Smallville - Distant Star

[fajrdrako_fic]

Title: Distant Star
Author: fajrdrako
Fandom: Smallville/Batman
Characters: Clark/Lex
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of Warner.


Distant Star

His lips in Clark’s hair, Lex stared up at the sky. They lay wrapped together on their backs on the flat Kansas ground. Around them, short grass; cool air; the chitter of crickets. The car blanket wrapped around them was protection against the chill night air, but better still was the warmth of Clark’s half-naked body, pressed against his. Clark was always warm.

There was no moon. Across the broad Kansas sky the stars were an infinite ceiling above them. Lex snuggled more closely against Clark’s body-heat, lazily tasting the back of Clark’s ear. He was not sure if he had the energy to move, ever again, in the whole of his life. On the other hand, if Clark moved against him just that way, and if he did it one more time.... well, another bout of lovemaking might not be out of the question.

“You’re smiling,” said Clark, as if he could see in the dark, and through the back of his head. It was in character. He could certainly do other remarkable things.

“Fuck off, you self-satisfied little git,” said Lex genially, which made Clark laugh in the dark. “Think you’re good, do you?” Lex buried his nose deeper into the warm, thick hair.

“One of us did,” said Clark. “Or maybe both. Lex, do you like watching the stars?”

“Don’t see them much, in Metropolis.”

Clark always took the deprived state of Metropolis city-dwellers for granted. “Do you know the constellations? There’s Cassiopeia....” Clark pointed upwards, his finger almost invisible against the sky. And see, there’s Sagittarius with his bow, down by the horizon. “Deneb, straight overhead this time of year. Do you know the constellations?”

Lex smiled lazily. “I know that one there. See? The constellation of McDonald. Looks like a double arch.”

The rumble of Clark’s chuckle was something he could feel but not hear, against his arms, against his belly which was pressed, skin to skin, against Clark’s warm back. “You phony. You know the constellations better than I do.”

“What makes you think that?”

“For one thing, their names are based on Greek myths. You love Greek myth.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You love Alexander.”

“He wasn’t a myth. He was as real as you are.” Lex dropped his head to kiss the provocative skin of one shoulder. “More real.” He tightened his arms around Clark’s chest.

“Does he have a star?”

“Of course. That one there.” Lex pointed upward.

“I can’t tell where you’re pointing.”

“Then we’re even. I couldn’t tell where you were pointing.”

Clark turned his head and kissed Lex’s lips, his tongue a gentle warmth that barely touched. “Do you know the stories of the constellations? Or the stars?”

“Sure. Which ones do you want? Perseus, over there? Andromeda, up there? Hercules - there, you see it, west of Vega?”

“You do know them.”

“You thought I didn’t? You aren’t the only person who ever owned a telescope.”

Clark lay his head against Lex’s neck, and Lex stroked his collarbone. “I can never tell when you’re conning me.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want you to know. I’d lose my advantage. Did you know Cassiopeia was the mother of Andromeda?”

“Tell me,” said Clark.

Lex spoke softly, his words hardly more than conversational, yet they took on the mantle of storytelling: the Greek consonants gently rounded, compelling the attention, lulling in their rhythms. “Cepheus was the King of Aethiopia, powerful and proud. Queen Cassiopeia was the most beautiful woman in his realm, dark haired, doe-eyed . . . . Picture her like Lana, Clark, with a great golden crown and jewels of green flame that flickered in the sun.”

“That isn’t in the myth,” murmured Clark. He lifted Lex’s hand to his mouth to kiss it, before taking it back under the warmth of the blanket and pressing it to his skin.

“Be quiet, I’m telling this story. Where was I?”

“Wrapped in this blanket in a field with--”

“Shh. We were in Aethiopia. Cassiopeia, proud of her beauty, claimed to be lovelier even than the sea-nymphs of Poseidon. Poseidon came with his avenging creature, his sea-monster, foam-bred fury meant to destroy the kingdom, to find this woman who dared compare her mortal charms to those of the Nereids . . . .

“In times of great danger, great sacrifices must be made. Ammon the Oracle told Cepheus that he could save the kingdom if he gave his daughter Andromeda to Poseidon and the devouring water-demons. He chained her to a rock, and left her to be brutally raped and devoured by the Lord of the Sea Monsters.”

“Is this going to end badly?” asked Clark.

“Not at all.” Lex ran his hands lightly through Clark’s hair. “See, there was a beautiful young man standing on a bridge . . .”

“A bridge on a rock in the ocean?”

“In the Aethiopian ocean. I might be wrong about the bridge. There was a beautiful hero named Perseus. . . .”

“Whose star is over there.”.

“Whose star is the brightest of them all, except Alexander’s. Perseus was tall and dark-haired, with warm blue eyes and long legs, and a wardrobe full of plaid Greek shirts. He saw the virgin Andromeda chained to the rock, and because he was a hero, he thought, ‘What a goddamned waste,’ and slew the monster. The vorpal blade went snicker-snack--”

“Wrong myth,” whispered Clark, but Lex ignored him.

“And the monster’s head fell into the water, never to be seen again. Perseus took Andromeda as his lover - his wife - and his lifetime companion.”

“A happy ending,” said Clark. “Were any of them bald?”

“Only the sea-monster.”

“It reminds me of the story of Leikala.”

“I don’t know that one.” Lex spoke softly, tracing a line along the back of Clark’s neck. “Tell me.”

“Leikala was a princess and a poet. There was a prophecy that her beauty was greater than that of any before her, so her mother was jealous, and frightened, and wanted rid of her. The queen, the nasty mother - she put Leikala in a boat with the head of a purple swan on the prow and the picture of a simlo on the sail.”

“A what?”

“A simlo... You know, one of those flying animals like a cat.... And they put her out to sea, but she landed on a rock where there was a pathway to the stars, and flew up into them, where the light of her beauty shone on the world forever. Her mother aged and died in shame, but Leikala’s light will last forever.”

“I’ve never heard that story,” said Lex. He had heard most stories.

There was a long silence, where Lex simply held his face against Clark’s neck, and wondered what he was thinking, and why his breathing had changed tempo.

Clark said, “I’ve forgotten so much. I thought. . . .” He sounded confused.

“What?”

“I thought I’d forgotten everything.” Clark pulled away from him, sitting up, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around his knees. Lying still on the ground beside him, Lex missed the warmth, and moved closer. He touched Clark’s knee.

“I thought I couldn’t remember, but I remember Leikala. I remember the - the - the flying cat-thing -”

“The simlo,” said Lex, with the same intonation.

“How can I remember, Lex? How? There’s no such thing. There’s no such story!”

“Not in Kansas,” agreed Lex. “So you made it up? What’s wrong with that?”

“No! You don’t understand. I heard it from . . .”

“From who?”

“Her. From my mother. From my mother... from before I came to the Kansas.”

“I thought you didn’t remember anything before that,” said Lex. He kissed the curve of Clark’s waist, and smiled as Clark touched his head in a caress that barely acknowledged his existence, yet showed pleasure in his being there.

“I don’t. I didn’t. But just then, I remembered, I remembered her, and a snatch of the song.... the song of Leikala. I remembered, Lex. From so long ago, so far away. My mother’s song.”

Lex had nothing to say. He remembered his own mother well. He’d been old enough, when she died. What would it be like to be Clark, to remember nothing of his origins, to be adopted so young? Well, he had Martha Kent for all those years, not a bad trade, a good choice for a second mother. Not a star in the sky, exactly, but a hero in her own right for those legendary apple pies.

“I wish I knew which star was hers. I wish I knew.” Clark lay back down, and Lex wrapped an arm around him.

“That one, there.” He pointed. “See? Over by Alexander.”

Their faces were close together now. Lex kissed the skin by Clark’s eye, tasting the dampness there. “Your mother,” he whispered, “must have been as lovely as Leikala.”

“I don’t even know,” said Clark. “I can’t remember what she looked like now.”

“All that I know,” said Lex, and his voice was poetry this time, a whispered homage to Browning’s words and to the body in his arms; “all that I know . . .” He did not tell Clark, but his voice was as his own mother’s voice had been, when she had taught him this poem which she had so loved.

“. . .Of a certain. . . .” He moved over Clark’s chest, brushing aside blanket and opened shirt, kissing the skin of his chest, the skin that was a thin softness over muscles of steel.

“. . .Star.” He kissed a nipple, and kept his mouth there, not quite biting, not quite licking, but holding.

He released it and began speaking again, musically, softly, against the ribcage, so his voice made a path of air on flesh. “Is it can throw.” He nuzzled the navel, sucking skin, his breath suddenly hot. Then a series of gentle kisses, light teasing, delicate, across the belly. Clark’s hands were on his shoulders, nether clutching nor holding, but silently imploring. “Like an angled spar.” Lex let his fingers run their way up and down Clark’s cock. It hardened with his touch, and Clark gasped sharply. Lex tried ignore the sound, but it made him harder, too, and his breath rougher. He caught his breath again.

“Now a dart of red.” The word ‘dart’ was punctuated by touch of the lips to the head of his cock, sucking gently and quickly, far too quickly, before moving away. Clark made a sudden dissatisfied sound.

“Now a dart of blue.” He used his entire mouth this time, and spread his hand over Clark’s chest, feeling the muscles quiver. He had never felt anything like Clark’s muscles.

Clark cried out. Lex lifted his head and said, “Till my friends have said . . . They would fain see too . . . my star that dartles the red and the blue.” His hand wrapped warmly around Clark’s cock, its heat a contrast to the cool air around them. Clark was shuddering with the movement of his fingers.

“Now it stops, like a bird. Like a flower, hangs furled.” Lips again. Lex was shivering a little himself, and not from cold. It was as if the heat inside Clark was inside him now, warming him, lighting him, making him into more of a real person than he had ever been. “They must pattern themselves on the Saturn above it.”

He moved his whole body till he lay on top of Clark, cock pressing against cock, chest to chest. He kissed the hollow of Clark’s throat. Clark growled, or purred, or snarled, and lifted Lex’s head so he could find and kiss his mouth. The kiss was hard and demanding. Lex let him have his fill, then murmured against Clark’s lips, “What matter to me that their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me, therefore I love it.”