Welcome to the pile of chaos that my brain has decided to cling to! I don’t know how to make gifs or videos or even memes so I wait for those more skilled than me to post so I can consume and share the content, for which I’m extremely grateful. Here you’ll find my unbridled appreciation for Jane Austen, SuperWhoLock (and their individual parts), Disney, Star Wars, superheroes, Chuck, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries, Shakespeare, Howl’s Moving Castle, lots of cop shows, fairy tales, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Harrison Ford, the Buffy!verse, Firefly, and more.
Most of my writing is nonfiction, critical analysis or reflection. I do write fanfiction but I have never finished or shared a piece of it.
I love sibling banter, so if you know of a show or book or movie that features great sibling interactions, message me please!
A few of my OTPs include: Sherlolly, Tiva, Reylo, Densi, Nallen, Magnum/Higgins, McKono, Frank Hardy/Nancy Drew, Romanogers, TaserTricks, Daisy/Sousa, Philinda, Morgan/Garcia, Cordelia/Angel, Buffy/Spike, Kathony, Chenford, Janeford, and there are loads more.
I’ll probably add to this list later. If you’ve stuck around this long, ask me a question!
Okay no I need to talk about the book version of Howl's Moving Castle. I love the movie but the book has such a different vibe and you, yes you, should read it.
Movie Howl is a soulful and quiet. Book Howl is a drama queen and Causing Problems and has a long string of jilted exes and couldn't shut up if you paid him.
Sophie and Howl drive each other up the wall at the beginning and it's really funny. Sophie and Howl are (despite themselves) very much in love by the end and they still drive each other up the wall and it's even funnier.
In the movie, Howl has been ordered by the king to participate in The War, and Howl is avoiding it because he is a brave conscientious objector. In the book, Howl has been ordered by the king to rescue his lost brother from the Witch of the Wastes, and Howl is avoiding it by any means necessary because he is a cowardly weasel who wants to stay as far from the Witch as possible.
In the movie, the Witch cursed Sophie because she was jealous about Howl speaking to Sophie for five minutes. In the book, the Witch cursed Sophie because Sophie had been doing surprisingly powerful magic for years without knowing it and it was actually starting to cut into the Witch's plans. (Sophie does not discover any of this until nearly the end of the book, but the reader can start to pick it up much earlier and the way Sophie's magic works is pretty darn cool.)
In the movie, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens, but this is implied to be nothing but nasty fearmongering. In the book, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens because Howl started the rumor so people would stop asking him to do wizard junk all the time.
The book lightly parodies a couple of tropes from Western fairy tales. In particular Sophie has internalized that, as the eldest of three sisters, her "destiny" is to fail so that her younger sisters will look cooler when they succeed, which is why she's so resigned to the hat shop at the beginning. (Sidebar: Sophie's sisters come up much more in the book and they're great.) There's also a really funny bit where Sophie attempts to operate a pair of seven-league boots.
In the movie, the fourth and final location that the magic door connects to is some sort of black void / mindscape / time portal dealy. In the book the fourth location is Wales, in the UK, on Earth, so that Howl can visit his family, because from Howl's perspective this is an isekai story.
i respect all of the nightwing fancasts but respectfully, the only man capable of pulling off the suave, charm, and sheer sex appeal wrapped in the eldest daughter syndrome packaging of richard grayson was matt bomer circa white collar 2009
like could they hypothetically find an unknown actor who could do it? maybe! but matt bomer’s neal caffrey literally had his own bruce wayne brother/father figure/older mentor in tim dekay’s peter burke and it was chef’s kiss
there is a reason for all of the white collar crossovers on ao3!!!!
My favourite Clark/Lois dynamic is the one where Lois has next-to-no romantic interest in Superman for a long while but instead develops a near-instantaneous-and-utterly-mortifyingly-obvious crush on Clark in, like, the first week she knows him.
The entire Daily Planet knows. Jimmy knows and thinks it's hilarious. Lois spends half her evenings groaning into a pillow and hoping against hope that Clark doesn't think she's a complete klutz who keeps tripping over her own feet around him.
Clark is, of course, completely unaware and genuinely thinks she's the nicest, sweetest, smartest, cutest, most intelligent and brave person he's ever met. Yes, he is in love with her too, but he hasn't noticed just yet.
Jimmy would say it’s her drive to get the story. Cat would say it’s her no-bullshit attitude. Steve would say it’s her inability to take a joke. Perry would say it’s her talent in crafting a pitch-perfect lead on the fly.
But Lois’s primary strength has always been her keen sense of pattern recognition. When people break their patterns, a story is always lurking close behind. Other times, the pattern itself is the story.
Take Clark, for instance. His clumsiness is legendary.
He once spilled his piping hot coffee on Bruce Wayne, who was touring The Planet to discuss the widespread rumor he was interested in buying it (true) and replacing them all with AI (not true). Clark apologized profusely, even offering to get Wayne’s suit cleaned.
Lois had never seen a man go that deathly pale as quickly as Clark after Wayne wryly quoted him his dry cleaner cost.
In addition to coffee, Clark regularly drops his papers, his lunch, his water, his coat (into puddles on the sidewalk), his phone, his keys. If Clark can hold it, he can drop it –
Or so Lois thinks, until she watches him rush into the bullpen, wade through an elementary school class on a field trip, dodge Jimmy busily swiping right on his phone, and duck the football Steve Lombard lobbed at the mountain of fake hair on top of Cat Grant’s head.
“I’m so sorry, Lois!” Clark places her coffee, the LuthorCorp prototype he took home to study, and an apology Danish on top of her desk.
Lois’s annoyance at Clark’s lateness (1 hour and 38 minutes) evaporates in the face of her unadulterated shock. “How did you do that?”
Clark glances behind him like she’s talking to someone else. “Do what?” he asks as sets down his coffee on his adjourning desk. He turns to hang up his coat, hip checking his desk on his way.
Splash
Clark makes a little wounded noise as he crouches down next to his overturned cup, coffee slowly seeping across the linoleum floor.
In one deft move, Lois whips out the Caution Wet Floor sign she saves underneath her desk and picks up her office phone. She presses *16, waits for Nancy to pick up, and says without preamble, “Cleanup on aisle Kent, Nance.”
As Nancy coordinates with the janitorial staff in the background, Clark makes a face at Lois.
“Category 1,” Lois adds into the receiver as she makes intense eye-contact with Clark, daring him to protest. “No need to bring in FEMA.” AKA Martin, who can get a little over-eager with his homemade industrial-grade cleaner.
As she hangs up, Clark pick up his empty cup to throw it in the trash, grumbling, “You know I don’t like that system.”
“And you know I don’t like wading to my desk every lunch break, but we all have our crosses to bear, Clark,” she says loftily.
“Sorry,” Clark ducks his head, “again.”
Lois swivels her chair to face him fully. “I’m not actually mad,” she says. “This happens, like, four days a week. If I took it personally, I would’ve set fire to your desk ages ago.”
Sure, she’d gotten angry at first – but, back then, she got angry at pretty much everything Clark did. She yelled at the top of her voice; he quietly stood his ground. She stole his story; he scooped hers. She got an exclusive with Superman; he broke the first credible sighting of Batman in Metropolis. And so on.
Until three months ago, when they got kidnapped chasing the same story. Stuck in a shipping crate with a half dozen other witnesses, Clark kept the peace until Lois could rally the group to break free. They all escaped the container and overran the guards holding them hostage. Lois took down the brains behind this genius plot with a few self-defense moves and a crotch shot. An overall success, even though Lois twisted her ankle.
Sue her, her Manolo Blahniks weren’t known for their arch support.
As the MPD arrived, she braced herself to watch Clark take off on his infuriatingly non-injured legs and claim his rightful spot on the front page. But he stayed behind instead. Stayed with her.
He was pretty annoying about it too, insisting that she go to the emergency room to get checked out, when RICE has served her perfectly well in the past. She went, if just to shut him up, and when the emergency medicine provider told her she needed immediate surgery, he refused to budge from her side for the next six hours because, as the doctor said, she needed someone to escort her home.
The next morning, she graciously let him share the byline – her name first, obviously.
And, well, after that, Lois found it exceptionally difficult to blow up at Clark for spilling various liquids across their work surfaces. Instead, she kept a lid on about 75% of her temper, and he started bringing her apology coffees whenever he really fucked up.
Clark chuckles as he slips his laptop out of his satchel. He tips his head at the prototype. “So, what did you learn about Luthor’s latest R&D project?”
* * *
Two days later, Lois looks up from her screen just in time to catch Clark spill his morning coffee all down himself and Steve Lombard.
Steve curses a blue streak, and Clark just takes it, gaze downcast, face a little red. Coffee drips down the baggy trench coat slung over his arm.
Lois jumps to her feet. “Lombard!” she barks as she strides over to intervene. “Get your act together.”
“Stay out of this, Lane,” Lombard says without looking at her. “My beef is with your braindead partner.”
“Which does make it my business,” Lois says as she slides neatly between them. “So why don’t you thank Clark for dousing that disgusting body spray that stinks up the elevator every time you get in? I know you act like a teenager stuck on the JV team, but do you have to smell like one too?”
Steve splutters, “What the fuck –”
“Clark,” Lois says, and the man in question snaps to attention. “Have you offered to pay for Steve’s dry cleaning?”
“Um,” Clark squeaks under Steve and Lois’s expectant looks, “no, not yet –”
“Good,” Lois says as she tugs him away from the scene. “Don’t. Our eyes can all use a rest from that crime against fashion. Right, Cat?”
Cat perks up immediately at the sound of her name. “For once, Lois has a point,” she says, raising her voice to be heard over Steve’s outraged, “I repeat: what the fuck, Lane –”
“You really shouldn’t wear jewel tones, Steve,” Cat continues brightly. “Not with your complexion.”
Steve demands, “What the hell is wrong with my complexion?”
“Nothing!” Cat assures. “But –”
Thank god for Cat Grant, not that Lois would ever admit it to her face. Lois parks Clark at his desk and unlocks her bottom drawer for her emergency stash of M&Ms that she only shares with the janitorial staff and her partner.
As Clark takes a small handful to get his blood sugar up and blood pressure down, she says, “That’s one way to start a morning. What crawled up Lombard’s ass and died?”
“I did spill coffee all over him,” Clark offers meekly.
As he passes by, Ron raps his knuckles on top of their divider. When they both look up, he says, without stopping, “Steve owes me $50 from the Chiefs’ win last week.”
“You’re a trooper!” Lois calls as Ron just rolls his eyes at the awful joke Lois will never let go. She turns back to Clark. “There you go. Lombard was just taking out his gambling debt on you.”
Clark frowns. “I really think the boiling hot coffee had something –”
“You do that every other week,” Lois waves the excuse off. “At this point, it’s practically Lombard’s fault for not getting out of the way in time.” Clark shuffles in his seat, opening his mouth to say something, and Lois’s eyes flash. “And don’t you dare say I’m victim blaming here –”
“No,” Clark says as he shifts his coat aside. “I was just going to give you this.”
Lois takes the coffee like it’s the holy fucking grail. “What the…”
“I’m sorry for bailing last night,” Clark says sheepishly as Lois just stares at him. “I still can’t believe I forgot to feed Mrs. Nguyen’s cat. You know he has irritable bowel syndrome, and if he doesn’t get fed his hydrolyzed diet on his strict schedule –”
“Yeah, yeah, cat unmentionables happen,” Lois says distractedly as she clutches her miracle coffee tighter.
How in the hell does Clark do it? He drops everything but apology coffees? How does that make any sense at all?
Clark brightens. “You’ll be pleased to hear the barista has stopped giving me weird looks for asking for eight sugars, three hazelnut pumps, and a shot of cream.”
Lois’s head jerks up. “It’s not that weird an order,” she protests.
“I really don’t understand why you keep drinking coffee while you clearly hate coffee.” Clark pushes his glasses up his nose. “Have you tried tea?”
“Hot leaf juice? Hard pass.”
Clark throws her a flat look. “You’re drinking hot bean juice right now.”
“Shut up, Kent.”
* * *
Lois’s day starts out awfully, with her source bailing on her last minute after she got ready to meet him at six in the goddamn morning. And her day doesn’t get any better in the weekly pitch meeting, where Perry shoots down her next investigative idea. Fuming, she leaves the office to cool off and grab an afternoon pick-me-up.
“I’m sorry, but we’re all out of hazelnut syrup,” the barista says.
Lois does not growl, but the noise that comes out of her mouth doesn’t sound quite human either.
“Sorry,” the barista repeats.
“Vanilla?” Lois tries.
The barista grimaces. “It wasn’t in our delivery today, which is why we had the run on hazelnut.”
Lois’s temper hikes up to dangerous levels, and she’d better get out of here before she blows. “Fine,” she says through gritted teeth. “Give me the regular coffee, no syrup. Add as much sugar as will physically fit in that cup, and don’t skimp on the cream, you hear me?”
“Got it,” the barista says, clearly relieved to be done with the order.
Lois slaps her card against the reader with enough force to snap it in two. It beeps cheerfully at her, and she does not smash it to a million, itty-bitty pieces. Instead, she stomps over to the far wall to wait and glowers at anyone who looks vaguely in her direction. After waiting two minutes that feel more like two hours, she picks up her coffee and leaves. Outside, her anger is still simmering too close to the surface, so she takes an abrupt right turn instead.
On a bench in Reeve Park, she slowly nurses her (disgusting, flavorless) coffee and contemplates setting Lombard’s desk on fire for the fun of it.
This is when, naturally, a 25-foot robot drops from the sky.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Lois snarls. She leaps up from her bench before the robot flings it into the air. Her cup goes skittering across the ground, the lid popping open and spilling coffee across the grass. Lois doesn’t spare it a backwards glance.
With her legs pumping and heels digging into the grass, she skirts around the robot and squints up at its enormous, metallic arms, glowing orange joints, and heavily helmeted head. So far, it weirdly hasn’t made any demands or pronounced any manifestos.
As she opens her mouth to demand who sent it, a familiar blur of red and blue shoots down. The ground shakes as the asphalt cracks. Lois’s knees almost buckle, but she holds her ground.
“Miss Lane, behind me,” Superman barks as he flies into the air and punches it right in the face.
The robot barely rocks back.
What the hell is it made of, tungsten?
Superman blasts it with heat vision next, scoring the metal armor, but not deep enough if Superman’s aggravated expression is anything to go by. He barely dodges a punch too fast for Lois’s eyes to follow.
Okay, time to get a few yards away from dodge.
On a nearby knoll, she grabs her phone, opens the camera, and engages the presets Jimmy programmed for situations exactly like this.
After a half-dozen more hits, Superman finally finds a winning combo. He blasts it with heat vision in crossing diagonal lines and punches where x marks the spot. Muscles coiled with unspeakable power, eyes glowing a deadly red, he unleashes himself on the robot.
Relatively safe up on her higher ground, Lois swallows, her throat dry and face flushed.
The robot staggers, the metal armor screeching as it caves in. It careens to the side, and Lois zooms in on a few odd scratches on its back panel, her eyes narrowing at their familiarity. Where had she seen this before?
The robot falls, and Lois shoves her phone back in her pocket.
Superman gets it in a headlock and starts to wrest the helmet off. It flails, but one arm is lying on the other side of Reeve Park, while the other has stopped glowing and hangs limp from its socket.
Perfect. Lois rushes forward, ignoring Superman’s shouts of “stop” and “stay clear” and other orders Lois typically ignores. The robot is so tall, even lying on its side, she doesn’t even need to kneel as she pulls at some sort of control panel hardware at its lower back – hello, front page of The Daily Planet, Lois Lane missed you – knocked loose by the fight.
As she yanks it off, Superman’s hands seize her around the waist, and the ground disappears beneath her feet. As they rocket upwards, Lois catches sight of the still-sparking head a few feet away from the body. Damn, that would have been so much more useful to take with her.
“Miss Lane,” he says, exasperated.
“Superman,” she says gravely in a poor imitation of his voice. She settles deeper into his arms, basking in the warmth that practically radiates off him. She clutches her prize tighter against her chest.
“What were you doing?”
“Reporting,” she says innocently.
“Really?” Superman’s eyebrows raise. “It looked a lot more like stealing to me.”
Lois frowns as she glances down at the panel. “Does that mean you know who owns the robot?”
Superman’s mouth thins. “I was a little busy trying to turn it off and keep civilians out of danger.”
“Well, good job on that.” Lois smiles sunnily up at him.
Superman glowers. “You make the latter efforts extremely difficult.”
“My bad?” she offers.
Superman exhales a loud sigh. “Don’t even try,” he mutters as they turn in the direction of The Planet.
Lois just throws her head back and laughs.
As they descend towards the roof, he says, “Please try to stay out of trouble next time.”
“This wasn’t even my fault!” Lois protests as he sets her back on her feet. “I was just drinking a shitty coffee after a shittier morning.”
Superman’s expression softens. “I hope you have a better night then, Miss Lane.”
“So far, so good,” she murmurs.
As he flies off, she shivers. Superman runs so hot; she always finds herself too cold whenever he flies away. God, the way he took down that alien robot, seeing him in action – she’ll never get tired of it. All that carefully-controlled power. All that otherworldly grace.
She takes a few minutes to compose herself, calm her racing pulse, and forget how his undivided attention makes her feel like the most important person in the world. With a sharp inhale, she leaves the roof and heads towards the elevators.
At the 38th floor, the doors open to a disaster zone. Apparently, Reeve Park has nothing on The Daily Planet’s bullpen.
Coffee is seeping across the linoleum. A glazed chocolate donut lies facedown with a clear stiletto print in it. Crumbs are sprayed all over the floor.
“What the hell?” she breathes before choking on a lungful of powdered sugar floating through the air.
“Lois!” Clark says as he pauses from cleaning up a half-squashed pastry box.
“Hey, Lois,” Cat greets sourly from where she’s dabbing a wet napkin against a greasy smear on her neon blue mini dress that just barely covers one asscheek. Her left heel is splattered with white dust.
Two interns are also helping, sheepishly piling any donut that can be salvaged back into the box.
“Oh, no, don’t eat that,” Clark moans quietly as one of the interns bites a cake donut that has seen better days.
“Dude,” the other intern says reproachfully.
Clark’s sigh of relief quickly morphs into an inhale of panic as the first intern hands over the donut so the other one can eat the other half.
“Really?” Lois asks, eyebrows raised at the pair of them.
“We’re unpaid interns in print media,” the first one says incredulously, and Lois really can’t blame him when he puts it like that.
“Carry on,” Lois says as she steps around the pair of them to crouch next to Clark.
“I wanted to get you something after the day you’ve had,” he mutters as he halfheartedly pushes his glasses back up his nose.
“Oh,” Lois says, pleased. “That’s nice of you.”
“Yeah, real nice,” Cat drawls as she wriggles her dress back down. She pulls her phone out of her purse and frowns down at the screen. “Great, now I’m going to be late. Thanks a lot, Clark.”
“Sorry, Cat.”
As Cat stalks off, Clark puts one hand on the floor as the other picks up the soggy coffee caddy. He pushes himself to his feet – and wobbles.
Lois surges forward to grab him by the elbow and steady him. “Woah, not so fast, Smallville.”
Clark smiles down at her. “Thanks, Lois.” He proffers the coffee caddy. “Here, I think one survived.”
She plucks out the only cup with the lid still on, not entirely unsurprised to taste hazelnut when she lifts it to her lips.
Two times is a coincidence, but three times is a pattern. This calls for more information.
She narrows her eyes at Clark, who just blinks guilelessly at her. He doesn’t look any different, so he probably hasn’t been replaced by an alien or whatever monster of the week is going to descend on Metropolis next.
“So, I saw that you were at Reeve Park earlier,” Clark says as he leaves the interns to fight over the rest of the donuts. “What happened?”
Lois throws up her free hand. “What didn’t happen?” She drops into her office chair and tosses the robot part to Clark. Unsurprisingly, it slips through his fingers, but he manages to catch it a fraction of a second before it hits the ground. As she regales him with the whole sordid tale, she outlines her article.
“Hey,” she says as she presses save on her first draft. “Do you want to head back to your place? I’ll get pizza; you can proof this thing? I’m starving.”
Clarks stares at her, wide-eyed behind his enormous glasses. “Um –”
“I’d volunteer mine,” she wheedles, “but no good pizza parlors around me get the crust right.”
It’s a blatant lie, and Lois offers a silent apology to Marty and Nico at Two Brothers’ Pizza Parlor. But Lois has done much worse to satisfy her curiosity.
Clark hesitates. “Okay.”
* * *
“This is… cozy,” Lois says as she steps inside Clark’s studio apartment.
Clark smiles lopsidedly as he ducks through the doorway after her and shuts the door behind them. “I do work in print media,” he says dryly.
Lois’s hip bumps the end table crammed in next to the couch, which is uncomfortably close to an ancient looking television. The kitchen sits along the far wall, not much more than a two burner stove, mini fridge, and a sink.
No Murphy bed, though. Lois’s first apartment had one, and she couldn’t use the bathroom in the middle of the night without practically peeing on the edge of her comforter.
“You keep a clean space,” Lois observes, impressed. The last time she slept at a guy’s, it was on a mattress on the floor, and his bright idea for hospitality was to offer her a hit of his vape before they got down to business.
Clark gives her water, pours out a small bowl of pretzels (half end up on the floor), and flips on a gurgly coffee maker before she can open her laptop.
“Um, thanks for coming over,” Clark stammers as he sits down next to her.
“Odd way of phrasing ‘bullied my way here’, but I’ll take it,” she says with a smile.
He turns on the television, and the sound of the 7pm news report fills his studio, starting with the incident in Reeve Park.
Lois pulls the robot part out of her bag and hands it to Clark as she turns back to her article on her laptop. “See what you can get out of that.”
“I – I will,” Clark says as he turns it over in his large hands, squinting down at it behind his large glasses. “Hey, I think –” He roots around in his messenger bag and lifts out the LuthorCorp prototype to compare the two.
Lois leans over to look at them side-by-side. “Oh my god,” she gasps. “That is definitely a LuthorCorp patented technology.”
Clark holds it up to catch more of the overhead light.
“Look,” Lois says, abandoning her article completely, “the circuitry, the wire pattern.”
Clark adjusts his glasses. “I think you’re right,” he says grimly. Behind them, the coffee maker beeps. Clark jumps up to his feet. “You wanted pizza,” he says out of nowhere as he heads to the kitchen, somehow managing to bump into the coffee table, couch, and standing lamp. He comes back carrying two mugs.
Clark’s knee knocks into the coffee table crammed between the couch and the television. He stumbles, sending one mug clattering all over the table.
“Jesus, Clark,” she swears as she yanks her knees out of drip range.
Sheepishly, Clark hands her the other mug to her. “Lucky it wasn’t yours.”
Lois’s eyes narrow. How lucky, indeed. She doesn’t say anything, just stares at him over the rim of her mug as she takes a sip.
The taste of artificially sweet hazelnuts coats her tongue. Lois freezes in surprise.
Clark has hazelnut syrup? From the handful (two) of times she’s bought apology coffee for Clark, she knows he prefers it black with a single, pathetic, packet of sugar.
So why does he have hazelnut in his apartment?
She opens her mouth, but Clark cuts her off before she can start, “I’ll just go get that pizza.”
“Pizza?” Lois echoes, her brow furrowing.
“Yeah,” Clark says as he edges backwards, almost toppling over his lamp again. “Pepperoni okay?”
She twists around to throw him a stunned look. “What the hell –”
“Be back in twenty!”
Baffled, Lois turns back around. Any reporter worth their salt knows to follow a lead and not stop for pizza. She compares the LuthorCorp prototype and the robot part for a few seconds until the tug of the far more interesting story draws her away.
She reaches into her bag and pulls out her notebook, flipping to her extracurricular notes on Clark’s butter fingers.
Steve Lombard: 7
Jimmy Olsen: 5
Cat Grant: 4
Ron Troupe: 2
Perry White: 2
And, most suspicious of all…
Lois Lane: 0
Clark clearly doesn’t discriminate in terms of collateral damage when it comes to coffee, water, and soda – with one clear exception.
Frowning, Lois gets up. She pokes her head out of the apartment front door and scans up and down the hallway for a sign of Clark before she engages the deadbolt, so she doesn’t lock herself out. She starts at the door right across the hall and knocks forcefully three times.
“Just a second!”
Lois lets her hand fall to her side as the door opens to reveal an elderly woman, gray hair to her shoulders, wearing a threadbare green cardigan. “Hello?” she asks.
“I’m looking for Mrs. Nguyen?”
“What for?” she asks suspiciously.
“I’m a coworker of Clark’s,” she starts, tilting her head back to Clark’s apartment door.
“Oh!” Mrs. Nguyen brightens considerably. “How is he? I haven’t seen him in weeks, poor thing. You tell that boss of yours he’s working Clark too hard.”
“I – yeah, of course I will,” Lois says as she keeps her surprise out of her voice. As far as she knows, Clark has left early every single day for a week to work from home and keep an eye on Mrs. Nguyen’s cat.
“Good,” Mrs. Nguyen says with finality.
Lois puts on her most disarming smile. “Clark recently mentioned that you were looking for a new vet for your cat. My guy in Bakerline has a great deal for feline care,” she says, having never owned a cat or spent any significant time around a cat in her entire life.
Mrs. Nguyen blinks. “My cat?” she echoes, her brows drawing together. “I don’t have a cat. Maybe Clark was thinking of Sunshine in 11F?”
“Oh, maybe,” Lois says, a heavy weight sinking in her gut that she doesn’t dare let show on her face. “Sorry for bothering you.”
“That’s quite alright, dear,” Mrs. Nguyen says warmly. “Any friend of Clark’s is a friend of mine.”
Lois hitches her smile up higher as she backs away. “Have a good night.”
Back in the safety of Clark’s apartment, she picks up her notebook again. The television is showing Superman helping with search and rescue after a ferry overturned in Hobb’s Bay. With one eye on the screen, Lois adds Mrs. Nguyen’s nonexistent cat to the list of suspicious activity.
Normally, if someone in the bullpen was rushing out all the time and lying about it, Lois would suspect one of two things:
They’re chasing an exclusive.
They’re having an affair.
Occasionally, when he disappears at odd hours of the workday, Clark comes back with a scoop. But when Lois flips back in her notebook and adds her tallies, it only comes to about a third of the time.
And he’s obviously not having an affair; he would have to actually be publicly dating someone for that to make any sense. Well, he could be dating someone who doesn’t want to be seen with him, as opposed to the other way around. But with Clark’s frankly annoying sense of self-righteousness and morality, he would never stand for that for long.
So why lie about Mrs. Nguyen’s cat?
Lois’s head spins with explanations, each more unlikely than the last:
Clark has a second job as a private detective to pay the bills.
Clark is an elaborate method actor.
Clark is a spy.
Lois shakes her head. Don’t be stupid. Clark Kent is not any sort of international man of mystery. He’s from goddamn Kansas and rants about the politics of corn subsidies. He didn’t know how to pronounce “capoeira” before they broke a fighting ring operating out of six separate martial arts studios in Hell’s Gate.
Still, the overwhelming majority of the evidence points to some big secret. The fake excuses, the unexplained whereabouts, the way he goes completely unreachable –
The clumsiness, though, that’s the outlier. The one clue that elevates a series of odd lies into something bigger – into a whole persona, maybe?
For something to do, she gets up to inspect Clark’s kitchen. There, tucked in the second cabinet above the sink, is a small container of hazelnut syrup. She pulls it down, idly rolling it in between her hands as she thinks.
Why pretend to be a klutz? It’s a waste of money, waste of coffee, and waste of a reputation. He clearly doesn’t spill things on people to settle petty office grievances, or else Lombard would outnumber Jimmy 200 to 1.
But maybe clumsiness isn’t the only part of his pretense.
With the hazelnut syrup clutched protectively in her hand like a talisman, she heads to the closet at the foot of his bed. She throws one door open, revealing a wall of bland suits, and pulls the scratchy polyester blends aside to read the labels. As she suspected, each jacket is two sizes too big (Cat helpfully told Clark what size he should be buying his first month on the job) and each pair of slacks is about three inches too long. Even more unbelievably, a couple suits still have their tags attached – so he definitely bought them after Cat gave him that super helpful, super condescending lecture during happy hour.
Why?
To manipulate them into underestimating him at The Planet? Could he have ambitions bigger than Metro?
Lois dismisses that idea as soon as it comes to her. They’re in journalism for crying out loud. The print media is a powerful but dying industry – if Clark had any truly machiavellian instincts, he would’ve gone for politics or venture capital or, who fucking knows, influencing. He wouldn’t be wading through the literal sewers to report on chronic under-funding within Metropolis’s Lead Removal and Compensation Commission.
She closes the closet and sits down heavily at the foot of Clark’s bed. She stares out at the cramped studio, not seeing much of it at all.
Clark is a good person; Lois knows this down to her bones from the way he stayed with her in the hospital; in the way he (ineptly) wingmans for Jimmy, even though Jimmy doesn’t need the help in the slightest; in the way he writes passionately about the human condition in every article he submits to Perry.
On one hand, Clark has a secret life, and maintaining this secret depends on people underestimating him.
On the other hand, this secret life can’t be anything bad or nefarious – not a spy, not a mobster, no – or Lois would eat his collection of hideous ties.
So many contradictions, and she has no idea how to make them fit into an explanation, into a neat box that accounts for all of Clark’s weird quirks and bizarre lies.
Lois tips back the hazelnut syrup directly into her mouth and gags. God, why did she do that?
obsessed with the fact that howl movingcastle is, like, the ideal portal fantasy protagonist. he's a welsh rugby-playing grad student who enters a magical world where he discovers he's a wildly powerful wizard. there's an evil witch out to get him and the king needs his help and there's a curse catching up with him. he has a magical creature sidekick and an orphan apprentice and a mentor who gets killed by the evil witch halfway through and a love interest under a terrible curse. the story is BEGGING for him to be the main character. and he's just like. no <3.
This is why I NEED a book-accurate screen adaptation. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Studio Ghibli’s version but the book still has so much more to offer that so many people who only know the movie don’t realize.
just finished peacemaker. so insane. so so insane. ten and martha spend the first third of the book flirting until they have to go on a chase through the Wild West to stop these murderous weapons. yeah. the weapons themselves. ten absorbs this weapon-entity into his flesh & mind to save Martha from the gunshot wound she casually suffers from in the last 40 or so pages. Martha proceeds to prince-charming-kiss ten back to life. um and there’s also plot stuff. and amazing side characters and such. and
I need an AU where the witchfinder accuses Morgana of being a sorceress and Arthur defends her. When Uther turns against her Arthur and Merlin prove that Aredian is a fraud but before that Uther yells at Arthur: "Magic is evil"
An Arthur yells back: "It's Morgana! She is good, she is kind even if she had magic she is still herself! "
Which made Morgana AND Merlin realize they could trust him
I really like this russian edition of classic books. Letting famous artists do the covers in YA style was such a simple but clever decision. According to the recent study the number of teenage readers increased, possibly thanks to these covers. I own traditional classics with blank covers but if I ever see one of these in the wild, it’ll probably make me go feral.
