the telling of all this

I.
Clark shows up at a quarter to five, throwing his bag down on the couch. He's so full of forward momentum that he stops only by colliding, hands out, with the edge of Lex's desk. The glass shakes on impact, and the paperclip pyramid Lex built so carefully during a conference call that morning tumbles apart. He doesn’t care. Clark is here.

Lex sits up, puts his feet on the floor. "Clark," he says, unnecessarily. "Something wrong?"

"Bad day," Clark says. He shakes his head. "I hate Jim."

Lex hates Jim. Whatever Jim's done, he hopes Clark will let him fix it. He wants so much to be allowed to fix something for Clark. "Jim who?" he asks, leaning back.

"Oh." Clark smiles through the haze of his bad mood. "No. Phys ed. Class. Gym. I hate gym."

Lex laughs a little, mostly for Clark’s benefit and at himself. He's so eager to further complicate things.

The noise has the odd effect of launching Clark forward again, propelling him right towards Lex. "I had a really, really bad day," Clark says, as he hovers just above and out of reach. Lex hasn't even moved his hands from the armrests of his chair, and then Clark leans down and kisses him.

Clark's attempts at seduction have previously amounted to something between teasing and annoying. Shy smiles and his head tilted too close when Lex speaks, nothing serious or said aloud. The strategy isn’t entirely unimpressive. Flirtation has its place in the art of self-defense, after all, and if there's one thing Clark needs to learn and learn well, it is how better to protect his own natural resources. Lex can't always be around to keep him safe. Clearly. He has gym.

"I got detention," Clark says. The words gust against Lex's mouth.

Lex wants to fix this, if Clark will let him. "Looking for more trouble?" he asks, and bites at Clark's bottom lip.

"No," Clark says simply, biting back. He rests his weight against Lex's chair, and they both tilt backwards. "Just you."

Clark has walked into this office a dozen times after school, casually happy or vaguely bored. He likes fruit juice and warm cookies and asking Lex easy questions about his science homework and impossible questions about girls. Lex has made sure that he is well stocked on all accounts.

But now. Clark kisses Lex wet and fierce, balancing staggered thrusts of his tongue with one hand on Lex's thigh. He is as cocky as he is desperate, someone who has never had what he's demanding. His fingers close tightly around the back of Lex's neck, mouth hot and hungry. He's trying to swallow Lex whole and Lex can't quite bring himself to care how much Clark doesn't know about what he's doing. Lex's hand is on Clark's waist, his shirt already untucked, though Lex can't remember when he even moved his arm, let alone when he finally, finally first touched Clark's hot skin.

Clark is climbing into his lap, and the sudden vertigo of the chair trying to overturn makes Lex snap forward and dig his fingers into Clark's hips. "Not here," he says, and watches Clark blink, processing what Lex has said until he understands that Lex isn't trying to stop them.

"Anywhere," he says, pulling Lex up and crushing their bodies together. Clark is wide and solid and he pushes the heel of his hand against the base of Lex's spine. If he breaks something, Lex will have proof this happened.

"Bedroom," he offers, the nearby couch an acceptable compromise, but Clark merely nods and starts walking backwards, around the desk, towards the door, pulling Lex by his shirt collar. Lex won’t try to stop this. He’s not sure he’d even know how.

He steers Clark into the hall, then grabs his hand and leads him up the stairs.

He pauses at the door to his rooms and Clark runs into him from behind, sliding his hands around and up Lex's chest. Clark bends a little and licks at Lex's jaw, sucks hard on his earlobe. Lex doesn't ask if Clark is sure, because Clark's palm brushes his left nipple through the shirt and then fumbles out to find the doorknob.

"Not in the hall," Clark says, low and near. Lex would fall forward but Clark's arms are still around him. Clark pushes them into the room, doesn't let go as they cross the sitting room. Lex turns around and Clark kisses him right away. Lex doesn't have anything as interesting as this to say. He pushes Clark's jacket off and onto the floor, and then unbuttons Clark's top shirt.

Clark fingers paw at the open neck of Lex's shirt like he's hoping for a hidden zipper to appear. Lex does it for him, and then pushes Clark's t-shirt up and over his head. The full warm flush of Clark's bare chest against his is a fireplace, raising goosebumps on Lex's back in contrast. The rest of him can be left out in the cold for now. He doesn't mind.

Clark's hand dances across his back and Lex shivers. Clark pushes him into the bedroom, a sharp stallion kick to the door and then they tumble onto the mattress. Clark lands on his side, Lex kissing him back onto the covers. Clark moans from somewhere deep in his throat, like he doesn't really know how to make the sound on purpose and it's just being breathed out of him hard.

Lex props himself up on one elbow and slides the other hand up Clark's long chest. "What do you --"

"Anything," Clark says, and his stomach quivers, actually shakes beneath Lex's touch.

"Do you have any idea what anything means to me?" Lex's brain is suspended in this strange, hyper aroused state where none of the options it's offering will stay long enough to be implemented. Clark tied at the wrists and hung from a hook in the storage cellar, Clark on his knees on the main stairway, holding onto the banister, Clark lying on his back by the edge of the pool, one hand trailing through the water as he jerks himself off, Clark bent over the --

"Please," Clark says, closing his eyes and tilting his neck back. His moans lower to a whisper and he claws out blindly to catch Lex's fingers, pushing them down over his crotch. "Please show me."

All Lex has wanted is to give Clark whatever he wants. The other things can wait. He opens Clark's jeans and works his hand inside. He's sweaty and slick and Lex slides down the bed, dragging denim and thin cotton boxers off. He settles himself with his chest on Clark's bare legs, his forearms pressing heavy thighs to the mattress, and licks a stripe down Clark's cock.

Clark pulses his hips into Lex's hands and says, "Please, oh, please Lex," like he honestly thinks Lex might not finish what they've started. Clark's head is thrown back and his long neck courses with deep, breathless swallows. He comes quick and almost reluctant.

Lex allows himself one endless moment with his nose tucked into the slope of Clark's hipbone, musky and ripe. Clark's hand ghosts over the crown of his head and Lex raises his face, meeting Clark's shocked, starved eyes. "Oh," Clark breathes softly, like he sees something in that look, something that explains what's happening between them. He falls onto the pillows again, arching his back. He's figured out they're nowhere close to being done.

Lex rises to his knees and runs his hands under Clark's thighs, folding them up. He takes Clark's hand. "Anything?" he asks, sucking Clark's fingers into his mouth, then adding his own. Clark shudders, Lex can feel it where he holds Clark's wrist, where his shoulder is pressed to Clark's inner thigh. Clark trusts him to do anything to that body.

"Don't move," he says, reaching forward to find lube in the nightstand drawer. Clark stills, closing his eyes, his own hands holding his legs up and open. Lex slowly works one finger in and Clark groans, rocks back when Lex adds another. Lex can see the hundred ways they'll do this overlapped like centuries of frescoes painted on the same wall. He is going to fuck Clark like the most gentle of excavations, because beneath this sudden shift in priorities is something priceless.

Clark bucks sharply and opens his eyes when Lex pushes inside, lifting his hips and Lex's off the bed before crashing back to the mattress. He's shaking again, great, deep tremors, and when Lex thrusts deeply and comes, Clark screams Lex's name. He's viciously jerking himself off, quick yanks that jolt the bed until he freezes mid-stroke and comes with a whimper. Lex leans forward to bite at his mouth, and Clark's eyelids flutter and close.

II.
Lex backs out of the room, easing the door open behind him with a blind reach. Clark sighs and shifts in his sleep but doesn't wake. Lex holds in a tight breath, sidesteps around the solid oak and pulls it shut after him with a soft click. Then he allows himself to exhale. Clark is naked and beautiful and wrapped in Lex's gray sheets like a pearl in the folds of an oyster. Clark is safe.

He turns around and Chloe is sitting in the leather armchair next to the fireplace, a digital camera in her lap and a frozen look of panic on her face. Lex would ask her how she got in if that wouldn’t so obviously be stalling.

He doesn't get a chance. "I -- I was looking for Clark," she says, and after the first stammer her voice is clear, if shaky.

"Of course," Lex says. He briefly considers picking up his dress shirt off the floor. But he's not cold in pajama pants, and there's no chance she doesn't know what's going on, and she seems likely to be more uncomfortable if they're not equitably clothed.

"I was just looking for Clark," she says again, running a hand through her hair. She doesn't look her age any more than Clark does, but that has so little to do with the power people carry.

Lex turns his back to her, spreading his hands wide on the long table. All he can see is his reflection in the darkened glass, his pale face and the mottled reds and browns of the wood-paneled room. An hour ago -- two? Three? He has no idea what time it is. Well past dark. It doesn't really matter how late it is. Some things haven't changed.

He twists around and Chloe's sitting up straighter now, growing into herself. There is a trail of his and Clark's clothes from the couch to his bedroom door and Lex imagines her as a search dog, sniffing each piece of evidence. He won't glance down to see whether Clark left fingerprints in his flesh.

"You were looking for Clark," he says, and his voice almost cracks on the name, which would be proof enough if there were still any question. "And you found this instead."

Chloe looks down at the camera in her lap, nodding.

"Congratulations on your first big scoop. You must be..." She raises her head, eyes wide and not nearly as frightened as Lex would like. "So excited you could scream," he finishes. She probably heard that, too. Lex doesn't care what she heard him say. He would cut out her tongue before she could dare repeat a word Clark had yelled.

"That's not. I was just looking for Clark --"

"So you said."

"And I thought he might be here."

Lex stares pointedly at Clark's sheepskin jacket, spread out like a pelt on the hearth. Chloe blushes, soft pink up high on her cheeks, and Lex crosses the room. He folds his arms over his chest and stands before her. Her eyes are level with his stomach and now he can feel the flush of long scratches, as if her stare had raised them, not Clark's ragged square-cut nails.

"It's really quite a story, Chloe. My father in particular would be interested in helping find a suitable publication, I'm sure."

Her chin comes up hard. "I haven't taken any pictures. I won't --"

"You haven't left," he says.

Her eyes water, from the confrontation or the confusion of it all, the sheer emotion. He hasn't yet raised his voice. He won't. He won't yell. Clark is sleeping, Clark is peacefully, blissfully unaware of a world outside Lex's broad bed and moonlit pillows and Lex doesn't care what army is standing there with a battering ram, he isn't going to let Clark be disturbed.

"I -- I didn't know what to do," she says.

"You could leave." He doesn't imagine she'll stay long, now that she's unstuck, unfrozen from whatever shock had paralyzed her in his favorite reading chair. It's possible she'd never realized she could get up and go.

"I know," she says, and stands clumsily, heels coming down too hard. The camera clatters to the stone tile with a decisive crack. She reaches out as if she can still catch it, then closes her mouth in a firm line and smoothes her skirt against her thighs. "I don't need pictures," she says, shattered and grown up in that long moment.

He pours himself a drink. His hands are steady enough now. "No one is here against his will."

"No one else will care whether that's true," she snaps. This is why he never spoke badly of Chloe to Clark. Lana was a windmill. Chloe is a hurricane.

"You know it's true," he says, facing her again, and she stands up straighter even as her face falls and her eyes spill over. Ah.

Chloe must think she should be all that Clark could ever need, a best friend with a kind, if fractured, family. She can give him prom tickets. Notes in study hall. Breasts. Clark's probably never even told her no.

She's failing miserably at fighting the tears, wiping her face impatiently. Lex doesn't mean to feel sorry for her, because she has him at a momentary disadvantage and that's never a good moment for sympathy.

He tries a smile. It finds his lips almost too readily and he presses his mouth to the lip of the glass, anchoring himself in the cool, familiar weight of crystal. "He's hard to resist," he says. He says it honestly. It certainly sounds as honest as it feels, which is new.

"I wouldn't know," she says, and Chloe's not a hurricane, she's a rogue wave, heavy with crashing power and self-defeating pressure. But she came over there, chasing Clark, chasing Clark and whatever it was that happened to drive him from experimental to urgent before dinnertime. Chloe came looking for that other story, and she got this one. She can't have Clark but she might try to ruin this for both of them. She's not very practiced at being an adult.

Lex swallows the rest of the Scotch. He is sick of protecting only the things he hates, of defending the people he loathes most out of inbred loyalty to a name. To an idea. Clark may not be normal but he is flesh and blood, and more than that he is Lex's future.

Lex had kissed his closed eyes and asked if letting him fall asleep meant he'd be late for something. Clark had turned onto his stomach and shrugged into the thick pillows. Clark is keeping better than his fair share of the bed warm and Lex will defend that against anyone who tries to make Clark's life something it's not.

"He isn't who you want him to be," Lex says. He tries to say it gently.

Chloe sniffs angrily and pulls unconsciously at her ear, deciding something. "He's not who you think," she says.

"Yes, he is."

"He has --"

"I know."

She looks down, blinking hard and disappointed. "You know?"

And the truth is, he doesn't. He doesn't really know. Clark hasn't told him. But if Chloe actually had something to tell, she'd be more specific, or less, not vaguely protecting a secret they've both come close to guessing but not been trusted with. Clark's not like other boys. He knows that. She has nothing to tell him about Clark that he doesn't already know. He knows more about Clark than she'll ever learn.

"I think you should go now," he says. She'll always ask too much of Clark. That's what he needs to remember from this conversation. He won't make the same mistake.

Chloe crosses her arms. "Do you think if this kind of thing keeps happening no one else will figure it out, too?"

"What kind of thing?" Lex asks and then grits his teeth, setting the glass down hard. He knows better than to show concern without circumspection.

"Did he even tell you what happened?"

Lex hadn't asked. He knows to let Clark tell him his own truths. "I think you should --"

"He didn't tell you," Chloe says, shaking her head. "Did you -- did you even stop long enough to ask him?"

"Chloe, you're very important to Clark, and I'm trying to be --"

"He almost got suspended." She shakes her head at him as if he's not paying enough attention. "He could've been expelled! He threw a kid halfway across the court, Lex. A kid, not a basketball. He went all He-Man over some stupid football player who's got his jock strap on a little too tight. But instead of just beating his chest or whatever you alpha males do when you're playing king of the hill, Clark picked up the guy like a rag doll and threw him into the bleachers."

Lex shrugs. There's probably a discipline report on file if he wants details. "He said he had a bad day. He didn't feel like elaborating."

"I bet." She flips her hair and Lex wants to break something.

"You have no idea," he says. The words taste like ice.

"The guy could press charges."

Lex looks her in the eye. "He won't."

Chloe takes a step back, bumps into the chair. She bends at the knees and picks up the pieces of camera. "I don't believe this was his idea," she says.

"Ask him yourself tomorrow." It's easy to say because she won't. Won't give Clark the opportunity to lie about it. This is done.

She clutches the broken camera to her chest. Her skirt is unevenly tugged up and her sweater is unraveling at the cuff, as if she worried the thread while she waited. "You don't know anything about him," she spits, but her lips quiver as she stalks out.

There's a decrescendo of slamming doors and then she's gone. Lex sits down, his stomach cold under his own fingertips. There's a sting of broken flesh, deep scratches that might scar, indistinct pain that's replaced a more acute flare in his lower spine where Clark grabbed and pushed him deeper inside.

He's sitting on a thinly padded chair at the secretary, the one that matches the wardrobe in the bedroom. He's never sat in this chair before. He prefers the armchair, because it's closer to the fire. He feels burned inside out, flayed and eaten. It's so cold in this room. He pushes to his feet.

III.
Clark is sitting on the bed in a sea of dark, shimmering silk. He looks only half human.

He looks like he heard everything.

Lex has no idea why he hasn't left, and he wants to bar the door, lock them both inside. It's a castle. There's no moat, but it would probably be weeks before anyone could actually break in.

"You were talking about me," Clark says. His feet are on the floor, but the sheet is wrapped around his waist, like he'd stood up, walked to the door, and then sat back down.

Lex sits on the long wooden trunk at the foot of the bed, just past where Clark can touch without reaching. He breathes out. Chloe is gone. This is done. "You threw a guy? That's what happened in gym?"

Clark stares, defiant. "I had a bad day."

Lex nods. "I think you scared some people."

"He was being a jerk." Clark tugs at the sheet, holding it tighter, and Lex shifts closer.

"Clark, you really need to be --"

"What?"

More gentle. More discreet. Tied to my headboard for your own good. Lex sighs. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No?" Clark glances up. Lex won't make him. It's not the principal's office. It's not his parent's kitchen table. "No," Clark says finally, voice stronger. "I get it. I need to be more careful."

Not nicer. Not different. Careful. Clark reaches a hand out to touch Lex's knee.

Lex moves around to sit next to him on the bed. He can feel Clark's skin shiver when their arms brush. He can impossibly feel his own lungs compress and expand, as if they're kinetically powered by Clark's heart and not his own.

"I would do anything for you," he says. His hand is on Clark's chest and he can feel Clark push against it and then pull himself back. "Anything, Clark."

"You don't --" Clark rubs at his mouth. "That could." He clenches his jaw. "I might be more trouble than you think."

Lex doesn't know, because Clark hasn't told him. Clark probably hasn't told anyone, and he's not telling him now, except that he is. He's warning Lex. He's trying to say that whatever it is will be worse than some jock thrown across a basketball court. But Lex already knew that much. He could have guessed.

He watches Clark's blink, beads of tears on the ends of his eyelashes. Clark's nose flares when he takes a shaky breath, and he digs his nails into the fold of fabric lying on his thighs. Clark isn't trying to scare him off. Clark is terrified.

Lex touches his chin. "Anything."

"A lot of trouble."

"Yeah," Lex says. "I know, Clark."

END

Credits: Title/lyrics by Ida. Beta by Punk and willa. Fucked-up uncommunicative guys destined to be written this gay courtesy the WB.