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Clark’s still tasting the rotting apple Lex made him eat at the lab when he stops by his house, so he decides to grab a quick shower and brush his teeth before meeting Chloe. It takes less than a second to brush his teeth at superspeed, so he slows down and does it again. After, he retreats to the barn. To strategize. He should find Chloe, see what she’s managed to gather, but so far things seem – pretty okay? Like, maybe the only problem with the black kryptonite was the explosion and as long as no one got caught up in it –
“Clark,” Lex says, stepping out of the ground floor shadows in the barn.
“Did you change?” Clark asks, which immediately feels like a stupid question. Clark’s in different clothes too. Lab explosion, hospital visit. Lots of reasons to change. He gets it. He hides his wince.
Lex drags his eyes up and down Clark, continuing to walk into the barn. “It looks like you did the same,” he says.
Clark licks his lips. “I wanted to get the taste of the rotting fruit out of my mouth,” he explains.
Lex reaches the stairs. “Ah, yes,” he says, “cloying, wasn’t it? Hard to swallow.” He grabs the banister and starts moving up. “But I knew you could handle it.”
It feels, like conversations often do with Lex, as though Clark is dancing on the edge of something he is only just beginning to understand. And that any wrong answer could send him plummeting the wrong direction, throwing him forever into the abyss of darkness and confusion below.
“Right, Clark?” Lex asks. He’s still climbing up the steps.
Clark swallows. “Right,” he agrees, inanely. “Um, what are we talking about?”
“I thought we were talking about how well you can take it,” Lex says, which really didn’t sound right to Clark.
“I thought we were talking about apples?” Clark asks and Lex finally closes the last steps up to him.
“Funny,” Lex smirks. “I thought we were talking about cherries.” And then he puts his hand on Clark’s shoulder and Clark almost jumps out of his own skin.
“Are you okay?” Clark asks, but staying as still as possible. As mad as they’ve been at each other this past year, something inside of Clark will do anything to keep Lex’s hand burning a hole in Clark’s shoulder. He must be pressing really hard too, because Clark can actually feel his fingers.
“Aren’t you tired of these games, Clark?” Lex asks instead. He moves them backwards and Clark – matches his steps. “I know I am.”
“What games?”
Lex raises an eyebrow. “This one,” he says. They come to a stop at the edge of the couch.
Clark looks down. “I – yeah,” he admits. “I am. I wanted to – but I don’t know what else – it’s so big, Lex. Bigger than me I guess,” he says. “And things go really bad when I make the wrong choice.” His eyes, under his fringe, are imploring. It’s been a while since that look worked on Lex, though. “Really bad,” he tells Lex. “I don’t want to make the wrong choice.”
“Oh, Clark,” Lex tells him, and forces Clark down on the couch. “I have a hard time believing there’s anything bigger than you.”
Clark’s mouth opens slightly, as Lex neatly steps between Clark’s legs. His hand comes from Clark’s shoulder to his jaw and he tilts Clark’s face up towards his. Clark follows, easily.
“I almost went to Lana,” Lex says conversationally, and Clark squeezes his own thighs as tightly as he can. He doesn’t know what will happen if he puts his hand on the couch. Or – on Lex. “But I don’t think she’s ready yet. And besides,” Lex brings his other hand past Clark’s shoulder to the couch. His chin still cupped in Lex’s right hand. Left arm boxing him in. “Why bother with intermediaries when you can go right to the source?”
“Intermediaries? Lex, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and then Lex’s mouth is covering Clark’s. Clark can’t help himself. He leans in.
Lex pulls away. “Interesting,” he says, and Clark feels his body go hot and dizzy all over.
“I thought –” Clark starts and Lex’s smile broadens, as Clark struggles to find the next words in his sentence.
“Oh, Clark,” Lex says, bringing his hand from Clark’s jaw to his chin. Tightening his grip on Clark’s face possessively. Thumb brushing up against the bottom of Clark’s lip. “I did. Intend to fuck you, if that’s what you were going to ask.”
Clark closes his eyes. He fights down the urge to swallow, and fails.
“Is that something you want?” Lex asks.
Clark’s eyes fly open. “Here?” He can’t help but look around the barn. “You want – now?”
“Hm,” Lex says, and leans back in to kiss Clark. “Maybe we can work up to it.”
Usually, when Clark is kissing people, it feels like a scene happening to someone else. Like, he’ll be so aware of his hands and how dry his lips are and what he should be doing next and what they expect him to do next.
With Lex, Clark isn’t thinking about anything.
And he should. It should be the worst idea in the world. There were a million protests ready to go. But every single one of them flew out of his head the second Lex leaned in and Clark realized in the moment that he didn’t give a shit about any of the rest of it. Not Jor-El, not his parents, not the Luthor name, not his stupid destiny.
Horrifically, Clark realizes that he’s shaking.
Lex is still standing over him, which Clark doesn’t understand, because he could sit, maybe on Clark? He could sit on Clark and then they would be touching in so many more places and Clark moans into Lex’s mouth.
It’s too light. It’s too light – there’s not enough pressure on Clark, not like Lex had done it before when he’d walked Clark backwards over to the couch.
But the more Clark tries to lean up into Lex, the more Lex pulls away. Like he delights in it, letting Clark try over and over and over again to get close enough. Like some stupid parody of the dance they’ve been doing since Clark met him.
It hurts, Clark thinks, in a moment of clarity. He doesn’t like it. He wants –
He tries to stand up.
Lex’s hand stops him. He breaks off from Clark’s mouth. “Let’s try something else,” he tells Clark, who’s starting to feel like he’s never going to understand his friend. He wants to ask stupid questions, like why? And is it because Clark wasn’t doing a good job? And why doesn’t Lex want to touch him? But that might remind Lex that Clark is just a stupid high school virgin and then he might stop all together, which would be infinitely worse, so Clark just shoves all of those feelings down and tries not to look up at Lex too desperately.
From the way Lex’s looking back down at Clark, he’s pretty sure he’s failed.
Lex’s hand drops to Clark’s shirt buttons where, one by one, he presses them open. Clark’s – he thinks they’re really going to have sex, now. This isn’t just some fluke. They’re going to – Lex is going to take off his shirt and he’ll reach the end of it and then he’ll unbutton Clark’s jeans and slide them off and he’ll turn Clark over and Clark’s brain starts feeling fuzzy.
“Lex,” Clark realizes he’s panting. Maybe it’s okay if he asks. “Can you – do you want to sit down?” He means next to him, but Lex slides his legs across Clark’s thighs, settling down at the edge of his knees.
“God,” Clark chokes out. “Lex.”
“All that power,” Lex says, dragging his hand across Clark’s defined torso, “but you’ll go where I tell you to, won’t you?”
“Please,” Clark begs. “Lex – Jesus, Lex, please. Whatever you say. Whatever you – ah!”
He thinks Lex looks cruel, then pleased, then cruel again. He bites down on Clark’s jaw. It won’t – break skin – but it grinds into Clark’s bones and he realizes Lex must know. He must know something otherwise – otherwise he wouldn’t do this. He’d realize this is wrong. Clark tries to sit up and that’s when Lex’s hand closes, vice-like, around Clark’s dick.
“Oh, god,” Clark says and feels his legs sliding open.
“If only he knew you were such a slut,” Lex says and Clark feels like his eyes are rolling back in his head.
“What?” he manages. “Who?”
Lex doesn’t answer. “You’re going to come for me, Clark,” he tells him. “And then you’re going to thank me.”
Clark feels his face tighten up. Lex’s hand is still in his jeans, pumping up and down his cock. “Can I,” Clark gasps, “Can I touch you?”
“There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” Lex tells him. “For now, you’re exactly where I want you: at my mercy,” and he digs his nails into Clark’s balls, causing Clark’s cock to pulse in his pants. Fuck, fuck, Clark tries to hide his face in the couch while Lex, still on top of him, shakes with laughter.
“See,” he tells Clark. “You can trust me. I know what you want. Better than you do,” and he does it again.
“Lex,” Clark groans. He can barely stop his hips from thrusting forward but with the way he’s feeling, he’d send Lex flying across the barn. He is under control. Clark is always under control. His own hands ball up into fists and clench down until his knuckles are white. “Lex,” Clark whines again.
“That’s right,” Lex says, “I’m in control here.”
“Yes, yes,” Clark agrees mindlessly. “Whatever – whatever you want.”
Lex twists his hand sharply up Clark’s shaft. It should hurt, Clark is realizing. It would – it would hurt, if he was a normal human. But it doesn’t hurt Clark. It doesn’t hurt Clark and Lex knows it doesn’t hurt Clark. Clark feels split open and splayed bare and he hasn’t even touched Lex yet. He thinks that if he could manage it right now, if he could step up, up and out of the barn door, he’d be able to fly.
Beneath his hands, the couch cushion rips. If Lex knows – if Lex knows, why is Clark pretending? He drops the tattered cushion and brings his hand to Lex’s hip.
But Lex uses his free hand to grab Clark’s wrist, and pin it to the couch. “Not yet,” he says, grinding his other hand down into Clark’s cock. Clark moans. “You’re going to slide off this couch, first,” Lex says, “and you’re going to stay on your knees until I’ve decided you’ve done a good enough job sucking me off.”
“Oh, God,” Clark says, and hips twitching involuntarily. “I’m going to –”
“Don’t come yet,” Lex says, with a weird sort of echo. Lex’s voice coming from the couch above Clark and the door at the barn at the same time. “You’re not allowed.”
“Clark! Clark!” the other voice that sounds like Lex is saying and Clark glances down in its direction on the first floor only to see a second Lex bursting in through the barn door. The newly arrived Lex makes eye contact with Clark.
Clark comes.
His mom stumbles in next. “Oh my God,” she says, turning away.
“Oh, fuck,” the Lex on top of Clark of Clark says, pulling his hand out of Clark’s pants and rolling his eyes. He holds his hand out to Clark’s mouth, who mindlessly leans in to lick it off before the entire situation comes rushing in and he freezes completely.
The Lex on top of him laughs, then shrugs, as if he’s unbothered. But Clark can feel the way his skin vibrates with anger. The way his expression slides off self-satisfaction to vengeful. He wipes his hand slowly down Clark’s while Clark gapes at the air. Becoming aware he’s breathing heavily.
“Clark,” the Lex not on top of Clark says with horror, “I’m so sorry. He tried to chain me up. I only just got away.”
Clark doesn’t feel up to making noises right now. His stomach churns, violently, and Clark is worried that for the first time in his life he’s going to vomit.
He’s still struggling to bring his breathing down to normal.
The Lex on top of him gets off of him. The Lex that had sex with him walks down to the Lex that hasn’t. “What’s wrong?” the Lex that’s had sex with him sneers. “Hard to see someone else take what you’ve always wanted? What you’ve been too spineless to take, when it's right there offered up to you?”
“No!” The Lex that hasn’t had sex with Clark – the real Lex, Clark is realizing, with a dull, echoing, thud. The real Lex says, “I would never.” He turns to Clark’s mom, swearing, “Ms Kent. I don’t want Clark like that. We’ve talked about this. You know this. You know I’d never do anything like this to Clark. He’s like a brother to me. You have to know that.”
His mom still hasn’t turned around. “I know,” she tells the real Lex, though her voice is hesitant. “You’ve been a good friend to Clark. I know you wouldn’t …” but that’s all Martha Kent can bring herself to say, it seems.
The Lex that Clark had sex with, the thing that Clark had sex with, the meteor freak wearing his best friend’s face that Clark had chosen to have sex with even when he knew something was wrong, shakes his head. He’s almost down to the ground level. “That’s why I’ll always win,” Lex tells Lex. “Dad was right about you. You’re too weak, too sensitive to rule. To go after what you want.”
Clark wonders if he should do something. Move quickly. Save – someone? But when he goes to shift off the couch, his pants are sticky and wet and he doesn’t move.
He hasn’t even zipped up his fly.
“I don’t want this,” the real Lex says, clearly disgusted and Clark closes his eyes. “I don’t,” he looks up at Clark. “I would never do something like this to you,” he says and for all the powers Clark has in the world he can’t stop the way that settles deep inside of him.
The thing that isn’t Lex snorts. “I know you’ve got this little performance you need to put on for the Kents, but I know you.” It jabs Lex in the chest. “You’ve wanted this since the very first time you woke up to your very own personal underage guardian angel telling you you were saved, and the only thing that stopped you from taking it was your own pathetic fear that maybe there’s a reason daddy never loved you enough and mommy left –”
“Now, Martha,” Lex yells and Martha turns around. The imposter reaches for his mother’s throat and Lex slams an oddly colored rock into the back of his hand while Martha pulls the trigger on a taser. Both his friend and the one Clark should’ve known wasn’t light up with a blazing yellow glare.
Clark keeps his eyes shut.
The light fades.
“What – what happened?” a voice Clark would’ve said with certainty was Lex’s speaks.
“There was an accident at the lab,” Martha says. “It created this thing that looked like you. It wanted something with Clark. We just – we brought you two back together.”
“Clark,” Lex says, alarmed, and too quickly Clark realises what’s about to happen. His eyes fly open and he doesn’t blur out of the barn only through years of practice.
“Clark,” Lex repeats, quieter, now at the top of the stairs. Clark can’t look up. He can’t – he knows what he looks like. His pants still undone. His hair – his face goes red. “Clark, what did he do to you?”
“Nothing,” Clark says.
“I’m sorry,” Lex says. “Truly.”
The burning his face is spreading to his throat and eyes, which feel rubbed raw, even though –
Even though they hadn’t gotten to that yet. “Okay,” Clark says tonelessly. Whatever he’s supposed to be feeling here hasn’t hit yet. He’s pretty sure he should be grateful for that.
Lex takes Clark in. Clark can feel his eyes tracing up and down Clark’s body and self consciously, he snaps his legs back together.
It’s clear Lex has even less of an idea what to say than Clark does. Eventually, moves next to Clark and the couch and crouches down. Putting his head on the same level as Clark’s. Not standing over him, commanding him, controlling him, stripping him bare of all his – “Talk to me, Clark,” Lex says. “Are we – are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Clark says. Then, because he knows Lex is going to ask, his mom is going to ask, everyone is going to ask: “He didn’t. Force me.” Lex inhales sharply. “I know – I know you wouldn’t. Do anything like that. I should’ve known. I’m sorry,” Clark says, and bites his lip.
“Clark,” Lex leans forward, putting a hand on Clark’s knee and okay, that’s it. That’s really all Clark can take for the day.
“I’d really like to be alone,” Clark says, in an even tone. Still not looking at Lex. Lex withdraws his hand immediately.
“Of course,” he says.
He doesn’t leave right away. He stands, and hesitates, at the top of the stairs. Clark doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe. And eventually, Lex steps back down the stairs.
“Clark,” his mom starts and stops, after Clark’s done using his hearing to follow Lex all the way out of the barn and into his car. She stands there for a while. “You couldn’t have guessed the effect black kryptonite would have on you,” is what she settles on.
“Right,” Clark says. “On me.”
His mom frowns. “Your dad is going to be home soon,” she says. “I’m going to get dinner started,” she says.
And then she, too, leaves the barn.
Clark leans forward and presses his head into his hands. One minute, he thinks. One minute and he’ll get changed. He’ll go down to dinner. His mom won’t tell his dad about this one, he’s pretty sure. Lex – Lex doesn’t even remember it. He doesn’t blame Clark for it.
One minute, Clark thinks. His stomach clenches. He’s getting up in fifty-nine seconds. In forty seconds, this won’t have happened. Clark has no marks on his skin.
Thirty seconds.
In twenty-nine seconds, Clark will throw away his pants. Maybe he’ll burn them. Whatever. It won’t matter in twenty-eight seconds.
His mom is waiting for him in the kitchen. Clark will be down to join her in twenty five seconds. He’ll be back to the son she knows in twenty seconds. This won’t matter in nineteen seconds.
Power will return to his limbs in ten seconds.
In nine seconds, this will actually have been a good thing. He’s like a brother to Lex. Lex is like a brother to him. Lex will be like a brother to him again in five seconds.
There is a box that Clark uses to keep his biggest weakness locked away in his bedside drawer, and in four seconds, today will go in there. In three seconds, he’ll lock it. In two seconds, he’ll put it away.
In one second, Clark will get up, and this will be over.
Clark presses his head deep into his hands and doesn’t move again for a long time.