"The Hatfield-Berscheid experiments were not," she said matter-of-factly, "revolutionary in any way, shape, or form."

Clark scowled. He didn't see what was so bad about True Love (or the delusion thereof), anyway. True Love had gotten his parents years of happy marriage; lack of it resulted in the horrifying farce that had been Lex and Desiree's relationship.

On one intellectual level or another, Clark knew that taking AP Psychology with a full load of other classes already was a bad idea. But having Principal Reynolds remind him constantly about his lack of attractive assets for colleges was starting to make an uncomfortable amount of sense, and Clark figured that he might as well. Besides, he had always thought that Psychology was an interesting field of study.

Clark was staring to learn that amateur Psychology was interesting.

Learning about myelin sheaths, absolute thresholds, biological reasons for behavior, and memorizing obscure theory that was completely debunked, Clark reflected, was for the birds.

Birds with terrible karma. In fact, Lionel Luthor if he was ever reincarnated as a bird.

Dr. Polanski had this really sick fascination with destroying cherished beliefs in high schoolers. She's started off the class by saying simply that there was no such thing as true and forever love, and amidst the quiet dissent in the roomful of twenty-eight kids, she'd waved them for silence and went on to dissect the statement in blinding factuality.

"They just examined a few things that people had been taking for granted for years." She paused to glance around the class over her bifocals, searching for interested students, and stopping to glare at those who were falling asleep. "The researchers primarily concerned themselves with two types of love: passionate and companionate." She slipped a transparency on the projector and continued to talk quickly. "Passionate love encompassed tender sexual feelings, and the agony and ecstasy of emotions, while companionate was a deep, abiding affection."

Clark drew circles in the corners of his paper.

"They also addressed another aspect of love: its myths."

He stopped mid-circle, and looked up, curious.

"There are, they claimed, three main myths about love. One, that a person would know they were in love when they fell in love. Some sort of preternatural love-dar that would immediately alert you to the fact that yeah, you're head-over-heels for someone."

There was a class-wide giggle, and Dr. Polanski smiled at the reaction.

"You laugh now," she warned, "but how many of you have heard someone claim that they had finally found The One? Said that their sophomore boyfriend was the guy for them, or the last girl they saw was the girl for life?"

There was an uncomfortable shift in the room, and Clark thought crazily back to Lana, a flash of her dark, pretty eyes and smiling lips. He shook his head resolutely, ignoring the knowing looks from Chloe in order to banish traitorous ideas from his brain; he did love Lana, that was one of the few things he knew for certain.

"Truth is that most high school relationships don't last. Truth is that everyone one that comes along, in the minds of most people, is the one. And we're almost always wrong," Dr. Polanski concluded, looking thoughtful. "Myth number two is that love is a purely positive experience."

Clark rolled his eyes at that. Of course it wasn't; anyone who'd ever been in love knew that one. After all, the three years he'd been in love with Lana Lang had been proof enough that love's ups and downs were hurtful and abrupt: Whitney, then being noble, and finally a slew of other reasons had intervened. If it wasn't giving Lana space to be with her boyfriend, then it was giving Lana space because her boyfriend had died.

Clark felt immediately ashamed at his last thought, hearing his father's voice echo loudly in his head in admonition; Whitney had died protecting America. It didn't matter what Whitney had done before, he'd done the right thing in the end, and that was what mattered.

"Myth number three is my personal favorite," Dr. Polanski said. "And that's that True Love lasts forever."

"Why wouldn't it?"

It took Clark a whole twelve seconds to realize that he was the one who'd said it. Chloe was watching him again, and he could see her pitying expression from his peripheral vision, as if he was a little kid, and she felt bad for how young he was.

Dr. Polanski turned off the overhead, and the room fell suddenly-silent without the background sound of the projector's fan. She smirked at him, crossing her arms over her narrow chest, eyeing him carefully, sizing him up.

"So, Clark, I assume you believe that True Love is forever?"

He nodded.

Having established himself as an enormous geek as far back as freshman year left him very little face to lose at the beckoned point of junior year; social death had occurred already, post-mortem loserdom was remarkably freeing. Lex said that he was being morbid, but Clark thought those were pretty big words coming from a guy who liked to let an entire town think he was just the crazy brat prince from the Scottish castle in the middle of Kansas.

She laughed, and the sound was bright. "Well, good for you, Clark. I don't look forward to the day you realize that it isn't true."

Clark opened his mouth to contest the point, feeling angry all of a sudden. As if he'd been brushed off, turned away from the movie theater because it was rated "R" and he was still a few years off.

She checked her watch. "That's it for today."

"I don't know why you let her get to you, Clark," Chloe said, eyes never leaving the computer screen, fingers flying across the keys.

Clark was fascinated with the way she typed because Chloe tended to misspell more words than type them correctly; three fourths of the busy, productive clicks from her keyboard were from hitting the backspace key dozens and dozens of times per page.

She turned to level a knowing look at him. "She does it to get a rise out of the students. If you can't get them interested, at least you can get them infuriated, right?"

He almost pouted. "She's crushing the innocence of four classes of people, Chloe. How is she allowed to do that? In a public school?"

Chloe rolled her eyes. "Because she's been doing it for years, Clark."

There was a brief, almost-silence occupied only by the short sound of plastic.

Clark looked up to see a disgusted expression on Chloe's face.

"What?" he asked self-consciously.

She looked pissed.

"Don't tell me you actually think that ridiculous crush you have on Lana is you being in true love with her, Clark," Chloe said, her voice low and shaking.

The immediate annoyance flit across Clark's face, but Chloe didn't back off.

In fact, she just bit her lip, exited out of whatever she was working on violently, and started shoving things into her backpack, not looking him in the face. He could see her shoulders trembling either in anger or some other incomprehensible emotion. Like most days, Clark didn't know what he'd done wrong, but it became very clear very quickly that he wished he could take it back, that he hadn't made Chloe upset.

She stopped suddenly, turning to glare up at him.

She was crying. Clark fought against the sudden and violent urge to throw himself flat on his belly in front of her and beg for mercy.

"You know, Clark," she said, voice weak, "I let you off easy at the spring formal, and I let you off easy for two years since that."

Clark winced and squirmed. He'd always known that Chloe hadn't quite gotten over him. Pete told him daily; Lana sometimes hinted at it. At the end of sophomore year, when Lex had finally and without great patience told Clark that if he heard one more word about how great Lana was, he'd shoot himself in the ass - Lex had mentioned something about the fact that Chloe was better, and still in love with him, to boot.

Clark just hadn't figured that Chloe cared so much anymore.

At least, not enough to cry.

"Chloe - "

"Shut up!" Chloe yelled. She wiped angrily at her cheeks, sniffling pitifully as she said, "I don't expect you to ever feel the way about me that I want - ed you to, but - "

The rest of her sentence dropped off, she looked at the ground, took up her bookbag, and stumbled out, throwing a hasty "bye" over her shoulder. The sound of her footsteps echoed in the hallway, and Clark could only stare at the open door of the Torch office, wondering what exactly he'd done wrong, and how he'd done it so spectacularly.

Lex was doing something complicated with his corporation that required about fourteen thousand people to take up almost-permanent residence at the castle. There was no shortage on space, but there was a definite run on breathing room. Since Lex's secretary was obsessive, and his publicist was both obsessive and frightening, Lex had taken to hiding in a second-floor bathroom with comic books and really illicit amounts of brandy when he didn't want to answer any more questions about his company logo and who he'd be taking to the next party.

Clark had found him one day four weeks ago: pure luck, he'd called it; copious use of xray vision, he knew.

He snuck through the house as quickly and quietly as possible, avoiding in quick succession Vivian the publicist, Charity the secretary, Bill the chief accountant, Darryl the technology consultant, and Ingrid, whose exact job description no one really knew. Clark feared for Lex's sanity. Greatly.

He tiptoed into a nondescript hallway, down to the fourth door on the left, and eased it open, almost laughing out loud at the sudden sight of Lex almost jumping to his feet.

"Clark!" his friend breathed, clutching a copy of the New York Post in one hand and the tub faucet with the other.

Lex, in thousand-dollar tailored pants, black silk socks, and a dark plum-colored shirt, was sprawled out in the bathtub with a bottle of brandy and three different news publications. He looked tired, haunted, and just on this side of ridiculous, which was exactly how he felt most of the time those days, too.

Clark smirked. "Definite CEO material, Lex," he said.

Lex didn't bother to try and look dignified before settling back into the tub, smiling lazily at Clark, just breathing like there weren't at least six frantic people downstairs looking for him and yelling at his servants. No, he didn't bother - just exuded dignity, even hiding from his subordinates.

Clark sat down on the rim of the claw-footed bathtub as Lex said, "It's a leader's prerogative to give his employees room in which to maneuver. It shows them for what they really are, gives insight to human mettle." Clark rolled his eyes. "That, or the fact that a modern CEO's image Consultant is tantamount to God and I find that somewhat terrifying," Lex admitted.

"Has she been telling you what to wear, again?" Clark asked, barely repressing laughter.

"Apparently, polls indicate me too effeminate to be a strong economic leader," Lex grumbled and picked at his perfectly pressed shirt.

"'Effeminate'?" Clark asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Lex had fourteen cars, an enormous house with turrets, gorgeous women hanging on his arm at all hours, and according to Metropolis Magazine, he "dripped sex in disgusting excess." Lex played pool all the time and drank Ty Nant water. Short of erecting enormous phallic objects on the front lawn of Luthor manor, Lex couldn't get any more male. Clark didn't find any of those facts synching with Vivian's public opinion polls.

Lex frowned. "Don't go there, Clark."

Clark couldn't resist. "You do wear a lot of pink."

"It's mauve. And for your information, GQ calls it the new blue, so shut the hell up," Lex muttered, burying his face back into the New York Post, reading the box scores on the latest game between the Mets and the Dodgers. His voice was low, but Clark heard, "Better than goddamn flannel..." just under Lex's breath.

"Flannel is manly," Clark said, ridiculously chipper, all situational influences considered.

Lex made a sound that would have been a snort if he wasn't so far above those sorts of things. But he paused at something too-bright in Clark's tone and looked up, gray-blue eyes curious in the late-afternoon sun, flashing in the pools of light that pattered his floor, thrown by the stained glass. There was something...odd.

"Clark?" he asked, much softer.

Clark didn't say a word, just stared and thought, his mood suddenly somber again as he recalled the expression on Chloe's face, angry and frustrated and pained. He took a deep breath, and finally said, "Just hypothetically."

Lex raised his eyebrows. "Yes?"

"Say someone is learning about experiments about love in a certain AP Psychology class," Clark started. "And say those experiments included - "

"Yes, I know," Lex said impatiently, "Hatfield-Berscheid. Three myths, two types of love. Go on, Clark."

Clark had given up on trying to find out how Lex knew so damn much when he was only six years older. It was as if Lex had actually learned everything that he'd studied in school, as opposed to cramming frantically the nights before exams. And to add insult to injury, Lex knew more random trivia than anyone that Clark knew, and could easily win any round of play-against-the-players Jeopardy while deeply involved in explaining the controversy over whether ancient Macedonia was really a Greek-speaking nation, Alex Trebec mispronouncing things on TV in the background. Clark had seen him do it.

"And suppose said person made mention about said experiments in a certain newspaper office after class," Clark went on, seeing the knowing expression dawn on Lex's face.

"I hope you're not too badly injured," Lex said dryly.

Clark winced. "If only. She cried, Lex."

Lex sighed, setting down the newspaper and resting his head against the cold porcelain curl of the tub, staring at the ceiling, a frown on his face. "You know, Clark," he started. "I would tell you just not to mention those sorts of things around Chloe, but experience dictates that avoidance doesn't really work."

Clark wanted to say something petty about Lex and his father, but bit his tongue.

"Did you mention Lana?" Lex asked, wincing at the name, as if saying it was spelling his own doom.

"No. I just said that Dr. Polanski shouldn't be talking about how True Love wasn't real, and how she shouldn't be crushing peoples' souls," Clark argued, growing increasingly annoyed. He just didn't see where he'd been in the wrong, or why Chloe had overreacted like that and cried when there wasn't anything over which to cry.

Lex turned to him at that, looking vaguely unsettled. "The Hatfield-Berscheid experiments didn't hypothesize that there wasn't anything like True Love, Clark," he lectured. "They speculated that all love was true, every kind, every instance. But simply that True Love doesn't last forever." Lex frowned playfully. "You weren't paying attention, Clark. I'm horrified. My property taxes pay for that gold and red vacuum of school spirit of yours, you know."

Clark huffed. "I know."

"Sure you did, Clark," Lex said, turning away again. "Look, stop beating yourself up over it. It sounds like she was just wound up and, for lack of a better term, 'freaked out.'"

Clark felt a smile work its way across his face.

Lex had a way about him. Clark always felt better after having worked through his problems with Lex, like some sort of enormous verbal flow chart, and only Lex had the dry-erase marker.

It was more than a little amazing to Clark that at the not-so-tender age of seventeen to see Lex Luthor, heir-apparent to the largest agribusiness empire on Earth, leader of the fastest-growing new startup corporation in the Midwest, laying in a tub while hiding from his employees. It was beyond description that this incredibly busy man, bubbling to the brim with ambition and big plans, carefully kept optimism and barely-concealed energy, would take the time out of his schedule to sit around and listen to a high school student complain about making his friend cry.

And Clark didn't like to examine it too closely, but...

...It made him breathe a little more quickly to recognize the comfortable friendliness, the affectionate warmth in Lex's eyes as he offered advice, spouted anecdotes, and was generally there at Clark's leisure, fulfilling the role of "best friend" far better than the too-often-absent Pete.

Lex employed almost four thousand people; Pete was on the football team. It was hard to Clark to wrap his mind around how Lex seemed to make time for Clark, and how Pete found time for Clark only when it was convenient.

Lex angled Clark a curious look. "What are you smiling about?"

Not like Clark was going to tell him all that sentimental garbage, so he fumbled for the next best answer. "You said 'freaked out,' and I could hear the finger quotes, Lex."

Lex actually chuckled softly at that. "MTV tries its best, Clark, but Excelsior wins."

It made sense.

Lex was more likely to say, "Had a minor psychotic episode in relation to certain pronounced incidences of cognitive dissonance whereupon Chloe was incapable of either rationalizing or repressing" than say "Chloe freaked out." But he had, and Clark figured that had to mean something about his influence and how Lex was starting to loosen up after all. And it only took three years, Clark found himself thinking ruefully.

Clark's ears perked up at the sound of footsteps growing closer, but before he could open his mouth to warn Lex to run or hide, the door to the bathroom burst open.

Vivian was exactly a foot shorter than Clark's impressive six three, had dark dishwaterblonde hair, and had managed to gain and lose something like forty pounds in the two years that she'd worked for Lex. (Lex, however, did acknowledge that her tendency to either overeat, under-eat, chainsmoke, or panic herself into weight loss or gain were probably his own fault; she wanted hazard pay.) She had dark brown eyes and they were sparking with irritation. There were printed pages in her hands, a cell phone in her pocket, Clark knew, and dozens of people working for her twenty-four hours a day in order to make Lex look like a good, wholesome CEO. And Lex hated her. With, quote, "The passion of a thousand suns."

Lex scowled and sank down lower into the tub, whispering "Damn."

Clark snickered.

Vivian shot him a glare that very clearly screamed, Get out. She said, "Hello, Clark."

Clark cleared his throat and excused himself, feeling no small amount of pity as he heard Vivian gearing up for another speech on why her being on the LexCorp payroll would be absolutely pointless if her stubborn employer didn't follow her advice, and why hadn't Lex started wearing the cobalt blue shirt she'd had Hugo Boss send? Barney's had made available fabulously masculine ties; it was only Lex's hereditary mule-like nature that stopped his conquest of the Bible belt, etc. etc.

And from the hallway, he heard Lex:

"Has anyone ever told you what an incredible nuisance you are, Vivian?"

Clark let the phone ring fourteen times before he hung up.

Chloe was obviously taking "freak out" to a whole new and previously unknown level.

"She still not answering?" Clark turned around to see his mother looking at him sympathetically. He frowned and shook his head, noting her pitying expression.

Clark flopped down at the kitchen table, sulking. "Lex said she freaked out."

Clark, over the years, had learned that when it came to issues of teenaged girls, it was always in his best interest to consult his mother. After all, Martha Kent was no stranger to teenaged mood swings, and she'd been hearing his, Pete's, his dad's, and Chloe's for years. Twice in the past, she'd flat-out told him it was a surprise that Chloe hadn't yet lost her patience with Clark; if it was her, his mom had said, she would have probably brained him with something heavy and blunt years ago.

"She's probably just in a bad mood, honey," she said soothingly, pressing a hand to Clark's cheek. "It's always rough for teenaged girls, especially with boys they like."

Her son's face darkened: shame and irrepressible annoyance. "Well, maybe she should pick someone else to like and stop bothering me!"

There was a horrible silence in the kitchen, and Clark's eyes widened as he realized that he'd said it out loud. His mother looked appalled, and Clark suddenly felt like pond scum.

"Oh, my God," Clark whispered.

His mother's face was tight, but forgiving. "It's okay, Clark, I know you're under a - "

"No, it's not!" he protested, frantic suddenly. "Chloe's been one of my best friends since, since eighth grade!"

Chloe had always been good to him, cared even though he was the outcast. And Clark admitted it, as horrible as it sounded, that the fact that Chloe had seen enough good in him to like him had always been a huge ego-boost. She was cute and smart and everything that he should have liked in a girl, and he felt four steps beyond awful to know that not only did he not reciprocate, that he caused her pain, too.

He had no right to be angry about it.

"Clark."

He looked up to see his mom's eyes hard. "Yeah?"

She sighed. "Look... That's the thing about love, Clark, it's not reasonable, it's not rational, and we can't control is or make it work the way we like." She looked like she was talking from experience, and with the fallout between her father and herself over Clark's father, she might have been. "It would be simpler if we could tell ourselves to stop caring about someone because it's inconvenient."

Clark swallowed hard and nodded.

"So there's no point in being mad at Chloe for caring about you, and no point in being mad at yourself for being annoyed, Clark," she continued softly. "Sometimes, that's just the way it is. And you know, it doesn't last forever," she said in a consoling tone.

Clark's head shot up at that: "it doesn't last forever," and "True Love isn't forever."

Was everyone sinking into pessimism? Or was it just some fact that he'd never bothered to look at too closely before? Neither option sounded particularly good.

"Okay. Thanks, Mom," he managed.

She ran a hand comfortingly over the crown of his head, and went off to finish preparing dinner. There was only so much warm wisdom that she could be offer; there was still the real world to address, and teenaged angst was in a separate galaxy at best.

Clark sat still and thought to himself for a long time.

"Clark, you know I like you, but..."

It didn't hurt anymore, since Clark had heard it (at present count, more to follow, obviously) fourteen times already. He always asked and Lana always gave the same response; she liked him, that much had been articulated, but she wasn't ready for a relationship yet, not so soon after Whitney had died.

Lex said it was like a game, Guess the Rationalization.

So Clark had turned Not Strangling Lex With One of His Four Hundred Dollar Ties into a game, too.

The Talon was busy that night, people coming and going as if the cappuccinos were actually good. (Clark used to think so, but then Lex had gotten bored one afternoon, driven them out to Metropolis, and they'd had the real stuff.) Lana had hired two new baristas and a waitress, so she was sitting pretty, chin cupped in one palm looking over her domain. She didn't even look bothered by the fact that she'd been feeding him bad excuses for almost four months.

He had to try, anyway. It made him feel manly.

"It's just a movie, Lana, we could go as friends," he offered, and realized with a sudden and harsh clarity that he was really sick of her bad explanations.

She smiled at him sweetly. "Thanks for everything, Clark, but - "

He waved his hand absently. "Nevermind, Lana. I understand."

Lana was still beautiful, relatively uncomplicated in the grand scheme of things. She had lost her parents in the meteor shower that had been his fault, grew up an orphan, the beloved princess of Smallville who had been defined in the horrible afternoon in October when fire fell from the sky with her face on the cover of Time. Everyone loved Lana; it was so easy for Clark to love her, too. She was everything he was supposed to like, like the lead female in a romantic comedy.

Chloe was the best friend: smart, quirky, and kind. Who, according to some romantic comedies, Clark was supposed to dump Lana for at some point or another.

Though, last year, either (according to which publication one liked to read, The New Yorker or the National Review) in an uplifting example of how society was growing more enlightened or degenerating into a modern, sprawling Sodom and Gomorrah, some woman had written and directed a box-office hit romantic comedy that hadn't ended either way. Zachary the brilliant young architect fell for Julia who ignored him and he drank vodka with Gemma who introduced him to her friend, Dorian. Two hours and four minutes later, Zachary and Dorian shared the first mass-released gay kiss on screen and became romantic icons like a homoerotic version of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.

But Clark had decided, after generous teasing from what seemed like*everyone in Kansas,* that being a teenaged alien with superpowers was complicated enough without having to add questioning of sexual orientation.

Lex had dismissed the movie as garbage, and told Clark that there were great art nouveau movies about real gay romance if he wanted to see them.

That had started a really interesting line of questioning which had ended abruptly when the 36D flavor of the week had wandered into the den wearing Lex's so-called 'effeminate' plum-colored shirt. At least Lex had looked embarrassed, even if she hadn't.

Clark checked his watch.

"Look, I've got to run," he started easily. In the last year, leaving Lana had gotten easier than coming to her. "I told Lex I'd meet him."

Lana narrowed her eyes for just a fraction of a second. "You guys are close."

Clark smiled, and realized out of all the expressions that had crossed his face so far that evening, it was the closest to being real. "He's my best friend, Lana."

She looked at him as if it wasn't a good enough explanation.

For a moment, a thought flit through his head: what if it wasn't?

Clark noted the minor explosion of activity at Luthor manor with a critical eye, swung a left, and headed back home. He knew he had an open invitation to the house, but he didn't want to disturb Lex while he was in the throes of actual productivity. Besides which, Vivian sort of...scared him. A lot.

He zipped through dinner with his folks, excused himself to his room, and read there until he couldn't focus on the words on the page any longer. Forcing himself to read _The Scarlet Letter_ hadn't been fun to begin with; the prospect of a more interesting avenue of thought sort of completely defeated the purpose of even trying. Hester Prynne was a chump, though Clark had a sneaking suspicion that Lex would disagree, and start some extended diatribe about American literature and Hawthorne's rejection of some literary style or another. Hearing about Transcendentalism from his English teacher was mindnumbing enough; if Lex got into it, then Clark would probably lapse into a coma from premature brain death.

True Love and its impermanence was everywhere he looked that day.

And so were chumps: Clark was a chump, so was Chloe. So was Hester.

Hester had loved Arthur Dimmesdale enough to sacrifice her reputation and ruin her life, bear the shame of an illegitimate child on her own; her love was True, and real, and visceral, Clark thought. But in the end, Dimmesdale had been weak and undeserving, and he'd died, leaving Hester alone again. If that wasn't an unfair and tragic conclusion to an unfair and tragic affair to begin with, then Clark didn't know what was.

True Love, true and pure and good, had ended.

Just as Hatfield and Berscheid had said it would, just as his mother had said. There was a horrifying transience to it now, as if everything was simply a layer of surface material, about to be blown away in the wind like debris or sand.

True Love hadn't been good enough.

Neither was coffee, eventually, because he woke up three hours later, his face pressed into the seam of the book, smelling the Smallville High School library.

Clark blinked thickly and looked out the window, the midnight stealing over the heavens. Stars were coming out, and he fought a primal urge to sneak out to the barn, stare out of the telescope, get lost in something greater than himself.

Clark wondered if it was some sort of phase that all teenagers went through. If questioning the nature and validity of Love was something that everyone did in their teens, in between tests and pointless quizzes and studying for the SATs. He lay back in his sheets and stared up at his ceiling, wondering if Lana or Pete or Chloe had ever kept themselves awake at night, thinking too deeply about things that felt like they should have come naturally, been cut and dry, black and white.

True, Beauty, and Love, weren't those three simple, plain concepts that were supposed to touch the lives of everyone on the face of the earth in equal measure and pressure? Wasn't Love supposed to be the best, least complicated, simplest thing? After all, his parents loved him, and he loved them back. It was easy, flexible. It got tense sometimes in between fights about small things that weren't important in the long run - but in the end, Clark never doubted that his parents loved him. It was a question of degree, not presence.

So why had romantic love become so complicated? Why "passionate love" so confusing?

And why was Clark obsessing, anyway?

He'd laid out his life very clearly: he would try to reign in his powers, do what he could to save people, be a good friend and son, stay out of the spotlight, and love Lana.

He'd always loved Lana.

Clark shut his mind down, refused to let himself think any further, and rolled out of bed to wash up. It was late, and he was tired of his own brain.

Idly, he wondered if that was how Lex felt all the time: worn from a day of overactive analysis, cut to pieces by his own mind.

"So, naturally, disappointment is part of every relationship."

That's the thing Clark had never understood about Chrissy: being a teenager was equivalent to total and ceaseless misery. The idea that someone would go to such extraordinary and murderous lengths in order to preserve the most awkward years of their lives was beyond Clark's understanding. The thought that the fourteen to eighteen set were the best years of his life made Clark really antsy about living past nineteen.

"The Hatfield-Berscheid experiments, as we covered yesterday in class, destroyed some age-old stereotypes about love, and I know some of you aren't...exactly happy about that," Dr. Polanski said, an indulgent smile on her face. She seemed to be looking right at Clark, and he barely repressed a scowl.

Chloe had stopped him in the hall was a vague, uncomfortable apology, saying something about how she had been having a bad day, and that she shouldn't have taken it out on him. But there had been a grudging tone in her voice, like she didn't mean anything that came out of her mouth, like she was waiting for him to interrupt with, "No, Chloe, you were right. What I feel for Lana is crap."

What Clark felt for Lana was the only thing he really understood.

Dr. Polanski turned on the overhead, where her looping handwriting had scrawled "Reciprocity effect" in all capital letters and underlined it twice.

"Reciprocity involves liking or loving those who show they like you. It extends to idealizing one's partner or perceptions thereof."

Clark tensed.

"Like idealizing someone, thinking they have no faults or are the exception to the rule when really, it's just because you don't want to come to the terms with the fact that your sweetheart is just as fallible and bad a person as anyone else," Dr. Polanski added.

The fan in the room was inordinately loud. As if it was a drumroll. Clark fidgeted in his seat, bit his lip, tapped his pen, and tried to block out everything she was saying.

Chrissy had it all wrong, Clark reflected darkly.

Being a teenager was a hazing ritual; those who didn't lose their minds or commit suicide by the time they reached twenty-one got a 'Pass Go, Collect $200' card to adulthood and reality. Turning fourteen had led to sticky sheets in the morning, mortifyingly bad conversations with parents regarding things that parents should never talk to kids about.

Fifteen had led to nightmarishly awkward incidences with the opposite gender and locker rooms where the art of "not looking" was honed to perfection or eventual death was accepted. Sixteen was terrified "dates" where both parties were too busy panicking and regulating their heartbeats to really enjoy each other's company. Seventeen provided two bad kisses with some girl that Clark didn't even really like, crying Chloe, Lana making excuses, and Pete going further and further away.

Seventeen was also AP Psychology.

Clark hated Psychology, and decided that the entire thing was Lex's fault.

"I thought it was fascinating, frankly," Lex had said one lazy afternoon in the barn. And since Clark was new and shiny and dumb and trusted Lex's judgment, he'd signed up for the class before reading the fine print.

"Will make you toss, turn, and reevaluate those things which prove fundamental to your sanity on a daily basis," the four point font whispered. Bludgeoning Lex would only appease some of the tension, and now, thanks to AP Psychology, Clark knew why physical violence was only a temporary release.

"I know everyone is looking at this lesson and thinking, "Well, I'm different." But that's the thing about Psychology," Dr. Polanski said, her voice soothing, taming the beast of the teenaged ego. "These sorts of things apply to everyone, on every corner of the earth. There's no point in being ashamed, or embarrassed, or worried. Everyone falls victim to this, and love, being so universal, more so than anything else."

Clark narrowed his eyes and slumped down in his seat.

Dr. Polanski uncapped an overhead pen and wrote, "Proximity effect."

"I see Vivian won."

Lex was wearing a cobalt blue shirt, and it brought out the brilliant color of his eyes, flaring with almost-childlike petulance. He was sitting at his desk, leafing through a mountain of papers and frowning at all of them.

"Vivian didn't win," Lex said in a short tone. "I conceded after seeing that the shirt did, in fact, put on display some of my more attractive physical assets."

Clark smirked but didn't push. His expression faltered. "You're busy. Should I go?"

Charity, being the most patient member of the Luthor staff, had told Clark that Lex wasn't restructuring the company, rewriting the bylaws, or any of the other guesses that Clark had made already. Lex was about to however, attempt to make himself presentable to venture capitalists, for a new, large, and very ambitious project that would need massive amounts of funding. Charity had made special efforts to emphasize how utterly vital it was to the future of LexCorp that Lex take it seriously, and be left alone enough to work with concentration. So, Lex being Lex, wasn't losing his mind nearly as much as he should have been, which was why Vivian was doing it for him.

Lex sighed. "Probably." A pause. "So sit down already, Clark."

Clark smiled and made himself comfortable on a leather couch, feeling it curve and mold itself to his body. The leather gave a soft sigh, as if to say, "Finally, you're back."

Lex set down his pen and glared around the room. "I'm going to fire Vivian, Clark."

He'd been saying so for months already.

"Why do you need a publicist, anyway?" Clark asked, genuinely curious.

"The same reason my father has one, Clark," Lex said smoothly, his voice pitched like silk and satin and a dozen other flawless things. "Just because you're a brilliant businessman doesn't mean you're a brilliant diplomat, and in my case, though I'm fairly good with both aspects, I have a somewhat disreputable past."

'Somewhat,' of course, being the gentlest word for it, Clark knew. Lex's past was the type of thing that got people crucified even in the Daily Planet. And that was based purely on what Clark knew about Lex's past; he didn't envy Vivian.

They shared a brief, comfortable silence.

Clark cleared his throat and said, "I'm losing my mind, and it's your fault."

Lex raised his eyebrows, looking almost as if he was caught off guard. "Really?"

Clark frowned. "You said Psychology was fun."

"I said Psychology was fascinating, Clark," Lex said pointedly, smirking. "And even if I had said "fun," my definition of amusing and yours are vastly different: clubbing or cow-tipping. You ought to have known better, anyway."

"Tipping the cows kills them, Lex," Clark said.

His friend rolled his gray-blue eyes. "Forgive me. I've never felt compelled to brave fields full of bovine feces in order to push one over in the dead of the night."

Clark had realized sometime near the end of his sophomore year that on average, to every one word that he said, Lex could say five and make them all sound many times smarter than anything that had come out of Clark's mouth just moments before. Clark could probably read from an encyclopedia, have Lex talk in response about diet sodas, and still have Lex sound more intelligent. He'd given up on being frustrated months ago.

He chose snark now.

"So you survived the wilds of the Metropolis nightlife, and you're afraid of little dung?"

Lex smiled for real this time, eyes dancing. "For the record, Clark, I never claimed to have "survived" the Metropolis nightlife; had I accomplished that feat, I very much doubt I'd be in Smallville, processing said dung." There was no bitterness in his tone, only idle amusement, like the thing that had hurt him in the past, banished him to nowhere, had scabbed over. "Besides," Lex continued, "you were saying about Psychology?"

Yes, Clark was.

"Dr. Polanski is purposely trying to destroy my view of love, Lex," Clark whined.

Lex laughed, and Clark said, "It's not funny, Lex! She's...she's talking about "reciprocity effect" and "proximity effect" and "idealization" and "cognitive dissonance" and all sorts of things that just out and out negate the idea of love!"

"Clark," Lex finally said, "you said it yourself a long time ago:; it's entirely different when the person likes you back."

Reciprocity effect, and only the slightest twinge at the memory of Kyla. Clark figured that he should still feel bad about that, but the more he'd thought about that, the more he realized that she'd been - as bad as it had sounded - a blip on the radar. There was Lana before, and Lana after.

Besides, Lana had never tried to kill people. Clark knew he'd cared for Kyla deeply, though, and couldn't really repress the wave of shame he felt every time he remembered her without any grief, as if the affection he'd felt while she was alive was a passing fancy, not real at all. Looking at her bracelet made him feel dirty, like he'd taken something under false pretenses, and he couldn't muster enough courage to return it to Kyla's grandfather.

"And you can't say that your being around Chloe for ages didn't have an affect on the fact that she has feelings for you now."

Proximity effect, and yet another black mark against Clark. He'd never liked hurting people, and of all the people in the world, he'd never wanted to cause Chloe pain. She was so good and sweet to him, always there, bright and funny and...perfect. But oh so wrong all at the same time. It used to be simpler, but back then, Clark hadn't ever had to tuck his erection under his belt in order to stave off embarrassment and Chloe didn't have breasts, either. Not really. 'A' cups didn't really count.

"Plus, you unable to tell me one bad thing about Lana."

Clark just glared at that.

Sure he could, he thought. Lana was...short?

"Cognitive dissonance isn't even really about love, Clark," Lex said easily, like a silvertongued repository of knowledge. "It's about convincing yourself of one thing or another because it's easier to swallow than the truth."

Well, damn.

Clark huffed. Lex laughed.

"If I didn't know any better, Clark," Lex quipped, "I'd say you drop by only to be verbally abused, proven wrong, and annoyed." His eyes were bright with something happy, and it made the knot in Clark's stomach loosen to see that carefree expression on Lex's face.

"You know better," Clark shot back. "I come to take advantage of how really disgustingly rich you are."

Lex rolled his eyes.

Fast cars, servants, indoor pools, an entertainment room in the castle with technology that shamed the multiplex forty-five minutes away, and Clark was still more likely to spend two and a half hours sitting around Lex's den shooting the breeze and playing pool than enjoy any of the things that Lex would freely give.

The phone on Lex's desk burst to life, and Charity's voice piped out, sounding squeaky and far away, slightly out of breath: "Lex! Your three fifteen is here, and the photo shoot for "Fortune" is in two hours, so get rid of your guest."

Lex's mouth tensed at her tone, and Clark got the distinct impression that the only thing that saved Charity's job at that moment was the fact that Clark was there. Lex had a tendency to repress his more temperamental side around Clark, as if he felt obligated to be a positive role model or something, play mentor and big brother where Clark had no other point of reference. As if Clark would ever need to know how to be polite to people who worked for him, act incredibly smooth, be rich with class, and drink brandy gracefully, anyway.

"Thank you, Miss Everett," Lex said tightly. "That'll be all."

There was another silence. Not comfortable.

Clark squirmed for a bit and Lex fumed silently in his chair, halfway between embarrassed and enraged.

"Sorry, Lex," Clark finally said, for lack of anything better.

"Don't be," Lex muttered. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but cut himself off, rubbing a hand over his face, all-at-once exhausted again. "Maybe you should go, Clark. I'm sure your mom wouldn't appreciate you being late for dinner."

"Sure, Lex," Clark finally said.

Lex offered him a weak smile. "See you around, Clark."

Their eyes met over Lex's desk, and they held the stare for a moment.

Just four feet of actual space. Compared to the hours by plane that Clark had grown used to as Lex built his company, romanced different debutantes, argued with the stock market, and had pissing contests with his father.

It was just four feet.

Clark had never felt so far away.

Orange sunlight streamed through the kitchen windows, creating a halo of copper-gold light around his mother's head. Clark stopped a moment at the door, smiling at Martha Kent's profile. It was his honest opinion that his mother was one of the most beautiful women in the world. She made the house home and being seventeen bearable; she also made the best apple pie in Kansas.

"Hey, Mom," he said finally, drinking in the sight of her turning to smile at him.

"Hi. How was school, honey?" she asked, wiping her hands on a dishtowel and abandoning dirty pots and pans for a moment, focused entirely on him.

Aside from his parents, the only person who ever paid that much attention was Lex.

He sighed. "I'm hating AP Psychology more and more every day."

She laughed. "When I took Psychology in college, I came home from every class convinced I had another disorder." She patted him on the shoulder. "Don't take it too seriously, Clark. A lot of Psychology is just conjecture."

Clark didn't know what "conjecture" meant, but figured that he should probably find out before he took his SATs in a month and a half.

He shouldered his backpack again and said, "Yeah, sure, Mom." And started to leave.

"Wait - Clark?"

He turned to see a nervous expression on his mom's face. "Yeah, Mom?"

She sighed. "I got a call from Ms. Bertram, today, Clark."

He stared back at her blankly. Bertram? Not a teacher, not an acquaintance, not even someone on his delivery route who could be calling to complain about the service.

"Vivian Bertram?" his mom supplied, and Clark's heart jumped into his throat. His mom saw the look of recognition in his eyes and went on. "I know you and Lex are best friends, Clark, but she says that they're in the middle of something really important, and that it's for the best if you just...stay away for a while."

That made something really ugly and feral rise up in Clark's brain.

But he'd cursed in front of his mother before, and her reaction had been worse than the threat of having his mouth washed out with soap, so Clark just nodded tightly, bit his tongue, and raced up the steps.

Everything was complicated now.

His penis had a mind of its own; Pete was never around; Chloe had to wear a real bra; Lana reciprocated but didn't act; Lex was...otherwise occupied.

Everything was complicated.

Clark was sitting in a desolate corner of Luthor manor's gardens, having checked for security cameras, wandering security personnel, and Vivian. Lex never went out into the gardens. "My asthma might have gone away with the meteor shower, Clark," he'd mentioned one day, sneering at all the foliage, "but I still have a fairly negative reaction to copious amounts of flower pollen." Clark had just nodded and added "copious" to the list of words that he was probably supposed to know already; he had looked it up and endeavored (another Lex word, two weeks ago) to use it as often as possible.

Technically, Vivian had said not to bother, Lex.

And stalking, if done properly, really didn't bother much of anyone.

He was x-raying the entire compound, and he'd had some trouble at first, but settled finally on the image of Lex standing over his desk, hands slipped in his pockets and face hard. Vivian walked into the room and his eyes sparked with something just short of anger. Lex said something, and Vivian set her hands on her hips, face just as hard, before replying, her expression much more calm than Lex. Then Lex yelled something, and Vivian yelled back, waving her arms and motioning around herself, pointing at Lex's things. Lex shut his mouth, bit his lip, and looked at the ground before glancing up and mouthing one sentence. Vivian raised her eyebrows, nodded slowly, and left.

Clark blinked, and wished that he had superhearing or something useful like that.

Oh, but he could imagine what had been said.

"You called Clark's parents, Vivian," Lex had said.

"I was acting in the best interests of LexCorp and yourself," Vivian had said in reply.

"I know what's in my best interests, Vivian, and I don't need you alienating my friends in order to achieve it!" Lex had cried, enraged.

"You obviously don't because when you invite that boy into the castle to waste your time and ours, you're not thinking clearly and you're not taking your job seriously!" Vivian would yell back.

Lex had sighed and said, "You're released from your position, Vivian. Please leave."

Clark thought that would be a very satisfactory turn of events, and decided as he saw Vivian disappear down a hallway that he would call Lex the next afternoon and invite him over to hang out or play basketball. (Clark hated to admit it, but despite alien superpowers, Lex still had a better layup than he did. Which sucked, since Lex was also three inches shorter.)

Then again, Clark realized unhappily, there was also a psychological concept called "projection" and what he was saying held vague overtones of that particular defense mechanism. And maybe, Lex wasn't chastising Vivian for having called the Kents at all, maybe, Lex was arguing with Vivian the same way that Lex argued with Clark,: over stupid things, which meant that Lex liked Vivian.

Maybe Lex was picking a fight with Vivian over what kind of curtains they wanted for the castle, since, you know, maybe Lex liked Vivian a lot.

Clark hated, hated AP Psychology.

He narrowed his eye and focused again, pushing too hard because he could see through Lex's clothes now, deep in his bones, before he pulled out and focused. Lex wandering around the second floor of the castle, looking vaguely dissatisfied, though the manor was quiet for the first time in weeks. Lex was picking at the walls, pulling at tapestries, too close to pouting to be real or sober.

Though to be honest, Clark had never seen Lex inebriated.

In fact, Clark had never really seen Lex lose control when Lex had any control at all to be had. There were moments, of course, but they were meteor-rock induced. And other times, when Clark thought that he'd finally gotten to Lex, his friend had just shut down, iron walls coming down behind blue eyes, a hard tilt to his mouth, and a new, pretty girlfriend in the castle all weekend long. Clark figured that during moments like those, Lex really earned the 'Debauchery' that seemed to be his middle name. And Clark had never really figured out the whys or hows of it all; what made Lex go off on some occasions, and why Vivian could spend two months not-so-subtly questioning his masculinity and Lex could just shrug her off at the end of a day.

Clark sat there and leaned back, watching at a comfortable distance, and wondered if it was normal, accepted, average, to be completely possessed.

Lex made amazing overtures of friendship, did things that were beyond the scope of most teenagers or even adults. It was facilitated by the money, but given without intent that the dollar signs showed through: Lex was Lex simply because he was, frozen thick with a foot of ice around himself, and all geek pride and hardcore science fiend in his heart and head; Lex was having two complete sets of Warrior Angel comics, and not-so-secretly being torn over the destroyed friendship in the comics more than the so-called victims; Lex was purchasing video game systems over E-bay because he was too proud to walk into a Wal-Mart and ask for an N64, and just because he had money didn't mean he had to waste it; Lex was driving gloves and the slick smell of oil on leather; Lex was freshly polished shoes and a world of confusing devotion the likes of which Clark had never really seen before, never really understood.

Lex was also...a million miles away.

Clark glanced at his watch and felt all the blood drain out of his face before he bolted.

Missing dinner was one thing; missing dinner by two hours to stalk one's best friend was quite another.

The test on Social Psychology was probably the best that Clark had done all year. Dr. Polanski beamed at him before handing down a scantron full of neatly-darkened circles and 96 written in red marker on the corner. It was ironic that Clark would do so well in the only class he really hated.

So by the time that lunch rolled around, Clark was deep in full-scale pout. Chloe had shooed him out of the Torch office, citing that if he was going to suck every bit of joy out of her existence, then he could do it elsewhere. Pete was out sick that day. And inevitably, Clark had wandered outside the school, around the red brick until he'd seen Lana's familiar profile, sitting in the shade of a tree.

"Hey," he said, remarkably comfortable.

Lana smiled, pink and soft from her perch on the grass. "Hey, Clark."

She looked perfect there, sitting in the midst of all the blossoming life of spring in a pink shirt and denim skirt. Lana was simply pretty, simply herself, and that's what Clark liked about her so much: simple. Lana was easy for him to understand, easy on the eyes, easy on his overtaxed mind.

She patted the ground next to herself and he flopped down, sighing.

"You seem somber," she commented lightly.

Clark smirked; everyone was tossing around SAT words. He shrugged in reply.

"Want to talk about it?" she asked.

He sighed. And yeah, Clark did. "I haven't seen Lex in nearly a week," he admitted.

Lana couldn't hide her smirk. "Could you sound like a teenaged girl any more, Clark?"

He frowned and narrowed his eyes at her. "Says the girl who wears pink perpetually," he shot back, the voice snotty and vaguely familiar. It took him half a moment of staring into Lana's surprised face to recognize that the snippy tone was a directly lifted from one of the conversations he'd overheard between Lex and Vivian. It was never any secret that Clark had a sarcastic side, too; he just hadn't ever seen it manifest with Lana.

She raised her eyebrows. "Touche," she finally murmured. "Why haven't you just dropped by? Doesn't he still buy produce from your family?"

Clark made a sound that was suspiciously close to a whine. "Yes."

And that was the point.

Whatever had happened between Lex and Vivian, it had obviously put Lex in a bad state, one in which he seemed to really realize that he was a CEO of a corporation, the employer of 4000 people, and no longer the disaffected scion of a multibillionaire or the always-available friend to a teenaged boy. Something had clicked in Lex's head, like the last pieces of a large, abstract puzzle, and it had told Lex that he needed to shape the hell up, because it wasn't just his life anymore.

...Which led to Lex politely begging off any phone conversations with Clark, actually listening to Vivian, working his very hardest to make his dreams come true.

"You're working too much, Lex," Clark had said a few days ago. And he'd never admit it to Lana, but he'd actually been twirling the phone cord around his finger, half out of nervous habit, half out of plain nervousness to have finally caught Lex on the phone.

And Lex, that logical bastard, had only laughed tiredly and said, "Not true, Clark. In fact, I think I haven't worked hard enough in the past. I could give you an extended lecture on Alexander the Great and Macedonia and the stock market, but I think you probably have homework. I know I have a conference call, so - "

"Lex," he'd interrupted desperately, ignoring the voice of his dignity wailing in the background for him to unroll his dick. "If - are you mad at me?"

There'd been a long silence before Lex had sighed affectionately. "Clark, I'm just busy, you know that, right?" Clark had nodded, and even though Lex couldn't see through phones and definitely not across Kansas farmland, he'd gone on to say, "Good," and hung up like Clark wasn't losing his mind on the other end of the line.

"So?" Lana persisted. "Why don't you just go and visit him?"

"The same reason that we shouldn't be friends to begin with!" Clark growled, surprised by the irritation in his own voice. Lana looked taken aback, and stayed silent and Clark ranted. "I mean, Lex Luthor. Heir to the Luthor empire, drives expensive cars with gloves, lives in a Scottish castle moved to Smallville brick by brick. Lex Luthor who started his own corporation when he was twenty-one and who really, honestly, Lana? Who really is too busy to have a friend like me."

Clark sank into the grass, flat on his back and feeling spent.

That was the crux of the whole thing, Clark realized. He'd learned about biomagnification from Chloe's expose on LuthorCorp pesticides, little doses building up into larger problems, and it seemed oddly applicable to his situation. All the tiny, tiny little things that meant that he and Lex should have just been total strangers, passers-by instead of friends had compiled, allied themselves, written up contracts and photocopied them. It was only time that had brought them to the forefront, with terribly imposing words like "impossible," and "secrets," and "too damn young" for Clark's comfort.

It was very clear to Clark then that his whole friendship with Lex was just a bomb waiting to go off. According to his folks, Lex was after his secrets; according to the lewder jokes in the locker rooms, Lex was after his ass. And aside from all of that, Clark knew that the person really in danger was Lex, since Clark was after Lex's time and Lex didn't have any to offer. Lex had been an inexhaustible well of energy, acceptance, and comfort beforehand, but that had also come with Lex's sullen disregard for the plant, his annoyance with his father, his family, his place in life.

It had all started to change, ever so subtly, and then in an explosion with the employee buyout, the beginnings of LexCorp, and now, venture capitalists.

Clark realized he hated venture capitalists.

In fact, the whole romantic notion of the robber baron itself was a huge pain in the butt; if they lived in a communist country, Lex would have all the time in the world to be friends with Clark. They could pick potatoes, salute their comrades, and Lex would have time to sleep, and breathe, and Vivian wouldn't be calling anyone's mother. Vivian probably would have been up against the wall for counter-revolutionary thoughts;, or she would be if Clark had anything to say about it.

"Clark," Lana said softly, a hand on his shoulder, "has Lex ever been too busy for you?"

Clark pouted. "He is now."

She smiled at him, the expression was genuine. "Special situations now, Clark. You know that most of the people at the Talon work for him? I mean, I work for him, sort of,. My employees work for him, and everyone from the plant who comes into town works for him." She released a deep sigh. "Lex does important stuff, Clark. I guess it's just weird because...well, he usually never lets it show."

"A week, Lana. I've never gone a week without speaking to my friends before."

That wasn't true, Clark knew. There'd been that one time during summer when he and Pete had just...seemingly had other things to do. There were no feelings of animosity or even annoyance; they'd simply been occupied with other things, separated for a while, and met back up a week before school started to do all the normal, stupid things they always did.

"Lex isn't a normal guy, Clark," Lana added, her voice slightly dreamy. "He drives a Porsche and eats organic vegetables and runs a fertilizer plant."

Clark turned to look at Lana with new eyes. "You've thought about this."

She blushed, terribly red, and Clark got a horrible and sudden suspicion.

"You ought to try poetry, Clark," Lex had mentioned offhandedly once, "Lana seems to like rhymes. I've got books in the library, if you want. We can bastardize something over dinner." Clark suddenly got a sinking pit in his stomach and knew why Lex knew that Lana was a sucker for poetry. He didn't over think the fiery, hot possessive scream in his head, because it was too complicated and had to be approached from two directions: he loved Lana Lang, so Lex couldn't have her; he needed Lex because Lex was his best friend, and Lana had better damn well keep her paws to herself.

Lana was pretty and popular and everyone loved her; Lex was the only person that seemed to be fairly immune. Clark was an only child and a farm kid; not having any competition and having nothing to have was a bad combination, and Clark admitted it: he was selfish with his things. He didn't like to share. Lex was his friend, and while Clark wanted other people to like Lex, he didn't want them taking him away.

Which brought Clark back to the problem at hand: "away."

"Lana...do you..." Clark started, "have a crush on Lex?"

"No! Clark!" she protested. "You know I like you," she added shyly. "I know...I know I'm taking a long time to come around and... But I can't just let it go. It's like after my parents died, Clark; Whitney was important even if he was...." She seemed to make up her mind. "You know I like you, Clark."

The pit in his stomach widened. Clark remembered that tone. It was the same one he used to use when people questioned him about his feelings for Lana. Negations were always on his lips, but deep inside, the answer was a very clear "yes."

It would explain a lot. Why Lana always seemed so cheerful and bright around Lex. Why she got angry with him more easily than normal business associates would, as if she was passing a moral judgment. Why his drinks always had more whipped cream than anyone else's, and more sprinkles, and definitely came with a larger smile. And Clark had always wondered why Lana seemed incapable of going through any of the Talon's paperwork on her own, why Lex always had to be there.

Lex and...Lana?

"Right," he finally said, and the skepticism showed, he knew.

Lana bit her lip. "Clark..."

Clark sighed, tamped down obvious temporary insanity, and said, "See you later."

He stood up, brushed off his jeans, and headed to his seventh period class.

Clark spent a lot of time failing Precalculus. A lot.

It was the combined effects of it being a) a math class, and b) right after lunch. Clark had spent first quarter attempting to learn things, but had given up after Lex smirked and said that there was no real secret to learning trigonometry, and that a lot of it was just memorization of various, useless things. "It's almost entirely pointless, Clark, especially since there're calculators that log formulas nowadays," Lex had said. (That, of course, hadn't stopped him from being able to do all of the extra credit problems Clark had that week in class in ball point pen without ever making a mistake.)

Be that as it may, Clark didn't hate math. Not really. It was a subject, numbers and variables, and there wasn't anything tangible to hate.

Their math teacher was too bland to be considered a target.

At any rate, it gave him time to think, which was sort of a perk. Sort of. Clark spent a lot of time writing things down he'd never understand, and thinking about Psychology.

The Hatfield-Berscheid experiments had ruined his life, and he hoped that Hatfield and Berscheid were very happy about that. Not only had they destroyed Clark's innocent, pure love for Lana Lang and polluted it with doubt and mired it with questionable intent, it also made him really...uneasy about...Lex.

For reasons that Clark hadn't quite worked out just yet.

Finally, the bell rang and Clark made his way into the hall, distracted, ducking people left and right and making no eye-contact. He didn't want to talk to anyone. He just wanted to think, and to run down to Luthor manor and play a game of pool, have everything go back to the way it was before.

That was the other thing. Everything was changing.

He wasn't okay with that one, either.

Clark reevaluated his immediate dismissal of Lana's "teenaged girl" comment when he saw the flash of silver-white just outside of Smallville High School. The big, stupid smile on his face got bigger with every step he took and he just knew he looked like an idiot, bolting toward his best friend's car like they hadn't seen each other in years.

He was about four feet away when Lex looked up from the steering wheel, flashed Clark a smile, and stepped out of the car, all in one smooth, liquid motion. Lex moved like water flowed, around things, over things, never stumbling.

And then Clark took pause, just a brief hitch in his step when he realized something.

Oh, sure, Clark had always understood on a clinical level that Lex was attractive. After all, Lana had giggled over the proclamation "Metropolis' Most Eligible Bachelor" on the cover of Metropolis Magazine, cut it out, and framed it. (Much to Lex's malcontent, it still hung behind the counter of the Talon. Clark had smirked at the small, handwritten caption: Our Fearless Leader. Lex was not amused.) Lex drove shiny cars, lived in a big house, drank brandy and enjoyed ancient history, was sensitive, comfortable, and only on this side of undressed. Clark had always had the really strange feeling that Lex was mostly-naked, and it was probably because Lex always seemed so flawless in everything he wore, everything he did, as if fabric didn't crinkle for him.

But Lex, leaning against the side of an Aston Martin, casual, tired smile on his face, sunglasses propped on his nose, and arms crossed was...

And everything just got more confusing.

"Hey there, stranger," Lex called out, his voice familiar and smooth and dark.

Clark managed a smile between the blinding flashes of realization. "Hey, Lex." Paused for a minute to mentally slap himself in the face a couple of times. "What are you doing here? I thought you were swamped at the castle?"

Lex smirked, and jerked his head toward the drivers side. "Hop in, I'll explain."

Clark did, jogging over and sliding into the familiar cabin of Lex's car, Lex's space. It smelled like leather and expensive linen pants and the faint scent of Lex's cologne.

And God, just because a really rich guy in a great car who was well dressed picked him up outside of his school in front of all the kids in Smallville didn't mean that Clark was getting a really delicious thrill out of it. He could see everyone gawking and pointing, whispering. "Five dollars says they're doing it," Clark could imagine them saying.

He wasn't melting; he wasn't ecstatic. Really.

Lex started the car, and they were driving, flying down and away leaving a crowd of students who thought that Lex was something scary, untouchable, or unwanted behind, just where Clark needed them to be.

"Vivian let you out to play?" Clark asked as Lex put on a CD. SR-71 was blasting in the car, full of middle-class angst, and Clark would remember it for when Lex attempted to deny that he was still sort of a teeny-bopper.

"Vivian is on her way back to Metropolis, and a substance abuse clinic, if I have anything to say about it. I've never seen anyone drink that much whiskey that fast," Lex yelled over the music, his voice still even. "I can't help but feel guilty for wearing so much purple despite her best efforts."

Clark laughed, loud and bright and easier than he'd laughed all week. "It's your favorite color, Lex. She should have known better."

Lex nodded thoughtfully. "Valid point."

Clark cleared his throat. "So you saw the venture capitalists?"

"Graham Robbins and Norton Pryce have," Lex said, and he sounded giddy, "conceded that LexCorp's designs in the future of aerodynamics as well as medical bioscience looked extremely good. And, as such, they've sunken a truly obscene amount of money into my coffers." Clark's mouth fell open. "I'm going to squeal like a little girl, Clark, but I'm not going to do it in front of my staff." Lex turned to look at him, all bright eyes and thrill, before asking, "Know of any deserted locals?"

And wasn't that an invitation for Clark's confused mind to say something that would make him feel ambiguous? As if the odd half-thoughts from his brief stint on red kryptonite didn't set him ill at ease enough already.

"Uh," Clark said intelligently, "we could go. Um."

No, there really wasn't. Smallville, in all its sprawling farmland, lacked somewhere where there would be zero consequence. Every inch of it was probably watched by one gossip-monger or the other, one society columnist out stalking the Luthors or some friend of Clark's parents.

Lex smirked. "I thought as much. Today's Friday, right?"

"Yes, why?" Clark shot Lex a curious look, the uncomfortably comfortable proximity fading into the background of his thoughts.

Lex's smirk stayed firmly in place, and he dropped his foot on the gas pedal with abandon.

"We're going to Metropolis. You and me, Clark."

Clark's heart fluttered at that, and he didn't even bother to try and explain it away.

"But," he started, "you - you're busy, and - paperwork."

Lex laughed, and drove faster, screaming past downtown Smallville, narrowing avoiding a truck parked too far from the sidewalk. Clark thought he saw Lana standing on the curb, a surprised look in her eyes as Clark and Lex went by. Some part of his Neanderthal brain grunted in approval.

"Yes, there's paperwork, Clark, but that can wait. You act as if I never leaned to prioritize," Lex scolded.

"So, to show your priorities, you're kidnapping me?" Clark responded. He couldn't keep the giggle out of his voice, and there was no point in doing it, anyway. Lex was in a fabulous mood; LexCorp had just gotten major funding for all of those things that Lex worked so hard for. And Adult Lex seemed to be taking a temporary breather for 'Lex Luthor Why Yes, That Is Another Shiny Phallic Object' to come out and play.

"Absolutely, Clark," Lex deadpanned. "How else will I start my journey toward fulfilling my destiny? I've got to start becoming a criminal mastermind somehow."

Clark snorted. "I hardly think stealing farmboys for the afternoon is criminal."

Lex swerved in the middle of the road, and Clark hung on tightly as they finally righted themselves back into the correct lane, and Lex looked like he could breathe again.

There was a long, long silence before Lex started laughing, at first trying to muffle the sound and then giving in to it. His eyes were crinkled and his mouth turned up, laughing like a little kid or a less important person. Laughing like he was happy.

"Sometimes, you really astound me, Clark," Lex said.

Clark smiled nervously. "What's so funny?"

"Stealing farmboys, Clark?" Lex prodded. "That's illegal in so many ways that you're far, far too young to be told about."

Clark frowned, really tired of being too young to get Lex's jokes. "I'm seventeen, Lex. And I'm sure whatever you're abducting this farmboy to do, it won't be anywhere near as illegal as..." He trailed off.

There was a long, terrible pause.

Between careening down the Kansas freeway, cows and corn on both sides of them, Lex's laughter, and Clark in the driver's side feeling mortified, it was becoming apparent that Clark was missing something big.

So he thought over what he'd said.

Right. So.

Clark fumbled for the door handle and was determined to throw himself out into the straggling traffic. A Porsche couldn't kill him, but maybe a semi would do the trick, and lucky him, there was a LuthorCorp big rig coming up the road. Oh, wasn't that irony utterly delicious.

But Lex's smooth hand was grabbing at his own, and Lex was still laughing, saying, "Don't overreact, Clark. You have - " laugh "- to admit that that sounded bad."

"Oh. God. I'm so sorry, Lex. I didn't mean for it to come out that way," Clark muttered.

He just knew that reading all that porn online was going to get him in trouble one day or another. And he was going to kill Pete for daring him to watch that skinflick, since of course Clark would stumble upon the innocent farmboy one and have it pollute his mind for the rest of all eternity.

"Of course you didn't, Clark," Lex said thinly. "And for future reference? Anytime anyone male does anything with a seventeen year old boy, it's illegal."

"Like driving in a car?" Clark said innocently, waiting for Lex's annoyed-cum-amused look, which came right on time, and more amused than annoyed that day.

"Funny, Clark. My eighteenth birthday present was my sealed juvie file. Believe it or not, I'm not going to be adding to my list of rather impressive crimes," Lex said, like it was a normal conversation to have with one's best friend.

They'd settled into a comfortable silence, and Clark had gotten curious and played the Shawn Mullins CD he found in Lex's glove compartment. They were cruising at a lessdeath -invitational seventy miles per hour, and listening to a slow, cigarette-smoke-andbars voice croon over Lex's very good sound system.

It was good. Really, really good.

"So," Lex said suddenly, changing the subject, "how's Psychology working out for you?"

Clark rolled his eyes. "We're done with Hatfield and Berscheid, but it's not going to get any better. Our next unit is Abnormal Psychology."

Lex changed lanes and said, "Really? I loved that."

"You would," Clark shot back sullenly. "She says that above all else, we shouldn't try to self-diagnose, since it would only drive us crazy."

"That's good advice, Clark," Lex said as they flew past the 'Now Leaving Smallville' sign on the side of the road. "My study partner managed to convince himself he had everything from schizophrenia to clinical depression by the time the semester ended."

Clark was curious. "You had a study partner?" he asked.

Something in the car tensed. "Sure, Clark," Lex started unsteadily, as shaken as his voice ever got, "but it was mostly an excuse to get him into bed."

Clark turned this admission over in his head. Looked at it from all angles, and realized through the terrified silence in the car that Lex wasn't just telling him, Lex was asking permission, as if he was showing something bad he'd done. "Is this okay?" he could hear Lex asking, childlike and scared.

And since he was Clark, he said exactly the wrong thing.

"But you have all those girlfriends."

Lex leveled a flat expression at Clark.

"Oh," Clark murmured.

"Yes, 'oh,' Clark," Lex said, staring straight ahead. There was another break in the conversation, which wasn't comfortable at all, and Lex said, "Look, if you want me to take you back home, or if you're not okay with - "

"No!" Clark hastened to yell. "No, it's not that I'm uncomfortable. It's okay, seriously, Lex. It's just a bit of a surprise."

Lex was shaking slightly, one wouldn't be able to tell if one wasn't paying very close attention. But it was Lex, and Clark always watched carefully. He released a long, shuddering breath and said, "Surprise? You obviously don't read the society pages."

"I don't," Clark said stubbornly, and his friend turned to look at him in surprise.

They both knew why, too. Clark Kent had known Lex Luthor for four months when Lex made his way to the society pages again. Chloe had come into the class that day crowing, flashing around a newspaper, and assorted people at school would read, laugh, and refer back to it all day long. Clark hadn't gotten a chance to look until lunch, and then, he'd read "Luthor Scion Fathers Illegitimate Child!" written in bold letters. In retrospect, it was the Inquisitor, and Clark learned more and more every day never to believe a single word they published. Back then, he'd rushed to the mansion after school and seen Lex brooding at his desk, silent and mostly-unresponsive, staring at the phone. It took nearly a week for him to find out that Lex had been waiting for blood test results that he'd ordered as soon as news came in from Metropolis. "Truth is, Clark," Lex had admitted later that night, drunk on misery and vermouth, "I'm probably sterile. The doctors said that the meteor rock exposure mostly flushed my chances of fathering children down the crapper." Clark had stared, felt all the blood drain out of his face, and then, found that a really ugly sort of hate was building up in his chest, guilt and anger and the need for revenge. "I mean," Lex had gone on, "I know intellectually that baby couldn't have been mine, Melissa really was an incredible slut, but..." He hadn't said another word, and threw back another glass before asking Clark if he could be alone for a while.

So Clark made a point to throw away the society pages every single week, never bought the Inquisitor, and if Chloe tried to read him any rumors about Lex, she'd get stared down.

All of that was peripheral, though, because Lex looked like he was blushing.

"You're too good for me, Clark," he murmured.

Metropolis, 250 miles, Clark saw and smiled. "Thanks for telling me, Lex."

The two boys looked at one another for a moment, and contented themselves with a grin.

"I can't believe that we're doing this," Clark lectured.

Lex had his back turned to him, and said imperiously, "Look, Clark, while I can admit that their nefarious business practices are cutthroat and worthy of admiration, I'm not going to pay four dollars for a bag of air. The combined worth of all the soda syrup and soda water used to make a day's worth of Coke is probably less than the cost of one supersized drink."

"You drive an Aston Martin, Lex," Clark insisted. "You live in a castle. You have a masseuse and you...you...buy people trucks for no good reason!"

"You saved my life," Lex said breezily. "Plenty good reason."

Clark rolled his eyes. He wasn't going to win this one, but he had to try. "Lex, they have rules against this. It's written on a sign right over concessions every time."

They were standing in the snack aisle of a gas station and Lex was systematically cataloguing all the different kinds of sour candies available. He'd already put in a basket a box of Sour Patch Kids, and was now seriously considering Sweet Tarts. There was also a six-pack of Cherry Pepsi. Clark didn't want to even think about how they were going to sneak those into the theater, especially since when he'd asked Lex about it, his friend had gotten an uncomfortably mischievous expression in his eyes.

"Clark, I'm not going to whore my bank account out to The Man."

Clark choked on a laugh, picking up package of Twizzlers. "The Man? Lex!"

"Yes, Clark, The Man," Lex said, hiding a laugh. "Hasn't anyone ever warned you about the Establishment, Clark?"

"Lex, you're insane."

"They warned me about the Establishment a lot when I was younger," Lex said thoughtfully. "I mean, television, movies, Ferris Bueller. We all rebelled, Clark."

Clark made a derisive noise, taking in Lex's pressed shirt, black cashmere jacket, and Prada shoes. He was the Establishment. "And how, Mr. Rebellion."

Lex looked down at himself and smirked, self-deprecating. "I didn't say we all won."

Clark laughed and Lex asked him if he was ready. "There're movie theaters in Smallville, too," Clark had pointed out half an hour ago. "Yeah, but we can't sit in the back row and disrupt people who are trying to have sex in Smallville," Lex had said simply. Clark had made mention of Lex's dirty mind, and how maybe this afternoon abduction was criminal after all, contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Lex had only flashed Clark an unrepentant expression and kept on driving.

The tangle of contradictions that was Lex was becoming clearer. Sure, he was an adult, mostly, a CEO, a Responsible Person, and had obligations, but Lex was more than that: Lex was also buying snacks and sneaking them into the theater because he was too cheap to get them at concessions; Lex was making fun of the teenagers making out in the dark; Lex was bad taste in candy and great taste in clothes. Lex was bisexual, and apparently, not so proud of it. It wasn't like there was a limit to facets of personality, and Lex had always liked being different.

And Clark found that he liked all of them: every edge, every side, every sparkle and shine and cutting-brightness that comprised all of Lex's different angles. Especially since it took very little for Lex to shift from one side to another in Clark's presence, from Working Lex to Just Lex, which Clark had always maintained was the coolest version. Despite the immutable science geek that Just Lex tended to morph into, Just Lex also knew the stupidest trivia and the best pranks. Just Lex also 'borrowed' his best friends for the afternoon, drove them three and a half hours away, revealed his sexuality, and promised movies and junk food.

"Clark? You ready?" Lex asked.

Clark smiled. "Yeah," he said, and got in the car.

So this was change, too, this recognition that Just Lex now had companions. LexCorp was important, and as much as Clark wanted to deny it, LexCorp Lex was more important to Smallville than Clark's favorite Lex. Which he could probably deal with, he just needed to make a compromise. And have Lex's solemn word that if Lana ever hit on him, he would pretend to be absolutely oblivious.

He was basking in it, the easy parts of all of it. Being close and being happy and having Lex happy for what seemed like the first time in a long time.

"Here," Lex said, handing Clark the six pack. "Stick those in your jacket."

"You're kidding," Clark said.

"Luthor's never kid," Lex commented. "Go on."

"They're cold," Clark argued. Not that it mattered to him.

"Not that it matters to you," Lex said casually. While Clark flushed and fought hard to continue breathing without chanting apologies, screaming and running in terror, or simply turning to dust on the spot, Lex said, "I'm not stupid, Clark. And stop panicking."

Clark nodded, suddenly feeling insanely calm. "Okay."

They were right in front of the movie theater now, and Lex was putting on his blinker, ready to turn into the overflowing parking lot. He was also eyeing the handicapped space, which made Clark both thrilled and vaguely uncomfortable.

It was surreal, to have two revelations in one afternoon: bisexual, and freak.

And the great part: no one cared, it seemed, on either end.

Lex glanced at the six-pack he'd dropped in Clark's lap. "So stick them in your jacket."

Clark laughed. "Lex!"

"We'll tell them you're pregnant," Lex assured him, and parked in the only available handicap space, headlights illuminating the "Minimum Fine $100" sign.

Clark groaned. "Lex. No more psychology, please."

"It's interesting, Clark," his friend replied, popping a Sour Patch Kid into his mouth.

"Yeah? Well, I still haven't forgiven you for getting me to watch this movie," Clark shot back, annoyance hedging in his voice as he looked around the theater.

The theater wasn't actually full, per se. There were groups of people all over, huddled together with their friends. So Clark didn't feel terrible about talking and generally making himself a movie nuisance because everyone else was doing it, too. The usher mentioned that it was the second month that the movie had been out, so Clark wasn't surprised it wasn't packed.

At the door, feeling like an idiot with a six pack of cola shoved down his jacket and candy he could hear crinkling in his pockets, Clark had realized Luthors really didn't kid as Lex had put his arm around him, pasted a big, stupid smile to his face, and said they were expecting. "She's very sensitive," Lex had said simply, pushing them past the skeptical usher. "She did professional sports for a while, the steroids were awful. Very bad." Clark couldn't really think outside of the screaming need to injure Lex badly. They were very lucky that there weren't any vulture reporters hanging around, because if the Inquisitor had been anywhere within range, there would be a full page spread about Lex Luthor, his incredibly ugly girlfriend, and their impossible love child. The first thing Clark had done after sitting down was punch Lex soundly in the arm.

Illegitimate imaginary pregnancy aside, there was the other thing.

"This is a chick flick, Lex!" Clark insisted.

"That's based on your Representative Heuristic," Lex said, not taking his eyes off the screen. "You take a few pieces of information you recognize: the crying women, the romantic subplot, and the comedic nature of them, and deduce that it's a "chick flick," when really, this is just a comedy. Even in the classic definition of the word."

Clark stared at Lex for a minute. "I'm going to hit you again, Lex. Really hard."

"You will not," Lex retorted, eyes still glued to the screen, still popping candy like an addict. "Look, that lawyer's coming back."

Clark turned. He admitted it: the only part of "Bringing Down the House" that he was actually enjoying was the young lawyer in it. There was something vaguely familiar about the guy, the way his body moved and how he talked.

"He looks familiar," Clark finally said.

Lex shrugged. "I met him at a party in Hollywood once. Nice guy."

Clark leaned in to say, "Seriously?"

"Seriously," Lex replied. "Michael something."

Clark shrugged. "He's kind of hot."

Lex whipped around to stare at Clark, wide-eyed. Clark debated whether it had come out of his mouth simply because he was trying to scare Lex, or if it was some sort of Freudian slip, whether or not that was still a valid psychological concept.

And really? That's what had started this whole problem to begin with, Psychology. One semester ago, Clark had been content, fairly happy with his life, simply and completely head over heels for Lana Lang, girl next door, and had a best friend who was the very definition of cool. Two quarters of Dr. Polanski's psychology later, Clark was starting to see cracks in the foundation of his affection for Lana, was confused and slightly attracted to the best friend, and was now obviously suffering some advanced form of encephalitis.

It was a long time before Lex rolled his eyes. "Very cute, Clark," he said.

Clark managed a weak smile, but didn't say a word.

"How did you know about Lana?" Clark asked suddenly, feeling the warmth from the Metropolis night against his theater-chilled arms. The movie had ended twenty minutes ago; it had taken that long for them to reach a gas station in the last rush of traffic.

Lex, who was leaning idly against the side of his car, waiting for the tank to fill, looked at him oddly. "Well, Clark," he drawled, "there was this accident, on a bridge? There was a roll of barbed wire and a teenager with a messiah complex involved, and somewhere along the way, I got dragged into the tawdry soap opera that is As The World Turns For Lana La - "

"No," Clark interrupted, "about the poetry."

Lex raised his eyebrows in time to the "click." He turned around to pull the nozzle out, and crazily, a thought flit through Clark's head. Lex pumped his own gas. It seemed strange that Lex would do menial labor. That would be like Lex cleaning his own castle or doing his own laundry or cooking his own meals, none of which seemed feasible.

"Well, one of Ms. Lang's many stalkers sent her that letter, I remember, and I read it before I just quoted a few lines to her myself," Lex said, pressing his credit card into the waiting slot and pressing a few buttons before turning back to Clark. "She seemed fairly receptive. Why?"

Clark's hand was fisted, nails digging into his own palm. He was upset, terribly so, but the really problematic part was that he couldn't tell at whom. Was he angry with Lex for charming Lana? Or at Lana for having a crush on Lex? He couldn't really be mad at Lex for charming Lana, since obviously, there was no intent to do so (right?); and he couldn't really be mad at Lana, since, well, everyone seemed to have a crush on Lex. The way that Lex walked, talked, and breathed just asked for it.

"I think she likes you," Clark managed.

Lex looked shocked, and it took him a second to collect his card and slip it back into his alligator-skin wallet. A few more seconds passed and a lazy smile came to his face.

"I think you're probably reading too much into the poetry, Clark," he said reassuringly.

Clark walked around to the driver's side door and slipped inside as Lex tucked himself in and buckled his seatbelt, pulling on his driving gloves. Lex's driving gloves were black leather, buttery soft. They smelled like Lex's skin, which smelled vaguely of rain and sophistication. Clark always paid attention, and Lex had let him drive the Aston Martin once, on the condition that Clark wore the gloves and was merciful on the transmission. He remembered the feeling of his hands surrounded by leather, cool around the fingertips but warm in the palms, and he imagined it was like pressing hands to Lex's, like something intimate.

"Yeah," Clark admitted, looking at Lex's hands on the steering wheel. "But what if I'm not? What if, one day, I walk into the Talon and she's flirting with you?" What was unspoken was: What if you're flirting back?

Now Lex made the derisive noise, and they pulled back into the congested Metropolis traffic. "Trust me, Clark. She's not my type. Don't worry about it." He sounded annoyed.

Clark's chest tightened. "I wasn't...I wasn't accusing," he explained. "It's that - "

"Don't worry about it so much, Clark," Lex murmured, looking left and right before switching lanes abruptly. "Honestly, Clark. Dating Lana is definitely not on my agenda, and neither is going to prison for statutory rape."

Clark shut his mouth and nodded. Lex was right.

"Now, be useful and tell me what we're doing next or I quiz you on various psychological disorders," Lex said.

Clark rolled his eyes. "You know, it really worries me that you still remember all this stuff. Shouldn't you be saving your brainspace for more important things? Like, oh, I don't know, LexCorp business, or the plant?"

Lex made a disapproving sound. "The brain is a muscle, Clark. You have to exercise it to keep it in top condition. Besides," Lex said casually, "I've always found it useful to know a bit of psychology when dealing with prospective clients and business partners."

"Mind-melding them?" Clark said, and waited for the smile.

Lex smirked. "'Mind-meld'? Oh, Clark."

"I could eat," Clark said out of nowhere, a big grin on his face now.

Lex turned to the side at a red light, looking Clark up and down thoughtfully. It made his face flush red to be regarded like that, and he had to fight the visceral urge to fidget under Lex's careful observation: it felt like he was being consumed.

"Well," Lex finally said, "you're not dressed for any of the more complicated places..."

"Hey!" he protested, blushing dark red. He felt like enough of a hayseed sometimes without Lex making fun of him, too.

"Complicated meaning tie and jacket required, Clark," Lex added, the apology was silent.

A few moments passed before Lex's face lit up. "I know the perfect place." Lex cast Clark wicked look before asking, "Do you like Moroccan food, Clark?"

He shrugged. "Never had it, Lex."

Lex smiled, and not for the first time, Clark thought it looked very much like a shark.

"Perfect."

"There are prevailing theories that all psychological disorders are imaginary, too, Clark," Lex said between fingerfuls of fragrant rice. "There are at least two psychologists who basically chalk up any disorder to being a big whiner."

The restaurant was small, smoky, and warm. There was a low din all around the room, sounds of small groups laughing. The walls were a comfortable, burnt-tan color, and most of the light provided was through tinted lamps, casting an orange glow everywhere. At the next table over, four Metropolis University students were complaining about their Physics professor. Clark and Lex were sitting cross-legged on the floor at a low table, and enormous plates of rice and meats had appeared for them - sans cutlery. Lex had simply said, "I told you to wash your hands carefully, Clark. Dig in." So they did, and Clark discovered that there was an entire world outside of tacos and eggrolls, and he loved it there.

Plus - the added bonus of seeing Lex eat with his hands.

"Every disorder?" Clark said, unbelieving, and Lex nodded. "What about people who try to kill themselves over whatever they have? They can't say that's being whiny."

Lex leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "They do. And that's why mostly no one subscribes to that theory anyway."

"Weird," Clark muttered.

Lex shrugged. "Psychology is weird. Homosexuality, up until 1973, was listed as a psychological disorder. And behaviorists and cognitive psychologists thought that it could be treated through therapy and medication, too."

Clark winced. "That's awful."

"Not really," Lex said thoughtfully. "I mean, people tend to fear what they don't understand, or something new. It's not a very enlightened response, but I can't say that the good-natured intent to fix whatever they perceive is wrong is necessarily evil."

Clark frowned and wiped his fingers on a napkin. "I'm sure the gay people they tried to 'treat' back then didn't agree."

"The gay people back then probably thought it was something bad, too," Lex responded. "America is founded on Puritanism. Most of them were probably terrified by their sexual inclinations. There's a reason being gay is equated with being closeted, Clark."

Clark sighed.

He could sympathize. The daily fear of being figured out was very real. There were always moments, retreads after mindless actions throughout classes and afternoons at the Talon or at Lex's where Clark would feel himself shift into panic, mind kicking into overdrive at whether or not his latest faux pas or lie had revealed him for what he really was: a freak. Yeah, Clark could sympathize. After all, people back then (and even now, in Smallville) thought that homosexuality was disgusting and repugnant; and the Weekly World News always had and always would treat aliens the same way.

It suddenly became overwhelmingly important that Lex not think of him the same way.

"What would be your response?" Clark asked.

Lex blinked. "To someone coming out of the closet?"

"Yeah. What would you say? I mean, if it was someone you knew?" Clark asked.

Lex wouldn't...abandon him, would he? After all, Lex was open-minded. Lex was a scientist. And unfortunately for Clark, that was half the problem:; Lex was a scientist. "I want to tell someone, Mom, badly," he'd admitted before. And then his mother had launched in a rational and logical dissertation on Why Telling Lex Was Tantamount To A Death Sentence, and tops was that Lex Is A Scientist - Do You Want To Be A Government Experiment?

Lex rolled his eyes. "Clark. I'm bisexual. Really think about that."

Clark blushed all the way up to his hairline. There wasn't really a point to doing it, but his body had the funniest idea of what was a threat to his livelihood. One day, it would figure out that Lex's smile and Lana's breasts were not going to attack him.

It was all mixed signals. Always mixed signals. That wasn't what he'd meant at all, but he could hardly explain that to Lex; he'd come dangerously close already.

So he filed the moment away, another terror for a harrowing collection of them, another drop in the ocean, another anxiety that would wake him at night sometimes, bathed in cold sweat, in the dark and suddenly, very much alone in every way that mattered.

"Right," he managed. "Never mind. Stupid question."

He was determined not to depress himself that evening. More and more frequently, time with Lex was turning into a commodity, one over which investors from Japan, venture capitalists, coffee-shop managers, psychotic fathers, and small town farmboys had to fight for. Clark had won for the evening, and he wasn't going to waste it.

"Just a little bit, yeah," Lex said, grinning, letting him off the hook.

Lex was wiping his fingers clean when the waitress came up to refill their water glasses. Clark watched in fascination as Lex eyed her, a slow, purely sexual smile on Lex's face as he started a conversation. The waitress didn't even blush, just flirted right back before smiling brightly and ran one hand down her neck, fingers dipping along her collarbone.

Clark had watched Lex flirt before, but it was still strange.

Especially now, knowing that Lex would do this...with a man, too.

Strange and oddly fitting all the same.

What was terribly out of place and totally inexplicable, though, was the roar of sudden jealousy that rose like bile in the back of Clark's throat. It took his defense mechanisms all of two seconds to kick into high gear and rationalize it all away. Lex was Clark's best friend, and they hadn't had any time together in a week. He hadn't blown off chores, listened to his father lecture him about responsibility and the Luthor family debauchery on a pay phone in a movie theater for ten minutes so that some two-bit waitress at a Moroccan restaurant could hold a monopoly over Lex's time and attention.

So. Clark cleared his throat. And glared, liberally.

The waitress glanced over at Clark in surprise, as if first noticing him. She looked him up and down before cocking an eyebrow and pursing her lips. With a careless excuse and a shift of her hips, she was gone again and Lex turned back to Clark, curious.

Lex didn't say anything, but Clark could tell he wanted to.

Clark cleared his throat and looked around nervously. "So, you come here a lot?"

Lex gave him the, 'I'm letting you off easy, again' look, but said, "Not since I was at MetU, no. It's five minutes walking distance from the social sciences building."

Clark hadn't known that. "You went to MetU? I thought you got your undergraduate degree from Princeton."

The MetU students at the next table settled down, and one of them turned a curious eye to their neighbors, though Clark was fairly certain that he was the only one who'd noticed. Lex had a general tendency to stop talking about himself whenever people who would potentially go on the record and destroy him in the newspapers were listening. Clark thought it was paranoia, and Lex mentioned an old clich about how it wasn't paranoia if they were really out to get you.

"I did," Lex said smoothly. "But that was after I was transferred there."

"Why'd you transfer? Didn't you like Metropolis University?" Clark asked, taking mental notes. College was looming ever closer, and aside from Chloe's really interesting scholarship searches, Clark was more and more temped by the campuses themselves, and in particular, Metropolis U's open campus and journalism program.

Lex actually looked embarrassed, a faint red came to his pale cheeks. "Well, I was sort of...asked to leave. By the chemistry department. There was an...incident." Clark fought hard to keep a snort of laughter hidden.

The people the next table over didn't bother.

Lex whipped around to see and before Clark knew what had happened, one girl at the table, between giggles said, "You! You're Lex Luthor! The Lex Luthor who blew up Professor Sidel's entire lab? You're legendary!"

Lex flushed in earnest now. "Thank you, I guess," he said slowly.

Clark laughed, the students laughed, and finally, grudgingly, so did Lex.

"What time do you have to be back home, Clark?" Lex asked, and they were flying down the road again.

The lights of Metropolis were glaringly red and orange and brilliant white, they streaked against the black of the evening like stars run together, and Clark was half-enchanted by the look. He'd always known the attraction of moving fast, but he'd usually been so intent on the destination he barely looked at the journey. It was cliche, he knew, but the world around him was beautiful as he moved far too quickly in Lex's car, as they moved far too quickly toward...somewhere Clark hadn't been before.

Home seemed very far away.

"Mom said to take my time, since if I let you go home, you'd probably just overwork yourself again," Clark said, and Lex smirked at that. "Dad said eleven."

The clock on the dashboard read 9:45 pm.

"But then again," Clark added, "Mom's probably keeping him distracted." When he was eight, he'd walked in on his parents, and been terrified of their bedroom ever since. Maybe he was growing up. Or maybe Lex and his occasionally perverse comments really were poisoning his mind.

Lex made a face. "I'm not going to think about why you're so okay with making that insinuation, Clark. I'm not even going to think about it."

Clark laughed. "You were made the same way, Lex."

"I was not," Lex scowled, but it was playful. "I was a test tube baby. Or virgin birth."

"Virgin birth? That would imply divinity," Clark shot back.

Lex smiled vaguely. "With my mom, I'd almost believe that."

They fell silent for a moment, and Clark stared at Lex quietly. His friend was as wired as he'd ever been, energy coiled inside of pale parchment skin, intelligence flashing behind silver-blue eyes and veiled thoughtfulness. But Lex was also smiling almost dreamily, sent into strange, astral serenity by the mention of his mother, who he, apparently, though was divine, and it made Clark want to smile and hug Lex tightly to his chest to see that expression on his friend's face.

"Worship," Lex said suddenly, as if he could read Clark's mind.

"Worship," Clark parroted.

"You haven't read Equus yet, have you, Clark?" Lex asked, glancing at him from the corners of his eyes, still soft around the edges.

Clark shook his head, no. "Not yet. That's twelfth grade. And if the PTA has anything to say about it, it's getting banned sometime this year so I won't even have to."

Lex made a dissatisfied noise and muttered something about the "back 40 being the dreck of all literary whores." "Well, then," Lex finally said, totally audible. "Equus is brilliant, Clark. You have to read it. If your library burns all its copies, come to me, I have plenty of paraphernalia pretending to be great literature."

Yeah, Clark bet he did. And he'd said that out loud.

Lex ignored it. "It's all about worship, Clark, weight with agony."

"I hear there's horse sex," Clark said, more to irritate Lex than anything else.

"It's not horse sex!" Lex cried, as if he'd heard that before. "It's - "

And Lex suddenly stopped himself and whirled about to look at Clark, despite the fact that they were on a fairly crowded road and driving at a respectable forty-five miles per hour. Which was over the speed limit anyway, not that that had ever stopped Lex. Clark gripped at the dashboard: he was indestructible, Lex was not.

"You do that just to annoy me, don't you?" Lex accused.

"Lex, the road," Clark pleaded, and when his friend finally complied and started paying attention again, he said, "Well, only sometimes."

Lex rolled his eyes and heaved a great sigh. "Why do I *bother," he said dramatically.

Clark smiled, big and bright and real like a dying sun. "Because I couldn't keep the truck?" Lex tensed for a moment and then the rough edges smoothed out again, as if it took him just a moment to catch the joke, get the affection in Clark's tone.

"Hey," Clark suddenly remembered. "Don't you have a penthouse?"

Lex's penthouse, he explained, was his twenty-first birthday present from his father.

Clark sighed and thought of what it would be like if his dad could give him gifts like that, and then he remembered the consequence of it, having Lionel as a father. Clark couldn't even stand being in the same room as the guy, much less knowing they shared genealogy and having to be nice to him. Suddenly, books and gift certificates didn't sound so terrible anymore.

The penthouse was also on the hundred and third story of a building. Which they were traveling up to. In a glass-walled elevator. Which was very, very high above solid ground. And looked like it was utterly unsupported. Clark would have clawed at the walls, but it was all slick-smooth, nothing to grab hold of unless he was going to throw himself into Lex's arms and whimper like a little kid. And of all the reactions he could have, that was the most unacceptable one in Clark's mind.

"You okay, Clark?" Lex asked, curious.

He forced himself to breathe steadily. "Yeah. Just...a little bothered by heights," he admitted finally, sneaking a glance to check Lex's reaction.

"If it makes you feel any better, I hate planes," Lex said easily.

It did, actually, so Clark smiled bravely. "So, anyone cool on your floor?"

"The entire floor is mine, Clark," Lex explained. "The elevator doors are going to open up to my apartment. That's why we had to enter a security code on that panel before we could get up here." Clark nodded; he should have expected that.

The elevator finally stopped its ascension and the doors opened.

Clark took a step out, and could only gape.

Clark had prepared himself for possible decadence, rich silks or heavy wood like at the castle in Smallville. Clark had also prepared himself for sleek, icy metal and glass like Lex's personality seemed to imply sometimes.

Clark hadn't expected Lex's penthouse to be so...lived in. Especially since it wasn't.

They were standing on top of a low platform, broad and rectangular. To Lex's right, there was a small wooden table with a red bowl on top. Lex dug through is pockets and threw his car keys into it, casual, easy, as if he did that a lot. The platform descended into a large, open room. The floors were wooden, clean and fairly light, comfortable and not shining. There was a flat gray area rug in the center of the living room, flanked by one large, long couch and two loveseats, a glass coffee table in the center with six remote controls. There were also end tables with two matching metal lamps, books stacked carelessly on the available surfaces. The whole thing was on its side, so that Clark was looking at the back of one of the love seats, and the sofas were all facing an expanse of wall with an enormous flat-panel TV. A large, open doorway on the other side of the room gave a peek of a comfortable, honey-wood and glass kitchen. Sliding doors to the right of the television were thrown open to a study, with dark mahogany shelves overflowing with volumes and the barest hint of black plastic casing, the side of a computer. The wall fell away to the left of the TV and Clark assumed that if he were to disappear down there, he'd see a dining room, four thousand bedrooms, a gym, and a zoo.

"Gorgeous, isn't it?" Lex murmured.

He wasn't talking about his interior design.

Where Clark should have been facing an exposed exterior wall - Clark faced a window. An enormous, room-length, floor-to-ceiling window with the most exquisite view of Metropolis that Clark had ever seen in his life. The lights in the apartment weren't on, and so the darkness of the night outside continued into the room, dotted by the bright windows of the business district, interrupted by the gaudy neon signs from department stores and nightclubs. The traffic in downtown Metropolis became waves of red and yellow. Somewhere, in the black sky, a helicopter was zipping around, one single orange smear against the dark. It was an incredible sight, awe inspiring at how man scraped away at the edges of the infinity with cities and skyscrapers that reached to the heavens. Clark couldn't quite wrap his mind around it, how big and terrible and shining Metropolis really was, because he'd mostly seen it from the ground up. This was Lex's world, looking at everything from above. In the far corners of the sky, the last edges of dark blue fringed ebony, like Clark was staring into Lex's pupils, so close and so deep that he could only imagine the blue rims, hard and bright like Lex's mind.

It was like the tourist postcards they sold four for a dollar on every street corner, only better and more raw, alive with the ugly and amazing sides of everything.

Clark could only nod.

"I come here sometimes," Lex said softly. "Just leave the lights off at night and look."

"I get that," Clark whispered. This moment demanded reverence.

"I," Lex started awkwardly. "I wanted to show Desiree this," he finally said. "I was going to bring her up here."

Clark was suddenly and violently torn away from the view, a lighting bolt of guilt severing him from the moment and he whipped around to look at Lex's profile, pale and ghostly in the city lights. Blue eyes were black and too-white skin was nearly translucent; Clark wanted to reach out to Lex, tell him the truth, explain everything, make it hurt less.

"We flew," Lex said again, nervous, "over Metropolis and landed here before we drove out to Smallville." He didn't look at Clark. "She really loved it. All the lights. I promised her I'd bring her out here."

And Clark felt sick at that. He felt sick, and his chest hurt. He wanted to pull Lex around to face him, to shake his friend until he snapped out of it and yell about how Miss Atkins had only wanted Lex for his money, never loved him, that she was a meteor freak and the love was all radioactive pheromones. He wanted to make Lex stop talking, because every aching word out of Lex's mouth was darkening that enormous black mark against Clark in some universal scorebook, and Clark already knew guilt like the back of his own hand.

But most of all, Clark felt angry. Rage like he'd only chanced before building behind his eyeballs and he wanted to find Desiree and snap her neck for what she'd done to Lex.

Clark could imagine it, too, her eyes scared and pleading were nothing compared to Lex's voice, hollowed out, and Lex's shoulders, slumping in resignation. As if Lex imagined that he really was destined to be alone. Like Clark wasn't going to be there, too, right with him the whole way.

Clark had never been good with words. He could make "I'm Sorry" scrambled eggs, or "Oops, I Screwed Up" repairs on the tractor. He knew how to make the copy for the Torch with paper and tape an earnest apology to explain to Chloe that he was in the wrong. And he could buy Pete food and watch the Three Stooges with him while Pete complained about his girlfriends. Clark knew different ways to say "Sorry."

Just not to Lex. He...hadn't done it that much, though it was probably deserved.

So Clark did the next best thing, what his mom always did whenever Clark felt the way that he thought Lex looked and -

Pulled Lex to his chest, without asking permission, without asking if he was holding on too tightly.

Just arms around Lex's thin shoulders, his cheek pressed the side of Lex's head, and breathing hard because some part of him had wanted to - needed to - do this for far longer than Clark had realized.

It was all so terrible and confusing, this garbage about growing up. So Clark ignored everything Dr. Polanski said about psychology and Hatfield and Berscheid, wiped what he thought about Lana from his mind, ignored his lingering guilt over Chloe, and forgot every single thing that Lex had said over dinner to just breathe.

Lex smelled like night air and rain and linen, clean and male and familiar.

Like coming home, for no reason at all.

But Lex's arms were wrapped around Clark's middle now, and if he didn't know any better, Clark would say he was crying, shoulders shaking out of exhaustion and terror and grief over everything that Lex had held in so long that he'd almost forgotten about it. It was certain now, because Clark could hear Lex's hiccupping sobs though his coat and he could feel his shirt getting wet; Lex's hands were fisted in Clark's jacket, and he wasn't standing up very well, just clinging, barely upright, desperate and so tired.

And Clark just held on, waited with a terrible ache in his stomach.

This, Clark knew, wasn't part of the plan.

But that was okay, because some of the best things were unexpected.

"Shit," Lex said, and his voice was still nasal, even after locking himself in the bathroom with a box of tissues and a wounded ego. "I sound like a goddamn girl."

"We'll tell people I made you watch 'Steel Magnolias,'" Clark said.

Lex stepped out of the bathroom long enough to glare. "No one could make me watch 'Steel Magnolias.'"

"I'll say I held you down."

Lex's glare turned into a scowl and Clark turned back around and grabbed randomly at one of the many, many remote controls that were laying on Lex's bedside table. He pushed at a button and a screen rolled down from the ceiling with an efficient hiss of sound, like a thin whip. He leaned his head back against Lex's headboard and yelled back, "Hey, what's this screen thing?"

"TV," Lex explained, slipping back to his spot in front of the bathroom vanity. "Shit. My eyes are still red." There was the sound of water running and then splashing.

When Lex's sobs had subsided and his shoulders had stopped shaking so terribly, Clark had asked where his bathroom was. And following Lex's sluggish movements, Clark had stepped through the doorway at the end of the long corridor and frozen stock-still at the realization he was in Lex's bedroom. Lex had made a beeline for the bathroom door, and Clark had been left there, awkwardly aware of his surroundings. Like the rest of the apartment, it was big, had a wall of windows, and was decorated in the key of gray-andwood.

Clark had decided after standing around uncomfortably for a while that if he'd said his first "hellos" to Lex mouth-to-mouth after a near-fatal car accident, there was nothing wrong with getting comfortable. So he'd kicked off his shoes, sprawled out on Lex's bed, and willed himself not to think about all the women who had probably been there, too.

"You have any frozen vegetables in your kitchen, Lex?" Clark called, fighting a losing battle with the remote. The television was...unrolled, but it wouldn't turn on.

There was a short pause before Lex asked, "You want to cook?"

"No! Look - frozen food over your eyes would probably bring down the puffiness, and - damn it! Lex, how do you turn your TV on? This thing is impossible," Clark huffed.

Lex apparently didn't hear Clark's complaint.

"My eyes are puffy?" Lex yelled. Each word was spoken raising an octave until "puffy" was nearly a screech.

Sometimes, Clark really wondered about exactly how vain Lex was.

"Lex!" Clark yelled, not bothering to turn around because all he would see was Lex frantically examining his face, checking for abnormal volume, scowling at his own reflection in the mirror. "Lex - how do you work the TV?"

"Puffy!" Lex wailed, as if it were a curse word. "Puffy? I'll never live this down."

"Look - if you tell me how to turn on the TV, I swear I won't tell anyone," Clark said.

There was an annoyed sound from the bathroom before Clark heard a swish of expensive pants and Lex was suddenly next to him, snatching the remote control out of his hands. He went through a ridiculously complicated series of at least seven buttons before he pressed "Power" and the screen burst into life. Lex dropped the remote into Clark's hands and stomped back into the bathroom, muttering to himself the whole time.

Clark thought it was kind of cute that the TV was turned on immediately to the Cartoon Network, and that a little digital reminder popped out of nowhere to say, "Justice League - eight o'clock and eleven thirty" on the screen. The idea of Lex watching TV was foreign in and of itself, since Lex seemed so rarely to do it, but the idea of Lex watching cartoons was simply delicious. Clark channel-surfed idly through MTV, CNN, and CSPAN, watched a little bit of TLC, some of the Home and Garden channel, and chuckled over Iron Chef. All to the background noises of Lex's occasional yelled profanity and whining about how long it took for any sort of swelling to go down and how he was going to look like hell in the morning and really, didn't Clark know it was all his damn fault? Clark was the one who'd wanted to see the penthouse and then he'd gone and hugged Lex and blah blah blah...

His fingers froze suddenly, and his jaw dropped.

The television's volume was on low, and Clark was eternally glad for that.

On the enormous screen, in high-definition, tremendously expensive quality, two young, well-muscled, very attractive men were in the throes of being...extremely agreeable with one another. Doggy style. And they seemed to be...quite vocal about it if their open mouths were any indication. Or maybe not, because Clark turned an entirely new and yet undiscovered shade of red when a third joined them and...made good use of the man on the bottom and his open lips.

If he had to hear it as well as watch it, Clark was pretty sure there'd be trouble.

And outrageously, Lex's voice was still filtering through in between concussive shocks to Clark's brain and a stirring in his pants.

"This never happened, Clark. You understand that?"

One of the men was sleek, slim and well-muscled, and his tongue was pressed to the corner of his mouth, just on the outside, a slip of wet pink against bronze skin. Dark hair in bangs brushed across his forehead and Clark could see his profile, strong and lean and his hips were...

"This is going to be a study in repression. Have you gotten to that yet in class? - "

They were just pounding into the man underneath him, driving force like he'd seen in Pete's brother's porno movies. But those had all been girls and they'd been more soft and had more curves and not so much familiar skin, familiar flesh, flat and hard, and no way in hell was Clark going to let himself get a hard-on from watching boys screw one another.

Did Lex even know he had this channel? He should have warned Clark if he did. Just a friendly, "Hey, Clark, don't flip to channel 235, all right? There's man-sex and you're confused enough as it is what with being an alien and in AP Psychology, without laying on my bed, getting a boner and being suddenly confused about your sexual orientation."

" - It's really amazing the lengths to which the human mind will go to - "

The man on the bottom was pale, and thinner than the other two, eyes closed and light, ginger lashes tossed pronounced shadows on his high cheekbones. He was handsome, and beautiful in a delicate way, but oh, so very, very naked. He was smaller and one long, bronze forearm cut across the angled turn of his hip to his groin where a thick fisted hand was -

Clark was having sort of a mental breakdown.

And he knew, knew in his logical mind that he should have screamed in heterosexual horror and changed the channel...four thousand strokes ago but God almighty, his pants were getting kind of uncomfortable and he did not know how to interpret that turn of events.

The pale man's mouth was also occupied, opened almost grotesquely wide and Clark could see his tongue peek out occasionally in between swallowing and sucking and -

"There are some variations called fugues and - Clark? Clark?"

Clark's danger sense told him to change the channel.

But since Clark was seeing gay porn for the first time ever in his best friend's bed while sprouting a hard-on the size of Manhattan, it wasn't making much of a big difference.

"Clar - holy shit!"

Lex made a lunge for the remote and fumbled until Clark's wide-open eyes were seeing the Powerpuff girls instead of wide expanses of sweating flesh.

There was a long, tangible silence.

"What. Were. You. Watching?" Lex managed.

And Clark had obviously lost his mind because he actually said, "You don't know?"

Lex actually laughed in amazement at that before he sort of fell into a sitting position on the bed, face white with shock and hands shaking. "Clark, I - " Lex laughed again, more relaxed this time, like he was finally getting his breath back. "You're too young for that."

Clark remembered his erection and sat up, crossed his legs, and tried vainly to hide it. Lex was a guy, he probably knew all the tricks. And post-porn hard-ons usually went away quickly, right? Clark knew he should have watched more porn; he would be better prepared for situations like this! Yeah, he told himself, because accidentally watching men having sex on your best friend's television happens a lot.

Lex watched him for a long time before his lips twitched.

Clark knew what was coming. "Lex," he said warningly, his cheeks flaming.

"It's okay, Clark. We all go through our 'experimentation' phases," Lex said, trying vainly to hide a laugh.

"Damn it, Lex," Clark whined. "It's not funny!"

"Sure it is," Lex quipped. "I cried; you watched gay porn. I have puffy eyes and you have a puffy - "

"If you finish that sentence," Clark said, low and dangerous, "I will throw you out your window. Do you understand me, Lex?"

Lex grinned. "I'm not saying a word."

Clark scowled and tried to figure out how they'd traded facial expressions so quickly.

"Why didn't you warn me?" Clark finally asked, and he sounded petulant.

"Clark," Lex said reasonably, "I have over five hundred channels. I watch CNN, Cartoon Network, the Weather Channel, and sometimes, when I'm in a particularly selfdestructive mood, Lifetime. I didn't even know I had...whatever the hell channel you were watching."

"You're lying," Clark said, more petulant by the moment. "It was close to CNN."

Lex rolled his eyes. "Your erection is taking all the blood away from your brain, Clark."

"Lex!" Clark cried, scandalized.

Lex, to his credit, didn't push any further. He just stood up, checked his watch, and said, "I'm going to go into the kitchen. I will probably be there a long time." His tone was blandly suggestive. "In fact, I may be there for several minutes, turning on various sources of sound so that whatever noise may come out of my bathroom would be totally masked."

Clark imagined killing Lex. Just for a minute.

"Well, then," Lex said, smiling like an idiot. "See you in a few uneventful moments."

And Lex walked out, shutting the bedroom door behind him.

Clark muttered every curse word he knew and struggled to the bathroom, glaring at his dick, wondering if this was a normal thing between friends: space to jerk off.

Lex said that despite seeing Clark as red as a tomato after his first brush with gay porn, maybe staying at the penthouse wasn't doing Metropolis justice. Besides, even Martha's approval would only extend so far, and Lex set his cell phone to alert him when it hit midnight so that they could at least start trying to get back to Smallville.

It was nearly eight thirty, and Lex was rolling something around in his head.

Clark could tell that Lex was debating with himself from the way that his brow furrowed, how his eyes were more gray than blue, and how his mouth was set into an irritated little line, as if Lex was more annoyed by having trouble making the decision, than by making the decision at all.

Weird how he knew that. Maybe it was just the proximity.

Which led, like a lot of things had been doing recently, back to psychology and the 'Proximity effect,' which couldn't possibly be applied to the situation since he and Lex were not doing that. This is kind of like a date, his brain suddenly and very unhelpfully supplied, and Clark wished he could take a metal bat to his own head, not that it would work, but at least it would seem therapeutic.

Therapy. Psychology. God damn it.

"You're brooding," Lex said, casting Clark a curious glance from the corner of his eye.

Clark flushed, hot and quick. "We-ll."

Lex rolled his eyes. "You know, I'm just going to use being a freak for most of my life as my excuse for being a piss poor friend here, but if it's about Lana, just lie and say you were thinking about the environment or the most recent incarnation of the tax code."

Clark almost choked, amazed. He wanted to be angry (or at least offended) with Lex for being so cold and so unpleasantly frank in his assessment of Clark's relationship with Lana. He wanted to pout that he had allowed himself to become so predictable. He wanted to ask Lex why his two conversations options were taxes and trees, when Clark knew lots of interesting lies, good ones, too.

"You're not a freak," was what Clark said out loud.

Lex sighed and looked sheepish. "Sorry."

Clark shrugs. It... wasn't as big an issue as it should have been. "S'Okay."

They sat for a while, lounging on the floor in front of Lex's incredible window, staring out into the ever-darkening cityscape. Clark felt soft and fuzzy all over, lethargic and comfortable, but his brain was teeming with activity, too much thinking.

"Jesus, I wanted to do something tonight," Lex complained.

Clark turned to look at his friend lazily. "Yeah?"

Lex looked dissatisfied. "I was going to impress you with my Metropolis suave." Clark laughed and Lex continued, ignoring him. "I used to rule this town in my teens, Clark. You said the name Lex L