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Therapy isn’t easily come by in a town such as Smallville. Lex considered flying someone out, but realised the drama and humiliation that would come from his father dropping by and catching them in the house. Lex had visions of himself laid out on a chaise longue, telling a bespectacled middle-age man or woman that he feared there was something rotting inside him, poisoning every good thing about himself, and he was frightened about what would happen when it leaked out into the world around him, only for his father to slam open the door and start mocking him mercilessly for being pathetic. For being ‘unlike a Luthor’. The therapist would certainly get a lot of things to make notes about, but Lex isn’t sure he could ever invite them back.
So instead he has discreet calls with a mental health clinic in Metropolis and hopes to god they’re not recorded. He pays extra for them not to be recorded. He’s not entirely sure he’s getting his money’s worth at any rate. Sure, it’s their job to listen, but sometimes he’s not sure there is anyone on the other end of the line. It’s like sitting at his desk talking into a void.
Today, Dr Schäfer spoke about contacting his primary care physician, with his permission, to talk about other options. A sign of defeat. Lex’s problems had worn her down in two months.
“I don’t want that.”
“Obviously I won’t do anything you don’t want me to, Lex, but I think it would be good to bring other care providers in on this. With how you’ve spoken today… I have some concerns.”
“Maybe you should get a therapist,” Lex had drawled. “That’s what I did. And it’s working so well.”
He had hung up on her, in the end. He might terminate the arrangement, he might not. He tries not to make too many choices on a whim these days. Increasingly they’re not the decisions of his better self. The rot leaks when he moves too quickly. He does things he regrets. More worryingly, he does things he knows he should regret, that a younger Lex would certainly regret… but Lionel wouldn’t.
Sometimes he has nightmares where his skin starts peeling off and his father is underneath. He hasn’t told the therapist about those. He doesn’t want to be a cliché.
Lex remembers when his impulsive choices were more likely to be kind. A car for the boy who saved his life. The beautiful, kind boy who pulled him out of the water. Maybe that makes all of this Clark’s fault. Maybe Lex was supposed to die. Sent to Smallville to disappear. Maybe that was the story all along, and Clark changed it, with his impressive ability to do the impossible. To survive a car driving at sixty miles an hour then save the foolish driver.
God, if it’s not one crushing chain of thought it’s another. It’s been that way for a few weeks now. He’s barely been able to get out of bed, his head is so heavy with doom and despair.
A meteor-affected freak had plagued the town with depression last week and Lex hadn’t even noticed. He’d just thought everyone had started seeing things properly. Who wouldn’t be miserable in this shithole? Maybe he needs a holiday.
The thought almost makes him laugh. Imagining himself sitting in the sun drinking a cocktail somewhere as if it would make him someone else. He’d be better off getting through these business emails that multiply every day. It’s like the more he tries to step away, the more they dig their claws in.
Since we missed your presence at…
As you had to reschedule…
We’d like to proceed without your insight at this point…
The whole thing feels so… pointless, some days. He’s providing the majority of the employment for this shitty town, of course, but do they need him to really do anything for that? If he hung himself in his office, would the emails just keep coming? Would anyone care about the lack of response? He’s made a fine business structure… things would just keep tootling along without him.
Lex closes his laptop. He sips his wine. And he tries to think of someone that would miss him.
A sort of panic sets in as the minutes pass. Everything that he’s done for people, every dollar spent to try and buy their love… it’s all been for naught.
His mind turns to Clark and won’t move on. It’s not an infrequent thing. On the days where he lies in his bed undisturbed and unacknowledged for hours, he often thinks he’d get up if Clark asked. Today he only got up around two in the afternoon because he realised it was maybe late enough to start drinking.
It’s almost enough to make him want his father to visit. Surely that’s rock bottom, to long for that disapproving, mocking presence, just so that Lex would find the energy to spite it? To have an acceptable target for the rot that leaks.
He tops up his wine.
Foolish to assume they can’t all see it, of course. Maybe he’s the last one to know. Maybe it’s been there since he was born and he just never noticed it. That’s why they all hate him. That’s why they reject his gifts, because everything has a coating of the rot. This irredeemable evil inside him.
No wonder he wants Clark. Want isn’t even the word, is it? Obsession. Like any demon that sees an angel. He thinks he’s reaching out to shake his hand, to kiss it, but his demon claws that everyone else can see are grasping at him, tearing at him as Clark tries to stay up high.
Redemption isn’t something Lex is owed, it’s something he has to earn. He doesn’t know how. He’s tried everything he can think of. The therapist said that relationships aren’t maintained by grand gestures, but by “being there”. “Showing up.” As if Lex hasn’t done that too. Where is he but here, in his lonely castle, waiting for Clark to need him? At the coffee shop, giving Lana everything she asks for. At the Kent farm, extending support over and over and over and over…
They don’t want it.
They don’t want him.
Nobody does.
Time then, for a thought experiment. By his window, Lex watches the rain with his wine in his hand and asks himself a question: If he never receives any reward, any acknowledgement, for his goodness… is it still worth it? If tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time… will he be satisfied? If he just makes more money and more gestures and drinks more wine and watches as around him all the good people fall in love and have dinner at one another’s homes and raise families together…
His future stretches out like a fucking void. And it’s too horrible to accept.
The window opens easily and the rain lashes at the sill and the curtains. Lex pushes the frame all the way up and leans out. There is a risk of paralysis, of course. Dorothy Parker’s poem about suicide methods springs unwillingly to his mind. Razors pain you, rivers are damp… Damp like his shirt as he leans out into the rain. Damp like his whole body after a beautiful boy pulled him back to the land of the living.
Maybe that’s when the rot started. Perhaps he was destined to die and Clark tried to change the story. Then stopped trying, leaving Lex as an anomaly. Something that isn’t supposed to be here.
Even now he’s hoping that someone will understand why he’s done this. That he’s sparing them, from whatever he might have become.
No sense in missing out on the rest of the wine. Lex sits himself on the ledge, legs hanging out in the rain and drains the glass before dropping it and listening to the glass smash against the flagstones down below.
What a wonderful night to die.
*
It’s way, way too close.
The sound of glass alerts Clark first, a faint smash breaking through the sound of heavy rain.
If he hadn’t been on his way to Lex’s home already, he never would have heard it. And if he never heard it, he wouldn’t have looked up to see…
He can’t even think about it without feeling sick. The ease with which Lex pushed himself from the window ledge. Like he was hopping off a desk. Like it was nothing.
There’s no time to think about the risk to his secret. Clark runs faster than he can be seen and is there to catch Lex before he can hit the stone path.
Lex opens his eyes. He had closed them to die. Stares up at Clark and the expression on his face is more complex than it had been on the day they met. The day they met Lex had looked at him with awe and wonder that made Clark feel like a hero. Now… Clark can’t figure out what he’s feeling under Lex’s gaze, other than relief that Lex is still alive to look at him.
Neither of them say a word as Clark sets him back down on his feet. For a moment Lex just stands there, uncaring of the rain as it gets heavier, soaks them both to the skin.
Then he turns on his heel and heads back into the mansion.
Clark follows. This is familiar, this letting Lex lead the way, lead the situation, lead the conversation… but it’s been a while since the pattern held and Clark isn’t sure whose fault that is, or if it’s even a problem. He has felt like he’s growing up. Part of that has been depending less on the people around him. Ma, Pa… Lex. Ma and Pa make it difficult to pull away, but Lex has always made it easy. He has always let go when Clark steps back. Waits for Clark to come back.
“You’re lucky I was here,” Clark says, clothes dripping over the expensive floor as he follows Lex into his office. Needing to break the silence because did Lex just… did he really just try to…
“Depends on your perspective,” Lex says, picking up a mostly empty bottle of wine and looking around for a glass.
Clark steps in to take it out of his hand. “I don’t think anymore of this is a good idea.” He’s handled a lot of situations like this in the past week, with the meteor-affected teen making everyone miserable. Ah, that’s it, of course! “You’re under the influence of a meteor-affected person. You need to take deep breaths and get some sleep and know that this’ll pass. I promise.”
Lex smiles slightly, but looks like he might cry. “Do you now? I don’t know what’s stranger – that you feel like you have the wisdom and authority to make that promise, or that I almost believe you.”
“You have to believe me,” Clark says, setting the wine bottle down on the cabinet at the side of the room to get away from the look on Lex’s face. When the walls come down, Clark never knows how to handle what’s behind them. There’s so much raw emotion there, it threatens to drown them both and Clark just never knows what to say.
“Why?” Lex asks. Almost cheeky. Contrarian.
“Because otherwise you throw yourself out of windows,” Clark says. It seems obvious.
“And that’s… bad?”
“Yes.” How can he even ask. “You should dry off and go to bed.” He wants to call home and ask Ma for advice, but it’s late and he’s supposed to be in his own bed asleep. None of the others affected by the meteor-mutated teen had gone this far, though his Pa had taken to carrying around his shotgun a lot more, which disturbs Clark now in retrospect.
“What brought you here tonight?” Lex asks.
“I couldn’t sleep. I know you never do.”
A slight chuckle from Lex. “Ah. I’m still useful at certain hours then. I suppose that’s… something.” He seems vague, but maybe he’s just drunk. Clark can smell the wine on his breath from halfway across the room. “Goodnight, Clark. It was… good to see you. Get home safe.” He wanders out of the room and Clark hears him head up the stairs, feet heavy from tiredness and the weight of his wet clothes.
He hears a door close upstairs, then a little later, the sound of the shower running.
Is it too late to call Ma? Is it worth the trouble he’ll be in for sneaking out? He knew he shouldn’t have, but he’d been lying in bed thinking of Lex. Thinking about how he hadn’t seen him much lately. He’s heard about him. Chloe saw him while checking into a lead for one of her stories. Lana said he stopped by the coffee shop. Ma saw him in town. They all said the same, that he didn’t seem himself. He seemed low. Quiet. Tired. Lex is always just… there, whenever Clark needs him. Asking for nothing but the secret that Clark has to guard with his life.
Clark is already leaving the house, thinking he’s going to have to wake Ma when he gets back to ask her about this, when it hits him.
Lex hadn’t asked about it tonight. Clark had appeared out of nowhere to catch him and Lex hadn’t asked a darn thing.
He dashes back into the house and up the stairs, into the bedroom, almost wanting this to be the most embarrassing moment of his life, wanting to be wrong…
But he’s not.
So much blood so quickly, Lex’s pale face even more pallid in the steam of the shower, still in his trousers with a razorblade in his hand and so much blood. Clark grabs him around the middle, lifts him out and to his bed.
“You need to let this happen,” Lex says calmly as Clark grabs towels and wraps them tight around his wrist. Both of them are trembling, Lex from blood loss and Clark from the shock.
“Let this… no, no Lex, you’re under the influence of a meteor—”
“No I’m not,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. You weren’t supposed to save me, Clark. I’m not supposed to be here. That’s why I don’t fit. That’s why I break everything I touch.”
“That’s not true,” Clark says. He tightens the towel tourniquets then grabs Lex’s jaw in both bloody hands. “You can’t break me.”
*
Lex wakes in a private hospital room with something like a hangover but worse. His wrists are bandaged. How did he fall in such a way that he… No. There was more after that. Clark had caught him, the angel catching the devil.
In the sober light of day, such a comparison feels melodramatic.
The door opens, and Clark enters. He smiles when he sees Lex is awake. “Hey, how are you feeling?”
“Like the debt between us is growing,” Lex says.
Clark sighs. He sits in the chair next to the bed. “I wish you wouldn’t think of yourself that way.”
“What other way is there to think?”
“That you would catch me,” Clark says. “If you could.”
It’s a perfect invitation to discuss Clark’s incredible feat of strength. Lex is of average height and build, but he jumped from the third floor. That should have hurt them both.
Instead, he says, “you don’t have to be here.”
“You said you shouldn’t be here,” Clark says. His handsome face looks haunted by the recollection. “Last night. That’s what you said. And I thought it was from the meteor mutant who was affecting the town, but… that was dealt with. So it’s not that, is it?”
“It’s not that.”
Clark wipes his sleeve over his eyes. “I think you need help, Lex.”
“Tried it. I can’t be helped. There’s… there’s something rotten in me, Clark.” The words almost stick in his throat. “I know you see it, you all do. The Luthor gene or whatever you want to call it, that propensity to be the very worst a man can be. I’m not there yet. I think. But it’s inevitable. I’m irredeemable. I don’t want to see how it ends. I don’t want to despise myself.”
“I don’t want you to either,” Clark says. A tear falls from his eye and splashes on the blanket. Lex had almost expected it to burn through the fabric, or remain solid. But when he touches a finger to the damp spot, it feels like anyone’s tears would.
“So you understand.”
“I’ve spoken to my Ma,” Clark says. A non sequitur. “When I went home to get changed. I told her what happened. I asked my parents, and they said it’ll be okay, if you come and stay with us for a while.”
It’s so… quaint, that Lex doesn’t know how to respond. “On the farm?”
“We don’t have another house, Lex,” Clark says with a smile. “No holiday home in the Algarve.”
“Pity, I could use some sunshine.” It shouldn’t be so easy, to fall back into this chatter, to pretend that they’re communicating. “I’m sure your father won’t be quite so accommodating.”
“He agreed to it,” Clark says with a shrug. “He seemed worried, when I told him.”
That almost beggars belief. Jonathan Kent, who saw the rot on Lex’s hands, who hears it in every word Lex speaks, and saw it all over the car Lex tried to gift his son.
A heavy sigh draws Lex’s attention back to Clark. “I wish you wouldn’t be so shocked that people want you to be okay. Like, I know you’re not perfect, Lex, but nobody is. And nobody should hurt the way you’re hurting.”
“Even me.”
“Especially you,” Clark says, his voice passionate and insistent. “You said we were destined for great things.”
“Something can be great and—”
“No, listen, I believe it. I believe it and I want to see what you do in this world and when you do it, I want to be there in the audience applauding the best friend I’ll ever have. And I’m sorry if I’ve not been around, I’m sorry if we fought, I know it’s my fault, I know you’ve tried to help me, and I—” Clark breaks off into another sob, hand over his eyes. “If I’d gone to sleep instead of coming over I would’ve lost you.” He presses his face then to the blanket over Lex’s middle, an arm thrown over him. “I would’ve woken up to a world where you were gone.”
He says it like the very idea breaks his heart. Lex lets a hand stroke through Clark’s soft hair while his tears soak through the blanket.
It starts to feel like, maybe, it wouldn’t be selfish to stick around. If only to keep Clark from crying like this again.
After all, there are plenty of other wonderful nights he can die, should he become less essential.