Up the Yin Yang

A/N: Thanks to Punk and mecurtin for invaluable feedback and help with this, and thanks to the whole flist for playing along.

Clark's body had a way of pretty much ignoring everything that went on around it. Sure, he could talk about metaphorical things, like crawling skin and fluttery stomachs and blurry vision and even racing heartbeats -- but the fact was Clark's body was rarely a system in flux. It was less like a delicate machine and more like a powerful tool made of a single material. Clark even pictured himself as being solid all the way through, like a plastic toy, instead of being filled with all the slimy and shifting pieces of humans. It was hard to resist the notion of invulnerability, of being the immoveable object that had yet to meet its unstoppable force, and Clark sometimes feared that this was the greatest threat to him, the place where he had the greatest potential of losing touch with humanity.

During the war with Luthor, Clark had often caught himself thinking about it as a sort of defense tactic -- looking at his sometime friend and flicking casually into x-ray, like the Kryptonian version of picturing the audience naked. Yes, Luthor was nothing but human, and no matter how many layers of hyper-calm he painted on, Clark could simply -- break him. Break him and spill him open. He never did, of course -- never seriously believed he wanted to, even -- but the very existence of the fantasy had sometimes frightened Clark badly.

And maybe that was why, Clark mused, the war had ended the way it had -- not in fire and raining death as he'd long anticipated, but with --

It was ridiculous, like the sappy ending to a children's animated movie.

With -- well. Not love...that was too strong a word.

With a kiss, anyway.

It was a charity function, hosted by LuthorCorp and presided over by Luthor himself. Luthor, who was sleek and charming in a tuxedo, was also deftly avoiding Clark and Lois's attempts to pin him down and drill him. This time it was about LuthorCorp's slow and sinuous encroachment on a biotech company which held a patent for a powerful cloning technique. Watching Luthor from across the room, Clark had been imagining how simple it might be, a quick motion -- and Luthor's machinations, which had tormented both of them for so long, would be over.

And the next moment, scared of himself and what he might do, Clark had been holding Luthor by the wrist, hauling him towards a stairwell, and proving his own inner humanity in a way he thought he'd long lost -- seizing Luthor (Lex) between his palms, bracketing his shoulders, pushing him against the cement wall, and --

If there had been any room for planning and speculation in Clark's mind at that moment, he might have expected Luthor to push him away in fury, to pull out a little lead box containing a certain ring, its shape symbolizing an eternity of hatred. But Luthor hadn't done it. He'd only released a shiver of tension and then he'd lit into Clark like something wild and starved. Clark had felt Luthor's desire against him, hard like the solid thing Clark wasn't, and there had followed several frantic minutes of consuming motion and sensation, Luthor pushing Clark up against the wall, wrenching his pants down, and thrusting inside him in the old way. And then he was slipping his hand down to tug at Clark's balls until Clark came because Luthor was Lex, and Lex knew, he knew what that did to Clark, what that had always done. Something deep inside the not-solidness that was Clark had broken away and started a landslide of motion in Clark's body.

When Clark had regained himself again, Luthor was gone. Clark had been utterly alone in the stairwell.

The next day, there had been a press conference at which Luthor had admitted to 'uncovering' some questionable research practices in his company. Then there had been a LuthorCorp internal review which was like the Spanish Inquisition, only scarier, and now, three months later, Luthor had emerged on the other side with a greatly reduced but squeaky-clean company. The biggest mystery was that for the life of them, neither Lois nor Superman could seem to find out that the performance was anything other than a genuine reform.

And as for Clark? The sensation that his insides had suddenly been transformed into quicksand had not faded with time. As though his encounter with Luthor had been some undersea earthquake, Clark was shaken, his erstwhile solidity replaced with something far more tempestuous. He grew tired at the end of a long news day, just like everyone else. He felt hungry when he hadn't eaten. He could feel the weight of his body when he lifted off the earth, was aware of the configuration of his limbs when he slept and woke up aching and sore after restless nights. He began to skip his nightly patrols as Superman, too drained and apathetic to muster the energy.

And he could smell things -- but not in the way his disinterested hearing could pick up voices miles away. Every smell carried emotional ballast. The scent of Lois's spearmint gum made him headachy and short-tempered. Simply passing by the Indian take-out place on his way home became an impossibility -- he consumed green curry ravenously every night. And he had to go into the Planet washroom and throw up the day that Jimmy walked in fresh from a photo shoot at Luthor's penthouse.

Crawling skin and fluttering stomachs and blurry vision were no longer abstract concepts. Luthor had done something to Clark that night in the stairwell -- he'd contaminated Clark somehow, and even though Clark knew that he should be furious and worried and scared, mostly he just felt strangely grateful. It was as though Luthor had granted him a measure of humanity.

But what Clark would never have guessed was that the transfer had happened in a literal sense.

There were a few dazzlingly spectacular moments of shock in Clark's memory. The revelation of his alien origins was foremost, of course, but this was closely followed by the seventh grade health class where he learned that he was in possession of one testicle too many and the day he learned that he could put holes in furniture if he failed to concentrate while masturbating. And then there were the later ones -- the day he realized that LuthorCorp was hurting people, and that Lex had known all along. The day he first saw Superman commemorative plates in a Smallville store and realized that his superhero persona was permanent. And now, this:

"Did you eat all of the donuts?" Lois was horrified. Clark wasn't sure whether the horror was more due to anger or disgust. Before he could swallow his last mouthful of Krispy Kreme and make some inadequate apology, Lois seized the empty box and threw it out, saying, "God, what is up with you lately, Smallville? You eating for two or something?"

Just like that, a supernova of panic exploding somewhere inside Clark's head, and he choked, which was supposed to be physiologically impossible for his species. He hastily wiped his lips with a crumpled napkin, blinking back tears and coughing. Eating for two?

Eating for two.

Shit.

No, it was totally ridiculous. Clark dismissed the thought, blinking away the sense of dazzled realization and telling himself that this was absolutely not a moment that could ever rank with having three balls or realizing his lover was an evil genius. It was a moment of insanity occasioned by a peak in blood sugar levels and Lois's compulsive need to refer to Clark as a woman.

But later that night, Clark found himself digging through his old high school notes, until he pulled out a faded and wrinkled biology line diagram which was covered in his and Chloe's handwriting. There was a pencil arrow pointing to the cross section of a testicle, and Chloe's hand (which had also decorated the testicle with fangs and google eyes) proclaimed 'ovicle!'

Clark shifted in discomfort on the sofa, suddenly aware of the weight of his scrotum brushing the flannel of his pajama pants, having a vivid sense-memory of Luthor's ungentle fingers and how they had tugged at Clark, how that had been the catalyst for that incredible and mind-melting orgasm three months prior. Luthor was still the only one who had done that, the only one who knew that Clark wasn't quite normal in terms of the equipment between his legs.

But a discrepancy in numbers of gonads didn't change Clark's biological sex, of course. Jor-El had never called him the Last Daughter of Krypton, for pete's sake. This was only some sort of delayed post-coital reaction to that bizarre encounter with Luthor. Clark's guilt was catching up with him, making him think stupid things.

Clark sighed and put the paper away, then stretched his arms, feeling the same odd sense of fatigue and achiness that had plagued him for weeks. He reached down absently to scratch at his waistband where the elastic was biting into his stomach a little. He'd put on weight, which was odd, sure, but between all the donuts and the green curry, not to mention all the sleeping he'd been doing, Clark could hardly be surprised if even his alien metabolism had been unable to keep up.

With a sigh of resignation, Clark let his hand snake down a bit further to furtively feel his balls. Long-held adolescent habit still reigned, and Clark rarely touched himself here, even though the tiniest brush of skin against the area had never failed to make him instantly hard. Luthor had exploited that, and maybe that was another reason Clark didn't do this -- it reminded him too much of Luthor, of what they'd had and what Luthor had thrown away.

But --

Clark stroked a bit more firmly, because it didn't feel like it normally did. It felt good, in the abstract way that having his back scratched or his scalp rubbed felt good. But it was utterly failing to make him as desperate as usual.

Clark sat back a bit and spread his legs, slipping his fingers back farther, feeling where Luthor had been. But those memories led nowhere productive, so Clark withdrew his hand and sighed.

He was not eating for two.

Maybe he'd just pop by the Fortress and check with the AI tomorrow, to be sure.

But Clark didn't make it as far as the Fortress before the stupid idea resurfaced. He made it exactly as far as wincing the next morning as he pulled on a wool sweater, at which point he paused, frowned, and wondered exactly how long his nipples had been this -- painful. Clark refused to use the word 'tender', even in his head.

And when Clark turned to look in the mirror, he caught a glimpse of his side profile. More specifically, he caught a glimpse of his belly, pushing out the waistband of his nipple-torturing sweater and generally making his dress pants look too small.

Mentally vowing to avoid the curry place tonight, Clark shrugged off his growing panic and left for work.

He hadn't planned to stop at the drugstore on the way, but he saw it and figured he might as well put this insane notion to rest. If Lois saw the bag containing the home pregnancy test -- which she probably would, given Clark's luck -- he could make up a story about somebody at the Planet asking him to buy it for her, and Lois would spend the rest of the day frantically trying to discover who Clark was helping.

Except that Clark ducked into the coffee shop two yards later and headed straight for the washroom. Just get it over with, Clark told himself, studying the pink directions and wondering how much torture it would take for Clark to ever admit to anyone that he'd done this. Because even for him, the man with two distinct personalities, this was bordering on seriously neurotic behavior.

Three minutes later, Clark opened his eyes (which hadn't really been squeezed shut, just tightly closed) to the sound of a woman screaming. For a moment, he wondered if his mental soundtrack had become external, and then he realized that, in fact, the scream had come from inside the coffee shop.

Clark whipped into his costume, grimacing at the glide of spandex on his chest, then paused to ponder the best way to get into the shop without being obvious about the fact that he was exiting the washroom. In the end (not so much avoiding looking at the test on the counter as too busy to glance that way) he settled for a speedy entrance, making a quick loop around the shop and hopefully convincing most of the patrons that he had in fact entered through the front door. It felt a bit strange, getting into heroic mode, which made Clark wonder uncomfortably how much he'd been slacking off in recent weeks.

It was a hold-up, easily taken care of even if the barrel of the gun in Clark's fingers made him remember something about Luthor and pool cues. Before that thought could take hold, Clark bent the weapon and tossed it to the floor, advancing on the dark-haired thief who had clearly picked exactly the wrong place to stage a robbery. "Do you want to fly directly to the precinct or would you rather wait for the cops to come get you?" Clark growled menacingly.

This was where most criminals fell to the ground and melted into a puddle of fear, but this man was atypical. He merely glanced down at his ruined gun and back up at Clark. "Sure you could make it off the ground, Superman?" he asked, with a pointed glance at Clark's middle.

Clark forced himself to keep his chin in the air even though he desperately needed to know if he really looked fat in this cape. "I could just throw you there by yourself if you need me to," Clark snapped irritably, cracking his knuckles.

The man smirked in a way that didn't remind Clark of anyone in particular. "Someone pee in your cornflakes this morning, Kal-El?"

Which made Clark think of pee, which led his thoughts back to the plastic stick on the counter in the bathroom behind him, which made him want to follow through on his threat to throw the man very far. Then it hit him.

"Did you just call me --" Clark began, blinking, but he didn't get a chance to finish before the front doors flew open and a group of people in dark clothing took over the scene. It wasn't the police, Clark realized. Sure, it may have been a while since Superman had saved the day, but last he'd checked, the police still used sirens and badges and radios, not laptops and cell phones and briefcases.

Also, Lex Luthor seemed to be in charge.

"What are you doing here, Luthor?" Clark demanded, trying to ignore the fact that Luthor smelled really good.

Luthor snapped his cell phone closed and murmured an order to one of his flunkies, then put a hand on the criminal's shoulder. "Lucas, couldn't you just ask me, if you needed money?" he asked, ignoring Clark's glowering.

"Yeah, right. Because I want to depend on your handouts," spat the man -- Lucas, Luthor had said.

Surely not that Lucas? Clark studied the man -- older, certainly, having lost some of the fineness of his features which had once made him attractive. Was it really Lucas, the second Luthor son?

"Well, if you don't want my handouts, I can pull out my team of lawyers immediately," Luthor said calmly, though the threat in his words was evident. Even as he spoke, the police -- the real police -- were pouring into the coffee shop, two of them seizing Lucas by the arms and cuffing him.

"No," Lucas said hastily. "I mean. I suppose I don't have a choice." The words were cardboard, and Lucas hurried to cover them with something more poisonous. "Can't have your brother soiling your white linens, can you, Alexander?"

"We'll talk later," Luthor replied evenly, only a tiny flicker of his jaw betraying his tension. Clark wasn't able to watch the exchange further, as a detective addressed him and began taking his report of the incident.

By the time the formalities were concluded, Luthor's entourage was on the way out the door and Clark had to bite back the urge to call Luthor's name, engage him in one way or another. But these days, Superman had no reason to antagonize Luthor, and Clark's reporter disguise was back in the washroom along with his --

Oh, crap.

"Find anything?" Detective Ebeling asked of a young officer as she emerged from the back rooms.

"Nope," she said, cheerily, and Clark saw that she had a baggie with a white plastic stick in it. "But someone in the men's room is having a baby!" she exclaimed, waving the evidence bag with a grin.

"Put it away, Tiemstra," said Ebeling tiredly, and turned back to Clark, who was frozen. "You okay, Superman?"

Kal-El, Clark forced himself to think. Lucas had called him Kal-El.

"Luthor's up to something," Clark spat, throwing his jacket over his chair and slamming himself down at his desk. "The coffee shop down the road was just robbed by Lucas Luthor and Lex was there before he could possibly have known about it, before the police even."

Lois's brows came together and her face narrowed with suspicion and thought. Clark bit his tongue as he realized that he'd slipped -- said 'Lex' instead of 'Luthor'. "Smallville, are you getting fat?" she asked, leaning back in her chair. "Because that would make me kind of happy."

Clark was never wearing a tight sweater again. And he was going to jog across Asia tonight. "Lois, are you listening? How did Luthor know that his brother was going to be there?"

"He probably has him tagged," Lois said, bored. "With a microchip under his ear, like a dog."

"There's another thing," Clark said. "When Lucas talked to Superman, he seemed kind of -- dismissive." Clark couldn't go into more detail, couldn't mention that Lucas had used a name that only Luthor and Clark's parents were supposed to know.

"Superman was there?" Lois said, sitting up again, a smile sliding onto her lips. "Why didn't you say?"

Clark rolled his eyes and sighed. "Can we just investigate, please? Where has Lucas been the last fifteen years, and why is he resurfacing now, and why does Lex-uthor know all about it?"

Lois stuck her tongue out at Clark and opened up her browser on her computer. "Have another donut, Clark," she snorted, with a sidelong grin.

Clark took a donut in spite of Lois's mocking glance. He was hungry, and besides, he was going to do that Asia-run-thing tonight.

"Found him!"

Clark looked up from his desk, where he had been busily scrawling the words, "Hormones might not be the same across species." Lois had the gleam of triumph in her eye, which was good since Clark had been unable to do anything contributing to her success. He had been too busy not thinking about the positive test result and what it might mean.

"He's been in Edge City!" she crowed triumphantly.

"What's he been doing in Edge City?" Clark asked, surprised. Edge City was all gambling and fake plastic people. It had little to do with either agribusiness or the kind of eurotrash partying Lucas favored.

"Well," Lois said, drawing out the word and clearly relishing her moment of triumph, "he's been running an establishment of the homosexual variety, mooching off of Lance Berkshire of Berkshire Consolidated in order to keep his pet project going. But apparently Lucas got on Lance's bad side somehow, and the money dried up."

"He was running a gay club?" Clark asked, astonished. Sure, Lucas had always seemed sort of -- but Clark would never have guessed that Luthor's brother was out and proud enough to be the proprietor of a gay club. Clark got up and looked over Lois's shoulder, blinking at the screen in disbelief. "Whoa. Well, did you find out why Lucas and Lance split, then?"

"I don't know. Maybe Lucas wasn't throwing the goat for him anymore," Lois mused distractedly.

"Throwing the -- Lois!" Clark didn't even know what that meant, but ever since he'd asked Lois what a 'felcher' was when she was cursing about a city councilor, Clark had been a lot more circumspect about requesting definitions for her terminology. It was invariably something Clark didn't want to know about.

"Oh, relax," she said, exasperated. "Hey, look! Says here that he's been receiving a small monthly stipend from LuthorCorp ever since he took off. But it doesn't say why..." Lois trailed off, her eyes sparkling at the possibility of a conspiracy under her fingertips. "Could just be a living allowance, I suppose," she said. "But then why isn't it coming directly out of Luthor's pocket?"

"You think he's on Luthor's payroll?" Clark asked, leaning over Lois's shoulder to read more closely. "You think Luthor's paying him to rob coffee houses?" he added, more doubtfully.

"Well, no, clearly Luthor has cut him off now, too. Didn't you say that Lucas was talking about not wanting a handout from Luthor?"

"So Luthor asked Lucas to do something and he wouldn't? Or do you think he's not -- um. Throwing Luthor's goat?"

"Clark! Jesus!" Lois shot a disgusted look Clark's way, confirming Clark's suspicion that the phrase meant something really sexual and twisted. "I don't know what's going on with the two of them," she concluded, closing the browser window. "Time for a little investigation."

"Where are we going?" Clark asked, making a move towards his coat.

"You're not coming along," Lois scoffed. "You're staying here and doing some more background research on Lucas's finances, figure out who he owes money to, that he's this desperate for cash. I'm going to go and visit Luthor Junior in jail and see if he won't tell me himself."

Clark sank back into his chair, scowling. He waited until Lois was gone, then reached for the last donut.

Not that he was eating for two or anything.

It had been a long time since Clark had been to the penthouse, but surprisingly, the security guard waved him towards Luthor's private elevator without even asking for his name. It was a good thing Lois hadn't known about Clark's access to Luthor, or Clark would have been forced to abuse this privilege long before now.

Clark fidgeted in the elevator during the long ride up, unsure of why he was here, only knowing that he couldn't have stayed alone with his thoughts at the Planet for any longer or he would have gone crazy with anticipation. He tried not to look at his reflection in the glass of the elevator wall, the way his sweater was riding up around his middle. He was being paranoid and the test had been wrong, and it wasn't calibrated for Kryptonian chemistry, and besides -- Clark was a man. Ergo, not capable of gestation.

He didn't feel very manly, however, when the elevator doors opened to reveal Luthor lounging against the wall of the entrance, clearly waiting for Clark just as he'd always done years before. Clark stumbled on his way out of the elevator, feeling his knees go a little weak. Luthor must have had kryptonite put in the walls, Clark reasoned, except this didn't feel like the usual weakness which accompanied exposure to the meteors.

"I was wondering if you'd come by," Luthor said before Clark could collect his dignity. "You looked like you wanted to say something to me in the coffee shop earlier."

Clark smoothed his sweater down, wishing he'd stopped to change into something baggier and more concealing. "I just -- how did you know where Lucas was?"

Luthor didn't give a direct answer, of course. He merely sighed and then walked into the penthouse, signaling mutely for Clark to follow. Clark took a few short steps, testing to see if his balance would hold, and then followed.

"Can I offer you something to drink?" Luthor asked, heading towards the bar as always.

Clark was more than a little tempted, but he forced himself to focus on the question he'd posed. "Aren't you going to tell me why you were having Lucas tailed?"

"I don't know if I owe you that kind of information," Luthor replied evenly, pouring himself a short glass of scotch. Clark could smell the sharp liquor from across the room, and his body greeted the scent with a strange combination of queasiness and longing. "Our last meeting was hardly what I'd call congenial."

"And yet -- everything changed after it," Clark half-asked. "The inquiry, LuthorCorp's reform...and am I wrong in thinking that you cut Lucas off along with all your other more questionable employees?"

Luthor's mouth quirked. "You think I overhauled my entire company just because of a quick fuck in a stairwell, Clark?"

Clark's mouth went dry as he realized that that was exactly what he'd been thinking, even if it didn't make any sense. That encounter had somehow fundamentally changed Clark's life -- so it only made sense to Clark that it should have changed Luthor's as well. "You're saying it was a coincidence?"

"It was a catalyst," Luthor hedged, taking a small swallow of scotch and waving Clark towards an armchair -- the armchair that had always been his before, as a matter of fact. "I won't lie. It was a factor. But if you're thinking you saved the world by fucking some sense into me, you're sorely mistaken."

"And Lucas?" Clark challenged, choosing to ignore both Luthor's gesture and the way his own stomach had just plummeted. "Am I right there?"

Luthor tilted the glass in his hand, contemplating the ice cubes and scotch. "Is this an interview?"

"Should it be?" Clark asked, playing into the game of questions. "Is there a story here? Lois thinks so. She's over at the city jail grilling Lucas as we speak."

Luthor released a short mirthless laugh. "She won't get anything out of him."

"Why is that?" But Clark could guess why. If Luthor's reform was genuine, then Clark was right, and Lucas had been ousted from the family payroll. But Luthor must realize that Lucas would have enough information to sink all his hard-won gains in integrity, even if Lucas hadn't realized it himself yet. Luthor was going to be paying Lucas a lot of money to keep his mouth shut.

And from Lucas's casual use of Clark's Kryptonian name, Clark had a strong suspicion of what Lucas had been investigating on LuthorCorp's behalf. It wouldn't do to let Luthor know what Clark did, though -- that Clark knew Lucas had been collecting information on him. It was better to hold his cards, play this close to the chest, and see if he and Lois could uncover the whole truth without involving the difficulty of interpreting Luthor's doublespeak.

Luthor didn't answer Clark's question anyway, only sat down in his armchair and waited quietly.

"Are you sorry?" Clark asked, unsure where the question was coming from.

Luthor looked up, quick flash of blue thoughtfulness. "About Lucas?"

"About us. In the stairwell."

Luthor redirected his gaze back at the glass in his hand. "I have never," he said, using the careful diction which always signaled intense emotion, "had cause to regret the chance to be close to you." The blue eyes came up to meet Clark's again. "Whatever form that may have taken."

And Clark was flooded with visions of all the violent ways he and Luthor had been in contact over the past few years -- the near-death struggles, the spitting threats, and the maniacal anger that had consumed both of them. Luthor genuinely didn't regret any of that? The declaration had all the trappings of a confession of love and yet Clark knew -- he knew -- what it really meant in their case. It meant that Luthor hadn't reformed for Clark's sake. It meant he was still angry. It meant that this quicksand turbulence in Clark's body was a one-sided sensation.

"I have to --" Clark blurted. "Your bathroom." And seconds later, Clark was on his knees in a marble room, wishing very sincerely that he'd never been born.

He'd been to the farm, of course, during the three months since the charity function, but Clark had made a point of keeping his visits brief, cheery, and uninformative. A few farm chores, a handful of cookies, a couple of stories about how Lois was screwing up his life -- both of his lives -- and Clark flew away again, feeling less refreshed than usual after breathing Smallville air. If his parents suspected something, they didn't say. The days when Clark had taken every problem to them were long over -- had ended, in fact, when Clark and Lex split up and Clark had discovered that his parents thought Clark had made the wrong decision in leaving.

They didn't talk about Lex anymore.

Today, Clark didn't have a chance of feigning cheerfulness, though. The minute he ducked in the kitchen door and found his mother baking muffins, he felt about four years old again. Even the expression on his face must have reflected it, because Martha took one look and went into top-gear mothering mode.

"Sweetheart," she said in her gentle sympathetic voice, and Clark actually felt his body sag in the doorframe with relief. "What's wrong?"

"I'm sick," he said, simply, because he was. Clark couldn't feel this awful and be something other than sick.

"What? How?" she asked, dusting flour off her palms and onto her apron, stepping hastily towards Clark as he closed the door behind him. Her fingers on his forehead, a gesture as instinctive as it was futile -- Clark was always hot to the touch. "Come and lie on the sofa."

Clark allowed himself to be led by the arm, basking in the illusion that a dozen years had just rolled back and he was just a kid in high school again. "I don't know how," he admitted as his mother settled him down on the tired brown couch in the living room. "I just am."

"Is it kryptonite?" Martha asked, sweeping an expert gaze over his body.

"I don't think so," Clark answered, toeing his shoes to the floor and slipping a hand down to cloak his belly. "I think it's -- it's not -- I mean."

Martha settled an afghan over him and stroked his hair back. "Did you throw up?"

Clark nodded pitifully, remembering the embarrassment of escaping Luthor's penthouse after crawling his way out of the bathroom, still feeling like the floor was swaying under him.

"I'll get some ginger ale," she said quickly. "And a bucket."

"I'm not going to --" Clark protested, but she was already gone. Mothers.

He was asleep before she returned.

Clark woke with a crick in his neck and a deep loathing for couches with broken springs. He sat up and found a glass of flat ginger ale on the coffee table in front of him, accompanied by a note.

Out in the barn helping Dad with the tractor. Call if you need anything.

Clark checked his watch and swore -- he'd slept away the entire afternoon and he still felt like crap, even if his stomach was calmer. Superman was definitely doing a crappy job lately, too -- normally he'd have done a few quick sweeps of the city by this time of day, and Clark hadn't saved anyone since the coffee shop incident that morning. He downed half the glass of soda as a precautionary measure, then extracted his cell phone from his pocket. He had four text messages waiting from Lois.

Lucas wont let of visit the Bastard, said the first. Lois had never figured out her predictive text phone and between that and her always questionable spelling skills, her messages appeared to be coded. This one probably meant that she hadn't managed to get in to see Lucas in jail.

The next read, Talked to disgruntled juvinscm employee re layoff. On in wont talk. 'Juvinscm' was Lois's cell phone shorthand for LuthorCorp, Clark knew from past experience.

Great news, began the next. Sale at jimmy choos bought new black pumps. which i will use to kick your app. where are you?

The last one was simple and yet completely mysterious: police found jrytngue in lucass apartment!!!

Clark stared at the screen in confusion, then checked the letters against his own phone's dialing pad. Give or take a couple of letters, it looked like it could be --

Kryptonite.

Clark bolted to his feet, trying to shake a frisson of fear. The only one who knew about Clark's weakness -- the only one Clark had trusted, other than his parents and Pete -- was Luthor. And it looked like Luthor had forsaken that trust for the sake of his research into Superman. He'd told Lucas, of all people, and Lucas, it seemed, had been preparing to make some move against Clark.

Perhaps he'd already made his move.

Perhaps this illness was kryptonite-related, some derivative, some milder form of the meteor rock which would produce weird symptoms, and it was all just a bizarre coincidence that the illness had started with the night with Luthor in the stairwell.

Or maybe Luthor was in on it.

Clark shook the thought away. No, Lucas clearly was working on his own, hence the bungled hold-up. Lex -- Luthor -- would never have condoned such an obvious failure, even for show. A tiny involuntary smile curled across Clark's face at the realization, because that was so Lex -- even when Superman had flown in and destroyed all his plans, Lex would make sure that his projects had the outward appearance of success. Clark couldn't count the number of times he'd attended celebratory press conferences over something he'd spent the previous day derailing. Sometimes Luthor even managed to spin it as though he'd meant for things to turn out exactly counter to his plans, something that Clark had always secretly found almost impossibly endearing, even when he was still angry.

"How are you feeling?" asked Martha, bustling back into the room with a tray of food. "Can you manage some soup?"

Clark shook his head, glancing up at his mother as he tucked his cell phone back in his pocket. "Lois -- needs me at the Planet. I shouldn't have taken this time off, even. And I can't even tell you how little I've been doing in my other job."

"Clark, if you're not feeling well, you need to take care of yourself," Martha said warningly. "I think you should go and have the Fortress take a look at you, see if it can figure out what's going on."

"I'm fine," Clark assured her hastily. He didn't want to go to the Fortress, just in case the thing that couldn't possibly be the problem actually was the problem. Clark didn't have enough energy left over to cope with even that possibility right now. "My powers are completely unaffected. Maybe it's just something I ate."

Martha pursed her lips at this, the gesture reflecting all the oh please, Clark she could possibly have needed.

"I really have to get going," Clark said, planting a kiss on his mother's hairline and heading for the back door. "Tell Dad I said hello."

She followed him back through the house, still telegraphing worry at him but not saying anything, merely watching as he pulled his coat on.

"I'm fine. I'll be fine," he said, hand on the doorknob, pausing to send Martha a sincere look. "Thanks for letting me crash here for a few hours. You're the best mom ever."

She released a short sigh of disappointment, crossing her arms over her chest, not succumbing to Clark's filial charms.

Clark stepped back in to draw her into a hug, feeling guilty for making her anxious. "What can I promise to do that will make you relax?" he asked, lowering his head a little to breathe in her warm comforting scent.

"Promise me," she said, squeezing him tight, "that if you need help, you'll tell us."

"I promise," Clark lied easily.

She drew back and stared him in the eye, perhaps sensing his dishonesty. "And if you won't do that," she continued, not breaking her gaze, "promise that you'll at least tell him."

"You know I can't," Clark said, pulling away and feeling his face flush with the old anger.

"I thought things were better now?" Martha asked. "You two aren't fighting anymore, are you?"

"Not -- actively. But."

"It must have been hard for him, to offer the olive branch," Martha said. "Couldn't you forgive him, just a little?"

Clark dropped his gaze, unable to look at his mother. "I have to go," he said at length.

Martha nodded, and Clark left.

This was why they didn't talk about Lex anymore.

What Clark didn't get, he thought as he zoomed angrily back towards Metropolis, was how his parents could be so stupidly blind when it came to Luthor. All through Clark's adolescence, the merest misstep on Lex's part brought with it all kinds of Kentian fury. Warnings from both his parents -- gruff pessimism from his father and earnest concern from his mother -- had been so effective that Clark himself had very nearly been convinced of Lex's evil nature. If it hadn't been for an impulsive and bizarre confession one day near the end of Clark's high school career, Clark was certain that the detente between he and Lex would have begun much sooner.

But when Clark, mid-sophomore year, had still failed to make a similar confession to his parents regarding his newly-defined relationship with Lex, Lex had taken matters into his own hands. Clark had come to the penthouse at Lex's invitation one night, expecting dinner and maybe after-dinner entertainment, to find his parents seated in Lex's mammoth living room, each holding a glass of imported water and looking deeply uneasy.

"What's going on?" Clark had asked of them.

"Lex said that you'd tell us," Jonathan had answered, already employing the voice that implicated Clark's doom.

And, as though Lex had planned it that way (and he probably had), the fall-out from that painful evening of revelations had turned out to be permanent. In showing both unflinching courage and honesty, Lex won Jonathan's approval for the first time. And, in demonstrating how completely he loved Clark, Lex won Martha's heart. Except for the part where both of Clark's parents were annoyed with him for keeping a secret from them for so long, it had all seemed to be great. Clark and Lex were out -- not in the eye of the public, of course, but to everyone who mattered -- and they had Clark's parents happily supporting them.

Clark scowled as he rounded on the brilliant city lights of the Metropolis downtown core. It had been great up until things had started going wrong with Lex. Not wanting to make the same mistake twice, Clark had at first kept his parents apprised of the small changes that seemed to be plaguing his relationship with Lex -- minor fights over the way LuthorCorp's name kept cropping up in all of Lois Lane's investigations, and Lex's increasing vehemence that Superman had no business butting into Clark's personal life. The growing demands of Superman on Clark's personal time, and Lex's utter impatience with Clark's desire to be Metropolis's savior. And at first, Martha and Jonathan had sympathized.

But then things had gotten worse. Clark, looking back, could never say exactly when he and Lex had started avoiding each other at home, unable to speak over dinner for fear of launching into what seemed like one long continuous argument. They kept a brave face for everyone who knew them as a couple, but Clark was happy to move out of the dorm room he'd rarely used into his own apartment when he graduated, forsaking his usual habit of staying at the penthouse almost exclusively. He had stopped telling his parents, because all they did was argue for Lex's side, tell Clark over and over how he must be mistaken, how he should always look for the best in people and how Lex had had a difficult time since his father's death, how trying it must be for Lex, to share Clark with the whole world.

And Clark, who had spent so much of his youth lying to cover up Lex's inadequacies, the little betrayals which had seemed immense at the time, but now seemed minor by comparison -- he was astonished by how completely his parents had bought into this mythology of Lex, the perfect man for Clark.

Clark knew when it had fallen apart, however -- the exact moment when the illusion had no longer been enough. He'd been working with Lois for just over a year, and the story was on a near-crash of an airplane at Metropolis airport. Three hundred people would have died if Superman hadn't interfered, and Lois and Clark were trying to find out why.

The path was convoluted and the investigation took over twelve weeks, but he and Lois broke the headline at last: 'LuthorCorp Used Public as Testing Ground for Faulty Engine Part'. Clark had watched as the technicians put the paper to bed, and then had headed straight for the penthouse.

Clark landed now in a darkened street, heading for an alley where he whipped back into his reporter clothes, including the too-tight sweater. Ten steps later, he was headed towards the Planet, remembering, with sick devastation, the way it had happened.

"Well?" Clark had demanded, slamming a print-out of his article down on Lex's desk. "What are you going to do?"

Lex had picked up the article, barely glancing at the leading paragraph before a tired smirk came over his face. "I was wondering when you'd remember that I existed," Lex had said.

"Lex! People could have died!" Clark had exploded, pacing around the room with barely-contained fury. "Stop acting like this is somehow about us!"

"It is all about us," Lex had said smoothly, following Clark's motions lazily. "I haven't seen you for over two months, except in the papers. Do you realize that?"

"So this was -- what? A ploy to get my attention?" Clark had exclaimed, stopping short and staring. Lex was actually insane. And he had just all but admitted knowledge of what his company had done.

Lex had smoothed a hand down over the front page of the article, watching his fingers trace the words, seemingly weighing his words before he doled them out. "I thought for sure you'd come here in uniform, when you came back," he had spoken at last, looking up at Clark with a fierce intensity that belied his casual tone. "To take me away. Because I'm a bad man."

It was like a slap in the face. Clark remembered actually lifting his palm up to touch his cheek, unable to understand that the blow had been entirely verbal. "You --" he had begun, watching Lex to see the tiniest flicker of remorse or fear. There was none.

And he'd gone straight to his parents' farm, scarcely able to keep to a straight path in the air, so dizzy he felt, so disoriented. And when he'd told them, told them what Lex had done, what he'd done to those people, repeated the conversation word for word so that they could understand what he felt...

"Has it really been two months since you saw him?" Martha had asked, the first to speak, following Clark's prowling and brightly-clad presence just as Lex had done.

"Why didn't you tell us things had gotten this bad between you?" Clark's father had asked, accusingly.

The crazy part, Clark remembered as he pushed open the door to the newsroom, was that they had blamed Clark. Even as they willfully admitted that Lex had done wrong, they insisted that Clark was the one who had caused everything to go awry in the first place.

"You're his compass," Martha had said. "How many times has he said that? And you -- you weren't there for him, Clark!"

"I think," Jonathan had added, "that if you spend enough time looking for the evil in people, they'll conjure some up, just to satisfy you."

It had been a double betrayal, unexpected and brutal. It had been some time before Clark and his parents had established their uneasy truce of silence. The Kents seemed to think that Clark was being obstinate and even cruel. Clark had finally forgiven them for thinking so, and moved forward with his war on Luthor in one life and made a huge effort to look like he was moving on in the other.

Clark blinked himself back to the present, realizing that he'd been glaring at his desk for at least a minute.

His desk, which was normally neat and tidy compared with the overwhelming disarray of Lois's desk just opposite, but which now was completely obscured by a ridiculously huge bouquet of white and purple flowers.

It could only be from one person.

Lois blasted past Clark as he reached for the card, hand shaking with some combination of anger and nostalgia. "Did you get my message?" Lois asked, shuffling through the papers on her desk and completely ignoring Clark's bouquet of flowers.

"Yeah," Clark replied distantly, fumbling with the envelope, shredding it with clumsiness.

"And?"

"And you're going to kick my app," Clark said. "Also, Lucas had kryptonite at his place." The card was very small but it felt strangely bulky, like something else was inside. As Clark pulled the card free of the wreckage of the envelope, something metallic pinged to the floor.

"He was going after Superman," Lois said. "And get this -- Luthor bailed him out!"

The card read, simply, Midnight, top of LC Tower. -- LL. Clark caught himself touching the familiar script, then forced his attention back to Lois. "He bailed him out?"

"I think this is the beginning of Luthor returning to his old supervillain ways," Lois said confidently. "I was right! I knew there was something weird about the way he pulled that Scrooge act, changing overnight."

Actually, Clark thought with surprise, turning the card in his fingers to see the purple logo on the back, it was Clark who had been convinced that Lex was just playing a part. He'd been the one who'd pushed Lois to check up on Lex, on his every move. Clark was used to Lois taking credit for his ideas, so it wasn't that he was surprised by her sudden acquisition of the glory that must accompany any such story -- it was that he couldn't quite understand why he'd been so desperate to prove himself right. Because now, granted the first seemingly solid proof that Lex was back on his old path, Clark's first impulse was not to smile because he'd been right all along.

Clark instead felt like crying.

To distract himself, he scanned the floor for the metal object that had fallen out of the card. He was expecting some sort of key, a typical Luthorian gesture of granting access to a forbidden thing when really a trap was being laid. But the object, when Clark located it, wasn't key-shaped.

He knelt down and picked it up, turning it over in his palm to face upwards. It was a silver locket, heart-shaped, delicate and perfect, with a hinge on the left side. Clark had never seen it before in his life, but he knew instinctively that this was a genuine Lillian Luthor artifact.

"We have to track him down -- Lucas, I mean -- and figure out what his next move will be. I'll bet anything that they're setting some sort of trap for Superman, that this is just one giant play for power," Lois was ranting, invisible behind the wall of flowers and paper above Clark's head.

He popped the locket open with one thumb, breathlessly cautious lest he should accidentally damage this precious thing.

Inside, a tiny scroll of paper, a long-dead way in which Lex had once sent love-notes to Clark -- microscopic printing which only Clark's eyes could make out without the aid of a lens. It was further encoded in Kryptonian, and it read, together they will be the balance between good and evil.

Clark's throat closed. Once, over a decade ago, he and Lex had decided that those words could hold a different meaning than the bleak and endless battle they seemed to evoke.

"Like this," Lex had said, tracing a circular symbol onto Clark's naked stomach. "Yin and yang. They cannot exist apart, and each grants something of its nature to the other."

"Without darkness," Clark had extrapolated, "light would have no meaning."

"It's more than that," Lex had said, clambering up over Clark's hips to straddle his body and lean in for a kiss. "It's that we have to be each other's balancing points. If we lose this --" and Clark had laughed at the very idea -- "If we do," Lex had persisted, "then we lose the thing that makes us whole." Then, with a dizzying dip of ginger lashes, Lex had said, "You make me a good man."

Clark had felt something burst into glorious laughter deep inside of him as Lex spoke the words, and he had turned Lex onto his back and dipped down to kiss his chest, whispering, "You keep me human."

"Clark?" Lois said, and true to her earlier promise, Clark felt the pointy tip of a Jimmy Choo jamming into his rear end. "Are you with me?"

Clark snapped the locket shut and stood up abruptly, turning to face Lois. "I can't," he said, unapologetic. "I have to go -- I'm meeting a source."

"A source on this story?" Lois asked eagerly. "Excellent, I'll bring the tape recorder."

"No, I promised I'd go alone," Clark improvised quickly. He wasn't at all certain that he wasn't simply walking into Lex and Lucas's trap, but he couldn't bear the thought of Lex invoking that long-ago moment for such a purpose.

"So I'll hide," Lois said, rolling her eyes. "Come on, Smallville, let's go."

"No." Clark didn't mean to say it as sharply as he did, but the word slipped through his lips with surprising vehemence.

Lois blinked at him, shocked. "Okay," she said, obviously hurt. "Okay, have it your way. I'll go after Lucas, you go meet your source. But you'd better have something for me when I get back. I'm tired of being the only one devoting any time to this partnership."

"You know," Clark snapped, "that's bullshit."

"Is it? Where were you all day?" Lois demanded, angrily driving one arm into her coat sleeve.

"Why does it matter?" Clark exploded, uncertain why he was taking this so personally. "Can't you just trust that, whatever I'm doing, it's important? I can't just -- drop everything the second you think you might need to see my face. You can't depend on me to be there for you, help you with all the decisions, make sure that you're doing everything right all the time!"

"Who the fuck are you yelling at, Smallville?" Lois exclaimed, furious and baffled. "Because it sure as hell isn't me! Since when do I depend on you for anything other than having the most excruciatingly awful fashion sense in the Western hemisphere?"

That pulled Clark up short, and he realized that he'd been holding that particular sentiment carefully in check for years. "I'm sorry," Clark said, embarrassed and yet still trembling with anger. "I -- I'm sorry."

Lois threw her purse over her shoulder, tossed Clark a cold glare, and left the newsroom at a quick pace.

Clark had to remind himself not to crush the locket into a little ball, so tightly were his fists clenched. He wasn't ready to meet Lex like this. It could only devolve into another shouting match.

It was odd, though, the things he'd shouted at Lois. Because that was what it came down to, with Lex. Clark felt responsible -- as though Lex were Clark's wayward child and every person Lex injured was a person Clark had failed to save. Lex had called Clark his compass, and Clark -- he had never quite felt up to the task. He should have admitted it long before now, but Clark had failed Lex, and that was what was so spectacularly galling about the whole situation. Clark, who by night was the conscience of an entire world, by day couldn't handle the job for a single man. But Clark had taken Lex anyway, taken him with all his flaws and his trust, because Clark was selfish and he'd wanted Lex for himself, because of the way Lex made him feel.

Beloved.

Unique.

Human.

But for all their talk of epic friendships and legendary balances, Clark and Lex had proven themselves unworthy of either epithet. Lex was only a mortal man who'd gladly foisted the responsibility for his ethics off on his superhuman boyfriend. And Clark was only a lonely and secretly misanthropic hero who had depended solely on Lex -- at first, to give him something to fight for, and then, later, something to fight against.

Clark opened his fist to look at the locket again, feeling a tight and uneasy smile curl over his lips.

Midnight.

Clark dithered a bit about what to wear, which would have felt amazingly girly except that Lex's long-ago comment about Superman coming to take him away was fresh in Clark's mind. If he went as Superman, he was going as Naman, and he would have that disguise to keep his mind clearer, his emotions at bay.

Going as Clark Kent was much more dangerous, but it was also more likely to lay Lex open, make him more honest. Lex had never been able to lie to Clark as easily as he'd lied to Superman over the years.

Then there was the issue of Clark's pants, and the way that none of them would quite fasten over his stomach. When Clark pushed at his belly in frustration, thinking that fat should be more compressible, he discovered that he wasn't actually battling cellulite. Instead, the slight convex shape of his abdomen seemed to be due to a small but hard muscular mass just under Clark's navel. He could feel it, like a large orange or a small grapefruit, distending his skin.

Did Kryptonians get cancer? Clark flattened his palm over his belly and pushed, disturbed by the intractability of the mass. But a glance at the clock showed that it was already ten to midnight, and Clark pushed aside his fears once again.

He would have to wear track pants or leave his top button undone.

In the end, Clark settled for an old and worn-in pair of jeans, soft around the waistband and secured with a doubled up elastic band which was neatly concealed by the tail of a too-long t-shirt from college. He walked to LuthorCorp Tower and then, casually leaning up against one of the side walls of the enormous building, bent his legs and make a rapid upward leap.

Lex was waiting for him, of course, pretend-casual even without the slightest wisp of a reason to be on the roof of his building.

"You took out the kryptonite," Clark observed, feeling his feet hit the asphalt roof without the usual stumbling landing.

"Actually, it's just shielded," Lex answered, looking up from his contemplation of his feet. "Easier to run a thin layer of lead through the walls than to excavate the meteor rock."

"More expensive," Clark countered as the wind whipped up and buffeted his body. "And, I suppose, more easily reversed."

Lex didn't blink. "Both are true." He took his hands out of his pockets and stepped closer, narrowing the distance between them to about fifteen feet. "But it seems like you don't need a meteor rock to make you sick these days."

Clark felt a blush rise like a heavy stain on his cheeks, and blamed it on the whipping wind. "It's a situation. The AI is looking into it."

If Lex knew it was a lie, he didn't let it show. He tilted his chin in some slight acquiescence and took another few steps. "Earlier, you asked me about Lucas, and I refused to answer."

Clark said nothing in response. Two more steps from Lex, and now they were less than ten feet apart.

"I should have answered," Lex said, taking Clark's silence as a cue to continue. "What he was planning concerns you, and you have every right to know about it. My reluctance to see the story in the press isn't an adequate reason to hold back vital information."

"Lucas knows. Maybe not who I am, but maybe enough to guess," Clark supplied. "Enough to hurt me if he wanted to."

"Yes," Lex agreed simply. "And he wanted to."

"Wanted?" Clark repeated. "Past tense? Have you lowered yourself to fratricide? Or is he just conveniently out of contact again?"

For the first time, Lex's eyes flashed a warning at Clark, but his voice when he spoke was void of any antipathy. "I bought him off. I'll keep him out of jail any way I can, and he disappears. I don't care where, as long as your secrets stay secrets."

"My secrets? Seems like you thought they were yours to give away," Clark rejoined. With every step Lex took towards him, Clark was finding it more and more difficult to rein in the old instincts, to avoid anger and accusation. Lex was a bare four feet away by now.

Lex swallowed and his hands went back into his pockets. "It won't help, but Lucas wasn't granted that information on my orders. The fact remains that he should never have had access, I know. But that was before -- before the investigation. The leak has been stopped up and everything I had on you has been expunged from the corporate database."

Three feet. Clark's breath was trapped somewhere under his diaphragm, and he caught tantalizing drifts of Lex's scent on the wind with every shallow breath.

"I still have my own materials, of course. Things you gave me, before," Lex said.

"Samples?" Clark asked, suspicious and increasingly defensive. Two feet.

"Print-outs."

Lex had been fascinated with the AI, and Clark had once ordered it to print out a comprehensive summary of Krypton, its people and its culture, as a birthday gift to Lex. Ten days and a small plane-load of documents later, Lex had been gifted with an enormous wealth of Kryptonian-coded knowledge. He'd started working through the translation that very night, lying naked and grinning amidst a snowdrift of papers. Clark had tenderly placed a single title sheet that read, 'Sexuality' over Lex's bare ass when Lex had finally fallen asleep.

Clark had forgotten all about it until this moment, and he flushed with anger at himself that he should have left such a valuable and dangerous weapon in the hands of his erstwhile nemesis.

"I'm not mentioning it to taunt you, Clark," Lex said, reading Clark's tortured expression far too easily. "I bring it up because I'm probably the world's only human expert on Kryptonian physiology. I know for a fact that I know far more than you do about your own body."

Clark suddenly found himself wondering why Lex had stopped where he had, stalled just within arm's reach, but frustratingly far away. "You know my body," Clark echoed, but without the clinical detachment Lex had managed.

"I've made it a point of study only recently, however," Lex said, disregarding Clark's shift in body language. "Since the charity function." He leveled a gaze at Clark, forcing Clark's attention away from the open collar of Lex's shirt. "Since you became ill."

It was much easier to blink past the sudden haze of attraction, provided with this stimulus. "You -- knew?" Clark asked, torn between annoyance and a trifling amount of pleasure.

Lex ignored the question. "Your sleep patterns went to hell, your food intake doubled, you've been short-tempered and impossible at work, you've barely seen your parents, your superhero duties have fallen by the wayside, and today wasn't the first day you were sick to your stomach, was it?"

"You knew," Clark repeated, not a question this time. Lex had always been amazing at straddling the border between eerily compulsive obsession and endearing concern, but Clark had had no idea that the addiction had continued past the end of their fractured relationship. He was equal parts horrified and touched.

"That's why I wanted to meet you tonight," Lex said, still matter-of-fact, still stubbornly two feet away.

"That's why you caught Lucas so quickly," Clark breathed in return. "Because you were tracking me, not him."

"I was tracking both of you," Lex corrected neatly. "I knew he was planning something, and as soon as your path converged with his, my team moved. Happily, it turned out to be an unlucky coincidence for Lucas."

"You care that much?" Clark asked. "That he might hurt me?"

Lex's eyes skidded off to the left for the first time, breaking his intent gaze. "I cared. But -- Clark, do you realize that you're carrying my child?"

Clark opened his mouth, sure that he was about to hurtle an insult to Lex's hard-earned sanity or maybe just erupt into laughter, but instead found himself standing with his mouth open and one palm tugging up his t-shirt to show the elastic band underneath. Clark looked down, disconcerted to see that the bump was visible from this angle, and said, simply, "Yeah. I kind of figured."

Clark looked up again to see Lex's reaction and found that Lex had finally closed in another foot, his hand outstretched, and Clark might have been a forward-thinking 21st-century kind of homosexual man, but if Lex so much as laid a finger on Clark's pregnant belly, Clark would break his hand off at the wrist.

But Lex's hand wasn't headed for Clark's stomach -- it was grasping at his upper arm, and Clark couldn't understand why exactly Lex's entire body was suddenly getting smaller and sort of dark-splotchy until he hit the ground.

When Clark opened his eyes again, he half-expected to be in some bright-white lab, surrounded by technicians in coats with purple Ls on them, but apparently his fainting spell hadn't lasted that long. In fact, Lex was still in the process of kneeling down beside Clark with an alarmed look on his face.

"When's the last time you ate anything?" Lex asked, frowning.

Clark tried to sit up but sagged back as the black splotches invaded his vision once more. "Don't be stupid," he said irritably. "I don't have low blood sugar. I'm a fucking invulnerable alien! I'm solar powered!"

"Right," Lex said, but not in a tone of voice which was agreeing with Clark, or even humoring him. No, it was a tone of utter dismissal, because Lex had apparently already decided on a course of action. "Can you stand?"

"I can fly!" Clark shouted, but when he went to prove it, he ended up slinging his arms around Lex's neck to keep from falling back on his ass. "Did you deshield your kryptonite?" Clark demanded, too irritated to properly appreciate the close-up view of Lex's blue eyes.

"No, you arrogant ass, you're starving my only shot at having an heir," Lex sighed impatiently, lowering Clark back to the ground and untangling himself from Clark's arms. "Stay here. I'll go and get something for you to eat."

"I'm fine," Clark insisted, but Lex was already gone and the asphalt was actually pretty comfortable.

Pregnant. Fuck. Lois was going to love this.

No, Lois wasn't going to know about this. No one was, except maybe his parents and Lex. Though how Clark was going to explain suddenly having a -- but Clark couldn't think that far ahead. He could barely think past the part where he was pregnant with Lex's spawn and for fuck's sake, this was actually way worse than ejaculating at muzzle velocity. It was worse than burning the training wheels off his bike, or running to Mexico, or

Except maybe the day that he'd lost Lex. That had been pretty bad.

And where was Lex, anyway? He seemed to be taking a long time getting back, and maybe Clark was a little hungry, now he thought about it, because suddenly he was picturing all the things he'd like to be eating at the moment and Lex was taking too damn long and Clark was going to curl up and die of starvation here on the roof.

"I found some Certs," Lex announced breathlessly.

"Certs?" Clark echoed, certain that he was now hallucinating, because he'd just been mentally eating his way through an enormous steak with a side of mashed potatoes and, for some reason, butterscotch pudding, and Lex was offering him fricking breath mints? "You were gone for three hours and all you could find was Certs?"

"I was gone for two minutes and I don't keep food in my office," Lex replied, a little archly.

"You are a bazillionaire!" Clark shouted. "Have someone make food!"

"I didn't want anyone to know you're on the roof when there's no plausible explanation for how you got here," Lex said, all too reasonably. "Have a mint and when you're acting less like Godzilla, we'll go and grab something at a diner."

Clark scowled, but took the roll of mints and shot them all into his mouth, one after another, just because that would bug Lex. Still, Lex might have had a valid thought in that giant bald head of his, because moments after the first mint hit his stomach, some of the sparkly fog that seemed to have surrounded Clark's brain began to drift away, and by the time the package was empty, Clark was able to sit up without clinging to Lex like the heroine of a Harlequin romance.

"You can't do that," Lex said, reaching out a steadying hand as Clark clambered to his feet. Clark batted the hand away. "You have to eat regularly. You can get energy from the sun, but the fetus needs sustenance in the form of nutrients, specific amino acids and fatty acids to make nucleic bases."

Clark clenched his jaw to keep several of the stronger swear words inside his head, then turned to face Lex. "You don't get to do this," he spoke. "If I need your help, I'll ask for it."

"You need my help," Lex returned, a bit more heat seeping into his formerly cool and logical tone.

Clark was about to retort that he needed no such thing, but then he remembered that, if nothing else, Lex could help explain how this had all happened. Clark was still too far gone in a general sense of shock to think about 'how', but he sensed that sooner or later, the dampening effect of the surprise would end, and Clark might then regret having pushed Lex away. And, as far as tutors went, Lex was generally far less irritating than the Fortress's AI.

"I want a burger," Clark said, because it was still his predominant thought. "And a butterscotch milkshake. And onion rings."

"Can you fly?" Lex asked, tone carefully matter-of-fact.

"I'll meet you at the Vine Street cafe," Clark decided, ignoring the question. "Ten minutes."

"Ten minutes," Lex agreed, and headed back towards the stairwell into the building.

Clark spent the next nine and a half minutes quietly gathering his strength again before dashing off towards the Vine Street cafe. The really annoying part was that Lex probably knew it, too.

For an hour, over two mushroom burgers and three orders of onion rings (Lex sipped a cup of coffee and picked at a slice of lemon meringue pie), Clark got the standard sex education class he had apparently never been granted as a twelve-year-old back in Smallville.

"I always thought I was male," Clark said, leaning in to look at the diagram Lex had scrawled on a napkin. "Jor-El called me his son."

"You are a male," Lex agreed. "On Krypton, you would have been called a man and you would have most likely been expected to marry a woman and she would have borne your children, just like humans."

"Except for the part," Clark said around a mouthful of onion, "where you knocked me up."

Lex tapped his pen on the third testicle in his line diagram. "This isn't a sperm-producing gonad, though," he restated. "This is an ovary."

"Undery," Clark corrected absently, thinking of Chloe and senior biology.

Lex rolled his eyes. "It contains oocytes, okay? The things that produce ova? Eggs?"

"But I don't -- ovulate, do I?" Clark asked, feeling pained by the very idea.

"You do," Lex said, sinking all Clark's hopes. "But think of this as an emergency back-up system in your species. Your body's resources are normally dedicated to all the functions of a normal male animal -- sperm production, testosterone production, facial hair, erections, etc."

Clark nodded, trying not to blush at Lex's bluntness.

"But -- and this is pure theory, you understand, Kryptonian evolutionary theory -- at some point, natural selection began selecting for mammals who had developed this secondary gonadic function. Say there's some natural catastrophe, and a population of brothodniks -- that's a kind of antelope thing -- was decimated to the point that there were only three females left. Well, that might be the end of the brothodniks, except for this function. See, all Kryptonian mammals are recessively hermaphroditic -- all have a secondary gonad of the opposing sexual function which can, if necessary, produce gametes compatible with another mammal of the same sex."

Clark swallowed a large gulp of butterscotch milkshake, pretending that he'd understood any of what Lex had said.

Lex must have sensed Clark's helplessness, however, because he restated his explanation in simpler terms. "Clark, on Krypton, all boys could have babies."

"So -- why didn't they? All have babies?" Clark asked.

"From what I understand, the function was considered culturally vestigial, if not biologically so. It happened, rarely, but for the most part, Kryptonians bred like humans."

"And how --" Clark began, then stopped for another onion ring.

"Well, in most Kryptonians, the secondary gamete isn't properly stimulated during the pubescent phase of development, and if it's not stimulated, the function is lost." Lex seemed to be examining his pie more closely, which seemed like a bad sign coming from a man who had never, in Clark's knowledge, been embarrassed by the topic of sex.

"How does it get stimulated?" Clark asked, darkly. If this came down to Lex's fingers in Clark's ass one day when he was eighteen, Jonathan and Martha would probably spontaneously die of shock.

Lex tilted his head in a quick gesture of dismissiveness. "Well, you have to understand, Clark, that had you been raised in Kryptonian society, you would never have --"

"Lex!" Clark exclaimed, impatient.

"You played with your balls," Lex blurted. "You were probably about fourteen or fifteen, and you played with your balls and that's all it took."

Glad he hadn't had any milkshake in his mouth at the time of this revelation, Clark snorted. "Oh, god, it didn't make me gay, it made me a woman," he giggled, feeling more than a little unhinged.

"On Krypton, there were strict religious practices in almost every culture, proscribing any sort of contact with the testicles for boys under the age of majority," Lex continued, more calmly, "and as for the girls --"

Clark snorted again, picturing himself walking around in high school wearing some sort of titanium chastity belt for boys.

"-the stimulation process is much more complex and involves exposure to certain pheromones, so --"

"It's okay," Clark assured Lex, freeing him of his compulsive need to overexplain. "Just -- please tell me the baby isn't coming out my ass," he grinned, momentarily touching Lex's hand for reassurance.

Lex went several shades paler and little lines appeared on either side of his mouth. "Actually, the process of conception is interesting," he said, quickly.

"Lex..." Clark repeated, more urgently, his grin fading.

"Considering that we've only rarely had unprotected anal sex, and considering the general lack of contemporary knowledge due to the rarity of the sample population on Krypton, I'm tempted to guess that manual stimulation of the ovary during anal intercourse is the thing that triggers ovulation. I mean, I'm projecting here, but just based on the fact that you always come so hard when I -- when I did that, I think that may be how we wound up in this situation, so to speak, just a random accident and yet I'm surprised that it didn't happen years ago. I mean, we were never shy about that part of your sexual anatomy, right? So I figure --"

"Lex," Clark said, more loudly. "Out of my ass?" This last drew the attention of the few patrons in the cafe, but Clark was beyond caring.

"Well, the mammalian male uterus on Krypton is actually just a sort of annex off of the transverse colon, and the birth canal is capable of tremendous muscular dilation in the throes of labor, so --"

The rest drifted into meaningless sound as Clark lowered his forehead to rest against the cool diner table.

The shock was returning anew.

When Clark's alarm went off the next morning, he'd only had about half an hour of sleep. He'd gotten home late after spending another hour in the diner with Lex, alternately declaring that he wanted to remain completely ignorant of what was going to happen and demanding that Lex explain yet again. Even after returning home -- his parting with Lex flooded with so much emotional ambiguity that Clark still had no idea if they were fighting again -- Clark had been unable to sleep, consumed with recurring waves of disbelief and nervous exploration of his changing body.

Lex had said eleven months, but that, he had explained, was the gestational term for a pure-blooded Kryptonian. With a half-human fetus, the term could be shorter.

"Or," Lex had said, all too casually, "the fetus could prove to be non-viable. The genetic equation might not add up. You could still miscarry."

And Clark had stayed awake at least half an hour longer because of that, loathing himself for the quick surge of hope and joy which had arisen at Lex's words.

Now, however, Clark was listening to the squawking of his alarm clock and clinging to his mattress, wondering how exactly he'd never noticed that mornings made him want to vomit profusely.

He carefully rolled onto his back and tugged at his flannel pajamas to study the lump there in the light of day. It was some consolation, however strange, to know that his body was designed for this, even if it was only as an emergency back-up system. It made Clark less hesitant to feel for himself, trace the surprisingly firm outlines of what Lex called the colo-uterine annex. Letting his hand move further down, as he had done the night before last, Clark gently fingered his testicles, one, two, and three, trying to determine which was the aberrant one, but he could discern no obvious difference. However, he couldn't deny that the touch of his fingers didn't make him as aroused as they usually did, which all went to support Lex's theory of ovulation being the reason this could make Clark's eyes roll back in his head. Since he wasn't going to ovulate, Clark supposed, the pleasurable sensation was gone, at least until --

Again, Clark couldn't think that far ahead. Instead, he moved his hand up to his semi-erect cock and gave it a welcoming stroke. Still a guy, Clark assured himself, grunting as he got harder and his hips tilted into the welcome warmth of his closed fist. Only guys can masturbate even when they feel like hurling.

Clark closed his eyes and let his mind wander, habitually picking over fond memories of things he and Lex had once done, not feeling as self-antagonistic as usual when his thoughts drifted from memory to fantasy. What would he do, if he had Lex's naked body under him right now? Clark would use his fingers and mouth to map all the changes time had wrought, and he'd make Lex stay perfectly still and submissive until Clark was certain he'd found every little familiar place and every place that had changed in his absence. Then, and only then, would Clark let Lex use his hands too, and Clark would get on his knees and let Lex fuck him from behind, because that was Lex's favorite. He loved the little noises Lex would make when he got really close, the way his thrusts stuttered and grew shallow and rapid, Lex clutching at Clark's hips as though Clark was slipping between his fingers, dissipating into the air, and Clark would -- he would --

Clark lifted his hand up to his mouth and sucked on one of his knuckles, keeping his eyes closed and imagining that he was tasting Lex instead of himself.

Clark really hoped that he and Lex weren't still fighting.

It just happened to be casual Friday at the Planet, which couldn't have suited Clark better. He pulled on the jeans from the previous night, fastened them with a blue elastic band (to better match his blue button-down shirt), and headed off to work. He would have to face Lois and make up some sort of story about his non-existent meeting with the source, but he was drawing a blank on how to proceed. It was hard to concentrate on strategy, the way his mind was darting around, first from his evening with Lex, then to his vague wishes for their future, then to the disconcerting recollection that he was pregnant, and then, ever so briefly, touching on the reality of that fact before veering back into what he was going to tell Lois.

Mom will be excited, he thought, rounding the corner onto 45th, and quickly considered simply saying to Lois that his contact hadn't shown up.

And later, as he waited for a light to cross 6th avenue: I'll have to move into a two-bedroom apartment, followed by the vague hope that Lois would still be on a high from the shoe sale.

And, as he stepped into the elevator at the Planet: oh, god, what if it's a girl? He didn't know anything about girls, and what little he knew was warped by his long association with Lois.

Lois, who -- wasn't at her desk.

Clark stopped short, staring across the noisy bullpen, and blinked twice. He glanced across at the huge wall clock and confirmed for himself that it was eight o'clock, and then looked back, because not only was Lois not at her desk, her computer was turned off and her coat wasn't tossed across Clark's own desk as usual.

"Hey, CK, are you putting on a little weight?" Jimmy asked, dancing sideways into Clark's sightline, shuffling papers and grinning. Jimmy's crush on Clark was the worst-kept secret in the Planet newsroom, but at the moment, Clark couldn't summon his habitual kind-but-distant older brother act.

"Where is she?" Clark asked, grabbing Jimmy's upper arm. "Did she call in sick?"

"Who?" Jimmy asked, his young features all-too-clearly broadcasting 'He touched me!'

"Lois!" Clark shouted, frustrated. "It's eight o'clock, Jimmy, and she's not at her desk." He released his hold on Jimmy's arm and headed for Lois's desk, Jimmy trailing after him hopefully.

"Maybe she got caught in traffic?" Jimmy suggested, and Clark rolled his eyes.

"Lois doesn't --" Clark began to mutter, sweeping his hand through the clutter on Lois's desk, but he stopped as his eye caught the blinking message light on Lois's phone. "She has a message," Clark said.

"So?" Jimmy was now perching on the edge of the desk, obviously trying for cuteness with a dimpled grin and a tilted head.

"So," Clark repeated, exasperated. "So, Lois checks her messages every three minutes. She's compulsive about it." He picked up the receiver and dialed her voice mail, pausing for a moment before pressing the month-day code of the date when Lois had met Superman for the first time.

"How do you know her --" Jimmy began to ask, but Clark silenced him with the wave of a hand.

One new message, two thirty-six a.m. last night.

"Kal-El," said a male voice, "I apologize for not using your own phone line, but I couldn't risk having anyone else hear this message, and your voice mail is closely monitored. This is Lucas Luthor, and I have a job for you. If you value your partner's life, you'll do as I say. I will send directions later today and I expect to see you by my side no later than noon. Not doing so will have -- oh, wait, I'll let Lois speak for herself."

There was a rustle and a rough indistinguishable order, and then Lois came on the line, sounding utterly terrified under a thin layer of bravery. "Superman, don't -- he won't hurt me, but he can hurt you, and I'm all he's g-" But this was interrupted by an abrupt shriek of pain.

Lucas's voice, when he returned, was far rougher and angrier. "If you think for a second that I will hesitate to go after every single person you love," he threatened, "let Lois Lane be the first to suffer."

Clark deleted the message when prompted by the automated system, ignoring Jimmy's questions. He was used to having Lois's life hang in the balance, since she seemed to get herself kidnapped with alarming regularity -- but this was different, because Lucas knew -- he knew everything. Because of Lex.

"He escaped last night," Lex spoke, and Clark looked up, suddenly aware of the hush that must have descended as Lex entered the Planet's newsroom. "He killed Mercy on his way out." Lex looked as tired as Clark felt.

"I have to go," Clark began, flicking open the top button of his shirt in a gesture that meant nothing to anyone but Lex.

"No," Lex said, reaching out to touch Clark's wrist, to stop him. "Clark, you can't. Not this time."

Clark shook his head, brushing away Lex's touch. "I've handled worse," he said, referring obliquely to the kryptonite that Lucas would have waiting.

"But it's not just you anymore," Lex said, and this was every argument that had never ended back when they were breaking up, Lex telling Clark that Clark had to put them first, ahead of scared helpless people, ahead of injured children and frightened women -- except --

Except this time, 'not just you' didn't mean Clark and Lex. It meant --

Clark swallowed. "Is it dangerous?"

"It could be, we don't know," Lex replied. "But I can't let you go and find out firsthand."

There was a certain tone of voice that Lex used when he was very earnest, when what he was saying was underpinned by the deepest emotion, and Clark finally understood. This wasn't about them, this wasn't about that long-ago argument.

Lex wanted this child. Lex would overcome anything -- his own pride, Clark's stubbornness, the laws of nature and of God, if he had to -- to protect this precious thing that he wanted above everything else in the world. What had Lex said? You're starving my only shot at having an heir.

The meteor shower, of course. Lex hadn't thought he could be a father, perhaps truly couldn't be, except in the case of a strange alien-shaped miracle.

Lex didn't want Clark. He wanted what Clark represented.

Clark bowed his head for a moment, struggling to accept the grief of the realization.

When he looked up, he knew exactly what he was going to say to Lex.

Clark's mouth felt numb as he spoke. "What are we going to do, then?" Even in this dark moment, Clark discovered, he couldn't deny Lex what he wanted so badly.

The relief on Lex's face was stark and sudden. He had been expecting Clark to walk away, of course. It seemed to take him a moment to regain his calm, but when he did, his response was simple and direct. "Have you gotten a meeting place yet?"

"No, not yet," Clark said, edgily. If Lex thought he could leave Clark out of this, well, then --

"We'll have to wait for a while," Lex concluded, and walked around Clark to sit in Lois's chair.

"I'm helping," Clark said tersely, sitting at his own desk opposite.

"I know you are," Lex answered calmly, then frowned as he caught sight of the state of Lois's desk. "I'm assuming they didn't ransack this?" he asked.

"No," Clark smiled, in spite of himself, amused by the look of disgust on Lex's face. "That's just Lois's status quo. She swears there's a system."

"She," Lex said, in a succinct tone, "is never babysitting."

The message arrived at 11:34, which meant that Clark had spent most of the morning fending off inquiries from his co-workers about why Lex Luthor was camped out at Lois's desk, where Lois herself had gone, and if it was true that he had touched Olsen's arm. Luckily, Perry was away at a conference, so none of the interruptions to Clark and Lex's silent vigil were of a managerial nature.

"Did you have breakfast?" Lex asked, around 8:45, and when Clark admitted he hadn't, Lex had one delivered. Pancakes, sausage, fruit salad, and herbal tea, accompanied by a long lecture on prenatal nutrition from Lex, delivered in an undertone across the shared surface of Clark and Lois's desks.

At 10:15, when Clark excused himself to go to the washroom, he returned to find that Lex had broken down and was now reorganizing Lois's workspace. "She's going to kill you," Clark said, sitting down and absently rubbing a hand over the bump pushing at his waistband.

Lex merely arched an eyebrow at the thought that Lois's claims to privacy had any effect over his actions.

At 11:06, Lex ate a Krispy Kreme donut. Clark watched, fascinated equally by the phenomenon -- a Luthor eating a Krispy Kreme -- and the spectacle -- Lex licking at jelly filling with pointed pink tongue.

"What?" Lex asked, noticing Clark's interest. "I'm hungry."

Clark flushed and looked away. "Nothing."

Lex dusted a speck of Kreme off of Lois's newly pristine deskpad, then leaned forward and propped his chin on one palm. "Nothing?" he asked, now with a slight flicker of coyness.

Clark clenched his teeth. "Nothing."

"I meant to ask -- from a scientific perspective, of course -- but I didn't have a chance..." Lex said, not moving.

Clark hummed a reply, checking his e-mail with sudden energy.

"Is everything still functioning normally?" Lex asked, far too loudly for the newsroom, or so it seemed to Clark's burning ears. "I mean, below the belt."

"Lex," Clark hissed, deleting unfortunately-timed spam offering to enhance his male member.

"Because I wondered, you know, if the hormones might not flood your system and suppress any existing sex drive, or even sexual function." Lex scooted his chair further in and now rested his chin on his clasped fingers, even closer.

"Lex," Clark repeated, with a significant eye flicker towards the rest of the people surrounding them.

"Just -- yes or no. Can you still perform?" Lex asked. "For research purposes only."

Clark blushed and vowed not to respond. The vow lasted approximately 3.46 seconds because Clark was, as established previously, male, and as such, did not gracefully accept any implied slight to his sexual prowess. "Yes," Clark whispered hastily, and made the mistake of looking across to meet Lex's eyes, to catch his reaction.

Lex's reaction was all smoldering blue heat, making Clark's already tight pants reach truly alarming levels of tightness. "I'll -- make a note of it."

Clark swallowed and forced his gaze away, rolling his chair in a bit to better conceal the strain he was imposing on his fly.

The minutes between 11:13 and 11:34 were the longest yet, but Clark was barely decent to greet the courier when he arrived. Lex, who had been sharpening and sorting Lois's pencils, sat up with interest as Clark turned the envelope over, checking it with his x-ray vision. Just a sheet of paper, so Clark pulled the flap open and drew it out.

Lex was already behind him, reading over his shoulder (not unlike Lois would have done, in fact), so Clark didn't have to repeat what was before him: an address for a warehouse in the riverfront district, an industrial area, and a single injunction: <i>Come in uniform, alone.</i>

They had fewer than twenty-six minutes to decide on a course of action.

"So," Clark said, unused to this place behind battle lines, and trying to dispel the strangeness of the situation with conversation, "um, how long have you had a Superbot?"

Lex's expression grew stormy. This was really perfect payback for that whole 'performance' exchange earlier. "It's a prototype," Lex said in his best serious science-geek voice. "For a combat simulation room that I was --"

"You know," Clark said, cheerily, looking through the warehouse walls to where his LuthorCorp-manufactured robot counterpart was slowly clunking its way across the concrete floor, "I used to have this blanket I carried everywhere when I was a kid." He paused. "Huh. Don't know what made me think of that, just now."

Lex cleared his throat and lifted his binoculars, even though there was nothing he could see from his vantage point. "You wouldn't have thought it was so funny if I'd gone through with my plan to use kryptonite to power him," Lex muttered under his breath.

"I would have been laughing on the inside," Clark answered solemnly, and then they were interrupted by one of Lex's security techs, imparting some vital information as to the speed of Superbot's processor coils or something to that effect.

"Can you see where Lois is?" Lex asked when he returned his attention to looking out from the van, across to the warehouse.

"Yeah, she's trussed up in an armchair, on the third level." Clark would never admit it, but some part of him always secretly enjoyed seeing Lois with duct tape over her mouth.

Another pause. "Is there an elevator?"

"No, just st-are you serious?" Clark cried, catching onto Lex's hesitation a second too late. "He can't climb stairs?"

"I said, it's just a prototype," Lex snarled.

"Superman can fly!" Clark exclaimed, torn between hysteria and horror. "And Superbot is defeated by a series of rising steps?"

"I'm sure Lucas will come down to meet him," Lex reasoned, returning to calmness.

Clark scanned up to where Lucas and his goons were pacing. "Maybe I should nip in and just whisk him up the stairs," Clark began in a whisper, not wanting Lex's minions to overhear.

"No, too dangerous," Lex shook his head. "Patrick, can you radio the bot to wait at the foot of the stairs? Clark, we'll need your -- uh. Your Superman impression." Lex held out a device that looked far too high-tech to be a microphone, because it was beaming actual laser beams up at Clark's face. "It reads the configuration of your facial muscles," Lex explained, "and transmits the data to the bot. That way, his mouth will match the words you speak. There'll be a slight delay, but -- well. Superman's not that quick on the draw, after all."

Clark stuck out his tongue, then squinted across to watch the Superbot stick out its tongue a moment later, a seemingly incongruous moment of childishness. Pulling a few more grimaces, Clark caught a dark glance from Lex, and settled down to business. When the Superbot halted, Clark cleared his throat quietly and shouted. "Lucas Luthor!"

All the headphoned men in the van jumped.

"Show your face!" Clark bellowed, and raised his chin as though to look up because the bot looked undeniably strange shouting into a stair riser.

Lucas, upstairs, seized Lois and shoved her into the arms of two large men, murmuring hasty orders before heading for the stairs.

Clark started to whistle, wanting to see the bot try to imitate him, but Lex sighed theatrically, and Clark tried to regain a sense of the gravity of the situation.

You, he told himself, are knocked up. Just like Susie Yates back in sophomore year at Smallville High.

That did it. Clark set his jaw and began to speak, timing it so that Superbot opened its mouth just as Lucas stood before it. "What is it that you want, Luthor?" Lex shifted a little beside Clark, probably remembering all too well the many conversations between them which had begun with those very words.

"It's really very simple, Kal-El," Lucas said, inclining his head so that Lois would be displayed to full effect. "I want your assistance in obtaining several essential items."

Clark maintained a grim silence, wishing the bot would look at Lois. It was all wrong. He was supposed to be reassuring the hostage at this moment.

"As you probably recall, I find myself in a bit of a legal bind at the moment," Lucas began, and Clark bit his tongue against the quick rejoinder he would have inserted had it not been for the two second delay. "I need to leave the country, and I need a certain amount of cash to make my life what I think it ought to be."

"Come on, come on," Lex was saying quietly, watching the video feed from the bot's camera, which was trained on Lucas. "Don't wait to flash the kryptonite, it only makes it worse for you."

"I can't do that," Clark spoke, regretfully. "You broke the law, and you have to pay the pri-" Lex snorted "--ice." While the bot repeated Clark's line, Clark backed out of the lasers' light and glared at Lex. "What?" he hissed, looking across at Lex.

"Nothing. Just...I bet you say that to all the boys," Lex smirked.

"And meanwhile, you're rooting for your brother?" Clark asked, deeply annoyed.

"Just...oh, never mind."

"No, please tell me," Clark snapped, but then a nudge from Mike the sound tech drew Clark's attention to the fact that Lucas had stopped laughing and was now speaking again.

"...don't you think, Kal-El?" concluded Lucas, with menace.

It was exactly like math class in high school, Clark despaired. He had no idea what Lucas was asking, but he was compelled to answer. "I don't have time for your games, Luthor," Clark improvised, and Lex was actually giggling.

"You know, I think the robot would do a better job on its own," Lex commented between bursts of laughter.

"Sir, all the bot can say is --" began Mike, but he was quickly shushed by a gesture from Lex.

"Would you all stop back-seat Superbot-driving?" Clark whispered, turning back to find that he'd missed yet another comment from Lucas. "Shit!" But Clark was back in range of the microphone device, and a second later, the bot exclaimed, "Shit!", appearing somewhat annoyed.

"Look, where's the goddamn kryptonite?" Clark asked, exasperated as Lex began to chuckle again.

Lucas knew something was up, no question. His dark brows had drawn together and he seemed to notice for the first time that Superman seemed oddly focused on him. "What makes you think I need kryptonite?" Lucas asked, clearly trying to regain control. "I have Lois. I could --"

"You couldn't," Clark interrupted. "I could take off the heads of both your goons before you could even blink."

The line was eerie, delivered by the bot, which was still looking forward, still as the machinery it was.

"So where is it?" Clark demanded. "What, in your pocket?" Clark nodded at the bot's radio controller, and suddenly the bot had hauled Lucas up by the lapels, forcing the move.

A lead box tumbled out of Lucas's jacket as the Superbot patted him down. Its lid cracked open, and with a sigh of relief, Clark watched as the bot radio operator had the bot stoop down to pick up the green rock -- so innocuous-looking, at this distance -- and place it back in the box before crushing both, so the result was a lead-covered lump of harmless rock.

"What the --" said Lucas from the floor where the bot had dropped him. "What --"

And that was all he had time to say before Lex nodded and his security team burst through the doors, followed closely by Clark himself, in full Superman regalia. Lois shot him a grateful look as he tore the duct tape from her mouth, and the inevitable flood began.

"Superman, I knew something was wrong, what is that thing, who are all these people, where's Clark," Lois gasped, not pausing for an interrogatory lift on any given question.

"I was wrong and you were right," said someone behind Clark, and he turned around to find the Superbot now looking at him, face full of puzzlement. For a moment, Clark thought that someone else had taken over the controls in the van, but --

"I was wrong, and you were right," said the bot again, adding, as if for emphasis, "Lex."

"That's all it says?" Clark blurted, leaning in to stare at Lex, Mike, and the rest of the crew in the van through the bot's cam. "Okay, this thing? Is going to the Fortress. Right now."

The robot spoke again. "And what are you going to do with a combat prototype?" it demanded, sounding and looking remarkably like an irritated Lex.

"I don't know," Clark said, reaching out and tucking the bot under his arm. "Maybe the AI can program it to spank intruders or something."

The truth was, Clark needed to hear it one more time, just once more, to make it real. It happened almost as soon as Clark crossed the threshold.

"Good afternoon, Kal-El," said the AI warmly, then, after a moment's pause, "My scan of your body reveals that you are gestating a fetus."

"Say it again," Clark said, sighing, and leaning the disabled Superbot up against a wall.

"You are pregnant, Kal-El."

"Thank you," Clark murmured, and moved into a room outfitted with a chair that was somewhat comfortable by the AI's standards. Once he'd collapsed into it and tugged off his red boots (his feet were swollen), he closed his eyes, wiggled toes in blue tights, and ordered, "Tell me more."

"What do you wish to know?"

"What can you tell me?" Clark asked, not a little shortly.

"My scan is giving me results on all aspects of the fetus's physiology. I can describe the fetus's viability, its genetic make-up, its gender, its current heartrate, estimated date of delivery, estimated birth weight --"

"Start," Clark interrupted, "start with the first one. Is it viable?"

The AI whirred, then spoke. "Yes."

"And it's half-human?" Clark prompted.

"Yes. From its genetic material, I can confirm its paternity. Do you wish me to elaborate?"

"Don't bother," Clark waved his hand. "Lex Luthor, I know."

"That is consistent with my findings."

"And... when?" Clark asked.

The AI had to take a moment to analyze his tone and calculate the most likely 'when' Clark would be asking about. "Estimated delivery date is in thirty weeks."

"Boy or girl?" Clark asked, "or something in between?"

"The fetus is female," the AI answered. "Do you wish to see it?"

Clark watched the screen spool down from the ceiling. "Can you capture this on DVD or something that Lex can watch?" Clark asked impulsively.

"Yes," the AI said, a little proudly. "Shall I make a copy for your adoptive parents as well?"

Oh, hell.

"Yeah," Clark said, rubbing his temples and hearing the Superbot saying, faintly, "You were right, and I was wrong, Lex."

The screen flickered into not the grey and white ambiguity of a regular ultrasound, but into a full-colour Kryptonian scan. Pink, faint light, sugary-looking spun fine tissue, and --there. A tiny hand. A tiny hand, a tiny arm, the scan zoomed out slowly and Clark could see its heartbeat, god, the curves of its ribs like a bird, dark shadows of miniature bones, dark eyes without lids yet, big belly with a grayish cord trailing, and -- and -- it moved. It twitched, lightning-fast, and Clark laughed with shock.

"Is it fast, like me?" Clark asked, feeling his heart race and his breath get caught in his throat.

"The motion you see is the normal motion pattern of a human fetus," said the AI in a reassuring voice. "There is a 59% chance that your daughter will have some Kryptonian traits."

Another twitch, less unexpected this time, and Clark laid his fingers over his belly, pressed softly and watched the shock waves from his touch ripple across the screen.

"You were right and I was wrong," suggested the bot, its voice getting slower as its battery ran out.

"We were both wrong," Clark corrected. "But this time we're right. This -- she is right," Clark told Lex in a half-whisper.

Mindful of Lex's wrath if Clark showed up hungry on top of having stolen Lex's toy earlier in the day, Clark stopped at a favorite Thai take-out restaurant in Seattle before heading back to Metropolis. He caught his reflection in a pane of glass as he placed his order and the sight made it apparent that Superman should take a leave of absence posthaste because, it appeared, spandex was not a forgiving material when it came to pregnant bellies.

Pregnant. Clark sat down on a stool at the lunch bar and dove into his Pad Thai noodles, turning the word over in his mind. It had ceased to be a word that his mind automatically blanked out, so that had to be progress. But the fact of it was still astonishing, difficult to encompass beyond the stretching of spandex and an explanation for the constant hunger and fatigue that had seized him the past few weeks.

Take, for example, the simple conclusion that came of the fact -- that Clark would, in thirty weeks, bear a child.

Clark swallowed hard, blinking back white shock. 'Pregnant', he realized, might be an okay word to think, but 'baby' still needed some work.

The lies required to cover that development alone were monumental. What would he tell Lois and Perry and Jimmy? What would Superman tell the world? And how would he explain it, when suddenly he had a newborn baby girl with no mother in sight, nor any reasonable candidate for one? And how on earth could he possibly juggle being a single dad, a reporter, and an alien superhero? He had enough trouble with two of those things lately, and that was just from being pregnant. Maybe the AI could be a daycare?

"Superman, can you sign my backpack?" lisped a small child, and Clark set down the take-out container, pasting on an automatic smile. The petitioner was about six, with glossy nut-brown curls and blue eyes, and Clark felt himself go a bit weak in the stomach as he looked at her.

He knew nothing about girls.

Oh, god, he knew nothing about girls!

How, for example, was the little girl's hair suspended up in the air like that? Clark couldn't make out any elastic bands or barrettes, nothing obviously maintaining the little buoyant explosion of curls. Clark sought out the mother as he scrawled 'Love from Superman', and asked. "How did you do that with her hair?"

She seemed understandably surprised, but replied nonetheless. "Oh, we just use bobby pins."

Pins? For a child's head?

"Could you show me?" Clark asked, and now the mother was looking genuinely worried. But Clark added a hearty Super-smile to the mix, and his publicity won out over maternal suspicion. She reached down to her daughter's hair and plucked out a dark piece of metal, bent into a taut U.

Clark squinted at the thing, growing ever more dismayed with his appalling ignorance. "Thank you," he said.

The kid would just have to have a buzz cut until she was old enough to do it herself, Clark decided, or maybe they could fly to the farm every morning and enlist the help of --

But although he was getting to the point of contemplating maternity leave with relative ease, it was still far beyond Clark to imagine what on earth he was going to tell his parents. Clark hastily thanked the girl and her mother, took the bobby pin thing as a souvenir, and wolfed down the rest of his lunch.

"Hey, are you home?" Clark asked, as casually as though they hadn't conspired to arrest a murderer that very morning. Once this had been normal for them, and it was surprisingly easy to fall back into long-lost habit, Clark's cell phone cupped to his ear like a warm reminder of Lex himself.

"Yeah, just got back from the office," Lex answered, still sounding a bit frayed around the edges. "Are you coming over?"

"Thought I might," Clark answered, forcing himself to remember Lex was off-limits.

"Come and have dinner," Lex said, and Clark could hear him opening and closing the liquor cabinet. "We should talk."

"I'll be there in --" Clark checked his watch -- "twenty?"

"Sounds good," Lex agreed. "You ate lunch." Not a question.

"Pad Thai in Seattle."

"Good. See you soon."

Clark stopped himself from automatically closing with 'love you' and hung up in a slight panic, leaning his forehead against the cool metal of the bathroom stall.

The Planet men's bathroom was the only place where Lois wouldn't follow him. Clark had grown so accustomed to placing personal calls from its echoing depths that it only now occurred to him that Lois had taken the rest of the day off to recover from her kidnapping.

He would do a quick patrol of the city before he left, Clark decided, then checked his watch and sighed. He would have to leave now. And now really felt more like a 'sit and eat all the donuts while Lois isn't here to stop me' moment than an 'off to save the universe' moment.

Being Superman was tiring.

Lex was a deceitful, twisted, cruel, and insensitive son of a bitch.

There was no other reason why Clark should have walked into the penthouse and found, for the second time, that Lex had invited Clark's parents to dinner without telling him.

Martha and Jonathan were beaming like Clark had just invented cold fission, each holding a drink, not uncomfortable this time because they thought they knew the steps to this particular dance. Clark blinked against the sight, turned to kill Lex dead with a flash of heat vision, and discovered that their host had done a disappearing act.

Lex was a deceitful, twisted, cruel, insensitive and cowardly son of a bitch.

"Clark!" exclaimed Martha, standing up so Clark could greet her properly. "We were so surprised to get Lex's call this afternoon, but -- oh, Clark." This last in a tone that Clark hadn't heard from his mother since before he and Lex had split up. "Oh, Clark, we're just -- is this what all the fuss was about, yesterday?"

"Sort of," Clark hedged, embracing his mother and his father in turn. "So, what did Lex say?"

"Just that he would like us to come up for dinner," Jonathan answered, all too pleased. "That the two of you had news to share."

"Does that have anything to do with it?" Martha asked, and for a long moment, Clark didn't know what she meant. Then he followed the direction of her nod and realized she was referring to the DVD case he held in one hand -- the DVD the AI had produced at Clark's request.

"Oh, this?" Clark asked, tossing it on an end table. "Nah, that was just for -- later. You know, a movie after dinner."

Lex came back into the room holding a plate of crostini and antipasto. "Clark, do you want me to stay while you tell them the news?" he asked pointedly.

"You should stay, Lex," Martha said, "if it involves both of you."

"Lex, can I talk to you for a second?" Clark asked, because this was not a decision Lex got to make unilaterally, not this time around.

Lex was about to say no, but he must have observed the gathering determination on Clark's face, and guessed (correctly) that Clark was far more difficult to manipulate now than he had been ten years ago. "Excuse us," he said graciously to the Kents, laying the tray on the coffee table.

The minute they were in Lex's office with the door closed, Clark began to speak. "What the hell do you think you're doing?' he exploded.

"They need to know, Clark!" Lex answered hotly, his anger a sure sign that he knew Clark was right.

"But we need to discuss it first, Lex! This isn't like last time! We haven't been keeping them in the dark about something that's settled between us -- shit, Lex, we don't even know how we're going to split custody, what I'm going to tell people, how we're going to deal with the next thirty weeks and the thirty years after that! This isn't time to tell my parents!"

"Custody?" Lex repeated, very quietly, all his fury suddenly gone.

Clark was about to light into Lex again, but the sight of Lex's expression stopped him. "You were afraid I would cut you out of it," Clark breathed, his anger fading. "You thought I'd actually keep your child from you?"

"It wasn't an unreasonable suspicion, given our recent past," Lex said, defensively.

"So you brought them, thought you'd force me to tell them in front of you so that they would know that the -- that it was yours, too?" Clark continued, torn between laughter and annoyance.

"You know," Lex said, almost fiercely. "You know, Clark -- this is my only chance, I won't get to have this any other time, any other way."

"I know that," Clark agreed, forcing his voice to be calm. "And I wouldn't keep her from you, Lex. You think I would do that?"

Lex looked down at his shoes, blinking fast. He seemed to collect himself in a moment, looking up. "You did say 'her', didn't you?"

Clark nodded, and Lex looked away again. "Her."

They were both silent, and at length, Clark sighed. "Okay, we'll tell them. But -- Lex, whatever happens, this is your daughter too."

The Kents were stirring with unease when they returned to the living room, no doubt having heard Clark and Lex's raised voices.

"Clark, what is going on? You're worrying both of us here," Jonathan demanded, as Lex sat down in an armchair.

Clark hovered uncertainly for a moment, sat, then stood again. "Maybe I'll show you," Clark said, and for an insane moment, thought he might just pull up his shirt and show off the elastic on his jeans button. But he thought better of it and retrieved the DVD provided by the AI.

Lex had to come over to help Clark battle the entertainment system, and he kept shooting Clark inquisitive looks over the DVD. "Just wait," Clark murmured. "You'll see."

They sat, Lex on one side of the room, Clark on the other, and the Kents began to shift a little nervously, because by now they would have noticed that the body language between Clark and Lex was not at all romantic. Lex picked up an enormous remote, pressed a button, and --

The room filled with a soft watery whooshing, a fetal heartbeat in surround sound, and Clark found himself watching not his parents, but Lex, wanting to measure his reaction when he saw --

The way the knuckle bones gleamed through pink skin like pearls. The way red and purple vessels snaked across the surface of the tiny arm, the narrow shoulders. The way the baby jumped abruptly, and Lex jumped too, face gone quiet and focused with fascination.

"I don't understand," Martha said first, breaking the silence.

Clark stood again and did what his mind had first suggested -- he pulled up the front of his blue shirt and turned so that they could see. "It's a girl," Clark said. "And it's ours."

It seemed like a bad joke when the first reaction was Clark's father clutching a hand to his chest. "Jonathan!" cried his mother, and Lex shot an accusatory glance Clark's way, as though he should have somehow guarded against this possibility.

"No, I'm fine," Jonathan protested, and indeed, his expression was trapped between a grimace and a smile. "Just -- Martha, the pills in my coat."

As Martha scurried off, Clark rushed to put an arm around his father's neck, sitting down next to him on the couch. "I'm sorry, Dad, I know this must be a hell of a surprise."

"Surprise," Jonathan laughed breathlessly. "Here we thought we'd never -- thanks, sweetheart" -- as he accepted the pills -- "never have a grandchild, and we always wanted a little girl in the family."

"That's what you're surprised about?" Clark asked, blinking. "Not the part where your son is pregnant?"

Jonathan's face was still a little ashen, and Lex (who by now was also hovering next to Jonathan) reached out to smack the back of Clark's head in response to his statement. "Son, this is by far one of the least shocking things your body can do," Jonathan said, smiling at Lex. "At least this time, it's something other people do."

"Other women," Clark clarified carefully. "I'm a man." Perhaps Jonathan wasn't getting enough oxygen to his brain?

Jonathan waved a hand in the air, dismissing this technicality, then shook his head. "A little girl. Who'd have dreamed it?"

"We can make up the sewing room," Martha said, her voice too bright, containing more of the panic Clark had expected from his father. "In pink. Isn't it nice to know already that it's a girl?"

"Mom, I'm not moving home," Clark informed her, still absently patting his father's back.

"Well, you're certainly not doing this alone," Martha said, more sharply. "And you can't stay in Metropolis."

"Why can't he?" Lex asked, entering the conversation for the first time. "And he won't be alone."

"I didn't mean to imply," Martha amended hastily, "except I had the impression that you two weren't --"

"We aren't," Lex said, abruptly. "But I intend to be there for Clark."

"She can come for summer vacations, and on weekends," Jonathan murmured happily, taking another pill and briskly rubbing his hand over his heart.

Martha broke eye contact with Lex and settled down on the couch on the other side of her husband. "We should still make up a room for her, you never know when you might like us to watch her."

"Have you thought of names?" asked Jonathan suddenly. "Ethel was my mother's name."

"Ethel!" repeated Lex, looking as though he might need a heart pill himself.

"Dad, that's a little premature," Clark interjected.

"Jonathan, you can't call a tiny baby 'Ethel'," said Martha censoriously. "Besides, it's our family tradition to use a maiden name. Maybe we could use your mother's maiden name."

When Lex shot a quizzical glance Clark's way, Clark supplied the answer. "Mackenzie."

"No," Lex said, emphatically.

"I don't see what's wrong with Ethel," Jonathan sighed.

"Everyone stop," Clark ordered, suddenly feeling a bit dizzy. Lex's hand descended on Clark's neck like a cool cloth, and he breathed out in relief as silence reigned. "We are going to have dinner," he said, softly, leaning back into Lex's touch. "We are going to eat and no one is to talk about the baby."

Of course, Clark's order barely lasted through the salad course. It wasn't long before Martha and Jonathan began asking the important, non-panic-related questions, the big ones that Clark and Lex hadn't begun to answer. With careful deflection and heavy-handed reminders that he and Clark were both adults, Lex took the brunt of the speculation away from Clark. By the time the Kents were putting on their coats at the penthouse door, they seemed resigned to the fact that their nursery decoration and name arguments would have to wait until a later dinner.

As soon as the door closed, Clark collapsed against it and groaned.

"I'm sorry for that," Lex said, not sounding very sorry.

Clark only groaned again in response.

"But they took it pretty well," Lex said, more cheerily.

Clark sank down the length of the door, ending up on his ass with his knees drawn up close to his chest, feeling the hard bump of Ethel squeezed in the middle. "Lex, I don't know how I'm getting around Perry, or the public, or if I can even do this," he sighed, closing his eyes. "And I don't know what a bobby pin is."

Lex didn't respond to this apparent non sequitur. He simply sat down beside Clark, close enough that Clark felt the length of his leg brushing against Lex's.

"And I'm tired and fat and -- it's only getting worse from here," Clark concluded, letting his head drop sideways onto Lex's waiting shoulder.

Which tensed almost immediately.

Clark lifted his head again, opening his eyes. "Sorry. I'm sorry," he said hastily with a blush.

"No," Lex said, too calmly. "It's fine. I just think that for her sake, we have to be pretty clear on what we're not. And it's stretching things a bit, as it is, to say that we're friends. I think we can't push it farther than that, not now."

"Yeah, that makes perfect sense," Clark agreed, nodding like an idiot, scrambling to his feet.

Lex stood up more smoothly, averting his gaze.

"So, I'll just -- go home." Clark held his breath, waiting for Lex to object, but Lex just stepped aside to allow Clark access to the front hall closet where his jacket hung.

"We're going to have to meet again," Lex said, as Clark slipped into his jacket. "To discuss custody, and your plans."

"Yeah," Clark agreed stupidly, looking past Lex's head. "Yeah, we'll do that."

"Well," Lex said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Good night."

"Good night," Clark agreed, and banged his elbow on the doorknob. "Good night," he repeated, backing out the door.

His last glimpse of Lex showed him a bare scalp bowed in something like contemplation.

"What the hell happened here?" shrieked Lois the second Clark stepped off the elevator on Monday morning.

Clark glanced in the direction Lois was pointing and saw her pristine, freshly Luthorized desk. "He helped save your life," Clark said, immediately.

"He touched my stuff!" Lois hissed, stomping in her Jimmy Choos over to the scene of the crime.

"He was being helpful," Clark tried, pushing up his glasses as he shrugged out of his coat, then moved Lois's coat over to the coatrack.

"He touched my stuff!" Lois repeated, yet more darkly.

"He sorted your pencils by size," Clark added with little hope. If saving her life hadn't made Lex worthy of Lois's forgiveness, pencil-sorting wasn't likely to do it.

Lois opened her mouth, but no sound came out, which struck Clark as a Very Bad Sign Indeed.

"Think of it as a clean slate," Clark offered, edging his way over to his chair. "You know, in two days, you'll have it back the way it was, even better."

Lois seemed unable to sit, herself. She was circling her desk relentlessly, as though she couldn't recognize her desk chair without its twenty layers of shed business jackets.

"Did you have coffee yet?" Clark asked hopefully. Caffeine could only help. "Because I was going to get some." And, failing that, leaving the building in search of Starbucks was an excellent second choice.

Lois was actually bending over to sniff at her deskpad.

"Oh, he might have, you know, spritzed it with his cologne," Clark explained hastily.

Lois backed up, eyes flaring wide, glowering at Clark. "With his cologne!" she shouted. "Spritzed?"

"So, cherry danish," Clark announced, rising and leaping for his coat. "And a double-shot latte, non-fat."

"I don't care if he's your new boyfriend, Lex Luthor is going down!" Lois exploded, just as the elevator doors closed again.

Lex was right. Lois was so never babysitting.

Clark decided, diplomatically, that he should take the long way around to the coffee stand next door to the Planet. He turned left instead of right when he exited, slipping into an alley, then headed for the Pacific.

Lex called when Clark was hovering over Beijing, trying to think of other ways to postpone his return to the office...ways that preferably didn't involve too much work because this little trip had tired Clark out completely and besides, he really didn't need a picture of his Ethel-belly on the front page of any Chinese papers.

"I have really good cell reception up here," Clark greeted Lex.

"Up where?"

"Over China."

"Are you surprised?" Lex asked, nonplussed. "You're visiting the land of the cell phone."

"That's true. Roaming's expensive, I bet."

"I could get you on the corporate plan," Lex offered. "Free roaming in most of south Asia."

"Hang on, I'm getting closer to the Urals," Clark warned, and the line went fuzzy as the satellites struggled to keep up. He held the phone to his ear again as he spotted Prague. "Still there?"

"Yes."

"Sorry. You were saying?"

"Actually, I wanted to know if you could meet tonight, for dinner. To discuss --"

"Ethel Mackenzie," Clark supplied.

"Our plans," Lex continued, more loudly.

"Yeah, sure," Clark agreed, waving at a jet. "Sorry, airliner."

"Eight o'clock, the penthouse."

"No," Clark answered. "My turf, this time. We'll meet at my place."

"Are you cooking?" Lex asked, worried.

"My place, eight o'clock."

It was only when Clark got back to his desk that he realized he'd forgotten all about the lattes. It was entirely possible that she would be volunteering to relieve him of at least one testicle in the near future.

At least, Clark reflected, wincing at the look on Lois's face, he'd be closer to the human norm.

As Clark had anticipated, Lex had obviously spent the weekend planning everything out to the last detail. Over wine (for Lex) and orange juice (for Clark), they jointly examined the press releases Lex's people had prepared to announce Superman's intergalactic mission of peace, the false medical documents which detailed the mysterious illness that was about to strike Clark Kent and leave him unable to work for over half a year, the floor plan for the newly renovated penthouse, even a flagged and highlighted list of girls' names and a marketing study on the safest and best baby carriers available.

Clark had found, in the past, that it was best to just sit back and let Lex talk when it came to situations like this. Lex talked through the nutritionally-balanced dinner, the low-sugar dessert, and well into the after-dinner coffee (decaf for Clark). Clark nodded, agreed occasionally, and frowned surreptitiously.

Lex concluded with a powerpoint presentation on how Clark might be able to breast feed inconspicuously. "Are there any questions?" Lex finished in his best boardroom style, as though mocking the idea that anyone could doubt anything he had said.

Clark raised his hand, and Lex narrowed his eyes, probably suspecting (correctly) that Clark was mocking him. "Yeah. How am I going to look after Ethel when it's my turn to have her?"

"How are you ..." Lex trailed, as though bewildered.

"I work forty-hour weeks at a job with no daycare benefits, and my other job pretty much constantly involves being on call. It's not very conducive to good parenting," Clark clarified. As thorough as Lex had been, this was the one point he hadn't addressed, and yet it was the point that Clark couldn't get past in his mind. No matter which way he turned the problem around, Clark couldn't imagine a way that he could fit a -- an Ethel -- into his overfull life.

Lex nodded quickly, dismissing this whole mess. "I'll take her whenever you can't, of course, and for times when we're both busy, we can have a nanny on staff. And Clark, I wish you'd stop referring to our child in that horrible way."

Ignoring the last part of Lex's speech, Clark frowned in thought. If Lex took Ethel every time Clark was busy -- well, that was forty hours a week for the Planet, and add to that another twenty-plus hours of superhero work at the oddest hours and with the least notice possible -- Clark might as well just give up on the idea of being any kind of decent parent. It simply couldn't work. If Clark and Lex were a couple, then it might make more sense, because they could always arrange for one of them to be at home -- but that wasn't a possibility. Barring the installation of some sort of infant-chute system in the roof of the LuthorCorp tower, a hole where Clark could drop the kid on his way to whatever emergency beckoned, there was only one solution.

"How about this?" Clark said, smoothing his jeans nervously, watching his hands on his denim-covered legs. "How about -- how about you just take her?"

Lex was silent, and Clark was too terrified with his own proposal to look up and see why.

"It's just -- I can't have a baby, Lex. Superman can't have a baby. I can't put her first, that's not in my job description, and it's not fair to her if I don't, and even though I know it's probably completely horrible to say, I have to do the right thing -- and you should be her parent, not me. I can barely manage being pregnant on top of everything else I'm doing. There's no space in my life for a child." The words tumbled out rapidly, one after the other, leaving an empty sore spot somewhere deep in Clark's chest. "You can look after her, you'll be amazing for her, and she doesn't need to know about me, not until she's older. I can --" Clark swallowed hard. "If we're still friends, I could still see her sometimes."

After another beat of silence had passed, Clark looked up, expecting Lex's face to be quietly jubilant. Instead, Lex was looking directly at Clark, his features naked and torn, looking much like Clark felt inside.

"You do want her, don't you?" Clark asked, confused.

"You --" Lex began, then cleared his throat because his voice was rough. "You would -- you'd do that?" Disbelieving, and tender.

"It's the only thing to do," Clark admitted slowly. "She can still see my parents, too, right? I don't think they'd forgive me if they couldn't see her, but they're like parents to you, too, so it wouldn't be as strange as --"

"You trust me that far?" Lex interrupted. "You trust me with her life?"

Clark half-smiled, unsure of why Lex was stuck on this point. They'd covered this on Friday night, hadn't they? "Of course I would."

"But -- four months ago, you'd sooner have killed a dog than let me own it, I know you would!" Lex exclaimed, almost angrily. "Why is it so different now?"

Clark stared blankly, unable to answer. Lex was right -- it was different now. It had all felt so much like old times the past few days, Clark had practically forgotten all the bad blood between them. He'd forgotten the things Lex had done, the things he'd condoned in the past. No, it wasn't that he'd forgotten -- that was the wrong word. It was more as though, suddenly, Clark was able to understand, to trust that those times were in the past, that they would stay there. How had the change come about? Was it as simple as this?

Clark had an unexpected flash of memory, Lex on his elbows over Clark's body, tracing that circle on the plane of Clark's naked belly. "What -- what was it you said, that time? With Naman and Zegit?" he asked haltingly, not certain why it mattered.

"Clark, if this is about you trying to base this decision on some bullshit prophecy, then --"

"What did you say?" Clark interrupted, loudly. Lex, drawing a circle, his eyes dark and grave and so confident.

Lex sighed and rubbed his temples, deflating visibly. "I said, 'It's like yin and yang. They cannot exist apart, and each grants something of its nature to the other.'"

Hearing Lex speak the words again, Clark made the connection. "That's what changed," Clark said, triumphantly, rising to his feet. "You said we couldn't exist apart, and then we did!"

"We did a great job of it, too," Lex scoffed, still looking baffled.

"We did," Clark insisted, and Lex snorted. "No, Lex -- aside from the part where we tried to kill each other for ten years -- aside from that," he repeated over Lex's harsh laughter, "we did it. We had to prove that we could do it, that we could be apart without destroying each other. And we did, Lex. We did." Lex sighed shortly, still shaking his head. Clark persisted. "Come on, what were the things we needed from each other?"

"You -- made me a good man," Lex said reluctantly, like it hurt to speak the words. "You were my compass."

"And you made me human," Clark said. "You made me feel like I belonged to this world, not like I was above it. You kept me from feeling isolated. You kept me from feeling alone."

"But eventually, I wasn't enough for you," Lex protested. "You had to fight against me, in the end." It was the first time Lex had admitted any kind of fault, and yet Clark was completely unsurprised by the admission.

"And I failed you, too," Clark added, gaining momentum, "but Lex! Listen to me! The last three months, all that's changed!" He paced up to Lex. "You have your own conscience, you don't need me for that. You're the one who reformed LuthorCorp, not me. You said it yourself, your decision wasn't because of me. It was your choice." Clark seized Lex's hand and placed it over his stomach, pulling the fingers around in a circle, right over where their child was growing. "I trust you with her because I know you don't need me to tell you what's right, not anymore."

Lex's eyes were dark now, just like they had been then. His hand, which had been still and limp against Clark, suddenly came to life, pressing gently to discover the contours of Clark's sacrifice. "What about you?" he asked, quietly, looking up to meet Clark's eyes. "If I've grown a conscience, then what's changed for you? If I take this child away from you, I take away your strongest link to humanity. You become more isolated than ever."

Clark felt his throat grow thick and heavy, but he still shook his head, managing a weak smile. "Each grants something of its essence to the other," he quoted, feeling Lex's fingers repeat the circular motion. "You gave me this link to humanity, Lex. It doesn't matter which of us raises her. The very fact of her existence, the knowledge that part of me has physically become part of the human race -- it's the greatest gift of humanity I could ask for. Transaction complete."

"Complete," Lex echoed, and his other hand suddenly came up and knotted in the hair at the nape of Clark's neck, hauling him in close. "But," he said softly, his eyes alight, "don't you think we should have one last -- transaction? Just to seal the deal?"

"Absolutely," Clark whispered back, and kissed Lex, Lex's mouth soft and receptive like it hadn't been three months ago, like it hadn't been for years.

Lex turned frantic the next minute, trailing rapid kisses punctuated with open bites down Clark's jawline, down his neck to the open collar of his shirt, and then -- Lex sank to his knees, and Clark gasped with relief even before Lex touched him, because yes, this had to happen now.

Lex fumbled with Clark's improvised fly fastener, cursed as the elastic snapped on his finger, then triumphantly tugged Clark's pants down, boxers and all. "God, I've wanted this for so long," Lex breathed, addressing Clark's waiting cock.

"You can have it now, Lex, just --" Clark's eyes squeezed shut as Lex's fingers began to play, then his hot mouth opened and sucked in the tip of Clark's cock. Clark's head fell back and he watched the insides of his eyelids flash red and black.

Lex swallowed him, holding Clark by the hips to keep him steady, but Clark wasn't going anywhere with that wet warm pressure around him, making him feel better than he'd felt in months. Not solid on the inside, no, Clark was full of flashing lights and spinning maelstroms and soft swirls of electricity, and Lex knew it. Clark cried out, gripping Lex's shoulders and thrusting a little, parting his legs in silent invitation. Lex knew him, knew his unspoken directives well, and Clark was rewarded with the slip of Lex's index finger down and behind, and then in.

In.

Clark remembered feeling Lex's finger begin to crook, seeking that sweet spot, and then everything was submerged in an animal blackness, total blank of pure sensation, no sense of anything but --

Gradually, opening his eyes to find himself curled around Lex on the area rug, finding Lex watching him with a mixture of concern and amusement, stroking his face gently. "So," Lex said, his voice hoarse. "I guess during pregnancy, the Kryptonian male experiences a slight increase in prostate sensitivity?"

Clark reached up with a tingling shaky hand and hauled Lex closer yet. "In five minutes," he said, his tongue barely functioning, "I'm going to ask you to investigate that theory with further testing."

"Orgasms are good for gestating humans," Lex grinned, wriggling closer so that Clark could feel that Lex was still waiting his turn. "Increases circulation, heartrate, respiration -- it's like a mini-workout."

"Mini?" Clark repeated, fumbling his way towards the source of that tantalizing hardness against his thigh. "I can't feel my feet."

As Clark's hand closed around Lex's cock through layers of fabric, Lex shuddered, saying, "Are the five minutes up yet?"

When they were both naked, having staggered, laughing, onto Clark's bed, Lex knelt behind Clark and stroked a path down his spine.

"Are you sure?" Lex asked, for the second time that evening.

"Yes," Clark answered, to both questions, and Lex moved inside with a single clean thrust, making Clark feel like he was being split two ways.

And, Clark reflected, gasping against the impossible buzz of pleasure that was thrumming inside his body, in a way, that was what he would do for Lex.

He would split in two, give part of himself to Lex for safekeeping -- and not just the part of him that was currently growing and developing its own life, but the part of Clark that needed something to fight for. The part of Clark that, deep down, wanted this not just once, not just tonight, but every night, forever.

"Okay?" Lex asked, stretching down to kiss Clark's shoulder, pushing in deeper.

And Clark wanted to shake his head 'no', wanted to demand a court of appeal, wanted to tell Lex that Clark was wrong after all -- he needed Lex, not just the small part of Lex that was inside him.

But it wasn't true, and it would only ruin everything else, and so Clark closed his eyes and nodded, feeling Lex move away again, settling back onto his knees, spreading Clark wide and then -- driving. Fucking. Familiar as the catch of sheets against Clark's underside, and already Clark was mourning the end of this night, even as he forced himself into the present, back into the immediacy of Lex's little catches of breath and hitches in movement.

Just as he'd remembered short days ago, Clark felt Lex's shift into desperation, the signals that he was dangerously close. Tight spasmodic clutch of fingers, the short sharp cries of almost-fear, the rapid hard irregular thrusts -- and -- and --

Flood of Lex's come inside him, and Clark reached for his cock, three short pulls and he came too, so close had he been all along.

Now Lex would fall onto the mattress beside him, he'd lick Clark clean if he was feeling playful, and Clark would smile and make a joke about last transactions. Clark knew it must happen, yet he remained motionless as Lex slowly pulled out, still as Lex hovered uncertainly, no doubt awaiting Clark's next body cue.

The question came in the form of Lex's hand stroking down Clark's back one more time.

"I'm okay," Clark assured him, feeling Lex's fear in the touch, but left his face pillowed on his folded arms, his right hand sticky and warm on his softened cock.

A kiss, another question, landing soft on Clark's hip.

"I'm --" Clark tried again, but stopped, because now, not a question, Lex's hand was pushing at Clark, forcing him to roll onto his side.

God, Lex was beautiful. Fucked out and sweaty and lean, the little muscles in his stomach still flexing with deep post-coital satiation.

"I was thinking," Lex said, dropping down not beside Clark but half on top of him, "that maybe we should renegotiate."

"I'm not changing my mind," Clark said, firmly.

"I am," Lex said, not sounding angry, but calm and thoughtful.

"You can't, you said you would!" Clark protested, wrestling grumpily with Lex's sprawled limbs.

Lex, unbothered, shrugged. "I just don't know if being a single parent is the thing for me."

"Lex!" Clark cried, upset now. "You can't --"

"I might be content with it for a few months, you know, but eventually, I think I'd be looking to settle down with someone." A flash of blue eyes, and Lex was annoyingly good at staying where he wanted to be, for all Clark's efforts. "Maybe someone who doesn't need to be with me," he said, almost smiling, and Clark's throat closed. "Maybe someone who just wants to be. Someone who can exist apart, but chooses not to."

A long blue gaze followed this last statement, and Clark abruptly stopped fighting Lex. "Oh."

"Someone who might, once in a while, be able to decide that his family is the most important thing in the world. Do you know anyone like that?" Lex asked, and kissed Clark.

When they broke apart at last, Clark could feel the grin splitting his face. "You know what I think, Lex?"

"What?" Lex asked, slipping down into Clark's now-welcoming embrace.

"I think little Ethel Mackenzie Luthor is going to be a pretty happy kid."

"Yeah?" Lex murmured sleepily, eyes drifting closed.

It was ridiculous, Clark thought to himself. Almost like the sappy ending to a children's animated movie. But without the darkness of the past decade, Clark realized, this light would have no meaning.

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