Lex is thirty six years old and feels only six of it, a perfect square root of his actual and mental age. He is driving towards a small, quaint town called Smallville, and he's thinking of corn and the Ku Klux Klan because the possibility of both existing here side by side seems likely. Something designer is still circulating in his system, he feels more alert and more alive than he has ever felt. He decides to step on the gas; there's not a cop in this world, let alone a cop in this tiny backwards town that he couldn't buy off.

Which was a mistake, because there's a young boy suddenly in front of his car, hazel eyes wide and a dark mop of hair Lex sees as he steps on his brakes, but it's much too late. The child closes his eyes and thrusts his shoulders forward. Lex's Porsche wraps around the boy and Lex sees nothing except motion and clear blue bright sky, his seatbelt holding him safely even as his head wildly jerks back and forth between the seat and the steering wheel.

When the grinding noises finally stop, Lex takes a long, undignified breath. The front of his car looks like a horseshoe, with splinters of metal sticking out from either side. The child stands surrounded by wreckage. Lex is sure he's suffering from some sort of hallucination, but to his amazement, the child calmly clambers on top of the car, rips off the roof and extracts Lex carefully from the wreckage.

He feels six years old all over again, but in the most humiliating way.

In what seemed like a blur, Lex is deposited gently on the sidewalk. "Don't move," the boy says in a reedy voice, "and don't be scared." Lex watches as the little boy squints. There's a weird distortion of light and air that occurs and it is only then that Lex realizes that he is at least forty feet away from the remains of his car. He looks at the boy, who has such an adorable expression of concentration on his face that he only hears his former car explode.

After staring at the flaming ball in the middle of the road for a few seconds, he looks at the young boy who's kicking dirt with his shoe, blushing furiously.

"What's your name?"

"Clark. Clark Kent."

"Thank you, Clark. You saved my life," Lex says. The boy ducks his head.

"You'd have done it for me too, right?" He looks up at Lex, and Lex can't help but smile. He normally cannot stand kids. Lex blames the drug.

"Of course," he says, shocked that he actually means it.

"I'm sorry." The boy casts his head down again. "I didn't wanna have to destroy your car."

"I can afford a new one."

"You'll have to buy it here in Smallville!" Clark's grin is infectious. "You'll have to now, `cause you can't leave here."

Lex raises an eyebrow at that. "That's why people buy cars though, Clark, so they can go places."

Clark suddenly becomes very serious. "You saw what I can do, mister. You can't leave, or they'll shoot you."

"I beg your pardon," Lex says incredulously.

"He means what he says." Lex turns around and sees a blond man holding a shotgun and a woman with glossy red hair holding a pistol. They lead a small crowd walking slowly towards them. Lex gets up and pushes Clark behind him.

"Clark is Smallville's secret," the woman says.

"And there's only one way people who see Clark can leave," the blond man says, aiming his shotgun carefully. The crowd spreads out to form a loose circle surrounding Lex and Clark.

Lex looks down at Clark who is smiling so innocently back up at him. He wishes desperately for sobriety.

"I like you," Clark says. "I'd like it if you can stay."

Bandit Nun's fast, Clark thinks, but she's no match for Superboy. Turning into an alley, Clark runs faster and extends an arm, intending to clothesline her, but Bandit Nun unfurls a whip from underneath her habit.

"Don't even think about it, Superman," she hisses. "The tip of this whip has kryptonite on it!" She proves her point by flicking it expertly, the tip of it catching Clark's cheek. A small trickle of blood drips down, but the cut heals almost instantly.

Clark stops in his tracks. He hates supervillains with kryptonite, and Bandit Nun is among the trickiest here in Smallville. From what Chloe (my code name is Data, he can imagine her saying) could tell him, Bandit Nun used to be a regular nun, but she had a kryptonite rosary that she prayed with that turned her insane and somewhat slutty.

Gossamer drifts ethereally into battle with her staff of light, which always emits bright light. "Superboy, what is the problem?"

"Bandit Nun's whip has kryptonite at the tip."

"Oh dear, I wish there was something I can do," Gossamer says. "Curse those meteor rocks for only giving me the ability to drift!" Her black hair shimmers beautifully as the light from her staff shines, and Clark feels an old pang of what he used to feel for her years ago.

Bandit Nun runs for it while they're distracted. Gossamer curses softly and drifts towards the direction of Bandit Nun's escape route.

Suddenly, something purple and fast tackles Bandit Nun into the ground.

"Got her, Superboy!" The whip is thrown far away.

"Thanks, Purple Bandit. Good job! Now we can question her and see what her and the Sin Syndicate are up to." He runs up to Lex and puts an arm around his shoulder. Lex smiles up at him and Clark feels the familiar warm constriction in his chest.

A sudden wind blows through the alley and Gossamer shrieks as she drifts farther than she anticipated. Lex reaches out for her wrist while still looking at Clark. She murmurs her thanks.

"Why on earth did your parents give you a boy's name?"

"That's not really my name."

"Why did they let Clark stick?"

"It had the first four letters of my name. When my mom was teaching me English, she was pointing out things that started with C-L-A-R."

"I don't understand," Lex says, stopping his kisses on her neck to look at her.

"She pointed out her maiden name, and there was only one letter after it. It was easier to learn than my real name," Clark says, smiling, "so I decided that that would be my name."

Clark reaches out to skim her fingers gently around Lex's face, outlining Lex's smile afterwards. Lex's fingers are unbuttoning her jeans. She wishes desperately that she could tell her secrets, and a small, disenchanted part of her mourns the fact that it's easier to give Lex her virginity rather than give up her secrets.

"Stubborn even then."

"Hi Kettle," Clark says. "Besides, I really don't like Clarissa."

Lex finishes unbuttoning her jeans. She lifts her hips up; he slides them off her legs. His fingers touch her panties, but he looks at her first. The question is clear in the air.

"I'm sure," Clark says. She's having a lot of trouble breathing normally, and she lets herself collapse back into Lex's bed as he mouths her through the fabric first. Her breath hitches; her limbs feel drowsy. She feels herself getting wet and is mildly embarrassed. She's never been sure if she does that differently than normal people.

Lex plants kisses on her navel, traveling slowly up to deposit long licks and kisses on her breasts. He holds himself above her with his elbows.

"Why did you stop?" She wants Lex so badly that she fights the urge to push him back down.

He thinks long and hard before saying the simplest of things. "You're so young," he says.

"Fourteen is just a number, Lex."

"Not when it's up against twenty-two."

Clark closes her eyes. She can't prevent the sickly, pathetic tears from falling and hates it. "Is this just your way of saying you don't want me?" She feels it keenly then, that she came into this Earth not through a mother, but in a spaceship.

"Not that. Never that," Lex says. "You saved my life. I might be destroying yours." He kisses her eyelids.

You already are, a voice inside her head screams. And it seems there's nothing left to lose. Maybe the truth does set people free.

She opens her eyes and sees Lex looking strangely vulnerable. "I don't trust you," Clark says. "And you don't trust me either."

Lex looks taken aback for a moment before he schools his face into indifference. "Just one more thing we should think about then, don't you think?" His voice is bland and detached. It sends shivers of dread down Clark's spine.

"But I think I can. Trust you, I mean," Clark says brokenly.

An endless silence, a silence where Clark thinks desperate things, of concessions of bits of truth. She knows though, that this is all she can surrender for now.

"I think I can too," Lex says. His hand slides underneath her cotton underwear.

In a gleaming corner of the supposedly abandoned basement in Luthor Castle, Lex sits, pondering a few decisions that will change everything. In front of him lies years of research and funding, theory sculpted into sleek steel and bright bursts of energy.

Let it not be said, Lex thinks, that he never had any backup plans on top of his contingency plans.

The portal of possibility literally lay open before him. It is a question of whether he has had enough of this endless stalemate with Superman, of Superman unwilling to kill him, of Lex being unable to kill him despite his best efforts. It is a question of whether Clark will lose that betrayed look every time he looks at Lex, and whether Lex can ever trust Clark ever again.

He remembers days of sky wide smiles and warm bronze skin, of kisses that went on forever and a depth of affection that Lex still struggles to comprehend. He thinks that's what he really wants and he hangs onto that ferociously.

His team of scientists say that they've been able to narrow down a few sequences of alternate realities within the portal, but they're not sure of the parameters of those realities.

Sometimes, Lex thinks he'll walk into the portal anyway.

THE END