TITLE: Flight to Neverland - The Continuing Saga {Sequel to Poetry in Motion}
AUTHOR: Nymph Du Pave
FANDOM: Smallville
PAIRING: Lex Luthor/Clark Kent, hints of a few others
RATING: PG-13
AUTHOR'S EMAIL: nymph_du_pave@hotmail.com
AUTHOR'S NOTE: It's, eh-hem, been a little while. For that I humbly apologize. Some of this has been written recently, some of it was written before I left the internet world for a while. To me it all fits and I can't wait to work on the last installment of the trilogy. FIrst, however, I do believe that ILS is in desperate need of another chapter or two.
FEEDBACK: Please tell me what you're thinking, I enjoy lurking in other minds.

Chapter Six
Patience

Martha rushed into Clark's room just as Clark woke up. "Clark, Chloe, honey. There's a problem."

Clark blinked, trying to wake up. His eyes were gritty and dry and it took him a minute to remember that he'd been crying all night with Chloe. He'd shared and bared everything to her. And she'd done the same, told him things that she'd never intended to tell anyone as a kind of bonding.

Then they'd fallen asleep. She was curled into his arm, her head on his chest and, if memory served, she was harder to wake up than his mother after their weekend at Disneyworld.

"Oh, Clark, Janet just called. She said that she and Richard have been looking all over for Pete. He told them he was staying here and somewhere else while a couple of family members were visiting, but they called here and the Pullman's and said they couldn't find him. They were surprised to find out that Pete had never come over here or to-"

"Pullman's?" Chloe asked, suddenly waking up. "Georgie Pullman's?"

Then it hit him. He knew where Pete was. "Mom, it's okay, he's at the old treehouse."

She frowned. "How do you know that?"

"Because," Chloe started sleepily, pulling away from Clark. "Going to Georgie Pullman's was code for 'let's go up to the tree house and get-"

Clark pushed her face down into the pillow to muffle the last word. He didn't want his mother thinking treehouse + Pete + Clark = drunk, even if that was the truth.

He looked up at his mother and laughed nervously. "He's probably out there sulking, mom. We had an argument a little while ago. Chloe and I will run over there and make sure he's okay."

Martha nodded. "Alright, well, I'll get the keys from your father as soon as he gets back."

Clark winced. This was not going to be easy. "Actually mom, I thought," he lowered his voice even though he was sure that Chloe had fallen back to sleep. "I thought I'd carry Chloe and just run."

Martha looked horrified. "What if she woke up?"

He looked down at his best friend and played with her hair a little. "Well, mom, see-"

"No, Clark," his mother breathed. "You can't tell her."

He winced again and kept playing with the blonde strands. He was glad he already had, otherwise the desperate tone to his mother's voice would have kept him from talking to Chloe about his origins for another week, at the least. "We had a fight too. Things got really emotional last night and-"

"Oh, no. Clark, no, baby. Tell me you didn't."

He swung his legs over the edge and sat up, careful not to disturb Chloe. "She's still here, isn't she? She didn't run out to get away from the big, ugly skin-eating, body-snatching alien. And she won't tell anyone anything. I promise. She promised."

"But you're putting all of us in danger, Clark, including her."

He stood up and hugged his mother. "I love you, Mom, but this is one area where you and Dad are very, very wrong. Chloe would have kept researching me until she found out someway or another. And what if the way she found out was through a videotape? Then anyone could find out if they got their hands on the tape." Martha started to protest but he pulled back and shushed her.

"I love Chloe, Mom. She's my best friend-"

Martha frowned. "You have an awful lot of best friends."

He nodded. "Three. And I intend for them all to know."

Martha shut her eyes tight. "Not Lex, please honey. Not him."

"I love Lex."

"I know you do, but what if your father's right? What if Lex is not who-"

"No, Mom. You're not listening."

She was quiet and looked at him.

"People who are curious will do more damage than people, trustworthy people, that have been let in on a secret. Now I love you and Chloe, Dad and Pete, but I love Lex. In the same way that you love Dad."

He paused and Martha looked stunned. "You're... you like... You're really-"

"Apparently."

"Oh, god. Does he know?"

"He? Know?"

"Lex. Does he know that you… that you're-"

"That you're gay. For him," Chloe's muffled voice filled in.

His mother looked a little flustered and Clark wondered how much of this Chloe had overheard.

He turned back to his mother and shook his head. "Not yet. But he will. Soon. Now Chloe and I have to go. Can you make a quick batch of that red eye stuff for when we bring Pete back?"

Martha nodded. "If this is really all too much for me to take in, Clark, imagine your father."

"He'll get over it."

"Yes, but it will take him killing Lex to do it?"

Clark smiled. "He'll just have to get past me first."

+_+_+_+_+

"The big, ugly skin-eating, body-snatching alien?"

Clark shrugged and she smiled at him. "Been watching to much FX there, buddy."

He stood still. "I was sure it was around here somewhere? Are you okay to stand?"

Chloe shook her head. Clark running had been… Well… "No, I think I'll just sit for a moment, thanks."

He nodded. "I'll be right back." He took off again and she shook her head in wonder.

The world had become lines, like a beautiful painting set askew by light or water or a warped mind. It was like one of those anti-gravity things. It held such power in that moment. She felt heavy and, at the same time, light. Like she could fly.

As soon as she got home, she was going to have to do some heavy thinking and soul searching to write, to describe it. And of course she would have to label it as a "dream" so as to protect Clark and his family, should anyone for any reason ever read her journal.

"Last night I had this incredible dream," she said and couldn't help but feel giddy. The run had left her in an over-amped state, too much adrenaline for her little frame.

The journalistic side of her wanted to know everything about Clark, everything about how he first began life here, how his parents kept up with him, what they felt when they found him… Everything.

But she knew she couldn't ask. Not yet. Not so soon. She still had to prove to Clark -- and herself -- that she was trustworthy, that she could draw the line between personal and publishable. She was too lucky to have him in her life. She would never again hide anything from him. Not like the adoption records. Nothing pertaining to him.

She got up and started walking to the right, the opposite direction of Clark, thinking about how he had explained his parent's reactions to his arrival.

Jonathon was a man of the land and therefore very physical of mind. Chloe took this and what she personally knew about him to mean that he couldn't really believe in something until he saw proof of it. He couldn't trust that which he could not see. It was just in him to be a simple man. He had faith in the life of making yourself, where what you reaped, you sowed, and what you had coming to you, whether good or bad, would eventually get to you.

Martha was more the believer of the two, the heart. She believed in a higher power, but had no true religious affiliation. She had faith that if you were a good and true person that karma would lighten your life.

It was easy to see why they had excepted Clark so easily into their lives. He was a welcome presence, the icing on the cake. The only thing missing from their family. Their angel had fallen from the sky and they had never questioned why the boy had come into their lives. The just accepted it. It was to be.

A sound of a piece of wood falling from the tree ahead caught Chloe's attention and she looked up ahead. There was a large pile of plywood, broken and in shambles, not twenty feet away.

No, she thought. This can't be it. This is just some old wood dump, or homeless bonfire.

Smallville hadn't had a homeless problem since the shelter opened in '92.

Her feet were already carrying her as fast as they could to the heap. She reached it and fell to her knees praying to herself that this was not the remains of the treehouse. She'd only been here three times; it was a boy's place and, as much as she was 'one of the guys' she could not pass physical exemptions. The only breasts that were allowed inside the hideout were ample ones, belonging to models caught in surreptitious poses and plastered on the inside of glossy magazines.

She caught sight of the shiny, Heineken long-neck glittering in the sun from within the debris and she knew that this was where her poor Pete was; a premature burial ground. The symbolism of the entombment was thick in her mind and heart. A boy lost beneath the broken remnants of his childhood. It had no doubt given in beneath him.

Much like their friendships.

As she yanked another board away from the pile she caught sight of a familiar hand; a hand with the discoloration of a pale scar leading down the inside of the wrist and up halfway to the elbow, which was still hidden under the wood.

"Pete," she whispered. The scar was from just two years ago, Christmas. The three of them and a few other dozen kids had been skating on Crater Lake when a patch broke under her. Clark had been off to the side, watching Lana, but Pete had been skating with her and acted fast. He'd grabbed onto her and pulled her hard enough to send her on her ass a few feet away from the hole. The water beneath him had gotten slippery and he'd fallen, slicing his coat, sweater and arm on the blade of her brand new ice-skates. She'd called out to Clark who'd run to get help. Together they'd saved Pete.

Called out. To Clark. Saved Pete. Together.

"CLARK!" she screamed while feeling for a pulse. She was too frantic to tell if there was one. +_+_+_+_+

~"Where have you been?"~

Lex should have known better. Plain and simple. He shouldn't have lied when Clark asked him.

Why even fucking care? the drunk half of him asked, then downed another gulp of vodka. His lips pulled back, baring his white teeth, and he hissed, watching his reflection in the antique gold flask.

The fire crackled and popped eight feet from him and he slouched even further into the over-stuffed chair. He could see that the light outside had long since faded, and it fit his mood,

He'd gotten angry at the implication in Clark's voice, not subtle, but blatant and unswerving. He didn't like being questioned and didn't like demands made of him either. Then bringing up Chloe's need and Clark's not being there for her…

He always knew what buttons to push on Clark. It was always so fucking easy, right there on the poor boy's face. The farmboy hadn't been taught to hide his weak spots. He was taught to hide something, something that seemed to Lex to be his strong and vulnerable suit, but never to hide his personal aches. The kid had a lot to learn.

He had his own weak spots. Clark was the biggest of them all. The blood in his heart was only running, was only pumping because of Clark's influence in his life. Everything had stopped and his life had deserted him. Then the kid decided to save Lex Luthor. So Clark ripped off the roof of the car, endangering himself and his family with the risk of exposure, and breathed life into a body better left cold, better left alone on the bottom of some muddy river.

He was Clark's. There was no other way of looking around at the situation. He was Clark's. Clark Kent owned him, body, heart, soul, mind… And whatever else Lex Luthor had.

Clark had needed him, he'd said, needed Lex Luthor. The only human being left alive that was capable of actually, genuinely caring about him had needed him for some reason or other and he'd selfishly hid.

Sam said Clark had sounded sad.

Sam said Clark was persistent.

Sam said Clark loved him.

"Sam." Lex threw the flask at the wall, disappointed by the lack of damage it did there. He should have been drinking out of a glass, or aimed for the Tiffany vase by the hearth.

Sam had told him his mother would get better.

Sam had assured him that Lillian would live.

"Sam's full of shit."

He remembered the pain though in Clark's young eyes. It was mixed with something else. Something heavy and needy and passionate.

He made a dispirited sound. Clark was passionate about a lot of things. About a lot of someones. But not him.

Combine the pain and the mystery product and you had a very confused Lex. Then there was all that talk about his assumptions and Clark's poem. And he still wasn't sure what Clark giving Lex his own poem back meant.

~"None of this or anything else has to do with Lana, Lex. It never does. It hasn't for the longest time."~

He'd naturally thought Chloe, but that couldn't be. Then a glimmer of hope that was smashed by habit. Clark couldn't be talking about him. Too long in Metropolis reading the signs from men and women had sensitized him up to sexual interest. But Clark wasn't like that. He was clean and sterile and sweet. The only thing that made him sweaty was farmwork, the only thing that got him grimy was 'the good Lord's earth'.

Lex rolled his eyes at his unfair presentation of Clark. The boy had never shown any fanatical leanings towards religion and probably thought homosexuals and bis were fine and dandy.

"As long as they don't approach him," Lex thought aloud and couldn't help but wonder if the booze was at fault for his scattered thoughts, or if that was still Clark.

Both could explain why he kept playing around the conversation as if Clark was hinting towards something, as if there was something there to pick up on.

~"You don't know what a 'best friend' is about, Lex. You've no fucking clue."~

"Well, duh," he whispered, hating the sound of the doorbell as it broke into his thoughts.

"SAM!" he called out before he remembered. Sam was 'out on the town' with some lady friend he kept meeting at the market, not that that had surprised Lex. Not for a very long time. Sam had always been single, had always been a lady's man. When Lex had been younger, he'd carelessly asked Sam why he was single. That had been the single time that Sam had ever lost his temper with Lex. Sam had coldly replied that it was none of his business, then briskly walked away.

"The extent of his horrid temper," Lex muttered sarcastically. He'd seen much worse come from Lionel. He ran his tongue over the ridge on his top lip. The scar would never go away.

The bell was there again. Lex had thought he'd do better to be left alone, without his staff in the mansion, but that was before he had a visitor. Now he wished that he had someone to answer the door, someone to tell whoever it was to go the hell away.

The bell rang a third and fourth time.

Persistent.

The thought that it was Clark got him up and out of his seat before his mind could register his body's actions. He told himself that it was because he wanted another shot at Clark, another chance to make the boy feel horrible, as Clark had done to him. A chance to show Clark that he didn't matter at all.

Deep down he knew he just wanted to see Clark's face. Angry or not, it was a beautiful face, and one that would still forgive him. Lips that would apologize for getting overheated at the Beanery, eyes that would be downcast over his own actions and at Lex's refusal to tell him the truth, hair that would fall over his forehead and eyes the minute that Lex pointed out that he shouldn't have lied, that he should have just trusted Clark would understand a need to be alone.

In his dreams, his better dreams, Clark would walk towards him, grasp his upper arms and tell him that he was never going to be alone again, that Clark would simply not allow it. Lex would try to protest and then find that Clark had an incredibly effective way of shutting him up. And the kisses -- among anything and everything else -- would last all night.

The bell rang a fifth time and startled Lex out of his thoughts. He was standing at the door, palm and forehead pressed to the hard, cold wood. He didn't remember getting there, didn't remember even getting up really, but could feel the pressure of lips against his. God, did he need someone to make sure he'd never be alone.

He yanked open the door, fully expecting a tall, handsome farmboy and finding a short, pretty blonde.

"Chloe," he said, and leaned up against the doorframe. "I'm really not gonna be help tonight."

She shook her head. "I'm not here for me."

He frowned. "Wha d'ya mean?"

One eyebrow quirked along with the sides of her mouth. "Well, I came for you, but it looks like intoxication got here first."

He shrugged, too drunk to deny or even feel agitated. It was the truth and if anyone other than Clark and Sam could call him on it, Chloe was right at home in the spot.

"You really love him that much?"

His head snapped up and his eyes stared hard at her. "What?"

"Nothing, Lex."

"What did you-"

She walked past him into the foyer. "Pete was in a treehouse some three or four stories up and fell."

"Uh-"

"Clark and I rushed him to the hospital where he spent several hours undergoing a few routine surgeries. The doctors put him under so many painkillers that he'll be asleep well into tomorrow."

"Uh, Chloe-"

"They told all of us to go home. All of us except his mother. I felt so…" She turned to face Lex. "There were a bunch of his family members, me, my dad, Clark and his parents. We all felt so helpless. Lex, Pete's arm, legs, wrists and a few ribs are broken. His back suffered injuries and he'll be lucky to fully recover without having to use a cane for the rest of his life."

She sat down on the couch and Lex realized that this was all too much information for him to handle. Right now he considered standing without falling a major accomplishment.

"I've cried myself out and then some. I'm not here to do more of that. I'm here for you."

"So you said." He plopped down on the armchair across from her. His head felt all gooey and spinning and like the world was just not going to hold still. He'd gone past his nice buzz, and getting up had alerted his mind to the rest of his body's drunken progress.

And Chloe was in his chair. His nice bodily-pre-warmed, cushiony chair. And he was stuck with the cold, stiff fabric of the armchair to left side of the fireplace.

"Lex?" Chloe's voice was soft and still and it was the point around which he could focus. Not the chairs.

"Yeah, Chlo?" He said her name, her nickname, because it felt good to know that she was there, that she was with him. Even if he was falling asleep -- passing out -- she had come to see him well.

"You love him, right?"

"Yup," he answered simply and resolutely.

"You love him a lot?"

His eyes closed, heavy and final. "With all a heart I didn't know still worked."

"Then be patient. Do you hear me, Lex?"

"Yes," he answered. "Be patient."

To be continued tomorrow...