And a Cherry on Top

Title: And a Cherry on Top
Author: katshakespeare
Category: Superman Returns
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,400 exactly
Summary: The air conditioning at the Planet is broken so Lois and Clark have to find another way to cool down.
Notes: Apparently this was the week for me to write an abnormal amount of Superman fanfiction. Gosh. This is number four. So here's my addition to the August heatwave challenge. Hope you enjoy.

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Lois Lane wiped the back of her neck with a damp washcloth. Five minutes ago, the cloth had been sopping wet with ice-cold water. But the heat had seeped into the washcloth and warmed it. The wetness cooled her skin only when she removed the cloth and the light breeze from the ceiling fan directly above her swept over her wet neck.

“Is there any particular reason the air conditioning isn’t working?” she snapped, directing the comment toward a gaggle of female interns who were gathered around the water cooler as if it were a fresh water oasis. “I can’t get any work done under these conditions!”

“Then get out of here, Lois.”

She looked up to find Perry White standing in his office doorway, tie gone, shirtsleeves rolled up, and sweat glistening off his forehead. “Chief, I’m not done with this article yet.”

“And you won’t be any time soon either. Kent’s on his way to the Metro North Y. There’s been another drowning. I don’t care about your fluff piece on feathers in chicken nuggets—”

“It’s about the inhumane treatment of the chickens killed to make those chicken nuggets, chief. Not that I think they should be killed at all—”

“Lois, I don’t care. Go find Kent. If you don’t, he gets the byline to himself!”

Lois’s feet slipped out of her heels when she stepped into them and stood up. She’d divested herself of her pantyhose hours ago. “It’s even hotter outside,” she whined.

“Maybe if you ask nicely, Detective Barnes will let you have a swim once they’re done gathering evidence. Now get out of my sight.” Perry flapped his arms at her then returned to his desk. He held a spray bottle in front of his face and began squirting.

She growled. “I’m going, I’m going,” she said. She shoved her writing pad into her shoulder bag, pushed a sharp pencil over her ear, then hurried to catch the elevator before some guy from copy shut the doors on her.

It took about fifteen minutes in an also un-air conditioned taxicab to get to the Metro North YMCA. When she got there, she found her partner slouched against a wall off to one side, several yards away from the yellow police tape, Detective Barnes, and a gathering of reporters from sources other than the Daily Planet.

“What are you doing all the way over here, Smallville?” Lois asked. She could feel her own sweat cool her arm pits now that she was once again out of the sun. She made a face. “Do I have to do everything around here?” She began to make her way to the small crowd, intent on pushing her way to the front.

“Lois, I already—”

She heard Clark well enough, but she ignored him. “Detective Barnes,” she called out, interrupting a novice reporter from the Inquisitor. “Lois Lane, Daily Planet.” She barged right through the amused chuckles and groans; everyone knew who she was. “Do you think there are any connections between this drowning and the others in the last week?”

“As I told Mr. Kent about twenty minutes ago, Miss Lane, we have no reason to suppose a connection at this time.”

“So you’re saying they’re unrelated incidents?”

The detective’s mouth quirked a bit. “Yes ma’am, I am. It’s a hot summer and the pools are crowded. Unfortunately, accidents happen. It’s a real shame, and the good people working here at the Y did everything in their power when it happened.”

“Was Superman here?” she asked quickly.

“Yes, Miss Lane, he’s come and gone. Got here moments too late, I’m afraid.” He turned his gaze from her to the fresh-faced blonde from the tabloid who Lois had interrupted. “Miss Welsh, you were asking?”

“Did he give a statement?” Lois went on.

The reporter from the Inquisitor called Lois a bitch loudly enough to ensure Lois heard it.

Detective Barnes looked to her again with a deepening frown. “I already answered that question and everyone here heard Superman’s statement already. It doesn’t need repeating. Perhaps you could ask your partner—Kent over there—what all was said.” He nodded to the crowd and then walked back toward his police officers.

A hand clamped down over Lois’s elbow. “Lois, let’s go.”

She spun around to find Clark in front of her, his tie still tight around his fully buttoned collar and his glasses only slightly askew on his face. He didn’t look like the heat affected him at all.

“I take good notes, Lois,” he said. “You should have remembered that.”

“Yeah, yeah, photographic memory and all that. Say, how come you’re not sweating like a pig?”

“Gee, thanks, Lois. That’s a nice way of putting it.” He rolled his eyes good-naturedly at her. “Tell you what. Why don’t we go for an ice cream soda? Isn’t there a place around the corner? Tammy’s Sodas and Shakes?”

She blinked. Lois remembered that place. She and Clark had gone to it shortly before their ill-fated Niagara Falls trip. The day before, actually, if she could remember correctly. She’d treated him after she bet him straight up that Jimmy Olsen was going to ask Annie Hunter from the advertising department out and she was going to say no. Clark argued and, to her surprise, Annie not only said yes, but she kissed him right there in the bullpen. Poor boy hadn’t even seen it coming. And Lois had to buy Clark a sundae with extra whipped cream and a cherry.

“Well, Lois? What do you say?”

She looked at him and smiled. “All right, Smallville, sure. It’s been a long time since I had a good old fashioned root beer float.” She started down the street. “You’re buying. And they had better have air conditioning.”

Clark followed two steps or so behind Lois but managed to grab and hold open the door for her before she could barge right in. To her delight, her entrance was met with a blast of manufactured air.

“Ah, I am never going to leave this place,” Lois said as she slid into a red-vinyl booth in the corner of the small diner near the bathrooms. “Whoever thought using this material was a good idea? I can feel my thighs melting into the plastic.”

Clark made a strange strangled noise as he sat across from her. He held a laminated menu on front of him. “Say, how about you and me share a banana split?” he asked. “You like those, don’t you?”

She blinked at him then smiled. “Of course I do. We had one before Perry sent us to Niagara Falls. Remember?”

For a moment, Lois thought Clark almost looked like he was in pain, but he covered it up with the menu held higher over his face. “Yeah, sure, of course. How could I forget? You, uh, took my cherry.”

Lois gasped and swatted the menu from in front of his face. “Clark Kent!”

“What?” he asked innocently, but he was blushing almost as red as that cherry had been.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You sure have a naughty side hidden in you, don’t you?”

He shrugged and held her gaze for a moment before turning to grin at the waitress in a red-and-white gingham apron who asked for their order.

Lois shivered a bit. She wrote it off as her reaction to the air conditioning, but the truth was, she had never realized just how blue Clark Kent’s eyes really were. She looked at the Formica tabletop, examining its cracks and graffiti.

“I asked for two cherries this time, Lois,” Clark was saying.

She looked up at him. “Oh, good. So, you talked to Superman?”

“Not exactly, no, but Detective Barnes passed along his statement to me. You didn’t have to come all the way down, Lois. I was already there.”

“Perry sent me,” she said. “I think he was tired of listening to me complain about the air conditioning. He doesn’t know when it’ll be fixed, by the way. Half the city’s air is out. There’s got to be a story in that somewhere.”

He chuckled. “You think there’s a story in everything, Lois.”

She shrugged. “There has to be,” she said. “How else are we going to fill the pages of the Planet. We have to dig for things. I can write a story about anything, Clark, and by now I’d hope you can too.”

Clark smiled.

A moment later, their waitress set a gigantic banana split on the table between them. It was made up of five scoops of what looked like vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, praline pecan, and coffee ice cream on top of two sliced bananas and topped with hot fudge, caramel sauce, peanuts, and whipped cream. Two cherries, intertwined at their stems, sat on top.

Lois’s eyes lit up. She rubbed her hands together and picked up the long ice cream spoon set in front of her. “This looks amazing,” she said. “Thanks, Smallville.”

She was already on her fourth spoonful when she realized Clark wasn’t digging in with her. “I can’t eat this all by myself,” she said, pausing her spoon halfway to her mouth.

“I’m enjoying watching you eat it,” he said.

She blushed. “That’s a bit creepy, Clark.”

He sat back, crossing his arms over his chest, and he shrugged.

“No, really, Clark, you can definitely have some. I can already feel it going right to my hips.” But that didn’t stop her from piling a hefty scoop of coffee ice cream covered with hot fudge onto her spoon and shoving it into her mouth.

Clark did roll his eyes at that. He picked up his spoon and shaved off a small bite of the strawberry ice cream. “A little cooler in here, isn’t it?” he asked.

Lois smiled. “Sure is.”

They settled comfortably into a silent routine of eating their ice cream and sharing smiles. Lois was thinking about the last time she shared ice cream like this with Clark. It seemed so long ago, nearly six years, she realized. So much had happened in that length of time. Superman had left. Clark had left. Jason had been born. And Lois had won her coveted Pulitzer Prize.

She set her spoon down and sighed heavily.

Clark looked at her. “Something wrong?”

Lois shook her head. “No, everything’s fine. Just—reminiscing, I guess. It’s been a long time since we did this, just us like this,” she said. “We used to spend practically every waking moment together.”

“Yeah.”

Lois smiled for a moment then reached for one of the two cherries. “Have I ever showed you how I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue?” she asked with a wicked grin. She popped the bulb of the cherry into her mouth and chewed.

Clark swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Uh, no, Lois, I don’t think you ever have.”

She held up a finger and put the cherry’s stem into her mouth. She kept her eyes trained on Clark as she twisted and swirled her tongue around the stem. Even in the air conditioning, the thought of what she was doing, the way Clark was watching her, she felt the sweat start up again and heat pooling in her stomach.

When she pulled the stem out a moment later, it was knotted loosely. She held it out to him. “Told you so.”

“I never doubted you, Lois,” he murmured. He was still looking at her intently.

Lois swallowed and sat back, breaking their shared stare. She set the cherry stem aside and returned to the ice cream, suddenly needing something to cool her down from Clark’s intense stare. Had he always looked at her like that? Had his voice always made her shiver when in that lower register?

“Uh, Lois,” he said quickly, his voice cracking a bit.

She looked at him. That was better, she thought. She decided to blame the heat on her curious heated reaction to his gaze on her. “Yeah, Clark?”

He cleared his throat. “Well, see, my mom’s going to be in town this weekend and I thought—well I was wondering if maybe Jason would like to spend some time with her. I know Richard’s mom passed away a while ago and you don’t really speak to yours. And it’s not like my mother has any other grandchildren and I think she’d like to dote on Jason. That is, if you don’t mind. I know it’s a bit presumptuous of me to ask—”

She reached out and laid a hand on his wrist. “Clark, that sounds like a wonderful idea.”

He perked up. “Really? Gee, Lois, I’m glad you think so. I didn’t know if I should really ask. Like I said, it’s not like I have any real connection to Jason.”

Lois smiled. “Jason adores you,” she said. “That’s enough. And it might be good for him to be spoiled for a bit and to get away from me and Richard. Plus I wouldn’t mind the time with Richard. Lord knows we never get a moment alone anymore.”

He frowned for just a moment. “Right. And if I’ve never mentioned it before, I’d be more than happy to watch him any time, Lois. All you have to do is ask.”

She realized she hadn’t moved her hand from his arm yet so she did it then, tucking her hands into her lap. “Thanks, Clark. I might have to take you up on that sometime.”

Clark smiled. “Well gosh, look at the time,” he said. “Don’t you think we should get back to the office? Perry’s going to want this article right away and—”

Lois stood up. “Sure, Clark. And how about you write the article? I’ll even let you take the byline.” She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin as he took a handful of bills out of his wallet and left them on the table.

“Really?” he asked. Then he narrowed his eyes at her. “And what am I going to have to do for that?”

She laughed and tucked her arm through his. “You bought me ice cream,” she said, looking up at him. “And you’re a really good friend, Clark. That’s enough.”

He smiled down at her as they walked out of the cool air and into the stifling sunshine. He squeezed her hand gently in his. “You’re a really good friend to me too, Lois.”