Chapter Text
When Lois walked into work, she was greeted with the sight of Clark Kent, if Clark Kent was younger and extremely fucking cool.
The kid was arguing, or possibly flirting, with the receptionist. He wore a beat-up leather jacket, paint splattered cargo pants, combat boots, round wire-rim glasses, and small gold studs in his ears. He had a backpack covered in pins and patches. His black hair was identical to Clark’s in texture and not much else. The kid’s was slightly longer and messier on top but the sides were shaved. All in all, he looked very much like he walked out of a punk pottery class instead of Kansas.
“You lost?” Lois asked as she handed her badge to Mike, the receptionist.
The boy looked her up and down, like he was assessing a battlefield. He flashed her a bright smile. “Lois Lane, it is an honor to meet you in person. You’re just the woman who can help me.”
Mike sighed in a long suffering way and put his head in his hands. “You can’t just barge in here and make demands of Pulitzer winning reporters.”
The boy ignored that. “My name is Conner Kent and I need to see Clark. His phone’s on silent.”
Lois took her badge back. “You his brother or something? You look like twins.”
“I’m his son.”
She didn’t hide her surprise well. In the ten years she had known Clark she’d never seen a wedding ring or even heard about a significant other and not once did he mention a son. She considered them friends, one might even say best friends, but apparently she needed to reevaluate that. “No fucking way. How old are you, kid?”
The million dollar smile faltered briefly then returned. “Seventeen.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she said. She grabbed Conner’s hand and marched him towards the elevators “Let him through Mike, he’s with me,” she called over her shoulder. Mike let out a half hearted acknowledgment.
Conner laughed. “With all due respect, you’re kind of terrifying Miss Lane. I feel like I’m about to get locked in a room with a two way mirror.”
“I’m saving the interrogation room for Clark,” she muttered as they stepped into the elevator. “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe he has a kid. I’m going to lose the ‘What’s Clark Kent’s dark secret?’ office betting pool. I said it was a medical condition or a debt to the mafia.”
“Clark is stubbornly healthy and he isn’t cool enough to know how to find the mafia,” Conner said.
Lois sighed forlornly. “I can’t believe I’m about to lose a bet to Cat Grant.” She looked back towards Conner and said, “I don’t know why he’s never mentioned you.”
He didn’t seem fazed or insulted by that. “To be fair, my other parent didn’t mention me either.”
Now that was interesting. But she didn’t have time to investigate more fully. They stepped out of the elevator and towards Clark’s desk. Well, Lois walked. Conner sauntered. She reached Clark first, sat down on top of his desk, and snapped her fingers in his face. “Got a minute, Smallville?”
He blinked and looked up at her. “Yeah, what do you need?”
It was then that Conner showed up and leaned against the wall of the cubicle in a casual way. “I need my birth certificate.”
Clark looked slightly alarmed as he looked between Conner and Lois. The latter raised an eyebrow. “And I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Birth certificate first,” Clark said. He had always been practical. He used a key to open his locked filing cabinet and started rummaging through. “But what do you need it for?”
“Kara and I were thinking about flying out to Greece. Barbara’s studying abroad right now, Kara misses her, and I’ve always wanted to reenact the plot of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.”
“I’m going to assume that was a joke,” he muttered. Clark paused. “Wait, why do you need your birth certificate to fly there?”
“For my passport, obviously.”
Clark continued to look confused until his eyes flicked to Lois. “Right, passport. Yeah, it’s here somewhere.”
He pulled out a slip of paper, deliberately keeping it facedown. Conner took it and shoved it into his backpack. Lois got a closer look at the pins and patches. A bi pride flag, a he/him pronoun button, a bootleg Superman symbol, a Red Robin logo, and a bunch of other knockoff superhero swag. There were also touristy keychains from cities around the world swinging from the straps.
After closing his file cabinet, Clark looked back at Conner. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Seniors get lunch privileges,” he said. “But I should head back before I’m late. Lovely to meet you Miss Lane, see ya Clark.” And with a salute, he swung back around and headed towards the elevators.
Clark looked back at her. She was still perched on his desk, leaning back on her hands and staring. “And what can I do for you?”
“Your son is so…punk rock,” she said, for lack of a better term. “He has an eyebrow piercing for God’s sake. It’s not what I would have expected.”
“What would you expect?”
“I don’t know. A baseball playing Boy Scout. A Jane Austen reader with glasses. Some kid with a detective agency.” She leaned forward slightly, closer to him. “I thought that if you had a kid, he’d be younger. But he said he’s seventeen and I know you’re thirty-three so…”
Clark nodded. “And that means I was a teen dad.”
“Which is fine.”
“I know it’s fine, I just don’t tell people.”
“But you’ve had a son this whole time and somehow, despite your thousands of excuses for coming in late or leaving early or not showing up, he’s never been mentioned?” She tilted her head slightly, waiting for an answer.
Clark leaned back in his chair, unflinching. No hunching his shoulders to make himself small, no slight midwestern accent to soothe the listener. Just authority. “Well, I didn’t know he existed until three years ago and I didn’t get custody until this school year.”
Lois nodded. “So, it’s complicated and you’re a private guy. That makes sense. I can respect that.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You can?”
“Clark, I know when to back off.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said, and turned back to his article. She hopped off of his desk, but before she left, she heard an incredibly soft “Lois?”
“Hm?”
“This is all off the record?”
“Of course.”
“And the words she used exactly were ‘punk rock’?” Conner asked.
“Yes.”
The two of them were in Clark’s apartment, where Clark sometimes lived, and Conner rarely did. With super speed, flight, and teleportation at their disposal, neither man needed to be constrained by anything as trivial as a permanent address.
“God, put that on my headstone,” Conner said as he leaned back on the counter to chug an energy drink. “And she has a Pulitzer, so she would know what she’s talking about.”
“I dislike how much you mention my coworker’s Pulitzer.”
“Tough. I have been hearing shit about Lois Lane since the day I was born. Luthor was always bitching about her exposés and scientists were always sending her anonymous tips. And she’s Superman’s only known associate, outside of the Justice League, so I learned everything there was to know about her. I’ve wanted to meet her forever.”
“Well now you’ve met her and she thinks that you’re punk rock and she thinks that I’m a disaster but what else is new?” Clark said as he poured his ramen into a bowl. Besides the pretense of a normal life, there was one thing that kept drawing Clark back to his apartment: the stash of instant ramen in the pantry.
“You know, I’m pretty sure that she’s into your ‘walking train wreck with vision problems’ persona.”
“I don’t need your opinion on my love life, especially not after watching you and Tim Drake interact three days ago.”
Conner did not dignify that with a response. “I’m not worried about Lois knowing about my existence. I don’t know why you’re worrying.”
“Because she would fight God to get an exclusive with Saint Peter. The woman is relentless. She’s best friends with Batman, that’s fucking terrifying.”
“And one day you’re going to marry her, and she’ll know all about your secret identity. I don’t see the issue.”
“We aren’t even dating,” Clark said.
“I don’t see why not. I think she’s into your whole ‘kicked puppy in a snowstorm who can’t find his glasses’ act.”
Clark sat down at the kitchen counter with a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks from his drawer full of disposable utensils. “With each new descriptor you find for my personality, the more inclined I am to tell Ma about how the chicken coop caught fire. And I will take your accomplices down with you, don’t think I won’t.”
“Bart doesn’t deserve that,” Conner said mournfully.