Does One Kiss Change Everything?

Two weeks after Lois had arrived at the farm to reveal that she had broken up with Oliver; Clark had stuck to the promise that he wouldn't make a move towards her until he figured how he could manage that little hat trick without breaking Oliver's confidence or having to reveal his secret. Oliver hadn't stuck around long after his break up with Lois and following the realization of the man's project to start a super team, the CEO of Queen Industries has announced that he was returning to Star City. Saving the world could be done from Star City just as easily as Metropolis and as Oliver had stated during their last meeting,

"Metropolis has you Clark."

Clark didn't know what to make of that but he was starting to understand his destiny if not the shape it would take. Seeing Oliver go was harder than he imagined because for a time, the man had filled the void left by the dissolution of his friendship with Lex and the loss of his father. However, he was becoming more and more accustomed to the idea that solitude was something he would be facing a great deal in his life.

Or not.

Lois had been sent by the Inquisitor to follow up on story about people who were disappearing after last being seen at the Smallville Cemetery. It was pure tabloid fodder but the weird seemed to be the Inquisitor’s bread and butter. As anticipated, the police was not taking the matter seriously since a thorough search of the area had uncovered nothing out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, Lois, incapable of taking anyone or thing on their word, decided to investigate on her own.

His first impulse had been to follow her because like no woman alive, Lois had a tendency to attract trouble. He used to think that this was Chloe's forte' but in truth, Lois left Chloe in the dust with just how many people she could tick off enough to want to kill her. Having dealt with Lois himself, Clark could almost sympathize. However the woman also knew how to take care of herself and she would not appreciate learning that he was following her. Knowing Lois, she'd accuse him of stalking and demand to know why and Clark had no explanation that did not involve that damned kiss.

So he remained at the farm after she had stopped by to drop Martha's schedule for the next week before driving away in that little mini of hers to the cemetery, even if the urge to follow her around like a puppy was becoming more and more difficult to fight. Before he used to twist up in knots after an encounter with Lois but these days, their fighting actually made him smile. She made his life interesting if nothing else. Clark had also come to the conclusion that with Lois, there was never any doubt about where he stood. If he put a foot wrong, she’d let him know about it. Such was the beauty of her.

A beauty he was becoming fonder of each passing day.

Clark had been in the barn when he heard the kitchen phone ring and in a blink of an eye Clark had run down the steps, across the walk before picking up the phone amidst the sound of a slamming kitchen door and fluttering curtains behind him.

"Hello...."

"SMALLVILLE!" Lois' frantic voice cried out. "Thank God you're there! I'm in trouble! This psycho used his mojo on me and I think he's buried me alive! Get help!"

"Lois!" Clark's heart started pounding. "Where are you?" He demanded.

"I'm at the Smallville cemetery!" She burst out, clearly terrified. "Hurry Clark, I can't talk long, my battery's almost flat!"

"I'm on my way!" He hadn't even let go of the receiver before he was out the door, the phone bouncing above the floor by its cord. Clark moved so fast that he was little more than a blue streak rushing through the cornfields bending stalks of green and making sign posts spin as he took the shortest route to the cemetery. It was a route he had committed to memory after years of trudging to the place at night in the vain hope of catching Lana there, when she carried out her nocturnal conversations with her dead parents.

Less than two minutes after he had left his phone conversation, Clark arrived at the Smallville Cemetery and saw no signs of Lois. Her car was in the lot but of her there was no trace. Scanning the ground with his x-ray vision, he sought out Lois whose words had indicated she had been interred like the deceased occupants of the cemetery. It took him but a moment to find her and Clark's eyes widened at the sight of Lois struggling in a space no bigger than a coffin, at least ten feet beneath the top soil.

Racing to the spot, Clark saw undisturbed grass above the space where her body was interred. There was no indication of how Lois had been buried alive except that he could see her with his enhanced vision. If she had not managed to call, no one would have guessed either. He wondered if this was how those people she had been tracking had vanished too. Had they simply been buried alive with no one the wiser as to how it could have happened?

"Lois!" He called out. "I'm coming!" He didn't know if she could hear him or not but he could see her kicking, so she reasonably sure she was still conscious.

Preparing to dig her out, Clark was about to tear into the earth when a young man stepped out of nowhere and glared at him. "You want her so bad, join her!" He sneered.

Suddenly, the ground beneath Clark's feet started to give way. It took a second for him to realize that he was sinking and fast. He saw the young man's eyes radiating with green energy and Clark cursed inwardly because with all his efforts concentrated on finding Zones, he had forgotten the homegrown dangers that Smallville was infamous for. Struggling to grab a hold of something to keep himself from sinking, Clark saw the young man grinning, his eyes glowing with malevolence as Clark continued to sink.

The speed of his descent through the earth was such that Clark didn't have a chance to react before he could feel soil scraping against his cheek and he disappeared past the grass. There was a moment of disorientation of moving through dirt before his feet dangled for an instant in empty space. Then his boot touched something solid again and the force driving him into the soil compelled him to bend his knees. Before he knew it, his whole body was flattened horizontally; moving through the soil like his body had turned to smoke. Finally, he was free falling against something soft.

"OW!" The voice was female, loud and irate.

Clark gulped. Lois.

"Lois!" He looked down and saw the crown of her chestnut colored hair as he landed right on top of her. "Are you alright?" He asked stupidly.

"I'm buried alive with an idiot! How DO YOU THINK I’M DOING?" She bit back furiously.

She’s fine, Clark thought.

Rolling his eyes, Clark tried to push up, only to hit his head on something hard. A clump of dirt broke loose and landed on Lois's face. She sputtered the soil off her face.

"Quit moving!" She ordered. "And quit talking, there was barely enough air for me, there's going to be even less now that you're here."

Oh hell, Clark swore soundlessly. He could get them out of here in a minute but that meant using his powers. Thinking quickly he looked up at the ragged ceiling of the small space and used his heat vision to burn a hole through the dirt. The air with the crisp smell of burning soil but the result was a fissure that peeked into the outside world wide enough to give them a fresh air supply.

"What's that smell?" She complained in his chest. "Is something burning?"

"I was cleaning out the fire place when you home when you called," he covered quickly, hoping that was enough.

"Terrific," she growled, shifting uncomfortably because his entire body weight was pressing down on her and there was barely enough room for her in this space, let alone two of them. Worse yet, their positioning was violating all her personal space and Lois was having a great deal of trouble maintaining her composure or her typical bravado like this. "Smallville we need to change positions."

"What?" Clark asked, looking down at her from his ruminations on how they were going to get out of here without him giving himself away.

"I mean get offa me!" She barked. "You're heavy."

"Oh," Clark muttered deciding that this was that special hell he had been dreading.

The space was not wide enough for them to lie side by side so the only thing to do was to change positions. After a few minutes of maneuvering and awkward contact, Lois Lane was lying against his body; her head resting on his chest while Clark was trying very hard to keep his hands to his sides instead of letting them wander. It didn’t help that Lois was a tall girl unlike Lana or Chloe who were quite petite in comparison. Lois’ frame covered most of him and he could feel her breath against his neck, the soft curves of her body and her breasts pushing into his chest which didn’t help his concentration any.

“Relax Smallville,” Lois remarked, trying not to rest her head against his shoulder or take notice of the fact that Clark Kent was actually Mr. Hard Body under all that plaid. “The cops will be here soon and they’ll find us.”

“Cops?”

Oh crap, Clark winced in the darkness. He had been so quick to get here, he hadn’t called anyone else.

“The cops Clark,” Lois said and then stiffened. “Smallville, you did call the cops right?”

“Uh…” Clark stammered, “well…”

“OH MY GOD!” Lois exploded. “You didn’t call the cops? You came straight here and didn’t call the cops? What the hell did you think you were going to do?”

Aside from feeling really, really stupid, Clark couldn’t honestly say. “All I could think of when you called was getting here Lois,” he tried to explain himself. “I mean you were screaming for help…what was I supposed to do?”

“If I wanted hysterics, I would have called LANA!”

“HEY!” Clark bit back.

“Oh you don’t get to be uppity after that boneheaded play Smallville!” Lois ranted. “Jesus H Christ, I called you because I thought you’d use some commonsense!”

“Look stop getting hysterical,” Clark said over her complaints, realizing he had his phone in his jeans pocket. “I’ve got my cell in my right pocket, I’ll make the call. Move over a little and I’ll get it.” His hand reached for his jeans.

“Well at least you’re not completely useless,” Lois snorted as she tried to move and bumped her head on the ceiling, unearthing more soil onto them.

“Hey watch it,” he grumbled squinting to keep any sots of soil from entering his eyes.

“I’ll get this damn phone,” Lois retorted and started reaching into his pocket.

A moment later, Clark said in a strained voice. “Lois?”

“What?” she asked as her fingers continued to search.

“That’s not it.”

“Oh,” she retracted her hand and added with a smirk. “I guess I can’t call you Smallville can I?”

Clark turned bright red in the dark.

“Will you just get the phone?” He grunted in a strained voice, trying not to be affected by that intoxicating scent of perfume and sweat she was exuding, like some raw animal elixir.

Laughing at his discomfiture even if she could not see it, Lois finally found Clark’s cell phone. Fortunately it was fully charged and Lois was able to call 911 and get help although it was going to take some time to reach them. All the while Clark was trying to keep his temper since this entire situation could have been easily resolved in less than a minute if not for the need to conceal his secret.

“See Smallville?” Lois said shutting off the phone, “that’s how it’s done.”

Yeah, yeah, Clark bristled as she made that taunt. “Excuse me for not thinking and coming to your rescue, alright? You ring up; all terrified telling me you’ve been buried alive! Cut me slack will you? I wasn’t thinking straight!”

“No you weren’t were you?” Lois replied, realizing at that moment that he had been so worried about her he had rushed right over, without even pausing to think of the consequences to himself not just her. Despite the fact that he could have gotten them both killed with some dumb ass Sir Galahad play, Lois was rather touched.

”Thank you Clark,” Lois said softly, her voice devoid of its usual taunt.

“Yeah right…” he looked at her skeptically.

“No really,” she repeated with earnest. “Thank you.”

They stared at each other for a moment and Lois pushed up to kiss him, mostly as a gesture of thanks for the risk he placed himself in order to save her. It wasn’t meant to be anything but a show of affection for someone who occupied a very strange place in her heart. No matter how nuts she drove him, Clark was always there when Lois needed him. It was a nice feeling.

Clark almost pulled away when Lois moved to kiss him, thinking as her mouth drew near that she was toying with him and would make him feel even stupider than he already did. However when the soft silk of her mouth touched his, Clark Kent forgot just about everything including his name.

There it was again.

That spark of electricity that seemed to tingle across the skin of her lips when she made contact with his mouth. For a moment, Lois forgot where she was, where she had been and where she was going to be. There was only now. It had meant to be a chaste kiss but the moment her lips touched his, chaste became as buried as they were. Her lips parted almost unconsciously and the next thing she knew, Clark was kissing her back. His hands were around her waist, pulling her closer. Hers were sliding around his neck, creating a vacuum tight seal between their lips.

Okay so it wasn’t a fluke, Clark’s scrambled thoughts managed to note, as his lips grew more demanding and they were rolling around in that little space, moving together in such perfect synchronicity that the earlier awkwardness was barely noticeable. Lois was beneath him and this time she had no complaints about his weight as he continued to plunder her mouth, ravage her lips and taste her like the forbidden fruit she had become since he donned Oliver’s mask. Kissing her wasn’t like kissing Lana where he felt himself hanging by his nails over the rocks of a high cliff.

Kissing Lois was like coming home.

He could feel her fingers running through his hair, her lips parting wider, giving him the invitation he had been yearning for, for so long. He wondered what she was thinking. He wondered if like him, could she think? Clark was having so much trouble keeping his thoughts straight as he took from her every ounce of honey in her lips.

Their exchange was wordless and somehow Lois knew if they spoke, it would ruin the moment and right now, she didn’t want it ruined. This was the kiss. The one she just didn’t feel with Ollie. She didn’t know how it could be Clark. He sure as hell wasn’t the Green Arrow (Bandit, thank you very much) but the feeling, the swoon she felt, it was all the same.

Somehow the kiss that felt so real was from Clark and maybe it was always meant to be Clark.

As the implications of that thought solidified in her brain, clump of soil broke free from above and rained dirt all over her.

“What the hell…” she grumbled as the spell was broken with Clark’s lips moving away from hers finally. There was no time to talk as a plastic tube pushed its way into their hollow from above.

Using his x-ray vision, Clark saw that there were police cars and fire trucks above head. Emergency service workers were forcing air tubes through the soil so that they could breathe and as they lay there, holding each other, listening to the sounds of rescue above; neither could speak.

Right now, talking was just too hard.