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The first time Lois Lane met Clark Kent, she was annoyed.
He wasn’t the one that annoyed her—at least not the only thing that got on her nerves that day; but Lois was self-aware enough at the time to realize that his general clumsy presence on this day did not improve her mood in the slightest.
Clark Kent was all tall limbs and blushing cheeks in the middle of a busy space, and Lois was running after a lead she’d been chasing for the better part of the week. It wasn’t really his fault if he happened to trip against the side of her desk, but it was definitely hers for snapping the way she did.
So much for being less of a hard-ass at work.
The next day, she genuinely apologized. She brought him a coffee, a donut from down the street, and immediately clocked in upon walking in to find him on the desk opposite her that Clark Kent was not the new intern she thought him to be—but her new colleague she’d apparently be working with in tandem from there on.
Clark then proceeded to surprise her all the more by accepting the apology and the coffee with a smile that made her temporarily stare with nothing to say—she blamed the dimples, and for the first time in a long time, Lois Lane was too stunned to fight Perry on the new hire.
The first time Lois met Superman, she was bleeding from the left side of her temple, and she was pretty sure she had a head injury. Her vision was fuzzy, her steps a little hesitant, and all the while, she held on to the recorder she’d previously retrieved from the military base she had infiltrated on a whim.
The truth was, Lois had no idea how she’d get out of there. The story was good, incredible even, but most importantly her words would help save countless lives—if she made it out of there. Which, considering the state of her, was not a certainty at the moment. She had not thought this through; and all she could think about was Clark’s worried face when she’d grabbed her coat and rushed out of the Planet.
Lois did not see him coming.
She’d heard about Superman on the news, of course. Everybody had, in the last few weeks. But it was one thing to see him with her own eyes when he landed in front of her, quiet as a mouse and looking every bit like the superhero he apparently was when he looked down at her with a worried frown.
There was something achingly familiar about him, she thought when she all but fell into his arms as he lifted her like a rag doll, holding on to her recorder like a life-line. She couldn't really pinpoint what.
It was humiliating enough to be carried around by a grown metahuman wearing spandex because most of her blood decided it was better off outside of her own body, so Lois was set on not staring at him too hard.
“Miss Lane,” Superman said, and his voice was much deeper than she’d thought. She stared at the dimples as he spoke, “You do have a talent for finding trouble.”
“Takes one to know one,” she gritted out in response, wondering if she’d get in trouble with him for splattering blood all over his fancy blue suit. “How do you know my name, anyway?”
“Come on. The Pulitzer winning journalist who once called me a flying circus with a knack for property damage? How could I not?”
And with that, he’d smiled at her with a fake innocence that should have offended her—but only served to make her feel a little warm inside, and nobody but Lois had to know.
The first time Lois realized Clark was Superman didn’t really feel like a first time, more so like a piece of the puzzle slowly building in her mind had finally started to make sense.
She was very-well aware that Clark had a crush on her. She was not blind, and the poor man was carrying a torch so big everyone in the twenty miles radius was well-aware of it. But Lois had tried not to spur him on—being her unapologetic self and treating him like she’d treated anyone that ever got away. She showed him her fear of attachment and never hid any of her nasty little habits, from cigarettes on the roof of the Planet during coffee breaks to stories about the general and her failed relationships.
But Clark only seemed to fall harder.
Which prompted Lois to agree to a date, just to deter him. Because she knew how those things went, and she was well-aware that most men never called her back after the first night she’d spent babbling her life away in a diner down the street.
Of course, Clark was different. He listened, and he smiled, and he laughed, and suddenly in the middle of a date Lois never wanted to leave, she realized she hadn’t felt comfortable with someone else like this in forever.
Until Clark looked down at his phone in the middle of their desert and excused himself. He looked apologetic, is the thing, but Lois knew better. She knew all the excuses she’d been served time and time again, and the thing is, she did not even blame him for finding a way out. But she’d thought this time to be different, because Clark was.
She walked herself home with a slight shiver, and tried not to feel too miserable when her cold and empty flat greeted her. It was only when she’d showered, wiped off her makeup and jumped into his comfortable pajamas that Lois saw it.
A small bouquet of flowers sat on her bedroom’s windowsill.
It looked beautiful, and Lois’ heart did a funny little dance—until she remembered that she lived on the 25th floor of the building, and some of the petals looked a little worse for wear, as if they had been held out to the wind for too long. The pieces clicked all at once,
Lois smiled. Clark was the worst liar in the history of this world—and his own, apparently.
The first time she had sex with Clark, Lois couldn’t quite believe she still had to learn things about her own body at 32.
She laid there in ruined bedsheets with Clark’s head pillowed on her thighs and her eyes closed, trying to find her breathing and subsequently a way to ask Clark—and herself—if this was what sex was supposed to feel like.
Maybe she’d been doing it wrong all the while.
Or maybe, she thought when Clark finally crawled up her body, pressing feather-like kisses against every bit of skin he could find, Clark Kent was simply one of a kind.
But, still.
How the hell had he managed to coax four orgasms out of her in one night?
“How soon can we do that again?” she asked Clark, still wondering how she would manage to walk herself to the ensuite bathroom after that.
Clark looked a little surprised, but his expression morphed into thoughtfulness easily.
“Uh. Give me five minutes? Maybe ten?”
The first time Superman got injured, Lois realized that the treacherous feelings she tried so hard to bury deep down inside of her were unfortunately not as detached as she would have liked.
She watched her boyfriend—ex boyfriend?— get kidnapped on live television, heard her source deliver bad news and listened to Jimmy tell her about a pocket dimension with ringing in her ears, feeling her stomach clench with every passing seconds.
She tried as hard as she could to deny the harsh reality of her love for Clark with Mister Terrific, then with herself when she stood in his bedroom in Smallville, but the truth was there. Lois was in love with Clark, and she unfortunately had to face the harsh reality of it.
The first time Lois cried in front of another person since her mother had died, she did in front of Jon Kent.
It was a pretty simple day in Smallville, and Clark had insisted on bringing her along on his visit to his parents. They were spending the long weekend there—nothing fancy or official, but enough for Lois to feel all sorts of worried about it still. She didn’t do parents, nor did she manage to make herself liked by her significant other’s families enough for them to care about her in the long run.
Of course, the Kents had to prove her wrong from the start. They embraced her like one of their own, cooked her meals Clark knew she liked and asked her about her life while telling her about theirs. It was a very strange feeling, and Lois had to take a breather every once in a while out in the barn to calm herself down.
Clark let her take it to her own pace. He didn’t come to find her in the barn, nor did he ask about the smell of cigarettes on her lips when he kissed her afterwards.
Going to town with Jonathan was not something Lois had planned, but she wasn’t mad about it either. Jon Kent was a man of very few words, but he did strike her as a fundamentally good person that had shaped Clark to be the man she loved today.
“This is lovely,” Loiss commented when they got into the car, pointing at the old chain hanging from the front mirror.
It was a small silver medallion she’d never seen before, and it looked like the kind of family trinket one would easily forget somewhere convenient.
“Oh, this old thing! I forgot it was even there. Clark used to play with it when he was a boy.”
“He sure is a man of taste.”
“You should take it,” Jonathan said, reaching for the chain that swung with the bumps in the road. “It was my mother’s. It’s been rotting away in this car for I don’t know how long.”
“Oh, of course not. I was just thinking out loud,” Lois said immediately, holding her hands up in surrender.
Jonathan spared her a look from the corner of his eyes.
“You know Martha and I had a daughter, once?” he said, voice so quiet Lois almost missed it. “She was too small, and way too premature. She passed away a few hours after being born. We named her Olive, like my mother.”
Lois’ throat tightened. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It was long before we found Clark. The doctors told us we’d never have kids again, and for a long time, we didn’t think we would. We were devastated.” Jonathan smiles, letting the horror of his story wash away with fond memories. “And then we found Clark. He was meant to be ours, just like we were meant to raise him into the man he is today.”
Jonathan sighs, settling a little more comfortably in his seat.
“The point is, Lois, that I believe everything happens for a reason. For us, but also for Clark, and for you. I don’t know much about your parents, nor do I want to impose on subjects I have no business asking about. But I would recognize that look you have in your eyes sometimes everywhere.”
For a split second, Lois thought about her mom. She thought about the apple pie she cooked on Sunday when her dad was away on base, and about the taste of sugar on her tongue that reminds her of the home she lost.
“And I think human beings are made of so many little experiences and stories that make them so unique; but the beautiful thing about life is that you don’t have to do it on your own. Clark had us, but before that, we had him. And it’s not taking away the pain of losing our girl, but it does make this path even more significant. So please, Lois. I insist. You should have it, and I hope it serves as a reminder of what you mean to this family, too.”
And so Lois cried, holding the medallion in her palm like a precious token of the life she ached to live.
The first time she realized Clark had bought a ring, Lois waited for a dread that never came.
She stood there in front of the drawer where Clark had hidden it—a beautiful silver band with a tiny diamond at its center, the kind she would wear and so unlike those big unpractical shiny rocks she hated—and waited for her heart to race and her body to lock in the way it did when she panicked.
It never came.
She simply looked at the band, then around at the flat and the mess Clark had made of her living-room with his work clothes on the couch and his impossibly big shoes by the door, and smiled.
The medallion Jon had given her was warm against her breastbone, the ache in her thighs still present from Clark’s ministrations the previous night, and she felt surrounded by the love she felt every time she thought about the man she had opened her heart to.
And so for the first time in her life, Lois embraced the way she felt—and then more.