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A
HAPPY PLACE
"You're finding this way too amusing."
Lex is fighting to keep from laughing, Clark just knows it. He can't see him of course, what with Lex being on his cellphone, speeding down Route 90 in the back of a limo while Clark sits in their Metropolis apartment and stares glumly out of the window.
"Come on." Lex's voice is deep and rich with smiles. Clark pictures him, chin tilted down as if no one will see if he grins into the collar of his coat. "Justice League company gathering? Did you guys do Secret Santa at Christmas, too?"
Clark has to smile at that. "Hardly. Can you imagine getting Bruce? 'Here, Bruce, Merry Christmas. I bought you a nice bat-shaped air freshener for your car. Sorry, your *mobile*.'"
Lex does laugh then, loud and long the way he only does when he thinks no one's listening. It turns Clark's smile into a grin, and he gets a funny look from the housekeeper, who's gathering up Lex's shoes from their various homes around the study. Clark will never understand why Lex has so many shoes. "So how far away are you?"
"About an hour, tops." There's a sound like a sigh, that's Lex's seat as he sinks further into it.
Clark closes his eyes and he can see it, Lex cradled in cream leather and wrapped in black wool. "An hour?" He leans back onto the couch, keeping his eyes closed. "It usually takes at least - hey. You're not driving are you?"
"No." Clark can hear Lex drinking something. Scotch, probably, despite it being four in the afternoon.
"It's coffee," says Lex, because while Clark is the one with the superpowers, Lex is definitely the mind reader.
"I wasn't-"
"Yes you were." Lex makes a small sound, quiet and tired under the swish of leather on wool. Taking his coat off, or else just shifting, putting his feet up on the seat next to him. Clark swings his own legs up over the arm of the couch and lays back, waiting. "So," says Lex after a minute, "what time do we have to leave?"
Lex's voice is warm in Clark's ear and he curls onto his side, waving a thank you to the housekeeper as she exits under a wobbling pile of shiny black loafers. "Around six-ish."
Exaggerated sigh. "And how long do we have to stay?"
Clark rolls his eyes. "Lex, you drag me to work functions all the time!"
"Yes, but the people at my work functions don't want you dead."
"The Justice League don't want *you* dead," Clark protests, rolling onto his back again. There's a skeptical silence on the other end of the phone. "Anymore," Clark amends.
"Tell that to Wonder Woman."
"Lex." Clark grins, because Lex can't see so it isn't really taking sides, and swaps the phone into his left hand. "So how was the plant tour?"
"Dull. But pleasing. Gabe's outdone himself this quarter."
Lex goes on for a while, exclaiming over profit margins and complaining about the new layout in the office. Clark closes his eyes again and drifts, letting Lex's voice flow over him, settling around him like a blanket.
"Lex," he says, when there's a pause, "I miss you. Come home."
He can practically hear Lex taking the phone away from his ear and raising an eyebrow at it. "I am."
"No, now." Clark is whining, but he doesn't care. Lex has been gone for a week, and now they have to go to the stupid party tonight, and Lex will spend all his time talking to Bruce in a corner and Clark just *knows* something went on between them when they were at that school together. Best case scenario: Clark and Dick will find themselves another corner to bitch in, and Clark can at least entertain himself watching Wally put his foot in it when Chloe realizes that Hawkgirl's the one he had a crush on. All things considered, Clark would much rather fly out to Route 90, pick Lex up, bring him back and lock them both up in the bedroom for a good few hours. Or days. "I could come and get you."
"Right. Because that wouldn't look weird at all."
"I could say I was saving you." It used to be much simpler. Clark wishes fervently for the days when all he and Lex had to worry about was someone finding out they were gay. The whole 'I Am Superman And My Lover Wants To Be President Some Day And Is Kind Of Concerned That The Whole Gay Alien Thing Might Affect His Chances Although Apparently The Gay Journalist Thing Isn't A Problem' issue really complicates the matter.
"Clark, I'll be back in an hour. Less. Is there any mail?"
"Spoilsport." Clark pushes up off the couch and wanders over to Lex's desk. "Let's see." There's a small rainforest's worth of envelopes stacked in neat little piles. "You have a few letters."
"Did Carolin categorize them? How many bills?"
Clark takes a moment to grin at Lex's completely anal obsession with answering his mail. "Left to right across your desk: Bills, four. Lexcorp stuff, about a billion. The paperweight Pix made for you. Interview requests, seven. A postcard from your dad. And that completely embarrassing photograph that you insist on keeping here."
"It's not embarrassing."
"It *is*. Look at my shirt! And how could you let me leave the house with that haircut?"
"Hey," says Lex, laughing, "that's my boyfriend you're talking about."
Clark doesn't say anything, because his mouth's stretched into a grin so wide that he can't get any words out through it.
"Besides. You gave me that picture. Remember? At Christmas?"
"How could I forget?" Clark sits down in Lex's chair and spins round to face the huge window. He loves it here. Lex's chair is the most comfortable thing ever; black leather soft as butter and it curves around him in a shape like Lex.
Lex has always liked to have a window behind his desk. Clark thinks maybe, once upon a time, Lex liked to turn his back on his life and spend a while pretending he was somebody else. Now he tells Clark he likes to have a clear view of the sky. Just in case.
There's a silence and it stretches, but that's not unusual. Clark kind of likes it. Likes it when they're both at work with their speakerphones on, Lois giving him a weird look every time she hears Lex yelling tinnily at some hapless employee. When Lex is away on business or Clark's stuck at the fortress, and they both fall asleep with their cellphones on the empty pillow. Or times like now, when they're apart and Clark just wants to hear Lex breathe.
He thinks about training his vision on Lex's limo, watching it progress towards him like he used to do from his loft when he was a sixteen year old kid. Back when he was hopelessly, desperately in love with his strange, beautiful best friend who drove too fast in his Porsches and Ferraris, flying down empty country roads at the speed of sound and still couldn't get to Clark quickly enough for either of them.
Clark hears Lex telling his driver to step on it and smiles to himself. Some things don't change.
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