Two men. In a kitchen that contained upward of a hundred thousand dollars worth of the finest culinary equipment in the world. The shelves were laden with enough fine grocery products to feed a family of four for a year. Counter tops glistened in the early afternoon sun on this summer's day.

Disaster was about to occur.

"You're sure you can do this?" One man stood in the doorway as if afraid to enter the pristine room. The other was already in motion, going through cabinets to find the ingredients necessary for the recipe he held in his hand.

"I'm a biochemist, Clark. I think I can handle making brownies."

"Well, my mom did say the recipe was idiot-proof." The younger man mumbled, slowly, creeping into the kitchen. Lex didn't bother to honor that with a reply and instead ransacked the shelves for some vanilla.

The first few minutes went relatively well. Everything went pretty much as planned until...

"Hey, Lex?"

"What?"

"Where's the chocolate?"

There was a long pause.

"Shit."

One superhuman run home and back later.

"I can't believe you don't have chocolate in your house." The teen admonished as he set down the bars of baking chocolate his mother had given him.

"Clark..."

"I mean, you have everything else. What's wrong with chocolate?"

"It's too sweet."

Long deadly pause.

"You don't like chocolate?"

Lex set down the wooden spoon he had been using to stir the dry ingredients and leaned against the countertop.

"I like it in things. Just not plain."

Clark threw up his hands in disgust.

"I'm having sex with a lunatic!"

"I'm not crazy." Was supposed to be a simple defense, but somehow there was anger in it. Clark blinked.

"I was just joking..."

"I know."

The harsh silence that can fall between them has arrived and they busy themselves with making the brownies. Finally, the damn things are in the oven. The kitchen looked like a hurricane with a plan had blasted through it.

"Uh....Lex?"

"What?" The voice is even, but a deaf man could hear the tension.

"You've uh....you've got some flour on your face."

It was just a smear, running under one eye and barely visible against the incredible paleness of his skin. Eyes firmly locked with Clark's he reached up to wipe it off, but his hand must have landed in batter because when he was finished a huge streak of brown coated his entire cheek. Clark couldn't help laughing at the picture presented: Lex standing in his kitchen, sleeves to what was no doubt a very expensive shirt rolled up to his elbows, batter on his face and a look of utter confusion as his young lover laughed until tears came down his face.

"You've got a little something.....on your cheek." The teen managed to sputter out. And choked with laughter again as Lex put a hand to his cheek and just the look of sheer outrage on his face....the strange grin that was starting to creep over those beautiful lips. Long thin fingers wiping at the batter and being lightly sucked on, so blatantly suggestive Clark was surging to his feet before he formulated a plan of attack.

Settled on licking the remaining batter off his lover's face and fingers then kissing him deeply. The late afternoon sun streamed in, saturating them in dappled brilliance.

*BITTER*

He doesn't like chocolate. The ramifications of this are catastrophic. How can a person not like chocolate? Especially someone who routinely poisons themselves with various toxic substances? Chocolate has to be the most addictive substance on Earth.

The brownies turned out well enough. Mom seemed happy with them anyway and asked me if I wanted to come sell them with her at the bake sale the next day. I backed out. The thought of standing with my mom, selling brownies that baked while I had sex with Lex (I chuckle despite myself, some things never get unfunny. Sex with Lex. Snort.) is too weird, even for me.

Instead, I finish up some chores and head over to Pete's to do some serious hanging out. The summer has been good to me, I think. It's given me plenty of time to be with my friends, get chores done, check in with my parents, but best of all, has given me time to be with Lex. Not just a few hours at night with the idea of us getting caught lurking in the back of my mind. Real time. I have hours in the summer for which I am not accountable to anyone. My parents expect me to go on long solitary walks. At first, I thought I was driving Lex crazy, coming around all the time. Now.... He'd never tell me, but I know he's shuffled around work for me. Not enough for anyone to notice because he probably does it all anyway at some ridiculously early hour of the day that shouldn't even exist. I'm trying to teach him to be lazy. Its one of the few things I think I can teach him. God knows, he's taught me enough.

Me and Pete watch a movie with things that blow up and wind up throwing popcorn at each other. Then hurriedly cleaning it up under the watchful glare of his Mom. All in all, a very satisfactory August afternoon.

Dinner was chicken and spinach pie which I ate with relish, remembering along with my parents about how much I used to hate vegetables when I was little. Funny because now I could eat virtually anything just to fill my stomach. Very few foods make me stop and say, "Not a chance." Most of the one's that do are from Lex's stock. Rich people eat really some strange stuff.

Which is when I had an epiphany.

Okay, so it was a really lame epiphany. It wasn't particularly life shattering or mind blowing. But it was important enough not to just be called an idea.

See, little kids like plain foods right? I mean, nothing spicy and definitely no vegetables. And once they try something and don't like it once, just forget about them ever getting to eat again.

I could lay money on the whole scenario that popped into my head while I was shoveling down the green stuff: Eight year old Lex at some boring adult party that his father dragged him to and a well meaning lady giving him one of those horribly fancy chocolates that are definitely made for adults. Him spitting it out in some napkin when she turned around and vowing to never touch the stuff again. Lex never really hung out in convenience stores with only a dollar in his pocket and dinner three hours away; he's probably never even had a Hershey's bar. Hence the lifelong belief that he didn't like chocolate.

I had to repress the urge to scream, "Eureka!" which probably would have alerted my Dad that I was not paying the slightest bit of attention to his diatribe against the organic fertilizer that smelled a lot like watered down cat piss. Instead, I helped myself to more spinach and began to plot.

*

"Earth to Kent, come in Kent!" Hand. Waving in front of my face. I blinked a few times and Pete came back into focus.

"Sorry." I mutter. "There's just so much...."

"So much what?" And now I'm definitely getting a weird look.

"Chocolate....how do people decide?"

"Uhh....Clark?"

"Yeah?"

"You know that you've totally lost it, right? We've been shopping here since we could eat solid foods. And until today you seemed perfectly able to make a choice."

Right. Sanity. Important. Decided just to act normal for once and grab a bar when something caught my eye.

"Perfect." I whisper and grab it, making for the register. Behind me, I can hear Pete muttering something that sounds a bit like, "Sometimes you're just pure weird, Clark", but I blithely ignore it, suddenly in a very charitable mood. This is a Good Plan. Unless of course, Lex really does hate chocolate. In which case, it was lucky I had super human powers.

I hum on the way home. Good thing I'm seeing Lex tonight because Pete is about ready to have me committed. He keeps giving me these long looks like he's trying to figure me out. It kills me sometimes, all the lying I have to do. It was bad before I had my powers, but it's ten times worse now with the whole thing with Lex added on.

Maybe one day, if and when we're out of Smallville, I'll tell Pete the whole thing. Sit him down with a drink and just spill out my guts from beginning to end and just take what comes. Chloe too. Maybe not at the same time though. I have to keep promising myself to tell them, reframing the scenario every time. It gives me some hope that it might actually happen, helps me to lie to their faces. Helps me feel like I won't go crazy with secrets.

Crazy. God, that was a bad choice of words in the kitchen. Sometimes I really just stick my foot in my mouth. I used to think that Lex wasn't afraid of anything, except maybe his father. Found out that he's afraid of a lot of things. I figured some out through things that he says and does, the tiny betrayals he commits with every quickened breath and calm cool rage. The insanity thing is a big one. He told me once, in a rare sharing mood, about the one acid trip he had ever taken.

"Never again." He'd said with a shudder. "It was the worst feeling imaginable. I'm used to feeling out of control in situations, but nothing had ever gotten that deep. It got into my thoughts...made me see things that I knew couldn't be there. I wanted to die. And some users told me I hadn't even had a bad trip. It made me feel...insane. Totally unable to control anything, not even myself. I hated it. I hate thinking that I might go crazy. I feel it some days when I'm sitting at my desk and filling out papers. I think, 'I'm going to flip. Right now. Blow a fuse, maybe kill a few people and blame it on Satan'. That would make one hell of a tabloid, wouldn't it? Luthor Sees Devil, Mounts Hostile Takeover of Hell."

Lex has a sense of humor. Most people just miss it under all the sarcasm. Or maybe they just assume that someone like him can only laugh if they're engaged in a business take over or being polite at a social gathering. But in reality, Lex laughs a lot and never at business. To him business is to be played with a poker face, nothing laughable about it. When he does laugh.....well, let's just say he has an extremely off center sense of humor. Mostly, he finds me amusing and while I think the capillaries in my cheeks are going to burst from blushing one of these days, it feels good to know that I get to see his smile spread over his face over something I said or did, however unintentional.

Pete leaves with a backwards glance and I'm going to have to explain away my weirdness today. Try and find a reason for my distraction. I hate lying anymore then I have to. It's become second nature to pick up the half-truths from things and bend them to my use.

*

"Are you sure Mr. Luthor doesn't mind you spending the night?" Mom asks as I pack my bag, tucking in the purchase from the grocery.

"Mom, it's just for tonight while the house is being fumigated. It's fine." And I really want to tell her then, just spill it all out. Long practice keeps the smile on my face.

"If you're sure..."

"It's okay, Mom. Lex really doesn't care. He's got a lot of extra space." It took a while to convince my parents that this would be all right. Pointed out that Pete's family couldn't put me up because they had relatives over and Chloe was in Oklahoma with her parents. Mom and Dad are already staying Nell's house, there really isn't a place for me. Besides, Lex offered.

"Well,...be polite."

"Yes, Mom." And the thought of being the type of polite my Mom means at this juncture of my relationship with Lex is enough to keep me smiling all the way out of the house and to the castle.

Until the enormity of what is about to happen occurs to me. I'd been so caught up in my small plan for tonight that I had forgotten about the magnitude of the event at hand. One day. Twenty-four unrelieved hours. The first full night I've ever spent with Lex.

By the time I let myself in, I can feel the butterflies in my stomach doing the Electric Slide.

There's a throb all through the house, the whole place is shaking like a fluttering heart. I move further in, closer to the study and there are suddenly chords and notes to be heard in the messy tangle, but it still takes me a minute to realize it's music.

Closer I get, the harder the throb and I can feel my organs starting to vibrate very slowly. Outside the door and the floor is shaking, whip it open and the sound comes pouring out like a caged animal suddenly set loose. There are words now, not in English, but some heavier harsher language. German, maybe or Russian. And the voice is angry, screaming on about lord only knows what.

And the study is just.....quaking. Shelves threaten to spill their contents, the floor already littered with papers and in the middle of it all, like the eye of a storm is Lex, dressed in his finest clubbing uniform. Leather pants so tight, I can already see he's halfway to hard and violet shirt so sheer I can make out drops of perspiration. Bare feet. He's dancing. Which nearly breaks the spell of it all because I never thought in a million years that Lex Luthor might be a bad dancer. If it can even be called dancing. It's more like head banging with more flailing. I want to laugh and I know he wouldn't even hear me over the music...

Flash. I have an almost vision. The music and Lex stay, but the study melts away and my overactive imagination generates a club, smokey and filled with bodies. Lex fits right in. The wildest among a breed of wild children, leader of a pack of ravenous hipsters looking for the best high.

The speakers are about to blow. I didn't think it was possible for me to get a headache. Though it isn't so much an ache as it is my pulse beating with the crazed tempo of the music. It sort of possess me and I drop my things in the door way and move behind my gyrating boyfriend, sliding arms around him to caress the patch of skin his shirt leaves open.

I will never get over how smooth his skin is. He leans his head back until he can see me eye to eye. Licks his lips in quick feline darts of his pinkish tongue. I can't help, but kiss him and it's a weird angle, but still. Mumph. The first one is always the best. The music is still pumping through my head, making me feel alive and aware, yet kinda woozy. Lazy swirl and I'm on my knees in front of him, his eyes hard on my head.

No foreplay, I decide right away. That'll shock him. And that's what I'd like to do tonight, be different and wild enough to throw my personal wild man off kilter. Starting with unzipping those tight leathers and of course, he's not wearing underwear. I can't even imagine how much that chaffs. Careful hands as I ease out his dick from his pants. His hands land heavy on my shoulders, the music aching through my knees as I take him into my mouth, worshipping him. He always tastes slightly bitter as if the days frustrations have poured out of his skin. It took me forever to be able to do this. I can't imagine how either of us survived the first few weeks of me being a total idiot. I freaked and shuddered, always waiting for something to go wrong, for my strength to be too much, to give away my secrets. And once he learned, entirely by accident, the week spent apart in anger. His and mine. But he forgave me and taught me this...this feeling.

The intensity of this, his hands on my shoulders, the music thrumming and the taste of him flooding my mouth makes me wish that it would never end. I wish to be captured in this moment, in this place and time where nothing else matters, but my mouth around him and his hands stroking my back.

Everything ends. And this does too with a flood of intensity in taste that I don't even bother trying to swallow. I capture what I can and help him to the floor when his knees give out. Our kisses blend our tastes together and they fall like rain. Somehow, I reach the stereo without leaving his body and plunge us into silence.

Or rather the harshness of his breath and the beating of his heart that floods my hearing instead.

"Jesus." He says finally. "You're early."

I frown a little.

"That's all you have to say?"

"You surprised me." He gives up like a gift and I take it. It's a reward. No one ever surprises a Luthor. "I needed to burn some frustration off before you came. Looks like I should have waited."

"Bad day at work?"

"Not worth talking about." His eyes flicker and for a minute, I see pain, but it's gone again. Another almost lie. I let him have this one, I want us to have a night free of bickering.

"So....leather pants?" Brilliant conversation starters. Never delivered one in my life.

"Yes. Like them?" He runs a hand over the front, tucking himself back in, zippering another sound to fill the room.

"Hells yes."

Suddenly, I remember the plan.

"Stay here." I tell him and he looks at me with one brow raised, but obeys and I think he's still a little shaky even kneeling and a feeling of pride imbues me. I gave Lex a fantastic blow job! Hah! Wish there was someone I could gloat too... I can picture Pete's spittake when I tell him or Chloe's dropping jaw, wondering if she can get a picture for her Wall of Weird. Push those thoughts away, grab my surprise and slither back over to him.

"Close your eyes and open your mouth." I command.

"I seem to remember that ending badly for me many many times."

Takes me a minute to get that and then the blush is back in force. I thought I'd finally vanquished it, but apparently it lives on.

"Lex, be quiet and close your eyes." Tight pause for a moment to see if he will obey and he does, finally and it takes me a long moment to remember the task at hand because he looks so very beautiful with his eyes closed that I want to kiss those pretty lids. So I do while my I open the wrapper break off a piece and ease it between those wonderful pink lips. "Don't chew. Let it melt on your tongue."

*SWEET*

The taste is almost as big a mind blow as Clark's entrance. I don't know what got into him and at this point I don't care. I'm already in that floating post-coital stage where everything is wonderful. Closed eyes makes the experience more intense. I can feel him nearby, his heat and those ridiculously full lips brushing kisses over my eyes. The nudge and smell of chocolate against my lips, but once it starts to melt, its like nothing I've ever tasted.

It's sweet, but not the hard aching sweet of candy. The taste is more mellow and as it melts over my tongue, coating it finely, Clark's tongue comes out to play. For the first time in a long while, I push him away.

"My chocolate." I mock growl at him. "What the hell is that stuff? How much did you pay for it?"

He's grinning now, knowing he's won.

"Hershey's Special Dark. I think it was a dollar twenty-five..."

"Hershey's?"

He looks appalled.

"You don't know Hershey's?"

"I own stock in their company. Never bothered with the product." I lick my lips to get the last vestige of taste and god, how long has it been since something tasted that good?

"Want more?"

There's an entire bar in his hand. Pleasant ideas drift through my mind, but I have to put a stop to this or all my careful planning will go to waste.

"After dinner."

"Lex...." And there's a tinge of whine.

He hates eating here which took me weeks to figure out. Doesn't like all the spiced and delicately prepared foods that I've made my daily bread. Formality of the oversized dining room table frightens him too. It makes him frustrating to dine with, but it also makes him adorably Clark. Wow. I used the word adorable in the same sentence with somebody I've been fucking. Would someone please tell me when I derailed from the set course of my life?

"We're eating in my room."

Good, I can stand up. It was touch and go there for a minute. In one fluid gesture, he's there beside me, pressing against me and urging me towards my room. Every inch of Clark is hard and warm. I wonder what it will be like to wake up next to him. I'll probably fall off the bed or wake up with cold sweats with feet bruised from trying to kick him. I'm not good at sharing personal space and more then a few potential partners have given me up as a lost cause.

I'd set up the food on a trunk at the foot of my bed a few hours ago. Despite Clark's belief of my total incompetence to do things for myself, I did in fact learn to some basic cooking. Bachelor food mostly: eggs, toast, hot dogs...those types of things. Learned because the trick I was with at the time wanted me too. Learned because she looked hot in an apron. Learned so I'll never be helpless, in any situation. Drew the line at laundry.

So dinner is eggs and toast. Lame to be sure, but the way his eyes light up, I'm assuming I did the right thing. Can't believe he hates Livia's cooking, but then again the lingering aftertaste of the Hershey's bar in my mouth, maybe I can understand. He was raised on plainer fare.

We eat sitting on the floor and it really can't get more informal then that. It gives me flashbacks to college, joining my more unsavory friends in their flea ridden apartments and having meals on boxes with plastic utensils while we destroyed the lining of our nostrils. I've lived hard, I realize, staring at Clark. He's wiping butter from his lip with the back of his hand. At his age, I'd already done most things one can do on and around a bed, tried most of the drugs I could get my hands on and hurt more then a few people. It's not just the years that make me feel so much older then him. It's the sheer weight of experience that hangs heavy around my shoulders. Ruining his innocence is another burden to bear, but one that has a lot of rewards.

"Lex, you're making me nervous."

Hadn't realized how long I'd been staring.

"You're beautiful." I tell him and that can't be my voice. I sound like our very own fawn princess, Ms. Lang.

"So are you." His face is so open and honest. I want to kick him out of bedroom and sit him down with a plate of milk and cookies. Call his parents and tell them he'll be home soon, safe and not at all debauched. It's more then a little late for that, but I can't help feeling it. Instinct. He doesn't fit in with the makeshift rules I live by.

"You may be the only person in the world who thinks that." It hurts to admit it, hurts because everyone is fascinated by me, never really interested. And one day, that will be Clark as well.

"I highly doubt that. I think Chloe has a crush on you."

"Wonderful. High schoolers find me appealing. Maybe I should start a rock group."

"Can you play an instrument?" Half-playful and half-serious inquiry.

"Part of my well rounded education. And of course, I was one of the best at my school." I inform him, finishing off the last of the toast. I had made mass quantities. Between his consistently massive appetite and my not having eaten all day, I think we could have stripped Smallville clean of its rather prestigious wheat fields.

"Of course. What instrument?"

"Viola." I haven't thought of it in years, but the battered case is still around somewhere with it's expensive instrument inside. Only the best for a Luthor. There was a time when I thought that thing was my only friend. It challenged me and dared me to do better like everyone else, but it never demanded anything and when I worked hard enough it gave me its own reward. A lot like Clark actually.

Dear God. Metaphors. I'm comparing him to string instrument. This is so horribly out of control.

"So you want to start a band. With you on lead viola?" That smile is incredibly dangerous. Makes me want to kiss those soft lips and lick those perfect white teeth. Another apparent perk of super powers. No plaque.

"And you can be a backup singer. With a tambourine."

"Tambourine?" He sputters. "What do I look like?"

"Don't make fun or I'll make you learn the triangle." Food is now forgotten and it's nice to laugh with someone again. Especially when that someone's hands are doing such promising things around my midriff.

"You're evil."

"Glad your finally catching on."

I'm being slowly pushed to the floor and you will hear exactly zero protest from me.

"Good band name: Lex's Evil Triangles." Have we reached the babble point already? Time to shut him up.

Kissing him is an experience in and of itself. His heat just pours off of him in waves with this sweet smell. Begs me to lift off that ridiculous red sweater and touch soft smooth skin, the vague down of hair on his stomach just making it smoother. Before I'm on the floor, I shrug out of my shirt and toss it away, the carpet rubs against my bare skin.

"Clark. Bed." I manage between his long wet kisses.

"Why?"

"Two words: rug burn."

"Who said you got to rub against the carpet?"

And there's that nanosecond nausea that always comes when he moves me at that heightened speed. I'm straddling him now and I seemed to have lost my pants. It's incredibly unsettling and a more then a little hot.

"I'm wondering if you do things like that on purpose." I say, tapping fingers against his chest. "Just to unbalance me."

His smile is at least 1000 kilowatts.

"Maybe. Does it work?"

I let my eyelids fall halfway and smirk without answering, trailing my fingers down his chest and lean foward for a kiss. When we're apart again and panting, he's still smiling.

"So what exactly are you planning here?"

"I was hoping you'd let me..." He trails off, blushing.

"If you're doing it, you can say it." I remind him.

"Fuck you." He says quickly.

"That's hardly an attidude you use to seduce someone."

"Lex!"

"What?"

"May I please fuck you until you pass out?"

I pause, letting a shiver run down my spine.

"When you put it that way, please go ahead."

He pulls the lube and condom from his pocket and moves me to sit on his thighs. I take them from him with another smirk and rip the foil packet open with my teeth. While he watches, I free him from his jeans and boxers, settle back down on thick muscular thighs and sheath his dick in latex. Lethargic strokes coat him thoroughly with lube and I lower myself onto him.

"What about..."

"I prepared myself for you." I inform him as he slides home with a full bodied groan.

And then the time for words passes as we both fade to grunts and moans. Strong hands on my hips that lift him and that lovely cock filling me over and over again. He comes before me as always, but his body considerably doesn't yield it's hardness until I've spent myself on his stomach.

Collapsing on top of him is something like coming home.

"Bed?" He asks after a minute or so.

"Mmm."

The feel of being lifted is wonderful. He tucks me in for all the worlds like a father and I will not think of Lionel while post-coital because it's definitely a mood spoiler.

Clark curls up next me and lays an arm across my stomach. It should be stifling, but instead it's rather soothing and I let his heat lull me to sleep.

*

I slept through the night. The whole thing. Without falling off the bed or having a nightmare or trying to remove Clark forcibly with night convulsions.

A fucking miracle.

I woke up still in his arms, listening to his soft snore. I stirred a little and his eyes fluttered open. A moment's sleep amnesia and then he smiled.

"Clark." I say, formally.

"Morning, Lex."

"I think I could get used to this."

"Me too."

We lay there, twinned together under thick comforters because big beds get cold quick when you sleep alone and absorb the morning. I don't know what he's thinking, but I know that he's happy. Which is bad.

Very Bad.

Because I'm falling in love with Clark Kent and if it's a mutual thing, it could cause a lot of problems. For right now...

I'm not very good at being philosophical unless it's as a Skeptic. I don't go in for all that Carpe Diem shit. But right here, right now, is a good solid place to be. I'd like to stay here for a while and not think about consequences and angry parents.

"Uh...Lex?"

"Yeah?"

"You're kinda leaning on my bladder and..."

"Go ahead." I say with a sigh and he grins that electrical smile at me before superspeeding to the bathroom.

His warmth stays behind and I can hear him puttering around in the bathroom. How utterly domestic and oddly normal. Staying in bed while my lover takes a piss. Could be any lazy Sunday morning for the average Metropolis gay couple. Lovely.

I wonder if I can count the time to the ruination of all this in minutes, hours or weeks?

"Get up and take a shower with me, you lazy oaf."

"Go away. The blankets are warm and they don't have to leave to relieve themselves."

"Oh, sure, but do they give you orgasms in the shower?"

Sometimes, I think I have superspeed too. I leave my thoughts among the folds of blankets and sluice the remainder of them away under boiling hot water while wonderfully huge hands wander absently on my flesh.