Fic: Your Mileage May Vary (complete)
For the Clexmas Bingo! Challenge.
Type: Tic-Tac-Toe
Prompts: Bad Day, Cars/Trucks/Vehicular, Flying/Floating (...and technically also Tight Spaces/Trapped, and Heat/Hot Days/Sweaty with a touch of Imprisonment/Captivity, now that I think about it, but that's all somewhat incidental :)
Title: Your Mileage May Vary
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: pre-Clex
Rating: PG-13 (mild cursing)
Spoilers: General for first two seasons, just to be safe :)
Word count: > 5,900
Summary: Hot, wet, bothered, and tired make for a lousy combination for a certain farmboy who is already having a bad day. Frustration ensues. Somebody is -such- a tease. And then came the panic attack.
Warnings: Un-beta'd. (Though if somebody wants to become my beta for some things, please let me know!) Oh, and I like italics. That may deserve a warning. *coughs*
Author's Note: One of a two-shot. "We Are Experiencing Vehicular Difficulties, Please Stand By" is majority Lex POV, upcoming. More notes at the end of the fic.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark was having a bad day.
If he was Lex, he'd might even be calling it a Bad Day... except that was because Lex was good at capitalizing words when he talked somehow, however the heck he did that, and Clark still hadn't gotten the hang of it. Maybe it was a Luthor thing. Or just a Lex thing.
But, come to think of it, Chloe did that sometimes, too (well, ok, a lot), so that couldn't be it. Maybe it was a Metropolis thing. ...He couldn't ever remember his mom doing that though. But that might not mean that she couldn't, just that she had no reason to.
He sighed and buried himself in the blanket a bit further. 'Let's take stock of the situation, shall we? You are scrunched up in the back of one of Lex's cars, soaking wet, tied up in a blanket, and should be feeling very very lucky that you are an alien and can't catch a cold. We think.' Except that "the back of one of Lex's cars" meant the trunk since they really had no backseat to speak of, and being alien meant that the blow to the head that should've knocked him out had instead left him very much awake and bored, since he couldn't do anything about the situation right now. Either situation -- Clark squinted and x-rayed through the backseat again -- Lex was driving, the kidnapper had a gun on him, but it wasn't loaded. The guy wasn't even a meteor-mutant -- no green glow that he could see, and no enhanced strength earlier like most of them seemed to get to Clark's ever-present annoyance. So he wasn't too worried.
Except this guy, whoever he was, was insistent that Lex drive the speed limit so that they didn't get pulled over by the cops. So clearly he didn't know Lex very well, or any of the cops in the area, because Lex was always speeding. Everybody knew that. It was kind of like the speed of light -- constant, unwavering fact of the universe -- and Lex in a mood generally meant he would see hitting that hyperactive energy-state of conversion (nerd) as a challenge and try to beat it out just to see if he could. Lex speeding was not liable to get them pulled over. Lex not speeding was. Idiot.
From the speed they were moving at, and the bumpiness of the road -- or rather, lack of it -- Clark figured they were headed for Metropolis. Which was a three-hour trip when his dad drove it, and even he took most of it at five miles over the limit. Not a huge problem, since Clark had alien toughness and stuff but, well, not comfortable, though at least he didn't have to go to the bathroom or anything. No, what was probably the worse problem, now that he thought of it -- though otherwise a great thing, assuming one was actually there and not stuck in the trunk of a car -- was that the Rosses were having that big barbecue this afternoon. Which meant that the entire Smallville police force was invited. Which meant that the entire Smallville police force came. Which meant they weren't on the roads and manning speed traps. And since it was a lazy summer day and nothing in particular was going on, it'd probably last until the sun went down, so nobody would be coming up the road behind them to man those speed traps anytime soon, so nobody would see them. Driving the speed limit. Which Lex should by rights be getting pulled over for, so the guy with the bulletless gun could get arrested, and Clark could get out of the trunk sometime before he and the blanket grew moss.
Bad day. Bad dAy. bAd daY? --Argh!
Dam-darn capitalization. He couldn't even get it right in his head!
Clark shifted around slightly to try and get more comfortable without kicking a hole in the side of the car, grumbled to himself. Suddenly, he remembered Chloe giving a lecture once about what to do after getting stuffed in the back of a car, and how you could kick out the taillights and stick your hand out and wave to get the attention of other cars. That perked him up -- for about all of two seconds, anyway. Until he remembered that it was not only a lazy summer day but a lazy summer Thursday, which meant that probably the whole town would show up to that barbecue, the Rosses being a prominent Smallville family and nobody having anything better to do that evening. So there would literally be nobody on the roads at all, not just the cops. And Lex would probably kill him if he smashed a gaping hole in the back of his really nice, really expensive sports car for no good reason, especially when it wouldn't do any good.
Well shoot. (Or not, because there were no bullets in that gun, and there were some times he really really wished he could tell Lex his secret, because then he could yell things like "You can take him, Lex!" from the trunk and Lex, knowing that Clark had x-ray vision, would not think twice about pulling over and KO'ing the guy, because obviously Clark wouldn't say something like that if he had a loaded gun. Or heck, just pop the trunk and Clark could super-speed out, run along the side of the car, and knock the guy out from behind without him ever realizing what happened, because then it wouldn't matter if Lex saw him or not, so long as the gunman didn't. Stupid secret.)
Clark was bored. Very bored. The guy with the gun wasn't talking, Lex wasn't talking because the guy with the gun didn't want him talking, and there wasn't any music playing because when Lex had tried to tune in to something the guy had started screaming and waving the gun around, so he'd turned it off. And it was hot out, and there was no moving air because he was in the trunk, and the sun was beating down, and there was nothing to do.
And a bored, hot, wet, somewhat-frustrated Clark was, apparently, a sleepy Clark. So Clark fell asleep.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark sat on the edge of the bumper and tried not to squirm under the not-so-patient glare that Lex was giving him. Which was so undeserved, by the way, because he hadn't done anything. Unless maybe that was the problem: he usually did something, and instead he'd fallen asleep. Which he did kind of feel bad about. --But at least he hadn't done anything wrong! Maybe he should say that.
"I'm sorry I fell asleep!" Oh, great start there, Kent. Clark winced internally. But Lex just blinked at him. Um, ok, no more glare, but now he looked almost... thoughtful. Er. Oh, where was a psychotic meteor mutant when you really needed them? Or at least that gunman, --wait a minute. Clark glanced around quickly. "Hey, where'd the guy with the gun go?" Clark didn't see him anywhere. Just a lot of grass and road and sky, with Metropolis in the distance.
"You don't know?"
Clark frowned. "I was asleep! --And in the trunk," he added quickly. "How should I know?"
"You were asleep. And in the trunk." It sounded like Lex was trying out the words.
"Uh, yeah. Which you just opened up and got me out of. Like, about a minute ago." He wondered if Lex had gotten hit in the head again. He didn't look bruised or concussed or anything... "What'd you do?" he frowned.
Lex stared at him. "What did I do?" Lex responded, somewhat quietly. It was almost like he was talking to himself, not Clark. Clark blew out a breath.
"Well, yeah! I was asleep -- and in the trunk -- and you were driving, and the guy was up front, and now we're parked on the side of the road and the guy's not here anymore. So what'd you do? Did you... threaten him or something?" Though Clark couldn't see how Lex could've done that effectively without talking -- even Lex wasn't that good.
"The guy --up front?" Lex frowned at him a little. Then frowned at him a little more. "No, I didn't threaten him."
"So, what, did a meteor freak show up, weird out, and disappear him?" Lex gave him an unreadable look. Then Clark remembered, even though all sorts of people usually tended to go after Lex like starving dogs after a bloody steak... --Hot summer weekday, barbecue -- not even a meteor freak would head out of town after Lex under these conditions. He ran his fingers through his hair haphazardly. "Or what, you gonna tell me that a, I don't know, huge mutated vulture swooped out of the sky and grabbed him up? Or something?" And boy, he'd started out that sentence sarcastically, but after he finished it he realized that hey, this was one of Lex's convertibles, and the top was down, and stranger things had happened in Smallville, and he hadn't actually looked up when he'd first realized the guy was missing, just around at ground level. So he looked straight up.
Nope, no guy, or huge meteor-mutated birds. That he could see anyway. Just a whole lot of sky and a couple small clouds. He looked back down and -- Lex was glaring at him again. "What?" No response. "What!" Aaand Lex had apparently decided narrowing his eyes was a good response to an already exasperated farmboy, rather than an actual explanation.
Well, that was it, he'd had it. Clark threw up his hands and ground out, "Fine, you know what? You don't want to tell me, don't tell me! Just, can you at least not-tell-me in the car while we're driving back to Smallville? To go to the barbecue we were gonna go to, before, you know, that drunk guy at the Crows practice game splashed that water jug all over me and we got accosted by that guy with the gun on the way back to the car, where you were gonna drive me home so I wouldn't be showing up completely soaking wet? I'd like to get there before they run out of hot dogs." By the time he finished, Lex had gone from annoyed to incredulous to gritting his teeth so hard Clark swore he could almost hear them grinding together. But honestly, it wasn't like he was whining, was it? Lex was the one being all weird and quiet and unreasonable, and when was the last time Lex hadn't talked so much anyway? But whatever. They were out in the middle of nowhere, they were both fine, Lex had obviously solved whatever, so couldn't they be getting on home now? Clark was starting to feel a little irritated himself, and he actually had reason to be. If Lex had just let him grapple with the guy earlier and take care of it instead of getting in the way, Clark wouldn't have gotten 'hit' so hard, wouldn't have had to 'play unconscious', wouldn't have ended up in the trunk, and they wouldn't be here right now.
Heck, if Lex wasn't here, or at least wasn't looking, Clark could be home, changed, and at the barbecue in seconds. And he wasn't going to feel guilty about that, Lex obviously hadn't needed his help for this one.
Clark glared at Lex. Lex glared at Clark. About the time Clark was fed up and about to jump down off the fender and start walking home, Lex waved his hand at the passenger's seat and headed towards the driver's side himself. Taking that as a "yes," Clark slammed the trunk shut and got in the passenger's side about two seconds before Lex got the key back in the ignition and peeled off.
Clark got the seatbelt fastened, tried to wipe at his shirt and jeans a little -- yeah, still pretty wet, the heat hadn't helped much what with being confined in an enclosed space with no real airflow -- then crossed his arms and glared out the window at the scenery. After the U-turn, and looking at Metropolis in the side mirror, he figured they were about halfway, so they had about a 50 minute drive ahead of them given Lex's current rate of speed. And geez, if he didn't already know Lex was pissed off before -- he wasn't wearing his driving gloves, they were down laying on the center console between him, being totally ignored. It even took him a good five minutes before he seemed to realize the top was still down, and when he did he hit the buttons for the automatic close and the A/C so hard Clark swore he heard the plastic crack.
After about another five minutes of silence, Clark figured maybe he ought to try and fix things, at least a little. Staying mad was exhausting. "Thanks." Lex startled and the car actually swerved a little before he glanced over at him. Well, that was weird, but... "For, uh, whatever you did. To fix things. I guess." Ok, maybe not the world's greatest attempt at an apology, but at least he was trying.
Except apparently opening his mouth was just another great excuse for Lex to glare at him again. "Oh, c'mon, what?!" he yelped, twisting around to face Lex head-on.
Lex looked over at him grimly. Took a deep breath, then spoke evenly. "Just to be clear." Clark frowned and nodded cautiously for him to continue. "You are thanking me... for whatever I did... to fix things."
Ok, something was really wrong here. And this time, Clark heard a slight emphasis on the "I". "...So, wait, you didn't actually do anything to the gun-guy?"
Lex looked completely irate for about a split-second, then seemed to recover from, whatever, and nodded once, decisively.
Clark exploded. "Well, then what the hell happened?" It occurred to him belatedly that maybe this was karmic revenge for all those times that he answered that very same question with "adrenaline" or "metal fatigue" or "rabid ducks".
Lex eyes slid over to him slowly, held for a moment, then went back to the road. He flexed his fingers around the steering wheel. Blew out a breath, and if Lex was anyone else Clark would've called that an exasperated, weary sigh. "You really don't know?"
"No!"
"..."
"I was asleep--!"
"Yes, I noticed that when I woke you up," Lex interrupted. "Are you sure you want me to... lay it all out for you?" Well, the tone was off, and there was somehow a question inside the question there, but--
"Yes!" Why else would he have been asking ever since he woke up? "Please," he added belatedly.
Lex smiled. Sort of. Clark really didn't know what else to call it, but he certainly didn't like the thing that Lex was doing, that looked like it was supposed to be a smile, but wasn't. Or wasn't supposed to be a smile, but was. Just, a really nasty one. Erg. He watched Lex's grip on the steering wheel make his knuckles go white, then relax ever so slightly. He watched Lex nod to himself once. And Lex finally began.
"Well, Clark. Apparently," he paused for a moment, then continued. "Apparently, the 'gun guy' knocked you out during your little dust-up. And he thought that I would be more amenable to cooperating if there was another hostage involved besides myself. So he shoved you into the trunk and tied you up a bit more in the blanket you were planning on using to keep from dripping all over the leather seats." Clark looked down and tried not to wince: he'd left the blanket back in the trunk. He knew all this already though. "And then he got us both settled in the car... I, driving and he, in the front seat," Lex glanced over at him for a moment, "and then he directed me to drive to Metropolis." At the speed limit, but Lex didn't bring that up for some reason, even though his jaw clenched and Clark knew that must be killing him. "So, here I was, driving along with a gun trained on me, and all of a sudden." Lex stopped, and took a deep breath, then continued carefully. "All of a sudden, the car began to handle very... strangely."
Clark frowned. "Strangely."
"Yes."
Lex was very pointedly not looking at him for some reason. "Ok, strangely how?" Clark asked.
"It slowed down a bit and started to fishtail a little, like the back tires weren't making contact with the road properly."
"You, you hit an oil slick?" But that didn't sound right, why would it only affect the back tires? He frowned at Lex.
"No."
Clark waited, but Lex didn't continue. "...Ok, so how come?" Lex glanced over at him. "Why weren't they... 'making contact with the road properly.' "
"Because they weren't."
"Ok, I got that. But why?"
Lex's jaw clenched slightly. "They weren't touching the road." Clark didn't know how to respond to that other than how he already had. About a minute later, Lex ran out of patience first and added, "The back wheels were completely off the road!"
That made no sense. "You were driving offroad?"
"No!"
"But you said--"
"The back wheels!"
"What, just the back wheels were driving offroad?" Clark added sarcastically.
Lex looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel or something. "No, we were driving on this road the whole time!"
"So the front wheels--"
"--were on the road--" Lex spit out lightly, like he was talking to a deranged two-year-old.
"--but the back wheels--"
"--were not," Lex concluded.
Clark was not getting this at all. He closed his eyes and tried to picture this, then opened them and looked at Lex. "You tried to pull off a front-end wheelie in a sports car?" he asked incredulously.
Lex bit down on what Clark was pretty sure was a curse. "NO!" he yelled.
"Then how did you--"
"I didn't!"
"So the car popped a wheelie on its own?" Clark was so not buying this.
"Rrgh," seemed to be all Lex felt like contributing to the matter further.
Ok, well, it was kind of hot out, and they had to have been driving awhile, and Lex hadn't had the... luxury?... of getting soaked with cold water earlier. The top was down, so the A/C wouldn't have done much even if it had been running. Maybe he had had some kind of temporary heat stroke or something. "Are you sure that--"
"I KNOW WHAT I SAW!" Lex bellowed. Clark jumped hard enough that the seatbelt slammed against him and creaked holding him down. He swallowed and tried to concentrate on bringing his heart rate below 260, because he was pretty sure that that jittery feeling he had was his body trying to go into superspeed without him, through the door. Holy. Crap.
Lex was breathing heavily and looked positively homicidal, but after glaring bloody murder over at Clark for a second he seemed to calm down for some reason. Clark was having a little more trouble with regaining the calm. His mind was racing and he was desperately trying to figure out what he'd done so wrong--
"Wait. You saw. Not-- felt. You said felt before." No, wait, not quite right. Stop, go back. "Handled. It handled like the back wheels weren't touching. That's, something you feel. Not --you can't see the back wheels when you're driving. What do you mean saw."
Lex worked his jaw. "The back wheels were about a foot off the ground, it would be difficult not to see that."
There were so many problems with that statement. Clark took a deep breath and tried to think of a way to get through this without getting himself bludgeoned. Or kicked out of a moving vehicle at 200 miles an hour. Which would be really hard to explain later without the corresponding bruises. Or broken bones. Whatever. "You were driving. You can't see the back wheels in the rear-view mirror or the side mirrors. You can't see the back wheels without practically turning around and shoving your head out the window. You can't drive like that without crashing." He blinked. "You didn't crash." did you? was the silent addition.
No, I didn't crash, Clark was the equally silent, but much more sarcastic, rejoinder, communicated by way of a narrowed glare. "You can see the back tires from the side mirrors if you adjust them," Lex shot back. "And it's a four-wheel drive car, I was able to keep enough control to slow down and stop effectively."
Clark opened his mouth to protest comparative driving skill -- he wasn't the one always crashing cars constantly -- but then realized something else. "Wait, what was the gun guy doing during all of this?"
Lex took the change in topic with something a little like annoyance and a little like smug glee. "Not much." Clark gave him a look. "Rattling off a couple Hail Mary's and curling up in a ball and crying a lot," he tossed out.
"So, not a Smallville guy."
Lex swallowed a --laugh? "No."
"So, what happened after you stopped the car?"
"Oh, he clawed his way out of the seatbelt and hit the ground running." Lex stopped, then added, reflectively, "I don't think I've ever seen anyone move so fast," with a vaguely distant smile.
"Uh, the treeline was kinda far away, Lex," and Clark hadn't seen anybody when he'd looked.
"Yes, it was," he grinned back.
Clark stared at Lex and wondered if he should ask how long he'd been asleep past when the car stopped moving. He rubbed his face with his hands. "Ok, so, motor vehicle possession. When did the back tires stop being a foot off the ground?" And realized that the answer to that question would also answer the unasked first.
"About five minutes later when they were two feet off the ground."
Or not.
"What, seriously?" and he got a glare for his troubles. "Ok, so, clearly not just something wrong with the suspension, then." Lex looked at him like he was an idiot.
"Clearly," he drawled. Clark never would've thought Lex was able to drawl. Of course, he wouldn't have thought a sports car could balance on its front two tires without outside support, either. Not that he'd seen that. Though it seemed a little much for Lex to lie about something like this. Smallville proof: Way too unbelievable? Then it must be true. And probably in a way that will bite you in the butt if you're not careful. Though that last one might be the Alien corollary.
Clark, worriedly, felt like he was way past the point of return for careful.
And, somehow, he knew he was gonna regret asking this. He took a deep breath, braced himself, then: "Do you know what was causing it?"
Well, that wasn't so painful. Yet. That only got him a surprised look from Lex. Wondering if he was a masochist, he tried again. "You've got a theory why the back wheels of the car came off the road like that, right? I mean, the car was stopped, the guy with the gun was gone, you didn't have to drive anymore, you could get out of the car. You didn't come around back and look? Poke at things?" Because, he honestly couldn't see Lex not doing something to try and figure out something so absolutely bizarre.
Lex gave him a long look and then turned back to the road again. He stayed silent awhile, then, finally, "Yes, I have a theory."
"Ok, you gonna share?"
Lex bit his lip, and pointedly did not look at him. "The last time I shared a... similar theory with you, you didn't take it very well."
Clark frowned, then sighed. "So, you're not gonna say?" he asked, already pretty sure what the answer was.
"I don't think it's a good idea to do so."
Yup.
He took another deep breath, getting ready for yet another plunge. "Ok, can I come up with a theory?"
Lex looked at him with some unholy mixture of surprise, flippancy, and intrigue. "I don't know, can you?" he said with a shark's smile that Clark was pretty sure he usually used on those business people he was always meeting with.
Clark gritted his teeth and got out, "Well, it'd be a whole lot easier if I could ask you about your... observations," he was pretty sure that was the right amount of scientific for Lex, "since I was kind of out of it at the time, and all."
Lex glanced over at him. Then glanced over at him again. Clark waited. Finally: "Ok, Clark."
"You-- wait, what?" Not the response he was expecting.
Lex glanced over again. "Ok. Ask away." Clark blinked, there had to be a catch. Lex must've read that on his face, because he added, "You ask your questions, I'll respond to the best of my ability, and when you're done you share your theory with me and we'll see if they match."
Clark felt very uneasy all of a sudden. This was a whole new ballgame. Asking questions with no limits? Getting straight answers? Comparing notes without holding anything back? He shivered, and it had nothing to do with the wet clothes or the A/C.
And what exactly were the right questions to ask, anyway? He swallowed, and thought furiously. This was... important, he could feel it. Dangerous, too, he bet. And how would he know if he were asking the right questions?
Lex gave him a startled grin, and Clark blushed furiously as he realized he'd asked the last question out loud.
"Ok, so, the back wheels of the car came up off the ground." A nod. "First a foot, then two feet." Another nod. "Smoothly?" Nod. "Did it go any higher than that?"
"Yes."
"How high."
"About three and a half feet."
Hm. Clark sat back in the seat, crossed his arms, closed his eyes, and visualized the car and what Lex must've been seeing. Turned it around in his head a bit. Then his eyes popped open and he glanced over at Lex. "Wait, wouldn't that scrape the front end of the car against--"
"Yes," Lex cut him off, and there was enough annoyance there that he cut himself off from asking anything further and grimaced. Except, no wait, there was something there. He changed his mind, closed his eyes again, then --got it.
"So the back end went straight up, it wasn't rotating around the front of the car somehow?"
Glancing over at Lex, he was rewarded with a thoughtful look. And a smirk. "Can you be more specific?"
Oh, hah. Sure. "If you looked at the car from the side..." he trailed off, then recovered, he wanted to be careful how he phrased this. "And watching the back wheels coming farther off the ground, did it look like the rest of the car got dragged towards the back wheels, or did it look like the back end was rotating upwards around the front wheels, or some point at the front of the car?"
"Yes." Clark glared, and Lex looked like he was stifling a laugh. But then he stopped and looked thoughtful for a bit, then a bit, gratified?, and stated with confidence, "Of those options, it looked the most like the first."
And Lex was really big on word choice. "Looked the most like? Not exactly like?"
"No. Not exactly like."
Ok, that was weird, so if it wasn't the back wheels -- it wasn't the back wheels. "Were the back wheels taking the weight of the car?"
Lex glanced over at him. "No, it didn't look like it," he responded, and seemed to bite off anything further.
"Did it look like--" wait, back up, he was actually assuming a lot here. "Was there anything visible, that you could see?, that looked like it was what was taking the weight of the back of the car?"
"No."
Well, drat. Ok, no visible means of support, but not the wheels. But, "It really looked like the back of the car was floating in midair? Not resting on something?" And then he had to frown at himself, because 'floating' wasn't really a good word for... was it? It felt like something wasn't quite clicking in his head, something obvious...
"No, not resting on something."
Clark bit his lip. He couldn't think of anything else to ask about that. "Ok, and after it hit three and a half feet, how long did it take to come down?"
Lex grimaced, then sighed and said, "It stayed at that height for about ten minutes, then it took about two seconds to crash to the pavement."
Clark blinked. Lex could've just answered the question asked and he'd have gotten the wrong idea, but he hadn't, and-- "Crashed? Like, it smashed into the road surface?"
It took Lex a minute to work his thoughts around that one. "It was more like it just dropped or fell. Additional downward force could have been applied, but I couldn't tell from what I saw."
Clark sighed and felt really frustrated. He knew it was right there. Not a guess at what Lex thought, but something more... personal. What he thought. This seemed familiar. Really familiar, with a side order of dread. Telekinesis was the obvious idea, but -- no meteor freaks around, remember? And Lex didn't count because even if Lex had somehow ended up with something more than, well, better healing or a good immune system or no hair or whatever, Lex said he didn't do it. So, not telekinesis. And it probably wasn't some sort of prank involving magnets in the road and the car somehow, because the car was normal -- he'd have noticed something off in the trunk and Lex didn't notice anything on the outside of the car. That also would've been a long distance of roadway to set up something under, since it started when the car was moving at highway speeds. The other best guess he knew from experience was some sort of ghostly haunting, except that tended to be meteor-related, and he would've felt or seen something earlier if that was the case. Plus, Lex hadn't reacted at all when he'd talked about car possession earlier.
He scrubbed at his face with his hands.
Ok. Start over. The back part of the car was pushed or pulled up into the air. Floated or hovered there. Then crashed back down to the ground. Up. Float. Fall. Up, float... Ok, and the whole time this was happening he was in the trunk asleep? Shouldn't this have woken him up?
Wait.
He was asleep while this was going on.
Up, float, crash.
This was familiar.
Oh. Shit.
"No." No no no no no. And no. No. Hell no.
It was him. He'd been floating. In his sleep. Again.
And pulled half a car up with him this time, apparently.
He closed his eyes and resisted the urge to tear out his hair.
And then stopped breathing when he realized that if he hadn't been locked in the trunk of the car... what would've happened then?
He shivered and shoved that out of his mind, as hard as he could. "No."
Lex had had a similar theory, shared before, that he didn't like. He remembered waking up on Route 8 in his pajamas, barefoot, and nearly getting run over, except it was Lex who found, saw him. In that order. Who also wondered how he'd gotten out there in the middle of nowhere without looking like he'd stumbled through half the county's brush at ground level. And had Lex seen anything before?
...And did that really matter all that much? Because Lex had sure as hell seen him now.
Oh God.
It hit him all at once.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Black turned to grey, then... dark blue? The roaring noise also receded.
Clark twitched a little as he slowly came back to himself. He was in a car. Curled up in a seat, with his head between his knees. He wasn't moving. The car wasn't moving, either, he was pretty sure. He shivered slightly. He felt really really cold inside.
There was some sort of murmuring noise, comforting and familiar. He blinked against his jeans and unfolded just a little, tried turning his head. It was a little difficult. Somebody was sitting -- kneeling? -- right up against him, rubbing his back. It was soothing. He felt himself start to relax. It was ok. His breathing got a little less shallow. The fog lifted a little more.
Awareness suddenly snapped back with full clarity. Lex. He was with Lex, in his car. Had been floating. Lex knew.
Lex was sitting right next to him.
He went completely rigid.
"No Clark, stop-- Clark, you need to breathe, Clark!"
That made no sense, he was brea-- Oh. No he wasn't, and things were getting grey again and hardtothink--
He forced a deep gasping breath.
It hurt. A lot. He did it again anyway.
Tried to uncurl a little, but just couldn't. He wanted to run and hide, but he just couldn't move. All he could do was shiver. Lex knew, and couldn't he just run home and...?
No. No, he didn't. He knew, but he didn't know. Not everything. He couldn't, could he? How could he? --Think, damnit. Lex saw you floating. Except he didn't see that either, technically, you were in the trunk, he just knows it was you, had to be you. There's no way you're going to be able to talk your way out of that. But. He doesn't know about anything else. Keep it that way. He had to keep it that way because... because...
This was important. Breathe. Grasp it. Yes--
Lex didn't know he was an alien. The easiest explanation for his floating was meteor freak. Which was wrong, and also bad, but not-- as bad as it could be. At least humanity was a possibility with the former. Although there was that little problem of how meteor freaks had a tendency of killing people and ending up-- because they were--
"I'm not psychotic. I'm not." Truth. And it was really important that Lex know that, believe that. "I, I don't want to. Be locked up." Also truth. And hadn't he always wanted to tell, dreamed of telling Lex the truth? He was shaking. He was shaking and he couldn't stop and he felt so cold. This just wasn't right. It shouldn't be like this.
"I know." Clark shuddered. "I know, Clark. I know you're not-- You're not psychotic. Nobody's going to lock you up. You help people. Ok? It's ok. Just-- breathe." Clark did just that for awhile, and slowly, slowly felt the tension unwind from his limbs. Finally he was relaxed enough to straighten up a bit. He turned a little and curled into Lex's arms, caught a breath and tried not to cry. Lex wasn't afraid of him. He still had to lie, and god that hurt so much more now that Lex knew at least a part of it, but as far as Lex was concerned he wasn't normal and yet he was ok with that, was obviously worried about him. Still cared.
"Please don't tell anyone."
"I won't. I promise."
Clark closed his eyes. "Thank you," he whispered.
He could almost feel Lex smile as he returned the hug.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Author's Note 2: Ok, this didn't end quite the way I'd originally intended, but the original idea didn't really fit so well in the grand scheme of things, and I guess I can play with that later :) I hope you all enjoy the way it turned out instead -- please let me know what you think!
Author's Note 3: I may mention from time to time, I've read a good bit of (recced) Clex fic. So, sometimes I can't help but blatantly steal a good idea or two, or wonder how much impact reading some of them had on what I wrote, so I will reference what I consciously thought of when writing. In this work, there were two main ideas I riffed off of a bit -- the "And how would he know if he were asking the right questions?" was a direct echo of "Bound" by Auden (link), and whenever I think 'Clark and Lex boldly daring/questioning each other' I tend to leap straight to "Kids' Game" by Te (link). You should read both of these if you haven't already, they're way better than mine ^_^;;
Type: Tic-Tac-Toe
Prompts: Bad Day, Cars/Trucks/Vehicular, Flying/Floating (...and technically also Tight Spaces/Trapped, and Heat/Hot Days/Sweaty with a touch of Imprisonment/Captivity, now that I think about it, but that's all somewhat incidental :)
Title: Your Mileage May Vary
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: pre-Clex
Rating: PG-13 (mild cursing)
Spoilers: General for first two seasons, just to be safe :)
Word count: > 5,900
Summary: Hot, wet, bothered, and tired make for a lousy combination for a certain farmboy who is already having a bad day. Frustration ensues. Somebody is -such- a tease. And then came the panic attack.
Warnings: Un-beta'd. (Though if somebody wants to become my beta for some things, please let me know!) Oh, and I like italics. That may deserve a warning. *coughs*
Author's Note: One of a two-shot. "We Are Experiencing Vehicular Difficulties, Please Stand By" is majority Lex POV, upcoming. More notes at the end of the fic.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark was having a bad day.
If he was Lex, he'd might even be calling it a Bad Day... except that was because Lex was good at capitalizing words when he talked somehow, however the heck he did that, and Clark still hadn't gotten the hang of it. Maybe it was a Luthor thing. Or just a Lex thing.
But, come to think of it, Chloe did that sometimes, too (well, ok, a lot), so that couldn't be it. Maybe it was a Metropolis thing. ...He couldn't ever remember his mom doing that though. But that might not mean that she couldn't, just that she had no reason to.
He sighed and buried himself in the blanket a bit further. 'Let's take stock of the situation, shall we? You are scrunched up in the back of one of Lex's cars, soaking wet, tied up in a blanket, and should be feeling very very lucky that you are an alien and can't catch a cold. We think.' Except that "the back of one of Lex's cars" meant the trunk since they really had no backseat to speak of, and being alien meant that the blow to the head that should've knocked him out had instead left him very much awake and bored, since he couldn't do anything about the situation right now. Either situation -- Clark squinted and x-rayed through the backseat again -- Lex was driving, the kidnapper had a gun on him, but it wasn't loaded. The guy wasn't even a meteor-mutant -- no green glow that he could see, and no enhanced strength earlier like most of them seemed to get to Clark's ever-present annoyance. So he wasn't too worried.
Except this guy, whoever he was, was insistent that Lex drive the speed limit so that they didn't get pulled over by the cops. So clearly he didn't know Lex very well, or any of the cops in the area, because Lex was always speeding. Everybody knew that. It was kind of like the speed of light -- constant, unwavering fact of the universe -- and Lex in a mood generally meant he would see hitting that hyperactive energy-state of conversion (nerd) as a challenge and try to beat it out just to see if he could. Lex speeding was not liable to get them pulled over. Lex not speeding was. Idiot.
From the speed they were moving at, and the bumpiness of the road -- or rather, lack of it -- Clark figured they were headed for Metropolis. Which was a three-hour trip when his dad drove it, and even he took most of it at five miles over the limit. Not a huge problem, since Clark had alien toughness and stuff but, well, not comfortable, though at least he didn't have to go to the bathroom or anything. No, what was probably the worse problem, now that he thought of it -- though otherwise a great thing, assuming one was actually there and not stuck in the trunk of a car -- was that the Rosses were having that big barbecue this afternoon. Which meant that the entire Smallville police force was invited. Which meant that the entire Smallville police force came. Which meant they weren't on the roads and manning speed traps. And since it was a lazy summer day and nothing in particular was going on, it'd probably last until the sun went down, so nobody would be coming up the road behind them to man those speed traps anytime soon, so nobody would see them. Driving the speed limit. Which Lex should by rights be getting pulled over for, so the guy with the bulletless gun could get arrested, and Clark could get out of the trunk sometime before he and the blanket grew moss.
Bad day. Bad dAy. bAd daY? --Argh!
Dam-darn capitalization. He couldn't even get it right in his head!
Clark shifted around slightly to try and get more comfortable without kicking a hole in the side of the car, grumbled to himself. Suddenly, he remembered Chloe giving a lecture once about what to do after getting stuffed in the back of a car, and how you could kick out the taillights and stick your hand out and wave to get the attention of other cars. That perked him up -- for about all of two seconds, anyway. Until he remembered that it was not only a lazy summer day but a lazy summer Thursday, which meant that probably the whole town would show up to that barbecue, the Rosses being a prominent Smallville family and nobody having anything better to do that evening. So there would literally be nobody on the roads at all, not just the cops. And Lex would probably kill him if he smashed a gaping hole in the back of his really nice, really expensive sports car for no good reason, especially when it wouldn't do any good.
Well shoot. (Or not, because there were no bullets in that gun, and there were some times he really really wished he could tell Lex his secret, because then he could yell things like "You can take him, Lex!" from the trunk and Lex, knowing that Clark had x-ray vision, would not think twice about pulling over and KO'ing the guy, because obviously Clark wouldn't say something like that if he had a loaded gun. Or heck, just pop the trunk and Clark could super-speed out, run along the side of the car, and knock the guy out from behind without him ever realizing what happened, because then it wouldn't matter if Lex saw him or not, so long as the gunman didn't. Stupid secret.)
Clark was bored. Very bored. The guy with the gun wasn't talking, Lex wasn't talking because the guy with the gun didn't want him talking, and there wasn't any music playing because when Lex had tried to tune in to something the guy had started screaming and waving the gun around, so he'd turned it off. And it was hot out, and there was no moving air because he was in the trunk, and the sun was beating down, and there was nothing to do.
And a bored, hot, wet, somewhat-frustrated Clark was, apparently, a sleepy Clark. So Clark fell asleep.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark sat on the edge of the bumper and tried not to squirm under the not-so-patient glare that Lex was giving him. Which was so undeserved, by the way, because he hadn't done anything. Unless maybe that was the problem: he usually did something, and instead he'd fallen asleep. Which he did kind of feel bad about. --But at least he hadn't done anything wrong! Maybe he should say that.
"I'm sorry I fell asleep!" Oh, great start there, Kent. Clark winced internally. But Lex just blinked at him. Um, ok, no more glare, but now he looked almost... thoughtful. Er. Oh, where was a psychotic meteor mutant when you really needed them? Or at least that gunman, --wait a minute. Clark glanced around quickly. "Hey, where'd the guy with the gun go?" Clark didn't see him anywhere. Just a lot of grass and road and sky, with Metropolis in the distance.
"You don't know?"
Clark frowned. "I was asleep! --And in the trunk," he added quickly. "How should I know?"
"You were asleep. And in the trunk." It sounded like Lex was trying out the words.
"Uh, yeah. Which you just opened up and got me out of. Like, about a minute ago." He wondered if Lex had gotten hit in the head again. He didn't look bruised or concussed or anything... "What'd you do?" he frowned.
Lex stared at him. "What did I do?" Lex responded, somewhat quietly. It was almost like he was talking to himself, not Clark. Clark blew out a breath.
"Well, yeah! I was asleep -- and in the trunk -- and you were driving, and the guy was up front, and now we're parked on the side of the road and the guy's not here anymore. So what'd you do? Did you... threaten him or something?" Though Clark couldn't see how Lex could've done that effectively without talking -- even Lex wasn't that good.
"The guy --up front?" Lex frowned at him a little. Then frowned at him a little more. "No, I didn't threaten him."
"So, what, did a meteor freak show up, weird out, and disappear him?" Lex gave him an unreadable look. Then Clark remembered, even though all sorts of people usually tended to go after Lex like starving dogs after a bloody steak... --Hot summer weekday, barbecue -- not even a meteor freak would head out of town after Lex under these conditions. He ran his fingers through his hair haphazardly. "Or what, you gonna tell me that a, I don't know, huge mutated vulture swooped out of the sky and grabbed him up? Or something?" And boy, he'd started out that sentence sarcastically, but after he finished it he realized that hey, this was one of Lex's convertibles, and the top was down, and stranger things had happened in Smallville, and he hadn't actually looked up when he'd first realized the guy was missing, just around at ground level. So he looked straight up.
Nope, no guy, or huge meteor-mutated birds. That he could see anyway. Just a whole lot of sky and a couple small clouds. He looked back down and -- Lex was glaring at him again. "What?" No response. "What!" Aaand Lex had apparently decided narrowing his eyes was a good response to an already exasperated farmboy, rather than an actual explanation.
Well, that was it, he'd had it. Clark threw up his hands and ground out, "Fine, you know what? You don't want to tell me, don't tell me! Just, can you at least not-tell-me in the car while we're driving back to Smallville? To go to the barbecue we were gonna go to, before, you know, that drunk guy at the Crows practice game splashed that water jug all over me and we got accosted by that guy with the gun on the way back to the car, where you were gonna drive me home so I wouldn't be showing up completely soaking wet? I'd like to get there before they run out of hot dogs." By the time he finished, Lex had gone from annoyed to incredulous to gritting his teeth so hard Clark swore he could almost hear them grinding together. But honestly, it wasn't like he was whining, was it? Lex was the one being all weird and quiet and unreasonable, and when was the last time Lex hadn't talked so much anyway? But whatever. They were out in the middle of nowhere, they were both fine, Lex had obviously solved whatever, so couldn't they be getting on home now? Clark was starting to feel a little irritated himself, and he actually had reason to be. If Lex had just let him grapple with the guy earlier and take care of it instead of getting in the way, Clark wouldn't have gotten 'hit' so hard, wouldn't have had to 'play unconscious', wouldn't have ended up in the trunk, and they wouldn't be here right now.
Heck, if Lex wasn't here, or at least wasn't looking, Clark could be home, changed, and at the barbecue in seconds. And he wasn't going to feel guilty about that, Lex obviously hadn't needed his help for this one.
Clark glared at Lex. Lex glared at Clark. About the time Clark was fed up and about to jump down off the fender and start walking home, Lex waved his hand at the passenger's seat and headed towards the driver's side himself. Taking that as a "yes," Clark slammed the trunk shut and got in the passenger's side about two seconds before Lex got the key back in the ignition and peeled off.
Clark got the seatbelt fastened, tried to wipe at his shirt and jeans a little -- yeah, still pretty wet, the heat hadn't helped much what with being confined in an enclosed space with no real airflow -- then crossed his arms and glared out the window at the scenery. After the U-turn, and looking at Metropolis in the side mirror, he figured they were about halfway, so they had about a 50 minute drive ahead of them given Lex's current rate of speed. And geez, if he didn't already know Lex was pissed off before -- he wasn't wearing his driving gloves, they were down laying on the center console between him, being totally ignored. It even took him a good five minutes before he seemed to realize the top was still down, and when he did he hit the buttons for the automatic close and the A/C so hard Clark swore he heard the plastic crack.
After about another five minutes of silence, Clark figured maybe he ought to try and fix things, at least a little. Staying mad was exhausting. "Thanks." Lex startled and the car actually swerved a little before he glanced over at him. Well, that was weird, but... "For, uh, whatever you did. To fix things. I guess." Ok, maybe not the world's greatest attempt at an apology, but at least he was trying.
Except apparently opening his mouth was just another great excuse for Lex to glare at him again. "Oh, c'mon, what?!" he yelped, twisting around to face Lex head-on.
Lex looked over at him grimly. Took a deep breath, then spoke evenly. "Just to be clear." Clark frowned and nodded cautiously for him to continue. "You are thanking me... for whatever I did... to fix things."
Ok, something was really wrong here. And this time, Clark heard a slight emphasis on the "I". "...So, wait, you didn't actually do anything to the gun-guy?"
Lex looked completely irate for about a split-second, then seemed to recover from, whatever, and nodded once, decisively.
Clark exploded. "Well, then what the hell happened?" It occurred to him belatedly that maybe this was karmic revenge for all those times that he answered that very same question with "adrenaline" or "metal fatigue" or "rabid ducks".
Lex eyes slid over to him slowly, held for a moment, then went back to the road. He flexed his fingers around the steering wheel. Blew out a breath, and if Lex was anyone else Clark would've called that an exasperated, weary sigh. "You really don't know?"
"No!"
"..."
"I was asleep--!"
"Yes, I noticed that when I woke you up," Lex interrupted. "Are you sure you want me to... lay it all out for you?" Well, the tone was off, and there was somehow a question inside the question there, but--
"Yes!" Why else would he have been asking ever since he woke up? "Please," he added belatedly.
Lex smiled. Sort of. Clark really didn't know what else to call it, but he certainly didn't like the thing that Lex was doing, that looked like it was supposed to be a smile, but wasn't. Or wasn't supposed to be a smile, but was. Just, a really nasty one. Erg. He watched Lex's grip on the steering wheel make his knuckles go white, then relax ever so slightly. He watched Lex nod to himself once. And Lex finally began.
"Well, Clark. Apparently," he paused for a moment, then continued. "Apparently, the 'gun guy' knocked you out during your little dust-up. And he thought that I would be more amenable to cooperating if there was another hostage involved besides myself. So he shoved you into the trunk and tied you up a bit more in the blanket you were planning on using to keep from dripping all over the leather seats." Clark looked down and tried not to wince: he'd left the blanket back in the trunk. He knew all this already though. "And then he got us both settled in the car... I, driving and he, in the front seat," Lex glanced over at him for a moment, "and then he directed me to drive to Metropolis." At the speed limit, but Lex didn't bring that up for some reason, even though his jaw clenched and Clark knew that must be killing him. "So, here I was, driving along with a gun trained on me, and all of a sudden." Lex stopped, and took a deep breath, then continued carefully. "All of a sudden, the car began to handle very... strangely."
Clark frowned. "Strangely."
"Yes."
Lex was very pointedly not looking at him for some reason. "Ok, strangely how?" Clark asked.
"It slowed down a bit and started to fishtail a little, like the back tires weren't making contact with the road properly."
"You, you hit an oil slick?" But that didn't sound right, why would it only affect the back tires? He frowned at Lex.
"No."
Clark waited, but Lex didn't continue. "...Ok, so how come?" Lex glanced over at him. "Why weren't they... 'making contact with the road properly.' "
"Because they weren't."
"Ok, I got that. But why?"
Lex's jaw clenched slightly. "They weren't touching the road." Clark didn't know how to respond to that other than how he already had. About a minute later, Lex ran out of patience first and added, "The back wheels were completely off the road!"
That made no sense. "You were driving offroad?"
"No!"
"But you said--"
"The back wheels!"
"What, just the back wheels were driving offroad?" Clark added sarcastically.
Lex looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel or something. "No, we were driving on this road the whole time!"
"So the front wheels--"
"--were on the road--" Lex spit out lightly, like he was talking to a deranged two-year-old.
"--but the back wheels--"
"--were not," Lex concluded.
Clark was not getting this at all. He closed his eyes and tried to picture this, then opened them and looked at Lex. "You tried to pull off a front-end wheelie in a sports car?" he asked incredulously.
Lex bit down on what Clark was pretty sure was a curse. "NO!" he yelled.
"Then how did you--"
"I didn't!"
"So the car popped a wheelie on its own?" Clark was so not buying this.
"Rrgh," seemed to be all Lex felt like contributing to the matter further.
Ok, well, it was kind of hot out, and they had to have been driving awhile, and Lex hadn't had the... luxury?... of getting soaked with cold water earlier. The top was down, so the A/C wouldn't have done much even if it had been running. Maybe he had had some kind of temporary heat stroke or something. "Are you sure that--"
"I KNOW WHAT I SAW!" Lex bellowed. Clark jumped hard enough that the seatbelt slammed against him and creaked holding him down. He swallowed and tried to concentrate on bringing his heart rate below 260, because he was pretty sure that that jittery feeling he had was his body trying to go into superspeed without him, through the door. Holy. Crap.
Lex was breathing heavily and looked positively homicidal, but after glaring bloody murder over at Clark for a second he seemed to calm down for some reason. Clark was having a little more trouble with regaining the calm. His mind was racing and he was desperately trying to figure out what he'd done so wrong--
"Wait. You saw. Not-- felt. You said felt before." No, wait, not quite right. Stop, go back. "Handled. It handled like the back wheels weren't touching. That's, something you feel. Not --you can't see the back wheels when you're driving. What do you mean saw."
Lex worked his jaw. "The back wheels were about a foot off the ground, it would be difficult not to see that."
There were so many problems with that statement. Clark took a deep breath and tried to think of a way to get through this without getting himself bludgeoned. Or kicked out of a moving vehicle at 200 miles an hour. Which would be really hard to explain later without the corresponding bruises. Or broken bones. Whatever. "You were driving. You can't see the back wheels in the rear-view mirror or the side mirrors. You can't see the back wheels without practically turning around and shoving your head out the window. You can't drive like that without crashing." He blinked. "You didn't crash." did you? was the silent addition.
No, I didn't crash, Clark was the equally silent, but much more sarcastic, rejoinder, communicated by way of a narrowed glare. "You can see the back tires from the side mirrors if you adjust them," Lex shot back. "And it's a four-wheel drive car, I was able to keep enough control to slow down and stop effectively."
Clark opened his mouth to protest comparative driving skill -- he wasn't the one always crashing cars constantly -- but then realized something else. "Wait, what was the gun guy doing during all of this?"
Lex took the change in topic with something a little like annoyance and a little like smug glee. "Not much." Clark gave him a look. "Rattling off a couple Hail Mary's and curling up in a ball and crying a lot," he tossed out.
"So, not a Smallville guy."
Lex swallowed a --laugh? "No."
"So, what happened after you stopped the car?"
"Oh, he clawed his way out of the seatbelt and hit the ground running." Lex stopped, then added, reflectively, "I don't think I've ever seen anyone move so fast," with a vaguely distant smile.
"Uh, the treeline was kinda far away, Lex," and Clark hadn't seen anybody when he'd looked.
"Yes, it was," he grinned back.
Clark stared at Lex and wondered if he should ask how long he'd been asleep past when the car stopped moving. He rubbed his face with his hands. "Ok, so, motor vehicle possession. When did the back tires stop being a foot off the ground?" And realized that the answer to that question would also answer the unasked first.
"About five minutes later when they were two feet off the ground."
Or not.
"What, seriously?" and he got a glare for his troubles. "Ok, so, clearly not just something wrong with the suspension, then." Lex looked at him like he was an idiot.
"Clearly," he drawled. Clark never would've thought Lex was able to drawl. Of course, he wouldn't have thought a sports car could balance on its front two tires without outside support, either. Not that he'd seen that. Though it seemed a little much for Lex to lie about something like this. Smallville proof: Way too unbelievable? Then it must be true. And probably in a way that will bite you in the butt if you're not careful. Though that last one might be the Alien corollary.
Clark, worriedly, felt like he was way past the point of return for careful.
And, somehow, he knew he was gonna regret asking this. He took a deep breath, braced himself, then: "Do you know what was causing it?"
Well, that wasn't so painful. Yet. That only got him a surprised look from Lex. Wondering if he was a masochist, he tried again. "You've got a theory why the back wheels of the car came off the road like that, right? I mean, the car was stopped, the guy with the gun was gone, you didn't have to drive anymore, you could get out of the car. You didn't come around back and look? Poke at things?" Because, he honestly couldn't see Lex not doing something to try and figure out something so absolutely bizarre.
Lex gave him a long look and then turned back to the road again. He stayed silent awhile, then, finally, "Yes, I have a theory."
"Ok, you gonna share?"
Lex bit his lip, and pointedly did not look at him. "The last time I shared a... similar theory with you, you didn't take it very well."
Clark frowned, then sighed. "So, you're not gonna say?" he asked, already pretty sure what the answer was.
"I don't think it's a good idea to do so."
Yup.
He took another deep breath, getting ready for yet another plunge. "Ok, can I come up with a theory?"
Lex looked at him with some unholy mixture of surprise, flippancy, and intrigue. "I don't know, can you?" he said with a shark's smile that Clark was pretty sure he usually used on those business people he was always meeting with.
Clark gritted his teeth and got out, "Well, it'd be a whole lot easier if I could ask you about your... observations," he was pretty sure that was the right amount of scientific for Lex, "since I was kind of out of it at the time, and all."
Lex glanced over at him. Then glanced over at him again. Clark waited. Finally: "Ok, Clark."
"You-- wait, what?" Not the response he was expecting.
Lex glanced over again. "Ok. Ask away." Clark blinked, there had to be a catch. Lex must've read that on his face, because he added, "You ask your questions, I'll respond to the best of my ability, and when you're done you share your theory with me and we'll see if they match."
Clark felt very uneasy all of a sudden. This was a whole new ballgame. Asking questions with no limits? Getting straight answers? Comparing notes without holding anything back? He shivered, and it had nothing to do with the wet clothes or the A/C.
And what exactly were the right questions to ask, anyway? He swallowed, and thought furiously. This was... important, he could feel it. Dangerous, too, he bet. And how would he know if he were asking the right questions?
Lex gave him a startled grin, and Clark blushed furiously as he realized he'd asked the last question out loud.
"Ok, so, the back wheels of the car came up off the ground." A nod. "First a foot, then two feet." Another nod. "Smoothly?" Nod. "Did it go any higher than that?"
"Yes."
"How high."
"About three and a half feet."
Hm. Clark sat back in the seat, crossed his arms, closed his eyes, and visualized the car and what Lex must've been seeing. Turned it around in his head a bit. Then his eyes popped open and he glanced over at Lex. "Wait, wouldn't that scrape the front end of the car against--"
"Yes," Lex cut him off, and there was enough annoyance there that he cut himself off from asking anything further and grimaced. Except, no wait, there was something there. He changed his mind, closed his eyes again, then --got it.
"So the back end went straight up, it wasn't rotating around the front of the car somehow?"
Glancing over at Lex, he was rewarded with a thoughtful look. And a smirk. "Can you be more specific?"
Oh, hah. Sure. "If you looked at the car from the side..." he trailed off, then recovered, he wanted to be careful how he phrased this. "And watching the back wheels coming farther off the ground, did it look like the rest of the car got dragged towards the back wheels, or did it look like the back end was rotating upwards around the front wheels, or some point at the front of the car?"
"Yes." Clark glared, and Lex looked like he was stifling a laugh. But then he stopped and looked thoughtful for a bit, then a bit, gratified?, and stated with confidence, "Of those options, it looked the most like the first."
And Lex was really big on word choice. "Looked the most like? Not exactly like?"
"No. Not exactly like."
Ok, that was weird, so if it wasn't the back wheels -- it wasn't the back wheels. "Were the back wheels taking the weight of the car?"
Lex glanced over at him. "No, it didn't look like it," he responded, and seemed to bite off anything further.
"Did it look like--" wait, back up, he was actually assuming a lot here. "Was there anything visible, that you could see?, that looked like it was what was taking the weight of the back of the car?"
"No."
Well, drat. Ok, no visible means of support, but not the wheels. But, "It really looked like the back of the car was floating in midair? Not resting on something?" And then he had to frown at himself, because 'floating' wasn't really a good word for... was it? It felt like something wasn't quite clicking in his head, something obvious...
"No, not resting on something."
Clark bit his lip. He couldn't think of anything else to ask about that. "Ok, and after it hit three and a half feet, how long did it take to come down?"
Lex grimaced, then sighed and said, "It stayed at that height for about ten minutes, then it took about two seconds to crash to the pavement."
Clark blinked. Lex could've just answered the question asked and he'd have gotten the wrong idea, but he hadn't, and-- "Crashed? Like, it smashed into the road surface?"
It took Lex a minute to work his thoughts around that one. "It was more like it just dropped or fell. Additional downward force could have been applied, but I couldn't tell from what I saw."
Clark sighed and felt really frustrated. He knew it was right there. Not a guess at what Lex thought, but something more... personal. What he thought. This seemed familiar. Really familiar, with a side order of dread. Telekinesis was the obvious idea, but -- no meteor freaks around, remember? And Lex didn't count because even if Lex had somehow ended up with something more than, well, better healing or a good immune system or no hair or whatever, Lex said he didn't do it. So, not telekinesis. And it probably wasn't some sort of prank involving magnets in the road and the car somehow, because the car was normal -- he'd have noticed something off in the trunk and Lex didn't notice anything on the outside of the car. That also would've been a long distance of roadway to set up something under, since it started when the car was moving at highway speeds. The other best guess he knew from experience was some sort of ghostly haunting, except that tended to be meteor-related, and he would've felt or seen something earlier if that was the case. Plus, Lex hadn't reacted at all when he'd talked about car possession earlier.
He scrubbed at his face with his hands.
Ok. Start over. The back part of the car was pushed or pulled up into the air. Floated or hovered there. Then crashed back down to the ground. Up. Float. Fall. Up, float... Ok, and the whole time this was happening he was in the trunk asleep? Shouldn't this have woken him up?
Wait.
He was asleep while this was going on.
Up, float, crash.
This was familiar.
Oh. Shit.
"No." No no no no no. And no. No. Hell no.
It was him. He'd been floating. In his sleep. Again.
And pulled half a car up with him this time, apparently.
He closed his eyes and resisted the urge to tear out his hair.
And then stopped breathing when he realized that if he hadn't been locked in the trunk of the car... what would've happened then?
He shivered and shoved that out of his mind, as hard as he could. "No."
Lex had had a similar theory, shared before, that he didn't like. He remembered waking up on Route 8 in his pajamas, barefoot, and nearly getting run over, except it was Lex who found, saw him. In that order. Who also wondered how he'd gotten out there in the middle of nowhere without looking like he'd stumbled through half the county's brush at ground level. And had Lex seen anything before?
...And did that really matter all that much? Because Lex had sure as hell seen him now.
Oh God.
It hit him all at once.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Black turned to grey, then... dark blue? The roaring noise also receded.
Clark twitched a little as he slowly came back to himself. He was in a car. Curled up in a seat, with his head between his knees. He wasn't moving. The car wasn't moving, either, he was pretty sure. He shivered slightly. He felt really really cold inside.
There was some sort of murmuring noise, comforting and familiar. He blinked against his jeans and unfolded just a little, tried turning his head. It was a little difficult. Somebody was sitting -- kneeling? -- right up against him, rubbing his back. It was soothing. He felt himself start to relax. It was ok. His breathing got a little less shallow. The fog lifted a little more.
Awareness suddenly snapped back with full clarity. Lex. He was with Lex, in his car. Had been floating. Lex knew.
Lex was sitting right next to him.
He went completely rigid.
"No Clark, stop-- Clark, you need to breathe, Clark!"
That made no sense, he was brea-- Oh. No he wasn't, and things were getting grey again and hardtothink--
He forced a deep gasping breath.
It hurt. A lot. He did it again anyway.
Tried to uncurl a little, but just couldn't. He wanted to run and hide, but he just couldn't move. All he could do was shiver. Lex knew, and couldn't he just run home and...?
No. No, he didn't. He knew, but he didn't know. Not everything. He couldn't, could he? How could he? --Think, damnit. Lex saw you floating. Except he didn't see that either, technically, you were in the trunk, he just knows it was you, had to be you. There's no way you're going to be able to talk your way out of that. But. He doesn't know about anything else. Keep it that way. He had to keep it that way because... because...
This was important. Breathe. Grasp it. Yes--
Lex didn't know he was an alien. The easiest explanation for his floating was meteor freak. Which was wrong, and also bad, but not-- as bad as it could be. At least humanity was a possibility with the former. Although there was that little problem of how meteor freaks had a tendency of killing people and ending up-- because they were--
"I'm not psychotic. I'm not." Truth. And it was really important that Lex know that, believe that. "I, I don't want to. Be locked up." Also truth. And hadn't he always wanted to tell, dreamed of telling Lex the truth? He was shaking. He was shaking and he couldn't stop and he felt so cold. This just wasn't right. It shouldn't be like this.
"I know." Clark shuddered. "I know, Clark. I know you're not-- You're not psychotic. Nobody's going to lock you up. You help people. Ok? It's ok. Just-- breathe." Clark did just that for awhile, and slowly, slowly felt the tension unwind from his limbs. Finally he was relaxed enough to straighten up a bit. He turned a little and curled into Lex's arms, caught a breath and tried not to cry. Lex wasn't afraid of him. He still had to lie, and god that hurt so much more now that Lex knew at least a part of it, but as far as Lex was concerned he wasn't normal and yet he was ok with that, was obviously worried about him. Still cared.
"Please don't tell anyone."
"I won't. I promise."
Clark closed his eyes. "Thank you," he whispered.
He could almost feel Lex smile as he returned the hug.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Author's Note 2: Ok, this didn't end quite the way I'd originally intended, but the original idea didn't really fit so well in the grand scheme of things, and I guess I can play with that later :) I hope you all enjoy the way it turned out instead -- please let me know what you think!
Author's Note 3: I may mention from time to time, I've read a good bit of (recced) Clex fic. So, sometimes I can't help but blatantly steal a good idea or two, or wonder how much impact reading some of them had on what I wrote, so I will reference what I consciously thought of when writing. In this work, there were two main ideas I riffed off of a bit -- the "And how would he know if he were asking the right questions?" was a direct echo of "Bound" by Auden (link), and whenever I think 'Clark and Lex boldly daring/questioning each other' I tend to leap straight to "Kids' Game" by Te (link). You should read both of these if you haven't already, they're way better than mine ^_^;;