Disclaimer: I don't own any of this.
Follow me on livejournal – nonotthatone dot livejournal dot com.
Indulgence
It had started as a joke. They'd been sparring, teasing each other across the table in some fancy restaurant or another that Lex had bought and closed for the evening. The food had been excellent and the wit flying thick; flush with love and good humor, Clark had laughed at something Lex said and replied, "Marry me."
Something glinted in the beat of silence that followed; whether Lex's eyes or his crystal wineglass, Clark couldn't be certain.
"Never," he declared.
Clark hadn't meant it, not really; but Lex's answer stuck out against the evening like a question mark. It slipped with them into the back seat of the limo and followed them all the way home to the penthouse. Clark forgot about it when Lex relieved him of his shirt; but afterwards, as Lex lay breathing slow and gentle in his arms, Clark felt it drawing near again. It lurked in the shadowy corners of their bedroom and felt uncomfortably like doubt.
He hadn't meant it.
Probably Lex hadn't either.
Another longstanding joke between them was Lex's passion for yielding to Clark's every whim. He had only to express a passing interest in something, and whether it was a cup of coffee or a weekend in Barbados, Lex would find a way to put a bow on it and place it in his hands. Clark had never really overcome the shyness of presents which Jonathan had drummed into him; but he'd also never really learned to hide his pleasure at them either.
And gifts aside, there were other things Clark didn't mind coming right out and asking for. Lex never seemed to tire of fulfilling those wishes either.
It wasn't something they'd ever discussed or even formally agreed to; but overall, it was a very satisfying arrangement. Lex liked to indulge Clark; and Clark liked to find creative ways to thank him.
Clark decided that was why Lex's response was bothering him; he wasn't used to Lex denying him anything he asked. It surprised him to discover how petulant that made him feel, and how long the feeling lingered.
He hadn't even meant it.
But what if he did?
Clark began to find small ways to sneak the question into conversation. Over breakfast, at the gym, during a late night phone call when Lex was on some other continent wheeling and dealing, after an argument about Clark's costume finding its way into Lex's dry cleaning basket again. He tried coy, he tried flip, he tried innocent and all the inflections in between.
Lex matched him every time, even began to strike preemptively.
"Despite any indications to the contrary, I am capable of saying 'no,'" he quipped one rainy Thursday morning when Clark wheedled at him not to get out of bed just yet. "For instance, I still won't marry you."
It was just another of their games. Clark reminded himself of that to soothe the sting of Lex's repeated refusals.
His biggest mistake, he now realized, was ever making threats. "I'll keep asking," he'd said, hoping the half-teasing was enough to hide the other half which was growing quietly desperate. "At increasingly inappropriate moments. So you might as well just say yes."
Lex had simply let one eyebrow arch. "I don't negotiate with terrorists. Do your worst."
Clark didn't know if he had a worst. But he rose to the challenge anyway.
He'd tried the romantic approach, surprising Lex with a library full of flowers and a candlelit table set for two. Lex had smiled knowingly and done things to him with rose petals that still made Clark flush crimson; but when he woke the next morning Clark realized Lex had never actually answered the question. The man was a master of deflection.
Clark tried next to impress him. He stepped up the hero factor and set a new one-day save record; the mayor staged a ceremony to give him the key to the city.
Lex sent in a squadron of cybernetic robots to break up the party.
They'd laughed until they cried afterwards, looking down on the smoking pile debris from the penthouse windows. Clark didn't like politicians much either; when crisis reared they always screamed like girls. But as his eyes grew luminous and he turned to Lex with words about the key to his heart on his lips, Lex's mirth ebbed to that same old impenetrable smirk and that same old taunting denial.
That withdrawal was maddening; Clark hated it. He didn't need picket fences, but neither did he want Lex's cold skyscrapers of glass and steel. If Lex was building walls, he would smash them.
He began to play to every hint Lex had ever dropped. He bought European-cut dress shirts and Armani ties. But at every turn, there was Lex waiting to raise the stakes. The cologne he bought in retaliation nearly drove Clark wild, and the Armani ties were reduced to shreds around the bedposts.
He'd even dosed himself with red kryptonite. He knew Lex had no corresponding vulnerability; but Kal could always flip his switches. Lex might find him more persuasive.
Unfortunately, Kal was no more pliable than Lex was, and not remotely interested in marriage. He conveniently forgot all about the mission Clark had given him; and when he vacated, all Clark was left with was a vague hangover and a more distinct sensation of shame. Lex brought him some tea with lemon, patted him on the head and promptly jetted off for a series of meetings on the Pacific Rim as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
The longer the joke dragged out, the less funny it became. Clark was twisting into knots and he was sure Lex was doing it on purpose. Why did it amuse him to make him suffer?
It wasn't fair. He'd never denied Lex anything he'd wanted so badly.
Except ... oh, right. There had been that one thing.
But Lex, ever-inventive and much less willing to take "no" for an answer than he was to give it, had wrung Clark's secret from him at last. And Clark would never forget how he'd done it: he'd done more than make him love him.
He'd made him want to tell.
So that was it - he'd just make Lex want to say yes.
He supersped to his mother's attic and came home with an armful of plaid and denim. He betrayed his own code to crack Lex's password - so easy though, "farmboy" - and sent a series of emails ordering equipment from experimental facilities all over the country overnighted to the penthouse. He channeled all he'd ever found in Lex that was morally dubious and viscerally seductive; he plotted. And waited.
When Lex came home from Hong Kong three days later it was like stepping back ten years in time. The volumetrics and holography Clark had misappropriated transformed their bedroom into the Kent Farm hayloft. Lex's pique at the abuse of company property disappeared instantly at the sight of Clark in faded old jeans and flannel. It never occurred to him before that moment that augmented reality could be marketed for autoeroticism; he'd have to make a note.
"Do you remember all the times we spent here?" Clark asked, moving deftly towards him amongst familiar objects that weren't really there.
"Yes." Lex held very still and let him come.
"And all the things you wanted from me then?"
"Oh yes," he repeated. He didn't need memory for that; the twisting need for Clark never left him.
"Why didn't you just take them?"
"Because I wanted …"
Clark was suddenly upon him like a storm, all-consuming, uncompromising. "Because you wanted me to want it too."
There on the floor of fantasy, Clark made him come three times in rapid succession and was threatening to make it four when Lex finally cracked. "God, Clark," he hissed with naked candor. "I can't take any more; you have to stop."
"I will," Clark answered, victory sweet as Lex's skin slick with sweat and himself, "if you say you'll marry me."
Lex groaned and thumped his head back against the floor, then laughed in spite of everything. "You shock me, Clark; this is a low blow."
"I learned from the best." Clark withdrew his sensory assault and wrapped Lex up in his arms, but his eyes did not release the pressure.
Lex met his gaze with equal force. "You don't like our joke anymore, do you?"
"I like to play with you," he insisted. "And I like you stubborn. But what I don't understand is why you won't say yes."
A complicated expression rose in Lex's face. "I think your view of marriage is a bit idealistic."
"I think yours is fatalistic."
"Well, I never had your example of what one should look like."
"Lex." Clark kissed him. "This isn't about my family, or yours. It's about you and me."
Lex sustained the kiss, as if to give himself time to regroup. When they parted, his eyes were fierce. "What do you want that I don't give you?"
"Nothing," Clark assured him.
"What would it change?"
Clark considered; repeated, "Nothing."
"Then why do it?"
"Because," Clark replied, his hands possessive on Lex's spine, "I want to be done with secrets. Don't you?"
*
The wedding was less showy than Lex's others, though no less elegant. There were fewer flowers, more dancing. Clark wore the purple tie Lex bought him; and in exchange, Lex didn't press him to change his name.