Chapter Text
Lois wasn’t a romcom girl, but even she was familiar with the old chestnut about men and women being unable to be friends with each other without things getting weird and messy. For her part, maintaining friendships with people of any gender was hard. A childhood spent moving between different military bases wasn’t conducive to putting down roots or creating deep, lasting friendships. Even after getting hired at the Daily Planet, she didn’t have friends, she had colleagues (and rivals).
Then he showed up.
At first, Lois hadn’t taken much notice of Clark Kent. That is to say, she obviously noticed him - he was kind of unnecessarily large - but she didn’t think much of him professionally. He went to a no-name school in one of the flyover states and she didn’t think he’d last a week under Perry White’s benevolent dictatorship. This was his first professional job out of college and, in her opinion, the fast-paced world of big city journalism was just not the right fit for a guy whose parents literally made a living watching grass grow.
(Okay, yes, to be fair, working at the Planet was also her first professional job out of college, but while she and Clark essentially had the same CVs, she interned under Perry for a year before she was hired full-time which basically made her a veteran and more than qualified to cast aspersions on her colleagues.)
Clark lasted the one week. Then two more weeks. It took about a month before Lois grudgingly admitted to herself that he was actually…kind of…in a manner of speaking… really good at his job. Shortly thereafter, she realized he was also a really good person. The two were strangely intertwined - there was something inherently trustworthy about Clark that made people feel comfortable, that made them feel safe to talk to him - often with more candor than was wise - when he asked them questions.
This ineffable quality Lois mistook, at first, for naivete, but it turned out Clark was just a naturally enthusiastic and curious person. When she asked someone, “How was your weekend?” (a question she almost never asked), she neither wanted nor cared for any answer other than, “Fine,” or, if she was in a friendly mood, “Pretty good.”
When Clark asked the same question, with genuine interest, he got real stories. Family histories. Anecdotes. His ability to get people talking extended beyond the water cooler to interview subjects, transforming small talk into smoking gun quotes.
Even she wasn’t immune to what was becoming known around the office as the Kent Charm Offensive. First, it was just joining him for a coffee run, making chit chat in line. Turned out he had a dry, snarky sense of humor, decent taste in movies, and a surprisingly eclectic taste in music.
They became friends. Like, to the point where they would call each other to talk on the phone using their voices in real time, a feature that Lois only ever used to make doctors’ appointments. And then there was TV and Takeout.
That clinched it for her, Clark’s Genuine Nice Guy (as opposed to NiceGuyTM) status. A show they both liked had gone off streaming, but Lois had the DVDs. She invited him over to eat pizza and binge watch the first season. He accepted and arrived with a bottle of screw top wine and a six pack of seltzer. They split the bottle, ate the pizza, watched the show, and at no point did Clark try to make a move on her.
He sat on one side of the couch and though he draped an arm along the back of the sofa, he never tried to touch her. Around ten o’clock he checked the time, cleaned up the remains of their meal, thanked her for letting him come over, and went home. No awkward pauses in the doorway, expecting her to ask him to stay, no sidelong glances at her closed bedroom door. He didn’t even look at her with a hangdog expression and ask if he could have a hug.
Granted, the bar for acceptable behavior for an adult man toward an adult woman was so low as to be subterranean, but Clark nevertheless cemented himself in her mind as trustworthy that night.
Of course, a weekly tradition of TV and Takeout did not completely send all of Lois’s cynical walls tumbling down. The ultimate test of his trustworthiness and her ability to put stock in it came to a head following an all-staff meeting at the Planet .
There was a shake-up in the vacation policy that had Perry raving about attacks on the free press. The reality was nothing close to a constitutional crisis: the old policy, which guaranteed 147 hours of PTO, with unlimited rollover, was fairly generous on paper. In practice, among a staff of people who followed their boss’s example of looking at vacation time as a test of their mettle (a test which one failed if they took time off for anything other than a dire emergency), the average amount of time most Planet staff took was in the low 50s. This resulted in hundreds and hundreds of hours of banked vacation time - per employee. A recent retirement spree alarmed the payroll office so much that they implemented a 35-hour rollover limit, effective immediately.
People had to use it or lose it. Which meant that long dreamed-of cruises, camping trips, European vacations, and the like were getting booked left, right, and center.
Lois didn’t have the money for anything elaborate and was instead looking forward to a long, miserable week burning through her PTO on her couch, working out of sheer desperation for something to do. She’d been complaining about this to Clark who said she could come home with him, if she wanted.
“The county fair’s coming up, it’s a good time to visit,” he offered. “You can stay at my parents’, they’ve got plenty of room and would love to have you.”
Clark looked genuine, but he always looked genuine. There was a small, but loud part of Lois’s mind that said this was a joke, he was kidding, and if she accepted, she’d look like an idiot when he sputtered (or worse, laughed in her face) and told her she was absolutely not invited to his parents house for a week. Were county fairs even a thing anymore?
“It’s not Paris or Disneyland,” he acknowledged, taking a cue off her skeptical expression. “But it’s also a shorter flight and not as expensive, so there’s that. Think about it, let me know.”
Lois did think about it and decided to call Clark’s bluff by saying yes, she’d love to go to Smallville, Kansas (a place she was not convinced actually existed). She then embarked on a game of chicken with him where they both kept raising the stakes.
He submitted his vacation slip to the admin office and she submitted one for the same week (Wednesday to Wednesday) - both were approved.
He claimed to have bought airline tickets and said his mom would pick them up and drive them out to the farm. She sent him her half of the fare through a cash app, which he accepted. That commitment to the bit impressed her - it was a pretty ballsy move to accept real money for a fake trip.
He drew up a list of must-eat fair snacks and she agreed to try all of them, especially the ones she was pretty sure were fake (like fried butter).
It was only on the night before they were supposed to fly out when Clark sent her a screenshot of her boarding pass with a text that read ‘See you in the morning!’ followed by a simile face and an airplane emoji that she realized they might actually be doing this.
Lois then began frantically searching up phrases like, “Smallville, Kansas” and “county fair.” Lo and behold, there was such a place! And there was also an upcoming county fair, which would be kicking off on Thursday.
“Oh my God, I need to pack!” Lois exclaimed aloud into the silence of her empty apartment. It was around midnight (six hours before she needed to be at the airport) when she started spamming Clark’s phone with a flood of texts.
Do I have to wear overalls?
Thankfully, he responded within seconds.
No? Not unless you want to.
Will it look weird if I’m NOT wearing overalls?
No.
Will YOU be wearing overalls?
Probably not.
Okay, that was a relief. Lois looked about ten years old when she attempted to make overalls work as fashion.
The thing was, although she had lived in many different places over the course of her childhood, none of them had been particularly rural. As a result, her only reference points for anything resembling a farming community came from mid-century American television. And she was pretty sure, in everything from Green Acres to the Beverly Hillbillies, someone was constantly wearing overalls. If not overalls, then…
What about cowboy boots?
Not unless you’re planning on doing a lot of riding. Are you?
The last time she’d been on anything resembling a horse was at some classmate’s birthday party when she was seven It was a pony and it tried to bite her. So that was a big no.
Do I need a cowboy HAT?
My parents own a grain farm, not a ranch. I’m not saying you will encounter zero cowboys on this trip, but you are not expected to become one.
That was slightly reassuring, but only slightly.
Will I have to ride a bull?
Again: Farm. Not ranch. We don’t own any cattle. There IS a mechanical bull at one of the bars nearby, you can ride that one if you want.
Did she want to ride a bull, mechanical or otherwise? Lois wasn’t entirely sure, but she wanted to be prepared for the expectation that she would, in fact, ride any bull that was presented to her.
Will I have to tip a cow?
That is Not A Thing. You know what is a thing? Needing to be up in five hours to make our flight. Night Lois!
There was one more thing she kind of needed to know before they departed - it was a little too late to cancel the trip over, but she wanted to be prepared.
Will I have to go to church?
This time, it took Clark a minute to reply. Three little dots appeared and disappeared in their text chain. Then, finally:
My family goes to meeting, not churchy-church. It’s only once a month and not happening when we’re there.
Even if there WAS meeting, you wouldn’t HAVE to go. No one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.
The point is to relax. I know you struggle with that, we’ll work on it. Starting with getting half a good night’s sleep 🙂
Lois rolled her eyes and tossed her phone aside. Then picked it back up immediately to look up what the weather in Kansas would be like during their trip - hot and sunny. She filled up her carry-on with shorts and t-shirts, threw a pair of sandals in along with a travel tube of sunscreen, zipped the whole thing shut, and went to bed without brushing her teeth.
Or setting an alarm. At 6:15 something knocked into her window, jolting her awake. It must have been an extremely confused bird, but she was grateful for it as she jumped into the shower, ran a brush through her hair, brushed her teeth, and, finally, rubbed a little extra hand soap under her arms because she’d already packed her deodorant.
She made it to the gate with fifteen minutes to spare before boarding; Clark was waiting for her with a half-melted iced coffee in hand.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, accepting the coffee, trying to discreetly sniff her armpits to see how the hand soap was holding up. “Traffic.”
Clark took her lateness with good grace and Lois finally had to accept that they were really doing this, that Clark had been the one to call her bluff. She was actually meeting his parents, spending a week at his house, going to a country fair, and eating fried butter.
What the hell had she gotten herself into?