Early June, Year 1: “I’ve Got a Crush on You” Clark was going out of his mind.
Lorry had gone undercover in one of Metropolis’s unconventional lounges, a high-end place that catered to businessmen with “exotic” tastes—which meant, in this case, Lorry-in-drag.
Clark had seen plenty of this sort of thing in his travels—a great deal of it less deliberately “avant-garde” and rebellious and self-conscious than the American versions. Far less obsession with pronouns for one thing. Clark liked Lorry as Lorry. He liked Lorry as Laura. The pan-part of him simply liked Lawrence Lane. He admired Lorry in costume. Lorry scowled at him.
“Maybe it's non-PC, but I'm not actually a girl,” Lorry hissed.
“I know,” Clark told him patiently and resisted the impulse to smooth his hand along Lorry’s wig and down his back.
“What are you doing here anyway?” Lorry said.
“You’re here undercover because the bar is run by the Metros, right? I’m here to assist my partner.” Clark gestured to his bartender’s vest and apron.
Lorry grimaced, then grinned.
“Kind of a rush, huh? Undercover?”
Across the room, a wealthy gentleman made eye-contact with Lorry and signaled coyly for service. Lorry picked up a tray.
“You’re, ah, just taking his order?” Clark said.
“He’s a man. I’m a man dressed a woman. Do you want me to draw you a diagram?”
“I’m watching you,” Clark growled.
He would have found it easier to keep his eye on Lorry if the lounge’s current manager, Toni, hadn’t approached the bar just then. She was part-suspicious, part-flirtatious, and Clark sighed. He’d gotten used to The Daily Planet, where the women collectively—probably due to Cat—had decided he was off-limits. He suspected that they all knew he was gay. Still, it was nice not to be bothered.
He smiled at Toni and said all the right things and tried not to flinch when Lorry threw him a knowing-glance, as if Lorry was getting confirmation of Clark’s straightness.
I’m not interested in her, Clark wanted to tell him. Especially since I suspect she is in cahoots with the Toasters, a group of arsonists trying to bring down property values in the area.
Lorry was less interested in the Toasters, more interested in the Metro’s inner struggle for power. Toni wanted to take over the organization from her brother Johnny—she had the backing of the family—she wanted the company to go legit—blah blah blah.
Clark found mafia problems less interesting than insect mating rituals--which latter were actually quite fascinating--hey, I coulda been a biologist--which was why Superman focused on things like putting out the Toasters’s fires and making sure Lorry didn’t get thrown into the harbor wearing cement shoes, especially after Lorry’s first piece on the Metros got published, and everyone at the club got very, very suspicious.
“Traitor,” Lorry snarled at Clark when they met up later at The Planet.
“You were sneaking around the back room. She was already suspicious.”
“We were sneaking around the back room. You could have pretended we were having a fleeting moment of passion.”
Of course, that sent Clark’s imagination into a fantasy involving—
A whole bunch of things he couldn’t afford to imagine.
He said, “I’ll remember that the next time we’re in a closet. It was better for at least one of us to avoid exposure.”
“Nobody knew who I was.”
“You saw Lex Luthor there, didn’t you?” Just like Lex, to show up in a place like that.
Right, Clark, because you and Lorry were there for completely virtuous purposes.
“He wouldn’t have given me up.”
Clark sighed in exasperation. He was fairly certain that Lex was behind the tests that occurred shortly after Superman arrived in Metropolis. The guy blew up a bank! Maybe. He was bad news, worse than the ambitious-businessman-about-town persona that Lorry attributed to him.
Don’t fall for him, he wanted to tell Lorry. But Clark wasn’t in a position to make that kind of request.
I’m such a coward. Sure Superman stopped the Toasters. And Clark helped Toni confess that she’d hired them as part of her take-over bid. But about the stuff that really mattered?
A total coward.
 |
| I ignored this scene in my fan fiction--it is never paid off |
| in the series anyway. |
Clark and Lorry’s next story involved genius children on drugs. Lorry found kids less interesting than stories about garden shows. Plus kids whined.
Perry assigned them to the story anyway. For a prior gay rights story, Lorry had gone through Metropolis’s foster parent paperwork to discover if the city would let him foster. Which they did. So he could. He used those credentials now to help the genius kids. And Clark was all smiley and supportive and Midwestern-down-to-earth laudatory about the virtues of helping widows and children. Which was embarrassing and sweet at same time.
“I bet you were a cute kid,” Clark told Lorry.
This guy is too good to be true. Don’t fall for him, Lorry.
***
Clark was getting worried.
Crime had gone down since his, or rather Superman’s arrival--violent crimes, that is. Petty crimes were on the rise.
“Precincts are slacking off,” stated Clark’s consultant, a criminologist from Metropolis Community College.
Clark had a high opinion of law enforcement. He was no Batman, there to give the authorities of a city what-for. He said gravely, feeling a little like Frank Reagan without the impressive mustache, “Law enforcement works hard to protect this city.”
“I’m not saying they don’t,” the consultant assured him. “Hey, I’m a retired detective. I’m not even saying any of this is deliberate. But when a superhero might show up at any minute to give a couple of punk kids a lecture on community service—the impulse to let minor things slide is automatic.”
In other words, Superman was making people lazy. And giving adults and children delusions of grandeur if the “smart kids” trying to take over television to demand chocolate shakes and tech were any indication.
I can't not get involved. I’m a responsible person. If I can help, I should.
At what cost? If people start to assume that I will handle every crisis, what will happen to the police, fire, 911? What about funding? What if government agencies decide, “Hey, Superman will cover it—more money for these other programs!?”
Truth is, I can’t handle everything. The city needs those agencies.
What he could do was confine himself to the big stuff. Clark made an appointment as Superman with the Chief of Police, at which meeting he tactfully suggested himself as a kind of emergency-only, ah, assistant. Which went down surprisingly well. Clark suspected that the police were afraid Superman was going to put them out of work.
Don’t worry. What I really want to do? Work at The Planet, help out Lorry, maybe even some day date Lorry and occasionally—-occasionally-—save the world. Is that too much to ask?
