Hard R for non-explicit sex. Third person omniscient point of view.

Written for the Clexfest 7th Wave Challenge, in which opening lines were assigned. Bonus points were awarded for a non-Luthorcest Lionel sex scene.

Thank you to Veronica, Elanorelle, Mel, Lily, Dolimir & Kiramalfoy for their suggestions.

Lex thought he had seen and done everything until he saw Clark naked.

That was saying a lot, considering everything Lex had seen and done in his twenty three years on the planet.

Scotch at seven, the burn at the back of his throat and laughter from his father's lips as he choked down the horrid stuff, then smiled afterwards and dabbed at his mouth saying, "Not bad."

Cigarettes at eight despite his asthma, suppressing the coughs and practicing inhaling in secret.

Virginity scrapped at twelve and a half, lost to the fourteen year old girl vacationing in Tokyo with her parents while he accompanied Lionel on a business venture.

His first blowjob from a guy, in the back of some club he was still three years too young to be entering, backed up against a wall with some door handle jabbing into his spine, wet and heat all around him, hands gripping the man's shoulders tightly as his knees buckled and his cock pulsed in the foreign mouth.

And of course, there was always the time he had walked in to find his father bent over his desk, knocking pencils and pens astray as he fucked his current secretary senseless, skirt bunched up around her waist, her heeled feet crossed behind his back. She had brown hair, Lex remembered. She made high pitched little moans and bit her lip when she came. He'd watched it all from the doorway, watched his father pump hard between her legs, her red lacquered fingers twisting hard in his hair. He'd watched as her eyes opened, caught his, widened, then rolled back into her skull when Lionel's fingernails dug into her ass. Eighteen years old, eyefucking with the help being fucked by his father. If that didn't require therapy, Lex didn't know what did.

But not one of those moments, no matter how life-altering, could even begin to compare to what happened to Lex on a very memorable day in July.

The entire event resulting in the words "naked" and "Clark" being used within the same sentence certainly wasn't premeditated. It started off innocently enough, Lex climbing the stairs to Clark's fortress like a hundred times before as Martha had told him that no, Clark wasn't in the house, why doesn't he check the barn?

Lex had no idea that Clark had, moments before, spilled the contents of an entire can of soda onto his lap, in turn forcing Clark to shrug off the jeans and impromptu tie-dyed t-shirt just in time for Lex's eyes to become flush with the loft's floor. This accident would prove rather serendipitous as it lodged the idea of naked Clark in Lex's brain for the remainder of the afternoon.

(Well, mostly naked. He was wet. Lex figured it counted.)

Lex stared, caught off guard. Took in the anatomy of the figure before him, eyes licking at every muscle of Clark's back, and he could hear his heart rate increase the longer he stared. Pushing the limits had always been Lex's vice, so he carefully raised his left foot and climbed a step higher, then another and another, left hand on the railing, right in his pocket, until he stood mere feet from Clark, who had moved to stand by the window and dry his chest with a worn piece of burlap.

"Taking up exhibition?" Lex called in perfect stage-voice, smirking when Clark's shoulders twitched and the boy whirled around and met his eyes.

"Lex!" Clark exclaimed, and scrambled for the throw draped over the hammock. He held it to his stomach and tried to keep his voice level. "I didn't know anyone was here."

A grin. "Evidently."

"I got wet," Clark explained, reddening.

"So it appears."

"I was just gonna change when you showed up."

"Hmm."

"Give me a sec," he said and pulled on a pair of shorts probably left by mistake one afternoon as they were covered in dust and bits of straw.

Lex lowered himself to the moth-bitten couch and waited, stretching out his arm and tapping his fingers patiently along the back edge, eyes still tracing those hips.

And that wasn't the half of it. That was only the precursor, the foreplay to the incident involving the honest-to-goodness naked flesh of one Clark Jerome Kent of Smallville, Kansas scheduled by some higher power to take place at exactly two thirty-seven that afternoon. Of course, Lex didn't know this. All he knew was that he was bored and Clark was standing in nothing but a pair of shorts, looking like some model stepped out of a clothing company dependent on a marketing campaign based in voyeurism.

"It's hot out," Clark commented, still dabbing at his chest with the rough cloth, not feeling a bit of it. He knocked some straw from his shorts and scratched his neck.

Lex wondered if the kid even realized the double meanings behind half of what came out of his mouth, but he nodded, cocked his head to the side and said, "You wanna go swimming?"

Clark shook his head. "Thanks, but it's too hot in your pool room. I'll just keep dumping soda on myself."

"What about Crater Lake?" Lex suggested. He tried for casual. He hoped it came off that way.

An eyebrow raised. "You wanna swim in that thing?"

He shrugged. "We don't have to. We could just...sit."

Clark considered this for a moment, could think of no reason why not, then raised his shoulders and dropped them back down. "Okay."

//

The usual sounds of laughter sounded distant from Clark's vantage point along the far side of the shore. He sat on a flat rock with his toes dipped in the water, shoes tossed into the weeds behind him, and wondered how close the nearest meteor rock fragments lay. He dipped his right food deeper in the water, then lifted it back out and waited for the sensation of his energy being drained.

Nothing.

He tried again, an inch deeper, and held his foot in the air as it dried.

Still nothing.

Huh.

This could turn out to be a good day, after all.

"How's the water?" Lex asked, leaning up against a small tree trunk, rubbing a hand over the back of his head.

"Warm," Clark reported. He tilted his head and followed a fish swimming through a stand of weedy greens, hidden from whatever predators lurked farther out in the darker parts of the lake.

Lex reached down and began untying his shoes, pulling his socks off slowly so as not to pull the silk, and set them aside carefully. He pushed himself from the ground with little effort and walked forward to where Clark sat, gravel beneath his toes, brushing off the surface of the rock before lowering himself to it. Clark shifted to give him more room, and Lex propped a leg up before him, rolling the cuff of his slacks. Then the other. The sun beating down in his eyes, Lex leaned back on his arms and stretched his legs out before him. One foot sank beneath the surface, then the other, the tepid water licking at his ankles.

Clark's elbow brushed against his, and Lex leaned into him gently, then sat centered again and waited for Clark to reciprocate. He felt the pressure on his arm increase and then fade, caught Clark's eyes and grinned. Watched that dark hair fall across Clark's forehead as he bit his lip. Nudged him a second time and watched for the smile to appear. Bright and young. Had he ever been that young, Lex wondered? He supposed not.

He inhaled slowly, his eyes still watching Clark's, and right then, nothing between them seemed impossible or complicated but sweet. Easy and friendly.

A tongue darted out, and Clark wet his lips. Lex's cock twitched.

So maybe things were slightly more complicated than he wanted to admit.

He looked away.

Raising a hand to his face, he shielded the sun from his eyes. Just the two of them for at least a mile, everyone else at a safe distance from both ear and eye.

Suddenly, he announced, "I'm going in."

"In the water?" Clark asked, turning his head, an eyebrow quirked.

"Mmhm. Are you coming?"

"I didn't bring anything to swim in."

Lex gave him the once over. "Swim in your shorts."

"I hate walking home in wet clothes."

Lex worked the buttons at his collar without diverting his eyes. "So take them off," he suggested. "It's not like there's anyone around," he added when the boy looked perfectly embarrassed at the concept.

Clark blinked rapidly, then stood up and turned his back. Lex laughed and shook his head, untucking the tails of his shirt and sliding it from his arms. He folded and placed it upon his shoes.

"I came swimming here once, a few years after the meteor shower," he said, fingers loosening his belt. "My father was looking over contracts with some associates, and I must've been distracting him because he asked one of his assistants to please take me somewhere so that I'd stop being a nuisance. So they brought me here." He unbuttoned his fly and worked the pants down over his hipbones. "I probably complained the entire drive over."

"That sounds like you."

Lex smiled, stepping out of the fabric round his ankles. "I remember sitting in the grass, throwing stones into the water. I think I was trying to hit a turtle. And whoever it was who'd driven me finally got tired of whatever it was I was doing, picked me up and carried me out into the lake twenty feet, then dropped me under the surface."

Lex could hear Clark snickering behind him.

"I was pissed. I had water up my nose, and my shoes were ruined. But when I got back to the shore, I just started to laugh."

"Why?"

"Because there was no point not to," he said, rearranging his pile so that his pants lay flat on the grass, next his shirt, and his shoes resting on top.

Lex glanced down at the watch he was currently removing from his wrist. Two thirty-seven in the afternoon, and he was standing lakeside with his best friend in a pair of grey silk boxers. With the sun unhindered by any clouds, Lex chided himself for having forgotten sunblock. His chest and back would be rosy and crisp that evening, if last weekend was any indication. A gentle splashing to his right caused him to look up, and that's when it happened.

Clark stood ankle deep in water, all clear, bronze skin and brown curls. Sunlight on his back, on his face, eyes blinking out from behind that tangle of hair.

As if paralyzed, Lex stared, his lips parted but mute.

"Lex?" Clark asked in a voice that belied his age and experience. He seemed to fold into himself when Lex didn't respond, and his hands dropped down between his legs, shielding. Blood rose in his cheeks, a buzzing in his ears that hummed away the songbirds.

Lex had no words. His tongue felt temporarily disabled, his mind unable to wrap itself around what it was actually seeing. He stared, his mouth open, unblinking as if to blink would be to erase with permanance the image before him. He couldn't remember if he had even inhaled in the past minute. The thought that comforted Lex most just then was knowing that even if he couldn't seem to breathe just now, the minute he passed out from lack of oxygen, his body would take over and force his lungs to work.

"Lex?" Clark said again, his voice small.

"Sorry," Lex apologized, regaining his ability to speak. "You caught me off guard." He forced a smile, his face all sorts of purple.

"Oh," Clark said, angling himself away, kicking at the small waves trying to wash up the pebbled shore.

More out of desperation than amusement, Lex found himself laughing, took three steps forward, inhaled and surface-dived into the water, warm against his hands yet cool to his scalp. Felt it skim over his back, soak through the silk. Filling his ears and closing them to sound. The familiar burning in his lungs as they absorbed what oxygen they held, the sting in his nose. Weightlessly, he floated, arms outstretched and bobbing with the various currents. Concerns were without form or reason. The world didn't exist to him just now, not when he was wrapped in the comfort of the lake, still, surrendered to its wiles.

If only he could stay like this.

Something like his name above the surface sounded far away and abstract. Sudden hands not his own on his waist pulled him from the solace, and he sputtered when air entered his nostrils, and brushed at his eyes. His vision blurred, watercolors.

"How long were you planning to stay under?" he heard Clark ask, hands still firmly on his sides. "Are you okay?"

"Of course I am," he replied more harshly than he meant to. The hands fell away. Even through the blur, he could see Clark step backward. He sighed. "But, thank you."

"No problem." Apathy tinged with hurt, and Lex felt a little guilty. It had been his idea to come here in the first place, and now he was snapping at Clark for being concerned.

"Clark."

"What?" Clark squeezed his eyes closed and pinched the bridge of his nose and waited.

"You're the best friend I've ever had," Lex told him then. "I hope you know that."

Clark lowered his hands, and their eyes met, static connection crackling to life between them.

Like everything else that spelled their history together, Lex hadn't expected Clark to kiss him just then. Hadn't expected that he would lean in with his eyes wide open and touch the side of Lex's face. Hadn't expected his own breath to catch and eyelids to flutter closed when Clark's mouth hovered above his. Hadn't expected that the same boy who blushed at the idea of his own skin would kiss him first, if at all, if ever. But then again, Clark Kent had never been exactly what he appeared on first impression.

Slow and consuming, awkward, warm lips caressed his. Hands skimmed up his ribcage and down again to his waist. He lifted his arms and wrapped them around Clark's bent neck. Lifted himself higher and kissed harder. Felt Clark's stomach press against his own, pushed a knee between his legs until the boy moaned into his mouth. Lex's arms tightened around his neck, and Clark's hands pulled Lex's hips hard against him. Sucking in a breath, Lex hissed his name and bit down hard on his lip.

"Christ," Lex said. "Do that again."

Pressed up against Clark's body -- pulsing between his legs, surging in his ears, sex so primitive, water licking his back -- he tried to get closer. Clark's breaths came fast in his ear. Hands and mouths and tongues and legs working, tangling, harder and more desperate than he remembered with anyone else.

Consumed. Electric. Alive. Exposed.

Nothing like being under water.

Fingers unknowingly bruised his hips, and Clark trembled against him, stilling. Lex kept moving. Heat spread to the tips of his fingers, his ears, behind his knees. Toes ground into a soft, organic layer of earth. His mouth opened, a stream of nonsensical words pouring forth, and then he sank, the boy's arms his reservoir.

//

They lay on the shore.

Lex closed his eyes, rested his face against Clark's chest, warm from the sun, wet and smooth beneath his cheek.

"That was good," he murmured.

"Yeah?" Clark asked, and Lex could hear the relief in his voice.

"Yeah," he repeated, and Clark's fingers gently explored his scalp.

Things were definitely much more complicated, now.

But, Lex reasoned, simplicity is overrated.

Clark's chest rose and fell like the swell of the tide, and Lex smiled. No reason not to.