Emergence: Part 7c/7

Mar 20, 2011 19:32

After this is the Epilogue and that'll be all she wrote for this one.

Part 7c



If the sky were falling - - again - - Lex wasn't sure he could have moved to avoid it. Mental synapses were sluggish coming back online, overloaded as they were by sensation. All those empty places filled to overflowing and it floored him. It always floored him, what Clark could make him feel, like he had some direct line to the core of him, that no one else could breach.

All the more terrifying that Clark could just leave - -had left - - and there would be no one that could replicate that feeling. No one that could fill that void that always flittered at the edges of him.

And Clark was gone now, the bed creaking on what was likely broken supports as he got up. The sound of his shoes on broken glass, the chill of breeze from the shattered balcony doors on sweat damp skin. Lex didn't open his eyes, didn't care to see the departure, if Clark hadn't already left, faster than the human eye could follow. Wasn't sure movement at this juncture was much of an option at all, between the soreness from yesterday's various meteor induced mishaps and the dull ache of exceptionally rough sex. But physical pain was a preferable distraction from the other sort.

Weight settling on the edge of the bed surprised him after prolonged silence from the room at large. The solid length of Clark, settling in beside him, arms snaking around him and pulling him back, firmly against Clark's hard chest. As naked now, as Lex, when he hadn't bothered to strip entirely before.

But tense. Lex could feel it in the arm circling under his ribs, in the coil of the body behind him. Still angry, and Clark angry enough to take it with him to bed, Lex decided, was a risky venture. A frightening thing, in the way that calculated risks gotten out of hand, could be.

"I had a plan," Clark's voice was a low growl against the back of his head. "I was going to do it with you and leave, so you'd know what you'd ruined."

"So, why are you still here?" Breath was hard to come by and it had nothing to do with Clark's arm pressing his ribs.

"Because I realized it would hurt me, more than it hurt you."

Well, you were wrong on that count, Lex thought, should have said, instead of the instinctive rejoinder that came out of his mouth. "So you want me, more than I want you. Interesting."

Clark hissed and the arm around him tightened enough that ribs creaked and Lex saw stars around the edges of his vision.

"God, why do you do that?"

"I don't know," Lex gasped, but it sounded like a sob through the rushing in his ears.

Clark let out a breath against the back of his neck. "Now there's honesty."

Like Clark knew the meaning. But Clark's version and Lex's were two different things. Clark's lies never had been designed to wound, even when they had, only to obscure. Lex used his like weapons, striking out when the soft underbelly of his soul was threatened. Anything to deflect from vulnerability.

"Tell me why?" Clark asked.

A simple question and Lex shut his eyes tight, simple answers eluding him.

"Do you even know?" Clark accused, voice trembling, arms steel bands that denied escape. "Were you angry at me because you thought I wasn't coming back? Were you doing it to get back at me? Did you just get bored and say what the hell? Make me understand, Lex."

"You think it was all about you?" Lex ground out.

"It wasn't?" Clark heaved himself up, planted hands on either side of Lex's head and loomed over him.

"You've got a bit of an ego going there, Clark. And you said all that public adoration wouldn't go to your head." Lex shoved at his chest, wanting him off, wanting distance from things too close to the surface for comfort.

"Damnit, Lex - - stop it." Clark caught his wrists, dragged him half way up off the mattress and slammed him back down onto it, just in case he'd forgotten who had the superpowers here.

He hissed in frustration, vision blurring, Clark's fingers biting into his wrists and it hurt and he was exhausted. Wrung dry from too many days of running himself ragged, from too many months of just not knowing and pretending it wasn't tearing him to pieces.

"What do you want to hear," he cried. "That I missed you? That it hurt and I hated it and I hated you for doing it to me? That given the choice between you being dead and you just having moved on to something better than earth - - than me, I'd choose you being dead?"

Clark stared down at him, wide-eyed, surprised maybe, by that admission.

"So you start screwing half of Metropolis to make yourself feel better?"

Lex turned his head away, hating the tremulous weakness that wanted to shake him apart. He had. Trying to find that substitute for what Clark had given him, that utter completion that he'd never in his life experienced. And money and drugs and all the casual sex in the world hadn't been able to replicate it.

"What? Were you trying to forget me?" Clark was pressing and when Clark was on the scent he was no less dogged than Lex himself.

"Did you?" Clark asked, softer voiced. "Forget me?"

"No, Goddamned you."

Lex twisted under him, trying to wrench his wrists out of Clark's iron grip, wanting free. Wanting distance from painful truths that flayed him raw.

"Stop it," Clark said sharply. "You're going to hurt yourself."

"You, hurt me." Lex hissed, so much truth in that simple accusation that it surprised even him.

Clark took a breath, swallowing. "Yeah. It does hurt, doesn't it? Loving somebody and thinking they betrayed you?" Clark's hands on his wrists loosened. He dropped his head, so that all Lex saw was the dark sheen of hair. "Can't you have enough faith to believe that somebody might love you enough that they'd never abandon you? Never betray you? That they might love you enough to forgive you even, when you do your damndest to screw things up?"

"Apparently not," he swallowed back the lump of pain. It had hurt. It still did and Clark didn't make it better with his declarations of love. Love was the problem to begin with. Love or something like it had wrung him dry all that time he'd been coming up with scenarios to explain Clark's absence.

"I'm sorry, Lex. I'm sorry I left you hanging. I thought I was doing the right thing going to the fortress. I thought - -" He swallowed, rolled away from Lex, to sit on the side of the bed, shoulders slack, all the tension drained away. Clark's angers were flash flood and loud. He expressed himself, got it out of his system and was whole again.

Lex had never picked up that trick. He lay there for a moment, letting the feeling prickle its way back into his hands, staring at the broad slope of Clark's shoulders.

He pushed himself up, and everything protested the movement. Slid off the side of the bed opposite Clark and picked his way past shattered glass to the bathroom. Turned on the shower, and though warm water would have been a blessing, cold was better than nothing. He needed to wash the drying residue off his chest and belly and stood there shivering under the spray as he did. Leaned against the wall under the showerhead afterward, cool water sluicing down his back, and shuddered, weak-kneed and faintly nauseous.

He heard Clark move into the bathroom. Felt him step into the shower behind him, the subtle warmth of his body as he leaned in, pressing his palms on the wet tiles outside Lex's own. And Lex couldn't understand why he hadn't left. Lex would have. Just the thought of Clark and anyone made him coldly furious and solid proof of the actual deed would have sent him over the edge into homicidal fury. Lana Lang was rightly lucky she was still among the living.

"You understand that I love you, right?" Clark said, mouth close to the side of Lex's head.

It ought not be hard to admit. Love came easily to Clark. "Sure - -"

"Don't," Clark said, with a little snap of steel in his voice. "Mistake how I love Mom, or Chloe, or anybody else, with how I feel about you."

"All right." Numb was better than raw and he let it flood in.

"Mom, or Chloe couldn't hurt me the way you can. And it hurts, Lex. And I know I hurt you, and I regret it, but it's better than the alternative. There's nothing you could do that would make me regret you, understand? Even when I'm so angry at you I have to get half a world away - - I can't stay away."

Lex shut his eyes against the water, the feeling that he'd dodged some fatal bullet making him light headed. It baffled him. Clark with all his simple, straightforward ideals baffled him.

Clark lifted a hand, thumb grazing a sore spot on Lex's shoulder. He vaguely recalled something to do with Clark's teeth.

"I'm sorry," Clark murmured, and this time there was a little horror in his voice. "I try so hard not to hurt you - - and I did. I couldn't think - -"

"You didn't," Lex denied, though he had, a little. But Lex had egged him on, digging for that rage, wanting that clash with Clark so bad he could taste it. Because clashing with Clark was better than not having Clark at all.

"It wasn't a mistake," Lex said softly. "You going. There are millions of people alive tonight that will attest to that."

Clark was silent behind him, chin on his shoulder, cheek against the side of his head. And Lex was cold everywhere, save where his big, warm body pressed. Then, "You're the one that matters. The one I love."

There was always something in him that cringed a miniscule bit, when Clark said that. Some twisted portion of his soul that couldn't quite believe, or if it did, expected disaster to follow in the wake of such declarations. Clark had told him that before he'd left for the Artic. And Lex had remembered those words each time he'd woken from some half recalled nightmare, or engaged in nameless, forgettable sex.

Yet here Clark was - -

"I never pressed you before, I know you've got issues," Clark murmured against his skin, words vibrating in his ear, and Lex felt himself start to tense. "But I need to hear it from you. Just once."

His hands on the wet tiles, clenched. The raw seeped back in to overtake the numb and God, how hard should it have been to tell Clark what Clark wanted to hear? It would make Clark happy and sooth his wounds. He wove words on a daily basis to sway conquests and crush opposition. Save that Clark was neither and the things he said to Clark mattered, because Clark mattered.

The last person on earth he'd said 'I love you' to and meant it, really meant it, had died in a hospital room that he hadn't been allowed to visit and left him to the mercy of the bastard that had spawned him. He'd never quite forgiven her for that.

"I'd have thought you'd figured it out by now."

"Say the words." Clark leaned against him, heavy and solid.

"They're just words, Clark."

"Then why can't you say them? You're good with words?"

Lex pressed his lips.

"You told Helen, Desiree, Lana when you were dating - - how many others? You can't say it to me?"

He had. He'd almost meant it with Helen, before she used it as a weapon against him and tried to tear out his heart. And it didn't count when it was a drug-induced obsession. And Lana, well, it was easy to find mutual comfort when you both lamented over the same self-righteous, lying bastard. And it had pissed Clark off to no ends, so she'd served double duty. And all the other various flings he'd had that had lasted more than a night, well, it was easy to make poetic gestures when there was little meaning behind them. Easy to say when you knew it was a lie. Not so when the truth behind it was so real it threatened to shake him apart.

"Okay, then," Clark said softly, in the wake of Lex's silence. He pushed himself away, and took the heat of his wet skin with him. It was just cold water after that.

"Where are you going?"

"I dunno," Clark walked naked and dripping out of the bathroom, snagged his underwear and jeans and pulled them on. Looked around for his shirt and used it to sop a little water from his hair before pulling it on. "Patrol a little. I heard some gunshots from Suicide Slums earlier - - maybe I'll check it out."

It was escapism pure and simple, Clark cutting out because Lex wouldn't give him what he wanted. A childish tactic, and yes, Lex might have used it on occasion himself, because it worked damned efficiently, but it grated, aimed towards him.

Lex hissed through his teeth in frustration, back against a wall and despising it. He yanked the hotel robe off the hook on the bathroom wall and stalked out after Clark.

"So, you're running, in other words?"

Clark sighed, shirt wet and clinging to his skin in spots. "I'm not going far. I just need to - - clear my head, you know?"

"Away from me."

"Well, you sort of muck up the works - - as far as head clearing goes." Clark flashed a half-hearted smile. There was something fragile in it, like Lex had just finished dispelling his belief in some childhood myth. Lex narrowed his eyes with the vague suspicion that Clark was trying to pull some sort of subtle power play, only Clark usually sucked at the 'subtle'.

"What do you want from me?"

"Do you love me?"

"Oh for fuck's sake - - Yes. I love you. Does that fill your need for confirmation? "

Clark stood there for a moment, staring, then the corner of his mouth twitched up.

"Yeah, it sort of does. And you gushed romantic, to boot."

"Fuck off." Lex felt marginally outmaneuvered, and tired, but not particularly as if he'd signed his death warrant, or given away the keys to his happiness.

Clark grinned. Not the 'at Lex's expense' sort, but the genuinely happy, marginally goofy sort that never failed to distract Lex from whatever serious matter he ought to be attending. He took a breath. Another, and chased the anxiety down to a place where it didn't get in the way of rational interaction with other living beings. God knew, he'd done enough sabotaging of relationships for one night.

"I made a mistake," he said and Clark's smile evolved into solemn attention. "A lot of mistakes - - trying to deflect from the fact that I needed someone so badly, that it made me feel - - less than whole - - when they were gone. When you were gone. And I hated that weakness. I still do."

"But on the flip side," Clark stepped up to him, in his damp T-shirt and worn jeans, big eyes and perfect bone structure. "We get this."

He leaned in, body brushing the terrycloth of Lex's Fairmont robe, and kissed him. Brush of soft lips, whisper of warm breath on his skin, graze of Clark's big fingers against the edge of his jaw. It made him shiver from scalp to toes, made him regret it when Clark pulled back and said softly.

"And this is good."

Lex rather liked Clark's simplistic answer to what Lex considered a complex problem.

"And you're not weak, Lex. God, you're so not weak and I hate that you think that the feelings you have for me, make you something less and I think you've got it sort of all snarled up wrong in your head, because you make me stronger. Even when you're not around, I'm better because of you."

"So what do we do now?" Lex was usually on the other side of that question, but he was feeling a little vulnerable, a little uncertain of his footing and that seemed to work for Clark, so Lex was willing to go with it, if it gained him ground.

"I dunno," Clark said thoughtfully, standing close enough that if Lex leaned forward they'd be touching. "Talk, I guess."

But he didn't sound particularly enthused with the idea. Being young and male, there was only so much emotional emoting that Clark could easily endure, and though Lex was usually all for talking, when it involved heartfelt confessions on his part, he was willing to stave it off.

He leaned forward just enough that his thigh pressed Clark's. "We should. But Metropolis will still be here tomorrow. And we will - - the subject won't have evaporated."

Clark made a sound, caught the back of his neck and pulled him forward. Lex leaned there, forehead pressed into the curve of Clark's neck and let Clark support his weight.

Clark was uniquely suited for the job.

To be continued . . .
Previous post Next post
Up