By Lemur
***
Knowing the coffee was warm in his hands even if he couldn't entirely feel it, Clark eased back into his favorite chair, glad that he didn't have to worry about caffeine stunting his growth. In fact, he secretly hoped it would. It was possible he came from a race of giants, but he felt plenty tall enough as it was.
He liked this chair best for the view it afforded: tilted just enough to give him full peripheral sight of Lana at the counter, but still aimed at the street through the window where he could feign interest immediately should Lana glance his way. It was perfect. Lana continued her bustling behind the counter, her white sweater making her only a flash of white and ebony on the periphery.
She was so graceful, or at least he thought so. So small and thin, delicate even, but so powerful when she needed to be, when she realized she could be. He didn't always like playing the hero. It was too much pressure to know that he could feasibly rescue people from murder and car troubles alike, but for Lana he liked being a hero. He liked having someone lovely and warm to protect.
And the fact that he was occasionally rewarded with a kiss on the cheek or a hug never hurt either.
It caused too much pain to think about, but Clark knew that he also protected her out of a sense of guilt. It was his arrival on this planet – this planet that wasn't his though it still boggled his mind to think of it that way – that had killed her parents. It felt like some grotesque twist of fate: the very same moment that brought him to his parents had taken hers from her.
Logically, he knew he had no control over it. He didn't even remember that day, but the doubts and concerns remained. He didn't remember, which meant that he might not remember being able to see out of the ship as it rocketed toward Smallville, or worse, that he was even piloting it, though the idea seemed absurd. He simply didn't know how much he had to do with it. He knew nothing. And he worried that that was worse than knowing.
But he wasn't sure he would take it all back even if he could. If some mystical force or angel named Clarence came down and told him he could change it all, make it so he never came to Earth, make it so Lana's parents never died and half the town weren't mutated by meteor rock radiation, make it so that – so that Lex even still had his hair, he wasn't sure he could do it. If he did, he would also make it so his parents had never had a child.
Logic dictated that the heartbreak of two was better than the heartbreak of dozens, but Clark wasn't exactly logical when it came to his family. He was like his father that way. As much trouble as he had been and would always be because of what he was, they loved him and he was still the brightest spot in their lives. It was mushy and it was embarrassing, but Clark knew all of that. He could never willingly cause his parents pain. So he would simply have to fix as much as he could from here.
The idea of winking himself out of existence wasn't so appealing anyway. He tried to be selfless or whatever that term was that Chloe used sometimes…self-actualized, but he wasn't. He loved his family and his friends. He loved Lana, and he wouldn't want to give up knowing any of them.
"Afternoon, Clark." He looked up to see Lex standing beside him and he vaguely wondered if he practiced at being that instantly intimidating.
"Hey, Lex. What're you doing here?"
In one enviably graceful move, Lex sat down in the chair opposite him. "I own the place. Technically, I have a better reason than you for being here." He smiled slightly. As usual, Clark smiled in response, feeling that he should really learn Lex's economy of expression. His own smiles felt like they were too high a wattage or something. "But I think we're here for the same reason," Lex continued, nodding his head toward the approaching Lana. "I have a meeting with the managerial staff."
"Hi, Lex. Thanks for coming by," Lana said, joining them with a file folder in her hands. Clark stood to leave them to their business talk.
"You can stay, Clark," Lex offered. "Unless you're planning to open a rival coffeehouse."
Giving a lopsided smile that he just knew looked stupid, Clark sat back down. "Definitely not." Before he could gallantly hand over his seat, Lana walked over to grab another of the cushy chairs. Super-speed, increased strength and still he couldn't pay enough attention to make sure the girl he liked didn't have to haul over her own seat.
However, a moment later, he was rather happy he was a cad. Lana pushed the chair the few feet to bring it in league with his and Lex's seats. Sitting down, she grabbed the arms of the chair and scooted it forward the last remaining millimeters to make it a comfortable talking distance.
And as she did so, she leaned over, causing the V-neck of her sweater to gap. Clark saw only a glimpse of something white and satiny and two curves of skin before she righted herself in her chair and regarded Lex professionally. Suddenly, Clark's throat felt dry and his eyes began to dully sting. He glanced at Lex, to see if he'd noticed, which he evidently hadn't, but either way, it was the wrong move on Clark's part.
At that exact moment, Lex, settling in his seat, rested his arm on the back of the chair and leaned back. He, of course, betrayed no span of skin – theoretically the existence of skin had to be assumed since Lex was always so impeccably dressed – but with him it was always angles anyway. And the sudden configuration of his limbs; bent arm, slanted torso, straight legs, combined with that ever-present aura of control and Clark's blood began sweeping through his veins entirely too fast.
So he sat beside Lana and Lex, trying not to think about the fact that he was looking at the two people in Smallville he most wanted to make-out with, or sleep with, or do whatever they were willing to do at that exact moment. He tried to keep his thoughts clean, but then, without warning, it was there – the image of Lana smirking seductively and lifting her shirt off over her head, showing him all of that satiny glimpse. Then, the picture of Lex stepping nearer to press those incredible angles against him.
Clark tried desperately to steer his thoughts elsewhere. Where were the inane questions when he needed them? He tried to wonder if his race had a game like Monopoly, but instead found himself curious about whether or not they all had such keen imaginations because he could hear Lana's playful laugh as she stripped and feel the heat of Lex's body flush against his. And his body responded.
Why here? Why now? Why in public? He considered crossing his legs as a diversionary tactic, but he never sat like so it would probably only lead to speculation and eventual, horrible, embarrassing discovery.
Clark attempted to recall a few of those quotes he'd memorized because they weren't sexy, but then, they made him think of Lex and Lex certainly was so that was no help. Nothing was any help and Lana and Lex still sat there, talking pleasantly to one another, hopefully not noticing that their quiet companion had turned an astonishing shade of red. Did he have so much blood that it could honestly rush both places at once? Everyone he ever fantasized about was here. Except Chloe, he suddenly realized. That was the one thing in his favor.
"Hey, guys," Chloe greeted, plunking down onto the arm of Lana's chair. "What's up?" Clark's eyes widened momentarily at the awful appropriateness of her innocent question, but then his imagination took over once again. Stripping Lana, warm Lex, and now Chloe sliding her tongue along his jaw line.
Worse yet, suddenly, all three images converged into one. Lana stripping as Lex pressed hungrily to him and Chloe nipped her teeth at his lips. Clark nearly leapt from his chair and ran full-speed out of the coffeehouse.
Then, he heard an abrupt breath of laughter.
Clark looked up to Lex smirking at him. Instantly, he knew that Lex had figured out exactly what he had been thinking, the way he always seemed to. He should have been embarrassed to be caught, but instead he felt his blood begin to peacefully cool. He even managed to breathe again. Slowly, Chloe and Lana talking about the latest issue of the Torch filtered through the thundering in his ears.
That was the part that people didn't see and that was why they never understood why Clark called Lex his best friend. Lex knew what he was thinking, may even have over-estimated his inventiveness and imagined something far more explicit himself, but he didn't judge him for it. Nor could he really. Clark didn't doubt that Lex had actually participated in such imaginings, most likely with more than just three people, maybe with men and women alike.
Lex wasn't like Chloe or Lana who would have been embarrassed or even angry that he thought such things. Lex wasn't like his parents who would have understood, but tacked on a life lesson about monogamy just in case. Lex just accepted it and smiled at him.
And that, among other reasons, was why he was friends with Lex. Once they'd gotten past the incident at the bridge, Lex accepted who he was with no caveats, no questions and no judgments. Had his secret past not been integral to the search, Clark felt certain that he could have gone to Lex with his anatomy worries and would have been met – and answered – with only an amused look. Of course, such a thing wouldn't be possible with their dynamic now, not without it being about touching and exploring and –
Wrong thought! his mind suddenly screamed at him. Wrong thought!
"Clark, are you feeling all right?" Chloe asked, another cruel innocent question. Clark tried to answer, he really did, but it came out a clutter of "Uhs" and "Whas," until he managed a barely evolved-man sounding "Yeah." Chloe and Lana both looked at him, confused.
"I think Clark was just distracted from the conversation, Miss Sullivan," Lex supplied smoothly.
Lex's seconds-long comment gave Clark just enough time to regroup. "Yeah, I'm fine. I was just, you know, thinking about school." Deep inside, he cursed Lex Luthor and his composed demeanor. And then he wondered if maybe Lex would pay him a little extra pocket money for walking around town, arriving places just five minutes before him to ensure that he would seem impossibly self-possessed by comparison.
"Well, okay, but school's over," Chloe replied. "You can stop thinking about it now."
"So says the girl who obsesses over the Torch constantly," Lana teased.
"That's different. The Torch isn't school. It's my life."
"We'll all completely ignore how pathetic that sounds," Lana added, nudging Chloe with her elbow. Clark tried not to be weirded out by their budding friendship, but there it was: weirdness. He worried what their two minds came up with to talk about.
"You know what's really pathetic?" Chloe countered. "The fact that I'm sitting here next to the manager of a coffeehouse and I have yet to be offered a cup of coffee. You should mark that down, Lex." Lex looked archly at Lana.
"Would you like some coffee, Chloe?" Lana quickly asked, leaping from her chair.
"I would, thank you," she replied, standing to follow and flashing a triumphant grin, all teeth and shining eyes, at Lex. Clark wished he could feel about her the way he felt about Lana. He certainly found her attractive, though in a way entirely different from Lana. Chloe was earthy and spunky, though he knew both those words weren't good enough for her with her intelligence and determination, not to mention that occasionally truly bizarre fashion sense of hers.
But sometimes he wanted to thump her upside her head. Why she liked him when Lex …existed didn't make sense. He'd seen them banter, their "verbal judo," as Lex had called it, and Chloe was the only person Clark knew who was fast enough to keep up with Lex's intellect.
He didn't doubt that it was Chloe's age that kept her from being on Lex's list of ladies to woo, but he knew that Chloe would get older and she would only get wittier and cleverer as she did. Eventually, she would prove irresistible to a man like Lex, a man with his eyes open who had grown bored with women of no substance. If there was one thing Chloe Sullivan didn't lack, it was substance.
It was a fun daydream, his best friends dating, getting married, but then there was the complication of his attraction to both. Warm Lex, Chloe nibbling. He decided since he had already narrowly avoided disaster once today, he really shouldn't tempt fate by throwing himself back into that fantasy.
Instead, he looked over at Lex who silently perused the file Lana had handed him. Clark thought to thank him for buying him much needed reclamation-of-mind time before having to answer Chloe, but that would be admitting that his thoughts had strayed to less than pure recreation. Even if Lex suspected it, Clark didn't have to admit it.
Instead, he quietly sipped the rest of his coffee. He felt calmer now that Lana and Chloe were chatting and giggling a few yards away. He liked them both, enjoyed their company, but they just made him nervous. Maybe it was too much scanning for subtext, or the fact that they both wanted something from him that he wasn't sure he could give, even if he knew what exactly it was. And there was this constant pressure to act now.
Even though they were teenagers and supposed to think themselves immortal, Clark thought that perhaps they could all sense it growing nearer, the ever-distant point on the horizon: graduation. Once high school was over, they didn't know where they would stand with one another, so there was this urgency to define relationships, to grasp moments in each other's company, to seize the day, as the old saying went, the Latin version of which Clark couldn't remember…something about a fish…
But Clark never felt that around Lex and he usually chose not to analyze why. If he did, he was afraid he would stumble onto something too immense to handle at the moment, so he kept his thoughts simplistic and surface: He felt no urgency around Lex because there was no urgency. It was as simple as that.
If he had been of an artistic turn of mind, he might have pictured it like a fast-motion sequence in an independent art house film: he and Lex sitting calmly in the Talon, comfortable and silent, just as they were now, while the rest of the world, the rest of their acquaintances, sped by in colorful blurs, constantly changing. Only he and Lex steady and enduring amid a torrent of time. But even if he never put it into words or imagined a visual metaphor, Clark sensed it. Somehow, some way, Lex Luthor was a permanent fixture in his life. For that reason, they never needed to rush.
"Did you want a refill, Clark?" Lana asked, walking back over with Chloe.
He glanced down into his empty cup. "Uh, no, actually. I should really be getting home."
"I'll drive you," Lex readily offered, closing the file folder. "Lana, have the electrician come in and assess the repairs. I'll look over the estimates."
"Okay. I'll call tomorrow," Lana said with a nod. "Thanks."
"You ready, Clark?" he asked, standing from his chair. Clark noted that he was being unusually proactive, but he couldn't figure out why and he wouldn't let himself speculate.
"Yeah." He turned, following Lex as he walked toward the door. "See you later, Chloe. Bye, Lana."
He knew both girls said good-bye, but he didn't hear them. At that exact moment, he was more engrossed in admiring the clean lines of Lex's shoulders…and trying not to think about why he was so eager to take him home.
***
Most definitely to be continued or rather, concluded.
Here's the deal, friends. I know that after "In Clark's Mind," a few of you wanted to see this storyline from Lex's perspective. Unfortunately, I can't get into Lex's mind well enough to do him justice (also, I don't feel I can properly adore him from within his own skin, so there's that). If one of you fantastic Lex-channelers finds yourself interested in exploring what Lex is thinking, what his motivations are during the events of this story or "In Clark's Mind," then please! Write it! I will be a most willing and eager beta or idea-bouncing board – or not – whichever you'd prefer. All I ask is that you tell me and give proper credit back to this fic. I sincerely hope that at least one of you is inspired. That would be wonderful.
Thanks to all who review. I appreciate hearing from you. And thanks to all who read, please keep doing so! Next chapter: Lex, Clark, subtext and an empty barn loft.