Dovetail Joint

by Lanning Cook

"Now.  Focus on the tip."

"Lex, I'm not doing this."

Lex managed not to smile at the preposterous notion of Clark refusing to do something Lex wanted him to do.  "You'll thank me for it later.  Focus."

Clark scowled.  He was too pale -- which had nothing to do with where he was and everything to do with where he had been until Lex had dragged him away.  "Not when it's in front of your face!"

"I trust you.  Do it."

"No!"

"You've already done it half a dozen times already."

"Not when it's in front of your face, I haven't!"

Lex let his smile win. "You're obsessed with my face, Clark."

Clark glared.  "I'm not obsessed with it.  I just like your face.  I like it just the way it is and I'm not setting it on fire."

Lex shifted uncomfortably as his crossed legs protested their prolonged exposure to a hard, cold wood floor.  "Light.  The.  Cigarette."

Clark, seated facing him, responded with typical Kent truculence and disregard for the germane. "It's not a cigarette.  It's a joint."

"The relevance of this observation escapes me."

Clark sighed. "Lex, why are we sitting in my loft lighting joints with my heat vision?"

"I should think that would be obvious."

"It's not obvious!  You've had me out here for two hours while Dad--"

"Your father is back in his own bed and in good hands."

"Are you sure?"

"Eli only hires the best."

"Moira doesn't look like a nurse to me."

"The best people are rarely what they look like.  I, for example--"

"She's one of his operatives, isn't she?"

"--look like a gay porn star.  But we both know--"

"You don't look anything like a gay porn star!"  Clark looked inappropriately horrified at the idea.

Lex regarded Clark over the tip of the joint with great interest.  "And you would know this, how, exactly?"

Clark went bright red.  "Can we go back to Moira?"

"No."

"Can we go back to lighting joints?"

"Clark, have you been watching gay porn?"

Clark looked away and squirmed as that delightfully crimson pigmentation spread across his ears and down his neck before disappearing beneath the ubiquitous flannel.  Lex started calculating, with considerable amusement, how long it would take to reach Clark's toes, and how much better that color looked on him than that white, drawn, waiting-for-doom look he'd been sporting a couple hours ago.  "Just online.  A little.  You know.  For--"

"Practice?"

"Ideas!"

Lex laughed softly at the absurd notion of Clark's sexual muse staging a work stoppage. "Trust me, Clark.  Your own ideas are the stuff of legend."

Clark regarded him in silence for all of two seconds.  "Lex, why did you come over here today?"

"To welcome your father home from the hospital."

"And why did you bring me up here?"

"To hone your heat vision skills."

"I don't think that's why."

Lex lifted the joint again.  "Shift your focus."

"Where did you get all this pot?"  Clark gestured toward Lex's stash of loose leaf and joints, neatly displayed in plastic bags on the loft floor.

"From the Timothy Leary Memorial Marijuana Forest.  Focus."

"If you bought it from someone who recognized you, they could--"

"The Timothy Leary Memorial Marijuana Forest is in the woods behind my farmhouse."

Clark blinked.  "What?"

"Someone in Smallville has a green thumb.  They must have abandoned their crop when they heard the property was sold."

"Are you serious?"

"This is one hundred percent Kansas home grown.  I ordered the papers on the internet -- using my alias of choice, of course.  God, I love living in the twenty-first century."

"Lex, what if Sheriff Millar finds out about the ... the Timothy ... who on earth is Timothy Leary, anyway?"

Lex ignored the horrifyingly wholesome implications of the question.  "Between the EPA cleanup, the eviction cancellations and the mutant coming-out parties, I think Sheriff Millar and his department have more important things to worry about.  Besides, Eli is the property owner of record."  Lex restrained an evil cackle.

Clark looked horrified.  "What if Eli gets arrested?  Lex, you've got to get rid of that stuff!"

"After the harvest."

"Lex."

"Clark, I've been clean and sober longer than is healthy for a Luthor.  Allow me at least one vice."

"One!  One?"

"Fine.  Allow me another vice."

"Lex, you are not getting hooked on pot."

Lex did his level best not to take the suggestion as the insult it obviously was.  "Don't be ridiculous.  Hooked on backyard weed?  There's just as great a likelihood I'll become addicted to your father's Budweiser.  My palate would simply revolt at the attempt."

"You're starting to sound like Eli.  And I'm not smoking that pot, either, so just get that idea out of your head now."

"Certainly not.  It's entirely too dangerous for an impressionable young mind.  You might wind up thinking--" Lex lowered his voice to an appropriately grave tone. "--that you can fly."

Clark's eyes narrowed.  "You are such a jerk."

"Anything might happen."

"Shut up."

"Now focus."

"I don't need practice lighting joints!"

"You need practice using your heat vision with precision."  Lex raised the joint yet again.  "Now.  Do it."

Clark's eyes leaped to amber, and Lex held his breath in spite of himself.  A soft, narrow beam of red hue traveled through the space between them, almost pastel in its gentleness, and ignited the tip of the joint; the resulting ember sent a thin stream of aromatic smoke toward the barn's rafters.  Lex smiled as Clark blinked, sending that enigmatic power back from wherever it came.  "You see?  My face remains intact."

Clark let loose a Coke-scented breath that danced across Lex's cheeks, a distressed expression twisting his face.  "Jesus, Lex.  I can't believe I just did that."

"But you did do it.  It was an impressive demonstration of control."  Lex lifted the joint to his mouth, watching Clark's eyes widen as Lex inhaled.

"You're not smoking that!"

"I'm not?  Should we be discussing alternate realities at this point?"

"For crying out loud, Lex!  Put that out.  Hasn't today been shitty enough?"

Finally.  Good.  Lex's admiration for Clark's recent strides in the art of maintaining notwithstanding, it was high time for this particular impressive demonstration of control to make a dignified exit.  "Define 'shitty.'"

"Define 'shitty'?"  Clark gestured toward the house, his eyes just a bit too bright.  "Dad looks ... he looks--"

"Like a man who had emergency bypass surgery two weeks ago," Lex said gently.  If Clark only knew how much worse Jonathan would have looked if he hadn't had the best of the best in medical care ... no.  Lex thanked whatever God was listening that Clark would never know that particular hell.

Clark swallowed convulsively.  "In the hospital, he just didn't look that way to me.  But seeing him look the way he does now, here, you know, here, where he's supposed to be--  He just looks worse here.  Worse.  I don't know.  I don't know if he--"

"He's going to be all right, Clark."  Lex took Clark's hand, lacing his fingers with Clark's.  "He's going to come back from this.  Brooding on worst-case scenarios isn't going to help either of you."

"It's like he's gotten old and thin all of a sudden.  And he's so pale.  Like, white. And weak.  I had to carry him upstairs, and he was light, and not in the normal way.  I shouldn't have to carry Dad.  He's Dad.  He's--"  Clark swallowed again and looked away.

"He's still Dad," Lex murmured.  "He had a long ride from Metropolis today, Clark.  He'll be himself again soon."

"I can't lose him," Clark whispered.

"You won't.  His prognosis is excellent.  You heard what Dr. Chambers said.  The man is the best.  He knows what he's talking about.  "

"I know."  Clark still wasn't looking at him.

"Your father will always have the best, Clark."

Clark nodded.

Lex sighed.  "Moira is an M.D."

That got Clark's attention; he turned back to Lex in obvious surprise.  "She's a doctor?  I thought--"

"That she was an international assassin, I suppose."

"She's got a gun in her medical bag."

"She's also a bodyguard.  We're going to take care of him, Clark.  We're not taking any chances with him or anyone else you love."  Lex caressed Clark's fingers, then took another hit, sending a deliberately provoking plume of smoke rafterward.

Lex was relieved when Clark glared at him.  "So Ms. Teskey--"

"Pamela's keeper is a registered nurse with more guns and knives concealed on her person than the laws of physics should reasonably allow."

"Does Pamela know about the Timothy Leary Memorial Marijuana Forest?"

"Yes."

"Did she tell you to get rid of it?"

"No.  She asked me for a lid."

"What lid?"

"Clark, are you certain you spent your childhood on this planet?"

Clark sighed.  "Lex, why did you bring me up here?"

"You don't think it was for heat vision practice?"

"No."

"Maybe I was trying to lure you into a sordid life of drug addiction."

"I don't think so."

"Maybe I was hoping you'd want to show me some new ideas."

Clark actually started to smile, and Lex started to breathe.  "I always want to show you new ideas."

"There you are, then.  Just a simple case of wanting my bones jumped by a talented amateur."

Clark's smile deepened; he leaned closer.  "I don't think that was it, either."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah.  I shifted my focus, didn't I?"

Lex opened his mouth to say something clever, but Clark was kissing him before Lex's undeniable genius could find words.  God.  Lex kissed him back hungrily.  This was the real high.  Someday Clark might actually come to understand that none of the pleasures of mind-altering substances -- or any other pleasures Lex could name -- rose to the level of significance when compared with the look in Clark's eyes, the sound of his voice, the barest hint of his touch.  Someday Clark might understand just how easily Clark Kent could play Lex Luthor's heart and body, and win.  Yes.  Now that was the day Lex would really be screwed. 

Clark pulled away very slowly, with tantalizing touches of lips and tongue.  "Thanks," he whispered.

He had to be kidding.  "Anytime," Lex whispered back. 

Clark cleared his throat.  "If I asked you to give up the Forest, would you do it, Lex?"

Lex swallowed. "If you asked me to give up breathing, I'd do it," he heard himself say. 

Clark's smile faded; he rested his forehead against Lex's for a second.  "Give me that damn thing," he said finally, pulling back.

Lex handed the joint over, then watched in amazement as Clark lifted it to his mouth.  "What the hell are you doing?"

Clark paused, the joint an inch from the incorruptible.  "I just want to try it first.  Maybe I'll think I can fly."

Lex briefly considered the living hell that would no doubt be his once Martha Kent smelled pot in her son's Herbal Essence-scented hair.  "I thought you wanted me to give it up."

"Sure I do.  I want both of us to give it up."  Clark gave him a serious look.  "Eli's going to call Sheriff Millar about that controlled substance he found in his woods, right?"

"Right," Lex sighed, leaning into the contact high zone for another kiss.  "But if you don't inhale, Jiminy, I'm telling you right now that I'm going to lose all respect for you."

End