Density

Lois, Clark, Chloe, Jimmy
Season 8 (spoilers up through 8.10)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.

Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8

"Lois, I need your help."

I looked up from the hard-hitting, front-page article I was composing. Okay, so the truth was it wasn't exactly front-page article material. In fact, it was an article about a stop sign being added at Fourth and Green.

But by the time I was through dazzling the reader with my sparkling prose, it was totally going to be front-page worthy.

Anyway, the new editor-in-chief, Tess Mercer, liked my writing. She was printing massive quantities of my articles, so many there was hardly room for any other reporter in the paper any more. Well... she'd printed two of my articles, anyway. The fact that they'd both been buried at the back of section C was irrelevant.

But obviously I was improving, because I was getting stories printed regularly, in that once-a-month sort of way.

Back on topic. I looked up from my vividly written journalistic opus to find Jimmy Olsen standing beside my desk, looking worried. Big surprise there-- he always looked worried. Worried was pretty much what he did.

"What?" I said, a bit more snappily than I probably needed to. But snappy is what I do. "I'm working."

He looked like he was about to roll his eyes, but prudently didn't-- probably because he knew I would have yanked them out of their sockets and used them for marbles if he had. "I need help," he said instead.

I lifted an eyebrow. "Got a hot lead for me?"

"No. It's personal."

"Then get lost," I said, gesturing at my very important article. "I'm working, and I'm on a deadline."

Okay, so I have trouble with the politeness thing. I learned courtesy at my dad's knee. If your dad's idea of a compliment had been to tell you, from the time that you were five, that you were half as pretty as your sister, or half as talented, or a quarter as smart, you might not have a real firm grasp on the concept, either.

"Lois." He frowned at me, and I knew he wasn't impressed by the two sentences on my screen. "Chloe agreed to marry me."

"I heard." I'd gotten a call from Chloe yesterday, filling me in. She hadn't sounded wildly excited. In fact she'd sounded strangely blase about the whole thing, but I decided not to say so.

"And... well, the thing is, CK's back."

"No kidding. Smallville actually got a job here, believe it or not."

I'd been the one to hand Clark Kent the application, kind of on a whim, but I still wasn't sure how he'd manage to finagle being hired. I guessed it was those big, sweet, naive eyes. Tess was mostly restricting the staff to people she could manipulate easily. Clark definitely looked like one of those people, and probably actually was. He was straight off the farm, after all.

"I heard." Jimmy looked worried. "See, the thing is... I think CK's in love with Chloe."

"Wow," I drawled. "Stop the presses. I so totally had no clue."

"So I figure he's getting this job just to impress her, because he knows what working here meant to her." He fidgeted. "I just got her back, Lois. I don't want to lose her again."

"Look..." I shrugged. "There's not much I can do about it. Before now, you had Lana around to kind of keep Smallville distracted. He was so busy chasing after Princess Lang that he didn't have time to stop and notice Chloe. But now that Lana's gone..."

"Right," Jimmy said. "That's where you come in."

I looked at him, frowning. "You are not seriously suggesting..."

"Yeah," he answered, very seriously. "I want you to make Clark Kent fall in love with you."

Read Chapter 2 here.