Disclaimer: Superman and Smallville belong to DC and WB, respectively. Clark and Lex do not belong to me.
Warning, this fic contains slash and implied incest. Set after Jitters.
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Night seemed to have fallen much earlier today than usual. In hindsight, he should have acknowledged the pathetic fallacy and just stayed home, but concern had made him oblivious to the universe's omens. It was past dark when Clark arrived at Lex's house/fortress/whatever, and the butler didn't even blink as he let him into the study before going off to find Lex. He got the feeling that he visited more often than the staff ever expected.
When Lex appeared several minutes later in the open doorway, the thing that stood out the most to Clark-even in the pale firelight-were the bruises. He was wearing a dark gray sweater that hung long over his hips and wrists, so most of the damage was covered, but the dark bruise at the back of his skull that Clark caught sight of when Lex walked into the room contrasted starkly with the rest of his pale skin.
"Hey, Clark." Lex's voice sounded forced to his ears, and...weary? That made sense; nearly dying in a fertilizer factory was bound to be tiring, if not down right traumatizing.
"Hey Lex." Brief awkward pause as Clark tried to judge his place in this castle tonight. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."
And the small but grateful smile he receives right there is the reason he hates lying to Lex: because when Clark speaks with plain, open honesty, it's obviously such a rare treat that Lex reflexively responds in kind. Its kind of...interesting, really, that he can do that. Different, definitely.
The smile fades far too quickly, and Lex returns to his normal state of ennui, only it's altered tonight. Fractured. This upsets Clark in way he doesn't totally comprehend, but he wants to change it.
"I'm fine." When Lex smoothed down the front of the sweater, the collar slid down and Clark glimpsed another bruise, darker and fresher, in the shape of fingerprints on Lex's throat.
It was hard for Clark to reconcile the Earl who did this to Lex with the one who worked on the farm and attempted to teach him to play guitar. If the meteorites could change a person's personality so drastically, wasn't the whole town essentially a time bomb?
"Did you see a doctor yet?" he asked, pretty sure the answer was yes, a doctor had been called and was waiting by the time Lex arrived. He indicated the marks on his too-pale throat.
"No," Lex answered, jerking the collar of the sweater up over the fingerprints. "It's just bruises. A bottle of aspirin and I'll be fine."
He may be an alien and able to redefine the laws of gravity daily, but Clark still had to blink in disbelief. "It looks like Earl tried to strangle you, Lex. You might have a concussion or something."
Lex just gave Clark one of his cynical half-grins, but even it was...off. "Don't worry, Clark; I'm fine."
That nonchalance towards his own life....It disturbed Clark. A lot. "I'm serious, Lex. You could really be hurt and not know it."
It felt wrong to call this particular expression a smile, half or otherwise fractionated as it may be. So bitter the sharp tang of it lay on his tongue, and Clark was getting more and more worried.
Lex drifted away from him and towards the fire, which was roaring more cheerily than Clark thought it had a right to, all things considered. "I'm not. I got beat up-" obviously "-but it's nothing major. Been through worse," he added, seemingly as an afterthought, and more to himself than Clark.
Since logic didn't seem to be getting through to this strange version of Lex, Clark decided to try and force his pride to cave. Which, looking back, hadn't been all that brilliant an idea, but. Hindsight. "Is this some sort of family stubbornness? You don't need to see a doctor because Luthors are too good to get hurt?" and wow, that sounded more like his dad than Clark had thought possible--but he was really worried about Lex and, frankly, exasperated that Lex wasn't sharing in the concern.
Lex grasped the mantle with both hands-his posture like the time he had shown up at Clark's house after the bank robbery, holding onto the doorframe like an anchor-and his fists clenched against the polished wood before he pushed away and turned back to Clark, eyes angry and at the same time almost...lost.
That had not been the reaction he was expecting. Witticism, maybe, or an annoyed smirk, but not...that. It left him with the instant urge to apologize.
"Sorry," he shook his head. "That was pretty harsh. I just--"
Lex cut him off with a gesture. "It's okay." Clark couldn't understand his expression right now, but he found it unsettling nonetheless. "You've pretty much hit the mark." And now there was staring, like he was trying to see under Clark's skin to the alien-DNA-wrapped secrets beneath. Which was still an unsettling expression, but at least a recognizable one. "Again."
The conversation was beginning to shift just a little to the left of normal--but talking with Lex was always a bit surreal, in a liberating sort of way.
"Lex, what..." can I do? Can I help with? Why does everything feel minutely fucked up and what do I need to do to fix this?
Didn't know which ending to pick, so he just let it hang and stared back.
Something in Lex seemed to ripple at that. He took three quick, short steps towards Clark, like he was trying to walk across a seesaw so quickly it wouldn't have time to tip over.
And then he stopped.
Quit walking, almost like he had crashed into a pane of self-erected glass, and the look he gave Clark from behind it was leashed and hungry and angry and trying to hide and failing.
To call it unnerving would be the worst of understatements.
"Nothing, Clark," Lex finally replied, once he'd gotten a visibly shaking hold on his self-control. "It's....Nothing."
He was lying. Unable to hide it or really even be bothered with trying at this level of stress and fatigue.
There was something he could do here, there had to be, something to answer Lex's unasked questions and ease all the tension in the room.
It was beginning to give him a headache, the pervading sense of something wrong here, almost unnatural, coupled with the residual nausea of being in close quarters with Earl for three hours and the uncertainty of this moment. And it didn't help that he knew from Lex's posture he was about to be dismissed. With as much friendliness as Lex could muster, but sent away nonetheless.
He took a step forward, then another half-step, until he was barely even a foot away. But the glass was still between them.
No wide gap, no mountain heights, just a pane of unidentifiable emotion. See the rare Lex Luthor: look, but don't touch.
"Look, Clark, it's been a long night...." Lex trailed off as Clark reached out, towards and through the glass, to place his hand on Lex's shoulder. The sweater was supersoft, probably lamb's wool or ermine or some other material that Clark wasn't likely to afford ever in his life, and for a brief moment he wondered if moisture would wreak it, because somewhere along the line his palms had started sweating.
Lex wasn't saying anything anymore, just staring at Clark anew, expression unreadable one more.
But not uncomfortable. Not about to move away.
So he took the rest of that step forward and kissed him.
Lips just like he'd remembered. Warmer and drier than when he'd pulled Lex out of the river, but still as unyielding now as they had been then. After a moment of that immobility, Clark panicked. He'd been wrong, read wrong and screwed up everything that he and Lex were. Trashed his friendship with one of the few people who understood without needing to be told everything, just out of some strange teenaged hormone stupidity.
He'd pulled back just far enough that his lips were no longer touching Lex's, trying to form a coherent apology or explanation or possibly just gain enough clearance to run out the door, when Lex reached up and tangled his hands in Clark's hair, dragging him back for another kiss.
It was so different from the first one that it wiped out everything. The time in sixth grade when he'd kissed Chloe next to the swingset and she kicked him in the shin in return, the moment in the barn with Lana/Tina, the one just a second ago--none of them were even a warm-up for this. Lex pressed hard against his mouth, hard enough that it probably should have hurt, but-of course-no. Lex's tongue traced the seam of Clark's mouth, insistent, as though he were afraid Clark would disappear soon and there wasn't enough time.
Clark obliged, opening his mouth and simply tasting, then there's the foreign flick of tongue over teeth and he feels like he's sinking into the overly plush rug under the weight of...something. Can't name it and doesn't care.
Needed to be closer, right then. He was too close to Lex to really step, so it's more of a shuffle while Clark grips Lex's waist with one hand to pull himself forward.
Clenches the wool tight enough to rip it at the groan Lex makes when Clark's hip bumps his cock, hard and warm and needy even through the thin fabric of his pants and the rough denim of Clark's jeans. He grins and presses a little harder just to hear that sound again, longer and deeper than before this time. Lex's hands are fisted in his hair now, and he's being kissed like Lex is ordering time and air and the world to not matter and not exist even, and Clark realizes that this is it. This is what he wants.
He runs his hand along Lex's shoulder, the sweater sticking damply to his palm for a moment, and intends to trail it up Lex's neck, wanting to feel the strange, smooth skin of his scalp. He might possibly pull Lex away, just for a moment to catch his breath, because it's starting to feel like his knees might collapse from underneath him and sending him crashing to the floor--not exactly suave.
But when he caressed the collarbone, Lex flinched as he inadvertently pressed the freshest bruises.
Flinched, then stiffened; like ice had been poured directly into his veins.
The hands fell out of his hair, and suddenly there's air, too much air and Clark forgets to breathe as he watches Lex take a step away. Away and down, falling back into wherever it is he was when Clark arrived.
It was like watching him drown again. Helplessly.
"Did I...." He wants to take a step forward, but he can't afford to see Lex retreat anymore.
"No," Lex rushed, "no. It's not. You." He yanked the collar back up again. "It's just...late." He seemed to be trying to say something else, rejection or explanation or pardon, but he couldn't force the words out beyond the...whatever it was.
Clark felt himself nod, jerkily, but it was more reflex than anything else. He had no clue how to react to this; there was something he wasn't getting, some big piece that would have explained this whole twisted moment to him, but right now he was lost. It takes him a moment to realize, uncomfortably, that he's hard. Forces himself past that. "Will...you be okay? Tonight?" He listens as his body somehow speaks, despite the fact that his mind feels like a black void, emotion so knotted and dense that none of it can escape.
Lex looks like he wants to find some thread of irony that Clark isn't picking up in that statement, but he's too drained to do so. He just nods.
"I'll....See you. Tomorrow?" And Clark dreads leaving, even though he wants to get away from all these broken boundaries. This is what minister meant when he talked about hell being the absence of God last Sunday--Clark's rapidly forgetting how he lived before his friendship with Lex, and going without now is...hard to think of. Like he'd lived so long with the albatross around his neck, it wasn't until someone pulled it off that he realized how close he had been to constantly buckling over, and now that person was threatening to return it.
"Yeah," Lex said distantly, already mentally seven leagues away from this room. Trying to forget things as soon as they'd happened.
And that...that hurts. So much. It's then that Clark knows he won't be coming back tomorrow. He can't.
"Bye," he says, a little too hurried and desperate to sound normal. He didn't even come close, but that's okay because this whole situation isn't normal. Doesn't wait for a reply to emerge from Lex, just leaves.
He manages to restrain himself until he's out of the house and past the gate, and then he takes off. Jet-propels towards home.
Heading towards safety and security and solidity, always knowing in the back of his mind that he's bringing all his destruction with him.
But he's used to that. That's normal.