Stigmatized
            by Nymph Du Pave

            CHAPTER SIX:
            Confrontation

            Clark walked out of the Talon, stretching, and heard Lana lock the door behind him.  He'd been able to fix every single one of the pipes at the Talon with help from his father and very little aid from his powers.  How would he have gone about soldering at superspeed when the iron could only get so hot?

            Now all I've got to do is repair the counters and plaster that one wall.

            He stretched his sore and cramped fingers, then pulled from his pocket out the sheet of paper.  It had been an absent gesture as he hadn't even been thinking about Lex.

            Lex, his mind supplied.  It was so hard to believe the boy was back.

            The man, he corrected himself.  The man.  He was never really a boy.  Clark saw the taillights from that night in the back of his mind.  Maybe he was never even truly your friend.

            Though he didn't feel the chill in the air, he'd shrugged on his lambskin coat- a present from Lana- and watched his breath plume in the night air.  It was dark but clear.  The stars shone down upon him.  He hadn't looked at them with more than a paasing glance in years.  He just never fel the urge.  His curiousity about Earth, and himself, about where he was from, about life in general and his people...  It had gone away with Lex.

            Lex.  The piece of paper felt odd in his hands, thick, foreign.  The thought of calling Lex made him feel weak and nauseous.  He just wasn't ready, that was all.

            Maybe I never will be.

            The Beanery was still open across the street.  Ever since the Talon opened it had been extending it's hours far past that of Lana's closing time and even with the Talon temporarily closed for repairs the Beanery was keeping with the competitive hours.

            He couldn't remember the last time he was in there as just a customer and not a spy, but a cold frappuccino sounded so incredibly good.

            He looked both ways, crossed the street and stopped in his tracks at the sight of a brand new, bright gold Bentley.  He wanted to tell himself that it wasn't Lex's, that it could be anyone's but he knew he would only be lying to himself.  The only excuse he could come up with would be one about the Bentley being too adult for Lex's taste and, really, he couldn't make that call.  Not anymore.  He no longer knew Lex and that hurt worse than seeing the young man so suddenly.

            After three years of being ignored all Clark still wanted to do was know Lex Luthor as intimately as possible.  All he wanted to do was love and receive love in return.  Hold Lex in his arms at all hours of the day.  Call the older man his lover.  Take all the pain that Lex had ever experienced and shove it deep inside himself so that Lex wouldn't have to bear the ridiculous weight of a life that clearly hated him.  After everything that Lex had done to him, after the begging and the humiliation and being turned on, betrayed, even if he had been warned…

            After being treated as if he never even existed Clark only wanted to make himself Lex's forever.

            He shook his head.  He couldn't go in now.

            Taking a deep breath, he looked into the Beanery's window, eyes sore and needy for the familiar pale face that haunted his dreams still.  He managed a wary look inside, eyes homing in on their target immediately.

            The boy sat, looking cozy in an overstuffed chair, drinking coffee and reading the café's copy of Sympathy for the Devil by Holly Lisle.  Clark knew the book.  It was a story about a nurse who wished all the souls in hell a second chance to repent, a second chance to be something more.  It seemed appropriate to the situation.  A second chance for the condemned.  Clark agreed with the book's message, but after what Lex did to him…  Was it possible to give him a second chance?  Without always remembering the pain he'd endured for so long?

            Clark frowned, looking his old friend over.  Something about Lex that didn't seem to fit...  It was the clothes.  He was in a loose purple pullover and black slacks.  Without the overcoat from yesterday, Clark could see that he'd lost much of his body mass.

            There used to be a lot more of him, he thought, suddenly a little disconcerted.  He couldn't believe he hadn't noticed the hollowness of Lex's features in the already too sallow skin.  Sunken cheeks that had once been sinfully voluptuous, lips thinner than they once were, dark half moons under Lex's eyes…

            He looks like he works all day and never once stops to eat.  How the fuck did I not notice this?  How could I have-

            A horn broke his concentration and he turned to see one of his neighbors waving him off the road.  "Come on there, Clark!  What'cha doing?"

            He plastered on a false grin and waved.  "Sorry Mr. Franklin.  Got a little cloudy-headed, there."

            "I'd say!"  Clark waved at the man as he pulled away.  He felt Lex's eyes on him, but couldn't dare meet them.  They once fell on his back with a familiar tingle, a loving kind of caress.  Now that Clark knew no desire lay within those heart-stilling blues, it was more of an unpleasant shiver.  He missed the ecstasy and exhilaration of his teenage ignorance and horny hopefulness.  The world had once been bright and filled with so many possibilities.  He thought that one fine day Lex's arms would open wide and he'd never leave his lover's side.  He figured college was in his future.  College, majoring in journalism.  Then reporter, then, hopefully, editor.  Then maybe the big time: Editor in Chief.  All with Lex by his side and, if he were so damned lucky, in his bed.  He'd dreamed of so many different sexual situations with Lex so many different ways that their friendship could become more.

            He'd not once thought it would become less, much less cease to exist entirely.

            He sighed.  He had to get home.

            Clark walked to the corner and, once out of sight, took off as fast as he could.

            +_+_+_+_+

            "I'm leaving, okay?"

            He switched off the power screwdriver and looked over the countertop at Lana.  She was so cute in the skirt with suspenders and the tube top.  It had taken him forever to convince her to wear things like it.  He smiled.  With the mid-calf  lace-up leather boots and braided pigtails- also of his influence- he could almost see himself finding her alluring.  Almost.

            If only Lex hadn't ruined his libido for every other human being on earth.  "What for?"

            "Well, I can't be of any help and you obviously don't want to talk-"  She held up a hand to stop the protest she knew was coming before he even opened his mouth.  "It's not a bad thing, Clark.  You just need to think.  And I've got to get some air.  I don't see how you can work in here with just that portable fan."

            "I don't want you wasting the AC on just me."

            "It wouldn't be a waste."

            He didn't want to get into the same old argument so he just smiled and rolled his eyes.  "Go.  And bring me a soda if you come back, okay?"

            "Okay.  I'll only be about an hour."

            She left and Clark ducked back down.  He placed the last screw to the hinge when he heard the footsteps.

            He groaned in humor at his best friend's predictibility.  "Yes, Lana, I'm sure the single fan is okay.  No, I don't want anything more than a soda, and get going before I make you help me with the plaster.  I love you to pieces but you're harder to get rid of than Whitney was."

            He stood up to find Lex standing with his hands in his pockets.  They both stood for a moment in a heavy but somehow comfortable silence.

            "So," Lex started.  "Whitney was harder to get rid of than I thought?"

            Clark fidgeted with the power tool.  "Actually, Lex, that wasn't how I meant it."

            "Really?"  One eyebrow up no disbelieving but in a request for explanation.

            "It has nothing to do with Lana.  He was a pretty cool guy once you got to know him."

            "You mean when he wasn't stringing up farmboys in corn-"

            "That was years ago, Lex.  You hold grudges that long?  For people you never knew?"

            Lex looked to the floor.  "Do you?"

            Disbelief casused anger to flare in Clark's cheeks.  "After everything you-  I have damned good reason, you- you arrogant- ass."  He shut his eyes and breathed in and out.  "Then again, you're right.  I never did know you, did I?"

            He opened his eyes to see a hurt Lex staring at him.  "There were things Clark.  Things I felt I couldn't tell you, things-"

            "Things you couldn't tell me?" he asked.  "Me?  Your supposed 'best friend'?"

            Lex's eyes grew dark and pained.  He stepped closer.  "Yeah, Clark.  Things I couldn't tell you.  You want to contest that?  You want to disavow the truth I'm giving you now and declare your ever-long honesty with me?"

            Clark looked at the countertop, guilt flooding inside his stomach.

            "You want to tell me how you were always up front with me?"

            "Okay, Lex.  I get your point."

            "You want to berate me for hiding things after everything you've hidden from me?"

            "Okay, I-"

            "I still don't know who or- or what you are."

            The 'what' hurt.  "I've got it, Lex!" he shouted.  "Did you come back to Smallville just to remind me of the past?  Of the lies and the humiliation and the pain?  Because if so you're doing a great fucking job!"

            "No, Clark," he said softly.  "I came to explain."  He lifted his chin.  "And beg your forgiveness."

            Clark snorted.  "Luthor's don't beg."

            "This one will."

            "AND WHERE DID THAT GET ME?"  Lex's eyes shown brightly at his outburst.  He felt his own tears rising up from years of loss, of guilt, of agony; the worst suffering a human could bear: the tried and failed reparation of a demolished heart.  He put the power tool down before he got too angry and threw it across the country.

            "I can't-"

            "Where?" Clark interrupted vehemently.  "I begged, Lex.  Begged.  And what?  Nothing.  Nothing but taillights I couldn't follow, loss I couldn't rid myself of and-  And a love I couldn't fucking shut out."

            Lex closed his eyes tight, the tears falling, but Clark couldn't stop.  As much as this hurt him, they were the words he needed to say.

            "I wrote you for how long, Lex?"

            "Over a year," came the boy's paper-thin whisper.

            His stomach tighened in rage.  He'd known that Lex had been recieving and returning but something about having Lex admit it made it all the more tangible, more real and so much more painful.  He sobbed once, gently and saw Lex become more emotional at the sound.  "All I ever wanted in the whole goddamned world was your forgiveness for that night.  That stupid, senseless night.  It wasn't like I betrayed you, Lex.  It wasn't like I tried to kill you.  All I did was kiss you.  All I did was love you."

            Lex flinched.  "God, Clark-"

            "How could you hate me for that?  How?  How in the world could you hate me for wanting to love you?"

            "I didn’t hate you."

            "I would have done anything to make you happy, Lex.  I was going to tell you everything if you chose to stay.  Everything that you wanted to know.  I would have taken you away from here.  I would have make it so that your father could never hurt you again.  But, no."  His anger returned at the sudden recollection of him on his knees for Lex.  "You treated me like some cheap toy you suddenly got bored with.  I was on the ground, in the dirt for you, Lex.  Begging you.  For more than a year I wrote you, begging again and again for your forgiveness.  You kept me on my knees for so long."  He swallowed, his throat painfully constricted.  "I don't think you coming here and saying 'please' is going to do jack-shit."

            He turned his back on Lex, but he could still see the boy in the mirror out of the corner of his eye.

            "I never hated-"

            "What were the words?" he hissed, not wanting to hear Lex tell him he didn't hate him.  He might belive him.  "Oh, yes, I remember.  There were so many of them, you know, but I remember them all.  How about 'Hell, Kent, you with your family's financial situation, had a better chance trying to buy me'?"  He saw Lex turn his face to the side in what he assumed to be shame.  "Then there was me groveling, making an 'ass' out of myself apparently.  A lonely fifteen year old who knew only that his best friend was leaving and maybe it was because he'd just put the moves on him."

            "I-"

            "And then your answer to my question about our destiny."

            Lex looked up.  Rapid blinking and now the tears were streaming from both their eyes.  "Please, Clark, don't say it."

            He spun around enraged, the poison in his heart seeming to grow more and more lethal.  "'Don’t say it'? 'Don’t say it'?  Fuck you, Lex!  Fuck!  You!  If anything your treatment of me for something so stupid, an action so hormonal, that-  Jesus, Lex, I deserve more than to just say that."

            Lex looked at him and walked towards the counter.  "You have the right to condemn my soul to hell and back for what I've done to you," he started, his voice strong with years of pain and self-hatred.  If there were any two things Clark would recognize within Lex's demeanor...  "You have the right to smash me into a million pieces.  You have the right to pulverize me, hate me, fucking kill me for what I've done to you.  It won't matter, Clark."  His voice cracked.  "My heart's already been shredded into a million pieces and sent to the indefinite corners of oblivion.  Nothing you could possibly say could kill me now."

            How about 'I still love you'?  How about 'I still want you'?

            He shook his head.  "I know what I've said.  I have nightmares still.  I don't go a single day without remembering what I did to the only other person I ever loved in my entire life."

            Clark's breath hitched, but he refused to be swayed.  "Loved?  Loved?  You don't know the meaning of the word love, Lex."

            "Wrong, Kent."

            "Oh, really."  He shook his head in familiar disgust he hoped would shine through.  "You're the bastard you always said you were.  I should have listened before I got hurt."

            The abandoned and broken look in Lex's eyes shot through his soul like an arrow on fire, ripping into his conscience.

            "You don't get to look like that," he shouted desperately.  "YOU have NO RIGHT to look betrayed by ME."

            Lex turned and walked towards the door.  "You're right, Clark," he started, his voice not just flat but completely dead.  Like nothing else on earth was worth living for anymore.  "I've got no right.  None.  None to even be here right now.  Just go on thinking that I never had any other motivation.  It'll make things easier.  Maybe for us both."  He stopped by the door and Clark could see the tears still falling.  "I hate you.  I've never loved you and I don't deserve your forgiveness."  His face shattered in a wreck of emotions.  "I'm sorry I ever expected it of you.  I thought-  I thought you were someone else."

            Clark shook his head.  "You killed that person, Lex.  He no longer exists."

            Lex nodded to himself.  "And I'll have to take that to my grave.  Goodbye, Clark."  He walked out of the Talon.

            Clark collapsed on the floor and began to sob.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

            The ending very, very soon.