The Slushy
by Nymph Du Pave

CHAPTER THREE

Lex sat on the roof of his new apartment building thinking about the only thing he'd been thinking about the last three months.  He hadn't even noticed the rain until the lightning had scared the shit out of him.  And still he stayed, not really caring about the danger.  This was the only place he could think and think clearly about anything.

Of course his 'anything' was only limited to one subject.

Clark Kent.

He thought that if he quit his father's business, went back to school, started dating pretty young girls -- safely around his age -- he could forget about Clark.  He wouldn't go back to his earlier ways.  He would have no reason to.

Quitting the family business hadn't been easy, but things didn't matter to him anymore.  The one thing he'd ever wanted with his soul, he thought he'd had.  He'd been touching and tasting and feeling within those few minutes.  But requited passion and perpetual euphoria was not to be his.  Reality came crashing through his reverie and smashed the light inside him.

When Lionel threatened to take everything away, Lex shrugged.  When his father threatened to disown him he'd been obviously relieved -- it was what he wanted after all.  He didn't want to be a Luthor; Luthor's equaled poison.

When his father had become enraged and punched him square in the jaw resulting in two broken teeth, three more that were dangerously loose and a bruise that hadn't gone away for weeks, Lex just looked at him calmly through his watering eyes and asked if he was finished.

Nothing.  Mattered.

How could it?

Lex breathed in noticing the lack of full truth in his thoughts.  Something mattered.  Science.  A little.  He was delving into it now, getting back to his roots.  Dabbing in new things and… and he'd met a girl.  Tall, strong and sweet.  Country fresh.  Independent.

Dark hair -- not as black as the hero in his dreams -- cut short and eyes like winter-green grass.  Not quite the forest on fire, the trembling ocean ready to quench his thirst… but it was a soft relationship, a quaint romance.

Claire Kelly.

And it hadn't lasted.

He didn't have to wonder why.  Nothing lasted anymore.  Except science.  Science and the rain.  It was always raining.

"You're a tough guy to find."

He shut his eyes tight and buried his face in his JC Penny's windbreaker, a little light for this weather but his physical body and his mentality had ceased to communicate for a long time now.

"And now you're just going to ignore me?  Like I'm not here?"

It often started out this way.  He wasn't sure how it would end.  He never was.  Clark had come to see him in his mind so often.  Usually, nowadays, it was while he was asleep.  He'd dream of the minutes that he had with Clark the one morning he thought he'd awaken with everything, with the world in his arms.

He hadn't had an honest-to-God hallucination in a very long time.

"I'm not leaving until you hear me out."

"You never do," he mumbled.

"What?"

He shook his head, and watched the city twinkle in the distance.  It really was beautiful.

He wondered how long it would take the hallucination to ask him to turn around.

"I've been doing a lot of thinking, and, really, I can't figure out just why the hell you left me."

Lex frowned.  This was a first.  Fake-Clark always had some reason.  Either Lex was being cursed for being a pervert or a bad friend, but fake-Clark always had something to make Lex feel like shit.

What the hell?

"I mean I can understand your embarrassment with the situation we were put in-"

'We were put in?'  It was usually to the effect of 'why'd you touch me like that, you sick bastard?'.

"-but I mean leaving Smallville was a little extreme."

"What makes you think it was all about you, Kent?" he snapped.  This new illusion was getting on his nerves.  It was too much like Clark.  He preferred the ones that yelled at him.  They helped him linger within his selfish self-pity.  This one was starting to make him think too much about what Clark might actually be thinking.

"Well, I thought…" he trailed off and Lex didn't have the heart to continue.

It's just your mind, you fucking moron!

His mind or not, the likeness between the voice and Clark Kent was too real.

"I couldn't be near you anymore, Clark.  It wouldn't have been the same."

"Why?!  What would have changed!"

Lex pushed himself backwards, off the ledge and onto the roof.  He stood, turning towards Clark.  He was surprised to see that the boy was wearing black jeans, a black turtleneck and a long black, wool coat.  He was also wet from the weather.

Lex's stomach became heavy.  Never in his dreams or his delusion had the mirage a la Clark ever deviated from the same worn farm clothing.  It had never been influenced by the weather either.

Just what the hell is going on?  Did I inhale something at the lab?

"What would it change?" he called out, trying to push away his hormones.  "What would it-  Everything, Clark!"

"Okay, so we were naked and in bed together-" Clark started.  "And you were- I was-  We were both a little-"

Lex realized why Clark was blushing, why he was stuttering.  "Aroused, you mean?"

Clark cleared his throat.  "Uh, huh.  Anyway, it's nothing that we couldn't have found a way around."

Lex shook his head and turned back towards the city, shivering and pulling his windbreaker tighter around him.  Now he could identify this phantasm.  It was the fancy of his mind, one he would not allow for the longest time.

The Forgiving Clark.

There was no way Clark would ever, ever-

"I'm an alien, okay?"

There was a silence in the air as the rain and thunder and city all seemed to fade away.  In slow-motion, Lex found himself turning around.  Clark blinked but did not look down.  The rain fell around him and when the sound of it falling on top of the cement rooftop came back to Lex, he could finally speak.

"What?"

"The truth, right?  That's what you want to hear?"

"You're an… alien."

"Yes."

He shivered but he wasn't sure if it was from the cold rain or the sliver of realization that was trying to break through.  There was something his consciousness was trying to tell him, something important, but his mind felt he couldn't handle it.

This is all-

What?

This is all-

He shook his head.  "This doesn't make sense, Kent.  This isn't real.  First you find me on my roof-"

"Your Landlady, Kay, said you might be up here when you weren't answering your apartment door."

"And you don't know why I left-"

"Should I?"

"You don’t hate me-"

Clark looked hurt.  "I could never hate you, Lex."

"And you're not blaming me for anything."

"Except for leaving, but  I know it's my fault."

Lex shook his head again, unable to believe that this could possibly be.

This is all very-

"No.  Because I was an ass.  A perverted ass.  I tried to make love with a fifteen year old boy that I was perversely attracted to, even thought myself in love with, and now you’re here telling me it's your fault and that you're an alien?"

"You're in l-love with me?"  Barely a whisper but the world had gone silent again and he couldn't have missed it.

"Clark would never trust me with that."  Just who was he trying to convince?

"I know.  That's were I failed as a friend.  If you give me a chance I'll tell you everything.  I should have that morning.  I promised you that I would.  I could have kept you in my life if I had."

This is all very r-

"NO!" Lex shouted and ran past Clark.  He approached the stairwell door and reached for it when Clark's hands grasped him and spun him around.  "Go away!  Just Fade away!"

"You can't just ignore this, Lex.  I don't know what you're running from or why you don't believe I'm real, but I am!  Could I touch you if I wasn't."

This is all very r-

"Clark Kent hates me, has every right to hate me."

"Because you were in love with him?  With me?"

"Yes," Lex said simply and slipped through Clark's grasp, falling to the ground.

Clark looked down at him for a moment, then crouched.  He cupped Lex's chin and forced the older boy to meet his eyes.

"'Your skin is the loveliest shade of holiness that anything this side of heave has produced and your gaze speaks volumes of your anguish.  You are the paragon of which all other immortals should be cast and your lips are where I wish to die.  Without your presence in my days I would wither and prefer to be nothing left alive.  I would rather rot and decay than be extant to long for something of which I cannot have.'"

Lex couldn't believe it.  "Ken Jerret Tolkam.  The poems.  The flowers.  How'd you-"

"Because I'm Ken, Lex.  Mix around the letters.  You get my name."

Lex frowned.  "But the 'J'…"

Clark stood up.  "Stands for Jerome.  My grandfather's name."  He offered his hand to Lex.

This is all very real.

"Oh, God," he breathed.  He took Clark's outstretched hand and for the first time noticed just how wet they both were.  The hand in his was warm and gentle, just how he remembered Clark.

Jesus.

The rain was running in his eyes and he had to get down to his apartment, but there were so many things that came first, that had to come first.

"You-  You don't hate me?"

Clark smiled softly and it hit Lex just how much he'd missed that smile.  He wanted in his gut to see the grin, the bright, killer grin that had once long ago haunted his every wish.

"I could never hate you.  I thought you hated me."

And there was a fear he'd once held so deeply that it now brought stinging tears to his eyes.  How could Clark have ever thought that Lex could have hated him.  Lex would do anything for the boy, anything.

"I could never hate you either," he whispered.  "I love you more and more each second that I know you exist.  Your arms are the only home I've known since you pulled me out of that damned river.  I know that in so many ways you've given me life, you've given me an outlook and a dream to live towards."

"Oh, Lex," Clark breathed.  "I love you so much."

Lex grabbed the wool coat and pulled.  The boy came easily enough and their lips met even in the slippery rain.  They opened to each other with moans in their throats and a heat in their hearts.

After a moment, Lex pulled away, gasping for air.  "I… love you… too," he said.

"Oh, man," laughed Clark.  "We're so fucking stupid, Lex.  Why couldn't we have done this three months ago?"

"Try almost two years ago.  I loved you all this time."

Clark sighed.  "I… me, too."  Clark buried his face in Lex's neck.  "Me, too.  God, you smell so damned good, Lex.  I missed everything about you."
The rain was starting to drain out his senses, so he opened Clark's coat to find it dry and warm beneath a waterproof lining.  He took a whiff and smelled… Chloe.

"What the-  Did you come to the city with Chloe?"

Clark laughed.  "Yeah.  Spring break.  She convinced me to buy some new clothes.  She's been helping me find you.  She knows all about my feelings for you."

"She didn't come here tonight, did she?"

"No, no.  I needed to do this alone."  Clark pulled away.  "That reminds me!"  He pulled Lex behind him as he opened the stairwell door and moved inside.  They let the door close behind them and Clark bent down.  "I want to show you this."

He unzipped a lunchbag and handed it to Lex who opened the top.  Inside was a familiar looking Styrofoam cup, dirty and damaged with a straw bent straw and a cracked lid.

"The slushy?"

"Well, it's empty," he grinned.  "-but it's the same cup.  I don’t know why but I kept it.  I couldn't bring myself to throw it out until I was sure we were okay again.  When you left I put it in my closet.  A month ago I found it by accident.  I put it on top of my desk to remind myself to find you.  To never stop until I did."

"It only took you a month?"

"And three days.  I know the slushy thing is stupid, but-"

"I wear the clothes you lent me," he blurted out.  He couldn't let Clark think his sentimentalism was stupid.  "I tried to send them back but I couldn't.  Literally.  The first time the driver got a flat tire a mile out.  The second time Sam just plain forgot and, well, Sam never forgets.  The third time the errand boy turned out to be one of those oddities that Smallville seems to produce.  I was three days from leaving and decided to take them out myself.  I drove to your house and saw Martha driving away.  I saw John in the fields.  It was a school hour, so I figured I could get in, drop off the clothes and be gone.  But there you were, sitting on the porch.  Like you were waiting for something."

"The plumbing broke inside the house," started Clark.  "We couldn't afford another visit from the plumber, especially since Mr. Kastin's son has taken over the business.  My mom picked my up from school dropped me off and told me to wait for my father and then went to pick up the supplies."

"How could you remember that?  I mean it could have been another day-"

"I heard and saw your car."

Lex was confused.  He'd been a long distance away and hidden from sight.  "How cou-"

"Alien, remember."

Actually Lex hadn't.

"So you saw me a couldn't drop them off?"

Lex nodded.  "Right, right.  And after that I thought it wouldn't hurt anybody to keep a sort of Kent -souvenir."

"What did you do with them?"

He looked to the side.  "I sleep in them mostly.  The jeans, too, but not the shoes.  I wear those out.  I wear all of them out sometimes."  His voice cracked as he realized his mistake.  "I never would have been able to get over you.  Never."

Clark pulled him in tighter.  "I never would have gotten over you either, Lex.  There's nothing on this Earth that could have eased the pain of losing you."

Lex looked up at him, about to apologize.

"Except for getting you back."  Clark kissed him sweetly and then pulled away again.

"I want more of that," Lex said.

"Well," Clark grinned and Lex's heartbeat skyrocketed.  "Lets go down to your apartment and see if I can get you to wake up naked in my arms again."

Lex felt that in his groin.

"Only this time I'm not letting you go anywhere."

Lex grinned.  "Like I'd want to."
 
 
 
 

FIN