SUMMARY: Chapter Ten Lex finally gets Clark to take the leap. But what he thought the truth was, and what the truth actually is… make for a bad reaction.
WARNINGS: Rated Teen for language and sexuality. Veers into the realm of AU after the episode "Red" from Season 2. Because I just – LOVE red kryptonite!
DISCLAIMER: So many people own Superman and Smallville that I don't even know where to begin. We'll just sweepingly say Siegel and Shuster, DC Comics, and the show's creators. It's this twisted copyright situation, anyway. But I'm not making any money of them, rest assured. Just – playing with them. In my mind. It's not my fault they picked Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum, eh!
AUTHOR NOTE: My version of red kryptonite varies from the show's use. In comic canon, red kryptonite causes a different reaction each time Superman/Clark is exposed to it, and the results typically last 24 to 48 hours.
Slant
Chapter Ten
"Promise me that we'll always tell each other the truth from now on, no matter what."
Lex swallowed. Whatever it was that was different about Clark, it was obviously immense. Maybe moreso than Lex had ever imagined (or allowed himself to imagine). And Clark would tell him the very thing he had yearned to know since the day they met.
That is, what was it about this ordinary farmboy that made him so special? What was it in this town that had changed Clark, that had made him something beyond normal? How had those meteorites or radiation changed him, what had he become?
But did he want to know?
Lex couldn't pretend that he didn't want to know. The thought of solving any mystery that had eluded him immediately attracted his analytical mind. Hell, it brought him closer to the throes of happiness than most other things he had experienced in his lifetime.
With the possible exception of really good sex. Or at least a fantasy of really good sex, one that usually involved Clark naked and hungry for just one thing, a thing only Lex could offer him…
And yet something within him persisted in asking him if this was what he really wanted. Because Clark's look – and it was purely Clark's look, despite being on Lex's face – seemed fascinated and terrified all at once.
Fascinated by what?
More importantly, terrified by what?
Lex had little doubt that the cause of the fear had to do with him being a Luthor, and it was of no doubt at all that said fear was the installation of Clark's wary parents, doing their best to protect him from Lex's questionable – at best – influence. Yet (through perhaps some body-switching form of empathy) he felt as if there was something to this fear of Clark's that had little or nothing to do with the Luthor name.
Perhaps it had more to do with the fascination, or whatever it was. Maybe fascination in not knowing how Lex was going to respond. The way even now Clark-Lex's eyes gazed upon Lex-Clark's face, glance skittering everywhere except straight into the eyes, following the line of high cheekbones and a broad forehead and lips puckering naturally, dark hair with its too-long strands tucked behind an ear or falling forward to brush a cheek ever so softly. What was he looking for, what did he see with Lex inside of him? Did he shift back by mere millimetres, anticipating angry yelling and accusations? Did those eyes dart just for a second to the big strong hands, wondering if he would be hit? Had Lex imagined that?
He didn't think so.
Clark had no idea how Lex was going to respond, and it fascinated both of them. Yet Lex found himself strangely ambivalent to that troubling fact, that Clark so obviously still felt some sort of fear or suspicion toward him. Under ordinary circumstances, it might nearly have been another insult to their so-called friendship, which had (barely) survived its apparently inherent distrust.
But that didn't matter now; none of it did, because Clark was going to tell him everything. Clark, who obviously feared that their friendship would disappear, shatter and break under the onslaught of the truth, who obviously feared that Lex would retaliate angrily, maybe even violently – was going to tell him. And all Lex had to do to be privy to this information was to make a promise; a petty thing, really, a small thing. Lex had never cared much for promises, didn't value them, and didn't feel an urge to keep them. He could promise all he wanted, feel the comforting words slide over his tongue as he convinced his future paramour or friend or casual fuck that he would never, ever hurt them. Promises meant nothing.
And yet he couldn't speak, couldn't move his mouth to form the words. He swallowed again and his throat still felt dry, desert-sand dry, as if all the smooth oil-talk that Luthors learned had melted away the moment he had come to inhabit the body of his best friend. Clark drew back away from him, and Lex realized that they had been standing together, so close together, and he had looked down just the tiniest bit to see straight into his own eyes; ha-ha, finally the taller of the two, the more powerful of the two.
But inside was the same old Lex, still trying desperately to cover his weakness, his uncertainty, his pain. Trying desperately to be something his father and everyone else was convinced he wasn't. A good man, a decent man, a man that Clark could tell any truth to and receive in return only understanding and compassion. It was a ruthlessly simple fairytale, and yet every time Lex tried to be that man, it failed miserably and pouring from his mouth came lies and more empty promises, and flowing from his bank came the money to soothe over the inevitable hurt, diamonds for a girl's ears or trucks for the poor boy at the farmhouse who had saved his life.
"The truth now?" It took an immeasurable time with those three words hanging like fragile glittering stars between the two of them before Lex realized that he had spoken – it wasn't his voice, after all. It was the voice of a young boy who was really a man, or maybe vice-versa, or else some other incomprehensibly beautiful thing.
"I won't ask you about your past, if you don't want me to. It doesn't have to be, umm, retroactive or anything. Just from now on, let's not lie. Please. No more secrets." Clark's voice was pleading now, the way Lex remembered pleading to Jude-who-was-not-Jude as he hung upside-down in the club with his life seconds from being over.
When Lex responded, he didn't say what he meant to say. He couldn't. He said the first thing that bubbled up into existence within his mind. "Why should I tell you any of my secrets?" And he cringed as Clark cringed.
"Are we friends or not, Lex? Or is 'destiny' just another lie you feed to people so they trust you?" Bitter voice, bitter words. Spoken the way Lex spoke to his father.
"I wasn't lying about that!" Lex was surprised to find his voice had raised until it was nearly a shout. But he hadn't lied about that. He didn't remember speaking the words, exactly. Only that they had appeared between the two of them, and the moment he had said them they had become true. The stuff of legends, he had said. Trust me, Clark.
Clark seemed as surprised as he was about the shouting. His eyes widened, he stepped back and sat down abruptly on the sofa, a movement utterly lacking in grace. In fact, his movements the entire time they had been together had seemed very careful, very precise, as if he was struggling to adapt to Lex's smaller, slimmer, more contained body and trying to reconcile it with his regular body.
"I didn't mean it. I don't think you lied. I'm just – I'm scared, Lex. I'm sorry that you have to see yourself like this but I am. I'm scared. I just want you to know the truth; I don't want to keep it locked up inside, and whatever this is that happened, maybe it happened for a reason. You said it yourself. Destiny. And I'm afraid of destiny, I'm afraid of my future, and I don't want to face it without my best friend." Clark was breathing rapidly and shallowly now, as if he had to get all of the words out before he could take a proper breath. "You said a friendship can't be built on lies. So promise me you won't lie, and I'll tell you the truth. And if, if you hate me… if you hate me, I…" He stopped, biting his lip. He was already regretting his words, Lex saw.
"I could never hate you, Clark."
An instantaneous relief spread over Clark's face. Though Lex had made no promises, Clark seemed ready to take that as his word. He leaned forward and with his left hand tugged softly at Lex's arm. Lex immediately sat down beside his friend, long legs automatically folding themselves into a comfortable position.
The moment was fast approaching. Fast, maybe too fast, like sixty miles an hour down a bridge with the grim music surrounding him in the car and the golden boy right before his eyes in that one instant before the water broke through and threatened to drown the reckless driver when he was miraculously, impossibly saved.
The fast track to fate in an out-of-control Porsche. Lex would never be able to avoid it.
"Lex, the truth is –"
Hell. The least Lex could do to be accommodating to fate was buckle his damn seatbelt.
"I promise. I promise, no more secrets from now on."
Clark smiled his beatific smile, shaped with Lex's pale lips and fine sorrow lines at the corners of his eyes, until it became something that Lex might have called beautiful if his vanity had not been severely struck down by one look at his savior-angel-farmboy. A farmboy that could extract a promise from a Luthor heartfelt in its sincerity, if perhaps not in its practice.
"No secrets. Can we shake on it?" Clark shyly extended his hand and Lex carefully took it, and they shook hands slowly and then didn't let go. For the briefest instance Lex glanced up at Clark to see him staring with rapt fascination at the clasped hands between them, then Lex looked back down to the hands themselves. For an instant, really no more than what might have been in the old days called a passing fancy, he imagined that he could see right through the hands to their very bones clutching one another in their luminescent white sheen, surrounded by the vaguest blue-black darkness that was flesh, and then the vision was gone and they both took their hands away a little too quickly.
"Tell me." Lex couldn't keep his voice from sounding eager, but with his promise – for whatever it was worth – extracted out of him the only thing swirling within his mind now was knowing; knowing what Clark was hiding, knowing what had really happened the day they met. Knowing that Clark would admit to that ridiculous theory his friend Chloe Sullivan was constantly perpetuating, the fantastic myth of shimmering rocks from outer space causing people to become strange and different and special. Causing them to become outcasts and freaks, as Lex himself was. How had it happened to Clark, he wondered. What ability had the meteor shower given him? For surely that was what it was.
Surely. Clark was just afraid to be different.
"I'm not – I'm not who you thought I was. I'm different from everybody else. I can do things, strange things. Weird things. I'm always afraid that I'll wake up and something else will happen to me. And it's because… because…" Clark trailed off, looking off into the distance beyond Lex, seemingly trying to form the right words.
"It's alright, Clark." Soothing words, there they were. The old Luthor charm coming back into play, a pat on the back, rubbing small circles into the tension spots of the shoulders, a calming hum between his lips. Just tell me.
"I'm not human," Clark stuttered. "I'm from another planet. I came down with the meteors, I think maybe they're from wherever I'm from. I brought them with me."
Silence. And then the thoughts.
Wherever I'm from. The words repeated themselves again and again. Not human, Clark had said. Another planet. And all of a sudden there was a vast vortex of thought in Lex's mind, all swirling together, all saying my God, my best friend is a fucking E.T., and he lied about all of it and I must have hit him with my damn car, who knows what else this thing can do, he could probably kill us all, an alien from another planet.
More silence. And then the accusations.
And he had caused it. He had caused the meteors. Clark had come to Earth with those green rocks that had scorched Lex and killed Lana's parents and made Smallville into this haven for horrible, twisted things. And God knows what was going to happen next – an alien invasion of more things like Clark, with more of those meteors, changing the entire planet, making humans like them or maybe just conquering the world.
And it was churning, the vortex, until it came down to a litany of selfish little inner Lex, who'd spent the last twelve years of his life being tormented and laughed at and hurt because of those stupid meteors and what they'd done to him, and Clark had caused it. He… because of him, this thing…
How much of this was he saying out loud? Lex focused back on the real world, focused on his words as he said them, staring down at his clenched fists in his lap. "You… because of you, you thing…" and then he stopped, terrified.
The whole vortex of words. The whole half-crazed speech in his mind, he'd said it out loud. A xenophobic rant that would've made Adolf Hitler proud. He'd said that he would never hate Clark, and then he turned around and stabbed him in the heart.
But it was shock, it was just shock. He had to tell Clark that it was just shock, and that he would never truly hate him, and that if Clark would just give him one second, please, then he'd be alright and they could talk.
Of course, when Lex looked up, Clark was gone.