Superman for Sale - Chapter 15 A
Title: Superman for Sale
Author: D.M. Wyatt
Pairing: Clark/Lex
Rating: Mostly R, some chapters are NC-17
Warnings: Physical and Emotional TC, graphic descriptions of adult sexual content, BD/SM, future fic, post rift
Spoilers: None
Word Count this chapter: 2,967, for Part A (8,067 for Chapter 15, )
Short summary of this chapter: Lex has trouble dealing with Clark's injuries and Clark wakes up more confused than ever...
Previous updates HERE.
Part A of two parts, 15B up next... (epilogue still to come)...
~:::~
After taking a short break the next morning, Lex went back into Clark's hospital room and stood and watched for a moment as Martha gently held her son's hand, as his face was bathed in sunlight. His face looked less ashen, but he was still unconscious. Clark was being kept heavily sedated to help him heal so Lex still couldn't sense what he was feeling.
Free of that anchor, Lex felt lost.
He stood at Clark's bedside and looked down at the casts and the external fixators that were keeping his bones together. There were a lot of tubes and wires running from his body, as the blood continued to drip into an IV line. Clark looked so pale and was so still. The constant beeping of monitors and the raspy rise and fall of his chest were the only things that assured Lex that Clark still lived.
As he looked at the man he loved cling desperately to life, he again felt close to breaking down. Lex spoke in a whisper, as if what he said was too fragile to speak out loud, "I don't know what to do... I don't know how I can bear this."
Clark's mother turned to him and replied in a husky whisper, "You're strong and my son is strong. You'll both get through this."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I do..."
"How can you be so sure?"
"I have faith in the power of my son's body, but I also have faith in the strength of your love."
He was surprised by that, "My love? It wasn't meant to be. How can that even work? He's Superman and I'm Lex Luthor..." He sighed as he looked at the man he loves lay unconscious in bed.
"I saw the video of the press conference. I know you love him, Lex."
"I don't know how or why. It completely snuck up on me. One minute I was buying him from a witch, the next moment, so unexpectedly, I discovered that I loved him so much that I can't imagine living without him. Suddenly, he's the most important person in the world to me. "
She looked back at him, her face still pale and her make-up smeared. She managed a small smile. "I'm not sure it was all that sudden, you two have danced around each other almost since you hit Clark with your car."
Lex tried to return her smile, but he thought it had come out more like a grimace. "Was it that obvious even back then?"
She bravely smiled back, "Yes, it was."
"It's impossible." Lex shook his head, "He doesn't want a relationship. He doesn't love me. Clark hates me and he's fought me almost every minute since that witch had held up the sign that said 'Superman for Sale'..."
He shook his head, now unable to conceive of a reality where the two of them could be together. Lex's voice cracked, but he couldn't help it as his eyes stung with unshed tears. "Sometimes I think he can't stand the sight of me."
"You know that's not true, Lex. I don't know if he loves you, that's for him to say, but he never hated you, not even when you two were going at each other all the time." She looked thoughtful for a moment and then turned back to Clark. "He probably hadn't told you much about when he was little, he wouldn't have had a chance given how you two used to be. However, he hasn't changed much since then. He's never liked to be forced to do things."
"What do you mean?"
She smiled warmly down at her son as she talked, "Well, when he first came, we loved him at once. He was adorable and looked far more vulnerable than he actually was, but the biggest problem was that he couldn't speak English.
"He quickly learned words, but English syntax wasn't easy for him to grasp at first. Forming sentences and really understanding what was being said was so hard for him. He was extremely stubborn even as a toddler and he was so strong. Yet, we couldn't really talk to him. It was a maddening mix and he would get into trouble. He would break things and make people notice him."
She leaned forward and brushed a stray curl from Clark's forehead. "I was so worried what would happen. My instinct was to carry him around like a baby until we knew he could understand. However, when I did that it made him so unhappy he'd cry. I didn't know what to do. He didn't know what was expected, and we couldn't talk to him about it. Everything was 'No, Clark' or 'Don't, Clark'. I hated always saying no to him. Yet, I was petrified he'd get hurt or, worse, get taken away, but Jonathan had told me not to even try to hold him back. He had faith that Clark would learn and, eventually, he did."
Tears had welled up in her eyes as she had recounted the story. She looked up at him as she gently held Clark's hand, "It was hard, but I learned to just let go." She took hold of Lex's hand with her free one. Her tiny, soft hand held his firmly. "You've got to learn to let go too. If you hold onto him too tight, he'll fight you. He'll never be happy."
Lex quietly asked, "What if I let him go and he doesn't come back? What would I do then?"
"It's a risk you're going to have to take, but if he does come back it'd be his choice and you'll have his whole heart." She looked up at Lex. "Wouldn't you want him with you because it's what he wishes, not because you forced him to stay?"
She was right, of course that's what he wanted, but was he ever going to get it?
He had nothing to say to that, but took the stone out of his pocket and looked at it. He felt the warmth of the stone that connected him to Clark and sighed heavily. He looked down at her still pale face and worried.
Martha had sat up with Clark all night the night before and was clearly tired, so she retreated to a room the nurses had kept for her. She left to rest for a few hours and Lex took her place at Clark's bedside.
He took Clark's cold hand and just held it as the warm sunlight that came in through the window slowly recharged Superman's depleted physical reserves.
~:::~
Off and on, Lex sat with Clark for the rest of that day and most of the next, relieving Martha. He would have to insist she eat, drink or go back to the room the hospital had set aside for her to sleep, but she probably should have done the same to him. Uncharacteristically, she never did. She was too worried about her son to notice Lex quietly falling apart.
So Mercy took the task of nagging Lex, but he had her at a disadvantage. He was her boss and had veto rights over any suggestions of hers that he didn't agree with, like doing anything that required leaving Clark's side.
Clark still slept long after the drugs should have worn off. They couldn't give him anymore because the needle from the IV line had come out and they couldn't reinsert it. Also, the pins extending into Clark's leg from the external fixators were pushed out, wrenching the metal screws out of shape. It took power tools to get the hardware removed from around Clark's leg. Lex was relieved because all that meant Clark was getting better, but he slept so deeply Lex still couldn't feel a thing from him.
Alone with still out cold Clark the night after he'd talked with Martha, Lex unfortunately had time to think.
He thought about what Martha had said and realized she had been right. The biggest problem with the situation with Clark was that he was still forcing him to stay.
With his new insights on life, thanks to his epiphany during the tsunami, Lex realized he had been wrong to manipulate Clark into the deal when he hadn't been negotiating in good faith. He had planned on killing the witch, but after the spell had been completed that hadn't seemed like the thing to do anymore.
So, Clark had given up a month of his life to keep him from doing something he probably wasn't going to do anyway, not once he had become bonded to Clark and that stone. He justified manipulating Clark into staying so he could seduce Clark once he was in his penthouse, but that didn't really work out like he'd thought it would either.
He wasn't sorry that had happened. Lex wouldn't have let her sell him to anyone else, even without the allure of the spell. He couldn't have stood the thought of anyone else beside him having that much control over Clark.
But that was the thing then, wasn't it?
He had always wanted to control Clark, or thought he had, but now he knew that he'd been wrong. Ironically, it was thanks to the consequences of the witch's binding spell that allowed him to control Clark that showed him that wasn't what he really wanted.
Lex wanted Clark to stay because it was his choice. He wanted Clark to love him as much as he loved Clark.
He sighed and thought about the witch and her lover, wondered what they were up to.
Lex still hadn't taken the money back, but that was only because he couldn't find it. He had been waiting for her to make a mistake, reveal what secret numbered account she'd hidden the money in, it had left the account his banker had deposited it into moments after he'd arranged for the transfer, but he hadn't been able to trace where it she had sent it after that.
He had been going to investigate, but he had gotten distracted by living with Clark and just forgot to pursue it any further. She still had the money and had probably already spent a great deal of it. The last report Mercy had given him on the witch she was driving a new Rolls Royce and her lover had a Bentley.
He was idly curious how much of the money was left.
The deal he'd made with the witch for Clark hadn't turned out the way he'd thought it would have. The stone hadn't been the Superman remote-control he'd thought it'd be, but it had still changed his life.
The money and the witch didn't really matter now, but twenty million was a cheap price to pay for Clark's life and the changes to his.
Had he to do it over again Lex would still do the same thing, even if it would have been at a thousand times what he'd paid, but what was the cost now? Could he still continue to force Clark to stay the rest of the thirty days and earn his love?
That made him think of the date and he looked at his watch. He swore softly and looked up to see Martha walking in.
He apologized to her, "I'm sorry, but I have to leave."
She looked confused. "What? Why?"
"You were right, Mrs. Kent."
"Please call me Martha..."
Lex sighed, "Martha, I have to let him go. Please tell Clark I'm sorry, but I won't be back." He turned to walk out the door and paused to look at her over his shoulder. "His things will be returned to his apartment before he gets out of the hospital."
"You aren't going to wait until he wakes up so you could talk to him about it?"
"No, I think its best if I just go."
"Leaving without a word isn't what I'd had in mind when I recommended you let Clark go..."
Resolved, Lex shook his head. "It has to be his decision so it has to be this way. If he wants to talk to me about it when he gets better, he knows how to find me."
It hurt to leave, but he felt he had to do it. He had to do the right thing, whether he liked it or not, and it was the right thing to let Clark go. Staying or leaving was now Clark's decision to make, not Lex's, not the witch's.
Lex looked one more time at the man he loved before he pushed the heavy door open and left.
~:::~
The next evening, Clark woke to a world that was strangely silent except for a faint beeping, medical instruments of some kind. His hearing wasn't super, he'd lost his abilities and felt weak. However, when he finally opened his eyes, everything looked blurry. He had to blink several times to get things back into focus.
He was in a bed, maybe a hospital bed. His head was raised, and his both his legs were elevated. The right one felt like it was held in something hard up to his knee; a cast. The left was wrapped in bandages that went to his thigh. Oddly, it itched in lines that ran up both sides of his leg. He couldn't scratch the itch because the arm on the left side was in a cast. That arm was in a sling and was laid across his stomach. The cast reached part way up his upper arm, his fingers curled around where it ended past his knuckles.
A petite blonde sat in a chair next to the bed. Her face was turned away as she read a book held in delicate looking hands. Clark couldn't think who she was going from the back of her head, but he knew that she wasn't a nurse. Her clothes were too dark and she wore too much jewelry, a heavy earring dangled from the one ear he could see.
He looked around a bit and realized that he was in a corner hospital room that had the curtains pulled back from the windows. The sun was setting and its rose colored light made the room look cheerier than it probably was.
Inexplicably anxious, it was difficult to know why. He felt odd, but he couldn't really pin down the cause.
It was something more than being hurt. He didn't still feel the pain he remembered from the fight with the robotic spider, the hurt had retreated into a general ache. No, it wasn't physical pain. There was something else wrong.
He looked around, confused, trying to figure out what it was, when he realized with a shock that there wasn't anything wrong. He realized that there was something missing...
He couldn't feel the phantom fingers.
He had only not felt them before when Lex was either out cold or deeply asleep. Lex rarely got so drunk he'd pass out and sunset wasn't early enough for him to be sleeping. At least he wouldn't have been in bed this early normally, so the absence of the phantom fingers scared him.
Panicked by the implications, worried Lex had been hurt, Clark tried to speak. It came out a croak. He cleared his throat and swallowed hard as the blonde girl's head snapped up. It was Chloe...
"Clark? You're awake!"
He tried to speak again, nothing came out.
She frowned in concern. "You okay?"
He cleared his throat again. He was able to finally speak in a hoarse whisper, "Where's Lex...?"
She looked confused, "I don't know, Clark. He was here the better part of the last couple of days, but I haven't seen him today at all." She wanted to change the subject so she smiled at him encouragingly, "Your mom is taking a break, but she'll be back in a few minutes. She's going to be happy to see you awake. She's hardly left your side the whole time you've been here."
Clark shook his head. "Lex..." He had to find him, so he sat up. When his muscles flexed the plaster cracked and the bandages ripped open, but sitting up made his head swim.
As his vision pushed toward gray, Clark fell back onto his pillow. His breath came in gasps as he barely managed to hold onto consciousness as the room spun around him.
"Oh my God, Clark..." Chloe picked up the pieces of the cast that had been on his arm. "Were you trying to leave? Why?"
He clamped his eyes shut, trying to stop the spinning.
She frowned, "You can't leave, you can't even stand..."
He whispered hoarsely and his speech was slurred, "Need t'see Lex... Make sure he's'okay..."
His mom rushed in from the hallway. "Sweetheart, Lex is okay. He's fine."
Clark was confused and he looked up at her, everything was disjointed and his eyesight had dimmed and blurry. It was like a fog bank had settled in over his bed. He was extremely tired and he could barely keep his eyes open, "Something happened... Can't feel him..."
His mother looked confused and held his hand. Her fingers felt surprisingly warm. "I don't know why that is, sweetheart, but he's fine. He had to leave, but you can talk to him once you're better..." She pulled back the covers and helped Chloe remove the rest of the cast pieces from the bed. "Just try to get some sleep..." She removed the ripped bandages and brushed short lengths of knotted black suture from his legs, along with the plaster dust from the destroyed casts.
Clark frowned, did they operate? He could see the thin lines of a healed incision, but they started to disappear now that even the fading sunlight could finally shine directly on his skin. That explained the itching, which faded as the incision lines slowly disappeared.
He wanted to say something else, maybe ask his mom to call Lex, but Clark couldn't as the exhaustion finally overwhelmed him. Sleep came, whether he wanted it to or not.
~:::~
Chapter 15 B HERE.