A Day at the Beach
By LastScorpion



"Hey, Lex. Wake up." Poke.

"C'mon, Lex. It's 4 a.m. Don't make me get people up to take you to the emergency room." Poke.

"Lex!"

"Stop prodding me. I'm awake." Lex rolled over and sat up on the edge of the bed. Oh, good. The room didn't spin. His head ached, but it didn't pound. His neck was sore, but it didn't throb. He was ferociously thirsty, and he needed a bathroom, and he was wide awake.

"Are you okay?" Clark asked. Clark sounded sleepy, and he was darn cute with his messy hair and rumpled cotton pajamas in the dim streetlight glow from the window.

"I feel much better. Is my bag in here?"

"On the floor by the door." Clark yawned. "Are you getting up?"

"It's six o'clock in Kansas, you know." Lex sat there for a minute without looking at Clark. Then he said, "I forgive you for deceiving me."

"Thanks." There was a laugh behind that word, but Lex didn't let it anger him. This was serious.

"I have to. If I don't, I'll have to hate you, and considering what you are, and what I am...." Lex looked over his shoulder. Clark looked serious, too, now. "A lot of things would end up being destroyed. I don't want to live in that world."

"Okay," Clark said. "Thanks."

Lex looked away again. This would be the hard part. "I need you to forgive me, too."

"For what?"

"I was the one who started Nixon on your trail. I tried to call him off, later, but he wouldn't listen to me. And I did fund Dr. Hamilton...." Lex's voice trailed off when he felt Clark sit up behind him.

"Lex! My dad almost died - the Nicodemus flowers AND Nixon? He blew up our TRUCK! How could you?" Clark was mad. Lex couldn't look at him.

"I know. I'm sorry," he replied in a small voice.

"Anything else?" Clark asked coldly. Jeeze, he sounded like Jonathan Kent. Or Superman.

"Yes," Lex whispered. His throat hurt, and his shoulders were stiff. He was hating this. "Those...thugs...that held my dad and your mom hostage at Luthorcorp that time. I...." Words failed him.

Clark was absolutely silent. Lex couldn't sense him moving or breathing.

Lex steeled himself to go on. "I hired them. To bug my dad's office. Well, I hired the guy who hired them, and there wasn't supposed to be anyone there that weekend, and I didn't know. I never intended...." God, that sounded weak.

"Lex." It was still the Superman voice. "I'm going to tell you something my father told me every day of my life." Okay, not Superman; it was the Jonathan Kent voice. "You are too dang strong to be careless. You are too smart and too powerful to not think things through. You can really hurt people, even when you're not trying to do anything of the kind. I know Lionel tried to convince you that he was always the stronger and the better man. He was wrong. You can do better than this, and you have to."

Lex thought he'd probably be angry if he had the blood pressure for it. He had never taken kindly to being lectured. But he had to face up to it. He was apologizing, even though a Luthor Never Admits He's Wrong. He had been wrong; people had gotten hurt; there was no getting around it, here in the dark, with no one but his best (only) friend. The last month had shown him how little he had when he didn't have Clark. "There's more." He didn't recognize his own voice.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" Clark's voice was gentle, Clark's again.

Lex swallowed hard and shook his head.

Behind him, Clark sighed. "Okay. I forgive you." Lex looked at him. "Try not to do it again. And I'll try not to lie to you anymore." Clark smiled at him.

Lex instantly felt better. He smiled back. "Friendship stuff of legend?"

"Absolutely. Don't trip on the stairs or anything. I'm going back to sleep."

"Okay. I'll see you later." Lex picked up his overnight bag and went down the hall to the bathroom.

******************************************

The sound of the shower running woke Dawn up. She stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, wondering vaguely where she was. Then she recognized the room and the inert blond-tufted lump buried under most of the blankets. "For someone so very tiny, Buffy sure hogs the covers," Dawn thought. It looked like the sun would be up in an hour or so. She wasn't sleepy. "Livin' on Kansas time," she guessed. "Might as well get up."

Dawn grabbed her canvas bag and went out into the hallway, closing Buffy's door softly behind her. The sound of the shower had stopped, so she went to the hall closet and grabbed a couple of towels. The bathroom door opened, and Lex came out. The big bruise on his left temple from last night was yellow already. The bandage was gone from his neck wound, and most of the scab as well. Both injuries looked like they'd had three or four days to heal. He was awfully well put-together for before the crack of dawn. "How the heck does he make his slacks be unwrinkled?" Dawn thought. "His stuff must have been in that little overnight bag. It doesn't make sense!"

"Good morning," Lex said formally.

"Hi. You look pretty good, considering how thrashed you were just yesterday."

He narrowed his eyes at her. It was probably pretty menacing, but she'd been menaced by way scarier things than Lex Luthor.

"Oh, don't worry. I'm in no position to cast aspersions on mutants. Can I get in the bathroom please?"

"Of course." Dawn was surprised he didn't bow.

******************************************

Lex found his way downstairs. He grabbed one of his bottles of water from the fridge, settled down on the decrepit couch and opened up his laptop. Since his father had moved into the castle with him, thus depriving him of most of his office space most of the time, he'd developed the ability to do business pretty much anywhere. A shabby living room in Southern California was certainly quieter than the busiest coffee shop in Smallville, and it was comforting to be somewhere his dad couldn't have had bugged. The company in Los Angeles had accepted his first offer. That was convenient. It meant this crazy beach expedition should be doable after all, especially if he could get a couple of things out of the way first.

Forty minutes later, Lex looked up with a start when Dawn set a glass of orange juice on the coffee table in front of him. He hadn't heard her approach.

"Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome," she replied. "You really should drink that before you forget, and some more water, too. Blood loss is no fun."

"Living here, you've probably been bitten before."

"Not I," she retorted with a flip of her shiny brown hair. "I'm not dumb enough to get bitten by vampires. No offense. But I've been sliced up by demons with blades, and I know what I'm talking about."

Lex chose not to get into a squabble with the girl and drank the juice.

Xander came stumping down the stairs. "Hey, Dawnie, Lex," he greeted them. Whistling a jaunty tune, he opened the front door and went out and got the newspaper from the drive. When he came back in, he went into the kitchen and filled a teakettle.

Dawn bounced into the kitchen after him and demanded the paper. He gave her part of it. She took it to the dining room table.

Lex rubbed his aching head on his fist and asked, "Is there any coffee?"

"Nope," answered Xander. "Just tea. I can make you a cup."

"Thanks."

"Dang!" Dawn yelled. She was gesticulating wildly with the newspaper. "Beach closed indefinitely due to sewer leaks!"

"Does it say 'Monster Activity Definitely Not Suspected?'" Xander inquired from the kitchen. "It's usually way down at the bottom, unless it's in the headline."

Dawn looked at the paper more closely. "Yeah, it does."

"That means they think it's monsters." Xander popped his head into the living room. "Lex, do you want sugar? There isn't any milk."

"No thanks. That's an interesting standard of journalism you have there."

"Yeah, well. Welcome to Sunnydale." Xander brought in two mugs of tea and handed one to Lex. Then he sat down in the armchair.

Dawn came in and perched on Xander's chair arm. "I want to go to the beach. If it's just monsters we still can, right?"

"What's with the monsters?" Buffy asked from the stairs. Dawn hopped up and got her sister the paper. Buffy sat down on the steps and started to read. Dawn went into the kitchen to make a couple more cups of tea.

"Tito's probably up. I'll call him," Xander volunteered. "He'll know if there's really something wrong with the sewer. All those plumbing types stick together." Xander hauled himself up out of the chair and went over to the telephone.

Lex watched Buffy read the paper. Her hair was still damp from her shower. She was wearing a tank top and jeans. Her feet were bare. She was unusually pretty for a girl who hadn't had more than five hours of sleep. She noticed his eyes on her and looked up. They traded smiles; then she went back to her reading.

Xander got off the phone. "Tito says there's nothing wrong with the sewers except that there's monsters in them. All the guys that have to go down there are being super-careful to go in teams."

"That makes sense," Dawn called from the kitchen. "Unlike this here." She brought out three cups of tea and set one on the step near Buffy and another on the coffee table in front of Lex. "Finish that, and drink this," she told him. To Xander, she complained, "Did you know that you guys have nothing but tea bags, canned tomato soup, and pears?"

"And I'm takin' the pears for my lunch today." The girls stopped what they were doing and gave Xander a Look. "Richard got me a day's work at a re-model on the east side of town. Cabinetry. I can do it mostly sitting. So I am finishing my tea, grabbing a couple of pears, and outta here."

"You taking the Mom-mobile?" Dawn asked.

"Nope. I don't drive so good with the gimpy leg. Richard's picking me up."

"Good!" Dawn declared. "Then I can make a grocery run. Is there any money?"

"Did you look in the coffee can?"

Dawn bounced into the kitchen to check. "Seventeen dollars!" she called.

"Take it all," Xander told her. "They're paying me cash by the day." A car horn honked from outside. "That's Richard!"

Dawn came out of the kitchen and tossed Xander two pears. He caught them and left.

"Be careful, and have a good day!" Dawn called after him.

"Mom-mobile?" Lex asked.

"When Mom died she left us the house and her SUV, so we call it the Mom-mobile," Dawn explained.

"She died right there on that couch," Buffy added dreamily.

Lex tried not to look freaked as he quickly moved his computer to the dining room table.

Dawn moved up the stairs to her sister. Buffy's eyes didn't track her, and her face was strangely empty. "Hey," Dawn said gently. "Hey, Buffy. What did you find out in the paper?"

Buffy blinked suddenly and looked up at the taller girl. "Oh! Um, it says that people noticed a terrible smell. I'm thinking I should make some calls, too. Good thing it's my day off." She handed Dawn the newspaper and got up.

"You have contacts in the Police Department?" Lex ventured.

"No, the Sunnydale PD has a strict anti-Buffy policy. But I went to high school with a guy who works for the Coroner now. He's got me on his speed-dial! It's saved me from a lot of long boring stakeouts in the graveyards, and it's handy sometimes for other stuff, too. Stakeouts." Buffy giggled a little as she dialed the phone, waited a second, and then said, "Hi! This is Buffy Summers. Is Chris Epps there? Thanks." As an aside she muttered, "I'm glad it's his shift."

"Chris made a Frankenstein Monster once," Dawn put in.

Buffy covered the receiver with her hand. "That's not exactly true, Dawn." She suddenly took her hand off the receiver and turned her back a little. "Hi, Chris! How are you? Yeah, we're fine. Good! Say, um, have you guys found any bodies floating in the ocean or washed up on shore with lots of, you know, big bites taken out of them recently? Eew. Okay. Eewww. Yeah. I think so, actually, but could you send me the preliminary autopsy report just so I'm sure? Thanks. Oh. You remember the Swim Team? Junior year? Well, they didn't so much vanish, really, as, you know, turn into Fish Fiends. So. Fourteenth Street? I'll check it out. Thanks, Chris. Say hi to Sophie for me. Bye."

Clark came clattering down the stairs. "Fish Fiends?" he asked.

"Good morning, sleepyhead." Lex and Dawn came out with it almost in unison. Clark looked from one to the other and blushed. Lex smirked. Dawn laughed out loud.

"Really," she went on. "Aren't farmers supposed to be up with the sun?"

"I was," Clark insisted. "As soon as the sun came up, I was awake. But then I had to find my stuff, and my shoes -- it's not like it's really so late now!"

"Relax," Buffy told him. "They're just teasing you. Besides, I bet they'd sleep late the next morning if they had to fly a few thousand miles."

Clark beamed at her. "Thanks."

Buffy beamed back. "Us superheroes have to stick together."

"Well, I'm going to the grocery store," Dawn announced. "Who's coming with?"

"And if we're going to the beach today, I'll need to find some weapons. And towels," Buffy contributed.

"I still want to know about these Fish Fiends," Clark persisted.

"I can totally fill you in," said Buffy, "Whereas Dawn wasn't even technically here at the time."

Dawn glared at her sister.

Lex saved his work and got up from the table. "So I'll accompany Dawn to the market."

"You're going to ride in an SUV?" Clark looked skeptical.

"Better that than haul groceries around in the Porsche."

****************************************

"You sure have a lot of swords."

Clark and Buffy were in the basement. She was dividing her attention about equally between the laundry machines and the big cabinet of weapons.

"And not a single harpoon. Dang! What did I do with them? I'm sure I used to...." An ominous thumping came from the other side of the large dim room. "Unbalanced load again! What is the matter with that thing?" Buffy ran over to rearrange the towels in the clothes washer. "Evil demonic washing machine," Buffy muttered.

Clark was still handling the weapons. These were nothing like Lex's fencing swords. "You were going to explain the Fish Fiends to me."

Buffy finished rearranging the wash, then restarted the machine and hopped up to sit on it. "Once upon a time, there was a town called Sunnydale, that was located on the mouth of Hell. Old Sunnydale High School was literally built right on top of it. Actually, new Sunnydale High School was, too. You know, the last time we were using those harpoons, Giles might have been in town. He's tall; you're tall. Could you maybe look on all the high shelves for me?"

"Sure," Clark said, "I'd be glad to." He started rummaging through the high shelves around the basement walls. "When you say the mouth of Hell...."

"It's a thin place between here and one of the nastier hell-dimensions. Easy to open, easy to get through, and it emits this evil vibe that attracts all kinds o' monsters and tends to make the people who live here get kind of, well, evil. The Spanish called it Boca Del Infierno, so we call it a Hellmouth. The late great Mayor Richard Wilkins built the town on top of it so demons would come -- he used them to get power so he could live forever and turn himself into a giant snake and stuff."

"Your mayor's a giant snake? I thought Smallville's mayor was bad."

"Oh he's dead now. We thwarted his plan to eat my entire high school graduating class by blowing him to smithereens. The high school, too."

"But, back to the Fish Fiends. And, are these harpoons I'm supposed to be finding made of metal at all?"

"The pointy parts are, I think. Back to the Fish Fiends. The coach at old Sunnydale High was apparently either evil or nuts, or both. Prob'ly because of living on the Hellmouth for so long. He really really wanted a winning season, so he did some research on some stuff the old Soviet Union had decided was too gross to use for their swim team, and he gave it to ours. He told them it was steroids, I guess, but actually it was derived from sharks and other fish. It made them a lot faster, and they made the State Semifinals, but after a while it made their skin come off and inside they were these big Creature-From-the-Black-Lagoon things. We thought for a while that the monsters were attacking the swimmers and eating them. We tried to save them, but we lost two more before we figured it out and Giles came up with a way to stop it happening to the rest of them. The monsters killed the school nurse, who was in on the plot, and the coach, and they broke through a metal fence thing in the sewers and escaped to the ocean. We thought they wouldn't come back, but now it looks like they have."

Clark gave up on physically searching the shelves. He stood in the middle of the basement looking intently all around. Suddenly he said, "Ah Ha!" and reached way up under the basement stairs. He brought down two long dusty spears, with the heads wrapped in cloth. "Is this what you were looking for?"

Buffy slid down off the washing machine. "That looks like them." She came over and unwrapped the points. "Great! They're not even rusty! Thanks, Clark." The washer stopped complaining. "Dryer time!" Buffy sang. She handed the weapons back to Clark, loaded the laundry into the other machine and set it. "If there's anything else you see there that you like, you could certainly bring it with."

"I don't usually fight with weapons. Lex can fence, though."

"I know; I saw him. We'll bring him a nice thin sword."

"Buffy," Clark said uncomfortably. "Are we gonna -- I mean it sounds like these guys are people. Were people. Are you just, are we just gonna...."

"Kill them?" Clark nodded unhappily. "Yeah, Clark, I think we're going to have to. I already let them go once, and they've come back, and they're killing people. Chris said...well, I don't really want to think about what Chris said had happened to that girl. I don't want to think about how many others they may have killed since I let them get away the first time, either. So I'm not going to. Let's just get the weapons upstairs and come up with a plan."

*************************************

Twenty minutes later Dawn and Lex returned. Buffy had fired up her old computer. It was a hand-me-down from her friend Willow, she said, but it did all she needed. The preliminary report from Buffy's friend at the Coroner's Office was downloading when Clark heard the clatter of people and grocery bags at the door. He hurried to help carry stuff in.

"You got a lot of canned goods," he commented to Dawn.

Buffy's head whipped around at the comment. "Dawn," she said angrily. "We only had seventeen dollars. Have you been...."

"Relax," Dawn interrupted. "I wasn't stealing. Lex paid."

"Oh." Buffy stopped looking mad and looked embarrassed. "Thanks, Lex."

"You're welcome. I must say, you accept gifts more graciously than the other heroes of my acquaintance."

Clark was embarrassed now. He hoped the others didn't notice him blushing, and drifted into the kitchen to help Dawn put away cans. There were dozens, and he commented on it again to Dawn.

"Well," she said, neatly stacking soup and fruit in the cupboard, "Sometimes they shut the power off, and if the place is full of canned goods I know Buffy will at least have food."

Clark was a little shocked, and his face showed it. "I didn't know you, um, your family, was so badly, um, struggling so much."

"It's not that she can't afford to pay the bills. Ever since Mom died, Buffy's always worked hard to make ends meet, but she's managed. It's just that sometimes, what with so much working hard, and the slayage and world-saveage and all, sometimes she just forgets to pay them." Dawn tossed her head in dismissal. "It's no big, and with Xander living here it shouldn't really be an issue at all. I just feel better, all the way back east in Kansas, if I know Buffy has something to eat in the house. And Lex was right there, and really nice about it, so I went for it." She glared at him defiantly, and wait, what had he done now? "You going to tell me It's Wrong to let a rich guy buy my sister a cupboard full of groceries?" Clark was about to break into a flurry of incoherent denials when Dawn was fortunately distracted by conversation coming from the front room. She flounced out of the kitchen. Clark carefully stowed the empty grocery bags and slowly followed her.

Lex, who didn't really do kitchens, had stayed with Buffy at the computer. They were looking at the report Chris Epps had sent.

"That's very disturbing," Lex commented. He looked even paler than the blood loss and blow to the head had left him, Clark thought, although it was a little hard to tell.

"It really really is," Buffy agreed. "Boys have other needs," she muttered angrily.

Lex looked at her like she was crazy. "What?"

"That's what the swim team coach said to me when he threw me into their lair. Damn! I wish I'd killed them then!"

Dawn looked at the image on the screen, then quickly looked away again. "So," she quavered, "You're sure this is them again? And is there a plan?"

"I'm sure." Buffy sounded resolute. "And there is a plan." She gestured to Dawn and herself. "Bait." She waved a hand at Clark. "Big Gun." She jerked her thumb at Lex. "Back-up."

"It's a Buffy plan," Dawn ventured. Buffy narrowed her eyes at her sister.

"You have any objections? Let's hear 'em." Dawn shook her head. Buffy widened her focus to include Lex and Clark. "Anybody have a different idea? This would be the time to say." The boys shook their heads, too. "Okay, then. Let's pack up and go to the beach."

**********************************************

Clark couldn't believe that they were worried about gruesome person-eating monsters on such a beautiful day. True, he should know better. Certainly any number of grisly mutant things had happened back home under equally pretty skies. But somehow the lovely pale sand and deep blue ocean seemed to make monsters seem even less likely than usual. On days like this, he could sometimes still hardly believe that he himself was an alien from outer space.

"Are we sure these monsters even come out during the day?" Clark asked dubiously. "It's just so pretty out here."

"Well," Buffy replied. The girl in the morgue was reported missing by her swimming buddies at 11:30 yesterday morning. Her body was found washed up on shore at ten p.m. I'd say that means they hunt during the day."

"Hey, Superman! You gonna help carry this stuff, or just stand and stare all day?" Dawn didn't sound very mad. Clark figured he'd better hurry up before that changed.

Soon they had towels, lawn chairs, weapons, a cooler and a big colorful umbrella set up on the deserted beach.

"I want to go in the water!" Dawn exclaimed.

"You and Clark are first in, then," Buffy told her. "Act baity!"

Dawn shucked her cover-up and ran towards the ocean cheering. Clark stopped with his t-shirt half-off and just watched. "I'd take that bait." Oh, shoot. Did he say actually say that? Lex and Buffy were laughing loudly at him. Apparently so.

"Kent, I'm surprised at you," Lex scolded. "What would your mother say?"

Clark blushed all over and fled. He reached the waves at the same time as Dawn.

"Behave yourselves!" Buffy called after them. "And look out for monsters!"

Dawn rolled her eyes and waded in hip-deep. She dived under a breaker and reappeared a little past the surf line. "Come on, Clark!" she yelled. "The water's fine!"

Clark plowed into the Pacific Ocean. It was nice, livelier than a pool, not cold (not that he really was bothered by cold, but he could tell it wasn't), salty, and very very big. He swam out to Dawn, and she splashed him. He splashed back. As they played, he started trying to figure out how to see through salt water. It wasn't exactly like regular water, and the way everything kept moving was messing him up. Suddenly it worked for a second, and he had a good look at Dawn in her blue-green bikini, treading water about three or four feet above the ocean floor. Then the vision slipped a little too far, and he had to close his eyes and dive to cool the resulting blush. Wow. He was glad Dawn didn't have x-ray vision.

'Cause that could be embarrassing.

************************************

"They're having fun," Buffy commented as she slipped her oversize t-shirt off and sat down on a towel.

Lex agreed. He sat down heavily in one of the beach chairs under the umbrella.

"Aren't you going to, you know, change? You did put on a swimsuit under that?" Buffy gestured at Lex's black workout clothes.

"I'm prepared to swim, but I'd rather not get a sunburn."

Buffy waved a little pink bottle at him. "Lex, sunscreen? Fancy new invention that keeps you from getting sunburned. You know, you do me, I do you?" Lex smirked at her, and she raised her eyebrows at him. "You KNOW what I mean. C'mon."

Lex sighed and got up. Buffy stretched out on her stomach, watching the two in the water the whole time. He settled down next to her and opened the bottle. Sticky. He didn't like it. But he did like the way Buffy wriggled a little as he smoothed the goop onto her back.

"You're...pale," he told her.

"Hence the sunscreen. I don't get out in the daytime enough anymore." She was still watching Clark and Dawn cavorting in the water. "Look at them," she mused.

Lex looked up and studied them playing for a moment. "I was never that young."

"I was," Buffy sighed. "But that was a long time ago." She grimaced. "Lotta gore under that bridge." Impatiently Buffy sat up and took the sunscreen bottle from Lex's hand. "I'll do the rest of me. Take. Off. Your. Clothes. You won't be much good as back-up if you have to stop and change before you charge into battle."

Lex sighed and stripped. It wasn't that he was ashamed of his appearance, even though the lavender Speedo that he'd packed with an expensive hotel's pool in mind seemed a little out of place here. It was the bruises. Even though Buffy had been the one in the middle of last night's fight, even though he was a Smallville Mutant and healed fast, even though he'd only been on the edges of combat and hadn't even noticed being hit much at the time, he was the one covered with bruises today. It didn't seem fair.

Buffy was still keeping a hawk's eye on Clark and Dawn in the ocean. She'd finished applying her own sunscreen and handed him the bottle without looking at him. "Let me know when you want me to do your back."

Lex started putting on sunscreen. It was annoying the way he kept doing whatever this girl told him to. His shoulder twinged unexpectedly when he stretched it, and he made a little sound. Buffy's head whipped around to look at him, and her eyes filled with alarm. He didn't like that either.

"Lex! Why didn't you tell me you were so beat up?"

"I'm not," he protested, as she forced him down to sit on her towel. "It's not as bad as it looks. I just -- my skin shows bruises particularly vividly."

"Well, I'm sorry I let you get hurt. And I'm sorry I yelled at you just now. Although it is better for you to not have the cover-up on. Sunshine is good for bruises." Buffy was watching the ocean and smoothing sunscreen onto Lex's back and shoulders as she spoke.

"Is that so? I never heard that before."

"Oh, yeah. Salt water, too. Spend the day at the beach; it'll cure whatever ails ya. Southern California Folk Medicine." Buffy's hands were warm and sticky, gentle on the innumerable bruises and sharp on the rest of his skin. He could feel her sensible black one-piece and her satiny skin brush against his back as she knelt up to apply sunscreen to his head. "You know," Buffy's breath made him shiver as it ghosted across his naked scalp. "This is a really unusual fashion choice for a white guy. But it suits you."

"Thank you." Lex cleared his throat. "It's not exactly a choice, though. I've been bald ever since the Smallville Meteor Storm in 1989."

"Good thing you can carry it off, then."

"Yeah," Lex breathed. He closed his eyes. This was mesmerizing. Warm sun, warm sand, warm girl rubbing his head....

It seemed as if he heard the shrieks and felt Buffy rocket away towards the ocean at the same instant. He lurched to his feet and grabbed the nearest weapon, ready to run down and help fight the -- whatever they were.

However, the sight that met Lex's eyes wasn't combat. It was just Buffy, arms akimbo, snarling at Dawn about how We Don't Scream When We're Not Really In Trouble as Clark looked on, abashed. They were all knee-deep in the surf (well, about ankle-deep on Clark), and Lex could tell from the way that Dawn's expression was shifting from apologetic through mulish to furious, that there would be a big fight soon.

"Hey!" Lex yelled. ("And when the hell did I become the peacemaker?" he wondered.) "Come on up to the towels and let's have lunch!"

*************************************************

It was a good lunch. It felt like a hundred years since Buffy had been on a picnic. This was turning into the best monster hunt ever. "I had no idea you were such a perfect picnic planner, Dawnie"

"It wasn't me," her sister replied. I went 'round and picked up the boring stuff, and Lex parked himself at the deli counter and picked out the picnic supplies."

The more Buffy heard about Lex, the better she liked him. She gave him her warmest smile. "Thanks, Lex. These sandwiches are really good. And I've never had taro chips before. They're nice."

"I'm glad you like it. I'd never tried them before either, but they seemed interesting."

"I like the pie, too," Dawn commented, looking slyly at Clark. Man, that boy blushed a lot.

"It's not a patch on Clark's mother's pie," Lex looked up and seemed to notice Clark blushing, too. He sighed.

Suddenly Clark threw a forkful of pie at Dawn. She screeched and got up and ran at him. He ran away laughing. They chased each other all over the beach. Lex and Buffy looked at each other and shook their heads. Kids.

***************************************

When Buffy declared it was her turn to be the bait now, Lex didn't really want to go in with her. However, his only alternative seemed to be staying on the shore where Clark and Dawn were making googly eyes at one another, and he was afraid they might start using baby-talk at any moment. He chose to brave the ocean.

It was the first time he'd been swimming in uncontrolled conditions since the crash. He had to work hard to conceal his nervousness. Buffy was past the surf by the time he nerved himself to dive in under a wave. The water was cold, and he didn't like the taste. He was glad they'd confirmed that there was no sewer problem; at least it should be clean enough. The way the surf pulled and pushed at his body was disturbingly similar to the current in that damn river. Pools didn't remind him of drowning, but this did.

Buffy was directly next to him without warning. "Oh, yeah," Lex remembered, "It would be wiser to worry about the monsters out here today instead of the river I crashed into four years ago."

"How ya doin', Lex?"

"Well enough."

"In the ocean you want to keep your eyes out to sea; that's where the next wave's coming from. Are you freaking out at all?"

"Pardon me?"

"Speaking as someone who's drowned, I just thought you might be a little upset."

"Are you?" Lex challenged.

"Nah, I'm fine in the ocean. When the Master drowned me, it was in this little decorative sort of an indoor pond thing he had in his underground lair. Still water, no light. Completely different from this." Buffy turned a contemplative somersault. When she came back to the surface, she continued. "Dawn and I took a little road trip last summer up and down Highway 1. We took the tour at Hearst Castle, and I had to LEAVE when we got to the big indoor pool with the statues and stuff. I'm still kinda proud I didn't scream."

Lex smiled. He felt a lot better. "I can tell you this; I'm glad it's not a river."

Buffy smiled back at him and did some surface dives. Presently she came back and floated on her back next to him.

"These guys that we're after -- before they turned into monsters -- one of them told me how he felt about the ocean, all mother-of-us-all and stuff. It was poetic, really." She was silent for a minute or two. "I told him to me it was just big and wet."

"It happens, sometimes, some places. In Smallville, too, there were several times when people I had...known...turned into monsters and tried to kill me. The effects of the meteoritic rocks were unpredictable, and generally horrific."

"I wish I could have saved them. We tried. We failed." Her face was cold and closed-in -- when did that happen? "I wish they had stayed away. They didn't, and now I have to kill them."

Lex swam quietly next to her for a while. Quietly, trying to be encouraging, he said, "Remember what they did to that girl. You have no choice."

Buffy turned and glared at him angrily. "I have a choice," she spit out. "I choose to kill them. Me, Buffy Summers, the Slayer. Making that choice." She swam rapidly out to sea.

Lex returned to the shore.

****************************************

Dawn had been seeing how red she could make Clark by saying things, and tickling him. The goal was to get his skin to match his shorts. It was maybe a little mean, but oh so very fun. Clark didn't seem to object much. Okay, yeah, he squawked, "Dawn!" pretty frequently, but he also laughed a lot, and she was sure he could get away from her if he really tried.

She was also keeping a fairly sharp eye on the ocean, since it would just be stupid to let the monsters take her sister as bait without noticing. If Clark was the Big Gun, someone had to know where to point him, and she didn't really believe Lex's stories about how good Clark was at it by himself. She'd known him at school for a whole year, after all, and he was basically a goof.

Although he did seem way more competent, and, you know, sexy, without his glasses.

Right! Eyes back out to sea, and Dawn noticed that Buffy seemed to have become enraged, and Lex was heading in. "That didn't take long," she muttered.

"What?" Clark asked.

"Oh, looks like my sister and Lex had a fight. Nothing to worry about. Par for the course. I'll go out and help her attract monsters; you stay here and see if Lex has become evil yet."

Clark looked confused. Dawn bounded down the sandy slope and jumped into the water.

*****************************************

Clark and Lex sat on the beach and watched Dawn and Buffy playing in the water. The girls were right at the surf line. They seemed to be playing tag, with breaking waves as the hazards. There was a lot of splashing, and a certain amount of squealing. "You never see that in Kansas," Clark thought. "I'm glad I came." Then he looked at Lex and sighed. Lex was brooding. Gotta put a stop to that.

"So, Lex," Clark smiled brightly and gestured with his chin towards the girls. "You falling in love yet?"

Lex laughed scornfully, but his eyes looked -- sad. "Come now, Clark. You know I don't do that anymore."

"Huh?" Clark asked brilliantly. "Why not?"

Lex looked bitter. "Surely you remember my wife, Clark? The woman I fell in love with, who framed you for arson and plotted to have me killed for the inheritance?"

Clark felt a little stupefied. "But, what about Helen?" he finally came up with.

Lex snorted. "Helen just confirmed the lesson Desiree taught me. It's better for me to avoid falling in love. I'm bad at it."

"But Desiree doesn't count...You couldn't help it! She was a meteor mutant."

Lex got very still. "She was what?"

"A meteor mutant? She had this pink mist sort of stuff, that came out of her mouth, and she could make any man fall in love with her and do whatever she wanted. Well, not me. I guess 'cause pheromones are pretty species specific."

Lex was just staring at him.

"It was just like Hathor on Stargate SG-1, actually. The one where Hathor infiltrates the SGC, and all the men fall in love with her and all the women get locked up and then Carter and the doctor break out and...." Clark's lame explanation petered out to nothing at the look on Lex's face.

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" Lex finally whispered.

"I thought you knew? I gave you copies of all the stuff Chloe found out about Miss Atkins -- how she was actually from Smallville, and where she was during the meteor storm, and about that guy killing her parents so she'd inherit and then totally denying it from jail two days later and how the exact same thing happened later with her first husband....I guess I just assumed you jumped to the same conclusions we did."

"I think I remember you giving me some papers, but...it's hard to remember things that happened when I lived with her. I guess Desiree got them away from me before I read them all. So it...." Lex looked lost in thought. He turned his full attention to Clark and asked, "Did you and your dad really see through her and concoct that clever plan to get her to incriminate herself?"

"No, Lex," Clark said gently. "That was just a cover story. She got Dad under her control. If I'd been two minutes later breaking out of jail, Dad would have murdered you and woken up days later not remembering anything about it."

Lex looked hurt and kind of lost. "I thought I really loved her," he breathed.

"I'm sorry, Lex. I thought you knew."

**************************************

Suddenly there was a scream, and Clark was gone in a flash. Lex looked up and saw the huge splash of his friend entering the ocean, the vanishing slick of brown hair that was probably Dawn being dragged under, and no sign of Buffy. He grabbed a harpoon and the rapier, and he ran towards the fight.

By the time he got to the water, there was blood in it. Dawn came gasping to the surface, considerably farther out than he'd seen her last. She was bleeding and trying to swim using only one arm, so Lex dropped the heavy metal sword and swam out to meet her.

"Where's Buffy?" Dawn choked out, as Lex pulled her towards shore.

"I don't see her. Stay calm." Lex's feet touched bottom, and Dawn pulled away from him.

"I'm calm," she growled. "I'm fine. You go help Buffy." Dawn clambered up onto the sand, and Lex watched her go. She had four deep parallel gashes on her left shoulder, and more on her right side. She was bleeding, but she made it out of the water and picked up his discarded sword. "Go!" she shouted at him.

"Go do what?" Lex thought. How was he supposed to even find these monsters? He scanned the ocean desperately. There was a boiling pattern to the surface about a dozen yards further out. He swam closer, and thought he saw a face for a second -- maybe Buffy, grabbing a breath of air? He dived, trying to keep his eyes open.

It was Buffy, and she was struggling with two big monsters. Fish Fiends was a pretty good term for them, actually. As they came into view, Lex saw one of them make a try at biting Buffy's hand off, but she turned it into an unbelievable punch into the thing's mouth and -- eww -- out the back of its neck. Blood blossomed from the lacerations that ran all the way down Buffy's arm as she pulled it from the creature's suddenly unresisting jaws. The other one had seized its moment to bite her on the other side. Buffy jabbed at its head with her elbow as it shook her back and forth like a terrier with a rat. Neither of them noticed Lex. He swam up behind the monster and stabbed it in the back with the harpoon. It let go of Buffy and whipped around like a snake to face its new attacker. Lex couldn't hold on to the harpoon handle. He backed up desperately, but then he saw that Buffy, swimming strongly despite the blood that poured off of her like smoke, had grabbed the harpoon still embedded in the monster's back. She kicked and thrust powerfully, and the harpoon went all the way through the monster. The sharp steel head emerged from the creature's chest, and the flat ugly face had just time enough to look down in surprise before it went slack with death. The two humans broke for the surface.

"Where's Dawn?" Buffy demanded as soon as she had taken a breath.

"She made it out of the water," Lex told her. "What happened to Clark?"

"I don't know. I didn't see."

Lex looked around franticly, but he couldn't see any more signs of underwater combat. Even if he could find Clark's fight, he probably couldn't be much help. Also, the girl next to him was bleeding heavily, and he now noticed that she was swimming more and more slowly. "Come on," he said, and put his arm under her shoulder. "It's not much farther."

"'Kay," Buffy said. Lex really started to worry when she let him help her to shore.

"Buffy!" Dawn exclaimed as they climbed up out of the surf. "Are you okay?"

Lex found the question irritating. Didn't Dawn see the blood? Buffy didn't object, though, and she seemed to take comfort from her sister's concern. Lex herded the girls up to the towels and got out the big first aid kit he'd noticed among their gear. Buffy seemed a lot less out of it once they got her sitting down, and she recovered quickly once she drank a bottle of fresh water.

Once both girls' wounds were thoroughly bandaged, and everyone was dried off and dressed again, it was Dawn who voiced everyone's growing concern. "Where's Clark?"

"I don't know, Dawnie. I didn't see him."

Lex kept looking out to sea, expecting to see Clark speeding back at any second.

"He pulled those things off of me. Then they ran away, well, swam away, and he chased them. But how far?"

"I'm pretty sure they couldn't have beaten him, Dawn. Not if he can always fight like he fought the Gorevanor."

"Then where is he?" The nervous girl turned to Lex. "You know him. Does he need to breathe? Could those things have drowned him?"

Lex couldn't look at her. "I don't know, okay? I don't know." His voice dropped. "I don't know anything about him."

*********************************************

Clark was having a terrible time.

Fighting the monsters hadn't been that hard. He couldn't really believe how mad he'd been when he saw them attacking Dawn like that, and it turned out they were pretty darn fast. He had to figure out how to be really fast underwater himself, so it took a while before he caught them and tore them to pieces. They were dead by the time he noticed that he'd chased them into some sort of underwater caves, and it turned out that he could hold his breath for a really long time, possibly forever, which was good because he was extremely lost. He found a way out of the water before he found a way out of the caves, and that was when he noticed that his swimsuit had been destroyed during the fight. Then when he finally remembered to use his x-ray vision to overcome the annoying total-darkness feature of the caves, and to use his super-strength to bash his way out when he got near the surface, he was nowhere near the ocean anymore. Finally he ended up super-speeding it back to Buffy's house, flying up to the roof and breaking in through a conveniently unlocked second-story window. He hoped the Summers girls wouldn't get in trouble with the neighbors for having a naked guy flying in their windows in the middle of the day. He found his clothes and got dressed, and sped back to the beach as fast as he could. He even risked flying. Now that his clothes were on, so he wasn't so horribly embarrassed and could think again, he was afraid he could remember blood in the water.

He hoped everybody was all right.

*********************************************

"I should have known better than to ever invite anyone to Sunnydale," Dawn moaned. She and Lex were staring out at the ocean. The blood had dissipated. The bodies were apparently denser than seawater; they hadn't surfaced, and weren't washing up on the beach. Buffy was glad of that. Burying monsters was hard work, and she didn't really feel up to it.

Lex and Dawn seemed even worse-off than she was, though. She could remember how upset she'd been about becoming hard inside, years ago. Now it was one of her secrets, the guilty gladness she felt that people could die and she could just keep functioning.

Let them mourn their friend. He was a good guy. Buffy cleaned the salt water and sand off the remaining weapons. Then she started packing everything up into the SUV. Her arm didn't hurt much; her side would heal, the big t-shirt covered up how wrecked her swimsuit was.

Strong arms relieved her of the heavy cooler on her second trip to the car. She looked up (way up) into worried green eyes. "Hey, Clark," she said. "What a nice surprise."

"Let me get that. Are you okay? Is Dawn?" He put the cooler away, then looked at her funny for a second and frowned and said, "Your ribs are cracked. Did, uh, did you know that practically every bone in your body has been broken?"

She smiled at the kid, even though that fall was one of her least favorite memories ever. "Yeah, I did actually." She raised her voice, "Hey, Dawnie! Hey, Lex! Look who's here!"

Dawn looked around and jumped up and ran to Clark. She tackled him in a huge hug, demanding excitedly to know just what had happened and where had he been and why had he changed his clothes. Lex wasn't far behind, but he was quieter. The sight of the three of them together made Buffy happy. She finished packing up their stuff.

Suddenly Clark's voice could be heard above Dawn's enthusiastic babbling. "Oh my gosh. Is it 2:30 already?"

Buffy checked the dashboard clock in the Mom-mobile. "Yup," she said.

"I told my mom and dad I'd be home by five! Oh, no!"

"I thought you guys said it only took an hour to fly from here to there," Buffy commented.

"Two hours time difference to Kansas," her sister pointed out. "It's okay, Clark. Now that you know you don't really need to breathe much, you can fly higher. You should be able to go faster where the air's thinner."

"But what about you? You need to breathe. And what about our stuff? It's still at your house."

"Dawn can ride back to Metropolis with me, Clark. Plenty of room in the jet. And that way you can go straight home to Smallville and not be so late."

Clark looked around at all of them. "Um, okay. Thanks, Lex. Thanks for having me, Dawn, Buffy. It was, well except for the, you know, it was really fun."

Buffy smiled at him. "We were glad to have you. Thanks for all your help with the Fish Fiends. Fly home safe."

"You want to come pick up your stuff from Metropolis tomorrow? You know -- five minutes there? We could get that coffee we were talking about?" Dawn was smiling at Clark, and he was beaming back at her.

"Yeah, Dawn. That would be great." Clark ducked his head down closer to Dawn's. "I guess I should go."

"Fly safe," Dawn murmured. She reached up and curled her good arm around his neck and kissed him.

Clark kissed her back. Then Superman flew back home.