Lex sipped his cappuccino and watched Clark, who was reading by himself in a corner of the Beanery. Midafternoon on a cold Saturday in December, and Clark had his nose buried in Camus.
Odd boy, Clark Kent. Secretive, in a hot-eyed, stubborn way; a boy with something bitter inside him. Lex closed his eyes and imagined Clark on a dissection table, strapped down, sliced open, his secrets removed and laid on stainless steel trays beside him.
He laughed at himself--that was an image he'd thought up for his father, years ago.
Clark looked over, his face open and questioning. "What's so funny?" said the lift of his eyebrows, and Lex raised his hand and waved him over.
"Hey," Clark said, and smiled brightly.
"Hey," Lex answered, and Clark sat down. "How are you?"
"Pretty good. You?"
And there was the smile again, innocent-boy in a way that Lex knew Clark was not. Could not be.
There were too many dead bodies near Clark Kent for a smile like that to be real; too many mysteries entirely for the kid to be at peace.
Becoming his friend hadn't made Clark much more forthcoming, but Phelan's backup files had made fascinating reading. There were new weapons in there, if Lex chose to wield them.
He did not, not yet. Phelan's files were merely one more addition to a large and growing arsenal.
"I'm fine," he answered. "My father isn't happy with me, but that's nothing new."
"Mine either," Clark said, tossing a look over his shoulder as though the senior Kent were going to magically appear. "I was kind of hoping he'd ease off as I got older, but he's just--"
Lex schooled his features to attentiveness--a shift of his eyebrow, a curve of his mouth, and he was listening, he was interested. He was trustworthy.
He was Clark's big-brother-esque pal.
And Clark, still a boy for all his secrets, responded, sweetly, opening like a nut warmed on a fire. "He just--he doesn't seem to trust my judgment. Or understand what--what I'm going through." He fidgeted in his seat, bending his tattered copy of The Stranger almost double in his hands.
Lex thought about blurs on security tapes, and the fact that Clark had gotten back to Smallville from Metropolis--on foot, in less than six hours. He thought about the sound Clark had made against the hood of his car, nothing like the sound of the metal barrier an instant later. Nor had it sounded like the tree he'd hit in a stolen SUV when he was fifteen, or the brick wall he'd plowed into on his seventeenth birthday, just to hear his father scream his name.
Clark looked at him eagerly. "Do you--I mean, does your father--" His face was guarded, but there was something like fear there.
Lex laughed. To compare a man like Jonathan Kent to a man like Lionel Luthor-- "Yes," he said. He leaned forward conspirationally. "My father doesn't understand me, or my interests, or what makes me unique. And what he doesn't understand, he fears. Tries to control."
"Yes!" Clark said, and the relief in him was so strong--for a moment, he was naked before the world, and in that moment--
Lex Luthor was watching.
He saw Clark, arms flung wide, smelling of sex and sweat, his mouth flushed and open and his secrets--
--his secrets--
--his secrets falling from him like water, coming forth from him, spilling upon the ground and right--
--into
--Lex's
--hands
--plans
--yes
Yes.
