I have just survived my first serious battle with my Clark-muse.  He has seriously spent the last week or so pouting because Lex has been getting laid.  What a baby!  But we chatted a bit this morning and he finally agreed to talk to me.

Rating: NC-17
Characters: Clark, Lex, Jonathan, Whitney, Lana, Gabe Sullivan, plus one.
Summary: The most heroic thing Clark did on a regular basis was to stitch up Taber’s right side whenever he needed it.
A/N: Thanks to sparktastic for cheerleading!  With any luck, this story is going to be rolling again now.

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“Brodie has food allergies,” Clark wrote, “so please don’t give him anything but what I send with him.”

But it didn’t make any sense, he thought in annoyance.  Lex had been watching Brodie for over a month now, and Clark had never mentioned anything about Brodie having allergies.  Saying so now would sound insane, or worse – suspicious.  Clark wasn’t sure if Lex was likely to pry, if he was the type for compulsive investigation, but it still didn’t seem very smart to provide this kind of impetus for curiosity. 

Mom had been much better at this, he mused, tapping his pen on the note.  When asked to bring Clark in for standard vaccinations, she had been prepared, citing a dozen studies on the possible negative effects of every shot that the public health nurse was offering.  Martha hadn’t been sure that Clark’s biology could handle a human inoculation, of course, but she’d created the lie so thoroughly that Clark himself had bought into it. 

It was the same with their organic food production.  Clark had been about seven, he figured, when his mom got going on his dad about how unhealthy pesticides were.  He remembered trailing his mom around town, hearing her impart all her research findings in hushed and horrified tones, making some other moms equally horrified.  And Martha had changed over gradually, first starting their own organic garden patch and insisting that Clark eat only meat from their farm.  It had taken almost two years before everything that passed Clark’s lips was certified organic, grown from their own (imported) earth.  Clark had believed this lie too, even though he was more resentful and often traded his honey and wheat germ sandwiches for someone else’s canned peaches.  Mom must have known, Clark guessed, but in order to keep her stories clear, had feigned total ignorance and continued to preach the value of their own garden.  It had worked financially, too, in that most of their business had grown from Martha’s mission to spread the word about her beliefs, so that Clark’s diet wouldn’t seem strange.

Yeah, Martha had planned ahead much better than Clark.  He hadn’t given much thought to preparing his alibis in advance with regards to Brodie’s food.  Of course he didn’t want Brodie to be eating – well.  There were reasons that locally-grown peas were just as toxic to Brodie as they once had been to Clark.  Clark didn’t like to think about it, but he knew that his mother would be very disappointed in him, in all the little concessions he had made in this area.  It went far beyond the matter of convenience, as with the disposable diapers, or the matter of health, as with Clark’s allowing Brodie to get all the standard vaccines.  It was a matter of carelessness.

So he couldn’t, in all safety, tell Lex not to feed Brodie whatever he’d been feeding him.  Clark supposed that the risks of disclosure outweighed the risks of the food Brodie might be consuming once a week.  But Martha wouldn’t have seen it that way.

Clark crumpled up the note, sighing.  It wasn’t as though he could consult Jonathan, either.  They were still in the holding pattern from last week, when Clark had come out to his dad – and even if they weren’t, it might be next to impossible to wrest an opinion from his father regarding Brodie’s upbringing.

So, like so many things on the farm, the organic food they so conscientiously produced was about to become a vestigial trail, a trace of a path that Martha had forged, yet another failure to live up to her memory.  Clark sat back and kicked his feet up on the desk, then cranked his head over his shoulder to check if his companion was still asleep.

Wade.  Clark was pretty sure it was Wade.  There were two guys with an eyebrow piercing who looked alike, and Clark always got them confused, but he thought he had it this time.  The guy -- probably Wade – had all but passed out when he finally came, and Clark had been shuffling around his dorm room ever since, trying to pen a note of farewell but getting stuck on the name.  The note to Lex was what had emerged instead.

Clark hadn’t expected to like topping as much as he had.  Wade had insisted, though, and Clark had – it had felt really different, more focused and sharp, more controlling.  He’d had to be careful, careful he wasn’t too rough, but Wade didn’t seem to want it that way, the careful way.  Clark shifted a little in his chair now, getting a little hard at the memory.  But it was almost four o’clock and Clark had to collect Brodie from daycare and shuttle him over to Lex’s for the evening.  Clark had skipped a lit seminar for this assignation, convinced by Wade’s whisper in his ear and also by the knowledge that he had to face Lex again that night.  Their short encounters in the front entrance of the mansion were getting more and more awkward as Brodie increasingly became not a link between them but rather a shield, defending one from the other.  Clark had felt compelled to do something to shake the dark sense of oppression that always followed him through Tuesdays now.

And it had been fun, up until these thoughts of his mother, Brodie, and Lex had come along and hijacked Clark’s post-coital cheer.

Clark lowered his feet to the floor again and hastily scrawled a note.

“Hey – had to run.  You look cute when you’re sleeping.  See you in class. XX Clark.”

It made Clark think of that thank you card he’d sent to Lex, made him wonder how Lex had reacted to it.  He’d never gotten a chance to ask, because the next time he’d spoken to Lex, it was over between them.

Being a Jedi knight wasn’t quite what Clark had imagined.  Sometimes, he kind of missed being a Padawan.

***

Lex’s investigations were getting nowhere.

Rather, they were leading him, over and over again, to the barred and impenetrable fortress that was Belle Reve Sanitarium.  One after another, those Smallville mutants whose abilities proved non-fatal seemed to end up at Belle Reve and were never heard from again.  Family members proved, at best, disinterested, if not outright hostile and denying that any relative of theirs was a freak.  Belle Reve itself was doubly protected, not only by federal privacy laws, but – more insidiously – by what could only be Luthorcorp-funded security measures.  Their firewalls had firewalls, and the staff were so well paid off by Luthorcorp that even lowly practical nurses and orderlies had servants whose exclusive job was to tell Lex’s investigators to go fuck themselves. 

Lex was beginning to think that the only way of getting past those gates was to have his own psychotic break, and it was a sign of the strain he was under that he very seriously considered it.

These Tuesday evenings with Brodie were proving to be Lex’s main source of respite from the increasingly claustrophobic confines of his mind.  They had fallen into a sort of routine.  After dinner, they played in Brodie’s room for a while, activities ranging in complexity from coloring to staging a full war using Little People (whose anthropomorphic qualities Brodie seemed to be discovering) and toy tractors.  Afterwards, they headed to the piano for Brodie’s weekly lesson.  Since Brodie had quickly outstripped Lex’s pedagogical capabilities, there was now a piano teacher from Metropolis, hired under the auspices of the fertilizer plant’s professional development fund.  Lex would sit back and listen, a short glass of scotch in one hand, enjoying this very humble beginning as a great musical patron.

And, galvanized by scotch in Lex’s case and being forced to sit still for half an hour in Brodie’s, they proceeded to Lex’s favorite part of the evening, which they were now enjoying.  Having turned off all the lights in the playroom, after clearing the floor of any hazards, Brodie and Lex would run around screaming and throwing plush toys at each other, occasionally devolving into a full-out wrestling match on the soft carpet, no holds barred.  Lex found it remarkably cathartic, and Brodie himself, though making great strides in becoming more and more like an actual human, seemed to crave this sort of animalistic insanity on a regular basis.

“Where’s Brodie?” Lex asked of the dark.  There was no answer except for the soft adenoidal breathing of a stuffed-up toddler, somewhere to Lex’s right.  Lex swiveled left and asked again, fully expecting to be tackled from behind, but no attack came.  “Hmm,” Lex said, feigning confusion.  “Maybe I’ll have to get the tickle monster to help me look.”  This was answered by a flurry of stifled giggles.

Lex dove down, fingers first, and tickled the first part of Brodie his hands encountered, which turned out to be a knee.  Brodie squealed with delight.  “Get away, tickle monster!” Brodie shrieked.  “Go away, make him go away, Yex!”

“I can’t seem to stop him,” Lex panted, managing to get a hand between the carpet and Brodie’s vulnerable side.  “He’s on the rampage!”

Some minutes later, when the tickle monster had been banished and Brodie’s giggles had subsided, Lex flopped onto his back, exhausted.  “You’re killing me, kiddo,” Lex sighed happily, feeling Brodie squirm over him.  “You have more energy than your brother, and that’s saying something.”

“Tomorrow will I be at home again?” Brodie asked, sprawling on Lex’s stomach.

“Yep, you’ll wake up in your own bed.”

Brodie took a moment to consider this fact, which must seem strange and mysterious to his young mind – waking up somewhere other than where he’d gone to sleep.  “Someday,” Brodie said, “I’ll stay here.”

“Probably not,” Lex said, reaching down to smudge a fond thumb over Brodie’s cheek.  “Clark likes to have you nearby.”

“No, someday I’ll stay here forever,” Brodie explained.  “You can be my brother, too.”

It was late October already.  In less than two months, Lex was probably going to walk out of Brodie’s life permanently.  Even if the mystery of Smallville and Project Constellation remained unsolved at that time – and it looked like it would be – Lex couldn’t risk his father’s curiosity about what was keeping Lex in Smallville.  Lex would have to return to Metropolis and pretend to resume his former life.  But right now, the very thought of leaving Brodie was like contemplating cutting off his own hand.

“You have a great brother already,” Lex said slowly.  “You don’t need me.  I’ll just be –”  What?  A guest star in the already tumultuous life of this small but tremendously important person?  Lex didn’t feel able to phrase it adequately.  “I’ll be a friend,” he said, finally.  “A friend you come to visit sometimes, okay?”

If he’d been expecting resistance from Brodie, he would have been disappointed.  All he got, after another pause, was a quiet and defeated, “Okay.”

***

Jonathan was in the kitchen when Clark came in the back door, juggling Brodie’s limp body, his impractical school bag, and Brodie’s backpack.  It was one of the long nights, Clark could tell already, when Jonathan was going to be restless.  It was barely eleven and Jonathan had already admitted defeat, holding a cup of decaf coffee between his hands as he sat at the table.

“Hey,” Clark said softly, shutting the door with his foot and shifting Brodie from one arms to the other.  “Still up?”

Jonathan was looking at Clark, which wasn’t usual, and it made Clark a little uneasy.  “You were out pretty late,” he said, almost asking, but then his expression closed again, and Clark knew that an explanation would be unwelcome.

“Yeah, just a – thing.  At school.”  It was Tuesday, which was supposed to be homework day, but Clark had driven back to Grandville instead, heading for the reassurance of friends and the oblivion of procrastination.  A gay porn video on fast forward so that no one got too interested, Clark and Justin playing a game where they kept slipping half-melted icecubes down the back of everyone’s jeans, and a very serious and detailed discussion, led by Chad, on how to deep-throat in a kneeling position – during which Justin and Clark very carefully avoided looking at each other for fear of laughing.

“Tomorrow’s her birthday,” Jonathan said.

Clark had known, of course.  He had known every time he’d written the date on his notes for the past two weeks.  But he’d never allowed himself to remember in the acute way that Jonathan was now remembering.  There was a long silence in the kitchen while Clark tried to summon something to say in response, but it seemed like everything had been said a hundred times before.  Finally, Clark opted for heading towards the stairs, dropping his schoolbag on the kitchen table enroute.

“She wouldn’t have cared,” Jonathan said, abruptly, when Clark reached the first landing.  “About – about you.  What you’re – She always said, as long as he’s happy.  But I’m not that strong, Clark.  I’m a weak man.”

Clark felt Brodie stir a little, and he drew his brother in closer, a giant living version of Taber.  “Do you hate me?  Because of it?”  Strangely easy to ask.

Jonathan blinked with surprise.  “No, I – no, son.  I could never hate you.  Not because of what you are.”

Clark nearly said it.  You hate Brodie because of what he is.

“It’s just – I need time.  Give me time, son.  I don’t have her here to help me.”  His voice was thick, on the brink of breaking for the thousandth time.

Clark nodded once and headed up the stairs, wondering inside when his patience had worn so thin.