by ingrid
When I finally find Clark after searching through the Fortress, the barn and yard after yard of cool drizzle, I see he's hunched in an alcove recently cleared of its native cobwebs and dust, sitting cross-legged in the smooth dirt, a sketch pad on his lap and what looks like a long piece of charcoal in his hand.
He's drawing in smooth lines, brushing away stray dust with the back of his hand in short sweeping gestures. I can't see his subject, just the motion of his creation and I crouch down to poke my head inside even if everything about him is screaming for privacy.
Since we've become lovers I want all of him, even the parts he tries to hide in dusty, uninviting spaces.
He looks up at my unexpected invasion, startled. "Hey, Lex." Squints at his wrist watch. "Am I late for something?"
"Not that I know of. Mind if I join you?"
Clark glances around the tiny space before squirming manfully to one side. "Sure."
I scoot in beside him and with the smell and danger of old splintery wood surrounding us, I think this is what it must like hiding beneath a boardwalk or playing fort with ones friends ... not that I'd ever done any of those things in my youth.
My childhood didn't afford me the luxuries of sensory memory; of times remembered by their taste or smell or touch -- just hard lessons learned, one after the other in controlled sterility. I can't say it was all bad, it was simply different and it was all I knew ...
Until now. Clark leans in for his kiss and I supply it gladly, lost in sensations I never tire of: the soft, wet mouth, the scrape of his tongue over mine, the fierce pulse in my cock that lingers even after he pulls away.
"You're wet," he says finally, pleasantly breathless.
"It's raining," I reply before kissing him again my body cursing the cramped space we're stuck in, wishing I could stretch out enough take him then and there in the dirt with the rain pattering over our heads.
But he pulls away, smiling and flushed and I know it's not to be. Yet.
Most days I have to practically drag Clark into my surplus of warm bedrooms and big beds -- he seems to have a kink for tight spaces and ratty couches where we fumble for what feels like hours atop hard, sometimes painful, surfaces before getting it just right.
I complain and he laughs before shoving me back down onto furniture and floors I wouldn't have touched with gloved hands not a year before. I think he likes seeing me get dirty, naked against a backdrop of chaos, aching and noisy for him.
What a pervert. My own beautiful pervert. "So, what are you drawing?"
I peer over his shoulder to look at his sketches but the pad slaps shut.
Oh my. Deer, meet headlights.
Clark's eyes turn impossibly wide, mouth opens soundlessly and he shakes his head. Making out with the town weirdo beneath the barn is easy -- perfectly acceptable actually -- but showing off a few sketches is an act of bravery even he, hero that he is, can't muster the courage for.
"What?" I have to laugh at his terrified face. I can't help it. If he got any cuter he'd put puppies out of business. "Are they dirty pictures?"
"No, just bad ones." Grumbled, and he's practically sitting on top of the pad.
"You can't be the judge of that. Let me see."
"No." Arms crossed over his chest and he's pouting, hard. "They're personal."
"Too personal to show me? Let me see, I promise to be kind. I just want to look at what my lover spends his afternoons drawing while it rains."
A whisper, a nibble on his ear and Clark slowly gives way, tilting his head and smiling his Cheshire-like grin, the one that's only for me.
"Okay," he sighs. Pulls the pad from under his behind. "But please don't laugh at how bad they are."
"Never." And I wouldn't even if they were the crudest of stick figures which they aren't. In fact, they're quite good. Page after page of landscapes and portraits ... portraits of his father, his mother, his friends ... and me.
Dozens of me's, all of them drawn from Clark's memory and imagination. I stare at a drawing of my face and it stares back at me looking reproachful and frightened in a way I can't put my finger on. My portraits are the only ones with any color in them -- he'd taken a blue pencil to color in the eyes -- and the effect is startling, all in black and white but for the eyes.
The sad, angry, frightened eyes.
Yes, they're good but not exactly flattering -- my mouth is turned down unhappily, tension seeps from every stroke and I can see why he didn't want to show them to me.
I'm quite the miserable bastard it seems.
"Do you like them?" he whispers and I can feel him watching every muscle in my face for a response.
"They're excellent. All of them," I reply, and it's true enough ... you don't have to like a work to see its merit. I hand him back the pad. "Well done."
"You don't like them," he says quietly. He stares at his hands. "I told you they sucked."
"Actually, I think they're incredibly realistic." The rain is starting to seep toward us in thin rivulets rolling over the dirt and I watch the miniature river come to a stop against my shoe. "Maybe too realistic."
"What do you mean?"
It's a true downpour now and drums against the wood above us. "Do I really seem that unhappy to you, Clark?"
His head hangs even lower. "Sometimes," he mumbles. He shrugs and rainwater drips onto his jeans creating dots of dark blue on the denim. "Other times not so much, but yeah, sometimes I worry."
"Worry about what?"
"I dunno. Worry that you're miserable. That you feel trapped." A pause. "That I'm not enough." He shifts uncomfortably, long limbs tangling in their confinement. "Or that I'm too much. You know ... too much for you to handle."
I reach up and touch the back of neck where the muscles are corded so tightly, they feel as if they could snap. "You don't think I can handle being with you, farmboy?" I keep my tone light but I can tell he's deadly serious.
Far too serious. "I think you can handle the farmboy part. It's the ... the ... you know."
Another helpless shrug and there it is. The drawings, this conversation, all of it ... it isn't about me. It's about him, his otherness and how he thinks I view him. With reproach. With concern. With fear.
All because of the simple fact he isn't from this world.
"Don't you ever think about it, Lex? What it really means?" He looks at me beseechingly and all I can do is nod as the storm unleashes a torrential sheet of water that obscures the yard in front of us. "I don't know where I'm from, I don't even know what the hell I am or what I'll turn into. I don't know if I'm the only one or ..." Here I can feel his shudder. "If there are more. Maybe coming after me. All of them, here, and I was the one who led the way."
He sounds so fearful, it makes my heart ache in spite of myself. "I think they would have arrived by now if that were the case, Clark." Softly, and my hand is still on the back of his neck, stroking and massaging. It's like petting a stone. "Besides, most invading armies don't send babies in as advance scouts."
He turns to me angrily and there's a rumble of thunder somewhere over the ridge. "So you're saying that none of this concerns you?"
"No. Some of it does concern me, frightens me even. But you don't. Therein lies the difference." I run my hand over his scalp, through his hair and he visibly relaxes, a little. "So next time you draw me, give me a smile once in a while, will you? I can't possibly be getting all this great sex and still be such a sour ass, can I?"
"I guess." He doesn't sound convinced. "I have dreams, you know ..." His voice trails away and he reaches over my lap for my other hand, lacing our fingers together, entwined.
"I have dreams too, Clark." I squeeze his fingers and a familiar strong grip squeezes back. "And they have nothing to do with alien invasions, monsters from outerspace or anything of the sort. They're about you -- the person you are, the person I know you'll be. The great person you'll be." I raise his hand to my lips, kissing the strangely soft skin along his knuckles. "Great like all my other heroes. The greatest one of all."
"I'm not a person, Lex." Simple sad tone, lacking bitterness. He merely sounds resigned. "I'm just ... me."
"Trust me, Clark. That's more than enough." I pull him close and he allows me to draw him in, even though he doesn't have to. "The only problem with you being in this world is that you might be too good for it. Just as the only problem with you being with me is that ..."
"Don't say it," he warns. "I mean it, Lex. We had this conversation already."
Ah yes. The "Lex Isn't Good Enough For Clark" conversation. The one that always ends in a noisy fight and stomping of muddy Timberlands out of the castle. I examine our cramped quarters and realize that every lovers' quarrel has its proper setting and for that particular fight, this isn't it.
The big stuff always needs more room. "Sorry. Here, why don't we make a deal?"
He looks at me suspiciously. Smart boy, knowing better than to make rash deals with a Luthor. "What sort of deal?"
"I promise not to put myself down in comparison to you and you promise not to worry about me when it comes to your ... " I think for a minute. "Specialness."
He moans, pained. "Now I'm special. I'll probably be a sanitation engineer when I grow up too. A differently-abled sanitation engineer."
Silly boy. "Is it a deal or not?"
The rain is slowing down again and Clark curls against me, nodding into my chest. It's suddenly obscenely comfortable in our little fort, warm and dry even in the face of relentless storms.
"Okay. It's a deal. If you're good with it, so am I." His warm breath tickles my quickening pulse. "I want you, you know. So bad."
With that purr the stirring within me starts and in a minute I know we're going to be in my car, racing back to the castle where our other sanctuaries wait, where I'll draw portraits of desire all over his skin with my hands, cock and tongue.
"I want you too, Clark. All of you."
"No matter what you end up getting?"
The rain is stopping and I'm already on my knees, ready to pull him after me through the mud and soaked grass. "The more the better."
He laughs because he knows it's true.
I want of all him. I'll have all of him and all of him, whatever that may be, will never be quite enough.
~&~
fin