FIC: The Simple Truth of Skin (Clark/Lex, NC-17)
Title: The Simple Truth of Skin
Author: Thamiris
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark/Lex
Category: Angst-edged romantiporn
Rating: NC-17
Length: 8000 words
Summary: There are many ways to wield a hammer.
Notes: Thanks to Yavannauk for inspiring this story with her email about Leech's mortal Clark, and encouraging me to write my version. Also, I've borrowed some lines from the episode. This is for latxcvi, with affection, on her birthday.
The Simple Truth of Skin
by Thamiris
In his car under a dead tree, Lex waited for calm, for knowledge, for a snowfall to bury him. No sound under snow, and he wanted that pure drowned quiet. Not the hysteria of reality. Not memories so ugly that his stomach turned again, like a snake surging under his skin.
Back in prep school hell, someone had played Deep Throat for a tabloid hack. The newest Luthorgate scandal starred Lex this time, Lex, the dean's son, and a drunken drag-show at a seedy cabaret. Trained by a father who deployed lies like IQ tests, Lex chose Alan Black as the suspect after tabulating the evidence: Alan had stopped meeting his eyes halfway through the term, disappearing for an hour every night, and had a jealous streak. He was so guilty that Lex could taste it, rotten on his tongue.
The next time Alan snuck into the dorm, Lex tackled him, then landed punch after knuckle-bruising punch on Alan's scared pretty face, saying, "Just admit it, and I'll stop." Alan cracked just before his jaw did, blubbering, between spits of blood, "I did it, I did it..." Only it turned out that Lex had caught him in the wrong lie. "He said he'd help me pass. I just had to...And if I told, he'd get me kicked out, and my dad would..."
Lex was booted from school the same day as their math teacher, accepting the rumors and his father's scarring backhand as his due.
Still truth-addicted, still bait for every would-be shark in the Metropolis fish tank, he refined his methods of extraction, keeping his hands clean and his conscious cleaner: research, then retaliation, always ten steps removed. The second phase sometimes troubled him sleepless until experience confirmed that people saw lies as a commodity, exchanged for a favor--and Lex's favor for all was to expose the flaw in their logic. Financial ruin was a good didactic tool.
Then he crashed into Clark, and his neat paradigm crumpled like the front of his Porsche.
Ninety percent of the time, Clark was like a door-less house, and he treated Lex the same way, so unconscious of borders that he walked right through them, strolling past defenses topped with the heads of liars. He blithely ignored minor differences like money and power to see Lex in his essential form, which was, at least in Clark's eyes, comfortably similar to his own. To Lex, this was at first like a surreal Aesop's fable, a rabbit seeing his reflection in a wolf. But, because Clark's gift was to alchemize the impossible into the natural, Lex, despite his skepticism, started to believe.
It didn't help, or didn't hurt, that Clark's behavior bordered on flirtation, sometimes crossing that line, too. "The tasty virgin's got a crush on you," Victoria told him, though in the way of beautiful women she never considered it reciprocated, not when Lex had the privilege of fucking her. "You can see it in those big, beautiful eyes. He doesn't even know to hide it." Lex was insatiable that night.
If the ninety percent triggered misdirected lust and an existential crisis, the other ten percent blew away his left brain. Whenever Lex mentioned the mystery of the car crash, Clark would lie. He did it with the skill of a five- year-old, all blushes and stumbling evasion, his discomfort so painfully obvious that Lex found himself wanting to reassure him even through his own frustration. While others lied to break down Lex's defenses, Clark lied to fortify his own, a contradiction in his character and their relationship that drove Lex crazy.
Lex cared next to nothing for the secret itself. Let Clark be the bastard offspring of Saddam Hussein, a Mengele science project. No one should inherit others' atrocities, and Clark's past defined him no more than the color of his eyes. If Clark thought that he knew Lex's essential self, Lex thought the same of Clark, and nothing could change how powerfully good Lex believed him to be.
The problem was convincing Clark of this. Any mention of his secret turned him skittish, and after years of emotional disengagement Lex lacked the ability to gentle him. His questions came out too aggressive, too demanding, too self-interested, the most resounding failure of Lex's life, shamefully reflected in Clark's shuttered expression, his abrupt disappearances.
To calm Clark while exacting some old vengeance, Lex allowed Victoria back into his life, though he could make love to her, kiss her lying mouth, only by picturing Clark in her place. The best thing about Victoria, the only good thing, was Clark's jealous reaction, but instead of selfishly milking it, Lex told Clark at least part of his rationale for his relationship with her, which set him firmly back at square one: wanting, not having, with only one secret and a loose handful of restraint between them.
Then a visit that afternoon from Roger Nixon, a sleazy emblem of Lex's past, offered a solution.
Nixon arrived after Victoria left for Metropolis on her double-cross mission, a sequence of liars, but not even the toxicity of Nixon's personality interfered with Lex's excitement when he saw the computerized simulation of the crash on the bridge. He watched it a hundred times, the Porsche slamming into Clark's body, the double fall into the river, savoring the undiluted truth that no one could survive the impact--no one except Clark.
The simulation kept Lex transfixed until the light faded and his eyes burned. One long blink, then action became imperative: he jumped to his feet, grabbed a jacket for the cover of sanity, and sped toward the Kent farm, his heart thrumming like the engine. And when he saw Clark outside, repairing the fence with a hammer, Lex knew that this was it, that Fate was on his side, that after today the past would end and the future would start.
As he climbed from the car, Lex hid all of this, saying only, "I needed to talk. You have a minute?"
So deceptively casual, so smoothly calm, and Clark reacted only with a smile, a joke, and the perfect segue: "If you want to help me with this fence." Then he lifted a thick wooden board like a normal man would, even grunting with the effort.
Pure spectacle, and a laugh welled inside Lex, coloring his words. "You can't lift that by yourself?"
"Look, I've been baling hay for the last two hours. I can barely lift my own arms. So what's up?"
Looking back, Lex realized that it went wrong from here, that in his excitement he missed the signals. There'd been an edge to Clark's response, a slight snap, and he should've changed tactics, moved more cautiously instead of barreling in, should've seen that something was different, that something was wrong with Clark before Lex said a word. "We're friends, right?"
"Yeah, last time I checked," Clark said impatiently. "Why?"
And Lex leapt. "I want you to tell me what really happened the day my car went off that bridge."
Instead of the truth, Clark skidded right into a lie, gave him the usual speech about diving in after him, painting the day as plain old rescue, and Lex tried to slow the downhill spiral. "I don't think you're being completely honest, and I think I know why."
"All right. Well, then you tell me what happened." Clark spoke slowly, sarcasm weighting each word.
Lex broke years of training and spoke more honestly and directly than he ever had, too much at stake for any other approach. "I think I hit you at sixty miles an hour. Then you ripped open my roof, pulled me out, and saved my life." Even when Clark shook his head and rolled his eyes, Lex didn't stop, hoping it would work, that Clark would hear the sincerity, would understand as he understood everything else. "You're the closest I've had to a real friend my whole life. You don't have to hide anything from me."
Another failure.
Clark just got angrier, stepping forward, that strange false brightness in his eyes. "You think I'm hiding something from you? Here. Take this hammer. Hit me anywhere."
"I'm not going to hit you, Clark."
"Come on! If I can get hit by a car, you can't hurt me."
"Clark, I just want the truth."
"The truth is I'm just a guy who tried to do the right thing. Isn't that enough?"
It was so far beyond enough that Lex had no words for it, or too many, so he stood quietly, uselessly rooted there while Clark stormed off. Lex didn't remember driving away, didn't remember stopping under the tree, didn't remember being alive until the scene looping in his head became too loud and ugly to ignore.
How did you tell someone what they meant to you? How did someone like Lex tell someone like Clark? Between them they had enough defenses to protect a whole country, enough issues to employ an army of therapists. He couldn't just share the simple truth, with the truth more complicated than quantum physics. More abstract, floating in the ether, waiting for a hammer to nail it in place.
Hit me anywhere.
Like Lex was his father. Like Lex was...himself, slamming his fist into Alan's face. He touched his scar, the one place where his cells refused to heal, the price of truth. The night after Cassandra Carver's funeral Clark had told him, staring with an odd intensity, as if Lex's mouth told a story only Clark could hear, that he liked the scar because "it makes you real, Lex." When he'd leaned in, looking dangerously older in his black suit, Lex had almost ruined their friendship with a kiss.
The last thing that Clark needed was proof of Lex's--
Revelation never came neatly. It was always a fallen apple, a bush in flames, eureka after a bath. Lex's epiphany arrived with the triumphant blast of his horn.
The engine roared, leaves swirled, and Lex was halfway up the stairs before the dark registered, the absolute quiet. When he called Clark's name to be sure and heard nothing back, he headed for the house. Through the screen door, he saw Martha at the kitchen table, motionless, Clark's jacket on her lap. She started at the open door, half- rose, saying, "Clark, I've been so...Oh, Lex. It's you. I thought..."
"He's not here?"
"He came in, then left. He was pretty upset, Lex. He said you'd had a fight, and Clark hasn't...He hasn't been himself the last couple of days. Jonathan's at the Ross' watching the game, and I didn't want to worry him, so I've just been waiting."
"Do you know where he could've gone?"
She spread out her hands. "If he's not with you, he could be anywhere."
"I'll find him, but call me if he shows up here first. I've got my cell."
"Take this." Martha handed him Clark's jacket. "He's not used to the cold, and he'll need this." Before he could leave, she touched his arm, waxen in the yellow light. "Lex, whatever he said, you mean a lot to him. He's just going through something, and he's....He's not strong right now."
"It's all right," he said gently. "I'll find him, and everything will be all right."
*
Lex never believed in destiny until he met Clark. His father always said that destiny was fear with a better publicist, an excuse to hide and let life walk all over you, but the truth lay in the inverse: people like his father denied destiny because they couldn't beat it. When Lex awoke on the riverbank to Clark leaning over him, free of guile, he saw the other end of the universe, and his life changed, just like that. Destiny.
That's how he knew Clark was at the bridge. He had to be, the place where it all started, the point of origin, and deep down Clark would knew this.
Fighting the urge to speed, Lex drove there, Clark's jacket on his lap, his high beams on, looking for that tall familiar shape. Nothing. To be sure, Lex pulled over and got out, peering down into the water, which smelled of dead leaves and winter, then onto the rocky bank. Too dark to see, so he called Clark's name loud enough to startle a gull, which flew up crying toward the moon. Nothing.
He tried the Beanery next and found Lana drinking coffee with a braying pack of cheerleaders and Neanderthals. A princess at court, she took forever to reach him, smiling and nodding to half the patrons. There was no cruelty in her, just the unconscious ego of the effortlessly popular.
"Hi, Lex." As she joined him near the door, a minion scrambled up, offering his seat, but she waved it off with another smile. "Is Clark coming out tonight? I tried calling him before, but he wasn't home, or with Chloe or Pete, who are doing the movie thing. Maybe he's hibernating. He's been kind of bearish lately."
"So you haven't seen him tonight?"
"Not since fifth period. Then I just saw the top of his head--he slept through most of the class. That's what I mean: very un-Clark-like behavior." She toyed with the green stone in her necklace. "Is everything okay?"
"Fine. You know Clark: he operates on a whole new level of time. If he does show up, can you ask him to call me?"
"Sure. Um, did you two have a fight or something?"
"Why do you say that?"
"Because you're the one person Clark always makes time for. And I thought maybe, with Victoria around..."
Lex had shunted Victoria aside when he'd signed the deal with Cadmus Labs. Retaliation mostly accomplished, just some loose ends before he delivered the coup de grace. "She won't be coming back. Enjoy your evening, Lana, and thanks for your help."
"Goodnight, Lex."
Outside on the sidewalk, shivering in the cold, Lex considered his next move. Maybe Clark had joined Pete and Chloe for the movie, but a tour of the multiplex's six theaters yielded only gratitude for Clark's height, which made the search quick, and an aching desire to sit beside him in the dark, with no worries beyond the action on the screen. He did spot Clark's friends, Chloe with her feet up, chucking popcorn at the screen to punctuate derogatory comments about plot holes, Pete laughing beside her, but the seats around them were empty.
The school. Maybe Clark was in the Torch office pounding out a story. But when Lex arrived, tires squealing, the building was locked tight, and the custodian, who caught him peering through the window, swore after a quick twenty that no one had been in all night, not even "that bossy blonde." Because the guy was young, if unaware of the feminist movement, Lex took a chance and asked where the high school crowd hung out these days.
"The Wild Coyote. The beer's cheap, and no one checks ID. Lots of hotties, if you're looking for some--"
Lex was already on the move. Not Clark's usual style, but what better place to stage some teenaged protest than a bar? Remembering his own club-hopping days, he hit the gas too hard, and the Jag skidded on the icy street; only a neat twist of the wheel stopped the crash into a streetlight. He took a selfish few seconds to recover from the image of Clark in a smoky back room, leaning against a black-painted wall while some drunk girl blew him, a second one kissing him while he fondled her.
The snake was in Lex's stomach again, but at least this scenario left Clark alive and unharmed, and he'd give up Clark to a hundred girls for that. No one, not even Clark, was totally invulnerable, and what if tonight...? His brain coughed up ugly picture after ugly picture, until the road turned into his life, black and empty with Clark gone, buried in...
The old cemetery.
A jerk of the wheel, and Lex aimed north. He almost missed the turn-off, a narrow gap between the trees, then drove slowly up to the gate. The day Cassandra Carver died, just like the night after, Clark had dropped by, this time "just to watch tv," and they'd ended up eating pizza and talking about death.
"I don't want it to be nothing," Clark had said. "Nothing seems like the scariest thing ever. Worse than hell. Just this big alone nothingness. It's stupid, but sometimes I go to the cemetery near my house to kind of prepare myself for it."
And Lex, already half-drunk when Clark arrived, answered, "You don't have anything to worry about. You'll live forever."
Clark had left five minutes later.
Now, gloves off, Clark's jacket tucked under his arm, Lex walked inside, the ground crunching under his feet like it was made of old bones, past squat grey tombstones and tall black angels. He'd just rounded a mausoleum when one of the angels moved, a small shift in the shadows.
"I'm cold," it said.
"Jesus, Clark. How long have you been out here?"
"I don't know. A long time." Clark didn't look up.
"Put this on." Lex held out the jacket, and when Clark didn't react, draped it around Clark's shoulders. "Come on. We need to get you home."
"I had a nosebleed today. After gym."
"Clark, please come with me."
"I don't want to die."
"You won't die from a bloody nose," Lex said, and took Clark's icy hand. "I promise."
Clark finally lifted his head, his face the same sickly grey as the moon. "You're not mad?"
"I was never mad, Clark."
"I'm hungry."
"Your mother will make you something. She's worried about you."
"She always worries. And I want pizza."
"She'll order you some."
"She'll make me eat leftovers. My mom's big on leftovers. Can I come to your place and have pizza? With extra cheese?"
Lex, just wanting Clark to move, nodded. "Whatever you want."
"I like when you say that," Clark said, finally unthawing, and took a step, then another, still holding Lex's hand.
*
"He's fine," Lex told Martha on the phone, watching Clark, who sat beside him on the couch wrapped in a blanket red as his flushed face, the wildness gone from his eyes. "He just went to the movies." The advantage of knowing an infinite number of liars was the ease of imitation.
She sighed, a long expelled breath in his ear. "Thank God."
"Hi, Mom," Clark called. "Everything's good. We're going to watch tv. And totally not going to eat pizza."
Martha laughed. "Now I know he's really all right."
"Food," Clark said, freeing one socked foot to nudge Lex's leg. "Get off the phone, Mom, so Lex can not order some pizza. And definitely not pizza with extra cheese."
"He's not imposing, is he? He mentioned the friend you have staying with you--"
"Clark could never impose, Mrs. Kent. And Victoria is gone."
"Good riddance." Clark applauded under the blanket. "Hey, Chloe came up with a great name for her: Vicwhorea."
His mother caught the comment. "Clark! I'm sorry, Lex. He's a little possessive of you."
"He's just looking out for me."
"Like you look out for him. Thanks for that, Lex. For everything."
A quick call to the pizza place, including a hundred-dollar bribe for speed and some serious extra cheese, then Lex turned to Clark, who was watching him from his wooly cocoon.
"Thanks for not telling her, Lex. Hanging out in graveyards isn't number one on my mom's list of Normal Son Activities. I'm still trying to get the hang of being like everyone else."
"I can't really help you with that," Lex said, reaching for his coffee. "But if you ever want advice on being an eccentric bald millionaire, just ask."
"Well, just in case: what's your secret?" Clark twisted on the couch until his back pressed against the arm rest and his feet were in Lex's lap.
"Being naturally bald helps, but you can always shave your head."
Clark brushed a hand through his hair, which immediately curled back into place. "Works for you, but I need mine. Next?"
"Live in a creepy old castle," Lex said. "No eccentric bald millionaire is without one."
"Check. What else? What about friends? And not girlfriends. I already know you need a skeezy one of those. I mean real friends. Best friends."
"I recommend farmboys who like to save people and hang out in graveyards." Lex took one of Clark's feet, cold through cotton, rubbing it.
"Oh, wow. That's good. My toes are still frozen. But about the farmboys--I hear they can be a pain sometimes."
"You heard wrong."
"I'd suck at being an eccentric bald millionaire. Not just because of the hair thing. Or the money thing. I can swing the eccentric part, no problem, but the farmboy part kills it. I like eccentric bald millionaires too much." And Clark gave Lex a quick, magnetic smile.
"Probably for the best. You're more suited for the hero than the villain role."
"You were the one who did the saving tonight, Lex. Got to say, I'm kind of liking the perks of victimhood." Clark prodded Lex's hands with his other foot. "You give good rub."
"Glad you're enjoying it."
"Um, Lex?"
He'd found a ticklish spot, and was enjoying Clark's squirms a little too enthusiastically. "Yes?"
"What if the best friend couldn't save people? What if he was too tired or too sick, or just wasn't strong enough? What's the EBM protocol in this situation?"
Lex did his best simulation of casual, concentrating on Clark's foot. "There are lots of ways to save someone, Clark. You said it yourself before. Sometimes it's just about being there."
"And that's enough?"
"More than enough."
Lex thought that he was locked in place, pinned there by Clark's newest smile, but when the doorbell rang only Clark's weight kept him from falling off the couch.
*
"You know," Clark said, around a last bite of pizza, "for a day that started as the biggest suckfest ever, it's turning out pretty amazing."
After a noisy sip of Coke and a swipe at his hands with a napkin, he settled back against the couch, still swathed in the blanket, while Lex, who wasn't that kind of hungry, watched him. When Clark stared back, Lex grabbed the tv remote and aimed, peripherally aware that Clark hadn't turned to the screen. After a few minutes, Clark leaned over and pushed his shoulder against Lex's.
"Hey."
"Everything all right, Clark?" A quick study showed Clark apparently demon-free.
"Well, now that you mention it, I'm still a little cold."
With the fire crackling and the furnace blazing, the room was summer-hot. And there was something in Clark's voice... "You want more coffee?"
"No."
"Another blanket?"
"No."
Monosyllables, a provocative position, an expression that wavered between a grin and a smirk--it read like outrageous flirting, but this was the wrong time for embarrassing conclusions. "You could take a hot shower, if you want. While I worked down here," he added quickly.
"That would take too long," Clark said. "I was thinking more about, you know, body heat. Like when people are freezing to death."
"Are you freezing to death?"
"Feels like it. And you look...really hot."
"Maybe I should take you home, Clark." So Lex could jerk off for equilibrium. "You've had a long day, and--"
"I wouldn't make it to the car, Lex. Seriously. If I had to step outside, I'd turn into a human icicle...Unless you want me to go."
"I'm just trying to think of you. What you need."
"I need help getting warm." Clark lifted the blanket on Lex's side and patted the space between them. "C'mon. Scooch over. You're letting all the cold air in. That's better," he added, when Lex edged closer. "But a little awkward. Maybe if you put your arm around...Yeah, like that."
Clark was hot and sticky pressed to Lex's side, his hair tickling Lex's cheek.
"Good movie," Lex said, just as tinned laugher from a sit-com burst out.
"There's a movie?" Clark inched even closer, his arm circling Lex's waist, and--
"Clark, I think you might have a fever," Lex said, shutting off the tv.
"I feel great--I mean, check me." But when Lex laid his hand on Clark's forehead, Clark shook it off. "Not that way. The kiss test."
"Clark..."
"You brought it up." Clark had the nerve to wink at him.
"You don't know what you're doing." Like ruining six months of good intentions.
Clark sat up so quickly that the blanket tumbled to the floor. "Actually, Lex, I know exactly what I'm doing. Yeah, this week has sucked big-time, and, yeah, tonight freaked me out, but it didn't, you know, make me gay. You did. I mean, you didn't, but ever since you came to Smallville--"
It was the directness that broke him, the straight-out admission, that and the determined set of Clark's jaw: Lex skipped Clark's forehead and went directly to his mouth, actually tasting Clark's next words. They were wet, soft, and Coke-sweet, and Lex licked Clark's tongue for more.
When Clark shivered, Lex whispered something wordless and soothing, stroking his hair, then found himself flat on the couch being kissed so intensely that his logic dissolved, and he gave himself up to the hard press of Clark's body, the slick press of Clark's tongue.
Something dark and violent welled inside him, a pure vicious impulse to possess that stopped him mid-arch into Clark, who bore down at the same time. Their teeth clacked, and Clark said, "Ow!", laughing, then, "No, it's good, because I was ready to...", before burying his face against Lex's throat. "You smell so good. You lent me a shirt once, and I kept it under my pillow, so weird, and..." And he licked Lex like a dog would, long wet stripes over his neck, then nuzzled him. "So good."
Clark's hair smelled like burning pine mixed with soap, and Lex rubbed his cheek against it while Clark, gripping Lex's shoulders, began to suck and bite, hard enough to bruise, hard enough to keep logic from ever coming back. Lex had the vague thought that Clark's mouth anywhere else might kill him. This might kill him--
"I don't even care if it hurts," Clark said, running his thumb over Lex's throat. "I like how it looks, all marked like this, and I know you do, too. I can feel how much you do." He moved his hips, pushing his stiff cock against Lex's. "And you make these noises. I love the noises."
Clark's own sounds, unconscious as Lex's, were satisfied growling sighs, and his hands would tighten when he bit extra deep. It made Lex's own hands itch for more skin, so he tugged off Clark's sweatshirt, the t-shirt underneath, to feel Clark's steamy back. A rougher sound from Clark as Lex stroked him, shoulders down to the waistband of his jeans, the pads of his thumbs riding Clark's spine.
"Yours, too."
That demanding mouth looked riper than ever, made to be bitten and sucked dry, but Clark wouldn't kiss him until Lex's shirt lay in a ball on the floor. Then, straddling Lex's thighs, Clark studied him with his lips half-parted, before trailing his fingers down Lex's chest.
"I have these fantasies," Clark said in a dreamy voice. "Dirty ones about you and me, and it's always straight to the good stuff. I never even thought about this, about just looking. It makes me so..."
Clark rubbed his thigh slowly, his stiff cock outlined against his jeans, and all Lex could do was breathe, or try to. The dark violence crashed back, and he wanted Clark to swear a blood-oath that he'd never do this with anyone else, would never show anyone what belonged to Lex alone--
And somehow Clark was beneath him, arms spread and jeans dragged low over his hips. "What are you going to do to me, Lex?"
Charged by Clark's eagerness, Lex said, "Anything I want."
Nothing gentle this time, just a solar kiss while Clark moaned and thrust up like he had to get closer, had to get off or break. And Lex reveled in it, in Clark, who was just warm skin and this illegal mouth, finding the edge of reality only when Clark gasped, "Lex, I'm so close..."
"Not yet," Lex said, willing his heart to slow down. "Unless this is all you want."
"No! I want more. Don't you?" Clark teased the base of Lex's spine with his fingertip, like he was searching for an answer in the order of his bones.
"I want you to come in my mouth." It was the easiest truth he'd ever told.
"God, Lex. Not helping here." Clark twisted under him, his neck arched into a vulnerable, begging line. The bite to his throat shocked Clark still, and for a few eternal animal seconds, Clark was his. Then Clark's arms went tight around his neck. "Hurts. In a good way. Really good. I didn't know..."
Lex did it again and again, low near Clark's collar bone, high under his ear, right to left and back again, breathing the faint soapy smell of Clark's skin. Red marks appeared, blue-tinged ones that shouldn't be here, not when Clark could live through a car wreck, and Lex licked them, then tasted the thin bruising skin of Clark's shoulder, all of these secrets against his mouth.
He liked the curve of bone beneath and licked Clark's jaw for more. To reach up, he'd placed a hand on Clark's chest, and so went there next, ready to burn Clark's shirts for hiding this part of him, felt Clark's fast-beating heart under a nipple that stiffened even more for his tongue. When he'd sucked and bitten the right one a deeper pink, Lex turned to the other while Clark gasped little fragmented breaths.
There were so many ways to tease Clark's nipple: sometimes Lex bit it, flicking his tongue over the tip, pinched until it looked ready to burst, scratched it with a nail, sucked hard and then softly. Occasionally he'd look up for Clark's sleepy-eyed bliss, the changing shape of Clark's mouth as he tried to form words.
The next time Lex glanced at him, Clark stroked his cheek, and Lex caught the side of his palm with his teeth, kissing along the edge to suck Clark's index finger. Cheaply suggestive, but his cock still reacted, all of him did, the finger so solid against his tongue. Clark fed him another one, and Lex showed him what he'd do when Clark's cock was in his mouth.
It made him even hungrier, greedier, and he took a third finger, licking the ends, then sliding down until they were buried inside. When they were slick, Lex drew back, took Clark's hand in his, and rubbed the wet fingers over Clark's nipple.
"Keep doing that," Lex told him, and, without a limitless supply of control, regretfully blinked away images of Clark on his back, jacking his cock while Lex watched.
Even half-dressed, Clark was already too pornographic. Just looking at him was hotter than full-out sex with Victoria, sex with anyone, and Lex sank lower, like Clark's body was a river. With Clark's hands cupping the back of his head, he paused over too many muscles to count, rising and falling with Clark's quick breaths, a cartographer's dream, licking his way south to Clark's right hip, the first one ever to map Clark's body.
The bone was six kisses long, ending at the waistband of Clark's jeans. Almost prone now between Clark's legs, Lex faced the thick press of his cock, then laid his cheek against it, rubbing lightly, breathing the damp, sea-salt smell. The rhythm lulled him, could've carried them both on a slow swell to orgasm, nearly did, and Lex started to kneel just as Clark spoke, his voice unsteady.
"Do it. What you said before. Please, Lex. Seriously, I really am going to die if you don't."
Tempting to take Clark upstairs, lay him in his bed where they'd have space to move...And change their mind on the way there, fight or think too much, or fall asleep until morning--
Lex opened the button of Clark's jeans, fumbling with the zipper as his hands began to shake. So close now, the collision of fantasy and reality, and he didn't bother to strip Clark bare, just tugged the jeans down to mid-thigh, then Clark's boxers. Freed, Clark's cock rested thick and heavy against his stomach, untouched by anyone except Clark himself, for Lex alone. No one else could have him. Ever.
"Lex," Clark said from a distance. "You should see your face. It's almost scary."
Then Clark went quiet, curving up as Lex held Clark's cock and tasted him.
He'd planned a blowjob worthy of a Persian eunuch but failed at the first contact, gorging on Clark's cock, sucking until his chin was wet, until Clark's cock was gleaming, until Clark's hips jerked and his hands locked onto Lex's shoulders--and still Lex didn't stop, couldn't, overwhelmed by the realness, the ache in his jaw, the stretch of his lips, the fullness of Clark deep in his throat, the way Clark's whimpers meeting his growls and the sounds of his wet mouth gliding up and down. Let the universe demand payback for claiming him, for refusing to stand aside while Clark found his ethical match. It was worth it, anything was, to have Clark's cock in his mouth.
Lex loved the head of Clark's cock best, went at it like a junkie with a fix, getting high on the slick bitter drops melting on his tongue. His blood surged, his vision sharpened, and he was fucking God, creating worlds with the barest effort, skies, stars and suns with the slightest gesture. He was flawless, immortal, eternal, ruler of the universe, Clark at his side for all time, and he drew galaxies with his tongue, wrote their history with his mouth, and sealed it with his hand around Clark's balls.
When Clark cried, "Oh God, Lex," it was worship, and Lex took it all, then gave it back, Clark's cock pushed so far inside him that Lex could hardly breathe, and it was perfect. Clark's balls were wet now, his thighs, and Lex, who could feel everything, felt the thrumming under Clark's swollen skin, the explosive pressure below the surface, the bruises forming on his own shoulders from Clark's grip.
Frenzied now, he licked, sucked, stroked, while Clark's thighs shook and his chest convulsed, his eyes barely open. Any time now, and Lex was ready, months-of-denying ready, for Clark's deepest secret to pour down his throat.
There. Apotheosis.
Clark flung out his arms like he'd been struck by Roman arrows, moaned like it, and thrust once, not just with his hips but his whole body. Then it came, the first lightning pulse against Lex's tongue. He didn't swallow, letting Clark fill his mouth, and drank only when it overfilled, come dripping down his chin, the rest flowing down his throat,
Clark truly part of him now. He sucked Clark dry, kept sucking him even as Clark collapsed back onto the couch, his panting breaths slowing to normal.
"That was..." Clark said, then licked his lips. "You are so...I want to kill everyone you ever...". He sat up, taking Lex's hand, and tugged until they were side by sticky side, Lex wiping his chin and sucking his fingers. "And it wasn't just because of what you were doing. I mean, that was awesome, but I kept thinking, ‘Lex is doing this to me. My best friend.' And that was the best part."
Lex managed to nod. Impossible to speak, with Clark's jeans still open, his wet, spent cock exposed, violet fingerprints on his thighs and bite marks on his throat, his hair a wild tangled mess, the image of post-coital decadence, and completely oblivious to it. Lex's desire, free-floating while he sucked Clark, focused with painful accuracy in his cock, and every impulse urged him to throw Clark down and ram his cock into Clark's ass, his mouth, rub it between Clark's thighs, against his nipples. Instead, he kept his arms at his sides and his eyes fixed on Clark's.
"--not a virgin anymore. Maybe. No, I can't be. Not after that." Clark paused for breath. "Um, Lex? You haven't said anything yet. I was...I didn't do anything wrong, right? I mean, you swallowed, and maybe that was gross. I tried to warn you, but--"
"It was perfect, Clark. You were perfect. And I think that virginity's whatever you want it to be."
"Then I want that. Thanks, Lex." Clark kissed him, then pulled back. "Oh. You taste like me." He tried again, his tongue darting, while Lex kept his hands flat on his own thighs. "Are you okay? You seem kind of...Oh," he said again, his eyes going wide. "Oh, geez, Lex. I'm an idiot. You didn't...You must need to, you know, come. Is there...What do you want me to do?"
Lex had to ungrit his teeth first. "You don't have to do anything."
"You mean you don't want me to?"
One of Clark's scary, unpredictable overreactions, but with the feel of Clark still in his mouth, Lex nudged him toward the obvious with a pointed look down. "What do you think, Clark?"
"Maybe I could just touch you? At least for now? I'm still getting used to this stuff. To sex," he added, serious and a little proud.
"Do what you're comfortable with. Anything. Nothing."
"Okay."
Moving with the caution of a cat at the dog pound, Clark slid his arm around Lex's neck, then lowered his hand to Lex's lap, where it hovered briefly before settling over Lex's cock, trapped under silk and gabardine. Though Lex bit back a groan and forced his hips still, Clark gave him a sidelong glance and said, "I'm guessing you don't hate this." Then he stroked him, a long hot stroke, and Lex had to thrust up. Had to.
"Maybe you could undo your pants," Clark said. When Lex complied without a word, Clark grinned, the bastard. "What? No questions about whether I know what I'm doing?"
"Do you know...Oh, God. Do you know what you're doing?"
Clark's hand was closed over him now through the silk of his boxers. "I'm figuring it out. Those little noises from before don't hurt." Another teasing stroke. "Yeah, like that." This time, Clark used only the tips of his fingers, and when he'd traced the length of Lex's cock, ran his thumb over the head. "You're so hot, Lex. I mean, your cock is. Hot and damp and hard."
At Clark's words, at his fingers slipping under silk to wrap around Lex's cock, and Lex's whorish reaction to both, his myth about sex with Clark opened like Pandora's box. This wasn't ruining Clark--it was ruining Lex, gutting him until nothing remained except this terrifying, vicious obsession.
There was no way to control it, to rationalize it, to be rid of it, and Lex didn't even try. Not tonight. He'd fight destiny later, when Clark wasn't jacking his cock, when Clark wasn't licking Lex's scar between fragmented whispers of, "God, you look..." and "I love how you feel..." When Lex wasn't fucking Clark's fist with his self-control gone, fucking it and pushing his tongue into Clark's mouth, ready to split open wide.
Lex came suddenly, sharply, each burst like broken glass, hot and painful. And he knew that the pain would never leave, that he had to accept this, too, that loving Clark meant hurting all the time.
*
They lay naked together on the red blanket before the fire. The pain was dulled now by the warmth of Clark's body, his happy sighs that sounded like hiccups, the occasional sleepy kiss. It was, Lex thought, his hand resting possessively on Clark's ass, what other people called happiness.
Soon he found himself dozing, half-dreaming, but in colors, not images. Then nothing but relaxing darkness that turned green and wet as a river, and Lex opened his eyes to Clark between his legs, Lex's cock in his mouth.
Lex raised himself on his elbows to watch, and it was the most beautiful, perverse thing he'd ever seen. He wanted a camera to take a thousand pictures that he'd keep in a secret drawer, capturing each detail forever: Clark's hair falling in his eyes, trailing onto Lex's hard cock, the sweet sucking sounds as Clark explored him with his tongue.
The blowjob was sloppy, inexpert, and so exciting that Lex couldn't speak. Forget pictures--he wanted Clark in a secret room, his slave, his whore, his concubine, who'd suck his cock whenever he asked, lick his balls like Clark was doing now, kiss them, kiss his inner thighs, then, God, rub the head of Lex's cock against his lips.
When Clark began to suck again, holding Lex's cock at the base, Lex fought the orgasm. He fought it like he'd never fought anything, not his father, not his worst enemy or his worst impulse. But this was Clark, and Lex had never been able to resist him for long.
He grabbed Clark's shoulder, said, "Fuck. I'm going to come," and proved it. Clark didn't move away, just continued to suck, and, God. Sweet, sweet rush, right into Clark's mouth, he was coming in Clark's mouth, coming on Clark's tongue, filling him with pulse after pulse. There was pleasure, and regret, with the end already in sight and secrets still between them.
As Clark gave a last lick, then crawled beside Lex, his arms going around him, Lex studied his face. If not the truth, did Clark at least understand about destiny? But Clark just looked monumentally pleased with himself, his smile carved on, muttering, "Definitely non-virgin now," so young, tired, and happy that Lex forgave him.
*
The hardest thing Lex ever did was take Clark home. With one hand on the wheel, the other holding Clark's, he drove so far below the speed limit that the Jag barely moved, yet still reached the Kent farm much too soon. Lex's bone-deep satisfaction muted resentment of the neat yellow house for stealing Clark, and, after a long, drowsy kiss, decided he might outlive the temporary separation.
"Stupid house," Clark muttered against Lex's shoulder. "Stupid parents and chores and high school."
Lex only let him go because Clark couldn't stop yawning. "You need sleep."
"I can sleep with you. Let's go back to your place. Or you can come inside."
"Your dad might have something to say about that."
"Stupid dad."
"He just worries about you," Lex said. "And if he knew about us, and about the graveyard, he'd have good--"
"No more talking."
When Clark broke the kiss with another yawn, Lex forced himself to reach across and open the passenger door to a rush of cold air. "You're exhausted, and I'm only making it worse. Go."
"Okay, I guess I can wait until tomorrow. If I have to." Clark unfolded himself and climbed out, stretching once with his face toward the moon, Lex's red blanket around his shoulders. Then he leaned back into the car. "You know, Lex," he said, "I tried to make it to the bridge tonight. After the fight. But I was so tired, and it was too far to walk. Then I figured you'd find me no matter what, so I stayed where I was." With another yawn and a wave, Clark walked away, into the house.
*
Epilogue
Life went on.
Wars still raged, hurricanes still struck, earthquakes still brought towns to their knees. Lex didn't even see Clark the next night, a soul-crushing mystery until he broke and called the Kent house, where Martha told him that Clark had fallen asleep on the couch after his chores and hadn't moved since.
"I don't want to wake him, Lex," she said softly. "He looks too peaceful, all bundled up in a red blanket."
That helped, and Lex hung onto the image over the next few days when chaos reigned with all the warmth and humanity of Caligula. It was Martha who informed him that Clark was in the hospital, and Lex, panicking, raging, ready to murder the fucker who put him there, raced to be with him--except that Clark misread his intensity as biological curiosity, and it was the hammer scene all over again, though Clark warmed a little at the end.
Backing off seemed the smartest option, planing the edges of his obsession, so Lex focused on more mundane affairs, meeting with Victoria and her father to hand-deliver his retaliation, where Victoria returned the favor with a slap and a look that almost passed for regret.
The week didn't improve when, back in Smallville, his father called to congratulate him on the Hardwicks' headline- making financial ruin; nothing brought out paternal approval like cold-served revenge. As an added bonus, Roger Nixon slithered by the next night. After Lex told him, mortal seriousness, that the Kents were now off-limits, Nixon produced some charming candid shots of Lex's father and Victoria one-upping each other with techniques from the Kama Sutra, each performing for the camera in every possible sense.
Nixon. Victoria. His father. A triumvirate from hell, his mirror without Clark, and Lex locked his doors against them.
He poured himself a drink, then another, bitter swallows that refused to warm him. He worked, paced, showered, then listened to Charlie Parker's heroin sounds on the couch wrapped in a blue blanket that made him see red. Finally, with no options left, he crawled naked into bed and fell into a fractured sleep, dreaming of a bridge that crossed into a graveyard.
He woke suddenly, disoriented, blinking in the dark. Too many shadows crowded the room, a crush pressing closer--
Then, beside the bed, one of the shadows spoke.
"Hi, Lex."
There was an old weight in his voice, Clark before the cemetery, and even as Lex turned on the lamp, he understood: the familiar secret was back, written over Clark's face like words on a gravestone. "Is everything all right?" A useless question, but what else could he ask?
Clark gave a plaid shrug. "Everything's back to abnormal."
"Is that good or bad?"
"Depends," Clark said.
Be smart, Lex told himself. Be smart, be gentle. Don't scare him off. Let him keep his secrets, just as long as he stayed. "Look, I was serious at the hospital. No more questions."
No relief, just a bright sharp hurt that darkened Clark's eyes. "Because you don't care?"
If Lex had wanted predictable, he would've have stayed with Victoria. "No, Clark. Because I do. Just not the way you think."
"I'm not even sure what that means." But Clark smiled, and the fierce line of his body relaxed.
Lex could've explained, given a long, passionate speech that would've scared Clark all the way back to the farm. Instead, feeling the pull of destiny, he lifted the covers on Clark's side, and said, "It means that I'm cold, and I need help getting warm."
Not all tales of obsession had to end tragically. It would all right as long as they were together. Without Clark, Lex knew, with the certainty of breathing, he'd fall somewhere dark, and no one would save him. So, when Clark was lying naked in his arms, his body miraculously free of cuts and bruises, Lex said nothing, just lost himself in the simple truth of skin.
*
The End
Author: Thamiris
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark/Lex
Category: Angst-edged romantiporn
Rating: NC-17
Length: 8000 words
Summary: There are many ways to wield a hammer.
Notes: Thanks to Yavannauk for inspiring this story with her email about Leech's mortal Clark, and encouraging me to write my version. Also, I've borrowed some lines from the episode. This is for latxcvi, with affection, on her birthday.
The Simple Truth of Skin
by Thamiris
In his car under a dead tree, Lex waited for calm, for knowledge, for a snowfall to bury him. No sound under snow, and he wanted that pure drowned quiet. Not the hysteria of reality. Not memories so ugly that his stomach turned again, like a snake surging under his skin.
Back in prep school hell, someone had played Deep Throat for a tabloid hack. The newest Luthorgate scandal starred Lex this time, Lex, the dean's son, and a drunken drag-show at a seedy cabaret. Trained by a father who deployed lies like IQ tests, Lex chose Alan Black as the suspect after tabulating the evidence: Alan had stopped meeting his eyes halfway through the term, disappearing for an hour every night, and had a jealous streak. He was so guilty that Lex could taste it, rotten on his tongue.
The next time Alan snuck into the dorm, Lex tackled him, then landed punch after knuckle-bruising punch on Alan's scared pretty face, saying, "Just admit it, and I'll stop." Alan cracked just before his jaw did, blubbering, between spits of blood, "I did it, I did it..." Only it turned out that Lex had caught him in the wrong lie. "He said he'd help me pass. I just had to...And if I told, he'd get me kicked out, and my dad would..."
Lex was booted from school the same day as their math teacher, accepting the rumors and his father's scarring backhand as his due.
Still truth-addicted, still bait for every would-be shark in the Metropolis fish tank, he refined his methods of extraction, keeping his hands clean and his conscious cleaner: research, then retaliation, always ten steps removed. The second phase sometimes troubled him sleepless until experience confirmed that people saw lies as a commodity, exchanged for a favor--and Lex's favor for all was to expose the flaw in their logic. Financial ruin was a good didactic tool.
Then he crashed into Clark, and his neat paradigm crumpled like the front of his Porsche.
Ninety percent of the time, Clark was like a door-less house, and he treated Lex the same way, so unconscious of borders that he walked right through them, strolling past defenses topped with the heads of liars. He blithely ignored minor differences like money and power to see Lex in his essential form, which was, at least in Clark's eyes, comfortably similar to his own. To Lex, this was at first like a surreal Aesop's fable, a rabbit seeing his reflection in a wolf. But, because Clark's gift was to alchemize the impossible into the natural, Lex, despite his skepticism, started to believe.
It didn't help, or didn't hurt, that Clark's behavior bordered on flirtation, sometimes crossing that line, too. "The tasty virgin's got a crush on you," Victoria told him, though in the way of beautiful women she never considered it reciprocated, not when Lex had the privilege of fucking her. "You can see it in those big, beautiful eyes. He doesn't even know to hide it." Lex was insatiable that night.
If the ninety percent triggered misdirected lust and an existential crisis, the other ten percent blew away his left brain. Whenever Lex mentioned the mystery of the car crash, Clark would lie. He did it with the skill of a five- year-old, all blushes and stumbling evasion, his discomfort so painfully obvious that Lex found himself wanting to reassure him even through his own frustration. While others lied to break down Lex's defenses, Clark lied to fortify his own, a contradiction in his character and their relationship that drove Lex crazy.
Lex cared next to nothing for the secret itself. Let Clark be the bastard offspring of Saddam Hussein, a Mengele science project. No one should inherit others' atrocities, and Clark's past defined him no more than the color of his eyes. If Clark thought that he knew Lex's essential self, Lex thought the same of Clark, and nothing could change how powerfully good Lex believed him to be.
The problem was convincing Clark of this. Any mention of his secret turned him skittish, and after years of emotional disengagement Lex lacked the ability to gentle him. His questions came out too aggressive, too demanding, too self-interested, the most resounding failure of Lex's life, shamefully reflected in Clark's shuttered expression, his abrupt disappearances.
To calm Clark while exacting some old vengeance, Lex allowed Victoria back into his life, though he could make love to her, kiss her lying mouth, only by picturing Clark in her place. The best thing about Victoria, the only good thing, was Clark's jealous reaction, but instead of selfishly milking it, Lex told Clark at least part of his rationale for his relationship with her, which set him firmly back at square one: wanting, not having, with only one secret and a loose handful of restraint between them.
Then a visit that afternoon from Roger Nixon, a sleazy emblem of Lex's past, offered a solution.
Nixon arrived after Victoria left for Metropolis on her double-cross mission, a sequence of liars, but not even the toxicity of Nixon's personality interfered with Lex's excitement when he saw the computerized simulation of the crash on the bridge. He watched it a hundred times, the Porsche slamming into Clark's body, the double fall into the river, savoring the undiluted truth that no one could survive the impact--no one except Clark.
The simulation kept Lex transfixed until the light faded and his eyes burned. One long blink, then action became imperative: he jumped to his feet, grabbed a jacket for the cover of sanity, and sped toward the Kent farm, his heart thrumming like the engine. And when he saw Clark outside, repairing the fence with a hammer, Lex knew that this was it, that Fate was on his side, that after today the past would end and the future would start.
As he climbed from the car, Lex hid all of this, saying only, "I needed to talk. You have a minute?"
So deceptively casual, so smoothly calm, and Clark reacted only with a smile, a joke, and the perfect segue: "If you want to help me with this fence." Then he lifted a thick wooden board like a normal man would, even grunting with the effort.
Pure spectacle, and a laugh welled inside Lex, coloring his words. "You can't lift that by yourself?"
"Look, I've been baling hay for the last two hours. I can barely lift my own arms. So what's up?"
Looking back, Lex realized that it went wrong from here, that in his excitement he missed the signals. There'd been an edge to Clark's response, a slight snap, and he should've changed tactics, moved more cautiously instead of barreling in, should've seen that something was different, that something was wrong with Clark before Lex said a word. "We're friends, right?"
"Yeah, last time I checked," Clark said impatiently. "Why?"
And Lex leapt. "I want you to tell me what really happened the day my car went off that bridge."
Instead of the truth, Clark skidded right into a lie, gave him the usual speech about diving in after him, painting the day as plain old rescue, and Lex tried to slow the downhill spiral. "I don't think you're being completely honest, and I think I know why."
"All right. Well, then you tell me what happened." Clark spoke slowly, sarcasm weighting each word.
Lex broke years of training and spoke more honestly and directly than he ever had, too much at stake for any other approach. "I think I hit you at sixty miles an hour. Then you ripped open my roof, pulled me out, and saved my life." Even when Clark shook his head and rolled his eyes, Lex didn't stop, hoping it would work, that Clark would hear the sincerity, would understand as he understood everything else. "You're the closest I've had to a real friend my whole life. You don't have to hide anything from me."
Another failure.
Clark just got angrier, stepping forward, that strange false brightness in his eyes. "You think I'm hiding something from you? Here. Take this hammer. Hit me anywhere."
"I'm not going to hit you, Clark."
"Come on! If I can get hit by a car, you can't hurt me."
"Clark, I just want the truth."
"The truth is I'm just a guy who tried to do the right thing. Isn't that enough?"
It was so far beyond enough that Lex had no words for it, or too many, so he stood quietly, uselessly rooted there while Clark stormed off. Lex didn't remember driving away, didn't remember stopping under the tree, didn't remember being alive until the scene looping in his head became too loud and ugly to ignore.
How did you tell someone what they meant to you? How did someone like Lex tell someone like Clark? Between them they had enough defenses to protect a whole country, enough issues to employ an army of therapists. He couldn't just share the simple truth, with the truth more complicated than quantum physics. More abstract, floating in the ether, waiting for a hammer to nail it in place.
Hit me anywhere.
Like Lex was his father. Like Lex was...himself, slamming his fist into Alan's face. He touched his scar, the one place where his cells refused to heal, the price of truth. The night after Cassandra Carver's funeral Clark had told him, staring with an odd intensity, as if Lex's mouth told a story only Clark could hear, that he liked the scar because "it makes you real, Lex." When he'd leaned in, looking dangerously older in his black suit, Lex had almost ruined their friendship with a kiss.
The last thing that Clark needed was proof of Lex's--
Revelation never came neatly. It was always a fallen apple, a bush in flames, eureka after a bath. Lex's epiphany arrived with the triumphant blast of his horn.
The engine roared, leaves swirled, and Lex was halfway up the stairs before the dark registered, the absolute quiet. When he called Clark's name to be sure and heard nothing back, he headed for the house. Through the screen door, he saw Martha at the kitchen table, motionless, Clark's jacket on her lap. She started at the open door, half- rose, saying, "Clark, I've been so...Oh, Lex. It's you. I thought..."
"He's not here?"
"He came in, then left. He was pretty upset, Lex. He said you'd had a fight, and Clark hasn't...He hasn't been himself the last couple of days. Jonathan's at the Ross' watching the game, and I didn't want to worry him, so I've just been waiting."
"Do you know where he could've gone?"
She spread out her hands. "If he's not with you, he could be anywhere."
"I'll find him, but call me if he shows up here first. I've got my cell."
"Take this." Martha handed him Clark's jacket. "He's not used to the cold, and he'll need this." Before he could leave, she touched his arm, waxen in the yellow light. "Lex, whatever he said, you mean a lot to him. He's just going through something, and he's....He's not strong right now."
"It's all right," he said gently. "I'll find him, and everything will be all right."
*
Lex never believed in destiny until he met Clark. His father always said that destiny was fear with a better publicist, an excuse to hide and let life walk all over you, but the truth lay in the inverse: people like his father denied destiny because they couldn't beat it. When Lex awoke on the riverbank to Clark leaning over him, free of guile, he saw the other end of the universe, and his life changed, just like that. Destiny.
That's how he knew Clark was at the bridge. He had to be, the place where it all started, the point of origin, and deep down Clark would knew this.
Fighting the urge to speed, Lex drove there, Clark's jacket on his lap, his high beams on, looking for that tall familiar shape. Nothing. To be sure, Lex pulled over and got out, peering down into the water, which smelled of dead leaves and winter, then onto the rocky bank. Too dark to see, so he called Clark's name loud enough to startle a gull, which flew up crying toward the moon. Nothing.
He tried the Beanery next and found Lana drinking coffee with a braying pack of cheerleaders and Neanderthals. A princess at court, she took forever to reach him, smiling and nodding to half the patrons. There was no cruelty in her, just the unconscious ego of the effortlessly popular.
"Hi, Lex." As she joined him near the door, a minion scrambled up, offering his seat, but she waved it off with another smile. "Is Clark coming out tonight? I tried calling him before, but he wasn't home, or with Chloe or Pete, who are doing the movie thing. Maybe he's hibernating. He's been kind of bearish lately."
"So you haven't seen him tonight?"
"Not since fifth period. Then I just saw the top of his head--he slept through most of the class. That's what I mean: very un-Clark-like behavior." She toyed with the green stone in her necklace. "Is everything okay?"
"Fine. You know Clark: he operates on a whole new level of time. If he does show up, can you ask him to call me?"
"Sure. Um, did you two have a fight or something?"
"Why do you say that?"
"Because you're the one person Clark always makes time for. And I thought maybe, with Victoria around..."
Lex had shunted Victoria aside when he'd signed the deal with Cadmus Labs. Retaliation mostly accomplished, just some loose ends before he delivered the coup de grace. "She won't be coming back. Enjoy your evening, Lana, and thanks for your help."
"Goodnight, Lex."
Outside on the sidewalk, shivering in the cold, Lex considered his next move. Maybe Clark had joined Pete and Chloe for the movie, but a tour of the multiplex's six theaters yielded only gratitude for Clark's height, which made the search quick, and an aching desire to sit beside him in the dark, with no worries beyond the action on the screen. He did spot Clark's friends, Chloe with her feet up, chucking popcorn at the screen to punctuate derogatory comments about plot holes, Pete laughing beside her, but the seats around them were empty.
The school. Maybe Clark was in the Torch office pounding out a story. But when Lex arrived, tires squealing, the building was locked tight, and the custodian, who caught him peering through the window, swore after a quick twenty that no one had been in all night, not even "that bossy blonde." Because the guy was young, if unaware of the feminist movement, Lex took a chance and asked where the high school crowd hung out these days.
"The Wild Coyote. The beer's cheap, and no one checks ID. Lots of hotties, if you're looking for some--"
Lex was already on the move. Not Clark's usual style, but what better place to stage some teenaged protest than a bar? Remembering his own club-hopping days, he hit the gas too hard, and the Jag skidded on the icy street; only a neat twist of the wheel stopped the crash into a streetlight. He took a selfish few seconds to recover from the image of Clark in a smoky back room, leaning against a black-painted wall while some drunk girl blew him, a second one kissing him while he fondled her.
The snake was in Lex's stomach again, but at least this scenario left Clark alive and unharmed, and he'd give up Clark to a hundred girls for that. No one, not even Clark, was totally invulnerable, and what if tonight...? His brain coughed up ugly picture after ugly picture, until the road turned into his life, black and empty with Clark gone, buried in...
The old cemetery.
A jerk of the wheel, and Lex aimed north. He almost missed the turn-off, a narrow gap between the trees, then drove slowly up to the gate. The day Cassandra Carver died, just like the night after, Clark had dropped by, this time "just to watch tv," and they'd ended up eating pizza and talking about death.
"I don't want it to be nothing," Clark had said. "Nothing seems like the scariest thing ever. Worse than hell. Just this big alone nothingness. It's stupid, but sometimes I go to the cemetery near my house to kind of prepare myself for it."
And Lex, already half-drunk when Clark arrived, answered, "You don't have anything to worry about. You'll live forever."
Clark had left five minutes later.
Now, gloves off, Clark's jacket tucked under his arm, Lex walked inside, the ground crunching under his feet like it was made of old bones, past squat grey tombstones and tall black angels. He'd just rounded a mausoleum when one of the angels moved, a small shift in the shadows.
"I'm cold," it said.
"Jesus, Clark. How long have you been out here?"
"I don't know. A long time." Clark didn't look up.
"Put this on." Lex held out the jacket, and when Clark didn't react, draped it around Clark's shoulders. "Come on. We need to get you home."
"I had a nosebleed today. After gym."
"Clark, please come with me."
"I don't want to die."
"You won't die from a bloody nose," Lex said, and took Clark's icy hand. "I promise."
Clark finally lifted his head, his face the same sickly grey as the moon. "You're not mad?"
"I was never mad, Clark."
"I'm hungry."
"Your mother will make you something. She's worried about you."
"She always worries. And I want pizza."
"She'll order you some."
"She'll make me eat leftovers. My mom's big on leftovers. Can I come to your place and have pizza? With extra cheese?"
Lex, just wanting Clark to move, nodded. "Whatever you want."
"I like when you say that," Clark said, finally unthawing, and took a step, then another, still holding Lex's hand.
*
"He's fine," Lex told Martha on the phone, watching Clark, who sat beside him on the couch wrapped in a blanket red as his flushed face, the wildness gone from his eyes. "He just went to the movies." The advantage of knowing an infinite number of liars was the ease of imitation.
She sighed, a long expelled breath in his ear. "Thank God."
"Hi, Mom," Clark called. "Everything's good. We're going to watch tv. And totally not going to eat pizza."
Martha laughed. "Now I know he's really all right."
"Food," Clark said, freeing one socked foot to nudge Lex's leg. "Get off the phone, Mom, so Lex can not order some pizza. And definitely not pizza with extra cheese."
"He's not imposing, is he? He mentioned the friend you have staying with you--"
"Clark could never impose, Mrs. Kent. And Victoria is gone."
"Good riddance." Clark applauded under the blanket. "Hey, Chloe came up with a great name for her: Vicwhorea."
His mother caught the comment. "Clark! I'm sorry, Lex. He's a little possessive of you."
"He's just looking out for me."
"Like you look out for him. Thanks for that, Lex. For everything."
A quick call to the pizza place, including a hundred-dollar bribe for speed and some serious extra cheese, then Lex turned to Clark, who was watching him from his wooly cocoon.
"Thanks for not telling her, Lex. Hanging out in graveyards isn't number one on my mom's list of Normal Son Activities. I'm still trying to get the hang of being like everyone else."
"I can't really help you with that," Lex said, reaching for his coffee. "But if you ever want advice on being an eccentric bald millionaire, just ask."
"Well, just in case: what's your secret?" Clark twisted on the couch until his back pressed against the arm rest and his feet were in Lex's lap.
"Being naturally bald helps, but you can always shave your head."
Clark brushed a hand through his hair, which immediately curled back into place. "Works for you, but I need mine. Next?"
"Live in a creepy old castle," Lex said. "No eccentric bald millionaire is without one."
"Check. What else? What about friends? And not girlfriends. I already know you need a skeezy one of those. I mean real friends. Best friends."
"I recommend farmboys who like to save people and hang out in graveyards." Lex took one of Clark's feet, cold through cotton, rubbing it.
"Oh, wow. That's good. My toes are still frozen. But about the farmboys--I hear they can be a pain sometimes."
"You heard wrong."
"I'd suck at being an eccentric bald millionaire. Not just because of the hair thing. Or the money thing. I can swing the eccentric part, no problem, but the farmboy part kills it. I like eccentric bald millionaires too much." And Clark gave Lex a quick, magnetic smile.
"Probably for the best. You're more suited for the hero than the villain role."
"You were the one who did the saving tonight, Lex. Got to say, I'm kind of liking the perks of victimhood." Clark prodded Lex's hands with his other foot. "You give good rub."
"Glad you're enjoying it."
"Um, Lex?"
He'd found a ticklish spot, and was enjoying Clark's squirms a little too enthusiastically. "Yes?"
"What if the best friend couldn't save people? What if he was too tired or too sick, or just wasn't strong enough? What's the EBM protocol in this situation?"
Lex did his best simulation of casual, concentrating on Clark's foot. "There are lots of ways to save someone, Clark. You said it yourself before. Sometimes it's just about being there."
"And that's enough?"
"More than enough."
Lex thought that he was locked in place, pinned there by Clark's newest smile, but when the doorbell rang only Clark's weight kept him from falling off the couch.
*
"You know," Clark said, around a last bite of pizza, "for a day that started as the biggest suckfest ever, it's turning out pretty amazing."
After a noisy sip of Coke and a swipe at his hands with a napkin, he settled back against the couch, still swathed in the blanket, while Lex, who wasn't that kind of hungry, watched him. When Clark stared back, Lex grabbed the tv remote and aimed, peripherally aware that Clark hadn't turned to the screen. After a few minutes, Clark leaned over and pushed his shoulder against Lex's.
"Hey."
"Everything all right, Clark?" A quick study showed Clark apparently demon-free.
"Well, now that you mention it, I'm still a little cold."
With the fire crackling and the furnace blazing, the room was summer-hot. And there was something in Clark's voice... "You want more coffee?"
"No."
"Another blanket?"
"No."
Monosyllables, a provocative position, an expression that wavered between a grin and a smirk--it read like outrageous flirting, but this was the wrong time for embarrassing conclusions. "You could take a hot shower, if you want. While I worked down here," he added quickly.
"That would take too long," Clark said. "I was thinking more about, you know, body heat. Like when people are freezing to death."
"Are you freezing to death?"
"Feels like it. And you look...really hot."
"Maybe I should take you home, Clark." So Lex could jerk off for equilibrium. "You've had a long day, and--"
"I wouldn't make it to the car, Lex. Seriously. If I had to step outside, I'd turn into a human icicle...Unless you want me to go."
"I'm just trying to think of you. What you need."
"I need help getting warm." Clark lifted the blanket on Lex's side and patted the space between them. "C'mon. Scooch over. You're letting all the cold air in. That's better," he added, when Lex edged closer. "But a little awkward. Maybe if you put your arm around...Yeah, like that."
Clark was hot and sticky pressed to Lex's side, his hair tickling Lex's cheek.
"Good movie," Lex said, just as tinned laugher from a sit-com burst out.
"There's a movie?" Clark inched even closer, his arm circling Lex's waist, and--
"Clark, I think you might have a fever," Lex said, shutting off the tv.
"I feel great--I mean, check me." But when Lex laid his hand on Clark's forehead, Clark shook it off. "Not that way. The kiss test."
"Clark..."
"You brought it up." Clark had the nerve to wink at him.
"You don't know what you're doing." Like ruining six months of good intentions.
Clark sat up so quickly that the blanket tumbled to the floor. "Actually, Lex, I know exactly what I'm doing. Yeah, this week has sucked big-time, and, yeah, tonight freaked me out, but it didn't, you know, make me gay. You did. I mean, you didn't, but ever since you came to Smallville--"
It was the directness that broke him, the straight-out admission, that and the determined set of Clark's jaw: Lex skipped Clark's forehead and went directly to his mouth, actually tasting Clark's next words. They were wet, soft, and Coke-sweet, and Lex licked Clark's tongue for more.
When Clark shivered, Lex whispered something wordless and soothing, stroking his hair, then found himself flat on the couch being kissed so intensely that his logic dissolved, and he gave himself up to the hard press of Clark's body, the slick press of Clark's tongue.
Something dark and violent welled inside him, a pure vicious impulse to possess that stopped him mid-arch into Clark, who bore down at the same time. Their teeth clacked, and Clark said, "Ow!", laughing, then, "No, it's good, because I was ready to...", before burying his face against Lex's throat. "You smell so good. You lent me a shirt once, and I kept it under my pillow, so weird, and..." And he licked Lex like a dog would, long wet stripes over his neck, then nuzzled him. "So good."
Clark's hair smelled like burning pine mixed with soap, and Lex rubbed his cheek against it while Clark, gripping Lex's shoulders, began to suck and bite, hard enough to bruise, hard enough to keep logic from ever coming back. Lex had the vague thought that Clark's mouth anywhere else might kill him. This might kill him--
"I don't even care if it hurts," Clark said, running his thumb over Lex's throat. "I like how it looks, all marked like this, and I know you do, too. I can feel how much you do." He moved his hips, pushing his stiff cock against Lex's. "And you make these noises. I love the noises."
Clark's own sounds, unconscious as Lex's, were satisfied growling sighs, and his hands would tighten when he bit extra deep. It made Lex's own hands itch for more skin, so he tugged off Clark's sweatshirt, the t-shirt underneath, to feel Clark's steamy back. A rougher sound from Clark as Lex stroked him, shoulders down to the waistband of his jeans, the pads of his thumbs riding Clark's spine.
"Yours, too."
That demanding mouth looked riper than ever, made to be bitten and sucked dry, but Clark wouldn't kiss him until Lex's shirt lay in a ball on the floor. Then, straddling Lex's thighs, Clark studied him with his lips half-parted, before trailing his fingers down Lex's chest.
"I have these fantasies," Clark said in a dreamy voice. "Dirty ones about you and me, and it's always straight to the good stuff. I never even thought about this, about just looking. It makes me so..."
Clark rubbed his thigh slowly, his stiff cock outlined against his jeans, and all Lex could do was breathe, or try to. The dark violence crashed back, and he wanted Clark to swear a blood-oath that he'd never do this with anyone else, would never show anyone what belonged to Lex alone--
And somehow Clark was beneath him, arms spread and jeans dragged low over his hips. "What are you going to do to me, Lex?"
Charged by Clark's eagerness, Lex said, "Anything I want."
Nothing gentle this time, just a solar kiss while Clark moaned and thrust up like he had to get closer, had to get off or break. And Lex reveled in it, in Clark, who was just warm skin and this illegal mouth, finding the edge of reality only when Clark gasped, "Lex, I'm so close..."
"Not yet," Lex said, willing his heart to slow down. "Unless this is all you want."
"No! I want more. Don't you?" Clark teased the base of Lex's spine with his fingertip, like he was searching for an answer in the order of his bones.
"I want you to come in my mouth." It was the easiest truth he'd ever told.
"God, Lex. Not helping here." Clark twisted under him, his neck arched into a vulnerable, begging line. The bite to his throat shocked Clark still, and for a few eternal animal seconds, Clark was his. Then Clark's arms went tight around his neck. "Hurts. In a good way. Really good. I didn't know..."
Lex did it again and again, low near Clark's collar bone, high under his ear, right to left and back again, breathing the faint soapy smell of Clark's skin. Red marks appeared, blue-tinged ones that shouldn't be here, not when Clark could live through a car wreck, and Lex licked them, then tasted the thin bruising skin of Clark's shoulder, all of these secrets against his mouth.
He liked the curve of bone beneath and licked Clark's jaw for more. To reach up, he'd placed a hand on Clark's chest, and so went there next, ready to burn Clark's shirts for hiding this part of him, felt Clark's fast-beating heart under a nipple that stiffened even more for his tongue. When he'd sucked and bitten the right one a deeper pink, Lex turned to the other while Clark gasped little fragmented breaths.
There were so many ways to tease Clark's nipple: sometimes Lex bit it, flicking his tongue over the tip, pinched until it looked ready to burst, scratched it with a nail, sucked hard and then softly. Occasionally he'd look up for Clark's sleepy-eyed bliss, the changing shape of Clark's mouth as he tried to form words.
The next time Lex glanced at him, Clark stroked his cheek, and Lex caught the side of his palm with his teeth, kissing along the edge to suck Clark's index finger. Cheaply suggestive, but his cock still reacted, all of him did, the finger so solid against his tongue. Clark fed him another one, and Lex showed him what he'd do when Clark's cock was in his mouth.
It made him even hungrier, greedier, and he took a third finger, licking the ends, then sliding down until they were buried inside. When they were slick, Lex drew back, took Clark's hand in his, and rubbed the wet fingers over Clark's nipple.
"Keep doing that," Lex told him, and, without a limitless supply of control, regretfully blinked away images of Clark on his back, jacking his cock while Lex watched.
Even half-dressed, Clark was already too pornographic. Just looking at him was hotter than full-out sex with Victoria, sex with anyone, and Lex sank lower, like Clark's body was a river. With Clark's hands cupping the back of his head, he paused over too many muscles to count, rising and falling with Clark's quick breaths, a cartographer's dream, licking his way south to Clark's right hip, the first one ever to map Clark's body.
The bone was six kisses long, ending at the waistband of Clark's jeans. Almost prone now between Clark's legs, Lex faced the thick press of his cock, then laid his cheek against it, rubbing lightly, breathing the damp, sea-salt smell. The rhythm lulled him, could've carried them both on a slow swell to orgasm, nearly did, and Lex started to kneel just as Clark spoke, his voice unsteady.
"Do it. What you said before. Please, Lex. Seriously, I really am going to die if you don't."
Tempting to take Clark upstairs, lay him in his bed where they'd have space to move...And change their mind on the way there, fight or think too much, or fall asleep until morning--
Lex opened the button of Clark's jeans, fumbling with the zipper as his hands began to shake. So close now, the collision of fantasy and reality, and he didn't bother to strip Clark bare, just tugged the jeans down to mid-thigh, then Clark's boxers. Freed, Clark's cock rested thick and heavy against his stomach, untouched by anyone except Clark himself, for Lex alone. No one else could have him. Ever.
"Lex," Clark said from a distance. "You should see your face. It's almost scary."
Then Clark went quiet, curving up as Lex held Clark's cock and tasted him.
He'd planned a blowjob worthy of a Persian eunuch but failed at the first contact, gorging on Clark's cock, sucking until his chin was wet, until Clark's cock was gleaming, until Clark's hips jerked and his hands locked onto Lex's shoulders--and still Lex didn't stop, couldn't, overwhelmed by the realness, the ache in his jaw, the stretch of his lips, the fullness of Clark deep in his throat, the way Clark's whimpers meeting his growls and the sounds of his wet mouth gliding up and down. Let the universe demand payback for claiming him, for refusing to stand aside while Clark found his ethical match. It was worth it, anything was, to have Clark's cock in his mouth.
Lex loved the head of Clark's cock best, went at it like a junkie with a fix, getting high on the slick bitter drops melting on his tongue. His blood surged, his vision sharpened, and he was fucking God, creating worlds with the barest effort, skies, stars and suns with the slightest gesture. He was flawless, immortal, eternal, ruler of the universe, Clark at his side for all time, and he drew galaxies with his tongue, wrote their history with his mouth, and sealed it with his hand around Clark's balls.
When Clark cried, "Oh God, Lex," it was worship, and Lex took it all, then gave it back, Clark's cock pushed so far inside him that Lex could hardly breathe, and it was perfect. Clark's balls were wet now, his thighs, and Lex, who could feel everything, felt the thrumming under Clark's swollen skin, the explosive pressure below the surface, the bruises forming on his own shoulders from Clark's grip.
Frenzied now, he licked, sucked, stroked, while Clark's thighs shook and his chest convulsed, his eyes barely open. Any time now, and Lex was ready, months-of-denying ready, for Clark's deepest secret to pour down his throat.
There. Apotheosis.
Clark flung out his arms like he'd been struck by Roman arrows, moaned like it, and thrust once, not just with his hips but his whole body. Then it came, the first lightning pulse against Lex's tongue. He didn't swallow, letting Clark fill his mouth, and drank only when it overfilled, come dripping down his chin, the rest flowing down his throat,
Clark truly part of him now. He sucked Clark dry, kept sucking him even as Clark collapsed back onto the couch, his panting breaths slowing to normal.
"That was..." Clark said, then licked his lips. "You are so...I want to kill everyone you ever...". He sat up, taking Lex's hand, and tugged until they were side by sticky side, Lex wiping his chin and sucking his fingers. "And it wasn't just because of what you were doing. I mean, that was awesome, but I kept thinking, ‘Lex is doing this to me. My best friend.' And that was the best part."
Lex managed to nod. Impossible to speak, with Clark's jeans still open, his wet, spent cock exposed, violet fingerprints on his thighs and bite marks on his throat, his hair a wild tangled mess, the image of post-coital decadence, and completely oblivious to it. Lex's desire, free-floating while he sucked Clark, focused with painful accuracy in his cock, and every impulse urged him to throw Clark down and ram his cock into Clark's ass, his mouth, rub it between Clark's thighs, against his nipples. Instead, he kept his arms at his sides and his eyes fixed on Clark's.
"--not a virgin anymore. Maybe. No, I can't be. Not after that." Clark paused for breath. "Um, Lex? You haven't said anything yet. I was...I didn't do anything wrong, right? I mean, you swallowed, and maybe that was gross. I tried to warn you, but--"
"It was perfect, Clark. You were perfect. And I think that virginity's whatever you want it to be."
"Then I want that. Thanks, Lex." Clark kissed him, then pulled back. "Oh. You taste like me." He tried again, his tongue darting, while Lex kept his hands flat on his own thighs. "Are you okay? You seem kind of...Oh," he said again, his eyes going wide. "Oh, geez, Lex. I'm an idiot. You didn't...You must need to, you know, come. Is there...What do you want me to do?"
Lex had to ungrit his teeth first. "You don't have to do anything."
"You mean you don't want me to?"
One of Clark's scary, unpredictable overreactions, but with the feel of Clark still in his mouth, Lex nudged him toward the obvious with a pointed look down. "What do you think, Clark?"
"Maybe I could just touch you? At least for now? I'm still getting used to this stuff. To sex," he added, serious and a little proud.
"Do what you're comfortable with. Anything. Nothing."
"Okay."
Moving with the caution of a cat at the dog pound, Clark slid his arm around Lex's neck, then lowered his hand to Lex's lap, where it hovered briefly before settling over Lex's cock, trapped under silk and gabardine. Though Lex bit back a groan and forced his hips still, Clark gave him a sidelong glance and said, "I'm guessing you don't hate this." Then he stroked him, a long hot stroke, and Lex had to thrust up. Had to.
"Maybe you could undo your pants," Clark said. When Lex complied without a word, Clark grinned, the bastard. "What? No questions about whether I know what I'm doing?"
"Do you know...Oh, God. Do you know what you're doing?"
Clark's hand was closed over him now through the silk of his boxers. "I'm figuring it out. Those little noises from before don't hurt." Another teasing stroke. "Yeah, like that." This time, Clark used only the tips of his fingers, and when he'd traced the length of Lex's cock, ran his thumb over the head. "You're so hot, Lex. I mean, your cock is. Hot and damp and hard."
At Clark's words, at his fingers slipping under silk to wrap around Lex's cock, and Lex's whorish reaction to both, his myth about sex with Clark opened like Pandora's box. This wasn't ruining Clark--it was ruining Lex, gutting him until nothing remained except this terrifying, vicious obsession.
There was no way to control it, to rationalize it, to be rid of it, and Lex didn't even try. Not tonight. He'd fight destiny later, when Clark wasn't jacking his cock, when Clark wasn't licking Lex's scar between fragmented whispers of, "God, you look..." and "I love how you feel..." When Lex wasn't fucking Clark's fist with his self-control gone, fucking it and pushing his tongue into Clark's mouth, ready to split open wide.
Lex came suddenly, sharply, each burst like broken glass, hot and painful. And he knew that the pain would never leave, that he had to accept this, too, that loving Clark meant hurting all the time.
*
They lay naked together on the red blanket before the fire. The pain was dulled now by the warmth of Clark's body, his happy sighs that sounded like hiccups, the occasional sleepy kiss. It was, Lex thought, his hand resting possessively on Clark's ass, what other people called happiness.
Soon he found himself dozing, half-dreaming, but in colors, not images. Then nothing but relaxing darkness that turned green and wet as a river, and Lex opened his eyes to Clark between his legs, Lex's cock in his mouth.
Lex raised himself on his elbows to watch, and it was the most beautiful, perverse thing he'd ever seen. He wanted a camera to take a thousand pictures that he'd keep in a secret drawer, capturing each detail forever: Clark's hair falling in his eyes, trailing onto Lex's hard cock, the sweet sucking sounds as Clark explored him with his tongue.
The blowjob was sloppy, inexpert, and so exciting that Lex couldn't speak. Forget pictures--he wanted Clark in a secret room, his slave, his whore, his concubine, who'd suck his cock whenever he asked, lick his balls like Clark was doing now, kiss them, kiss his inner thighs, then, God, rub the head of Lex's cock against his lips.
When Clark began to suck again, holding Lex's cock at the base, Lex fought the orgasm. He fought it like he'd never fought anything, not his father, not his worst enemy or his worst impulse. But this was Clark, and Lex had never been able to resist him for long.
He grabbed Clark's shoulder, said, "Fuck. I'm going to come," and proved it. Clark didn't move away, just continued to suck, and, God. Sweet, sweet rush, right into Clark's mouth, he was coming in Clark's mouth, coming on Clark's tongue, filling him with pulse after pulse. There was pleasure, and regret, with the end already in sight and secrets still between them.
As Clark gave a last lick, then crawled beside Lex, his arms going around him, Lex studied his face. If not the truth, did Clark at least understand about destiny? But Clark just looked monumentally pleased with himself, his smile carved on, muttering, "Definitely non-virgin now," so young, tired, and happy that Lex forgave him.
*
The hardest thing Lex ever did was take Clark home. With one hand on the wheel, the other holding Clark's, he drove so far below the speed limit that the Jag barely moved, yet still reached the Kent farm much too soon. Lex's bone-deep satisfaction muted resentment of the neat yellow house for stealing Clark, and, after a long, drowsy kiss, decided he might outlive the temporary separation.
"Stupid house," Clark muttered against Lex's shoulder. "Stupid parents and chores and high school."
Lex only let him go because Clark couldn't stop yawning. "You need sleep."
"I can sleep with you. Let's go back to your place. Or you can come inside."
"Your dad might have something to say about that."
"Stupid dad."
"He just worries about you," Lex said. "And if he knew about us, and about the graveyard, he'd have good--"
"No more talking."
When Clark broke the kiss with another yawn, Lex forced himself to reach across and open the passenger door to a rush of cold air. "You're exhausted, and I'm only making it worse. Go."
"Okay, I guess I can wait until tomorrow. If I have to." Clark unfolded himself and climbed out, stretching once with his face toward the moon, Lex's red blanket around his shoulders. Then he leaned back into the car. "You know, Lex," he said, "I tried to make it to the bridge tonight. After the fight. But I was so tired, and it was too far to walk. Then I figured you'd find me no matter what, so I stayed where I was." With another yawn and a wave, Clark walked away, into the house.
*
Epilogue
Life went on.
Wars still raged, hurricanes still struck, earthquakes still brought towns to their knees. Lex didn't even see Clark the next night, a soul-crushing mystery until he broke and called the Kent house, where Martha told him that Clark had fallen asleep on the couch after his chores and hadn't moved since.
"I don't want to wake him, Lex," she said softly. "He looks too peaceful, all bundled up in a red blanket."
That helped, and Lex hung onto the image over the next few days when chaos reigned with all the warmth and humanity of Caligula. It was Martha who informed him that Clark was in the hospital, and Lex, panicking, raging, ready to murder the fucker who put him there, raced to be with him--except that Clark misread his intensity as biological curiosity, and it was the hammer scene all over again, though Clark warmed a little at the end.
Backing off seemed the smartest option, planing the edges of his obsession, so Lex focused on more mundane affairs, meeting with Victoria and her father to hand-deliver his retaliation, where Victoria returned the favor with a slap and a look that almost passed for regret.
The week didn't improve when, back in Smallville, his father called to congratulate him on the Hardwicks' headline- making financial ruin; nothing brought out paternal approval like cold-served revenge. As an added bonus, Roger Nixon slithered by the next night. After Lex told him, mortal seriousness, that the Kents were now off-limits, Nixon produced some charming candid shots of Lex's father and Victoria one-upping each other with techniques from the Kama Sutra, each performing for the camera in every possible sense.
Nixon. Victoria. His father. A triumvirate from hell, his mirror without Clark, and Lex locked his doors against them.
He poured himself a drink, then another, bitter swallows that refused to warm him. He worked, paced, showered, then listened to Charlie Parker's heroin sounds on the couch wrapped in a blue blanket that made him see red. Finally, with no options left, he crawled naked into bed and fell into a fractured sleep, dreaming of a bridge that crossed into a graveyard.
He woke suddenly, disoriented, blinking in the dark. Too many shadows crowded the room, a crush pressing closer--
Then, beside the bed, one of the shadows spoke.
"Hi, Lex."
There was an old weight in his voice, Clark before the cemetery, and even as Lex turned on the lamp, he understood: the familiar secret was back, written over Clark's face like words on a gravestone. "Is everything all right?" A useless question, but what else could he ask?
Clark gave a plaid shrug. "Everything's back to abnormal."
"Is that good or bad?"
"Depends," Clark said.
Be smart, Lex told himself. Be smart, be gentle. Don't scare him off. Let him keep his secrets, just as long as he stayed. "Look, I was serious at the hospital. No more questions."
No relief, just a bright sharp hurt that darkened Clark's eyes. "Because you don't care?"
If Lex had wanted predictable, he would've have stayed with Victoria. "No, Clark. Because I do. Just not the way you think."
"I'm not even sure what that means." But Clark smiled, and the fierce line of his body relaxed.
Lex could've explained, given a long, passionate speech that would've scared Clark all the way back to the farm. Instead, feeling the pull of destiny, he lifted the covers on Clark's side, and said, "It means that I'm cold, and I need help getting warm."
Not all tales of obsession had to end tragically. It would all right as long as they were together. Without Clark, Lex knew, with the certainty of breathing, he'd fall somewhere dark, and no one would save him. So, when Clark was lying naked in his arms, his body miraculously free of cuts and bruises, Lex said nothing, just lost himself in the simple truth of skin.
*
The End