Lex had known it was a mistake to test meteor rocks on primates. Not because of any ethical concerns – vervets were considered vermin in most of their native countries and had bounties on them in some – but because super-powered monkeys were unlikely to buckle under the usual Luthor methods of persuasion. He wasn’t entirely sure what sorts of goals and desires monkeys aspired to. Somehow, he didn’t think a lifetime supply of bananas would keep such a creature in line.

As it turned out, he was right.

“Coleby, stop it,” Lex complained, but there wasn’t any power behind it. The vervet had long ago established that he wasn’t going to listen to anything Lex said. After he had broken down four industrial steel doors, Lex had decided it would be less destructive and more cost-effective to just let him do what he wanted. His goal currently seemed to be following Lex everywhere he went.

The monkey chattered, mimicking Lex’s stance and shooing gesture.

With a sigh, Lex gave up the pen he had been trying to write with and Coleby had been trying to steal for the last twenty minutes. “Fine, have it.” Coleby chattered again, happily this time, and snatched the pen away. He immediately started to scribble on the pad Lex had just been taking notes on.

“Fuck,” Lex cursed in hopeless resignation. “Coleby, I needed that.”

Colbey just patted Lex’s head and chattered in a way that sounded almost sympathetic.

Lex picked up his phone, but before he could dial, Coleby had lost interest in the pen and paper and now wanted the phone. This wasn’t going to work. Even if he could get the number dialed and retain possession of the handset, Coleby would start screaming and Lex wouldn’t be able to stay professional. That hadn’t mattered when he was firing people, but he was now finished with that phase of the project restructuring process.

He gave Colbey the phone and reached for the pen. Coleby blocked him, now wanting both of them. He chattered at Lex, holding both items possessively.

Lex admitted defeat. There was no possible way he was going to get any more work done when he was sharing an office with a tyrannical and greedy vervet monkey. “Go on, keep them. I’m going home,” he told Coleby as he stood up and collected his jacket. Colbey abandoned both pen and phone and followed him to the door, chattering at him.

Lex led him out of the office, spoke briefly with his assistant, which Coleby didn’t like and displayed clearly by hissing and baring his teeth at her. Lex made it short and headed for the elevator, Coleby at his heels. “The story is that you’re my pet,” Lex told him as the car descended from the upper levels of the LuthorCorp building down to the underground garage. “I had you shipped in from South Africa. No talk of secret labs and no knocking walls down, understand? Especially not around Lana because she’s pregnant, okay?”

He could almost swear that Coleby had to understand him because the insolent creature put a finger in each ear and started blabbing rudely. It was almost as bad and a lot more blatant than the last couple of conversations, confrontations really, he’d had with Clark.

“Cole, you’re a monkey. You’re supposed to be cute and charming. Cut it out.” Coleby was having none of it. If this was some kind of pre-test for raising a kid, he was beginning to reconsider letting Lana have it. “Coleby, stop.” He made the mistake of trying to grab the vervet by his wrist.

He succeeded in getting the fingers out of Coleby’s ears. He also succeeded in backward flight and plastic deformation through directed kinetic energy. He also blacked out for a couple of floors.

When he came to, there was a Lex-sized dent in the side of the elevator, he was crumpled on the floor, and Coleby was worriedly patting his face and chittering unhappily. “Yeah, you shouldn’t throw me or anyone else around like that, either,” he told the monkey. He ignored the pounding in his head and tried to stand up.

Coleby wrapped an arm around Lex’s neck, the signal that he wanted to be carried for a while. Lex sighed, “Cole, I was just unconscious.” He was only about eleven pounds, though, so Lex picked him up anyway. As Lex straightened up, Coleby climbed over his shoulder to get a look at the back of his head. “Is it bleeding?” Lex asked, reaching up to check. It wasn’t, thankfully, so hopefully nobody would notice his latest head injury. He still grimaced as Coleby prodded it with his fingers and chattered sorrowfully.

“I’m fine, Coleby, leave it alone.” As the elevator door opened and he headed for his Ferrari, though, Lex decided that perhaps the wiser move today was not to go home where his pregnant fiancé was. Putting Coleby into the passenger’s seat, he strapped him in with the seat belt then did the same thing for himself. “Cole, no,” he all but whined as Coleby easily escaped the restraints. “Coleby, see, I have one, too,” he pulled at his own strap. “It’s to keep you safe. You need to stay in your seat, okay? Stay. Got it?”

Coleby ignored the lap belt but dutifully got back under the shoulder strap, looking over at Lex repeatedly to make sure he did it just the same. He beamed happily at Lex and chattered proudly while shaking his strap demonstratively. “Yes, very good, Coleby,” Lex praised in relief. It was far more cooperation than he could reasonably expect after the preceding afternoon.

He started the car and shot out of his parking spot and the garage with his usual lack of regard for any pedestrians or other vehicles in the way – what was the point of a motor with that many decibels if not to warn people to dive for cover? It was particularly impressive in confined spaces like garages. Today, though, the sound of the motor was drowned out by the sound of a screaming monkey.

Lex slammed on his brakes, nearly causing the car behind him to back-end him and making Coleby perform an impressive feat of acrobatics when the seatbelt proved inadequate to the task of holding his non-standard form. Coleby stood on the dashboard, in the pose that meant he was scared and dangerous. Horns honked at Lex from all directions and he realized he was in the middle of an intersection. Shit. He eased forward and off to the side of the road, pulling into the parking lot for the Daily Planet employees. Double shit.

The guy at the gate just stared at him. And at the monkey that looked ready to attack somebody, but Lex got equal billing which he didn’t think was entirely fair. Of course, the parking attendant didn’t know that Coleby could probably kill him with little trouble, so he supposed it was understandable that he thought Lex Luthor behind the wheel was equally frightening, especially given his most recent traffic incident happened only twenty feet away.

“I can either park here and block everybody from getting in or out of your lot, or you can let me in to park until Coleby calms down.” The attendant apparently decided not to cause further traffic build up and let him through the gate.

Lex eased slowly inside the Planet parking garage, and took the first available space before turning the car off and turning to Coleby, “See, that’s why we have seat belts,” he said in as calm a voice as he could pull off. He was really glad that he hadn’t been using a convertible today or Coleby might have gone flying out of the car entirely.

While that probably wouldn’t have hurt the super-powered primate, it probably would have made him very mad. Lex actually liked Metropolis. He didn’t want to loose a furious Coleby on it.

Coleby bared his teeth and snarled, not getting any calmer now that the car had stopped. Lex opened his door and stepped out of it, “You don’t like the car? You don’t need to be in the car. We’ll walk home, okay?” Except Lionel was staying in the penthouse and it was far too long a walk to get anywhere else. Coleby was a project Lionel was kept out of the loop on, and he’d rather not introduce them, especially now that the project was so spectacularly out of control.

The vervet scrambled out of the vehicle, looking much happier the moment he was on solid ground, but obviously still wary. Lex squatted down, trying not to let his knees touch the pavement, and held out an arm, “Hey, Cole, it’s okay. The car’s off.” Tentatively, Coleby inched toward him, then looped an arm around his neck. Lex stood, holding his shaking body and closed the car door. Coleby tensed, but Lex ran a hand down his spine, “ Shh, it’s okay. The car’s not going to hurt you.”

“Lex?”

Lex tensed as well, and turned slowly toward the voice. “Ms. Sullivan.” Coleby snarled at her and snapped angry chatter in her direction.

She held up her hand in surrender, “Hey, hey, truce, monkey!”

Lex continued to stroke the fur of his back. “Shh, shh, Cole, easy, boy.”

He quieted but continued to bare his teeth at her. His hand gripped the back of Lex’s neck painfully hard but he tried not to let that show. “Make it fast, Ms. Sullivan, Coleby is not very friendly.” That was something of an understatement. The two scientists who had directly overseen his project would probably be in the hospital for a few days. The official story was that they were attacked by an unknown assailant when they left the building on their lunch break. Lex still wasn’t sure why Coleby had developed such an attachment to him. He’d been expecting to be the third victim to the vervet’s tantrum.

“Why are you in the Daily Planet parking lot?”

Lex gave her a look like she had just asked the world’s stupidest question. “Because it was the closest turn off after the LuthorCorp parking lot. Coleby doesn’t care for my driving style.”

“He’s got good sense then,” Ms. Sullivan muttered, probably not intending for Lex to hear it. Coleby snapped his teeth together and chattered at her again. It was probably only projection that Lex thought it sounded a lot like the primate was telling her to just go away.

It did seem to convey the sentiment adequately, though, because Sullivan withdrew a step and gave Coleby a wary look, possibly taking her cues from Lex that while Coleby might look relatively harmless, he was anything but. He always had thought she was one of the brighter minds in Smallville.

“Well, I’ll leave you alone with your monkey then,” she said. “I don’t know where you came up with him, but he’s perfect for you.” He’d also often thought she was one of the more irritating people in Smallville.

Coleby shrieked at her, squeezing at Lex’s neck again as he leaned toward her. It pinched a nerve and Lex’s face contorted in pain as he hunched forward. “Cole! Let go!” Instinctively, he reached back to push the hand away. Coleby shouted, unhappy with the attempt to dislodge him and squeezed harder. Pressure point, Lex identified as his vision swam and he dropped hard to his knees and one hand. “Cole! Ow! Cole, let go!” his voice was starting to panic. If a monkey killed him, his punishment in the afterlife would be listening to his father berate him for all eternity for putting the original location of Level 33.1 back into operation.

“Shit!” Ms. Sullivan shouted distantly. “Lex! Clark!”

And Coleby was gone. Lex climbed back to his feet, looking around wildly even as his hand rubbed the back of his neck. “COLE!” He shoved passed Kent without acknowledging him or his rescue, “Cole!”

A hand far larger than Coleby’s spun him around to look into angry green eyes, “What was that, Lex?”

Lex shook his arm free, furious. “Where is he!?”

“You just tossed his pet monkey across the parking garage, Clark,” Sullivan explained the situation.

“You bastard!” Lex snarled at Clark, shoving at him before looking down the long row of cars. “Coleby!”

“It was killing him,” Clark’s voice tried to explain, presumably to Sullivan because Lex certainly didn’t care about his reasoning. If Clark hurt Cole, he’d seriously kill the hypocritical farmboy.

A scampering sound had Lex straightening and trying to find its source. The angry screech had him relaxing in relief until a terrible shattering sound and someone’s car alarm going off had him running toward the noise. “COLE! Stop it!”

He heard two sets of footsteps running after him, so there were going to be witnesses to, yes, Coleby had smashed up someone’s Mustang. Another car, a Honda, was also in bad shape, probably being the one Clark damaged by throwing a monkey fifty yards away, but it was the Mustang that was taking the beating of an angry vervet; possibly because it was the same color and a closer shape to the Ferrari.

Lex rubbed a hand over his face and closed his eyes. He just wanted this day to be over. Better, he wanted this day to not yet have begun. He’d disband the project before the experiment went awry. Not wrong, precisely, because what they expected to happen happened. Coleby had just hadn’t been as cooperative as originally projected. The primate behavioral scientists responsible for that oversight were either newly unemployed or in the hospital. “Coleby. Bad monkey.”

Coleby screeched again and shoved at the Mustang, skidding it into the Ford truck on its other side. Lex knelt down, not caring about his knees anymore. The pants were already a loss. Holding out an arm, he called again, “Coleby. C’mere, Cole. No more cars, I promise.”

Cole gave him a distrustful look, but stopped attacking the Mustang. Kent and Sullivan thankfully kept their traps shut.

“Cole, come here,” he waved his fingers encouragingly, “You’ve defeated the evil Mustang, so come back to me now.”

“Lex,” Clark warned, breaking the silence that had been too good to last. Lex ignored him and just patted the ground in front of him with his other hand and called Cole’s name again. Coleby considered him for a long moment, then appeared to decide he’d rather be with Lex than a bunch of mutilated cars.

Just before Coleby got to him, though, Clark’s hand grabbed Lex by the shoulder and yanked him away. “That thing’s dangerous,” the moron stated, like that wasn’t perfectly obvious after looking at the Mustang and the Ford.

Lex spun around and shoved at Clark. “Don’t you ever touch me or pretend to care, Clark. Just stay away from me and Cole.” He had no idea where the possessive and protective feelings for the vervet were coming from. Maybe it was because he’d been spared. Maybe it was from the very long afternoon spent in each other’s company. Maybe it was the few overtures of friendliness Cole had occasionally made.

Maybe it was because Clark didn’t like him.

Whatever the cause, it was with a lot more fondness than he’d ever felt for Coleby before, that Lex picked him up this time and held him. Coleby draped his arm all the way around Lex’s neck this time, which Lex was secretly grateful for because that probably meant he wouldn’t get accidentally killed.

He gave the three broken cars a look of annoyance and sighed. “I suppose I’ll go inside and get the Planet legal department in touch with my lawyers for reimbursement.” He had no idea what the insurance claims people or the car mechanics would make of the damage, but at least there weren’t any dents that were identifiably caused by Cole-sized hands.

“You’re not going anywhere near other people with that monster.”

Lex scowled. “Coleby is a vervet monkey, not a monster. He has a name. Use it when you speak of him.” Of course, Clark probably had a point. Coleby did not take it well when Lex paid other people more attention than Coleby was getting. He assumed the quiescence he was experiencing now came from the petting and the fact that they were actually talking about Coleby. He seemed able to tell the difference.

Chloe had moved between the Honda and the Mustang as she examined the damage. “Shit, Lex, I don’t want to know what steroids that little guy’s on but you are not bringing him inside a populated building.”

That worked out well; Lex didn’t want to tell her. Instead, he took out his phone and tossed it to her as best he could while still holding onto an armful of monkey. When she caught it and looked at him in confusion, he nodded toward Coleby. “He starts screaming when I talk on the phone. So you just volunteered to call up my lawyers and tell them to contact the Planet. The number is listed under ‘Legal’ in the address book. Oh, and tell them I had a car incident out front, too. No damage, but tell them to forward the information on to the PR department.”

As she began to scroll through the list, Lex turned back to Clark. “I don’t suppose you could actually be helpful for once instead of spouting off insults and leaving? You don’t want Coleby destroying the city, I don’t want Coleby destroying the city. Can you think of anywhere I can get to – on foot – where we won’t be a danger until I can get him trained?”

Chloe was talking softly and she raised her voice before Clark could come up with an idea. “They want to know whether this is a personal legal issue or LuthorCorp’s.”

Lex considered, trying to decide if Coleby still counted as a business venture. “Personal. And tell them to have somebody come and pick up the Ferrari.”

He listened to Chloe’s end as she passed on what Lex had said and also listed out the three license plate numbers, and to his growing shock, so did Coleby, without so much as a snarl. A little positive attention seemed to do him a world of good. That boded well for training. Clark still seemed to be trying to figure out where to send them, which was good because Lex had run out of options in the immediate vicinity.

“They want to know the official story,” Chloe said after a bit more back and forth about the types and relative conditions of the three vehicles.

Lex grimaced as he regarded the scene, trying to figure out how best to describe it in a believable fashion. “I got angry. Cars suffered.” He probably wasn’t quite strong enough to have pushed the Mustang hard enough to cause that much damage to the Ford, but who was going to gainsay him? “Tell them to sign me up for anger management again to forestall police involvement.”

Chloe looked at the damage, looked at Lex, looked at Coleby, looked at Lex, looked at the damage, then shrugged and repeated the story for the lawyers. When she hung up, she tossed the phone back to him, which Coleby caught and wouldn’t give back to Lex. He just chattered into the mouthpiece cheerfully, apparently fully recovered for his earlier ordeal. Lex let him have it for now, figuring he’d reclaim it in a few minutes when Coleby lost interest.

“They’re not happy,” she informed.

“I don’t pay them to be happy,” Lex dismissed, shifting Cole’s weight in his arms. Coleby just continued to play with the phone.

“You left yourself open to criminal charges,” Chloe continued, sounding surprised.

“Vandalism,” Lex agreed. “It won’t be the first time I’m convicted of it, if the owners do press charges. It’s a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine, restitution, and therapy. I’m already voluntarily signing up for the therapy and offering to pay for all damages, thereby demonstrating that I know I did wrong and want to make amends, thus significantly reducing the chances that formal charges will actually be brought against me.”

“But you didn’t do it,” Clark brought up. “Your monkey did.” It still wasn’t Coleby’s name, but at least he wasn’t calling him a monster anymore, so Lex let it pass. “And I bet whatever you did to him wasn’t just a misdemeanor.”

Lex met his accusing stare evenly. Clark had correctly identified precisely why he was taking the blame instead of trying something fancy like getting out of it entirely. There was precedent for this sort of thing. Lex had a solid record of taking out his frustrations on cars. Nobody would doubt it, particularly here in Metropolis where his car history dated back to when he was sixteen.

“I’m voluntarily taking the blame for his actions, paying restitution for all harm incurred, and offering to disappear for a few days until he’s more manageable, thus showing I know I did wrong and want to make amends and thereby significantly reducing the chances of you two turning me in.” He hoped. He didn’t let on that he doubted they would let him go that easily because that would just encourage them to have him arrested. He knew better than to try bribing or blackmailing these two without setting up contingencies. It would just make them move faster in their intent to get law enforcement involved and right now he didn’t have all his bases covered. He wouldn’t, so long as Coleby was still alive.

While possession of a super-powered primate wasn’t as explicitly illegal as, say, possession of heroin, there was a fair possibility that Coleby might qualify as a weapon of mass destruction, which was decidedly unlawful. And that was prior to examining where he or his powers came from.

The government didn’t look kindly on smuggling foreign animals into the country without paperwork or quarantine. The illegal experimentation violated at least a dozen ethics codes, again mostly in regards to procedure and paperwork rather than inhumane treatment. The worst thing Coleby had suffered was confinement and a few painless injections. Still, it all amounted to a felony, with a minimum jail time of two or three years. Quite a bit more, if Coleby actually was deemed a weapon of mass destruction.

A few times that afternoon, it had occurred to him that Coleby may need to be eliminated. He had decided poison would probably be the most reliable method. Dose his food. Now, though, holding Coleby as he continued to chatter into Lex’s cell phone, sometimes pretending to be angry, sometimes just talking in vervet-speak, and intermittently shooting looks at Lex and adjusting his expression to match whatever mood Lex was currently displaying, that didn’t seem possible.

Clark was scowling fiercely. Coleby kept glancing his way as well, but he didn’t appear to feel threatened. Perhaps that was because Lex wasn’t, or maybe it was because Clark was now more displeased with Lex than Coleby, but whatever the cause, the looks he sent Clark’s way seemed smugger than anything else. Lex wasn’t going to discard the possibility that Coleby was simply watching him because Clark had never gotten to use the cell phone and he didn’t want to lose it to an undefended quarter.

“Lex, I don’t think you grasp that I don’t trust you with a soft, cuddly rabbit, never mind a demon-possessed monkey with unusual strength.”

Lex shook his head, not certain what Clark’s concern was. “Are you afraid of what I’ll do to Coleby, what I might make Coleby do, or what Coleby could do to me?”

Coleby slapped a hand over Lex’s mouth, made a very recognizable shushing sound, glared, waved the phone, and snapped angrily before calmly going back to chattering into the phone. It was a perfect mimicry of what Lex had done when Coleby had been making noise when he was on the phone earlier that afternoon (excepting that Lex hadn’t been brave enough to put his hand that close to Coleby’s teeth).

Lex’s eyes widened in surprise and his eyes darted to Chloe then back to Clark, noting that both of them seemed recognize that something significant had just happened. They probably just thought it was that Coleby had found a way to shut him up, though. There was something that vaguely resembled concern mixed into the distrust in Clark’s expression and voice when he answered the question. “All of the above.”

Lex just stayed silent, not willing to anger Coleby and risk another unwanted Clarkian rescue. After a few awkward moments, Coleby signed off and gave Lex his phone and mouth back. Then he looked superiorly at Chloe and blatted off something that sounded rude.

With a polite thank-you, Lex took his phone back and put it away. Looking back at Clark, he demanded, “So what brilliant plan do you have to keep him from becoming a nuisance? Animal control won’t be able to handle him, I guarantee you that. He at least sometimes listens to me.” When it suits him, Lex didn’t add.

“I was thinking of dropping him in the harbor. I’ve never heard of a monkey that swims.”

Lex wasn’t sure either. Vervets were not exclusively arboreal, but he doubted they did more than wade in water. He stepped back and held Coleby more defensively. His eyes narrowed and his muscles tensed. “Coleby is powerful and temperamental, but he is not evil and you have no right to kill him.”

“He nearly killed you, and look what he did to those cars! Tell me Lex, how many people has he hurt so far?”

He’d tell Clark no such thing. “What he did to me was an accident. He doesn’t know his strength yet. He doesn’t want to hurt me. The cars scared him; he defended himself and eliminated the threat as best as he was able to understand it. Which is why, wherever we go, I need to be able to walk there. So, we have three options. One, we figure out where there is an abandoned building within six or so blocks of here. Two, you try to take Coleby away from me and make him very angry – there’s a floor in LuthorCorp that no longer has walls or doors in it because we tried that. They were strong, steel reinforced doors and walls, too. You’ve seen Level 33.1. He made a shambles of it. Fortunately, he was the only project active there. Or, three.”

They waited. He said nothing. Finally, Clark prompted, “Or three . . .”

“Three, you pick us up and speed us out to the middle of nowhere before Coleby has a chance to panic. He’ll panic once we get there, so make sure it really is remote. I wouldn’t suggest any place that has even one other person. Preferably, no manmade buildings either. Trees would be good, they might comfort him.”

For a moment, it looked like Clark was going to deny he could bring them to any such place at any such speed, but his options were as limited as Lex had said they were. Either he gave up his speed secret (which Lex had just proved was not very secret) or he left Coleby loose in the city. “And you want to vanish with him?”

Lex considered his schedule for the next week (busy), judged the likelihood of Dad taking back control of Luthor Corp in his absence (very high), calculated how Lana would take his disappearance (worry, anxiety, bad for the baby), projected his ability to feed himself and Coleby in a remote forest (survivable, but the menu was going to suck), wondered how tempted Clark would be to just leave them there (seriously tempted), estimated the probability of getting cell phone reception in case of emergency (zero), determined his chance of survival if attacked by a bear or something (low, unless Coleby rescued him, which was possible but in no way guaranteed, bringing the overall probability to middling), and examined Coleby’s possible fates if he didn’t go along with him (invariably unpleasant). “Yes.”

“Now?”

He dug out his phone one more time and tossed it to Chloe again. “Inform my lawyers and Lana that I’m not dead or kidnapped.” He looked at Clark. “Yes, now, before Coleby starts getting restless again.”

“Wait!” Chloe called first. “What do I tell them?”

Details. Keep it simple. “Tell the lawyers I needed a sudden vacation. Tell Lana that I was called away on an emergency business trip.” It would have been better to have stories that were not mutually exclusive, but he wasn’t doing anything illegal, precisely, so they were not going to need to stand up to a court inspection. If anybody felt the need to look into his story, he was already in trouble.

“And your dad? For when he stops by my cubicle because you know he’s going to figure out I was the one laying down your alibi.” Right, he would be the one looking into the story.

Lex grimaced, not wanting to think about his dad. “I don’t care; just tell him I’m on vacation.” Picking up on Lex’s irritability, Coleby started chattering nastily at Chloe again and made the signal to get put down. Lex nodded at Clark and the parking garage was gone.

Coleby had gone tense again, but after a moment’s shock and a look around at the thick forest around them, he appeared to relax. Lex let him down when he made the signal again. He kept close to Lex and looked around once more then let out a cry. He appeared to be listening for a return call, but there were no other vervets around to answer.

A glance at Clark showed he was also watching Coleby. They both began to relax when Coleby showed no signs of going psycho after the transport. In fact, Coleby seemed less freaked by it than Lex was. He’d known Clark was fast, but actually getting carried from the Daily Planet parking garage to the middle of a forest that he wagered wasn’t even in Kansas was something else entirely. “Where are we?” he asked when Coleby climbed up into a tree and made himself comfortable on one of the lower branches.

“North Dakota,” Clark answered, which narrowed it down a little but not nearly as specifically as he’d need to direct a rescue party to him. Of course, Chloe still had his phone so it wasn’t like a 911 call was possible even if he could find a place with reception. He wondered what predators the North Dakota forests had. He also strongly hoped it wasn’t hunting season. When did that start and end anyway?

“So, how are we doing this? You come back in a week to see how well we’re progressing?”

Clark gave him a look of stubborn determination. “I’m not leaving, Lex.”

“What about your classes?” Lex pointed out.

They apparently weren’t very important to Clark because he just waved a hand dismissively. “I can miss a few.”

“So you’re just going to hang out in the woods with me and Coleby and ignore all your other responsibilities.”

Clark gave him a look of incredulity. “I’m not the one with a pregnant fiancé, a wedding to plan, and an international corporation to run.” Okay, granted, Clark wasn’t the only hypocrite present. Lex glanced toward Coleby who seemed to be watching them intently. “And you’re dropping all of that for a psychotic monkey, Lex? Forgive me for being concerned about your agenda with it.”

Yes, put like that, Lex was clearly acting irrationally. His father really was going to have a field day with this when he found out about it. He considered asking Clark to bring him back and just leave Coleby out here to add to the big foot myths, but Coleby picked that moment to say, “Lee- acks.”

Lex turned toward him slowly, eyes wide and incredulous. “Coleby?”

“Lee- acks?”

“Holy shit. Coleby.”

He let out a short burst of chatter that may or may not have been mimicry of ‘holy shit’ then Coleby repeated, “Lee- acks.”

Lex stared at Coleby, and then sent a stunned look at Clark who didn’t seem to understand the monumental significance of what just happened. He opened his mouth in two false starts before he managed to say, “My name. He said my name. We have mutual name recognition. Clark, do you have any idea how incredible that is?” He didn’t wait for an answer.

“Coleby,” Lex said again, ignoring Clark entirely as he focused again on the vervet. All thought of going back was obliterated. There were tests and training to do. He remembered Clark long enough to ask, “Can you run back for a notebook and a pen so I can keep a journal? And my cell phone, if Chloe’s done with it?” Not that he’d be able to use it, but it would be nice to have anyway, if only so the budding reporter didn’t have access to all his contact numbers.

Clark stood guard, observing Lex’s interactions with the psycho-monkey, but they both seemed calmer outside of Metropolis. Lex’s pet hadn’t attacked either of them since arriving and Lex’s ‘training’ seemed to consist mostly of saying Coleby’s name and getting absurdly happy when Coleby said ‘Lee- acks’ back at him. He’d also managed to get the monkey to say “ Kalark” a time or two after pointing at Clark and repeatedly saying his name. Somehow this was enough achievement to fill a page and a half in the notebook Clark had gone to fetch for Lex.

Clark had no idea what to make of it all. Lex was genuinely excited, really happy, and openly affectionate toward the little hell-demon with fur. It reminded him of the early days of their acquaintance, when they had been friends; when life was simpler and Lex was more innocent. Not that Clark thought he had ever been entirely innocent, never mind what he thought back then, but Lex had at least done a good impression of a decent human being back then.

He knew better now, but looking at Lex in his honest delight at getting a monkey to do something as simple as say his name, it was hard to remember that. The sun was going down and Lex shivered a little in the early evening chill, but Clark hardened his heart against it. Lex was up to something. He was still trying to figure out what, but it boded no good, and Lex had no right to be comfortable while doing it. There was an abandoned summer lodge not too far from their current position, but Clark wasn’t going to offer that information until Lex was really miserable.

To his surprise, Lex stood up and looked around. “We should find some berries or something to eat and something resembling shelter before it gets too dark to see.” He mimed eating to Coleby and said, “Food, Coleby, help me find food.” Lex tucked his notebook under his arm and headed off in a random direction, Coleby close by and looking intently around him.

Within ten minutes, they had located some blackberries and ate their fill. Well, he assumed Coleby and Lex did; Clark was still hungry and less than satisfied with the meal. He didn’t complain, though, because Lex didn’t and he wasn’t going to be out survivor skilled by a rich guy. Of course, after the island getaway Helen had given him for a wedding present, Lex could probably out-Survivor just about anyone, but Clark wasn’t going to acknowledge that. Who knew how much of that Lex remembered, anyway? Clark just hoped they weren’t going to be eating bugs tomorrow because he really didn’t think he could do it without hurling.

They soon found a thick copse of trees that Coleby seemed to like so they settled down beneath their canopy. Coleby settled in the trees themselves. Lex found a spot on the ground. Lex looked up at him for a moment, looking ready to say something, but then he closed his mouth, shook his head and curled up on his side in the dirt.

Clark debated for a long moment about what to do next, but it was late autumn. North Dakota got even colder than Kansas did and Kansas was cold at night. Clark lay down beside Lex and wrapped his body around him. “Clark?” he questioned, going tense.

“I don’t like you or trust you, Lex. That doesn’t mean I want you to die of hypothermia overnight.”

“Did it occur to you to run back for a blanket instead?”

No, actually, it hadn’t, but Clark wasn’t going to admit that. “That would be cheating.”

“Cheating,” Lex repeated in disbelief.

“ Shhuh,” came from above them.

Lex squirmed out of Clark’s arms and reached for his notebook and scribbled something into it. When he finished with that, he settled back into place and whispered fiercely, “One word of this to anyone back in Metropolis and I will not be able to keep my mouth shut about you being an alien.”

Clark tensed, which was probably a dead giveaway, but Lex had taken him by surprise. Lex didn’t seem to notice and just raised the volume of his voice and called up to the monkey, “Good night, Coleby.”

There was some monkey gibberish back that ended with “Lee- acks” which made Lex laugh softly and settle more comfortably in Clark’s arms. “Night, Clark.” Lex fell asleep quickly, or Clark thought he did. An hour later, Clark knew he’d been faking it when he actually did drift off. Clark didn’t sleep at all.

How long had Lex known he was an alien?

A few hours before dawn, Lex had curled up as close to Clark as it was humanly possible to get. His body was racked with shivers and chills and Clark felt guilty for not getting that blanket. He was in and out of wakefulness, muttering things like “fucking cold” and “freezing” when he was at his most aware. This had probably not been a problem he faced on the island.

Clark used a low intensity of his heat vision to warm him every now and then, but it never lasted very long and he was afraid doing it more often would burn him. At least it kept Lex from getting frostbite or anything.

The monkey slept soundly and seemed to be perfectly comfortable. But then, the monkey had hair and lots of it and was well adapted to living out-of-doors.

Eventually, Clark decided it would be less torturous to leave Lex for twenty seconds, run home, grab a blanket, and come back. Lex was awake when he returned, sitting up and shivering uncontrollably. “Y-you left,” he whispered.

“Only for a minute,” Clark assured, unfolding the blanket and wrapping it around them both. He was shocked when Lex began stripping. “Are you insane? What are you doing?”

“Skin on skin, Clark,” Lex said shortly. “Warmer that way. Clothes aren’t doing anything but getting in the way of heat transfer.”

It didn’t make any sense to Clark that to get warmer they had to take clothes off, but Lex sounded like he knew what he was talking about. “Why didn’t you suggest that earlier?”

“Because, we didn’t have a blanket, genius, exposing skin to the open air isn’t going to improve anything, Clark. Just take your shirt off if the rest makes you uncomfortable.”

Lex’s tone suggested he was being an idiot and an inhibited, selfish bastard. To prove him wrong, Clark took off his jeans, too. Somewhat to his surprise, it seemed to help. Lex fell back asleep and stayed almost warm to the touch.

By dawn, they had a different problem.

The problem with staying awake all night was that it offered far too much time to think. The first three hours had been spent circling around the past six years, trying to find when Lex picked up on the alien thing in a way that he would remember now. Close consideration after the fact suggested that since Lex’s first response to seeing him stop a car with his body was ‘you’re not human!’ instead of ‘you’re a mutant!’ Perhaps there’d been a good bit of evidence even prior to Belle Reeve.

Fortunately, Clark had been able to put aside his review of the past when Lex had begun shivering. Trying to keep him warm occupied about an hour before he gave up and went for the blanket. After the blanket and stripping down to bare skin with the sole exception of Clark’s boxers, Clark’s mind fixated on the fact that Lex was naked.

At first, his thoughts were pure, or at least mostly pure. He did sneak a peek just for comparison purposes and noted smugly that Lana had traded down. As the night wore on though, Clark began tracing his hands over Lex’s body, making sure he was still warm to the touch. When he found a cooler spot, he would rub it gently, sometimes breath on it if it was within easy reach, working the heat from his own body into Lex’s less insulated one.

In his sleep, Lex moved into the touches, making pleased noises. Clark tried not to notice Lex was getting hard. He was moderately more successful at that than he was at not noticing that he was getting hard himself. It didn’t stop him from touching. In fact, as dawn began to break, he skived off his boxers so he wouldn’t get them dirty.

Rearranging their bodies so he was now spooned up behind Lex, he settled Lex’s head on one of his arms and draped the other over his waist. He took a moment to gather his courage, and then wrapped a hand around Lex’s dick.

He woke on the second stroke. “Mm,” he moaned and pushed with his hips into Clark’s hand. Clark squeezed his hand a little and pressed himself against Lex’s backside.

Lex really woke up this time and went tense. “Fuck. Clark. What are you doing?”

“Giving you a hand job and humping you. Have a problem with that?”

He seemed to think about it and Clark gave him a minute because it had taken him nearly an hour to decide that it didn’t have to mean anything. Both of them were perfectly well aware that they hated each other, but they were hard and Lex was cold, so who would it hurt besides Lana who probably wouldn’t ever know?

When Lex took longer than his allotted minute, Clark began stroking him again. Many years of practice on himself made him fairly confident he was good at it. Lex hummed again and pressed his head back as he moved his hips forward. Clark wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not, but the move exposed his throat. It was irresistible. He lowered his mouth to it, sucking and biting.

Lex groaned and fucked his hand more earnestly. Clark rolled them ninety degrees so Lex was under him as he humped his ass even as his lips, tongue, and teeth continued to work on Lex’s neck and his fingers squeezed, tugged, stroked, and massaged Lex’s dick. Under the onslaught, Lex came first. He cried out, his body spasmed, and wet heat rushed between Clark’s fingers and onto the leaf strewn ground under them. Clark barely had the presence of mind to super-speed Lex’s only clothes and the blanket out of the way.

As Lex panted and trembled in the aftershocks, Clark left his neck in favor of biting into the flesh of his collar and grabbing him by the hips as he continued to grind against him. Feeling the edge of orgasm begin to crash, he pushed Lex flat and came all over his back and ass.

For a long moment, they said nothing. Lex was the one who eventually broke the silence. “Again, not a word about this to anyone.”

Clark nodded, using his hand to wipe Lex relatively clean. “Trust me; I don’t want anyone to know about this any more than you do.”

Lex twisted around and gave him an examining look. After a moment he nodded, “I don’t suppose you do.” He smirked, “You liked it too much. Pushing me down, marking me, and putting your scent all over me. Very primitive and animalistic, Clark. You wouldn’t want your mother to think -”

Clark had to shut him up, firstly, because he didn’t like Lex talking about his mother, not ever, and especially not right now. Secondly, because he really didn’t want to think that explicitly about what he’d just done; it was making him hard again. Thirdly, because Lex was right and he hated it when that happened. So he shoved his come covered fingers into Lex’s open mouth.

Lex’s eyes opened wide with surprise. Clark maneuvered him one-handed until he was laying flat on his back then straddled him, pushing the fingers deeper into his mouth. “Lick them clean.” Lex stared up at him with disbelief and incredulity. “Do it.”

For a moment, he was sure Lex was going to attempt to break his teeth by biting him instead, but then he began licking. Though, seriously, this had been a really bad plan if one of Clark’s goals had been to prevent himself from getting hard again. Lex did lick him clean, but that was really the least of it. His tongue seemed to be making love to Clark’s fingers. Add in the sound effects and the way his body moved every time he had to shift for a different angle, and Clark was in desperate need again.

He took his fingers away and presented Lex with his cock. Lex’s eyes darted up at him briefly, a hidden look Clark couldn’t decipher locked behind his ‘You have no idea what I’m capable of’ stare. “Do it,” he ordered again, and Lex opened his mouth again. Clark slowly lowered himself into it.

The last time he’d been blown was the summer in Metropolis when he’d been high on red kryptonite. With Lex flat on his back instead of on his knees in an alley, this felt more like fucking his face than getting blown. It was still good, even when Lex choked or let his teeth scrape Clark’s dick. He grabbed one of Lex’s wrists from where Lex was desperately holding onto Clark’s hips in a futile effort to control their pace and directed that hand back toward Lex’s cock. “Jerk yourself off,” he told him. He’d do it himself, but he couldn’t easily reach it from this position.

He slowed his own pace; waiting until he could see Lex’s approaching orgasm in his eyes. He began fucking in earnest and Lex’s muffled sounds felt so good. He eased up when Lex began choking again, letting him catch his breath before driving into him once more. “Come for me, Lex,” he invited, and Lex’s eyes closed and he tried to cry out something but the words were lost to exquisite vibrations. Clark held out as long as he could until Lex seemed aware of himself again. “Start swallowing,” he advised, and then burst.

Clark pulled out when Lex started gagging. The last of his ejaculate fell onto the ground and Lex turned over and coughed some more out, but Clark estimated he had been able to swallow a good portion of it. He started to get concerned when Lex kept on coughing. Rubbing Lex’s back, Clark asked worriedly, “You okay, or do you need a hospital?”

Lex shook his head quickly. “Fuck no. Hospital’s the last thing I need,” he refused, and then went back to coughing.

“Water?” Clark suggested instead. When Lex nodded, he ran off, grabbed a Ty Nant from the mansion, and was back almost before Lex realized he was gone. “Here.”

Lex drank three long gulps, before lowering the bottle and clearing his throat. “Vicky always made that look much easier,” he gasped ruefully.

Clark stared at him. “Please tell me that was not the first blowjob you ever gave.”

The dark scowl sent his way as Lex began to dress himself suggested that he was going to say no such thing. “Clark, I’ve planned to be president for as long as I can remember. There were some things I never did, even as a teen and fooling around with other boys was one of them.”

“What changed? Why me?”

Lex stood up and looked toward the sunrise. Clark dressed quickly and moved to stand beside him. Lex sighed and glanced at him sidelong. “Nothing. You just already have a well established feud with me, so in something like this your word is no better than mine. We’re already obsessed with each other, so it won’t affect how we act. Nobody will believe it of either of us without physical or eyewitness evidence, so nobody will speculate what happened; even if they knew we were alone together at night. This is the one place on the planet that I’m sure there are no spies or bugs or inadvertent security cameras or too-curious civilians watching me. I heal fast, so the bruises on my neck will be long gone before we go back. All of that, plus I was cold and sex warms me up.”

“You’re a bastard, Lex.”

“Can you honestly tell me that your motives were pure? Please, Clark. I know you hate me. There was no sentimentality on either side, so don’t try to pretend there was. You considered the pluses and minuses as well.” He moved to stand directly in front of Clark and looked up their three inches of height difference to stare him in the eye. “You can not look me in the eye and tell me that you did not list out all of the consequences and lack of consequences long before you grabbed my dick. Tell me, Clark, was breaking me up with Lana one of your hopes?”

Clark stared right back and didn’t pull his punches, “The thought did occur to me. But then I figured you wouldn’t tell her and I wasn’t going to tell her, so I assume she’ll never know.”

“You’ll let her marry me knowing I had meaningless sex with somebody else while we were engaged? Clark, for shame, you claim to be her friend.”

Clark was confused. He couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be sarcasm or not. “Do you want me to tell her?”

“No,” Lex said, jabbing his finger against Clark’s solar plexus, “I’m just driving home the point that I’m not the only bastard here. I used to think you were so good, so upstanding, but you’re not. Alien origins aside, you’re just as humanly fallible as the rest of us.”

“Oh?” Clark asked archly, “So you do count yourself among the fallible?”

Clark couldn’t read his expression. It was something like disbelief, perhaps mixed with something resembling consternation, maybe a bit of wonder thrown in on the side, and a lot of pain topping it all off. “Clark, you were the only person who ever thought I wasn’t. It was cute and inspiring at first, but nobody can keep up under that kind of pressure. I was twenty-one and a Luthor, Clark. I tried. I tried so hard to live up to your impossible expectations.” He shook his head, “When I finally did crash and burn, you threw me away like a month old newspaper. I tried to make it up to you, and you said you forgave me, but you didn’t. It wasn’t the same and you never even tried to trust me again. I should never have apologized after that room. We’d be angry at each other, but there still would have been the hope for reconciliation.” He turned and walked toward a mountain stream they’d crossed last night.

“Lex,” Clark stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. Lex’s back went rigid. “There’s always hope.” Though yesterday at this time, he wouldn’t have said there was. Heck, two minutes ago, he wouldn’t have. But had he really never listened to Lex’s side before?

Lex turned around, eyes flashing dangerously. “No. There isn’t. I tried sincere apology. It didn’t work. Now, I don’t think it’ll work for you either. You’re not the only one who was betrayed, Clark. Let go of me and let me wash my face.”

“Fine,” Clark released him because there was no reasoning with him when he got into a mood like that. “I’ll find us breakfast. Any requests?”

“I suppose coffee is too much to ask for.”

Clark imagined that Lex suffering from caffeine withdrawal would be almost as dangerous as the psycho-monkey around cars. “I’ll see what I can do. While I’m back in civilization, do you want a bagel or anything, too?”

Lex turned around with a puzzled expression on his face, like Clark wasn’t making any sense. “What happened to ‘that’s cheating, Lex’?”

“I gave up on that around 2:30 this morning when you nearly froze to death.”

He nodded slowly then said, “Bagel’s fine. Cinnamon with raison if they have it, anything that doesn’t have poppy seeds or onions if they don’t, plain cream cheese.”

Clark raised an eyebrow, “Anything specific for your coffee?”

Lex gave him a Look. “I’m sure you remember my coffee preferences. They haven’t changed. But as long as you’re out, could you pick up a toothbrush, toothpaste, wash cloth, and soap?”

“Anything else?” Clark asked with a sigh.

Wearing an expression halfway between irritated and wryly amused, Lex shook his head. “Don’t look at me like that.”

Clark blinked. He wasn’t looking at Lex like anything. “Like what?”

“Like,” he closed his eyes and shook his head, “never mind.” He pushed the thought away with an open handed gesture. Looking at Clark again, he added, “Anyway, a newspaper wouldn’t go amiss either.”

“A newspaper,” Clark repeated in disbelief.

“It’s practically a breakfast food, Clark. I always have one in the morning.”

“Right,” Clark agreed, humoring him now. “Bagel with cream cheese – cinnamon and raison if they have it, coffee, newspaper, toothbrush, toothpaste, wash cloth, soap, that it?”

For a moment, Lex’s blue eyes danced with mischief and his mouth twitched before he schooled his expression to seriousness. “Make sure the soap is liquid soap. My skin’s sensitive and gets itchy if I try to use bar soap. I prefer ones that are unscented, if you don’t mind. And make sure you get toothpaste that fights plaque and gingivitis as well as cavities. As for the toothbrush, find one that’s got that bend for better reach, and no primary colors, okay? No pink, orange, or green, either. Clark, you’re giving me that look again.”

Clark was pretty sure he knew what look he was talking about now. It was the one Dad used to give Mom all the time when he was ‘going out to get the mail’ and ended up doing the week’s grocery shopping by the time she was done with him. “You’re doing it on purpose.”

Lex was all guileless innocence, which meant he was totally doing it on purpose. “Doing what?”

“Being irritating.”

He smirked, completely unrepentant and looked up into the branches overhead, “Hey, Coleby, you up? Clark’s taking orders for breakfast.”

“ Kalark! Lee- acks!” The leaves rustled as the monkey navigated the branches above them, and then dropped down onto the ground beside them.

“Good morning, Coleby,” Lex greeted, as he knelt down in front of him. Looking up at Clark, he added, “He likes fruit best, get him some apples or pears or something. Bananas, if you have to be trite.”

Coleby sniffed the air, took a few steps closer to Lex and sniffed again. He tilted his head toward Clark in what almost looked like human confusion. He backed a step away from Lex, still warily watching Clark.

“He smells you on me,” Lex stated. “He thinks you and I are mates, so he’s a little nervous about getting too close in case you get possessive or territorial. I don’t think he’ll fight you for me given that I’m fairly certain he knows we’re not the same species.”

Fight over Lex? With a monkey? “You’re not even female, Lex.”

“He probably has serious doubts about that right now. I’m not his species which makes it difficult enough to tell even before factoring in that I don’t look like a normal human. And with the way we cover up our sexual organs, he can’t be sure. I’ve got your spunk on me and he can smell it. Add in that we’re all very tense right now and it adds up to a fight over sexual dominance. Clark, I really don’t want to be raped by a mutant monkey while you’re gone so will you please get over here and claim me.”

This was ridiculous, but then one of the first mutants Clark had run across had been Greg who turned into a bug and promptly wanted to breed with Lana. A mutated monkey with delusions of humanness might try to take a mate as well. Clark moved in between Lex and the monkey, crossed his arms in his most intimidating manner and looked down at the relatively tiny primate. “Lex is mine,” he intoned, feeling stupid. He wondered if that was enough or if he should kick the monkey just for good measure.

“Give him a minute to decide what to do,” Lex murmured softly. “If he doesn’t back down, you should probably touch me and push me away from him to make your point clearer.”

As it turned out, it didn’t come to that. Coleby swung up into nearby tree and called out sadly, “ Kalark en Lee- acks. No Kulbee, no Kulbee.”

“Holy fuck!” Lex swore and dove for his pen and notebook. “That’s English.”

Anticipating a return to full behavioral scientist mode, Clark made a vague gesture and said, “I’ll go get breakfast.”

Lex waved him on, “Yeah. And grab me a coat, too.”

Coleby felt so stupid. Lex was a female. He’d thought the bumps on the chest determined who was a female but he must have been wrong because Clark and Lex were clearly mated. Maybe the Upright females were the ones without any fur at all. Lex had been the only one he’d seen like that, but maybe the Uprights didn’t have a lot of females. It would explain why all the haired Uprights seemed so eager to do everything Lex wanted them to do. That was why he’d thought Lex was the family group leader.

Fortunately, she seemed to have taken him for a juvenile or things could have gone very badly when her mate showed up. As it was, Clark had thrown Coleby into the maw of an evil eyed beast. Luckily, Coleby had become very strong and he was able to fight free and take down the other beast that laid in wait nearby.

By then, Lex had found him again and explained to Clark, well, something. The Uprights had a very complex calling system and it was taking him a very long time to get a handle on it. But even after Lex straightened out that Coleby wasn’t trying to mate with her, Clark still hadn’t liked Coleby and now he finally understood why. Because Lex was Clark’s mate and Coleby was going around making her carry him places to prove that he was the new family leader. He felt like such an idiot.

Clark had run off somewhere between one blink and the next. He was very fast. He was very strong, too. Stronger even than Coleby, he was pretty sure. That was probably why he had the only female. Coleby wasn’t going to challenge him. He needed to understand the calling system first. Lex sat on the ground and patted a spot in front of her, calling Coleby’s name, so he went and sat there. Her duties as female seemed to be teaching juveniles the calling system, so it was probably a good thing she thought he was one. It worked out well for him and he wasn’t going to correct the misconception until he had a much better grasp of it.

He still didn’t understand the significance of the stick that left marks behind either, but Lex used it a lot. He didn’t try to take it away from her this time because now he knew she was a female who had a very scary mate. Before, he’d thought she was just a male who wasn’t as strong as Coleby. As such, if she had something he wanted, she was supposed to give it up. Clark changed that.

He was so lucky she thought he was just a juvenile or he’d be Coleby-meat in the belly of an evil-eyed beast. If Clark hadn’t gotten them out of that place when he did, Coleby didn’t think he could have beaten them all if they all woke up at the same time.

Lex had repeated two calls ‘eat’ and ‘food’ about a zillion times and Coleby was still a little confused about the difference between them when Clark returned with gifts for his mate. It was so obvious now. How had he missed it before?

She took out a long black item and wrapped it around her with a new call to Clark. See, if all of them were that simple, he’d be able to pick up the strange Upright language faster, but no, no, no, usually Lex went on for eons before giving Clark a chance to talk forever in his own turn.

Next out of the bag came a round red fruit that looked delicious. Lex put it in Coleby’s hand and said again, “Food.”

He decided to try the call Lex had just used and hoped it wasn’t exclusive between mates. “ Thak oo.”

Lex lunging for the stick and the white leaves was usually a sign that he got something right, so he congratulated himself on a job well done. She jabbered off, excited and happy, at Clark, and Coleby felt proud that he was the cause of it. To celebrate, he bit into his ‘food’. Uprights made such strange sounds.

At first, he thought they just made noise to make noise, and he’d tried to mimic that until he realized there were certain sounds that came up much more frequently than others and in very specific places in the long complicated calls – usually the beginning or the end, or repeated over and over again when they wanted him to do something. That was when he figured out “Coleby” meant him.

It took longer to figure out that “Lex” meant the female (though he hadn’t known she was female yet at the time), and once he established he knew her name, she told him Clark’s and made that bit of decryption easier.

When Lex finished using her stick, she put it aside and took out a tall brown cylinder from the bag of Clark’s gifts that smelled terrible and was smoking. She wrapped her fingers around the cylinder and breathed in the smoke like it was ripe fruit and got a weird look on her face. “Coffee,” she called in a tone Coleby didn’t understand. Then she put the cylinder up to her mouth and drank the rancid, smoke-water stuff.

Coleby wrinkled his nose and retreated up into the trees where he could smell only leaves and his fruit. Uprights were so strange.

When night fell again, Coleby had a vocabulary of about twelve words or phrases. Lex was focusing all his energy on teaching English to the monkey and none at all on training him to be non-violent. Clark figured they could be out in the woods for a while. He thought about mentioning the lodge, but Lex was laying down his long trench coat on the ground, and making no complaints about sleeping on the ground again.

Figuring that having a roof over their heads would only drag out the expedition longer, Clark said nothing. Besides, he didn’t want to invade someone’s summer home until he knew the monkey wasn’t going to break it. Lex needed to demonstrate the thing had some rudimentary control and house-training before Clark would let them break in and borrow the lodge.

So he lay down on the trench coat with Lex, and pulled the blanket over them both as he did so. Lex striped quickly and Clark did the same. Clark spooned up behind Lex and wrapped his arms around him, maximizing skin on skin contact.

“I wouldn’t say no to an air mattress or foam pad if you want to bring one back with breakfast tomorrow,” Lex said dryly. “Also, another blanket and more socks, gloves, and possibly even a hat might be appropriate if it keeps getting colder.”

“Socks, gloves, and hats while having sex? Kinky.”

“Who said anything about sex?” Lex hadn’t, actually. By his tone of voice now, though, it didn’t sound like he was going to say ‘no’ to that any more than he would to the air mattress.

Clark rolled him onto his back and lay on top of him. Clark held Lex’s head between his hands and said softly, “You are cold, aren’t you?”

Lex met his eyes and Clark could feel the other man’s cock swelling against his thigh. “I am,” he agreed with a small, coy smile, making it sound like being cold was the sexiest thing in the world.

“Then I should warm you up, shouldn’t I?”

Reaching up to card his fingers through Clark’s hair, Lex consented with an authoritative nod, “You should.”

“Good,” Clark said and lowered his head to catch Lex in a kiss. It wasn’t soft or gentle or any adjective that most people would apply to a kiss they could potentially receive from Clark Kent. But Lex Luthor wasn’t most people, so he didn’t get the same kind of kiss. Lex was an evil bastard who, despite some headway made in civility in the last day and a half, was still on Clark’s most hated list.

He felt no guilt at all in kissing Lex like Kal had kissed people during that summer in Metropolis; hard and harsh and with no intention of letting him breathe until Clark was ready for him to breathe. Lex resisted at first but Clark held his head, so he couldn’t turn away from it. Clark’s lips and tongue were stronger than Lex’s clenched jaw and he forced his way inside until Lex realized the futility of his resistance and gave in to the kiss. He fought for dominance, fought to turn Clark over, but Lex’s human strength was no match against Clark’s alien super strength.

When Clark broke the kiss, Lex was sweating from his exertions and panting from lack of oxygen. “God, Clark,” he gasped. “When’d you learn to kiss like that?”

Seeing no point in lying about that now, Clark shrugged, “That summer you were on your island getaway. I ran away to Metropolis. It was educational.”

“Heard about that,” Lex said, still breathing hard. “Wasn’t sure what to believe.”

Clark ignored the implied request for more information and went after Lex’s neck instead; revisiting the fading remains of the bruise he’d left on him last night. “Shit!” Lex gasped as Clark’s left hand started working Lex’s cock at the same time.

“Suck,” Clark instructed, giving Lex the first two fingers of his right hand.

Lex dutifully took them into his mouth. He licked and sucked with remarkable talent for someone who had given his first blow job just that morning. Well, girls had fingers, too. Clark supposed Lex could have practiced on them.

Moving down from Lex’s neck, Clark’s mouth visited Lex’s left nipple, then traced lower still to tongue-fuck his navel. He reclaimed his fingers as he sat up and nudged at Lex’s inner thighs to make room to kneel between them. “I’m going to blow you now,” he announced.

“Oh, God,” Lex swore, spreading his legs apart eagerly.

Clark hadn’t done this in years himself, but it turned out it really was like riding a bike. Not having a gag reflex helped, too. Lex bucked under him and cried out, his voice carrying in the night air, but there was nobody around for miles to hear him. Except, Coleby, of course, but the monkey already knew what they were up to.

Taking advantage of Lex’s distraction, he eased one of his spit-slicked fingers into Lex’s body. Lex’s muscles went taut. “ Clark?” he gasped, a thread of nervous fear in the question.

Clark pulled off Lex’s cock, breathing on it for a moment which made Lex shudder. “I’m going to fuck you tonight, Lex.”

“I don’t -”

Interrupting, Clark shook his head with a smirk, “Nu-uh. You do now. You wouldn’t want to further confuse Coleby, would you? I top, you catch. Besides, I’m only doing this because you’re cold. I can stop.”

Lex seemed to be considering how likely it was that Clark really would stop. “Bastard.”

“Yes,” Clark conceded, because he really was being a bastard tonight and he only intended to get worse. This was Lex Luthor. If you gave him an inch, he’d take the whole state. “I’m the bastard who’s going to fuck you.”

“Fine,” Lex agreed grudgingly, like he was making a concession on a business contract instead of offering up his virgin ass. “Continue then.”

“Lex,” Clark cautioned, giving him one more chance to opt out because, Lex Luthor or not, he was still a virgin, at least in this. “It’s going to hurt.”

He scowled, “I used to be straight, not stupid. I can handle the penetration.”

Clark shook his head and stared down at him seriously. “You don’t understand. I’m going to hurt you. Partly because I’m too strong to have sex safely with a human, which, incidentally, is why I broke up with Lana in the first place. But, mostly, I just want to fuck you until you scream for mercy.” He was shocked when Lex’s cock jumped instead of wilted.

Unexpected masochistic tendencies aside, Lex asked prudently, “It’ll heal though, right? There’ll be nothing permanent, requiring medical attention or splints?”

“Right, nothing like that.” Clark was sure he could control his strength enough that he wouldn’t actually kill or maim anybody, and Lex was a lot sturdier than Lana had ever seemed. It was just going to leave some serious bruises.

Lex nodded; a look of challenge in his eyes. “Bring it on, Kent.” He lay back, opening himself up for Clark. “You have one small problem with your plan, though, Clark.”

“What’s that?”

“Luthors never scream for mercy.” Clark couldn’t wait to wipe that smug grin off his face.

“We’ll see about that,” Clark told him, then hesitated one last time before beginning. “The safe word is ‘mercy’, Lex. I’ll stop if you use it.”

“Thank you, but I won’t need it.”

Warnings and safe words had been given and Lex was more eager than before they’d been issued. There had to be something in his nature that forced him to act contrary to anything that offered safety or well-being. It was no longer Clark’s concern though. Lex had given open consent to anything Clark wanted to do to him.

First things first, that look of superior expectation had to go. Clark moved up and grabbed him by the wrists that Lex had so conveniently placed in a good pinning position. Lex’s brows raised in a look that asked, Is that really the best you can do? It wasn’t, but Clark would work up to the more interesting parts. For now, he captured Lex in another kiss.

Lex didn’t resist this time, but he still tried to dominate it. Clark didn’t let him. When they broke apart some time later, Lex was panting slightly and Clark frowned down at him. “I’m so much stronger than you are, Lex. It’s futile to fight me.”

Even in the fading twilight, Lex’s eyes seemed to gleam brightly. “That’s why I have to. You know as well as I do that I’m the Segeeth to your Naman. I told you the second time we met that we had a destiny together. Granted, this wasn’t what I had in mind at the time.”

Clark reeled back for a moment, stunned that Lex knew that and would reference it so casually this long after their last confrontation over the caves. He’d thought Lex had lost interest in them.

“Don’t even think about denying it, Clark,” Lex warned. “Anyone with any brains and even the smallest understanding about the powers you possess could figure out you’re Naman. The Kawatche knew it; I could tell by the way they treated you. It doesn’t take a genius, either, to realize that when a powerful stone knife inexplicably disintegrates when I touch it, it means something.”

Clark closed his eyes as he lost the very last shreds of doubt that it might have been Lionel’s touch that did it. He opened them again and looked down at Lex. “It wasn’t your father . . . ?” he asked anyway, knowing it wasn’t.

Lex shook his head. “It was gone before he could touch it at all.” For something that he had assumed for years, it hurt surprisingly a lot to know for sure that Lex was the prophesized Segeeth. Lex watched his face avidly, blue eyes darting to catch every nuance. “I’m right,” he said after a moment, “I’m Segeeth.” He said it like it was an accomplishment, something to be pleased about and proud of.

Closing his eyes again, Clark breathed in deeply, counted to three, and then opened them once more. He realized that he was still propped up over Lex’s body, holding him down by his wrists. “This is wrong,” Clark said, his voice sounding regretful even to his own ears. “We’re enemies.”

Lex stared up at him incredulously. “You are fucking kidding me. We’ve been enemies for two years. You didn’t have any problem with this a minute ago. I have no illusions that this is anything but a hard, angry fuck.”

He didn’t get it. “It’s way more than just a fuck, Lex. We do this, it changes everything.”

“It doesn’t,” Lex insisted. “It doesn’t change anything.” He couldn’t be more wrong.

“The cave walls say otherwise. Or do you think it’s just a coincidence that Naman and Segeeth are described as ‘closer than brothers’ and shown joined in one body?”

“That described us before the rift and was drawn that way to symbolize it,” Lex dismissed. “We’re already fighting, that’s long since outdated. And for fuck’s sake, Clark, either lie down or have sex with me because you’re letting in the cold air.”

Clark lowered himself over Lex, but only because he could see that Lex was breaking out into goosebumps from the draft he was allowing to flow between them.

Lex closed his eyes as Clark’s weight settled over him. “Look, Clark, I’m sorry I brought it up. We’ve gone years without talking about it; I shouldn’t have said anything now. Go back to playing your head games with me. It was just getting interesting.”

“I wasn’t playing head games,” Clark denied sullenly.

Lex sighed and opened his eyes again. “Clark, any sex that isn’t based in mutual love and respect is a head game. Correct me if I’m wrong, but neither of us loves or respects the other right now. At best, we have the bitter ruins of them, but that just makes it even more of a mindfuck.”

Clark frowned, wondering if that was a sideways confession. “So you admit it is more than just a fuck.”

“You’re making this way more complicated than it has to be, Clark. I’m cold. We have sex. We both feel good, we release some frustration with each other, and I get warm. It’s simple.”

It wasn’t simple though. It was the farthest thing from simple. “What about Lana? You’re engaged, Lex.”

He was starting to get visibly irritated. “We already established that she’ll never know.”

Clark knew he was being contradictory, but now it felt important whereas before it hadn’t. “You’ll know. I’ll know. What kind of precedent does that set if you’re cheating on her this early in your engagement? I can’t let you marry her after this.”

“You can’t stop me,” Lex refuted, the tenseness in his muscles revealing that he was getting close to losing his temper. “It’s not your decision.”

“You’re right. It’s hers,” Clark countered, feeling almost too calm. “But I can make sure she knows what you almost did.”

“She won’t believe you,” Lex pointed out, which was probably true. Clark barely believed it and he was directly involved.

Clark narrowed his eyes at him, trying anyway. “It’s a matter of public record that you have a very cavalier attitude toward sex.”

“You’re forgetting something, Clark. I’m. Not. Gay.”

There was one really easy way to disprove that ludicrous claim beyond any and all doubt and Clark made his point before realizing the stupidity of doing so while they were both naked and pressed up against each other. The fierce two-sided kiss brought their softening cocks quickly back to hardness before Clark was able to force Lex down.

Sometime during the struggle to disengage their tongues, Lex had wrapped his legs around Clark’s waist and gripped large handfuls of Clark’s hair. Even with the kiss ended, Lex’s arm muscles trembled in his efforts to lower Clark’s mouth back down to his and his lower body rocked up wantonly.

Clark groaned, fighting his own arousal. “Damn it, Lex. You can’t claim you’re not gay one second then act like a bitch in heat the next.”

“Wish I was in heat, Clark. That sounds warm.”

For some reason Clark did not want to examine too closely, that just made him angry. He grabbed Lex by his wrists and pushed against the pressure points to make him let go of his hair. Pinning both wrists to the ground easily with one hand despite Lex’s resistance and squirming, Clark also maneuvered their bodies without sparing Lex the use of bruising strength to curl up his back and line up his cock against Lex’s unprepared hole.

Lex went still and held his breath. His eyes shimmered with something that Clark was sure Lex would never admit was fear. “You do not understand what you’re toying with, Lex,” Clark warned him. “I have not wanted to fuck somebody until they were bleeding and broken this badly since I was high on Red K. Do not tempt me.”

Lex’s throat worked and his tongue wetted his lips. He wisely said nothing at all, just watched Clark warily and tried to breathe evenly. His cock was still rock hard.

“Now, I’m going to ask you one more time and this time you’re not going to be flippant. You do understand this is far more than casual and extremely stupid, right?”

Lex nodded. “We’re already obsessed with each other, Clark. This can only make it worse. We do this, and it will prove to be massively poor judgment on both our parts and impossible to live with. There will be consequences and repercussions that we probably can’t even begin to imagine.” He paused for only a moment before asking, “We’re still going to do it, right?”

In answer, Clark let go of Lex’s wrists and moved up to put his cock against Lex’s lips. “Slick me up with your saliva.” Lex opened his mouth and bent his neck to engulf the head. His tongue swirled and his cheeks hollowed as he sucked and produced more spit.

Clark cradled Lex’s bald head in Clark’s large hands, forcing it to tilt backward as Clark pushed into the warm wet heat of Lex’s mouth. Lex choked and gagged as he took too much, too fast, but Clark wasn’t overly concerned. He pulled back a little to give Lex a chance to recover and breath then pushed back down as he advised, “Swallow me.”

Lex swallowed but it was too much for him again and he gagged, his fingers scrapping uselessly against Clark’s hands as they held Lex’s head immobile. Panic and tears appeared in his eyes when Clark did not immediately pull out. Clark held in place for another beat then let him breathe again.

When Clark was satisfied with the amount of spit on the root end of his dick, he gave Lex his skull and mouth back, moving instead to line up against Lex’s asshole. “This is going to hurt -a lot. Normally, you’d be stretched first so that it would just feel like a harsh burn instead of complete agony, but unless you really want me to get you ready beforehand; I’m just going to hurt you.”

“Slow, Clark,” Lex requested. “Just go very slowly.”

Clark nodded, to show he would honor the condition, and then he began to ease into Lex.

As his body was breached, Lex’s eyes closed and his face tightened in pain. His mouth opened and he began panting in quick, shallow breaths. After a few moments, his eyes snapped open as if he’d just realized they were closed and he didn’t want them to be. His gaze fastened onto Clark’s face and they stared at each other as Clark slid, millimeter by hot, tight, painful millimeter, deeper into Lex’s body.

Lex was sweating with effort though what, exactly, he was exerting himself to do or refrain from doing, Clark couldn’t really tell. The only time Lex’s gaze wavered was when he darted his eyes down to see the progress of their joining. Clark also took those moments to see his own cock being slowly engulfed inside Lex.

“God, Clark,” Lex gasped when they were almost halfway there. “You’re big.”

“Hurts?” Clark asked, not exactly sympathetically, but with something approaching concern. Not that he was going to stop or anything.

“I’m on fire. I can feel you in my toes. ‘Hurts’ is entirely inadequate to describe this.”

It was perhaps the hardest and most selfless thing he had ever done in his entire life to ask, “Do you need me to stop?”

Lex glared. “If you stop, I swear on my mother’s grave, I will find a way to kill you.”

“Good,” Clark didn’t try to hide his relief. All his effort went into keeping to the agonizingly slow pace he’d already established. After a short time, he groaned, “Shit, Lex. You feel like a clamp.”

For a moment, Lex didn’t seem to know how to take that. “Is that good?”

“Incredible,” Clark confirmed.

Lex nodded, as if he hadn’t expected anything else. “You feel like a giant, hot poker stoking the fires in my blood and making me burn like I was already in Hell.”

That didn’t sound very pleasant. It also put his simile to shame. “Is that bad?”

To his surprise, Lex half smiled. “Exquisite,” he corrected, sounding pleased with himself for coming up with a word that held connotations of both ‘excruciating’ and ‘perfect’ under the present circumstances. Lex clearly had way too many brain cells still functioning.

Clark was still less than three quarters of the way in, though, and he needed both hands and all his concentration to keep himself from speeding up. Lex was going to have to be permitted to keep his mind until Clark was fully seated inside him. Unless, of course, making him think about what was happing would succeed where the actual fact of it fell short.

“God, Lex, you’re so tight around my cock I can feel your pulse.” Huh. The aforementioned pulse sped up. Talking about what he was doing did seem to have an effect. “Look at where we’re joined.” Lex did so and Clark also watched the slow motion of their bodies as Lex took a tiny bit more of him every moment. “I’m most of the way inside you, Lex.” The pulse sped up again. Clark smiled, “But there’s still a whole quarter to go. You’re so full already, aren’t you, Lex? Can you imagine what it will feel like to have all of me?”

“Fuck,” Lex breathed. His pulse raced. Sweat broke out anew on his head and torso and the muscles of his ass briefly contracted before he forced them to relax again to ease the pain of his penetration.

“I can finish it off fast,” Clark offered, hoping he would take him up on it but Lex shook his head.

“Steady, Clark. Don’t rush it now.”

The last quarter passed silently as they both continued to watch. Lex wrapped an arm around Clark’s shoulders and used the other hand to prop him away from the ground for a better vantage point. He couldn’t be comfortable and the new position made Clark need to use a little more force to continue pressing inside.

Despite that the blanket was no longer protecting his backside and he was making no visible exertions, Lex was sweating again as the last of Clark was swallowed into his body. Clark released his hips, leaving angry red marks where his fingers had been, and wrapped his arms around Lex’s torso, supporting him in his chosen position. He continued to stare at where Clark’s body was flush against his, though it was physically impossible for him to actually see his own filled hole.

Though it was beyond obvious, Clark still vocalized it. “I’m inside you. You’ve been fully penetrated now.” Carefully, he shifted Lex’s one arm out of the way and lowered him down onto his back again.

Lex broke his stare to look into Clark’s eyes instead. He quietly allowed his legs to be lifted up and hooked over Clark’s shoulders. He shifted minutely to adjust to the change in his weight distribution and braced his hands flat on the ground on either side of his head. They continued to start into each other’s eyes until Lex nodded. “Do it.”

“It’s not going to last long,” Clark warned. He’d used up reserves of restraint and patience he never knew he had just to get inside. He felt ready to explode already.

“That’s not going to be a problem,” Lex assured, sounding a little short of breath.

Holding Lex by his hips again, Clark pulled out an inch or two then pushed back in, faster than before, but still slow. “God, Lex, you’re tight. Never felt anything like you.”

Lex’s heels dug into Clark’s back and his stomach and arm muscles strained as the bald man pushed himself up to meet the downward thrust. He grunted as they came together with a heavier impact than Clark had intended. “Clark, just fuck me already,” Lex grated impatiently.

Clark had wanted to do just that, but had been trying to give Lex a little bit longer to get accustomed to him. Freed from such obligations, Clark opted to reward him a bit and pulled out enough to nudge against the prostate that he’d used his x-ray vision to locate.

“Fuck!” Lex cried out, throwing his head back and pushing himself back onto Clark. That made Clark loose all semblance of restraint or control and he began to fuck Lex in earnest.

It was fast. Four thrusts were all it took to bring him off. He gripped Lex’s hips hard and drove into him on the fourth as he came. Lex shouted something unintelligible and his body shuddered around Clark. Milking the last of his come into Lex’s body, Clark released one hip to trace a finger through the white fluid that coated Lex’s chest and stomach.

Bringing it to his mouth, Clark tasted it. The bitterness was completely worth it to see Lex’s eyes go wide then close as he fought to control his expression. Lex was right. This was a mind game. Clark was pretty sure he’d won. Gently, he lowered Lex’s legs back to the ground and carefully pulled out of him. For all his precaution, Lex still made a pained sound as they came apart.

Using super speed, Clark fetched Lex’s washcloth, dampened it in the stream, and used heat vision to warm it before dropping back to normal speed and cleaning the spunk off Lex. Tossing the cloth aside, Clark turned him to the side, spooned up behind him, and pulled the blanket tight around them both. “Warm enough?”

“Yeah,” Lex agreed drowsily before his eyes drifted closed and fell asleep in Clark’s arms.

Not entirely trusting Lex to let him know if he was hurt, Clark turned him onto his back and used x-ray vision to check for internal injuries. Not being any kind of trained medical professional, all he could determine for sure was that there wasn’t any internal bleeding going on and none of his bones were broken. His heart seemed to be going fine and he was breathing regularly. Aside from some bruising, and probably some significant pain in his ass, Lex seemed fine. Clark wrapped his arms around him again and settled down for another long night.

Lex slept fitfully for six hours. He just shifted restlessly, making occasional pained sounds as he moved. Clark stroked his skin, and tried to soothe him, but if it had any effect, it was difficult to judge.

It was still early, well before the sun was ready to rise, when Lex woke again. “Clark?” he asked after a moment of tense stillness while he presumably reoriented himself.

“I’m right here,” Clark told him.

He drew in a sharp, sudden breath between his teeth, and closed his eyes against the pain that showed in them. Clark brushed a hand over his arm and wondered if it was his place to offer reassurance or sympathy. “Clark,” Lex repeated his name, his voice tight, “Something’s not right. It shouldn’t hurt this much.”

Though he didn’t want to bring Lex for medical attention with his alien DNA still inside him, Clark knew Lex wouldn’t say anything unless the situation was dire. “Do you need a hospital?”

“God, no,” Lex denied, perhaps even more appalled by the idea than Clark was. “Just, I don’t know, get me some Advil or something.” Another hiss of an indrawn breath stopped Clark from getting up to fetch the requested medicine. “Fuck, if it was my ass that hurt, I wouldn’t be too concerned, but it’s not.”

Starting to become genuinely worried himself, Clark asked, “What does hurt?”

“Stomach,” Lex answered shortly. “Sharp, jabbing cramps. Do you think I’ve got an ulcer?”

Clark’s eyes narrowed as he switched into X-ray vision again. He located the organ that most resembled the stomach in his biology text books, and checked it for ulcers. He shook his head, “No, your stomach lining is fine,” he said with too much certainty before he remembered that Lex didn’t know about – or at least he wasn’t supposed to know about – his X-ray vision.

Lex stared at him with avid interest. “You can see my stomach lining?” He looked like he was suppressing a deep need to reach for the notebook and pen that he kept for his notes on Coleby. His left hand twitched.

“Um,” Clark began, trying to figure out what excuse might work this time.

Shaking his head, Lex interrupted the attempt, irritation obvious in his voice, “Forget it, Clark. I withdraw the question. Just say if you know what’s wrong with me.”

Clark looked again, but he shook his head after a fruitless examination of Lex’s insides. “I didn’t do so great in human physiology. I can’t even name some of your organs, much less tell if there’s anything wrong with them.”

Lex sighed and frowned, but settled back against Clark’s body. Clark wrapped his arms around him. They lay quietly together for a long moment and Clark thought Lex was going to go back to sleep. After a few minutes though, Lex twisted around so that his back was to Clark, then pulled Clark’s arms lower to drape around his waist instead of his upper body.

Beneath Clark’s fingers, Lex’s stomach did feel oddly warm to the touch. They stayed in the new position for another couple of minutes before Lex snaked his right hand out from beneath the blanket and held it, closed in a fist, in front of his face before slowly opening it.

Clark couldn’t restrain his surprised gasp as the dark lines of the El House symbol were boldly revealed against Lex’s pale skin, even in the dim starlight. “Can I assume this design means something to you?” Lex asked quietly, though the resigned quality to his voice suggested he didn’t really expect Clark to reveal anything.

Clark debated how to answer, not trusting him enough to tell the whole truth but feeling like Lex might almost have the right to know this time, since it was now branded into the palm of his hand. “How did you get that?” he asked instead.

Lex said nothing for a long moment, and then he closed his hand around the symbol and lowered it back under the blanket. “You were right,” he acknowledged, the words sounding reluctant and like they physically pained him.

“About what?” Clark asked before understanding dawned. “Oh, that. Yeah. I know. It was incredibly stupid. Why did we do it?”

Lex shrugged, “I’m emotional and reckless, what’s your excuse?”

“I react and don’t think,” Clark answered with the standard complaint people, specifically Chloe and sometimes his mother, had about him.

They lay quietly together for a long moment before Lex called him on his excuse. “You were thinking. You tried to stop us. You tried to warn me. Why did you let me manipulate and convince you to continue?”

Clark snorted. He had delusions of being a hero, not a saint. “I haven’t had sex in two years and you were being a slut. Work it out. You’re engaged and you obviously haven’t been abstaining, so why did you need it so bad?”

Lex deflected his question, “You were still dating Lana two years ago. I know for a fact you two had sex.”

Letting him get away with it for now, Clark shook his head. “I’d lost my powers around the time of the second meteor shower, which is why I dared have sex with her at all. After I got them back, I was afraid to have sex with her anymore because I thought I’d hurt her. I didn’t tell her that was why we stopped being intimate, of course, and she blew it totally out of proportion and that’s a large part of the reason why we broke up.”

Lex turned around to stare at him for a long moment before he shook his head. “You are an idiot, Clark. I begin to understand why all my plots to get you and her hooked up during high school failed. Did it ever occur to you to just suck it up and tell her the truth, or some modified version thereof?”

Though he had considered it, and even done it in one alternate reality where his father had lived, Clark shook his head. “You know Lana and her opinion of both aliens and mutants. How do you think she would have responded?”

“Doesn’t that suggest to you that you’re maybe dating the wrong girl? Let her go, she’s not the one for you.”

Clark’s eyes narrowed. “She’s not the one for you, either. You’re only dating her because she was mine first.” All of a sudden, he flashed on an alternate reason besides vengefulness that Lex might have done that. He wrapped the conversation back to his question, “Tell me, Lex, why did you want to have sex with me that badly?”

Lex’s eyes widened, like he was shocked Clark would link the two ideas, and then they widened again, like he was shocked by a self-realization. “Are you suggesting that I’m engaged to Lana so I can have sex-once-removed with you?”

Put like that, it did sound extreme, but Clark held his ground. “Yes.”

“I am not that pathetic.”

“You are that obsessed.”

Lex opened his mouth, and closed it. He twisted around so that his back was pressed against Clark again. “Fuck you.”

“No thanks, I’d rather fuck you.” Which was cheeky and rude and he totally wouldn’t have said it to anybody but Lex.

Lex just laughed shortly. “Maybe later. Right now, I’m going to try going back to sleep. I heal faster when I’m unconscious.”

“Lex?” Clark asked, seriously, unwilling to ignore the bad feeling in the pit of his stomach for however long Lex intended to doze. “You never loved me, right?”

There was a brief, almost non-existent, pause before Lex shook his head and denied it. They had been friends for a long time though. Close. Closer than brothers, if you wanted to steal the Kawatche description. Clark had a sudden understanding of what it must have felt like every time Lex had listened to him say something blatantly untrue and needed to pretend he believed it.

Of course not, Clark. Don’t be ridiculous. The scoffing dismissal repeated endlessly in his mind, each time sounding more and more off, more and more wrong, despite Clark’s desperate need to find truth in the words. There wasn’t any, though. Lex thought he was such a great liar, but he wasn’t, and Clark wished, just this once, that he could have been fooled.

Why’d he have to go and lie anyway? A simple ‘yes, Clark, but then I saw what a jerk you were and got over it’ would have been cruel and cutting and very much in the Luthor style. Or maybe, ‘We were friends, Clark. What do you think?’ which would have neatly avoided the question altogether but left the impression at platonic caring. But no, he went and lied, which meant he was feeling threatened, which meant he could still be hurt by the subject. Damn it.

And fuck, if Lex had loved him, really loved him, Clark could have saved him, stopped him from becoming this, this Luthor. Worse, Clark began to wonder if the break up of their friendship was in response to his declining morals, or if his declining morals were in response to their declining friendship; evil actions done just to spite Clark, or even get his attention as part of some fucked up cry for help.

“Lex,” he said, softer, quieter.

The body went tense in his arms. “What?” he asked irritably, “Don’t you sleep?”

Clark ignored the question. “I’ll trade. Information about the mark on your hand for what you’re doing with level 33.1.”

“There is no level 33.1. It’s all a delusion by-”

“Fine, good night, then,” Clark interrupted. “Sleep.”

For a long time, Clark thought that he had. It was almost twenty minutes later when Lex said, “I’m making an army of mutants.”

Clark felt his stomach drop and he felt almost physically queasy. “Why?” he forced himself to ask instead of doing something lethal.

“The Earth needs someone to defend her in the event of an alien invasion. You can’t deny there are people out there in the cosmos; people with incredible abilities, both in the physical capabilities and in what they can do with technology. We can’t just ignore a threat of that magnitude. We need some kind of line of defense, some people of our own with abilities that are just as extraordinary.”

“And you don’t care about such minor concerns as ethics?” Clark challenged.

Lex sighed. “They’re all naturally occurring mutants, Clark. Any that were laboratory induced to be that way are left over from my father’s era. And they’re all dangerous, so I can’t just let them out.”

“So you never took anybody that was normal and made them super-powered and dangerous?” Clark rephrased, sounding doubtful.

“Right,” Lex agreed, nodding.

Clark had him trapped now, but there wasn’t any victory in his voice as he asked, “What about Coleby?”

For a moment, Lex said nothing, then sighed and admitted, “Coleby qualifies as animal testing. At least, he did until he mutated and began speaking rudimentary English. Even you can’t tell me that he’s being held against his will, though.”

No, he couldn’t, but that wasn’t the only objection he had. “Don’t even try to tell me that the government approves his project.”

Lex shrugged indifferently. “I feel no inclination to tell them about Coleby’s project, especially now that it has been disbanded. I believe I’ve answered all your questions about 33.1. What does the brand mean?”

Clark sighed. Lex had disclosed the requisite information. Just because Clark didn’t like the answers was not a good enough reason to go back on his deal. There was a remote chance a similar exchange might be made in the future if he kept up his side of the bargain. “It’s the symbol of my biological father’s House, the House of El. It’s sort of like a family crest.”

Lex nodded thoughtfully. “So I’m wearing your name.”

That was one way of putting it. “Yes.”

“Did you know this would happen?”

Clark shook his head even though Lex was facing away from him. “No.”

Lex brought his hand up and looked at it again. Using his left pointer finger, he poked at it before bringing it right up to his face for a closer inspection. “It looks and feels like it was physically imprinted, like I pressed my hand against something very hot with this design on it. I don’t think semen being introduced into my body, no matter how alien, could create such a mark. Do you have any idea how it could have been made?”

Racking his brain turned up one possible explanation, but not a complete one. “When you were Zod, I pressed a piece of metal that looked just like that into your hand. It’s what sent him into the phantom zone and made him leave your body.”

“My right hand?” Lex questioned, “Right where the mark is?”

Clark thought about it, trying to remember exactly where the El signet had touched Lex. “Exactly right where the mark is,” he confirmed with absolute surety.

“That can’t be good.” For once in his life, Clark agreed completely with Lex. “But it still doesn’t explain why I didn’t have a mark then, but I do now.”

Shaking his head, all Clark could do was admit to his ignorance, “I don’t know, Lex. Alien-freaky doesn’t come with an instruction book. Professor Fine altered you so you could host Zod, right? Maybe it’s got something to do with that. Or maybe it’s got something to do with being Segeeth - that somehow made the palac knife disintegrate.”

Lex rubbed at his temples then slipped his hands back under the blanket. “It’s too early in the morning to think about this. I really am going back to sleep now.”

When Lex awoke some hours later, the sun was up. His stomach seemed to have recovered from whatever was bothering it. Coleby was munching happily on a pear, and Clark was eating some kind of bagel sandwich that smelt of bacon. The sweet fragrance of coffee was nearby and Lex found the Starbucks cup waiting just out of reach of where he lay. He shifted just enough to grab it, and then reclaimed his warmed-up spot on his trench coat, already sipping greedily at the hot liquid.

“Morning,” Clark greeted. “There’s an egg sandwich in the bag for you if you want it.” The bag in question was next to Clark, so Lex decided to wait for it. His immediate concern was staying under the blankets.

Coleby waved his half-eaten pear in the air and smiled with absolute happiness. “Eat foo!” It was remotely possible that Lex had simply chosen the wrong fruit to bribe the vervet with back at Luthor Corp. He smiled back genuinely, though, because he was fairly certain that most of Coleby’s cheerfulness came from the success of correctly stringing a noun and a verb together.

It was a contagious sort of victory, and Lex was just as proud of him as Coleby was of himself. “Very good, Coleby,” he praised. He took another reverent sip of the Starbucks, which he noted made Coleby wrinkle his nose and run off into the treetops, but not before raiding the bag and taking another pear with him. Lex suppressed the urge to roll his eyes.

Looking around as he continued to nurse his coffee, he noted there were two foam pads rolled up off to one side, two pillows with flannel covers, and two more folded blankets. Abandoning the coffee momentarily, Lex dressed quickly and tried not to think about the fact that he was wearing the same suit for the third day in a row.

He pulled the trench coat on overtop his clothes and hoped there wasn’t too much semen on it. Both the coat and the suit would need to be burned when he got home. “Lex,” Clark called as Lex pulled on his thin brown socks, which were made with looks in mind, not living outdoors in late autumn. He looked up and caught a soft white fabric ball that Clark threw to him. “Warmer socks,” he said.

They were hideous tube socks, but they were thick and with a far greater insulation capacity than his brown ones, so he put them on without bothering to take the other ones off. Two pairs of socks were warmer than one regardless of how useless the one pair was by itself. His shoes didn’t fit right with the tube socks on, of course, being customized to fit him perfectly when he was wearing the thin, formal socks. But the shoes were going by way of the same fire his coat and suit were, so it didn’t matter if they got a little stretched.

“I got you a hat and gloves, too,” Clark told him as he finished tying the laces. “Mom made them for me a few years ago, but I don’t really need them.” The items being offered were bright blue, but at least there weren’t any pompoms or anything to make them look childish.

Lex took them and looked around at the trees and utter lack of civilization before putting them on. “Not one word,” he warned with a full blown Luthor glower of imminent death, “to anybody, ever.” He could only hope the Kent-made hat and gloves didn’t diminish the impact of the glower.

Clark did not appear affected. In fact, he was smirking a bit. Lex wasn’t sure if that was because of the glare’s reduced effectiveness or simply because Clark wouldn’t have been affected anyway. Clark had always been irritating in that way. “I seriously can’t decide whether you’d be angrier if I leaked that you wore a home-made hat and gloves or if I told about us having sex.”

Lex glared, but did not dignify the statement with a response. The answer should have been perfectly obvious. He could survive being publicly outed. The hat would be impossible to explain. “Clearly, I should swear off getting cold. It puts me into all kinds of untenable positions.” He moved over to give a brief examination to the blankets, pads, and pillows. They looked serviceable, though by the hay fragrance that hung around them, they were probably kept stored in the Kent’s barn loft.

Satisfied that he was going to have some padding between him and roots and stones that littered the ground where they slept, he moved over to Clark’s side and liberated his egg sandwich from the paper bag. “We might want to get some kind of waterproof awning or tent before we get rained or snowed on. Also, I could do with a change of clothes. Frankly, I’m not dressed for the climate or habitat.”

“Do you even own camping gear?” Clark asked doubtfully.

“If by ‘camping gear’ you mean denim and flannel, no.”

“How about ‘warm and sturdy’?” Clark suggested, still sounding like he didn’t think Lex had anything to fit the description.

He did have a few sweaters that fit the warm category, but they were cashmere and he didn’t want to get leaves or dirt in them. “No comment.”

Clark laughed. “Didn’t think so. How much cash do you have on you?”

Lex hadn’t needed to take out his wallet since before Coleby started following him around. “Two or three hundred, I think.”

“More than enough to buy what you need at the nearest Walmart, then,” Clark decided.

Lex just stared at him. “I am not going into a Walmart, Clark.”

Clark frowned thoughtfully. “Sears?”

“I don’t buy retail.”

“Lex,” Clark sighed, “You need some warm clothes. Either I bring you to Sears and you try on stuff that you can remotely tolerate, or I’ll dress you in my old clothes and hope a belt will be a good enough adjustment.”

“Never mind, Clark. I’ll be fine like this. Forget I said anything.” Lex finished the last of his sandwich and washed it down with the last off his coffee. Moving over to the mats, he unrolled them and laid them out side by side, finding the fastenings to latch them together.

“Lex,” Clark said, watching him as he placed the two pillows at one end and spread the three blankets over top, effectively making their bed. He tucked in the blankets for good measure. “We can get you warm thermal pajamas. We don’t need to sleep together.”

Lex forced himself not to display any emotion as he turned back to Clark. “Is that what you want? You had my ass and that’s all you were after? Why bother making all that fuss about it not being casual, then?” He didn’t ask if that had been part of the head game because that would be admitting he was affected.

Clark neither flinched nor blushed, which said as well as anything how much they had both changed and gotten harder in the last few years. He just continued to regard Lex. It was a little disturbing. It reminded him of the way he used to look at Clark. Like he was trying to figure him out, like he wanted to take him apart to see how he fit together. He began to wonder if maybe he had possibly deserved some of Clark’s hostility and distrust.

Clark advanced into his personal space, and Lex stood up to meet him. Clark’s hand cupped his face and Lex fought to keep anything but resolute challenge from showing in his eyes or expression. He did not allow himself to flinch or step away. He tried not to get hard from Clark’s proximity, either, but he knew better than to waste resources on a hopeless cause.

“What I want isn’t the issue,” Clark stated. “You’re the best fuck I’ve had and I would love to bury myself in you every night for as long as we’re out here.”

Damn it, what the hell was wrong with him? He was not Clark’s bitch. Why was it so hard to keep his expression unaffected by those words? Why was he so hard? Despite what he’d said to Clark in his efforts to get his own way, he was done with his obsession. Clark meant nothing to him now. Why the fuck did it fill him with gleeful pride that Clark liked sex with him better than he had liked it with Lana? What kind of sick fuck was he that it even mattered how he and his fiancé compared in relation to Clark’s enjoyment of them?

It was just a fuck, right? He didn’t even like Clark anymore.

A thumb brushed over his cheek. They were close enough that Lex could see Clark hadn’t shaved yet this morning. The fingers holding his jaw must have told Clark by now that Lex didn’t ever need to. “You’re the one that needs to make a decision.” Lex blinked, not understanding. Clark must have read that in his face because he expanded, “Me or Lana, Lex. You can’t have both.”

Lex pulled away and Clark let him. He had no illusions that he could have done so without Clark’s permission. “It’s not a difficult choice, Clark.” Lex said dismissively, turning his back on him. “I’m engaged to Lana, she’s having my child.”

“You don’t love her,” Clark stated.

Lex turned enough to scowl at him. “I don’t need to. And I sure as hell don’t love you.”

Clark closed his eyes and sighed deeply, sounding sad and regretful. “You did.”

“Too late,” Lex snapped before his mind was able to intervene and tell him the wiser course of action would have been to deny it.

“I’m sorry,” Clark said, and Lex was almost positive he meant it. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t nearly enough. Lex turned away and started searching the branches for Coleby. It was about time to start the day’s lessons. “Lex, can we fix us?”

No. He wanted to say it. Luthors didn’t forgive and to fix them he would need to. It would require sacrifice and he hated sacrifice. He would need to compromise and he liked getting his own way about everything. It was a bad deal and an unnecessary one. Even trying would be reckless, stupid, and dangerous. He had this obsession closed; there was no reason to open it again. He didn’t need Clark. “I don’t know. Can you trust me?”

Clark hesitated, proving the idiocy of even considering this course of action. “Can you?” he asked instead of answering with a lie. It was a start. If he’d said ‘yes,’ Lex would have had to kill him.

“No,” Lex answered honestly. Another impressive start.

“Can you learn how to?” Clark asked, proving more diligent than Lex had expected.

He honestly didn’t know. “Can you?”

A shrug. “Maybe.” Not the most hopeful of answers, but it was probably honest. “It depends on how well you learn.”

Lex studied him for a long moment, because that was precisely why he didn’t know as well. He laughed shortly. “Catch-22. I can’t trust you unless you trust me, and you can’t trust me until I trust you.”

“We should each make an act of faith,” Clark suggested. “For yours, you break up with Lana. Now you tell me what you want from me.”

An act of faith. Something he could ask of Clark that was comparable to asking him to break off his engagement. “The secret in the caves.” That had been a large part of what broke their trust in each other the first time. “I want to know everything about the caves.” He needed to understand why some writing on a wall meant more to Clark than the friendship they had once had.

Clark looked at him distrustfully for a moment, but Lex didn’t let it pierce his armor. Clark hadn’t trusted him for a long time, if he ever had. He was used to Clark’s distrust. He still hated it. “That’s bigger than Lana,” Clark said.

“Act of faith,” Lex reminded, not backing down. “And you’re asking me to give up my child, too. She’s pregnant, remember?”

Clark took a deep breath, but nodded. “Okay, but if she lets you have custody, I get another concession.”

It was like contract negotiation. “Define your secondary concession.”

He nodded his head toward the bed made of foam pads and blankets. “We sleep together. You exclusively bottom unless and until I decide you’re ready to switch.”

Interesting. He’d been under the impression Clark simply did not bottom. “What conditions merit that decision?”

“When I’m convinced you love me unconditionally and you won’t try to use it to your advantage in any way.”

Lex blinked. That was harsh. It also meant that Clark may as well have said he would never bottom. “But you’re not averse to using the perceived power differential against me.” It was exactly that kind of hypocrisy that infuriated Lex to the point of hatred in the first place.

Clark didn’t appear at all ashamed. “Different rules apply to you. They always have.”

For the first time, Lex did not hold back his opinion on that. “You are a hypocrite. You always were. You always held me to a far higher standard than you held for yourself or your other friends. Why am I different?”

“Because you’re too powerful.”

That was rich. “And you’re not?”

“I have different rules, too.”

While that was no doubt true, it didn’t help make anything any clearer. “So why can you top but I can’t?”

Clark looked at him seriously. “Because you are the one who was trained to use sex as a weapon. Because Lionel is traditional enough to foster the belief in you that topping means dominance and I can’t allow you to think you have anything of the sort over me.”

Lex could almost understand where he was coming from. He was even partially right about the views Lionel had installed in his psyche. Topping the most powerful being on the planet would induce an incredible feeling of invincibility. It would probably be dangerous for all involved. “But I’m permitted to think you have dominance over me?” The knife cut both ways.

“That’s your choice. You can think that, you can refuse to have a sexual relationship, or you can move into the next century and just enjoy the good sex.” Clark looked at him seriously. “I don’t need or want your brand of power. Do you honestly believe last night was about anything other than you personally? I don’t care about your money or your business, I never have. Right now, my issue with you is your lack of ethics. If I can use your stereotypes against you to get you to back on the right path, I’m not above that.”

He wasn’t lying. Clark’s complete disinterest in the money and business had been the initial draw that got Lex involved in this mess in the first place. He let Clark’s motives pass unchallenged. “Your secondary concession is having a sexual relationship, which takes your second option away.”

Clark’s eyes met his and he raised an eyebrow. “Can you honestly tell me you don’t want one, even with the restriction? I was being generous with my second concession since it was something I was going to expect anyway.”

“But it’s only binding if I get custody. In the likely event that I don’t, what happens then?”

“Let’s say it is binding so long as you wish to have a sexual relationship, but no additional sanctions will be placed on you if you decline or you are granted custody.”

Lex debated, factoring in that by agreeing, he was accepting harsher terms for the more likely event, versus how well he could mobilize his legal team to take custody from the biological mother of his child, versus the fact that the new terms would likely be imposed whether he agreed to the condition or not. He nodded. “Deal.”

He took off his right hand glove just long enough for him and Clark to shake on it. The El brand warmed between their clasped hands as they did so. As their hands fell back to their sides, Lex asked, “Did you feel that?”

Clark looked baffled. “Feel what?”

Lex shook his head, hoping he had just imagined it, and put the glove back on. “Nothing. Forget it.”

“We’re trying to trust each other, remember?”

Lex narrowed his eyes, “Let’s at least accomplish out mutual acts of faith first before we go spilling additional insecurities, all right?”

Clark shrugged, halfway between apologetic and probing. “You sure you don’t want to start with something small, first?”

Lex spread his hands apart. “Be my guest. Tell me something small.”

Clark blinked for a moment, and then shook his head. “You’re a real piece of work, Lex.”

Smirking at him, Lex suppressed a chuckle. “That’s not news, Clark. I thought the point was to tell me something I didn’t know.”

For a long moment he said nothing, looking at Lex seriously and consideringly. “You hit me with your car,” Clark stated very deliberately, and though Lex had known that for years, since the day it happened in fact, something about the way he said it released a tension inside him that Lex hadn’t even known he’d harbored.

Lex nodded. “Thank you.”

“Lee- acks!” Coleby was back, dropping out of the trees to land on the foam mat bed. He loped over to where Lex and Clark stood, still far too close for propriety. Coleby picked up the empty coffee cup, shook it, wrinkled his nose, and threw it aside. “Ka,” he said, a sound which Lex had eventually decided was simply a noise of disgust rather than an actual attempt at a word.

“Hey, don’t knock the coffee,” Lex chided, then looked at Clark to answer his small something with one of his own. “Coleby is the greatest thing I ever did.” Then he stepped away from Clark and waved for Coleby to follow. “Come, Coleby.” Coleby took his hand and Lex led him over to the foam pads where he sat down and picked up one of the pillows. “This is a pillow. Pillow.” He handed it to Coleby. “Say that, Coleby, pillow.”

The day passed in a blur of English lessons. Clark ran back to Metropolis to take his afternoon classes and collect his homework to do while Lex and Coleby tackled vocabulary. He also brought back and set up a tent. The pseudo bed filled the entire inside of it, but at least they’d be dry if it did start to rain. Clark was a little surprised Lex hadn’t even suggested buying woodland property and having his people build a cabin overnight, but he supposed Lex was just as reluctant to put Coleby back in a human like setting as he was.

He also supposed it would tell people where Lex was. The more he thought about it, the more obvious it was to him that Lex didn’t want to be found just now. He didn’t want to share Coleby.

Clark still wasn’t sold on the idea that turning a monkey into some kind of creature with strength that rivaled Clark’s and with the intelligence of a young child was really such a great thing, but Lex was devoted to the creature. Clark might have been almost jealous if their relationship was based more in the traditional emotions and less in bitter angst. As it was, Clark could watch them objectively and feel a little guilty that he was sabotaging Lex’s chance at being a father. He was a little surprised that Lex had that kind of patience.

When he returned with dinner – Subway sandwiches for him and Lex, two apples for Coleby – he was greeted with what was becoming a traditional announcement: “ Kalark back!”

Lex encouraged and praised him as enthusiastically as he had the first time Coleby did it, nearly ensuring that the trend would continue every time Clark returned from civilization. When Lex looked up with a smile as he accepted his turkey sub, Clark could almost imagine they were back in the loft five years ago.

That spell was broken when Coleby held out his hands and asked for his own meal, “ Foo?” Clark clapped an apple into each palm and was rewarded with a more brilliant mirror of Lex’s smile. “ Thak ‘ oo!”

Lex silently shook his head, smirking a little to himself. Clark felt a little relieved that he keep unwrapping his sandwich instead of jumping for his pen and notebook. Of course, that had been premature because the pen and notebook were right next to him and Lex started writing as soon as he was chewing his first bite.

“It’s rude to write at the table,” Clark said.

Obviously surprised, Lex looked up at him blinking. “Excuse me?” he asked when he finished swallowing.

He was probably playing dirty but he was feeling a little ignored. Lex hadn’t said more than a few words to him since Coleby had returned after breakfast and he had just spent a good portion of his weekly food budget on them over the last two days. “What kind of table manners are you teaching him? You’re not supposed to write at the dinner table.”

Lex looked around them, as if seeking something. “What table?”

Oh, right. He forgot Lex could be a literalist if it fit his purposes. “The metaphorical one we are metaphysically sitting around.”

“Ah, that one,” Lex said. Clark braced himself for some kind of philosophical debate that would probably bring in the Greeks, but to his surprise, Lex just closed his notebook, hooked his pen cap into it to save his spot, and put it aside. “My apologies. It won’t happen again.” He sat up straighter and began to eat his sandwich with far more decorum and formality than Clark thought was even possible when eating a twelve inch sub without a plate or silverware.

Feeling obligated to at least straighten his posture since he was the one who instigated the ‘metaphorical table manners’ idea, Clark also tried to eat more slowly and neatly. Coleby eyed them both in confusion for a few seconds, then sat up straighter himself, taking smaller and less noisy bites of his apples. Huh. Coleby really was learning table manners from them. Lex nodded and smiled in approval.

“Meal time,” Lex said in his teaching voice, using a finger to make a circle that included all of them. Clark wasn’t really sure what Coleby interpreted that to mean but the monkey did his best to repeat the words. “That’s when people eat together,” Lex explained, then rephrased it to words Coleby knew. “Lex, Clark, Coleby eat food,” he made the circle gesture again, “Meal time.”

Lex smiled at Clark, the light in his eyes warning that he was about to reveal something he’d been working on for a while. “Ask him what just happened.”

Not seeing how doing so could damage the Earth as he knew it, he humored Lex and asked Coleby, “What just happened?”

Coleby beamed. “ Culby luren oord.”

Lex was grinning at Clark, too, just as proud of himself as Coleby was. “He learned a word,” Lex translated, in case Clark hadn’t been able to understand the awkward pronunciation. He sounded so pleased with Coleby’s accomplishment that the monkey might as well have discovered a cure for cancer.

Picking up a stone and tossing it into the middle of their circle, Lex prompted, “Ask him again.”

“What just happened?” Clark dutifully asked.

“Rock fall.” Either those words were just easier to pronounce or they’d worked on them longer, but Clark had no trouble following that sentence.

Lex beamed, “He can understand and answer some questions.”

That was when Clark realized Lex was trying to include both Clark and Coleby in dinnertime conversation. The amazing thing was that he managed to keep it going by demonstrating to Clark many of the words Coleby had learned during the last fifty hours or so. It ended abruptly when Coleby stood up and said, “Done.”

Lex nodded. “You may be excused. Good night, Coleby.”

As this had been what Lex said before settling down for sleep the last two nights, Coleby repeated, “Goo nigh, Lee- acks,” then climbed up into the tree branches.

“Coleby!” Lex called after him before he could disappear to wherever he went to sleep through the night. Coleby stopped and turned back. “Say good night to Clark.”

“Goo nigh, Kalark.”

By the time Clark finished returning the send-off, Coleby was out of sight. Lex shrugged at him and took a sip from his water bottle. “I’m still working on polite behavior.”

Clark raised an eyebrow and couldn’t resist the dig, “Yours or his?”

Lex huffed a laugh (it was too dignified to be a snort, but Clark would have been tempted to call it that on anybody else). “Both, I suppose.”

They continued to eat quietly. When they finished and packed away their trash, Lex picked up his notebook and jotted down a few lines of notes before looking back up at Clark who was watching him. “What?”

“It’s only seven-thirty. Stores will still be open for a few more hours. We can get you some warmer clothes.”

Lex made a visible effort to come up with an excuse to not go, but Clark wasn’t going to have him freeze to death when the temperatures dropped again. “What you’re doing with Coleby is going to take time, right?”

“Yes,” Lex agreed.

“Forecast for this area is rapidly decreasing temperatures this week. We could have snow by Saturday. You need something warmer or I’ll be checking you into a hospital with hypothermia.” He moved into Lex’s personal space and just picked him up. They were at a mall in Arkansas before Lex could even protest.

Putting him down and nudging him toward the doors of Sears, Clark started listing what he needed, “Long underwear, jeans, thermal undershirt, some kind of medium weight shirt, and a heavy sweater or sweatshirt to wear on top of that. Maybe a real winter jacket instead of your trench which looks really cool but is not meant for a North Dakota winter.”

Lex glared at him and stated, “I do not need-”

Clark cut him off because Lex could be an idiot when fashion clashed with good sense. He had never managed to convince Lex that he should wear sneakers or boots when he came onto the farm. Over the first few years of their friendship, Clark was sure Lex had thrown out more money continually replacing his shoes than it would have taken to pay off the mortgage and invest in brand new top of the line equipment. He always had a new pair after each visit to the barn. “Yes, you do. Now pick out what you want yourself or I will.”

Before they moved toward the populated center of commerce, though, Lex took off his hat and gloves and gave them to Clark. “I’m not wearing these in public.” Without anything better to do with them, Clark put on the hat and stuffed the gloves in his coat pockets. Then they went into Sears.

It was worse than shopping with Chloe. No, it was worse than shopping with Lana. No, it was worse than shopping with both Chloe and Lana at the same time. Lex was the pickiest most finicky customer he had ever seen in his life. The sales staff were ready to either tear their hair out or throw him out of the store by the time he decided on one sweater that was ‘of adequate quality and aesthetics for the purpose to which it will be put.’ Clark got him on the line, through the check out process, and out into the mall before any of the clerks made an attempt on Lex’s life. It was a near thing.

They went to Dick’s next. This time Clark didn’t let him speak directly to any of the employees. That worked better. They left with some insulated jeans, a thermal undershirt, a turtleneck in the exact shade of purple as the LuthorCorp logo, and some top quality insulated hiking boots that barely met some minimum requirements for style and color. They looked at the coats, too, but Lex refused to so much as try any of them on. All and all, though, Clark was pleased with their success at Dick’s.

They went to Macy’s last and Lex found a heavy coat in the formalwear section that he deemed worthy of being his ‘woodsman’s coat’. Like in Dick’s, the total came to more than the two hundred he had left in cash so he used his credit card. Like in Dick’s, they didn’t seem to recognize him as the CEO of LuthorCorp, even when they saw his name.

As they left the mall, secure in their anonymity, Lex grouched, “They could have at least asked if I was related to Lex Luthor.”

Clark shook his head, trying not to look too amused. “ Don’t worry, your Dad will still hear all about you slumming it at Macy’s.”

“It’s the Dick’s purchases I’m more concerned about him finding out about. We are far away from our camp, right?”

“By several states,” Clark assured.

Lex nodded. “Good. Let’s bring these back. Then, we can go down to Smallville and take our leaps of faith before going to bed. We’ll do the caves first, so that when Dad does track us, we will have had time to physically get from here to Smallville. He knows you’re fast, but I’d rather he not find out you’ve shared that with me.”

Clark looked at him seriously. “I need you to swear that you will follow your end of the bargain afterwards.”

Lex’s return look was just as serious, and Clark thought he could make out the faintest hint of offense behind his neutral expression. “I swear it,” he promised. “Can we go now?”

A moment later, he was setting Lex down just outside their tent. Lex stashed his bags away inside and Clark tossed the hat and gloves in after them. He knew better than to expect Lex to wear them where people he actually knew might see him.

“Smallville, Clark. The caves,” Lex ordered as soon as he was done zipping the tent closed against potential invasion of wildlife.

The caves didn’t look any different, though it had be quite some time since Lex was last here. His eye was drawn, as it often was when he visited, to the joined form of Segeeth and Naman.

“You know the legend already, right?” Clark asked. “Naman falls from the stars, is really strong, all that, and Segeeth is like his brother but then he becomes the Bringer of Darkness.”

It was a ridiculously abbreviated version of the story, but Lex had done his homework on the legend so he wasn’t going to press too hard on it. “It also says we’re the balance of good and evil,” he added, bringing in the one other point he thought was important to the overall theme. “And I do insist that I’m not the Darkness. I’m the Bringer of it. That’s a small but very important distinction. I never meant to unleash Zod on the world.”

Clark stared at him. His eyes were wide and he opened his mouth. No words emerged, but his jaw worked. He looked completely floored. Lex hadn’t thought he’d said anything all that stunning. It was just his instinctual protest against accepting that he was a villain. Nobody would want to think that of themselves. That’s why he had so many Clark-going-bad theories.

“Oh God,” Clark gasped, apparently regaining minimal speech capacity. “It already happened. You brought the Darkness. Dark Thursday. It’s over. This,” he waved his hand around to indicate the whole of the wall, “it’s done. It was about Zod.” He laughed, seeming almost giddy with relief, and took Lex by his shoulders and spun him around in circles. “Destiny happened and it’s over! You’re not really evil!” He sounded so happy about that, not to mention unflatteringly surprised.

It was entirely possible he had done far too good a job of being spiteful. Maybe now was a good time to broach the subject of accusations. “No, I’m not. And if you talked to me about things I did that you had problems with instead of making accusations and ultimatums, I might have even listened to you instead of continuing with such projects just to infuriate you more. You don’t honestly think that you found out about all my worst schemes by chance, do you?”

He had. Lex could tell it just by looking at his face. “How incompetent do you think I am? I wanted you to find out.”

“But you covered your tracks. I couldn’t even pin most of them on you with any kind of logical evidence.” He looked baffled by this turn of events.

“I wanted you to find out. I didn’t want to go to jail. I was taunting you, not stupid.” Had Clark somehow missed the memo that said Lex was a genius? All of his worst offenses always went back to treating Lex like he was moron.

Clark’s eyes narrowed. “But you did those things.”

Lex sighed and appealed to the cave ceiling. “I never claimed I was good, Clark. I was weaned on Machiavelli and Nietzsche. A certain amount of unethical behavior is only to be expected and I was feeling no inclination to behave myself.”

“And now?” Clark questioned.

Lex spread his hands and positioned himself directly beside the passage that said Naman and Segeeth would be the balance of good and evil. “Balance me, Clark.”

Clark really was the ultimate hero. He got off on inflicting good. Lex could see the flash of arousal in his eyes from here. Most people would not find ‘balance me’ to be a provocative statement, but in this context Clark was apparently taking it as equivalent to ‘strip me naked and fuck me against these primitive cave drawings that we just reinterpreted to suit our needs.’

Not that Lex intended to ever suggest Clark was reading only what he wanted to read in the pictures. Neither was he going to complain about getting stripped of his pants or pushed up against the wall. Clark wasn’t entirely accurate in his assumptions about Lex’s preconceptions over bottoming. He didn’t intend to inform him of that either.

Any sex was power over the other person. Desiree and Victoria could probably give treatises about how male domination was complete crap. Making Clark loose control over himself, feeling him move against you without any kind of restraint? There wasn’t any power on the Earth greater than accomplishing that.

He urged Clark on, counting each bruise and scrape a victory against Clark’s artificial inhibitions and limitations. He fought for dominance in their kiss, not because he thought he could win, but because it drove Clark to strive to best him. Clark needed balance, too. Whereas Lex had too few boundaries, Clark had too many. He needed to be drawn out or he’d never be anything more than destiny’s plaything, dragged from one rescue to the next with no regard for his own personal life. He needed to learn how to do what he wanted.

Lex was good at that.

“Yes!” he encouraged, not exactly for demonstrational purposes. During one of Clark’s trips to Metropolis today, while Lex had been working with Coleby, he’d picked up a tube of lubrication. Much to Lex’s relief, Clark had decided to bring it along with them tonight and was now making use of it in very satisfying ways.

The first Lex knew of Clark’s multitasking on the lube was when his fingers drew away from slicking Lex’s passage and were immediately replaced with the length of his dick pushing up inside. It wasn’t anything like the slow but exceptional torture of last night.

It was fast, taking only a second or two to fill him completely. The lube made it tolerable, but Clark was like a hot iron rod that was two sizes too large for the slot he had just shoved into. It burned and tore through him. Force of will prevented Lex from screaming, but it was impossible to keep from making any sound. A cry of surprised pain escaped and his erection suffered from the unanticipated shock of agony.

“Some warning next time,” Lex requested breathlessly, working his ass muscles as he tried to adjust quickly to Clark’s size and presence. He didn’t have the time or brain power to give the automatic assumption that there would be a next time the analysis or consideration it deserved.

Clark groaned and strained with the effort of giving Lex that opportunity to accustom himself to the intrusion. “Sorry.” Lex thought he might even mean it. After another moment or two, Clark asked in a voice harsh with the need to move, “Does this mean we’re dating?”

“Having an affair,” Lex corrected as the burn finally started to fade, “At least until I break up with Lana. Okay, go ahead.”

Clark frowned but let it pass, opting to resume having sex instead of dwelling on the truth of Lex’s description. Soon, the pull of Clark leaving and the push of him returning were all Lex could think about. Given the limitation of having almost no leverage to work with, Lex had to clamp his muscles tight and undulate against him to urge Clark on. Sounds also drove Clark into a frenzy, so Lex allowed himself to indulge in very vocal sex, letting his groans and shouts ricochet loudly in the enclosed cave.

By the time his feet were lowered back to the ground, Lex felt bruised, battered, and used. It was a good feeling and his legs were little better than wet noodles, completely unequal to the task of holding his weight. Fortunately, the cave wall and Clark were both there to prevent him from becoming a puddle on the floor.

The undersides of his thighs ached where Clark’s hands had held and supported him. His back was in bad shape; friction burned and bruised, but hopefully not bleeding. His ass felt open and empty. He thought Clark’s semen ought to be running down his legs but for some inexplicable reason, it was defying gravity and remaining, warm and wet, inside him.

His own ejaculate was all over both their shirts, neither of which had been removed for the up-against-the-wall quickie. Lex wiped at it, leaving damp patches behind, but it was better than wearing the white splotches. He licked his fingers clean, and was rewarded with Clark’s eyes flaring.

Strength returned to his legs and he moved to collect his underwear and pants. Checking the damage, he was glad to see Clark had bothered to unzip and unfasten them instead of just tearing them off. They were fire fodder, but he still needed to wear them for the rest of the evening. He’d only gotten one leg into his briefs before saying, “So that’s the legend. What else do you know about the caves? How does the octagon fit into them?”

Clark’s eyes lingered on him until he got his underwear on and began putting on his pants. Once there was nothing of interest left on display, his eyes turned to the octagonal depression on the other side of the cavern. “That’s a repository of Kryptonian knowledge,” Clark answered shortly and quickly redressed himself. “That’s how I learned the language. Walden was never supposed to get the download. His brain couldn’t handle it. This used to be where you could contact Jor-El, too, but he moved to the Fortress.”

“Your barn?” Lex asked, confused. “Who’s Jor-El?”

“ Jor-El’s my biological father. Well, the personality of him. He was an AI before he was destroyed with the Fortress. And I don’t mean the barn. Over here.”

Lex followed him to a back corner of the cavern and tried not to gape as it opened up on Clark’s command. A smaller room was beyond it, bathed in pale blue light. “This place is a portal to the Fortress,” Clark said. “It’s dead now, but you can get a look at it if you want.”

“I do,” Lex said, trying to sound blasé about it. A portal? To a presumably alien fortress? What part of that would make Clark think it wasn’t something Lex would do anything to see? Even if it was just a ruins.

Clark shrugged and pulled the octagon out of a slot on a table like stone in the middle of the room. “Come closer,” he instructed, and Lex didn’t hesitate. Clark dropped the metal disc back into the slot and the portal activated.

Lex stared around barely able to grasp the scope of the Fortress. Great crystals rose up in multi-facetted monuments, and the goosebumps on his skin were not just from the chill of the room. It felt faintly alive. “I don’t think it’s as dead as you thought,” he said softly, his voice hushed because it wouldn’t be right to speak at full volume in this place.

“JOR-EL!” Clark boomed out, apparently not affected by same ambiance Lex was. Lex flinched from the sound and waited for the crystal to shatter, but nothing happened.

“JOR-EL!” Clark shouted again, this time less demandingly and more questioningly.

A quiet beep came from one of the crystal structures and Clark moved toward it. Lex followed and found a small monitor that displayed alien symbols. The last character kept changing, but the rest was steady. “What does it say?”

“Recovering damaged systems,” Clark translated, “Time remaining: 138 days, six hours, seventeen minutes, and forty-three seconds. Forty-two. Forty-one.”

Lex watched the countdown until the last two digits changed twice. “Your people use a base ten as well?”

Clark shrugged. “I guess. Come on, let’s go.”

Looking up at him in surprise, Lex protested, “But we just got here.”

“I don’t want you messing around with anything while it’s fixing itself.”

That was cruel. He couldn’t show Lex an alien structure filled with alien technology and then make him leave without exploring it. “But-”

“Five months, Lex. If we haven’t started fighting again in five months, I’ll bring you back here so you can see it when it’s operational. I’ll give you the grand tour then.”

Lex looked longingly at the countdown, “But…” His fingers itched to touch the screen, to see if those uneven crystals were really buttons.

Clark prudently caught him by the wrists and pulled him away. “No touching, Lex. Five months, you can be good that long, right?”

Lex could be Mother Theresa if it got him back in this place while it was running. “An angel, Clark.” Clark snorted in his disbelief, but Lex would show him. His eyes never left the display panel until the portal reactivated and they were back in the cave. As they moved back into the cavern with the Segeeth story, he looked back at the room with the portal. “Is there anything else about the caves I should know, or is that it?”

“That’s it,” Clark said. Lex believed him, if only because the Fortress was definitely something that could not be topped and anything else there might have been paled into relative insignificance.

“I understand now why you wanted more in exchange for that than breaking it off with Lana. If you want to add something to our agreement, I’m open for negotiation.”

To his surprise, Clark shook his head. “No, I’m good. I’ve got something to hold over you now.”

There was no possible way he was going to let Clark set up a credit plan. “It’s a one-time deal. If you don’t take me up on it, I’ll just rack the difference into my profit margin.”

Clark shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. I got my fair exchange. You saw the Fortress and now you’ll behave yourself so you can get back to it.”

Lex supposed he’d been too obvious in his open lust. It was entirely his own fault that Clark knew he now had a handle over him. But . . . alien fortress. Surely, he couldn’t be blamed.

Checking his watch, he saw that it was nearly nine. It was getting late, but Lana wouldn’t have turned in yet. “I suppose the mansion is the next stop?” No point in putting it off any longer. “Wait!” he held up his hands when Clark moved to scoop him up. “You are aware that the entire mansion is under surveillance, right? I’ve almost reached a point where my security team is even competent. You will trigger an investigation if you just appear somewhere. We should either drive there in a car, or walk up to the front gate.”

“Oh,” Clark said and Lex wondered again how it was that he could think he kept anything a secret.

“And when we reach the front gate, let me do the talking,” Lex instructed. “You suck at lying. It’s painful to listen to.” It felt good to finally be able to say that to Clark’s face. “If you ever lie to me again, I swear to God, I will call you on it. If you are in a situation where you can’t tell me the truth, just change the subject. Don’t insult my intelligence.”

Clark looked a little taken aback, but Lex could not regret the outburst. He was done pretending to believe Clark for the sake of their non-existent friendship. It wasn’t ever going to happen again, even if their truce did somehow mend the rift.

Fortunately, Clark did not do anything stupid, like try to offer an inadequate apology or something. Though, running them to the Kent home probably wasn’t the wisest thing he could have done, either. Before Lex fully realized he was being moved, they were in the Kent kitchen and Martha was staring at them. He pulled his trench coat closed and hoped that she hadn’t noticed or recognized any semen stains. Of course, Clark’s shirt was still out on display. He cleared his throat and muttered, “Shirt,” under his breath.

Clark looked down, blurred, and was suddenly wearing a different shirt. Subtle, it was not, but neither was quickly buttoning your coat when you were inside a warm house.

“Okay, boys, what’s going on?”

Leaving it to Clark to explain what was happening to his mother, Lex headed for the stairs. “I’m going to borrow your shower, Martha, if that’s all right?”

She spared a glance for him, then waved him on, “Go right ahead, Lex,” she invited as she turned her attention back to Clark. Lex felt no guilt in abandoning him to his mother. He might have years ago, but not any more. Besides, he hadn’t showered in nearly three days. He felt more guilt just for standing in her kitchen.

When he came back downstairs, he was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, both off which were far too big on him. His other clothes, including the trench coat, were bundled up in his arms. He addressed Martha first, “Do you have an incinerator?”

Both Kents looked at him in surprise. “Lex, most people clean their dirty clothes, not burn them.”

“Three days, Clark,” Lex reminded him. “These are beyond cleaning. I’d burn the shoes, too, but I couldn’t find an extra pair in your room.” He was a little surprised he’d found the black t-shirt and jeans he was currently wearing – both would be very tight on Clark’s larger frame.

Clark looked down at the loafers in question. “Your shoes aren’t even dirty.” Given they weren’t the same color they’d been when he first put them on almost three days ago, Lex took Clark’s definition of ‘not dirty’ to mean ‘not covered in sexual fluids’ instead of ‘not covered in dirt’.

“More than two days in a forest, Clark. They’re dirty. They used to be black, not this brown-grey color.” He twisted his left foot in the air to emphasize how not-black the shoe on it was.

“You’re going back into that forest, so what does it matter?” Clark argued.

Lex waved a hand around them. “Your mother keeps a very tidy home.” Unfortunately, the point he was trying to make was lost because it was his right one that he gestured with.

“Lex, your hand!”

He quickly closed it into a fist, but it was too late. Martha was advancing on him with a purpose. “Let me see it.”

Lex kept it closed and looked at Clark, “Did you tell her?”

Her eyes narrowed and darted back and forth between him and Clark.

Clark shook his head. “I only got as far as telling her that you made a mutant monkey and we’ve sort of reached a truce since it’s just us and him out there in the woods.”

“Lex,” Martha spoke softly, “ look at me.” Lex looked. “Where did you get that mark?” Lex looked at Clark but Martha raised her voice, “Don’t look at Clark! Answer me yourself.”

Lex stared at her in stunned disbelief. “You don’t think I’m acting under my own volition. Clark’s not controlling me, Martha.”

“Maybe not on purpose, but I know what I saw on your hand, and from where I stand, this looks like a kidnapping. Answer the question.”

Lex opened his hand and looked at it again. The dark lines stood out in stark relief against his skin and he knew that as long as he didn’t wear gloves, the mark was going to be noticed. When he came back to civilization he would need to make a point to reintroduce hand gloves as a fashionable style. “Zod,” he said shortly. “I got it when Zod was expelled from my body.”

Martha frowned, not buying the explanation. “I’ve seen you since then,” she stated. “Your hand was fine.”

Closing his fist, he looked at her seriously. “It just wasn’t visible until last night.”

“What happened then?” she prompted.

Lex looked at Clark again, but this time she didn’t snap at him for doing so. He debated lying. He doubted Clark wanted her to know any more than he did. The trepidation in Clark’s eyes, though, showed that he expected Lex to tell the truth. He supposed lying to Martha was a Bad Thing. Decidedly non-angelic. “We did something we probably should not have done,” he said, going for vagueness. “We knew it was a bad idea at the time, but we did it anyway.”

“What did you do?” she asked, sounding like she knew she didn’t want to know.

“I think you’d be happier not having the details,” Lex told her. He knew he’d be happier without her having the details.

She frowned. “I’m sure I would be, but I think I need to have them.”

Lex stole another look at Clark, but he just looked like he was trying to wish himself someplace else. The bastard. He was supposed to have explained all this while Lex was in the shower. “We weren’t careful,” he said, “I got hurt, and the next morning, my hand felt like it was asleep. When I looked at it, it had that mark on it.”

Worry suffused her features. “Hurt how?”

Shaking his head, Lex diverted the question, “Nothing serious. Bruises mostly. I’m fine. I heal quickly.”

Her brows drew together. “That isn’t what I meant.” She turned to Clark, frowning in disapproval, “What did you do?” He looked stricken. He looked guilty as sin. Any jury in the country would convict him for anything based on that look. Martha’s frown deepened. “Clark?”

Clark looked to Lex, his eyes practically begging for a rescue. For a moment, Lex fully intended to let him stew in it, but then he remembered he was an angel for the next five months. “Martha, he didn’t do anything that I didn’t ask for.”

She was clearly beginning to lose patience with them. Narrowed eyes turned on Lex and she asked with perfect and sharp diction, “What. Did. He. Do?”

It was obvious that they weren’t going to vague their way out of this. They either had to admit to it or lie. He didn’t think this was a situation where lying was the Right Thing, however much he might wish it were. “We had sex.”

“Oh,” she said, sitting down, her fire abruptly spent. She breathed in deeply, going almost Zen on them, and then breathed out. “You two had sex. With each other.”

Lex nodded and decided to keep it simple. “Yes.”

“That’s when the mark appeared on your hand. The mark you got when you were Zod.”

He nodded again and repeated, “Yes.”

“This is bad.”

Again he nodded and agreed, “Yes.”

A few long seconds passed in silence. “What about Lana?”

Lex looked away. “I’m going to break it off with her.”

“Lex,” Martha began, but Clark spoke over her.

“Mom, he cheated on her. He can’t get married to her now.” Lex was a little surprised when he wasn’t the only one glaring at Clark. Clark held his ground with the stubbornness of Kent men, though. “He can’t. It wouldn’t be right.”

“I hardly think either of you are in any position to talk about what’s right. Clark, you knew Lex was all but married.”

Lex was sure that was a significant part of why Clark did it, his last minute protestations on Lana’s behalf notwithstanding. He didn’t mention that to Martha, though, because whatever Lex’s issues with Clark were, Clark was her son and she was entitled to some motherly misapprehensions about him. “Surely, Mrs. Kent, you can’t condone a relationship built on betrayal and an unplanned pregnancy. That’s not fair to Lana or the baby.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “If that’s how you see it, then you’re right. The engagement should be ended.”

Lex rubbed his temple. “I care for her, I do, but if I loved her like a husband should, I wouldn’t have slept with Clark.”

Her gaze fixed on him and she said coolly, “No, you wouldn’t have.” Lex shifted his focus to the side, unable to maintain eye contact. “What do you feel for my son, Lex?”

The question brought his attention back to her face as he stated, “It’s easier to ask what I don’t feel for your son.”

“What don’t you feel for my son?” she revised.

Lex drew in a breath and held her eyes as he answered, “Indifference.”

She seemed to be waiting for more, but Lex was done. He supposed he could give her apathy and disinterest, but they were just synonyms and didn’t add any additional lack of feeling. He liked the simplistic finality of his answer as it currently stood.

Clark cleared his throat, ending the impasse as she shifted her attention to her son. “Do not think I’m done with you, yet, Clark. We are going to have a very long talk. First though, have you talked to Lana about any of this, yet?”

“No,” Clark answered, “that’s why we’re here. We need a car to get to the mansion.” Ah, so that was his flawed reasoning for coming here. Lex had been wondering.

She went to the counter a tossed a ring of keys at Clark. “I expect you to tell her the truth.”

With only one look at her face, Lex could barely conceive disobeying her. He didn’t imagine Clark could do even that much. Not that he’d expected he’d do a lot of lying; Clark might consider it grounds for rescinding the invitation back to the Fortress, but he’d thought maybe he could get away without revealing a few key details, like who he’d slept with. That was looking less and less likely.

As they drove to the mansion in the Kents’ family sedan, Lex tried to argue that it would only hurt Lana to tell her they’d both betrayed her, but Clark just looked forlorn and said Martha would tell her if they didn’t. Lex just hoped she wouldn’t get so angry that she’d go to the Inquisitor with the whole sordid story. After the Daily Planet article about their love triangle just two weeks ago, they’d jump at the chance to close that last side. Not to mention, just finding out that Lex was gay would probably be enough to induce euphoria in the editor there.

The mansion door opened as soon as they slammed the doors of the car shut. The gate guard had call back to the house since Clark’s presence seemed to have triggered some kind of security procedure and Lana was already waiting, narrow-eyed and suspicious about what two self-proclaimed enemies were doing in Martha Kent’s car and driving out to the Luthor mansion together. Lex had no idea what she was guessing had happened.

“What are you wearing?” she asked, frowning at his clothes, as they entered the foyer.

Lex looked down at Clark’s overlarge jeans and t-shirt and wondered how she wasn’t already jumping down his throat for cheating. He was fairly sure the marks on his neck were not completely gone yet. “My suit had an encounter with nature. Mrs. Kent was kind enough to lend me something clean to wear.” He gave Martha the credit for generosity because Lana would immediately smell a rat if he attributed it to Clark.

They filed into a sitting room where Lana and Clark both took seats while Lex went straight to the bar and poured himself a stiff drink. “A water for either of you?” he asked, since he was standing less than a foot away from the mini-fridge that held his Ty Nant.

They both declined and Lex knocked back half the liquor in his tumbler. This was not going to be a pleasant conversation. He topped off his glass and took a seat in a chair that was about halfway between Lana and Clark, placing them at the three points of an equilateral triangle. He wondered briefly if the symbolism was as heavy-handedly obvious to either of the others as it was to him but expected it went over their heads.

He took another drink from his scotch when the silence lengthened and it became increasingly obvious that they expected him to start. He almost wished Lana were standing so he could ask her to take a seat. He’d need a different line to warn her that what he was about to say was going to be upsetting. “Lana, it took you days to decide to accept my proposal.”

Her eyes narrowed, already suspecting he was somehow going to turn this around and make it her fault, even without knowing what ‘it’ was. It wasn’t an unjustified suspicion, as much as he might like to think it was. Under other circumstances, he would have held that against her.

That wasn’t the point he was trying to make tonight, though. He swirled his scotch and pretended to examine its color as he stated, “Perhaps that should have suggested to you that saying yes was going to be a mistake.” He gave no indication that he felt regret or guilt because he didn’t, not really, but he couldn’t look at her. He waited for her to make a comment, but she offered none. Lex took another fortifying swallow of his drink, then stood and walked back to the bar to refill it.

As he poured, he continued in a calm even voice that gave nothing away, “I will offer any kind of financial support you or the child needs. If you don’t want the child, I will be glad to take custody.”

“Lex,” she cut him off. She sounded more baffled than angry, but that would change. “What did you do?”

He turned around and faced her. She had the right to see his expression as he said this. “I had sex with someone else.” He reconsidered his phrasing because that made it sound like a one time mistake, which she might possibly be able to forgive him for. “It’s an ongoing affair. I don’t expect it’s going to stop any time soon.”

She stared, incredulity evident on her face, but that was quickly subsiding to fury. “You’re telling me that you’re breaking our engagement because you found another woman?”

It was now or never, and never had already been denied as an option. “No. It’s Clark.”

“Clark!” she all but roared as she pushed violently up to her feet. Clark, for all his alien invulnerability, cringed down into the sofa but she had probably forgotten he was even present. It was Lex she stalked toward and he wondered if she was going to try to kill him. He was about seventy-five percent sure that Clark would stop her if she did. He put his glass of scotch aside and stepped away from the bar because he didn’t want her to have it readily available as a weapon.

“Lana,” he tried to reason calmly with her, but that was a mistake because she was in no mood for reason or calm. He turned his head with the blow from her hand and worked his jaw. It was just a slap so, despite the tingling of his cheek, there wasn’t any real damage.

“You bastard,” she hissed. He didn’t attempt to deny it. Not only would it fall on deaf ears, but even he could see that he deserved it. “After everything you said about how I should move on.”

As it turned out, Clark did not have the market cornered on hypocrisy. Perhaps some leeway ought to be offered given how much he’d noticed of it in himself these last few days. “Lana,” he began again, but he was still too calm and she furiously shoved him back a step.

“Do not ‘Lana’ me, Lex.” She was really pissed now. She wasn’t screaming anymore. She was using that quietly dangerous tone that he had begun thinking of as her Luthor voice. “You got me fucking pregnant and now you’re sleeping around with my ex. I’m not even going to bother being surprised that you’re bisexual because that just explains far too much about your obsession with him.”

She jabbed a finger angrily into his chest, “What I don’t get is that you’re doing this when you know what a bastard Clark is. You know he goes hot and cold. You know he will never tell you the truth. You know he’s so busy being a Good Samaritan that his significant other barely makes a blip on his radar.” She glowered for a moment then spat out, “You know what, Lex? You deserve each other.”

“Lana!” Lex called after her as she stormed toward the door.

She whirled around, “What!”

“Do you want custody of the baby?”

Her eyes flashed in anger and she snapped, “There is no baby. I’m getting an abortion.”

Lex shook his head. “You can’t.”

“Try and stop me. It’s my choice.”

That wasn’t the issue at hand, though Lana probably didn’t realize it. “No, I mean you can’t. It’s not mine.”

She scowled and narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking about? Of course it’s yours. I’m not the one who’s been sleeping around.”

Lex didn’t rise to the bait. He knew she hadn’t cheated on him, not technically. It had still been his body, which was half the reason why he’d been willing to accept the child as his own. “I’m sterile. I always have been. I’ve done the math, Lana. The baby is Zod’s. As such, it’s half alien and probably indestructible.” That being the other reason.

“What?” Clark squawked , ending the silence that Lex had known was too good to last.

Lana continued to ignore him, though whether that was because he had become a persona non grata or because she had more important things on her mind, Lex couldn’t say for certain. “That’s insane, Lex.”

“But possible,” Lex insisted. “I’ve had myself tested again; I still don’t produce viable sperm. I can’t be a father. Not without extraterrestrial help.”

“You never thought to tell me this before?” Lana demanded, possibly more furious over that than she was over the cheating.

Lex just looked at her calmly. “You would have over reacted.”

She stepped closer again, her eyes flashing in anger, “You are a controlling, manipulative bastard. I think I’m glad you fucked around and showed me your true colors now.” As opposed to after they were married and had to deal with the nastiness of a divorce, which was clearly implied.

“I take it you don’t want custody?” Lex ventured, basing the assumption on her not wanting to go through with the pregnancy at all. Her opinion of Zod only made it more likely.

“There won’t be any custody to have,” she reiterated. “I’m getting an abortion. Especially if it’s Zod’s.”

Lex returned to the bar and collected his scotch again. He sipped at it and said to the glass rim, “Attempting that could prove dangerous to you.”

“I. Don’t. Care.”

Lex heard her footsteps storm away and the door to the room slam closed. He sighed. “Is that sufficient warning, or should I do something to stop her?”

“You really think it’s Zod’s?”

Lex grimaced, “It has to be unless she did cheat on me.”

Clark stood and moved closer. Lex did not turn to look at him as he asked, “And you were going to raise his kid as your own and probably never tell Lana you couldn’t have children.”

As that seemed perfectly obvious to him, Lex just topped off his glass for the last time and put away the bottle. “I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Clark, think of me however you like, but I’d never use my son or daughter the way my father used me.”

“But that’s the whole point. It wouldn’t be yours. It would be Zod’s.”

Lex turned and scowled at him darkly. “Tell that to your parents, Clark. There’s more to being a father than being the one who fertilized the egg. Besides which, I don’t know how much of my own genetics got mixed in since Zod was using my physical body. This could be my only chance to have a child who is even a little bit biologically mine. I’ve known I was sterile since I was fifteen. You think anything less than an opportunity like this would have gotten me to try marriage again?”

Clark frowned, not entirely trusting his words, but not dismissing them as lies either. It was a start. “I should call her doctor and tell him that she’s interested in an abortion. See what he thinks about it.”

“Maybe,” Clark began, then shook his head, “no, never mind. Forget I said anything.”

He hadn’t gotten far enough for Lex to extrapolate what he was going to say, but he ventured a guess, trying not to sound hopeful, “You think Chloe or someone could convince her to keep it?”

Clark shook his head. “No. That’s not it. I don’t trust Zod’s spawn any more than Lana does.”

“As the devil’s own myself, I don’t like that you’re not even giving this kid a chance. We’re not born evil.” He paused, hesitated, and then added, “We’re shaped that way by how everyone treats us like we are. That’s why I wasn’t going to tell Lana. She wouldn’t understand.”

Grimacing, Clark shook his head. “Under ordinary circumstances, I’d agree with you, but this is Zod we’re talking about. His offspring will probably be very powerful and, frankly, I don’t want that kind of person to be a Luthor. The only person I’d trust to raise the kid would be my mom.”

Lex frowned as he considered an option he hadn’t previously thought of. “I’d be willing to negotiate a custody arrangement that included her, if that’s what it takes to get you to agree that attempting an abortion will only hurt Lana.”

Clark sighed. “I don’t think she’s going to listen to me any more than she did to you, so I’ll talk to Chloe, but that’s all I can do.”

It was better than nothing. “I can influence all the abortion clinics in Kansas not to let -”

“No!” Clark cut him off. “Lex,” he shook his head. “You need a keeper.”

“It’s in Lana’s best interest,” Lex pointed out. “We don’t know what will happen if she tries to abort a half-alien.”

Clark sighed. “Kidnapping her so she didn’t marry you was also in her best interest, but I didn’t do that because she’s entitled to make her own mistakes.”

Lex scowled. “Even if she could die?” He meant to let the other part pass unacknowledged, but he added despite himself, “And I’d hardly call engagement an accurate parallel.”

Clark just looked at him. “This time? About something she feels this strongly about? Yes. She’d consider destroying Zod’s spawn a fair exchange for dying. You only saw the aftereffects, Lex. She met him. Even your dad’s not that evil.” He started walking toward the door.

Lex finished his scotch and followed him into the main hall. Brady, the head security man at the mansion was waiting there and Lex gave him a terse nod. He had probably heard most of the exchange, but he was bound by dozens of confidentiality agreements so Lex wasn’t terribly concerned about it. They’d only discussed Zod, not Clark. Brady was already briefed about Zod. He knew that tonight’s security tapes needed to be scrapped.

“Sir.” Lex turned back, raising an eyebrow to encourage him to continue. Clark was already out the front door and out of sight, but Lex didn’t make the mistake of believing he wouldn’t know what was said. Clark had demonstrated omniscience before. Brady’s question, however, was mundane. “How long will you be away, Mr. Luthor?”

Lex shook his head, unable to give an exact timeframe. “I’m working on a very delicate project. It could take weeks.” It could take years, but Lex hoped to have Coleby house trained enough to move back to someplace sparsely populated but civilized well before then and the Smallville mansion was looking like a good option now that Lana wasn’t going to be occupying it for much longer.

“Do you have a contact number? I tried your cell phone, the message said you were out of service range and your voicemail was full.”

Lex made a mental note to check his messages before going back to North Dakota. “I’m inaccessible. In case of an emergency, use your best judgment and leave a message at the Kents’ house. I’ll try to make it here or call within twenty-four hours.”

“And you, sir? What will you do in case of emergency? Do you have any security where you are?” Lex wondered if his concern was professional or genuine.

“I’m fine. I have two body guards where I’m staying. One of them is with me at all times. I have the utmost confidence in their abilities.”

By the frown on Brady’s face, he wasn’t so convinced. “Where are they tonight?”

Lex inclined his head toward the door. “Clark’s one of them.”

Brady closed his eyes and looked physically pained. “Sir, as the head of your security team, I formally object. I’ve read your history. You, of all people, must see that the last person you should be trusting with your life is the person you’re sleeping with. Especially when that person has had such a hostile attitude toward you for as long as Mr. Kent has.”

So he had listened to at least part of the discussion with Lana. Lex held his gaze evenly and stated, “Your objection is duly noted. I’m disregarding it.” He turned and headed for the door.

“When you turn up dead or disappear permanently, I am not responsible,” Brady called after him.

Lex paused at the doorframe. “Duly noted,” he repeated. “Do you want it in writing?”

Brady seriously considered it. “Yes,” he decided which Lex probably should have taken as a sign that he was behaving irrationally, but there were no better alternatives. Besides, whatever else he thought of Clark, he did know Martha and Jonathan Kent’s son would never murder him.

He located a piece of paper and pen and wrote out a quick statement dissolving Brady of any blame in his poor security choices while he was abroad. He signed it and Brady signed it and Brady made sure Lex touched every one of his fingers against the sheet so his prints would be all over it. Only then was he satisfied and allowed Lex to go out and join Clark in his mother’s car.

The drive back was mostly quiet. Only once the farmhouse was in sight did Clark speak, “I don’t know whether I should hope she’ll yell at me now to get it over with, or hope she waits until you’re not here.”

“If you want, I can wait here until she’s done. Brady said I have a lot of voice mail to listen to.”

“Um, yeah,” he agreed. “That works.” Lex opened his phone and dialed in to his voice mail.

Martha watched the boys pull out onto Hickory Lane and drive out of sight. She returned to the kitchen and picked up the phone. For a moment, she considered calling the mansion to give Lana some warning of what was about to happen, but that wasn’t the number that she ended up dialing.

“Hello? Martha?” Lionel’s voice asked when the line connected. “Is something wrong?”

“Did you know?” she asked without preamble.

His voice was baffled, which did not necessarily mean he was actually baffled, “Know what?”

“Where’s Lex?” she asked instead of clarifying, hoping to determine whether he had been as in the dark as she had been about how Clark and Lex truly felt about each other.

There was a minute pause, indicating he was thinking about how to answer. He knew something was going on, though she couldn’t yet say for sure that he knew what was going on. “I find it interesting that you would ask that tonight. I just learned that, as of a few hours ago, he was in Arkansas, shopping at Dick’s and Macy’s. Have you learned why he would drop everything to go someplace that required,” he paused again as his voice took on a decidedly disgusted tone, “thermal underwear? I wasn’t aware Lex even knew such things existed.”

Martha could easily see Clark’s influence in that purchase choice. She doubted Lex would think any more highly of thermal underwear than Lionel did. “I wouldn’t know,” she lied because this was not her secret to tell. If Lionel did not already know, she was not going to share it. “So you don’t know what he’s been up to?” she pressed.

Another pause while he decided how much to tell her. “I know Ms. Sullivan knows more than she’s telling and that, despite what she says he is not on a personal vacation.”

Martha raised her eyebrows, the expression helping her fake surprise, “If he’s bought thermal underwear, it sounds like a camping trip to me.”

Lionel sighed without pause to consider whether he should or not. “This is Lex, Martha,” he reminded her. “I begin to suspect you know as much as Ms. Sullivan does.”

“I suspect I know a good deal more than Chloe does,” Martha corrected, feeling fairly confident that neither of the boys had told anyone what they were up to before she found out about it. Judging by Clark’s account of why they were living in the forest together, Chloe only knew the beginning of the story. “What I want to know now is how much you do.”

“Very little. There was some unusual expenses authorized by Lex a few days ago, his lawyers signed him up for Anger Management again, and then he vanished without a trace. Ms. Sullivan told myself and the office that he was taking a personal vacation then turned around and told Ms. Lang that he was taking a business trip. I suspect neither is the truth. I’d suspect foul play, except Ms. Sullivan would be hiding her involvement better if that were the case. I assume, also, that Clark,” the way Lionel always spoke Clark’s name never failed to put Martha on edge, which was perhaps the only reason she didn’t quite trust him even after all the help he’d given them so far, “is involved since it is his best friend and mother who appear to have the most information regarding Lex’s disappearance. I trust there’s a good reason for taking my son away from his responsibilities.”

“I have my doubts but Lex seems to think there is.” How much that had to do with the monkey and how much with Clark was difficult to say. Martha was not going to share the particulars of her doubts with Lionel however.

“You’ve spoken with him?” Lionel asked, genuinely surprised.

She decided to leave it vague, as outright denial was not an option. “Briefly.”

For a moment, he said nothing. She wasn’t sure if he was analyzing her response or trying to figure out whether to press or change the subject. “Will he be gone long?” he asked instead.

The monkey thing had not sounded like a short project. The way the boys had talked, they seemed to be planning to stay out in those woods indefinitely. “I believe so.”

“Ah,” Lionel said, as if she had just given him the piece of the puzzle that revealed the entire picture. She really didn’t think it did. He didn’t know, she decided. Whatever else he had pieced together about what Lex and Clark were doing, he had no idea that they were sleeping together. “I’ll let you go then,” he said, having gotten the information he thought he wanted from her. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Martha returned, because she’d gotten what she needed from the conversation as well.

She hung up the handset and puttered about the kitchen, tidying up already tidy cabinets and counters. When she finished that, she reorganized the junk drawer. She had moved on to dusting the living room when she finally heard Clark and Lex returning. Only one car door slammed and when the porch door opened, only Clark came in. “Where’s Lex?” she asked.

“Checking his voicemail in the car,” Clark told her, waving back the way he’d come from. “We don’t get service out in the woods.” What Clark didn’t say, but seemed perfectly obvious to her, was that he was giving them a chance to talk about this privately. There was no other reason for him to stay outside on a chilly autumn night when he could come into a warm house.

“Do you want to explain to me what you think you’re doing with him?” she asked her son, doing her best to keep her voice calm and reasonable.

Clark moved into the kitchen and sank into one of the chairs around the table. He folded his arms on the wood and dropped his head onto them. “I have no idea.” The words were a little muffled but understandable.

Sitting across from him, Martha sighed. “What do you feel for Lex?” It was his turn to answer the question.

“Anger,” he said first, without needing to think about it. “Fury. Disappointment. Betrayal. Dread.” He paused and sat up. Looking at her, he added, “Hope. Expectation. Curiosity. Interest. Lust. Passion. Need. Responsibility. Possession. Protection.”

He looked like he was still trying to give names to more of his emotions, but Martha interrupted, “Love?”

Clark shook his head but spread his hands. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Hate?” she asked, needing to know.

He grimaced slightly and shook his head. “I would have said yes a few days ago, but I don’t think that’s what that is, now.”

Martha closed her eyes and breathed out slowly. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, as bad as she had feared, but it still wasn’t good. Looking at her son again, she said, “You know this is unhealthy, right?”

Clark sighed and slouched down in his chair. “Lex said we were both obsessed, and that was before we did anything. We knew it was a bad idea when we started.”

“And you did it anyway,” Martha said, her tone giving her opinion of that.

Clark slouched lower and looked away guiltily.

Shaking her head, she tried to figure out where to go from here. “I’m not happy with your choices, Clark,” she said, because she wasn’t and she felt it was her parental duty to tell him that. He wasn’t a child anymore however, so she knew she couldn’t just make him stop. “I just hope you don’t grow to regret it too badly.”

Clark shook his head. “I think – no,” he frowned and shook it again. “I can’t explain it, Mom. Lex is, I don’t know, but however much I know this is screwed up, I can’t . . . I told him, Mom. Well, he knew already, mostly, but . . . I showed him the Fortress.”

“Oh, God,” Martha swore, unable to hold back the blasphemy. It was worse than her fears.

“I think I was wrong – well, not really about him, but I could have handled him better. We’ve been talking, really talking, for the first time in ages, and,” he hesitated, trying to figure out how to explain what was going on, “I could have handled him better,” he repeated.

“Is that what you’re doing now? Handling him?” she asked, not meaning to inflict the word with innuendo, but Clark blushed and squirmed.

He still managed to meet her eyes as he said, “Better than I was before. We’re still working out most of it. It’s been less than two days since we even thought about touching like that. We’re still trying to figure out how to act around each other now that we’re not fighting constantly.”

She was actually relieved to hear that they were still in an adjustment period. That meant there was at least a remote chance that they weren’t just using each other, a chance that they might even be trying make amends with each other.

“Clark!” Lex’s muffled voice came from outside, just before a short perfunctory double knock preceded him opening the porch door. “Clark!” he repeated, looking a little worried. “Monday nights, do you have class or anything?”

Clark turned in his chair to look at him, “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

Lex relaxed, and leaned against the frame between the kitchen and living room. “Good. My lawyers and the police have apparently been going at each other and I need to be at anger management on Monday or I’ll get brought in for leaving the state with pending criminal charges.”

“Pending criminal charges?” Martha repeated in concern.

Apparently none too concerned about them, Lex made a negligent wave. “Just a little vandalism. I didn’t even do it. It was Coleby.”

“The psycho monkey,” she stated in a flat voice, not quite disbelieving him, but Lex obviously wasn’t taking the charges, criminal charges, against him seriously.

Lex’s eyes narrowed and he straightened up to his full height, looking personally insulted. “Coleby is a very intelligent vervet who is still learning how to cope in the human world. He mistook the cars for a real threat and defended himself.” He glared at Clark. “Coleby is not psychotic.”

Clark glared back. “The first time I saw him, he was trying to crush your neck.”

Lex tensed and his voice showed his growing anger, “That was a misjudgment of his strength. He didn’t mean it. I would think you of all people would understand a power going out of control.”

“He’s dangerous,” Clark did not back down.

“I know that,” Lex snapped. “Why the hell do you think I’m living in the woods? He needs to learn control. That’s not the same thing as being psychotic.”

Clark did relent then. “Fine, your monkey’s not psychotic.”

Lex relaxed. “Thank you.” He looked at Martha, “Are you done with us? I’d like to get back and go to bed. Neither of us has slept well the last two nights. I’m hopeful that the foam pads will help.”

Martha looked at Clark with a raised eyebrow. He shrugged and hunched his shoulders with mild guilt, “You don’t need the two from the barn, right? Or the extra blankets I keep out there? Lex has been really cold.”

She shook her head with a small smile. “No, that’s fine.” She decided she didn’t have anything else that had to be said immediately and waved them toward the door. “I’m finished with you for now. Clark, visit me while Lex is at his class, all right?”

“Sure, Mom,” Clark agreed and then they were both gone.

Coleby was concerned. The Uprights had disappeared. Since coming out here, Clark had run off repeatedly, but Lex had always stayed. At night, they liked to make a lot of noise, which made it impossible for Coleby to sleep, but tonight . . . silence. When he’d gone down to check on them, they had both been gone.

He’d looked around, but there were no predators nearby; no blood, no signs of a fight. He screamed out Lex’s name and Clark’s but there was no answer. He patted the nest the Uprights had made, but they weren’t hiding under the fake funny-colored fur. He’d gone back up into the trees to move faster around the area as he looked between the nest and stream and over to the berry patch, when he thought he heard them chattering at each other.

Hurrying back to the nest, he found that there was a big white bag thing like what Clark used to carry Lex’s gifts in the nest, but they were nowhere in sight. At least Clark had been back. If Lex wasn’t with him, he’d find her. Coleby perched in the trees, choosing a spot that let him have a good view of the nest and waited. And waited. And waited. He caught himself dozing off a few times, but he snapped himself awake again. He couldn’t sleep. He needed to know that Lex was okay. He needed to know that Clark found her and brought her home safe.

Finally, they returned. Clark put Lex down and they both moved quietly into the nest, putting the white bag aside and climbing under the fake furs. They shed their other fake furs so they were pale and hairless in the short glimpses he caught of them as they moved under the larger furs. Clark turned Lex onto her stomach and they mated, assuring Coleby that all was right with both of them. Relieved, he waited until they were done then moved up higher into the branches to get some much needed rest.

The next morning, Coleby woke with the sun as he usually did and moved back to his vantage point over the nest. Both uprights were still asleep and he looked around, making sure there were no predators stalking around in the early morning light, but all was quiet.

Clark woke first. Coleby was surprised he’d caught the male Upright asleep at all, this was the first he’d seen it. He attributed it to the late night searching for his mate. He also looked around, seeking predators, but he made the land creature’s mistake of not looking up. He saw neither Coleby nor the hawk that flew over their heads. Not that the hawk would bother something as big as Clark and Lex, or even Coleby.

Not having spotted anything, Clark turned his attention to his mate, waking her with a touch and a tasting of her. She turned into his arms, still partially asleep, but she woke quickly when they mated again. It was different this time. They mated face to face now and even after they finished, they stayed together. Clark stroked her face with his finger and she wrapped her mouth around the digit. Clark’s mouth replaced his finger against her mouth, and soon they were mating again. Lex shouted Clark’s name and it echoed through the trees.

They still didn’t move apart. Coleby was getting hungry, but he wasn’t going to disturb them until he was sure Clark was done mating. They talked together, too quietly for Coleby to make out any of the individual calls from this distance. After a little while, Clark drew up, looking aggressive as he hovered over her and she looked aggressive right back. They mated, again. Coleby decided she must be ready to conceive. They could be coupling all day if that were the case. He went to go see if the berry patch had any berries left.

When he came back, he was pleasantly surprised to find Lex out of the nest and wearing a different set of fake furs than she usually wore. She looked warmer like that. He approved. Clark was nowhere in sight, and he assumed he gone to get the family food. “ Kalark foo?” he asked, just to check. The berry patch had been barren and he was starving.

She smiled at him. “Yeah, Clark left for food.” She sat on the log she liked best and Coleby settled beside her. She kept on chattering, though whatever she thought she was saying Coleby had no idea. That was fine, he was satisfied by the part he had understood.

Clark returned a little while later with that bag that smelled of Lex’s rancid smoke-water. The smoke-water was handed out first and made Lex happy. Coleby escaped the stench as soon as he was given his two pieces of food and ran up into the treetops where he could smell the fresh juice as he bit into the sweet fruit.

When he judged it was safe to go back down to the Uprights again, the smoke-water was gone and Clark was missing. “ Kalark?”

“Class,” Lex said. It was a call Coleby hadn’t yet figured out, but it usually meant that Clark would be gone for a long time. He pulled a box out of the smoke-water bag and pulled out a perfectly white egg. He put it in Coleby’s hand, “Egg.”

“Eck,” Coleby repeated dutifully.

They repeated the word back and forth a few more times until Lex nodded and said, “Close enough,” which Coleby was pretty sure meant you-got-it-right-but-I’m-not-totally-happy-with-it. He had no idea how to make her happy with it, so he usually just accepted that he got it right, though it lacked the excitement he got when he got it right and she was happy with it.

“Squeeze,” she said next.

“ Skees,” Coleby repeated, slowly and carefully, taking care because he had trouble with the hissing sounds the Uprights were so fond of.

“ Ska-wheeze,” she said again, slower, drawing the sounds out.

“ Ska-wees,” Coleby tried again.

“Close enough.” Coleby was going to start hating that call soon. He got it right. Lex should be happy.

Lex picked up the egg and held it in front of Coleby’s face, saying slowly, “Egg.” She reached down and switched the egg for a stone and held that up “Rock.” Then she closed her fingers around the stone and make a tight fist around it, her whole arm shaking a little with how much effort she was putting into closing her fingers around it, “Squeeze.” Then she put the rock in Coleby’s hand. “Squeeze,” she said.

Coleby closed his fingers around it and did as she had done. The rock crumbled. She blinked in surprise. “Huh. Okay, that one wasn’t supposed to break.” Coleby hoped he wasn’t supposed to repeat that because it was too long to remember. She didn’t seem to because she shook her head and pointed to the crumbled rock bits. “Rock broke,” she said. “Broke.”

“Broke,” Coleby repeated, because that one he was sure she wanted him to say.

She beamed, “Good!” Coleby beamed back. About time she was happy about it. She pointed at the pieces of the stone, “What just happened?”

“Rock broke,” Coleby guessed.

“Perfect!” Coleby felt pride swell within him. Two in a row.

Lex picked up the egg again. “No squeeze egg,” she instructed, shaking her head as she put it into Coleby’s hand again. “Hold. No squeeze. Hold. Say that, hold.”

“Old.”

“Close enough.” Coleby grumbled low in his throat, making Lex look at him in mild alarm and hold up her hands. “I know you can’t pronounce H’s, calm down!” Another nonsensical utterance. Coleby really wished the Uprights made more sense. Why did they need all these calls anyway? It wasn’t like a rock was going to attack anybody.

Lex picked up the egg. “Lex hold egg.” She put it back into Coleby’s hand. “Coleby hold egg.” She picked it up again, “What just happened?”

“Lee- acks old eck.”

Lex smiled, “Good!” Coleby liked ‘What-just- happeneds’. He almost always got them right. She held up the egg again. “Egg not broke.” She put it Coleby hand. “No squeeze, not broke,” she shook her head and held Coleby’s eyes as she closed his fingers around it. “Hold. No squeeze. Not broke.”

Coleby closed his fingers around the egg and did not break it. Lex smiled, a little in relief, but mostly in pride, “Good!” Coleby beamed back. She stood up. “Stand. Coleby, stand.” He didn’t know what she meant. She sat down beside him again on the log. “Lex sit.” She stood. “Lex stand. Coleby, stand.”

Coleby got off the log. It was harder for him since he was smaller and had to jump a little. The egg broke. “Ka,” he said, making a face.

“Egg broke,” Lex said, dismayed. She pulled out soft white leaves from the smoke-water bag and cleaned up the mess.

Then she took another egg out of the egg box and put it into his newly cleaned hand. “Hold egg. Egg not broke. No squeeze. Sit.” He pointed back to the log.

Coleby stared at the log. He’d have to climb to get up there again. The egg broke really easily. It had been really gross. Even if Lex hadn’t told him not to break it again, he wouldn’t want to. With a great deal of care, he climbed up onto the log one-handed. It wasn’t difficult – his feet and tail did most of the work. The hardest part was not squeezing the fragile egg by mistake.

He managed it. He held it up for Lex’s inspection, grinning proudly, “Not broke!”

Lex grinned back. “Good! Now, stand. No squeeze.” She tapped the ground in front of the log with her foot. “Stand, Coleby.”

Coleby got down off the log slower this time, sliding off instead of jumping. He held up the egg, “Not broke!”

“Great!” Lex congratulated, but she didn’t take the egg back. They both sat down on the ground and indicated he should do the same. Over the next little while, Coleby kept trying to give the egg to her, but she kept telling him to ‘hold the egg, Coleby’ so he kept on holding it as she reviewed some of the calls he’d learned yesterday. Coleby liked reviews. Lex didn’t give ‘close enough’s on reviews and he usually got most of them right.

It was when Clark came back that the new egg broke. “ Kalark back!” Coleby had cried gleefully when he heard the swoosh that accompanied his arrival. He’d jumped up to his feet, eager for the fruit that Clark brought back, and that was when he squeezed too much. “Egg broke,” he said mournfully, holding out his messy hand toward Lex.

Lex chattered calls at him that Coleby hadn’t learned yet, but he hunched his shoulders and looked guilty because he knew he was being reprimanded by her tone. “Water,” she said, to Clark, when she was done yelling at Coleby. A blue bottle was given to her and she splashed some water onto Coleby’s hand, and then used the soft white leaves again to wipe the egg off. When she was done with that, she went into her nest and found a bar of something. “Follow, Coleby,” she instructed and headed toward the stream.

Once there, she put Coleby’s hand into the water, pulled it out and used the bar to make bubbles all over his hand. He did not protest this treatment because she thought he was a juvenile and he wasn’t yet ready to tell her otherwise. She washed the bubbles off in the water, and then chattered again in unknown calls. This time he had no idea what she was going on about. He followed her back to where the nest was and Clark gave him fruit. He ran off into the trees to eat in case Clark wanted to mate with Lex again.

Lex watched Coleby disappear from sight and decided not to yell after him that they were having mealtime together. It was just as well. He and Clark needed to talk and Coleby didn’t like being ignored. He opened the carton of lo mien and a package of chop sticks. After swallowing his first bite, Clark was still chewing a piece of General Tso’s chicken, so Lex decided to start.

“I started working on controlling his strength today,” he began. “He’s got some instinctual control, obviously, or he wouldn’t be able to climb around with his pears, but he broke an egg just now and all he did was stand up. It’s going to be a while before I’m ready to trust him in the mansion.”

Clark chewed and swallowed quickly. “The mansion?” he asked, doubtfully.

Lex lifted his eyebrows and made a ‘why not?’ expression. “Lana’s not living there and it’s out of the way. Besides, Smallville will ask fewer questions if somebody notices him.” He assumed that was a self-defense mechanism of the natives. If they didn’t ask, they didn’t need to acknowledge the strangeness of their town. “It has a lot of space, too, both indoors and on the grounds. I think it’s the logical next step once he’s ready for limited human contact.”

Chopsticks poked unhappily a piece of chicken and Lex took the opportunity of Clark’s hesitation to take another mouthful of noodles. “How long?” he asked after a long moment.

Finishing his bite of food first, Lex swallowed before answering, “I’d estimate two or three more weeks at minimum. Can you keep up with your course work while running back and forth like this so often?”

Clark nodded and ate a piece of his chicken. “Shouldn’t be a problem,” he began. Lex became fascinated with the appearance of his lo mien because Clark was talking with his mouth full. “My biggest concern is the weather. Are you and Coleby going to be all right out here all the time?”

“ Coleby’s shown no indication that he’s affected by the cold. I’d wager the mutation is making him as impervious as you appear to be. As for me,” Lex hated having the weakest body present but short of going cyborg, there wasn’t much to be done about that, “I’m going to need a lot of sex. Hot showers would be nice to have every so often as well.” For cleanliness, if not for the minutes of warmth. “I’ll probably start keeping a fire going, too, during the day.”

They ate quietly in silence until Clark asked if he wanted any chicken or rice. They traded containers and finished the last of the Chinese food. As they broke open their fortune cookies, Clark asked, “Are you cold now?”

Lex pulled out the strip of paper and read it out loud, ignoring his question for now. “Be open for new opportunities.”

“In bed,” Clark said, and then realized he’d said it out loud and blushed.

Snorting, Lex smirked at him, “It does work that way, too, doesn’t it. What’s yours?”

“Make new friends but keep the old,” Clark read.

Feeling turnaround was fair play, Lex added insolently, “In bed. But just me, because I don’t think you want to keep Pete in your bed.”

Clark glared at him and pointed at the tent. “For that, I should just leave you here cold and alone, but I’ll give you one more chance to get into that bed where I’m supposed to be keeping you.”

Lex hurriedly ate the two halves of his cookie then climbed beneath their blankets. It was colder today than it had been yesterday and his extremities were starting to go numb, even with Martha’s homemade hat and gloves. “Clark?” he asked as he stripped, “Would you find it too kinky to fuck me while I’m wearing the hat? The pillow is freezing.”

“I can deal,” Clark told him as he crawled in beside him, already naked after stripping out where it was cold but easier to remove clothing. By the time Lex got his thermals off (he’d never admit it, but his legs were infinitely more comfortable today than they had been yesterday even with the drop in temperature), Clark had already provided enough heat to warm the space between the blankets and the insulated mattress pads.

Clark’s hands on him warmed his skin and Lex closed his eyes when Clark told him to do so. They snapped open again as his body began to feel like he was standing beside a fireplace. Waves of heat flowed from Clark’s eyes for a moment before it abruptly stopped and Clark glared at him. “I said close your eyes.” Where the fire-like heat had been was now painfully missing the sensation, so Lex closed them again in hopes that Clark would pick up where he left off. “Keep them closed or I won’t do this any more and you can just get frost bite.”

Lex nodded. “Just tell me when I can open them again.” Heat suffused him again and Clark rubbed it into his skin, seeming to penetrate the warmth clear down to the chill in his bones. “Mm,” Lex moaned, “that’s good. Have you considered a career as a masseuse?”

Clark’s chuckle was genuine and a sound he hadn’t heard much of in years. He realized he’d missed it. “I’d probably get all fat old guys for clients. I’ll stick to journalism, thanks.”

Lex decided not to tell Clark that the secret was in working for an agency with other, less skilled, masseuses so he’d get all the attractive clients. That way he could have Clark’s hands and heat producing eyes all for himself. He hummed in pleasure as Clark turned him over and began working on his backside. His torso hadn’t been particularly frozen, but the massage was more than welcome. He’d had to cancel his last appointment two weeks ago and hadn’t had a chance to reschedule a new one.

As he loosened one particularly tight knot, Lex made another sound of encouragement, and murmured, “If we go back to being enemies, would you consider part-time masseuse employment? It’s just two or three times a month, and I pay really well.”

Twice in one conversation: Clark laughed again. Maybe instead of apologizing after their first real fight, Lex should have just turned up naked in Clark’s bed and asked for a massage and a fuck. “I don’t know, Lex,” Clark drawled, moving his hands lower. “I don’t think I’d be able to have my hands all over you and not do this.” He pulled apart Lex’s ass cheeks and, oh God, that was his tongue.

“Fuck!” Lex screamed, spreading his legs apart and lifting his ass into the air to give Clark all the access he could get.

Clark pulled away, just long enough to say, “Don’t worry, I’m getting to that part.” Then he went back to sticking his tongue where tongues had no business being. Though, Lex decided with the few brain cells he had left working, tongues ought to revise their contracts to gain regular access to that particular location.

Lex whited out as he came and when his senses cleared, Clark had replaced his tongue with his dick and Lex’s body was already fucking itself onto it. Clark was draped over his back and he seemed to know that Lex had just regained his mind because he leaned in to whisper, “Do you let your masseuses do this?”

“Not,” he gasped and rocked back into Clark’s thrust as it hit his prostate, “Not usually, but,” a groan interrupted as the next thrust got him in the same spot, “I could con- oh fuck, Clark,” he swore as Clark’s hand wrapped around his spent cock and pumped it slowly. It painfully rose under the attention. “Conceivably negotiate,” he tried to continue, but was again cut off by an involuntary groan as Clark added sucking his neck to the fucking and jerking him off, “an exception in, fuck!” If he was going to ask questions, why wouldn’t he wait until Lex was done answering him before going for the prostate like that? Lex was sure he was doing it on purpose. “Your case.”

“What?” Clark asked, leaving his neck alone just long enough to say the one word.

Someday, Lex would kill him. There was no hurry because Lex wanted to enjoy his hands and dick and heat in the meantime, but someday, he would. “I said,” he began again, but that was as far as he got as Clark changed the rhythm on him.

“ Shh,” Clark told him over his moan, “talk later.” Lex was fine with that, but Clark had asked. He saved that remark for later along with his answer and turned his concentration over to the sex at hand. He didn’t try to drive Clark into a frenzy this time because as good as his body was at recovering from abuse, it was still only about four hours since the three rounds that morning. He’d gotten Clark angry just before the last one (it was inevitable when bringing up meteor experiments, but he had bargained information about Jor-El for the particulars about Coleby’s project) and Lex wasn’t sure he could handle another rough fucking this soon.

Clark did, however, respond well to the appearance of submission and became gentle, almost caring, in his touches and movements. In some ways, that hurt worse than any physical pain, but Lex found himself craving this as much as he did the hard punishing strength of angry domination sex.

When it was over, they collapsed together and lay quietly for a moment until Clark kissed the back of his head, a gesture too tender for Lex to allow. He shifted, pulling off Clark’s dick and turned around. “As I was saying, I wouldn’t normally allow that from a masseuse, but I’d be willing to negotiate an exception if you wanted the job.”

For a moment, Clark said nothing, though his brows drew together as he seemed to remember something. After a short silence he asked, going for casual and failing, “What happened to ‘I’m going to be president so I don’t fool around with guys? ’”

He wondered why Clark was bringing that up now. They’d already basically declared that they were seeing each other. ‘Dating’ was still probably a bit of a stretch, given that they were just fucking and not going out on dates, but he’d thought the intent was clear. “It’s a little too late for that,” Lex answered aloud. He shook his head, “Once an ex-girlfriend finds out something like this, you can pretty much kiss the secret goodbye. Two people can keep a relationship quiet. We’re up to at least five.” He didn’t think Martha or Brady would say anything, but every additional person who knew was one more way for the secret to be exposed.

“Lana wouldn’t,” Clark began, but Lex shook his head making him fall silent.

“Maybe not right away, but ex-girlfriends are very bitter creatures, especially when the break-up is over the guy cheating on her. I can only assume ex-fiancés are worse. She’ll tell somebody.” Lex was absolutely certain about that.

“I suppose you’d know,” Clark snipped, which dispersed the last of Lex’s discomfort over how affectionate Clark had just been. This was how they were supposed to act around each other.

He scowled at Clark for form’s sake and denied, “This is the first time I’ve cheated.”

“Yeah, right,” Clark was so dismissive of the possibility that Lex wondered if it was even worth defending himself.

He decided to try anyway. That was his purpose in life, according to the Kawatche: to fight impossible battles he was destined to lose. “ Clark, I’ve had exactly three relationships that lasted longer than a night. I didn’t have a chance to cheat on Desiree and I just didn’t on Helen.”

“ Victoria?” Clark prompted, still not lending any credence to Lex’s claim.

Lex rolled his eyes. “She hardly counted. That was business, not personal.”

“Am I business?” Clark asked, sounding somewhere between irritable and accusing.

Glaring, Lex told him stiffly, “You are very personal, Clark. And what did I tell you about accusations?”

Clark’s eyes widened, “I wasn’t accusing.”

It didn’t have the usual hallmarks of a Clark lie, so maybe he hadn’t been. Lex was probably overly susceptible to mistaking similar tones for that particular one. “Okay,” he accepted, giving Clark the benefit of the doubt even though Clark hadn’t done the same. Lex, after all, was an angel now. “It just sounded like you were implying I was letting you fuck me for ulterior motives.”

Clark looked torn, like he was trying to make a decision when all the choices were bad. Lex waited him out. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Lex,” he began, which meant of course he was going to say something uncomplimentary, “but aren’t you?”

Because Lex was an angel, he did not take it the wrong way. He really ought to be getting credit for this conversation in his anger management class. “First of all, Clark, if I were fucking you for ulterior motives, I’d be much more pleasant to be around. I can actually do charming, you know, and if I wanted you to do something for me, even Luthors know you get more with honey. Second, we’d fucked twice well before we started talking about exchanging secrets. That’s the fringe benefit, not the sex. Third, the cold is an excuse, not a reason. Fourth, I’m doing this against sound logic. The risks far exceed the possible gains.” Except the Fortress. Another look at the Fortress was worth pretty much anything. “And fifth, Victoria left a sour taste in my mouth so now I prefer to keep business transactions out of the bedroom.”

Blinking, Clark said only, “Oh.”

Lex pushed further, “We’re fucking like bunnies because we’re obsessed. We were never able to let go, and we were probably both repressing for years, and I know we’ve been mutually stalking each other for most of the time we’ve known each other. Tell me how that’s not personal, Clark.”

“I can’t,” he admitted seriously. Then he began to grin, slowly at first, but blossoming into his full blown Clark Kent smile. Lex hated him for that because it was impossible to stay angry with him when he smiled like that. It was impossible not to melt under its bright warmth and the last thing Lex wanted right now was to melt. He’d worked too hard for the ice. “Did you just call yourself a bunny, Lex?” Clark asked, still grinning hugely. “Like a cute, cuddly, little, white bunny-rabbit with a twitchy nose?”

Lex stared at him. His mouth opened. It closed. And then Lex began to laugh.

He still had it. Clark nearly leaped up so he could properly punch his fist triumphantly into the air. He could still make Lex Luthor laugh. He could still diffuse his temper. For the first time, Clark thought that maybe this wasn’t a mistake. That maybe this could work. That maybe it would even be good for them. He doubted Lex had done much laughing lately.

He’d almost let the opportunity slip past. He’d nearly fallen into old habits and denied repression or stalking. But then the bunny thing just struck him as absurd and he knew, he knew, it would dumbfound Lex to turn his words back on him. That was another thing that didn’t happen nearly often enough. It was good for him.

The laughter didn’t last long, it rarely did, but that it happened at all was a real achievement. Clark felt closer to him than he had in months. Strange, that getting him to laugh felt more intimate than the sex did. It was then that he realized that at some point Lex had raised defenses and barriers against him. Ones that Lex hadn’t lowered even with their truce. And he had just gotten past one of them.

Clark propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at Lex, really looked at him. Lex stilled mid-eye-roll as noticed Clark’s intensity. “What?” There was a wary defensiveness to the question. Distrust. Self-protection. Lex fully expected him to say some that would hurt him.

He suddenly didn’t want to. He’d villianized Lex for so long in his mind that he’d forgotten that Lex could be hurt, forgotten that it was wrong to want to do so. How had he forgotten that, when only a few years ago, he’d called this person his best friend? No, Lex was not a good person. He’d done bad things. He would do bad things again if he wasn’t encouraged toward a different path. But he couldn’t have changed that fundamentally in only three years. He did have good aspects. He could be a good person when he tried. Somewhere along the line, he’d just stopped trying. “Where did we go wrong?”

Lex studied him for a long moment, and then asked, “The truth? Or are you being rhetorical?”

It had been rhetorical, but then, he hadn’t thought Lex had an answer. “The truth.”

“For me, it was my inability to put aside my curiosity even when it was obviously hurting you. For you, it was your tendency to make assumptions and never explain why you were angry.” He’d clearly put a lot of thought into the matter. Clark almost felt guilty for never wondering before why their friendship had failed. “We also both had absurdly high expectations of the other, but I think that issue, at least, has been put to rest.”

Lex pushed himself up on an elbow as well and looked at Clark seriously. “If this is going to work, Clark, I mean, really work, you need to talk to me and not assume I’m just being a bastard to fulfill my evil quota for the week. I have reasons for everything I do. You might not agree with them, but we should be able to discuss them like adults. In the meantime, I will wait patiently for the five months to be up and not try to manipulate you into bringing me to your Fortress at every opportunity. Neither will I plot ways to sneak in there by myself.” He stopped, frowned, and added as a self-correction, “At least, I won’t carry through with any of them.”

Clark made a mental note to never leave Lex alone when he was in Smallville, but nodded outward agreement. There was no reason to antagonize him over baseless doubts. Clark felt like he had grown as a person – which was a really weird and pretentious phrase, but he didn’t know how else to describe the sense of self-accomplishment he felt - in the last few minutes and he was pretty proud of himself for it.

He smiled at Lex which made his former best friend frown in suspicious confusion, which in turn made Clark smile more widely. “Okay,” he said.

Lex waited. Clark said nothing further. “Okay?” Lex repeated after another couple of seconds. “That’s it, just ‘okay’?”

“You made good points, I agree with them.” If Clark had known just agreeing with Lex would confound him so much, he would have done it sooner. Of course, Lex hadn’t really done or said much worth agreeing with lately, but Clark wasn’t going to dwell on that right now.

“Well, good,” Lex said, but it was pretty clear he’d been expecting some kind of argument and he was left at loose ends because Clark hadn’t followed the expected script.

“Lex?” Clark asked, a worrying thought occurring to him suddenly.

Lex looked more attentive, picking up on his tone. “What is it, Clark?”

“Do I have to tell you why I’m angry when you’re purposely pushing my buttons to get angry sex?” Clark liked angry sex with Lex. He was pretty sure Lex did, too, or he wouldn’t push for it so often.

For a moment, Lex looked offended, “I do not -” he stopped abruptly, apparently realizing he was lying through his teeth. “No,” he revised his answer, “if I can’t figure it out, I’ll ask afterwards.”

Clark nodded, relieved, “Good, because that would totally kill the mood.”

Lex smirked and lay down on his back, pulling Clark to roll on top of him. “I think we’ve hit the limit of emotional disclosure two guys can have in one afternoon. You’ve still got time before your two o’clock and my ass has shown remarkable resilience so far.” His eyes hooded and he pulled Clark’s head down and to the side. Clark thought he was going to whisper something in his ear until he felt the wet trail along the outer shell as Lex used his tongue for something else entirely. In a husky voice, Lex added, “I’m feeling the overwhelming need to prove I’m nothing like a fuzzy, white rabbit before you leave.”

By the time Clark ran off to shower quickly before his class, Lex had done a fine job of making his point. His nose hadn’t twitched once and Clark was sure that no bunny had ever moved quite like that.

The two o’clock was Media Law and Ethics, which he shared with Chloe. She’d saved him a seat and they’d paid attention to the lecture, but as soon as class was over she turned on him. “What is going on with you and Lex?” she demanded. “Lana showed up at my dorm at two o’clock in the morning.”

Clark flinched. He’d hoped he’d get to Chloe before Lana did.

“Is what Lex told her true?” she demanded.

“Which part?” he asked with an outward grimace. “The Zod thing or the sex thing?” Chloe’s eyes narrowed and he knew perfectly well that she knew perfectly well, that he knew perfectly well, that she meant the sex thing. He looked miserably at the floor and mumbled, “He was cold.”

She stared and repeated flatly, “He was cold.”

Clark nodded. “He nearly froze to death. If we weren’t sleeping together he would have gotten hypothermia.”

“Lana gave the distinct impression there was actual sex going on, not just sleeping together.”

With a guilty look, Clark stole a glance at his best friend. “Um, I’m a guy, Chloe.”

“And so is Lex,” she pointed out. “Last I knew neither of you swung that way.”

“Um, I wasn’t exactly discriminate that summer in Metropolis.” Clark shrugged, “I had thought it was just the red K, but he was naked, Chloe, and well, he’s got a really nice ass.”

She held up her hands defensively, “I do not want to know, Clark!”

Clark blushed. “Right, well, it just happened. One time wasn’t gonna hurt anybody and nobody was going to know.” Chloe looked like she was going to say something, but Clark kept going, “But then it happened again.”

“I take it Lex was fine with the gay thing?”

Clark’s hand wavered out in front of him in the ‘so-so’ universal sign. “It was his first actual experience with another guy, but I get the impression he’s thought about it before. Possibly a lot. He had presidential aspirations, though, so he never followed through.”

Chloe looked doubtful. “Somehow I don’t see him giving those up for a tumble with you.” Clark wondered if he should feel insulted by the way she said the last word.

Slouching lower in his chair, he looked around the by now empty classroom. “He probably just shifted his goal from ‘youngest president’ to ‘first gay president’. We agreed he should break up with Lana, not give up his political ambitions.”

“And what did Lex get in exchange for that?”

He didn’t even try to pretend that Lex had done it voluntarily. “I told him about the caves.”

Chloe looked at him sharply. “I can tell who the better negotiator is. Clark, was that really wise . . . ?”

Clark grimaced. “Possibly not, but I think it’ll work out all right. Lex only got a glimpse of the Fortress.”

“Clark!” Chloe exclaimed, stunned and horrified.

He held up a hand and continued, “He only got a brief look, but it was enough. He’s sworn five months of good behavior, so he can look again. And right now? He’s living in a forest without any cell reception and no way to get to civilization. What’s he going to do? Tell Coleby?”

“But when he gets back . . .”

“It’ll be weeks yet,” Clark told her. “Lex is completely obsessed by his pet monkey. He’s not coming back until Coleby’s ready. By then . . .” Clark trailed off, not sure if he should say anything.

“By then what?” Chloe prompted.

“I think I can break through,” Clark dared to utter; hoping that saying it wouldn’t jinx it.

Chloe didn’t get it. “Break through what?”

“His barriers. He’s calmer out away from people. His masks aren’t as reflexive. I can sometimes catch a glimpse of the old Lex. I’ve got five months to train him to be a good person again. Or, at least, a not-evil one.”

“Clark,” Chloe began, and then sighed and shook her head. “You want to change him.”

Clark smiled. “Yes.”

“You know that never works.”

For moment, he said nothing, just looked at her, his smile dimmed and his eyes serious. “I have to try. He loved me, Chloe. Before. I never knew. I think I can still save him.”

Chloe closed her eyes and sighed. “It’s not going to be easy, Clark. You know that, right? You can’t just kiss him and make him better.”

Of course he knew that. He was hopeful and optimistic, not stupid. “It’s going to take a long time,” he agreed, “and a lot of patience and a lot of compromise and talking. But I think we’ll both be happier in the long run if we work this out.”

Not even Chloe could argue that.