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TELL
"Do you love me?"
It's a quiet voice, one that Martha knows, and she freezes in the doorway.
"Yes."
There's a laugh that wasn't meant for her ears, but it finds them anyway.
"Do you love me?"
"You know I do."
"Say it."
There's a baby breeze playing around her ankles, and it gambols straw onto her shoe. She doesn't know if that's what she heard, or if there really was a sigh.
"I love you."
The breeze pets the hem of Martha's dress. The early spring sun is warm on her back, and she shivers.
"You are so cute."
"Luthors aren't cute."
She knew. She knew as soon as she heard that voice and she knew before that. You couldn't miss the way that boy looked at her son. Lonely eyes trying to drink him in, eat him up like maybe he could get enough of Clark while no one was looking.
She should have done something to stop this.
"Well then maybe you'd better change your last name. I know, you could be Mr. Alexander Joseph The Great."
"Clark-"
"Esquire."
They both laugh then. Martha watches the sunburnt shadows of the trees and tries to pretend she can't hear them kissing.
"What about you?"
"I don't know. I think I'd better wait until college before I tell my parents I want them to call me Hephaestion."
Martha didn't think Lex could laugh like that.
"You do kind of look like him."
"Hephaestion?"
"Mmmhmm."
"Oh, my, god."
"Sorry."
He doesn't sound it, and Martha really can hear kissing this time.
Looking over to the house, she sees Jonathan at the table, frowning at a tractor part. He's not supposed to do that at the table. He looks up and smiles when he sees her.
She raises a hand.
Don't come over here, she thinks.
She'll have to tell him eventually. Or maybe she won't, seeing as she's not supposed to be fetching firewood anyway, and if she'd let him do it like he asked then the day would have worked out very differently.
Clark's never been good at deception. Lex is, and that's what surprises her.
She thought he'd remember to be more careful.
There's another sigh from somewhere above her head, and it's different this time, undeniably so.
Martha hurries from the barn, and puts a smile on for her husband.
When Clark and Lex come into the house later on, she won't tell that she knows. She'll watch Lex and Jonathan talk awkwardly around their uneasy truce, and she'll notice for the first time the way Clark looks at Lex when he thinks no one's looking.
She won't tell.
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