Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jonathan Kent wasn’t the world’s most observant man. Well, now that wasn’t exactly true; when it came to things around the farm he was plenty observant. His family even jokingly called him the ‘cow whisperer’ sometimes, because he could always tell from just a glance when there was something wrong with one of the cows. But when it came to people and what they were feeling, often it took him a second or third look, or Martha pointing it out to him.

So Jonathan, being the unobservant man that he was, considered himself very lucky that his son was just about the opposite of subtle. He stood in the doorway to Clark’s room for a minute or two, watching his son hunched over his desk and thought, not for the first time, that the boy was really getting too big to be cooped up in this small room any time he wanted privacy. They didn’t have any good trees near the house for a tree house, and besides kids tended to out-grow those things once they hit their teens. Maybe an addition of some sort on the barn. Something to think about.

Jonathan rapped his knuckles against the door frame. “Son? Can I come in?”

“Sure, dad,” Clark said turning around and smiling brightly at him. “What’s up?”

Jonathan came in and sat down on the edge of Clark’s bed. “I was just thinking… I haven’t seen Lana around at all lately.” Lana wasn’t Clark’s best friend by any means, that was Pete, but the two of them were the only kids their age remotely within walking distance of each other, so they’d had their fair share of playdates over the years. Except not recently. Jonathan knew Clark had gone to the little party Nell had thrown to celebrate Lana being officially adopted, and he thought he could remember another time or two after that, but nothing for the last month at least. “I was wondering if maybe the two of you had a fight.”

“No, we didn’t fight,” Clark said morosely. “Dad, I don’t think I like Lana anymore.”

“Why not?” Jonathan asked, feeling a bit thrown. Clark was one of the friendliest kids Jonathan had ever met; he couldn’t imagine his son not liking someone, and certainly not without a very good reason.

“She makes me feel bad when I’m around her.”

“How does she make you feel bad? Is she saying mean things to you?” Jonathan asked. Lana had always seemed like a sweet girl to him, but he could certainly remember Nell getting a bit catty back when; maybe Lana was picking up some bad habits from her aunt.

“No, Lana’s really nice,” Clark insisted. “She makes me feel bad like sick bad. My stomach feels all queasy and my palms get sweaty and I get kind of dizzy and clumsy and sometimes it’s hard to talk.”

“Oh,” Jonathan said, the pieces falling into place. “Clark, that doesn’t mean you don’t like Lana.”

“It doesn’t?” Clark asked, sounding hopeful.

“If anything it means just the opposite,” Jonathan assured him. “Son, I think it’s time we had a little talk.”

Clark hesitated for a moment in the doorway to Lex’s study, feeling a little uncertain of his welcome for the first time since, well, the first time he’d come to the mansion. Sure Desiree was gone now, but the whole incident just left Clark feeling a little… off.

Then Lex looked up, saw him standing there, and smiled, and Clark felt stupid for ever feeling insecure. Lex was Clark’s friend, his best friend even, and no stupid meteor mutant lady was going to mess that up for long, even if she had been really pretty and had weird lust-inducing powers and for a little while Clark had really thought that Lex actually loved her. “Clark, perfect timing.”

“Were you just finishing up?” Clark asked, walking in and taking a seat on the couch.

“Right in the middle of something, actually, but I don’t know how much longer I can stand to look at these wedding invoices without wanting to do something drastic, so I welcome the distraction,” Lex said, getting up from his desk. “Never underestimate the spending power of a man who thinks he’s in love.”

And that was kind of what Clark wanted to ask Lex about. “How do you know it wasn’t really love?”

Lex gave Clark an odd look. “Well, I would say her attempts to have me killed were probably my first clue.”

“No, how do you know that what you felt for Desiree wasn’t really love?” Clark corrected, since Desiree had made it pretty obvious that she didn’t care about Lex. “I mean, I know she was making you feel it by sort of drugging you, but how do you know what she was making you feel wasn’t real love?”

“Personally, my definition of real love would automatically preclude anything where the other party is forcing you to feel it, no matter how genuine the emotion might seem at the time, but that’s not what you’re asking, is it?” Lex sat down on the couch next to Clark, nestling himself in the corner, where he could give Clark a long considering look. Then, slowly, he smiled. “Clark, are you asking me how you can tell if what you’re feeling is really love?”

“It’s just something I’ve been thinking about lately,” Clark said, fidgeting with his hands a bit. The whole incident with Desiree had brought it to the front of his mind, but he had been considering it for a while. Because Clark had been so sure for such a long time now that he was in love with Lana, but this past year had put a lot of things into question. Lana had started dating Whitney, and it seemed to Clark that what Whitney had felt for Lana was different than what Clark felt for her. At first Clark thought that was just because Whitney didn’t actually really love Lana, but now he wasn’t so sure. And then there had been the whole thing with Chloe. Clark knew he loved her as a friend, but when he found out that Chloe liked him more than that, he’d started feeling differently about her too, but not the same kind of different that he felt about Lana. And then just recently when he’d been the best man at Lex’s wedding he had been so certain that Lex was really in love with Desiree, only to find out later that she was some kind of weird lust/love-inducing meteor mutant. The whole thing was just really confusing.

“I’ve got good news and bad news for you,” Lex said. “The good news is, there is a lot of information out there about the subject. Hundreds of philosophers and thousands of poets all striving to answer the very simple question of ‘what is love?’ I could go on for days about the Ancient Greek’s opinion on the matter alone.”

“Yeah, but that’s true about any subject,” Clark teased, and Lex shot him a quick grin. “So what’s the bad news: that I have to spend the next month in the library digging through all the information out there to find my answer?”

“No, the bad news is that the real answer to that question is: if you have to ask, you’ll never know.”

“Never?”

“Not in the literal sense,” Lex assured him, looking amused. “It’s just something that everyone has to figure out on their own.”

“So, if it’s love, then I’ll ‘just know it,’” Clark said sarcastically. His dad had been saying that for years, and it sounded sort of good, but it wasn’t all that helpful.

“You might. Or you might think you know it and then later find out that your wife was drugging you all along. It just depends.” Clark made a noise of frustration – why couldn’t something just be easy for once? – and Lex reached out and placed a hand on Clark’s arm. “I’m sorry I couldn’t just give you an answer, but you’ll always have me here as a sounding board if you need one.”

Clark smiled. “Thanks Lex.”

If there was one thing that Lana Lang considered herself an expert on, it was love. Not relationships, or romance, or passion, just love, in general. Despite losing her parents at a very young age, or maybe even a little bit because of it, what with the automatic sympathy everyone in town gave to their little fairy princess, the literal cover child for the tragedy they had all felt, Lana had grown up absolutely surrounded by people who loved her. There was Nell, who wasn’t the same as having a mom, and who didn’t always understand Lana, but she loved Lana like a daughter just the same. And then there were Nell’s friends and customers, who looked on Lana with varying degrees of adoration. And then there were Lana’s own friendships, all of which seemed to run very deep on the other person’s side of things, even on the occasions that Lana only saw the person as being a casual acquaintance who was fun to hang out with. Because of this wealth of experience, Lana had learned fairly well how to recognize what love felt like when it was directed at her, and how to distinguish between different kinds of love.

That’s how Lana had known, even back when she was still dating Whitney, that Clark was in love with her, romantic love. Of course, the way that Clark loved had always been a bit different than Whitney. Whitney had his own goals and wants, and when his desires had clashed with Lana’s, Whitney was always, it seemed to Lana, putting himself first. Clark, by contrast, was offering a very selfless love. Yes, he had his secrets, or perhaps it was just one larger secret, that he wouldn’t budge on, but aside from that he was always willing to… well, not do whatever Lana told him to do, because that made Lana sound like a horrible, self-centered person, but he was certainly more flexible and sensitive to Lana’s needs than Whitney had been.

That’s where Lana originally assumed the sex thing was coming from. Because while Whitney had always listened when Lana said no, because he wasn’t a terrible human being, right up until Lana put her foot down, he would always push her to the edge of as far as she was willing to go. With Clark, Lana got complete control to set the pace, and he would follow wherever she led. In fact, it was the total lack of pressure on Clark’s part that made Lana decide that she wanted to have her first time with him, and it had been much more amazing and intense than Lana had ever imagined.

That was probably why she didn’t notice at first that Clark didn’t seem to find the sex as amazing as she did. It wasn’t that she thought he hated it, or that he wasn’t present with her during their love-making, but he didn’t seem to enjoy it as much. In fact, Lana kind of thought he enjoyed the cuddling afterward better than the sex itself.

“Hey Clark,” Lana said, approaching him in the hall in between classes.

“Hey,” Clark replied, wrapping his arms around her. He gave her a kiss on the forehead and looked at her with clear love shining in his eyes.

Maybe Lana was being silly. She didn’t have very much experience with sex, so maybe she was just missing the signs of how much he liked what they were doing. And yes, he hadn’t tried to initiate anything between them, but then Lana hadn’t given him much of a chance to, had she?

“Listen, Nell’s up in Metropolis tonight, so I thought you could come by later and we could hang out. You know, just do whatever you’re up for,” Lana said, giving her words just enough salacious implication that if Clark were already thinking along the same lines, he was bound to notice, but not so much that he would if he wasn’t. The point was to see if Clark would initiate sex on his own because that’s what he wanted to do, not because he thought it was what Lana wanted.

“That sounds great,” Clark agreed, giving no indication that he had noticed Lana’s innuendo. But then, Clark really was the epitome of a good Midwestern boy. Probably he didn’t even want to imply anything related to sex in the middle of a crowded public hallway. Probably when Lana let Clark take the lead tonight, he would lead her straight upstairs to the bedroom. Because Clark was in love with her, Lana was sure of it.

But then, sometimes even the experts were wrong.

Clark wasn’t sure how he ended up here. After… it happened, he had run up to the loft, thinking it would be a good place to be alone. But as soon as he set eyes on the place, he had been assaulted with happy memory after happy memory, each one hitting him like a knife in the gut. Things went a little blurry around the edges after that and suddenly he had found himself here, curled up on a comfortable couch that smelt of leather and something else that Clark only recognized in a visceral ‘this is a good thing’ sort of way. He had the brief presence of mind to worry if he used super-speed where somebody could see him before conscious thought slipped away, and Clark succumbed to the feeling of safety that permeated the room.

“Clark?” Lex said, his voice and his hand on Clark’s shoulder rousing Clark from his daze (because he absolutely hadn’t fallen asleep on his best friend’s couch while said best friend was at work; that would be weird even by Clark’s standards). Clark opened his eyes to find Lex crouched in front of him and looking at him, the apparent, to Clark at least, pleasure at Clark’s presence edged with not a little concern. “Is everything alright?”

Rather than answer in words, Clark, without really thinking about what he was doing made a small distressed noise and sort of slid off the couch, wrapping his arms around Lex as he went. Lex took this turn of events with the same grace that he did everything, automatically reaching up to reciprocate Clark’s hold and rubbing his hands up and down Clark’s back. “Hey it’s okay. Whatever it is, I’ll fix it.”

Clark smiled a little in spite of himself. It was just like Lex to want to fix everything for Clark; the familiarity was comforting. “This isn’t something you can fix.” Though if anyone could fix it, or show Clark how to, it would be Lex. “Lana,” he began, before stopping, unable to finish. He knew saying it out loud wouldn’t make it any more real than it already was, but that wasn’t how it felt.

“What happened to Lana?” Lex asked, his tone taking on a whole new dimension of worry, making Clark feel like a terrible person. Because he was too afraid to face reality and just tell Lex what happened, now Lex thought Lana, who was his friend too and his business partner, got eaten by a meteor mutant or something.

“Lana’s fine. We just – she broke up with me,” Clark admitted softly, burying his face into the joint where Lex’s neck met his shoulder, still too afraid to actually face the truth.

“Oh Clark,” Lex said. He nudged Clark’s head up so he could look at him in the eyes. Clark resisted slightly at first, but he couldn’t hide forever. Lex, when Clark finally chanced a look at him, was all affection and understanding. “I know this feels like the end of the world,” he said, brushing back Clark’s bangs, “but trust me it’s not. The voice of experience speaking here.” The last was said with a self-depreciating grin that invited Clark to join in on the joke.

He didn’t. Clark hated it when Lex joked about Helen. Lex had almost died and Clark had gone to his funeral; that wasn’t the kind of thing you joked about. Even high out of his mind on Red Kryptonite, it still had hurt worse than anything. On the other hand, Lex did have a point, albeit in a roundabout way. Breaking up with Lana seemed like the worst thing that could have ever happened, but Lex wasn’t abandoning Clark when he need him most this time, or dying, so it obviously could be much, much worse. “Okay,” Clark said.

“Good,” Lex said, his grin shrinking, but turning into something more natural and genuine in the process. “Do you think we can move this up to the couch, then? This position is a little hard on my knees.” It was then that Clark realized Lex was still crouching, his weight completely supported by the balls of his feet. And not just his weight, probably about half of Clark’s too, since Clark was still clinging to Lex like a needy puppy.

“Sorry!” Clark said, standing bolt upright and blushing furiously. “I didn’t mean to jump you like that, I just… I’m sorry.” He sat down shame-faced on the far end of the couch, trying to make sure Lex could get as much space as he needed from Clark’s very clingy nature.

Lex, however, completely undermined Clark’s good intentions by sitting down right next to him. Then he reached an arm around Clark’s shoulders and urged Clark to lean on him. Clark still felt embarrassed about the whole thing, but if Lex was not only letting him do it, but actually encouraging him, it was probably okay. Plus it felt really nice.

“You know the scar I have on my lip?” Lex said after a few moments.

“Yeah?”

“I got it when I was seven. Tripped down the stairs, bloodied my nose, and split my lip almost in half.” Clark tried to picture it and found he couldn’t. He just had a hard time imagining Lex doing anything as normal and graceless as tripping; Clark had always assumed Lex had got it in a fencing accident or something.

Lex must have caught a glimpse of the odd expression on Clark’s face because he chuckled softly and said, “Not my proudest moment I admit. But anyway, the day it happened was fairly unusual in that my father was home – he had some paperwork he had forgotten to bring to the office, I think – and my mother was busy putting on a charity event and Pamela had the day off, so my father was the one who took me to the hospital. He got in the limo first and I climbed in after him. I remember not being foolish enough to actually climb into his lap, but I sat right next to him, just like this, hoping he might pull me in his lap of his own accord, or maybe put his arm around me, or even just hold my hand. Instead, he turned to me and told me I was seven, which was much too old to be coddled.”

“But you were just a little kid,” Clark protested.

“You have met my father, haven’t you?” Lex said with dry amusement. And yeah, Lex’s dad was pretty awful, but –

“It’s still not right.”

“As it happened, my mother agreed with you. She didn’t get home until later – my father didn’t think it was important enough to call her away from her work – but once she did, she came straight up to my room and pulled me into her arms. By then I was feeling better and I pulled away, repeating what my father had told me earlier. I’ll never forget what she said to me."

“What did she say?” Clark asked.

“She said, ‘Alexander, no one is ever too old to need to know someone cares about them when they’re hurt.’” 

Clark smiled and relaxed further into Lex. This is why he had come here, even if he hadn’t been thinking straight at the time. Lex always knew the right thing to say or story to tell to make Clark feel like things were normal, not falling apart or like Clark was too big for his body. Clark knew that when he told Lex what had happened – Lana’s complaints of lack of passion and her claims that Clark wasn’t really in love with her – that Lex would be able to make sense of it all. Then he would explain it to Clark, and maybe they could fix it and maybe they couldn’t, but at least Clark would understand.

Having grown up in Smallville, Pete had thought there was nothing left in the world that could truly shock him, but going to college in New York was eye-opening in a completely different way than the Wall of Weird had ever been. Less X-Files and more learning that there was more to the totally normal and mundane world than Kansas. Of course some of it may be less about New York and more about Pete just growing up and becoming a more mature person – like realizing the way he left things with Clark was really shitty of him. Not that he blamed himself for leaving, sometimes you really did have to look out for yourself first and everyone else second, but he kind of used to blame Clark for ‘making’ him leave, which wasn’t fair at all.  So about two months after arriving at college, Pete sent Clark an email. He never quite managed to say sorry, but Clark seemed happy enough to hear from him regardless and pretty soon they were able to pick up almost where they had left off.

There were other things, though, that were definitely due to New York. Pete hadn’t been stupid or completely ignorant before or anything, he had known that there were dudes out there that were into other dudes, and he didn’t really have a problem with it as long as they weren’t trying to get into him. But it wasn’t until he had moved out of Kansas that he’d gotten to see that kind of stuff first hand as something that normal people did rather than just as a concept. And after he had… well it sure explained a lot about Clark and Luthor – Lex, Pete could call him Lex now, because once he’d gotten away from Smallville for a while he’d found he really didn’t hate Lex as much as he had thought he did.

After a little while Pete found himself worrying about Clark again; a familiar feeling, but this time it had nothing to do with where Clark was from and everything to do with the fact, as far as Pete could tell from his emails, Clark‘s only two friends besides Pete were Chloe and Lex, and given Pete’s new understanding he wasn’t even sure Lex counted as a friend exactly. And because Pete would always feel like the slightly cooler friend that had to watch out for dorky Clark, he did a little research and then sent Clark a link to webpage for the Met U chapter of Delta Lambda Phi. It was a bit late to rush, obviously, Pete had said, but Clark could at least try going to some parties and meeting some people.

Clark had sent back a very confused response pointing out that since he didn’t drink – couldn’t get drink because of his alien physiology he meant, but Pete and Clark had both spent enough time with Chloe to realize how unsecure Yahoo! Mail was – he wasn’t much for frat parties. Also, he didn’t understand why Pete was trying to send him to a gay frat, he wasn’t gay. 

Pete just shook his head and laughed a bit when he read that. He didn’t know if Clark considered being gay to be a bigger and more embarrassing secret than being an alien, or if he was just oblivious, but either way, it was typical Clark.

Clark fell back against the hallway wall – hard enough to make a satisfying sound, but not enough to do any damage – and collapsed to the floor, glaring at the sock hung on the door to his dorm room like it had personally wronged him. And Chloe had a class on Tuesday evenings, so Clark guessed he was off to hide out in the library until she was done and he could go hang out, and possibly sleep, in her room. Never mind that he just came back from the library and had been looking forward to relaxing for the rest of the evening. Lacking the willpower to get up again yet, Clark sighed and pulled out his phone.

“Lex Luthor.”

“Dorms are the worst,” Clark said, full of feeling. Seriously, he was thinking about lobbying to the UN to have them classified as inhumane torture.

“You get kicked out of your room again?” Lex asked, his voice tinged with amusement.

“I just don’t understand how one person can be having this much sex,” Clark protested. Weren’t humans supposed to have a refractory period or something?

“Trust me, your roommate doesn’t even begin to reach the levels of obsession that some people have toward sex.”

“I’m just saying, I’m not running around having all kinds of sex” – or any at all, really – “and I’m doing just fine.”

“It’s certainly your prerogative not to be having all kinds of sex if you don’t want to, but it’s your roommate’s prerogative to sleep with every person that will give him the time of day f that’s what he wants to do.”

“Is it also his prerogative to kick me out of our room every time he wants to do it?” Clark asked pointedly, resisting the urge to burn the sock to ashes with his heat vision. Just because the sock would be technically not on the door anymore, that wouldn’t change what was going on in Clark’s room right now. Besides, it’s not like it was the sock’s fault; it was probably a perfectly nice sock.

“It seems like you let him make it his prerogative,” Lex observed, and Clark made a noise that wasn’t quite a curse word. Lex, because he was a horrible, horrible person that Clark hated, laughed at him. “Did you want to come over here for the night?”

Lex was the best, and Clark loved him. “If you don’t mind?”

“Of course not. You’re welcome here any time.”

“All the time?” Clark asked, because sometimes his brain had a way of making plans and sending them straight to his mouth without consulting Clark’s opinion.

“Any time, all the time, whenever. My penthouse is your penthouse,” Lex said.

Oh well, might as well just go for it. “No, I mean… I have to live in the dorms this year, right? But next year I’m allowed to live wherever and I was just thinking that if you really meant all the time…”

“I… I’d like that Clark. A lot. But I don’t think your parents would be too thrilled by the idea.”

“Hey, I’m an adult now, I can do whatever I want,” Clark said. The following silence from Lex was heavy with skepticism, and Clark had to acknowledge, okay maybe that was fair. “Honestly, they like you a lot more than you think they do. Besides, I’m sure they’ll be fine with it when I tell them you’re giving me a really good deal on rent.”

“Clark, I’m not going to charge you rent.”

“Lex, I’m not going to not pay you rent,” Clark countered. “I know you don’t need the money, but I kind of need to pay it. It’s part of that whole being a responsible adult thing.”

Lex sighed. “Okay, $25 a month.”

“You can’t go to the movies for $25. 500.”

“100.”

“300.”

“No rent, with the possibility to renegotiate after you graduate, and your graduation gift will cost less than $1000,” Lex offered.

Clark considered that for a few moments, then said, “Same thing, but paying $100 a month, and $100 is also the spending cap on my graduation gift.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Kent. Deal.”

“Deal,” Clark said, grinning. “Hey, Lex? You’re the best.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Lex said, but his tone was very obviously pleased. “I’ll see you over here in twenty.”

Kal-El placed the octagonal key into the slot in the cave wall, and Jor-El, once again running at full-capacity, began running the repair subroutines on a number of his programs that had been damaged in either the hastier than planned take-off or the crash landing upon Kal-El’s arrival to Earth, the problems being primarily in his core personality programs. Transferring his software from the damaged hardware of the ship to the relatively intact caves had sped up the process significantly, but at his current rate, Jor-El still estimated two hundred thirty-six point seven four years before all systems were functioning at optimum capacity. He hoped, as much as he could in his current state, that Kal-El found the Stones of Power and assembled the Crystal of Knowledge and created the Fortress soon. Once Jor-El managed to download his program to there, finishing repairs should only take between 3.5 to 6 years, depending on a number of currently undeterminable factors.

“I need to talk to you Jor-El,” Kal-El said in demanding tones, as though Jor-El wasn’t his father and therefore owed his respect and obedience. A large part of Jor-El wished to take Kal-El within the cave walls and to mold him into the perfect obedient son. However, a very small part of him insisted that Kal-El was not meant to be his puppet, but his son, and must therefore be allowed to make his own decisions and, on occasion, mistakes. Unable to determine which command was coming from the faulty programming, Jor-El took the cautious route; he could always kidnap Kal-El later, if need be.

“What do you wish to discuss my son?”

Kal-El blushed, and gave off a number of indicators that he felt uncomfortable speaking with Jor-El. This upset Jor-El. As his son, Kal-El should not be reluctant to bring any problem he desired help with to Jor-El. Jor-El reallocated his working memory, devoting five percent more of his resources to the core personality programs, identifying that as the most likely cause of his failure to form a bond with his son. “It’s just… I’ve noticed that I don’t exactly work like a normal human in some respect. Uh… downstairs respects.”

“You are not human. You are better than them,” Jor-El gently chided.

“I am not better than them, and I am not going to rule anybody with strength,” Kal-El spat out angrily.  The things his adoptive parents were teaching him; Jor-El wasn’t certain why he had chosen to give Kal-El to the Kents of all people. He accessed his memory files on the subject and determined that it was because the Kents had been deemed as highly likely to treat Kal-El with love and care as if he were their own biological son, and that they would further be likely to teach Kal-El how to treat others with love and care and respect as well. The latter of these desires did not properly align with Jor-El’s current stated goals for Kal-El, so he flagged the files as being high priority to check for potential corruption.

“Look,” Kal-El said, “can you just tell me whether or not Kryptonians have sex? Well, I know you have sex, because I saw all those memories that you left in your necklace, but I’m not… is there maybe something wrong or weird about my development? Like, do Kryptonians have a delayed puberty or something? Or Pon Farr, because I would definitely like some forewarning if I’m going to have to deal with a literally potentially fatal case of blue balls.”

Interesting. Jor-El scanned Kal-El – not nearly as well as he could have if he could have if he were in the Fortress, shouldn’t the Stones of Power have called to Kal-El by now? – and discovered something he hadn’t anticipated at all. Jor-El could only assume that Kal-El’s exposure to the radiation of the yellow sun prior to him reaching his physical maturity had allowed his biology to accustom itself and develop normally. It was quite the contrast to the effect it had had on fully adult Kryptonians.

“Worry not, my son. You are maturing in a completely normal Kryptonian fashion. We stopped leaving the birth of our children up to the whims of nature a very long time ago, and, lacking a clear reproductive use for our sex drive once we began genetically engineering children, over time we lost it.” Jor-El’s time with Louise taught him that there could be other uses for intercourse aside from reproduction, such as establishing and reinforcing a pair bond, or merely pleasure, but Kryptonians had found other ways to achieve those ends, ones that didn’t leave the participants so open to the transmission of diseases. That the humans had yet to figure this out for themselves was merely further proof of why they needed Kal-El to lead them.

“But I saw you! And I didn’t just see it, I felt it. You weren’t just doing that to make Louise happy.”

“A side-effect of the Earth’s yellow sun that you were lucky enough to not to be affected by,” Jor-El told him.

Kal-El let out a very bitter laugh. “Lucky? I get all these powers that I don’t even want and I constantly have to watch to make sure I don’t accidently hurt anyone or worse, do something too freaky where someone could see. And then I spend years lying to my friends about it because who knows what could happen to me if my secret fell into the wrong hands and, as far as my parents are concerned, not a single one of my friends can be trusted to keep that from happening. And now you’re telling me I’m lucky because apparently the one power I missed out on was a normal sex drive?”

Before Jor-El could remind him that his sex drive was normal by Kryptonian standards, and even among humans it wasn’t completely unheard of, Kal-El removed the octagonal key from its slot, effectively returning Jor-El to low power mode. 

Repairs logged in at one point six two percent complete.

“Comedy or drama?” Clark asked, not needing to look behind him to know Lex had come back in the room with the popcorn. 

“Comedy,” Lex said. “But not screwball. I want something with an actual plot this time.” 

“Well aren’t we demanding?” Clark said, but there was no heat to the words. They had so many movies, Lex could have said he wanted to watch one about giant radioactive ants attacking downtown Columbus and stopped with the power of shaving cream, and Clark would still have a couple of different titles to choose from.  

“There’s nothing wrong with knowing what you want,” Lex retorted, and Clark looked back over his shoulder to toss him a winning smile.  

“No, I guess there isn’t,” Clark agreed. Lex looked discomfited by Clark’s response, which struck Clark as odd, but he shrugged it off. Probably Lex had just been expecting more banter. “Well, hopefully this will meet with your approval,” he said, slipping his selection into the player. 

Clark got up to join Lex on the couch and was somewhat surprised by the position Lex had taken – sitting straight up in the dead center of the sofa. Once again Clark chose not to worry about it, settling himself into his normal spot at the corner where the back of the couch met the arm before more or less manhandling Lex into his usual position, leaning back against Clark’s chest. Once he had them both properly settled, Clark began massaging Lex’s shoulders. It was a daily ritual they had started once Clark had begun to appreciate how much stress Lex put himself under every day. This meant Clark was in the ideal situation to notice how much more tense Lex was today than usual. 

“Bad day at work?” Clark hazarded, thinking it might explain Lex’s unusual behavior.  

“Not, exactly,” Lex said. “Mercy jut mentioned something today that has me… worried.” 

“What did she say?” asked Clark, already trying to figure out if he needed to have a word with her. He hoped not; in addition to being a good assistant, or at least so Clark had gathered from comments Lex had made, Mercy was also a competent bodyguard for Lex when Clark couldn’t do it, something that Lex seemed to have an impossible time finding. Plus she actually liked Lex, admittedly in a slightly creepy way, but she was neither homicidal nor stalker-y about it, which was good enough for Clark. 

“Leave my employees alone,” Lex said, once again showcasing his uncanny ability to know what Clark was thinking, this time without even looking at Clark. Had it been anybody but Lex, Clark would be seriously creeped out. 

“Sorry,” said Clark. He was so used to protecting Lex, sometimes he forgot that LexCorp employees weren’t under his jurisdiction until after they were stricken with one of the many and varied types of insanity that Lex seemed to attract to himself. “But do you want to talk about it anyway? It’ll probably help.” 

Lex sighed and shifted over, so his back was to the couch and he could look Clark in the eye. “Clark, you know you’re the most important person in the world to me.” 

“Yeah, I love you too,” Clark said, and if his tone was glib, his expression was pure affection. 

“That’s the problem,” Lex said, more to himself than to Clark. And really, that was just confusing. Clark loved Lex and Lex, though he had difficulty saying it right out sometimes, loved Clark; what was the problem with that? 

“Clark,” Lex said, his tone completely serious and determined, “I’m straight.”

“And my people have evolved beyond the desire for sexual reproduction,” Clark replied. It still seemed pretty new to him, despite it technically being almost a year since he’d found out, and he didn’t feel really comfortable telling other people about it yet, but that was other people and this was Lex.

Then the implications of what Lex had said hit him. Lex had known Clark loved him and from there made the not unreasonable, if inaccurate, assumption that Clark wanted to have sex with him. But Lex didn’t want to have sex with Clark, which had directly conflicted with Lex’s desire to give Clark anything and everything he wanted. No wonder Lex had been so tense.  

“Your people?” Lex echoed, looking at Clark strangely. Oh, right! Clark hadn’t actually told Lex about the alien thing yet. He had stopped lying to Lex a while ago, and stopped trying to hide his abilities not long after that, but they had never discussed it at all. 

“Also, I’m an alien from the planet Krypton. I was sent to Earth as a baby to escape the planet’s destruction.” 

“You’re an alien,” Lex repeated. Clark nodded. “From a planet called Krypton,” he repeated again and Clark nodded again. It was starting to get a bit worrying; technically Lex hadn’t gone non-verbal or anything, but usually, no matter how surprised, Lex’s utterances were more novel than just parroting back whatever had been said to him. “Is that why you-“ 

Oh, a question; that was probably a good sign. “Have super-strength, super-speed, super-hearing, x-ray vision, heat vision, various other kinds of super-vision, ice breath, a photographic memory, the power of flight, and can survive a car ramming me off a bridge at sixty miles per hour?” Clark finished for him. “Pretty much, yeah. Earth’s yellow sun is younger than Krypton’s red one was and the radiation from it gives me powers.” 

Lex looked at Clark like that was either the coolest thing he had ever heard or the dumbest, which, yeah, Clark totally got. “Actually, I was going to ask if that was why the basics of human interaction escapes you sometimes,” said Lex, mostly teasing, probably. 

“No, that’s because I was raised in a barn,” Clark quipped. Lex chuckled in response, and that’s when Clark was sure, not that he had been really all that concerned in the first place, that things were going to be okay.  

“I see,” Lex said. “And just so we’re clear, despite Mercy’s insinuations, you actually have no interest in getting into my pants, correct?” 

“I doubt I’d even fit into your pants,” Clark said, pretending to give a critical eye to the garment in question. Lex shot him an annoyed glare, to which Clark responded to with a grin, before giving a serious answer to Lex’s question. “I wouldn’t say I find the idea inherently objectionable in any way” – after all, he had slept with Lana a few times and Clark’s feelings for Lex were a lot stronger than his feelings for her had ever been – “but it’s not something that I have any real interest in either.” 

“Alright then,” Lex said easily. Then he shifted over again until he could settle himself back against Clark’s chest, where he belonged.   

“And then you just need to get your boyfriend to–“

“Chloe!” Clark objected, cutting her off mid-train of thought. She hated when he did that. “Lex is not my boyfriend.”

“Oh I’m sorry; it must have been all the cuddling that confused me,” Chloe said, rolling her eyes.

“Well, he’s not. Lex is straight for one thing. And I…” Clark hesitated. “I’m asexual.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Chloe said turning the idea over in her mind. She hadn’t been expecting it, exactly, but she couldn’t say she was surprised either. If anything, it was nice to have final definitive confirmation that Clark’s lack of interest in her low cut sweater phase had been on him, and not because she had been wrong about how completely amazing she looked in those tops.

“That makes sense?” Clark repeated, his voice starting to go to his high and whiny place. Oh. Right.

Chloe placed one hand on Clark’s shoulder and looked him straight in the eye. “Clark. Thank you for sharing that piece of yourself with me. I am glad you are comfortable enough with me to feel you can be honest. I hope you know that I support who you are and any choices you make to express that.” She gave a final decisive nod, and then let go of his shoulder and turned back to her laptop.

“That sounded memorized,” Clark said suspiciously.

“Oh, it was,” Chloe assured him breezily. “We had this ‘Sensitivity in the Workplace’ seminar when I started at the Star, and that’s what they told us to say if anyone ever comes out as anything to you. I promise did mean it though, even if it was canned. Anyway, like I was saying, then you just need to get your boyfriend to-“

“Chloe!” 

“I’m teasing you; as your friend I’m allowed to tease. I mean, the two of you do cuddle a lot.” Chloe frowned thoughtfully and added, “And if you both want to express yourselves by cuddling and being platonic life partners or not-boyfriends or whatever you want to call it, then I support that. Now, if you’re done interrupting me…”        

Clark tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep. He wasn't sure how long he had been lying there, but after another minute or two he decided it had been long enough. Clearly he wasn't going to succumb to sleep until after he had dealt with what was bothering him. Or, more accurately, what was bothering Lex. 

Clark climbed out of bed and into the hall, pausing only long enough to quickly have and discard the notion of throwing on a t-shirt. He was more comfortable without, and it wasn't anything Lex hadn't seen before. 

Lex, when Clark entered his room, was breathing deep and evenly, but Clark wasn't fooled. There was a distinct difference, though Clark didn't think he could qualify what that difference was if asked, between Lex's actual sleep breathing and his pretend sleep breathing. "I know you're awake," he said, sitting down on the side of the bed.  

"I don't know why I even try," Lex said self-depreciatingly. 

Clark felt a grin ghost across his face. "You really shouldn't bother," he said. 

"Regardless, I don't want to talk about it," Lex said. 

"Okay," Clark agreed easily. Then he sat and waited. 

"My father's a huge ass," Lex said after a few moments. 

"The hugest," Clark said. 

"He does evil things," said Lex. 

"He really does." 

"He's evil." 

"Definitely." 

"I deserve better." 

"A lot better." 

"I hate him." 

"Me too." Clark waited a minute, but it appeared Lex was done. Clark smiled softly, reaching out for one quick comforting stroke to Lex's shoulder. "Even with all that, it's okay if you love him." 

"God Clark, what does that say about me?" Lex exploded. ""He's been an utter bastard to me my whole life and has no redeeming qualities, but I still care about him." 

"He's your dad Lex," Clark said. "I think that just makes you a good person." 

Lex searched Clark's face for a moment before letting out a satisfied sigh. "Thanks Clark; that actually helps." He stretched and settled deeper into the bed. "You can go back to sleep now if you like." 

Clark started to get up to do just that, but stopped when he was struck with a better idea. Instead of leaving, he peeled the covers back and climbed in. 

"Clark, what are you doing?" Lex asked. He sounded disbelieving almost and definitely surprised, but he wasn't saying no or trying to stop Clark, so Clark figured he had this one in the bag. 

"Going to sleep," Clark answered. "You're going to end up having a nightmare later tonight, so I'm going to be right back in here anyway. This way I'll save some time." That wasn't one hundred percent accurate – Lex had nightmares more frequently on the nights after he had to deal with his father, but he was still less likely to have one than not. It made a pretty good excuse though. 

 "You do realize this isn't exactly normal," Lex said. 

"You do realize I'm not exactly an angsty teenager anymore," Clark retorted. "Normal is vastly overrated." 

Lex huffed a breath that sounded a lot more annoyed than Clark was sure that Lex really was. "I suppose it's fine, just for tonight." Lex relaxed into sleep and, despite appearing to roll away from Clark, somehow ended up significantly closer with his arm draped over Clark's waist. 

"Just for tonight," Clark assured him, a faint hint of a smile in his voice. 

It would be hard to say which surprised Clark less, waking up curled up with Lex like a couple of puppies, or coming home from work later that day to find all his stuff had been moved into Lex's room. 

“I’m just worried that one of these days Lex is going to try to take advantage of you, and you’re going to let him,” Martha said. She leaned back against the kitchen counter and frowned at her son. She couldn’t deny that both Lex and Clark seemed the better for having the other in their lives, but even after having a very long time to get used to the idea, much longer than either Clark or Lex had had to be certain, she still wished the two of them had just remained friends.

“Lex isn’t like that,” Clark said, sounding much less adamant than he had when he was a teenager. Not because he believed it less, mind, but because he believed it more, and so no longer felt the need to prove it to anyone else. That, or possibly because Martha was always less vehement about the dangers of Lex Luthor than Jonathan had been. A very small part of Martha was actually glad her husband had passed before the thing between Clark and Lex had finally come to fruition. But only a very small part.

“Besides, I would never use my powers for anything questionable, no matter who was asking me to,” Clark continued.

“Oh, that’s not what I meant at all, sweetie. I know Lex would never ask you to do anything bad.” He might think it, but Lex respected Clark’s morals and his powers too much to ever ask it of him. Of course, what Martha had been thinking was hardly any better. “I’ve been concerned since you came out that Lex might ask you one do to do something that you would be… uncomfortable with.”

“Lex and I weren’t even dating when I came out,” Clark protested.

Martha looked at him. “I’m your mother.” As though she couldn’t tell when her own son had fallen in love. And Lex had never made any secret of his feelings for Clark.

“And mom always knows,” Clark completed. “But I guess I’m not sure what you’re worried about, that Lex is going to jump me one day and force me to have sex with him? You do know that he’s pretty exclusively into women in that respect, right?”

“I know that he has been in the past, yes, but honey it’s very easy for sex and love to get confused.”

“I guess?” Clark tentatively agreed. “But honestly, if it was going to happen I think it would have by now. And if it did, I’d be okay with it.”

“That’s exactly what worries me. That you’re going to let your feelings for Lex convince you to do something you don’t want to because he wants it from you.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like?” Martha asked.

Clark frowned in thought for a minute before a look of clarity crossed his features. “Do you remember that year you got Dad season tickets to the Sharks for his birthday?”

“Of course.” She had started saving practically the year before, lining up a few extra orders for baked goods here and there, never so many at once that Jonathan might notice something. There had been a number of times throughout that year too when she had been tempted to dip into those savings to pay for other various things they really needed, but in the end it had all been worth it for the look of surprise and excitement on Jonathan’s face.

“You got him two tickets, one for him and one for you,” Clark said.

“I went to a number of the games, yes, but the other ticket wasn’t for me, it was for whoever your dad wanted to take with him. Which was you most of the time, as I recall,” Martha corrected.

“That’s not the point. The point is, you ended up going see a bunch of football games that year because Dad asked you to. Mom, you don’t even like football.”

“That’s hardly the same thing.”

“It is the same thing,” Clark insisted. “You don’t like football, and you would never chose to watch a game completely of your own volition, but you would watch them with Dad. And not just going to see the Sharks that year he had season tickets, but sometimes when he was just watching a game on the TV you would sit down and watch it with him, because it made Dad happy to share it with you and making him happy made you happy.”

Martha found herself frowning again. It certainly sounded reasonable, but her son could make the most outlandish things sound reasonable sometimes; she thought it was something that he had picked up from Lex. And no matter what Clark said about it, Martha just couldn’t equate football, which was really just a harmless, silly little sport when you got right down to it, to something as powerful and meaningful as sex in her mind.

Clark sighed. “Look, how about this? If I ever think Lex is going to ask me to do something that makes me uncomfortable, I’ll just threaten to rat him out to you. You know Lex would never do anything to make you upset at him.”

Martha chuckled a little bit. It was true that Lex did seem to fall all over himself trying to please her, even more than he would for Clark at times. On occasion Martha wished she could somehow pull Lionel and Lillian Luthor aside and have a serious talk with them about some of the awful things they must have done while raising him to make their son as uncertain of himself as he was, but mostly she just found Lex’s actions endearing. He really was a sweet boy.

And that should be the crux of the issue, shouldn’t it? No matter what Lex acted like in the board room, and despite the rumors that had surfaced not too terribly long ago about ‘Lex girls’ and diamond earrings, at heart Lex was a sweet, good boy who loved Martha’s son very deeply. That would have to be enough.

“I just worry,” Martha repeated, but this time the words were offered up as a sort of explanation. 

Clark grinned the fond yet exasperated smile of children with embarrassing parents the world over. “I know you do, Mom.”

Clark dozed lightly, but was unable to fall into a deeper sleep. Not that he was particularly surprised by that; he never slept well without Lex any more. There were definitely times lately Clark was grateful that, no matter what his preferences were, he didn’t need all that much sleep. 

The sound of the front door opening and closing invaded Clark's scattered and meandering consciousness, and a moment later his focus automatically locked in on Lex's familiar heartbeat. The comforting rhythm allowed Clark to drift deeper asleep, so he didn't notice Lex coming into the room and getting ready for bed until, some timeless interlude later, the mattress dipped under the added weight of Lex's body. 

Clark reached out for Lex and gathered him close, letting out a contented sigh once they were wrapped comfortably around each other.  

"Get everything taken care of?" Clark asked, not bothering to open his eyes. Instead he focused on the warm feeling of Lex in his arms and the familiar smell of him - spicy-sweet body wash and a scent that was uniquely Lex, with a hint of hotel bar soap underneath. Lex always showered twice after these evenings, once at the hotel because he didn't want to bring 'that smell' home, and again in their shower. Ostensibly the second time was to get the cheap soap residue off his skin, but, given the way he avoided the subject when Clark suggested he just bring some of his own body wash to the hotel with him to save time, Clark suspected it was more of a psychological need than a physical one. 

"Yes," Lex replied, a thread of guilt running through his voice. Clark frowned; they couldn't have that. 

"Good, I'm glad," Clark said firmly, looking Lex in the eyes to reaffirm the message. And he was glad. Lex had a need, and Clark did consider it a need, given how stressed and tense Lex tended to get when he went too long between these bouts of physical release, that Clark couldn't help him fill and had no interest in helping him fill. But someone had to help him because, brief feelings of guilt immediately afterward aside, getting that need taken care of made Lex happy. And when Lex was happy, Clark was happy. 

"Are you?" Lex asked. Clark could only assume his feelings of guilt were getting in the way of Lex's normally unerringly accurate ability to judge Clark's sincerity. 

"If you got it taken care of that means Mercy didn't have to save you from any more crazy homicidal bimbos. Which is good, because she works too hard as it is," Clark joked, though he felt a little bad about the bimbo comment. He was sure all the women Lex met up with for his little rendezvouses were perfectly lovely. Well, most of them anyway. 

Lex chuckled a little and relaxed, like Clark hoped he would. "That she does. I probably should give her another raise," said Lex. 

"Probably," Clark agreed. "Though at this point she likely makes more than a couple of lawyers combined. Plus a doctor." 

Lex snorted. It was completely undignified and Clark loved it, like he loved every little thing Lex did that proved just how willing he was to let his guard down around Clark. They always made Clark feel warm and glowy inside. "Mercy makes more than the combined income of an entire firm of lawyers. Plus a doctor. Not," he hastened to added, "that she hasn't earned it." 

"Mmm," Clark hummed in agreement, snuggling closer and relaxing as though he were about to fall asleep. He didn't though, waiting for the inevitable question. 

"Clark?" Lex said and Clark made a noise of acknowledgment. "Do you want me to stop doing this?" 

Clark couldn't remember for sure when Lex had asked that question for the first time – definitely after they started sharing a bed, but before, he thought, the advent of Superman – but he did remember that the moment Lex had asked was the moment Clark had stopped feeling even a little bit jealous of the women Lex had sex with. Because it had hurt a little at first, knowing that they could give Lex something he wanted that Clark couldn't, even if each individual one meant far less to Lex than Clark did. But in making that offer, Lex had made it clear to Clark that he needed Clark more than he needed what those women could give him. And at the end of the day, that was all Clark needed.  

"No, it's fine," Clark answered. He considered, like he did every time Lex made that offer, explaining to Lex how he felt about the whole thing. He thought if he tried hard enough he could make Lex understand how little it bothered him, so Lex wouldn't feel the continuous need to get Clark's permission to do something that made him happy. But in the end he decided not to, and went to sleep instead. 

Sometimes it was just nice to be asked. 

“Your boyfriend is cheating on you,” Lois said. Not the most subtle or sensitive of openings, but then Lois had never claimed to be good at either of those things. At least she had had the foresight to drag Clark into an empty storeroom first; she should definitely get kudos for that.

“Partner, and what are you talking about?” Clark asked, not sounding at all like a jilted lover. But then he was so tangled up in Luthor, it was hardly surprising that he wouldn’t believe her right away.

“I saw him. I was staking out Senator Johnson-“

“Lois!” Clark chastened, and maybe she had technically promised that she wouldn’t go on stake-outs by herself anymore after what happened the last time or six, but now was not the time to be focusing on that.

“Bigger picture, Clark. While I was following Johnson, I saw Luthor go into a hotel with some skank.”

“He’s not cheating on me.” Clark said very calmly and in clear denial.

“I hate to break this to you, but they weren’t going in there to play a game of cards,” Lois bit out, and then reminded herself to be calm. Clark was the victim in this situation and he didn’t need Lois snapping at him because she didn’t like people telling her she was wrong.

“I’m not stupid; I know Lex and that woman were going to have sex – and you shouldn’t call them skanks, that’s not very nice or woman empowering. He just wasn’t cheating on me, because we have an open relationship. Or, he’s allowed to have sex with women when he wants to.”

Lois felt her jaw wanting to drop. It didn’t, but she could feel it wanting to. It was hard enough to buy that Clark Kent, small town farm boy Clark Kent, would be dating Lex Luthor, now she was supposed to believe that Clark had agreed to an open relationship? “Listen Smallville, was this Luthor’s idea? Like he told you that the thing between the two of you wasn’t going to work unless you let him have sex with whoever he wants whenever he wants and you just went along with it because you thought it was the best you could do? Because it’s not; you’re a good guy, and you deserve someone who appreciates that, not someone who’s trying to take advantage of it.”

“Uh, not to undermine probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, but Lex isn’t taking advantage of me. We have an understanding and beyond that I don’t think our sex lives are really any of your business.”

For the second time in as many minutes Lois had to stop her jaw from dropping. Who had given Clark a backbone? “I’m just trying to be a good friend here.”

“And I appreciate that,” Clark said, smiling at her. “But now you’ve told me what you saw, and I’m telling you that Lex and I are fine. It’s all fine."

Lois frowned. “If you’re sure.” She would never understand that man.

The instant the limo door closed behind them, Clark sidled up alongside Lex, dropping his head onto the other man’s shoulder. Lex laughed softly, but obliging put an arm around him. “You’d think you’d be used to this by now.”

“Superman likes to be the center of attention, not me.”

“And how long have you been attending these events with me?” Lex asked.

Clark made a vague noise of acknowledgement. Just because he’d done it a lot, didn’t make him like it any better. “I ran into Victoria tonight,” Clark said after a moment.

Lex briefly wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Is she back up again?” Victoria had spent the past fifteen years since LuthorCorp had bought out Hardwick Enterprises on a never-ending cycle of success and prominence to failure and obscurity.

“Yeah. She was there with Oliver.” It was just such a shame that, despite her intelligence and capability, Victoria seemed to think she could only get up in the world on someone else’s coat tails rather than one her own merits.

“With Queen?” Lex snorted. “Good, they deserve each other.”

“Oliver really isn’t that bad.” Yeah he needed to get over himself sometime, and Clark could understand why Lex might still be somewhat resentful of Oliver, but Oliver had gotten better since high school, the way most people do. “He shut Victoria down pretty quick when she started making her usual boy toy insinuations.”

“I’m sorry you had to put up that,” Lex said. Clark just shrugged; it honestly didn’t bother him. He’d always thought that, underneath all the crap the two of them had put each other through back then, Victoria actually genuinely liked Lex. And people said all kinds of mean, petty things when they were jealous. Clark didn’t let it get to him any longer.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” Lex said a minute later, with the desperate casualness that meant whatever it was, was really important to him.

“What’s that?” Clark asked, equally casual.

“I think we should get married. I know we don’t have the most traditional of relationship, but I really think-“

“Lex, we love each other, we live together, we’re the most important person in each other’s lives, and we do a whole lot of cuddling. Case in point,” Clark said, patting the arm Lex still had slung around his shoulders. “I’d say that’s pretty traditional. Besides, you don’t have to convince me; you’ve always been the one who was more worried about being normal.” Clark thought about that a moment and amended it to, “Well, when it comes to things between us, at any rate.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Of course it’s a yes.” How could it be anything but, when the very thought of marrying Lex made Clark feel all warm and happy and safe inside, the same way he always felt around Lex, only times a thousand?

“Oh,” Lex said, sounding a bit surprised. Had he honestly been even the slightest bit worried that the answer would be no?

Clark shifted to capture Lex in a tight hug, which Lex returned with his usual fierceness, only a little more so. Once they had finally pulled back, Clark placed a lingering affectionate kiss on Lex’s forehead and, because Lex really was a traditionalist when it came to some things, he followed it with a quick chaste kiss to Lex’s lips. “Yes Lex, I would love to marry you.”

“Good,” Lex said, practically glowing with happiness. “How does this weekend work for you?”

Clark didn’t doubt that Lex could get everything together in a matter of days – how long had he had to pull together the wedding with Desiree, and Clark and Lex’s wedding wouldn’t be nearly that ostentatious – but… “Maybe we should give it a month or two? Family and friends typically need a bit of heads up to be able to attend a big event like a marriage, especially if Lana decides she wants to fly in from France.”

Lex deflated a bit. “Your friends and family, you mean. I doubt my father will come; he didn’t come to either of my last two weddings.”

“Our family,” Clark corrected. “Mom and I are your family too. We have been for a long time, this is just making it official for everyone.”

Lex closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths in and out. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” Clark said, but he was smiling. “So in two months?”

“On March 13^th,” Lex suggested. “That was Julian’s birthday.”

Clark’s smile turned even softer. “I’m sure he would have been really happy for you. March 13^th it is.” And then, because Clark would never ever get tired of saying it, “I love you, Lex.”

“I love you too, Clark.”