Work Text:
The first sign was subtle.
Real Estate.
Clark doesn't keep up with that kind of thing. Lois loves it, is always flipping through the classifieds or the glossy catalogs of houses they have in the stands in front of restaurants and bodegas. She can skim through a listing in ten seconds or less and either condemn it as overpriced with a click of her tongue or a sweet deal with a low whistle.
And when she's really bored at work, which is any day that she has to write and not put her life in danger or hack into people's private social media for leads, she will cruise international listings on different websites.
It was one such day, while she's stuck waiting for a phone call back from Metropolis General Hospital, that she notices something that makes her straight up like a bird-dog catching a scent.
"What?" Clark asks, already feeling the pit of his stomach lock up. Because nothing sane or safe ever follows that kind of look.
"It's Luthor," she murmurs and his stomach knots up.
Jesus. Nothing good has ever followed Lex's name out of Lois's mouth.
"What about him?" Clark asks.
God, what mess is Lex making this time? It took forever to track down all the illegal guns he snuck into countless rival gangs and rebel groups across the world just to kickstart a domino effect that somehow drove Lexcorp stock up three hundred and twelve points in an hour.
"His apartment in Tokyo is up for sale," she says, brow furrowing as she types furiously at her computer.
"Okay," says Clark. "And?"
"He's had that apartment since 2002. It was the second place he ever bought for himself, right after the Metropolis Penthouse. Why would he sell it?"
"Why does Lex do anything?" Clark asks, feeling the first prickles of discomfort.
They've fallen into an unspoken pact of mutual destruction over the years in regards to Clark's civilian identity. Lex knows crossing the line into hurting Clark's friends and family would mean pushing Clark over the line of not killing or permanently injuring someone. So they choose to ignore each other entirely when Clark is out of the suit, which — good.
It's painful enough interacting with Lex through the distance of the Superman persona. He doesn't really know how to be Just Clark around him anymore.
"For profit," Lois answers and uh oh the pen cap is headed for her teeth. "And yet, he sold it at a loss. To some family. Hold on, let me check something."
Clark lowers his blocks, extends his hearing past the Planet, looking for something -- anything -- to get him out of this conversation. A lost child. A car wreck. A cat in a tree.
"Oh shit, he sold the Milan house last week. And the Paris apartment three days ago. The Montana ranch is also up for sale and the vineyard in Cyprus."
"How do you know where all his houses are?" Clark demands.
Lois waves that away. "Because usually when he buys property somewhere, something shady starts getting built within a twenty mile radius. Listen, he is selling everything but his place here."
She leans back in her chair, chewing mercilessly at the pen cap. "Why?
"Maybe he needs to liquidate for something," Clark suggests reluctantly. "A quick injection of a millions somewhere?"
It sounds like something Superman is going to have to deal with later.
Hell.
"Maybe," Lois says, that dreamy, vague tone meaning her mind is traveling far far from here and Clark won't get a sensible word out of her for the next few hours at least.
The answer comes just four days later. Lexcorp unveils the new Lilian Luthor Cancer Foundation and graces it with a check worth enough keep it funded for the next ten years even without any other donations.
"What the hell is this?" Lois mutters after she and Olsen stomp back from the charity dinner. "Is he making another election bid? Is this a tax thing?"
Clark's already been at the Fortress running his own investigation. There's a couple hot spots for potential illegal experimentation he's been keeping his eye on the last few months. Both have gone dark, shuttered up or disappeared.
"I have on idea," he says, the unease tightening inside.
Lois chews at the side of her mouth for a moment before brightening. "Maybe he's dying!"
"He's not dying," Clark snaps, the remains of an old hurt stirring up.
"You're probably right," sighs Lois. "The man is a cockroach in both survival skills and personality. A shame."
Maybe he's dying!
It echos in his head the rest of the day. Lois's instincts are almost never wrong and it's stirring up the remains of an old hurt like a dust devil. But even if Lex isn't dying (and he's not) something strange is happening. Lois isn't wrong about that.
He ends up spending his evening going through Olsen's photos, uploaded into the shared file system, scanning each for some kind of clue.
It's typical fair. Lex stands against a podium, a huge banner stretched out behind him with the Lilian Luthor Cancer Foundation emblazoned in beautiful script, framed by the logo of a ribbon made of lily petals. He's dressed in another sharp, perfectly tailor suit, dark as an ink stain and makes his pale complexion bright as the moon. Clark skims over the close ups of Lex's face because it still hurts to look at it, to feel the echo of comfort and familiarity at the sight of it that lingers against all odds and twenty years.
He studies the backgrounds instead. Olsen had stood just to the left of the stage and some of his camera angles glimpsed the backstage. The outline of Mercy hovers in the shadow and in her hands is something black and strangely shaped and --
A sharp inhale. Clark nearly cracks the mouse in his suddenly spasming grip.
It's a cane. She's holding a cane.
He scrolls back to the close up photos. It's hard to tell at first, but there's a fine layer of make up on Lex's face, especially under his eyes. Which shouldn't be unusual for a photo-op. Clark has long since given up the delusion that men on screen never wore make up, especially after his short and disastrous stint on TV himself. But makeup hides, which means there is something to hide.
What could he possibly hide? Lex doesn't get sick and his healing factor protects him from just about any life threatening injury.
Clark swallows but the knob of worry in his throat doesn't leave.
From funding lobbyists fighting for all kinds of restrictive laws for Meta Humans and to arguing passionately in front of Congress to arrest Superman and throw away the key, Lex has made sure he and Superman will go down in history as the bitterest of enemies.
By contrast, Lex and Clark have a cordial, professional acquaintanceship. Lex will occasionally call on Clark during press conferences and has even sat for an interview once or twice. He provides helpful, forthcoming answers to any questions pertaining to his business rivals -- also very convenient, being directly across the street.
Clark showing up in the suit gets an immediate banishment, helped along with sight lasers from kryptonite guns hidden in the walls and ceilings. But Clark in his Daily Planet uniform of rumpled slacks and a baggy button-down is granted a short wait in the reception area before a meeting with Lex.
(Even now, after all these years and all their animosity, Lex makes time for him. It's something Clark tries hard not to think about).
The cognitive dissonance between how Lex treats Clark in his different personas makes his head swim so he doesn't try to dissect it too much. Chloe said a psychologist would have an absolute field day with the way Lex can compartmentalize.
Clark reminded her the last psychologist Lex allowed in his life tried to drug him into insanity. She didn't continue that train of thought.
So the day after Clark discovers the cane, he pops up to Lex's office on his lunch break. He made sure to wear the shirt with the faded mustard stain on the collar, usually hidden by his sport coat. The more pathetic Clark looks, the more it seems to disarm Lex. He probably likes the reminder that only Superman is self-assured in his purpose and Clark is barely holding it together most days.
It always sends a pang through him when he steps into Lex's office and sees the same vision of Lex sitting at his desk in front of his laptop, a pen twirling in his hand sometimes, or a drink nearby, as Clark did after school in 2002.
"Clark," says Lex, looking up, expression pleasantly neutral. It's an expression Clark hates more than the rage Superman sees more often than not. At least the hate is honest. "An unexpected pleasure."
And God, its almost unbelievable that he could remember a time when Lex would say that unironically.
Usually Lex stands up to greet him; both out of ingrained etiquette and to corral Clark away from the desk before he can see anything too incriminating on Lex's computer. But today Lex remains sitting, gesturing at the chairs in front of his desk in invitation.
It sends a prick of unease through Clark, this tiny change in their routine. He doesn't sit, instead choosing to stand behind the chair and rest his hands on the back. Sitting down feels too close to . . .a time they can never go back to.
"What brings you here?" Lex asks, closing the lid of his laptop and steepling his fingers. Sure enough, his eyes catch on the mustard stain and lingers there for a moment.
Clark twitches his hand, slows time down enough to take a good, long look at Lex's face. There, under the concealer, are dark shadows around his eyes. A faint tremor shakes his jawline.
"Lois covered your new foundation," he says, not sure how to start. "I just want to know . . .if everything's alright. With you."
Lex's eyes narrow. Even an innocent inquiry is met with suspicion. Clark lost the benefit of the doubt a long time ago. But then again, so did Lex.
"And why would something be amiss?" Lex asks.
Clark fights against the urge to fidget.
"It's a bit unusual for you, is all," he says.
"What — charity work? Luthorcorp donates almost ten million a year —"
"Yeah for tax write-offs or good publicity or some other trade-off," Clark snaps because Lex was so good at looking good, and it just makes all the pain and cruelty Superman uncovers even more infuriating because Lex could be so much better than this if he would only —
"You seriously think that's what this is?" His eyes narrow in a viscous glare. "My mother died of cancer, Clark, which you damn well know about —"
And it's so rare for Lex to mention anything about their past history together that Clark stands in wordless shock as Lex barrels on.
" — which makes this visit pretty ghoulish, even for you. If you want to accuse me of doing something nefarious, you can do it in the suit. I've had enough of them coming out of Clark Kent's mouth to last me a lifetime."
"Hey, I didn't accuse of you anything —" Clark cries, mouth finally catching up.
"Yet," Lex interrupts. "Why else would you be here? I'm just beating you to it."
"There is something going on." The leather creaks dangerously under his hands. "It doesn't have to be nefarious. But you're selling off your international properties. And if cancer research was so near and dear to your heart, why did it take so long to do something with it? Why now? What's going on, Lex?"
The anger recedes from Lex's gaze, replaced by something even worse: cold hard neutrality. He relaxes against his chair but Clark's not naive enough to see it as a victory.
"Priorities change when you grow up, Clark," Lex drawls. "You should try it sometime."
"That's what this is? You're just getting older?" says Clark skeptically.
Lex shrugs. "We can't all be ageless Kryptonians."
"Is that why you have a cane?"
Lex has a perfect poker face but not even he can hide the sudden tightening of his posture, the spike of his pulse. The hitched breath.
"I don't have a cane," he says with the perfect mix of derision and confusion.
Clark doesn't bother looking; there's too many lead-lined safes in his office.
"Not in here, maybe. But it was in the photos of your press release. Backstage."
"Whatever you thought you saw, Clark, it was not a cane and it certainly wasn't mine. Now if you're finished with this pointless visit about your delusions, you can get the hell out."
There it is, that cold dismissal that Clark loathes more than all the rage and insults and derision that Lex throws at him.
He leaves with a knot in his stomach, more worried than ever.
The next step comes from Lois. She pokes him in the ear with her pen while he's typing diligently on his story, snorting at how he jerks back with enough force to send his chair rolling back into Olsen's desk with a faint crack.
"Lois, what the hell?" he says scrubbing at his ear furiously as he scoots back to his computer.
"Lex has his own doctors, right?" Lois says, completely unrepentant.
" . . .yes." His hackles raise up.
"And doctors keep records, right? Even if they're privately employed."
"Lois," Clark says warningly.
"You should hack into Luthor's medical records and see what's going on."
Clark stares. "Do you have any idea how violating that is for his privacy? As well as illegal?"
He glances around the office but it's close enough to lunch time that most people have deserted their posts.
"Oh please! That man has never once given a single fuck about your privacy!" Lois scoffs. "Didn't he build like a whole gay shrine to you when you were a teenager?"
Clark nearly chokes on his own spit. "God — okay, yeah, but — you don't have to say it like that."
"I call it as I see it," she says with a shrug. "Clark, if something really is wrong with him, this could be the story of the decade."
He knows Lois as deeply as one person can know another person. So he understands that her tunnel vision about a scoop doesn't preclude her from empathy. Still, the callousness of turning Lex's potential medical nightmare into a story makes him wince.
"If something is wrong with him then I need to find it out and fix it," he says, tone veering sharp.
She blinks at him. "Well, yeah. I figured that. And then its the story of the decade. And if you want to find out and fix it, then I think you know what you need to do . . ."
Well, he is not hacking into Lex's personal medical records to find out what's wrong.
Bruce is.
Even in the mask, Clark can see the exasperation Bruce levels at him at the request.
"You have the most advanced supercomputer in the world," Bruce says slowly, as if Clark forgot.
"I know," Clark says, fighting a flush. Because he didn't exactly forget but its like when his parents got their first computer and his dad avoided it entirely. He knew how to turn it on and use it, but he hated even acknowledging it's existence. The super advanced tech in the fortress makes Clark feel the same discomfort he can't shake. Like it's unnatural.
"I don't trust Jor-El with anything related to Lex," he adds and hopes it sounds convincing enough. "He can hold a long grudge for an AI."
Bruce sighs. "Alright. I'll see what I can find. I have to admit, I'm a little curious myself. He's making things absurdly easy for Wayne Enterprises. I don't know what game he's playing."
Three nights later he appears in Clark's apartment through the back window in full Batman regalia and scares the living daylights out of him.
"You have a key," Clark snaps, bending down to pick up the shards of the glass he had shattered when he jerked in shock.
True to form, Bruce does not acknowledge this.
"I didn't find anything," says Bruce, slapping down a thin manila folder on the table. "Not anything recent. He scans himself regularly for cancer and all screenings have come back negative, as recently as a month ago. There are multiple surgeries and gunshot wounds in his history, but his healing factor has ensured that none of those are causing complications down the road."
Clark dumps the remains of the glass into his trashcan. "I don't understand. There's something going on, I just know it. I can feel it."
"I believe you," says Bruce. "He canceled a meeting with my CFO yesterday and that's never happened. Say what you want about his tactics but he has good business etiquette. He'd never blow off an important meeting, especially one he set up."
Clark runs a hand through his hair and sighs. "I don't know what else to do."
"There's nothing else to do, except watch and wait."
So Clark watches and waits. He sneaks out onto the roof during his lunch hour and tries to scan his vision through Lex's office windows, the only part not lined in lead. They are tinted with a mirror finish so it gives Clark a headache if he stares too long. Nothing of note happens, except that Lex sits the vast majority of the time. Sometimes he will roll his chair back to the window and stare out of it for long moments, gaze resting on the Daily Planet more often than not.
Luthercorp itself is quiet. No deals, no reports published from their labs, no meetings with other companies, no press releases, no interviews. Not even social media updates.
For two weeks it's radio silence and Lois tearing her hair out. Two weeks of the pit in Clark's stomach growing heavier and heavier, doom collecting like rain in a barrel.
So it's almost a relief when Lex collapses while walking down the stairs of his private jet. Photos splash all over the Inquisitor's social media less than an hour later and Lois is furious enough to develop her own heat vision.
"I knew I should have stalked that man," she hisses, holding he neck of her beer in a death grip. She tips it to her mouth in a long chug that would put a frat boy to shame. "But I didn't want to lower myself to the level of fucking TMZ and you said that there was nothing in his medical files!"
She swings an accusatory look his way.
"There wasn't!"
But he can't stop staring at the photo of Lex crumbled at the bottom of the stairs. Lex didn't fall. He didn't trip. He always knew exactly how to move his body —
Lois sucks her teeth. "That just means he either had it scrubbed or he didn't document it at all. And that means . . . ." She bites her lip. "I don't know what that means, actually. But I don't think it's good. There's a purpose for a medical record. It's a reference."
"He's not dying," Clark snaps.
Lois raises her brow. "I didn't say he was. This time."
And yet medical records are a reference. A reference for the future. And if Lex wiped his or refused one to be recorded altogether then he must not expect to need it in the future . . .
"Any word on his condition?" he asks.
"Mercy Graves says he's stable. That's all anybody knows since he was carried into his private lab in Luthorcorp Tower and she's on guard with a gun and no fucks to give."
Mercy Graves carries both normal and kryptonite guns, so any surveillance is out. Not to mention that Lex has certain rooms in Luthorcorp tower with kryptonite ground and embedded in the paint. He wouldn't be surprised if Lex chose to recover in one of them, just as a personal fuck you to Superman.
The next morning Luthorcorp stock drops almost three hundred points as news of Lex's condition spreads. Clark hears wild rumor after wild rumor: from Lex had gotten stoned out of his mind on hallucinogenic shrooms to Lex was shot with a poisoned dart from Lucius Fox for missing their meeting to Lex is dying of five different kinds of cancers simultaneously.
Nothing close to the truth, though Clark had no idea what the truth could even be. He knew Lionel was dying of a liver disease while in prison. Maybe it was genetic. Maybe Lex got it from how much he always drinks.
Yet if it had progressed this far then wouldn't it be in his medical files?
Clark pours over them again last night, still sitting on his kitchen table where Bruce left it. It stretched all the way back to the mid eighties, before the meteor shower. Most things Clark already knew — like the asthma that plagued Lex all through childhood until the meteor shower. The electroshock therapy, which Clark still flinches at the mention of. The car accident, the memory sending another sharp pang in his chest.
But there are parts that shock him: Three months of daily dialysis for poison that summer after Clark's junior year, when he had been stuck as Kal El. The poisoning had happened the same day as Lionel's trial that Clark testified in.
A shooting on Christmas Eve 2005 that permanently paralyzed Lex and left him in a three day coma, and the experimental surgery that saved him at great risk of his life.
Clark had been running around Metropolis playing Santa and Lex had been dying.
Of course, Lex's actual death is not in his medical file, only his injuries sustained when the Fortress collapsed on him. According to the file, he had been in an induced coma for three years before getting a heart transplant and waking up.
Still, there is nothing in his file that Lex hasn't completely recovered from, according to his doctors. He's the picture of health.
Clark sets the file down and rests his face in his hands.
Lex stays in the hospital for almost two weeks. He has open heart surgery. Clark keeps his distance, despite everything in him screaming to go talk to Lex, because he doesn't want to be added stress in what is apparently a weak heart even though nothing in Lex's files could possibly suggest he had such a thing.
Lois has stopped chasing the story, which worries Clark more than it relieves him. As each day passes, the dread grows dense and heavy in his gut, a grenade that he's swallowed. There's nothing he can do but wait out its inevitable explosion. But its the wait itself that feels more deadly. That is slowly choking him. He runs himself ragged at night, flying to the other side of the world and throwing himself into landslides and floods and avalanches and gang wars.
And then, two weeks since Lex's collapse, a nondescript envelope shows up at Clark's apartment. It's an appointment with a lawyer. To discuss transferring the ownership of the Smallville plant.
To Clark.
He stares at it uncomprehendingly until his phone buzzes in his pocket. He takes it out with numb fingers and only because it's Bruce's special ringtone, a Morse code of buzzes that spell out B-A-T
"Hello?"
"Explain to me why Lucius Fox is currently in talks with Lex's board about the acquisition of Luthorcorp," Bruce says without preamble.
"What?" Clark yelps.
"He's selling Luthor Corp to Wayne Enterprises, Clark. For a pittance."
"I just got a letter that he's giving me the Smallville plant," Clark says, feeling a wavy of dizzy panic grip him. He has to brace himself against the wall, the plaster cracking under his hand. "I don't understand, Bruce."
"Clark." Bruce voice turns uncharacteristically gentle.
Its never good when Bruce goes gentle. He knows exactly what Bruce is going to say with a sudden, deadly clarity and yet he has no idea how to stop it.
"These are the actions of someone who does not expect to live."
"There's nothing wrong," Clark cries. "His files —"
"They're not putting it in his files," Bruce says slowly, like he's trying to explain something to a child.
It makes Clark so incandescently angry that he hangs up on Bruce and only years of mastering his self control keeps him from crushing the phone in his hand.
Clark blows off the appointment with the lawyer. Doesn't even consider it. Instead he heads to Lex's office, where he's still holding meetings as the transfer of Luthorcorp to Wayne Enterprises makes the whole tower buzz like an overturned beehive.
He speeds past everyone, barreling his way through the door in a blink before Mercy even knows he's there to point a gun at.
The wave of kryptonite pain does not hit him as he expects once he crosses the threshold. He figured Lex would pad the place out after their last argument. But the sight of Lex in a wheelchair by the seating area stops him just as cold in his tracks.
A wheelchair.
"Lex?" Clark's voice is little more than a harsh breath.
Lex meets his gaze and looks utterly unsurprised to see Clark standing here. Now the signs of illness are unmistakable in the tired tilt of Lex's eyes, the thin frame his suits hang loose upon. The wan and pale color.
Clark takes shaking steps towards him.
"Lex, what the hell is this?" he demands, holding up the letter.
"An appointment you missed. You know the polite thing to do is call if you're going to cancel," says Lex mildly.
"You're giving me the Smallville plant."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"It's the lifeblood of that town, Clark. You're someone I know won't dismantle and sell it piecemeal to the highest bidder."
Clark swallows against the sudden lump in his throat.
"I don't want it."
"I don't really care," says Lex, matter of fact. "You're the only one I trust with it."
"Lex. Why can't you keep it running?"
Of all the expressions Lex has given him — hate and bitterness and twisted delight in Clark's suffering — this soft, tender sorrow is the most painful.
Its the look you give someone when you're about to break their heart as gently as possible.
"You were right, Clark. There is something wrong with me. And I'm dying from it."
Lois knew it. Bruce knew it. The Inquisitor knew it. Hell even the stock market knew it. But to hear it confirmed from Lex's own mouth flays him wide open. He can't comprehend it. He doesn't want to.
"What do you mean?"
"What the hell do you think I mean?" Lex sighs, the same kind of tired Clark's mom had in her last days. "I don't have much time left. Days maybe. That's why you need to meet with Mr. Asbury as soon as possible."
"How? What's happening?" Clark demands.
Lex just shakes his head. "It's not something I'm willing to explain. It just is."
"That's bullshit," Clark snaps.
But Lex just shrugs. "I know my fate, Clark. You don't have to like it or understand it, but that wont stop it from coming."
He leans forward and takes a manila envelope from the coffee table and holds it out. "Here. I was going to call you this afternoon to give this to you."
Clark eyes it like a bomb. "What is it?"
"What your mother bequeathed me in her will," says Lex cryptically. He waves it. "Take it."
The words don't compute for a moment. Mom gave Lex something in her will? Morbid curiosity forces Clark's hand more than any sense of obedience.
"Look, I wish I had more time to talk, but there's a lot I need to get done while I still have the strength to do it," says Lex. "Come see me tonight at the apartment if you have the time. All the kryptonite is gone."
"I — okay." Clark swallows back the dread and fear that wraps like a hand around his throat.
The envelope is light, the weight concentrated on one end so its not paper. Postcards, maybe? They're roughly the right shape. But how would Lex send postcards to Mom without anyone else knowing? Why would he want to?
He could x-ray it on the subway ride home but he doesn't dare. It's sad and pathetic of him but the envelope scares Clark more than all the kryptonite weapons that Lex has created. It sits on the kitchen table all through dinner prep — interrupted by two nearby muggings — and Lois's subsequent crashing of said dinner, just as Clark had a feeling she would.
"They're not saying what it is," Lois says as she shuts the door, tossing her purse on the couch like she lives here, "but Luthorcorp has released a statement saying that Lex is fighting some kind of illness and he'll be right as rain after his treatment runs his course. That's why he's in a —"
"Wheelchair," Clark finishes, dumping the frozen stir fry vegetables in the pan. "I saw him today."
Lois cocks a perfectly manicured eyebrow. "He let you in?"
"He tried to give me the Smallville plant so he was probably expecting me." Clark stabs at the frozen clump with a little more force than necessary.
"The Smallville plant? To you? Why the hell would he do that?"
"Because he's —"
The wooden spatula cracks and splinters in his grasp. Lois hip checks him out from in front of the pan.
"Give me that," she says, taking the remains of the spatula out of his hands and tossing it in the trash. "Go sit down."
She shoos Clark to the table before scrounging in his utensil drawer for another spatula. The envelope sits inches from his hands. Curiosity and dread rush and pull at him. He forces his gaze to Lois instead, who has tossed her blazer on the other chair and rolled up her sleeves. She reaches out to the fridge and digs for a soy sauce bottle, uncaps it with her teeth, and starts pouring.
"Lois — " he says helplessly. "That's too much. You're going to make it inedible."
"No — splinters were going to make it inedible," she huffs, but she sets the bottle down.
Without asking and with only minimal complaint, Lois finishes dinner. It's a rare sight, especially now that they've broken up. But even when he lived with her, she insisted he cook because she wasn't a "fifties housewife" and he was glad to comply because Lois's cooking could kill a non-Kryptonian.
Even though the salt factor nearly makes his hair stand on end, Clark shovels a dutifully grateful mouthful.
Lois, pointedly does not touch her own bowl.
"What's that," she asks, nodding at the envelope. "Is that the deed to the plant?"
"No." Clark flinches from the sight of it. "It's . . .something Mom left for Lex in her will. He wants me to have it."
"Martha gave something to Lex?" She pushes her bowl to the side and reaches for the envelope. Without asking, of course, because why would she?
Not that Clark protests as she slices it open with one dangerously sharp fingernail. He doesn't think he has the courage to do it himself. Into her hand slides a small stack of . . .photographs. Clark can see the date of the last one written in pen in his mother's handwriting — 10 - 14 - 2002 — and his stomach clenches. He'd rather eat another spoonful of inedible stir fry, which he does.
"Whose the kid?" Lois asks.
A flutter of anxiety.
"What kid?" he asks.
She hands over the first picture and Clark goes very still, like the photograph is a predator who can sense movement.
It's Ryan. Ryan on the hospital bed, comics fanned around him, Clark and Lex sitting on either side like guard dogs.
The sight of knocks the breath from him like a sucker punch. He hasn't seen Ryan's face since the funeral. Where they used this exact photo.
All of a sudden Clark can't breathe and he has to stand up, shoving away from the table so fast that the chair wobbles and only the minute flash of his hand steadies it.
"It was a friend I had a long time ago," he says, throat tight. "He died."
"Oh."
The slight drag of glossy paper tells Clark Lois is flipping through the rest. He's too cowardly to ask what's in them, not if just the first one made him feel this unmoored. After a few minutes he hears the blessed noise of Lois stuffing them back into the envelope, the relief in his chest the same as when someone puts the kryptonite back into it's lead box.
Lex's lead box. A gift from his mother.
"Lex really is dying, isn't he?"
It's not in Lois's nature to be gentle. She's not good at it so she doesn't often try. But her voice has softened into rare tenderness and that makes it more real than Clark can handle right now.
"So he says. But you know Lex . . ." Clark swallows tightly. "It could all be part of some scheme. Some plan."
"Must be a hell of a gamble to sell off Luthorcorp to Bruce," she says knowingly.
Clark shrugs. "I'm sure we'll see it his real goal play out sooner or later."
Footsteps and then a hands wrapped around his waist for behind, her face pressed between his shoulder blades.
"Clark," she says, so soft.
She doesn't say anything else. She doesn't have to. Clark knows exactly what she would say anyway and she knows it.
After she leaves, having taken three bites of overly salty stir fry that he later incinerates all evidence of, Clark sits out on the fire escape. The constant noise of the city engulfs him like a cocoon. Usually when he needs a quiet moment of contemplation he flies out into the heartland and finds a quiet field or a big tree and flops down. Even years after his move to the city, his heart feels the most quiet when he's touching grass somewhere, where the sound of birds or crickets drowns out the occasional car. Metropolis is bright and exciting and fun — but never peaceful.
But tonight Clark doesn't want to hear his own thoughts. He welcomes the noise, sinks into it like a bath, and watches Lex's apartment building until the top floor lights up.
All the kryptonite is gone.
It would be the perfect trap.
The realization hits him, makes him perk his head up.
I'm dying, Clark. Come to my stronghold where I've spent years embedding it with everything that could possibly kill you but I got rid of it all. Pinky Promise.
And then Clark walks into an ambush.
Its flawless.
Pretending to by dying, selling off his company -- it's a huge risk. But Lex always played with risk.
He shoots up into the sky without a second thought, still dressed in his work clothes. If its an ambush Lex wants, it's an ambush he'll get. He braces himself for the special burn of kryptonite as he nears the penthouse terrace. But it doesn't come. Not when he touches down in the gravel lined garden. Not when he approaches the unlocked French doors. Not when he steps inside Lex's spotless living room.
It's absence frightens Clark more than its presence. He scans through the walls, despite the lead-lining still remaining, hoping to see the trap before it springs.
Nothing.
When Lex steps into the room from the hallway, Clark braces himself for a gun or a smoke bomb or a small army of kryptonite outfitted bodyguards.
But all he carries is a thick folder and a wan smile at the sight of Clark.
"I was worried you wouldn't come." he said, making his way towards the couch. "Sit. Please."
Clark sits on the couch across from him, a set up close to the fireplace so painfully reminiscent of the study in the mansion.
"Since you wouldn't meet with Mr. Asbury, I took it upon myself to get the paperwork," says Lex, setting the manila folder down.
So it's not an ambush. It's not even personal, just a business meeting, even after giving Clark those photos. The realization sends cracks through Clark's chest, broken ice. It's a new hurt to join the conflicting maelstrom of emotions threatening to break loose in him. A twisted sense of betrayal.
"I told you I don't want it," Clark snaps.
"I know, Clark." Lex sighs and leans forward, elbows braced on his knees. "But I need you to take it. I want to leave Smallville in good hands," he continues softly. " . . .Please."
There's no kryptonite. No trap. No scheme. Just Lex, with no make up to the cover the dark circles under his eyes, the tight creases at the corner, the sallow dullness of his skin. The way his usually flawless posture folds like wet cardboard.
Lex is dying.
Lex is dying.
"Will you please just tell me what's wrong," Clark begs. "What's going on?"
Lex shakes his head. "There's no point in telling you. It won't change anything."
And just like that, anger ignites in him. An old familiar rage at Lex's stubborn refusal to the sane thing, the right thing. The thing that makes fucking sense.
"Yes it can! I can help you if you'd just swallow your pride and tell me what the fuck is happening to you!"
And usually when Clark gets pissed, Lex gets pissed right back, gets in Clark's face, throws out devastating one-liners that echo in Clark's head for weeks.
But tonight there is no fury sparking behind Lex's eyes. No hate. No disdain.
There's just nothing.
"You can't help me, Clark," he says with all the resigned patience of a parent dealing with a toddler's tantrum.
"Then I'll find someone who can," Clark snaps. "Just tell me."
"If there was anyone who could help me, don't you think I would have tried?"
"You never came to me!"
"Because you can't fix it," Lex cries. "You can't save everyone, Clark. Some people are just beyond your help. I thought you would have learned that by now— "
That photo flashes in his head; Ryan in the hospital bed, comics fanned around him. It's a low blow, cruel in its accuracy, but Clark doesn't have time to get angry because coughs start wracking Lex's body. He doubles over, slight frame shaking in his loose suit.
"Lex!" Clark darts over to him, pulling Lex close against his chest to try and stabilize his body. He's so bony and frail that Clark's almost afraid to touch him. His bones feel as soft and brittle as balsa wood.
Eventually the coughing peters out to labored breathing. Clark can only rub soothingly up and down Lex's back. It's the first time they have touched each other in . . . years. Too many years. When Lex pulls back , the stain of drool left behind on Clark's white shirt is stained pink.
The sight of it sends a bolt of pure, unadulterated panic in Clark. The kind he hasn't felt since he was a child, staring down at the waterlogged body beneath him and pressing on that chest and begging —
Don't die on me!
"Let me take you to the Fortress," Clark says, struggling to keep his voice even. He's stayed calm in the face wildfires and the devastating aftermath of mudslides and hurricanes and the impending doom of tornadoes and tsunamis and yet the sight of that pink stain is sending hysteria crawling up his throat. "I'll sign your stupid paperwork if you come with me."
Lex should be crowing victory, jumping for joy, wearing an unbearable smirk at the offer of setting foot in the one place he'd never managed to penetrate ever since the first time despite many valiant efforts.
Instead he shakes his head.
"It would be pointless."
"Let me make it more clear," says Clark. "I'm taking you to the Fortress regardless. If you don't fight me on it, then I'll sign you paperwork."
Their gazes clash, a stalemate of mulish obstinacy that neither one had ever voluntarily broken — until Lex breaks his gaze away and sighs.
"Alright. Fuck. Alright. You win, Clark."
But Clark doesn't feel victorious as he zooms into Lex's room and snatches up the cashmere throw folded at the foot of the bed. Instead he feels like he's three seconds from hyperventilating. Lex, true to his word, does not fuss as Clark wraps him up in a blanket and then zips back into the closet to rummage for a beanie before hoisting Lex into his arms like a sick toddler and taking off into the sky.
The cold rush of air does little to dampen the terror raging in his chest. Lex's clings to him tightly, face pressed into the crook of Clark's neck. His heart is beating like a wild horse, panicked and unsteady, the rhythm stuttering and flickering. Clark tightens his grip.
"It's alright, I've got you," says Clark, but the wind snatches his words away. So he tightens his grip, places one hand on the back of Lex's head, thumb brushing the delicate skin of his neck.
A minute later has Clark bursting through the door.
"Jor-El!" He yells before the AI can start a conniption fit over the man shivering in his arms. "I need you too run a full diagnostic on Lex Luthor."
Jor-El could have a visual avatar but chooses not to. Jor-El does not have feelings, whether he would want them or not. Jor-El is also not truly Clark's father in an meaning of the word.
And yet the silence that follows is the exact same pointed exasperation that Dad had when Clark told him he was joining the football team no matter what.
Clark ignores it, just as he ignored his own dad's fury, and carries Lex into the med-bay. A softly cushioned bed sits in the middle, surrounded by crystals and and light and nothing that resembles a control board in any way. Lex barely looks around. He curls in on himself in the cold as Clark adjusts the blankets and pulls the beanie down to cover Lex's ears.
"Start diagnostics now."
The process takes fifteen minutes and that's because Clark forced Jor-El to be thorough. Lex barely moves or pays attention to the soft blue lights that cascade over his body, the holographic projection of his vitals that hover over their heads. Even though the scientist in him should be in slack-jawed awe. He doesn't bat an eyelash when Clark takes a vial of blood — just drapes his arm out from under the blanket. Clark doesn't even need x-ray vision to find the veins that stand out so starkly against Lex's pale skin. He eases the needle in, gentle as he can, but Lex doesn't flinch at the pinch of it.
The longest part is the waiting as Jor-El processes the information. Clark slips into the bed to curl around Lex, just as he had done with Ryan, to offer some heat through the blanket. To feel the fragile body in his hands while it still breathes.
"Diagnostic complete," says Jor-El, flashing the report in front of Clark.
He reads it in seconds, then goes back and re-reads it.
"I don't understand."
"It's perfectly comprehensible," says Jor-El. "The heart is weakening at a rapid pace and will soon fail altogether."
"I got that part," Clark snaps. "What's the cause?"
"There is no cause."
"How the fuck is there no cause?"
"That I cannot tell you. All other vitals are healthy. There are no signs of abnormalities. The heart itself has no sickness. It is simply . . .dying."
"Then run it again," Clark demands. "Run it until you find something."
"Clark."
Lex's voice is thin and small next to him, pressed into Clark's shoulder.
"It's not going to find anything."
"You don't know that," says Clark tightly. "Jor-El—"
"I do know that." He wheezes a soft cough. "The cause of this is not biological. It's a curse."
Clark's own heart stops, a sharp pause before sputtering back into rhythm.
"A curse," he repeats, pulling back to look at Lex. "Magic?"
Lex nods.
"Where — where did it come from? Who cursed you?"
"Does it matter? All the technological advances of the universe is not going to fix it. You and I have no power over it."
Clark's mind starts to whirl.
"We can . . .we can get you a heart transplant."
"It's not my heart that's cursed, Clark. It's me."
"Why? Lex, what happened?"
Lex shakes his head again and presses his face back into Clark's shoulder. "Please, Clark. Just take me home."
Another shiver wracks through his body and Clark feels the lashing whip of guilt. He can argue with Jor-El and run more tests later.
"Alright."
Clark flies them back to Lex's apartment. He carries Lex bridal style into the bedroom, pulls the covers down, tucks him into bed. Fiddles with the controls of Lex's electric mattress topper until it's gentle heat starts to warm Lex's shuddering body. Takes Lex's shoes off and places them beside the closet door. Fetches a glass of water from the kitchen.
Looks helplessly around the room for more to do and finds nothing.
"Clark."
Lex's voice comes muffled from under the blankets. A pale hand slips out and beckons him, though Clark had moved at the sound of his name. He balances in the narrow slip of bed next to Lex and takes that cool hand in his. Lex wriggles a bit out of his cocoon, the covers falling under his chin. In the dim ambient light from the city, his eyes look pale and ghostly.
"You told me once that you were sorry you couldn't save me," Lex says, voice barely a whisper. "But I shouldn't have been someone you needed to save. I should have been someone you could rely on and instead I become the person you learned to hate and fear." He squeezes Clark's hand. " I have so many regrets, Clark. But you are my biggest one."
Lex once aimed a Kryptonite laser that burned a chunk the size of a dinner plate out of Clark's side. It took a whole day in the med-bay of the Fortress to recover and he missed a deadline on a story that almost got him demoted at work.
He would relieve that a hundred times than to hear one more word.
"Save it," he snaps. "Don't tell me anymore. I'm not going to listen to it."
Hurt shines bright in Lex's gaze before he tilts his head away.
"I deserve that," he says softly and Clark realizes his mistake.
It's the same one he always makes with Lex: lashing out without explanation. Letting his emotions overrun his mouth and good sense.
He reaches out and cups the side of Lex's face, turning that gaze back to him.
"No. Lex, no, that's not --" He exhales, once and sharp. "I've never hated you, Lex. Not ever. Okay? And I'm not -- I'm not giving up. I'm not giving up. I don't care what you or Jor-El or anyone else has to say. I'm going to figure this out, Lex, and you won't need to tell me a dying man's regrets, do you hear me?"
Lex's eyes flit over Clark's face. As if trying to memorize it. "Even if you could figure out a solution, you won't have it in time. I have a few days left, at most. You have a lot of gifts Clark, but you can't stop time."
"I can put you in stasis in the fortress," says Clark.
"And if this wasn't magical in nature, that might actually work. But it's not. And it won't."
Clark' s eyes flutter closed against the wave of despair that hits him. "Lex — just — shut up, okay? I told you. I'm not giving up. And I'm not going to sit here and listen to you —"
It's okay. Clark" Lex says, voice gentling. He squeezes Clark's hand again. "It's okay. You've done all you can. You've tried everything to save you worst enemy just as a hero should. But it's time to let me go, Clark. I created my own undoing. It's no one's fault by my own."
The words fall like little bombs against his chest. It's the exact sentiment Mom tried to tell him after Ryan. That she tried to tell him about herself when the antibiotics stopped working. And despite all the years that separate that heartbreak from this one, the helpless rage and bone-hollow grief remains the same.
"I — I can't," he says, voice cracking. "I can't give up, Lex. Not yet."
Lex's eyes flicker over Clark's face again. Then he swallows.
"When you fail," he says, "will you come see me? I don't want to die alone."
"You're not going to die alone," Clark promises. His thumb brushes lightly over the shadow under Lex's eyes. "That I can promise."
He wants to stay until Lex falls asleep. He wants to stay forever, actually. There's a dark voice whispering in his mind that Lex will die the moment Clark lets him out of his sight. It follows him to the living room where he signs the paperwork to make the transfer of ownership of the Smallville plant official. It haunts him all the way to the Watchtower and not even keeping Lex's weak, fluttering heartbeat in the back of his awareness silences it.
Chloe keeps a meticulous database of anyone with powers or magic, including profiles on anyone who has made themselves an enemy of the Justice League. Clark spends the next few hours scouring it. A handful of magic users pop up but none of their abilities have anything to do with curses.
Or maybe Clark just doesn't really know what to look for.
I'm not giving up he told Lex and yet he's lost when it comes to magic. As Lex said, it's impervious to all the science and technology in the universe. It has its own set of rules that not just Clark finds incomprehensible but also Bruce and Oliver and Bart. The only person who has any real experience with magic is —
Clark's head snaps up. Then he yanks out his cellphone and calls because she carries the same disdain for texting that his mom had before she died.
"Hello?"
Clark's knees almost buckle at the sound of her voice.
"Diana. How soon can you meet me at the Watchtower? I have . . .a really big favor to ask of you."
Diana arrives in under an hour, giving Clark's beyond rumpled work clothes a raised eyebrow. He realizes it's the first time he's ever been out of the suit in the Watchtower. Though everyone knows each other's civilian identities, the League draws strict lines between those aspects of their lives.
She takes one look at him, tilts her head, and her face softens.
"What's wrong, Clark Kent?"
Though Diana shares very few traits with his mother, she can read Clark with the same terrifying accuracy as Martha did. She takes a seat next to him at the computer, old eyes shining in the glow of the screens, and listens as the story comes out in spurts and rambles and choked off sentences.
"You know, many people would consider his death a justice," she says, not unkindly, when Clark finishes. "Especially because it seems to have come about from his own hands. You would be free of him without the guilt of having ended his life. It's not a failure of on your part when he dies."
"I know that rationally," says Clark. "But it doesn't feel that way. I can't just sit back and watch him die. I can't."
Her gaze does not waver and it does not judge. "Do you know why?"
"I — it's wrong," he says, though that's not quite right. "I can't — it's just wrong."
He had two years without Lex once. And the relief of his absence and break from the constant agony that Lex inflicted on his life was eclipsed by the flood of grief that quietly drowned him. He can't go through it again.
I have so many regrets, Clark. But you are my biggest one.
And Lex is his. Countless nights spent those years after Lex's death cataloging his memories, trying to find the moment it all went wrong and seeing so many moments that shamed him. Lex didn't want reconciliation when he returned and Clark couldn't really blame him.
"I see," Diana says, standing up. Though her voice and expression stays neutral, he can feel the disappointment emanating from her. Like he gave a wrong answer in a class discussion.
"Do you know anything?" he asks. "Is there anything you can do?"
She nods.
"There's a . . .hunch I think I will follow," she says slowly. "It may take me a couple of days. She's very hard to track down when she wants to be. I will get in touch when I have more information. And I'll try to be as fast as I can."
The relief that sweeps through him would have put him on his knees if he wasn't already sitting.
"Thank you," he says, standing up to shake her hand. He wants to fall to his knees instead. "I — I know you have no reason to care if he lives or not and it is probably better off for everyone else that he does die but —"
She holds up her other hand and Clark silences himself.
"It matters to you," she says. "So it matters to me. I make no promises, Clark. But I will see what I can do."
Her hand drops, a heavy, reassuring weight, onto his shoulder. "In the meantime, perhaps it would benefit you to find out why he's worth so much effort."
There's nothing left to do but wait. A wise person would sleep, but Clark feels too wired, his thoughts too loud. He'd been through Lex's death once before, he knows exactly what awaits him for the second round, and that's precisely what scares him.
Even his mother's death brought a measure of closure with it, but Lex? There's still so much left unsaid between them. Unfinished. Something's been missing this whole time and Clark still can't figure it out but he thought he had more time.
God. He thought he had more time.
The thought compels him to reach for the photographs one night. To confront the memory of Ryan again. He never even told Lois about him. The boy does not deserve to be forgotten, shoved to the back of Clark's mind and ignored. In the photo, Clark has his arms around Ryan's thin shoulders, a wide grin on his face that he had tried to inject all his hope and reassurance in. By contrast Lex's smile looks so small and restrained it might as well not exist at all, sorrow lurking in the corner of his eyes. Like he already knew. Clark had faith but Lex had experience. And experience won out. Like it always did for Lex.
Clark sets it gently face down beside him and moves onto the next photo, blinking away the stinging in his eyes.
There aren't that many. Maybe ten all together. There's a picture of Lex at his surprise birthday party at the Talon in Clark's sophomore year. Confetti falling from Chloe's hands as she dumps it wholesale from the balcony. Lex's wide grin exquisitely rare, a stupid party hat on his head that Clark remembers stayed on for nearly the whole night.
There's one Clark and Lex from his wedding to Denise, the pose by thecake making it look almost like its their wedding instead. And another from his suit fitting for Lex's second wedding, Clark standing awkwardly in front of the mirrors with Lex's hands hovering over the suit coat, checking the fit. There's a picture of Lex in the stands of one of Clark's football games.
Somehow Mom managed to con Lex into posing next to a tall bale of hay that he had stacked those scant days he played at being a farmer after Lucas showed up. Tall, proud, covered in sweat and filth and more relaxed than Clark had ever seen him. Several more photos of Lex and Jonathan working together follow, in the fields and the barn and even one of Lex washing dishes at the kitchen sink. Almost as if Mom had to record this or no one would believe it.
Tears sting at his eyes, ruthlessly persistent no matter how hard Clark presses his palms against his face.
He can't bear to look at the last one.
Sleep eludes him.
Or, more accurately, Clark eludes sleep.
Technically, he doesn't need to sleep, barring injury or exposure to kryptonite. The power of the sun fuels him more than anything else. But it's a habit as ingrained as breathing and Clark dutifully keeps to a farmer's sleep schedule when he's not busy with Superman business or a tight deadline.
Or keeping track of Lex's heartbeat.
It doesn't leave the penthouse. After two days, it doesn't leave the bedroom. The urge to fly over, to talk to Lex, to see him gets harder to wrestle back each day. It's stupid and risky and something he might regret later. Lex had even warned him of this very thing with Ryan: that he wasted time trying to fix his mother instead of just being with her and missed the last days of her life.
But to visit Lex makes his impending death real in a way that Clark can't accept just yet. He needs Diana to tell him if its time to give up hope. So he spends his days in suspended anticipation, twitchy and fearful and waiting and hoping against hope that the torment will continue as Lex's pulse grows weaker and weaker.
Until his phone rings on the third day.
"Watchtower," Diana's voice says on the other line. "As soon as you can get here. I have your answer."
Clark doesn't even give Lois a heads up before dashing up the stairs to the roof and taking off faster than anyone can track him. Diana still has her phone in hand by the time he barrels through the doors of the database room.
Her expression is somber.
Clark's stomach plummets.
"What is it?" he asks. "What's happening to him?"
Diana bends over the keyboard of the computer and taps away until an image flashes up. A woman, Themysciran judging from her clothing, with an aura of beautiful menace about her.
"This is Circe," she says.
"Like the woman in mythology?"
"Not like the woman. The same woman. She's a witch and a demi-goddess in her own right. For the last sixty years or so she has fluttered around the high society in Europe and America. Three months ago . . . this happened.
Another photo, this time a grainy paparazzi picture of Lex and a woman sitting in a Porsche. The glare from the windshield, the raised hand blocking half their faces, make it hard to see who exactly is caught with Lex.
"You think this is the same woman?" he asks.
"Yes. I can always tell," says Diana. "It was difficult to find her, but I tracked her down. She confessed through the Lasso to cursing Lex when he spurned her advances."
Hope explodes from him like a wild horse breaking free of its fencing. "So she can undo it," he said. "Where is she? Do you have your in your custody? Or should I go to her?"
"Clark . . ."
Her expression turns grave and Clark's stomach revolts.
"It is not the nature of curses to be undone by their makers," she says slowly. "There are certain conditions that must be met for the curse to break or it remains, regardless of the power of its creator."
It feels like someone is hollowing out his insides with an ice cream spoon.
"What are the conditions of the curse?"
"She accused Lex of being heartless and so cursed him to lose his heart. The only cure is a kiss from his true love. But because of his heartless nature . . . she does not believe such a person could exist. Therefore there is no real cure for his condition."
There's a strange, muffled feeling in his head, dampening the sound around him.
"There has to be — someone," he stammers. "Someone."
Diana tilts her head. "Do you know of such a person? Bruce has told me you've known Luthor since childhood."
There were only three people Clark knew Lex had loved. All three he married. All three had tried to kill him, one deservedly so. And all three hated him.
Unless he had a secret girlfriend squirreled away . . . .there was no one. But if he had a secret love hidden away he wouldn't be messing with ancient Greek witches.
You can't fix this Lex had told him over and over again.
And this was why.
Lex had pushed everyone who could care about him away and now he's left with nothing and no one but his own ambitions to keep him company.
I have so many regrets, Clark.
Oh, and his eternal rivalry with Superman. Which now, in light of recent events, looks more like a twisted way of keeping Clark close to him than an expression of real hatred.
You are my biggest one.
"You must still care for him, to fight for him so," says Diana gently. "Go to him. I do not think he has much time left."
Clark does not go to Lex. Not at first. He makes a pit stop at his kitchen table so he can press the heels of his palms against stinging eyes and cry regardless. His chest feels like it is cracking in two. Just as it did with Ryan in that hot air balloon. Just as it did when his dad took his last breaths in Clark's arms. Just as it did when his mom quietly slipped away in her hospital bed.
There is just too much pain for any one person to contain, even a Kryptonian.
And underneath it all, surging up like a volcanic eruption, is fury.
It's not fair.
Lex has survived gunshots and car crashes and three months on a deserted island and assassination attempts and poison and actual death just to be taken out by this? By slowly wasting away believing that there is no one left on this earth capable of loving him?
And Clark? How many fucking times is he going to have to sit and watch helplessly as someone he loves dies? How many times must the universe torment him with this exact nightmare over and over and over again? How many times has he lost Lex alone? How much more is he expected to take?
The table is upended and thrown halfway across the living room before Clark even registers that his hands have moved. Photographs scatter over the floor in the wake and the sight of them kickstarts a wave of shame and horror. He drops to his knees, gathering them up, checking each one for damage, counting them.
There's the birthday party photo. The hale bale photo. Lex and Clark and Ryan. Lex washing dishes. Tux fitting, Lex under the tractor, Desiree's wedding. And then —
The one he didn't see. The one with the date scribbled on the back. October 2002. Sophomore year.
It's a stealth photo, taken from the back porch. Lex and Clark are leaning against the car in the late afternoon sun. Just talking. Lex is looking off at the barn, mid sentence, and Clark is looking at Lex, grinning.
And the love sick look on on his face could be seen from Mars.
Several things click into place, rapid fire realizations he would have never allowed back then. It trickles over him like a hot shower, starting at the top of his head, in his mind, and rushing down to his heart and then his gut and then the tips of his fingers that clutch the photo until it starts to crumple.
He immediately relaxes his grip, stacks it with the rest of the photos and cradles them gently to his chest.
It would benefit you to know why he's worth so much effort.
Hysteria tickles at his throat, makes him choke out a gasping laugh.
He needs to see Lex.
He needs to see Lex now.
Between the dizzying rush of discovery and the dire need to get to Lex as fast as possible, Clark forgot to listen. He didn't pay attention.
"Lex" He shouts, bursting through the balcony doors.
The only thing that greets him —
"Lex?"
Is silence.
He strains his hearing past the noise of the streets, the wind, his own roaring heart, even the birds overhead.
Nothing.
X-ray vision reveals nothing as the walls are lead lined. But Clark stays rooted to the spot, to afraid see what awaits him in Lex's bedroom.
When you fail, will you come see me? I don't want to die alone.
Clark had promised. He had promised.
God.
God.
A sob escapes him, echoes in the in the tomb-like quiet. He forces each foot in front of the other, a steady march towards a sight he knows is going to break him into pieces. A sight he deserves to see, this last failure to Lex.
He presses open the door, the pain in his chest like his own heart failing, like a fist has reached inside and squeezes with all its might —
It's empty.
The bedroom is empty.
Air stutters in Clark's lungs. The world freezes for a moment.
The bed is empty.
And then Clark's heart kick-starts and his synapses start firing again and he tears through every room in the apartment in a second flat.
No Lex.
Instead, a flash of memory — a barn cat that Clark used to sneak in and let sleep in the bed with him. Who had snuck off under the porch to die in the peaceful dark.
Is that what Lex is doing? Finding a quiet place to die?
The thought lodges in his throat, making it hard to swallow. He rockets up from the balcony terrace to scan the city a mile up, sifting through hearts like an unhinged prospector, never finding the one he needs.
Only the sudden buzzing in his pocket interrupts the pressure bomb of hysteria building up in his chest. It's his cellphone, a text from an unregistered number that Clark used to have memorized by heart.
Meet me where it all began. You promised.
Clark sends a reply and then flies faster than the signal to Lex's phone.
There's a silver Porsche parked in the middle of the bridge, lined up almost exactly where a jagged hole used to be. For a horrible second Clark thinks Lex is going to drive it over the edge, that he's just waiting for the right witness. But the driver's seat is empty.
On the riverbank is a heart that flutters like a lost moth. Lex lies stretched out over the sand, limp and quiet, dressed in funeral black. The phone resting on his chest chimes with Clark's reply.
If Clark hadn't spent the last week with his nerves shredded by impending heartbreak he's only just now starting to understand, he might laugh at this display of ridiculous dramatics. The sheer maudlin sentiment of wanting to die in the place where you first cheated death. Where everything between them began, a life irrevocably changed. It must have taken all his remaining strength to make the trip.
Instead he rushes over Lex's side, gathering gaunt limbs into his arms and cradling him.
Lex gazes up at him with a familiar, awe-struck expression that wipes the years away. They are twenty one and fifteen again, with the terrifying promise if their future stretched ahead.
"I love you," Clark gasps.
He presses a clumsy, desperate kiss to Lex's mouth. Not his finest work by any means but the curse didn't say the kiss had to be good.
"I love you," he repeats, and mashes another kiss to Lee's cheek.
The process repeats, feverish declarations followed by a hurried kiss to Lex's forehead or his other cheek or the delicate lid of his cornflower eyes or the shell of his ear. Anywhere and everywhere Clark can get at, just in case the spell isn't paying attention.
"Clark — Clark!"
Hands push ineffectually against his chest until Clark pulls back. Lex stares up at him in almost comical wide-eyed shock.
"What are you doing?"
The realization strikes Clark with the speed and impact of a bullet train: true love did not have to be reciprocated love.
"The — the curse," Clark stumbles. "I'm — I thought I could break — Lex?"
Lex's shock has melted into a furrowed brow and distant gaze as he slowly brings a hand to his chest.
Oh God. What if it didn't work? What if it did work but Clark was too late and Lex's heart is too damaged —
"What's wrong?" he asks.
Would a hospital still be able to help him now that the magic is gone?
Lex slowly shakes his head. "Nothing," he says, dazed. His eyes drift back up to Clark's face, flickering over every detail as if seeing Clark for the first time. "Nothing's wrong. I feel . . . normal."
Relief floods through Clark, taking him out at the knees, spilling over his eyes. He curls over Lex, forehead pressed against his shoulder, and hides tears in the soft fabric of his sweater. After a moment, Lex's hand tentatively skates over Clark's back.
They stay like that for a moment, A tableau of hesitant comfort, before Clark's ears pick up on an oncoming car.
"We should leave," he says, sitting up, "before someone calls the cops or an ambulance. Unless . . .do you want me to take you to the hospital? Get you checked out?"
"No," says Lex immediately. "If I never set foot in Smallville General again it will be too soon."
"Alright," says Clark. He shifts his grip around Lex and stands up, cradling the man to his chest. "I know a place."
"Clark —" Lex starts to protest but the rest of it gets snatched by the wind as Clark super-speeds down the road until he turns down a very familiar driveway.
He deposits Lex on the couch in the barn loft, holding him steady by the shoulders as Lex fights the typical wave of vertigo that tends to overwhelm the people Clark carries.
"I'll get you some water," he says.
He walks the old fashioned way to the kitchen, partly out of ingrained habit from the long standing ban against super-speed in the house and partly because he has no idea what should come next.
All his hastily made plans didn't get past keeping Lex alive.
Now what?
But his mind remains unhelpful all through the motions of fixing that glass of water, stuck on the same thought that repeats on a loop:
Lex is not going to die.
Lex is not going to die.
Lex is not going to die.
At least not yet. But not even fearful cynicism can overpower the joy exploding in his chest. It doesn't matter that Lex is still mortal, it doesn't even matter that he might not love Clark back the same way. Or at all. Lex can hate Clark as much as he wants just as long as he's alive to do it.
He finds Lex hovering over the desk when he clomps back up the stairs, running a finger over worn paperbacks and old spiral bound notebooks from high school. Clark steps up next to him and sets the glass gently on the desk by his hand.
"This place hasn't changed at all," remarks Lex.
He pulls one out and traces over Clark's sloppy handwritten history notes with the reverence one usually saves for priceless artifacts from an ancient era.
"I remember going over these notes with you for one of your tests."
"I kept the notebooks because of the extra paper in the back," Clark says, rubbing the back of his neck. "Or so I told myself. But honestly, it was just that I couldn't bear to change anything after Dad died. I'd come up here sometimes and just . . .pretend that he was outside, fixing the tractor again." Clark snorts. "That's really healthy sounding, isn't it?"
"I'm not really the best judge on healthy coping mechanisms," says Lex with soft irony.
He closes the notebook and turns around to lean his back against the desk, hands perched on the edge, a pose straight out of 2002.
"You love me."
It's not a question, yet the flat edge of disbelief blunts the awe in Lex's voice.
Clark flushes, that old familiar panic bubbling in his chest when someone didn't believe him. An outcome he should have expected — the boy who cried normal too many times for anyone to take him seriously, both the truth and the lies.
"I know it probably sounds like another lie to you —"
"It does," says Lex. "And yet it can't be because you broke the curse."
His stare settles over him, unrelenting and heavier than any jet plane or building. Clark flinches his gaze from it.
"I'd say you have a strange way of treating the people you love," says Lex, "but I've seen your track record."
"Like you don't have your own track record," Clark retorts but there's no bite to it. Lois has trained him to be less of a hypocrite over the years.
Lex shrugs out of the corner of Clark's eye, a silent acknowledgement. Touche.
"I didn't know it about myself," adds Clark. "For the record. And . . .and it's okay if you don't — feel like that. I know that we're —complicated."
And men. Something that apparently doesn't matter to Clark but he's never seen Lex date or marry anyone but women.
Clark fidgets with the notebook, runs his fingers over the deep impresses of a pen he gripped too hard. What would have changed if he had realized it then, if he had learned this about himself alongside the causes of the Civil War? What would their friendship have turned into?
"All those enhanced senses Batman would kill for and yet you remain the most obtuse person I've ever met," says Lex with a shake of his head.
"Maybe it's for the best. I can't imagine how awkward and uncomfortable it would have been for you to have some lovesick teenager trailing behind you."
That stare sharpens until it feels like a knife at his throat.
"Clark," says Lex, tense and almost angry. "If I wanted to be any more obvious about the way I felt about you, I'd have had to take out a fucking billboard. Or spell it out in fireworks above your house," he adds pointedly.
A flash of memory and then — a flush blooming down the edge of his throat as he swings wide eyes over to Lex.
"Oh," he says, stupidly.
"Yes. Oh." Lex rolls his eyes. "How did you not figure it out for so long?"
Clark shrugs. "I didn't know it was an option. But then I saw one of the photos my mom took of us. We were leaning against your car and —"
And the pieces start to fall together.
"You knew, didn't you," Clark accuses. "You sent me those photos because you knew — and I would be your only hope."
And yet Lex kept insisting that Clark couldn't save him. Or was that also part of the gambit? Lex could lie so well and even after all these years he knew exactly how to manipulate Clark. There are just some things you can't develop an immunity to and for Clark . . .it's always been Lex.
But Lex is shaking his head before Clark could even finish. "Back then? I had a suspicion — or desperate hope if we're being honest. But I thought I killed any chance of it a long time ago. I gave you those photos because . . .you would be the only one left who could remember what we used to be like. That maybe you would rediscover some of that fondness when you remembered me and I wouldn't have died leaving only hate behind me."
"Lex." Clark swallows against the painful squeeze in his chest. He risks wrapping each of Lex's wrist in the gentle cage of his fingers, thumb brushing over that beautiful pulse, growing stronger by the minute. "There was never just hate. I may not have recognized it, but I still felt it."
This time it's Lex's gaze that flinches away, but not before Clark sees the raw emotion shining in them, a bare honesty that he hadn't seen since those early halcyon days.
"You love me," he murmurs, like he needs the reminder.
"Yes," Clark says, squeezing his wrists, slipping his hands down until their fingers tangle together. He steps in until they stand toe to toe, breath to breath. "And now we have time to figure out . . .what that looks like." Clark tips Lex's chin up, ducking his own gaze down so neither of them can hide. "If you want."
"Is it even possible?" Lex asks.
It's so fragile, the look in those eyes. Like Lex could shatter not with a twitch of Clark's immeasurable strength but with just a word, a look. His heart, bare and vulnerable just like when Clark was young and oblivious and didn't know how to be careful with such a thing.
"I'm willing to try if you are," says Clark simply.
Lex swallows. "I suppose . . .I have nothing else to do with my time. I sold Luthorcorp." He pauses and then a sharp hysterical laugh bursts from him. "God I sold it. To Bruce fucking Wayne. And all the patents from my labs to fund the cancer foundation. The labs themselves to the government. My penthouse." Another hysterical laugh. "Clark, I'll be homeless this time next week."
"I guess you'll have to live with me in my crappy apartment," says Clark, grinning. "Or you could stay here, watch over the house. And I could come visit after work every day while you put a home-cooked dinner on the table."
Lex snorts at that. "Of course you would want to recreate your parents gender-conforming marriage. But if anyone is going to be the welcoming housewife, it's you."
"You could travel," Clark suggests with a shrug. "See the world as a place of wonder and not something to carve up and sell. I could fly to whatever city you ended up in thirty seconds or less and you could show me all I've missed in my sheltered childhood." He lifts a hand and brushes his thumb against the delicate veins under Lex's eye just to see them flutter closed for a second. "You have so many options, Lex. So . . . what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
That startles a smile to break across Lex's face. God. He is so achingly beautiful.
"Mary Oliver," he says. "I'm impressed."
"It took a while, but eventually I moved on from self help books," says Clark.
Another smile, this one in the crinkle of his eyes. Heart-stopping.
"I don't know everything that I'll do," Lex says. "But I know where to start."
He cups Clark's face in his hands and pulls him in for a slow, devastating kiss.