This story takes place post-"Heat," and was written mainly to perv on driving gloves and the hammock, two things that need more perving. It was also written for Apocrypha, who accused me of being a "smut-tease," and Te, because I promised her smut in the next one. I wanted a slow, rainy soundtrack with some good sensuality in the mix. My medley of choice for this piece, Jewel's rendition of "Have a Little Faith in Me," Sarah McLachlan's "Possession," and Dave Matthews' "Where Are You Going." I've been hanging out on the light side of my mp3 collection for a while, I think I'm going to have to pull out the Tool and Stabbing Westward for the next one. The Divine Beta Collective shone forth in their benevolence once again. Eliza, Sleeps With Coyotes, 'tilla, and Peach are true godsends. Peach's mouthwatering verdict:"it's an oven-warm chocolate cake made with dark, bittersweet chocolate (rich, delicious, and satisfying, mmm) and eaten on a cold day."

It's raining outside, and the hammock is perfectly positioned to catch the breeze while he swings idly back and forth and watches the rain fall. He tried reading earlier, then dozed for a while with Fahrenheit 451 open on his chest. He's still not completely awake. Both the x-ray vision and the heat vision took a lot out of him when they manifested, though he's found it's nothing a little extra sleep won't cure, and while the heat wave didn't really affect him, the cool, wet air feels...nice.

Distantly, he hears the sound of a car pulling into the drive. Lex, he would guess by the soft purr of the engine, and he smiles a little sadly. Lex hasn't visited in a few days, too busy with lawyers and the plant and his father's ongoing recovery. All perfectly reasonable explanations, none of them touching on how tentative Lex is with him now, the uncertainty that has crept into the measuring looks Lex has always given him. It's like the way his dad has been extra attentive to his mom lately, as if to make up for being human enough to succumb to Desiree's influence.

He remembers the brief, breathless moment when he felt it, when he wanted her. When he would have done anything to have her. He remembers Lex burning under his hands, and his mind shudders away from how it all could have gone differently. If he had been human enough.

To succumb.

There's the sound of swift footsteps on the stairs, and he realizes he hasn't been paying attention. He turns his head just as Lex steps up into the loft, and offers his friend a smile.

"Stay right there," Lex tells him as he begins to rise, holding up one gloved hand. "I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to stretch out on your couch."

"Be my guest." Clark twists on his side for a better angle, watching as Lex takes off his rain-soaked coat and drapes it over the loft railing before claiming the corner of the battered old couch, his arms spread out on the back and side and one leg stretched across the cushions with the other still on the floor. It is and it isn't a very Lex pose, and it makes him think of...things that would have been very dangerous a week ago. "Looks like your back is doing better."

Lex offers him a familiar smirk. "I'm a fast healer, Clark. I've had sunburns that felt worse than I do right now." He pauses, then adds, "The annulment was finalized yesterday."

"Lex...." Clark pauses, swallowing. What is he supposed to say to that? Congratulations? I'm sorry? "I wish...I wish things had turned out differently."

"Yes, well." Lex shrugs with a peculiar, boneless grace, then leans forward, bringing both feet to the floor. "All my life, people have tried to manipulate me, Clark. Desiree was nothing special in that regard. She was just a little better at it than most."

"She still hurt you, Lex."

"And she made me hurt you."

Clark really feels he shouldn't be having this conversation lying down, but when he tries to rise again, Lex is right there. He always forgets how fast Lex can move. He's sometimes wondered if it's another side effect of the meteors. Lex has one hand on his shoulder, holding him in place, and Lex's eyes are the color of the rain.

"That wasn't you, Lex," Clark says, meeting those eyes. "I know that."

"You always have such faith in me, Clark."

There's something in Lex's voice that makes him shift a little under the still-gloved hand, but he can't look away from Lex's eyes. "You're a good friend, Lex."

"Your friendship means a lot to me." Lex's hand drifts from his shoulder to loosely curve around the side of his throat. "Even with all your secrets, you've never tried to manipulate me."

"Lex--"

Leatherclad fingers press lightly against his mouth, and he falls silent. Lex's eyes hold him quiescent as Lex pushes him back flat on the hammock. Then, in a move that Clark's pretty sure no one else could duplicate without disastrous results, Lex oozes up onto the hammock to straddle him on folded up legs, setting the hammock lightly swinging. Or maybe the sense of movement is just the hypnotic effect of Lex so close, leaning in and looking at him like that with rain-grey eyes, petting him with elegant, gloved hands.

"She was wearing red when I met her, did I tell you that? She was wearing red and she said she was there to save me. It was enough to let her close, after a week without even talking to you."

Lex's fingers brush his lips again, Lex's body heat hits him in a wave, and he realizes with a sense of rising panic that there's one thing he's neglected in trying to master his new power. How's he supposed to control it when he's actually having sex? And he's pretty sure that's what Lex is planning, here.

He doesn't ever want Lex burning under his hands again.

"Lex, wait--"

"I've been waiting, Clark." Both hands move down his sides to yank his tee-shirt out of his jeans, and then there's leather stroking across his stomach, cool and soft and he feels so hot by contrast, but that sense of gathering energy has shifted much, much lower than his eyes. "I saw your mother at the Talon and told her I'd be stopping by. She wanted me to tell you that your father is still in an apologetic mood, so they're going to catch a movie while they're in town. You don't mind if I take advantage of their absence, do you?"

Lex moves one hand up to cup his cheek, the other sliding up to settle over his nipple and rub lightly. Clark arches into the contact, gasping. "Lex, god--"

Lex kisses him, deep and wet and--not demanding exactly, but inevitable. Like Clark's mouth has always been Lex's territory and Lex was just waiting to claim it. And Lex claims it thoroughly, a tongue flavored faintly of coffee flicking at his palate and licking his teeth and twining slyly with his own tongue to coax him into response. Tasting him, and Clark wonders if Lex likes the combination of coffee and Hershey's chocolate as much as he does.

Clark fumbles Lex's shirt out of his pants, and Lex makes a sound as Clark presses his palms to the warm, smooth skin of Lex's back. Clark winces, remembering the burns--but Lex is arching up into his hands like his touch is a very good thing, and he just can't pull away from that. Leatherclad fingers close on his nipple briefly, drawing another gasp from him before sliding down under the waistband of his jeans. Lex slips his tongue from Clark's mouth, but Clark can't even whimper at the loss before Lex is worrying at his lower lip with sharp, even teeth. One fingertip eases inside the waistband of his boxers and his hands clench convulsively on Lex's back. Lex laughs and licks a path across his jaw and up to his ear.

"Nobody's ever touched you like this, have they, Clark?" Lex whispers, his voice another teasing caress. "I know Desiree wanted to. She wanted you to kill me, didn't she? What do you think she would have thought about being your substitute?"

"Lex," he hisses, and Lex bites the lobe of his ear.

"God, Clark. Say my name again. I could make a fortune off your voice."

Clark laughs a little shakily. "Lex...you already have a fortune."

"That's good, because I'm really not good at sharing."

Lex slips his hand out of Clark's jeans and undoes the belt--which is a feat of dexterity that really shouldn't surprise Clark, given that it's Lex--and eases the button free of the buttonhole. Then Lex's hand is completely inside Clark's boxers, and there's a leather glove cupping Clark's cock, just holding him. Clark makes an indefinable noise at that, and Lex pulls away from his ear to smile down at him, eyes darker than the rain now and so hungry.

"Lex," Clark breathes, and Lex's smile turns feral.

"Yeah, Clark. Just like that."

"Please, Lex, I need--"

Lex cuts him off with another kiss, and this one is demanding, mind-blowing, that moment under Desiree's spell multiplied a hundredfold because it's real and it's not stopping and it's Lex. The hand is gone from around his cock, and he wants to protest that, but he can hear a belt being undone and a zipper being pulled down and he reaches up to put his hand on Lex's as Lex pulls himself out. Lex moves on to tackle Clark's zipper, but Clark lingers, finding Lex's cock and stroking it in time to Lex's tongue moving in his mouth. Lex growls into the kiss, breaking free to push Clark's head to the side and bite down hard where neck and shoulder meet. Clark feels that with a shock all the way to his toes.

"Lex!"

"That's it, Clark. God, you're so hot." Another zipper sound, and then he feels the brush of rain-heavy air as Lex eases his cock free of his boxers. It's a different kind of shock, the touch of leather there nothing he ever expected to feel. Neither is Lex stretching out on top of him until their legs are entwined, bracing with his unoccupied hand against Clark's shoulder and leaning in, watching Clark intently. Another, more profound shock as Lex coaxes Clark's hand away to clasp their cocks together in his own, and then Lex's hand is moving in long, precise strokes, and all Clark can do is grab onto the hammock as the safer object in reach and pray he doesn't rip right through it.

He feels like he's burning and his eyes are not remotely the hottest part of his body, but he closes them anyway, because watching Lex like this is too much of something that may well be the thing that can kill him.

"Open your eyes, Clark. I want to see it. I want to see you." There's no way he can disobey that tone, hungry as Lex's eyes. He looks up, and he's drowning and he's burning and Lex is devouring him, all of him, and really, he could stand to die this way. It's better than the meteor rocks. No pain. No nausea. Just skin and leather and Lex and--

Combustion.

He's pretty sure he shouts Lex's name again. He'd almost swear Lex says his. He feels something hot and wet splattering his stomach, and then it's like his bones just dissolve. Lex stares down at him for a long moment with dilated eyes, breathing hard. He stares back, trying to remember how to speak, but all of his vocabulary seems to have deserted him except the one word.

"Lex...."

Lex brushes his cock gently one more time before releasing it, and then Clark forgets how to breathe as Lex brings the soiled glove to his mouth and begins to lick his fingers. And still Lex watches him so closely.

"I like the way we taste, Clark. I like the way you look under me."

Clark really wants to say something to that, but all he can come up with is an inarticulate sound that's not even close to a word. Lex doesn't seem to mind. Lex just smiles and licks his own glove again.

"You want a taste?"

He can't imagine saying no to that, or to anything else Lex wants to suggest at the moment, really. Lex doesn't offer his hand, though, instead leaning down again to kiss him. This one is an offering, Lex barely brushing into his mouth before retreating, letting him decide how deep this will go. Clark takes tentative advantage of Lex's open mouth, darting his own tongue inside to catch their flavor and it's--different. There's still coffee and chocolate but now there's something else too, salty and bitter and it tastes like Lex looks, like sex feels.

Sex. He's just had sex with Lex. In a hammock. With driving gloves. And he didn't set anything on fire. Somehow, that almost seems wrong.

Lex starts to pull away, and he finds he can move enough to get his arms around Lex; hold Lex there and keep kissing, keep tasting. Lex laughs and Clark can feel it all the way down his body. Everywhere they touch. Which is--

He lets Lex go to breathe, and Lex finds his ear again. "Did you like that, Clark?"

"I--" he pauses to swallow, then wonders if Lex means the kiss. "Which part?"

"Was there a part you didn't like?" Lex pulls back and Lex's smirk is so damn smug. It's really not fair, except he's still not thinking all that well, so Lex probably has the right to look like that.

"No. I--I liked it." Liked it the way he likes oxygen, and he hopes this is not a one-shot deal, but he's not sure how to ask Lex that. "Did you?" Or maybe that's one way.

Lex's smile is positively criminal. "Yes, Clark. I liked it very much."

"Oh." Lex liked it. Lex is looking much too unruffled for what they just did, and that irritates him enough to be daring. "Would you. Like to--?" And what the hell is he asking?

The smile falls away and Lex's eyes go dark again, but his clean hand cupping Clark's jaw is gentle. "Don't ask me unless you mean it, Clark. I'm not in the mood for anybody's games."

"Except yours." Which is not in the script that leads to him getting more sex, but he has to be clear on this, because his brain is coming back online and he's not sure he's in the mood for anybody's games, either. Not even the ones that lead to handjobs from sexy billionaires wearing leather driving gloves. "Lex, this is--is this about Desiree? Because I don't want--"

"No." The answer is flat, almost angry, and yet Lex smiles again, this time a little sad, as his eyes fade back to the color of rain. "Weren't you listening, Clark? Desiree...was about you."

He wants to answer that. He can't think of any words to answer that. Easier to kiss Lex again, and maybe that's answer enough as Lex relaxes in his arms and Lex's hands start moving on him again. It only lasts a few seconds, though, and then Lex pulls away again.

"We need to get cleaned up," Lex says before he can protest. "And then you're leaving a note for your parents, and we're going to the castle. That should give you time to think about what you want to ask me."

"I know, Lex." Clark slides one hand up to cup Lex's head, keeping him in place a moment longer. "I know."

"In that case," Lex's lips and teeth find Clark's ear once more, "the castle is a much more discreet place to answer."

"You sure there won't be too many bad memories?" Clark gasps, trying to hold onto thought, and this time he feels Lex's smile.

"Not too many, and I intend to make several new good ones. Come on, Clark, let's go get wet."

~END~