Density, Chapter 3

Lois, Clark, Chloe, Jimmy
Season 8
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.

Clark Kent was dense.

Seriously, there was no other word to describe him. He was dense. Flirting bounced right off him like rocks thrown at a brick wall. On his first day at work, an explosion conveniently rocked the building, and I threw myself against him. Instead of pulling me against him, or holding me in his arms a trifle too long, like most guys would have, he simply grabbed my arms, very politely, and put me back on my feet.

Not too much later, a meteor freak who could kill men with a kiss came to town. While explaining endorphins and orgasms to Clark (who acted like he had no clue what a climax was), I sort of, well, sucked on the end of my pencil. Not subtle. But he just looked at me blankly: Why are you chewing on a perfectly good pencil?

Dense, I'm telling you.

Later that night, I found him macking on the meteor freak redhead in the elevator. I was genuinely pissed, because hello, I was trying to get the guy to notice me, and instead he was noticing other women instead. Yeah, okay, she had some sort of freakish control over men, so he probably couldn't help it. But still. I stalked off, doing my best to look jealous, and he came after me, apologetic, but not in the least interested in touching me.

But of course he never would have chosen the redhead over me if she hadn't had some sort of freakish control over men. I think that's obvious. I mean, a contest between me and some gorgeous, stacked redhead? Come on. The winner should be obvious. Like I said before, I'm hot.

The redhead informed me that Clark and I had some sort of bond, so she intended to kill me. I figured she was just looking for an excuse to kill me because I was hotter than she was, because the only bond Clark and I had was the fact that our computers were plugged into the same outlet... and that sounds a lot dirtier than I meant it to.

Even so, the words reminded me of something Jimmy had told me once. He'd gone to see this gypsy who'd sold me some lipstick (pretty color, but nasty side effects) and she'd informed him that Clark and I had entwined destinies, or something like that.

But it was rapidly becoming obvious to me that Clark and I had no destiny together. None whatsoever. Not that I'd ever really thought we'd make a good couple, but if I'd ever been inclined to think that way, the events of the last few weeks had convinced me otherwise.

In fact, I honestly doubted Clark would ever manage to reproduce with anyone. If a girl stripped off her shirt in front of him, he'd probably just politely pick it up and hand it back to her. He was that dumb.

After the incident with the redhead, Jimmy and Chloe had an engagement party. I hate to admit it, but I sort of got drunk there, because, well, it was starting to get on my nerves the way Clark looked at Chloe, with his heart shining right out of those big green eyes. He just would not look in my direction. He was so disinterested in me that it was kind of painful.

It wasn't like I had any real feelings for Clark, but his obsessive focus on Chloe was really starting to grind holes in my ego.

Besides, I'd had a guy who looked at me that way once, with his heart in his eyes. I'd given him up, but I couldn't stop thinking about him. The more Clark looked at Chloe that way, the more I thought about...

Well, his name is of no consequence. Really, I hardly remember it at all.

Hell, after that party, I hardly remembered anything at all.

I guess I had a little more to drink than I meant to, and Clark wound up taking me back to his farm, probably because Jimmy and Chloe wanted to kill me for some of the things I later found out I said. I must have done a striptease for Clark-- in fact, I blurrily remember it, and I don't know if it was hot or embarrassing. I seem to recall that I meant it to be enticing, but I think I may have puked in the middle of it, so it probably wasn't quite as hot as I meant it to be.

But sure enough, I was right. Even stripping in front of the guy wasn't enough to seduce him. Although I have to admit the puking probably didn't help.

Anyway, when I woke up, the farmboy had put me into his old football jersey and let me sleep in his bed. I knew without asking that we hadn't slept together, and that he'd crashed out on the couch like the gentleman he was, but I asked anyway, just to watch him squirm. His eyes got big, and he stammered out a negative, and told me to get dressed.

Later that day, we discovered that Jimmy and Chloe had gotten abducted, and we needed to find them. Since two seconds of research disclosed that it was engaged couples who were being abducted, I suggested we impersonate an engaged couple shopping for rings and parade around downtown Smallville. He looked like he'd swallowed a lemon, but played along, and we went to Smallville Jewelers and tried on rings. Clark didn't look happy about it, and he didn't seem to enjoy holding my hand much.

Dense.

Anyway, the point is that I was doing everything besides a lap dance to get him to look at me, and he wasn't paying attention, or even noticing. We wound up getting abducted ourselves, and that got a little scary, because our abductor was a psychopath who'd been cheated on by his wife, and he was testing engaged couples, and electrocuting the ones he felt weren't good enough. He asked me if I loved Clark, and I panicked, having no idea what to say.

Did I love Clark? Of course I did, as a friend. But I wasn't sure that would be enough for the lie detector. And if it caught me out in what the guy deemed to be a lie, Clark would get zapped-- and even if I didn't love Clark that way, I didn't want to watch him being fried right in front of me. And what if I said I didn't love him? The guy would probably zap Clark anyway, because if we were engaged, I certainly ought to love him, right?

I cried and stalled until I managed to slip the device off my finger, and then weepily confessed to my supposed deep love for my fiance. Clark looked at me kind of oddly, but later, after the guy had let us go, I explained how I'd slipped the clip off my finger. I'm not absolutely certain he believed me (ironic, since it was true), but he didn't argue about it.

Once we were all out of danger, Clark went back to calling Chloe all the time, even when he was supposed to be working, and when he hung up the phone after talking to her, he'd stare into space with this really stupid look on his face, until I had to throw a paper airplane at him to get him back on planet Earth.

He had it bad, poor guy. No matter how much I tried to get him to look my way... he was pretty much stuck on the all-Chloe, all the time station.

I actually felt kind of sorry for him. I mean, he was obviously madly in love with her, and she was getting ready to marry the man she loved. It was just so sad.

The poor dumb sap.

In the meantime, Jimmy was growing frantic. He was scared to death Clark was going to do something crazy, make a move on Chloe, abduct her-- pick a scenario. Jimmy was obviously going nuts himself, but the unfortunate truth was, I wouldn't have put it past Smallville to do something like that. In fact he had done something like that a couple of years ago, when Lana Lang had gotten engaged.

And it was becoming painfully obvious that Smallville felt a lot more for Chloe than he ever had for Lana. The look in his eyes every time he saw Chloe was... well, heartrending.

I began to think Jimmy had a point, and that there was a fairly good chance Clark was going to abduct Chloe and run off with her, too.

I decided it was time to confront him.

Read Chapter 4 here.