Chapter Text
Clark thinks of six am as Lex’s time of day, even more so than it ever belonged to the cows and his chores on the farm. Just as the sun begins to rise, with the air too cool for the day ahead, cold and crisp and new with a sheen of dew on the grass, Clark thinks of Lex. Despite the two shots of espresso it takes to wake him that early in the morning, the promise of a new day ready to be seized before anyone else can try to claim it, that time of day is his. Clark hasn’t spent much time in Metropolis, amidst the glass and steel skyscrapers, the crush of people propelled forward by an internal engine with something to do, somewhere to go, someplace to be, but he imagines that the city suits Lex just as perfectly.
Maybe that’s too romantic a thought to have about your best friend. A sort of minor soliloquy about the dawn and his boundless aspirations, not a new thought but something that has occurred to him in snatches at various points over the years. Maybe Clark should have seen this coming sooner.
The windshield is entirely clouded over with condensation. So are the windows, from what Clark can see of them. He can’t actually move—Lex is heavy against his chest, their bodies pressed together along their sides all the way down. His breath is slow and even; his heartbeat, when Clark listens for it is steady. There is something so beautiful about the relaxed sprawl of his legs out into the passenger side wheel well. Untidy, unpretentious, unrehearsed. And Clark only gets to hold onto it for as long as he can stay still.
There is birdsong outside and the chittering of chipmunks as they move through leaves on the forest floor. Even to Clark’s hypersensitive ears, there is quiet. A kind of peace he could lose himself in, feeling Lex warm and safe against him.
Which is of course, when that superhearing picks up a footstep from a quarter-mile away.
That takes him entirely by surprise. They aren’t exactly in the middle of nowhere but they are far enough out of town that anyone who wanted to come out here would probably have to take a car, aside from some teenagers who might chance a six-mile ride on their bikes but would probably go to one of the other lakeside spots instead and probably not so early in the morning.
But there is Mr. Winslow’s farm about a half-mile down the road. This dirt road is on his property though he isn’t too territorial about it most days, except for when he uses it as a fishing spot. Clark hears a metallic clink as the person he is almost entirely sure now is Winslow, approaches the car. If Clark isn’t mistaken, it’s the sound of a gun brushing up against the zipper on a jacket, jostling as he makes his way down the road. There’s a hitch in the steady step, perhaps Winslow just noticed the strange car parked at the end.
Damn it.
Clark nudges Lex gently—too gently, apparently, because all it does is make Lex curl himself closer into Clark’s side with a sleepy noise. Which is incredibly unfair because Clark does not have the time to appreciate that sound the way he should with Winslow about to aim a shotgun through the window of Clark’s truck.
“Lex,” Clark whispers, carefully in the process of shifting Lex’s weight to the seat instead of on top of him.
Lex inhales sharply, letting out a short groan. “Mmm, Clark?” he asks, full voiced.
Clark winces. “I need to take care of something, I’ll be right back. Keep your head down.”
Blue eyes snap from bleary to focused and Clark feels really bad about the rude awakening. He’ll feel even worse if Winslow realizes exactly what Clark was doing parked out in his woods overnight.
He opens the door and Lex lies down across the front seat, eyeing Clark as he goes. Not quite the soft and gentle morning Clark had been enjoying just minutes ago but Clark is determined to make it up to him. Somehow.
Outside the truck, Clark busies himself with trying to make it look as though he hasn’t been here all that long. He fusses with the truck bed and looks up in surprise when Winslow comes out of the woods.
The shotgun lowers immediately. “Clark Kent? What are you doing out here at this hour?”
“Morning, Mr Winslow!” Clark flashes him a smile. “I was out doing deliveries, thought I’d come down and take a look at the lake. I hope that’s alright.”
“Fine, fine. How’s your folks?”
Mr Winslow is a short man, round in the belly, with a beard shot through with gray. He’s a regular at the farmers market, his stall never all that far from the Kents. Clark can make this kind of small talk in his sleep, raised to it for years. Winslow props his shotgun against the ground like a cane and cocks his hip as they chat about the farm and the weather, prospects for the crop yield this fall. All the while Clark has half a mind on Lex in his front seat.
“Well, I was just taking the dogs for a walk and saw your car down at the end of the road, thought I’d check it out. I’ll let you get back to your deliveries. Say hi to your folks for me.”
Clark swallows a sigh of relief and nods. “Will do.”
Lex is lying flat on his back across the front seat when Clark finishes, one hand pillowed behind his head. He lifts his chin to look up at Clark, the long, pale column of his throat bared. “Good morning,” he says wryly, before sitting up.
“Morning,” Clark murmurs, watching Lex straighten up. He flexes his neck back and forth and arches his spine a little to get the cricks out. “Sorry about that.”
“The wake up call or the ache in my neck? Neither of which are your fault.”
Clark tucks his hands in his pockets and shrugs, looking down at his shoes where he scuffs at the ground. He looks up at Lex through his lashes. “Are you hungry?”
“I could use a cup of coffee. Getting threatened with a shotgun at—“ Lex checks the watch on his wrist. “—seven in the morning is a great jolt of adrenaline but it doesn’t really have the staying power of caffeine. We could go back to the mansion.”
They could. They definitely could. Hidden away from the rest of the world, given space to figure out what they mean to each other again, the mansion has been their safe haven all summer.
But Clark has another idea.
“Or... you could come home with me,” Clark suggests.
Lex stares at him and Clark can practically hear all of the useless questions he is choosing not to voice out loud: you want to bring me back to the farm? Aren’t your parents home? What are they going to say when they see you with me? Are you sure? Are you sure this is what you want?
But Lex isn’t about to ask dumb questions and he isn’t about to beg for reassurance. “I could,” he says cautiously, committing to nothing more than the fact that it is a possiblilty.
Clark brightens immediately, choosing to take that as a yes. “Great, come on.”
The day is bright and hot by the time the truck pulls into the driveway at the farm. The sun is blazing like the sound of cicadas, a constant, tremulous beating. Not a cloud in the sky to mitigate this last gasp of summer warmth.
They pull up in front of the farmhouse with a screech of tired brakes. Clark cuts the engine and Lex catches his eye with Clark’s hand on the door. One last chance for nerves, to cry uncle, to call the whole thing off. But neither of them is the type to back down so easily, one of the many reasons they get along. Clark was the one to offer up the dare—not a dare, he means this so sincerely his teeth ache with it, if this doesn’t go well, he doesn’t know what he’ll do—and Lex accepted his game of chicken. If it weren’t for everything that could possibly go wrong, he might almost feel like a kid again.
The screen door squeaks as they step inside the kitchen. Clark can smell coffee and hear something sizzling on the stove. His parents are farmers, they get up early. “Mom? I’m home.”
His mom comes out of the pantry with a clean towel in hand and stutters to a stop when she notices them both. “Clark,” she says and doesn’t manage to get any further than that, caught up between ‘you were out all night’ and ‘what is Lex doing in my kitchen’. She settles for, “Is everything alright?”
Before Clark can answer, the screen door squeals on its hinges again. “Martha, have you seen the—“
Looking down at his oily work gloves, Dad nearly walks into Lex’s back before he glances up and Lex sidesteps quickly out of the way. His expression of confusion hardens almost instantly. “What’s going on here?”
Clark reaches back to take Lex’s hand in his. He wants to do more than that somehow, protect him, place his body in between Lex and whatever anger or fear or suspicion might come his way. But that’s an impractical sort of thought, and no matter what his dad feels for Lex, he wouldn’t try to hurt him.
“Lex and I had a long night, I offered to take him home and make him breakfast before bringing him back to the mansion.” An unspoken, is that alright with you hangs in the air between them but Clark isn’t about to voice it. He doesn’t particularly care. He wants his home to be a place Lex can feel comfortable and safe in too. That’s his choice and his dad is going to respect it or else.
Or else, what? Clark isn’t exactly sure. Mostly, he hopes that the situation doesn’t come to that. All that Clark has wanted all summer is for his dad to respect his decisions. College, his job, and now this, something that feels even more important than all the rest of it combined.
There is a chance, however small, that his dad will tell him to leave. Or, he will tell Lex to leave which at this point, is the same thing really. Because Clark isn’t sure that he can take another attempt from his dad to control his life. Maybe Clark should go to Met U, maybe they don’t need him on the farm or else, maybe they are better off letting him go just to see what they can manage on their own. But these are choices Clark needs to make for himself. If Dad tries to make them for him, Clark might have to spend the night at the Luthor mansion. More distance than they have already suffered all summer long might be the only recourse.
His dad glances between the three of them, eyes drawn back to where Clark stands, as tall and resolute as he can make himself. He sniffs, clears his throat, and tosses his work gloves down beside an empty plate on the table.
“Alright then,” he says quietly. Even with super-hearing, Clark isn’t sure that he heard him correctly until he says, “You boys make yourselves at home.”
The tension in the kitchen eases somewhat, though Clark can’t quite bring himself to let go of the breath he’s been holding. His dad grabs a slice of toast and the pot of jam on the table, then pours himself a glass of milk. Clark gives his mom a look and they both make a silent agreement to continue on as though everything is fine. Though, there is definite shock and curiosity in the look that his mom gives him, the promise of questions later.
Which is fine. More than fine, Clark wants her questions badly. Things have been far too quiet around here all summer, Clark living more than half of his life outside of this house out of necessity and what he wants more than anything is to be welcomed back in, all of him. And that includes the part of himself that is falling in love with Lex.
Mom moves too, in the attempt at normalcy that follows. She pulls out a tub of flour and another container of sugar. Only when she grabs the big frying pan and the dish of butter does Clark realize what she is up to. He turns to grin at Lex. “How do you feel about pancakes?”
Clark helps his mom make them. Or at least, he mans the frying pan while she whips up the batter at something resembling superspeed and holds her off while she attempts to initiate the full Martha Kent Morning Fry-Up. He’s pretty sure that unless Lex has a hangover, he probably isn’t much of a breakfast person at all but Mom doesn’t need to know that lest she take it as a personal challenge.
Lex sidles up to the stove to watch and make conversation—or more likely, claim a strategic position close to Clark to avoid sitting at the kitchen table alone with Clark’s dad—only for Mom to gently but firmly insist that he sit down. He’s a guest and the pancakes will be ready in just a minute.
But things are going well, strangely well. Lex asks politely about the repairs they’ve done on the farm since the meteor shower and compliments some of the work he saw outside. Rather than sneering, his dad accepts the flattery with a polite nod and starts talking about some of the work still to be done. It’s the kind of shop talk his dad can make with anyone, and it’s a little bizarre to think that’s something his dad and Lex have in common. Lex seems to know a little about everything, enough to make conversation and turn his interest on like a light switch when confronted with something he doesn’t know. Dad is affable enough to get along with just about anyone. And perhaps both of them are midwestern born and bred enough to set aside bad blood for the sake of appearances and a shared meal.
So when Clark joins them at the table, he sits down next to Lex and steals the bacon Mom put on his plate. The conversation has headed deep into organic farming methods and Clark shuts that down in favor of mentioning the new bookstore moving into the old post office building on Main Street in town and then they get on the topic of the films being shown this week at the Talon.
It’s nice. It isn’t easy or comfortable but it feels like it could be which is enough to make something in Clark ease just a little bit.
When Clark’s plate is clear, Dad asks, “Clark, would you mind helping me outside real quick?”
Clark chances a look around the room. Mom is absorbed in doing the dishes and he gets only a brief peek at Lex, who takes a meaningful sip of his cup of coffee. It amounts to a shrug without the bother of lifting his shoulders. No help whatsoever but then, no one can really help him with this. He has been avoiding this conversation for too long already.
With a glance back through the screen door, Clark sees his mom walk over to the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in hand to sit opposite Lex. Only then does he realize just how thoroughly he has been outmanuevered. There wasn’t really a way around it but his parents have silently agreed on a strategy of divide and conquer. Clark can only hope that Mom goes easy on Lex.
Dad takes him out to the barn, as though there is actually something he wants help with, or else to keep out of easy earshot. But then once inside, he does actually take Clark over to the stubborn old hay baler.
“I’ve been meaning to service this thing for ages now,” Dad says. “I just never seemed to find the time for it. Would you mind giving it a lift?”
“Sure,” Clark says slowly. Dad gestures over to the rig that they usually use for maintenance. There are other ways of getting heavy machinery from one place to another and they do use them around the farm at times but it is so much easier for Clark to simply pick it up and put it down with super strength.
Then his dad climbs under it and gets to work. Clark stands back and watches a little, not quite sure what to make of this performance just yet.
“Can you come over here and turn this for me?” He says it into the bowels of the hay baler so Clark comes over and crouches down beside him to see where he is pointing. The screw is completely caked in black, mud or oil or tar, but dried in a way that must make it impossible to get a wrench around. Clark twists it into motion easily, using a bit of finess to make sure he doesn’t use too much force and strip the threads off the screw.
They continue on like that for a few minutes, like his dad really does mean to check the electrical system and the hydraulics on the baler. He will ask Clark to grab him a tool or to hold this or bend that and Clark does it, no questions asked. His dad is a natural when it comes to the many and various mechanical issues that come up on the farm. He is the engine whisperer, the deft touch. Much as he has tried to impart his wisdom unto Clark, not nearly enough of it has ever stuck.
But eventually, Dad pulls his head out from underneath the hay baler. He wipes a bead of sweat from his forehead and smears a bit of grease across it instead. With his hands on his knees, he sighs and looks up at Clark. “I suppose this conversation has been coming for a long time, hasn’t it?”
It really, really has. And even now that it’s here, Clark still isn’t sure that he’s ready for it.
“I suppose we should both be grateful you didn’t inherit my stubbornness or who knows how long this might have gone on.”
“Dad—“
His dad holds up a hand. Now that he has started speaking, he doesn’t intend tostop quite so soon. “I’ve had a lot of time to think over these past few months. About all the things you said and I said and everything we didn’t get a chance to say to each other because we would have had as much luck with that as I’ve had with this damn baler. And do you know what I’ve learned in all the time we’ve spent not speaking to each other?”
“What?” Clark blinks. He has no idea what his dad is going to say. Part of him is still waiting on pins and needles waiting for him to go off on the fact that Clark brought Lex here. He’s ready to defend himself, to defend Lex, but waiting for the explosion to go off leaves him twitchy, restless.
“I’ve learned that I’m as hard headed as your mother always warned me I was,” his dad says with a small smile. “I learned that the only thing trying to tell you how to live your life is going to get me is a place on the outside of it.”
“You’re always going to be a part of my life, Dad—“
Dad stands and clasps Clark’s arm. He gives the muscle there a squeeze and looks him directly in the eye. “And I learned that somewhere along the way, without me realizing it, you learned to make your own choices and stand by them.”
Clark swallows thickly around the lump in his throat, blinking hard.
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders and a good heart to guide you,” his dad continues. “You have to make your own choices whether I like them or not and I need to be here to support you no matter the consequences.”
“Even if one of those choices means staying home to work the farm?” Clark asks. He isn’t sure that’s what he wants anymore, knows that isn’t what he will want forever even if it feels like he has a duty to it for the time being.
“Even then. I’ll be glad to have you.”
Then comes the harder question. “Even if one of those choices is Lex?”
His dad takes a breath and despite this heart to heart, how good it feels to have his dad want to listen to him, Clark has to make sure that he means what he has been saying. Maybe he has reconciled himself to what he sees as Clark’s first bad adult decision, but he’s had months to adjust to that. Clark needs to make sure he isn’t about to hear the same lecture he has heard a dozen times before. The decision to bring Lex into his life is an important one and if his dad can’t accept that, then the rest of this conversation has all been for nothing.
“It doesn’t work both ways,” Clark says. “You can’t say that you trust me to make my own decisions and then punish me for making decisions that you don’t agree with. This isn’t—“ Clark pauses, breathes in and out, collects himself before continuing. He can’t let his emotions carry him away, even now when their current is so strong.
“Lex isn’t some sudden impulse—“ a crush, his mind helpfully supplies, though Clark isn’t quite ready to go there with his dad just yet. “I didn’t take the job with him, become friends with him again, bring him here in order to spite you. I want him to be a part of my life and if you can’t accept that—“
Clark doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. He doesn’t want to, is the thing. He doesn’t want to imagine a world where this part of himself—this huge part that cares for Lex, feels seen by him, that has grown and matured and become better because of Lex—isn’t a part that his dad can love.
“He’s a good man, Dad. And a better one when we’re together. I want to be there with him to see who we could become because I think we could be pretty great.”
His dad draws his mouth into a line and gives Clark a stern eye. An appraising look, but one that he already knows the measure of. He pats Clark’s shoulder firmly.
“Alright then,” he says. “I trust you.”
A few days later, Clark meets with his advisor at KSU. They talk about his plans for the upcoming semester and the one after that. They talk about the courses he is currently scheduled to take in the fall and the offerings he should keep an eye out for in the spring and what he might want to declare his major in.
They also talk about what credits might be most likely to transfer if he decides to finish out his degree at another institution.
Clark is… exploring his options. He hasn’t made a decision one way or the other just yet but it is nice to know that it’s there. His future isn’t set in stone no matter which way he decides to go. There is always some way of getting back to where he needs to be if he remembers to keep an eye out for the opportunity.
A phone call with an admissions officer at Met U clears up a few more questions lingering in Clark’s mind. They echo some of what he heard at Kansas State, with slightly more hesitance to admit that most of his credits would transfer over as pre-requisites. But it’s a start and it leaves him with options even as the days before the start of the fall semester dwindle down to single digits.
When he arrives at the mansion that afternoon, security tells him that Lex is out by the pool. After all of the time that Clark has spent out there over the course of the summer, it’s still a strange place for Lex to be. But there in a lounge chair beside the pool is Lex with his laptop balanced in his lap. He’s dressed down for the day now that it’s late enough to be officially off the clock, even if Lex’s typical working hours extend far beyond the usual nine to five.
He looks up when Clark steps outside and nods to the empty chair next to him before shutting his laptop and setting it aside. “Clark,” he says. “I thought you’d be busy getting ready to go back to school. Don’t you start classes on Tuesday?”
Clark does and he doesn’t remember telling Lex that. Technically, classes start on Monday but Clark’s first class doesn’t meet until Tuesday morning. Trust Lex to know his schedule without asking.
“I’m all set.” Going back to school in college isn’t so different from high school as it turns out. Except in college, his professors aren’t going to give him grief if he decides to keep his notes for his various classes mixed up together in one spiral notebook or if he decides to use blue pen instead of black. “But I just got some news.”
“Oh really?” Lex gets up from his lounge chair and decides to take up residency on Clark’s. Which is perfectly alright by Clark. He’s been trying to figure out how to get close to Lex since he got here and this new vantage point make this so much easier.
“I have something to tell you too,” Lex says. “But you can go first.”
It takes Clark longer than it should to remember what he wanted to say. Having Lex this close, braced over him a little with one hand on the other side of Clark’s hip, is distracting.
“I talked to my advisor,” Clark says. “And the admissions office at Met U. We discussed my options for transfering. I can take care of a lot of my prerequisites at KSU and transfer next fall as a sophomore and actually save a lot of money by doing it that way. KSU tuition is like a quarter of what I’d spend at Met U.”
Lex hums thoughtfully, eyes wandering from Clark’s face down to his lips and chest and back. He is listening but his mind has also ventured off somewhere else, compartmentalizing.
“And I talked to my dad about getting some help on the farm,” Clark continues, even as Lex inches closer. The hand reaching across him has drifted over to Clark’s hip, stroking down his thigh and back up again, skirting the hem of Clark’s shirt. “I’ll be there over the course of the next year to help him find good people, transition over to sharing the work. And then by the time I leave, he’ll be ready. Everyone will be a whole lot more comfortable this time around.”
“Communication and compromise, very mature,” Lex murmurs, proving that despite his split focus, he is paying attention. He rewards Clark by closing the distance between them, ensnaring the lips he found so captivating while Clark was speaking.
Clark allows it, leans back in the lounge chair and lets Lex in. He really does feel good about this.
Then Lex shifts a little, pulling back just enough so that he can throw one leg over Clark’s thighs and crawl into his lap. Which shouldn’t be possible or sexy—Lex is a six-foot-tall grown man, nearly as big as Clark and Clark knows he would feel ridiculous if he tried this—but Lex proves that it is both undeniably possible and sexy in one fluid motion. Clark’s hands find his hips and balance him as he leans back in.
It’s like the kiss in the truck only better. Lex takes control, the perfect amount of presure on his groin where his weight bears down. Heady and dizzying and indulgent. Clark could get used to this. But...Lex had something to say, didn’t he?
Clark angles his head to the side but Lex is on a mission. He changes course, pressing his lips to his cheek, the hard edge of his jaw and then the soft skin underneath and—oh, that’s almost good enough to make Clark change his mind, whatever Lex has to say can wait until later, Lex clearly thinks so.
But he is curious, and he wants to devote all of his attention to the maddening man in his lap and that will be so much easier once they get whatever this is out of the way first. “What—what were you going to say?” Clark gasps as Lex treats his pulse point to a hint of teeth.
“Hmm?” Lex hums. Clark can feel the vibration of it against his skin. “Oh, right. You’re fired.”
Lex goes right back to what he was doing, not one to be deterred with a goal in mind. He gets Clark’s ear lobe between his teeth and nips at it. Which only serves to make Clark’s voice jump two octaves when he says, “What?”
Pulling back to look at him fully, Lex eyes him. “You’re fired,” he says slowly. “I guess that’s never happened to you before—to be fair, it’s never happened to me either but I’ve heard it can be a difficult thing to process so feel free to take your time.”
Lex is laughing at him. He keeps almost all of his amusement hidden behind a killer poker face but it still shines through in his eyes.
“What are you talking about?” asks Clark.
“I don’t date employees, Clark. It’s bad optics. I don’t need that kind of reputation.”
“Right,” says Clark. Makes sense, Lex’s reputation in town is sometimes held together with string anyway. But then the entirety of what Lex said begins to sink in. “Wait, dating?”
If they weren’t pressed so close together, if Clark didn’t have his full arsenal of abilities at his disposal, if he knew Lex even a little bit less, he might have missed the way that Lex freezes at that. Like he thought maybe he could get away with saying it without Clark noticing and now has to run damage control.
“Well, sleep with—even the close friendship thing as an employee isn’t great in the long term—“
“—You want to date me?” Clark interrupts. None of what Lex is saying is important. He can’t let him avoid addressing this head on. It’s Lex’s fault. He’s the one that brought it up.
“I spoke without thinking, Clark. I know that’s not realistic.”
“And what if I want to date you?” That pulls Lex up short. All of his disaster scenarios coming to a screeching halt. “What if I want to be close to you—as close as I can be, whatever you’ll allow?”
Clark runs his hands up Lex’s sides, feels his breath hitch in the space under his hands beneath the ribs. His, all of it his.
“What if I want to be yours so long as your mine?”
Lex looks down at him with something possessive in his eyes, want and heat and desire, all of it entirely focused on Clark in all of the ways Clark likes best.
“I’d like that,” says Lex, artfully understating things as usual.
Clark grins, something bright and brilliant that he can feel lighting him up from within. “Me too.”