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It hasn’t been busy enough today, the proverbial slow news day, and when Lois steps into the elevator she presses ‘up’, rather than ‘down’, to match her mood. From glancing at the ticker before she left she’s reasonably certain she isn’t interrupting anything, so as she runs out onto and across the roof she shouts, “Superman!” and leaps out into the rushing air.
And falls, into exhilaration, and then an extra second, and acceleration, and a second extra second, and a third, and the beginning of worry --
Strong arms around her, broad chest like sun-warmed steel and thick cloth with just the right give. “Hey,” Lois says, looking up.
Clark looks, well, down, at her, eyebrows sharp, eyes narrowed, frowning. What? She opens her mouth to say as much, as Metropolis’s gleaming towers flow past them, and he kisses her.
Hard. Not too hard, but harder than he usually kisses her, hard enough to feel how tender her own flesh is beside his invulnerability. And he tastes – more human, like a specific human, someone whose kisses are cool and firm.
Lois knows who Clark’s been kissing, ooh what a mental image, and she cries out in apology against his lips as he lets her up. “Oh crap Smallville I’m so sorry! I wrote your date down for tomorrow!” Now Clark smiles at her, the sunlight returned to the blue of his eyes, brighter than the sky behind him. “Please apologize to him for -- huh?” as he glances up at the horizon and firms his jaw.
“You get to apologize to him yourself,” Clark tells her, dimpling, and “Hang on.”
Lois hangs on. Clark flips his cape around her, a billowing red shield and --
One sonic boom later, and she can feel the breeze between her left foot’s toes, but these weren’t her favorite shoes anyway. The sky is overcast gray-green and the air smells, well, weird.
Lois tumbles through rain-flecked air and lands on leather stitched with Kevlar. A decrepit building looms over the roof she’s on, strong arms come up around her and a vivid red-blue dot vanishes into the pallid sky.
“Hi,” she says, to blank white lenses in a black cowl mask, a firm jaw and the slightest hint of a smile, as she relaxes on the safest lap in Gotham and presses her hands over the bat symbol on his chest.
“He said you called,” he says in a voice much too light for this face.
"I owe you an apology," Lois tells Batman.
He toggles his lenses and Brucie's pale blue eyes shine out at her. "I'm sure we can work something out," he says, now in Batman's granite voice, and she can't help but shiver. She's only flesh and blood.
______
Lex Luthor is watching through the visor of ExploraBot Mark 10.2 as he pilots it over North Sentinelese Island, looking for a good landing spot. Why are they so isolationist anyway? Today he’ll find out what they’re hiding.
Mark 10.2 detects motion, a blur of red and blue. Ugh, it's the alien --
Luthor notices that Superman's eyes are glowing red.
He might be in trouble here.