Title: Falling Away With You
Author: a.lakewood
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Clark/Lex
Spoilers: Scare
Summary: Lex has another accident and Clark saves him yet again.
Feedback: is encouraged, greatly appreciated, and lets me know if you want me to continue.
A/N: This fic is intended to be the first half or first part of a larger story, but I feel it is able to stand alone as well. The rest is still being written, so it'll be awhile yet before it's posted.
Clark was in the barn taking down decorations that still remained from his graduation party the day before. As he balled up the streamers he had torn down, Clark heard the familiar sound of the Porsche approaching. He headed out into the driveway, anticipating his on-again-off-again friend's arrival. Ever since that night in the LuthorCorp lab – when Lex had injected that...untested antidote into his arm – their friendship had been firmly on-again.
Clark smiled at the fact that he could recognize the sound of Lex's cars from a good mile away and discern it from the sound of the other vehicle on the road. There was something almost comforting about it. But the purr of the engine was interrupted by the sound of twisting, groaning metal, shattering glass, and a scream. Clark dropped the bag in his hand, cleaning the barn up completely forgotten. He strained to hear something more, but heard only his parents in the house, cows out to pasture, birds in a tree further down the driveway, and the wind rustling leaves of the new stalks of corn in the field.
He rushed to the highway on the other side of the field and superspeeded towards town. He saw the decimated remains of the blue Porsche smashed into the trunk of an old pine tree. He rushed to the driver's side and carefully pulled Lex from the wreckage, completely unsure of whether or not the man in his arms alive. Cradling the battered body to his chest, Clark superspeeded to Metropolis General - arriving there faster than he ever had before. Lex was immediately taken from his arms and into surgery.
Clark wasn't sure how long he stood there in the ER entrance, but a nurse approached him, blood smeared on her scrubs. She gently touched Clark's arm, startling him out of racing thoughts that completely overwhelmed him. "That man is lucky that you were so quick getting him here. Another couple of minutes and he could have bled out or his heart could have stopped," she said quietly. "Come with me and we'll find something for you to change into."
Clark glanced down at his blood-soaked clothing. "Thanks," he said, his voice sounding odd to his ears, following the nurse. She exited what must have been a supply closet, he thought, with a set of scrubs similar to the ones she wore. She handed them to him as well as a plastic trash bag.
"Here. The men's room is just down there. I'll be at the station in the lobby, okay?"
"Okay." Clark headed to the bathroom and changed, putting his soiled clothes into the bag. When he got to the nurses station, he stopped the nurse who had given him the scrubs. "Can you call me when Lex gets out of surgery? – Mr. Luthor."
The nurse looks at him a moment before turning towards the computer terminal. "What's your name?"
"Clark Kent," he answered. And when she started typing, he started with his phone number.
"Wait," she interrupted him. "Mr. Luthor has already designated you as the first person to be contacted should anything happen to him."
It took Clark a good couple of minutes to wrap his still-fragmented mind around that bit of information. "Thank you," he said. He slowly made his way out of the hospital before superspeeding home.
The screen door in the kitchen banged shut, half-startling Martha, who stood at the sink rinsing vegetables for dinner. She took in Clark's appearance, momentarily not noticing the scrubs, focusing on the troubled look in his eyes. "Honey, what's wrong? What happened? Are you all right?" she questioned, drying her hands on the dishtowel on the counter before pulling out a chair at the kitchen table for him. Until Clark collapsed into the chair, almost with enough force to splinter the wood – however, only causing it to groan in protest of the sudden weight – he hadn't realized how weak-in-the-knees he'd felt.
"I'm fine, Mom...It's Lex...He was in an accident – I got him to the hospital in Metropolis as fast as I could but...he was bleeding so bad." He wiped at his face, surprised to find that it was wet – he couldn't remember crying.
"Oh, Clark...Is he going to be okay?"
On the verge of tears, Clark shook his head as he shrugged, afraid to open his mouth for fear that he'd break down completely.
"Clark..." Martha soothed, leaning across the table to take his hands. "Your father and I can handle things here for a few days...Why don't you go back to the hospital and stay with Lex?"
Clark took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to calm his emotions. "Are you sure?" This time, when he spoke, his voice didn't sound quite so raw.
"Yes, sweetheart. And don't worry about Dad - I'll talk to him. He'll understand."
He stood, still clutching Martha's hands, his knees a little unstable yet. He pulled Martha up to him and enveloped her in a hug. "Thank you, Mom. I love you."
"I love you, too, Clark."
Clark had changed into his normal jeans, t-shirt, and flannel shirt before he had returned to the hospital that afternoon. The nurse, Michelle, he learned, from the photo ID clipped to the pocket of her scrubs, took him to the waiting rooms in the surgery ward. By the time Michelle returned later that night, Clark was half-way through the second to last magazine on the table in the middle of the room.
"Mr. Luthor is being moved from surgery," Michelle began. "We're taking him to a private room in ICU. Do you want me to take you down there? You can talk to his doctor," she suggested. She led him to the waiting room closest to Lex's private room. "Wait here, and I'll get Mr. Luthor's doctor for you."
"Thank you, Michelle." He received a gentle half-smile and nod from the nurse before she left.
"Clark Kent?" a man, the doctor, Clark presumed, asked him, tucking a clipboard beneath his arm to reach a hand out. He vigorously shook the hand Clark had offered when he stood. "Doctor Loeffler."
"Nice to meet you, sir."
"I suppose you'd like to be updated on Mr. Luthor's current state, yes?"
"Yes, sir."
"We've finally got him stable, but he coded twice on the operating table. He sustained two broken ribs, a compound fracture of the right tibia..." he removed the clipboard from beneath his arm and scanned the top paper before continuing. "Also, his right wrist was broken, he suffered another concussion, lots of internal bleeding and bruised organs...one of his lungs was punctured by one of the broken ribs..." The doctor's eyes then flickered up at Clark, then he went on. "A valve in his heart ruptured when the steering wheel impacted his chest - this is what also caused the broken ribs and lung puncture..."
Clark reached out for the wall, the table, a chair, something to grasp so he wouldn't collapse, his head reeling at the extent of Lex's injuries.
The doctor rested a hand on his shoulder. "Are you all right, son? Come sit down. Here." He helped Clark settle into the chair the young man had occupied when he first entered.
"Did- Did you have to...?" Clark trailed off, his hand splayed over his chest.
"Did we have to do open-heart surgery?" Dr. Loeffler supplied. When Clark nodded, he answered the question. "Yes. It's the only way to repair that kind of damage. In order for his heart to function correctly, we had to mend the ruptured valve with a tissue graft."
"What else?" Clark asked after a moment.
"He's in a barbiturate- or drug-induced coma to keep the swelling in his brain down - which, thankfully, has minimized. We're trying to bring him out of it, but haven't been successful so far...Even though the intracranial swelling has diminished, there's a possibility that Mr. Luthor has suffered brain damage. How severe, we don't know yet."
Clark had never been more thankful to be sitting because he was sure his knees would've buckled beneath him at the doctor's words. "You have no way of knowing when he'll wake up?" Clark whispered the question.
"It could be days or weeks."
"And you can't bring him out of it?"
"Anything beyond what we've already tried could cause more damage than what he has already sustained. And, while Mr. Luthor wishes that you be aware of his condition and such, you understand that you have no authorization over anything that we do insofar as operating, treatment, etcetera. Lionel Luthor is still, legally, his next of kin. All decisions will be left up to him."
"When can I go in and see him?" Clark didn't want to dwell on the fact that Lionel held Lex's life in his hands.
"I'd recommend tomorrow. The state that you're in right now... It will make it that much harder for you to see him. Do you want to talk to one of our grief counselors?"
"I, um...Thanks, but no. I think I'll...be okay."
"All right. If you need anything, any of the nurses at the nurses' station will be more than happy to help you."
"Is it okay that I stay here? for the night?"
The doctor smiled, soft in comparison to the weathered skin of his face. "Of course. I'll talk to Michelle if she's still on duty and see if, maybe, she can find an empty room for you, all right?"
"Thank you, Dr. Loeffler."
After a long couple of minutes, Michelle returned to the waiting room. "Clark?" she questioned. "I've got a room for you."
Clark woke the following morning unsure of where he was. It sounded as though a hundred people were having a hundred conversations no more than two feet away. As the thick cloud of sleep cleared from his mind, he remembered that he was in the hospital – the conversations were between doctors and nurses and patients, and all he had to do to get rid of them was focus his hearing on one thing, drown everything else out – and the nightmare of Lex coming thisclose to dying was actually reality. Clark swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat there a moment wondering if he should go check on Lex first or call home. He decided he'd better call home because, if Lex was awake and up to taking visitors, he wouldn't leave Lex's side until someone made him.
When Clark approached the nurses' station, he didn't recognize any of the men or women there from the previous day. A woman roughly the same age as Michelle glanced up at him briefly before her gaze returned to him only a moment later. "Clark Kent?" she questioned uncertainly.
"Yeah. How'd you know?"
"Michelle described you very well. I'm Candace." She extended her hand over the counter and they shook, her hand lingering a moment longer than necessary. "I assume you would like to know how Mr. Luthor is doing?"
"Actually, could I -"
"He's been asking for you."
"Nevermind. I can call home later." His parents would understand if he called sometime in the afternoon. Besides, there was probably a phone in Lex's room he could use; that way he wouldn't even have to leave Lex's side.
Candace smiled. "Okay. Follow me." Candace led him to a door five or so beyond the waiting room he had been in the night before. She peeked in quickly before closing the door again. "The doctor is in there right now."
"Dr. Loeffler?"
"No. Dr. Loeffler isn't scheduled to arrive until one. Dr. Hennessey is on duty right now."
"Oh. Okay."
After a couple of minutes of silence, the door opened and a young doctor stepped out. Candace gestured towards Clark. "Dr. Hennessey – this is Clark Kent. Mr. Luthor asked to see him."
"Yes," Dr. Hennessey agreed, turning to Clark. "Go ahead and go in. But be brief. Mr. Luthor has been through a lot."
"I know. Thank you." Clark waited outside the door as Candace and Dr. Hennessey left. Waited a minute or so longer to work up his courage to open the door. He entered the dim room quietly, the door clicking shut sounding loud. He could see the foot of Lex's hospital bed from where he stood, and Lex's right leg in a cast. Focusing on just putting one foot in front of the other, he finally made it to Lex's bedside. "Oh, God, Lex..." his voice broke upon seeing his best friend's mottled face. The left side was far more bruised than the right, a cut butterfly-bandaged closed above his eyebrow. He guessed it made sense if it had been his head that had caused the broken driver's side window. His hands trembled as he reached for the metal guard of the bed.
"Hey...Clark..." There was a faint smile curling at Lex's lips, happiness and relief in his eyes marred by pain.
"Lex..." a shuddered breath. He moved a tremulous hand towards the less-injured side of Lex's face, at first afraid to touch, but Lex leaned into the caress. "They did- didn't know when you'd wake up...I was so afraid I was going to lose you before..." Lex pressed a gentle kiss to Clark's palm and that was what undid him, allowed the tears he'd been trying so valiantly to hold back to just fall. Clark wasn't surprised at how natural it felt, how much like being lovers it felt. And Clark hadn't even admitted his love yet, didn't know for certain if it would be returned.
"Before what?" was the softly asked question from Lex, who, Clark realized, had shed tears of his own.
"Before I could tell you everything," he whispered.
"Everything?"
"Everything."
"You don't have to..."
Clark tore his gaze from Lex to see where the chair behind him was. Not moving the hand that still grazed Lex's cheek gently, Clark reached for the chair and brought it closer to the bed so he could sit, so he could confess without the fear of his knees buckling beneath him. "Lex," he began, stroking the tear-trail on the pale cheek beneath his thumb away, looking Lex in the eye once again as he took a breath.
"I already know."
"But I still need to say it."
"I know you're different, Clark...That you've always been different...I know what you are."
Clark's eyes widened, then he realized that Lex hadn't freaked out about it like he thought he would. "That's not what I was going to say. But I'll get to it."
"Okay."
The look in Lex's eyes was all the encouragement he needed. "I love you, Lex."
A sharp intake of breath caused Lex to wince. "Don't," he said to Clark, noting the panic in the younger man's eyes. "Just a small pain."
"You sure?" worry still evident in the voice, if not the eyes.
"Yes...I just wasn't...expecting your...declaration."
"Oh." Clark cast his eyes downward, even more unsure as to whether or not Lex felt the same.
"Clark. Look at me. Please."
Clark complied, feeling his unease melt away at the lazy smile Lex wore. It had to be love, his heart told him. His head immediately rationalizing, or really good drugs.
"I love you, too."
He knew he was grinning like an idiot, but Clark couldn't help it. He leaned up, giving Lex plenty of time to tell him to stop, to place a chaste kiss upon Lex's dry, chapped lips. As far as first kisses went, for either of them, it wasn't spectacular, no fireworks. But it was enough because there was love. Clark sat back and looked at Lex for a long moment before he stood and moved the chair to the other side of the bed. He threaded his fingers through those on Lex's good hand. "As far as my other confession is concerned," he sighed, "I want to wait until you're better to go into that, okay? But I promise I'll tell you everything. Tell you the truth."
"Okay."
