Fic: Three Step
Title: Three Step
Category: Smallville
Word Count: 3541
Date of Completion: 24 December 2007
Primary Characters: Clark Kent, Lois Lane
Rating: PG-13
Setting: AU, season 8
Summary: A waltz of superiority.
Additional Notes: Written for icancounttoduck (as part of Divine Intervention's winter ficstravaganza 2007) and beta'd by Paloma and st!cks.
- - -
Three Step
for icancounttoduck
Lois was always three steps ahead of Clark and he was sick of it.
And it was always three steps: a waltz of superiority, beat by beat by beat.
She pre-empted every move he made in everything they did. When Clark had thrown a loosely-packed snowball in her direction, she had made the ensuing fight a military operation
And when he had tackled her, landing entangled with her in the snow, their faces so close that the whole world seemed to glitter and shimmer around them, she had leaned in until he was breathless from thinking they would kiss, only to find himself alone on his back as she started on the snowman.
The fight over whether "Frosty" was lopsided or not had almost caused another snowball war, until Kara had materialised and enforced a kind of mediation.
He could hear her now, tapping away at the keyboard: tap, tap, tap. She had become an accomplished typist in the past year, but her spelling was the same as ever.
"That's what you're there for, Smallville," she always said with a cavalier twitch of the brow as she waved her latest masterpiece of investigative reporting in front of his face. "Now stop yapping and start reading."
Even now she was at it, sitting in his room with papers - he was sure - strewn all over the bed, condensing and clarifying her thoughts. Even at Christmas.
It had been a coup, convincing Lois to stay at the farm for the holiday.
Chloe had flown to Paris earlier in the week, on an offer to write about European Christmas traditions. Lois would never invite herself into somebody else's family holiday, but Clark would let her make a snowman out of him before he let her spend a minute alone over Christmas.
"Thanks," she had said in the end; just a thanks, because for one rare moment he had stolen the words out of her mouth.
He relished the memory. He had to because Lois was always exactly three steps ahead of him, and moments like that didn't swing around often.
He was hoping one would swing around tonight.
Clark had plans.
Lois had always been there - always. Lois Lane: rude and temperamental, and the only person who had thrown all her weight into pulling him back from the brink and never asked anything in return.
Tonight he wanted to give her something that others had begged for and taken by force: a story about sacrifice and distant stars and a man who walked as a stranger on the only world he knew - his life story.
It was the only part of him she didn't already have.
"Here," he said, as he set the hot chocolate down on his end table and stood, arms crossed, by the bed.
She barely even inclined her head before saying, "I asked for coffee."
He rolled his eyes. "Lois, you've had three cups already."
At that, her fingers stopped tapping, hovered over the keys, and she gave him her full, sceptical attention. "Are you my doctor?" she said.
"Just try it," he said, "it's my Mom's secret recipe. I wanna make sure I got it right."
Lois raised an eyebrow. Clark knew almost nothing about getting people to do what he wanted: she had to admit, it was sweet.
"Fine," she said, and made a big show of rolling her eyes as she grabbed the steaming mug.
Though he had won after all, she realised, as she saw the devious edge to his smile. She licked her lips slowly and frowned, setting the mug back down on the bedside table.
"You did that deliberately," she accused, but he just raised his eyebrows in apparent innocence.
She closed the laptop and put it next to her on the bed, swinging her legs over the edge and standing before him with her arms crossed. "You made me feel sorry for you so I'd give in."
Clark's mouth split into a grin. "You'll never know," he said.
This was the start: this had to be the start of an even footing. Maybe their one-upmanship would never end. He didn't want it to. But he was ready to approach Lois differently, and he was ready to use all the weapons he had at his disposal, even self-effacement.
As long as she knew who had won in the end.
Lois shrugged. "Well, let's be clear here." She leaned up to his ear, so close he could feel her breath warm his skin, and whispered, "I let you win."
She flopped back onto the bed and winked up at him, playful, before picking up the laptop again and cracking her knuckles.
"Wait," Clark frowned, "what are you talking about? You didn't let me win."
"Sure I did," Lois drummed her fingers on the surface of the laptop and raised a teasing eyebrow, "just like I let you win that stupid snowball fight the other day."
Clark raised his eyebrows. "Are you kidding?" he said, "I tackled you; no way did you let me win."
Lois snorted. "Please, Kent," she said, "I learned tactics from the best. I think I can win a silly little snowball fight."
She paused to shoot him an infuriating smirk. "I wanted to give your ego a break for once. Besides, I didn't want to trample all the snow before we got a chance to build a snowman."
"Pretty shaky defence," he said pointedly. "There are fields of the stuff."
That snowman felt like half the trouble to Clark - if Lois hadn't hopped up to make it, he might have kissed her, and that thought had had him in a daze - and it was lopsided to boot.
What was worse was he was losing sight of what he had planned to do today, letting Lois needle him in another direction, and he knew it.
Worse still was the fact that, even aware of it, he was still letting her do it. This was the real way she danced the waltz three steps ahead: riling him up until he would do whatever she wanted just to prove her wrong.
Win or lose, right or wrong: she was always right about something, and she always won in the end.
But one day she'd lose her footing and fall, and Clark would be there to catch her.
"OK," Lois got up off the bed again and levelled him with a competitive glare, "there is one way to settle this, and I think you know what it is."
Half of him wanted to hang his head and sigh inwardly. The other half wanted to cross his arms and look down on her challenge with a grin.
Both halves had already accepted that he was going to do it.
That was how he found himself crouched behind the snowman on Christmas Eve with the sky flaking around him. He could almost feel that icy statue's cold disapproval as he packed the snow into balls.
"Yeah, keep it up," he said quietly. "This is all your fault anyway. If it weren't for you I might have kissed her last time and then -" he paused, struggling to link the failed kiss to the second snow fight.
"Whatever," he said after a moment. "You know it's your fault - you don't need me to tell you why."
"Hey, Smallville!" Lois' voice cut through the air. "You might as well give up now! A whole platoon couldn't take me down in '98, I don't know why you're even trying."
He rolled his eyes and then shouted back, "Keep talking, Lois. I know exactly where you are."
Whomp.
So, she had used the sound of his voice to figure that he was behind the snowman rather than one of the mounds of snow that had clumped together on uneven earth, just as he had claimed to be using hers - it wasn't quite ironic, but it was annoying.
He ducked out from behind it and threw a snowball at Lois' retreating back. It barely clipped her elbow as she dove behind her snow bank.
Now he really knew where she was - and he didn't even have to use his X-ray vision.
Not that he would. Really.
The next few minutes brought a flurry of snowballs from both parties. Clark couldn't help but feel a kind of satisfaction every time he heard one of Lois' snowballs crash into the snowman. It was half his problem, and she deserved to miss.
And Lois had some major upper-body strength - he had to acknowledge that if he weren't Kryptonian a lot of those supposedly playful punches would have really hurt.
Then somehow he was shoving snow down her collar, and she was rubbing it in his face, cold and wet, and they were stumbling and falling.
He wrapped his arms around her as they hit the ground laughing.
Then he looked up, and there they were again with the snow seeping in through his clothes and the sky falling in pieces around Lois's face.
Whose heart was that?
Whose heart was beating so fast?
Clark breathed slowly: in, out, in, out. Whoever it was that had told him there were no second chances was clearly wrong.
Lois swallowed, but she pushed herself off Clark in the same way she had pushed him off her the other night he caught her wrist. And when she looked askance back at him he just grinned at her rakishly and then leaned up and kissed her, gently, on the mouth.
He hadn't realised until this moment just how long he had wanted to do that - not just since the other night, not even since he had the first time as the Green Arrow: maybe since the day they met.
It couldn't have felt more perfect to Clark, even with the cold water soaking the back half of his body, because the snow was swirling all around them and Lois was kissing him back, her eyes closed, her hand on his chest, her lips pressed to his.
She leaned back and gave him a strange look, like she was seeing him in a new light and like he had affirmed everything she had always suspected all at once. Then she smiled and breathed out, shuddering, like she was laughing silently or shivering from the cold or both.
She cocked her head to one side. "What the hell was that?"
And he had done it: he had done something Lois had not anticipated. She wasn't three steps ahead of him this time. For all her fancy footwork she was one step behind, and Clark liked it.
"I win," he said, still smiling.
For a moment it looked like she was going to argue, she was frowning - and seeing her like that, cheeks red, hair wet and straggling around her face, took Clark's breath away - but as she opened her mouth he just pulled her in and kissed her again, now that he could, and she let him, her knees on either side of his waist, pulling him up.
Then she put her hands on his shoulders and shoved him back down into the ground, breaking the kiss. Clark frowned up at her, but Lois' lips twitched at her own superiority as she reclaimed the upper ground.
"Frosty's watching," she said.
"What?" Clark blinked, chest heaving, and looked over to the side. There, more lopsided than ever, and lumpy now as well, was Lois' snowman, coal eyes full of judgement for Clark.
He let his head fall back against the ground - it made a soft thunk - as Lois got up. Then he felt her hand in his, pulling him up.
"So, Clark," she said, and he narrowed his eyes because her voice was full of that dismissive bravado. She gestured at the snowman. "Think he'll come to life at midnight?"
Clark looked from the snowman to Lois and back again, and then smiled. "Why, Lois?" He took a deep breath, and half-smiled as he added, "Did you want to go walking in the air?"
Lois looked back over her shoulder at him with her eyebrows raised. "Don't be ridiculous." After a beat, she added, "Although you never know. Does that coal look like meteor rock to you?"
She grinned back at him, and then turned around and hit him gently on the shoulder. "Come on, let's go."
For the second time, he grabbed her wrist and stopped her leaving. And when she frowned back at him this time he just breathed, feeling his heart echo through his chest, knowing he could surprise her again.
It was his heart.
His heart was beating so fast.
"I wasn't... totally joking," he said. He swallowed and looked down at their hands, all tangled together. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick.
Then he breathed out, slowly, and realised Lois was the one person who had always been there and asked for nothing back - and he knew it wouldn't matter, because she had already seen him at his worst, and it was OK.
"Come here," he said, pulling her in. Lois looked at him with narrowed eyes, but made no comment as he put his hand on her waist. She seemed to understand.
He kept his eyes on hers: concentrating, because this was difficult, and stepped back.
The Earth fell.
And they were spinning - waltzing in the deep black of night, with the snow all around them, taking Lois' breath away, step by step by step.
She shivered and looked down, breathing out all at once.
"Are you OK?" he said.
"Walking in the air," she said, her breathing fast and shallow, then looked back at him, "Go figure."
She closed her eyes, and her chest heaved, up and down, until she had control of her breathing once more. Then she looked up at him, and in her eyes he saw a thousand stars swimming, not sure if they were a reflection or if his heart was just three steps behind.
He closed his eyes, and nodded. "I wanted you to know," he said, opening his eyes, "because -" his heart was still racing, and so was hers, "I just wanted you to know."
Lois nodded. She understood. She always understood. Slowly, tentatively, she put her arms around his shoulders, and her head in the crook of his neck. And in that gesture was everything: the past four years together, all their unspoken feelings, all coming out tonight.
If he never got another Christmas present, he didn't think he would miss it.
"Lois," he said, because it had to be the whole truth, "I just - I'm not meteor infected." Through his shirt he could feel her jaw, clench and unclench.
He looked up over her shoulder into the sky, and breathed in, waiting.
And he felt her open her mouth and inhale, then close it again as if she'd thought better of whatever it was she was going to say.
"I'm an... intergalactic traveller," he said. And he had been thinking about news writing enough now to condense the facts. "I came to Earth when I was a baby. My planet's gone. Kara and I are the last members of my Kryptonian race." He paused for a moment and then added, quietly, "We're all alone."
"You're not alone," she said, and he realised it was the first and the last thing he had expected her to say, all at once. She grinned when he looked at her, and shook her head.
"Like this is a surprise," she said. He stared, and she looked at him like he had lost his mind, "You're just weird," she said. She shook her head at him and then added, like it explained everything, "When we met, lightning struck. Literally."
Lois Lane took everything in her stride.
So no, he wasn't quite three steps ahead of her this time, but he wasn't three behind either.
And he might never know how much Lois had known or suspected or was pretending to have known, but it didn't matter.
Three feet from the ground, Clark lost concentration.
It was Lois' fault: she had a wicked streak, and a wicked hand.
They dropped out of the sky and stumbled back together. Lois' grin blurred against the night sky, and Clark felt himself fall back, right back, into something solid, and cold, and lopsided.
"What the hell did you do, Smallville?"
"Me?" He sat up in the snow, pushing her slightly away, and glared at her.
"Yeah, you," she said, sitting back on his thighs and frowning at him. "Look what you've done to my snowman!"
He shook his head, incredulous. "You distracted me!"
An interested smile crossed Lois' face. "I distracted you?" She cocked her head to one side. "How did I distract you?"
Clark rolled his eyes. "You know how you distracted me."
Lois bit her lip, teasing him. "Really?" she said. "Was it like..."
Clark felt her fingers on his waist, moving the fabric of his top out of the way and lightly brushing the skin. He breathed in.
Lois raised an eyebrow. "…This?"
"Yes, Lois," Clark said, trying to keep his voice steady, "that's exactly what it was like."
He was amazing.
If Lois hadn't just learned he was born light-years away she would have thought it anyway.
But being here in the snow with him, with the water dripping from his hair, teasing and frustrating him: this was a kind of Christmas she never saw coming, and those were the best kinds of anything.
And that was her heart.
Her heart was beating so fast.
How could this happen to someone like Lois Lane?
He was frowning. She felt a tug in the corner of her mouth. Then she leaned in for the kill.
Her eyes closed when she felt him kiss her back. Then it was only his hand on the nape of her neck, and his fingers in her hair.
She half-felt, half-heard him groan as she slid further into his lap, pressing her lips along his jaw and into his neck.
Her knees and shins were digging into the snow, cold and wet, but she didn't care. He was running his fingers down her neck and along her collarbone; his body was hard beneath her, and her breathing was heavy, steaming in the air around them.
He shifted under her, and she shivered.
Clark paused, his chest heaving. He was suddenly aware that they were in a field, in the middle of winter, on top of a broken snowman.
"It's too cold for this here," he said.
Lois gave him a look of utter disappointment, but leaned back and stepped up off him anyway.
They said nothing on the way back to the farmhouse. If Lois hadn't slipped her hand in Clark's, and stood a little closer than usual as they trudged back through the snow, Clark might have questioned whether anything had really happened.
Kara wasn't on the farm when they returned.
There was a note on the table: what looked like some scribbled-out Kryptonian, then, in English, "Partying. See you tomorrow since it's so important to you (still don't quite get Xmas). Kisses, Kara."
"Partying all night?" Lois raised an eyebrow, leaning over on the counter. "At least you know she can defend herself."
"Yeah," said Clark, turning the note over, "as long as there's no meteor rock around."
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," said Lois, shaking her head with a condescending smile. "You aren't seriously as over-protective of your super-juiced cousin as -"
Clark raised his eyebrows.
Lois shrugged, "Well, you know."
"I'm just saying," said Clark, "look what she wrote on the note about Christmas." He thrust it over at Lois. "You can't tell me that wouldn't make you kind of suspicious."
Lois stood back, with the kind of smile that meant no good, and crossed her arms.
"Right," she said, "'Gee, Lois, it's a good thing that pipe burst when it did.'"
She gave him a look when he rolled his eyes, and then continued. "'Oh, it wasn't locked, it just needed a bit more jiggling.'" And, finally, pointedly, "'Barn door? Um, uh, um - wow, it must have fallen from an airplane.'"
"OK!" Clark glared at her, "I get the picture. "
"No," said Lois, "I don't think you do."
He raised an eyebrow, and she cast him a wicked smile. "From where I'm standing," she said, "the picture is this." She paused. "You've just spilled your deepest and darkest - which, by the way, is totally touching -"
He sighed, exasperated.
She continued, "And now I'm thinking, I'm all alone, in an empty house with," she shrugged, "a semi-adorable farm boy who happens to have kissed me out in a field earlier." She looked him up and down, and then shrugged, "You know."
She was amazing. Nail-biting, coffee-drinking, lopsided-snowman-making Lois Lane was amazing.
There was a reason she was always three steps ahead and he could never catch up - he felt like she was faster than the whole world, dragging all of humanity behind her.
And he couldn't believe any of this had happened at all.
He felt his lips spread into a grin as she bit her lip, and he took her hand, pulling her in. She leaned up and kissed him, and she was so warm in his arms that he felt weak.
She ran her fingertips lightly down his spine and he closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. When she reached his waist, she dug her fingers into the hem of his shirt and began to pull it up, kissing his jaw with a smile on her face.
He pulled back and looked right into her eyes. She raised an eyebrow, and he swallowed. Running his hand up her back, he gently pulled the elastic out of her half-tangled ponytail.
"What did you have in mind?" he said.
Lois just smiled up at him, and for a moment he thought it flickered like she had reclaimed some small victory. Then she hit him on the arm and said, "We're building a new snowman."
Category: Smallville
Word Count: 3541
Date of Completion: 24 December 2007
Primary Characters: Clark Kent, Lois Lane
Rating: PG-13
Setting: AU, season 8
Summary: A waltz of superiority.
Additional Notes: Written for icancounttoduck (as part of Divine Intervention's winter ficstravaganza 2007) and beta'd by Paloma and st!cks.
- - -
Three Step
for icancounttoduck
Lois was always three steps ahead of Clark and he was sick of it.
And it was always three steps: a waltz of superiority, beat by beat by beat.
She pre-empted every move he made in everything they did. When Clark had thrown a loosely-packed snowball in her direction, she had made the ensuing fight a military operation
And when he had tackled her, landing entangled with her in the snow, their faces so close that the whole world seemed to glitter and shimmer around them, she had leaned in until he was breathless from thinking they would kiss, only to find himself alone on his back as she started on the snowman.
The fight over whether "Frosty" was lopsided or not had almost caused another snowball war, until Kara had materialised and enforced a kind of mediation.
He could hear her now, tapping away at the keyboard: tap, tap, tap. She had become an accomplished typist in the past year, but her spelling was the same as ever.
"That's what you're there for, Smallville," she always said with a cavalier twitch of the brow as she waved her latest masterpiece of investigative reporting in front of his face. "Now stop yapping and start reading."
Even now she was at it, sitting in his room with papers - he was sure - strewn all over the bed, condensing and clarifying her thoughts. Even at Christmas.
It had been a coup, convincing Lois to stay at the farm for the holiday.
Chloe had flown to Paris earlier in the week, on an offer to write about European Christmas traditions. Lois would never invite herself into somebody else's family holiday, but Clark would let her make a snowman out of him before he let her spend a minute alone over Christmas.
"Thanks," she had said in the end; just a thanks, because for one rare moment he had stolen the words out of her mouth.
He relished the memory. He had to because Lois was always exactly three steps ahead of him, and moments like that didn't swing around often.
He was hoping one would swing around tonight.
Clark had plans.
Lois had always been there - always. Lois Lane: rude and temperamental, and the only person who had thrown all her weight into pulling him back from the brink and never asked anything in return.
Tonight he wanted to give her something that others had begged for and taken by force: a story about sacrifice and distant stars and a man who walked as a stranger on the only world he knew - his life story.
It was the only part of him she didn't already have.
"Here," he said, as he set the hot chocolate down on his end table and stood, arms crossed, by the bed.
She barely even inclined her head before saying, "I asked for coffee."
He rolled his eyes. "Lois, you've had three cups already."
At that, her fingers stopped tapping, hovered over the keys, and she gave him her full, sceptical attention. "Are you my doctor?" she said.
"Just try it," he said, "it's my Mom's secret recipe. I wanna make sure I got it right."
Lois raised an eyebrow. Clark knew almost nothing about getting people to do what he wanted: she had to admit, it was sweet.
"Fine," she said, and made a big show of rolling her eyes as she grabbed the steaming mug.
Though he had won after all, she realised, as she saw the devious edge to his smile. She licked her lips slowly and frowned, setting the mug back down on the bedside table.
"You did that deliberately," she accused, but he just raised his eyebrows in apparent innocence.
She closed the laptop and put it next to her on the bed, swinging her legs over the edge and standing before him with her arms crossed. "You made me feel sorry for you so I'd give in."
Clark's mouth split into a grin. "You'll never know," he said.
This was the start: this had to be the start of an even footing. Maybe their one-upmanship would never end. He didn't want it to. But he was ready to approach Lois differently, and he was ready to use all the weapons he had at his disposal, even self-effacement.
As long as she knew who had won in the end.
Lois shrugged. "Well, let's be clear here." She leaned up to his ear, so close he could feel her breath warm his skin, and whispered, "I let you win."
She flopped back onto the bed and winked up at him, playful, before picking up the laptop again and cracking her knuckles.
"Wait," Clark frowned, "what are you talking about? You didn't let me win."
"Sure I did," Lois drummed her fingers on the surface of the laptop and raised a teasing eyebrow, "just like I let you win that stupid snowball fight the other day."
Clark raised his eyebrows. "Are you kidding?" he said, "I tackled you; no way did you let me win."
Lois snorted. "Please, Kent," she said, "I learned tactics from the best. I think I can win a silly little snowball fight."
She paused to shoot him an infuriating smirk. "I wanted to give your ego a break for once. Besides, I didn't want to trample all the snow before we got a chance to build a snowman."
"Pretty shaky defence," he said pointedly. "There are fields of the stuff."
That snowman felt like half the trouble to Clark - if Lois hadn't hopped up to make it, he might have kissed her, and that thought had had him in a daze - and it was lopsided to boot.
What was worse was he was losing sight of what he had planned to do today, letting Lois needle him in another direction, and he knew it.
Worse still was the fact that, even aware of it, he was still letting her do it. This was the real way she danced the waltz three steps ahead: riling him up until he would do whatever she wanted just to prove her wrong.
Win or lose, right or wrong: she was always right about something, and she always won in the end.
But one day she'd lose her footing and fall, and Clark would be there to catch her.
"OK," Lois got up off the bed again and levelled him with a competitive glare, "there is one way to settle this, and I think you know what it is."
Half of him wanted to hang his head and sigh inwardly. The other half wanted to cross his arms and look down on her challenge with a grin.
Both halves had already accepted that he was going to do it.
That was how he found himself crouched behind the snowman on Christmas Eve with the sky flaking around him. He could almost feel that icy statue's cold disapproval as he packed the snow into balls.
"Yeah, keep it up," he said quietly. "This is all your fault anyway. If it weren't for you I might have kissed her last time and then -" he paused, struggling to link the failed kiss to the second snow fight.
"Whatever," he said after a moment. "You know it's your fault - you don't need me to tell you why."
"Hey, Smallville!" Lois' voice cut through the air. "You might as well give up now! A whole platoon couldn't take me down in '98, I don't know why you're even trying."
He rolled his eyes and then shouted back, "Keep talking, Lois. I know exactly where you are."
Whomp.
So, she had used the sound of his voice to figure that he was behind the snowman rather than one of the mounds of snow that had clumped together on uneven earth, just as he had claimed to be using hers - it wasn't quite ironic, but it was annoying.
He ducked out from behind it and threw a snowball at Lois' retreating back. It barely clipped her elbow as she dove behind her snow bank.
Now he really knew where she was - and he didn't even have to use his X-ray vision.
Not that he would. Really.
The next few minutes brought a flurry of snowballs from both parties. Clark couldn't help but feel a kind of satisfaction every time he heard one of Lois' snowballs crash into the snowman. It was half his problem, and she deserved to miss.
And Lois had some major upper-body strength - he had to acknowledge that if he weren't Kryptonian a lot of those supposedly playful punches would have really hurt.
Then somehow he was shoving snow down her collar, and she was rubbing it in his face, cold and wet, and they were stumbling and falling.
He wrapped his arms around her as they hit the ground laughing.
Then he looked up, and there they were again with the snow seeping in through his clothes and the sky falling in pieces around Lois's face.
Whose heart was that?
Whose heart was beating so fast?
Clark breathed slowly: in, out, in, out. Whoever it was that had told him there were no second chances was clearly wrong.
Lois swallowed, but she pushed herself off Clark in the same way she had pushed him off her the other night he caught her wrist. And when she looked askance back at him he just grinned at her rakishly and then leaned up and kissed her, gently, on the mouth.
He hadn't realised until this moment just how long he had wanted to do that - not just since the other night, not even since he had the first time as the Green Arrow: maybe since the day they met.
It couldn't have felt more perfect to Clark, even with the cold water soaking the back half of his body, because the snow was swirling all around them and Lois was kissing him back, her eyes closed, her hand on his chest, her lips pressed to his.
She leaned back and gave him a strange look, like she was seeing him in a new light and like he had affirmed everything she had always suspected all at once. Then she smiled and breathed out, shuddering, like she was laughing silently or shivering from the cold or both.
She cocked her head to one side. "What the hell was that?"
And he had done it: he had done something Lois had not anticipated. She wasn't three steps ahead of him this time. For all her fancy footwork she was one step behind, and Clark liked it.
"I win," he said, still smiling.
For a moment it looked like she was going to argue, she was frowning - and seeing her like that, cheeks red, hair wet and straggling around her face, took Clark's breath away - but as she opened her mouth he just pulled her in and kissed her again, now that he could, and she let him, her knees on either side of his waist, pulling him up.
Then she put her hands on his shoulders and shoved him back down into the ground, breaking the kiss. Clark frowned up at her, but Lois' lips twitched at her own superiority as she reclaimed the upper ground.
"Frosty's watching," she said.
"What?" Clark blinked, chest heaving, and looked over to the side. There, more lopsided than ever, and lumpy now as well, was Lois' snowman, coal eyes full of judgement for Clark.
He let his head fall back against the ground - it made a soft thunk - as Lois got up. Then he felt her hand in his, pulling him up.
"So, Clark," she said, and he narrowed his eyes because her voice was full of that dismissive bravado. She gestured at the snowman. "Think he'll come to life at midnight?"
Clark looked from the snowman to Lois and back again, and then smiled. "Why, Lois?" He took a deep breath, and half-smiled as he added, "Did you want to go walking in the air?"
Lois looked back over her shoulder at him with her eyebrows raised. "Don't be ridiculous." After a beat, she added, "Although you never know. Does that coal look like meteor rock to you?"
She grinned back at him, and then turned around and hit him gently on the shoulder. "Come on, let's go."
For the second time, he grabbed her wrist and stopped her leaving. And when she frowned back at him this time he just breathed, feeling his heart echo through his chest, knowing he could surprise her again.
It was his heart.
His heart was beating so fast.
"I wasn't... totally joking," he said. He swallowed and looked down at their hands, all tangled together. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick.
Then he breathed out, slowly, and realised Lois was the one person who had always been there and asked for nothing back - and he knew it wouldn't matter, because she had already seen him at his worst, and it was OK.
"Come here," he said, pulling her in. Lois looked at him with narrowed eyes, but made no comment as he put his hand on her waist. She seemed to understand.
He kept his eyes on hers: concentrating, because this was difficult, and stepped back.
The Earth fell.
And they were spinning - waltzing in the deep black of night, with the snow all around them, taking Lois' breath away, step by step by step.
She shivered and looked down, breathing out all at once.
"Are you OK?" he said.
"Walking in the air," she said, her breathing fast and shallow, then looked back at him, "Go figure."
She closed her eyes, and her chest heaved, up and down, until she had control of her breathing once more. Then she looked up at him, and in her eyes he saw a thousand stars swimming, not sure if they were a reflection or if his heart was just three steps behind.
He closed his eyes, and nodded. "I wanted you to know," he said, opening his eyes, "because -" his heart was still racing, and so was hers, "I just wanted you to know."
Lois nodded. She understood. She always understood. Slowly, tentatively, she put her arms around his shoulders, and her head in the crook of his neck. And in that gesture was everything: the past four years together, all their unspoken feelings, all coming out tonight.
If he never got another Christmas present, he didn't think he would miss it.
"Lois," he said, because it had to be the whole truth, "I just - I'm not meteor infected." Through his shirt he could feel her jaw, clench and unclench.
He looked up over her shoulder into the sky, and breathed in, waiting.
And he felt her open her mouth and inhale, then close it again as if she'd thought better of whatever it was she was going to say.
"I'm an... intergalactic traveller," he said. And he had been thinking about news writing enough now to condense the facts. "I came to Earth when I was a baby. My planet's gone. Kara and I are the last members of my Kryptonian race." He paused for a moment and then added, quietly, "We're all alone."
"You're not alone," she said, and he realised it was the first and the last thing he had expected her to say, all at once. She grinned when he looked at her, and shook her head.
"Like this is a surprise," she said. He stared, and she looked at him like he had lost his mind, "You're just weird," she said. She shook her head at him and then added, like it explained everything, "When we met, lightning struck. Literally."
Lois Lane took everything in her stride.
So no, he wasn't quite three steps ahead of her this time, but he wasn't three behind either.
And he might never know how much Lois had known or suspected or was pretending to have known, but it didn't matter.
Three feet from the ground, Clark lost concentration.
It was Lois' fault: she had a wicked streak, and a wicked hand.
They dropped out of the sky and stumbled back together. Lois' grin blurred against the night sky, and Clark felt himself fall back, right back, into something solid, and cold, and lopsided.
"What the hell did you do, Smallville?"
"Me?" He sat up in the snow, pushing her slightly away, and glared at her.
"Yeah, you," she said, sitting back on his thighs and frowning at him. "Look what you've done to my snowman!"
He shook his head, incredulous. "You distracted me!"
An interested smile crossed Lois' face. "I distracted you?" She cocked her head to one side. "How did I distract you?"
Clark rolled his eyes. "You know how you distracted me."
Lois bit her lip, teasing him. "Really?" she said. "Was it like..."
Clark felt her fingers on his waist, moving the fabric of his top out of the way and lightly brushing the skin. He breathed in.
Lois raised an eyebrow. "…This?"
"Yes, Lois," Clark said, trying to keep his voice steady, "that's exactly what it was like."
He was amazing.
If Lois hadn't just learned he was born light-years away she would have thought it anyway.
But being here in the snow with him, with the water dripping from his hair, teasing and frustrating him: this was a kind of Christmas she never saw coming, and those were the best kinds of anything.
And that was her heart.
Her heart was beating so fast.
How could this happen to someone like Lois Lane?
He was frowning. She felt a tug in the corner of her mouth. Then she leaned in for the kill.
Her eyes closed when she felt him kiss her back. Then it was only his hand on the nape of her neck, and his fingers in her hair.
She half-felt, half-heard him groan as she slid further into his lap, pressing her lips along his jaw and into his neck.
Her knees and shins were digging into the snow, cold and wet, but she didn't care. He was running his fingers down her neck and along her collarbone; his body was hard beneath her, and her breathing was heavy, steaming in the air around them.
He shifted under her, and she shivered.
Clark paused, his chest heaving. He was suddenly aware that they were in a field, in the middle of winter, on top of a broken snowman.
"It's too cold for this here," he said.
Lois gave him a look of utter disappointment, but leaned back and stepped up off him anyway.
They said nothing on the way back to the farmhouse. If Lois hadn't slipped her hand in Clark's, and stood a little closer than usual as they trudged back through the snow, Clark might have questioned whether anything had really happened.
Kara wasn't on the farm when they returned.
There was a note on the table: what looked like some scribbled-out Kryptonian, then, in English, "Partying. See you tomorrow since it's so important to you (still don't quite get Xmas). Kisses, Kara."
"Partying all night?" Lois raised an eyebrow, leaning over on the counter. "At least you know she can defend herself."
"Yeah," said Clark, turning the note over, "as long as there's no meteor rock around."
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," said Lois, shaking her head with a condescending smile. "You aren't seriously as over-protective of your super-juiced cousin as -"
Clark raised his eyebrows.
Lois shrugged, "Well, you know."
"I'm just saying," said Clark, "look what she wrote on the note about Christmas." He thrust it over at Lois. "You can't tell me that wouldn't make you kind of suspicious."
Lois stood back, with the kind of smile that meant no good, and crossed her arms.
"Right," she said, "'Gee, Lois, it's a good thing that pipe burst when it did.'"
She gave him a look when he rolled his eyes, and then continued. "'Oh, it wasn't locked, it just needed a bit more jiggling.'" And, finally, pointedly, "'Barn door? Um, uh, um - wow, it must have fallen from an airplane.'"
"OK!" Clark glared at her, "I get the picture. "
"No," said Lois, "I don't think you do."
He raised an eyebrow, and she cast him a wicked smile. "From where I'm standing," she said, "the picture is this." She paused. "You've just spilled your deepest and darkest - which, by the way, is totally touching -"
He sighed, exasperated.
She continued, "And now I'm thinking, I'm all alone, in an empty house with," she shrugged, "a semi-adorable farm boy who happens to have kissed me out in a field earlier." She looked him up and down, and then shrugged, "You know."
She was amazing. Nail-biting, coffee-drinking, lopsided-snowman-making Lois Lane was amazing.
There was a reason she was always three steps ahead and he could never catch up - he felt like she was faster than the whole world, dragging all of humanity behind her.
And he couldn't believe any of this had happened at all.
He felt his lips spread into a grin as she bit her lip, and he took her hand, pulling her in. She leaned up and kissed him, and she was so warm in his arms that he felt weak.
She ran her fingertips lightly down his spine and he closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. When she reached his waist, she dug her fingers into the hem of his shirt and began to pull it up, kissing his jaw with a smile on her face.
He pulled back and looked right into her eyes. She raised an eyebrow, and he swallowed. Running his hand up her back, he gently pulled the elastic out of her half-tangled ponytail.
"What did you have in mind?" he said.
Lois just smiled up at him, and for a moment he thought it flickered like she had reclaimed some small victory. Then she hit him on the arm and said, "We're building a new snowman."