Fic: Spooky Stuff (2/7, complete, all parts linked)
Art by sanadafaye
Back to Master Post
Back to Part 1
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The two of them finally retrieved the dish soap from the back office, and Clark dropped it in a single bucket as they both made their way into the kitchen. Lex raised an eyebrow at the flashlight already illuminating the dirty dishes, right where Clark had left it, and a smirk threatened to break out.
Clark wondered if his, 'yeah, you want to make something of it?' was communicated properly through his glare of response, because now it looked like Lex was trying to stifle a laugh.
Lex gave him an amused look and swept his flashlight beam over the accumulation of dirty dishes. The pile was rather large. No -- make that looming with a side-order of threatening. Clark sighed audibly and stepped forward to start, plunking the container of liquid dish soap down on the counter and setting the bucket down on the ground temporarily.
He sadly wondered if it was going to be enough, or if they were going to have to go back to the office and retrieve more in the middle of their effort. He shook his head to himself slightly, then moved to the right sink and started to reach for the knobs, but he paused when he realized Lex wasn't doing the same.
Instead, Lex was looking over the two sinks thoughtfully. Clark didn't get it -- they were just the usual sort of industrial sinks -- large stainless-steel tub basins with a lever to close or open the drain underneath, knobs to select the right mix and amount of hot and cold water, and over each sink a flexible industrial sprayer with a lever at the head for controlling the water flow, one that you could unhook from its overhead faucet-holder for close-up use -- nothing special. Lex was scrutinizing them seriously, however, like a complex math problem laid out before him, one with lots of weird symbols and squiggles.
Clark glanced back at the sinks and suddenly wondered what Lex saw when he looked at these. From the way Lex was giving everything the once-over, it was clear he'd never seen one before -- at least, not in this configuration, Clark knew he could use a kitchen sink from some of the times they’d hung out in the mansion's kitchen. Clark was about to explain the setup to him, but stopped as Lex suddenly seemed to be wholly present in the room and in the moment again. For some reason, he had that self-assured look he got when he'd come to some internal resolution and a decision. Clark paused and waited, watching. Lex nodded to himself, once, and then he did the most amazing thing.
Lex stepped forward, unhooked the sprayhead and left it dangling for the moment, then flipped the flashlight -- pointing down -- in his hand and deftly hooked it in snugly where the sprayer was usually held.
Clark looked on in amazement. The beam not only played over the entire sink, but the light bounced off the stainless steel and made it seem even brighter. It was also high enough that the surroundings were lit up by the attenuated light from the original source beam. It was... brilliant!
Lex glanced over at him with a small, satisfied smile, then he scooped up Clark's previously-abandoned flashlight from the counter, reached across, and did the same for Clark's sink, as well.
Clark smiled back, then, while he still remembered to do so, scooped up the bucket and moved over to the mop corner, placing it down next to its companion. He saw Lex’s eyebrows raise slightly, take in the two wet mops and now two buckets, and the slight head tilt and narrowing of eyes, though short-lived, was a bit too assessing for comfort. Clark tried to ignore the extra attention he had gotten, instead opting to focus on locating a couple more towels -- with two of them working, they'd need more -- and scrubbers, before walking back over and handing Lex his fair share.
Lex accepted them before passing over a small stack of the dirty dishes and they started working in a comfortable, companionable silence, elbow-to-elbow. After awhile, they picked up a rhythm: Lex took the easier dishes, cleaned them off quickly, and set them to the side dripping, giving the more caked-on stuff to Clark to handle. Lex then set cups, mugs, and bowls to soaking and slid utensils into those, also to soak. Lex then dried anything accumulated in the 'wet' stack in the meantime and set it aside in the 'dry' stack while Clark kept working on the random worst of the dirty dishes, pots, and pans and passing them off wet. Then, once Lex had made a dent in the 'wet' pile, he went back to the sink and finished cleaning up the soaked items while Clark took his turn at drying dishes, both the 'wet' items passed over from Lex and the current 'wet' pile. Once Lex cleared out his sink again, they started the process all over again. There was a lot to clean, though.
Five full iterations later, and only halfway through the pile, the center table in the kitchen was near-to-overflowing with clean, dried items. They glanced at each other, and mutually decided to stop to put dishes away and clear more space before continuing.
After awhile, Lex seemed to get tired of staring intensely at the insides of drawers in order to tell what slots the silverware should be put into. Rather than retrieve one of the larger flashlights from the sink area, he pulled out his little keychain light for more illumination, instead.
"So, why didn't you pull that mini flashlight out earlier in the storeroom?" Clark half-accused in consternation, shattering the quiet.
"Would you believe me if I said that I didn't think of it before?"
"No!"
Lex smirked slightly. Clark felt a little annoyed, because that wasn't a confirmation or a denial.
"Brat," Clark muttered.
"Excuse me?" came the half-laughing response.
"What? You are! You were hanging onto me in there and slowing us down on purpose!"
Silence.
Wait-- "...You were slowing us down on purpose?" Clark looked at Lex with no small amount of alarm -- he hadn't been that hurt, had he?
"I can't want to just spend more time with you sometimes?" Lex asked quietly.
Clark blew out a breath and let the tension just fall from his shoulders, then frowned a little. "You couldn't just ask?" ...Oh dear god, was Lex pouting? "And you wonder why I called you a brat?"
Lex tilted his head slightly to the side and glared up at him sideways. "You didn't know that before you said that."
"Doesn't make it any less true," Clark pointed out. "And I am a good judge of character."
"Oh, you are, are you?" Lex replied sardonically.
"Yes," Clark grinned.
"Then why do you hang out with me?"
That brought Clark's mental thought process to a dead stop. What the hell? "--Lex!" Clark set down the stack of plates he'd been holding and turned to face Lex fully, but this was one of those few times Lex would not meet his eyes.
"Sorry, I--" Lex started, apologetically.
"No, that's-- you shouldn't say things like that." Clark felt an undirected anger at the world.
"Why not? It's true," Lex said quietly. Clark was about to read him the riot act, when Lex looked straight up at him and said, "I've got things in my past that have already made trouble for you and your family. You were avoiding me earlier this evening after the trip back from Metropolis, once we were no longer in forced close company. So, why aren't you going with your instincts?"
Clark deflated abruptly. Apparently he had only himself to be angry with for this. "My instincts aren't saying to avoid you, that's just -- I was feeling uncomfortable because I didn't know what to do. I don't know what's going on with you. You don't... --you don't talk about things like this, ever -- you don't ever really talk about yourself, and... I had to, to research you to figure out what was going on because you wouldn't tell me," and god, the bitter sickening irony of that, "and you almost died because..."
Clark let out a frustrated sigh and dropped his eyes -- get any further into that and he'd be taking credit for saving him when he'd tried pretty hard to make it look like he hadn't. "Look, I get that what happened with Amanda was painful and you wouldn't want to talk about it -- I wouldn't want to talk about it, either, if it were me -- and maybe you were scared something was going to happen to me or Lana or somebody if you talked about it, and maybe you were even trying to protect us by not saying anything..."
He could sort of relate to that, if that was what Lex had been thinking and feeling. He met his eyes again briefly, and even that was difficult. "…But I don't know for sure why you did what you did, because you won't talk to me about it, about any of it, and-- even if you didn't want to talk about Amanda, you could've said something, like who you thought was after you and what they looked like so everybody could watch out for them. I only found out about the fake Jude and the Club Zero connection by accident," and only because Chloe had shown him her photos of the farm with the C.E.P. guys at exactly the right time. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and glanced off to the side and then back again, getting even more frustrated with Lex the more he tried to talk this out. "But, even after everything that just happened, getting kidnapped and all of it, you're still acting like nothing happened. You almost died today, and I don't know what you're thinking! There's, there's no way that you're just 'fine'. And I don't like having to guess what's going on with you." ...especially when I might be able to help. "Friends are supposed to talk about this stuff."
He realized that Lex was actually twitching as he finished that last bit, and his usual manic energy was almost crackling off of him like little jagged lightning bolts -- barely restrained. Clark swallowed hard and resisted the urge to take a step or two back. Uh oh, what did he do wrong...?
"Well, what do you want me to do, Clark?" Lex started out slow, low, and dangerous. "Do you want me to talk about my feelings? About what I felt each time those bastards inflicted something on me, on you and your family? What it felt like to have your father blame me for something I didn't do? Or what it was like to be greeted with severed hands and dead bodies and ghastly screams every time I turned around? To hang from the ceiling for hours, getting shot at, not knowing when I was going to die? What it was like to have to never see Amanda again, never speak to her, because I had to in order to keep her safe? To find out now that it was for nothing, that rather than suffering and dying in prison she'd suffered outside of prison and died by her own hand, instead? What people said about me behind my back in whispers that I couldn't ignore, while I remained silent, thinking I was helping her by doing so? Do you want to watch me cry? Scream? Break down laughing hysterically? Should I feel bad for not baring my soul to you about my family life growing up? Do you really want to know the worst of it? Do you think you could handle it? Would you even believe me if I told you? Because I've seen the look on your face when I talk about Luthor family traditions, Clark. You don't understand, you can't even comprehend..." Lex gritted out, then closed his eyes and snapped his teeth down as if to prevent himself from saying any more than he already had.
"But--" Clark began. He stopped abruptly when Lex threw his shoulders back, seeming to brace himself, then tilted his head back up and snapped his eyes open, boring into Clark's gaze with his own.
"No, Clark! You--" Lex tried to collect himself, and failed. "You listen to me. That's what you want, right? For me to talk? If I talk, that means you listen." Lex snarled it out and took a step towards Clark, glaring up at him. "You don't know the first thing about me, and you don't want to know. We've known each other for almost six months now, and you've never wanted to know anything about me before, never asked. We hang out sometimes, and you run around town haphazardly trying to save the day and putting yourself in harm's way while sometimes letting me know about it, and that's about it for you. And any time I try to ask something that you don't like -- by god knows what criteria, because most of it isn't even personal -- you either shut down, lie, yell, or find some other way to try and redirect or otherwise distract me!"
"You talk a good game about friendship and what it means and what it is, and maybe I don't know much about how to be a good friend, Clark, but I do have eyes and ears. I can see how you interact with your other friends, and how they interact with you. Does Lana ever treat you as anything other than a convenient workhorse or a silent ear? Has she ever asked about your problems? Did she even notice when you drifted apart when you were younger, or try to keep up the friendship? Does Chloe see you as anything other than a 'farmboy'? Has she even tried? Does she understand personal boundaries? Is she even capable of keeping a secret? If you ever told her anything that you didn't want anyone else to know, what would happen? And if she didn't like it, or thought it was juicy enough, how long do you think it would be before she wrote it up in the Torch? And how long would she keep up her righteous indignation if she felt offended by it; how long and how hard would she laugh about it afterwards if it were anything else? Has she ever been the one to extend an olive branch when something's gotten her angry, for whatever reason? And Pete, who is your best friend -- does he ever talk about his home life with you, past complaining about his brothers a bit? Does he ever ask you what it's like to grow up adopted or without siblings? What it's like working on the farm and trying to balance schoolwork at the same time? Does he ever talk to you about what he worries about in the future, or what he wants to do after high school? Does he even talk about girls with you seriously? Do you know if he has a crush on someone, or who he might be dating at any given point? Has he ever tried to help you out with Lana, or has he always just blown you off and laughed about it with Chloe? Do any of your friends ever talk about anything important with you? Do you with them?"
Clark felt like he'd been socked in the chest with a fistful of meteor rock.
"So tell me, Clark, exactly what do friends talk about with each other? Exactly what do they share?" And everything in his posture, his stance, and his gaze was a challenge: 'Am I wrong?!'
But Clark... couldn't respond. He didn't know how. Nothing Lex had said was wrong. He'd never really... thought about it like that. Then he swallowed around a painful lump in his throat, because it occurred to him that maybe the reason it was this way was because of him and his secret -- he couldn't really trust others, and so they couldn't really trust him in return. Maybe it was just a failing with him, for being alien. ...Or maybe he'd gotten it really wrong all along -- maybe the only people anyone could trust that way was family.
"Clark?"
"I--" Clark dropped his gaze, couldn't meet Lex's eyes, couldn't even really look at him at all. "Maybe... maybe you're right. Maybe..." Clark swallowed. "I..." God, everything hurt. "I should... get home, it's late, I have chores. Tell Lana I'm sorry I couldn't help finish the dishes," he half-mumbled. Then he turned and shoved his way out the back entrance of the kitchen. Once he was out into the alleyway, he just ran. He didn't even notice the rain.
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Lex stared.
He hadn't meant to do that.
That wasn't the response he'd expected.
It was like Clark had just... folded inwards suddenly.
He'd had arguments with Clark before. Shouting matches, even. But nothing like this.
He should, by all rights, be angry. He'd been having trouble enough as it was in keeping it together and Clark, damn him, had just kept pushing. He had every right to be angry. Hell, he'd nearly fallen apart earlier in front of Phelan of all people, for god's sake, and that was before being abducted, shoved into a straitjacket, hung from the ceiling in a place that held nothing but bad memories for him, and toyed with in a sick perversion of Russian roulette for hours on end. He didn't want to dwell on what happened -- it was over and he wanted to forget it had ever happened and ignore it completely. But Clark wouldn't let him. But he didn't feel angry anymore; after having lashed out at Clark, he felt sick. Like he'd broken something very important.
The door stayed closed. Clark wasn't coming back? He'd really left?
He walked forward and opened the door, thinking that maybe, just maybe, Clark was standing out in the alleyway uncertainly, feeling like he couldn't come back inside. Or was locked out.
No Clark. Just a lot of rain.
A lot of rain. Shouldn't the deluge have been more than enough to drive anyone back indoors, even with an umbrella?
Shit, shit, shit!
Lex flinched at a slight gust of wind that blew some of the ice-cold rain forward from under the eaves to lightly spray him. He backed up a step, letting the door slam shut, glanced around, and grabbed one of the umbrellas sitting near the door -- put there explicitly for employee use when quick treks into the alleyway for loading and unloading might be necessary during unexpected inclement weather. He’d added the line item to the Talon’s acquisitions list himself, and fully blamed Clark for that -- for slowly teaching him that small things would be accepted, and treated as if they were big things. The idea was still amazing to him, despite Clark’s consistent reactions as an existing living proof.
Yet, he’d actually had to explain to Lana why he’d wanted them on there, and then had further found himself needing to defend keeping them in the budget. It had surprised him. She’d been penny-pinching despite it being wholly unnecessary to do so -- he was mainly going along with this as a hobby, and a way to get to know Clark’s main love interest a little better, as he had been wondering what exactly his younger friend saw in her besides a pretty face-- and as part-owner, he wouldn’t mind supplementing the income a bit to keep it afloat when it ran into the red.
He’d thought the whole experience might be a little restive, compared to the stress of managing the #3 plant. Instead, he’d found himself arguing with a teenage girl over the fiscal responsibility of keeping around items that would most likely need replacement intermittently due to shrinkage loss. He’d joked that they could always personalize the umbrellas with the Talon logo and get free advertising while easily being able to track down the accidentally pilfered items for retrieval. Lana had huffed at him without amusement.
It probably hadn’t helped that he actually agreed with her somewhat less than polished and rather immature monetary arguments on some level, as they nevertheless closely mirrored what his own sentiments would have been under normal circumstances. The original idea of the umbrella gesture had simply been the personally-motivated, somewhat benign view that it would just be a nice thing to do for the teenaged employees who would be undoubtedly be making up the majority of the workforce.
All-in-all, he’d had executive board meetings with his father that had gone better. ...Not that he would ever suggest any such line of reasoning to his father. Every LuthorCorp business decision had to be backed up with at least a half-dozen good, strong, financially-motivated money-saving and efficiency-streamlining motives and methods, regardless of what Lex’s actual top two or three reasons were for wanting to do something, and god-help-him if he ever voiced anything to his father as being ‘for the sole benefit of the employees’. ...Come to think of it, that was probably why he’d had so much trouble with Lana -- when had he ever tried to put forth something he’d wanted, something purely out of a nebulous feeling, with no rationale or proper reasoning to justify the cost? It was a wonder he’d been able to hear himself think over his own internal cringing.
Had he ever done anything substantive to go after something he’d truly wanted without a solid logical justification to mask the true source of his interest? Even his interest in comic books was shielded by the rationale of a collectibles investment with dual copies of each issue bought, weak and see-through as the argument had always been. No, the closest he’d ever come to that had been... actually, no, wait-- he had done so before. There had been some very iffy situations with Clark, times when he'd asked for something he’d wanted in a roundabout way... but Clark just gave of himself like it was as natural to him as breathing -- and Lex had never had to attempt to defend what he wanted from him, to him, with him. Had Clark been spoiling him in some way? Lex shook his head slightly at the thought.
Well, regardless of earlier arguments, the umbrella stock was certainly coming in useful at the moment, Lex mused. Probably one of those karma things he’d surreptitiously overheard Chloe snark about in Clark’s presence before, he thought with a slight smirk. But he quickly lost that expression to a frown as he opened the borrowed umbrella, shouldered open the outside door against the wind, and went out in search of an elusive Clark. He recognized his own mental avoidance habits in response to rather disastrous situations of his own making, and he’d stalled for far too long as it was.
The cold wind and the rain caught up in it effectively destroyed what little good humor he could still pretend to claim within seconds. He grimaced and turned to check the door as it closed behind him. Locked? -- yes -- so Clark really could not have gotten back in this way. After glancing up and down the alleyway and confirming no Clark in sight, Lex immediately turned to his right and hurriedly made his way around the periphery of the building towards the front edifice -- the front door was the obvious option at this point. Maybe he could catch up to Clark with the umbrella before he was entirely soaked getting back inside?
Lex gritted his teeth against the onslaught as the first true gust hit him out of the shelter of the alleyway and suppressed a shiver. Then he started in shock as he got a good look down the street. He wildly turned around, sweeping his gaze the opposite way, down other alleys, then back towards the front of the building.
No Clark. No Clark anywhere.
Lex twitched and started forward. He hadn’t paused, frozen-up, inside that long, had he? All of what--?, ten, maybe twenty seconds? He stopped in front of the large windows and got a good look inside the Talon -- no, Clark wasn’t back inside, either!
Lex felt something clench inside his chest, because this... just wasn’t possible. Even if Clark hadn’t been trying to get back inside and had set off at a dead run, there should have been some sign of him. The rain was still coming down fairly hard, but visibility wasn’t that bad. --Goddamn it!
Lex turned on his heel and nearly sprinted back around the corner and down the alleyway to emerge at the other side. He half-slid to a stop and was greeted to a similarly Clark-less set of streets.
For a moment, Lex was overcome by an all-encompassing anger. Had Clark really thought “chores” was a good excuse to run off like this? As if he could get anything done on the farm out in this weather? Lex had spent summers with his mother at the ranch in Montana, before she’d died and his dad had sold the property. He damn well knew exactly what “farm chores” entailed. The boy couldn’t lie worth a damn... except that he could. Christ, he’d just proven he could with that unbelievably subtle wholly-fabricated “kitchen-meeting” not a half-hour prior, hadn’t he?
Clark’s original statement hadn’t been an accidental choice of words, Lex had recognized the chance for what it was and immediately used it, and then... then Clark had built off of it. Not only that, he’d practically filled in the cracks and mortared the whole mess into a coherent whole with expert skill and a careful attention to detail. Asking after buckets to supply the kitchen Lex had supposedly passed through, and fictitiously not found any within while looking for such, when there was already one there... Lex barely suppressed the urge to punch an immediately available brick wall in the form of the back of the newly-converted theater.
So, what the hell did this mean with all those times Clark had flat-out bald-faced lied to him? Could Clark simply not be bothered to expend the effort to lie to him properly? Did he really think Lex was so stupid that he wouldn’t notice? --No, no, he was sure that Clark knew when Lex knew he was lying, and that he knew that Clark knew that he knew Clark was lying. What did it mean, then, if he was wholly capable of lying and lying well and just... did it poorly anyway? He couldn’t believe that Clark couldn’t do anything he set his mind to if he really wanted to. So why the hell would he want Lex to catch him at it? To continue to catch him at it, over and over and over again? He couldn’t think of any conceivable reason for it.
Lex just... had to stop thinking about this. Right now. No good could come of this, especially while he was in this state.
Another gust of wind and rain-soaking helped him to refocus back in the moment. He let out a breath and tried to unclench his teeth and fists. His choice right now was actually quite simple -- go after Clark, or go home.
To hell with it.
Lex gritted his teeth and headed for his car.
He knew that if he didn't go after Clark, that that was probably it: fledgling friendship over before it had barely even begun. He was already in dire straits with Clark's parents, worse than he'd ever been, due to the illegal dumping that had killed off their herd. Forget that it hadn't been his fault -- the chemicals were from his plant, thus it was his responsibility that they be disposed of properly, and if his security had been so lax that this had happened, then... regardless of where the blame ultimately should or should not fall, some major changes in procedure needed to happen.
So, even if Clark wanted to continue to associate with Lex, with pressure from his parents working against them it would be difficult. And, after what had happened tonight, and with Clark having run off like that without regard for the weather, he doubted Clark would be the one coming to him to talk, even if things magically resolved themselves at the farm. And, if Lex left things as they were, it would probably be too late if he waited long enough for the general situation to improve, on the unlikely hope that in time tempers would cool, if they ever did. Clark did not handle awkward well, and the longer their fight went without resolution, the less likely he would be to want to bring it up at all, and eventually the easiest way to do that would be to avoid Lex entirely. So if Lex wanted to mend things between them, he was going to have to be the one to step forward, and without delay. He knew all this.
He pulled his car keys out of his pocket and rifled through them.
Clark was far too young for him, a 14-year-old-mess, and who in their right mind would want to hang out with a high school freshman at his age, anyway? He was a reckless, enthusiastic, nosy, energetic, bookish, thoroughly annoying kid with absolutely mercurial moods at times, not to mention a distressing savior complex that made some of the biblical types look like slackers, coupled with a downright pathological tendency to lie so unbelievably badly that he'd give Ganser syndrome a bad name.
He found the car remote and hit the button to unlock the doors.
...Seriously, Clark sucked at lying to him. Mother Teresa would lie better than he did. Plus, he was an open book. A practically pristine open book with only a handful of the most important pages written in an unknown foreign language, and god-help-him but he wanted to whack the boy over the head with a Rosetta stone sometimes. Several times. Until he finally gave it up.
He shivered as another wind gust blew more rain onto him and ducked down further under the umbrella in a futile effort against the elements.
He'd be much better off letting things lie as they were and finding someone of his own age and social status to associate with. Someone reasonably down-to-earth, who didn't think partying hard was an excellent use of all available time, and who his father couldn't bribe, beat, or blackmail into stabbing him in the back or - worse - keeping tabs on him.
He closed his eyes and rubbed them with one hand, then leaned against the car for a moment, swaying with the wind, and sighed.
He had no damn clue how he was going to get past Clark's parents to talk to him. Or what to say. Or how he'd react. Assuming he wasn't met with a shotgun barrel in his face for running a half-drowned farmboy home to his parents with tears in his eyes. Because almost getting shot in the head again was really going to be a delight and talking down a teenager and his irascible parents was just a lovely time and absolutely how he wanted to spend the rest of this fine evening.
Fuck.
He slid his hand down to the door handle, his mind already trudging up the road of a farmhouse drive, having been thoroughly engaged for quite some time now with the problem of how the hell he was going to manage to pull this off. Maybe he could steal a ladder from the barn and hit up Clark's bedroom window instead, bypass the parents entirely. He pulled the handle and opened the car door.
--And promptly yelped then cursed as a wave of ice-cold water crashed over his thighs and feet.
Lex was frozen for a moment, staring in horror downwards as the wave turned into more of a slow-flowing stream coming out of his car.
He opened the door a little more and continued to watch it drain out of the footwell in fascinated horror. Then he looked up a little further.
The top was down on his convertible.
The top was... down on his convertible, just as he'd left it earlier when he'd arrived with Clark, long before the clouds had started rolling in. The top was down, the windows were rolled all the way down, and...
Lex giggled once.
It had been raining for two hours like it was serious business. His car was a low-rent pool. There were small, standing puddles of water streaming down the seat cushions... that were slowly refilling to overflow from the deluge still pouring out of the sky, even now.
Lex giggled again a little longer, then reflexively slapped a hand over his mouth and squeezed, hard, to force himself to stop.
His shoulders shook slightly. His body began to shiver, not just from the sideways-blown rain.
He gave up and started to laugh hysterically.
It was... too much. Just...
Lex went weak in the knees and just slid down the side of his car. Let the umbrella fall from his grasp, tilted his head back, and laughed as the cold, cold rain cascaded down his face. He laughed so hard and so long he started to double over, his sides beginning to hurt as he began to gasp for breath. It felt a little like a half-remembered asthma attack, and he felt a vague panic before he realized it was not his throat closing up; he just needed to breathe a little deeper, a little longer.
He tried not to wrap his arms around his midsection and desperately grab at his sides, not to clutch cold fingers around his throat, and instead focused on regulating his breathing in past small sobs of air. The rain helped, too - holding on to that feeling of little cold needle-droplets, getting progressively cooler as night approached, hitting the exposed skin of his head and hands got him away from thinking about ghosts, alive and dead, bodies, drowned cars and relationships and… drowning in cars and relationships… Lex scrubbed at his face and took in his present reality: one young male Luthor, sitting on the wet ground, getting rained on, curled up next to his waterlogged car, needing to get from point A - here - to point B - Clark.
Karma, indeed.
Screw karma.
Lex suppressed a shiver and decided that getting out of the rain would be an excellent idea at this juncture, and getting the top of the car up would be a good start in that. He turned and half-collapsed against the car, the metal a solid cool presence against his back. Glancing down, he tiredly scooped up his keys from where he’d dropped them, then hit the remote button for automatically putting up the roof.
He didn’t hear anything. Not even a click.
Lex frowned and hit the button again, then glanced up behind him. Nothing was moving.
He turned around and cautiously pushed himself up. Hit the button again, then realized that nothing blinked lights at him in the car. No headlights, no lights on the console, nothing.
With a grim feeling, Lex punched the button for locking and unlocking the doors once, twice in quick succession, and didn’t see the headlights flicker, didn’t hear any cheerful car beep of acknowledgment, didn’t see the locks themselves click or move one whit.
Then Lex finally remembered that he hadn’t locked the car earlier, either. And he couldn’t remember having heard any response when he hit the button before getting attacked by rapidly-exiting water, either.
Fuck. Fuck!!
If the car wasn’t even responding to the door lock, then the computer console was completely shot. Granted, the damn thing was never meant to be waterproof, but--! He blew out an exasperated breath at himself. He wasn’t going to be able to start the car if the computer was down -- the security measures that read the encrypted chip in the starter key wouldn’t be working.
Stubbornly, he spent a moment sitting in the puddle in the driver’s seat trying the key in the ignition, anyway, for the hell of it, freezing his ass off while doing so.
Damnit.
He tiredly let himself tilt forward and his forehead impacted the steering wheel with a soft, solid thunk.
Ok. He was an adult with a nonfunctional car. He could handle this. People dealt with these sorts of things all the time, and it wasn’t like he was stranded out in the middle of nowhere - he was in the middle of town, for god’s sake. He could probably walk wherever he needed to go, despite the steadily-dropping-in-temperature rain.
So, what would any reasonable adult do, when faced with a nonfunctional car that needed servicing… when the power in town was out… and a nosy, high school reporter was lurking about, ready to poke holes in his Clark-approved “oh, I came back to the Talon during the rainstorm” cover story? He’d been trying to make it a practice to give as much patronage to the local businesses as he could, but if he sent the car to the local repair shop - inexperience with foreign cars of any cost, aside - or even had them tow it to the mansion’s garage for him, people would talk. And, what was he going to say: “The car wasn’t functioning properly before I left, but I decided to drive it anyway, instead of one of my fifteen other cars”? “I drove here in the pouring rain with the top down, but magically entered the Talon bone-dry”? “I felt like putting the top down after arriving, because I thought the leather upholstery needed a good bath”?
…All right, maybe Clark wasn’t as bad at lying as he thought.
Lex briefly wondered if he could blame this one on metal fatigue. Or mental fatigue. Because Clark surely used that one often enough, and sometimes it sounded a little like he was slurring the word.
Lex allowed himself the luxury of an audible sigh -- just this once - and got out of the car, carefully closing the door. He reached into an inner jacket pocket for his cellphone while leaning down and scooping up his umbrella -- it wouldn’t help him much at this point, being fairly thoroughly wet all over, but maybe it would help keep the cellphone a little dry. He thanked god, or his emergency planners - close enough - for the auxiliary electrical generator that the mansion sported, as well as the low-powered cellphone tower that someone, somehow had managed to get installed on the premises, as well. With the power out across town, the local radio station might also be down, or down to minimal on-site power for emergency broadcasting if they had their own backup source. By extension, that would mean cutting power to the cellphone antennas it usually supported, which would mean that only landlines would be functional for the duration… except for cellphones that could use the mansion’s backup antenna, like his.
This meant that, when he dialed the mansion, not only did the call go through, but the housestaff there were well-endowed with the digital resources necessary to broker someone from out-of-town into towing the car someplace remote, reliable, respectable, and, above all, discreet, for repairs.
When given the ETA for the towing service to arrive - more than five minutes -- he was then asked if he would like the limo sent for him, or, rather, where he wanted the limo to pick him up.
Lex grimaced, because, god, he didn’t want that - he liked driving himself wherever he needed to go, thank you -- and ended up in a half-hearted argument where he barely convinced his staff that, no, he did not need any of his cars driven down to him, either, but only just. It only occurred to him after he hung up that, if he had agreed to someone driving a car down for him to drive back home alone, while someone else tailed them and picked up the impromptu driver… wasteful of people’s time and smacking of the arrogance of a rich boy’s leisure as it had felt when it had been strongly suggested to him, he could have driven to the Kent farm instead of back to the mansion if he had done so. Now he was truly resigned to walking, because there was no way he was going to call up the mansion again and ask them to do that after he’d just finished turning them down. It would set a bad precedent, besides: Luthors didn’t change their minds - they always made the right decision, first-time - he snorted quietly as that little bit of pure Lionel arrogance was too much for even him to let slide.
Well, there was nothing for it.
Lex gave his poor, abused car one last long look. He contemplated trying to wrestle the top back up, but he’d need both hands for that, he was already disastrously close to a drowned-Luthor state and having a hard time not shivering, and he really didn’t need another good soaking.
Instead, he turned on his heel, only allowed himself to hunch under the umbrella a fraction, and dialed up the Kent farmhouse on his cell as he walked, Clark-bound, feeling that he might as well start the night’s torture immediately, rather than risk further contempt by daring to drop by unannounced as he normally did.
The phone connected. And rang. And rang. And rang.
No answering machine - that was normal. Expected, even.
No-one picking up? -Wasn’t.
Lex brought the phone down and glared at the screen. Yes, he’d dialed the right number. He brought it back to his ear.
It kept ringing.
It wasn’t as though they could be screening his calls, Lex realized. The Kents didn’t have caller-id, and even if they did it wouldn’t be working with the power out.
Why were they not answering the phone? Mrs. Kent always picked up immediately when she was in the house -- and she was almost always in the house. Mr. Kent, more rarely, and only when Mrs. Kent was busy. Clark when he was expecting a call and in the kitchen. For none of the three to pick up after three rings was beyond abnormal.
Lex hung up and tried dialing again. When the same experience repeated itself, he hung up again and, feeling slightly alarmed, picked up his pace.
He didn’t know what was going on, but it couldn’t be good.
He tried not to panic. Surely there was a logical explanation, non-meteor-freak-related. Surely, Roy Rothman hadn’t been working with anyone else. Surely, it was all over now, for good this time.
…And who had the girl in the Talon been?
Lex shivered and put it out of his mind. Clark should be fine. He always was, wasn’t he? When had he not gotten out of a situation unscathed? Besides, this wasn’t exactly the middle of the Suicide Slums: a tall, muscular boy like Clark wasn’t about to be challenged by gangbanger punks or grabbed off the street for rough trade out here in the middle of the countryside. It was generally safe to walk the streets here. Clark would be sequestered at home with his family by now. They had guns. If some unwelcome guest made themselves known, they would be fine; they could handle it. He had other things to worry about, like how not to get himself shot by said capable parents, and what the hell he was going to say to Clark when he saw him next.
Somehow, he didn’t think abject begging would be a good start. It might set the wrong tone...
~*~*~*~*~*~
On to Part 3