Fic: Girls Just Wanna Be Boys Again, Thanks (Parts 1 and 2) (3/6)
Title: Girls Just Wanna Be Boys Again, Thanks (Parts 1 and 2)
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark, Lex
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: major for Season 1, though it references some things up to Season 5 and beyond (Oliver, mainly); starts after Jitters (1x08) but goes AU before Rogue (1x09)
Word count: 23,700+ and 24,700+
Summary: Clark and Lex get genderswapped. Real life ensues.
Warnings: Only unofficially beta'd. Genderswap fic (a.k.a. female!Clark and female!Lex). Some weirdness and confusion involving sex and sexuality, as a matter of course. ...It belatedly occurs to me that I should also warn for PTSD and chemical torture.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
Comments: Yes, please! :)
Author's Note: Written for the clexmas Spring Fling 2012 -- Changes, Prompt: Changes of gender.
For the full ongoing text (parts further than 2), updates will (eventually) be posted at AO3.
Previous post is here.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex was in a foul mood the next morning, not having slept well. His hair was causing him issues, not least of which was that it was a wreck, he couldn't handle it properly, and he'd been too tired the previous night to find some scissors and hack away at it.
He hadn't liked his hair before, but this was damn ridiculous.
So he glowered as he went through his shower -- using the vaguely floral-scented shampoo and conditioner that Mrs. Palmer had all-but-thrust upon him the previous evening before bed. He glowered at himself in the mirror as he got the comb -- a similarly forced 'gift' -- stuck in his hair twelve times before giving up -- his hair was effectively one huge mess of tangled snarls that he was certain he would never get out. He glowered perhaps a little less when he slid into his favorite high-speed convertible... but then was sent glowering again as he realized that the wind most decidedly did not feel the same now, nor gave him the exhilirating rush he was used to -- because rather than merely gliding across his face and over his head like a tactile adrenaline rush, it instead sent his damnable hair whipping around his face, and that fucking hurt.
He'd actually had to make a decision between putting the top up or driving slow.
He skidded to a halt once he hit Main Street, parked in a huff, and stomped into the Beanery, at least wanting an honest-to-god good cup of coffee this morning. He knew he wasn't going to get one, but he was damn well going to try and hold out high hopes anyway, until they were dashed after their latest attempt at brown sludge hit his lips -- lord help him, but if someone ever offered to build him a decent coffee shop in this backwater town, he'd fund the entire damn thing for one good cup a day, that's all he'd ever ask! -- but as he stomped by one set of partially occupied tables, just at the side of center of the shop, he spun and did a double-take.
"Clark?" he asked, barely recognizing his friend. The difference of just one day -- he didn't look sick anymore, thank god!
"Mmm?" Clark said around a mouthful of what looked to be a peanut butter sandwich. --At least, Lex surmised as much, given the loaf of bread and open jar of peanut butter (with knife-stuck-in) sitting on the table next to a half-drained jug of milk. He watched Clark blink up at him, swallow his mouthful, and then lift the milk and take a good swallow straight from the jug one-handed, all without letting go of the half-a-sandwich he was clutching.
"Hey, Lex," Clark said thickly, then took another swallow of milk. "So, um... hair?" he said, tilting his head.
Lex sighed heavily and glanced away. He started when his usual nervous gesture -- running a hand over his head -- encountered said hair. He glowered a bit upwards at it, blew out a breath, and all but fell onto one of the spindly and highly uncomfortable high-backed wood-and-metal chairs next to Clark.
"Yes, hair. Apparently I can have an excellent immune system and no asthma or hair, or asthma and hair. Apparently both walk where none fear to tread," he ended with a sigh, propping his head up with a fist, and a bad-mannered elbow on the table.
Clark snickered. "It's not that bad."
"It is that bad! Look at this!" Lex complained, grasping a chunk of still slightly-soggy hair in one hand and moving it upwards. The rest of his mass of hair followed. "It's a complete mess!"
Clark eyed his hair critically. "You want some help with that?"
"Do you have a pair of scissors? Or a razor?" Lex said, huffing, letting go of the mass of hair and feeling it swing down like a weighty pendulum behind him.
"Lex! You shouldn't just cut it all off!" Clark protested.
Lex blinked, then gave him Clark a disbelieving look. "Why not?"
"Because if you just shave it all off, you'll have to do it a bunch of times, and it'll probably itch coming back in."
Lex blinked at him, and felt a little horrified at the notion. His scalp shouldn't itch!
"Cutting it too short would probably be bad, too, because then it might fall into your eyes and face and you wouldn't be able to pull it out of the way," Clark added, scrunching up his face and giving Lex's hair a critical look.
Lex knew he must've pulled a look just then, because a few female school-aged teens giggled at him as they walked by towards the ordering counter.
Lex folded his arms, crossed his legs, somewhat demurely, and said, "Well, then, what would you recommend, Clark?"
...And now it was Clark's turn to look a little taken aback. "Well, um..." He stopped and gave the idea the weight of his full attention for a few moments, then he brightened a bit.
"Just wait here for a sec, ok?" he said, getting up from the table and heading for the drinks counter.
Lex eyed Clark as he walked off. He didn't exactly move like a guy, but he didn't move like a girl, either. He did, however, move like Clark, which was both odd... and not.
He took a deep breath and surveyed the rest of the Beanery. No-one seemed to be paying him the least amount attention, really. He wasn't sure whether to be offended by this or not. Really, was this town so completely insane that men turning into women didn't even hit on anyone's radar?
...Actually, Lex didn't want to know the answer to that, now that he thought about it.
Clark stopped at the counter and flagged down a waitress who he seemed to know, or at least was comfortable being friendly with. He leaned against the coffee bar and chatted her up. She lowered her tray to her hip, frowning slightly, but when Clark motioned a hand towards Lex and then back at himself, she glanced over, her eyebrows rose as she looked at Lex, and then she turned and smiled at Clark brightly, nodding as she gave her response.
And then he watched as she handed off her tray to another server with what looked like a faster rundown of an explanation, and another exchange of smiles.
The girl disappeared into the back for a moment as Clark waited patiently. Then she returned and handed over a few small items, which Clark took up in his hands, with a grin and what was obviously a 'thank you'.
Lex waited until Clark had returned to their table, then said without preamble, "You're wearing a skirt."
Clark glanced down at the one-tone long green skirt and said, "Yeah, mom laid it out for me this morning, and I don't think any of my pants will fit," with a shrug.
"Is it..." Lex gave him an uncertain look.
"Weird? Kinda, I guess. It's all... open and flow-y, really different than jeans," Clark said, wrinkling his nose. "But it's got a stretchy waist, and it fits, and I've gotta wear something to school, so..." he trailed off, shrugging as he pulled his chair around the side behind Lex and sat down. "At least it's long?"
Lex turned around and slung an arm over the back on his chair, facing Clark. "You know, I could--" he started, about to suggest a shopping trip for pants that would fit him and other less-obviously-female-looking-ish items -- after all, it was Lex's fault that Clark had gotten into this mess, and he doubted the Kents had much in their clothes budget for this sort of thing -- when he realized Clark was frowning at him furiously.
"Ah, problem?" Lex asked tentatively.
"You've gotta turn around," Clark said.
Lex blinked at him. "Why?"
"Because I can't fix it like that," Clark said firmly.
Lex blinked again, nonplussed, then looked down at what Clark had in his hands: a hairbrush, a comb, and some... hair-fastening tools? A few were circular, like a rubber band, and some just looked like long thin pieces of rope -- or thick thread.
"You-- what?" Lex said intelligently. Sort of.
Clark sighed, set everything but the hairbrush down on the table, and said, "Turn around."
"But--"
Lex found his elbow lifted and dropped over the chairback without fanfare, and his shoulders abruptly turned so that he was sitting straight-ahead.
He frowned and turned his head to ask--
"No, no moving," Clark said, putting both hands on either side of his head and gently twisting it straight-forward again.
Lex blinked, and said nervously -- while not turning around again -- "Clark, I don't think--"
"Hold still!"
Lex cringed internally and braced himself for the truly horrific and incredibly futile hair-pulling experience he was about to endure, squeezing his eyes shut.
He heard brushy-snarly sounds from behind him, but no painful yanking.
Lex slowly cracked his eyes open, and tentatively forced himself to relax. And then sat with his hands folded in his lap, and wondered what the hell Clark was doing back there, because he must be doing something, but...
...well, he actually didn't feel any tugging at all.
Lex started to turn his head again, but remembered Clark's earlier warning. He tried to glance about, moving only his eyes, to see what was going on in any reflective surface--
--He managed to partially see what Clark was doing out of the corner of his eye in the reflection in the storefront's window glass, but not much. He did seem to be brushing, at least, and very intent on it, too -- biting his lower lip as he focused entirely on Lex's hair.
"Not that I'm complaining, Clark--" because god knew he wasn't! "--but why does it not hurt?" Lex asked finally.
"I'm holding your hair above where I'm brushing," Clark said. "Tugging is bad."
Yes. Yes, it is, Lex thought. "But aren't you supposed to brush it from the top?"
The brushing noises paused a moment, as Clark paused in his efforts. "You tried to brush it from the top without getting all the bottom stuff unsnarled first?" he said incredulously.
Lex opened his mouth to snap at Clark and tell him off for using that tone of voice on him, except his brain caught up with him first. He remembered some things he'd learned at the ranch in Montanta about knots in rope and where and how to go about the start of untangling things, and...
Lex snapped his mouth shut and felt his cheeks heat.
"Wow. No wonder you had problems," Clark continued, unaware. The brushing sounds resumed.
Five minutes later and Clark had made it up to Lex's skull, and was apologizing every few seconds for the tugs because he couldn't keep from pulling those snarls.
Lex didn't really mind though, because half the time he didn't hit a snarl, and...
And then it was all-clear. Just long stokes, starting at the top of his head, and Lex just sat back and let Clark do it, closing his eyes and revelling in the feeling, because, god, this felt so decadent, so sensual, so...
Clark pulled the hairbrush bristles through his hair with another long stroke, and Lex sighed softly, a gentle smile surfacing to grace his lips as he tilted his head back just a little.
Mmmm, this could go on forever...
Except it didn't.
Lex slowly opened his eyes, trying not to whine, because there really was no good way to ask Clark to just keep going--- ohmygod, Clark's hands were in his hair why?
He started, his eyes widening and shoulders tensing, then slammed his eyes shut and forced himself not to flinch as Clark's fingers ran through his hair again. His fingers curled up in his lap and he tried not to shiver; he really wasn't used to this.
And then Clark's broad palm swept across a huge portion of his head and that was too much! "Clark, what--!?"
"Sorry, gotta get it up. You're hair's too long to just let it hang down loose all day, if you can't brush it yourself; it'll tangle up all over again. I think I can do this right... --Let me know if it feels too tight?"
Lex suddenly realized that Clark's other hand was at the base of his neck, curled up around...
Oh.
Lex bit his lip and tried not to giggle as Clark pulled his hair back and secured it in a ponytail.
"That feel ok?"
Lex almost nodded before he rememberred he wasn't supposed to move. "Yes."
"Ok, good. I used the strap, ok? You should just be able to untie the bow and unwind it from around the hair."
"Ok," Lex said, and he started to lean forward when he felt a hand on his shoulder again. "Problem?"
"Uh, yeah."
"...Still not done?" Lex asked, wondering what could possibly be left to--
"I'm gonna try to braid it. It's still mostly free, sort of -- it'll just snarl from the ponytail down."
Lex glanced back over his shoulder, feeling his hair swing behind him -- and it was a much smoother, sweeping, free-r cascading feeling, now that it wasn't all snarled. Still odd, though. "Do you know how to do that?"
Clark looked a little uncertain, but nodded tentatively. "I've seen dad do it for mom once. I think I remember it right."
"All right, Clark," Lex said after a moment's pause, turning back around.
He blew out a quiet breath as Clark brushed at his hair again, and this time he felt every tug as he did it -- apparently Clark couldn't do everything he needed to do while holding his hair still -- and then an odd constant pressure.
"No, you need to pull your head forward," he heard Clark say as he let his head fall back. Lex felt more than heard a mad scramble, then more brushing and a grumble, and soon enough he had a long braid tossed over his left shoulder with one of the cloth-like rubber bands securely wrapped multiple times around the end. He stroked his fingers over, and through, the very soft-feeling fluffy-looking tuft of hair at the end that was free, and wondered at it -- this is my hair? It was actually kind of... soft. And a little wave-y when not tangled. Huh.
"Everything work out ok?" Lex heard, and he turned his head and glanced up at the waitress from earlier.
"Yup!" Clark said brightly behind him, passing over the brush, comb, and remaining assorted hair-things. "Thanks!"
"No problem," she smiled back. "Happy to help in a hair emergency," she winked at Lex, as she sat down two cups of coffee and three muffins in front of him -- blueberry.
"Oh, uh, yeah, I kind of ordered for you -- hope that's ok," Clark said sheepishly.
Lex shook his head slightly. After fixing his hair, he had no complaints, especially since he always ordered the same thing, and Clark apparently knew his order. Though the order itself was a bit larger than usual...
Well, first things first. "What do I owe you for...?" Lex asked the waitress, gesturing at his hair.
But he only got a laugh in return. "Oh, don't worry about it," she said. "I've got a zillion of those things at home. Besides," she winked, "it's for a good cause."
Lex smiled back tentatively, and instead handed over the payment for his breakfast, along with a generous tip, which he hoped would cover her trouble and replacements, though he had no idea how much they might cost.
He got back a grin and a pat on the shoulder, so he figured it must've been enough.
"So, Clark..." he began, after Clark had moved his chair back around and settled back in with his own breakfast feast of sorts, "Why so much food?"
"Oh. Um," Clark blushed a little. "I've been ravenous since, well, you know," he grimaced. "Haven't you?"
Lex had to stop and think about it, but Clark was right -- he had eaten a great deal more in the past twenty-four hours than usual, and hadn't skipped any meals, besides.
"You think it's a side effect of the process?" Lex asked, taking a sip of his coffee before pulling a bite-sized chunk from his first muffin with his fingers and popping it in his mouth.
"Mmm, maybe. But, I guess I was super-thin, too. Like unhealthy-whatever. I, uh, I kinda... got sick... a lot. And I think I burned a lot off getting better, or something."
Lex turned over the thought in his mind as he quietly ate. Clark had been an ungodly stick-figure mess. It would make sense that his immune system would need food for energy to fix... whatever had been damaged, and heal what needed healing. Not to mention filling him back out again, Lex realized, eyeing Clark with his previous state-of-body in mind, as Clark had looked at the hopsital. That did actually make quite a lot of sense, and, looking at what Clark was eating -- high-energy breads and nuts, and milk with calcium for his bones along with other nutrients -- yes, it was no wonder why Clark was eating what he was, and looking far healthier for it.
"I hope you're not skimping on the meat," Lex added, because he would probably need the iron and animal protein, if he'd had nearly as much blood loss as Lex had had through... 'getting sick'.
"Mmm, not sure I have that much money on me," Clark said. "Probably had a lot last night," he offered.
"You're not sure?" Lex asked, frowning.
Clark shook his head. "I don't remember yesterday really well," he said, making himself up another two sandwiches.
"Then why would you think so?" Lex asked, curious.
"Because I bought this stuff with my allowance money this morning," Clark said around a mouthful of sandwich. "There was, like, no food in the house."
Lex eyebrows raised. "None?" He found that hard to believe.
But Clark just smirked and gave a significant glance down at Lex's placesetting.
Lex looked down and wondered where the hell all three muffins and his coffee had gone off to.
Then he winced slightly and felt his cheeks heat again.
Clark just grinned and offered up a peanut butter sandwich.
Lex, bemused, gingerly took it, and watched Clark grab another gallon of milk from a grocery bag on the floor, unscrew the lid, and refill one of his coffee cups with it.
"How did you get them to let you eat outside food in here?" Lex asked, realizing that nothing on the table was actually something that could be bought from the menu here.
"Oh, I got a cup of hot chocolate and two bagels with cream cheese. The grocery store was out of bagels -- can you believe that?"
Lex smiled at his over his cup of milk... and it soured as he glanced over at the door as he heard a familiar voice and laughter.
Lex finished off the sandwich quickly, and chugged down the milk, because lord knew he wouldn't be able to get anything else down after this.
He tried to look nonchalant and not glare up at the three men who were walking up the aisle, hoping beyond hope that they weren't actually here because... no, damn, they were walking up to their table -- fuck -- but certainly they wouldn't actually recognize...
"Well, look who it is," the blonde decked out in green drawled down at him, looking amused, with malice glittering in his eyes.
Fuck.
"Oliver," Lex said flatly, because it was obvious now that there was no point in denying it -- they already knew he was him. Word must have gotten around somehow, outside town. He turned away slightly to keep from giving Oliver a dark glare -- he knew better than to instigate a fight with the now (mostly) grown-up bully, because, fuck, he had to live here. He didnt want the town to think that he--
"Hey, shit, he really does look just like a girl, now!" Alden piped up, with a snickering laugh from Geoffrey. Lex visibly winced at bad memories.
"Lex doesn't look like a girl..." Clark said uncertainly, frowning up at the trio.
"No, he just is one," Oliver grinned. "Always has been."
Lex gritted his teeth and told hmself it wasn't worth it.
"Uh, noooo," Clark said slowly, like he was talking to a brain-damaged fool. "Lex is a guy. Always has been."
All four of the Excelsior Prep graduates turned to stare at Clark.
"What?" Clark said. He tilted his head at Lex. "Just because you sort of have hair now and, uh, your chest is kinda... less flat..." Clark frowned, like he'd lost track of what he was trying to make a point about. "Anyway, I mean, you still look like you, and you're still a guy," he ended, talking to Lex.
"Lex is a girl," Oliver repeated.
"Hey," Clark protested. "Just because his body's a little more girly now, doesn't mean Lex isn't a guy. He's totally a guy! And so am I!" he ended heatedly, taking a bite out of yet another peanut butter sandwich. He chewed at them while the three older bullies exchanged looks.
Alden started in on him first. "Wait, wait, you're the other guy who got surgery with him!" He started laughing hysterically, nastily.
Clark frowned up at Alden. Then his frown deepened and he slowly set down his sandwich as he looked the other two of them over.
"Damnit, Oliver, just leave him alone, you don't know--" Lex started lowly, almost under his breath to his long-standing tormentor as he slowly stood up, because fuck it if he got Clark caught up in this, too--
"No, no," Oliver said, with a pasted-on smile, brushing Lex aside and taking a step towards Clark. He leaned down over Clark, one hand on the table, and said, "I'm kind of curious. You know, why you did it. What's your type?" he grinned with a totally facetious smile.
Lex's blood ran cold.
"Excuse me?" Clark said calmly.
Lex nearly sucked in a breath at Clark's response, because that didn't sound right. Clark didn't--
"I was just wondering if you'd like to go out sometime," Oliver said smoothly, with his two cohorts looking all innocent behind him, and Lex clenched and unclenched his fists. Fuck but Lex wanted to hurt him, because he knew what Oliver was thinking, because if Clark had gotten a sex-change operation because he was interested in guys -- thank god that wasn't the case -- Oliver was going to-- thinking of-- trying to basically hurt him by--
"No, thank you," Clark said with zero interest, turning back to his milk and downing the rest of the gallon before setting it back down, effectively giving Oliver the cold shoulder.
Oh, hey, Clark knows how to dole out rejection like a pro! Lex laughed weakly to himself because, really, who knew?
Oliver's eyes narrowed, and he straightened. "Oh, sorry, I didn't realize," he drawled, reaching in a pocket. He tossed a few dollar bills down onto the tabletop, with a sneer.
Lex stepped forward and grabbed Oliver by the shoulder, wrenching him back, about to flatten Oliver for the implication--
Clark scooped up the money neatly, folded it between his fingers, and said, "Oh, don't worry," as he stood up, took one step forward, and slid it neatly between Oliver's pants and his belt. "I can pay for my own meals."
Lex's jaw dropped.
Oliver's eyes widened in shock, and then he shrugged off Lex's grip like it was a minor annoyance, took a step forward, and loomed over Clark. Alden and Geoffrey stood at his shoulders, a step away from cornering Lex's young friend.
Clark didn't back down. He just tilted his head back a little and put his hands on his hips.
Lex's brain was jibbering at him incoherently at this point, because Clark didn't get aggressive, he never got aggressive. Also, he was a five-foot-maybe-two-inch-nothing girl right now, and these were three six-foot guys with at least a hundred pounds on him, each, and-- what the fuck, his brain was telling him that the brunette in front of him was really, really hot and it was doing strange uncomfortable warm things to his innards--
"Clark..." Lex said, starting to step forward.
"It's fine Lex, I'm handling this," Clark said calmly without looking away from Oliver.
Oliver tensed his shoulder and neck muscles, as though to move forward, obviously readying for a fight.
Oh god, he was going to be scraping his friend off of the floor--
"No! Stop!"
And then Lex blinked and had to resist the urge to hide, because the person who had said -- commanded -- that? Had been him.
Lex was also a good step forward from where he'd been standing before, at Clark's shoulder, and when had that happened, exactly?
Four sets of eyes turned to look at him. Three were worse-than-unfriendly. One was understanding.
"Really, Lex, it's fine. I've got this."
Lex took a deep breath, about to protest as he stared into Clark's eyes... and instead found himself nodding slightly and backing down, literally taking a step back, because he... couldn't really do anything anyway. Taking on all three of them at once... Clark would still end up in the thick of it, trying to rescue him out of the beatdown of his life. I might as well let Clark try... Lex supposed, thought he still felt more than a little frantic and highly uncomfortable about it...
...especially since Clark seemed to have forgotten that he wasn't six-foot-three and two-hundred-some-odd pounds of strong Kansas farmboy muscle anymore.
Oliver was looking between the two of them, amused for some reason. "Really, Luthor? You're gonna hide behind this little girl?" he grinned. Lex winced, because conversations nearby were starting to die down... where the hell were the police, and why was no-one doing anything about this? They were out in public, for god's sake!
"You really think I'm a girl?" Clark asked casually.
Oliver just laughed at him. Alden said, "Yeah, so?"
"And you're actually thinking about hitting a girl?" Clark didn't quite straighten, exactly. He just dropped his hands to his sides and stood there. And didn't move. He didn't seem the least bit like he was making any sort of physical challenge at all. And he looked totally unconcerned and unthreatened by the three of them, singularly or en masse.
Alden laughed again, but it sounded almost... nervous. Geoffrey looked... a little off-put, maybe confused. Oliver frowned down at him.
"What, you gonna tell me some patriarchical shit about how hitting girls is wrong?" Oliver said, pseudo-reasonably. "I am equal opportunity all the way, kiddo," he smirked, shaking out his hands and making loose fists.
Clark tilted his head slightly and gave him a look like he was the oddest duck in the book. "What, seriously? That's why you think guys don't hit girls?"
Alden's grin was slowly fading and... he started to look... worried. Geoffrey looked like he wanted to back off for some reason.. or run. Which was... interesting. Lex couldn't remember having seen them react that way to anyone before.
Oliver, on the other hand... "Ok, shrimp, I'll bite -- why don't guys hit girls?" he asked, like it was some big joke and he was waiting for the ending.
And Clark stood there, cool as a cucumber, and said, matter-of-factly, like he was explaining how the sun rises in the east: "Guys don't hit girls, because girls always win."
And then he drove a fist into Oliver's solar plexus in a quick rabbit-punch -- no warning at all.
Oliver stood there for a moment, swaying... then he made a squeaking noise, his eyes crossed, and he went down like a sack of potatoes.
Clark stood there, in exactly the same pose as before, and calmly stared the two remaining bullies down, while Oliver lay curled up on the floor, groaning softly.
There was dead silence for awhile, and then Geoffrey cleared his throat carefully, then flinched at the attention.
"Um. Would you mind if we, uh..." His eyes flicked down at Oliver.
"Sure, go ahead," Clark said easily.
And with that... permission?... Alden and Geoffrey each got a good grip under one of Oliver's arms and started to pull him up.
"Oh. And one more thing," Clark said.
They both looked up at him and froze.
"Stay out of my town, ok?"
Alden and Geoffrey paled slightly. They both nodded repeatedly, then dragged Oliver outside with them as fast as they could, without another word.
The door slammed shut.
Conversation resumed in the Beanery, as if it had never stopped.
Clark turned around, grabbed his chair, pulled it close to the table, and sat back down.
Lex glanced between Clark sitting at the table peanut-buttering his bread, and outside through the windows at the threesome who were sorting themselves into a sports car, one still very out of it, and the other two looking frantic as hell. He did this several times, while his brain unsuccessfully tried to process what the hell had just happened.
Clark got down to the serious business of munching down another sandwich.
After awhile, Lex sat down slowly.
It was... a little surreal. Clark had just... for him... and he was just acting... normal like... and...
And Lex had forgotten something rather important.
"Ah, Clark?" Lex said tentatively.
"Mmm?" Clark said with a closed mouth full of peanut butter.
"Thanks."
Clark shrugged. He took a swig of milk. "Don't mention it."
Lex felt almost offended at the notion. "But you--"
"No, really. Don't mention it. My parents would kill me if they knew I got in a fight," Clark said, looking up at him, more than a little worried.
Oh. Right. ...Huh. "Okay," said Lex.
Clark relaxed and gave him a smile, then dropped his head and got back to eating.
After awhile, Lex couldn't help but ask.
"So... girls always win?"
"Uh huh."
"I did not know that."
"Really?" Clark looked up at him, wide-eyed.
Lex nodded once, propping his head up in a fist again.
"Wow," said Clark. He stopped and thought about that for all of two seconds. "You're really lucky," he said, before resuming his chewing.
And that little comment just sent Lex's head spinning all over again.
~*~*~*~*~*~
By the time Lex got himself another two bagels from the coffee bar, he had come to several conclusions:
1) He never wanted to find out what Mrs. Kent, Chloe, and Lana had done (or still did) to earn the continual "girls always win" respect of one Clark Kent. Ever.
2) Excelsior Prep's all-boys program had obviously left him deficient in some areas of knowledge to the point that he truly had little-to-no-idea about the breadth or depth of said deficiencies whatsoever.
3) He was going to take Clark's hard-earned knowledge to heart and, if ever he found himself confronted with an opponent of the female variety in the future, he was going to a) make a full-out no-holds-barred pre-emptive strike first and then b) run like hell in the opposite direction (and possibly, for safety, ask Clark if he could hide behind him or otherwise seek his assistance in such matters, because Clark was clearly far more well-informed in girl-boy issues when it came to open warfare than Lex himself was, apparently).
4) The Beanery's coffee still made sludge look good. (sigh)
He was also resolved to find a way to convince (con) Clark's parents into letting him take Clark jeans shopping in the near-future. No stalwart defender-of-Luthors should ever have to find themselves resigned to walking around town in a weird flappy-feeling skirt.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex and Clark chatted about other small, yet significant topics for a bit. It was almost time for high school to begin, and Clark was finishing off the last of his meal and getting ready to go. He'd better ask now, or... "Clark?"
"Hmm?"
"Are you a meteor freak?"
Clark nearly did a spit-take with a mouthful of milk.
Lex realized that perhaps he could have timed that better, as he watched his young friend manage to swallow and cough a little, before glancing back up and giving him an approximation of The Look.
"No."
Well, so far no explosion. That's good, right? Lex steeled himself and asked, just as quietly as before, "Are you sure?"
Clark frowned at him. "Yes."
"How do you know?"
"I just do." Clark balled up the empty bread bag and added, "Why?"
Now it was Lex's turn to feel a little off-balance. "Your behavior earlier seemed... atypical. You weren't aggressive, exactly, but..."
Clark blinked, looked a little blank, then got a rueful half-smile and said, "Oh, that wasn't..." He shook his head slightly. "I just figured that if I look like a girl, and I was gonna get treated like a girl, that maybe I should get at least a few perks of being a girl, you know?"
Lex let out a startled laugh, Clark grinned, and Lex soon found himself grinning right back.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark managed to make it through the first half of the day without issue. Nobody really gave him any trouble for being a girl. Either the whole town already knew, or the teachers just weren't aware enough to realize (or simply didn't care) that they had an extra girl in their classes when they should've had a boy.
Given how much he got away with with his abilities over the years, Clark wouldn't be surprised if it was both.
Clark managed to catch Ms. Willis, his history teacher, before homeroom began, and tried to beg her to let him take the test then and there, but she wouldn't have anything for it. He struggled through his first three classes for the day, and tracked her down at lunchtime -- not too hard, as she was on hallway duty that period, thank god. He wasn't exactly sure how he managed it, but he got her to agree to giving him an oral exam as a makeup during his study hall period after lunch, when she was also free. Sure, he wouldn't have a chance to review right before it, and it was probably going to be super hard, but it was better than a zero grade and failing the class.
Clark sighed in relief as he dashed off to the grocery store again, this time to buy a decently-sized lunch -- well, makings for one, anyway -- and then back to the Torch to hide out from the hordes with a little time to spare for eating.
It was only once he walked in the doors and stopped short at seeing Chloe and Pete that he remembered why he'd been almost-but-not-quite avoiding the people he knew all day.
He warily sat down at a desk, hoping he could just eat in silence while they bantered, instead of being subject to a barrage of questions...
"So, are you really Clark?"
...but really, who was he kidding?
"Yes, Chloe," Clark sighed as he unwrapped the lunchmeat he'd bought, and uncapped the mustard.
"Oh yeah? How can we know?" Pete said, pulling over a chair and ganging up on him.
Oh god, they weren't actually serious, were they?
"Yeah, maybe he's a changeling or something, trying to usurp Kent's rightful place?"
"Or his GPA," Pete offered. "Hey, if you are Clark, what's it like being a girl and having boobs? Do they turn you on?"
...What was scary was that Clark still couldn't tell if they were being serious or not.
He untwisty-tied the loaf of bread while watching them both.
"Well?" Chloe demanded.
"Well, what?" Clark asked. Then he got it. Rolling his eyes, and ignoring Pete's question, because it was fricking dumb: "God, seriously? ...I don't know. Wall of Weird? Eighth grade in the barn? It took you three hours to track down Lex's cellphone? Sean Kelvin sucked hardcore and didn't want to chill out?"
Pete groaned at the last one, and Chloe looked taken aback at the mention of the barn, so he hoped that would be the end of it.
"Hey, anybody could know about that stuff -- I mean something only the real Clark Kent would know!" Chloe regrouped.
...Or not.
Clark finished making his stack of sandwiches and said, "Ok, fine. You told the crazy guy who kidnapped Lex all about meteor freaks and their mutations, and that Lex had some super self-healing ability or something, and that's why Lex got kidnapped."
Then he glared at her as he took a bite of his first sandwich.
Chloe looked like he'd slapped her, but, really, she'd had it coming.
"I-- I did not--!"
"Dark hair, late thirties, five-foot-seven, glasses, wore a white lab coat with a grey suit underneath and a yellow tie with blue ducks on it, and was totally super-talkative like a mad scientist out of some dumb B-movie." When Chloe opened her mouth, he added, "And he probably wasn't wearing the white lab coat when he talked to you, 'cause it was all stained and frayed at the edges and even you would've thought he was a nutjob."
Chloe set her jaw. "I didn't know he was going to do that. He just told me who he was and that he was a doctor interested in strange mutations, and wanted to talk to me about my research."
"You told this stuff to a complete stranger!" Clark protested, because, god, how could she not get how wrong and dangerous that was?
Chloe glared right back at him. "He didn't ask anything I haven't told anybody before, and the people have a right to know--"
"God, you aren't even sorry, are you?" Clark realized, aghast. Then he got angry. "Lex could've died, don't you get that?! You told somebody something stupid that you don't even know is true and--!"
"It is true!" Chloe protested.
"What, that Lex can heal from practically everything?"
"Well, he survived, didn't he? He survives everything!"
Clark sat there and just stared. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"You... you..." Clark just didn't have the words. He turned to his best, oldest friend since forever. "Pete, can you-- just tell her--"
"What? She's right. And it's not like Luthor doesn't deserve it," Pete snorted. "Kinda funny, actually."
He was not hearing this. He was not-- "Yeah? Is it funny what happened to me, too?" Clark said, sounding strangled even to himself. "Did-- did I deserve it?" I thought I was dying. It hurt so badly--
"For running off after him? Hell yeah. That was stupid to do." Pete said, crossing his arms, leaning back in his chair, and looking belligerent.
Clark went wide-eyed and sucked in a breath, feeling as though his insides had gone cold, because that had hurt. Almost worse than--
"You should've waited and let the police handle it," Chloe said. "We told you to wait!" she said, sounding accusatory, her voice shaking.
Clark felt starbursts of pain behind his eyes, and had to remember to breathe. He was nearly vibrating with rage.
"Some friends you are," he choked out, grabbing up his sandwiches and stomping out, close to tears.
"Clark!"
"I'm not Clark, I'm just some imposter who wants his GPA, remember?!" he screamed back over his shoulder, slamming the doors shut behind him. He stomped down the hallway, heading for the cafeteria because, well, god, he was doing better with the rest of the student population than his own so-called 'friends' so far today, so why the hell not?
It was near the end of lunch at that point, so he was able to find a mostly empty table and sit apart from the stragglers, far enough away that nobody tried to strike up a conversation. Nobody bothered him. He sat down with his sandwiches and got through them pretty quickly, what with no interruptions and all.
He laid his head down for awhile, and then he opened his eyes, panting a little and sweating lightly. He felt thirsty. Really thirsty.
He stood up, swaying slightly before he got his footing. He wiped a little sweat from his forehead, suddenly feeling really tired.
He headed for the boys bathroom and didn't think twice about going in.
He ducked his head sideways under the faucet and opened it up, full-cold.
He drank and drank, and finally he felt full.
He sighed and straightened, and then felt a weird pressure all above his eyes.
And then he sneezed, hard, into the sink, so hard he bent over.
He sneezed again. Multiple times.
Ugh. His head felt weird. He coughed once or twice, then spat.
Red and green goo. Mostly green goo. Ew.
--Oh god, EW!
He flailed for the paper towel dispenser at the wall and blew his nose.
He was through about half the roll before he was done.
He cleaned up the sink really carefully, and threw out all the paper towels, shoving them far down in the bin and covering them with more.
He washed his hands and face, and then his hands again, and sighed when he was through because... weirdly, his head felt lighter. A lot lighter. Like it had been full of... heavy fog, or lead, or something like that, maybe? And his thoughts were.... sharper. Clearer, almost.
Oh wow, it wasn't missing a day of classes, Clark realized as he mentally reviewed the stuff from his earlier classes that day. It was me.
Well, he felt a lot better now. ...Maybe the history exam wouldn't go so completely horribly, if he was lucky?
Clark sighed, ran his hands over his face, and turned to go.
He nearly ran into one of the senior linebackers coming in.
The guy looked startled as hell, backing up a step before glancing at him and then around at the room, then glared down at him and growled, "What the hell, man? Boys bathroom!"
"Uh, yeah," said Clark.
The guy stopped short in his tirade, blinked down at him and said, "Wait, you Kent?"
Clark nodded tentatively with the beginnings of a frown, wondering if Whitney had put out a hit on him or something.
"Oh. Dude, use the girl's bathroom." And he moved around Clark towards one of the urinals.
"What? --I can't go in there!"
"Sure you can," the guy said rolling his eyes as he unzipped.
"But -- they might be-- I don't know, naked in there or something!"
"That's the locker room, dummy," the linebacker said none-too-patiently. "Stay out of there if you don't want to get trashed by the girls. Or their boyfriends," he added meaningfully as he glanced over at Clark, who was still freaking out at the idea of either, or both, or any of it at all. "Dude, seriously. OUT!"
Clark got out.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark sighed and impatiently waited out his time in the cafeteria, counting down the seconds until his make-up history exam. ...At least he had a window seat. The sun felt nice.
He propped his chin on a hand and his eyes slowly drifted shut. Then they flicked back open as he realized exactly what he'd done that morning in front of Lex.
Oh shit. He nearly broke out into a cold sweat. I picked a fight with somebody. An actual fight. Three somebodies. And won. And Lex watched me do it. He wasn't supposed to do stuff like that for a reason. That stuff got him noticed, and a fight could too easily go wrong. If one of them had managed to land a hit...
He hadn't really cared or thought much about that at the time, though. ...Maybe I can blame it on the stuff in my head? After all, it had looked like he'd still had a lot of that gunk left in his system.
In retrospect, though, Lex hadn't gotten angry that Clark had basically taken on his fight for him. In fact, Lex hadn't seemed to mind -- he'd seemed almost relieved, afterwards. --And he'd promised not to tell, so it would probably be ok, because who else would tell on him to his parents? And the sun did feel really nice...
He was almost drifting off to sleep with his head cushioned in his arms, when he felt a hand roughly grab his shoulder and yank him back.
"Wh--!" Clark protested,
"CLARK JEROME KENT!"
Clark craned his neck around and looked up before freezing in sheer overwhelming horror.
"Mom?!?" he choked. "Wh- whaaaat are you doing here?" his voice ended in a squeak.
Oh god, his mom looked ready to kill somebody, and his dad was there too, standing a couple steps behind her.
oh god, oh god, the Beanery, oh god was all Clark could think.
"You are supposed to be at home in bed, young man! You are sick!" his mom nearly screamed at him, shaking him by the shoulder and dragging him upright. "Do you have any idea how worried we were?"
Clark blanked out for a couple seconds, then realized they don't know about that and then wait a minute "--I'm fine, mom, really, I-- you put out the clothes for me, remem--"
"Don't backtalk me, young man! MARCH!!" she yelled, dragging him along like a wayward little kid.
Clark realized that everybody was staring, and and only had about two seconds of panic and self-loathing about how he was gonna be the school pariah, literally the bottom of the social food chain -- no, below that, even, did they have subzero popularity? because he was going to have that -- for what his mother was doing to him right now. Yeah, about two seconds of wanting to die and get swallowed up by the earth right then and there, before he remembered something considered even more important in his household.
"Mom, oh god, no! I barely got Ms. Willis to let me retake the history exam! I can't leave yet!" he begged. If he didn't take the test, he might fail history, and failing history with an 'F' didn't just fuck up his GPA -- getting an 'F' in any class meant he might have to retake the entire year!
Clark dug in his heels and squirmed, trying to get out of his mother's iron grip, which she just ended up transferring to his wrist.
As his mother bodily dragged him from the cafeteria, Clark, frantic, grabbed the doorframe and resolved not to let go -- superstrength abilities coming to light be damned.
"Let go, Clark!" she yelled at him, pulling him hard.
"No, oh god, mom, I'm fine, will you please listen--!"
"Martha," his dad said, catching up on the approach and holding his hands up, "Maybe we should just--"
"--Don't you tell me to calm down, Jonathan Kent!" she said with an angry glare, yanking at Clark again.
"...Is there a problem here?" a familiar voice said.
Oh thank god, Clark thought, because nobody messed with old Ms. Willis.
...Then again, nobody messed with his mom, either.
Somehow, Ms. Willis talked his mom into letting him take the oral history exam before they took him home.
Clark was nervous as hell at trying to answer questions with both his parents in the room, one glowering and looking really not pleased with him at all, but somehow he managed to survive it.
He only really started panicking about what the entire school had witnessed in the cafeteria once they were in the truck driving home, with his mom ranting at him for leaving without saying anything -- which was crazy, because she'd been the one to leave the clothes on his bed, hadn't she? -- and still being too ill to go anywhere or do anything -- which was totally untrue and she would know that if she'd just look at him for two seconds -- and how he was grounded for a month for sneaking or wandering off like that -- she couldn't seem to make up her mind as to which he'd done.
Clark almost -- almost -- asked her why she'd left him alone in the first place, rather than staying glued at his side all the time, if she was really all that worried about him. But that would have been mean and hurtful, so he didn't, even though he himself was seriously hurting because of what she was saying and had already done. It really wasn't right, though; she was being totally unfair about everything. What was so bad about wanting to go to school when he was well?
His mom didn't even stick around to help his "poor invalid self" get out of the truck -- she just went straight indoors.
"I'm fine," Clark grumbled to his dad.
"But you weren't yesterday," his dad said with a sigh. "You don't want people thinking--"
"Lex was fine today, too," Clark said, quiet but heatedly. "It would've been weird if I hadn't been ok," he said adamantly.
His dad frowned at him, but didn't say anything for awhile as he turned off the engine and stepped down from the truck onto the grass-and-gravel driveway. "Son, I don't think I like you comparing yourself to Lex Luthor," he said as he silid the seat forward so Clark could get out of the back.
"Would you rather I was like that crazy scientist guy and died instead?" Clark said, knowing that was unfair. "Or any of his other 'subjects' who died, too? Because those are the only other guys to compare to." When his dad looked up at him with a mixture of surprise and consternation, Clark added lowly, "I ran into Lex at the Beanery. He filled me in a little bit on some of the missing pieces during breakfast this morning."
"You get enough to eat?" his dad asked as Clark slid out of the backseat and he slammed the truck door shut.
Clark started slightly and his shoulders dropped a little -- he'd been expecting a putdown or disparaging comment or, well, something from his dad on his meeting up with Lex. Huh.
Instead of pushing it by bringing it up, Clark just nodded. "I hit the grocery store for stuff for breakfast, and again for lunch." He paused. "I've been eating a lot more than usual --but so has Lex, so..." Clark shrugged but still felt a little guilty -- he knew he wasn't supposed to let people know how much he ate usually, because it was another thing that might get noticed. Yet another anomaly.
His dad patted him on the shoulder consolingly, same as always. "You don't worry about that son, you just get better first, all right?"
"I am dad, really," Clark said, looking up at him and trying to let him know without words that he was, now.
His dad took a good look at him, then gave him a more relaxed smile and said, "You sure, son?"
Clark smile back, and was about to nod and reiterate, except then he remembered. "Um." He sighed and winced a little instead. "Well, I would have said I thought so this morning, too, but..." and then Clark proceeded to tell his dad what had happened in the bathroom that afternoon.
"Hm," his dad said. "Well, you do seem pretty healthy now, mostly back to your old self again, but I think you should still take those iodine pills. Just in case."
"And school?" Clark asked anxiously, because mom had been talking about pulling him from his classes for two whole weeks in the truck.
His dad scratched the back of his neck. "Well, your mother wants you on strict bed rest. I say we give it to her and you stay in your room all day."
"But Dad! I--!"
"And I'll keep an eye on you so she knows you aren't getting out," his dad overrode him.
Clark stopped, then started to smile at the look his dad was giving him. "You know she's never gonna believe that I snuck out without you knowing about it."
"I don't know any such thing, and I will disavow all knowledge," his dad said piously, but they both knew otherwise -- if Clark got caught, they'd both be in hot water, and then some.
"Thanks, dad," Clark said around a lump in his throat, hugging him.
His dad hugged him back, then clapped him on the back and drew away. "C'mon now, let's get inside before your mother has another conniption," he sighed.
Clark made a face, and his dad quietly laughed and tussled his hair a bit for it, but they both hurried for the porch.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Next post is here.
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark, Lex
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: major for Season 1, though it references some things up to Season 5 and beyond (Oliver, mainly); starts after Jitters (1x08) but goes AU before Rogue (1x09)
Word count: 23,700+ and 24,700+
Summary: Clark and Lex get genderswapped. Real life ensues.
Warnings: Only unofficially beta'd. Genderswap fic (a.k.a. female!Clark and female!Lex). Some weirdness and confusion involving sex and sexuality, as a matter of course. ...It belatedly occurs to me that I should also warn for PTSD and chemical torture.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
Comments: Yes, please! :)
Author's Note: Written for the clexmas Spring Fling 2012 -- Changes, Prompt: Changes of gender.
For the full ongoing text (parts further than 2), updates will (eventually) be posted at AO3.
Previous post is here.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex was in a foul mood the next morning, not having slept well. His hair was causing him issues, not least of which was that it was a wreck, he couldn't handle it properly, and he'd been too tired the previous night to find some scissors and hack away at it.
He hadn't liked his hair before, but this was damn ridiculous.
So he glowered as he went through his shower -- using the vaguely floral-scented shampoo and conditioner that Mrs. Palmer had all-but-thrust upon him the previous evening before bed. He glowered at himself in the mirror as he got the comb -- a similarly forced 'gift' -- stuck in his hair twelve times before giving up -- his hair was effectively one huge mess of tangled snarls that he was certain he would never get out. He glowered perhaps a little less when he slid into his favorite high-speed convertible... but then was sent glowering again as he realized that the wind most decidedly did not feel the same now, nor gave him the exhilirating rush he was used to -- because rather than merely gliding across his face and over his head like a tactile adrenaline rush, it instead sent his damnable hair whipping around his face, and that fucking hurt.
He'd actually had to make a decision between putting the top up or driving slow.
He skidded to a halt once he hit Main Street, parked in a huff, and stomped into the Beanery, at least wanting an honest-to-god good cup of coffee this morning. He knew he wasn't going to get one, but he was damn well going to try and hold out high hopes anyway, until they were dashed after their latest attempt at brown sludge hit his lips -- lord help him, but if someone ever offered to build him a decent coffee shop in this backwater town, he'd fund the entire damn thing for one good cup a day, that's all he'd ever ask! -- but as he stomped by one set of partially occupied tables, just at the side of center of the shop, he spun and did a double-take.
"Clark?" he asked, barely recognizing his friend. The difference of just one day -- he didn't look sick anymore, thank god!
"Mmm?" Clark said around a mouthful of what looked to be a peanut butter sandwich. --At least, Lex surmised as much, given the loaf of bread and open jar of peanut butter (with knife-stuck-in) sitting on the table next to a half-drained jug of milk. He watched Clark blink up at him, swallow his mouthful, and then lift the milk and take a good swallow straight from the jug one-handed, all without letting go of the half-a-sandwich he was clutching.
"Hey, Lex," Clark said thickly, then took another swallow of milk. "So, um... hair?" he said, tilting his head.
Lex sighed heavily and glanced away. He started when his usual nervous gesture -- running a hand over his head -- encountered said hair. He glowered a bit upwards at it, blew out a breath, and all but fell onto one of the spindly and highly uncomfortable high-backed wood-and-metal chairs next to Clark.
"Yes, hair. Apparently I can have an excellent immune system and no asthma or hair, or asthma and hair. Apparently both walk where none fear to tread," he ended with a sigh, propping his head up with a fist, and a bad-mannered elbow on the table.
Clark snickered. "It's not that bad."
"It is that bad! Look at this!" Lex complained, grasping a chunk of still slightly-soggy hair in one hand and moving it upwards. The rest of his mass of hair followed. "It's a complete mess!"
Clark eyed his hair critically. "You want some help with that?"
"Do you have a pair of scissors? Or a razor?" Lex said, huffing, letting go of the mass of hair and feeling it swing down like a weighty pendulum behind him.
"Lex! You shouldn't just cut it all off!" Clark protested.
Lex blinked, then gave him Clark a disbelieving look. "Why not?"
"Because if you just shave it all off, you'll have to do it a bunch of times, and it'll probably itch coming back in."
Lex blinked at him, and felt a little horrified at the notion. His scalp shouldn't itch!
"Cutting it too short would probably be bad, too, because then it might fall into your eyes and face and you wouldn't be able to pull it out of the way," Clark added, scrunching up his face and giving Lex's hair a critical look.
Lex knew he must've pulled a look just then, because a few female school-aged teens giggled at him as they walked by towards the ordering counter.
Lex folded his arms, crossed his legs, somewhat demurely, and said, "Well, then, what would you recommend, Clark?"
...And now it was Clark's turn to look a little taken aback. "Well, um..." He stopped and gave the idea the weight of his full attention for a few moments, then he brightened a bit.
"Just wait here for a sec, ok?" he said, getting up from the table and heading for the drinks counter.
Lex eyed Clark as he walked off. He didn't exactly move like a guy, but he didn't move like a girl, either. He did, however, move like Clark, which was both odd... and not.
He took a deep breath and surveyed the rest of the Beanery. No-one seemed to be paying him the least amount attention, really. He wasn't sure whether to be offended by this or not. Really, was this town so completely insane that men turning into women didn't even hit on anyone's radar?
...Actually, Lex didn't want to know the answer to that, now that he thought about it.
Clark stopped at the counter and flagged down a waitress who he seemed to know, or at least was comfortable being friendly with. He leaned against the coffee bar and chatted her up. She lowered her tray to her hip, frowning slightly, but when Clark motioned a hand towards Lex and then back at himself, she glanced over, her eyebrows rose as she looked at Lex, and then she turned and smiled at Clark brightly, nodding as she gave her response.
And then he watched as she handed off her tray to another server with what looked like a faster rundown of an explanation, and another exchange of smiles.
The girl disappeared into the back for a moment as Clark waited patiently. Then she returned and handed over a few small items, which Clark took up in his hands, with a grin and what was obviously a 'thank you'.
Lex waited until Clark had returned to their table, then said without preamble, "You're wearing a skirt."
Clark glanced down at the one-tone long green skirt and said, "Yeah, mom laid it out for me this morning, and I don't think any of my pants will fit," with a shrug.
"Is it..." Lex gave him an uncertain look.
"Weird? Kinda, I guess. It's all... open and flow-y, really different than jeans," Clark said, wrinkling his nose. "But it's got a stretchy waist, and it fits, and I've gotta wear something to school, so..." he trailed off, shrugging as he pulled his chair around the side behind Lex and sat down. "At least it's long?"
Lex turned around and slung an arm over the back on his chair, facing Clark. "You know, I could--" he started, about to suggest a shopping trip for pants that would fit him and other less-obviously-female-looking-ish items -- after all, it was Lex's fault that Clark had gotten into this mess, and he doubted the Kents had much in their clothes budget for this sort of thing -- when he realized Clark was frowning at him furiously.
"Ah, problem?" Lex asked tentatively.
"You've gotta turn around," Clark said.
Lex blinked at him. "Why?"
"Because I can't fix it like that," Clark said firmly.
Lex blinked again, nonplussed, then looked down at what Clark had in his hands: a hairbrush, a comb, and some... hair-fastening tools? A few were circular, like a rubber band, and some just looked like long thin pieces of rope -- or thick thread.
"You-- what?" Lex said intelligently. Sort of.
Clark sighed, set everything but the hairbrush down on the table, and said, "Turn around."
"But--"
Lex found his elbow lifted and dropped over the chairback without fanfare, and his shoulders abruptly turned so that he was sitting straight-ahead.
He frowned and turned his head to ask--
"No, no moving," Clark said, putting both hands on either side of his head and gently twisting it straight-forward again.
Lex blinked, and said nervously -- while not turning around again -- "Clark, I don't think--"
"Hold still!"
Lex cringed internally and braced himself for the truly horrific and incredibly futile hair-pulling experience he was about to endure, squeezing his eyes shut.
He heard brushy-snarly sounds from behind him, but no painful yanking.
Lex slowly cracked his eyes open, and tentatively forced himself to relax. And then sat with his hands folded in his lap, and wondered what the hell Clark was doing back there, because he must be doing something, but...
...well, he actually didn't feel any tugging at all.
Lex started to turn his head again, but remembered Clark's earlier warning. He tried to glance about, moving only his eyes, to see what was going on in any reflective surface--
--He managed to partially see what Clark was doing out of the corner of his eye in the reflection in the storefront's window glass, but not much. He did seem to be brushing, at least, and very intent on it, too -- biting his lower lip as he focused entirely on Lex's hair.
"Not that I'm complaining, Clark--" because god knew he wasn't! "--but why does it not hurt?" Lex asked finally.
"I'm holding your hair above where I'm brushing," Clark said. "Tugging is bad."
Yes. Yes, it is, Lex thought. "But aren't you supposed to brush it from the top?"
The brushing noises paused a moment, as Clark paused in his efforts. "You tried to brush it from the top without getting all the bottom stuff unsnarled first?" he said incredulously.
Lex opened his mouth to snap at Clark and tell him off for using that tone of voice on him, except his brain caught up with him first. He remembered some things he'd learned at the ranch in Montanta about knots in rope and where and how to go about the start of untangling things, and...
Lex snapped his mouth shut and felt his cheeks heat.
"Wow. No wonder you had problems," Clark continued, unaware. The brushing sounds resumed.
Five minutes later and Clark had made it up to Lex's skull, and was apologizing every few seconds for the tugs because he couldn't keep from pulling those snarls.
Lex didn't really mind though, because half the time he didn't hit a snarl, and...
And then it was all-clear. Just long stokes, starting at the top of his head, and Lex just sat back and let Clark do it, closing his eyes and revelling in the feeling, because, god, this felt so decadent, so sensual, so...
Clark pulled the hairbrush bristles through his hair with another long stroke, and Lex sighed softly, a gentle smile surfacing to grace his lips as he tilted his head back just a little.
Mmmm, this could go on forever...
Except it didn't.
Lex slowly opened his eyes, trying not to whine, because there really was no good way to ask Clark to just keep going--- ohmygod, Clark's hands were in his hair why?
He started, his eyes widening and shoulders tensing, then slammed his eyes shut and forced himself not to flinch as Clark's fingers ran through his hair again. His fingers curled up in his lap and he tried not to shiver; he really wasn't used to this.
And then Clark's broad palm swept across a huge portion of his head and that was too much! "Clark, what--!?"
"Sorry, gotta get it up. You're hair's too long to just let it hang down loose all day, if you can't brush it yourself; it'll tangle up all over again. I think I can do this right... --Let me know if it feels too tight?"
Lex suddenly realized that Clark's other hand was at the base of his neck, curled up around...
Oh.
Lex bit his lip and tried not to giggle as Clark pulled his hair back and secured it in a ponytail.
"That feel ok?"
Lex almost nodded before he rememberred he wasn't supposed to move. "Yes."
"Ok, good. I used the strap, ok? You should just be able to untie the bow and unwind it from around the hair."
"Ok," Lex said, and he started to lean forward when he felt a hand on his shoulder again. "Problem?"
"Uh, yeah."
"...Still not done?" Lex asked, wondering what could possibly be left to--
"I'm gonna try to braid it. It's still mostly free, sort of -- it'll just snarl from the ponytail down."
Lex glanced back over his shoulder, feeling his hair swing behind him -- and it was a much smoother, sweeping, free-r cascading feeling, now that it wasn't all snarled. Still odd, though. "Do you know how to do that?"
Clark looked a little uncertain, but nodded tentatively. "I've seen dad do it for mom once. I think I remember it right."
"All right, Clark," Lex said after a moment's pause, turning back around.
He blew out a quiet breath as Clark brushed at his hair again, and this time he felt every tug as he did it -- apparently Clark couldn't do everything he needed to do while holding his hair still -- and then an odd constant pressure.
"No, you need to pull your head forward," he heard Clark say as he let his head fall back. Lex felt more than heard a mad scramble, then more brushing and a grumble, and soon enough he had a long braid tossed over his left shoulder with one of the cloth-like rubber bands securely wrapped multiple times around the end. He stroked his fingers over, and through, the very soft-feeling fluffy-looking tuft of hair at the end that was free, and wondered at it -- this is my hair? It was actually kind of... soft. And a little wave-y when not tangled. Huh.
"Everything work out ok?" Lex heard, and he turned his head and glanced up at the waitress from earlier.
"Yup!" Clark said brightly behind him, passing over the brush, comb, and remaining assorted hair-things. "Thanks!"
"No problem," she smiled back. "Happy to help in a hair emergency," she winked at Lex, as she sat down two cups of coffee and three muffins in front of him -- blueberry.
"Oh, uh, yeah, I kind of ordered for you -- hope that's ok," Clark said sheepishly.
Lex shook his head slightly. After fixing his hair, he had no complaints, especially since he always ordered the same thing, and Clark apparently knew his order. Though the order itself was a bit larger than usual...
Well, first things first. "What do I owe you for...?" Lex asked the waitress, gesturing at his hair.
But he only got a laugh in return. "Oh, don't worry about it," she said. "I've got a zillion of those things at home. Besides," she winked, "it's for a good cause."
Lex smiled back tentatively, and instead handed over the payment for his breakfast, along with a generous tip, which he hoped would cover her trouble and replacements, though he had no idea how much they might cost.
He got back a grin and a pat on the shoulder, so he figured it must've been enough.
"So, Clark..." he began, after Clark had moved his chair back around and settled back in with his own breakfast feast of sorts, "Why so much food?"
"Oh. Um," Clark blushed a little. "I've been ravenous since, well, you know," he grimaced. "Haven't you?"
Lex had to stop and think about it, but Clark was right -- he had eaten a great deal more in the past twenty-four hours than usual, and hadn't skipped any meals, besides.
"You think it's a side effect of the process?" Lex asked, taking a sip of his coffee before pulling a bite-sized chunk from his first muffin with his fingers and popping it in his mouth.
"Mmm, maybe. But, I guess I was super-thin, too. Like unhealthy-whatever. I, uh, I kinda... got sick... a lot. And I think I burned a lot off getting better, or something."
Lex turned over the thought in his mind as he quietly ate. Clark had been an ungodly stick-figure mess. It would make sense that his immune system would need food for energy to fix... whatever had been damaged, and heal what needed healing. Not to mention filling him back out again, Lex realized, eyeing Clark with his previous state-of-body in mind, as Clark had looked at the hopsital. That did actually make quite a lot of sense, and, looking at what Clark was eating -- high-energy breads and nuts, and milk with calcium for his bones along with other nutrients -- yes, it was no wonder why Clark was eating what he was, and looking far healthier for it.
"I hope you're not skimping on the meat," Lex added, because he would probably need the iron and animal protein, if he'd had nearly as much blood loss as Lex had had through... 'getting sick'.
"Mmm, not sure I have that much money on me," Clark said. "Probably had a lot last night," he offered.
"You're not sure?" Lex asked, frowning.
Clark shook his head. "I don't remember yesterday really well," he said, making himself up another two sandwiches.
"Then why would you think so?" Lex asked, curious.
"Because I bought this stuff with my allowance money this morning," Clark said around a mouthful of sandwich. "There was, like, no food in the house."
Lex eyebrows raised. "None?" He found that hard to believe.
But Clark just smirked and gave a significant glance down at Lex's placesetting.
Lex looked down and wondered where the hell all three muffins and his coffee had gone off to.
Then he winced slightly and felt his cheeks heat again.
Clark just grinned and offered up a peanut butter sandwich.
Lex, bemused, gingerly took it, and watched Clark grab another gallon of milk from a grocery bag on the floor, unscrew the lid, and refill one of his coffee cups with it.
"How did you get them to let you eat outside food in here?" Lex asked, realizing that nothing on the table was actually something that could be bought from the menu here.
"Oh, I got a cup of hot chocolate and two bagels with cream cheese. The grocery store was out of bagels -- can you believe that?"
Lex smiled at his over his cup of milk... and it soured as he glanced over at the door as he heard a familiar voice and laughter.
Lex finished off the sandwich quickly, and chugged down the milk, because lord knew he wouldn't be able to get anything else down after this.
He tried to look nonchalant and not glare up at the three men who were walking up the aisle, hoping beyond hope that they weren't actually here because... no, damn, they were walking up to their table -- fuck -- but certainly they wouldn't actually recognize...
"Well, look who it is," the blonde decked out in green drawled down at him, looking amused, with malice glittering in his eyes.
Fuck.
"Oliver," Lex said flatly, because it was obvious now that there was no point in denying it -- they already knew he was him. Word must have gotten around somehow, outside town. He turned away slightly to keep from giving Oliver a dark glare -- he knew better than to instigate a fight with the now (mostly) grown-up bully, because, fuck, he had to live here. He didnt want the town to think that he--
"Hey, shit, he really does look just like a girl, now!" Alden piped up, with a snickering laugh from Geoffrey. Lex visibly winced at bad memories.
"Lex doesn't look like a girl..." Clark said uncertainly, frowning up at the trio.
"No, he just is one," Oliver grinned. "Always has been."
Lex gritted his teeth and told hmself it wasn't worth it.
"Uh, noooo," Clark said slowly, like he was talking to a brain-damaged fool. "Lex is a guy. Always has been."
All four of the Excelsior Prep graduates turned to stare at Clark.
"What?" Clark said. He tilted his head at Lex. "Just because you sort of have hair now and, uh, your chest is kinda... less flat..." Clark frowned, like he'd lost track of what he was trying to make a point about. "Anyway, I mean, you still look like you, and you're still a guy," he ended, talking to Lex.
"Lex is a girl," Oliver repeated.
"Hey," Clark protested. "Just because his body's a little more girly now, doesn't mean Lex isn't a guy. He's totally a guy! And so am I!" he ended heatedly, taking a bite out of yet another peanut butter sandwich. He chewed at them while the three older bullies exchanged looks.
Alden started in on him first. "Wait, wait, you're the other guy who got surgery with him!" He started laughing hysterically, nastily.
Clark frowned up at Alden. Then his frown deepened and he slowly set down his sandwich as he looked the other two of them over.
"Damnit, Oliver, just leave him alone, you don't know--" Lex started lowly, almost under his breath to his long-standing tormentor as he slowly stood up, because fuck it if he got Clark caught up in this, too--
"No, no," Oliver said, with a pasted-on smile, brushing Lex aside and taking a step towards Clark. He leaned down over Clark, one hand on the table, and said, "I'm kind of curious. You know, why you did it. What's your type?" he grinned with a totally facetious smile.
Lex's blood ran cold.
"Excuse me?" Clark said calmly.
Lex nearly sucked in a breath at Clark's response, because that didn't sound right. Clark didn't--
"I was just wondering if you'd like to go out sometime," Oliver said smoothly, with his two cohorts looking all innocent behind him, and Lex clenched and unclenched his fists. Fuck but Lex wanted to hurt him, because he knew what Oliver was thinking, because if Clark had gotten a sex-change operation because he was interested in guys -- thank god that wasn't the case -- Oliver was going to-- thinking of-- trying to basically hurt him by--
"No, thank you," Clark said with zero interest, turning back to his milk and downing the rest of the gallon before setting it back down, effectively giving Oliver the cold shoulder.
Oh, hey, Clark knows how to dole out rejection like a pro! Lex laughed weakly to himself because, really, who knew?
Oliver's eyes narrowed, and he straightened. "Oh, sorry, I didn't realize," he drawled, reaching in a pocket. He tossed a few dollar bills down onto the tabletop, with a sneer.
Lex stepped forward and grabbed Oliver by the shoulder, wrenching him back, about to flatten Oliver for the implication--
Clark scooped up the money neatly, folded it between his fingers, and said, "Oh, don't worry," as he stood up, took one step forward, and slid it neatly between Oliver's pants and his belt. "I can pay for my own meals."
Lex's jaw dropped.
Oliver's eyes widened in shock, and then he shrugged off Lex's grip like it was a minor annoyance, took a step forward, and loomed over Clark. Alden and Geoffrey stood at his shoulders, a step away from cornering Lex's young friend.
Clark didn't back down. He just tilted his head back a little and put his hands on his hips.
Lex's brain was jibbering at him incoherently at this point, because Clark didn't get aggressive, he never got aggressive. Also, he was a five-foot-maybe-two-inch-nothing girl right now, and these were three six-foot guys with at least a hundred pounds on him, each, and-- what the fuck, his brain was telling him that the brunette in front of him was really, really hot and it was doing strange uncomfortable warm things to his innards--
"Clark..." Lex said, starting to step forward.
"It's fine Lex, I'm handling this," Clark said calmly without looking away from Oliver.
Oliver tensed his shoulder and neck muscles, as though to move forward, obviously readying for a fight.
Oh god, he was going to be scraping his friend off of the floor--
"No! Stop!"
And then Lex blinked and had to resist the urge to hide, because the person who had said -- commanded -- that? Had been him.
Lex was also a good step forward from where he'd been standing before, at Clark's shoulder, and when had that happened, exactly?
Four sets of eyes turned to look at him. Three were worse-than-unfriendly. One was understanding.
"Really, Lex, it's fine. I've got this."
Lex took a deep breath, about to protest as he stared into Clark's eyes... and instead found himself nodding slightly and backing down, literally taking a step back, because he... couldn't really do anything anyway. Taking on all three of them at once... Clark would still end up in the thick of it, trying to rescue him out of the beatdown of his life. I might as well let Clark try... Lex supposed, thought he still felt more than a little frantic and highly uncomfortable about it...
...especially since Clark seemed to have forgotten that he wasn't six-foot-three and two-hundred-some-odd pounds of strong Kansas farmboy muscle anymore.
Oliver was looking between the two of them, amused for some reason. "Really, Luthor? You're gonna hide behind this little girl?" he grinned. Lex winced, because conversations nearby were starting to die down... where the hell were the police, and why was no-one doing anything about this? They were out in public, for god's sake!
"You really think I'm a girl?" Clark asked casually.
Oliver just laughed at him. Alden said, "Yeah, so?"
"And you're actually thinking about hitting a girl?" Clark didn't quite straighten, exactly. He just dropped his hands to his sides and stood there. And didn't move. He didn't seem the least bit like he was making any sort of physical challenge at all. And he looked totally unconcerned and unthreatened by the three of them, singularly or en masse.
Alden laughed again, but it sounded almost... nervous. Geoffrey looked... a little off-put, maybe confused. Oliver frowned down at him.
"What, you gonna tell me some patriarchical shit about how hitting girls is wrong?" Oliver said, pseudo-reasonably. "I am equal opportunity all the way, kiddo," he smirked, shaking out his hands and making loose fists.
Clark tilted his head slightly and gave him a look like he was the oddest duck in the book. "What, seriously? That's why you think guys don't hit girls?"
Alden's grin was slowly fading and... he started to look... worried. Geoffrey looked like he wanted to back off for some reason.. or run. Which was... interesting. Lex couldn't remember having seen them react that way to anyone before.
Oliver, on the other hand... "Ok, shrimp, I'll bite -- why don't guys hit girls?" he asked, like it was some big joke and he was waiting for the ending.
And Clark stood there, cool as a cucumber, and said, matter-of-factly, like he was explaining how the sun rises in the east: "Guys don't hit girls, because girls always win."
And then he drove a fist into Oliver's solar plexus in a quick rabbit-punch -- no warning at all.
Oliver stood there for a moment, swaying... then he made a squeaking noise, his eyes crossed, and he went down like a sack of potatoes.
Clark stood there, in exactly the same pose as before, and calmly stared the two remaining bullies down, while Oliver lay curled up on the floor, groaning softly.
There was dead silence for awhile, and then Geoffrey cleared his throat carefully, then flinched at the attention.
"Um. Would you mind if we, uh..." His eyes flicked down at Oliver.
"Sure, go ahead," Clark said easily.
And with that... permission?... Alden and Geoffrey each got a good grip under one of Oliver's arms and started to pull him up.
"Oh. And one more thing," Clark said.
They both looked up at him and froze.
"Stay out of my town, ok?"
Alden and Geoffrey paled slightly. They both nodded repeatedly, then dragged Oliver outside with them as fast as they could, without another word.
The door slammed shut.
Conversation resumed in the Beanery, as if it had never stopped.
Clark turned around, grabbed his chair, pulled it close to the table, and sat back down.
Lex glanced between Clark sitting at the table peanut-buttering his bread, and outside through the windows at the threesome who were sorting themselves into a sports car, one still very out of it, and the other two looking frantic as hell. He did this several times, while his brain unsuccessfully tried to process what the hell had just happened.
Clark got down to the serious business of munching down another sandwich.
After awhile, Lex sat down slowly.
It was... a little surreal. Clark had just... for him... and he was just acting... normal like... and...
And Lex had forgotten something rather important.
"Ah, Clark?" Lex said tentatively.
"Mmm?" Clark said with a closed mouth full of peanut butter.
"Thanks."
Clark shrugged. He took a swig of milk. "Don't mention it."
Lex felt almost offended at the notion. "But you--"
"No, really. Don't mention it. My parents would kill me if they knew I got in a fight," Clark said, looking up at him, more than a little worried.
Oh. Right. ...Huh. "Okay," said Lex.
Clark relaxed and gave him a smile, then dropped his head and got back to eating.
After awhile, Lex couldn't help but ask.
"So... girls always win?"
"Uh huh."
"I did not know that."
"Really?" Clark looked up at him, wide-eyed.
Lex nodded once, propping his head up in a fist again.
"Wow," said Clark. He stopped and thought about that for all of two seconds. "You're really lucky," he said, before resuming his chewing.
And that little comment just sent Lex's head spinning all over again.
~*~*~*~*~*~
By the time Lex got himself another two bagels from the coffee bar, he had come to several conclusions:
1) He never wanted to find out what Mrs. Kent, Chloe, and Lana had done (or still did) to earn the continual "girls always win" respect of one Clark Kent. Ever.
2) Excelsior Prep's all-boys program had obviously left him deficient in some areas of knowledge to the point that he truly had little-to-no-idea about the breadth or depth of said deficiencies whatsoever.
3) He was going to take Clark's hard-earned knowledge to heart and, if ever he found himself confronted with an opponent of the female variety in the future, he was going to a) make a full-out no-holds-barred pre-emptive strike first and then b) run like hell in the opposite direction (and possibly, for safety, ask Clark if he could hide behind him or otherwise seek his assistance in such matters, because Clark was clearly far more well-informed in girl-boy issues when it came to open warfare than Lex himself was, apparently).
4) The Beanery's coffee still made sludge look good. (sigh)
He was also resolved to find a way to convince (con) Clark's parents into letting him take Clark jeans shopping in the near-future. No stalwart defender-of-Luthors should ever have to find themselves resigned to walking around town in a weird flappy-feeling skirt.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex and Clark chatted about other small, yet significant topics for a bit. It was almost time for high school to begin, and Clark was finishing off the last of his meal and getting ready to go. He'd better ask now, or... "Clark?"
"Hmm?"
"Are you a meteor freak?"
Clark nearly did a spit-take with a mouthful of milk.
Lex realized that perhaps he could have timed that better, as he watched his young friend manage to swallow and cough a little, before glancing back up and giving him an approximation of The Look.
"No."
Well, so far no explosion. That's good, right? Lex steeled himself and asked, just as quietly as before, "Are you sure?"
Clark frowned at him. "Yes."
"How do you know?"
"I just do." Clark balled up the empty bread bag and added, "Why?"
Now it was Lex's turn to feel a little off-balance. "Your behavior earlier seemed... atypical. You weren't aggressive, exactly, but..."
Clark blinked, looked a little blank, then got a rueful half-smile and said, "Oh, that wasn't..." He shook his head slightly. "I just figured that if I look like a girl, and I was gonna get treated like a girl, that maybe I should get at least a few perks of being a girl, you know?"
Lex let out a startled laugh, Clark grinned, and Lex soon found himself grinning right back.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark managed to make it through the first half of the day without issue. Nobody really gave him any trouble for being a girl. Either the whole town already knew, or the teachers just weren't aware enough to realize (or simply didn't care) that they had an extra girl in their classes when they should've had a boy.
Given how much he got away with with his abilities over the years, Clark wouldn't be surprised if it was both.
Clark managed to catch Ms. Willis, his history teacher, before homeroom began, and tried to beg her to let him take the test then and there, but she wouldn't have anything for it. He struggled through his first three classes for the day, and tracked her down at lunchtime -- not too hard, as she was on hallway duty that period, thank god. He wasn't exactly sure how he managed it, but he got her to agree to giving him an oral exam as a makeup during his study hall period after lunch, when she was also free. Sure, he wouldn't have a chance to review right before it, and it was probably going to be super hard, but it was better than a zero grade and failing the class.
Clark sighed in relief as he dashed off to the grocery store again, this time to buy a decently-sized lunch -- well, makings for one, anyway -- and then back to the Torch to hide out from the hordes with a little time to spare for eating.
It was only once he walked in the doors and stopped short at seeing Chloe and Pete that he remembered why he'd been almost-but-not-quite avoiding the people he knew all day.
He warily sat down at a desk, hoping he could just eat in silence while they bantered, instead of being subject to a barrage of questions...
"So, are you really Clark?"
...but really, who was he kidding?
"Yes, Chloe," Clark sighed as he unwrapped the lunchmeat he'd bought, and uncapped the mustard.
"Oh yeah? How can we know?" Pete said, pulling over a chair and ganging up on him.
Oh god, they weren't actually serious, were they?
"Yeah, maybe he's a changeling or something, trying to usurp Kent's rightful place?"
"Or his GPA," Pete offered. "Hey, if you are Clark, what's it like being a girl and having boobs? Do they turn you on?"
...What was scary was that Clark still couldn't tell if they were being serious or not.
He untwisty-tied the loaf of bread while watching them both.
"Well?" Chloe demanded.
"Well, what?" Clark asked. Then he got it. Rolling his eyes, and ignoring Pete's question, because it was fricking dumb: "God, seriously? ...I don't know. Wall of Weird? Eighth grade in the barn? It took you three hours to track down Lex's cellphone? Sean Kelvin sucked hardcore and didn't want to chill out?"
Pete groaned at the last one, and Chloe looked taken aback at the mention of the barn, so he hoped that would be the end of it.
"Hey, anybody could know about that stuff -- I mean something only the real Clark Kent would know!" Chloe regrouped.
...Or not.
Clark finished making his stack of sandwiches and said, "Ok, fine. You told the crazy guy who kidnapped Lex all about meteor freaks and their mutations, and that Lex had some super self-healing ability or something, and that's why Lex got kidnapped."
Then he glared at her as he took a bite of his first sandwich.
Chloe looked like he'd slapped her, but, really, she'd had it coming.
"I-- I did not--!"
"Dark hair, late thirties, five-foot-seven, glasses, wore a white lab coat with a grey suit underneath and a yellow tie with blue ducks on it, and was totally super-talkative like a mad scientist out of some dumb B-movie." When Chloe opened her mouth, he added, "And he probably wasn't wearing the white lab coat when he talked to you, 'cause it was all stained and frayed at the edges and even you would've thought he was a nutjob."
Chloe set her jaw. "I didn't know he was going to do that. He just told me who he was and that he was a doctor interested in strange mutations, and wanted to talk to me about my research."
"You told this stuff to a complete stranger!" Clark protested, because, god, how could she not get how wrong and dangerous that was?
Chloe glared right back at him. "He didn't ask anything I haven't told anybody before, and the people have a right to know--"
"God, you aren't even sorry, are you?" Clark realized, aghast. Then he got angry. "Lex could've died, don't you get that?! You told somebody something stupid that you don't even know is true and--!"
"It is true!" Chloe protested.
"What, that Lex can heal from practically everything?"
"Well, he survived, didn't he? He survives everything!"
Clark sat there and just stared. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"You... you..." Clark just didn't have the words. He turned to his best, oldest friend since forever. "Pete, can you-- just tell her--"
"What? She's right. And it's not like Luthor doesn't deserve it," Pete snorted. "Kinda funny, actually."
He was not hearing this. He was not-- "Yeah? Is it funny what happened to me, too?" Clark said, sounding strangled even to himself. "Did-- did I deserve it?" I thought I was dying. It hurt so badly--
"For running off after him? Hell yeah. That was stupid to do." Pete said, crossing his arms, leaning back in his chair, and looking belligerent.
Clark went wide-eyed and sucked in a breath, feeling as though his insides had gone cold, because that had hurt. Almost worse than--
"You should've waited and let the police handle it," Chloe said. "We told you to wait!" she said, sounding accusatory, her voice shaking.
Clark felt starbursts of pain behind his eyes, and had to remember to breathe. He was nearly vibrating with rage.
"Some friends you are," he choked out, grabbing up his sandwiches and stomping out, close to tears.
"Clark!"
"I'm not Clark, I'm just some imposter who wants his GPA, remember?!" he screamed back over his shoulder, slamming the doors shut behind him. He stomped down the hallway, heading for the cafeteria because, well, god, he was doing better with the rest of the student population than his own so-called 'friends' so far today, so why the hell not?
It was near the end of lunch at that point, so he was able to find a mostly empty table and sit apart from the stragglers, far enough away that nobody tried to strike up a conversation. Nobody bothered him. He sat down with his sandwiches and got through them pretty quickly, what with no interruptions and all.
He laid his head down for awhile, and then he opened his eyes, panting a little and sweating lightly. He felt thirsty. Really thirsty.
He stood up, swaying slightly before he got his footing. He wiped a little sweat from his forehead, suddenly feeling really tired.
He headed for the boys bathroom and didn't think twice about going in.
He ducked his head sideways under the faucet and opened it up, full-cold.
He drank and drank, and finally he felt full.
He sighed and straightened, and then felt a weird pressure all above his eyes.
And then he sneezed, hard, into the sink, so hard he bent over.
He sneezed again. Multiple times.
Ugh. His head felt weird. He coughed once or twice, then spat.
Red and green goo. Mostly green goo. Ew.
--Oh god, EW!
He flailed for the paper towel dispenser at the wall and blew his nose.
He was through about half the roll before he was done.
He cleaned up the sink really carefully, and threw out all the paper towels, shoving them far down in the bin and covering them with more.
He washed his hands and face, and then his hands again, and sighed when he was through because... weirdly, his head felt lighter. A lot lighter. Like it had been full of... heavy fog, or lead, or something like that, maybe? And his thoughts were.... sharper. Clearer, almost.
Oh wow, it wasn't missing a day of classes, Clark realized as he mentally reviewed the stuff from his earlier classes that day. It was me.
Well, he felt a lot better now. ...Maybe the history exam wouldn't go so completely horribly, if he was lucky?
Clark sighed, ran his hands over his face, and turned to go.
He nearly ran into one of the senior linebackers coming in.
The guy looked startled as hell, backing up a step before glancing at him and then around at the room, then glared down at him and growled, "What the hell, man? Boys bathroom!"
"Uh, yeah," said Clark.
The guy stopped short in his tirade, blinked down at him and said, "Wait, you Kent?"
Clark nodded tentatively with the beginnings of a frown, wondering if Whitney had put out a hit on him or something.
"Oh. Dude, use the girl's bathroom." And he moved around Clark towards one of the urinals.
"What? --I can't go in there!"
"Sure you can," the guy said rolling his eyes as he unzipped.
"But -- they might be-- I don't know, naked in there or something!"
"That's the locker room, dummy," the linebacker said none-too-patiently. "Stay out of there if you don't want to get trashed by the girls. Or their boyfriends," he added meaningfully as he glanced over at Clark, who was still freaking out at the idea of either, or both, or any of it at all. "Dude, seriously. OUT!"
Clark got out.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark sighed and impatiently waited out his time in the cafeteria, counting down the seconds until his make-up history exam. ...At least he had a window seat. The sun felt nice.
He propped his chin on a hand and his eyes slowly drifted shut. Then they flicked back open as he realized exactly what he'd done that morning in front of Lex.
Oh shit. He nearly broke out into a cold sweat. I picked a fight with somebody. An actual fight. Three somebodies. And won. And Lex watched me do it. He wasn't supposed to do stuff like that for a reason. That stuff got him noticed, and a fight could too easily go wrong. If one of them had managed to land a hit...
He hadn't really cared or thought much about that at the time, though. ...Maybe I can blame it on the stuff in my head? After all, it had looked like he'd still had a lot of that gunk left in his system.
In retrospect, though, Lex hadn't gotten angry that Clark had basically taken on his fight for him. In fact, Lex hadn't seemed to mind -- he'd seemed almost relieved, afterwards. --And he'd promised not to tell, so it would probably be ok, because who else would tell on him to his parents? And the sun did feel really nice...
He was almost drifting off to sleep with his head cushioned in his arms, when he felt a hand roughly grab his shoulder and yank him back.
"Wh--!" Clark protested,
"CLARK JEROME KENT!"
Clark craned his neck around and looked up before freezing in sheer overwhelming horror.
"Mom?!?" he choked. "Wh- whaaaat are you doing here?" his voice ended in a squeak.
Oh god, his mom looked ready to kill somebody, and his dad was there too, standing a couple steps behind her.
oh god, oh god, the Beanery, oh god was all Clark could think.
"You are supposed to be at home in bed, young man! You are sick!" his mom nearly screamed at him, shaking him by the shoulder and dragging him upright. "Do you have any idea how worried we were?"
Clark blanked out for a couple seconds, then realized they don't know about that and then wait a minute "--I'm fine, mom, really, I-- you put out the clothes for me, remem--"
"Don't backtalk me, young man! MARCH!!" she yelled, dragging him along like a wayward little kid.
Clark realized that everybody was staring, and and only had about two seconds of panic and self-loathing about how he was gonna be the school pariah, literally the bottom of the social food chain -- no, below that, even, did they have subzero popularity? because he was going to have that -- for what his mother was doing to him right now. Yeah, about two seconds of wanting to die and get swallowed up by the earth right then and there, before he remembered something considered even more important in his household.
"Mom, oh god, no! I barely got Ms. Willis to let me retake the history exam! I can't leave yet!" he begged. If he didn't take the test, he might fail history, and failing history with an 'F' didn't just fuck up his GPA -- getting an 'F' in any class meant he might have to retake the entire year!
Clark dug in his heels and squirmed, trying to get out of his mother's iron grip, which she just ended up transferring to his wrist.
As his mother bodily dragged him from the cafeteria, Clark, frantic, grabbed the doorframe and resolved not to let go -- superstrength abilities coming to light be damned.
"Let go, Clark!" she yelled at him, pulling him hard.
"No, oh god, mom, I'm fine, will you please listen--!"
"Martha," his dad said, catching up on the approach and holding his hands up, "Maybe we should just--"
"--Don't you tell me to calm down, Jonathan Kent!" she said with an angry glare, yanking at Clark again.
"...Is there a problem here?" a familiar voice said.
Oh thank god, Clark thought, because nobody messed with old Ms. Willis.
...Then again, nobody messed with his mom, either.
Somehow, Ms. Willis talked his mom into letting him take the oral history exam before they took him home.
Clark was nervous as hell at trying to answer questions with both his parents in the room, one glowering and looking really not pleased with him at all, but somehow he managed to survive it.
He only really started panicking about what the entire school had witnessed in the cafeteria once they were in the truck driving home, with his mom ranting at him for leaving without saying anything -- which was crazy, because she'd been the one to leave the clothes on his bed, hadn't she? -- and still being too ill to go anywhere or do anything -- which was totally untrue and she would know that if she'd just look at him for two seconds -- and how he was grounded for a month for sneaking or wandering off like that -- she couldn't seem to make up her mind as to which he'd done.
Clark almost -- almost -- asked her why she'd left him alone in the first place, rather than staying glued at his side all the time, if she was really all that worried about him. But that would have been mean and hurtful, so he didn't, even though he himself was seriously hurting because of what she was saying and had already done. It really wasn't right, though; she was being totally unfair about everything. What was so bad about wanting to go to school when he was well?
His mom didn't even stick around to help his "poor invalid self" get out of the truck -- she just went straight indoors.
"I'm fine," Clark grumbled to his dad.
"But you weren't yesterday," his dad said with a sigh. "You don't want people thinking--"
"Lex was fine today, too," Clark said, quiet but heatedly. "It would've been weird if I hadn't been ok," he said adamantly.
His dad frowned at him, but didn't say anything for awhile as he turned off the engine and stepped down from the truck onto the grass-and-gravel driveway. "Son, I don't think I like you comparing yourself to Lex Luthor," he said as he silid the seat forward so Clark could get out of the back.
"Would you rather I was like that crazy scientist guy and died instead?" Clark said, knowing that was unfair. "Or any of his other 'subjects' who died, too? Because those are the only other guys to compare to." When his dad looked up at him with a mixture of surprise and consternation, Clark added lowly, "I ran into Lex at the Beanery. He filled me in a little bit on some of the missing pieces during breakfast this morning."
"You get enough to eat?" his dad asked as Clark slid out of the backseat and he slammed the truck door shut.
Clark started slightly and his shoulders dropped a little -- he'd been expecting a putdown or disparaging comment or, well, something from his dad on his meeting up with Lex. Huh.
Instead of pushing it by bringing it up, Clark just nodded. "I hit the grocery store for stuff for breakfast, and again for lunch." He paused. "I've been eating a lot more than usual --but so has Lex, so..." Clark shrugged but still felt a little guilty -- he knew he wasn't supposed to let people know how much he ate usually, because it was another thing that might get noticed. Yet another anomaly.
His dad patted him on the shoulder consolingly, same as always. "You don't worry about that son, you just get better first, all right?"
"I am dad, really," Clark said, looking up at him and trying to let him know without words that he was, now.
His dad took a good look at him, then gave him a more relaxed smile and said, "You sure, son?"
Clark smile back, and was about to nod and reiterate, except then he remembered. "Um." He sighed and winced a little instead. "Well, I would have said I thought so this morning, too, but..." and then Clark proceeded to tell his dad what had happened in the bathroom that afternoon.
"Hm," his dad said. "Well, you do seem pretty healthy now, mostly back to your old self again, but I think you should still take those iodine pills. Just in case."
"And school?" Clark asked anxiously, because mom had been talking about pulling him from his classes for two whole weeks in the truck.
His dad scratched the back of his neck. "Well, your mother wants you on strict bed rest. I say we give it to her and you stay in your room all day."
"But Dad! I--!"
"And I'll keep an eye on you so she knows you aren't getting out," his dad overrode him.
Clark stopped, then started to smile at the look his dad was giving him. "You know she's never gonna believe that I snuck out without you knowing about it."
"I don't know any such thing, and I will disavow all knowledge," his dad said piously, but they both knew otherwise -- if Clark got caught, they'd both be in hot water, and then some.
"Thanks, dad," Clark said around a lump in his throat, hugging him.
His dad hugged him back, then clapped him on the back and drew away. "C'mon now, let's get inside before your mother has another conniption," he sighed.
Clark made a face, and his dad quietly laughed and tussled his hair a bit for it, but they both hurried for the porch.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Next post is here.