Pairing: Clark / Lex
Rating: R
Category: AU, drama, angst, humor, established relationship
Spoilers: just about everything up through the end of the first season
Summary: Dr. Hamilton's experiments on the meteor rocks have an unanticipated side effect that threatens to destroy the very fabric of space and time.
WARNINGS: contains references to a 16-year-old engaged in an explicit sexual relationship with a 21-year-old adult
Acknowledgments: The idea for this story was conceived while reading the Star Trek novel Q-Squared by Peter David.
Author's notes: Please forgive the amateur scientific babble contained herein. :) Many thanks go to Jessica, Beth, and Jennie for the beta.
Feedback: Yes, please! Any comments, encouragement, critique, etc. will be endlessly appreciated.

Part 1: All Aboard

Clark rolled over in bed and threw an arm over his eyes to block out the sunlight that spilled in through the large bedroom window. The air was cool against the bare skin of his chest, prickling his skin.

"I was wondering when you were going to wake up."

Peeling open one eye, Clark felt a grin tug at the corners of his mouth. Beside him, Lex was lying with his head propped up on one hand, blue eyes gleaming with affectionate amusement as they stared down at him.

"How long have you been up?" Clark stretched lazily, enjoying the feel of expensive cotton sheets sliding against his skin. He twisted his neck to look for the clock on the endtable and winced slightly when he saw what time it was. "Jeez, I thought you were supposed to be the spoiled rich guy who liked to sleep the day away. Aren't I usually the one who's up at the crack of dawn?"

"Well, considering we didn't get in till almost the crack of dawn...." Lex's voice had a touch of mischief in it. "I think you can be forgiven just this once."

Clark shivered under the light touch Lex ghosted across his ribs. "Not to mention that you pretty much wore me out when we got back here," he said with a smile, remembering. Then he was pulling Lex down into a good-morning kiss, and it was wet and hot and Lex and so very, very good.

It was some time later when they finally pulled themselves out of bed. Clark pulled on his jeans and ran his fingers through his hair, walking up to the window to look down at the front grounds outside. He still couldn't get used to the sheer size of this place, no matter how many stolen nights he was able to spend here.

"What time are your parents going to be coming back from Metropolis?" Lex asked, voice coming from the direction of the bathroom closet. And yes, Lex had a walk-in closet in his bathroom. The mind boggled.

"I'm not sure. Sometime later this afternoon, I think." Clark frowned at this reminder that their weekend together was almost over. They'd been sleeping together for nearly two months now, taking advantage of whatever opportunities fate chose to gift them with, and the novelty of it hadn't even begun to wear off. Clark wasn't sure it ever would.

"We'd better be getting you home then, probably." Lex's voice was muffled, and Clark looked over his shoulder to see him emerging from the bathroom in the process of sliding a thick dark sweater over his head. The movement made his muscles ripple enticingly, giving Clark the briefest teasing flash of his flat stomach.

Clark licked his lips slightly, feeling his face heat. Even after all these weeks, it still never ceased to surprise him how much he wanted whenever Lex was around. He'd have thought that finally having his feelings requited would have toned it down a bit, but no. Not even a night spent in some of Metropolis' more seedier nightclubs -- or a pre-dawn morning of truly awe-inspiring sex -- seemed able to cure him of his fixation. He seemed destined to lust after this man morning, noon, and night.

There were, of course, far worse obsessions to be burdened with.

"What's so funny?" Lex asked, coming up to stand beside him at the window. There was a small curl at one corner of his mouth, as if he wanted to smile but wasn't quite sure what the joke was.

Clark realized he was grinning again. "Nothing," he said, knowing full well that at that moment, he sounded every bit as old as his sixteen years would indicate. He reached out to touch Lex's chest just because he could, and bit down on his lower lip at how soft the sweater felt under his fingers.

"Nothing." Lex's tone was dry. He slid a hand up Clark's arm, raising gooseflesh over his skin.

Before he could say anything else, his eyes moved to the window, and a sharp frown tightened the skin between his brows. Clark followed his gaze and saw that there was a dark sedan pulling into the driveway from the direction of the front gate. It pulled to a stop in front of the main portico, but the angle was wrong for Clark to see who was inside.

"Who's that?" he asked, turning back to Lex curiously.

Lex's eyes were still fastened on the car outside. "I don't know," he said, but there was something in his tone that sounded almost cold. Clark stared at him in surprise. Unbidden, a sudden fierce thought crossed his mind:

Lex was lying.

"Lex?" Lex's eyes had taken on that flatly emotionless luster that Clark hadn't seen since before the first time they'd fallen into bed together. It was the one he usually wore whenever he didn't want someone to know his true feelings about something. "What's wrong?"

Lex gave his arm a brief squeeze and turned away from the window. "I'm sure it's nothing."

Clark bit back the questions he wanted to ask and followed him out into the hall. Already, he could hear voices in the foyer downstairs as Lex's doorman let the visitor in. Enrique was talking in his usual low, respectful tones, almost inaudible at this distance, but the visitor kept trying to talk over him, demanding rather franticly that he needed to see Lex.

The very last person Clark expected to see when he got downstairs was Dr. Hamilton.

Clark hovered on the very bottom step, hand poised over the banister as he tried to think just why the eccentric meteor rock collector would have chosen to visit Lex at home on a Sunday morning. He felt himself tense reflexively, remembering how Hamilton's experiments on the Nicodemus flowers had nearly killed his dad and Lana just a few months ago.

"Dr. Hamilton," he said stiffly, looking to Lex for some kind of explanation.

"It's all right, Enrique." Lex was using the voice he normally reserved for meetings with his father, which disconcerted Clark a bit. The look he leveled at Hamilton could have carved a hole in solid granite.

Enrique looked relieved as he turned to go. Clark didn't blame him.

"Lex." Hamilton crossed the foyer toward them with long strides, looking rumpled, as if he'd slept in his clothes for several nights running. His eyes were startlingly white against the dark skin of his face. "We have a problem."

"Dr. Hamilton." Lex's voice was cool. "Is there something I can do for you?"

That stopped Hamilton in mid-stride, as if he didn't have any idea what Lex was talking about. His gaze flickered to Clark briefly, then moved back to Lex again.

"We don't have time for this," he said, almost angrily. "There's a problem with the experiments on the meteor rocks."

Clark stared at him. Experiments? Meteor rocks? And he was telling Lex this... why?

If anything, Lex's expression grew even more cold. "Perhaps you'd care to make an appointment with my secretary, so we can discuss this in more detail at a later time. As you can see, I do have company at the moment."

Clark felt his face heat when he realized that he still wasn't wearing anything other than the jeans he'd put on when he climbed out of bed that morning. But Hamilton didn't seem to even notice his attire (or lack thereof), much less give any indication that he wondered why Clark would be spending the morning half-undressed at Lex's house.

Hamilton was, at the moment, entirely focused on Lex. "Are you even listening to me?" he said incredulously, looking as if he wanted to shake some sense into Lex but didn't quite dare. "We have a serious problem."

And in one of those blinding flashes of insight that tended to hit Clark every so often, it occurred to him that Hamilton knew Lex. Lex had told Clark he hadn't recognized the car in the driveway, but his body language had said otherwise. And here Hamilton was, coming to Lex to report a problem with his experiments on the meteor rocks, much like a trained lackey coming to ask for help from his employer.

Clark turned to Lex with wide eyes. "You lied to me."

When Lex turned to him, his expression was stricken. "Clark--"

Clark retreated backwards a step, hand tightening around the banister. "You knew, didn't you? Hamilton was working for you when he did those experiments on the Nicodemus flowers. Pete did see him here." He couldn't believe it. He felt suddenly as if someone had superimposed a new image over the one in front of him, so that the foyer looked the same as it had a moment ago but... wasn't.

Lex took a step toward him, holding out one hand in entreaty. "Clark, wait. You don't understand--"

"Damn it, Lex. He almost killed my father." And there was the sudden memory of facing down his dad in front of the bank, reaching for the muzzle of the gun, the earsplitting shock of it when it went off, thunder and fire hitting him square in the chest with a dozen burning needles of pain....

"Clark, please." There was something that almost looked like desperation in Lex's eyes now, so subtle that Clark didn't think anyone other than him would have been able to see it. And that was such an alien look for Lex, no pun intended. It made Clark recoil without really meaning to.

"You lied to me," he said again, unable to quite wrap his brain around the concept. Because sure, Lex could spin with the best of them, but it had never really occurred to Clark that he'd do it with him.

Another image, this time of his dad lying in a coma in that damned hospital bed, and his mother's face wet with tears where she sat beside him. Lex had been standing at his side out in the hall, offering support, being a friend, and swearing up and down that he had no idea what kind of research Dr. Hamilton had been working on....

And their relationship was just too damned new for him to handle this. Clark took another step backwards before turning and running upstairs. He snatched up his shirt from the bedroom floor and shrugged into it on his way to pick up his shoes, not even caring if he was acting like a jilted teenager at the moment.

"Clark!"

He could hear Lex on the stairs now, coming after him, but Clark just couldn't talk to him. Not like this. His hands were shaking, and he pressed them hard against his thighs to make them stop.

"I have to go, Lex." He didn't even stop when he passed by Lex at the top of the stairs. Ducking his head, he avoided Dr. Hamilton's gaze entirely on his way to the front door.

And then he was outside, and he had to fight the urge to break out into a full-speed run to get out of there. He could still feel Lex's hands on him from that morning, and the memory burned in him, jarring harshly with the memory of the strangely wounded eyes he'd seen Lex wear in the foyer just a few minutes ago. It was a dichotomy Clark just didn't have the brainpower to reconcile at the moment, and he shoved his hands deep into his pockets as he walked toward the front gate, hoping rather desperately that Lex wasn't going to follow him.

It looked like Lex was going to let him go, and he didn't know whether to feel relieved at that, or pissed off. Damn it. He still couldn't believe such an idyllic morning could have turned so quickly into a nightmare. His head was filled with images of the clubs they'd visited last night, bright lights and loud music and an unending array of people to gawk over, waving around the fake ID Lex had had made for him like a talisman to get him inside. Not that half the places had even asked to see it, once they'd seen who he was with. Because Lex had a past, didn't he? People in Metropolis knew who he was, knew what he was capable of, in a way that people in Smallville apparently didn't.

Your friend Lex isn't exactly on the side of the angels, Phelan had told him.

And maybe Clark just hadn't wanted to believe. Because Lex was his friend, wasn't he? His incredibly rich, incredibly cool, incredibly sexy friend who just also happened to be his boyfriend now. He'd even toyed with the idea of letting Lex in on some of his own secrets. Not the big ones, like the fact that he was from another planet, but maybe letting him know that he could do a few things normal Smallville teenagers couldn't. Because hell, Lex had already guessed almost all of them, hadn't he?

That thought seemed vaguely terrifying now. Because Lex had been doing experiments. On meteor rocks. And not only that, he'd lied about it. Clark shivered, wrapping his arms around himself as he walked even though he wasn't really feeling cold. Lex had said he'd stopped looking into the accident with the Porsche, too, and what if he was lying about that?

Oh, god.

Clark stopped suddenly, blinking up at the absurdly innocent-looking Kansas sky. The road around him was penned in on either side by endless rows of golden-tipped wheat, moving in the breeze like waves on the ocean. The sight was strangely disorienting, and he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get his bearings.

This wasn't just a schoolboy crush he had to worry about. He had a very real secret to protect, a secret that impacted on the lives of his family, and what would ever happen if anyone found out about it? He had a sudden image of being strapped to a lab table in some secret underground research facility, a la Alien Autopsy, and while he didn't honestly believe that would ever happen, he knew that any hope he had of a normal life would be over if the wrong people ever found out what he was.

And hadn't his dad been telling him for over a year now that Lex was The Wrong People? Luthors can't be trusted, he'd said. They're opportunistic and devious, and they only look out for themselves.

Clark had never even considered the possibility that he might be right, up until now.

Feeling suddenly depressed, he started walking again. He thought about Lex as he'd seen him that morning, eyes bright and filled with mischief, hands somehow soothing and maddening all at once as their bodies moved together beneath the sheets. He'd looked... happy, in a way that Clark had rarely seen in him before.

Clark's dad was wrong. He had to be. Even if Lex had lied about Dr. Hamilton's experiments on the meteor rocks.

Experiments that had killed people.

It was too much to think about right now. Taking a quick glance around to make sure there was no one to see him, Clark deliberately cut off any further thoughts and ran full out in the direction of home, reveling in the freedom of his utterly inhuman speed.

Whether he was running away from or to something, he didn't know.

"Dad, you're home." Clark looked up from the magazine he was reading on the kitchen table and smiled as his parents walked in through the front door. "Hi, Mom."

"Hi, honey." Martha gave him a quick kiss on the top of his head as she made her way past him to the counter. Apparently they'd stopped at the grocery store on their way home from Metropolis. "Did you have a nice weekend?"

"Yeah. It was great." And it had been, even if it had been rather dull. "You're back early."

"We decided to beat the afternoon traffic coming out of the city," Jonathan told him, setting the brown paper grocery bag he held down on the counter next to Martha's. He gave Clark a level look as he began to pull the food items out and set them aside. "I'm hoping there were no incidents like last year's while we were gone." His tone was only half-joking.

Clark felt his face heat at the memory of the fiasco he'd caused when his parents had been away for their anniversary the previous year. "Uh... no. No parties, Dad." He held up two fingers in a scout's salute. "Scout's honor."

"We didn't think you would," Martha assured him, giving Jonathan a reproachful glance.

Jonathan grunted. "We hoped not, anyway." But there was a sparkle in his eyes when he looked at Clark that told him the attitude was just for show. Mainly.

Clark grinned. "You know you wouldn't have left me here alone if you didn't trust me."

"Of course not." Martha apparently considered the subject closed, which Clark appreciated. "By the way, did you deliver that last box of produce over to the Luthor house last night like I asked you to?"

Clark looked up guiltily, pushing back from the table. "Ah, jeez. It completely slipped my mind. Sorry, Mom."

She shook her head bemusedly. "Better late than never, I guess."

But Clark was already moving out the door, reaching for his keys as he went. He skipped the last two steps down to the front sidewalk and jogged toward his truck where it was parked in front of the barn.

His truck. The thought still awed him, even after all this time. And how many other sixteen-year-olds had a brand new F-150 pickup truck to call their own? He still remembered the day he'd first laid eyes on it, wrapped up in a fancy white bow and left only with a single engraved card to indicate who it was from.

And for a moment he flashed back to what it had been like, laying eyes on Lex Luthor for the very first time. It had been terror and shock and exultation as the car hit him, realizing he should have been dead and he wasn't. It had not been a particularly auspicious meeting, but Lex had certainly not been shy about showing his gratitude to Clark for saving his life.

Clark smoothed a hand over the truck's steering wheel with a small smile as he pulled out of the driveway. Of course, his dad had been dead set against him accepting a gift from a Luthor for any reason, but Clark had eventually been able to wear him down. And that worked well for everyone concerned, didn't it, because Lex would have just found some other way to pay him back if he'd returned it the way his dad had wanted him to do. Lex Luthor didn't strike Clark as a man who liked leaving his debts unpaid.

Of course, they'd seen very little of each other after that. Sometimes Clark wondered what would have happened if he had given the truck back, if maybe they would have had more of a reason to see each other. If maybe they would have become friends, as unlikely as that seemed. Lex seemed awfully alone sometimes, living by himself in that huge castle at the edge of town. The Luthor ancestral mansion, Chloe had told him a while back, shipped stone by stone over from Scotland.

And what could Clark possibly have to offer in the way of friendship to someone like that?

Shaking his head bemusedly, he pulled in through the front gate of the mansion just as a dark sedan was pulling out. He let his eyes trail after it speculatively as he parked in front of the house. He'd always thought it was a mark of Lex's continued gratitude that he let him use the front entrance to make his deliveries, instead of making him drive all the way around to the back.

The door was answered by Lex's doorman, who let him in with a small nod of greeting. Lex was standing at the far end of the foyer, looking contemplative where he stood sipping at something inside a dark blue glass bottle. Clark didn't know what was in it, but he assumed it was something hideously expensive.

"Mr. Luthor," Clark said, shifting his grip on the crate of produce in his arms. "I'm sorry I didn't get these over to you last night like I was supposed to. My parents were out of town, and I forgot."

Lex turned toward him and smiled. "No harm done. And I've told you before, Clark -- you can call me Lex."

Although his tone was friendly, there was a small line between his brows that told Clark he was preoccupied with something. Turning to glance over his shoulder at the door, Clark asked, "Was that Dr. Hamilton who just left here?"

Lex shrugged, following his gaze with an indecipherable expression. "It wasn't anyone important." But the shadows never really left his eyes as he turned to lead the way to the kitchen.

Clark dropped off the crate on the floor next to the refrigerator for Lex's cook to deal with later and turned to go, feeling somewhat uncomfortable. He could tell that Lex was disturbed about something, but he didn't quite know how to word the question to ask him about it. Or even if he should.

Lex seemed to sense his curiosity, though, and turned toward him with a small half-smile on their way back to the foyer. "What's your opinion about parallel universes, Clark?"

Clark stared at him, wondering if this was one of those eccentricities that Chloe told him rich people had in abundance. "I'm not sure what you mean," he said after a moment, feeling his face heat. He couldn't help feeling a little intimidated around this man.

"Do you think they exist?" Lex seemed honestly curious.

"I'm... not sure."

Lex nodded as if this were a piece of uncontroversial wisdom. "Well, that's exactly the problem, now isn't it? Even if they do exist, there's no real way to prove it. Not definitively."

And Clark had heard somewhere that Lex had been enrolled in a graduate biochemistry program at Princeton before he'd come to Smallville. He was a scientist; maybe this was some kind of a mental exercise to help him while away the tedium of cornfields and crap factories?

"I suppose so." And since he didn't know what else to say to that, he asked, "Do you think they exist?"

Lex's gaze turned contemplative again, and that small line reappeared between his brows. "I don't know."

That seemed to mark the end of the conversation, and Clark left the castle with some degree of relief, feeling as if he'd been drowning in a conversation he didn't really understand.

Whatever else he might be, Lex Luthor was definitely more than a little odd.

Lex's heart was pounding as he moved to go after Clark, but he was pulled up short by Hamilton's hand on his arm. Furious, he turned and tried to wrench his arm away.

"I told you never to come here," he hissed, feeling a near-irresistible urge to do violence. To be honest, he'd never truly intended for Clark to find out about his involvement with Hamilton, but he'd certainly never intended for him to find out like this.

"That doesn't matter." Hamilton looked like he wanted to do some violence of his own. His fingers dug like claws into Lex's arms. "You need to listen to me. We. Have. A. Serious. Problem."

Lex drew in a deep breath and then let it out slowly, trying to force himself to calm. "What did you do this time?" he asked, shaking off Hamilton's hands.

Hamilton's eyes were wild, but he seemed a bit calmer now that Lex was actually paying attention to him. "I irradiated them. With a spectrum of radiation and light of intermittent wavelengths that are similar to those found in the sun. I wanted to know what effect, if any, our sunlight has on them."

Lex stared at him, feeling as if he were missing the punch line somehow. "And...?" he prompted, when Hamilton failed to continue.

"And they reacted." Hamilton's tone was ominous. When Lex failed to respond to this bit of news, he turned abruptly to start pacing across the room and explained, "I've been collecting evidence over the past few months that it's actually their reaction to our sun that's been causing all of the strange mutations around here. That's why all the official investigations never found anything." The sneer in his voice clearly said what he thought of official organizations such as OSHA and the like.

"And why is that?" Lex kept his tone dry, although he was starting to get curious despite himself.

Hamilton looked at him as if he was seriously wondering how Lex managed to tie his shoes in the mornings. "Because it's the sunlight that causes them to react," he said, as if this should be perfectly obvious. "All the experiments done on them so far have been conducted inside laboratories where they were stored in sealed containers, usually after enough time has elapsed for them to lose whatever built-up solar energy they'd managed to absorb. By the time anyone actually got around to doing any tests on them, they weren't anything more than hunks of green rock."

It made a strange kind of sense, Lex had to admit. "But you, in your bounteous wisdom, decided to apply sunlight to them directly." And suddenly it occurred to him just what Hamilton had so far failed to explain. "And they reacted... how?"

For the first time, Hamilton began to look uncertain. "What do you know about multiplicity theory?"

Lex blinked, feeling as if the conversation had just taken an abrupt ninety-degree turn without signaling first. "It's a branch of chaos theory, isn't it? Something about there being an infinite number of parallel universes...."

Hamilton was nodding now, looking pleased. "Yes, exactly. An infinite number of parallel universes, each representing an alternate branch of history. For every choice we make, there's another universe out there where we made the opposite choice, and history goes on from there. As a result, some universes would be so similar as to be nearly indistinguishable, but others would show varying degrees of differences from our own. The more divergent the timelines grow, the more dissimilar the universes would be."

Lex shook his head. "It's a nice theory, Doctor, but what does it have to do with anything?"

"Don't you understand?" Hamilton was getting frustrated again. "What the meteor rocks do is alter the fabric of space and time around them, creating... pockets of disturbance that sometimes have unexpected side effects."

"Like turning a teenage boy into one of the insects from his bug collection, or giving an old blind woman the ability to see the future." Lex could feel the skin between his brows beginning to furrow as he considered it. It made sense, damn it.

"Exactly. So far, the results have been rather mild due to the immense distance between us and the sun."

Lex felt a prickle of unease move through him. "Just how much sunlight did you irradiate them with?" he asked, feeling suddenly uncertain that he wanted to know the answer.

Hamilton's eyes were wide when he turned to look at him. "I used varying degrees of intensity. At the highest, I used about one million candles per square inch of solar energy."

Somehow, Lex didn't think that could be a very good thing, given the things Hamilton had just told him.

"And what happened?" he asked, letting his voice harden just a bit to let Hamilton know that any further avoidance of the issue would not go over very well at all.

"I'm not exactly sure." And now the uncertainty was back again, more pronounced this time. "At first, I didn't think anything had. But then, I began to notice... discrepancies."

"Like what?"

Hamilton shook his head, looking doubtful. "Nothing too profound, at first. An acid stain on my lab table was suddenly gone one morning, only to reappear a few hours later. My collection of pipettes was suddenly stored on the other side of the room, only when I turned around, they were back where I'd originally had them. Little things like that began happening all over the place, and I began to get suspicious."

Lex stared at him as if he'd gone mad. Which was a very real possibility, he couldn't help thinking. "Were you drinking at the time?"

Hamilton glared at him. "No, I was not drinking at the time. I think what's been happening is that the lab where I conducted the experiment is beginning to fluctuate between universes."

"Because of the meteor rocks."

"Yes. Because of the meteor rocks."

"And it's doing this why, exactly?"

Hamilton rubbed a hand over his eyes. "I'm thinking that if, in several adjacent universes, I conducted the exact same experiment in the exact same place at the exact same time, it could have had... consequences."

"And these consequences would be bad?" Lex hazarded to guess.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you." Hamilton sounded like he was trying to talk between gritted teeth, and had been for quite some time. "Our sunlight causes the meteor rocks to disrupt the fabric of space and time. If they were suddenly irradiated at parallel points in several closely adjoining universes, they might cause the walls between those universes to erode."

Lex forrowed his brow, trying very hard to understand what Hamilton was telling him. "Erode?"

Hamilton nodded. "That's what I think's been happening in my lab. And the effects are spreading."

There was something ominous about that statement that Lex didn't want to think about too hard at the moment. "So what does that mean?"

"It means that the universes are collapsing in on each other. Slowly, right now, but I think that's going to change. And once the convergence begins to gain speed, it could have a snowball effect that will start impacting on those universes where I didn't conduct the experiment. The entire multiverse is in danger of dissolving into..." -- he paused, apparently groping for a suitable word -- "chaos."

That certainly sounded dire. It also sounded like something out of a bad TV movie. Lex shook his head incredulously. "And you've come up with this theory because you misplaced a few pipettes?"

Hamilton glared at him. "You can believe what you want to, Lex, but you are not getting me anywhere near that lab again. And I don't care what you threaten me with."

He sounded like he meant it. Lex sighed. "All right, look. Why don't you take the rest of the weekend off. I'll have Enrique arrange to have a car take you to Metropolis; you can stay in my penthouse there until I figure this thing out. Okay?" At least then he'd know where Hamilton was, given how much trouble he always seemed to cause.

Indecision flickered for only a moment before Hamilton gave in. "All right. But I'm warning you, Lex. Stay away from Cadmus."

Lex nodded, trying out an encouraging smile. "I promise. Now why don't you go home and pack. I'll have the car pick you up in, say, an hour?"

The smile seemed to have its intended effect; Hamilton relaxed visibly as he turned to leave. "Make it forty-five minutes and you've got yourself a deal."

"Done." Lex watched him go with a feeling of unease slithering through him, and it was only when Hamilton was opening the door that another question occurred to him. "Assuming you're right and this convergence is happening, how would we go about turning it off?"

Hamilton paused with his hand on the doorknob. "I haven't a clue." He closed his eyes briefly before visibly collecting himself. "I'll be waiting for your car, Lex. Don't be late."

Then the door slammed shut behind him, and Lex was left standing alone in the middle of the foyer wondering at just what point his pleasant morning with Clark had gone to hell.

Clark finished his chores and was finally able to retreat upstairs to his loft in the barn, grateful for the chance to get away from his mother's well-meaning curiosity. His parents had come home earlier than he'd been expecting from Metropolis, and while he hadn't disobeyed their restriction not to have a party this year while they were gone, he still couldn't help feeling a little guilty for spending the night over at Lex's.

And of course his mother could always tell when there was something wrong with him, even when she didn't understand precisely what it was. Clark knew he must seem somewhat off to her after the incident with Dr. Hamilton, and that she wished he'd talk to her about whatever was bothering him. But what was he supposed to say, exactly? It's all right, Mom -- I just got into a bit of a fight with my boyfriend this morning. Oh, and by the way, my boyfriend just happens to be Lex.

No. That wouldn't go over very well at all. And so he suffered in silence, and pretended not to notice all the concerned glances she was casting in his direction. Which meant he was looking for even more opportunities than usual to be alone today, and he really wasn't in the mood to be alone at all.

Maybe he'd been too hard on Lex. Hell, he hadn't even given Lex the opportunity to explain anything. Maybe there'd been a perfectly logical reason why Dr. Hamilton would have shown up at his front door complaining about the results of his latest experiment, a reason that might have nothing whatsoever to do with Lex being his employer.

Even if Lex hadn't denied Clark's accusation that he'd been lying to him.

Clark sighed and stretched back on his couch, folding his arms in back of his head as he stared up at the bare rafters of the ceiling. He felt like he'd aged about twenty years over the past couple of months, but he supposed becoming involved in his first sexual relationship -- like ever -- would do that to a person.

He still couldn't decide if that was healthy or not, although he was pretty sure he'd know what his parents would say if he asked them. Something along the lines of how it was madness to ever become involved in a relationship with a Luthor, even worse that it was this particular kind of a relationship, and how Lex couldn't be trusted and was only looking out for himself, and was only attracted to the idea of corrupting Clark's innocence.

And Lex had corrupted his innocence, hadn't he?

Repeatedly.

The thought made Clark grin. Okay, so maybe there was something to be salvaged in this relationship after all, even if it was only the incredibly hot sex.

But seriously, there was something he got out of his relationship with Lex that he didn't find with anyone else, and it was more than just the obvious. He felt like he could be himself around Lex. Like when Lex looked at him, he didn't see a gawky teenager or an alien from another planet; he just saw Clark, pure and simple, without any expectations involved. It was... freeing, in a way.

And maybe it hadn't been fair to run out on Lex like that that morning. Clark chewed at his lower lip, mulling things over. His skin still crawled at the idea of Lex and Dr. Hamilton working together while his dad had been in the hospital, but the very least he could do was give Lex the chance to explain.

His decision made, he rolled to his feet and made his way down the stairs, hoping his parents were both out of the house at the moment. As luck would have it, he could hear them by the tractor in back of the barn, having one of their perennial arguments about whether to replace the parts that needed fixing or just buy a new tractor. Clark silently placed a bet on his dad again in this instance and trotted toward the house, ducking quietly inside and heading toward the phone.

He dialed Lex's private number from memory and sank back against the counter, keeping one eye on the door. It rang three times before Lex picked up.

"Lex Luthor," he said in his best professional tone.

Clark grinned, feeling ridiculously glad to hear his voice. "Lex, it's me. I wanted to call and apologize about this morning."

There were what sounded like a few moments' puzzled silence before Lex replied. "Clark? Is that you?"

"Yeah." Clark frowned slightly. "You're not mad about this morning, are you?"

Another moment of weighing silence, and the hairs along the back of Clark's neck were starting to prickle now. "How did you get this number?"

Clark smiled slightly, wondering if this was Lex's idea of a joke. "You gave it to me. Remember? You said I could call you any time, day or night?" He cast another nervous glance toward the door, wondering how long his parents would be. "Look, I can't talk long. I just wanted to call and say I'm sorry for running out on you this morning. It was just kind of a shock to see Dr. Hamilton there, and I thought maybe you had something to do with that whole Nicodemus thing last year." He paused. "You didn't, did you?"

"Of course not, Clark." The certainty in Lex's voice was comforting. He sounded... smooth. "Look, why don't you meet me at the Talon, and we can talk more about it there? Okay?"

"Uh... sure." Clark supposed it would be easier to meet there than at the castle. Maybe. "I can be there in about a half hour."

"I'll see you there, then." The line disconnected with a soft click.

Clark stood staring down at the phone in his hand, wondering just when he'd fallen into the Twilight Zone. Maybe Lex was still mad at him for running out on him this morning. The thought was disturbing.

But he wasn't going to be able to do anything about it standing here. Hanging up the phone, he reached for his sweater on the hook by the door and turned to leave.

Lex stared down at the phone on his desk with a worried frown, replaying the conversation he'd just had over in his mind. Clark Kent had just called him -- on his personal line, no less -- to accuse him of working with Dr. Hamilton during the Nicodemus fiasco last year.

No one had ever suspected his involvement, as far as he'd known. The thought that he might have been wrong was... disturbing, to say the least. Not that he'd actually done anything wrong; Dr. Hamilton had acted without his knowledge, and Lex's only role had been to try to pick up the broken pieces before things got even more out of hand. But... still.

What else did Clark know?

Decisively, he reached out to turn off his computer and stood up, reaching for the jacket on the back of his chair. He went to fetch the Ferrari out of the garage and immediately started in the direction of downtown Smallville, such as it was.

The Talon was crowded this afternoon, but Lex was able to find a table near the back. He sat down and ordered a cappuccino when the waitress approached him, and settled back anxiously to wait.

It was nearly an hour and a half later when Clark walked in the door, accompanied by two of his friends from school. Chloe and Pete, Lex identified after a moment's consideration, and maybe it was just a coincidence that the Ross boy had been one of the ones infected by the Nicodemus pollen last year. Dr. Hamilton had assured him that once the effects of the pollen had worn off, there would be no recollection of what had transpired under its influence, but... maybe. Maybe.

He stood up to greet Clark and his friends, deliberately choosing not to react to the fact that Clark was over an hour late in meeting him. He watched their reactions carefully, seeing the expected flare of dislike in Pete's eyes, but there was no sign that he recognized Lex as anyone other than the son of the man who had cheated his family out of their creamed corn factory more than ten years ago.

"Mr. Luthor." Clark gave him a vaguely puzzled-looking smile, shifting his grip on the sweater he held in his hands. Apparently it was too warm outside to wear it this late in the day. "It's good to see you again."

Lex narrowed his eyes, not feeling much in the mood for any kind of games. He forced his smile to broaden slightly. "Would you mind sitting with me a moment so I can talk to you?"

"Uh... no. I mean, sure." Clark glanced over his shoulder at Chloe, who shrugged. Pete looked sullen, and Lex flashed him a tight smile as he turned to lead Clark back to his table.

Clark sat down and met his gaze hesitantly. "Look, I'm really sorry about not bringing you the produce last night when I was supposed to...."

Lex almost laughed aloud. "That's not what I wanted to talk to you about." This situation was becoming more and more bizarre. He leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on the table. "Look, Clark. You called me just a couple of hours ago, and you said some pretty disturbing things. I just wanted to make sure the air was clear between us."

Clark's eyes widened perceptibly. "I called you?" he said incredulously.

Lex nodded, frowning. "Yes. You did."

But Clark was shaking his head now. "I'm sorry, Mr. Luthor -- I mean, Lex -- but it wasn't me. Honest."

Lex's frown deepened. "I was there, Clark. It was you." He rubbed a hand over his forehead, sighing. "You came to my house this morning, right? And you saw Dr. Hamilton there?"

"Well, I think so." Clark looked uncertain. "His car was just leaving when I got there. I didn't even know he was in Smallville anymore, not since those flowers he was experimenting on with the meteor rocks started getting everybody sick last year." And now his gaze was turning speculative, which wasn't what Lex wanted at all.

"But you called me about it. And I told you I'd meet you here." Lex was beginning to have the maddening sensation that they were having two entirely different conversations.

Clark shook his head again, looking startled. "Chloe and I were just over at Pete's playing basketball, and we decided to come in to get some drinks. I was surprised to see you here. You were waiting for me?"

There was an innocence in his eyes that shook Lex deeply. He'd never met anyone so completely guileless before, and he wasn't quite sure how to handle it. He wished suddenly that he'd taken the time to get to know Clark better over the past year and a half, but after giving him the truck as reward for saving his life, he'd spent little time thinking about the boy who'd been his savior. And even that hadn't left much of an impression on Lex, now had it? Another near-death experience averted, another debt repaid. The thought was vaguely depressing.

And how had he ever believed that Clark could be Machiavellian enough to come up with this kind of duplicity? It just wasn't in his nature.

"I apologize, Clark. It was my mistake, obviously." Lex watched as Clark's shoulders sagged in obvious relief that the interview was over; the kid couldn't hide an emotion to save his life. "You go on and have fun with your friends."

Clark gave him one of those blinding smiles that he remembered from the edge of the lake that day. "It's no problem, Mr. Luthor -- er, I mean Lex. I hope you find out who it was that called you."

Lex watched him go, wondering why his unease only seemed to deepen as Clark's tall form disappeared into the crowd. Then it occurred to him that he still had no idea who had called him. It had sounded like Clark, and seemed to agree when Lex assumed it was Clark. He'd mentioned coming over to see him that morning, and seeing Dr. Hamilton....

Dr. Hamilton.

Goddamn.

Lex sat forward in his chair, stung by a sudden burst of adrenaline as the pieces fell into place. He had talked to Clark, only it obviously hadn't been his Clark. Which meant that crazy old bastard had actually done what he'd said he'd done, and the meteor rocks out at Cadmus Labs had created a rift between two parallel universes.

Two? Or more?

Lex's hands were sweating now, and he pressed them against his thighs absently. If Hamilton was right, then there was another Clark out there who apparently knew about his experiments on the meteor rocks. Knowledge like that could ruin Lex's reputation in this town, which was really the only thing he had going for him in the endless war he seemed to be waging against his father.

Another Clark. Another Dr. Hamilton.

Another... Lex.

For some reason, that was the most disturbing thought of all.

Because if the other Clark knew some of the things he'd done, then it was a sure bet the other Lex knew all of them. And Lex believed firmly that the very worst enemy he could ever hope to have in this world would be himself.

This was going to require some serious thinking.

Casting a last glance in the direction Clark had gone, he stood up and made his way outside to his car.

Enrique answered the door almost as soon as Clark rang the bell, and smiled a subdued greeting.

"Is Lex here?" Clark asked, knowing his voice was terse but not really caring at the moment.

"He's at his computer," Enrique said, with a discreet nod in the direction of the den. "I think he'd welcome a distraction at the moment."

Clark found him right where Enrique had said he would be, sitting bathed in the disturbingly bloody light that streamed in through the stained glass windows behind him. Lex looked up in surprise when Clark came into the room and immediately pushed back away from his desk, looking relieved.

"Clark," he said, coming around the desk toward him. "I tried calling you at home, but your mother said you'd gone out. I was hoping you'd come by today."

Clark was a bit taken aback by the earnest greeting, but he refused to be sidetracked. "I waited at the Talon for over two hours, Lex. If you didn't want to see me, all you had to do was say so."

What followed was one of those interminable moments where neither side of the conversation seemed to understand quite what the other was saying. It was a feeling Clark was familiar with from the occasional arguments he had with his parents, but it wasn't something he'd ever really experienced with Lex before.

"You were at the Talon?" Lex said after a moment, as if he were waiting for Clark to elaborate further.

"Yes." And Clark didn't really know what to say after that, because Lex was looking at him like he didn't know what he was talking about. "You said you were going to meet me there, remember?"

"Why would I say I was going to meet with you at the Talon?"

"I don't know. It was your idea." Clark was starting to get frustrated now. Which was a huge step ahead of feeling pissed off like he'd been when he'd gotten here, but still.

"My idea?" One of Lex's eyebrows rose sharply.

"Yes. Your idea." Clark took a deep breath and decided to start over. "It was when I called you earlier this afternoon to apologize for running off."

Several emotions flickered in sequence over Lex's face then, too quickly to decipher. Finally, the thought he seemed to focus on was, "You called to apologize?"

Clark nodded slowly. "For running off this morning. You do remember that, don't you?"

"Vividly." Lex looked relieved. "I was afraid you weren't going to come back."

"Well, I did." This just wasn't making any sense at all. "You really don't remember me calling you?"

"No. Are you sure you had the right number?"

"Yes, Lex. It was you. I'd swear it was. You promised me you didn't have anything to do with Dr. Hamilton and the Nicodemus poisoning last year, and then you told me you'd meet me at the Talon."

Something ugly chased across Lex's features, so quickly Clark almost might have been able to believe he'd imagined it. "I told you what?" he said, sounding choked.

Clark stared at him, feeling an uncomfortable suspicion begin to tighten inside his stomach. "That you didn't have anything to do with Dr. Hamilton. That is true, isn't it, Lex? That's why I ran out this morning, you know. I thought you'd lied to me about not knowing what'd happened to my dad when he was in the hospital."

Lex continued to just stand there and look at him, not saying anything, and the suspicion Clark felt shifted abruptly into anger.

"You didn't know what was going on then, did you, Lex?" he asked quietly.

Lex shook his head, slowly, but it didn't seem to be in denial. "Clark, you have to believe I didn't plan to have anything happen to your father. Or Lana, or Pete, or... any of them."

Clark stared, feeling as if his stomach was trying to drop out of his body. "Lex...?"

That stricken look was back on Lex's face again. He seemed to be waging some kind of internal battle, but all he finally said was, "I've never wanted to hurt you, Clark. You or your family. You have to believe me."

Which was just no kind of answer at all. Yet in a way, it was. Clark felt something hard and cold fall down over his eyes, and saw Lex almost visibly recoil from it.

"You did lie to me." Was that his voice? "You stood next to me while my father was dying and you... lied to me. About all of it."

"There was nothing I could do for him." Lex lifted a hand like he wanted to touch Clark's arm, then dropped it again as if he wasn't quite sure how Clark would react to being touched at the moment. "I had it all under control. We were working on finding a cure...."

"You were lucky, Lex." He was raising his voice now, and he clenched his fists at his sides to stop it. "You knew what'd poisoned him. If you'd told us, the whole hospital could have been looking for the cure. It's just dumb luck that you found it on your own before he... before he...." He shook his head, chasing the thought away. "If you'd told us, maybe that truck driver my dad rescued wouldn't have died. Did you ever think of that?"

Lex closed his eyes. "I wanted to help him. I did everything I could, Clark."

"Except trust me." And that sounded a little too close to blasphemy coming from him, but god, his secrets had never killed anybody. "Just why did you decide to start sleeping with me, Lex?"

Judging by the sudden startlement in Lex's eyes, he hadn't been expecting the question. And this wasn't really something they'd ever talked about, now was it? They'd just sort of fallen into bed together that first time, and it had been good, and they'd just kind of gone on from there. For all Clark knew, it had only been a fling to Lex, and he had lovers stashed away in every major city in the world.

"Clark." There was a note in Lex's voice now that almost sounded like fear. "I haven't been using you. I... like you. A lot. Maybe more than I should." He turned away abruptly and paced to the wet bar in the corner, where he poured himself a shot of something rich and amber-looking. He cradled the glass in both hands for a moment before taking a drink and turning around.

The alcohol seemed to give him the courage he'd been lacking, because he looked Clark right in the eye and said, "Dr. Hamilton was working for me when he did his experiments on the Nicodemus flowers. I'd hired him to do some tests on the meteor rocks, and he got a little... creative with the money I'd given him." He frowned sharply, as if this was still a sore spot between them. "I should have been supervising him more closely; believe me, that's a mistake that's been rectified since then." He looked suddenly uncertain, and there was a look in his eyes which somehow managed to suggest that something very strange was occurring to him. "Or at least I thought it had."

A moment later, he seemed to shake off the mood. "But yes, I lied to you, Clark. And no, I shouldn't have." Clark got the impression he hadn't said those words to very many people in his lifetime. "It honestly seemed like the only thing I could do at the time. But if I really wanted to deceive you, I would have lied to you about it again right now, come up with some plausible explanation for why Hamilton came here this morning." His eyes were strangely earnest, although his expression hadn't changed. "You know I could have done it if I'd wanted to."

And that was... true. Clark felt himself start to relax slightly for the first time since he'd seen Hamilton's car outside Lex's window that morning.

But it did bring up another question that had been bothering him. "So why did Hamilton come here this morning?"

Lex gave a slightly self-deprecating smile. "You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Clark smiled tightly. "Try me."

Lex hesitated a moment longer, as if he was seriously considering holding the information back, but then he seemed to give a kind of internal shrug and said, "He told me his latest experiment on the meteor rocks ripped open a hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum, so that a neighboring parallel universe has started leaking through into ours. Or else we're starting to leak through into theirs; he wasn't entirely clear on that."

Clark stared at him for a moment before responding. "Have you had him checked out recently for, ah, recreational pharmaceuticals?"

Lex laughed shortly. "Actually, yes. All employees of LuthorCorp have to undergo regular substance abuse examinations, and my personal employees are no exception. He did seem rather adamant about it, though."

"So do you believe him?"

He'd really expected Lex to just laugh it off, but instead, Clark was surprised to see a trace of uncertainty flicker across his eyes. "I'm not sure."

Clark was incredulous. "You're not serious?"

Lex shrugged, turning to look at the window. "I've seen a lot of strange things since I came to live here in Smallville, Clark. I've learned not to dismiss anything out of hand."

Clark thought about that for a moment. Lex had a point, and he didn't even know half the weird things that went on here. And if Chloe's theory was right (as they usually were), it was all due to the meteor rocks.

"So what does that mean?" he asked, feeling a tingle of apprehension move through him. "What's going to happen?"

"I don't know." Lex looked at him levelly over the edge of his glass. "I think Hamilton was trying to insinuate something about the walls between the universes collapsing in on each other, until the 'entire multiverse dissolved into chaos.' That's a direct quote, if I'm not mistaken." He took another sip of his drink.

Clark frowned. "That sounds... not entirely good, Lex."

"Yeah." And for the first time, Clark saw the fear lurking in the back of Lex's eyes. "Just who do you think you talked to on the phone this morning, Clark?"

It took a moment for the import of the question to register. Clark refused to admit just how much it disturbed him. "So what are you saying? I accidentally called your number in a parallel dimension? That's crazy, Lex."

Lex's sudden smile was sharp-edged. "Yes, it is. You want a drink?"

Clark stared at him, not quite certain what he was supposed to say to that. Assuming it hadn't been Lex he'd talked to earlier -- and Lex seemed pretty damn sure that it hadn't been -- then it did give some degree of credence to Hamilton's theory. Not much, of course, but it was enough to get Clark thinking.

"Sure. Why not?" He blotted his suddenly damp palms against the front of his jeans.

He had a feeling that before too much longer, he was going to be needing one.

Martha sat down at the kitchen table in her small apartment and closed her eyes as tightly as she could, trying to erase the image she'd seen in the market square that morning.

It wasn't like she'd asked much out of her life. After her husband had died in the meteor shower thirteen years ago, she'd done her best to make the best of things for herself and her son. Her exceptionally innocent, impressionable, unusual son, and who could blame her if she felt so very protective of him? He was only sixteen years old, for god's sake.

She loved Clark dearly. Always had, from the moment she'd first seen him standing out there in that field, so young and needful, without anyone to care for him. After the first wild grief at Jonathan's death had passed, he'd been all she had to cling to, and she liked to think she'd done all right by him.

And perhaps she'd have been able to convince herself that was true, if it hadn't been for Lex Luthor.

Just thinking his name was enough to make her hand curl into a fist on the top of the table in front of her, and the image from that morning came back again, even more vividly than before. Lex Luthor and her son, visiting the town market together. Which was bullshit, because what possible reason could Lex Luthor have for visiting the lower class except to show off his hold over her son?

A part of her believed he lived for the idea of flaunting it over her, which probably wasn't too far from the truth. Because she'd been one of his most vocal opponents, hadn't she, when he first started building his monopoly over the businesses in town. It must be a kind of double triumph, to have succeeded in taking her son away from her.

She could still remember Clark's eyes when she'd gone up to him that morning. He'd looked stricken, as if he knew full well why Lex had brought him there, and didn't like it one bit. But he hadn't raised a word of objection, had he, when Lex walked up beside him and touched a hand to his waist.

Of course the entire town knew about Lex's relationship with Clark, but whether they approved or not, the Luthors were powerful people. And so everyone seemed willing to just look the other way, and pretend they didn't see.

But Martha saw. Martha knew.

And Lex damn well knew it.

Lex's lip had had its habitual curl that morning, as if he'd caught the world in the act of telling a joke only he understood the punch line to. His eyes had been bright with something that wasn't quite pleasure when he turned to look at her.

"Ah, Mrs. Kent." He'd been obnoxiously polite, as always. "How are you this morning?"

She couldn't quite remember what she'd said to answer him, but whatever it was, it had made him smile.

Clark had had feelings for Lex for over a year now, and Martha knew Lex was taking full advantage of her son's devotion. She wished suddenly that she'd been able to raise him to be stronger, to guard his secret more zealously. It was times like these that she truly missed Jonathan, and wished he'd been there to help her raise Clark. Because she was strong, but she was also soft-hearted. She'd taught Clark how to trust, how to be loyal and trustworthy and honest and good, but perhaps he'd needed other teaching as well that she hadn't been able to provide on her own.

And in the end, Clark had chosen to live at the castle with Lex, ignoring her pleas to let the relationship end. For that reason alone, she was willing to hate Lex, but she hated him even more for using her son, for using his powers. For turning him into his... whore.

She'd been able to see the edge of the collar beneath the top of Clark's expensive shirt at the market that morning, glinting brightly in the light as if it were mocking her.

And there had been triumph in Lex's eyes when Clark stayed by his side instead of going to her. Because of course he believed he'd won. He'd managed to secure his own personal alien slave, bound to him by some twisted perversion of love. Martha had no weapons to raise against that -- and god knew she'd been trying for months now.

She'd seen the regret in Clark's eyes when he turned to go. Because she was still asking him to choose between them, even if she didn't vocalize it anymore, and his choice had already been made.

Forcing the images out of her mind, Martha dropped her head down onto her folded arms and cried.

~ * ~

"I really don't like it when you do that, Lex."

Clark sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled off his shirt in one smooth motion, tossing it aside onto the floor. Seeing his mother was always hard ever since he'd left home, and it didn't help when Lex insisted on acting so... Lex-like around her.

"When I do what?" Lex asked innocently, running a casual hand through Clark's hair as he stepped up between his spread thighs in front of the bed. Clark shivered under the caress -- as he always did -- and wrapped his arms around Lex's waist, burying his face against his stomach.

"You know what I mean. It hurts her when you rub it in like that."

"You did choose me, Clark. She just hasn't gotten used to the idea yet."

Clark frowned. Sometimes it seemed like Lex just didn't understand normal human emotions. Life was war to him, laid out in an endless array of wins and losses, and he was determined to come out the victor no matter what the cost. Like there was some impersonal referee keeping a tally out there somewhere, and whoever ended up with the most points at the end of the game would win.

That attitude had only increased since Lex's father died last year. It had been during that terrible storm that had hit during the spring formal, and the twisters had touched down at the edges of Smallville. Clark's mom had always been suspicious of the circumstances of Lionel's death, even though Clark had assured her that Lex could never have done the things she seemed to be implying. Lionel's death had been an accident. Even the ME agreed it couldn't have been anything else.

Pushing the unpleasant thoughts away, Clark breathed in deeply, inhaling the scent of crisp cotton and, underneath, the subtle musk of Lex's skin. It was a good smell, a familiar smell, and he let it push away the memories of his mother's face that morning.

"Ah, Clark." Lex's voice was low and affectionate, the one he only used when they were here alone together. "You worry far too much."

"One of us has to." Clark bit lightly at Lex's stomach and smiled when the muscles there jumped.

"You, my pet, are getting far too willful lately." There was amusement in Lex's voice. He ran a thumb over the collar at the back of Clark's neck, raising gooseflesh against Clark's skin. "I hope you're not forgetting who you belong to."

The collar was a thin rounded band of pure platinum, with a single two carat diamond fitted into the front at his throat. Lex had had it made especially for Clark, nearly two months ago. Clark still remembered the night Lex had put it on him, and the memory never failed to make him shiver.

"You," he whispered, and there was a strange kind of thrill in the affirmation.

Lex's fingers slid into his hair again, pulling back firmly until Clark looked up at him. "Don't you forget it," he said, and there was an edge to his voice now that made Clark instantly, painfully hard.

He pushed Clark back against the bed, and Clark went willingly, letting Lex's body cover him. Lex reached for his wrists and held them down against the coverlet over his head, and Clark shifted slightly in anticipation, feeling almost unbearably aroused by the possessiveness of the touch. They both knew he was strong enough to break the grip with ease, just as they both knew perfectly well that he wouldn't.

When Lex kissed him, Clark opened his mouth to it eagerly, thrusting up against the heat of Lex's body. It was times like these when all the little doubts and uncertainties fell away, as if they'd never been. Because while Lex might never actually use the word "love", his body spoke a language all its own.

Clark moaned slightly when Lex pulled away, and Lex chuckled, smiling down at him in a rare unguarded moment of what looked like pure contentment. Lex didn't get to be happy very often; it was one of the things that frustrated Clark to no end. He'd made it one of his life's missions to make sure Lex took time for himself every now and then, to take his mind away from all those many battles he seemed to constantly be waging.

"You really are something else," Lex said contemplatively, fingering a lock of hair that had fallen down over Clark's forehead.

Clark tipped his head up, trying to kiss Lex's fingers. "Only for you." And then, because he couldn't quite help himself, "Tell me you're going to try to start getting along with my mom. Please?"

Lex snorted lightly. "She hates me, Clark. She'd destroy me if she could."

"That's not true--"

"I'm fucking her baby boy." The crudity of the assessment made Clark wince. "And as if that weren't enough, I know about your secret. She must think I'm the antichrist at this point."

Clark couldn't keep the sullenness from his voice when he said, "You don't really go out of your way to make her think otherwise, do you?"

Lex grinned. "Believe me, Clark, if there were a way to turn us into one big happy family, I would." He gave Clark's wrists one last squeeze and rolled off of him, rising smoothly to his feet. "I have to go make a phone call before it gets too much later. Stay here in bed and wait for me."

Clark frowned slightly. "Does that have something to do with Dr. Hamilton's visit this morning?"

A shadow seemed to fall down over Lex's eyes at the question, and Clark could see him struggling with the decision of whether or not to answer. As CEO of the recently renamed LexCorp, there were a great number of secrets he didn't feel Clark should be privy to.

Apparently this wasn't one of them. "Yes," he said, and now the shadow seemed to have crept into his voice as well. Something about that meeting had bothered him deeply, although he hadn't explained to Clark yet just what it was Dr. Hamilton had said. "Apparently there's some kind of problem down at Cadmus Labs. I sent someone down to look into it, but I haven't heard back from him yet."

"Is it serious?" Clark couldn't help the reflexive shiver of fear that moved through him; Cadmus Labs was the place where Dr. Hamilton had been doing experiments on the meteor rocks for Lex.

The smile Lex gave him couldn't quite banish the uncertainty in his eyes. "Probably not," he said, but he used his business voice when he said it. The one Clark had learned not to trust.

Clark watched him go, feeling his unease deepen. Lex was worried. Maybe no one else could have seen it, but Clark did, and the knowledge frightened him.

But Lex had told him to wait here. Stifling a sigh, he shimmied back further onto the bed and let his head fall back onto the pillow.

If there was anything really serious going on, Lex would tell him later.

~ * ~

Martha slowly lifted her head from the table and wiped the tears from her eyes, blinking in the heavily slanting light that fell in through the kitchen window. Sitting here feeling sorry for herself and for Clark wasn't going to accomplish one damn thing. Not when that monster had him out at the castle right now, doing god knew what to him.

She knew perfectly well that Lex was amused by the idea of having Clark at his beck and call, by having Clark's powers to help him secure the financial empire his father had left behind. But that wasn't going to last forever, and when the novelty wore off, his use for Clark would be over.

And what then? At best, Clark would be tossed out on the street to nurse his broken heart alone. But at worst....

At worst....

Lex had been a scientist before he became involved in his family's business. Surely there was some small part of him that wanted to know. Because Clark was an alien, a visitor from another planet, and Lex had to be curious about that, had to want to understand why.

Martha had a sudden vision of Clark strapped down to a lab table with those damned meteor rocks arranged around the room to make him weak, suffering through unspeakable tortures to satisfy Lex's scientific curiosity. Because Lex knew Clark's weakness now, didn't he? He knew how to control him, to own him, in every sense of the word. The worst part of it was, Martha almost believed Clark might be willing to climb onto that table voluntarily, simply because Lex asked him to.

No. Not in her lifetime.

Feeling strangely calm, she pushed back from the table and stood up to fetch her coat. It seemed obvious to her that there was only one way she'd be able to free her son from the hold Lex had over him.

She was going to have to kill Lex Luthor.

Lex hung up the phone with a small frown and ran a hand back over his head, trying not to notice the cold ball of anxiety that was beginning to form deep inside him. Ever since his meeting with Clark at the Talon that morning, he'd been on the lookout for any further evidence of odd phenomenon, and the constant vigilance was wearing on him.

He'd sent one of his security people out to Cadmus after hearing Hamilton's story that morning, but hadn't heard anything back from him yet. He'd just tried calling the man's cell phone to find out why he hadn't checked in, only to find that the call wouldn't go through.

It was hardly conclusive evidence, but it was... curious.

He sighed heavily as he made his way upstairs, wondering just what the hell he was supposed to do. It was insanity to even consider that Hamilton's claims might be true, but this was Smallville. It would be a lie to say that stranger things had happened, but not by much.

He pulled open the button at his collar as he made his way into his bedroom suite upstairs, thinking that what he really needed right now was a nice, hot shower. Something to ease the aches of the day's stresses away, and help him get some kind of a clear perspective on things.

He was already moving to hang his shirt up in the wardrobe against the far wall when he noticed that there was someone in his bed.

For a moment, he couldn't even think past that rather unexpected revelation, but then his shock managed to double when he recognized just who was lying there.

It was Clark, dressed in tailored dark slacks and not much else, dozing on his back in the middle of the bed as if he owned it. His tousled hair looked somewhat longer than Lex remembered from that morning, but what really drew Lex's eyes was the thin silver collar fastened around his neck.

He squeezed his eyes shut hard, wondering if the vision would still be there when he opened them again.

It was.

Clark seemed to sense that Lex had come into the room, because he opened his eyes and smiled sleepily, rolling onto his side to face him. The bare skin of his chest looked flushed against the paleness of the coverlet, and Lex couldn't help but stare as Clark propped his head up on one hand, reaching down to finger at the front button of his slacks with the other.

"Sorry," Clark said with a small smile that seemed disturbingly intimate to Lex. "Didn't mean to doze off like that. I think you wore me out last night."

Lex took a slow step backward, feeling his mouth go dry. This had to be another phenomenon of Hamilton's experiment -- only like Hamilton had said, the effects of it were spreading. Clark... from an alternate reality? A parallel reality?

Waiting for him in his bed?

The not-Clark continued to look at him, only now a puzzled line was beginning to form between his brows. "Is everything all right, Lex? How are things out at Cadmus?"

The question made Lex stiffen involuntarily. This Clark apparently knew about Cadmus, too. Maybe he was the one who'd called him on the phone that morning? Did he even realize that he wasn't where he was supposed to be? Or.... Lex looked around with a growing sense of horror. Or was he the one who wasn't where he was supposed to be?

"Wait here," he said, rather proud of the fact that he was able to get the words out at all. His heart was pounding. Clark still looked puzzled, but he nodded agreeably enough.

Lex retreated back out into the hall and made his way to his desk in the den downstairs. His hands were shaking when he pulled the left-hand drawer open and reached for the small handgun he kept inside.

He didn't understand what was going on, but he'd be damned if he was just going to stand around waiting for it to happen. That strangely slutty version of Clark was the only link he had to any of it, and Lex would do what he had to in order to find out what he knew. He almost ran on his way back upstairs.

He didn't know if he was disappointed or relieved when he got back to his bedroom and found that it was empty again.

Lex rubbed a hand over the back of his neck as he made his way back into his bedroom, trying to dispel the growing feeling of uneasiness that was trying to crawl through him. The security guard he'd sent out to Cadmus hadn't answered on his cell phone, and Lex was trying very hard not to think that might have something to do with the strange disturbances Hamilton had told him about that morning.

Clark was watching the doorway when he walked into the room, looking somewhat bewildered. Lex stopped mid-stride and grinned slightly, enjoying the sight of a half-naked Clark lounging on his bed. "You look like you've seen a ghost," he said teasingly.

If anything, the puzzlement in Clark's expression only deepened. "You just left here," he said, sounding as if he was trying very hard to remain calm, "about two seconds ago. And you were wearing a different shirt."

Lex continued to grin, waiting for the punch line, but after a moment it occurred to him that Clark was dead serious. Feeling a sudden prickle along the back of his neck, he turned to look over his shoulder at the lengthening shadows in the hall. "I'm the only one here, Clark."

Clark scrambled up and sat cross-legged, tightening his hands over his knees. He was starting to look worried now. "Damn it, Lex, I saw you. You told me to wait here, and then you left. And almost immediately, you came back in again."

"Only I was wearing a different shirt."

"Yes." Clark ran a hand through his hair, looking up at him with wide eyes. "I know it sounds crazy, but I swear it happened. And I almost didn't think... didn't think you recognized me at all that other time."

Lex was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this. He walked forward to stand in front of the window, looking out at the clouds gathering near the horizon. If he wasn't mistaken, they were going to have rain by morning.

The effects are spreading, Hamilton had told him.

Making up his mind abruptly, he turned and went to sit on the bed next to Clark, reaching out to run his fingers over the diamond on the collar at his neck.

"I want you to tell me everything," he said. "Everything you can remember about the other me."

Lex looked up at the light streaming in through the stained glass window of his den and thought it looked uncomfortably gothic for his current state of mind. Behind him, Clark was pacing across the room, drink in hand, still apparently trying to come to terms with the fact that reality as they knew it might be in the process of dissolving around them.

And just who had Clark spoken to on the phone that morning? Was there really such a thing as parallel universes? Lex was having an admittedly difficult time wrapping his brain around the concept, but like he'd said to Clark earlier, he wasn't prepared to dismiss anything out of hand.

What really bothered him was that he still didn't know how Clark felt about the fact that he'd lied to him about Hamilton. That morning when Clark had run out on him, it had felt like someone had ripped his heart out and thrown it away, and he still wasn't quite sure how to deal with that. Clark had become extremely important to him in an extremely short amount of time, and Lex wasn't used to that at all. Usually his affairs were short and rather one-sided, and involved such wholesome family values as greed, deception, and manipulation, with a healthy amount of lust thrown in for good measure.

The lust, they seemed to have in abundance. But as for the rest of it....

Lex didn't know what to make of Clark. Heaven knew there weren't many people Lex would honestly call friends in his life, and none that he would venture to trust after only a year or so of acquaintance. Trust was a privilege that had to be earned in Lex's world, and he was still getting used to the idea that Clark handed it out so readily.

But that was the crux of their current problem, now wasn't it? Clark had trusted him, without reservation, and Lex had let him down. Not that Lex believed Clark was being honest with him in all areas of his life -- far from it -- but then, why should he be? Clark didn't owe him anything, even if Lex's natural curiosity had a hard time containing itself around him sometimes.

Of course, Lex had found a way to go and make it personal. Because this wasn't about individual boundaries anymore; Clark was right about that much. Lex's decision to keep his knowledge about the Nicodemus flowers secret had almost had disastrous consequences -- and had, for some poor anonymous schmuck who'd managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Normally that wouldn't have bothered Lex overly much; he'd learned a long time ago not to hold himself responsible for the vagaries of fate. But now, he was beginning to think that Clark's conscience was rubbing off on him.

It was disturbing, to say the least. A part of him wanted to recoil from the very idea of it, just run off to Metropolis and lose himself for the rest of the weekend in something truly amoral that involved rather unhealthy doses of drugs, alcohol, and kinky anonymous sex. But the greater part of him -- the part that had felt physically wounded when Clark ran away that morning -- wanted to get down on his knees and thank whatever gods existed that Hamilton's little faux pas with the pandimensional universes had distracted Clark enough from Lex's betrayal that he'd been willing to return.

Because Clark couldn't leave him. That was unthinkable.

And as luck would have it, before he had to think about that assertion too deeply, he was diverted by the sound of the front doorbell ringing.

Clark glanced at him sharply, but Lex only shrugged and set his drink down on the edge of his desk. "I have no idea," he said, answering the unspoken question. "I'll go see who it is."

Enrique was already on his way to answer the door when Lex got to the foyer, and Lex waved him away, indicating that he'd get it. For all he knew, there would be some multi-tentacled alien from some really divergent universe standing on their doorstep, and there was no sense in unnecessarily frightening the hired help.

It was almost more of a shock to open the door and see Clark.

Lex stood frozen with his hand on the doorknob, feeling his heart seize inside his chest. Up until this very moment, he hadn't seriously considered the possibility that Hamilton's assertions were correct. Theories about parallel universes were all very well and good, but without proof they were just that -- theories. And Lex had always been more of a hard science kind of guy.

But there was little denying the fact that he'd just left Clark standing in the other room, and now he was standing right in front of him. Wearing red flannel instead of blue, but otherwise looking very much the same.

Lex blinked. "Uh... hello?"

Clark ducked his head and smiled shyly at him. "I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Luthor. It's just that I was kind of worried about you after seeing you at the Talon this morning, and I wanted to make sure you were all right. Did you ever find out who called you?"

"The... Talon." Lex closed his eyes. His own Clark had been waiting at the Talon to meet with him this morning, supposedly at his suggestion. This was going to require a lot of thought to wrap his brain around. "I... yes. I think so." He opened his eyes again. "Would you like to come in?"

"Um, okay." Clark looked unsure, but he followed Lex inside readily enough.

Lex hesitated just inside the door, wondering what the etiquette would be for introducing his underage lover to his pandimensional counterpart. The logistics alone could prove to be fairly entertaining.

His attention was suddenly drawn by the sight of Clark staring down at the foyer carpet, brow furrowed in a fairly puzzled expression. Clark looked up after a moment and frowned, waving vaguely with one hand at the oriental-patterned rug.

"Did you get new carpeting in here since this morning?"

Before Lex could think of an adequate answer to the question, both of them jumped simultaneously at the sound of gunshots coming from the direction of the den.

~ * ~

Clark was just about to follow Lex to see who was at the door when he heard a sound at the other side of the room.

Turning to face it, he was at first completely disoriented to see Lex walking into the room through the opposite archway. Only instead of the dark sweater he'd put on that morning (and had been wearing up until just a few moments ago), he was wearing a light purple button-down shirt, unbuttoned at the collar.

A moment later, it occurred to Clark that he'd spoken to someone on the phone that morning who hadn't been Lex.

Or at least, not his Lex.

His mind reeled for only a moment before accepting the obvious. He was, of course, a resident of Smallville and therefore well used to coming to terms with all kinds of bizarre and unpredictable phenomena. It wasn't even, strictly speaking, the first time he'd come face-to-face with a Lex that wasn't actually Lex.

Except that somehow, he had the uncomfortable sensation that this one was.

The not-quite-Lex stared at him for a long moment, standing frozen in mid-step at the other side of the room. His eyes were wide with shock, although he seemed to be having an easier time adjusting to Clark's presence here than Clark was to his.

Something dark seemed to flicker in the new Lex's eyes, and Clark barely had time to draw in a startled breath before Lex reached into the back of his waistband to pull out the small handgun he'd apparently been carrying there, leveling it at Clark with both hands.

"Lex?" Clark said uncertainly, taking a reflexive step backwards. His mouth felt suddenly dry. Not that Lex could actually hurt him, but still. Lex didn't know that, did he?

"Who are you?" Lex's voice was low and steely. He took a slow step into the room, looking very much like he had every intention of using the gun if Clark moved so much as a muscle.

Clark was having uncomfortable flashbacks to the time when Bob Rickman had hypnotized Lex into coming after him with an Uzi. There'd been the same line of lethal concentration between his eyes when he was getting ready to squeeze the trigger, even if he hadn't been aware of his actions at the time.

"Lex, it's me. It's Clark." Clark backed up another slow step, holding his hands out to either side. Knowing that Lex wouldn't be able to hurt him didn't take the sting away from having Lex point a fucking gun at him. What the hell kind of universe did this guy come from, anyway?

"I know who you look like," Lex said, moving even further into the room. The barrel of the gun did not waver. He looked momentarily uncertain at that assertion and added, "Or maybe who you are, somewhere else. But this is my house, and no matter who you think you are, you are not Clark here." The logical improbability of the statement didn't seem to faze him very much at all. "You know about Cadmus, don't you?"

Clark wasn't sure what to say to that, since he did know about Cadmus. Or thought he did, anyway. But he had a feeling that was exactly the wrong answer to give in this situation.

But Lex seemed to take his silence for agreement regardless. He smiled tightly, firming his grip on the gun, and gestured with it toward the hall. "You're going to come with me, and we are going to talk. And you'd better hope," -- and here his voice turned about ten degrees colder than it'd been a moment ago -- "that you have the answers I want to hear."

Clark moistened his lips nervously, chancing a quick glance over his shoulder. He knew the gun couldn't hurt him, but his Lex was just down the hall, and he'd be distressingly vulnerable to bullets if this new Lex decided to start shooting. Clark couldn't let a gun-wielding maniac wander loose around the place even if, technically, it was his home, too.

This could all get very confusing very quickly, if he wasn't careful.

Pushing that thought aside, Clark tossed his drinking glass onto the floor and moved forward, fully intending to take the gun away from Lex and let him try to sort out the how of it later. The sudden flash of gunfire caught him by surprise, as if Lex had been waiting for him to make just such a move, but it didn't startle Clark nearly so much as the feel of the bullet that ripped into his arm, stopping him dead in his tracks and sending him pitching forward onto his knees.

He stared up at Lex in shock, clutching at the wound in his arm with the hand of the other. After a moment, he pulled his hand away and glanced down at it, gaping at the dark red smear of blood there.

He was bleeding.

Goddamn.

Several things crossed Clark's mind within the space of a few seconds at that point, each one following rapidly on the heels of the other. First of all, it occurred to him that it was meteor rocks that were causing the fissures in the walls between the universes. Secondly, this strangely paranoid Lex had apparently slipped through such a fissure without being any the wiser. Was it not conceivable that he (and his gun, which he'd assumedly brought with him) would have been affected in some way by the meteor rocks on the way through?

Thirdly, Clark realized that he could apparently be shot, and killed, and lie bleeding to death here on Lex's expensive Persian rug. Which, fourthly, did not change the fact that his own Lex would be just as vulnerable as he suddenly appeared to be.

Which led him to his final thought of the moment, which was that the only chance he had of keeping his Lex safe would be to keep the maniac with the gun as far away from him as possible.

"I don't want to hurt you," the Lex with the gun said, advancing forward another cautious step.

"Then don't," Clark said reasonably, gritting his teeth against the totally unfamiliar pain in his arm. But he had a feeling that logic was not going to win him any battles in this situation.

He didn't wait to see what else the Lex with the gun was going to do. Without taking his hand away from the wound in his arm, Clark twisted around and bolted for the doorway, trying to ignore the sickness that roiled through him. He ducked reflexively in anticipation of the salvo of gunfire that chased after him, and then he was in the hall, shoes skidding on the floor as he fought to keep his balance. He cast a desperate glance in the direction of the foyer, knowing Lex would be coming to investigate the commotion any moment now.

Feeling sick at the thought of it, Clark turned toward the stairs and did the only thing he could think of to do.

He ran.

Lex jumped up sharply at the sound of gunshots coming from downstairs and reflexively dropped a protective hand on Clark's bare shoulder. Clark stared up at him with wide eyes, looking frightened, and Lex soothed him as best he could, smoothing a thumb over the collar in back of his neck.

"Stay here," he instructed quietly, already moving toward the door. "I'm going to find out what's going on."

Clark looked like he was going to argue, but he closed his mouth again and nodded, looking miserable. Lex flashed him a tight smile and slipped out into the hall, closing the door behind him.

An instant later, he stumbled back with a low "oof" of shock as Clark barreled into him headlong from the direction of the stairs.

Lex stared, feeling curiously detached from the scene in front of him as this new, flannel-clad Clark looked up at him with wild eyes, shrinking back slightly in what looked like apprehension. Lex tightened his hands on the boy's arms reflexively and frowned at the wince of pain that crossed Clark's features.

Glancing down, he saw that Clark's arm was bleeding.

"What the hell?" he demanded, not feeling quite sure which impossibility he was reacting to first.

Clark looked back over his shoulder at the stairs and pushed him abruptly forward, back toward the room he'd just come from. "Move," he hissed, sounding not at all like the Clark Lex knew. "He's coming!"

Reacting to the fear in his voice more than to the actual words themselves, Lex immediately opened the door behind him and pulled Clark back into the bedroom, locking it tightly behind them.

The Clark on the bed sat up straight in alarm, looking suddenly whiter than the coverlet beneath him. "Lex...?"

"Shh." Lex dragged the other Clark back against the wall beside the door and waited, listening for any sign of the man who had apparently been responsible for making him bleed like that. Clark bleeding. Jesus.

He tensed as he waited for the doorknob to jiggle, indicating that someone was trying the door, and he thought belatedly of the gun he kept stashed in his desk downstairs. But as the seconds ticked past and nothing continued to happen, he decided that whoever it was had apparently moved on to search the other rooms down the hall.

Lex let out his breath in a cautious sigh, slowly allowing himself to relax. Glancing down at Clark, he couldn't completely hold back the wry smile that wanted to emerge at the sheer absurdity of the situation.

"Let me guess -- you're from one of Dr. Hamilton's alternate universes."

Clark looked relieved that he wasn't going to have to explain. "Yeah. I guess so." He looked toward the bed and went suddenly white.

Lex decided not to give him time to think about what he saw there. Coming face to face with another version of himself couldn't be very pleasant at all.

"Sit down." He pulled Clark toward the chair in the corner of the room and sat him down, glancing over at his own Clark where he still sat frozen on the bed. "Clark, go into the bathroom and fetch the first aid kit. Now, please."

His Clark hesitated another moment before scrambling to obey, and Lex turned to the new Clark again with an approving nod. Very carefully, he tried to pull Clark's hand away from the wound in his arm.

"What happened to you?" Clark finally seemed to make the decision to trust him and moved his hand away, and Lex winced as he got a better look at the wound. Just a flesh injury, thank god, but it looked suspiciously like it had been caused by a bullet.

And that wasn't possible, was it?

"I was shot." Clark's tone was guarded. And Lex couldn't really blame him for that, now could he?

"But how is that possible?" Lex looked up to find Clark staring at him in sudden alarm, but he pressed forward anyway, wanting to know. "I mean, bullets shouldn't be able to hurt you, should they?" And then a new thought occurred to him, and he met the new Clark's gaze speculatively. "At least for my Clark...."

Clark's eyes widened perceptibly, as if it was just occurring to him for the first time that Lex knew. His jaw worked for a moment before any sound came out. "It's the meteor rocks," he said finally, sounding hoarse. "They're the ones making the universes converge, and I think when... when the gun came through the rift, they left some kind of residue on it. Or something."

Lex nodded thoughtfully; it made sense in a weird, X-Files-ish kind of a way. But that meant it would be equally possible that his own Clark could become injured while this "convergence" was happening. That was not a thought Lex liked at all.

"Here you go, Lex." His own Clark had returned from the bathroom, and Lex took the first aid kit from him gratefully, smoothing a hand briefly over his arm in thanks. Turning his attention to the Clark in front of him, he set about doing what he could to bind up the wound.

He supposed he'd find this situation quite hysterical (in one way or another) if he allowed himself to stop and think about it.

Several minutes later, Clark flexed his arm experimentally and winced, but seemed pleased enough with the results. Lex put the bloody bandages away and stood, resting his hand on his Clark's bare shoulder where he sat on the edge of the bed.

The new Clark seemed to be thinking things through even as he folded his sleeve back down over his arm. "Where's Dr. Hamilton right now?"

Lex frowned. "I sent him to Metropolis to spend the weekend in my penthouse."

"How long would it take you to get him here?" Clark's eyes were strangely earnest when they looked up at him.

"About forty minutes by helicopter. Why?"

Clark widened his eyes incredulously. "Look around you. The fabric of the universe -- all our universes -- is fraying around us as we speak. We need to talk to him."

It was a somewhat theatrical claim, but looking at the evidence, Lex couldn't find any argument to refute it. He reached for his cell phone and dialed his penthouse in Metropolis, giving terse instructions for Hamilton to be brought to the castle as quickly as possible. As he put the phone away again, he wondered rather perversely which universe's Dr. Hamilton they were going to end up getting.

"We can't stay here." Lex's Clark leaned hard against his thigh, trembling slightly, and Lex smoothed a hand down over his back, trying to reassure him. He'd been shaken quite badly when Lex had warned him that he'd likely be vulnerable to bullets here. "Whoever shot him is going to get to this room sooner or later, and I'd rather not be here when he does."

Lex nodded, conceding the point. "I have a gun downstairs."

The other Clark seemed apprehensive but agreeable. Lex let him go first and very carefully followed him out into the hall. Looking both ways, he relaxed slightly when he saw that it was empty.

It was then that he looked behind him and realized that his Clark was missing.

~ * ~

"Lex?" Clark stepped out cautiously into the hall, fingering the collar at his throat nervously. Lex and that other Clark had stepped out the door right in front of him, but now he couldn't see them anywhere. He put a hand on his stomach, clenching his teeth at the low feeling of nausea that rolled through him. If he didn't know better, he'd think there were meteor rocks somewhere nearby.

"Lex?" He was beginning to panic now.

The hall was empty.

~ * ~

Lex crept cautiously across the foyer and tried not to think how unnerving it was to be called "Mr. Luthor" by the boy he'd fucked nearly senseless just over twelve hours ago.

But of course this wasn't really his Clark, now was it? The thought was unsettling, but he did his best to adjust to the facts as they presented themselves, choosing instead to focus on figuring out just what the hell was going on.

There'd been no sign of his Clark in the den, although there had been several bullets lodged in the archway leading out into the hall. The thought that Clark might have been hurt was maddening, and he'd reacted immediately by going to his desk drawer to fetch the gun he kept there.

It was gone.

As if that wasn't enough, the Clark he had with him now seemed to be feeling ill in some way. It was troubling, and it was made even more so by the fact that the castle around him kept changing. Not in any blatant way, not in any way where he could step back and claim "This isn't my castle!", but it was changing nonetheless. Subtle things, like the color of the drapes over the window being dark crimson instead of maroon, or a painting in the hall suddenly being a Picasso instead of a Monet. And then, just as unexpectedly, things would go back to normal again.

It was enough to given even the staunchest of individuals a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. Lex was reminded suddenly of Dr. Hamilton's accounts of the changes he'd noticed out at Cadmus before he jumped ship and left. How had he explained it? -- the universes were in a state of fluctuation. Lex supposed that would be the last stage before total convergence occurred.

The thought was not encouraging.

"Clark?" he called, making his way cautiously into the large ballroom where he usually had his fencing lessons. He didn't even really care that there seemed to be a maniac with a gun running around the castle somewhere; he wanted his own Clark back with him, and he wanted him back now. "Clark!"

Thunder rumbled outside, sounding uncomfortably closer than it'd been just a few minutes ago. The ballroom seemed disturbingly vast all of a sudden, filled near to bursting with chasing shadows.

Looking over his shoulder briefly, Lex realized that the other Clark was gone.

"Well, hell," he said aloud, feeling unexpectedly flummoxed by this realization.

He stood there in the middle of the room wondering just what he was supposed to do now when he saw a flicker of movement on the grounds outside. Frowning, he stepped up to the tall window in the far wall and squinted through the rapidly falling gloom, trying to make out what it had been.

There was a figure out there making its way toward the rear door of the castle, looking like it was making a considerable effort to be circumspect. The sight was unusual enough to make the skin at the back of Lex's neck tighten, and his unease only deepened when the figure passed underneath a floodlight before disappearing from view around the edge of the building.

Mrs. Kent?

Feeling a bit like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, Lex turned to retrace his steps to the back entryway to let her in.

~ * ~

Clark held his wounded arm tightly against his stomach, wondering when the nausea he'd felt from being shot was going to go away. He could feel his pulse throbbing just above his elbow where the bullet had hit him, beating out a steady tattoo of pain that brought a fine layer of sweat beading up on his brow. Clenching his teeth against it, he did his best to stay close to Lex as he made his way down the hall.

There was something creepy about this Lex that he couldn't quite put his finger on. He seemed harder than Clark's own Lex somehow. Colder. Sharper somehow, like if Clark touched him he'd draw blood.

And had that other version of himself been wearing a collar?

He wondered suddenly if his own Lex possessed this kind of lethal potential. So far, one Lex had tried to kill him, and another was leading him downstairs to arm himself with all the poise of a military strategist. The thought was worrying, and Clark thought again of the Nicodemus flowers and Dr. Hamilton.

Like he really needed the imminent collapse of the universe to confuse him; he had enough to keep him occupied just trying to figure out what was going on in the heads of the people he already knew.

Or thought he'd known.

Lex suddenly pulled up short with a low curse, and Clark realized they were in the den already. Across the room, he could see that the top left-hand drawer of Lex's desk was already open... and empty.

He blinked suddenly and looked down at the carpet under his feet. If he wasn't mistaken, there had been a different pattern on it when he'd been down here just a few minutes ago.

"Come on." Lex's fingers clamped down hard around Clark's unwounded arm, like he half-expected Clark to disappear on him, too. Given the way things had been going, Clark couldn't completely discount the possibility.

"Where are we going?" Clark tried to keep up with Lex's rapid strides as he left the room, feeling weakened by what he presumed was loss of blood. It wasn't something he'd ever really experienced before, but it felt uncomfortably like the way he felt around the meteor rocks.

"To the helipad to wait for Hamilton." Lex's teeth were clenched so tightly Clark could see the muscles jumping in his jaw. Clark wondered suddenly if he was as worried about his Clark as Clark was about his own Lex.

They were just making their way up the back stairs when Clark heard a gunshot somewhere behind them, muffled by the walls that separated them. Instantly, he tensed, thinking of the Lex from his own universe, but the fingers on his arm did not loosen.

"Let me go." He tried to wrench his arm away, but he felt inexplicably weak suddenly. The nausea he felt was increasing as the minutes went by, and he was beginning to think it had to do with more than just loss of blood.

Lex didn't release him, and Clark stumbled as he pulled him up the stairs. This was seriously starting to piss him off, and he opened his mouth to say so. But before he could get the words out, he tensed again at the distant sound of a woman's scream.

The sound drew both of them up short, and Clark turned to look back over his shoulder with his heart in his throat.

"Mom?"

~ * ~

Lex pulled open the back door to find Martha Kent inexplicably standing on his castle's rear doorstep.

The sky behind her was starting to turn an intimidating shade of brooding dark purple, as if it were trying its damnedest to get in the mood of the whole end of the universe thing. Lex wrenched his eyes away from it and focused on Martha, but his unease only deepened when he got a good look at her. She looked... thinner than he remembered, and her hair was shorter. There was a weathered look about her that made him think for a moment that she had to be someone else entirely.

Surely Clark's mother had never looked at him with that degree of cold-blooded hatred before.

It almost didn't surprise him when she lifted the hand at her side and revealed the gun she was holding. Lex stepped backward hurriedly, feeling his heartbeat begin to race all over again.

"Where is he?" Martha's voice was cold. "Where is my son?"

Lex stared at her, thinking for one irrational moment that she'd just found out about his affair with Clark. But if anyone was going to come gunning for him under those circumstances, he'd have bet his inheritance it would have been Jonathan instead of her.

"Look," he said, holding his hands up in front of him in a placating gesture. "I know this is hard to understand, but I'm not who you think I am."

Martha didn't seem to have heard him at all. "Where is he, Luthor?"

Lex shook his head, not knowing how to answer her even if he'd wanted to. He couldn't help thinking how disturbing it was to know he was apparently even more of a bastard in some other universe than he was in his own.

"I don't know," he said honestly, trying to stay calm. "You're welcome to come in and help me look for him, if you want."

Which was obviously the wrong thing to say, since Martha seemed to think he was making fun of her. Her mouth pressed together in a hard, thin line, and Lex threw himself to the side an instant before the gun went off, shattering the air of the room with its furious retort.

He didn't stop to wait for her to renew her aim. Heart pounding, he ran out into the hall and made his way toward the stairs, thinking rather desperately that he'd probably have the best chance of evading her in the labyrinth of smaller rooms upstairs.

It was a complete surprise when he reached the upper floor unscathed, and it was even more of a surprise when he turned into the hall and ran headlong into Clark.

Lex shook his head to clear it and then blinked rapidly when his vision focused. "Clark?" he croaked, feeling like he'd just about had all the shocks he should reasonably be expected to take in one day. Clark was staring at him with wide eyes, wearing tailored pants and no shirt and... a collar?

"Lex?" Clark's voice was thin with apprehension.

Before Lex could even think what to say next, he heard footsteps pounding up the stairs behind him, and he whirled, planting himself securely in front of Clark. "Run," he said firmly, fully intending to do what he needed to distract this bizarrely homicidal Martha so Clark would be able to get away.

Martha just reached the top of the landing when Clark gave a sharp cry behind him, and Lex turned to see himself emerging from one of the bedrooms at the end of the hall. The carbon copy of himself stared at him in shock for a moment before raising the gun in his hand, and Lex squeezed his eyes shut for one frantic moment, wondering if there was anyone in this goddamned house who didn't want to kill him.

He threw himself at the closer threat and tackled Martha, reaching for the gun she was in the process of bringing to bear on him. She screamed as they both went tumbling down the stairs, and Lex left her where she'd fallen, scrambling to get to his feet again. He winced at the new array of bruises he'd collected from the fall.

Martha was already standing, holding the gun on him with both hands. Lex stared at her from where he crouched against the floor, one hand pressed to the bottom step in the process of rising.

"Mrs. Kent," he said, holding out one hand in mute appeal. Even after all this, he couldn't believe she would actually shoot him. "Don't--"

It caught him completely by surprise when she fired.

~ * ~

"Lex!" Clark cried, finally managing to shake off Lex's grip on his arm. He turned away from the helipad and ran back down the stairs, determined to find his own universe's Lex at all costs.

~ * ~

"Lex!" Clark cried, drawing up short where he'd been wandering lost by himself through the mansion's hallways. Turning around, he ran in the direction of the gunshot he'd heard, determined to find out just what the hell was going on.

~ * ~

"Lex!" Clark cried, running up to the railing overlooking the foyer from the upstairs hall. He couldn't believe his mother had actually shot Lex. He was still trying to come to grips with the horror of it when he saw himself run into the foyer through two opposite doorways beneath him.

He stiffened suddenly when the other Lex in the upstairs hallway stepped up behind him and pressed the barrel of a gun against the bare skin of his ribs.

~ * ~

Lex blinked his eyes open slowly to find two Clarks and a rather startled-looking Martha Kent staring down at him.

His shoulder hurt like hell, and he swore under his breath when he tried to move it. The Clark dressed in blue flannel bent down and kissed him lightly on the lips, tasting faintly of scotch.

"Lex?"

Lex licked his lips and nodded, feeling reasonably certain that he had finally found the right Clark. Thank god.

"What happened?" He didn't feel particularly clear on anything at the moment, but he vividly remembered being shot by Martha Kent.

As if to confirm this, Martha said, "I shot you." She still sounded like she'd rather see him dead than give him the time of day, but now there was an edge of uncertainty underlying it. She couldn't seem to take her eyes away from the two Clarks in front of her.

Lex blinked again and raised his head, seeing another version of himself standing off to one side of the foyer. One dressed in a dark grey shirt and black slacks, watching them all with a fair degree of suspicion, as if he wasn't quite sure what to make of it all.

It was a feeling Lex empathized with wholeheartedly.

He sighed and turned his gaze to the other Clark, whose eyes were wide and wondering as he looked across Lex's body at his counterpart. Lex wasn't sure if the shock he apparently felt was at seeing his double for the first time or at seeing his double kiss Lex.

"Well, fuck." Lex pressed a hand to his bleeding shoulder and struggled to sit up, aided by his universe's Clark. He leaned against Clark's side gratefully. "Would anyone care to tell me just what the hell is going on here?"

"That's exactly what I'd like to know."

Unexpectedly, the voice came from upstairs, and Lex remembered belatedly that there was a second gunman up there with that strangely alluring half-naked collared version of Clark. He glanced up at the top of the stairs and found said Clark looking frightened in the grip of yet another version of Lex, who was holding a gun pressed firmly against his side.

The grey-shirted Lex downstairs took an abrupt step forward, looking suddenly dangerous in a way Lex wasn't quite sure he liked.

"Don't hurt him," the grey-shirted Lex said sharply, and it sounded less like a plea than an order that would have very negative consequences if it were disobeyed.

The Lex upstairs let his gaze move between each of them, looking somewhat lost. "Hamilton was right, wasn't he?" he said, moistening his lips nervously.

"Apparently so." The grey-shirted Lex took another step forward, holding his hands out to either side. He didn't take his eyes away from the Lex on the landing above him. "Now why don't you let him go, and we'll talk about this."

"Clark." Martha's hand tightened over the gun at her side, but she apparently didn't want to risk doing anything that would get her son shot. Her gaze flickered toward Lex's Clark where he was crouched by Lex's side on the floor, still cradling the wound in his arm.

"Mr. Luthor?" the other Clark said at Lex's other side, and strangely enough, it made the Lex upstairs look almost... relieved? "What's going on?"

This looked like a question that the upstairs Lex would very much like an answer to as well. "Clark? Are you all right?"

The red-flanneled Clark nodded, although he still looked kind of shaken by one thing or another. "I'm fine."

"We're all fine," the grey-shirted Lex said, moving slowly forward onto the lower step and effectively drawing his upstairs counterpart's attention again. To Lex, he looked uncomfortably like a shark moving in on its prey. "Now why don't you let. Clark. Go. And then we can talk about this like civilized human beings."

The Lex upstairs began to look uncertain.

"Please, Mr. Luthor," the red-flanneled Clark said, rising slowly to his feet. His eyes were wide as he held Lex's gaze upstairs.

Another tense minute passed before the Lex upstairs finally let his breath out in a harsh sigh and nodded, moving the gun away from his captive's side. The collared Clark darted abruptly forward, practically flying down the stairs and into the grey-shirted Lex's arms.

The grey-shirted Lex pressed a cheek to his hair briefly and cradled him in against his chest, turning them to put himself in between Clark and the man with the gun. Looking over his shoulder, he glared.

"Put the fucking gun away," he snapped, sounding more than a little pissed off. "Before something worse happens."

Lex couldn't tell if it was a request or a threat, but before his purple-shirted counterpart upstairs could react to it, he heard the rhythmic cadence of helicopter blades coming in over the castle.

Beside him, Clark tensed. "Dr. Hamilton," he said, looking down at Lex with wide eyes. "We have to get upstairs to talk to him."

"Dr. Hamilton?" Lex closed his eyes, trying very hard to make sense of things. After a moment, he decided that talking to Hamilton was probably their best hope of figuring this thing out.

Apparently the same thing had occurred to one of the other hims, as well.

They moved as a tense, somewhat paranoid group to the castle roof, where they could see the helicopter circling down through the clouds. Night had fallen while they were inside, and it was raining now, so that the castle seemed to be encased within a wet, grey, impenetrable bubble, cut off from the rest of the world.

Dr. Hamilton looked pissed when he climbed down out of the helicopter and ran hunched over toward them, ducking his head against the rain. He looked rather like a man who had been forcefully put onto a helicopter and sent back to the one place on earth he really did not want to go, which Lex presumed was precisely what had happened.

To his credit, Hamilton's eyes widened only slightly when he saw the group of them standing there. "I'd guess that the effects of the meteor rocks are spreading outward in a sort of blast radius from the place where I conducted the experiment," he said, following them all inside.

"So how do we stop it?" Lex asked, leaning slightly on Clark's arm beside him as he made his way down the stairs. He'd managed to wrap a temporary bandage around the wound in his shoulder, but it still hurt like the dickens.

The look Hamilton cast back at him was vaguely bemused. "Stop it? I haven't even figured out how the meteor rocks are doing it yet. The only suggestion I have is to plan an extended vacation somewhere as far away from here as you can get."

The grey-shirted Lex fixed him with a level look. "But what do you hope to gain by running? You said the effects of the convergence are spreading outward. Isn't it going to swallow everything up no matter where you go?"

Hamilton glared at him. "Yes. But the further away I get, the longer I have to live a normal life until it gets there. I was trying to bribe your housekeeper to take me to the airport so I could fly to Hong Kong."

The grey-shirted Lex looked rather pleased that his housekeeper had proven to be unbribable.

Lex shook his head as Clark helped lower him into the chair at the dining room table. "But so far it only seems to be affecting three different universes. If we have a chance at all of stopping it, it has to be now."

"But I don't know how." Hamilton glanced around nervously. "I haven't even begun any tests to see if there's anything that will disrupt the meteor rocks' natural energy. There are probably pockets of convergence happening all across the multiverse, wherever there's a concentration of universes where I did the damned experiment. Sooner or later, the walls are going to thin enough where those pockets are going to converge, and then poof!" He threw his hands up in a fair approximation of an explosion. "Utter chaos."

"So there's more than just three universes being affected by this." The purple-shirted Lex looked upset by this news, one hand still playing idly with the gun in his lap.

Lex closed his eyes and thought about that for a moment. He tried to picture what would happen when the convergence began to snowball -- when there would be not just three Lexes, but a dozen, a hundred, a million. All fighting for their place in the universe, for their right to exist.

Damn, there were just three of them here now, and they'd almost managed to kill each other.

At Lex's side, Clark looked like he was trying to come to a decision. He looked up and met the gaze of the red-flanneled Clark across the table, then turned to glance toward the collared Clark, who shrugged, lowering his gaze.

"Lead," Clark said unexpectedly, reaching out to run a hand over Lex's arm. He turned to look at Hamilton directly, pressing his lips together.

Hamilton looked at him blankly. "What?"

"Lead," Clark said again, tightening his fingers over Lex's arm. "It blocks the effects of the meteor rocks."

"And you know this... how?" Hamilton looked skeptical.

"Look, you're not the only one who lives in Smallville." Clark looked uncomfortable, as if he didn't really want to have to explain himself. "You can't really live here for any length of time and not... notice things."

Lex stared at him, thinking of some of the things he'd noticed over the past year and a half, particularly about Clark himself.

But now was not the time to go into it, no matter how much his natural curiosity was jumping around inside his head. He turned toward Hamilton with a frown. "If that's true, then we might have a chance of at least stopping the effects from spreading."

"If not reversing the effects altogether." Hamilton was beginning to look thoughtful. "It must be taking an incredible amount of energy to keep the universes in convergence like this. If we were to abruptly cut off that energy source before the damage proceeds much further, things might just go back to normal on their own."

"Like a rubber band snapping back into place once the pressure's taken away from it," the grey-shirted Lex mused.

"Exactly." Hamilton nodded. "If you can independently isolate the meteor rocks I affected inside a lead casing, and if that actually manages to contain their energy, then... it just might work."

The purple-shirted Lex at the end of the table looked up at him sharply. "Well, then let's get going. I can't help feeling we don't have a lot of time left."

Hamilton stared at him as if he'd grown a second head. "I'm not going anywhere near the locus of this thing. I wish you the best of luck, Lex, but you are on your own with this one."

Lex shifted slightly in his chair, taking a sip of the scotch Clark had poured for him to help with the pain in his shoulder. "I'm afraid that's not possible, Doctor. We need you to find out where the affected meteor fragments are."

Hamilton's eyes were wide when he turned to look at him. "No. No way. There is no way in hell you are getting me anywhere near Cadmus Labs."

At the end of the table, the grey-shirted Lex smiled.

~ * ~

Hamilton cursed as the truck went over a bump in the road, and Clark reflexively put out a hand to steady him. His own Lex was currently pressed up against his left side, swearing whenever the movements of the truck jostled his injured shoulder. At Clark's other side, Hamilton hunched down inside the collar of his coat and glowered.

They'd decided to take the truck Lex had tried to give him over a year ago, which had been inexplicably sitting in front of the castle when they'd gotten outside. It had been unanimously agreed that even though it was raining hard enough to drown a small country, they'd much rather rely on the pick-up's four wheel drive than on any of Lex's vast array of sportscars.

The purple-shirted Lex was driving, with his own universe's Clark sitting by his side, but the rest of them had had to squeeze into the bed in back. The rain wasn't bothering Clark as much as he would have expected, except in that it was soaking through the bandages on his arm. He supposed that with the imminent end of the universe to keep him occupied, getting a little wet was actually the least of his worries.

There were surprisingly few people on the road for the earliness of the hour, even taking into account the rain, and Clark couldn't help wondering if anyone else in town was seeing the effects of the universes' convergence. The thought was troubling, and the sense of urgency he felt deepened, thrumming through him in a steady cadence of hurry, hurry, hurry that made him itch to get out and run.

Not that he was sure he could even outrun the truck the way he was feeling right now. Apparently the other two Clarks were feeling the effects of the meteor rocks, too, and Clark could only assume it had something to do with the rocks' thinning of the universes' walls around them. Across from him, the collared Clark was sitting huddled inside the long coat his Lex had wrapped around him, hunching in against his Lex's side and looking miserable. The grey-shirted Lex sat with his arm wrapped tight around his shoulders, chin pressed tightly to the top of Clark's bowed head and glaring out into the night as if he wished he could challenge it to a duel for making Clark feel this way.

Clark's mom was looking at the two of them speculatively, apparently caught up in her own thoughts. The sight of her was disturbing to Clark for reasons he couldn't quite explain. She hadn't said much since he'd first seen her, but he got the feeling she'd lived a somewhat harder life than his own mother had. The familiar laugh lines around her eyes were missing, and her shoulders were hunched, as if she were suffering under some great weight. He'd been appalled by the blind hatred she apparently felt for Lex in her own universe, although now that emotion seemed to have faded into something cooler, something that was almost searching.

Clark could see the lights of Cadmus Labs ahead of them now, looking watery and almost insubstantial through the rain. The effects of the meteor rocks were growing stronger the closer they got to the lab, and he closed his eyes tightly, fighting back the dizziness that slithered through him. He had to hold it together for just a little while longer.

Absently, he fingered the edges of the small lead box in his lap. It was Lex's, the one that had supposedly been made from the armor of St. George. In Clark's own universe, Lex had given it to him as a gift early on in their friendship, but apparently he hadn't done so in at least one of the other two universes, since it had been sitting in its usual place on the mantel when one of the other Lexes had gone looking for it.

They pulled in through the lab's front gate, and Lex gave it a dark glance as they passed it by. Clark shivered as a stray drop of rain made its way down the back of his shirt collar and asked, "What's wrong?"

Lex frowned. "There should have been a guard at the gate. Where is everybody?"

Clark shivered again and looked toward the main lab building. There were lights on inside, shining yellowly against the dark, but he couldn't see any sign of movement there.

Any sign of life.

The other Lex pulled the truck up in front of the main entrance and opened the door to climb out before the engine's rumble had completely faded away into silence. He looked pale in the watery light of the floodlights.

"Where the hell's the guard?" he demanded, looking very much like he wanted to go out and shoot somebody.

Clark shook his head as he scrambled out of the back of the truck. "I don't know." He clutched at his wounded arm and squinted in the direction of the lab, ducking his head against the rain. "But we have to hurry."

The collared Clark behind him nodded, looking just as tense as Clark felt. "There isn't much time left at all. I... don't know how to explain it."

The third Clark came toward them, leaning hard against the side of the truck. His universe's Lex immediately went to help steady him. "I can feel it, too."

Hamilton stared at each of them in turn. "You're all certifiable."

Lex reached out with his good arm and shook Hamilton's collar gently. "The meteors, Doctor. Where are they?"

Hamilton stared at him for a long moment, blinking hard through the rain, but then his shoulders slumped in defeat. "Inside. I'll show you."

They went inside, and Clark looked around apprehensively, feeling his sense of foreboding deepen. The halls and rooms they passed were bright and sterile-looking, and also very, very empty. There was a strange humming in the air that didn't seem attributable to any kind of lab machinery, which lifted the hairs along Clark's arms and neck as if he was walking through some kind of electrical current.

He was walking almost double now as the sickness from the meteor rocks rolled over him. Lex's arm was firm around him, and his expression was frightened when Clark glanced up at him.

"You should go back," Lex told him, tightening the arm he had around Clark's waist. His eyes were wide and bright in the overhead fluorescent lighting. "There's something here that's hurting you."

Clark shook his head, straightening with an effort. "I can't, Lex." He steadied himself with a hand on Lex's good shoulder and almost laughed at the picture they must make, two wounded and bleeding heroes off trying to save the universe together, barely able to make their way down the hall.

Lex kissed him unexpectedly, and Clark gave into it without protest, thinking suddenly that the rest of their problems could just go hang if only he could have this, right here, for the rest of his life. None of it seemed to matter anymore -- not the fact that Lex had lied to him about the Nicodemus flowers, not the fear that he'd only been using Clark, or the sneaking suspicion that Lex was somewhat darker inside than Clark had originally assumed. Maybe it took the possible end of their existence to put everything into perspective, but Clark felt suddenly certain that nothing could be worse than losing what he had right here.

"I love you," Lex whispered, and Clark shivered with something that had nothing to do with the rain or the cold or the imminent destruction of everything he knew.

Lex had said he loved him.

"I love you, too," he whispered back, rubbing his cheek against Lex's and hugging him as tightly as he dared, not wanting to