Clark slept like an inanimate object for six hours, but when the dreams started, he twisted and moaned until he finally bolted awake, sweating and gasping. The poisoned nightmares of the red kryptonite days were still too close. He wondered if they would ever fade. If they didn't, he wondered if they would end up driving him back into insanity.
There was no point in trying to get back to sleep. He thought about going his old place in the loft and waiting for the sunrise, but that was hours away, and it would give him too much time to brood. Maybe if he just kept himself occupied.... He did what chores he could at high speed -- the chickens didn't seem to care, but the cows objected to being milked at that pace, so he left that last job for Jonathan -- and set off for Lex's castle before dawn.
Truth be told, he didn't know if he had managed to work up the courage to face Lex yet. Maybe if he just stood outside and watched for awhile....
Practice had honed his high-frequency vision to the point where it was barely a thought to spread his senses to a wider spectrum. He wasn't sure he was comfortable with that, but there was no giving it back short of blinding himself. He sighed, and let his eyes look into, through, the castle walls, randomly, not yet deliberately searching.
And, of course, the first thing he saw was Lex, sitting in his library, a half-empty glass beside him, staring darkly into a cold fireplace.
Drinking? At four in the morning? Clark took in Lex's appearance more carefully. A little rumpled, especially for Lex. Maybe he hadn't even gone to bed yet.
Lex looked up, and Clark's eyes followed his automatically. Monitor screens. Oh, no. Of course Lex would have perimeter security sensors up, especially with all he'd been through lately. Clark cursed himself for being a stupid kid. All the hard lessons he'd been through himself in the past few months, and it hadn't even occurred to him to check.
Lex reached for something beside the glass, and held up a small control panel. "Come on in, Clark." The sound was broadcast from a speaker by the front door.
Clark would rather have walked toward a meteor rock, but he made himself move forward. Lex turned to look directly at the door, as if he could see Clark as well as Clark could see him. The door opened itself at a touch from Lex on the little panel.
"I'm assuming you know where I am," Lex's voice said said from the speaker. "If you care to join me. If not," a shrug, and Lex took a drink, "You know where the pool is."
The inference being that Clark only came over to take advantage of Lex's money and toys, not to be with Lex himself. Clark froze, unable to breathe, shaking. He closed his eyes against Lex's stare, not even bothering to try to fight a sob. He turned to leave. There was no way he could face Lex now, not in this mood, not if that was how Lex felt about him now.
Maybe not ever. He wondered for a second if the camera would catch him at speed.
"Clark." The tone changed -- not much, but enough for him to look back. Lex was looking at the security screens again. Watching him. Lex would never apologize, could never relax. But maybe he was regretting the stab, and would allow Clark to make the first move.
Clark swallowed. He was willing to put in the effort. He would either have to make his apologies, and hope to be accepted by his friends again, or have nothing left of his humanity, nothing left of himself except the cold unforgiving voice of Jor-El in his mind.
"I'm -- I just didn't mean to disturb you this early." Another half-truth, another evasion. Sometimes it did seem like that shell of lies was all there was left of him.
Lex snorted, swirling his glass. Clark wondered if Lex were snorting at himself for sitting alone and drinking in the hour before dawn, or at Clark for lying to him. "You're not exactly interrupting. But you would already know that, wouldn't you? If you didn't mean to disturb me, then why are you here? Don't tell me you've taken up stalking, Clark."
Already know that? Clark shivered. Why would Lex say that? How much did he know? "I just ... I wasn't thinking. I just had to get away. I ended up here."
Lex sighed. "Come inside, Clark. The security cameras were not designed for holding a conversation through. And whatever you have to say, it probably isn't something you want recorded and gossiped over in the guardhouse."
Clark gulped. He had known about the security system on the front door, and although the perimeter sensors were an upgrade he hadn't known about, anyone with half a brain should have known that Lex wasn't the only one monitoring them. So much for having half a brain. "Thanks ... Lex." He closed his eyes, bracing himself, and walked cautiously into the foyer and down the halls he had been through so many times, so easily, before.
Lex inclined his head slightly to look at Clark as he forced himself reluctantly into the room. It was cold, a cold that went deeper than temperature. It was cold in the way that Lionel was cold in a business meeting. Cold as if no human being had ever been there.
"So, to what do I owe this honor? I didn't think you would have time to come around, what with your triumphant homecoming." Lex took a drink, but his eyes never left Clark's face.
Clark nearly retreated from the weight of the stone mask in those eyes. "It was your homecoming that was triumphant. Mine is more like ... one long apology."
"You know even less than you think, if you believe that." Lex's voice did nothing to take the insult from the words. "When I find out exactly who tried to kill me, and why, and deal with them, then it will be a triumph." He gestured with his free hand, the sharp angry motion slowed by alcohol and exhaustion. "In the meantime, you're still the town's golden boy, and I'm still the embodiment of all the wrongs ever done by Luthors."
Bitterness rose in Clark. "You didn't do anything wrong. I did. Maybe my friends and family have forgiven me, but they'll never completely trust me again. But you'd already know all about that, right?"
"Trust?" Lex would have laughed if he weren't so tired. "Is that what this is about, Clark? You wanted to see just how far we could still trust each other?" He leaned back, looking around for a bottle to refill his glass. "You were moving pretty fast when you crossed the perimeter sensors. A little over two hundred kph, by my calculations. I don't know whether to call the Olympics committee or Cadmus Labs."
Oh, no.... Well, he already knew about the meteorites, so the whole purpose of keeping his secret was kind of pointless now. "What," he said carefully, and Lex's sudden glare told him that he had better not finish that with "are you talking about?" Lex was not, quite, as angry as Chloe, but that might just be because of the late hour and the booze, and he had far more practice at rage. "What do you -- want to -- know?"
For answer, Lex leaned over to a drawer and lifted out a dull gray box that was obviously heavy -- Lex had to put down his drink and use both hands, grunting with the effort. Clark would have guessed what it was even without the shift in his vision.
Lex picked up his drink again. "Do you want to open that?" Taunting.
Clark took a deep breath. If that was the way he wanted to play it.... "No."
"Why not?" Lex had to be pretty drunk to show such petty spitefulness.
It made Clark angry. "Games, Lex? Is that all that's left between us?" He moved toward the box at speed, a blur, before he could change his mind, and yanked the lid open.
Oh, hells, the refined stuff. Clark went to his knees even as he shoved the lid back closed. Fact was, he admitted through the blinding dizziness and pain, he might not have managed even that if Lex hadn't slapped his own hand down on the lid with a roar.
"Goddammit, Clark!" He was on his feet before Clark could see again, leaning over him and radiating pure fury. "I wanted you to talk to me, not torture yourself!"
"S-sometimes," Clark managed to retort, "It f-feels like ... the s-same thing."
Lex said something under his breath that would have been considered much too unsophisticated for a Luthor. He shoved the box violently back into its drawer and slammed it closed, ramming a bar lock through it for good measure, every motion the action of a man who desperately wants to hit something hard enough to break it.
Clark wondered if Lex had been tempted to make him that something, and if he knew he'd be risking breaking his own hand. He suspected that the answer was yes to both.
"Sit down." Lex pointed at the couch -- the place where Clark had spent so many hours comfortably studying or reading while Lex worked, just content to be in one another's company, making the occasional offhand comment. Clark tried to blame his blurred vision on the radiation's after-effects again. The trouble he had getting to his feet had to be due to residual weakness, too. Surely he wasn't about to start crying again. Not in front of Lex.
Whatever Lex made of his stumbling, he just hauled Clark upright as if he were the super-strong one, and pushed him onto the couch. It was not a friendly gesture, and Lex turned away from him immediately, going to the bar while Clark fought for self-control.
Then Lex was back, shoving a heavy glass of something amber into Clark's hand.
Maybe that was as close to a friendly gesture as Lex was able to make any more.
Lex sat back down and refilled his own glass as Clark sipped the powerful-tasting stuff. So what if it wasn't even dawn yet. It felt like he had already been through enough for a full day. "Why did you do that?" Lex demanded, so quietly it was barely above a whisper.
Clark forced a faint smile. "You mean that wasn't a dare?"
Lex sighed and scrubbed at his face, as if tired enough to finally consider letting go. "A challenge? Maybe it was. Or maybe ... a threat. That's how Luthors deal with their ... opponents." He leaned back, taking a drink and closing his eyes. "It's a hard habit to break."
"Am I your opponent, Lex?" Softly.
"Are you?" Lex looked at him directly. "You're certainly a force to be reckoned with. If you ever decided to oppose me, you could kill me outright before I could make a move. But the meteorites are not your only weakness. You're inexperienced and careless. Gullible. If you held back, if you made a mistake, you wouldn't have a chance against me."
"I don't want to oppose you. And I would never even dream of killing you."
Lex leaned forward. "Are you absolutely certain about that? Are you certain that I will never, not once, do something that you would oppose? Are you going to keep that lie between us too, Clark? Or are you really just that much of a fool?"
"I probably really am that much of a fool." Clark downed the rest of his drink in one gulp and closed his eyes, feeling the liquid burn a little in his throat and stomach. It was an unusual sensation for him, not entirely pleasant, but somehow enticing. Like eating too much ice cream too fast. "But I still believe in you, Lex. And I believe that you would never do anything I would have to -- fight you over. Not like that."
When he opened his eyes again, Lex was staring at him in a kind of fond bemusement. "Clark Kent, eternal optimist," Lex said, almost gently. "Power and innocence and charm, all wrapped up in one unnatural package. Self-effacing, and trusting, and living a lie all these years behind those smiling guileless eyes. What am I going to do with you?"
Clark's eyes went involuntarily to the drawer, and Lex slammed a hand flat on the desk top with a crack like a gunshot, suddenly with no sign of tiredness or drunkenness.
"Goddammit, Clark," and although he wasn't yelling this time, the cold blazing rage was even more threatening than his previous shout. "No matter what happens between us, I will NOT do that to you. Not unless you go absolutely bugout crazy and somebody really does have to kill you. Then, I promise you," he brought himself down to quiet again, though it was an obvious effort of self-restraint, as he took a drink, "It will be me."
Clark looked up at him. There was nothing else to say to that. "Thank you."
Lex stared at him. Without a word or change in expression, he went to the bar and brought back another bottle, filling Clark's glass before he could protest and drinking directly from it himself. Clark's mouth opened and closed once, twice, like a fish trying to figure out where the water had gone. "Lex, it's not even dawn yet," he finally said lamely.
"So?" Lex's stare became amusedly challenging. "I was nearly killed. God only knows what happened to you. I was drugged, bashed up, almost drowned, burned, beaten, abandoned, starved, and if I ever see an episode of Survivor again, I will shoot the television and then myself. You, on the other hand, pulled the throwing-it-all-away routine yourself, blew up half your own house and took off on the equivalent of a cocaine and heroin highball, and had a psychotic break and either didn't remember your own name or didn't give a damn.
"We should worry about having a damn brandy just because the BBC doesn't come on for another ten minutes?" Lex lifted the bottle and drank deeply. "To survivors. Prosit."
Clark closed his eyes. Okay, of course it was never going to be the same between him and Lex -- between him and anyone -- ever again. But that was only to be expected. At least it seemed that he would be accepted back into Lex's private life, maybe even as a friend, not just as someone he had once known. He lifted his glass, and drained it. "Salud."
He gasped at the hot shudder that ran down his throat and out through his stomach into his blood. Was this what it was like for humans? No wonder people got addicted to the relaxing warmth inside, when everything outside was so cold.
He opened his eyes to see Lex's eyes on him, amused, and as warm as the tingling in his fingers. "Maybe I should have the glass and you should have the bottle. Though I hate to think of how much six hundred dollar brandy it would take to get you drunk. Can you even get drunk?"
"I dunno," Clark muttered. Why would Lex ask him something like that? "Never tried. Jona -- Dad -- yelled at me for sneaking one of his beers when I -- when Pete -- last year. Not that he had to. Tasted awful. Poured it out in the garden."
Lex leaned forward, eyes glittering. "Heh. Either you do respond to alcohol, or...." He put down the bottle, demeanor changing suddenly and harshly. "Clark, why did you start to call your father by his first name, and then change your mind?"
Clark met his eyes, and the brandy's warmth drained away. "Because Jonathan Kent isn't my father," he said tiredly. "But you knew that. Everybody knows that."
"Yes, it's common knowledge that you're adopted." Lex went to get another bottle, twisted the top off it, and handed it to Clark. He didn't so much as raise an eyebrow when Clark took the 1.75 liter glass bottle as if it were a paper cup. "But you've always seemed happy with your adopted family. More so than I with my blood sire."
He lifted his bottle, an expression sardonic enough to scare a wolf. "To my dear old dad, may he and Satan be too busy trying to destroy each other and fight over who rules in hell to bother with humanity ever again." He pretended to drink deeply, and motioned for Clark to do the same. Clark swallowed half a bottle of flavored rum and felt the blanketing, distancing warmth slowly envelop him again.
Lex watched the slight shift in his expression carefully. Yes, it did seem that Clark could be affected by alcohol, though he recovered faster than even Lex at his most furious. As fast as he recovered from the obviously terrible effects of the meteorites. As fast, almost, as he could run. Lex snickered, and the sound made him aware of his own alcohol intake. No, he was not going to tell Pete that the high-speed camera included a secure transmitter.
Lex leaned forward again carefully. "You see, I can understand if you have issues with your father figures. Did you find out something about your own biological father? Please tell me it's not Lionel. We would have to compete on what to do to even the score."
"Jor-El," Clark said thickly, and then several dozen syllables in no language Lex had ever heard, although he spoke five fluently and ten more passably. Then Clark drained the rest of the glass bottle and stood suddenly, so fast that Lex didn't see him move, and hurled the empty bottle at the fireplace with explosive force. The unintelligible language went on for several more syllables in what was all too clearly both a plea and a curse.
Lex peeked over from behind the desk from where he had thrown himself instinctively at Clark's first motion, to see Clark covering his face with his hands. Sobbing.
Okay, this was completely unacceptable. Besides, the BBC market report was on.
Lex walked over to touch the stereo control on, to give Clark a few seconds to regain his composure, for some boring background noise that they could both pretend to listen to, and for himself to hunt through every idea he had ever wondered about his unusual friend to explain what had cut Clark so completely loose (aside from enough booze to kill a yak) and what language that was he was sobbing in, and what he might have meant by "Jor-El."
"Clark. Don't break my arm or anything, okay? Sit down. You're probably as tired as I am. And your dad -- Jonathan -- is right. One beer is about your limit at five in the morning." He touched Clark tentatively, as cautious of the younger man's emotional state as he was of the power and speed he had already seen Clark demonstrate. He wondered what the mass-velocity equations would tell him about the crater in his fireplace. "Sit down."
Clark -- well, collapsed was an accurate description. He had stood up longer against the deadly greenish radiation. "I'm sorry, Lex." Choked.
"I will not accept that." Lex stood over him, arms folded. Clark looked up at him like a kicked puppy. Lex refrained from slapping him around a little. He remembered, vaguely, shooting Clark with a semi-automatic, and watching the bullets ricochet off. But the wide-eyed puppy look was almost enough to make him go open that drawer again.
Or maybe finding a rerun of Survivor and carrying through on his promise to himself.
"You don't owe me any apologies. If anything, I owe you one. I was pushing where I obviously had no business. It's another Luthor habit -- we tend to treat everyone else's family the way we do our own." He started to pour himself another drink, then reconsidered. The sky was beginning to lighten from black to cobalt. He went to the refrigerator and retrieved two bottles of water instead, pressing one into Clark's still lax hand.
"Clark, if you want to tell me what you were just saying, I would love to hear the translation. But if not, then just tell me whatever it is you came over to tell me." He sat down and drank some water. "I am not going to pry at you. It's just not worth it to me any more."
Clark rubbed the cool wet bottle against his forehead before opening it. "How much did Chloe tell you?" he asked tiredly, as the alcohol sugar wore off.
Lex raised an eyebrow. "Chloe hasn't told me anything. I haven't even seen her since I got back, except at the hospital. What did she tell you that she had told me?" Okay, that was pretty much a new low in grammar for a Luthor, but consider the circumstances.
"She said she hadn't told you everything." Clark rubbed his eyes, and then stiffened. "No. She said she hadn't told HIM everything. She never referred to you by name."
Lex said several very unsophisticated words under his breath. "Clark. Chloe has been spending a certain amount of time with my dear old dad over the summer. He got her an intern's job at the Daily Planet. I wondered what he thought he was going to get for it in return. I should have known better than to jump to the immediate conclusion. Lionel likes them young, but he can pay for that in the city without incurring any other obligations."
Clark spent a good minute of long practice and hard-won control trying not to be sick. Even though it had already been metabolized, the alcohol he'd gulped wasn't helping. He didn't realize he'd closed his eyes and bent his head in shallow-breathing concentration until a cold wet cloth was placed in his hand.
"Clark?" Lex's voice came from much too close. "Lie down." He pushed lightly, and Clark complied. "Sometimes I forget that not everyone takes for granted what I do."
"Chloe," Clark managed, through a tightness in his throat that both made it hard to breathe and mercifully hard to spew everything left in his stomach. "And Lionel...."
"If he's forced her, he won't live to see sunset, and I don't give a damn if he's listening right now," Lex said in that icy rage that was so quiet that Clark had to concentrate to hear. "If it was Chloe's choice, then there may be ... things we need to talk about."
Lex decided on the spur of the moment not to tell Clark that he was perfectly willing to kill Chloe too, if she was a real danger to the special person in front of him. That might become one of those lies that would forever be between them, because Clark would never be able to understand or forgive what Lex knew was necessary.
"She said that -- she hadn't told him everything. That's all I know." Clark lay trying to focus on the ceiling, trying to put pieces together. He wasn't really all that good at it. Chloe had always been the one who did it for him.
And he had always taken that, and her, for granted. As many times as he had accused her of snooping, as many times as he had abandoned her, hurt her, he had always assumed that she would still simply be there. Clark's breath caught somewhere between a choke and a sob. Why should he expect her loyalty, when he had done so little to earn it?
He had taken her fascinating and inquisitive nature and used it against her. And then he had run her off. He couldn't blame her for going to Lionel. He couldn't have blamed her if she'd tried to kill him herself.
"So what didn't she tell him, Clark?" Lex's voice was deceptive velvet, and Clark turned his head to look at him in puzzlement. Lex smiled slightly and touched his finger to his lips. The tiny shushing gesture would have been meaningless to anyone who didn't know what they were talking about. Lex might have been stroking a drop of brandy from his upper lip. "Sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. Do you feel up to a walk around the garden?"
Clark didn't, really, but he understood what Lex was trying to do. He sighed and struggled back to a sitting position. He hadn't made it to his feet yet when Lex touched his control panel again.
The explosion sent him to the floor with a scream as his senses shattered. Blind and deaf and unable to feel -- it wasn't like kryptonite, it wasn't like anything else ever, but it hurt, and he couldn't tell what was there anymore, couldn't even feel anything under his hands....
"Clark!" The voice came from far away and right in his ears at the same time. "Clark, god, answer me!"
"What .. what .. hap ... pened...?"
"Oh. God." Lex sat back on his heels from where he had futilely been trying to give Clark CPR, wiping sweat from his head with the shirt he had ripped off. "Thank all of the gods. When you screamed.... Dammit, Clark, I thought you were almost invulnerable. That was an EMP -- an electro-magnetic pulse. I was just disabling whatever spy-eyes Lionel had planted. I didn't realize ... I didn't mean to.... What did it do to you?"
"I'm ... I'll ... be ... okay." Clark lifted a hand to his head and found it was no effort, though he still couldn't see much and wasn't sure if he was touching anything. Lex's voice faded in and out. "My ... s-senses ... k-kind of like ... your ... s-spy-eyes."
Lex said several words that Luthors weren't even supposed to know, much less say out loud, and not all of them were in English. "I didn't even think of that." Another un-Luthor word. "And I should have. Of course you would feel it, if you can see through walls."
"You ... know...?"
"Clark, when you were standing in the middle of the yard with six separate cameras trained on you -- and it's going to really piss off the guards to have to replace that whole system -- you were looking right at me. Not at any of the cameras. At me. Through that wall there. Which, in case you haven't noticed, does not have any windows, and there are three walls between there and where you were standing. Remember what I said about being careless?" Lex got up and went to put more ice in the cloth, berating himself. He was hardly one to talk about being careless. He'd assumed Clark's denser cell structure would protect him, not make him more vulnerable. His physics professor was going to give him holy hell.
Right, like he was going to tell even Doctor Reeve about Clark. When hell froze absolutely solid and Lionel owned the ice skating concession. All he wanted right now was to know what Lionel knew about Clark. The meteorites had been a dead giveaway. But if dear old dad knew about the red stones.... Lex would rather see Clark tied down and cut open than running on his equivalent of crack again. Physically, he healed insanely fast. Mentally....
He put the cold cloth pack over Clark's eyes, gently moving Clark's hand out of the way. Clark allowed it. Lex was fully aware that he couldn't have moved Clark's little finger with both hands if he hadn't. "At least we can talk without fear of any interruptions or interceptions now. When you feel up to it. If you feel up to it."
Clark sighed tiredly. The ice pack had felt pretty good, for a few seconds, with his sense of touch still reeling. But as the shock wore off, so did his ability to take comfort from any of the things that humans felt. Temperature, moisture content, texture ... no longer something to feel, but to categorize and check off in mental boxes. Hearing, 5 Hz to 150 kHz, check. Vision, one angstrom to ten million, check. "I'll be fine, Lex." Ability to tell the truth, to admit to what he was and trust in other people, still tearing his mind in half.
Lex sat down on the floor beside him. "That doesn't answer my question."
The hell with it. He had known that coming back was going to strip him raw. Cyrus had talked to him about it, warned him what it was like to lose your mind and have to find it again. To spend the days screaming at the things you couldn't stop, and the nights crying over the things you could. To not even dare to let someone hold your hand, for fear of hurting them. There wasn't anything left that could be harder than what he had already been through.
How had Lex put it? It wasn't worth it anymore.
"So now that you're pretty sure we're not being spied on." Clark could have sat up, but didn't feel like it. Didn't feel like meeting Lex's eyes. "What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to not lie to me anymore. And I'll try not to lie to you."
Clark made a small unhappy laugh. "That's pretty much what Chloe said." He rolled over and propped his head on a hand, still not looking at Lex. "What do you think she told him?"
"That's what I was going to ask you," Lex said quietly, respecting his hesitancy. "What's the worst thing that she could have told him?"
Clark looked like he was about to cry. Lex cursed himself again. Of all the stupid, painful things to have to ask the kid.... "Clark. You have to remember, that's just how Luthors think. Always looking for a weak spot, an advantage. But I'm not doing it to hurt you. I have to know what Lionel knows if I'm going to be able to protect you from him."
Clark bowed his head. Lex, ever the strategist, even in an early morning of emotional intimacy and after a day of insanity and revelations. "You already know about the meteorites. You know I'm faster and stronger than a human could be, and can see through things. What else would -- what do I ... dammit, Lex, what can I say?"
Lex stood up and locked his hands behind his back. "You said, 'than a human.' Are you a meteorite mutant who somehow managed not to go crazy, Clark? Are you human?"
Clark tried to look up at Lex, and failed. "No, I'm not a meteor mutant. No, I'm not sure I haven't gone crazy. And no, I'm not from Earth."
Lex gaped at him, but said nothing. He took several deep breaths, staring down at the teenage boy slumped on his floor. He blinked and forced his eyes back into his head.
No, I'm not from Earth. Sitting curled up on the floor in a small town in Kansas.
"I think," Lex breathed, "That that's the part that Chloe didn't tell anyone."
Clark finally managed to raise his head. Picking up a tractor was a lot easier. "So Lionel doesn't know I'm...."
"An ET?" Lex finished, and then barked a laugh. "I could write a book on how stupid that sounds. Would you like some M&Ms?"
Clark choked. "Actually, I do like M&Ms. Doesn't everybody?"
Lex squatted in front of him, the glint of devilment in his eyes. "Even the green ones?"
Clark felt his skin crawl, then nerved himself, and managed to face Lex. "I like lime starbursts and lifesavers and ice cream, too." Taking that first step seemed to open the flood gates. "Dammit, Lex, I was raised on this planet. I didn't even know I was an alien myself until a few years ago. I don't THINK of myself as an alien. Just because I could destroy this castle or this town or this state or this country or probably this whole world with one hand. Or with the heat vision, without even moving. It's still my home, the only one I've ever known. And you could still kill me just by opening that box."
Probably no one except a Luthor would have taken such a revelation of power as something to be intrigued by, instead of to be wary of. Or frightened of. Lex just sat back down on the floor, making himself comfortable at Clark's current eye level. "Heat vision?"
Clark glanced over at the fireplace, at the shattered remains of the rum bottle. Five seconds later, Lex's fireplace had an interesting new glaze. Clark lowered his head again. "I still want to be a kid who grew up on a farm and had a crush on girls and might write a book some day," he said, almost voicelessly. "I spent my whole life trying not to be a freak. Trying to hide it. I don't know why I'm here, why I am what I am. I don't know what to do."
The touch to his forehead startled him as much as any bullet ever had. His head snapped up again, eyes wide, to meet Lex's steel blue, yet somehow sympathetic, gaze.
"We could start by shaving your head, so you can learn how not to be able to hide being a freak," Lex offered, casually caustic, brushing Clark's hair back.
Clark stared at him in disbelief. Then he began to giggle. "Oh, Lex," he forced out through snorts, "I'm really sorry. I wasn't thinking when I said that. Really. Maybe you're from another planet too. Aren't the aliens all supposed to have big bald heads?"
"That's right, and big funny-looking eyes too." Lex stretched his eyes wide and made a Marvin-the-Martian look. "Take me to your leader. Oh, wait, that would be me anyway."
Clark fell on his back, helpless with laughter. "How do you do that, Lex?"
"What, imitate an alien? I've been doing that since I was five. Long before I met you. Long before you -- unless, wait, was that you I saw, the day the meteors came down?"
"No, I meant, how do you deal with the impossible like it's just another business deal?" Clark shook his head. "But yeah, that was me." His eyes went distant. "All the people who died -- and what happened to you -- that was me. I'm ... sorry."
Lex's hand, which he had settled gently in a kind of reassurance on Clark, reared back and slapped him. Hard. Clark stared at him. Even at speed, it took him so completely by surprise that he wouldn't have caught it in time to dodge. "What did you do that for?"
"That's how I deal with recalcitrant business partners too, Clark," Lex said lazily. "Pay attention. No one in my corporation is allowed to take the blame for anything unless I say so." His eyes were suddenly very hard. "And I sure as hell don't allow little children to take the blame for anything. Even Lionel wouldn't stoop that low.
"Impossible? Very nearly all of my business deals are a matter of putting a perspective on the impossible. You're not even a potential deal yet. There's not a lot of demand for melting shattered rum bottles that I can't take care of with a flamethrower."
Clark stiffened. "You have a -- potential deal -- for an alien?"
"Well, yeah, maybe." Lex yawned. "Depends on how good you turn out to be. In college," he clarified, at Clark's startled withdrawal, eyes glinting again. Lex knew exactly what he had said, and what Clark had immediately assumed. "I have no use for a second-rate business partner. Good accountants and technical writers are easy to come by, for LexCorp."
Clark sighed. Lex was offering someone from another planet an OFFICE job. After all the strangeness and lies, and all the things that both of them really ought to be terrified of, Lex was back to being what Clark had always known, the sardonic friend with the unyielding front of someone much too young to rule the world, but already determined to do so.
As opposed to what Clark's extra-solar heritage had ordered him to do. "Only you," he said, relaxed enough to be tired again. "Only you could take this so ... easily."
Lex put a hand back on him, staring into his eyes. "How did you take it, Clark?"
Meeting Lex's eyes was as frightening as staring into the deadly green. "What do you think? I freaked. All my life I'd known I wasn't normal. Picking up a car when you're eight is kind of a clue. But a spaceship in the storm cellar? What would you have done?"
"Heh." Lex shrugged, thinking, and went to the refrigerator, getting some juice for both of them. "Honestly? I don't know. Run tests on myself. Pushed my limits. Destroyed, like you said, the latest rotten school I had been exiled to. Taken over the world at age 15. But then, I'm a Luthor. That's what we do. It's a damn good thing you were raised a Kent."
Clark sighed. "Lex, anyone ever tell you that you're weird?"
"This from the brat who sees through walls and melts glass with his eyes. Drink your damn juice. You want some bagels with that?"
Clark snorted out a snoot full of juice. Only Lex.
The banging on the front door actually startled even Lex. He jumped up, spinning automatically to his cameras, then sighed. "Goddammit, I even forgot that I fried those myself. You're a damn distraction, Clark. Go use your heat vision on the bagels while I kill whatever bill collector is stupid enough to bother a Luthor at oh-five-thirty. Where's my Uzi? Never mind, you can always throw him through a wall or something."
Clark was choking on his juice. Lex kicked him to get his attention. "What, are you allergic to your mom's own fresh-squeezed too? How did you get through first grade? Ow. Remind me to wear steel-toed shoes next time I kick you. What's your problem?"
"You," Clark choked. "You're acting so ... *normal* ..."
"What's not to be normal about? I have a billion dollars in pocket change, and you pick up tractors. Wait until you meet the cats. That'll teach you what's not normal. I didn't name them after the Furies for no reason." The door rattled again, and so did Lex's temper. "Keep your #$%^&! shoes on! #$%^&*, of course, I fried the intercom too." He paused to look down at Clark, still curled up on the floor. "You going to be okay?"
Clark looked up, and this time it was no effort to meet Lex's eyes. In fact, it was as wonderful as the sunrise. "With a friend like you, Lex ... I think I'll always be okay."
"You're a *^%$ optimist." Lex stalked, rumpled and still half drunk, with murderous intent clear in every line of his pale skin, towards their intruder, who was pounding at the door again. But he paused in the doorway to look back at Clark. "I'm holding you to that."
Clark sat up, taking in with wonder the man who had not only accepted what he was, but become his protector. Clark had told him that he could destroy the world, and Lex had said that anyone who tried to hurt Clark would answer to Lex Luthor. "To what?"
Lex's expression softened. He fought not to show the fear -- not of his friend, but for his friend, the thought of losing his friend. "To always being okay."
Don't touch that red crap again. Don't blame yourself again. Don't forget who you are again. Clark bent his head and close his eyes. "I promise." At least to try.
Lex relaxed as if he had just put on his tie. "Good. Go deal with the bagels. If you can do heat vision and x-ray at the same time, you can watch me kick someone's ass."
Clark fell back on the floor again in giggles, and Lex glared at him. "Just don't set fire to the kitchen! The cook will kill you, and I promise you that her spoon is deadlier than any green rocks. She even scares your mom."
The visitor proved to be a young man with longish hair and the most intent eyes that Lex had ever seen. He wavered between hiring him for his audacity and killing him right there. Here was someone with potential. Unknown, but definitely potential.
Cyrus smiled and held out his hand. "Lex. We haven't formally met."
Lex took the handshake automatically, and went to his knees in agony. Appendicitis and kidney stones hadn't hurt like this. Lex couldn't scream because he couldn't breathe. His body was coming apart. He wanted to die right then and there. Please.
"That," said the young man coldly, "Is level one. If you hurt Clark again, I can go up to a scale of ten. And I can keep you alive long enough to feel every second of it."
"C ... Clark..."
And Clark was THERE, no entrance, just suddenly holding Cyrus in a grip that would have been death except for Clark's fierce control. "Bill. Let him go. Now."
Cyrus had still been channeling anti-healing, and Clark was taking it.
The pain was like the meteorites, but it wasn't aimed at him, couldn't kill him, so he held on, using just enough of his strength to let the healer know that he meant it. "STOP it!"
"He...." Cyrus gasped when Clark's arms tightened. No one had ever been able to stand against the touch of his fire. Clark was HOLDING him. "He hurt you!"
"I did it myself. And stay the hell out of my mind if you're not going to pay attention. The Baron would beat the crap out of you for being so careless."
"Sez the moron who picked up a tractor where every satellite orbiting Earth could see it!" Cyrus shifted his attention, one hand on Clark, the other on Lex. The energy changed to warmth and calm and good things, and Clark let out the breath he'd been holding. Cyrus could have killed them both in his anger.
Clark knew that feeling. Unfortunately.
"So," Lex managed, wondering if breathing was all it was cracked up to be if people kept taking it away from you, "I gather that you .. know about ... Clark."
Cyrus frowned. "I was about to rip you apart over that."
"I," Lex managed to force himself to stand up, "rather got that idea." He brushed uselessly at his slacks. "Clark, would you go get the juice and toast? I think your friend and I need to talk."
Clark looked back and forth between a very angry Cyrus and a pretty pissed off Luthor. "I can hear what you say, you know."
"That should not be a problem."
Gods, even after being put through more in ten minutes than most people were in one lifetime -- your friend is an alien, and his friend can rip you apart by touching you -- Lex still had a crease in his slacks. "Okay. Fine. Bagels coming up. I do not want to see any dead bodies when I come back." Clark failed to keep a tremble out of his voice. "Please."
Cyrus and Lex gave him exactly the same look. Keep the supersensitive hearing out of it. You are not responsible for everything. This is not your fight.
From the kitchen, Clark blanched when he heard Lex yelling at Cyrus. Lex NEVER yelled. He wondered about ripping open the drawer with that rock just to get their attention when he heard Cyrus hit Lex.
He went supersonic to try to get between them. Cyrus hissed at him and held up a hand that, to his visual spectrum, glowed. "Do not start with me, Kal-El. You will not win."
Clark swallowed, fighting terror and tears. "Who's the strongest one in the room?"
"I am." Cyrus extricated himself from the pile and sat back on Lex's couch, to the billionaire's interest and breathless amusement. "So shut up and listen."
"I for one, am listening," Lex drawled, eye already darkening from the punch.
"I cannot read your mind," Cyrus said quietly. "But I know who you are. I know you better than you know yourself. I can either kill you right now, or let you go until another day. Depending on what you choose next. I could actually even believe in you some day. If you will believe in yourself. And if you give me one thing."
Lex was obviously making an effort not to show pain. Cyrus hadn't just punched him in the face. "Cyrus," Clark started, truly worried at knowing just how real that threat was, and how little the empath would care about murder charges, considering the people who had trained him. "I can't let you -- "
Lex put Clark on pause with a raised hand. "I don't have much of a choice, do I?"
"You have all the choices in the world. Make the right one, and Clark will stay your friend instead of becoming your enemy. I might even learn to help you out. Make the wrong one, and Lionel will not live long enough to have your death investigated. No, Lex, that is not a threat. Or a promise. Pay attention. Clark saved my life. Clark saved my soul. No one threatens him without going through me first. What is that damn box doing in your desk?"
Lex looked away. "I just ... wanted to know. And there had to be -- one left."
"You're freaking Stephen Hawking already? Why didn't you just ASK?"
Lex turned to meet his eyes. "I did. Clark lied."
Clark was looking back and forth between them uneasily.
"Wanna be tortured again?" Cyrus was on his feet suddenly, eyes dangerous again. "Want to touch me again, Luthor? Want a taste of what those green rocks feel like?" Cyrus put his hand on Lex's shoulder. "Want to know what it's like not to be human, Lex?"
"Cyrus ... Bill ... don't ... please...."
Cyrus close his eyes, focusing all his mental talent. "Go away, Clark. Beg, Lex."
"I will not." Clark took Cyrus by the wrists and pulled him away from Lex. Gently. Everyone present knew that he could have smashed bone with his fingertips, and was holding back only because he was more afraid of himself than of anything else on the planet. Everyone present also knew that Cyrus could have had Clark on his knees through their contact, that even Clark had no defenses against Cyrus when they were touching.
"I will." Lex's voice was feather-soft. "For Clark's safety. I will beg. Do whatever you have to. Take whatever you need to." Lex tapped his head, making it clear that he understood that his opponent could rape his mind. "But if you hurt Clark, I won't give a damn how long either my father or I live. I will guarantee that you won't survive it either."
Cyrus let out a breath. "I hate it when people tell me the absolute truth."
"Then don't ask for it."
The staring contest between Cyrus and Lex scared Clark as badly as any green rock ever had. "Stop it," he said, as forcefully as he could manage with his eyes closed. "I am not your damn toy. I am not your damn prize."
The two looked at him in astonishment. Realizing, through the one's empathic talent, and the other's ability to read and manipulate people, that they had been doing exactly what they had both been most intent on not doing.
Cyrus squirmed a little in Clark's grip. "Sorry, Kal. Clark. Don't take it so hard. It's all just part of ... coming back. To what we are. Sometimes you lose your perspective."
Clark released him, dropping to the floor. "I'm -- I only want to be human again. As much as I can. To belong. I know you can understand that. But you're not...."
"Like you?" Cyrus finished. "No, my friend, we're not. But you're not like me, and the billion-dollar boy here isn't like you or me, either. Am I going to have to slap you again to get the part about being all kinds of human in the head through to you?"
"You were both born on this planet."
"And you haven't been kicked out of eleven academies," Lex countered, getting into the spirit of things. "Yet," he added thoughtfully.
"You can't pick up a tractor." Clark made a small smile at the thought of being kicked out of even one academy. His father would KILL him. Not to mention his mom.
"I can hire a crew to pick up a tractor. Or ten of them. Assuming I'd want to."
"I can fix that black eye." Cyrus extended his hand to Lex, warily. "If you want."
"Nah. Dear old dad will be over in a few hours, especially since I fried his spyware. It will make for an interesting topic of non-conversation."
"You can't see through walls."
"Of course I can. Though the security system replacement will take at least a day. And leave the damn county next time I have to clean out the bugs, will you?"
"You can't burn stuff with your eyes," Clark tried, wondering where he was going with this, and why.
"Want to come to a staff meeting and watch me?" Lex glared sleepily at him.
"Clark, the point is, you DO belong here. You ARE one of us. Would you just put that into what passes for your brain already before both of us have to hit you?"
Clark took a deep breath. It seemed to be his day for being slapped around "Dare you."
Lex and Cyrus tackled him so fast and unexpectedly that Clark didn't have time to react, even at full speed. They must have been planning this even while they yelled at each other. And oh gods, Cyrus knew where he was ticklish. Clark yelped.
Fortunately the sun was over the horizon and his stamina was back up to full. Clark was the last one standing when they had finished wrestling to the point that the other two couldn't catch their breath any more.
"Hey, William," Lex mumbled, "Wanna be experimented on by a mad scientist? There's a few spare bedrooms around here somewhere."
"Heh. Buy me a purple shirt, and you got a deal."
"Purple's not your color. Dark gray, maybe. Navy. Or silver. Silk."
"Get some sleep, Lex. You're going delusional on us."
"Wait until you meet the cats." Lex yawned. And then he was out like a light.
Cyrus ran his hand over Lex's eye and jaw where he had been punched, wincing at the alcohol poisoning as well as the damage he had done himself. Putting Lex to sleep hadn't taken more than a touch and a thought. "Lex really cares about you, you know."
"Yeah, sure, which is why he has a box of refined kryptonite in his desk."
Cyrus rolled over. He was exhausted physically, as well as emotionally taken apart. "You/re from another damn planet, Kal. Power and knowledge that he only dared dream about. No matter how much money he ever makes, how many people he dominates, he'll never be anything more than just another Earthling. It's killing him inside that you even exist. Much less that you were right here under his nose all along, and wouldn't tell him.
"You lied to someone who trusted you as a friend. Who wanted, still wants, to help you, as Clark and as Kal, and doesn't know how. After what he's been through most of his life, you were pretty much the straw that broke his back. He's still not much more than a kid himself. And he's never had a friend until he met you. You want to feel it?" Cyrus put one hand on Lex's head, and held out the other to Clark. "I guarantee you that you won't enjoy it."
Clark recoiled. "No. Probably not." I have enough baggage myself.
"He's hurting. So are you. And both of you are blaming yourselves."
"Tell me something I don't know," Clark bit back.
"All right." Cyrus took a deep breath. "Come here."
Like I need to be hurt any more. Leave me alone. "Are you some kind of sadist, Bill? You enjoy putting us through this?"
"No, I don't. You have no idea how much I wish I could spare you. Both of you. But I don't have the power to stop what will happen to you, both of you, otherwise. You do. Unless you want to end up incurably psychotic. Like Lake."
Clark paled. A lethally dangerous superhuman., out of control.... "N-no."
"Then COME HERE. And brace yourself."
Cyrus could claim not to be able to read minds all he wanted, but Clark was never going to believe him again. For him to know exactly what buttons to push, what Clark's worst nightmare was, he had to have been living in his head all these months since the red rock.
Which, come to think of it, he more or less had been. They'd been linked since the day of the meteors, never mind the first time Bill had actually touched him.
Clark closed his eyes. He had known that coming back was not going to be easy. But he knew it had to be done. If he couldn't be part of this world again.... He would rather go open that drawer than hurt his friends any more. Much less do what he had so casually, unthinkingly, mentioned to Lex that he could do. What he might yet do, some day, if he ever lost his sanity so completely again. Even just thinking of that made him feel sick.
If being hurt was the price he had to pay for humanity, he would pay it gladly.
He knelt, and reached out to take Cyrus' hand.
Cyrus cracked another tooth.
There was no point in trying to get back to sleep. He thought about going his old place in the loft and waiting for the sunrise, but that was hours away, and it would give him too much time to brood. Maybe if he just kept himself occupied.... He did what chores he could at high speed -- the chickens didn't seem to care, but the cows objected to being milked at that pace, so he left that last job for Jonathan -- and set off for Lex's castle before dawn.
Truth be told, he didn't know if he had managed to work up the courage to face Lex yet. Maybe if he just stood outside and watched for awhile....
Practice had honed his high-frequency vision to the point where it was barely a thought to spread his senses to a wider spectrum. He wasn't sure he was comfortable with that, but there was no giving it back short of blinding himself. He sighed, and let his eyes look into, through, the castle walls, randomly, not yet deliberately searching.
And, of course, the first thing he saw was Lex, sitting in his library, a half-empty glass beside him, staring darkly into a cold fireplace.
Drinking? At four in the morning? Clark took in Lex's appearance more carefully. A little rumpled, especially for Lex. Maybe he hadn't even gone to bed yet.
Lex looked up, and Clark's eyes followed his automatically. Monitor screens. Oh, no. Of course Lex would have perimeter security sensors up, especially with all he'd been through lately. Clark cursed himself for being a stupid kid. All the hard lessons he'd been through himself in the past few months, and it hadn't even occurred to him to check.
Lex reached for something beside the glass, and held up a small control panel. "Come on in, Clark." The sound was broadcast from a speaker by the front door.
Clark would rather have walked toward a meteor rock, but he made himself move forward. Lex turned to look directly at the door, as if he could see Clark as well as Clark could see him. The door opened itself at a touch from Lex on the little panel.
"I'm assuming you know where I am," Lex's voice said said from the speaker. "If you care to join me. If not," a shrug, and Lex took a drink, "You know where the pool is."
The inference being that Clark only came over to take advantage of Lex's money and toys, not to be with Lex himself. Clark froze, unable to breathe, shaking. He closed his eyes against Lex's stare, not even bothering to try to fight a sob. He turned to leave. There was no way he could face Lex now, not in this mood, not if that was how Lex felt about him now.
Maybe not ever. He wondered for a second if the camera would catch him at speed.
"Clark." The tone changed -- not much, but enough for him to look back. Lex was looking at the security screens again. Watching him. Lex would never apologize, could never relax. But maybe he was regretting the stab, and would allow Clark to make the first move.
Clark swallowed. He was willing to put in the effort. He would either have to make his apologies, and hope to be accepted by his friends again, or have nothing left of his humanity, nothing left of himself except the cold unforgiving voice of Jor-El in his mind.
"I'm -- I just didn't mean to disturb you this early." Another half-truth, another evasion. Sometimes it did seem like that shell of lies was all there was left of him.
Lex snorted, swirling his glass. Clark wondered if Lex were snorting at himself for sitting alone and drinking in the hour before dawn, or at Clark for lying to him. "You're not exactly interrupting. But you would already know that, wouldn't you? If you didn't mean to disturb me, then why are you here? Don't tell me you've taken up stalking, Clark."
Already know that? Clark shivered. Why would Lex say that? How much did he know? "I just ... I wasn't thinking. I just had to get away. I ended up here."
Lex sighed. "Come inside, Clark. The security cameras were not designed for holding a conversation through. And whatever you have to say, it probably isn't something you want recorded and gossiped over in the guardhouse."
Clark gulped. He had known about the security system on the front door, and although the perimeter sensors were an upgrade he hadn't known about, anyone with half a brain should have known that Lex wasn't the only one monitoring them. So much for having half a brain. "Thanks ... Lex." He closed his eyes, bracing himself, and walked cautiously into the foyer and down the halls he had been through so many times, so easily, before.
Lex inclined his head slightly to look at Clark as he forced himself reluctantly into the room. It was cold, a cold that went deeper than temperature. It was cold in the way that Lionel was cold in a business meeting. Cold as if no human being had ever been there.
"So, to what do I owe this honor? I didn't think you would have time to come around, what with your triumphant homecoming." Lex took a drink, but his eyes never left Clark's face.
Clark nearly retreated from the weight of the stone mask in those eyes. "It was your homecoming that was triumphant. Mine is more like ... one long apology."
"You know even less than you think, if you believe that." Lex's voice did nothing to take the insult from the words. "When I find out exactly who tried to kill me, and why, and deal with them, then it will be a triumph." He gestured with his free hand, the sharp angry motion slowed by alcohol and exhaustion. "In the meantime, you're still the town's golden boy, and I'm still the embodiment of all the wrongs ever done by Luthors."
Bitterness rose in Clark. "You didn't do anything wrong. I did. Maybe my friends and family have forgiven me, but they'll never completely trust me again. But you'd already know all about that, right?"
"Trust?" Lex would have laughed if he weren't so tired. "Is that what this is about, Clark? You wanted to see just how far we could still trust each other?" He leaned back, looking around for a bottle to refill his glass. "You were moving pretty fast when you crossed the perimeter sensors. A little over two hundred kph, by my calculations. I don't know whether to call the Olympics committee or Cadmus Labs."
Oh, no.... Well, he already knew about the meteorites, so the whole purpose of keeping his secret was kind of pointless now. "What," he said carefully, and Lex's sudden glare told him that he had better not finish that with "are you talking about?" Lex was not, quite, as angry as Chloe, but that might just be because of the late hour and the booze, and he had far more practice at rage. "What do you -- want to -- know?"
For answer, Lex leaned over to a drawer and lifted out a dull gray box that was obviously heavy -- Lex had to put down his drink and use both hands, grunting with the effort. Clark would have guessed what it was even without the shift in his vision.
Lex picked up his drink again. "Do you want to open that?" Taunting.
Clark took a deep breath. If that was the way he wanted to play it.... "No."
"Why not?" Lex had to be pretty drunk to show such petty spitefulness.
It made Clark angry. "Games, Lex? Is that all that's left between us?" He moved toward the box at speed, a blur, before he could change his mind, and yanked the lid open.
Oh, hells, the refined stuff. Clark went to his knees even as he shoved the lid back closed. Fact was, he admitted through the blinding dizziness and pain, he might not have managed even that if Lex hadn't slapped his own hand down on the lid with a roar.
"Goddammit, Clark!" He was on his feet before Clark could see again, leaning over him and radiating pure fury. "I wanted you to talk to me, not torture yourself!"
"S-sometimes," Clark managed to retort, "It f-feels like ... the s-same thing."
Lex said something under his breath that would have been considered much too unsophisticated for a Luthor. He shoved the box violently back into its drawer and slammed it closed, ramming a bar lock through it for good measure, every motion the action of a man who desperately wants to hit something hard enough to break it.
Clark wondered if Lex had been tempted to make him that something, and if he knew he'd be risking breaking his own hand. He suspected that the answer was yes to both.
"Sit down." Lex pointed at the couch -- the place where Clark had spent so many hours comfortably studying or reading while Lex worked, just content to be in one another's company, making the occasional offhand comment. Clark tried to blame his blurred vision on the radiation's after-effects again. The trouble he had getting to his feet had to be due to residual weakness, too. Surely he wasn't about to start crying again. Not in front of Lex.
Whatever Lex made of his stumbling, he just hauled Clark upright as if he were the super-strong one, and pushed him onto the couch. It was not a friendly gesture, and Lex turned away from him immediately, going to the bar while Clark fought for self-control.
Then Lex was back, shoving a heavy glass of something amber into Clark's hand.
Maybe that was as close to a friendly gesture as Lex was able to make any more.
Lex sat back down and refilled his own glass as Clark sipped the powerful-tasting stuff. So what if it wasn't even dawn yet. It felt like he had already been through enough for a full day. "Why did you do that?" Lex demanded, so quietly it was barely above a whisper.
Clark forced a faint smile. "You mean that wasn't a dare?"
Lex sighed and scrubbed at his face, as if tired enough to finally consider letting go. "A challenge? Maybe it was. Or maybe ... a threat. That's how Luthors deal with their ... opponents." He leaned back, taking a drink and closing his eyes. "It's a hard habit to break."
"Am I your opponent, Lex?" Softly.
"Are you?" Lex looked at him directly. "You're certainly a force to be reckoned with. If you ever decided to oppose me, you could kill me outright before I could make a move. But the meteorites are not your only weakness. You're inexperienced and careless. Gullible. If you held back, if you made a mistake, you wouldn't have a chance against me."
"I don't want to oppose you. And I would never even dream of killing you."
Lex leaned forward. "Are you absolutely certain about that? Are you certain that I will never, not once, do something that you would oppose? Are you going to keep that lie between us too, Clark? Or are you really just that much of a fool?"
"I probably really am that much of a fool." Clark downed the rest of his drink in one gulp and closed his eyes, feeling the liquid burn a little in his throat and stomach. It was an unusual sensation for him, not entirely pleasant, but somehow enticing. Like eating too much ice cream too fast. "But I still believe in you, Lex. And I believe that you would never do anything I would have to -- fight you over. Not like that."
When he opened his eyes again, Lex was staring at him in a kind of fond bemusement. "Clark Kent, eternal optimist," Lex said, almost gently. "Power and innocence and charm, all wrapped up in one unnatural package. Self-effacing, and trusting, and living a lie all these years behind those smiling guileless eyes. What am I going to do with you?"
Clark's eyes went involuntarily to the drawer, and Lex slammed a hand flat on the desk top with a crack like a gunshot, suddenly with no sign of tiredness or drunkenness.
"Goddammit, Clark," and although he wasn't yelling this time, the cold blazing rage was even more threatening than his previous shout. "No matter what happens between us, I will NOT do that to you. Not unless you go absolutely bugout crazy and somebody really does have to kill you. Then, I promise you," he brought himself down to quiet again, though it was an obvious effort of self-restraint, as he took a drink, "It will be me."
Clark looked up at him. There was nothing else to say to that. "Thank you."
Lex stared at him. Without a word or change in expression, he went to the bar and brought back another bottle, filling Clark's glass before he could protest and drinking directly from it himself. Clark's mouth opened and closed once, twice, like a fish trying to figure out where the water had gone. "Lex, it's not even dawn yet," he finally said lamely.
"So?" Lex's stare became amusedly challenging. "I was nearly killed. God only knows what happened to you. I was drugged, bashed up, almost drowned, burned, beaten, abandoned, starved, and if I ever see an episode of Survivor again, I will shoot the television and then myself. You, on the other hand, pulled the throwing-it-all-away routine yourself, blew up half your own house and took off on the equivalent of a cocaine and heroin highball, and had a psychotic break and either didn't remember your own name or didn't give a damn.
"We should worry about having a damn brandy just because the BBC doesn't come on for another ten minutes?" Lex lifted the bottle and drank deeply. "To survivors. Prosit."
Clark closed his eyes. Okay, of course it was never going to be the same between him and Lex -- between him and anyone -- ever again. But that was only to be expected. At least it seemed that he would be accepted back into Lex's private life, maybe even as a friend, not just as someone he had once known. He lifted his glass, and drained it. "Salud."
He gasped at the hot shudder that ran down his throat and out through his stomach into his blood. Was this what it was like for humans? No wonder people got addicted to the relaxing warmth inside, when everything outside was so cold.
He opened his eyes to see Lex's eyes on him, amused, and as warm as the tingling in his fingers. "Maybe I should have the glass and you should have the bottle. Though I hate to think of how much six hundred dollar brandy it would take to get you drunk. Can you even get drunk?"
"I dunno," Clark muttered. Why would Lex ask him something like that? "Never tried. Jona -- Dad -- yelled at me for sneaking one of his beers when I -- when Pete -- last year. Not that he had to. Tasted awful. Poured it out in the garden."
Lex leaned forward, eyes glittering. "Heh. Either you do respond to alcohol, or...." He put down the bottle, demeanor changing suddenly and harshly. "Clark, why did you start to call your father by his first name, and then change your mind?"
Clark met his eyes, and the brandy's warmth drained away. "Because Jonathan Kent isn't my father," he said tiredly. "But you knew that. Everybody knows that."
"Yes, it's common knowledge that you're adopted." Lex went to get another bottle, twisted the top off it, and handed it to Clark. He didn't so much as raise an eyebrow when Clark took the 1.75 liter glass bottle as if it were a paper cup. "But you've always seemed happy with your adopted family. More so than I with my blood sire."
He lifted his bottle, an expression sardonic enough to scare a wolf. "To my dear old dad, may he and Satan be too busy trying to destroy each other and fight over who rules in hell to bother with humanity ever again." He pretended to drink deeply, and motioned for Clark to do the same. Clark swallowed half a bottle of flavored rum and felt the blanketing, distancing warmth slowly envelop him again.
Lex watched the slight shift in his expression carefully. Yes, it did seem that Clark could be affected by alcohol, though he recovered faster than even Lex at his most furious. As fast as he recovered from the obviously terrible effects of the meteorites. As fast, almost, as he could run. Lex snickered, and the sound made him aware of his own alcohol intake. No, he was not going to tell Pete that the high-speed camera included a secure transmitter.
Lex leaned forward again carefully. "You see, I can understand if you have issues with your father figures. Did you find out something about your own biological father? Please tell me it's not Lionel. We would have to compete on what to do to even the score."
"Jor-El," Clark said thickly, and then several dozen syllables in no language Lex had ever heard, although he spoke five fluently and ten more passably. Then Clark drained the rest of the glass bottle and stood suddenly, so fast that Lex didn't see him move, and hurled the empty bottle at the fireplace with explosive force. The unintelligible language went on for several more syllables in what was all too clearly both a plea and a curse.
Lex peeked over from behind the desk from where he had thrown himself instinctively at Clark's first motion, to see Clark covering his face with his hands. Sobbing.
Okay, this was completely unacceptable. Besides, the BBC market report was on.
Lex walked over to touch the stereo control on, to give Clark a few seconds to regain his composure, for some boring background noise that they could both pretend to listen to, and for himself to hunt through every idea he had ever wondered about his unusual friend to explain what had cut Clark so completely loose (aside from enough booze to kill a yak) and what language that was he was sobbing in, and what he might have meant by "Jor-El."
"Clark. Don't break my arm or anything, okay? Sit down. You're probably as tired as I am. And your dad -- Jonathan -- is right. One beer is about your limit at five in the morning." He touched Clark tentatively, as cautious of the younger man's emotional state as he was of the power and speed he had already seen Clark demonstrate. He wondered what the mass-velocity equations would tell him about the crater in his fireplace. "Sit down."
Clark -- well, collapsed was an accurate description. He had stood up longer against the deadly greenish radiation. "I'm sorry, Lex." Choked.
"I will not accept that." Lex stood over him, arms folded. Clark looked up at him like a kicked puppy. Lex refrained from slapping him around a little. He remembered, vaguely, shooting Clark with a semi-automatic, and watching the bullets ricochet off. But the wide-eyed puppy look was almost enough to make him go open that drawer again.
Or maybe finding a rerun of Survivor and carrying through on his promise to himself.
"You don't owe me any apologies. If anything, I owe you one. I was pushing where I obviously had no business. It's another Luthor habit -- we tend to treat everyone else's family the way we do our own." He started to pour himself another drink, then reconsidered. The sky was beginning to lighten from black to cobalt. He went to the refrigerator and retrieved two bottles of water instead, pressing one into Clark's still lax hand.
"Clark, if you want to tell me what you were just saying, I would love to hear the translation. But if not, then just tell me whatever it is you came over to tell me." He sat down and drank some water. "I am not going to pry at you. It's just not worth it to me any more."
Clark rubbed the cool wet bottle against his forehead before opening it. "How much did Chloe tell you?" he asked tiredly, as the alcohol sugar wore off.
Lex raised an eyebrow. "Chloe hasn't told me anything. I haven't even seen her since I got back, except at the hospital. What did she tell you that she had told me?" Okay, that was pretty much a new low in grammar for a Luthor, but consider the circumstances.
"She said she hadn't told you everything." Clark rubbed his eyes, and then stiffened. "No. She said she hadn't told HIM everything. She never referred to you by name."
Lex said several very unsophisticated words under his breath. "Clark. Chloe has been spending a certain amount of time with my dear old dad over the summer. He got her an intern's job at the Daily Planet. I wondered what he thought he was going to get for it in return. I should have known better than to jump to the immediate conclusion. Lionel likes them young, but he can pay for that in the city without incurring any other obligations."
Clark spent a good minute of long practice and hard-won control trying not to be sick. Even though it had already been metabolized, the alcohol he'd gulped wasn't helping. He didn't realize he'd closed his eyes and bent his head in shallow-breathing concentration until a cold wet cloth was placed in his hand.
"Clark?" Lex's voice came from much too close. "Lie down." He pushed lightly, and Clark complied. "Sometimes I forget that not everyone takes for granted what I do."
"Chloe," Clark managed, through a tightness in his throat that both made it hard to breathe and mercifully hard to spew everything left in his stomach. "And Lionel...."
"If he's forced her, he won't live to see sunset, and I don't give a damn if he's listening right now," Lex said in that icy rage that was so quiet that Clark had to concentrate to hear. "If it was Chloe's choice, then there may be ... things we need to talk about."
Lex decided on the spur of the moment not to tell Clark that he was perfectly willing to kill Chloe too, if she was a real danger to the special person in front of him. That might become one of those lies that would forever be between them, because Clark would never be able to understand or forgive what Lex knew was necessary.
"She said that -- she hadn't told him everything. That's all I know." Clark lay trying to focus on the ceiling, trying to put pieces together. He wasn't really all that good at it. Chloe had always been the one who did it for him.
And he had always taken that, and her, for granted. As many times as he had accused her of snooping, as many times as he had abandoned her, hurt her, he had always assumed that she would still simply be there. Clark's breath caught somewhere between a choke and a sob. Why should he expect her loyalty, when he had done so little to earn it?
He had taken her fascinating and inquisitive nature and used it against her. And then he had run her off. He couldn't blame her for going to Lionel. He couldn't have blamed her if she'd tried to kill him herself.
"So what didn't she tell him, Clark?" Lex's voice was deceptive velvet, and Clark turned his head to look at him in puzzlement. Lex smiled slightly and touched his finger to his lips. The tiny shushing gesture would have been meaningless to anyone who didn't know what they were talking about. Lex might have been stroking a drop of brandy from his upper lip. "Sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. Do you feel up to a walk around the garden?"
Clark didn't, really, but he understood what Lex was trying to do. He sighed and struggled back to a sitting position. He hadn't made it to his feet yet when Lex touched his control panel again.
The explosion sent him to the floor with a scream as his senses shattered. Blind and deaf and unable to feel -- it wasn't like kryptonite, it wasn't like anything else ever, but it hurt, and he couldn't tell what was there anymore, couldn't even feel anything under his hands....
"Clark!" The voice came from far away and right in his ears at the same time. "Clark, god, answer me!"
"What .. what .. hap ... pened...?"
"Oh. God." Lex sat back on his heels from where he had futilely been trying to give Clark CPR, wiping sweat from his head with the shirt he had ripped off. "Thank all of the gods. When you screamed.... Dammit, Clark, I thought you were almost invulnerable. That was an EMP -- an electro-magnetic pulse. I was just disabling whatever spy-eyes Lionel had planted. I didn't realize ... I didn't mean to.... What did it do to you?"
"I'm ... I'll ... be ... okay." Clark lifted a hand to his head and found it was no effort, though he still couldn't see much and wasn't sure if he was touching anything. Lex's voice faded in and out. "My ... s-senses ... k-kind of like ... your ... s-spy-eyes."
Lex said several words that Luthors weren't even supposed to know, much less say out loud, and not all of them were in English. "I didn't even think of that." Another un-Luthor word. "And I should have. Of course you would feel it, if you can see through walls."
"You ... know...?"
"Clark, when you were standing in the middle of the yard with six separate cameras trained on you -- and it's going to really piss off the guards to have to replace that whole system -- you were looking right at me. Not at any of the cameras. At me. Through that wall there. Which, in case you haven't noticed, does not have any windows, and there are three walls between there and where you were standing. Remember what I said about being careless?" Lex got up and went to put more ice in the cloth, berating himself. He was hardly one to talk about being careless. He'd assumed Clark's denser cell structure would protect him, not make him more vulnerable. His physics professor was going to give him holy hell.
Right, like he was going to tell even Doctor Reeve about Clark. When hell froze absolutely solid and Lionel owned the ice skating concession. All he wanted right now was to know what Lionel knew about Clark. The meteorites had been a dead giveaway. But if dear old dad knew about the red stones.... Lex would rather see Clark tied down and cut open than running on his equivalent of crack again. Physically, he healed insanely fast. Mentally....
He put the cold cloth pack over Clark's eyes, gently moving Clark's hand out of the way. Clark allowed it. Lex was fully aware that he couldn't have moved Clark's little finger with both hands if he hadn't. "At least we can talk without fear of any interruptions or interceptions now. When you feel up to it. If you feel up to it."
Clark sighed tiredly. The ice pack had felt pretty good, for a few seconds, with his sense of touch still reeling. But as the shock wore off, so did his ability to take comfort from any of the things that humans felt. Temperature, moisture content, texture ... no longer something to feel, but to categorize and check off in mental boxes. Hearing, 5 Hz to 150 kHz, check. Vision, one angstrom to ten million, check. "I'll be fine, Lex." Ability to tell the truth, to admit to what he was and trust in other people, still tearing his mind in half.
Lex sat down on the floor beside him. "That doesn't answer my question."
The hell with it. He had known that coming back was going to strip him raw. Cyrus had talked to him about it, warned him what it was like to lose your mind and have to find it again. To spend the days screaming at the things you couldn't stop, and the nights crying over the things you could. To not even dare to let someone hold your hand, for fear of hurting them. There wasn't anything left that could be harder than what he had already been through.
How had Lex put it? It wasn't worth it anymore.
"So now that you're pretty sure we're not being spied on." Clark could have sat up, but didn't feel like it. Didn't feel like meeting Lex's eyes. "What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to not lie to me anymore. And I'll try not to lie to you."
Clark made a small unhappy laugh. "That's pretty much what Chloe said." He rolled over and propped his head on a hand, still not looking at Lex. "What do you think she told him?"
"That's what I was going to ask you," Lex said quietly, respecting his hesitancy. "What's the worst thing that she could have told him?"
Clark looked like he was about to cry. Lex cursed himself again. Of all the stupid, painful things to have to ask the kid.... "Clark. You have to remember, that's just how Luthors think. Always looking for a weak spot, an advantage. But I'm not doing it to hurt you. I have to know what Lionel knows if I'm going to be able to protect you from him."
Clark bowed his head. Lex, ever the strategist, even in an early morning of emotional intimacy and after a day of insanity and revelations. "You already know about the meteorites. You know I'm faster and stronger than a human could be, and can see through things. What else would -- what do I ... dammit, Lex, what can I say?"
Lex stood up and locked his hands behind his back. "You said, 'than a human.' Are you a meteorite mutant who somehow managed not to go crazy, Clark? Are you human?"
Clark tried to look up at Lex, and failed. "No, I'm not a meteor mutant. No, I'm not sure I haven't gone crazy. And no, I'm not from Earth."
Lex gaped at him, but said nothing. He took several deep breaths, staring down at the teenage boy slumped on his floor. He blinked and forced his eyes back into his head.
No, I'm not from Earth. Sitting curled up on the floor in a small town in Kansas.
"I think," Lex breathed, "That that's the part that Chloe didn't tell anyone."
Clark finally managed to raise his head. Picking up a tractor was a lot easier. "So Lionel doesn't know I'm...."
"An ET?" Lex finished, and then barked a laugh. "I could write a book on how stupid that sounds. Would you like some M&Ms?"
Clark choked. "Actually, I do like M&Ms. Doesn't everybody?"
Lex squatted in front of him, the glint of devilment in his eyes. "Even the green ones?"
Clark felt his skin crawl, then nerved himself, and managed to face Lex. "I like lime starbursts and lifesavers and ice cream, too." Taking that first step seemed to open the flood gates. "Dammit, Lex, I was raised on this planet. I didn't even know I was an alien myself until a few years ago. I don't THINK of myself as an alien. Just because I could destroy this castle or this town or this state or this country or probably this whole world with one hand. Or with the heat vision, without even moving. It's still my home, the only one I've ever known. And you could still kill me just by opening that box."
Probably no one except a Luthor would have taken such a revelation of power as something to be intrigued by, instead of to be wary of. Or frightened of. Lex just sat back down on the floor, making himself comfortable at Clark's current eye level. "Heat vision?"
Clark glanced over at the fireplace, at the shattered remains of the rum bottle. Five seconds later, Lex's fireplace had an interesting new glaze. Clark lowered his head again. "I still want to be a kid who grew up on a farm and had a crush on girls and might write a book some day," he said, almost voicelessly. "I spent my whole life trying not to be a freak. Trying to hide it. I don't know why I'm here, why I am what I am. I don't know what to do."
The touch to his forehead startled him as much as any bullet ever had. His head snapped up again, eyes wide, to meet Lex's steel blue, yet somehow sympathetic, gaze.
"We could start by shaving your head, so you can learn how not to be able to hide being a freak," Lex offered, casually caustic, brushing Clark's hair back.
Clark stared at him in disbelief. Then he began to giggle. "Oh, Lex," he forced out through snorts, "I'm really sorry. I wasn't thinking when I said that. Really. Maybe you're from another planet too. Aren't the aliens all supposed to have big bald heads?"
"That's right, and big funny-looking eyes too." Lex stretched his eyes wide and made a Marvin-the-Martian look. "Take me to your leader. Oh, wait, that would be me anyway."
Clark fell on his back, helpless with laughter. "How do you do that, Lex?"
"What, imitate an alien? I've been doing that since I was five. Long before I met you. Long before you -- unless, wait, was that you I saw, the day the meteors came down?"
"No, I meant, how do you deal with the impossible like it's just another business deal?" Clark shook his head. "But yeah, that was me." His eyes went distant. "All the people who died -- and what happened to you -- that was me. I'm ... sorry."
Lex's hand, which he had settled gently in a kind of reassurance on Clark, reared back and slapped him. Hard. Clark stared at him. Even at speed, it took him so completely by surprise that he wouldn't have caught it in time to dodge. "What did you do that for?"
"That's how I deal with recalcitrant business partners too, Clark," Lex said lazily. "Pay attention. No one in my corporation is allowed to take the blame for anything unless I say so." His eyes were suddenly very hard. "And I sure as hell don't allow little children to take the blame for anything. Even Lionel wouldn't stoop that low.
"Impossible? Very nearly all of my business deals are a matter of putting a perspective on the impossible. You're not even a potential deal yet. There's not a lot of demand for melting shattered rum bottles that I can't take care of with a flamethrower."
Clark stiffened. "You have a -- potential deal -- for an alien?"
"Well, yeah, maybe." Lex yawned. "Depends on how good you turn out to be. In college," he clarified, at Clark's startled withdrawal, eyes glinting again. Lex knew exactly what he had said, and what Clark had immediately assumed. "I have no use for a second-rate business partner. Good accountants and technical writers are easy to come by, for LexCorp."
Clark sighed. Lex was offering someone from another planet an OFFICE job. After all the strangeness and lies, and all the things that both of them really ought to be terrified of, Lex was back to being what Clark had always known, the sardonic friend with the unyielding front of someone much too young to rule the world, but already determined to do so.
As opposed to what Clark's extra-solar heritage had ordered him to do. "Only you," he said, relaxed enough to be tired again. "Only you could take this so ... easily."
Lex put a hand back on him, staring into his eyes. "How did you take it, Clark?"
Meeting Lex's eyes was as frightening as staring into the deadly green. "What do you think? I freaked. All my life I'd known I wasn't normal. Picking up a car when you're eight is kind of a clue. But a spaceship in the storm cellar? What would you have done?"
"Heh." Lex shrugged, thinking, and went to the refrigerator, getting some juice for both of them. "Honestly? I don't know. Run tests on myself. Pushed my limits. Destroyed, like you said, the latest rotten school I had been exiled to. Taken over the world at age 15. But then, I'm a Luthor. That's what we do. It's a damn good thing you were raised a Kent."
Clark sighed. "Lex, anyone ever tell you that you're weird?"
"This from the brat who sees through walls and melts glass with his eyes. Drink your damn juice. You want some bagels with that?"
Clark snorted out a snoot full of juice. Only Lex.
The banging on the front door actually startled even Lex. He jumped up, spinning automatically to his cameras, then sighed. "Goddammit, I even forgot that I fried those myself. You're a damn distraction, Clark. Go use your heat vision on the bagels while I kill whatever bill collector is stupid enough to bother a Luthor at oh-five-thirty. Where's my Uzi? Never mind, you can always throw him through a wall or something."
Clark was choking on his juice. Lex kicked him to get his attention. "What, are you allergic to your mom's own fresh-squeezed too? How did you get through first grade? Ow. Remind me to wear steel-toed shoes next time I kick you. What's your problem?"
"You," Clark choked. "You're acting so ... *normal* ..."
"What's not to be normal about? I have a billion dollars in pocket change, and you pick up tractors. Wait until you meet the cats. That'll teach you what's not normal. I didn't name them after the Furies for no reason." The door rattled again, and so did Lex's temper. "Keep your #$%^&! shoes on! #$%^&*, of course, I fried the intercom too." He paused to look down at Clark, still curled up on the floor. "You going to be okay?"
Clark looked up, and this time it was no effort to meet Lex's eyes. In fact, it was as wonderful as the sunrise. "With a friend like you, Lex ... I think I'll always be okay."
"You're a *^%$ optimist." Lex stalked, rumpled and still half drunk, with murderous intent clear in every line of his pale skin, towards their intruder, who was pounding at the door again. But he paused in the doorway to look back at Clark. "I'm holding you to that."
Clark sat up, taking in with wonder the man who had not only accepted what he was, but become his protector. Clark had told him that he could destroy the world, and Lex had said that anyone who tried to hurt Clark would answer to Lex Luthor. "To what?"
Lex's expression softened. He fought not to show the fear -- not of his friend, but for his friend, the thought of losing his friend. "To always being okay."
Don't touch that red crap again. Don't blame yourself again. Don't forget who you are again. Clark bent his head and close his eyes. "I promise." At least to try.
Lex relaxed as if he had just put on his tie. "Good. Go deal with the bagels. If you can do heat vision and x-ray at the same time, you can watch me kick someone's ass."
Clark fell back on the floor again in giggles, and Lex glared at him. "Just don't set fire to the kitchen! The cook will kill you, and I promise you that her spoon is deadlier than any green rocks. She even scares your mom."
The visitor proved to be a young man with longish hair and the most intent eyes that Lex had ever seen. He wavered between hiring him for his audacity and killing him right there. Here was someone with potential. Unknown, but definitely potential.
Cyrus smiled and held out his hand. "Lex. We haven't formally met."
Lex took the handshake automatically, and went to his knees in agony. Appendicitis and kidney stones hadn't hurt like this. Lex couldn't scream because he couldn't breathe. His body was coming apart. He wanted to die right then and there. Please.
"That," said the young man coldly, "Is level one. If you hurt Clark again, I can go up to a scale of ten. And I can keep you alive long enough to feel every second of it."
"C ... Clark..."
And Clark was THERE, no entrance, just suddenly holding Cyrus in a grip that would have been death except for Clark's fierce control. "Bill. Let him go. Now."
Cyrus had still been channeling anti-healing, and Clark was taking it.
The pain was like the meteorites, but it wasn't aimed at him, couldn't kill him, so he held on, using just enough of his strength to let the healer know that he meant it. "STOP it!"
"He...." Cyrus gasped when Clark's arms tightened. No one had ever been able to stand against the touch of his fire. Clark was HOLDING him. "He hurt you!"
"I did it myself. And stay the hell out of my mind if you're not going to pay attention. The Baron would beat the crap out of you for being so careless."
"Sez the moron who picked up a tractor where every satellite orbiting Earth could see it!" Cyrus shifted his attention, one hand on Clark, the other on Lex. The energy changed to warmth and calm and good things, and Clark let out the breath he'd been holding. Cyrus could have killed them both in his anger.
Clark knew that feeling. Unfortunately.
"So," Lex managed, wondering if breathing was all it was cracked up to be if people kept taking it away from you, "I gather that you .. know about ... Clark."
Cyrus frowned. "I was about to rip you apart over that."
"I," Lex managed to force himself to stand up, "rather got that idea." He brushed uselessly at his slacks. "Clark, would you go get the juice and toast? I think your friend and I need to talk."
Clark looked back and forth between a very angry Cyrus and a pretty pissed off Luthor. "I can hear what you say, you know."
"That should not be a problem."
Gods, even after being put through more in ten minutes than most people were in one lifetime -- your friend is an alien, and his friend can rip you apart by touching you -- Lex still had a crease in his slacks. "Okay. Fine. Bagels coming up. I do not want to see any dead bodies when I come back." Clark failed to keep a tremble out of his voice. "Please."
Cyrus and Lex gave him exactly the same look. Keep the supersensitive hearing out of it. You are not responsible for everything. This is not your fight.
From the kitchen, Clark blanched when he heard Lex yelling at Cyrus. Lex NEVER yelled. He wondered about ripping open the drawer with that rock just to get their attention when he heard Cyrus hit Lex.
He went supersonic to try to get between them. Cyrus hissed at him and held up a hand that, to his visual spectrum, glowed. "Do not start with me, Kal-El. You will not win."
Clark swallowed, fighting terror and tears. "Who's the strongest one in the room?"
"I am." Cyrus extricated himself from the pile and sat back on Lex's couch, to the billionaire's interest and breathless amusement. "So shut up and listen."
"I for one, am listening," Lex drawled, eye already darkening from the punch.
"I cannot read your mind," Cyrus said quietly. "But I know who you are. I know you better than you know yourself. I can either kill you right now, or let you go until another day. Depending on what you choose next. I could actually even believe in you some day. If you will believe in yourself. And if you give me one thing."
Lex was obviously making an effort not to show pain. Cyrus hadn't just punched him in the face. "Cyrus," Clark started, truly worried at knowing just how real that threat was, and how little the empath would care about murder charges, considering the people who had trained him. "I can't let you -- "
Lex put Clark on pause with a raised hand. "I don't have much of a choice, do I?"
"You have all the choices in the world. Make the right one, and Clark will stay your friend instead of becoming your enemy. I might even learn to help you out. Make the wrong one, and Lionel will not live long enough to have your death investigated. No, Lex, that is not a threat. Or a promise. Pay attention. Clark saved my life. Clark saved my soul. No one threatens him without going through me first. What is that damn box doing in your desk?"
Lex looked away. "I just ... wanted to know. And there had to be -- one left."
"You're freaking Stephen Hawking already? Why didn't you just ASK?"
Lex turned to meet his eyes. "I did. Clark lied."
Clark was looking back and forth between them uneasily.
"Wanna be tortured again?" Cyrus was on his feet suddenly, eyes dangerous again. "Want to touch me again, Luthor? Want a taste of what those green rocks feel like?" Cyrus put his hand on Lex's shoulder. "Want to know what it's like not to be human, Lex?"
"Cyrus ... Bill ... don't ... please...."
Cyrus close his eyes, focusing all his mental talent. "Go away, Clark. Beg, Lex."
"I will not." Clark took Cyrus by the wrists and pulled him away from Lex. Gently. Everyone present knew that he could have smashed bone with his fingertips, and was holding back only because he was more afraid of himself than of anything else on the planet. Everyone present also knew that Cyrus could have had Clark on his knees through their contact, that even Clark had no defenses against Cyrus when they were touching.
"I will." Lex's voice was feather-soft. "For Clark's safety. I will beg. Do whatever you have to. Take whatever you need to." Lex tapped his head, making it clear that he understood that his opponent could rape his mind. "But if you hurt Clark, I won't give a damn how long either my father or I live. I will guarantee that you won't survive it either."
Cyrus let out a breath. "I hate it when people tell me the absolute truth."
"Then don't ask for it."
The staring contest between Cyrus and Lex scared Clark as badly as any green rock ever had. "Stop it," he said, as forcefully as he could manage with his eyes closed. "I am not your damn toy. I am not your damn prize."
The two looked at him in astonishment. Realizing, through the one's empathic talent, and the other's ability to read and manipulate people, that they had been doing exactly what they had both been most intent on not doing.
Cyrus squirmed a little in Clark's grip. "Sorry, Kal. Clark. Don't take it so hard. It's all just part of ... coming back. To what we are. Sometimes you lose your perspective."
Clark released him, dropping to the floor. "I'm -- I only want to be human again. As much as I can. To belong. I know you can understand that. But you're not...."
"Like you?" Cyrus finished. "No, my friend, we're not. But you're not like me, and the billion-dollar boy here isn't like you or me, either. Am I going to have to slap you again to get the part about being all kinds of human in the head through to you?"
"You were both born on this planet."
"And you haven't been kicked out of eleven academies," Lex countered, getting into the spirit of things. "Yet," he added thoughtfully.
"You can't pick up a tractor." Clark made a small smile at the thought of being kicked out of even one academy. His father would KILL him. Not to mention his mom.
"I can hire a crew to pick up a tractor. Or ten of them. Assuming I'd want to."
"I can fix that black eye." Cyrus extended his hand to Lex, warily. "If you want."
"Nah. Dear old dad will be over in a few hours, especially since I fried his spyware. It will make for an interesting topic of non-conversation."
"You can't see through walls."
"Of course I can. Though the security system replacement will take at least a day. And leave the damn county next time I have to clean out the bugs, will you?"
"You can't burn stuff with your eyes," Clark tried, wondering where he was going with this, and why.
"Want to come to a staff meeting and watch me?" Lex glared sleepily at him.
"Clark, the point is, you DO belong here. You ARE one of us. Would you just put that into what passes for your brain already before both of us have to hit you?"
Clark took a deep breath. It seemed to be his day for being slapped around "Dare you."
Lex and Cyrus tackled him so fast and unexpectedly that Clark didn't have time to react, even at full speed. They must have been planning this even while they yelled at each other. And oh gods, Cyrus knew where he was ticklish. Clark yelped.
Fortunately the sun was over the horizon and his stamina was back up to full. Clark was the last one standing when they had finished wrestling to the point that the other two couldn't catch their breath any more.
"Hey, William," Lex mumbled, "Wanna be experimented on by a mad scientist? There's a few spare bedrooms around here somewhere."
"Heh. Buy me a purple shirt, and you got a deal."
"Purple's not your color. Dark gray, maybe. Navy. Or silver. Silk."
"Get some sleep, Lex. You're going delusional on us."
"Wait until you meet the cats." Lex yawned. And then he was out like a light.
Cyrus ran his hand over Lex's eye and jaw where he had been punched, wincing at the alcohol poisoning as well as the damage he had done himself. Putting Lex to sleep hadn't taken more than a touch and a thought. "Lex really cares about you, you know."
"Yeah, sure, which is why he has a box of refined kryptonite in his desk."
Cyrus rolled over. He was exhausted physically, as well as emotionally taken apart. "You/re from another damn planet, Kal. Power and knowledge that he only dared dream about. No matter how much money he ever makes, how many people he dominates, he'll never be anything more than just another Earthling. It's killing him inside that you even exist. Much less that you were right here under his nose all along, and wouldn't tell him.
"You lied to someone who trusted you as a friend. Who wanted, still wants, to help you, as Clark and as Kal, and doesn't know how. After what he's been through most of his life, you were pretty much the straw that broke his back. He's still not much more than a kid himself. And he's never had a friend until he met you. You want to feel it?" Cyrus put one hand on Lex's head, and held out the other to Clark. "I guarantee you that you won't enjoy it."
Clark recoiled. "No. Probably not." I have enough baggage myself.
"He's hurting. So are you. And both of you are blaming yourselves."
"Tell me something I don't know," Clark bit back.
"All right." Cyrus took a deep breath. "Come here."
Like I need to be hurt any more. Leave me alone. "Are you some kind of sadist, Bill? You enjoy putting us through this?"
"No, I don't. You have no idea how much I wish I could spare you. Both of you. But I don't have the power to stop what will happen to you, both of you, otherwise. You do. Unless you want to end up incurably psychotic. Like Lake."
Clark paled. A lethally dangerous superhuman., out of control.... "N-no."
"Then COME HERE. And brace yourself."
Cyrus could claim not to be able to read minds all he wanted, but Clark was never going to believe him again. For him to know exactly what buttons to push, what Clark's worst nightmare was, he had to have been living in his head all these months since the red rock.
Which, come to think of it, he more or less had been. They'd been linked since the day of the meteors, never mind the first time Bill had actually touched him.
Clark closed his eyes. He had known that coming back was not going to be easy. But he knew it had to be done. If he couldn't be part of this world again.... He would rather go open that drawer than hurt his friends any more. Much less do what he had so casually, unthinkingly, mentioned to Lex that he could do. What he might yet do, some day, if he ever lost his sanity so completely again. Even just thinking of that made him feel sick.
If being hurt was the price he had to pay for humanity, he would pay it gladly.
He knelt, and reached out to take Cyrus' hand.
Cyrus cracked another tooth.