Chapter Text
Clark is not watching the news. Superman is.
Pointedly - there's an adverb, Sports section - Superman is the one picking apart every interview, each soundbite and diatribe on his character, his intentions, his mission. Clark is somewhere behind him, wishing for a red sun and a bottomless well. Whether it's for drowning his sorrows or drowning himself could be anyone's guess.
"Clark."
He's not here right now, Lois.
"Clark," she says again, insistent. "You can't keep listening to these."
Oh, well, he's not. No worries. Superman gives her an agreeable hum, but mutes the television for good measure.
It's lucky that neither of them are looking at the expression Lois gives him for that move.
"Clark. You can't keep watching them, either - are you serious?"
She moves in front of the screen, and that's his last straw, in what used to be a golden field, earth to sky.
"No, Ms. Lane, I'm bloodthirsty. Didn't you hear?" he says.
He's standing, now, and Lois backs up a half-step on instinct. She lights up with anger a heartbeat later.
"So what? You're just going to sit here and let it destroy you? Let Lex trot around that doctored clip and his paid-off analysts-"
"I'd never seen the second part of my parent's message," he says.
Lois looks the way she's looked several times in the last month around him, like she's missed a step on the staircase and is searching for who yanked it out from under her. Too often, it's him. And maybe that's what I was meant for, something in him hisses, and he doesn't know who it is - not Clark, not Superman. At least, not who he thought Superman was.
Who, or what?
And that's more Lex than he'd like in his subconscious.
Lois speaks slowly. "So, the message..."
"I don't know," he breathes. "I don't know. The first- the part about helping, about being good, that's- that's who I thought I was."
"That's who you have been," and her hand was on his arm, soothing.
"Is it? They don't think so."
They're all watching the television, now, as the latest host shakes his head in disgust at a clip of Superman pandering to the public by smiling. There's a picture of him crouching, holding a hand out to a terrified child, with the bold-font libel of "SUPER-GROOMER?" tacked underneath.
Lois is incandescent with rage, rendered wordless by fury, but Clark's hand is on hers before she can take it out on his innocent TV remote.
"I'll turn myself in," he says, and that derails her.
"Clark-"
"They'll take me where they took the dog. He's alone, and he's scared. He needs someone to..." Clark takes a breath he doesn't need. "He needs someone."
Lois has a quick answer, as always. "You need someone."
And that's a little too much for him to lift, 83% capacity as he is right now. He feels the weakness of that 17% grow when she holds him in her gaze like that - looking for Clark, like he's all there is to the man in front of her. Like he's human.
Journalist that she is, she senses it, too, but lets him off the hook.
"Where do they think they're going to put you, Superman?" She says, dry, gesturing back to the broadcast, where they're interviewing everyone they can get in front of a microphone about the Superman threat.
"I don't know. Maybe Brucie Wayne has some ideas. Are they out of Metropolis billionaires, that they're moving on to Gotham millionaires? 'Oh, I've got this secret dungeon, plenty of room for an evil alien-'"
"Quiet."
"'And his little dog, too-'"
"Shh," she hisses, and unmutes the interview - which is... odd. The only interest she's ever expressed in Bruce Wayne is in his rapidly-multiplying wards, not his opinion.
Maybe it's because he's winking at the camera, waving flippantly as the door of his car closes, having just finished giving soundbites to the paparazzi stationed outside his latest event. He does have quite the stare, but Clark's not sure why it would have that much impact on Lois's heartbeat .
"...Lois?"
"Is that true," she says, and it's not a question; it's in the same way she knew about Krypto, but hated to know it from a cellphone video of him shouting at Lex, and not from him. Like she's thinking it through and piecing the puzzle behind it together, having a picture ready for him to confirm, before he answers.
"Is what true? What now? Did I kill Bruce Wayne's parents?"
Wordless, she rewinds the stream, making Clark genuinely wonder for a moment if he did. When was their murder? When did his escape pod crash? The timelines could match.
He didn't kill the Waynes.
It's much worse.
"Mr. Wayne! Mr. Wayne! Did you hear about Superman's secret harem of women?" someone calls out from behind the camera.
Bruce Wayne pauses, one step from leaving his obligatory Gotham gala behind and vanishing into the night. He turns, and his face is perfectly still, too still, before it breaks into a winning smile. Bruce Wayne flirts with every reporter the Planet sends his way, Clark recalls, and he doesn't seem ready to stop here.
"Secret harem," he clarifies, tone disbelieving. Maybe Lois is glad to find someone defending him, Clark thinks, even if that someone is Brucie Wayne, half-gone after a wine reception.
"Of human women! To spread his genes!"
Wayne's eyebrows go up, surprised. It looks genuine.
"Well," he says, "He's never mentioned a harem, and I don't think his genes can get much farther through me," and folds himself into the car.
The crowd of paparazzi and Clark's mind both begin screeching. There are too many questions to make coherent. Well, almost too many. These break through:
"What do you mean? You and-"
"Mr. Wayne! Are you saying-"
What the hay?
"Bruce! Bruce! Come back!"
What the Hell?
"You're having an affair with an alien?"
"Superman is Bruce Wayne's boyfriend?"
"Is Bruce Wayne your boyfriend?" Lois asks.
What the fuck?