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It's 2 AM and Clark is running. The way is dark and his feet pound heavily on the gravel by the side of the road. After forty minutes he's breathing hard and he tells himself that it should feel good, the way his lungs burn, but he's not sure he believes it. He presses his hand to the stitch in his side, reminds himself that this is normal, this is how real humans feel.
Lana, he should be thinking about Lana, how he has made love for the first time, how wonderful it was. Just the thought makes him smile, alone and panting as he jogs down the dark road, and God, he's going to have to watch that grin or his parents will know right away—will know how wonderful it was, because it was.
But he can't get the taste of blood out of his mouth.
His own blood, and his jaw is sore, and his knuckles are sore, too. Lana was so fragile in his arms, so perfectly small and delicate. He had to be so gentle, even now, can only touch so much, if more than he's ever dared before. He's used to that; it's second nature to control himself and though that control's so much easier now, he still could bruise her flawless peach-soft skin if he's not careful.
Is Lex bruised? He looks just as fragile, the translucent paleness of his bare head against the dark of his suits. Clark remembers what it was like to hug him before, how carefully he had to watch his strength. Not just to keep from crushing his brittle human ribcage but because this was Lex, and Lex would notice if Clark was holding him too inhumanly tight, or if Clark was holding back too obviously.
But he didn't feel brittle tonight; the solid set of his jaw hurt Clark's own fist, aching a little even now, and Clark's lip is still swollen and tender when his fingers prod it. Lex had moved so fast, catching his last blow and dealing it back. Clark's not used to fighting anyone fairly, but he would bet he and Lex are evenly matched now. Or Lex might be better; he's trained in boxing and fencing and though he looks so thin in tailored black, his body's whipcord strong. And he's fast.
Clark's still getting used to thinking of other people who aren't Bart as fast. He wonders how much longer it will take him to get used to being slow. He's been running for nearly an hour and he still isn't home. Once he could have been to Alaska and back by now. Not anymore, but he's happier this way, he tells himself that honestly, even as he digs his palm into the needling pang in his side again. It's a different ache than he's used to, not only less than the ripping, wrenching pain of kryptonite, but cleaner, too.
Headlights shine through the night, sweep over him and then vanish as the truck continues rumbling down the road in the other direction. He should have driven himself back; he'd be home by now if he had, but he left his truck parked behind the Talon. He's not used to being slower than cars. He had tried to sleep beside Lana, curled up so neatly and warm, but he wasn't tired and couldn't stop moving. So he told her he should be home, because of his parents, and she had kissed him goodbye and he nearly had stayed anyway. But outside in the crisp summer night, his body was humming with energy, almost like having his powers again, and it felt so good to run.
Hickory Lane, he's almost home now, if out of breath, and the breeze is chilly on his sweating skin, though he's burning like when he was feverish with the kryptonite infection. This is what it means to be normal, though, and he should appreciate it. The house is dark, curtains closed. Sneaking inside without tripping over something won't be as easy as it was with his former reflexes; he heads for the barn instead. He crashes on the loft's couch often enough that his parents shouldn't comment, as long as he's here when they wake up. They're going easy on him anyway, torn between being happy for his happiness and the new concerns they're trying not to worry him with.
Clark is almost to the barn when he realizes there's already a light on inside, not the floodlights but the single low-watt bulb hanging over the stairs up to his loft. His father, perhaps, having trouble sleeping after everything that happened, determined to protect his family; or his mother, waiting up for him, wanting to see him safe.
Only it's not either of his parents. It's Lex. Clark stares as the spare black figure sitting hunched on the steps unfolds himself, standing to face him.
Clark's out of breath and tired, finally; he could sleep now, wants to flop down and rest his rubbery legs. He's not ready for another fight.
In the dim yellow light, Lex's face is sallow. He looks as tired as Clark feels. "I was waiting for you," he says.
There's a faint mottling around his jaw that might be bruises or might only be shadows. Clark tries to see if Lex is angry, but his eyes are as opaque as ever he's seen, almost black. Clark wonders if he should be scared. Wonders if he should look for a gun or something, but he doesn't have his x-ray vision to scan with, and what is he supposed to do if Lex does have a gun? "I didn't see your car," he says instead, like an idiot, like this is a normal conversation and not two o'clock in the morning after everything has changed between them.
"I parked at the end of the driveway and walked up," Lex says. "I didn't want the engine to wake your parents."
Prudent. Lex is well aware his dad has a shotgun, even if Lex didn't bring any firearms himself. "They don't know," Clark says. "I didn't tell them. What you did."
He expects Lex to deny it again, that blank-eyed, too-practiced innocence. "You're being irrational." His fists are curling in anticipation, exhausted as he is.
Instead Lex turns away. "I came here to give you something," he says, picking up the metal briefcase resting on the stairs behind him. He hefts it up, crosses the distance between them in three long strides and hands to Clark.
Clark takes it. The briefcase is heavy, but no heavier than it looks, really; it would have been nothing to him before and he can handle it with one hand now, straining a little. "What is this?" he asks, though he already can guess.
"You were right," Lex says instead of answering. This close Clark can smell the sharp astringency of scotch on Lex's breath. Probably too much for him to have driven here safely, but Lex has never worried about driving safely and legal issues obviously are no longer a concern for him, if ever they were. His words are crisp and clear and his eyes are still dark impassive holes. "I arranged it personally. The rumors about you they heard, their escape. The facility you broke into was under complete surveillance. I intended for you to break in; I saw everything. I was rewatching the video when you came tonight."
"Then you know what I did. And what I couldn't do." Now, Clark's mind adds. Still, it's closer to the truth than he usually dares, and the stitch in his side from the run that was relaxing squeezes tight again in his gut.
"I know," Lex says roughly, but he doesn't ask and doesn't explain. He nods at the briefcase. "There's a copy of the video; you can make sure for yourself. Along with everything else I've put together."
Tonight was his first time fighting with his fists without holding anything back; tonight was his first time making love. But they've been here before, done this before. Clark already knows how this will end. "So you're giving me everything, and you're going to swear to stop investigating me, until something makes you start again, because you're never really going to accept that there's nothing to investigate. You're never going to believe that I'm not anything special; you're never going to believe that it wasn't destiny, that the great Lex Luthor just was luckily saved by a random farm kid. Because you think you're too important to have something happen to you that could have happened to anyone."
His anger is as righteous as it was at the mansion tonight, and it feels as good as outrunning the wind. But this is different than before; he can't feel Lex going down under the blow. He's lashing out as hard as he had with his fists but Lex is only watching him unmoving, more unsatisfying than punching water, not even a ripple to prove he's hit.
He's breathing as hard as when he first entered the barn, and Lex says, "No."
"No?"
"No, I'm never going to believe it." Lex's even tone might sound smirking but his mouth is a flat line. "No, I'm not accepting it. And no, I'm not going to swear I'll stop investigating. I didn't come here tonight to lie to you, and we both know swearing that would eventually be a lie. No matter how much I meant it, or wanted to mean it."
This isn't like anything Lex has said before. His hands are in his slacks pockets and he's looking at Clark with steady dark eyes. Clark's knuckles ache and he can't stop realizing they do. He wonders if Lex's fist in his pocket is bruised from his jaw, if Lex is used to such vivid, ordinary pain, so that he doesn't notice it anymore. "So—why did you come?"
"I told you. To give you that." Lex indicates the briefcase again.
"Why give your research to me, if you're not closing the investigation?"
"That's not the research itself, only copies of the data. I have the originals and multiple backups. I can recreate most of it anyway; I have before."
"Then why—"
"So you understand, Clark. So you know what I've found; so you know what I've done to find it. What I'd keep doing." Lex closes his eyes and opens them again, too slowly to be a blink, too quickly to be concealing anything. Maybe nothing more than a tell of impatience. "I'm going back to Metropolis tomorrow."
Lex goes to Metropolis several times a week, but the way he says it now means he won't be coming back. Clark hears it like he's taking another punch. The mansion, empty: no mouth smiling at him with false poison over a gold-rimmed glass; no slim long fingers showing him how to clasp a pool cue; no spontaneous lectures on the Trojan war or Napoleon's conquests and failures. No easy smooth voice inviting him into the air conditioned cool of the office, Lex with his polished billionaire's shoes up on the glass desktop, tapping on his laptop keyboard with one hand while his other hand rubs his temples, thanking Clark for interrupting his headache.
No more explaining the finer points of raising cattle to Lex, who knew thoroughbred bloodlines but not whether a Holstein was beef or dairy; no more convincing Lex to try the mochaccino with sprinkles and laughing at his pretended wrinkle-nosed distaste, even as he licked the last drop of cream off the stirrer.
It's not like that now; it hasn't been for a while. If Lex goes to the Talon anymore, it's not when Clark is there.
Metropolis once was a couple minutes away for Clark, a dash across the state; but not anymore. And Clark hasn't until this moment known how much he wants it back the way it was, what he and Lex were. Not as it has been the last year or two, requests and refusals, lies and bargains; but what they had in the beginning, that friendship no one else could make sense of, that Clark never tried to explain because there was no need to justify it. It was just him and Lex and that was the way it was.
Maybe he's been thinking that now they could have that again, with no secrets between them. But the sun set on those days over a year ago, as finally as it set a few weeks ago, the day of the meteor shower. He doesn't know which of them has changed more, him or Lex. Can't even say honestly which change is for the better, though that should be easy. He should be happy, getting what he's always wanted—no, not always. Only since he learned the truth about himself, the day he should have died.
The day he met Lex. If he had been a regular mortal kid, Lex's Porsche would have killed him, that day on the bridge. If he had been a normal human, both he and Lex would be dead four years now.
He's a normal man now but he's still lying to Lex, because Lex is special, as special as Clark once was, and it was destiny after all; it must have been. Only something that powerful could hurt like this.
"So you're running away now?" Clark asks.
Lex cocks an eyebrow at him, so casually it might be hostile, if he didn't look too worn out to fight. "Everyone here in town will appreciate it. I'll still make sure FEMA follows through, and no one will have to choke down their hypocrisy to thank me for it."
"It's not like that now. Smallville knows you by now. We don't—not everyone hates you. Anymore."
Lex's other brow also goes up. "I thought you'd be the gladdest to see me gone. Not having to defend me all the time to your friends, your family. You can settle down and forget any of this ever happened."
"I'm not going to be glad," and it's the most honest thing he's said to Lex in a while.
And Lex can tell, because for one moment it looks like he did hit Lex again, harder than before; Lex is looking at him like he was when Clark left his office, like he was the one wronged, open pain in his eyes. Like as badly as he had betrayed Clark, he had betrayed himself worse.
Then he blinks and recovers himself, and it's probably thanks to the scotch that this much showed, or else it was a trick of the shadows to begin with. "You're just frightened," he tells Clark. "You're scared to see me leave because it's a change from what you're familiar with, and you've had enough changes lately. Graduating high school, the destruction to the town, your relationship with Lana," and Clark wonders if his blush shows in the dim light; wonders if Lex sees even that newest secret. Lex looks up at him through his lashes. "And everything else," he finishes. "You've had enough turned upside down; it's only natural to try to hold onto what you're used to, even if it's negative, a ruinous force."
"'Ruinous'?" Clark almost laughs, because as much as he himself always strove for normalcy, Lex can never consider himself to be anything commonplace; he's not content just to be a bad influence, he has to be destroyer of worlds.
But Lex's eyes flash, even if his face stays a mask and his voice stays level. "Look in that briefcase, Clark," he says. "I want you to go through it with your parents, everything I've collected. I want you to consider everything I could do with the information I've gathered, and I want you to remember that I still have my own copies. And I want you to remember what's already happened, that those three who might have killed your parents and Lana today were sent by me."
All thought of laughter leaves Clark. His mouth is dry. He's been blackmailed before, was threatened just this afternoon, and he recognizes the feeling too well, the sick-making helplessness in the pit of his stomach. Once that guilty frustration had drove him to punch through a wooden beam; now he thinks his knees might be trembling. If he were nearer to the stairway railing he would grab for its support. "What do you want, Lex?"
"What do I want?" and now Lex is laughing, a weird tight laugh that is all the weirder in that it sounds sincere anyway. "I want you to keep living here on this farm with your parents, tending the fields and milking cows. I want you to go to college and finally apply the intelligence and love of learning you forget you have most of the time, because you don't think it counts for much. I want you to marry Lana Lang, girl of your dreams, and raise a mob of boys and girls as beautiful as the both of you. I want you to be happy, Clark. However you manage it."
It's a barrage of images, an array of contradictions, and all Clark can think is that this is Lex. This can only be Lex, to be so absolutely right and so totally wrong at the exact same time.
"I wouldn't be happy," he says. "Not with any of that. Not with just that."
Lex inclines his head, looks at Clark again, that look that says he already sees everything. "But it's going to have to be enough now, isn't it, Clark."
Lex knows. Enough to understand; too much. Or not enough. Clark drops the briefcase, its secrets too heavy for his mortal arm. Everything else, Lex said, those secrets that mean nothing to him anymore; but their loss isn't what's wrong, no matter what Lex thinks. "Don't go to Metropolis."
Lex stiffens, a momentary freeze that Clark would have missed had he blinked. Then he's moving past Clark with long prowling strides that are pure confidence, carriage of power, just close enough to brush Clark's shoulder in passing. "You don't understand, Clark. Maybe it's over for you now. It's not for me. I'm too obsessed with the past, with you—didn't you tell me so just hours ago? You were right. I can't let this go—I'm never going to. Not until I know. As long as I'm here, I'm going to be looking for the answers, and do you think it matters to me, what happens to anyone, as long as I get what I want? I'm my father's son. Never forget that."
"But you're going to Metropolis," Clark says, and Lex stops in the doorway, framed in the wide wooden beams. "Why are you running, if it doesn't matter to you, Lex?" He's speaking the truth again. He can tell because Lex isn't moving, the line of his back rigid under the black suit jacket.
"If you didn't care," Clark says, moving towards Lex, moving towards the truth like he's feeling his way blindfolded, "if it didn't matter to you who got hurt, then you would have done something like this sooner. If all you cared about was knowing my secret, then you would have pointed a gun at me and pulled the trigger. And when I died—then you'd know the truth, wouldn't you. So why didn't you, if that's all that mattered to you?"
If he listens closely enough, he can hear Lex breathing, can hear him swallow and though Lex is turned away Clark knows he's running his tongue around the inside of his lip, thinking, finding the words. The spin to tip this in whatever direction he wants, but Clark won't let him; he speaks before Lex can. "I called you a coward before, for not facing me yourself—I was right about that, too, wasn't I. You couldn't do it. Even if you had a gun now, you wouldn't. You sent those guys after me because you couldn't do it yourself—and they still weren't enough to kill me. I handled them, and you knew I could. Whatever you thought I was, whatever I actually am, you believed I could handle it. And I did."
"No one should've been in danger." Lex bites off the words like he wants to tear into someone's throat. "I calculated it carefully—you've dealt with worse than those mutants without collateral damage. I set them straight on you; you should've taken them out before they could lay a finger on anyone. No one was supposed to get hurt."
"No one was, Lex. Not seriously," Clark says, wondering how he can argue this so straightforwardly, when just hours before they had come to blows over it.
Lex is holding onto the roughhewn post of the barn door. In the yellow light Clark can see the tendons standing out on the back of his hand from the tightness of his grip, like he's trying to dig his nails into the wood. But his voice is bizarrely light, unaffected calm. "What do you want me to say, Clark? That I'm sorry for endangering your girlfriend and your parents? That next time I'll be sure only to target your life and not your loved ones', and I apologize for the inconvenience?"
"Well. It would be a start," Clark says.
Lex laughs again, a harsh cough that makes his shoulders jerk under the jacket. "In that case—I'm sorry." Then his breath catches, and he doesn't sound like he's laughing anymore. "I'm sorry."
"You're not your father, Lex," Clark says.
He feels Lex begin to move before he sees it, the tension of an elastic the instant before it snaps. And Lex is fast, and Clark is so achingly slow now, but he's fast enough here because he has to be, before Lex bolts into the night, before Lex vanishes out the door. If he does, Clark knows he'll never come back, not like he's here now. It will never be the same, and this, this Clark needs not to change, no matter what else is different. Even if it makes him a coward; even if it's only because he's frightened.
He catches Lex there in the doorway, on the threshold, puts his arms around him and pulls Lex to him. Lex is facing away, his rigid back to Clark's chest, his arms stiff and straight at his sides under Clark's bear-hold. This is different than any hug they've shared before, because Clark is holding on, not carefully, not fearful of crushing and splintering brittle human bone; but as tightly as he can. When he embraced Lana tonight he was so cautious not to bruise her, not to hurt her. But he's hurt Lex already, and Lex's jaw bruised his fist, and he doesn't care if it's painful and he doesn't care if Lex struggles against him; he's not going to let go.
Lex doesn't struggle. He's still like stone; Clark can't tell if he's even breathing. His mouth is near Lex's ear, so he only has to whisper to be heard. "You're not your father. Your father never would have said sorry and actually meant it."
"And how do you know I mean it?" Lex hisses back, still not moving. But his shoulders are shaking under the straight sharp lines of his jacket.
"Don't go to Metropolis," Clark says. "Stay here. Keep investigating me, if that's really what you want to do. Just be more careful about it."
"Clark," and Lex almost chokes on it.
"You're not going to find out anything anyway," Clark tells him. "There's nothing for you to find out." Then he takes a breath that rasps in his ears, and adds, "Not anymore."
Lex's breathing is loud, almost as loud as his own, and his voice is almost nothing. "What?"
"You could have shot me before," Clark says, low and quickly, like if he says it fast enough it won't count as betraying the secret. "You could have pulled the trigger before, and it wouldn't have hurt me, hardly at all—you have before, actually, but you don't remember those times. But that's not true anymore. Now I'm just like a regular human."
"Like a human?" Lex asks, and there's a peculiar sharp edge to it.
Clark gulps air. In for a penny, in for a pound. He can feel the briefcase behind him like a black hole, like the weight of its secrets is so great it warps gravity, drawing him down. Lex knows so much already. Chloe assumed he was a meteor freak, but Lex guesses more than that already. And Lex tried to tell him. Asking his questions, again and again. Chloe stopped asking but Lex didn't, even knowing. Wanting Clark to tell him; telling Clark what he knew. He didn't really need to bring the briefcase; Clark already knew what Lex knew, if he only thought about it a little. "I wasn't born here," he says. "Not on Earth. I was born somewhere else."
"Krypton," Lex says in a low sigh, and then he relaxes, the rigid fierce tension draining out of him like a plug was pulled. His shoulders slump as Clark draws away.
"How'd you know—"
"It's all in there." Lex waves at the briefcase, turning back toward Clark. In the yellow glow he's smiling, not a smirk, not the faked innocent concern he had greeted Clark with this evening. An old smile, like he's looking at Clark over a silly mochaccino across a table at the Talon.
"But I'm not like that anymore," Clark says. "I'm just a normal guy, now. Nothing special about me." And this could be normal, too, like it once was, with no secrets left between them.
Except Lex shakes his head. "'No," he says. "You're never not going to be special. Any more than I could ever be normal," and he runs one hand over his bald pate, a self-conscious gesture Clark hasn't seen him make in years.
It doesn't sound like a threat but Clark isn't sure what it does sound like. Except that Lex isn't giving it up after all, and he should have expected that but still. "Lex..."
That smile keeps playing on Lex's lips, a little too gentle to be mocking. "No one normal could forgive what I've done that quickly or that easily."
Clark blinks, and like that the stitch in his side lets go and he can breathe freely. "But someone as special as Lex Luthor shouldn't apologize so quickly, should he? It's only us normal people who can say sorry without anybody thinking we're weak, or something stupid like that."
"Clark." Lex is still smiling, like he can't help it. Clark hasn't seen his mouth twist like that in a long time and he realizes that he missed it. He missed it like now he misses throwing a football across the whole farm. Then Lex grows serious, forces away the humor until he looks like he has been looking lately, since he took command of LuthorCorp, older than his years, so mature that no one remembers he's ten or twenty or thirty years younger than nearly any of his business peers. "Clark, I want you to look through the briefcase anyway. And I do want you to show it to your parents. You have to decide exactly how much you want to forgive me for. After that you can—"
"After that, I'm going to come over to the castle and tell you everything you didn't put in the briefcase. Because you're going to be there and not in Metropolis, right?"
Lex breathes out. "I suppose I will be." He turns away, steps out of the circle of dim light into the night. "Make sure you look at everything."
"Why, are you going to give me a pop quiz?"
"It wouldn't be a pop quiz if I warned you about it, would it," Lex said, but he sounds like he's trying to be teasing and is failing; sounds as tired as Clark, though as far as Clark knows he's usually up this late. It never really occurred to Clark to wonder about that before, how late Lex is always up, though he's usually at the plant first thing in the morning. Clark never needed more than a few hours of sleep a night himself, before.
Clark thinks of the scotch on Lex's breath; thinks of the Porsche, or Ferrari, or Aston Martin, or whatever fast car he's got parked around the bend, and how he likes to accelerate on turns and brake just for the shriek of the tires. Thinks about today and being helpless as those guys stood over his mom and dad and Lana, and even with no meteor rock around he still couldn't do anything; thinks about how almost four years ago he would have died on the bridge, and Lex would have died, if he had been then what he is now. "Lex, maybe you should just stay overnight—"
"As thrilled as I'm sure your parents would be to have me for breakfast," Lex says, and he doesn't sound like he's trying to joke now, sounds more like he's trying not to laugh, "I'll pass. After everything that's happened tonight, Clark, you have a lot to think about."
Over his shoulder he gives Clark a look, not saying anything, not even smiling exactly, but a look that makes Clark's ears burn hot because Lex is looking through him; Lex can see the truth about him and Lana the same as he saw Clark's other secrets, and is telling him so, as he told him about the others. The silver briefcase behind him is only a symbol; if he listens, Lex had always told him everything he knows.
Everything that's happened. Lana, accepting warmth and small soft curves, sweet and wonderful; Lex's fist splitting his lip, the taste of blood in his mouth and the ache of his bruised knuckles: two of the most real things he's ever felt, and Clark wonders if he'll ever be able to separate one from the other. He'd gotten used to his crazy vision and his super-hearing, but he wonders if normal humans always feel things, not just pain but everything, as clearly as this. Wonders how they bear it, if they do.
Lex is out the door, his black suit blending into the night. Clark, ducking outside, can just barely make out the pale curve of his head in the starlight. "I'll see you tomorrow, Lex," he says, raising his voice a little.
Lex doesn't stop, but he calls back, "I'll see you, Clark," and it's like how it once was, and that feels better, more normal, more real, than anything else tonight.