Chapter Text
It was a normal morning at the Daily Planet. Perry White was yelling about missing deadlines, Jimmy Olsen was already on his third cup of coffee and his fifth near-death experience (he tried photographing an “urban coyote” that morning), and Steve Lombard was loudly pitching a story about “The Ten Hottest Meteorologists in Metropolis” with the confidence of a man who owned exactly one suit and had never ironed it.
And somewhere between the clicking keyboards, buzzing phones, and faint scent of newsroom-grade instant coffee, two people were being extremely subtle about their totally-not-public workplace relationship.
Which is to say: they were kissing behind the copier again.
The machine, already groaning from years of overuse and paper jams, let out a mechanical wheeze as Lois Lane pressed her back against it, trying and failing to look inconspicuous. Her fingers scrambled across its surface, accidentally slamming the “Staple” function, which prompted an indignant beep-beep from the machine as a single staple shot out and clinked uselessly onto the floor.
“Clark, we’re going to get caught,” she whispered, breathless, her lips brushing against his as she tried to push him back and pull him closer all at once. Her voice was hushed but tinged with adrenaline. “Someone could walk in any second—”
“That’s why I’m making it fast,” Clark Kent murmured back, one hand braced against the copier, the other slipping to her waist. He kissed her again—this time slower, deliberate, the kind of kiss that made time warp. “Unless you’d like me to slow down, Miss Lane.”
“Don’t tempt me,” she breathed, just as the copier let out another shrill BEEEEP in protest.
“Oh my god,” groaned a dry voice from just outside the door.
They froze.
Cat Grant strode into view like a woman who always walked in heels—even when she was holding them in her hand. Her tailored blazer was immaculate, her curls pinned up with effortless flair, and in one hand she carried a steaming cappuccino that, frankly, looked too expensive for any vending machine within five blocks. The other hand dangled her signature red stilettos, replaced sometime earlier with fierce but sensible leopard-print flats.
She didn’t break stride. She didn’t need to.
“Get a room,” she drawled, not even bothering to glance fully in their direction. “Or at least go behind a copier that doesn’t squeak like a dying robot.”
Lois peeled herself away from Clark so fast it was as if the copier had caught fire. She dragged a hand through her hair and looked like she was strongly considering pretending she was just inspecting the toner cartridge. “She didn’t see anything, right?” she hissed, half to Clark, half to the mortified ghost of her dignity.
Clark blinked, adjusting his glasses with a sheepish smile. “She was looking directly at us.”
“Yeah,” Lois said slowly, eyes narrowed like she was doing mental gymnastics. “But like. Was she seeing us? Like seeing-seeing us? Maybe she’s sleepwalking with her eyes open. That’s a thing, right?”
Clark gave her a look, somewhere between amused and fondly resigned. “Lois, she told us to get a room.”
“She tells everyone to get a room. She once said that to Perry and a cheese danish.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And were they making out behind office equipment?”
“That’s not the point,” Lois muttered, crossing her arms and eyeing the copier like it had betrayed her. “This is your fault. You’re too good at kissing.”
Clark smiled. “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“It sounded like a compliment.”
She turned to him with a glare that wasn’t entirely committed. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”
“Luck’s got nothing to do with it, Miss Lane.”
They thought they were subtle.
They really did.
Clark would show up every morning with two coffees in hand — always “accidentally” grabbing Lois’s exact, unnecessarily complicated order: extra-foam, half-sweet vanilla oatmilk latte, one shake of cinnamon, no lid.
“Oh,” he’d say, blinking behind his glasses, pretending to read the order sticker. “Huh. Must’ve picked up the wrong one.”
Lois would take it without missing a beat, lifting the cup to her lips and blowing across the foam like it wasn’t exactly what she wanted. “Lucky guess,” she’d mutter, before walking off with the casualness of someone who’d been emotionally compromised but refused to show it.
Never a thank-you. Never a smile. Just this smug little twitch of her mouth that said: He knows. I know he knows. And I know he knows I know he knows.
It was a game. A stupid one. And they were terrible at it.
Lois, for instance, had taken to leaning over Clark’s desk for the most mundane of reasons — like whispering, “Did you see the latest wire report?” even though the wire reports were all emailed and she was literally holding a printout in her hand. Her voice would be low and conspiratorial, warm against his ear, while her hand would oh-so-casually brush a non-existent crumb off his shirt collar. It was the kind of motion that said: Yes, I’ve memorized the shape of your shoulder, what of it?
Clark would just look up at her, blinking, lips parted like he was about to say something — anything — and then think better of it. Instead, he’d nod, like he hadn’t just forgotten what century it was.
For his part, Clark once got up from his desk in the middle of the afternoon, gaze slightly unfocused, and mumbled, “Be right back,” in a tone that suggested maybe he was going to the copy room. Or the bathroom.
He came back 42 minutes later holding a bag from a taco place in Gotham.
“Wait,” Cat had asked, squinting at the logo. “Isn’t that place, like, three hours away?”
Clark blinked. “Oh. It’s nearby.”
Lois didn’t even look up from her keyboard. Just reached for the bag and said, “You forgot the green sauce last time.”
Across the bullpen, Steve Lombard slowly turned to Jimmy Olsen and, with all the dramatic flair of someone cashing in on a sure thing, slapped a ten-dollar bill into his hand.
“I give it two weeks,” Steve declared.
Jimmy frowned. “They’re not dating.”
Steve stared at him. “Buddy. He crossed state lines to get her lunch.”
“It’s just tacos,” Jimmy argued. “Clark’s a nice guy. He does stuff like that.”
“Oh, sweet summer child,” came Ron Troupe’s voice from his desk, where he hadn’t even looked up from his article. He said it like a man who’d seen too much, typed too fast, and had emotionally clocked out two presidential administrations ago.
Jimmy looked between them, confused. “So what, you all think they’re... what? Secretly together?”
There was a moment of silence. A collective, judgmental pause.
Then Steve held up his phone and scrolled through his photos. “I have three different pictures of them looking at each other like they’re in a perfume commercial. In the same hour. Look at this one. She’s literally biting her lip.”
“I think she was eating a donut,” Jimmy said defensively.
“She’s not even holding a donut.”
Jimmy paused, reconsidering his stance. "...Okay, but what if they’re just… flirty friends?”
Ron snorted.
“Sure,” Steve said. “And I accidentally spent two hours in an elevator with Vicki Vale and didn’t fall in love.”
Jimmy opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked toward Clark and Lois — who, at that moment, were both definitely pretending not to glance at each other across the bullpen — and sighed.
“I hate this office,” he muttered.
“Welcome to the club,” Ron said dryly.
Later that week, Lois was mid-interview on the phone, leaning back in her chair with a pen tucked behind her ear and her heels propped against the corner of her desk. Her tone was polite, but barely — the kind of strained civility she reserved for politicians who tried to sound too surprised when caught doing something obviously illegal.
“No, Deputy Mayor, I’m not accusing you,” she said evenly, scribbling something aggressive into her notepad. “I’m quoting your exact expense report. That’s different. If you’d like to explain why your transportation budget includes a line item for ‘miscellaneous yacht costs,’ I’m listening.”
Across the bullpen, Clark stiffened.
It was subtle — but not to her. His shoulders went rigid, his fingers paused over the keyboard, and that faraway look slid across his face like a cloud passing in front of the sun.
Lois clocked it instantly. She barely missed a beat. He stood.
“Yeah, no, it’s fine,” she said smoothly into the phone, eyes still following Clark as he moved like someone listening to a conversation only he could hear. “I’m sure Clark will be back soon. He just got... an urgent call.”
Clark was halfway across the bullpen, already loosening his tie.
“A call about his… soup.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone line. Lois gave it a half-second, then pushed through like she hadn’t just said the most suspicious sentence in the history of journalism.
“Yeah. His mom’s soup,” she repeated, louder, as Clark slipped into the stairwell and vanished. “Back in Kansas. The recipe was in danger. Terrible thing.”
Perry White, who had appeared like a grumpy ghost in the doorway of his office, narrowed his eyes and stepped forward. “Soup?”
Lois didn’t even blink. She turned in her chair and gave Perry a solemn nod, like this was a matter of national importance.
“Martha Kent’s famous chicken and barley. Family heirloom,” she said, sighing theatrically. “The recipe was almost lost. Can you imagine? All those generations of seasoning and love—poof. Gone.”
Perry stared at her for a long second, then looked toward the stairwell like he might still catch a glimpse of Clark fleeing the scene.
Lois pointed her pen toward the hallway. “I think I heard him mutter something about broth integrity.” Perry opened his mouth. Closed it. Rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I swear to god,” he muttered. “If he’s out there covering a damn food festival without pitching it—”
“He’s not,” Lois said quickly, spinning her chair back toward her desk. “Definitely not food festival-related. Soup emergency. Personal. Very emotional.”
Clark was long gone, of course. Already halfway to whatever burning building or alien crisis needed handling. Probably flying over Blüdhaven by now. Ron Troupe didn’t even look up from his screen. “Someone get the man some crackers,” he said, deadpan, typing at lightning speed.
Jimmy walked by with a folder in hand and paused mid-step. “Wait, are we talking about Clark’s soup? Is this like the chili incident from last spring?”
Lois pointed at him. “No one talks about the chili incident.”
Jimmy raised his hands in surrender and backed away slowly. “Copy that.”
Perry grumbled something about deadlines and ducked back into his office, and the bullpen returned to its usual rhythm — the clack of keyboards, the hum of printers, and the low-level chaos that never really stopped.
Lois glanced once more toward the empty hallway and smiled faintly.
Wherever Clark was, whatever disaster he was saving the world from — she knew he’d be back in five.
Six, if it was space.
Other classic Lois Excuses™ included:
“Clark’s cousin has vertigo and needed someone to adjust her satellite dish,” she once said, not looking up from her notes as she casually shoved Clark’s abandoned notepad into her desk drawer.
“Wait,” Steve Lombard had asked, squinting. “Wouldn’t she, like… fall off the roof?”
“Not with Clark there,” Lois replied sweetly. “He’s very stable.”
Steve had blinked, confused and a little concerned, but ultimately shrugged. “Huh. Good cousin.”
Then there was: “Clark’s stomach gets nervous around too much fluorescent lighting.” Perry didn’t even pause. “Tell him to take a walk.”
“He already did. The lights in the hallway made him queasy. He’s grounding himself in the stairwell.”
Perry just muttered, “Fluorescent menace,” and walked away.
Another time, when Clark vanished halfway through a morning editorial meeting, Lois simply said: “He’s volunteering at a kitten yoga fundraiser. For… cancer. The kittens have cancer.”
A long silence followed. Jimmy slowly lowered his coffee. “Wait… the kittens have what now?”
Lois didn’t flinch. “Tiny kitten chemo. It’s very cutting-edge. Also they do little stretches. Warrior Pose for Whiskers.”
Steve nodded solemnly. “My chiropractor does something like that. Cat-cow pose. It's legit.”
Then there was the recurring favorite: “Clark’s stuck in the elevator again. Third time this week.”
“Didn’t we just get those fixed?” Ron asked without looking up.
“Some people are just naturally magnetic,” Lois said, sipping her coffee. “It’s a burden.”
No one questioned it.
“Oh, he just realized he left his oven on. In Kansas,” was said with all the urgency of someone reporting a five-alarm fire.
“He owns an apartment in Metropolis,” Perry had pointed out from the doorway.
“Yeah, but the heart of his cooking is in Smallville,” Lois replied.
“Sounds flammable,” Ron said.
But the absolute best may have been: “You know how Clark is about recycling. He saw a stray plastic bag and took off.” It wasn’t even remotely plausible. But Lois said it with the kind of conviction usually reserved for Senate testimonies.
Everyone in the bullpen would just nod along. Gravely. Respectfully. As though it all made perfect sense.
Sometimes, they even added more. “Yeah, and I heard he composts emotionally,” Jimmy whispered once, passing a folder to Ron like they were spies in a Cold War thriller.
“Clark cries into biodegradable tissues,” Ron added dryly, still typing.
“His tears are filtered through a Brita before they hit the ground,” Steve said, spinning in his chair. “Carbon neutral sobbing.”
Lois, overhearing all of this, didn’t even blink. She just turned a page in her notepad and said, “Glad to know we’re all on the same page.”
Jimmy leaned over to Steve. “Wait… do you think they’re, like, really dating?”
Steve rolled his eyes. “Dude. She lied about kitten cancer and no one even blinked. They’re basically married.”
Clark remained blissfully unaware.
Because, well… Clark was Clark.
You could dress him in a perfectly pressed shirt, slap glasses on his face, and drop him into the middle of Metropolis’s most chaotic newsroom, and somehow he’d still walk around like a golden retriever in a necktie — kind, attentive, charmingly earnest… and utterly oblivious to the fact that half the office was openly dissecting his love life like it was part of the morning brief.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t smart. He was brilliant. Sharp as hell when it came to reporting, policy, and, you know, foiling intergalactic warlords before lunch.
But when you can hear three dying satellites, a crumbling bridge in Tokyo, and someone in Gotham sneezing wrong, all at the same time — subtle social cues tend to get... lost in the mix.
Like, say, the way Lois’s voice changed slightly when she said his name. Or how the bullpen seemed to quiet just a little too quickly whenever he reappeared from one of his conveniently timed “coffee breaks.”
Or how Steve had once deadpanned, right in front of him, “Clark and Lois are so obvious I’m getting secondhand PDA,” and Clark had smiled politely and replied, “Oh, I’m sure it’s just good teamwork.”
Good. Teamwork.
The man had heat vision and still couldn’t see it.
And honestly? The rest of the newsroom wasn’t even mad about it. In fact, at some point, they'd all quietly agreed — without ever actually agreeing — to cover for him. A sort of collective, unspoken gaslighting campaign of love and loyalty.
If Clark noticed strange looks or too-long silences, he’d just assume someone was having a bad day. If he returned to find Lois had covered his meeting or lied spectacularly on his behalf, he’d smile sheepishly and say something like, “Thanks, Lois. You’re always looking out for me.”
To which she’d usually respond, “Someone has to,” before immediately pretending to be too busy to talk.
And so the system rolled on: Clark flying off to save the world, Lois spinning tales wilder than a telenovela to explain his absence, and the rest of the bullpen nodding along like this was all perfectly normal behavior for two definitely not dating coworkers who stared at each other like a romance novel cover come to life.
He didn’t question it. Not really.
And if he ever did catch on — if, by some miracle, he tuned out the orbiting space debris long enough to realize what everyone else already knew — well, the Daily Planet was ready.
They had a PowerPoint.
Ron made it.
At one point, Perry White had just had enough.
The morning was already chaos: the city budget hearings were unraveling, some intern had knocked over the coffee pot (again), and someone — probably Steve — was blasting weather-themed TikToks from his cubicle. Perry emerged from his office looking like a man on the brink of declaring war.
He was juggling two manila folders, a half-full coffee mug that said “Print is dead? Over my dead body”, and a burrito that was actively disintegrating in his hand. Salsa dripped onto the floor with each angry step.
He stopped just outside his door, glared over the top of his glasses, and barked:
“Lane! Kent! My office. Now.”
The bullpen froze.
Clark and Lois, seated on opposite sides of the editorial table (but exactly one suspicious leg-width apart), looked up like guilty teenagers caught making out behind the gym.
Lois’s spine snapped straight. She hastily buttoned her blazer like that would somehow erase the last 30 seconds of under-table contact. Clark pushed his glasses up his nose — not because they needed adjusting, but because he always did it when nervous. It was either that or flying straight through the ceiling.
The two exchanged a look — part panic, part resigned doom — and rose in unison.
They followed Perry into his office like defendants heading into sentencing. The door shut behind them with the solemnity of a courtroom gavel.
Perry turned slowly to face them, eyes narrowed, the burrito now visibly leaking onto a napkin clutched between his fingers. There was a long, oppressive silence.
Then:
“If you’re gonna keep playing footsie under the editorial table during staff meetings,” he said, voice low and dangerous, “at least try to be less obvious about it.”
Lois made a strangled sound somewhere between a gasp and a dying engine. Her face went scarlet. “We weren’t— I mean, I didn’t—!”
Perry raised a hand. “Lois, I’ve been in newsrooms longer than you’ve been alive. I know footsie when I see it. And what you two were doing was textbook.”
Clark looked like he wanted to melt through the floor. “Sir, I can assure you—”
“I don’t care,” Perry snapped, wiping salsa off his wrist with a sigh. “I don’t care if you’re playing footsie, holding hands, exchanging vows, or slow dancing in the damn break room. You wanna date? Fine. You wanna pretend you’re not dating while sneaking off behind every piece of furniture in this building? Also fine. Just keep it professional enough that I don’t have to hear about it. And don’t. Miss. Deadlines.”
Lois opened her mouth, then promptly closed it. Clark nodded like he was being scolded by the Pope.
“Now get out of my office,” Perry growled, collapsing into his chair. “Before I change my mind and assign you both a puff piece on the Mayor’s Chihuahua and his gluten-free lifestyle.”
They didn’t need telling twice.
They backed out of the office so quickly they nearly collided in the doorway. The bullpen was completely silent as they emerged, every eye pretending not to be watching. Somewhere in the distance, someone’s printer beeped mournfully.
Clark blinked. “I think we got away with it.”
Lois stopped mid-stride and turned to stare at him, deadpan.
“You think,” she said flatly, “we got away with it.”
Clark hesitated. “I mean… he didn’t yell that much.”
“He called out our footsie game in one breath, Clark.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t reassign us,” Clark pointed out.
Lois stared at him for a long moment, then shook her head. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”
Clark smiled. “You keep saying that.”
“And yet, you keep pressing your foot against mine during meetings like we’re in a high school romcom.”
“That was you?” Clark blinked. “I thought that was Steve.”
Lois smacked him lightly with her notebook.
Back in the bullpen, Steve handed Cat a crumpled five-dollar bill with a theatrical sigh.
“What was the bet this time?” Jimmy asked around a mouthful of donut, powdered sugar misting the air like toxic snow.
“Whether Perry would pretend not to know,” Cat replied, sipping her iced coffee with a triumphant smirk. “Spoiler: he did not.”
Steve snorted. “Five bucks says they still think they’re being subtle.”
Cat raised an eyebrow. “Five bucks says Lois murders him before the next staff meeting.”
“Which one?” Jimmy asked, jerking a thumb in Clark’s direction.
Cat didn’t miss a beat. “Either. Both. A tragic murder-suicide caused by romantic tension and poor table etiquette.”
Steve laughed, then choked slightly on his donut. “God, I love this job.”
Jimmy glanced toward Perry’s office, where the door still bore the psychic weight of righteous fury. “Think they’ll finally stop sneaking around?”
Cat shrugged. “Not a chance. They’re like cockroaches with bylines — nothing short of nuclear fallout will stop them.”
Just then, Lois and Clark reappeared, walking briskly and totally not holding hands but also very much walking in sync like they'd practiced it.
Steve gave a low whistle. “Yup. Definitely cockroaches.”
Jimmy held out his hand toward Cat. “Double or nothing says they’re making out in the stairwell before lunch.”
Cat grinned. “You’re on.”