Fic: Spooky Stuff (3/7, complete, all parts linked)
Art by sanadafaye
Back to Master Post
Back to Part 2
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Lex had been slogging along through wind and freezing-cold rain in straight lines, successfully getting closer to his goal, but his mind had been wandering about in winding circles, not really getting anywhere.
He scrubbed a hand down his face and flicked off a good bit of moisture. It was getting even colder now that nighttime was nearly upon the town, and he really needed to get out of the elements soon. He picked up his walking pace yet again, not caring now if he looked harried by the weather - it wasn’t as if anyone was around to be watching him, anyway, all snug in their houses with all the lights out.
Well, except for very faint lights visible through some of the windows. Candles? Lanterns? Flashlights? He shook his head to himself. He was losing focus on what was important again.
He really hadn’t been getting anywhere, though. Every time he tried to think of what he would say and all the possible ways that any of the Kents could respond, he started to meander into outright fantasy, or draw a blank. Their reactions to the chemical dumping had been unexpected on all fronts. Mrs. Kent, usually quietly supportive, or at least neutral, had actually withdrawn from him, warned him away from her family and Clark, and he assumed vice-versa as well.
Clark… well, his running away from him had been atypical. He’d never just given up during an argument before, and he generally didn’t run from his problems; if anything, when he saw problems, he tended to run towards them, as far as Lex could tell. Mr. Kent’s outright and very loud, very explicit aversion to his presence was, while far beyond anything Lex had been on the receiving end of from him before, actually the most normal-seeming of the three, and he had to be slightly out of his mind in that he almost found that familiar reaction a little comforting.
Lex started to sigh, checked himself, then thought to hell with it and let his breath out gustily. Maybe he was going at this all wrong. Maybe he should be less concerned with trying to play things out just so with verbal sparring, and instead concentrate on attacking the underlying issues.
…Which are what, exactly?
‘Clark running away from me, and the problem of friendship,’ Lex thought promptly, then winced internally at his own self-centeredness.
More Clark-centered, that would be: Clark feeling like he had to run away from him… and the problem of friendship. They were probably connected, too.
Well, that was easy.
Clearly the cold and the wet had been getting to him, for it to have taken him this long.
But it occurred to him that Clark had not just run away from him, but also away from his other friends. Lex hadn’t been standing between Clark and either of the doors, and Clark could have just as easily run out into the main area of the Talon to his other friends for comfort, instead of out into the cold. The inside door had been the one closest to him, in fact.
So why hadn’t he sought after the solace of his friends when Lex had only barely avoided imploding inwards by instead exploding in front of him, largely at him? Wouldn’t a good group of close friends who cared about him have gathered around him, closed ranks about him, and comforted him? Maybe even told Lex off in the process? Friends didn’t laugh and jeer at another friend while they were on the verge of tears and feeling miserable, right?
Of course, Lex was pretty sure that friends weren’t supposed to yell at other friends when they were feeling upset about something that didn’t really have anything to do with those other friends, either, especially when those other friends were feeling concerned about their well-being and wanting to help. Even if the way they tried to go about it was totally unhelpful. He felt like even more of a heel thinking about it.
Could Clark really not trust his friends to be on his side and support him when he needed it? Surely it had simply not crossed his mind to seek them out, for whatever reason…
…or maybe Clark just had crappy friends. Crappy friends that didn't deserve his trust. He obviously wanted more, though, and had actually felt comfortable enough with Lex to tell him exactly what he wanted.
Lex didn't want to be a crappy friend.
Sure, Clark seemed to want the impossible, possibly unobtainable, but when had that ever stopped Lex from trying?
And, he had to admit, though with no small amount of trepidation, what Clark had said had resonated with some deep part of him, despite his counter. His desperate counter, because he'd been feeling pretty damn vulnerable the last few days, and he tended to counterattack when he was feeling vulnerable and someone was making him feel something -- something overwhelming that he couldn't quite identify or put words to, didn't understand, and couldn't control. Back off and pull away emotionally, and that was the best way to deal with his dad, who was the only one who could still make him feel at such a deep level anymore, who always made it hurt. With Clark... he hadn't been trying to let the boy in past the surface level, but somehow Clark had gotten under the surface when he wasn't looking, slowly, inexorably, irreversibly, and he'd lost unregainable ground.
Apparently he'd gotten in through the locked doors of his heart and mind and was well on his way to exploring all down the dusty corridors and making Lex his own... something. "Friendship" did not cover this. "Friendship of legend" hardly did it justice.
But he hadn't been trying to prove his own point at all -- that was what scared him. He agreed with Clark. He'd wanted Clark to tell him he was wrong, and to give him all the reasons why. He didn't have reasons why. He needed them, craved them -- some excuse. Any excuse. For his accusations, he'd pulled together memories of half-allusions to thoughts and actions, quiet observation via guarded sideways glances, and a good amount of guesswork building from his patchwork understanding of the small group’s teenage personalities to tie what he'd said together -- and much of the information had been gleaned from conversations with Clark himself and his reactions.
It hadn't occurred to him that what he had been saying might have been truly accurate. He'd never thought that Clark's chosen small-town friends could be so shallow; Clark seemed fairly discerning in what he expected from people, and why would he spend so much time with them if they weren't worth it? Worth him? He'd confirmed no less than that very same thing earlier, telling Lex that he believed Lex worthy of such distinction, at the start of that disastrous end.
But it suddenly occurred to him -- Clark didn't exactly have a lot of potential friends to choose from, now did he? In a 45,001 population town, how many people were Clark's age? Smallville High wasn't that big. Maybe 300 people in his year-group? Far less than that who he'd know from his classes. And, what if they really were typical small-town people with small-town mindsets? Clark wasn't stupid -- Lex wouldn't waste his time trying to converse with him if he was -- and he doubted that Clark would feel comfortable trying to hold long, intelligent conversations about the things he found interesting, which often had nothing to do with the town or the farm, with people who… wouldn’t agree with him, and might ridicule him for it if he tried.
Taking that into consideration, if there was one thing about Clark's friends that they all had in common, which also made them different from all of the other highly-forgettable teenagers running about town, it was that they didn't just 'go with the flow': they were all outside the norm in one way or another, and each of them had thoughts and goals that went beyond the town limits. Perhaps the last was why they were outsiders.
They didn't fit in; their hearts and minds were elsewhere, and eventually, someday the rest of their bodies would catch up with them -- some sooner than others. Case-in-point: Lana Lang, who'd been living the small-town girl dream for years -- fairy princess, head cheerleader, loved and beloved by all -- and in general winning the popularity contest for life. She had suddenly stopped being 'the good girl' who was always trying to fit in by following the rules and unwritten strictures of the community. She'd literally thrown it all away and decided to go independent and aggressively entrepreneurial instead. Her reputation and the expectations of the entire town and anyone else be damned. Talk about bucking the system... that girl bore watching.
Pete wanted out of town. Drive and drive and never look back, was the impression Lex got. He was itching to go: Lex had sensed that from him, even without Clark having confided the knowledge. Chloe was from out of town -- newly transplanted from the big city a little over a year ago by Gabe -- and a true Metropolis girl through-and-through, highly energetic, pushy, explosive, questioning everything and getting what she wanted almost all the time, and what she wanted was to return to her home once she was done here.
Lana obviously had dreams and aspirations beyond those of normal teenagers, passions and memories to keep alive, and Lex doubted that she'd stay in town even as long as Chloe, once she realized that whatever it was that she wanted for herself clearly wasn't here. Lex himself... was Metropolis, in a way. Although, sometimes he felt like he was becoming acclimated to the town somehow; he never seemed to miss Metropolis as much as he thought he should since he'd come here. Not even once. And, instead of driving the distance to Metropolis to go clubbing nights, he found more enjoyment from long rambling talks with Clark up to his curfew, or exposing Clark to the joys of classic movies and kettle corn at the mansion for impromptu weekend movie fests. Sometimes in the afternoon, no less. Lex snorted to himself. 'My way of bucking the trend is trying to become more wholesome, God help me.'
So, if they were all birds of a feather flocking together, what did that make Clark? Clark was the small-town farmboy and dutiful, hardworking Kent son the way Lex was the Metropolis playboy and envied and feared Luthor scion. Yet, neither one of them quite fit in their proscribed roles.
Clark, as much as he fit in the town, somehow really didn't belong in Smallville, and it drove Lex to distraction sometimes trying to figure out why that was. Other than one totaled car with some really... interesting... dents and tears in its metal components, and a none-too-clear memory of their eyes meeting immediately prior to a head-trauma-inducing, very bad crash -- both less than absolute concrete proof, together more than just hearsay -- he'd had no solid reasoning to back that instinctive feeling... until now.
If Clark were some normal teenager, he wouldn't be hanging out with what were effectively a bunch of misfits, himself included, and they with him. So, there was something more going on there. His level of intelligence was one thing, but the rest... there were days when it was blatantly obvious to him that Clark was forcibly immersing himself in everyday mediocre ho-hum forgettable nonsense, and he did it periodically. It was intensely and oddly directed in such a way that Lex had begun to wonder what vectors Clark was trying to satisfy when he did it. It reminded him a little of Clark’s aborted attempts at Lana, in a way - short-lived, intense, seeming to accomplish nothing. Most distressingly, the overall impression Clark made when doing so all but outright screamed “average!” in a vague sort of way, as though he could cloak himself in it, needed to physically armor himself with it, against the horrors of the world. It was almost as though he sought after normality like a starving man despaired of food and drink.
...And people generally craved what they wanted desperately but didn't have.
Suddenly, everything slid into place. Lex had always suspected Clark wasn’t normal. But Clark knew he wasn't normal, perhaps painfully aware of this fact, and Lex hadn’t really thought through what that self-awareness might mean for his friend before. ...Especially since, unfortunately, for whatever reason, Clark apparently felt he had to be normal, or in the worst-case at least seem that way to everyone else while trying to be.
And, like most anyone, Clark was friends with people who were the closest to him -- to being like him -- that he could get… but this meant that Clark's friends weren't normal, either. Yet Clark couldn't get very close to his friends because then they'd find out that he wasn't normal, too (--see previous: Clark had to be normal), while Clark's friends got as close to him as they could get, as close as he would allow. Not could allow, would allow. But Clark wanted close friendships; he’d proclaimed just as much, earlier.
Furthermore, because of Lex, Clark must have suddenly realized that there was a difference between what he could allow -- far more than he normally allowed -- what he should allow -- far less than he would allow -- and what he wanted to allow -- which maybe surpassed what he thought he could allow, was capable of allowing. It came down to a simple soul-wrenching, mind-wrecking conclusion: Clark couldn't get close without giving up trying to be normal. He wanted to get close. He needed to be normal.
Double-bind. Deadlock.
Small wonder it had looked as though his thought process had crashed and burned and he'd panicked and fled. People had screaming breakdowns and lost their minds over less. His response was perfectly reasonable given the circumstances. And of course the “need” had won out over the “want”.
Lex cursed. He'd done exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. …Well, since he'd put the pressure on, it was only fair that he be the one to try and take it off. He'd have to try and think of a good way to approach doing so; luckily, with an idea of what must have happened inside Clark's head, he felt he had a chance. On reflection, he grimly realized that he was going to have to be brutally straightforward and painfully honest to get anywhere, though. Anything less than jarringly direct probably wouldn't make it through, and any dishonesty now would, when discovered, invariably lead to a deep distrust that could potentially cause backlash enough that Clark might never open up to anyone ever again -- the risk of further pain being just too high.
He looked up and realized that he'd finally slogged his way to the Kent farm. Frowning through the rain under a darkening sky -- it was getting close to sundown -- he realized, as he walked down the main drive, that the truck wasn't there. Where were Clark's parents? Was that why no one had answered the phone? Was Clark home alone? Or could the family have all left for someplace else together? --That seemed unlikely, but for Clark not to answer the phone, regardless of the situation… wasn’t that equally unlikely? Lex felt a bit of trepidation, but it was quickly shoved down. He hadn’t done that much damage to their relationship, had he?
Lex started to trudge up to the house, then paused and looked back towards the barn. If Clark were in a bad mood, he'd be liable to head to the latter more than the former, but if he'd been soaked to the bone by the rain, by rights he ought to be in the house.
Well, Lex probably couldn't get much more wet himself spending a little time checking the barn, just in case. He didn't want to try to break into the house only to find that Clark wasn't inside.
Lex shoved the barn door open with a grimace and slipped inside. He set the umbrella off to the side on the ground, for all the good it had done him on the long walk over here -- the wind had blown the rain at him sideways more times than he'd bothered to count. He shivered at the change in temperature, and realized the barn was actually slightly warmer than out-of-doors. Listening to the horses in the few stalls, he wondered if it was a combination of animal body heat and windbreak, or just one of the two, or inexplicably something else. He even spared a thought for the cows outside that were probably miserable in this weather, until he remembered that the entire herd had died from the illegal chemical dumping.
The blowing wind didn’t quite rattle the sides of the barn, though Lex had half-expected it, nor did he hear any of the whistling sounds he usually associated with air gusts forcing their way into an improperly-sealed building and creating drafts. He shivered for a moment before absently curling his arms around his midsection. The sturdiness of the barn aside, the storm wasn’t letting up, and while the horizon was clear of the storm clouds to the west, he’d seen that the storm stretched out as far as he could see across the Kansas grasslands to the north, from whence the wind was coming. Lex didn’t want to think about the pressure fronts that might have caused this, or the possibility that this was tornado weather and he too ignorant to know it.
The hayloft window was open, but with the last dim twilight rays able to struggle across the horizon and under the cloud-cover being further blocked by the driving rain, there wasn't much fading light making its way inside. He went for his keychain flashlight, but in trying it he realized that water must've gotten inside the tool at some point, either during one of his intermittent soakings, or when he had dropped it on the ground earlier, because it was producing no light.
He sighed and gave himself a few moments to acclimate to the gloom, and realized that while there were deep shadows on the ground level, he could still navigate carefully by the intermittent flashes of lightning... and by memory. The Kents usually kept the main area open, at the very least clear to the staircase up to the loft, and with a start Lex realized that he'd visited Clark's 'fortress' more often than he'd been in many of the rooms in the mansion. He'd certainly spent more time here than any of the rooms other than the library, the dining room, the kitchen, and his bedroom. He wondered what he should be thinking of that, then shook his head and refocused on who was important at the moment -- Clark -- not himself.
He was certain by the time he reached the base of the stairs that Clark couldn't be in here -- he'd heard nothing from above, there was no light and no movement, and no greeting or acknowledgment of any sort. But when he'd gotten high enough to see level with the floor of the loft, he shivered hard and nearly gasped in horror.
Clark was here, after all.
He was sprawled, eyes wide open. Not on the ratty old couch, but across the low coffee table in front of it. His head was towards the stairs, tilted back at the ceiling, his arms and legs loosely dangling off the sides of the table in a manner that made Lex sick to his stomach, a purely visceral reaction to the sight. He wasn't moving. He had all the vitality of a corpse.
Lex stumbled up the stairs and dropped down to crouch behind his head. His hands hovered over him uncertainly, then he saw, after his eyes cleared from the afterimage of another lightning flash, that Clark was breathing, just very slowly and shallowly. But, his eyes weren't blinking. In fact, they seemed almost silver-blue, reflecting the light a little like a cat's, but fundamentally different somehow. He suppressed a shiver -- weren't Clark's eyes green?
He wasn't focused on Lex at all. He seemed to be a million miles away, and he apparently hadn't heard him come in, or trudge up the stairs, despite the fact that Lex hadn't been trying to be quiet at all. When Lex leaned over him, almost eye-to-eye, he was completely unresponsive. Five seconds passed. Ten. Fifteen. Thirty. God, he still wasn't blinking.
"C-Clark?" Lex asked tentatively, finally finding a place for his hovering hands on Clark's shoulders. "Can you hear me?" This wasn't right. Was he drugged? Under the influence of something?
"...Clark?"
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Clark came back to himself all at once. He closed his eyes in a long blink, took a deep breath, shifted his whole body slightly, reacquainting himself with the feeling of his muscles in a gravity field, then reopened them, letting his breath out slowly.
Lex's face was hovering above him, inches from his own. He blinked.
Lex blinked back, then looked somewhat... relieved? "Clark…" he breathed.
Clark stared.
“Clark?”
He watched the relieved smile slowly slip from Lex's face, to shift into a furrowed brow and downturned lips and slowly lowering eyebrows.
"Are you all right?"
Clark didn't respond. It was weird that Lex was here.
"What were you doing?"
Lex had interrupted him practicing tricks with his vision. He'd been trying to get the layered stuff down, just trying to see through the roof of the barn to the rain without giving himself headaches, but after awhile he'd realized that he could 'zoom in' and 'zoom out' on things like looking through a telescope at the same time as looking through the things in-between. He'd never been able to do that before, though it occurred to him that maybe it was because he’d never thought to try. Once he’d gotten the hang of the ‘zoom’ after staring at the ceiling for a minute or so, he’d tried combining the two again on purpose. It had gotten really interesting when he'd zoomed in further and further, starting seeing the stars, and then picked a few and started zooming in on galaxies and spiral arms and star nurseries.
Sprawled face-up, with his back supported like it was and everything else just feeling loose-limbed, he almost felt like he was floating solidly nowhere. Like he wasn't anywhere at all. It was kind of... a nice feeling. Removed from everything. He wondered why he'd never tried this before. It was sort of peaceful, especially with his vision filled with stars. He’d always liked staring up at the sky, until the spaceship had ruined it for him. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the feeling of being small and overwhelmed, isolated yet safe because he really was overlookable as truly insignificant in the grander scheme of things.
"Clark," Lex repeated, a little more harshly. Clark didn't get what his problem was.
"Can you hear me?"
"Why are you here?" Clark finally asked, not really caring about the answer. Lex didn't want to be friends, Clark couldn't be friends. This had been made clear earlier. What, did he want a round two to really drive the point home? Or maybe just the last, final word?
Lex looked taken aback, then vaguely… relieved?... before he composed himself and took a deep breath. "I wanted to apologize for what I said earlier. I shouldn't have said what I did. You're right -- I wasn't feeling fine, and I took it out on you. I'm sorry."
"But you meant what you said."
"Clark--"
"You weren't lying."
"Clark, I..."
"You weren't wrong."
Lex looked pained. "Not being wrong isn't the same thing as being right."
"That's not..." That thought made Clark's head ache. It didn't make sense. They were the same thing. There wasn't a between. There was right, there was wrong, and that was it. "Why are you here?" he restarted. "You don't want to be friends with me, you think I can't --you made that clear."
"I..." Lex looked a bit worried, then suddenly determined. He straightened a little and stared piercingly down at him. "You're right. I don't want to be friends."
Finally. Now Lex would leave. Clark closed his eyes and tried to push away the slowly-returning ache.
"I want to be whatever the hell it is you were talking about wanting us to be."
Clark's eyes snapped open.
"I wanted to be wrong about friendship not being what you said it was. I wanted you to tell me I was wrong."
Clark abruptly slid down the table and sat up, backing away from Lex almost too fast in his startlement, staring. "What?" he said weakly.
"I wanted to be wrong."
Clark started to tear up.
"I don't like the idea of opening up." Lex cautiously pushed himself up and sat on the edge of the table. "It's uncomfortable. It's scary. I probably like the thought of being completely honest and answering questions about myself about as much as you do about yourself," he added quietly. "It doesn't mean I don't want to, with you. I just... don't like being hurt. It's easier if someone hates me and I can say that they don't know me. Someone hating me because of who I'm not is on them. Someone hating me because of who I am is..." He trailed off.
"I don't hate you." Clark whispered.
"I know, Clark. That's part of what scares me. I don't want to lose that, but if you do know me better, I might," Lex added quietly.
"I won't."
"You can't know that. There's always a risk."
Clark opened his mouth to protest -- he hadn't yet, and after surviving the Club Zero mess he doubted that was possible -- then he stopped and felt absolutely forlorn. Lex might hate him if he found out Clark was an alien -- he'd been terrorized by the meteor shower when he was a kid, lost all his hair. He'd been lied to again and again, and mostly for Clark's own good, not Lex's. He remembered what Lex had said about betrayal -- he only trusted once, and that would probably lose him it. What would happen then? ...Yes, Lex had lots of reasons to hate him, if only he knew. Was it really impossible that the reverse could be true? That there might be something about Lex that could make Clark hate? That maybe Lex hating Clark for being an alien and acting on it could make Clark hate Lex back for the betrayal? Dark dread roiled about inside his gut as he stared at his hands, yet again unable to come up with a reply.
"But it's not just me trying to pretend everything's fine sometimes. You're always trying to act like everything's normal, for whatever reason. But it's not."
That came out of nowhere and cut through everything like a knife. Clark's head snapped up and he stared at Lex almost uncomprehendingly. Tears threatened to fall.
"Clark, I know you try to be normal. But I know you're not."
Clark didn't realize he was crying until Lex moved forward and gently brushed his tears away.
"You're extraordinary. And there's nothing wrong with that."
Clark started sobbing in earnest. It hurt like hell. And Lex seemed a little shocked at his response, and the severity of it; Lex was hovering now, looking nervous and concerned and worried, hands fluttering slightly, obviously unsure what to do… other than to tell him terrifyingly wonderful things that he’d always wanted to hear. His mom had always said he was different, special. But she'd never said it was ok.
His dad... didn't say anything about it, really, if he could help it. It was a dirty secret to hide -- there was a long list of things that Clark was not supposed to do around the farm. There was only a very short one of things that were barely tolerated, at best, only because he couldn't keep things that far under wraps, because long ago when they'd told him otherwise he'd tried to obey them, he really had. They'd eventually found out that he went a little crazy if he didn't use his strength or speed at all for too long; it wasn't just a discipline problem.
Worse, there was an even longer list of things he was never supposed to do anywhere, ever, because it was too dangerous. 'Don't do it' came first; 'don't get caught' came second, and was relegated to accidents, because he had to hide who he was. And then he'd found out that they'd even hidden him from himself, and then lied -- to him -- about it. So, maybe it was shameful, too, because his abilities were bad enough, but he wasn't even human and they hadn't wanted him to ever know it.
So, Lex "knew". But he didn't know. That didn't exactly stop Clark from wanting to pretend that Lex had meant what he'd said in exactly the way he wanted. But even this little bit had helped make him feel better -- 'God, how pathetic am I?' But he still couldn't stop crying.
Lex tentatively reached out, then enveloped him in a secure hug, drew him close, not holding back. Clark grabbed at him spasmodically in-between sobs and buried his face in the crook of Lex's shoulder. And, as he cried, it felt like his tears were emptying something out. When Lex started to gently stroke his hair and murmur comforting words to him, like It's ok, and Don't worry, and There's nothing wrong with you, Clark started to shake and cry harder, and he buried himself even deeper in Lex's soothing embrace.
Clark thought he'd never be able to stop crying. But, eventually, the sobs became quiet tears, and his breathing finally evened out a bit. Finally, he wasn't crying at all, just holding onto Lex for the comfort, because it simply felt good.
Finally, with a sigh, he slowly disentangled himself from Lex, though. He knew he couldn't hold him forever. He wiped at his eyes with the back of a hand and mumbled, "Sorry for getting you all wet."
Lex quietly laughed a little and shook his head. "Don't worry, you didn't contribute much."
Clark frowned and took a good look at Lex for the first time since he'd entered the barn. "Oh my god," he said, alarmed. "What happened? Didn't you have an umbrella?"
"It's a bit windy out there, and I had to walk." Clark stared in shock while Lex elaborated. "My car was a bit waterlogged. I hadn't put the top up before we came inside."
"You're soaking wet, you must be freezing--" and he hadn't noticed. He should have noticed.
"You were plenty warm, I didn't mind," Lex put out, almost shyly.
"--god, you're going to get sick!" because he'd been too wrapped up in his own head to see the state Lex was in. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
"Clark, it's ok. I don't get sick--"
Clark stood up and rooted around for a candle in the desk, grabbed some matches, lit it, and shoved it in a handy lantern. He scooped it up, turned to face Lex, and announced, "You need to change into some dry clothes."
"--really, I'm fine--"
"And you should take a warm shower." Mom always said that helped stave off chills; his dad always did it when they got caught out in a summer storm in the fields.
"--and you're wet too, you should take your own advice," Lex pointed out.
Yeah, except he had an alien constitution and probably couldn't get sick from puny earthling germs, ‘Stupid germs.’ He walked over to Lex and stubbornly stared him down. "You first," he said, adamant.
Lex gave up. He finally realized that Clark was in full mother-hen mode and that there was nothing for it. "Ok."
Clark helped him up, his head filled with thoughts of towels and soap, and gratitude that they had a gas-powered water heater, and what he might be able to use as spare clothes that might fit Lex, and more lantern lights so they could see in case the power was still out...
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On to Part 4