly green giant to spy on them for you."

She watched the monitor as Oliver rolled his eyes yet again at the nickname on one screen and Lois repeatedly poked Clark in the arm on the other.

"I'm really sorry. What do you want me to do instead?" Chloe humored him.

"For starters, you can start by getting me to do all your dirty work in the future, especially the really filthy stuff," Bart winked at the camera. "And after, I'm sure we can come to some kind of agreement."

"Are you sure it'll be that easy? I may need some persuading."

"Okay, I'm stopping you two right there. There's no flirting on company time. I'm not paying for the therapy we'll inevitably need. We get enough mental trauma from our day jobs, I do not need you two adding more," Oliver said. His face was nearing the shade of green he sported at night. Not an unattractive color for a leather outfit, but rather unhealthy for skin. Chloe could not resist baiting him further.

"Technically it's not an official mission, so you don't have regulatory power over any flirting done on the job."

"Yeah! You hear that, Kermit? We can flirt as much as we want," Bart grinned, crossing his arms.

"They do know we can hear them, right?" Clark asked.

"They'll figure it out sooner or later. There's one more thing I want to tell you before we go back to work though," Lois said.

"Yeah? What do you have that could top my confession?"

Lois said nothing and kissed him. Clark's hands slid to her waist to balance her as he pushed forward, kissing her back deeply.

"Oh," was all Clark said when they pulled back, not letting go of each other.

"How's that for a confession, Smallville?"

"I still think I've got you beat. Alien origins trumps love."

"Who said anything about love?" Lois teased.

"I did," Clark said, and kissed her again.