But here is a coda ficlet for Hidden. I haven't seen Aqua yet, so consider this as though it was written right after Hidden aired, I guess.

Rating: R
Pairing: Clark/Lex
Summary: Hidden Coda. Lex's missing scene after his fight with Clark.



After Clark leaves, Lex thinks for a while and discovers that he should have known something was wrong from the first punch Clark threw. Clark’s sense of fair play, though sketchy when it comes to emotional battery, would never allow him to hit Lex before, even though Lex has seen it in Clark’s eyes a hundred times. But then, when Clark is in the room, Lex’s logic gets jammed with static interference, his whole body becoming little more than a conduit of rage.

He still can’t quite believe he punched Clark back. Lex rolls onto his back, feeling the hardwood cold against his bruised shoulder, and raises his arm to examine his hand. It ought to be smashed, Lex knows. Maybe even grazed on the outside, like Lex had punched concrete. A boy who can toss off cars like toys could certainly break human skin if a human were stupid enough to attack. Instead, it’s only a little puffy, a little red, and nowhere near as sore as Clark’s lip probably is at the moment.

With Lex’s logic stuffed out of sight like a used condom, the visceral shock of seeing that blood trailing from Clark’s lip had been absolute. One minute, insane rage – and Lex knew insane rage, not in any hyperbolic sense – and the next – cherry red drop against Clark’s red lips, a more perfect red. Lex had immediately gotten hard, reflex reaction with no mediation from his brain, and he could scarcely say why, except for the simple ugly beauty of that crimson drop on Clark’s full lower lip.

Clark distilled, maybe, Lex thought, absently dropping his hand down to touch his own scarred mouth. Essence of Clark, he thought, and smiled in spite of himself. Once upon a time, Lex had guessed that essence of Clark would emerge from a much different part of his person, that was true. How many hours here, in his study, fantasizing about that? About stripping Clark, at first just of his plaid shirt and low-rise jeans that belonged to no farmer Lex had ever met. Stripping that pretty fifteen year old of his innocence and his inability to lie, but his determination to do so anyway.

And later, when Clark had flashed his darker side like a snake showing a poison orange underbelly… later, Lex had thought about stripping away Clark’s better intentions, trying to get at that cruel and narcissistic core, pulling Clark out of the leather and the spray-painted jeans and then just dropping to his knees and taking Clark apart starting with his cock.

Now things had grown darker still inside Lex’s mind. These days, his fantasies had almost lost any semblance of sexuality. Instead, he dreamed of Clark in metaphor – a fortress wall, a vast ocean, an unscaleable cliff-face. He longed to batter himself against Clark’s barred doors, decimate himself against Clark’s rocky surface until – what? It ended differently sometimes. Sometimes Clark would concede, miraculously. Other times, it ended when Lex had managed to destroy himself in the effort.

But today.

Lex curls up to a sitting position, wincing, then settles with his arms crossed over bent knees.

Today had been ruby red against soft flesh, and Lex is still hard from it.

Stripping Clark of his humanity seems like the greatest fantasy of all.