At the end of Nemesis, Clark tells Martha that he thinks he and Lex still have a chance at being friends. This is a total body rewrite of my original story exploring the possibilities of that relationship. Alternate universe, obviously slash, Lex/Clark.

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It's not, what you thought,

when you first began it.

You got, what you want
now you can hardly stand it though.

It's not going to stop; it's not going to stop.

It's not going to stop, 'till you wise up," Amiee Mann.

Heading to the mansion again—unannounced and uninvited—I couldn't help but notice how different everything had become. Lex used to welcome my visits, like he had been waiting for me all day, but the last couple of years my presence was barely tolerated. Lex used to hug me whenever I came by, even if I was only dropping off produce, but then at some point, he stopped.

We tried to stay friends as long as possible, and when that no longer worked, I'd come by about once a week, and we'd have sex, but we didn't talk to each other any more.

I wished I could remember an exact moment when Lex started to get annoyed with me, a specific day when he seemed more angry, more hateful, but I couldn't. It all happened so gradually that I didn't realize how much we were fighting, and lying, and then one day I just wasn't allowed inside the mansion anymore. Lex wouldn't return my phone calls, and when I came by with the weekly fruit and vegetable orders, I was told to drop it off at the front gate. Then he started sleeping with Lana, and they got married.

All down the hallway I fingered the tiny hunk of Kryptonite I'd been keeping in my pocket ever since Lex and I broke up. Once inside Lex's office I could smell a tiny bit of cold gunpowder—someone had fired a weapon earlier—and brandy…lots of brandy. Lex was sitting, staring into a crackling fire, with his back to the door.

His head was slumped to the side, eyes closed racing around, watching his dreams. I almost left, thinking it would be better come back when he was awake, but then I saw the bandages on Lex's face, the dark purple black bruises contrasted against his pail skin. He looked so helpless, and week, and I needed him to need me. I kissed him then, once, on the forehead, and his eyes opened, slowly. Lex moaned, stretched, and then looked at me, angrily.

"Lana's gone, Clark. Sorry to spoil your fun, but there's nobody here—at least, nobody who needs rescuing." The words came out slowly, in a cautious tone, as though Lex were trying to avoid certain phrases like he wanted to hide the fact that he was drunk, even if it was just me.

"You were right," I said, and Lex stopped reaching for the glass he'd been drinking from. "You said something when we were—earlier, and I realized you were right all along." Lex was interested, but just barely. I knew I'd have to be careful. If I said the wrong thing, lied, held something back, he'd know, and this whole effort would have been for nothing.

"Sit," Lex gestured towards the chair to his left. "I said a lot of things, Clark, to which one of them would you be referring to?" he asked, slurring.

"You're drunk." When I said this Lex shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, ' no duh,' and reached once again for his glass—only to discover it was empty. He decided not to get up, but did stare at the bottle across the room. "I have been lying to you ever since the day we met, and every time I caught you spying on me I overreacted, because I was afraid you'd learn the truth, and you wouldn't want me anymore. I didn't plan to keep lying forever, I swear. I meant to tell you, but—"

"You chickened out?" Lex sounded surprisingly uncertain, but I was afraid to correct him, knowing that any little thing would start a fight. "No. No, no, no, no, no! I never did anything to deserve being treated like—for at least six months. I gave you a truck! I let you drive my Ferrari, I—you ere supposed to be my friend. You were the only friend I ever had, and all you did was lie to me. What did I do to deserve that?" Lex sighed, leaned his head back against the chair, yawning, and he closed his eyes. "Get out," he said, sleepily. As angry and pissed off as he felt, he couldn't stop himself from nodding off.

"I was a kid, and you hit—you ran me over with you car, and I was fine. I ripped the roof off the thing…you have no idea how scared I was. I didn't know what was going on, so I said the first thing that popped to my head. When my Dad told me everything, I wanted to explain it to you, but he said I couldn't, and I was so scared they wouldn't let me live with them, or worse…I figured that if I just told you the truth eventually, everything would be okay in the end."

It seemed like an eternity between when I started talking, and when I got it all out, and it must have actually been a while, because when I first came in the windows were pitch black, and now the slim fingered dawn was starting to creep into the room. Lex woke up, and he looked at me strangely. I took him in my arms. He didn't seem to mind as we walked up to the bedroom.

He didn't mind when I took off his clothes, and put him in bed, or even when I took off my pants, and climbed in beside him. Once he closed his eyes, Lex didn't wake up again until almost noon, but I didn't sleep a wink. I stayed up the whole time, watching his chest rise and fall slowly, and clutching the small rock until my palm started to bleed, throbbing.

"What the fuck are you doing here? I thought I kicked you out last night." Lex gripped his head, squeezing and massaging his temples. "We didn't actually, you know, what did we do last night?"

"I came over to apologize for—for everything. I wanted to tell you the truth." Lex chuckled, and I knew it was one of those now or never situations. I had to tell him immediately, or he'd never speak to me again. "I'm from another planet."

For a long time he just stared, blankly, and then Lex lunged at me, his hands clenched into tight little fists. He reached to hit me, and I grabbed him by the wrist. I held onto his arm, pushing it down gently. "You don't really wanna do that. Look, Lex—I wish there was way for some way for you to do this, but there isn't. I mean the meteor rocks—Kryptonite, weakens me, but it doesn't change the way my body works or make anybody else stronger. If there was a way for you to actually hurt me, without breaking your wrist I'd tell you to do it, but I don't wanna hurt you. "

"Too late," Lex said, almost mouthing the words. I hated my abilities then, almost as much as I hated myself for the things I'd done to Lex. "What if I used one of those rocks to smash your face in?" he asked, but I got the feeling he didn't want to cause me physical harm.

"I could die if you went at it too long, but as soon as the stuff was far enough away, I would get, I'd be fine again. I used to lay in bed at night, and pray that you'd call me on it, because I knew I'd never be able to lie if you figured things out."

"But lying for any other reason was okay? You didn't have a problem with it then?"

"I was fourteen and scared!"

"You're not fourteen now! Are you telling me that you were still scared of—what—getting kicked out of your parent's house six moths ago? Or did you think I'd hurt you? Take advantage of you?" I wanted to hold him again, and I tried, but Lex pushed me away.

"I don't expect you to forgive me, but—I mean you were my first, well everything, and it killed me having to lie all the time, and I wanted to tell you. I meant to tell you. I should have told you. Lex, I'm sorry." I fell to the ground, shaking, and Lex held me, awkwardly—still angry—but he held me, and when I pulled back there was a wet spot on his shirt, of what my face looked like crying. "I'll go," I told him after we sat there staring at the comforter for about an hour.

"Sure, walk out on me, like every other person in my life," Lex said, trying to sound carefree.

"I figured you didn't want me around right now," I admitted. "I still love you. I can't imagine how hard that's gotta be to believe, but I do." I knew he wanted to say, 'what could you possibly know about love?' but he didn't.

"I want you to stay."

"I think we're going to—I think it might be good for us to—I was thinking that we might be able to make things work if maybe we could, you know, start over."

"I don't know if we can. Start over that is, considering everything I just think maybe we…" All I wanted to do was hold Lex, and never let him go, so I moved to put my arms around him again. This time he did let me hold him briefly.

"So what can we do?" I asked. Lex and I had a huge history. We had known each other for so long, I felt like my whole life revolved around him, had to revolve around him.

"Maybe we could talk, come clean, find out if there is anything left to re—to se if we can try to salvage this—our relationship," he told me.

"I want us to sleep together. I think right now, I'm feeling completely out of control, and I need to get that back. I wanna—make love to you. We can talk too, before—during—afterward, whatever you want do."

"I think we should talk first. I can hold you, touch you, or you could hold me, or whatever you like." Lex pressed his face to my chest, and the two of us lay down on the couch together. I knew that I was the only person Lex had ever allowed himself to be vulnerable around, and I understood that was why this whole thing was so difficult for him. When we lay down on the couch together, he curled up into a ball. His entire body fit in the space between my chin and my knees, as I curled up around him.

"Why me?" Lex asked at last. "There's got to be millions of people in the world who deserve to be saved, to be the object of your constant attention. People need help, lots of them, so why do you keep coming after me?"

"I never liked anybody, but then I met you, and…

"Everything changed?" Lex muttered, 'no kidding,' and then shrugged.

"There's that too, but I never knew I could like guys, and I felt like a freak. Actually, when my Dad told me to give the truck back, I was glad, because it meant I'd get to see you again. I wanted to tell you everything about a million times. I left my house everyday, thinking, this time I'm gonna tell Lex. This is the day. Every lie I told him, everything I had to make up, I kept telling myself, and this is the last one.

"So I was your first guy crush, big deal. You're out of the closet now, and you're gorgeous. Clark, you could have anybody you wanted, Ollie, that brat with the speed powers, Whitney, Pete, anybody else. Go rescue them. Leave me alone."

"I tried that already and it didn't work. I mean, Sex with Bart is amazing—he's the only guy I ever met who could keep up with me, but it was just sex. I didn't love any of those guys. I couldn't. I feel like there's a leash around my heart, and you've got the other end."

"That's a crappy metaphor."

"I can't be with anyone but you. I need you, Lex. I'll die if we're not together."

Lex looked at me as if he were about to roll his eyes or tell me I wouldn't actually die. "See this?" I shouted, yanking my sleeve down to my elbow. I hadn't told anyone about the Kryptonite or that I'd started cutting my arms. Mainly this was because I thought people would try and stop me, and because only girls cut themselves like that—I thought. Lex hugged me, then pulled my body as close to him as he could. Lex kissed my wrists and started digging through my pocket until he found the meteor rock, and threw it out of the room.

"Jesus Clark! Doing that sort of thing doesn't solve anything, I learned that the hard way." Lex bit down on his lip momentarily, wishing he hadn't told me the last part. "People care about you, and you're willing to hurt them, because we're fighting? People love you. They'd miss you Clark."

When Lex said 'they,' or 'people,' I knew what he really meant was 'I would miss you,' and 'it would hurt me,' but I didn't say anything. "Okay," Lex told me at last. "Okay, maybe we can try again." He sighed, kissing all up and down my arm.

"Are you doing this because you think I might kill myself if you dump me again?" Lex shook his head, and I gave him the look. Then Lex shrugged again. "I wanna hold you. Please, it makes me feel…"

"In control?" Lex completed my sentence. "I would feel guilty if you died because I didn't do anything, but I wanted to be with you anyway. This just gives me an excuse without making me look weak. You can tell me everything, if you still want," he said. "I love you Clark." I don't know if it was because Lex was close to me, or because he was speaking to me, because he said he loved me, but I started to feel better the minute I wrapped my arms around him. I closed my eyes, kissed his head, and then I looked back at him.

"This isn't gonna be easy, Clark. We've—you lied to me, probably about as much as I lied to you. I don't know if I can trust you, and you'd be a sucker to think you can trust me like that," he said, snapping his fingers.

"There's gotta be something I can do—something we could do, together, you know like a trust exercise."

"I doubt falling backwards into your arms is going to make me fall in love with you. Besides, you could run halfway across town for a snack, and still come back in time to catch me."

"I'm not talking about those stupid things people do on weekend retreats, or whatever. I want us to like tell each other something…something we never told anyone before…and we'll just keep doing that until we don't have anymore secrets," I suggested.

"I don't know. How do I know you're not just trying to get dirt on me…or worse?" Lex asked, scooting away from me. "Maybe we should just go back to fucking each others brains out whenever we're down and…oh come on—you're giving me that look? You wanted to do it before, why not now?"

"I wanna be more than just some throw away fuck toy to you. I like having sex with you and—you're the best lover I ever had, okay, but I always wanted to be your everything. I always wanted us to be together forever."

"I paint my toenails," Lex blurted. I stared at him blankly for a moment, and then he added, "Clear nail polish."

"What?" I asked. I couldn't believe he would say something like that, especially right in the middle of a fight.

"I never told anybody that before…what you expecting something darker? You already know all my darkest secrets. It's your turn." Lex got up off the bed, and pulled on his bathrobe, before sitting up next to me, and sighing. I thought for a long time before telling him anything, not wanting to screw this up. I wanted to tell him the most perfect secret ever, but all I could think of was stupid stuff, the kind of thing Lana and Chloe would giggle over at a slumber party.

Finally I sighed, and said, "I never liked Lana. I mean—she's nice and everything, but I only ever pretend to think she was pretty because I knew everyone else thought so. I pretty much figured that I was a freak because I didn't like anybody that way, guys or girls. In fifth grade all the girls picked boys to pair up with and they had mini weddings. I was the priest. It wasn't that nobody wanted me, three different girls asked, but I turned them all down. I didn't want anyone. Then you hit me with your car, and when we were falling into the water all I could think, was damn I wish I could fuck him. He's so beautiful, and perfect, and—then I was okay, so I pulled you out of the car, and…I would have kept on doing CPR for the rest of my life, because I couldn't be away from you for more than a second. Every since we met I have been 100 totally and completely, head-over-heals, crazy in love with you, and only you."