Obsessions Chapter 20 of 21

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

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

Here's chapter 20 of Obsessions.



Chapter twenty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yeah?" Clark said, after a pause.

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

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

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

"God. Why?"

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

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

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

"I'm coming over."

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

"Are you sure?"

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

"Did you see the news?"

"I did."

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

"No one on the bus saw you?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"All right."

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

"Bedroom, okay?"

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

"Breathe," Clark whispered.

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

"You're not. Trust me."

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

"Close your eyes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Um hum," Clark murmured into his chest.

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

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

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

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

"Okay." He felt muddled. Half awake.

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

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

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

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


To be continued . . .