P.L. Nunn's Blog, page 5

Stranded 18

Yeah, I know its been forever since I've updated. Tons of projects going on that have me working industriously and I tend to get absorbed and forget everything else.

anyways, here's the next installment of Stranded,in which we get to meet the laughing man and get a little insight on just what happened to destroy most of humanity.

Check it out here.

new stuff

I've got the next chapter of Stranded up. There's some confusion with the chapter numbers, I'm not sure how I managed to mess it up, but the actual body of work in in order.

http://bishonenworks.com/fiction_new/story_chapters/stranded17.php

Also, i've had people ask about a Ronin collection, so I'm editing and putting together a set of zines with all the completed Ronin Warrior fiction. And yes, that will include a finally completed 'Season of Dragons' in the third and final zine.

These stories are close to my heart, the Ronin fandom the one that sank its claws in and got me into yaoi. My first slash fiction and my first man on man art.

Also included in these zines will be all the Ronin doujinshi, which aren't available anywhere else.

This first zine will include five fictions, as well as the Sai Love mini doujinshi.

http://bishonenworks.com/cart/main/index.php

A little new Stranded. . .

Although I make no promises to finish it anytime soon, I did write several new chapters of "Stranded"after I'd finished 'Obsessions' and was on a Clex-high. They've been floating around my hard drive for months now, so I figured I might as well post them.

i've put half of the new stuff up at the BishonenWorks Fiction page. I'll post the other chapters soon.

I think I left on posting on LJ around chapter 12ish.

Check it outhere.

obsessions Chapter 21/21

And here it is. The final chapter of Obsessions. I want to thank everyone who read and commented. It always means a lot. I hope I offered a few hours of entertainment.

On to the Epilogue.



Epilogue


Summer ended, as summer always ended. Too soon. Clark's time with Lex was back to being fettered.

Weekends and the occasional weekday afternoon, if he had to have his fix. Or if some unexpected complication cropped up like attempted assassination or crazed retaliatory attacks by unhinged highly questionable researchers. The majority of which had been funded by Lex's father and suddenly found themselves defunded and their projects confiscated.

And Lex had thought getting away from Smallville would reduce his number of life threatening situations. Apparently Lionel had been funding a lot of private sector research involving meteorites. A lot of highly disturbing projects, some of which Lex still hadn't tracked down the locations of, just the progress reports that Lionel had kept in his personal records.

And Lex was trying to keep the knowledge of all this less than legal research, not to mention the knowledge of just how reactive the green meteor rock was, out of the public eye. Was trying to accomplish his clean up work very quietly. He was trying to avoid government fines and sanctums, as well as government interest in Smallville, which was, when one got down to it, the epicenter of all meteor related things.

Which meant Lex was contacting a lot of these researchers on the sly, going into situations involving people that had had an awful lot of exposure to a substance that could alter mind as well as body, and it was driving Clark to distraction.

It bothered Clark to no ends that Lex tended not to tell him about these things until after the fact. Lex being concerned about Clark and research facilities - - and that was a loose term since some of those facilities were little more than garages or basements - - that were filled with some form of meteorite. A decent bodyguard or two did not always make a difference when dealing with a meteorite enhanced lunatic. Clark had started keeping an ear out for Lex. It was getting easier to hone his hearing down to the finest detail, to the sound of a particular voice, a hundred miles away. Easier to track the sounds he was focusing on like a hound dog on the track of a scent.

Of course, Clark had his own share of lunatics to deal with; the usual Smallvillian roster of trouble that seemed to find its way to his vicinity. Lana was as prone to attracting lunatics as Lex and you could always expect to have at least one deranged devotee stalking her by the end of the first week of school.

It was nice to fall into old routine. It was nice to go home some school nights and finish his chores and casually mention to his parents, that he thought he'd take a spin to the city and eat dinner with Lex and not have them - - his dad in particular - - go through the roof. He'd sort of figured out that if he was responsible about it, and straightforward with them, they were pretty willing to accept that he was old enough to know what he was doing.

It wasn't like his dad ever said Lex's name with love and affection, but Clark thought he'd come to some sort of terms with the idea that Clark wasn't suddenly going to about face and turn heterosexual, and that Lex was an inescapable fact of life.

Pete had come to a similar conclusion. Granted, Clark and Pete talked about Lex and the things Clark might possibly be doing with Lex, as little as humanly possible, but still, things were as much back to normal as they could get in Smallville.

Pete had gotten pretty good at covering for Clark when Things happened that demanded Clark's attention. Case in point: right smack dab in the middle of forth period biology lab and the mixing of chemical agents in a test beaker over a live flame, Clark's hearing cut in. Or at least the parts he allowed to reach past the surface of his awareness did. Everyday conversations and activities flew right under his radar, but when someone he was attuned to, Mom, Dad, Lana, Pete, Chloe, Lex - - most especially Lex - - exclaimed outside the normal range - - he picked it up. He had no idea how, and Lex had grilled him relentlessly on the fine tuning of the skill - - it was just something that he did and that got better the longer he did it.

The liquid in the beaker was just beginning to bubble and turn colors when he heard Lex exclaim. Well, curse was a more accurate term. A really loud, really surprised curse followed, by the dull pop pop of what sounded like gunfire.

"Pete, I gotta go - -" he handed Pete his vial, didn't give him time to open his mouth to ask why, before he took off. Likely nobody but Pete even noticed he was gone, everyone absorbed by their experiments. And if the teacher did, and he got in trouble for the absence - - so be it.

He traced the sound to Granville, one town west of Smallville. To an old abandoned warehouse, and got there just as a portion of tin, corrugated wall was blown out from the side of the building. It flattened knee high, dead weeds, and was accompanied by a billow of smoke. There were two vehicles parked near the door of the place. A battered old ford station wagon, and a shiny new black and silver SUV with a LuthorCorp parking garage sticker in the window.

Clark cursed and headed in through the ragged hole in the wall. There was a lot of empty space, most of the contents of the warehouse clustered together. What looked like a lot of piecemeal hospital equipment and patched together computer equipment. There were shelves of containers with a lot of suspicious looking goop, several of which had been overturned. There was a man in a suit under one of the overturned cabinets, out cold. And across the warehouse, the movement of people behind stacked crates, and the pop of more gunfire. There was a guy stalking the crates in an untucked shirt and dirty slacks, with a lot of metal wires that looked like they were coming right out of his head, but were, when Clark narrowed his eyes and looked closer, actually attached to little shards of green rock that had been embedded directly into his skull. His hair had been shaved in little patches to allow for the rocks. It looked like something out of a Pinhead movie. He wasn't the one shooting though. That was from the woman with the gun behind the crates, who was with Lex - - Clark confirmed it with a quick burst of x-ray vision.

She fired and the guy with the rocks in his head squinted and the bullet deflected before it got to him and embedded itself in the wall behind Lex and his bodyguard's heads. The man squinted again and the nails holding several of the crates together began to pry themselves loose from the rotting wood and fly in the direction of the people behind the crates.

Okay, enough was enough. Clark picked up an old tire and hurled it. It hit the meteor pieced man square in the back of his head, dropping him like the proverbial rock.

There wasn't movement behind the crates, and with one last wary look at the guy with the rocks to make sure he was down for the count, Clark ran that way.

The woman with the gun was down, Lex was on his knees, looking a pale and pissed, his fingers over a wound in her neck gushing blood.

"What the hell, Lex?" Clark snapped, pissed himself, because they kept having this same damned argument about Lex trying to separate Clark from meteor-related situations. Frustrating habit, since they both knew Clark was better equipped to deal with them than anyone else. But then Lex was scared for him. Lex had seen with more detail than anyone, just how vulnerable he could be when meteor rock was in the mix. Hard to hold a grudge when Lex just couldn't shake those images in his head, and was practicing concern for Clark the only way he knew how, by keeping him away from certain trouble.

"Shut up," Lex gave him a glare. He had a little bloody furrow just above his ear where likely a nail had whizzed just shy of driving through his temple. "Get her to the ER, now!"

Clark glared back, gathering up the woman, who was stout and solid under her pants suit, and spiriting her to the Granville Emergency room in less time than it took for her to draw a pair of gurgling breaths. He made sure the medical staff realized what they had on their hands before heading back to the warehouse.

Lex had moved into the ruins of the little laboratory portion of the place and was trying to lift the shelving off the other suited man. Presumably a second bodyguard. Clark recognized the woman, but the man was new.

He started just a little when Clark showed up next to him, then stepped back and let Clark do the heavy lifting.
"You know that talk we had about you walking into these sorts of situations without even a 'hey, Clark, I might run into a crazed meteorite wielding lunatic with issues about having his operation shut down, today, so heads up?' Well, this is a good example of why that seems like a really good idea."

Lex looked up at him from his crouch next to the inert bodyguard. He had his fingers on the man's neck, trying to find a pulse. Clark could have told him it was there, but Clark was little pissed off.

"I assure you," Lex said between clenched teeth. "The last time I spoke with Dr. Howe, he was meteorite free. Would you mind?"

He jerked his head towards his man on the floor.

Clark glowered, and hauled him up, careful of what, upon closer x-ray inspection, turned out to be a broken collarbone and several fractured ribs. He deposited him in the same ER as the woman.

Lex was on the phone when he got back, pacing. The man Clark had taken out - -Dr. Howe, he presumed - - was still out cold.

Lex was barking at someone to get over here and clean the place up. The hand not holding the phone to his ear was still bloody. Fresh blood. And it occurred to Clark that it wasn't from where he'd been trying to put pressure on the woman's wound. There was a tear in Lex's jacket arm. And beneath that a scoring of flesh larger than a nail would make. More bullet sized.

"He shot you?"

Lex glanced his way, then down at his arm. He drew a breath and put the phone in his jacket pocket.

"Not exactly. One of my people shot at him - - he deflected the bullet and - -" he shrugged, the ending to that story self-evident.

"God." Clark stared around the place. He'd seen too many others like it. Little pockets of research funded by Lex's father. Run by men too radical to ever participate in legitimate research. "What are you going to do about him?"

Lex shrugged. "Have the meteorite implants removed. Make sure he's powerless without them and drop him off at Belle Reeve."

LuthorCorp had subsidized a whole new wing of the state's facility for the mentally disturbed. There was a whole new staff and a whole new set of protocols for those patients that normal safety procedures just wouldn't work for.

"So your people are on the way?"

Lex shrugged, looking disgusted. "They are. This was supposed to be a non-violent meeting. He had agreed to sign the non-disclosure agreement. God, you can't trust a scientist as far as you can throw him." He glanced at Clark and amended. "As far as I could throw him."

"And you stick by your word like glue," Clark groused.

"Get over it. I never promised to give you a detailed copy of my itinerary." He waved a hand in irritation and a little blood-spattered Clark's shirt.

"God, Lex. How bad are you bleeding?" Irritation faded in the face of concern.

Lex blew out a breath, staring down at the blood dripping down the back of his hand. Whatever adrenalin had been feeding his own temper seemed to drain away. He shook his head, and Clark could almost hear the 'I'm fine', before Lex managed to utter the words.

"ER or home?" he asked before Lex could insist he was more bullet proof than he was. Lex had had a lot of bad experiences in hospitals. Bleeding to death was a serious option to consider before he'd willingly agree to walk into an ER. Clark wouldn't force it on him if didn't want to go, but one way or another he would see the wound got treated.

"Home," Lex capitulated.

Clark gathered him up and ran. Shorter run to Metropolis from Granville. It cut two or three minutes travel time from the trip, which got him to the city and Lex's penthouse in just under seven minutes. He had taken it slow, conscious of the fact that human beings didn't tolerate traveling at the speeds he did, unprotected.

He sat Lex down on the couch, not trusting him to keep his feet if he put him directly on him, after the run and the steady blood loss.

Lex sucked in a lungful of air that had probably been hard for him to draw while Clark was running and started shrugging out of his coat. Clark went for the med-kit in the kitchen. He was familiar with the location, having had occasion to break it out before when Lex refused hospital based medical attention.

The score on his upper arm wasn't deep, but it must have nicked something, because it had bled pretty badly. It was beginning to clot now that Lex wasn't moving around. Clark cleaned it, while Lex sat on the sofa with his bloody shirt in his hands, wiped it with antiseptic salve and covered it with a white gauze bandage.

Neither of them spoke while he was about it. When he smoothed the last piece of tape down, he sat back against the arm of the couch and stared at Lex.

"You realize," he said finally, when Lex was apparently too wrapped up in his own thoughts to prompt conversation. "That I'm more likely to have problems rushing into something unprepared, than I am if I know a detail or two?"

Lex's eyes flicked to him, narrowing just slightly.

"I don't want an itinerary," Clark said in exasperation. "I just want to know when you're thinking about walking into dangerous situations."

"It wasn't supposed to be dangerous," Lex said calmly. "I promise you, I wouldn't have walked into the warehouse with nothing but two people and a legal document if he'd had shards of meteorite embedded into his skull the last time we talked."

"Yeah, that did seem sort of like a dead giveaway that he wasn't operating on all cylinders," Clark said dryly.

Lex's mouth twitched.

Clark opened another alcohol swab and dabbed at the thin score over Lex's temple. Lex leaned back against the sofa, head pillowed against soft tan leather, and let him.

"It's the middle of a school day," Lex observed, eyes closed.

"I know. You made me cut out on chemistry." The temple wound had already clotted and was small enough not to require a bandage. Lex healed at a crazy rate anyway. That one would be mostly gone in maybe a day or two. The bullet gouge in his arm, maybe a week before you'd hardly be able to tell the skin had ever been marred. He slouched down next to Lex, propping his boots on the edge of the glass coffee table.

"I'm sure you're devastated." Lex rolled his head to look at him.

Clark snorted. His arm touched Lex's bare arm. Lex's skin was pale against the cream of the couch, but a shade or two darker than the white of the gauze bandage. It was a nice juxtaposition.

Clark brushed his cheek against Lex's shoulder, smooth, warm skin, lots of smooth warm skin bared for his view. Lex could get him hard just talking to him over the phone, sitting next to him in the middle of the day, Lex shirtless, in the cool privacy of Lex's apartment had him twitching in his jeans.

He twisted his head to look up and meet Lex's eyes. Lex arched a brow, just enough interest in his blue eyes that Clark felt safe sliding the arm trapped between him and Lex behind Lex's back and curling it around his side.

"Shouldn't you head back to school?" Lex leaned down and kissed him lightly, in direct contradiction to the question. Because really, if Lex wanted to encourage him to head back to Smallville High, kissing him wasn't the way to urge him in that direction.

"You can help me come up with a believable excuse for cutting out."

"I generally find," Lex slid his hand under the hem of Clark's shirt, pushing it up as his fingers skimmed Clark's belly. "The more embarrassing, the more believable."

"So I claim I had a bout of explosive diarrhea or something and had to run home to change clothes?"

Lex rolled his eyes and pushed Clark onto his back, working his shirt up as he kissed him. Clark settled happily on his back, Lex between his legs, Lex's mouth and hands making his skin tingle and his cock rock hard against his belly.

Lex was hard too, rubbing up against Clark between two layers of pants. Lex's nudity issues were pretty much gone. He didn't particularly like being the only naked body in a room, but he was okay now with getting naked and having Clark's hands all over him. Sometimes little things made him start, little triggers that didn't always make sense to Clark, and Lex would stand there for a moment, breathing hard, eyes zoned out as something maybe terrible flashed across his memory, before he snapped himself out of it. But that happened a lot less now than it had.

His erection issues had also melted away, so mutual hand jobs had become the norm. Clark hadn't pushed for anything more. A little at a time seemed the course to take. He really, really wanted that next step, though.

It was a broad couch, especially convenient for two bodies making out. Easy to roll over and take Lex with him, without toppling over the edge. Lex looked up at him, on the bottom now, and Clark dipped down to kiss the faint indignation away, before sitting up and stripping off his t-shirt, then working his way down Lex's legs.

Lex watched with interest when Clark started unbuckling his belt. He pulled his pants and underwear down to about mid-thigh, and took Lex's erection in hand as it bobbed free. It was beautiful and pink, shiny at the head. He stroked it, slow, firm and Lex shut his eyes, head rolling back on the couch.

"I'm gonna suck you," he said, because giving Lex warning when new things were initiated was simply polite.

Lex made a sound, and lifted his head, eyes wide and dark. But there was nothing in his expression that hinted disinclination at the idea.

Clark bent down and took him into his mouth, before Lex could think about it and change his mind. Shut his own eyes at the feel of Lex filling his mouth, the scent of him, the taste of him, concentrated and primal. He worked him with mouth and hands, remembering with crystal clarity the way Lex had worked him, all those months ago. He must have been doing a good job, because Lex was gasping, moaning, his hands tangled in Clark's hair, his eyes dilated and huge as he stared down, watching. Clark grinned around his mouthful, loving everything about this. The reactions he was getting, the feel of slick, silken flesh, the way Lex's body tensed and thrummed under his hands.

Lex came and Clark swallowed it all. Stayed glued to the softening flesh, licking and tasting, hands gently rolling loosening balls, fingers stroking the inside of lean thighs, until Lex was lax and breathing normally again under him.

"God," Lex whispered.

"That was awesome. Why haven't we been doing that?"

Lex laughed, eyes shut, face turned towards the back of the couch. "Because I forgot how good it could be."

Clark hadn't forgotten, he'd just been biding his time. But he figured Lex had pretty good reasons to be gun shy. It had been a year, but a year wasn't that much time considering the things Lex was trying to forget.

Lex sat up abruptly, pushed Clark backwards with a hand on his shoulder. Clark went with it, sprawling back against the far arm of the couch, hoping, praying, Lex might be considering returning the favor. He wouldn't be upset if all he got was a hand job, but God, he had wet dreams at least once a week about Lex's mouth on his dick. And from the look in Lex's eyes, the focused determination, as his long fingers unbuttoned and unzipped Clark's jeans, Clark thought - -maybe. Please God, maybe.

Clark sprang free, all flushed and glistening at the tip, and he wasn't nearly as pretty down there as Lex. But really, he could have been sporting the ugliest dick in the world, but when Lex went down on it, it felt beautiful. Everything felt beautiful with the warm, wet suction of Lex's mouth around him. He clasped both hands behind his head to keep from puncturing Lex's couch from the initial reaction of pure bliss.

Lex's shoulders were hunched, the wings of his shoulder blades stark against stretched skin, the top of his head naked and lovely, as he bent over Clark. He pulled back, just the tip in his mouth and looked up at Clark, blue eyes intent and liquid, flicking over his face, as if he were memorizing Clark's no doubt dazed expression. Something in the line of Lex's back loosened and he sucked, cheeks hollowed, lashes fluttering down as he started concentrating on the most central part of Clark's being.

It didn't take much to get Clark to come. He warned Lex of the impending eruption with a breathless gasp. Lex pulled back and jerked him the rest of the way to completion with a tight hand. Then finally, when Clark had finished, bent down and swiped his tongue across the glistening tip of Clark's dick. Then again, as if testing the flavor. He looked up with a faint smile while Clark sprawled bonelessly.

Lex moved up to lie beside him, wriggling a little to get his half mast pants up enough to be more comfortable. Clark didn't bother with his. Just lay there, blissfully happy, with Lex pressed up against him.

Lex's fingers absently trailed down the ridge of his abs. It tickled a little, and it never ceased to amaze Clark that a bullet could bounce off his skin, but the lightest touch could still make his it pimple. He was eternally grateful for it.

"After you graduate and get into MET U. I want you to move in here." Lex said in that 'this is serious, so pay attention' tone of voice he got when he was talking about important things.

Clark blinked at him, wide-eyed, breathless. "Really? To live? With you?"

"No, I was thinking of living in my office and giving you the place to yourself," Lex said sarcastically, then gave Clark a narrow eyed look and clarified. "Yes, with me."

Clark grinned. "God, Lex. That would be great. It would be more than great - - it would be - -" He couldn't even come up with words to express how the idea made him feel. Warm and tingly and just filled to overflowing with love for Lex. All his extremities sort of vibrated from sheer want of him.

"Then we can have sex. Lots and lots of sex."

"You have a one track mind," Lex observed dryly, but there was a look in his eyes that said that he was expanding on the idea inside his head.

And duh, seventeen. What did he expect? Sex was sort of like the center of his universe at the moment. And besides, he was closer now to eighteen than seventeen. And Eighteen was supposed to be that magic moment when his parents stopped considering him too naïve and young to be engaging in serious sexual activity. Right.

"You know, seventeen is really sort of an arbitrary number," he commented.

Lex lifted a brow. "Is it?"

"I mean my parents just sort of assumed how old I was when they found me and picked a birthday date. I might be a hundred, for all he we know."

Lex's mouth twitched. "This is true."

"And technically, even if we were to stick by that birthday, I'm closer to eighteen than seventeen."

"First rule of negotiations. Don't show all your cards in one hand. You should have stuck with your original line of reasoning before getting desperate and throwing in a second alternative. You were swaying me with the arbitrary number argument."

"So my lack of bargaining skills are going to keep us from having sex sex, until my arbitrary birthday in March?"

Lex's eyes glinted amusement. He took an inordinate amount of enjoyment from ruffling Clark's feathers. Clark took a similar delight in rolling him onto his back and kissing him until he was breathless.

He laughed when Clark pulled back, and leaned over him. Relaxed with Clark's weight pressing him down into the leather. Almost back to what he had been, before his life had been ripped apart. Better maybe. Stronger almost in some things. More - - and Clark hesitated at the word - - honest, than he had been. Maybe even, strangely enough, more trusting. Like surviving had tempered something in him. Like the death of his father had released him from a lifetime of always expecting the worst from people. Always expecting that knife in the back, even from friends. Especially from friends. Or maybe, if Clark were feeling a touch narcissistic, that hadn't been so much Lionel Luthor's death, as Clark's friendship.

"Tell you what," Lex said, nails scraping up Clark's ribs and around to his back, leaving little sensory trails of pleasure in their wake. "Come over this weekend when you're not cutting class and present your case. We'll see what comes of it."

Clark beamed, feeling pretty secure in his ability to argue his way into sex if Lex was willing to put the issue on the table.

Life was good.

The End

Obsessions Chapter 20 of 21

If I've been remiss updating - - I've been distracted. I'm writing again - (A new original fantasy that I'm very excited about) - and that always tends to completely swallow my spare attention. Sorry.

Anyway, we're down to the finish line in this one. One more chapter to go.

Here's chapter 20 of Obsessions.



Chapter twenty

Fall merged with winter. It was a cold one, and Metropolis with her forests of concrete and glass and steel had always been a frigid mistress during the colder months.

Lex considered taking over his father's penthouse suite, the entire top floor of the Mulhoney building in uptown Metropolis. With its own private gym and its onsite kitchen staff, and private security to keep the world at bay, a man could find complete privacy if he wanted. But he was trying to find some sort of solid footing in the world, and closeting himself in amidst the trappings of secluded wealth was not the path to that goal.

So he returned to his own apartment. Not quite so large, not quite as prestigious in locale as the Mulhoney address, but it was familiar and it was filled with his things and not his father's. It would do for the present. He had his realtor on the prowl for a new address. He had a list of needs, but it was really just a matter of what struck his fancy.

Clark was his during the weekends. There had been a big brawl between Clark and his parents over school night treks to the city, which with Lex's support - - after a call from Martha Kent - - Clark's parents had won. Clark got Friday afternoons, and Saturday till curfew, and Sunday during the day. Of course, if they knew what they did during a good deal of those hours, even that time would have been curtailed.

Lex's couch saw more foreplay in a month than it had during the entire time he'd had the apartment. Which was not to say Lex hadn't been shamefully active, sexually, it was simply that 'making out' had seemed such a waste of time and he'd tended to go straight for the kill.

He was getting better. He was able to relax and go with it when Clark got overzealous and pressed him down into the couch leather. Clark's hands on his skin under his clothing began to be something he could enjoy again. He had issues about being naked. He couldn't help it. He could get as far as shedding his shirt with Clark, but when it came down to his pants and being fully exposed - - his mind would get in the way. He'd flash back to the basement and weeks of forced nudity and he'd balk.

He'd started getting the healthy arrival of morning wood again. And even with Clark, when he was wrapped up in the feel of Clark's mouth, the texture of his skin, he'd find himself getting hard, and feeling it - -but it tended to be sporadic and as soon as he noticed it, or Clark's hand brushed against him, he'd soften.

It was a start. And Clark didn't mind. Clark assured him of that, and backed it up with demonstrations. He made sure Clark, who had no such trouble with spontaneous erections, never left unfulfilled. He'd gotten hand jobs down to a fine art. He could make Clark come through his jeans if he didn't mind having to start up the laundry and wash off the evidence before he sent Clark home. Clark touching him below the belt, was still an issue.

Come January, he closed up the apartment and headed to Indiana and the completion of his degree. Getting into a top tier school on the fly for make up credits proved not so difficult a thing if one had the right connections and the right resources to back up the request. Notre Dame got a new set of bleachers, LuthorCorp got a nice tax write off, and Lex got winter enrollment in a much-lauded school of higher learning.

Two states away, he didn't have quite the name recognition as he did in Kansas. Even deceased, people still connected Lionel Luthor's name to LuthorCorp, not Lex's. Lex's had had more write ups in gossip rags than business journals. He'd been one of those notorious children of obscene wealth that spent his life on the party circuit - - until he wasn't. If you discounted the kidnapping and the myriad speculation surrounding it, it had been close to two years since Lex Luthor had created a scandal. He was old news at twenty-two.

He found, that when resentment and rebelling against parental authority wasn't at issue, he rather liked school. He enjoyed absorbing new material. He enjoyed sitting through lectures, and competing with himself as well as others. Thesis projects and the proving of skill through written tests actually appealed to him.

Clark thought he was insane. Looking forward to tests, as far as Clark was concerned was sheer idiocy. But it was March and Clark was newly seventeen - - Lex had managed to slip that new and very expensive telescope he'd promised past Jonathan Kent in the guise of a birthday present - - and Lex had better things to do than argue the point. Their time had been cut to Saturdays. A great deal of that due to the fact that Lex's class load was considerably heavier than Clark's.

But Clark had a phone, which he'd bought himself this time, and there was something to the adage of absence and fond hearts, which made Saturdays very nice days indeed.

By the time the semester rolled around to an end, Lex had gotten over most of his crowd issues. He didn't start when someone walked up on him unannounced, or break out into cold sweats in the midst of a crowd. Army fatigues and military crew cuts still made something inside him curl up, but he recognized it for what it was and strove to overcome it.

He chose not to participate in the graduation ceremony, it seemed pointless since he'd only attended the one semester, and received his diploma of completion privately. Which left nothing to do but go back to Metropolis and LuthorCorp, which had been operating diligently and profitably without him or any Luthor at the helm for half a year.

He quietly moved into Lionel's corner office. Had his father's things removed and his own style of furnishing brought in. He didn't attempt to make any major moves on the board. The present CEO and his staff were operating efficiently enough that Lex felt no need to disrupt the day-to-day operations of the company. He simply put himself into the mix, observing, going through company doctrines and files. Delving into the plethora of under the table projects that his father had been engaged in. There were quite a few that had little basis in legality. Quite a few that were blatantly criminal.

Lionel had been studying meteor rock since almost the day it had fallen from the sky, all those years ago. Its effect on living organisms, its usage in everything from farming to the accelerated growth of clones. Things that put the legitimate research Lex had condoned with Hamilton before he'd gone off the deep end into stark raving lunacy, to shame. His father had had files on every case of meteor related mutation that had ever been reported in or around Smallville and a great deal that had never seen the light of day. He had a file on Clark. Nothing that hinted that he'd known of his alien origins, but disturbing nonetheless that he'd been looking into him.

More disturbing still, was that he'd had a file on Lex. One of the very first of his meteor related records. There was a great deal of his childhood that Lex only recalled in patches, but apparently he had been, before the meteor shower that had taken his body hair, a sickly child. Asthma, allergies, other issues he had no memory of having and all of them gone within weeks of his exposure. That he'd more or less known - - it was the other - - trials - - of his enhanced immune system that made him pour a tumbler of scotch, sit behind his desk and shake, so angry at his father, he could barely read the words in the file.

He'd been exposed to things - - very dangerous things. He'd had things done to him. There were dates and there were explanations of procedures performed, and all of it was one big blank in his memory. One big empty chunk of his life between the age of 9 and 13. Whether he'd blocked it out, or something had been used to eradicate the memories - - well, it was a big file, and if he could get over the nausea that wanted to swell, he could probably read the finer details and find out.

What he really wanted to do was shred the file in its entirety then go find someplace dark and drink until he passed out. That his father had whored him out for a profit, when he was seventeen and running wild was infuriating - - this, this file of things done to him without his knowledge and beyond his control when he'd been young enough to look to Lionel for protection - - it shook him to the core. It shook him to the core that his mother had been alive for a few of those years and hadn't stopped it.

What he did instead was pick up the phone and make a call. He'd been meaning to have the safe in his father's office opened. If the combination had been written down somewhere, Lex had yet to find it. At the moment, ripping the thing out of the wall was an acceptable option.

He told the assistant, who didn't know quite what to do with him yet, to get whoever she needed to get, to pay them whatever they needed paying to get here now, and crack the bastard before end of business.

She had experts there within the hour and Lex sat there and nursed a scotch, staring with narrow eyed intent as they drilled into the locking mechanism. It was better than sitting there dwelling on being ten and having no one that cared enough about his welfare to put a stop to something distinctly counter to it. He thought, somewhere along the line, in some former life perhaps, he must have offended something with a great deal of influence with karma.

It took them three hours to crack the safe. He banished the crew and the curious assistant once the door was liberated. Pulled the door sized thing open himself, and stood in the threshold, staring at a veritable Fort Knox of meteorite bricks. A shelf that took up the entirety of a wall lined with them. Predominantly green, with a few red, even fewer other colors mixed in.

"Jesus," he breathed. He'd acquired meteor rock for Hamilton's experiments at Cadmus himself, but he'd never seen so much of it in one place, refined and pure. God help Clark if he got within a hundred yards of the safe. He didn't know what he'd expected to find, more evidence that the old bastard had been a relentless son of a bitch, perhaps - - but he hadn't expected this.

There was a familiar object on the opposite shelf. A flat, octagonal disc. The one his team had excavated from Miller's field. The missing piece to Clark's ship.

He could only guess how it had come to be in his father's possession. He picked it up, turning it in his fingers, the tiny symbols scored into the material having so much more meaning now that he'd seen the matching ones on the ship.

He pocketed it, and started pulling out files and computer discs. Boxes containing artifacts that might have just been that, antiquities that Lionel had collected, or might be more. There was no telling.

It might take him weeks, maybe months to go through the vast amount of information here, of data that his father had not trusted on the LuthorCorp mainframe.

He shut the safe door when he'd extracted everything he wanted, uncomfortable around that much meteorite. He'd have it transported to Cadmus Labs and people he trusted with the handling of it. He wasn't blind to the benefits of exploring its properties and the advantages thereof.

He spent the next few hours, well into evening going though his father's files, until sitting in his office reading about his dealings began to make his skin crawl. Began to make him feel sullied by association. There would be no paper trail for some of the things his father had condoned, but even from what little Decker had told him - - of the tasks his father had originally hired him to perform - - Lex was able to start putting pieces together. The dark foundations upon with LuthorCorp had been built.

He went home when he couldn't stand it anymore. Called Clark. School was out for the summer, but even then, Clark wasn't allowed free access to the city - - and Lex - - whenever the fancy struck. There were rules and Clark at heart, respected the ideal of a good rule.

"Hey. I'm glad you called," Clark's voice swept away a little of the darkness.
"I opened my father's safe today," he was in no frame of mind for small talk. Pleasantries seemed beyond him.

"Yeah?" Clark said, after a pause.

"I found the disc from Miller's field."

"Really? How - - how'd he get it?"

Lex shook his head, picking up the disc from where he'd placed it on the wet bar, the metal dense and cold in his hand. "I don't know. He also had about a half ton of refined meteorite."

"God. Why?"

"Because he was conducting research. A great deal of research. And had been almost from the day of the meteor shower. I've been going through his private records - - and God, I feel like a shower isn't going to come close to washing off the filth."

There was a long pause, then. "Do you want me to come over?"

Please, God. He needed Clark so bad it ached. "No. I just needed to vent. It's been a long day."

"I'm coming over."

"Clark - - no. It's late. Come over tomorrow, pick up the disc, if you want. There were a few other things that he had that you might want to take a look at that I'll bring home."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Come over tomorrow. We'll get lunch." And he could push Clark down and run his hands over his skin and find a little much needed purity.

Clark took a breath, a deep enough one that Lex heard it across the line. "Okay. See you then."


Lex wanted to be there when they tried the disc in the ship again. Clark agreed. Though his parents weren't quite so certain they wanted to tempt the ship into activation again and have it go off the preverbal deep end like it had the last time the disc had been fitted into its matching slot.

Lex offered to find a place a bit more secure than a root cellar to undertake the action, but the Kent's were hesitant, no small bit afraid of exploring Clark's alien legacy. Clark was a little uncertain himself, anxious maybe of what he'd discover.

As much as Lex would have liked to see the ship power up - - if it were still even capable of it - - he didn't push. It was Clark's decision and he'd come to it in his own time and Lex would be there to witness it. He'd been conducting a little research himself, tracking the trajectory of the meteor shower that had brought Clark to earth, sitting up with Clark far enough out from the city that the stars were bright in the night sky and pinpointing matching possibilities to his computer simulations. They had a dozen theories between them of why Clark had been sent. Of all the possible reasons a child might be abandoned to a foreign world. Clark admitted that he'd never had anyone - - his parents not willing to dwell, Pete too uncomfortable with the whole concept - - willing to sit and speculate for hours over all the myriad possibilities.

Spectacularly remarkable subject matter aside, Lex had never had anyone he'd been interested enough in talking with, to sit for hours and simply speculate. Never had anyone he trusted enough to share the fact that talk of star spanning civilizations and alien motivations was far more interesting than captaining a business, acquiring companies and building stock values.

There was an incident outside Smallville that made national news. A hostage situation involving an oil truck and a hijacked bus on a bridge with a group of kids on their way to summer camp for troubled teens. There had been an explosion and the miraculous escape of the endangered teens before the bridge could collapse. The news failed to mention the unusual powers of the teen hostage taker and Clark had been too fast for any eyewitnesses to identify. Still, national news. Lex didn't like the focus of the media, even as transitory as that focus could be, anywhere near Smallville and Clark.

Clark came over the next day, looking pleased with himself.

"Did you see the news?"

"I did."

It was Saturday, and the heat had broken via a low pressure system that had brought a night's worth of summer thunderstorms. The city outside Lex's balcony looked clean and sparkling from the thorough drenching.

"No one on the bus saw you?"

Clark rolled his eyes. "You sound like my dad. That was the first thing he asked, too. No. No one saw me do anything. I'm careful, Lex."

God, he sounded like Jonathan Kent. When had that happened?

After lunch, which they took at a deli down the street from Lex's building, they ended up, as they ended up most days Clark was over, on Lex's couch, some game on the TV that neither one of them paid much attention to.

Clark's hands on his shoulders kneaded away most conscious thought. Clark's mouth moving across the back of his skull, the shell of his ear made his nipples hard. Clark had shed his shirt somewhere along the way to this point, and Lex's had been unbuttoned. He'd already washed the residue of Clark's completion from his hand and off Clark's belly.

"Lex," Clark said, thumbs gently pressing into the muscles at the base of Lex's neck. "I want to get naked with you."

Lex blinked away the lethargy. Considering. The idea in and of itself didn't make him shrink. It had become habit to avoid it and any complications it might bring.

"Getting naked leads to things we've both made promises not to engage in yet." It was a perfectly legitimate excuse. He'd never thought he'd be making it and wanting to believe it, a year ago.

"I'm seventeen. Do you know what I did these last two weeks alone? Not discounting the bus, and the exploding tanker, I fought off two escaped convicts suped up on meteorite dust, and pulled a man and his daughter out of a head on collision out on route 16. The other driver wasn't so lucky. I think I can be naked with my boyfriend and not fall to pieces. Question is - - can you?"

He pushed Lex forward just enough that they could look at each other. Lex sat there, heart beginning to beat just a little faster, and stared into Clark's earnest green eyes. "It's not that simple - -"

"I know that," Clark said. "But, we haven't tried in a long time, and things have been going good. Lex, do you trust me?"

He took a breath. "I trust you. You know I trust you."

"I know you trust me up here," Clark tapped his own temple. "I think your body's still having doubts. I think maybe it just needs to relearn how to be touched and how to trust."

"You think that, do you? Don't tell me you've been doing more reading?"

Clark's mouth quirked. He shrugged. "A little. Listen, you don't have to do anything, but unless you start pushing things a little, how are you going to make progress? And this stuff I was reading - - it isn't sex - - there's no sex - -its tantric healing."

"Tantric - -? God, you're reading the Kama Sutra?"

"No," Clark denied, a little disgruntled. "I was reading about how to help people heal from sexual trauma and there was this link - -and the more I read, the more it made sense. Lex I want to help you. I want you to do more than help me get off. I want to be able to touch you - -everywhere - - and not have you shut down on me. Please."

"No." It was his reflexive response to pressure. It came out sharp and cold.

Clark blinked at him, then slowly nodded. "Okay. I understand."

But really, Lex thought Clark might be getting to that point where he didn't anymore. And what then? Maybe Lex had been using his understanding with Martha Kent as an excuse not to push himself. Maybe he'd let breaks heal without setting the underlying bone of the issue.

Clark turned his gaze to the game on the big screen, but his attention seemed forced. This was a reasonable request of Clark's. It wasn't asking too much for him to gather his courage and try.

"All right."

Clark looked at him. Big eyes, wide with the appreciation of what it took for Lex to agree. Clark switched the television off and rose, holding out a hand.

"Bedroom, okay?"

Lex took his hand and let him draw him towards the master suite. Kissed him in the doorway, a soft nuzzling of lips, the bare graze of his fingertips across Lex's jaw.

"Breathe," Clark whispered.

"I am breathing," Lex said against the side of his mouth.

"You're not. Trust me."

Lex drew in a deep breath. Another consciously deep lungful of air that helped get him out of the tangle of his own mental processes.

"Close your eyes."

He did it, and Clark stepped away. There was a flutter, the faint smell of scented candles. He opened his eyes, his patience for the unknown a tenuous thing at the best of times. The room had gone dark, the drawn curtains shutting out the afternoon sun, every candle he owned, and some he was relatively certain he didn't, lit and sitting around the room.

He gave Clark, who was back to standing before him, a look.

"Mood lighting," Clark said with a half embarrassed shrug, eyes never leaving his. Hands sliding up his arms, down again, drawing the unbuttoned shirt off his shoulders. Lex shrugged it off, let it drop.

Clark's hands on his skin were large, warm, their passage firm enough to qualify almost as a sort of massage. They slid down his back, around his hips, and stopped at the button of his pants. Clark dipped his head a little, looking for consent. It was either give it or flee, and Lex was tired of fleeing.

He nodded, and Clark unfastened his pants, drew down slacks and boxer briefs in one smooth motion. He shivered once, cool air touching him all over. But it wasn't really the temperature. It was him exposed, and Clark exposed and he didn't recall Clark getting naked.

Clark stepped into him, warm body, soft genitals, hands loose on his arms. "This isn't about anything but you. You want to stop, we stop."

Lex stood there an endless moment, trying to interpret the feelings racing through him. Whether the feel of Clark's dangling genitalia against his own made him feel anticipation or fear. Sometimes it was hard to distinguish between the two.

He leaned into Clark, breathing his scent. Clark sighed, arms sliding around to his back. "C'mon."

Lex settled back into the pillows, and Clark followed him, easing down beside him, naked thigh to naked thigh. He turned so he could look Lex in the eye. Clark had never been as good as he was at keeping that direct eye contact, maybe it had been all the lies and the fact that Clark hated uttering them. He was unflinching now, big green orbs boring into Lex's own. Liquid and focused and promising things Lex could believe in if he just let himself.

"Turn over, on your stomach." Clark didn't urge him, just asked it. It took an effort regardless, putting his naked back to another person. He folded his arms under the pillow and felt Clark shift, sitting up, swinging a leg over and straddling his thighs.

Lex shut his eyes a moment, a flash of weight on his back making his stomach clench.

"Breathe," Clark prompted, soft voice, gentle hands on his sides reminding him that this was the here and now. Warm liquid drizzled his back, slick and fragrant when Clark laid hands upon it, smoothing into his skin. Fingers dug into his shoulders, kneading out the tension, thumbs working the back of his neck, easing their way down the line of his spine one vertebrae at a time.

Clark was ridiculously good at massage, a fact Lex had already discovered. They just hadn't experimented with the full body sort. Lex shut his eyes and relaxed into it, feeling his body loosen up a muscle at a time. By the time Clark reached his ass, he was too deep into the experience to care. Clark's thumbs pressing into his lower back were almost enough to make him hard. It was one of his tension spots, that and the back of his neck. Clark seemed to know, and spent a good deal of time in those areas.

When he eased him over onto his back, his body felt very much like there was jelly under his skin instead of solid muscle and bone. Clark nudged his legs apart, settling between his thighs, poured more oil from the little bottle Lex recognized now as one he kept in his night table drawer, onto his belly and smoothed it out. Slid his hands down his hips to his legs, down to his calves, kneading the big muscles, back up to his thighs, and then down again, long supple movements, fingers working out the tension from the Achilles tendon up. It was good enough to qualify as a sleepy sort of sexual.

Warm, slick hands touched his testicles. He drew a breath, lethargy trembling, feeling tension knot up in his stomach, his balls wanting to draw in on themselves, reflexive expectation of something happening they didn't want.

"Breathe," Clark said softly enough that it was hardly more than a whisper. One big hand slid up to Lex's naked pubic bone, splayed there, warm and solid, while the other rolled his nuts gently.

He let out a long exhalation of air, the pressure slowly bleeding out, testicles loosening in their sack as they realized what Clark was doing was pleasurable. And Clark kept at it, concentrating on everything but his cock. The insides of his thighs, the juncture of thigh and torso, the swath of sensitive skin between anus and balls. The look of concentration on his face was almost mesmerizing. As Lex were some complex thing he was trying to figure out the workings of.

He hardened as Clark's fingers pressed his perineum, sensation so intense it was almost painful.

He breathed something under his breath, a curse maybe, or a prayer and Clark backed off, sliding his hands to his thighs, kneading flesh and muscle until Lex began to sink into that lazy euphoria again.

He had softened when Clark finally shifted his attention to his cock. He circled the base with one hand, pulling up and off, then used the other and repeated the motion. It was different than jerking off, long measured strokes that resonated with half the nerve endings in his body, designed more to massage than to stimulate.

He shut his eyes and tried to sink into the pillows when Clark changed direction, stroking from the tip down to the base. He was hard again. It had been coming and going sporadically, but this last time neither mind or body were focusing on anything other than the sensation of Clark's hand. His balls tightened, suddenly desperately eager to expel.

"Don't come yet," Clark suggested seriously, working on the tip of his penis with slick, warm fingers.

Lex almost laughed. After six months of not, he wasn't sure avoiding it now that his balls were tightening, was an option. But Clark backed off, hands sliding to other places, and eventually, with the lack of attention, the pressure eased. Clark encircled him again, big hands, meticulous focus and Lex sank into it. Just went with it, and drifted, letting Clark control the flow.

"I'm going to slip a finger inside," Clark said solemnly. "And touch the sacred spot."

"Sacred spot. You have been reading the Kama Sutra," Lex murmured, feeling faintly like he'd taken a few good inhalations of really good weed. "I thought you didn't want me coming."

Clark didn't answer. One hand continued that upwards stroking motion on his cock, a finger of his other circled him, pushed in, slick and oily.





It wasn't until that stretch of entry, when he felt Clark's big finger slide into him up to the first digit that something nasty and dark crept up on him. Vision, scent, feel of Decker leaning between his legs that first time, penetrating him with a finger. A hundred other times - - opening him up - - and he hadn't been able to stop it. Hadn't been able shut him out. The son of a bitch was dead for half a year and still he tormented him.

He shut his eyes, breath going choppy. Things gearing up inside that might take over if he let them. If he didn't practice his breathing technique and ease the tension out with the spent air in his lungs. Focus on Clark's face. Just Clark's face, his lips, dark and full, the brush of his lashes, the way his hair fell across his forehead, silky and black.

Clark crooked his finger, pressing his prostate, stroking it in time with the motion of his other hand on Lex's cock and sensation exploded outward. Bright, blinding, pure feeling that whited out those Decker memories and jerked him directly into his present body and Clark's hands on all the right places.

Clark tapped him from the inside, fingertip beating out a tempo, his other hand motionless on Lex's cock, both their attention converged directly on Clark's finger on that spot. Pleasure. Unbearable, undiluted pleasure, when the mind was in agreement with the body. It felt like an eternity since he'd felt the rush of it.

He'd been in a bubble of denial for so damned long, afraid to feel this, hating himself for all the things that Decker had made him do in that basement. Afraid to touch himself or be touched because he couldn't shake those memories. Well, fuck Decker. Because he wasn't denying himself this and giving the man one more power over him.

He threw an arm over his eyes, hiding the burning wetness leeching out from beneath his lashes. Arched up, all those muscles Clark had loosened clenching with the building pressure.

It was blinding when it came, so much unrealized tension built up over the last half year that his body almost didn't know how to deal with the release. He might even have blacked out during the apex of it, too much sensation after hardly feeling any at all.

He came back to dizzy awareness with Clark's hands stroking his thighs, his belly, and the realization that the faint choking sobs he was hearing were coming from him. He shuddered with it, the culmination of too many internalized things bursting free in one setting.

Clark didn't say anything. Just knelt there, rubbing Lex's twitching skin, while Lex pressed arms across his face and had an emotional breakdown.

It was a good one though, if such things could be labeled good. Liberating. Everything felt lighter, like the first time he'd snapped and raged at Clark and then started telling him horror stories. It felt like one more piece of his puzzle fitting back into its allotted place.

When he stopped shaking, Clark crawled up and lay down next to him, dark head on his shoulder, arm across his ribs. Clark was better at prolonged silences than Lex. Clark was better at embracing the peace of a moment and going with it.

"So you read about that, did you?" His voice sounded a little shaky.

"Um hum," Clark murmured into his chest.

Lex stroked Clark's hair, shut his eyes and drifted.

Came awake by degrees, warm under sheets, with Clark pressed against him, softly saying his name.

"Lex? Lex, we overslept. I've gotta get home."

He blinked, turning his head to stare at the bedside clock. Past eleven. The curtains were drawn on night now, instead of afternoon.

"Okay." He felt muddled. Half awake.

"I wish I could sleep over," Clark pressed closer, not making any move to leave.

"Umm. Eventually." He wondered how open the Kent's would be to the idea of a sleepover. It would be almost comical suggesting the idea to Jonathan.

Clark sighed, reluctantly slid out from between the sheets, taking his comfortable warmth with him. He either used his speed, or Lex fell back into a doze, because a moment later he was dressed and leaning down to say goodbye against the side of Lex's mouth.

He suspected the speed, because when he rolled into the spot Clark had been, the sheets were still warm. He burrowed into the pillow, fresh with Clark's scent and went back to sleep.


To be continued . . .

obsessions Chapter 19

Boy, I didn't realize how slack I'd been in updating this. Sorry for the long delay. RL just got away from me.

Anyway, here's part 19 of Obsessions.



Chapter nineteen
Never in all his days, would Jonathan Kent have figured he'd have turned a blind eye to his son cuddling - - doing something damned close to cuddling - - because you didn't sit that close to someone you weren't planning on laying hands on - - with another man. With Lex Luthor. Who was another one of those things Jonathan never would have figured.

He'd wanted to beat the damned smug bastard to a pulp not that long ago, and here he was welcoming him into his house. Albeit grudgingly, and after a lot of convincing from Martha, who'd taken it into her head somewhere along the way that Lex Luthor needed her mothering. Of course, it was a lot harder to hate him, after what he'd risked for Clark. What he'd done to save Martha's life in that damned house Jonathan wished had never been brought to Smallville, stone by stone, all those years ago. Hard to hate a man - - a young man - - who'd gone through a hell that sullied the mind just thinking about it. The burned remnants of those leather cuffs and that man-sized dog collar were still out back in a metal drum along with the rest of the trash. And Jonathan had stood there, watching them burn that day, feeling righteously angry on behalf of a kid he'd never thought he'd feel anything but distrust for.

It still didn't mean Jonathan wanted him being intimate with his son. Didn't mean he wanted Clark to want to be intimate with another man, but there wasn't much he could do about it. It wasn't like he could tell Clark how to feel or who to feel it about, no matter how much he wanted to.

He kept reminding himself of that. Kept reminding himself that Clark was a smart boy. A good boy, that knew right from wrong. Martha had spent no few nights reminding him of that early on, when it had first sunk in that it hadn't just been the red meteorite that had twisted Clark's thinking, but a genuine attraction to another man. When all he'd been able to think about was the devastating knowledge that his son might be gay.

He still wanted to lay the blame of that on Lex. Lex somehow twisting up Clark's thinking. Martha had scolded him for that notion, giving him the sort of look a woman might give a man that had suggested something patently ridiculous, when he'd brought it up. But he still held to the notion that if it were possible to talk a body into doing something intrinsically opposite to its nature, Lex Luthor would have been slick enough to do it.

Not so slick now, though. Not even close to having the confidence he'd had before. Lex had always come at you with hand extended and that disconcerting direct eye contact, that aura of absolute assurance when he was trying to convince you of something that your better judgment warned against. There was no immediate offered hand now. And when he met your eyes it was almost like he had to force himself to do it and to hold the contact. Like the self-assurance had been beaten out of him. He wasn't flinching away though, not like that first day after Clark had gotten him out. Jonathan supposed there were certain hurts that would take a long time healing.

It still didn't mean he'd trust either one of them as far as he could throw them. Martha said trust Clark to do the right thing. She said she'd had a conversation with Lex. But Martha had never been a young man and he was damned sure she didn't have the insight he did, on just how powerful hormones were when you were young and male. Responsible Clark might be, but the sex drive was a powerful thing. And as far as Lex went - - well, Jonathan figured Lex had damned little practice with control, if half the rumors he'd heard were true.

Which meant, the only thing that let him walk out of that barn and leave the two of them up there together, was Martha's very legitimate argument that chances were Lex was in no place mentally after his ordeal, to engage in sexual activity.

Jonathan could buy that. Hell, after what he'd seen - - the marks on Lex's body that day, the bruising and the striping on his genitalia, like a Goddamned strap had been taken to him - - he hadn't been able to perform his husbandly duties for a week, without the image of it coming back and shriveling up any spark of sexual interest.

And they had come down, not too long after - - damned if he was going to bed until they were both safely settled in separate rooms - - Clark looking as happy as Jonathan had ever seen him.

And next morning, Clark was up before him, eating a bowl of corn flakes when he came down to get the work that needed doing, even on holidays, finished early. The door to the guest room was still shut, and he figured it would be hours yet before they saw Lex. Which sat just fine with him. It gave him a little alone time with his son, while Martha was finishing up her shower.

"So, Lex looks like he's doing well."

Clark looked up a little warily from his cereal, ready maybe for a little parental condemnation. "Yeah. Pretty good."

"How'd that trip to the Luthor mansion go, yesterday?"

Clark shrugged, shoveling in another mouthful of cornflakes. "We didn't stay long. It was sort of freaking him out. He said the man who kidnapped him had been in the house before all this happened. Said he came in with the crews after the tornado last summer."

Jonathan drew his brows. He hadn't known that.

"He tried to play it down, but I think just being in the house was hitting him pretty hard."

"So he won't be coming back to Smallville?"

"No. He's going back to Metropolis."

Jonathan nodded, trying to hide his relief. Even for Clark, Metropolis was a damned sight further to go than a few rural routes down to the mansion. There could be parental restrictions put on visits to the city. Curfews that damned sure better be met.

"That's probably for the best."

Clark narrowed his eyes. "Right, because the further apart me and Lex are, the happier you are."

Bingo. But he didn't say that. He took a page from Martha's playbook and tried tact. "Son, there's only so much alone time I want between my teenage son and the twenty-two year old I've already caught him in a compromising position with."

Clark opened his mouth, the red meteorite excuse on the tip of his tongue. Jonathan gave him a stern look and added. "Any more than me or your mother would allow you stay out to all hours with a 'girlfriend'."

"Yeah, but you'd rather I had a girlfriend."

"Maybe I would, but if she were almost six years your senior, I'd have issues with it regardless. Even if she weren't, I damn sure wouldn't condone sex." He got that out without coloring. He'd never had the sex talk with Clark. Clark had never been serious enough about a girl - - at least one that was serious back - - to warrant it. He was pretty sure he was in over his head having it concerning another guy. He might just have to leave that particular task up to Martha.

Clark did blush. That was the difference between sixteen and forty-seven. Age gave you that little extra ability to deal with uncomfortable subjects without wanting to run and hide. Or at least the talent to hide the urge if you did.

"That irrigation pipe in the south field's been giving me trouble, again." Still, there was only so much of this sort of talk he could take in one sitting, and he thought he'd done damned well. Been damned reasonable with it. "Make sure it's not blocked up again when you fill the troughs this morning."

"Okay," Clark took a breath, maybe as relieved as he was at the change of topic. "I'll get the herd fed, then come back and start delivering the rest of mom's pies."

It was a good plan. Clark would have it done in a few hours if he took his time about it.



Clark wasted as much time as he possibly could, finishing off chores around the farm, delivering all the rest of the pies and baked goods, finishing up yet another make up paper up in the loft, and it wasn't even ten o'clock yet. Lex's tendency to sleep in was putting a serious crimp in Clark's plans.

When he wondered into the kitchen around quarter to ten, his mom was just taking the turkey out of the brine solution she'd had it soaking in. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and asked him to dump the brine, then when he'd brought the big container back in, she nodded in the direction of the stairs.

"I heard the shower cut off a few minutes ago, so I imagine he'll be down soon."

He listened himself for the sounds of life upstairs, and heard the subtle noises of a body in motion. He reached for a cookie and she gave him a warning look. If she'd had free hands she have swatted his hand.

About ten minutes later, Lex came downstairs, light casual sweater, black slacks, smelling faintly of Dial and whatever it was about Lex that always made something in Clark stand up and take notice, even before he'd admitted that it was happening.

"Coffee, Lex?" His mom asked, both her hands immersed inside the turkey.

"Thank you. Good morning." He gave Clark a faint smile and went for the half full coffee pot.

"Breakfast is cold this morning. Clark can show you the cereal."

"Thank you, I'm fine." Lex sipped black, sugared coffee, eying Clark over the lip of the cup.

"Dinner won't be on the table till four. You'll want something to tide you over. You've lost too much weight."

Clark rolled his eyes at the total 'momness' of that statement, even if it was true. Lex got that sort of tolerant, forced-amused look in his eyes he got when he was putting up with something for the sake of good manners. He took a cookie from the same trey Clark had snatched his.

Mom pursed her lips and said. "Something healthy."

Clark plucked a pair of apples from the bowl on the kitchen table, and grinned at Lex. "C'mon, I've got something to show you."

He tossed one of the apples to Lex on the way down the porch. Lex caught it one handed and the amusement in his eyes turned genuine. "How long have you been up?"

"Oh, since the crack of dawn. Got all my chores done while you were lazing away in bed. Fed the cows, slopped the hogs, dug a ball of sludge the size of your head out of the south irrigation system. It was great.'

"See, and here I thought I'd missed something, but come to find out, you've given me excellent examples of why not to own a farm."

"I've pretty much convinced myself." Clark headed to the root cellar, slid back the latch and hauled the doors open. Dust floated up as light flooded the dark spaces.

"Well," Clark ducked his head under the beam supporting the roof over the wooden steps and moved down to the dirt floor. "Here it is."

He waited till Lex followed him down, before pulling the tarp off the ship in the back corner. The light from outside didn't quite reach this far, so there were a lot of shadows even during the day. Not enough to hide what was under the tarp.

Lex didn't say a thing, just walked around it the first time without touching, eyes taking in every detail of the ship. It was a little dusty from being down here so long, but the dust didn't hide the sheen of the ship's skin. Maybe seven foot long total, egg shaped main body, with a darker diamond shaped 'fin' flaring out from the center. Dormant and dead like always. It always gave Clark the shivers when he came down here and stayed with it too long, imaging all the things it represented.

"It's the same material," Lex said softly, finally lying fingers on the surface of the dome. He ran them across the edge, making marks in the dust coating. Came to the octagonal shape in metal and traced the outline. "It's the same material as the disc - -"

He trailed off abruptly, looking up at Clark from the other side of the ship. "The octagonal disc we found in Miller's field? It's part of this ship."

"Yeah."

"Did you take it?"

"No. Nixon did."

Lex turned that over, eyes narrowing. "But you lied to my face about it."

"I know." Clark took a breath. "I'm sorry. I didn't think I had a choice."

Lex stared at him a moment longer, then looked back at the ship. "You were - -what, three or four - - when you landed here?"

Clark shrugged. "I guess."

"Whoever sent you had to have had a pretty good estimation of how long the trip would be - - a few more years and this ship wouldn't have held you. Either that or it employed some sort of suspended animation that would have kept you in stasis indefinitely if you hadn't found a planet that could support you. God, Clark, you don't have any clue where you came from? No information with the ship?"

"There wasn't a like an owner's manual or anything," Clark said, feeling just a tad defensive. "At least not that I can read. There are some symbols on the inside - -"

"You can open it?"

"Sometimes. It doesn't always cooperate." He went over and grazed his fingers along the edge, but the ship just stayed quiet and still, not in the mood to show off.

"It went crazy during the tornado last summer. My mom was down here when it just came to life - - first time ever - - and took off like a bat out of hell. It crashed in a field about ten miles from here. Pete found it. It hasn't made a peep since then."

"So it still has power?"

"Apparently. I don't know what set it off."

"Clark, keeping this down in your root cellar is just - - wasteful. There are things we could learn - -"

"Right and the more people who know about it, the more people there are to ask questions about who was inside it when it landed. I really, really don't want to end up in a lab somewhere."

Lex stared at him, eyes inky blue in the shadows, turning that over in his head, turning a lot of things over if Clark were any judge, and he liked to think he was.

"I wouldn't let that happen," he said finally.

"Could you stop it, if say, the government found out and decided better safe than sorry? Are you up to that fight, Lex?"

Lex tightened his jaw. "You've thought this through."

"Yeah. It used to keep me up at night. Why do you think we were so adamant about keeping the secret?"

"To protect you. I get that. But, God, there are so many questions. And the answers might be right here."

"And they might not be. It might be just a hunk of metal. Maybe even a dead one. That last flight might have expended the rest of its juice."

Lex stared at him for a long moment, then slowly nodded. "All right. I'll respect you wanting this thing right where it is. But one day the need for answers is going to start eating at you and this might be the only clue you have to your heritage."

"I know. God, I know. When I start looking, I'll get you to help me find those answers. But right now, all I want to do is survive this year with everybody I love in one piece and me not flunking out of school. Don't we both sort of have enough to deal with, without worrying about this?"

Lex stood there for a moment, fingertips on the edge of the ship, face half in shadows. Finally his mouth curved in a grudging smile and he shrugged. "Fair enough."

He moved around to the front of the ship, where Clark was, shook his head with faint disgust. "All this time and you've had it in the root cellar, behind a door that doesn't even have a lock."

"Yeah, the security around here isn't high tech."

Lex snorted.

"Do you wonder what you were sent here for?"

"All the time." Clark leaned against the edge of the ship, took a bite of apple. Wiped at the dribble of juice that ran down the side of his mouth. "I learned the names of pretty much all the constellations, figuring I had to be from one of them."

"It's a big galaxy." Lex moved around to stand in front of him. Lifted a thumb to brush away the remnants of apple juice Clark had missed. Clark swallowed a big lump, and shifted his thighs to allow better access.

"I'll buy you a better telescope. One you can use to actually stargaze."

Clark grinned. Lex leaned in and kissed him. Licked the flavor off his lips and Clark closed his eyes and curled his fingers around the edge of the ship fin, letting Lex have his way. He didn't know how, the moment Lex was ready to engage in it, he was supposed to not have sex, because all it took was a touch from Lex and Clark's whole body was thrumming.

Lex shifted closer, right up between Clark's legs, his hands in Clark's hair like he couldn't get enough of the feel of it.

"You know how my dad feels about you buying me gifts," Clark gasped, bracing his feet on the hard packed dirt floor, as Lex leaned into him.

"Umm. I'm working on ways to maneuver around him. God, you taste good."

He slid his hands down Clark's neck to his arms, fingers stroking his biceps, the hollow on the inside of his elbow. It was enough to make Clark moan and thrust a little helplessly, and Lex couldn't have not felt his erection, because it was right there, clear as day. He figured with anything other than his ship, his fingers would have left imprints from the death grip he was practicing on it.

Lex blew out a breath against the side of Clark's mouth, leaned back a little, giving Clark a wry look. He looked further down to the bulge in Clark's jeans, then put a little practical distance between him and it. It was hard to tell if he'd had issues with it or not, when he was wearing his bland expression.

He ran a thumb across Clark's lips once before he stepped out from between Clark's legs. "I think we might want to take a moment before we go back outside. Just in case."

Clark rolled his eyes and thought about suggesting Lex go ahead on out, since he didn't have anything tenting his pants, and give Clark five minutes to take care of the problem alone. It wouldn't take long, but then he'd have to go inside and change and come up with an explanation why there was a need. He took a breath and thought unsexy thoughts.

When he was presentable, he threw the tarp back over the ship and they headed back outside.


Clark wanted to go for a walk. With very little else to do on a farm, and five hours to kill till dinner, Lex was game. And he needed a little span of companionable silence to get over the curl of panic his own actions had spurred. Not a huge attack of nerves, just the sudden intrusion of his mind into the mix, getting squarely in the way of any enjoyment he'd been experiencing. And gratifyingly enough, he had been enjoying that.

He'd needed to find out whether he could just take that step and find simple pleasure in touching someone that mattered without having to work himself up to it. And he had. Wholeheartedly, up until the point that Clark's erection pressing against him snared his attention and wouldn't let it go, spurring a domino effect of thoughts that ended up killing any desire to carry on with the experiment.

So they walked, down the dirt road leading through the pastures and fields behind the house, towards the distant woods beyond. It was a nice day, the weather was cool, there were cows looking at them from beyond weathered fencing.

Clark didn't breach the silence until the house was small behind them. "Any dreams last night?"

Lex's first instinct, always his first instinct was to cover his weaknesses. But it was getting easier with Clark, to remind himself that he wasn't laying himself vulnerable to attack with painful admissions. That he was in fact, shoring something up, building bridges that led to secure ground.

"A few. Not bad," he shrugged. He'd dreamed mostly about the house. About blood on the floor, staining his bare feet. Of walking the halls with the overpowering sense of being followed and not being able to find a way out.

As his dreams went lately, it had been a breeze.

"So my dad talked to me this morning."

Lex glanced aside at him. Since he suspected Clark's father talked to him a great deal, the mention of this could only have to do with him. "And?"

"Actually, it went pretty good. He's glad you're not moving back to Smallville, he doesn't want us out at all hours of the night and he doesn't want us having sex."

Lex snorted. "Is that all?"

Clark shoulder bumped him, grinning. "The last time we 'talk' talked, he was forbidding me to see you. This is just curfew and abstinence."

"Ah, the two founding virtues of the structured teenage years. I've heard about those. I never practiced them."

It was Clark's turn to snort. Lex avoided another playful bump into the grass on the side of the trail.

"Don't resent them for caring enough about you to make an issue of it. My father's method of parenting consisted of letting me do whatever I wanted and cleaning up afterwards - -oh, ninety percent of the time - - then if it wasn't likely to hit the papers and effect stock values - - he'd occasionally snap and let me rot in jail for a few days to teach me the value of responsibility."

"Jesus, Lex. What were you doing when you were a teenager that landed you in jail on a regular basis?"

"I was inventive."

They reached the woods and a trail that looked as if it were a riding path, if the occasional old lump of horse manure were any indication. Lex had never been much for the deep woods. He liked his outside spaces manicured and bug free. He missed the Centennial Park jogging path in the city. That was as close to a nature trail as he'd ever had any inclination to travel.

Clark made walking down a shaded trail, swatting away the sporadic dive-bombing insect, tolerable. Enjoyable even, when they reached a creek with large flat rocks dotting the shore and breaking the surface of the shallow water. Clark chose to bypass the shore trail and skip from rock to rock down the creek, until eventually he reached a large span of flat rock on the opposite sun dappled bank.

"This used to be my favorite place to come and get away from everything." Clark crouched, and pointed out letters carved into the rock. CK + LL inside a lopsided heart.

Lex lifted a brow.

Clark grinned, looking embarrassed. "At the time I was thinking Lana, but it works pretty well anyway. I was twelve when I did it."
He flopped down the rest of the way, stretching out his legs. Lex sat down next to him, finding a few other obviously boy made etchings in the stone. Wondered if Clark had had to use an instrument, then remembered that he didn't have to secretly nurse those sorts of questions any longer and voiced it.

Clark held up a finger. "Nope. Just a nail. Course, it was harder back then. I wasn't nearly as strong as I am now. When I was little, I could bleed, if something cut me hard enough. Now it only happens if I'm around meteor rock."

A shiver rippled across Lex's skin, memories of Clark bleeding flashing behind his eyes. Clark lay back, flinging out his arms, staring up at the canopy of foliage above. "The one time I ran away I came out here."

Lex looked down at him. "You ran away?"

"Yeah, I was - - I dunno, eight or nine and my parents were still freaking out about me being able to control my powers. Pete had asked me to come over for a sleepover with a few other kids from school, and they wouldn't let me. It was devastating. At the time me and Pete were just getting to be friends and I was sure he'd hate me for ditching. I'd never had a friend before, so it was a pretty big deal for me. I threw a fit. Stuffed my blanket and some food in a backpack and came out here. I think my dad found me that night, and by that time, it was dark and I was pretty freaked out and ready to go home."

Lex lay back, not above using Clark's arm as a cushion against the rock, staring at Clark while Clark stared at the trees. "So what were you planning, a life in the wilderness, living off the land?"

Clark grinned, beautiful profile, beautiful fall of silky black hair that had yet to be trimmed against the pale rock beneath his head.

"That had crossed my mind. I think I had seen an old Tarzan movie that week."

"Ah, the inspiration of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I always leaned towards John Carter over Tarzan."

"Yeah, well, you're a bigger geek than I am."

Lex laughed at that, suspecting it was true, but it caught in his chest when Clark rolled his head, grinning back, and full on, he was simply too breathtaking to resist.

He leaned over and kissed him. Clark curled his arm, pulling him closer, and they spent a few minutes just casually exploring lips and mouths. The sound of the brook was a cheerful, calming ripple in the background.

Lex broke it for want of air, lay back on the stone staring up at the foliage, closer than he had been before. If his heart rate had increased, it was all Clark and no deeper cause.

"When I was young, I read everything I could get my hands on," Lex admitted. "I guess I was a total geek in that respect. My father always discouraged 'flights of fancy', but my mother had as big a need for escapism as I did. I was devouring authors like Burroughs when I was six, seven years old. Sun Tzu and Kranz and Machiavelli were pretty much my attempts to brown nose my dad."

"Yeah, well, your dad sucked."

Lex laughed, kissed him again. It wasn't as much of a stretch this time. Just a matter of turning his head and Clark's mouth was right there. Leisurely, wonderful. No pressure. No agenda. No niggling little insistence at the back of his mind to get on with it, get the deed done so he could get back to more important matters. There were no more important matters. Clark trumped them all.

Clark who was young and bright and achingly beautiful, and wanted him. Wanted him in a way that no one had ever wanted him before. Not for the money, or the influence, or the connections - - but just for him. Wanted him even now, when he was broken in ways he hadn't thought it possible to be broken. When he felt numb almost below the waist, aware of the tactile pleasure of Clark's skin, of his taste and the feel of his lips, but it couldn't seem to saturate deep enough to make a difference.

He rose up, an elbow on Clark's chest, and deepened the kiss. Seeking that spark of feeling. Clark moaned under him, one hand sliding up his back, the other drifting up to the back of his neck. His cock was pressed against Clark's hip, but nothing stirred. Clark was stirring though. It wasn't fair to Clark to keep doing this to him, though, bringing him to the brink then backing off. Clark wasn't complaining now, but he might eventually.

He thrust his tongue into Clark's mouth, steeling himself, and slid a hand down to the front of Clark's jeans. And yes, he was hard and long beneath the denim, the velvety soft tip of his cock escaping out from the top.

Lex pulled back, looking down at Clark's flushed face, reminding himself it was Clark. Clark. Not - - him.

He pressed his palm against the length of Clark's erection, rubbing, the foreskin sliding against his palm. And foreskin was nice. There was no flared, tight skinned mushroom head, nothing to remind him of Decker at all in the feel of it. And hand jobs had been the one thing Decker hadn't demanded of him. Decker had enjoyed him restrained too much to allow him the freedom to have even that small bit of control. Squeezing his hand beneath the waistband of Clark's jeans and wrapping his fingers around the girth of his cock was empowering, almost.

Making Clark whine and moan, making his cheeks flush red and his lashes flutter down while his white teeth pulled at his bottom lip - - almost did make something in Lex stir below the belt.

This was safe. This was giving Clark something Clark needed without triggering some panic button inside Lex, without treading too liberally on promises made to parental figures - - there were no body parts being inserted into any orifices - - and third base was damned acceptable, considering what they had been doing before the world had turned on its head.

Besides which, he had no problem lying to the Kent's if it meant watching Clark while he came. And it didn't take much before he did, crying Lex's name, spurting warm and wet across Lex's hand, across the swath of hard bared belly, the rumpled front of his t-shirt.

Lex leaned there, across his chest while he shuddered, slowly stroking his gradually softening cock, watching as the focus came back into his eyes.

"Oh, God, Lex."

"Umm. Good?"

Clark shuddered, a big breathless grin splitting his face. "God - - yes."

Lex removed his hand, eyed the glistening coat of Clark's semen. A few months ago, he wouldn't have had issues with licking it off, at the moment the thought of semen in his mouth was enough to make his stomach churn. Even Clark's.

He leaned over and dipped his hand in the creek, letting the evidence wash off with the water.

"Shirt," he reminded Clark.

Clark looked down at the wet spots on his blue t-shirt, and grinned, before sitting up and stripping it off.

"I've used this creek to wash up before."

"The notorious creek." Lex watched him soak the shirt and use it to wipe off his stomach. Droplets of water trailed down the ridges of well-defined abs, pooled in his navel. He rinsed out the shirt in the creek, then laid it out to dry in a sunny patch.

Clark took off his shoes and socks, and put his feet in the water, sat there with his forearms on his knees and looked at Lex. "I know why you can't be here - - in Smallville, but God, even in Metropolis - - I hate you being so far away. I hate not being there if you need me - -"

"Clark, touching as that is, I'm pretty sure the ratio of mentally challenged meteor infected per capita in Metropolis is considerably less than Smallville. Chances are I'll be able to avoid regular incidents."

Clark glowered at him. "That's not what I meant."

Lex waved a hand. It was a mute point. It wasn't like he could expect Clark to sleep over and keep the nightmares at bay, even if he were in Smallville. A few hundred miles wouldn't make that much of a difference.

"I know what you meant. Stop worrying."

Clark rolled his eyes, turned a rock over under the clear water with his toe. "A year and a half till I'm legal, you know? And nobody can tell me who I can sleep with or where I do it."

"I'm aware." And he was, down to the day. Though the legal age of consent in Kansas was 17, there was a pretty large age gap between them, and in this conservative state, gender did factor in. As well as parental outrage or lack thereof. And though that hadn't stopped him before, it would be nice not to have to scurry about like thieves in the night.

"So you think you'll still want me a year and half from now?" Clark asked, trying to make it sound like a joke, but the little furrow of intent interest between his brows a telling hint that the answer worried him.

Lex lifted a brow, leaned back on his hands and let his eyes sweep up the line of Clark's naked back. For an alien demigod with bone structure out of some master artist's wet dream, Clark had the most bizarre inferiority complex. Lex hadn't been a big proponent of lasting relationships before, but the day he'd met Clark, he'd known, felt it in his soul, that there was some intangible, indissoluble connection between them.

"Try and shake me."

Clark's expression lightened.

They headed back after Clark's shirt had air dried, taking their time about it, talking about little, non-consequential things. Clark found an old, half deflated football in the field they were cutting across, and grinned. "That's where this went."

He leaned back and hurled it skyward, and it sailed up like it had been shot out of a cannon.

"God," Lex said, while they stood there and watched the speck of it against the blue sky. "And you wondered why your father had problems with you playing ball."

Clark sniffed, maybe following the path of the ball still, even after it had disappeared beyond Lex's ability to follow. "I'm capable of playing human speed."

"Sure."

"See, you don't believe me, either. I have perfect control."

There was the whistling sound of something rocketing through the air, and Clark jogged a few steps ahead and caught the saggy ball with a solid thump of leather against flesh.

Lex shook his head, not able to hold back the grin of amazement. "I believe you."

And he did. If Clark had that sort of power and hadn't in the throes of passion managed to pound Lex through the mattress - - literally - - then he had pretty refined control of his powers.

"Even if you're showing off, now."

Clark grinned, tossed the ball out into the field where it landed in the midst of a group of dozing cattle. He got a few lazy blinks, but not much more of a reaction out of them.

By the time they meandered back to the house, Lex's watch was reading almost two. They were almost to the house when a car turned onto the long driveway from the road. A newish model VW bug.

"That's Chloe's car," Clark pointed out.

Clark picked up his pace, walking up to meet it as she pulled in next to Lex's Porsche. Lex sauntered behind, in no hurry to deal with Clark's friends. It wasn't just Chloe that emerged, but Lana as well, both of them looking beyond Clark at Lex, like he was the last person on earth they'd expected to find here.

"Lex, you're back," Chloe almost managed not to gape at him and he could see the questions swirling behind her eyes. He had no desire whatsoever to know the rumors circulating about him around town.

"Lex." Lana was staring at him, big eyed and he had no intention of letting a pair of sixteen-year-old girls drive him into retreat. God, if he couldn't deal with the likes of them, the city was going to destroy him.

"So what are you guys doing here?" Clark was asking, diverting their attention from Lex.

"Well," Chloe dragged her eyes from Lex to Clark. "We were all going to the Golden Corral Thanksgiving buffet with my dad - - in my house boiling an egg takes concentration - - but he got called out to the plant for an emergency, so we're on our own. We figured we'd come see what you were up to before we went and got dinner."

"Nonsense." Martha had come out onto the porch, dishtowel in hand. "We've plenty here. If Gabe isn't back in time, you girls are welcome to eat with us."

Fantastic. Lex strolled up to stand next to Clark. A respectable distance. "What emergency?"

He hadn't given the plant a thought in - -oh, a month, more if you counted the unwilling time spent in the basement. He could make the assumption that someone had taken over all the top tier managerial duties. Likely Gabe Sullivan, who had been an excellent general manager and like the rest of the employees, had a stake in the plant's success. He felt remiss for not having looked into it sooner.

"Oh, some cooling system on the fritz that finally decided to up and die today. They had to shut down like half the plant this morning, but he's got the part coming in from Wichita, so he thinks everything'll be back up and running by tonight." Chloe gave him a look like she really thought he ought to know more about this than she did.

"It sounds like he has it well in hand. Someone saw to it he got a raise with his promotion, didn't they?"

She opened her mouth and he shrugged before she could answer. "I'll see that it's made official."

Since he had no intention of running the Smallville Plant anymore himself, he might as well promote the man who'd been doing it in his absence.

"Lex, how are you?" Lana asked, and if the questions had broiled behind Chloe's eyes, a wary sort of empathy glistened in Lana's. Smallville wasn't immune to the gossip rags littering its drugstore newspaper racks.

"I'm fine, Lana, how are you? How's the Talon?"

She blinked slowly, realigning to his change of subject, some little bit of panic entering her expression. Curious.

"Lana's living with Chloe now," Clark supplied. "Her aunt got married and moved to Metropolis."

"Kate Hawkins is still day manager," Lana said defensively, as if she thought Lex were going to question the idea of a teenage girl running something so complex as a small town coffee shop. He honestly didn't care. Lana was a sweet girl. A little self-absorbed, but then most beautiful girls were. Most of his interest in Lana's success or lack thereof had been directly related to making Clark happy. And at the time, making Lana happy had accomplished that.

"Are you in the black?"

"Yes. Karaoke night really boosted profits."

"Then I have no complaints."

They moved onto the porch, Lana migrating into the kitchen to exchange pleasantries with Martha, while Chloe lingered trying to pry information out of Lex.

"So I 'm sort of surprised to see you here," she finally said, when he ignored or avoided most of her other questions.

"Really?"

"I mean, you like own half of Metropolis now, right? Oh, and sorry about your dad. I sort of didn't expect to see you on some podunk farm for Thanksgiving dinner."

He lifted a brow.

"What do you mean podunk?" Clark interjected.

"But I guess you are sort of an orphan now, aren't you?" Chloe pointed out.

Clark opened his mouth, maybe to call her on her bluntness, then looked at Lex instead, realization sinking in that she was right.

"You are aren't you? No family anywhere?"

He would have neglected to answer Chloe's summation, but Clark he gave a shrug. "Not that I'm aware of."

It was no huge thing. The family he'd had never had done him much good.

Lana came out with four glasses of iced tea, and the talk turned to school, and the latest meteor related curiosity that Chloe had ferreted out. Things Lex could sit back and let them engage in, without actively participating himself.

Jonathan came in from the barn, raised surprised brows at the girl's on the porch, then good naturedly claimed the more the merrier - - Lex couldn't quite imagine him being so ingratiating if it had been him that happened to show up under similar circumstances - -and said he was off to shower and settle down to watch a little football before dinner hit the table.

The idea appealed to Clark and the girls were all for it, so he suggested they head to the loft and watch the game up there. Clark moved an the overstuffed chair against the rail next to the couch for extra seating, and Lex gladly claimed it, not sure he was prepared to be crowded in on the couch amidst people that weren't Clark. Which left Clark and the girls the couch. Clark got stuck in the center of a Chloe-Lana sandwich, which seemed to please him about as much as it would please any teenage male. The girls leaned across him, talking to each other, and Lex put his feet up on the coffee table and paid more attention to watching Clark from under his lashes than the game on the small screen television.

Chloe was relaxed, unmindful of leaning against Clark, but Lana was a little more careful about it and Lana kept giving Clark odd looks now and then, like she was baffled that he wasn't paying her more attention. Chloe didn't bother Lex in the least, but Lana - -

Lex wondered if Clark had ever had the opportunity to go up to her and say, 'by the way, I'm not interested, anymore. Just friends, okay?' He knew she'd been miffed after the red meteor incident, but he didn't know what, if any declarations, had been made.

Then it occurred to him that he was feeling the stirrings of jealousy towards a sixteen-year-old girl and that he needed to shut it down, right now. He chewed on a piece of ice and forced his attention to the game and off of the fact that Clark had been obsessing over Lana a lot longer than Lex had been obsessing over Clark.

By the time Martha sent Jonathan out to call them in to dinner he was more than ready to go share a table with Jonathan Kent just to get Clark off the couch with Lana.

Dinner went well, considering. Martha's spread looked good enough to wet even Lex's recently unreliable appetite. Clark slipped into the chair next to Lex and nudged his leg every now and then under the folds of the tablecloth. The Kent's didn't believe in a lot of dinner conversation, and attention was focused for a good while on food and most of the talk consisted of, 'pass the rolls and great stuffing Mrs. Kent.'

It wasn't until dessert was brought out, and appetites were sated enough for people to sit back and start talking.

"So how is your aunt settling into married life, Lana?"

"Chloe, I'll fix up a plate for you to take home to your father."

And so on, until Jonathan casually mentioned, "So Sadie Hawkins is coming up - - what next month? Either of you girls figured who you'll ask to the dance."

"I try to stay away from dances," Chloe said vehemently.

"I'm sure Pete would appreciate an invite," Martha said, giving her husband a look. It hadn't exactly been a subtle attempt to peddle Clark.

Chloe rolled her eyes and snorted. "Yeah, Pete's been smoozing up to half the girls in school. He's got a list of hopefuls."

"What about you, Lana?" Jonathan was dogged, as if he thought getting Clark to a dance with a girl would swing him back around to the straight side of the road.

Lana blushed a little, glancing aside to Clark, before looking away and shrugging. "I don't know. I hadn't really thought about it. I think I might be in Chloe's camp this year, and just avoid it."

Clark narrowed his eyes, finally getting it. He caught Lex's gaze and rolled his eyes.

"So Lex is thinking of going back to school," Clark said, in an obvious attempt to change the subject. Lex rather wished he hadn't.

"Really?" Martha leaned forward, more interested than she had been in the other polite after dinner conversation.

"You never finished college?" Chloe asked.

Lex leaned back in his chair, idly swirling the last melted chunks of ice in his glass and considered jamming his heel down on Clark's foot under the table just to let him know how much he appreciated the change in topic. "Life got in the way. I was remiss."

"Wow. Who'd have thought it?" Chloe looked in inordinately impressed at his failing.

"I didn't know you dropped out of college." Jonathan said, not sounding nearly as impressed. From the look on his face, Lex rather thought he'd just confirmed one more suspicion the man held about him.

"Where do you think you'll go, Lex?" Martha asked.

He shrugged, and surprisingly enough the pressure of being the center of attention wasn't making him want to crawl under the table. He'd used to thrive on it.

"I'm about a semester short of a MBA. I was thinking of forgoing the Ivy League this time and going Notre Dame. It's School of business is the best rated in the country."

"I think that's wonderful. Its good not to leave these things unfinished."

"My thoughts exactly."

Martha smiled at him, the sort of look he faintly recalled seeing on his own mother's face now and then, forever ago.

The conversation drifted to other things and all in all, he supposed, Jonathan Kent's attempts to set Clark up with Lana aside, it was the best holiday dinner Lex could easily recall.

To be continued . . .

obsessions Chapter 18-B

Things are starting to get a little crazy this close to Christmas - - especially since I'm a big procrastinator and haven't finished either shopping, cleaning, or decorating - - so this might be the last part I remember to post this week.

If I don't post again until after Sunday - -happy holidays, everyone.

Here's part 18-B



* * *
There was the faint smell of disinfectant. It lingered in the air, no doubt clinging to stone and marble, bringing to mind unpleasant memories of hospitals. Lex refused to clench his fists, though his fingers twitched with the need.

It was cool inside, summer heat fled and fall temperatures already permeating the thick stone environs of the mansion. It would get cooler still, as winter set in. Miserable place to spend the cold months for a man that had never appreciated the cold, with all its chills and drafts, with its floors and walls like ice to the touch. It was likely his father had taken that into account when he'd sent him here. Lionel had liked his subtle punishments as much as his obvious displays of power.

Lex had vague recollections of the place swarming with police, but only bits and pieces, lurid little snapshots that fit into no cohesive place in his mind. He remembered the events preceding it with more clarity. Remembered very clearly walking into this house against all his better judgment, every instinct he had screaming to just turn around and run.

He'd only had Martha Kent at his back then, Clark's presence was somewhat more reassuring. The house wasn't screaming threat at him now, just cold, lonely resentment, like the first day he'd walked into it, after it had sat empty for years. But still, walking through that door was hard.

He took a breath and kept moving. He didn't want to visit the study, but it was right there off the main hall, doors wide open, magnetic in its pull. Clark was already heading that way, walking through those doors with as much casual indifference to what had happened inside, as he had a hundred times before. He could have passed by, let Clark explore the scene of the crime alone, but it was as if his legs had an agenda separate from his mind, taking him into that room regardless of the curl of unease starting to claw its way up his spine.

There was no blood on the floor, no police tape, or evidence that anything out of the ordinary had happened here. Just a room he'd walked into a thousand times before. Stained glass, aged stone, cold hearth; all of it familiar. Until he walked closer to where he thought Decker had fallen and stared down at a chip in the parquet floor.

"This is where - - he shot your father?" Clark asked hesitantly, but his voice sounded distant, tinny and hollow.

Lex canted his head, staring numbly at the indention, wood chipped away, a deep gouge, as if a bullet had torn through. He'd done that. When he'd been firing down into Decker's body. Surprising there was only the one miss, considering how shaky his hands had been.

There had been blood. A great deal of blood. Decker's. His fathers. It had matted Lionel's hair, stained his skin where his face had pressed against the floor. Dead eyes staring up at Lex. Accusing.

What was the last thing he'd said to him? Lex, be reasonable. Don't taunt the psychopath with the gun to his father's head. Unless he'd wanted the trigger pulled. Had he? Had he stood in this room twice and contemplated letting his father die? How much of this was his fault? How much of the blood on his hands?

"Lex?" Clark was standing next to him, brows drawn a little in concern. He'd said his name more than once.

The images on the floor faded, and it was just a floor with a bullet-made chip again . He blinked away the fog that wanted to creep in and muddle his thoughts, glanced up at Clark, who's eyes were bright and green helped Lex find that clarity he needed. "Yes. This is where it happened."

"I'm sorry," Clark said, a little helplessly.

Lex shook his head. "Don't be. It's just a room." It was just a room. Just a room. He shoved his hands in his pockets to hide the tremors.

There were things he'd never tell Clark, and what his father had done to him, callous usage to gain one advantage or another, was likely one of them. That that knowledge might have been eating at him enough that maybe, just maybe he'd pushed Decker into pulling the trigger, was another confidence he didn't need to burden Clark with.

He turned on his heel and walked out. Wanting out of the study now - - right now - - and headed upstairs to the temporary office he'd made for himself. He'd had his laptop brought to him, and any work he'd left here was almost two months old. There wasn't a lot to salvage. He'd have it all packed up anyway, sent to the penthouse in the city. The same with his personal items. The majority of his wardrobe was still here.

"Do you want to take anything now?" Clark asked, in his bedroom, pulling back the curtains and looking out the big window overlooking the rear gardens. It was getting dark out, and the hedge maze would be all shadows now.

He hadn't brought an overnight bag, having every intention of driving back to the city and staying at the penthouse tonight, then driving back tomorrow. The idea of staying here was repugnant. Martha's offer had surprised him. Mostly because he'd never assumed Jonathan would have agreed to him staying under his roof. He pulled down a leather overnight bag and put a few things in it. He picked through his collection of watches, pocketed the one his mother had given him before she died and left the rest.

"No. I'll make a list and have them pack it all up Friday. I don't need that much. God knows what I'd do with suits of armor and eight foot high grandfather clocks in Metropolis. If you want anything, you're welcome to it."

Clark laughed. "Right, because the loft really needs a little gothic flare."

Lex half smiled, swallowed and remembered some of the things Decker had told him. "He was here. In the house, weeks before he - - decided to make his move."

Clark's expression froze. "How?"

Lex shrugged, tried to make it casual, even though it felt like ants were crawling under his skin. "Construction crew after the tornado. He came in again as a day worker when my father was renovating my office. He'd been following me for months. He was at the Talon when you gave me the shard of meteor. That's how he knew."

Clark opened his mouth. Shut it. Then his eyes narrowed and he said slowly. "He was in Manhattan. When we went to Manhattan for the show - - he bumped you in the bar. He was on the street later - - I remember. It didn't occur to me until - - son of a bitch."

Clark stood there, clenching his fists so hard his knuckles popped. Lex stared, a knot in his gut. He didn't remember, and God knew the last part of that night had been a blur, but he didn't doubt Clark.

His skin crawled. The very air in this house made him jittery and uneasy, and the deeper he got within it, the more the walls seemed to close in. The urge to just run was almost overpowering.

Decker had been in this room - -his bedroom - - he'd walked these halls, stalking him, had laid hands on him that day in the hall, and this place for all its cold impracticality, had been home. Lex wasn't sure if home was a word that he'd ever be able to equate with safe again.

"Let's go." As fast as he could without demeaning himself in front of Clark. He just needed to get outside where he could breathe again.

"Okay."

He got on the road and drove. Just the quiet purr of the engine and the wind whistling through Clark's open window. It took a few miles before his hands relaxed on the wheel. The car and the road was a therapy of sorts. He'd always loved to drive. He'd gotten some of his deepest thinking done behind the wheel of a fine automobile.

"I've spent my whole life," he said into that silence. ""Trying one way or another to impress my father."

Clark looked at him silently, waiting for him to expound on that statement.

"When I was young, I tried so hard to meet his standards, read the things I thought he'd want me to read, played his little war games, and avoided anything remotely resembling a real childhood because I thought it would make him proud. I honestly wanted to make him proud. Once I figured out how impossible a feat that was, I changed tactics and spent all my energy trying to appall him. I got better results with that, until he snapped and sent me here, and I reverted back to trying to impress him again with my business acumen."

"You did pretty well for yourself here," Clark said.

Lex cast him a glance and a wry look. "That first winter here, I took multiple online business courses trying to figure out the mechanics of managing the plant. I sweated over the fine points of the buyout. If it weren't for my mother's old lawyer, offering a few suggestions, I'm not sure I'd have pulled it off."

"But you did."

"I did."

"And its sort of small beans compared to LuthorCorp."

"Inconsequential," Lex agreed. And it was, The Smallville plant was nothing, LexCorp was nothing more than a speck at the bottom of the corporate ladder. LuthorCorp was a monster, and the people at the top, the people his father had gathered to guide it were sharks of the highest caliber.

Lex was a shark, too, granted a shark with issues at the moment, but a shark nonetheless. In the sort of waters he'd been raised in, it was either be that, or be chum. But he'd been operating on instinct, years of surreptitiously watching his father's own brand of war games, and not quite three years of various colleges where he'd spent more time avoiding class than attending. If he was going to jump into that elite corporate shark tank, even if he were jumping in at the very panicle, he wasn't going to do it at a disadvantage.

"I think I'm going to finish up that degree."

"Yeah?" Clark sounded genuinely surprised.

"I'm twenty-two credits shy of a Business Master's, including the online courses last year. It's a semester's worth of classes."

"That's great, Lex. I'm trying to picture you in school, though and the image, it's just not coming. Have you decided which school?"

Lex glanced at Clark, who was grinning. "I'm considering. I've burned a few bridges that aren't repairable, but there are plenty of options."

"And you'd be doing it for nobody but you," Clark said, getting it. Getting him, better than his father ever had. Than anyone ever had.

Lex shrugged again, looking back at the road. He'd taken the roundabout way back to the farm. Circling town, down country routes bordered by fields full of fall produce. A pretty town for a drive. He didn't want to live in it.

"Have you eaten?" Clark asked, Clark having a food fixation. "Because I haven't eaten. It's always simple stuff night before Thanksgiving. Mom's saving up her cooking energy for tomorrow."

He hadn't. Not since breakfast back at the beach house, and the two drinks he had on the flight over.

He was a little hungry. Besides, the simplest things made Clark happy. Apparently him eating was one of them.


Clark made sandwiches. A fair number of them. He stacked them on a plate, tossed Lex a bag of potato chips and a pair of cold soda and told his mom, who was putting the finishing touches on a pie about to go into the oven, that they were heading out to the loft to eat and watch a dvd.

Which was fine with Lex, since Clark's father kept casting glances at him, as if he didn't know quite how to deal with the fact that his wife and son had accepted Lex so wholeheartedly into their home. He kept expecting a reminder that he'd been warned off the property, or at the very least a stern warning that the man would tolerate no funny business with his underage son. Instead what he got were a few scrutinizing looks, like the man was trying hard to figure him out in between nursing a long necked beer.

Lex wouldn't have minded a little alcoholic relaxation himself, just a little something to ease the tension. In the year and a half that he'd known Jonathan Kent, he'd never seen him hold his tongue on something near and dear to his heart. And non-standing prejudices against anyone with the Luthor name aside, Lex had fucked his sixteen year old son. So unless Martha had neglected to share all her insights on the matter with her husband - -and Lex decided it was a good possibility she hadn't since he hadn't been threatened with either a shot gun or a call to the sheriff - - either Jonathan hadn't figured it out himself, or the man was taking his presence with unnerving good stride. Maybe Martha had slipped a little herbal something extra into his supper.

It had been a long time since he'd been in the loft over the barn. Nothing had changed. Same old beat up couch, same red throw, same rustic bookshelves and desk. The telescope was folded up and off to the side, but then Clark had used it mostly to spy on Lana anyway.

"Tomorrow, when its light, I'll show you the ship," Clark promised, clearing off room for the food on the makeshift coffee table that consisted of two crates and Indian weave throw over the top.

Lex ran his fingers across the back of the couch, wandered to the loft window and stared out across darkened fields. He'd come here a lot, back when he'd been seeking to get that little bit closer to Clark. Back when he'd been pursuing something he hadn't really thought he'd ever had a chance of ever getting. Testing his limits, or Clark's. God knew he had a perverse penchant for it - - pushing that little extra bit, until something inevitably gave.

With Clark it had come in the form of inhibition freeing red meteor rock. Without it, Clark might have just continued to blush, and stubbornly pretend he wanted things he really didn't, and jerk off to subconscious desires and hate him self afterward. Him and every other closeted gay man in the world. Closeted gay alien man. Big addendum.

He looked at Clark's dark head, silky thick hair, perfectly formed bone structure and marveled that he had the most unique being on the planet portioning out clumsily made ham sandwiches on paper plates in the loft of an old barn. Or more significantly, he simply had the most unique being on the planet. His.

"Come eat before the flies get the scent and start trying to get their share," Clark suggested.

Charming. He'd never had the pleasure of eating up here and fending off the inevitable insect population that one might find frequenting a barn. He did rather miss the city.

The ham was fresh baked and salty, and really actually rather good. Lex consumed his share of the sandwiches, drank carbonated sugar water, and sat back on the couch, while Clark brought out a selection of dvd rentals.

It was a small TV, and the Clark's father was too cheap for statalite, so the dvd player Clark had perched on top of the set was a Godsend considering the quality of the local channels out here. Lex walked out to his car to get his laptop, giving Clark free reign to choose a movie.

Clark had a buddy cop comedy on when he returned. Clark liked the franchise and had seen the movie countless times before, once even at the mansion, where Lex had happily endured it, if it meant two hours in a darkened room with Clark.

That viewing had seen them seated a discreet, proper distance apart, Clark no more thinking about closing it, than he'd been thinking about particle psychics. Clark edged over this time, while Lex was waking up the laptop. Not close enough to crowd, but near enough that there was barely a hand's breadth between them.

"So, if you do this, you thinking of starting in the winter semester?"

"Probably."

Clark drew his knees up, booted feet on the makeshift coffee table. "And in the meanwhile - - are you going back to the beach - - or Metropolis?"

Lex pulled up the LuthorCorp private server connection, logging in under his old password. There'd been restrictions on his access before - - information he couldn't access, places he couldn't go, blood-relation not placing him high enough in the food-chain to warrant it. They were still there. He hadn't bothered until now to start delving into the underbelly of the company. He'd have to make a call Friday and arrange to have his security clearance upgraded.

"Metropolis." He hadn't been one hundred percent certain before. He thought he was now. If he didn't test his limits now, he'd never find his footing. He could deal with the press of the city - - he had to.

"You sure?" Clark asked.

Lex canted his head, giving him a look from under his brows. "No. But I can't hide forever, so I might as well make the plunge."

"It wasn't hiding, Lex, if it was something you needed to do."

Clark edged a little close, shoulder brushing his. Clark had picked up patience somewhere. God knew he hadn't learned it from Lex. Subtlety wasn't his strong point though. He made a point of stretching, and his arm ended up along the back of the couch behind Lex. Lex had never had that particular maneuver pulled on him before, but then he'd never actually been with a man longer than it took to practice the sex act, before. At least not willingly.

He shivered and pushed that thought from his mind. Relaxed into Clark just to show it who was boss, and Clark sighed and let his arm slip down off the couch back and onto Lex's shoulders.

His body was getting better at accepting being up close and personal without the reflexive twitches. At least with Clark.

He idly cruised the current LuthorCorp project list - - at least the one's his security clearance allowed him to access - - narrowed his eyes at the name of a project LexCorp had been underbid for and his father had denied all knowledge of - - while Clark entertained himself with the movie. It was a companionable way to spend the evening.

Jonathan Kent only stomped out once, around ten, as if he couldn't help himself from checking to make sure there was no elicit sex taking place in his barn, with the excuse of reminding Clark that he needed to be up early to deliver the rest of his mother's baked goods. Clark had removed his arm from around Lex's shoulders, but hadn't bothered to put distance between them. The computer in his lap had prevented Lex's immediate instinctive urge to do it himself, without having to juggle electronics. He rather wished Clark had edged away just a little, because slouched on a sofa, thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder to shoulder was only marginally less incriminating than various other things Jonathan could have caught them doing. And God knew there had been a time when Lex had imagined pushing Clark down on this very couch and perpetrating some of those things.

Lex went very still in lieu of guiltily sliding away, while Clark's father pursed his lips and gave them a disapproving look. But then, Lex wasn't that familiar with the nuances of Jonathan Kent's looks, very seldom having gotten anything that didn't smack of disapproval. Maybe that was just his normal expression. Maybe he'd offer Lex the keys to the farm and the deed to his son while he was wearing it.

"I know, Dad. I'll be up bright and early and get everything delivered," Clark promised, not seeming effected by the glower.

"God," Lex breathed when the sound of his boots had receded down the loft stairs and out the barn.

Clark's arm fell back around him. "He's okay. That was okay." Clark assured him.

"Right. So this feeling I keep getting of him thinking about shooting me - - it's all overactive imagination?"

"He wouldn't shoot you."

"You realize the last time he caught us this close together, neither one of us had clothes on. I'd lay odds, that if he'd had a gun, he'd have shot me that day."

Clark opened his mouth, thought about that, then colored a little. "My dad doesn't shoot people. Besides which, that wasn't your fault - -and yeah, I guess if you look at it like that - - you gotta wonder what was going through his head."

"Personally, I rather not know."

Clark grinned, and slouched a little deeper so they were eye level. "Can I kiss you?"

Lex blinked. The question catching him off guard.

"I mean, if you don't want to, that's okay," Clark assured him, all big eyes and lush mouth. "I just thought - - well, I thought it'd been a long time since I kissed you - - and maybe you'd be okay with trying it - - no pressure - -"

"Shut up." His heart did pound a little at the prospect, but then his heart had pounded and his pulse had raced at the prospect of kissing Clark before any of this had happened. Funny how the body reacted much the same to fear as it did to passion. But it was just a matter of leaning in, of brushing his thumb across Clark's mouth, petal soft and so very addictive. Clark's lashes fluttered down, black and thick, a little shaky breath escaping him at Lex's touch.

He brushed his mouth over Clark's. They both shivered, that light contact electric. He kissed him again, soft exploration of lips, fingers weeding through the hair at the back of Clark's neck, the texture of that no less appealing.

It was pleasant, the scent of him, the taste of him, the feel of him. This heady warmth that filled his head and swelled something inside him - - but didn't reach far enough down to stir interest in his cock. Which was disconcerting on the one hand, because generally, just looking at Clark across a room could get him hard, and a relief on the other, because this wasn't the time or the place to be contemplating sex. But still, it worried him, that lack. Made something rancid lurch in his gut when memories surfaced of not being able to help getting hard in that basement. Of Decker working at it, hand or mouth or vibrating tool working him up to an erection he very badly hadn't wanted. And yet, here, now he couldn't feel the stirring with Clark.

"Lex? You okay?"

He stared at Clark, who was looking at him with big, worried eyes. Clark had the computer, which had begun to slide off his lap in his big hand and was carefully setting it on the table. He didn't take his eyes off of Lex.

"I'm okay," he said it reflexively.

"You sure?" Clark asked.

He swallowed, shut his eyes for a moment, deep breathing, beating back the memories. He needed to conquer this. Needed to prove to himself that he was stronger than this.

"Clark, I'm fine." He leaned back in, pushing Clark back, taking Clark's mind off worrying about him by another kiss, slipping a tongue between Clark's open lips and into the moist warmth of his mouth. Clark groaned, hands moving to Lex's hips, shifting to let Lex bear him back. Clark had no issues with erections, Lex felt his through his jeans.

A little stab of panic hit him, he staved it off with a growl into Clark's mouth, and a knee pressed tight against the bulge between his legs. Clark whimpered into his mouth and Lex bit his lip, hard, plunged his tongue into Clark's mouth, raked his fingers up his sides.

"Lex - -" Clark pulled back, staring up at him with wide bright eyes.

"What? You wanted to make out. Let's make out."

He covered Clark's mouth again, stabbing his tongue like he was fucking, and Clark made sounds and went with it for a few moments, pliable and hard under him, before he shuddered and pushed Lex back.

"Lex." Clark's fingers wrapped around his arms, implacable restraint, holding him back when he went to drive back down, angry, inexplicably angry.

"Breathe," Clark told him sharply. "Lex, just breathe."

Was he not? His head did feel faintly light. Dizzy. His hands were shaking. He wasn't sure when they'd started. Clark was flat on his back on the sofa, lips red and flushed, worried. The bulge Lex had his knee jammed tight against had started to deflate.

"Oh - - God," He didn't know where that had come from. That almost fugue state of - - what? Violence? The need to control, maybe? Not Clark so much as himself. He felt sick.

"You're okay," Clark drew him down, gentle, careful, arms loose around him. "We're okay."

He shut his eyes, the shaking spreading out from hands to the rest of him. Clark's hands moved across his back, concentric circles, fingers pressing into knotted muscles.

"I don't know where that - - I didn't mean - -"

"Lex, its okay." Clark kneaded his shoulder, the back of his neck. He pressed his cheek against Clark's shoulder, face against Clark's neck and let Clark work out the tension.

"It's not your fault. This happens," Clark said, softly.

"What?"

"With people who've been through the sort of thing you have. I've done some reading - -"

God. Lex almost laughed. Clark had been reading. He shut his eyes, swallowing back the lump in his throat.

"I shouldn't have pushed. If you're not ready, you're not ready."

"Stop trying to sound like the adult here."

Clark snorted softly and brushed his lips against the top of Lex's head. Lex let out a long breath, whatever tension had built up to send him off the deep end, dissipated. He pressed his mouth to the pulse behind Clark's jaw. Moved to Clark's lips, tongues grazing and breath mingling. Clark's hands never stopped their rhythmic motion on his back. Soothing, easing away the background static that wanted to creep up and crackle at the edge of his nerves.

This time he didn't need to convince himself this was doable. This time it was just instinct and Clark and it was easy to let himself melt into him.

Until a horse snorted in the barn below and he started, lifting his head and listening for the sound of footsteps.

Clark looked up at him, amused. "Its not my dad. I've got an ear out."

"Forgive me if the idea of your father walking in on us makes me jumpy."

"You're scared of my dad?"

Lex rolled his eyes. He wouldn't have admitted it, not so long ago. No matter how physically intimidating Jonathan Kent could be when he got right up and yelled at you in your face, admitting weakness was simply not acceptable. At present, those Luthor ideals had lost a little of their impact.

"I'm justifiably cautious."

Clark grinned. "I guess it is getting late. And he might decide to make one more trip out here just in case I forgot about getting up early - -"

"Umm. Parents are thoughtful that way."

"So I guess," Clark sat up, dislocating Lex from his prone position to one of straddling Clark's hips. "We should probably go in so he's not sitting in there worrying."

Lex looked down and lifted a brow. "We wouldn't want that."

Clark kissed him, a slow deep one, that made things inside Lex curl up and tighten and quiver. He broke it, licking his lips.

He swung a leg over and reached for his laptop. "If you're planning on being up at the crack of dawn, feel free not to wake me."

Clark grinned and followed him down the loft steps and out of the barn.

To be continued . . .

obsessions Chapter 18-A

This next chapter is pretty long, so I'm splitting it into two sections.

Obsessions chapter 18-A



Chapter eighteen
He didn't know what had happened. He'd been fine, everything had been fine and then the world had gone taut and narrow and whatever cords had been holding him together had just snapped.

Fine? Maybe he hadn't been fine. Maybe those taut stretched cords had been the only things preventing him from shattering. Just like the mirror had shattered - - had to be shattered - - to destroy the image staring out. Himself, seemingly whole and hale when inside it felt like he was flayed and raw and bloody.

And Clark had seen it. Clark had seen him break, Clark had seen the utter weakness, the utter lack of control and Clark was the last person he wanted to display that to. He'd needed Clark separate from that place. He'd needed Clark beautiful and bright and unsullied, because how Clark perceived him mattered. Because he could find himself maybe in the way Clark looked at him. Because if Clark knew just how filthy - -filthy whore, I'm a filthy whore - - he was, if he knew what he'd done - - he'd never look at him the same.

But Clark was still here. He'd tried to chase Clark away - -embarrassment, humiliation, self-loathing - - tried to shock Clark into retreat, but Clark wouldn't go. Clark wouldn't let him go, and panic had been right there, eager to rush up on him, until the ground had slipped out from under him and instead of restraint, Clark became the only solid ground he had. The only thing keeping him from drowning. The smell of him, the solid strength, the dogged refusal to give up on Lex the only thing keeping the nightmare at bay. Just like in that basement. Even then, even when he'd thought him dead, Clark had still offered the only escape he'd had open to him.

It was the first time he'd cried - -really broken down and lost all control and simply raged and sobbed - - since Clark had gotten him out. He wasn't even sure if he'd deteriorated this badly when he'd been under Decker's control.

He supposed, in the rational part of his brain that could step back and look at all this dispassionately, that it was long overdue; that he'd done himself no service at all holding it all in. Martha Kent had said as much - -repeatedly.

He didn't remember cutting his hand. Funny, since it stung now, even with the dab of antiseptic and the strip of gauze bandaging that Clark had gotten from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Lucky his father had stocked a few supplies or Clark would have started tearing up the sheets. There was the stain of blood, dried now, running up the back of his hand towards his wrist, a little bit of it caught in the cuticles of the nails of index and forefinger. He had worse things staining him.

He shuddered, coming a little closer to the surface. He'd missed getting from the floor by the door to the bed. He wasn't sure if he'd done it, or Clark had. He wasn't sure what he'd said in the interim between meltdown and the cold fear of what he'd wrought afterwards. But Clark was sitting against the side of the bed, knees pulled up, facing the badly abused French doors and staring out towards the ocean. The sky outside was purple and orange with sunset. Clark's head was dark, curls of soft hair fanning out against the smooth skin of his neck.

Save from the bloody light of sunset, the only light was that from the open bathroom door. The lamps were conspicuously missing. He supposed there might be pieces of them scattered around the room. But the dark was acceptable. Sometimes, he couldn't get enough of it.

"He never turned the light off," Lex said numbly, and Clark turned slightly, just enough to let him know he was listening. "There was never any darkness. Even when I slept, I could see it behind my lids. Could hear that damned buzz of fluorescents. When I did sleep - - he never let me fall into naturally - - I can still smell the chloroform, sickly sweet. He'd always wake me up before I'd slept enough for it to matter. I had no control. Over anything. He fed me. He bathed me. He wouldn't let me pee on my own, or - - he stuck a tube inside me and flushed me out every fucking day - - " Lex shut his eyes and shuddered, feeling his guts clench at the memory. "Do you understand that? Can you comprehend how it feels to have every shred of power, every shred of control stripped from you?"

"No," Clark said softly, still his silhouetted profile, and not facing his eyes made it easier. "But you have it now. You have more money than god. You can do anything you want to do and there's nobody who can make you do differently. Not even me, Lex. I will never do anything you don't want me to do. All it'll take is a word. Understand?"

Lex pressed his palms over his eyes, stifling a miserable laugh. "Suppose I'm incapable of ever wanting you to do anything? How is that fair to you?"

Clark turned to look at him, solemn green eyes. "Lex, it's been a month. You've got me forever. We'll figure it out. "

Lex turned on his side, curled an arm around his head and stared at Clark. He felt something yawning at his feet, something that gaped wide and deep and stygian at its depths, and he could either back away from it, trapped on the one side or gather the courage and make the jump.

He shut his eyes, feeling wetness that he didn't even try and stop gathering at the edges. Maybe it had already been there for a while. Hard to care about when he was facing chasms.

"I have nightmares every night." He admitted it into the softness of the pillow. The confession felt like sandpaper scratching its way up his throat. "Sometimes they're so bad - - sometimes I'm afraid to sleep at all. I've yet to decide if alcohol makes it better or worse, harder to wake up from them, certainly."

Clark made no judgments, just turned a little more, resting an arm on the bed and his chin on the arm, and watched him patiently, waiting.

"I thought I'd conquered my fears – squashed that feeling of being afraid all the time - - because I hated that feeling - - but he brought it back. And I can't live like this, I can't stand my heart jumping up to my throat every time someone brushes against me. I can't live not being able to focus half the time because at the back of my mind, I'm reliving something that happened in that fucking basement."

Clark stared at him, a long silent moment, then slid a hand across the sheets, laid it across Lex's bandaged one. "Lex, it'll get better. I don't pretend to know how or when, but I've got to believe no pain can go on forever. It's got to ease up. I'll do anything you want me to do, except give up on you. You ask that of me and you're gonna get a fight."

Lex stared down at Clark's hand, dark against the white of the gauze bandage. Maybe he was simply too exhausted to care, but it was not an unwelcome touch. He'd never been particularly fond of casual intimacy even before this, a byproduct of the household he'd been raised in, no doubt. He'd never even had a lover he'd particularly wanted to sleep with beyond the sex act itself. Even the occasional live in ones. Victoria had had a bedroom of her own in the mansion during that brief period when they'd been trying to manipulate each other into corporate corners.

The sex was fine, but having her - - having anyone at his back while he was vulnerable never had sat well with him. God knew where he'd picked up that paranoia.

But Clark - - Clark he needed close to him. Clark's presence, Clark's scent, the sound of his breath, the little tingle Lex felt when they touched. Clark kept his demons at bay. He needed Clark to stave off the nightmares.

"Come up here," he said softly and it was hard asking it, as unsure as he was whether his body would betray him. Clark rose, the mattress dipping under his weight, before he slid in, settling carefully next to Lex. Like he was afraid to touch him in fear of setting something else off. Not fair to him, really, to use him so, when Lex wasn't sure he was fixable, but desperation made for a certain selfishness.

And something in Lex did recoil just a bit, as Clark settled a hands width away, just close enough to rest his forehead on Lex's shoulder, tentative movement. Lex shut his eyes and the feeling subsided. He slid a hand into Clark's hair, soft and thick and smelling of the ocean. Clark was still here, after witnessing Lex's implosion and it baffled him. Clark knew what he'd done, what he'd had done to him and he didn't flinch from him. His father would have. He could imagine the look in Lionel's eyes, the derision in his voice as he chided him, 'You simply didn't try hard enough, Lex,' or 'if you had any sort of backbone you'd have taken one of those chances he gave you when there a rope around your neck, and ended it. Better dead than shaming the family name, eh son?' And he'd considered it, but when it came down to it, he really hadn't wanted to die.

He rolled into Clark, pressing close and Clark's arms came around him. Just that. Just that embrace that offered everything and asked for nothing and Lex felt like he wanted to cry again.

Instead he started to talk.

"He called me on your phone," he said, remembering all to clearly that moment of hope, before the terror set in. "Told me what to do and where to go. And other than going to your parents - - I did it. I did what he told me - - I don't know why - - but I couldn't think past the fact that he had you. And when I got there, you were on the ground, and you were bleeding, but he let me call your parents and tell them where you were. I thought, okay, this might work out after all - - they'd find you, you'd heal - - it would work itself out. It always had before when the shit hit the fan."

He squeezed his eyes shut, the next bit having played over in his head a hundred times in all its grisly detail. "But it didn't. He shot you and I couldn't stop him. There were holes in your head and bone and bits of brain - - "

"Lex," Clark caught his hand, that was curled and trying to dig into the skin at Clark's shoulder, and brought it up to Clark's head. "They're not there now. See?"

He spread his fingers across whole flesh and soft hair unmated by blood or grey matter. He clenched his hand in Clark's hair, pressed his face into his neck, smooth skin that smelled faintly of ocean salt. The Clark smell lingered beneath that. Heady, comforting. The rush of his blood was hypnotic.

"I remember screaming. I don't remember anything after that. When I woke up, I was in that place. I was - - naked and chained to a bed. There were cuffs on my wrists and ankles that never came off - -not the entire time I was there. He collared me like I was a dog." He laughed bitterly, but it came out sounding more like a sob.

Clark didn't tighten his embrace, his hand on Lex's side didn't move, just his thumb, gently making circles that Lex could feel though the layer of silk shirt. Almost it chased away the ghostly recollection of Decker's hands on him that first time, exploring.

"I thought - - I don't know what I thought. I was pissed off - - God, so fucking angry - - at what he'd done to you - - that it really didn't sink in what he was planning to do to me. Until he started putting his hands on me. He wasn't happy about us having sex - - he really wasn't happy about that."

Clark swallowed, the motion of his thumb stalling. "Yeah," he said softly. "I think I remember him saying some things while we were - - waiting for you, I think. He didn't like that I'd touched you."

Clark drew his knees up a little, as if remembering some phantom pain. "He - - he used that meteor rock knife - - a lot, while he was ranting about it."

Lex hissed through his teeth, wishing he'd been able to take a little more time to kill the bastard. That Decker had hurt him was a given, but that he'd taken the time to make Clark suffer before he'd tried to finish him off - - it made something hard and cold form inside him. Something that had nothing to do with his own tremulous sense of self and everything to do with protecting Clark. Who despite all his alien born advantages, had vulnerabilities that could be exploited by a man that knew his secrets. Lex was suddenly absolutely certain that Jonathan Kent hadn't gone to nearly the lengths he should have in his efforts to keep those secrets. In his shoes, Lex would have gone to greater ones.

"You shouldn't have been in that position," Lex said.

"Yeah? If not me, then he'd have either used somebody else that couldn't have survived a couple of bullets to the head, or just taken you outright and nobody would have had a clue. Me included. Stop second guessing and move forward."

That last smacked of Martha Kent. Clark mimicking her better traits, just as Lex suspected, he occasionally mimicked his own father's worse ones.

"I'm tired." And he was. It was almost as hard an admission as the others. A different sort of weakness. He'd been running on reserves he hadn't known he'd had for close to two months. Just surviving when he'd been with Decker - - barely doing better than that once he'd been out. One sort of restless sleep was pretty much the same as the next, once you got down to it. It turned out peace and tranquility didn't do him nearly as much good as a froth at the mouth meltdown.

"Me too," Clark said, and Lex suspected it was a sympathetic tired, but he decided to let it slide, because Clark's lashes against his cheeks were thicker than any man's had a right to be and Lex liked looking at him when he had his eyes closed, and his mouth softly parted in relaxation.

Lex shut his eyes and didn't dream.

Not a single subconscious flutter that he recalled at any rate, to disturb his slumber. He stirred at the insistence of his bladder. Blinked into awareness, mind still sluggish from sleep, and stared at Clark's legs. They were very nice legs, long and well muscled with a fine dusting of dark hair that was almost imperceptible until you got up close and personal. Clark had them drawn up, his back to the headboard, a paperback book resting against his knees. It was one of Lex's.

"Hey." Clark smiled down at him.

Lex shifted his head and blinked up, rather wishing he were still asleep. It had been too long since he'd gotten a long, uninterrupted stretch of it.

"This is good," Clark indicated the book. "I didn't think you read stuff like this."

"You think I read non-good things?" Lex wasn't feeling particularly witty.

Clark's smile widened. To brilliant for this early. This sky behind him was pale grey so it had to be some ungodly hour.

"No. Just - - you know, things that aren't so easy to read. I like this. Assassins and little psychic dragons, and humor."

"Occasionally," Lex pushed himself up. "I like entertainment instead of introspection in my reading material."

He swung his feet to the floor and headed for the bathroom. He thought there had been a fair deal of debris from his tantrum last night, but was gone now. The lamps were still missing though, and the glass in the door still shattered. He didn't bother to look in the mirror. Just finished up and trekked back to bed. Collapsed back down and thought, just another few hours and he'd be caught up. Might as well get it while Clark was here to drive away the nightmares.

He thought about the grey light of early morning, then thought about Clark still being here. Crap.

"How much trouble are we in with your parents?"

"None." Clark looked down at him from over the top of the book. "I called last night and let them know I was staying over."

Lex wondered how that conversation had gone. No. On second thought, he didn't want to know at all.

"It's still early. Go back to sleep. I'll be here."

It seemed like a good idea. He shut his eyes, drifting. Thought as he drifted into hazy half awareness that he felt the gentle warmth of Clark's fingers on his head, the soft whisper of Clark's voice. "Dream good things, Lex."

He sank down and very possibly did.

They spent a lot of time Sunday not doing anything. Just sitting in the house with the doors and windows open, letting the ocean breezes ripple the curtains and sweep through the house.

Clark had run into the little town by the wharf Lex had taken him to for lunch and picked up the makings for breakfast while Lex was showering. A loaf of fresh baked bread, some cheese and OJ, and a lot of fruit from a stand by the road. He'd toasted and chopped and had it ready by the time Lex came downstairs, so there was no excuse not to at least make an effort to eat. He didn't like how much weight Lex had lost. He didn't like being able to feel his bones quite so distinctly under his skin. It wasn't healthy. It made him feel like Lex might break if he wasn't very, very careful around him and he didn't like that feeling.

But Lex didn't do half bad, better than lunch yesterday where Clark had ended up finishing up half his sandwich. So maybe it was the fruit, or maybe Clark had just guilted him into it, presenting it like it was his first try at culinary design or something. He had done a pretty good job arranging the plates.

They sat outside for a while, and Lex talked intermittently, then he'd stop, choked up, embarrassed, emotionally wrung dry and they wouldn't say anything for a long while. Which was okay, because Lex didn't retreat from him afterwards, or even look like he regretted the things he'd said. He just looked really thoughtful, like he was turning stuff over in his head that he'd avoided doing for a long time.

They moved inside when it started to drizzle, cut on the television for background noise, found some National Geographic documentary on the predators of the coral reefs. They had a repeat performance of the breakfast menu for lunch, since it had gone over so well.

Sat afterwards, the plates on the coffee table, while Clark reluctantly cracked open the American lit book and the assignment he'd promised to get a start on.

"The influence of Transcendentalism in American poetry as opposed to the Romanticism of the English of the same period." Clark spat out the subject of the make up thesis. "I mean, If I have to read it, that's one thing - - but doesn't it sort of take away from the whole idea of, you know, poetry impacting you emotionally, if you have to dissect it like you're doing a science project?"

Lex lifted a brow and reached for the book. And Clark ended up a lot closer to him than he'd started out, while Lex flipped through and tried to explain concepts that Clark's brain just didn't want to grasp. Or maybe he was just distracted, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh with Lex, while Lex was quoting stanza's that Clark wasn't paying nearly as much attention to the meanings of as he was to the sound of Lex's voice. But Lex seemed to like the idea of outlining the thesis, and he sent Clark for the laptop. So Clark started pecking away at the keyboard while Lex listed talking points for him to expound on later.

It was a good distraction and Lex's mood lightened considerably, which was worth spending an hour or so on Clark's least favorite subject. He almost had the bones of the paper fleshed out, with Lex leaning over and offering suggestions and comments for improvement, when his mom called, and reminded him that he had school tomorrow and that short of dire emergency, she did expect him home at a decent hour tonight.

He didn't want to go. If he hadn't been sitting next to Lex at the time, he'd have made the argument that Lex needed him. But it was almost like she read his mind anyway, because she asked to talk to Lex.

Lex eyed the phone warily, like he was expecting it to bite him when he put it to his ear.

"I'm fine, how are you?" Lex answered in response to whatever she'd said and Clark had to fight, really fight hard, not to listen in on both sides of that conversation. He could make a pretty good guess what she was saying though, from Lex's flick of the eyes towards him, and the dry arch of one brow. He'd had to do some fast talking last night to convince her to let him stay the night. It wasn't like he would have left Lex for any reason anyway at that particular time, parental consent included, but it was just easier that he'd gotten it. She'd been worried, though and his mom generally didn't mince words when she was worried.

"I don' t know. I'll think about it. Yes. Of course." A long pause, where his lashes flicked down and he didn't say anything, just swallowed, listening. Then more subdued. "I'll try. Thank you."

He cut the connection, held the phone for a moment, then glanced at Clark. "She's adamant I come for Thanksgiving."

Clark let out a breath, afraid she'd been adamant about something else. Thanksgiving was all right. He was adamant Lex come for Thanksgiving, too.

"So we'll be seeing you, then?"

Lex shrugged. Leaned past Clark to lay the phone on the lamp table - - and stayed, resting against Clark's shoulder, breathing slow and deep, like he was trying to convince himself of something. Clark adjusted the laptop on his thighs so Lex could see the screen better, a legitimate reason for him being there.

"You need that in quotations." Lex indicated a line distractedly. Clark went for the correction and Lex sighed, slouching down deeper on the couch, relaxing against Clark.

He shut his eyes and murmured. "Don't piss off your parents. I can't afford it. I'm fine."

"Yeah, you say that a lot."

Lex shifted enough to look up at Clark, wearing one of those looks of his that teetered between amused and skeptical. "Maybe I'll fly down Wednesday. I need to see about some things with the mansion. Have some things packed up and sent - -"

"Sent where?" Clark asked when he hesitated.

"The penthouse in Metropolis, I guess. I can't stay here forever. Besides, I hear winter up here puts Kansas winters to shame."

Clark nodded. He understood that he couldn't stay in Smallville, not after what had happened here to him. Not yet, at any rate. And though Metropolis didn't have the draw of the ocean, it was a whole lot closer than an island off the coast of Massachusetts. Clark could make that trip in ten minutes. Maybe less now that his speed had increased.

And the fact that Lex was thinking about doing something - - the fact that he was planning - - was a good thing.


School was a huge distraction from the things Clark wanted to be doing. Which was mainly Lex. But Lex sounded okay on the phone, and okay when he went by after school Tuesday. A different sort of okay, which was hard to explain. Not exactly the sort of okay he had before when he was shielding like crazy; he was a little more willing to let things slip now, a little more willing to admit that he'd had a hard time sleeping the last few nights. A little more willing to sit on the deck for a few hours Tuesday and talk about the sorts of things that the telling of, Clark thought, was like shedding dead weight that he didn't need.

He flew in Wednesday on one of the LuthorCorp jets, and made the drive from Metropolis international to Smallville while Clark was still in school. Clark got home, and there was a black Porsche in the drive, but it hadn't been there long, if the heat radiating from the hood was any indication.

He pounded up the back porch steps and into the kitchen and found Lex leaning against the island counter while his mom was pulling the steaming kettle of the stovetop. His dad was nowhere in sight. Either still out in the fields or purposefully in the barn finding something to occupy himself other than entertaining Lex.

"Wipe your feet, honey," his mom reminded, since the yard was still muddy from last night's rain. He backed up a step, onto the mat inside the kitchen door, scuffing his boots while he meet Lex's mildly amused blue stare.

"You just get here?"

One shoulder lifted under a charcoal wool coat. "Round abouts."

"Would you like a cup of tea, Clark?" his mom asked just to be polite in front of company, since she knew he'd rather go for a cold soda.

"I'm good," he said and grabbed a Pepsi out of the refrigerator door. He popped the lid and went to lean on the island next to Lex.

The kitchen smelled of pumpkin pie and cookies. She'd been baking all week. Her pies were county fair blue ribbon winners and she'd been taking Thanksgiving orders a month in advance. There were about a dozen cooling on racks or already in pie boxes on around the kitchen that she'd get Clark to run by to people tomorrow morning. She'd turned a tidy little profit this year.

"So how was the drive in?" He dragged his eyes off all the baked goods and onto Lex.

He got a half smile. "Not bad, considering early holiday traffic."

His mom handed Lex a cup of tea, already sugared like she knew how he liked it. Lex thanked her and sipped at it, while she sat down and idly ran a finger around the lip of her cup at the table.

"You should take Clark with you when you go to the house," his mom said, watching the both of them with that look she had that hinted she knew a lot more than she let on.

Lex shrugged. Since Clark had had every intention of going with him, he smiled and nodded assent.

"Sure."

"And of course you're not staying there tonight," she said with a little more sternness in her tone.

"I hadn't planned on it," Lex said. "I'll drive back to the city."

"Nonsense. I've cleaned out the guest room. It took me two days to go through the clutter and it would be inconsiderate of you to put all that hard work to waste."

Lex opened his mouth, trying to figure out a way around mom-logic.

"Of course, I'll understand if you feel uncomfortable - -" she said, very obviously going for the guilt cave-in. Lex lifted a brow and glanced at Clark who was trying very hard not to look like Christmas had come early.

"If you've gone to that much trouble - -"

She took a sip of her own tea and nodded. "No trouble at all, dear. Clark why don't you run and get your chores finished so you can ride out to the mansion with Lex without your father having fits."

It took him all of half an hour. It was a long half hour, knowing Lex was in his house, talking with him mom. And he still didn't know if she'd ever carried through with that threat to talk to him about the 'them having had sex' thing. Clark really hoped not.

His dad caught him on the way back to the house, hailing him from the tractor, and asked for his help unhooking the big plow from the back. He had it off the hitch, and was backing it towards the side of the barn before his father had climbed down off the tractor. He grabbed the hose before his dad could request he do so and started spraying the mud off it.

"So I see Lex is here," his dad remarked on the obvious, since they didn't know anybody else that drove around in hundred thousand dollar sports cars.

"Yeah."

"You get the side of the henhouse patched back up?"

"Yes sir."

"And those stalls mucked out in the barn?"

"The whole list."

His dad stood there, thumbs hooked in the loops of his jeans, staring at the muddy water running off the plow blades. Thinking things that he didn't say. Or didn't know how to say without getting loud. Clark wasn't blind to his dilemma. It had to be hard, welcoming Lex into his house. He hadn't talked with his dad, other than a few angry words, about how he felt about Lex. About the fact that girl's had become an afterthought in favor of - - well, Lex. He figured his mom had.

Since he'd snapped out of his reparative state, his dad had been completely okay with him. Too happy to have him back to hold on to disappointments over any compromising positions he'd caught him in. Clark figured he probably had a few more issues with Lex.

"So your mother said he's going out to the estate."

"Yeah, this afternoon."

His dad nodded, tightening his jaw. "You riding over with him?"

"Yeah."

"Guess that's a good thing. There was a lot of blood spilled in that house."

Clark took a breath. He hadn't seen the signs of it on his brief foray when he'd been looking for Lex. He supposed Lex had had someone in to clean it all up after the police had finished their investigation.

Clark cut off the hose, stuffed his fingers in his pockets and waited to see if his dad was working his way to a point. But he just waved a hand towards the house and said. " Better get started before it gets dark."

"Yes, sir," Clark didn't need to be encouraged. He headed towards the house, remembering to wipe his feet this time, before his mom could remind him.

"So you want to head out before it gets too dark?" Clark asked.

Lex was sitting at the table across from his mom, coat across the back of the chair, an untouched cookie on a napkin in front of him.

"If you're finished."

Hid dad was coming up the porch as they were leaving, and both he and Lex hesitated, like neither one knew exactly what to do. Clark figured if his dad had been out in the fields, this was the first he'd seen of Lex today.

"Mr. Kent." Lex recovered first, but didn't offer his customary hand.

"Lex." His dad didn't seem offended by the lack. Sort of relieved actually. But he had that ramrod straightness of the back that suggested pretty clearly that he was putting forth an effort to something. And Lex had his hands in his pockets, a pretty clear indication with him, that he was less than at ease. Clark sighed and got the ball moving by heading for the steps.

"We'll see you later tonight." He didn't put a hand on Lex, but Lex moved to follow him anyway, and his dad moved in the other direction and whatever snag had frozen them there dissipated. Thanksgiving dinner was going to be fantastic, Clark thought.

It took maybe five minutes once they hit the road, to reach the mansion. Lex didn't speak throughout it. He slowed down once they reached the route bordering the estate walls, like he was in no hurry to get there.

At the gates, he got out and took a key he'd probably had arranged to have waiting for him at the airport with whoever had delivered the car. He unlocked the chain on the gate, swung it open and drove in without bothering to close it after them.

Big grey house, with all its castellated edges and ivy covered stone and it had never struck Clark as looking so desolate as it did now. Maybe that was because with no groundskeeper presently on staff, all the summer flowerbeds were dead and brown.

"So what are you going to do with it?" Clark asked, breaking their silence as they approached the front doors.

"I don't know," Lex admitted. He unlocked the front doors, and stood there in the threshold, not taking that first step inside.

Clark's mom had told him what had happened that day, with her and Lex, and what they'd found, and how terrified she'd been. He could only imagine what Lex had been feeling, fresh out of a three-week long nightmare.

Clark stood there beside him, waiting for him to make that first move. Lex took a breath, mouth set, eyes resolute and walked inside.

To be continued . . .

Obsessions Chapter 17

Here's chapter seventeen of Obsessions.

Enjoy



Clark had a canvas bag with him when he arrived. It was just after six and he had a look that screamed self-satisfaction.

"My mom sent these," Clark lifted the sack.

Lex lifted a brow and indicated the counter. It was a good bet Clark wasn't particularly pleased about a bag of produce. "She does realize the island's not experiencing a shortage of organic vegetables."

Clark shrugged. "Did I mention this morning that I could run on water?"

Lex opened his mouth, stymied in his build up to complaining over Clark mentioning the contents of his refrigerator to his mother. The running on water declaration was most certainly a subject changer.

"No. You neglected that tidbit."

"Yeah, well - -" Clark held out his hands, grinning. "Apparently if you run fast enough, you sail right across. I just figured it out. Well, I figured it out this morning. By accident. Works pretty well, though."

Lex eyed him thoughtfully. He was all shiny and pleased, practically glowing with it. White teeth, golden skin, wind tousled black hair that was getting a little long. "You couldn't before. Did you just not know you were capable, or are you getting faster?"

"Faster," Clark said without hesitation. "I beat my last time by a long shot. So what did you do today?"

Oh, broke down a little. Arranged for your father to engage in a little arson, just so it could be a family affair. Got warned away from the underage sex. How about you? Lex leaned back against the counter, and said instead. "I picked up a few things in town. You do like fish?"

Clark shrugged unenthusiastically. "I guess."

"Well it's an island. The seafood is fresh and plentiful. I thought maybe we could christen that grill on the deck."

Clark perked up at that idea, very much a sucker for food related activities. Clark was far from a gourmet and Lex's appetite was less than enthusiastic. They decided on simple. They cut up some of the produce Martha had sent, peppers, onions, yellow squash and piled them on top of the tuna fillets and put them in tinfoil pouches to steam on the grill.

They sat on the deck and watched the ocean while they cooked, Lex listening to Clark talking about the last few days at school and the uncomfortable task of reintegration.

"Everybody at school thinks I'm the biggest freak on the planet," Clark said, sitting perched on the deck rail, watching Lex instead of the ocean behind him. "As soon a people forget one thing, something else pops up to get them talking."

"Do you care what people say behind your back?"

"Well, yeah. Don't you?" Clark countered and gave him a penetrating look.

"No. For the most part. But then, I've probably got a lot more people talking about me than you have. Besides which, it's high school. It's a given that you're going to encounter asinine behavior."

"Did you?" Clark canted his head curiously.

Lex almost considered lying, glossing over what had been a rather intimidating first year and half of his prep school education. But admitting things to Clark had become comfortable to him. Cathartic. He ran a hand over his head and smiled wryly.

"Have you looked in the mirror, Clark? You think you have it hard, try being the scrawny, bald freshman at the elitist of elite schools. Because believe me, rich kids can be dicks of monumental proportions. If I'd been 6'3 and looked like you, chances are I wouldn't have gotten my ass kicked quite as many times as I did. Well, that and possibly if I had any ability whatsoever to keep my mouth shut when someone bigger and meaner than me was looking for a fight."

Clark frowned. "See, now I just want to go and kick some rich kids asses."

Lex snorted. "Oh, don't feel sorry for me. I got over the victim phase and delivered my own justice."

Clark kept staring, thinking things he didn't say. Things Lex silently thanked him for not saying. He slowly nodded. "Okay."

He hopped down from the railing and headed for the grill. "Does that smell done to you?"

It was, and it wasn't half bad. Lex managed to eat about half of his packet, which was more than he'd had the appetite for in a long while. Clark brought it out in him.

Clark kicked off his shoes and wanted to examine the beach afterwards. The sky was purple, the ocean huge and dark, broken only by the pale glimmer of white caps. The booming rush of waves crashing against beach reminded a person how small they were. It was cool enough to warrant a jacket, but Lex just stuffed his hands in his pockets and avoided the chill foamy surf that rushed the sand. Clark had no such qualms. He walked a few yards closer in, the bottom of his jeans soaked up to the knee from the water.

"You know, before I came here, I'd never seen the ocean," Clark admitted.

"Really? With your abilities - - you never just decided to take a run and see?"

"It never occurred to me. I was content I guess. With the farm and Smallville and the things Smallville offered. My biggest dream was marrying Lana and maybe having a house of our own in town."

Lex sidestepped further up the beach to avoid a particularly far-reaching surge of tide. Clark waded a little deeper, up to his knees in rolling water.

"And now?"

"Now its like the whole world is waiting. Now I don't even know all the things I want - - except that whatever they are, they've got to include you."

Sixteen, Martha had said. Sixteen, and you've got to be the adult. "When you're sixteen everything is bright and shiny. You'll have a hundred dreams - - a thousand, before you find the one that really matters."

Clark stopped, staring at him, a big wave crashing against the back of his legs and not moving him an inch. "What does that mean, Lex?"

A gust flapped Lex's shirt and he shivered, digging his hands deeper into his pockets. Clark wasn't shivering at all, and the Atlantic this far north towards the end of November was chill. One more amazing thing. Lex could spend a lifetime exploring them all. He wasn't altruistic enough to give it up.

"Nothing. It means nothing. Me trying to play at adult. Why aren't you cold?"

He looked down at Clark from his dune, feet sinking into loose, dry sand.

Clark stared at him a moment longer, like he was trying to figure him out, then he shrugged and took a step backwards, deeper into the water. "I dunno. One of those things."

"Oh, I love that answer."

He got a grin flashed at him. It was as white as the white caps, just as beautiful. "If I figure it out, Lex, you're the first one I tell. Promise."

By the time they got back, Clark was wet all over, the hems of Lex's pants were damp, and the moon was up.

Clark just stripped off his sodden t-shirt and wrung it out as they walked up the path to the house. His shoulders were broad, back rippling with lean muscle that barely hinted at the power he truly held. His jeans were dripping.

"Throw those in the dryer in the utility room." Lex said, trying for casual, trying very hard not to put distance between himself and a Clark that was already unbuttoning sodden jeans. "There should be something that'll fit you there."

"Sure," Clark agreed, and kicked off the jeans, balling them up to squeeze out the water before heading into the house in nothing but wet, clingy boxers that showed more than they hid.

Lex sat down on the big, double lounge and watched him go, so many conflicting emotions churning inside him it made his head swim. Clark - -just Clark being Clark made him sweat. Martha's voice inside his head, reminding him - - sixteen. As if he needed her prodding to make him think twice about it, because the promise of intimacy - -the threat of it - - made something inside him curl up and shrink away.

Clark strolled back out in a pair of gray sweatpants that were a size too small and clung like a second skin. Everything just there, from the curve of his ass to the soft bulge of his genitals. He hung to the right.

"The moon over the ocean is awesome." Clark flopped down on the other side of the lounge, sighing happily, folding his arms behind his head, chest still glistening with a few beads of moisture, smooth and perfectly formed. The only hair was the narrow start of the treasure trail a good ways below his navel heading down. Lex had a hit and run vision of Decker's body, with its thick mat of hair, bristly, dark, chest, legs, arms. His skin crawled with tactile memory. A little bit of bile teased the back of his throat. He swallowed it down, forced back the way his vision wanted to tunnel. This was Clark. Clark was not Decker.

Clark was smiling happily, staring up at the sky, at a mostly full moon and a vast array of stars. "The sky's beautiful here."

Lex thought he should get up and move to another deck chair. Clark was too close, crowding him without actually touching. Making his skin prickle and his heart thud and he honestly didn't know if it was in appreciation or anxiety.

Lex shut his eyes and tried to calm his racing pulse.

"What time do you have to be home?" He almost blurted it, tact eaten up by the nerves.

Clark blinked at him in the moonlight. "A couple of hours. Before midnight. Do you want me to go now?"

Yes. No. "I can't - -" That vague sensation of vertigo edged in on him. It felt as if the lounge might dip out from under him.

Clark sat up, hand pressing down on the cushion next to Lex's hip, not touching him, but close enough that Lex felt it. Lex felt the whole of him. Impossible not to. "You don't have to do anything. We don't have to do anything. I'll go, if you need me to."

"I don't want you to go." He could overcome this. He could fight this battle and win it. The spoils were too vital not to make the effort.

He eased himself down, head back on the slanted back of the lounge, staring up at the sky that so fascinated Clark. Practicing his breathing technique while the earth steadied under him. Clark settled back down beside him, arms behind his head again. Not touching, just close enough to know that he could if he shifted enough. That morning, in the light of day, when he'd had a purpose, when Clark had been distraught and blaming himself for things Lex had stopped blaming him for long ago, he hadn't even thought twice about stepping up and calming him.

The darkness made a difference that he couldn't understand. Clark's near nakedness did and that he understood all too well, eyes drifting back to the shape of Clark's flaccid genitals clearly hinted beneath clingy grey cotton.

"I always look up there and wonder which one I came from," Clark said softly, reverently. "And why? Did I crash land? Was it on purpose? Was I abandoned? Are there other people like me out there?"

"No clues?" Lex blew out a breath, distraction a relief. "What about the ship?"

Clark rolled his head, looking at him. "Did my parents show it to you while I was - - out of it?"

"No," Lex honestly hadn't cared until now. Clark's origins had been far down his list of concerns. "I haven't been back to Smallville since - - the day after - -"

"Yeah?"

"The mansion was - - there was a lot of death in the mansion. You were beyond any help I could give you - - and I needed to be someplace else."

"I understand."

Lex rolled his own head, meeting Clark's eyes, and thought maybe he did. Clark could be surprisingly empathic when he chose.

"Thanksgiving's coming up. You can come and see it then."

"Thanksgiving?"

"Sure. My mom always goes all out. It'll just be my parents and me and you if you want to come, so no pressure."

Because eating at a table with Jonathan Kent when he suspected Lex and his sixteen-year-old son had been engaging in sex not prompted by the accidental exposure to mood altering meteor rock would exert no pressure at all. He did want to see that ship though, now that Clark had him thinking about it.

"I'll consider it."

Clark smiled, satisfied with that. The silence was comfortable and Lex had never been one for long stretches of companionable silence. It just wasn't in him not to fill those spaces with something, but Clark made him content to just lie there and enjoy the sky while the tension slowly eased out of him.

He drifted. Eased back to awareness pressed against solid warmth. Cheek against smooth skin, arm across a hard, bare stomach.

There was a moment where his heart slammed against his ribcage, where his body instinctively wanted to jerk away when it woke up next to an unexpected presence. He laid there, pulse erratic and racing, as the pieces to the here and now, the quiet rush of surf, the night sky, the familiar, welcoming scent of Clark, edged out the bitter recollection of what had been. Clark's body was passive and still. Clark was the antithesis of threat. He told himself that. Repeated it a few times until he began to believe it. Shut his eyes and let the conviction sink in. Relaxed back against the warmth of Clark, utterly relieved that he could.

He lay there a while, allowing himself the luxury of Clark's sleeping presence. He shifted, staring at Clark's sleep softened face. He lifted a hand, traced a finger across the temple where the bullet had gone in. The bone structure was pristine, the skin unmarred. He clenched his fist, remembering the echo of those shots. Remembering the almost hollow sound of his voice when he'd screamed denial. He dreamed of those shots almost as much as he dreamed of what had happened afterwards. He half wondered, in his moments of less than rational thought, if some higher power had extracted the price of Clark's resurrection from him in pain and suffering. He'd have paid it willingly. Though it would have been nice to know at the time, that his torment had been worth something.

He let out a breath of silent laughter, the self-deprecating sort, and rolled his head to stare up at the night sky.

It occurred to him that the moon was considerably further across the sky than it had been last he'd looked. He shifted his arm to get a look at his watch. After midnight.

Fuck.

All he needed was another conversation like the one he'd had today, with Clark's parents. He cringed at the idea of Jonathan Kent calling instead of Martha, demanding to know what he'd done to his son.

"Clark."

Clark made a sound. A sleepy little groan and the arm beneath Lex's shoulders curled, pulling him a little closer, subtle strength in that embrace that was as relentless as the tides. But the arm loosened, falling back along the lounge before Lex had the chance to tense.

"Clark, wake up. Its past your curfew."

"Don't care," Clark slurred, lashes still flush against his cheeks.

Lex wasn't entirely sure he did either, he could probably endure another lecture if he had to. Because this was good, this discovery that he could experience blissful comfort pressed up against another living being. He'd been afraid that ability had been gouged out of him.

"I'll drop out of school and just stay here with you," Clark murmured. "I'll beach comb for a living. Is that a legitimate job?"

"I think, with a high school diploma, possibly even a college one, you could find better."

"Umm. You did okay without the college one."

Lex frowned against Clark's shoulder. "That was a failing on my part. I wish - -" he trailed off, considering a world of bad choices on his part. A world of rash mistakes that had very likely spurred the imagination of the psychopath his father had set to watch dogging him. "I wish I'd done things differently."

Lex pushed himself up, looking down at Clark. "Go home before I get a call from your mother."


Clark hadn't been so much grounded as he had been sternly reprimanded for coming home a good hour and a half after he was supposed to be, on a school night. His parents had both been up waiting for him, and he'd pretty much prepared for a fight, but they'd poured on the guilt instead, telling him how much they loved him and how afraid they'd been when he'd been injured and how they all needed to work together to get things back to normal.

His Dad hadn't even brought Lex's name into it, which sort of deflated Clark's arsenal of righteous indignation. They were in firm agreement that he wasn't to make the trip back to Lex's east coast island house on a school night for the rest of the week. Since it was Wednesday - - well, Thursday morning, he figured he could afford to cave to keep peace in the house.

And it did give him the time the catch up with his friends. Chloe had never been in question, but Lana seemed to have completely gotten over her pique and Pete was pretty much back to his old self. A little guarded maybe, but then, that might have been because - - Pete admitted when they were alone between classes- - Clark had seriously freaked him out with the whole zombie routine. He hadn't seen the bullet holes, but he'd seen the bandages.

He called Lex, and had he sensed anything remotely off in his voice, he'd have blown across country regardless of parental disapproval, but Lex sounded fine. Lex told him about the movie he was currently watching, which turned out to be some classic sci-fi flick that interested Clark a lot less than Lex's voice. Clark sat on the sofa in the loft, phone cradled between shoulder and ear and slowly jacked off, while he listened to Lex wax poetic over the gritty artistry of early Ridley Scott. He was a huge Bladerunner fan. He loved the first Alien. He despised the sequels. Clark sort of liked the second one.

He hadn't really masturbated since he'd snapped back to reality, there'd been a lot of other stuff on his mind, a lot of worries, a lot trying to be really, really careful around Lex. But he figured Lex over the phone half a country away was safe masturbation material. And Clark had lots of practice being quiet about it, what with mom having hearing that was damn near as good as his newfound sensitivity in the area. He could bite his lip and swallow the groans that wanted to rip up his throat as he squeezed a hand hard around his dick breaking through the open fly of his jeans. And once he started, it really hit him that it had been like six, almost seven weeks since he'd jerked off and considering he'd done it at least once or twice - - sometimes a lot more than that daily since he'd been old enough to discover the activity - - that seemed like an eternity.

His balls thought it was an eternity, tightening up almost after the first five or six strokes, and he had to hold the phone away from his face and clench his jaw as he spilled over his fist.

He was still sort of hard after, and Lex was asking him if he was okay. Sure, fine. What were you saying?

He shut his eyes and listened to Lex talk, making a few comments himself, but mostly, just sinking into the sound of Lex's voice, imagining sinking into Lex, as he stroked himself more leisurely.

Last night had been good. He thought Lex was getting better, a lot less tense around him, a lot less jumpy by the time he'd chased Clark home, than he'd been before.

Lex was strong. Lex never let adversity keep him down. If he couldn't face it head on, then he came at it from a different angle and outmaneuvered it. Clark knew Lex could get over this. Clark would help him if he could. If Lex would just relent and talk to him about the things that mattered, the things that were tearing him up on the inside, instead of holding it all in. His mom said not to push, but his mom also said that nothing good ever came of holding onto a hurt so long that festered and turned gangrenous.

There had to be a happy medium.

He had a meteor freak issue Friday after school, and boy, it seemed like forever since he'd had one of those. He really hadn't been paying a lot of attention, but Lana ended up being okay, afterwards, if not a little confused at how she'd woken up at home in bed.

He put in a lot of extra work on the farm afterwards, getting stuff done that wasn't even on the to do list, just to cover his bases for the weekend. With the exception of early nineteen-century poetry, which he despised, he'd gotten all his make up work done. He'd dole it out a little at a time over the next couple of weeks, to keep from raising eyebrows, but he was done and his mom was satisfied. He promised her to take the poetry book with him to Lex's. He even figured Lex could help him out deciphering the mental meanderings of long dead, really pessimistic poets, if he asked nicely.

So Saturday morning, bright and early - - well, relatively bright and early - - after ten, since Lex seemed to have a problem with the early morning wake up calls - - Clark headed east. He had a backpack stuffed with a few things this time, swim trunks, since he had every intention of partaking of the ocean during the light of day, an extra change of clothes, just in case the need arose, the damned poetry book, to appease him mom. There wasn't much he could do to appease the look his dad got, sort of dour and disapproving, and Clark thought he'd heard a bit of argument between his parents last night about the wisdom of letting him spend all this time alone with Lex half continent away from parental supervision. He'd stopped listening about halfway though, not wanting to hear it. Feeling bad, really bad, over his dad being so against the idea of him and Lex, feeling embarrassed as hell when his mom brought up things like 'not having sex' when you're too young to get all the implications - - like there were secrets out there associated with it that he hadn't figured out yet. Like he thought it was a nifty pastime to go out and practice with just any body that was game instead of something wonderful and sacred and not to be squandered unless it meant something. He got that. He believed that. He wasn't quite sure how to reassure his mom - - much less his dad - -without dying a little from the humiliation factor.

Whatever they came up with, he'd try to respect, because he loved them and they deserved it. But he'd draw the line at no Lex. He'd fight them for Lex. But there had been no restrictions waiting for him at the breakfast table, just his mom suggesting that he try not to make them stay up to all hours of the morning waiting for him to get home this time and make it a relatively decent hour. His father stuffed pancakes into his mouth in the obvious effort not to add his two cents to that. Apparently mom's view had prevailed in the discussion last night.

So Clark kissed her cheek, grinned at his dad and took off.

Lex was up when he got there, sitting on the deck with a mug of coffee and a laptop. Clark slowed down at the base of the deck steps, to keep from startling him into sloshing coffee onto the keyboard and delivered a cheerful 'Morning', as he stomped up the stairs.

Lex looked over the rim of his sunglasses at him, mouth twitching a little in a half smile.

"So what are you up to today?" Clark asked, because really, other than sitting around reading, looking at the ocean, sleeping, all of which were great if you were trying to relax and heal, and all of which he thought, after a while would have driven Lex crazy, there wasn't a lot to do.

Lex tipped his glasses back, giving Clark an unobstructed view of his eyes, which were very pale blue this morning, almost grayish in the bright morning light. There was the slightest hue of purple under them, like he hadn't gotten much in the way of sleep last night.

"Catching up on a little news. I've gotten behind lately."

Clark sat down on the chair opposite him, and decided not to ask if he'd slept. There was no reason to start the day off with Lex touchy and on the defensive. "I can give you some Smallville news. I had to deal with another meteor mutant yesterday."

Lex lifted a brow and Clark went into details. It was such a relief being able to talk to him about stuff like this, which tended to be a pretty big part of Clark's life, instead of having to avoid valid subjects and outright lie. And Lex was a lot more interested than Pete had ever been, after he'd found out. Though Pete might deny it, Clark thought the whole thing scared him a lot. Not Clark so much as all the crazy shit that he tended to jump into feet first.

"He didn't see you?" Was Lex's first question.

"Well, he sorta did. But Lana was unconscious and I was literally at the Talon in front of tons of witnesses like a minute later, so I've got an alibi. I've done this a couple of times before, you know."

Lex eyed him thoughtfully, thinking maybe of all the times Clark had given him perfectly legitimate reasons why Clark 'couldn't have had anything to do', with whatever it was Lex had been asking him about.

"Your names comes up a lot at the sheriff's office," Lex commented. "I know, because I've had the occasion to inquire."

"Yeah?" That was the sort of statement that would have set off every warning signal he had six months ago. Now he canted his head and grinned a little bashfully. "I gave you the runaround a lot."

"Unn. You need to come up with better lies."

Clark lifted a brow.

"There's going to come a day when you don't have a decent alibi, or there are too many witnesses to convince they've experienced some form of group delusion. Or someone catches you on video. The 'you hit your head pretty hard' excuse is just not gonna fly forever."

"Did you ever believe it?"

"The first time, you had me really doubting. After that - - not so much."

Clark's grin widened at Lex's dry tone. "Yeah, I sorta picked up on that a few times, when you looked like you wanted to strangle me. Why didn't you kick me out and wash your hands of me?"

Lex leaned back in his chair, giving Clark one of those sleek, amused looks of his. "I will admit to ulterior motives."

Clark thought about that and the things he'd pretended hadn't been there, that he knew damn well had been, now. Thought of the bullshit Lex had been willing to put up with because Lex had had it bad for him. It made him sort of flushed and hot at the pit of his stomach thinking about it.

"Yeah?"

Lex arched a brow. "I was curious. How was I supposed to catch you in a lie if I didn't see you on a regular basis?"

Clark gave him an unappreciative look. Lex half shrugged and added. "And you did lie very prettily. Even when they were pouty, indignant ones. I would have hated to miss out on that."

"I don't pout."

Lex laughed abruptly. "Oh dear God, do you really think not?"

Clark might have been offended, if it wasn't so good seeing Lex laugh honestly, without having to pretend.

"So I was thinking about maybe checking out the ocean," Clark said. "I brought trunks."

"Knock yourself out."

"You wanna come?"

Lex laughed again. "Not even remotely."

He did walk out onto the beach though, after Clark had been in the water a while. Clark saw him, a tiny figure on the beach, after he'd swam out a good mile. It was likely Lex couldn't see him so far out, past the gentle swells. The water was fantastic though, huge and evocative, with unrelenting motion. It was euphoric almost, to simply float, no ground beneath him, swayed by something more powerful than him. He was vaguely aware of temperature extremes, even though they had little effect on him, and if he had to guess, he'd say this was somewhere around 50 degrees, so little wonder Lex hadn't been eager to join him. Clark liked the cold better than the heat. The cold - - especially the extreme cold, almost invigorated him. This cool water, combined with the constant motion made his skin tingle pleasantly.

He swam back to shore, putting on a bit of speed until he was close enough that Lex could see him from the beach.

Lex stood there, beige clothing almost the color of the sand, loose and whipping in the wind, unreadable expression on his face, fingers in his pockets, while Clark waded out.

"Hey," Clark said grinning, shaking water out of his hair. "Are there dolphins in these waters? I think I saw something big break the surface out there."

Lex opened his mouth. Took a breath, like he wanted to say something but restrained himself. He shook his head and said instead. "I don't know. You were pretty far out."

"Yeah, it was great. There's a little island another couple miles out. I'm heading for that next time."

Lex didn't look particularly impressed at the declaration and it occurred to Clark that not being able to see him out there, he might have worried. Lex was new to Clark's whole special ability thing and his confidence hadn't been boosted much by Clark getting throat-slashed and shot the first day he'd found out.

"Last time I clocked myself," Clark said, a sort of peace offering to let Lex know just how little he had to worry about Clark and the perils of the ocean. "I was up to being able to hold my breath for about twenty-three minutes. That was last summer. I'm betting I can beat that now."

Lex looked past him a moment, maybe towards that distant island. It was clear enough you could see the bigger landmass of Nantucket itself beyond it, maybe twelve, fifteen miles to the southeast. Lex's fingers clenched just a little in his pockets, the only indicator that there were nerves at play.

"I thought we might ride into town for lunch."

"Sure," Clark was more than game for an outing. Running through the island at supersonic speeds didn't leave much room for appreciating the scenery.

Lex looked apologetic over the car. It was a four door Mercedes that he claimed as his father's.

"It was here when I arrived," Lex explained, which Clark translated as, if Lex had been in a better frame of mind, he'd have had arranged for something sleeker to seen in. But then, Clark had the feeling Lex hadn't been getting out a lot.

It wasn't a big island, and they road along a coastal highway until they reached a little wharf in Edgartown, that boasted high dollar sailboats, and yachts mixed in with more weathered working vessels. There were a lot of quaint little shops and bistros. Nobody looked twice at them, as if whatever reputation Lex had gained back in the city - - Metropolis, New York or otherwise - - hadn't been able to cross the channel and follow him here. There weren't even any gossip rags on the magazine racks in storefronts they passed, just the local paper and the New York Times.

Good thing, because according to Chloe, who'd apparently been keeping tab, the gossip rags were running wild with the whole Lex Luthor kidnapping/sex slave/possible murdered father for inheritance thing. Clark had gone on line and looked at a few stories after she'd told him and immediately wanted to run into the city and torch the Inquisitor's presses. Or at the very least knock a few journalistic - - and he used the term lightly - - heads against walls. He didn't want Lex to ever have to see those stories, but it wasn't like he could shield him from them.

They ate lunch in a little place on the wharf. Not very crowded, which Clark counted as a good thing, because Lex was exuding just the slightest aura of something. Clark wouldn't go so far as to say tension, it was just after knowing Lex as long as he had, knowing how Lex moved when he was in control and comfortable, there was a certain grace lacking. A certain smooth predatory gait to his stride that just wasn't there. Like he was on edge and waiting for the next shoe to fall. A certain stillness that came over him when he passed too close to people on the street, that made Clark want to insert himself between him and all those oblivious passer bys.

By the time they left, Lex's jaw was clenched and his hands white knuckled on the wheel. It took half the trip back to the east shore beach house before he relaxed. Clark wanted badly to ask, 'is this why you left Metropolis?' 'is it getting better or worse?', but Lex hadn't brought it up himself, and he remembered his mom's warning not to push. Only problem was, he wasn't sure where that line was between pushing and backing too far off and letting Lex slide into something he'd have a hard time pulling himself out of.

It was one of those instances that talking to his mom and getting her advice, would have been really, really nice.

Lex had had a glass of wine with lunch. He had another when they got back to the beach house. Sat down with it, while Clark flopped onto the white leather couch and flipped through the selection of satellite channels.

"You wanna know what classic sci-fi I like?" Clark gave Lex a look from the vantage of the other end of the couch, as he landed on a black and white episode of Lost in Space. "This is awesome stuff. I'd kill for The Robot."

"I had a working model," Lex said casually. "Granted, it was three feet tall, but it gave great catch phrases."

"Figures," Clark grinned.

Lex shrugged and sipped at his wine. Almost at ease, but not quite. Like there was something at the back of his mind that he couldn't shake.

They spent an hour watching back-to-back episodes, then Lex's attention wondered, and he fetched his laptop. Clark figured it was time for another swim. He'd make that island this time, and give Lex time alone.

He slipped on still damp swim trunks and hit the ocean at a run. Dove into the waves and got sand in his shorts from the tumbling surf, but that was okay. He dove through the waves until the chop stopped and it was just swells, then started swimming, normal human speed.

He wished he could get Lex out here, because there was peace in the waves. A cocooning sort of silence, inundated by the swell of water that settled everything.

He made it to the islet, sat on the rocks for a while, watching the seagulls bomb dive the surf. The sun was getting towards the western horizon. The day had passed too quickly. It was the first one he thought, that he'd spent morning to evening entirely in Lex's company. He thought he could get used to it.

He swam back, spent a lot of time underwater, going deep, where even with his vision, all he saw was murk and shadow and the occasional silvery glimpse of fish. Stayed down until his lungs started to burn, then rocketed to the surface.

It was exhilarating. It made him feel vibrant, alive. He tromped out the waves, shedding water on his way back to the house. Lex apparently trusted him enough not to drown this time that he hadn't come out to check on Clark's status.

He stood at the counter, back to Clark as he came in, idly scrolling down a page on his laptop, an almost empty glass of a different color wine in hand. The lack of hair accentuated the line of Lex's neck. Just one long, smooth sweep of muscle and tendon from the bump at the back of his skull to the sweep of his shoulders. He was beautiful, and Clark wondered if he'd figured out yet, just how much Clark loved him.

He stepped up impulsively, lying hands on Lex's shoulders, brushing his cheek against the smooth skin at the back of Lex's head. Lex stiffened, just this moment where he literally stopped breathing, every muscle in his body frozen into unnatural stillness, before a strangled sound escaped him and he jammed and elbow backwards, trying to spin, a frantic struggle that sent the laptop crashing to the floor, in the wake of the wineglass.

"Get off. Get off!"

Lex was hissing at him, pushing at him, and Clark's instincts, fast as they were, had been shocked into sluggishness.

"Lex, it's me. It's me," he cried, and finally had the sense to just let go and stumble back in shock. Lex went the other way, back against the counter, pupils so dilated that his eyes were almost black, breath ragged and harsh. Staring more through Clark than at him.

It took him a few moments to focus, for comprehension to seep back into his eyes. Then he opened his mouth, that utter animal panic that had flooded his expression turning into something more aghast. He met Clark's eyes for a heartbeat and god knew what expression Clark was wearing. Then Lex's mouth thinning and something hardened behind his gaze, and he turned without a word and stalked upstairs.

Clark stared for a moment at the mess on the floor. The wine seeping into the hardwood. He grabbed a towel off the counter and laid it on the spill to sop it up, picked up the laptop and laid it on the counter. He'd get the shards of broken glass later, when he didn't have a distraught Lex to deal with.

It was his fault. He didn't know what he'd been thinking, surprising Lex like that, when Lex was in no state of mind to deal with surprises. The look in his eyes, the raw panic and fear - - how close to the surface had that been to break through so easily?

The door to Lex's bedroom was closed. Clark stood outside it, miserably debating whether to lift a hand and knock. He swallowed, hating himself for causing this and ventured. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. I shouldn't have - -"

Something crashed, the chiming clatter of breaking glass. Clark flinched and it took everything he had not to break through the door. He used his x-ray vision instead, making sure Lex was all right. Which he was, at least physically. Pacing, breathing hard, hands clenching and unclenching as he moved.

"Lex?"

Another clatter of smashing glass and Clark shut his eyes, winching at the sound of destruction. He backed up, back to the opposite wall and listened to Lex melt down behind the thin layer of door. The sound of movement stopped, momentarily, then Lex was at the door, snatching it open, staring at Clark with wide, storm colored eyes. Half the panes in French doors were shattered, whatever had been on the dresser hurled through. There were pieces of ceramic in the corner and a dent in the wall where the lamp had been slammed into it. The mirror over the dresser was splintered, long, razer sharp splinters of reflective glass still clinging to the corners but the majority of it littering the dresser and the floor around it. There was trickle of blood running down Lex's hand where glass had sliced. Not deep, not bleeding too bad.

Still, Clark paled at the sight of red. "Lex - -? Are you okay?"

"No!" Lex snarled at him. "Obviously I'm pretty fucking far from okay. God, Clark what do you want from me? What do you expect, because I really need to know if I'm going to try and put up a decent front. If you're looking for a quick fuck, I'm afraid I'm not up to par. With a few drinks I could probably lay there and take it if you really felt the need. Its not like I could stop you. "

Clark gaped at him, aghast. "No! I don't want - - I wouldn't - -"

He stopped, trying to put two and two together. Thinking that maybe when he'd come up behind Lex he might have been sporting half an erection. The feel of the surf rushing through his shorts had been pretty damn exhilarating, that was all. Sex hadn't been on his mind at all. Hell, he'd hardly noticed the thing, because God knew a strong breeze could inspire a tightening in his pants with nothing more than cows in attendance. But Lex had felt it, maybe when Clark pressed up behind him. God, he was an idiot.

"Lex, I'm sorry. I didn't mean - - please talk to me," he pleaded. "I want to help you, but I don't know how if you don't tell me."

Lex stared at him, mouth tight, face frozen in that expression he wore when he was trying to convince the world he didn't give a damn. It probably would have fooled most people, but Clark could read his eyes, and they were the sort of dark they only got when there was emotion to spare rolling around behind them.

"Stop trying to help me, Clark. I'm broken. Don't you get that? Just get the fuck out and go try and fix someone else, Clark. Go chase Lana - - go for the girl and the white picket fence and leave me the fuck alone!"

He tried to slam the door closed, to shut Clark out, and Clark wasn't having it. He caught the edge, desperate, confused, forced it open, and after a moment of resistance, Lex it go.

"Lex, no - - I'm not going anywhere. And you're not going anywhere until you just talk to me!" The hell with not pushing. His mom was wrong. Lex didn't need him to back off, because Lex wasn't going to do anything but stagnate if left to his own devices. He put his hands on the doorframe, meeting Lex's wild eyes unflinchingly.

Lex bared his teeth, glaring back, not backing down, angry. And Angry was good. Angry was better than panic and fear and whatever other dark poisonous things roiling around in there eating him up from the inside.

"What the fuck do you want to hear? You want to dirty details? That it got to the point where I was preying for a good old-fashioned dick up the ass rape instead of having him come up with something more creative? That he violated me every fucking conceivable way a body can be violated and then came up with new ones? That I was so fucking spineless that when he put his cock in my mouth and said suck, I put forth my best effort hoping that he'd get off enough to give me a few moments peace afterwards. But that it never stopped him from fucking me over anyway? I begged and I crawled and nothing stopped - - I can feel it in my mouth - - everything tastes like him - - there's so much of him inside me that I can't wash it out - - staining me - - I can't scrub it off - - I can't make it go away - -"

His shoulder hit the doorframe, hands curled into claws, nails raking at his wrists, like he was trying to tear off invisible cuffs. He couldn't seem to catch his breath. Clark was having a hard time catching his own, swallowed up by this hollow horror that Lex's words had created in the pit of his stomach. Touching him was what had started this whole thing, but every instinct Clark had said get his arms around him, pull him in and let him rage all he wanted as long as he knew Clark was there.

It was probably foolish, but instinct had served Clark well before. He moved in close, wrapped his arms around him, and Lex when ballistic, bucking against him, cursing, struggling in a blind rage to break free.

"Lex, it's not there," Clark yelled at him, trying to keep hold and not hurt him in the process, because there was nothing rational in Lex's eyes. "There's nothing there, no stain. There's nothing there. I can see through to your bones and there's nothing there." He was babbling over Lex's exertions, thinking, God, God, I've made a mistake, he won't forgive me for this. He'll hate me.

"I can feel him," Lex slammed a fist against Clark's shoulder, followed up with his forehead, pressed there, his weight heavy against Clark of a sudden, just leaning there, all the strength drained away, legs going out from under him and Clark went with it, sinking down the doorframe, easing them both down to the floor, Lex shuddering, sobbing against his neck. "All the time - -I can feel him inside me. Like poison. I dream about him, Clark. Every night. I see him out of the corner of my eye - - I can't breathe sometimes - - I feel so fucking - - weak."

Clark tightened his arms and Lex didn't fight it. Lex just shook with silent tremors and dug his fingers into Clark's shoulders. "He's dead and you're alive. You're not weak. You faced him down and you won. You did what you had to do, Lex. And you survived it. How's that weak?"

Lex didn't answer. Just pressed his face into Clark's shoulder and held on like he'd found unexpected ballast and was holding on for dear life.

Clark was so relieved to provide the service that he sat there, arms around Lex and cried.

To be continued . . .

2012 Calendar

This year I'm doing something different with calendars.

Although I appreciate the people who did buy last year's calendar, overall, I spent a lot of time creating new art and still ended up with poor sales.

So this year, I thought I'd do custom calendars for those of you who want a BishonenWorks Calendar, essentially letting you chose twelve pictures of already completed art.

You can do do a naughty calendar, a G rated one, an all Clex, Gundam, Weiss, or original work - - mix and match however you'd like.

Since i'll be custom creating these for each customer and ordering one at a time, it'll be a little more expensive - - I'm thinking between $26.00 and $29.00 since it'll actually take some time and effort to resize each image to fit the calendar format.

i'll figure out the details and make it available via the Bishonenworks shop soon so anyone who wants one can place the order and get the calendar by the first of the year.