Chapter Two, just because it was either this or bathe the cats and vacuum the house....
"Morning, Kyle. Sam told me you might be hiding out in the closet." Closet was a very nearly appropriate name for it, being a former storeroom in an old strip mall subdivided to make room for political paraphernalia.
The big man buttonholing him, publicly best known as stern-faced with a commanding presence and a habit of fiery rhetoric, was in fact one of the kindest and most caring people Kyle had ever known, and he drove himself harder than he did any of his staffers. That depth of commitment was what had attracted Kyle to work for him in the first place. "Who have we got here? He looks familiar."
"I would think so." Kyle gestured to the man sleeping peacefully, for the first time in days, on a back room cot. "That's Lex Luthor, founder of Lex Corp and heir to the Luthor fortune."
The candidate widened his eyes, and he was a man not easily surprised. "I leave for one week to go fundraising, get maybe enough to pay the electric bill, and you haul in a billionaire. Kyle, what position would you like on the cabinet? VP is spoken for, I'm afraid, but name your price."
Kyle chuckled. "Actually, I was just going to ask you the favor of hiding him out here for awhile. He's had a, hm, falling out, with some rather unpleasant characters."
"As if anyone could refuse you a favor." The big man's eyes darkened. "What sort of unpleasant characters? Anyone I can do anything about?"
"Morgan Edge, for one."
"Edge." Somewhere between a growl and a spit. "I thought he was dead."
"It's a long story, but apparently he's mixed up in human cloning. I wouldn't put it past him. Or Lionel Luthor, for that matter."
"Lionel? This kid's old man? Cloning? Dammit. Do you ever get into anything less complicated than a black widow's web, Kyle? No wonder I went into politics. Somebody has to keep track of people like you. I don't suppose this long story of yours has anything to do with the weightlifter kid passed out in what's left of my office chair next door? He must have had one hell of a nightmare. I've tried to smash the phone like that a dozen times myself."
"Um. That's just an old friend of mine. And Lex's. He wanted to hang around and see if Lex would be okay, but you know, kids need to sleep every once in awhile." Seventy hours awake and running back and forth to Smallville had put a strain on even Clark's stamina.
The candidate's eyes narrowed again, an expression he would not have shown on-camera except very deliberately. "A teenager who I doubt is old enough to vote is an 'old friend' of a billionaire. And of yours. One of *your kind* of old friends? What else does he do? Besides bust chairs and phones in his sleep?"
"He smashes alarm clocks, too," Kyle offered. "I wouldn't advise trying to wake him up."
The bigger man glared at Kyle for a minute, and then chuckled. "Didn't mean to pry. God only knows what's in my own sealed records. I sure don't. So what are we going to do with these two kids who could make or break us? In your expert opinion. And pun fully intended," he added as an afterthought.
"Lex needs medical attention. He's been drugged with some kind of psychoactives. It took everything I had to get him to sleep."
"Done." The candidate nodded, then sighed. "Something else to put on the agenda, though I doubt it will play in Peoria. Drugs! Your kid's restless? Drug him! Trouble sleeping? Take a pill! Trouble waking up? Grab the antidote! I'll bet half the households in America have enough little bottles in their medicine cabinet to kill an army of alien invaders. Not that that's a good thing. Wonder what the statistics are on accidental poisonings? Not that most people would admit to it. Somebody might take their drugs away. How about the restless sleeper in there?"
Kyle, who had changed colors at the phrase concerning alien invaders, swallowed. "He's pretty handy. Can put up posters and do fix-it work. Maybe help with the get-out-the-youth-vote campaign."
"If so, he's worth a fortune. The union volunteer support is everything we could ask for, but the kids aren't going to listen to the over-30s. And if the kids who are old enough to get sent to war don't start taking an interest in who's sending them to war and why, then this country is doomed. I'll comp him the chair and the phone for registering one teenage voter." The candidate paced. "Not that I'm complaining, Kyle, but does this ever feel like cheating to you?"
Kyle knew the man was referring only to Kyle's talent, having no clue what kind of power he had sleeping in the next room, and what kind of ally -- or just how dangerous a liability -- Clark could be. He sincerely hoped his politician friend never asked whether or not it was "cheating" to make the effort to be friends with Clark.
Because for all the kid's easy charm, his bashful good nature and natural charisma, Kyle could not honestly say that Clark didn't scare the hell out of him.
"Is it cheating to use money and connections as power?" Kyle countered. "Is it cheating for an ex-CIA man to use the CIA for his own benefit, instead of for protecting the people they're charged with protecting? Is it cheating for a corporation's owners to use that corporation to steal from the stockholders for personal gain, instead of to do the job it was chartered to do? Is it any more cheating for me to talk to someone than it is for Lionel Luthor to talk to someone? Do the ends justify the means? I'm a salesman, sir, not a philosopher. Maybe you could talk to Lex about that. I'm sure he's had lessons in Machiavelli."
The big man surprised Kyle once again by clasping his hands behind his back to idly pop his joints, stretching and chuckling. "Maybe I should do that. Wonder if he'd like a post on our cabinet?"
" 'Our'? Sir, I think I'd work best from the back of the room at a press conference. And I haven't tested myself against the likes of the Moonies yet."
"I've never seen you fail. At anything."
"You haven't met the boy's girlfriend yet."
Clark had actually been listening to them for awhile, having been dredged up from the depths of exhaustion when the candidate had breezed into his own office, taken one look at the destruction, and backed out with a quiet whistle.
He'd also spent some considerable time trying to figure out how to explain it. It hadn't even really been a nightmare. Just a general feeling of frustration and needing to lash out against it all.
He'd tried to reassemble the chair while he was eavesdropping, too, but even his dad's carpentry skills weren't up to repairing splinters. He hoped no one had actually seen him crush the phone He didn't remember doing that at all.
But the comment about Chloe sent him into inadvertent high speed, appearing in the doorway before he got control of himself. "She's not my girlfriend," he said, automatically defensive on the subject. "We're just friends."
He ran a hand through his hair, realizing that was not the greatest opening line in the world, especially for an important man whose office he had just done serious damage to. "Um, sorry about the chair and the phone, sir. I'll replace them. I was just -- really angry about what had happened to Lex. It must have been, you know, adrenalin."
Kyle rolled his eyes. Better Clark should have claimed to be on drugs himself. It would have been a more plausible explanation both for the strength and the overboard reaction to Chloe's name. Adrenalin didn't usually result in protestations about girlfriends.
Actually, he was pretty sure Chloe was as much interested in Lex as in Clark, considering her performance in getting Lex out of the sanitarium, but she had too much sense to really fall for either of them. Hopefully someday she'd find someone to be interested in who wasn't an inane alien or a dysfunctional high roller.
The older man just smiled, the practiced and inviting smile of a professional, holding out his hand in introduction. Before Clark could catch Kyle's warning glance about being discreet, he'd given his name and that light-up-the-sun Kent smile that convinced the candidate that he had a really live one on his hands.
This kid could be a get-out-the-vote poster rep for everyone from 12-year-olds to their great-great-grandmothers. He would wait until he was in private, though, to wonder about the teleportation act and the "Hulk smash" job done on the military surplus chair and phone and how the kid had heard Kyle's comment about the girl. And why Kyle had looked so odd at his comment about alien invaders.
Clark's worried eyes went past them to Lex, still snoring calmly. "Is he okay?"
"He will be," Kyle reassured him. "Mostly he just needs some time to rest and clean the drugs out of his system. Though there are some indications that he was drinking pretty heavily, too, so withdrawal is going to be a little rougher than usual. He could still act a little on the crazy side when he wakes up."
"I'll have someone check his blood for residuals," the candidate added. "The last thing his liver needs is any more drugs right now, but there may be some imbalances that need to be corrected, if you can reassure him that any treatment is strictly for his physical health."
"I'll stay with him." The way Clark said it, there was no questioning him. Kyle and the head man tipped their heads sideways at each other with a matching slight twist of the lips. One knew, and the other pretty well suspected, that it was not bravado or false confidence on Clark's part that even a violent and confused Lex would not be causing any personal injury lawsuits.
Anyone with such loyalty and determination, the older man reflected, Kyle-type oddity or alien invader or whatever, strange abilities or not -- anyone who could still shuffle his feet and grin like that when all kinds of things had obviously gone wrong around him, would definitely be someone you wanted on your team.
Though the boy was a downright unbelievably bad liar. Someone was going to have to coach this kid in the art of the deal.
And the candidate hadn't gotten as far as he had by missing obvious details like the kid being friendly with Kyle, but still going well out of his way to avoid coming within ten feet of the man. Presumably the boy knew about Kyle's talent, but he wasn't staying out of range of his touch from fear or wariness. It was more like the unconscious skirting withdrawal from the heat zone of a big fire.
He was going to have some interesting questions for his weirdly talented assistant over the next few campaign stops. Well, at least it would keep him awake.
"So, Kyle," the big man draped his arm over Kyle's shoulder, steering him away from the fascinatingly strange boy hovering protectively over his billionaire friend in order to give them some privacy. The insanity of the campaign had just taken on a level of intrigue that was going to make the next debate seem like handing out lollipops.
Kyle realized with surprise and not a little chagrin that the man was immune to his power, and probably had been for some time. "Think you could convince them to make us some fresh coffee and donuts at Jackie's? I stopped in there on the way in, and they tried to sell me yesterday's leftover jelly-filled. Hmph! What's a man running for president got to do to get some respect around here?"
* * * * *
"You may not be interested in war or politics, but they are interested in you."
"People who don't care who they vote for end up being governed by their inferiors."
* * * * *
"Morning, Kyle. Sam told me you might be hiding out in the closet." Closet was a very nearly appropriate name for it, being a former storeroom in an old strip mall subdivided to make room for political paraphernalia.
The big man buttonholing him, publicly best known as stern-faced with a commanding presence and a habit of fiery rhetoric, was in fact one of the kindest and most caring people Kyle had ever known, and he drove himself harder than he did any of his staffers. That depth of commitment was what had attracted Kyle to work for him in the first place. "Who have we got here? He looks familiar."
"I would think so." Kyle gestured to the man sleeping peacefully, for the first time in days, on a back room cot. "That's Lex Luthor, founder of Lex Corp and heir to the Luthor fortune."
The candidate widened his eyes, and he was a man not easily surprised. "I leave for one week to go fundraising, get maybe enough to pay the electric bill, and you haul in a billionaire. Kyle, what position would you like on the cabinet? VP is spoken for, I'm afraid, but name your price."
Kyle chuckled. "Actually, I was just going to ask you the favor of hiding him out here for awhile. He's had a, hm, falling out, with some rather unpleasant characters."
"As if anyone could refuse you a favor." The big man's eyes darkened. "What sort of unpleasant characters? Anyone I can do anything about?"
"Morgan Edge, for one."
"Edge." Somewhere between a growl and a spit. "I thought he was dead."
"It's a long story, but apparently he's mixed up in human cloning. I wouldn't put it past him. Or Lionel Luthor, for that matter."
"Lionel? This kid's old man? Cloning? Dammit. Do you ever get into anything less complicated than a black widow's web, Kyle? No wonder I went into politics. Somebody has to keep track of people like you. I don't suppose this long story of yours has anything to do with the weightlifter kid passed out in what's left of my office chair next door? He must have had one hell of a nightmare. I've tried to smash the phone like that a dozen times myself."
"Um. That's just an old friend of mine. And Lex's. He wanted to hang around and see if Lex would be okay, but you know, kids need to sleep every once in awhile." Seventy hours awake and running back and forth to Smallville had put a strain on even Clark's stamina.
The candidate's eyes narrowed again, an expression he would not have shown on-camera except very deliberately. "A teenager who I doubt is old enough to vote is an 'old friend' of a billionaire. And of yours. One of *your kind* of old friends? What else does he do? Besides bust chairs and phones in his sleep?"
"He smashes alarm clocks, too," Kyle offered. "I wouldn't advise trying to wake him up."
The bigger man glared at Kyle for a minute, and then chuckled. "Didn't mean to pry. God only knows what's in my own sealed records. I sure don't. So what are we going to do with these two kids who could make or break us? In your expert opinion. And pun fully intended," he added as an afterthought.
"Lex needs medical attention. He's been drugged with some kind of psychoactives. It took everything I had to get him to sleep."
"Done." The candidate nodded, then sighed. "Something else to put on the agenda, though I doubt it will play in Peoria. Drugs! Your kid's restless? Drug him! Trouble sleeping? Take a pill! Trouble waking up? Grab the antidote! I'll bet half the households in America have enough little bottles in their medicine cabinet to kill an army of alien invaders. Not that that's a good thing. Wonder what the statistics are on accidental poisonings? Not that most people would admit to it. Somebody might take their drugs away. How about the restless sleeper in there?"
Kyle, who had changed colors at the phrase concerning alien invaders, swallowed. "He's pretty handy. Can put up posters and do fix-it work. Maybe help with the get-out-the-youth-vote campaign."
"If so, he's worth a fortune. The union volunteer support is everything we could ask for, but the kids aren't going to listen to the over-30s. And if the kids who are old enough to get sent to war don't start taking an interest in who's sending them to war and why, then this country is doomed. I'll comp him the chair and the phone for registering one teenage voter." The candidate paced. "Not that I'm complaining, Kyle, but does this ever feel like cheating to you?"
Kyle knew the man was referring only to Kyle's talent, having no clue what kind of power he had sleeping in the next room, and what kind of ally -- or just how dangerous a liability -- Clark could be. He sincerely hoped his politician friend never asked whether or not it was "cheating" to make the effort to be friends with Clark.
Because for all the kid's easy charm, his bashful good nature and natural charisma, Kyle could not honestly say that Clark didn't scare the hell out of him.
"Is it cheating to use money and connections as power?" Kyle countered. "Is it cheating for an ex-CIA man to use the CIA for his own benefit, instead of for protecting the people they're charged with protecting? Is it cheating for a corporation's owners to use that corporation to steal from the stockholders for personal gain, instead of to do the job it was chartered to do? Is it any more cheating for me to talk to someone than it is for Lionel Luthor to talk to someone? Do the ends justify the means? I'm a salesman, sir, not a philosopher. Maybe you could talk to Lex about that. I'm sure he's had lessons in Machiavelli."
The big man surprised Kyle once again by clasping his hands behind his back to idly pop his joints, stretching and chuckling. "Maybe I should do that. Wonder if he'd like a post on our cabinet?"
" 'Our'? Sir, I think I'd work best from the back of the room at a press conference. And I haven't tested myself against the likes of the Moonies yet."
"I've never seen you fail. At anything."
"You haven't met the boy's girlfriend yet."
Clark had actually been listening to them for awhile, having been dredged up from the depths of exhaustion when the candidate had breezed into his own office, taken one look at the destruction, and backed out with a quiet whistle.
He'd also spent some considerable time trying to figure out how to explain it. It hadn't even really been a nightmare. Just a general feeling of frustration and needing to lash out against it all.
He'd tried to reassemble the chair while he was eavesdropping, too, but even his dad's carpentry skills weren't up to repairing splinters. He hoped no one had actually seen him crush the phone He didn't remember doing that at all.
But the comment about Chloe sent him into inadvertent high speed, appearing in the doorway before he got control of himself. "She's not my girlfriend," he said, automatically defensive on the subject. "We're just friends."
He ran a hand through his hair, realizing that was not the greatest opening line in the world, especially for an important man whose office he had just done serious damage to. "Um, sorry about the chair and the phone, sir. I'll replace them. I was just -- really angry about what had happened to Lex. It must have been, you know, adrenalin."
Kyle rolled his eyes. Better Clark should have claimed to be on drugs himself. It would have been a more plausible explanation both for the strength and the overboard reaction to Chloe's name. Adrenalin didn't usually result in protestations about girlfriends.
Actually, he was pretty sure Chloe was as much interested in Lex as in Clark, considering her performance in getting Lex out of the sanitarium, but she had too much sense to really fall for either of them. Hopefully someday she'd find someone to be interested in who wasn't an inane alien or a dysfunctional high roller.
The older man just smiled, the practiced and inviting smile of a professional, holding out his hand in introduction. Before Clark could catch Kyle's warning glance about being discreet, he'd given his name and that light-up-the-sun Kent smile that convinced the candidate that he had a really live one on his hands.
This kid could be a get-out-the-vote poster rep for everyone from 12-year-olds to their great-great-grandmothers. He would wait until he was in private, though, to wonder about the teleportation act and the "Hulk smash" job done on the military surplus chair and phone and how the kid had heard Kyle's comment about the girl. And why Kyle had looked so odd at his comment about alien invaders.
Clark's worried eyes went past them to Lex, still snoring calmly. "Is he okay?"
"He will be," Kyle reassured him. "Mostly he just needs some time to rest and clean the drugs out of his system. Though there are some indications that he was drinking pretty heavily, too, so withdrawal is going to be a little rougher than usual. He could still act a little on the crazy side when he wakes up."
"I'll have someone check his blood for residuals," the candidate added. "The last thing his liver needs is any more drugs right now, but there may be some imbalances that need to be corrected, if you can reassure him that any treatment is strictly for his physical health."
"I'll stay with him." The way Clark said it, there was no questioning him. Kyle and the head man tipped their heads sideways at each other with a matching slight twist of the lips. One knew, and the other pretty well suspected, that it was not bravado or false confidence on Clark's part that even a violent and confused Lex would not be causing any personal injury lawsuits.
Anyone with such loyalty and determination, the older man reflected, Kyle-type oddity or alien invader or whatever, strange abilities or not -- anyone who could still shuffle his feet and grin like that when all kinds of things had obviously gone wrong around him, would definitely be someone you wanted on your team.
Though the boy was a downright unbelievably bad liar. Someone was going to have to coach this kid in the art of the deal.
And the candidate hadn't gotten as far as he had by missing obvious details like the kid being friendly with Kyle, but still going well out of his way to avoid coming within ten feet of the man. Presumably the boy knew about Kyle's talent, but he wasn't staying out of range of his touch from fear or wariness. It was more like the unconscious skirting withdrawal from the heat zone of a big fire.
He was going to have some interesting questions for his weirdly talented assistant over the next few campaign stops. Well, at least it would keep him awake.
"So, Kyle," the big man draped his arm over Kyle's shoulder, steering him away from the fascinatingly strange boy hovering protectively over his billionaire friend in order to give them some privacy. The insanity of the campaign had just taken on a level of intrigue that was going to make the next debate seem like handing out lollipops.
Kyle realized with surprise and not a little chagrin that the man was immune to his power, and probably had been for some time. "Think you could convince them to make us some fresh coffee and donuts at Jackie's? I stopped in there on the way in, and they tried to sell me yesterday's leftover jelly-filled. Hmph! What's a man running for president got to do to get some respect around here?"
* * * * *
"You may not be interested in war or politics, but they are interested in you."
"People who don't care who they vote for end up being governed by their inferiors."
* * * * *