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 . . .
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 . . .
No comments have been added yet.
P.L. Nunn's Blog
- P.L. Nunn's profile
- 515 followers
P.L. Nunn isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
