by jenn
It's easy stuff, kid stuff. Closing your eyes and saying no. Turning your back and saying you can't. Walking away and saying never again.
Three year olds can do it. Grown men can, too. Doesn't mean much when you can't stay away. And maybe he'd always known, because it didn't make much sense otherwise.
Something like remembering, familiar warm sheets and some expensive scent that he'd never identified, never wanted to. He hadn't remembered the taste of Lex's throat, though, and the way he tilted his head when he was saying Clark was full of shit without saying anything at all. And he wasn't sure how he could have forgotten that.
Of course, these days, Lex could say it. There was nothing left for Lex to lose, and it was there in the possessive fingers wrapped around his arm, the warm breath against the back of his neck.
"Lex."
"Yeah."
And there were things he could say. Why now, why not then, why did you let go, why didn't you, what did I say, what would it take, but Clark bit every question back. Lex might answer, and he might lie.
Or God, he might not.
"I should--" But those words stopped, too. Clarity was something he'd given up walking in here, along with sanity and reason and every warning and every word written in white chalk in the black of his mind, ten feet high and screaming even now, but Lex's slow smile, Lex's hand on his cock, Lex's body, they erased it all. Wiped down and wiped out and in the end, hadn't he seen this?
He had to have.
"Shh." Delicate brush against his temples, long fingers careful and soft, mapping his skin. Casual possession, something new for Lex to play with, explore, enjoy, like he hadn't written the book on how to take, how to keep, how to hold onto things he should never have.
Clark shut his eyes.
"No." Hand under his jaw, and Clark looked up. Blue and intense and hard and hot, something out of a fantasy Clark had never wanted to have. "See this."
Lex liked to watch, always had. From a distance, from too close, from too far, watching and weighing and deciding and accepting things Clark never could, never would, never wanted to. Compromise wasn't something either of them knew how to do.
The kiss was like something he'd forgotten he needed. Warm and thick and filling all the empty spaces in Clark's mind. Lex, who shifted on top of him effortlessly, pinning him down with nothing but the sheer force of will that made strength meaningless. Hand buried in his hair, pinning him to the bed, telling him without words all the things he should have known. All the things he'd forgotten.
It'd been too long and not nearly long enough.
"God, Lex."
Slow this time, the white-heat of the first time still achingly close to the surface, afterburn in every nerve of his body. Letting Lex take it all, just like that, so much easier this way. Easy for Lex to rock into his body with a little gasp from them both, slick cock stretching him fast and dirty.
"Better this way," Lex murmured against his mouth. And Clark wondered how much he'd said aloud. "You know."
He did.
And it could have been no time at all, nothing between them that was as powerful as time, as inescapable as responsibility. All things real taking a long walk out the window, all the grounding gone. Lex at twenty-one would never have been this ruthless--but then, Lex at twenty-one would have cared too much to push, too much to risk. Too much to let go.
Lex would have lied to him then, and he remembered long nights when he'd have given anything to be the one Lex could tell the truth.
"Lie," Clark whispered when Lex lazily rocked back, and Lex bit into his collar.
"I love you." Almost mocking with the drag of teeth over his skin, another sharp thrust that made Clark shudder. "I'll never betray you." Sucking bite to his throat, long and long until it became bright and hot and almost pain, or as close as Clark could ever get. "I'll never lie to you." Another bite, Lex's hands on his body like something necessary for simple survival. "I'll let you go."