Title: And Bid Them Dance

Author: kayladie

Rating: R

Summary: Clark needs to learn how to dance. Lex is more than willing to teach him.

Notes: Movie quote used is “Dancing is just a conversation between two people. Talk to me.” from the movie Hope Floats. Title of story is from a poem by William Wordsworth.

Clark leaned a little too hard on the doorbell to Lex’s penthouse, and quickly pulled his finger away when he heard an ominous creaking noise. Worriedly, he x-rayed the mechanism and determined that he hadn’t done any real permanent damage. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief as he waited for someone to come let him in. He always seemed to forget his strength just a little bit whenever he was very nervous, and lately, being around Lex made Clark very nervous.

He couldn’t exactly put into words why Lex was affecting him so, but he did have the feeling that it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It wasn’t the same sort of nervousness that he’d felt when Lex had gone behind his back and had him investigated several years ago.

Clark had thought they wouldn’t be able to get past that huge stumbling block in their friendship…Lex’s deceit and his own lies had been a brick wall that had been a long time in tumbling down. Somehow they’d managed it, with some careful honesty on both sides. After not speaking to one another for over a year upon the discovery of that freaky room in the castle with all its ‘souvenirs’, Clark had been trying to put the friendship behind him, certain that it was dead forever. He had in fact been at the farm on a long weekend from his freshman year at Metropolis University when, out of the blue, Lex had come by the barn and quietly asked if they could try again.

At first, Clark wasn’t sure what to do, but the way his heart had leapt with joy at seeing his former friend had told him something. Of course, at that point, it had been telling him something else, too, but Clark wasn’t ready to face that aspect of his feelings for Lex yet. Lex had confessed to hiring Roger Nixon and working with Dr. Hamilton, and he’d apologized again for the room, reiterating that it was more his curiosity about the things that had happened to him, than an interest in Clark’s secrets.

Clark wasn’t sure he completely believed that, but he realized that he’d really missed Lex, so he was willing to let it slide. Plus, he was grateful that Lex was willing to let go the fact that Clark had been lying to him since the day they’d met. Seeing the things in that room had made Clark abruptly aware that his secret wasn’t really very secret from Lex…which meant that Lex had known pretty much everything about his powers for well over a year, and the world had miraculously not ended. Clark hadn’t ended up in some dark laboratory, strapped to a table with Kryptonite ties.

Lex knew and he hadn’t said anything, so Clark confessed everything, even the alien part; and by the look on Lex’s face, Clark could tell that he’d suspected that, too, but was still amazed that it was actually true. The renewed friendship had been a little awkward at first, but the two of them had quickly fallen back into the comfortable roles of older brother/little brother. Lex once again had someone to eagerly listen to his tales of conquerors long past, and Clark had someone to listen as he moaned about trying to fit in at MetU.

Lex was full of wonderful advice about that, and advised Clark that he should join a fraternity, for one thing. Clark had been hesitant, remembering all his father’s lessons about staying out of the limelight, but Lex had talked him into it. And it wasn’t all that bad, really. Sometimes the guys were really annoying and immature (when he compared them to Lex, but then, who could really compare to Lex?) but he’d made several good friends. It was nice to have more than just two friends that he could hang out with.

Another bonus of being in a fraternity was that it brought him into contact with the girls of their sister sorority. Clark was long over his unrequited love for Lana Lang, and he’d been looking forward to testing the waters, so to speak, with someone NOT from Smallville. Weirdly, he’d found himself more interested in spending time with Lex than going out with any of the girls who expressed an interest in him. And to his surprise, there’d been quite a few.

In the middle of his sophomore year, Clark was on the verge of starting to understand what this need to be around Lex all the time meant, and then he met Madeline. She was a sorority sister, and she had apparently set her sights on Clark being her boyfriend. Clark was not particularly interested in that role, especially since he was having new and intriguing thoughts about Lex, but Madeline wouldn’t take no for an answer. The hard part was that it was very difficult to be angry with Madeline, because she was so cute. She was about five foot three, with blonde hair and bright blue eyes; in other words, she was like a little baby doll, and Clark just couldn’t contemplate hurting her feelings.

Before he quite knew what was happening, he and Madeline were a couple. Clark couldn’t recall asking her to be his girlfriend, but suddenly all his friends and all her friends considered them to be together. They morphed into ClarkandMadeline, as though the two of them had somehow become one entity.

While there were some nice side effects to this couple deal (read: the sex), Clark was not happy. For one thing, as soon as she’d decided that she and Clark were boyfriend and girlfriend, Madeline started trying to change him. His hair, his clothes, the music he listened to, even the classes he took! Clark wondered what Madeline had even seen in him in the first place, if she was just going to try and ‘fix’ it all. The one thing he had put his foot down about was Lex.

Madeline didn’t like anything that took Clark’s attention away from her, and had tried to discourage him from hanging out with Lex. But Clark was never going to let anything, or anyone, interfere with his friendship with Lex ever again. If only he had the slightest clue whether Lex was experiencing the same confusing feelings that he was, Clark would have dropped Madeline like a bad habit.

Unfortunately, Lex was still behaving just like the friendly big brother he’d been to Clark in high school. In fact, even the heated glances and lingering looks that Clark had noticed in the early stages of their friendship (but had no idea how to handle at the time) had all but disappeared. Clark was becoming very frustrated, as he viewed Madeline time as intruding on his Lex time. It was getting to the point where the sex wasn’t even worth not getting to see Lex as much as he wanted to, especially since lately he’d found himself thinking of sleek muscle and a smoothly bald head instead of Madeline’s petite curves whenever they were intimate.

But Clark had never been very good at matters dealing with romance (witness the utter destruction of his friendship with Chloe when they’d tried to become more than friends during their senior year in high school) and he just didn’t know how to get himself out of the situation with Madeline without it becoming extremely messy. Clark really hated messy, especially when it came to relationships.

A rueful smile twitched at his lips as he recalled the one and only time that Lex and Madeline had met. They’d hated each other instantly, although both attempted to hide it. No one other than Clark would have been able to see Lex’s disdain, but Madeline was fairly obvious with hers. Clark remembered what had happened when he’d innocently called his girlfriend ‘Maddy’. She’d looked at him and said with a sweet (but somehow not really) smile, “Oh, Clark, I don’t like nicknames. They’re so lower-class, don’t you agree?”

Clark was embarrassed and wanted to apologize to Alexander ‘Lex’ Luthor for Madeline’s appalling statement. Lex had merely looked at Clark and raised one eyebrow in a sardonic motion that clearly said ‘where the hell did you find this bitch?’ and wasn’t it another telling sign that he could read Lex so well, yet had no idea what Madeline wanted the majority of the time.

Today was one of those times when she had made her wishes perfectly clear, however. She’d been chattering on and on about ‘the ball’ and Clark had finally been able to interrupt her long enough to find out what she was talking about. It was awful. There was a big formal dance held every year by all the fraternities and sororities and Madeline very much expected him to go. The awful part was that it wasn’t a dance like he was used to from Smallville.

All the dances he’d ever gone to in high school had consisted mostly of everyone sort of leaping around independently or gently swaying against each other for the slow dances. No, this dance wasn’t even a dance, it was a ball. A ball where he was going to have to try and perform dances that actually had names, like the waltz and the foxtrot and the rumba. Clark instantly went into panic mode, as he wasn’t even sure he could spell ‘rumba’, let alone figure out how to do it.

Most of the other guys in the fraternity were from old money, and they’d been raised taking instruction in this kind of thing. Clark was a farmer, and unless there was going to be square-dancing included (which he highly doubted) then he was going to be lost. Which was why he was here at Lex’s penthouse…hopefully, his best friend would be able to help him with this.

Clark still wasn’t sure why he was so nervous, though. It might have something to do with the fact that he was thinking he was going to have to get pretty close to Lex if he was going to be learning to dance. The thought excited him a lot, and Clark decided to really think about that instead of pushing it to the side as he’d done for the last few months. Maybe he would even be able to figure out what Lex was feeling if the two of them had to get that close.

That deliciously terrifying thought was still ringing through his head when Lex’s butler finally opened the door, showing Clark into the living room to wait for Lex. It was a good thing that Lex wasn’t the one with x-ray vision, or he would have been astonished at how fast Clark’s heart was beating.

“Clark. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit today?” Lex said with a smile as he came into the room.

Clark tried to smile back, but it was probably more like a grimace of pain, going by the slightly confused wrinkle of Lex’s brow.

“Lex, I need you to teach me how to dance,” he blurted out.

Lex looked at him with an expression of small surprise, and said, “Dancing’s really not that difficult, Clark. You just have to find the rhythm of the music and move with it-”

“No, I need to know how to do specific dances. Like the waltz and stuff. There’s this big ball…”

“Ah, yes, the Clarington Annual Fundraiser. I remember it very well,” Lex said with a little chuckle.

“You mean you knew there was going to be this big formal thing and you still wanted me to join the fraternity? How could you, Lex!?” Clark said, only half-kidding.

“It’s still not that difficult. I can give you some pointers.”

“I don’t need pointers, I need twenty-four seven instruction for the next two weeks,” Clark grumbled.

“Now, it’s not that bad, I’m sure. You’re very light on your feet for such a large man,” Lex replied, and then he sort of looked up and down the entire length of Clark’s body.

From the heat he felt on his face, Clark was certain that he was probably about the shade of a fire engine at the moment, but he managed to keep a little cool as he asked, “So you can help me, then?”

“Of course, Clark, what are best friends for?”

About twenty minutes later found them in the living room with all the furniture shoved to one side, and classical music coming out of Lex’s state-of-the-art sound system. Clark stood in the middle of the room, consciously trying not to shuffle his feet. He was holding his breath as Lex turned and walked towards him, arms outstretched as though he was going to give Clark a hug. Clark tried not to think about how much he really wanted that.

“Now, the first thing we have to work on is your stance. Spine straight, shoulders square, and you’re going to put one hand on my waist,” Lex said and moved Clark’s hand to his hip. “And the other hand is going to hold mine here.”

Clark felt his breath hitch a little as Lex slipped a hand into his. He attempted to cover it with a cough when Lex glanced at him questioningly.

“Okay there, Clark?”

“Fine,” Clark said, the word sounding like little more than a squeak. He cleared his throat, and then said in a deeper voice, “I mean, fine.”

Lex smiled at Clark, and there seemed to be a strange little glint in his eyes that Clark couldn’t quite read. The two of them were standing there, absolutely still, and so close…Clark hadn’t been so close to Lex in a while. They didn’t hug very often, resorting to manly slaps on the back or shoulder to show their affection for one another. Clark wanted so much more than that. But he feared it might be forever out of his reach. That thought petrified him.

“Are you ready to begin?” Lex asked, his voice smooth and almost mesmerizing.

Clark decided not to try to speak this time and simply nodded.

Thirty minutes later, the frustration was visible in every line of Lex’s body, but he had yet to say anything insulting about Clark’s woeful lack of grace and rhythm. His poor feet might have had something to say about the number of times they’d been trod upon, but Clark thought Lex might be trying to spare his feelings.

“Clark, I’m not sure that you’re completely concentrating here,” Lex said tightly, and Clark figured that was the nicest way he could say ‘You’re an absolutely hopeless case, and please stop trying to murder my toes.’

“I’m trying, Lex, I really am! But all this back and forth, and step this way, then that way…argh, it just doesn’t make any sense to me!”

“I think you’re making it too complicated. You have to relax and just feel it.”

“S’too hard,” Clark mumbled.

“You’re making it too hard. I want you to relax. Look at it this way…dancing is just a conversation between two people. Talk to me,” Lex coaxed.

Clark just stared at his dance partner, his confusion evident on his face.

“Dancing together is like we’re communicating on a different level. What would you say to me if you couldn’t use words?”

A glimmer of an idea sparked in Clark’s brain and he grabbed onto it, held onto it before he could lose his nerve and let it slip away. What would he say to Lex if he couldn’t use words? Oh, so many things. So many things that had been building inside him for years, and if he could show Lex rather than tell him…maybe that had been the answer all along.

And if Lex didn’t feel the same…well, Clark would be more embarrassed than he’d ever been in his life, but at least he would know.

All thoughts of dancing went right out of his head as Clark considered what he wanted to ‘say’ to Lex. Looking right into Lex’s eyes, Clark tried to make his intentions clear. He thought he might have gotten through a little bit as Lex went very still and his gaze became even more intense than it usually was.

Clark pulled his hand from Lex’s unresisting grasp, still keeping his other hand on Lex’s hip because he liked it there, liked the feel of Lex’s warmth seeping into his palm. He used just one finger to reach up and touch where he could see Lex’s collarbone peeking out from his dress shirt, the first two buttons of which were undone. Clark ran his finger gently along the ridge of bone, feeling Lex’s sudden shiver and delighting in it.

His finger reversed course and trailed back towards Lex’s throat. Clark smiled as Lex swallowed convulsively, still holding so still that he would have felt like a statue if not for the heat that was pouring off his body. That lone finger turned into his whole hand as Clark gave in to an impulse he’d long had, and cupped the back of Lex’s head, nudging that little bump on the back of his skull that had fascinated Clark forever. Lex briefly closed his eyes and let out a soft sigh. Clark was holding his own breath, trying to contain the excitement that raced through him at how receptive Lex was being to his touch.

Switching back to one finger, Clark traced the arch of Lex’s eyebrow, the hairs there so pale, they were almost invisible. Lex tilted his head just slightly into Clark’s touch, and Clark’s heartbeat went into double time. Using just a bit of super hearing, he was thrilled to note that Lex wasn’t unaffected either, as his pulse was nearly racing.

Lex’s lips parted and Clark was astonished to realize his best friend was panting; just a little bit, but his breathing had definitely picked up along with his heart rate. Clark couldn’t resist…his finger slid down the side of Lex’s face and rubbed across the velvety skin of Lex’s mouth. Lex definitely gasped out loud at that, and then his tongue darted out and licked the tip of Clark’s finger.

Clark felt his knees go weak, and he instinctively pulled Lex closer, needing something to keep him from falling to the floor. And then he almost went anyway, because now Lex’s hips were nestled right up against his and it was extremely obvious that the both of them were very turned on by their ‘dance’.

His finger was still resting on Lex’s lips and then Lex licked it again, sucking it partly into his mouth and twirling his tongue around the tip very suggestively and Clark barely held back a moan. Clark pulled his finger out of Lex’s mouth, ignoring the slight sound of protest that the other man made. He had to see what Lex tasted like. He slipped his finger into his own mouth and tasted Lex on his skin. It was heavenly, and Clark let his eyes slide closed as he savored it.

“Fuck, Clark,” Lex gasped, and apparently he was done playing around.

He yanked Clark’s hand away from his mouth and pulled him into a deep and desperate kiss. Oh, how much better Lex’s taste was firsthand! Lex was attempting to devour him and Clark just let himself sink into the passion that had been simmering between them for the past six years. The next thing he knew, Lex had pushed him backwards until they fell onto the sofa that had been moved out of the way earlier.

Lex was on top of him, still kissing him frantically, and grinding his cock down onto Clark’s in the most delicious way. Clark’s hands slid down to grab Lex’s ass, pushing and pulling along with Lex’s intoxicating movements.

Then Lex was biting his neck, kissing his ear, whispering words that Clark could only barely make out.

“God, Clark…yes!...wanted you forever…Fuck!...you feel so good…so good!”

Clark didn’t know how Lex was still able to form words at all. He’d completely lost all verbal abilities and could only moan and whimper in encouragement as Lex’s writhing began to speed up. Clark only just managed to retain enough coherent thought to thrust his hips up against Lex.

“Oh, yeah…gonna come, Clark…gonna come on you and I haven’t even gotten your clothes off yet…”

The image of the two of them naked went straight to Clark’s cock and he whined in agony as he was suddenly harder than he’d ever been in his life, and oh God, he needed to come, he needed to come right now!

Somehow, Lex understood exactly what he needed and he put his hands on either side of Clark’s head, forcing their eyes to meet. Clark groaned at the sight of Lex in all his fiery glory.

“Come for me, Clark. Come now!”

And Clark could only helplessly obey. His head fell back to the sofa as his body exploded in ecstasy, waves of pleasure pulsing through him unchecked. A second later, Lex was crying out above him, and Clark managed to lift his head enough to watch Lex Luthor lose control. It was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

Lex collapsed atop Clark’s body and the two of them laid there for a long moment, catching their breath, trying to regain their senses. It didn’t escape Clark that the orgasm he’d just had was infinitely more powerful than anything he’d ever felt with another person, and they were both still completely clothed!

Clark sighed as he briefly thought about Madeline and realized he was going to have to deal with messy after all.

“What are you thinking?” Lex’s quiet question came from somewhere around Clark’s chest.

“Lots of things, actually,” Clark said, and was glad that he’d regained his powers of speech, because he certainly didn’t want to mess this moment up. It was far too important.

“Such as…” Lex prompted.

“What a fantastic dance teacher you are, for one thing. Can I sign up for an extended course of instruction?” Clark said, with a smile.

Lex chuckled into his chest, and finally raised his head to meet Clark’s gaze.

“I’m always open to negotiations. And what else?” he asked, and Clark could see the reserve in his eyes. He was going to let Clark decide how things would be between them. That was fine with Clark, as he had lots and lots of plans for Lex Luthor, many of them involving lots and lots of skin-on-skin contact. As wonderful as what they’d just shared was, Clark wanted more.

“That I need to go see Madeline as soon as I can…” Lex’s eyes clouded dangerously and the soft smile disappeared from his face, until Clark continued. “…because I need to break up with her immediately.”

Lex’s smile returned and almost blinded Clark with its brightness. “Good answer, Farmboy. Anything else on your mind?” he whispered suggestively as he let his hands trail across Clark’s shoulders.

“Just how much I love you,” Clark whispered.

Lex’s hands faltered and he looked at Clark in shock. “You love me?” he asked, his voice small and unsure and totally unlike the Lex Luthor that Clark knew.

“I think I always have. Was just too young and stupid to know it.”

“Never stupid. A little naïve, perhaps,” Lex corrected gently. “God, Clark,” Lex sighed as he pushed his fingers through Clark’s hair. Clark hummed in appreciation and tilted his chin up towards Lex. “I think I’ve wanted you longer than I’ve loved you, but not by much.”

“Why did we wait so long?” Clark asked before he lifted his head to kiss Lex softly, this one much more gentle than their first, but no less intense.

“It doesn’t matter when we started, Clark. What matters is that we’re never going to end,” Lex promised.

Clark liked the sound of that so much that he kissed Lex more urgently. Much later that day, after they’d explored each other far more thoroughly, Clark couldn’t help staring down at Lex as he lay asleep, his body curled into Clark’s so satisfyingly.

Madeline had always bemoaned the fact that Clark wasn’t very romantic or thoughtful. (Lex didn’t seem to have any complaints, Clark thought smugly.) Maybe he had listened to a thing or two while he’d been Madeline’s boyfriend, because he had the biggest urge to send her a huge bouquet of flowers…with the words THANK YOU in the boldest letters he could find.

~END~