Whoa.

Hello, naked sweaty boy-muses! How I've missed you!

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: This part (as in, Part 2) is actually close to being finished -- I would say another 2 sections at most. Weird.

Part 1
Part 2:1
Part 2:2
Part 2:3
Part 2:4
Part 2:5
Part 2:6
Part 2:7
Part 2:8
Part 2:9
Part 2:10
Part 2:11
Part 2:12
Part 2:13
Part 2:14
Part 2:15
Part 2:16
Part 2:17


Clark woke in the darkness feeling a sudden surge of panic. As always, his first thought was Where is Brodie?, and for long terrified seconds, he couldn’t answer himself. He was in the strange-smelling dark, he wasn’t home, and Brodie was gone.

“What time is it?” asked Lex sleepily beside Clark, and Clark remembered.

Feeling a little disoriented still from his flight of fear, Clark rubbed his eyes and tried to grasp how he could possibly know the time and why it might be important. Luckily, Lex seemed more cogent already, and in a moment, the space between his hands was faintly lit by the LCD glow of a cell phone screen. “Five in the morning,” Lex declared, sinking back into the pillows and closing his cell phone with a groan. “We won’t fall asleep,” he mimicked bitterly, covering his eyes with one palm and rubbing slowly.

Clark stretched a leg experimentally and rolled over to face Lex, who showed every sign of falling back into slumber, making small sleepy sounds. “Hey,” Clark said in greeting, feeling a smile curl over his mouth. This had really happened.

“Mmm,” said Lex.

“It’s Saturday,” Clark said, wriggling closer to plant a kiss on Lex’s ear.

“Mmm,” agreed Lex, but now his hand slipped down from his eyes to cover what Clark suspected was a smile.

Clark kissed Lex’s neck, slipping a hand across his chest and crooking one leg over Lex’s body, enjoying the slip of skin on skin. “So,” Clark said, opening his mouth to lick a part of Lex’s jawline that tasted of sleep and sex. “Let’s do something. Together.”

Judging from activity under the covers, Lex wasn’t falling asleep anymore. “Mmm,” he said, but this was an entirely different kind of hum.

Clark was feeling a different hum, too, buzzing over his body, energy coursing just under the surface of his skin, because this was *Lex* and he didn’t have to kid himself anymore – Lex was different. Clark didn’t feel like this with anyone else, and because of that, no one else was even worth the effort. He needed to be closer, closer than this, so he got up on his knees and straddled Lex’s torso, bending down to kiss as Lex woke up. Just the tip of a tongue, feeling Lex slowly strain for it until his head lifted off the pillow in search of more. But Clark was feeling playful, joyous in the freedom, the possibility, in this connection, so he backed away and made Lex sigh in protest.

Lex’s eyes slit open, searching out Clark’s expression. “Come back here,” he ordered, but without conviction. Clark just grinned and wriggled his ass a little, watching Lex’s gaze drop slowly until he was staring at Clark’s heavy cock. Clark obligingly stroked it a few times, then shifted forward on his knees until he had Lex’s arms in the bend of his knees, Lex’s hands shifting to grasp his thighs in anticipation as Clark braced himself forward on his hands and – Lex opened his mouth.

He’d never done this, never even *thought* this, but Christ, it was so easy and unreal and perfect, Lex urging him on with hard press of fingers, soft mouthfuls of grunts and working tongue, Clark moving gently at first, testing and teasing, and then gathering momentum, feeling the muscles in the small of his back bunching with urgency. He had gone past gentle, past careful, past every boundary he had set for himself over long years, and Lex’s rough hands were still saying, *more*, Lex stretching up for it, and between his own sounds of enjoyment, Clark could hear Lex gasping and humming.

It ended too quickly, it always ended too quickly with Lex, so quickly that Clark could feel himself wanting more even as he came, feeling Lex swallowing around him, feeling Lex’s finger slip inside, hinting. “Are you okay?” Clark asked, trembling, as he sat up on his knees, surveying Lex even though he knew instinctively that Lex was more than okay.

Lex didn’t answer, just looked up at Clark with heavy, sex-hungry eyes, his hand gliding back up to the cleft of Clark’s ass.

“We should,” Clark said, suddenly aware of the utter impropriety of where they were, and what they were doing there. But his mouth stopped working because Clark was apparently still a bit slick from earlier in the night, and Lex had gone in with two fingers. “Oh, fuck,” Clark breathed, moving into it.

“That’s the idea,” Lex said, unsmiling and intense.

It was some time later before Lex asked again, “What time is it?” and this time Clark was obliged to answer, “Time to go.” With gloomy determination, they unstuck their skins and got out of the bed on opposite sides, Clark blinking against the sunrise now peeking in the window. Outside, Smallville was still asleep, only a few lone cars whirring quietly down the street, business owners coming to take morning deliveries, newspaper carriers going to pick up their daily allotment from the Ledger distribution depot. Clark knew the rhythms of his hometown, and usually, they comforted him, but now he was only interested in the rhythms of Lex across the room, the soft not-sounds of buttons being poked through fabric, of a leather belt gliding across wrinkled wool trousers.

“I need a shower,” Lex muttered, looking up into one of the dozen mirrors that surrounded them and making some cryptic adjustment to his bare head that must be the Lexian equivalent of finger-combing one’s bedhead into respectability. Clark caught his own reflection in another mirror, watching the inevitable awkwardness of limbs as he contorted his way into yesterday’s boxers, and grimaced. Bedhead, indeed.

“So, later,” Clark said, and watched the ripple of tension go through Lex’s posture. “You should come by the farm and we can take Brodie out somewhere.”

He didn’t know what he was trying to provoke, unless it was an end to this strange morning normalcy. If it was about to end, if Lex was going to retreat back into that safe place of indifference where they had pretended to live, then Clark wanted it to happen now, on his terms.

But if he’d really been expecting it, it wouldn’t have felt so much like a shock when Lex turned to face him and said, quietly, “Clark.”

“There’s a Halloween party at the library,” Clark suggested brightly. “Or the corn maze, we could do that.”

“Clark,” Lex spoke again.

“Or we could just kick around the farm, you know,” Clark said. “I’ve got some work to do for dad, you could help – watch Brodie or whatever.”

“Clark –”

“He loves you, Lex, do you get that?” Clark shouted suddenly, startling himself, but not Lex. “God, you can’t just keep jerking him around, he’s a fucking toddler! How do you think he’s going to feel when you just drop out of his life one day? He’s had – there have been enough – God, Lex, people have to stop just *leaving*!” And Clark turned away, angry to find that he was – this was stupid – blinking back tears.

There was no hiding, not from yourself or your companions, in a room filled with mirrors, and Clark knew that Lex was watching in silence.

“Maybe you should just stay away from him,” Clark said. “If you’re just going to – he doesn’t need that, Lex.” What was Clark saying? Brodie had never been so happy, so calm, so manageable as he’d been in the weeks since he’d begun seeing Lex on a regular basis. Taking Lex away would only undo all that progress, Clark knew, make Brodie irascible and angry and horrible. But Lex would leave anyway, wouldn’t he? Because of Clark.

So maybe it was easier to put this on Lex, and maybe that was why Clark was doing it, but the end result would be the same anyway.

“What about – what about your class?” Lex asked, and his voice sounded thick like Clark’s.

“I’ll figure something out,” Clark said, breaking into motion, needing action. He found his shirt draped over a pink armchair and pulled it over his head.

“You’re being unreasonable,” Lex protested, and even if he was pretending to be rational, he sounded panicked as Clark had felt upon waking earlier. It felt good, in a sadistic way, to know that Clark had this power over Lex, even if he had to go through Brodie to use it.

“I’m only thinking of what’s best for Brodie,” Clark said, sitting on the edge of the bed to pull his jeans on.

“You’re –” Lex blurted, pacing towards Clark, then abruptly in the other direction. “You don’t have the faintest fucking *idea* what’s best for him, if you think this qualifies!” Lex shouted, and now they’d both lost their tempers, and Clark was smiling tautly.

“He’s my brother,” Clark said, standing and buttoning his fly.

“Exactly,” Lex said, pivoting again to stare Clark down. “That’s exactly the problem! Clark, he’s your *brother*. He’s not your son. He’ll never *be* your son, and you’re no kind of father if you won’t take your thumb out of your ass and start making a difference in his life!”

Clark actually stepped back, so startling was this proclamation.

“You’re not raising him, Clark. You’re *getting by*. You’re surviving, nothing more! Do you honestly believe that it’s best for that kid to grow up in a household so fucking soaked in repressed grief? He tiptoes around you like you’re a bomb about to go off, and I can’t say I blame him!”

“It’s not me who has the problem there, Lex,” Clark spat. “You know it’s my dad, he’s the one who –”

“Bullshit!” Lex yelled, and now he was right in Clark’s space, hands spread wide in anger. “That is a crock of shit, Clark Kent.”

“You don’t know, you’re not around to see,” Clark exclaimed, stunned by this unfairness. “My dad, he’s –”

“Your dad isn’t the problem, Clark. He’s wrecked, okay? He’s broken and he’s not going to ever get better. Ever!”

Clark actually felt his hand rise from his side, clenched in a fist, ready to strike, and the only thing holding him back was the need to keep some measure of control.

“Your dad is a fucking write-off,” Lex hissed, shaking his head. “You’re the one who could make things better, and you won’t take charge and do it.”

“I was seventeen years old when Brodie was born!” Clark cried. “I was a junior in high school, Lex, and my mom *died*, okay? And my dad was a disaster and *someone* had to look after Brodie, and I did it, but I was just a kid! How could I have done anything differently?”

“Past tense, Clark,” Lex said. “You *were* a kid, yeah, but guess what? You’re a grown-up now and you have to do what’s right, not what’s easy – not what hurts less. Not what lets you still live in this fantasy world where one day your dad’s going to wake up and let you go back to being a kid. Not what lets you hold back the reality of the situation.”

“Oh, please tell me the *reality* of the situation,” Clark shouted, rolling his eyes. “Because I’ve been living in a fantasy, clearly. I like to *fantasize* about being the only sane one in my family, about taking Brodie to the doctor and cleaning up shit and dealing with temper tantrums!”

“Your mother is dead!” Lex yelled, and Clark laughed, because, yeah, he *knew* that. Lex had no idea what – “She’s *dead*, Clark!” Lex repeated, stepping closer, lowering his voice a bit. “Martha Kent is dead and she’s never coming back.”

“Stop saying that,” Clark said, angrily. “You think I don’t know it?”

“Clark, she’s dead and she left you alone with all of this shit to deal with and she is never going to come back and fix it.” Lex’s voice deadly soft now, cold and mean and it cut far deeper than it should have, deep enough to reach a place where Clark hadn’t quite ever believed what Lex was saying. Clark looked down, away, blinking hard even though he was crying, God, *crying*, and how long had he been crying? For minutes already, maybe longer.

“The only way,” Lex said, fiercely, “that your life is going to get better is if you accept that.”

Clark wanted to turn into an embrace, any embrace would do, just long enough to convince himself that this wasn’t as shattering as it felt. But Lex wasn’t exercising tough love, he wasn’t trying to help Clark. His voice was crystal sharp and full of rage, no solace there, and Clark could feel his heart being devastated by what Lex was showing him, unblinking and cruel. Mirrors on every surface, no hiding, and when Clark looked up, he could see a dozen angles of his defeated shoulders, of Lex’s merciless honesty.

No solace to be found anywhere, and Clark had never felt this broken, not once in the three years since –

Lex abruptly raised his chin in a gesture of dismissal, and left the room.

ETA: Fixed my little schoolday on a Saturday issue. I'm special.