By the time the piece of tin disguised as a car finally arrived at it's destination, three hours of teen age gossip, in-depth analysis of a television program called the O.C. and the musical stylings of Avril Lavigne had left Lex thinking longingly of his last run in with Lana. It's wasn't as if he enjoyed the bloodied hands, but the music had definitely been better.

The only comfort he had was a tiny nerve pill disguised as an aspirin and the steady presence of Clark practically cuddled up next to him.

Of course, the sight of Clark bent over, trying to get out of the backseat did cheer him up. It wasn't as if Lex had made an effort to ogle his friend's ass, but he wasn't about to pass up the opportunity when it was just right there.

"Lex." Chloe called him out of his stupor, holding the door open.

"Oh. Sorry."

He managed to get out with a modicum of grace to find her smirking at him as he rose.

"Nice view?" She asked before walking away to follow Lana and Clark into a shabby looking building.

Swallowing down whatever paltry excuses and denials came into his head, he quickly closed the door and caught up to the small group.

"Hey Lex? You know those two burly guys in the black Sedan that followed us all the way from Smallville?" The young reporter asked.

"Security detail." He simply stated.

Chloe just nodded her head. Lana and Clark, however, both looked around to try to figure out who they were talking about.

His security had definitely improved recently. Chloe Sullivan noticing that someone's following her was fairly inevitable. On the other hand, it would have been inexcusable if either Lana or Clark had noticed.

The two young women he had assigned to watch over the Kent Farm from a distance had impressed Lex the most. So far, he hadn't had to endure one irate phone call or visit from either Jonathan or Clark about their presence.

"Can I help you?" A woman with whose name tag indicating she would be their hostess greeted them.

"Yes. We need some seats over by those people." Lana pointed to the unlikely party of two men unmistakably built like football players and a couple of Goths.

"Follow me."

As they all followed her to their table, Lex took in the well worn red carpet, plaid valences hanging over the windows and smell of greasy food. 'Clark must feel right at home here' he thought.

The three teenagers said their hellos to the others and sat down next to him at the table they had been shown.

"How long have you guys been here?" Chloe asked them.

"About ten minutes." The Goth boy answered. Lana had said his name was Chad when she introduced them back at the Talon. "We would've been here longer, but Joan made me drive the speed limit."

"He didn't drive the speed limit." Joan pronounced.

"It was closer than usual. Anyway, what movie are we seeing again?" He asked.

"The Life Aquatic since you guys refused to see any chick flicks or the Leonardo DiCaprio movie." Chloe replied sourly.

Dan snorted. "Hey! I remember you two making it clear you didn't want to see any of the new horror films out. It was only fair."

"We get enough of super powered psychos and aliens at home, thank you very much." Chloe snarked.

Lana screwed up her face. "We haven't had any aliens yet."

Lex choked on his water and Chloe started to reply but began laughing instead. The humor became infectious. Looking at Clark's expression, Lex couldn't help but laugh along with her.

"Hey guys. What's so funny?" Pete came up with his group to sit at another adjacent table.

"Pete, we haven't had aliens yet. Have we?" Lana asked.

He got a distinctly deer-in-headlights look on his face and managed to stammer with a straight face "Aliens? I don't see any aliens."

This only served to cause Lex and Chloe to laugh harder.

"In Smallville," Lana clarified, as if Pete were mentally deficient. "We haven't had any alien things happen in Smallville yet? I mean I thought it was all mutant stuff."

"I…um…I don't think so." He replied and quickly sat down.

Lex tried to get himself under control, but every time he managed Chloe would start giggling again or he would look up to see Clark glaring at them.

"Mutants?" Ali asked.

"Haven't you ever seen someone back home do something totally bizarre?" Dan asked her.

"Yeah like stretch funny or be in two places at once?" Fitz jumped into the conversation. "And then there was that one time Chloe made everyone tell the truth whether they wanted to or not."

"I was only like that for a little bit." Chloe managed to respond between chuckles.

"A temporary mutant?" Joan asked.

"To be fair, she got better." Lex commented.

More laughter erupted.

"You guys are crazy." Ali declared and opened a menu. "Mutants? Like I'm gonna fall for that."

No one volunteered to explain any further about Smallville's lurking oddness and the laughter settled down enough for the waitress to brave her way over and take their orders.

Lex sipped his coffee while the other teenagers chatted idly. Everyone except for Clark, whose glare had turned into a full fledged pout.

Lana slipped out of her seat to go to the restroom and Pete quickly sat down in her place. "So do any of you guys actually know Mandy?"

"I know Jenny and that she's her sister. That's about it." Chloe gave him a sympathetic look. "Is everything going alright over there?"

"I don't know. She hasn't said more than five words to me since we met, and that includes 'Hello'. Do you know what she likes or anything?" He asked pitifully.

Chloe shook her head 'no'.

Clark cleared his throat and spoke up. "She's on the computer club, writes fiction and plays video games."

"How do you know that?" Chloe asked him.

He shrugged. "I saw her name on the roster somewhere. I remember she had a story published in a magazine sometime back and I overheard Jenny saying that she couldn't hardly drag her away from her computer games sometimes."

Pete brightened. "Thanks man. I owe you one."

He clapped Clark on the shoulder and got up to return to his date.

"You know, sometimes your abilities really come in handy." Chloe remarked.

Clark's glare picked back up in full force and he didn't reply.

Chloe leaned over the table.

"Hypothetically," Chloe glanced around until she saw that Lana had decided to pull up a chair to Chad's table on her return, "if there were an alien in Smallville, I'm sure he…or she… would be a very nice person who was well respected and loved by his friends despite their teasing."

'Aha', Lex thought. Chloe either knew or suspected. He figured she would have amassed as much evidence as he had, if not more, on the mysteries surrounding Clark. And apparently, she had come to the same conclusion he had. Moreover, she must have presumed Lex knew from either Clark or his own observations.

It felt good to have someone not treat him like he should be blind, deaf and dumb.

Clark, on the other hand, had shrunk back into his chair. Lex was absolutely positive that if he hadn't been in public surrounded by people who knew him, the young man would have bolted faster than he could blink.

"And hypothetically," Lex spoke up, "this alien's friends would completely understand the need for secrecy. They would most likely be very sorry if they ever in any way endangered his secret, even if they were only laughing."

Clark just looked over at him with a blank face. Sometimes Lex just couldn't read him.

"That's all either one of us are going to say tonight Clark," Lex assured him, "so lighten up and have fun."

"Have you guys finished everything?" Lana interrupted them.

Chloe frowned. "We're not going already, are we? We'll be an hour early."

"It'll take us ten minutes to get the cars and drive them around to in front of the theater. We've also got to get twelve decent seats and some of the guys want to get popcorn."

"Popcorn sounds good." Clark observed.

Lex stared. He knew from experience that the boy could consume vast quantities of food, but it never ceased to amaze him.

"You just ate a Grand Slam with extra pancakes in record time." Chloe looked apprehensively at him, probably thinking of the safety of her car and hair.

Clark just smiled. "What do you expect? You wouldn't let me eat before."

The movie passed with little to no incident until upon exiting the theater, Chloe ran smack into Fitz's back.

"Was it suppose to rain?" Jenny asked.

"Nah, it was all suppose to go north." Chad responded.

"We are north." Joan pointed out.

"Oh yeah. I forgot."

Chloe edged her way around Fitz to see out the front doors. It wasn't just raining, it was a torrential downpour.

"What's going on?" Lex pushed his way up front.

"Um, I can't drive in this." Jenny looked fearfully from the weather outside to Lex.

"None of you can drive in this." Lex stated and then popped his cell phone out of his jacket and moved away to talk to someone.

After a brief conversation, he walked back up to them. "I've called some cars to come pick us up and take us to my penthouse until the rain lets up. If it doesn't, you may have to spend the night so I suggest you use this time to call your parents."

"Why can't your drivers just take us back to Smallville?" Pete asked.

Lex looked at him exasperatedly. "Because driving slowly around Metropolis a short distance in this weather is completely different from attempting a long drive on the highway."

Pete sulked while the rest of them used the next fifteen minutes passing around cell phones and talking their parents into possibly letting them stay the night away from home.

Clark had spent the majority of the movie quietly brooding over how incredibly exposed he had felt tonight, until he took the time to stop thinking about everything that could go wrong and feel how much weight had been removed from his shoulders.

Lex and Chloe knew.

He had already suspected that they had seen so much, they would think he was a meteor mutant or something, but he hadn't really considered that their assumptions would be so accurate.

In the lobby of Luthor Corp Towers the others chatted excitedly about the possibility of getting to spend a Saturday night in Lex Luthor's penthouse, even if they would only be sleeping.

Clark trailed to the back of the group. The penthouse always made him think of red kryptonite, running away with Lex and loosing control.

Something must have shown on his face because Chloe fell behind and put an arm around him as they walked to the elevators. "Have you been here before?"

"No. Lex's talked about me coming up here for the weekend, but we never got around to it."

She looked at him with concern.

"I…I just thought it would be under different circumstances, like for graduation or when I started MetU." He confessed.

"Like when you would move away from Smallville and really start your life?" She asked.

"Yeah." He sighed and continued voicing his thoughts. "You know when I ran away a few summers ago?"

She nodded.

"I was just…I know it's stupid, but I was angry with him for not being here."

"Everyone thought he was dead."

"I know. I went to the funeral." Clark confessed. "I hated that he was gone. I didn't even get a chance to save him, he just left and I couldn't reach him."

Chloe squeezed him. "Well he's here now, in perfect reaching distance."

After a quick tour around the penthouse, which reminded Clark strongly of Lex's office, the rest of his classmates congregated in the media room.

Lex had pretty much fled from the group into his office at the earliest possibility.

Clark found himself wondering into the living room. He stood at the balcony window and stared out into the rain for what felt like an eternity.

"Why are you in here in the dark?" Lex approached him, not bothering to turn on any lights.

"I'm just looking outside."

He stopped right next to Clark to look out. "It's not much of a view right now."

"Yeah. And it doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime soon." Clark agreed. "So, you finally decided to venture out of the safety of your office?"

Lex smirked. "I did have to check my messages. Anyway, I figured the comedy channel's keeping them pretty busy right now."

"Sure." Clark grinned as he watched Lex's reflection in the glass.

"It is peaceful in here." Lex commented and settled into watch the rain.

"I'm glad you know." Clark broke the silence which had quickly filled the room. He turned to face his friend with a new outlook on life. "I've been afraid of so many things for so long. Losing Lana. You and Chloe figuring it all out. You turning away or being afraid of me. And now it seems like I had nothing to fear all along."

Turning from the window and towards Clark, Lex looked him in the eyes. Clark could feel their connection thrum to life.

"I'm not afraid and I wouldn't ever turn away from you."

"I know that now."

Clark took a deep breath and closed what little distance remained between them. Touching the side of Lex's face with the back of his knuckles in a strangely familiar gesture, he leaned in a pressed their lips together. It was a quick, chaste kiss and Clark soon pulled away, looking for a reaction.

Lex wasn't breathing.

"I'm…," He started to withdraw and apologize, but Lex pulled him back and covered Clark's mouth with his.

Clark closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around Lex as the other man proceeded to claim his mouth. They parted their lips and their tongues met, massaging each other. Clark whimpered as Lex did nothing short of taste him. He felt dizzy. Breathless. Like he had jumped off of a building again and was falling through the sky.

Eventually their kiss subsided and broke off, leaving them holding each other. Clark buried his face into the crook of Lex's neck, embracing him as tight as he could without causing damage and relaxing into the repetitive motion of the hand caressing his back.

"Clark, I hope you know that I'm not going to let go after this." Lex whispered into his ear. "I don't think I could even if I wanted to."

"Good." Clark whispered back.

Clark thought about his other fears: diamond earrings, payoff trucks, Lex disappearing in another flight. He hoped he could learn to let go of those too.

A/N: Ok, I have to admit it. Having just written my first kissing scene and put it on display, I'm a little nervous. Any advise on how to approach these kinds of events in a story without it coming across mechanical or unnatural would be highly appreciated. And as always, thank you for all the wonderful reviews.

ty-rant84: Oh god, I'm contributing to Lana love. Bows head in shame. I actually like my version of her too. Unfortunately I don't have a mailing list, but if you log into and go to e-mail alerts, then to author alerts, you can enter my penname and you'll get a notice every time I submit a chapter.

Khassa: In my story, Chloe's old car blew up when she let Lois drive it so she had to get another one. There was a mutant turtle involved. Don't ask.