Fic: Monsters: Myths, Legends, and Surreality (PG-13)
Title: Monsters: Myths, Legends, and Surreality
Category: fic
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Word Count: >2763
Summary: The problem with being well-versed in popular culture and bad movies was that Lex couldn't ignore the validity of theories as presented in cheesy dialogue and lengthy exposition.
Spoilers: Seasons 1, 2 (vaguely). See Notes.
Warnings: Bad language, reference to violence (mild, I think, but beware)
Notes: Fusion with the movie "The Monster Squad". Probably requires explanation, but... just accept that it's crack and you'll probably be fine. Some spoilers for that movie, but mostly not. My apologies for the delay in posting. I can't even blame NaNo, which has a word count of zero, still. Unbetaed at present.
Prompt: ancient evil, bat(s), candy
Two days ago, Lex decided he liked his life just the way it was.
Today, he's willing to exchange it for the cost of a new silk shirt and a ratty hotel somewhere Not Here.
It starts, like most things in Smallville, with a seemingly ordinary day that quickly turns into anything but. Except that in Smallville, the term 'ordinary' really only applies to things which are, in the rest of the world, 'weird' and 'unusual'. So perhaps it's more that it's a strangely mundane day which reverts to normal with the arrival of the next 'strange' event.
Lex will admit that he's not enamored of meteor-affected mutants or the body-possessing types of aliens, but he does prefer the routine of such things, especially when one of the alternatives is a scaly, strong, greenly growing creature that stalks from the lake with it's gaze focused on Lana Lang (typical, actually, and pretty routine), or having to fight off the wolfman shortly after his late lunch, before Clark's even (supposed to be) out of school (not so typical and very, very aggravating).
Dracula, at least, does as he's supposed to and is hiding from the sun (until he manages to spell the sky dark), which Lex does appreciate while he can. The Mummy, however, is free to roam when and where it will, which is also expected, but largely unappreciated at the moment.
As a closet movie buff, Lex is more a fan of science fiction than horror, and the current monster populace invading his town and castle are reason enough that that will never change.
* * *
It had been a good week.
Yesterday, Clark Kent revealed is greatest secret, entrusted it to Lex like the gift it was, all uncertain glances and shy smiles when Lex didn't freak or try to immediately get him into a lab.
Two days before that, Lex managed to outwit his father on a buy out.
And this morning, Jonathon Kent admitted that Lex was not the devil (though he was possibly the Spawn of. Lex didn't push the issue).
This afternoon, Lex lost his favorite car to a superpowered werewolf wearing the tattered remains of his best friend's clothes, lost his glass-topped desk to a bipedal lizardman, took over the part of rescuer (temporarily, he hopes) of Lana Lang. He has two hours to regain the amulet that will otherwise be used by Dracula to take over the world (fuck his life), and his current allies are a pregnant Martha Kent, intrepid reporter Chloe Sullivan, not-as-hateful-when-Lex-is-needed Pete Ross, and an awkwardly sewn together giant of a woman (Mary Shelley is as artful a liar as any author).
Lex can read German just fine, but Smallville has a shortage of virgins, something Lex doesn't want to think on too hard. Except he has to think of something, because the others are looking to him as if he's their last hope. And it's still almost not quite enough; Lex has learned to bear his father's disappointment, he's learned to live with his own, but somewhere out there is a werewolf who will eventually come back to himself and Lex will give anything to be able to meet his gaze afterward and say, "I didn't let everyone you love die."
Also, there's the possibility that if Lex can keep everyone else alive, Clark will kiss him again, with that edge of wonder and desperation and the hint of chocolate that had kept Lex from getting in the car fast enough to actually get away when a magical approximation of the full moon had risen in the afternoon sky.
Lex dislikes meteor mutations, but he loathes magic with an intensity he's very recently reserved for vampires.
* * *
At shortly before dawn, Lex had been roused from his bed by the sound of the south east wing collapsing. Structural damage is always a problem when there are mutants around, but Lex is used to rebuilding various sections of the castle for natural and unnatural reasons (and the occasional fit of temper after a visit from his father).
Clark's presence isn't necessarily required at such events, but neither is it entirely unexpected.
Lex takes in the three pale women dressed in bed sheets, the slick bastard in black, and the alien standing off against them in the rubble of a hallway and thinks of a movie he watched when he was young. The pink glow of an amulet in Clark's hand is not a surprise, but Lex knows how the plot of such things take a while to unfold and despite knowing that he's privy to the greatest of Clark's greatest secrets, he knows in that instant that he's not versed in all of them. It's not a question of whether Clark's been holding out on him, but how long and how much. It's the bad start of a worse day.
There's running, hiding, an odd crawl through a subterranean passageway, and a string of apologies and explanations from Clark that are better than the half-truths of before, even if Lex would rather hear about chemistry and girl troubles than Van Hellsing's supreme fuckup of a century ago.
"Only my father would import the unmarked grave along with his castle." It's the first thing he's said in the quarter of an hour since they left Dracula and his brides behind.
Clark gives him a look that's confusion and surprise, Lex presumes at how well he's taking the whole thing. The look morphs into fondness quickly. "You've been in Smallville too long."
It's true, but Lex shakes his head. "Not long enough." He hasn't had nearly enough time to figure out how a town filled to brimming with strangeness and uncertainty can be home, though it's apparently been long enough to become just that.
* * *
Lex isn't sure how they pick up Pete and Chloe. Lana's inclusion is a given, as soon as they rescue her from the Creature from the Black Lagoon. They convene in the Talon, as it's already been wrecked on one pass through from some monster or another.
"It's not in English," Clark says, squinting as if that could make the scrawl legible. The journal was in the crypt, apparently, though the amulet wasn't. Lex considers asking where it came from, but that is probably a conversation for earlier. He doesn't quite care.
He shakes his head and turns another page. "German. And older. This," he taps a nail against a page, "Is an incantation. To send Dracula and the forces of evil back to Hell."
"Seriously?" Pete moves closer, ignoring his self-imposed space bubble to peer around Lex's arm.
If Lex had a sense of humor and didn't think Pete would sulk about it, he'd tease that he's not as serious as the heart attack awaiting him before he's forty. "Seriously. We have until midnight." He pauses, running the numbers before reaching the same, damning conclusion again. "Midnight tonight, Romanian Daylight's Savings. Or approximately dinner time."
There's a moment while they all look around for a clock that hasn't been knocked off the wall.
Pete shifts uncomfortably and puts more space between himself and Lex again. "What do we need? Garlic?"
"Silver bullets and stakes," Lana suggests, her voice hard. They all look at her, taking in the pallor of her skin. The fight to get her out of the Creature's grasp had been... relatively awkward, since apparently it'd been swimming in Crater Lake long enough to pick up kryptonite. Brute force wasn't always the best way to rescue people, but it was quicker than waiting for them to be distracted enough to sneak up behind them with a metal baseball bat.
Lex finds himself nodding along with Pete, which is probably the strangest part of the morning.
"Holy water?" Clark suggests.
* * *
They were on there way back from the church with several gallons of blessed water and several stones of silver flatware when the first convulsion hit Clark and Lex pulled over on the side of the road.
The darkening sky and blood red moon had been less surprising than the hair Clark had sprouted and the sudden elongation of his already long (and appropriately named) canines.
* * *
The problem with being well-versed in popular culture and bad movies was that Lex couldn't ignore the validity of theories as presented in cheesy dialogue and lengthy exposition.
He lowered the shotgun. "The problem is that I've seen the original, and the Creature isn't all bad."
"Movies are not exactly a great guide to real life, Lex," Clark pointed out. The Creature's skin was a familiar green and Clark looked like he wants to back away from the slow creep of pain, but he wouldn't leave Lex's side.
"If you stop, we'll give you safe passage back to the swamp of your choice." In an aside to Clark, he added, "Though set in Brazil, the film was actually shot in Florida."
"Geek," Clark whispered back, conflicting emotions crossing his face to leave the fondness, fear, and a lingering kryptonite-induced sickness.
Oddly, the creature had stopped and was regarding them as if... Lex's smile was approaching a smirk and Clark would probably call him on it. Then it started forward as before and his smirk disappeared, and really, the day had sucked from the get-go, so why was he surprised?
* * *
"Is that going to be your entire plan?" Pete asks snidely, flicking the safety back on on the shotgun and lowering the barrel to the ground.
Lex looks at them each in turn, his odd little assembly of heroes. Lana's in the Creature's clutches, Clark's a werewolf, Jonathon's unconscious from colliding forcefully with a wall. Martha's pregnant, Chloe's pissed, Pete's frightened, and the monster... "We should really name you," Lex says idly, feeling numb under the impending sense of doom.
Martha pats his cheek with just enough force to get his attention. "Focus, Lex."
He turns his attention back to Pete again. "That's my plan. They're people in undeniably strange circumstances, but people nonetheless."
Pete opens his mouth and closed it, eyes narrowing at Lex. "This is one of those Lex-and-Clark things, isn't it?"
Lex considers the question seriously; he has time for contemplation, as his plan is little more than two minutes of reprieve before inevitable death and according to the time table, they have fifteen minutes until it's midnight in Romania. "A great trust was given to me and I'll work to justify the faith it showed."
"Uh," Pete says, forcing a look of disgust on his face. Lex knows it's forced because it lasts only a second before it disappears and he jokes weakly. "You're soft in the head."
"Question," Chloe interrupts. They give her attention accordingly, but her face is upturned to the sky. "Does Dracula count as a person?"
There isn't a rush to provide answers, but at least Lex can assured they aren't thinking about Lex-and-Clark things in the ensuing silence.
"There's the Whedon theory or the Stoker theory," Chloe finally declares. "Either he was human and it's possible to return his soul, or his soul's black as night and beyond saving. Those in favor of Joss?" No one votes for that, which shows that they've obviously learned something from living in Smallville. "And those backing Bram?"
Pete raises a hand. Lex doesn't know if Chloe had kept out of it in order to be the impartial judge, but Lex is thinking and his abstaining from the vote does not go unnoticed. "Seriously?" Pete asks, voice sharp with the raw, ragged edge of the nerve that has just snapped.
"If it's a last resort, I'm sure we can find a stake and garlic, but we have a tool at our disposal that will keep our hands relatively clean." And out of arm's reach of Dracula.
Several expressions brighten at that. Chloe digs a hand into her jacket pocket and pulls out the amulet. There's a moment, a lull, almost peaceful, as they look at it. It doesn't last before someone has to bring up the unfortunate truth. "The diary's gone," Martha murmurs, one hand rubbing absently over her stomach.
Lex feels the weight of stares and doesn't look at either Pete or Chloe. His desperate bid to distract a particular werewolf with a game of "fetch the diary" had worked. With results Lex could have predicted if he'd thought just a few seconds longer.
He shakes his head. "We don't need it. I can remember the incantation. We need a virgin." They need a little girl with a worn teddy bear. Or anyone under the age of sixteen, apparently. He's still not looking at Chloe and Pete, though for a different reason this time.
Ten minutes until their window to send Dracula off to purgatory closes and they're stuck with an undead overlord with bad breath and an unfortunate desire to see them all slaughtered in the most painful way possible.
* * *
Less than twenty-four hours ago, Lex was having the most enlightening conversation of his life with the not-actually-human teenager he'd had the fortune of falling for on a muddy river bank a year and a half ago.
Twelve hours ago, he and the same lovely young man were running around trying to save the world (or at least their world, small as it is).
Twenty minutes ago, Lex made a pregnant woman drink holy water and dressed her in silver armor before giving her a handgun and letting her take up guard over her husband.
He has two minutes to get Frankenstein's monster of a maiden to speak an ancient spell against evil.
It's official; his life cannot get any stranger than this.
* * *
It's so anticlimactic that when the vortex disappears from the sky and the world falls silent, the only thing Lex can do is stand on the empty street. There's a painful whuff from a few feet away and Lex turns his head, trying to kill that last thread of curiosity that is, almost certainly, one day going to get him killed.
Clark's head lifts and there's still a hint of wildness about him, but it fades as their eyes lock. "Lex?"
"What's a castle without secret dungeons and chains?" Lex muses aloud, letting his body turn and angle toward Clark like it wants, shifting closer. It's not fear that keeps him from crossing the distance, though Clark's downtrodden expression implies that he thinks it is. That overrides the exhaustion that drags Lex's feet down (speaking of, he lost a show to the hole in the sky, and the ground is covered in stones and twigs and broken glass).
"Lex?" Clark says again, voice rough, vaguely growly, as if the wolf's not entirely gone yet.
And Lex doesn't know that it will be. He won't know for another few days whether Clark's non-wolfish now because he's no longer a werewolf or because there's no magical full moon anymore.
There's a puddle of green slime dripping from a teenage boy who could very well be local and a young woman with stitches holding together parts of her body that were already (always) attached. Lex feels a little nauseous and a lot confused, even though he's probably the person best able to theorize on the subject of monsters.
There's a pile of ancient bandages and Lex... really just doesn't want to think about it.
"I didn't let everyone you love die," he says, words tumbling unbidden.
He doesn't get kisses then, but the solid feel of Clark's arms about him, the semi-familiar (it's never happened often enough, that they're this close) smell of his skin where Lex's face is pressed against his throat... it's more than enough. Better, in a way, because it leaves Clark's mouth free to whisper trust in his ear.
* * *
There are questions, to which semi-plausible answers are given. They're not even remotely true.
There are cuts and scrapes to clean and wrap, rubble from various buildings to clear out, homes and businesses to rebuild.
When Great Revelations of the Hidden Life of Teenage Boys, part II, commences, it's at Lex's insistence and it may possibly involve dungeons and chains and long, slow kisses by candlelight. Clark speaks in hesitant tones, like these are the secrets that are hard to believe, not alien orphans who can look at Lex like he's a hero, who believes in him.
Like the strangest thing that has happened to Lex hasn't been that he's lived up to those expectations.
* * *
Something like an epilogue...
The British accents are more annoying than Lex is willing to deal with before he's had something to eat. Lunch was too many hours ago now to count. Lex hushes them as he strides past, getting in Clark's way.
"You're vulnerable to magic," Lex reminds Clark softly. He reaches out a hand and draws him into an embrace. "Which is why none of us will ever ask you to go out and face blood sucking bastards or dark wizards. Meteor-affected teenagers and the occasional alien- or ghost-possessed friend, sure. You've got the experience for that. But creatures of legend?" No, Lex won't chance Clark against a foe he's vulnerable against, even though he knows Clark would go willingly.
He doesn't know what the alternative is, yet, but he knows he'll find it. There are higher costs of failure than disappointment.
Category: fic
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Word Count: >2763
Summary: The problem with being well-versed in popular culture and bad movies was that Lex couldn't ignore the validity of theories as presented in cheesy dialogue and lengthy exposition.
Spoilers: Seasons 1, 2 (vaguely). See Notes.
Warnings: Bad language, reference to violence (mild, I think, but beware)
Notes: Fusion with the movie "The Monster Squad". Probably requires explanation, but... just accept that it's crack and you'll probably be fine. Some spoilers for that movie, but mostly not. My apologies for the delay in posting. I can't even blame NaNo, which has a word count of zero, still. Unbetaed at present.
Prompt: ancient evil, bat(s), candy
Two days ago, Lex decided he liked his life just the way it was.
Today, he's willing to exchange it for the cost of a new silk shirt and a ratty hotel somewhere Not Here.
It starts, like most things in Smallville, with a seemingly ordinary day that quickly turns into anything but. Except that in Smallville, the term 'ordinary' really only applies to things which are, in the rest of the world, 'weird' and 'unusual'. So perhaps it's more that it's a strangely mundane day which reverts to normal with the arrival of the next 'strange' event.
Lex will admit that he's not enamored of meteor-affected mutants or the body-possessing types of aliens, but he does prefer the routine of such things, especially when one of the alternatives is a scaly, strong, greenly growing creature that stalks from the lake with it's gaze focused on Lana Lang (typical, actually, and pretty routine), or having to fight off the wolfman shortly after his late lunch, before Clark's even (supposed to be) out of school (not so typical and very, very aggravating).
Dracula, at least, does as he's supposed to and is hiding from the sun (until he manages to spell the sky dark), which Lex does appreciate while he can. The Mummy, however, is free to roam when and where it will, which is also expected, but largely unappreciated at the moment.
As a closet movie buff, Lex is more a fan of science fiction than horror, and the current monster populace invading his town and castle are reason enough that that will never change.
* * *
It had been a good week.
Yesterday, Clark Kent revealed is greatest secret, entrusted it to Lex like the gift it was, all uncertain glances and shy smiles when Lex didn't freak or try to immediately get him into a lab.
Two days before that, Lex managed to outwit his father on a buy out.
And this morning, Jonathon Kent admitted that Lex was not the devil (though he was possibly the Spawn of. Lex didn't push the issue).
This afternoon, Lex lost his favorite car to a superpowered werewolf wearing the tattered remains of his best friend's clothes, lost his glass-topped desk to a bipedal lizardman, took over the part of rescuer (temporarily, he hopes) of Lana Lang. He has two hours to regain the amulet that will otherwise be used by Dracula to take over the world (fuck his life), and his current allies are a pregnant Martha Kent, intrepid reporter Chloe Sullivan, not-as-hateful-when-Lex-is-needed Pete Ross, and an awkwardly sewn together giant of a woman (Mary Shelley is as artful a liar as any author).
Lex can read German just fine, but Smallville has a shortage of virgins, something Lex doesn't want to think on too hard. Except he has to think of something, because the others are looking to him as if he's their last hope. And it's still almost not quite enough; Lex has learned to bear his father's disappointment, he's learned to live with his own, but somewhere out there is a werewolf who will eventually come back to himself and Lex will give anything to be able to meet his gaze afterward and say, "I didn't let everyone you love die."
Also, there's the possibility that if Lex can keep everyone else alive, Clark will kiss him again, with that edge of wonder and desperation and the hint of chocolate that had kept Lex from getting in the car fast enough to actually get away when a magical approximation of the full moon had risen in the afternoon sky.
Lex dislikes meteor mutations, but he loathes magic with an intensity he's very recently reserved for vampires.
* * *
At shortly before dawn, Lex had been roused from his bed by the sound of the south east wing collapsing. Structural damage is always a problem when there are mutants around, but Lex is used to rebuilding various sections of the castle for natural and unnatural reasons (and the occasional fit of temper after a visit from his father).
Clark's presence isn't necessarily required at such events, but neither is it entirely unexpected.
Lex takes in the three pale women dressed in bed sheets, the slick bastard in black, and the alien standing off against them in the rubble of a hallway and thinks of a movie he watched when he was young. The pink glow of an amulet in Clark's hand is not a surprise, but Lex knows how the plot of such things take a while to unfold and despite knowing that he's privy to the greatest of Clark's greatest secrets, he knows in that instant that he's not versed in all of them. It's not a question of whether Clark's been holding out on him, but how long and how much. It's the bad start of a worse day.
There's running, hiding, an odd crawl through a subterranean passageway, and a string of apologies and explanations from Clark that are better than the half-truths of before, even if Lex would rather hear about chemistry and girl troubles than Van Hellsing's supreme fuckup of a century ago.
"Only my father would import the unmarked grave along with his castle." It's the first thing he's said in the quarter of an hour since they left Dracula and his brides behind.
Clark gives him a look that's confusion and surprise, Lex presumes at how well he's taking the whole thing. The look morphs into fondness quickly. "You've been in Smallville too long."
It's true, but Lex shakes his head. "Not long enough." He hasn't had nearly enough time to figure out how a town filled to brimming with strangeness and uncertainty can be home, though it's apparently been long enough to become just that.
* * *
Lex isn't sure how they pick up Pete and Chloe. Lana's inclusion is a given, as soon as they rescue her from the Creature from the Black Lagoon. They convene in the Talon, as it's already been wrecked on one pass through from some monster or another.
"It's not in English," Clark says, squinting as if that could make the scrawl legible. The journal was in the crypt, apparently, though the amulet wasn't. Lex considers asking where it came from, but that is probably a conversation for earlier. He doesn't quite care.
He shakes his head and turns another page. "German. And older. This," he taps a nail against a page, "Is an incantation. To send Dracula and the forces of evil back to Hell."
"Seriously?" Pete moves closer, ignoring his self-imposed space bubble to peer around Lex's arm.
If Lex had a sense of humor and didn't think Pete would sulk about it, he'd tease that he's not as serious as the heart attack awaiting him before he's forty. "Seriously. We have until midnight." He pauses, running the numbers before reaching the same, damning conclusion again. "Midnight tonight, Romanian Daylight's Savings. Or approximately dinner time."
There's a moment while they all look around for a clock that hasn't been knocked off the wall.
Pete shifts uncomfortably and puts more space between himself and Lex again. "What do we need? Garlic?"
"Silver bullets and stakes," Lana suggests, her voice hard. They all look at her, taking in the pallor of her skin. The fight to get her out of the Creature's grasp had been... relatively awkward, since apparently it'd been swimming in Crater Lake long enough to pick up kryptonite. Brute force wasn't always the best way to rescue people, but it was quicker than waiting for them to be distracted enough to sneak up behind them with a metal baseball bat.
Lex finds himself nodding along with Pete, which is probably the strangest part of the morning.
"Holy water?" Clark suggests.
* * *
They were on there way back from the church with several gallons of blessed water and several stones of silver flatware when the first convulsion hit Clark and Lex pulled over on the side of the road.
The darkening sky and blood red moon had been less surprising than the hair Clark had sprouted and the sudden elongation of his already long (and appropriately named) canines.
* * *
The problem with being well-versed in popular culture and bad movies was that Lex couldn't ignore the validity of theories as presented in cheesy dialogue and lengthy exposition.
He lowered the shotgun. "The problem is that I've seen the original, and the Creature isn't all bad."
"Movies are not exactly a great guide to real life, Lex," Clark pointed out. The Creature's skin was a familiar green and Clark looked like he wants to back away from the slow creep of pain, but he wouldn't leave Lex's side.
"If you stop, we'll give you safe passage back to the swamp of your choice." In an aside to Clark, he added, "Though set in Brazil, the film was actually shot in Florida."
"Geek," Clark whispered back, conflicting emotions crossing his face to leave the fondness, fear, and a lingering kryptonite-induced sickness.
Oddly, the creature had stopped and was regarding them as if... Lex's smile was approaching a smirk and Clark would probably call him on it. Then it started forward as before and his smirk disappeared, and really, the day had sucked from the get-go, so why was he surprised?
* * *
"Is that going to be your entire plan?" Pete asks snidely, flicking the safety back on on the shotgun and lowering the barrel to the ground.
Lex looks at them each in turn, his odd little assembly of heroes. Lana's in the Creature's clutches, Clark's a werewolf, Jonathon's unconscious from colliding forcefully with a wall. Martha's pregnant, Chloe's pissed, Pete's frightened, and the monster... "We should really name you," Lex says idly, feeling numb under the impending sense of doom.
Martha pats his cheek with just enough force to get his attention. "Focus, Lex."
He turns his attention back to Pete again. "That's my plan. They're people in undeniably strange circumstances, but people nonetheless."
Pete opens his mouth and closed it, eyes narrowing at Lex. "This is one of those Lex-and-Clark things, isn't it?"
Lex considers the question seriously; he has time for contemplation, as his plan is little more than two minutes of reprieve before inevitable death and according to the time table, they have fifteen minutes until it's midnight in Romania. "A great trust was given to me and I'll work to justify the faith it showed."
"Uh," Pete says, forcing a look of disgust on his face. Lex knows it's forced because it lasts only a second before it disappears and he jokes weakly. "You're soft in the head."
"Question," Chloe interrupts. They give her attention accordingly, but her face is upturned to the sky. "Does Dracula count as a person?"
There isn't a rush to provide answers, but at least Lex can assured they aren't thinking about Lex-and-Clark things in the ensuing silence.
"There's the Whedon theory or the Stoker theory," Chloe finally declares. "Either he was human and it's possible to return his soul, or his soul's black as night and beyond saving. Those in favor of Joss?" No one votes for that, which shows that they've obviously learned something from living in Smallville. "And those backing Bram?"
Pete raises a hand. Lex doesn't know if Chloe had kept out of it in order to be the impartial judge, but Lex is thinking and his abstaining from the vote does not go unnoticed. "Seriously?" Pete asks, voice sharp with the raw, ragged edge of the nerve that has just snapped.
"If it's a last resort, I'm sure we can find a stake and garlic, but we have a tool at our disposal that will keep our hands relatively clean." And out of arm's reach of Dracula.
Several expressions brighten at that. Chloe digs a hand into her jacket pocket and pulls out the amulet. There's a moment, a lull, almost peaceful, as they look at it. It doesn't last before someone has to bring up the unfortunate truth. "The diary's gone," Martha murmurs, one hand rubbing absently over her stomach.
Lex feels the weight of stares and doesn't look at either Pete or Chloe. His desperate bid to distract a particular werewolf with a game of "fetch the diary" had worked. With results Lex could have predicted if he'd thought just a few seconds longer.
He shakes his head. "We don't need it. I can remember the incantation. We need a virgin." They need a little girl with a worn teddy bear. Or anyone under the age of sixteen, apparently. He's still not looking at Chloe and Pete, though for a different reason this time.
Ten minutes until their window to send Dracula off to purgatory closes and they're stuck with an undead overlord with bad breath and an unfortunate desire to see them all slaughtered in the most painful way possible.
* * *
Less than twenty-four hours ago, Lex was having the most enlightening conversation of his life with the not-actually-human teenager he'd had the fortune of falling for on a muddy river bank a year and a half ago.
Twelve hours ago, he and the same lovely young man were running around trying to save the world (or at least their world, small as it is).
Twenty minutes ago, Lex made a pregnant woman drink holy water and dressed her in silver armor before giving her a handgun and letting her take up guard over her husband.
He has two minutes to get Frankenstein's monster of a maiden to speak an ancient spell against evil.
It's official; his life cannot get any stranger than this.
* * *
It's so anticlimactic that when the vortex disappears from the sky and the world falls silent, the only thing Lex can do is stand on the empty street. There's a painful whuff from a few feet away and Lex turns his head, trying to kill that last thread of curiosity that is, almost certainly, one day going to get him killed.
Clark's head lifts and there's still a hint of wildness about him, but it fades as their eyes lock. "Lex?"
"What's a castle without secret dungeons and chains?" Lex muses aloud, letting his body turn and angle toward Clark like it wants, shifting closer. It's not fear that keeps him from crossing the distance, though Clark's downtrodden expression implies that he thinks it is. That overrides the exhaustion that drags Lex's feet down (speaking of, he lost a show to the hole in the sky, and the ground is covered in stones and twigs and broken glass).
"Lex?" Clark says again, voice rough, vaguely growly, as if the wolf's not entirely gone yet.
And Lex doesn't know that it will be. He won't know for another few days whether Clark's non-wolfish now because he's no longer a werewolf or because there's no magical full moon anymore.
There's a puddle of green slime dripping from a teenage boy who could very well be local and a young woman with stitches holding together parts of her body that were already (always) attached. Lex feels a little nauseous and a lot confused, even though he's probably the person best able to theorize on the subject of monsters.
There's a pile of ancient bandages and Lex... really just doesn't want to think about it.
"I didn't let everyone you love die," he says, words tumbling unbidden.
He doesn't get kisses then, but the solid feel of Clark's arms about him, the semi-familiar (it's never happened often enough, that they're this close) smell of his skin where Lex's face is pressed against his throat... it's more than enough. Better, in a way, because it leaves Clark's mouth free to whisper trust in his ear.
* * *
There are questions, to which semi-plausible answers are given. They're not even remotely true.
There are cuts and scrapes to clean and wrap, rubble from various buildings to clear out, homes and businesses to rebuild.
When Great Revelations of the Hidden Life of Teenage Boys, part II, commences, it's at Lex's insistence and it may possibly involve dungeons and chains and long, slow kisses by candlelight. Clark speaks in hesitant tones, like these are the secrets that are hard to believe, not alien orphans who can look at Lex like he's a hero, who believes in him.
Like the strangest thing that has happened to Lex hasn't been that he's lived up to those expectations.
* * *
Something like an epilogue...
The British accents are more annoying than Lex is willing to deal with before he's had something to eat. Lunch was too many hours ago now to count. Lex hushes them as he strides past, getting in Clark's way.
"You're vulnerable to magic," Lex reminds Clark softly. He reaches out a hand and draws him into an embrace. "Which is why none of us will ever ask you to go out and face blood sucking bastards or dark wizards. Meteor-affected teenagers and the occasional alien- or ghost-possessed friend, sure. You've got the experience for that. But creatures of legend?" No, Lex won't chance Clark against a foe he's vulnerable against, even though he knows Clark would go willingly.
He doesn't know what the alternative is, yet, but he knows he'll find it. There are higher costs of failure than disappointment.