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"What are you doing up?"
In some part of Lex's mind, Clark will vanish one day. It's as sure as snow in winter or Lex's future presidency, hanging on the horizon. And it's always like this, a double shot of an empty, professionally decorated living room, a house with a society wife and two perfect little children that live at boarding school and only call home when they need more money.
It was supposed to be his life; he knew from the cradle, maybe, and wanting more had never translated into believing he could have it. Not with Desiree, Helen, Lena, or Lydia. Not with the women between and beyond, or the single nights with men he barely remembers.
And just for a second, he can actually see it, before it changes, a messy room with that horrible leather couch and Clark spread out on the floor, typing into a laptop, blinking owlishly through his glasses and chewing on his lip, drinking too much coffee and staying up much too late.
Lex is still not sure he believes it.
Clark looks up from the laptop. "I had a story to work on." Pulling the glasses off, Clark sits up, liquid grace from years of being Superman, and while the body's vulnerable and human now, the mind behind it is anything but. Lex doesn't ever forget Clark wandered through the Arctic with a severely interesting case of food poisoning and shot him through the shoulder once upon a time.
Clark Kent's ideas of what being in love meant are just as scary as Lex's are sometimes. Leaning into the doorway, Lex tries not to smile as stupidly as he wants to.
He wants to say, go to bed, but Clark in their bed is wet dream material, the kind of thing Lex spent years avoiding. Clark in their cars is Smallville all over again. When he wants to be grounded, wants to feel what they are now, it's here, in this room that Clark made his own..
Reality is messy piles of papers, dirty socks, dishes in obscure, forgotten places until Doris hunts them up, moldy with old pizza or half-curdled milk from wherever Clark forgot them. Reality is old flannel shirts and messy dark hair that's too long again because Clark always forgets to schedule a cut. Reality is a handpainted room by the richest man in the world and the man that used to be Superman, long dinners, and sleeping in every Sunday morning.
Reality is a frightening stretch of contented days, and Lex has no idea how he got to this, except he did, and they did, and it slides over him like water. It always does.
"Don't tell me. We're going back to Washington." Clark cocks his head, tapping a quick sequence of keys without looking down, then closing the laptop and rolling onto his back, sighing a little at the relief from pressure. Poor put-upon Clark, who never met a headache or a backache before and borrows Lex's masseuse so often Lex has thought about taking classes himself, just to be the only one that touches Clark like that.
"Not anytime soon, no." Lex has a business to run, a world to conquer, or at least buy and sell a few hundred times, and a sudden surfeit of time on his hands. He's not sure what to do with any of it right now, but lounging on the couch is appealing. Watching Clark in that full body writhe while he works the kinks out, relaxing into a boneless sprawl on the cream colored rug is something that goes well beyond classy porn. "Your parents are calling."
Clark's mouth tightens just a little, eyes flickering down.
"They're leaving messages on my phone, but they're not being very specific," Lex continues, crossing to the sofa, kicking at the long leg in his way. Clark doesn't move, eyes fixed on the ceiling. "Anything I should know?"
Clark sighs, pushing himself up on both elbows. "I told them."
"Ah." And here he'd thought they'd wait until after, say, retirement. Or Lex's death. Either would do.
"There's going to be an article on it," Clark says, rolling back down, like the kid Lex suspects he still is, under all that adult responsibility and career worries. Clark lost too much childhood to what he was--Lex doesn't plan on letting him lose another second. "In the Inquisitor. Chloe told me." The green eyes narrow thoughtfully. "You know. Marriage. Kind of a huge event and all."
"Vegas."
Clark tilts his head, eyebrows raised. "I'm not that kind of boy."
Lex grins, kicking Clark's foot. "You are exactly that kind of boy. So do I need to worry about a pitchfork in my back?" Hating the Kents is work, but Lex has had over a decade to perfect it. Jonathan's habit, so effortless it's like breathing. Martha, however, is more difficult.
And then sometimes, all it takes is that look on Clark's face, closed up and quiet, that the fifteen year old boy he met had never had. Love him to distraction they might, but they'd never make this easy. It's not that he doesn't understand why they hate him. It's that Clark shouldn't be the one hurting for it. "They're adjusting."
Even knowing that, knowing that he's sentenced Clark to a lifetime of a chasmed family, Lex can't give him up. It's as unthinkable as letting Superman die in the Arctic at the hands of his own people. Unacceptable.
Lex feels Clark's head rest on his knee, fingers idly rubbing the carpet. So fucking young, and it amazes him sometimes. Clark grew up so fast, and Superman had seen everything twice, but the man on the floor never lost his hope to it. He'll hope all his life, Lex thinks, touching the dark hair, remembering Clark when they met for the first time, the last time, and then in that tiny downtown tenement, when Lex walked in and felt everything just slip. Time had frozen, in a tiny pool of blood and a shaken, pale man on the floor, and it was Smallville all over again. Protect, defend, hide, care for, instinct taking over reason, and Lex remembers waking up the next morning and knowing that while he could have him, he couldn't let Clark go.
He'd let Clark go once before, and nothing had ever been quite right since.
"Lex?" Clark yawns briefly into his palm, looking up with liquid eyes. It's always a warning sign--the sad part is, Clark doesn't need to do that. Only three things could cause it, and Lex doesn't remember Lois doing an expose on LexCorp, so....
"Dinner with your parents?" Memories of the last time are jumbled, because Lex consumed brandy to the point of near-poisoning once they came home. He thinks it's better that way.
Clark smiles, slow and wide. "No."
Hmm. "What?"
"Who says I want anything?" Turning, Clark comes up on both knees, giving Lex a slow smile, just because he knows he can, because he knows that Lex can't resist, because he's Clark and Clark's smiles are given by the dozen but never the same twice, and Lex sometimes wonders how he'd live without them. "I'm just curious."
Lex closes his eyes. This can't be good.
"About?"
Head tilted, Clark lowers his arms onto Lex's knees, settling comfortably, like the biggest kid alive, waiting for a bedtime story. "Tell me what made you ask me to marry you."
Lois said, pull over. Her voice had been strange and stiff, like when she'd left him, reminding him how much he hated her sometimes.
He'd said no, almost hanging up the phone as he topped one hundred ten, because he knew she could hear it and he knew it would piss her off.
Pull over, she said again, and her voice stiffened more. Background noise intruded--voices, sirens, other sounds he couldn't identify or maybe didn't want to. Pull over, she said, and Lex pulled onto the side of the road, and cut the engine, staring at the darkness of a Smallville night as Lois told him that Clark had been shot.
He never drove so fast in his life.
Lois was waiting at the back door; reporters were everywhere, even here, but security got him through, Mercy and Hope just a breath behind, staring down anyone who thought they might try and follow. Nothing stopped the screamed questions. Only belatedly, Lex realized Lois' arm was in a cast and she was white under her tan.
A nurse saw them and led them upstairs, talking about emergency surgery and other words that made no sense. Lex dropped Lois in a chair before she collapsed and walked to the doors of the surgical unit, looking inside. Nothing of Clark was visible--just blue and white blankets, blue and white surgeons, and the pool of blood growing slowly beneath their feet.
Terms like 'irregular rhythm' and 'pulmonary embolism' and 'severed aorta' were thrown this way and that above his head, and somewhere along the way, Lois was standing like a bulldog between him and the world that didn't exist outside that room.
"Lex." Her voice was choked and broken, so unlike her that Lex had to look at her. Long fingers curled around his arm, pulling him away from the door. "Lex. Come sit down."
"No." But he went, because she was stumbling and Lois never never stumbled. "How bad?"
She wouldn't lie, not for him, not even for herself. "His heart stopped twice in the ambulance. They brought him in still doing CPR." She sat down before her legs gave out and brought her good hand up to her face. Lex could see the blood on her shirt, soaking black into the jeans. One sleeve of her top had been cut away completely. She hadn't taken a painkiller yet--he knew her. If anything--happened--she wanted to be ready.
If anything--
"What happened?"
"Drug deal gone bad. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time." She rubbed at her forehead, leaving pinkish smears across too-pale skin. A low, choked laugh. "We didn't even--it wasn't even for a fucking story, just going to dinner. Clark didn't know what happened. He was out before I could tell him."
"And the shooter?"
Lois' eyes closed. "He ran."
Raising an arm, he wrapped it around her shoulders, feeling her slowly uncoil against him, eyes closed. "Did you call--"
"Yeah. Right after I called you. His parents will be here as soon as the helicopter arrives."
Smart. Rubbing his hand against her back, he winced at the tacky, rough feel of the material. Blood, half-coalesced, clung to his fingers. The instinct to pull away was negated by the fact that Lois was crying into his shoulder and God, of every thing he'd ever wished on her, he'd never wanted that--never hear those soft, choked sobs or the hitch in her breathing, the shaking that started somewhere deep inside and moved outward, her good arm wrapped around her stomach.
He couldn't find enough air to breathe.
"They said--they got him here fast. Emergency surgery in the ER. They moved him up here as soon as he was stable. He's--he's strong."
"Cassius."
"He'll be here. He was my first call."
Lex almost smiled. Benny was a thousand miles away, lost in the wilds of Chicago. His creds would get him onto any LexCorp jet that could fly. It would be a matter of an hour, maybe two.
It was good she was falling apart--it kept him here and now, not listening, not hearing, not acknowledging the scream of the heart monitor, the frantic activity inside those doors. Nodding when the Kents rushed in and the nurse briefed them somewhere over Lex's head, accepting the reluctant touch on his shoulder by Martha's work-hardened hand, counting every breath.
"He's a fighter," Lois whispered against his shoulder, and Lex nodded blankly. There were so many ways for a human to die that Superman couldn't. Tonight, it would have been an inconvenience and a mishap, something that Clark would laugh at later. Instead, punctured lungs and broken ribs, the damage of a single bullet through ordinary human flesh.
Somewhere outside this hospital, the world was gathering to hear if Lex Luthor would lose another lover, but Lex rather thought he wouldn't. It was both of them or not at all. Lex was never burying another body if it wasn't his own.
Medical power of attorney was something he'd covered before going to the Arctic years ago. Lawyers were good for anything and everything, and later, Clark had signed one, too. Lex listened numbly as the doctor recited the litany, like Lex was capable of making any kind of rational decision.
Superman's life had been in his hands a thousand times, but never Clark's. Never like this, surrounded by sterile white walls and the soft hum of machines in the background, while they told him that Clark might die.
Coma, they told him. Possible brain damage. Medical terms ran in circles above his head, but he didn't see anything but Clark, big hand limp in his. He looked like he was sleeping.
"Lex?" Lois' voice seemed far away, but he could see her from the corner of his eye. She'd changed clothes at some point, arm in a sling beneath her coat. "How--how is he?"
Lex stared down at the bed. "He's going to be fine."
"We're his parents," Mrs. Kent said calmly, but her hands were twisting in his lap. "For his treatment, we should be consulted--"
"We both signed," Lex said, wondering what he was drinking. A paper cup that smelled like coffee had materialized when he woke up on in the armchair by the bed, and there was a crick in his neck that no amount of rubbing seemed to ease. Clark's heart monitor bleeped methodically, the new soundtrack to Lex's life, and Lex wondered what day it was. Four days, five, ten, since Lois called him? He hadn't checked his phone in days. Cassius didn't tell him much, but Lex didn't need to know much. He needed to know Clark would live, and he needed to know when he'd wake up, and those were questions Cassius couldn't answer.
"Lex," she started again, and the twisting hands seemed to take on a life of their own. "We understand that Clark signed, but I'm not sure he understood the implications of what he was doing." She paused, and Lex wondered how long it had been since she'd slept. "Legally--"
"I'm not doing this right now."
Martha Kent shut her eyes briefly. "I've spoken to Mrs. Ross. The power of medical attorney can be contested in extreme situations. And Kansas does not legally recognize--"
"What?" Kansas law didn't recognize a lot of things. "Federal law--the law I drafted--does. Are you planning to contest his wishes because he chose me instead of you?"
Maybe she would. A mother, like a lover, would go places they wouldn't otherwise for someone they loved. Martha's hands stilled. "I don't think you should be the one to decide if my son lives or dies."
Yes, it always came back to that, didn't it? Years passed, but memories didn't. Leaning into the chair, Lex turned his head enough to watch Clark's slow, even breathing. "He's not going to die."
"He wouldn't want to live on like this indefinitely." Martha's voice was softer than the words. "I know my son, Lex. You--you know him too. If this is irreversible--"
"He's going to be fine." Nothing else was acceptable. Like the sun rising and the periodic visits of Lois to annoy the shit out of him at home, some things were inevitable. Clark would wake up, and he would be fine.
"The doctors--"
"I don't care." Even to himself, he sounded flat. Leaning a little, Lex stroked his fingers over Clark's still hand, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. He'd never thought this would happen. It had been a joke--tit for tat, Clark had said, grinning when he signed. You make me decide, I make you. So deal, hero of the people. See, I even did it in purple ink. "He has the best medical care in the world." And that's not even an exaggeration. "He'll be fine."
You fucking ass, Lex had thought, almost smiling, remembering Clark's fingers stained with purple ink, drawing patterns on his back.
"Lex, don't--don't make this more difficult than it--than it has to be. He's my son." Martha's voice sounded choked. "It's been over two weeks. We don't want this to--but if we have to, we will take this to court."
"You'll lose." And they would. If the law failed, money would take care of it. Lex had always heard there were things that money couldn't buy, but the law had never been one of them. "Now get the hell out."
"You little shit." That was Jonathan, always to be counted on to make a bad situation worse. "Who the fuck do you think you are? We're his parents. You--you're not--"
"I'm his lover," Lex said. Clark was always so warm, even now. Like the sun was always shining on him. It was so maudlin he couldn't help grinning, lacing his fingers through Clark's. "I live with him. I sleep with him. You don't have to like it. I don't give a shit if you do and I never did. But don't you fucking dare come in here and--" And what? Tell him what he already knew? Time was running out and Lex knew the statistics on coma patients, and the longer Clark was like this, the less chance there was. "Get out or I'll have you thrown out."
Jonathan's hate was as familiar as a glove--Martha's still had the power to hurt, but it was so habitual, so normal, that Lex hardly noticed the flash of pain as she got up and walked out. Gently, Lex laid a hand on Clark's chest to feel the slow rise and fall. He was being unfair. They were his parents, and they grieved, like he did, like Lois did, like Chloe did, like Pete and Lana did.
"I was thinking," Lex said, watching Clark's chest. "Before Lois called. I was thinking we should go on vacation. Somewhere you could rest. You've been working too hard." The many faceted dangers of two driven people. Clark was usually the one that stopped Lex mid-stride, but he'd been working on a big story and lived on coffee and bagels for the two weeks before. Lois had run the article yesterday. Lex hadn't read it yet. Not--not yet. "I know, I never thought I would say that either, but you have been. I was going to tell you to take a break before you burned yourself out. I almost stayed home to talk to you about it, but the plant called. I wasn't going to stay the night in Smallville. I was going to come home and surprise you...." Lex stopped, taking a deep breath. Clark's fingers felt so limp. Sleeping, Lex told himself. It's just sleep. "You know, your parents really don't hate me as much as they used to. I wasn't threatened once. Unless you count the lawsuit, and you really shouldn't. They're upset."
Lex closed his eyes, leaning his head onto the edge of the bed. "And they're not the only ones, you son of a bitch, so wake the hell up."
The papers were served two days later. Lex's lawyers took them and went to work, leaving Lex to the important task of watching Clark's daily examinations.
Lois was with him tonight. He wasn't sure if there was a rotation schedule in place, but Lois, Lana, and Chloe all took turns with the Kents, sometimes quiet and sometimes not. He found he didn't resent it as much as he would have thought he would.
"They have leads," Lois said into the empty air. Lex lifted his head, blinking slowly, as Lois looked at her nails. "But no suspects."
"Have they called you--"
"When they find him, they will for identification." Lois ran her nails slowly over the arm of the chair. "They've been having trouble. He was with a certain--set in the Metropolis drug world. Might have friends. Wealthy friends, I think."
The world narrowed abruptly--the sound of the heart monitor, Clark's slow, steady breathing, and Lois' eyes, fixed on the bed above Clark's head. "Who?"
"I don't know yet." Lois looked at him for a few long seconds. "But I will."
LexCorp's interim CEO while Lex was indisposed was taking some unusual initiative in ways that would have, in another time, led to his swift and early demise. One of the drawbacks of the (relatively) straight and narrow was the way it whittled down the options.
But even the straight and narrow allowed for litigation. Lex thought the man would be lucky to be able to hustle back alleys after it was done. The deposition regarding the Kents' suit was scheduled for the next day. They were nothing if not stubborn.
Lex grinned as he leaned against Clark's bed, reading stock reports the next day. "Oddly, the stock went up. A little corporate bloodbath seems to be good for morale. Who knew?"
The Kents were using the lack of a formalized union as their basis of contention, but Lex figured that they'd go to the gay couple thing if they had to. Kansas could be so conservative. His lawyer had briefed him exhaustively. He couldn't remember anything that she'd said.
"Do they have a chance?" Lois asked him. She looked exhausted, ink stained fingers and black circles under her eyes.
"A very good one, if they got an honest judge." Lex thumbed through a copy of The Daily Planet, seeing his ex-wife at a charity dinner on page one of the Lifestyle section. "They won't."
"You're sure about that?"
"One and three quarter million sure, yes." Page two had a section on summer trends. "I was thinking about taking Clark to Greece."
"He'll probably have fun," Lois said, leaning her elbows on the bed. "I'd wait until later in the summer, though. Do a tour of the Mediterranean while you're at it."
"He doesn't like being away from home that long." Two weeks was Clark's limit. Something left over from Superman, maybe, or just Clark's love of his work. "But we could go to Rome."
Lois grinned, chin on her hands. "Jimmy sends his regards. He's on location in Springfield and won't be back for a few weeks."
"The tornado? Why aren't you covering that?" There were few massive natural disasters that Lois didn't stand witness to.
Lois shrugged, checking her nail polish. "Anyone can cover it. Yadda yadda yadda big storm, took out buildings, survivors, grief, plans for future exploration into the phenomenon of tornados, some statistics."
Lex nodded. Lois didn't want to leave the city.
The silence was comfortable, stretching between them as Lois tapped on her laptop and Lex read reports that Mercy brought to him daily. The Kents came every day, and Lex found it strangely easy to forget they were in the room. Martha had tried to talk to him, once. He didn't listen.
He just doesn't give a shit.
"Lex." The tone of Lois' voice was familiar. Pete had sounded like that, grey faced and hands shaking, when he'd pulled Lex aside one afternoon, when the coffee machine had refused to work no matter how many quarters Lex put in it. It may be time to think about it, Pete had said. Lana had sounded like that, her voice scratchy from crying, when she said, he wouldn't want it to go on like this. Chloe hadn't yet, but he figured she would in the next couple of days. Lex closed his eyes. No, he'd said every time. No.
"I think I know who he is And where."
Lex straightened, paper falling from numb fingers. Lois' eyes were fixed blankly on her laptop screen. Remembering, maybe. "Did you tell the police?"
Lois slowly shook her head.
"Are you going to?"
The cool gaze met his. "No."
One night, Clark had woken him up from a sex-sated sleep, the kind that made Lex stupid and Clark snuggly, the kind where Lex couldn't imagine how life ever got any better than this.
Clark had been cross-legged on that hideous twin bed in his apartment, wrapped in an old quilt and looking painfully like jailbait. Just sitting there, watching Lex like he might disappear if he looked away.
"Clark?"
Clark had tilted his head, like he was thinking. "Corporate espionage. Fine. Murder the competition? Not so much."
Lex remembered trying to form words. "I didn't--I haven't--"
"I know. You didn't. You haven't. You haven't in a long time. But you've wanted to. And we aren't going there, not again." Clark had looked so determined, so damned sure. "It's not that I don't trust you. I do. I just don't trust your instincts."
Fair enough. Lex wasn't sure he trusted them either. "I said I wouldn't do that. Anymore."
Clark had grinned then, and Lex had wondered if he was dreaming this entire thing. "I know. And I know you believe it. I'm just--giving you a little incentive."
"Incentive?" He should have been angry, but Clark had been warm and rumpled, soft from sleep, and for some irrational reason, still let Lex into his bed every night.
"I love you." Clark watched him for a few seconds. "I'll believe what you tell me. That's my choice. Here's yours. You tell me the truth. Promise me that."
Lex stared at him. "That's it?"
"That's it." Clark lay back down, moving the covers over enough to curl up beside Lex, one arm thrown over Lex's chest, nosing gently at his throat. "You tell me. And I'll believe you. Every time."
And at the time, it had seemed like the most ridiculous thing Lex had ever heard. Truth was so flexible, and so relative, and Clark had to know that Lex could lie without lying at all.
But truth, like so many things, became habit, and it was months before Lex understood exactly what Clark had really asked. The first flash of alarm, or disappointment, or hurt, when Lex told him something questionable--incentive, Clark had called it.
Powerful stuff.
He sometimes wondered if any one of his enemies knew they lived and breathed because Lex couldn't lie to his boyfriend; the idea of coming home to Clark with blood on his hands, metaphorical or not, was unthinkable. He knew he couldn't do it. Clark might not walk out on him--and that alone was enough of a mindbending concept for Lex to have trouble absorbing--but that didn't change the fact that Lex would have to tell Clark, and that Clark would know.
Clark would know, even if he never mentioned it again.
"This is different," Lex told his bedroom while he dressed. He hadn't slept in their bed in three weeks. The help kept the room clean of dust, but that didn't change the silence or the emptiness. Lex would go crazy if he tried to sleep here, so he didn't. The recliner in Clark's hospital room was becoming more comfortable by the day. "I know you don't want it. But this is different, Clark."
This was different, and the same. Lex closed his eyes and thought of Clark, peaceful and silent and still, the way he'd never been still before. The slow beep of the heart monitor, the respirator, the doctors and their answers that he didn't want to hear.
Getting his overcoat, Lex gave the room one last look before leaving. He wouldn't be back here until Clark was.
"Because Kansas doesn't recognize federal law doesn't mean that Mr. Luthor's rights to his partner are dissolved." She was good, but then, he only hired good. Legal terms had flown over his head all morning, and Lex was in the hospital with Clark, no matter where his body was. He had no idea what he'd said in the disposition, but it was looking increasingly likely this would go to court.
Cassius sat in the room with him, staring at the charts. "I don't know."
Lex nodded, eyes on Clark's face. A physical therapist came in every day to help keep Clark's muscles fluid.
"I need something better."
Cassius looked at him over the clipboard, PDA clutched in one hand. "Baseline humans aren't my specialty, Lex. For what it's worth, if he comes out--"
"When."
Cassius didn't lose a beat. "I don't think there will be brain damage."
"They want to pull the plug." Lex breathed out, reaching for Clark's hand again. His fingers were getting thinner, wrapped limply through Lex's. Lex could remember when they could bend steel.
Cassius' voice was gentle. "I know."
"I'll kill anyone who tries."
"Lex--"
"There's no point otherwise. It's just a fucking waste of time, all of it." Lex closed his eyes, wondering if Cassius could ever understand.
Lex could feel the cool blue eyes fix on him, weighing and measuring. He wondered if the Kents had become desperate yet, had thought of using Lex's carefully private mental instabilities to declare unfitness. The lawyer had mentioned it. Lex hadn't cared. "I want to find him and kill him," Lex said to the fingers, feeling his breath hitch. "That's my choice. Here's yours, Clark. Come out of this, and I won't. He lives and breathes in a federal penitentiary, but he gets to live. But only if you wake up."
"It's not healthy," Cassius had said once, a long time ago, when Clark still lived in that rat's ass of an apartment and Lex was trying to find subtle ways to burn it down. "Obsession isn't a way of life, Lex."
Lex had grinned at him. "I don't know any other way."
Cassius now just read papers and nodded, like nothing Lex could say would ever surprise him again.
A few hours from now, Lex had a LexCorp board to terrify into submission. A few days from now, Lex had to go before a judge that would decide whether Clark lived or died. A few weeks from now, the weather would change and summer would start, and Clark always, always loved summer.
"Wake up, Clark," Lex told the fingers, chest tight. "That's all you have to do. Just wake up."
"We want what's best for him."
They did, they had, they always would, and Lex would never be it. Martha watched him from reddened eyes, hand clasped in Jonathan's. "This is a family matter. We don't want this to go to court."
"He's my family," Lex answered, staring at the paper cup of coffee. It tasted better today.
"Lex, I--understand." And it must have taken her a lot of effort to get that out. "But you have to be realistic. We know our son. And he never would have wanted this."
"I know your son. And he never gives up. On anything." Lex twisted his fingers into the cool cotton sheets. He'd had the hospital ones replaced with sheets from home.
"You're being selfish." Lex bit down, closing his eyes. "This isn't about what Clark wanted. This is about you, not letting go. Not being able to." Somewhere far away, Lex can hear Clark tell him that, on the roof of a building or the floor of a lab, or any of a million times when Clark was Superman and Lex didn't care about anything. Martha's voice broke "He gave up everything for you. His powers, his family, his friends, his professional integrity, the possibility of a family--. You--he's not a possession, Lex. He trusted you with this responsibility. So earn it."
Lex looked up. It was so much easier to hate Martha right now. "Is it easier to let your son die than know he's in love with someone you hate?"
The slap doesn't penetrate any farther than the skin, but Lex thought he might feel it forever.
Lex heard Cassius' voice, but he didn't know what happened afterward. The sound of Clark's heart monitor drowned it out.
Lex was still sitting there hours later when Clark opened his eyes on the world for the first time in almost two months. Slow and lethargic, like Clark after a three day insomnia streak and five hours of sleep. Lex watched his hand move sluggishly on the sheet before he realized what Clark was searching for.
Lex laced his fingers through Clark's and watched Clark's mouth soften, eyes feathering shut. Time stretched out like taffy as all around him, people came and went, talked and made notes, and someone was crying, and Lex listened, because they were saying things he could stand to hear.
"He's awake," Lois said softly, and Lex thought of the gun in his coat, the promise he hadn't broken, and the incentive that made him keep it. Reaching over, Lex stroked back the messy dark hair, watching Clark's slow smile, the mouth that slowly formed words he didn't need to hear, before Clark drifted back into sleep.
"The police called me in for the line-up to identify the suspect," Lois said softly, and he felt the hand on his shoulder tighten. "They got an anonymous tip."
Lex watched the slow rise and fall of Clark's chest, feeling like he was taking his first clear breath in months. Maybe years. "I knew he'd wake up."