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Title: Scarred Clark
Author: Rivka T
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: R
Notes: Once upon a time,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cjandre posted a drabble about Clark rescuing Lex from the accident, and Lex coming back to consciousness to see a boy with a hideous green scar across half his face. I was entranced by the idea.
CJ planned to and ultimately began to expand on the idea with a full story involving Clark, who had both physical scars and some brain damage affecting his motor control from a meteor rock hit to the face, and Lex coming to SV much later than he did in canon. Her story is neat and plotty and intriguing and generally yummy.
What sparked in my mind was something a lot less ... complicated. I imagined the meeting happening in the same time as it did in canon, and Clark being only physically scarred and not otherwise disabled, so he went to high school and people had a lot better excuse to look at him funny than they did in canon. Anyway, I imagined Clark & Lex becoming even closer friends because of Clark's extra isolation, and Lex finding out a lot more about Clark, whose different reaction to meteor rocks was after all on his face. There were adventures and Lex being superprotective of Clark. Also I think at some point they had some secret code for if Lex was in trouble and couldn't overtly say he needed help; he'd call Clark "Kent" if the trouble was such that Clark needed to intervene right then and "CK" if it would be better for Clark to hang back, but Lex always said "CK" and they had a big fight about it until Lex agreed that he'd only say "CK" if Kryptonite were present. So, the summer before Clark's senior year, Lex helped Clark figure out the spaceship, and ultimately Lex discovered that the caves and the ship could produce a machine that would fix Clark's face (if assisted by Kryptonite, which was necessary to make Clark's skin vulnerable enough to change). They did the surgery, which was successful, and took off for a month or so for Clark to travel, get used to his new face, and "heal" away from SV's concerned citizenry.
All of that was so that I could write what follows. Pure fanservice, or self-fanservice really.
Clark unloaded his bags from the tiny trunk. At least Lex assumed so, from the way that the bags were there one moment and gone the next. Jonathan and Martha Kent were standing on the porch steps, rather clearly not inviting Lex inside. Lex leaned against the car, arms folded, wanting nothing more than to be driving away, somewhere with a flat road and radar-blind cops, where the sound of the engine was louder and more ordered than the voices in his head.
And Clark was back, smiling the brilliant smile he'd seen a thousand times. "Thanks again, Lex."
He shook his head dismissively. "It was my pleasure." The solidity of the car behind him, holding him up, still ticking as it cooled from travel, was almost comforting.
Clark moved to hug him, then hesitated in recognition of Lex's inviolable personal space. Lex straightened up and opened his arms in clear permission.
The hug was all-encompassing, careful, as Clark was always careful, but overwhelming in its unyielding strength. Clark's shirt already smelled like home. He could almost hear Clark's heartbeat, and he squeezed as hard as he could.
At last, he released Clark and stepped back a fraction of an inch.
"Goodnight," Clark said.
"Goodbye, Clark."
With one last, pure smile, Clark bounded past his parents and into the house.
Martha Kent caught his eye. "Goodbye, Lex." She, at least, understood. Besider her, Jonathan Kent shifted uncomfortably, caught between antagonism and reluctant gratitude.
"Goodbye, Mr. and Mrs. Kent."
Lex got into the car and started it without hesitation. It purred under his hands, as if to console him.
As he took the turn onto the main road, he wished he wanted to stop the car and put his head in his hands. But Luthors didn't cry – they made other people cry. Instead, he rehearsed the litany that was going to get him through this.
Inevitability.
Clark would jump at the chance to have normal friends his own age. The scars that bound them together were wholly unseen now.
Invisibility.
Clark had a destiny, and not one that ought to unfold under Lionel Luthor's eye or the lenses of the sensationalist media following Lex around. They'd held back before because their readers would only have seen Clark's face, not Clark, and that wasn't an appetizing enough story.
Invulnerability.
When the all-out war with his father began, he wouldn't be able to afford hostages. His father was sure to involve civilians anyway, but Lex could handle that if the casualties were interchangeable. A break now would go far to convince his father that Clark was just like all the others, using Lex until he got what he wanted and then giving up the pretense of friendship.
He had the sneaking suspicion that the first reason was driving his logic on the others, but it didn't matter.
****
For once, Clark was at the bus stop early. After Lex left the night before, Clark's mom had cut his hair, closer than it had been in years. It would have been shorter, but too close to his head the hair started blunting the scissors. The change was still enough to remind him that he didn't need to keep his head down.
The bus doors lurched open and he stepped on. It was like a movie – as he passed each row of seats, heads turned, whispers started, and Clark stood a little bit taller.
By the time he got to Pete and Chloe in the back, he was all but swaggering. "Hey, Pete. Hey, Chloe," he said as he sat down, swinging his backpack onto his lap.
"Hey, Clark," they chorused, doing that thing where they looked over his right shoulder.
"How was your –" Chloe continued, and then a jolt from hitting a pothole brought them eye to eye.
Chloe's uncharacteristic speechlessness made Pete look, too.
They stared at him, and Clark saw the wisdom of Lex's demand that they travel during his "recuperation." He was able to meet their stares and not cringe away in shame, though the blush seemed to be even more invulnerable than the rest of him.
"Reconstructive surgery," he said, loudly enough that the word was sure to sweep through the bus in moments.
"Oh my God," Chloe breathed at last, raising her hand to touch his cheek. "You're beautiful!" she blurted, then turned scarlet all the way to her cleavage. Clark flashed on a scene of a prim, dowdy secretary taking off her glasses and shaking her long hair out from its bun. Then he remembered Lex, saying the same thing a year ago.
He grinned at her, though it was an effort not to jerk away from her unfamiliar fingers.
"How did – what happened?" Pete asked, wide-eyed.
"It's an experimental treatment," Clark recited. "Lex found the doctors in Edge City."
"He paid for this?" Pete frowned, ready to make another nasty remark.
Clark was grateful that they'd planned for these questions.
"I said, it's experimental. They did it for free, as long as my parents paid for me to stay in Edge City. I had to stay two weeks while it healed. My grandmother gave us the money." That was risky, but otherwise people might wonder why the Kents hadn't withdrawn any money from the local bank, Smallville not being very much like a tropical island nation in banking secrecy terms.
Clark thought that it ought to trouble him more that Lex was so skillful at the construction of cover stories, but then the bus pulled into the school lot and the questions stopped.
As it turned out, the rest of school was just like the bus: stares, whispers, some brave questions. Mrs. Marsden, the French teacher, asked him if he was a new student, while Mr. Graves in math stopped when he raised his hand in roll call and repeated "Clark Kent?" as if checking whether Clark was sure. The students giggled, even though their own reactions had generally been less graceful.
More people talked to him at lunch than had approached him in the past three years, total. They all seemed very nice – well, almost all – but Clark found that he didn't have much of an appetite.
"It's human nature," he remembered Lex saying. "It's not admirable, but most people don't have much choice in it, so you can't blame them individually for turning away from what seems damaged."
Lana came up in the middle of the stream of visitors, who parted for her as naturally as they'd cringed at Clark, before.
"Clark," she said softly. "I'm so glad."
He looked at her, beautiful and shining and always kind. She'd even given him a job washing dishes at the Talon two years back, before he'd proved too unreliable for that. The girl he'd replaced had become a waitress, though she turned out to have a worse memory than Lana and had gotten the kitchen job back days later.
Lana was wearing a pink sweater with pearl buttons over a matching top. She reminded him, as always, of an angel, delicate and too easily broken for his hands, spun sugar that couldn't withstand a hard rain. The kind of person his powers gave him an obligation to protect.
"Me too," he said and smiled at her, a little bigger than the one he gave all the other people, because she'd always been willing to be seen with him.
Clark blew off the invitations to a pick-up basketball game after school in favor of a run to the mansion, where – and he was keenly aware of the irony – he wouldn't feel so out of place.
Lex wasn't there.
The cook, after the obligatory surprise and feeling of his now-symmetrical cheeks, said that Lex wasn't expected back until almost midnight. She gave Clark a slice of angel-food cake and sent him on his way. Clark had been looking forward to dissecting the day with Lex, but he had to remember that Lex was a busy man with thousands of employees to oversee, just back from a long trip.
Regretfully, he zipped back to school and asked if he could still join the game. The other guys welcomed him and before an hour had passed they were razzing him as if he'd always been part of the group. He was careful, and didn't use his powers at all. Once, Mike Dubinsky slammed a shoulder into him and got knocked to the ground, but Clark offered him a hand up and Mike slapped him on the back, so he thought it was okay. It was an amazing feeling, so good that he lost track of time.
His mom just smiled when he ran in fifteen minutes late for dinner and told him that he could do his chores after he ate.
The next day, Lana and the other members of the Spirit Squad convinced him to stay and decorate welcome-back posters in the gym. Sheila Randolph giggled and sat to close to him, so that he had to duck away when she tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder. She smelled fresh and clean, nothing like the girls in the clubs he'd been in with Lex.
The next week, he took Sheila to a Jackie Chan movie – she'd seen them all and was right to say he'd enjoy it too. After, she told him how glad she was that he wasn't so shy any more.
Clark wanted to say that she was wrong, that he was the same and only the people around him changed their reactions. But when he opened his mouth to say so, he couldn't. The set of his shoulders, his always turning away from other kids – that had suppressed whatever basketball invitations might have been his. He'd been so scared of laughter that he hadn't looked for more genuine smiles. Lex and Chloe had sought him out, worn down his wariness, while Pete remembered him from before the accident, but he could have had other friends if he'd taken more risks – and now he could. It wasn't his *fault*, not really, but it would be unfair to say he'd been this person all along, underneath the scar, as if the cruel world heprived him of any responsibility for his own isolation. There hadn't been a Clark underneath the scar – it had been part of him, and now it wasn't.
Sheila wasn't exactly the kind of person to whom he could say that. He was distracted for the rest of the evening, even when Sheila got up on her toes to give him a soft, peach-scented kiss goodnight. He waited only the barest instant after he was out of her line of sight to start running to the mansion.
Lex wasn't there.
"He's gone to Metropolis," the butler explained. Then, leaning closer, "By the way he was dressed, if he returns tonight, he won't be alone."
Clark tried to keep his disappointment from showing, but he knew it was a total failure.
"If I may?" The butler's face – John, Clark remembered – was kind, the way his mother's had been kind when he'd come crying home from middle school.
Clark nodded, a hollow feeling in his stomach.
"Mr. Luthor's hours have been extremely long of late, and his recreation ... intense. Shall I leave a message that he should call you when he is again available." It wasn't a question, and it wasn't something John would have said without Lex's direction.
"Yeah," he said, hearing his own tears, and turned to go. It was an effort to walk human-slow to the the gates, until he was beyond the range of the security cameras. Then, the wind was cold against his wet cheeks. He was still crying when he came into the kitchen.
"Honey?" His mom was there, rising immediately from the account books spreak across the kitchen table. She wrapped her arms around him and let him cry like a kid into her shoulder.
After a while, the tears slowed and then stopped. He pulled away, sniffling, and dug in his pocket for a handkerchief to clean his face. His mom was still next to him, watching with concern.
"Sit down, honey," she said, and guided him to a chair. She went out of sight and then a glass of milk and a plate of cookies appeared before him.
Clark didn't want to eat, but it would make his mom feel better, so he took a bite and drank some milk, trying to smile in appreciation.
"Did something happen with Sheila?" His mom sat down across from him, her face full of sympathy.
"What? No." He stared down at the cookies. One chocolate chip had almost detached from its cookie. He nudged it with his finger and it snapped free. "Lex doesn't want to see me."
His mother pursed her lips, surprised, and sighed. "Clark – I'm sorry you feel bad. But Lex is a grown man, and maybe he feels it's time you spent more of your time with people your own age, friends you have more in common with."
"I don't have more in common with *anyone* on this planet!" He squeezed his fists hard so he wouldn't break anything. "And Lex has been my friend for years. Why would he change his mind now? Now, when everything is good?"
Another sigh. "I'm sure Lex likes you, but he has a very different life, and now that you're healed ..."
"Are you saying Lex was just my friend out of pity?"
"I don't think pity is a big part of Lex's life," his mother said dryly.
"Okay, gratitude. That's all it was?"
His mom leaned forward, putting her hands flat on the table. Forgotten papers were piled on either side of her. "I'm sorry, Clark, but sometimes people just don't feel the way we want them to feel."
Clark stood up. "I'm going to bed." He didn't believe that Lex would lie like that to him. Could it be true?
She opened her mouth, then closed it without speaking. He could feel her eyes on him as he left the kitchen and went up the stairs.
****
Lex logged out of his computer and leaned back in his chair. He was tired, the kind of tired that sleep wouldn't help. The waters of Lethe, perhaps, or some homebrewed near-equivalent. It would disappoint a lot of people who were counting on him, but they should have known better than to put all of their eggs in one basket case.
He stretched his arms over his head, feeling his muscles complain from yesterday's overly aggressive workout.
A few reports slung into his briefcase, Lex was ready to leave for the night. The security guard nodded deferentially as Lex exited the building and headed to his car, spotlighted and alone on the lot.
Not entirely alone. Clark was leaning against the driver's side, his arms folded over his chest. He stared at Lex as Lex approached, his eyes unreadable under the glare of the lamp.
"What are you doing here, Clark?" He stopped several yards from the car. "Isn't it a school night?"
"I can't exactly get near you anywhere else."
He winced. Clark had learned some of his not-answering tricks a little too well.
"Is there something I can do for you?"
"You can tell me why you've been avoiding me."
"I didn't have to try very hard," Lex snapped, regretting it before he finished.
Clark looked down. When he raised his head, still angled as if he were looking through bangs, he'd regained his aura of righteous indignation. "So, this was some sort of test? To see if I'd abandon you for a normal life?"
Lex bit down on an observation about tests and failure. "I hope you're enjoying normalcy." If he was uninvolved, Clark would find it difficult to remain emotionally invested.
"News flash, Lex." Instantly, Clark was standing only inches from him. Lex's hand tightened on his briefcase. "Alien. Last son of Krypton. Normal – not really an option."
"Of course it is. Normal is just an image. Inside, everyone feels like a freak." Lex edged back and around, towards the car and escape.
Clark's brows lowered. "Nice way to change the subject, by the way. Was it just me who thought we were friends, friends for life?"
There was a strange pain in Lex's chest. He wondered if his mother's weakness had manifested itself like this.
"Well?" Clark, disobligingly, was still waiting for an answer, his eyes gleaming in the bad light.
"I'll always be your friend, Clark. But it might be best for me to do that from a distance now. You've got an opportunity to have a golden year, and after that a new life at college, and I don't want our friendship to stand in the way of any of that experience." Speech over, Lex swallowed, thinking he'd done well.
"I don't want experience if I can't share it with you."
Lex tried not to let himself receive a different message than Clark had intended. At some point in the conversation, Lex had been backed up against the door of his car, the metal and plastic still warm from the heat of the day. He didn't think Clark knew how close he was standing, or what it would look like if the security guard glanced over.
He had to clear his throat before he could speak. "I didn't want to have to say this, but people may say some nasty things about your friendship with me now that you have a higher profile."
To his surprise and dismay, Clark laughed, his eyes closed and his mouth in a cynical quirk. "You think they haven't already? I've gone three years with people saying things like, 'I guess he doesn't need to look you in the face to fuck you' and it never stopped me before."
Lex actually sagged back against the car, appalled. "I had no idea –"
"Yeah." Clark's smile was his brave one, left over from before. "I don't care. I don't want to listen to any more excuses. Tell me what you want, Lex. I'll do anything, even if it means leaving you alone."
It would have been less painful had Clark squeezed Lex's heart like an orange and then thrown it into a blender. "Clark," he said, stalling, trying to get his vapor-locked brain to work.
When had Clark gotten so close? As Clark's eyes flickered down to Lex's lips, Lex realized simultaneously that Clark was bending over him like some romance hero and that Clark's face was lighting with revelation.
"You're trying too hard to be good," he said, his voice teasing, even merry. "That's always a sign that you're up to something." He put one hand on the roof of the car, inches from Lex's arm. Lex's cutting remark folded itself closed in his throat. "I don't know whether it's really sweet or really insecure of you to make me do all the work." Clark's other hand closed the trap, so near that the vibration of the molecules in Lex's body might bring them together.
Lex swallowed again, trying to think, trying to want to think. He closed his eyes, the only remaining way to get some distance. That seemed to be Clark's signal to brush his cheek against Lex's, a light touch that made Lex harder than linear algebra. His heart drummed in his chest. His lips parted and he wasn't sure whether he meant to resist or serve.
"When I kissed those girls at the clubs," Clark said, his breath hot against Lex's skin, "I imagined how you'd do it. It took me a while to figure out why I liked that so much. You've always given me whatever I wanted, Lex. Give me this."
Before Clark could close the last distance between them, Lex gave an embarrassing little near-moan and grabbed Clark's head with both hands, the briefcase thudding on the concrete with a sound like all his excuses shattering. He kissed Clark so fiercely that Clark twitched back a little. Lex followed, seeking the oasis of Clark's mouth. He'd been dying of thirst for years.
Clark didn't take long to adapt to Lex's sudden enthusiasm. Moving one large hand between Lex's shoulderblades and the other to his waist, Clark bent him back, kissing him with more enthusiasm than finesse.
He pulled back, blinking against Clark's radiance. "We should get out of here. The guard's going to investigate."
"I don't care."
Lex looked at him. He was defiant, but uncertainty flickered in his eyes. Lex didn't want to think about closets and bad publicity – and in Clark's case there was no such thing as good publicity.
"Let me rephrase. We should get out of here. I've lost my taste for public sex."
Clark's mouth parted and his hips flexed against Lex, grinding into his cock through his pants. "Okay," Clark said, even as his body belied him.
Author: Rivka T
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: R
Notes: Once upon a time,
cjandre posted a drabble about Clark rescuing Lex from the accident, and Lex coming back to consciousness to see a boy with a hideous green scar across half his face. I was entranced by the idea. CJ planned to and ultimately began to expand on the idea with a full story involving Clark, who had both physical scars and some brain damage affecting his motor control from a meteor rock hit to the face, and Lex coming to SV much later than he did in canon. Her story is neat and plotty and intriguing and generally yummy.
What sparked in my mind was something a lot less ... complicated. I imagined the meeting happening in the same time as it did in canon, and Clark being only physically scarred and not otherwise disabled, so he went to high school and people had a lot better excuse to look at him funny than they did in canon. Anyway, I imagined Clark & Lex becoming even closer friends because of Clark's extra isolation, and Lex finding out a lot more about Clark, whose different reaction to meteor rocks was after all on his face. There were adventures and Lex being superprotective of Clark. Also I think at some point they had some secret code for if Lex was in trouble and couldn't overtly say he needed help; he'd call Clark "Kent" if the trouble was such that Clark needed to intervene right then and "CK" if it would be better for Clark to hang back, but Lex always said "CK" and they had a big fight about it until Lex agreed that he'd only say "CK" if Kryptonite were present. So, the summer before Clark's senior year, Lex helped Clark figure out the spaceship, and ultimately Lex discovered that the caves and the ship could produce a machine that would fix Clark's face (if assisted by Kryptonite, which was necessary to make Clark's skin vulnerable enough to change). They did the surgery, which was successful, and took off for a month or so for Clark to travel, get used to his new face, and "heal" away from SV's concerned citizenry.
All of that was so that I could write what follows. Pure fanservice, or self-fanservice really.
Clark unloaded his bags from the tiny trunk. At least Lex assumed so, from the way that the bags were there one moment and gone the next. Jonathan and Martha Kent were standing on the porch steps, rather clearly not inviting Lex inside. Lex leaned against the car, arms folded, wanting nothing more than to be driving away, somewhere with a flat road and radar-blind cops, where the sound of the engine was louder and more ordered than the voices in his head.
And Clark was back, smiling the brilliant smile he'd seen a thousand times. "Thanks again, Lex."
He shook his head dismissively. "It was my pleasure." The solidity of the car behind him, holding him up, still ticking as it cooled from travel, was almost comforting.
Clark moved to hug him, then hesitated in recognition of Lex's inviolable personal space. Lex straightened up and opened his arms in clear permission.
The hug was all-encompassing, careful, as Clark was always careful, but overwhelming in its unyielding strength. Clark's shirt already smelled like home. He could almost hear Clark's heartbeat, and he squeezed as hard as he could.
At last, he released Clark and stepped back a fraction of an inch.
"Goodnight," Clark said.
"Goodbye, Clark."
With one last, pure smile, Clark bounded past his parents and into the house.
Martha Kent caught his eye. "Goodbye, Lex." She, at least, understood. Besider her, Jonathan Kent shifted uncomfortably, caught between antagonism and reluctant gratitude.
"Goodbye, Mr. and Mrs. Kent."
Lex got into the car and started it without hesitation. It purred under his hands, as if to console him.
As he took the turn onto the main road, he wished he wanted to stop the car and put his head in his hands. But Luthors didn't cry – they made other people cry. Instead, he rehearsed the litany that was going to get him through this.
Inevitability.
Clark would jump at the chance to have normal friends his own age. The scars that bound them together were wholly unseen now.
Invisibility.
Clark had a destiny, and not one that ought to unfold under Lionel Luthor's eye or the lenses of the sensationalist media following Lex around. They'd held back before because their readers would only have seen Clark's face, not Clark, and that wasn't an appetizing enough story.
Invulnerability.
When the all-out war with his father began, he wouldn't be able to afford hostages. His father was sure to involve civilians anyway, but Lex could handle that if the casualties were interchangeable. A break now would go far to convince his father that Clark was just like all the others, using Lex until he got what he wanted and then giving up the pretense of friendship.
He had the sneaking suspicion that the first reason was driving his logic on the others, but it didn't matter.
****
For once, Clark was at the bus stop early. After Lex left the night before, Clark's mom had cut his hair, closer than it had been in years. It would have been shorter, but too close to his head the hair started blunting the scissors. The change was still enough to remind him that he didn't need to keep his head down.
The bus doors lurched open and he stepped on. It was like a movie – as he passed each row of seats, heads turned, whispers started, and Clark stood a little bit taller.
By the time he got to Pete and Chloe in the back, he was all but swaggering. "Hey, Pete. Hey, Chloe," he said as he sat down, swinging his backpack onto his lap.
"Hey, Clark," they chorused, doing that thing where they looked over his right shoulder.
"How was your –" Chloe continued, and then a jolt from hitting a pothole brought them eye to eye.
Chloe's uncharacteristic speechlessness made Pete look, too.
They stared at him, and Clark saw the wisdom of Lex's demand that they travel during his "recuperation." He was able to meet their stares and not cringe away in shame, though the blush seemed to be even more invulnerable than the rest of him.
"Reconstructive surgery," he said, loudly enough that the word was sure to sweep through the bus in moments.
"Oh my God," Chloe breathed at last, raising her hand to touch his cheek. "You're beautiful!" she blurted, then turned scarlet all the way to her cleavage. Clark flashed on a scene of a prim, dowdy secretary taking off her glasses and shaking her long hair out from its bun. Then he remembered Lex, saying the same thing a year ago.
He grinned at her, though it was an effort not to jerk away from her unfamiliar fingers.
"How did – what happened?" Pete asked, wide-eyed.
"It's an experimental treatment," Clark recited. "Lex found the doctors in Edge City."
"He paid for this?" Pete frowned, ready to make another nasty remark.
Clark was grateful that they'd planned for these questions.
"I said, it's experimental. They did it for free, as long as my parents paid for me to stay in Edge City. I had to stay two weeks while it healed. My grandmother gave us the money." That was risky, but otherwise people might wonder why the Kents hadn't withdrawn any money from the local bank, Smallville not being very much like a tropical island nation in banking secrecy terms.
Clark thought that it ought to trouble him more that Lex was so skillful at the construction of cover stories, but then the bus pulled into the school lot and the questions stopped.
As it turned out, the rest of school was just like the bus: stares, whispers, some brave questions. Mrs. Marsden, the French teacher, asked him if he was a new student, while Mr. Graves in math stopped when he raised his hand in roll call and repeated "Clark Kent?" as if checking whether Clark was sure. The students giggled, even though their own reactions had generally been less graceful.
More people talked to him at lunch than had approached him in the past three years, total. They all seemed very nice – well, almost all – but Clark found that he didn't have much of an appetite.
"It's human nature," he remembered Lex saying. "It's not admirable, but most people don't have much choice in it, so you can't blame them individually for turning away from what seems damaged."
Lana came up in the middle of the stream of visitors, who parted for her as naturally as they'd cringed at Clark, before.
"Clark," she said softly. "I'm so glad."
He looked at her, beautiful and shining and always kind. She'd even given him a job washing dishes at the Talon two years back, before he'd proved too unreliable for that. The girl he'd replaced had become a waitress, though she turned out to have a worse memory than Lana and had gotten the kitchen job back days later.
Lana was wearing a pink sweater with pearl buttons over a matching top. She reminded him, as always, of an angel, delicate and too easily broken for his hands, spun sugar that couldn't withstand a hard rain. The kind of person his powers gave him an obligation to protect.
"Me too," he said and smiled at her, a little bigger than the one he gave all the other people, because she'd always been willing to be seen with him.
Clark blew off the invitations to a pick-up basketball game after school in favor of a run to the mansion, where – and he was keenly aware of the irony – he wouldn't feel so out of place.
Lex wasn't there.
The cook, after the obligatory surprise and feeling of his now-symmetrical cheeks, said that Lex wasn't expected back until almost midnight. She gave Clark a slice of angel-food cake and sent him on his way. Clark had been looking forward to dissecting the day with Lex, but he had to remember that Lex was a busy man with thousands of employees to oversee, just back from a long trip.
Regretfully, he zipped back to school and asked if he could still join the game. The other guys welcomed him and before an hour had passed they were razzing him as if he'd always been part of the group. He was careful, and didn't use his powers at all. Once, Mike Dubinsky slammed a shoulder into him and got knocked to the ground, but Clark offered him a hand up and Mike slapped him on the back, so he thought it was okay. It was an amazing feeling, so good that he lost track of time.
His mom just smiled when he ran in fifteen minutes late for dinner and told him that he could do his chores after he ate.
The next day, Lana and the other members of the Spirit Squad convinced him to stay and decorate welcome-back posters in the gym. Sheila Randolph giggled and sat to close to him, so that he had to duck away when she tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder. She smelled fresh and clean, nothing like the girls in the clubs he'd been in with Lex.
The next week, he took Sheila to a Jackie Chan movie – she'd seen them all and was right to say he'd enjoy it too. After, she told him how glad she was that he wasn't so shy any more.
Clark wanted to say that she was wrong, that he was the same and only the people around him changed their reactions. But when he opened his mouth to say so, he couldn't. The set of his shoulders, his always turning away from other kids – that had suppressed whatever basketball invitations might have been his. He'd been so scared of laughter that he hadn't looked for more genuine smiles. Lex and Chloe had sought him out, worn down his wariness, while Pete remembered him from before the accident, but he could have had other friends if he'd taken more risks – and now he could. It wasn't his *fault*, not really, but it would be unfair to say he'd been this person all along, underneath the scar, as if the cruel world heprived him of any responsibility for his own isolation. There hadn't been a Clark underneath the scar – it had been part of him, and now it wasn't.
Sheila wasn't exactly the kind of person to whom he could say that. He was distracted for the rest of the evening, even when Sheila got up on her toes to give him a soft, peach-scented kiss goodnight. He waited only the barest instant after he was out of her line of sight to start running to the mansion.
Lex wasn't there.
"He's gone to Metropolis," the butler explained. Then, leaning closer, "By the way he was dressed, if he returns tonight, he won't be alone."
Clark tried to keep his disappointment from showing, but he knew it was a total failure.
"If I may?" The butler's face – John, Clark remembered – was kind, the way his mother's had been kind when he'd come crying home from middle school.
Clark nodded, a hollow feeling in his stomach.
"Mr. Luthor's hours have been extremely long of late, and his recreation ... intense. Shall I leave a message that he should call you when he is again available." It wasn't a question, and it wasn't something John would have said without Lex's direction.
"Yeah," he said, hearing his own tears, and turned to go. It was an effort to walk human-slow to the the gates, until he was beyond the range of the security cameras. Then, the wind was cold against his wet cheeks. He was still crying when he came into the kitchen.
"Honey?" His mom was there, rising immediately from the account books spreak across the kitchen table. She wrapped her arms around him and let him cry like a kid into her shoulder.
After a while, the tears slowed and then stopped. He pulled away, sniffling, and dug in his pocket for a handkerchief to clean his face. His mom was still next to him, watching with concern.
"Sit down, honey," she said, and guided him to a chair. She went out of sight and then a glass of milk and a plate of cookies appeared before him.
Clark didn't want to eat, but it would make his mom feel better, so he took a bite and drank some milk, trying to smile in appreciation.
"Did something happen with Sheila?" His mom sat down across from him, her face full of sympathy.
"What? No." He stared down at the cookies. One chocolate chip had almost detached from its cookie. He nudged it with his finger and it snapped free. "Lex doesn't want to see me."
His mother pursed her lips, surprised, and sighed. "Clark – I'm sorry you feel bad. But Lex is a grown man, and maybe he feels it's time you spent more of your time with people your own age, friends you have more in common with."
"I don't have more in common with *anyone* on this planet!" He squeezed his fists hard so he wouldn't break anything. "And Lex has been my friend for years. Why would he change his mind now? Now, when everything is good?"
Another sigh. "I'm sure Lex likes you, but he has a very different life, and now that you're healed ..."
"Are you saying Lex was just my friend out of pity?"
"I don't think pity is a big part of Lex's life," his mother said dryly.
"Okay, gratitude. That's all it was?"
His mom leaned forward, putting her hands flat on the table. Forgotten papers were piled on either side of her. "I'm sorry, Clark, but sometimes people just don't feel the way we want them to feel."
Clark stood up. "I'm going to bed." He didn't believe that Lex would lie like that to him. Could it be true?
She opened her mouth, then closed it without speaking. He could feel her eyes on him as he left the kitchen and went up the stairs.
****
Lex logged out of his computer and leaned back in his chair. He was tired, the kind of tired that sleep wouldn't help. The waters of Lethe, perhaps, or some homebrewed near-equivalent. It would disappoint a lot of people who were counting on him, but they should have known better than to put all of their eggs in one basket case.
He stretched his arms over his head, feeling his muscles complain from yesterday's overly aggressive workout.
A few reports slung into his briefcase, Lex was ready to leave for the night. The security guard nodded deferentially as Lex exited the building and headed to his car, spotlighted and alone on the lot.
Not entirely alone. Clark was leaning against the driver's side, his arms folded over his chest. He stared at Lex as Lex approached, his eyes unreadable under the glare of the lamp.
"What are you doing here, Clark?" He stopped several yards from the car. "Isn't it a school night?"
"I can't exactly get near you anywhere else."
He winced. Clark had learned some of his not-answering tricks a little too well.
"Is there something I can do for you?"
"You can tell me why you've been avoiding me."
"I didn't have to try very hard," Lex snapped, regretting it before he finished.
Clark looked down. When he raised his head, still angled as if he were looking through bangs, he'd regained his aura of righteous indignation. "So, this was some sort of test? To see if I'd abandon you for a normal life?"
Lex bit down on an observation about tests and failure. "I hope you're enjoying normalcy." If he was uninvolved, Clark would find it difficult to remain emotionally invested.
"News flash, Lex." Instantly, Clark was standing only inches from him. Lex's hand tightened on his briefcase. "Alien. Last son of Krypton. Normal – not really an option."
"Of course it is. Normal is just an image. Inside, everyone feels like a freak." Lex edged back and around, towards the car and escape.
Clark's brows lowered. "Nice way to change the subject, by the way. Was it just me who thought we were friends, friends for life?"
There was a strange pain in Lex's chest. He wondered if his mother's weakness had manifested itself like this.
"Well?" Clark, disobligingly, was still waiting for an answer, his eyes gleaming in the bad light.
"I'll always be your friend, Clark. But it might be best for me to do that from a distance now. You've got an opportunity to have a golden year, and after that a new life at college, and I don't want our friendship to stand in the way of any of that experience." Speech over, Lex swallowed, thinking he'd done well.
"I don't want experience if I can't share it with you."
Lex tried not to let himself receive a different message than Clark had intended. At some point in the conversation, Lex had been backed up against the door of his car, the metal and plastic still warm from the heat of the day. He didn't think Clark knew how close he was standing, or what it would look like if the security guard glanced over.
He had to clear his throat before he could speak. "I didn't want to have to say this, but people may say some nasty things about your friendship with me now that you have a higher profile."
To his surprise and dismay, Clark laughed, his eyes closed and his mouth in a cynical quirk. "You think they haven't already? I've gone three years with people saying things like, 'I guess he doesn't need to look you in the face to fuck you' and it never stopped me before."
Lex actually sagged back against the car, appalled. "I had no idea –"
"Yeah." Clark's smile was his brave one, left over from before. "I don't care. I don't want to listen to any more excuses. Tell me what you want, Lex. I'll do anything, even if it means leaving you alone."
It would have been less painful had Clark squeezed Lex's heart like an orange and then thrown it into a blender. "Clark," he said, stalling, trying to get his vapor-locked brain to work.
When had Clark gotten so close? As Clark's eyes flickered down to Lex's lips, Lex realized simultaneously that Clark was bending over him like some romance hero and that Clark's face was lighting with revelation.
"You're trying too hard to be good," he said, his voice teasing, even merry. "That's always a sign that you're up to something." He put one hand on the roof of the car, inches from Lex's arm. Lex's cutting remark folded itself closed in his throat. "I don't know whether it's really sweet or really insecure of you to make me do all the work." Clark's other hand closed the trap, so near that the vibration of the molecules in Lex's body might bring them together.
Lex swallowed again, trying to think, trying to want to think. He closed his eyes, the only remaining way to get some distance. That seemed to be Clark's signal to brush his cheek against Lex's, a light touch that made Lex harder than linear algebra. His heart drummed in his chest. His lips parted and he wasn't sure whether he meant to resist or serve.
"When I kissed those girls at the clubs," Clark said, his breath hot against Lex's skin, "I imagined how you'd do it. It took me a while to figure out why I liked that so much. You've always given me whatever I wanted, Lex. Give me this."
Before Clark could close the last distance between them, Lex gave an embarrassing little near-moan and grabbed Clark's head with both hands, the briefcase thudding on the concrete with a sound like all his excuses shattering. He kissed Clark so fiercely that Clark twitched back a little. Lex followed, seeking the oasis of Clark's mouth. He'd been dying of thirst for years.
Clark didn't take long to adapt to Lex's sudden enthusiasm. Moving one large hand between Lex's shoulderblades and the other to his waist, Clark bent him back, kissing him with more enthusiasm than finesse.
He pulled back, blinking against Clark's radiance. "We should get out of here. The guard's going to investigate."
"I don't care."
Lex looked at him. He was defiant, but uncertainty flickered in his eyes. Lex didn't want to think about closets and bad publicity – and in Clark's case there was no such thing as good publicity.
"Let me rephrase. We should get out of here. I've lost my taste for public sex."
Clark's mouth parted and his hips flexed against Lex, grinding into his cock through his pants. "Okay," Clark said, even as his body belied him.
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