Title: White Noise

Author: Dae

Email: Dae@ourfallenwords.com

Web Page http://www.ourfallenwords.com/slash

Summary : Clark finds a new way to mask anxiety riddled stimuli.

Pairing: Clark/Lex

Rating : PG-15

Category: Slash, Angst

Spoilers: You seen the pilot? Good.

Feedback: I could beg. You want me to beg?

Archive: Lists, yes, anyone else, ask, and ye shall receive. Not ask...and um. I'll pout.

Disclaimer: They don't belong to me, but to a long list of people from the initial comic book to the current producers of Superman's latest manifestation in the wonderful show of "Smallville" on the WB. I make no profit and mean no infringement. Sue me and get a lot of useless knowledge and ever amassing student loans.

Notes: I posted this on another list,a few days ago but under the influence of an unnamed person I'm posting it here too. I guess this is also me saying "Hi!" Waving. Retreating back to lurkerdom. Oh, and it's a stream of consciousness piece. My apologies to those of you less than fond of that sort of thing.

Be a good boy, Clark.

Do you chores. Finish your homework. Mind what your Momma says.

Listen to your father.

Listen. To your parents. To the rules. To the neat crisp lines in your notebook that should be full of carefully scripted letters, forming words, forming sentences, forming the way things are supposed to be in the good ol' U S of A. To the lines of white space, empty rows, between the passages of the Good Book that told you how it should be.

But wasn't...

Not for a farm boy who was anything but a farm boy. Who had followed those lines, followed those rules, never realizing that he was not in the text. Not unless you put a different spin on Revelations 8:7.

"...There came hail and fire, mixed with blood, falling upon the earth."

No. He wouldn't go there.

He was in the white space.

The emptiness.

That which wasn't addressed directly, just taken for granted.

And he wouldn't fit between the neat crisp lines in his civic book, neither.

Either.

Grammar?

Did that apply to him any more? Or was that another rule, another proscribed direction of conduct, which he had accepted. Tried to live by. Only to find out he was somewhere in the margins, negated somewhere outside the body of the text.

Always.

No matter how hard he tried.

And he had tried.

That's what hurt most.

That, and the disappointment in his father's gaze.

"Clark?"

The rustle of the Torch had accompanied his father's voice. Whitney's truck, there, on the front page of the school paper. Clark had glanced away, unable to stop the faint twitch of a smile. That was all the evidence his father had needed.

"Clark. We taught you better than that. You shouldn't play those sort of tricks on people."

Clark had felt his eyes narrow, a muscle jump in his jaw. There were other words. The same sort of speech he had heard before, but in response there was a new anger inside him. An anger, instead of shame.

No, it hadn't been nice. No, it hadn't have been the "right thing" to do.

Yes.

He understood he was different.

That it had to be hidden.

That people wouldn't understand.

How could they?

He didn't even understand. There weren't words, only white spaces. Margins.

He'd been sitting at the window since his father left. Grounded. He'd never been grounded before. Given chores, yes. Lectures, more than he could count.

But grounded?

He supposed it was an appropriate enough punishment for most teenage boys. Most teenage boys would have somewhere to go. Somewhere to be kept from.

There was only one place he'd ever been kept from.

One person.

Lex.

There was a moment of something, there inside. Something like the anger which had woken in him at his father's voice. Something similar, but not quite. A tightness in his chest. There a moment, then gone.

Like his thoughts.

Blue eyes? Green?

Lana had green eyes, hazel really. That reflected the green of her necklace. That damn necklace. He wasn't sure how he'd lost it. If it had been his own hands, or those others that took it from his neck. Soft hands. Strong hands.

Blue eyes.

Clark paced the length of his room, along the line of the faded blue and white carpet and the pale maple floorboards. The blue wasn't quite right. Too deep. Not enough grey. There had been a light it those eyes. A light that defied color. Not grey. Not blue.

Not.

Not helping.

He felt more disjointed. Confused. Lost.

He wanted to run again.

He had speed. He had strength. He had endurance.

What he didn't have was a place to go.

He did have a place not to go.

And a moment of resolve.

His feet hit the ground with a soft thud. He glanced up, but there was no movement from his parent's window. It was only a quick sprint to the Luthor manor. It was only a quick sprint anywhere in the whole of Kansas, for that matter.

But Clark tried not to dwell on things like that. He refused to consider those things he refused to think about might be what he was running from.

Nope.

Not him.

He was just having a bout of traditional adolescent angst. Giving in to an act of defiance against the authority of his parental units. Resistance to...something long and eloquent that sounded like he had finished his lit homework instead of staring blankly into the stars for the past few hours.

It was late. Well past late.

He stared at the door in front of him.

What the hell was he doing here?

He was going to turn around. Leap the gate. Go home.

He was.

But first he was just going to sit a minute. Just one. Pretend to catch his breath while he really just wanted to turn around and knock. He would, if he could just figure out what to say.

"Hi. I'm sorry to disturb you this evening, or well, morning, but..."

"But in a moment of complete neurosis I decided to stop in and say `Hi!'?"

"Stop in to talk about the weather?"

"Or I could just compliment your sense of timing." Clark finished, looking over his shoulder at the form leaning against the door jam.

"You're hell on my security system, you know that?" Lex motioned Clark inside, following a few steps behind him, bare feet on bare floor.

Clark let Lex pass him, kept an eye on the paneling along the walls. The tasteful yet eclectic mix of expensive furniture. Anything but the subtle shift of light and shadow across the silk of Lex's robe.

And the obvious lack of anything beneath it but skin and muscle and...

"Here."

Clark blinked at the glass that had been pushed in his hand. Something gold gleamed back. It had the scent of oak and orange, and his nostrils flared at the undeniable tang of alcohol. "I can't. I'm-"

"In enough trouble already that one drink isn't going to make or break you at this point. Or so I'm assuming, given the situation I found you in the other day and the fact you're sitting on my stoop at half past two, talking to yourself and looking as if the world were about to end.

"You lead an interesting life for a small town boy," Lex toasted him before taking a long pull from his own glass, the muscles in his throat working slowly as the amber liquid disappeared. "Antigua Muscat de Frontignan."

Lex's eyes moved from the glass to Clark, to his glass, then back to his eyes. Clark answered their silent question by taking a sip from his own glass.

Heat. Fire down his throat, but a sweetness that curled on his tongue.

"Good, isn't it?"

Clark had to nod, eyes lost somewhere between the glass in hand and Lex's gaze.

"It's from a little place in Napa."

Clark noticed the smile on Lex's face lost some of its warmth.

"My father, of course, wouldn't be trifled with something not from the Continent. It might offend his discerning palate. Given, there were more than a few disappointments before I found this particular label, but I think it was worth the search.

"Worth trying something new. Different." Lex nodded, his eyes taking on a distant quality.

Clark nodded as well, bringing the glass back to his lips. It's didn't burn as much this time. A happy warmth instead, though the tightness was back. In his chest.

He lowered the glass, his tongue catching a drop on his lower lip absently.

It was good.

As was the look in Lex's eyes.

Different.

The word didn't sound bad when Lex said it.

Clark took another drink, savoring it this time as much for the subtle turn of flavor as the look on Lex's face as his did. He'd seen that look, in the moment when cognition had returned to those not blue, not grey eyes when he regained consciousness that day and.

And even that night, when despite the situation those eyes had drifted.

As Clark's were.

Wrong. What he was thinking, or more aptly not letting himself think, was wrong.

Or maybe just different.

Would it be out of character to ask for another drink?

Lex seemed to read his mind, long fingers catching the neck of the bottle and bringing it towards him. The bottle. Himself. The thin navy silk of his robe.

Maybe this hadn't have been a good idea.

But the jumble of thoughts in his head had stilled. Cleared.

Now there was only one thought, troubling though it might be.

Lex.

A thought. An action. There.

Clark reached out, past the bottle in Lex's hand, to curl his hand behind Lex's neck. He pulled, with only the smallest fraction of his strength. Pulled Lex close. Found his lips. With lips. And tongue. A hint of teeth.

Kissed him with more passion and confusion and truth than he would have dared kissed Lana with. Dared kiss anyone with.

Kissed him fiercely. And was kissed fiercely in return.

Maybe this had been a good idea after all.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

fini

///Dae221: Nah, we believe there are a few straight men out there in real life, just not in fanfic...///

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