toomuchplor (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
toomuchplor) wrote2005-10-26 01:00 pm
toomuchplor) wrote2005-10-26 01:00 pm
Entry tags:
Project: Mpreg Must End!
So I was perusing back-entries on my alter-ego's lj, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rose_emily and realized with some horror that I started writing that little ridiculous mpreg OVER TWO MONTHS AGO.
Seriously, is anyone else totally in shock about that?
Okay, so I *hate* leaving things undone, I really do! (And yes, that includes the mammoth work of evil that is Constellation.) And I have exactly 4 unfinished WiPs in LJ-land, and only one of them is going to stay unfinished, dammit. Of the rest, I will prevail.
In fact, I'm gonna prevail over this mpreg motherfucker TODAY. With your help.
I'm pasting the entire body of the fic thus far into this post, so people can refresh their memories or read it for the first time if they didn't see it before. And, at the end, in classic Choose-Your-Own-SV-Fic style, is a poll. Answer the poll promptly, and within an hour, you will see the next part appear.
I have an appointment later this evening, but nothing after that, so this will get done! I swear it!
Rating: R
Pairing: Clark/Lex
Warning: Mpreg. Yes, really.
A/N: It was only supposed to be 10 or 15 pages, but it's already hit 30 and I'm not sure it won't make 50. Help me finish!
Clark’s body had a way of pretty much ignoring everything that went on around it. Sure, he could talk about metaphorical things, like crawling skin and fluttery stomachs and blurry vision and even racing heartbeats – but the fact was Clark’s body was rarely a system in flux. It was less like a delicate machine and more like a powerful tool made of a single material. Clark even pictured himself as being solid all the way through, like a child’s plastic toy, instead of being filled with all the slimy and shifting pieces of ordinary humans. It was hard to resist the notion of invulnerability, of being the immoveable object that had yet to meet its unstoppable force, and Clark sometimes feared that this was the greatest threat to him, the place where he had the greatest potential of losing touch with humanity.
During the war with Luthor, Clark had often caught himself thinking it – looking at his sometime friend and flicking casually into x-ray, like the Kryptonian version of picturing the audience naked. Yes, Luthor was nothing but human, and no matter how many layers of hyper-calm he painted on, Clark could simply – break him. Break him and spill him open. He never did, of course – never seriously believed he wanted to, even – but the very existence of the thought had sometimes frightened Clark badly.
And maybe that was why, Clark mused, the war had ended the way it had – not in fire and raining death as he’d long anticipated, but with –
It was ridiculous, like the cartoon ending to a children’s movie.
With – well. Not love…that was too strong a word.
With a kiss, anyway.
It was a charity function, hosted by LuthorCorp, presided over by Luthor himself, sleek and charming in a tuxedo, deftly avoiding Clark and Lois’s attempts to pin him down and drill him about LuthorCorp’s slow and sinuous encroachment on a biotech company which held a patent for a powerful cloning technique. Watching Luthor from across the room, Clark had been imagining how simple it might be, a quick motion – and Luthor’s machinations, which had tormented both of them for so long, would be over.
And the next moment, scared of himself and what he might do, Clark had been holding Luthor by the wrist, hauling him towards a stairwell, and proving his own humanity in a way he thought he’d long lost – seizing Luthor (Lex) between his palms, bracketing his shoulders, pushing him against the cement wall, and –
If there had been any room for planning and speculation in Clark’s mind at that moment, he might have expected Luthor to push him away in fury, to pull out a little lead box containing a certain ring, its shape symbolizing an eternity of hatred. But Luthor hadn’t done it. He’d only released a shiver of tension and then he’d lit into Clark like something wild and starved. Clark had felt Luthor’s desire against him, hard like the solid thing Clark wasn’t, and it had been frantic minutes of consuming motion and sensation, Luthor pushing Clark up against the wall and thrusting inside him in the old way, slipping his hand down to tug at Clark’s balls until Clark came because Luthor was Lex, and Lex knew, he *knew* what that did to Clark, what that had always done, and something deep inside the not-solidness that was Clark had broken away and started a landslide of motion in Clark’s body.
When Clark had regained himself again, Luthor was gone. Clark had been utterly alone in the stairwell.
The next day, there had been a press conference at which Luthor had admitted to ‘uncovering’ some questionable research practices in his company. Then there had been a LuthorCorp internal review which was like the Spanish Inquisition, only scarier, and now, three months later, Luthor had emerged on the other side with a greatly reduced but squeaky-clean company, and for the life of them, neither Lois nor Superman could seem to find out that it was anything other than a genuine reform.
And as for Clark? The sensation that his insides had suddenly been transformed into quicksand had not faded with time. As though his encounter with Luthor had been some undersea earthquake, Clark was shaken, his erstwhile solidity replaced with something far more tempestuous. He grew tired at the end of a long news day, just like everyone else. He felt hungry when he hadn’t eaten. He could feel the weight of his body when he lifted off the earth, was aware of the configuration of his limbs when he slept and woke up aching and sore after restless nights.
And he could *smell* things – but not in the way his disinterested hearing could pick up voices miles away. Every smell carried emotional ballast. The scent of Lois’s spearmint gum made him headachy and short-tempered. Passing by the Indian take-out place on his way home became an impossibility – he consumed green curry ravenously every night. And he had to go into the Planet washroom and throw up the day that Jimmy walked in fresh from a photo shoot at Luthor’s penthouse.
Crawling skin and fluttering stomachs and blurry vision were no longer abstract concepts. Luthor had *done* something to Clark that night in the stairwell, he’d contaminated Clark somehow, and even though Clark knew that he should be furious and worried and scared, mostly he just felt strangely grateful. It was as though Luthor had granted him a measure of humanity.
But what Clark would never have guessed was that the transfer had happened in a literal sense.
***
There were a few dazzlingly spectacular moments of shock in Clark’s memory. The revelation of his origins was foremost, of course, but this was closely followed by the seventh grade health class where he learned that he was in possession of one testicle too many and the day he learned that he could put holes in furniture if he failed to concentrate while masturbating. And then there were the later ones – the day he realized that LuthorCorp was hurting people, and that Lex had known all along. The day he first saw Superman commemorative plates in a Smallville store and realized that his superhero persona was permanent. And now, this –
“Did you eat all of the donuts?” Lois was horrified, but Clark wasn’t sure whether the horror was more due to anger or disgust. Before he could swallow his last mouthful of Krispy Kreme and make some inadequate apology, Lois seized the empty box and threw it out, saying, “What is up with you lately, Smallville? You eating for two or something? No pastry is safe around you.”
Clark choked, which was supposed to be physiologically impossible for his species, and hastily wiped his lips with a crumpled napkin, blinking back tears and coughing. Eating for two?
Eating for two.
Shit.
No, it was totally ridiculous. Clark dismissed the thought, blinking away the sense of dazzled realization and telling himself that this was absolutely not a moment that could ever rank with having three balls or realizing his lover was an evil genius. It was a moment of insanity occasioned by a peak in blood sugar levels and Lois’s compulsive need to refer to Clark as a woman.
But later that night, Clark found himself digging through his old high school notes, until he pulled out a faded and wrinkled biology line diagram which was covered in his and Chloe’s handwriting. There was a pencil arrow pointing to the cross section of a testicle, and Chloe’s hand (which had also decorated the testicle with fangs and google eyes) proclaimed ‘ovicle!’
Clark shifted in discomfort on the sofa, suddenly aware of the weight of his scrotum brushing the flannel of his pajama pants, having a vivid sense-memory of Luthor’s ungentle fingers and how they had tugged at Clark, how that had been the catalyst for that incredible and mind-melting orgasm three months prior.
But a discrepancy in numbers of gonads didn’t change Clark’s biological sex, of course. Jor-El had never called him the Last Daughter of Krypton, for pete’s sake. This was only some sort of delayed post-coital reaction to that bizarre encounter with Luthor. Clark’s guilt was catching up with him, making him think stupid things.
Clark sighed and put the paper away, then stretched his arms, feeling the same odd sense of fatigue and achiness that had plagued him for weeks. He reached down absently to scratch at his waistband, where the elastic was biting into his stomach a little. He’d put on weight, which was odd, sure, but between all the donuts and the green curry, not to mention all the sleeping he’d been doing, Clark could hardly be surprised if even his alien metabolism had been unable to keep up.
Still, Clark let his hand snake down a bit further to furtively feel his balls. Long-held adolescent habit still reigned, and Clark rarely touched himself here, even though the merest brush of skin against the area had never failed to make him instantly hard. Luthor had exploited that, and maybe that was another reason Clark didn’t do this – it reminded him too much of Luthor, of what they’d had and what Luthor had thrown away.
But –
Clark stroked a bit more firmly, because it didn’t feel like it normally did. It felt good, in the abstract way that having his back scratched or his scalp rubbed felt good. But it was utterly failing to make him as desperate as usual.
Clark sat back a bit and spread his legs, slipping his fingers back farther, feeling where Luthor had been. But those memories led nowhere productive, so Clark withdrew his hand and sighed.
He was *not* eating for two.
Maybe he’d just pop by the Fortress and check with the AI tomorrow, to be sure.
***
But Clark didn’t make it as far as the Fortress before the stupid idea resurfaced. He made it exactly as far as wincing the next morning as he pulled on a wool sweater, at which point he paused, frowned, and wondered exactly how long his nipples had been this – painful. Clark refused to use the word ‘tender’, even in his head.
And when Clark turned to look in the mirror, he caught a glimpse of his side profile. More specifically, he caught a glimpse of his belly, pushing out the waistband of his nipple-torturing sweater and generally making his dress pants look too small.
Mentally vowing to avoid the curry place tonight, Clark shrugged off his growing panic and left for work.
He hadn’t planned to stop at the drugstore on the way, but he saw it and figured he might as well put this insane notion to rest. If Lois saw the bag – which she probably would, given Clark’s luck – he could make up a story about somebody at the Planet asking him to buy it for her, and Lois would spend the rest of the day frantically trying to discover who Clark was helping.
Except that Clark ducked into the coffee shop two yards later and headed straight for the washroom. Just get it over with, Clark told himself, studying the pink directions and wondering how much torture it would take for Clark to ever admit to anyone that he’d done this.
Three minutes later, Clark opened his eyes (which hadn’t really been *squeezed* shut so much as just tightly closed) to the sound of a woman screaming. For a moment, he wondered if his mental soundtrack had become external, and then he realized that, in fact, the scream had come from inside the coffee shop.
Clark whipped into his costume, grimacing at the glide of spandex on his chest, then pondered the best way to get into the shop without being obvious about the fact that he was exiting the washroom. In the end (not so much *avoiding* looking at the test on the counter as *too busy* to glance that way) he settled for a speedy entrance, making a quick loop around the shop and hopefully convincing most of the patrons that he had in fact entered through the front door.
It was a hold-up, easily taken care of even if the barrel of the gun in Clark’s fingers made him remember something about Luthor and pool cues. Before that thought could take hold, Clark bent the weapon and tossed it to the floor, advancing on the dark-haired thief who had clearly picked exactly the wrong place to stage a robbery. “Do you want to fly directly to the precinct or would you rather wait for the cops to come get you?” Clark growled menacingly.
This was where most criminals fell to the ground and melted into a puddle of fear, but this man seemed atypical. He merely glanced down at his ruined gun and back up at Clark. “Sure you could make it off the ground, Superman?” he asked, with a pointed glance at Clark’s middle.
Clark forced himself to keep his chin in the air even though he desperately needed to know if he really looked fat in this cape. “I could make you come off the ground and fly there by yourself, if you need me to,” Clark snapped irritably, cracking his knuckles.
The man smirked in a way that didn’t remind Clark of anyone in particular. “Someone pee in your cornflakes this morning, Kal-El?”
Which made Clark think of pee, which led his thoughts back to the plastic stick on the counter in the bathroom behind him, which made him want to follow through on his threat to throw the man very far. Then it hit him.
“Did you just call me –” Clark began, blinking, but he didn’t get a chance to finish before the front doors flew open and a group of people in dark clothing took over the scene. It wasn’t the police, Clark realized, because last he’d checked, the police used sirens and badges and radios, not laptops and cell phones and briefcases.
Also, Lex Luthor seemed to be in charge.
“What are you doing here, Luthor?” Clark demanded, trying to ignore the fact that Luthor smelled really good.
Luthor snapped his cell phone closed and murmured an order to one of his flunkies, then put a hand on the criminal’s shoulder. “Lucas, couldn’t you just ask *me*, if you needed money?” he asked, ignoring Clark’s glowering.
“Yeah, right. Because I want to depend on your handouts,” spat the man – Lucas, Luthor had said.
Surely not *that* Lucas? Clark studied the man – older, certainly, having lost some of the fineness of his features which had once made him attractive. Was it really Lucas, the second Luthor son?
“Well, if you don’t want my handouts, I can pull out my team of lawyers immediately,” Luthor said calmly, though the threat in his words was evident. Even as he spoke, the police – the *real* police – were pouring into the coffee shop, two of them seizing Lucas by the arms and cuffing him.
“No,” Lucas said hastily. “I mean. I suppose I don’t have a choice.” The words were cardboard, and Lucas hurried to cover them with something more poisonous. “Can’t have your brother soiling your white linens, can you, Alexander?”
“We’ll talk later,” Luthor replied evenly, only a tiny flicker of his jaw betraying his tension. Clark wasn’t able to watch the exchange further, as a detective addressed him and began taking his report of the incident.
By the time the formalities were concluded, Luthor’s entourage was on the way out the door and Clark had to bite back the urge to call Luthor’s name, engage him in one way or another. But these days, Superman had no reason to antagonize Luthor, and Clark’s reporter disguise was back in the washroom along with his –
Oh, crap.
“Find anything?” Detective Ebeling asked of a young officer as she emerged from the back rooms.
“Nope,” she said, cheerily, and Clark saw that she had a baggie with a white plastic stick in it. “But someone in the men’s room is having a baby!” she exclaimed, waving the evidence bag with a grin.
“Put it away, Tiemstra,” said Ebeling tiredly, and turned back to Clark, who was frozen. “You okay, Superman?”
Kal-El. Lucas had called him Kal-El.
***
“Luthor’s up to something,” Clark spat, throwing his jacket over his chair and slamming himself down at his desk. “The coffee shop down the road was just robbed by Lucas Luthor and Lex was there before he could possibly have known about it, before the police even.” Clark bit his tongue as he realized that he’d slipped – said ‘Lex’ instead of ‘Luthor’, and Lois looked like she’d noticed, her brows drawn together in thought and suspicion.
“Smallville, are you getting fat?” she asked, leaning back in her chair. “Because that would make me kind of happy.”
Clark was never wearing a tight sweater again. Also, he was going to jog across Asia tonight. “Lois, are you listening? How did Luthor know that his brother was going to be there?”
“He probably has him tagged,” Lois said, bored. “With a microchip under his ear, like a dog.”
“There’s another thing,” Clark said. “When he talked to Superman, he seemed kind of – dismissive.” Clark couldn’t go into more detail, couldn’t mention that Lucas had used a name that only Luthor and Clark’s parents were supposed to know.
“Superman was there?” Lois said, sitting up again. “Why didn’t you say?”
Clark rolled his eyes and sighed. “Can we just investigate, please? Where has Lucas been the last fifteen years, and why is he resurfacing now, and why does Lex—uthor know all about it?”
Lois stuck her tongue out at Clark and opened up her browser on her computer. “Have another donut, Clark,” she snorted, with a sidelong grin.
Clark took a donut anyway. He was hungry, and besides, he was going to do that Asia-run-thing tonight.
***
“Found him!”
Clark looked up from his desk, where he had been busily scrawling the words, “Hormones might not be the same across species.” Lois had the gleam of triumph in her eye, which was good since Clark had been unable to do anything contributing to her success. He had been too busy not thinking about the positive test result and what it might mean.
“Ha! He’s been packing it in Fudge City!” she crowed.
“Lois!” Clark reprimanded her, blushing automatically. “What’s he been doing in *Edge* City?”
Lois brushed off Clark’s admonishment with flick of manicured nails. “I call it like I see it. Anyway, he’s been running an establishment of the homosexual variety, if you’d prefer, mooching off of Lance Berkshire of Berkshire Consolidated in order to keep his pet project going. But apparently Lucas got on Lance’s bad side somehow, and the money dried up.”
“He was running a gay club?” Clark asked, astonished. Sure, Lucas had always seemed sort of – but Clark would never have guessed that Luthor’s brother was out and proud enough to be the proprietor of a gay club.
Lois squinted at the screen. “Yep! Called … ‘Neil and Bob’s’.”
“Kneel and *what*?” Clark yelped, jumping up to see for himself.
“Neil, Smallville. As in, Neil Diamond.”
Clark blinked at the screen. “Oh. Well, did you find out why Lucas and Lance split?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Maybe Lucas wasn’t throwing the goat for him anymore,” Lois mused distractedly.
“Throwing the – Lois!” Clark didn’t even know what that meant, but ever since he’d asked Lois what a ‘felcher’ was when she was cursing about a city councilor, Clark had been a lot more circumspect about requesting definitions for her terminology. It was invariably something Clark didn’t want to know about.
“Oh, relax,” she exhaled. “Oh, look! Says here that he’s been receiving a small monthly stipend from LuthorCorp ever since he took off. But it doesn’t say why…” Lois trailed off, her eyes sparkling at the possibility of a conspiracy under her fingertips. “Could just be a living allowance, I suppose,” she said. “But then why isn’t it coming directly out of Luthor’s pocket?”
“You think he’s on Luthor’s payroll?” Clark asked, leaning over Lois’s shoulder to read more closely. “You think Luthor’s paying him to rob coffee houses?” he added, more doubtfully.
“Well, no, clearly Luthor has cut him off now, too. Didn’t you say that Lucas was talking about not wanting a handout from Luthor?”
“So Luthor asked Lucas to do something and he wouldn’t? Or do you think he’s not – um. Throwing Luthor’s goat?”
“Clark! Jesus!” Lois shot a disgusted look Clark’s way, confirming Clark’s suspicion that the phrase meant something really sexual and twisted. “I don’t know what’s going on with the two of them,” she concluded, closing the browser window. “Time for a little investigation.”
“Where are we going?” Clark asked, making a move towards his coat.
“You’re not coming along,” Lois scoffed. “You’re staying here and doing some more background research on Lucas’s finances, figure out who he owes money to, that he’s this desperate for cash. I’m going to go and visit Luthor Junior in jail and see if he won’t tell me himself.”
Clark sank back into his chair, scowling. He waited until Lois was gone, then reached for the last donut.
Not that he was eating for two or anything.
***
It had been a long time since Clark had been to the penthouse, but surprisingly, the security guard waved him towards Luthor’s private elevator without even asking for his name. It was a good thing Lois hadn’t known about Clark’s access to Luthor, or Clark would have been forced to abuse this privilege long before now.
Clark fidgeted in the elevator during the long ride up, unsure of why he was here, only knowing that he couldn’t have stayed alone with his thoughts at the Planet for any longer or he would have gone crazy with anticipation. He tried not to look at his reflection in the glass of the elevator wall. He was being paranoid and the test had been wrong, and it wasn’t calibrated for Kryptonian chemistry, and besides – Clark was a man.
He didn’t feel very manly, however, when the elevator doors opened to reveal Luthor lounging against the wall of the entrance, clearly waiting for Clark as he’d always done years before. Clark stumbled on his way out of the elevator, feeling his knees go a little weak. Luthor must have had kryptonite put in the walls, Clark reasoned, except this didn’t feel like the usual weakness which accompanied exposure to the meteors.
“I was wondering if you’d come by,” Luthor said before Clark could collect his dignity. “You looked like you wanted to say something to me in the coffee shop earlier.”
Clark smoothed his sweater down, wishing he’d stopped to change into something baggier and more concealing. “I just – how did you know where Lucas was?”
Luthor didn’t give a direct answer, of course. He merely sighed and then walked into the penthouse, signaling mutely for Clark to follow. Clark took a few short steps, testing to see if his balance would hold, and walked after Luthor.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” Luthor asked, heading towards the bar, as always.
Clark was more than a little tempted, but he forced himself to focus on the question he’d posed. “Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“I don’t know if I owe you that kind of information,” Luthor replied evenly, pouring himself a short glass of scotch. Clark could smell the sharp liquor from across the room, and his body greeted the scent with a strange combination of queasiness and longing. “Our last meeting was hardly what I’d call congenial.”
“And yet – everything changed after it,” Clark half-asked. “The inquiry, LuthorCorp’s reform…and am I wrong in thinking that you cut Lucas off along with all your other more questionable employees?”
Luthor’s mouth quirked. “You think I overhauled my entire company just because of a quick fuck in a stairwell, Clark?”
Clark’s mouth went dry as he realized that that was exactly what he’d been thinking, even if it didn’t make any sense. That encounter had somehow fundamentally changed Clark’s life – so it only made sense to Clark that it should have changed Luthor’s as well. “You’re saying it was a coincidence?”
“It was a catalyst,” Luthor hedged, taking a small swallow of scotch and waving Clark towards an armchair – the armchair that had always been his before, as a matter of fact. “I won’t lie. It was a factor. But if you’re thinking you saved the world by fucking some sense into me, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“And Lucas?” Clark challenged, choosing to ignore both Luthor’s gesture and the way his own stomach had just plummeted. “Am I right there?”
Luthor tilted the glass in his hand, contemplating the ice cubes and scotch. “Is this an interview?”
“Should it be?” Clark asked, playing into the game of questions. “Is there a story here? Lois thinks so. She’s over at the city jail grilling Lucas as we speak.”
Luthor released a short mirthless laugh. “She won’t get anything out of him.”
“Why is that?” But Clark could guess why. If Luthor’s reform was genuine, then Clark was right, and Lucas had been ousted from the family payroll. But Luthor must realize that Lucas would have enough information to sink all his hard-won gains in integrity, even if Lucas hadn’t realized it himself yet. Luthor was going to be paying Lucas a lot of money to keep his mouth shut.
And from Lucas’s casual use of Clark’s Kryptonian name, Clark had a strong suspicion of what Lucas had been investigating on LuthorCorp’s behalf. It wouldn’t do to let Luthor know what Clark did, though – that Clark knew Lucas had been collecting information on him. It was better to hold his cards, play this close to the chest, and see if he and Lois could uncover the whole truth without involving the difficulty of Luthor’s doublespeak.
Luthor didn’t answer Clark’s question anyway, only sat down in his armchair and waited quietly.
“Are you sorry?” Clark asked, unsure where the question was coming from.
Luthor looked up, quick flash of blue thoughtfulness. “About Lucas?”
“About us. In the stairwell.”
Luthor redirected his gaze back at the glass in his hand. “I have never,” he said, using the careful diction which always signaled intense emotion, “had cause to regret the chance to be close to you.” The blue eyes came up to meet Clark’s again. “Whatever form that may have taken.”
And Clark was flooded with visions of all the violent ways he and Luthor had been in contact over the past few years – the near-death struggles, the spitting threats, and the maniacal anger that had consumed both of them. Luthor genuinely didn’t regret any of that? The declaration had all the trappings of a confession of love and yet Clark knew – he *knew* -- what it really meant in their case. It meant that Luthor hadn’t reformed for Clark’s sake. It meant he was still angry. It meant that this quicksand turbulence in Clark’s body was a one-sided sensation.
“I have to –” Clark blurted. “Your bathroom.” And seconds later, Clark was on his knees in a marble room, wishing very sincerely that he’d never been born.
***
He’d been to the farm, of course, during the three months since the charity function, but Clark had made a point of keeping his visits brief, cheery, and uninformative. A few farm chores, a handful of cookies, a couple of stories about how Lois was screwing up his life – both of his lives – and Clark flew away again, feeling less refreshed than usual after breathing Smallville air. If his parents suspected something, they didn’t say. The days when Clark had taken every problem to them were long over – had ended, in fact, when Clark and Lex split up and Clark had discovered that his parents thought Clark had made the wrong decision in leaving.
They didn’t talk about Lex anymore.
Today, Clark didn’t have a chance of feigning cheerfulness, though. The minute he ducked in the kitchen door and found his mother baking muffins, he felt about four years old again, and the expression on his face must have reflected it, because Martha took one look and went into top-gear mothering mode.
“Sweetheart,” she said in her gentle sympathetic voice, and Clark actually sagged in the doorframe with relief. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sick,” he said, simply, because he was. Clark couldn’t feel this awful and be something other than sick.
“What? How?” she asked, dusting flour off her palms and onto her apron, stepping hastily towards Clark as he closed the door behind him. Her fingers on his forehead, a gesture as instinctive as it was futile – Clark was always hot to the touch. “Come and lie on the sofa.”
Clark allowed himself to be led by the arm, basking in the illusion that a dozen years had just rolled back and he was just a kid in high school again. “I don’t know how,” he admitted as his mother settled him down on the tired brown couch in the living room. “I just am.”
“Is it kryptonite?” Martha asked, sweeping an expert gaze over his body.
“I don’t think so,” Clark answered, toeing his shoes to the floor and slipping a hand down to cloak his belly. “I think it’s – it’s not – I mean.”
Martha settled an afghan over him and stroked his hair back. “Did you throw up?”
Clark nodded pitifully, remembering the embarrassment of escaping Luthor’s penthouse after crawling his way out of the bathroom, still feeling like the floor was swaying under him.
“I’ll get some ginger ale,” she said quickly. “And a bucket.”
“I’m not going to –” Clark protested, but she was already gone. Mothers.
He was asleep before she returned.
***
Clark woke with a crick in his neck and a deep loathing for couches with broken springs. He sat up and found a glass of flat ginger ale on the coffee table in front of him, accompanied by a note.
Out in the barn helping Dad with the tractor. Call if you need anything.
Clark checked his watch and swore – he’d slept away the entire afternoon and he still felt like crap, even if his stomach was calmer. He downed half the glass of soda as a precautionary measure, then extracted his cell phone from his pocket. He had four text messages waiting from Lois.
Lucas wont let of visit the Bastard, said the first. Lois had never figured out her predictive text phone and between that and her always questionable spelling skills, her messages appeared to be coded. This one probably meant that she hadn’t managed to get in to see Lucas in jail.
The next read, Talked to disgruntled juvinscm employee re layoff. On in wont talk. ‘Juvinscm’ was Lois’s cell phone shorthand for LuthorCorp, Clark knew from past experience.
Great news! began the next. Sale at jimmy choos bought new black pumps. which i will use to kick your app. where are you?
The last one was simple and yet completely mysterious: police found jrytngue in lucass apartment!!!
Clark stared at the screen in confusion, then checked the letters against his own phone’s dialing pad. Give or take a couple of letters, it looked like it could be –
Kryptonite.
Clark bolted to his feet, trying to shake a frisson of fear. The only one who knew about Clark’s weakness – the only one Clark had trusted, other than his parents and Pete – was Luthor. And it looked like Luthor had forsaken that trust for the sake of his research into Superman. He’d told *Lucas*, of all people, and Lucas, it seemed, had been preparing to make some move against Clark.
Perhaps he’d already made his move.
Perhaps this illness *was* kryptonite-related, some derivative, some milder form of the meteor rock which would produce weird symptoms, and it was all just a bizarre coincidence that the illness had started with the night with Luthor in the stairwell.
Or maybe Luthor was in on it.
Clark shook the thought away. No, Lucas clearly was working on his own, hence the bungled hold-up. Lex – Luthor – would never have condoned such an obvious failure, even for show. A tiny smile curled across Clark’s face at the realization, because that was so *Lex* -- even when Superman had flown in and destroyed all his plans, Lex would make sure that his projects had the outward appearance of success. Clark couldn’t count the number of times he’d attended celebratory press conferences over something he’d spent the previous day derailing. Sometimes Luthor even managed to spin it as though he’d *meant* for things to turn out exactly counter to his plans, something that Clark had always secretly found almost impossibly endearing, even when he was still angry.
“How are you feeling?” asked Martha, bustling back into the room with a tray of food. “Can you manage some soup?”
Clark shook his head, glancing up at his mother as he tucked his cell phone back in his pocket. “Lois – needs me at the Planet. I shouldn’t have taken this time off, even.”
“Clark, if you’re not feeling well, you need to take care of yourself,” Martha said warningly. “I think you should go and have the Fortress take a look at you, see if it can figure out what’s going on.”
“I’m fine,” Clark assured her hastily. He didn’t want to go to the Fortress, just in case the thing that couldn’t possibly be the problem actually *was* the problem. Clark didn’t have enough energy left over to cope with even that possibility right now. “My powers are completely unaffected. Maybe it’s just something I ate.”
Martha pursed her lips at this, the gesture reflecting all the oh please, Clark she could possibly have needed.
“I really have to get going,” Clark said, planting a kiss on his mother’s hairline and heading for the back door. “Tell Dad I said hello.”
She followed him back through the house, still telegraphing worry at him but not saying anything, merely watching as he pulled his coat on.
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine,” he said, hand on the doorknob, pausing to send Martha a sincere look. “Thanks for letting me crash here for a few hours. You’re the best mom ever.”
She released a short sigh, crossing her arms over her chest, not succumbing to Clark’s filial charms.
Clark stepped back in to draw her into a hug, feeling guilty for making her anxious. “What can I promise to do that will make you relax?” he asked, lowering his head a little to breathe in her warm comforting scent.
“Promise me,” she said, squeezing him tight, “that if you need help, you’ll tell us.”
“I promise,” Clark lied easily.
She drew back and stared him in the eye, perhaps sensing his dishonesty. “And if you won’t do that,” she continued, not breaking her gaze, “promise that you’ll at least tell *him*.”
“You know I can’t,” Clark said, pulling away and feeling himself flush with the old anger.
“I thought things were better now?” Martha asked. “You two aren’t fighting anymore, are you?”
“Not – actively. But.”
“It must have been hard for him, to offer the olive branch,” Martha said. “Couldn’t you forgive him, just a little?”
Clark dropped his gaze, unable to look at his mother. “I have to go,” he said at length.
Martha nodded, and Clark left.
This was why they didn’t talk about Lex anymore.
***
Continued in next post.
rose_emily and realized with some horror that I started writing that little ridiculous mpreg OVER TWO MONTHS AGO.Seriously, is anyone else totally in shock about that?
Okay, so I *hate* leaving things undone, I really do! (And yes, that includes the mammoth work of evil that is Constellation.) And I have exactly 4 unfinished WiPs in LJ-land, and only one of them is going to stay unfinished, dammit. Of the rest, I will prevail.
In fact, I'm gonna prevail over this mpreg motherfucker TODAY. With your help.
I'm pasting the entire body of the fic thus far into this post, so people can refresh their memories or read it for the first time if they didn't see it before. And, at the end, in classic Choose-Your-Own-SV-Fic style, is a poll. Answer the poll promptly, and within an hour, you will see the next part appear.
I have an appointment later this evening, but nothing after that, so this will get done! I swear it!
Rating: R
Pairing: Clark/Lex
Warning: Mpreg. Yes, really.
A/N: It was only supposed to be 10 or 15 pages, but it's already hit 30 and I'm not sure it won't make 50. Help me finish!
Clark’s body had a way of pretty much ignoring everything that went on around it. Sure, he could talk about metaphorical things, like crawling skin and fluttery stomachs and blurry vision and even racing heartbeats – but the fact was Clark’s body was rarely a system in flux. It was less like a delicate machine and more like a powerful tool made of a single material. Clark even pictured himself as being solid all the way through, like a child’s plastic toy, instead of being filled with all the slimy and shifting pieces of ordinary humans. It was hard to resist the notion of invulnerability, of being the immoveable object that had yet to meet its unstoppable force, and Clark sometimes feared that this was the greatest threat to him, the place where he had the greatest potential of losing touch with humanity.
During the war with Luthor, Clark had often caught himself thinking it – looking at his sometime friend and flicking casually into x-ray, like the Kryptonian version of picturing the audience naked. Yes, Luthor was nothing but human, and no matter how many layers of hyper-calm he painted on, Clark could simply – break him. Break him and spill him open. He never did, of course – never seriously believed he wanted to, even – but the very existence of the thought had sometimes frightened Clark badly.
And maybe that was why, Clark mused, the war had ended the way it had – not in fire and raining death as he’d long anticipated, but with –
It was ridiculous, like the cartoon ending to a children’s movie.
With – well. Not love…that was too strong a word.
With a kiss, anyway.
It was a charity function, hosted by LuthorCorp, presided over by Luthor himself, sleek and charming in a tuxedo, deftly avoiding Clark and Lois’s attempts to pin him down and drill him about LuthorCorp’s slow and sinuous encroachment on a biotech company which held a patent for a powerful cloning technique. Watching Luthor from across the room, Clark had been imagining how simple it might be, a quick motion – and Luthor’s machinations, which had tormented both of them for so long, would be over.
And the next moment, scared of himself and what he might do, Clark had been holding Luthor by the wrist, hauling him towards a stairwell, and proving his own humanity in a way he thought he’d long lost – seizing Luthor (Lex) between his palms, bracketing his shoulders, pushing him against the cement wall, and –
If there had been any room for planning and speculation in Clark’s mind at that moment, he might have expected Luthor to push him away in fury, to pull out a little lead box containing a certain ring, its shape symbolizing an eternity of hatred. But Luthor hadn’t done it. He’d only released a shiver of tension and then he’d lit into Clark like something wild and starved. Clark had felt Luthor’s desire against him, hard like the solid thing Clark wasn’t, and it had been frantic minutes of consuming motion and sensation, Luthor pushing Clark up against the wall and thrusting inside him in the old way, slipping his hand down to tug at Clark’s balls until Clark came because Luthor was Lex, and Lex knew, he *knew* what that did to Clark, what that had always done, and something deep inside the not-solidness that was Clark had broken away and started a landslide of motion in Clark’s body.
When Clark had regained himself again, Luthor was gone. Clark had been utterly alone in the stairwell.
The next day, there had been a press conference at which Luthor had admitted to ‘uncovering’ some questionable research practices in his company. Then there had been a LuthorCorp internal review which was like the Spanish Inquisition, only scarier, and now, three months later, Luthor had emerged on the other side with a greatly reduced but squeaky-clean company, and for the life of them, neither Lois nor Superman could seem to find out that it was anything other than a genuine reform.
And as for Clark? The sensation that his insides had suddenly been transformed into quicksand had not faded with time. As though his encounter with Luthor had been some undersea earthquake, Clark was shaken, his erstwhile solidity replaced with something far more tempestuous. He grew tired at the end of a long news day, just like everyone else. He felt hungry when he hadn’t eaten. He could feel the weight of his body when he lifted off the earth, was aware of the configuration of his limbs when he slept and woke up aching and sore after restless nights.
And he could *smell* things – but not in the way his disinterested hearing could pick up voices miles away. Every smell carried emotional ballast. The scent of Lois’s spearmint gum made him headachy and short-tempered. Passing by the Indian take-out place on his way home became an impossibility – he consumed green curry ravenously every night. And he had to go into the Planet washroom and throw up the day that Jimmy walked in fresh from a photo shoot at Luthor’s penthouse.
Crawling skin and fluttering stomachs and blurry vision were no longer abstract concepts. Luthor had *done* something to Clark that night in the stairwell, he’d contaminated Clark somehow, and even though Clark knew that he should be furious and worried and scared, mostly he just felt strangely grateful. It was as though Luthor had granted him a measure of humanity.
But what Clark would never have guessed was that the transfer had happened in a literal sense.
***
There were a few dazzlingly spectacular moments of shock in Clark’s memory. The revelation of his origins was foremost, of course, but this was closely followed by the seventh grade health class where he learned that he was in possession of one testicle too many and the day he learned that he could put holes in furniture if he failed to concentrate while masturbating. And then there were the later ones – the day he realized that LuthorCorp was hurting people, and that Lex had known all along. The day he first saw Superman commemorative plates in a Smallville store and realized that his superhero persona was permanent. And now, this –
“Did you eat all of the donuts?” Lois was horrified, but Clark wasn’t sure whether the horror was more due to anger or disgust. Before he could swallow his last mouthful of Krispy Kreme and make some inadequate apology, Lois seized the empty box and threw it out, saying, “What is up with you lately, Smallville? You eating for two or something? No pastry is safe around you.”
Clark choked, which was supposed to be physiologically impossible for his species, and hastily wiped his lips with a crumpled napkin, blinking back tears and coughing. Eating for two?
Eating for two.
Shit.
No, it was totally ridiculous. Clark dismissed the thought, blinking away the sense of dazzled realization and telling himself that this was absolutely not a moment that could ever rank with having three balls or realizing his lover was an evil genius. It was a moment of insanity occasioned by a peak in blood sugar levels and Lois’s compulsive need to refer to Clark as a woman.
But later that night, Clark found himself digging through his old high school notes, until he pulled out a faded and wrinkled biology line diagram which was covered in his and Chloe’s handwriting. There was a pencil arrow pointing to the cross section of a testicle, and Chloe’s hand (which had also decorated the testicle with fangs and google eyes) proclaimed ‘ovicle!’
Clark shifted in discomfort on the sofa, suddenly aware of the weight of his scrotum brushing the flannel of his pajama pants, having a vivid sense-memory of Luthor’s ungentle fingers and how they had tugged at Clark, how that had been the catalyst for that incredible and mind-melting orgasm three months prior.
But a discrepancy in numbers of gonads didn’t change Clark’s biological sex, of course. Jor-El had never called him the Last Daughter of Krypton, for pete’s sake. This was only some sort of delayed post-coital reaction to that bizarre encounter with Luthor. Clark’s guilt was catching up with him, making him think stupid things.
Clark sighed and put the paper away, then stretched his arms, feeling the same odd sense of fatigue and achiness that had plagued him for weeks. He reached down absently to scratch at his waistband, where the elastic was biting into his stomach a little. He’d put on weight, which was odd, sure, but between all the donuts and the green curry, not to mention all the sleeping he’d been doing, Clark could hardly be surprised if even his alien metabolism had been unable to keep up.
Still, Clark let his hand snake down a bit further to furtively feel his balls. Long-held adolescent habit still reigned, and Clark rarely touched himself here, even though the merest brush of skin against the area had never failed to make him instantly hard. Luthor had exploited that, and maybe that was another reason Clark didn’t do this – it reminded him too much of Luthor, of what they’d had and what Luthor had thrown away.
But –
Clark stroked a bit more firmly, because it didn’t feel like it normally did. It felt good, in the abstract way that having his back scratched or his scalp rubbed felt good. But it was utterly failing to make him as desperate as usual.
Clark sat back a bit and spread his legs, slipping his fingers back farther, feeling where Luthor had been. But those memories led nowhere productive, so Clark withdrew his hand and sighed.
He was *not* eating for two.
Maybe he’d just pop by the Fortress and check with the AI tomorrow, to be sure.
***
But Clark didn’t make it as far as the Fortress before the stupid idea resurfaced. He made it exactly as far as wincing the next morning as he pulled on a wool sweater, at which point he paused, frowned, and wondered exactly how long his nipples had been this – painful. Clark refused to use the word ‘tender’, even in his head.
And when Clark turned to look in the mirror, he caught a glimpse of his side profile. More specifically, he caught a glimpse of his belly, pushing out the waistband of his nipple-torturing sweater and generally making his dress pants look too small.
Mentally vowing to avoid the curry place tonight, Clark shrugged off his growing panic and left for work.
He hadn’t planned to stop at the drugstore on the way, but he saw it and figured he might as well put this insane notion to rest. If Lois saw the bag – which she probably would, given Clark’s luck – he could make up a story about somebody at the Planet asking him to buy it for her, and Lois would spend the rest of the day frantically trying to discover who Clark was helping.
Except that Clark ducked into the coffee shop two yards later and headed straight for the washroom. Just get it over with, Clark told himself, studying the pink directions and wondering how much torture it would take for Clark to ever admit to anyone that he’d done this.
Three minutes later, Clark opened his eyes (which hadn’t really been *squeezed* shut so much as just tightly closed) to the sound of a woman screaming. For a moment, he wondered if his mental soundtrack had become external, and then he realized that, in fact, the scream had come from inside the coffee shop.
Clark whipped into his costume, grimacing at the glide of spandex on his chest, then pondered the best way to get into the shop without being obvious about the fact that he was exiting the washroom. In the end (not so much *avoiding* looking at the test on the counter as *too busy* to glance that way) he settled for a speedy entrance, making a quick loop around the shop and hopefully convincing most of the patrons that he had in fact entered through the front door.
It was a hold-up, easily taken care of even if the barrel of the gun in Clark’s fingers made him remember something about Luthor and pool cues. Before that thought could take hold, Clark bent the weapon and tossed it to the floor, advancing on the dark-haired thief who had clearly picked exactly the wrong place to stage a robbery. “Do you want to fly directly to the precinct or would you rather wait for the cops to come get you?” Clark growled menacingly.
This was where most criminals fell to the ground and melted into a puddle of fear, but this man seemed atypical. He merely glanced down at his ruined gun and back up at Clark. “Sure you could make it off the ground, Superman?” he asked, with a pointed glance at Clark’s middle.
Clark forced himself to keep his chin in the air even though he desperately needed to know if he really looked fat in this cape. “I could make you come off the ground and fly there by yourself, if you need me to,” Clark snapped irritably, cracking his knuckles.
The man smirked in a way that didn’t remind Clark of anyone in particular. “Someone pee in your cornflakes this morning, Kal-El?”
Which made Clark think of pee, which led his thoughts back to the plastic stick on the counter in the bathroom behind him, which made him want to follow through on his threat to throw the man very far. Then it hit him.
“Did you just call me –” Clark began, blinking, but he didn’t get a chance to finish before the front doors flew open and a group of people in dark clothing took over the scene. It wasn’t the police, Clark realized, because last he’d checked, the police used sirens and badges and radios, not laptops and cell phones and briefcases.
Also, Lex Luthor seemed to be in charge.
“What are you doing here, Luthor?” Clark demanded, trying to ignore the fact that Luthor smelled really good.
Luthor snapped his cell phone closed and murmured an order to one of his flunkies, then put a hand on the criminal’s shoulder. “Lucas, couldn’t you just ask *me*, if you needed money?” he asked, ignoring Clark’s glowering.
“Yeah, right. Because I want to depend on your handouts,” spat the man – Lucas, Luthor had said.
Surely not *that* Lucas? Clark studied the man – older, certainly, having lost some of the fineness of his features which had once made him attractive. Was it really Lucas, the second Luthor son?
“Well, if you don’t want my handouts, I can pull out my team of lawyers immediately,” Luthor said calmly, though the threat in his words was evident. Even as he spoke, the police – the *real* police – were pouring into the coffee shop, two of them seizing Lucas by the arms and cuffing him.
“No,” Lucas said hastily. “I mean. I suppose I don’t have a choice.” The words were cardboard, and Lucas hurried to cover them with something more poisonous. “Can’t have your brother soiling your white linens, can you, Alexander?”
“We’ll talk later,” Luthor replied evenly, only a tiny flicker of his jaw betraying his tension. Clark wasn’t able to watch the exchange further, as a detective addressed him and began taking his report of the incident.
By the time the formalities were concluded, Luthor’s entourage was on the way out the door and Clark had to bite back the urge to call Luthor’s name, engage him in one way or another. But these days, Superman had no reason to antagonize Luthor, and Clark’s reporter disguise was back in the washroom along with his –
Oh, crap.
“Find anything?” Detective Ebeling asked of a young officer as she emerged from the back rooms.
“Nope,” she said, cheerily, and Clark saw that she had a baggie with a white plastic stick in it. “But someone in the men’s room is having a baby!” she exclaimed, waving the evidence bag with a grin.
“Put it away, Tiemstra,” said Ebeling tiredly, and turned back to Clark, who was frozen. “You okay, Superman?”
Kal-El. Lucas had called him Kal-El.
***
“Luthor’s up to something,” Clark spat, throwing his jacket over his chair and slamming himself down at his desk. “The coffee shop down the road was just robbed by Lucas Luthor and Lex was there before he could possibly have known about it, before the police even.” Clark bit his tongue as he realized that he’d slipped – said ‘Lex’ instead of ‘Luthor’, and Lois looked like she’d noticed, her brows drawn together in thought and suspicion.
“Smallville, are you getting fat?” she asked, leaning back in her chair. “Because that would make me kind of happy.”
Clark was never wearing a tight sweater again. Also, he was going to jog across Asia tonight. “Lois, are you listening? How did Luthor know that his brother was going to be there?”
“He probably has him tagged,” Lois said, bored. “With a microchip under his ear, like a dog.”
“There’s another thing,” Clark said. “When he talked to Superman, he seemed kind of – dismissive.” Clark couldn’t go into more detail, couldn’t mention that Lucas had used a name that only Luthor and Clark’s parents were supposed to know.
“Superman was there?” Lois said, sitting up again. “Why didn’t you say?”
Clark rolled his eyes and sighed. “Can we just investigate, please? Where has Lucas been the last fifteen years, and why is he resurfacing now, and why does Lex—uthor know all about it?”
Lois stuck her tongue out at Clark and opened up her browser on her computer. “Have another donut, Clark,” she snorted, with a sidelong grin.
Clark took a donut anyway. He was hungry, and besides, he was going to do that Asia-run-thing tonight.
***
“Found him!”
Clark looked up from his desk, where he had been busily scrawling the words, “Hormones might not be the same across species.” Lois had the gleam of triumph in her eye, which was good since Clark had been unable to do anything contributing to her success. He had been too busy not thinking about the positive test result and what it might mean.
“Ha! He’s been packing it in Fudge City!” she crowed.
“Lois!” Clark reprimanded her, blushing automatically. “What’s he been doing in *Edge* City?”
Lois brushed off Clark’s admonishment with flick of manicured nails. “I call it like I see it. Anyway, he’s been running an establishment of the homosexual variety, if you’d prefer, mooching off of Lance Berkshire of Berkshire Consolidated in order to keep his pet project going. But apparently Lucas got on Lance’s bad side somehow, and the money dried up.”
“He was running a gay club?” Clark asked, astonished. Sure, Lucas had always seemed sort of – but Clark would never have guessed that Luthor’s brother was out and proud enough to be the proprietor of a gay club.
Lois squinted at the screen. “Yep! Called … ‘Neil and Bob’s’.”
“Kneel and *what*?” Clark yelped, jumping up to see for himself.
“Neil, Smallville. As in, Neil Diamond.”
Clark blinked at the screen. “Oh. Well, did you find out why Lucas and Lance split?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Maybe Lucas wasn’t throwing the goat for him anymore,” Lois mused distractedly.
“Throwing the – Lois!” Clark didn’t even know what that meant, but ever since he’d asked Lois what a ‘felcher’ was when she was cursing about a city councilor, Clark had been a lot more circumspect about requesting definitions for her terminology. It was invariably something Clark didn’t want to know about.
“Oh, relax,” she exhaled. “Oh, look! Says here that he’s been receiving a small monthly stipend from LuthorCorp ever since he took off. But it doesn’t say why…” Lois trailed off, her eyes sparkling at the possibility of a conspiracy under her fingertips. “Could just be a living allowance, I suppose,” she said. “But then why isn’t it coming directly out of Luthor’s pocket?”
“You think he’s on Luthor’s payroll?” Clark asked, leaning over Lois’s shoulder to read more closely. “You think Luthor’s paying him to rob coffee houses?” he added, more doubtfully.
“Well, no, clearly Luthor has cut him off now, too. Didn’t you say that Lucas was talking about not wanting a handout from Luthor?”
“So Luthor asked Lucas to do something and he wouldn’t? Or do you think he’s not – um. Throwing Luthor’s goat?”
“Clark! Jesus!” Lois shot a disgusted look Clark’s way, confirming Clark’s suspicion that the phrase meant something really sexual and twisted. “I don’t know what’s going on with the two of them,” she concluded, closing the browser window. “Time for a little investigation.”
“Where are we going?” Clark asked, making a move towards his coat.
“You’re not coming along,” Lois scoffed. “You’re staying here and doing some more background research on Lucas’s finances, figure out who he owes money to, that he’s this desperate for cash. I’m going to go and visit Luthor Junior in jail and see if he won’t tell me himself.”
Clark sank back into his chair, scowling. He waited until Lois was gone, then reached for the last donut.
Not that he was eating for two or anything.
***
It had been a long time since Clark had been to the penthouse, but surprisingly, the security guard waved him towards Luthor’s private elevator without even asking for his name. It was a good thing Lois hadn’t known about Clark’s access to Luthor, or Clark would have been forced to abuse this privilege long before now.
Clark fidgeted in the elevator during the long ride up, unsure of why he was here, only knowing that he couldn’t have stayed alone with his thoughts at the Planet for any longer or he would have gone crazy with anticipation. He tried not to look at his reflection in the glass of the elevator wall. He was being paranoid and the test had been wrong, and it wasn’t calibrated for Kryptonian chemistry, and besides – Clark was a man.
He didn’t feel very manly, however, when the elevator doors opened to reveal Luthor lounging against the wall of the entrance, clearly waiting for Clark as he’d always done years before. Clark stumbled on his way out of the elevator, feeling his knees go a little weak. Luthor must have had kryptonite put in the walls, Clark reasoned, except this didn’t feel like the usual weakness which accompanied exposure to the meteors.
“I was wondering if you’d come by,” Luthor said before Clark could collect his dignity. “You looked like you wanted to say something to me in the coffee shop earlier.”
Clark smoothed his sweater down, wishing he’d stopped to change into something baggier and more concealing. “I just – how did you know where Lucas was?”
Luthor didn’t give a direct answer, of course. He merely sighed and then walked into the penthouse, signaling mutely for Clark to follow. Clark took a few short steps, testing to see if his balance would hold, and walked after Luthor.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” Luthor asked, heading towards the bar, as always.
Clark was more than a little tempted, but he forced himself to focus on the question he’d posed. “Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“I don’t know if I owe you that kind of information,” Luthor replied evenly, pouring himself a short glass of scotch. Clark could smell the sharp liquor from across the room, and his body greeted the scent with a strange combination of queasiness and longing. “Our last meeting was hardly what I’d call congenial.”
“And yet – everything changed after it,” Clark half-asked. “The inquiry, LuthorCorp’s reform…and am I wrong in thinking that you cut Lucas off along with all your other more questionable employees?”
Luthor’s mouth quirked. “You think I overhauled my entire company just because of a quick fuck in a stairwell, Clark?”
Clark’s mouth went dry as he realized that that was exactly what he’d been thinking, even if it didn’t make any sense. That encounter had somehow fundamentally changed Clark’s life – so it only made sense to Clark that it should have changed Luthor’s as well. “You’re saying it was a coincidence?”
“It was a catalyst,” Luthor hedged, taking a small swallow of scotch and waving Clark towards an armchair – the armchair that had always been his before, as a matter of fact. “I won’t lie. It was a factor. But if you’re thinking you saved the world by fucking some sense into me, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“And Lucas?” Clark challenged, choosing to ignore both Luthor’s gesture and the way his own stomach had just plummeted. “Am I right there?”
Luthor tilted the glass in his hand, contemplating the ice cubes and scotch. “Is this an interview?”
“Should it be?” Clark asked, playing into the game of questions. “Is there a story here? Lois thinks so. She’s over at the city jail grilling Lucas as we speak.”
Luthor released a short mirthless laugh. “She won’t get anything out of him.”
“Why is that?” But Clark could guess why. If Luthor’s reform was genuine, then Clark was right, and Lucas had been ousted from the family payroll. But Luthor must realize that Lucas would have enough information to sink all his hard-won gains in integrity, even if Lucas hadn’t realized it himself yet. Luthor was going to be paying Lucas a lot of money to keep his mouth shut.
And from Lucas’s casual use of Clark’s Kryptonian name, Clark had a strong suspicion of what Lucas had been investigating on LuthorCorp’s behalf. It wouldn’t do to let Luthor know what Clark did, though – that Clark knew Lucas had been collecting information on him. It was better to hold his cards, play this close to the chest, and see if he and Lois could uncover the whole truth without involving the difficulty of Luthor’s doublespeak.
Luthor didn’t answer Clark’s question anyway, only sat down in his armchair and waited quietly.
“Are you sorry?” Clark asked, unsure where the question was coming from.
Luthor looked up, quick flash of blue thoughtfulness. “About Lucas?”
“About us. In the stairwell.”
Luthor redirected his gaze back at the glass in his hand. “I have never,” he said, using the careful diction which always signaled intense emotion, “had cause to regret the chance to be close to you.” The blue eyes came up to meet Clark’s again. “Whatever form that may have taken.”
And Clark was flooded with visions of all the violent ways he and Luthor had been in contact over the past few years – the near-death struggles, the spitting threats, and the maniacal anger that had consumed both of them. Luthor genuinely didn’t regret any of that? The declaration had all the trappings of a confession of love and yet Clark knew – he *knew* -- what it really meant in their case. It meant that Luthor hadn’t reformed for Clark’s sake. It meant he was still angry. It meant that this quicksand turbulence in Clark’s body was a one-sided sensation.
“I have to –” Clark blurted. “Your bathroom.” And seconds later, Clark was on his knees in a marble room, wishing very sincerely that he’d never been born.
***
He’d been to the farm, of course, during the three months since the charity function, but Clark had made a point of keeping his visits brief, cheery, and uninformative. A few farm chores, a handful of cookies, a couple of stories about how Lois was screwing up his life – both of his lives – and Clark flew away again, feeling less refreshed than usual after breathing Smallville air. If his parents suspected something, they didn’t say. The days when Clark had taken every problem to them were long over – had ended, in fact, when Clark and Lex split up and Clark had discovered that his parents thought Clark had made the wrong decision in leaving.
They didn’t talk about Lex anymore.
Today, Clark didn’t have a chance of feigning cheerfulness, though. The minute he ducked in the kitchen door and found his mother baking muffins, he felt about four years old again, and the expression on his face must have reflected it, because Martha took one look and went into top-gear mothering mode.
“Sweetheart,” she said in her gentle sympathetic voice, and Clark actually sagged in the doorframe with relief. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sick,” he said, simply, because he was. Clark couldn’t feel this awful and be something other than sick.
“What? How?” she asked, dusting flour off her palms and onto her apron, stepping hastily towards Clark as he closed the door behind him. Her fingers on his forehead, a gesture as instinctive as it was futile – Clark was always hot to the touch. “Come and lie on the sofa.”
Clark allowed himself to be led by the arm, basking in the illusion that a dozen years had just rolled back and he was just a kid in high school again. “I don’t know how,” he admitted as his mother settled him down on the tired brown couch in the living room. “I just am.”
“Is it kryptonite?” Martha asked, sweeping an expert gaze over his body.
“I don’t think so,” Clark answered, toeing his shoes to the floor and slipping a hand down to cloak his belly. “I think it’s – it’s not – I mean.”
Martha settled an afghan over him and stroked his hair back. “Did you throw up?”
Clark nodded pitifully, remembering the embarrassment of escaping Luthor’s penthouse after crawling his way out of the bathroom, still feeling like the floor was swaying under him.
“I’ll get some ginger ale,” she said quickly. “And a bucket.”
“I’m not going to –” Clark protested, but she was already gone. Mothers.
He was asleep before she returned.
***
Clark woke with a crick in his neck and a deep loathing for couches with broken springs. He sat up and found a glass of flat ginger ale on the coffee table in front of him, accompanied by a note.
Out in the barn helping Dad with the tractor. Call if you need anything.
Clark checked his watch and swore – he’d slept away the entire afternoon and he still felt like crap, even if his stomach was calmer. He downed half the glass of soda as a precautionary measure, then extracted his cell phone from his pocket. He had four text messages waiting from Lois.
Lucas wont let of visit the Bastard, said the first. Lois had never figured out her predictive text phone and between that and her always questionable spelling skills, her messages appeared to be coded. This one probably meant that she hadn’t managed to get in to see Lucas in jail.
The next read, Talked to disgruntled juvinscm employee re layoff. On in wont talk. ‘Juvinscm’ was Lois’s cell phone shorthand for LuthorCorp, Clark knew from past experience.
Great news! began the next. Sale at jimmy choos bought new black pumps. which i will use to kick your app. where are you?
The last one was simple and yet completely mysterious: police found jrytngue in lucass apartment!!!
Clark stared at the screen in confusion, then checked the letters against his own phone’s dialing pad. Give or take a couple of letters, it looked like it could be –
Kryptonite.
Clark bolted to his feet, trying to shake a frisson of fear. The only one who knew about Clark’s weakness – the only one Clark had trusted, other than his parents and Pete – was Luthor. And it looked like Luthor had forsaken that trust for the sake of his research into Superman. He’d told *Lucas*, of all people, and Lucas, it seemed, had been preparing to make some move against Clark.
Perhaps he’d already made his move.
Perhaps this illness *was* kryptonite-related, some derivative, some milder form of the meteor rock which would produce weird symptoms, and it was all just a bizarre coincidence that the illness had started with the night with Luthor in the stairwell.
Or maybe Luthor was in on it.
Clark shook the thought away. No, Lucas clearly was working on his own, hence the bungled hold-up. Lex – Luthor – would never have condoned such an obvious failure, even for show. A tiny smile curled across Clark’s face at the realization, because that was so *Lex* -- even when Superman had flown in and destroyed all his plans, Lex would make sure that his projects had the outward appearance of success. Clark couldn’t count the number of times he’d attended celebratory press conferences over something he’d spent the previous day derailing. Sometimes Luthor even managed to spin it as though he’d *meant* for things to turn out exactly counter to his plans, something that Clark had always secretly found almost impossibly endearing, even when he was still angry.
“How are you feeling?” asked Martha, bustling back into the room with a tray of food. “Can you manage some soup?”
Clark shook his head, glancing up at his mother as he tucked his cell phone back in his pocket. “Lois – needs me at the Planet. I shouldn’t have taken this time off, even.”
“Clark, if you’re not feeling well, you need to take care of yourself,” Martha said warningly. “I think you should go and have the Fortress take a look at you, see if it can figure out what’s going on.”
“I’m fine,” Clark assured her hastily. He didn’t want to go to the Fortress, just in case the thing that couldn’t possibly be the problem actually *was* the problem. Clark didn’t have enough energy left over to cope with even that possibility right now. “My powers are completely unaffected. Maybe it’s just something I ate.”
Martha pursed her lips at this, the gesture reflecting all the oh please, Clark she could possibly have needed.
“I really have to get going,” Clark said, planting a kiss on his mother’s hairline and heading for the back door. “Tell Dad I said hello.”
She followed him back through the house, still telegraphing worry at him but not saying anything, merely watching as he pulled his coat on.
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine,” he said, hand on the doorknob, pausing to send Martha a sincere look. “Thanks for letting me crash here for a few hours. You’re the best mom ever.”
She released a short sigh, crossing her arms over her chest, not succumbing to Clark’s filial charms.
Clark stepped back in to draw her into a hug, feeling guilty for making her anxious. “What can I promise to do that will make you relax?” he asked, lowering his head a little to breathe in her warm comforting scent.
“Promise me,” she said, squeezing him tight, “that if you need help, you’ll tell us.”
“I promise,” Clark lied easily.
She drew back and stared him in the eye, perhaps sensing his dishonesty. “And if you won’t do that,” she continued, not breaking her gaze, “promise that you’ll at least tell *him*.”
“You know I can’t,” Clark said, pulling away and feeling himself flush with the old anger.
“I thought things were better now?” Martha asked. “You two aren’t fighting anymore, are you?”
“Not – actively. But.”
“It must have been hard for him, to offer the olive branch,” Martha said. “Couldn’t you forgive him, just a little?”
Clark dropped his gaze, unable to look at his mother. “I have to go,” he said at length.
Martha nodded, and Clark left.
This was why they didn’t talk about Lex anymore.
***
Continued in next post.