Fic: Lover's Choice (Smallville) Clex

[seagull2eagle.livejournal.com]

Title: Lover's Choice
Fandom: Smallville - Pairing: Clex
Rating: PG - Words: 3,387
Type: drama, adventure, romance
Warnings: none
Spoilers: general first few seasons. Pilot, Cassandra, Extinction
Summary: Lex's old lover wants him back in her cold embrace. Clark doesn't want to let him go.

Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams. ^^ This story was written for free entertainment purposes only and may not be reproduced for profit or altered without permission.

Notes:
Set in early Season 3. For the h/c bingo square "drowning". Cross-posted to Archive of Our Own

---

Lover's Choice

"Your lover wants you back!"

Clark turned to see who the meteor mutant was proclaiming about now. He groaned as he followed her gaze. Lex had apparently just come around the corner. At the woman's words, Lex stopped walking and stood there, puzzled.

The woman laughed and laughed and repeated what she'd said.

"So young, so pretty, so warm. She had you in her embrace, and your lover wants you back. She will have you, young man. She wants you back, and she will have you!"

The police hauled the woman away, and she turned her attention onto one of them, pronouncing doom and gloom and death by falling in his future.

Clark walked up beside Lex. "Sorry about that."

"I'm starting to have a positive hatred of crazy old ladies predicting my life" Lex sighed.

Involuntarily, Clark bristled slightly. Cassandra had been his friend.

Lex noticed and shifted his weight slightly. "Sorry," he said, his apology genuine in his voice.

Nobody else Clark knew would have seen a thing. "It's okay. I know you didn't have the best experience with Cassandra."

"My future killed her." Lex looked away. "And now apparently my lover wants me back." He snorted. "Like that's anything new."

Clark's hackles rose again, stronger than before. "Is Victoria coming back?" he asked bitterly.

Lex blinked again. "Not that I know. That was just... I didn't mean anybody specific."

"Oh, so you have lots of old lovers wanting you back!" Clark's anger was rising, though he wasn't sure why.

With an obviously stifled groan, Lex ran his hand over his head. "Clark." He stopped and then stared at Clark for a long moment, before he looked away again. "Clark, when I was a teenager, I wanted to rebel and piss off my father. I did a lot of things deliberately to make my dad angry. At the time, I didn't care what it would do to me. Now, though... Now, there are a lot of things I wish I hadn't done."

Clark calmed down. Lex was apologizing for his past, and that was something that Clark had sworn he wasn't ever going to make Lex do. Well, he swore it and then he forgot it again the next moment. Just like his dates with Chloe. Chloe... Clark jerked up his wrist and swore at the time on his watch.

"Forgot something?" Lex asked, amused. He had relaxed again, hands in his pockets and slouching in that elegant way he did.

"I was supposed to help Chloe with an article an hour ago!" Clark hated meteor mutants. He hated them, hated them, hated them.

"I'll give you a ride to the Torch or the Talon, whichever it might be," Lex pulled his keys out of his pocket. "You can write this up as an article for her and she'll forgive you."

"Torch. She always forgives me," Clark said glumly as they walked to Lex's car. "That's part of the problem."

"Ah, guilt." Lex started the car. "The thing Clark Kent does best."

Clark looked around, disconcerted. That was sharper than Lex normally got with him. "Um, it's okay. About the past lovers, I mean. I'm sorry I got angry. I don't know why I did... it's, well,... you don't hold Lana against me."

Lex jerked the car wheel, almost spinning them into the bridge railing. Clark reached out and grabbed the wheel, forcing the car straight. After Lex had control again, Clark let go and sat back, panting. "God, Lex!" That had been a little too déjà vu for him. He twisted in his seat and looked at the bridge they were quickly leaving behind.

"Thanks, Clark." Lex said in a shallow voice. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I did that." He was pale and his eyes were fixed on the road in front of them while his hands gripped the wheel carefully.

Clark's heart was pounding. "Maybe there's a good thing about limos," he joked. Or half-joked.

Lex didn't respond and the rest of their drive was silent. When they got to the school, Clark was relieved to see Chloe's car still parked there.

Lex squinted at it. "What is that?" He parked his car three parking spaces away, giving it a wide berth.

"Chloe's car – her dad got it for her last month."

"I pay her dad better than that."

Clark grinned. "It's traditional with a first car. Used and occasionally needing repairs so you learn what to do with them."

"If you say so," Lex said dubiously.

They got out and Lex looked at Clark with worried eyes. "Clark, I'm really sorry---"

"It's okay," Clark cut him off. He came around the car and stood a foot away. "Really. I'm just glad you're all right." He was glad he'd been there but at the same time he worried that he was the cause of it.

Lex reached out and clasped Clark's shoulder briefly before letting go and getting back in the car.

As Clark watched Lex drive away, he moved his shoulder experimentally. He'd felt warm when Lex had touched him there, and tingly all over. The urge to move forward and touch Lex in return had been strong and Clark didn't know what to make of it.

With a sigh, he went inside the building and found Chloe.

She grumped at him for being late, but forgave him when he gave her the outline of what had happened.

"Cool. We'll have the jump on the local paper, with Dan on vacation and nobody else monitoring the police bands."

Sometimes Chloe's competitive streak was a little disconcerting to Clark, but he accepted it as part of the reporting world.

When they were done with the articles, Clark asked Chloe if she could do some research. He told her about what the old woman had said. "I'm worried about Lex."

Chloe looked away from her computer with a skeptical raised eyebrow. "You want me to look up all Lex's ex's and try and narrow down which of them is going to try and... have him back? Seriously? Do you even know how many that is?"

Clark frowned, that angry feeling rising up again. "I want to make sure he's safe. The way she'd said it... it was a threat. One of them is going to try and hurt him."

"He doesn't exactly have the best track record for it, does he?" Chloe agreed. She turned back to the computer and started typing search commands and putting in parameters on her program. "Was that the exact wording? 'Cause if the woman really used "she" as a pronoun, I guess I can exclude guys from the search. Unless they've had a sex-change. I'd better check for that."

"What?" Clark blinked several times quickly. "Guys?"

Chloe raised her hands off the keyboard and turned around again. "Clark Jerome Kent. Do not tell me you didn't know!"

"Um..." Clark flushed. "I don't pay attention to gossip."

Chloe rolled her eyes. "It's not gossip, it's established fact. Though I admit he's been very careful since he moved to Smallville. Not willing to push small town morals, I'd guess. Or maybe another reason," she said archly.

A warm feeling rose up in Clark, rolling through his body. He pictured Lex with guys and his flush got redder and other parts of his body stirred. Then he remembered that Lex had stopped flirting with him months back and Clark sighed. "You don't think he's interested in Lana, do you?"

Chloe had resumed typing again, but at this, her hands slammed down involuntarily in surprise and the computer made a protesting noise. "What?!"

"Well..." Clark told her about the bridge incident. "I think it was me. I think it was from what I said."

Chloe raised her eyebrows, saying more with them than she did with words. "What, exactly, did you tell him?"

"Uh, I was saying it was okay about his past lovers, and then I said he didn't hold Lana against me and that's when he jerked the wheel."

Chloe stared at him in disbelief. "I don't blame him. Do you have any idea how that sounded? Well, no, of course you don't, you're Clark Kent, King of the Oblivious."

"Hey!" Clark was indignant. Then he realized he still didn't know what Chloe meant.

"Oh my god... does this mean you're over Lana?" Chloe's eyes were wide, the disbelief spreading.

"Huh?"

"Oh my god, you are!" Chloe shook her head. "How did I miss it? And just what is it with my luck anyhow? But Lex, oh wow."

"Huh?" Clark said again.

Chloe opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. "No... I think this one you get to figure out yourself. But trust me, Lex isn't interested in Lana." She turned back to the computer. "I'll start working on this list. Could you do the layouts?"

He wasn't going to get anything from her now. Even if she was going to tell him before, Clark knew she wasn't now. With a sigh, he went to his computer to work on layouts.

... ... ...

Clark was about to head home, but he hesitated. The words kept running through his head. It wasn't like they should have a sinister theme, but they did. He thought he would just check in with Lex before he went home.

... ... ...

"Lex!" Clark sped up the last ten feet knowing nobody would notice and too concerned to care. He pounded Lex on the back as Lex coughed and coughed, sounding like he was hacking out a lung.

Finally, Lex spat a mouthful of water into the wastebasket beside his desk, and the blue color started to leave his face. He sat bent over with his head in his hands. Clark rested his hands on Lex's back, running his hands over him soothingly.

"Thanks, Clark." Lex straightened up, still looking pale. His voice was a little rough.

"Did somebody try and poison you? What happened? Who's here?" Clark kept his hands on Lex possessively. Nobody would hurt Lex while he was here.

Lex looked amused. "Nobody, Clark. I choked on my water." He nodded at the bottle of water on the ground near them, the puddle of spilled liquid all around them.

Clark blinked in disbelief. "You choked on your water?"

"It went down the wrong way. Hasn't that ever happened to you?"

"Well yeah, but not..." Not to the point where he'd almost died from it.

Lex laughed. "I would have been fine, Clark, but thank you. I..." Lex seemed to realize that Clark still had hold of him. He stirred a little restlessly, glancing left at his shoulder with Clark's hand resting there. "What are you doing here, Clark?"

"Chloe's looking up a list of your lovers who might want to hurt you. Because of the pronoun, she's excluding men." Clark moved his hand over a little, just to where the shirt wasn't. Lex's bare skin. Clark's heart beat rapidly as he caressed it with a finger. Smooth. Soft. Warm.

"Not all of my past is on the internet," Lex said, breathlessly. His hand rose involuntarily, hovering in the air near his shoulder, between their bodies. "It's probably nothing, she shouldn't bother." His voice didn't hold conviction. Didn't sound like he was paying that much attention to the conversation either.

"Saving your life is never a bother." Clark took another step forward, removing the last distance between them. Lex's hand touched his chest. Even through the two shirts he wore, Clark could feel the burn.

"Clark..."

Clark leaned down, slowly, like he was being pulled on a wire. Lex's head tilted up to meet his. They kissed.

It was a long minute before they moved away, and only because Clark's angle was hard for him to keep. He straightened up, then knelt down so he was on the floor in front of Lex. His hands on Lex's thighs. Lex's blue gaze looking into his own.

"You're sixteen," Lex whispered, his eyes conflicted.

"You stopped flirting with me last year."

"You were fifteen then."

"But you were flirting with me at fourteen."

"You weren't responding then."

"Lex..." Clark reached out and placed his hand on Lex's cheek. Lex leaned into the gesture, closing his eyes.

"We can't," Lex said, even as face showed nothing but happiness.

"We'll take it slow," Clark said. Not that he really wanted to, but he was sure that it was the only way to have Lex. Otherwise, Lex would run, just to protect Clark. Clark didn't want Lex to run.

Blue eyes opened and searched Clark's own, looking to find... something. They must have found it as Lex nodded, the skin of his cheek moving along Clark's hand.

"I better go," Clark said, reluctantly. If he stayed, who knew what they'd do.

Lex nodded again, without words.

Clark leaned in for another kiss. Then he rested his forehead against Lex's. "Be careful, Lex. Please?"

"I will," Lex promised, his voice sincere.

With a last look, Clark slipped out of the mansion and headed home. His steps and heart were light as he kept chanting inside his mind, "Lex loves me, Lex loves me, I love Lex..."

When he got home, his mom met him at the door. "Clark, Chloe wants you to call her. It sounded urgent."

All happy thoughts were purged upon the instant as Clark remembered the threat. He sped to the phone and dialed Chloe's number with shaking fingers.

Chloe answered without preliminaries. "It's not a person, Clark! It's Death!"

Clark blinked. "What?"

"The lover that wants Lex back. I figured it out – it's not a person, it's Death."

"Death isn't a lover," Clark puzzled it out.

He could almost hear Chloe rolling her eyes on the other side of the phone. "It's an expression, dufus! Lana was reading some old stupid poetry tonight," Clark heard a "Hey!" from the background but Chloe didn't stop talking, "and I realized what it was. When Lex first got here – he drowned until you gave him CPR and brought him back to life. It's Death that wants him back. That's why the car spun out at the bridge."

"And the water he choked on," Clark said slowly, his fear growing.

"Water?"

"Just a half-hour ago, at the mansion. I stopped to check on him and he was choking on water."

"And you left him there?!"

"It was just water!" Clark's grip on the phone tightened.

"Water he'd drowned in. Go back to him, Clark, now!"

Clark realized she was right and why was he spending time talking to her anyhow. He dropped the phone and ran.

He burst into the mansion calling Lex's name. Lex wasn't in the study. Oh god. Clark scanned the castle with x-ray, finding everything still and quiet and no sign of a skeleton anywhere. Where was he? Lex was here just a half-hour ago... he couldn't have gone far.

Clark dashed to the garage, running his eye over the cars. It didn't look like any were missing. The one Lex had been using earlier that night was there.

Where was Lex?

Stopping where he was, Clark stood as still as he could. He needed to find Lex. This had worked for him once before, when Lex was next on Van's list to assassinate. Clark had only known Lex was in Metropolis, not where, but he knew he had to be there. That time, he'd just... this time... this time, Clark needed to...

There.

Clark snapped his eyes open and ran outside, speeding through the grounds out to the lake.

A still figure floating in the lake, the air caught by his coat holding him up. No sound. Not a cricket, not a frog. Not a heartbeat.

"LEX!" Clark pulled Lex out of the water, his heart in his throat. So quiet. His body limp, unresponsive. Eyes shut.

Shifting Lex onto his side, Clark first gave him the Heimlich to get the lake water out. Water poured out of Lex's mouth but he didn't start breathing again. Clark flipped Lex so his back was on the ground, and he started CPR. "Come on. Come on, damn you."

He breathed into Lex's mouth, then turning his head to feel the air come back out onto his cheek.

He pushed on Lex's chest, feeling a rib break but not stopping.

"He's mine, damn it! Mine! Not yours! He's not your lover, he's mine! You want him back, but I'm keeping him!"

Something listened.

Clark could feel it in the air, gathering around them. Cold; much, much colder than the air around them.

Grimly, Clark continued to give breaths and compressions. He acknowledged the other presence but didn't let it stop him. "Mine. Give him up. He was never yours except for the briefest of moments. He's been mine longer and I'm not letting him go."

In a moment between rescue-breaths, Clark sought out a large rock near them and trained his heat-gaze upon it. He poured heat into the stone until it glowed red and dispelled the cold.

Not the presence, though. It wrapped around Lex, tugging his body towards the lake.

Clark jerked Lex back and tried not to lose the rhythm of the CPR.

"You," Clark breathed into Lex's mouth.

"Can't," Clark pushed on Lex's chest.

"Have," Clark pushed again, glaring at the lake.

"Him." Clark breathed again.

Lex coughed, water and bile spewing out as he turned his head and threw up.

Clark rocked back on his heels, his hands on Lex's body, his head bowing over him. He sucked in huge gulps of air, regaining his own breath, dizzy from the effort.

"What...?" Lex coughed some more, his lungs trying to turn inside out.

Clark held Lex carefully through the coughs, supporting him. "What the fuck were you doing out here?!"

"Nightly... walk... loose stone..." Lex managed between gasps. When the coughing stopped, the shaking began.

Gathering Lex in close, Clark stood up, cradling Lex to him.

Lex went totally still, however it was the stillness of astonishment, not the stillness of death. "Clark?"

"We're getting you back to the castle," Clark said. "We're going to warm you up and dry you off and bandage that rib, and you'll be safe there. Death can't have you, you're mine."

The cold presence that had still been hovering nearby swirled around them, picking up dust and small rocks and throwing it into the air.

Clark held Lex tighter. "Mine." He tried to take a step but couldn't break the circle.

"Clark..." Lex shifted inside Clark's arms. "You're holding me."

Apparently, Lex was completely unaware of the other conversation going on right now. Clark glanced down at him. "Yes, I am. Lex, you just drowned again because your stupid Death-lover wants you back but she can't have you back. Tell her that you're mine."

"What?"

The circle of dust and stones around them grew higher. Water spouted from the lake in great reaching arcs.

Lex gulped. "Clark, I'm yours. I always have been. From the moment I saw you on the bridge, even before I woke up on the river bank looking into your eyes... I'm never going to be anybody but yours. I'm not just saying this just to say it; it's true. It's always been true, and always will be."

With a final swirl, the wind died. The coldness was gone. The water receded.

Clark closed his eyes. "Thank you. I'll take good care of him, I promise."

He ran to the mansion with Lex in his arms. Inside the castle, he placed Lex carefully on the couch, lighting the fire in the fireplace with his eyes.

Lex glanced from the fireplace to Clark to the outside door. "Um..."

"I'm not hiding from you anymore," Clark said fiercely. "You're just going to have to get used to it because I'm not letting Death have you or anybody else."

Lex's expression relaxed into a goofy grin. "Okay." He held his hand out to Clark.

Clark took it. "Okay?"

"Absolutely," Lex didn't stop grinning. "You said something about getting me dry and warm?"

With relief and exultation, Clark's face blossomed out to match Lex's grin.

"Let's get you out of those wet clothes," Clark purred, reaching for Lex's shirt.

Lex's hands joined his.

That night, Death was nowhere to be seen.

---

END

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