Chapter Text
The announcement goes about as well as could be expected. The official line is that Lex is stepping back from the race to focus on his company and his personal life.
“You supported this campaign because you had faith in the ideas I put before you. Because you believe in progress and change, not in some far off, distant future, not for some hypothetical children you might have one day. But change that you and your neighbor get to enjoy in your lifetime. I want that and want that still, even as I stand before you today to step down from this campaign.
I entered this race because I believed that serving as your United States senator was the best way to make that possible. But before I take on that role, I would like to prove to you all, those of you who supported our efforts these last few months and those who did not, that I am worthy of the position. That I have a proven track record of using the skills, talents, and resources I possess to serve the public good.
When I am elected to public office, I want to be able to devote as much of myself to the role as possible. And it is with all of that in mind and with a hopeful eye towards the future, that I withdraw from this election.”
Dad tracks him down two days later, more time than Lex thought he would get but it seems that his decision has truly baffled his father. The curious, assessing eye Lionel gives him, staring Lex down at his desk is almost enough all on its own to make the whole endeavor worth it.
His father helps himself to a drink as they face off in the study at the mansion, a move that Lex sees more clearly now than ever as an effort to buy time. He takes it over to one of the dark armchairs and examines Lex where he sits behind his desk.
Lex endures the examination with a carefully blank face, though for the first time in a while when it comes to his father, the emotion he is trying to hide is amusement. He knows what Lionel is thinking. He’s torn between one of the core tenets of what it means to be a Luthor, the ruthlessness at the core of them—never back down, never give in, don’t start anything that you don’t intend to finish at any cost—and the fact that Lex has done exactly what he wanted. Dad said from the very beginning that this entire enterprise was foolish, he should be happy that they’ve escaped with so little disaster.
That war, between disappointment and relief, plays itself out across his father’s face as he looks at him. Before he decides on anything, Lionel looks down into his glass and shakes his head laughing.
“I don’t know what you hoped to accomplish with that, son. But I’m glad you’ve finally seen sense. Should I be concerned that you’ve decided to turn your eye towards more personal matters?”
Whether he means their private battle for control of the company or the disaster that has been Lex’s personal life is left purposefully ambiguous. The response to both, at least where his father is concerned, is probably yes.
“I think it’s time I stepped more fully into my role as CEO, don’t you? Make some changes when it comes to the direction I would like to take this company.”
“I’m surprised, son. I thought this whole endeavor was a foolish attempt to distance yourself from our legacy. To build something of your own, untainted.”
Lex smiles at him. “You can run from destiny or you can shape it and you, yourself, taught me never to run.”
Lionel sets his drink down and stands, straightening himself up. “I suppose you expect me to wait and see along with everyone else what this great destiny of yours looks like.”
“Don’t worry, dad. When it comes I’ll make sure you’re one of the first to know.” Lex sits back in his chair and lets his arms dangle from the rests, utterly relaxed and open, nothing to see here.
Almost as soon as his father leaves, Clark comes bursting through the study doors. It’s been at least two weeks since the last time he’s done that though something in the way he holds himself, the energy he brings with him this time, has changed.
“Did you run into my father out there in the hall?” Lex asks. “I didn’t realize I had revolving door appointments scheduled for today.”
“What? No.” Clark shakes his head. “Is it true? You dropped out of the race?”
There was almost no time between his father’s exit and Clark’s appearance. Lex wonders absently if Clark employed some of his enviable speed or else one of his other abilities to make sure that he could secure this conversation with Lex alone.
Unable to decide which way this conversation is going to go, Lex decides that uncertainty seems as good an excuse as any for a drink.
“I did.”
The look on Clark’s face is hesitant, trying desperately not to be so young. “Why? I mean, I know the answer you gave to the press, the company, your personal life. I guess I just wondered if there was more to it than that.”
“Like what?” Lex asks. What did Clark hope for when he heard the announcement? What is it that he is trying so hard not to want right now?
“You mentioned big plans for LuthorCorp, doing more good in the role you already have. What does that look like?”
Lex takes a sip of his drink. The taste lingers on his tongue as he savors. “I’ve been in charge of LuthorCorp for more than a year now but it’s still my father’s company. And while I’ve taken on new assets and pursued pet projects, it still remains fundamentally the same. We have the resources to end hunger, cure disease, and protect the Earth from alien threats like the kind we saw last summer. I don’t have to wait for some new position or for someone else’s approval. I have the power to start changing the world today.”
Maybe that’s too much to reveal to Clark all at once, laying so much of his ambitions out on the table for him to pick apart and reject. But Clark said he wanted more than the polished answers he gave to the press and Lex finds that he wants to give them to him. His vision of the future left him with a foolish desire for a Clark that might stand at his side, see him and support him. He might not get to have every part of that future but Lex thinks, hopes, maybe.
That is, until he sees the way Clark folds his arms across his chest, body language pulling himself in tight. Then all of Lex’s hopes for some kind of understanding are utterly lost.
“What makes you think we have to worry about aliens coming back?” Clark asks.
“Who’s to say that they ever left?”
“Or that they’re dangerous? Lex—“ Lex raises an eyebrow, watching Clark get worked up over this. “You’re right. You do have the power to do great things and—and I think your intentions are ultimately good. But this obsession with the aliens, I don’t think it’s right. It’s a distraction from those other goals and to anyone outside of Smallville, it probably sounds crazy. Can’t you leave that to the government or something?”
There is something genuinely desperate in Clark’s voice, in his eyes. He really doesn’t want Lex to pursue this further, is terrified that he will. Clark might even beg if he thought he could ask for what he wanted without revealing something about himself. Of course. Whatever this is about is big and important but not worth trusting Lex with.
Lex sets his glass down on the table. He was right, he did need a drink for this conversation and he’s starting to think he might need the bottle. “Let me get this straight. You want me to give up my research into the aliens that attacked us last summer—me, the only person positioned to take this matter seriously—you want me to give up and simply hope that the next time we encounter something that powerful, that we are woefully unprepared for, we somehow manage to escape unharmed. That’s...it’s like you don’t know me at all. To think that I would rely on chance or coincidence when I might be able to do something instead.”
Shaking his head, Lex continues. “You’re asking me to trust you on faith alone while at the same time failing to trust me in turn. Where do we go from here, Clark?”
Clark is quiet for a long moment. No doubt searching for a convincing lie to spin or another way to end their friendship all over again. It was too much to hope that they might be able to talk to each other, that they might be able to approach each other as people instead of as enemies. Lex is so tired of hoping.
Then Clark says, “Are you doing anything else today?”
It’s two o’clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday. Ostensibly, Lex should have work to do, a hundred different things that demand his attention. But he just threw away a senate campaign and he cleared his schedule once he saw that his father was on his way from Metropolis to speak with him.
“No,” Lex says slowly. “What did you have in mind?”
“Feel like taking a drive?” asks Clark.
He says it like he thinks there is no way in hell that Lex will actually agree to it. He says it like a fifteen year old boy, hopeful and hesitant all at once. He says it like the man who stepped into Lex’s hospital room and wanted to belong there, like it wasn’t right that Lex should be hurt and Clark shouldn’t be there to comfort him.
There are some cars in Lex’s collection that haven’t been driven in months. His work on the spaceship, his senate campaign, the growing risk involved in driving the way he likes to best, all of that means that one of his favorite hobbies has fallen by the wayside, cut out of his life by necessity in the pursuit of loftier goals.
“Sure,” Lex agrees. What does he have to lose? And the look of surprise on Clark’s face at the idea of Lex doing something so unexpected is so much sweeter than it was on his father’s. Clark grins at him, bright and sunny, and some treacherous part of Lex’s heart starts to hope again.
He tosses Clark a set of keys that he keeps near his desk belonging to a car that he hasn’t had a chance to drive in a long while. “But you’re driving,” he says.
Lex sits in the passenger seat of the Porsche and watches the fields out of the window as the car slowly picks up speed. “Come on, Clark. I promise it goes faster than that.”
A quick glance at the speedometer and Clark’s over the speed limit at least. Just barely five miles over it, but hey. Progress.
“I bet you could outrun my Porsche the way you drive it,” Lex says, egging him on a bit. If the laugh Clark huffs under his breath is a bit nervous, Lex pretends not to notice.
Clark downshifts and turns off onto a side road that winds around Crater Lake. He just barely manages to roll through the stop sign as opposed to stopping completely. Lex might just manage to be a bad influence on him yet.
“Where are you taking us anyway?” Clark was the one to suggest this and he’s driving like he has some destination in mind. Lex can only hope he doesn’t want to take them into town or something. He could put on his best unaffected expression and face the locals but he really doesn’t want to just yet.
“Nowhere really, but we’re almost there.” With that non-answer, Lex turns his attention back out the window. The car climbs a slight slope under a canopy of pine trees, circling the edge of the lake.
They finally pull over a little ways off the road and Lex gives Clark a bit of a smirk at their destination. Clark catches his eye and shakes his head. “Shut up,” he says. “I just wanted somewhere private.”
“Did you now?” He can barely keep his voice from dissolving into laughter.
Though Lex has never been here in company, he knows that this spot is something of a makeout point for Smallville’s teenage population. Mostly, he knows that there’s a spot not too far down the road where a state trooper likes to hang out late at night that Lex tries his best to avoid. There’s no one else here at the moment, in the middle of the day, but still. The implication remains.
Clark shuts off the engine and the car is enveloped in a heavy quiet. He looks out at the view, through the trees and over Crater Lake before taking a deep breath. “Right, so. You said back at the mansion that I was asking you to trust me when all I’ve done over the last few, well, years is prove that I don’t trust you in return. And that’s true, I’ve been terrified to trust anyone and it’s hurt everyone I love at one point or another.”
Lex waits and listens. He has spent the last twenty minutes literally along for the ride but even now he can’t quite believe what Clark is saying, what he might be about to say. It’s so reminiscent of the vision he had of the future and yet completely different because the terror in Clark is so real, immediate, visceral that he almost wants to tell him to stop, take pity on him somehow.
But Lex might be on the brink of everything he has ever wanted so despite Clark’s pain, he refuses to stand in his own way.
“And since Christmas and the shooting, you’ve done so much to show me just how stuck we’ve both been. That it could be so easy to make different, better choices if we stop being afraid. Tell me that three weeks ago, if I came to see you in the hospital, you would have let me stay. Not to mention the rest of what happened that night and the next morning. Tell me that even a week ago, you would have had the courage to drop out of the race. Because that was a brave thing, Lex, and I’m proud of you for it.
That should be patronizing but Lex doesn’t feel the spark of offense that should be there. Clark is looking at him so earnestly and to be honest, it did feel brave. So much of Lex is his reputation and he risked everything with a gamble like that, that he can’t be sure will pay off in the long run.
“So I figure, it’s time that I step up too. If I want things to be different, I have to do different things. The definition of insanity, right?”
Clark breathes a laugh, sheer nervous energy, before he steels himself.
“You did hit me with your car that day on the bridge,” he says. “All of the strange things you suspect me capable of, they’re probably true. More than that too. I didn’t know until that day actually. I knew that I was different, I knew that there were things that I could do that no one else could, and I knew that I needed to keep them a secret. But until that day, I didn’t know why.”
Lex knows he should keep his mouth shut. Clark is finally saying everything he has wanted to hear for so long now. But when it seems Clark is stuck, Lex can’t keep his curiosity from jumping in. “Why?”
The next breath that Clark takes is a shuddering thing. A sudden urge to reach out and touch him passes through Lex, but he isn’t sure that he could get away with it without breaking Clark entirely.
“The aliens that crashed here last summer? They’re from the same planet as me. Krypton. Only, it shouldn’t have been possible because Krypton was destroyed. My parents—my birth parents—sent me away when I was a child.”
“The meteor shower,” Lex murmurs and Clark nods.
“That’s why I’ve been so afraid of your work with the aliens and the ship. Not just because it endangered my secret but because of the way you talk about them, Lex. I know that they were dangerous. I know what they wanted and it was awful. But I fought them and made sure that they could never hurt anyone again and I need you to trust me on this.”
Trust. That is what it has always come down to between them. Both of them desperately seeking someone to trust but neither ever truly giving in, allowing themselves to be seen in their entirety. Lex thought he had once, allowed Clark to see him more than anyone else ever had, though there were still things he kept hidden. Perhaps Clark felt the same.
Only now, things are different. They’re trying something new.
Lex doesn’t know how a version of himself from three weeks ago would have responded to everything that Clark is saying now. He doesn’t know what he would make of this entreaty. He would like to think that he could have listened with an open mind, that he would ultimately be so fundamentally grateful for an end to all of the lies that everything could go back to the way it once was between them. They could be friends again, trust each other again, thanks to this.
But Lex also knows himself well enough not to rely on such a charitable interpretation. Without the vision of the future he had, the secrets that were revealed to him there, there is a very real chance that Lex might have been terrified by Clark’s admission that he is from another planet. That he is not human. That he is like the beings that came last summer to wreak havoc on Earth. Despite everything that Lex knew and guessed at, he might have seen Clark differently. He might not have been able to look at Clark, the man he has known for years now, known and admired and yes, wanted, and see him as a friend.
That isn’t the case now.
Lex doesn’t trust easily. Perhaps he did once, but over the years, he has only gotten worse at it. Drawn inward until it might be more accurate to say that Lex doesn’t trust at all.
And while he can’t say that he is willing to start now, prepared to throw himself head over heels into the strong and steady arms of Clark Kent, no matter how appealing they might be, he might be willing to try again. Which is more than he could say for the man he was even a few weeks ago.
This time, Lex doesn’t fight the urge to reach out to Clark, to place his hand on his shoulder and draw his eyes to him. Clark’s eyes are wide, unblinking, terrified to his core even still. If Clark is capable of even half of the things he was in the vision, or half of what Lex has seen or guessed at, he could destroy Lex with a thought. And yet, here he sits scared and breathless, young and beautiful, and Lex can’t bring himself to hate him.
“Okay,” says Lex.
Clark swallows thickly. His breathing gone heavy. “Okay?”
“You’ve given me a lot to process but the sum of it is: okay. Because you’re right. None of this comes as a complete surprise. This… feud between us, it was always about more than what you can do or what you are. So when it comes to all of that: okay. As for the rest of it, it’s like you said. We can continue on the way we were, growing more and more miserable by the day, or we can try something new. I can’t promise that I’ll be any good at putting my trust in someone but if I could do it for anyone it would be you.”
The look on Clark’s face is a little dumbfounded, dazed, like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Above all, he looks deliriously happy.
“Okay,” Clark says. The glassy-eyed look breaks then into a sparkling grin, like the sun breaking out from behind clouds. He reaches up to catch Lex’s hand with his, his thumb stroking the back of Lex’s hand. His fingers linger there and again Lex’s brain supplies him with thoughts of just how strong those fingers are and how gently they are handling his own.
Clark looks up from where his gaze has fallen to watch the two of their hands clasped together, the simple act of physical touch that has become so foreign to them over the last year or so. A little of that desperation is back again, sharp-edged with need.
“Can I—“ Clark starts before stopping himself. So much want but he has no idea what to ask for, where to begin.
Lex leans forward across the center console and reaches out with his other hand to clasp Clark’s face. The second he makes contact there, Clark closes the rest of the distance between them and opens himself up to the kiss.
If their kiss in the hospital was hesitant, gentle, testing the waters, this kiss means that they are ready to dive in. This time, Clark is eager, grasping at the front of Lex’s shirt and pulling him in closer. Lex has to turn and climb half over the seat to accommodate him, the position anything but comfortable, but he is more than willing to do it. Clark’s hands find the seat of his pants and half-carry him the rest of the way, until a stray elbow hits the horn and they both start with a jolt. Lex bites down on Clark’s lip by accident, hard enough that it should break the skin before they both dissolve into laughter.
Lex brings his hand up to thumb at Clark’s lower lip, pink and plush, reddened a bit by kissing but entirely undamaged. And soft, so soft and sweet to the touch. He leans back in to capture Clark’s lips rather than voice any of the questions he still has. This is enough for now, more than enough, so much to explore, Clark’s whole enviable body open and willing and wanting. And they have time for those questions. If this newfound trust between them is worth anything, there will be time.
Jonathan Kent wins the election for state senator. He does so handily, even with around thirty percent of the vote going to Lex despite dropping out. Lex doesn’t go to the party at The Talon, nor does he watch the final tally come in, glass in hand at the mansion.
Instead, he spends the night in one of the labs at the plant, losing himself in one of their current projects in cellular division and plant growth and thinking about the projects he saw in his vision. It’s far too late for anyone else to be in the building, so Lex is here alone at the lab bench, goggles, lab coat and latex gloves donned, microscope lit and waiting, drink sitting on the table against proper lab safety rules and he feels… fine. Good, even.
He makes note of something on a spare notepad and flexes the muscles in his neck. A quick glance at his watch and he realizes it is after midnight already. It’s been so long since he really lost himself to this kind of work. Absorbing, meditative, good.
Clark comes to find him a little while later, surprised that he wasn’t at the mansion. He delivers the good news, assessing Lex with a close eye to see how he takes it but the result doesn’t hurt Lex as much as it might have only a short while ago.
He’s moved on, and what he has moved on to promises to be so much better.
It’s March by the time Lex remembers the role that Jonathan Kent played in his vision of the future. Nothing about that future seemed set in stone. It was a possible future, an example of something that he could aim for if he altered his priorities, one potential ideal in a multiverse of infinite outcomes. So when Jonathan Kent won the election and survived the month of January, Lex put his potentially imminent and untimely death out of his mind. Perhaps some small change that had already happened, the fact of receiving that vision of the future at all, averted that disaster.
It’s March by the time Lex realizes he was wrong. The disaster was not averted, only delayed.
There’s a general sense that someone should have known. Someone should have done something, swooped in at the last moment and saved him. But it was sudden and tragic and the doctors all agreed that no one could have known, there was nothing anyone could have done, there was no saving him.
Lex stands next to Clark at the funeral. He stands there even when the rest of the assembled mourners have walked away. When he looks around and sees that even Lana and Chloe are starting to make their way back to their car, leaving Clark and Martha and virtually no one else, he thinks about leaving. But then Clark turns to him and folds him in his arms and Lex’s body remembers this.
There was snow on the ground then and the pain was less intense but he held on to Clark as tightly as he could and he stayed with him through the worst of it.
The grass is green now, made all the brighter because the sky above is a flat, featureless gray. There are daffodils laid out on the casket and crocuses poking up through the soil amidst the graves. Clark buries his face in Lex’s neck. Beneath his hands on Clark’s back, Lex can feel the suppressed sobs that tear through him.
Lex hates to think that if this had happened a few months earlier, he might not have stood here. He might not have been able to hold Clark and comfort him in the wake of his father’s death. He might have been powerless in the face of his grief.
There was nothing anyone could have done to stop it but Lex can stand here now and hold Clark through the worst of it. He presses a kiss to the side of Clark’s face and comes away from it tasting salt from his tears.
Martha becomes state senator in Jonathan’s place in April. Grief has settled over her in a thick gray shroud, her lips set in a firm, hard line, her face a little hollow. But she has always been the sort of person to do what needs to be done no matter what.
And she’s good at it, is the thing. Perhaps if Jonathan or Lex or the rest of the world had taken a closer look at her, they might have saved everyone the mess of their campaigns. Watching her at work reminds Lex of her brief stint as his father’s personal assistant. Part of her was always wasted as a farmer’s wife, she always had the capacity and perhaps the desire for more. It’s that more that keeps her going now, that takes her away from the still and empty farmhouse and gives her something to put her energy towards.
Clark is quiet, a little lost. He blames himself for his father’s death. With all of his enviable talents, the ones that Lex gets to see now at long last—heat vision, super strength and speed and invulnerability... x-ray vision?—he feels like he should have known.
They fight about it. Because nothing will ever be simple or easy between the two of them. Lex tells Clark that he can’t save everyone. That for all of his abilities, he will always be imperfect.
Clark rails against him, full of anger and fear and righteous indignation. Clark tells him that isn’t true. If he throws himself into his training, consults the artificial intelligence of his birth-father, if he works harder—surely then he could do more, be more. Defeatist thinking isn’t going to help him become the man he is supposed to be, the man his father wanted him to be.
And in a low voice, Lex tells Clark that he can do amazing things but he can’t predict the future. He doesn’t know everything. He can’t be everywhere at once. He can strive to do the best that he can every single day and it still might not be enough. Ever. Acknowledging reality isn’t the same as admitting defeat. It’s being rational and allows you to do more with the circumstances at hand and the powers at your disposal.
Clark...tells Lex what he can do with his reality and reminds him of just how often his life tends to break the carefully constructed rules of it.
They have that conversation twice over before Lex understands how to end it.
Failure, imperfection, mistakes that cost lives are inevitable. For all of Clark’s abilities, he will always be flawed. He isn’t a god.
None of that means that Clark should stop trying to do good. And it doesn’t mean that the failures will ever hurt any less. It simply means that now, Clark knows what it is to be human. To try your best and fail but to keep trying anyway. That is the legacy Jonathan would want to leave behind, not this stubborn god-complex in the shape of his son.
Perhaps Lex does manage to channel Jonathan a bit when he says it, or he simply hits upon a pearl of wisdom that might have reasonably come from the man’s mouth, because Clark’s face just crumples. He sits down on the couch in Lex’s study and cries tears that Lex hasn’t seen since the funeral. When Lex ventures to place a hand on Clark’s knee, Clark draws one hand away from his face to hold onto it.
Fine’s return and the spaceship make for a good distraction in the midst of Clark’s grief.
There is nothing quite like the threat of danger and a problem to be solved to narrow Clark’s focus to a razor sharp point. Lex finds himself almost grateful for his fanatical political supporter, or the ex-cops obsessed with the alien invasion, or the invisible hitman that all try to kill him at one point or another over the next few months for at least giving Clark something to do. He’s like one of those working breeds of dogs that people try to keep as pets without realizing that if you don’t give them a job to do, they will make a job of tearing up your curtains or scratching at the door or howling at the mailman. The only reason Lex feels comfortable making that comparison is because he suspects he is the same way.
But there is plenty of work to be done between LuthorCorp and reorganizing the 33.1 labs and arranging a tentative partnership with Wayne Industries. On top of all of that is the spaceship, which Lex and Clark find together in Honduras and bring back to a secure warehouse facility near Smallville. They examine it together, under a careful and fraught agreement not to keep secrets about anything they find or suspect. It’s a fiendishly difficult bargain to keep, Lex suspects on both sides, but he tries his best to stick to it. Honesty has never been his friend, but it’s served him well so far.
When they’re working together to solve a problem, the two of them find something better than anything they’ve shared before. It’s more than a return to the friendship they once had, it’s deeper than that, stronger and more mature. They bounce ideas off of each other at lightning speed, unimpeded by secrets and lies and omissions.
Clark is smart and capable and while Lex knew that there was more to him than met the eye from the day that they met, that there was more to him than a shy high school student and a bit of a dork, realizing the full extent of what he is capable of is somewhat astounding. The way that he has had to hide just how intelligent and talented he is even by conventional measures so that he could go unnoticed in a classroom makes Lex in turns furious with the Kents for all of the insecurities they have instilled within their son and impressed by how ruthless they were in keeping Clark’s secret.
Even with their growing comradery, Fine almost manages to manipulate them into doing his bidding. He tries to turn them against each other and almost succeeds.
Lex gets injected with a vaccine his labs were developing, one of his new initiatives for LuthorCorp, and he becomes a vessel for Zod. Fine uses the image of Clark’s father to try and convince Clark that killing Lex is the only way to save the world.
It isn’t. Clark manages to find another way but even then, that doesn’t mean that the aftermath of their fight is easy. Escaping the Phantom Zone, undoing the damage Zod did to Metropolis and the rest of the world, finding their way back to each other, every step of the way presents another challenge. Among the growing list of obstacles are Kryptonian prisoners that need to be tracked down, finding the money needed for the rebuilding efforts, learning that Clark has super breath? and being kidnapped by Oliver fucking Queen.
But they face those challenges together, or with the knowledge that the other is doing the best they can to do what the other cannot. There’s a trust there between them that gets easier over the course of that summer, to the point where Lex can’t imagine facing this mess without it.
Sometime in late August, Lex rolls over in bed to face Clark. A comfortable, sated exhaustion is settling into his limbs and the promise of sleep with Clark here beside him is stripping him of higher brain functions.
The bed beneath them is lovely and plush, brand new for his refurbished penthouse in Metropolis. Lex decided to make the move sometime in June and then spent the next two months convincing Clark to apply late to Met U for the fall semester, making plans and arrangements so that all of this might be possible. Tonight is the fulfillment of weeks of planning, having Clark here with him in the city.
But Clark has pushed himself up on his elbows to look at him, suddenly intent and alert. “Wait, what do you mean you knew? You didn’t know.”
“There was just so much evidence, Clark. I’ve been obsessed with you for years.”
“Right, but you didn’t know anything.”
“Because you were so good at coming up with convincing cover stories for why you never drove anywhere or could pick up a tractor or were always in the right place at the wrong time. How many times did I find you in the caves only for you to tell me you were writing a paper for school?”
Clark blushes, cheeks turning red, eyes darting down. He’s so pretty like this, like some kind of miracle the way that they can be naked in bed together and he can still bite his lip. “But you didn’t know for sure.”
“No, I didn’t. I guessed, I hypothesized. I even dreamed about it a few times, one time Santa Claus was there—“
“You remember that?”
This time, Lex is the one to freeze, his whole body coming awake in the blink of an eye. “What do you mean, do I remember that, what do you know about it?”
Lex said it mostly as a joke, something they could laugh at and diffuse the building tension. It’s amazing that they can talk about the subject of Clark’s powers and keeping secrets at all without the roiling tension of their past coming back to haunt them.
“Well, I mean—“ Lex can see Clark trying to pull together some kind of lie, some way to get himself out of this unscathed. But perhaps he’s out of practice because he can’t seem to manage it in time.
“You’re telling me Santa Claus was telling the truth? You… met Santa Claus and wished there was some way to save me?”
“I wished there was some way to fix our relationship,” Clark corrects. “And he said he could show you what could be possible and then it would be up to you to decide what to do with that when it was over.”
Lex blinks, more taken aback by this news than he was when Clark told him his secret. Despite what Clark said and what he told Clark, he knew the majority of what Clark told him then, the shock was the fact that Clark’s decision to finally tell him at all. But this? This is entirely new.
He thinks that’s the worst of it when Clark delivers one more shock. “And I saw what he showed you.” The red in his cheeks hasn’t gone anywhere.
“You saw?” Lex asks.
Clark nods.
“Everything?”
Another nod.
That should be humiliating. There are some things that happened in that vision that Lex is not entirely proud of. He cried. He yelled at Santa for god’s sake. The fact that Clark has known the whole time and kept that from him should be infuriating.
Instead, Lex finds a grin spreading his lips. He dips down to press his head into Clark’s chest, hiding it and the laugh that threatens to break free.
“Lex?” Clark asks nervously.
Deep breath, in and out. He rolls over to meet Clark’s eyes again. “Everything, huh?”
“Yes, I’m sorry I didn’t—“
“And you came to visit me afterward. After everything you’d seen.”
Clark blinks. “Yeah, I did. Of course, I did.”
“Of course,” Lex agrees. “Did you like what you saw, Clark?”
“Well, I—“ Clark stutters and Lex presses his advantage.
“Did you like everything we did?”
Lex moves so that he is on top of Clark, pressing him down into the mattress. Clark stares up at him, wide-eyed and breathless. How could Lex be upset that Clark knew all of that, knew it the entire time, when it managed to bring him here?
“Should we reenact that morning together?” Lex asks, positioning himself just the way he did then, one of his legs on either side of one of Clark’s thighs. He rolls his hips forward and watches the way that Clark’s eyes flutter shut. It’s too soon, for Lex at least, but he can bring them together slowly, lazily rutting together without the urgent need for release, teasing Clark in a way that he has never experienced before. Lex loved being with a version of Clark that knew him inside and out and someday he will love that Clark again but for now, getting to be with a Clark for whom everything is new, getting to explore him and to be explored in turn, that is a pleasure Lex is never going to give up.
Clark bites down on his lower lip and nods fiercely, eyes pressed tightly closed. That won’t do at all. Lex leans down and kisses him, gentle but insistent, toying with Clark until he opens up and lets him in.
An important lesson in Lex’s personal education on the anatomy and physiology of Clark Kent had nothing to do with the physical form of the man beneath him and everything to do with his psychology. Once he knew that Clark was interested, it took longer than Lex might have expected to get him into bed. Clark wanted something physical, wanted it badly. But for a long while, there was a mental barrier that kept getting in his way. Some ghastly combination of his puritan upbringing, a long-instilled reluctance to betray his abilities in a moment of passion, and a deep-seated fear of hurting another person by mistake.
In the end, the solution came down to trust, as it so often does between the two of them. Communication and trust. Something that they’re still working on, obviously, but the results of their efforts so far have been promising.
They fall asleep like that, lovingly gentle kisses and touches that slow and dissolve into sleep. Lex lies on top of Clark like some over-sized body pillow. Clark has an arm wrapped around Lex’s waist. Sure, the position becomes uncomfortable at some point in the night but Lex wouldn’t move for anything.
And in the morning, they revisit that vision they shared all those months ago in a new light.
Christmas Eve sees Lex pouring himself a drink in the penthouse, looking out at the lights of the cityscape as though they are twinkling red and green. The scotch goes a long way towards warming the remaining chill left in his bones after a trip to the Arctic, Clark’s present to him this year.
The Fortress was… astounding. And Lex might have needed a moment alone with his thoughts afterward as it was but then once they had returned to the apartment, Clark overheard a news report about a collapsed dam in Nebraska and he thought maybe he could—
Lex was shaking his head already, by the time he had halfway voiced the question. Go, be careful.
Leaving Lex to his drink and this view on Christmas Eve.
It wasn’t as though they had big plans, just a quiet night alone together. Tomorrow, they’ll head to Smallville to spend Christmas morning with Martha. The first Christmas without Jonathan has been tough on them both but Clark and his mother are holding up. It’ll be good for them to be together.
Clark and Lex have already exchanged gifts. Lex’s gift to Clark was something they picked out together. He was a little disappointed to lose the element of surprise that is key to any great present but the look on Clark’s face when they finally walked away with it was golden.
Buying a two-door red Ford pick-up was almost physically painful to begin with. The fact that it is used, nearly insulting—to Lex or Clark, Lex isn’t really sure but Lex is offended on someone’s behalf, possibly both of them. But Clark did let Lex buy it for him outright, instead of taking out a car loan or god forbid leasing it. Consider it a Christmas present Clark said, though again, Lex isn’t quite sure whose. He isn’t thrilled with the idea of giving Clark a sub-par truck just so that he can lend credence to the illusion that it’s possible for him to zip back and forth between Metropolis and Smallville on the weekends but the idea that Clark would let Lex buy him a car, any car, might be part of Clark’s Christmas gift to him.
The dealer had taken one look at Lex and tried to hike up the price. Lex privately gave him an extra 5k on top of a cash offer in full to leave them alone and give Clark whatever he wanted.
There might also be another present or two in store for Clark tomorrow. If Clark thinks that Lex is going to pass up an opportunity to give him things, he is dreaming. He’s going to look very nice in the wool coat Lex has waiting for him in the morning. The price tag on it is a secret that Lex is taking to his grave.
None of that really compares to Clark’s gift to him. When Lex closes his eyes, the lights of Metropolis become sparkling gleams refracted off of a hundred crystalline surfaces. Beautiful and cold and starkly alien, like nothing anyone else on Earth has ever seen.
What could Lex do to ever equal what Clark has given him? Opening his eyes to the rest of the universe, allowing him to see.
And that doesn’t even account for Clark himself, as a man, a friend, a partner. There is no way to balance the scales. There is almost no point in trying.
The front door to the apartment opens, the one that only Clark ever really uses. The stairs are there as a safety measure but no one besides Clark wants to grapple with fifty-six floors worth of stairs for fun. He is quick to meet Lex by the window, catching him at the waist with one hand as he half-turns to greet him. The quick peck of a kiss is something they’re both getting used to, like something too good to be allowed every time.
“How was it?” Lex asks. He checked in with the news and the internet as best he could but the combined effect of that part of Nebraska residing in a news desert and hopefully Clark’s discretion kept him from following Clark’s exploits from afar.
Clark snags a bottle of water from the bar by the window. He shrugs a little. Not great then, obviously, he wouldn’t have gone if they didn’t really need him. But Clark also isn’t the type to brag.
“The town closest to the dam was pretty much decimated. The whole area was fairly flat so the water just came in and trashed everything. It’s about waist high on the main street.”
Lex nods. “I saw on CNN.”
“But I think everyone got out alright. Most people had a bit of warning when the dam started to fail, there were just a few people who didn’t get the memo or couldn’t get out on their own.”
“Were you careful?” Did anyone see you is the real question and they both know it.
Clark gives this another so-so grimace and Lex frowns at him. “There was a little girl. She wouldn’t leave her bedroom on the second floor of her house without her teddy bear and the only way out was the roof. And then there was this older man, though I’m not sure he could actually see me but it would have been rude to just pick him up or something without talking to him first.”
Right. Clark would reveal his abilities to some stranger because the alternative would be rude. Where was this inflexible moral code when it came to Lex all of those years? But perhaps lying to someone’s face wasn’t considered rude in the Ma and Pa Kent book of manners.
Lex isn’t bitter. Not anymore at least. The reflex just comes a little too easily to him sometimes after years of practice.
Setting aside his drink, he pivots to take Clark in more fully. As he should have expected, when Clark said the town was flooded waist-high with water, he was clearly speaking from experience. Lex shakes his head. “You’re a mess.”
Damp from head to toe with a thin layer of grime all over, Clark’s hair curls as it dries. He smells a bit rank, wet dog and earthy with a faint vinegar stink of something foul. His jeans are caked in mud that splashed up to his knees. There is another smear of the stuff across his chest like someone swiped him with their hand, perhaps while he was carrying them. All of it is mostly dry by now but he is definitely going to leave a few stains on the carpet.
“Shower. Now.” Lex’s tone leaves no room for argument.
Clark has the audacity to look up at him through his lashes. “Are you coming with me?”
“This isn’t a fun shower, this is a decontamination shower. Who knows how much raw sewage you waded through when their waste water system flooded.”
Clark pouts a little and Lex sighs. He is not getting in there with Clark until he’s spent at least twenty minutes under scalding hot water but he’ll make his way to the bathroom and keep him company while he’s in there. Clark picks up on where he’s headed and in the blink of an eye, races past him to beat him there. The shower is already on by the time Lex even makes his way down the hall.
He eyes the pile of Clark’s clothes on the floor like the bio-hazard they are. At least this is another minor victory in his slow and steady conquest of Clark’s wardrobe. These are going directly in the trash and Lex is very happy to accept the discount flannel and Walmart denim as ceded ground. Lex has a pair of Levi’s in Clark’s size for him to wear the next day after sleeping over that happen to make his already amazing ass look exceptional.
But another idea crosses Lex’s mind as he pokes at the pile of red and blue with the toe of his shoe. These have become something of a uniform for Clark whenever he goes out into the world with the express goal of helping people. Bright colors to distract from the man behind the abilities.
“You need better clothes,” Lex murmurs. There’s a tear along the jacket’s shoulder seam. Perhaps it got caught on something or Clark managed to pop it by accident in a feat of strength.
“My clothes are fine, Lex!”
He shouldn’t have been able to hear that over the shower spray. Super hearing is another ability that has taken some getting used to.
And while theoretically, that might be true for the rest of Clark’s wardrobe—if one allows the definition of ‘fine’ to be somewhat loose—that isn’t the case when it comes to this. If Clark is going to do more of this, spread his wings and use his abilities to help more people more often, he needs clothing that can keep up with him. Maybe something that can keep his identity a secret or protect him from kryptonite—that might be an interesting research project.
Lex has a hazy memory of something he glimpsed in his vision of the future last year, a brightly colored costume hung up in their walk-in closet. Back then, he didn’t get a good look at it beyond the eye-searing colors.
But he could probably do better than that when it comes to designing something for Clark. Perhaps that will be his Christmas present next year. No need to rush him in coming out of the superhero closet.
The shower turns off and Clark pokes his head out from behind the door. “What do you think? Satisfied?”
In his musing, the bathroom has filled with steam from the shower, clouds of it fogging the mirror behind him. With Clark able to withstand the hottest temperatures the heating system can manage, it likely didn’t take long. Not exactly an autoclave but Lex finds himself as tired of waiting as Clark has been since the moment he got home.
And he is home, isn’t he? Not officially at any rate, that might be considered moving too fast even for them, but Clark does spend most nights here, though he has a dorm room on the Met U campus. He has a growing collection of clothes in the walk-in closet, a spare toothbrush in the bathroom. When he walks through the door, something in him eases. Not in the same way as when he goes back to the farm; some part of Clark will always need fresh air and sunlight and a big wide-open sky. But close.
Lex holds out a hand for Clark to take. The shower’s nice but he wants Clark in bed now.
Clark lets himself be led to the bedroom but refuses to be passive for long. He pulls Lex in at the waist and presses him to him, bringing their foreheads together before he bends down to kiss at Lex’s neck. Which is perfectly fine by Lex. His hands have miles of clean, bare Clark to explore, his entire body a long, flushed warm line against him. He will never get tired of mapping the carved marble muscles and bones of him beneath his fingertips.
With clumsy hands, Clark tries to undo the buttons on Lex’s shirt and continue to kiss him at the same time, suddenly frustrated by being the only one without clothes. Lex threads a hand through his hair and tugs at it a little to guide him away. He gets both hands on either side of Clark’s face, staring into blue-green eyes turned black in the dark. His face is painted in light and shadow from the skyline just outside their window, a glint of it sparkles there at the corner. Lex’s awe at having Clark close like this, the beauty of him simply there and waiting for him, will never cease.
And once, he came so close to never having him at all.
Lex’s thumb strokes the line of Clark’s cheekbone, just marveling at him. “Merry Christmas, Clark.”
Something flickers in Clark’s expression, too much too quick for Lex to really get a read on. But he gets the sense that Clark knows a little of what just passed through his head. The what-ifs that linger especially at this time of year. That kind of quiet understanding after all of their fights and everything they’ve been through is the gift of a lifetime.
Clark smiles, a quiet, thankful thing. “Merry Christmas to you too, Lex.”