Seventy Two Hours

Day 1: Like Falling

It's edging on obscene, that he's lying in two completely different ways, on two completely different levels, and managing it with two very different people, all with one sentence. Exciting; growing thick and warm in the pit of his stomach, very like pleasure. Terrifying, like the first time he fell off the roof of the barn and ended up ass-deep in nothing but dust without a broken bone in sight.

Roller coasters have never been quite as good since.

It's like power, actually, and he can even admit it to himself, in that little dark part of his mind he's been checking out more often than ignoring now. Just to see what the interior weather's like, mostly. Phelan left him with the location and directions on how to get there, but it's still brand new, and he's curious what's located there, what he'll find if he looks too closely and too long.

"Dad, I can't come home. The weather's too bad to drive."

And it's just--cool. Normal people lie all the time--Clark likes to think, just once, that he can do it, and for a normal reason. Brings the world into some kind of balance, or at least, a little less unbalanced than it usually is.

And the thing is, the thing that will probably just *kill* his father when he figures it out, is that Clark's getting better at it every day. Good enough to slide beneath the Smallville radar, good enough to keep suspicious Lex circling him like a starving dog for *months*, and now, good enough to tell an absolute truth that isn't true at all. And to his *father*, and he thinks that the time'll come very soon when Jonathan Kent will realize exactly what he's taught his son to do as effortlessly as breathing.

"Clark." Edges of impatience cut between them through the line, and he can see the debate written across his father's face like a drive-in movie of the mind. Nothing subtle about Jonathan Kent from the top of his head to the soles of his work-worn boots. The balancing act of being a father to a teen and a father to a freak, that makes him worry even when he doesn't need to. "I know that you think--"'

And sometimes worry for all the wrong reasons about the right thing.

"Dad, there's a snowstorm. It's a blizzard. I can't see three inches in front of me without x-ray, and there's no way Lex is gonna believe I can make it home on foot. He can't drive in it--we'd end up in a ditch."

Over the static-thickened lines of the phone, he can hear his father's breathing, short and erratic.

"Dad, there's no way I can get away with it. He's--you know him. He's smart. He likes me and trusts me, but he's not stupid. He'll think it's weird just if I *mention* walking home in this sort of weather."

And that's all true, it's fact, and his father knows it. Knows, too, that the thing about lying is, sometimes you have to back it up. You can't pull an empty gun out and expect to fire shots, and you can't lie and not expect to have to prove it every once in awhile.

Clark figured that out awhile back, but this is the first time he's tried it as more than a theory. And he thinks that twelve years as Jonathan Kent's son is plenty to understand the man from the inside out, and he knows the choice between the secret and Lex is no choice at all.

Instinct is screaming, though, loudly silent in the phone line between them. And his father has excellent instincts, all things considered.

"All right." It's defeat, and it's against the grain and the instincts, and it's also called winning. Victory's addictive stuff. "Call in the morning--hopefully, it'll be better and I can--"

"Dad. You know Kansas blizzards." Something about the flatness of the land, the snow that might not settle long enough to take out a lease and start a family, but it sure as hell liked to play indigent visitor in the air. Last year, it was a week locked in the house, and last year, Clark didn't have the vision or the nerve to run through it.

It'd been a rough week for everyone. Maybe Dad's thinking about that, too.

"Call anyway. Be--careful, okay?"

Clark could almost laugh, or dance, or just grin into the phone like an idiot. Instead, he looks up at the touch of Lex's hand on the door and smiles.

"Yeah." Lex's head is tilted, watching him again. No one watches like Lex. Clark sometimes wonders if the tracks will one day show up on his skin. "I will."

"Tell your parents hi for me," Lex says, and walks by him to the refrigerator. No accidental brushes of long fingers, either, though Clark thinks this would be easier if Lex would do *something*. Lex lives in his personal space and doesn't take kindly to visitors. Doesn't leave it often himself, and for all Clark knows, there's a television and comfortable living room suite in there to keep him entertained in lieu of human contact. He's never met anyone, ever, who belongs to themselves so completely.

Says a lot more than he thinks Lex would ever admit to about his first primary relationships, too.

"Lex says hi," Clark tells the phone, and it's impossible that he can hear his father grind his teeth, but he really thinks he does. "I'll be fine. Tell Mom I love her. Bye."

He gets a grudging goodbye and flicks the phone off with his thumb, laying it aside on the counter, and watches Lex study the refrigerator's contents like he's rationing out the last box of Girl Scout Thin Mints to cookie junkies and his life's at stake. Which, with Thin Mints, could be the case, especially around July when the Girl Scouts are retired from cookie sales for another year and desperation sets in.

"I don't eat that much," Clark tells him, and he gets one of those glitter-splashed smiles as Lex glanced back at him briefly.

"You'd be surprised how extraordinarily well-stocked we are. There are grocery stores we could assist if it becomes necessary. Are you hungry?"

Clark can't help grinning and leaning into the counter.

"Not really. Glad you don't mind me crashing here, Lex."

Lex snags a bottled water from the bottom of the refrigerator and pushes the door closed, leaning back against it carelessly. It never stops fascinating him, the way Lex moves, as if puberty was something that had happened to that body long before Lex took up residence, after all the rough edges were smoothed out and ironed clean and crisp.

"I could never mind that." Lex opens the bottle with a careless flicker of his wrist, and Clark's reminded that Lex's strength is all in his hands and wrists; small, well-developed muscles from fencing, which may make it sucky if someone's trying to kick his ass when he's unarmed, but probably evens out *a lot* if Lex has a weapon and a fair chance of fighting back. He's seen Lex with a rapier and with a gun, and he's pretty sure he's right. His back thought so, anyway. "Trust me, my own uninterrupted company for however long this storm lasts wouldn't be good for anyone."

He doesn't mention Victoria.

"I heard you evacuated the plant earlier today."

"I had your warning and the weather channel," Lex answers easily, and it's an old joke, because Lex has satellite television with like a billion channels, but it's always on the Cartoon Network. Apparently, there's a lot to be learned from Wylie Coyote and the Roadrunner and from Bugs and Daffy, though if Clark wants to be highly symbolic and channel Freud or the latest of the television pop psychologists on Oprah or Sallie Jessie Raphael, he'd wonder a little on Lex's propensity toward adversarial relationships. "Anything in particular you want for dinner?"

Clark drums his fingers against the mug and thinks about it.

"How scared should I be by your culinary skills?"

He gets a narrow-eyed look.

"For that, you might be restricted to those potato chips. I'm not completely incompetent in the kitchen. There's this thing called a microwave and another thing called a deep freeze, which stores such items as frozen dinners."

"Looks like college wasn't a waste after all." He can't help teasing Lex--it's just so rare to get the chance. They seem to do their best bonding during Big Events, and Clark's been itching to try it out when there's nothing more intense going on than a snowstorm.

"That's it--" Lex snaps his fingers and there's no way even Lex can keep from cracking a smile, though God knows, even this is a battle for control. "You cook."

Clark blinks and thinks about it--not the worst idea he's ever heard, but then, he's also stuck his arm in a shredder for kicks, so good judgement's never been his strong point. Tapping his almost empty mug, he just grins and surrenders.

"You win. You're a kitchen prodigy."

"Hmm." Lex is studying him again, and he likes that--well, likes the concept of it, that Lex is interested enough to want to come out and actively check out the real world once in awhile. Lex doesn't miss much, that's true enough, but he also rarely seems to care about what he sees. --You're special, Clark,-- Amy's brother said. --Luthor says you're special, and now I'm special, too.-- Attention is as addictive as victory. "I'll take that, for now. You're the guest--pick out something you want."

"Can we skip healthy and go straight to junk food?" Clark asks hopefully, and Lex laughs. It's beautiful and has no edges he can find.

Class was over early due to the weather, letting them free a good hour before the bell would normally ring. Deliveries would have to be done early and he'd get home and there'd be chores to do before the storm came in. The sky was that uncertain shade that had pretensions of being blue but aging grey right before his eyes.

Weather coming in fast, like his father might say.

Chloe and Pete took off for the bus and Clark thought about following them, but somehow, it was more tempting to go by the Beanery and grab some hot chocolate. He could still get home well before the bus passed his house and started his parents worrying, and anyway, he wasn't expected this early.

Wrapping his coat closer around him, Clark turned toward downtown--easy twelve blocks to the coffee shop and their wonderful almond chocolate cocoa. Chloe gave him the addiction to it, with one too many nights there working on Torch issues and that caffeine addiction is probably going to land her in rehab at some point in the future. The roads were full of people stocking up and lots of familiar waves, though he wasn't sure half the time who the hell he was waving *to*.

Okay, so he also wasn't paying much attention--the sky was where the action was. Clark loved storms--since he was a kid, come to think of it, and it was probably due to the fact he couldn't afford to have temper tantrums himself. Blizzards, though, were more--subtle. None of the drama of lightning or thunder, just the endless white on dark, the hiss of the wind, changing the world into a fifties television show before they introduced technicolor. Being alien had these perks that right now, especially now, he couldn't imagine giving up, and one of them was to sit outside when the weather decided to get off its sedatives and go psycho for awhile.

Okay, and he liked the fact that this year, x-ray vision was going to keep him from being restricted to the house and the land of the farm. His directional sense had always sucked too badly to afford making a run blind.

Up ahead, he saw Lex's car, purring quiet and soft before the Beanery--sleek and white as the snow. Probably not the wisest choice for this weather, but then again, Lex didn't like to do things that were too practical. Clark got the feeling Lex enjoyed being the eccentric guy in the castle, if for no other reason than he didn't get swamped with eager students at his door during the constant school fundraisers.

Lex was coming out of the Beanery--long black coat that looked like leather trailing in the wind, supremely indifferent to the cold of the day and the greying skies above. Keys dangling from one gloved hand, and Clark realized they hadn't talked since--the hospital, and if he was honest with himself, that wasn't much.

And there was something in his posture--post-recovery-of-powers made him sensitive, he supposed. Or the tiny edges of guilt that he didn't acknowledge. Or maybe just the fact that if he didn't swing by now, he wouldn't see Lex until the storm passed. Jogging, he made his way up the sidewalk and crossed the street, landing in front of the car just as Lex turned.

"Hey."

For a split second, he wasn't sure Lex recognized him--hell, he didn't even seem to be on the same planet, more distant than he'd ever been, and Clark was counting those moments with the gun pointed at him in the garage and seeing his life pass before his eyes because he'd never been tested out on bullets. Powers didn't come with a warranty or explanation manual, after all.

"Clark." Lex drew himself back, both from wherever he was vacationing mentally and physically, too, a foot opening between them that made Clark blink. "I'm sorry--do you need anything?"

It was smooth and careful and polite, there was a smile that looked so much like the real thing that nine out of ten would never know the difference. But Clark had been the freak all his life, so of course he'd hit the tenth spot and he held onto his grin with all his might when it began to slip.

"Nothing. Just--saying hi."

The smile evened out a little, became something that reached the blue eyes.

"It looks like the weather's getting worse." So Lex noticed after all. "You're out early--I assume due to weather conditions?"

"Yeah. Blizzard weather. Last year, it was--well, like a week or something until we could get out of the house."

Something flickered across Lex's face, so fast that even Clark couldn't catch it.

"You don't say." Lex's keys jangled discordantly and a glance down showed the strain of tendons beneath pale skin, metal cutting into the skin of his palms and he didn't even seem to notice. "I had better call the plant, then. If you'll excuse me, Clark--"

It was a dismissal, and Clark nodded without even being really aware of what he was doing, just somehow ending up on the sidewalk and watching Lex test out the gear shift's ability to keep up with him.

Hot chocolate seemed like less a good idea, and deliveries were looming. Pulling his coat tighter, Clark began to walk in the direction of home.

"You have a Playstation?"

Lex looks up from what looks like a complicated pile of random wires he's apparently attempting to either identify or shred, depending on mood. He was trying to find the cord for the DVD player and got lost when the cords changed colors and started merging, or so Clark assumes. He's been lost since he looked at it.

"Of course." With a few flickers at buttons on a huge system that Clark would have needed illustrated instructions to figure out, the television's on blue screen. "I'm a closet geek. Pick a movie."

"Biochemistry major. You played a lot of Doom and Origin in college, didn't you?" Clark sorts through the DVDs in the cabinet. Like the world's most eclectic movie shop--there's tons in there, some of which come with subtitles, and Clark wonders if that's Lex's taste or Victoria's.

"And you think I'd admit that?" A half smile curving his mouth, less of a battle. Clark's waiting for the day that Lex doesn't make it a battle at all.

Sometime after the emigration from the kitchen but before dropping to camp in the den, Lex had changed clothes--suit replaced with a long sleeve t-shirt and jeans that looked far too expensive to actually wear, thick socks. On someone else, it would be casual. Lex could go to charity balls like that and still seem the best dressed in the room. Something about how he wears it, or the way his body just disregards clothes as extraneous.

He wonders, just a little, what it must have been like to see Lex at fourteen, at sixteen, before all that polish had been perfected--Lex *had* to have, at some point, been gawky and awkward and uncertain, had to have been. Completely unimaginable, but then again, Clark knows that his mother, who works on her hands and knees in the garden, never touched a broom or washed her own dishes before she became Jonathan Kent's city-bred wife.

He shakes his head as Lex gets to his feet. The collar slips sideways, just a little, and Clark catches the edge of a darkened bruise on the curve of Lex's throat, almost hidden by the lines of the shirt. It's the closest thing imaginable--so close to flicking his gaze to x-ray and mapping out every bruise, every mark Victoria left on his body. All the places she's claiming.

"What are you thinking about?"

And it's a little shock, to realize he's been *staring* at Lex. One eyebrow is up, curious and interested, and Lex is in the room so intensely that it seems too small to hold them both.

"Victoria." And it seems just a bad idea to bring her up at all, but Clark can't really help it. "She--didn't seem happy and you--I mean, it's none of my business or anything--"

"You should see her with a diamond necklace or a during a corporate takeover--those make her happy. Everything else is a variation of unhappy." Lex shrugs, and Clark bites his tongue, trying to stop any more questions, because there's a good chance he won't like any of the answers. Her mark is in here, too, though he's been trying not to look--the places in the room that don't feel like Lex at all. The rug on the floor is new, and there's a pair of stiletto heels half-buried beneath the couch. There's also the brandy decanter with two glasses beside it now, and a bracelet discarded on an end table with a set of keys. He's scared of what the bedroom looks like, and is glad he doesn't remember anything about it but the impromptu graffiti. Lex takes a glass of brandy, crossing in front of Clark, close enough to feel the brush of the jeans on his knee. That might not be accidental. "Go ahead and ask."

"Huh?"

Lex is curled up in the chair, one leg hanging lightly over the arm, and Clark watches his face for some clue. Nothing to read.

"You're thinking hard." There's the smile, but it's hard-edged, and Clark has the startled suspicion that Lex might be as confused by the changes as Clark is. "We're friends, Clark. You can ask me anything."

Clark draws up his knees and thinks about the offer. He takes it for what it is--ask the right questions, stay away from the bruised places. Like the ones on his body, Clark has a good idea where some of the ones in his mind are located, or can make some educated guesses.

"I don't know--it's just. Well." Clark stops, trying to chart the territory he navigating. There are landmines waiting for an unwary step, and he's going to have to be subtle, which has never been his forte. "You seem tired, that's all."

"Rough week." Brief and to the point, and Lex rubs the bridge of his nose, eyes closing. There are shadows beneath, visible just for this second. "Business deals, life, and a storm that closes down the plant. I'm sure this week could get worse, but I'm trying to decide if it would take my actual death to do it."

Clark doesn't think Lex is far off in that assessment, either.

"Do you--do you want to talk about it?"

The blue eyes are open suddenly, wide, like innocence.

And surprise, surprise, Lex can lie too. And he does it better and cleaner and still doesn't hide it at all.

"Nothing interesting, Clark. Just a bad week. So, what movie do you have in mind?"

"James is bringing the Jaguar around."

He heard them while coming in through the kitchen door, snow swirling around him like a cloak or maybe fairy dust, and yes, he'd seen "Lord of the Rings" a few too many times the past month. Geek, thy name is Clark.

The entire room was lit up, and not just from the too-bright fluorescent lights that gave it the disturbing feel of the school cafeteria, gleaming off the indecent amounts of clean silver metal in the room. Lex was at the fridge, mulling which bottle of water to choose, and Victoria was feet away, leaning against the counter with that feeling of slightly distant distaste, as if kitchens were beneath her notice. Smaller than Clark remembered her, though, lighter, less presence, and he wasn't sure why that was but did know that it did good things for his mood. Long, dark woolen coat around her like armor, but not against the weather, and her face was pale.

"Sorry," he said, unsure what to do--it was the first time that he'd honestly wondered if he was welcome since those first early days. Her glance was fast and hot and indefinably hostile, and the hostility included him. Weird. "I just--"

"You aren't interrupting," Victoria bit out, and Clark swallowed hard, watching her turn away on a heel, eyes meeting Lex's as he turned to face her. Something passed between them, tightening the air until there didn't seem to be anything in the room but *that*. "Lex--"

"You'll make good time if you leave now." Lex's hand twitched against the smooth line of his pants and he pulled it into his pocket, drawing into himself. "The storm might delay you."

"God, Lex--it's business. There's a difference. You've got to see that."

Lex's head tilted just a little, and Clark wished he could see his eyes. Or maybe find a way to scrunch his way out the door without being noticed, and Lex's gaze caught him before the thought got any farther than a working theory. It said stop, and it said it in *that* way, the way Lex could get policemen to let him go into buildings with psychotic armed ex-employees. No argument, no discussion, just do it, now.

Clark stopped, almost unbreathing, and Lex flickered back to Victoria. Watching, curious, interested, detached, and something that might have been hatred except--God. He'd never want that look turned on him, not for any reason. Ever.

"I'm not having this discussion again." Lex turned lightly, cutting off contact with her like changing a radio station. She had to have felt that. "Clark, what can I do for you?"

"Um." God, Victoria just standing there, elegantly seething, before she reached out, as if to touch Lex--but her hand dropped. She knew the personal space thing, it seemed. Nothing about Lex was even close to being welcoming, like the cold outside, but more focused.

"I'll see you around."

"Have a good trip." A little pause, and Victoria felt it too, with the way Lex's shoulders tightened. "Tell my father hi when you see him." Tossed over his shoulder, and Victoria blinked with a wince that seemed to shudder the material of her coat like a leaf in a strong wind. Then she was gone, heels a muted clicking as she crossed the kitchen and went out the far door. Anticlimactic, almost, because it felt as if something had been left--unsaid. Lex didn't seem to feel it, though. "Clark?"

Clark remembered that the kitchen door was still open and quickly pushed it shut, staring at his shoes and the snow that had accumulated on the floor. He didn't know what was on Lex's face now--if anything was--but he knew he didn't want to see it.

"Nothing important--I mean, I just have your deliveries."

"Fair enough." And when he looked up, there was nothing but Lex's focus, on him, Lex's smile, and he couldn't help smiling back.

Sometime during the movie, Clark had shifted closer, and he's noticing this when he realizes that Lex's chair leg is brushing his knee. Lex is looking thoughtful, like he always looks when he's concentrating. Nothing less or nothing more, and it really might have been any day in their lives, except for all the differences.

Victoria's gone, but she's in the room with them, maybe even if Clark hadn't brought her in himself. It wasn't love, Lex had said, but maybe Lex didn't need that as much as he needed what she could give, had given him. Whatever the hell that was, and that thing in the kitchen runs through his head as he retrofits it with what he knows now.

She wasn't coming back--but then, she didn't need to.

"She's not coming back, Clark," Lex says softly, as if echoing his thoughts, and it throws him a little. "I said you could ask."

"I--didn't want to--well, upset you." If that's the right way to put it, bring the entire kitchen in here too, and he *really* doesn't want that.

Lex shrugs, draining off the second glass of brandy. Clark's beginning to wonder what Lex's tolerance is.

"Don't worry about it. Business is business."

Clark looks up and smiles quickly, brightly. Lying like a second nature, like a reflex, like an instinct. He's not sure he'd know a real truth if it hit him in the head tonight.

"Disappointed?"

Clark blinks, trying to work that one out, and Lex either takes pity on him or just gets bored waiting for him to respond.

"That I'm that shallow, that I fucked her when I didn't care about her?"

He wouldn't say Lex is shallow, though Clark gets the feeling Lex wants to be, badly. Probably would simply everyone's life if the image matched the man underneath.

"No." And maybe, he thinks, he's disappointing Lex with that--Lex seems to like him as the moral barometer. Just to see where he shows up on the scale, or something. "You just--you know, can do--can find someone that--."

"You don't like her." And Lex sounds--surprised. And it's just too obvious to try and lie about, or maybe this is the truth that not only hits Clark in the head, but also burrows inside to take up residence and start a small but thriving business.

"No." And he can say that's been true since the beginning, watching her slide into life with Lex as if she had the right. Lots of reasons for it he's never bothered to examine to closely, but he's had time tonight. He's had reason tonight, too, and he's beginning to think dislike is only the tip of the iceberg.

Thank you, Phelan. A lesson he didn't need, didn't want to recognize, that place in him he didn't want to go right now.

Lex smiles a little, and the thoughtful look is back. Or something like it--two degrees removed from the other, and Lex is kicking his foot again, another sign that there's more than just random thoughts going on behind his eyes.

There's a brush against the top of his head--air light and soft, and it takes everything in him not to move into it. Lex's fingers, idle movement, he thinks, and hopes it's not.

"You want something to drink?"

There's a soda on the floor by the television with the empty bag of potato chips, and Clark blows out a breath. It's not a plan, or anything like one--loosely connected thoughts with only a single goal.

"How do you stand on illegal underage drinking?"

Little sound like laughter.

"Tsk, Clark. It's not illegal if you don't get caught. Haven't I taught you anything?"

Pulling his knees up to his chest, Clark grins up at him. Lex's hand is inches away on the arm of the chair, fingers dangling like an invitation. The smile is warm and utterly relaxed, or as close to relaxed as Lex is capable of unassisted.

He needs assistance, Clark thinks.

"So, what do you have?"

"So, you said these storms last a week?"

Clark nodded as he carried in the last crate--Lex's mew staff didn't appear, which was, face it, really damn weird, because they were always on-hand. Even when they didn't need to be, and there was a moment where Clark missed Amy desperately. Stalker she might be, but at least she made the castle a little less forbidding, a little more--human? Made Lex more human, in some indefinable way, seeing him the object of a schoolgirl crush. Completely different image with that than the public image or even the one Clark got, and it made Clark wonder what Amy had seen in him that no one else did.

"Yeah," Clark answered, shutting the door behind him. Lex was sitting on the counter, ankles crossed, studying the crates as if they carried jewelry and not organic fruit and vegetables.

"Hmm. I'm supposed to go to Metropolis for a few business meetings with my father."

"If you left now, you could probably make it," Clark told him unnecessarily. Sharp, white smile directed at him. "Just--probably, you know, not a good idea. We already got the farm ready. You know, for the storm."

"Of course. You think your family will be okay?"

It was always warming, that Lex asked like that. Clark's father hated him, his mother was the Switzerland of the Inter-Kent Luthor War, but Lex was always--concerned.

"Sure. I mean, it's really not that big a deal. I'm sort of surprised, though--we usually only get these every few years, and usually with more warning." Clark leaned against the cabinet, watching Lex's face. So relaxed. "There's cabin fever of course, but you have a very big house. And you have your staff--"

"I sent them into Metropolis when I thought I'd be leaving," Lex answered, lowering a leg toward the floor. "In retrospect, that was apparently a mistake." Lex slid off the counter, barely creasing his suit before settling on the floor. "This your last delivery?"

"Yeah," Clark answered absently. "Last of the day. Sort of longer than usual, lots of people stocking up." Lex, here alone for however long the storm lasted. That was--not good.

"Don't look like that." Very close, and Clark turned just a little, surprised he hadn't felt Lex move. Inches away, casual sprawl against the counter beside him, omnipresent water in hand.

"Like what?"

"Believe it or not, I can take care of myself."

"I never said you couldn't." Might have *implied* it, and he nudged Lex's shoulder with his.

"You *looked* it." Sly grin, edged in ways that Clark didn't have words for. Lex fingered the almost-empty bottle and tilted his head, catching Clark's eye. "Trust me, Clark, if there's one thing I do know, it's self-preservation." Then Lex pushed away from the counter, walking to the far door that Victoria had exited only minutes before.

And weirdly enough, one glance back at him, and Clark found himself following.

There was a time when Clark played a drinking game--at Whitney's fifteenth birthday party, he thinks. Him and Chloe and Pete and Greg, scary thought, avoiding the room where the older kids were playing the grown up version with lots of giggling and the soft sounds of clothing hitting the floor. Lana hadn't been there--at least, he didn't remember her among the crowds of kids filling every room to overflowing.

They'd been too young, so they'd snuck into Whitney's bedroom with beer stolen from the fridge and did tried to chug with mixed results for an hour before Chloe threw up on Whitney's bed and ten minutes later Whitney's parents had come home, and *that* had been a night to remember.

He wonders to this day if Whitney figured out what was in his bed before or *after* he got in.

The bottle's between them, two shot glasses fetched from that cavernous kitchen, salt by Lex's knee in a small silver shaker and some exquisitely cut limes in a crystal dish waiting for use. Lex is nothing if not prepared for random acts of alcoholism and the Clarkish version of teen hedonism.

"It's easy." The slate-colored sleeve is pushed back, giving Clark a glimpse of the soft-looking skin of his inner arm, the uneven color at the juncture of his elbow. He's careful not to look too close, though, stare too long. Lex raises his arm, licking carefully across his wrist and Clark feels it on the back of his neck and the inner curve of his thigh like a physical touch. Lex is watching Clark, like this is a lesson he'll be graded on later, and Clark nods as Lex sprinkles the salt and reaches for a lime. Non-salted arm lifts the glass, he licks the salt then takes the shot like cold water on a hot day. Shivers just under the skin, eyes narrowing, and the lime slides between his lips quick and fast, before he puts it aside and smiles.

"Got it?"

Clark's mouth is dry and he has to swallow to even speak.

"Think so." He pulls his sweater over his head absently--no reason to risk alcohol getting on it--and looks down at his arm for a moment, bared by the short sleeves of his t-shirt. Gold skin that looks almost dark compared to Lex. Licks his arm a little awkwardly, just below the wrist, and Lex's hand closes over his, pulling his arm straight. He watches Lex sprinkle the salt and then shot glass is in his hand.

"Take it."

Licks the salt, eyes the shot for a second before he raises it to his mouth--

--and God, it burns. The taste is sharp and bitter, filling his nose and mouth, and he wants to choke. Just the thought of Lex's grin is enough to force the issue, will over body, or just the sheer horror of the very idea of Lex witnessing him being as young as he thinks Lex believes he is. It slides down into his stomach like molten lead and refuses to settle once it gets there. Something's pushed between his lips and he bites instinctively, a sour shock to his tongue. Licks to catch the juice and touches something warmer and smoother than peel, softer, too.

He opens his eyes, wiping away the damp that filled them, but Lex is back on his side of the bottle, casual with one knee raised. Smiling like he did when Clark did something that pleased him. Maybe Clark imagined it.

"Not bad." Blue eyes filled with light. There's no grey there at all. "Again?"

Clark lets the lime drop from his mouth to his lap and nods.

Second time, they do it together--hard burn again, but at least this time it's familiar and Clark's ready for it. It settles nicely and his eyes aren't full of tears.

Third time, he goes first, faster, getting used to the movements, the choreography of it. Lex is staring at the bottle, fingers closed over the neck.

"You've never drank before." Lex doesn't ask it like a question, but Clark pretends it is.

"Not--well, not liquor or anything. I mean, I *do* go to parties, you know."

Lex snorts softly. The background of the television is a low hum that's becoming steadily less understandable. Tequila is fast stuff.

"True." There's a decision being made, or maybe accepted, and Lex takes his shot without salt or lime at all. "Three in an hour is your limit, Clark."

"Hey, my tolerance is better than that!" He pushes at Lex's hand, and it sits there on the bottle, almost uncertain.

"I'm not carrying you to bed, you know. You pass out, you sleep right here." There's a smile in there. "And I do thorough revenge, so remember that if you throw up on me."

"I'm glad you're so worried about my health." Clark takes the bottle, filling both their glasses. His hand's steady and there's a little trickle of excitement mixing with the liquor in his stomach "Come on, Lex. On three."

"You don't fence anymore?"

He picked up a rapier from the case, holding the handle lightly between his fingers, feeling out the weight. Elegant weapon, matched Lex in every way that he could see. Sharp and deadly. Like Lex's questions, like his smiles.

"Not recently. Heike's busy." Clark gave him a sharp look, but Lex was moving closer, and that personal space shifted just a little, long enough to feel the heat of his body before Lex took another one out, letting the light glint off of it. "I'm busy."

"The plant taking that much time?"

Lex nodded absently, and Clark watched him shift a little, right before his eyes.

"Yes and no."

Oh, right. Victoria. Clark didn't comment on the unspoken, though he wished he had the nerve. Even to use some sly innuendo, but hell, he didn't even *know* any sly innuendo, and that was one of those moments he felt he should have his skateboard under one arm and a permission slip from his mother before he could see Lex in private. Lex was moving, slowly, the sword out in sharp, bright flashes, and Lex wasn't in the room at all, but in that world where everything was stripped down to thrust, parry, move.

Fascinating and beautiful, to see all that energy channeled like that.

Clark shifted the other sword in his grip and Lex turned, almost too fast to see, and the sharp tip was inches from his throat. That he didn't flinch was from shock--he was invulnerable, yes, but unexpected objects moving at high velocities toward his body were still something he usually tried to avoid.

The look was familiar--he'd looked at Lex over the barrel of a gun like this, and Clark's heart stopped as the point didn't move. Brief moment where he wasn't sure it *was* going to ever move again, then Lex relaxed, letting the blade fall toward the floor.

"Sorry. Reflex on peripheral vision." He nodded at the sword Clark held, flexing his hand around the hilt. "Come on--lose the jacket."

"What?" His brain was about six or so miles behind his body, which obeyed pretty naturally when Lex was feeling out his command propensities. His jacket was on the floor and he flexed his fingers around the sword. "What do you want me to do?"

"Watch and learn."

Sometime, probably between shots six and seven, Lex got really involved in sharing with him the history of tequila. Lots of hand gesture to make the point, too, though Clark lost the sense of those really fast. Stretched out his long body on the floor, one elbow beneath his head, and there was some sort of chemical formula involved, and the uses of worms, but Clark wasn't listening as closely as he could have.

The bottle's pushed to the side and there's maybe four shots left now in it, or so Clark estimates. Clark licks excess salt from his arm and catches Lex's fast glance, hot enough to make him flex his hand, aware that he's moved so Lex's lax fingers are inches from his leg. Close enough to touch with a shift of either of their bodies.

Grinning, he looks at the two shots poured and sighs a little. Alcohol is pretty cool stuff--it does interesting things with the entire concept of up and down and what and what isn't appropriate behavior, which is why he lets himself slide a little sideways and catches himself with a hand on Lex's thigh. It's an accident, of course.

"Are you drunk?" Lex asks Clark's shirt, and Clark can't help a little giggle. It sounds pretty cool so he tries it again. "Because it's illegal. I think."

"Snowstorm. We could start a meth lab in the basement and engage in bestiality without worry." Okay, he's definitely more than a little affected, and this is sort of a good thing. He can still think okay, not like the football players at keggers, but there's this soft haziness that makes him able to tune out his father's voice in his head, which has been screaming for the last hour about the very extreme wrongness of all of this. Maybe it's superteen metabolism that's keeping him on this edge, but it's--wow. He likes to know that he could take up a thriving life as an alcoholic just like any normal person.

"Never did meth," Lex said, running his fingers over the carpet like he's reading Braille or like he's looking for a lost cufflink. "Too damaging." Clark pushes himself upright, removing his hand reluctantly, and studies the shot glasses.

"Want another shot?"

"I don't think sitting up would be a good idea." Lex's voice is dry--no slur at all, but he never could imagine Lex as a sloppy drunk anyway. Grinning, Clark pushes lightly at Lex's shoulder and he rolls amiably on his back, smiling up at Clark. Lex is so many things all the time, but this is the first time Clark's been able to add cute into the adjective roll call. Socked feet rubbing for static in the rug, loose sprawl of his body that still manages to look controlled, like he's practiced it for moments like this, and grinning as if it's Christmas just outside the door.

Cute.

Smiling, and one hand is against Clark's thigh, running his knuckles absently over the denim, as if he has no idea he's doing it. Charging the nerves beneath the skin there until it's like Lex is touching his cock with the tips of those tapered fingers. Clark bites his tongue hard to break the shock of heat. It doesn't help much.

"Be creative," Clark answers and picks up the salt, licking the inside of his wrist. This time, Lex's gaze stays, fixing on the shiny wet skin, and he lets it take a little longer, until the skin is slick. Reaches for the salt and shakes it on, then reaches for the glass.

His hand is unsteady from more than the alcohol. He barely feels the heat of the liquor, feels nothing but the weight of Lex's eyes on him, the absent brush of his knuckles, the carpet smooth beneath them. The lime is an afterthought, and they're down to one slice left.

"Creative?" Lex mulls the word as if he's never heard it before. Blue eyes fix on his, impossible to look away. "You have something in mind?"

All on its own, his hand reaches out, taking Lex's wrist, and there seems to be a strategy involved now, or at least a set of loosely connected thoughts that will look rather brilliant if he pulls it off. Turns it over slowly, feeling Lex's eyes still on him, then leans down, running his tongue over the pulse point. Tastes Lex and salt and clean skin. Can't quite stop, and it's a little jerk of startled realization that drags his mouth away from the very wet skin, shiny in the glare of the television. He gets the salt by touch, sprinkling it on and his hand isn't unsteady anymore, because there really is a line and he just crossed it.

There's no point in pretending it's anything other than what it is, what he's doing now.

Lex's eyes are fixed on him when he moves, slowly straddling the long body, picking up the last shot. There's nothing readable there, not in the body or the eyes or the hand he still holds. Carries it to Lex's mouth, and watches as Lex licks his wrist with two slow, concentrated sweeps of his tongue, picking it all up. Maybe tasting him there, tongue sliding over his lips in a quick dart that makes Clark's cock ache.

Then stares up at him, head tilting a little, waiting to see how far Clark's willing to commit himself, but Clark jumped off the loft and landed without a scratch, so tequila and Lex's mouth can't hold much more terror than that. Clark takes the shot quick and hard, and then leans down.

Tequila and salt, Lex's hand against his face, and the way his lips part instantly. Tongue follows the liquor because Lex's mouth is open and *there*, ready for him. Lex swallows and there's a moment where the world tips sideways, because Lex isn't doing anything else.

Clark lifts his head and Lex smiles, just a little, and there's miles between them.

"Turn you on to see that picture, Clark?"

They were wrapped up in conversation on the third floor--where'd that start? Right, after the fencing, with the small muscles in Clark's wrists trembling from the strain--fencing wasn't exactly about strength, but about to use it. Lex's hand hovered above his wrist when he learned to thrust, telling him how to hold it, how to feel it. Brush of a palm on his hip to move his body in the rhythm, impersonal as hell with anyone else, but Lex might as well have been stroking his bare back with his fingernails.

He was so hard he thought the sword metaphors that kept popping up unannounced in his head and the sound of Lex's voice would bring him to his knees well before they'd ended the lesson with Lex's rapier against his throat again.

Outside, the wind was picking up and Clark listened, knowing it was near time to get back to the truck, before it was too bad outside to go anywhere. It was closer every second he shaved off, holding Lex in that inner hallway Something like marking time with Lex's voice and no idea what they were talking about.

Lex's head tilted, studying him suddenly.

"It sounds like the storm is picking up." Moving by Clark, not touching, to approach the window. Outside, the light was dying beneath the strength of snow and clouds, or maybe just moving into Lex, who was brighter by the second.

"It doesn't seem like you," Clark heard himself blurt out, and Lex turned on his heel. Eyes like the clouds outside.

"What doesn't?"

The castle. The clothes. The way Lex looked like he wanted to be running even when he wasn't. Victoria. All of it.

Clark motioned around him, wondering if Lex would take it at face value or he'd need to elaborate. He wasn't sure how to explain, how he couldn't see Lex anywhere else, anywhere at all, but it was like knowing that you're using a skeleton key in a door. It may fit, but that didn't mean it belonged there.

"The--castle. This."

"You're right." And Lex was turning in a slow circle, as if he'd been dropped here only seconds before and wanted to figure out the lay of the land before taking a single unassisted step. "It's not. I don't know whose it is, really, any of it." And maybe they were having one of *those* conversations, the ones where he's never sure if Lex knows or even cares if Clark understands, and sometimes, he wonders if Lex understands either. Because there was more here, filling the room between them, thick and inescapable.

They went back downstairs in silence, into the office where Lex hunted for another bottle of water behind his desk, and Clark fell onto the couch. He needed to get home soon, and the keys to the truck were jingling in his pocket like a reminder. Lots of things to do. Lots. Lex picked up the phone as Clark slid forward in the seat, and he caught the edge of something black and shiny beneath the edge of the couch. Curious, he pulled it out.

Dropped it almost immediately, and not for the first time, Clark wished that those powers had gone for good, because maybe then, his memory wouldn't be so perfect, his vision so precise.

Instantly, he pushed it back under the couch, knocking his heel into the sofa in the process, loudly. He was shaking somewhere inside, and it was *there*, in his head.

God. That--that....

"Clark?"

It was the lying that saved him. Auto-reflex and he found the words were tripping out on their own, because God knew, everything else in his head was a blank.

"Fine. Just--it's getting bad outside. I'd better--"

"Call your parents." Lex sorted through a stack of folders with a little frown, and Clark had the horrifying thought Lex was looking for that picture.

"Call my parents?" They were back in concrete things, and Clark always got lost when Lex switched languages like that. From Lexesque to human in the blink of an eye.

"I don't think you can drive in this, Clark." The blue eyes touched on him briefly. "Tell them you'll be here until it's over."

Clark nodded slowly, finding his footing. He had to get out of this room.

"I'll use the phone in the kitchen."

It's freefall, but nothing like it. This time when he lands, he knows it will hurt and something's going to be broken, maybe his sanity. Lex's hand is still on his face, gentle and stroking his skin with the lightest touch imaginable.

He has no idea what to say, and righteous rage just isn't going to work in this case. He's been pissed at Lex before, but he always knew on some level that he could afford it, that his credit at the inner bank of Lex was high enough that he could do almost anything and pretty much get by okay.

This time, rage will be expensive, and this time, he doesn't think he has the credit to cover it.

"No." Too naked a lie, even for him. "I mean--I saw, under the couch, but--" Words are swallowed in the silence growing around them. The smile doesn't change, not at all, and Clark takes a breath, feeling how still Lex is. Clark can hear the wind outside again, howling as if it's trying to get inside and find someone to haunt, or just to pick up a few chairs and papers and the shot glass Clark dropped on the carpet beside them.

Make a mess of the room the way Clark has made a mess of this.

"I didn't say I was unwilling, Clark, but you didn't have to get me drunk. Just a simple 'I'm hard, Lex' would have done it." Lex's other hand is between them, sliding to cup his cock through his jeans. Even with that mocking look, it's still hot, impossible not to move into it, gasp. Lex squeezes lightly, rubbing against the head with his thumb, hard and inescapable. "I'm easy, you know."

Still staring up at him with those blue eyes that say a lot of things that have nothing to do with want or need.

"Turned me on, too," Lex whispers, and he's sitting up, so suddenly Clark has to catch himself on one arm before he topples backward. Lips close to his, warm, tequila-scented breath. Strong, hard body. "You have no idea what she was like." Hand curling around the back of his neck. "Do you want me to tell you?"

Clark tries to breathe, but the hand's moving on his cock so slowly, so thoroughly, and then the button's undone and the zipper's jerked down. There's cool air and rational thought for a second, but just a second, and then Lex's hand slides inside the line of his boxers and strokes over the length. Clark sucks in a breath at the feeling--utterly different from doing it himself, new angle and new position and new *everything*. Lex knows where the sensitive spots are, uses them ruthlessly, pulling his head down until warm breath tickles his ear.

"I fucked her the first time when I was sixteen. Bathroom on the top of a broken toilet in London." Thumb circling the head and Clark can't stop the soft moan bitten out between his lips. "We were both high. She was tight and hot and she bit through my shoulder when she came."

The images are sharp, defined, *hard*, and this is just sick, no way to justify bucking into Lex's hand, to shiver when those lips brush over his throat, licking his ear, to let the images play out in his head. No way to do anything at all but let Lex do this and Clark'll be sick tomorrow, he knows it, he'll be sick and he'll hate himself, hate Lex, hate Victoria and the world and his body--but now--God, now....

"Her first day here, we fucked in my office. Bent over the desk, against the wall, on the couch. On her hands and knees on the floor." Warm breath on his ear, a sharp bite that's a shot of sensation arrowing straight into his cock. "Can you see it, Clark?"

God, yes, he could. See everything and it's too sharp to escape. Black and white pictures, color in the office now, and he's shaking.

"Want her, Clark?" The hand on his neck is rubbing deep circles, then fingernails, light and pushing in, slow and implacable, and it's just a goad. "Want me?"

A sharp bite to the lobe of his ear, and Clark grabs for Lex--his shoulder, his back, whatever he could reach. Tearing the collar of Lex's shirt and finding the bruise with his mouth, thinks he can taste Victoria there still.

It's a turn-on, too, and he's not sure how far over the line of perversity he's crawled and there might not be a way back. Not from this.

"Lots of things, Clark." Lex's voice a silky hiss, crawling beneath his skin, and Clark shudders, mouthing the bare skin. All the slick heat and the way Lex is stroking him, faster every second. "Slow and hard right here, spread you open and fuck you until you can't walk, can't even remember how. You have no idea, do you?" Hard strokes, too fast, thought is just a distant memory, everything's imagery and feeling. "Come on, Clark. You're close, I can feel it all through you. Let it go."

It's too much. God, too much, too hot, and Clark jerks, biting down when he feels the first shock. Orgasm completely different than anything he's done on his own and still pleasure--dark and thick and twisting in his gut, pulled from everywhere in his body, everywhere, and it shatters him, no way to do anything but just go with it. He's sobbing something and holding Lex so tight he'll leave bruises, and he has the taste of iron over tequila in his mouth and licks at it.

Lex's blood on his tongue and his teeth, and God, Lex's hands on his body, easing away from his cock, and he twitches. The button on his jeans is neatly done and the zipper pulled up, and Lex pushes him back.

It's too sudden to do anything but sprawl, knocking the bottle over, and the world is nothing but the smell of tequila and sex and blood. When he can open his eyes, Lex is standing, looking down at him. Deliberately licked his hand, catching the taste, and Clark shudders again, cock twitching painfully. It's too soon, not nearly enough.

"I wouldn't mind you replacing her in my bed."

It's like a rapier that doesn't stop at his throat--cuts through the lies and the half-truths and it hits dead center. Because it's true.

"Think about it. My door is always open." And he turns on his heel, walking away. Clark shuts his eyes, staring up at the ceiling with the wind in his ears and the taste of Lex in his mouth.

He ends up running.

Not for home or any place like that, because if he did, he'd never leave. He'd hide in the loft under a pile of blankets and see Lex and Victoria on Lex's desk, on Lex's couch, in Lex's bed. Her long legs and her bright hair and her brilliant smile and the fact that she has Lex in ways that Clark never can. Even now.

Lex said it wasn't love, but Clark's beginning to wonder what exactly either of them know about love. Maybe love is what makes you fuck your best friend on the den floor, make your best friend a proxy. Makes you want to be--want to be that proxy, still want that body and that voice and that offer that some part of Clark wants, badly, just to accept. He's done it before--not like that, not ever like that--but there's a limousine in his memory, and Lana, a party he missed as Lana's escort, and if he's going to be honest--and God, he can't be anything but, not now--he would have done it for Lana, too. Wanted it, and it says something about him, something he can't even try to deny.

That's when he ends up sitting in snow and feeling the wind all around him, and that's when he realizes he's in deeper than he'd thought, and he'd known he was in damned deep.

There aren't enough choices. Go home, go back to Lex's, keep running until it's burned out of his mind--the feel of Lex's voice and the black and white picture and Lex's hand on his cock and the taste of tequila that Clark will never be able to touch again. Even thinking it brings him up and on his knees, wanting to throw it all up and knowing his body just doesn't do that.

It sucks being invulnerable.

He hates her. Not the 'I want to kill you because it will be worth years of guilt' hate like Phelan, but something completely different, even worse in some indefinable way. He wants to hurt her, leave the kind of scars she's left in Lex, that Lex left in him, and wants the chance to look at the scars often afterward and know he put them there. Wants to see her face and wants to touch her body and find out, for sure, what she has, what makes her what Lex wants so much, against everything and despite everything.

He's been sitting in snow for an hour before it occurs to him that he has at least two more days at Lex's, maybe three if the weather holds like this, and God, he's supposed to--what? Avoid him for the next few days?--granted, not exactly hard in that godforsaken castle. Crawl into bed with him and just let it go, all of it? Tell him to fuck himself and leave despite below zero temperature and unpredictable winds?

There's nothing else to do--Lex believes him now, that he's human, that he's normal, that he's not special or anything out of the ordinary--

--You're special, Clark. Luthor says you're special, and now I'm special, too.--

Getting to his feet, he runs a hand across his face and catches the lines of cold water--tears he didn't know he'd been crying, and the taste of them is salt.

Snow's cold against his knees and he still can't throw up, though he wants to. Badly.

Day 2: Don't Look Down

He wasn't paying attention--somehow, he'd expected Lex to be in his office or maybe still in bed. The storm took a downturn that brought something terrifying like hope out around two this morning, but it's back, full force and pissed as hell. Like it's echoing the world inside the castle, which is getting smaller by the second.

Lex is in the kitchen with a bowl of oatmeal and absently drinking a cup of coffee. Casual shirt in some shade of blue that shifts with the eyes that find Clark before he can think to turn and run, and Lex smiles.

It's a light stab--not enough to debilitate, just enough to remind him of the absence of pain. There aren't any edges at all.

"I was wondering when you'd be up. I made oatmeal." He gestures toward the pot in the center of the table that's so shiny Clark would swear it's never been used.

"Thanks," he mumbles, and sees the bowl already sitting out, spoon neatly beside it, a glass waiting for him to get comfortable enough to panic. Almost magically, a pitcher of orange juice appears before him on the table when he sits down, and this--this is surreal.

Eating does this great thing, though--it keeps talking from happening. Lex is reading a paperback bound in fading yellow and so old Clark can't even read the title anymore. The room is silent, and it's bright, and it's getting smaller. Clark wishes he could eat at superspeed and then go hide, and wonders how he's going to handle two more days of this.

He tries not to look at Lex, tries not to see if there's any sign of the sleepless night that Clark's had, but there's nothing there. Lex eats like it's a newfound religious experience and reads like it has the words of God or the best method of world conquest between the yellow covers and that's it. He's not getting water from stones (and he's tried, just from curiosity) or a reaction from Lex.

Anger wants to make an appearance, but there's too much going on in Clark's head to be able to do anything with it but attack the oatmeal. The silence is this sort of comfortable where all the words that could be said are apparently not going to be, not ever, and he thinks that Lex might just forget the entire thing. He's perfectly capable of rewriting history in the image he wants.

Burying the bodies, so to speak, and Clark wonders if he can do that or even wants to, and if that offer that Lex made is one he wants buried, too.

The sound of Lex getting up and taking the bowl to the sink drags Clark from his contemplation of his oatmeal, and Lex gets his cup of coffee before going toward the kitchen door, book tucked under his arm. There's a scary moment that Clark's relieved and angry all at once.

"Entertain yourself for a while. I have a few things to do in my office." And gone, out the door, it could have been any other day except, of course, for the entire staying-the-night-and-eating-breakfast-together thing. And the bizarre, traumatizing sex upstairs that still gets him hard whenever he tries too hard not to think about it.

He's never felt younger than this moment, right this second. Bowl's empty and Clark makes a run for it. Call his dad. Gotta do that. Don't forget.

There's a phone in the kitchen, but Clark wanders upstairs, remembering vaguely that Lex is one of those people who keeps a phone *everywhere*. There's also a shower, which he attacks first, and his boxers--well, frankly, they need to be washed before another wear. There's got to be some sort of laundry room here, and Clark makes a mental note to ask Lex about it as he slips back into his till-damp clothes, feeling really weird without the underwear.

It's startling, though not unexpected, to see the den clean. The alcoholic reverie erased as if it had never happened, and Victoria's heels are gone from under the couch as well. He has to pause, check out the state of the carpet, and finds it clean and dry beneath his hand. A faint, sweet-powdery smell emanates that he recognizes from home.

Which brings up imagery of Lex coming out here sometime early this morning while Clark was brooding outside, with carpet cleaner and actually *scrubbing* it, and now, for some reason, Lex's behavior is highly clarified.

If the evidence is gone, it never happened.

Slowly, Clark pulls himself back up, finding the phone by accident on the end table beside the couch. There's a brief second of sick curiosity about the former recreational uses of the couch before Clark sits down--after all, if Lex is covering his tracks, there's little chance he's going to find something here that's going to give him more issues. Picking up the cordless, he flicks it on.

Scratchy dial tone. A harbinger of the future, which will be phonelessness. Quickly, Clark dials the number.

Two rings and it's picked up.

"Clark?"

Ah, Dad. Probably hovering near the phone, waiting for the call from the indestructible son.

"Hey Dad." Clark racks his brains for something to say, but the weirdest and most inappropriate things are coming into his head. Like, *Hey, I had sex, sort of* and *I really, really think therapy is gonna be necessary* and *I need more underwear.* Nothing useful.

"You okay?"

Like what exactly does Dad think is going to happen? It's just worry, Clark knows--basic parental worry, that even if he's invulnerable, it's still theoretical as far as his father's concerned, no matter how many shredders, cars, or cliffs there are. It usually isn't this annoying--and even now, his parents actually have *reason* to be worried, what with the days of humanness that were his life recently.

But--

"I'm fine. You know, despite the fact Lex is chasing me with a knife due to cabin fever. I'm hiding under the bed, by the way." God, it's so stupid, but he can't help himself. There's a long, serious moment where he begins to think that his father's sanity has snapped and the man is considering this a viable idea, but the silence stretches too long. "Sorry."

"You should be." Little pause. "What's wrong?"

Nothing. Everything.

"Bad night. The storm--it's loud up here." And it's not entirely a lie, not really. It is loud. "And you know, lots of snow." Deep snow, too, if Clark's trip outside is any indication. Possibly, very possibly, it could get high and thick enough for even him to have some problems.

He can't be sure his father believes him--if they were face to face, he'd know for a fact--but the line's breaking and reading audio cues on a phone during a storm is near impossible.

"Son, are you sure--"

And Clark sighs.

"If you have a good way for me to get home short of erasing Lex's memory directly after, I'm open to it. But Dad--" Clark rubbed his head distractedly. No hangover, thank God. Maybe invulnerable boys were immune to that, too. Nice possibilities inherent in the knowledge. "I'm fine. Lex is working in his office and I'm about to play a few games. Everything's great, really."

There's another silence, then the tiniest sigh. "All right. I love you."

"Love you too, Dad. Give my love to Mom." Clark clicks the phone off, studying it for a few moments before pulling his knees up, wrapping them close against his chest. Yes, there's a Playstation, movies, everything anyone could need for solitary entertainment, and Clark takes a minute to wonder how much time Lex spends up here alone.

Probably a lot.

Slumping into the couch, Clark broods on his options. He can entertain himself. He has to, really; option two is spending the day doing what he did most of the night--to wit, more brooding, which frankly, was *so* not much fun.

But--there's Lex's door, and there's his own sick curiosity. He remembers, a little distractedly, when Lex hired some Metropolitan firm to come clean up his room after the adventures of the Anti-Victoria Campaign headed by Jeff. Who Clark is beginning to seriously sympathize with, by the way, at least in his stand on the presence of Victoria.

Getting to his feet, he walks toward the door, thinking on the possibility of being caught. Unlikely, but possible, since Lex is Lex and therefore somewhat unpredictable. Curiosity wins, and Clark pushes the door open.

First thing of course--painful neatness. Clark's mother would be impressed, and it makes Clark think serious thoughts on this being an excellent way for at least one member of his family to connect with Lex. Immaculate rug placement, bed neatly made, not a scrap of clothing on the floor (Clark's own personal Waterloo in the neat-room department). It didn't feel like anyone *lives* here though. Strange, off-putting feeling of a guest room, and maybe that says something about Lex, too, that he always seems most *real* in that office.

Clark sucks in a little breath. This is wrong. Very, very wrong. He should not be looking around in here--

And there's nothing to see. Literally.

"What the hell--"

Clark spins on a heel--and this is bad, very bad, extremely bad, because he's in Lex's *room* and there's just no reason for that, none at all. Like God's giving him a quick slap for snooping or something. And he wasn't snooping, he'd swear.

Clark hadn't realized until this moment how much background noise is made by electricity--the soft hum of the heater in the background, the buzz of electrical lights and appliances around the castle. Without the heat, the wind outside is harsh and loud and--well, spooky.

He's not a kid anymore. He doesn't get spooked just because the lights are out. Especially with x-ray vision, which means--well, he's still perfectly capable of seeing. So. He's fine.

He's huddling on the floor against the wall, and that--God. Crap. Big macho hero, huh, Clark?

Forcing a grin, Clark gets to his feet, reaching out to find the line of the wall and flipping his vision over--always uncomfortable, and he still gets headaches if he uses it too long. Blinking, he readjusts, finding the lines of the wall and the floor--hand on the wall, he guides himself out, into the den, then glanced around for the stairs.

Lex. Alone in this. Well, Lex is an adult and probably perfectly comfortable sitting around in absolute dark. Probably. So no problem. And surely there are candles somewhere, for emergencies like this. Clark takes the stairs two at a time, ignoring the little voice in his head that asks, rather snidely at that, if he's not scared, why is he running for company?

Crap. Clark ignores the voice and carries on. He's restraining himself from running only because he doesn't trust super-vision enough to risk running *through* a wall instead of just stopping at one. There's no possible reasonable explanation for that.

Downstairs, left at the stairs, right here, and he comes to the door of the downstairs study with a little shock. Pausing, he raps on the door, then pushes it open.

"Lex?"

Nothing.

Going inside, Clark looks around. No Lex in evidence. Huh. So. Not here. Clark focuses, feeling the first flare of pain across his temples, and starts studying the entire floor. No, no, no, no--

--skeletal structure. Looks like it's still living--Clark still isn't sure if the secretly buried bodies of whatever ancient Luthors who owned the castle before hadn't been shipped as well, just to keep the authenticity--and Clark tries to decide where, exactly, Lex is located.

Since it's left--left is the kitchen. Good to go.

Easy to make his way down the hall, but even with the vision thing, the dark is--well, not friendly. Certainly not when combined with howling winds and the distinct cool cut of the air now that the heater is off. Thing about castles, sadly enough--originally, they weren't exactly designed for great insulation. Feeling his way down the passage, Clark emerges into the kitchen.

"Lex?"

Little pause, and below the sound of the wind, Clark thinks he can hear breathing.

"In here, Clark."

Clark turns slowly, taking in the room. Came from the right--pantry, he thinks. Okay. Carefully, Clark picks his way across the room, finding the handle of the ajar door. It occurs to him that dim light is emerging from inside and flicks his vision back to normal--and grabs for his head at the spike of pain.

Oh yeah, he's sooo going to be feeling this one for awhile.

"Clark?" The soft sounds of Lex moving, close enough to hear over the storm outside, and a hand closes over his wrist. Light pull, and he's inside, where Clark blinks in the faint light of about six candles, arranged artistically on the three lowest shelves. "Come on--I just found the candles."

Slowly, Clark eases to the floor, where Lex already apparently took up a pretty comfortable residence. A cigarette lighter and the yellow-backed book are on the floor, along with a dusty brown bottle he doesn't recognize. Lex twists around him, pulling the pantry door shut, and crosses back over, settling down and reaching for something on the second shelf.

It takes Clark a second to recognize--

"You're eating cake icing?"

Quick flash of teeth.

"Don't start. One of the perks of adulthood is eating whatever you want whenever you want." Lex extends the container with another smile. "Have some? Bittersweet chocolate buttercream. Nothing better, with no nutritional value whatsoever."

More from good manners than anything, Clark dips a hand in, visualizing his mother's face if she could see this. It isn't a pretty sight. Grinning, he licks it off his finger and okay, icing is *good*.

"Thanks."

"Always at your service, Mr. Kent," Lex answers, idly sucking on one finger. "So I see not only did the regular current go off, the generator did too. This should be an interesting storm."

"Can you fix it?"

Lex shakes his head, two fingers buried in the chocolate.

"I'm flattered by your faith in my versatility, but biochemical engineer, not mechanical. Too practical. But if you'd like your very own designer narcotic, I can help you out." Lex licks the tip of his finger free of chocolate, eyes closing briefly. He's enjoying the chocolate. Clark is, too, just watching Lex. "How long did you say these storms last?"

Clark thinks about it for a minute before mutely extending one hand. With a grin, Lex moves the container under his fingers. His mom is *so* going to kill him.

"Last year it was about a week," Clark answers, licking. Too nervous to see if Lex is watching him, but he swears he can *feel* it. "We're going to starve to death, aren't we?"

"Not with the quantity of icing and instant pudding mix in here."

"Freeze to death?"

"There's this low-tech invention known as a fireplace. Heard of it?"

"Is the phone still up?"

"So I can call and bitch to someone to get down here via teleportation to fix things? No, the phone went out first. Enough warning for me to decide that maybe finding the candles wouldn't be such a bad idea. Just to be prepared."

The pantry seems a little quieter than the rest of the castle, and warmer--maybe something to do with small space and being an interior room or something, and Clark likes it. Sucking a little chocolate off the side of his palm, he tries not to watch Lex too closely.

It's hard, in every way. Long elegant fingers traced in dark brown, a smear by the side of his mouth, trailing down his wrist and onto the cuff of the long sleeve shirt. Clark realizes he stops breathing every time Lex's tongue darts out and drags his gaze to the floor, rubbing his forehead to distract himself. Even low-grade pain isn't doing much to help.

"You okay?"

Clark looks up and sees Lex's gaze fixed on him with something like worry.

"Headache. Nothing serious." Rubs again. He hates how these settle--the only comparison he can think of is how his mother describes her allergy headaches in late spring. His brief stint as Normal Guy hadn't included headaches, but Clark has some unpleasant memories of landing on the top of that car and the new and unexciting varieties of pain available in the human spectrum of experience. This isn't as bad, granted, but it's not that great either.

Both eyebrows arch in question.

"Hangover?"

"No--well, maybe a little." Clark shrugs, pushing aside the memories that seem to sit just outside the door of his consciousness, ready to push in at the slightest provocation. "It's no big deal."

"Hmm." And Lex is studying him, reaching out with chocolate covered fingers and smoothing the sharp line Clark knows has developed between his eyebrows. It's warm, slick, and--comforting. Clark lets his eyes fall closed. "You should have told me this morning. I have a remedy in my bathroom." More touching, firmer, more fingers, more pressure. As if he can draw the pain away by sheer will.

Lex is *touching* him. Clark deliberately tries to recall what had happened the *last* time Lex touched him but--it's distant now. Warm pantry closed around them, the smell of chocolate, the storm locked outside, soft light making this slightly unreal, and Lex just doesn't do this, not for anyone Clark has ever seen, not even Victoria.

This is miles and memories away from the den, and Clark hands himself over to it.

"I'm getting chocolate on you," Lex murmurs, and Clark opens his eyes, meeting intense blue. Even candlelight isn't enough to dispel the heat there, the thousand other things that always seem to be fighting some sort of war in Lex's mind. Lex's thumb is smoothing a slow path over his forehead, like he knows where every ache is located and wants to fix them all.

There's something else there, vivid below the set lines of Lex's face, and Clark shrugs a little awkwardly, mouth going dry.

"S'okay." Just wants to keep the contact, but the fingers are gone, and it's like withdrawal. Clark blinks, his skin cold, but Lex is moving, fast, hand against the side of Clark's face, leaving another line of thick chocolate on his cheek. Lex leaning forward, and *there*--brush of a warm, wet tongue against his forehead.

Clark shoves both hands against the cold stone of the floor, trying to keep perfectly still, breath released in a soft sigh. Slow path across his skin, the drag of Lex's lips now too, and Clark's breath catches in his throat. Doesn't want to move, even breathe; he can't remember a touch like this in his life and doesn't want it to end. Lex's thumb is resting just beside his mouth and he can't quite help it--darts out a quick lick, tasting chocolate and skin beneath, so warm and smooth, and does it again. Lex isn't moving away, the touch isn't changing, but--

--stops, breath warm on his slick skin for an endless moment, then the hand under his jaw pressing his head up. A second of nothing but this *look* that he can't define, and it's not important, because Lex leans forward, hand moving from his cheek and tongue catching another line of slick chocolate.

It's pure sensuality, settling in Clark's stomach, diffusing this feeling everywhere--his fingertips, his toes, the sensitive skin at the back of his neck, his bare stomach. He knows somewhere in the back of his mind that he'll never see an iced cake again and not *remember* this. A slow lick to the corner of his jaw, then a silky drag until the slick tongue is running over his mouth.

Little breath he can't help, and Lex traces the line of his lips when they're parted. Clark digs his fingers into the floor, somewhere in him hoping he's not leaving gouges in solid stone and the rest of him not giving a good damn. Lex--kissing him. Slow and careful like he's making a mental map, and he lets his mouth open a little, tilts his head to offer Lex whatever he wants.

Lex takes it.

There's Tina, somewhere in the back of his mind--Chloe too, and then there's the vision of Victoria and Lex that lingers longer, the fuck upstairs that burns when he touches the memory--but he wipes it all out, going with the moment. Warm insinuation into his mouth, achingly slow while Lex studies everywhere before moving on, and it feels--God, it feels good. Lex's tongue in his mouth, his hands on his face, no touch anywhere else but there, but it's more than enough. Like everything in his body is focused just *here*, and he had to touch. Just the line of Lex's jaw with the tips of his fingers, skin incredibly smooth and silky soft. Can't stop, not if the lights came on and all of Smallville was watching this, his parents, Lana, and Victoria and Lionel Luthor, too.

Doesn't care at all, because Lex is letting him--*letting* him, it's like a gift or an offer and he wants it. Finds himself sliding closer, lets his other hand fall naturally against Lex's thigh, smooth wool beneath his hand, hard muscle under that shifts at the touch. The hands on his face are holding now, moving into his hair, slow fingers tracking his skull and settling solid on the back of his neck. Sucks a little on Lex's tongue and there's a sound, he's not sure who makes it, and just one thought, one drive--closer, get closer.

And they're on their knees, somehow, strong male body warm and heavy, alien in the best possible way, and Lex's mouth is settling on his throat, still so damn *slow* and thorough and God, it's like moving through honey, all thick, languorous movements and moist heat. Clark tilts his head back and tries to remember how to breathe naturally--there isn't even the memory of a headache anymore, with Lex's hand on his back, running in steady strokes between his shoulder blades, settling on the small of his back and then back up again, like being petted but nothing like it at all. Wet sounds that seem to be the only thing in the world to listen to, Lex's breathing quick and steady below it. Sucking at the hollow of his throat that tightens his body and then below his ear, smooth slick tongue tracing the pulse and beneath his jaw. The drag of teeth that make Clark shiver hard, grip tighter.

It comes to a natural slow stop--Lex's mouth sliding slower on his shoulder, and Clark just waits, not wanting to move, spoil this moment by doing anything at all. Being tasted, thoroughly. Wonderful. Clark hears his own unsteady breathing now, and never before has he been aware of his body like this. Not the constant danger of losing control, the way it could betray him at any given moment with its strength or its speed or God, the weird new powers that show up randomly to make his life that much more complicated but--. What else it can do, how it can feel. It's like being just human again, here with Lex. Lex, who hasn't moved at all, and Clark can't quite stop himself from stroking the shoulder beneath his hand.

"Lex--" It comes out involuntarily, because he really, really doesn't want to say anything that could possibly break this.

"Hmm?" Lick of his neck, quick and light, then Lex moves back, but thank God, his hands don't move. Thumb idly drawing circles on his jaw and warm still on his back through his sweater. And now that he's said something--he has to find something to add to it. Do it again, please--okay, that might sound odd. Is there more icing? You want to talk about this?

Oh God no. Talking would be so bad right now.

"Umm--you think there's--I mean, I sort of need to change clothes."

Little pause, then there's the coolest sound imaginable--Lex is laughing.

"I'm a lousy host. Come on--I can find my way around here in the dark." Lex gets to his feet, blowing out two of the candles, and Clark presses a shaky hand to the floor, pushing himself up. "I think--here." Lex shuffles something in the darker back of the pantry, then comes back with two linen napkins. He wraps one carelessly around the bottom of a candle and hands it to Clark.

A hideously expensive candle holder, that. Lex wraps the other and lets the edge fall over his wrist, leaning down to pick up the lighter, then considers the icing for a few minutes before a little grin turns up his mouth. Picking it up, he puts it on the shelf and Clark steps to the side, letting Lex lead the way to the door.

It's a quiet journey, and Clark discovers that the candles really didn't do much of anything useful in the way of guidance. Lex's quiet curse on the stairs also tells him that the linen isn't helping with the candle wax issues, and then they're in the den again somehow and Lex pushes his way into his bedroom.

"Hmm." Lex thinks for a moment. "Let's see--you're what, about two feet taller than me?"

Clark catches Lex's grin in the candle. "Three at least."

"Yes. I noticed that. All right, stay here. And the lights would go out when I actually need to look around in my closet--"

"You don't know what you have in there?" Cant' help teasing. "I didn't think you owned that many clothes--"

Lex gives him a patient look.

"Be careful unless you want to end up in a dress--"

"I won't ask how you got a dress--" Clark stops, too suddenly to cover for it, but forces himself to stumble on. "Can it at least be in my color?"

There's a tense second, then Lex shakes his head, muttering something that sounds vaguely threatening about the color puce, then opens the door, disappearing inside until even the candle light is gone. Clark looks down and notes that wax has splashed across his wrist and picks it off idly, rearranging the linen over it. There's noises from inside--and the sound of something toppling and then Lex cursing loudly and thoroughly and part of it isn't even understandable, and Clark makes a note to ask what language *that* was before Lex emerges carrying several items over one arm and Clark follows the dim form to the bed.

"Selection complete. Go right ahead."

Rural living and open showers at school have one really good perk--Clark lost his ability to be shy around the time in third grade Pete hid his clothes after gym and he spent an hour in a towel while the gym teacher looked frantically for something for him to wear. But this is just slightly to the left of that, and he hands Lex the candle, turning slightly to pull sweater and t-shirt over his head and discarding them at the foot of the bed. Shoes next, and he sits on the edge of the bed and drops them carefully to avoid later tripping. Jeans, too, and he reaches for the clothes by touch.

Hears a sound that's almost lost in the shock when the cold hits and he realizes--right, no *underwear*.

Clark pauses and glances up to see Lex watching him without expression but still managing to make him flush like he hasn't for this in years. And yes, this is definitely a world away from the locker room and wet towels and the crude jokes Clark still can't make himself repeat, like, ever. Taking a breath, he pulls the sweat pants up, material the worst sort of tease on his skin and okay, he's officially perverted or something, because--cotton sweat pants? Sweater next, feeling the thick material catch on the rough palms of his hands. Smoothest, softest stuff he's ever felt, like liquid, and opens his mouth to ask what it is, before Lex's voice, low and quiet, cuts between them.

"Need help?"

And he could be absolutely serious, because the voice is deadpan, very Lex. And the room, right, see, it *had* seemed cold but it really, really wasn't. Clark licks his lips, quick, trying to think of something to say that won't sound as stupid as the stuff running through his head, like a commentator narrating bad porn.

The sweatpants are not *nearly* bulky enough to hide his reaction. Not good. Not good at all.

"I-I'm good, thanks."

If Lex had looked at him for a second longer, had done so much as raise an eyebrow, Clark would have touched him. Pulled him so close he'd feel the heat of his body, that smooth skin, push him down on the bed and crawl on top and just--God, do anything Lex let him. Anything was an amazing number of things, too, far more than he'd ever suspected twelve years on planet earth had stored away in his mind. They ran through his mind in vivid color with sound effects and oh *damn*....

"Socks are beside you." And Lex steps back, little grin then as if something has just happened, but what exactly is a mystery. Clark fumbles the sweater over his head and grabs blind for the socks, and head to toe he's dressed again and in Lex's clothes.

Which is--hot in a new way, and it's weird how sweat breaks out at the thought.

"So--" And his voice sounds--oh, sounds not very normal, not at all. "What now?"

"I'm thinking on that." Lex hands him the candle back and surveys the room like he's looking for inspiration. "I didn't exactly plan for--blizzards." Little sigh. "I wonder where I left the chess board."

"Chess?"

"You can play, right?"

"Well." Clark pauses, thinking. "I know how the pieces move, if that's what you mean."

A soft laugh and Lex's hand touches his shoulder, quick and light. No time for Clark to do anything but breathe at the echo of it.

"Close enough. Let's see if we can hunt it up--God knows, there's not much else to do, so no hurry." Smooth smile, and Lex turns back to the door as if they hadn't done anything more interesting than discuss the weather.

Clark follows.

Lex is two steps beyond wired--unable to sit still, though he still manages to beat Clark in all three games of chess, one with a queen handicap and one where Clark would swear he wasn't even watching the board. At the beginning, Lex played at his level--that is to say, it came laden with little signs like a cleared throat or raised eyebrows when one of his moves was beyond idiotic, and it gave Clark some confidence that this was a game he could actually learn.

Game two was queen handicap--a little faster, but not quite as damaging to his pride as it could have been. Game three was ten moves with Lex twitching in his chair and getting up for water four times. Clark's king died a shameful death right in front of his eyes and Lex's hands were that quiet stillness on the edge of shaking. Like withdrawal, Clark thinks, but totally different.

"Checkmate." A brush of Lex's fingers and Clark watches his king topple to the board. It's his imagination that the sound echoes over the entire world. Surely there were people who played worse chess than he did. Lex leans back, folding his arms, jacket pulling tight, and Clark can see the fingers are twitching against the dark material of his sleeve before he notices what he's doing and stops.

It's a dangerous sort of amusement to watch Lex go into his own private version of the jitters--so still that the air itself seems to be waiting and Clark realizes that he's been watching Lex for a full five minutes without Lex noticing.

That in itself is a disturbing development.

"Your laptop has a battery, right?" Clark asks finally, mostly from self-defense. He can't handle a fourth game.

"Laptop?" Long fingers sliding across the wood of the desk they've been playing at, blue eyes going to the innocent looking computer, shut down and quiet on the other side. "Yes, it has a battery. Why?"

Maybe Lex isn't aware he's beginning to have some disturbing parallels with 'The Shining', but Clark's beginning to mentally review his list of Stephen King novels. Isolation seems to always be a bad idea. They're in a castle, and there's snow. Horror movies have started with a lot less in the way of atmosphere, but on the other hand, the virgin never dies, so maybe Clark's safe.

Well, whoa. Not a virgin. Or is he? What's the line when it comes to boys anyway?

"You just look--er. Like you need something more interesting to do." If Clark has his way, he'll leave Lex to quietly work his way through his energy level, and Clark will do a few runs of the castle. It's affecting him, too. It's been a long time since forced inactivity--a *really* long time, and maybe his dad is going to start remembering that and be grateful that Lex is going to have to deal with it and not him.

Lex gives him a startled look, then thoughtful.

"I'm not--it's just I had some things I was doing until the phone decided to play dead." Lex twitches, getting to his feet and finding the fifth bottled water from some mysterious place beneath his desk. "It's--frustrating."

Clark's beginning to wonder what exactly is in Lex's water supply.

"Oh." Nothing to say to that. Clark looks down at the board. There's a good chance he'll go insane if he loses again. Especially if Lex makes it look so--well, pathetically easy.

"Want another game?" And it's not like Lex even sounds like he cares--maybe he's trying for a personal best in beating high school kids or something. Clark can't help the flare.

"No, I don't." It's in his voice, he knows it--and maybe he can admit that they're both beginning to feel the effects of a dark castle and no electronic equipment. Wonders how long it will be before they both check out the kitchen for sharp items to mull while thinking less than socially-acceptable thoughts.

And it's been, what, a little over twenty-four hours? This can't be a good sign at all.

When he looks up, Lex is studying him with this slightly abstracted air--not personal, more like searching for a mistake in an equation or God, checking out some contract for unpleasant clauses.

"How would you like to be entertained, Clark?" Too smooth to be insulting, but something edged and dark beneath it. This could end up Movie of the Week; if he can be killed, he wonders who will play him. Too much to hope it's Matt Damon.

That thought's enough to bring back a little sanity, and Clark leans back into his chair.

"I'm beginning to think Thoreau was utterly insane," Clark answers, and Lex's lips quirk.

"I've never understood the appeal of isolation," Lex answered, playing with his water bottle. "Or enforced inactivity for that matter. What did you do at home?"

Oh. Well. That.

"We only lost electricity only once--but that was pretty near the end of the storm. Mom learned to crochet, Dad rebuilt the tractor's engine in the living room and left stains all over the floor. We spent the last day sanding those out of the wood." Something's moving in the back of Clark's head. It actually seems like a good idea, idiotic as it feels. "So you know this whole castle even in the dark, huh?"

"I can walk it blindfolded," Lex answers, head tilting. Smile widening suddenly, and no one could ever accuse Lex Luthor of being slow. "I'll give you a five minute head start. And if you ever--*ever*--tell anyone about this, I will deny it and have you killed."

Clark grinned as he got to his feet. Good mood restored, energy release, and Lex is smiling. It's all good.

"You can try. Anything I should worry about?"

"Just the dead wives I keep in the north tower. But don't worry--they only get grumpy when I forget to add a new one every few months." Eyebrows up, sparkling energy running through him beneath his skin like light, making the candle superfluous. "Ready to play?"

The castle has gotten big again.

Not just intimidatingly large--endless rooms filled with covered antiques and no light--but *big*, like something out of a fairy tale, and there are random moments where Clark wonders if he'll ever find a way back again. He's not cheating--human speed and human eyes to survey the lay of the dark halls, and he didn't remember to grab a candle before he left Lex's office. Bad idea anyway, like a beacon for Lex to find, maybe leaving trails of wax behind him. No reason to make this too easy.

He has time to think again, probably not a good idea. Without Lex and some customized denial, he's adrift again, and he's beginning to think that running is really becoming a little too much of a symbolic cliche in this little gothic fantasy. And what the hell was Lionel thinking, anyway? A *castle*, for God's sake?

But then, he can hear his father's voice, mumbling things about Luthors and their propensities and multiple sins that they apparently inherited along with the surname and indecent amounts of money. Castles and random trucks and little gifts that bind more firmly than even Clark really understood before this moment.

Clark skids down a hallway off another hall, through a room that's draped in pale dusty sheets like the memories of some ghosts who found exile to Kansas even more boring than expected. He has to pity them--there's a romantic idea in being a specter in Scotland, but frankly, up against meteor-pumped mutants, they look pretty silly. Probably abandoned the castle around the time they realized there was serious competition from the living in the art of terror.

Sliding into another large room--bedroom, if the bedframe he hits his knee on is any indication--Clark stops to think about where to go next.

And not just in the castle either.

There's a sidedoor--Clark checks it and finds a closet. He could curl up here--he's gone pretty far interior, aware of the chill of the house and wondering a little vaguely if Lex will be okay meandering around in these temperatures. Well, as long as he's moving--and there's an activity, firewood gathering, slated for later tonight. Clark's seen the fireplace in use--he knows at least one chimney in this place works. In the den, come to think of it, and great, that'll be fun to hang out in for a night and see the place on the carpet where he and Lex--

--did things.

Let's not cope just yet.

Closing the door, Clark feels his way along the wall--dim outside light in an uninspiring shade of grey through one curtained window keeps the room from being pitch black, but it almost hinders the process of finding anything. Everything's in monochrome and the dark spaces look too solid, and Clark's managed to trip over shadows that he thought were furniture. No excuse of meteor rocks--that was all the horror of adolescence there.

It's actually a pretty comforting thought. Very normal and teenagerish. It may suck, but hey, at least he shares it with the rest of the males of the planet between the ages of thirteen and seventeen.

Another door, and he pulls it open. Not a closet--how on earth are these rooms put together anyway? Going through, Clark stops at the sound of--something.

It's this automatic impulse to check behind him. There was no way Lex could have caught up with him. So maybe it was a ghost, checking out to see who was wandering through the castle. Maybe he should be scared.

Maybe he should remember he was only three years out of wanting to sleep with a nightlight every night. And *not* think about the fact he's surrounded by lots of space and sheets. Because he's fifteen, for God's sake, and he's been up against much scarier things.

But maybe he should, you know, get out of this room.

He can't help but grin at himself, even as his heart does a miniature speed-up, and he makes his way across the floor, aware he's actively listening now for something to spook him.

Chloe would laugh at him for *years* if she found out about this. Which she wasn't. Not ever. Ever, ever, ever.

There. Another sound. Light and soft--very likely just the creak of really old stone. Because stone surely creaks. Clark finds the far door by dint of hitting it full body and pulls it open. A brighter shade of grey--the room bathed in fragile light from high, narrow windows, and Clark can see the rushing snow outside if he looks hard. Another room. One day, he's going to ask Lex for the blueprints and a history lesson, because this room is damn cool.

Okay. So, where next? The clever thing to do, of course, is double back to the warm, lived in parts of the castle. And wow, to think he'd thought once that even the rooms Lex occupied seemed rather deserted. Not even. He'd do a lot to see carpet and signs of human habitation not a good century or so old.

Clever thing to do, double back, but that's a problem, and Clark turns slightly to view the door behind him. Not one of his brighter moments, he'd been running blind for--check the watch, God, thirty minutes?--and okay, he could figure this out if he just looked long enough. Back through that door, across the room, then the room with the closet and then a hallway and another hallway and he just got lost again. Crap.

Had it been left out of his alien genotype to give him something as simple as a decent sense of direction? Chloe could be blindfolded and spun around but could find north like a magnet. Pete could use directions based on landmarks of all things, but he, Clark Kent, superboy extraordinaire, had been known to get lost in the mall.

There's a scary flash of a possible future where someone a hundred years from now finds his still living but utterly insane self running in circles trying to find a way back out, and this is the reason why, in essence, his mother restricted him from horror movies last year.

Turning, Clark goes back into the room he just emerged from. Straight across, and no one is ever going to know the fact that little goosebumps are jumping to attention all over his body. Moving quickly, he trips over something shadowy--could be another godforsaken shadow for all he knows--and comes out in another room, and there's several doors, and oh God, it was going to be on Chloe's Wall of Weird, Kent Boy Disappears in Mysterious Castle While Parents Grieve and Blame Luthor Spawn Who Lost Their Only Son....

"Lost?"

And that's how he gets plastered against the wall.

God, did he yell? No, no, no, he didn't, please no.

There's a low chuckle and something bright flares to life--a candle--and he sees Lex's face, smiling with disgusting amounts of amusement.

"Scare you?"

Clark takes a minute to wait for the cold sweat to dry and his heartbeat to return to normal.

"No." Did he sound normal?

"Of course not." The candle disappears beneath Lex's fingers, plunging them into darkness. Clark can't see *anything* and crap, he's going to strangle Lex and screw being normal and human. Flicks his vision, but Lex isn't in the room. A little further flicker and he looks around him. This room is empty and so are the two on either side--crap, Lex must have moved *really* damn fast.

Probably hiding somewhere to scare the hell out of him, and so much for playing fair.

Hands clenched into fists, Clark stalks into the next room, the billowy white a hell of a lot less disturbing now that he can see the furniture it's protecting. Faint light unnecessary now--the room's big and there are only three doors. No Lex anywhere in sight, and Lex must be moving really damn fast, faster than really possible or--

--sudden, scraping sound, low to the ground--

--*crap*--

--a hand closes on his ankle with a quick jerk that forces a sound out of Clark's throat that isn't a scream IS NOT a scream and Lex is laughing like the world is ending.

"You bastard," he breathes. On the floor. Of course. First rule of hiding--do it somewhere obvious. Middle of the floor in a deserted room. Clark hadn't thought to look *down*, dammit.

The laughter's indecently long, but it's also--well, cute. He gets a visual of Lex on his back, hands on his stomach, about to lose his ability to breathe. It's easy to grope out, catch his arm and pull close. Lex winds down slow and Clark lifts himself up on an elbow.

"I wish I could have seen your face." Laughter in his voice too. Clark can't help grinning.

"I didn't make a face. It wasn't that big a shock."

"You screamed. Like a girl."

"You're being sexist."

"I'm being honest." Clark flicks his vision back to normal--somehow, just now, it feels too much like spying to be able to see Lex and Lex not see him. "Nice job, by the way. I didn't expect you to come this far."

Clark blinks.

"How far?"

"West wing, if the sheets are anything to go by. I'm freezing and I've won. Ready to give up?"

"Hold it--you won something?" Clark can't help teasing, even as he pushes himself up on his knees, freeing Lex's arm.

"Isn't that the rule?"

"You didn't call it."

"You didn't ask." Smug in purely auditory form is just as annoying as the visuals. Lex is standing up, reaching out and finding Clark's arm by chance, pulling at his sleeve. "You want to find your own way back?"

Clark's not disturbed at all by the wrapped furniture, but--

"Nah. Let's get firewood or something. Are you going to tell me what you think you won?"

It's slow and deliberate, a trail of cold fingers against his inner wrist--never what he would have called an erotically charged zone of his body until right this moment, standing in something close to perfect darkness. Standing still, he's suddenly aware of the quiet of the room--must be an interior, no windows, some really weird part of his mind offers like it's actually important--and there's a scratch of fingernails into his skin, quick and sharp. Can't help but catch his breath a little, listening to Lex breathe just inches away.

Can't help but grab the hand when it withdraws, and Lex tenses just a little, but not in anything close to rejection. Long, smooth fingers, hints of calluses on the tips and edges.

"Here?" Low.

And it doesn't even sound like that bad an idea. Clark sucks in cold air and rational thought from wherever the hell it's been muttering and it says, quite clearly, this is a bad idea. It says, you remember what happened last night? It says lots of things, and it also once told him that he shouldn't enjoy jumping off the roof or speeding through cornfields, and he sends that voice for a little walk.

"Okay." It's breathless and stupid and that's just fine. He's fifteen--he's *supposed* to be stupid.

He can't see Lex grin, but he knows it's there. Sharp and bright, and Lex is so vivid that vision is pretty superfluous. A movement of the air and a warm body is close, close, but not quite touching.

"Come on." And Lex is moving, like he really does know this place in the dark, no huge surprise. Through doors and down halls and Lex doesn't even bother with the candle. Clark's vision is in normal, Lex's fingers on his sleeve. Just a tease.

"I didn't believe you" Clark says after a while, just to fill the silence, which is way too meaningful, and to shut up the voice that came back from its walk with more objections. Sound seems to cancel it out. "That you knew the place this well."

"Chronic insomnia has its perks." Lex sounds really normal. "No--left, Clark." Hand pulling on his sleeve and directing him back on course when for some outlandish reason the door to the right looks interesting. Brush against his skin quick and so cold. "It's easy to get lost--Amy was up here three hours walking in circles before she thought to find a window and yell."

"You heard her?"

"Her mother heard her and had the sense not to try and find her by herself, since it was getting dark." Lex's voice is thoughtful. "She left me a message at work. It didn't take long--I showed her the main corridor and how everything branches out. It's really easy to remember how to get around once you have the pattern--fractal based."

"Of course." Fractal based. He'll need to look that up. And no wonder Amy fell so hard for Lex. Nothing is quite so romantic as the person who rescues you.

"She liked the idea of disappearing." A different note, something bordering on sad. No face to be seen, though, and that's frustrating. "She knew the castle better than I did, near the end. Victoria hated that, but Amy was just a kid. When I was her age, I did the same thing--granted, the Luthor house in Metropolis isn't quite this big, but--well. It's the same principle."

It had never occurred to Clark that Lex might actually understand Amy.

"That's why you weren't upset, wasn't it?"

The silence isn't so much uncomfortable as thinking, as if Lex is working through something.

"No--but Amy's--. It won't make sense." Lightly dismissive. Clark gets the edge of Lex's sleeve, pulling him to a halt.

"Try me. I mean--you took it *really* calmly, considering that most stalkers around here have some sort of homicidal intent. And--" Well, they'd thought Amy did. Which was--

"I've known her since she was born," Lex answers testily. "Shit, I've known her parents since *I* was born. She's a kid. What the hell did you expect me to do--have her arrested? Ruin her family?" There's a defensive note creeping into Lex's voice, and Clark wonders where that came from. "The only people in all of Smallville who didn't think my only goal in life was to rape the livestock and destroy the village or whatever crap you've been fed since you were, what, three? I *knew* them. I liked them. And I had to send them away. I didn't like doing it." Another short silence. "I still don't."

Clark thinks on this, wondering if Victoria put pressure on Lex. Probably.

"Not everyone thinks that."

"I need to meet those people one day. They seem to be part of the hidden population--what, do you run them into the basements during the anti-Luthor meetings?"

It's been building for awhile from the sound of Lex's voice--Clark has memories of those moments in the garage, the unleashed bitterness. He'd--well, dismissed it, part and parcel of the entire mind-control thing, but now--now he has to wonder, just a little.

"You're not being fair."

"Probably not." It's not a concession, exactly. "I'm sorry. Are you hungry?"

The abrupt switch of topic is utterly deliberate, and they emerge into a hall that Clark recognizes. And Lex isn't touching him anymore.

"Sure. And--well, we might as well get the firewood and get stuff--you know, ready." Clark thinks about the fact that he's stronger than Lex. "You do food, I can get the wood if you show me where you store it?"

"That's an excellent question." Lex's voice is amused again. "And an excellent division of labor. Let's find out."

Hmm.

It's frighteningly cozy, like something Normal Rockwell would paint if he'd been running with Andy Kaufman and tripped acid beforehand. Fire. Food. Candles of all godforsaken things. Lex's good mood returning for no good reason, which frankly isn't such a surprise as it should be, or Clark has become really adapted. A deck of cards, and Lex is losing at poker, and Clark would think it was deliberate except he knows how very much Lex hates losing at anything.

There's nothing even vaguely approaching sexual, except it really, really is, and maybe it's just Clark who is obsessing over every single little thing. Like the fact Lex discarded his jacket over the edge of the sofa, and the light, shifting-colored shirt has two buttons undone. And that casual sprawl that's just *too* casual. Though, okay, he's been obsessing about this sort of stuff for awhile now, though. He's healthy--he thinks--he's male, and he's adolescent. Sex is already on his mind eighty percent of the time anyway. There's been entire hours devoted to nothing but his highly imaginative fantasy life.

And Lex is just stretched out there like some sort of invitation and playing *cards* of all godforsaken things, and frowning with a line of concentration etched into his forehead like he's working out physics equations that'll change the laws of gravity if he gets them right. There's this impulse, held under the tightest control possible, to reach out and *touch* it, smooth the skin with his fingers like Lex had done for him, and his hand twitches every once in a while to try it. See what Lex does. If he lets him. How far he'd let Clark go. Which might be very, very far indeed.

This should scare the hell out of him.

"Too much chance," Lex says, and Clark's jerked from his musing, almost dropping his cards. Looks at Lex with what he hopes is just curiosity.

"Huh?"

Lex tosses two cards down and Clark fumbles the deck up and gives him two more. Light, impersonal brush of skin when Lex takes them.

"Too much chance involved--there's no skill. I can't force these cards into pairs or flushes or whatever I need to beat you. It's--" Lex makes a sound that's edging on exasperation. "Ridiculous. And people bet *money* on this?"

So Lex never engaged in poker games in college.

"Didn't you do stuff like this in college?"

Lex glances up, quick and intense, searching for something, but Clark can't figure out exactly what.

"No. I had--other things to do."

There's this image, and it's stupid, but it won't go away. "What, strip chess?"

Lex looks up, blank, and then something breaks--wide grin and a soft laugh.

"No. Though--the idea has merit." And Lex is smiling, warm and inclusive, and being on the Lex Mood Swing Merry-Go-Round might not be quite so bad after all.

"Two pair." Lex drops his cards on the floor, eyes on Clark. "You?"

Can't help smiling when he puts down the straight.

"Shit." Lex knocks his cards over and rolls onto his back. "I'm not doing this again. I have my pride."

"You beat me three times in chess. You just can't stand to find something you're not good at the second you try it." And it's *true*, a sudden and really rather obvious realization to make. Lex turns his head a little to look at him.

"Got it in one." Lex pulls up his feet onto the carpet, dragging the soles of his feet along it with something that's either deliberately suggestive or a symptom of Clark's rapidly growing fixation. Socks can't be arousing. Or shouldn't be. Or something.

"It's sort of noticeable." Clark fixes his gaze safely on the jack in his hand, who is winking at him in perfect understanding. Great.

"You're thinking of the sword that narrowly missed your head when we formally met," Lex observes when Clark looks up. Bright blue eyes, lightened in shades of grey. "That wasn't one of my finer moments."

Lex doesn't look away. Clark can't--the cards are slick under his hands as he pushes them aside, and he should, in fact, maybe make some sort of comment, break the silence, God, at this point, knock something over and be highly embarrassed--but it just stretches and Clark takes a breath. Lets it out, and pulls his knees up under him--going to go get another soda, add more wood to the fire, run somewhere else--but oddly, that's not exactly what happens. Only a little shift of space, floor moving beneath him without him being quite aware how it comes about, and he's staring down at Lex on the floor from inches above and watching again.

It's on the order of an out of body experience or a dream-sequence, though none of them, as far as Clark can tell, have ever involved multiple hands of poker. He leans down and touches Lex's mouth with his--light, nothing but vague theory and a history of no less than three former kisses to go on, one of them with Lex.

Warm. Warm and smooth lips, and Lex isn't doing much of anything but letting him. There's a second, sharp and intense, where he thinks that there will be repeat of what happened before, but Lex licks his lips and moves--hand against Clarks' face, drawing him down, warm and close. Nails pressed briefly into his throat, then the kiss deepens, quick and hard, until Clark feels himself collapse, keeping just enough sense to catch himself on his elbows.

Intent here. Lots of intent, Lex's hand pushing up the edge of his sweater and scratching patterns into the small of his back, up over the never-before sensitive line of his vertebrae, fingers smoothing the lines he makes. Little flickers of heat wherever Lex touches him, and Clark pulls his mouth away from the addiction of Lex's, dragging in a breath. Ducks his head and tastes Lex's jaw, smooth and cool, under his chin where the skin is warm and so soft. Smell of some expensive soap, and Lex is tilting his head back, fingers tangling in his hair.

"Clark--" Low, soft voice, like honey or chocolate icing. Thick and rich and it sends a shiver through Clark's body, words coating his skin. Clark fumbles the buttons on Lex's shirt, almost ripping one off, finding more skin, interesting-tasting skin that does interesting things, makes Lex make interesting noises.

He's beginning to get the distinct impression he's acting as young as he is. He could seriously care less.

"Is this--" Can't quite think of a way to ask without sounding even younger. Lex's eyes are closed, but his mouth curves slightly. "Can I--"

"Yes."

Good, good. Let's get all those consent issues out of the way. Clark pushes himself up, bracing a knee on either side of Lex, sucking in a short breath at the press of Lex's cock against him--moves into it experimentally and gets a full body shudder from the man beneath him.

Quick work to pull the shirt free, unbutton impossible buttons, and open, finally, and Clark ducks his head, licking down the center of Lex's chest. Slow, languorous movements of his tongue and this, this is good. Equally slow, firm movements of Lex's hands over his back, his shoulders, nails skimming his neck.

He slides back up and Lex catches his mouth--hands on his face, holding him. Brutal, fast kiss, teeth sinking into his lip before he pulls back. Like a shock of electricity in every nerve.

"Not the floor." Whispered against his skin, another bite to his jaw. Short, quick buck against him, rubbing with a too-fast, intense pressure on his cock and Clark hisses.

"O-okay."

Clark finds his footing, a little dizzy and harder than he really thinks is possible. Vaguely, he's aware of Lex pressing one of the candles into his hand and gets just enough reality back to hold the wax away from his skin, and Lex's hand is on his arm, pulling him--somewhere else. Not a floor. His breathing is *really* loud and he swears he can hear his heartbeat thudding in his ears and wonders if Lex can hear it, too. Sound of the door closing, candle taken away and put--somewhere--then he turns into a warm mouth--warm and slick and knows *exactly* what it's doing and why.

God. Yes.

Pushes the shirt off Lex, who lets it fall without breaking the kiss, hands returning to stroke his back--long, hard strokes, pulling him closer, fingers cool and smooth and drawing lines on his skin he wishes would never disappear.

"I--" But the words aren't coming out and Lex tilts his head, brushing a lick over his collarbone that he hadn't even known was sensitive until that second. Hands sliding down to his ass and pressing them together so tight that Clark groans, cock to cock through soft material that doesn't do anything but make Clark even *harder*.

Then Lex is gone--moving back, away, and the loss hit Clark like a punch.

"Take off your clothes for me."

Lex sits on the edge of the bed, watching as Clark slowly pulls the shirt over his head, nothing scary in that except it's terrifying anyway. He watches as Lex's eyes run over him, slow and steady, and all on their own, his hands drop to the top of the sweatpants. Pulling the elastic as he toes off his socks, kicking them aside, then pulling down the pants.

Naked. Here and now, in this room, and he steps out, feeling Lex look at him--all over him, inch by inch like something tangible, something he should be able to see on his skin. eyes fixing briefly on his cock, and Lex is--

--waiting.

God knows for what, and Clark's so hard it aches, through his balls, into the small of his back, the pit of his stomach. The cold air of the room almost like touch on his naked skin, making it even more sensitive, even hotter.

There's a terrible vulnerability in this, and Clark thinks--no, he *knows* it's deliberate, that whatever is going on in Lex's head knows exactly what this is, even if Clark doesn't. Lex stands up gracefully, dropping his unbuttoned shirt on the floor like a shed skin and taking the few feet that separate them in the time it takes Clark to draw a breath. Hand on the back of his neck, a kiss that's nothing like anything before--taking, showing, and it's Lex, always thinking, and something in Clark wants to get Lex past that completely. Past the thought that's always alive and awake behind his eyes, the man who never reacts without thinking it through, the man who can hold him perfectly still and pliant with just the tip of his tongue in Clark's mouth.

Clark drops on the mattress when Lex pushes, with only the vaguest recollection of moving and Lex is--on him. In him. Everywhere, and he barely has time to think before he's lost in cool skin and slick mouth and wonderful, skilled hands that are coaching him in how this goes. How to move, how to arch into every touch, the rhythm Lex sets rocking on his cock, slow and deliberate and driving anything like thought away. He's being *taught*, with every shudder Lex coaxes out of him, and Lex knows bodies, knows men, knows what to do and how to do it, and Clark doesn't know anything at all.

Like how incredibly stupid it is to try to seduce someone like this. Like how far out of his league Lex really is. Like how much he doesn't care when he's naked in Lex's bed.

The soft wool of Lex's pants is rough against his skin, and he's making sounds he doesn't think are even possible. Sucking kiss to the side of his throat, making him arch, enough maybe to bruise vulnerable skin, tongue a wet and soft chaser, soothing, teeth finding sensitive spots and digging in.

"Lex--"

"Shh." Open mouthed kiss to his jaw, tingling trace of teeth behind. "Let me--"

"Anything." Means it, and it scares him, but it scares him more when Lex pushes up on both hands, staring down at him. Blue eyes dilated to a thin line around solid black, searching, looking, and it's last night again except it's not when Lex brushes a kiss across his mouth, almost chaste and almost kind.

Almost.

"Okay." God, wool like the best kind of pain, abrasive and sharp and he twists up into it when Lex settles on him again. Bodies can *do* this, feel this, and he never knew. Never guessed it could *be* like this, with every nerve alight and awake and wanting, making him twist up, clutch Lex, a clumsy, wet kiss that's still hot, teeth and tongues and a thrust against his hip that makes them both moan.

"Please--" And Lex is smiling, just a little, sliding off of him and he hears himself growl, and okay, *that's* new, but then that impossibly wet mouth is on his chest. Soft, careless nips, traced in some random pattern across his skin that he can't possibly follow, settling briefly on a nipple just long enough to make him ache, hard fingers twisting them after he leaves, and yes. Yes. Please. Please.

"You're going to enjoy this." Hot breath on his stomach, and Lex licks into his navel gently before following that insanely sensitive line of hair down, and Clark doesn't have time to even *think* what Lex could mean before a wet mouth closes over the head of his cock.

*Jesus*.

"First time?" Lex says, and the only thing that really makes sense is that Lex has *stopped*. Which is wrong, wrong, and Clark looks for words to make Lex understand that. A lazy hand jacks his cock and Clark digs his fingers into the blanket, making an embarrassingly needy sound. "Clark?"

"Yeah." Like Lex didn't *know* that, and when he looks down, the sharp smile should scare him, but he doesn't care about sharp smiles or anything but the way Lex watches him when he draws the tip of his tongue from base to head, following the vein. "Please, Lex...."

"Look. Watch."

And Lex--just *swallows* him, like something out of one of Whitney's porn movies, like the performance is half the fun, and Clark stops breathing, may never breathe again. Sudden, sharp shift through his body, sensation just on the edge of overload, and he knows he's saying things, stupid things, and doesn't care. Nothing matters but the way Lex looks, mouth stretched around his cock, blue eyes dark and curious and not; nothing but the steady rhythm that's pulling him apart inside inch by inch, every nerve shivering in reaction; finally, nothing but *this*--orgasm like a sky full of stars, bright and brilliant and terrifying and so good he never wants to stop.

It's maybe hours or seconds later when Lex pulls away, climbing the length of his body, tongue dragging sweat-slicked, too-sensitive skin, stomach and chest, throat and finally, his mouth. Deep, wet kiss, and he tastes like himself, like Clark, like them, like *sex*. Lex's hand closing over his, pulled roughly against scratchy wool, and Clark fumbles the button open, zipper down, twined fingers circling something hard and hot and just for him. Staring into Lex's eyes, following the slow rhythm, and he pushes Lex's hand away, bracing his other hand between Lex's shoulder blades, close as he can get, enough to feel panted hot breath on his face, the little shudders of Lex's body.

He can see it happen the second he feels it, dilated eyes widening, slim body shaking, and the slow pulses of the cock in his hand. A blinding, heady rush of heat and wet over his knuckles, and his name a breath on Lex's lips. He kisses it away, holding on, never wanting to let this end, feel every twitch of Lex's body, see the aftershocks flare beneath Lex's skin.

Seconds or hours later, he can draw away just a little, just enough to pull his hand free, slick and wet and just--taste. Lex. Himself. Them. *Sex*.

"Lex--" he breathes, and his hand's pulled down, fingers twining through his, and the rough kiss doesn't say anything about stopping.

"We have all night," Lex murmurs against his mouth with another sharp bite, a twist of fingers through his hair that should be painful. "What do you want to do, Clark?"

Images from a thousand fantasies invade, flickering like candlelight, almost too fast to follow.

"Everything."

end part II