Drugs of Choice

Kal-El wakes in the dark to shaking and horrible loud noises, but when he's pitched out into bright heat he forgets all about being scared. Yellow in blue is above him, his two new favorite colors, dazzling his eyes. His skin is tickling all over and it makes him giggle and squirm in the dirt. Finally he runs and hides in the smoke and tall plants. When he comes to it, the red thing dazzles his eyes, too.

It's probably good that the nice lady blankets his skin as soon as she does. Kal-El is already high as a kite.

The bigger boy slouches against the wall, carefully holding a cigarette like he's just about to light it. Nobody sees this side of the Excelsior building, and the brick is correspondingly cracked and mildewed, the ground blanketed with filthy old pieces of litter.

Lex approaches with a flutter in his stomach. The forbidden thrill speeds his heart and makes his skin tingle; he'd have goosebumps if he could. "Do you have it?"

"Yeah. Both copies, just like you said." Lex steps closer, and money and a pair of comic books exchange hiding places, sliding from one uniform coat to another.

Clark stares at the symbols night after night, long after his parents think he's asleep. He mouths the words to himself, puzzling them out syllable by syllable. He wants to understand this more than he's ever wanted anything in his life.

One night he makes a breakthrough; only a small one, but he's so excited he forgets to go back to bed. His father is the one to discover him in the morning. "What are you doing?"

Waving a little hand eagerly, he shows off what he's been working on. "See... Sp--ot. Spot. See Spot -- run. Run, Spot, run..."

Lex leans in until his goggles clink on the glass. Fumes condense and drip down tubes while others swirl like white liquid in the bottom of the flask. Lectures bore him to nearly to tears, so he doesn't go. But he'd do more than he has, for less extra lab time than he's stolen.

This is the alphabet of the universe, and watching it makes him quiver inside like a violin string. It's the closest thing he knows to worship.

Well, one of the closest. He finishes up and goes out, to clubs where strangers will make him quiver outside.

Clark daydreams of football. He would love to impress Pete, make Lana smile, get the guys on the team off his back. The uniform would hide him, the helmet would muffle the noises and let him pretend there wasn't a crowd staring at him. It wouldn't be so bad.

For all that, he doesn't fight his dad very hard, only responds with standard teenage resentment and doesn't press. It's hard enough pretending to be normal in obscurity.

Clark daydreams of games, but he dreams of running fast, faster, fastest, leaving the world behind and flying into cool solitude.

Tense, gaping lips; warm blasts of stale air; cold trickles of clay-flavored water; these are the farthest things from a kiss.

It's ironic, Lex thinks as he jacks off under fine linen in the dark. He courts his women with possessive surveillance, but a boy he's never even kissed has him building a cathedral of obsession that sometimes scares even him.

Miles away, Clark jacks off under nubbly flannel in the dark and regrets not catching Lex's taste all those months ago. He does remember feeling the fragile human chest. He wants to see it heaving on its own, bare.

Clark doesn't mind carting Lex home after the odd binge. He's strangely approachable after incidents like this last, so much of that fierce intelligence drugged or distracted that Lex himself chatters unrestrained.

"--So the 100% ethanol, 'ts bound by all this poison ssshit, never drink it Clark. The 95% now..."

"--We're here. Come on, Lex, up the steps, whoops! There now."

"Thanks. Yer a real friend, yanno that? And so sexy..." Lex sighs.

"Keep going," Clark rasps. Lex does, describing all kinds of things until he mumbles into sleep. Clark cleans himself with a tissue he leaves in Lex's hand.

It's a beautiful Sunday after a week of drizzles, and Lex goes looking to spend some time with Clark.

"He went out for a walk," Martha says, "you just missed him." Lex thanks her and leaves, but a huge footprint in the mud catches his eye.

The tracks cut across soft sprouting fields and through patches of forest. Lex mops his forehead, glad of the shade.

He's stopped by a heap of clothing. His throat closes and he forces his gaze beyond the tree cover.

Clark is splayed in the meadow, writhing under the touch of the bright hot sun.

Lex backs him outside, into the gardens. Clark finds himself kneeling surrounded by flowers. They glow bluish, reflecting the full moon. So does Lex, watching him seriously, kneeling as well and stripping them so gently their clothes make no noise.

They remain silent until he has Lex down on the grass, shuddering as Clark rides him, so strung out on the cool rapture on his skin and the hot brand inside his body that the soft words can't scare him, only push him higher:

"You know what moonlight is, Clark? It's the reflection of sunlight already reflected off Earth's oceans."

Lex looks at Helen, and wants as only a Luthor can. She has the wit to intrigue him, and the edge to resist his father, not to mention a darkly edible beauty. Moreover, he sees his own curiousity consuming her from the inside.

Lex looks at Clark, and wants as no Luthor ever has. Perhaps he wants as no human ever has - he doesn't know.

And so he hides things badly, and swallows as Helen walks out the door, and with a chilled vial in his hand he phones Clark.

"Come over. I have something I think belongs to you."

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