Concealed
After Clark leaves, Lex thinks for a while and discovers that
he should have known something was wrong from the first punch Clark threw.
Clark’s sense of fair play, though sketchy when it comes to emotional battery,
would never allow him to hit Lex before, even though Lex has seen it in Clark’s
eyes a hundred times. But then, when Clark is in the room, Lex’s logic gets
jammed with static interference, his whole body becoming little more than a
conduit of rage.
He still can’t quite believe he punched Clark back. Lex rolls onto his back,
feeling the hardwood cold against his bruised shoulder, and raises his arm to
examine his hand. It ought to be smashed, Lex knows. Maybe even grazed on the
outside, like Lex had punched concrete. A boy who can toss off cars like toys
could certainly break human skin if a human were stupid enough to attack.
Instead, it’s only a little puffy, a little red, and nowhere near as sore as
Clark’s lip probably is at the moment.
With Lex’s logic stuffed out of sight like a used condom, the visceral shock of
seeing that blood trailing from Clark’s lip had been absolute. One minute,
insane rage – and Lex knew insane rage, not in any hyperbolic sense – and the
next – cherry red drop against Clark’s red lips, a more perfect red. Lex had
immediately gotten hard, reflex reaction with no mediation from his brain, and
he could scarcely say why, except for the simple ugly beauty of that crimson
drop on Clark’s full lower lip.
Clark distilled, maybe, Lex thought, absently dropping his hand down to touch
his own scarred mouth. Essence of Clark, he thought, and smiled in spite of
himself. Once upon a time, Lex had guessed that essence of Clark would emerge
from a much different part of his person, that was true. How many hours here, in
his study, fantasizing about that? About stripping Clark, at first just of his
plaid shirt and low-rise jeans that belonged to no farmer Lex had ever met.
Stripping that pretty fifteen year old of his innocence and his inability to
lie, but his determination to do so anyway.
And later, when Clark had flashed his darker side like a snake showing a poison
orange underbelly… later, Lex had thought about stripping away Clark’s better
intentions, trying to get at that cruel and narcissistic core, pulling Clark out
of the leather and the spray-painted jeans and then just dropping to his knees
and taking Clark apart starting with his cock.
Now things had grown darker still inside Lex’s mind. These days, his fantasies
had almost lost any semblance of sexuality. Instead, he dreamed of Clark in
metaphor – a fortress wall, a vast ocean, an unscaleable cliff-face. He longed
to batter himself against Clark’s barred doors, decimate himself against Clark’s
rocky surface until – what? It ended differently sometimes. Sometimes Clark
would concede, miraculously. Other times, it ended when Lex had managed to
destroy himself in the effort.
But today.
Lex curls up to a sitting position, wincing, then settles with his arms crossed
over bent knees.
Today had been ruby red against soft flesh, and Lex is still hard from it.
Stripping Clark of his humanity seems like the greatest fantasy of all.