Title: Domesticating Lex (1/1)

Author: VividRain

Rating:PG

Summary: Clark thinks metaphorically about Lex.

Disclaimer: Not mine. Don't sue.

Archive: Vivid Rain Falling oocities.com/spikwannabe. All others apply within.

Feedback: Loved and adored.

Notes: This is to everyone who was so supportive of Shared Sleep and Interlude with Paint. This story has nothing to do with those other two. My Smallville muse appears to be hyperactive.

Clark liked to think in metaphors. It wasn't easy to find one that fit every situation and he was often hard pressed to come up with something that worked. But with Lex, it was easy. Being with Lex was like taming a wild animal.

Living as he did, Clark had a lot of opportunities to perform such domestications and even has something of a knack for it though it wasn't something he liked to boast about. Taming something wild was an accomplishment to be sure, but it was sad as well. Things tamed lost some of the fire and freedom that had made them so appealing in the first place. That happening with Lex is not one of Clark's concerns. The wealthy beauty had so much fire and freedom that years of taming would leave him still a phoenix.

Their friendship had been just like the beginnings of taming a wild animal. First, the near death encounter. It was rare that animals approached humans unless they could not run. Lex had most certainly been incapacitated. Their first contact had established a bit of trust.

And how wild Lex had looked then! A sleek graceful body, pale and trim, ready to bolt at any moment. The cunning of the wolf lingered in his eyes and the smile of predator gone to long without a meal. It still made Clark shiver to think about it. They had danced around each other as trainer and student always do when they commence. Carefully, Clark made himself more and more appealing. He offered, instead of food, secrets and confidences. He wheedled with pleading eyes and soft smiles instead of with quick tricks of the hand.

The wild thing would gain more trust of the trainer and would be confident enough to let itself be touched. The first night that they had kissed was nearly a year after they had met on the bridge. A brief and fleeting thing just before Clark existed the car. Lex had been dropping him off after a night at the movies.

Predictable to the metaphor, the brief stroke scared Lex off for nearly three days. And then he returned, hesitant and shy, but hopeful. Not that anyone who knew of Lex would have been able to identify any of those emotions in his stony face, but Clark didn't know of Lex. He knew Lex. And it was all in his eyes and hands.

Even after establishing contact with an animal, there was no guarantee that you had everything in hand. An animal that trusted a human touch could still run off one afternoon and never reappear. It was easy to see that happening with quicksilver Lex. It seemed he might uproot at any moment and leave the castle standing empty. But gradually, the trainer shot for the next level.

And the beast would sleep in their presence.

The first night they slept together in Lex's substantial and comfortable bed, Clark understood the true meaning of vulnerability. They lay skin to skin, naked and sweating from exertion, above the sheets. In one smooth movement that almost made Clark leap out of his skin from it's suddenness Lex closed the distance between them and settled his head on Clark's shoulder. His eyelids fell closed and his breathing grew even, he was asleep in seconds. Delicate light eyelashes fluttered daintily on perfect pale skin and Clark could feel each in drawn breathe. The trust placed in him was so obvious that it took him three days to fully understand it. Lex was constantly on his guard, ready to defend or attack. Only in sleep was he vulnerable and most often, he took cat naps through the day and spent the nights dozing. He trusted...no...expected Clark to protect him while he was at his most vulnerable.

It was an exhilarating feeling. It was also completely terrifying. Clark had not earned such trust. It had been achieved through deception just as readily as the person who conjoled the fox out if it's whole to kill it.

And that's why Clark had taken the risk of scaring Lex away from him for good. In one moment, he revealed everything and exposed himself utterly. It had seemed for the period of several god-awful seconds that Lex would bolt.

Clark had underestimated both the effectiveness of his training and the sly cleverness that was innate in all wild things. The stormy blue eyes processed everything and accepted it all without hesitation.

Since then everything had gone on as it had before, except better. Maybe even more intense. Carefully and without even quite meaning too, Clark further drew Lex out of his burrow.

He also knew better then to make demands. Because domestication is a tricky business. Wild animals could convert back at any moment. Although, a well trained beast won't hurt it's master. But. If it felt that it's master was in danger from anyone then it will turn on that person or thing in a second. Most people in Smallville knows what happens when once wild animals taste flesh again. They've been part of the search parties to find the poor half-crazed thing and take it down.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

They were lounging in bed at present. It was a Sunday morning, Clark had legitimately slept over the night before, after a jaunt to Metropolis. Lex was stretching, arching his naked body into the air and yawning, revealing his perfectly straight white teeth and the tip of pale pink tongue.

"Wasted penny." Clark muttered. "It was so pointless, I can't remember it now."

Lex raised his eyebrows in disbelief, but said no more about it. Another yawn cracked his jaw open. He shook his head to clear and rose in one fluid motion.

"Let's get some breakfast." He suggested, searching the room for his boxers. It was a generally a good idea not to appear naked before one's staff.

"I was thinking about the jaguar we saw at the zoo the other day." The teen admitted as he got to his feet, far more slowly, to begin his own search for wearable clothing. "It reminded of you."

"Mangy and smelly?"

Clark thoughtfully lobbed a shoe in his lover's direction.

"No. Graceful and wild, but caged."

"You think I'm caged?" No challenge to the compliments. Lex never commented one way or another on compliments. He'd heard to many false ones to be much swayed.

"Maybe not caged." Clark allowed. "More like...contained."

"Hmmm. With my father as the jailer then?" The comment was tossed off from the door of the bathroom.

"Or me." The teen said the words more to himself, aware that Lex was out of earshot.

*

"Or me." The words were so tenuous that Lex almost hadn't caught them, before crossing to the sink and running the water at a thunderous speed to drown out any other remarks his beautiful partner might make.

So Clark thought he had tamed him. And maybe, to some extent, he had.

Yet, Lex knew a little more about these things then guileless Clark would expect. Oh, not about taming. No, Lex had never been good about trapping things that ran riot. He himself had all to often been that wild, untamable thing, dancing like his heart would burst and cruising so high on drugs that there were whole weeks of his pubescence that he could not remember.

He did, however, know something about domesticated animals. No matter how pretty and well bred the bird, no matter how house trained the cat, it was much easier to untrain something that it was to train. It took days, months, maybe even years to gain the trust of something that knew hunger and pride. It took seconds to undue it.

All one had to do was be a wild animal with a lot of cunning. Wait until the trapped and tamed beauty went into heat. Open the door to it's gilded cage. It would never return.

Perhaps, Clark has managed to somewhat tame his lover, but Lex knew that he had made Clark feral in every sense of the word. He had betrayed all the secrets that his domesticaters had trained him to never repeat, he had broken every one of their rules at one time or another and he consorts with things wild.

Lex suspects that another reason Jonathan Kent distrusts him is his knowledge of animals. The deep farmer part of him sees past Lex's tame demeanor and senses the beast inside the growls out the edges, threatening to spill over. Martha, more of a city girl in her deepest of hearts, doesn't realize how temporary taming can be. She does not truly understand the dangers. Her husband had always been domesticated and like a loyal dog had never slipped his bonds.

His son was another story. Lex grinned at himself in the mirror, the smile of the calm collected business man. There was no mask he could not wear, no hoop he would not jump through to keep Clark by his side. If he needed to act as if he had been broken of his predatory ways then so be it, but if anyone ever so much as raised a hand to the boy then the facade would be dropped. He was not above having someone killed to protect the younger man and his many dangerous secrets.

He smiled into the mirror again in what he considered his real smile. Not the shark tooth and not the close lip business man, but the sly half-grin with only a glint of teeth. Warm hands slid around his bare midriff.

"You were taking so long in here, I thought you might have slipped on the expensive tile and stained it with unsightly blood."

Lex laid his head back on the strong, tan chest. In the mirror, there skins contrasted, paper white against sun kissed brown. Dark against light. Tamed against Wild. In the steam of the hot water still streaming from the sink, the mirror was fogging up, the lines between the two wavered. Lex twisted in broad arms to claim a savage kiss from that irresistible mouth.

There was no upper hand, no master and no student, no wild or domesticated beasts, no evil done or secrets kept. They were two boys, their age difference negligible, stumbling in unknown territory and telling their lives with story tale images to soften the hard edges of reality.