This was written the W100 challenge and expanded a bit. I poked it but it wouldn't go any further. Completely AU, of course.

All that is arid in me.

They were ten years old, maybe eleven. Pete has stolen a pack of Malboros from his dad's coat pocket and two cans of beer from the fridge. They leaned against the wall at the back yard, giggling and each one took a cigarette from the pack. The matches were soggy and wouldn't light up.

He remembers the smoke curling thick around his fingers. The filter was bitter, a taste a bit like burned paper, a bit like forbidden adulthood. He inhaled, closing his eyes.

There was movement in the air, a rustle, a sudden chill, and he jumped up, casting weary glances around, afraid it was Pete's dad with a smack for them both. But there was nobody. Just the summer leaving, peeling off the earth like snakeskin.

Pete took a deep drag and broke into a compulsive fit of coughing. He raised the beer can, took a sip and he let it fall. It fell on the ground with a dull thud and rolled away. His eyes were bulging, his chin was wet as he struggled for breath, hands linked around his throat as if he was trying to throttle himself.

He didn't know what to do. He wasn't allowed to touch people. If he hit Pete on the back his hand might go right through the ribcage. If he called his parents they'd both get into trouble.

After a thousand years Pete calmed down, spat, took a deep breath.

"It's your fault," he said. "Why did you jump up like that? Scared the shit out of me."

Clark had a crumbled handkerchief and helped him wipe his face. He had been pressing his hand into the wall without noticing, and it had left a clear mark, five fingerprints. He shifted, hoping Pete wouldn't notice. The cigarettes on the ground slowly burned themselves to death. Everything would be all right.

Everything was so loud, unbearably loud, the splash of water like the grinding of an electric chainsaw.

It has become a ritual of sorts.

He found out the number and the line hasn't been disconnected yet. Every evening, after dinner, he calls at the castle.

Every evening he listens to same repetitive buzz, pulsing through his head, forever and forever, but he is Clark and Clark hopes everything will be all right.

Listens to the phone, can almost see it ringing inside that empty house, and gives it a bit more time, a few more minutes. He imagines how long it would take for Lex Luthor to pick it up; six footsteps from the pool table, ten from the bedroom, twenty from the garden if he was sitting outside tonight, pale under the sickle moon.

His father frowns as he walks by.

"It wasn't your fault, son," he says, but Clark still waits, receiver in his hand, waiting for the drowned man with the crushed ribs to answer the phone.