Fic: And Lo, The Stubborn Shall Inherit The Clark (4/4, complete)
For the clexmas Bingo! Challenge
Shape: Individual Fill (to-be Blackout, eventually, we hope)
Prompts: Costumes (yes, it contains others, but this was the original prompt)
Title: And Lo, The Stubborn Shall Inherit The Clark
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: pre-Clex
Rating: R (to be safe)
Spoilers: general for early seasons, with a dash of in-joke or two for later-season madness :)
Word count: >11,300 total
Summary: Bunnies, drive-by-shootings, and guy chick flicks, Smallville-style. Also, scheming!Lana! (nooooooo! …wait, um, nm. We might be ok with this after all.)
Warnings: Un-beta'd. Except by the bunnies and redheads. Who only sometimes talk back, maybe.
Author's Note: Rating for sexual inclinations, and some language. Wacky timeline, story occurs sometime mid-season 2 (post-2x09, prior to 2x10 (and 2x13)) -- please assume 'events' from ‘real-life’ occurred earlier in the SVU:) Oh sweet brevity, why dost thou elude me so? No additional author’s notes at the end of the fic! Holy camoley!
Installments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Related sillyfic version of this work: Inheriting Clark -- The Happy Bunny Version!
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
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Part 3
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Lex finished his tea, set it down, and selected another plate from the table spread to lift up and share between them, this time of fruit slices and what looked like a honey-cream dip.
Speaking of mismatched roles... “Is your mother dressed as the Red Queen?” A selected apple slice was a bit more tart than he'd expected, even with the sweetening dip. It was light yet complex, and he liked it, though.
Clark nodded. “Not the movie Red Queen, though. That costume was a little too elaborate for last-minute sewing. We sort of ended up putting something together that was more like a red version of the White Queen’s gown. The Red Queen in the movie is more like the Queen of Hearts in the book, though.” Clark seemed more partial to the strawberries.
Lex’s eyebrows raised. “Why wasn’t she the White Queen, then?” He tried a pear slice next, and realized part of the tartness must have come from the dip itself. Interesting.
Clark shrugged, an apple slice in hand. “We didn’t have a white wig.” He finished demolishing that and moved on to the pears.
Lex shook his head. “Well, that seems a worse match than Chloe as the dormouse. I can’t see her raging about.” He popped a blood-orange slice in his mouth, and the combination was pleasantly almost sour.
Clark looked a little uncomfortable. “You’ve never seen her angry.” Lex gave him a look. “It’s kind of ...scary. It doesn’t happen often, though,” he offered.
Lex still couldn’t imagine it, but from Clark’s reaction he felt obligated to take his word for it. Taken in a different light, such a thing could explain why Clark was always so very, very well-behaved. However, he had always thought that Clark’s behavior was more of a case of nature beating out nurture, given Clark’s dogged determination to maintain their friendship even in the face of Jonathan’s influence.
He could certainly attest to the truth of the fiery-tempered, sharp-tongued, quick-to-anger redhead stereotype, though -- he lived it daily.
“Well, setting aside anger-management issues,” which got him a slight laugh from Clark, “she certainly seems capable of the regal commanding side of things.” The plate, now barren, he slid back onto the table.
“She put her foot down? With you?” Clark looked stunned.
“She does that at home?” The only red-haired mother he’d ever met was soft-hearted, easy-going, and tended to smile and bake a lot. Were there two Martha Kents wandering around the farm?
“Mom’s the peacekeeper.” Lex frowned, not quite understanding Clark’s implication. “Doesn’t work so well if nobody listens to her. Or if she can’t make the decision stick.”
Ah. Conflict, he knew conflict. Just in a different setting. “With two warring factions, a respected neutral third party is sought with the power to arbitrate the matter and stop the quarrel by force if necessary?”
“Uh, sure? Except she’s not a judge and there’s no cops throwing people in jail if you don’t agree?”
“The powers of judgment and military enforcement were combined, Clark, and those Magistrates were called governors or Praetors.”
Clark gave him a puzzled look.
“...I was referring to the administration of justice in Ancient Rome, notably the adjudication over warring factions in the tribal provinces of Britannia.”
“Oh. I thought you meant, like, Family Court. Or Judge Judy.”
“Warring factions on a daytime TV show?”
“Modern-day Hatfields and McCoys?”
“They let people bring guns on-set?” Lex went for the easy argument, instead of trying to argue how the pre-television-era Hatfield-McCoy feud of blood, honor, and vengeance was clearly at a different level than what most modern-day whiny little sheep could produce. Probably a good tactic, considering that he didn’t know any of the details of the mess past the names of the families involved. It was a little too modern-day for him to know its historical significance, but not exactly a current-enough event to have been read about in the newspaper, either.
“Not if they can help it, but people have chairs.” Lex gave him a blank look. “Seriously? Haven’t you ever been really sick and had to stay at home with nothing to do but watch daytime TV?”
Lex smiled. “Ah, but I don’t get sick, remember?” It was one of the side-benefits of the meteor shower he thoroughly enjoyed.
“Ok, fine, but sometimes you’re in the hospital for awhile until your lawyers scare the doctors into letting you go," Clark pointed out. "What do you watch in the hospital?”
“CNN.” Once again, reminding Clark that he had better things to do with his time than rot his brain marveling at the idiocy of the masses.
Clark rolled his eyes. “So instead you compare me and my dad arguing to tribal warfare?”
“Well, you do have a rapier, I hear,” Lex grinned. Technically it was a fencing foil, but details.
“I’m supposed to bring a sword to a shotgun fight?”
“You can take him.”
Clark laughed.
“I think I’ll stick with my mom,” Clark finished, shaking his head slightly after having calmed down again. “She tends to side with me.”
“Your neutral third party is not so neutral?”
“Something like that.”
“So, if I wanted to be gaining in Kent family good will...”
“You should totally go with mom. She already likes you.”
Really. Now that was an interesting and highly valuable tidbit of military intelligence. “She’s never taken your father to task for his prejudice or remarks against me,” even when Jonathan did so right in front of her, him, and the good Lord above, Lex pointed out. Lex knew Jonathan disliked him, at best. On a good day.
“But when he starts going too far she says ‘Jonathan!’ and makes him stop.”
“But--” that wasn’t taking his side, at best that might be enforcing a politeness extended to guests.
“Peacekeeper. Doesn’t usually start the fights.”
“She just ends them,” Lex mused.
Clark nodded decisively.
So, in the Kent family equation of social conduct, liking someone did not necessarily mean actively taking their side? He’d gotten the wrong impression from only paying close attention to Clark, then.
Hm. Then what did it mean that Martha had actively participated in maneuvering him into a position where he was dressed up as Clark’s favorite movie star and ‘forced’ to spend time enough with him to discover that fact? Or had that been Lana’s idea? He may not have been as circumspect in keeping his ‘public face’ intact when meeting with Clark there, and more than once he’d looked up to see her watching them. ...Then again, Martha had said to ‘have fun’.
Good lord, was that explicit approval and a go-ahead to date her only adopted son?
He certainly hoped so. He’d really thought he hadn’t been so blatant in his affectionate interest, though. But, she mostly certainly was not a stupid woman. Far from it.
But, if he was wrong and that hadn’t been what she had been referring to...
“I guess she does have superior firepower, though. Rifle beats shotgun.”
That startled Lex out of his mental review of past actions, which had started to run in unproductive circles. “What?”
“Mom. She’s good with a rifle. Better than dad with the shotgun, definitely.”
“Meaning?”
“Dad can shoot at coyotes in the fields. Mom can shoot down pheasants and quail.”
Ouch. He received the message loud and clear: do not annoy the formidable Kent matriarch who is, in fact, more than capable of shooting the broadside of a barn. And look, they even happened to have one of those, Lex realized hysterically.
"How... pleasant." Lex searched for some properly relevant and polite response. "Do you ever cook and eat the fowl?"
"Sure -- wouldn't want them to go to waste! They're pretty good!" Clark smiled happily.
Ye gods.
"You... eat them often?" Lex was left wondering how he could steer the topic away to something more benign that didn't involve things getting shot. This time Clark was the one to choose and lift a tray, this one of small cakes, for the two of them to share between them.
"Not really. Only during hunting season, and we only shoot the ones we find on our own land."
"Hmm." Lex selected a light cream-colored cake and lightly bit into it. Ah, but Martha did know her desserts. He recognized a Kent recipe when he tasted one. He felt his shoulders drop and he let his eyes flutter closed as he savored the taste unashamedly, and with a happy mental sigh finished off the rest in one sharp bite.
"Good?" Clark asked.
"Mmm," Lex agreed. "Only thing that could make this better would be a bit of coffee to go with it," he mused softly, then blinked his eyes open and hoped he hadn't committed some unthinkable act of blasphemy there by suggesting that Mrs. Kent's presentation was anything less than perfect, absolute, and complete, or could possibly be improved in some way.
Glancing over at Clark showed him he was safe in that measure, at least, because he seemed to have a slight smile at his response. "Yeah, I like those better with coffee than tea, too."
Lex shared a smile with Clark, up until his young friend added, "So, um, speaking of coffee..." and bit his lip while trying not to shuffle his feet.
"...yes?" Lex added wondering what exactly Clark was--
"You were hanging out with that female doctor from the hospital the other day, right?"
--oh no. No no. The mental flailing began and warning klaxons went off in Lex's head as he froze up, and he prayed that he did not have a deer-in-the-headlights look plastered across his face. Clark did not, did not go after taken girls. Even with a lot of pushing he barely did so -- not really, not like he was trying to win them over or, perish the thought, actually steal them away properly -- and Lex had a very strong feeling that his sentiment might also extend to the less-fairer sex as well. If Clark had had feelings for Lex when he'd been 'dating' Victoria, it would explain his somewhat jealous-seeming behavior much better, and his latter reluctance would have accounted for his self-removal from Lex's sphere for the interim. Lex had to play this carefully or he'd lose his chance to capture Clark's burgeoning interest before it really began --argh! He was delaying too long, too long!
"So, what was that about?" Clark prodded.
Just say something, fool!
"Ah, that was--" how could he explain this to an intelligent young man who surely saw possible flirtation in every move? "--just coffee." Lex fought the urge to kick himself, and how could he explain away what had actually been the beginnings of interest, after all? --Though it was next to nothing when compared to Clark himself, and, damnitall, had it been overheard smalltown gossip, which seemed to move faster than the speed of light, or had Clark actually seen the two of them together? "She is an interesting woman, but" -- let's damn her with faint praise, now! -- "I was only intrigued by her long memory, and the fact that a local doctor was also being forced to take anger management classes."
"Long memory?"
"...Apparently she bore witness to one of my less-than-stellar moments during my 'hard partying' phase in Metropolis," Lex admitted reluctantly. Lex knew that Clark had an idea of what his Club Zero days were like, and seemed to have moved past the idea of that not-so-long-ago prolonged lapse of his from anything that could have been styled "good behavior".
True to hope, Clark only frowned a little before letting that go. "You remembered her?"
"Ah, no, she remembered me."
Clark frowned. "How do you know she wasn't misremembering?"
"I --looked her up." Damn.
"You what?" Double-damn.
"It's-- I looked you--r family up, too. After the crash. And the truck?" Backpedal, backpedal quickly. "If I don't know someone, I have to have them researched. People who claim to remember me tend to be on the short road to blackmail or worse."
"You researched her?"
Oh god. At least Clark hadn't immediately fixated on having had someone research him however long ago, briefly, or benignly, or the bit about blackmail attempts on his person being somewhat normal fare. "How else would I know anything about anyone?"
"You could ask them yourself? Or ask Bette Smith."
"She wouldn't tell me, and I don't know who that is."
"Why wouldn't she tell you? And Bette's the Busybody. She's got her nose in almost everybody's business, and she knows everybody in town." Clark only paused to think for a moment before he added. "I'll introduce you. You shouldn't be researching people; that's rude." ...yet pumping what sounded like the town's biggest gossip for information on someone local was just fine? "You could always ask my mom, instead, if that's better." Oh yes, assuming he wanted to have to deal with Mr. Kent's attitude as the currency of payment, certainly.
"Thank you, that would be helpful," Lex managed to reply without grimacing. "Unfortunately, Helen isn't from Smallville, so that wouldn't have helped in this situation. And she didn't tell me because she was being decidedly difficult."
"But you had coffee with her anyway," Clark half-questioned, half-insisted, in a tone that implied that there must be interest there, because he knew that Lex didn't usually do things like that casually. Not with girls, anyway, and apparently Clark had yet to connect that little tidbit with the possibility of Lex's interest in him, because they went out for coffee together all the damn time.
"It was really more of an excuse to complain about the horrendous lectures and videos with someone of a like mind on the subject matter," Lex added, with as little interest and as much of a scoffing attitude as possible.
"And to get to know her better."
He was moments away from starting to pull hair out of the wig. "And now I do, and she's really quite grating. I can understand why she's in the class, and I'll be avoiding her in the future whenever possible." And the last was certainly going to be the god's-honest truth from this point forward.
Clark gave him a long look as he popped another cake in his mouth and chewed at him suspiciously.
"It was just coffee! I would much rather spend time with you!" Lex tried, more than a little desperately.
Clark rolled his eyes a little, but looked somewhat mollified as he finally gave up. "You should eat something, you're acting weird."
That sounded like something from the Martha Kent school of advice, so Lex swiped another teacake from Clark's tray and bit into it ferociously. As mood-medication went, he found it actually did quite well.
After they ate in silence for awhile and Lex had calmed down somewhat, Clark glanced over at Lex again. "We should probably head inside and get changed. It's getting late, and I don't think anybody new is going to be stopping by."
Lex had to agree. The lull was over, as people who had been inside the Talon were just now starting to stream out in ones and twos, and the street was becoming no longer deserted.
"I suggest that we swing around the back and take the side entrance through the kitchen," Lex recommended quietly.
Clark nodded as they both tidied up the plates and dishes on the large platter. Lex handed Clark back his bunny head, and once he had it back on they split up the platter, folding table, and tea party sign between them and made their way in relative quasi-anonymity to safety behind several sets of closed, locking doors.
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In the back room, Clark first helped Lex remove his head ornamentation, then makeup. That gentle, careful procedure aside, they sought after their original garments, then each changed into their own clothing in separate areas of the room, behind shelving, backs turned to each other. Once done, it was a waiting game: relax in idleness until everyone had left the shop so that there would be no witnesses to connect the entering characters with the exiting people, and thus no-one would be the wiser to their identities... at least in Lex's case. Clark's duties for the day, he supposed, would be known to everyone in short order due to Chloe's big mouth, if it wasn't already common knowledge at this point. They both ended up casually lounging on the floor, sitting side-by-side with their backs against one of the shelving units, ignoring the dust.
"Clark?" Lex began quietly.
"Hmm?"
"Are you doing anything Saturday afternoon?"
"I'm helping my dad with the tractor," Clark shrugged ambivalently.
"Oh."
"...I'm free in the evening, though," Clark offered instead. "Why?"
"I thought you might like to come over and watch movies. We haven't done that in awhile."
"What, no hot date with Helen?"
"No!" Lex spat back in denial, straightening, before catching the wicked too-innocent look in Clark's eye. Apparently, his brain needed to catch up to his mouth; he wasn't processing Clark's good-natured teasing very well at the moment.
Clark got a quirky smile and wrapped an arm around Lex's shoulders. "Ok, ok, I get it, you don't really like her all that much."
"I really don't," Lex agreed in a half-mutter, leaning back again. At this point, he really wished they'd never met. Either time.
"Ok, so, what time?"
"Six P.M.?" That was about the earliest one could call 'evening' in the Kent household. Dinner was usually around that time.
Clark grinned. "I dunno, you gonna feed me if I come over before eating?"
Lex nodded. They'd done that before. His kitchen staff didn't mind -- if anything, they liked it when Clark came over and ate lots of food.
"Ok, six P.M. then."
Lex let out a soft sigh and shifted slightly to lean into Clark a little more. Clark let him, or didn't seem to notice... except that he shifted his arm a bit to make Lex a little more comfortable, so maybe he did.
Clark played basketball in his driveway, enjoyed dress-up for tea parties, held his own in long rambling conversations with historical and geeky scientific references sprinkled liberally throughout, snarked away at movies with the best of them, and excitedly cheered football games with his friends from the stands, alike. Clark teased and challenged him equally well, seemed to care about Lex's well-being sometimes even more than his own, and their silences together were more comfortable than anything Lex had ever known. Was it any wonder Lex loved him? How could he not?
Lex slowly closed his eyes and smiled.
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Next fic in the Easter!Clark series: Don't Quote Me On This
Next fic after that (immediately follows this one): Solve This Equation: Movie Night + Popcorn + Clark = ?
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Reference photos for “Alice in Wonderland (2010)” (not an AN, I didn’t lie! Muhahahaha!):
White Rabbit
Mad Hatter 1 and Mad Hatter 2
Alice
Red Queen
White Queen 1 and White Queen 2
Dormouse