Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Prologue

For all intents and purposes, he should have died. That's what the doctor told him, second day in, when Lex was loosing his mind trapped in the narrow hospital bed, deprived of the use of his cell, deprived of an aide who knew what the hell was going on and how to take proper measures to handle it.

The doctor should have known better, having treated Lex for other various life-threatening injuries over the years and witnessed miraculous recovery. Should have expected Lex to be up, by the end of that second day, despite the aches and pains and lingering faint headedness of severe blood loss, and wanting out.

He should have stayed there.

He came to that conclusion rather quickly, when the federal agents descended. When he discovered the military had cordoned off the dam site, and all the sodden secrets within. And Smallville law was clamoring after him, on the heels of the federal government, claiming something about finding Lana's journal, and the incriminating evidence there in. But they didn't stand a chance at staking their claim when there were charges being leveled on a Federal level, the least of which were illegal human experimentation, misappropriation of military personal and federal funding and the worst being possible treasonous acts.

It became surreal, on a certain level.

Lex was inherently a multi-tasker, tremendous pressure was a fact of life. He had learned to deal under the harshest of circumstances, but things were veering out of his control. Personal impacts had shattered his calm, and continued battering hindered him from piecing it back together. Part of his brain - - part that could have been put to better use dealing with lawyers and endless questions, the answers to which needed to be meticulously worded - - seemed stuck, much as it had in years past, in the mire of Clark Kent.

He hadn't seen Clark since he'd picked him up, half-dead, off the side of the road, after the entity had been at him. At least he thought it had been Clark. The real Clark, not something masquerading in his body. And that had been the crux of the problem, of the questions he couldn't shake, how Clark had come out without a mark when no one else that had ever had that close a contact with the thing ever had? Well, other than him - - and he certainly hadn't come out unscathed.

He'd dredged up every scrap of information they'd gathered on the entity while he'd been lying in the hospital bed, or sitting in federal custody waiting to be questioned - - or hell, being questioned - - and there was simply no recorded evidence to support what had happened. And if the thing had left Clark, where was it? The fact that it might be running around free somewhere, with its new mentality to mask its old taste for blood - - was chilling.

It was easy enough to admit that he was afraid of it. He hadn't been particularly before, more interested in what the properties of its biological make up could provide him, but it had been decisively good at instilling fear. He would hunt it down regardless, if it was still out there, because fear or not, he had a personal score to settle, and left uncollected those sort of debts could cripple a man.

It had worn Clark's face so well. He could still see that smile, and hear the tone of his voice while it had been hurting him in ways inconsistent with the methods Clark used to inflict pain. He would have given a good portion of his fortune for a chance to get Clark alone in a room and willing to answer questions.

As it turned out that was a sacrifice he'd be forced to make regardless.

"Lex?"

It was close to 1a.m. and the offices of LuthorCorp tower were dark, devoid of the usual scurry of personal. It had been eight days since the calamity. Eight days since Lana's death. Eight days since the thing had stolen Clark's body and wrecked vengeance on him, the result of some unspecified threat against his father. Eight days since he'd had more than an hour's sleep not interrupted by anxiety driven nightmares.

Lex was not at his best. There was only so much caffeine and amphetamines could do to keep a sleep-deprived mind alert. But it was better than the nightmares. Things he couldn't remember, and likely was lucky not to.

Lionel paused at the doors to his office, crisp, clean suit, bright eyed and focused like he was walking into a mid-day meeting instead of intruding on a midnight soliloquy. His bruises were fading slower by far than the deeper one's Lex had sported, but he carried them well, like battle scars to be proud of. Supposedly he'd been there when Lana's car exploded - - tossed aside by the ferociousness of the blast. How apt, since it had been his hand pulling the strings behind her acceptance of vows.

"Get out." There was a gun in Lex's desk. He was of a mind to pull it out - - of a mind to give the vultures on his doorstep something deliciously solid to rip into.

"You look appalling, Lex." Lionel strode in, a folder in hand. "You should have stayed in the hospital. You're always so eager to put your health at risk."

"Its mine to risk." He wasn't feeling eloquent. He'd been eloquent all day in the face of government bureaucracy. "Would you have had me stay put while they pulled the company down around us."

"Around us?" Lionel laughed. "If the company comes down, it will be because of your actions son. Your obsessive pursuit of ridiculous fancy, when you should have been focusing your efforts on growth and expansion. And it's not the company they're after, Lex. It's you."

Lex rose, fighting back an instinctive snarl. "Don't lecture me. You lost that right a long time ago. I'm dealing with this and I don't need your input or your help."

"You're not getting out of this, son. You've made enemies in high places. You've been so busy feeding your own paranoia that you've forgotten the politics of negotiation. You've been sloppy. How many bodies did they pull out of your project at the dam? Personal that even your appropriations committee puppets didn't know about. And let's not forget about your little disagreement with Senator Burke before his untimely death. That was a rash move. Smacks of desperation and desperation is the herald of failure.

"The military wants a piece of you. The federal government does on quite a few levels. We won't even mention small town law."

"Let's not." Lex suggested coldly. "And let's not forget your hand in that, shall we?"

"Anything I did, was done in the attempts to curb your obsession."

"The hell it was. And my obsession was well placed, don't you think, considering the things we both know as fact. What you seem to know quite a bit more than you're sharing, dad. Did you think I'd forgotten that the thing came to see you?"

Lionel smiled at him. A pitying curve of the lips, like he was delusional and spouting madness. Fuck the coffee, he wanted a drink. He wanted to bash Lionel's head into the glass surface of his desk. He wanted to damage something until it bled. In that respect, he thought he could almost understand the entity's motivation - - if it had been frustrated and hounded.

"Did you know they recovered Lana's journal?" Lionel threw him off guard. He did know, but he had no idea what it contained. His lawyers might have copies by now, if it was to be used as evidence against him, but he'd been too wrapped up in federal problems to deal with insubstantial local ones.

"She was very - - concise - - in her recounting. Quite damning really. I have to even question if it was all true, or some of it merely the venting of a tragically unhappy young woman. You really should have noticed, Lex."

"Like you noticed with mom? Seems to run in the family," he said and was rewarded by a minute flinch and a tightening of his father's mouth. Then Lionel shrugged, a cant of his brow that conceded that Lex had scored a hit.

"If this goes public - - more public than it already has, they'll crucify you, Lex. They're talking congressional hearings to discuss the misappropriation of funds even now, did you know? And when they start digging, they'll uncover your other dirty little secrets and we both know what they entail. You may never see the outside of prison again - - if they're that kind."

"And that would be a coup for you, wouldn't it, dad? Payback." He leaned forward, hands flat on the desk, because otherwise, they might betray him.

"Oh, Lex." Lionel shook his head, the picture of melancholy. "The loyalty of a parent to a child is boundless. I'd sell my soul to keep you safe, son."

"Can't sell what you don't have, dad." Lex laughed, he had to. It came out bitter and cold with the irony.

Lionel laid the folder on the desk, slid it across to rest between Lex's hands. Lex didn't touch it.

"Over the years, son, I've cultivated alliances and gone out of my way to curry favor with men that aspired to power. I've paved the way for political careers and broken the competition of men that might not have achieved their places of power without a nudge of help. If you think simply because I don't sit at the head of this corporation, I don't have power, that's one more miscalculation on your part.

"It's going to all go away, Lex. The federal inquiry, the military investigation. I've called in my markers. Favors from very high up in the food chain and this mess you've created will be buried."

Lex stared at him, waiting to hear the catch. Because there always was one with his father.

"There's a price." Lionel said, tapping the folder.

"Of course." Lex didn't want to open it, but he did.

"The federal government will be levying fines. Against LexCorp. Against you. Quite substantial, but when you're buying off the government, the cost is always high."

Lex stared down at the documents. The neat categorization of agencies from the EPA up, claiming financial toll. He sat down, knees gone a little weak, tallying numbers in his head. Staggering numbers. The corporation was multi-billion dollar, but only a fraction of that was liquid.

"So in return for me putting a dent in the national deficit, I get to avoid the inconvenience of a few hours of congressional bullshit and criminal charges that might or might not stick? I'll take my chances."

Lionel's smile was tight and condescending. "Pass the offer by your lawyers. I built the company from nothing, I trust you can follow in my footsteps and recover from setback that's financially crippling, but not devastating. So you liquidate property and go without a new car for a year or two. I assure you the alternative is considerably worse."

Part One

Lana was dead and Clark felt angry and helpless.

With all his powers, all his unearthly abilities, he was impotent, stymied, because there was no direction for his rage. The sheriff's department and the Lowell county DA and Henry Small and anyone else with the influence to see justice done were spinning their tires, efforts concentrated in the wrong direction - - only casually exploring other avenues in their determination to indict Lex.

Clark might have applauded that sentiment, that dogged resolve, if he didn't grudgingly believe Lex's claim of ignorance in the matter. If he'd believed otherwise, Lex quite possibly would be dead already, victim of Clark's initial rage.

Lex could lie and lie and lie, serpent sly falsehoods slipping off his tongue as calm as smooth silk, but there had been something in his eyes, some spark of honest shock, of ravaged grief in the face of a fear that had nothing to do with Clark's anger. And later, when he'd been on his way to dead, bleeding out in winter dry grasses, victim of that same fear, who'd worn Clark's own vestige and mimicked his powers, Lex had cried innocence again. No artifice. No sleek wordplay. No articulation at all. Just desperate need and Clark accepted it. Deep down, past the surface rage, he'd believed.

He hadn't wanted to, because God knew, Lex was black with blame, but not in this. Not in this last crime against Lana. So Clark had deposited him at the ER and abandoned him, too fast for any human eye to follow, his own body wrung dry from the fight with the phantom that had drawn from his Kryptonian DNA.

He thought the thing was gone. He hoped it was. It had happened very fast at the end, the power of the crystal rupturing through the thing, like it had pierced Lex when Zod had worn his body - - ripping the intruder violently out. Only there'd been no body this time in the aftermath, no shell drained of alien consciousness and it was entirely possible it had fled, mortally injured or just injured, to lick its wounds.

Regardless, there had been no sign or word of it in three weeks. And life returned to normal - - or as normal as life in Smallville ever got. Chloe revived from her coma two weeks after the fact. Lois published her story about illicit LexCorp projects, but all she had was speculation. She'd never gotten to the guts of it, and the military had come in a day after the dam broke and staked claim to the area. They'd cleaned everything out, despite LexCorp protest.

Quite a lot of protest, according to what Clark heard from Lionel. But the matter had serious federal attention, spurred on by powerful interests that sensed the chink in LexCorp/LuthorCorp armor and were eager to dive in for the kill.

And Lana was dead. Flesh scorched away, bones shattered so badly from a blast centered under the driver's seat that there hadn't even been enough left of her for dental identification. Someone had been needlessly thorough. He'd seen the vehicle, in the police compound at night, and gone over it with his enhanced vision for a clue, for a particle of anything that might give him answers, but there was nothing left but a ravaged mess. The police had already retrieved what fragments were left of the device and from what he'd overheard, from what Lionel had been able to find out for him, all they knew was that it had been no simple, jury rigged bomb. There had been artistry behind it and that probably meant that whoever had done it might have been targeting Lana to get at Lex.

If only they'd waited a few hours, they might not have needed her death to get at him. The phantom had triggered enough of a landslide to near drown him.

And that first week, Lex was attacked from all sides, damaged from the assault of the phantom, diverted by accusations of Lana's murder and the murder itself and he just let it happen. Clark heard gleeful reports from Lois, things she'd gleaned from sources linked to her father, to old contacts she'd gained during her stint as his mother's aide de camp, of all manner of charges leveled, of possible congressional hearings, of assets seized.

And then, they evaporated. The charges, the federal involvement, the military presence in Smallville. It wasn't Lex's doing. It was Lionel's. Lionel's maneuvering, and Lionel calling in favors that went up so high in the federal government, a simple man could get nosebleed dwelling on it. It hadn't been Scott free, not even close. There were fines involved. Huge federal fines levied against LexCorp. Considerably more money, according to the associated press than LexCorp had liquid access to.

There were reports of bankruptcy of the smaller LexCorp and a great deal of reorganization of its larger brethren. And maybe that had worked out to Lionel's benefit, humbling Lex. Having Lex in his debt, dubious as the favor was. Clark couldn't guess the workings of the Luthor mind. Not Lex, and certainly not Lionel, who claimed to channel his birth father, and most likely did. But, honestly, Lionel Luthor had been as manipulative a soul as ever existed without the added benefit of Jor-el's own brand of machinations adding a new twist to the works. It was a frightening combination and not one Clark particularly trusted. The Lowell county DA was still investigating the murder, still had Lex in their sights, prime suspect. Lionel's maneuverings couldn't erase that suspicion and maybe Lionel hadn't even tried. Maybe Lionel didn't really believe Lex was innocent of those charges. It was hard to tell, because Lionel liked his wordplay and Lionel liked his subtle insinuations.

So the only one looking outside Lex for the people responsible - - other than Clark and his confidants - - was Lex. And even distracted by corporate disruption he had better resources than they did.

And Clark was drifting. Lost in three weeks worth of stagnancy - - three weeks of denial, of looking for someone to blame, of blaming himself, of blaming her for ever getting herself tangled up in Lex's world to begin with, of hating the world at large for the unfairness of it all.

He needed something solid to sink his teeth into. Going to Metropolis at night, playing midnight vigilante to exercise his frustrations could only relieve so much of the pressure. He almost wished that the phantom would show up again, or some other uniquely dangerous threat, so he could really work out his rage. So he wouldn't have to hold back when he felt the need for violence.

He wanted to know what Lex had uncovered. He needed to know it. He didn't want to see Lex. He had avoided Lex since he'd found him by the old dirt road that bisected route 619.

It didn't matter that it hadn't been Lex's hand that had forced her into the marriage. Lex was still the catalyst that made Clark's teeth ache when he dwelled on the months she'd worn the band that declared her a Luthor. Lex had pursued her. Lex had asked her. And that was enough of a treason to make Clark see red.

He didn't want to see Lex, but he had to, to find out what he'd uncovered.

So he drove to the mansion, late enough to qualify as rude. There was frost on the ground, frost on the windshield before the heat of the cab melted it away. Winter rolling in early, before fall could officially resign its office. It was colder out here, in the country than it was in the city - - at least that was what Clark heard. He never felt the extremes anymore. It was only ingrained habit that reminded him to don cold weather clothes at all, to avoid curious looks from the rest of the world, shivering behind their gloves and hats and winter coats.

There was guard at the gate, but he was snug in his little house, watching a tiny portable TV, so Clark go out and walked up, tapping on the glass and startling the man.

"Is Mr. Luthor home?" 'Mr. Luthor' sounded like he was asking after Lionel.

The gate guard cast a meaningful glance at his watch, then got on the phone. After a few minutes, he hung up and gave Clark a smug look.

"He's not receiving guests. Try coming back in the daylight, next time."

Clark didn't know whether the suggestion came from the guard or had filtered down from Lex on the other end. It was irritating either way and Clark stood there a moment, staring past the bars of the gate at the distant silhouette of the estate and regretted not simply bypassing legitimate routes of entry altogether.

He stomped back towards the truck, slammed the door shut with more force than needed and turned the ignition. The flare of the headlights caught the guard trotting towards him from the little house.

"He'll see you." The guy said, not so smug anymore, when Clark cracked the window, then went back to the guardhouse and triggered the gates open. They used to be open all the time. There used to be no guard at the gatehouse, or more than domestic staff at the mansion. Things changed.

It was a long drive, past hedges and manicured lawn. He pulled up in front of the portico, the only vehicle out front. A man that Clark wasn't familiar with opened the door, neutral face showing no opinion of the late visit.

"Mr. Luthor is in the study."

"I know the way," Clark said, and moved past, rubber-soled boots making muffled thumps on the marble.

The fire was crackling in the hearth when Clark walked in, but he recalled Lex saying once, that even with the fire, and electric heat, the castle never quite lost its chill, especially in colder months. Lex had never liked the cold.

Clark didn't see him in the room, and stood there in the center, debating a penetrating visual search of the surrounding rooms. Lex spoke to him from above. "What do you want, Clark? Come to gloat. To see the mighty fallen?"

Lex liked to make an entrance, even when he wasn't the one doing the entering. He stood on the balcony library overlooking the study, one hand on the railing, the other holding a tumbler of amber liquid. There was something in the careful way he held his body, in the loose set of his mouth that suggested that it wasn't the first glass of liquor he'd had tonight.

"Funny, I never saw you as one of the 'mighty'." Clark said, hard eyed, standing tense and wary in a place that had once held such allure for him. "Unless we're talking ego."

Lex lifted a brow, a faint fey look in his eyes. He moved towards the stairs, trailing fingers along the railing. He was slim and shadowy in the wan light of the upper balcony, black pants, charcoal grey, high necked sweater that made the paleness of his skin all the more stark. It was a good look on him, but then Lex wore most everything well, and Clark had to look away, because the days of admiring the way Lex moved and the way he wore his clothing were long past.

"Ah, flattery," Lex finished what was in the tumbler, a wry little smile on his lips that came nowhere near to reaching his eyes.

"And from what I've heard, you haven't fallen. You just got spanked a little when it could have been worse. I can see you've had to make all sorts of sacrifices."

Lex made him tense. Lex's rolling gait down the stairs made him want to turn around and just get the hell out, because Clark instinctually felt that Lex lazy and relaxed, was more dangerous than Lex guarded and hostile.

"Ah, you've been talking to my father. But then, the two of you have developed so many common interests of late, haven't you? Secrets shared, schemes hatched - - and he's always proven so trustworthy - - so noble in his pursuits - - I can see why you might confide in him."

"Lex, I'm not here to talk about your father."

"Are you here to talk about how you escaped unscathed from the entity? I'd love to have that conversation." Lex padded towards the glass-topped bar.

Clark tightened his lips, wondering what it would take to get Lex onto a topic of his choice and off the ones that Clark didn't want to discuss.

"I don't know. Isn't it enough that it's gone?"

"Actually. No." Lex poured more scotch. "Who in their right mind would think that it's enough? The thing is a killing machine, and you'd like me to just thank my lucky stars that it happened to go away - - no reasonable explanation? Do we even live on the same planet? Where's your sense of responsibility, Clark? It's generally so well defined."

"You brought it here." Clark snapped.

"I brought it to 'Smallville'," Lex corrected, liquor sloshing over the edge of the glass onto his clenched fingers. "I didn't bring it here. That happened independent of me. I was simply working to make sure we're prepared to deal with the things that follow in its footsteps."

Clark took a breath, a knot of guilt in his throat. Lex was right on one count. He hadn't brought it to earth. That was Clark's doing. The deaths it had caused were ultimately on his shoulders.

But Lex was staring at the faint patterns of frost on the panes of the stained glass window behind his desk, a frown marring his brow. The liquid in his glass was vibrating, disturbed by the tremors of his hand.

"But maybe I did," he said, voice distant, as if he weren't really talking to Clark at all. "Maybe I did something - - when I wasn't myself - - that brought them here. There's no indication they were here before that. It recognized me, you know?"

"I don't think you did," Clark said carefully. Then. "What?"

Lex turned to look at him, eyes fever bright, cheeks flushed from the booze. "It - - said it recognized the flavor of him - - or whatever he was - - in my blood. How is that possible, if he's gone? Zod."

The sound of the name on Lex's tongue made Clark's heart pound a little faster. "He's gone, Lex. It's - - it's been over a year. He's gone."

"How could you possibly know that? How could you possibly know half the things you claim as gospel? I have nightmares five days out of seven about Dark Thursday - - about Fine. About what I did when Zod was inside me. About what he did to me."

"You remember?" Clark asked, fighting for calm. Trying to decipher the range of emotion flittering behind Lex's eyes. Lex was never so open nowadays, never showed show much - -not unless there were great quantities of alcohol involved - - or equal amounts of blood lost.

Lex laughed and swallowed the scotch in one long swig. "Not a damned thing. It's all a big blank, but what the mind knows and what the subconscious knows are two different things. It seems my subconscious is in on secrets that it's not sharing with my mind."

It was a dangerous topic. A loaded one and Lex was the last person on earth that he wanted to dredge up memories of it with.

"Lex, I have nightmares about that day sometimes. Everybody who was impacted by it probably does now and then."

"Do you want to know what I've been feeling, ever since that fucking thing that wore your face, brought the subject up?" Lex hissed, a moment of flash flood anger. "That there is something left inside. Like the tip of a lizard's tail that breaks off and lays there, still wriggling, amputated from its body - - but still fucking wriggling. I can't get the image out of my mind."

The glass hit the wall behind Clark, raining fine crystal on the carpet. It was unsettling, the words and the images and the possibilities and it occurred to him that none of them in the know had ever bothered to do Lex the simple courtesy of letting him know that Zod had been banished permanently. And he'd been obsessing about it, one way or another for a year or more. Fortifying because of it - - building armies.

Fuck.

Clark didn't know how to go about it now. Didn't know how to explain without going into his own involvement. Couldn't explain about the phantoms for the same reason. All this time, he'd been so busy being pissed off at Lex, that he hadn't realized that underneath the cool, and the arrogance and the machinations, lay fear.

Even if he tried to come up with a neutral explanation, a carefully worded, carefully edited account that dabbed at the edges of the greater truth, he doubted Lex would want to hear it from him. Lex was far past blithely accepting fanciful tales from him and Clark was past the point where he felt the need to spin them.

But it bothered him, Lex's fears about Zod.

What if it were possible, that something had been left behind? Not a comforting thought. He'd ask J'onn about it, next time he saw him. He hesitated at the notion of inquiring of Lionel, because if Lionel were channeling Jor'el, he knew very well what his birth father's thoughts were on anything Zod related.

"Did you ever - - talk to Lana - - about the nightmares?" He didn't like contemplating Lex and Lana's private moments. He didn't like to think about them intimate. Even though he'd had nightmares about them together, disturbing ones that he didn't like to dwell on, that involved naked bodies, writhing under sweat soaked sheets, Lex's pale skin against Lana's golden flesh. And him sweeping down in a rage, flinging Lex off of her, pushing him down when he rose to protest - - holding him down, pinning him, slick skin under Clark's hands . . . and the rest inevitably turned nightmarish, because more often than not, Lana wasn't there anymore and there was just him feeding his anger towards Lex . . .

"She has her - - had - - her own about that time. No need to burden her with mine." Lex moved towards the fire, a hint of a waver in his walk. He leaned there, hands against the mantle and the glow turned slacks and sweater orange where it touched.

"She's why you've come, isn't she? And I diverted your train of thought." Lex said turning off one subject and onto another as easy as changing lanes in traffic. "Have you changed your mind about me? Swayed by the dogged determination of Smallville's finest?"

"What makes you think I ever doubted you didn't have a hand?" Clark asked stiffly.

Lex looked at him over his shoulder, a cruel twist on his lips. "I'm standing here aren't I? I'd be either dead in the dam or dead in the field if you truly believed otherwise, wouldn't I?"

Clark swallowed, the truth of that statement a painful acknowledgement - -at least in the dam, when the grief had been fresh. He didn't think he could have left Lex bleeding to death in the field either way. He hoped he couldn't have.

"Yeah. She's why I came. I know you're investigating. I want to know what you've found out."

"Your interest in my wife - -"

"Lex." Clark cut him off before he could get onto that particular tirade. "You're drunk. I'm tired. Can we not pretend that you had a happy marriage and I that don't have a right to know what happened to her and why? What's the point anymore?"

Lex tightened his fingers on the stone of the mantel, staring down into the fire.

"This has been a remarkably civilized conversation. I can't recall the last time you and I spoke so - - rationally." He said softly, slowly choosing words. "Lex, don't play games with me on this. What have you found out?"

"That she was considerably more - - devious - - than I gave her credit for," Lex said softly, an ironic wisp to his voice.

"What?"

"Did you know what my father did? No. You couldn't have. You lie as much as the rest of us - - me, her, my father - - but you've never been cruel about it. An honest liar." Lex laughed at the contradiction and Clark had to wonder if he wasn't on the verge of falling down drunk, just hiding it well.

Clark clenched his jaw, because he did know what Lionel had done - - now. And it still made red crowd in along the edges of his vision, no matter Lionel's claim of necessity.

"Do you know why they're so intent on investigating me?" Lex asked. "Because she paved the way. She was subtly crying foul weeks before it happened. Dropping hints that, if I were optimistic, I'd suppose she thought she might use in divorce proceedings, to make her case against me. If I weren't - - " he trailed off, eyes distant, caught in some dark musing.

"Are you saying," Clark said tightly, angry that the words were even leaving his lips. "That she set you up?" The desire to hurt Lex stirred.

Lex looked up at him, eyes dark, pupils kissed by the glow of the fire. "I didn't say that. You did."

"Fuck you. She would never - - her mind didn't work that way."

"No. Your mind doesn't work that way. Don't assume everyone shares your particular rustic sense of honor. Most of us don't. Most of us can't afford it."

He'd known in his gut, it was a mistake coming here. That Lex would twist words in his gut like a knife.

He took a step towards Lex, fists clenched, maybe something of violence in his eye and Lex flinched. Minutely, but it was there all the same. A flash of something in his eyes that he couldn't control before he straightened and shoved it aside - - A ghost of fear. And Clark recalled that a few weeks past, something that wore his face had come close to killing Lex. Had tortured and toyed with him, and just like the incident with Zod, no one had bothered to tell him that it hadn't actually been Clark - - not his body, not his mind hidden beneath the consciousness of an alien invader.

And if Lex thought some part of Zod was still in him, what was to stop him from assuming that some part of the phantom might still lurk within Clark - - ready to leap forward and take up where it had left off?

Guilt trumped anger. He loosened his fists, taking a breath, wondering why the hell somebody hadn't tried to pick him up and try to find out for certain about what he might play host to or how he'd survived it. Lex had never hesitated before with anything involving the phantom. Lex had never hesitated in a lot of things. And yet, no one had ever come for Clark.

"If I discover something relevant," Lex said, sliding his hands in his pockets, a casual movement meant to reinforce the illusion of control - but Clark heard the rapid patter of his heart. "I assure you, I won't keep it private. Good night, Clark."

Part Two

Lex woke with the echo of his own cry ringing in his ears, half out of bed, heart pounding so hard it hurt. A panic fogged mind sought out threat in the shadows of the room. But the room only stared back at him, unmalignant and cool. Devoid of blame.

He took a breath, gathering scattered wits, the images, as always, fading as soon as his conscious mind stirred. Leaving him with nothing but the surety that they had been appalling. The nightmare could have been anything - - so many things to choose from now to torment the subconscious. New nightscares to compete with the old and he didn't know which he preferred. At least with the old one's he'd been able to recall a thing or two.

He looked for the bedside clock and it wasn't there. He remembered that this wasn't the master bedroom. He hadn't slept there in close to a month. He ought to move his things, if he were going to avoid it. He ought to have hers removed - - those things the police hadn't already taken in their quest for evidence. He didn't want it anymore. Didn't need reminders.

He wondered idly, forcing himself to lie back and settle into the comfort of the guest bed again, if he ought to offer her belongings to Clark. A morbid little collection for him to build a shrine around. He could worship at the alter of her personal artifacts like a man seeking to revive an old religion and maybe it would keep him out of Lex's business.

He looked at his watch, unable to find sleep after the turbulence of the nightmare - - 5:19. He had an appointment in Metropolis at ten. Another round of board advisory meetings overseeing the liquidation of assets. LexCorp stock was suicidal at the moment, and LuthorCorp values were dropping.

Distance LexCorp from LuthorCorp his lawyers, his board, every business advisor he had preached. Let Lionel take a public role as spokesman for LuthorCorp dealings and hope he could re-instill lost confidence.

It was like pulling teeth, considering it. Considering stepping back until this blew over and giving his father even the illusion of power. But, it would be foolish not to bow to the inevitable. Stupid to hold out until the board voted him down, just like they'd voted Lionel down three years ago when he'd been defamed and defrocked. Better to step into the shadows willingly and let his father do what he did best. Charm and maneuver and fool everyone into thinking he was the second coming. And meanwhile Lex's name would still on all the company charters.

No reason, since he was awake and not likely to find sleep again, not to get a head start. There were a few other things in Metropolis he might use the time to take advantage of. Give him a chance to get out of the country for the morning, maybe he'd even spend the night in the city.

So he showered and dressed and by time he was downstairs someone on his domestic staff must have realized he was up, because there was fresh coffee in the pot, and sliced fruit on a cold trey under glass on the island where he took quick breakfast.

The staff was very quiet nowadays. Diligent in their jobs, but furtive almost. Perhaps they were respectful of his space, grieving husband that he ought to be - - or perhaps, like the rest of Smallville, they thought he'd had a hand in her death. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he caught the occasional accusatory glance or two, as his back was turning.

Now that he thought about it, the staff had catered to her like she was some fragile, fractured creature and maybe she had been, drifting through the mansion like a wraith those last months, dissolute in her not so cleverly hidden misery. He'd just chosen not to see it. He considered dismissing them all - bringing in a new staff from the city.

He needed to get out of the mansion.

He drove himself, and at 6 in the morning there was enough frost on the ground, covering fields along the road, tilled bare after the last harvest, that it almost looked like light snow. Traffic was marginal, until he hit the interstate and then the road was one long, grey, empty track and it felt like release to press the pedal to the floor and feel the powerful engine surge to full life.

An hour down the road and traffic picked up, cars feeding onto the highway from exits along the way, all city bound. He still made a three-hour trip in just under two.

The meetings were predictably long, and frustrating. The thought of going out and finding a drink or two, at maybe one of the exclusive clubs on upper Grace, where you needed an 8 digit bank account just to get in, where he'd still be welcomed with open arms, even though LexCorp stock was in the red and they'd set in motion the liquidation of more prime assets than he could name in one breath.

Afterwards, he'd pay a visit to M&C labs on the north side. A discreet visit that he'd put off for weeks, trying to distance himself from anything to do with project Ares. The back up research was there, evidence of a most inflammatory nature if it reached the wrong hands. Things he ought to destroy, facts and file and intimate details - - but he couldn't make himself part with it. He couldn't shake the need to pursue the project - -

He got a call that disrupted his plans. The Smallville DA had come across new evidence in the investigation. Security camera pictures of Lana meeting with an unknown man, five days before her murder. The Smallville authorities wanted him to identify the man, and his lawyers were eager for the possibility of another trail for them to start sniffing down.

He thought about refusing. Telling them they could damn well wait until he was back in town tomorrow - - but he was curious who she'd been meeting with. When Clark had come asking for information, Lex hadn't balked at giving it simply to annoy - - he just didn't have any. He had every resource he could spare looking into her death and they were all drawing blanks. He didn't know if he simply wasn't looking in the right place, or if whoever had done it was so proficient they'd left no trail to follow.

So he agreed. It was 3 o'clock now, and he made tentative arrangements to meet his lawyer at the Smallville Sheriff's office at five. If he was late, they damn well could wait on him.

He made it in reasonable time. By the time he hit rush hour, he was well out of the city and missed the out flux of commuters from Metropolis.

The Smallville Sheriff's station was the next street over from Main, flanked, appropriately enough, by the offices of a local conglomeration of lawyers on one side and a sporting goods store, specializing in the sale of hunting paraphernalia and firearms on the other. For a town that was constantly prepared for nothing, it was an interesting mix of vultures and predators flanking the bastion of local law.

He'd been here enough during his sojourn in Smallville, that he knew the most convenient parking was around back, in the lot where impounded vehicles and defunct sheriff's cruisers were parked. He walked around the building and into the offices and a great deal of the activity stopped, eyes focused on him. He'd learned to ignore the stares early on - - long before notoriety was a factor in the attention he drew. When it had just been who's son he was. Or that he was a bald headed freak at 9. Or the sex and drugs and rebellion before he'd ever reached drinking age - - a paparazzi's wet dream. Government pay offs and murder investigations were only the latest.

His lawyer bustled up, a Metropolis yuppie, barely older than Lex. The man didn't bother with pleasantries, instead launching into a precise explanation of the nature of the new evidence. A restaurant manager in the city, after hearing about the ongoing investigation of Lana Luthor's death, had volunteered security footage taken a week before her demise.

Sheriff Taylor and ADA McMurry sat down with him in one of the little interrogation rooms - - a location, he was sure, that had been calculated to grate his nerves. They'd failed to indict him once, and they were seriously hoping for reaction.

"Was your wife having an affair, Mr. Luthor?"

"It's entirely possible." He answered amenably enough, shuffling through the photos. They were low quality captures, showing her at an outside table, with a man - - maybe forty - forty-five - - graying hair at the temples, smart suit. They never touched in the photos, but it was clear they were having an intense conversation.

"But I doubt it was with this man." He looked up, meeting McMurry's eyes. "Her tastes ran more rural. And prettier."

But there was something about the man in the photos. Something that sparked recognition. Lex had seen him somewhere - - there just hadn't been made enough of an impression made where the occasion or the name stood out.

"So you don't recognize this man? Or find it strange that your wife was meeting with him, behind your back?" The Sheriff asked with the veiled antagonism of a man foiled time and again.

"I find it strange that after four weeks, you're still wasting time and resources harassing me. Meeting for assignation and meeting for lunch are two very different things. I'm sure she ate lunch every day, I didn't always know who with, nor did I require a full list of her acquaintances."

"You don't strike me, Mr. Luthor, as a man that lets much slip his notice. According to your late wife's journal, you were quite - - controlling." The sheriff remarked.

Lex stared back, face neutral, refusing to rise to the bait. He thought maybe he had been - - the nature of the beast brought up to control empires - - hard not to want a hand in the other aspects of his life. And she hadn't been equipped to deal with it, much less counter it in a way that didn't include betrayal. A small town girl that should have married a small town boy with reasonable aspirations. Not a man that occasionally entertained scenarios of ruling the world.

Not Clark.

He wasn't sure where that addendum came from - - from what recess of his mind, but he frowned a little at the slip.

His lawyer put an end to the meeting. Lex had answered their questions, claimed ignorance and there was no reason for them to turn a voluntary meeting into an interrogation.

"I want copies of those photos." He told his lawyer on the way out.

"Do you know who he is?"

"Not yet. Make it a priority to find out."

The lawyer nodded, turning about to make requests of the ADA for copies of the information, while Lex stalked out.

The sun sat early this time of year and the shadows were already long, the sky tinted with the rose hues of oncoming dusk. He seldom took the time to notice simple beauties like the broad Kansas sky in the throes of sunset. There were too many other things vying for attention, too many other priorities.

He pulled out his phone, had his thumb on the menu, and got accosted, half way down the steps by the unpleasant voice of Lois Lane.

"So, Lex, you managed to weasel out from under the hand of the law again, I see. Can I get a comment? The average person wants to know how it feels to be above the law. Apparently the price of buying your way out federal prosecution is in the ten figure range, but what's it cost to get away with murdering your wife?"

He snapped his phone shut and tried to ignore her. Lois Lane was an aggravating, persistent pain in the ass. The Inquisitor printed speculative, libelous drivel to start with, but Lois pushed the envelope with her string of poisonous articles. For the past month, she'd been getting print space - - high profile print space in her campaign against him and LexCorp.

Chloe had enough integrity and enough legitimacy to print stories she had the hard evidence to back up - - she also had the sense to know when to back down, but her lamentable cousin lacked all of those attributes. And with the ongoing scandal, the Inquisitor was willing to risk the lawsuits LexCorp Lawyers were threatening, to sell out issues. Suing Lois herself was a lost cause, since she had nothing to lose, and pressuring her with more inventive methods would only egg her on. He knew her type. A loose cannon with a pen and an outlet for publication. All his years of experience with low-rent journalists just like her, said keep his mouth shut and step over her, like any other unsavory obstacle. Anything he said would be twisted regardless.

But she pissed him off. "Don't you have better things to do, Ms. Lane? A follow up article on your Chupacabra piece, perhaps? Your take on Mexican folklore was truly uninspiring."

"So you follow my work?" She paced him, a condescending smirk on her lips that was quietly infuriating. "How about a comment on rumors of LexCorp insolvency in the wake of federal fines? I'll assume a no comment means you're too broken up about it to discuss it."

He scoffed. "You don't really get the concept of 'liable', do you, Lois? And as refreshed and challenged as I am by your constantly unique points of view, you're getting boring." "Yeah, well I haven't killed anybody recently, so I guess I'm pretty low key, compared to you."

If he ran her over in the sheriff station parking lot, there'd be hell to pay. It would almost be worth the risk. He pictured the finer details while she was trailing him, spouting more inflammatory babble, then slowed, noticing, with a rapidly increasing surge of irritation, the group of men loitering by his car. Actually sitting on the hood of his Mercedes.

"Get off my car." He strode towards them, unlocking the car as he walked, noticing letterman jackets on two out of the five, the gaudy mix of red and yellow on men that were at least three or four years out of high school if not more. There were cigarette butts and a six-pack's worth of empty beer cans on the ground. Apparently they'd been here a while, choosing the most expensive car in the lot to lounge about on while they shot the breeze or whatever it was they'd been doing, wasting time on the back lot of the sheriff's station.

"Well if it ain't Lex fucking Luthor himself," one of them sneered, not bothering to rise from his sprawl on the car hood.

"Strutting around town after what you did that sweet thing."

There was belligerence in their eyes, the indignant rancor of men whose initiative was bolstered by the addition of alcohol.

"Get off of my car." Lex repeated, slowly, calmly as if he were speaking to children.

"I dated Lana Lang once." One of the Letterman's claimed, and the man had to be a year or two older than Clark, if not more, which meant a few years ahead of Lana in high school. Football player maybe. He probably had a reputation in a town that idolized its high school players, past and present, but Lex had no notion who he was, having paid little heed to the state of Smallville high school football outside of the brief time Clark had been on the team. Even then, the other faces had been a blur. But if Lana had dated this broad faced hick, he'd have heard about it from Clark.

"I doubt that," he said dryly, pushing past the man blocking the door.

"How come they let you just walk out of there, you piece of shit, when that girl's in the ground?" One of them put a hand on Lex's arm and Lex tensed, cool on the verge of shattering. It had been a long day. It had been a frustrating day. If he did something unexpectedly violent, like slamming this bastard's head into his car window, he wondered how many of the others he might draw blood on before they took him down? Calculating risk-reward ratios was generally not so literal a thing with him.

"That's what I was just asking, boys," Lois hovered a few yards outside the ring of them, a big, nervous smile plastered on her face. "But we can talk about it nice - - because you know - - sheriff's station."

She waved a hand and they slowly got her point. It was a bad place for an assault. Maybe he even owed her one for it, because they backed down, giving him dark, dirty looks. One of them, when sliding off the hood of his car, drove a fist down when pushing to his feet and left a small dent.

Lex drew a breath and another. He could pursue it, which would end up less satisfying than the adrenalin-fueled part of his brain insisted it might be. Pursuing it would only mean going back into the sheriff's station and he'd seen enough of the drab interior of that building for a lifetime.

They called him a few names, before he got into the car and shut the door, muffling the sound of their voices. His hands were shaking, he was so angry. All day long he'd kept his head, and it took these ignorant bastards to get to him. He pulled out of the space with a skid of tires, swinging close enough to make two of them jump back to avoid flattened feet, which was small enough satisfaction.

He ground his teeth all the way out of town, until he reached that last intersection before open road surrounded by nothing but empty farmland for miles.

The solitude eased the tension. It was getting to him. After all these years, he'd finally had about as much as he could tolerate of small town America. The reasons he'd had to stay in Smallville just weren't anymore. The mansion was a mausoleum of cold walls and leering memory. The people had never appreciated a Luthor among them - - and after this - - well, he could be cleared tomorrow of all doubt concerning Lana's death and they'd still blame him for destroying her. Their hometown princess. The girl who'd survived everything but him. The bitch who'd betrayed him and maybe set him up and gotten caught in the backlash.

He ought to sell the castle - - get a few million towards that debt his father had so graciously negotiated for him - - and move back to the city once this mess was over. Wouldn't that piss Lionel off? It made him smile a little thinking about it.

Something skidded onto the road in front of him. A truck veering half off its tires onto the main road from one of the countless country routes that intersected it. There was no braking to avoid it, just a frantic jerk of the wheel that sent the Mercedes sliding uncontrollably towards the embankment across the lane on the other side of the road. The front end hit earth with bone wrenching, metal crumpling impact. Air bags inflated, slamming into him and stealing breath even as they saved him from crashing into the dash.

Lex sat there, shocked, feeling the warm flavor of blood in his mouth where he'd shredded the inside of his cheek. Nothing else felt particularly damaged. Nothing but his car and his patience. He cursed, the miracle of being simply alive evaporating in the face of indignant anger.

The truck had stopped its mad rush, and pulled up not far from him. Another vehicle, the headlights which had been distant points behind him, screeched to a stop. If he was lucky, they'd been close enough to witness the jackass in the truck sailing across the intersection in front of him.

The door tried to stick, but he got it open with a shove from his shoulder. He batted the deflating airbag out of the way and managed a mostly graceful exit into the ditch he'd run afoul of. He climbed out of it and onto the road. The second vehicle had stopped, headlights on high, illuminating the sad state of his front end harshly. The other driver was trotting towards him to see what damage had been done and Lex wasn't in the mood to play gracious.

"You stupid son of a bitch, I had the right - -"

The fist caught him off guard, the guy not even stopping as he swung and belatedly Lex realized the jacket was the yellow and red of a Smallville high letterman. Lex spun, kept his footing, and came around with a blow of his own, that rocked the big bastard backward a few steps and bloodied Lex's knuckles.

"You fucking faggot!" the guy screamed, and rebounded forward. A second man from the truck was hard the heels of the first.

The guy was big, and drunk and not as quick as Lex on a good day, probably. Lex avoided the charge, kicked the back of the bastard's knee in and spun to meet the other one. He drove a fist into a gut that was a lot softer than it had probably been in the football days from high school, and had the satisfaction of seeing the guy grunt and double over, before impact hit him from behind.

A fist in the ear, stole his equilibrium. It came from one of the passengers of the truck that had been in his rear view mirror - - almost all the way since town.

Fuck. They'd followed him. And knowing the back roads, one had most likely sped down a rural route and managed to cut him off, while the other one followed. He didn't know if they were just out for a casual drunken assault, or if they had something more serious in mind.

The blow behind his ear hurt and he staggered, swung and hit somebody in the face, then twisted in an attempt to drive an elbow into the side of the body closest to him - - succeeded - - before somebody got in a blow that caught him in the solar plexus. Air left in a rush as did a portion of vision. He went down, knees hitting asphalt hard, gasping after breath, thinking that he really, really didn't need to have his ass thoroughly kicked a second time in one month. At least these guys were human.

There was a gun in his glove compartment, but he doubted he could get to the car, wrench open the passenger door and fumble after if before they took exception. He saw the flash of a cheap, gold plated high school ring, and a fist smashed into his face. Pain flashed behind his eyes, instant and shocking. New blood flowed in his mouth. He would have gone down entirely, sprawling on the pavement, but they caught his arms and kept him from crumpling.

"Fucking bald freak. Come into our town like you think you own it." A fist plowed into the side of his jaw while they held him on his knees. Another blow that snapped his head back and fogged his thinking.

"Driving your fancy cars. . ." Another.

"Fucking our women. . . " And another and it felt like his brain was rattling around inside his skull with each impact, like a bean inside a maraca.

They shoved him down, and the toe of a boot connected to his back, to his ribs, with stabbing flares of agony. If he could just get on his feet he'd make them regret it. They were drunken country hicks that had just gotten lucky and he was a goddamned Luthor and Luthor's didn't get driven off the side of the road at night for a curbside beating.

"Killing that girl . . . " But he couldn't get his feet and he couldn't think past the pain, and his mind flashed back to the abandoned mill and the entity inflicting similar hurt and it was hard to differentiate between the two.

He curled in on himself, instinctive effort at self-defense. It was all that was left for him to do, assaulted from all sides. Four men determined to kick him to death. And they might succeed, because he lost control of his limbs somewhere around the dozenth blow and they weren't stopping and everything was going pain washed red.

If they were smart, they'd just put him back in the car - - and with the present love he was getting from the sheriff's department, they might not even investigate the unusual bruising. Might just write it off as an accident and that would be that. A neat tying up of loose ends, so many problems taken care of in one fell swoop - - so much time and effort saved. They'd throw these guys a private party, celebrate their ingenuity - -

Then it stopped, or maybe it was a state of nothingness and he just couldn't feel. But in Lex's experience, if someone were inflicting pain, he was generally aware of it on some level. And he could faintly, through the ringing in his ears, still hear them cursing him - - laughing among themselves, pleased with themselves. The words didn't mean anything though. Just a jumble of sound to a scrambled brain.

Something warm hit his face that wasn't blood. Hit his body, saturating his clothing. Burning ammonia smell.

A detached part of his mind realized they were urinating on him and that was an insult that his brain refused to fully comprehend. People did not piss on Luthor's. Not and live to brag about it.

But what if the Luthor in question were dead? What then? It ran down his cheek, into his mouth and he thought, maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing to die out here - - escape all the crushing problems - - escape the mortification. Maybe if he willed it badly enough - - it would happen. But no, Lex wasn't weak. Lex was a survivor. He didn't curl up and die; not when his company was teetering on the edge of disaster, not when an alien entity, with a mouth you could masturbate to the memory of was trying to bore a hole through him into the earth with fingers made of rock. So dying wasn't an option.

But darkness came down anyway, and he didn't know if it were the herald of death - - or was simply a prelude to apathy.

Part Three

Clark felt uncomfortable in the Talon, because it had been hers and it felt almost like her ghost still lingered. Drifting around the back counter, making the doors rattle on the display case, or idly ruffling napkins. But of course, it was only the footsteps across the loose board near the case that made the glass tremble and just the breeze finding its way in each time the door opened that disturbed the linens.

But he had friends who lived in the apartment above and ghosts or no, it wasn't enough to keep him away from Chloe or even Lois, who in her calmer moments didn't annoy him quite as much as she once had. He had few enough friends left, to avoid the one's he did simply because they lived above a shop that reminded him of better days.

Which was him being morose. He knew this. He accepted this, because it was hard to be anything else after wallowing so long in the throes of disappointment and remorse. Chloe asked him, a few days after she'd come out of her coma, if he remembered the last time he'd been happy. Really happy. And he'd stood there for a while, thinking, trying to come up with an answer and failing to find an easy one. There were moments of course, brief bright spots, but overall, it was hard to pinpoint a long stretch of contentment.

"You need to do something about that," she'd said, with the newfound wisdom of the nearly dead. "Life is too short to spend whiling away after something you can't have."

He honestly didn't know whether it had been a dig at him, or some introspection on her own life choices. But it had been so nice to have her back, he hadn't really cared.

She was back at work now - - two weeks after coming out of a coma the doctors hadn't been able to explain. She couldn't explain it, what she'd done or how and Chloe had done more research than anyone he knew on mutant phenomenon - - well aside from Lex, and asking Lex's opinion wasn't an option.

She was on her way back to Smallville from the Planet now and had called Clark from the road with no particularly new information to share, but a few ideas of new routes to take. She promised to run ideas past him over dinner, which sounded like a plan.

Clark was tired of his own cooking. He missed his mom's home cooked suppers, the smells of her baking in the afternoon, the aroma of simmering pot roasts and perfectly fried chicken. He missed his mom. She'd come back for Lana's services, but hadn't stayed long enough.

Clark was good at sandwich making. He wasn't half bad at simple breakfasts. He could grill with the best of them, but the majority of his other culinary efforts fell flat; under spiced, overcooked, watery, tough - - if there was a way to make food unappealing Clark could find it.

Chloe had told him to pick a place and they'd meet at the Talon so she could unload her desktop and deposit her work upstairs before they went and contemplating dinner was a heady distraction.

Dawson's Home-style Buffet, two streets over on Apple, offered a plethora of options - - all you could eat, but McLean's Steakhouse had a special running, buy one get the second half price. Red meat was always appealing, even though Chloe was restricting her meat intake these days to fish and chicken. McLean's had chicken on the menu.

He loitered near the stairs inside the Talon, avoiding looking at the spot in front of the counter where he and Lana had shared an early kiss, or the booth in the back where they'd used to sit and talk - or the table where they'd all gather to study during high school- and then there was the table by the window where Lex had always liked to sit, quietly observing the ebb and flow of people, talking to Clark about things that no body had ever considered Clark capable of understanding back when he'd been wide eyed and na_ve.

He took a breath, turning his thoughts away from the past, and watched Janet, the girl who'd taken over management duties after Lana had entered the Luthor world and risen above mundane things like working for a living. And that was a mean thing to think, and he felt marginally guilty for it, but it was true nonetheless. Lana had retreated into that world and it couldn't all have been Lex's manipulation, no matter how nice it might be to consider her withdrawal a fault of his - - Lana had been too quietly stubborn in her own right to just meekly withdraw on the whim of someone else.

The staff of the Talon were on pins and needles now, expecting the ax to fall any day. Expecting word to come down the line through lawyers or realtors that Lex had decided to close the shop down, to sell it as he almost had time and again, save for Lana's intervention.

It had been Janet's statement to the police the day Lana had died, relating Lana's fears of physical retaliation, her claims that Lex had threatened death on her before he'd let her leave him, that had set them on Lex to begin with. And maybe Janet had exaggerated in the throes of hysteria - - maybe even Lana had in her desperation, because as many things as Clark knew Lex was capable of, hurting Lana - - seriously contemplating hurting her - - seemed far down on the list.

"Hey, Smallville," he glanced over his shoulder and saw Lois weaving her way past a group of customers by the door. He groaned a little, because Lois here meant three for dinner. She would worm her way into a situation whether she was invited or not, and dinner conversation would have to be stunted out of necessity because of her presence.

"Hey, Lois. I didn't know you were in town."

"I live in town, dufus." She shouldered her way past him at the base of the stairs.

"Yeah, but you stay in the city a lot." He countered lamely.

She shrugged, swinging around two steps up, her bag just missing his face. "The friend I usually crash with has a new boyfriend. Third wheel." Lois rolled her eyes as if it were a great inconvenience to her, the initiation of other people's romances.

"What was she thinking?" Clark muttered.

"Yeah. Sleeping over first week is taking things a little too quick if you ask me. Sleep shouldn't be involved until at least the eight or ninth date. Until you know the guy isn't going to strangle you in your sleep."

Clark lifted a brow at her in mild amazement. "Jeeze, Lois what sort of guys have you dated?"

She waved a hand, dismissing the dismal state of her past relationships. "Jerks. A lot of jerks. Speaking of which, did you know Lex Luthor got called into the sheriff's office again this afternoon?"

He caught his breath, attention suddenly very much focused on Lois. If Lex had been called in it meant something had come up in the investigation.

"Called in or brought in?"

"Called. I couldn't find out why, even though I practically prostituted myself to that doughy desk sergeant, trying to get a hint. Lex was his usual pleasant self when I tried to get a comment on the way out." She hesitated, frowning, then added. "There was a little trouble in the parking lot when he was leaving."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Bunch of drunken rednecks, waiting for him by his car. Big, dumb, has-been types - older than you and still sporting school colors. Looking for a fight right there in the sheriff's parking lot."

"Did they get one?" The palms of his hands itched a little, prelude to the bad feeling that curled in his gut.

"No. They backed down, but they weren't happy about it and they sort of made beelines to their trucks. I don't know if they were desperate to get to the bar and start bragging about how they backed down a Luthor or - - well, not that I have a problem with the devil getting his due - - but sometimes small town justice in the bible belt can get a little out of hand."

"You think they went after him?"

She shrugged uncomfortably. "Maybe. I told Deputy Doright outside the station about what happened, but he seemed to think they were just good ol' boys blowing off steam. There's not a lot of love between Lex and the sheriff's office right now."

"How long ago?" The bad feeling uncoiled and expanded, because nothing that could turn bad in Smallville ever veered the other way.

"Not long. The time it took me to walk from the station back here. Maybe a half hour? I stopped for a donut on the way back."

"He was heading home?"

"You know, he wasn't in a sharing type of mood, Clark. How am I supposed to know? Is there a club for homicidal billionaires in Smallville? Maybe he was heading there."

He gave her a tight look, annoyed at her flippancy - - at her casual acceptance of probable violence against - - against anyone - - it made no difference that it was Lex. It absolutely did not and hadn't in a long time.

"Listen, I was meeting Chloe to get something to eat. If I'm not back in ten minutes tell her - - just tell her I'll call her."

"Clark - -" Lois called after him, but he couldn't stand there and talk when his body needed to be doing something. To dispel that bad feeling as nothing more than the general pessimism he'd been experiencing all through this last dreadful month.

He got outside the Talon and far enough down the sidewalk so he was out of Lois' line of sight through the front window, then took off.

He knew the route Lex would take heading from town to the mansion. Knew a few side routes if Lex were feeling the need for scenic views. It would take him seconds to trace those roads - - just to make sure. He'd stop by the mansion, scan it just to see if Lex were inside and that would be that. His moral obligation fulfilled.

He saw the wreck on route 17 halfway between town and the mansion and felt a pang of dread. Saw the two trucks on the road, flanking it, shielding what went on between them. He skidded to such an abrupt stop on asphalt that he burned rubber on the soles of his shoes - - heard them, before he saw them, covered in darkness.

The sound of labored breathing, the thud of flesh impacting flesh. Animal grunts of effort, involuntary sounds of pain.

He moved and was just there, catching a fist on its way to smashing down into an unprotected head. There was a curse of surprise and the two holding Lex on his knees let him crumple on pavement, and all Clark saw of him was spatters of dark blood on pale skin as he fell.

And he knew them. All of them had gone to school with him, seniors or juniors his freshman year. The one who's meaty arm he held had been linebacker for the Crows five years running if you counted the year he'd repeated. Jake something or other and Tom and Clancy Briggs, and Chris Tucker who'd been back up quarter back to Whitney before Whitney had left Smallville to find a different fate.

"Kent? Is that you, Kent? Where the fuck did you come from?"

One of the Brigg's brothers demanded, wild eyed and flushed.

"What are you doing? God, what have you done?" Clark loosened his hold on the linebacker's arm with enough force to send the big man staggering back a few feet. Lex was breathing. Labored, harsh inhalations. He wasn't moving. Just lying there, sprawled on black pavement, blood on his face, blood trickling down behind his ear, bloody hand beneath the cuff of his coat.

"None of your goddamned business, Kent," the linebacker snarled.

"Getting a little fucking justice," Tucker said. "You ought to be grateful. She was your girl once, right?"

God. Their hands were smeared with Lex's blood and they thought it was justice.

"What do you care if we pound this cocksucker into the ground?" One of the Briggs brothers, maybe Clancy, pulled back a foot to kick Lex. Clark felt the snarl surface before he realized he'd reacted and slammed the heel of his hand flat against Clancy's chest with enough force to hurl the man backwards into the side of Lex's car.

"You fucking - -" Tom Briggs screamed at him, hurling a fist at Clark in retaliation. Clark caught it, squeezed with enough pressure to send Tom to his knees and stared with absolute cold clarity at the linebacker as he advanced, giving the big guy reason to reevaluate his course of action.

"Get out of here, before you find out what it's like to bleed on the pavement." Clark said softly, the surge of anger like heat in his veins, that he had to actively strive to repress. He would hurt these men otherwise and he didn't want to cross that line.

He stepped over Lex, a foot on either side and dared them to test him. Something inside maybe even wished they would. Give them a taste of what it felt like to go up against overwhelming odds.

Maybe they saw something in his face that was more dangerous than their drunken, misplaced retribution, because they backed off, casting glowers as they retreated, the Briggs brothers helping each other to the one truck, the linebacker and Tucker piling in the other.

He drew a breath. A deep swallow of cold night air that helped soothe the trembling anger - - that helped him think of things other than smashing his fists into malleable human flesh.

He waited until they'd pulled off, tires screeching on asphalt, before he crouched down, putting a hand on Lex's shoulder. The wool of his coat was damp, and Clark pulled his hand back a little in surprise, then noticed the smell.

"God," he muttered, and laid his hands back down, turning Lex onto his back to assess the damage. He tried to be gentle but Lex hissed at the motion, coming alive with a flailing attempt to land a blow. Clark just let it hit him, before catching Lex's wrist and the back of his head and pulling him up against his knees, urine saturated clothing or not.

"Lex. Lex, calm down. It's over. I got you."

Which didn't seem to help with the panic, because Lex jerked against him, heart thudding so fast and frantic that Clark could feel it through bone and flesh and layers of clothing. He was going to hurt him if he held on while Lex was fighting to be free. And at the moment, hurting Lex was not a high priority. So he let go cautiously and Lex pushed himself backwards and sprawled, staring at Clark with wide, bruised eyes. With bruised everything, blood leaking down over one eye and the curve of one cheek from multiple cuts. Bloody nose, lip wet and red from an obvious split on the outside and maybe less obvious ones within. And that was what Clark could see.

"Clark?"

As if Lex doubted. And then Clark realized that he might. So he settled onto his knees on the road and gave Lex a very calm, very reassuring look, the sort you might give an animal you were trying to coax out of a corner.

"How many cars does this make that you've totaled? Are you still in single digits or are you into double now?"

Lex stared for a moment more, that look people got when they'd taken one too many hits to the head. Then he released a little sigh, his elbows gave out and he collapsed back onto the pavement. His head hit with a painful sounding, dull thump. Clark grimaced and scrambled over.

"I think - - I might be sick," Lex murmured.

"I need to get you to the emergency room."

"No." Lex caught at Clark's sleeve. Pale hand, bloody knuckles, voice sharp. "God, no. I'm - - okay."

He latched hold of Clark's shoulder, hauling himself upright, teeth clenched with the effort. Since Lex was determined to try, Clark rose and helped him up - - kept a hand on his elbow because he was wavering.

"Okay, then I should get you home and you can call your own doctor."

"Fuck - - no. Not there. Just - - just get me to my car. I'm going to - - city."

"Have you seen your car?" Clark looked over Lex's head at the dark, crumpled front end of the Mercedes. Lex followed his gaze, staring as if he didn't quite comprehend.

"Fucking town - -" Lex swore softly, before his legs gave out and he crumpled.

Clark caught him on the way down, swearing a little himself. If Lex was set against the hospital and didn't want to go home, it didn't leave a lot of other options. He ought to call Lionel to deal with his son - - and to hell with what Lex thought of that solution. Lionel would probably love it- - one more thing to have over Lex. And Lex wasn't in a position to bargain. Lex was bleeding all over Clark's jacket - - the second time in a month and this time there was the added stench of urine.

"Damnit," Clark ground his teeth, swung Lex up in his arms while he was unconscious enough not to notice the lack of vehicular transportation, and headed home.

If it hadn't of taken him all of five seconds to make the trip, he might have had time to talk himself out of the insanity of bringing Lex into his own house. Lex had been on the property in the last year and half, but he hadn't been in the house. Hadn't stepped over that invisible line of welcome or lack of. You invite a man into your house, a certain degree of trust was implied and he hadn't trusted Lex in a long time. He didn't trust him now.

He got the door open with the hand under Lex's knees. It wasn't locked. It was never locked. People out here didn't need to bar their doors against mundane things like burglaries or home invasion - - the sorts of things that haunted Smallville generally couldn't be stopped by simple precautions like locks anyway.

Clark was halfway up the stairs heading for the bathroom and the medicine kit in the cabinet when Lex came to, tensing in his arms, grabbing the back of Clark's jacket with one hand like he feared Clark was going to drop him. But then, most people didn't trust the sensation of being off their own feet. Most people didn't trust anything out of their own physical control. With Lex that distrust was probably doubled.

"God - - put me down." Lex twisted a little, and superior strength or no it was hard to hold on to somebody that was eeling around in your arms, unless you clutched tight. And there were maybe some fractured ribs to consider that he didn't want to crack further.

"Just - - wait a second." There was no room to maneuver on the stairs and Clark clomped up the rest of the way and dropped Lex's feet to the floor. The rest of Lex's body wanted to follow, so Clark kept an arm under his shoulder, and got no complaints.

Maybe Lex couldn't, breathing hard, fist still tight in Clark's jacket like he was feeling enough pain to knock further argument right out of him.

"Where - -?" Lex gasped.

Clark pressed his lips, almost not wanting to admit it. "My house."

He got Lex into the bathroom while that was being digested. Got him sitting on the toilet lid and went into the medicine cabinet for the first aid kit.

"God - -" Lex complained, wrinkling his nose. In the confined space of the bathroom, the smell was worse.

"Yeah, you smell like a urinal." Clark agreed, wondering why he was dealing with this instead of one of the army of people Lex employed.

Lex gave him a distressed look, like that was more of a trauma for him than the beating and tried to shrug out of his coat. Got desperate about it, like the cold damp was acid instead of pee, and almost toppled himself off the toilet lid. Clark grabbed his shoulder and held him steady, and helped him pull it off. He tossed it in the corner by the wicker hamper. Lex was looking down at his shirt, which was stained with blood and patches of less savory liquid, as were his slacks, and something close to a sob escaped him. A desperate, hysterical sound that Clark had only ever heard from Lex when he was drugged and half out of his mind. It struck a chord of sympathy - - maybe even guilt, and Clark crouched down.

"It's okay. We'll get you cleaned up." He caught Lex's jaw while Lex was struggling, single-mindedly with the buttons of his ruined shirt.

"Look at me, Lex," he said firmly, wanting to assess the damage. Lex flinched, the grip on his jaw probably hurt. There were bruises on the side of his face, bruising around his eyes. Split lip, swollen but clotting already. Cuts that had to have been made from a fist with a ring, on his face. He marked easily to start with and they'd had a real go at him. He was having a hard time focusing on Clark, which meant concussion maybe - - and made Clark regret not taking him straight to the ER.

He understood the reluctance though. He understood Lex's ego and it was considerably more fragile than Lex let on. This humiliation made public would be unendurable.

He helped Lex with the shirt and underneath there was more abuse. The thick wool of his jacket might have buffered some of the impacts, but Lex was still dotted with bruises. The impact points of boot toes to body.

Clark clenched his jaw, anger rising again. The mentality it took to kick a man while he was down escaped him.

"I don't remember getting here," Lex said dazedly, slumped back against the wall next to the toilet.

Clark wet a rag and started cleaning the blood off his face. "You were out."

Which was entirely true. He just didn't need to mention that he hadn't driven Lex here. The truck was outside and there was no way in hell Lex had noticed how he'd arrived on the scene.

The gash above Lex's right eye was long and deep, but it had already started clotting.

"This might need stitches," Clark remarked anyway, thinking that the butterfly band-aids in the kit would do for now.

"It'll heal," Lex murmured, eyes shut. He sounded tired. Very, very tired. "Everything does."

And he was right. The wounds he'd taken in his shoulder barely a month ago - - terrible finger sized punctures in his flesh by something less than human - - were gone. No trace at all on the smooth skin of his shoulder. Wounds like that ought to leave traces. Scarring for maybe years to come. He knew Lex healed fast, but he hadn't guessed this fast and this well.

"Lex?" he asked, because Lex was wounded and not thinking straight, and his defenses were low enough maybe, to answer a prying question. "Did you heal this quickly before the ship took you?"

Lex rolled his head against the wall to look down at Clark. Foggy eyed, drowsy and with as many blows as he'd taken about the head tonight, it probably wasn't a good idea to let him fall asleep for more than a little while for a few hours.

"No," Lex said after a bit, and it was too simple an answer to be a lie. He shut his eyes again, maybe out again, because he didn't protest when Clark ran his fingers lightly across his ribs, following the trail with his x-ray vision, searching out internal damage. A few hairline fractures, but nothing that caused bone to misalign. Deep breathing and exaggerated movements would hurt, but lungs weren't in danger of being punctured.

Lex had disturbingly smooth skin. Clark's fingers lingered, almost of their own accord, fascinated maybe by the texture of flesh completely devoid of hair. He'd never touched - - really touched Lex before. He'd never seen this much of Lex's skin bare. Lex never wore clothes that revealed too much of his flesh, as if he were self-conscious of the utter smoothness - -maybe he was. Maybe you just didn't grow out of some insecurities. Foolish to be embarrassed by it though when it was really kind of - - nice.

Clark pulled his hand back, fingers tingling, embarrassed himself of a sudden. He grabbed for the rag, wrung it out compulsively until the water ran clear instead of pink, and he could focus again on what he had to do. Which was clean Lex up and get him out of the corner of the bathroom and someplace more conducive to a battered body.

Which meant pulling off his shoes and his urine spattered slacks, which he managed easy enough, without rousing Lex from the drowse he'd fallen into. Run the rag down his body, to erase the stench from his skin. Clean the scrapes on his knees where the pavement had damaged skin through the thin material of fine trousers. Peroxide on the worst of the cuts, which didn't disturb Lex until he dabbed at the torn flesh of his knuckles, and then he hissed into wakefulness and tried to jerk the hand away.

Clark held on to his wrist and commented wryly. "I hope you knocked a few teeth loose to compensate for this much damage."

"It's cold," Lex mumbled, not all there. But it probably was. Clark didn't feel it and when he was by himself in the house, he never bothered turning the heat up. One of the penny-pinching traits he'd picked up from his dad.

It didn't help that Lex was mostly naked.

Okay. Take a breath. Lex was as clean as he was going to get without a shower and he wasn't up to that tonight. Clark wasn't sure he was, so he got an arm under his shoulder, got him to his feet. Lex's legs sagged, even though he tried and Clark ended up taking most of the weight. Which was fine. The weight was nothing, it was the skin under his hands that made him uneasy.

Where to put him? The guest room was crammed with junk, and it didn't seem right to put Lex in his mother's bed - - not with the pictures of his father staring critically down from the chest of drawers. So Clark's room it was. With furniture he'd had since grade school, because they'd just never had the money to upgrade over the years. And walls that still held various posters and banners from his high school days that he'd never gotten around to taking down. There always seemed to be things that took priority over redecorating.

He dropped Lex into bed, glad to have his hands off him, and Lex eased back into the pillow with a grimace that hinted at just how much discomfort he was in.

"I'm going to come back up with some aspirin," Clark promised, distracted momentarily by the bruise peeping up from under the waist band of Lex's boxers, just brushing the edge of one sharp hipbone. The belly next to it was flat, hard - - no hint of the usual treasure trail leading lower - -

He took a breath, and pulled the covers up, because Lex sprawled mostly naked in his bed was vaguely alarming.

"Don't bother," Lex slurred. "They don't work for me. Vicodin might be nice?"

"Sorry. None of that lying around." Clark backed away. Listened to the sound of Lex's breathing slowing, the measured thud of his heart. He retreated to the hall and stood there, thinking about banging his head against the wall to pound some semblance of reason back into his skull - - but then he'd only have to fix the plaster tomorrow.

He could go downstairs and still listen out for Lex at the same time. And he'd promised to call Chloe, after bailing on her - - for Lex of all people - - but she'd understand. She might not entirely believe Lex was innocent of killing Lana, but she believed that Clark believed it and was working to help find a clue to the real culprit.

He realized he should have asked Lex about the meeting at the station while he'd had him off balance and teetering on honest. He'd do it later, when he went to rouse him in a half hour or so, just to make sure he hadn't fallen into brain swelling induced coma or worse.

"Hey, Chloe."

"Clark? What happened?" She'd picked up on the first ring.

He told her, basically and she gave him a predictable response. A perfectly reasonable response.

"You really should have taken him to the ER, no matter what he wanted. You recognized the guys?"

"Yeah. The Briggs brothers and Chris Tucker and that Jake guy who was linebacker for the Crows for forever."

"Did you do anything that they're going to question later?" She asked very softly, so he gathered Lois was in the room.

"No. Maybe. They were drunk enough that they probably won't remember the details. I guarantee you, none of them have the bruises Lex does."

"Do you want me to come over?" she asked, after a long pause, as if she doubted he could deal with Lex on his own. Or if she thought they weren't safe to be around each other. Probably they weren't, but he was pretty sure he could take Lex.

"I'm fine. Go eat dinner with Lois. Don't even think about letting her come over here, because he's out and I can't deal with her and him."

He changed his clothes downstairs, and considered throwing Lex's in the washer as he was making yet another dinner sandwich. But then, Lex probably wore dry clean only and a cycle through the washer and dryer would finish the job of ruining them.

He wolfed down the sandwich and a soda, then went back upstairs to check on Lex.

"Hey. Wake up." He nudged Lex's shoulder. Again and Lex murmured something under his breath that didn't quite sound like a word. Not an English word.

Esh-ra. Was what it sounded like, slurred as it was. And Clark's brain made an unexpected connection, an instinctual connection between English and a language that had been learned via implant instead of practical application. Esh-ra meant 'stop' or 'leave' or some variation of those sentiments in Kryptonian.

It could have been simple coincidence, a muttered incoherency that happened to resemble an alien word. He felt an involuntary chill regardless, remembering what Lex had said a week ago, drunk off a fortune's worth of fine scotch. That something was left inside him - - some segment broke off from the whole of a persona that Clark had been so sure he'd banished completely.

He shook Lex's shoulder, hard enough to make Lex gasp, and start awake, nothing but pale disorientation in his eyes. Certainly no hint of a genocidal dictator.

"What did you say?" Clark demanded. "Lex, what did you just say?"

Lex stared up at him in confusion. Irritated confusion. "What?"

Lex kept staring, not getting it. Not getting much past the need to drift back to sleep and Clark balled his fists, alarmed for a whole new reason. He sat down hard in the chair by his desk, running that word over in his mind, wondering if he was mistaken. Wondering what if?

A year's worth of nightmares, Lex had claimed, in a moment of drink induced honesty. A year's worth of - - something maybe a little different in Lex. Something maybe a little more driven and ruthless than had been there before Zod had taken him as his vessel.

Clark just hadn't been close enough this past year to really see first hand. He hadn't wanted to be close and Lex had ceased all efforts at reconciliation - - at coming up with believable lies. Because of Lana, Clark figured - - an insurmountable bone of contention between them, more so even than the research and the labs. But what if there was something else? Some other driving motivation?

Clark looked back at the bed, at the still shape under a quilt his mother had made a decade or more ago and wondered what he'd brought into his house.

Nothing he hadn't been dancing around for the past fourteen months. Certainly nothing that was going to prove a threat he couldn't handle. Probably nothing more than ridiculous speculation on his part. It had been a bad month and he was looking for new fronts to vent his frustration.

Still it would be nice if J'onn carried a cell phone, because Clark had a few questions and with Lex at issue, Lionel was an uncomfortable option for answers.

Part 4

The sheets were coarse and the pillow was lumpy, but there was a certain smell to the pillowcase that was vaguely comforting. Something familiar and warm, that was so much more appealing than the blossoming ache that came with consciousness.

A whole-body ache that came with its own set of multi-hued colors sparking at the corner of vision when Lex opened his eyes and moved. Or tried to move. The effort was aborted at the first contraction of muscle and the first bone deep swig of pain and he groaned and pressed his face back into that inviting pillow.

Jumbled memories played through his head. Fragments of things that might or might not have actually happened. Run off the road. Assaulted. Vivid recollection of the glint of a school ring flashing in front of his face. Snapshots of pain and he flinched, involuntarily as his body recalled more vividly than his brain. He couldn't recall what they'd said, other than they'd blamed him for Lana's death.

That was pretty much a given. He wasn't sure where he was and finding out would require lifting his face out of the pillow and opening his eyes to take a guess.

He shifted his head, carefully, and cracked an eyelid. There was a window with blinds half cracked, letting in dappled sunlight. The curtains were some horrid country print. The posters on the wall looked like they belonged out of the late nineties, or in a school hallway.

They were familiar. The room was familiar. And now that he had visual stimuli, he connected the smell directly to Clark. He still had no idea how he'd gotten here. Wasn't sure if he ought to be alarmed, offended or relieved. He shut his eyes again to consider it - - and drifted.

Came awake again some indefinite period later and chided himself for the lapse. This was not his bed. Not his house. And Clark was not his friend, no matter that his body wanted to sink into the bed that oozed his scent.

He pushed himself up and little stabs of dizzy pain rippled behind his eyes - - muscles complained vehemently, limbs trembling with the effort. It was a familiar feeling - - a month ago he'd felt much the same. And often enough before that, the way his luck tended to run, that he ought to be used to it. But there was a subtle difference in the distribution of pain. There didn't seem to be a great deal of him that they'd left unattended in the road last night. Everything hurt. He had a sudden memory of Clark there. Of Clark kneeling on the road next to him, calmly asking about - - something - - Lex didn't remember the question, just the soothing tone of his voice.

Clark in the road. Clark in the field. Clark in a dozen other places, unexpected savior - - Lex felt a shiver of indignation. Or maybe it was just cold. The room was chill on his bare skin.

He realized he'd been undressed and felt another very distinct curl of annoyance, His clothes were nowhere in sight. There was a robe on a hook on the closet door, grey and mercilessly without country print.

Getting out of bed took effort. His muscles wanted to cramp. His head wanted to explode. His bladder felt like it was on the verge of rupturing. The bladder won out over other physical discomfort.

He felt like an old man, limping across the floor, easing into the robe, which was thankfully thick and warm, if overlarge. Clark's robe would be. But it was comfortable and it had that smell - - and Lex's brain seemed intent on focusing on scent.

The bathroom was one door down on the other side of the hall. He heard no sounds from the rest of the house when he ventured outside of Clark's room.

The porcelain tiles of the bathroom floor were cold on his feet. The wallpaper was just as hideous as he remembered from the last time he'd been in here. The dcor was the same.

He raised the lid of the commode and closed his eyes at the sting. If the residual hurt were any indication, he'd be peeing pink for a while.

As he was finishing, flushing away the odor of blood-tainted urine, he remembered what had happened to his clothes.

He growled, low in his throat, fist pressed against the wall behind the commode and thought he'd find the bastards and kill them. He even contemplated whom he'd get to do it.

But first he needed to get his bearings, to find some clothes and get out of here. He paused on the way by the mirror, winced and passed on. He didn't need to see the details. He felt them.

First thing - - even if Lex didn't feel up to a confrontation - - and what encounter between them wasn't lately? - - was find Clark.

The stairs were a challenge that his legs just didn't seem up to handling. His left knee in particular kept sending little shooting pains up his leg and if his equilibrium had been up to the task he'd have looked down for signs of massive bruising. As it was, a dozen steps overwhelmed him. His head was spinning by the time he'd reached the bottom, and his body shaking, and it was either sit down on the bottom few or fall. So he chose the less embarrassing former option.

Which turned out to be mortifying after all, because that was where Clark found him when he returned to the house, stomping in through the kitchen with the noise three people might have made, and spotting Lex before Lex could pull himself up. Not that he'd be particularly dignified standing, considering his attire, but it would have been a marginally better way to confront Clark.

"You're awake."

Clark was full of brilliant observation. Clark was flannel clad and bright eyed, a few errant strands of straw in his dark hair, as if he'd been baling hay or mucking out stalls or some other farm oriented morning chore. Which was probably right on the money, all things considered.

"I didn't hear you. I was out - -" Clark started, then shut his mouth, as if he'd decided he really had no obligation at all to explain what he'd been about.

"I wasn't wearing a bell," Lex said dryly. "I wouldn't have expected you to. What am I doing here?"

He saw the moment Clark's eyes got belligerent. The morning sparkle replaced by resentment and Lex felt a nudge of satisfaction at that.

"I could have left you on the road," Clark said sourly and when Lex kept waiting, he elaborated. "You were dead set against the hospital and didn't want to go home."

"So you brought me to your house?"

Clark narrowed his eyes, clearly not pleased. "I've made better decisions."

Lex ran his tongue along the faintly swollen edge of a split lip. Picking a fight with Clark seemed inherently counter productive. There was nothing to fight over at the moment, worthy of taxing his throbbing head.

"How did you know?" he finally asked.

Clark's eyes flickered away a moment with that look Clark got when he was considering a lie. Lex knew it so well it was almost comforting.

"Lois told me." Clark shrugged. "Said she saw them take off after you, and I was heading that way - -" he shrugged again, as if to drive home the pure happenstance. "We need to call the sheriff. Somebody's probably already reported your car."

"No," Lex said and Clark blinked at him.

"What do you mean, 'no'? They can't get away with what they did to you."

"Sure they can. If I can't identify them, which is a distinct possibility and if they have alibis from their buddies at the bar or the turkey shoot or pool hall or where ever they hang out, you think the sheriff will take my word over theirs? If you haven't noticed, I'm this month's town pariah. My pull isn't exactly what it used to be."

"I know exactly who they are and I'll pick them all out of a line up, and give a statement and testify if it comes to it." Clark declared with absolute certainty.

There was something fierce in his eyes, something offended that was in no way directed at Lex. It was almost - - touching. If Lex didn't know better, he'd almost think Clark was angry about them hurting him - - instead of just angry over the general principle of the thing.

Lex shook his head slowly, pulling himself up by the banister rail. "I appreciate the offer, but no sheriff. I don't need one more complication right now." He didn't need the incident spread over the papers - - and it would travel from the Smallville Ledger to the City papers at light speed. All the humiliating details. God help him if Clark had told Lois Lane.

He felt a little surge of panic - - a fine indication of his state of mind - - and took a few long breaths to push it back.

"Clark, I would - - appreciate it, very much, if you would keep this incident to yourself." And there he was, reduced to pleading and it sat terribly wrong, but the words slid from his mouth silk-smooth regardless. Lex could do all manner of unpleasant things with a smile on his face, if needed.

Clark stared at him, eye level for a change with Lex on the bottom step of the stair. Not happy at all, Clark's sense of justice being what it was.

"If you'd care to share the names, I'll see it taken care of privately," Lex offered, to appease injured sensibilities and Clark snorted. An actual half laugh, and Lex hadn't heard Clark laugh in years it seemed, even if it was a disbelieving one.

"I know how you take care of problems, Lex. It's either the law or nothing."

Lex shrugged. He could find out on his own - - if he could remember the faces. "Okay, nothing then."

"Fine," Clark snapped.

"Fine," Lex smiled tightly.

Clark stood there, breathing hard, probably no more comfortable than Lex, probably wanting to invite him out of his house, but hampered by the fact that Lex was standing there in his robe and without a ride to take him on his way.

"Clothes would be nice," Lex commented.

Clark looked down at the robe. He winced a little, a faintly embarrassed look crossing his face. "Ah, your clothes are pretty messed up - - I've got them in a plastic bag - -"

"Burn them," Lex suggested. He didn't want to think about what was on those clothes.

"I've got some old stuff, you can use."

He nodded. The idea of climbing back upstairs after he'd just completed the task of coming down seemed more than the prospect of clothes was worth just this moment.

"Would you bring them down?"

Clark shrugged and squeezed past him to climb the stairs. Lex moved down the hall and debated, kitchen or living room. The living room had a couch. He went for the couch. His phone had been in the car. He was almost certain he hadn't stuck it in his pocket before he'd gotten out. Which meant until he got home, he was limited to the numbers he knew by memory.

He should get someone on the car right away, if the sheriff's department hadn't already towed it in. They'd make something out of it just to give him grief. He didn't want to have to explain how it had gotten there, but figured he could claim a cow had wandered into the road that he'd swerved to avoid. It was doubtful anyone else, other than Clark, would come forward with the real story.

He heard the muffled sounds of Clark rooting around upstairs and wondered where he was having to burrow for this 'old stuff? It seemed to be taking a while. He leaned back, settling into the corner of a well-used couch. The cushions had permanent dents where bodies had nestled over the years. He shut his eyes, finding a position that was halfway comfortable against a patchwork pillow, drawn into relaxation despite himself.

He could rest here, he mused. Without his cell, without his computer, without access to his staff - - he could rest. Just a little while, so he could catch his breath before he forged back out into the fray. He was tired. He hurt. There was so much to do.

Clark couldn't be trusted. Clark was the only one he could trust. Contradictions swam in his head.

"Lex?"

Lex snapped open his eyes, head reeling. Clark was standing in front of him and he hadn't heard him come downstairs - - a miracle in itself, for all the noise Clark made simply existing. Clark had a pair of jeans in his hands and a long sleeve sweatshirt.

"I found something that might sorta fit," Clark explained. "My mom had some of my old stuff from middle school packed away."

Charming. He was getting hand me downs from Clark's middle school years. But then, Clark had been taller than him at fifteen, and broader, so Lex could only assume he'd either had an astronomical growth spurt or he'd towered over his middle school classmates.

Clark shook out the jeans, soft faded blue and still long enough in the leg to make him doubt the prospect of a decent fit. Embarrassing. Simply embarrassing.

If the sweatshirt had Smallville middle lettered on it he was going to have Clark killed. Fortunately for both of them it was plain navy.

"Um, are you hungry?" Clark asked, as if he were nervous of a sudden.

The thought of food made Lex vaguely nauseous. He could handle caffeine though. He could live off of caffeine. He thought he smelled some drifting in from the kitchen. "Coffee would be nice."

Clark nodded and went to fetch some and Lex grimaced at the prospect of bending his body in the required ways to get on the pants. He managed, with only a few stabbing pains and muscle complaints. The jeans were a comfortable fit around the hips, but still an inch too long.

It was almost funny. Almost.

Clark came in with the coffee while Lex was standing there, shirt in hand, considering the possibility of growth hormones in the Kent farm water supply, or meteor enhanced growth spurts. Which would be mild additions indeed, to his file of Clark oddities.

Clark stopped in the doorway, as if he were surprised that Lex was still in the process of dressing. His eyes flickered down to Lex's chest, an impulsive, awkward sort of glance that he hastily drew back up to some point beyond Lex's head.

He thrust the coffee out, some of it sloshing on his hand. "Here. I can take you home, if you want."

Lex was still processing the look. There was an odd little blush across the top of Clark's cheeks.

"No," Lex said, easing into the shirt. "If I can use your phone, I'll call someone."

He took the cup, the ceramic warm in his hands. It was black and fresh and could have been store brand crap and it would have tasted good at that moment, hitting the back of his throat.

Clark loitered in the kitchen while Lex sat back down and made the call, then came back in when he'd hung up and stood there, thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans.

"Listen - - I'm sorry about what happened to you, Lex. It wasn't right and you didn't deserve it - - "

"It wasn't your fault." Lex cut him off before he could veer into the realm of pity.

Lex didn't take pity well, even beat to within an inch of his life. Even when he felt it so plainly now in muscle and bone that he wanted to curl up and sleep for another few days - - until it all went away and he could wake up renewed and pain free.

But what he would do, was go home and take a long, hot shower to ease the stiffness and afterwards he'd see to a few things that could be seen to from the Smallville end.

He'd never gotten to M&C labs, and there were staff there - - a few people in the know, that he had paid and paid well to keep their mouths shut when the government had started in on the project - - that needed reassuring. Personal reassuring to make sure those files stayed secure.

He would have someone drive him into the city, and he could rest in the comfort of luxury leather seats during the drive. He'd allow himself that.

"Why did the sheriff call you in?" Clark asked and Lex kept the coffee mug neutrally at his lips while he mulled over possible answers to that question. Of course, Lois had told him. Ridiculous to think Clark wouldn't find his way into the loop someway or another. He always had managed to be privy to information that had no business knowing.

"No breaks in the investigation," Lex said casually, after a long swallow of coffee. There were little tremors in the black surface of the liquid in the mug and he tightened his hands, resting it on his knee. It wasn't nerves - - but the overall weakness of a battered body, but a tell was a tell, anyway you looked at it and Lex didn't like giving things away.

"What did they want?" Clark folded his arms, big forearms under the rolled up sleeves of his blue plaid, corded with muscle. His hands were large, long fingers, big knuckles - - to be expected of a young man who managed a working farm with no outside help. It was hard to fathom how he did it, the crops and the cattle and the general upkeep, and still managed to be exactly where he wasn't wanted with annoying consistency. Sheer stubbornness, perhaps, if Lex wanted to look at it from a purely mundane point of view. The same stubbornness that would keep Clark hammering at him until he got an answer he believed - - and at the moment, Lex was marooned in his house and too tired to fence words over an inconsequential matter - - even though part of him wanted to seek out conflict with Clark.

"It was nothing. Just photos. Security footage of her in a restaurant a few days before she died. They wanted me to identify the man she was with?"

"Did you?"

"No. They thought she was having an affair." He threw in, out of malice, just to see Clark flinch from the notion. And Clark did, a sharp glance of the eyes, a frown as the gears in his head turned.

"She wouldn't," Clark said, as if he were the expert on Lex's wife. Which, come to think of it, he probably was.

"Really? The way I understand it, she was ready to cheat the day we took vows - - or am I mistaken?" He met Clark's stare, and Clark gazed back, hard and serious.

Clark shook his head, mouth tight and Lex wasn't entirely sure if silence meant that maybe there had been something behind his back other than unrequited love, or if Clark was simply disgusted by the implication. He rather thought it was the latter, because Clark wore his guilt like an outer layer of skin - - plain for all to see and it just wasn't there.

"You know, at this point, I really wouldn't care." He felt the need to be casual about it. To relegate any assumption of damage done as insignifigant - - fleeting. He'd been called callous and cruel enough times that there was no reason to challenge the viewpoint. It was easier filling that role, than the one Clark liked to project.

But, Clark just stared at him, like he was trying to dissect him and it was unnerving. Clark's eyes were too green, and too familiar, and had seen too much of the inside of him before he'd learned the folly of sharing secrets and weaknesses that would never be given back in return.

There was the sound of a car pulling up outside and Clark looked that way, flexing his fingers, shifting, as if he'd grown tense in his own body.

Lex sat the mug down on the end table and pushed himself up with a grimace of pain that he couldn't quite conceal. He stood there for a moment, delivering orders to his body to quiet down and stop complaining in front of people he didn't wish to seem weak to. He looked up, after a breath and met Clark's eyes with a faint challenge. Clark didn't rise to meet it. Just stepped aside and let Lex walk stiffly past.

But he followed him out onto the porch, looking down into the yard where the driver was getting out of a silver Audi sedan, standing by the car door, waiting for him.

It was cold outside. Frigid weather that made him miss a coat, that made bruises ache all the more. His breath frosted a little in the air. Clark didn't seem to mind. Clark had been out in it without a jacket all morning.

"Thank you," he said, because it was only polite to do so when life had been on the line and he hadn't before.

He glanced over his shoulder and Clark nodded, but Clark still had that look on his face, things going on behind his eyes that Lex just couldn't concern himself with now.

At the moment it was all he could manage to walk down the front porch steps and across the yard to the car. But he did it with aplomb, well-versed in the art of hiding weakness.

Part Five

Clark had worried all night and all morning while he'd been tending to the farm. While Lex had slept in his bed, dreaming God knew what sorts of things that might possibly have a grain of Kryptonian origin. Bad things, Clark thought, because the sleep hadn't been easy at first. No more alarming, half familiar alien words, but, murmuring and restless movement, until well past midnight, when Lex had just settled.

Clark hadn't slept himself more than a brief half hour or so of dozing downstairs in the reclining chair in the front of a TV with the sound turned down. He'd woken up Lex a few times in the night, just to be safe, but somewhere around five, he'd decided Lex was okay - - brain swelling wise and just let him sleep the rest of the morning through while he went out saw to the morning's work.

He might have been done in half the time - - a fraction of half the time if two of the heifers hadn't gotten adventuresome and tried to cross a section of barbed wire separating pasture from a copse of wood beyond, tangling themselves in the wire.

So he'd ended up tending yet more bloodied creatures in the crisp light of early morning and hoped this wasn't the sign of an oncoming trend.

Lex had been testy and hostile, when he'd gotten up. It might have been just the way things had regressed between them, that they couldn't be in a room without tensions mounting, but more likely it had been pain induced, because morning after stiffness was a bitch - - so Clark heard, and Lex had taken a bad beating.

A lot of the bruises had already begun fading by the time Lex left though, and the cuts scabbed over. Clark couldn't remember if damages had healed quite so rapidly years ago, when he had been hanging around Lex on a frequent enough basis to notice such things.

But no. Fast - - but not this fast and Clark started thinking about that Kryptonian word and the things the ship might have had to do to a human body - - the alterations of basic genetic code to make it capable of dealing with powers it was never meant to possess.

The powers had vanished with Zod, but the basic alterations might still be there, lingering in the complex chain of human DNA. Something Kryptonian inside Lex - - some fleeting element that might be enough for a fragment of something else Kryptonian to latch onto.

He cursed, an hour past noon, blissfully alone again on the farm and still obsessing about Lex - - when Lex wasn't his business anymore. The bare fields of the east 40 were ready to be sown with winter wheat. He'd already planted a small stretch of kale in the field closest to the house, which was breaking through the earth, thriving in the early cold.

The work was mindless, but still, he couldn't concentrate. If he had facts - - even educated supposition to counter doubt, he'd be able to breath easier. Because if there was a trace of something that didn't belong in Lex - - it was his business. His shoddy work at ousting the invader to start with.

He showered off the dirt that went hand in hand with farm work, put on clean clothes and headed out.

It took less time to reach the city than it did to take the elevator ride to Chloe's floor in the Daily Planet and he only took the time to ride up, instead of whipping up the stairs, because he needed to figure out exactly what he wanted to say. Not that Chloe could give him answers, but she could corroborate his theories - - or shoot them down as crazy-talk. Either way, he needed to talk with her.

She was eating lunch at her desk when he came in, a deli sandwich and a bottle of water, while she tapped at her keyboard one handed. She looked up when she saw him, and smiled around a mouthful of turkey on rye.

"Hey. You have a few minutes?" He stood over her desk while she was swallowing. She was Googling something about paper manufacturing that he figured was for an article. He didn't inquire, very much distracted by other concerns.

"Sure. Just taking a late lunch. I take it since you're here and not scowling too much, that everything went okay? Did the sheriff come out?"

"No." Clark felt the afore mentioned scowl forming of its own accord, and Chloe lifted a brow at him. "He wouldn't let me call him."

He didn't go into why. She didn't need to know and it was the least he could do, keeping quiet about certain things that would hurt nothing but Lex's ego, when Lex had asked him almost nicely.

"God," she said. "He's not going to take care of it himself? Should we arrange protection for those guys?"

He opened his mouth. Shut it. Because she looked dead serious and it was yet one more thing that was hard to wrap his mind around sometimes - - that Lex was capable of arranging casual murder.

"I don't think he remembers them - - listen Chloe, about Lex." He pulled up a chair and sat down close to her, so he could speak quietly. "Do you think he's different than he was before Zod?"

He whispered the name very softly, not even really liking it on his own lips. Chloe blinked at him, eyes scrutinizing his face, wheels turning inside her head as she tried to get beneath the question.

"How?" she asked slowly, with the wary look of someone who thought they might not like the answer.

"I dunno. I mean - - just different. Colder. Crazy obsessed in a way that he wasn't before." He didn't know how to explain it. He wasn't sure if there was anything to explain other than him grasping at things that just weren't there.

"Okay," she said, running her fingers across the edge of her desk thoughtfully. "I'll play along and say - - maybe. But Dark Thursday changed a lot of things for a lot of people. And as much as I'm not a Lex supporter, I've got to admit that it must have been pretty traumatic for him - - seeing the aftermath and knowing he was inadvertently responsible. That can change a man. Some for the better, some for the worse. And maybe before then there were lines he wouldn't have crossed - - at least not without some really long, hard thought - - lines that just don't seem to exist for him now. But people change, Clark - - I mean three years ago I put my life on the line because I believed in what he was doing, and this year he uses my mom as a guinea pig and has me kidnapped and tagged - - so yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say there was a change. Now I'd like to hear why you're interested in the psychology of Lex all of a sudden?"

He'd freaked her out. He could see it in her eyes. He was sorry for that. Sorrier still that he just didn't feel comfortable revealing the why's and where fore's - - not unless he knew for sure.

"Just - - just a couple of things that struck me odd. Don't worry about it. I'll get out of your hair."

"Clark," she stood when he did, frowning. "You don't just bring up the L and the Z words and then say never mind and take off."

But he was already gone. Out to the street the fast way, blending in with the afternoon foot traffic smooth enough that pedestrians intent on their own business never noticed his sudden appearance. They noticed more when he just stopped on the sidewalk to stare up at the Planet's towering, glass-plated neighbor.

He really hadn't wanted to talk with Lionel about this - - talking to Lionel period still made him tense, knowing how he'd pressured Lana. Knowing how he'd manipulated them all - - for the overall good, he'd claimed. To keep an eye on Lex and his obsessions - - to help Clark. As if Clark needed that kind of help - -

But Lionel knew things - - or could access things - - or had things come to him that were vital - - via a connection with Jor-el that Clark didn't pretend to fully understand. And Lionel had been aware of J'onn and J'onn of Lionel before Clark had been aware that either one of them were working under the impetus of his long dead father. An uneasy thought, really, that someone that long dead could still effect the flow of events - - could still impose will upon the living.

So he went to see Lionel Luthor - - up in his tower of glass and steel. He was let up without hindrance, his name apparently on the list of immediate admittance, because the secretary nodded at him when he spoke it and waved him past security. He had to wait in the lobby outside Lionel's office for a while though, until a bevy of men in suits, lawyers or stockholders or investors, trickled out of the office. When he was finally ushered in, Lionel rose from behind his desk and smiled his benevolent conqueror's smile in welcome.

"Clark, my boy. It's good to see you. What brings you to see me? Your mother is well, I hope."

"Fine." He hadn't talked to her in two days. She was busy in Washington, wrapped up in things that, a few years ago, Clark never in a million years would have thought to find her distracted by. But he didn't want to exchange pleasantries with Lionel.

"Do you know how to get in touch with J'onn?" he asked.

Lionel lifted a brow, a faint, curious cant of his head as he sat back down, steepling his hands before him on the immaculate desk. There was a neat stack of paperwork to his right. A pen perfectly aligned - - everything in its place and ordered and under his control. The way Lionel liked life. Little wonder Lex had picked up the habits.

"Honestly, no," Lionel admitted, thoughtfully, as if he'd never considered the need before. "He's somewhere out there, observing - - But I would imagine it would take quite the threat for him to make himself known. Is there a problem?"

He watched Clark with placid interest. Unruffled. It took a hand at his throat - - a serious hand - - or a threat to something he loved, to shake Lionel Luthor's calm.

Clark remembered when he'd come to him, after the Last Phantom had taken Lex - - desperate and angry and ready to level threats he might or might not have been able to carry out, when Clark had hesitated - - wrapped up in his own guilt and grief and horror.

So Lionel wouldn't balk at destroying Lex, financially and emotionally, but he'd move heaven and earth to protect his life. Which disposition sounded very much like Jor-el's attitude towards Clark.

"When a host is possessed by a phantom," He took the plunge in the shallow end, deciding to skirt around issue. "And when I extract it using the crystal - - is it possible that something could get left behind?"

"Left behind?" Both Lionel's brows went up. "That's an unnerving concept. Why would you think so?"

"Let's say, theoretically, that after the phantom was gone, the host started having nightmares - - maybe started acting a little off, or claimed that they felt something inside that didn't belong. Or spoke a word in a language that there's no way they could know otherwise in their sleep?"

"That's a fair deal of theory, Clark. It sounds more like you're listing fact."

"I just want to know if it's possible."

Lionel pursed his lips, considering. "I don't know. The library of your father's knowledge isn't just there for my taking, it comes to me when needed. But from what I already know, it would have to be a particularly strong entity to resist the power of the crystal. And even then, once the incorporeal body had begun to be extracted - - I would imagine leaving a part behind would be like you or me exiting a building and leaving behind a finger. It wouldn't be pleasant."

"So not likely?"

"I didn't say that. I simply said it wouldn't be a sacrifice anyone without a great deal of resolve would be willing to make."

Clark shut his eyes, a sick little knot forming in his gut. Resolve was not something he imagined Zod had been lacking in. "So, what effect do you think - - just a piece - - might have?"

Lionel stared at him, face passive, eyes unreadable, but Lionel, like Lex, was never still behind those eyes. Always thinking, always evaluating possibilities. "Has a former host been exhibiting signs? The young man from California - - if I recall - - is the only surviving phantom host."

"Maybe," Clark said, instinctually, and mentally kicked himself the moment the word left his mouth, because now he had to come up with a story to back up the fabrication.

"Oh my, but he's not, is he?" Lionel's eyes lit up with sudden understanding he didn't even try and hide. "And here you are being purposefully vague. We're not talking phantom possession at all, are we, Clark? We're talking something considerably more treacherous. Has Lex been having nightmares?"

Lionel laughed, relaxing back into his chair. "The concern is surprising, all things considered, but I assure you that any subconscious horrors plaguing my son at night, are of his own design. Whatever made you suspect otherwise?" Clark shook his head, balking at talking to Lionel about Lex. Even now, with all that was between them, giving Lionel insights into Lex's psyche that he didn't already have, seemed immoral. Relating his worries - - the things Lex had admitted in a moment of drunken weakness seemed like betrayal. Felt like turning Lex's deepest fears over to the enemy - - even if Lionel wasn't Clark's enemy - - even if Lex was.

Wasn't he? Odd that with Lana gone, Clark didn't seem quite so sure of it anymore.

"If you can think of a way to contact J'onn, I want to talk to him."

Chapter Six

The trip to M&C had been predictable. The scientists, as scientists tended to be, were skittish at being secreted away in an obscure lab, nervous over the demise of their superiors and the rash of government involvement in the deconstruction the project they had all had a hand in.

Lex was good at dealing with skittish resources. He was quite adept at mixing reassurance with intimidation. And how subtly gratifying it was to have someone just threatened into compliance look at you with gratitude in their eyes. A Luthor game and he liked winning.

He'd looked over the remaining research, the speculation on lost data and lost resources, the high percentage that the project could never be fully actuated without access to alien peptides - - the analysis on what it would take to get the project back up and running. Somewhere else, of course, far below government radar.

He was already funneling funds from other off the books projects - - from private accounts that he'd hoped not to have to breach, but had begun the process of anyway - - in preparation.

He just needed to find the perfect location, and start looking for another source of test subjects, since pulling from the military would be problematic now. The peptides - - well, where there was one, there would others. He felt it with the same surety he felt towards the creation of his army.

No one at the lab had dared ask about the cuts and the bruising, but his Metropolis secretary had inquired when he'd gone in the afternoon after he'd left Clark's care - - the first person to do more than look and pretend there was nothing amiss in fear of offending him, and he'd given her the prepared answer. Car. Cow. Ditch.

It was what he told the sheriff when he called to arrange for his people to tow the car out of impound. And since the cow in question was not available for statement, the matter was really between Lex and his insurance company and not a law enforcement issue.

The sheriff hadn't liked it. The sheriff would have rather Lex had veered off the road attempting to run down school children. There had been inquiry as to whether there had been alcohol involved and Lex had fought against the urge to retort, that he'd been stone sober, but the sheriff might want to check the inebriation level of the local chapter of has-been high school jocks.

He'd stayed in the city that night, too weary to make the trip back, not feeling any particular need to return to the chill of the castle with its frost rimmed windows and lingering echoes. The penthouse was sterile and quiet and there were no particularly bad memories or worrisome staff to intrude upon a body that just wanted to drink away the stiffness and the sour pang of indignation.

The bed was large and comfortable, smooth sheets, heavenly pillows - - it reminded him of any number of the guest bedrooms in the mansion that he had moved about in the last month - - one to the next, trying to find a comfort zone - - trying to find a space conducive to easy sleep. Failing.

Funny that the best sleep he'd gotten in - - quite a long while - - had been on Clark's sagging mattress, under Clark's cheap sheets, with the smell of Clark on the pillows. And he'd frowned at that admission, staring up at a night dark ceiling with the city outside his window.

The next morning, he almost didn't look like he'd taken a beating at all. The accident story was much more believable. All but the worst of the bruising had faded. The cuts on his face, save for the worst one over his eye were well on their way to gone. The ribs, Lex was still very much aware of, and the general fading ache of an abused body, but the latter could be soothed away by the simple luxury of a hot shower and the former could be endured.

He went to his office in LexCorp towers and attended to business. Moral was low with the company in danger. There had been rumors of layoffs - - premature at best, and he had word of no small number of resumes being quietly distributed around town. He considered finding out the names attached to those rumored resumes and starting the firings now.

He avoided most of the incoming calls - - refused most of the people that wished to see him - - working at his desk at his own speed was one thing, dealing with nervous stockholders and anxious executives was another.

A call came in from the lawyer in charge of Lana's murder investigation, which he did take, sitting back and listening while the man reported that a name had been placed to the face of Lana's mysterious lunch engagement.

"Robert Hyde," the lawyer told him. "Formally of Rampart, Hyde and Vale out of New York, before he was obtained for legal council by Vitarkas Global Transport, which is a subsidiary of - -"

"Daniakos Global." Lex finished for him, making the connection between a grainy face in a photograph and one of a collection of lawyers that had sat across the table from him six months ago when he'd been engaging in little hostile takeover from the Twins.

Son of a bitch. He snapped the phone shut with a snarl. Nikolas and Sophia Daniakos, who'd inherited the third largest shipping company in Greece from a father who's name could be mentioned in the company of the likes Onassis and Tsakos - - and had promptly plunged it into debt.

It had been an opportunity too good to pass up at the time, sweeping up Daniakos stock on the open market when it tanked. Almost as satisfying a financial move as a personal one.

He had a history with the Daniakos Twins. Drugs and sex and certain photographs that had gotten him into a great deal of trouble with his father when he'd been eighteen and considerably less clever than he'd thought he was.

Sophia Daniakos had been twenty-three and the most stunning woman to walk into a nightclub and Lex had been in love. Or lust. It amounted to the same thing when you were eighteen and spent your time jet setting between New York and Metropolis to hit all the hottest nightspots and be seen with all the best people. And the Twins had been at the top of the heap back then - - practically Greek royalty that everybody who was anybody wanted to get near. They were the sort that opened and closed clubs just by being there. The best drugs - - the best parties - - the best sex, so the rumors went. Because very few people got into Sophia's bedroom that her brother didn't want there. And Nikolas Daniakos had particular tastes. Young. Hot. Wealthy. Nikolas didn't like to fuck too far down the food chain. And if you did get into Sophia's bed - - it was damned certain that you would be fucking her brother as well. Or getting fucked - - but by that time, you'd be so far gone on Ecstasy or ketamines or any of the other plethora of drugs that the Twins seemed always to have at hand, that it wouldn't really matter.

Until you sobered up and realized Nikolas had fetishes, and if you were maybe a little hazy on the details - - well, the Twins liked to take pictures.

Lex had thought he'd been so smooth, back then, so savvy in the ways of the world until he got hit with the Twin's brand of worldly experience. A decade of private schools didn't prepare for sex scandals and blackmail and the heady shame of having it all brought to Lionel Luthor's attention. Of having his father make it all go away.

So when the chance had come up, almost a decade later, to strip Nikolas Daniakos of the shipping line that was the foundation of the name his father had built - - Lex had jumped at the chance. Had sat across the table while the company changed hands, and smiled emotionlessly while Nikolas glowered.

'Perhaps a picture, to commemorate the occasion?' Lex had asked, when they were leaving the table, and the lawyers hadn't had a clue, but Nikolas had narrowed his eyes, and glared, knowing exactly the inference - - knowing exactly the reason LuthorCorp had sought out Daniakos shipping like shark sensing blooded prey, and consumed it.

Bad feelings? Of course. In spades. But had they sought Lana out or had she sought them? And why? She'd known about the takeover - - but not the details of his past acquaintance. Had she been looking for outside help - - wealthy help with a score to settle? Or had they been looking for inside information on him? Or had they been seeking something else? The rise to fortune and power by the Daniakos was probably littered with bodies - - killing a man's wife, in retaliation for a business coup was not a far stretch. Involving her in it and then double-crossing her fit with the sort of games the Twin's liked to play.

Still it was a leap, and getting either of them in a room where he could ask a few pointed questions and see their eyes would make a difference. Sophia Daniakos could lie as well as any woman, but Nikolas was the sort of man that couldn't help but brag of his exploits - - a psychological imperative that made him a poor negotiator and worse liar.

He set his assistant the task of tracking down the Daniakos and arranging a meeting, then let his people on the investigation know there was a new direction to explore.

Clark flittered across his mind. He'd made a promise to apprise Clark of new developments. He hadn't actually meant to keep it, and certainly it was no more than speculation at this point, but it would be an excuse to pick up the phone and call. He frowned and refused the urge. But he couldn't help thinking of Clark standing in the living room, proffered coffee in his hand, staring at him, nonplussed.

He chased that memory away, feeling a little unsettled himself, a clear enough indication that he'd been sitting here too long today, that he was tired and sore and needed to move to work out the stiffness.

He hadn't decided whether he'd stay in the city tonight, or go back to the mansion. A long drive for a few hours sleep, when he might have to come back to the city tomorrow anyway.

"Lex."

He looked up and saw his father striding purposefully down the corridor. Lex was close enough to the elevator that if the doors opened immediately, he might slip in before Lionel reached him, and avoid having to talk. It felt cowardly, the notion of easy escape, so he waited before the bronze elevator doors until his father had covered the distance, and then pressed the call button.

"Son, I heard you had a mishap on the road Monday night. You really do have terrible luck with cars."

The doors slid open immediately, and he regretted not taking advantage of the escape route after all. He stepped in now, schooling his face into neutrality, and his father and his father's security guard followed.

"You have sharp ears, dad. It was a fender bender that didn't even get a write up. I'm surprised it got back to you." Lex stared pointedly at his warped reflection in the polished brass. He could see Lionel's wavery shape next to him in the metal, thankfully lacking the detail of expression. The security guard stood behind the both of them, just a dark shape in the brass.

"I heard something about a cow." Lionel remarked.

Lex exhaled a long breath, refusing to expound on ridiculous fabricated details. The security guard stepped forward, close enough to his back that complaint hovered at the tip of Lex's tongue - - and dried up as the reflections in the brass began to twist and swim, darkening around the edges.

A hand touched his shoulder and he felt himself falling. A long, long freefall with no bottom in sight. The descent was slow, like the pull of anesthesia that drowned out the sense of time and place, but still left some semblance of awareness. Something slithered inside him, some animal sense of alarm that wanted nothing more than to reach the bottom of the fall and retreat into darkness - -

- - And Lex sputtered back to awareness, swiping at the hand that was trying to dab at his face with a cold, wet handkerchief. He was back in his office, on his couch, his father crouched next to him with the cloth in hand, his secretary hovering behind nervously, and his father's security guard beyond her - - only it wasn't the same man from the elevator. He'd seen this one before, but the other had been an unfamiliar face - - tall, lean black man with tinted shades. He couldn't remember the features, because he hadn't paid enough attention to take them in.

"What happened?" He decided that he detested the feeling of disorientation that came with opening his eyes someplace entirely different than he'd closed them.

"Lex, you fainted. My god, did you have yourself checked out after your 'fender bender'? Head injury is not to be taken lightly."

Lionel's fingers hovered near the scabbed cut over his brow and Lex knocked his hand away - - unexpected panic crowding in from the back of his mind at being touched - - by Lionel, by whoever had gotten him here from the elevator to his office.

"I've called for a physician," Lionel rose, looking down, nothing but concern on his face. Benevolent, fatherly concern.

Lex almost choked. "Don't bother."

"It's been a stressful month, son. LexCorp issues aside, you've experienced physical trauma and the body needs time to recover. Why don't you stay in the city for a few days, take break and rest in the penthouse where I'll be close by if you need me."

God. Lex pushed himself up, straightened his coat while he searched for some sign of the lightheadedness that had assaulted him in the elevator. It was gone. His head was clear and focused.

"If that's a threat, dad - - it's a good one. I'll stay in the country. Don't bother to come out."

"Clark." Lionel's voice oozed out of the kitchen phone, and Clark didn't think he'd ever reach the point where unexpectedly hearing Lionel purr his name wouldn't make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. "Could you come to the city and meet me at my office? It's important."

"I'm sort of in the middle of something." Which was not entirely a lie. He had water boiling in preparation for boxed macaroni and powdered cheese. He'd been thinking of calling Chloe, but hadn't gotten around to it yet.

"Its about Lex."

Clark tightened his jaw, pulse jumping a little. He'd been trying not to think about Lex-related things today. But the bag of ruined clothes he'd thrown out this afternoon had brought back vivid images of Lex on the road, crumpled and bleeding and he'd come close to making a trip out to the Wild Coyote where he knew at least the Briggs brothers hung out to see if they were still in the gang beating frame of mind. But he'd dismissed the notion a moment later, because it wasn't his nature to pick fights, even if they were well deserved, and he'd already left his mark on at least one, if not both of the Brigg's brothers. He didn't need to make more of an impression. Besides which, Lex was the last person who needed anyone to fight his battles for him - - the last person Clark needed feel concern over the welfare of.

"What about Lex?"

"Some things just shouldn't be discussed over the phone," Lionel said.

Clark turned off the heat under the water, and covered the distance between Smallville and Metropolis while Lionel still had the phone to his ear, sitting behind his desk in his LuthorCorp tower executive suite. Papers fluttered and Lionel blinked up at him in surprise.

"Okay, what?" Clark asked, then stopped, registering the still figure in the shadows by the floor to ceiling windows behind Lionel's desk.

"It appears you were correct in your assumptions concerning my son." Lionel regathered his calm and leaned back, watching Clark gape at the brutal implication of that statement.

The man - - the being - - that claimed to be an emissary of his long dead father, turned away from observing the night dark city outside the window and faced Clark. His eyes were mundane brown now, but Clark knew it was an illusion that covered an unnerving glow of red.

"J'onn?" he said, then looked back at Lionel, putting pieces together. Of Lionel having more of a means to contact the elusive J'onn than he'd claimed - - and of them pursuing his concerns without bothering to let him know they were about it.

A surge of anger came out of nowhere - - irritation and no small bit of anxiety. "You sat here yesterday and told me it was nothing and then you go behind my back and - -"

"Behind your back, Clark?" Lionel cut him off, a narrow eyed look of impatience in his eyes that he usually was so adept at hiding. "This is my son, we're talking about. My concern."

"Yeah, and your concern has always worked out really well for him." Clark snapped.

Lionel canted his head, considering, running the back of his knuckles along the stubble on his jaw.

"As interesting as this territorial pissing match we seem to be engaging is might turn out to be - - there are more pressing issues at hand, don't you think?" Lionel said, and Clark took a breath, turning that over in his head. Feeling a moment of sharp embarrassment - - because maybe that's what he was feeling, some sort of misplaced protectiveness, dug up and dusted off from some years old stash of unwanted sentiment.

Clark took a breath, loosened his fists and tried to force the irritation down. He looked to J'onn who was observing them both silently.

"All right. Talk to me. There's really something there?"

"I felt the presence of something that did not belong," J'onn said, unnaturally still, hands immobile at his sides, when it was all Clark could do not to ball his into fists and pace.

"You felt it? How did you get Lex to - - is it dangerous, what's inside him?" He was having trouble fixing on a target and focusing. There were too many questions. Too many concerns.

"Not overtly," J'onn said. "It is not - - entirely sentient."

Clark didn't know what that meant. What it really meant when they were talking about something inside a human mind that ought not be there. Lionel was sitting back, mouth pursed, as if he'd already heard this explanation - - as if he already had decisions made in his head on what was to be done about it - - and that annoyed Clark, all over again. It scared him a little, because they'd already been at Lex behind his back and neither of them, once engaged, were casual players. Neither was Lex, but he was at the distinct disadvantage of not even knowing he was in the game.

"What is it, then?" Clark asked.

"A fragment," J'onn said. "Possessing no cognizant understanding of its own - - merely the ghost of Zod's inclinations. Something that clung to the mind of the host when you tore the incorporeal whole away."

"Would it effect the things - -? I mean would he be any different because of it?"

"I do not know. When I sought it out, it retreated. It has had a long time to infiltrate his mind, and I cannot know how powerful an influence it has gained, until I have the opportunity to sift through and examine it more closely."

"Clark," Lionel said. "However deeply it's embedded itself into Lex - - it's still only a splinter of Zod's mentality. We can't assume that it's done anything more than give him bad dreams."

"How do we get rid of it?" He didn't want to look at Lionel, with his calm eyes and the patronizing tone of reason in his voice. "Can I pull it out with the crystal?"

J'onn shrugged, expression still painfully emotionless. "You could. But the portion of his mind that it has attached itself to would be damaged. I can unravel its hold, given time - - separate it from his mentality enough that the crystal could draw it out with minimum harm."

Clark swallowed, uncomfortable with both their eyes upon him, as if they were waiting on him to reach a conclusion that they'd already achieved. He wondered if they hadn't needed him to use his father's crystal, if they'd have even consulted him at all?

Zod. Even a piece of Zod - - the ghost of his intentions, his motivations skulking about the world, was enough to make Clark feel ill - - his worst nightmare come back to haunt him. Lionel said the fragment might pose harm only to the state of Lex's easy sleep. Clark thought he was wrong. Zod was a builder of armies - - merciless in his goals - - and Lex hadn't been - - until this last year, when he'd taken a project, that according to Lionel's intel had not been initiated with mass production in mind and turned it into a fanatical crusade.

"How much time?" Clark asked, mouth dry.

"It will take as long as it will take," J'onn declared helpfully.

"It's best if we deal with it now," Lionel said. "Lex believes he's had one spell today, if he looses more time on the heels of it, he'll attribute it to the same cause. He's at the estate in Smallville now. I trust, from past experience, you've no qualms about breaching security."

"No," Clark said softly, then. "You said 'minimum harm'. How much is minimum?"

J'onn simply stared at him. Clark clenched his jaw, turning his eyes to Lionel, the father who claimed concern. "And you're okay with this?"

"I am. The alternative, Clark, is to simply ignore it. I don't think either one of us is capable of that, do you?"

Clark looked away. He wasn't. He knew he wasn't. It could have been any stranger and he couldn't have let it rest - - much less Lex, who had enough obsessions and moral ambiguity all of his own without the added benefit of something coldly alien. Something like that other half of Clark - - the Kryptonian mindset that didn't understand human values and human frailties - - that he'd locked away for the sake of everything he loved.

He nodded assent, and Lionel held out something, a small flesh colored something that looked like a round band-aid on the tip of his finger.

"Put it on his neck, below his ear," Lionel instructed, like he was giving Clark casual stock-tips. "The effects are swift."

"You want me to drug him?"

Lionel lifted a brow. "You could use more physical means to subdue him, but chemical sedation seems more humane. Unless you prefer to inform him of the situation and ask for his assent?"

No. Clark wasn't prepared to do that. He swallowed and gingerly plucked the patch off Lionel's finger.

"Call me," Lionel said, tapping a key and bringing his sleeping computer screen back to life. "When it's done."

Part Seven

"That's not an answer I want to hear," Lex said coolly, phone cradled between shoulder and ear as he poured himself a healthy two fingers worth of scotch from the crystal decanter on his office bar. "If you can't find them via business routes, try the society pages or the gossip rags. Just track them down."

His people were having trouble contacting the Daniakos twins. The lawyer that had met with Lana was also proving difficult to locate. It wasn't as if Nikolas and Sophia were particularly furtive in their activities, so it should have been an easy matter to find them and set up a meeting. An hour's worth of work arranging it between his assistants and theirs - - only it seemed, for all intents and purposes, as if they were avoiding his calls.

Quite likely, considering the overall nastiness of the buy out. More likely if they'd had a hand in the Lana conspiracy. He snapped the phone shut and laid it on the bar, taking a moment to savor the burn of the liquor, while he considered methods of extracting information from a pair of jaded socialites that wanted to play hard to get.

Over three hours on the road from Metropolis to Smallville in the middle of rush hour traffic, with a driver that didn't have Lex's tendencies to double any posted speed limits, had put him in a fine mood. The Mercedes that had been towed back from the sheriff's impound, sitting outside the garage, front end crumpled beyond reasonable repair had been icing on the cake.

The phone rang again, vibrating slightly on the glass surface of the bar and Lex glared at it a moment, before checking the number of the incoming call. He recognized the name as the supervising manager of one of the LexCorp holdings in the process of liquidation. A panicked call, no doubt. He'd been getting quite a few of those as people discovered their worlds were being turned upside down. He ignored the call. Cut the phone off, having had his quota of telephone conversations this evening on the way back from the city. He was tired of dealing with the people who wanted a piece of him and mollifying the ones who were unavoidable sacrifices.

The door from the main hall opened and he expected someone from security, because the house staff was avoiding him like the plague. He half turned, irritated at the intrusion, quarter to nine and well into time that ought to be his own, and then kept turning, because it was Clark, walking in blithe as if it was mid-day and he had an open ended invitation.

There were standing orders at the gate - - had been since the ill-fated engagement party - - that Clark Kent was not allowed onto the grounds without express permission.

"How did you get past the gate?" He wasn't feeling particularly genial. He was feeling off his balance, confronted with the last thing he'd expected tonight, with hands in its pockets and a faint, awkward expression on its face.

"They let me in. Were you busy?" Which was the sort of answer he might have gotten out of Clark when he was fifteen and admitting to charming his way past the housekeeper to loiter about Lex's office and distract him from his work. Generally Clark gave less genial answers nowadays with more accusation in his voice.

"They let you in?" Lex blinked, calculating just how many people were going to lose their jobs over this little blunder. "What is it with you and these night time visits, Clark?"

"Lex." Clark put out his hands, as if emphasizing that no, he wasn't armed. Just damned persuasive, obviously to have gotten past the gate guard, and through the front door. "I - - I just stopped by to see how you were - - y'know, after."

"I'm fine," he said automatically, even while he was trying to wrap his mind around the sudden concern.

"I saw the car - - out by the garage. Looks totaled." Clark commented, throwing Lex further off balance because they just didn't have these sorts of conversations anymore.

"What do you want, Clark? Forgive me if I find it hard to believe that you stopped by to check on the state of my health and comment on the condition of my automobile."

Clark frowned, but it wasn't his usual glower, more a sigh of resignation and a forlorn look from under ridiculously long black lashes. Lex narrowed his eyes, because Clark was staring at him - - really staring - - like he was trying to get inside his head or under his skin - - and without the usual antagonism in his eyes, Clark's stare was entirely unnerving.

But whatever Clark's problem was tonight, whatever mental dilemma that had him acting out of character - - it couldn't be Lex's problem. He had more than enough of his own.

The papers on his desk fluttered gently, like an errant draft had found its way into the study and wafted across his desk. He glanced aside, lifting his hand at the whisper of a tickle across his skin.

"Clark, it's been a long day, and my graciousness evaporated two hours ago sitting in traffic on the inter - - state - -" he trailed off, the rest of his sentence eaten up by a wave of dizziness. A surge of panic came up in its wake, his mind crowding with all the possible reasons for two episodes in one day - - blood clots and untended head injury and pushing his luck that little bit too far this last time when maybe his father and Clark and anyone else with decent common sense had been right and he ought to have had himself checked out - -

The room was spinning - - or was that him? Staggering against hard warmth that hadn't been there a second ago, clutching at the material of a jacket and pressing his face against the stability of Clark's shoulder in the desperate search for solid ground. And there was the smell again. It hit his brain, countercurrent to the sickening recoil of the rest of his senses.

He tried to say something - - 'help' would have been an adequate word and he wasn't too proud to ask it, not if he were in the midst of a stroke or an aneurism - - only he couldn't quite form that one simple word.

"It'll be okay," Clark said, grim-voiced. The words were a receding echo, falling away like they were slipping down a drain - - or Lex was.

Clark's arm was under his arm, hand against his back. The other was on his neck above his shirt collar, palm big and warm, fingers curling around his neck, callused thumb rough/soft behind the skin of his ear.

He sank, and sank drifting down like jetsam caught in a cold current, plummeting down into darkness - -

He was drowning, distant awareness of death filling his lungs. Familiar feeling. The stuff of nightmares. It seeped inside, persistent and heavy, stretching his skin, bleeding out of his pores - - or in through them - - he lacked the perspective to differentiate.

It swirled inside him, like the lazy ripple of something sliding through warm blood - - invasive and perverse and coldly malignant. He recoiled, but there was nowhere to go, body weighted down with the presence of it, the dark press of liquid death surrounding him, crushing him subtly.

He drifted, caught in the grasp of current that swallowed everything. It always swallowed everything. The sickening plummet of the car - - the grasping pull of the plane, huge and twisted and determined to pull all the smaller flotsam under with it when it went. It dark and cold underwater - - it never ceased to be dark and cold - - and there was no wavering light of the surface and no hands dragging him up - - just the weight pulling him down.

Something reached for him out of the deep, sly and muscular like the sibilant body of an eel, attempting to tear him apart, reaching into his flesh and curling around his spine, trying to strip nerves and veins and marrow - - he screamed, mute sound in the depths and struggled to twist away from the assault - - blind animal terror - - blind animal rage.

Useless efforts. There was pain. Ripping, tearing pain as it gouged the core of him - - wrenched past his heart, and he couldn't breath, lungs finally burst - - The darkness afterwards was complete and thankfully pain-free.

"God," Clark cried, "His heart's stopped."

How many hours had he sat or paced, watching J'onn sit motionless, eyes like low burning embers, Lex stretched out before him on the floor of the loft, because Clark hadn't known where else to take him, private enough for what they needed to do. How long had he listened to the steady beat of Lex's heart, slow, easy tempo brought on by drug induced sleep? Long enough that when it stopped - -just simply ceased to beat that the silence was deafening.

He slid to his knees, panic fueled fear making his hands shake - - they'd killed him. They'd killed Lex over something that might have been nothing more than a dark shadow over his subconscious.

How many seconds since the heart had ceased its rhythm? He placed his palms over Lex's chest, ready to start compressions - - and J'onn's eyes flared and he reached out, catching Clark's wrist before he could make contact.

"Now. Do it now, Kal-el." he hissed, a fine sheen of sweat glossing his high brow.

It took Clark a second to realize what he meant, and he fumbled for the crystal in the pocket of his jeans, pulling it out and willing it to life. There was a miniscule flare. A tiny little tingle of energy that barely breached the skin of his palm and then it was still and cold again. He wasn't even sure if it had worked or just decided to sputter out.

He met J'onn's fading red eyes with desperate ones of his own, and J'onn nodded and let go a breath.

Clark tossed the crystal aside, careless of it in his haste to get his hands on Lex. One palm in the center of his chest, atop the sternum. He remembered the guidelines from health class - - fast hard compressions - - but he had to be careful in his haste not to shatter breastbone and ribs, and it was difficult to gauge.

He got to a count of twenty-seven before he heard the sluggish thud of Lex's heart shuddering back to life. He felt it under his hand, beneath the thin material of Lex's shirt. His head spun with relief, his own pulse a rapid patter behind his temples. He leaned there, over Lex, and glared up at J'onn, who was uncurling long limbs from the position he'd been sitting in for - - how long had it been? Eight hours? Ten? There was sunlight leaking in through the cracks in the loft shutters.

"Minimal harm? You call that minimal harm? His heart. Just. Stopped."

"And you restarted it." J'onn observed, as if it were really an inconsequential thing. Clark clenched his fists, blood pounding hard enough to hear the rush inside his head. "It's gone?"

It fucking well better be gone, after that.

"It is."

"And he'll be okay?" And didn't that cover a variety of uncertainties.

"The fragment was more entwined than I had originally sensed." Time will tell if there was damage done.

"God." Clark's stomach gave a little lurch.

"Kal-el." J'onn inclined his head at him, swung one of the loft shutters open and launched himself straight up with a faint crackle of disturbed air.

Clark glowered at the empty space and the gently swinging shutter. The cool morning breeze eased its way in, rifling old newspapers on the desk, tickling his skin. He didn't feel the cold, but he shuddered regardless, nerves still thin and tight. He'd expected it to be quick. He'd expected not to feel sick over it - - like he'd done something dark and furtive.

He pulled Lex up between his knees, back against his chest, where he could pick at the little patch behind his ear with a thumbnail. He flicked it into the shadows, like he might something poisonous and offensive and sat there, clenching his teeth so hard his jaw popped.

He stayed there for a while, feeling six kinds of fool for risking this. The rational part of his brain insisted that they were all better off, most especially Lex with that clinging little remnant of Zod gone. It said that if the roles were reversed, Lex wouldn't have hesitated to put a life on the line in a chancy endeavor - - Lex did it all the time, which was why they'd parted ways - - Which was why he couldn't stand to look at Lex sometimes, because the disappointment hurt too much.

Only, he wasn't Lex and he didn't live by Lex's standards and he didn't make decisions based on cold calculation of profit ratio and scientific advancement. And neither had Lex, once upon a time and Clark could hate him for that sometimes, too, more than for Lana or years worth of investigation into Clark's business.

But Lionel had been right in one respect, Clark could never have just let it go - - that some part of Zod still existed here - - lurking in the shadows. And yet - -

'Lex's heart had stopped' - - just ceased to beat and Clark clutched him a little tighter, so he could feel the thud of it now, against his chest. He rested his cheek against the thin, smooth skin of Lex's head and tried not to think about 'damage done', but once the floodgates were open, it was hard not to.

The space heater had cut out an hour ago, out of kerosene, and it was probably cold up here and Lex had a thing about being cold. With the patch gone, he might stir soon - - Clark hoped he would, at any rate, so best to get him home, past security and staff that Lionel had promised would not be overly concerned if Lex was conspicuously absent from his morning routine.

Two months ago, if Clark had discovered Lionel had a sly hand in Lex's personal staff, he wouldn't have given a flying fuck - - other than the concern that Lana might be caught in the middle of another Luthor power play. The notion was making his skin crawl tonight - - this morning.

He looked at his watch. 8:10. Eleven hours. It had taken eleven hours to dig the remnant of Zod out of Lex. It had seemed like days.

The air was just cool enough to make the warmth of the covers a subtle pleasure, the quiet the deep, all consuming sort that you got when surrounded by the thick stone walls of 17th century castles. And morning sleep, for a change, was not restless and tense, interspaced by the remnants of uncomfortable dreams.

Lex slid an arm under his pillow, and thought about sleeping in. It had been a very long time since he'd indulged and this morning the notion had a certain allure.

It felt good to slide towards sleep that was a luxury rather than a bodily requirement. The slither of fine sheets was smooth against his skin when he drew a knee up - - but something pricked at his senses. A vague awareness of lack of solitude.

He cracked an eye open to a room hazy with sunlight filtering in past sheer window drapery. It took a moment more to focus on Clark, as still and quiet as the rest of the room, slouched in the reading chair across the room, long legs stretched out on the ottoman, chin on chest, soundly asleep. He had the book that been on the night table draped open upon his lap, one big hand lax upon the pages.

Lex blinked, not quite questioning the state of his awareness - - because god knew odder things had happened - - and really, if he was going to dream of Clark in his bedroom, asleep in a chair across the room was probably not where his subconscious would place him.

Not that he'd had those sorts of dreams in a while - - if Clark had been featured in any dreams lately Lex had the feeling there had probably been blood and screaming involved.

He tried to recall events that might have led up to this unusual occurrence. He was almost certain he hadn't done anything recently enough, being side-tracked by murders and government interference, that might have infuriated Clark to the point where he needed to invade the sanctity of Lex's bedroom to level his accusations. Not that that would explain him being asleep in the chair - - Clark's little indignant rants tended to be spur of the moment. Lex doubted he'd have the patience to quietly sit and wait till Lex woke up.

Which brought him back to Clark dozing in his bedroom. Had he been drinking last night? It might account for the wafting fog in his head and the circular thinking. Had Clark? Or more accurately had he been drinking with Clark, which might explain the current situation, even though Lex couldn't recall the last time he'd been drunk enough not to remember 98% of the night before. And he'd never seen Clark drunk or heard of him drunk - - imagined yes, but stray whimsy didn't count. So the probability of them inexplicably deciding to indulge in a binge - - together - - seemed astronomically low.

Clark's flannel shirt was undone and the t-shirt under it riding up enough to show a thin strip of tan belly. And that was somehow incongruous to the fact that he had a translation of a wordy Russian novel resting on his chest.

Lex couldn't stand it anymore. "Clark. Wake up."

Clark's eyes snapped open at the abrupt command. He started up, face clouded with momentary shock, hands fumbling for the book that he'd sent tumbling with his movement. His eyes focused on Lex and if Lex didn't know better, he'd have thought there was naked concern there. The look was almost more disconcerting that Clark's actual presence. Almost.

"Do I even want to know, what you're doing here?"

"Are you okay?"

They managed the questions simultaneously. Lex tightened his mouth, a curl of apprehension working its way up his spine, because Clark still looked painfully worried and had scrambled out of the chair, book in hand to hover a few feet away from the edge of the bed.

Maybe Lex did recall something of Clark from last night.

"Why would I not be?" he asked warily, pushing himself up.

"You don't - - remember?" Clark asked with that tone in his voice that suggested he'd been about something he ought not have.

Lex narrowed his eyes, trying very hard to put pieces together. Clark 'had' been here last night - - without invite - - and Lex had been pissed and tired and - - fuck. He pinched the bridge of his nose, not quite remembering, but making an educated guess.

"I passed out again."

"Again?" Clark had an edge to his voice. Clark's fingers on the book were white knuckled.

"Second time today - -" he looked out the window at bright sunlight and corrected absently. "Yesterday. At the office. In the elevator."

He wasn't sure why Clark needed that information. It just slid out of his mouth. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and it occurred to him that Clark must have gotten him up here and into bed. That Clark had undressed him a second time in less a week and he felt a flutter of nerves that had no business being.

"How long was I out?"

Clark licked his lips, a quick swipe of pink tongue. He looked at his watch and a pained little smile curved a recently moistened mouth. "Uh, a long time. It's almost one."

Lex blinked, tearing his gaze away from Clark's mouth to the window. One in the afternoon was beyond indulging himself a little and oversleeping. He hadn't even known his body was capable of sleeping in so late.

"And you stayed here - - all that time?" he asked slowly, just to get the facts straight, because obviously there were blanks that needed filling in.

"I - - I was worried," Clark admitted. "I guess I dozed off."

"Dostoyevsky will do that do you," Lex made an effort to put a drawl in his voice, but he was feeling a vague sense of disequilibrium that he was having trouble shaking. "He's a wonderful cure for insomnia."

Clark lifted the hand with the book, as if he'd forgotten he was clutching it. Lex's clothes were laid over the chest at the end of the bed. The same ones from yesterday, but at the moment they were preferable to striding down the hall to the closet in the master bedroom in his underwear to fetch fresh ones.

"I'm sorry, Lex."

Lex swung a wary look around. Clark hadn't apologized to him in - - well, years, quite a few years, if you didn't count him being sorry Lex had gotten his ass kicked a few nights past.

"What did you do?" He inquired mildly, regardless of the fact that he was insanely interested in any regrets Clark might have. He pulled on his slacks and shrugged on the shirt before they were buttoned, just wanting clothes on, because being without put one at a distinct disadvantage.

Clark seemed to think about that for a moment, before shrugging awkwardly. "I should have taken you to the ER Monday night - - gotten them to look you over. X-rays or Cat scans or whatever they do when somebody's kicked you in the head."

"My head's fine." Lex said sourly. It wasn't lingering concussion. He damned well knew what that felt like.

"Maybe a brain tumor," he said, because he felt a little bitter irony was needed here.

Clark's eyes widened in distress. Over him. Like Clark had suddenly decided it was okay to give a damn again. Lex opened his mouth to say something cutting. Shut it, because nothing really came to mind.

He didn't get physical maladies, he simply didn't. Maybe it 'was' stress or anxiety attack or the onset of some mental disease. He'd make an appointment in the city and get a professional opinion.

His shoes were by the nightstand, socks balled up inside, but he could forgo those long enough to walk down the hall and get clean socks, bare feet not being the problem bare skin was. Only Clark followed him to the door, practically treading on his heels, which was damned annoying, but not quite as unsettling as how much difference an inch worth of sole on a shoe made when turning around to complain about it and having to look up and up to meet Clark's eyes.

First instinct said back up a step. Second one said, the hell if he would. Third one caught the scent of Clark's soap and hay, the faint tang of dried sweat - - entirely Clark and male and - - fuck - - maybe he should take that step backwards after all. Lex took a breath and wondered when exactly he'd stopped appreciating the way Clark smelled.

Not that it mattered, because he'd wasted half the day away in bed - - sleeping. If he'd been engaging in something else, at least he'd have gained something from the lost time. It was a wonder his phone hadn't been ringing off the hook with business that needed attending.

"Don't you have cows to feed? Hay to bale? Other people's homes to intrude upon?" He canted his head, putting a casual hand on the doorframe, because casual was the best method of dealing with the little flicker of tension that came with the invasion of his personal space.

Clark swallowed, eyes drifting down - - and it could have been nervousness, because Lex knew he could outstare Clark any given day of the week - - but it reminded him more of the look Clark had given him at his house - - awkward appraisal followed by quick embarrassment.

"I was just - - concerned." Clark shuffled a step backwards, putting the distance between them that Lex had been too stubborn to create.

"Don't feel the need to dredge up old habits on my account." He pulled the door open and strode out into the hall. The house was quiet as a tomb. You'd think in the middle of the day, there'd be some movement from the staff. No one had appeared all day, and apparently all night, to ask what Clark was doing lurking in Lex's room. Unless they'd come to conclusions of their own about what he'd been doing there. The suspicion that he'd murdered his wife on top of the fact that he might be fucking her ex-boyfriend would give them unlimited material to whisper about behind his back.

Where the hell was the security that had apparently let Clark roam the grounds last night?

"Is today a holiday?" Sometimes he lost track of the little things - - and he was generally quite liberal with his employee's on things like vacations, holidays and overly gracious benefit packages. It paid to be generous when it came to garnering loyalty - - right up until the day you cut some poor working stiff off a the knees for profits sake. He'd learned that lesson the hard way, from his father.

"No," Clark said, trailing behind him. "Why?"

"My house seems conspicuously empty."

Clark clomped along in silence for a few steps, then offered. "It's the last week of fall - - there's a festival in Cooperstown. Sort of a big thing. Whatever happened to Beatrice? I liked Beatrice. I don't think your new staff is that reliable."

Lex almost laughed. He might have been offended if it wasn't so utterly bizarre, Clark giving him advice on his domestic staff. Lex vaguely recalled Beatrice the cook who'd been one of two part time staffers when he'd first moved to Smallville. He seemed to recall she'd had a fondness for Clark. But, who hadn't, when Clark had been fifteen?

Clark at 21 was considerably more annoying. And Lex had had enough years to grow immune to those eyes and a pout that bordered on pornographic to be swayed towards consideration that would profit him nothing.

"Clark." Lex stopped in front of the doors to the master suite - - the room he'd shared with Lana and he didn't want to open those doors with Clark standing here. Didn't want Clark to see the ghosts because they were his - - only he didn't know where that dismal thought had come from, ridiculous and sentimental. He hadn't even gone to her funeral after the fight with Nell and Henry Small and his father of all people, to have her buried in the cemetery next to her parents instead of the more ostentatious site Lex would have preferred. They hadn't wanted him there - - and he'd been distracted, desperate to salvage what he could of Project Ares, before the government investigation tracked down all the research sites and stole it away from him.

He'd been scrambling to arrange lab space in Metropolis when they'd put what was left of her in the ground - - and he'd barely given it a thought all through the day and it struck him now at so oddly an inconvenient time, that betrayal or not, he'd owed her a little more than that.

"Lex?"

"No," he snapped at a question Clark hadn't even asked, or maybe Clark had asked and he hadn't heard and that unsettled him. Clark blinked, and Lex clenched his fists.

"Just - - get out."

Clark stared at him a moment more. Then did.

Part Eight

Lex had seemed okay. Lex had actually seemed particularly tolerant considering he'd woken up to find Clark dozing in his room. Which Clark really hadn't meant to do - - but the book had just been god-awful boring. He just hadn't been expecting Lex to sleep so long and he'd needed to make sure he was all right when he awoke.

Needed to make sure he awoke period, because he'd entertained the fear that he might not - - after the almost dying thing. And he'd been determined to brave the lion's den - - or the Luthor's - - and wait until he knew for sure.

But Lex had gotten up clear-headed without any obvious mental defect - - yet. Not that it might not crop up - - because, though he didn't think J'onn would have purposefully hurt Lex or been sloppy with the job, it had been more complicated than he'd said and Clark was absolutely certain that he'd known that going in and neglected to mention it. Maybe Lionel had too. God knew what he'd be willing to risk to achieve a goal.

If they'd known about the physical danger - - and the more he thought about it, the more he figured at least J'onn had to have suspected the trauma of unwrapping a segment of one clinging mentality from another would plunge the body into shock - - they'd had the sense not to mention it to him.

Because drugging and kidnapping a man was okay, but near causing his death was problematic.

Right.

Clark smashed a fist into a four by four support beam in the barn. It splintered, predictably, and he hissed through his teeth, hardly seeing the damage done through the film of guilt. One of the horses nickered, not pleased with the volume of his tantrum.

He shut his eyes for a moment, breathing deep, then went over and scratched under a big equine jaw. The horse gave him a baleful look, holding out forgiveness for a scoop of long overdue breakfast grain. Clark doubted Lex would be so willing to let bygones be, if he discovered what had really happened last night.

There were supplies that needed getting from town, so he took the truck, passing the road that led down to the Luthor estate on the route in. He'd check on Lex again later - - subtly - - in ways only he could, since he doubted Lex would take it kindly if he started showing up unexpectedly in person to inquire about his state of mind.

But Clark needed to assure himself that the results of this almost catastrophe had turned out all right. He needed to make sure so he could put it behind him and get Lex back out of his mind, or at the very least shuffled to the corner relegated for disappointments and irritations. It was entirely disconcerting and brought up too many old memories, when he was right up front. It was far too easy to recall better times when Lex wasn't snarling at him, and didn't have Lana on his arm and wasn't actively engaged in terrible things that made Clark's life difficult. Too easy to remember that he'd always had that uncomfortable awareness of how well Lex wore his clothing, or how embarrassing a draw for the eye the graceful curve of neck into shoulder - - so much more prominent now that he'd seen a great deal more of Lex's skin than he ever had before. Or laid hands on it.

God. And wasn't that the most mortifying thing of all? That he couldn't quite get the memory of the feel of Lex's skin out of his head. That last night when he damn well should have been looking out for him, his hand had lingered over the places deep bruises had been four days prior - - places that were blemish free now. Silk smooth and supple and it just blew Clark's mind that a man's skin could feel like that. Or look like that, stretched taut over svelte muscle and sinew.

Simply embarrassing that 'that' was what stuck in his mind.

He was at the feed store, loading up the last of his order, when Chloe called. He leaned against the back of the truck and answered the call.

"You cut and ran on me the other day," she accused in greeting and he winced.

"Yeah. Sorry about that." He wasn't entirely certain he was ready to talk about the Zod infestation with her yet. At least not while he felt so bad about the solution, because she'd only point out all the perfectly legitimate reasons he had for doing it, and he wasn't looking for justification.

"Are you busy?" she asked.

"Nothing life or death. What's up?" He'd already lost most of the day, what was a little more wasted time?

"Lois and I found out why Lex was called in to the sheriff's office."

"Yeah?" He already knew why, unless Lex had been lying or omitting pertinent facts, which was a high possibility. "Pictures right? Of Lana and some guy."

"Oh ho, you are on top of the game," Chloe had that smug tone that said she was still one up on him.

"And?" he asked warily.

"We're in town. Want to come and meet us at the Talon and we'll share some interesting news?"

"Give me ten minutes."

There was an open space a block down the street from the Talon that the pick-up could squeeze into. He walked the sidewalk towards the caf, and people nodded or smiled as he passed, because everyone knew everyone in town, or knew mothers or fathers or family. And secrets were non-existent - - unless they were the type that you buried deep in the recesses of a storm cellar - - and folk talked about them freely - - because, well, that's what happened in small towns.

If Chloe and Lois had gotten hold of information from the investigation, then it had probably spread the same way. A deputy talking to a wife and her talking to a friend and so on and so on. It was the same reason the whole county had prematurely convicted Lex of the murder in the first place. Unrelenting gossip.

The scourge of a small town. He wouldn't miss it the day he got out.

The Talon was moderately full with the pre-dinner crowd, but Chloe and Lois weren't among them, so he climbed the stairs to the second floor apartment. Lois snatched the door open on the second knock and beamed at him like she'd just finished off the canary. She grabbed his arm and tugged him into the apartment. He allowed the manhandling with a wary look about the room.

Chloe was at the kitchen island, tapping away at her laptop.

"So what's this interesting news?" He asked, when Lois let him go and went to hover over her cousin's shoulder.

"My powers of persuasion finally paid off," Lois declared. She waved what looked like a copy machine copy of a photograph at him. "I got this off an assistant in the D.A.'s office."

He took it from her, and stared at the picture of Lana at a table with an unfamiliar, middle-aged man. He ran his thumb over the grainy image of Lana and looked back up, waiting for the remainder of their news.

"And I found this," Chloe said, turning the computer around so Clark could see the screen, which held an archived page from the Daily Planet. "You can thank my infallible memory for this. Well, and the fact that I was paying special attention to anything LexCorp related at the time this article came out."

The page was from the Planet's business section, and there was a picture of a group of men on the steps of LuthorCorp. The caption read 'LuthorCorp buyout of international shipping dynasty'. Chloe indicated one of the men on the steps and Clark held up the photocopy, comparing. It might have been the same man. Both pictures were grainy.

"Okay, I'm biting."

"He's a lawyer for a Greek shipping company that Lex bought out about six months ago. A really ugly take over, according to people in the know. He took a family corporation and basically ripped it apart."

"So why was he meeting with Lana?"

"Got me." Chloe shrugged.

"Show him, already." Lois urged.

Chloe's smile turned shark-like. "I Googled Nikolas Daniakos, the owner of the company, and Lex - - and look what I came up with."

She brought up another screen with an image search, and there were a lot of pictures that looked like nightclub paparazzi shots. The rich and famous coming and going from the hottest, most exclusive clubs. The ones with Lex in them were hard to miss. Even in a crowd of expensive clothes and attitude, he stood out, but he looked young - - really young, in these pictures. There was the occasional appearance of some celebrity face that Clark actually recognized in some of the shots, but all of them contained a swarthy, dark haired man, obviously a few years older and a stunning olive skinned woman.

"How long ago was this?"

"1998. Supposedly Lex and Nikolas Daniakos and his sister, Sophia were tight for a while back in the day. Rumor of the time had it that he was actually sleeping with the sister and doing a lot of party drugs with the both of them."

Clark looked closer at the woman in the pictures. Long dark hair, sleepy-eyed sexuality, sleek curves - - she would have been Lex's type. She looked like a predator to Clark, and so did the man, with his dark, shark's eyes.

"Then something happened," Lois took up. "Some big blow-up that involved the police called out to the Daniakos yacht in New York Harbor - - the report of which I might add never got filed - - then Lionel Luthor got into it and the Daniakos got called home to Greece - - on supposed 'family' business, but I'm thinking threats were made and they were scared enough of Lionel on his own turf to make scarce for a while."

"So they did something to Lex," Clark said slowly.

"Or he did something to them," Lois interjected, but Clark ignored her, because the Daniakos looked older than he was now by a good span and they didn't have the aura of victims. Not that Lex did, but - - God, he looked young in the pictures.

"And he retaliated ten years later by taking apart their family company. And then, one of their lawyers meets with Lana on the sly? Why?"

"That's the question, Smallville," Lois chided. "Maybe she was giving inside information and he found out about it and had her killed."

"He didn't - -"Clark started automatically, then stopped, tightening his mouth. "Lex didn't even recognize the guy in the photo."

"He's lying," Lois said.

"He told you that?" Chloe asked.

"And you believed him?" Lois exclaimed, like Clark was the most gullible man on earth.

He gave her a narrow glare and she lifted a brow.

"I'm just saying," she said. "That what Lex Luthor says and what he does aren't always one and the same."

"Since when are you the expert, Lois?" He snapped, on edge and not even knowing why. Maybe it was the culpability he couldn't shake that made him feel responsible for Lex. Maybe it was the fact that he'd had Lex's life in his hands an awful lot this week, which made him defensive of it.

"What the hell, Clark?" Lois bristled at his tone. "Just because he gets his ass kicked by a few local rednecks - - you're suddenly his number one fan?"

"And just because you've got a grudge and a press pass, you think your opinions are gospel?"

Lois swelled up with indignant rage, mouth open to fire a return salvo.

"Children." Chloe stood up, leveling looks at the both of them. "As entertaining as a knock down drag out between the two of you might be - - he's got the weight on you, Lo, so I'd put my money on him."

"Yeah?" Lois huffed, glaring at Clark. "Waste of good money then, because I'd kick his ass."

Clark snorted, but he kept thinking about those pictures and what Lex hadn't told him. Maybe Lex really hadn't recognized the lawyer - - maybe he didn't even realize the connection. Or he knew damned well and hadn't wanted to share the information. Which pissed him off, but not enough to buy Lois' crackpot theory. Either way, if these people had had something to do with Lana's death, Clark wanted to know about it.

"I'll keep looking into this," Chloe promised.

"Okay." It was either flop down on the sofa and spend the evening listening to Chloe and Lois hash out theories, or head for the door and maybe get a little work done.

He headed for the door. Fighting with Lois the rest of the afternoon wasn't a big draw. Chloe trailed in his wake, clearly wanting to ask him things that she couldn't in front of Lois.

She followed him downstairs to the caf, while Lois, still miffed, nonchalantly lingered on the balcony overhead, pretending not to notice them at all.

"So are you going to let me in on what's going on?" Chloe asked quietly.

"It's taken care of," he said and she gave him an expectant look, wanting more.

"Hey, Kent," a raucous voice called from across the room. Jake of linebacker fame stood with a few of his cronies, chatting up a pair of high school age girls.

"How's your boyfriend?" Jake said it with the sort of sneer in his voice that dared Clark to make an issue of something that had obviously been covered up. But his buddies laughed, low and conspiratorially, like they knew exactly the inference. Jake was wearing the same letterman jacket he had that night, and there was a smear of dark, dried something on the sleeve. Blood. Spattered from when he'd been pummeling Lex into the ground.

"Shit," Chloe said under her breath. "Is he one of - -?"

But Clark hardly heard her through the rushing blood in his ears. He covered the space in a dozen measured strides that he didn't really remember taking, and smashed a fist into Jake's face. He pulled the punch a fraction of a second before it landed, the shock on the linebacker's eyes as he saw the blow coming, dredging up some semblance of Clark's common sense. Still bone cracked and blood spattered and the big man tumbled backwards, taking two of his friends and a table and chairs with him as he fell.

Clark stood there, dismay that he might have killed a man battling with the anger that still made his fists curl at his side.

"Sumbitch. Sumbitch." Jake's nasal cries as he struggled against the tangle of limbs and overturned furniture, alleviated the concern of manslaughter charges. "Y'broke my fuckin' nose."

People were gathering, mesmerized by the blood and the violence, as people tended to be.

"So, file charges," Clark suggested. "Maybe I'll give a statement of my own."

Jake glared at him, fingers clutching his bleeding nose. Chloe had her hands on Clark's arm, tugging ineffectually. Lois did too, and he hadn't even noticed her approach.

They got him moving, through the crowd of onlookers and out the door. Once he hit the sidewalk his hands started shaking. He hadn't just done that. He hadn't just smashed in somebody's face because of a taunt thrown across a room full of people.

"Are you okay?" Chloe was asking. If he was okay? It was laughable. He felt sick.

"Damn, Smallville, you've got a mean right, there. You took down three guys and a table." Lois still had hold of his left arm and it was odd that he could feel her fingers, but he hadn't really noticed the impact of his fist breaking a nose.

Chloe was still looking at him, concerned in a way that Lois wasn't - - knowing things Lois didn't.

"I - - I didn't meant to do that," he said, because he needed to say something.

"Hey, it happens." Lois shrugged it off. "I hit people all the time. And that guy deserved it."

He shook his head, pulling out of their grasp, striding down the sidewalk towards his truck. Just wanting to get home - - by himself, so he could figure out where his head was at.

It was Saturday morning and there was a light layer of snow - - not frost - - but actual snow on the ground outside the mansion. Not even technically winter yet and they were already getting snow. It boded ill for a temperate season to come.

Lex needed to get out regardless. Needed to work off a building sense of tension that went beyond the overall stress of the last five weeks. He'd woken with it, caught in the throes of a dream he remembered with more clarity than he'd been able to recall a dream in months. A great many months.

6 o'clock and he was awake with little chance of falling back to sleep. But then, he'd gotten enough sleep yesterday for two people - - with Clark sitting watch like a determined guard dog, which he still found inexplicable. And fascinating.

He took the service road that circled the entirety of the estate grounds. Twice around was a mile. He ran until the cold was a distant memory and the ache in his ribs couldn't take it anymore.

His stamina was shot to hell, he thought, gasping after breath on the back steps of the mansion. He used to be able to make the circuit a dozen times without feeling as if he were about to die. He'd managed five today and it hurt. But then, he couldn't remember the last time he'd had the time or the inclination to just get out and run. There had always been too many vital concerns - - things that he couldn't put off to take the time to simply cater to his body's needs. And he'd always liked to run. Liked the escape of it where there was only the path and the solitude of his own thoughts.

He'd run with Lana, back when they'd been in like with each other, back when he'd been able to laugh - - and he paused, leaning against the cold stone banister at that unexpected reflection - - that he'd been happier when he'd liked his wife, than when he'd loved her. It was an odd little epiphany that he missed the girl more than he missed the woman and he stood there for a while, breath fogging the air, turning that over in his head uncomfortably.

He considered it on the way upstairs to the shower. Took the possibility apart, while hot water streamed down his body - - when exactly he'd stopped liking Lana for Lana, for a girl who'd believed in what he'd believed in for a time, who'd been the one honest thing he could rely on, and started simply needing her. Like air - - or more accurately armor - - against what?

Clark came to mind, but he couldn't fathom why. Because Clark was the enemy. Clark was a threat. But the notions were like placards he remembered reading in the rearview mirror as he passed them on the road. Meaningless.

He pressed his hands against the warm tiles of the shower and stared at the water sluicing down the drain. An honest shiver of doubt assailed him. Lex tried to pin down the source of the uncertainty, but it was elusive, like grasping after something in the fog and having it dissolve in his fingers.

He bared his teeth and drove a fist into the tile. It hurt and the tile was unfazed by the aggression.

He shook out the hand; shut the water off, because it felt like it was seeping into his brain and the feeling was eerily familiar and uncomfortable. He didn't feel lightheaded, but there was a vague sense of disassociation - - as if something were missing - - some vital element or purpose that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Lex drew a long, deep breath and let it out slowly, gathering his focus. He'd make an appointment Monday and find out what sort of pharmaceutical solution it would take to make this problem go away.

He dressed for comfort, having no intention of seeing anyone today closer than the impersonal distance of a video feed allowed. A ribbed sweater, fine and warm, now that the heat of the shower and the exertion of the run had dissipated. He hesitated with his hand on a pair of dark slacks, eye drawn to the folded pair of borrowed jeans lying on the shelf under the row of clothes.

He ran a hand over soft, faded denim. They didn't have the scent that kept triggering old associations in his memory. Too much time had passed since they'd clung to Clark's skin. But they had a hole in the back pocket that a boy's wallet might have rubbed, and a rip in the knee with dangling strings that had probably been perpetrated during some bit of youthful horseplay.

Lex had tried very hard not to entertain inappropriate thoughts about Clark when he'd been fifteen - - even if he hadn't always succeeded. Imagining him younger, the flesh that would have shown through that hole, the worn spot by the inner thigh, was patently criminal.

He picked up the jeans regardless, compelled by the imaginary sense of familiarity, when he was feeling quietly unfamiliar in his own head this morning. He pulled them on, and the sweater and a pair of soft Italian loafers. It felt good, dressing down for a change - - a minor stress reliever in and of itself. He went downstairs and the staff was out and about today, back to normal routine and he hadn't gotten around yet to asking Mrs. Drake if he'd given them the day off yesterday. Security was studiously 'not' present, but then they weren't supposed to be. Lana hadn't liked to see ominous armed men in the house, so he'd catered to her wishes to a degree, increasing electronic measures and decreasing human ones.

He got a cup of coffee from the kitchen and went to his study. Settled at his desk and turned on his laptop. He responded to emails, made a few notes on his calendar and considered a few calls. His father phoned around noon, but Lex ignored it, not feeling obligated to talk business with Lionel on a Saturday and refusing to engage in conversation about anything else.

He went over LuthorCorp secure files to see what his father had been up to, and found nothing overly suspicious. He had people watching Lionel's moves, but his father had the tendency to worm his way past measures taken to hinder his influence.

LuthorCorp stock was holding. It was low, but not disastrously so. LexCorp stock was still floundering and it was almost a physical pain to check the downward spiral.

He got another call and he sat for a second, phone in hand after reading the name on the caller ID.

"Mr. Mueller." He picked up, knowing very well that the man on the other end had no tolerance for idle pleasantries.

"I have the names." The cold, level voice over the line of a man who made his living getting blood on his hands so the people that hired him didn't have to dirty their own. "Do you want to know them?"

"No," Lex said, pulse racing as fast as it had the first time he'd sought out this man - - this very frightening man - - to deal with an obstacle in his path some ten months ago.

He changed his mind. "Yes. Who are they?"

"Thomas and Clancy Briggs. Jake Smith. Christopher Tucker. Should I pursue the matter?"

Should he quietly and efficiently see to it that those four men didn't live to the see another month, was what he was asking. And Lex had set him on their trail, coldly furious and wanting retaliation the day after. Four lives just like that and four days ago, he hadn't blinked at the thought of ordering it. He sat here now, trying to swallow past the lump in his throat - - trying to remember the justification he'd had when he'd called Mueller. They'd wrecked his car and beat the crap out of him, but that wasn't why he'd orchestrated their demise - - no, he'd done that because he'd been fucking furious that they'd had the gall to humiliate him on top of it. Four lives because a handful of drunken local has beens had pissed on a Luthor.

A word from him and it would be done. Just like that, and he could go back to business as usual - - remorse a distant, contained thing. He teetered on the precipice of panic, remembering other problems this man had solved for him - - impediments to his goals that had to be removed. But sitting there, with the morning sun warming the office from the high windows, with a old, soft sweater and jeans that felt like some sort of haven, he couldn't seem to make the scales balance out in his head. Validation he was almost certain he'd felt every time he'd set Mr. Mueller in motion just wasn't registering now.

"No," he said. "Do not pursue the matter further. Payment for full services will be deposited as usual."

He hung up. Sat there, while his hands shook, remembering faces and names and orders given like he was recalling moments from a movie- - surreal, because he could place himself in the script, but the motivations behind the motivations were lost to him.

He rose, pacing the length of the room, on the verge of abandoning the office altogether, then turning and stalking towards the bar. It was early to start drinking - - but what the hell? Maybe half drunk he could organize thoughts better than he was managing sober.

He downed two tumblers and barely tasted the scotch. The phone rang again and he cast a narrow glance towards the desk. It wasn't in him to simply ignore it without knowing at least who had the balls to intrude upon his Saturday. He put the empty glass down and stalked over to look down at the incoming number.

Clark. He smothered a bitter laugh and considered ignoring it. It kept ringing. Another ring and voice mail would cut in and Clark could talk to that. Add his message to whatever Lionel had wanted to say.

He snatched it up before that last ring finished vibrating the phone on the desk.

"What do you want?"

There was a pause on the other end. Clark digesting his non-attempts at telephone courtesy.

"I need to talk to you," Clark finally said, sounding like he was on a mission. Fuck that.

"No."

"It's important."

"It's the middle of the day. I'm conscious. Don't break the streak, Clark. Bad luck." He hung up. Stared at the phone expecting an irate call back, but it didn't ring.

Almost, he was disappointed.

Part Nine

Clark looked up from the phone in his hand to the mansion across the boundary of box hedges, weathered statuary and dead fall gardens. He was already inside the wall, having bypassed security and outpaced the motion sensors capacity for detection. He'd been aiming for politeness, calling ahead for permission and Lex was lucky he'd waited this long, because the desire to head out here yesterday evening and ask about the connection between Lana and Lex's old clubbing buddies had been really hard to resist. The only reason he hadn't was because - - well, because he'd been feeling distinctly anti-social after the incident at the Talon. The fact that the sheriff hadn't swung by to arrest him for assault and battery had barely made a dent in his mood. Chloe had called him later and let him know that no charges were being pressed, so apparently Jake had taken Clark's threat to heart. Which didn't make Clark feel much better.

All his life he'd been told - - after that first imperative rule of not telling - - was never strike out in anger - - never do something that in a moment of rage, he couldn't control. Something irrevocable, like shattering a fragile human body and having the world know that he wasn't like the rest of them. He'd come so damned close. And why? Not in self-defense, or to protect a threatened life - - but because he'd been pissed - - and it had come up so fast and sharp that still didn't understand it.

He'd come out to see if he could get an honest answer out of Lex today and gotten rebuffed. But Lex had had an edge to his voice, this little twinge of something that straddled the sharp line of hysteria and Clark thought about mental lesions and broken psyches and all the other possible repercussions of ripping the remnants of Zod out of him.

So he scoped out the wandering grounds security on the other side of the mansion sneaking a smoke, and bounded over the hedges and closer to the house. He expanded his vision, sifting through layers of stone and mortar to find the living things within. There was the cook, chopping something in the kitchen and the housekeeper washing windows in the solarium. Lex in his study, pacing, nervous energy oozing from his stride.

Clark focused past the walls and into the warmth of the room. Orange from the fire, red from the stained glass, yellow sun from the high windows. Lex moved in and out of the patterns of light. He had a glass in his hand, a thick, grey sweater - - faded blue denim with a familiar hole in the knee. Familiar worn seams clinging to the line of Lex's legs. Clark's hand me downs.

Clark swallowed, almost losing his focus, things going skeletal and layered before he concentrated and got the finer points of his vision back on line. Before Tuesday morning, when Lex had been limping out of Clark's house, he wasn't sure if he remembered ever seeing Lex in jeans before - - Lex didn't do jeans and t-shirts and casual Smallville attire. But there he was, stalking about his study wearing Clark's old Levi's and it was simply, unaccountably - - hot.

"Shit." Clark turned around, putting his back to the wall, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, trying to get the image out of his head. There was no way, no possible way he'd ever worn those jeans the way Lex did. The soft cling of wear-thinned fabric to long, lean thighs, the pale glimpse of knee through the rip in the leg - - the hole in the back pocket over - -

God. His own jeans were getting far too tight. He looked down to confirm and even standing here alone, it was embarrassing. He cursed it, under his breath and told it to go away, but it was still centered on the idea of Lex in his jeans - - of Lex walking the way Lex always walked, wearing 'his' jeans. And it was the most ridiculous thing ever that he was standing against the side of the mansion with a boner. He wasn't fifteen anymore, and plagued with raging hormones that triggered these sorts of things at the brush of a strong breeze.

The need to get out of there became pressing, even if running superspeed with a hard-on wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world. It wasn't like he was going to be confronting Lex today anyway. Not and keep what was left of his dignity.

So he got home in seconds flat and leaned against the corner of the barn, secure in the solitude of the farm, his breath forming furious little clouds before his face. He wasn't out of breath, but he was breathing hard and there was nothing to do but rub his hand over the bulge in his pants, because it didn't seem to want to go down on its own and it was insistent to the point of discomfort, almost.

Harder - - the scrub of cotton boxers and the inside seam of his zipper pressing against his cock felt like the scraping teeth of heaven. He shut his eyes and knocked his head back against the wood, thinking about Lois's breasts against his arm this afternoon, and Chloe's mouth and God - - God, it wasn't enough to wash away Lex's ass in Clark's jeans and his legs - -

He came, sticky and hot inside his shorts, and hissed through his teeth after the pressure went away and he could breath again, and walk again without feeling like he was going to poke a hole in his jeans.

In all honesty, Clark couldn't say it wasn't the first time Lex had ever crossed his mind while he was masturbating, but it had been an awfully long time and even then it had been embarrassing. The only bright spot was that his mother wasn't home to inquire why he needed to change pants in the middle of the day.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow he'd try to talk to Lex again, when Lex would hopefully be wearing normal, tailored clothes not likely to cause spontaneous erections.

Now, he just needed to get his priorities straight. Get a little work done about the farm - - or maybe take a break from it all for an hour or two and take a spin about the globe. God knew he needed something to drain off pent up frustration that was obviously effecting more than his mental state. Maybe he'd head up to the Fortress where it was cold enough that he actually could feel the chill on his skin. Cold right now would be a very good thing.

The drink didn't dull the perplexity. Not even in mass. It took the edge off though. It always took the edge off. If not for the advantage of meteor enhanced biology, Lex thought his liver might have been well on its way to early retirement.

No one had ever bothered to suggest his alcohol consumption teetered on the edge of addiction, not even Lana and god knew he'd increased the intake during the last few months of their marriage - - but then she hadn't really cared at that point. And no one else would have had the courage to mention it. Clark maybe, if they'd still been friends.

But of course, when they'd been friends, the need hadn't been so intense. Then it had just been the pull of the normal, everyday tension of being a Luthor. The stress of having Lionel as a father.

Now - - well, there was a price to knowing the things he knew, and doing the things that needed doing.

It wasn't like he allowed himself the luxury of actually getting drunk on more than very special occasions. It wasn't as if it were easy for him to reach that point - - aforementioned enhanced metabolism a definite killjoy when it came to recreational substances.

He'd spent the day fighting distraction - - fighting the urge to turn things over in his head and discover the worms underneath. His mind kept drifting back to Mueller and what Mueller did for him with a vague sense of quizzical repulsion that was simply foreign. And if he thought too hard about it, delved too deeply, the unease would spider outwards, tangled roots from a central hub - - This problem had been eradicated because it had become a hindrance in the operation of that venture which protected this facility which had honestly been created to study a dangerous curiosity - - to alleviate a known threat - - not become one in and of itself.

So he'd finished off the brandy and in lieu of sending one of the staff down to get a fresh bottle, had started in on the vodka.

And somewhere around a quarter bottle into that, he'd started thinking about Clark - - and that strip of hard belly visible when he'd been asleep in the chair and how soft his lips looked in repose - - like a woman's almost, full and dark with natural rouge. And he'd used to have the most explicit fantasies about that mouth and what it could do for him. To him - -

Fucking ungrateful bastard. All of Lex's efforts - - wasted - - discarded like so much rubbish, because Clark didn't understand the simple need for pragmatism. He hated Clark because he was oblivious to the pain he created and yet he was willing to condemn. Clark who he'd protected - - who he still protected, even though part of him wanted to destroy - - to devastate Clark. And he could have so easily - - a phone call - - as simple as calling Mueller and erasing a problem - -

If Clark only knew the impulses Lex had denied for him - -

He'd felt the need to share this information some point after dark - - but not wearing Clark's clothes - - God, he wasn't so far gone that he was willing to share that little moment of weakness, so he'd changed and gone down into the garage and pulled the cover off the Porsche, letting it flutter to the concrete in a waft of dust particles. He'd neglected her too long, content to be chauffeured about like a fledgling imitation of his father. Fuck Lionel.

He got in the car, headed out of the castle grounds and into rural America.

It was just before seven, the sky blanketed with clouds that made the evening darker than it ought to be, that insulated the air with a sense of moist cold that might be the herald of more early snow or simply cold, cold rain.

Clark was at the kitchen table, when he heard the sound of a car taking the drive too fast, tires spitting gravel outside as it pulled to a short stop. He had the dregs of cold Campbell's soup in a cup, the crumbs of grilled cheese on a napkin and his laptop open before him in preparation of doing a little research of his own.

Through the kitchen door he could see the sleek shape of a car in the darkness, headlights illuminating the fine mist that saturated the air, engine purring quietly. It was still running when Clark walked out onto the porch and stood on the steps warily. Even if there had been an abundance of criminally expensive Porches navigating the roads of Smallville, this one still would have been familiar. Lex used to drive it all the time, the car he'd always end up coming back to, after he'd gotten over the allure of new acquisitions. Clark hadn't seen him in it in a while.

It didn't look as if he was planning on getting out of it now, and Clark wasn't sure if that were a good thing or not. Him showing up at the mansion, intruding upon Lex's personal space was one thing, Lex showing up in his domain was another. It made him bristle a little defensively and want to walk over and tap on the window to suggest Lex call before showing up on Kent property.

Only, maybe he didn't mind so much tonight as he might have, this afternoon's embarrassing moment aside, and he was curious. So he walked across the yard, feeling the very fine mist on his skin and rapped once on the window. It slid down, breaking the buffer between the quiet of the night and the low beat of the music throbbing from at least a half dozen strategically placed speakers.

Lex didn't look up at him, one hand on the wheel, eyes forward, staring towards an empty field.

"Should you be out roaming the roads without security?" Clark asked, instead of the blunter inquiry of what he was doing here and what he wanted.

Maybe Lex had been expecting the latter, because he leaned his head back against the headrest with an aborted laugh. "I have security."

Clark bent a little to look into the shadowed interior of the car. Nothing there but Lex, but Lex, upon closer inspection, had the dense shape of a gun in his coat pocket. There was also the subtle scent of alcohol about him.

"Should you even be driving?" Clark asked, and Lex's mouth tightened. He looked up, meeting Clark's eyes, his own hidden in the shadows.

"You called me. Said it was important? What?"

Clark had. He hadn't expected a personal visit. "It could have waited till tomorrow."

"Well, that would be a first with you, wouldn't it? I didn't think you were capable of waiting when an urge struck?"

"Did you drive over here to insult me, Lex?"

"If I were insulting you, you'd know it - -" Lex started, then canted his head, a humorless smile touching his lips. "Well, maybe 'you' wouldn't."

If he dragged Lex out of the car and shook him, Clark wondered if he'd get an answer out of him that didn't involve verbal abuse.

Lex cut the ignition, pushed the door against Clark's legs and Clark stepped back to give it space to swing open. It was a relief of sorts that Lex had changed clothes. Back to his normal fashionable chic, even if the shirt was untucked and showing skin four buttons down.

He moved past Clark, the slightest waver in his gait, the mist sheening the pale skin of his head. Something was wrong. Clark could feel it. The way Lex shoved his hands in his pockets to hide the trembling. The distant look in his eyes. He'd heard the hint of it in his voice today, but the addition of god knew how much alcohol made it more pronounced.

"Lex?" he asked warily. "Did something happen?"

"Yes," Lex said simply and stood there, in the beams of his headlights, staring at nothing. Then he shook his head and retracted the admission. "No. I just came to see what you wanted. I was rude on the phone."

Clark let out a breath of disbelief. "I wanted to ask why you didn't tell me the man Lana met in the pictures worked for old friends of yours?"

Lex didn't answer for a moment, then he turned, the ghost of an ironic smile on his lips. "Why should I? Your sources of information seem more than adequate."

"Because you said you would and I'm holding you to it." Clark said it levelly, absolutely dead serious and Lex lifted his brows in something that might have been actual surprise.

"That's touching. Really."

Lex was drunk enough, Clark thought, that there might have been as much honest truth as sarcasm in that statement. Lex was also drunk enough, that he probably barely noticed the gradual permeation of water into clothing.

"If you want to stand in the rain, stand in the rain." Clark started towards the house, leaving Lex in the drive, but making an offer he wouldn't have considered a month ago - - hell, he wouldn't have considered it a week ago. "Otherwise, there's an actual roof and coffee in the kitchen."

Which Lex needed about a gallon of, but Clark wisely didn't mention.

Lex stood there, while Clark clomped up the steps and scraped the mud off his boots on the welcome mat, then started moving towards the house.

"Headlights," Clark called and Lex stopped mid-stride, rocking a little in his tracks like balance wasn't quite his friend, then returned to kill the lights.

When Lex came into the house, stopping just inside the kitchen door, Clark had already closed the laptop and stood with his hip against the kitchen table, wondering how much of a fool he really was. Lex was dangerous because he was beautiful, and determined and manipulating and capable of so many terrible things and Clark wanted to believe it hadn't all been his fault. Not this last year. Clark wanted to believe that the remnants of the monster who'd destroyed one world and tried to demolish another had tainted Lex and that now that it was gone - - maybe.

He didn't even know what he was hoping for or why it made a difference because Lex had damn sure been toying with the idea of playing God before Zod - - but still, there'd been a difference. Just maybe there was something salvageable.

Which brought him back to being a fool. And a fanciful one at that. He thought about Lex in his jeans, and Lex mostly naked and smooth when he'd put him to bed - - and had to turn and fumble after a cup in the cabinet and poured coffee from the instant machine on the counter.

"Black right?" Even though he knew that's how Lex took it. He knew so many little details about Lex, so many little likes and dislikes and confidences shared - - because they'd used to talk. Aside from certain dark secrets they both kept buried, they'd used to share confidences.

"I'm fine," Lex said.

Clark took a breath, and turned around to meet his eyes. Lex's face was pale beneath the sheen of rain, eyes dark and unreadable, like he'd gathered his calm between the car and the kitchen and was holding on to it for dear life.

"So why didn't you tell me you found out who the man was?" Clark asked point blank.

Lex walked into the kitchen, trailing fingers along the back of the closest chair. "I just found out." He paused, looked up at Clark speculatively and amended. "A few days ago. It slipped my mind that I was supposed to report to you."

"Right," Clark said. Nothing ever slipped Lex's mind. "So, is there a connection? Between these old friends of yours and - - what happened?"

Lex lifted a brow at Clark's inability to say it. Lana's murder. So Clark looked away, tightening his mouth while Lex mulled over an answer.

"I haven't found that out yet," Lex finally admitted. "And they're not friends. They were never friends."

"No? What were they? There are an awful lot of pictures of you guys hanging out."

Lex circled the table, long fingers still trailing the edges. "Have you been surfing the net, Clark? You can't believe everything you read, you ought to know that."

"And pictures speak a thousand words. What, did you have a bad break up with the sister?"

Lex reached the counter next to him, fingers turning the cup of coffee Clark had poured for him. "I thought you didn't like hearing about my sordid affairs? I seem to remember a sermon - -"

"Lex." Clark gave him a look, and Lex smiled wryly, shifting enough that his hip brushed Clark's and even through layers of damp wool and denim, Clark 'felt' it.

"I never fucked her," Lex said bluntly. Then he turned, facing Clark, close enough that Clark could see the blue and the green fighting for dominance in his eyes. "I honestly don't believe anyone other than Niko Daniakos has ever fucked Sophia. But she would watch, while he fucked me. Is that the sort of detail you wanted to hear, Clark?"

Clark took a breath, not even beginning to know how to deal with that, and Lex never took his eyes from his face. Just watched with that predatory, hungry look, like he wanted to devour every nuance of Clark's reaction. Like he wanted to shock and dismay.

"Would you like to hear the particulars?"

"No," Clark said, mouth gone dry. He could imagine well enough. Too well, and he wanted the imagery out of his head, even while some baser part of his intellect kept drawing it up. He moistened his lips, and Lex broke eye contact, gaze flickering down.

"Hmm," Lex sounded almost disappointed.

"Do you think they had something to do with it, Lex? Is the blood that bad between you?"

"I destroyed the jewel in their family crown." Lex shrugged indifferently, as if it were nothing. "Ripped it apart and sold the pieces I wasn't interested in off to competitors or salvage. Yes, the blood is bad. No, I have no idea the connection. Yet. But, honestly, if they'd a hand in orchestrating it, I'd imagine they'd have done a better job of setting me up. Same reason I never suspected my father's hand in it. I'd be behind bars now if anyone competent had planned it."

"Then who?" Clark exclaimed. "And why?" He drove a fist down in frustration and the cupboards rattled. He was lucky he didn't dent the countertop. The hurt of not knowing was almost sharper now than the duller ache of her being gone.

Lex shook his head, the calculated indifference fading from his eyes. He swallowed, looking past Clark to the array of magnets and keepsakes stuck to the refrigerator door. "You know - - no matter the who or the why - - it was probably because of me. Something I'd done or someone I'd - - hurt."

Clark drew a breath, trying to steady his hands. "You've hurt a lot of people, Lex."

"I know."

He wasn't certain if he'd ever heard Lex admit it before. He wasn't sure Lex meant to now, but there was something distant and a little lost in his look, which he shook off with a shiver of black clad shoulders and looked back up at Clark with a crooked twitch of the mouth. "Most of them even deserved it."

Condemnation wanted to bubble up, like an old familiar friend, only Lex looked like he was waiting for it, and that threw Clark off the game.

Lex's pocket rang. Clark started. Lex reached in for his phone, checked the number and flicked his eyes up to Clark mildly.

"I have to take this." He walked towards the kitchen door with the phone to his ear. He waited till he was outside on the porch before answering, but Clark didn't need to close the distance to hear the voice on the other end of the line and he felt absolutely no shame in eavesdropping.

"Talk to me," Lex said.

"We've found the Greeks, sir."

"Where?"

"New York. We have eyes on them."

"Have the plane ready. I'm flying out tonight."

He severed the connection, slipping the phone back in his pocket and starting down the steps towards his car without a backward look or an explanation.

Clark stalked out onto the porch, clenching his fists in irritation. "Where are you going?"

Lex hesitated, turning in the soft rain to look back at Clark. "Business," He said smoothly. "Did you need my itinerary?"

"You're lying," Clark said, a growl of frustration lacing the accusation.

Lex lifted a brow, patently false amusement on his face. "I might take offense at that - -"

"If you weren't lying through your teeth." Clark cut in.

"- - If I didn't know how uptight you are over this unfortunate situation." Lex finished without missing a beat.

The desire to shake him reared up again - - or to press him against the wall and force something resembling truth from his lips.

"Anything more solid than speculation," Lex said over his shoulder. "I will let you know."

Part ten

There was a two-hour delay getting off the ground due to weather that had decided to put a dent in Lex's plans. Which meant, by the time he drove the two and half hours to the airport outside Metropolis and impatiently paced the private terminal waiting for air traffic control to clear the LuthorCorp jet for take off, it was after midnight when he finally got into the air.

The delays, the lack of sleep and the fact that though scotch never left him with anything more than fond memories, vodka inevitably made his head pound, put him in less than a tolerant mood when they finally sat down at LaGuardia. Being told by his people, upon arrival, that they'd lost track of the Twins, didn't improve the mood.

"Sir, we followed them though half of Manhattan, but our people couldn't get into the last club they entered and they never came back out - - at least through the front entrance."

"Where are they staying?" He suppressed the urge to rail at the man for not having the credentials to gain entrance to what was no doubt one of the cities more exclusive clubs. There were simply some places you didn't get into unless your face was plastered on the front of magazines or movie screens or your bank account had a ridiculous number of zeros attached.

"They have a yacht at harbor - - the Dionysia. But they haven't returned to it."

Par for the course, if the Twin's habits were anything like they'd been when Lex had known them - - and from all indications, they'd changed little over the years - - to the ruination of their father's empire. But if drugs and sex and notoriety were all they craved, then the remainder of the Daniakos fortune would easily supply them a lifetime's worth of debauchery. Unless they'd been plying their hands at fucking with Lex's life - - in which case he might have something to say about the length of those lifetimes - - or the stability of Daniakos prosperity.

Lex pinched the bridge of his nose, willing the headache to recede. It didn't seem inclined to take orders.

The ride through Queens to the Queensboro Bridge and into Manhattan was quiet and relatively traffic free at three a.m. and there wasn't a damned thing to do, without a bead on his quarry but check into the hotel and wait till they showed. Which very well might not be till after the clubs opened again and they were back out on the prowl.

He got a suite at the Mandarin Oriental, his lodging of choice when visiting New York, and someone's reservation probably got bumped in their eagerness to accommodate him. He got an executive suite with a Central park view. Clean white furniture with rich mahogany trim and windows that looked out over the twilight vista of upper Manhattan.

The bar was fully stocked and he considered it for a moment, before dismissing the urge, wandering into the bedroom and letting himself collapse into softness. He lay there for a while, the room spinning a little behind closed lids, the cool, processed hotel air clearing his head.

The gun in his pocket poked against his hip, and with a sigh, he sat up, shrugging out of the coat, tossing it across the chair opposite the bed. He toed off his shoes and scooted back against pillows, not particularly caring if he fell asleep in his clothes. He'd have them pressed in the morning and maybe go to Bodaro's and pick up a change of clothing while he was waiting for word on the Twins. He hadn't been to Bodaro's in a long time, or John James in the Garmet district.

He should have stopped and packed a bag - - or called and had one delivered - - he'd had the time, after all with the weather delays. But his focus had been off - - or too narrowed - - he wasn't sure which, and the minor details that he usually paid so much attention to, had been overlooked. It was distracting, the subtle feeling of something fractured - - but not.

The rain on Clark's dark hair had sparkled like diamond dust. The image came out of nowhere. Stayed with him while he lay there, melting into fine hotel linen. If he put his hands in it, the shards would melt away like snow - - absorbed by Clark's heat, because Lex's fingers were cold - -

He blinked - - light filling his vision from floor to ceiling windows that he hadn't bothered to pull the shades on when nothing but darkness graced the other side. Someone was knocking on the door, and his people would have called before coming up and hotel staff wouldn't have dared interrupt a guest in their room, unsummoned - - and even then they wouldn't be insistent about it.

Lex twisted his wrist around to look at the time. 9 o'clock. Sharp. Almost six hours sleep had cleared his head, but he still had the taste of a day old binge in his mouth. And whoever was beating on his door was going to lose a job or gain a problem.

He slipped on his shoes, thought about tucking in the shirt, but it was rumpled enough that it would hardly matter and he wasn't out to impress people on his shit list.

He stalked through the suite and snatched the door open. Stood there a second looking at an annoyed looking Clark Kent before slamming it shut in his face.

How the hell - -? It was just damned annoying - - beyond annoying and well into infuriating - - how Clark always ended up exactly in the places Lex least expected and most certainly didn't want him. Clark was supposed to be tilling fields and sowing seeds in fucking Smallville - - not showing up at his doorstep in the most exclusive hotel in Manhattan. How had he even known? Who on Lex's staff could have slipped the information? Some advocate of Lana's, doling out information on the side? Had he followed him to the airport? In his truck, at the speeds Lex had been going down a rain slick highway? Unlikely?

Lex made it to the bar, before turning on his heel with a smothered curse and heading back to the door. He opened it again to Clark's glower and forced his own expression into one of barely controlled neutrality.

"How did you get here?" Which wasn't necessarily the right question, but Clark got under his skin in a way no boardroom adversary ever had.

"You're the only one allowed to fly?" Clark retorted with just enough surliness in his voice to make Lex think he probably had spent the last few hours with his big body crammed into the cheap seats of a commuter plane.

Lex rethought his line of questioning. "How did you find me?"

Clark shrugged, a little more uncomfortable with that one, and countered with a prying question of his own. "Have you talked to them, yet?"

Lex wanted to snap that it wasn't Clark's business and for him to back off - - but, they'd already covered that ground and Lex had been drunk then too and agreed to something he shouldn't have.

Clark disrupted his calm badly enough sober; he really needed to stop encountering him three sheets to the wind. How the hell had he overheard? But then, Lex used to have a room full of answers about Clark that he didn't know the proper questions to. Or was that the other way around? Sometimes the questions and answers surrounding Clark ran muddied in his head.

"I don't know what you think you know, but you've wasted a trip. Go home, Clark."

"No."

If he'd had hair - - Clark would have had him pulling it out in frustration. The idea of yanking on Clark's and using it as a handle to slam his head repeatedly against the wall was an attractive one.

"What are you hiding, Lex?"

"Many, many things. You go first and we'll start spilling secrets." Clark glared.

Maybe it was simply habit, too long ingrained, that dictated he keep his secrets close, whether they were incriminating or not. Maybe it was just Clark. But having this debate - - especially when Clark had no concept of voice modulation - - halfway in the hall of the Mandarin Oriental was in decidedly poor taste.

He grabbed one flannel sleeve and pulled Clark across the thresh hold. Clark stepped into the room grudgingly and Lex shut the door behind him. They protected the privacy of their guests ferociously here, so how Clark had discovered his room number was another mystery.

"So, have you talked to them yet?" Clark repeated.

Lex gave him a look, wondering how he'd even gotten upstairs dressed like he'd just walked in out of the field. Mud spattered jeans and blue flannel were the sort of thing that stood out in upscale Manhattan locales.

"No. How did you know I'd found them at all?"

Clark chewed his lip - - no small bit distracting to see the corner of a full lower lip sucked into Clark's mouth - - and finally declared stubbornly. "I heard part of your conversation - - I could see it on your face."

Which was a horrifying thought, that he could be so transparent that Clark, who was undeniably intelligent and bright, but often painfully unobservant about the important things, could decipher the whys and wherefores of this trip from one side of a phone conversation and a misplaced expression.

"While I'm impressed by your powers of deduction, Clark - - if I had needed your help or wanted it, I would have asked. When I said I'd let you know if I found out any pertinent information, I meant it. Clearly, I haven't found out any yet. If you feel outside of the loop -- well, I'm sorry, but it's not your loop."

Lex moved into the bedroom, ignoring the glare, reaching for his phone inside his jacket pocket. Clark trailed behind him, stopping at the doorway, eyes drawn to the fantastic view of Central park and the towering monoliths of grey flanking the red and oranges of fall foliage. He wondered idly if this was Clark's first time in New York. Certainly seeing it from this view had to be a first for him.

Lex checked for voice mails, listened to his man in the city report that the Daniakos had not returned to the yacht and that there was still no sign. Lex wasn't concerned. As long as the boat was in harbor, they'd be in the city and as long as they were in the city, they were predictable. They'd stick to routine. He'd find them tonight.

"What are you going to do, Lex?" Clark asked, tearing his gaze away from the windowscape and fixing it on Lex.

"Buy you a return ticket home. I'll even spring for Business."

Clark kept staring, not amused.

Lex considered having him bodily thrown out. Maybe even physically put on a plane home - - only he doubted Clark would go easily and Clark's unique durability was no less pronounced than his absolute, infuriating doggedness.

Clark would be pissed and it occurred to Lex, that there'd been a sort of dtente between them recently - - an odd, fragile cessation of overt hostilities - - and strangely enough he found the thought of destroying it disagreeable.

"Lex, if you thought this was nothing - - that these people had nothing to do with - - her - - you wouldn't have hopped on a plane and flown out here in the middle of the night. So stop trying to pretend its nothing."

Lex turned, expecting the glower and got something more imploring. Got Clark tired of the fencing and looking at him for something he hadn't wanted to give in a long time - - honesty. That Clark thought he might give it was unsettling. That Lex had the need to provide it made his head ache a little.

"We've lost track of them," he said shortly. "But they'll be out tonight and word will get around because they like to make entrances. I'll have people watching the places they're most likely to go."

"And then?" Clark's eyes were fixed on him. Big. Intent. Leaf green in the bright morning light flooding the room through the windows. There had been times when Clark used to look at him and his mind would blank, all his finely honed grasp of language stalled when confronted with the statistical improbability that nature, left to its own devices could come up with something so lacking in imperfections.

He almost fell into the trap now, but pulled himself back from the brink. "Then I go and have a talk with them."

"We." Clark amended.

Lex felt the inclination to laugh and stifled it. Looked Clark up and down instead, from the worn workman's boots to the flannel, a bit of thread unraveling from a tear at the seam in the shoulder, missing a button, two from the bottom. Repeated the look because - - well, there was simply a lot of Clark to take in.

"When I go looking for clues at the Wild Coyote, you'll fit right in. They won't let you past the door at the Marquee. I believe there's a rule against plaid - - unless kilts or mini-skirts are involved."

Clark lifted a brow, miraculously not offended back onto a glare.

"And which will you be wearing?" Clark asked, deadpan.

"Well, the Luthor's are Scottish - -" There was a rhythm to both verbal sparring and flirtation that was almost identical, and Lex fell into it without missing a beat. "And I've been told I have nice legs."

Clark's eyes flicked down the length of the aforementioned legs, then back up with an accompanying blush.

Lex lifted an eyebrow of his own, waiting for the comeback that would allow the dance to continue. But Clark had his mind on other things - - things connected to the blush - - and he had seen Lex's legs recently, as well as the rest of him, so he probably had an opinion.

Lex would have given quite a bit to know what it was, but he settled on being satisfied with the blush. The ability to make Clark color had never failed to please.

Not that it had ever been a feat, to tweak the modesty of a sheltered Kansas farm boy and twenty-one was not so far a reach from sixteen when you took into account the lack of social life - - limited sexual experience and the tendency to fixate on things he couldn't have. At twenty-one, compared to Clark, Lex had been a jaded, world-wise ancient.

"I didn't come - - Stop trying - - I'm going." Clark fumbled after words, flustered or angry, possibly both, big hands flexing at his side like he didn't quite know what to do with them. It was fascinating. Riveting, actually and Lex shrugged lazily, feeling a certain sense of control settle back into place and needing to keep it.

"Far be it for me to discourage you from trying then."

He decided on momentary mercy and let Clark off the hook by breaking the stare and picking up the hotel line by the bed. He requested laundry service then strolled towards the bath, unbuttoning his shirt as he went. He finished undressing on the cool imported tiles of the bathroom floor, noted with satisfaction that every blemish and bruise had faded. Aside from the faint reminder of healing ribs, he was entirely whole. Physically. He frowned at the metaphorical little voice that reminded him of that.

Clark was loitering at the bedroom door, not quite knowing what to do with himself, now that he'd cemented his intrusion into Lex's business - - not quite knowing what Lex was up to. Lex stepped to the edge of the bathroom door and tossed the crumpled ball of clothing at Clark.

"When they come to pick up the clothes, tell them to have them back within the hour. I'll be showering."

Clark gaped. His eyes went straight down Lex's body, widening, like a child without the manners to avert his stare politely from a physical defect, the blush going from pink to bright red, his lips parting a little as he clutched the clothes.

And honestly it had been a ploy, a little power play to unsettle Clark and Lex loved to put an adversary off balance, thrived on it - - but he hadn't quite expected that blatant, wide-eyed stare. There were old issues that reared up now and then, body issues that a man couldn't help having when he was bare as a ten year old below the belt.

He nodded slightly, a casual assertion that he was in no way flustered, that he had in no way made a miscalculation in tactics, and stepped back into the bath, shutting the door behind him.

Well, that worked out wonderfully. He leaned there for a moment, eyes shut, before he allowed the ghost of a grim smile to cross his lips. At the very least he'd probably assured that Clark's stay would be an uncomfortable one, though he doubted even a little calculated nudity would throw him off the trail. Lex cut the water on, determined to take a very long, very leisurely shower. Clark could sit out there and look at the skyline for all he cared - - or raid the well-stocked kitchenette - - or the bar. Maybe sulking on the couch, slouched back, knees spread, pouting. Clark had lips designed to carry a pout. Designed maybe for other things. A few years ago if he'd had Clark alone in a hotel room half a country away from Smallville Kansas - -

No. No. No. He was not prepared to go down that road this morning. Not in the shower with the beginnings of an erection that had nothing to do with Clark - - honestly - - it was simple habit. Spending the last few weeks of his marriage not sleeping with his wife had dictated manual relief.

Clark wasn't in the equation - - except that he was. He always was, one way or another, whether Lex was visualizing him on his knees in abject defeat or on his knees giving head, Clark always had a place in the fantasy.

He sighed, giving in to the whimsy, stroking himself - - hand on soap-slick skin. There was an art to being quick and deft - - when he sought relief because it was the body's imperative instead of something sensual - - he wanted to find that distance now, with Clark a room away - - but in the same vein, Clark was a room away. He shut his eyes against the spray of warm water and blanked his mind, finding that place where only sensation counted for a few blissful minutes.

After that, he felt saner. Even the little niggling sense of unease that had been plaguing him since the most recent collapse had receded. The water sluiced down his body, taking the evidence with it and after a few minutes he added more soap and helped finish the job.

The mirrors were fogged when he finally stepped out, but the heat from the overhead lights had warmed the floor tiles, and the towels were thick and soft. He took his time drying off, calculating time spent. Not nearly as much passed as he'd have liked - - not enough to have really irritated Clark. But still, there was nothing to do, but put on the snowy white robe hanging on the bathroom door and walk back out into the cool air of the suite.

The bedroom, of course, was Clark free, so he snagged his watch and his cell and strolled into the living room. Clark was standing close enough to the windows that his breath created faint traces of fog. The fingertips of one hand touched the glass, splayed with the strangest hint of delicacy considering the size of the hand.

Lex stared for a moment, snared by the inconsistency, blinked and contemplated seeing if the quality scotch offered by the Mandarin was still as high as he remembered. But no, it was before ten and - - simply, no.

"Have you been to New York before?" he asked instead, slipping on his watch and fastening the catch.

Clark turned to look at him, a quick flash of the eyes taking him in, a bobbing of the Adam's apple as he swallowed. "No."

"It's a nice time of year to visit. Winter's not bad. Summer is intolerable."

"You've been here a lot."

Lex wasn't sure if it were a question. Clark was looking back over the park, where it was safe.

"When I was younger. We used to have a place - - over there," Lex indicated the rise of buildings to the right, exclusive, multi-million dollar apartments overlooking the park. "My father lost it in a bet, though he'd never admit it. He never got around to acquiring a new residence, but then he was never much for New York. Probably why I visited so often."

Clark was looking at him again, curious, a little uncomfortable, but not hostile. Minus the anger and the coiled tension that had seemed so much a part of him of late, he looked younger. Like he was supposed to look, instead of like someone trying to hold the weight of the world on their shoulders at all of twenty-one. It was bad enough trying when you were twenty-seven - - a losing proposition, because there was never enough of you to go around. And where had that pragmatism been when he'd been ignoring all the warning signs in the world of woman's discontent and running LexCorp into the ground, pursuing goals and pushing timetables that were unrealistic? And didn't that sound like something Lionel would say, which left an unpleasant, unsettled feeling in the back of his mind.

"What happened here, between you and them on their boat, that your father covered up?" Clark asked.

Lex felt his pulse skip a beat. He remembered why he hadn't been back to New York in a long time, now. Remembered flashes of things that Clark did not want to know about. Or maybe it was him, that didn't want Clark knowing.

"I sat it on fire with a flare gun. Minimal damages. They were able to take it home." Which was only truth. If he'd had been able to get his hands on a real gun at the time, there might have been manslaughter charges instead of easily paid off arson and property damage ones.

"Why?" Clark asked. Of course Clark asked.

"I thought you didn't want to know the particulars." Lex smiled coldly with absolutely no intention of answering. He flipped open his phone instead and arranged for a car, while Clark chewed the inside of his cheek, perhaps using his imagination to fill in blanks on his own. As if Clark's imagination was sordid enough to come close to the truth.

Room service tapped on the door as he hung up, delivering his freshly laundered clothes. They'd made good time and he gave the boy the type of tip that guaranteed impeccable service in the future.

He took the bag into the bedroom, away from Clark's quiet speculation. Came back out pressed and immaculate, with his coat over one arm.

"I'm going out," he said, striding for the door, even as Clark hastily rose from one of the chairs by the window. "You can come, if you want."

He phrased it indifferently, as if Clark's presence mattered very little to him, one way or another. And honestly, it shouldn't have. But he felt a warm peal of satisfaction - - he might, if he were feeling particularly candid, even say relief - - when Clark stomped across the floor to catch the door before it swung shut behind him, and trailed down the elegant hall on his heels.

Lex was a son of a bitch. Not that Clark hadn't discovered and become accustomed to this fact for some time now - - it was just that he hadn't been close enough recently to be personally impacted. There was a difference between suspecting culpability in some unsanctioned research project or subtly rubbing the fact that he was dating/marrying/doing Clark's ex in his face, and stepping boldly forward, blithely unconcerned and blowing Clark's mind. Shaking the foundations of Clark's fundamental beliefs like he might uproot the board of some recently subjugated company.

It wouldn't have even been an event worth reminiscing about - - if Clark could have stopped reminiscing. It wasn't like he hadn't seen another guy's package before - - he had gone through four years of high school gym, after all. He'd never once looked at Pete and - - well, not been able to look away. And Pete had been damned impressive in that department and proud of it. And that was the sort of thing a man might appreciate - - or envy, or be proud to surpass - - and not feel like he was veering into the realm of unacceptable.

Not that Lex hadn't been impressive - - just not so much as Pete had been or Clark - - but then Pete had always sworn up and down that Clark was a freak and once he knew about the alien thing, he'd been smugly assured as to the validity of that claim. Lex had just been - - perfect and cut and - - pretty, the skin of his cock as pale and smooth as the naked flesh surrounding it. Probably softer to the touch - - and wasn't that a mortifying notion.

Lois's breasts, soft and round with infinite cleavage. The way Lana used to bit her lower lip, the hint of teeth and tongue. The swell of Chloe's hips - - the sharp jut of Lex's - - sleek muscle over bone angling down towards the juncture of his legs and all that smooth, hairless skin, and his pretty, pretty cock. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it!!

The worst thing - - the absolute most embarrassing facet of the whole thing was that he honestly didn't think he'd met Lex's eyes or looked at his face the whole time he was standing there in the bathroom doorway. He hadn't been able to tear his gaze up past his waist and Lex had to have noticed. Lex didn't miss the little things, much less the painfully obvious. Dumbass.

He called himself a few other choice names while he listened to the sound of the shower running and kept his gaze fixedly glued to the city outside the window, because God knew what he might be tempted to look at if he let himself turn around and stare at the wall separating rooms.

All because Lex was a bastard, who wasn't happy unless he was pushing somebody's buttons.

And then he'd come out all fresh from the shower, snug in a hotel robe, smug in his own absolute calm and started small talk. Clark supposed it could have been worse. He could have come out with a towel wrapped around his hips and not spoken at all - - and God only knew how Clark might have embarrassed himself then.

So he found himself following Lex through the lobby of what had to be an outrageously expensive hotel. And the bellhop or concierge or whatever opened the brass doors for them and told Lex the car would be there shortly, as if the man were heartbroken that it wasn't out there waiting for them now.

He'd followed Lex here from the airport, after beating the LuthorCorp Jet by a long, long shot. The city had been sleeping then, the traffic no worse than Metropolis at night. He could hear it now, outside the barrier of the hotel drive. The rumble of a thousand thousand engines, the squeal of tires, the crash of rumpled fenders and broken headlights, the cries of irate drivers.

A car pulled up, as sleek and expensive as anything Lex had ever driven - - and yellow. Bright yellow. A man in a suit got out, came around the car with a clipboard and the concierge met him and waved him towards Lex. There were apologies for making Lex wait all of five minutes, and Lex signed something and strolled around to the driver's side of the car.

It was a Ferrari. Clark recognized the little horse logo on the front. He snatched the door open when Lex gunned the engine, slipping in before he could peel off without him.

"It's yellow," Clark observed, because, well, he'd never seen Lex drive anything yellow before. Lex liked blacks and silvers, and blue-grays. He didn't do colors that verged on neon. Though, Clark sort of liked it.

Lex flicked his eyes towards him, and cut out into traffic. Clark didn't ask where they were going, just looked up at the buildings that they passed, and at the people on the street and thought that New York was not that much different than Metropolis. Bigger. From what he'd seen on the way in, it seemed to sprawl forever. Clark didn't ask about landmarks, even though he wanted to, and Lex didn't offer explanations even though Clark knew he loved to play tour guide, which made the air vibrate with all the almost moments of broken silence.

They moved into the traffic of 7th Avenue. There were a lot of nice cars mixed in with the battered taxies. A lot of nicely dressed people mixed in with t-shirts and second hand jackets, on the street. Storefronts were polished and sleek and just reeked of the expensive things inside. Lex found a Ferrari sized space on the side of the street and backed the car into the spot.

"Will you feed that?" Lex spoke for the first time since they'd gotten into the car, and Clark looked at the meter and dug into his pockets for change. He had to assume Lex had nothing but plastic and large bills. He dropped two quarters in and figured if they stopped anywhere else that required coinage to park, he'd have to get change.

Lex was heading towards a store with male mannequins in the windows, sporting an assortment of casual chic.

"You're going clothes shopping?" Clark asked, standing on the sidewalk and blocking the smooth flow of pedestrian traffic.

Inexplicably enough, it seemed that Lex was. Clark took a breath and followed him into the store.

Lex hadn't gotten a dozen steps into the sore and already had someone fawning over him. Clark walked into the door and immediately had a turtleneck sweatered salesman looking down his nose at him as if he were a vagrant come in off the street. Clark narrowed his eyes a little back at the guy, stuffed his hands into his pockets and shuffled into the store. It smelled really good inside, and there was music with a sort of weird, acoustic tempo oozing out into the air from hidden speakers. The floors were all real wood and polished, but there were rustic brick columns, original probably to the building that they'd left unfinished to give the place that contradiction in terms sort of look. There was a pool table right out in the middle of the floor and a collection of leather couches and chairs that nobody was sitting at. The racks of clothes were along the sides in little well lit cubbies and every customer seemed to have their own private salesperson.

"Can I help you?" the turtleneck with the attitude asked, sounding as if he sincerely doubted there was anything Clark could possibly afford in this store. Which was probably true.

"No," Clark muttered, and when the guy kept staring, maybe on the verge of telling him where the nearest soup kitchen was, Clark jerked his chin towards Lex and added. "I'm with him."

Which apparently made all the difference in the world, because the smile turned from patronizing to ass kissing with the smoothest transition Clark had ever seen.

"Ah, well, what can I show you today? Are we looking custom or ready to wear?"

Clark had no idea the difference. "Just browsing."

Which got him a purse of the lips and the reluctant departure of the salesman. Lex had a pair of salesmen groveling to him over by cubby filled with lots of black. Clark loitered by the pool table, wondering if anyone ever played or if it was simply for looks.

A woman approached Clark - - long legs, short skirt, white silk blouse stretched over an impressive set of breasts. He figured she worked there when she said. "You're waiting on Mr. Luthor?"

"Um, yeah." He was having a real problem today, meeting people's eyes. He looked up from her cleavage with a slight blush and met hers. She didn't seem offended. In fact she ran one manicured hand up his arm in a measuring sort of way and asked.

"Perhaps I can interest you in something a little more urban? I'm sure we have something in your size, though I'd have to take measurements."

Her fingers slipped around his bicep and he swallowed. It was a come on. He could hear it in her voice, but he wasn't sure if it was all salesmanship or if she actually had something else in mind. He flashed her a nervous smile and tried to think up an answer that didn't involve stuttering.

"I don't think that will be necessary," Lex sauntered over, adjusting the cuff of a sleek black shirt. "I think we can guesstamate size."

Lex gave her a 'thank you, no' half-smile that didn't reach his eyes and she pulled her hand away off like she'd suddenly realized she was trespassing private property.

"Of course. Perhaps something in jade, to set off his eyes."

Clark gave Lex a look as she held out a graceful hand, indicating movement on Clark's part that didn't involve exit from the store.

"If you're going with me tonight, you'll need something adequate to wear."

Which was sort of insulting and Clark would have loved to argue the point for argument's sake, save that Lex was right and it wasn't like he could run home and get a nice shirt - - well nothing as nice as what they sold here - - and zip back with out Lex noticing.

So warily followed the saleswoman to one of the cubbies with mirrors on one wall with two little changing booths to either side.

"Shirt," she directed and stood there with a sort of polite insistence until he frowned and unbuttoned the flannel. He had a T-shirt on under, which he damned sure wasn't shedding just out in the store unless a changing room door was involved. She took the flannel from him in two fingers and laid it across the back of a chair and looked him up and down. She laid hands on his shoulders, but it was an entirely light, non-suggestive touch this time like she really was measuring him.

He got handed a green shirt. He started to shrug it on over the T, but she clucked her tongue at him and shook her head. "Italian silk does not sit well over thrift store cotton."

He did not scowl at her. It wasn't polite. But he wanted to. He took the shirt and retreated into the little changing room and it did feel good against his skin, all slithery and smooth. The collar was really big though and he didn't like it.

He stepped back out to look in the mirrors and Lex was back.

"No. The collar's to wide," Lex said as if he were the final word, but well - - he was right about the collar thing. "Try the burgundy."

The woman was holding several shirts that Lex had apparently picked out and handed over. It made Clark uncomfortable in a tingly sort of way, Lex choosing clothes for him.

"I know how to pick out clothes," he said sullenly.

Lex lifted a dubious brow.

Clark took the other shirts and returned to the changing room.

"That one is very nice," the woman remarked when he stepped out in a long sleeved, dark red shirt that fit really well. Sort of embarrassingly well, the way it stretched across his shoulders and narrowed down around his torso.

"Maybe the next size up?" he asked hopefully.

"No. This is good." Lex said, circling in that predatory way of his. He stopped in front of Clark and reached up to the buttons that were done up almost to the collar. Clark came close to flinching, and controlled it - - not sure if he ought to bat Lex's hands away, or step back or stand there like a frightened rabbit and endure it while Lex unbuttoned the top two buttons. It felt sinful when Lex's knuckles brushed his skin - - and he focused his gaze over Lex's head to the brick column behind them and thought about cows and axel that needed fixing on the old tractor and dad telling him that 'son, the world will throw all sorts of temptations at you, the trick is being able to tell the good from the bad'.

That worked.

"Pants."

"No. Absolutely not." He was not going through another session of changing room charades with Lex playing the master of ceremonies. The jeans were relatively new and he just needed to brush a little mud off the hem. "Besides, the only clubs that have a 'no-jeans' rule are boring anyway."

"We're not going to have a good time. And how would you know that, Clark?" Lex canted his head, managing to looking doubtfully curious.

"I've - - been to a club or two - - in Metropolis," Clark muttered. He'd been to more than a few - - he'd cut a swath through the city, but it wasn't something he liked to think about, because it hadn't been him. Not really. He'd never told Lex about it. He'd never told anyone the details and he didn't plan to.

"Have you?" Lex was interested now. Amused and patronizing. "Did you go the whole fake Id route, or were you hitting the under twenty-one spots?"

"With the right attitude, you don't need Id." Clark shot back, offended.

He got a clever smile out of Lex at that, and a speculative look, while Lex did something with his tongue and the back of his teeth that made Clark's mind flash on the image of him naked.

Which was not what he wanted running through his head right now - - or any other time for that matter - - because he couldn't even begin to appreciate the vast scope of the wrongness.

"With the right attitude you don't need quite a few things." Lex agreed. "But a decent pair of slacks to go with the shirt would take you a good part of the distance. It's not as if I'm suggesting black leather."

And there was the glint of something old and familiar in Lex's eyes, a hint of flirtatious teasing that Clark hadn't seen from him in a very long time. He hadn't understood then, that Lex flirted with everyone - - tried to seduce everyone, one way or another, friends and enemies alike and that it had nothing to do with sex, it had to do with power. Because Lex was always on the prowl for one more conquest.

And if Clark kept telling himself that, he'd even believe it.

Part eleven

The line of hopefuls outside the velvet rope of La Cruz snaked around the corner of the building, and down 27th. There was a spattering of the curious, with and without cameras simply mulling, hoping to get a look or a snapshot of celebrity.

It had been quarter to twelve when Lex's people had finally latched onto the Daniakos trail coming out of Bungalow 8 in Chelsea and had tracked them to the smaller, very exclusive La Cruz. A new hotspot, that might retain popularity for a few months if it was lucky and then the fashionable crowd would find some new spot to frequent.

Lex had been out of the club scene long before La Cruz had ever opened its doors, but if the Twins were there on their after mid-night tour then he knew all he needed to about it. The drugs would flow freely as would the sex. The sort of place that paid through the nose to keep the police from interrupting the entertainments of its high profile patrons.

"Don't drink anything anyone hands you," Lex had told Clark.

And Clark had given him a look that very clearly said he was not an idiot and capable of taking care of himself. But the sort of crowd that circled around the Twins had no problem spiking drinks and Clark, no matter what his claims, had a look about him that just screamed 'purity in need of corruption'.

And he looked good. The sort of good that would attract attention that Lex wasn't sure he wanted him to attract. Lex wasn't sure he wanted Clark on the Twin's radar - - for a number of reasons. But chiefly because Clark tended to be intimidating when he was pursuing a cause, and Lex wasn't out to blatantly intimidate just yet. He wanted to test the waters - - talk to them without their shields up, and see what his gut told him. His instinct was generally accurate and Niko Daniakos had a bad poker face. And if that didn't work then he'd consider strong-arm tactics.

So he went in on his own, and let Clark park the car. And though it might have been years since Lex Luthor had made the round of the club scene, he was recognizable and like Clark had said in the hotel, the right attitude and a lot of cash could get you anywhere.

He strode right up the entrance, after exiting the god-awful yellow Ferrari, ignoring the stares and the stray paparazzi that suddenly realized that here was something more unusual than a strung out teen starlet. He heard his name uttered from people leaning out of line to stare. The suit with a clip board next to the two very large, black-t-shirted bouncers by the door, whose job it was to differentiate between the desirable elite and the desperate wanna be's, inclined his head and smiled, ushering Lex in with a - Mr. Luthor, good of you to join us, tonight.

Lex paused, slipping the man several folded hundred dollar bills, requesting softly that Clark be allowed in when he arrived. He got an affirmative nod, and stepped into the club.

Stepping inside was like being hit by a physical wave of sound and scent and motion. Strobe lights throbbed in time with the music and bodies mingled and swayed near the doors, voices raised to near yells to be heard above the music. The ceiling was bare beams and the tangled wire of lighting and speakers. Raw brick and welded iron framed walls that had been stripped to their guts. Demolition chic.

The bar in the central room was lined with neon lights, a constant beacon against the flashing overheads. There were thick I-beam supports dotted throughout, and stairs that wound up to a second half level where more bodies gathered. Catwalks where half naked people swayed or made out or stared vacantly down into the undulating masses.

Lex moved into the crowd, finding the press of overheated bodies less of a thrill than he had, once upon a time. Clark might have been able to see over the heads of the crowd and spot a familiar face or two, but Lex didn't have that luxury, so he made his way to the bar, and slid a bill towards the closest tender.

"Daniakos?"

"Blue room." The bill disappeared and the bartender jerked her head towards the back of the main room.

Around the edges of the dance floor, where the music was deafening, and there were doorways in between leather upholstered booths, leading into individual lounges, each one emitting the soft glow of sullen light. Red, blue, purple.

He slid though the crowd towards the blue. A young woman pressed against him, wrapping her arms around his neck, the hazy seductive smile on her face of someone at the apex of her high.

"Wanna fuck?" She smelled of Chanel and was sporting designer originals.

He caught her bony wrists and untangled himself from her grasp, not even bothering with a verbal response.

Stepping through the doorway into the blue room, the music was instantly a decibel or two lower, the light was soft and constant, and the bodies swayed here and there to the beat but left the manic dancing to the other room. There were a lot of booths with plush cushions where people lounged, and the walls were lined with blue tinted mirrors.

There was a space at the back, a raised portion of floor with sheer drapery and beaded strands, a big private booth that overlooked the floor. People seemed to gravitate to and from it, as if seeking audience, or at the very least the best drugs.

There were at least a dozen bodies sprawled on the wrap around couches. Beautiful people, all. More than one celebrity face among them. The table in the center was a vice cop's dream - - at least the dream of one not paid to purposefully ignore the goings on of the rich and famous here at La Cruz.

Nikolas Daniakos sat between two glittery blonde things, swarthy and broad, dark hair artfully mussed. He oozed that wealthy, Mediterranean look, wide jaw, dark eyes, slick attitude.

He saw Lex and his eyes widened a little, a flash of surprise crossing his face, a flash of something darker, before his mouth curled up in a lazy smile.

"Lex," Sophia was right there, purring his name, no less startling a beauty today than she'd been almost ten years past. No less easy to refuse when she leaned in to kiss him. Her tongue slipped into his mouth and she tasted of cinnamon and the tart flavor of margaritas and the barest hint of something bitter. He pulled back, not as easy a conquest as he had been - - certainly less trusting of warm greetings after sub-zero business maneuverings.

"You've been avoiding my calls, Niko." He had to half yell to be heard above the music, standing on the other side of a table crowded with glasses and drugs, staring down into the black eyes of a man who'd held a good deal of sway over him, when he'd been young and stupid. He didn't even look at Sophia, who'd been the temptation that had led him into the Twin's web, but he felt her hovering at his side, not quite touching his arm.

"Didn't want to talk to you, Lex." Niko ran his hand down the bare shoulder of the pretty young thing at his right and she leaned into the touch, pupils dilated, nipples hard under the sheer fabric of her top.

"Make the effort," Lex suggested.

Niko met Lex's stare for a moment, weighing his options, then he urged the girls on his left to move, and with little pouts of displeasure the couch on that side of him cleared. It was either stand there and show hesitation, or move in smoothly and take the body-warmed seat, despite the distaste. Sophia followed him in, settling in next to him, her thigh touching his, the smell of her perfume an underlying trigger to past things. He felt the tingle of goose pimples along his arms.

"You've been in the news, Lex." Niko leaned in towards him, flash of white teeth, sly smile, his cologne so much more repulsive than his sister's subtle sent. It didn't just rise gooseflesh, it made Lex's stomach curl a little. "LexCorp's having trouble, no?"

"Nothing that won't pass."

"Ah, yes, I heard your father had to come in and save the company, Lex. He makes a habit of that, doesn't he?"

"Too bad yours wasn't around to bail you out while you were destroying his legacy." Lex said with a humorless twitch of a smile.

Niko's laughter held as much humor as Lex's half smile. A waitress wove her way to the table with a trey full of drinks. Lex waited for her to deposit the full glasses and clear away the empties. Beyond the mulling bodies, he thought he saw the glimpse of raven hair and burgundy shirt, but he couldn't be sure it was Clark.

"I can't say you're the last person I expected to see here, Lex, but it's a close call. I thought you were all business, now," Niko said.

"So boring," Sophia purred, leaning against him, with that voice like warm honey. "And you used to be so much fun."

"I've developed an appreciation for my brain cells intact," he said. "Would you care to explain why my wife was meeting with your legal council?"

"Your wife?" Niko lifted a thick brow. "Which one? You've been through a few now, haven't you, Lex? The one that tried to kill you, or the one you killed?"

Lex allowed a cold, dangerous smile to cross his lips - - the type of malice that didn't offer idle threats, but promised in absolutes.

"Robert Hyde met with my wife six weeks ago in Metropolis. He was under contract with you at the time."

"Hyde? We've quite a few legal vultures working for us. You can't expect me to remember them all."

"Funny, because I remember him from a few days worth of meetings six months ago, and he wasn't even drawing a paycheck from me."

Niko laughed. "What was it you said about brain cells, Lex? Do you remember such a man, Sophia?"

"You know I never pay attention to such things, Niko. She was pretty, your wife, wasn't she, Lex?" Her dark eyes were intent, her full mouth curved in a smile. There was something of Lana's look to her - - or Lana had possessed something of Sophia Daniakos about her. Long dark hair, doe eyes that so skillfully hid the glint of a predator. Sophia claimed to have no care for business, no care for anything but her pleasures and catering to her brother, but Lex didn't believe that. Not anymore.

Sophia's light fingers brushed his knee and the touch felt - - good. Electric almost. She leaned across him so her brother could hear. "You look so good, Lex. Doesn't he look good, Niko?"

"The years have been kind." Niko admitted, a speculative glint in his eyes.

The weight of Sophia's breast against Lex's arm, the soft give of flesh through his coat came with a euphoric little wave of awareness. A ripple of tingly warmth eased up his body, like a hundred little fingers trailing over his skin. He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to clear his head, trying to keep the blue light and the glittering bodies from spinning. Her hand slid up his thigh - - God - - his cock reacted, lengthening into the touch and it felt amazing - -

Until it hit him, with a dull sort of disgust, that she'd spiked the kiss. It had to have been the kiss, because he hadn't had anything else in his mouth. That tartness on her tongue hadn't been mixed drink but a hit of something potent. A slow burn that wasn't the comforting high of X or the mind-bending trip of LSD, but some chemical cousin that might very well fuck him up in company that he dearly did not wish to be fucked up in.

"You bitch," he shoved her off and staggered to his feet, bones feeling like rubber, body vibrating. Niko leaned back, while his sister scooted into the space Lex had vacated, curling under his arm, her gleaming rust lips curved up in a predator's grin.

"What's the matter, Lex?" Niko asked, the words seeming to run together. "Stay and talk. We'll catch up on old times, no?"

Son of a - - He'd fucking kill them. As soon as he could focus his thoughts, as soon as he could harness the electric thrum that was making his nerves pulse.

Lex collided with someone, with several someone's getting down the two steps to the floor. A body slid against his, hard and male, mesh shirt and leather, a murmured suggestion against his ear. A hand slid under his jacket and for a moment he went with it, all the wrong circuits tripping - - or the right ones. He shoved the body away.

He ought to be calling his people and having the Twin's damned boat sank - - anything to ground them until he could force a meeting someplace under his control. Have them picked up maybe, on their way out of this club - - only he didn't have that sort of manpower in New York. Not at short notice - - all he had was a few men already spread thin - - and Clark.

Clark. Who was at the edge of the Blue room, easy to spot now that Lex was out on the floor, taller than the people around him, Black hair and gorgeous face above a shirt the color of dried blood. No one in this entire club of wealthy, beautiful people - - people that could afford the best surgery could provide to improve upon Mother Nature, came even close to Clark.

And Clark had his eyes glued to Lex, a worried frown between his brows and even that looked good on him. Clark's smiles were heaven, but his frowns were charged with storm cloud current and were no less thrilling, laced with the promise of leashed violence. And Lex liked violence - - violence possessed more honesty than sweet kisses and soft words, which were nothing more than dust jackets over volumes of lies.

Clark mouthed his name, but Lex couldn't hear it over the throb of music. He grabbed Clark's arm, pulling him along in passing, out of the blue room and into the louder din of the main club. Beneath the thin fabric of the silk shirt, Clark's skin was hot, and his arm was solid and hard, the muscle twitching under Lex's fingers when a girl flung herself against him, pressing her scantily clad front against his chest. One breast was bare and glittering with iridescent oil.

In the flashing lights, Clark's expression was priceless. Smallville morality shocked into offense. Lex let him go, considering shedding the coat because the heat was stifling. He couldn't think from it.

Clark caught his arm, pulling him around, yelling at him over the music. 'What's wrong? What happened?' Was maybe what he asked.

There was a little glitter from the bare breast on Clark's shirt. A little on his hand where he'd probably had to extricate himself from her embrace. If he lifted his hand and wiped it across his mouth, he'd have it on his lips. The image stuck in Lex's head. Enticing. Erotic.

And Clark stood there, one still body in the midst of a hundred undulating ones, eyes large and dark and wary, face a work of stark art under the flashing lights.

Lex wanted him. It surged up, unhindered by rationalization and animosity. Lex shoved at him, and Clark took a step backwards, back against one of the I-beam supports, opening his mouth to make an apology that no body would hear over the music. Lex closed the space, pressed against him, and shocked Clark into true silence.

He tangled his fingers in the silk, nails scraping the flesh beneath, wanting to mark, wanting to raise welts and bring blood to the surface - - he was still hard - - hard all this time and pressing up against Clark made it want to explode. But it was the drug talking - - the best stuff always made him horny - - something in his metabolism that sent hormones into overdrive, fast and furious before it worked its way out of his system at a fraction of the time it took for anyone else to come down.

Sophia had tasted of cinnamon - - he wanted to know what Clark tasted like. He'd always wanted to know what Clark tasted like. And Clark was standing there, not quite knowing what to do, aghast maybe, but not shoving him away in indignation - - not moving away from the grind of his body, or the grasp of his fingers.

"I'm on something. I don't know what," Lex yelled, because it needed to be said, because there needed to be a validation before he lunged forward and kissed Clark.

He saw colors and tasted bliss. Clark's soft lips parted in surprise and Lex slipped his tongue inside as if it belonged there. Clark's tongue retreated, and Lex chased it down, a hand tangled in Clark's hair, one scraping down the back of his arm, until Clark's tongue flickered forth to meet him. Artless and messy and hot, and Lex wanted to devour him, wanted to wrap himself around Clark's body and stake a claim.

Clark's hands didn't know what to do, where to settle - - on Lex's shoulders or his hips, and ended up grazing under his coat, skimming the line of his torso from armpits to hips and the jolt of sensation went through Lex like he'd been tazered.

Either the drug was absolutely fantastic or Clark was - - he couldn't decide which, and didn't quite care, because he felt the rub of Clark's erection against his own, hot and hard beneath the denim that Clark had refused to part with. Fucking in some dark corner of the club didn't seem like such a terrible idea. It wasn't as if he hadn't in the past. He didn't recall it ever seeming so vital, he didn't recall ever wanting to slip his hand down the front of a man's pants as badly as he wanted to get into Clark's. But then again, he didn't think he'd ever wanted a man as desperately as he wanted Clark and maybe that didn't have a fucking thing to do with whatever Sophia had slipped him. All her little Mickey had done was broaden his perceptions.

Clark pushed him away, fingers gripping Lex's arms so hard the pain got through the haze, face flushed and shocked, mouth parted, lips red and wet. Lex's own felt tingly and swollen - - everything felt tingly and parts of him were definitely swollen. Which was amusing enough to make him grin like an idiot and try to grind close to Clark again, but Clark swung him around, a death-grip on Lex's left arm above the elbow, and stalked towards the faint glow of the exit.

"We need to get out of here." Clark yelled at him. And it was a wonderful idea. Somewhere private. The car would do, or the alley, Lex didn't particularly care as long as he got Clark there alone - - or not alone. It didn't particularly matter at the moment.

People parted for Clark like he was a barge breaking through ice, dragging Lex in his wake. It was distantly embarrassing and the grip hurt and it was unbelievably hot, Clark taking the initiative.

It was easier getting out than in, and the air was a hundred times cooler and fresher, even in the depths of the city. The absence of bone shaking music was like a gift from the gods. But he'd forgotten the crowd outside and the paparazzi and there were a few flashes that the bouncers glared at, and Clark ignored, while Lex tried to wrap his mind around the idea that a sex scandal in the gossip rags might out shadow the corporate one in the business section.

The car was a few blocks down, nearest parking and Clark was taking the sidewalk at a good clip, hand still fast on Lex's arm. Mouth set tight now, and eyes hard, no less of a turn on. But then most everything was now.

"God, Lex!" They reached the car and Clark swung him around, against the passenger side door. "I thought you told me not to drink anything."

"I didn't," he said, pushing off from the car and against Clark, pressing his mouth against the bare skin above Clark's collar, tasting the faint salt of sweat and something indefinable and Clark.

Clark breathed a curse, hands on Lex's shoulders as Lex worked a hand between them, palming the front of Clark's jeans. Clark hung to the right and his cock was still a half hard, impressive length. Clark's fingers clenched and a spasm of pain shot through Lex's shoulders and might have dropped him to his knees if Clark hadn't been there to shore him up. He had a fleeting memory of the thing that had worn Clark's face, with its hands that could break bone and rip muscle without even trying.

But Clark was saying sorry, muttering it, in the same breathy tone he'd used for the curse and Lex thought that if Clark wanted to hurt him, that might not be such a bad thing. He might just be able to get off on that, and they'd both have something they needed. He murmured something along those lines against Clark's neck and felt Clark shiver.

He slid his hand up under Clark's shirt and touched the skin beneath. He felt goose pimples form under his fingers and that was simply erotic. He wanted to get his mouth on the same spot, but Clark wrapped an arm around his waist and walked him backwards to the curb, got the car door open with his other hand and maneuvered Lex into the seat.

So apparently making out against the car was a no go.

He leaned his head back against the headrest, while the car settled around him. Being off his feet provided an oddly weightless sensation - - the muffled quiet behind raised windows was curious. Clark opened the driver's side door and let in some of the city's residual noise. The car shifted a little under his weight when he got in, and the noise went away when he closed the door.

The red shirt was half untucked, and the jeans were tight across Clark's thighs, tighter now that he was sitting than the loose fall of them standing. Lex leaned across the gearshift and ran a hand up taut denim. Clark made a strangled noise and caught his wrist. Held it up between them and met Lex's eyes with desperately serious green ones of his own.

"Lex - - could you not - - are you okay? Should I call someone? Take you somewhere?"

"Its not so bad," As highs went, this one was really rather nice. He liked the feel of cool leather seats and the smell of the car. He liked the feel of Clark's fingers circling his wrist. "Home."

"Hotel?" Clark countered and certainly that was as good an alternative as any. It had a bed.

"I like how you say my name." Lex leaned in closer and Clark swallowed. "You use it like a curse one moment and a supplication the next."

He got close enough to feel the warmth of Clark's lips against his own, before Clark pulled away, pushing Lex firmly back into the confines of his own seat. Clark's hands were shaking as he fumbled with the key and the ignition. The engine purred to life and Lex slumped back, a dull sense of disappointment pricking the edge of his thoughts. Clark was a killjoy. Clark was a tease. And if Clark wouldn't oblige him - - he ran a hand between his legs, squeezing and his cock seemed indifferent in the matter of whose hand was touching it, as long as someone was - - he could take care of it himself.

Clark pulled out into the street, trying not to look at Lex or listen to Lex or think about Lex. Lex was bad enough stone sober with a grudge - - boneless with hands that wanted to roam everywhere, with a mouth that was no less clever on lips and skin than it was with words - - he was overwhelming. And wrong. And out of his head on something he'd warned Clark to steer clear of.

Clark had seen Lex drunk, but he'd never seen him stoned or high or whatever this was that had him hazy eyed and slurred, and deep into the realm of sexual overdrive. And God - - Lex's tongue had been in his mouth, all sly and wet and rough velvet and his lips had been slick and silken on the inside and - - stop thinking about it. Stop thinking.

Clark had listened to the conversation with the Greek twins, had tuned out the music and focused on the voice he knew like the back of his hand and the responding, slightly accented others. How Lex had gotten the drug, he didn't know, but there had been nothing particularly revealing or incriminating in the short conversation. But if these people were anything like Lex, they could lie without missing a beat.

Lex made a sound that sort of went straight past Clark's brain to his spine and traveled down. He had to glance over and wished he hadn't because it was hard to tear his eyes away when Lex had his hand down the front of his pants, stroking in cadence to his little breathy moans. And the image hit Clark's brain of Lex's cut cock and how different it looked from his own uncut one, and how when it was hard the skin would probably stretch taut and shiny across the tip - -

Lex arched in his seat half growling, and Clark caught a glimpse of the rosy head slipping past the edge of Lex's underwear. Then the flash of headlights coming down the intersecting street and he jerked the wheel hard, throwing out an arm to keep Lex from flying forward when he slammed on the brakes, but not soon enough to avoid the curb and the trashcans that the nose of the Ferrari sent tumbling across the sidewalk and into the road.

Clark blinked through the windshield at a couple of startled homeless men taking shelter a few door stoops down. A taxi swerved around his tail end, passing by without slowing. Lex was laughing, low and soft next to him.

He looked over and the fact that he'd wrecked a half million dollar rental car wasn't nearly as distracting as Lex slumping in the seat next to him, bringing up a hand, fingers glistening with spots of what had to be come and sliding one after the other into his mouth, like he was licking melted ice cream from his fingers or honey or - - ah, God, Clark was so hard it hurt.

Lex leaned over, across the gear shift and his hand landed on just the right spot - - or the wrong one and Clark shuddered and bit back a groan, thinking if he shoved Lex away now, he'd likely fling him hard enough to tear the door off the car - - and Clark had damaged the car enough already - - and Lex had strong fingers and they were kneading through the denim.

The jeans were so constricting and Clark thought he just might rip a seam - - or come in his shorts, which seemed more likely when Lex surged up, one knee on his seat and slipped his tongue into Clark's mouth again. Lex kissed like it was an art form and he a master of the craft and there was just no place to go to avoid it, trapped in a car that had been built for looks instead of spacey comfort. Nothing to do but lift his hands to the sides of Lex's neck, curving his fingers around the smooth, sleek skin at the back of his skull and sink into it. Because really - - really, you just didn't get kissed like this everyday - - maybe ever - - where it sort of sapped rational practicality like a sponge and dropped IQ a good fifty points.

Clark felt the button of his pants give, felt Lex's clever fingers squirm under his jeans and a little spark of reason flared up, pounding on the outside of his brain to let him know he needed to stop this. It was wrong on so many levels, not the least of which was Lex being stoned out of his mind. It was taking advantage - - the next best thing to rape, though Clark was a little foggy on who was getting molested - - and Lex would probably be rightfully outraged when he came down.

Only Lex's fingers touched his cock and Clark lost his train of thought, half coming up off the seat as sensation shot through his body.

"Ah - - God. Lex - - Lex, I can't let - -" Lex bit the side of his neck and the words tumbled into inarticulate gasps.

"Yes. You can," Lex murmured into his ear, hot breath, grazing hint of teeth at the lobe, fingers wrapped tight around Clark's cock. "You know you want to."

He didn't. Really, he didn't. Lex was the last thing he wanted. He wanted Lex naked with nothing between his hands and that smooth, smooth skin. He wanted Lex face down, fine lean body crushed under his, gasping after breath, begging for it - -

Clark came, crying out, spasming, balls throbbing as they emptied, come spewing up across his belly and fine new shirt, on Lex's hand. Lex's hand, which was squeezing the head of his cock like he was trying to milk the last drop. Clark saw lazy stars. They settled like the trailing brands of fireworks, sizzling out into blackness with the acrid scent of spent gunpowder left in their wake. And like a fireworks show, once the explosions were over, there was nothing but darkness and the muted silence of the night - - and he'd just had sex in a car with Lex. On the side of a New York street, with a couple of homeless not fifteen feet down the sidewalk and the occasional cab flashing its headlights in the rear view mirror.

Breathing became suddenly difficult. The last time Clark had hyperventilated he'd been six, but he felt a bout coming on now.

"Oh, God." He got the door open, got out from under Lex and stumbled onto the sidewalk. Leaned with his hands on the hood of the car and fought the urge to just run. To the other side of the world where no one would suspect what he'd just done. Where he could hide his face in shame and maybe pray to some pagan god that Lex would have hazy memories at best of tonight's activities.

What were the chances? Slim to none, with his luck.

He took a breath and circled the car, needing to move, to get his mind on something else. He accessed the damage to the right front end. The headlight was shattered and the frame crumpled around it. It honestly looked as if the car had taken more damage than the trashcans. You'd think anything this expensive would be built to take more than a love tap without needing major reconstructive surgery.

You'd think, even if he couldn't toss a tractor across the county line, that having four inches and thirty pounds on Lex, he could have staved him off. You'd think it would have been first instinct - - instead of second or third or washed away entirely by the press of a body against his. It wasn't like he hadn't ignored a dozen or more eager bodies pressed up against him this very night once inside the club - - and most of them had had breasts. Of course none of them had skin like Lex's and maybe Clark had a skin fetish that he was only just discovering because he'd been fixating on Lex's for a while now. Maybe it was a blossoming Kryptonian thing.

He'd paced to the end of the block and not even realized it. He turned around to start back, and the passenger side door was open and Lex was squatting down with his back against the side of the car, the long tail of his jacket trailing off the sidewalk and into the gutter. Clark wasn't sure whether to speed up or slow down. He wasn't sure how long he'd been out here running circles in his head.

Lex had his fingertips to his forehead. He looked up from under his hand when Clark ventured close and there was something a little more collected in his eyes. Clark couldn't think of a damned thing to say, but if the heat in his cheeks were any indication, his expression probably spoke volumes.

How did you say, 'jeeze, sorry I let you stick your tongue down my throat and your hand down my pants when you were drugged, because I don't even normally swing that way - -'

"Fuck," Lex muttered and shoved himself up. He held out his hand. "Keys."

"What?" Clark stared dumbly. It was the same hand that had recently been around his cock, and recently had come smeared fingers sucked into Lex's mouth. Clark wondered if Lex had licked off what he had spattered on his hand. The notion actually made his newly spent cock twitch.

"Clark," Lex's voice got through his mental meanderings. "Give me the keys."

Keys? As if Lex needed to be behind the wheel of a car. He had bad enough luck stone sober.

"No," Clark said. "I'll drive." He might not be able to look Lex in the eye at the moment, but he wasn't prepared to let him endanger himself, or anyone else.

Lex tightened his mouth, as if being flat out refused wasn't something he was used to when he gave direct orders. Which he probably wasn't.

"Obviously you're in the midst of a moral dilemma here, so I wouldn't want to impose," Lex said carefully, as if his brain's connection to his mouth wasn't as lightening fast as usual. There was a hint of offense in his tone that he usually hid so much better when he was being defensively sarcastic.

Clark looked up and caught a glimpse of unshielded turmoil in Lex's eyes, a mishmash of emotion that he couldn't even begin to interpret.

"This shouldn't have happened," Clark blurted. "I should have stopped it. I don't know what I was thinking - - and you weren't - - and I was supposed to be the responsible one and its as much my fault - -"

Lex hissed through his teeth, spinning on his heel and stalking into the road to wave down an oncoming taxi. The cab had to swerve a little to miss hitting him and Clark shut his eyes, trying to slow the thumping of his heart, because things were really swinging miserably out of control.

Lex got into the cab without looking back and Clark stood there next to the badly used rental and wondered if he just went home and pretended tonight hadn't happened if he would wake tomorrow and go on with life as usual. Something that happened a thousand miles from home, in the heat of the moment, shouldn't irrevocably change a life. People had casual sex all the time. Strangers met, got drunk, knocked boots and never saw each other again.

But of course, Lex wasn't a stranger and Clark hadn't been drunk and they both lived in the same small town so the option of avoiding each other was a little slim. They hadn't done a particularly good job at it when they'd been at odds and actively engaged in cold war. Clark wasn't entirely sure the idea of steering clear of Lex really appealed now.

A trio of teenagers had slowed in their progress down the sidewalk to appraise the car. Ferrari hubcaps had to be worth a pretty penny, much less the other salvageable parts. They were skinny and armed with switchblades in the pockets of their ridiculously low slung pants, and despite the appeal of the car, Clark fixing them with a 'you really don't want to try me' look, decided them against attempted carjacking. They kept walking, looking back over their shoulders.

The longer the car was here, the more chance a police cruiser would pass by and he'd have to explain the reasons why, or trouble that he'd have to physically deal with would saunter up, so he carefully pulled back the front bumper so it wouldn't gouge the tire when it turned, and pulled out onto the road. Hopefully accident insurance came with such rentals or Lex was going to get a hefty repair bill.

He glanced over at the passenger seat. It was embarrassing to admit, but he was almost certain he'd never seen anything quite so hot as Lex with his hand down his pants, slowly jerking off. Those peeks of flesh had been riveting. The sounds Lex made better than any porn Clark had ever snuck over Pete's basement to watch - - better than Lana's quiet little breathy moans - - and that made him feel guilty and deviant.

He could have held Lex off. Could have done any number of things - - if he hadn't liked what Lex was doing. If Lex hadn't sparked every sensory receptor in his body and then some. If he hadn't wanted - - very badly - - was Lex had been offering.

He had a Ferrari and a city mercifully sparse of traffic in the wee hours of the morning - - maybe if he drove long enough, he could figure out exactly how he was going to deal with this.

Part twelve

The cab stank of sweat and whatever cheap cologne the driver had sprinkled liberally over himself to cover the fact that he probably hadn't bathed in days. Lex leaned back in the seat, the back window rolled down the halfway that it would go and tried not to think about how unsettled his stomach was. Tried not to watch the buildings flash past, because it made the sensation of motion sickness worse and adamantly attempted not to dwell on the absolute mortification and dismay that had been on Clark's face.

Lex could still feel the pain of the gearshift ramming into his side when Clark had shoved him away in his attempts to flee the car. He'd have a bruise there come morning. Maybe some others that he didn't quite feel now, on the downside of whatever Sophia had slipped him.

Predictably, he'd reached the apex and come down hard and fast. The downside of the slope was never particularly pleasant, which was why his youthful drug phase had only lasted a few years before he got tired of fleetingly short periods of gratification backed by dismal downs. It had taken a ridiculous amount of hard drugs, mixed and matched, if he'd wanted to last the night. He supposed he ought to be thankful of that fast metabolism now, or he might still be making a fool of himself in front of Clark. And there was nothing Lex despised more than feeling the fool.

Clark. God. The last time he'd seen Clark so offended - - so mortally embarrassed - - Lex couldn't even remember. He laughed, rubbing a hand over his eyes feeling a bit of mortal embarrassment himself. He added the other hand, palms pressed into his eyes - - thinking that all last year, when he'd been looking for a way to get Clark out of his business and off his back, the solution would have been so ironically simple. Back him into a corner, kiss him breathless, slip a hand down his pants and get a good firm grasp on what had to be - - and Lex could only guesstimate from feel alone - - a very impressive cock, and Clark would take off, never to show his face again, his puritan morality affronted beyond repair. A marvelous solution.

It would have been a wonderful way to keep him away from Lana - - if in retrospect keeping Clark away from Lana had been as vital a concern as keeping Lana away from Clark - - as keeping Clark from being happy. He laughed again and thought there was more of the drug still in his system than he'd assumed, because that wasn't the type of rationalization he'd make lucid. Even to himself.

He wasn't sure when hurting Clark had gone from a personal need close to his heart, a Luthor imperative to return pain given - - to a coldly clinical need for conflict. A curious realization and he couldn't put his finger on the seeds that had started that particular portion of their war, but he thought that Lana might have been a casualty of it. Tactical ground won in dirty combat. And he'd done things to get her - - unfathomable things, that made his hands tremble a little now, trying to rationalize - - because at the time, losing had not been an option. When he looked back now, all things considered, loosing would have been the best thing for all involved.

He laughed again, silently and wondered how much black coffee it would take to knock Sophia's crap out of his system completely. Niko liked to think he ruled his little roost, but she'd always been the sly one, the ingenious one who whispered suggestions into her brother's ear. Lex had to wonder if most of their little games were spawned by Sophia's fertile imagination instead of her brother's. So beautiful and so twisted.

He took a breath of the fresh air whipping in through the window and tried to clear his head, then pulled out his phone and started making calls. He could get more of his own people down here in a few hours time, but he needed to make sure the Twins didn't leave New York before then. He gave instructions and hoped the men here, who would not be his top choice for under-the-table work, could carry them out. Made another call and woke someone up who owed him a favor and got another ball rolling in another court.

The cab pulled up to the Mandarin Oriental and the driver got a hefty tip, thanks to Lex's lack of small bills. He leaned against the wall of the elevator on the ride up, head clogged with a gummy film that he couldn't quite shake. He recalled the feel of Clark's lips. Soft. He'd known they'd be soft. Even pressed tight in a grim frown, you could see Clark's lips would be supple and plush. He kissed like a novice though, uncertain of himself, uncertain of his technique - - except for that last one, in the car before he'd come - - then, he'd gotten into it - - gotten off, before he'd gathered the shreds of his moral values back together and fled.

Poor little Kansas farm boy led into temptation and falling to it, and then crying foul. Self-righteous bastard. Clark never changed. The high horse just got taller and taller.

Lex couldn't quite recall what Clark had said, but he was certain there had been regret attached - - as if Lex didn't regret latching onto Clark instead of some faceless stranger, who'd have happily given him a fuck in the club toilet and gone on his way. At least then he could have come down from it pissed, but not feeling as if he'd done someone a grave injustice. Done Clark an injustice - - as if it suddenly mattered again.

Lex stalked down the hall to his room. Had to insert the key card twice because his hands were shaking too badly to get the door open the first time. His head was in a fine welter, thoughts chaotic and jumbled. He called down for a pot of coffee and a bottle of Tylenol. Once he got a cup or two down, he'd call and double check on the order's he'd given, just to make certain they'd sounded as comprehensible to his man as they had to him when he'd been giving them.

He got into the shower - - as cold as he could take it and let the spray beat against his face. Got out chilled and shivering and slipped into the clothes he'd flown down in. The cart with the coffee had been left inside his door, along with the pills.

He swallowed four pills with black coffee, refilled the cup and tuned the TV onto CNBC to watch the early morning commentary on the soon to open market. The Japanese market was already open, and LuthorCorp was actually up a point and a quarter there. LexCorp was down .51 and Lex almost wished he hadn't turned it on to see. As much as he hated admitting it, his father and the plan to distance LuthorCorp from LexCorp seemed to be working on the one front. In the grander scheme of things, if LexCorp went down, it would be an acceptable tactical loss, if its larger brethren escaped relatively unscathed.

Tactical loss. An easy term to bandy about when it wasn't your company and your reputation on the line.

He turned the channel aimlessly, seeking something less depressing than business news, settled on a history channel special on human sacrifice and the Aztec culture, which was a definite step up. It was grim enough to fit his mood and kept his mind off other less productive things. Dark haired, green-eyed things that he ought not care one whit about the opinions of.

Lex focused on millennia old mutilated skeletons tangled in a newly unearthed mass grave in an Aztec dig site in Mexico. He idly wondered, while he was watching primitive art renditions of prisoners being eviscerated and decapitated, if Clark would ever be able to look him in the eye again without blushing. Would that even be so great a loss?

Except, that he liked Clark's blushes. He liked the way he used to be able to rattle him with veiled sexual innuendo. He'd always wondered how much went over Clark's head and how much he really understood and pretended to be oblivious of - - because he'd been scandalized or turned on and embarrassed because of it. Lex shut his eyes and veered his mind away from that vein of thought.

He drifted off, and was jarred awake at around five by the ringing of his phone. He blinked himself awake and answered.

"It's done, Mr. Luthor, exactly as you wanted."

Okay, one problem down. He rotated a neck gone stiff from drowsing on the couch, and rose, heading to the bedroom for a few hours more comfortable sleep. Sooner or later the Twins would be calling on him. He guessed later, since with the hours they kept, they were notoriously late sleepers. If they got to sleep at all.

There was a t-shirt on the end of the bed and a worn flannel shirt. Evidence of Clark that he'd forgotten was here. He took a breath, and unbuttoned his own shirt, put it on a hanger in the closet, then hung his slacks over a pants rack. He tossed the flannel and the T on the chair by the window - - then hesitated, his own sense of radical order making him retrieve them, and put them both onto hangers in the closet.

He slipped between the sheets and sank into uneasy slumber.

He awoke not long after seven. He'd had dreams that had to do with Clark and Clark's barn in the midst of high summer. There had been hay involved, he thought, with the refreshing awareness of actually being able to recall the details of a dream. And possibly bare, sweaty skin. No new dream, he just hadn't had the like in a very long time.

He'd gotten less than four hours sleep, but he felt refreshed, energized almost. Maybe it was the lack of fuzz in his head. Or taking active measures to assure the twins would be making an effort to see him, after the little impromptu stunt they'd pulled last night.

He checked his phone for messages, but there were none that he cared to answer. Showered, and dressed in some of yesterdays acquisitions, he decided to go down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast.

He hesitated just out of the elevator, staring at a newsstand with today's edition of the Wall Street Journal, which had a majestic looking profile of his father on the cover with a caption reading "Lionel Luthor Does it Again: Newly returned CEO pulls LuthorCorp from the brink."

Lex ground his teeth, feeling a thrumming tension between his eyes. He walked past without picking up a copy, through the lobby towards the entrance of the Mandarin Caf. Almost he missed Clark, wrapped up in lingering annoyance over the Journal cover. He slowed his stride marginally and cast a glance to one of the comfortable groupings of seating scattered about the elegant first floor reception area and sure enough, there was Clark, slouched in a chair, looking distinctly as if he'd been there for some while.

Lex kept walking, feeling a little surge of satisfaction, followed by a peel of irritation, a nudge of curiosity, a twinge of victory and then back to the satisfaction. Having run the gambit of emotional reaction in response to the simple presence of Clark Kent, he dredged up the additional one of disgust and aimed it at himself.

"How many will there be?" the hostess greeted him at the entrance to the caf. He could almost feel Clark's presence approaching from behind.

"Lex."

He glanced casually over his shoulder at Clark, burgundy silk shirt untucked and no less attractive because of it, hair tousled to the point that if Lex had to guess, it hadn't been touched by a comb since they'd left the hotel for the club the night before. Again - - no less attractive from the lack. Maybe even more so. Or perhaps Clark just seemed so much more attractive than usual because Lex had gotten up close and personal, first hand taste, first hand touch and it was coloring his perception.

He tore his eyes away and looked back to the hostess.

"One." He said and she glanced behind him to Clark, then back with an unfaltering smile.

"This way, please."

Of course, Clark trailed him and stood there, shifting a little in either impatience or annoyance while the waiter descended with coffee and inquired whether Lex would be having the breakfast buffet - - which was quite expansive if he recalled correctly - - or if he'd prefer to order from the menu. He'd actually had an appetite coming down, but between his father on the cover of the Wall Street Journal and Clark surprising him before 8 am, it had dwindled.

"The buffet, please."

The waiter nodded and went off.

"Listen, Lex," Clark started, as Lex rose to wander down the line of silver covered serving platters. "I brought back the car."

"Give the keys to the concierge." Lex took a plate and chose a selection of fruit, a toasted bagel and creamed cheese and considered the smoked salmon. He decided against and strolled back to the table. Clark was still with him.

"Was there something else?" he asked mildly, as he might a hovering assistant who needed a prod to be about their business.

Clark stood there, tense, working the inside of his cheek like there was a mountain of something else's that he'd like to broach, while Lex spread cheese across the top of one half of the bagel.

"The front end was sort of banged up." Was what he said instead, so very clearly not what was really on his mind.

"Humm. I'd assumed you could drive something not manufactured by Ford. My mistake."

He didn't look up at Clark's expression but Clark's fists, which were more at eye level clenched and there was the distinct sound of cracking knuckles. Lex wondered how much it would take to push Clark over the edge.

"We need to talk," Clark said bluntly. Lex considered the even spread of creamed cheese and finally looked up to meet Clark's eyes. There was no blush, which was a surprise.

"No. We really don't. I think we're long past the point where heart to hearts are required to hash out differences. I assure you I won't be spreading tales, so you can rest easy."

"I wasn't worried about that." Clark leaned down, palms flat on the crisp white tablecloth. "I was worried about you."

Worried about him? That was laughable. And annoying. It struck a chord of defensiveness that set Lex's nerves on end.

"Shouldn't you be long past that, too? What is it with you, Clark, that you always have to play someone's savior? You'd think that with Lana dead, you could find someone more in need of it than me. Chloe, maybe? Lois certainly seems to attract trouble - - why not go and bother her?"

"At least they don't deserve the shit that hits the fan around them." Clark snapped.

"And of course, I do." Lex took a bite of bagel.

"Yes." Clark agreed immediately - - then took a breath and gathered frayed calm, adding in a much lower voice, though teeth that were practically clenched. "But you didn't deserve what happened last night and I'm sorry I didn't - - handle it better."

Lex speared a strawberry, spent a great deal of time pretending to examine the quality if the berry while he turned that over in his head.

"In what way? I'm a little foggy on the details." Lex finally asked - - even if he wasn't - - because, well, he was curious and if it made Clark uncomfortable answering that was an added bonus.

"You were on something - - not thinking straight," Clark pulled the chair out and flopped down so he could lean in on his elbows and whisper.

"Obviously," Lex agreed dryly, trying a piece of cantaloupe.

"Its like - - its like if somebody roofies your date, the last thing you do is go and take advantage of it and I was just freaked out and didn't know what to do and it got out of hand." Clark finished with a deep breath and almost comically serious look.

Lex rolled his eyes at Clark's attempt at rationalization. "First of all, it wasn't a roofie - - it was nowhere close. Second - - your date? Third, if you had taken advantage you'd have fucked me in a bathroom stall, instead of acting like a frightened virgin while I got a little handsy. So get over yourself, Clark. Oh, and by the way, obviously some part of you knew exactly what to do, when you were coming all over my hand. Accurate assessment?"

Lex took one last sip of coffee and rose, leaving Clark with the beginnings of that oh so satisfying blush on his cheeks.

Lex ground his teeth all the way across the lobby to the elevators. He picked up a copy of the Journal while he waited for the car to arrive, just to give himself more fodder for irritation.

Of course Clark would take the martyr's route. Taking blame on himself, even though Lex knew at heart he thought he was just an innocent victim of Lex's drug induced horniness. Just happened to kiss back like he really meant it and just happened to get a hard-on of porn star proportions. An accident. A twist of cruel fate. Clark hadn't enjoyed it at all. Of course it wasn't the corn-fed, self-righteous prick's fault. Nothing ever was.

Lex stepped into the elevator car, paper curled in his fist and the doors almost made it closed before a hand inserted itself into the gap and forced them back open. Clark stepped in, red cheeked and pissed and Lex pressed his lips, frankly surprised Clark had the nerve to prolong a painful conversation.

They stood there, at silent odds while the car stopped at the second floor, picked up a pair of women in fashionable sweats who had obviously come from the hotel's gym. They got off on the Fourth floor and Lex could practically hear the grind of Clark's teeth.

"Why did you kiss me?" The straightforward question caught Lex off guard.

"I thought we'd established I was high?"

"The place was filled with gorgeous women. Why me?"

When Clark actually stopped and thought, he was annoyingly perceptive. Lex shrugged, gathering forces, wondering how much it would take to make Clark run screaming. Wondering how much it might take to make him stay.

"Didn't you know, I don't have a problem with men?" He stepped closer, right up into Clark's personal space. "But, I think the question is, why did you kiss me back? Repeatedly."

Clark swallowed, took a half, nervous step backwards, which put his back against the elevator wall, and Lex had no qualms closing the distance, pressing his advantage.

"So I can only assume, you don't have an issue with men, either. " he grazed the back of his hand across the front of Clark's jeans. Rubbed his knuckles up and down the flap covering the zipper and felt reaction underneath. "Or is it just me?"

Clark caught his wrist, brought it up between them, and Lex looked up from the captured hand to Clark's eyes. Dilated pupils with a ring of angry green. Lex smiled the sort of smile that offered all manner of things to a man willing to throw caution to the winds and take him up on the offer. Which of course Clark wouldn't, because the sorts of risks Clark took, weren't of the scandalous nature.

He leaned in, brushed his mouth across Clark's and felt the full body shiver that rippled over Clark in response. "If you'd care to explore options, make an appointment. I'll see if I can squeeze you in."

The doors opened and Lex pulled back, lifted a questioning brow and Clark released his wrist as if it had sprouted thorns. Lex strolled down the hall, not looking back, feeling a distinct sense of victory, even if it did come with simmering frustration.

He got the door half open when he felt Clark press in behind him, pressing him into the room, up against the inside wall while the door softly swung shut behind him.

"You're a son of a bitch." Clark growled, breath close to Lex's ear.

"I thought we'd already established that." He shoved Clark back - - or made the attempt and failed, Clark caught one wrist, held it fast against Lex's side while he leaned in.

His hand was going a little numb from Clark's grip, but the rest of him was very aware of the press of Clark's body. He could feel the thud of Clark's heart against his back, the external wave of heat that radiated from his skin. The harsh breath against the back of his head.

He pressed his free hand flat against the wall, seeking leverage that didn't seem to make a damned bit of difference trying to move Clark when Clark didn't want to be moved.

"Is there a plan to go with this bit of spontaneity?" Lex inquired, less control in his voice than he might have liked.

Clark made a sound that might have been a growl - - frustrated, low in his throat. "You - - just - - make - - me crazy."

Which in certain circumstances, might not have been the most undesirable of things. Might have been a very good thing indeed, considering Clark was half erect against his ass - - if Lex had plunged into this little contest with sex as the goal, instead of sex as a means to drive Clark away. After the utter embarrassment of last night, he simply wasn't up to more of Clark's horrified regrets in the face of impulsive physical reactions.

"You're not making my life any easier, either. Get off," Lex growled back, bucking against Clark uselessly.

"Why did you kiss me?"

Ah, god, back to that again. Clark was steadfast as granite.

"Why do you think?" Lex hissed.

Clark was silent, leaning into him, his weight oppressive, subtly thrilling. Then suddenly it was gone, and it was just Clark's hands on either side of him against the wall. Lex turned, caged, not desperate enough yet to surrender dignity and try and duck under Clark's arms to escape. Not sure he wanted to.

He'd made a hobby of reading Clark, once upon a time. Certainly no complicated undertaking, since Clark wore his emotions as plainly as credits on the big screen. His lies had always been as easy to read as his truths. There was honest emotion there now. Honest confusion. Honest frustration. Honest guilt, because upstanding young Kansas farmers didn't sport erections pressed up against other men.

What would it take to make Clark just give up and go home? To stop fucking with Lex's head with this sudden surge of interest - - with the sudden reinsertion of his presence in Lex's life when it had taken Lex a damned long time to get over the abrupt departure in the first place.

"I don't know," Clark said softly and Lex hissed, because it was lie. Another damned lie because Clark did know.

"That's bullshit." Lex took the half step open to him, between Clark and the wall, got right up in Clark's face, and damned if he wasn't a little hard too, from anger, from Clark's closeness, from Clark's aggression. It grazed against Clark's and it was like a shot of pure electricity.

"You were never that naive," he bit out, mouth very close to Clark's jaw and Clark wasn't moving, Clark's arms were brushing his shoulders. "You were just so used to lying to everyone else, that lying to yourself about a little deviant attraction was no great stretch. Admit it, Clark. If I'd been anything but reputable back then - - and I so fucking was - - I'd have had you bending over for me every - -"

"Shut up," Clark shoved him backwards. Hard. Lex hit the wall with enough impact to drive the air from his lungs, to make him see stars when his head hit. His knees went watery, would have given out entirely if Clark hadn't caught him by the arms and pressed up hard against him, mouth covering his, slamming his head back against the wall, all over again.

It was desperate and demanding, Clark's tongue invading like he was waging war, giving no quarter, thick and strong and wet, thrusting inside Lex's mouth like he was fucking. Oxygen starved and half dazed, Lex tried to get his bearings, but it was easier at the moment, to simply submit. To rub his tongue across Clark's, to suck at the meaty fullness of it, to let Clark pull his into his mouth, wet and messy and wonderful even if he was on the verge of seeing black around the edges of his vision from the lack of air.

Clark pulled back and Lex gasped, pulling in a shuddery lungful of air. Clark's perfect, perfect lips were glistening, his eyes so dark a green they were almost black.

"God," Clark said, in the same sort of voice he might use at the scene of a horrific accident.

Lex could see it in his eyes, Clark thinking about Lana hardly six weeks dead, and his mother, and his self-righteous father and all his carefully constructed pre-conceptions about what it was to be a man - - and Lex didn't care. Not about Lana or Clark's moral values or even his own recent desires to drive Clark as far and as fast away from him as he could.

"How's it taste? That straight shot of honesty?" He asked, voice shaking just a little, but he didn't care about that now either.

Clark stared at him, mouth half open, throat working and so damned hard. Lex was and he shifted, grinding against Clark and Clark gasped. Lex saw a flash of pink tongue. He grasped Clark's shirt, pressing up and kissing him. Sucking his bottom lip into his mouth, biting it enough that Clark shuddered and made a sound that went through Lex like the best drug in the world. He slipped his tongue inside, slow easy, tracing the silk on the inside of Clark's lips, the slick feel of his teeth and Clark's tongue flickered out to meet him, practically shy after the intensity of his first kiss, but growing stronger and Clark opened his mouth and drew Lex in.

Clark's taste was euphoric, half remembered from last night, but clear headed, in possession of all of his faculties, it curled through Lex's senses like fine liquor.

He worked his hand down between them, cupped Clark's bulge and Clark's body jerked against him, up against his hand. He let his mouth slide to Clark's jaw, biting, scraping his tongue, sucking against the angle of clenching muscle and bone. Clark was muttering, prayers or curses - - all of it unintelligible past the pounding blood in Lex's ears. Clark's hand moved up from his arms to his neck, big, callused fingers rough/soft against his skin, sliding under the collar of his shirt to splay out across his shoulders. A button popped off and another as Clark tried to work his hands down more of Lex's chest and that was okay. Buttons could be reattached, new shirts purchased. Clark's fingers on his skin were beyond price.

He got the button of Clark's jeans undone, fumbled after the zipper and got it down enough so that he could get his hand down, but Clark caught his wrist before he could do more than brush his fingers across the moist tip of Clark's cock. Clark pushed him back against the wall and pinned him there, the strength in his hands unforgiving - - entirely frustrating. Clark looked at him for a moment, eyes bright and fevered, throat working.

Clark was thinking. Lex could see it. The second guessing going on behind his eyes. The doubt. If he could just get his hands on Clark's cock, he could banish that unwanted thought. Get down to basics.

"What are you waiting for?" he sneered. "Me on my knees, sucking you? I could do that for you if its what you need to get back on track."

Clark twitched, fingers tightening on Lex's wrists, grinding bone together, maybe the animal part of his brain thinking about that option and liking it. Lex hissed and arched forward, closing the distance between their hips, grinding his erection against Clark's. It was the deciding factor. Despite all of his high and mighty ideals, his homespun values, Clark was only human.

Clark was back against him, sucking his tongue into his mouth and Lex dug his fingers into his silk slick hair, ran them down a silk covered back, feeling muscle roll and flinch under his hands.

Clark moaned, hauled Lex up by the elbows until his feet were half off the ground, chest sliding across chest. He could feel Clark's hard little nipples through the thin material of his shirt, biting into his skin like brands. He wanted to taste them. Roll them in his mouth. To bite hard enough to make Clark scream.

Clark's mouth was on his neck, not gently, and it felt fucking fantastic, but there were things that would feel better. And he had Clark willing - -more than willing, damned insistent - - and not denying it and that was unprecedented and not to be chanced on unpredictable mood swings.

Clark let him slide down, a slow drift between Clark's body and the wall, and somewhere along the way Clark finished mauling his shirt, big hands drifting down his ribs, to his hips, sliding around to the small of his back like he couldn't get enough of Lex's skin.

Lex got his hand on Clark's cock, felt it jump under his touch, gripped the head hard, sliding the foreskin down so he could press a thumb to the tip. He wanted to see it, to see all of Clark, golden and naked, confirming the details he'd only ever had his imagination to supply him with.

"No," Clark said, slipping around behind him, too swift by far, for Lex's peace of mind, too strong. One hand curled around his waist, the other tugged at his zipper, pushed his slacks and underwear down over his hips and as frustrating as this little stubborn streak of Clark's was, it was just as exhilarating. An exquisite little power play that Lex didn't particularly mind Clark winning, as long as he didn't back out before the game was over.

The pants slid down and his cock bounced up, craving attention. Lex drew Clark's hand down and Clarks fingers tentatively touched his skin, touched the place where pubes would be if meteor radiation hadn't stolen his ability to sprout them.

Clark's fingers circled him, callused and strong and it felt like a little brush with the dirty part of heaven, that first flex of his hand. Lex's head fell back against Clark's shoulder, he thrust into the grip and Clark's other hand spread out flat against his hip, pressing him back, preventing the friction he craved.

"You fuck," he breathed, digging fingers into Clark's forearm, but his nails didn't leave marks, not even the little white streaks that would flush to pink before fading.

"I want to hate you." Clark breathed against his shoulder, covered the warm spot with his mouth and bit down. His hand tightened, warm and large around the head of Lex's cock.

"Yeah?" Lex was seeing stars. Feeling little tracery explosions traveling from the bite to his cock, secure in Clark's grasp.

"I did, when - - you and Lana - - you went out of your way to make me."

It wasn't an entirely inaccurate statement. He'd been a son of a bitch. But Lex was having trouble concentrating. He was generally very good at multi-tasking, but not apparently, when Clark was slowly, firmly jerking him off. "You make bad choices, Lex."

God, wasn't that a loaded statement. It could have covered so very many things, to Clark's way of thinking. None of which he felt particularly inclined to debate at the moment.

Lex got a hand behind him, found Clark's rigid cock, pressed between them, wrapped the shaft in his fingers and flexed. "Practical choices."

"Doesn't make it right." Clark gasped.

He swallowed and thought agreeing to anything at the moment might be his best option to get Clark to get on with it. "Maybe not. Do you want to fuck or do you want to talk?"

Clark groaned, maybe liking the notion, maybe just liking Lex's hand on his cock. Lex found himself against the wall again, face first, Clark's hand still gripped firm around him, Clark's cock, mostly escaped from the band of his shorts, pressed against the cleft of Lex's bare ass. The whole of his body clenched, coiling and wanting. Wanting Clark's hot fist to move again. Wanting Clark's other hand to slide up his body, pinch his nipple - - Wanting Clark's mouth on his shoulder, or his neck or anywhere as long as it was doing something. But mostly - - mostly wanting Clark's cock, slick with pre-come, and hot and heavy, even if it would hurt like hell without the kindness of lube.

Lex couldn't remember the last time he'd wanted as badly as he did now - - and the prospect of blood mixed with the gratification made him shudder in anticipation. If he begged Clark to get on with it, he wondered if Clark would appease him, or continue on doggedly at his own pace. If he pissed Clark off again, badly, that might do the trick.

"It took less time to get Lana to spread her legs, than it's taking you to work up the nerve to fuck me," he said, lacing the words with spiteful humor.

"Don't," Clark warned, his voice shuddery with anger/passion/revulsion/want.

Lex ground his hips back, felt the bite of the zipper of Clark's jeans against his thighs. Clark groaned and thrust against him, cock sliding in his cleft, but not inside. It was okay, because Clark's hand was moving with his thrusts and Clark was making the type of moaning sounds that could only be issued through clenched teeth. His hands were so strong and so hot, moist with sweat and the come leaking from Lex's cock. He ought to be crying out from the intensity of the grip, - - couldn't differentiate between the pain and the pleasure, but they were so intertwined that it didn't matter.

He felt Clark tense, the grip tightened and Lex did cry out, face pressed against the wall, while Clark spurted over his lower back. Hot, searing spatters of come branding his skin.

Lex would have come himself, if Clark's grip hadn't been so tight around the base of his cock and then the grip was gone, Clark backing off like Lex had sprouted thorns, job unfinished. Hateful, son of a bitch.

Lex groaned, support gone and sank down the wall to his knees, in the tangle of his pants. He didn't even look at Clark, didn't want to see the expression on his face this time, just took his aching cock in hand and stroked it hard. Four, five times was all it took, and he was spilling over his hand, across his own belly.

He slumped, shoulder against the wall, feeling the residual ache of Clark's fingers now that passion was spent and indignation was rushing in to take its place.

"You can run away now," he said, fixing as impassive a look as he could manage on his face before he looked up. He felt numb. Drained. Like this had been considerably better sex than it had ended up being. But, he couldn't shake the notion that even if he'd had to finish up himself, it still ranked up near the top. Because - - God - - it had been Clark. And it might never be Clark again and that hurt - - raking across something that felt surprisingly like vulnerability inside of him. He hated the feeling.

"You know, I imagined you having better staying power," he remarked lazily. "Is that why you couldn't keep Lana? No follow through?"

"You're a son of a bitch," Clark said softly, with something very much like tentative hurt in his voice.

Lex laughed, cradling one bruised wrist, feeling the aches of quite a few others. "And you're a prince, Clark. We were made for each other."

If Clark had a response for that, it was swallowed by someone rapping smartly on the door to Lex's suite. Wonderful. Perfect timing. Whoever it was could fucking well come back.

"Lex," Clark said softly. "Its the woman from the club."

Lex groaned, opened his eyes enough to squint at Clark who had a hand gingerly on the door, apparently having checked the peephole.

Are you sure, he mouthed and Clark nodded.

Fuck. Leave it to Sophia Daniakos to show up at half past nine in the morning, when Lex was in the midst of recovering from an extraordinarily compromising situation.

He pushed himself up, yanking up his pants, finding the zipper mangled halfway down. His shirt was buttonless, and there were no doubt finger marks on his skin. Fucking priceless.

He growled and cast Clark a glare. Clark had zipped and buttoned up and there were no apparent splotches of telltale bodily fluids on his person. Apparently everything had been magnetically attracted to Lex, because he had more than his fair share.

"Tell her I'm in the middle of a call. Don't make small talk. Don't let her leave before I come out." He headed towards the bedroom, gauging how quickly he could step under the shower, dry off, get redressed in undamaged clothing and get back out here.

Leaving Clark in a room with one of the twins was not high on his list of intelligent moves. But then, Clark had shown a surprising bit of predator himself this morning, so maybe he could hold his own.

Part thirteen

Clark took a breath, found surprisingly enough, a center of calm that by all rights ought to be a far and distant thing, considering he'd just lost all hold on sanity and reason.

Lex had retreated to the bedroom, the lingering marks of Clark's fingers - - Clark's mouth - - on his pale skin, and even that wasn't throwing Clark. Clark wasn't sure if he was in some weird state of denial, or shock, or simply satiated into complacency. If he'd had time to really think about it, he might have been able to achieve a more appropriate state of mind. In other words - - panic.

But the woman outside the door demanded immediate attention, so he fortified his self-control, composed his face and opened the door.

He'd only seen her before through a crowd of people, under the eerie blue light of the club's back room. If her face hadn't been so memorable, like some classic beauty off the silver screen, he might not have recognized her as the same scantily clad woman who'd been pressing up against Lex last night at La Cruz.

She was a vision of elegance now, in a tailored ivory skirt suit that clung to her curves like an expensive second skin and emphasized the olive hues of her skin and the darkness of her long hair. Up close she was the sort of woman that caused intelligent dialogue to dry up and wither away. The type of woman that billionaires would have pursued - - and had.

"Uh, hello." He felt like an idiot, standing there staring at her.

She canted her head, eyes flicking over his face, a faint, patient smile on her lips. "This is Lex Luthor's suite?"

"Yeah. He's on the phone. Important call." Idiot. Absolute moron. Clark smiled to cover it, one of his big, sort of apologetic ones that usually had women tumbling over themselves to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Sophia Daniakos lifted a brow, looked him up and down a little more thoroughly. "I believe he wanted to speak with me. May I come in and wait?"

She walked past him without waiting for consent, her heels clicking on the marble of the entryway before she hit carpet. She had really fantastic legs, but Clark tore his eyes away in a panic as he passed the wall he'd had Lex pressed against less than five minutes before. There were no stains, no splotches, nothing to indicate it had been anything other than a twisted dream. Except for the smell - - and God, Clark hoped the scent of sex was mostly in his head and not actually permeating the air.

"So," She turned in the center of the room, to look at him. "Are you here by the hour, or did he pick you up last night at the club?"

She asked it with such a composed smile, such an elegant lilt to her voice that he almost didn't get the connotation. It took him a second, before his defenses started kicking in and he got past the deceptive beauty and remembered this woman might have had something to do with Lana's death, that she'd certainly done something to Lex last night. She was a shark. A pretty shark, trolling for blood.

"I'm a friend," he said, mouth twitching in the sort of smile he might give Lois when she was rubbing his last nerve raw.

"Hmm," She wasn't making the effort to hide her appraisal of him. "Lex always did have exquisite taste in 'friends'. I do hope I didn't interrupt anything other than his call."

She settled on the couch, her fingers, tipped with manicured nails stroking the leather of the seat cushion next to her, little rotating circles of her index finger that were almost sexual. She was the sort of woman, he thought that drew you in with her beauty, but seduced with the little things, the subtle movements, the simple grace of crossed legs - - and he found himself oddly numb to it. "No interruption at all." He crossed his arms, not backing down from her dissecting gaze, not bothering to tack the smile back on. Having played enough games this morning and not wanting to play hers.

She pursed her lips a little, a pretty pout at his lack of interest in her verbal teasing. Let her play with Lex when he came out, because Lex was at the top of his 'words as weapons' game today.

"Do you have a name, Lex's friend?" she inquired.

"Yes," he answered.

She kept watching him, and wary of her as he might be, he hadn't been raised to employ discourtesy easily. He relented.

"Clark."

"Clark," she repeated, lips curving a little as if she'd won some sort of victory. "Pretty." She said and he knew she couldn't mean the name, because, well, it simply wasn't. He finally felt the blush that should have risen minutes ago. He couldn't help it. Lex had said not to talk to her.

"So what do you do for fun, Clark? What sort of games do you like to play?" She purred and the innuendo was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Clark had no idea how to answer that one or even if he should try.

"Not the type you like, Sophia."

Lex kept him from having to, strolling out of the bedroom as pressed and neat as he'd been doing nothing more stressful this morning than reading the paper, not even glancing Clark's way. "To what do I owe this - - pleasure?"

She fixed her gaze on Lex. Clark did, eyes drawn almost helplessly as Lex moved across the room towards the suite's bar. He had on a blue gray shirt, buttoned up to the neck and a silvery gray tie, back slacks that fit him - - well, like all of Lex's clothes fit, perfectly - - which was absolutely the wrong direction for Clark's thoughts to drift.

"As if you didn't expect a visit, Lex?" Sophia was saying, drawing Clark's attention back to the issue at hand, instead of how Lex wore his clothes, how his ass looked in pants - - or out of them - - Clark drew a sharp little breath, stomach churning like someone had slipped a sliver if meteor rock into the room, and forced his eyes to the woman. She was safer by a long shot.

Lex canted his head, considering the selection of hotel liquor, and said lightly, as if it were of little consequence. "After your little stunt last night? I assumed you and Niko would find the nearest available rock to hide under. I would have, in your shoes."

Lex smiled at her, and it wasn't one of his nice ones. He poured a finger's worth of something amber colored, and lifted a brow, a silent inquiry to her preference.

She waved a hand sharply in refusal, the first indication that she did indeed have nerves and that somehow Lex had already pricked them. No surprise there, Lex was good at it.

"You don't play innocent well at all, Lex," she said. "I don't know why you try."

Lex shrugged, sipping at his drink. "Is there a problem, Sophia? Perhaps I can help?"

She tightened her lips, then regained control of her calm and smiled thinly back at him. "Our yacht was impounded early this morning by New York city police. It seems they were tipped off about the possibility of illegal substances onboard."

"Unfortunate," Lex managed a brilliant imitation of sympathy. "I hope you weren't careless enough to have any lying around."

"Apparently they discovered several kilos worth of cocaine."

"That's a lot, even for the two of you," Lex remarked. "Planning a party, were you?"

"It wasn't ours and you know it, Lex." She hissed the name like it was poison on her tongue. "They've been questioning Niko for hours. And then there seems to be some issue with our visas that has the interest of your Homeland Security."

"Imagine that. Well, I suppose it would be criminally negligent if suspected drug traffickers were to flee the country."

"You bastard," she said with more level calm than Clark could have managed under the same circumstances. "Don't tell me you're upset about last night. It seems to have worked out quite well for you."

She glanced towards Clark and he felt another little rise of heat and tightened his jaw.

Lex simply lifted a brow, not rising to the bait, not following her glance, as if Clark weren't even in the room.

"Or," she asked, a deeper hue if insinuation settling in her eyes. "Is this about our little party on the boat, all those years ago, Lex? Even after gutting the company, you still can't get over it? I still think about it, now and then. How delightful it might have been if you'd been more - - accommodating."

A muscle twitched in Lex's jaw. His fingers on the glass were white, but nothing else showed on his face or his voice when he spoke. "If I were still harboring that grudge, Sophia, the least of your problems would be drug charges and revoked visas."

She glared and Lex's knuckles relaxed on the tumbler, composure quietly regained at her expense. And Clark had to wonder what it was that had happened that Lex so very obviously did hold a great deal of bitterness over. He remembered those pictures he'd seen, of Lex with this woman and her brother, as cock-sure as any eighteen year old with a fortune to back him up, but still very, very young. While she looked the same. Same expression, same seductress smile, like she knew so much more than the men around her and always had.

She gathered herself, settling back into the cushions, stroking the skin between the hem of her skirt and her knee. "This is about the girl."

It wasn't a question.

"My wife," Lex agreed and Clark felt something clench inside, a hard little knot between his heart and his gut that would never, ever accept with grace that unholy union.

"Would you care to explain?" Lex asked.

"Lovely young woman," Sophia shrugged. "Sweet. I met her in Metropolis while you and Niko were fighting over the dissolution of Papa's company. Sad little thing though, caught in your shadow."

Lex's mouth tightened.

"I can understand you sleeping with her. She was beautiful and I know you like your beautiful things, but taking her as a wife? She was ill-suited. No proper match for a man that likes challenge."

"When I need your advice on my personal life, Sophia, I'll email." Maybe she'd scored deeply, because Lex moved to the window, hands loosely in his pockets, looking out over the multi-hued park and the city beyond. "That was six months ago. Why was your man meeting with her last month?"

Sophia rose, brushing past Clark with the deliberation of a hunting cat, as she moved towards the bar. "We commiserated on past disenchantments and future pitfalls - - the general disappointment that women share over men. I gave her my number. She called it."

Lex turned, eyes narrow and bright. Clark could practically see his body coiling, no less of a predator than she was. More dangerous by far, by the simple nature of their hunting grounds. She trolled the clubs and the playgrounds of the elite. Lex was global.

"And you hoped to gain what, by fostering this association? Inside information on LexCorp? Something to use against me? You did realize you'd have to stand in line and wait your turn for that particular source of information. She was apparently stretched thin."

"Ah, yes. Your father."

Lex opened his mouth. Shut it abruptly, apparently not expecting her to be privy to that particular knowledge. Lana had to have told her and Clark wondered just how many people she'd confided in before she'd ever come to him. He supposed wryly, that he was a step further up in the information highway than Lex, who had been the absolute last to find out. A month ago that knowledge hadn't bothered him in the least - - he'd reveled in it, confirmation that she'd never loved Lex - - but now, oddly enough, he felt a niggling little stab of empathy.

"She met with your man and a week later she was dead. You realize don't you, that if I discover you or your brother had a hand in it your lives are over."

It was as blatant a threat as Clark as ever heard Lex level, he was usually so much subtler in his insinuations, but he was angry now. Maybe more than angry and Clark could understand that, could feel it inside himself at the thought of having someone in the room that might have used Lana as coinage against Lex in the payment of some meaningless vendetta.

But Sophia Daniakos was holding up her hands, eyes suddenly wary and wide as she realized the implication of Lex's words. As she realized what he was accusing her of and what he was capable of in retaliation.

"No. No, that's not what happened. This had nothing to do with her death - - she asked me for help. For money she couldn't get from your accounts without you finding out."

Lex just stood there, not demanding she elaborate, maybe figuring things out in his own mind that Clark had yet to put together.

"Why?" Clark had to ask, and she turned her eyes on him, more than appraisal in her gaze. Curiosity. Wondering who he was that Lex let stand here in the middle of this. He didn't care what she thought or what she assumed, he just wanted to know.

"She wanted to leave him and needed the resources to run far and wide and I was happy to help her out." She turned her gaze back to Lex, eyes narrow. "Because I understand what it's like to be under the thumb of a man who thinks he's God."

"You had money transferred to her, through your lawyer?" Lex asked, voice gone low and neutral. Nothing showed on his face. His eyes were blue-gray mirrors.

"Yes."

"What else?"

"Nothing else. Nikolas knew nothing of it. He would hardly have approved. He's old fashioned that way."

"How much did you give her?"

"None of your business, Lex. What does it matter?"

Clark wondered the same thing. She was dead, and if this woman was telling the truth they were no closer to finding out why or who. This had all been a colossal waste of time. All it had proved was that Lana had been so desperate to get away from the Luthor world that she had run to Lex's enemies for aid. Instead of running to Clark. Instead of trusting him with any of this.

"Everything matters, Sophia. But I think we're done." He walked towards her, a hand hovering at the small of her back and she went with it, walking with him to the door.

"Be a gentleman and walk me to the lobby," she said. "For old times sake, Lex."

Lex shrugged, opening the door for her and Clark felt a peal of relief that she wasn't going to walk out that door and leave them alone again. He wasn't sure he was ready to be alone again with Lex. With Lana so fresh on his mind, it made what they'd done seem so extraordinarily wrong. So excruciatingly dirty - - because part of him still twitched a little thinking about it. The part he'd stuffed hastily back into his pants, without the benefit of a tissue to wipe off. He could still feel the slow drying wetness against his shorts.

He felt the heat in his cheeks again, but their backs were towards him and he fought it down. He wasn't ready to get in the elevator with them, because God knew that ride down would be filled with enough tension without Clark adding himself to the mix, but damned if he was going to wait in the room for Lex to come back up. He wasn't sure if he could hold a rational conversation just yet in the same room they'd just both gone off the deep end in. He wasn't sure he could talk to Lex at all, because somewhere in that convoluted maze Lex called a brain, he'd decided that provoking Clark was his new method of communication. And worse yet, something inside Clark rushed to the challenge, eager for the conflict - - eager for any excuse to back Lex against the wall and let him know without doubt that there were bigger dogs in the junkyard than him.

Which was so completely screwed up that Clark wanted to yank at his hair or smash a fist in the wall, or run somewhere far distant where it was cold and silent and try and get a handle on his newly birthed insanity.

He ran downstairs instead. Got there long before the elevator carrying Lex and Sophia arrived at the lobby, and loitered behind the foliage in the little indoor Japanese garden.

The doors opened and they stepped out, no worse for wear. They crossed the lobby, and Sophia stopped, turning towards Lex and saying something about bygones and the times they'd shared in the past, to which Lex didn't respond, until she leaned up and kissed him on the mouth. Which made Clark's fingers curl until Lex stepped away from it, impassively, maybe on the verge of saying something when a man burst through the lobby doors, from an awkwardly parked black Mercedes outside.

"You come to him? Of all people? Did you touch her?"

Clark didn't even have to expand his hearing to get that, and though he didn't remember the features of Nikolas Daniakos as vividly as he did Sophia, vague recollection and basic math pretty much assured him this was the man.

Lex's height, but a lot broader, the man didn't carry his age as well as sister and the lines on his face were tense with rage and no doubt the exhaustion of dealing with the problems Lex had created for him for the last half dozen hours or so.

Sophia smiled and her hand brushed Lex's arm, a familiarity that suggested intimacy before she left him, walking past her trembling brother towards the door.

"I'll kill you. I'll fucking kill you!" Nikolas shouted, face gone red with rage, body vibrating with it before he launched himself at Lex. Clark was halfway across the lobby before it even occurred to him what he was doing, and stumbling to a halt when Lex sidestepped the swing, and conveniently got a foot between his attacker's ankles, sending the man staggering forward into the arms of frantically approaching bellmen. When it wasn't four on one, and karma wasn't thumbing its nose at him, Lex wasn't half bad at taking care for himself.

"No one touches her but me. No one but me, you smug little freak!!" Niko was screaming, struggling in the hands of two bellmen, glaring at Lex like he was the antichrist.

Lex's mouth turned up in a cool smile, but he didn't say a thing. Just stood there with his hands in his pockets and watched them force Niko towards the door and the car where his sister was already waiting. But Lex had a look in his eyes, when Clark finally walked up, that hinted at wheels turning inside his head.

"It's funny, isn't it," Lex said, tone soft and musing. "How little a woman really has to do, to have a man do her dirty work. If he'd had a gun, he would have shot me."

Clark swallowed, the notion of that making his gut lurch. He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to think about how badly he didn't want to think about Lex bleeding out his life on imported tiles.

"Is your new hobby making enemies and getting death threats, Lex?" Clark asked.

The car screeched away outside, pulling hazardously into city traffic. Lex tilted his head, looking up at Clark, almond eyes inscrutable, still thinking and God that made Clark edgy. Being this close to Lex did, because Clark could smell him and feel the subtle energy radiating from his body and he hated that awareness. Lex had felt really good under his hands. The kind of good that made everything else bleed away into inconsequentiality. Until consequence came back and slapped him in the face and he realized what he was doing - - what Lex had driven him to do. It had been Lex, right? Lex's fault. Lex's vicious seduction.

Clark swallowed again, convulsively and shuffled a step away, needing that space. Needing a lot more than a few feet.

"It seems to be," Lex said, with less of an edge of sarcasm than might be expected with that bitter admission.

"Did you believe her?"

Lex looked back towards the doors and the movement of traffic beyond the landscaped wall separating the Mandarin's drive from the rest of the city. "Yes."

He trusted Lex's instincts and in this, he trusted Lex not to lie. Which left nothing else here for Clark, but the desperate urge to leave.

"If you need a lift back home," Lex said in a neutral voice. "I'll be flying back to Metropolis this afternoon."

Clark almost laughed, the offer was so civil. Like Lex hadn't recently been spewing vile things at him to spur him on, and he hadn't had Lex pressed up against a wall, his dick pressed tight against Lex's perfect ass, shooting come onto the small of his back.

He felt the panic swim up, gnawing at the edges of his calm like hungry piranha, and shook his head. What the hell was Lex thinking? Plotting? Planning? His bouts with schizophrenia were driving Clark mad. And the idea that it might have something to do with the abrupt and admittedly violent removal of the remnant of Zod just made it worse. Because then, didn't the blame lie partially at Clark's own feet?

"No thanks. I'll manage on my own." He managed to say that without it coming out strangled and did the one thing he'd always been consistently good at in this rollercoaster ride of a relationship - - he turned on his heel and walked away.

Part Fourteen

Halfway through the flight home and Lex was a little drunk. The flight attendant had kept filling his glass and he'd kept drinking it down, because he'd needed to have his hands on something, otherwise it was drum the arms of his seat obsessively or walk the cabin and the turbulence was rough enough to put a damper on comfortable pacing. Lex hated turbulence. It made him nervous and he hated being nervous.

He hated being distracted to the point where the simple act of conducting essential business was beyond him. He had his laptop, he had his phone, he had a great deal of work that he could have been doing - - if he could have torn his thoughts away from this disaster of a weekend. From this very curious week in its entirety. From Clark.

He accepted Sophia's story. It even made sense to him, that Lana would seek outside help in her attempts to leave him. If he looked at it logically, past the hurt and past the anger, it had been a smart move. Funds from what should have been an untraceable source - - he might never have uncovered it if he hadn't been so dogged in his determination to clear his own name - - or if Clark had killed him in Reeves Damn, driven to murder by grief over Lana's death and a clear indication that Lex had been responsible.

And he'd come close. Lex remembered the look in his eyes, dilated pupils, narrow rage, all the empathy, the compassion, the humanity that normally dwelt in Clark's expression just gone. He'd seen that look in the eyes of killers, in the faces of no few number of psychotic 'guests' he had acquired and kept safely locked away from a blithely unaware populace in various off-the-books facilities. He'd never seen it in Clark - - not like that. It had been terrifying and exhilarating, because a brief flicker of something inside him had thought that if he were going to die, better by Clark's hands than the thing he'd left in the lab. It would have given Lana the justice she thought she needed, even from the grave - - and Clark would have been a murderer for her - - just like Niko was willing to kill because his snake of a sister let him believe a falsehood.

If he could believe it of Lana. If Clark hadn't stopped and Lex still wasn't entirely sure why he had. Just as he wasn't certain why Clark had picked him up off the road and taken him home, or sat in his bedroom all night while Lex slept off what he was sure now, had been an exhaustion and stress related attack.

Oh, the looks he could understand. Clark had always looked at him - - under the lashes when he didn't think Lex was watching. The nervous, curious looks of a young man who didn't entirely understand why he was so fascinated.

Lex could understand fucking someone you despised. He'd done it on more than one occasion. Apparently Lana had all through their sham of a marriage. He just didn't understand the concern, or why despite his best efforts, Clark kept coming back and looking at him occasionally like he was something wounded that Clark needed to mend.

Perhaps it had all been the driving need to discover who had killed Lana and the fact that Lex had found a possibility in the Twins that had kept Clark so determined to shadow him? That reason was gone now along with any vague idea of where to look next. So perhaps he could expect not to see Clark in the foreseeable future. Perhaps? After what had happened between them in the Mandarin Executive suite that morning, in the heat of anger and frustration - - he doubted Clark would ever willingly cross his path again. Which was exactly what he'd wanted. Wasn't it?

He shuddered a little, an uncontrollable reaction to a sudden jolt of turbulence, clutched the seat arm in one hand and the smooth planes of the glass in the other. He rode it out, no choice but to ride it out, as the air buffeted the plane from without and Lex thought about the terrible sounds of engines failing and the whine of insubstantial objects power-diving towards the earth from thirty thousand feet in the air. He had nightmares about those sounds. He'd known Clark seven years, a quarter of his life - - and it didn't seem nearly long enough.

He shut his eyes and pushed that panic induced thought away. Another one followed on its heels, of Clark kissing him, fierce and desperate and Clark's big hands on his body, tentative, like he'd been touching something pricey and fragile, before need took over and the grip tightened and god, Clark's strength had never felt so good. Until it stopped. And that had been an embarrassing, inopportune let down. Might have been entirely disappointing if Clark hadn't stood there staring at him raptly, mouth open, cock half hanging out of his open jeans, while Lex stroked himself to completion.

The turbulence actually proved helpful, since it kept the flight attendant in her seat and not prowling about noticing the beginnings of the tent in Lex's pants. How many Clark-related fantasies had he entertained over the years of just such an occurrence? Even while he'd been getting regular sex from Victoria, Helen and various other partners. Certainly while he'd been courting Lana. Even after Clark had stopped being the boy who had first enthralled him, for so many reasons, and became a young man full of distrust and accusations. When had the sexual whimsies actually stopped and turned into darker musings? He looked back, being analytical about it, because analytical made the hard-on recede - - ticking off dates and events in his head.

After Dark Thursday - - when he'd been so traumatized by the destruction he'd wrought under the possession of something utterly alien, that the whole of his worldview had altered. When he'd half killed himself and invested a good deal of his fortune in his pursuit of an answer to preventing such a thing happening again. When he'd dreamed every night about things he couldn't recall in the morning and couldn't ever shake the feeling that he wasn't quite alone in his head. Like an amputee feeling the ghostly sensations of a limb that was no longer there.

Only he hadn't felt it for a while and he wasn't sure when that had gone away either. He wasn't sure about so many things and it vaguely felt like the onset of some mild mental break. Which he damned sure wouldn't allow. He had too much to do for that sort of inconvenience.

There was a light covering of snow on the ground when the plane touched down in Metropolis. Ridiculous that it was colder in Kansas than New York, but the cold front they'd been experiencing seemed unusually persistent.

Lex left the plane with a bag he hadn't had on the trip up, walked across the private strip butting up against the vast tarmacs of Metropolis International, towards the parking lot. There were a few stray flakes in the air and an overcast sky made early evening darker than it ought to be.

The Porsche was blocked in by the long, black shape of a limo, the exhaust of which spit white clouds of condensation into the cold air. Lex didn't have to see the license plate to know it was a LuthorCorp car. No one else would have the audacity to blockade him but his father.

Lex ground his teeth, considering options as he walked across the lot, shoes crunching in snow. The front passenger door opened and his father's usual security man got out, opening the back door in invitation.

His choices were limited. He could refuse it, walk around and sit fruitlessly in his car hoping his father would give up and leave without voicing whatever it was he'd come out here to catch Lex and say, or walk back to the terminal and call for a ride of his own. Or just step into the Lion's den and see what was so fucking important.

He chose the latter, triggering the Porsche trunk open and tossing his bag at the waiting security guard, before he slid into the back of the limo.

"Son." Lionel sat in his leather-upholstered cocoon of warmth, the melodious sounds of one of Mendelssohn's concertos oozing through the sound system.

"What?" Lex wasn't in the mood for pleasantries. He had a buzz that wasn't entirely contributing to razor sharp wits and he hated to feel disadvantaged around his father.

"You've been avoiding my calls, Lex. I was beginning to worry." Lionel turned the music down a few notches, a subtle, patient smile curving his lips.

Lex had, but really, avoidance between the two of them had been working out so well lately. Lex found himself less constantly in a murderous mood when his father was out of sight and out of mind. "I find it hard to believe you don't have more productive things to do than sit out here waiting to ambush me because I haven't been returning calls. What do you really want?"

"I was worried about you, son. Have you seen your doctor yet? Some things shouldn't be taken for granted, your health chief among them."

"Don't - -" Lex started off with a growl, stopped and got hold of his temper and started again. "Don't concern yourself with my health, dad. As busy as you are, pulling LuthorCorp from the brink, I wouldn't want to distract you."

"Ah, this morning's pretentious Journal cover." Lionel laughed. "The young man who took the interview was overly enthusiastic."

"Another fan?"

Lionel shrugged and Lex practically choked on the false modesty.

"Don't be bitter, son. We agreed this was for the best, no matter wounded pride. This will blow over. People will forget. You'll have your place back in the sun, if you choose to take it."

"Choose? You mean you won't have your tendrils sunk so deeply by that point that I'll actually have a choice in the matter?"

"You have your safeguards. You think I'm not aware?"

"I think you're entirely aware, which is why I worry, dad."

Lionel laughed again, that infuriating casual amusement he could wear when Lex felt nothing even close. "You think I want to end my days waging war on the corporate front, Lex? I have visions of retirement. Someplace sunny. Spain, perhaps, I always did love Marbella."

Lex sat back, not believing it for an instant. His father would be the master manipulator until the day he died and if Lionel Luthor had his way, he might even be able to affect things beyond the grave. Chilling thought.

"If all you wanted was to inquire about my well-being, rest assured, I'm fine."

He reached for the door handle, Lionel reached for his arm, latching on and leaning forward, eyes sharp and critical as if he were searching for something Lex had no clue of. To the day he died, Lex would never get over the feeling of not measuring up - - that there would always be chinks in his armor that his father could spy out, no matter how impenetrable Lex forged it.

He matched the gaze, pulled his arm out of the grasp and stepped back out into the cold.

He got into his own car and waited for the Limo to pull away, which after a minute it did, slowly receding into wan evening grayness. Lex sat for a while, letting calm that his father always managed to shatter settle back over him. He turned over the things Lionel could want from him when he already had LuthorCorp again - - at least on paper. When he had the approval of the public, the approval of the stockholders, the approval of the board. He didn't need Lex's sanction. Lex did have his safeguards against his father wresting full control, but he didn't doubt for a moment that Lionel had already uncovered them - - was already working to disengage measures to encumber complete authority. Lex had been playing at corporate warfare - - really playing it - - for six years - - his father had been a master at it long before Lex had been born and a smart player, a paranoid one, never passed on his best tactics.

Lex watched the approach of an incoming passenger plane and the roar of it, as it passed by low overhead, shook the car a little. He cut on the engine, let the defrost melt the light layer of ice on his windshield while he checked his voice mail. Sure enough three messages from his father, an old one he'd ignored from a day or two ago and two new ones, from last night and this morning. He deleted a fair bit, mentally marked a few that he'd let his assistants deal with, a few he could put off until tomorrow and regular business hours and one that he hadn't thought about for the last two days, but really ought to deal with now.

Making the trip to M&C labs from the airport was easier than making it from LuthorCorp towers and fighting heart of the city traffic. The congestion was still terrible though, 5 o'clock traffic made worse by the bad weather and people's absolute inability to navigate when there was even the hint of snow on the ground.

He reached the facility, its faade dull and lazy, not even a fence or a guard to monitor incoming traffic. An old security man at the front desk that nodded at him and barely took his eyes off the little portable TV blaring some game or another. No one cared about wheat gluten and research thereof and that was what this lab studied - - on the books. He had a dozen facilities like this one, innocuous fronts concealing far more complicated things within.

This one had been set up impromptu, a means to house what was left of the premier project on his list of projects. A few weeks ago, he hadn't been able to think of anything else but the resurrection of Ares, funny how it hadn't crossed his mind all weekend.

The measures to reach the real sub-basement lab were more strident and the air down here was filtered and cool, permeated by the hum of equipment behind the walls. There had been testing done here, behind lead shielded walls, of meteor rock in various capacity. He still had a great deal of his father's stolen stash, secreted here and there. More priceless than gold for its rarity outside Smallville, considerably more dangerous, instable as it was. As likely to create catastrophe as benefit from its usage. Four months ago a lab exploring the possibility of meteor rock as an alternate source of long-term energy had exploded at the outskirts of Scranton. Four neighboring buildings had gone up with it. Fourteen dead and they were still getting reports of possible side effects from survivors and not a beneficial one among them. Every one of the active research facilities had been moved out of populated areas after that. This one included.

Now it was home to eight misplaced researchers and every scrap of salvaged data they had.

"What do you have for me?" he cut to the chase, walking in on newly promoted project director Knox and his team, all of them waiting nervously on Lex's arrival.

They offered proposals, and final analysis on the lengths the project could go without the crucial alien peptide component. They could be ready to move to the new location in a few days time if he gave the go ahead. Ready to start recruiting test subjects from a new pool - - not as ideal as military trained, but the next best thing when you were talking taking a man and playing Mr. Wizard with his DNA and hoping the process took before you made damned sure there wouldn't be a chance he'd betray you once you'd made him into something more than human. Or less.

Two years ago when he'd initiated the germination of this project, he'd been content to wait out slow, methodical exploration of the possibilities of instilling select mutant abilities in non-mutated test subjects. No one that hadn't been willing to take the risk had been involved in the endeavor. There had been no such thing as alien peptides to leap frog the potential light years ahead of projected schedules. Until the first of the extraterrestrials had turned up after the events of Dark Thursday.

Even then his researchers hadn't wanted to take the next step, the logical progression until years worth more study had gone into it, until they really understood what they were playing with. And he hadn't let them. One scientist had even threatened to go to the press after the dozenth or so subject was brought in. Mr. Mueller had dealt with that problem.

Mr. Mueller . . .

"You said last week, you'd like more time to evaluate accumulated data from the last run of tests," he stood at the end of a stainless steel lab table while they fidgeted around it, nervous in his presence. He'd made sure all of them held the proper respect. There were figures on the laptop before him, but he couldn't quite focus, wondering idly instead, why he couldn't recall the name of the researcher that had been silenced. You'd think if he were going to have a man killed, he'd have taken the time to recall the name. It was chilling that he hadn't cared enough to remember.

But then again, you'd think if he'd had a man killed, eight months later it wouldn't suddenly occur to him that there might have been better ways to deal with the problem.

"Well, yes. Ideally, scrutinizing that data, running purely lab based trials on non-human subjects would certainly be preferable - - but you did stress the urgency of moving the project along, Mr. Luthor," Project director Knox said, as agitated as any researcher faced with the impatience of the powers that be.

"Is there any progress past the point we'd already reached that can be made without the peptides?"

"Well, no sir. But you did say that you wanted subjects prepared in the event we were able to obtain - -"

"Wait," Lex cut him off, shutting the laptop with a sharp movement. "Do your data analysis. Do your lab tests. No human subjects until we have a viable source of peptides." Until he figured out if the sacrifice of the first fifty was justifiable.

He left the lab, shocked scientists in his wake. Scientists who must have doubted his sanity, when a week before he'd been pushing them towards forging ahead regardless of caution. His shoes echoed on the hallway floor, tempo of confidence in his stride that he didn't let falter, past electronic security, past the old guard who was part of the faade, and into the parking lot, before he let his hands shake.

He planted them on the cold roof of the car above the driver's side door, drawing in lungfuls of condensation laden air, breathing it out in gusts of white.

What the fuck?

Month after month of absolute certainty, of doing what needed to be done, of sacrificing everything for the cause and suddenly the validation slipped through his fingers like oil through a sieve, leaving the slick feeling of distaste clinging in its wake.

He could quote all the reasons, like lines in a play. He could understand the hard truths and the hard choices - - he knew how to make hard choices, the things the average man - - the things Clark wouldn't understand and wouldn't condone - - but needed doing anyway. Only to make those choices you needed discipline and you needed perspective and he had the former in spades, but somewhere along the way he'd lost the latter - - somewhere along the way, his methods had gotten muddied and he couldn't understand how or why. The more he pulled at the strings, the more his understanding seemed to unravel and it was making his head throb.

Maybe his father had been right to inquire about the state of his health, because he was beginning to feel a vague sense of disassociation that couldn't be anything but the prelude to something worse.

He wanted a drink. Or a hit of whatever Sophia had slipped him the other night, because he hadn't felt anything but certain on the tails of that. Maybe find some good looking kid with dark hair and rippling muscles and close his eyes and pretend.

He went back to the penthouse instead, not ready to make the drive in this weather back to Smallville. Settled down with that drink, because anything harder just wasn't going to happen, even though all it would take was a call. He wasn't that kid anymore that went out and got high and got fucked to chase away his dissatisfactions.

He pulled out work to prove it. Legitimate LexCorp business that had been piling up this last week. Things that needed his personal stamp of approval. Emails that needed replies, proposals and figures that needed going over. There was a meeting next week with certain high level federal authorities, smoothing out the final details of the bargain his father had orchestrated - - the timetable allotted for the payment of fines levied. He'd gathered enough capital for the first installment and only had to liquidate a fraction of LexCorp holdings, but then, it was the plummeting stock that was killing him.

He fell asleep on the couch, woke up stiff and sore from the awkward position, papers still spread out on the coffee table, lap top still open, dutifully drowsing, but on the same page he'd left it.

A shower took care of the residual body ache and chased away the lingering dregs of hangover. He went to his offices in LuthorCorp tower with a considerably clearer head than he'd had when he'd retreated to the penthouse. Concentrating solely on business business clarified his thoughts - - gave him a focus on details that triggered absolutely no contradictory musings.

But the problem with competent assistants, was that there was only so much work that he actually needed doing, when there weren't meetings scheduled or people that needed his personal attention. He hadn't been expected today, so the schedule was clear of all but a few face to faces. It left him time in the afternoon for thoughts to wander.

Clark would be home now. Probably home late last night, hours behind Lex at the mercy of passenger airline sluggishness. Lex thought of him slouched in too small economy seats, still in blood red silk, and leaned his head back with a sigh. The flannel and the T-shirt were in Lex's travel bag, along with his own off the rack purchases. He'd considered leaving them, tossing them in the trash in a fit of frustration when he'd returned to that suite, rebuffed. But Clark's scent, permeating cheap fabric stopped him and he'd sat there, on the end of the hotel bed, shirt twisted in his hands and belittled himself for sentimentality. He couldn't leave the shirts behind anymore than he could the bruises Clark had left on his wrists that the cuffs of his sleeves had hidden from Sophia's prying eyes.

Those had faded by morning though, along with the rest of the finger shaped bruising and an intelligent man might have chosen to put the memory of the incident behind him as well. An intelligent man shied away from assured pain and embarrassment. Of course, there were certain areas of his life that Lex had never exhibited particularly great amounts of intellect in. The arena of his personal life was the prime example. One disaster after another and God knew he'd tried to make it work. Just bad choices or bad luck that seemed to strike time and again - - like that sort of contentment wasn't meant to be. If he believed in Luck he might have bought the excuse - - so really, it was just down to bad choices.

Sophia had met Lana for an afternoon and figured out she was ill suited. It had taken Lex over a year. He wondered when Lana had known.

But no, off that track, or he'd just get maudlin, or paranoid and he wasn't sure which was worse.

He'd finished everything he was likely to finish by half past five and let his assistant know he'd work from the mansion tomorrow. He was on the road by six driven by some indefinable urge to simply get home. The roads were clear of yesterday's snow and he made good time. He passed the sign declaring Lowell county an hour and thirty-seven minutes from the city and the traffic was non-existent, which meant another fifteen minutes with the Porsche pushed to its limits and he'd be within Smallville town limits. Another ten and he'd be home. Fifteen if he wanted to keep down the rural route that bordered the estate and pass the Kent Farm.

But he wouldn't do that. He would go home and put something on his stomach other than water and scotch and the English muffin he'd had this morning and try and find a little peace. Perhaps read. It had been a long time since he'd sat down with a book and simply lost himself in written word.

There was still snow on the ground when he pulled through the gates of the mansion. More of it out here in rural Smallville than there'd been in Metropolis. Clumps of it decorated the hedges and the naked branches of ornamental trees. There weren't many lights on in the mansion, but then he hadn't called ahead to let them know he was on his way. Gate security would be notifying house security though, that he was back on premises, and sure enough he was met at the door by the quiet, serious head of estate security, who didn't ask how his day had been or the weekend that he'd flown the coop without a word of warning, and probably didn't care as long as he was in one, functioning piece. He hadn't hired these men for their personalities.

He went up to the master suite, determined not to let the ghost of Lana chase him to lesser rooms. Tomorrow he'd have the staff start boxing up her things. Nell was enough of a social climber to still be on speaking terms with him, allegations of misdeed or no, so he'd call her and see if she wanted her niece's things. If not - - the Smallville Good Will would get the donation.

He felt better with that long overdue decision finally made. As if a burden had been lifted he hadn't known was there. He put on comfortable clothes, and went downstairs, where the staff had started the fire in the study. It would be a while before the warmth of it seeped out and took the chill off the air. He took a late, hastily prepared dinner on the sofa next to the fire. Sat afterwards with his back to the fire and flipped through the choice of books he'd brought down from the library. He read a page of this, a half chapter of that and couldn't find a subject that kept his attention. His fingers were cold and his mind kept wandering to how uncannily warm Clark's hands were. Clark's skin in general.

Clark's skin. Lex leaned his head back against the arm of the couch, staring at the shadows at the ceiling. Copper colored nipples on golden skin. The rose flush of his cheeks that almost matched the blush of his lips - - almost matched the shade of his cock, when it was proud and erect. It would have been nice to see the whole package, but Lex's imagination filled in details hidden by underwear and jeans.

Lex sighed, shut his eyes and considered putting the books aside in favor of switching on the TV and finding a channel that offered good old-fashioned porn.

He woke up at the muffled movement of one of the staff adding wood to the fire. The man murmured a soft apology and Lex grimaced at a stiff neck and the morning light filtering in through the stained glass. Second night it a row he'd slept on a couch. Someone had come in during the night and put a throw over him, a frankly surprising act of kindness considering how much distance the staff had been keeping from him lately. He still felt like - well, like he'd slept on a couch in a room ten degrees colder than he normally liked to sleep.

He took the time for a long, leisurely shower, leaned against the tiles and stroked himself with soap slick hands while he pictured Clark doing dirty, dirty things. It didn't take much of that to trigger release and he leaned there afterward with a self-satisfied smile that slowly faded as it occurred to him that masturbatory fantasies might be the only option open to him, as far as Clark was concerned.

He'd fucked up Monday morning. Let emotion get the better of him and destroyed a tentative truce. He thumped his forehead against the shower wall, let the hot water beat against his back and tried to figure out how he was going to fix it. Stopped thumping and rethought that and realized that he actually did want to fix it.

If for no other reason than to explore the possibility of whether he actually could. The challenge of Clark never failed to appeal - - on one level or another.

Despite the steam of the shower, the bathroom tiles were cold underfoot. Lex smeared a clear patch in the fogged mirror and stared at his reflection. His mother's eyes stared back - - that one thing he had to really recall her to memory, eyes just like hers, changeable as weather on the outside, but he had to wonder how much of his father lurked beneath. More than he'd ever wanted to believe possible, once upon a time. But a few of those inherited traits were laudable, tenacity chief among them - - and it had gained him no small victories in the past.

He took breakfast in the kitchen while he spoke with his assistant at length about the state of his schedule for the rest of the week, of emails to be forwarded and faxes to be sent for his approval.

He even pondered going into the study and settling down to work early, before shuffling the notion aside in favor of more pressing concerns.

He took the new black Audi, and left behind security, who were probably beginning to feel superfluous, with his rejection of them this last week and headed east down route 601. It was cold of course, but the clouds were spotty and the sun just might gain the courage to peek through as the day progressed. With a little luck it would melt the snow and bring a stretch of much needed warmth.

Lex was already tired of the cold and it wasn't even true winter yet. He had no doubt Clark had already gotten half his days work done, cloudy cold or not. He pulled into the Kent drive, up to the bright yellow farmhouse. He got out with the implements of his plan. Granted it wasn't a particularly brilliant plan - - but his resources on the Clark front were limited.

Lex knocked politely at the front door. There was no answer. He walked out to the big barn, where Clark could usually be found. A few of the horses nickered at him questioningly, but no Clark. It was frustrating to be stymied simply because Clark wasn't home at quarter to nine in the morning. What possible pressing engagements could he have this early?

He headed back out, and there was Clark standing by his car, jacketless, muddy boots, sleeves rolled and a bit of hay clinging to his shirt and hair, indicating he'd been doing some cow related chore. He also had the sort of wary look on his face that people wore at the approach of tax collectors and insurance salesmen.

"What do you want, Lex?"

Lex held up the laundered, neatly folded flannel and t-shirt that Clark had opted to leave behind. "I thought you might want these back."

Clark eyed the offering. Looked back up at Lex with vaguely annoyed eyes and asked sullenly. "Did you think I was getting down to my last few?"

Lex managed not to loose the impartial smile, even though Clark was considerably less endearing moody and resentful at twenty-one than he'd been at sixteen. He supposed he deserved a bit of hostility though, after some of the goads he'd used against Clark in their last encounter. Lex could take his medicine to get a step closer to a goal.

"I didn't want to take the risk of you going without. I wouldn't want your reputation ruined if you were seen without plaid or primary colors."

"If you're worried about my reputation, being seen with you's guaranteed to have people avoiding me."

Okay. So Clark's sense of humor was currently hibernating, even if he had hit the nail right on the head. Lex hadn't been able to take a step into town within the last month without people glaring, or whispering, actively crossing the street to avoid him, not to mention gratuitous physical attacks on his person.

"Well, the risk of social stigma aside, I thought I'd drop them by." He held out the clothes.

Clark looked at them like they were laced with poison. Looked back up at Lex with a dead on stare that was so reminiscent of Jonathan Kent's frank, accusing gaze that Lex had a brief, fanciful moment thinking of Clark channeling his spirit.

"All right, Clark I admit it, it was a flimsy excuse. It seems to me we need to talk about - -"

"No!" Clark snapped, accusing stare turning white around the edges with sudden panic. "We don't."

Clark snatched the shirts out of Lex's hands, gave him wide berth in moving past him as if the risk of touching him were too great to bear. "I've got a lot of work to do, so you can leave now."

Lex tightened his mouth, watching Clark's stiff shoulders as he walked towards the house. He swallowed back an angry knot and spun towards his car.

"Lex?"

Lex stopped, one hand on the hood, one on the open door. He didn't turn to look back. He was tired of the animosity on Clark's face. It occurred to him that one of the things he missed most in his life was Clark's smile.

"Thanks for the shirts."

"Yeah."

"You could have sent somebody by."

"I could have."

He heard the squelch of Clark's boots in the soggy drive. Felt his presence a few yards away - - had always been uncannily aware of Clark's simple presence.

"What are you doing, Lex?" Clark asked softly.

He didn't know how to answer that. Trying to heal a rift they'd both been damned and determined to create? Trying to appropriate what had once been a valuable resource. Trying to gain some measure of control over something personal when he seemed to be losing control over so much else. Trying to get laid?

"That's an excellent question. If I come up with an answer that makes sense to me, I'll let you know."

Clark was silent, maybe caught off guard by that bit of blatant honesty. Lex took a chance and turned, caught Clark staring at him from under those ridiculously lush lashes, eyes somber.

"I don't understand you," Clark said.

Lex almost laughed. Caught it and flashed a wry smile instead. "I don't understand me, either."

Another brutal honesty - - but this one Clark wouldn't get the gist of.

"Lex, why do you go out of your way to hurt - -" Me, was how Lex thought Clark would have ended that sentence when he didn't finish it. Just stood there swallowing like something had flown down his throat.

That was another one that Lex wasn't entirely sure how to answer. At least honestly. Clark was hitting on the difficult questions today.

Because you hurt the things you loved the most. But no, that wasn't right either, that was just him channeling his own father. And he didn't love - - he hadn't come here because he loved - - he'd come here because he wanted. Two very different things.

"Lex?" Clark was closer, a hint of concern in his eyes and Lex didn't remember seeing him move. "Are you okay?"

Of course he was okay, he just needed to catch his breath, to quell the rapid beating of his heart and try and ignore why the panic had surfaced in the first place.

"It's my nature, Clark. Just like it's yours to be gullible and believe the best of people - - until they show you otherwise. Isn't that how it goes?"

"You're doing it again."

He was. Basest instinct to strike first when he was feeling disadvantaged and Clark put him on the defensive just being Clark.

"Habit."

"It didn't used to be," Clark had a hand on the edge of the door. The folded shirts were on the porch steps behind him, probably already stained with bits of tracked mud from the yard. It occurred to him, out of the blue, that with Martha Kent doing the Washington circuit, Clark was left to his own devices in the domestic areas that she had probably claimed as her own before.

"If you plan on keeping the burgundy silk, it's dry clean only."

Clark blinked at him.

Lex managed not to mimic the dumbfounded look, even though he felt it. God knew where the laundry tip had come from.

"Yeah, I can read laundry instructions," Clark said dryly, but there was a miniscule curve to his lips. "Don't tell me that you've ever, in your entire life, had to do a load of clothes?"

"Clark, very few of my clothes are of the type you just throw into the machine." "That wasn't what I asked."

"No," Lex said. "I've never done my own laundry. I've never cut the grass. I've never washed my own car - - cars. It doesn't mean I don't know how it's supposed to be done."

"You've never cut grass?" Clark sounded astonished. Like it was a rite of passage that every young man was required to take before he was allowed into the ranks of adulthood.

It was an inane conversation, but it felt very much like the kind of therapy that no earthly amount of money could buy.

"I've been outside while it was being done. Does that count?"

Clark's mouth twitched. He stared over the door at the hood of the car as if the cooling patterns of condensation on the gleaming paint held some secret meaning. He looked back to Lex and there was a shift in his eyes, a subtle intensity that hinted at the iceberg that lay beneath the surface of Clark's beautifully simple faade. It was the sort of look that contradicted every lie Clark had ever told claiming normalcy. Because nothing normal could exude diffident farm boy naivety the one moment and that sense of overwhelming power the next.

It made Lex's pulse start racing again - - but not from panic.

There was the sound of tires spitting mud up the drive. Clark swallowed and turned his eyes down the drive. It felt like something physical being ripped asunder, the loss of that gaze and Lex leaned back against the edge of the car, recovering. Turned his own stare down the drive as a car drove up. Pulled to a stop a few yards behind the Audi and vomited out the unwelcome presence of Lois Lane.

Clark shuffled away from him, obliquely putting distance between them. Lex tightened his jaw and straightened, putting on a face that showed nothing.

"What are you doing skulking about this early in the morning?" Lois stomped through the mud like she was on a mission, ignoring Clark and glaring at Lex suspiciously.

"I could ask the same of you?" He could very easily hate Lois Lane to the point of violence for her interruption.

"Well, unlike you, I'm welcome here. Don't you have laws to break? Murders to commit? The day's a wasting, Lex."

He smiled tightly, not in the mood to waste his time in verbal battle with her in the middle of Clark's driveway when he was feeling so damned cheated. Since Clark pointedly wasn't looking at him, he didn't look at Clark. Just got into the car with the purpose of orderly retreat.

Lois fired a parting salvo. "Have you been to the dam since the army pulled out, Lex? Of course, they're in cahoots with you, covering up information, so I was just wondering, how many bodies did they really recover? I heard they were finding them a mile, two miles down the river once the water receded. What's it feel like being responsible for that? Can I get a quote?"

"Fuck you." He said softly, because no calm, impassive answer could fight its way to the surface though the surge of queasiness he thought he'd left behind at the Metropolis lab.

Her eyes gleamed in a predatory, gleeful way at his lapse.

He pulled the door shut, started the engine and made a U-turn around Clark and Lois - - not looking at Clark's face. Not wanting to see his expression. He got out onto the road and floored it, the car surging forward and he was halfway home before he slammed the brakes and skidded to a stop off the side of the road. Sat there with his hands, white knuckled on the wheel, leather creaking under his grip, mind awash in a chaotic swirl of static that finally coalesced into one thing.

She was right. He hadn't been back there since the incident. He'd read the reports. He knew the exact number of casualties. He knew the official explanation of what had ruptured the dam walls. The unofficial theory was less popular and involved things the army wasn't entirely prepared to admit existed, fools that they were.

Lex knew. Lex had had its fucking cock down his throat. But the responsibility didn't lie with the entity, it lay with him. And he hadn't set foot within the wreckage to see for himself the damage wrought. He needed to go. Needed to make the pilgrimage, because maybe if he did, he could get past whatever subconscious hang up was impeding his mind.

He turned the car around and headed for Reeves Dam.

Part Fifteen

Lois was still bitching about Lex, but Clark only heard a fraction of the complaints, the sound of her voice the only thing really getting through for a few moments as he watched Lex's car speed away. When Lex had been younger, he'd used to drive dangerously fast - - like a man with a death wish. He'd slowed down in recent years. Graduated for the most part, from the sleek extensions of male ego he used to have imported in, to more refined works of automotive art.

Everybody grew up, sooner or later. Lex no exception. Clark no exception. Everyone gave up some cherished ideal, some coveted dream, sacrificed on the alter of adulthood.

Lex only reverted now a days, spun tires and mistreated his toys when he was pissed. At least in Clark's admittedly limited knowledge of recent Lexian behavior. He hadn't been keeping track. He should have been. Maybe then he'd have a clue what was going on inside Lex's head.

Lex had half smiled at him, and it had seemed really, really honest - - not the tight, fake smile that was the only thing Clark had seen from him in a long, long time. The tension had been on its way to relaxing off his face, and his eyes had almost lost that guarded look - - halfway to something familiar and candid. Before Lois drove up and banished it.

Lex was a half mile down the road, and Clark adjusted his vision, slowly focusing back on what was standing in front of him still talking, and away from the car going way too fast down a country route that still had patches of icy slush.

"What?" He cut into her diatribe and that question could have covered a plethora of subjects that he didn't want her to have to repeat.

Lois snapped her mouth shut, eyeing him narrowly. She took a deep breath and said with exasperation practically oozing from her pores. "Were you listening to a word I said, Smallville?"

"Uh, yeah. I just missed that last part." He tried to recall if there might be some reason she was out here this morning that he'd forgotten in the confusion of the weekend.

"I said, I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him - - me, not you - - and what was he doing out here anyway? You really would think he'd have better things to do than harass the local yokels."

Clark narrowed his eyes and gave her a glare at the insult, which she either didn't notice or ignored, because she plowed right on.

"Considering what happened last week and the love the rest of the town has for anything Luthor, you'd think he'd just pack up and move back to the city where soulless scum are a dime a dozen."

"Lois." He felt a little surge of protectiveness, which was just damned stupid and uncalled for, because Lex could take care of himself just fine. Except when he couldn't.

"Don't tell me he was out here thanking you for your little save? A little late for that, isn't it? What did he want?"

Even if Clark had an inkling to the answer of that one, he wasn't prepared to share with Lois when she'd already managed to get him on edge.

His still mostly neatly folded shirts were on the steps. Lex had probably had them washed. But then, Lex always was a stickler for the most miniscule detail. Things most people would never even consider important, Lex thought of and dealt with. Obsessive compulsive to a degree, with the way he liked things ordered. The way he folded his clothes and kept his surroundings immaculate. The way he poured over books, craving knowledge - - the way the unknown plagued him like a demon with a sharpened stick.

"What are you doing here, Lois?" He asked without answering.

She huffed a little, cheeks pink from the weather and her irritation. "Just stopping by to see if you were home. Chloe and I tried to reach you all weekend, but you were incommunicado and apparently not even bothering to answer your cell. Did you forget to charge it, or were you just feeling unsocial?"

Actually, now that he thought about it, he probably had forgotten to charge the phone late last week before the impromptu trip to New York. He'd thought it had been unusually quiet all weekend.

Easy to plead forgetfulness since it was God's honest truth. So he shrugged and managed an embarrassed look.

"Sorry about that. Mom used to always remind me to plug the thing up. I forget."

"God, Smallville. You're hopeless." Lois rolled her eyes, but there was a little twinkle that suggested satisfaction, as if she'd gotten to the bottom of a mystery and the answers all pointed to someone else's stupidity. "But it still doesn't explain where you were all weekend. We stopped by a couple of times looking for you? The truck was here, but no you."

That was a harder one to explain. He tried for simplicity. "I needed to get away, so I went to the city this weekend. I got a ride with a friend headed that way."

Half lie. Half-truth, if you overlooked the implication that the city in question was Metropolis and not New York.

"You have friends other than Chloe and me? And my God, I didn't think they had barn dances and ho downs in Metropolis." Lois lifted both brows as if that was the most astonishing news. Clark lowered his, wondering if there would be any painless, successful way to mark Lois off that short list.

"Shut up, Lois."

She smiled at him, pleased with herself. Followed him to the house when he stalked that way, sweeping up the shirts as he went like it was the most common thing in the world - - like he'd left them out here for some reason, instead of having them hand delivered by Lex Luthor - -

Who'd looked really good today, in a black wool pea coat and sensible black boots with soles fit for early winter instead of the imported shoes he usually wore. Who'd had a little bit of color in his cheeks from the morning cold - - who's skin would have probably felt really chill if Clark had touched him - - really smooth.

Clark tightened his lips and turned to press his hands to the kitchen island, looking at Lois, who was rooting around in the cabinet for creamer to put in the coffee she'd helped herself to.

"Chloe at work?" he asked, while she was liberally dosing.

"Yep."

"Why aren't you?"

"Who says I'm not?"

And that almost scared him, because God knew what she'd uncovered or what had happened in town while he'd been doing things he'd been trying really hard not to think about with Lex six states away.

"Everything okay?"

She turned around with the mug in hand, a frustrated line between her brows. "I wasn't just busting his balls, when I asked about the dam. I've been trying to get in there for weeks now - - I mean I figure I have the right if anybody does, having almost died there myself - - after what happened to Chloe. I thought once the army cleared out, I could slip in, take a few pictures - - do a little snooping, but LexCorp security moved in when the military moved out, and they've got it locked down."

"Lois, you can't believe they left anything there?"

"No. But sometimes you just have to see for yourself."

The dam was twenty miles outside Smallville, four miles off the highway at the end of a road that had seen better days. He owned it through a subsidiary of a subsidiary that had the government contract of its upkeep, and under normal circumstances it would have taken a magnifying glass and a leap of logic to connect Reeves Dam to LexCorp. That or a disaster of major proportions.

Everyone knew now. It had been plastered across the front of papers country wide, even if the press never did get the real story. And even those that suspected had been shut down, one way or another. The Government didn't want public knowledge of what had been going on here, anymore than he did. Maybe more so. There was a limit, after all, to what Lex could lose. No matter how vast, his resources were finite. If people got wind of aliens and government sanctioned genetic manipulation the federal government stood to loose the sort of face that could cost it more than money.

There was nothing subtle about security now. Before, they'd tried to hide their presence, to dispel the notion that any thing out of the norm was happening here. Now, they were posted to keep out the curious. The trespassers with a cause and a press badge. The mourners, come to see the place where the waters had been unleashed.

Sixteen civilian lives washed away in the initial torrent. That was the final count. There were lawsuits filed for wrongful death that were trickling into the courts, even though settlements had been offered. The families of his own casualties had already been compensated. He took care of his employees and his employees' interests.

The subjects were another matter. Men that were already supposed to be dead, fatalities of another sort of war altogether. Volunteers who hadn't an inkling what they were really getting themselves into. Who'd given themselves over because they'd believed the spiel. The protection of country, of liberty, of all the cherished things against not the 'internal' threat of global politics and religious fanaticism, but something so much worse.

The ends justified the means, right? Of course they did. Even if it meant stripping the humanity from a group of men willing to give their lives for a cause, making them something more than human and less, to fight the advent of something - - more than human and less.

He walked into the dam, past rubble on the floor, past the raucous sound of repair work in progress. They'd shored the dam, sealed the cracks and patched the holes and the river was held at bay once more. More power in that stymied water than what he'd hoped to gather here.

He'd wanted that army. He'd wanted it so bad everything else had faded to obscurity. Trifling distractions from the long-term goal of power. Power for security? Power for the sake of power? Power to subjugate - - who? He wasn't even sure if he could differentiate between legitimate goals and pipe dreams anymore- - but he'd been so sure when he'd pushed this project into overdrive- - so damned fervent - -

The path he remembered that led to the lab was blocked by a wall of uncleared debris and dark with failed lighting. He flicked on the flashlight they'd given him at the entrance when he'd ignored their warnings of unstable areas. He had to work his way around the long way, through security gates wrenched off their hinges, and halls with walls slimy from algae growth, stinking of mold and mildew. Water still pooled on the floor here and there, and he trod through it, uncaring, focused on the goal, on the subtle underlying scent of death in the air. Or was this in his imagination?

There was the doorway, gaping black hole into the control room. Funny how he'd always been so eager to get here, to cross that threshold and behold the fruits of his labor - - and now he stood at the bottom of the steps leading up and couldn't quite convince his legs to move. It was the sense of death, quiet and insidious that repelled him - - that drew him forward finally. Most of the tell tale equipment was gone. The army had been through here with a fine toothed comb, gathering evidence - - removing it. They had him if they wanted him. Fifty times over, well negotiated settlements or not.

The floor was littered with wreckage that he slowly stepped around, sweeping the beam of light here, there, expecting - - God, he was expecting things that were simply not going to be here. There was no stench other than mildew and no death presence other than what his imagination provided and yet - - was that his breath? That rasping sound?

Two bodies would have been found here, if the initial flooding hadn't displaced them. The unbreakable glass separating control room from subject holding area was unarguably broken. Shattered by strength greater than anything they'd been able to reproduce. Beyond, was wreckage. The ceiling had half collapsed, though the rubble had been removed in efforts to retrieve bodies. There had been a rupture in the wall - - Lex had seen pictures - - where water had flooded in. Patched now. All but the bare bones of examination tables gone, pulled out to remove the suggestion that human beings had been housed there. Row upon row of them, neatly placed, like lines of corn in any number of Lowell county fields.

He hadn't remembered the names before, not of the ones that had been in stasis, waiting their turn to receive that all important alien boost - - that jolt of energy that would give life to the creation - - a modern day legion of Frankenstein's monsters.

Master Sergeant William Ramey. Lieutenant Edward Summerfield. Private first class James Smith. Private first class Steven Chenault. Wes Keenan - - the list went on. He'd read it after his visit to M & C. The first time he'd gone over as a whole, as a list of names that belonged to men, rather than assets. It hadn't seemed to matter before.

He walked to the shattered window, passed the beam of his light over empty space. Rubble. Twisted metal. Stared for a long time, a vague sense of numbness creeping up - - like he'd felt after Dark Thursday when the damage reports starting really rolling in. When the enormity of the death toll began to sink in. The only difference being, he didn't remember that terrible day - - not consciously. He remembered this. He'd orchestrated this - - this monstrosity. Rode roughshod over morality and ethics - - and he'd had ethics once, hadn't he? Not Kent ethics, granted, but the Luthor brand - - still - - still - -

The beam of the light passed over something half caught under a chunk of concrete on the floor by his boots. The arm off a set of glasses. He stared at it for a moment, putting two and two together, because no one in the facility that afternoon had worn glasses but the man he'd willingly sacrificed for his own escape.

It hit him. It just hit him so hard he couldn't breath. The bile came up, a surprising rush of acid at the back of his throat. It caught him like a slap on the face, a sudden wash of blind repulsion that sent him to his knees with the force of the nausea that came in its wake.

Lex knelt there, bits of rock biting into his knees, while his stomach expelled its contents. Reached for the gently rocking flashlight that had fallen from his hand after, vacant grab for the one point of movement and light in the chamber. Wiped the back of his arm across his mouth, the wool of the jacket sleeve scratchy against his lips.

The light was wavering, damaged when he'd dropped it perhaps. No. It was his hand. He pushed himself to his feet, staggered backwards into a wall and braced himself there, the names flitting across his memory - - but not the faces. He couldn't match the faces, because they'd all just been naked test subjects, stacked in rows.

He got out the door, blind escape, to the bottom of the steps and leaned a shoulder against the wall as his stomach clenched and rebelled again. Nothing but a thin stream of liquid came up this time and it tasted like nothing so much as stomach acid and stale scotch. He dry heaved again, not seeming to be able to stop, once started. Wetness spiked his lashes and he blinked it away, its presence rousing indignity. Rousing fury that helped drive back the shuddery feeling in his knees.

He got out of the warren of halls without having to backtrack by luck alone, because God knew, he wasn't concentrating on the path. Wasn't concentrating on much of anything, as he walked out past LexCorp security towards the car. Just keeping his stomach stable and his hands from noticeably trembling. Keeping his face impassive. That was a big one. A major effort when usually it came so easily.

He drove back home, hands clenched on the wheel, trying to grind molars down to nothing, radio turned to silence because the music was noise that clashed with the disruption in his mind. The madness could only flood in if he let it. If he gave in to the weakness and let the confusion overwhelm him.

He could hold it at bay if he ignored it. If he pushed the twangs of guilt far back in his mind and went on with life. Necessary evils. Two words that held so much meaning when you were talking about survival. Personal survival no less than species. More so, maybe.

He kept repeating it, a mantra that grew meaningless the more the words echoed in his head. Became sounds, a collection of syllables and vowels that were gibberish until he stopped - - took a breath and reevaluated the words. He heard them uttered his father's voice along with the echoes of a hundred other 'life lessons'.

The housekeeper was running the vacuum in the main hall when he came in, the cord undulating behind her like a serpent as she moved. Back and forth. Back and forth.

She straightened when she saw him. Cut off the machine and waited questioningly, because he was standing there staring.

"Get out," he said, low growl and she blinked, incapable of comprehending the depths of his desire for silence.

Get out!" he yelled, and he never raised his voice with the staff. You never showed emotion to the domestics - - a rule learned young. But he was feeling the edges blur. The seams starting to rip in the fabric of his psyche.

She flinched backwards, flustered, not knowing whether to edge past him to unplug the machine or simply retreat. House security came trotting down the hall at the disturbance, and Lex realized there were too many people by far in the mansion.

"Mr. Luthor?"

"Everybody. Out. Security. Staff. Just get. The. Hell. Out of the house."

He stalked to the study, leaving them to it, heading straight way to the bar. The taste of fresh scotch washed away the bitter taste of vomit from his mouth. He filled another glass. Downed it like he was gulping water. It hit a newly empty belly with warmth that was palpable. He shrugged out of the coat and flung it in the general direction of the couch. It landed on the arm and slithered off onto the floor and he found he didn't particularly care to walk over and pick it up.

Another glass of scotch and he moved to his desk, leaning over and opening the laptop. His fingers hovered over the keys, while he debated files he could pull up. So many necessary evils.

He grinned. Laughter came out around it that sounded nothing less than hysterical. He slammed the laptop closed, snatched it off the desk and hurled it. He hadn't been particularly aiming for the stained glass window behind his desk, but he managed to hit it, off center, and the computer sailed through with the tinkling of shattered glass.

The glass tumbler followed, exploding against the age-old stone wall next to the window. Everything else went off the desk with a sweep of his arm. Books flung off the shelf, priceless first editions, tossed spine up on the floor, in a blind frenzy.

He found a poker beside the fireplace and it was an enthusiastic extension of his rage. The stereo smashed to bits, objects d'art destroyed, glass cases shattered. The glass top of his desk harder to make a dent in, just splintery fractures of stressed glass that wore down his patience and sapped his energy.

He stood in the middle of it, pulse rushing in his ears like the water from a broken dam, sweat trickling down his face. No, not sweat. Blood. He lifted a hand and felt the sting of cut above his brow. Looked at the blood on his fingers as if it were alien. His head spun with the irony of that?

He licked it off, one finger at a time, salt and copper, and wondered what it was that the entity had tasted when it had been violating him in that parody of Clark's body? Violation. Looking back, he supposed that had been pure karma at play, considering the violations he'd committed. Nothing less than he'd deserved - - not even close. The greater good never came without its necessary evils, after all.

God, he was shaking. He felt his bones rattling and he couldn't stop it. If he'd had those pills handy, he was considering a few days ago, he would have swallowed a hand full, just to kill the tumult in his head. He glanced towards the bar, and found it decimated. Bottles shattered, precious liquid soaking into the floor, making puddles on the hardwood. Not the smartest move on his part. He'd have to go down to the cellar now for more.

He did just that, reached the door leading to the depths of the castle and realized he still had the poker in hand. He leaned it against the frame, careful that it didn't fall, needing it not to fall, because it was his choice what to obliterate and what to keep in proper order.

Down into cool, darkness, silence where even the sound of his steps got eaten up by the density of earth buffered stone. He broke open a dust-covered case of 60-year-old Macallan that he'd bought at an auction a few years back. What he'd been saving it for, he had no clue. What was the point of it sitting down here, aging in the shadows when he could put it to more constructive use?

He took a swallow right from the bottle, a damned criminal way to savor something that had cost him twenty thousand a pop, but it was no less smooth and rich than it would have been out of a Waterford tumbler, swirled and savored slowly.

He slid down against the stair railing, sitting on the next to bottom step, drinking down rare single malt with much the fervor that a bum on the streets of Metropolis might attack a six dollar bottle of 20/20. There existed the corresponding need to forget, perhaps. Or at the very least the desire to numb persistent awareness.

Somehow he was back upstairs. He didn't remember making the climb. He didn't remember finishing off the one bottle and grabbing a second, but he held it in his hand.

He'd wanted silence and the whole of the house screamed it at him now. Years and decades and centuries worth of unsaid things wrapped up in stone and mortar and aged wood. He saw boxes at the top of the stairs leading to the family wing that he hadn't noticed before. Lana's things, which the staff had obediently packed up, ready to be taken away and out his sight.

If the all traces of her were gone, he wouldn't have to think about the depths he'd sank to assure success. Things flashed across his mind, decisions made - - necessary evils to further a cause when he thought she'd been faltering - - drawn back towards the enemy - - towards Clark.

Inevitable. Clark drew in everyone. Clark was magnetic. Powerful. Pure. The type of man you could fall in love with and not have second thoughts once you saw beneath the surface. Clark didn't have the sort of darkness that seeped up through the cracks like blood through torn skin.

Lex wavered in the doorway of the study and took in the extent of the demolition. It was like something inhuman had gone on a tear. Maybe it had.

He searched through the scattered shards of crystal around the overturned bar for a whole tumbler. Found one with only a whisper of a chip along the rim and figured it would do. It was only fair to appreciate the Macallan out of a proper glass, now that he was on his second bottle.

He headed towards his desk and tried to right his chair. It was a treacherous task with his balance shot to hell, heavier than it looked. Defied, he sank down beside it, pushing himself back against the wall behind the desk, the glass clutched between his knees, the bottle on the floor next to him.

He looked through the clutter for his laptop - - remembered after a bit that it was probably outside in the garden somewhere, resting on sodden earth with all its damning information.

But there were things he'd never written down, on paper or behind the encrypted security of computer software. He wondered if she'd told Clark. He shuddered, tightening his hand around the glass, fighting back a new curl of nausea at the thought. There were quite a few things he'd flaunted in Clark's face, things designed to hurt, things designed to incense - - but never, ever did he want him to know the depths of Lex's desperation. The depths of his shame - -

He lost time. He knew he'd lost time because his hands were wet, palms stinging with the bite of scotch whiskey burning the slices in his palms. Shards of the tumbler still glistened in his hands, while the larger, broken pieces lay on the floor between his knees. He turned his palms up, watching the blood well, watching it trail, pinkish where it mixed with the Macallan down his wrists to soak into the edges of his sleeves.

Necessary evils. He'd needed to protect himself, after all. Needed to have that tactical advantage because he'd been in a war - - he just couldn't remember why.

He touched a shard of glass embedded in his hand. Wiggled it and the grate of glass against bone or tendon or whatever it lodged in deep in the meat of his palm, registered as dull, distant pain. More blood seeped out though, around the edges, when he pulled it slowly out.

He used to have control over everything. But it was slipping now. Pieces of his life crashing down like dominoes - - click, click, click. It was nice to know he could still bleed on command.

And something in the back of his mind, stirred in alarm. He reached for the bottle and saw the silver shape of his office portable. He used to know Clark's number by heart, still remembered the first cell number, but it wouldn't be the same anymore. Even Clark upgraded phones once and while. The farm number would be the same. Lex had a head for numbers, even when it felt like he was bleeding from the brain.

He leaned his head against the wall and grayed out. Came back again at the crunch of glass and his name uttered like a breathy curse.

Clark stood there, in the middle of the remnants of Lex's tantrum, fists clenched at his side, body taut with anger or surprise or hatred or fear. Lex didn't know anymore. He'd used to be able to read Clark like a beloved classic.

"Why are you here?" He couldn't fathom it. He couldn't fathom the sound of that slurred voice in his ears. Was that him?

"You called me?" Clark's face was pale, his eyes wide and bright and beautiful.

Had he? He didn't remember. He'd thought he'd just drifted for a moment. "And you came," Lex whispered, a sense of reverence shivering over him. It was the most amazing thing. No matter what he did, or how little he deserved it, Clark always came. The day he stopped, would be the day Lex lost all chance at salvation.

"What have you done?" Clark moved forward, flung the overturned chair aside so that it skittered across parquet and crouched in front of him.

Big fingers, stained by honest dirt caught Lex's wrists, turned them face upwards so the damage showed. Lex didn't try and stop him, didn't try and avoid the critical eyes. What was the point?

"God," Clark said softly, smearing blood from the unmarred skin of Lex's forearms and wrists as if he expected to find self-inflicted gashes. Not a particularly novel idea, but he wasn't that far gone yet.

Clark's eyes traveled down to the pieces of the glass on the floor, the bloody silver phone next to them, that Lex didn't even remember picking up in the first place. Clark took a breath. When his gaze flickered back up, his eyes were narrow and hard. A muscle twitched in his jaw. Angry. Furious Clark. Lex felt confident at the classification of those emotions.

"I shouldn't have bothered you." Lex felt numb. Felt stabbing pain. Felt dead inside. Felt surges of emotional upheaval that came in unpredictable surges. "You can go now."

Run out the door, never to be seen again. Betrayed. Betrayer.

Clark said something under his breath, something that probably contained foul language. He rose, pulled Lex up after him by the wrists, one smooth, unhindered motion.

"Where is the staff? Where's your security, Lex?"

Where? Oh, he'd sent them away. They were loud presences intruding upon his solitude.

"Gone. Sorry." Lex wasn't sure that was what he was sorry about. There were a lot of options to choose from.

Clark muttered again, pulled Lex by a grip on one slick wrist around the desk. Lex's hip hit the edge and he staggered, balance shot to hell, legs trembly and weak, from the booze or maybe a little from all the blood soaked into the sleeves of his sweater and pooled on the floor where he'd been sitting. Clark put an arm around him, shoring him up and the heat of contact went through him like a lazy surge of current.

"Is there a first aid kit in the kitchen?"

Maybe. Probably. When Lex got hurt, it generally required more attention than a box of generic medical supplies could provide. But he seemed to recall a kit under one of the counters. Clark didn't wait for his affirmation, just got him moving and there was no arguing with Clark when he wanted forward momentum.

Into the kitchen. There were the signs that the cook had been about something when Lex had ordered the exodus. The remnants were still on the counter. Clark took him to the sink and stuck his hands under running water. It was cold, frigid at first, but Clark didn't seem to notice, and Clark's hands weren't letting Lex pull his own back. But it washed the old blood away and made the new run pink, leaving the gashes in clear relief.

"There's still some glass in there." Clark said, after squinting at Lex's pinkened palms. He looked around the kitchen then, fixing finally on one of the doors under the island. The first aid kit was miraculously inside.

Clark pulled up a stool and said 'sit' in the tone he might use with a dog. Lex didn't respond well to spoken command. He did better with hand signals, which Clark reverted to after a moment, taking Lex by the shoulders and aiming him towards the padded seat.

"What the hell, Lex?" Clark picked at the big slice in Lex's palm with a pair of tweezers out of the kit. Prodded until the ends of the tweezers clicked against something hard and solid nestled in Lex's flesh and latched on.

Was it possible to feel yourself go pale? It hurt more, of a sudden now that Clark was here, than it had when he'd been staring at the blood in dazed fascination in the study. Perhaps Clark amplified everything.

"Do you think you could root around a little deeper?" he asked, on a harshly expelled breath, trying hard to keep his voice from wavering.

Clark held up a pink-coated sliver of crystal, disgust clearly written on his face. He plunged the hand he'd been working on under water again, and Lex swallowed, feeling the thud of pulse in both hands now, hot and throbbing. "You're probably going to need stitches." Clark squirted ointment on his palms and started wrapping them.

Lex watched him wind filmy white cloth around and around, while the stool swayed under him. Or was it the kitchen?

"What happened, Lex?" Grim voice. Jaw still working as Clark fought back some emotion.

Wasn't that the hundred billion dollar question?

"Nervous breakdown? Mental break? If I could remember the symptoms of my last brush with insanity, I'd have more to go on." That came out shakier than he'd hoped. He'd been aiming for wry sarcasm. His wit was usually much sharper three sheets to the wind.

Clark's eyes jerked up to his, his hands stilling on the bandages. "Why do you say that?" He asked softly, something timorous and culpable shifting through his expression.

Oh, God. If only he knew. Laughter boiled up, desperate and hysterical and he fought it down. Managed to squash all but a few strained cackles, before he jerked his hand out of Clark's loosened grip and staggered off the stool. The kitchen was too bright. All white and gleaming stainless steel. He needed darkness and shadows to drown himself in.

"Damnit, Lex, tell me what happened?" Clark stomped up behind him. Caught Lex's arm and swung him around and the room spun with him, crazily, like he was loosely fastened in the seat of a Tilt-a-whirl. "Tell me why your study looks like a tornado ripped through and why you're so drunk you were willing to sit there and just bleed."

The grip hurt. It really sort of hurt, which was saying something, that he could register it past the swirley mess in his head and the throbbing heat in his hands. Indignity reared up at the manhandling. Unless the hands-on was proceeding some sort of rough fuck - - which really was an idea that held merit all on its own - - Lex was not prepared to tolerate it.

"Let go." If there was authority in his voice, Lex didn't hear it. It came out shaky and breathy and didn't seem to make much of an impact on Clark, who took a step closer without releasing the grip and glowered down, self-righteous and demanding - - and entirely hot. Lex's mind drifted back to the rough fuck notion, until Clark shook him a little and then did let him go. Without the benefit of that hand, Lex stood there, swaying, bearings lost.

"I want to help, but you need to tell me, Lex, what I'm helping with," Clark said slowly, face very serious, eyes very intent on Lex's face, like he was trying to see inside him. As if he were trying to figure out what made Lex tick, not because it would give him some advantage, but because he was simply concerned about Lex. Because Clark liked to understand people for the sake of people, and not to ferret out weak spots to prod and manipulate.

Clark wanted to help. Clark always wanted to help, but he couldn't if he hated Lex so badly he couldn't stand to look at him. And he would if he knew. But - - didn't he already? Hate. Didn't he already have enough grudges that any sane man would have shied far away? And he'd come anyway.

It was inside Lex's chest, this swelling, tight ball of guilt and confusion and if he didn't lance it, it was going to crush him from the inside out. Lex laughed at the absurdity of that macabre image, kept laughing until his shoulders shook and Clark's hands came back, gentle this time, to weigh on his shoulders.

"My math's all wrong," he said trying to wrap his mind around a concept that had too many blurred edges to get a grip on. "Two and two are adding up to nine hundred and seven - - and I just can't make sense of it."

"What?" Clark blinked at him in confusion, but his face had the earnest magnetism that had snared Lex all those years ago - - and Clark had never lost that, they'd just stopped talking enough that Lex ever got the chance to see it. God, he missed it.

"Sixteen. Fifty. Two. Nine. Two thousand three hundred and twelve. - - One."

"What are you talking about, Lex? What does that mean?" Clark wanted to know.

Clark wanted to know - - but really, he wouldn't like the truth behind those numbers. Lex had added them up. He might forget a name when it didn't seem to matter, but he didn't forget the details. The devil was in the details, what was his father always said. Some of Lionel's lessons, he had taken to heart.

"Lives," Lex whispered. "That's how many - - my hand, my actions, my orders - - that's how many."

His knees felt weak. Clark's big, green eyes were blurred so badly they seemed multi-faceted. But his vision wasn't so far gone that he couldn't see Clark putting things together. Clark's fingers tightened on his shoulders, and Lex half expected pain. But instead - -

"Dark Thursday wasn't your fault, Lex." Clark figured out the big number, his mouth twisting a little in a grimace. "Nothing that happened that day was your fault. Don't you get that?"

Lex laughed again, an aborted breath of bitterness. He was bleeding again, from the eyes. God, please let it be blood that was warm and wet on his cheeks, because anything else would be unforgivable. He couldn't think. Why the hell was Clark playing devil's advocate with the devil?

"I don't know how I got here." The words felt broken, coming out of his lips. He did. And Clark was just standing there, a foot away, blotting out the bright whites of the kitchen, smelling of clean earth and grass and the faint unique musk that was simply Clark.

"I do," Clark said, solemnly, like he was speaking last rites.

And that was really not what Lex had expected to hear. Not even close. One more inconsistency atop a mountain of inconsistencies and the whole of the structure started to tumble. His legs gave way, overcome by that nauseating down-the-drain sort of faintness that went hand in hand with succumbing to the influence. He clutched at the closest solid support, wrapped his hands in the edges of soft fabric, but it couldn't keep him from sinking. There wasn't buoyancy enough to stand up to the weight pulling him down into darkness.

So he let go and plummeted.

Part Sixteen

Clark caught Lex on the way down. Was already reaching when Lex's lashes fluttered shut, his face went slack and his body gave up the pretense of stability. Lex was just unresisting weight against him, slack in his arms while Clark stood there breathing like he'd just run been running laps coast to coast, Lex's babble starting to make sense in his head.

God. God. J'onn had said time would tell, but Clark wasn't sure this was damage plaguing Lex, so much as conscience. He hoped not and all he could do was hope, since J'onn wasn't around to inquire. And if it was conscience - - and he didn't think Lex had been capable of guile just then, then it was a good thing, right? It meant maybe what Lionel had said about the Zod thing just being a whisper of a presence inside Lex's subconscious was maybe an understatement. Was maybe a damned big understatement if the pain in Lex's eyes had been anything to go by.

He got an arm under Lex's knees and swung him up in his arms. Familiar sense of weight, familiar fit of the body in his grasp. He'd had Lex in his arms a lot lately. Enough that he could see habits forming. He shifted his shoulder, so Lex's head lolled forward instead of back, and figured upstairs. It wasn't as if he hadn't carried him up there before.

He passed boxes on the landing, and padded down the second story hall to the room he'd taken Lex before - - after he and J'onn had pillaged his mind. No. Not pillaged, damn it. Repaired. It had been necessary. For all involved. For the world, maybe, if the Zod influence had pressed Lex towards the sorts of things that had led to the destruction of Zod's own race. Clark's own race.

He laid Lex upon the bed and the damp blood on his sleeve immediately stained the beige brocade of the comforter. It would have to stain, because the notion of undressing him again - - after what had happened in New York - - it made Clark's hands shake. Seeing Lex's skin bared was not conducive for deep thought and Clark really needed to think. He settled for taking off Lex's boots, which had dried mud in the soles and bits of glass embedded in that.

Letting Lex continue on, driving himself mad and blithely unaware of the reasons why, would be deplorable. An unforgivable act of cruelty. And yet, how did he broach the subject without dredging up the inevitable questions of how he knew? And Lex loved his questions. Lex thrived on questions. And Clark made a livelihood of keeping secrets. No wonder there had been the inevitability of clash - - with neither one willing to bend. Only it was important now, really important for Lex to understand that maybe those things he was grieving about, those lives he had tallied up, weren't entirely his fault.

Clark needed someone to talk to in a bad way. Someone without bias. But did such a person even exist that didn't have prejudice against Lex one way or another? Maybe mom, and even if she did, she'd still try and give him honest advice. Only she was in Washington and the last time he'd popped in to visit, he'd almost gotten caught on camera, because she had a spotlight all her own now. So calling was a safer bet. Besides, he wasn't sure he wanted to be a half country away just now, until Lex sobered up and got a grip.

But outside would be fine. Where the cold fresh air would clear his head. The mansion was oppressing. As if all the dark deeds done within its walls weighted the air. It was enough to push a perfectly sane man over the edge. He never had liked the idea of Lana living here and that went above and beyond the fact that she'd been with Lex. Hell, he wasn't sure if he liked the idea of Lex living here, with nothing but staff that obviously didn't give enough of a damn to try and deal with him when he was so obviously in need of dealing with.

He went downstairs, picked through the shambles of the study and found Lex's cell in his coat pocket. His own was dutifully charging at home and he hadn't really stopped long enough to think about grabbing it in his haste to get here anyway. Lex hadn't asked for help in so many words when he'd called, but Clark had heard it plain as day in the slurred speech and the nonsense words. After he'd heard 'blood' that had pretty much clenched the deal and he'd just been there, heart hammering in - - well, in fear - - of what he might find.

It was almost three and the sun, which had been out this morning for a while had gone back into hiding behind ominous fronts of clouds. Another storm rolling in on the heels of the one that had just left. The temperature was already dropping. He went out the kitchen door, to the back terrace overlooking a manicured array of evergreen box hedges formed into a geometric maze that dominated the landscape below. He walked across the tiled terrace past wrought iron patio furniture, down low stone steps and onto a lawn that no amount of time and effort could keep green in the midst of early winter weather. It was scrupulously free of dead leaves or other fall debris, and the dormant garden beds were rich with mulch and spotted with fall hardy perennials. The gardens here were too formal for his tastes, too controlled. He liked his mother's wildflower beds better, that grew untamed and tangled and beautiful.

He dialed his mother's cell number, and it picked up almost immediately, answered by the now familiar voice of his mother's personal assistant.

"Hi, Nancy. It's Clark again."

"Hi Clark. Session's running over. The senator's still tied up."

He shut his eyes and sighed. Some days, he missed the sound of his mother's voice.

"Okay. Just - - just tell her I called again."

"First message I give her." Nancy sounded like she had better things to do than talk to him.

He severed the connection and held the phone to his chest, debating his other venting options. He used to be able to tell anything to Chloe - - except this Lex stuff was different. And Chloe had reason enough to not want anything to do with anything remotely involving Lex and it didn't feel right making her fight past painful grudges just because he couldn't deal with a problem on his own. It didn't feel right having to explain to her why it mattered to him so much, really mattered, when he wasn't quite sure himself.

There was Lionel, but he shivered a little even as the thought crossed his mind. Lionel's methods of helping Lex were as inscrutable as Jor-el's were of helping Clark. Even though Lionel might have more than the straws Clark was grasping at, the idea of baring Lex's weaknesses to him made the hair on the back of Clark's arms rise. No, he'd given Lex over once into that particular brand of care when he been young enough and scared enough not to know better, he wouldn't do it again. No matter whose side Lionel claimed to be working on.

He cursed J'onn for being secretive and elusive, because if anyone could figure out exactly how to deal with this problem, it was a being capable of getting into people's minds and sorting through the mess. At the very least Clark would dearly have liked to shake some comprehensive answers out of him.

Otherwise, his options were limited to just coming out and saying, yeah, there was a chunk of Zod left inside your head and I helped rip it out. Sorry it's messing with your mind, but that's the price you have to pay, I guess. How did I know? Well, you want the old familiar lies or should I come up with some new elaborate ones? God. He was screwed. He was totally screwed.

He collapsed down onto a white stone bench at the edge of the hedge maze and stared gloomily up at the weathered faade of the castle. He focused his hearing, picking up the rhythmic tempo of one heartbeat inside. Strong, steady beat, that didn't even hasten when something loud and porcelain sounding shattered.

Crap. Clark was back inside before he finished his mental cursing. He skidded to a stop in the doorway, and found the beside lamp in pieces on the hardwood floor and Lex staggering towards the bathroom with the single minded intent of someone desperately feeling the need to hurl. Clark followed him in, hovering, because Lex seemed none too stable - - clenching his fists a little, helplessly when Lex dropped to his knees and hunched over the commode, the whole of his body shaking as he heaved.

From the sound of it, it was mostly liquid, and though Clark was neither squeamish nor prone to nausea, his stomach did flutter a little in sympathy. Lex knelt there a while longer, after whatever was going to come up, had come up, his arms resting on the toilet seat, his head hanging and for a moment, Clark thought maybe he'd passed back out. But after a minute, he shuddered and managed to push himself up, leaving a little red smear from the hand that had had the worst cut, from blood soaked through the bandages.

Clark took a step backwards as Lex staggered for the sink, yanking open the mirrored cabinet over it, and fumbling around inside after a bottle of mouthwash. A tumble of various other medicine cabinet paraphernalia came tumbling out after it, which Lex ignored in his struggle with the Listerine cap. He took a swig of it, dropping the open bottle where it fell, to ooze green minty freshness over the bathroom sink counter. Clark snatched it up, screwing on the top as Lex bent down and spit, wiped the back of a hand across his mouth and turned to collide with Clark.

Lex blinked up at him, as if he hadn't noticed Clark's presence before, put a hand out and patted Clark's arm, then frowned down at the stiffened, blood-crusted cuff of his own sweater.

"God," Lex breathed, hazy distaste, as he pushed around Clark and back into the bedroom, awkwardly attempting to pull the sweater off as he walked. Which considering the massive amounts of expensive booze that he'd probably consumed, was probably a really bad idea. He lurched, socked feet dangerously close to the remains of the lamp and Clark caught him, an arm about the waist, helping with tangle of sweater and arms and head. Which left Lex listing against him, bare now, from the hips up, hands sliding up Clark's arms to grasp the collar of his shirt, pulling Clark with him towards the edge of the bed.

Clark's mouth was appallingly dry and whatever innate grace he might have possessed sort of shriveled up and died as his feet tangled with Lex's and it was either twist about and sit down or fall down with Lex under him. Lex on top might have been worse, because Lex's hip was pressing against Clark's crotch, his weight solid and warm. Lex's mouth was really close to the edge of Clark's jaw, his breath sending tickly little fingers of sensation all down Clark's body.

"I love - - your smell." The words shimmered out along with one of those amazing, tingly breaths upon Clark's skin, and Lex sighed afterwards, going loose and heavy against him.

"Oh - - God," Clark breathed out one of his own, not even having a coherent clue at that precise second what to do, with his hands on Lex's naked back and his dick having inappropriate, twitchy thoughts where it was pressed between his thigh and Lex's hip. He looked at the ceiling and imagined his dad's expression, walking in upon such a scene and that served to put his lower extremities firmly back in line.

Now if he could just get his nerves to settle - - no easy task, because well, this just shouldn't feel so nice. He ought not be experiencing the distinct urge not to wriggle out from under. To simply lie there and soak in the sound of Lex's soft breath, and the feel of his heartbeat and the texture of all that vibrant, living flesh under his hands. Maybe just for a bit, he could indulge this unexpected impulse.

He eased backwards a little, getting his back against the padded headboard, getting a leg up onto the bed and shifting Lex into a more comfortable position. Lex was easy to deal with unconscious, long limbs, lean body, malleable and cooperative. But his skin was cool to the touch, and Clark realized that was because the room was chill, just like the rest of the damned castle, so he pulled the side of the comforter they weren't laying over and draped it across the both of them. He lay there a second, Lex's forehead pressed into the curve of his neck, then slid his hands under the blanket and against Lex's back. Almost he felt guilty for it, that indulgence, like he was molesting a man not aware enough to protest - - or appreciate it. But he couldn't quite stop himself from spreading his fingers out over skin he'd been thinking about a lot lately and just savoring it, when there were no witnesses to catch him at it, Lex included.

Lex's shoulders were broad, but his shoulder blades were sharp and boney, and the muscles of his back a thin, sinewy covering across bone. Clark could almost feel the shape of ribs under flesh. There was nothing to spare on Lex, no excess anywhere, like the magnitude of Lex's energy consumed anything even remotely superfluous. Until you got below the belt - - and no, Clark absolutely refused to let his hand wonder past the small of Lex's back to the swell of his ass - - his memory was excruciatingly perfect in recalling the detail of that, thank you.

He shut his eyes and imagined his dad again. Now son, there are just some things you don't take to bed with you if you expect to wake up with all your parts intact - -

Clark grinned. It wasn't exactly one of his father's pearls of wisdom, but he could well imagine it coming out of his mouth. He felt the smile fade, chased away by more sullen musings. He'd been so angry at Lex, for so damn long. Driven to it by jealousy, rage, hurt - - before Zod ever came into the picture, when Lex had gone in for the kill and taken what he knew was Clark's - - even though she really wasn't. Anymore than she'd been Lex's. Clark's ideal girlfriend. Lex's ideal wife. And the both of them left with nothing but the ashes of a feud over a woman.

It was funny, that the way's Lex had always chosen to strike at Clark had been at the heartstrings - - when he'd had the resources to make more devastating physical assaults. As much obsessive interest as Lex had in metahumas, as much evidence as they had of his gathering both willing and unwilling subjects - - he'd never gone after Clark. After that last time, that fiasco at the farm that had almost gotten Clark, Lana and his parents killed, Lex had never tried again - - and even then, even if Clark had responded the way Lex must have been hoping - - Clark had the feeling it might never have gone further. Like all he'd really been looking for had been confirmation.

If he'd gotten it, maybe things might have turned out different - - maybe. Who the hell knew anymore? Clark didn't. The world was so turned upside down now, that he didn't know much of anything. He knew he wasn't angry right now. Not even close.

He turned his head and watched the first drops of cold rainfall outside the window. Snow would have been nicer. Snow wasn't so gray and depressing. It covered and made beautiful the things rain simply just washed bare. He shut his eyes again, lulled by the silence of the house, the patter of rain outside, by the slow, steady cadence of Lex's heartbeat.

He came awake at movement. The careful motions of a man who was probably in the throes of a none too subtle hangover. Clark blinked down at Lex, then over to the window, which framed darkness instead of the gray afternoon light that had been there the last time he'd looked. It didn't mean a lot. It was getting dark early now, closer to the equinox, but his internal clock guessed somewhere around six. He'd check with his watch as soon as he could extract an arm.

Lex looked up at him, the faint traces of red veining at the corners of his eyes, skin tinted with an unusual pallor. There was a strain in his eyes that suggested no small bit of pain throbbing behind them. Definitely hangover.

"Hey." Was the first thing that came to mind, and Clark kicked himself a little for the brilliance of that opening statement. But maybe it was okay, because Lex wasn't looking all that clever himself at the moment.

"God," Lex breathed, and got an elbow under him, braced against Clark's ribs, and sort of rolled off Clark and over onto his back next to him. He lay there, breath a little harsh, one arm over his eyes. Clark shifted, uncomfortable of a sudden, looked down at the one foot that was on the bed and the dried mud that had flaked off from the boot he'd neglected to remove. He sat up, pulling the leg from the bed, leaning down to swipe at the dirt. It was six. Which meant he'd dozed for close to three hours.

"What - -? do I want to know - - what happened?" Lex murmured, arm still hiding his eyes.

He didn't remember? Was that a good thing or a bad? Clark swallowed, panic biting at the edges of his calm. "You, ah, passed out. Guess you went on a binge. Tore up your study, really bad."

Lex was silent a long time, the rise and fall of his chest his only movement. Clark noted absently that his nipples were a shade of pink only a tone or two darker than his skin, the nubs only slightly darker as they peaked from the cool air in the room. He tore his eyes away, up to what was visible of Lex's face and asked softly. "Lex? You awake?"

"What are you doing here?"

Back to that again. Clark bit his lip, the urge to come up with a comfortable, easy lie and avoid the plain truth so strong it was almost in his throat, before Lex lifted his arm - - lifted both arms to look at his bandaged hands. The blood on the white gauze of the one was dark and dry now, but the hands were trembling. He curled his fingers and winced, turning his head a little to look at Clark, a sort of dread inquiry in his eyes.

"Yeah," Clark sighed, claiming credit for the patch up and pushing the lies back. "You sort of messed yourself up. I should have taken you to get stitches."

Lex dropped his hands to his chest, gaze shifting away. Eyes fixed on some mundane spot at the corner of the ceiling. "Okay," he finally said, voice a little hoarse. "I appreciate it. You can go now."

Dismissal. Clark blinked, chewing on the inside of his cheek. It would be really easy to back off, to let Lex have his distance and his defenses. Only it would make it twice as hard when he had to come back and eventually deal with this. And he would, because he couldn't do it to Lex anymore, let him flounder when all it would take was a semblance of explanation to give him something to cling to.

"Do you remember those numbers you rattled off to me, Lex? The ones you were so upset over that you did this to yourself? Lives, right? Victims?"

Lex narrowed his eyes, jaw working, then pushed himself up. A shiver of pain passed across his face, before he strangled it, trying to hide everything. But he was still too ragged to achieve the usual perfectly placid expression that graced most of his deceptions. Too hungover, too off his balance, too damaged to hide the bruising in his eyes.

"I don't require your services any longer, Clark. Go home."

Textbook Lex on the defensive. Imperious and cold. It didn't throw Clark off one bit.

"Did they matter to you two months ago, Lex? Why not?"

"What do you want?" Lex asked, clipped, soft-voiced tone.

"Maybe it wasn't all you, Lex." There, he'd said it, gotten over the first difficult hump. "Remember what you told me about feeling like there was something inside you? Something left over from Zod? I think maybe - - maybe you were right."

Lex took a breath, staring at Clark with bright, bloodshot eyes for maybe three breaths, before he said quietly. "That's an unusual leap of logic for you to make, Clark."

"Yeah, well, its not completely out of the range of possibility, is it?"

The silent stare Lex gave him was that critical, under the skin sort that made Clark feel like he was fifteen and had just presumed to offer Lex stock tips. He took a breath and leaned forward anyway, not flinching from that gimlet gaze. "Is it still there. That feeling?"

Lex's mouth twitched, he pushed to his feet, shut his eyes for a brief moment and swayed. After a breath and a gathering of determination, he headed for the bathroom. Clark knew Lex metabolized fast, but he wasn't sure if the unsteadiness was all hangover or if Lex was still a little drunk. Even if he was, he'd gathered his wits enough to form coherent sentences.

Clark trailed after him, standing in the doorway of the bathroom, while Lex hesitated, staring dazedly at the jumbled contents of the medicine cabinet scattered on the counter, the gummy puddle of spilled mouthwash. The had this lost sort of look, like he couldn't comprehend the disarray. Then with a jerky motion, he snatched up what looked like a bottle of prescription painkillers and struggled with the cap, fingers no doubt a little stiff and sore from the slices in his palms. Got it open and shook out two pills, which he downed with a glass of water. He stood there afterward, hands on the countertop, staring past his own reflection at Clark's, eyes close to blue under the bright bathroom bulbs, searching for something from Clark maybe, with the safety of reflective glass between their gazes.

"I'd be scared, too," Clark said softly, and immediately figured mistake, when Lex's expression hardened and he scoffed at perceived insult. Weakness was not a trait Luthor's admitted to, Clark recalled with something close to frustration - - at least not when they were close to sober.

"You're delusional," Lex suggested coolly.

"Right," Clark shot back. "Because it's total science fiction that anybody could conceivably be taken over by an alien entity. What was I thinking?"

Lex was not amused. Lex was so anything but amused, but his hands were shaking, and he couldn't quite clench his fists to hide it. Smooth denials weren't flowing from his mouth because he was thinking. Clark could practically see him putting together things in his mind, things that he didn't like, or that hadn't occurred to him before maybe.

"What about the dreams, Lex?" Clark asked, needing to hit on all the points that he safely could. "Are you still having those?"

Lex let out a breath of exasperation, a whispered curse, and tried to push past Clark through the bathroom door. Clark didn't budge, blocking escape from a simple question. He repeated it. "Are you still having them?"

Lex stood there, practically close enough that Clark's shirt brushed his bare skin, staring straight ahead, resolutely fascinated with Clark's mouth, lashes a fine fan of ginger shading his eyes. And for once, the nearness didn't scatter Clark's wits, but reinforced his determination.

Very softly, without looking up, Lex said. "You know, if any other Kansas farm boy came up to me with this fantastical supposition, I'd assume he was growing more than corn - - and smoking it to boot. But you - - you've got the inside track, don't you Clark? You knew about - - Zod, before I did. What was the story you told Lana, again?"

"Please don't make this about me, Lex. It's about you, this time. Just you." Please, please let him accept it, this one time, without argument, without closing himself off, on the outside of one more not quite lie. Clark didn't want to lie to him now, not with Lex's hands shaking and his body held so defensively taut it was a wonder he didn't shatter. Clark's secrets could only cloud the issue. He owed Lex an explanation, he owed him maybe more than that, but he didn't owe him the deeds to his life.

Lex looked up and for the briefest moment, his eyes glittered with hurt or anger, but he pulled it in, throat working, back ramrod straight. "Please get out of my way, Clark."

Softly asked. Politely asked. And what was he going to do, keep Lex trapped in the bathroom until he agreed to consider a not entirely reasonable explanation without the facts to back it up? He shifted out of the threshold, and Lex passed by. He hesitated at the remains of the bedside lamp, but stepped around them, to the door. Clark trailed down the hall behind him, towards the double doors of the master suite.

The last time Clark had been in here, the traces of Lana had been everywhere. The obvious signs of impact that a woman made on a room. But they were gone now. The dresser top starkly bare, devoid of make-up, brushes and combs, perfumes, hair accessories and jewelry and all the other assorted stuff that sat it apart from the sort of things a man might have on his own small portion of dresser top.

Why hadn't she noticed? There had to have been signs. Maybe just subtle changes at first from pre-Zod Lex to what he had become afterwards. Clark hadn't been close enough to see for himself - - had purposefully distanced himself from the pain of Lex and Lana - - but she should have seen. Maybe she did see, eventually, and maybe that's why pregnancy or no, she'd hadn't wanted to go through with the marriage. Maybe she had questioned it, but had had no one to turn to with her suspicions. She could have come to him - - she damn well could have come to him with it and he'd have listened. Maybe. Perhaps he'd still have been too angry to care. Or possibly, she'd been too wrapped up in her own problems to question why Lex went from his normal brand of obsession and subtle Luthor manipulations to cold-blooded dictator in the span of months.

Clark ran his fingers across the gleaming, lacquered surface of the dresser. There was a box sitting next to it, the flaps half open, filled perhaps with things Clark really didn't want to dwell on. Her things. He was surprised Lex had left them here as long as he had. Clark wasn't sure he could have looked at those personal items, day in and day out without crumbling a little each and every time.

"Hurting her was the last thing I ever wanted to do." Lex said quietly from behind him. Clark turned and found him leaning against the threshold of the closet, watching Clark look at those boxes. Lex had put on a shirt so dark it verged on black, save when the light hit and brought out shades of purple. The cuffs hung, unbuttoned, covering the top edges of the bandages on his hands.

"I know." Clark sighed. And he believed it. No matter what he'd thought Lex capable of, harming Lana had never been on the list.

For a moment, Lex just looked at him as if gauging the validity of Clark's admission. Then his eyes flicked down, and he shook his head slightly, a sort of dismissive motion, but Clark saw pain in it - - guilt certainly. Lex pushed off the doorframe, with the careful movements still, of a man who's not quite sure if his head is up to speed with his body.

Lex headed down stairs and Clark followed, feeling like he was keeping vigil. God, the quiet of the place was almost alarming and he focused his hearing a little just to pick up more than the muffled pads of their footfalls. He couldn't hear the rain outside anymore, but there was the sense, even through castle walls that it was doing something out there. He looked through the stone and saw big flakes of wet snow wafting through darkness. Not sticking yet, but soon. That's why it was so silent. Snow buffered everything. Even the sounds of nighttime wildlife from the grounds and the woods at the edge of them was muted, everything tucked in and awed by the catharsis of snowfall.

Everything but Lex, who had stopped at the entrance to his study and was staring at the devastation he'd wrought with a sort of shell-shocked amazement. He stepped into the room, and his shoes crunched on bits of glass, stopped in the center, heartbeat increasing, and God knew what was going through his head. Clark wondered if he even remembered thrashing the place.

"Let's assume, for the sake of argument," Lex said, without turning. "That your theory has a grain of merit. Why did it stop?"

No one without particularly acute hearing would have picked up on the tremor underlying the question. No one that didn't know Lex might have even caught it then. It would have sounded like polite inquiry - - nothing Lex was particularly invested in knowing the answer to. Clark didn't want to lie. He really didn't want to stand there and come up with fabrications one more time in the face of Lex's raw need.

So he said nothing, perhaps the wisest choice he might have made, because Lex didn't press the issue, wondering around the study instead - - coming closer to his own conclusions. He picked up the half empty bottle from the floor behind his desk and Clark frowned, thinking seriously of going over and knocking it right out of hands if he lifted it to take a drink. But Lex just looked at the blood-smeared bottle, a sort of bemused quirk on his mouth and commented.

"Do you know what a rare label this is? I was saving it for - - I don't know what I was saving it for. A rainy day?" He looked around, as if he were searching for the cap, but it was nowhere to be found, so he sat the open bottle on the cracked, chipped surface of his desk.

A stray flake of snow blew in from the jagged hole in the window behind the desk. There was enough cold air with it that their breath fogged a little. Clark hadn't picked up on that before. Hadn't noticed the fire was long dead. He shivered and it had nothing to do with cold. He didn't want to stay here. He sure as hell didn't want to leave Lex here alone.

"In another couple of hours the roads are going to be a mess," Clark said, and Lex glanced at him with mild curiosity, no doubt wondering what exactly that had to do with him.

"Then you should probably get home."

"That's a good idea." Clark took a breath. "I think you should come with me."

Lex canted his head. "Should I?"

"Because if your staff's not here now, they're probably not going to have an easy time making it in tomorrow and - - let's face it, the place is a shambles. And it's cold." And huge and quietly unsettling.

"I know how to work a thermostat, Clark. I can start a fire, for that matter."

"Really? So cutting grass is a problem, but starting a fire you can manage?" He tried to keep the fact that he felt faintly desperate out of his voice.

Something shifted in Lex's eyes, a sharpening of perception that had been noticeably dull since they'd come downstairs. "Fire's considerably more interesting than grass. Why do you care, Clark, if I'm cold and have a deficit of domestics?"

There was enough of a taunt in that question, that Clark rose to the bait and countered. "Why'd you bring shirts by the house this morning?"

Lex opened his mouth, hesitated and something close to a smile twitched at the corners of his lips. "You know, one the things that always annoys me the most about you, is your penchant for answering perfectly legitimate questions, with questions of your own."

Clark stood there, not quite knowing how to respond to that blatant truth, other than shuffle his feet and shove his hands in his pockets. "Yeah, I guess that used to be a bad habit."

"Used to be?" A brow shot up.

Clark studied the rug under his boots, then looked back up at Lex from under his lashes, waiting.

"This morning, you told me to get off your property." Lex reminded him.

"Yeah," Clark agreed. "I'm inviting you back on, now."

Lex looked away, laughing abruptly. Stopping abruptly. "Am I a project, Clark? One of your charity cases? I'm flattered, really, but I would think you could find a cause more deserving of your - -"

"Shut up and put on your coat, Lex."

Lex chewed the inside of his cheek, considering. A lot less offended that Clark would have thought. Finally he shrugged, just a touch of wariness in his eyes and said. "Okay."

Part seventeen

"How did you get here?"

Lex stopped outside the front door, eyes scanning the curved drive beyond the castle's carriage porch. Driveway lights illuminated the fall of heavy snow, clinging to the cold paving stones, even if it only stuck to the wet ground in patches before it melted away. There was no truck though, and Clark felt the sting of stupidity slapping him in the face at the oversight. He hadn't exactly jumped in the pickup in his rush to get over here.

"I ran," he said and held out his hand without missing a beat. "I guess we're taking your car. And since I'm guessing you're still probably over the legal limit - - Keys?"

Lex's look was about as inscrutable as Lex's looks ever got, but he dug into the pocket of his coat and withdrew the keys to the black Audi that was parked half under the shelter of the portico. Dropped them wordlessly into Clark's hand and walked around to the passenger side.

"You know," Lex said, after Clark had gotten his seat adjusted and the car moving down the drive towards the gates. "There was a time when that answer would have irritated me beyond all reason."

Clark licked his lips, noticing that the gate guard was still at his post, even though everybody else seemed to have abandoned the grounds. "Yeah? Not now?"

"Mmm. Just doesn't seem to be striking any nerves."

Lex had enough other things on his mind that it was hardly surprising a casual confession of Clark's left him unfazed. And it was only a few miles. It wasn't like it wasn't possible Clark might have decided to take an afternoon jog.

Clark stopped at the gate and the guard leaned out of the guardhouse as the gates were swinging open. Lex rolled down his window. "I won't be back until tomorrow, weather permitting. Lock up and go home before the roads get too bad."

The guard nodded, rubbing gloved hands against the chill. "I'll do that, Mr. Luthor. Have a good night, Mr. Luthor."

Lex rolled up the window and leaned his head against the rest, face tilted towards the glass and the fields rolling by outside. He looked tired, a weariness that seemed to go beyond the physical. A quietness had come over him - - a sobriety that had nothing to do with the level of alcohol that might or might not still be in his system.

The whole ride home was silence. And silence was a good thing, because some issues needed to be worked out inside a man's own head, without outside input. Clark had a few of his own mulling. Lex had been right, he hadn't wanted anything to do with him this morning. Hadn't wanted the complications Lex brought with him, the contradictions. The embarrassment. Until Lex had changed his mind with a half a smile that didn't conceal the nerves beneath and a bit of ridiculous banter that had gone straight past Clark's defenses like a guided missile. Maybe it was a good thing Lois had shown up when she did, to shake him out of it. Maybe she just had crappy timing.

Regardless, Lex was wounded now. Confused now, but he'd get over it, and then what? What would he be, free of that influence? A better man or a worse one, damaged beyond repair? One way or another, Clark needed to find out. He didn't have it in him to turn his back on the problem. He hadn't been brought up to turn wounded things away - - even if they weren't looking for help. Even if they might turn out to be the sort of half-wild creature that turned and bit the hand that helped them.

They reached the farm, and the kitchen light was still on and God, he hoped he hadn't forgotten and left the stove on or anything, but since the house wasn't in flames, he figured not. He pulled up behind the pickup, cut the headlights and plunged the yard into darkness. They crunched across the gravel in the drive towards the house, and Clark's mind switched back to farm mode when it occurred to him that he had two horses in pasture that needed to be brought in tonight, what with the weather. The herd would fair fine, but he'd have hay to put out tomorrow and water troughs to thaw.

"Lex, door's unlocked. I've got to close up the barn, but I'll be right in."

Lex hesitated, nodded and continued on. Clark walked towards the barn until the door shut behind Lex, then took off into the darkness towards the east pasture. The horses were waiting by the fence, no doubt put out that he'd left them out in first rain, then snow. He patted necks and noses on the walk back, and promised extra portions of grain. With the horses in their stalls, well fed and the barn shut snug, he hurried back to the house. He'd almost been afraid that Lex had bolted- - had almost been prepared for it. But that was just habit - - him expecting the worst where Lex was concerned and tying to shield himself.

But Lex was where he was supposed to be. In the house, with his coat laid neatly over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, standing in the hall under the stair gazing at the array of family photographs on the wall. The house was really quiet, and sort of cold, so Clark stuffed wood into the woodstove, looked over his shoulder to check were Lex was and started it burning the quick way, with a blast of inferno vision. He padded back into the kitchen and thought coffee might be something Lex dearly needed.

"You hungry?" he asked, spooning ground beans into the filter.

"I'm fine." The answer drifted in from the hall, followed shortly by Lex, who had composed his face into a pleasantly unreadable mask. All armored up then, like he was expecting a fight - - or expecting to be asked to give things he wasn't prepared to part with. Or maybe just really, really upset over the things Clark had suggested and hating the idea of showing that inner turmoil. Who the hell knew with Lex when he had his game face on?

The best thing to do in these cases, Clark had learned during his early years of Lex watching, was to plow on regardless. "I think its time to break out the good stuff."

Lex lifted a brow. Clark rummaged in the freezer and pulled out a plastic container of his mom's county fair, prize-winning chicken Brunswick stew. She'd put up enough of it a few months ago to last him half the winter if he got tired of his own cooking. He dumped it into a pan on the stove and broke it into smaller frozen pieces with a ladle and a serving fork.

"You don't listen very well," Lex commented, but there wasn't much in the way of complaint in his voice.

"When's the last time you ate? Not drank, but actual food?"

"Are you sure your mother didn't leave you cue cards lying about, so you could get the tone of maternal harassment down pat?" Lex inquired dryly.

Clark felt the edge of a smirk, flattened it out and glanced over his shoulder to give Lex a look. Lex was standing with his hands on the back of a chair, black cuffs against white bandages, long pale fingers below that. He remembered the last time Lex had been in the kitchen, those same long fingers trailing across the backs of chairs - - all seduction in the way he'd moved, the sway of his hips, the look in his eyes, the things he'd been saying - - but the frightening sort of seduction, designed to scandalize. He just looked weary now. Wrung out and badly used - - and most of that self-inflicted.

"You drink too much. Sit down, stew's almost warmed." Clark said flatly and turned with a mug of black coffee before Lex could narrow his eyes in offense, and held it out in offering.

Lex stared at it, jaw working tightly, then reached out and took it with a bandaged hand. He pulled out the chair and sat down. Silent. Definitely offended. If he'd have said the same thing to Lois, about the drinking, he might have gotten the cup flung at his head, Lex held his angers closer to heart - - expressed them in subtler, more devastating ways.

Clark turned back to the stew and took a breath. No doubt about it, this was going to be a long night.

"Don't turn your nose up. My mom made it, not me." He felt the need to clarify as he slid a bowl of the stuff in front of Lex and sat down with one of his own. Whether Lex cared to admit hunger or not, Clark was ravenous. Mental dilemma did not dwindle his appetite.

"I never doubted your culinary skills," Lex said idly turning his spoon in the steaming concoction before him. "I would assume, growing up with your mother as an example, you know your way around a kitchen."

"You'd think," Clark mumbled. "After the second time I almost burned down the kitchen, she stopped asking me to help. There was this thing with hush puppies and - - well - - Gas stoves and grease fires suck."

"I imagine they would." Lex agreed mildly and Clark looked up at him, but Lex was still examining the contents of the stew.

"I was twelve," Clark added, just in case there might be some mistaken belief that it had happened last year.

"It couldn't have been an easy decision for her, taking the senate seat - -" Lex said quietly, looking past Clark out the kitchen window at the snow caught in the outside porch lights. Something flickered at the back of his eyes, a crack in the seams. Clark tightened his fingers on spoon, felt the metal give and let up, the both of them knew very well why that senate seat had opened up. He wanted to ask, 'would you do it again? Now?' Wanted to know whether that decision and the subsequent ones had been made under the influence of something more dangerous than aged scotch. Maybe Lex didn't even know. Clark couldn't begin to imagine how tangled the web had been or what sort of introspection it might take to untangle it. To figure out where Zod's desires had ended and Lex's had begun.

"We discussed selling the farm," Was what he said instead, and surprised himself a little with the admission, because it was close to his heart and painful. More so because deep down, he wanted to, was terrified of being shackled to this plot of earth forever.

Lex's eyes shifted back to him, sharpening, studying him and Clark leaned over his bowl to scrape the bottom.

"What's keeping you from doing it? The fact that there are photographs of three generations of Kent's working this land on your wall? Because your father died here?"

God, Lex was supposed to be the one off his balance here, and he was already under Clark's skin like a surgeon with a scalpel, making all the right assumptions. And he didn't have the right to bring up dad. He just - - didn't. That's what he got, trying to have a conversation with Lex, when everything they might talk about would trigger sore spots sooner or later.

Lex picked up on his tension, or was familiar enough with the flexing of the muscles in Clark's jaw to know upset when he saw it broadcast. He slid the bowl away, untouched and pushed back from the table. "No offense to your mother's cooking - - but I just can't eat this now. Does that antique in your living room get Cspan, CNN anything with decent news?"

"We have satellite," Clark said crossly. It had sort of been essential with his mom's political responsibilities, that they get more than the local channel's take on world news. Lex nodded and disappeared into the living room. After a moment, Clark heard the television come to life.

He emptied Lex's stew back into the pot. It could be reheated later and damned if he was going to let it go to waste. He stared at the mixture, vegetables and chicken and mush and it occurred to him that a man with a hangover might not find its appearance particularly appetizing. It did sort of resemble food that had seen the light of day a second time around. God.

A touch of hot coffee added to what was cooling in Lex's mug and Clark followed into the living room. Lex had settled on the couch, slouched into the corner closest to the wood stove. He'd found one of the news channels, but there was something in his face that made Clark think he wasn't paying much attention. Clark held out the mug and after a second, Lex looked up and accepted it, cupping his hands around it as if to soak up the warmth.

"You still - -" Clark didn't know how to phrase it politically, so he made a vague motion towards his own head.

"Hung-over?" Lex asked, then shrugged a little. "The dregs of one. I tend to recover quickly from these sorts of things. One of those rare advantages of - -"

He trailed off, but Clark knew what he'd been about to say. Maybe Lex knew he knew and simply waited to see if Clark would fill in the blanks.

"From meteor exposure?" he asked, because what the hell, they both knew - - what was the point in dancing around the issue? He collapsed down on the other end of the couch, a whole empty cushion between them. Lex's mouth curved momentarily with a wry smile, a cold flash of practicality dancing across his eyes.

"Yes. My own personal - - alteration." He looked away for a moment, staring back at the TV with narrow intensity, his hands around the mug tightening, fingers tensing. "But it's different now. Faster. Metabolically, restoratively I'm leaps and bounds ahead of where I used to be." He held up one bandaged hand and didn't even seem to care that it was shaking. "This will be closed up by tomorrow. You'll never know I had it in four or five days. Whatever the Ship did to me - - I'm not the same. I've never been quite certain whether to take it as a blessing or a punishment. Who would have guessed there might be other lingering - - side effects?"

Clark felt his stomach lurch a little. He hadn't known. Hadn't even considered that the fundamental physical alterations the Ship had made out of necessity, might not have vanished as completely as they'd assumed. He'd cared about three things at the time - - that the powers were gone, that Zod was gone, that Lex was alive. Beyond that, he'd been focused on other things.

How had it not occurred to him that to be a suitable host for a Kryptonian, a human shell would have had to be altered at a basic genetic level? Genetic code changed into something more than human. Something a step closer to Clark. And Lex knew. Lex had lived most of his life with the obvious physical effects of one mutation. That he'd been subjected to the unknown factors of a second one - - specifically forced upon him by alien abductors must have driven him mad. Must have been terrifying for a man who thrived on control, to have absolutely none at the most rudimentary of levels.

"I - - I didn't know." Clark said slowly, mind still spinning with what ifs. If Lex realized all of this - - with Lex's obsessions with the nature of mutation - - had he offered himself up, in one of those facilities of his, as a subject for testing?

"Why would you?" Loaded question, but hollow sounding. Lex's eyes back on him now. It was the most amazing thing how their color seemed to shift with lighting and mood.

Clark didn't have an answer for that - - not an easy one, at any rate. "Somebody should have figured," he muttered, not sure if he were more uncomfortable, or irritated with absolutely everyone who had been in the know who hadn't questioned, himself at the top of the list. "Did you tell Lana?"

"No," Lex said after a moment of silence. "I'd already given her enough to worry over - - enough reasons to fear anything connected with the ship and Zod - - and me."

"Right, because what if she thought less of you for it?" Clark said and Lex narrowed his eyes, then his mouth twitched and he shrugged.

"Exactly. I see we're on the same page. Is that why you kept your secrets?"

Clark swallowed, denials familiar as the flavor of his mom's stew sitting on the tip of his tongue. But they both knew those lines by heart and Lex had one-upped him in the honesty department tonight, and it made Clark feel shallow and small. "Yeah, maybe it was. Is."

He surprised Lex. Clark saw it in the widening of his eyes, the momentary parting of lips as maybe a question or an accusation trembled there - - but didn't come out. Then Lex's mouth tightened and he turned back to stare at the television, gathering himself in a little, like he was cold, or defensive. His skin was very pale in the glow from the TV, his eyes nothing but shadow. There was a tense sort of fragility to the set of him now that screamed, okay, I'm done talking. Leave me the hell alone.

Clark sat there for a while, watching Lex pretend to watch TV. But Lex wasn't paying attention, because there was some story about a painting dog, that even Clark found silly, and Lex had the remote within reach and didn't bother to switch channels. He was just sitting there, wrapped up in the silence of his own screaming thoughts.

Clark wasn't sure he wanted to know what was passing through Lex's mind - - was almost certain if he did, it would leave him dizzy and confused.

He left Lex on the couch, and went to bring in a few more armfuls of wood. Snow was sticking now and there was a fine covering of it across the yard, more on the roof of the barn and the shells of the truck and Lex's car. He stood out on the porch for a while, watching the snowfall, listening to the muted sounds of the horses in the barn, of the herd in their pasture over the rise, the buzz of the television inside the house - - the soft revolutions of Lex's breathing. If he tried hard enough he could discern the impact of individual flakes as they landed, each one adding to the growing blanket of white.

The phone rang in the house. Clark blinked, the sound of it like the roar of a freight train in comparison to the gentle resonance of crystallized ice. He hurried into the house and snatched it off the hook.

It was his mother, exhaustion edging her voice, concern hard at the center.

"Everything's okay, mom," he assured her, taking the phone and heading back to the porch. He'd wanted so bad to talk earlier, but now, he didn't know how to broach subject. How did he explain that he'd lost his grip on good sense and dragged Lex home with him - - that somehow Lex had wormed his way past the ranks of Clark's other concerns to find a place at the top. It wasn't an unfamiliar circumstance, it had just been a while.

"Nancy said you sounded upset. I tried to call this afternoon but you didn't answer. Are you sure, you're okay?"

"Yeah. I was - - out." Sleeping in Lex's bed with Lex sprawled on top of him. And liking it. A lot. Bet you didn't see that one coming, huh, mom? Neither did I.

"You forgot to charge your phone."

"Yeah."

"Write a note and stick it on the refrigerator, honey." She knew him so well, it was scary. "I'm so sorry I missed you earlier. I think I should shuffle aside a few meetings and fly home this weekend."

"Mom, its snowing here and looks like more's on the way. You'll just end up getting stranded at an airport between here and there. Stay. I'm fine. I just - - missed your voice, is all."

She was quiet for a few breaths, and he just knew she was analyzing him, putting together little clues he hadn't even realized he'd been giving. She hardly ever failed to come up with anything but dead on accurate assumptions about his state of mind. Maybe he should get her home, put her in a room with Lex and let her help hash out that quandary.

"Okay," she finally said, not pushing. "Call me, if you need to talk about anything, honey. I'll tell Nancy to make sure to put you through. I love you."

He nodded, feeling a little lump in his throat, then curled his free hand in annoyance, because damnit, he was twenty-one, not fourteen and he ought not need mom's miracle touch to solve his problems for him. "Love you, too, mom. Bye."

He stood there with his hands on the rail for a while. He couldn't begin to explain the depths of his dilemma with Lex - - oh, the Zod part was pretty straightforward - - it was just the other stuff - - the mess in New York and the way he couldn't quite manage to shake images of Lex naked - - or the feel of his skin or how his mouth tasted - - that was the sort of stuff that made him light headed just contemplating talking to his mom about.

He didn't even want to think about what advice she'd give on the subject. He shuddered a little bit in horror at the notion and thought maybe one quick little zip around the borders of Lowell county would clear his mind.

But that would be cowardly, and his head was in pretty good shape, comparatively speaking, so there was nothing to do but go back inside.

Lex was still sitting there, scary quiet. Clark stood in the doorway between living room and kitchen and tried to come up with something intelligent to say.

"Shower's upstairs if you want to use it." But of course, Lex knew where it was, having been here a time or two. Clark decided to dig a little deeper. "You can crash in my bed when you're ready."

Lex's eyes flicked to him and Clark couldn't see past the shadows to what was in them.

"I'll use my mom's." He stuffed the tips of his fingers in his pockets, feeling the need to qualify - - because, well, otherwise embarrassing assumptions might be drawn. Assumptions that the part of him that dwelled below the belt twitched a little at the notion of. He was not blushing, it was absolutely not heat he felt in his cheeks. He muttered something that sounded vaguely like babble in his own ears and headed for the stairs to check on the sorry state of his sheets. Laundry, like charging his cell, tended to slip Clark's notice. He hadn't gotten around to it for a while and there was a hip high pile of 'waiting to be washed' in the basement by the washer and dryer. There were a lot of things that just didn't seem as important as they had a few months ago - - a year ago.

There was maybe one clean fitted sheet, and a mismatched flat that he found clean in the upstairs linen closet. He did a really quick job of stripping off the old and putting on the clean. He sucked at wrinkle-free bed making. Hospital corners were beyond his ken, but it was as good as he was going to get it,, At least the room didn't smell like old socks, thank god - - and one day soon, he vowed to take down the Crow's banner and the Radiohead poster, and the Yasmine Bleeth swimsuit poster Pete had gotten him for - - what, his sixteen birthday? - - that was still stuck on the outside of his closet door.

Clark stepped out into the hall and stopped, startled, Lex not more than a few steps away and damned quiet about it. But then, Clark had been preoccupied with the antiquated adornments on his walls.

"Hey, I was just changing sheets. I'll be out of your way - -"

Lex stepped closer, close enough that the tips of their shoes were only inches apart. His eyes were murky, blue green, fixed on Clark's hands with their balled sheets, moving up to his face with slow, deliberate scrutiny. The dimness in the hallway created hollows and rolling shadows on Lex's face - - on the delicate curve of his head. "No bother."

Clark stood paralyzed, heart beating crazily, egged on by some primal instinct that warned danger.

"Why am I here?" Lex asked, voice low, rough velvet. His eyes didn't leave Clark's, and he had really mesmerizing eyes once he snared you. The sort of eyes that dug down into your soul, took your measure without loosing a beat and came back out with ammunition to use against you. Clark had gone out of his way, the last few years to avoid looking too hard and too long into Lex's eyes, afraid of the inherent traps. Afraid of giving Lex things he didn't want Lex to have.

He swallowed, mouth desert dry, palms hot and clammy where he clutched the sheets. The answers to Lex's question were rolling around in bits and pieces inside his head, not a cohesive one in the bunch. "Nobody as messed up as you were ought to be left alone. Look what you did to yourself? I figured if you were someplace booze free, you'd could get your head - -"

Lex leaned in and kissed him. Clark's back hit the door jamb, his mind going curiously white for a breathless moment, with Lex's hands on his shoulders and Lex's mouth, warm and soft pulling at his bottom lip. Lex drew back, and the retreat of his mouth seemed to have a direct correlation to the coherency of Clark's thoughts.

"That's not a good enough answer," Lex said on the exhalation of a soft breath, while Clark blinked in shock. "Try again."

Like he expected a decent answer, pressing against Clark in the doorway, nothing but the wadded laundry between him and what was really starting to feel like a full-blown erection in Clark's jeans. Words were escaping him at the moment.

"Never mind," Lex amended his demand, and trailed his tongue across the edge of Clark's jaw and really, Clark could have pushed him away, could have moved his head to avoid it - - but nerves he didn't even know he had were popping and it just felt so damn hot.

"It's probably better - -" Lex slid his mouth back to Clark's and the back of Clark's head hit the wall with a thump that would have made anyone else see stars.

"- - if you don't - -" Lex pressed closer from necessity, having to lean in and up to gain access. The concept that this was a bad idea kept trying to raise its hand and demand his attention, but it was being too polite, drowned out by the chorus of riotous excitement crowding up from lower regions.

Clark opened his mouth with a sort of helpless groan and Lex's tongue slithered in, crafty and warm.

"- - talk at all."

The scent of Lex's skin was warm, sultry with the hint of whiskey. It went through Clark like something alive, shuddering to the surface, this quiver of craving that had a life all its own.

"God," Clark gasped, releasing his death grip on the sheets and reaching up to grasp the sides of Lex's head, fingers curling around the back of his skull, thumbs pressed into the hollow of his cheeks. Dragging him up closer, because he couldn't get deep enough inside to satisfy the inexplicable thirst.

Lex's fingers slid under the untucked flannel shirt, up Clark's sides and raked down, digging in hard enough that he would have scored flesh through the layer of T-shirt - - if Clark's flesh had been easily marked. Welts didn't raise, but goose pimples did, in a ripple all over his body. He wanted so bad it ached - - so bad it stole thought - - like in New York when he'd thrust Lex against the wall in blind frenzy and anger. Only he wasn't angry now and he wasn't the one who was on the verge of out of control. He wasn't the one looking for a substitute addiction - -

Some trickle of willpower got through past the energetic clamor of his libido. He broke the kiss, forcing Lex back far enough to meet his eyes. "Lex - - what are we - -? I can't - -"

"Shut up," Lex lifted his hands, fingers wrapping around Clark's wrists, teeth bared a little in his fight for breath. "You brought me here - - just shut up - - and play the good host - - and do this for me." He tried to close the distance, but Clark wouldn't let him, that reasonable, reckoning part of his mind verging on appalled. But the rest of him, all those pesky lower brain functions - - all those animal instincts - - were trilling with exhilaration.

Lex's breath was jagged, harsh, and Clark could feel it against his body, could feel it under his hands, the beat of Lex's pulse through the big arteries in his neck. He was hard. Just beautifully stiff against Clark's own erection and how did you just turn away and ignore something so crucial and just damned obvious?

Did it really matter that this was a crutch, when there was no downside? Really, it wasn't like it was going to make more of a difference than what had happened in New York? Right? His lower brain was very insistent on that point.

Lex moved his hips and constrained erections brushed in a way that had Clark seeing little dancing stars. That had his body humming and rational thought crowded out by the primal need to get down to basics.

"Ah - - fuck."

"Exactly." Lex concurred and it slid downhill from there. Or sideways in a stumbling, graceless migration into Clark's room.

There was a great deal of fumbling with buttons and belts and Clark's feet had no earthly idea what to do with themselves when confronted with Lex shoving him in increments towards the bed.

The back of his knees hit the mattress and he sat down hard enough to make the springs squeak, his shirt and t-shirt discarded on the floor between bed and door. Lex shoved his way between Clark's knees, sinking down with a purpose, hands working at Clark's jeans, fingers grasping denim and pulling and Clark's body was two steps ahead of his mind, because it helpfully lifted his hips so Lex could pull the pants down baring - - just everything. He should have been embarrassed - - really embarrassed like the way he'd felt the first time Lana had seen him naked and just stared at his cock like she'd never seen uncut foreskin and wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Only it didn't seem to bother Lex in the least - - in fact Lex was sort of looking at him like he was something expensive and gourmet and he hadn't eaten in a while.

Which analogy might have been funny, if Clark's sense of humor hadn't been tucked away somewhere with his good sense. As it was, all he could really focus on was Lex on his knees between his legs, his shirt unbuttoned, revealing the pale, creamy curve his neck, the ridge of his clavicle, the tantalizing strip of smooth, hard chest and belly. His belt was loose, the button of his pants undone, and Clark had the hazy, surreal recollection of having done that.

Then he stopped thinking altogether when Lex leaned forward and sucked in the head of his cock. Wrapped his hand around the shaft, pulled the skin back and slid his tongue across the slick, leaking tip.

Clark almost came, then and there. Because - - fuck, fuck, fuck - - Lex had his mouth on his cock and hadn't there been one or two fleeting teenaged masturbatory images of just such a thing? And even then, he'd never imagined Lex trying to worm the tip of his tongue into the slit of his dick like he couldn't get enough of the taste, while his oh, so clever hand massaged the shaft and his other oh so clever hand rolled Clark's balls like dice he was warming up for a lucky throw.

Then Lex changed tactics, licking down the underside, to the fleshy V of skin connecting balls and shaft and Clark dug his hands into the edge of the mattress and heard himself making strangled sounds. When Lex came back up, he met Clark's feverish eyes for a heartbeat, gaze nothing short of pornographic, then swallowed him whole. Or it seemed that way, because Lex was really good with his hands, and bent over Clark, fucking him with his mouth, lips stretched around the girth of Clark's dick in this incredibly dirty/sexy way, teeth scraping just a little - - not that Clark cared - - in fact it made it all the better, heightened the sensation, like Lex's nails down his skin.

Lex was swallowing, making little humming sounds and the head of Clark's cock was snug in his throat and it was maybe one of the most erotic things Clark had ever felt. He went over the edge and spilled, jerking helplessly, hands hovering and clenching, afraid that if he laid hands on Lex now, he'd hurt him.

It was like Lex had his mouth on the tap of Clark's tension - -his pent up energy, and was draining it off, swallowing it down with convulsive movements of his throat, leaving Clark blissful and satisfied in the wake. When Lex pulled back, Clark's cock plopped from his mouth, wet and still flushed with gathered blood that hadn't decided yet to declare total retreat. Not with combatants still on the field. Not with Lex's eyes fixed on Clark's face as he shrugged off his shirt. Not with Lex using Clark's thighs to push himself up, the tent in his pants so obvious it looked painful.

Clark knew what Lex looked like down there, had had his hands on smooth, hairless skin, the silky heat of Lex's cock - - He lifted his fingers to the waist of Lex's pants and surprisingly enough they were steady. Surprisingly enough, even though his breath came hard and his heart pounded, he knew exactly what he wanted to do. His fingers skimmed Lex's hips and a little shiver rippled across Lex's skin - - an honest reaction that couldn't be hidden by glib words or schooled expressions and Clark felt a shiver of his own that he'd caused it.

He curled his fingers in material and drew slacks and briefs down, rougher than he'd meant to, because restraint was just a nine letter word, the meaning of which had been lost somewhere along the way. Lex bobbed free, and he was beautiful, just like Clark remembered, belly flat and hard, the concave between hip and groin framing his jutting, pink cock.

Clark stared for a second too long, and Lex's hands connected with his shoulders, pushing him back and oh, god the feel of Lex's skin when there was nothing between them was amazing.

Clark's hands moved of their own accord, exploring all the curves and hollows and sharp edges, while Lex's mouth and fingers were performing their own assessment. Lex was grinding against his hip, leaving slick little trails of precome, and Clark was hard again - - big surprise there.

Clark got a hand on his hip and reversed positions, rolling Lex onto his back, sliding hand from hip to cock.

"That's it - - that's good," Lex gasped when Clark tightened his grip and stroked. Tight, sleek skin. Rosy, leaking head that kept disappearing down the circle of Clark's thumb and index finger. Clark couldn't tear his eyes away, until Lex's fingers twisted in his hair, drawing him down to his mouth, tongue thrusting into Clark's in a matching rhythm. Then Lex tensed and he threw his head back, back arching off the bed, pumping into the channel of Clark's fist with discordant, wild strokes and he came, warm and wet across Clark's hand and his own stomach.

Clark opened his fist, slowly, while Lex collapsed back against the newly changed sheets, long, pale body shuddering on the heels of climax, breath gradually slowing. Clark stared at the glistening residue on his hand - - he'd never had another man's come on his skin. Never considered how it would taste, but Lex had swallowed everything Clark had offered with no flicker of distaste - - with no hesitation. Lex's mouth tasted phenomenal and the salty tang of his skin, sheened with sweat was addictive, so maybe - - Clark lifted his hand, rubbing the edge of his thumb across his lips, testing the flavor with the tip of his tongue.

It was interesting, a little salty, a little musk - - an intimate sampling of the basest part of a man. Of Lex.

He looked up, met Lex's stare, the naked fascination in his eyes as he watched Clark lick the rest of the come off his mouth.

"An acquired taste," Lex said slowly, pushing himself up onto his elbows. "For some."

"You like it?" Clark could hardly find his voice.

"Like wine, there are vintages - -" Lex's lashes fluttered down, trailing off, half a wry smile crossing his lips as he reconsidered the slick answer and decided on something more cut and dry. "I like yours."

Clark's dick thrummed, trapped between his belly and Lex's hip, back to full, avid attention. Lex must have noticed, because he looked down.

"You have something?"

Clark most certainly did. He wasn't sure what Lex meant right off, though.

Lex caught his brief bafflement and clarified. "Condoms? Lubrication?"

God - - Lex was offering and Clark couldn't think past it, other than the half lucid memory of pressing Lex against a wall and thrusting against his white buttocks. And maybe Lex was recalling the same thing, because he pushed at Clark's shoulder, scooting back enough to get his back against the pillows and the headboard and said. "If you need a few hints to get it right this time, I'm happy to give pointers."

The growl that curled its way up Clark's throat had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with building desperation. He reached for the bed table, and the jar of Vaseline jelly, which was as close to real lube as you got in the Kent household. Pitifully enough, there hadn't been a condom here in years and even then, he'd been scared shitless his mom would discover the stash. Not that he'd ever had sex in this house more than once and then - - well, surprisingly enough it didn't even matter at the moment that he was about to have it a second time with his first partner's lawful spouse. He'd agonize over that later and in detail, he was sure.

He'd agonize over a lot of things that just didn't seem to make a damn bit of difference now with Lex propped against his headboard, long white thighs spread like he was posing for dirty pictures, hand idly curled around the base of his half flaccid cock.

"For starters," Lex drawled, the faintest hint of challenge in his voice. "Vaseline's a little messy, but it gets the job done. You need to actually apply it, though. I could help, if you're - -"

Clark grabbed his hips and dragged him out of his recline, got himself between Lex's thighs. Between Lex's thighs - - Lex sprawled out under him, heartbeat accelerating, eyes so dark with dilated pupils they were almost black. Come on. Come on. Lex's lips were forming the words, but the sound didn't get past the rush of blood in Clark's ears.

He greased himself, fingers glopped with petroleum jelly making a sort of ribald suckling sound as he stroked his cock. And there was procedure for this, wasn't there? But Lex drew him forward, intent on the endgame and growled at him. "Now. Fuck me, now."

Clark was on him, before he'd finished processing the command, Lex's knees in the crooks of his elbows, leaning forward and sliding down the crevice of Lex's ass. Finding the right spot by animal instinct and driving in with a lot more strength than he probably should have used, because Lex gasped like the air had been knocked out of him, fingers scrambling for a hold on Clark's thighs. Clark froze, hunched over, halfway inside flesh that grasped him like a close fitting glove.

"Move," Lex hissed, face flushed, pained, but he lifted his hips, moving against Clark, impaling himself further. And God - - balls deep inside of Lex was like absolutely nothing Clark had ever felt. He drew back and slammed in again and the slide was transforming, like the first time he'd run so fast that gravity seemed to loose a little bit of its hold on him. Astonishing that fragile human flesh could grip him so tightly, with heat to match what was bubbling inside him. It pushed him over the edge, and it stopped being anything but the need to get off hard and fast. That narrow focus of purpose that had him lifting Lex for a better angle and pumping into him. That had the bed creaking and swaying ominously in time.

Somewhere along the way, Lex must have gotten religion, because he kept gasping Jesus - - God - - Jesus, on the release of each jagged breath and his hands were just splayed out, clutching at sheets, like Clark had driven the strength right out of him. His mouth, open and gasping was so gorgeous, Clark had to lean down, forcing Lex's knees almost to his shoulders, and cover it with his own. And that maybe did it, the fucking and the kissing simultaneously, because Lex clenched around him, muscles tight and convulsing - - Clark hadn't thought it could feel any better - - and came again, spattering both their stomachs, screaming something incoherent and possibly lewd.

And Clark kept moving, reveling in the feel of it around him, finding it beyond electrifying when Lex's body went loose and jointless under him afterward, willing receptacle that made little breathless sounds at the apex of each inward stroke. Not the sort of sounds he would have ever imagined Lex making. But he liked them, and thought he'd like to cause Lex to make them again.

When Clark came, it was almost liberating, because Lex was durable, and tensile strong and not likely to break because Clark let himself go for a few precious minutes. Maybe even a little part of him didn't care if he did.

Clark leaned there for a few seconds afterwards, feeling that odd sort of exhaustion that was more mental than physical. Things other than that central connection of bodies, started to come back into slow focus. The faded pattern on the rumpled sheets. The new dent in the old plaster wall behind his bed right about where the headboard would have slammed into it - - repeatedly and with force. The warm press of Lex's legs against his arms.

Clark drew in a slow breath and pulled back, and Lex drew in a quiet, hissing breath as Clark slid free of his body and lay there after Clark had rolled off, eyes shut, just breathing. Maybe giving Clark an out. An avenue of escape that didn't involve after sex conversation that Clark was almost entirely sure he couldn't handle.

The bandage on Lex's left hand had come undone, gauze trailing off onto the sheets. The one with the dried blood. The bandage on the other hand was intact. He looked back at the unraveled one and it just screamed disarray, an untidy middle finger to all of Lex's calculated precision. If Lex had had hair - - it would have been tousled, too and that thought made Clark grin a little.

Getting out of the room might have been nice, but he reached down for the quilt at the end of the bed and pulled it up, instead. He might have just made one of the bigger mistakes of his life, but he wasn't going to run from it. He was tired of running from it.