Investigations Into
Interoffice Relations

Chapter 1

Falling in love in a coffee shop

Everyone working at the Daily Planet went to Caffe Artigiano for their break. It had a U-shaped, stand-up espresso bar that would not be out of place in Italy or Argentina. A small fleet of Milanese cousins served there or filled cups at the mosaic-topped tables pushed against the walls. The original owner supposedly parked his coffee cart beside the Daily Planet building back in the forties, serving Italian-style espressos and cappuccinos during the day and working as a DP graphic artist at night. The two businesses were so entwined, no one ever remarked on the large portion of DP staff sitting at the tables at any given time.

The plans for the new DP building made room for a new Caffe Artigiano, of course, but while Metropolis rebuilt, the newspaper rented a couple offices in a suburban strip mall just outside downtown. One of the offices had a space cleared away as a temporary Caffe Artigiano, complete with an espresso bar made of folding tables and patio furniture as booths. As with the original cafe, this was where the DP staff stole down time, interns, star reporters, and technical staff alike.

The temporary Caffe Artigiano was where Cat Grant deigned to speak with the hoi polloi of the Daily Planet staff. "I have gossip."

Jenny nearly choked on her caesar wrap. Ben from IT froze in the middle of slurping his latest cleanse concoction. Inez, the only other journalism intern besides Jenny, reared back like she smelled something foul. Yan Ping, the circulation gopher, looked wildly around to make sure Cat was actually talking to them and not the next table over.

"Um. That's great, Cat," Jenny said. She didn't know what else she was supposed to say. Cat's job description was all about gossip. If she wasn't so good at giving online readers their steady feed of celebutante sexcapades and rock star drug habits, the Daily Planet wouldn't have bought her blog for exclusive syndication.

Cat leaned down further. "I have staff gossip."

"For your site?"

"I'm pretty sure eager young journalists such as yourselves would love to get their toes wet with some real journalistic credits. If you can dig something juicy up, I could be persuaded to add 'writing assistant' to your resumes." Cat wiggled her expertly tweezed eyebrows at them.

Inez, finally finding air for her umbrage, opened her mouth but Jenny stepped on her foot before anything could come out.

"Wow!" said Jenny. "I didn't know the Planet's writers were that famous! That's so cool! I totes love working here, don't you guys?"

Yan Ping and Inez gaped at her. Ben chewed determinately at his burger.

"Of course they're not as well-known as me," Cat snapped. "But Superman is big news these days and that means Superman's interest in Lois Lane is fair game."

This time, Jenny had to yank on Inez's arm to keep her from talking. "You want us to investigate Lois? Is that allowed?"

"Nothing too personal, of course. The world wants to know more about Superman. Superman seems to want to know more about Lois. And Lois is... well..." Cat deliberately turned her gaze to the left.

Jenny, Yan Ping, and Ben also turned. Inez crossed her arms and stared at the table.

What Cat Grant apparently found so interesting was Lois Lane sitting beside the new hire, Clark Kent. They huddled over a pile of papers and poked at a pair of tablets, their coffees and pastry apparently forgotten. Lois' animated hand-waving and fly-away hair indicated Important Information lay somewhere on that table. In contrast, Clark remained placid, throwing in short comments whenever Lois took a breath.

"I don't get it," said Yan Ping.

"Omigod, you call yourselves journalists? Look at them," Cat said.

They looked.

Clark finally remembered they had food and was pushing the pastry plate closer to Lois who kept pushing it away as she found more and more interesting things to poke at on her tablet.

They stared back at Cat, still nonplussed.

"I see I'll have to start from the beginning," said Cat with a much-beleaguered sigh. "Their body language is incredibly intimate. Look at how their knees and shoulders face each other."

"They're in a cramped one-person table in the corner," Inez said.

"Look at how he's trying to feed her."

"Everyone tries to feed Lois," Ben said. "Whenever any of us interns get hired, no matter which department we're in, Mr White tells us to leave food at Lois' desk because she always forgets to eat."

"They're constantly eye-fucking."

Jenny almost wrenched her neck trying not to smack the palm of her hand against her face.

Cat softened her voice to a whisper. "Didn't you see it at all during the staff meeting this morning? Every time they make eye contact, they hold it for at least thirty seconds and one of them looks away blushing. Kent made three completely unnecessary reasons to stop by Lois' desk: once to give her coffee, then to give her some paper he could've easily emailed, and the third time, to return a stapler."

"Lois gets possessive about her stapler," said Jenny.

Cat continued as though she hadn't been interrupted. "Lane is even worse. She stared at Clark sitting at his desk two separate times for no reason. When she did go to his desk, she leaned over him with her best assets showing, if you know what I mean. And during the staff meeting, I would swear on a stack of bibles that they were playing footsie. I'm telling you, there's something hot and steamy going on there."

"What do you care?" asked Yan Ping. "Everyone wants to know about Superman, not Lois Lane. So what if her and Clark are getting together. I want to get with him sometimes."

"He's totally dreamy," said Ben.

"And so nice," Jenny added. "Remember when he bought all us interns pizza last week just because he thought we looked tired?"

"He even remembered I'm vegetarian," said Inez.

"Yeah, yeah, he's the next Dalai Lama." Cat waved their comments away. "I want to know for sure if they're getting together. 'Cause if they are, we can drum up some pretty good readership with a little love triangle."

Jenny didn't bother to hold Inez back this time. "What?"

"Beautiful, successful career woman caught between the love of an alien saviour of the world, and Joe Normal from Hicksville, Alabama. Do you know how many hits that would generate for the DP site?"

"I don't think we're legally allowed to snitch on our colleagues," said Jenny.

"Don't think of it as snitching. Think of it as investigative reporting for the entertainment section." Cat slung her purse more securely to her shoulder and with a "Tweet me, my peeps" thrown over her shoulder, she sashayed out of the café.

"He's from Kansas," Yan Ping muttered.

"Like we're actually going to spy on Lois and Clark for her," said Inez. "I'm not going into student debt so I can sell tabloids."

"Well, if you want to get out of student debt, I'm guessing tabloid journalism is the way to go," Ben pointed out.

"Shut up."

Never knew just what it was about this old coffee shop I love so much

With two cups of coffee balanced in each hand, a paper sack of breakfast pastry clamped between his teeth and the help of a doorman, Clark manoeuvred into the lobby of his and Lois-- his and Lois!-- hotel room. Metropolis already hummed with activity at five-thirty in the morning. He was lucky to get the first batch of maple doughnuts from the bakery three blocks down, the one Lois proclaimed were the best on the east coast.

When he got to their door, Clark hugged the coffees to his chest to free up one hand for the key. The card worked after a couple tries; he was sure he'd woken Lois up, but the room remained dark and silent. Lois was a lump under the sheets, her hair lit up by a lone ray of light that had managed to circumvent the from the blackout curtains.

Clark put down his breakfast goodies. As quietly as possible, he removed his shoes and sweatshirt. But the scent of coffee was too much even for a night owl like Lois. She groaned.

Pressing a quick kiss somewhere in the vicinity of her ear, Clark whispered, "Keep sleeping. It's early."

"Morning person," Lois grumbled into the pillow.

"Keep sleeping," Clark said again. "The coffee will keep."

"Doughnuts." One green eye glared at him from between tangles of hair. "Maple?"

"First batch of the day."

"Mmmrph."

"You can eat it in bed."

"Fffmm." Lois slapped the pillow beside her. "Hrm."

"Right now?"

She slapped the pillow harder.

Clark slid into bed, his heart thudding in his ears. They hadn't... not yet. But every night he could, he slept beside Lois and no matter how deeply asleep she was, she'd sling an arm or leg around him and everything suddenly felt less... just less. Clark was pretty sure he started falling in love with her when she snarked at him about his family shield in a military interrogation room. Seventeen days and nine hours later, he was no longer falling: he was at the bottom of the hole looking up.

He knew love didn't work this way. Nothing in Jor-el's history-- what little of it he shared while his artificial intelligence was still online-- said anything about kryptonian romance. However, everything Clark learned about human love, the real kind, not just infatuation, told him true love was a hot quiet flame tended to for long periods of time. The fairy tale version wasn't supposed to be real but, God! he desperately wanted it to be.

Lois' hand warmed his shoulder. Her feet, almost always cold, slid between his calves. He curled himself around her, his movements gentle. He tucked an arm under her head and circled the other around her back. Her swells fit perfectly into his notches, his angles into her curves. Her hair-- fine, fly-away strands that reminded him of sunlight-- tickled his cheeks.

"Mmmm." Lois nosed his collarbone. "Smell nice."

"I had one of the doughnuts," Clark confessed. "But I got you a couple more."

Using his hair as a handhold, she slid up his body. Air rushed out of Clark's lungs. Blood rushed to his face and to his groin. Lois pressed her mouth against his and as he moaned, her tongue slipped between his lips. He tightened his arms around her, pressing her close, closer, so he could feel the heat off her hips against his belly. Without breaking the kiss, Lois leaned back, tugging at Clark, signalling him to follow as she rolled onto her back. He arched over her, holding her hands in place around his neck.

"You ate a maple doughnut," said Lois. She kissed him again.

"There are two more in the bag," said Clark between the kisses.

She moved south to nibble on his neck. "The maple ones are mine."

"Don't be greedy, Lois." He traced the muscles of her back, his thumbs daring to brush the sides of her breasts.

"I don't share. My doughnuts." And Lois kissed him again, so hard and so thoroughly, Clark wasn't sure if she wanted him to take his shirt off next or if she just wanted to lick every trace of maple doughnut from his mouth. Knowing Lois, it was probably both.

Somewhere between Lois clawing his back and Clark nosing his way up from her belly to her breasts, Lois' phone alarmed.

"Fuck you," said Lois.

"I thought we were trying," Clark said, popping his head up to give her a grin and a wink.

The alarm was quite insistent to the point where Clark thought about offering to incinerate it for her, but at that moment, Lois jackknifed out of bed.

"Shit!" She grabbed the phone and repeated, "Shit!" before running to the ensuite.

Clark sighed and flopped back on the bed, aching, half-hard.

"I completely forgot my teleconference with Perry and the board in--" Lois looked at her phone for a third time-- "ten minutes about the headlines due to go online by six. They're trying to edit out references to LexCorp's lawsuits pre-attack with Luthor's PR team shoving that 'rebuilding the city of tomorrow' bullshit in our faces. Perry and I are trying to pull their heads out of their asses."

Clark opened the curtains. Dawn fought with streetlamps for the honour of lighting Metropolis up. Behind him, Lois was yanking a striped blouse over her boxer shorts.

"And for some reason, they want video conferencing, probably to show off their fancy upstate offices while we're holed up in a former video rental store. How's my hair?"

"Beautiful." Clark handed her a cup of coffee and the maple doughnuts.

"Still hot," Lois said after taking a glug.

"I reheated it," said Clark, tapping his temples.

Grinning, she leaned up to kiss him. "You're adorable and I want to eat you for lunch."

"It's a date." Jerking his thumb in the direction of the window, Clark said, "I'll just go help out so you don't have to explain to the bosses why the new hire's serving you breakfast topless."

"Just taking a page of the Good Ol' Boys' Club rule book, rookie."

I am categorically incapable of writing fic without a soundtrack.
Landon Pigg - Falling In Love At A Coffee Shop