The Sink That Ate Christmas
It seemed like such a good plan at the time -- Christmas with Clark's folks, just one day away from the farm, one day to properly break in Clark and Lex's first house.
He and Lex had spent several weeks minutely decorating their two-storey home, Clark's tinsel and gaudy festivity waging war with Lex's white and silver and filigree. Clark had won the kitchen and the den, but his white plastic mistletoe hanging in the doorframe leading into the front parlor was the last outpost of Kent holiday sensibilities. Lex's expensive spun glass ornaments were lined up there, one in each pane of the French doors, fragile but formidable soldiers on the front line of the great Christmas decoration battle. Their home base seemed to be the seven-foot Douglas fir in the front window.
"I couldn't have real trees when I was a kid," Lex had said, and that's how the parlor had been won in the end, because Clark still couldn't resist Lex's pathetic childhood stories, even after five years.
They compromised on the front entrance -- real evergreen wrapped around the stair banister, with blatantly artificial and too-red velvet ribbon snaking up to hold it in place. There was a little advent calendar on the jelly cabinet, twenty-four doors hiding chocolate -- Ghirardelli liqueurs for Lex, cheap waxy foil-wrapped Santas for Clark. And the homely little hanging light fixture that illuminated the entryway was the thing they were both most proud of -- its light spangled down through iridescent glass tree ornaments, shiny enough to appease Clark, and subtle enough to make Lex smile.
The presents under the tree were wrapped in thin lead-lined paper, both Lex's and Clark's, because Lex was untrusting and Clark knew perfectly well that Lex wasn't above using an x-ray machine anyway. The good news was that the metallic wrapping paper made for sharp neat corners, so even Clark's handiwork looked better than usual. In the week before Christmas, Clark and Lex took turns sneaking into the parlor and surreptitiously shaking, smelling, and otherwise examining the packages under the tree, until there was not a single surprise left for either of them, lead paper or no.
It would be Clark's first chance to cook a big meal for his family and his spouse, and if Lex stayed away from the kitchen, there was a good chance that most of the food would even be edible. Clark had made several tins of heavy shortbread and their basement freezer was overwhelmed by pecan tarts and sugar cookies. He had a tub of fresh cranberries ready to go. Their turkey had been ordered months earlier. Mom would bring the fresh yams. She and Clark would spend Christmas afternoon amiably chopping and grinning at each other over bubbling dishes, because they never got to be all together like this.
It was going to be the perfect day, even down to the two feet of snow they'd gotten the day before Christmas Eve.
That was, it was going to be perfect right up until the sink ate Clark's wedding band.
"I can see it in there," Clark said, squinting.
"Why did you take it off, anyway?" asked Lex testily.
"Because I thought it would look better if it wasn't covered in mashed potatoes," Clark returned snidely.
"And why exactly were you sticking your fingers in the mashed potatoes?" Lex pursued.
"Because I forgot to buy a masher," Clark answered irritably. "Okay? I forgot to buy a masher and I thought I could just use my fingers because they're pretty strong and fast."
"Why not a fork?" Lex asked, giving Clark the 'you're unbelievably stupid' look.
Clark scowled. "That's not the point. The point is, I took off the ring and stuck it on the edge of the sink and then I knocked it off and it fell down the drain."
"You have superhuman reflexes," Lex stated.
"Yes," Clark snapped.
"And?" The look from earlier was only intensifying, and Lex's voice was getting louder, which was no good because any minute, Mom and Dad were going to overhear and things had to be perfect.
"Just help me get it out," Clark whispered, with a pointed glare through the kitchen wall to where his folks were sitting and drinking cider.
Lex rolled his eyes and pushed up his sleeves, muttering something about mashers and forks and stupid husbands. "What do you need me to do?"
Clark squatted by the sink, perusing its innards. "Can you sneak down to the basement and get my toolbox?"
"You're, what? Using a wrench?" Lex asked. "Clark, you are a wrench. You're a wrench and a soldering iron and a hammer and I don't know why you even have a toolbox."
"I'm not a screwdriver," Clark pointed out. "And also? Shut up and get the toolbox, okay? I don't want to break the pipes by accident." When Lex didn't move, Clark glanced over his shoulder at him. "You don't know where the toolbox is, do you?"
"Why should I know? I'm married to a wrench!" Lex exclaimed, making Clark shush him violently.
"It's on the shelf by the drill. And if you call me a drill, I swear to god you're not getting any pie."
Lex almost pouted, but gained control of his features in time to avoid it. "How am I getting down to the basement without them seeing? That's more your field of expertise, isn't it?"
"I have to stay here in case Mom comes to check on the yams," Clark replied. "Go! Just say you're getting some more shortbread from the freezer."
"We already have enough shortbread to prematurely kill a legion of middle-aged --" Lex began, but stopped when he glanced over and caught Clark's glower. "Going downstairs now."
It felt strange, Clark thought, to be without his wedding band. He and Lex had been married -- really married, as Lex termed it -- for almost four years now, and the only times Clark went without his wedding band were when he changed into his alter ego. It felt as wrong as wearing his Clark Kent glasses with the blue spandex suit.
"You know, you shouldn't be letting your father at that shortbread," said Martha, startling Clark out of his thoughts. "Lex went to get more?"
Clark tried to smile, but he was busy casually kicking the sink cupboard closed with one foot, so he didn't quite pull it off. "Oh, um. Lex is, you know. Being a good host."
"He gains enough weight sitting on his behind all winter as it is," smiled Martha, presumably referring to Jonathan, not Lex. "He hardly needs the calories."
Clark worked his left hand into his pants pocket, hoping his mother wouldn't notice. "Ha, no, he doesn't," Clark laughed stiffly. "Hey, how are the yams?"
Lex burst into the kitchen holding the toolbox at that moment, so Clark sped over and back, hiding the tools under the table while his mother was distracted by the yams. "I thought you were getting shortbread," Clark said, raising an eyebrow meaningfully. For a sneaky CEO, Lex was really pretty bad at keeping his cover stories straight.
"I changed my mind," Lex answered coolly, raising an eyebrow back at Clark, telegraphing profanities with remarkable ease. "How are the yams, Martha?"
"They're almost done," she answered, dividing a suspicious look between the two men. Clark jammed his hand deeper into his pocket, but his jeans were too tight, so he ended up only looking more awkward. "Can I do anything else to help, Clark?"
"Um, no thanks," Clark smiled. "I mean. We've got it under control, right, honey?"
Lex shot another four-letter word Clark's way with a twitch of his mouth. "We sure do."
Martha left the kitchen, looking a little puzzled.
"Way to go," Clark hissed. "Now she thinks you're acting weird."
"I'm acting weird?" Lex repeated in a normal voice. "Clark, you've got your hand so far into your pocket, you look like you're giving yourself a handjob through your pants."
"I couldn't let her see that I'm not wearing the ring," Clark answered, pulling his hand out quickly. "And -- gross, Lex!"
Lex only sighed. "Can I go? I got the tools."
"No, stay here. Stand guard while I do this," Clark ordered, then sped into action. He had just gotten the sink into its component pieces and was about to tip over the trap and extract his ring when he heard Lex speak, loudly.
"Jonathan! Can I grab you a beer?"
Clark reassembled the sink in record time, still ringless.
"Martha said you brought up some more shortbread," inquired Jonathan subtly, then he noticed the toolbox in the middle of the tile floor. "Something broken?"
"Nothing the Drill here can't handle," Lex said in his hearty fake-manly voice. Clark hated that voice. Plus Lex had just called him the Drill. No pie for Lex. "He was just --"
Shit. Lex didn't know what the hell Clark could possibly be doing with tools in the kitchen, other than what Clark was doing, and Lex must have realized that just as Clark did. "I was just tidying them up," Clark smiled, dropping the wrench into the box with a clank. "I was grabbing something under the sink, and I noticed how messy the toolbox was, and I guess I just got distracted."
Dad should approve of that. He was crazy about keeping his tools neat. Only he didn't seem happy. "You shouldn't keep your tools under the sink, son," he said sternly. "One drippy pipe and they're all rusted. You should keep them in the basement."
"On a shelf next to the drill, that's what I keep telling him," Lex piped up, still in his macho tone. "I mean, he might be able to hammer and solder without the tools, but even Clark can't be a screwdriver."
They laughed together over this while Clark glared and tried to look properly chastened at the same time. "Well, I guess you're right, Dad," he said at last. "Hey, Lex, why don't you and Dad take the tools down to the basement and find a place for them? You could show him that sander you bought."
Lex smirked and nodded, and Clark grinned because Lex had no freaking clue what a sander looked like, let alone where it was. "We can rustle up that shortbread while we're down there," Lex said smarmily, and damn it! Lex was going to distract Jonathan with high-calorie cookies! That was playing dirty.
Clark waited until they were on their way to the basement before he turned back to the sink and dismantled it again, this time going more slowly because he was relying on his hands and his own sense of appropriate pressure to unscrew the pipes.
The phone rang just as Clark went to tip the trap again.
"Mom, can you answer that?" Clark called, because Lex wouldn't be able to hear the ring in the basement.
"Where's the extension?" called Martha, two rings later.
Clark sighed. His mother was probably one of the most wonderful women alive, but her fatal weakness seemed to be an inability to find phone extensions. Phone extensions to Martha Kent were like kryptonite to Clark, shortbread to Jonathan, or naked Clark to Lex. "It's -- never mind, I'll get it!" Clark hollered, and dove for the kitchen phone before the voice mail could pick up.
"Hello?"
"Merry Christmas, Clark!" squealed Chloe.
"Chloe, it's ... um. Wow. A bad time," Clark managed, trying to untangle the phone cord and get back to his wedding band and the dismembered sink.
"I said, MERRY CHRISTMAS, Clark!" Chloe shouted again. "Come on, you can do it."
"Merry Christmas," Clark answered automatically, only a little resentful that Chloe could still make him say things on command. Mostly he was just concerned because his ring wasn't in the trap anymore. It wasn't in any of the pipes, actually.
"Guess where I am?"
"You're near a phone," Clark provided hopefully, tipping all the pipes one more time, even though his x-ray vision didn't lie.
"Guess."
You're in the middle of the interstate with a Mack truck bearing down on you, if there's a God. "Um. Kansas?"
"I'm in New Zealand! It's Boxing Day here."
"It's what?" Clark asked, glaring at the sink again. It ate his ring!
"Boxing Day. It's the day after Christmas."
"Boxing as in the sport or as in cardboard?" Clark asked, twisting the pipes back together while wishing death to all plumbing.
"New Zealand, Clark! Not really caring about the etymology of the holiday names!"
"Are there sheep?" The ring really wasn't in the sink. It must have fallen past the trap somehow, between Martha's intrusion and Jonathan's. Which meant it was -- where? Clark x-rayed through the kitchen floor, following pipes down and down. No ring.
"Not here on the beach," Chloe was saying. "It's summer, you know. I was surfing all day."
"That's great, Chloe," Clark said absently, because there was no ring. He was officially ringless.
"Hey."
"What?" Clark couldn't have just lost his wedding ring. It was like losing a child, or a limb. It was inconceivably stupid.
"Kitten toes," Chloe was prompting.
"I hate that nickname," Clark sighed. But it was still better than the Drill.
"What's going on there? Are you and Lex fighting?"
"I lost my ring," Clark confessed. "It fell down the sink because I forgot to buy a masher."
"Why didn't you just use a fork?" Chloe asked, sounding mystified.
"My fingers are very strong and fast!" Clark shouted.
"You don't have to remind me," Chloe said in a really inappropriate way. "Well, get it out of the sink."
"It's not in the sink anymore!" Clark cried frantically, wishing he had magnetic powers, not just stupid hot and cold ones.
Though that wouldn't help locate a gold ring, actually.
"Where is it, then?" Chloe asked.
"I don't know!" Clark exclaimed in frustration. "Hey, if you're not going to get on a plane back to the States and help me look, can we wrap this up?"
"Merry Christmas, Clark," Chloe said flatly. "Ho ho ho."
"Yeah, yeah," Clark grumbled. This was supposed to be the perfect Christmas. They had yams and mistletoe.
Chloe hung up, and Clark did, too, after he wrested the pipes back into working order.
When he looked up, Lex was standing in the doorway, looking altogether too relaxed. "Find it?"
Clark held up his bare left hand in reply.
"You didn't?" Lex blinked, a little more alert now.
"It's gone," Clark moaned. "The sink ate it and Chloe's surfing." He leaned back against the cupboards, shifting onto his butt and sighing. "If I'd remembered to buy a masher, this wouldn't have happened."
"Or if you'd used a fork," Lex added, then quickly lost his smile as Clark threw him a look. Lex padded over and slipped to the floor beside Clark, taking up his hand.
"I'm sorry, Lex," Clark whispered.
"We'll find it," Lex answered confidently. "For now, let's just have this Christmas thing."
"It was supposed to be perfect," Clark said despairingly.
"It is perfect," Lex assured him. "Your mom and dad are fighting about shortbread and the turkey smells great and I have a present hidden for you that you didn't know about, and later on I'm gonna kiss you under that tacky-ass plastic mistletoe you put up. Then we'll all hold hands and sing that stupid song from the Dr. Seuss special and we'll get drunk and tetchy by the fireplace and your mother and I will have many many awkward silences."
Clark let his head tilt until it was resting on Lex's shoulder. "I love you," he said softly, hating the feel of his blank ring finger. "But you're still not getting any pie."
Lex laughed and kissed Clark's hair. "You're an asshole," he said fondly.
"I'm your asshole," Clark answered with a silly smile. "That sounded dirtier than I meant it to," he added quickly, when Lex started chuckling, low and deep under Clark's ear.
The over timer began to beep, and then Martha was in the kitchen, frowning at Lex and toeing Clark aside. Clark briefly considered explaining the ring situation, but he decided against it because he knew that if his father caught wind of the problem, they'd all be spending Christmas night dredging the sewers.
So Clark resolved to forget all about it for the time being and concentrate on this -- this moment, this evening, this first dinner in their home. The potatoes were a bit lumpy and the cranberries were too tart, but it was still Christmas, and Clark was surrounded by the people he loved.
Halfway through dessert -- Lex managed to wrangle pie despite Clark's best efforts to convince his mother to deprive her son-in-law -- Jonathan cleared his throat in an ominous way.
"Well, this has been a really fine day, son. Your mother and I are impressed."
Martha smiled her agreement. "And you've done a great job of decorating. I mean, it's a beautiful home to start with, but -- your tree is lovely, Clark."
Clark smiled at Lex and tried to pretend that he didn't mind taking credit for the crystal monstrosity, the home base of all the crystal foot soldiers advancing on Clark's Christmas.
"It is a beautiful home," said Jonathan, again in that strangely ominous voice. "And spacious -- three bedrooms." Clark was even more worried when Jonathan seemed to lose interest in his pie. "That's great, three bedrooms. One for you two, one for guests, and one for--"
"The toolbox!" Lex blurted.
"What?" chorused Clark and his parents.
"Now, son, I really think the basement is the best place for tools," began Jonathan sanctimoniously. "I mean, if you're going to set up a workshop somewhere else, the garage is really a better idea than your third bedroom--"
"No, I mean --" Lex began, then shot Clark a meaningful look. "I think you might have left something in the toolbox, Clark."
Clark stared stupidly for a moment, then grinned. Of course the ring was in the toolbox! It must have fallen out of the pipes when Clark was reassembling the sink in a hurry the first time, and then Lex had toted the toolbox back downstairs before Clark had noticed the ring in among the screwdrivers and --
"I'm gonna go and get some more shortbread," Clark announced. "To go with the pie."
"Jonathan, you don't need any more of that, you hear me?" Clark could hear his mother scold as he sprinted towards the basement.
It was glimmering, tossed in casually with the level and the wall anchors, shiny and a bit wet from its recent excursion, but none the worse for wear. Clark slipped the ring on and beamed at it, moving to sit cross-legged on the cement floor, feeling himself relax completely for the first time in weeks. He heard Lex stepping down the staircase behind him, but Clark didn't bother to turn and greet him. He merely waited until Lex was close by, kneeling behind Clark and squeezing his left hand.
"Is it a masher?" Clark asked, leaning back into Lex's arms.
Lex made an inquisitive noise as he kissed Clark's neck.
"The present you got me, the one I didn't know about."
"It's not a masher," Lex replied dryly, squeezing Clark a little.
"Is it mistletoe? Real mistletoe?"
"Nope."
"Celery salt?"
Lex laughed. "No."
"I give up."
"It's --" Lex started, then stopped. "You know, we do have three bedrooms."
Something in Clark's chest went very still at Lex's words. "We do," he agreed cautiously.
"The thing I got you -- it's an idea for the third room."
"A desk?"
"No."
"A ping pong table?" Clark suggested hopefully.
"You're not funny."
"A litter-box?"
Lex released Clark and stood up, pulling Clark up along with him. "Not a litter-box."
Clark grinned easily, then let go of Lex's hands. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay," Clark repeated, and the part of his chest that had gone so still only moments earlier now broke into terrified flutters. "Okay, let's do it."
"Should we tell them?" Lex asked, and god, he was smiling so big, like he had the day he'd proposed the second time.
Clark nodded, and felt his own smile mirroring Lex's. "Next year will be really different," he said, because the thought occurred to him.
Lex was already heading for the stairs. "It'll still be perfect," he stated confidently. "Unless, of course, you decide to drop your ring down the sink again."
Clark quickly set off after Lex, catching up with him as Lex reached the dining room. "Mom, Dad," Clark said, half-tackling Lex with leftover momentum, hugging his husband from behind and making him produce some rather undignified, un-Lex-like noises.
Clark took a deep breath, feeling his ring tap against Lex's, two hands clasped in a years-old gesture of solidarity. "We kind of have plans for that bedroom already."