Obsessions Chapter 15

And here's part fifteen of 'Obsessions'.



Chapter fifteen

The police came eventually. Martha must have called them. Lex didn't remember her finding a working phone. Just the pounding of multiple feet and the invasion of an army of local, and eventually state and federal authorities.

Lex sat on the second to the bottom step of the grand staircase with Martha while they stormed the house, marking off evidence of the crimes, clashing with each other over jurisdiction and protocol. Assaulting them with questions that Lex was in no wise capable of answering. His feet were still stained with blood, and the echo of the gunfire still played in his head. The rest of it was muffled confusion around him.

Jonathan Kent came, and they stopped him at the door until he yelled for his wife, voice reverberating through the house, and Martha rose and hurried to the door, squeezing through the front line of police blocking it, to be engulfed in his big arms. If he was here it meant Clark was alone at the farm. He wouldn't have brought him with him in his present state. It worried Lex, the thought of Clark alone, and the worry kicked out some of the blanketing numb.

He started thinking about the things he didn't need them knowing, thinking about how to keep Clark out of it now that the Kent's were firmly entrenched in the sordid mess.

Someone with authority moved them to a room they'd apparently deemed free of crime scene evidence. There were EMTs, who looked at Martha's head, and tried to look at Lex's various hurts, before he shrugged them off, not wanting hands upon him. They wanted both of them at the hospital, for closer examination, but their wants were at odds with the wants of the authorities, which had, it turned out seven bodies on their hands.

They'd found Lionel's assistant, the cook and two of his security in the pantry off the kitchen. Lex's gate guard had been discovered in the bushes beyond the gatehouse. Then there was Decker and Lionel Luthor himself.

Lex was responsible for at least one, if not both of those deaths. He wasn't sure if he could have done anything differently that might have prevented his father's. If he'd have acted sooner. If he'd have moved when Decker told him to move. Had he gotten in that last 'fuck you', in a conscious move to piss Decker off? God knew, he was intimately familiar with the man's hair trigger temper. Maybe he'd done it on purpose. He couldn't remember what he'd been thinking. He couldn't remember much of anything beyond squeezing the trigger that first time.

Martha remembered. He half heard her answers as a different set of detectives questioned her across the room, her husband staunchly by her side. She'd found him on the road on her way to town. That was the story she'd repeated at him while they'd sat on the steps waiting for the arrival of the authorities. She'd come upon him, wondering dazed and confused and brought him home. It was a reasonable explanation, and one that his current state of mind lent perfect credence to.

One that backed the fact that he had no idea where he'd been kept or had a good story for how he'd escaped. He played on the trauma and the shock to avoid giving details until he could figure them out in his own head.

But they were relentless, all of them vying for some upper hand. And he had a father with whom he'd been on questionable terms dead, and the inheritance of a multi-billion dollar corporate monster as a result. They were suspicious of the circumstances, and God knew if some of them were creating scenarios in their heads around the idea that he'd set the whole thing up as a means to an end. The part of his brain that was starting to function again, told him to stop fighting the EMT's efforts to get him to the hospital. That if he had to start defending himself in this - - God, please God, don't make him have to argue the details - - he needed them to have as much physical proof as possible. And he healed fast. Almost twenty-four hours since Clark had pulled him out of Decker's nightmare and bruises were already fading.
So he relented. Let them take him to the hospital, let them record the evidence Decker had left on his body. Went away while they did it to a place very similar to the one he'd used to escape Decker. They took his clothes with their blood spatter, and ones of his own appeared. He could only assume Martha Kent had had the foresight to gather a few of his things before she and her husband had followed Lex to the ER.

Somewhere between the start of the examination and the end, Lex's lawyers arrived. They were in the company of LuthorCorp functionaries. LuthorCorp lawyers, LuthorCorp sycophants, drawn by the smell of death. The smell of corporate upheaval.

And strangely enough, Lex didn't relish the idea that soon enough they'd all be at his beck and call. He'd wanted the power a thriving company offered before this - - broken his back to build something. But now, as he waited while police conferred with lawyers in a battle over whether he would be subjected to more intensive questioning at the headquarters of whoever had won the jurisdiction toss-up, or released on his own recognizance, he thought it had all been ego.

All been some grand effort on his part to prove his father wrong. To prove that he wasn't the aimless dilettante Lionel had accused him of being before he sent him here.

"Mr. Luthor, they've agreed to sit down and talk with you sometime in the next few days for a more in-depth statement. You're free to leave when you like." His lawyer was smugly satisfied.

There was a mob in the lobby. Not entirely unexpected, but startling. His body it seemed had developed tics separate from his mind and he stalled beyond the glass paned doors leading from examination rooms to lobby, staring at the swarm of what had to press, and various members of his father's staff and law team.

"I'm having my car brought around. Lex, I'm having the car brought around."

Lex blinked, focused on the face of his lawyer, the concerned frown. He thought that statement might have been repeated multiple times before the last two that he'd picked up. He took a breath, nodded.

One of the local deputies was standing outside the ER door, keeping the wolves at bay. When the call came that the car was outside, Lex's lawyer asked for his help getting through the press.

The questions rushed in like a flood as soon as he stepped into the lobby. Most of them were just white noise, a few got through. Is it true Donald Decker was obsessed with you for years? Were you sexually assaulted during your captivity? Were you aware he was targeting your enemies? Did you collude with him to murder your father?

There was a clog by the door and he couldn't get through fast enough. People pressed close and his heart was pounding so hard, it threatened to come up his throat. He felt paper thin and light headed.

"Move out of his damned way!" Another body joined the deputy, inserting a shoulder, shoving a blurred faced reporter with a camera roughly aside. Jonathan Kent, who waded in and helped make a path.

Between them, they got him out, into fresh evening air. He saw Martha hovering in the emergency driveway, the Kent Pickup truck in one of the short-term spaces beyond. They were still here - - had been here for hours - - because he had. It was almost surreal that they'd waited,

"Clark?" He circled around the car, while Jonathan and the deputy and the lawyer kept the crowd from following.

"Pete's with him." She said softly. "Lex, where are you going to stay? You can't go back to the mansion?"

Even if it weren't a crime scene, he wasn't sure he could step foot back within it. It had never been anything but uninviting. Cold stone that his father had imported from a land Lex had never set foot on. Other than Clark, Smallville was very much the same. It never had welcomed him. Never had cared one way or the other whether he lived or died. There was nothing keeping him here save Clark, and Clark was more damaged than he was.

"Metropolis." He had the penthouse there.

"Are you sure you want to be alone?" She stared up at him, more concern in her eyes for him personally than he thought anyone had ever evidenced. It was baffling to him that she had so much to go around. That she wasn't stretched so thin worrying over Clark and her own family that there was anything left for anyone else. It had been all his own mother could do to comfort him when he'd needed it on her good days - - and on her bad, there'd been no room for anyone but her. And he'd understood. She'd been sick. She'd had Lionel Luthor for a husband. Sparing concern for other people's problems would have been exhausting for a woman with so many of her own. Lex had understood then.

He wasn't entirely certain he did now.

"Alone is exactly what I need to be." He forced a smile for her. "I'll be okay. You have my number. Call if you need me. Call if Clark - -" he trailed off, not even certain how to finish that sentence. "I'll have my people start immediately clearing up the issue with Child Protective Services."

She sighed. "You have mine, too, Lex. You don't need a reason to call."



Things nipped at the edge of his awareness. Sound like things. Soft clamoring of a hundred little noises - - things that if he concentrated, sounded like everything from water dripping, to cows mooing and munching, the gravel under someone's boots, to the distant hum of conversation. It was disconcerting and he shook his head, trying to block it out.

It felt vaguely like he was wrapped in plastic wrap, seeing the world just fine, but oddly insulated from it.

There was a picture on the desk. Three people. An expanse of lake behind them. Trees beyond that. The girl in the center had a huge grin on her face, pressed in between two guys. Her hair was wet and slicked back on her skull, and lacked its usual perky bounce.

It was Chloe. With Pete on one side of her, and him on the other. He was wet, too. The lake was Crater Lake and he thought maybe Pete's older brother Greg had snapped the shot. They all looked young. It had been the summer before they'd started high school.

He let his gaze drift from the picture to the books on the desk beside it. Biology. American Lit. Advanced Algebra. Early American history. A few dog-eared paperbacks. A journal that somebody had gotten him for a birthday one year - - Lana? - - and he'd never had gotten around to writing in. He wasn't a journal sort of guy.

He moved to the desk, running a finger down the spine of the American Lit book, trying to recall if he'd studied for the Poe test, Mrs. Lanskey had been threatening. He didn't remember what poems it was supposed to encompass. Chloe would know. Chloe would help him make heads and tails out of it, because honestly he had a better head for math than poetry.

The insulation was starting to dissipate, things becoming sharper, clearer. The smell of what could only be frying chicken caught his attention. His stomach made needy sounds. It felt sort of like it was so empty his navel ought to be touching his spine. He looked down, pulled up the hem of his t-shirt just to check, but it looked the same as ever.

He hoped his mom was making cornbread with the chicken. He thought he could eat his weight in it. He headed downstairs to check. It was raining outside, he could smell it in the air, see the gloom through the windows. The quiet patter of it against the tin roof was a comforting symphony. He idly wondered when it had started. He didn't remember waking up to it. He didn't remember waking up at all, come to think of it. Odd.

His mom was in front of the stove, turning a piece of golden fried thigh in a cast iron skillet.

"So's there gonna be cornbread to go with that?" he asked hopefully. And mashed potatoes. He could eat about a pound or two of those easy.

She gasped, the pair of tongs dropping from her hand, spattering hot oil on the stovetop. She faced him, utter shock on her face and his first thought was that she'd been burned by the oil spatter.

"Mom, you oka - -?"

Was about as far as he got before she cried his name and hurled herself at him. She hugged him tight, screaming for his dad loud enough to make him wince, what with his hearing gone all crazy sensitive.

"Mom? What's wrong?" She was hugging him so tight, he heard her bones creak.

"Oh, baby, baby, we weren't sure you were coming back to us."

She was sobbing a little, and his shirt was damp where she had her face pressed against him. He looked up helplessly as his dad banged through the back door, then stopped, eyes widening in as much surprise as his mom had had in hers when she'd seen him.

Like he'd been gone for a long time and had conveniently forgotten. But his dad got over it, and clamped hand on his shoulder, grinning at him.

"Coming back - -?" He stared at his dad in confusion. Considering Smallville and his luck with stumbling into the bizarre and unusual, maybe something had happened.

There were things itching at the back of his mind, vague little recollections creeping back in as if unsure of their welcome.

"Clark - - son - -" His dad swallowed, choked up and that just completely rocked Clark's world, because his dad just didn't choke up.

"What - - what happened?" he was almost afraid to ask. "Did something happen?"

He untangled himself from his mom enough to stand back and stare down at her, there was a newspaper behind her on the kitchen table with a front-page story about the annual Smallville Fall festival fair. He looked closer at the date. Nov 16th.

Last he remembered it had been the end of summer. Long hot days that seemed to last forever. He began to panic. That was a lot of lost time. A month and a half's worth at least.

"Mom, dad - - what happened to me?"

"Calm down, son." His dad's fingers squeezed his shoulder. "What do you remember?"

He opened his mouth. Shut it. It felt like something was clogging his throat, trying to burst free and flood up to fill his mind.

"I - - I don't know."

"You were shot, honey," his mom said. "In the head. It was - - severe."

"By who - -?" he started, then stopped hearing them, when that blockage burst and things started surging in his head. Memories like muggings, hitting him hard and merciless. But leaving things instead of taking. The first kiss that mattered - - the taste of Lex's mouth. Lex telling him no and him not listening, and hating himself afterwards. Lex telling him no again, but this time pulling him in and confusing him with a completely contradictory reinforcement of what he really meant. Lex pushing him back against a wall in a darkened theater, all hands and mouth and sinewy muscle. Lex under him, enveloping him, expanding Clark's horizons like they'd never been expanded before, nails scraping across Clark's back, panting and cursing and saying Clark's name like a prayer. Lex.

Then a different, more lurid recollection hit. The man with the wild eyes, egging him on, driving a green meteor rock blade in to him, repeatedly. Telling him in the moments between consciousness the things he would do to Lex.

Oh - - God.

"Lex," he gasped the name, breath sour in his chest, curdled by the fear. He was at the mansion before the name left his lips, his parents forgotten in his desperation to find Lex.

But the front gates were locked with chains, and the big house was dark and silent. When he burst the lock on the door and skidded to a stop inside, there were sheets over the furniture, just like there had been the very first time he'd come, before Lex had had time to have the house fully opened.

There was nothing alive here. It was heavy and cold without Lex. He stood outside in the drive breathing cool, moist air, letting the rain hit him and tried to get his bearings.

Six weeks. He'd lost six weeks and Lex was gone. Gone. The fist in Clark's chest wouldn't go away.

He ran home, made his parents start at his sudden reappearance, and stood wet and dripping on his mom's floor.

"Lex. Where's Lex? God - - what happened - -?" Images popped into his head. Horrible, horrible images. Lex dead. Lex ripped open by a man with a knife and not having Clark's ability to heal. Lex strung up, tiny trails of blood trickling down his arms, naked and battered and registering dull shock - - that one smacked more of recollection than imagination. He didn't know where he'd pulled it from.

"Honey, breathe." His mom stepped up to him, put her hands on his face. Gave him a stern, calming look, and waited until he took a big gulp of air before she said. "Lex is fine. He just couldn't be here anymore. He had to get away and heal."

"Heal? Is he hurt?"

"Not the way you were, sweetheart."

He needed to find Lex. He needed to see for himself. "Where is he?"

His mom exchanged looks with his dad, who was standing there, a frown threatening. Because his dad didn't like Lex. Didn't approve of Lex. Didn't approve of the things Lex made Clark feel.

He lifted his chin, looked his mom in the eye, then his dad and said. "I love him. Tell me where he is?"

His dad blew out a breath, and Clark didn't even try and figure out what his look meant, but his mom gave him a good long look, before lying a hand on his arm and saying.

"He's in Massachusetts, Clark. He has a beach house on Nantucket Sound, in Martha's Vineyard."


It took Clark longer to actually find the house once he reached the island off the coast of Massachusetts, than it had to run from Kansas to the east coast. He was good with geography on the large scale, it just got a little tricky when he had to pinpoint locations he'd never familiarized himself with.

Forty-five minutes and he was there, which was better time than he'd thought possible. Better by almost half of what he'd been capable of, say just last year. The ferry ride over took almost that long and he fidgeted the whole trip.

It wasn't that big an island and his mom had said it was a beachfront house and given him the address. It was just there were a lot of beachfront houses and he was impatient and impatience made him hasty, and he was afraid he might have rushed and missed something on the first run around the island perimeter. He took it slower the second go round. Found the Nantucket Sound area, where the houses were mostly old and big, and sat on large private lots in front of pristine private beaches. A lot of wealth congregated here. But quietly. Without the sort of fanfare you'd expect in the big city.

Everything was quiet here. Just the sound of the ocean, vast and relentless in its march on the beach, the subtle rustle of evening wind through marsh grasses, the occasional caw of seabirds. And that was it. Smallville was noisier than this place.

He stopped on the beach in front of a big, white washed beach house. It sat back from the beach, beyond the dunes, with a huge deck and a wraparound porch, and an array of floor to ceiling windows lining the ocean-facing portion of the house. It was big, but it was quant, and sort of beach country, but maybe that was because the root architecture of the house itself looked to be really old. It was so not Lex that he almost doubted he had the address right, but he'd spied the lane name on his way down, and the house number was the one his mom had given him.

Almost he was afraid to trek up the path leading from beach to house. He didn't know why, save that when he'd asked his mom about Lex, about what had happened to Lex, she just told him that it was Lex's tale to tell, if he chose. She told him not to push Lex and there had been something in her eyes that hinted that she knew things she wasn't sharing, even with him. A tone in her voice that made him think that somewhere along the line Lex had become a priority with her and one she took seriously. His dad hadn't had a lot to say on the subject.

All of it scared the hell out of him. It was a fear that wasn't going away until he saw Lex and assured himself he was whole. So he took a breath, and tromped through white sand up a winding trail through marsh grass spotted dunes to the house. There was a big yard with lots of green grass and a gnarled beach type trees. There were thicker trees at the edges of the property, shielding it from the neighboring beach houses. The steps leading up to the back deck were wooden and sandy. The deck itself was a sprawling, white washed thing, with lots of built in seating around the edges, and comfortable cushion lined lounges. There was a big fire pit built into the center, but it looked too pristine to have been used anytime recently.

There was a paperback book lying spine up on one of the long deck lounges though, and a pair of sunglasses on the little table next to it.

Then he looked up and saw Lex through the French doors leading into the house. Heading his way, with a glass of something in his hand, a half distracted look on his face, until he got to the doors, looked where he was going and saw Clark on the deck.

He started, badly. Clark saw the clear moment of shock, before he recovered and stood for a breath just staring through the glass at him. Then he opened the door and stepped out. Wary blue eyes took him in, the hand on the glass was white knuckled. He was barefoot and had just a little more color to his skin than he usually did. Or maybe it was just the white shirt, casual and overlarge, unbuttoned and rolled up at the sleeves, with a white t-shirt under it and a pair of thin cotton khakis. Clark had never seen Lex in clothing anything like it before. But then, maybe Lex adopted his wardrobe to his environment, and he did sort of look like a walking add for chic fall beachwear.

"Hey," Clark ventured, since Lex was just staring at him, sort of like he wasn't entirely sure he weren't seeing things. "Um, nice house?"

"God," Lex whispered.

"No, just me," Clark tried for a grin, couldn't hold it and stepped forward instead, wrapping Lex in his arms. It felt so good to feel him, to smell him, to just have him close, that Clark almost didn't notice the flinch, the way Lex tensed up. Something was a little off. A little wrong, and he tried to step back, but Lex clutched Clark's t-shirt with the fingers of the hand not holding the glass and sloshed a little liquid on Clark's back when he tightened the arm that was holding it, and didn't let Clark go.

"You're all there? Whole?"

"I guess." He pressed his cheek against Lex's temple, not really knowing how to answer that question. "I don't really remember not being whole."

Lex pushed back, took enough of a step away from him to study him critically. "You just woke up and everything was - - back on line?"

Clark shrugged again. "Umm. Yeah? Mom was frying chicken and it smelled great - - and - - um, yeah, I guess so."

"How did you get here?"

"Umm - - I ran."

Lex didn't quite lift a brow. He kept staring though, and Clark tried to get details straight in his head. He'd told Lex, but hadn't had the chance to go into detail, and Lex had had a lot of time to mull over the idea that Clark was an alien without Clark there to soften him up to the idea. So maybe that tensing had to do with that. Maybe Lex was all fine and good with a meteor mutant for a - - boyfriend? - - what the heck were they? - - but not with an extraterrestrial. He really should have taken the time to ask his mom a few things before he'd taken off like a bat out of hell to find Lex.

"From Smallville?"

Clark shrugged. "Mom gave me the address."

Lex kept staring. And Clark was starting to vacillate over that secret little thrill he'd always experienced when Lex was giving him that deep blue once-over, and nervousness that he was debating all the reasons he ought not have anything to do with a freakishly fast alien from outer space.

"What's the last thing you remember?" Lex finally asked, apparently moving on from the running across half the country thing. It wasn't a particularly mood lightening change of topic.

Clark tightened his mouth. "That guy. With the meteor rock knife. He wasn't after me, was he? He was after you."

Lex looked away, muscle in his jaw ticking. "Yeah."

Clark clenched his fists. "And he hurt you?"

Lex drew in a pair of deep breathes, eyes fixed somewhere beyond Clark's shoulder on the beach, before he turned them back to Clark.

"What did your mother tell you?" Lex was good at evasion. Always had been.

"She told me you had to leave so you could heal - -she didn't tell me from what. She told me not to push you. What does that mean, Lex? What happened to you?"

Lex rolled his eyes a little, shook his head and walked past Clark to sit the drink down on the little table next to the lounge. He sat down on the edge of it and squinted up at Clark.

"It means your mother is endearingly overprotective. I'm fine. I just needed the time to get my head straight in a place that wasn't Smallville and wasn't Metropolis."

Clark moved a step closer, blocking out evening sun behind him. "I'm missing six weeks. Somebody needs to tell me what happened."

Lex looked down at his hands, the long fingers of one hand absently stroking the wrist of the other. His skin had the healthy glow of beachfront living, but there was something fragile under it. Something tenuous that went beyond the fact that he looked thinner than Clark remembered. And maybe there'd always been something a little tenuous about Lex, a little hint of vulnerability that he tried so hard to pretend wasn't there, and maybe even Clark was the only person he let his shields down enough to see it, but it had never been quite so obvious to him before as it was now.

Lex said he was fine, but Clark was suddenly certain that that was an exaggeration. And somebody had made him that way. Somebody - - that man - - had done things to him to make him brittle. That image of Lex he had, the terrible one of him naked and manacled flashed through his mind.

He squatted down, so Lex didn't have to look up at him. "My mom said I was shot in the head. That it was pretty bad. This guy did it?"

"It was. He did. I thought - -" Lex shut his eyes a moment, mouth tight, like he was reliving something horrible. "I was sure you were dead."

"You were there?"

Lex's mouth quirked, he looked down at Clark with a glint of wry self-contempt in his eyes. "It was a huge fucking mess. The whole thing. I wasn't using my head and - - and I paid for it. You paid for it. I'm sorry."

Clark canted his head, confused. "Why? You didn't shoot me in the head, did you?"

Lex opened his mouth, shut it with that sort of half curve of the lips he got when Clark had won some point with him. "No."

"Okay then. The guy who did - - is he - -?"

"Dead."

Clark tossed that over, and that Lex memory, expanded a little, adding in the presence of the man with the hard eyes, and the military buzz cut. Naked too, except for boots, and was that the sort of detail Clark's imagination would come up with on its own, or was it more than imagination? He saw an image of the man flying through the air, but not where he'd landed - - because he'd focused on - - on Lex.

"Did I - -?"

"No."

Clark opened his mouth, wanting details to flesh out his sketchy memory. Needing them. Needing to know what had happened to Lex.

"Are you hungry?" Lex asked before Clark could press.

Which was Lex trying to deflect again. But he had something a little desperate in his eyes and maybe the idea of not pushing him when he was already close to some edge, wasn't a terrible one, even if Clark dearly wanted to.

He shrugged. He hadn't actually eaten any of that chicken that his mom had been frying.

He followed Lex inside. Big airy main room, with a living area and a big kitchen with white washed cabinetry juxtaposed with really modern looking stainless steel appliances. There were stools on the living area side of the kitchen island and Clark sat on one while Lex rummaged in the freezer. He had a lot of containers of pre-prepared food.

"There's a woman who runs a catering company in town," Lex explained. "She's a genius."

He pulled out a wax paper carton and stuck it in the microwave. By the he pulled it out, the smell of beef and vegetables in some sort of wine broth was making Clark's mouth water. It was sort of fantastic.

"It feels like I haven't eaten since - - well, the last time I remember eating." Clark said between mouthfuls.

Lex stood there, sipping on the glass of what Clark assumed was wine, watching Clark eat. "From what I understand, you didn't. You were in a walking vegetative state. You didn't talk, or eat, or do anything for yourself. You only occasionally responded when spoken to. You had a tendency to wander outside and stand in the yard."

Clark swallowed a lump of tender beef down and stared at Lex, wide-eyed.

"We were afraid," Lex said, and took a big swallow of wine. "That the damage done to your brain was permanent. Your body's ability to heal was miraculous enough, the fact that your brain not only repaired itself, but retained all the parts that make you you - - is astounding."

"And - -" Clark had to ask, because not knowing was eating away at him. "And you're okay with it? With me being - - not from around here? Because we really didn't get the chance to talk about it before I sort of got my throat slashed."

Lex's fingers tightened marginally on the stem of his glass. He forced a breath and a wry smile. "That was an inopportune time for an interruption, wasn't it? Your parents told me how they found you. They explained a lot of things."

"Really? Both of them? Willingly?" Clark raised both brows.

Lex's wry smile turned a little more amused. "Your father wasn't happy about it."

"You didn't answer the question, Lex. Are you okay with it? Are you okay with me?" Clark wasn't going to let him get away with avoiding that one. He needed to know.

Lex stared at him, a long liquid moment, things going on behind his blue eyes that Clark could only guess at. But there was nothing speculative, nothing that hinted he was trying to shield, it was just Lex trying to suss out emotions he didn't quite know how to deal with, in his own head.

"You heard me and you dragged me out of hell," Lex finally said. "Word's can't express how okay I am with you."

to be continued . . .