The scar on my back itched like hell every time my silk shirt shifted over it. Its raised edges had gone down overnight, but now the thing begged to be scratched every second of the day. The pain was almost preferable to this incessant itching. Clark's hand rubbed lightly over my back to temporarily alleviate the annoying itch, but I knew that his scar was bothering him just as badly. The difference was that I could scratch it with my hands without worrying about tearing open my skin. The bad thing was that I couldn't reach the entire area of my back. Clark could reach his, but one slip of his super strength would open the wound. It was the first time I realized just how careful he had to be all the time when he was picking up a glass or hugging another person. It gave me some insight into Clark's generally cautious personality and his indecisiveness.
"I'm decisive," Clark argued from the other side of the kitchen. I raised my eyebrows, painful reddish-blonde implants that my father had forced me to get along with my not-exactly-natural eyelashes, as I took a drink of orange juice from my glass to prevent myself from saying anything I might regret later. Then again, if he shared my thoughts, he knew exactly what I was thinking. It would've felt like a major invasion of privacy if it weren't so damn useful. I was constantly getting attacked by meteor mutants and my father's lackeys in my spare time. Having Clark tuned in to my every thought would make it a lot easier to deal with all of that. Not every girl had a six-foot-four alien boyfriend with super strength and speed to protect them.
"Right." I savored the taste of the bright, fresh fruit juice. "Because, when I think of Clark Kent, the first thing I think of is a take-charge personality." That might come back to bite me in the ass. I received a warm glower for my efforts and took another sip of orange juice to prevent him from tackling me into the nearest kitchen appliance. He wouldn't want me to choke, after all. Then again, the Clark I was thinking of was the one he portrayed in public and in front of his friends. The one that no one would ever suspect as being a superpowered alien from Krypton. A response to my insinuation lingered in the back of his mind, but it was one that included Dominic. We mutually decided that bringing him up wouldn't be the best thing to do right now.
We ate breakfast in comfortable silence. Martha and Jonathan were in town for the afternoon, so we had to reheat some of the leftovers in the fridge. Neither of us minded. It was still Martha's cooking. I couldn't live off of anything else if I tried right now. My best chefs were lousy compared to Martha. It was as if she had injected her familial warmth into her food. It was the definition of soul food. Clark and I both looked up at the same time when he heard Ryan's soft footsteps on the carpet upstairs. I was still amazed by just how much he could hear and how hard it must have been to filter everything out. The image of sleepy-eyed Ryan in his pajamas rubbing his eyes was priceless. His hair was mussed and stuck up in the back. For once, he looked his own age instead of the adult he sounded like.
"Morning, Dad." His soporific state seemed to wear off as he shifted his eyes to me. "Mom? You're up?" He looked surprised to see me. "I didn't hear you." I knew that he didn't mean with his ears. It was ironic that as soon as I lost one man rooting around in my head, I gained another. Then again, Ryan wasn't Kryptonian. Maybe Clark's heritage had something to do with the change in Ryan's powers. He could never read Clark, so it was only reasonable that he couldn't read me while I was so connected with Clark. The current occupant of my mind silently agreed with my conclusion, and I pondered how we were going to tell Ryan what had happened.
Clark stepped up for me. "You know how my Kryptonian father told us that we were going to bond?" Ryan nodded. Neither of us had explicitly informed him of this, but he picked up things all the time from my mind. It was a shame that it would stop, because that was part of our mother-son connection, but it would force us to connect in other ways. "We did last night. We can hear each other's thoughts. You're probably getting interference from my mind." I saw Clark twitch and absentmindedly rubbed his chest. He felt so pleased that I expected him to start kicking his foot like a dog, but he remained composed in front of our adopted son.
"We also got this Kryptonian symbol burned into our skin. Very romantic," I added sarcastically. Ryan's eyes went wide, and I knew that he wanted to see them. Clark pulled up his shirt to show the elated pre-teen. At first, Ryan traced it with his fingers, but when it became clear that the motion made Clark uncomfortable, he stopped. "It itches. Mine is on my back." Matching tattoos. I would never have thought I would do such a thing. It wasn't as if it was voluntary. Clark's thoughts protested my unhappiness with the symbol. It was a part of his culture, and I sensed that it meant something deeply personal. Rejecting it was comparable to rejecting his identity. I silently assured him that I was unconditionally in love with him.
"Cool! You got tattoos!" Ryan looked at Clark with his best puppy-dog eyes. His lower lip was drawn out to the point of pouting, and his hands came together in a praying gesture. "Can I get one? Please?" His voice pled with us, but the thought was so ridiculous that I had to laugh. Clark's lips spread into a grin. His eyes were bright green with amusement. It was touching that Ryan wanted to be part of our family through branding himself, but he was not getting tattooed anytime soon. Not even in the seediest spots in Metropolis who relaxed their rules for the identification-challenged.
"No," both of us said firmly, and Ryan's expression immediately fell. Seeing that kind of dejection reminded me that Ryan still felt like an orphan sometimes, but Clark dutifully affirmed that not getting things you wanted was a part of being a kid. It wasn't part of my childhood, I mused. Lionel had been swift to give me things I could use to entertain myself. It wasn't the kind of parenting style I endorsed. As if he were still tuned in to my thoughts, Ryan turned to me with his plaintive expression still in place. "You're too young. Maybe when you're older." Telling him "no" was one of the hardest things about being a parent. His excitement fizzled as he quietly left the room. Clark's thoughts told me to leave it alone.
It was a rare day of pure relaxation. Maybe it was only so calm because I was sharing Clark's thoughts, and his thoughts were always calm when there was nothing troubling him. His friends didn't care enough to stop by, but he didn't mind. It gave them more time together. None of Smallville's meteor mutants came crashing through the door, so all of us remained safe inside the quiet house. When Martha and Jonathan got home, we spent the evening watching a movie. I fell asleep.
I woke up in Clark's empty bed missing his warmth. I could already tell that he was having a busy day at school. He seemed to tap into my consciousness as soon as I was alert and sent me an update. Pete Ross had written Clark's name on the ballot for class president as a cruel-hearted joke. No one was going to vote for the sixteen-year-old outcast who had knocked up a twenty-one-year-old heiress who was disliked by everyone in the county. I told him so myself. He seemed to think that his chances were a little better than that, but he was going to pull out of the election anyways. I wanted to be president when I was younger. Then reality came crashing down on me. I could do it, theoretically, but it would take either a considerate amount of blackmail or a lot of hard work. With Daddy's company in my future, I hadn't exactly been trying at anything.
Not now, Clark reminded me. Now, I was in it. I glanced at the clock and noticed that I would have to get my ass moving in order to get to the Talon on time. I could have lied to myself and said that I wasn't afraid that Dominic would show up, but it wouldn't have helped any. Clark offered to ditch school and spend time with me, but we were already on the town's radar enough. If Clark started ditching classes, they would have every right to discriminate against us. It was better not to give them another reason to ostracize Clark.
I got dressed and ate lunch with Martha before I left for the Talon. The Mercedes was starting to get dirty from the dusty roads in Smallville, but I didn't have the time lately to wash it. Besides, driving around in a shiny car that was made in the current year wasn't the best way to get the townspeople on my side. It was bad enough that I drove a foreign car. The things that people discriminated against in small towns was almost ridiculous. Clark took a moment to add that Metropolis was pretty shallow itself and that I shouldn't be talking.
There was a woman waiting outside the Talon. I was immediately wary when I got out of my car. Sure enough, she was wearing a short skirt and a pretty smile. She had Metropolis written all over her. Her hair was red and long and her skin smooth, but behind her eyes, I sensed a cutting intelligence that was rare even for Metropolis women. She was a career bitch. Not to be trusted. "Can I help you?" I asked wearily as I unlocked the front door. I was tired of my father's games becoming a recurring event. She offered up another smile and a hand to shake after she followed me inside.
"Carrie Castle. I work for the Metropolis Journal." Oh God. A reporter. It was even worse than I thought. I fought not to roll my eyes as I took my hand back and started turning on the appliances and setting up shop. "It's quite a world, isn't it? One day, you're the heiress to billions of dollars. The next, you're working in a coffee shop and living on a farm." She was grating on my nerves. Clark wasn't pleased either, but he wasn't used to these kinds of reporters. I should have been handling this better than I was, but I was in no mood for the antics of the press.
"Did my father send you?" I struggled to keep my voice calm. If my father was looking to send me into a mental breakdown by sending a barrage of annoying people my way, he was nearly succeeding. I took a deep breath for the baby's sake. Castle's wide brown eyes protested the accusation. "Why else would a reporter from Metropolis come to Smallville? I'm sure you have better stories to write." She gave a knowing smirk across the counter.
"Come on, Miss Luthor. The talk of the town is that you're engaged to a sixteen-year-old boy. Not only is that immoral, it's illegal." The click of a tape recorder reminded me to be careful about what I said. It wasn't helping that Clark was freaking out inside my mind about me going to jail. Not only would Lionel bribe an entire jury for me, but I wasn't going to give them the evidence they needed to lock me away. I doubted that Lionel's life lessons included a stint in jail. Though, I may have underestimated the degree to which he was willing to throw me to the wolves.
"Last time I checked, it's not against the law to date a minor. What's against the law is having intimate relations with one." She almost laughed, but she suppressed it out of professional courtesy. And because the tape she had running would have recorded it. She cleared her throat and looked down at the fabric covering my stomach. Pretty soon, I would be out of my shirts and into Clark's for comfort's sake.
"Excuse me, but aren't you currently pregnant? Isn't that proof that you had sexual relations?" Clark believed that I had talked myself into a corner. Little did he know that the Luthor shark in me was circling the waters, begging to be freed on this haughty bitch. Her posture had devolved from that of an intelligent reporter to a gossiping teenager. She was leaning on the counter. Her eyes sparkled at the thought of victory being so close to her grasp.
"It certainly is." Before she could shut off the tape recorder, I interrupted her moment. "But there's no proof that it's his." Castle's eyes went wide. I was exchanging one slew of muckraking slop for another. "Then again, there's no evidence that it's not. I suppose that makes your story a little less exciting, doesn't it?" Clark mentally congratulated me for having more figurative balls than he did. While the reporter was still in shock, I leaned forward and made my tone a little more conversational. "That being said, why is it that I'm more interesting than my father? Shouldn't you be investigating him? Kissing the ground he walks on?"
A coy smirk told me all I needed to know. My father had been the one to tip her off about the article. It was an indirect relationship, but I knew that she would fuck him if it allowed her to climb higher on the career ladder. Clark told me to censor my thoughts, because the image of my father fucking anyone was disgusting. I didn't take that as an insult. "There's no story in success, Miss Luthor. Your father has been consistently doing well in business matters for years. In the meantime, you--" She stopped to pull something from her purse. I was treated to a view of newspaper clippings from the last few years. "--You have been dragging the Luthor name in the mud for the same amount of time. Do you know why you get more press coverage?" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Because you're a walking, talking scandal."
Clark warned me not to attack her. I didn't intend to be arrested for assault. Instead, I did the exact opposite of what I was feeling and smiled. It was a slow, smooth smile of the victor in the argument. "The mere fact that I get more press coverage than my father is exactly why I'll be more successful than he'll ever be. Scandalous or not, people will still be talking about me in thirty years when he's nothing more than dust in the ground." I didn't care about the press. I wanted my father to hear this. Clark was silent on the other end of our mental connection. I knew that he felt a small amount of pride, but he also felt a tinge of fear. The finality in my words scared him. It scared me, too.
She shook her head from side to side in disbelief. "People are going to stop talking about you while you're playing Little Lex on the Prairie. Your appeal is already fading. The only reason I'm writing this story is so that I'll be the first to show the world how miserable your life has become." Her eyes narrowed mockingly. "You're always rebelling against your father, but pretty soon, the rebel act is going to get old. You'll just be a sad farmer's wife with stretch marks on your ass." She glowed with cockiness. "And, shaving your head? Not the best move, princess. What's the new fashion trend, lesbian or cancer patient?"
Now I did want to hit her. I pleaded with Clark to allow me just one bitch slap so I could put Castle in her place. "I'm sure my father can tell you when you're fucking him tonight. How much is he paying you to write this article?" Evasion. I thrived on the fact that her eyes went to the side for one, tiny second. I hit a nerve. "I hope you aren't just doing it for the sex." I was relieved when a customer walked in the door before she could respond. "Thank you, Miss Castle. Now get the hell out of my shop." She scoffed and looked at the customer for support, but the man glared at her. She was clearly more of an outsider than I was. She took the newspaper clippings and left in a huff.
The rest of the day went by normally. While I was focusing on profits and how to increase them, I was able to tune Clark out. Meanwhile, he at least attempted to pay attention to his classes and his friends. There were only about five people left in the shop at the end of the night. I was waiting for them to leave so that I could close up and go home to Clark. I could feel my stomach fill with warmth in response. The rush of emotion was Clark's way of telling me to hang in there. I was enjoying our newfound connection. I felt more relaxed. It could have been the change in career, too. Sitting behind the counter keeping an eye on a couple of jocks sipping coffee was much easier than babysitting workers at the crap factory. I had time to get my work done while I was at work so that I could go home and simply relax.
Thankfully, the kids didn't cause any trouble. They complimented me on the coffee and left. The back was already locked up, so all I had to do was turn everything off and lock the front door. When I was finally sitting in my Mercedes, I felt like I could breathe easier. The leather seats supported my aching muscles, which were aching more as my stomach got bigger. I tried to tell the little Kryptonian to slow down and stop growing so quickly, but it didn't want to listen to me. That didn't bode well for the future. I couldn't explain why my face split into a grin at the thought. Just the fact that I would have a future with my child was reassuring. It was starting to become one of the best things I had ever felt.
I knew that the baby coming out Kryptonian would have its ups and downs. Every mother wanted her child to be invulnerable, but at the same time, I saw the burden on Clark's shoulders that he carried with his powers. It felt like we were cursing the baby's life before it had even begun. Everything would be alright. It had to be. My car's engine purred to life. I found myself driving a little slower lately. I wanted to see Clark as soon as possible, but it wasn't just my life I was risking by speeding anymore. Plus, I couldn't afford the tickets. The Talon was doing well, but any unnecessary expenses might put a strain on the business. I didn't want to take any chances.
Here I was, finally settling down to a normal life, and my father detested me for it. He had berated me for my whole life to obey the rules that society had set. I wasn't obeying all the rules, but I was working on it. I wasn't doing drugs. I wasn't drinking or smoking. I felt the most contented that I had ever felt in my entire life. I never would have thought that I would enjoy being a mother, but now, I couldn't wait. It was exhilarating. It was tangible evidence of me and Clark, and it was someone that I knew I could love unconditionally. I didn't care about being the gossip of Smallville, and now Metropolis. I cared about what it would feel like the moment I held my baby in my arms for the first time.
I prayed that the baby would come out a natural-born Kent instead of a Luthor. We just had bad genes and maniacal inclinations. But Clark was my balance. I only hoped that his influence reached our child. I didn't want it to be like me. The drive home seemed shorter than usual. My head was clouded with thoughts and daydreams. I stepped out of the Mercedes, and my mind reached out almost naturally for Clark's presence. This connection had only been active for a day, but it felt as if I could never live without it again. He was in the loft. I stepped into the barn. The wooden stairs creaked under my weight as I climbed them. It felt like destiny. If Cassandra Carver had seen us like this, what was there to be so afraid of?
Clark was sprawled out over the couch. It looked about two sizes too small for his tall, muscular frame. His bright red t-shirt rode up his stomach to bare an inch of golden skin. His hands came together at the back of his head to show off his fantastic biceps. Beautifully blue-green eyes stared up at me lazily from across the room, but the glitter in them betrayed his interest. The warm night produced a sheen of moisture on his skin and made his jet-black locks stick to his forehead. He needed his hair cut. There was a curl hanging low over one of his eyes. At that moment, all I could think was, how did I get so damn lucky for him to stare at me like that? Like I was the only one in his life who really mattered, even though I knew it wasn't true. Like he would love me for the rest of my life, faults and all.
"Long day?" His voice was barely above a murmur, but it was reinforced with the same thought that played in my mind like an echo. He wasn't wearing any jeans; it was too muggy for that. Instead, he had blue cotton boxers on that showed the majority of his toned legs, which hung off the edge of the sofa. His feet were like his hands, almost too big for his body but perfectly so. I crossed the room and sat directly across from him in the folding chair used for guests. The TV was turned off. All I could hear was the soft summer air stirring outside and the melodic chirp of crickets. I could see the stars clearly in the midnight black of the sky, stars so bright that it was hard to believe that I'd never seen them in Metropolis.
"Not anymore." All the stress of the day simply melted away. It was as if his mere presence was the sun breaking dawn on my night sky. I couldn't give a shit about Carrie Castle and her article at that moment. All I could think about was Clark. I could tell that he was relaxing in the same way. The tension in his muscles had faded since I had first arrived, and all we were doing was sitting within a foot of one another. I was almost shaking from his nearness when I leaned forward to kiss him. It was his soft, plush lips playing with mine in a slow, teasing manner. His hands came to rest on my cheeks to hold me in place as he deepened the kiss. I slid from the chair into his lap. I didn't care about how hot it was outside. I was burning from the inside out, and the humidity on the outside was nothing compared to the fire inside.
I continued my part of the kiss down his neck. His favorite spot was right under the jaw. My teeth scraped against the impossibly smooth patch of skin directly below his chin. A low growl escaped his throat that thrilled me down to my toes. "I could have killed Carrie Castle. And Dominic." I bit the same area as hard as I could without breaking my teeth on his skin, and the resulting hiss was encouraging. "And your father." I soothed the area with my tongue and drew back so that I could look into his eyes. They were more green than blue when he was aroused. They had the slightest bit of red in them when he was angry.
"Do you really want to talk about my father right now?" I made my point by grinding my hips against his. His hands gripped my hips and brought them to a standstill. His grip wasn't hard enough to bruise, but I could sense that he meant business. I gave a small sigh. "Clark, I've been thinking about my father for the better part of my life. Don't I deserve a break?" My irritation wasn't necessarily directed at Clark, but I could feel it growing inside me. I wished that Lionel would just leave me alone. That would be a miracle, and those didn't happen often in my life. Clark was one of the only ones so far. Ryan was another. The baby inside me was bargaining for the top slot on the list.
"I don't think it's a good idea to ignore him." I almost rolled my eyes. "Lex, you of all people know what your father is capable of. What if he does drag this whole incident into court? I know that you think he won't, but it's a possibility that he will." Orange wasn't my color. I took the opportunity to lie down on top of Clark. It was oddly comfortable to lie down on a plush bed of invulnerable flesh and muscle.
"He wouldn't be able to stand the publicity. The Luthor name would be dragged through the mud. He wants me to go back to Metropolis with him. Going to jail is not part of the plan." It was depressing that I could get into my father's head so easily. I was used to being manipulated. Clark's hand rubbed my lower back to soothe me. I shifted so that I wasn't lying directly on my stomach and then his other hand started to rub my baby bump. "If they did DNA tests on the baby, we would be fucked. They would know that it wasn't human." A pang of protective sadness went through my chest. "I just have to trust that he won't do anything about it." Trusting my father was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. I hated the control he wielded over me, even now.
"You know him better than I do. I trust you." His deep, rumbling voice didn't shake once. I wasn't used to being trusted. It was a big responsibility. I only hoped that I could maintain that trust.
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