Before The Songs Were Made
By Emelerin
For the Smallville Flash Fiction Challenge

Pairing: *Clark/Lex*
Prompt: Lex helps Clark overcome his fear of heights

Rating: NC-17
Summary: In which fear is found in unexpected places.

Disclaimer: The characters are not my property. I know this. Dedication: For Evangelene, who issued the prompt. <curtseys> Notes: I am indebted to Chrissy, the TyNant girl, for a lovely, lovely beta. She deserves the best of things. The title of this piece is a phrase taken from A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin.

'He was born, long ago, in a pale house by a grey-shored lake on a world we will never visit. He was born with the dark hair we have always known, with limbs strong in potential, and his eyes were a color for which his people had no name.

Perhaps it was this that made them choose him for the journey. He did not know why, and thus we cannot. What we know is that his people sent him away from his homeland, his planet ceasing to exist in his wake. We know that he came here, that he landed on our earth and grew, over time, into the hero of our prophecies.

What is less known is the path of that growth, of the life of the hero before the songs were made. Of who he was before he stopped the great earthquake, before he defeated the dictator, before he conquered the scourge of the green and the red, before he brought peace to our planet. Know that before he devoted himself to our salvation, his life was his own.

In these, the longest nights of winter, while the rain pours so heavily that some drops get lost and never make it to the ground, I invite you to wonder. To take what little we know of this man and weave a story of his life. To question what made him that which he was to become.

I ask you to make new songs.

As you leave me, think on these things: before there was Superman, there was a boy named Clark Kent. You must imagine his face before it became part of the man of steel, and this will guide you. Ask yourselves how heroes are made. I grow weary of the chants of praise, and crave instead the truths of life. Re-examine the old tales, my children, and make them anew as your own.

Finally, know what I tell you now: the Luthor... the Luthor was not always the man we have known, and enmity is not always what it seems. First, he too was a boy, a young man. With both hands intact, he held those of Clark Kent and there was balance. When you craft the songs of their intertwined lives, do not forget these beginnings.'

A quietness came, and they went out into the night.

"Clark? What are you doing in my basement?"

"Hey, Lex."

Clark is sitting in a dark, unvisited corner of the room, a room Lex had been busily converting from basement to wine cellar before he got sidetracked with business in Metropolis several months before. It had been progressing well before Lex's exodus; where once there was only unappealing, ignored space now stood innumerable shelves of wines, bottles stacked carefully and kept cool and inert over time. Clark has only been down here a few hours, but he thinks he might never leave, the absolute stillness and tomb-like calm giving the place an air of impenetrability that he finds soothing. It wasn't impenetrable to him, of course, nowhere was, but the rough-hewn walls were dense and ancient, much older than the ridiculous mansion perched atop them, and they gave him the feeling of peace he had been looking for all week.

Clark can feel Lex's eyes on him, and as he sits with outward impassivity, he begins internally shuffling through his catalogue of Lex-stares to try and find which one was being leveled at him this time. It's only when he realizes that he doesn't recognize this one, that this feeling, the feeling of being watched that shifts depending on Lex's mood or meaning, is completely new to him, that he allows himself to move. Not to look back at Lex. He didn't come here to look at Lex, to engage in another endless round of staring. Instead, he raises the bottle in his hand to his lips, and takes another swig from the neck. The wine is dark and strong, but he can't tell much more than that with the label's details all in French, the paper warm against his palm, loosening slightly against his thumb.

"I have glasses for that upstairs, Clark."

Yeah. Thanks, Lex. Now go away.

Lex doesn't, though. He comes closer, the embodiment of inevitability, and Clark grips the neck of the bottle a little tighter, feeling the heavy, blood-like liquid in his mouth expand and become warm. He doesn't want to swallow, enjoying the perverse way the liquid is both dry and wet on his tongue, how it moves in his mouth and heats to the temperature within, becoming part of him without effort. He hadn't expected to like wine, picking a bottle off the rack on a whim more because he could than because he wanted to. That feeling had made him smile and open the bottle, even though he'd be drinking alone in a dark cellar, knowing it was nothing he should be doing. In the most secret parts of himself, he had missed that simple justification, had missed having his own will as his only arbitrator. That had ended - and he's glad it's over, he is - when the ring came off two years ago and life as Clark Kent recommenced. But sometimes, when he's alone, in dark, silent places, he misses the utter simplicity of that time.

Somewhere off to his left, Lex gestures at the bottle. "The French have a very emotional relationship with their wine. They believe it to be the strength of their nation, the blood of the body of France flowing through their veins from the vines."

Lex sits beside him now on the low wooden bench. Clark doesn't know where the Luthors got the bench, really. It's almost as old as the walls, smooth and worn with age, its wooden seat curving to outline the bodies that had shaped it over time. Clark wonders if it had come with the house. It matches nothing around it, completely out of place. He feels surprisingly comfortable on it, even with Lex sitting like a silent question mark beside him. He's not talking, but he's not moving, either. He's not going to be the one to back down this time, so he settles back into the blank meditation he had almost achieved before Lex's arrival.

Can't keep it up long, though. Lex, a warm presence at his side; the simple human warmth of him belying the dangerous shivers that shoot through Clark at his proximity. He may not make Clark's veins turn green, but prolonged exposure to Lex gives him just the same feeling of being under attack, of being altered on some deep, cellular level. And that feeling is unwelcome here. It is cutting through the miasma of misery that has surrounded him all this time, and he frowns, unready to leave the comfortable confines of his depression. Lex is relaxed beside him, long limbs managing to look (not that Clark is looking) as if they were made to sit on low wooden benches in complete comfort. Unprovoked, petulant anger punches through Clark and he opens his mouth to say god knows what before Lex beats him to it.

"Why are you in my wine cellar, Clark?"

There it is. Clark can't be bothered to make something up. Doesn't feel like telling the truth. Rarely gets that urge anymore. He wonders briefly when it ended. When he stopped feeling as if his truths would soak through his skin in Lex's presence, as if the need to share was so strong that somehow they would find a way through his impermeable hide and dance out into the room to join all the other things that hung in the air whenever he looked at his friend. He thinks it was probably after he realized that Lex didn't really want them anymore. When it became obvious that the air around them was filled with combustibles made to ignite on contact with anything approaching truth. Clark thinks of their last meeting in Metropolis, a crazy afternoon of stilted conversation and flinching fingers, and he doesn't see how it could be any other way. He takes another drink, and offers the bottle in lieu of an answer.

His fist, wrapped around the bottle neck, remains hanging in the space between them for a long moment before he feels Lex's fingers brush over his to take the wine. Fingers that feel not unlike the wine itself sliding warm down his throat as he swallows reflexively at the touch.

Clark keeps his eyes down, clenching his jaw against the stupid need to turn his head. Sees Lex examining the label through peripheral vision, but shuts his eyes when the bottle is raised. Soft sound as liquid tips towards the waiting mouth, then another sibilant murmur as lips slide off the neck, releasing the bottle which goes to rest against Lex's thigh. Clark feels a shot of recklessness streak through him.

"I'll tell you something, Lex. A fact." Lex liked those. "This room marks the lowest point in Smallville. This cellar is as far down as Smallville goes."

"I - didn't know that." Soft and even. Clark can hear the effort Lex is making to keep his voice neutral. He knows him well, even now. Can't quite understand how it is that he knows this man, this intense, furious, whirlwind of a man, that he has not run long ago from the source of so much turmoil. He has run from everything else. Run down here.

"It's true. It's even lower than the caves. Further underground than my storm cellar. This room is the deepest part of Smallville."

"You're acting quite deep yourself, Clark."

Clark doesn't welcome the amusement like he once would have. He doesn't turn and smile into Lex's eyes, because he's learned that smiles don't make up for all the rest anymore. They always slip off Lex's face as soon as he realizes they're there, replaced by an anger Clark wishes were directed more at him. Thinks maybe that Lex is addicted to anger, and is only around him until he can find a way to kick the habit. For now, though, they're here in Smallville, together for the first time in two months, sitting on a small bench in a dark room, while above them a mansion full of staff prepares to host the town's summer fair. Clark listens, but he can't hear anything. They really are very far down.

"Why are you here, Lex? In Smallville?" Clark doesn't realize until he's asked that he has no right to an answer, having given none himself.

"I have a meeting with the Smallville plant shareholders. They're a small group, strategically unimportant, but I have a certain amount of sentimental attachment to them. My first supporters."

"No." Denial is instinctive, though he regrets expressing it almost immediately.

"No?"

"You've always had supporters, Lex. People who believe in you." God, that was stupid. They were into dangerous areas here. Painful areas they had visited over and over again. Though really, very few avenues of conversation between them were completely free of tension these days. Clark's pretty sure they couldn't have a discussion about preferred brands of laundry detergent without it turning into a mined argument on friendship, betrayal and destiny. Screw you, Luthor! Tide is the only soap I can trust! Unlike some people around here!

He should really go home now.

But, dammit, he was here first. Well, sort of. And this is the most comfortable he's felt since coming back to Smallville, and he has another month of it before he can head back to MetU, so he is going to take solace where he can. Lex isn't even supposed to be in town at all. They avoided each other plenty in the city, why couldn't Lex do it here, too?

Clark reaches across and grabs the bottle from Lex's unresisting fingers. He drinks, and something about this mouthful unlocks something inside. He freezes there, head tilted back, and they rush past him, through him, pictures, sounds, feelings, moments of Lex. Four years of Lex, of his walk and his scent and his faraway gaze that snapped back to you without warning, close and scary and warm. It was shocking, how much of Lex seemed to be living in his head, how much of his own life had been lived in Lex's presence, under his influence, near to his skin. That skin, whether pale, bruised, flushed, or chilled, always soft. Well, soft looking, anyway.

Clark lowers the bottle, feeling shaken. Turns to look at Lex, who is staring at him, eyes trained somewhere below his chin, a still, fixed expression on his face. Reflexively, Clark reaches up a hand, and finds that he has spilled some wine down his chin, one warm maroon rivulet making its way down his neck. Oh. Embarrassed, he wipes at it with his fingers, stemming the flow before it reaches his shirt. He's had this shirt a long time, but he hasn't worn it in years, not since Whitney's dad's funeral. It would be good to keep it dry this time.

"Are you saying that you support me, Clark?"

He must know that Clark has no answer for him. That their days of easy answers are over. He does know; he knew before Clark did. But Lex sounds different here in the cellar. He looks different too, the weak filtered light of the room making him loom much closer than he really is. In sunlight, nowadays, Lex seems further away than ever before. He has seen him, sometimes, in the city, across a street, in the back of a car, Clark's rapidly-developing sixth-sense having kicked in so far only to train on wet kittens, that one annoying reporter, and any sighting of Lex within a three-block radius. It is a bizarre thing, feeling that unique shock of awareness that leads to watching from the shadow of a doorway as Lex Luthor passes by in the back of a limousine. Bizarre, but a whole lot less terrifying than it is to sit and look at him here, with his body almost touching and his eyes looking nowhere but right back at Clark.

Clark's shoulders sag and he looks away. So sick of being scared, of backing down. Just not sick enough to get over it, obviously. Looks like Lex isn't the only addict in the room. Cellar. Whatever.

"Have you been back in Smallville long?"

Clark takes a minute to admire Lex's willingness to keep asking him questions. He can answer this one. "Just a week. I'm here 'til the end of the month, I think."

"How does it feel to be back?"

"Great." Oh give it up, Kent.

"So great that you're in my wine cellar getting drunk at three in the afternoon on the day of the town fair."

"I don't have any problem with the fair, Lex. Or the town." Which is true. Something is different with this conversation, though.

Lex moves, sudden. Clark is frozen as he leans in, then leans further across his body, a long stretch of hard torso that pushes him over Clark's lap as Clark sits gripping the bench, trying not to gasp, trying not to crack the wood beneath his fingers. Until Lex puts a hand on his thigh, and Clark feels his jaw drop and his body go loose. The bottle in his hand starts to fall, but Lex is there to catch it, and he sits back, unruffled, and takes a long drink.

"You have good taste, Clark. This is nice wine." The grin he throws Clark then is sharp and shiny and Clark flashes on pre-dawn light and barn windows and the feel of the ceiling at his back. He sees Lex's grin fade, and knows that his face has gone pale and that he is shaking again. He's been shaking on and off all week, but had thought that he'd be safe from it down here.

And Lex is up, standing, wine swinging at his side, brushing off his leg as Lex moves around the room. Comes to stand in front of him.

"So tell me, Clark. What do you think of Metropolis?"

He has no choice but to look at Lex now. And fuck, because Lex looks really, really good. Complicated, infuriating, and terrifying all wrapped in a crisp grey shirt and soft dark pants. Clark has met some beautiful people in Metropolis. He's seen some women, and some men, who look as if they've been put on Earth purely to be looked at, like it's their destiny to be eye-candy while it's his to catch kittens and hide from slow-moving limos. None of them can compare to Lex though, the smooth sharp man standing in front of him with banked fury behind the tease in his eyes.

"I love it." He's smiling. Because he does, and it's easy to say it, and he's ridiculously pleased to be able to give one straight answer. "I really do. I just got there and spent some time walking around in it, running around in it, and... I dunno. I tried to pin it down, figure out what it was that made me happy, because I wasn't expecting to like it, you know? Clark the farm boy. Smallville through and through. In fact, to tell the - "

Stops.

Goes on more quietly. Doles out a little more truth. "I think it scared me how much I liked it. Because it felt like a betrayal, kinda. Realizing that I could be happy somewhere other than here. But it does make me happy, Lex."

Yeah, most of the time. Still, it's easier there than here, and in a way that's the hardest part of the whole thing, that this place isn't the fit it used to be. That's what scares him now. God, among all the other things he's terrified of from minute to minute these days. And his room, he misses his dorm room at MetU. If he had been there last week instead of out in the barn, none of this would be happening.

He realizes that he's banging his head rhythmically against the wall, and stops before he makes a dent. He's fooling himself. It was always going to happen, sooner or later. It had been happening for years now, really, he'd just been denying it, suppressing it. Pretending it wasn't happening. Tying himself to the mattress. Fuck it.

"I'm scared of heights."

Lex freezes in mid-step, then loosens himself and turns slowly to look at Clark. He approaches him, and Clark waits for the questions. Instead, the nearly-empty bottle of wine is proffered. Clark takes it, pouring back the wine warmed from Lex's hand. When it comes, it's not a question.

"You're in my basement because you're afraid of heights."

Clark gulps. Runs his tongue over the roof of his mouth, feeling the difference in texture there after the ripeness of the wine. "Yeah."

"No, Clark."

"What?" He looks up, confused and a little indignant. He felt stupid enough confessing; he doesn't need Lex calling him a liar. Not over this.

"It doesn't make sense. I know you've dealt with heights before."

Clark can list the times in his life he's been above 100 feet on one hand, and he knows that Lex has never been with him for any of them. A sudden hot fear enters his head as he realizes that Lex must be talking about some other time he's been high up. Sometime Lex knows about, though he wasn't there. And seeing as he's never anywhere far off the ground unless he absolutely has to be, that means that Lex is referring to one of his... rescues. He's momentarily surprised that Lex would allude even implicitly to gathering information about him, and then the usual worry is back, taking over, along with the frustration of having another secret that isn't a secret at all. Lex knows. He must know. Clark's pretty sure Lex saw him at the Talon at Christmas, five minutes after he'd driven away from the farm leaving Clark behind on the barn sofa with no car in sight. And he has a hunch that Lex knows exactly what happened on that bridge four years ago, too. It terrifies him. God, he's getting sick of being scared all the time. But he knows this particular fear; it's almost comfortable now. He's not afraid of Lex the way his dad is, the way his mom thinks he should be. This fear is his, all his.

"Tell me about it, Clark."

Clark raises his head slowly and meets Lex's intense gaze. Has to lean back to do it; Lex is looming above him in the near-darkness and he seems very, very close. Clark doesn't know what has made Lex move in like this, but he finds himself breathing to a new rhythm, deep and shallow all at once, and his stomach is clenching, tremors are darting through him, and his wrists hurt, he wants to touch Lex so badly. Eyes locked, and something has to give. Something has given. So he will.

"I think I'm disappearing." Lex steps even closer, moving over Clark's legs and walking up the length of his body.

Clark's jaw clenches, and he blinks quickly, repeatedly. "I...It was early, really early, the sun hadn't come up yet. I was looking out, looking... down, and I realized that it had finally happened. That I..." Oh dangerous, Clark. How are you going to explain this one? How are you going to convey how it felt to stare out at the morning sky from the ceiling of the barn, two feet from the window, knowing you could have floated away forever? To look at the fading stars and know that you came from them and they seemed to want you back? How do you tell that to this man?

"When I'm up there, Lex, it feels like I could never come down."

In a strange way, he has told the truth, at last. Because that's exactly how it feels. The rush of euphoria turning to terror as the wind pushes against his body, inside and out, as he can feel himself respond to its movements, its currents, knowing that he never need touch anything on Earth ever again if he is willing simply to let go for good. The alchemical change within him at the first glimpse of Earth from a distance, at the first tug of fresh breezes, as he can feel his body begin to rise.

Lex is frowning, then bending, reaching to stroke a thumb over Clark's cheek as Clark watches the play of hypotheses suggested and discarded wash across his face. "That sounds more like agoraphobia than acrophobia, Clark."

Clark startles, unnerved. "What? Isn't agoraphobia the fear of open spaces? I live in Kansas, Lex. I know open spaces."

Lex seems to be suppressing a smile. "Agoraphobia is really about fearing the loss of safety, Clark. Everyone experiences it in one form or another. It's the fear of finding yourself unprotected, lost, alone."

As he listens, or half-listens, mesmerized by Lex's proximity, he realizes that it's not the fear of heights or floating that he's thinking of. As Lex speaks in his drawling snake-charmer voice about terror, Clark finds that it is Lex himself that makes these feelings seem familiar, the shaky rush of knife-edge endorphins that covers him anytime Lex comes anywhere close.

"I'll tell you something, though, Clark." He's so near now that he hardly needs to speak above a murmur. He is straddling Clark's thighs, feet rooted on either side of his body, legs splayed slightly to bring him near. Clark is still gripping the back of the bench, head back and chest rising rapidly with each breath. There isn't enough air down here, and Clark is beginning to wonder what life will be like with claustrophobia and agoraphobia when Lex speaks again. "People will tell you that you need to conquer your fear. That you should make yourself the master of it, vanquish it and move on with your life the stronger for it." Clark is pretty sure who 'people' might be in Lex's case. He flashes on a vision of Lionel lecturing a young Lex, and shivers. The shivers grow as Lex leans in even tighter, now only inches away from his face. "But that's bullshit, Clark. The fear never goes. It never goes away." Clark doesn't know what's happening. He knows that more is being revealed here than a lesson in psychology. He can see blazes of emotion in Lex's eyes, but the intensity that holds him tells him that what he is hearing is as much confession as admonition. "If you're hoping that it will disappear, that it won't be part of you any more, that you'll find a way to be fucking normal, then tough, Clark. It's never going to happen. It's who you are. Who you'll always be."

Clark doesn't know who Lex is talking to anymore. Himself, maybe. They are breathing in tandem now, hot wine-flavored breath mingling and washing over them both. And before he can stop himself, before he can analyze what he might be thinking, feeling, Clark tilts his head back, letting his mouth go soft in blatant, willful invitation. Lex stills, briefly, though the air around him never stops vibrating, and then his hand reaches down, over into Clark's hair where he makes a fist, pulling Clark even closer, opening his mouth even further. And then the distance is gone, the question of the source of his terror is moot, because it's on him and in him and around him, tight and hard and hot.

Lex swings a long, muscled arm behind his neck and fists his hand in his shirt, yanking him in tight and holding him there as he kisses him like it's the filthiest, nastiest, best thing he's ever done. Oh Jesus. Clark is lost. Because when he'd thought about it, about what being with Lex would be like, he'd imagined it would be somehow elegant and slow, like the move of Lex's hips walking down a corridor, like the way his shirt rests across his shoulders, careful and perfect. But it's fucking nothing like that. Lex is trying to murder him with his mouth, pushing up against him, pushing him really, really hard, and his arms are tight and rigid, and his body moves well, so well, but there's nothing elegant about it. It's all shove and grind and tug and Clark thinks he'll have to cry or laugh from the feel of it.

Lex pulls his mouth away, gulps in a breath, then pushes back towards him again as if it's pre-determined, reaching in to bite, to bite at his mouth, and Clark feels the scarred lip pushing against his own and he can't resist the urge to suck it in, to hold onto it, though he knows he has no right. He reaches up with both hands and pulls Lex's head closer, holding him in place while he pushes up and in and opens every part of himself to the caustic, burning want that spills between them.

Lex pulls back again, and Clark can't fathom what the look on his face could mean. He's never seen anything like it before, and it's as if a layer has been stripped off Lex, pulled back to reveal the surging, roiling power that he usually keeps hidden under silk shirts and etiquette.

"Why are you doing this, Clark? I'm not going to comfort you, if that's what you need." Clark can see that Lex is, in his own way, trying to look after him here even as he denies it; giving him a chance to back away, even as his hands are moving from his hair down his neck and under the collar of his best blue shirt. And it's true, Lex will never be soft arms and pillowed calm. He'll never tell him to hush, that everything will be fine in the morning. Lex will never be comfortable, never be soothing, except that he is soothing to Clark, in the freakish way that fits in so perfectly with every other freakish part of him.

Ohhh... okay, maybe soothing isn't the best word right now....

Lex has his hands on his shirt, and he's unbuttoning it with quick, efficient movements. He's taking Clark's clothes off. Lex wants to see him naked. Wants to touch him. Really wants to touch him, a lot, because that's what he's doing now, hands inside the shirt, on his chest, fingers splayed and searching. Clark gets his feet flat on the floor and drags his knees up, and just like that, Lex drops into his lap, a warm muscled weight draped across his body. Pushing at the shirt now, working it off his shoulders, pinning his arms to his side. He's trapped. It hits him all over again, and this close, the words have nowhere to go except straight out of his mouth and into the air, an atmosphere already sodden with lust and tension and moans.

"Lex. I'm - I'm scared of this, too."

"Oh, Clark." You should be. Lex leans in, hovering. Smiling a soft and coveting smile.

And while he can feel Lex staring down at him, he can't open his eyes. He is shuddering and floating at the same time, loosened from the bonds of reality by the chain of Lex's arms around him. His mouth feels empty, itchy, and he rubs his tongue against its roof, trying to tame the need he feels. It's not working, and that's when he realizes that he has to do something about it. He opens his eyes to the flame of Lex above him, leans forward and nudges Lex's head back, far back, then reaches out his tongue and pushes it, open, hard and demanding onto the juddering line of Lex's throat. Oh yes. This is what his tongue was made for. He drags it up and along the curve, pressing tight and firm against the wet slippery skin to the ultra-soft flap of Lex's earlobe, and Lex lets loose a noise that would sound just like a whine if it weren't for the naked aggression that suffuses it.

He feels Lex shudder almost uncontrollably, and then the whip-hard body is crushed tight against him, the space between them gone. Lex leans in, pushing his face into Clark's neck, sucking open-mouthed and vengeful as he licks a path to his ear. Pulls back a little. "I don't have the answers you're looking for, Clark."

Through the hazy ripples of arousal, Clark hears him, and agrees.

Lex slides his hands down the back of Clark's shirt, pinching and stroking the spasm-wracked muscles. His voice, when it comes close up against him, is ragged. "I can't stop your fears, Clark. I won't be your savior. And you can't be mine."

Then Clark's shirt is off and in a sudden lithe movement, Lex disentangles himself, dropping to his knees on the earthen floor. With a fast, brutal shove that draws an undignified moan from Clark, Lex yanks his lower legs forward onto the ground. This leaves Clark's elbows propped on the bench so that his whole body is stretched out, the length of his torso and thighs acting as a bridge between the floor and the seat.

Clark's head drops back, overwhelmed by the similarity between this moment and the way he felt in the barn that morning. Vibrant and unrestrained, utterly terrified, and staring at a picture of inevitable destiny. He was made for the skies. And he was made for this man. This is Lex who will never smother his fears. Lex who once asked him if he believed a man could fly, staring at him with a spark of madness gleaming through all that breathless, helpless fascination. Lex who wouldn't dissect him or harness or corrupt him, whatever their fathers might believe, but who would easily spend his life delighting in everything about himself that Clark feared.

The whispering promises are back, this time muttered into his mouth as Lex moves over his straining body, scraping his sides and pulling at the softest parts of his chest. "I'll take you high up, Clark. I'll take you to the top of the world. And you'll shake just like you're shaking now, and I'll love you for it, I'll love you for it." Then the hands are gone and Lex is up on his knees in front of him, undoing his shirt buttons with a viciousness Clark wants focused only on him. Then the shirt is off, and Lex is speaking again, punishing words with his mouth, but Clark can't hear him because he's caught, completely caught by the sight of the spare, tightly-packed muscle moving smoothly under skin he's been thinking about for years. He feels... enraptured, overwhelmed, and the feeling grows exponentially when Lex leans back in and presses that skin, that body right up against his own humming flesh.

"Clark, Clark. What do you have to be afraid of with a mouth like that?"

Clark figures it's a rhetorical question when Lex leans down and swallows any possible answer. Under the pull of the ravishing mouth, Clark feels Lex's hands working at his belt, and he shudders so violently at the prospect of it all that Lex loses his grip on the belt and his hand slips down the outside of Clark's pants. The careless brush of hot, fast fingers draws another inexplicable sound from his mouth, and Lex curses sibilantly and goes back to his task. Seconds later he's successful, and sure Luthor hands are pushing at Clark's pants and boxers and pushing them carefully over and down, past the knees bent in the dirt that lift only when urged, coordination gone.

He's naked in Lex's wine cellar. And Lex's hands are running up the outside of his legs, slipping around the back to push gently into the crease between buttock and thigh, the soft material of the pants Clark has stared at incessantly now torturing him everywhere they touch.

"Clark."

There's a strange gulping noise coming from somewhere. Clark realizes with a start that it's him. Lifts his head and opens his eyes, his vision swirling crazily before focusing on Lex, who is still stroking and grabbing everywhere he can. His eyes are baby-steps away from crazed, control a concept neither of them seems familiar with at this point.

"Clark. Sometimes fear... isn't weakness." Clark frowns, confused and drowning. "Sometimes fear is just a message that tells you nothing. Nothing except that you're alive enough to feel it."

Clark is feeling everything; the terror he has lived with so long peaking and shrieking through him, mixing with the heat generated by Lex like a great confluence of waters, and waves of it wash over him, whipping his body and carrying him ever higher.

"I'm not afraid of you, Clark." And Clark knows he isn't. Lex isn't afraid of what he could do or what he could become, and it's precious. It frees him to keen in a long exhaled breath as Lex reaches strong, elegant fingers between his thighs and pushes, slow and dirty and hot, opening his legs so, so wide, leaving Clark in no doubt that he is up on an altar for Lex, both an offering and a host.

"Le-" Clark gulps, trying again. "Lex." He won't move his arms, he can't, but he's finding a way to say what he needs. "Lex. Push me. You have to push me. Now." Gasps. "Always." He illustrates it by pulling back and then markedly, deliberately pushing himself, his cock, forward against Lex, a fierce and provocative shove that Lex takes as an order, shaking hands moving to his waist to unbutton his pants. "Yeah, yeah, Lex. Please."

It only takes him seconds, a brutal shift of clothing, shoes and socks discarded and forgotten, and then he's naked and bare, perfect in the cellar half-light. Then he moves, flesh to flesh from knee to nose, and Clark is pinned back and owned, cradled in human heat. With a shaken exhalation, Lex moves a closed fist up Clark's chest, reaching up over his collar bone and around his shoulders, coming down the other side with manacle grip in place. His other hand, openly splayed this time, slides down, reaching to cup Clark's ass, fingers sliding inside the cleft to flutter there before they clench on the curve, rock solid.

Then, for just a moment, there is stillness.

Finally, Clark inhales and slowly, deliberately bares his neck. And fear is good, so good when it's like this, and the next time he has to stand on the edge of a skyscraper or feels himself lift off the ground, this is what he'll think of, and maybe he'll be ready to soar. For now, he's enveloped by Lex, Lex who is growling low and dangerous over his jugular, then Clark feels his smile against his throat before his mind is detonated by the simultaneous onslaught of the sharpest of bites and the slowest, nastiest of thrusts.

"I'll push you. I'll push you, Clark."

Every sluice of blood in his veins is compelling him to get closer, to grind and ravish and bind, primitive drives making fusion of flesh an imperative. Lex's thrusts are growing less and less studied, but every one of them is branding Clark all the same, Lex's cock pushing onto his own, thighs slamming together, and they are forehead to forehead, and nothing makes sense but the rhythm.

Gradually and inevitably, the rhythm crumbles under the weight of their need, and as the pressure escalates and spirals, Clark pulls his face back from Lex's drenched skin and opens his eyes to look. To look at Lex. He looks at him so long and intense that his eyes are watering, but he can't stop. Because it seems for this moment that Clark has never seen anything before in his life, nothing with this clarity, nothing that ever seemed as real, as blood-to-the-bone vital as Lex Luthor's pupils widening in recognition of his recognition. And he thought he'd known fear up on those ledges, out on the side of the barn, but he'd known nothing. Because this is fear, right here, pounding and visceral, encapsulated in two pairs of eyes that can't bear to blink, two bodies that can't bring themselves to move apart.

And all at once there's a surge of joy through the desperate heat thrumming through him. He can't believe he's having a goddamn epiphany now, but suddenly it's all becoming beautifully clear. Because this may be all he's ever wanted, and it makes him feel like maybe he can be just right for this, for this fierce, heated man and his passion like a heady mix of sex and rage. He can rise to this, can meet him everywhere he's asked - and every bit of him that can rise is rising, arching off the floor and the bench, pushing back, as much as he wants, as much as he's always needed, and he feels so... wanton. He smiles into Lex's mouth at the nineteenth-century word, and takes the opportunity, as Lex pulls back to see him do it, to share the smile he couldn't give him earlier, to arch up in just the right way to bring their cocks together in one last push, and Lex's eyes stretch and his nostrils flare and he smiles back, telling Clark with no uncertainty that he has finally gotten something right.

Minutes later, on the heels of orgasm comes peace. Clark pries his hands away from the bench, his favorite bench in the world, and sits on the dirt floor with his arms around a panting, slippery, momentarily silent Lex. Clark smiles again, he can't stop now, and presses a soft, fond kiss to the top of Lex's scalp while Lex is too out of it to protest the indignity. And then he starts to laugh. Quietly and happily, he starts to laugh. Because nothing is solved. He's still a messy alien college student and he's not going to be climbing high buildings for the fun of it anytime soon. And Lex is still about as predictable as lava, though a good deal more pleasant to the touch. He's still scared of what his future holds, and he doesn't think he'll ever be completely at ease with his body's ability to freak him out, but it's okay. It's all okay. Because he just had sex with Lex, who is now looking at his goofy grin with a remarkably similar expression of his own, and he's realized, blindingly, with a shock like falling from the sky, that fear is nothing to be afraid of.

The song ends. Amidst the sound of thundering, sibilant rain, the notes die out and the silence settles once more.

End.