Title: Truth and Lies
Author: me_ya_ri
Email: me_ya_ri@yahoo.com
Rating: PG
Challenge: Written for CLFF Wave 28: Pretense - Prompt: #2 a false show of something:  a pretense of friendship.
Notes: Set just post S5.8: Solitude, so assume spoilers for everything prior to that.  Many thanks to Danceswithgary for her excellent beta work!
Summary: Clark spends some time thinking about everything that's happened lately and makes some painful realizations.  Then he attempts to fix at least one of his errors.

 

+++++

 

"God, it was all a lie," Clark sighed, flopping down on the couch in the loft.  "Fine was just pretending to be my friend and I fell for it hook, line and sinker."

 

Chloe had gone home after finally warming up from her exposure to the arctic cold in the Fortress.  Mom was with Dad in their bedroom and he was not going back in the house until they were done celebrating her survival, thank you very much!  He really hated that his hearing had gotten so sensitive that he couldn't avoid hearing when they were making love.  He could even hear Lex grumping in his office about losing the black ship.  

 

Chloe had told him that Fine had come out of that ship.  Having seen what Fine did at the Fortress, Clark believed her.  Lana was back in Metropolis, studying something and muttering about Lex and Clark hiding things from her, which made him wince.  She was trying to figure it all out and no one was giving her the truth she needed.

 

"Well, there's nothing new there," muttered Clark, staring at the roof of the barn.  "I don't think I've ever told her the truth."

 

He hadn't.  From the moment that he'd met Lana as a child, he'd been lying to her.  It didn't matter that he hadn't known exactly what he was until he was fourteen.  He'd still never told her the truth.  She was his shining image of everything he should be, if only he could be normal.  She was perfect, the ideal, what every boy wanted, so of course he had to want her too, so that he could be normal.  Except that he didn't really want her, he wanted what she represented. 

 

Or at least he had thought he needed normalcy.  He wasn't so sure that he wanted it anymore.  People kept getting hurt when he tried to be something he wasn't.  Every time he'd run away from what his heritage, someone had gotten hurt, usually people close to him.  He wasn't a human.  He wasn't what everyone thought they saw.  He wasn't 100% certain just what he was, but normal definitely wasn't it.  Worse, he was pretty sure he was the most gullible person on the planet after having Fine fuck with his brain, play him like a fish on a hook, and then nearly kill his mother without Clark realizing there was something off about the guy.  He'd nearly destroyed the Fortress because he couldn't seem to learn to read people, not Mom and Dad, not Lana, not Chloe, sure as heck not Lex.  He'd been misjudging the people around him his entire life.

 

"Maybe I'm…misjudging…everyone," Clark muttered, frowning at the ceiling in thought.

 

He was utterly wrong about Lana.  He could see that now, especially as he listened to her cursing at whatever it was she was studying.  She was anything but the sweet, innocent girl that he'd been pining for all these years.  Clark sighed as he examined his memories of her, the things she'd done, and the way they'd interacted.  She hadn't been the sweet girl next door since her summer in France.  She was a smart, funny, brilliant businesswoman, and just a bit too ruthless for him to be comfortable with her anymore.  He'd kept lying to himself and to her so that he could cling to the fantasy that marrying Lana would make him normal, but it was so selfish that it made his stomach twist.  She could find someone who'd really love her if he let the fantasy-Lana go, but he still kept stringing her on when he couldn't give her what she deserved.

 

That realization made him squirm on his old, battered couch.  He'd never admitted to Lana just how hard it was for him to respond physically to her.  He wasn't sure if it was because she was so small and fragile, or because he always feared she'd figure out he wasn't human...or if it was simply because he was gay.  Could an alien be gay?  How could he know what was normal for his people?  Sure, the two Kryptonians on Braniac's ship had looked stereotypically male and female, but that didn't say a heck of a lot about how Kryptonian society and sexuality worked.  All Clark knew was that it was harder for him to respond physically to females than it was to males, not that there were that many people he responded to...of either gender.  Heck, he could count the number of people he'd been sexually attracted to on one hand!

 

The one person he did consistently respond that way to was the one person that literally everyone tried to keep him away from: Lex.  Mom worried about Lex's influence on Clark.  Dad hated everything Luthor.  Chloe was suspicious of Lex's motives.  Lana obviously saw Lex as a rival.  Lionel was Lionel and didn't want anyone near his son.  Even Pete had wanted to keep Clark away from Lex, but that was because he hated what Lionel Luthor had done to his parents.

 

"Wait a minute," Clark exclaimed, sitting up in a rush.  "They're all warning me away from Lex for their own reasons.  I wonder if…"

 

Maybe Fine was pushing Clark away from Lex for his own reasons, too.  Just like Mom and Dad and Chloe and everyone else, Fine didn't want Clark together with Lex.  Given Fine's plans—enslave humanity and turn Earth into a new Krypton—maybe being with Lex was a lot more significant than Clark had thought.  But why else would Fine be so determined to keep Clark away from Lex?

 

"Well, he is a genius," Clark said thoughtfully, getting up and pacing.  "And he's really good at reading people, figuring out what they're up to.  He has all sorts of resources at his fingertips.  He could block Fine's plans, if only he knew…about…them."

 

Clark stopped, blinking.  Clark had never once been completely honest with Lex, not from the very first moment they met.  When Clark had resuscitated him on the riverbank and Lex had said, "I could have sworn I hit you," Clark had instantly decided to lie.  Lex had never had all the information he needed to be able to truly be Clark's best friend.  It was all a pretense.  By refusing to trust him, Clark had just pretended to be Lex's friend, never letting him in.  If it went on this way, they were going to end up mortal enemies because Lex was too intelligent and too good at reading people to miss all the things Clark still tried to hide from him.  Maybe that pretense was the most effective weapon that Fine had to keep them apart, to keep them both weak.

 

"I'm terrible at judging people," Clark mused as he paced more slowly.  "Lex is terrific at it.  I'm invulnerable and have all these powers, where Lex is human and very vulnerable.  Lex has resources and I don't.  If the two of us worked together, there's probably nothing we couldn't do, and that would be a huge threat to Fine's plans."

 

Clark thought it over for a few more seconds and nodded.  He had to be right.  If he trusted everyone else in the world to be better at judging people than he was, then he had to accept that he was never going to be certain what to do interpersonally.  He could use their opinions of what he should do to a degree, always with the caveat that they were working for their best interests, not Clark's.  But Fine—Brainiac—wanted exactly the opposite of what Clark wanted.  He was in many ways Clark's perfect opponent.  So if Clark did the opposite of what Brainiac wanted (at least until he figured out what Clark was doing and changed his strategies) then he'd be doing the right thing.  That meant he needed to tell Lex everything and get his help, if that was possible after everything that had happened between them.  Clark nodded again, checked that his parents were still making love and then sped over to the mansion.

 

+++++

 

Lex still didn't know how his father had stolen the black ship but he knew he had to have done it.  No one else had the resources or the knowledge to be able to do that.  It didn't matter what denials Lionel fed him; Lex knew the truth.  His father was still working against him and eventually he'd try to destroy Lex.

 

"Lex," Clark called, banging through the office doors like it was years ago.  "I really need to talk to you and I'm not going to make much sense, but if you would listen, I think that it will all fit together eventually."

 

"Clark." Lex greeted him with a frown, as he grabbed a tumbler and poured some scotch, "It's late and I'm busy.  I don't have time."

 

"Because you lost the spaceship and you're trying to figure out what happened to it," Clark said, nodding.  "Yeah, that's part of why I'm here.  I just had a huge battle with Professor Fine and since he's part of the ship I'm not surprised that it disappeared."

 

The tumbler of scotch froze about halfway to Lex's lips.  He stared at Clark, trying to determine if his former friend and daydream lover was on something again.  He didn't look like it.  He looked upset, worried, a little frightened, but pretty much normal for Clark.  Lex set the scotch down again, cocking his head at Clark.

 

"Professor Fine is a part of the black ship?" Lex questioned, glancing up into Clark's eyes.

 

"Yes," Clark agreed, nodding.

 

"And you just had a battle with him," Lex continued.

 

"Yes."

 

"And you're…telling me this why?" Lex asked, wondering if he was asleep and this was one of his frequent dreams / nightmares where Clark told him everything and the world came to an end.

 

Clark sighed and made a face that was part nervousness, part anger and part pure Clark-ish hesitation.  Lex had to fight not to smile. It had been so damned long since Clark had been this open with Lex, not that he'd ever been totally open, of course, but they used to be able to tell each other almost everything.  Other than about Clark's painfully obvious powers, of course.

 

"Well, it's kind of complicated and I'm still working it all out in my head," Clark said, blushing faintly, "but if you'll bear with me I'll try and explain it.  You might want to sit down, though.  There's some pretty big stuff in the explanation."

 

"All right," Lex conceded, deciding to treat it like one of his dreams until proven otherwise.  He took a seat in the chair opposite the couch and looked up at Clark. "Lay it on me."

 

Clark nodded and paced a little before retrieving the tumbler of scotch.  He delivered it to Lex, handing it to him with a serious expression.  Lex raised an eyebrow, (that had never been part of the dreams) then he accepted the tumbler and swirled the scotch while he waited for Clark to organize his thoughts and nerve himself to start talking.

 

"So, let's see," Clark began thoughtfully.  "I guess I'll start with the beginning.  Professor Fine isn't a human.  He's an alien supercomputer that's part of the spaceship Lana saw land during the meteor shower.  He and the people that came out of it are from a world called Krypton that was destroyed when I was a baby.  They're followers of General Zod, the man who tried to take over Krypton and the galaxy long before I was born.  My father, Jor-El, was the inventor of this really incredible prison called the Phantom Zone, and Zod was imprisoned inside it after he was defeated.  When Krypton was destroyed, my father sent me to Earth along with the interface for the prison so that Zod and the other criminals wouldn't be released.  I guess Jor-El was sort of like the jailor, and now I've inherited the job of keeping them locked up, but I really don't know much about that.  I was supposed to go for training with my father like half a dozen times, but I never trusted him so I never went, but now I think I was being stupid and maybe I should have gone, but I'm not sure.  That's part of why I'm here."

 

"Whoa," Lex attempted to dam the flood of words spewing from Clark.  "Slow down, Clark."

 

"Sorry," Clark apologized, blushing and flopping into the chair opposite the couch.  "I've never actually talked about any of this before to anyone.  It's hard to stop now that I've started.  Where'd I lose you?"

 

"Professor Fine is an alien supercomputer out to free an alien general?" Lex prompted, getting a nod from Clark.  "And you're an alien, too?"

 

"Yes," Clark agreed, looking as if he were about to pass out from sheer nervousness.

 

"Why are you telling me all of this?" Lex yelled, putting the scotch down on the table so he wouldn't accidentally spill it while waving his hands around.

 

Clark blinked, and then chuckled, shrugging ruefully.

 

"Well, Professor Fine's ambitions are the exact opposite of what I want," Clark explained in a slightly subdued tone of voice.  "He wants to enslave humanity and turn the Earth into a new Krypton.  I don't want to rule over anyone and I love the Earth exactly as it is.  Fine—whose real name is Brainiac, by the way— has been trying to keep you and me apart from the very first moment I met him.  He did everything he could to make me distrust you.  Everything he told me was a lie or the pieces of the truth twisted until they became lies.  So, since I'm terrible at figuring people out, I decided that if Brainiac—who's brilliant at it—didn't want me to trust you, and what we want is opposite, then doing the opposite of what he wants is probably the right thing to do."

 

Lex was fairly certain this wasn't one of his dreams, but it might turn out to be one of his nightmares based on the way Clark was making his head spin.  The logic in that little explanation didn't quite add up, but it was pure Clark, so Lex sighed in resignation, rubbing his face before looking at Clark carefully.  No, Clark still didn't looked drugged or like he'd been taken over.

 

"I'm to assume that the enemy of my enemy is my ally?" Lex surmised.

 

"Something like that I guess," Clark allowed.  "You're great at reading people.  You always know the right thing to do.  You have all these resources.  You're brilliant.  You're talented.  You're everything I'm not.  I'm strong, fast, invulnerable, and have all sorts of powers, but I'm terrible at reading people and never sure of the right thing to do.  I always flail around and eventually find something that sort of works.  I don't have the resources to track or stop him.  I'm not brilliant.  I'm not especially talented at anything except math.  We're perfect complements.  If we stopped fighting and lying to each other, then I think we could stop Fine.  Brainiac.  Whatever."

 

"And then what?" Lex prompted, his heart beating so hard in his chest he was surprised it hadn't burst through his sternum.

 

"I don't know," Clark admitted with a confused shrug.  "Honestly, I'm surprised I've gotten this far.  I usually flail around a lot longer than this before I figure out that I screwed up."

 

Lex firmly bit down on the burble of laughter that welled up, refusing to let it show on his face, much less let it out.  'Flailing around' was a pretty good description of how Clark dealt with life.  He truly had no idea how the boy had made it to college when he had no idea what he wanted out of life, what he stood for, or what he believed in.  When it came down to it, none of this was Lex's business.  Clark should be bringing this to his parents or Lana, or at least Chloe, not Lex.

 

"Why are you telling me this?" Lex asked, adding emphasis so that Clark would understand what he was asking.

 

"Well, I can't tell Mom and Dad, other than in a general way," Clark explained.  "If you think they hate you, trust me when I say that they hate my birth father even more.  I can't tell Chloe, well, I'll tell her, but not all of it.  There's stuff I don't trust her with knowing.  And I'm sure not going to tell Lana.  When it comes to Lana, everything's been a lie."

 

"A lie," Lex repeated, blinking at Clark.

 

Clark nodded, looking so sad, so tired, so…worn, that Lex had to clamp down on his heart again to keep it from hoping.  Clark had been in love with Lana Lang since the moment he'd met her.  There was no chance that Lex was ever going to win his heart.  He might be allowed to help Clark save the world, but there was no doubt that Clark was going to end up in bed with Lana or some other girl someday.

 

"Yeah," Clark sighed, studying the glass on the table.  "It turns out that I'm sort of gay and I've never wanted to admit it.  I'm so different that I would have done anything to be like everyone else, and Lana's always been my personal icon of normalcy.  Everyone wanted her, so if I wanted her, then I had to be normal and not some freaky alien thing from outer space."

 

Lex lifted the tumbler of scotch and downed it in three quick swallows that burned as they slid down his throat.  He rested his head against the back of the chair, closed his eyes and counted to ten in English.  Then he did it again in German and Japanese, by which point he could raise his head and meet Clark's eyes without grabbing him and kissing him.  He reminded himself firmly that gay added to Clark did not equal Clark and Lex happily ever after.

 

"Clark, I…" 

 

Lex wasn't sure what to say.  It was too much to take in all at once and he suspected that they'd only just scratched the surface.  So many incidents were swarming in his mind, things that he wanted to ask Clark about but couldn't.  They'd done this before, this dance of trust and breaking the trust.  He didn't want to be hurt again.  He didn't want to have his dream so close, only to have it snatched away.

 

"Just go, please," sighed Lex, shaking his head.  He waved one hand, cutting off whatever Clark had been about to say.  "I don't think there's anything you could say that would convince me right now.  I need to think."

 

"Could I show you something?" pleaded Clark, in that horribly hurt little boy voice that always made Lex feel like an absolute cad.  "It won't take long.  You'll need a heavy coat and hat, some winter gloves, but I think seeing it will help."

 

Lex had never been able to refuse Clark anything when he used that tone of voice and looked at him like that.  'Puppy eyes' were completely inadequate to describe the impact of that look.  He sighed and nodded, setting the empty tumbler down.  They gathered Lex's heaviest winter coat, hat and gloves, drove to the Kawatche Caves of all places, and went into the inner chamber where Lex knew he'd seen Clark disappear during the meteor shower.  Clark took a deep breath, pulled out the long-lost octagonal disk, and turned to Lex.

 

"Put on your stuff," Clark directed, taking a deep breath.  When Lex was ready, Clark took his hand and dropped the disk into a slot on the pedestal table.

 

Lex wasn't sure what he expected, but the weird drop-twist-slide-jump movement wasn't it.  Ice-cold arctic air wasn't it.  Huge crystals that formed some sort of alien building really wasn't it.  Lex's jaw dropped and he stared around them, trying to look at everything at once.  It was real.  He touched the huge crystals that made up one wall.  It was real.  He hurried around the corner, looking at everything.  It was real.  It was all real.  Lex turned back to Clark, shaking from far more than the cold.

 

"You're really trusting me with everything." Lex shuddered violently in reaction.

 

"I have to, Lex," Clark said sadly.  "Fine didn't try to take Mom and Dad away, not really.  He used them as tools but he didn't try to drive me away from them.  He was always trying to keep me away from you.  That's why I keep telling you that I have to trust that doing the opposite of what Fine wants is the correct thing to do.  It makes sense in a sort of backwards way."

 

"All right," Lex breathed out softly, walking over and touching Clark's chest.  Unlike Lex, he wasn't shivering at all.  "All right, let's collect as much information as we can.  If Brainiac really does want to destroy the world and enslave humanity, he's had months to do whatever he wanted.  We'll probably have to work quickly.  Hopefully we can get this done and be able to remain friends afterwards."

 

"Um, Lex?" Clark stammered, looking extremely nervous.  "I'm trying really hard to always tell the truth to you now, so I really think I need to stop you right there."

 

Lex's heart stopped.  He didn't want to be friends.  He only wanted an ally.  Lex could have kicked himself.  Why would he assume that Clark wanted to be friends?  He was an alien, and God only knew what he thought.  Who knew if he could have friends, if he was capable of feeling that sort of emotion?  Lex kicked himself mentally while slapping on his blank-face so that none of it showed.

 

"Um," Clark gulped, swallowing hard, "I'm planning on dumping Lana.  It just isn't working and I know she can do so much better than me.  I've jerked her around for way too long and that has to stop.  So…well…I was hoping…."

 

He quivered, looking anywhere but Lex's eyes.  He was wringing his hands, and literally shuffling his feet.  Lex's heart stopped hurting and started to hope, even as he prayed mentally for it not to be a dream, a nightmare, or Clark's stupid inability to say things right.

 

"I don't know how you feel about me," Clark went on, breaking into a sweat and making Lex's lips twitch, "because you know, really bad at reading people and all that, but I've always really liked you and um, well…I'm not making any sense!"

 

Lex laughed quietly as Clark tugged at his hair, trying to put his feelings into words.

 

"You like me," Lex said, taking pity on him.

 

"Yes," Clark agreed, nodding desperately.

 

"And you're hoping that I like you too."

 

"Yes," Clark murmured shyly.

 

"And you would like to know if it's possible for us to be more than friends," Lex ventured, more than a little cautious at the prospect.

 

"Yes!" Clark exclaimed, beaming at Lex as if he were the most brilliant person in the world.  "Um, would you?  I mean, with me?"

 

Lex laughed, shaking his head in dismay.  He really didn't know how he'd fallen for someone who was so totally his opposite, but he had.  Years ago on a riverbank, after nearly drowning, he'd looked up into a pair of green eyes and drowned again, that time for good.

 

"Clark, there could never be anyone as important to me as you," Lex declared, reaching out to cup his strong chin.  "I was willing to be satisfied with being your friend.  If we had become enemies, I would have become your ultimate nemesis.  I'd be delighted to be your boyfriend, your lover, your husband, whatever you'll give me.  And I'll certainly be glad to help you defend the earth against Professor Fine.  Whatever you're willing to give me, I'll take."

 

Clark blinked, then smiled, then grinned, and then looked like he was about to spontaneously combust when Lex said the word 'husband.'  He bounced a little and nodded, suddenly acting very shy.

 

"Can I…uh...give you a kiss?" Clark stammered, blushing so brightly that his ears went red.

 

"Yes," Lex answered, stepping closer.  "As long as I can give you one, too."

 

"As many as you want," Clark promised, wrapping his arms around Lex.

 

It was simple and sweet, a shy virgin's kiss that made Lex's heart beat faster.  God, but he was going to have fun teaching Clark about love!  Clark pulled back, grinning at him with a rueful look in his eyes.

 

"You know," Clark said thoughtfully, "I might have to move into the mansion."

 

"What?" Lex blurted. "Why?"

 

"Because I'm terrible at lying, Lex," Clark admitted sadly, though there was a mischievous look in his eyes.  "Everyone's going to know I'm in love with you as soon as they see me.  Dad's going to go through the roof!"

 

Clark started laughing and Lex grinned, joining in.  Their laughter echoed off the crystalline walls of Clark's Fortress.  Come what may, Lex was never giving Clark up, not after all of this.  They were together now, and not even alien super computers and angry fathers would tear them apart.

 

The End