kal and lois on a metropolis rooftop at night and it gets cold so she drapes her coat over his shoulders, but the coat is red and kal breaks down in tears because it reminds him of sol send ask
and she initially and gingerly takes the coat off but he tugs on it and insists to keep it on, and retreats deeper into it, so she just lets him keep it permanently because it reminds him of both sol and lois send ask
Not quite what you asked, I took some creative liberties, but thank you for the idea! I cobbled this together today, so apologies if it's not like amazing or anything
Kal & Lois, ~1100 words, getting together (ish), canon divergence, circa issue 15?
~
She finds him on the roof, which is funny, because he didn’t mean to be found.
“Hi,” he says noncommittally as she approaches. There’s a big paper gift bag in one of her hands. A tray of coffee to go in the other. Two cups, Kal notes. No worming his way out of this one. He strains a smile and takes one and it tastes like sweet milk and bile.
“Best coffee this part of Metropolis,” she says, setting down her bag and pressing her own cup to her lips. She’s smiling like maybe she’s seen something he didn’t mean for her to and so he shrinks behind his shag of hair. “Was hoping I’d find you up here,” she continues. “‘Cause I’d look real stupid if I came up with all this stuff and it was just me all by my lonesome. Maybe one of these days I’ll figure out how you take your coffee.”
“It’s good to see you,” he says.
“Easy, now.” She picks up the paper bag again and trades his coffee for it. “This is for you. Hope you don’t mind the re-gift, it’s just not really my style.”
He doesn’t know what that means but accepts it. “Thank you,” he says, and stands there awkwardly, wondering if maybe he missed the memo or said something he didn’t mean to at some point because how are they now both standing here in this place that he came to be alone, and why is she suddenly giving him things like she’s aiming to get closer to him.
He looks beseechingly at his coffee cup in her hand, thinking if only he could keep nursing at it, then she wouldn’t be looking at him waiting for him to say something. Stories below, an old man in a checked cap starts an accidental dance on the ice. Kal thinks about zipping down to save him and grimaces when someone else does.
When he looks up again he sees violet eyes on him, and for a strange moment he feels like a kid again, cutting patterns through purple prairie grass with Krypto hot on his tail. And then he remembers where he is, wonders how long he’s been standing here, wonders if his thoughts work at the same tempo as everyone else here or if they move as freakishly fast as the rest of him. But that’s not the case, it couldn’t be, because now there’s an eyebrow crawling up Lois’s face and there’s heat burning his and he doesn’t know what to do so he says “thank you” yet again.
“Well? You gonna open it or are you just going to stand there?” says Lois, not unkindly. There’s something like mischief in her eyes, like she sees him squirming and she likes what she sees. He tilts his head down toward the bag and feels like he’s bending mountains to do so. It’s tucked away beneath tufts of tissue paper but he saves his hands the trouble and stares at it real good till he can see all the way through to his shoes. Then he tugs it up out of the paper after all because it’s certainly caught his interest, a quilted red coat that shines like lacquer in the city lights. It’s soft in his hands, downy-soft and plump and giving. And he’s still not sure what a re-gift is or what he’s supposed to do. He stuffs it back in the bag with some difficulty.
“Thank you,” he says again. She hands him back the coffee like he's passed some sort of test and he stares at its little paper jacket.
“Not your style either, huh?” she says with a laugh. “That’s alright, no hard feelings. Here, I hate to make it your problem instead.” She gestures to the bag with her open hand, and now he thinks, maybe it's my head that's moving too slow.
“A re-gift means… I give it back?” he says.
“Jesus,” she says. “No, it’s… okay, so you do want it, then. Here, maybe start by putting it on?” And she doesn’t wait for him to do it. She pushes the bag against him as she tugs it out, and out it comes like those glimmering bubbles he’s seen oozing out of little pink plastic wands that the Smallville kids wave around in summertime. He tries to stifle a laugh as she fluffs it out in front of his face, it’s so damn large that he can’t even imagine what she must look like in it, thing could swallow her up if she wasn’t careful. She sees him laughing and—there it is again, that look of mischief—and she balls the jacket up and throws it at his face.
“C’mon, Superman,” she laughs. “You gotta think fast.”
“Lois,” he complains. But he’s smiling now. Maybe he meant for her to find him after all. He looks at the jacket in his hands, fluffs it out like she did just a moment ago, and he swears it gets larger with the wind. Something in his cape reacts to the motion and he sees it creeping toward the jacket without his say-so, inspecting it with red feathery fingers. Kal swallows something hard and hugs the jacket to his chest and mutters a thank you to Lois’s boots.
“It’s super lame, like I said,” she says, but her voice sounds funny and when Kal risks a look at her he sees that her eyes have gone glassy. She flicks her hand like she’s trying to wave him away. “I was just clearing out some junk from my old place since I moved to Metropolis. And then I found it all boxed away in my closet, and it’s not like I’d ever worn it, and it was, I don’t know, it was—”
“Red,” Kal says.
“Yeah. Red,” Lois echoes.
He wants to hug her but starts wondering how a person does that, was it anything like how they did it on Krypton, these hugs of Earth? Was it spontaneous? Awkward? Warm and reassuring? He thinks maybe he’d like to find out but before he can, she gently takes the coat from his hands and wraps it around his shoulders, his cape floating out of the way as she does so. Then it settles back down on them both like a sigh and Kal tugs the jacket around him and notices, for the first time since he’s landed on Earth, how very cold it was here.
He opens his arms tentatively, feels like a bumbly teddy bear in this bulky getup. But Lois sinks right in and hugs him tight. “Glad it found a good home,” she says in his ear. She feels warm and snug against his chest, and the cape wraps around her too.
I'm glad I did, too, he thinks. They sway with the wind on the rooftop, him all huddled up in his coat and her all huddled up inside him.
