Fic: Spooky Stuff (7/7, complete, all parts linked)
Art by sanadafaye
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Back to Part 6
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Lex woke in the middle of the night, facing Clark, curled within his arms. He woke from a nightmare of crushed steel and dark water, the same one he usually had most nights these days.
Lex shoved away the memories like pushing through cobwebs; they still stuck to him. He supposed that it was going to be one of those nights.
Lex coughed softly, grimaced a little, and burrowed farther into Clark’s chest. Clark was fast asleep, and hopefully he wouldn’t mind come morning. Clark’s arms curled around him a little further, and he shifted slightly in his sleep, humming slightly.
He thoughts drifted back to Clark’s alien. That had been one of his more spectacular rescues, Lex realized, and he frowned as he realized what he’d accidentally been documenting all along - the alien’s exploits. He’d have to carefully and thoroughly destroy all the evidence he’d slowly accumulated in the Secret Room in the mansion when he returned the next morning. He didn’t want anyone else learning anything from him that might be damning, or set them on Clark’s trail, he thought muzzily; he had a promise to keep.
Something tickled and tugged at him inside his brain, though, and he frowned as he tried to think back on the accident. The torn top of the vehicle was, wow, evident of a good bit of strength, not just what some fast application of a pair of boltcutters could do to some pesky locks when a Luthor wasn’t looking. But where had the alien been when he had been looking?
Lex closed his eyes and replayed his memory of the crash from when he hit the bale of wire until he blacked out hitting the… rail… or was it the water? No, he thought, trying to control his breathing back down to an even rise and fall, I remember hitting the water, but what came before…
He stopped and backtracked. Stopped and backtracked. He’d met Clark’s eyes. In his head he replayed the simulation he’d had developed. Constant loop playback. Really compared it to his memory for the first time, instead of shying away from it. He’d met Clark’s eyes. He’d met Clark’s eyes, and then…
He’d hit.
Lex’s eyes snapped open, and he had to force himself to calm down. No, that can’t be right. The alien was there, it had to have stopped him, moved him, saved him first. Clark was fine, he…
He closed his eyes again and concentrated. Where had the alien been during all this? He looked human, not invisible -- he must have been around to see it and help.
But, try as he might, he couldn’t remember anyone else there. It had been just him and Clark. Him and…
His eyes snapped open again and he fought down panic. NO. There was no way, no way that could be right. Clark was--
Clark was his friend, and he was going to wake him up with his panic attack. He lifted shaking hands and pushed gently against Clark’s arm to draw himself away so he could get out of the too-small bed.
It was like trying to knead steel.
Lex’s eyes widened.
He let go, then touched him gently. Laid his whole hand across Clark’s bicep. Felt how slack and relaxed it was, breathed out a relieved sigh because he was being ridiculous, and then slowly started to push.
Warm. Living. Steel. With about as much give.
Lex bit back a whimper.
He curled in on himself, and Clark shifted again. Lex had a sudden terrifying vision of being crushed between something other than his seat and his dashboard, and only barely managed to restrain himself from lashing out in panic, because intellectually he now knew exactly how little effect that would have. He ratcheted it down, told himself that the easiest way to… get away… would just be to ask Clark to let him go; after all, why wouldn’t he? He pounded on Clark’s chest instead, softly, then more heavily.
Why wasn’t Clark waking up?? He started to shake.
Clark shifted again and muttered something that had Lex freeze in place. Lex broke out into a cold sweat.
That hadn’t been intelligible English, which at face value wasn’t odd at all. No, what was frightening was that the syllables hadn’t been English, or any other language Lex knew of. It had been intermixed with weird clicks, a glottal stop or two, and some sounds he was pretty sure could not possibly come out of a human throat.
When Clark shifted a third time, drawing him closer, Lex bit back a scream, and instead whimpered out, “Clark, Clark please.”
“Mmph,” he heard, and Clark’s arms miraculously loosened.
Lex still couldn’t move Clark’s limbs, but he was able to squirm down and out, now, and did just that.
Out of Clark’s arms, out from under the covers, and he plopped down on the floor next to Clark’s bed. Moonlight streamed in through the window behind him, in the too-quiet night now that the rain had stopped. It hit Clark’s form and Lex was reminded of a Greek god, immortalized in marble and paints, slumbering peacefully.
Lex swallowed hard and tried not to examine that thought too closely.
He slowly scrambled to his feet, as quietly and quickly as he could in his feverish state, and picked his way over to the door. He… he had to get out of the room. He needed a quiet corner to think. He needed…
He was out Clark’s door and halfway down the stairs before he remembered the spaceship, and when he looked up at the looming shadows painting the walls and every corner that almost seemed to be streaming from the alien technology, he froze like a deer in headlights.
And the menace he’d felt earlier was nothing compared to what he felt now, in the dark, alone, past the midnight witching hour.
He started to turn to go back up the stairs and then stopped as he felt a chill and goosebumps up the back of his neck. It was completely and totally irrational, but he had a horrendous fear that something was behind him at the top of the stairs and would get him if he turned around to face it. Something with glowing red eyes.
He couldn’t go forward and he couldn’t go back. He was stuck. Trapped. The panic oscillated inside him with no outlet. But he had to move. Back to the room. He had to get back to the room. Clark was up there; the thing at the top of the stairs wasn’t real, it was just in his head. The spaceship was real, and he had to get away from it.
He told his feet to move and they wouldn’t. He told his knees to bend and they wouldn’t. He started to shake and when he felt the danger and malice rise up before him like a wave, he finally came unglued, turned, and the fear of something at his back went away as he saw nothing was upstairs lying in wait. Then the terror and need to escape from what was downstairs slammed into him full-force from behind and propelled him upwards. He scrambled back up the stairs and into Clark’s room, slamming the door shut behind him.
He slid down the door, back to it, and struggled to breathe. He curled his knees up towards his chest and nearly wept at how normal and safe Clark’s room felt right then.
He started to cough again, and when he was able to look up once more, it was into glowing blue eyes.
Lex nearly let out a shriek.
Instead, he slammed back against the door and panted, eyes wide open.
It took him a moment, watching the dark form lever itself up from the bed, to realize that they were the same eyes he’d seen out in the barn - silver-blue and reflective, not glowing.
It didn’t help that a back portion of his brain was busy deciding that the safe, sane option for egress was out the second-story window, thanks-ever-so-much, and informing the rest of him in no uncertain terms that implementing that escape plan any time now would be really good.
“…Lex?” a sleepy voice asked. “What’s…” a hand came up to scrub against head-hair. “What’s going on?” Less sleepy, now.
“I had a nightmare,” he said, voice hitting the higher registers and cracking before the end. Still am, in fact. I’d really like to wake up now, please, his hysteria noted for the official record.
“Are you ok?” with concern. “Can I… help?”
Sure, Clark, you can help. You can tell me that aliens aren’t real and that there is no spaceship downstairs and that I’ve gone completely off my rocker and then I can relax and go to Belle Reeve and get the really good drugs! That would be just lovely. Very sane. I’m sure my father would be happy to sign off on it. Lex bit down on a hysterical giggle and shook his head from side-to-side instead, then stopped when he became afraid it might fall off.
“Um, ok…” unsure but backing off. “Do you normally have nightmares?” and concern made a reappearance.
“Sometimes.” No, not like this…
Silver-blue blinked out of existence, then back in again.
“Oh. Sorry, I… that… sucks.”
“Not your fault.” Oh yes it is, it is all your- no, wait-- no, it’s not, he said he didn’t have a choice about being sent here, and I bet he didn’t get to decide whether he got born an alien, so stop that!
…If he was born an alien.
Silver-blue eyes. Sometimes.
Also really fucking strong and damn near invulnerable. Sometimes.
Started out small and got big? Looked exactly like a human? …Or had it just taken the body of one?
If it was something that could inhabit human bodies, that would explain how the abilities Clark seemed to possess or ‘have happen around him’ had jumped to the Summers boy temporarily… and then back again. It would explain why Clark almost seemed to be two different people, sometimes.
It would explain a lot.
So, who was he talking to then? The alien? Or Clark? Or had Clark ever really existed?
Because it could also be a whole lot of wishful thinking, given that he considered Clark his friend and he didn’t want to think about whether ‘Clark’ was a complete lie told by a masterful puppeteer living inside ‘Clark’s skull, or, even worse, if Clark was real and being controlled most of the time, stuck behind his own eyes screaming for help.
But Summers had been fairly the same, personality-wise, before and after whatever had happened to him, Lex had read from his people’s research. That spelled hope for Clark. That could mean that Clark was a willing host, and not a prisoner, especially since it seemed he had gone to lengths to get it back. Lex prayed it was so.
…Of course, the alternative explanation was that Clark had been shot through space here as a baby, crashlanded on Earth, in the middle of populated Kansas, and then adopted by the Kents, no less. And who the hell would adopt an alien space-baby from god-knows-where and then raise it on a farm among cows? Or put through the paperwork to allow it? Hey, that seemed like a really good idea. …Oh, no, wait - no, it wasn’t -- that was completely insane.
Possession or coexistence. Parasitic, symbiotic, or other. …It had to be symbiotic coexistence. Nothing else made sense.
…Yet, all was still hearsay and conjecture. What was the Truth? Who or what was in front of him right now?
“…Lex?” A tentative, nervous question to a tentative, nervous being. How appropriate.
“Yes?” Hm, he’d gotten that out almost without sounding like a maniac ready to climb the walls, this time. Good for him.
“You’re… kind of looking at me like…” A pause. Hitch of breath, then: “You’re looking at me kind of funny.”
“Am I?”
Sound of nervous shuffle of bedclothes.
“Your eyes are blue,” Lex blurted out. Oh crap, that was not what I meant to say.
Deathly silent pause. “What??” strained reply, over… panic?
Too late now, just go with it. “Your eyes are silver-blue. And not quite glowing.”
“What?!?” And knuckles came up to scrub at eyes, hard. It was such a purely human gesture. Lex dropped his head back against the door and felt his own terror and panic slowly begin to drain out of him. For some odd reason, he almost felt like crying.
“Is… is it better?” Clark asked tentatively, lower his hands from his eyes. Still silver-blue and reflecting the moonlight.
“No… but,” he sighed. “Clark, your eyes looked like that before in the barn, and--” he started to explain more fully, but...
“--My eyes have been doing this all night?!” Clark half-shrieked. “Why didn’t you say anything!?” He sounded…scared.
Oh, Clark. “Not all night, Clark; just out in the barn and now. I think it might be because the light is too dim and…“ He trailed off as Clark stared at him for a moment, then grabbed up the lantern, struck a match, opened the latch, and lit the candle all in one smooth motion, a fluid set of movements that were far too graceful for a human to be able to produce at that speed.
It was the little things that I should have noticed more.
Then he remembered Clark’s ill appearance when Lex had untied him from the scarecrow, and again when he had tried to hand back Lana’s necklace to him before he’d closed the lead box, and he suppressed a shudder.
He hoped to god he was wrong about that; the meteor rock was all over town. And it had come down in the shower that had brought the alien; what kind of being would bring its own destruction with it? Or send it with another. He resolved to never find out the answers to any of those questions if at all possible. …Not unless Clark needed rescuing from his alien-other… self? …Lex hoped that no other aliens would come calling. Possibly yet more wishful thinking on his part. He’d have to take a closer look at the pictures and radar imaging of the shower itself in the near future, discreetly. And start paying attention to the space weather reports, and the Deep Space Network radar data.
Clark held the brightly-lit lantern up to his face and Lex saw his eyes go back to their normal green-blue when the brighter light hit them. Clark looked over at Lex, worried still, and Lex nodded. Clark almost seemed to collapse at the ‘all clear’, and his shoulders dropped completely.
Lex closed his eyes, sighed, then met Clark’s gaze again and motioned him over.
Clark looked puzzled, and still a little nervous, but he came right over. He dropped right down next to Lex, back to the door, pulled his knees up slightly, unconsciously mirroring Lex’s pose, and put the lantern between them.
Lex picked up the lantern and blew the candle out.
Clark made a wordless exclamation.
Lex simply set it back down and then leaned into his friend’s shoulder.
“…Lex? But-“ He sounded so confused.
“Clark, don’t worry about it, ok?”
“But I can’t… people will…”
“It’s just in near-darkness. Your eyes reflect a little like a cat’s in dim light, I think.”
“But they need to not do that. I didn’t even know,” he said, tightly clenching his fists over his knees. Lex realized that he’d never seen Clark clench anything in his fists when he did that.
“So? We’ll figure it out.”
Pause.
“Or you will,” Lex sighed. “Just get a flashlight, a dark room, and a mirror. Point it towards or away from your face, and see if things look different in the mirror, and how and when they change.”
“Oh,” came the soft reply.
Lex, feeling a little braver now, lay his hand over one of Clark’s fists. He felt Clark shift slightly and gently intertwine their fingers, grasping him back.
“Lex?”
“Hm?”
“Thanks for telling me,” Clark said softly.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?” Lex waved off.
“…Mom and dad never said anything,” Clark replied so quietly Lex had to strain to hear.
“Well, perhaps it’s recent.” And that was probably the most inane thing he’d said yet tonight, right up there with wanting life to be fair.
“Maybe, I guess.”
Lex shut his eyes. The fact that Clark took that seriously does not bode well, I think. Does that mean he grows into things?
And that sent his mind off to the last place he had wanted to go.
He slowly leaned his head against Clark’s shoulder and took his time turning over everything he’d said earlier. Then he moved it two steps to the left of third-person, closed his eyes, and clenched his jaw as he fought the urge to throttle the boy sitting next to him.
Do I look as human as you do?
What if it was yours?
After a long silence and a lot of courage:
“Lex? Are you… I mean, did you…?” He heard Clark audibly gulp.
Did I what, Clark? Did I figure it out? Did I figure you out?
…No, not for sure. Not yet. Because the meteor rocks did things that made no sense, that were insane, too. He didn’t want to think what it might mean for some indeterminate number of members of an alien race to have shoved a baby into a space capsule and tossed it onto a primitive planet out in the middle of nowhere -- because as far as space went, this neighborhood was Smallville, not Metropolis. He didn’t want to think about why anyone would do that, or whether the aliens that did it might have been the same or different race as the baby they had sent. He didn’t want to think that Clark might be a cuckoo, or a biological weapon, or anything other than a person and a good human being and his friend. Everything else was either too sad or too scary for him to handle right now.
But that was Occam’s razor, the shortest path. If it had been a smaller symbiote or parasite, and not an entire small person, the basket-sized area of the spaceship should have been able to hold multitudes, and life around here would be a lot weirder than it was. If it had been a pathogen or some small alien being that was causing the meteor mutations, rather than the radiation from the rocks themselves, the doctors at Belle Reeve and the other hospital staff assigned to the meteor freak cases would have found evidence of such by now, not the other way around. …And if he was supposed to be a weapon of some sort, it would make sense that he should blend, but not to send material along that could make him sick, or possibly kill him. And to send a child that would have to grow before being able to wreak havoc, and have no memories of what it was supposed to do? Ludicrous.
But who the hell would do that to Clark? To a baby-Clark?
A monster who he was better off without.
Damn them all. Clark would keep Lex safe on Earth, and Lex would keep Clark safe from the rest of the universe in return. He’d wipe all the bastards back to their respective Stone Ages for him, if that was what it took.
…And if those monsters from the endless night of deep space ever came a-calling to snatch him back, Lex would show them exactly how scary a possessive, pissed off Luthor could be.
…And he could start by not completely freaking out when trying to walk past Clark’s spaceship in the dark.
Baby steps, you silly little human. Figure out how to stop, and help, the meteor freaks before all that. Let’s fix the town first before taking on the entire universe, shall we?
Lex let out a shaky breath that became another weak coughing jag, and Clark rubbed his back again, just like before.
When he’d calmed down again, Lex shifted slightly and put his head down on Clark’s shoulder, fighting off tears.
“Lex?” Clark whispered, raising a hand to softly stroke the back of his neck.
“I just… need a minute. I’ve had a really hard day,” Lex whispered back, rough-voiced.
“Yeah. Me too.” And Clark gently maneuvered him into a no-holds-barred hug.
Lex silently cried into his friend’s shoulder. Someday, they would talk about this. Someday, they would both be ready. Not today, though, and not tomorrow, but someday.
He finally began to understand the difference between the theory of alien life existing, and what it actually meant to truly know it, up close and personal. He started to get an inkling of what might happen if the knowledge became widespread, and knew why the Kents had been both so reckless and yet so careful. Lex knew, and he was thankful that he was home.
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AN2: If anyone’s wondering about the ghost -- it’s the same one as in 5x14, just a different target this time. There was some extra distance, so she didn’t latch on quite as firmly as in canon. A future fic in this ‘verse may eventually address this :)
As for the late season 6 reference… who do we know with red glowing eyes who watches over Clark? *g*
AN3: …Yes, I apparently have ‘A Thing’ about flooding Lex’s cars. *hides eg*
AN4: I firmly maintain that I am not completely and irredeemably Evil, in that I did not split this up into several stories, which would have had me posting Lex’s entrance into the farmhouse and subsequent discoveries as an entirely separate fic. Because, if I had done that, I would have been leaving it an open question as to whether this Clark was actually an alien or… not…
And now, after pointing out that lovely little mindbender to confuse the issue of evil-ity: pleasant dreams! *g*
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