Title: Shared Sleep

Author: VividRain

Rating: PG

Summary: Memories are an important part in the mourning process. C/L

Disclaimer: I do not own them, which is probably for the better.

Archive: This story will be archived at my site: oocities.com/spikewannabe. All others please inquire first.

Feedback: Received with a glad heart.

The sheets are comforting and warm in the late twilight. The woman is long and elegant underneath the luxury of the high thread count linen, a book is resting on her upraised knees and her long shining hair is fanned out on the pillow like a deep orange frame for her delicate face. The light by her bed is a perfect spotlight and she turns the pages rapidly with a keen interest sparkling in her light eyes.

The door cracks open with barely a sound. The bed dips slightly and the sheets are warmer in a sudden, but not unpleasant way. Without looking up, she draws up the sheet and allows the small body of her son to curl up next to her in bed. He props up his own book on his knees. It's a chapter book with large print and a few pictures about etymology. He turned six last week.

They read together until a far off grandfather clock chimes eight. With a serious look, he marks his page and hands her the book for safe keeping on the end table. The long slender hand cards through his flaming orange locks and he falls asleep to the sound of her flowing blood and the turning of pages.

**

The memories of his mother jump on Lex at the oddest times, a sort of mental landmine. This one was jarred to the forefront while he drank coffee at the Talon and tried to focus on business reports. He can feel himself nodding off and the memory is there with a hideous suddenness.

When they catch him, it's always off guard with no obvious set off. He wears her watch, reads her books on occasion and always keeps a bottle of her favorite perfume in a cabinet in his bathroom, but none of these things jolt him like these sudden memories.

It's all a part of losing a parent he supposes. He'll probably feel the ache for the rest of his life, he was told by the professional psychiatrist who reported everything he said back to his father. In the later years, once Lex had actually figured this out, he had told some pretty interesting stories to that shrink.

But that was later.

The other funny things about these memories is that they aren't specific really. The scene that had passed before him was fairly common. Instinctively, beginning at age three or four, Lex had known when his father would not be home for the night, but his mother would. These times came perhaps once or twice a month. He took instant advantage of them, sneaking away from his nurses to come creeping quietly to her room.

It was their ritual. The rest of their time was observed, monitored by his father, his governess, his tutors, even the press. Besides, the rest of the time, she didn't have much time for him. There were a lot of obligations for the wife of a billionaire. She had to make appearances, attend parties and basically be seen in all the right places with all the right people.

Lex is left mostly to himself. The grueling lectures of his father are also later. His father has yet to see him as a person, but more of a carefully persevered treasure that he likes to take out on occasion to make sure it is being properly polished. Even then Lex was wary of the towering man with the low wheedling voice.

The nights with his mother would have ended like they did for most children at age eight or so, but as he grew he found that it was the *only* time he had with her. Life became more complicated.

"Hey." The sultry voice stirs him from his reverie. "Are you okay, Lex?"

"I'm fine, Clark. Have a seat. I was trying to escape from my paper work."

"Mmm. I've got a ton of schoolwork. Wednesdays are the worst. No weekend in sight."

"Weekends...I remember weekends." Lex says with mock nostalgia. "Free time. I remember that too.. It's all so distant...."

Clark raised his eyebrows and a Mona Lisa smile graced his wide lips.

" Maybe you should take a break. You're eyes are getting glassy."

" I haven't been sleeping much lately." Lex admits, trying to be bland and not whiny. He doesn't like whiners, so he doesn't make an exception for himself. But it's not whining really because he can't, in all honesty, remember when he has slept for more then two consecutive hours. It might have been a week or two ago. No wonder the memories are thick in the ground.

"No food with your coffee?"

"Not hungry."

"I doubt that." Clark's eyes gleam wickedly. "You're college age, Lex, and I've never met a guy under 25 who wasn't hungry unless they were dying." He paused for a moment, a sudden worried statement flitting over his face. "You aren't sick, are you?"

"No." An odd part of Lex is touched by this motherly concern. "Believe it or not, I cannot tuck away food like you can."

"So when was the last time you ate?"

"Don't mother hen me, Clark."

"It was a while ago, wasn't it?"

Lex stared at him with unblinking incomprehension. It was if his words were hitting a vacuum. A big concerned vaccum.

"My cook is perfectly able of serving decent food."

"I bet you haven't had more the a forkful of everything she's set in front of you for a week."

"Clark..." The edge to his voice is sharp, anyone else would have backed off. Clark went blithely on.

"My father's meeting an old friend for dinner tonight and didn't tell my mom until late. We'll have plenty of extra. Come over?"

"I have work to do." He says firmly.

"And you won't be able to do it on an empty stomach and no sleep."

Clark's already rising and doesn't even check to make sure Lex is coming. For a long moment, Lex considers staying out of stubbornness. He wants Clark to realize that he's not a pet, he refuses to have some Pavlovian response to the farm boy's commands.

"My mom made apple pie for dessert. I picked them myself."

Lex rubbed his forehead with the heel of his palm and began to pack up his papers. The raw eagerness of Clark is something he can't fight, so he gives up trying. It's too wholesome to protest, it is without a doubt, the most sincere concern he has ever encountered.

They have a brief squabble over who got drive and in the end they go in separate cars because Lex refuses to leave his car in town. Not so much afraid of it being ripped off or defaced, but the sense that it will arouse question and suspicion for simply existing. As he drives behind the Kents' sensible old pickup, he contemplates his own irrationality. Man's impulses are difficult to fight, he acknowledges and he can't win every battle. It's a rather harmless indulgence anyway.

Entering the kitchen, a few steps behind Clark, he can already see the huge spread and Martha's genuine charming smile as he's ushered in. It strikes him that this was a setup. Jonathan had most likely been encouraged to spend the rare night with a friend while Martha and her son had schemed to get Lex to their home for a real meal.

As much as he hates being manipulated, he can't find it in himself to be angry.

"It smells great, Mrs. Kent."

"It's Martha, Lex. Good gracious, you make me feel old talking like that."

The woman said good gracious. It was unreal.

They tucked into a truly delicious meal, homey and heavy. The main course with turkey, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables and some type of squash which was grown right in the backyard. The beverage of choice was fresh brewed ice tea or cold water. Both sat in clear pitchers with small beads of condensation dripping down the side. It should have felt dream like, but the plates and silverware felt solid in his hands. The meal upbeat without the storm cloud of morality Martha called a husband hanging about.

Outside the weather darkened, clouds rolled in and thunder quietly rumbled in the distance. The thunderstorm had been predicted, but Lex hadn't been paying much attention to the weather lately. The crisp apple pie for dessert was delicious though Lex could have done without the fresh cream. The image of bovine carcasses and Luthor Corp purple hung clearly in his mind like a nightmarish ghoul.

"I think Clark should drive you home, Lex." Martha mused, listening to beginnings of rain patter on the windows. "The roads are bound to be washed out. The truck will handle it better. You can store the car under the overhang next to the garage for tonight."

It is obviously from Martha that Clark gets his run away caretaking ideas. The stubbornness is Jonathan, but this maternal assumption of duty is all the mother. Once more, Lex allows himself to be swept away. In for a penny, in for a quarter...or something like that. He couldn't quite remember the phrase correctly. He made a token attempt to help her clean the dishes, sure in the knowledge that his efforts would be rebuffed.

"Go, get home. Maybe get some sleep, so you can save the town. You can't be a savior when you're acting like a zombie, you know."

"Mom's right, you've been on autopilot for weeks."

Lex, feeling uncomfortably short, glared up at Clark.

"You know, I've been perfectly fine taking care of myself for twenty-two years."

"Then maybe it's time you gave someone else a chance. "Martha said gently. Lex paused for a moment, thrown.

"Come on." Clark rested a hand on his shoulder. "Let's get you home."

Lex guided his car under the given space. The rain was pelting down harder now, flooding his vision as he walked to join Clark in the truck. Except, Clark wasn't in the truck, he was leaning against and letting the rain run down his face, plastering his thick dark hair to his face. The tight red T-shirt was rapidly melding itself to his body. Dark eyes caught his own and for a long moment, they stood ten feet apart, eyes locked and their breathing synchronized.

*

When he was ten, the nights with his mother became even more precious. He'd started middle school, a partial boarding school. He was away five days a week, but home on the weekends. It became even harder to grab precious moments with the fluttering spirit of his mother.

The approach was reversed now. On nights when she was lonely, his father had started going on longer and longer trips, she would have a servant call him to her side. He would go, his heart nearly bursting with joy and lay his head on her stomach, listening to her heart and her breathing. She would read him odd scraps of things or recite poems or bits of fairy tales remembered from her own murky childhood. The rise and fall of her voice was soothing and even, never raised in anger or criticizing him as his teachers so often did. Her hand on his bare scalp was the best of all, she would stroke idly without thought as if he still had that wonderful full head of hair that she used to call 'her bit of him' because it matched her own flaming, flowing mane.

That was the other reason he loved her. She had never been repelled or inclined to foster cures on him for his strange and sudden baldness. She took it in stride as she did everything. The memory of her hand is so strong, his scalp actually tingles. Perhaps though, that is the rain, that has begun to soak through his shirt.

*

The ride back to the castle is quiet and uncomfortably moist. Clark smirks every time he moves because his fine Italian leather shoes squeak in protest. The rain is coming down impossibly harder, the roads are almost undrivable.

"Come inside and wait for it to die down." Lex suggests to prove he still has a hand in this game of concern.

Clark follows without a word, but out of the corner of his eye Lex spots a small knowing smile.

"Let me call my Mom, so she doesn't worry."

Lex pointed the way to the nearest phone, told Clark he'd be in his study putting away papers and promptly realize that he'd left his briefcase in his car. Damnit.

Well, that secured the no work policy for tonight. He couldn't do anything without some of the documents in that case and there was obviously no way that Clark was going to let him go back to retrieve them, especially after he had recommended the youth to stay. He had quite neatly painted himself into a corner.

In his study, he allowed himself a moment without thought. The blankness of his mind was oddly reassuring as he stared at the opposite wall of his study where a bust of Beethoven stared back. He had had it moved there several days ago for the express purpose of having something new to stare blankly at when his overheated mind quit on him.

The saving of the company that was now 'his' was a prickly, long and difficult. His father fought him at every turn, but Lex was better prepared then his father had assumed and they were beginning to spar on more level terrain. Not equal by any mean, not yet, but the playing field was leveling. The possibilities of power were tickling at the back of his mind and he teased them out gently with dexterity, the glimpse of his horizon becoming clearer.

"Umm....Lex?"

He shook his head to clear away destructive thoughts and focused on his young, beautiful friend.

"My mom asked me to ask you if I could possibly stay here for the night...the road washed out near my house." Clark looked at him sheepishly.

"Tell her that'd be fine and not to worry, I have plenty of room for one more person." He flashed a quick, toothy. " And this way you can make sure I sleep well tonight."

An embarrassed flush stained Clark's cheeks as he backed out of the room. Lex ran what he'd said back through his head and abruptly realized the double meaning that Clark had undoubtedly picked up on. He must really need sleep if he was missing his own innuendo.

Now, what do with a beautiful sixteen year old boy on a rainy Midwestern night? Lex Junior had a few things to say about the matter, but the Lex had learned many years ago that his little brain was not to be trusted when it came to important decisions. See Victoria as the most recent example.

With a feral grin, Lex let his mind idly speculate on the impossible night of debauchery, conjuring some fairly detailed fantasies which involved a lot of touching and charming blushes. He wondered if Clark was a moaner or a screamer? He was willing to bet the former. After sex would probably involve cuddling which Lex had mixed feelings about, but in Clark's case would most likely allow.

It was the waking up part which Lex felt some trepidation about. He had exacting standards in many things and that was one. The idea of true love was something he had long ago discarded as rubbish, but the irrepressible romantic part of him, however small, had long ago decided that the person he loved would be someone with whom sleeping with would be as pleasant as sleeping with his mother.

This impossible goal pleased him. It was something he had never articulated, even to the shrink he hadn't known was ratting on him. He knew how it would have sounded like it had been some sick sort of incestual experience. The truth was that it was with his mother that he had been the rare moments that he felt protected, safe, comfortable and above all, loved. None of the paid substitutes came close and while in his early years he had had some surges of love for his elusive and verbally abusive father, they were tainted by his current feelings for the man.

So Lex's measuring stick was high. No one could ever measure up. He was safe.

*

At twelve, Lex had begun to wonder if he was perhaps, to old to sleep with his mother. It was around this time that she became pregnant again and he came home for school vacation. His father was spending the summer in Europe settling a large deal there and as elated as he was at the possibility of another son, he couldn't get out of his prior engagements.

Lex had spent every night that long weary summer curled around his increasingly fragile mother. Her stomach swelled and seemed to sap the energy out of her once active limbs. Her movements, always elegant, gained a lassitude they'd never had before. She frequently sighed at the sight of her son entering her bedroom, but she welcomed him as she always had. He thought he would never tire of lying beside her, a hand on her stomach, feeling the baby's strong kicks.

They often discussed the babies' possible names, despite the already definite verdict of his father. They spoke of abstract concepts that Lex was beginning to understand as he stood on the knife edge of puberty. It was she who informed him of the differences between boys and girls, things he already knew, but not in the clear and concise detail she had spoken with.

He saw none of his school friends and his days were spent with endless tutors who despite gender, age and subject differences seemed to be identical gray lifeless blobs. His nights were spent curled against his mother's side learning about life in all it's beautiful facets.

It was the best two months of his life.

*

In the end, they settled on board games. It had been a long time since Lex had played Monopoly on a cold rainy night and it harkened back foggy memories of the dormitories he had spent his teen years in. They had all smelled vaguely of mildew on days like this and he had sat around with other boys, angry, restless and jostling for a turn at one game or another.

"I think you have an unfair advantage in this game." Clark complained as in the first turn around the board, Lex had managed to gain both Park Place and Boardwalk. "I mean, years of business training, years!"

"I rolled double one's. It was pure luck." Lex chided with a smile as Clark rolled and counted out seven spaces. " Go directly to jail, Mr. Kent."

"This game is rigged." Clark muttered grumpily, moving his piece to the orange jail square. "Aren't monopolies illegal in America any way?"

"Mmm. But there are ways to get around it." Lex moved blithely past go and helped himself to two hundred dollars. "Give me Connecticut would you? Thanks. "

"I'm paying the fifty dollars to get out. I never roll doubles."

"All right." He slid the sleek car piece across the marked squares. "I'll buy the Electric Company. "

The small piece of cardboard was tossed and bounced harmlessly off his forehead. He made no comment, but a casually flicked house hit Clark in the shoulder. The teen ignored this in favor of rolling the dice.

"Finally, a property. I'm buying New York."

"I already own it. You owe me seventeen dollars."

"This game is definitely fixed. Why do you even have a copy of Monopoly? Don't you do this enough in real life?"

"Not with plastic houses and rules. It's comforting to play something with definite rules. Okay, I landed on Free Parking. Guess that means that all that money you paid to get out of jail is mine."

"I hate you."

"Oh, come on Kent, it's still anybody's game."

"You're gloating."

"Just roll the dice, Clark."

The game precedes well enough until Clark lands on Boardwalk. With a hotel. For the second time. There's no helping it, he has to declare bankruptcy. As they clean up the game, Clark pouts prettily and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, 'cheater.'

Lex chuckled.

"I don't need to cheat to win at board games. Believe it or not, I am secure enough in my masculinity to play a fair game of Monopoly."

Clark smiled against his will.

"What does your masculinity have to do with cheating?"

"If I was worrying that I'd lose face from loosing, then I'd cheat. But somehow, I didn't think you'd think less of me for not having more tiny plastic red cubes then you."

They both laughed, although the joke wasn't much.

"Do you have any cookies?" Clark asked out of the blue. "I'm hungry."

"You're a bottomless pit, is what you are." But Lex rose and obediently ransacked the neatly organized kitchen for something resembling snack food. He turned up a bag of vanilla cream wafers and a nearly full bag of chocolate chip cookies. Moved on an impulse he found a container of milk and two glasses.

"Milk and cookies!" Clark exclaimed in a faked high squeaky voice. "Now, you have to tell me a story Uncle Lex!"

"I don't know any stories." Lex told him blithely, setting down the tray on low serving table. "Except for boring war tactical things."

"Tell me a story about you then. Something interesting that I don't know yet." He looks so innocent that Lex doesn't have the heart to refuse. He shifts through his memory the same way he shifted through the kitchen minutes before. Looks for something appropriate. Something innocent.

"A month after the meteor shower, I suddenly felt upset about it. I had tried not to think about it mostly, but something in me burst. There wasn't anyone for me to talk to. Everyone was busy somewhere else. Then I heard a servant in the hall mention that my mother was home, taking a nap.

"I went to her room and I waited outside the door for a minute because it had occurred to me that my father might be home with her. The door opened when I was about to walk away.

"I remember...I remember knowing at that moment that she was the most wonderful mother in the world because somehow she had known that I was standing outside and that I needed her. She didn't ask me any questions, she held out her hand and I took it. I never told her what was wrong that day, but a month later, I was called to her room.

"When I got there, she led me to a chair in her room and smiled at me. There was a shopping bag next to the chair and she drew out a colorful box. It was filled with paints. She wasn't a very artistic woman and I'd never thought of her so much as sullying her hands with a crayon, let alone paint. But she withdrew some brushes too. I knew immediately what her idea was and I approved."

"What was it?" Clark asked, interrupting for the first time through a mouthful of cookie crumbs.

"She painted my scalp. The paints were cold and the brush tickled, but it was exhilarating. Afterwards, she said I looked like Oberon from Midsummer's Night Dream, a muli-colored wonder with a serious intent. Those were her exact words. We never spoke about it again and I washed off the paint as soon as I got back to my room, but I understood what she was trying to tell me. That I could be beautiful. I never forgot that."

"You are beautiful."

Lex's head shot up to catch the muttered words. Clark stared at the ground.

"Do you think so?" He asked as casually as he could muster.

"Yes." Clark raised his head to make eye contact, blushing, but refusing to back down. "You're very different. But...etheral....almost not human..."

"Wonderful." He commented, gently, but slightly sarcastically to lighten the mood. "I'm subhuman."

"No. I mean..." Clark seems at a loss for words. Frustrated, he gives up and decides on a more direct approach. He leans forward to capture Lex's mouth with his own. The kiss is a little clumsy, but it's touchingly brief and fleeting.

When Lex doesn't protest, he leans forward again and this time Lex responds. They lock together, the fresh taste of milk (dead cows) and chocolate blend with the glass of brandy Lex had been sipping at. They part to breath and Clark gazes at Lex from under his unruly mop of hair.

"Can I sleep with you tonight?"

Lex raises an eyebrow.

"Don't you think that's moving a bit fast?"

If it's possible, the blush gets redder.

"I mean, you know...just sleep."

The coincidence doesn't phase Lex for a moment. A vague irrational part of him still believes that those landmine memories are set off by whatever ghost of his mother remains around him. Everything has a purpose.

"My bedroom's...."

"Up two flights of stairs, third door on the right." Clark supplies rising. "I remember from the two times I had to bring you home from the hospital."

*

The very last time Lex spent the night with his mother, he was thirteen. He had recently lost his virginity, been drunk twice and smoked his first joint. He was abnormally well proportioned for his age. So many of the other boys were awkward, all arms and legs or stout or too short, sometimes all at once. But he already had his mother's grace. He'd heard it whispered by adults that he looked like a 'mini-adult.' Many of his teachers would have vouched the same for his quickness and mastery of subject matter. He had been tutored so that he would already have a foreknowledge of all the material in every class. His father's idea of having an advantage. At thirteen, he was taking most of his lessons with the eldest kids in the school. There was talk of sending him to one of the prestigious English private high schools next year.

The night he had spent curled around his mother was also the last time he would see her alive. He didn't know that for a fact yet, but there was the beginning of fear of it. Since Julian's death, she was fading and eventually, she would be gone. She stopped sleeping, stopped eating and poured herself into useless work. Lex's bad habits had not been pulled from midair.

That last night, he had come in later then usual. The lights were already off in her room, but her door was unlocked and when he entered, she lifted up the covers as she always had. Her distinctive smell filled his nostrils and he buried himself next to her, eventually settling his head on her shoulders. He was to big now to rest on her stomach without having to curl his legs uncomfortably close.

They hadn't spoke, but neither had they slept. For two hours, Lex knew the exact time due to the solemn ticking of the same grandfather clock of all those years ago, they had simply laid together. Finally, she drifted off to sleep and her grip around his shoulders loosened. Slowly, he had sat up against the head board, tucking her arm carefully to her side.

In the gradual lightening of the room, he kept silent vigil, memorizing her face, the small sounds she made in her sleep and the steady rise and fall of the sheets as she breathed evenly and without apparent effort. He slipped away at dawn, so as not to be missed. That morning, before she awoke, the car came around to take him back to school.

The next time he saw her, it was easy to get around the cold fact of her body in the coffin. His permanent image of her was that still figure drawing in steady deep breaths, the sound of her heartbeat still rang in his ears.

His first real act of mourning her is one drunken night in Germany on his eighteenth birthday. He went out alone with at least thirty-eight bottles of assorted alcoholic beverages and smashed every last one of them against the wall of an abandoned factory, ignoring the blood on hands from the shattering glass and tear stains on his face. His throat had been raw from the screams and sobs for three days.

He'd read somewhere that it was typical for a child who had lost a parent, not to mourn until their late teens or even early twenties.

He knows, in a deep sort of way, that the mourning began that night of her steady breathing and it will end when his own breath finally falters for good.

*

Lex half-expected to be smothered in the night when Clark threw a casual arm over him after they had both settled into the bed. Yet, the strong weight of him was reassuring and well....Lex would heal. He always did.

He woke up still fully able to breath. Clark, had at some point during the night, rolled over. The amusing thing was, he hadn't let go of Lex, so the older man had apparently spent the rest of the night sleeping on a Clark mattress. He woke with one ear pressed against the strong chest and the sound of a steady heartbeat flooding his mind.

He tries not to talk to the dead. It's creepy and illogical, but sometimes it's hard not to and at those times he doesn't resist. Man is impulsive and he can't win them all.

"All right, Mom." He muttered. "You made your point."

And for a moment, he swears he can feel the light touch of her hand on his scalp and the smell of her perfume caressing his cheek. As quickly as it appeared, it fades. A pang of loss, greater then any he's felt in a long time floods through him. When Clark awakes, he is still fighting back tears.

"I like waking up like this." The yawning teen said simply. Whatever issues or ideas he has about Lex and the new dimensions of this relationship, Clark seemed content.

"It's nice." Lex says when he is sure enough of his voice. A loud rumble interrupts the moment and reverberates through Lex's body. Clark's stomach. "Breakfast?"

Guiltily, Clark nods his head and they rise together in search of the first full breakfast Lex has had in over a year. His cook actually beamed when he complimented her on her eggs.

Staring across the table where Clark was happily tucking away several people's servings of egg, toast, bacon and pancakes, he shakes his head at the seemingly endless appetite of his .....friend? Companion? The semantics of this relationship alone are complicated.

Lex is also acutely aware that he never ate breakfast with his mother after spending the night with her. He was always ushered back to his rooms where a carefully balanced meal was set before him, along with a copy of the daily newspaper which he was expected to read most of by the time he was nine. One of the few parts of his training he actually enjoyed. Meanwhile, his mother would dress and fly off to some champagne breakfast or brunch with high society ladies.

It is a welcome change to watch Clark messily consume the whole of the larder, much to the almost orgasmic joy of the cook.

Things were cyclical, Lex decided. Especially in human nature. And if that meant he would spend the next thirteen years of his life waking up with Clark Kent, then he decided he could live with it.

"Lex?" Clark asked around a mouth full of food.

"Hmm?"

"Can I come over this weekend?"

"Of course. We have a lot to talk about."

"Yeah...and.....I kinda wanna paint your head. It sounds like fun."

The gales of laughter echoed through the castle, bounding off the walls. The gloom of the storm has passed in the night and sunlight was piercing through the musty halls of Lex's home. In the deepest of the shadows, where no light could reach there was a strange flicker as if a candle had been lit and blown out at once. Two low laughs bounced through the walls and the flicker came again. For a moment, the acoustics played a strange trick and it seemed as if there were three voices, three distinct laughs. One as high and light as that of a society woman. And then it was gone.

No, the ache would never leave, Lex thought as he and Clark drove back to the Kent house to pick up his car. It would linger in his heart, but that didn't mean that there wasn't room for other things. Not love...not yet. But he was a Luthor after all. Not completly his father's son, but his mother's too. Anything was possible.