Hope
Sequel/Series: nope
Pairing: CLex
Rating: PG-13
Category: angst, first time, romance?
Archive: list archive
Notes: Not sure about the style of this, never tried it before, hope you like :)
Warnings: general season one and two spoilers, but details of Lex’s life aren’t accurate
Disclaimer: not mine
Summary: A confession
When I was two years old, my father took away my teddy bear. He was old and torn, only had one eye, but I couldn’t sleep without him. Dad said I was too old for such childish toys.
When I was five, my father took away my dog. I’d only had him a few months, a birthday present from my mother. My father said I was too old to be running around, playing and besides, we made too much noise. My father shot him.
When I was seven, my father said I was too old to have friends, that it was time for me to realise that I couldn’t trust anyone. Anyone but him that was.
When I was nine years old, I died for the first time. Only for a little while, but I died in a shower of flaming rocks. I don’t remember much before waking up in the hospital, but I will always remember feeling the sweetest caress I’d ever felt outside of my mother’s. It gave me hope; a hope I clung onto for the rest of my life. A hope that got me through my darkest times. Starting with the loss of my hair.
When I was eleven years old, my baby brother died, and soon afterwards, my mother. And with them, the last of my childhood. After that, my life consisted of trying to please my father by being the best at everything. I never pleased him, but I held onto my hope.
When I was thirteen, I was sent to England, to boarding school and I stopped trying to please my father. My thirteenth year was the first year I got drunk, the first year I got high… the first time I had sex. With a boy. And it was the first time I was raped. My hope was all that got me through.
When I was fourteen, I started making my own drugs and selling them. I had sex with boys and girls and always topped. I got expelled from school for blowing up the chemistry lab… and for fucking the headmaster’s wife. It was the first year my father did more than smack me; he beat me. I held onto my hope desperately.
When I was sixteen, my father put me in a prep school in Metropolis. So he could keep an eye on me, he said. After that, my life consisted of trying to piss my father off. I succeeded, not that he ever showed it, except to beat me if I got arrested. That was the year I stopped taking drugs and getting drunk. I needed to stay in control if I was going to survive my father. I never let on though, I just held onto my hope, that sweet caress.
When I was seventeen years old, I went to University. I pushed drugs, I fucked around, I got arrested. I got thrown out of University, my father got me into another. He had me followed, watched; he thought I was drunk and high 90% of the time. It was the second time I was raped… by the boy I thought was my best friend, but who turned out to be on my father’s payroll. I stopped trusting, almost stopped feeling, but always, I held onto my hope. Even when Amanda killed herself.
When I was nineteen, I got my degree and my first position in LuthorCorp. My first official position, of course. My father had been pushing business onto me since childhood. He pushed, I pushed back. He couldn’t beat me anymore, I was too big, too old and too well versed in self defence. He found other ways to punish me; fucking my girlfriends, buying my ‘friends’. Good thing I never invested any emotion in any of them. I held onto my hope and found out I was far better at business than my father could have dreamed.
When I was twenty one, my father exiled me to Smallville. When I was twenty one, I died for the second time. When I was twenty one, I met an angel and fell in love for the first, and last, time… when I was twenty one, I found my hope.
@>*~
Lex stopped talking and sighed. He was weary and felt old beyond his years. He was twenty three now and his hope was fading. His best friend didn’t trust him and in the last two years, he’d become less and less worthy of that trust.
Two wives had tried to kill him. His father had nearly died, been blinded and had still managed to take everything that meant a damn to him, everything he’d worked so fucking hard for. Except Clark.
This was all he had left now, this quiet, tense fireside confession. Clark hadn’t said a word throughout and Lex hadn’t looked at him. Every second that passed, Lex could feel his hope dying and with it, his heart, soul… any chance of love and a good life. Any chance of escaping his father’s legacy.
“Goodbye, Clark.”
@>*~
Clark sat and listened, sorrow turning to grief and pain and then to complete shame. He’d lied, made accusations, judged and used. He wasn’t an angel, he wasn’t even a worthy best friend.
Clark had done nothing but condemn Lex to live without hope and it hurt so much, he couldn’t breathe, let alone speak.
Until Lex moved, until his whisper of goodbye.
Clark reached up and grabbed Lex’s arm, pulling him round. The dark smudges under Lex’s eyes were a sharp contrast to his paler than normal skin and Clark felt tears spring to his eyes.
Everything Lex had done wrong since he’d arrived in Smallville, every mistake he’d quietly admitted to was forgiven in the instant Clark saw those dull, empty, hopeless blue eyes.
“Please,” he whispered. Lex looked confused. “Don’t go.”
@>*~
Lex stared up at Clark, seeing the tears in darkened green eyes, hearing the words, yet not quite comprehending them.
“Don’t leave me,” Clark breathed, his voice breaking, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Suddenly, his arms were full of sobbing Clark Kent and Lex couldn’t do anything to prevent the renewed surge of hope in his heart. Even though it would surely cost him when it was stamped out for a final time.
“Clark?” he whispered, “Why are you sorry?”
It took a few minutes, but Clark finally calmed enough to speak. “For the way I treated you. And for still doing it even knowing that I was maybe the one person who could really hurt you. I’m sorry I never told you who I am and where I come from, for betraying your trust time and time again; and for being so scared that I couldn’t even admit to myself how…” He stopped and shook his head.
“How what, Clark?” Lex prompted quietly.
Clark yanked himself away, “No! I don’t deserve anything from you, not your friendship, not your forgiveness. I can’t… I can’t be your hope, Lex, I don’t deserve it.”
Lex swallowed hard, pain filling his heart, confusion filling his mind. “Clark, I don’t understand,” he whispered, “I told you everything because I hoped you would forgive me.”
“I do, of course I do,” Clark breathed out in distress, “But you deserve more than me and I don’t deserve you at all.”
“Don’t say that, Clark, you are everything to me. You’ve been the hope that kept me alive for fourteen years, the love that gave me such sweet joy and bittersweet torture for two,” Lex sighed, “You’re all that keeps Lex from drowning in Luthor.”
Clark clung to him suddenly, “Would you still say that if I told you I was an alien? That I caused this?” He ran a hand over Lex’s head and down his cheek. Lex quickly grasped that hand and held it to his face.
“My hope,” Lex whispered. He turned his head to press a kiss to Clark’s palm. “My love.”
@>*~
Clark gasped, pulling back enough to look into Lex’s eyes, seeing the renewed hope. “I was so scared, Lex, too scared to allow myself to accept the feelings I had for you. I buried them, but they never went away, just grew stronger and stronger. I did things, hurt you, tried to push you away; but you didn’t leave, you didn’t berate me, you never denied me. How could I help loving you?”
The hope in Lex’s eyes brightened. “Love me?” he asked quietly.
“I’ve been in love with you since you hit me with the Porsche,” Clark admitted for the first time. He closed his eyes, nervous and unsure. What would Lex do now? A gentle brush of lips against his own was his answer and Clark opened his eyes again.
“Sit down, Clark.” Lex gestured at the couch, before sitting himself. Clark nodded and sat back down, close to Lex. “Will you tell me your story, Clark?” Lex asked softly.
Clark nodded. He would do anything Lex asked to keep that hope alive in his eyes.
@>*~
Clark nodded and Lex smiled for the first time that night. When Clark curled up on the couch and put his head in his lap, Lex sighed happily and gently stroked thick, dark hair as, haltingly, Clark began to speak.
The flame of hope in his heart, that had come so close to being extinguished, was burning like a furnace and Lex didn’t think it would ever diminish again.
@>*~
When I was twenty three, my first, and last, love was returned. I was trusted, worthy. It was the first time I was truly happy… but it wasn’t the last.
end
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