A/N: Sorry for any ships I sink—it's less about my personal preferences and more about what I think would be realistic for this AU. Also, there's a bit in this that refers to chapter 15 of "Raising a Mutant."

Thanks goes to BenRG for the idea for the first two of this set.

Chapter 5 - Five romances that didn't work out (and one that did)

1

It was weirdly tense and quiet at the dinner table. Lex sat staring at his food, poking at it with his fork but never actually eating. Clark was eating, but he kept looking up at Lex whenever his mouth wasn't full, giggling under his breath.

Martha had gotten the sense Lex had been hiding something for a few days, maybe even a couple of weeks, but she didn't want to press him. He had only been living with them for six months; he wasn't ready to come clean about everything in his life, and that was okay.

When Clark stopped eating altogether in favor of giggling, Jonathan finally cleared his throat. "You got something to share, son?"

"Ask Lex, not me." The grin never left Clark's face.

"Shut up," Lex muttered to Clark.

"Hey." Jonathan's tone was a little sharper than Martha herself would have used. "You don't speak to your little brother that way."

Lex hung his head. "Sorry, sir," he whispered.

Martha gently patted Lex's arm and looked over at Clark. "What's so funny, young man?"

"I said. Ask Lex."

"Clark," Martha chided.

Clark looked right at Lex. "Or you could ask Mercy Graves."

"Shut up!" Lex's face turned bright red.

"Lex!" Jonathan yelled.

"Sorry, Jonathan. Clark, drop it, okay?"

Martha bit back her questions. She'd heard the name Mercy Graves before, in school news bulletins. Mercy was at the top of Smallville Middle School's athletics departments. Martha was pretty sure she was the same age as Lex.

Clark laughed again. He leaned toward Lex and mumbled in a singsong voice, so quiet Martha almost couldn't hear it, "—sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S—"

"Clark, I said drop it!" Lex pushed back his chair and stormed away.

"Hey, hey!" Jonathan called. "I did not excuse you from the table."

"Lex, meet me in the living room," Martha said.

"Martha." Jonathan glared.

She gave him a pointed look and went to meet Lex, who was faced away from her with her arms crossed.

"Hey," she said softly.

"I don't want to talk about it."

Martha was quiet for a moment, considering her next words carefully. "You know, someday, Clark's going to be in middle school, and he's going to start having crushes on girls."

"I don't have a crush on Mercy." It came out too fast, like it was a practiced sentence.

She took a step closer. "Oh, I know you don't. I'm just saying, don't take it too hard if Clark teases you and thinks you like someone. He doesn't understand right now, but someday he will. You'll get your chance to tease him back someday."

"I don't have a crush on anyone."

"It's okay if you do."

"I don't."

"Okay."

Lex was quiet for a long time before he turned to look at her. "But if I ever did have a crush on a girl—like, someone else, not Mercy . . ."

"You can always talk to me about it. I'll give you advice if you need it, but I won't judge you, and I'll do my best not to embarrass you in front of her."

He nodded. "Thanks, Martha."

"Mercy's cute."

"Ugh, Martha!"

She held back her laugh and nodded back toward the kitchen table.

2

"Wrong direction, little brother."

Clark jumped up from his telescope. "What?"

Lex smirked. He'd lost track of some things while he'd been away at college. "Lana Lang, huh?"

Clark lowered his head. "Since first grade."

"First grade. Really."

"Yeah. I turn into an idiot around her. I actually tripped and fell right in front of her the other day—have you ever seen me trip?"

"No, I guess not." Lex was pretty sure that had more to do with the meteor rock necklace. Clark seemed to get sick around the stuff.

"I, uh . . . I think I'm in love with her."

"Wow. Do Mom and Dad know?" Lex had taken to calling Jonathan and Martha Dad and Mom when he was talking to Clark, even though he still addressed them by name to their faces.

"I didn't . . . tell them, exactly."

So, yes. "They won't embarrass you."

"Really?"

Lex shrugged. "They didn't embarrass me when I was your age. You know who did, though?"

"Who?"

"You."

Clark's head fell back. "Are you talking about when I caught you kissing Mercy and teased you at the dinner table?"

"Payback time, little brother."

"I was six!"

"Mom said you weren't old enough to understand, but apparently you were, because you were already in love."

He groaned. "Le-ex!"

"Oh, I'm not gonna say anything in front of Lana. Though I should tell you, I make a great wingman. I bet I could get her to look twice. What do you say?"

"Don't."

Lex held up his hands. "Fine, fine. I'll stay away from her, and I won't embarrass you in public. But at home?" He grinned.

Clark rolled his eyes. "I'm never gonna hear the end of this, am I?"

"Nope." Lex went over to the telescope and angled it toward the sky. "In the meantime, eyes up, Clark. She's a person, not a carnival show."

3

Clark had never been with anyone like Kyla Willowbrook before. She was older than him, she knew who and what he was, and she liked him. Really liked him.

In the end, that was the problem.

The fact that she was a skinwalker wasn't a deal breaker. They had a long talk about it when she got out of the hospital—Clark was thankful for Lex having drilled him on emergency procedures as soon as he started saving people regularly, or she might have bled out in his arms—and they were able to get back together. For a little while.

It didn't feel like a relationship. Not like a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, anyway. It felt more like she was a fan and he was a celebrity, or like she worshipped him as a god. The final straw was when she wouldn't stop calling him Naman.

He felt terrible for weeks after he broke things off.

4

Jonathan was at the hospital for a minor farm injury. Well, he thought it was minor, but a broken leg was the kind of thing that tended to make Martha freak out a little bit.

Against orders, he was limping down the hall back to the waiting room when he passed by Lex, dressed in scrubs and carrying a clipboard.

Jonathan blinked a couple of times—Lex was difficult to mistake, but Jonathan really hadn't been expecting to see his son here. Lex was home for the summer, though he didn't spend much time at the house; Jonathan knew he had friends and other things to do, but he had no idea Lex was working at the hospital.

"Lex? What are you doing here?"

His face reddened slightly, and he shook his head.

Jonathan took a step closer. "Son?"

"Volunteering. A little."

"I didn't know you were interested in the medical field," Jonathan said. Lex was majoring in business.

"I'm not. There's, ah . . . this medical resident who works here . . ."

Jonathan smiled. He should have known. "Name?"

Lex's voice was barely a whisper. "Helen Bryce."

"Pretty?"

Lex nodded, and his gaze wandered off into space. "It's a long shot. She's out of my league."

Jonathan doubted that. Lex had grown up to be a handsome young man—if anything, the baldness enhanced it. Aside from that, he was too smart for his own good, he worked hard, he truly cared about others, and he could be quite charming when he wanted to be.

Lex shrugged. "I think it's gonna take a guy with money to win her over. Still—" he gestured to the scrubs— "giving it my best try."

"Good luck, son. Let me know if you ever want to talk about her." Jonathan clapped Lex on the shoulder and continued to hobble toward the exit.

That was the first and last time Jonathan ever heard about Helen Bryce.

5

The new girl who had come to stay with the Kents stayed in Lex's old room and messed with his stuff. She was presumptuous with his parents, rude to Clark, and prejudiced enough about the Luthor name that she actually stood out even as compared with other people in town.

But none of that was Lex's problem with her. His problem was that he recognized her.

He caught her alone one late morning after Clark had left for school, in the wake of one of her 45-minute showers that forced Lex to find sneaky ways to help his parents with the water bill. He caught her off guard as she was heading from one room into another.

"We've met before, you know."

She gasped and whirled around to face him. "Lex, don't sneak up on me like that!"

"July, 1993."

"What?"

"The playground at Smallville Elementary School."

"1993?"

"You don't remember, but I do."

"Excuse me?"

"There was a boy at the park, waiting in line for a swing. You cut in front of him."

"What?"

"Do you deny it, Lois?"

"That was eleven years ago, I don't even remember it."

"He was a good kid. And you made him cry."

"What, was it you? No, you're a lot older than I was. Who was it?"

"Believe me, if it was me, we wouldn't have any problems here."

Lois sighed. "Clark, then. What do you want, an apology?"

"I let you go that day. Figured you were young, you didn't know any better."

She shook her head, her breath catching in her throat. "And you've held this grudge all these years? Seriously, Lex?"

"Had you given me any reason to believe you've changed in the years since then, I would never have said a word about it. As it is . . ." He mustered all the gravitas he could from what little Lionel had taught him: "Lay off my brother. Show a little gratitude to my parents and some respect for their home. And leave me alone. I'm a Kent, but I kept the Luthor name for more than one reason. Testing me would be ill-advised."

Lois blinked a few times, her mouth opening and closing a few times as if she was trying and failing to figure out what to say. Finally, she stormed off.

She was packed up and gone within a couple of days.

+1

Martha took a few minutes on her own to touch up her makeup and dab away the sweat. In the hectic early stages of establishing his new business, Lex hadn't been around for Sunday dinner in over a month. Martha would have to admit she had probably gone overboard with the dinner she had planned, but she was overjoyed to be having her family all together again.

She came back into the kitchen, and they were just sitting down to dinner when Lex's cell phone started to ring. He glanced down at it before apologizing to Martha. "I'm sorry, I have to get this."

"It's okay, sweetie, do what you need to do." She was already so overflowing with pride for him, she couldn't imagine having been upset, though Jonathan was already grumbling something about Lex taking work calls during family time.

When Lex returned to the table, his cheeks were a little flushed. "My apologies. I've been working with an accountant from an allied company, just needed to go over a few details."

"Oh!" Jonathan blinked. "An accountant friend of mine started doing some freelance work recently. Maybe the same guy? What's his name?"

Lex shook his head. "It's a she. And Anastasia doesn't do freelance work."

Martha didn't often have hunches. She'd had one out in that cornfield when she first met Clark; she'd had another in the police station where she'd first seen Lex; and of course, one on her college campus when she first laid eyes on Jonathan. But there was something in the way Lex said the woman's name, something so subtle she was sure Jonathan and Clark hadn't picked up on it. Something only a mother could see. She was absolutely certain he had just spoken the name of her future daughter-in-law.

She swallowed her thrill and forced herself to remain casual. "Well, shall we dish up?"