FIC: Of Violets and Roses, Part One
Title: Of Violets and Roses
Author: ladydreamer
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Lexana, Clex
Warnings: Character death (you know who, plus some freebies who we don’t need), gore, dark humor, crack!science, MANSMUT
Spoilers: Through S6 Wither
Summary: A strange epidemic causes tragedy in Clark’s life. When Lex’s scientists fail to find a cure, Clark has to ensure that if Lex cannot be cured, he can at least keep him alive and sane until they find out who is behind the virus.
written for the Kill Lana Challenge at kill_lana_lang
Betaed by the lovely miche_connor
Thursday, 8:53am- LuthorCorp Tower
The weather was a little cold for September. Lex noted that as he stopped by the coffee shop next to the LuthorCorp building. It was a small business, but they knew him by name, had since the days when he was a mere plant manager for his father. Liked him more than they had Lionel, too.
Lex stopped in briefly for his trademarked ‘extra-hot double cap no foam’ and a blueberry banana muffin. He hadn’t had breakfast that day. Hadn’t had time helicoptering between meetings in Smallville and Metropolis and had been running off of coffee all day. He took the muffin and to-go cup and headed out to his car.
Not fifteen minutes later, as he picked at his muffin while driving back to Smallville, did Lana call him, requesting that he meet her at The Planet. Lex suggested that he wouldn’t be welcome, but Lana insisted that they needed him, so he assured her that he would come and got off the phone. He set the muffin aside, wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin he kept in the car, and took a sharp turn back to Metropolis.
Lex pulled up as close to the building as he could. Absently, he picked up the abandoned muffin, and when he reached The Planet, he peeled off the wrapper and tossed the muffin stump out for the pigeons.
“I feel as though I have been summoned,” Lex stated, walking towards the group surrounding a small television with a bit of a cocky swish in his step. To his surprise, both his father and Martha Kent were sitting around beside the other reporters, Clark, and Lana. “What called for this little powwow?”
“I’m surprised you don’t know, son. There’s quite the panic outside the LuthorCorp building.” His father walked closer to him, but then stopped suddenly, narrowing his eyes in almost… no. That couldn’t be fear in his father’s eyes. How uncharacteristic. What was he playing at? Lionel reached for his son with one hand, and Lex pulled back.
“I had an early meeting this morning and was heading back to Smallville. Anyone care to share?”
“Oh, god.” Lana covered her mouth with her hands. Lex felt everyone’s eyes on him. That strange little photographer, who looked like Eric Summers, got out an umbrella. Chloe smacked him on the arm.
”What?” Lex demanded. Lana had started to cry. Lex moved forward to comfort her, but she jerked away, and Chloe grabbed her and held her still, petting her hair soothingly. Knowing that someone was comforting Lana put Lex a bit more at ease.
“Lex, you… feeling okay?” Clark asked gently.
“I’m feeling stared at and annoyed.”
Just then he heard a loud popping sound. The entire room jumped and looked at him expectantly. This was getting a bit ridiculous. He headed to the window to see what was going on.
He gaped in horror as he saw a pigeon swelling up into a dripping ball. It exploded.
POP!
Chloe’s curiosity had gotten the better of her, and she was soon at the window with him. She ran to her desk, grabbed a pair of latex gloves, and ran back. “Call the police. They need to quarantine that area out there.”
Lex reached for his cell phone then stopped. The phone dropped from his hand unbidden, and he raised his fingers to his face, staring in disbelief.
They were turning purple.
“Oh, god, Lex,” Lana sobbed.
“Someone please tell me something,” Lex repeated softly.
Chloe took a deep breath. “Where were you today?”
“The castle. Work. The coffee shop next to work. My car,” he rattled off. Chloe nodded along as he told her. Lex noticed that most of the other reporters had fled the room while he had been looking out the window.
“There’s… something going on at that shop, and we don’t know if you’re the carrier or if it started there.”
“Wonderful. What’s going to happen?” He inadvertently looked back at the window. “That?! Is that-?”
“The people at the shop went up right away,” Jimmy interrupted. “He should be splatter by now.”
“Jimmy,” Martha hissed at his insensitivity.
“Went up?” Lex asked. He moved towards the television, which was broadcasting something.
Marita Sharpe went off in her car at 47 and 3rd about ten minutes ago, Alan. A young man, we haven’t identified him, got caught with the splatter and went off as well.
Good God, Terrence.
I know. It definitely started at the Buzzkill Café, from what the police can tell, and they’ve quarantined the area, but there have been a few extra explosions around town. The authorities are telling people to stay inside, and if someone looks like they are going to go up, run. Get under cover. This is one pitch you don’t want to catch. Back to you, Alan.
The reporter buzzed on as they replayed a clip someone had made with their cell phone in the café. A woman came out of the kitchen, swelling up, her belly ballooning rapidly as her arms and legs distended with fluid so quickly that they were pushed out from her body. Her belly and breasts soon overtook the rest of her and she was screaming, screaming.
It hurt.
The pressure.
Someone save her.
Until…
Lex wasn’t sure what came out of his mouth, but he was certain it was profane and not in English.
“Lex, honey, it’s okay…”
Several others who had been splattered with her juices began swelling in the shop. Lex ripped his gaze away from the screen.
“That doesn’t seem like… it can’t be a meteor effect…Who the fuck would engineer something like that?” Lex demanded of no one in particular. Lionel grabbed the back of his neck, and Lex realized he had been walking backward.
“Son, we need to get you down to one of your labs. Whichever one you think might be most helpful…”
“Oh! He’s not the carrier. Look.” Chloe got on her laptop where she had downloaded some of the clips. “Or... maybe you shouldn’t look, Lex. Okay, here. The timestamp for the first… um… “
“Blueberry?” Lex supplied tensely.
“Ew. Um. Your meeting ended at 9:30?”
“About. It was 9:50 before I was able to leave the building.” Lex didn’t mind dying. He minded dying like that very much.
“Oh. Okay, then the first… blueberries happened before Lex even got into the shop. I wonder why the pigeons...”
“It’s the muffins. Blueberry muffins. Well, I had a bit of the blueberry banana. Tossed the rest outside for the birds.” He rubbed his hand behind his head, anxiously. His eyes shifted around. Clark came up behind him. The two of them locked eyes. “Never had something like this one on the Wall of Weird, did you? I… I should be dead.”
“We’re going to find a way to save you,” Lionel insisted. Lex opened his mouth. He felt as though he had to get his sense of bearing soon or his father would realize how ridiculously he was behaving. He couldn’t believe that Lionel hadn’t given him a censorious look already.
“But I’m not. We…” He closed his eyes and put his purple-tinted hands in front of his mouth. “We have to find out where the blueberries in those muffins came from. And we should test my blood to see if we can’t find what’s resisting the… whatever it is that’s causing this. If someone’s trying to create an epidemic, we need a cure immediately.”
Lana, trying to control her crying, moved to hold him. Lex pushed his hands out and moved backward.
“Lana no! Stay away! We don’t know how many ways this could spread. You can’t touch me!”
She nodded quietly and wiped away tears. “Oh…”
“I know. Just, stay. Stay safe, okay?”
Clark stood beside him. “Chloe and I can start trying to track down where those blueberries came from? You go to the lab.”
Lex nodded and steeled himself. Time to take this thing out. By any means necessary.
1:22pm- 33.1
When Clark and Chloe left the elevator into the secret level of the LuthorCorp building, they saw that Lex’s skin had taken on a distinctly more purple hue, and the buttons of his silk shirt were straining a little around his stomach. Clark shivered and thought of all the people on television who had blown up. He looked back at them, and Clark noticed that his eyes had taken on a violet color, and his face looked a little puffy.
Juicy, Clark thought to himself solemnly.
“Have you found anything? I’m afraid we’re at a dead end on the analysis here.”
“Have you figured out why you’re kinda immune?” Chloe asked, pitching her voice in soft tones. Lex shrugged.
“Not much more than what I figured to begin with. My mutation is fighting the foreign DNA. From what we can figured from our samples-” Lex informed them. Samples being the people who had exploded already, of course… “-is that we’re dealing with some sort of retrovirus that is restructuring the DNA from within.”
He paused and put a hand to his stomach. That rush… the juice filling him up. It hurt. Stretched and pushed areas that should not be stretched or pushed. What had those other people felt? He tried to put it out of his mind, but Clark was looking at him as though he were a fragile thing that he needed to whisk away and take care of. Possibly to his barn.
“You?” Lex gave him a hard look.
“We figured out that the muffins come from a larger bakery in town. They supply pretty much everyone in the area with their baked goods.”
“Oh?” Lex asked in alarm. He moved over to a raised chair and sat town a little tiredly. The juice was starting to get heavy, and he wasn’t even that big. How would it feel when he…? No. Lex forced the thought out of his mind.
“Yeah, so potential biiig problem here. Only no other coffee shops have reported a anything yet.”
Lex nodded. “So just the Buzzkill. Then an individual swapped out the shipment? Or made sure that batch was made with their own brand?”
“Not sure yet.”
He nodded again and rubbed his belly. Clark reached for him. “Stop, Clark! Not without gloves.”
“Are you okay? You… um.”
“The pressure,” he answered simply in explanation. “We’re going to try to remove the juice surgically in a little bit.”
“I’ll keep hunting, Lex,” Chloe promised. “Just hang on as long as you can. Either your guys will come up with something, or I’ll find the sick creep that came up with it and we’ll squeeze the information out of them.”
The two men looked at her.
“What did I say?”
Lana hovered around them quietly, torn between crying and screaming. When they’d first brought her here, she and Lex had quite the fight over whether she should have been briefed as to the existence of this lab. Lex adamantly insisted that with the thousands of projects in his purview he could not possibly keep her abreast of them all, and she wouldn’t have been able to keep them straight if he did. They would spend all of their time talking about his business, and it would be a conversation she largely didn’t have the education to understand.
Lana had naturally interpreted the comment as an insult to her intelligence and began making baseless accusations that Lex lied to her on every opportunity, didn’t trust her, and was possibly sleeping with other women. Maybe men.
Lex had turned from her coldly and began working with the doctors, saying briefly: “Your sense of timing to pick a fight is quite poor. You can degrade my character and morals another time. At the moment, we need to do some tests.”
So Lana seethed in the corner. Angry at herself. Angry at him for being so coolheaded when she tried to manipulate him. Angry at Chloe for being closer to him right now, physically, than she was.
“Chloe?” Lana stopped her hurrying friend as she headed for the elevator.
”Hey… how are you holding up?”
Lana gave her a broken smile. “If you find out where they got these blueberries… will you be able to save Lex?”
“I… um.” Chloe shifted awkwardly. “I want to tell you yes, but I don’t really know. This isn’t a meteor rock thing. It’s pretty obvious that these berries were engineered specifically. Until we find out what the purpose was, we’re working blind. I mean, the scientists have some samples from the blueberries and tons from Lex and some from the… um. Others.”
Lana felt hot tears spilling down her face again.
“It looks bad. But it’s looked bad before,” Chloe added hopefully. “And we got through it. So… hang on, because we’re all working on this together.”
Lana nodded and took a seat over by the door. After a few moments, Lex came up to her, with his hands in his back pockets. She looked up and focused on the growing gap between the edges of his shirt over his stomach. She could see the stained skin underneath; he was awfully purple now.
“Lana, I’m going to let the doctors try some surgeries. They have enough samples of my blood before and after this… to be able to go forward with trying for a cure for others who become infected in case anything-”
“I don’t care about them.”
“Lana…”
“I don’t. I don’t. I just want you to be okay.” A question burned hotly in her mind, and she peered up at him with accusing eyes. “Why do they have so many samples of your blood from before today?”
Lex was quiet. Secrets.
“Can’t you tell me?” She asked bitterly. Lex crouched down to her level. A button popped off his shirt, and he glared at his expanding middle. He had one hand out trying to keep his balance and another against the curve of his belly. He knew he was nowhere close, but he was already feeling like he might burst.
With a sigh, he looked up at her again. “I thought you knew. I thought it was a given that I was one of the mutants. Chloe had such a large file on me, I assumed you had…”
“No.” She turned away from him. She couldn’t see him like that any longer. Lex sighed again, and she heard him stumble and make a pained noise trying to get back to his feet.
2:17pm- 33.1
The doctors swarmed around Lex, shouting orders and frantically trying to stop the bleeding. It was their second try in “de-juicing” him. He was going septic. Lana pressed herself against the glass frantically.
A few moments, later one of the doctors came out to tell Lana and Martha not to expect surgical intervention to help. They couldn’t find a repository to let out the pressure; it was all intermingled with his own blood. They couldn’t bleed the juice out without him bleeding to death. Lana crumpled into Martha’s arms. She couldn’t even go into the operating room to comfort Lex when he woke up because of the contamination risk.
He hated waking up alone in hospitals. She remembered him telling her that once.
3:42pm- 33.1
Lex had made his way into the bathroom to get away from the doctors and his father, and Lana, who had completely fallen to pieces on him, accusing him in one breath and crying into Martha’s shoulder the next. He was waiting for Clark to return again. Not that the information would help him much at this point. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and barely recognized the bloated creature before him. His cheeks pouched out from the swelling. They had given him an oversized white shirt and a pair of drawstring grey sweatpants, which were beginning to stain with juice. His belly was already stretching the fabric. He looked like he was fucking pregnant. He cupped his churning middle and collapsed onto the toilet seat.
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t die like this. Instead of dying quickly like the others, his mutation would make it slower and more painful. Would leave those around him remembering him not as the powerful businessman he’d made of himself but as a pitiful ballooned bathysphere of a man.
He had been sitting there for a few minutes before he realized that he was crying. Thank whoever his father wasn’t there to see him break down. He raised a hand to wipe the tears away. No… not tears. Juice. He blinked and looked at the dark liquid on his hands.
“If… How else might it come out?” Lex wondered. An amazing thing that he’d noticed was that he hadn’t eaten since this… process began. He wasn’t hungry at all. He hadn’t used the washroom either. But maybe… if tears could work? Lex struggled to get to his feet. He set his legs wide and tried to hoist himself up, but found it impossible. The muscles of his stomach were pushed too far out. Experimentally, he licked his lips, and leaned as far over to the sink as he could manage. He spit.
There was a little bit. If he couldn’t go up, he could go down. He wiggled his way to the edge of the toilet seat and tried to ease himself down to the floor. He rolled over until he was on his knees and lifted the lid. He tried to throw up.
“Dammit, if teenage girls can do it, why can’t I?” he sobbed angrily. He leaned back against the wall and looked down at his huge belly. He reached out and sloshed it. This is how everyone was going to remember him. Engorged and repulsive. Lex Luthor of the Tremendous Girth. Experimentally he looked down to see how purple he was in other places and then it hit him. How he could get some of the juice out…
3:57pm- 33.1
Clark bounded back into the lab with Chloe on his heels. She hadn’t seen him this determined to be with Lex in a long time. All their petty arguments seemed… well. What they were. Petty and pointless and mostly baseless. They didn’t matter in the face of a crisis as they shouldn’t have mattered in the face of the last.
“Where is he?” Clark asked.
“He went to the bathroom a little while ago,” Lana answered. She had finally stopped crying and was sitting with Martha quietly. “It’s… how long has he been in there?”
“I think he probably just went to get away from us. This has been pretty intense.” Martha stroked Lana’s hair. “He’s worried about you.”
“He shouldn’t be worried about me. He should be worried about himself!”
“I’m sure he is, but he knows that you’re frightened and scared. He wants to protect you,” Martha whispered to her, rubbing her shoulders. Clark shifted his feet anxiously.
“Well?” Lionel asked. Chloe sat beside them.
”I have a lead.”
“I’ll go check on him.” Clark headed in the direction of the restroom before anyone could say otherwise. He x-rayed the room, and seeing Lex’s swollen form struggling on the floor, he flung the door open.
Lex panted, covered in beads of purple sweat, streaks of juicy tears down his face, with his sweatpants down and his hand…
“Close the fucking door.”
Clark obeyed. “What are you-?”
It was obvious what he was doing. Clark blinked.
“Is that helping?”
“A little?” Lex huffed. “I can only do this so much. I’m not that maneuverable right now.”
Clark bent down and put his hand on Lex’s juice-swollen cock.
“Clark!”
“I got a little splattered out in the field earlier. This can’t hurt me,” Clark told him, starting to pump. Lex leaned back in exhaustion, as Clark began pushing the juice out of him. A small frown etched into his forehead as he concentrated. He moved the other to Lex’s belly and pushed down a little bit.
“Ohhhh….” Lex moaned.
“Does that hurt?”
“Yes, but... don’t stop… god… anything to get that pressure off me.”
Clark slid his hand under the soaked shirt and began to massage Lex’s taut berry belly as he went along. The smell of it was incredible. He wondered…
“What are you doing?”
Clark wrapped his lips around Lex’s cock and began to suck vigorously. He motioned for Lex to keep rubbing his belly.
Lex tried not to moan too loudly. Oh, the sense of release… Clark placed his own hands against Lex’s legs and began to rub them, squeezing him, forcing the juice to come out his pores or further into his abdomen where it could come out. Lex came once, hard and gushing into Clark’s mouth and he swallowed and swallowed, and kept going, sucking harder. Lex pressed his head against the wall and bit his lip. Juice ran down his chin as he tried not to scream out against the intensity. Clark took him all the way into his mouth and began to move his fingers along the back of Lex’s blue balls, hoping to get him to come harder and release more juice.
After the third time Lex came, Clark pulled back and looked at his own juice-swollen belly, but he knew he was just really full. Ugh. Lex’s stomach had gone down considerably. He looked a bit deflated from the experience, and exhausted, but Lex melted against the wall in relief.
“Where the hell did you learn to suck cock like that?”
“I’m really flexible.” Clark offered him a hand and maneuvered Lex back to his feet. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
When they came out of the washroom, Lana stormed up to them and demanded, “What were you two doing in there?!”
It had been obvious from the noise what they had been doing in there. That and Clark’s lips were stained with the telltale bluish-purple Lex juice. Then she got a look at Lex. “You’re smaller.”
“Clark helped,” he said simply. Clark blushed.
Lana stood in amazement. She drew a bit of her hair behind her ear, not knowing how to react. Lionel stood behind her and Martha with an inscrutable expression.
Clark frowned in embarrassment. Everyone was staring at them. His mom had heard him having sex! “I didn’t want to molest your boyfriend, but…”
“I don’t want to die,” Lex said sharply.
“I don’t want him to die. It worked?” She moved as closely as she could without touching Lex.
“See for yourself.” Lex lifted his shirt. Tears sprung to her eyes again.
“Then you have permission to molest my boyfriend.”
Tuesday 12:46pm- Lex’s Penthouse
Over the next few days, with no cure in sight, Lex moved into the penthouse in Metropolis with Lana by his side and a ‘juicing’ room where Clark would come by at least once a day to ‘help.’ It was located close enough to the building that he would be able to reach the lab in minutes if they came up with anything.
Lana turned a blind eye and wore latex gloves all around the house.
Being so indisposed, Lex found that he had to ‘temporarily’ hand the company back over to Lionel. He was certain he would not be getting it back without a fight.
“You think Lionel is behind this?” Clark asked, after a mid-day juicing. He sprawled back on the juicing room bed, which he had to admit was pretty comfortable. He figured it would have to be. Lex would be feeling very swollen and sore by the time he needed Clark in here.
“Not unless he’s decided to keep the throne and live forever.” Lex shrugged and leaned into Clark. He wasn’t sure what “function” holding onto Clark after juicing actually had in this arrangement, but he couldn’t break himself of it. “I’m afraid this is going to have long term damaging effects on you, Clark. You shouldn’t swallow.”
“You taste good.” Clark looked at the alarmed expression on Lex’s face and sighed. “The worst thing that’s happened to me is that my jeans are getting a little tight. You’re high in calories.”
Clark showed him the bit of pudge he’d gained over the past few days. Lex rested his head on Clark’s shoulder. “There’s so much we don’t know about this. How can you be sure that it won’t do something that you can’t see?”
“You said that these berries were genetically engineered to change human DNA?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know why it won’t hurt me.”
Lex curled into Clark’s arms and kissed him fiercely. Clark ran his fingers over Lex’s stained skin. After juicing he looked much less purple, but the color remained faintly, a reminder that Lex was on borrowed time right now. Lex hadn’t cried since the first day when Clark had caught him in the bathroom, but he knew that this was hard on him, and he wondered which act Lex had been more humiliated for getting caught doing. Crying or masturbating.
Actually, Clark was pretty sure he knew the answer. Clark had no problem crying, though.
But only in the barn when he went home. He wanted Lex to see him confident and strong and maybe believe this was going to work out all right.
Saturday, 12:02am- Penthouse
Lex lay on the bed, exhausted from Clark’s ‘help,’ and a long day of pouring over data from the labs at 33.1. Lana had no idea what the space had been for prior to their current tragedy, but she was glad now that Lex had the place prepared for just such an emergency. It was hard to keep the faith when Clark was in charge of keeping her lover alive. He wasn’t much use to her right now actually. He was far too afraid that she might catch the Blue Plague, as the newspapers called it, to let her touch him, and he’d always been jumpy about being touched before anyway. Which was weird and he wouldn’t talk to her about that.
Except their night in front of the fire. She smiled and walked up to his bed softly. Fire had always made her feel sexy for some reason she couldn’t remember. Drawing the covers back, she looked at Lex’s body. He was a light purple, but mostly white, and although he was slightly plump from the juice swelling anew inside him, she could see his ribs sticking through. The fact of the matter was, the doctors had told them that Lex still needed to eat a little. But he wasn’t eating. The problem was that after Clark juiced Lex, he and Lana noticed that Lex was getting thinner every day. The juice fed him only a little, and everything tasted like blueberries for him. It made him gag and turn away from any food given to him.
Lex could burst. Or he could starve to death. Lana decided that she would have to get Lex to eat something, somehow. She traced a naked finger over his gently curved belly and wondered if her tight, muscular boyfriend would ever be returned to her. If this was how it was going to be, until he asked her to kill him or Clark exploded himself from the weight gain. She put what they did together in the juicing room out of her mind. Lex loved her. Clark loved her. They wouldn’t be doing anything of the sort if it weren’t necessary to keep Lex alive. It was really her they wanted. Clark was sort of a hero that way. And Lex was so brave, giving the doctors whatever samples they needed to create a cure.
Just the other day, Victoria Hardwick had somehow contracted the Blue Plague and burst in front of her entire board, who in turn caught it and exploded within minutes. The news had reported on the Hardwick “Flood,” that morning.
Lana leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips. Then walked softly back to her room.
Saturday, 9:19am- Penthouse
Clark was only coming by to check on them. They had given him a key. He told himself that was the only reason, that he was worried about the situation and Lex’s health.
It wasn’t because it was growing harder and harder for him to be away from Lex.
He opened the door easily and stood frozen at the sight before him. His insides turned to ice water as he looked over the carpet soaked in juice and blood. White walls were now painted fresh in a wide spatter of violet and rose red. Why hadn’t Lana called him if Lex had gotten worse? Clark fell to his knees amidst the gore and began to sob.
“Oh, Lex. Oh god Lex no…” He muttered to himself over and over that Lex couldn’t be dead. He’d just checked him the night before. He had been fine… he should have stayed with him. By his side in case the infection got worse, accelerated faster...
As his sobs calmed, Clark’s hearing picked up what seemed to be a high-pitched whimper. He stood slowly, ignoring the smear of various juices against his jeans trudged deeper into the apartment. He walked through the hallway, where a section of intestines had stuck fast to the wall. Soon he found the source of the pitiful sound and walked into the room.
He almost began to cry again as he saw Lex, shirtless and whole. There was a spray of blood across his face, and his eyes were empty. And he was cradling something to his chest.
“Lex… oh god, Lex.”
Lex didn’t answer, but rocked back and forth. He made that high, pained noise. Clark leaned down and put his hands around Lex. “Lex Lex Lex…”
He chanted it softly and rested his chin on Lex’s shoulder.
“…murdereder.”
“What was that?” Clark pressed his face into the curve of Lex neck. He looked down into Lex’s arms. It was a skull. Clark drew back sharply.
Lex made the noise again. Clark stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do. Most of the flesh on the skull was gone, or split at the seams from the pressure of the juice. But the long, silky black hair…
“Told… she didn’t stay away… god I murdered her.” Large juicy tears began to roll down Lex’s frozen face. “She god… oh god… murdered her.”
“You’re coming home with me, Lex.” Clark choked on his own tears. He pried the skull out of Lex’s hands and began to drag him away. “Lex, come on. You can’t stay here.”
“Kill me.”
“What?” Clark stopped, but still held Lex tightly.
“Kill me. Please kill me, Clark. Please kill me. Kill me.”
The gravely broken voice rattling out of such a strong man chilled Clark to his very core.
“I won’t. You aren’t going to die,” Clark insisted. He took Lex more forcefully and made him come along. By the time they had reached the car, Lex was wholly leaning on him. Clark strapped him into the passenger seat and kissed him gently on the lips. “I’m going to make all of this okay.”
Lex didn’t answer. He didn’t say anything else for a long time.
Author: ladydreamer
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Lexana, Clex
Warnings: Character death (you know who, plus some freebies who we don’t need), gore, dark humor, crack!science, MANSMUT
Spoilers: Through S6 Wither
Summary: A strange epidemic causes tragedy in Clark’s life. When Lex’s scientists fail to find a cure, Clark has to ensure that if Lex cannot be cured, he can at least keep him alive and sane until they find out who is behind the virus.
written for the Kill Lana Challenge at kill_lana_lang
Betaed by the lovely miche_connor
Thursday, 8:53am- LuthorCorp Tower
The weather was a little cold for September. Lex noted that as he stopped by the coffee shop next to the LuthorCorp building. It was a small business, but they knew him by name, had since the days when he was a mere plant manager for his father. Liked him more than they had Lionel, too.
Lex stopped in briefly for his trademarked ‘extra-hot double cap no foam’ and a blueberry banana muffin. He hadn’t had breakfast that day. Hadn’t had time helicoptering between meetings in Smallville and Metropolis and had been running off of coffee all day. He took the muffin and to-go cup and headed out to his car.
Not fifteen minutes later, as he picked at his muffin while driving back to Smallville, did Lana call him, requesting that he meet her at The Planet. Lex suggested that he wouldn’t be welcome, but Lana insisted that they needed him, so he assured her that he would come and got off the phone. He set the muffin aside, wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin he kept in the car, and took a sharp turn back to Metropolis.
Lex pulled up as close to the building as he could. Absently, he picked up the abandoned muffin, and when he reached The Planet, he peeled off the wrapper and tossed the muffin stump out for the pigeons.
“I feel as though I have been summoned,” Lex stated, walking towards the group surrounding a small television with a bit of a cocky swish in his step. To his surprise, both his father and Martha Kent were sitting around beside the other reporters, Clark, and Lana. “What called for this little powwow?”
“I’m surprised you don’t know, son. There’s quite the panic outside the LuthorCorp building.” His father walked closer to him, but then stopped suddenly, narrowing his eyes in almost… no. That couldn’t be fear in his father’s eyes. How uncharacteristic. What was he playing at? Lionel reached for his son with one hand, and Lex pulled back.
“I had an early meeting this morning and was heading back to Smallville. Anyone care to share?”
“Oh, god.” Lana covered her mouth with her hands. Lex felt everyone’s eyes on him. That strange little photographer, who looked like Eric Summers, got out an umbrella. Chloe smacked him on the arm.
”What?” Lex demanded. Lana had started to cry. Lex moved forward to comfort her, but she jerked away, and Chloe grabbed her and held her still, petting her hair soothingly. Knowing that someone was comforting Lana put Lex a bit more at ease.
“Lex, you… feeling okay?” Clark asked gently.
“I’m feeling stared at and annoyed.”
Just then he heard a loud popping sound. The entire room jumped and looked at him expectantly. This was getting a bit ridiculous. He headed to the window to see what was going on.
He gaped in horror as he saw a pigeon swelling up into a dripping ball. It exploded.
POP!
Chloe’s curiosity had gotten the better of her, and she was soon at the window with him. She ran to her desk, grabbed a pair of latex gloves, and ran back. “Call the police. They need to quarantine that area out there.”
Lex reached for his cell phone then stopped. The phone dropped from his hand unbidden, and he raised his fingers to his face, staring in disbelief.
They were turning purple.
“Oh, god, Lex,” Lana sobbed.
“Someone please tell me something,” Lex repeated softly.
Chloe took a deep breath. “Where were you today?”
“The castle. Work. The coffee shop next to work. My car,” he rattled off. Chloe nodded along as he told her. Lex noticed that most of the other reporters had fled the room while he had been looking out the window.
“There’s… something going on at that shop, and we don’t know if you’re the carrier or if it started there.”
“Wonderful. What’s going to happen?” He inadvertently looked back at the window. “That?! Is that-?”
“The people at the shop went up right away,” Jimmy interrupted. “He should be splatter by now.”
“Jimmy,” Martha hissed at his insensitivity.
“Went up?” Lex asked. He moved towards the television, which was broadcasting something.
Marita Sharpe went off in her car at 47 and 3rd about ten minutes ago, Alan. A young man, we haven’t identified him, got caught with the splatter and went off as well.
Good God, Terrence.
I know. It definitely started at the Buzzkill Café, from what the police can tell, and they’ve quarantined the area, but there have been a few extra explosions around town. The authorities are telling people to stay inside, and if someone looks like they are going to go up, run. Get under cover. This is one pitch you don’t want to catch. Back to you, Alan.
The reporter buzzed on as they replayed a clip someone had made with their cell phone in the café. A woman came out of the kitchen, swelling up, her belly ballooning rapidly as her arms and legs distended with fluid so quickly that they were pushed out from her body. Her belly and breasts soon overtook the rest of her and she was screaming, screaming.
It hurt.
The pressure.
Someone save her.
Until…
Lex wasn’t sure what came out of his mouth, but he was certain it was profane and not in English.
“Lex, honey, it’s okay…”
Several others who had been splattered with her juices began swelling in the shop. Lex ripped his gaze away from the screen.
“That doesn’t seem like… it can’t be a meteor effect…Who the fuck would engineer something like that?” Lex demanded of no one in particular. Lionel grabbed the back of his neck, and Lex realized he had been walking backward.
“Son, we need to get you down to one of your labs. Whichever one you think might be most helpful…”
“Oh! He’s not the carrier. Look.” Chloe got on her laptop where she had downloaded some of the clips. “Or... maybe you shouldn’t look, Lex. Okay, here. The timestamp for the first… um… “
“Blueberry?” Lex supplied tensely.
“Ew. Um. Your meeting ended at 9:30?”
“About. It was 9:50 before I was able to leave the building.” Lex didn’t mind dying. He minded dying like that very much.
“Oh. Okay, then the first… blueberries happened before Lex even got into the shop. I wonder why the pigeons...”
“It’s the muffins. Blueberry muffins. Well, I had a bit of the blueberry banana. Tossed the rest outside for the birds.” He rubbed his hand behind his head, anxiously. His eyes shifted around. Clark came up behind him. The two of them locked eyes. “Never had something like this one on the Wall of Weird, did you? I… I should be dead.”
“We’re going to find a way to save you,” Lionel insisted. Lex opened his mouth. He felt as though he had to get his sense of bearing soon or his father would realize how ridiculously he was behaving. He couldn’t believe that Lionel hadn’t given him a censorious look already.
“But I’m not. We…” He closed his eyes and put his purple-tinted hands in front of his mouth. “We have to find out where the blueberries in those muffins came from. And we should test my blood to see if we can’t find what’s resisting the… whatever it is that’s causing this. If someone’s trying to create an epidemic, we need a cure immediately.”
Lana, trying to control her crying, moved to hold him. Lex pushed his hands out and moved backward.
“Lana no! Stay away! We don’t know how many ways this could spread. You can’t touch me!”
She nodded quietly and wiped away tears. “Oh…”
“I know. Just, stay. Stay safe, okay?”
Clark stood beside him. “Chloe and I can start trying to track down where those blueberries came from? You go to the lab.”
Lex nodded and steeled himself. Time to take this thing out. By any means necessary.
1:22pm- 33.1
When Clark and Chloe left the elevator into the secret level of the LuthorCorp building, they saw that Lex’s skin had taken on a distinctly more purple hue, and the buttons of his silk shirt were straining a little around his stomach. Clark shivered and thought of all the people on television who had blown up. He looked back at them, and Clark noticed that his eyes had taken on a violet color, and his face looked a little puffy.
Juicy, Clark thought to himself solemnly.
“Have you found anything? I’m afraid we’re at a dead end on the analysis here.”
“Have you figured out why you’re kinda immune?” Chloe asked, pitching her voice in soft tones. Lex shrugged.
“Not much more than what I figured to begin with. My mutation is fighting the foreign DNA. From what we can figured from our samples-” Lex informed them. Samples being the people who had exploded already, of course… “-is that we’re dealing with some sort of retrovirus that is restructuring the DNA from within.”
He paused and put a hand to his stomach. That rush… the juice filling him up. It hurt. Stretched and pushed areas that should not be stretched or pushed. What had those other people felt? He tried to put it out of his mind, but Clark was looking at him as though he were a fragile thing that he needed to whisk away and take care of. Possibly to his barn.
“You?” Lex gave him a hard look.
“We figured out that the muffins come from a larger bakery in town. They supply pretty much everyone in the area with their baked goods.”
“Oh?” Lex asked in alarm. He moved over to a raised chair and sat town a little tiredly. The juice was starting to get heavy, and he wasn’t even that big. How would it feel when he…? No. Lex forced the thought out of his mind.
“Yeah, so potential biiig problem here. Only no other coffee shops have reported a anything yet.”
Lex nodded. “So just the Buzzkill. Then an individual swapped out the shipment? Or made sure that batch was made with their own brand?”
“Not sure yet.”
He nodded again and rubbed his belly. Clark reached for him. “Stop, Clark! Not without gloves.”
“Are you okay? You… um.”
“The pressure,” he answered simply in explanation. “We’re going to try to remove the juice surgically in a little bit.”
“I’ll keep hunting, Lex,” Chloe promised. “Just hang on as long as you can. Either your guys will come up with something, or I’ll find the sick creep that came up with it and we’ll squeeze the information out of them.”
The two men looked at her.
“What did I say?”
Lana hovered around them quietly, torn between crying and screaming. When they’d first brought her here, she and Lex had quite the fight over whether she should have been briefed as to the existence of this lab. Lex adamantly insisted that with the thousands of projects in his purview he could not possibly keep her abreast of them all, and she wouldn’t have been able to keep them straight if he did. They would spend all of their time talking about his business, and it would be a conversation she largely didn’t have the education to understand.
Lana had naturally interpreted the comment as an insult to her intelligence and began making baseless accusations that Lex lied to her on every opportunity, didn’t trust her, and was possibly sleeping with other women. Maybe men.
Lex had turned from her coldly and began working with the doctors, saying briefly: “Your sense of timing to pick a fight is quite poor. You can degrade my character and morals another time. At the moment, we need to do some tests.”
So Lana seethed in the corner. Angry at herself. Angry at him for being so coolheaded when she tried to manipulate him. Angry at Chloe for being closer to him right now, physically, than she was.
“Chloe?” Lana stopped her hurrying friend as she headed for the elevator.
”Hey… how are you holding up?”
Lana gave her a broken smile. “If you find out where they got these blueberries… will you be able to save Lex?”
“I… um.” Chloe shifted awkwardly. “I want to tell you yes, but I don’t really know. This isn’t a meteor rock thing. It’s pretty obvious that these berries were engineered specifically. Until we find out what the purpose was, we’re working blind. I mean, the scientists have some samples from the blueberries and tons from Lex and some from the… um. Others.”
Lana felt hot tears spilling down her face again.
“It looks bad. But it’s looked bad before,” Chloe added hopefully. “And we got through it. So… hang on, because we’re all working on this together.”
Lana nodded and took a seat over by the door. After a few moments, Lex came up to her, with his hands in his back pockets. She looked up and focused on the growing gap between the edges of his shirt over his stomach. She could see the stained skin underneath; he was awfully purple now.
“Lana, I’m going to let the doctors try some surgeries. They have enough samples of my blood before and after this… to be able to go forward with trying for a cure for others who become infected in case anything-”
“I don’t care about them.”
“Lana…”
“I don’t. I don’t. I just want you to be okay.” A question burned hotly in her mind, and she peered up at him with accusing eyes. “Why do they have so many samples of your blood from before today?”
Lex was quiet. Secrets.
“Can’t you tell me?” She asked bitterly. Lex crouched down to her level. A button popped off his shirt, and he glared at his expanding middle. He had one hand out trying to keep his balance and another against the curve of his belly. He knew he was nowhere close, but he was already feeling like he might burst.
With a sigh, he looked up at her again. “I thought you knew. I thought it was a given that I was one of the mutants. Chloe had such a large file on me, I assumed you had…”
“No.” She turned away from him. She couldn’t see him like that any longer. Lex sighed again, and she heard him stumble and make a pained noise trying to get back to his feet.
2:17pm- 33.1
The doctors swarmed around Lex, shouting orders and frantically trying to stop the bleeding. It was their second try in “de-juicing” him. He was going septic. Lana pressed herself against the glass frantically.
A few moments, later one of the doctors came out to tell Lana and Martha not to expect surgical intervention to help. They couldn’t find a repository to let out the pressure; it was all intermingled with his own blood. They couldn’t bleed the juice out without him bleeding to death. Lana crumpled into Martha’s arms. She couldn’t even go into the operating room to comfort Lex when he woke up because of the contamination risk.
He hated waking up alone in hospitals. She remembered him telling her that once.
3:42pm- 33.1
Lex had made his way into the bathroom to get away from the doctors and his father, and Lana, who had completely fallen to pieces on him, accusing him in one breath and crying into Martha’s shoulder the next. He was waiting for Clark to return again. Not that the information would help him much at this point. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and barely recognized the bloated creature before him. His cheeks pouched out from the swelling. They had given him an oversized white shirt and a pair of drawstring grey sweatpants, which were beginning to stain with juice. His belly was already stretching the fabric. He looked like he was fucking pregnant. He cupped his churning middle and collapsed onto the toilet seat.
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t die like this. Instead of dying quickly like the others, his mutation would make it slower and more painful. Would leave those around him remembering him not as the powerful businessman he’d made of himself but as a pitiful ballooned bathysphere of a man.
He had been sitting there for a few minutes before he realized that he was crying. Thank whoever his father wasn’t there to see him break down. He raised a hand to wipe the tears away. No… not tears. Juice. He blinked and looked at the dark liquid on his hands.
“If… How else might it come out?” Lex wondered. An amazing thing that he’d noticed was that he hadn’t eaten since this… process began. He wasn’t hungry at all. He hadn’t used the washroom either. But maybe… if tears could work? Lex struggled to get to his feet. He set his legs wide and tried to hoist himself up, but found it impossible. The muscles of his stomach were pushed too far out. Experimentally, he licked his lips, and leaned as far over to the sink as he could manage. He spit.
There was a little bit. If he couldn’t go up, he could go down. He wiggled his way to the edge of the toilet seat and tried to ease himself down to the floor. He rolled over until he was on his knees and lifted the lid. He tried to throw up.
“Dammit, if teenage girls can do it, why can’t I?” he sobbed angrily. He leaned back against the wall and looked down at his huge belly. He reached out and sloshed it. This is how everyone was going to remember him. Engorged and repulsive. Lex Luthor of the Tremendous Girth. Experimentally he looked down to see how purple he was in other places and then it hit him. How he could get some of the juice out…
3:57pm- 33.1
Clark bounded back into the lab with Chloe on his heels. She hadn’t seen him this determined to be with Lex in a long time. All their petty arguments seemed… well. What they were. Petty and pointless and mostly baseless. They didn’t matter in the face of a crisis as they shouldn’t have mattered in the face of the last.
“Where is he?” Clark asked.
“He went to the bathroom a little while ago,” Lana answered. She had finally stopped crying and was sitting with Martha quietly. “It’s… how long has he been in there?”
“I think he probably just went to get away from us. This has been pretty intense.” Martha stroked Lana’s hair. “He’s worried about you.”
“He shouldn’t be worried about me. He should be worried about himself!”
“I’m sure he is, but he knows that you’re frightened and scared. He wants to protect you,” Martha whispered to her, rubbing her shoulders. Clark shifted his feet anxiously.
“Well?” Lionel asked. Chloe sat beside them.
”I have a lead.”
“I’ll go check on him.” Clark headed in the direction of the restroom before anyone could say otherwise. He x-rayed the room, and seeing Lex’s swollen form struggling on the floor, he flung the door open.
Lex panted, covered in beads of purple sweat, streaks of juicy tears down his face, with his sweatpants down and his hand…
“Close the fucking door.”
Clark obeyed. “What are you-?”
It was obvious what he was doing. Clark blinked.
“Is that helping?”
“A little?” Lex huffed. “I can only do this so much. I’m not that maneuverable right now.”
Clark bent down and put his hand on Lex’s juice-swollen cock.
“Clark!”
“I got a little splattered out in the field earlier. This can’t hurt me,” Clark told him, starting to pump. Lex leaned back in exhaustion, as Clark began pushing the juice out of him. A small frown etched into his forehead as he concentrated. He moved the other to Lex’s belly and pushed down a little bit.
“Ohhhh….” Lex moaned.
“Does that hurt?”
“Yes, but... don’t stop… god… anything to get that pressure off me.”
Clark slid his hand under the soaked shirt and began to massage Lex’s taut berry belly as he went along. The smell of it was incredible. He wondered…
“What are you doing?”
Clark wrapped his lips around Lex’s cock and began to suck vigorously. He motioned for Lex to keep rubbing his belly.
Lex tried not to moan too loudly. Oh, the sense of release… Clark placed his own hands against Lex’s legs and began to rub them, squeezing him, forcing the juice to come out his pores or further into his abdomen where it could come out. Lex came once, hard and gushing into Clark’s mouth and he swallowed and swallowed, and kept going, sucking harder. Lex pressed his head against the wall and bit his lip. Juice ran down his chin as he tried not to scream out against the intensity. Clark took him all the way into his mouth and began to move his fingers along the back of Lex’s blue balls, hoping to get him to come harder and release more juice.
After the third time Lex came, Clark pulled back and looked at his own juice-swollen belly, but he knew he was just really full. Ugh. Lex’s stomach had gone down considerably. He looked a bit deflated from the experience, and exhausted, but Lex melted against the wall in relief.
“Where the hell did you learn to suck cock like that?”
“I’m really flexible.” Clark offered him a hand and maneuvered Lex back to his feet. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
When they came out of the washroom, Lana stormed up to them and demanded, “What were you two doing in there?!”
It had been obvious from the noise what they had been doing in there. That and Clark’s lips were stained with the telltale bluish-purple Lex juice. Then she got a look at Lex. “You’re smaller.”
“Clark helped,” he said simply. Clark blushed.
Lana stood in amazement. She drew a bit of her hair behind her ear, not knowing how to react. Lionel stood behind her and Martha with an inscrutable expression.
Clark frowned in embarrassment. Everyone was staring at them. His mom had heard him having sex! “I didn’t want to molest your boyfriend, but…”
“I don’t want to die,” Lex said sharply.
“I don’t want him to die. It worked?” She moved as closely as she could without touching Lex.
“See for yourself.” Lex lifted his shirt. Tears sprung to her eyes again.
“Then you have permission to molest my boyfriend.”
Tuesday 12:46pm- Lex’s Penthouse
Over the next few days, with no cure in sight, Lex moved into the penthouse in Metropolis with Lana by his side and a ‘juicing’ room where Clark would come by at least once a day to ‘help.’ It was located close enough to the building that he would be able to reach the lab in minutes if they came up with anything.
Lana turned a blind eye and wore latex gloves all around the house.
Being so indisposed, Lex found that he had to ‘temporarily’ hand the company back over to Lionel. He was certain he would not be getting it back without a fight.
“You think Lionel is behind this?” Clark asked, after a mid-day juicing. He sprawled back on the juicing room bed, which he had to admit was pretty comfortable. He figured it would have to be. Lex would be feeling very swollen and sore by the time he needed Clark in here.
“Not unless he’s decided to keep the throne and live forever.” Lex shrugged and leaned into Clark. He wasn’t sure what “function” holding onto Clark after juicing actually had in this arrangement, but he couldn’t break himself of it. “I’m afraid this is going to have long term damaging effects on you, Clark. You shouldn’t swallow.”
“You taste good.” Clark looked at the alarmed expression on Lex’s face and sighed. “The worst thing that’s happened to me is that my jeans are getting a little tight. You’re high in calories.”
Clark showed him the bit of pudge he’d gained over the past few days. Lex rested his head on Clark’s shoulder. “There’s so much we don’t know about this. How can you be sure that it won’t do something that you can’t see?”
“You said that these berries were genetically engineered to change human DNA?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know why it won’t hurt me.”
Lex curled into Clark’s arms and kissed him fiercely. Clark ran his fingers over Lex’s stained skin. After juicing he looked much less purple, but the color remained faintly, a reminder that Lex was on borrowed time right now. Lex hadn’t cried since the first day when Clark had caught him in the bathroom, but he knew that this was hard on him, and he wondered which act Lex had been more humiliated for getting caught doing. Crying or masturbating.
Actually, Clark was pretty sure he knew the answer. Clark had no problem crying, though.
But only in the barn when he went home. He wanted Lex to see him confident and strong and maybe believe this was going to work out all right.
Saturday, 12:02am- Penthouse
Lex lay on the bed, exhausted from Clark’s ‘help,’ and a long day of pouring over data from the labs at 33.1. Lana had no idea what the space had been for prior to their current tragedy, but she was glad now that Lex had the place prepared for just such an emergency. It was hard to keep the faith when Clark was in charge of keeping her lover alive. He wasn’t much use to her right now actually. He was far too afraid that she might catch the Blue Plague, as the newspapers called it, to let her touch him, and he’d always been jumpy about being touched before anyway. Which was weird and he wouldn’t talk to her about that.
Except their night in front of the fire. She smiled and walked up to his bed softly. Fire had always made her feel sexy for some reason she couldn’t remember. Drawing the covers back, she looked at Lex’s body. He was a light purple, but mostly white, and although he was slightly plump from the juice swelling anew inside him, she could see his ribs sticking through. The fact of the matter was, the doctors had told them that Lex still needed to eat a little. But he wasn’t eating. The problem was that after Clark juiced Lex, he and Lana noticed that Lex was getting thinner every day. The juice fed him only a little, and everything tasted like blueberries for him. It made him gag and turn away from any food given to him.
Lex could burst. Or he could starve to death. Lana decided that she would have to get Lex to eat something, somehow. She traced a naked finger over his gently curved belly and wondered if her tight, muscular boyfriend would ever be returned to her. If this was how it was going to be, until he asked her to kill him or Clark exploded himself from the weight gain. She put what they did together in the juicing room out of her mind. Lex loved her. Clark loved her. They wouldn’t be doing anything of the sort if it weren’t necessary to keep Lex alive. It was really her they wanted. Clark was sort of a hero that way. And Lex was so brave, giving the doctors whatever samples they needed to create a cure.
Just the other day, Victoria Hardwick had somehow contracted the Blue Plague and burst in front of her entire board, who in turn caught it and exploded within minutes. The news had reported on the Hardwick “Flood,” that morning.
Lana leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips. Then walked softly back to her room.
Saturday, 9:19am- Penthouse
Clark was only coming by to check on them. They had given him a key. He told himself that was the only reason, that he was worried about the situation and Lex’s health.
It wasn’t because it was growing harder and harder for him to be away from Lex.
He opened the door easily and stood frozen at the sight before him. His insides turned to ice water as he looked over the carpet soaked in juice and blood. White walls were now painted fresh in a wide spatter of violet and rose red. Why hadn’t Lana called him if Lex had gotten worse? Clark fell to his knees amidst the gore and began to sob.
“Oh, Lex. Oh god Lex no…” He muttered to himself over and over that Lex couldn’t be dead. He’d just checked him the night before. He had been fine… he should have stayed with him. By his side in case the infection got worse, accelerated faster...
As his sobs calmed, Clark’s hearing picked up what seemed to be a high-pitched whimper. He stood slowly, ignoring the smear of various juices against his jeans trudged deeper into the apartment. He walked through the hallway, where a section of intestines had stuck fast to the wall. Soon he found the source of the pitiful sound and walked into the room.
He almost began to cry again as he saw Lex, shirtless and whole. There was a spray of blood across his face, and his eyes were empty. And he was cradling something to his chest.
“Lex… oh god, Lex.”
Lex didn’t answer, but rocked back and forth. He made that high, pained noise. Clark leaned down and put his hands around Lex. “Lex Lex Lex…”
He chanted it softly and rested his chin on Lex’s shoulder.
“…murdereder.”
“What was that?” Clark pressed his face into the curve of Lex neck. He looked down into Lex’s arms. It was a skull. Clark drew back sharply.
Lex made the noise again. Clark stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do. Most of the flesh on the skull was gone, or split at the seams from the pressure of the juice. But the long, silky black hair…
“Told… she didn’t stay away… god I murdered her.” Large juicy tears began to roll down Lex’s frozen face. “She god… oh god… murdered her.”
“You’re coming home with me, Lex.” Clark choked on his own tears. He pried the skull out of Lex’s hands and began to drag him away. “Lex, come on. You can’t stay here.”
“Kill me.”
“What?” Clark stopped, but still held Lex tightly.
“Kill me. Please kill me, Clark. Please kill me. Kill me.”
The gravely broken voice rattling out of such a strong man chilled Clark to his very core.
“I won’t. You aren’t going to die,” Clark insisted. He took Lex more forcefully and made him come along. By the time they had reached the car, Lex was wholly leaning on him. Clark strapped him into the passenger seat and kissed him gently on the lips. “I’m going to make all of this okay.”
Lex didn’t answer. He didn’t say anything else for a long time.