Fic: Never Been Lexed (Smallville, Clark/Lex, Rated PG)
My contribution for the Smallville track of undermistletoe.
Title: Never Been Lexed
Author: Moosesal
Fandom and Pairing: Smallville - Clark/Lex
Rating: PG
Word count: 9123
Warning: This is sickly sweet, beware sugar overdose. It's also obviously an AU. If neither of those appeal to you, you might want to move along. :-)
Note: This is based on the movie Never Been Kissed and my first attempt at writing a retelling of an existing story. Many thanks to brandil, caoilainn, and ldthomps for their beta efforts. All remaining errors are mine.
"Clark! Clark! Clark!" Clark looked around him in surprise and pushed his glasses up his nose. He couldn't believe how many students and parents were here cheering him on, not to mention all the reporters waiting for a story.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. I was just here doing my job, but then things happened. Life happened. And now I'm standing here on the 50-yard-line.
He looked up to see 5:00 on the scoreboard clock. When the seconds started to tick away, the crowd went wild again.
I'm not the kind of guy who does this sort of thing. Just a few months ago, I was the kind of guy no one ever noticed. I liked it that way. For years it's been necessary to who I am.
***
Two months earlier
Somehow in the last few months, Clark's editor had thought it would be interesting to pair him up with another reporter. He dropped down behind his desk and looked over at his partner, Lois Lane. Lois was an investigative journalist with a background in ... well, stories that even the Inquisitor was hesitant to print due to a questionable lack of evidence. Before meeting her, Clark had thought the Inquisitor would print anything, but she had an entire portfolio of articles they'd turned down.
Clark, on the other hand, was a science writer with degrees in journalism and biochemistry from Metropolis University. He liked the science beat. He didn't do investigative stuff. Why Perry White thought he and Lois would make a good team was beyond him. Woodward and Bernstein they most definitely were not.
"What?" he asked as he realized Lois was attempting to stare a hole through his head.
"We were supposed to cover the Metropolis Opera Company's opening last night."
"I don't write for the society page, Lois."
"There were important people there, Smallville."
Clark cringed at her nickname for him. He didn't need the reminder of his small town roots and how different he was from Lois in her designer clothes and fancy shoes. "I'm sure you had it covered and Jimmy was there for photos, right?"
She rolled her eyes at him and he knew it was going to be a banner day. Eyerolling at -- he glanced at the clock on his phone -- 8:02 am. Yep, banner day. "Of course we had it covered. That's not the point."
He picked up his phone and gave her his best apologetic face. "I've got messages," he said as he dialed into the voicemail system while booting up his computer. Ignore her and she'll go away didn't really work with Lois, but every once in a while she took the hint. He nearly sighed in relief as he realized this was one of those rare moments.
Just as he was hanging up from checking his messages, Perry came by and looked at Lois. "You know my policy on office dating." She stared at him blankly while he stared back pointedly before quickly glancing over at Clark.
Lois nearly choked as she said, "Clark? You think I'm dating Clark?"
"No. You and Jimmy Olsen at the opening last night." Lois went pale and Clark held back a laugh.
"Who--"
"Jimmy," Perry stated.
"I'm gonna kill that..." her words trailed off behind her as she hit the stairs in search of a soon-to-be dead man.
Clark looked up at Perry and asked about his proposal to send a reporter to an upcoming medical conference. "Oh yeah," Perry said. "Great idea. I'm sending Parker."
"Parker? Peter Parker?" Clark asked, trying not to show his disappointment or annoyance. Parker was a great photojournalist, but this conference didn't really lend itself to interesting photo ops. "Oh. Well, I'm sure he'll get some great pictures."
"Yeah, that kid's killer with a camera. Did you see the shots he got of Spiderman?" Perry started to walk away and then turned back, "I'll need copy on last night's opening by five."
"Of course." Clark sighed and opened his e-mail. He was sure Lois had already written up the event, she'd just need Clark to polish the actual writing.
He was still replying to the first message when she returned. Clark noticed her lipstick was smudged and she had a soft look in her eyes. He tried not to laugh as he asked, "Did you kill him?"
She attempted her famous Lois glare, but the blissed out look on her face pretty much canceled it out. "No. I told him he was taking me to dinner tonight."
"Ah," Clark nodded. Lois had a way of making revenge expensive for her targets.
"So when's the last time you had a date, Smallville?"
Clark tried his own glare; she already knew the answer to that question.
"You know," she waved her hands around as though searching for the right words. "Dinner, movie, leather bar, whatever it is hot guys do together these days."
Clark spit coffee all over his computer screen and wished he'd aimed for Lois instead. "I don't go to leather bars, Lois. And I'm busy. Work keeps me busy."
"You need to get laid."
***
Clark hated meetings. Lately meetings meant somebody getting fired. He wasn't worried about himself or Lois, but Perry had that look on his face. He looked at Dalton and said, "I was really impressed with that story you did on corruption in the mayor's office." Dalton smiled and then Perry continued, "But since the Inquisitor printed the same story the day before us, you're fired."
Dalton paled and Perry pointed at the door. "Go. Now. Out!" Dalton gathered his notepad and pen and practically ran out the door.
Perry looked down the conference room table at everyone else and smiled. "Happy September, everyone."
"Happy September, Mr. White," they answered in unison.
"To celebrate this month, I've decided we need to do an undercover feature."
Clark suppressed a groan, while Lois perked up and looked ready to raise her hand like an excited kid in school. And then she did raise her hand and before Perry could even address her she took a deep breath and launched into her proposal. "I was thinking about going undercover as a prostitute down in Suicide Slums. I could get some inside information on the drug trade, prostitution, and Lionel Luthor's connections with the mafia down there."
"Funny you should say that, Ms. Lane, because I was thinking how great it would be to do a piece on 'My Semester in High School' and I was thinking we could do it in Smallville. I've been hearing about strange things going on with adolescents in that town."
Clark, and he assumed everyone else, wasn't really sure how high school and Lois's proposal about Suicide Slums were connected, but he certainly wasn't going to question the man who'd just fired one of their best reporters. Then Clark wished he had questioned it because suddenly Perry was pointing at him and saying, "Kent. You report to Smallville High on Monday morning."
"But, I'm from Smallville, sir."
"Then you should fit right in."
"No, I mean ... what about my cover? It's a small town."
"Did you go to Smallville High?"
"Well, no. I went to school in Gotham--"
"Well then, this is your chance to see what you missed."
When they got back to their desks Lois glared at him. "You should turn this down."
"What? How? He'll fire me."
"You could quit," she offered. "You're not made for undercover, Clark."
She was right, but the way she said it made Clark want to prove her wrong. "Just watch me."
Twenty minutes later as he ran home to his parents' farm, he thought again that Lois was right. He slowed down and stopped on the bridge outside of town like always. It was tradition to stop and look down at the water; it was how he transitioned from city life back to the farm. But this time was different.
As he stood on the bridge, a silver Porsche came flying towards him, hitting him and punching through the railing, and sending them both down into the river. Clark shook off the surprise and ripped the roof off the car. He pulled the driver out and carried him to shore where he performed CPR. The man was beautiful -- creamy white skin, delicate yet strong features, impeccably dressed -- and it was no hardship to press his lips to the stranger's and share his breath. Once the man was breathing and had coughed up a bunch of water, Clark rolled him onto his side, ran to a pay phone, and called 911. He then ran back and hid in the bushes watching over the stranger until the ambulance arrived. When it was clear that the man would be okay, Clark super-speeded himself to the farm, expecting never to see the man again.
***
Clark suspected that Perry White had chosen him for this job because he thought Clark's 'boyish looks and charm' would not only help him pass as a teenager, but get him in immediately with the popular kids. Perry clearly knew nothing about teenagers.
As Clark stood in the entryway of the school he'd managed to avoid attending several years earlier, he thought they should have sent Lois instead. The only upside to being here was getting to see his parents regularly; he liked his life in Metropolis. He hoped he'd find a good story right away and be back to the city and the Daily Planet in a week or two.
He stepped through the front doors of the school and looked around at the other students as he shrugged his backpack up on his shoulder. Fashion had been perhaps the only thing he hadn't worried about in high school -- sometimes uniforms were a good thing. He looked down at his plaid shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers. Then he looked at the kids around him and back down at his own clothes and sighed. He was a farmer's kid, the clothes fit the part. He'd never been popular and didn't expect that to change now. Perry really should have sent Lois.
As he made his way to the office, Clark noticed banners everywhere reading "GO CROWS" and "63 days until Homecoming". Sports, especially football, had been the one thing that might have made Clark popular in high school, but because of his special abilities his father hadn't allowed him to participate. Now that he not only had powers, but was six years older than the seniors, sports weren't going to be part of his high school experience this time around either.
He put thoughts of being a football star out of his head and entered the main office to register and get his class schedule.
***
Lex looked up in surprise as a new student walked into his classroom, schedule in hand. "Is this Organic Chemistry?" the boy asked as they locked gazes.
"It is. I'm Lex Luthor, although the school has a policy about students calling me Lex." He reached out and the boy handed over his schedule and Lex looked at it, finally breaking their stare. "Clark Kent. Welcome to Smallville High and O Chem, Clark. You can join Miss Sullivan there in the back--" he gestured in her direction as he returned Clark's schedule to him "--as she's in need of a new lab partner. She blew the last one up during an unauthorized experiment." He smirked at the nervous look on Clark's face. "Just kidding. He had some freak accident in Crater Lake. I've been assured that Chloe had nothing to do with it, despite the ... thoroughness of her article in the Torch."
There was something familiar about Clark, but Lex couldn't quite place it. He felt like they'd met before, but he had a perfect memory for names and faces and Clark Kent was not registering with him.
Lex smiled warmly at him and the boy blushed and pushed his glasses up on his face before moving to join Chloe in the back of the room. Lex realized after a moment that he was staring at the boy as he settled in, and shook his head to clear it. "Okay, class. Where did we leave off last week?" He turned back to the board and started jotting down chemical equations. Clark's face was in the back of his thoughts the rest of the day.
***
At lunch Clark wandered around the cafeteria trying to figure out where to sit. For a moment he flashed back on his days in Gotham -- despite his superpowers, he'd gone through a period where he was incredibly clumsy. On his first day there, he'd tripped and landed on his tray in front of everyone. As he stood up -- covered in spaghetti, pudding, and milk -- the other students had applauded. Luckily for him, things were different now; Clark was different now. He came back to the present to see his new lab partner waving him over to her table. "Hey, Clark. This is Pete. Pete, Clark."
Clark exchanged "Heys" with Pete then sat down to unpack the lunch his mother had handed him that morning. She'd been a little excited by opportunity -- between homeschooling and then Clark attending boarding school from seventh grade on, she'd never had reason to pack him a lunch. He was slightly mortified to compare Chloe's leftover pizza and a Diet Coke and Pete's school lunch with his own spread of two turkey sandwiches on thick slices of homemade bread, a baggie of carrot sticks, an apple, four homemade oatmeal raisin cookies, and a bottle of juice (not to mention the two cartons of milk he'd bought). He was just grateful his mom hadn't packed him a thermos of soup.
"Wow, Clark. That's quite a lunch." Pete seemed a little awed by the amount of food.
"Yeah, my mom ... she thinks they starved me at boarding school."
Pete and Chloe just nodded like they could relate and talked about some test they'd had that morning in Calculus.
***
Clark sighed in relief as he walked out of school at the end of his first day. He'd survived; no one had questioned whether or not he actually belonged there. Everything was going according to plan. Until he noticed that his truck was missing. He was standing in the spot where he was certain he'd parked it, but it wasn't there. Who would want his beat-up truck?
"Missing something?" He turned around to see Chloe looking up with a grin on her face. "Your car?"
"Truck, actually. How'd you know?"
She rolled her eyes. "Stupid jocks do it to all the new kids. You're lucky you're so tall, otherwise they'd probably string you up as this year's human scarecrow." He raised an eyebrow in question and she shook her head. "Trust me, you're better off not knowing. Come on, I think I can guess where your truck is."
He followed her around the building and sure enough, there it was in the end zone of the football field. The coach not caring about the truck sitting in the middle of his practice session, didn't seem worth asking about.
"Pop the hood," Chloe said.
"What?"
"Trust me." He popped the hood and when he came back around she was putting something back in place. "Should be fine now. They like to disconnect the battery."
"Thanks." Clark smiled and relaxed for the first time all day. "You want to ... get a coffee or something?"
Chloe's face lit up at the invitation and she suggested the Talon.
Over coffee and gooey brownies, Clark learned that Chloe was editor of the school paper -- the Torch -- and that she wanted to be a reporter. She was applying to MetU's journalism program and was hoping to intern at the Daily Planet over the summer. Her enthusiasm combined with Clark's own experience at MetU (which he carefully talked around) culminated in him agreeing to write for the Torch. By the time they parted ways he was already committed to an article on the football team and hazing.
***
"I think I've got a story, Perry."
"Yeah, kid?"
"Yeah. The football team here is hazing the rookies."
"I sent you there to investigate something unusual, Kent. Hazing is not unusual."
"But--"
"No." Perry hung up on him.
During his first week at Smallville High, Clark was introduced to Chloe's 'Wall of Weird' and personally witnessed several things that would have met Perry's criteria for unusual. The problem was, he couldn't really gather evidence and witnesses to support the stories without blowing his own cover -- that he was not only one of Smallville's oddities, but the reason for the existence of all the others. He was more prepared to break his cover as a student than to let anyone know he was an alien with superpowers. So he tried selling Perry stories about the real ingredients in cafeteria coleslaw and the travesty of teachers' salaries. Perry wasn't biting.
***
Lex sat at his desk rereading Cosmos for what felt like the billionth time. There was some material he wanted to share with his physics students so he was brushing up. He was surprised when Clark knocked on the door frame and stepped into the room.
"Deja vu," he said.
"Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Luthor. I left my bag in my rush to get to lunch."
"No problem." Lex watched him move to his lab station in the back and pick up his backpack from the floor.
"You like Carl Sagan?" Clark asked, nodding to the book in Lex's hand.
"He's got some interesting theories. Just brushing up for some discussion with my physics students this afternoon. You've read Sagan?"
"Yeah, he's not bad. I find Feynman's writing to be more fun though."
"Richard Feynman?"
Clark nodded. "Yeah. And Hawking. The both have a way of making the most complex stuff accessible to everyone."
Lex was surprised. He'd gone to grad school with people who found Physics for Dummies to be difficult, anything beyond that was near impossible for them to understand. Feynman and Hawking were popular, certainly. Their accessibility, however, was debatable for college graduates, much less high schoolers. That Clark was interested enough in science to read outside the curricula was a delight. "Are you sure you're seventeen?" Lex teased.
Clark ducked his head and then the bell rang and he was rushing off to his next class, leaving Lex staring at an empty doorway.
***
Clark entered the Torch office a few days later and looked at Chloe and Pete. "What's with this school and Homecoming? The countdown banners, the parade planning, the fund-raising carnival this weekend?"
"Smallville has a long rivalry with Granville," Chloe responded. "But I just moved here a couple years ago, so I don't really get it either. Pete?"
"It's football, Clark. It's, like, the greatest game ever and Smallville's been kicking Granville's ass for years. It's tradition." Pete shrugged. "Besides, what else is there to do in a little town surrounded by corn fields? We get a carnival and then a few weeks later there's football and a dance. Both nights usually end with kids getting drunk and having sex in their backseats."
"Are you guys going?"
Chloe and Pete looked at each other and laughed. "Well," Chloe said, "yeah, to the game. But only in case something happens worth reporting in the paper."
"You're not going to the dance?" Clark asked.
Chloe looked away and Clark sensed that she wasn't being completely honest when she said, "Why would I want to go to a silly Homecoming dance?"
***
"So," Lex smiled as he scanned the classroom, "a little crossover today with biology. Let's discuss pheromones." He suppressed a sigh as the class know-it-all, Wilbur, raised his hand. "Yes, Wil?"
"Pheromones aren't real, Mr. Luthor. They're a myth." He added a curt nod to the end of his statement as though that would prove his point.
"Are you sure? What about in animals? Plants?"
"Well, I thought you meant humans," Wilbur stammered, trying to save face. Lex faked a smile and nodded at another student who'd raised her hand.
As other students piped up, a lively debate began. Lex noticed that Clark looked like he had something to contribute but was not butting in or raising his hand. In fact, despite his size, he looked rather small tucked behind his lab table, eyes hidden behind bulky black frames. "How about you, Mr. Kent? What do you think?"
Clark seemed to perk up at being addressed directly and despite the charming blush to his cheeks, he smiled as he launched into an explanation about the mating habits of the Tanzanian cockroach and how females catching the scent of less aggressive males will have fewer sons in her next clutch of young. Lex was impressed; he'd read an article on the exact subject just a few months earlier. He found himself focusing on Clark as his students continued to discuss the matter.
Lex had never found himself attracted to a student before, not even when he was in grad school and teaching undergrads just a few years his younger. He chuckled to himself and blamed a love of comic books for even considering that Clark must be an alien to attract his attention like he did. Yet he couldn't help but wonder what pheromones the boy was emitting.
The bell rang, taking him by surprise. He shook it off, dismissing the class with a cheerful, "Have a good weekend. But not too good, you still have an exam on Tuesday. And if I run into you at the carnival, I'll try not to embarrass you."
***
"Lonely rider," the operator called. "We've got a lonely rider, here. Single!"
Lex noticed Clark alone in the Ferris wheel car and overheard some students commenting about the "loser" holding up the ride. He stepped forward and handed a ticket to the attendant. "This seat taken?"
"Umm, no." Clark blushed and slid to one side, making room. Lex felt a familiar tightening in his groin as he squeezed in beside Clark then nodded to the attendant who quirked his brow while fastening them in.
"Thanks for letting me join you. My girlfriend, Helen, hates rides, but I love them. Although I must admit I'm a little afraid of heights." The car began its slow ascent into the sky.
"You're afraid of heights and you're on the Ferris wheel?"
"Well, it's more that I'm afraid of possibly falling to the earth."
"That accident when you were kid." Clark said. "The meteorites, right?"
"You remember that story from class?" He sometimes worried that he told too many stories to his students, that he bored them.
"I remember everything from your class, Mr. Luthor." Clark locked eyes with him for a moment, before looking up at the stars.
"I love the Ferris wheel," Lex said, joining Clark in gazing up at the stars. "It's like flying. Do you believe a man can fly, Clark?"
Clark turned to him and blinked before saying, "Sure, Mr. Luthor. In a plane."
Lex chuckled. "Call me Lex. We're ... not in class."
"Lex." The sound of his name on Clark's tongue was intoxicating; Lex needed a distraction. He pointed out a couple constellations and was delighted when Clark relaxed and began talking about astronomy with great passion.
A boy above them started rocking his car and looked down at them, yelling, "If the bucket's a rockin', don't come a knockin'." Lex noticed Clark blushing and said, "Teenage boys."
"Yeah," Clark agreed, fidgeting in his seat.
"I'd like to think we grow out of that phase, but ... some people never change."
"You're not like that." There was such certainty in Clark's voice; it touched Lex's heart, among other parts of him.
"Your parents would be horrified if you spent time with the teenage version of me." Lex thought back to his years of partying and doing drugs and being an obnoxious rich kid who got away with murder. "You're a good kid, Clark. You'll do great things." With me, he silently added.
***
"Okay, class. I'm not sure how much you still have to learn on the subject, but Ms. Tillerman from the county public health office is here to give you a little sex ed refresher course." Lex smiled at them and while Chloe whispered, "Yes! No O-Chem today!" Clark found himself slightly mortified to be sitting through a sex education lecture at his age.
He saw a head peak into the room and Lex ran over to the woman. "Hello. You must be Ms. Tillerman." he said.
Clark thought he was going to die when Lois stepped into the room and grinned at him over Lex's shoulder. "Umm ... yes," she said as she returned her attention to Lex. "Yes, I am."
Lex turned back to the classroom. "I'll just leave Ms. Tillerman to do her thing and trust that you'll all be on your best behavior for her." And then he strolled out of the room with that easy gait of his. Clark had trouble averting his gaze until he heard the words "how to put on a condom" issue from Lois's mouth. He didn't need a mirror to know his cheeks were beet red.
***
Lex couldn't help but eavesdrop on Ms. Tillerman's presentation. He peered through the door and watched Clark fumble with his condom and banana while Chloe seemed to roll hers on with ease. He grinned at that and reassessed the intrepid young reporter.
When Ms. Tillerman walked over to assist Clark, Lex slipped into the classroom and leaned against the side wall, listening in on their conversation.
"Is this necessary?" Clark asked with a hint of distress. "I mean, if you wait for love and choose that one person for life?"
"One person for life?" Ms. Tillerman laughed. "Does anyone do that anymore?"
"Penguins do. They wait for that one perfect penguin," Clark's cheeks flushed slightly, but he held Ms. Tillerman's gaze, "and they stay together until death. It's ... romantic." At that last comment, Clark looked away, clearly embarrassed, and his eyes found Lex's.
"And you're waiting for your penguin?" Ms. Tillerman asked, her tone was sarcastic and unbelieving, but her body language belied her words.
"Yes." Clark looked so certain, his gaze never leaving Lex's face, and Lex knew the boy meant it. He thought of all the women and men he'd been with in his life and wished he'd waited for his own penguin. Maybe he'd been waiting all these years for Clark.
***
Lex stopped by the Talon on his way home one evening. Lana had called and said she needed him to sign off on some invoices. While he was mostly hands off with the business, he liked to keep an eye on the books and his investment. He was surprised to walk in and see Clark hanging out with Chloe and a few other kids. It was nice to see him making friends and settling in. Lex told himself there was nothing wrong with being interested in his students' happiness. It was what made him a good teacher - he connected with his kids.
He sat down at the counter and took care of the paperwork Lana passed to him. When he was finished he bid her a good evening and rose from his stool only to turn right into Clark, who spilled a full cup of coffee down his shirt.
"Shit. I mean ... I'm sorry, Mr. Luthor. I didn't--"
"It's okay, Clark. It was an accident." When he looked up into Clark's shining eyes, Lex found that he didn't really mind that his shirt was ruined. It wasn't like he couldn't afford a new one. "No worries."
"I could --"
"Really, Clark." He smiled at the boy's awkwardness. "It's not a problem."
"Are you sure?"
"It's nothing." Lex smiled and nodded, deciding a change of subject was in order. "I was reading your lab report earlier, Clark. You've been hiding something from me."
It was like flipping a switch. The happy Clark from minutes earlier was gone; he visibly paled and stammered out, "Wh-wh-what?"
"You're an amazing writer," Lex commented.
"I'm not--" Clark objected.
"Have you thought about where you're going to college, Clark?"
"I-I'm not going to college. My dad needs me on the farm." He looked away.
"Metropolis University's not that far away and they have excellent science and writing programs. I have some connections there, I could talk to --"
"I can't." Clark's tone was final and Lex knew when to quit.
***
"News room. Lois Lane speaking." Clark smiled at the sound of her voice.
"Hey, Lois."
"Smallville." He rolled his eyes at the nickname and then nearly choked on his own spit when she said, "Don't roll your eyes at me, Clark. You got a story or what?"
"Well ... no. I was calling to talk about my cover."
"Is there a problem? It seemed fine the other day when I stopped by." She somehow managed to laugh at him and simultaneously sound bored; he thought maybe he should've called Perry instead.
"Not exactly. It's just, my teacher, Mr. Luthor--"
"You mean, Lex? Your hot ass science teacher and heir to millions?"
"Huh?"
"Lex Luthor. Lionel Luthor's son who rejected the family business to teach science to idiot kids." The "duh" was unspoken, but unmistakable in her tone.
Clark hadn't thought about the name before then. Suddenly the fancy Porsche he'd crashed into the river and all the expensive cars he drove to school despite losing the Porsche made sense. So did his partnership in the Talon and living in the fancy 'castle' outside of town. Clark was suddenly incredibly embarrassed about his investigative reporting skills -- they were even more absent than he'd thought.
"You've got your story, Smallville."
"He's just my chemistry teacher, Lois."
"Heh. Chemistry. I bet."
Clark didn't want to think about what she was implying. "Can we get back to why I called?"
Now he could picture Lois rolling her eyes. "Shoot."
"He keeps talking to me about college and stuff. Telling me I've got potential and how he can get me a scholarship to MetU and ..."
"So he's taken an interest in you, that just makes it easier. I told you -- Chemistry."
"Look Lois, I think I'm doing too well in his class and--"
"I can just see it now." She cut him off. "Dateline: Smallville, Kansas. Luthor Heir Sexes Up Reporter Posing as Student."
Clark dropped the phone, but could hear Lois laughing even while the receiver lay on the floor. Lex? Sexing him up? He picked up the phone and said, "You're crazy, Lois" before hanging up. Just because Lex -- Mr. Luthor -- was interested in his education didn't mean ...
Clark thought about the way Lex smiled at him and seemed interested in what he had to say in class. He thought about how laid back he'd been even after Clark spilled coffee all over him. How nice he looked with his wet shirt clinging to his body. Clark groaned, if anyone was interested in the "sexing up" of the other, it was Clark interested in Lex. He needed a story now so he could get back to Metropolis and get out of this mess before he got his heart broken.
***
After a continued lack of success in getting a story Perry was happy with -- and being scooped by the Inquisitor about strange things going on at The Beanery with kids drinking coffee laced with some green liquid -- it was suggested to Clark that he get in tight with the popular kids. The jocks and the rich kids. Clark looked down at his plaid shirt then stared out of the barn's loft at the farm his family had run for generations. He couldn't exactly try out for a team with his special abilities and he definitely wasn't going to pass for rich. But he knew someone who could do both -- he called his friend Jason Teague for some advice.
He was surprised the next day to run into Jason in the hall at school. Jason smiled and winked at him before slipping into a classroom. At lunch Clark watched him win a coleslaw eating contest, surrounded by kids chanting "Teague! Teague! Teague!" to cheer him on. And then on Friday, Clark found him in the hall sporting a football jersey and making out with a cheerleader he recognized as Lana Lang from the Talon. After an incredibly long (and inappropriate in Clark's opinion) kiss, Jason managed to pull his mouth away from hers to look up at Clark.
"Hey, Kent!" Jason called out. "I was just telling the guys here--" and he already had four football players and a few cheerleaders gathered around him as he moved towards Clark "--about how great an arm you've got. How if you hadn't torn your rotator cuff on the slopes in Aspen this spring, you would've replaced Whitney as QB."
Clark's eyes widened, but then he nodded and played along. "Yeah. It's healing up, but I'm still doing some physical therapy." He was a horrible liar, but they all seemed to buy the story.
Jason grinned at him and said, "We're hitting the Talon after school. You should come. Meet the girls. Meet the guys." He waggled his eyebrows and winked -- Jason knew he was gay, but he also knew the importance of a cover. Several of the guys and all of the girls surrounding him were enthusiastic in their agreement, saying "Totally" and "Yeah, Clark, come join us" and he nodded and said "Okay" in return.
***
Hanging out with Jason and his jock friends finally resulted in a story. The coach seemed to have some weird fire starting ability. However, when Clark tried to enlist Chloe's help she gave him the cold shoulder. She'd seemed pretty annoyed with him in lab lately, but he was a guy -- a twenty-four-year-old gay guy -- and teenage girls had never made sense to him. When he finally asked her what was wrong, told her that he thought they were friends, she rolled her eyes at him. It was like working with Lois. Hell, the way they both interacted with Clark, the two of them could be related.
"What?!" he asked. He really didn't have a clue.
"Why don't you go hang out with Jason and Whitney and all the other jocks. Go shake some girl's pompoms at the pep rally." She grabbed her lunch and walked out of the cafeteria, but Clark followed her to the Talon office.
"I'm sorry," he said and he meant it. Chloe had been a good friend to him. "I didn't mean to blow you off."
"You were supposed to write a story last week and I had to come up with something at the last minute because you were too 'busy'." She made little finger quotes and rolled her eyes again.
"I was studying for our chemistry exam," he insisted, fighting the whine that crept into his voice.
"Clark, you know all the answers in class before Mr. Luthor even introduces a new topic. You didn't need to study that much."
He could feel himself blush, because she was right. Of course he knew the answers, he'd already done all of this before. But he couldn't exactly tell her that or that he was in Metropolis meeting with his editor when he missed his deadline with her. "I'm sorry," he said again. "Look, I've got a story. It's a good one. Wall of Weird stuff."
She looked at him skeptically, but he could tell he had her interest. He apologized a couple more times as he detailed what he knew about the coach and they agreed to write the story together. He figured he'd talk to Perry later about getting Chloe's name on the byline in the Planet when they published the real article there. If things went well, maybe he could help her get that summer internship she wanted.
***
Coach Walt turned into a human fireball two days before Homecoming and the student body was conflicted in their opinions of Clark and Chloe for publishing the article that sent him over the edge. They received alternate thumbs up and curses of "Mudrakers" as they walked down the hall. The Mudrakers comment especially irked Chloe who called them "idiots" and went on an on about them not even knowing the right word or the real meaning of it.
It was only at Jason's insistence (and the discovery that Lex would be one of the faculty chaperons) that Clark reluctantly agreed to attend the Homecoming dance. He asked Chloe to be his date, strictly as friends. He was oblivious to the way her face lit up when he asked and the soft sigh in her voice when she said yes. He was equally oblivious to the look in her eyes when they danced or how that looked changed when he left her to find Lex.
***
Lex spied Clark at the refreshments table getting a cup of punch and made his way through the crowd. "You look very handsome tonight, Clark."
By this time, Lex had come to expect Clark's blushing and fidgeting with his glasses. The stammered, "Thank you, so do you," was so soft Lex could barely hear it over the sound of the band.
"I've been wearing fancy suits and tuxedos since I was a child -- the downside of being a Luthor -- but it still feels a little weird to dress up quite so much for an evening spent in a high school gymnasium."
Clark's broad smile extended to his eyes and brought an equally genuine smile to Lex's own lips. "Yeah, I can't believe I'm even here. It's not really my thing." And he was fidgeting again, but still smiling.
"Nor mine," Lex said, tilting his head and really looking at Clark. "I'd ask you to dance, but I think that might be a bit much for Smallville High." Clark choked at the suggestion and took a sip of his punch to try to settle his nerves. "Maybe a walk outside? A chat?"
"Won't Helen be worried?"
"Helen and I have," he paused and found himself breaking Clark's gaze for a moment. "We've split up. Turns out we don't want the same things."
"Her loss," Clark said and Lex sensed he'd said it without thinking. "I mean --"
"You're amazing, Clark Kent." Lex reined in his desire to touch Clark and turned his attention to another matter before his other brain took charge of things and cost him his job. "Have you given any more thought to college? I spoke to a friend at MetU ..."
They were still standing at the table, not having moved toward the door and their walk, when everything changed.
***
Clark smiled to himself when he looked over Lex's shoulder as Lex asked him again if he'd thought about attending MetU. He saw Chloe dancing with Whitney Fordham, quarterback of the football team. They were talking and laughing and Chloe seemed to be in heaven.
"There's something I have to tell you--" he said to Lex, trying to figure out how to clear the air between them. He stopped when he saw some other students heading her way with a bag full of what looked like mud. He could have used his superspeed to intercept before anything happened, but he was frozen with shock. His own high school classmates had been cruel to him at times, always there to remind him that he was a scholarship kid, that he didn't really belong. Memories of being set up on a fake date flashed before his eyes and he missed Lex saying, "There's something I have to tell you, too." When he came back, he could hear the kids whispering about "Muddy Mudrakers" and he moved just in time to push Chloe out of the way so that the mud was dumped all over Whitney instead.
"What's wrong with you?" Some girl he didn't even know asked. "You ruined everything!"
Clark had his story on the coach, screw his cover. He looked at Jason, who shook his head indicating he hadn't known what they were planning, and then Clark turned back to Whitney and punched him (careful to pull his strength) before looking at the crowd. "Let me tell you something! I don't care about your stupid Homecoming traditions. I'm twenty-four years old. I'm an undercover reporter for the Daily Planet and I've been doing everything I can to get into your little group, to be popular, to get a story for the paper about how things are different here in Smallville. But it's not different here. This is just like my school in Gotham. The rich kids, the popular kids, you think you're better than everyone else.
"You will spend your lives putting others down to make yourselves feel better. Why her?" He pointed at Chloe. "This young woman is amazing. She's smart and funny and talented and beautiful. On my first day here, she befriended me. You guys didn't even look at me until my college roommate came in and posed as a friend from my old school and told you that I'm cool."
Clark looked over and saw Jason's eyes widen as he blushed and edged away from the teenage girl at his side. "You think being a star on the football team or having money or being beautiful is what's important. You're sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old. You have a lifetime ahead of you to become something. Stop limiting yourselves." He shook his head and sighed. "Excuse me, I have something important to take care of." He turned around and looked for Lex, not seeing him anywhere, then he ran out of the gym hoping to find the one person who'd had the most impact on him during his time at Smallville High.
He found Lex in the parking lot getting into his Ferrari. Clark ran over to him and muttered, "Surprise?"
"Surprise, you're writing a story on me?" Lex yelled. "You couldn't try for a regular interview first? I'm not my father, I don't work for my father, there's no story here, Clark."
"Lex, I wasn't--" he objected.
"Or maybe, Surprise, it's okay for me to be attracted to you?"
"You were attracted to me?" Clark had hoped, but not actually let himself believe it possible.
"Dammit, Clark! Every time I looked at you across my classroom, I had to think of what I'd do with my life if I wasn't teaching anymore. I had to wonder how in the hell I'd let myself fall for a student, a teenager. I was going to wait for you to turn eighteen--"
"But now we don't have to wait." Clark reached for him, but Lex shrugged away from the touch.
"Now I don't want to wait. Everything I fell for was a lie. For all I know, everything you said was a lie. The penguins. Feynman and Hawking. I bet you don't really like them, you probably haven't even read them. I don't know you at all." He slipped into his car and started the engine.
"But you do know me, I'm the same person--"
"Get out of my way, Clark."
"Lex--"
Lex revved the engine and Clark stepped back. He watched Lex drive away and turned to find Jason behind him. "You okay?"
Clark shook his head. He wasn't okay, he'd never be okay. He'd finally found the one person he wanted to be with forever and he'd ruined it all.
Jason pulled him into a hug and said, "It'll work out. If it was meant to be, it'll all work itself out."
"How?" Clark whispered. "I ruined it all."
"Yeah. You know I was supposed to start in the remaining games this season?" Jason teased. "I could've been noticed by a recruiter, had another chance at college ball--"
"I'm sorry, Jason, I didn't--"
"Hey, easy, Clark. I'm just joking. While you were out here with Lex, the principal offered me a job coaching here. Seems the old coach left in a blaze."
Clark looked up in surprise and smiled at Jason's joke. "Is that what you want?"
"Yeah," Jason nodded, a bit of surprise on his own face. "Yeah, I think it is."
***
The next morning Lois dropped a copy of the Inquisitor on Clark's desk. The headline read REPORTER REVEALED AT SMALL TOWN HIGH SCHOOL. "We got scooped on our own story, Smallville."
Clark sighed and looked away.
"Are you just going to sit around here moping and reading research about penguin mating habits or are you going to go after him?"
"Lois--"
"I'm serious, Smallville. Get off your ass and do something. You want your penguin?" She smiled at him and it was kind, not her usual smirk.
"Yes."
"Then go get him."
Clark nodded and walked into Perry's office. "Excuse me, sir?"
Perry looked up, a deep frown on his face. "Close the door, Kent."
"Sir, I want to apologize for how things went down in Smallville." He looked pointedly at the copy of the Inquisitor sitting on the corner of Perry's desk. "I know I didn't get the story you wanted, but you will get your story. Two stories, actually. The firestarting coach? Chloe Sullivan wrote an amazing article for the Torch. I'm sure she'd love to have it reprinted in the Daily Planet." Perry just grunted at him. "And ... if you save me a few pages in Thursday's Life & Style section, you won't be disappointed. You'll get your article."
Perry looked up at him with eyes that pierced his soul. Clark wondered if he wasn't the only alien in the room right then. "I'll need copy by 4pm on Wednesday."
"Thank you, sir."
***
Someone once told me that to write well, you have to write what you know. Well this is what I know. I'm twenty-four years old and I've never really been kissed. A dork, a geek, a loser, whatever word you choose, that was me. I grew up in Smallville, Kansas, and was home schooled until the age of twelve. After that came six years of boarding school where I never really fit in -- the combination of being gay and being on a scholarship, didn't do much for my popularity.
As a gay student in an all boys school, one might think I'd have had some sort of sexual experience during those years, but the truth is, aside from a couple of awkward dances with girls from our sister school, there was nothing. Certainly not anything with anyone I cared about. And then my senior year it seemed like all of that was going to change. I met someone online who seemed perfect. We made a date to meet in person, but when I showed up at the meeting point he wasn't there. The next morning I walked into my first class and everyone was laughing and asking about my big date the night before. It was a joke, my classmates had set it up, had created the perfect guy, and had outed me. I never really recovered from that.
When I received the assignment to go undercover as a high school student, I was horrified. I'm a science writer, not an investigative reporter. Then I thought maybe it was a chance to change my perceptions. to create new and better memories. But the rich kids and the jocks are still the same. The separation between the popular kids and the geeks is still there. Attending public school in a small town didn't feel any different than my years at private school in Gotham City. Things haven't changed, but I have.
All the things that made me miserable in high school shaped who I am today. And reliving it all made me realize how happy I am with who I am today, how proud I am of who I've become. I love my job writing for the Daily Planet. I have family and friends who care about me. The only thing missing from my life is love.
While undercover, a certain teacher was run over on my long drive to self-discovery. This man made me feel like I belonged, made me smile when he smiled, made me believe in myself. In my deception, I hurt him deeply. I only hope that he can forgive me, that he reads this article and can understand a little bit of who I am. That I'm the same person he got to know while I was at Smallville High. To this man, you know who you are, I am so sorry. But I need to say more than that. I need to say that I think I love you.
If you're reading this, I have a proposal. I, Clark Kent, will be at the Smallville Crow's championship game against Granville this Friday night. I will stand on the 50-yard line five minutes prior to kick-off. If this man accepts my apology, I ask him to meet me there and grant me my first kiss.
As a student, I always felt I was a loser. But I believe that there is one person for all of us who can take that feeling away. That a kiss from the right person, changes everything.
Lex read those words then picked up a paperweight from his desk, wrapped it in the newsprint, and added it to the box holding the other personal items from his desk. A few weeks earlier he'd been offered a position in Metropolis. After everything that had happened at the Homecoming dance, he figured he should take it while he could. He loved teaching in Smallville, so when Excelsior called asking him to replace a teacher who'd been killed in a car accident, he wasn't initially sure what to do. He was committed to his kids at Smallville High, but teaching here wasn't the same. Especially after everything that had happened with Clark.
This was an incredible opportunity for him. Lex knew from his own years at Excelsior how exceptional their lab facilities were. Their science program was better than that at some of the nation's better universities; there was no comparing it to schools like Smallville.
On the other hand, being at Excelsior meant being in Metropolis; that meant being near his father and the career that he'd turned his back on. Despite the enmity Lionel had inspired years earlier in the people of Smallville, Lex had pretty much been received on his own merits and he was happier than he'd expected to be in the small town. Until Clark Kent walked into his classroom, anyway, and challenged his perception of right and wrong. He knew better than to take a personal interest in a student. It had never been an issue. But with Clark, well, nothing with Clark was like anything Lex had ever experienced.
He'd been trying to figure out how he could make it work. Taking the job in Metropolis would end their student-teacher relationship. And once Clark turned eighteen, he needn't worry about the legal issues. He could tell from the way Clark had looked at him, from the way they had talked when given the opportunity, that there was something there. Something real. And then he'd found out that it had all been a lie. He grabbed another piece of newsprint and wrapped his coffee mug.
***
"Clark! Clark! Clark!"
He looked around himself nervously and watched the clock begin to tick down.
4:59. 4:58. 4:57.
Someone handed him a microphone and the crowd quieted.
"Umm ... thank you all for coming out tonight. Thank you for reading my article." The crowd cheered again and Clark blocked out the sound in his head.
3:52. 3:51. 3:50
Clark looked over to see Jason standing with his players on the sidelines, giving him a thumbs up.
2:58. 2:57. 2:56.
He looked up to see his mom and dad in the stands. His dad with that tight, worried smile; his mom looking concerned but hopeful for him.
2:14. 2:13. 2:12.
Perry White was there too, alongside Lois and Jimmy Olsen. Clark laughed and shook his head as Lois sent Jimmy off to get her something. Cotton candy, probably. And a Diet Coke.
1:37. 1:36. 1:35.
He saw Whitney and the other jocks watching the clock and seeming to support him. And the cheerleaders with signs reading "Go Clark!" He thought maybe he'd made some difference in their lives and told himself that that should be enough.
He looked at the clock again. It was down to 1:00, and still no sign of Lex.
He was happy that Chloe was talking to some of the other reporters; Pete standing by her side with his camera, ready to capture a picture for her article in the Torch.
0:45. 0:44. 0:43.
The crowd noise began to die down, everyone's eyes flitting from the clock to Clark and back again.
20 seconds.
Still no Lex.
10 seconds and the crowd began counting down with the clock. Clark's head fell forward and he stared at the ground.
0:07. 0:06. 0:05.
It was over. Lex wasn't coming.
0:04. 0:03. 0:02.
He let the microphone fall to the ground at his feet.
0:01.
Silence.
Then suddenly a murmur started to spread through the crowd. Clark looked up and saw a bald head moving through the throng of people at the base of the stands and then running out onto the field towards him.
"I told you you could write, Clark."
"I had a story worth telling." Lex's hand came up to cup his jaw and he pulled their mouths together in a searing kiss. Clark had a vague sense of everyone cheering and screaming and applauding, but he was so lost in the touch of Lex's lips and tongue, the feel of a strong hand on his lower back, pulling him closer.
"It was you on the bridge." Lex touched his fingers to Clark's lips. "You saved me."
"Yes." Clark answered, even though Lex's words weren't a question.
"Sorry I'm late," Lex whispered against his lips.
"You're worth the wait."
THE END
Title: Never Been Lexed
Author: Moosesal
Fandom and Pairing: Smallville - Clark/Lex
Rating: PG
Word count: 9123
Warning: This is sickly sweet, beware sugar overdose. It's also obviously an AU. If neither of those appeal to you, you might want to move along. :-)
Note: This is based on the movie Never Been Kissed and my first attempt at writing a retelling of an existing story. Many thanks to brandil, caoilainn, and ldthomps for their beta efforts. All remaining errors are mine.
"Clark! Clark! Clark!" Clark looked around him in surprise and pushed his glasses up his nose. He couldn't believe how many students and parents were here cheering him on, not to mention all the reporters waiting for a story.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. I was just here doing my job, but then things happened. Life happened. And now I'm standing here on the 50-yard-line.
He looked up to see 5:00 on the scoreboard clock. When the seconds started to tick away, the crowd went wild again.
I'm not the kind of guy who does this sort of thing. Just a few months ago, I was the kind of guy no one ever noticed. I liked it that way. For years it's been necessary to who I am.
***
Two months earlier
Somehow in the last few months, Clark's editor had thought it would be interesting to pair him up with another reporter. He dropped down behind his desk and looked over at his partner, Lois Lane. Lois was an investigative journalist with a background in ... well, stories that even the Inquisitor was hesitant to print due to a questionable lack of evidence. Before meeting her, Clark had thought the Inquisitor would print anything, but she had an entire portfolio of articles they'd turned down.
Clark, on the other hand, was a science writer with degrees in journalism and biochemistry from Metropolis University. He liked the science beat. He didn't do investigative stuff. Why Perry White thought he and Lois would make a good team was beyond him. Woodward and Bernstein they most definitely were not.
"What?" he asked as he realized Lois was attempting to stare a hole through his head.
"We were supposed to cover the Metropolis Opera Company's opening last night."
"I don't write for the society page, Lois."
"There were important people there, Smallville."
Clark cringed at her nickname for him. He didn't need the reminder of his small town roots and how different he was from Lois in her designer clothes and fancy shoes. "I'm sure you had it covered and Jimmy was there for photos, right?"
She rolled her eyes at him and he knew it was going to be a banner day. Eyerolling at -- he glanced at the clock on his phone -- 8:02 am. Yep, banner day. "Of course we had it covered. That's not the point."
He picked up his phone and gave her his best apologetic face. "I've got messages," he said as he dialed into the voicemail system while booting up his computer. Ignore her and she'll go away didn't really work with Lois, but every once in a while she took the hint. He nearly sighed in relief as he realized this was one of those rare moments.
Just as he was hanging up from checking his messages, Perry came by and looked at Lois. "You know my policy on office dating." She stared at him blankly while he stared back pointedly before quickly glancing over at Clark.
Lois nearly choked as she said, "Clark? You think I'm dating Clark?"
"No. You and Jimmy Olsen at the opening last night." Lois went pale and Clark held back a laugh.
"Who--"
"Jimmy," Perry stated.
"I'm gonna kill that..." her words trailed off behind her as she hit the stairs in search of a soon-to-be dead man.
Clark looked up at Perry and asked about his proposal to send a reporter to an upcoming medical conference. "Oh yeah," Perry said. "Great idea. I'm sending Parker."
"Parker? Peter Parker?" Clark asked, trying not to show his disappointment or annoyance. Parker was a great photojournalist, but this conference didn't really lend itself to interesting photo ops. "Oh. Well, I'm sure he'll get some great pictures."
"Yeah, that kid's killer with a camera. Did you see the shots he got of Spiderman?" Perry started to walk away and then turned back, "I'll need copy on last night's opening by five."
"Of course." Clark sighed and opened his e-mail. He was sure Lois had already written up the event, she'd just need Clark to polish the actual writing.
He was still replying to the first message when she returned. Clark noticed her lipstick was smudged and she had a soft look in her eyes. He tried not to laugh as he asked, "Did you kill him?"
She attempted her famous Lois glare, but the blissed out look on her face pretty much canceled it out. "No. I told him he was taking me to dinner tonight."
"Ah," Clark nodded. Lois had a way of making revenge expensive for her targets.
"So when's the last time you had a date, Smallville?"
Clark tried his own glare; she already knew the answer to that question.
"You know," she waved her hands around as though searching for the right words. "Dinner, movie, leather bar, whatever it is hot guys do together these days."
Clark spit coffee all over his computer screen and wished he'd aimed for Lois instead. "I don't go to leather bars, Lois. And I'm busy. Work keeps me busy."
"You need to get laid."
***
Clark hated meetings. Lately meetings meant somebody getting fired. He wasn't worried about himself or Lois, but Perry had that look on his face. He looked at Dalton and said, "I was really impressed with that story you did on corruption in the mayor's office." Dalton smiled and then Perry continued, "But since the Inquisitor printed the same story the day before us, you're fired."
Dalton paled and Perry pointed at the door. "Go. Now. Out!" Dalton gathered his notepad and pen and practically ran out the door.
Perry looked down the conference room table at everyone else and smiled. "Happy September, everyone."
"Happy September, Mr. White," they answered in unison.
"To celebrate this month, I've decided we need to do an undercover feature."
Clark suppressed a groan, while Lois perked up and looked ready to raise her hand like an excited kid in school. And then she did raise her hand and before Perry could even address her she took a deep breath and launched into her proposal. "I was thinking about going undercover as a prostitute down in Suicide Slums. I could get some inside information on the drug trade, prostitution, and Lionel Luthor's connections with the mafia down there."
"Funny you should say that, Ms. Lane, because I was thinking how great it would be to do a piece on 'My Semester in High School' and I was thinking we could do it in Smallville. I've been hearing about strange things going on with adolescents in that town."
Clark, and he assumed everyone else, wasn't really sure how high school and Lois's proposal about Suicide Slums were connected, but he certainly wasn't going to question the man who'd just fired one of their best reporters. Then Clark wished he had questioned it because suddenly Perry was pointing at him and saying, "Kent. You report to Smallville High on Monday morning."
"But, I'm from Smallville, sir."
"Then you should fit right in."
"No, I mean ... what about my cover? It's a small town."
"Did you go to Smallville High?"
"Well, no. I went to school in Gotham--"
"Well then, this is your chance to see what you missed."
When they got back to their desks Lois glared at him. "You should turn this down."
"What? How? He'll fire me."
"You could quit," she offered. "You're not made for undercover, Clark."
She was right, but the way she said it made Clark want to prove her wrong. "Just watch me."
Twenty minutes later as he ran home to his parents' farm, he thought again that Lois was right. He slowed down and stopped on the bridge outside of town like always. It was tradition to stop and look down at the water; it was how he transitioned from city life back to the farm. But this time was different.
As he stood on the bridge, a silver Porsche came flying towards him, hitting him and punching through the railing, and sending them both down into the river. Clark shook off the surprise and ripped the roof off the car. He pulled the driver out and carried him to shore where he performed CPR. The man was beautiful -- creamy white skin, delicate yet strong features, impeccably dressed -- and it was no hardship to press his lips to the stranger's and share his breath. Once the man was breathing and had coughed up a bunch of water, Clark rolled him onto his side, ran to a pay phone, and called 911. He then ran back and hid in the bushes watching over the stranger until the ambulance arrived. When it was clear that the man would be okay, Clark super-speeded himself to the farm, expecting never to see the man again.
***
Clark suspected that Perry White had chosen him for this job because he thought Clark's 'boyish looks and charm' would not only help him pass as a teenager, but get him in immediately with the popular kids. Perry clearly knew nothing about teenagers.
As Clark stood in the entryway of the school he'd managed to avoid attending several years earlier, he thought they should have sent Lois instead. The only upside to being here was getting to see his parents regularly; he liked his life in Metropolis. He hoped he'd find a good story right away and be back to the city and the Daily Planet in a week or two.
He stepped through the front doors of the school and looked around at the other students as he shrugged his backpack up on his shoulder. Fashion had been perhaps the only thing he hadn't worried about in high school -- sometimes uniforms were a good thing. He looked down at his plaid shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers. Then he looked at the kids around him and back down at his own clothes and sighed. He was a farmer's kid, the clothes fit the part. He'd never been popular and didn't expect that to change now. Perry really should have sent Lois.
As he made his way to the office, Clark noticed banners everywhere reading "GO CROWS" and "63 days until Homecoming". Sports, especially football, had been the one thing that might have made Clark popular in high school, but because of his special abilities his father hadn't allowed him to participate. Now that he not only had powers, but was six years older than the seniors, sports weren't going to be part of his high school experience this time around either.
He put thoughts of being a football star out of his head and entered the main office to register and get his class schedule.
***
Lex looked up in surprise as a new student walked into his classroom, schedule in hand. "Is this Organic Chemistry?" the boy asked as they locked gazes.
"It is. I'm Lex Luthor, although the school has a policy about students calling me Lex." He reached out and the boy handed over his schedule and Lex looked at it, finally breaking their stare. "Clark Kent. Welcome to Smallville High and O Chem, Clark. You can join Miss Sullivan there in the back--" he gestured in her direction as he returned Clark's schedule to him "--as she's in need of a new lab partner. She blew the last one up during an unauthorized experiment." He smirked at the nervous look on Clark's face. "Just kidding. He had some freak accident in Crater Lake. I've been assured that Chloe had nothing to do with it, despite the ... thoroughness of her article in the Torch."
There was something familiar about Clark, but Lex couldn't quite place it. He felt like they'd met before, but he had a perfect memory for names and faces and Clark Kent was not registering with him.
Lex smiled warmly at him and the boy blushed and pushed his glasses up on his face before moving to join Chloe in the back of the room. Lex realized after a moment that he was staring at the boy as he settled in, and shook his head to clear it. "Okay, class. Where did we leave off last week?" He turned back to the board and started jotting down chemical equations. Clark's face was in the back of his thoughts the rest of the day.
***
At lunch Clark wandered around the cafeteria trying to figure out where to sit. For a moment he flashed back on his days in Gotham -- despite his superpowers, he'd gone through a period where he was incredibly clumsy. On his first day there, he'd tripped and landed on his tray in front of everyone. As he stood up -- covered in spaghetti, pudding, and milk -- the other students had applauded. Luckily for him, things were different now; Clark was different now. He came back to the present to see his new lab partner waving him over to her table. "Hey, Clark. This is Pete. Pete, Clark."
Clark exchanged "Heys" with Pete then sat down to unpack the lunch his mother had handed him that morning. She'd been a little excited by opportunity -- between homeschooling and then Clark attending boarding school from seventh grade on, she'd never had reason to pack him a lunch. He was slightly mortified to compare Chloe's leftover pizza and a Diet Coke and Pete's school lunch with his own spread of two turkey sandwiches on thick slices of homemade bread, a baggie of carrot sticks, an apple, four homemade oatmeal raisin cookies, and a bottle of juice (not to mention the two cartons of milk he'd bought). He was just grateful his mom hadn't packed him a thermos of soup.
"Wow, Clark. That's quite a lunch." Pete seemed a little awed by the amount of food.
"Yeah, my mom ... she thinks they starved me at boarding school."
Pete and Chloe just nodded like they could relate and talked about some test they'd had that morning in Calculus.
***
Clark sighed in relief as he walked out of school at the end of his first day. He'd survived; no one had questioned whether or not he actually belonged there. Everything was going according to plan. Until he noticed that his truck was missing. He was standing in the spot where he was certain he'd parked it, but it wasn't there. Who would want his beat-up truck?
"Missing something?" He turned around to see Chloe looking up with a grin on her face. "Your car?"
"Truck, actually. How'd you know?"
She rolled her eyes. "Stupid jocks do it to all the new kids. You're lucky you're so tall, otherwise they'd probably string you up as this year's human scarecrow." He raised an eyebrow in question and she shook her head. "Trust me, you're better off not knowing. Come on, I think I can guess where your truck is."
He followed her around the building and sure enough, there it was in the end zone of the football field. The coach not caring about the truck sitting in the middle of his practice session, didn't seem worth asking about.
"Pop the hood," Chloe said.
"What?"
"Trust me." He popped the hood and when he came back around she was putting something back in place. "Should be fine now. They like to disconnect the battery."
"Thanks." Clark smiled and relaxed for the first time all day. "You want to ... get a coffee or something?"
Chloe's face lit up at the invitation and she suggested the Talon.
Over coffee and gooey brownies, Clark learned that Chloe was editor of the school paper -- the Torch -- and that she wanted to be a reporter. She was applying to MetU's journalism program and was hoping to intern at the Daily Planet over the summer. Her enthusiasm combined with Clark's own experience at MetU (which he carefully talked around) culminated in him agreeing to write for the Torch. By the time they parted ways he was already committed to an article on the football team and hazing.
***
"I think I've got a story, Perry."
"Yeah, kid?"
"Yeah. The football team here is hazing the rookies."
"I sent you there to investigate something unusual, Kent. Hazing is not unusual."
"But--"
"No." Perry hung up on him.
During his first week at Smallville High, Clark was introduced to Chloe's 'Wall of Weird' and personally witnessed several things that would have met Perry's criteria for unusual. The problem was, he couldn't really gather evidence and witnesses to support the stories without blowing his own cover -- that he was not only one of Smallville's oddities, but the reason for the existence of all the others. He was more prepared to break his cover as a student than to let anyone know he was an alien with superpowers. So he tried selling Perry stories about the real ingredients in cafeteria coleslaw and the travesty of teachers' salaries. Perry wasn't biting.
***
Lex sat at his desk rereading Cosmos for what felt like the billionth time. There was some material he wanted to share with his physics students so he was brushing up. He was surprised when Clark knocked on the door frame and stepped into the room.
"Deja vu," he said.
"Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Luthor. I left my bag in my rush to get to lunch."
"No problem." Lex watched him move to his lab station in the back and pick up his backpack from the floor.
"You like Carl Sagan?" Clark asked, nodding to the book in Lex's hand.
"He's got some interesting theories. Just brushing up for some discussion with my physics students this afternoon. You've read Sagan?"
"Yeah, he's not bad. I find Feynman's writing to be more fun though."
"Richard Feynman?"
Clark nodded. "Yeah. And Hawking. The both have a way of making the most complex stuff accessible to everyone."
Lex was surprised. He'd gone to grad school with people who found Physics for Dummies to be difficult, anything beyond that was near impossible for them to understand. Feynman and Hawking were popular, certainly. Their accessibility, however, was debatable for college graduates, much less high schoolers. That Clark was interested enough in science to read outside the curricula was a delight. "Are you sure you're seventeen?" Lex teased.
Clark ducked his head and then the bell rang and he was rushing off to his next class, leaving Lex staring at an empty doorway.
***
Clark entered the Torch office a few days later and looked at Chloe and Pete. "What's with this school and Homecoming? The countdown banners, the parade planning, the fund-raising carnival this weekend?"
"Smallville has a long rivalry with Granville," Chloe responded. "But I just moved here a couple years ago, so I don't really get it either. Pete?"
"It's football, Clark. It's, like, the greatest game ever and Smallville's been kicking Granville's ass for years. It's tradition." Pete shrugged. "Besides, what else is there to do in a little town surrounded by corn fields? We get a carnival and then a few weeks later there's football and a dance. Both nights usually end with kids getting drunk and having sex in their backseats."
"Are you guys going?"
Chloe and Pete looked at each other and laughed. "Well," Chloe said, "yeah, to the game. But only in case something happens worth reporting in the paper."
"You're not going to the dance?" Clark asked.
Chloe looked away and Clark sensed that she wasn't being completely honest when she said, "Why would I want to go to a silly Homecoming dance?"
***
"So," Lex smiled as he scanned the classroom, "a little crossover today with biology. Let's discuss pheromones." He suppressed a sigh as the class know-it-all, Wilbur, raised his hand. "Yes, Wil?"
"Pheromones aren't real, Mr. Luthor. They're a myth." He added a curt nod to the end of his statement as though that would prove his point.
"Are you sure? What about in animals? Plants?"
"Well, I thought you meant humans," Wilbur stammered, trying to save face. Lex faked a smile and nodded at another student who'd raised her hand.
As other students piped up, a lively debate began. Lex noticed that Clark looked like he had something to contribute but was not butting in or raising his hand. In fact, despite his size, he looked rather small tucked behind his lab table, eyes hidden behind bulky black frames. "How about you, Mr. Kent? What do you think?"
Clark seemed to perk up at being addressed directly and despite the charming blush to his cheeks, he smiled as he launched into an explanation about the mating habits of the Tanzanian cockroach and how females catching the scent of less aggressive males will have fewer sons in her next clutch of young. Lex was impressed; he'd read an article on the exact subject just a few months earlier. He found himself focusing on Clark as his students continued to discuss the matter.
Lex had never found himself attracted to a student before, not even when he was in grad school and teaching undergrads just a few years his younger. He chuckled to himself and blamed a love of comic books for even considering that Clark must be an alien to attract his attention like he did. Yet he couldn't help but wonder what pheromones the boy was emitting.
The bell rang, taking him by surprise. He shook it off, dismissing the class with a cheerful, "Have a good weekend. But not too good, you still have an exam on Tuesday. And if I run into you at the carnival, I'll try not to embarrass you."
***
"Lonely rider," the operator called. "We've got a lonely rider, here. Single!"
Lex noticed Clark alone in the Ferris wheel car and overheard some students commenting about the "loser" holding up the ride. He stepped forward and handed a ticket to the attendant. "This seat taken?"
"Umm, no." Clark blushed and slid to one side, making room. Lex felt a familiar tightening in his groin as he squeezed in beside Clark then nodded to the attendant who quirked his brow while fastening them in.
"Thanks for letting me join you. My girlfriend, Helen, hates rides, but I love them. Although I must admit I'm a little afraid of heights." The car began its slow ascent into the sky.
"You're afraid of heights and you're on the Ferris wheel?"
"Well, it's more that I'm afraid of possibly falling to the earth."
"That accident when you were kid." Clark said. "The meteorites, right?"
"You remember that story from class?" He sometimes worried that he told too many stories to his students, that he bored them.
"I remember everything from your class, Mr. Luthor." Clark locked eyes with him for a moment, before looking up at the stars.
"I love the Ferris wheel," Lex said, joining Clark in gazing up at the stars. "It's like flying. Do you believe a man can fly, Clark?"
Clark turned to him and blinked before saying, "Sure, Mr. Luthor. In a plane."
Lex chuckled. "Call me Lex. We're ... not in class."
"Lex." The sound of his name on Clark's tongue was intoxicating; Lex needed a distraction. He pointed out a couple constellations and was delighted when Clark relaxed and began talking about astronomy with great passion.
A boy above them started rocking his car and looked down at them, yelling, "If the bucket's a rockin', don't come a knockin'." Lex noticed Clark blushing and said, "Teenage boys."
"Yeah," Clark agreed, fidgeting in his seat.
"I'd like to think we grow out of that phase, but ... some people never change."
"You're not like that." There was such certainty in Clark's voice; it touched Lex's heart, among other parts of him.
"Your parents would be horrified if you spent time with the teenage version of me." Lex thought back to his years of partying and doing drugs and being an obnoxious rich kid who got away with murder. "You're a good kid, Clark. You'll do great things." With me, he silently added.
***
"Okay, class. I'm not sure how much you still have to learn on the subject, but Ms. Tillerman from the county public health office is here to give you a little sex ed refresher course." Lex smiled at them and while Chloe whispered, "Yes! No O-Chem today!" Clark found himself slightly mortified to be sitting through a sex education lecture at his age.
He saw a head peak into the room and Lex ran over to the woman. "Hello. You must be Ms. Tillerman." he said.
Clark thought he was going to die when Lois stepped into the room and grinned at him over Lex's shoulder. "Umm ... yes," she said as she returned her attention to Lex. "Yes, I am."
Lex turned back to the classroom. "I'll just leave Ms. Tillerman to do her thing and trust that you'll all be on your best behavior for her." And then he strolled out of the room with that easy gait of his. Clark had trouble averting his gaze until he heard the words "how to put on a condom" issue from Lois's mouth. He didn't need a mirror to know his cheeks were beet red.
***
Lex couldn't help but eavesdrop on Ms. Tillerman's presentation. He peered through the door and watched Clark fumble with his condom and banana while Chloe seemed to roll hers on with ease. He grinned at that and reassessed the intrepid young reporter.
When Ms. Tillerman walked over to assist Clark, Lex slipped into the classroom and leaned against the side wall, listening in on their conversation.
"Is this necessary?" Clark asked with a hint of distress. "I mean, if you wait for love and choose that one person for life?"
"One person for life?" Ms. Tillerman laughed. "Does anyone do that anymore?"
"Penguins do. They wait for that one perfect penguin," Clark's cheeks flushed slightly, but he held Ms. Tillerman's gaze, "and they stay together until death. It's ... romantic." At that last comment, Clark looked away, clearly embarrassed, and his eyes found Lex's.
"And you're waiting for your penguin?" Ms. Tillerman asked, her tone was sarcastic and unbelieving, but her body language belied her words.
"Yes." Clark looked so certain, his gaze never leaving Lex's face, and Lex knew the boy meant it. He thought of all the women and men he'd been with in his life and wished he'd waited for his own penguin. Maybe he'd been waiting all these years for Clark.
***
Lex stopped by the Talon on his way home one evening. Lana had called and said she needed him to sign off on some invoices. While he was mostly hands off with the business, he liked to keep an eye on the books and his investment. He was surprised to walk in and see Clark hanging out with Chloe and a few other kids. It was nice to see him making friends and settling in. Lex told himself there was nothing wrong with being interested in his students' happiness. It was what made him a good teacher - he connected with his kids.
He sat down at the counter and took care of the paperwork Lana passed to him. When he was finished he bid her a good evening and rose from his stool only to turn right into Clark, who spilled a full cup of coffee down his shirt.
"Shit. I mean ... I'm sorry, Mr. Luthor. I didn't--"
"It's okay, Clark. It was an accident." When he looked up into Clark's shining eyes, Lex found that he didn't really mind that his shirt was ruined. It wasn't like he couldn't afford a new one. "No worries."
"I could --"
"Really, Clark." He smiled at the boy's awkwardness. "It's not a problem."
"Are you sure?"
"It's nothing." Lex smiled and nodded, deciding a change of subject was in order. "I was reading your lab report earlier, Clark. You've been hiding something from me."
It was like flipping a switch. The happy Clark from minutes earlier was gone; he visibly paled and stammered out, "Wh-wh-what?"
"You're an amazing writer," Lex commented.
"I'm not--" Clark objected.
"Have you thought about where you're going to college, Clark?"
"I-I'm not going to college. My dad needs me on the farm." He looked away.
"Metropolis University's not that far away and they have excellent science and writing programs. I have some connections there, I could talk to --"
"I can't." Clark's tone was final and Lex knew when to quit.
***
"News room. Lois Lane speaking." Clark smiled at the sound of her voice.
"Hey, Lois."
"Smallville." He rolled his eyes at the nickname and then nearly choked on his own spit when she said, "Don't roll your eyes at me, Clark. You got a story or what?"
"Well ... no. I was calling to talk about my cover."
"Is there a problem? It seemed fine the other day when I stopped by." She somehow managed to laugh at him and simultaneously sound bored; he thought maybe he should've called Perry instead.
"Not exactly. It's just, my teacher, Mr. Luthor--"
"You mean, Lex? Your hot ass science teacher and heir to millions?"
"Huh?"
"Lex Luthor. Lionel Luthor's son who rejected the family business to teach science to idiot kids." The "duh" was unspoken, but unmistakable in her tone.
Clark hadn't thought about the name before then. Suddenly the fancy Porsche he'd crashed into the river and all the expensive cars he drove to school despite losing the Porsche made sense. So did his partnership in the Talon and living in the fancy 'castle' outside of town. Clark was suddenly incredibly embarrassed about his investigative reporting skills -- they were even more absent than he'd thought.
"You've got your story, Smallville."
"He's just my chemistry teacher, Lois."
"Heh. Chemistry. I bet."
Clark didn't want to think about what she was implying. "Can we get back to why I called?"
Now he could picture Lois rolling her eyes. "Shoot."
"He keeps talking to me about college and stuff. Telling me I've got potential and how he can get me a scholarship to MetU and ..."
"So he's taken an interest in you, that just makes it easier. I told you -- Chemistry."
"Look Lois, I think I'm doing too well in his class and--"
"I can just see it now." She cut him off. "Dateline: Smallville, Kansas. Luthor Heir Sexes Up Reporter Posing as Student."
Clark dropped the phone, but could hear Lois laughing even while the receiver lay on the floor. Lex? Sexing him up? He picked up the phone and said, "You're crazy, Lois" before hanging up. Just because Lex -- Mr. Luthor -- was interested in his education didn't mean ...
Clark thought about the way Lex smiled at him and seemed interested in what he had to say in class. He thought about how laid back he'd been even after Clark spilled coffee all over him. How nice he looked with his wet shirt clinging to his body. Clark groaned, if anyone was interested in the "sexing up" of the other, it was Clark interested in Lex. He needed a story now so he could get back to Metropolis and get out of this mess before he got his heart broken.
***
After a continued lack of success in getting a story Perry was happy with -- and being scooped by the Inquisitor about strange things going on at The Beanery with kids drinking coffee laced with some green liquid -- it was suggested to Clark that he get in tight with the popular kids. The jocks and the rich kids. Clark looked down at his plaid shirt then stared out of the barn's loft at the farm his family had run for generations. He couldn't exactly try out for a team with his special abilities and he definitely wasn't going to pass for rich. But he knew someone who could do both -- he called his friend Jason Teague for some advice.
He was surprised the next day to run into Jason in the hall at school. Jason smiled and winked at him before slipping into a classroom. At lunch Clark watched him win a coleslaw eating contest, surrounded by kids chanting "Teague! Teague! Teague!" to cheer him on. And then on Friday, Clark found him in the hall sporting a football jersey and making out with a cheerleader he recognized as Lana Lang from the Talon. After an incredibly long (and inappropriate in Clark's opinion) kiss, Jason managed to pull his mouth away from hers to look up at Clark.
"Hey, Kent!" Jason called out. "I was just telling the guys here--" and he already had four football players and a few cheerleaders gathered around him as he moved towards Clark "--about how great an arm you've got. How if you hadn't torn your rotator cuff on the slopes in Aspen this spring, you would've replaced Whitney as QB."
Clark's eyes widened, but then he nodded and played along. "Yeah. It's healing up, but I'm still doing some physical therapy." He was a horrible liar, but they all seemed to buy the story.
Jason grinned at him and said, "We're hitting the Talon after school. You should come. Meet the girls. Meet the guys." He waggled his eyebrows and winked -- Jason knew he was gay, but he also knew the importance of a cover. Several of the guys and all of the girls surrounding him were enthusiastic in their agreement, saying "Totally" and "Yeah, Clark, come join us" and he nodded and said "Okay" in return.
***
Hanging out with Jason and his jock friends finally resulted in a story. The coach seemed to have some weird fire starting ability. However, when Clark tried to enlist Chloe's help she gave him the cold shoulder. She'd seemed pretty annoyed with him in lab lately, but he was a guy -- a twenty-four-year-old gay guy -- and teenage girls had never made sense to him. When he finally asked her what was wrong, told her that he thought they were friends, she rolled her eyes at him. It was like working with Lois. Hell, the way they both interacted with Clark, the two of them could be related.
"What?!" he asked. He really didn't have a clue.
"Why don't you go hang out with Jason and Whitney and all the other jocks. Go shake some girl's pompoms at the pep rally." She grabbed her lunch and walked out of the cafeteria, but Clark followed her to the Talon office.
"I'm sorry," he said and he meant it. Chloe had been a good friend to him. "I didn't mean to blow you off."
"You were supposed to write a story last week and I had to come up with something at the last minute because you were too 'busy'." She made little finger quotes and rolled her eyes again.
"I was studying for our chemistry exam," he insisted, fighting the whine that crept into his voice.
"Clark, you know all the answers in class before Mr. Luthor even introduces a new topic. You didn't need to study that much."
He could feel himself blush, because she was right. Of course he knew the answers, he'd already done all of this before. But he couldn't exactly tell her that or that he was in Metropolis meeting with his editor when he missed his deadline with her. "I'm sorry," he said again. "Look, I've got a story. It's a good one. Wall of Weird stuff."
She looked at him skeptically, but he could tell he had her interest. He apologized a couple more times as he detailed what he knew about the coach and they agreed to write the story together. He figured he'd talk to Perry later about getting Chloe's name on the byline in the Planet when they published the real article there. If things went well, maybe he could help her get that summer internship she wanted.
***
Coach Walt turned into a human fireball two days before Homecoming and the student body was conflicted in their opinions of Clark and Chloe for publishing the article that sent him over the edge. They received alternate thumbs up and curses of "Mudrakers" as they walked down the hall. The Mudrakers comment especially irked Chloe who called them "idiots" and went on an on about them not even knowing the right word or the real meaning of it.
It was only at Jason's insistence (and the discovery that Lex would be one of the faculty chaperons) that Clark reluctantly agreed to attend the Homecoming dance. He asked Chloe to be his date, strictly as friends. He was oblivious to the way her face lit up when he asked and the soft sigh in her voice when she said yes. He was equally oblivious to the look in her eyes when they danced or how that looked changed when he left her to find Lex.
***
Lex spied Clark at the refreshments table getting a cup of punch and made his way through the crowd. "You look very handsome tonight, Clark."
By this time, Lex had come to expect Clark's blushing and fidgeting with his glasses. The stammered, "Thank you, so do you," was so soft Lex could barely hear it over the sound of the band.
"I've been wearing fancy suits and tuxedos since I was a child -- the downside of being a Luthor -- but it still feels a little weird to dress up quite so much for an evening spent in a high school gymnasium."
Clark's broad smile extended to his eyes and brought an equally genuine smile to Lex's own lips. "Yeah, I can't believe I'm even here. It's not really my thing." And he was fidgeting again, but still smiling.
"Nor mine," Lex said, tilting his head and really looking at Clark. "I'd ask you to dance, but I think that might be a bit much for Smallville High." Clark choked at the suggestion and took a sip of his punch to try to settle his nerves. "Maybe a walk outside? A chat?"
"Won't Helen be worried?"
"Helen and I have," he paused and found himself breaking Clark's gaze for a moment. "We've split up. Turns out we don't want the same things."
"Her loss," Clark said and Lex sensed he'd said it without thinking. "I mean --"
"You're amazing, Clark Kent." Lex reined in his desire to touch Clark and turned his attention to another matter before his other brain took charge of things and cost him his job. "Have you given any more thought to college? I spoke to a friend at MetU ..."
They were still standing at the table, not having moved toward the door and their walk, when everything changed.
***
Clark smiled to himself when he looked over Lex's shoulder as Lex asked him again if he'd thought about attending MetU. He saw Chloe dancing with Whitney Fordham, quarterback of the football team. They were talking and laughing and Chloe seemed to be in heaven.
"There's something I have to tell you--" he said to Lex, trying to figure out how to clear the air between them. He stopped when he saw some other students heading her way with a bag full of what looked like mud. He could have used his superspeed to intercept before anything happened, but he was frozen with shock. His own high school classmates had been cruel to him at times, always there to remind him that he was a scholarship kid, that he didn't really belong. Memories of being set up on a fake date flashed before his eyes and he missed Lex saying, "There's something I have to tell you, too." When he came back, he could hear the kids whispering about "Muddy Mudrakers" and he moved just in time to push Chloe out of the way so that the mud was dumped all over Whitney instead.
"What's wrong with you?" Some girl he didn't even know asked. "You ruined everything!"
Clark had his story on the coach, screw his cover. He looked at Jason, who shook his head indicating he hadn't known what they were planning, and then Clark turned back to Whitney and punched him (careful to pull his strength) before looking at the crowd. "Let me tell you something! I don't care about your stupid Homecoming traditions. I'm twenty-four years old. I'm an undercover reporter for the Daily Planet and I've been doing everything I can to get into your little group, to be popular, to get a story for the paper about how things are different here in Smallville. But it's not different here. This is just like my school in Gotham. The rich kids, the popular kids, you think you're better than everyone else.
"You will spend your lives putting others down to make yourselves feel better. Why her?" He pointed at Chloe. "This young woman is amazing. She's smart and funny and talented and beautiful. On my first day here, she befriended me. You guys didn't even look at me until my college roommate came in and posed as a friend from my old school and told you that I'm cool."
Clark looked over and saw Jason's eyes widen as he blushed and edged away from the teenage girl at his side. "You think being a star on the football team or having money or being beautiful is what's important. You're sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old. You have a lifetime ahead of you to become something. Stop limiting yourselves." He shook his head and sighed. "Excuse me, I have something important to take care of." He turned around and looked for Lex, not seeing him anywhere, then he ran out of the gym hoping to find the one person who'd had the most impact on him during his time at Smallville High.
He found Lex in the parking lot getting into his Ferrari. Clark ran over to him and muttered, "Surprise?"
"Surprise, you're writing a story on me?" Lex yelled. "You couldn't try for a regular interview first? I'm not my father, I don't work for my father, there's no story here, Clark."
"Lex, I wasn't--" he objected.
"Or maybe, Surprise, it's okay for me to be attracted to you?"
"You were attracted to me?" Clark had hoped, but not actually let himself believe it possible.
"Dammit, Clark! Every time I looked at you across my classroom, I had to think of what I'd do with my life if I wasn't teaching anymore. I had to wonder how in the hell I'd let myself fall for a student, a teenager. I was going to wait for you to turn eighteen--"
"But now we don't have to wait." Clark reached for him, but Lex shrugged away from the touch.
"Now I don't want to wait. Everything I fell for was a lie. For all I know, everything you said was a lie. The penguins. Feynman and Hawking. I bet you don't really like them, you probably haven't even read them. I don't know you at all." He slipped into his car and started the engine.
"But you do know me, I'm the same person--"
"Get out of my way, Clark."
"Lex--"
Lex revved the engine and Clark stepped back. He watched Lex drive away and turned to find Jason behind him. "You okay?"
Clark shook his head. He wasn't okay, he'd never be okay. He'd finally found the one person he wanted to be with forever and he'd ruined it all.
Jason pulled him into a hug and said, "It'll work out. If it was meant to be, it'll all work itself out."
"How?" Clark whispered. "I ruined it all."
"Yeah. You know I was supposed to start in the remaining games this season?" Jason teased. "I could've been noticed by a recruiter, had another chance at college ball--"
"I'm sorry, Jason, I didn't--"
"Hey, easy, Clark. I'm just joking. While you were out here with Lex, the principal offered me a job coaching here. Seems the old coach left in a blaze."
Clark looked up in surprise and smiled at Jason's joke. "Is that what you want?"
"Yeah," Jason nodded, a bit of surprise on his own face. "Yeah, I think it is."
***
The next morning Lois dropped a copy of the Inquisitor on Clark's desk. The headline read REPORTER REVEALED AT SMALL TOWN HIGH SCHOOL. "We got scooped on our own story, Smallville."
Clark sighed and looked away.
"Are you just going to sit around here moping and reading research about penguin mating habits or are you going to go after him?"
"Lois--"
"I'm serious, Smallville. Get off your ass and do something. You want your penguin?" She smiled at him and it was kind, not her usual smirk.
"Yes."
"Then go get him."
Clark nodded and walked into Perry's office. "Excuse me, sir?"
Perry looked up, a deep frown on his face. "Close the door, Kent."
"Sir, I want to apologize for how things went down in Smallville." He looked pointedly at the copy of the Inquisitor sitting on the corner of Perry's desk. "I know I didn't get the story you wanted, but you will get your story. Two stories, actually. The firestarting coach? Chloe Sullivan wrote an amazing article for the Torch. I'm sure she'd love to have it reprinted in the Daily Planet." Perry just grunted at him. "And ... if you save me a few pages in Thursday's Life & Style section, you won't be disappointed. You'll get your article."
Perry looked up at him with eyes that pierced his soul. Clark wondered if he wasn't the only alien in the room right then. "I'll need copy by 4pm on Wednesday."
"Thank you, sir."
***
Someone once told me that to write well, you have to write what you know. Well this is what I know. I'm twenty-four years old and I've never really been kissed. A dork, a geek, a loser, whatever word you choose, that was me. I grew up in Smallville, Kansas, and was home schooled until the age of twelve. After that came six years of boarding school where I never really fit in -- the combination of being gay and being on a scholarship, didn't do much for my popularity.
As a gay student in an all boys school, one might think I'd have had some sort of sexual experience during those years, but the truth is, aside from a couple of awkward dances with girls from our sister school, there was nothing. Certainly not anything with anyone I cared about. And then my senior year it seemed like all of that was going to change. I met someone online who seemed perfect. We made a date to meet in person, but when I showed up at the meeting point he wasn't there. The next morning I walked into my first class and everyone was laughing and asking about my big date the night before. It was a joke, my classmates had set it up, had created the perfect guy, and had outed me. I never really recovered from that.
When I received the assignment to go undercover as a high school student, I was horrified. I'm a science writer, not an investigative reporter. Then I thought maybe it was a chance to change my perceptions. to create new and better memories. But the rich kids and the jocks are still the same. The separation between the popular kids and the geeks is still there. Attending public school in a small town didn't feel any different than my years at private school in Gotham City. Things haven't changed, but I have.
All the things that made me miserable in high school shaped who I am today. And reliving it all made me realize how happy I am with who I am today, how proud I am of who I've become. I love my job writing for the Daily Planet. I have family and friends who care about me. The only thing missing from my life is love.
While undercover, a certain teacher was run over on my long drive to self-discovery. This man made me feel like I belonged, made me smile when he smiled, made me believe in myself. In my deception, I hurt him deeply. I only hope that he can forgive me, that he reads this article and can understand a little bit of who I am. That I'm the same person he got to know while I was at Smallville High. To this man, you know who you are, I am so sorry. But I need to say more than that. I need to say that I think I love you.
If you're reading this, I have a proposal. I, Clark Kent, will be at the Smallville Crow's championship game against Granville this Friday night. I will stand on the 50-yard line five minutes prior to kick-off. If this man accepts my apology, I ask him to meet me there and grant me my first kiss.
As a student, I always felt I was a loser. But I believe that there is one person for all of us who can take that feeling away. That a kiss from the right person, changes everything.
Lex read those words then picked up a paperweight from his desk, wrapped it in the newsprint, and added it to the box holding the other personal items from his desk. A few weeks earlier he'd been offered a position in Metropolis. After everything that had happened at the Homecoming dance, he figured he should take it while he could. He loved teaching in Smallville, so when Excelsior called asking him to replace a teacher who'd been killed in a car accident, he wasn't initially sure what to do. He was committed to his kids at Smallville High, but teaching here wasn't the same. Especially after everything that had happened with Clark.
This was an incredible opportunity for him. Lex knew from his own years at Excelsior how exceptional their lab facilities were. Their science program was better than that at some of the nation's better universities; there was no comparing it to schools like Smallville.
On the other hand, being at Excelsior meant being in Metropolis; that meant being near his father and the career that he'd turned his back on. Despite the enmity Lionel had inspired years earlier in the people of Smallville, Lex had pretty much been received on his own merits and he was happier than he'd expected to be in the small town. Until Clark Kent walked into his classroom, anyway, and challenged his perception of right and wrong. He knew better than to take a personal interest in a student. It had never been an issue. But with Clark, well, nothing with Clark was like anything Lex had ever experienced.
He'd been trying to figure out how he could make it work. Taking the job in Metropolis would end their student-teacher relationship. And once Clark turned eighteen, he needn't worry about the legal issues. He could tell from the way Clark had looked at him, from the way they had talked when given the opportunity, that there was something there. Something real. And then he'd found out that it had all been a lie. He grabbed another piece of newsprint and wrapped his coffee mug.
***
"Clark! Clark! Clark!"
He looked around himself nervously and watched the clock begin to tick down.
4:59. 4:58. 4:57.
Someone handed him a microphone and the crowd quieted.
"Umm ... thank you all for coming out tonight. Thank you for reading my article." The crowd cheered again and Clark blocked out the sound in his head.
3:52. 3:51. 3:50
Clark looked over to see Jason standing with his players on the sidelines, giving him a thumbs up.
2:58. 2:57. 2:56.
He looked up to see his mom and dad in the stands. His dad with that tight, worried smile; his mom looking concerned but hopeful for him.
2:14. 2:13. 2:12.
Perry White was there too, alongside Lois and Jimmy Olsen. Clark laughed and shook his head as Lois sent Jimmy off to get her something. Cotton candy, probably. And a Diet Coke.
1:37. 1:36. 1:35.
He saw Whitney and the other jocks watching the clock and seeming to support him. And the cheerleaders with signs reading "Go Clark!" He thought maybe he'd made some difference in their lives and told himself that that should be enough.
He looked at the clock again. It was down to 1:00, and still no sign of Lex.
He was happy that Chloe was talking to some of the other reporters; Pete standing by her side with his camera, ready to capture a picture for her article in the Torch.
0:45. 0:44. 0:43.
The crowd noise began to die down, everyone's eyes flitting from the clock to Clark and back again.
20 seconds.
Still no Lex.
10 seconds and the crowd began counting down with the clock. Clark's head fell forward and he stared at the ground.
0:07. 0:06. 0:05.
It was over. Lex wasn't coming.
0:04. 0:03. 0:02.
He let the microphone fall to the ground at his feet.
0:01.
Silence.
Then suddenly a murmur started to spread through the crowd. Clark looked up and saw a bald head moving through the throng of people at the base of the stands and then running out onto the field towards him.
"I told you you could write, Clark."
"I had a story worth telling." Lex's hand came up to cup his jaw and he pulled their mouths together in a searing kiss. Clark had a vague sense of everyone cheering and screaming and applauding, but he was so lost in the touch of Lex's lips and tongue, the feel of a strong hand on his lower back, pulling him closer.
"It was you on the bridge." Lex touched his fingers to Clark's lips. "You saved me."
"Yes." Clark answered, even though Lex's words weren't a question.
"Sorry I'm late," Lex whispered against his lips.
"You're worth the wait."
THE END