Emperors didn't just stumble across their empires; they never closed their eyes in a hovel one night, and opened them the next morning to a new and glorious future.

The few people who did that would soon find it wasn't an empire at all, but a figurehead-dom, not worth the house of futile stress and strain, nor the years it would shave from their fragile lives. His father had earned the Luthor Empire and it had killed his mother when she'd inherited it, the fall of the burden a crushing weight on her already delicate health. That wasn't going to happen to him.

Good things come to those who wait, Jonathan told him frequently. That was wrong, too. He could wait for something for an eternity, or he could go out and get it. Never mind that Jonathan meant it as a cautionary prodding to patience. Lex knew how to scheme and wait; he also knew how to snatch and take something.

He was thirteen and could hardly wait to be acknowledged as the adult mind that he was. Opportunity would soon start to lay itself at his feet, which was the 'good things come to those who wait' but it would do so because of the name he'd been born into, not because of his own worth. He was going to reach past those petty offers and only take the ones he wanted, the ones offered to him because of what he could do, what he was capable of, not because of a name.

For the moment, he was capable of lying in bed in his shared room at Excelsior, his head stuffed with pleasant daydreams. He was capable of looking forward to going home the next afternoon, to maybe catching a movie with his family, to being with them again for two short days.

Then he'd come back to Excelsior to restart the cycle of the week. Every Thursday so far that semester, five in all by then, he'd told himself that would be the night. It had become a game, a depressing game that he was losing. Thursday would come, and he'd find himself lying in bed, thinking of how to work up the courage, to find the right moment to suggest to Bruce, to....

To kiss him. Perhaps do more. Perhaps be entirely rebuked and made a fool of somehow in rejection. That was probably why every Thursday it was becoming harder and harder to push himself to action.

It wasn't exactly the skillful planning of a would-be emperor.

Bruce would be back any moment, back from the gymnastic practice he put himself through. He seemed to be most active late at night and Lex frequently stirred to awareness when his roommate returned from one of his midnight prowls around the Excelsior buildings. Sometimes he got the distinct impression that something had been going on out there, outside of their mutual sanctuary, but Bruce was renowned for his brooding silences even now. It had gotten so he just let those moments pass or distracted his older roommate by starting a discussion. If he noticed the occasional bruise or difficulty in moving, it wasn't something they talked about.

Sure enough, footsteps approached and the door opened, Bruce entering with his habitual stealth as if not wanting to disturb him, a damp towel draped around his shoulders from his shower. He was taller, leaner and more muscular than Lex, having had his first adolescent growth spurt some time before, and was filling out with poise rather than the gangliness that seemed to hit most of them.

Almost daringly, Lex was sprawled out on his bed, atop the covers, a small fortress of books surrounding him. "Hey, Bruce. Looks like you were doing some real hard studying just now," he teased lightly, only faintly nervous. There was nothing to be nervous about, after all. They were roommates, long-term roommates and knew each other well.

Bruce looked at him and gave him the faint rare half smile that he bestowed on very few people at Excelsior. "Yes.... I like to stretch myself," he replied in a non-committal tone. "It's very liberating to challenge my limitations."

"You should come to the farm this Christmas holiday," Lex drawled, "I bet you'd find it quite a challenge. It's not the graceful swinging you do, but it's graceful in it's own way. Rhythmic cowshit shoveling."

Bruce sat down, his hair still a little damp from the shower. He slipped the towel loose and put it aside. "Perhaps so," he replied sounding older than his fourteen years. "But Christmas is a family time Lex."

He made it a statement of fact that seemed to automatically draw excluding lines around its relevance to him.

Lex sighed, and then closed his book, before he moved them all to the floor beneath his bed. Bruce was frustrating that way, always quick to use that as his excuse; Lex had to swallow down the urge to remind Bruce that the Kents weren't his blood relatives, either, but that didn't make a difference. "All the more reason for you to come."

Bruce looked at him, his body movement stilling a moment as he appeared to consider the offer. "I'd be a stranger there," he said, looking at Lex directly for a moment with dark intense eyes.

That practically constituted a breakthrough; he'd answered in such a way that showed that he'd given the possibility consideration. It was the first glimmer of wanting more contact that he'd shown.

Lex wasn't fool enough to let it go. Maybe it wasn't the Thursday night breakthrough that he half-dreamed about some nights, but it was enough to stir up the voice of Jonathan in the back of his head, reminding him to be patient. "No one is a stranger in the Kent household, Bruce. And you're my friend."

"There would be many who might regard that as a.... bad thing Lex, that you're friends with someone like me," Bruce replied, lying back on his own bed and staring upwards at the ceiling a moment. "I'd make things.... uncomfortable."

"No you wouldn't," Lex twisted, finishing the shuffling away of his books, and rolled to his feet from the bed. He didn't wear the 'rich boy' pajamas that he used to wear, instead going with comfortable flannel bottoms and a roughed up t-shirt that had been Jonathan's in high school. It was soft on his skin, and just easier to sleep in, his narrow frame carrying the faded red with mustard lettering of Smallville High -- sort of reaching back to make a connection with everyone at home. "Why do you say things like that, Bruce, when we both know they're not true?"

Bruce turned to look at him, his eyes glittering in the dim light of Lex's bedside reading light, "No Lex, you're the one that knows it's 'not true'. How many people are truly comfortable around me?"

The younger teenager gave a lazy shrug of his shoulders, and then hauled Bruce's chair up to his bed. "How many people are comfortable around me? They at least like you well enough to your face and behind your back."

"Then they're fools deceived by what they want to see." Bruce said in a flat tone. He paused a moment, breathing evenly as if he realized he had just verbally slapped Lex back and was regretting it slightly. It was unlike him to respond so emotionally, and it made Lex wonder exactly what sort of stress Bruce had been under that he wasn't aware of at the moment. When Bruce continued, though, it was in his usual soft level tones, as if the previous words were a momentary aberration. "Lex, how many times have you asked me to come and visit your home? And how many times have I said no? You know why I can't, we've been through this."

"One of these times I'll wear you down enough and you'll say 'Fine, Lex. But I've warned you and warned you what will happen', and then you'll suck it up and actually enjoy yourself." Lex folded his arms on the back of Bruce's chair, and rested his chin on his arms. He didn't let his eyes stray from Bruce's face, his sharp eyes, when he spoke, seeing a flicker of that same something unusual in his gaze. A hint of.... no, not openness, but more like vulnerability that could be exploited.

Bruce seemed to consider this fact and looked at Lex, studying him much as he would have done one of his heavy science texts -- searching for some logical answer as to why his friend was pushing at this so hard. The Excelsior way looked for the cold hard reason behind this -- what could be gained or destroyed, what power could be lost or won by the approach of one of his peers in such an offer.

"Why? Why do you ask me?" he asked finally, trusting that he would either get the truth or sense evasion.

"Because I know how horrible it is to be alone. You're my friend, and I don't want you to be alone. I want to share the good people that I live with, and what it's like in Smallville, with you." Because it would feel nice, and there was every chance he could impress on Bruce the feeling of what it was like to belong -- with a person, with a place, with anything. Lex recognized the lost glitter in Bruce's eyes too well.

"And what would you gain from it?" It was an automatic thought for a billionaire, ingrained into all of them at Excelsior. No one did something for nothing. Everyone wanted something, they wanted a piece of money, power, ambition, his very soul and they would bleed him dry if he let them get close enough. As alone as Bruce had been for so long, his defenses were a marvel of keeping people at a pleasant distance; a one-way street for his charisma where he could touch others but refused to be touched himself.

That could've been him, Lex thought fleetingly, but he was too open to danger still. Bruce was more closed, more reserved.... no less keen for adventure, but physical damage and personal damage were different things. "Nothing tangible. Nothing that I could hold in my hand and say 'this is what I got out of you'. Because you know what? I have everything that I want and can have. So I suppose I'd get the knowledge that I was able to share a little of what I have."

"Sharing knowledge is in the best traditions of Excelsior," Bruce commented in a bland voice. It was a non-answer, a highly irritating habit that Bruce had when he was deciding something but didn't want to show his hand. It was a surprisingly effective tool, and imitators had adopted it and were using it all over the school. Theirs was just imitation, a weak echoing mimicry of the real thing.

"Quite. It makes for strong bonds.... And I'll let this drop right now. Promise me you'll think it over this weekend. Christmas is a long way off, after all," Lex said, backing away from the sensitive subject a little reluctantly. Tonight had seemed different, he'd thought he had reached him for a moment and touched the real Bruce, not one of his carefully crafted reflections. Perhaps he'd been wrong that Bruce had seemed more vulnerable tonight. Still, he had tried and knew when to retire gracefully.

But it seemed that the moment wasn't yet over. Bruce was staring at him, searching his face in a disconcerting manner for something that either he didn't or did find. Whichever was the case, it led to another long pause and then Bruce said, "No need."

He looked back at Lex and the curve of a smile touched his lips again and for a startling moment his eyes were alive in a way that seemed to make him a completely different person. "I would like to accept your invitation."

Lex let a slight smile slip free, and he lifted his head a little, sat up straighter as he grinned faintly. "Good. I don't think you'll regret it, and if you do...." He let his voice gentle, softening because he knew what it was like, "It certainly won't be worse than staying by yourself."

Bruce nodded but did not answer that as such. "What should I know? Or should I.... improvise?"

"And the teachers think that I scheme." Lex reached out a hand to pat Bruce's solid chest, square in the center, careful to keep it comradely. "Months away, Bruce."

"It's never too early to start research," Bruce looked at the hand a moment as if it confirmed something he suspected, and then added in the same even tone, "Of any kind."

It was so hard to tell with him if it were an invitation, a casual comment, or a trap. That was Bruce's skill. He made himself a mirror, a dark mirror where he got what he wanted from watching people interact with reflections of themselves that he sent back to them.

Lex liked to think he was good at telling when Bruce did that, because he seldom had anything intense to have reflected back. But he wanted that so very badly, and had it been so blatant that Bruce could do that to him? He twitched his thumb, and then started to stroke it over the fabric of his shirt. "I don't like playing games, Bruce...."

"Really?" Bruce placed his hand over Lex's and stilled the movement, holding his hand there against the rise and fall of his breathing. "Neither do I."

The moment hung in the balance, seeming to have failed and drained away. At least until Bruce spoke again softly, "Sharing knowledge is in the best traditions of Excelsior.... as I have already mentioned once tonight."

"I don't have much knowledge to share...." A slight shift, and the chair was balanced on it's back legs, leaning forwards as Lex leaned towards Bruce, hand moving in one slow stroke to the edge of Bruce's collar.

"But you seek it, as I did," Bruce spoke softly. "Some do for curiosity, some for a means to power, some have it thrust upon them." He looked at Lex carefully, assessing again and curiously that flickered was back in his dark eyes as if some rapid and difficult decisions were being made. "Never the last, not from me. Is this what you want?"

Lex nodded, pushing back the giddying shot of elation at having the topic breeched by Bruce instead of having to ask it himself. Of course, a nod alone wouldn't satisfy Bruce, so he murmured, "Yes, I want to. I've wanted to since the summer started...."

"I noticed," Bruce said dryly with another faint smile. "You're starting to grow Lex, you've grown even over the summer. It's being noticed."

That was a hint of a warning as much as a statement. Lex was no longer a young boy -- before, even with his accelerated learning putting him years above his age, he had been 'off limits', where Bruce evidently had not. But now that he'd shot up in height and was being seen as a teenager, a young man rather than a boy and perceptions of him were changing. The fact that Bruce had been so unusually forthcoming about it proved to Lex that he'd been aware of it for some time, and maybe had considered some sort of action when the time was right.

Vague flattery, but Lex liked it as he tipped the chair back onto all four legs, and twisted to sit on Bruce's bed. "Is this a bad thing?"

Bruce accepted the rather unprecedented invasion into his personal space. They had been close before but it was usually on Lex's side of the room as he seemed to value his privacy a great deal. He shifted slightly, to allow Lex more room and looked at him and nodded seriously. "It can be," he murmured, his eyes showing that strange flicker of emotion again that vanished swiftly. "Depending on who notices. It's another element to the Game."

"It's funny, but I don't feel quite so steeped in that concept as I used to be. A game implies that you can just walk away at will.... but it's life. You can't walk away from it," he shifted his hand again, half-petting Bruce's chest over his shirt. "And who else would notice? I have a big shiny head that makes a good detractor."

That was a fact that never seemed to cease following him around -- painful words, cruelty aimed at sabotaging his self-esteem. He tried to rise above it, but it did still hit a sensitive spot. It made the implicit admission by Bruce that he was interested all the more attractive.

Bruce frowned a little. "Have they been bothering you again?" he asked, but allowed the touch, seemingly relaxed beneath Lex's exploring fingers. He was looking at Lex carefully, testing his resolve.

"I comfort myself with the knowledge that I'll soon be making sure they can't be employed anywhere," Lex smiled only slightly, sly voiced as he shakily opened the top button of Bruce's top. It was hard not to be nervous with Bruce giving him no guidance in what he was doing, any encouragement or rebuff.

"Everyone can be hurt Lex," he murmured again, feeling the tentative touches skitter against his skin.

He turned and his hand touched Lex's jaw line, feeling the lengthening bone emerging from the roundness of youth. "A kiss is often the best place to start."

"Somehow I think you won't hurt me...." Lex leaned down tentatively, fingers still on Bruce's chest, and exhaled in a tense puff of breath. "Show me how to do it, how to kiss. I know you put mouth to mouth...." But it wasn't the chaste little kisses he gave Clark. At least he hoped not.

Bruce smiled then, a true smile. This close, his eyes were warm and bright and there seemed to be more of what Lex liked to consider the real Bruce looking out at him. "Don't think of the movies, that's for a different time and place. Start gentle...." His lips brushed over Lex's with a caressing feel. "Close, but gently teasing."

Bruce tasted like toothpaste a little, but it wasn't that which caught Lex's attention. He had soft lips, and that lingering brush made Lex's mouth tickle, made him want more as he tried to mimic that demonstration.

"That's right," Bruce approved smiling again. "Then a little harder.... you'll feel you'll want to." A closer contact and the draw away was slow and deliberate, sucking a little at Lex's lower lip.

"That feels so good, Bruce," Lex sighed, tipping his head down a little to press the closer contact. He shifted bodily, too, a slow move to hover over Bruce, knowing full well that if Bruce didn't want him there, Bruce would simply move him bodily.

"That is the general idea," Bruce admitted, his voice soft and low. "Most people make the mistake of thinking a kiss is simple. If you learn this next part well, you will have mastered something people can go through their entire life not knowing."

Strange words from someone not that much beyond fourteen, but Bruce had never appeared young, not since his parents were murdered. Even then it had seemed that when they had next seen him after that incident, the Bruce they knew had been replaced by a silent adult presence that observed the world from behind his dark eyes. He shifted a little, so their bodies would touch, and slid his hands and arms around Lex, creeping up to his neck and head. "Don't just kiss with your mouth, Lex, kiss with your entire body, with your whole self," he murmured.

The resulting demonstration was a tactile experience that seemed to touch and chase sensation in trails from his entire body to his lips as hands caressed and supported, the body moved against him subtly and their legs twined just a little.

Lex was a fast learner, and had learned young how to read and respond to people as a fundamental skill. Not a mirror as Bruce liked to do, but simple responses, whatever would be the best way to get under someone's skin, to get at them, to get them to understand. But it was all euphemism and intellectualism that didn't hold much of a candle to the feeling of hands and muscles against his own, to the feeling of Bruce's mouth and the feel of their breath huffing out between them during kisses.

He wrapped himself around Bruce, not clinging, but trying to feel as much as he could of those caressing hands, the subtle motions that were leaving him aching and agitated with eagerness. "God...."

Bruce chuckled lightly right against his lips, the exhalation tingling on dampened sensitive skin. "You always have been a fast learner Lex," he said and looked at him, his approval plain and open to read. "Again, both of us kiss, and let's see where it takes us."

"Somewhere nice," Lex decided softly, looking into that clear approval for a moment, a long moment, before he pressed his mouth to Bruce's again. Slow but far from idle, he kissed and pressed, stroked and rocked against the other boy, finally lightly sucking the full bottom lip into his mouth.

Bruce responded in kind and then pressed more fiercely against Lex as he sought to free his bottom lip by engulfing Lex's own mouth with his own, pushing for an entrance there, even as he parted his own lips.

Mimicry again, but Lex was good at it and didn't hesitate when he opened his mouth, molding against Bruce's again. Tingles and sparks of heat were turning to a slow inferno, and Lex was half-aware of pressing and twisting his hips against Bruce's steady motions. Kiss with the whole body -- it was working.

Again, he was shown by example, shown how the movement of tongue against tongue could stir a compulsion, could coax the sense of touch into a complete dominance in the body. He was shown how that first intimacy, of allowing someone inside a part of him could stir a connection between them that tugged and pulled like magnetism, wanting more and more contact to validate that trust. It was not something that could be explained, only experienced and Bruce was a great believer in learning and teaching through experience.

It was tactile learning, and Lex was flooded with it in that moment; later he'd sit down and pick apart the bits, understand what had happened and just why he'd enjoyed what he'd enjoyed, but for the moment, there wasn't even daydreams in his head. He was in that vague haze of a dream, experiencing and enjoying the feelings that his creative mind couldn't simulate for him. Lex sucked on Bruce's tongue, moaned into his mouth as he curled a hand in the other boy's thick hair.

Bruce seemed to enjoy that, seemed to respond to everything he did, guiding everything just that little bit further each time he felt Lex was ready to move on. Even as Lex moved instinctively against him, he suddenly added a firm press groin to groin in return, the heat and swell of him evident even through material.

Soft flannel and slick satin left almost no friction, no traction between the fabrics; just the rub of hipbone against hipbone, two hard cocks jutting at each other through fabric.

Lex broke the kissing when a shudder of arousal, an urge to squirm and buck wildly, passed between his shoulder blades. "Christ, Bruce, I want more, it's all so good...."

"Then you'll have more," Bruce murmured and slid his hand over the soft flannel, rubbing gently, getting him used to the idea of someone else's hand on his cock.

Or almost on. Masturbation was a relatively recent pleasure, one Lex didn't have any shame in indulging -- but he hadn't expected that Bruce's fingers between them, cupping and stroking him through his pajamas, could feel so arousing. That shiver struck again, and he laid his head down on Bruce's shoulder with a hiss of pleasure, still petting his friend's hair and chest.

"We'll have to be quiet, or the Hall Monitor will come past...."

"Lean into me Lex," Bruce murmured in his ear in an intimate whisper, "It will muffle the noise...." With that, he slipped a hand inside Lex's pajamas and stroked there, too, his own reactions seemingly perfectly in control.

Turnabout would be fair play. Later. For the moment, Lex tucked his face against his friend's neck, moaning softly and almost whimpering when skin touched skin, the sensation so much stronger and evocative than his own fingers on himself.

Whoever Bruce had learned from had taught him well, because he made the whole thing seem easy, natural. There was no sense that they were doing something wrong, save the slight thrill of the possibility of the Hall Monitor happening past which was an innocent risk, not anything serious.

Slow strokes, up down, up down, and it felt like Lex's entire body was being stroked, that his essence was being milked out of him with that steady, wonderful touch that he started to rock his hips into. Moans and whimpers continued, but Lex started to kiss at Bruce's neck, under the ruffled locks of his hair. He tasted like he'd just showered, like soap and water and fabric softener.

Bruce's free hand smoothed over the back of Lex's head and then over the soft top that acted as his pajamas, his own breath coming faster as he pumped his hand more rapidly, squeezing just a little more now. Just a little more, and just a little more, met by the sudden twitching jerking of Lex's hips into his hand, a soft noise muffled against Bruce's neck when the first spurt loosened, so tense with it that everything ached and clenched.

Lex couldn't remember touch feeling so good in his life.

Bruce pulled the climax from him, the hot sticky wet of it slicking his hand for the final strokes until Lex's body relaxed from that shuddering tension and he pulled him in close to his body for comfort.

Lex twisted a little, almost purring when he told Bruce, "Bruce.... let me. Let me do that to you."

"That might be too much for tonight." Bruce said a little raggedly, the mirror mask slipping back into place. "I don't want you to feel overwhelmed."

"No...." No, Bruce couldn't let that damned mask fall back down. Lex pushed himself up a little, forcing himself not to lose the sated smile that had drifted onto his face. "I'm not overwhelmed. Let me."

Bruce looked like he was going to refuse for some bizarre reason, and then slowly nodded. "If you wish." The puzzle was why he was hesitant, as it was obvious he needed and wanted that touch.

"I promise I'll try to make it good," Lex whispered, shifting properly atop Bruce again. Then it was just a simple leaning in to take his mouth with slow kisses, while he worked a tentative hand beneath the waistband of Bruce's pants. If his nice long shower was going to be undone, it was only fair that Bruce's pants face the same fate.

"I'm sure you will, Lex. You're a natural," he replied in among the kisses, shifting to allow access more easily. His reluctance seemed to have vanished so thoroughly that it could have been just imagination.

Lex wasn't going to just dismiss it. He'd mull over it that weekend, maybe mull over it for many weekends to come, but he'd never just let go of something that could be so crucial. It wasn't going to interfere with his pleasure, though, or the comfortable lazy feeling that he was drifting on as he wrapped fingers around Bruce's cock.

He almost jumped at the feeling of hair against his fingers.

"Yes...." There was a small hitch in the voice against his ear, "Yes, hair is usually there. Part of growing up for many."

Part of growing up for people who weren't freaks, Bruce meant, but he was kind about things and knew that was one of Lex's few sensitive points. "It's interesting...." He circled his hand around the base, thumb rubbing through coarse curls and over Bruce's sack.

Bruce drew in a long breath and closed his eyes a moment. "That is usually a.... very sensitive area.... " he said in a tightly controlled voice.

"Are you trying to tell me you like that, or that it hurts?" Lex whispered, voice smirking for him even though Bruce had his eyes closed.

"For me it feels good but for others it may not," Bruce replied, his eyes still closed and the flush to his skin showing he more than just 'liked' it. "You should know for when you do this with someone else."

"But I like you, Bruce." The sort of simple, open statement that he'd started to learn from the Kents but would still only ever share with the few, few people who were close to him. He rubbed his thumb again, ghosting for a moment before he started to pick up a steady pace. Just like he was jerking himself off, only it was Bruce, and Bruce had the most alluring flush on his face.

It became obvious that Bruce was no more immune to the heady rush of physical pleasure than Lex had been, for all his apparent poise. He wanted it -- it didn't have to be said, it could be felt and tasted and smelled and heard in the hitched breath and seen in the glistening skin. His attempt to answer vanished as he gave a low barely suppressed moan.

There was no way that Bruce could muffle that against Lex's hair, so, almost kindly, Lex leaned his thin -- still not tall -- frame up and kissed Bruce's lips, swallowing the moans as he started to stroke more firmly, keeping all of his fingers in play, from tip to base, wrapped tight around the hard flesh.

It was enough. Enough to let Bruce push suddenly hard against the gripping hand and lock rigid until he climaxed, the gasp breathing into Lex's kiss in appreciative silence.

Lex settled atop and to the side of Bruce again, pulling his fingers carefully free after a last, parting caress. They were sticky, like his own crotch felt, and he fleetingly thought that next time, the occasion would demand tissues. "That was so good...."

"Yes." Bruce had his eyes closed as if waiting for a moment to pass, but when he opened them, they were dark and warm and strangely grateful. "Thank you, Lex. You were great."

Lex laughed quietly -- not mocking, not anything but warm relaxation -- and he bussed Bruce's mouth with another kiss. "You were great, too. If that's the thing one says. No, don't tell me -- I don't want to know what one says. This was.... nice. Comfortable."

Bruce nodded, his secret smile present there just for Lex in that moment. "It's the best way. Too many people look for passion in their first time. It's too much. Too much for a first time. I hope it felt.... natural the way we did it."

Lex found himself nodding before he'd even thought it through much. "Yeah.... yes, it was. Natural is a good word for it." Then Lex muffled a yawn with his sticky fingers, and halfway licked them clean. It was a weird, thick, musky taste, but he'd done that before, too. "I think I'll nap, and then get up to clean us off. Is that okay?"

Bruce looked amused at that gesture, "You're like a cat Lex," he said stroking him gently. "Yes, that's okay."

There was a new closeness between them now, one that could not be avoided. For all of Bruce's control and efforts, Lex was just that little bit closer to the real him than anyone else had ever been. The same was the case with Lex. It was a different type of knowing, but the fact remained that Bruce Wayne now knew Lex Luthor in a way that no one else in the world did. Not even his foster parents. Not even his younger brother Clark.

Just one more thing to mull about over the weekend.

Someday, he'd be an emperor with an empire that stretched as far as his eyes would dare to see. But that was in the future, and there was no reason to limit himself to having that as his only goal.

And, he thought driftily, he'd risen to the occasion of his Thursday night promise to himself.

Excelsior was starting to become both heaven and hell. Lex had always adored the school for what he could learn, for what there was academically, and loathed it for the people aspects.

They weren't leaving him alone anymore. Like vultures, they sensed that he was closer to Bruce than he'd been, and two quiet billionaires bonding close was a danger sign in the world they moved in. It spoke of unholy alliances, and Lex was sure that Bruce was starting to get the same shit he was getting, and had been getting for the last few months. In fact he began to wonder how long exactly it had been going on for his friend as some of the marks Bruce had previously put down to gymnastics injuries in retrospect became something more sinister in his mind.

He didn't talk about it, not to professors, not to Martha or Jonathan, or to Clark, or to Bruce. He didn't talk about humiliating words or astonishingly embarrassing events in the showers after class. Not even when they hurt and left his head spinning and he could see a reflection of Bruce's withdrawal from people in himself. It was weakness, and he was still at a vague loss for how to regain control without lashing back too sharply and showing that weakness for the sharks at Excelsior to see.

Christmas break was going to be a couple of weeks to relax at home, with none of that to affect him, and enough time to do minor research. It had already been a hellish couple of months; he wasn't going to let it develop into a hellish year or longer.

"See all that snow and nothingness, Bruce? This is what home looks like in winter. The cows blend in if they're not in the barn," he half-joked to his fellow passenger as the taxi rolled to a stop in the drive.

Bruce did not seem to have relaxed in the same way that Lex had and looked at them. "I don't think I've ever seen so much snow," he commented looking around. "Gotham is very different."

"So's Metropolis. The only snow you see there is plowed up off of the roads, dirty and gritty.... This is clean and untouched." He paused, making sure his coat was buttoned up against the cold before he popped open his door. "At least until Clark romps through it."

"Your brother enjoys snow?" Bruce asked, following suit. "It's a shame he doesn't come to Excelsior, you seem to get on so well with him."

"I wouldn't put him through that," Lex decided, reaching down to his feet for his book bag. The suitcases from cleaning out their 'dorm' were in the trunk, and he had money in his pocket to pay the driver. Right, everything was in order. "He fits better here in Smallville."

Bruce gave him a sideways look and then glanced over at the house. "I think we've been spotted," he said a faint smile already touching his lips.

The door flung open, and there was the sound of Martha raising her voice.

"Clark Kent, don't you dare go out there without a coat on!"

"But Lex is home!" Clark's over excited young voice drifted out. "For two whole weeks!"

"And that lets you off having a coat?" The pair of them appeared in the doorway, warm light framing them as Martha forced Clark to put on a jacket.

The impatient Clark managed to run out and grab Lex in a hug when he was all of a few meters away from the door. "Lex!"

"Hey, Clark!" Lex laughed, halfway sing-songing as he latched onto his little brother and spun him to drop him in the snow. "Have you been good? C'mon, help me get our bags -- Bruce, this is Clark, and that's Martha in the door...."

"Am always good," Clark protested and picked up one of the bags, lugging it as if it was heavy. "Hi, Bruce!" he said cheerfully and disappeared inside, dragging the bag behind him.

"Come on in, boys," Martha said smiling, embracing Lex in a welcome home as soon as he got close enough. "Bruce, welcome to Smallville. Lex assured me that you wouldn't mind roughing it with us for a couple of weeks, but please let me know if there's anything you want, or don't like.... and we'll work something out for you."

She smiled again, trying to put the self assured young man at his ease. He was taller than Lex, for all her eldest son seemed to be growing an inch or so every week they saw him.

Bruce rather formally put his hand out to greet her with a handshake and said in his most charming quiet tone, "Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Kent, and thank you for allowing me to come and stay over Christmas."

"Call me Martha, Bruce. We don't stand on ceremony here. Please, don't consider yourself a guest, consider yourself part of the family," she welcomed Bruce, before moving inside out of the way of the doorway.

Bruce looked a little startled by that, the unfamiliar open manner and looked at Lex even as Martha called out, "Lex, I've just brewed some of your favorite coffee -- you want some?"

"Yes, please," Lex grinned, darting eyes over to Bruce to catch that startled expression. "C'mon, we'll take your stuff up to my room and then we'll go find Jonathan. You'll like him, Bruce...."

It was one of the rare times that Lex felt that whirlwind of energy that his brother seemed to be made of entirely. He darted closer to Martha then, almost relieved as he hugged her again. "It's really good to be back."

Martha smiled again just for him this time. "Good to have you back, sweetheart," she replied again. "We've put the spare bed in your room, Lex. It's a little cramped and I've put a few of your things in your closet if you don't see them out where they usually are, okay? Jonathan's just getting some wood in for the fire. Bruce, do you want coffee as well? How do you take it?"

She'd seemed to instinctively recognize another coffee drinker and Bruce nodded. "Black please, no sugar."

"Don't be too long up there boys, I don't want it getting cold. Clark, be careful with the bags, sweetheart," she said watching Clark drag them upstairs, enthusiastically making a show -- normally he would have scooped up the heavy cases and run upstairs with them carried effortlessly over his head.

"I hope there's nothing fragile in there," Lex chuckled quietly, as he started after Clark. Bruce was half-expected to follow him up, as Lex trailed after his little brother. "I got you a Christmas gift, Clark.... You can't peek, though."

"A gift?" That if anything seemed to make Clark even happier. He could have been taken as a snapshot and put on Christmas cards everywhere as a representative of the wide-eyed wonder that touched children at this time of year. "We've got you a present too," he blurted out. "I helped choose part of it. You'll like it! Lots and lots!"

Bruce was following them up the stairs, his amusement palpable despite his silence.

"I bet I will." Lex shifted his bag on his shoulder, and then darted ahead of his little brother to open and hold open his bedroom door for Clark and Bruce. "It's a little cramped, and I apologize for that...."

The Waynes and the Luthors were members of America's industrial rich. Flashy, spacious houses and mansions were their hallmark, not the farmhouse and cramped-by-the-extra-bed bedroom that Lex was so happy to be in again.

Bruce smiled again, despite that. "It's different," he admitted, but he certainly wasn't the type to complain about anything. "I like it."

Clark bounced on Lex's bed. "Lex has loads of cool things!" he announced proudly. "He'll show you them.... even the St. George box if you're lucky."

Bruce raised an eyebrow in appreciation of this revealed wonder. "I shall hope to be lucky then," he replied in his quiet tones, looking faintly overwhelmed.

"Let's unpack," Lex suggested as he swung his backpack off of his shoulder, and then started to take his coat off. Loads of cool things? He wanted to laugh, but settled at grinning slightly to himself. "Or we'll tire Bruce out dragging him all over the house."

"Can't be tired yet.... only just got here!" Clark said enthusiastically. "Haven't even played in the snow yet!"

"Clark honey, can you bring down Lex's dirty laundry bag?" Martha's voice sounded up the stair. "Bruce's, too, if he has anything that needs washing."

"Sure, Mom!" Clark bellowed back and started rooting around for Lex's laundry without even asking.

Eyebrows going up slightly, Lex darted his eyes over to Bruce to see how he was taking the normality of it. "You heard her, Bruce," he smirked, unzipping his suitcase to help Clark.

"I put most of mine to the laundry at Excelsior," Bruce said looking a little shell-shocked. "I do have some, but I wasn't expecting to have anything washed now.... I don't want to impose."

"You're not imposing," he insisted, twisting to look at his friend over his shoulder. "You're here until we go back to Excelsior, and you can't expect your clothes to just build up."

"Martha won't mind?" Bruce asked uncertainly. He opened his leather case and for once he was not the one leading the way, but was reliant upon his younger roommate for guidance. And Lex liked it.

Lex was determined to share the experience with his friend, just as he'd told Bruce he would. "Why would she -- she asked, didn't she?"

Bruce nodded at that, pulling out a small bag as well and handing it to Clark who was waiting, and smiled and then pounced on Lex's and darted off with them, sounding like he was bouncing down the stairs rather than running.

"Got 'em!" he could be heard announcing to his mom and was obviously being recruited to help sort and put the clothes in the wash as the pair were left in comparative silence upstairs.

Lex started to put his clothes away in his drawer, moving slower with Clark gone. "Here, you can use these two drawers. What do you think of.... well, anything so far?"

"You weren't joking about Clark being a bundle of energy were you?" Bruce replied sitting down as he sorted through his clothes. "It's.... all quite strange to me," he admitted in a quieter voice.

"If it gets too strange...." Lex shrugged gently, and added, "There's a loft in the barn that's sort of a space for Clark and me. He's just excited right now that I'm home. He's always this happy, though."

Bruce shook his head chuckling slightly as if Lex had spoken of an unbelievable marvel. "No, it's a good strange," he said looking up at Lex. "I just can't believe it's real. I always wondered why you came home every weekend.... every holiday. I understand now."

"It's home, in all senses of the word." Lex slipped his suitcase beneath the bed, then perched on the edge to watch Bruce unpack. "And it's not Excelsior. It's different, and I meet a lot of everyday people."

"You're lucky Lex. I think I would trade everything I had to have what you have here, with Clark and Martha and Jonathan," Bruce said putting his things away.

There was a slight sound outside and then the door pushed open again and Clark came in carrying a tray with two cups of coffee on it. He looked a little less excited than he had before, but that might just have been the fact he was carrying the coffee and didn't want to spill it. "Mom said they were getting cold down there," he said putting the tray down carefully. He gave Bruce a glance and then smiled at Lex. "Dad said we can go get the tree tomorrow. Mom said we had to wait until you and your friend were here so we could get a good one and decorate it ourselves!"

"I can't remember -- did we ever get a replacement star for the top after, ah, last year's incident?" Lex flushed a little as he recalled that. It had just been to make the light brighter, a blue-white glow like a real star, and.... the magnesium he'd rigged into it hadn't been a great idea, even if it had delighted Clark.

"No.... we need to get a new one," Clark replied, happy to plunk himself on Lex's bed. "Will it explode like last year's?" he asked brightly.

Bruce actually chuckled a little at that.

"Minor experiment gone.... very wrong," Lex grinned at his friend, still feeling sheepish at the mention of it. "So tomorrow we're going to get a tree and a new topper, right?" He reached to pick up his cup of coffee, the milky-looking one that smelled sweet, and offered Bruce his own cup.

"Thank you," Bruce said politely, taking it and looking pleasantly surprised at the quality of the drink. Little did he know that Martha was an expert coffee maker. "Exploding stars sound very like a very unusual Christmas tree topper. Maybe we'll be able to find something to equal that."

"We were going to make it glow," Clark said happily. "Mom said if it glowed any more it would melt the ceiling. And then it exploded into silver rain. It was the best star ever."

"So, it'd be best to find one that was manufactured to glow that way. Thankfully it wasn't an heirloom.... And that not too many of the ornaments broke. And the tree only partially caught fire. Actually, that was pretty fun," Lex snickered after a mouthful of coffee, and a glance to the expression on Clark's face. "So what've you done all day, Clark?"

"Helping Mom at the Fair. It was really busy," Clark would have ordinarily have clambered on Lex by now, but there was a comparative stranger in the room and he was a little nervous of getting too close.

"Was Pete there, too? I bet you helped mom sell a lot of pies." Lex didn't take on a condescending tone with Clark -- he talked straight to him, and settled down on the mattress beside Clark.

"Yeah! We sold loads." Clark moved a little closer to Lex now he was sitting down, forgetting about the watchful stranger in a quixotic mood swing. "Mom was cleared out before anyone else. Then Pete came over and we went to see the bike he says he's getting for Christmas and his birthday too. It looks good.... nice shiny red. Looks fast too." Surreptitiously he had eased over so he could lean against Lex and the smile reappeared on his face.

"Is he really getting a bike, or is he just hoping that if he tells enough people that his parents'll cave and get it for him?" Lex slipped his arm around Clark's shoulders, hugging him tight for a moment. "I've missed you -- exams were hell this semester. Bruce and I have done enough research on ketones to bog down the tractor."

"You look tired," Clark said, looking up at him with his clear green eyes, reading him and then Bruce as if they were open books. "And.... stressy-worried. Both of you. They must have been horrible exams to make you like that."

Horrible exams, and.... Lex just smiled crookedly, mugging his brother closer for a moment. "Yeah. You just wait until you're in school, in high school, and then you'll get stressy-worried. C'mon, Bruce -- why don't we all go downstairs? The kitchen's always nice and warm, and we have a SNES hooked up to the TV downstairs. We can play it if dad's not going to watch the news."

They were normal things. Videogames and chatting with his brother, posing a sharp contrast from scheming, constant research, and trying to wade through the subtle and unsubtle mind games at Excelsior.

Bruce nodded. "Sounds good," he replied, seemingly fascinated by Lex and Clark's interaction.

"Yeah! Dad won't mind," Clark joined in. "He watches it later after dinner.... C'mon, we've got StarRacer and everything!" Clark bounced up and hurtled off down the stairs again.

Lex had a smile for Bruce when he got up, still carrying his coffee cup. "Enjoy today -- I bet tomorrow once we get the tree, we'll also be enlisted in farm work. Even that's kind of fun."

"It will certainly be different," Bruce replied. "I hope I don't embarrass myself."

"You won't. In fact, there's no way you can," Lex reached for Bruce's hand, hesitant about that, before he grabbed him and tugged him out into the hallway. "C'mon, or Clark will come and fetch us."

Bruce smiled and followed with his smooth grace, down the stairs into the cheery downstairs where Martha was cooking dinner in the kitchen and brushing snow off of Jonathan who'd just come in with a filled log basket. It was nearly pitch black outside and cold made the inside cozier. Clark had already set up the SNES and was curled on the sofa waiting for them to come and play, rather generously opting to let Bruce and Lex start off.

Lex snuck down quietly in front of Bruce, and veered from heading towards the living room to the kitchen to wave at Jonathan. "We made it, Jonathan -- Bruce, this is my.... foster-father, Jonathan Kent," he declared, quite proudly.

"Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Kent," Bruce put out a hand to shake Jonathan's. "Thank you for allowing me to visit over Christmas."

"We're glad to have you here, Bruce -- Lex has told us a lot about you," Jonathan grasped Bruce's hand, shook it vigorously, and then let go so he could walk away and take the firewood with him. "Make yourself at home here."

Just like Lex had said, and Lex could barely restrain his smile as he glanced to Martha. "We're going to play games, all right? I'll set the table when dinner's ready."

"Try not to let Clark fall over the back of the sofa this time," Martha warned with a laugh. "You've got a little while.... the roast won't be done for an hour. And if Jonathan lights the fire, can you make sure it keeps going?"

"Yes, ma'am." Lex inclined his head politely then turned back to the living room and Clark. "You can be player one, Bruce...."

Bruce nodded and picked up the controller - Lex knew that Bruce didn't know the game, but his reflexes allowed him to pick it up quickly. With Clark bouncing and cheering them both on, but not impartially, the living room became raucous, with even Bruce protesting and raising his voice a little.

It seemed odd that something as simple as a game could bring a slight flush and an animated look to his face so easily, where years at Excelsior had failed to touch him like that. For once in his life, Bruce Wayne appeared to be enjoying something that had no real reason or scheme or plan behind it.

Lex loved racing games, but a slight difference in placing, and his skills went all to hell. Was a spaceship so different from the equally improbable cars that showed up in games? Apparently it was, because Bruce beat him over and over, the best four out of five games, and it was with a laugh that he surrendered his controller to Clark.

"Here, you two play -- I'll stir up the fire."

Lex watched Clark bounce down from the sofa arm, grabbing the controller. His swift reflexes made it more of an even match than it should have been and Bruce actually found himself having to compete and concentrate to keep up.

"I'm winning!" Clark exulted and then seemed to remember what he was doing and his game play slipped a little, though he won the first race. It was hard for him, remembering to keep his abilities and reflexes under control while at home. It was usually the only place he could be himself, and with Bruce here he had to remember to be careful again. He was good at being careful, and Lex could feel a blush of pride.

Bruce beat him on the next round, but not by much. "You're very good Clark," he commented.

The young boy was a little wary but smiled, "I get to practice lots more than Lex," he said cheerfully. "I have to practice to keep up."

"Lots of practice," Lex chipped in for his little brother, once he was done with the fire. He settled behind the two, close to both of them and almost touching. He patted Clark's back lightly, but added no comment and hoped his brother would at least give his all into the game if nothing else while Bruce was there.

"Play again?" Bruce asked. "One of the difficult runs?"

Clark hesitated a little and then, feeling Lex's presence and reassuring pat, nodded. "Sure!" If Lex wasn't cautioning him to be careful then he would try and beat his friend. Wanting to win was at least normal.

The resulting clash in the game was almost hard to watch as lightning reflexes on both sides battled away furiously. In the end it was Bruce who won by a sneaky maneuver that just managed to sneak by a nose at the finish line.

Clark flopped back melodramatically against Lex with a giggle at his own defeat. "He beat me!"

Lex chuckled, patting Clark on the chest. "I'm sorry, Clark -- maybe you need to practice more?"

"Maybe." Clark looked up at him, grinning.

"Boys, can you set the table?" Martha called out. "And bring in another chair for Bruce, too. Dinner will be ready in a few minutes."

"Okay. Are we getting carrots, too? Bruce, you're not allergic to anything, are you?" Lex asked. He prodded Clark to his feet and reached forwards to turn the game off. Later, they'd get back to it. Later. They had time to get to it again, and other games, and for the moment Lex was content and happy.

"I'm fine.... no allergies," Bruce replied stretching out, before getting up. "It smells very good."

"We have everything," Martha called out. "Most of it terribly unrefined and in large quantities." She performed the logistical miracle that coordinated everything to arrive at the table all at once. "I hope you're all hungry."

If they weren't before, they would be by the time everything came out of the oven. A large beef roast emerged along with a heap of roast potatoes piled high like sizzling golden nuggets, enough to provide adequate tribute to an Inca god or two. Everywhere they looked, vegetables, biscuits, and fresh gravy rich with meat juices tantalized the senses. Jonathan reappeared like magic.

It had to have been the food that summoned. Jonathan swept back into the room, kissed Martha almost on the mouth, and carried the roast over to the table for her; Lex dragged a chair over to Bruce, and then carried the big dinner-plates out and set them on the table, while Clark was trusted with the silverware that wasn't silver and certainly had a lot of wear on it.

Somehow miraculously, everything seemed to synchronize at the same time, even as Bruce sat down, and Lex could see the faint awe in his eyes. The plates, the food, the people were all there at the right moment and a rather animated serving process went on, where things were offered, passed on, put down, picked up again, balanced on something else as someone passed something over and serving spoons fumbled for between the plates.

Bruce seemed to realize that being politely restrained about what he was taking was an insult, and after an initial hesitation took what he wanted, as opposed to being polite. It was still nowhere near what graced Jonathan's plate, or Clark's plate, which held a surprising amount of food for such a young boy. Even Lex had more on his plate than he ate at Excelsior, more of the plain meat and potatoes than the pheasant in cream plum sauce that had been their last dinner at Excelsior. They had milk in their glasses to compliment the cups of now cold coffee both of them had drunk.

"How's the tractor, Jonathan?" Lex asked as he started to cut a bite-sized piece of roast. There wasn't a pause for grace, either.

"It's still working -- it could use a tuning up if you want to see to it, Lex...."

"After you've got the tree," Martha admonished the men folk that surrounded her. "Otherwise you'll all be out there puzzling over it and the day'll be gone. Bruce, are you sure you don't want any more vegetables?"

"Quite sure, thank you, Mrs. Martha," Bruce said. "I didn't know you actually did mechanics Lex." He half asked, half stated as he glanced at his friend.

"You know I like cars," Lex reminded him softly, a twinge defensive as he took a bite to eat. "It's like the electronics I tinker with -- and there's just no opportunity to do anything like that at Excelsior." People there, the ones who were old enough to drive, just didn't fix their own cars.

"It sounds.... interesting," Bruce replied. "Would you mind if I joined you?" he asked, with a gleam of anticipation in his eye.

Martha laughed a little. "Well, that's all you need to become an honorary Kent family member -- be christened with tractor oil and grease."

"You'll like it," Just from the spark in Bruce's eyes, Lex could tell he would. "It's sort of fun, and that's why Jonathan refuses to get a new tractor...."

"They don't make them as dependable as that old one, Lex," Jonathan scowled lightly and then that softened into a grin at having been caught out.

Clark was silently watching Bruce as he ate, looking a little worried. "Not sure what I could wear though," Bruce said apologetically. "I didn't figure that into my packing."

"We'll buy you something in town tomorrow. Cheap and cheerful," Martha said brushing that off as an obstacle. "We've done that a few times, it's not a problem."

"I'd lend you something of mine, but I'm still smaller than you." Something Lex knew both well and firsthand, and his smile twitched a little slyly as he finished off his cold coffee. "You have to help, too, Clark."

"Okay," Clark replied, though it wasn't with his usual enthusiasm.

"After dinner, do you want to go up to the loft? We can show Bruce our space," Lex asked, before spearing another roast potato.

"Don't let Clark stay up too late tonight," Jonathan told them both mildly. "Since we're going to be up early tomorrow to go to the tree farm."

Clark nodded absently, taking in his father's rule. "I decorated it for you," he said, still looking at Bruce and Lex with intense scrutiny. He didn't want Bruce in their space. But that would be rude and Lex wouldn't be happy because he could tell he wanted to take Bruce there. "Can show you the decorations before I hafta go to bed?"

"You did?" Lex broke into a grin at the idea of Clark having decorated -- probably messily and without much taste -- and the sheer thoughtfulness of it. It was one of the many reasons why he liked to come home so often. "I bet you helped to decorate your classroom, too. We ought to make more paper chains this year."

"Yeah, but Pete fell off his chair when he was putting up the chains and ripped them," Clark said. "And squashed me, too," he added for Bruce's benefit.

"He squashed you?" Lex scowled a little, and reached forwards to pet Clark's hair. "He ought to be more careful around you."

"Didn't hurt," Clark smiled again at that touch, lighting up at the attention. "He's not that much bigger than me. Chloe laughed at him and then fixed the torn paper, so Mrs. Peters didn't notice."

Lex settled back, and speared another forkful of the pieces of roast that he'd cut up. "Good. You got your report card, too?"

"It was a very good report card." Martha chipped in, pouring herself some juice. "Even if his artistic efforts are graded more for enthusiasm than content, I think." She smiled at Clark who grinned unashamedly.

"Mom said I did well. It was really easy compared to what you show me," Clark replied enthusiastically. "There wasn't anything in it about Napoleon or Alexander at ALL!"

"Or the thirty years war? What do they teach you kids in class," Lex chuckled. "You did the Egyptians in history though, right? Bruce knows all sorts of Egyptian things if that interests you."

"Yeah, the Pyramids were great!" Clark said enthusiastically. "And the embalming -- we did all that. But they didn't do much about the gods or the Upper and Lower Kingdoms, like it said in your books."

"There was a time that Egypt ruled the world," Bruce contributed and then offered more information. "They were one of the oldest civilizations to last to leave their mark to the present day."

"Mrs. Peters said that the Pharaohs were like gods to them. They looked pretty strange...." Clark said. "But then their gods were pretty strange too. And weird names too."

Clark was off on one of his chattering moments. Over dinner they learned that lots of the Egyptian gods had animal heads, that he liked the Falcon Headed god Horus, but he wouldn't want to have to fly around because he had decided he didn't like heights that much any more, that he was interested by why they thought taking the organs out of the body to preserve them in 'cans' (something that Bruce gently corrected to canopic jars, while trying not to laugh) was a good idea as surely they wouldn't be able to find them if they needed them again. And how all that worked with them going to the underworld and weighing a heart against a feather....

Lex slipped off to get their coats after dessert, feeling generally pleased that he could leave Bruce and Clark for a moment and that they were talking. After a couple of days there, Bruce was definitely going to feel comfortable with them, and it was good for Bruce to relax. For him to relax, too.

"Okay, Let's go see your decorations, Clark," Lex grinned as he thumped down the stairs with coats in his arms. "When do you want us back in the house?" he asked Martha.

"I want Clark in bed by eight," Martha said starting to clear up. "You boys, can stay up later if you want but we'll be going into town at around ten tomorrow so.... not too late okay? And make sure you turn the heater off when you come back in."

"Yes ma'am," Lex grinned with a fake salute. "I'll even tuck Clark in -- here's your coat," he offered his little brother, holding the flannel warmth out to put it on him.

Clark wriggled in and bounced off out towards the barn to put the lights on as Bruce slipped on his coat. Then he just followed Lex to the barn and their loft space. Clark had not only put up paper chains and tinsel but he'd managed to string lights everywhere and he had turned them on, illuminating the area with a seasonal atmosphere.

"Clark, you're great," Lex praised with a laugh, half-racing up the stairs. Tinsel and lights hanging from the walls, and across the room, and wow, that was probably a fire hazard, Lex noted with a grin as he moved to turn on the heat. "You did this all by yourself?"

Clark grinned. "You like it? Yes, I did it myself. Dad gave me one set of lights but I went and found the old set, too."

"It looks great," Bruce complimented, and Clark smiled a little at that, but still warily.

Lex fidgeted with the heater, and then twisted to look at them both. "See the bookcase, Bruce, and that's my desk and the robot arm I told you I'm working on."

"The famous robot arm," Bruce stepped over, immediately interested. "You got it working yet?"

"Sort of, but it doesn't move the way it should yet and I haven't had time to work on it properly yet." Lex hauled an extra chair up towards the desk. "Come on, Clark -- Bruce, sit down there and I'll show you. Tomorrow I'll drag another chair in here."

Clark settled and half-listened, half-contributed to the resulting technical discussion as Bruce and Lex got into an animated discussion about how to create appropriate feedback from the grip. He was very interested and listened quietly.

And all attention wasn't on him. It wasn't Lex talking to him and instructing him on how it worked, it was Lex talking to someone who seemed to know everything he was talking about, getting feedback from him and as much instruction as he shared. Lex hauled Clark up onto his lap to point out a problem with some of the joints, and then let him stay sitting there as he continued chatting with Bruce.

It was oddly disturbing. Sitting on Lex's lap was good, but not having his attention was not so good. But then he didn't dare make a fuss in case Lex sent him away completely. It wasn't like he didn't have a replacement there.... someone better, cleverer than he was. Someone who Lex spent more time with anyway.

Clark was jealous, but he didn't recognize the emotion. It was just a hot bittersweet feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was too busy making reasons to support the closeness he could see and feel between the older boys without knowing all the information. Bruce would touch Lex when he was pointing out something, Lex rested his hand on Bruce. They smiled, secret smiles at each other, their eyes seeking each other even as they mocked each other's ideas.

It was like playing, like when Lex played with Clark. Lex didn't let hardly anyone touch him; he didn't shake hands with people when they met them, didn't let anyone get too close for him except Clark and their parents. And Lex was around Bruce all week long; he only saw Clark on holidays and weekends, and now Bruce was going to steal Christmas from Clark, too.

It was horribly unfair.

"Bruce, you want to stay here and I'll come back after I've tucked Clark in?"

"Sure.... I'll try and fix this mess you've made," Bruce said with a slight smile.

Clark slipped off of Lex's lap. "You don't have to. Should stay with your.... friend. I can put myself to bed," the young boy offered while mutely begging for Lex to come with him.

"And miss out on reading to you?" Lex stood up, and then reached for his little brother's hand. He was half-aware of Clark's unease, but was pretty sure it was just from having a stranger around and that it would fade, not grow, with time. "Not a chance."

"Okay," Clark said relieved, almost feeling like he had scored a point somehow, as he took Lex's hand. "See you tomorrow, Bruce!"

"See you Clark," Bruce responded quietly and Clark practically tugged Lex away.

Lex didn't stop smiling as they meandered out of the barn, though he slowed his pace once they started back through the path they'd worn through the snow. "So, do you like Bruce so far?"

"He's.... okay," Clark said, a little subdued. Truthfully, he was very nice, and that made it worse. If he weren't nice then Lex wouldn't like him and it would be easy for Clark to be righteously angry about him taking advantage of his brother or something. "He's nice," he admitted after some more consideration.

"Yeah. I think he is. He's nicer than almost every other student at school," Lex told Clark, voice level and smooth, but praising, too. "He's a lot like me, and that's why I wanted him to come here over vacation. He needs a break."

"He does?" Clark asked looking up at his brother. "He looked stressy-worried too. Is it the exams?"

"Sometimes. Mostly," Lex slowed. It was nice, icy cold and somewhat refreshing in the snow. "I've been having to deal with people at school that I'd rather not deal with. And so has Bruce. Bullies, you know. It's nothing you should let get to you."

Clark looked up at Lex, the strange glimmer of snow light touching them with a peculiar glow. "You are okay, aren't you Lex?" he asked in a hesitant voice.

Warm, open green eyes were looking up at Lex when he started to hesitate in answering back. "Sort of okay."

Clark looked at him a moment and then hugged him tightly as he had wanted to the whole time Bruce had been there and had not been able to. "I want to help it be okay," he said fervently. "What can I do to make it be okay?"

"Just be you, Clark. I've missed you," he hugged his brother back tightly, bending a little to get closer to him, and then hauled him up into his arms in a motion full of effort. "There's nothing to do about bullies and people like that except hope they go away...."

"If I was bigger like Bruce I'd make them go away," Clark said fiercely, holding onto his brother. He hesitated a moment and then went silent, not wanting to even bring up his fears about being replaced, not now they were being just them. He didn't want to ruin this moment of just the pair of them out under the diamond dust stars beneath the crisp deep winter night.

Lex bussed a kiss to Clark's cheek, and started to carry him to the door. "I know you would. That's what brothers do for each other."

"Will you tell me if it gets bad?" Clark asked as they approached the door, its golden light spilling out over the snow in welcoming warmth. "So I can help?"

"But you can't. You're all the way here, and I'm not. But you do help in your own way -- every weekend, I get to see you." Lex hefted Clark a little, and then started up the steps to the door.

"Does Bruce help then?" Clark asked suddenly as they went in.

"When I ask him. Which isn't often," Lex admitted quietly as they entered the house. Then he masked his words with the stomping off of snow from his boots. "What kind of story would you like tonight?"

"Anything," Clark replied. So. Bruce could help Lex where he could not. The uncharacteristic center of misery began to build again, breaking the fragile perfection of their alone time together. "Maybe.... one of the Egyptian stories." They weren't too long, and he shouldn't stop his brother from being with someone who could help him.

"Maybe I should have Bruce come and tell it," Lex teased him gently as they passed by the living room. "Martha, I'm going to put Clark to bed, and then Bruce and I are going to be tinkering with the robotic arm."

"Okay, sweetheart." Martha looked over her shoulder. She appeared to be doing something mysteriously Christmassy while watching TV. It involved wrapping paper and bows and a scattering of gift tags. They would be doing the rounds of their neighbors at some point on Christmas Eve -- or she would while the boys got the tree.

"We'll come in before ten, I promise," Lex told them both, and Clark in a way, as he started towards the stairs carrying Clark tight despite that his arms were starting to hurt.

Up the stairs, step by steady step, and at the top Lex finally get his little brother slip from his arms, and gave him a playful push towards the bathroom to wash up. "I'll get a book and meet you in your room."

Clark nodded and rushed to get changed and ready for bed, so he could have his alone time. Knowing Bruce was in the barn, he literally zipped into the bathroom and got changed, using his abilities with a sense of relief. He'd felt cramped by the restriction. It was bad enough concentrating like that all the time at school but to do it all through the holidays too.... it was tiring work. It was barely a matter of moments before he was in bed waiting for Lex and his story.

"I don't think you ever get really clean," Lex chided with a smirk as he entered the room just then, two books in hand. "Do water drops speed up for you, too?"

"Nah, it all slows down so I make sure every drop counts," Clark smiled happily at the familiar nighttime ritual. "What did you bring in?!"

"I have a book on the upper and lower kingdoms, and Pinocchio. Feeling up to both of them?" For once Lex wasn't sure if Clark would want an extended story time, but he'd play it by ear.

"Yes! I mean...." Clark looked a bit guilty. "Your friend is out there on his own. If I left Pete or Chloe like that they wouldn't speak to me for days."

Lex settled carefully cross-legged on the bed beside Clark, and reached to pat Clark's hair. "Bruce won't be angry with me. He doesn't expect me to be with him every waking hour."

That meant that Clark shouldn't either. He wanted it, though; he wanted Lex there all the time when he was there and that was probably wrong because he was meant to share and it seemed that meant people as well. He blinked a little. "Okay. Both stories then," he said, sounding a little happier, even if he was trying to work out what the deal was with his brother and his friend.

"Both stories it is." And Lex opened the first, the Egyptian one, and started to read.

Clark snuggled in, half-listening, and half-thinking about Bruce and Lex. They weren't best friends like Pete and he were best friends, doing a lot more light teasing at each other and eye contact than actual playing. And talking. A lot of talking, but Lex liked to talk. Maybe if there were two Lexes, all they'd do was talk at each other?

But then he'd seen them touch, and Lex didn't even like to be touched that much by Mom and Dad. He was better about it now, but for a long time it had only been him who Lex touched all the time. And now there was Bruce.

It was no good. Even though things were trying to be the same now with them having story time it felt different because he kept thinking that Lex had someone else now who he could talk to, who was older and who could help him and that he was comfortable enough with enough to rival their brotherly relationship.

He halfway wanted to ask Pete if he was ever jealous of his older sister's friends, or his older brother's, but Pete wasn't close to his older siblings the way that Clark was close to Lex. It wasn't fair that there was Bruce; it'd seemed like Lex was just for Clark, just for him and sometimes for his parents, and everything had been happy that way.

At least Lex had volunteered to read two stories, stretching his voice to make the right sort of sounds in the stories, to sound like more than one character. Every once in a while his voice broke, not a tearful breaking, but an awkward one, and Lex just cleared his throat and kept reading.

Clark waited until the story was over before tilting his gaze upwards at Lex, looking again with questions lurking unspoken. He was going to speak and then retreated. Lex even sounded different. His voice was getting different now... more like Bruce's, deeper and more intense. Instead he leaned against him and said a simple, "Thank you."

"Sleep tight, okay?" Lex hugged him close for a moment, and then started to draw away. An Egyptian story and two chapters of Pinocchio had been so short. "We'll get the tree tomorrow, and then it's Christmas Eve already."

"Good!" Clark replied, settling back down against his soft pillow. "We'll find a good tree and we can all decorate it.... Bruce, too." He was trying to be bravely generous about the person who was producing so much confusion in his life at the moment. "And then we can wait up for Santa together."

"Only so late, Clark. We don't want to keep Santa away by waiting up for him," Lex smirked. "Then you wouldn't have any gifts left for you, and everyone else would. Santa's pretty paranoid about being watched. It takes away the mystery."

"Okay, a little late," Clark replied, smiling happily. "Just long enough he knows we're looking but not long enough to send him away."

"Good plan. Good night, Clark...."

Lex was still smiling as he turned away from his little brother with his books tucked under his arm, and slipped out of the bedroom.

Clark lay looking up into the darkness for a long while. He was trying really hard. Really, really hard to behave properly, not to be rude or else Mom would be upset with him as well. But it was a pretty devastating thing to discover that he wasn't the center of Lex's world and even worse, to have to be nice to the person who had brought this revelation to him. He would try and like Bruce for Lex's sake, but secretly he was going to hope that maybe he would have to leave so it could just be them again. Like it always had been until now, and then Lex wouldn't look so.... stressy-tired and everything would be okay again, and stay that way forever.

He clung to that thought as he closed his eyes at last, and drifted into a fitful, exhausting sleep.

Smallville seldom knew what to do when the Kents came into town for any length of time. If it was just Martha and Clark, then it was fine. If it was just.... well, any combination of two of the Kents, things stayed quiet. It was when Lex came with them that confrontations happened, that whispers happened, and he started just as many confrontations as were started for him.

But with Bruce there, Lex was doing his damnedest to be good. They'd parked the truck outside of the tree lot, and Jonathan was pulling Clark along through the rows and rows of fresh cut trees. Lex lagged behind a little, waiting for Bruce to catch up through the thick snow that he and Clark and Jonathan had no trouble plowing through.

"I need boots like yours." Bruce commented, maintaining his balance and smiling a little as his shoes allowed him to slip on the snow. "I'm getting the impression that Clark and Jonathan are part husky."

"You say that now, jokingly, but if you saw them during harvest time there'd be no question that they have to be. I have trouble keeping up most days," Lex drawled. "Sometimes I wonder if Clark has somehow picked up every one of Jonathan's traits through osmosis."

"And what have you picked up?" Bruce asked amused as he slipped and held on to Lex for balance. The fact that Bruce Wayne never lost his balance was another issue entirely.

Lex slipped his arm over Bruce's shoulders for a moment, seeming to relish in the touch and the fully believable pretext of having to help his city-boy friend walk through the packed down, trampled, half-icy snow. "A healthy appreciation for labor."

"That I can tell." Bruce smiled again. Even the brief time with the Kents had seen him shed a degree of the shadowy pain that he always seemed to wrap around him. He smiled much more easily out here amongst the fresh snow and smell of cut pine.

"Lex, Lex! Look at this one!" Clark bellowed at them both, falling over in the snow and then giggling as he stood again, tugging at a tree.

Snow fell in clumps from the branch, and Jonathan shook his head at Clark, pointing to the ground. "That's a good one, Clark, but look at all of the needles around it. Let's try to find one that's going to last longer, and is a little straighter."

Clark paused, dropped the tree he was tugging and went bounding off through the snow, excited and happy as his breath billowed into the cold sharp air as he rushed around making sure they didn't miss anything.

"I never remember having that much energy," Bruce commented, watching the other boy. "Or maybe it was that we weren't meant to have to run anywhere."'

"Or maybe we never learned to have fun like he does?" A quirk of his eyebrow, and then Lex took off after Clark, bounding past other customers and through the trees to try to tackle his younger brother.

Jonathan hung back, shaking his head. "Well, Bruce, are you having fun here?"

Bruce nodded, seeming a little wary of the older man. "Yes, thank you, Jonathan," he said watching Lex and Clark tumble through the snow with a smile. "I don't think I've ever gone looking for a Christmas tree myself before."

"You do put up a tree at home, don't you? It's just -- Lex, don't put snow down your brother's shirt!"

There was a squealed protesting laugh from Clark who ran away just a little too fast with Lex holding onto him so they both fell over in the powdery white covering.

"Yes but.... It appears ready decorated. Besides, it's just me and Alfred," Bruce replied. "It's.... usually quiet."

"That's a shame. Is Alfred visiting family this holiday?" Jonathan's voice sounded oddly tinged with a shade of guilt when he asked that, but his face was just for shooting a glare at his sons.

"Yes," Bruce replied, nodding a little watching Lex romp with Clark, tossing him into the snow and trying again to put snow in his hair, while the younger boy giggled, dark hair and bright eyes wild with fun. "He's visiting his sister and his niece. I've always felt somewhat guilty that he feels that he should keep me company over the holidays. Another reason I'm grateful for you allowing me to come to stay."

"People just shouldn't be alone on the holidays," Jonathan told him, before giving him a pat on the back. "Go on, go play. We'll find a tree eventually, but the world isn't going to end if it takes a while." Which could've been translated as Jonathan being able to find one easier on his own

"I'm not.... I.... don't want to disturb them," Bruce said quietly. It was a sad thing but the quiet words seemed to be his way of communicating that he didn't know how to join them.

"It's pretty late for that," Jonathan remarked wryly. Then curiously enough, he stooped and picked up a handful of snow and slush. "Ever thrown a snowball before?"

Bruce shook his head. If he had, it had been before he was six and he didn't turn his mind back to before that time willingly. But he bent down and scooped up snow in imitation of the man next to him.

"The things they don't teach you at that fancy school. Cup it in both hands, and then pack it tight, and twist it a little. Like rolling a ball of.... clay, sort of. Then you just throw it like a baseball." Jonathan walked a few feet away from Bruce. "Boys! Boys, this way!"

And then hurled it, catching the side of the knit cap Lex was wearing. It exploded in a flair of powder.

Bruce grinned and hurled his, scoring a direct hit on Lex's chest as well and then scooped for more to throw at Clark who was busy laughing at Lex. Jonathan hadn't given him a direct answer, hadn't told him outright how to join in on their play, but he'd given him a direct route through mimicry, and soon there were snowballs flying and other children joining in.

Clark tumbled over taking several hits and he and Lex seemed intent on making a last stand. Clark had very good aim, as did Lex, and they had attracted retaliation from all sides. They even dived behind the cut trees, Clark's giggling giving away where they were to Bruce who was preparing an ambush, having made a pile of snowballs ready to hurl if they surfaced.

Whack-a-mole, Lex had called it once. When something was really easy to hit if he just waited long enough, and it was only a matter of waiting for Lex to peek his head around the corner, laughing as he hurled a snowball out at some unknown child. Bruce's stealth paid off and with a broad grin he rained down snowballs at their position with devastating accuracy.

Clark yelped as much in surprise as anything as he accidentally popped up just so that a snowball hit him straight in the face. He fell over coughing as powdered snow went up his nose and in his mouth. An ordinary child probably would have been bawling from it and Bruce was concerned enough to step out of his hiding place to see if he had hurt him. "You...."

Was as far as he got before a fist-sized knot of snow smacked him in the forehead, and then another in his chest, and he could hear Lex laughing and jostling Clark to get him to his feet and see if he was all right -- still throwing snowballs all the while.

Bruce knew when to play into a role and he staggered melodramatically and then collapsed to the ground in a swirling heap of expensive coat, snow and bad acting.

"Yay! You got him!" he could hear Clark chirp up, and then sneeze out more powdery snow.

"And thus Lord Luthor defeated his foe, the valiant Sir Wayne." Bruce felt a hand pat his cheek, and then Lex grasped his gloved hand tight and started to haul him up with his ever-surprising strength.

"It was a battle well fought, my Lord Luthor," Bruce smiled, a full glowing happy smile derived from the simple contest that even though he'd lost he felt like he had won. "I didn't damage the brave Squire Clark here?" he asked, glancing at the youngster.

"Nope," Clark replied. "It went up my nose a bit that was all." He grinned as he looked at his brother's friend. "Tickled."

"Boys, c'mon over here -- I think I've found a good tree!" Jonathan hollered loudly to them from back near the entrance.

"Wait until we get to tell Mom how helpful we've been," Lex winked at his little brother, still holding onto Bruce's hand as he tugged him forwards. "Let's go!"

"Oh yeah! The tree. I forgot." Clark did his trail blazing husky impression back over towards Jonathan and Bruce was strangely reluctant to let go of Lex's hand even as he followed. It could have been just looking for support, but the touch lingered.

"It's the best tree," Clark announced after looking it over critically. "Nice 'n big too."

By the time they reached the tree Lex had reluctantly released Bruce's hand, leaving Bruce invigorated by the play and the familiar flirtation. He paused, pacing around the tree that Jonathan was holding up, and finally nodded critical agreement to what Clark had said.

"It looks just tall enough, firm and still alive."

"Which is why I've already paid for it. Come on and help me get it to the truck, boys. Have you had fun? We have plenty of snow on the farm that could do with some mauling."

"Maybe after we've got it decorated, we can have a rematch," Bruce replied, still sounding happy. "We wouldn't want to upset your mom by playing while everyone else was working."

"Oh, Don't worry. Martha's going to put everyone to work," Jonathan promised. Then he moved to pick up the stump end of the tree. "C'mon, help me with the other end. Clark, run ahead and let down the tailgate." Jonathan tossed the keys to Lex, who caught them and then passed them to his little brother.

"Here you go."

Clark rushed forward, undoing the tailgate and watched as the three others hefted the large tree up and over to the truck. Lex was being diplomatic when he eventually got into the cab of the truck, sitting in the middle between Bruce and Clark, complaining about space and being smushed up against Bruce. He didn't really mind it, it was the same sort of complaining he made when he was at the end of the seat and pressed against the door, teasingly threatening to pop it open and leap out.

Lex was talking with Bruce again, as the truck trundled down the road, but he had his arm around Clark's shoulders.

"And we can probably get Clark on our shoulders to put the tree topper up."

"Sounds like a good plan," Bruce replied. "Though it is a tall tree. Hope you don't mind heights Clark."

Clark looked a little worried at that. "Don't like heights that much," he admitted, "It won't be too high, will it, Lex?"

Lex mugged his little brother closer, shaking his head. "Nope, not too high. Just to the top of the tree, and you're okay with that, right? It's not real heights, like tall buildings."

Clark nodded. "That's okay then. Don't like falling," he said leaning into Lex even as he watched the gleaming white countryside flicker past.

Bruce looked at Lex a moment, examining his expression as he looked at his brother. Lex had touched on the subject of some accident once before but brushed it off as nothing major. He was beginning to learn that Lex might appear more open than he was, but in reality there were things going unsaid. Perhaps later he would ask him and maybe get a more complete version of the truth.

Maybe. If he didn't get distracted. For the moment, things were quiet and peaceful; there was no reason to rock the boat just yet.

Lex leaned forwards to flip on the radio, pressing buttons until he found the preset he liked. Jonathan groaned, "C'mon, son. Find some Christmas music instead."

Clark giggled next to him and Bruce, who had to listen to Lex's taste in music for most of the time at Excelsior, smiled indulgently. "You'd end up listening to a version of jingle bells that has to be heard to be believed," he announced lightly.

"If we had a CD player in the truck, I'd inflict it on all of you right now," Lex drawled smugly, punching up for the Christmas channel -- and the compulsory Burl Ives rendition of Frosty the Snowman -- before he sat back in his seat. "Well, and if I had the cd with me right now."

"A very good reason never to get a CD player put in," Bruce said dryly. "Hearing it once was too often."

"It's better than dogs barking Silent night. And who put that in the CD player?" Lex elbowed Bruce lightly, mouth curled into an easy smile despite that he was half-accusing his friend.

"Neither of you boys have good taste," Jonathan quipped.

"That was.... Ahrrt." Bruce parodied himself, gesturing flamboyantly. "An artistic commentary on how Christmas is going to the dogs."

"That was a CD for dog-lovers to giggle at," Lex countered, prodding Bruce again lightly. "And you were trying to get Principal Reynolds's dog to starting howling."

"Lex, how could you say such a thing!" Bruce replied prodding back and then affected a dreamy expression. "I still say he would have made a wonderful castrato counterpoint to the melody."

"It's a terrier-mutt thing, Bruce, not a pure-bred." Lex shook his head, then moved his hand to fidget habitually at the edge of the fairly uncomfortable knit cap. "They let the teachers keep pets, sometimes, to keep them company. Reynolds says it's so we don't drive them all up a wall."

"Well, tormenting his dog like that and I can see why he'd say that," Jonathan scowled vaguely. He didn't seem very chiding of Lex.

"It seemed to enjoy itself," Bruce said with a chuckle. "It got a little over-excited truth be told."

"If I were a dog, I'd certainly rather be around other dogs than the Principal." Lex twisted a little on the bench seat, and jostled Clark gently. "Didn't you say that your teacher brought hamsters in for the class to take care of?"

Clark, who had lapsed into quiet as seemed to be his tendency when Bruce and Lex were talking, was startled into speaking. "Yes! I like them but Dad says they're just cute rats. Pete's got one of his own now. It's all fuzzy."

"See, now you've got him going, Lex. You're going to hear nothing but hamster stories for hours now," Jonathan teased. "Clark, son, if you want a pet, wouldn't you rather have something a little bigger?"

"Nuh-uh. A hamster could live in my room. Mom said we couldn't have a dog or a cat inside really, and I don't want a dog or a cat.... or a fish. Chloe has a fish.... it's.... kinda boring, but Pete's hamster has all these cool tubes and things to run up and down on, and we can let him run around in Pete's room and ...."

Jonathan was right. Hamster stories flooded out, but as they'd had the hamster discussion before, Clark did not push his luck by pleading for it again. His Dad had said 'no' rather loudly and going on and on never worked with him. It was almost annoying, at least for Bruce. Clark could really talk if he got going, and he was going and only starting to peter out by the time they got back to the farm.

"Well, Clark.... maybe you'll get some kind of pet for Christmas," Lex half-suggested as he reached past Bruce to pop the door's sticky handle open. Reached past, with a brush over Bruce's stomach that had to be deliberate. Jonathan was already getting out of the truck.

Clark shrugged. "Dad said no," he replied getting out, noticing the touch. "C'mon, gotta help Dad with the tree!"

Bruce leaned near him murmuring, "He can certainly talk some, can't he?" as he unhooked the seatbelt.

"I'm glad he's talkative. When I first came here, he could hardly talk at all. He's more than caught up to where he ought to be." Maybe it wasn't the smartest thing for Lex to do when he slipped past Bruce out of the truck, squeezing against him in a rub of body against body before he bounded languidly to help Jonathan bring down the tailgate.

Bruce got out of the truck smiling, and found himself looking directly into Clark's rather solemn expression. The other billionaire was suddenly convinced that he had seen them and had to quell some tinge of embarrassment. Billionaires did not get embarrassed. They paid other people to be embarrassed on their behalf.

Giving a quick smile he went and joined Lex and Jonathan as they manhandled the tree off of the truck even as the door opened and Martha stepped out. "Good heavens, I sent you out for a tree, not the entire forest!" she said.

"It'll look great in the living room!" Jonathan promised her as they started towards the door and the steps carefully as possible. "Clark, show your mother the tree topper we bought."

Clark rustled in the bag that he'd brought in and pulled out the boxed iridescent star that would discretely glow if batteries were put in. Considering the men had chosen it, Martha seemed impressed.

"That is.... lovely Clark, really lovely," she said examining it closely. "Beautiful. No blowing this one up Lex, it's too nice to be experimented upon."

Lex shifted his gloved hands on the almost shapeless needle-covered branch he was supporting as they started up the steps. "This time we just got one that'll do what I tried to get it to do in the first place. No flaming trees this year, I promise."

"Good. Well.... have a drink and then we'll get it decorated. I got the decorations down and the stand for the tree is waiting as well," Martha said, being practical. "We have coffee or hot chocolate for the hunter-gatherers of the family."

And when Martha made hot chocolate around Christmas, she made it properly with real chocolate, so it was rich, sweet and creamy. Clark's eyes lit up. "Hot chocolate!" he said getting ahead of all of them and slipping inside.

"Thanks for holding the door!" Lex caught it with his knee, and helped to jostle the tree into the house.

"I hope the bottom's straight," Jonathan half-groused, looking at the trunk as they headed towards the tree-stand. "You two boys try to keep it steady while I hoist it up."

"The hacksaw is on the table if you need it." Martha called out, laughing at their efforts with the amusement of someone who knew there would be muttered swearing in the next ten minutes and they wouldn't be a part of it.

Bruce was half buried in the tree by now along with Lex, the sharp needles prickling through his clothes in an amazing way. He'd never been close enough to a Christmas tree before to realize how fragrant and scratchy it could be on the skin. He'd never before actually helped to settle in a Christmas tree before, or noticed that it was held into the base by heavy screws that Jonathan and Lex alike cursed while settling into the wood. By the time the tree was actually in the stand, and standing straight and tall, Bruce's arms hurt, and there were woodchips and needles all over the floor.

"Clark, get the broom and the tree-skirt.... Lex, go help your little brother." Clark guiltily darted off, having watched most of it, giggling with Martha at their efforts.

Bruce shook out the ache in his shoulders even as Martha offered him one of the special coffees or hot chocolates. As everyone else seemed to be making a beeline for the chocolate, he tried it as well as he sat down, his eyebrows rising in appreciation as he savored the smooth real taste.

"Clark, sweep carefully.... that's it. You don't want to knock over all their hard work," Martha instructed as she located the tree-skirt and moved over next to Lex. "There now.... out of the way, give me a hand, Lex, and we'll put this on together."

Jonathan settled down in the recliner for just a moment, and watched as Lex and Martha put on the tree skirt, and Clark rushed past them with a dustbin stuffed with needles and dirt. The tree was up, and it was satisfyingly large and impressive, and a nice symmetrical shape with well proportioned branches.

"Well, Bruce, ever untangled a string of lights before?"

"Can't say I have," Bruce admitted, licking his lips a little from his drink before answering. "Is there a knack to it?"

"I'd like to say there is, but...." Jonathan started towards one of the boxes. "Come over here and help me. These lights are in a series, so if one's bad, well, we're in for a long afternoon."

It was a universal law, that no matter how carefully Christmas lights were put away, they would end up in a hopeless tangle and more to the point, a perfect set would have somehow managed to have several bulbs burn out while it wasn't being used. It was a rather perplexing mystery, but engrossing nonetheless. By the time he and Jonathan had methodically worked through the lights, Bruce had come up with several new products for one of his minor subsidiary businesses to produce, all revolving around stopping the lights from tangling -- he decided having them on a reel might work -- and being able to locate the broken bulb without having to test each one. All this to prepare the market for the Christmas lights that would never tangle, and would never burn out.

A grateful nation would probably elect him as President if he wanted the job.

After that, there was the actual winding of the lights around the tree, a haphazard draping that was part art form, and part skill; it had to be done just so, or it looked too careful. Not that there was any way the tree could look 'too' careful after Lex helped Clark bring out the paper-chains to hang on parts of the tree, most of them ending up stuck onto the wall.

Martha was supervising, and the comments in response to her suggestions ranged from the terse to the slightly hysterical and the occasional censored expletive from Jonathan. Tinsel was draped artfully, baubles glimmered and spun precariously on the ends of branches, paper chains caused havoc in amongst everything else. Suggestions about whether that ornament would look better here or there took on the sort of meaning that life or death usually warranted. But eventually, it was completed all bar the new star to go on the very top.

Lex was eyeing that task warily, and had stepped back by then to stand beside Bruce, grinning to himself. "Well. This is usually when the tree gets knocked over."

"Or someone falls into the tree," Martha commented as she undid the star from its box and laid it on the side. "Well.... Do we need the ladder or are you all man enough to risk the task?"

"Why doesn't Jonathan put Clark on his shoulders?" Lex suggested. "Clark can put it up, right?"

Clark nodded, a little disappointed that it wouldn't be Lex who helped him, but his Dad was just as good. "Sure, I can do that," he replied, grabbing the star that was on the side.

"I did it last year," Lex explained sotto voce, "And I couldn't balance him properly. He'll be taller than me, soon, which isn't fair."

"I think you're heading for your own growth spurt," Bruce murmured in reply. "Maybe next year you'll be ahead."

In the mean time, Clark was lifted up by Jonathan, reaching for the pinnacle of the tree, stretching a little precariously.

"Maybe. Maybe not. Dad was pretty.... not tall. Not like Jonathan." Lex grimaced a little.

"Hey, Clark, wiggle it a little left."

Clark reached and wiggled the star, and it settled into place nice and straight. "There!" he announced and flicked the switch on the back, before settling onto his father's shoulders.

Jonathan clapped a little, taking a step backwards with Clark still balanced. "Good job, guys. The tree looks great this year!"

Clark grinned down at Lex and Bruce and Martha applauding their efforts.

"Record time too. Usually it takes most of the day," Martha replied, sounding pleased. Being ahead of schedule was always a good thing, especially at Christmas when they tried to fit so much in to a short space of time. "Well, we can all grab some lunch, then you boys can do whatever you want for the rest of the day."

Which was Martha code for, 'Don't get in my way too much, I have Christmas things to do'.

"Clark, do you want to play outside more?" Lex asked, walking away from Bruce for the moment and towards Clark.

Clark nodded, and seemed to like the idea. But there was something in his eyes. Something, a fear in his eyes.

And Bruce couldn't explain it.

Some of Clark's fear had ebbed away with the passing of time and familiar holiday traditions. Sticky popcorn with caramel, the semi-fancy Christmas Eve dinner and pumpkin pie; watching It's a Wonderful Life and kicking his feet up onto Lex's lap; rattling gifts laid under the tree, some of them newly deposited by Lex. He finally nodded off around midnight, and though he'd last been sleeping on the sofa and watching holiday cartoons, he woke up neatly tucked into bed in his dark room.

He hadn't had a chance to say good night to Lex, and it said something about that lingering doubt that he really wanted the familiarity of that goodnight hug, and that he wanted to see if they had waited up for Santa like they had planned.

As was often the case when alone, awake and in the dark, the random thought that he could just go in and say goodnight and Merry Christmas to his brother very, very quietly started to become more and more important to him. The fact that he might accidentally bump into Santa on the way was considered as an added bonus.

It took him a full half hour for the idea to bloom into action and rather stealthily, he padded out of his room, and gently pushed at Lex's door peeking around to see if he were awake or whether he should sneak up without disturbing Bruce or not. He didn't want to wake HIM up.

His eyes tried to scan the room, but they stalled out like those few disconcerting times that he snuck into Lex's room to find Lex sitting up in bed looking back at him.

Only Lex wasn't looking at him, and was hardly visible at all. The first thought that struck him was that they were wrestling, or playing; but playing usually involved laughter, and neither one made any sound other than strained breaths. Lex was pinned beneath Bruce, and there were sheets tangled around their legs. Bruce's pajamas were shoved down to his knees, and he was rock, rock, rocking against Lex as he hugged his back. And Clark couldn't see if Lex were smiling or not, or what he was doing, because he had his face down in the pillow.

Clarks eyes were wide as he stood for a moment as he tried to fit what he seeing into his world view. He wasn't stupid, far from stupid and he understood some of the basic concepts of things even if he didn't grasp the details. Pete's older brother had told them some things that they had scoffed at about what older people like their parents did because they shared beds.

'Making love' he'd called it.

It seemed a weird thing to do. Pete's brother had explained that it involved some rubbing together and that was what they were doing wasn't it? Not wrestling, not playing, but a sort of rubbing together. Bruce and Lex were 'making love' and ... that meant that Lex loved Bruce...

And he hadn't 'made love' with him, his younger brother, so that meant he loved Bruce more than he loved Clark.

The logic followed through a child's way of thinking seemed inescapable. The conclusions made his shadowed eyes well up and the scene blurred in front of him as the certainty that he had based his life on -- that his brother loved him -- vanished like a snowflake coming to rest in his hand.

Without even an exhalation, or a sniffle, he blurred himself with speed and was gone, the door swinging gently and silently shut behind him. Somewhere in that crazy mixed up logic he was using, he grasped onto the idea that Santa could give him what he most wanted. And maybe, if he could just speak to him.... tell him he could take back all his other presents, he might give him that one thing that he really wanted.

His brother to love him again.

Clark sat outside, on the front step in the snow, unfeeling of the cold, listening, just listening to the silent stars, hoping for the jingle that the movies always had when Santa came, crying his heart out as quietly as he could so no one else would know.

There was no jingle, not one that he heard. He sat there until he cried himself out, and time blurred with sleepiness and anguish, his hair and skin picking up a glitter of frost from the cold he didn't feel. He hardly heard the scrape of the door opening; but then the wood creaked, and he felt a familiar warm hand on his shoulder.

It wasn't the familiar hand he wanted to be squeezing his arm, but it was pretty good, still. His dad sat down beside him on the step. "What's wrong, Clark? I got up to make sure you boys had all gone to bed, and I couldn't find you under the Christmas tree like I expected."

"Wanted.... wanted to talk to Santa.... and.... ask him something...." Clark got out between his hitching breaths, obviously distraught.

Jonathan wasn't smothering, or overly persuasive, but in his silence, he had a way of prying at Clark. "What were you going to ask him? I think he's come and gone, Clark. There's presents under the tree."

That was the wrong thing to say. From the anguished look in Clark's eyes as he looked up at his father he might as well have been told that someone had died. "He's.... he's come? I missed him?"

Jonathan nodded gently, blue eyes gleaming worried as he patted Clark's shoulder. "He's been. We can go wake up your brother and his friend if you want, and I'll go get mom, and we can start Christmas early for you, Clark."

"No.... no.... I don't want Christmas!" Clark said vehemently. "Don't want anything, just one thing.... and now it's too late." He had rather worryingly gone very pale and still now, a little like he had after the accident at the Castle.

"Clark, if it's about the hamster...."

"I don't want a hamster, I don't want any of the things I wrote to him for.... I...." Clark practically choked as the words came tumbling out over the obstacle of his jealousy and loss. "I.... want Lex to love me again.... He doesn't love me any more. I wanted to tell Santa he could have all of my other presents back if he'd just make him love me again, but now it's too late."

It was all too clear and devastating to his young mind. It all made a terrible perfect sense and he clung to his father with a depth of misery that went far beyond any disappointment over a present.

"Shhhh, Clark.... What do you mean your brother doesn't love you? Of course Lex does, he loves you a lot." A hand stroked his miserable shoulder, but it wasn't enough. "Why would you say he doesn't?"

Clark shook his head, the fine dark strands dusted over with white glittering frost. "Loves.... Bruce.... more...." he mumbled. "More.... than me."

"Oh, Clark...." Jonathan rubbed at his arm again, and sighed. "No, Clark. He's his best friend, like Pete's your best friend. That doesn't mean Lex doesn't care about you."

"But....but...." Clark swallowed, looking up at his father desperate to get him to SEE what seemed so obvious to him now. "Bruce and he were...." He fell silent a moment before struggling to say the words aloud. "....together.... more than friends are. More than he is with me."

The fingers on his shoulder hesitated, went tense for a moment. "What do you mean, Clark?"

All of a sudden Clark seemed to realize he might have said something that might get his brother in trouble, and however upset he was he didn't want that. He shook his head and remained silent, but it was obvious he had seen something which had sent him fleeing the upstairs, and that it had to have happened recently considering that he had been perfectly content when he fell asleep on the sofa. That didn't leave a lot to the imagination.

"Clark, you can tell me," Jonathan pressed, hand still on Clark's shoulder.

Clark shook his head stubbornly. He didn't want to get Lex into trouble, that wouldn't help him like Clark again, it would probably make things worse. "Can't. He'll be in trouble and won't like me," he said, which didn't help matters.

"He'll always like you, Clark. You're his brother, after all. C'mon, let's get back into the house." Jonathan started to stand, almost shivering from the cold as he tugged Clark gently to his feet.

If he hadn't felt so miserable Clark might have resisted but he just wanted everything to go away. Being told what to do was easier than running away right now, though running away was an idea that prickled at him temptingly. But this time was different, he didn't feel he was completely alone, so he allowed himself to be guided inside

Maybe that was why Lex had stopped loving him. Too strange, too different, and Lex had someone -- someone who was almost just like he was. Quiet, and the right age, and they went to school together, and it just wasn't fair that Jonathan was tugging him into the house with a sense of thick tension, almost-anger simmering around him. But it wasn't directed at Clark. "Let's go upstairs to see your mother, Clark."

Clark nodded mutely, rubbing at his eyes as his father took him upstairs, up past his own room, and where Lex and Bruce were....

Making love.

And into his parents room, where Martha was sitting up in bed reading something with the bedside light on, and looked around expecting Jonathan to be alone.

Seeing the state of Clark, she looked at Jonathan alarmed. "What's wrong, sweetheart?" she said softly and Clark just barreled into the bed and her looking for comfort, burying in the covers miserably. Martha hugged him instinctively and looked up, seeing a simmering tension in her husbands face.

"Jonathan?"

"I've got to go talk to Lex and his.... friend. Clark, keep your mother company." Then Jonathan turned and headed back into the hallway, past Clark's room, and to Lex's room where he hadn't originally thought to go.

Jonathan nearly hesitated as he opened the door, wanting his suspicions from what Clark had said, or more precisely from what he had NOT said, to be unfounded. Totally. But he had to know so he pushed open the door and turned on the light.

Turning on the light, a single bright fluorescent light that Lex had insisted on having -- for clarity when he was working on projects in his room, delicate things like models -- Jonathan found himself looking at both boys, asleep in Lex's bed. Not chastely, but tangled, and there was a faint smell that Jonathan wished he hadn't recognized as sweat and sex.

The light woke them both up, and Lex muttered something crankily, reaching blindly to pull covers over his head.

Oh dear God. Well no wonder Clark had been upset. He hadn't been blind to his youngest son's moments of struggling with having to share his brother with his friend, but to catch them in the act.... God alone only knew what his youngest son had thought. And God alone only knew what he thought. A surge of anger that his oldest son was doing this sort of thing even if it hadn't been expressly forbidden -- because who would think you would have to forbid it to a thirteen year old? -- spread its warmth through him.

One thing he did know was that he was not going to start bellowing until they were further away so that Clark and Martha could not hear the details. He shook Lex's shoulder briskly, the anger flickering in his expression.

"What, what, it's not morning yet, it's only--"

Lex stopped dead, eyes opening; everything seemed to click into place, and he jerked back from Bruce, from Jonathan, and stumbled out of the bed and into the tiny walk-space between the bed and the wall. "D-dad!"

Bruce blinked open his eyes as well, drawing back silently horrified, even as Jonathan said, "Put a robe on, son, and come with me," in a rather grim terse voice.

Lex dove for his robe to obey the order as fast as he could, fingers shaking as he slipped it on. "Dad, Jonathan, it's not what it.... I...." He struggled for a moment with fear, and the facade of having actually been prepared for that eventuality. A glance was spared to Bruce, nervous, as Lex started towards the door ahead of Jonathan.

"Not a word, Lex, until we get down stairs," Jonathan said in a low tense voice as he herded his wayward son forward, leaving Bruce watching them with dark eyes exit the room in silence.

Lex didn't give a 'yes sir', just nodded; he almost stumbled on the way down the stairs, fingers knotted tight on the handrail the only thing that kept him from losing his balance completely. He was going to get thrown out, or Bruce was, and they were definitely both in trouble, and maybe he wasn't going to be allowed to go back to school. They were both in such trouble, and Lex had never been in trouble, not real trouble, before.

Jonathan was visibly struggling to control his temper until they got downstairs where he turned and said immediately, "Would you care to give me an explanation, son? That doesn't involve lying or giving me a run-around?"

If he started right away, without any direction, it was going to end up haphazard, and.... If Lex were going to be thrown out of the house, he was going to be thrown out for a coherent reason. "Where.... do you want me to start?"

"I want you to tell me when this started. If you or your friend started it and what the hell you think you're doing?" Jonathan replied some of his ire leaking out despite his best intentions. He was glaring at his eldest son as if he could bore a hole into his brain and extract the truth.

"It started back in September. I.... I started it." Lex couldn't look up at Jonathan's face, couldn't speak above a whisper. Over in the corner the Christmas tree, unlit and still, seemed to declare to him that he'd ruined everything. It wouldn't be the first time. "I know what I'm doing. It's sex. It feels good and it's a comfort, and at least it's my choice."

"You're thirteen, son, a little early for sex wouldn't you say?" Jonathan snapped out, trying to rein in his anger.

"Maybe." Lex glanced up for a moment, just enough to see the anger, and then down again. "It just sort of happened...."

"How? He took advantage of you?" Jonathan suggested. "You were forced to think it was a good idea?"

Lex shook his head almost tersely, "No, no, he didn't. Bruce wouldn't, ever. I thought about it all summer, about.... about kissing him, about.... never mind. But I started it, I didn't even know if he was.... would ever want to."

"Goddammit Lex!" Jonathan exploded a little, unable to find a way to deal with this, to organize it in his head. "What were you thinking!?"

Lex shrank back a fraction, looking up to catch sight of Jonathan's anger. It was like when he'd done something to really piss off his father, and he was half-waiting to be hit upside the head. Half-waiting for it, half-fearing it, because he didn't want to be hit.

"I, I was thinking that it was okay...."

"That it was okay? When you're underage for any sex, let alone with another boy?" Jonathan countered. "This is something that's okay at this school of yours?"

"N-not really.... It's not something they notice? They haven't noticed what, what Marvin Crumpler and Kevin Birch do." There, Lex almost said it, but saying it didn't push down his urge to throw up or pass out from fear.

"And what do they do?" Jonathan asked pacing now.

"They hu.... nothing." Lex gave up, shifting backwards to perch in one of the kitchen's chairs. It wasn't any use to argue or justify or anything.

Jonathan slapped his hand down on the table in frustration with a dramatic crack. "They do what Lex?" he demanded.

Lex jumped, and the noise reverberated through the kitchen. "Nothing! Nothing, they don't do anything!"

"No lying, no run-around Lex." Jonathan said, warningly. "Tell me."

"I'm not lying. It just doesn't matter. They hurt people, in the showers and sometimes in the halls. That's bad, so obviously what Bruce and I are doing is bad, and now you're going to throw us out, and I'm sorry, I didn't think there was anything wrong with it...."

It was a stunned moment later when he said in a much gentler voice. "Hold on.... hold on son, whoever said anything about throwing you out?"

"You haven't yet, but you're angry," Lex pointed out shakily, not moving from his chair, but he was tense -- ready to make a run for it if need be, after that nerve-wracking slap to the table.

Jonathan followed Lex's gaze to his hand, and flushed somewhat guiltily as he clenched his jaw as he tried to salvage the situation. "I'm sorry, son. Believe me, even if I'm angry, there would never come a point where we would throw you out. Ever, understand that? We made a promise to you about that, and we'll keep it." He pinched the bridge of his nose a moment, trying to get the knot of emotion to dissipate. "I think we may need to speak to your mother about this, and Bruce."

Lex nodded jerkily, and looked down to his hands in his lap, fingers folded tightly together. "What're you going to do?"

"Sort this out," he said vaguely. "Stay there. I'll get your mother."

It didn't help that a rather pale looking Bruce came down the stairs carrying his own case, with eyes so closed off and defensive that it hurt to look at him. "I'll call a taxi for myself, Mr. Kent," he said softly, interrupting them.

Jonathan looked at him, seeing for the first time how young he was as well behind that slick manner. "Just.... stay there will you Bruce?" he said gruffly, though he felt the urge to give him a good shouting at as well. "We have things to speak about. Stay there, both of you."

And with that he darted upstairs.

Lex glanced up at Bruce, and tried to crack a smile. "Sorry," he whispered to his friend, not quite willing to breech the space between them for fear of Jonathan coming back right away and yelling.

"It's okay," Bruce replied quietly. "Tell them it was my fault." His voice was back to the hard almost emotionless tone he had when he felt the most threatened. "Tell them I made you."

"You didn't. I'm not going to lie to them and say that, and it'd be a lie because you didn't. I started it." Lex leaned one arm on the table, exhausted feeling. "And I already told Jonathan that."

"The older one is usually at fault. You know how it works," Bruce said evenly as if it didn't matter. But it did and he couldn't keep that up for long, and he sighed a little. "I shouldn't have come."

"Yes, you should've. You've had fun, haven't you?" It was like waiting for an axe to fall, onto his neck. Lex sighed, too, but he couldn't sigh out his apprehension.

"Yes, and that makes it worse," Bruce replied even as there was the sound of voices upstairs talking urgently. "Because now I know how it should be.... And what will never be."

"You're being melodramatic," Lex tried to tease, but his heart wasn't in it. He heard feet coming down the stairs. Littler feet. Clark's feet. "It will be, Bruce. It is."

Clark stood a moment, looking desperately unhappy at the bottom of the stairs trying to send an apology with his entire body without having to say a word. Lex was pale and more than just 'stressy-worried', even Bruce looked like he was desperately unhappy and Clark just didn't know what he could DO. In the end he just ran over to Lex and tried to hold onto him, as if worried he was going somewhere.

"Hey, Clark. Been up long?" Lex tried to greet casually. But he hugged his little brother close, tight. Clark seemed agitated and he liked to try to soothe that when he could.

"It's my fault." Clark whispered. "My fault. Was crying and Dad found me...."

Lex's eyebrows furrowed for a moment, but he just hauled Clark up onto his lap and hugged him close, relishing in the familiarity of it, even as he considered what had been said. "You.... you saw?"

Clark nodded, confessing his crime. "I just wanted to say good night.... an'.... and then I knew you loved him better than you did me.... and I wanted you back. I wanted to ask Santa.... to give me you back instead of presents and Dad found me and now.... now...."

"You little bugger." Lex sighed, closing his eyes as he tightened his arms around Clark. If he strained his ears, he could almost hear Martha and Jonathan talking. Hashing out whatever decision they were going to come downstairs with, probably. Sword of Damocles. "I love you, you're my.... you're Clark. You're not like anyone else. Bruce is.... Bruce is my friend, and it's a different kind of love. There's all sorts of it."

"I didn't want them to know.... I went outside to try and catch Santa but.... he came already and...." Clark gulped. "I didn't say.... I didn't say, Lex, please don't be mad."

"I'm not mad." Lex squeezed him close for a moment, and beckoned Bruce at least closer to him. Anger and sadness were both intense emotions, and sometimes they crossed over, but he certainly wasn't angry just then. Tired and sad and scared.

"It's not your fault Clark," Bruce replied trying to do his part in soothing too. "It's okay.... I'll leave and it will be fine. Lex, where's the phone? I'll call a taxi."

"That's.... a pretty simplistic solution, Bruce," Lex whispered. "It won't work. We both know that."

"What else do you think they'll do?" Bruce asked rhetorically. "What else can they do? At least this way they'll have an easier target to blame."

Martha and Jonathan were obviously having an animated discussion upstairs. It could even be described as a minor argument and Clark looked very worried now, as raised voices could be heard.

"Doesn't change matters. Look, Bruce.... don't try to be a hero, okay? I started it. They probably won't let me go back to Excelsior, so just...." Just stick it out and wait, Lex almost said, but he bit his tongue and just continued to hold Clark close.

"If it becomes difficult, Lex," Bruce said carefully, "There is always room for you at my place."

"Thanks," Lex murmured hesitantly, and the gesture rubbed the edge of his jaw against Clark's ruffled hair, "But it won't come to that. This is home...."

The kitchen stayed quiet, all of them listening but trying not to listen to Martha and Jonathan. It was kind of hard not to over-hear, muffled shouts and then almost inaudible words, before there was yet more arguing.

Merry Christmas. Lex sighed, and started to stand, slipping Clark down from his lap. "Let's go wait in the living room. You too, Bruce. Put your suitcase down?"

Bruce didn't put down the case but brought it with him, as if being ready to flee at any moment was a necessity. He did follow though, silently avoiding both Clark's gaze and Lex's by looking down as he sat in on of the far chairs. Almost absently, Lex bent and turned on the Christmas tree lights to try and lift the subdued atmosphere even as Clark looked at the both of them, looking lost and anxious.

The lights of the Christmas tree glittered on baubles, the star glowing gently above them all. It should have been picture perfect Christmas, with the family, the snow, the tree, the presents.... but it was hollow somehow with the anxious anticipation sucking the wonder out of it.

Then one of the boxes under the tree, back behind and out of sight, squeaked. It was a high-pitched whiny noise, but it was definitely an animal. Lex sat down on the floor, legs drawn up to himself, as if the closer he was to being curled up in a ball, the more safe he was going to be.

Clark tilted his head a little looking at Lex and then turning towards the sound. Curiosity was warring with depression and guilt and starting to win. "What's that?" he whispered as if that would make okay to ask.

"Sounds like Santa got you a gift," Lex whispered back, glancing over to Bruce when he answered Clark -- just for a moment, before his tired eyes skittered over to Clark. "Don't open it yet, okay? Just wait."

Clark blinked, apparently a little distracted from his depression. Whatever it was, it was alive but didn't sound like a hamster.

Lex wrapped his arms around his knees, tired tension slipping to fearful tension when he heard two sets of feet coming down the stairs. He didn't look over to them, not just yet; it was like a horror movie; Lex knew that around the corner a monster was going to creep, peeking it's angry head just around the edge first.

If Martha could be described as an angry monster it was a strange one with a penchant for plain dressing gowns. She wasn't exactly breathing fire but she did have an unusually serious expression on her face as she came in. Lex glanced up and over to her from where he sat on the floor, but quailed internally when Jonathan loomed up behind her. Tag-team events were always the worst.

"M.... morning," he greeted them shakily.

Martha came over and sat down on the couch and looked at him, Bruce and then glanced over at Clark's silent form. "Clark, could you please go to bed now, sweetheart?" she asked in the tone of voice that held 'disobey and suffer the consequences' undertones

Even Clark knew better than to argue with that, though he hesitated, looking worried.

"Now, Clark," came the firm voice ordering him to leave. "Your father and I want to speak with Lex and Bruce."

Rather disconsolately the younger boy accepted his banishment upstairs, though whether he would actually go to bed was another matter.

"Your father has been telling me about your.... discussion," she said in a calm even voice. "We have a few things to say to both of you before we make any decisions."

Without Clark's palpably calming presence, and with Bruce seated far away from him, Lex could only give a vague, lost sort of nod; there wasn't going to be any point in arguing with them, not when he felt so far out of his league.

"I'm going to make some coffee," Jonathan said, voice too grave for that statement. "But I expect both of you to be truthful."

Martha waited a moment, until the sound of water filling the kettle gave her leave to start questioning them. "I have to admit I was somewhat shocked Lex, Bruce.... but that is another issue. I want to know about Excelsior. I want to know what you meant when you said there were others who hurt you, Lex, and if Bruce knew or what this is about. This is very important to us, Lex, so... please, tell me?"

"Tell you what exactly?" A free offer of information wasn't going to happen, as tense as Lex was, and he glanced to Bruce, catching his eyes to see what was there.

"Tell us who has hurt you, how and why." Martha asked again.

Bruce was looking at him, a flicker of guilt squirming beneath his mask. It was what he had been worried about, and they had both pretended nothing happened to each other but now it was obvious something had.... to both of them. It had been something that had been going on for him for some time and he had been so determined it would not happen to Lex and yet, very obviously it had.

They just didn't talk about it. To talk about it was to make it real and to make it real didn't help at all. There wasn't anything to be done, except get angry, so Lex preferred the silence. "There're older boys.... they're not going to finish school as early as Bruce and I are, and they.... in the showers...." He glanced to Bruce again who gave a slight nod, then back to Martha. "Both of us."

Martha looked pale at that admission. "What do they do, Lex?" she asked glancing across at Bruce a feeling a pang of sympathy for him as well. Lex had a family who cared what happened; Bruce seemed to have no one to protect him, to even ask if he was all right. What would Lex have been like if there was no one there to do that for him? There was no point about going off of the deep end about something that was endemic in their social circles, just because they didn't share those circles. But that didn't mean they had to accept that it was going to happen.

"Things Bruce and I do. Only it's not a choice, and it's not the same, it...." Lex was mindful to hold very still, not to fidget, and to hardly move at all except for his lips and his eyes. Clark's Christmas gift was squeaking softly in the background, rustling through woodchips. "It's cruel."

Martha went silent a moment. So, he had been abused, sexually or physically in these past few months, and by the sounds of it his friend too. "Bruce?"

Bruce nodded slowly. "It happens," he admitted quietly, betraying a longer familiarity and experience with the cruelty rife in Excelsior with those couple of words. "They already started to notice Lex, and I had heard tell that he was due to be targeted. It was one of the reasons I agreed to.... well...." he faded off his meaning abundantly clear. He looked at Lex seriously, trying to conceal the measures he had taken to stop this practice. "They'll lose interest soon on the whole as they don't seem to be intimidating him. It's.... to do with them trying to be in power, not about anything else."

"It happened to you?" Martha asked softly looking at the older boy.

He nodded again. "Some time ago. A... few years. But more now -- they don't like the idea of us being friends that close. It's dangerous in the world of Excelsior." He looked down a moment and then back up at them both, his eyes glittering with something hard and slightly dangerous as he realized he had to give them some assurances. "There are.... things I have organized to try and stop the worst of it." He looked apologetically at Lex. "I wanted to act sooner. I had hoped that it had been soon enough, but obviously not."

Lex grimaced as he listened to the words, and started to shake his head, "How? What can you organize that could.... short of doing something rash."

Bruce smiled, still showing that hint of dark assurance. "Have I ever done anything rash? No, after Christmas I think you'll find that things will be much.... calmer at Excelsior for the time being. A small exercise in the application of appropriate power, that's all." He sounded so adult then

"Blackmail," Martha said, looking at him so intensely even his mirror mask seemed unable to deflect her attention.

Bruce nodded slowly, looking at Lex as if he was sending mute apologies his way for such high handed if slow actions. "I would have fought them physically if I had been able." There were too many of them, and he was going to rectify that imbalance as soon as he could.

"That's okay," Lex murmured, quiet and still torn between sitting there fearfully and the oddest sense of relief. If it stopped, it didn't matter how it was done, blackmail or violence, or however.

If it stopped, whatever technique Bruce used was worth it.

"So.... what now?" he asked, glancing to Martha again. And he felt a frisson of surprise to see Jonathan lingering silently in the doorway past her.

"Now we decide whether it's safe for you to go back there," Martha said steadily. "That's the main concern for us both." She glanced back at Jonathan. "Both of us are.... horrified that something like these attacks could happen to you there and...."

"....and they would happen in any private school you transferred him too." Bruce interrupted in an intense voice. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Kent, but it's true. You don't know how rare what you've given Lex is.... but he exists in THAT world too, the world of the rich who think of themselves beyond the law. And the world of Excelsior, of the rich is a different one, and Lex is a part of it.... and he is a target and has to learn to deal with it. Just as I was, and always will be. The murmuring in town? That's nothing compared to what our kind can do. It's not a matter of feeling the rules don't apply, its more a case that different rules apply and you have to learn things in a different way to survive"

"That's it, then," Jonathan said tightly, walking nearer to Martha. "You're going to go to school here, Lex."

"What? No, that's not fair! It'd be a waste to send me there!" Lex started to his feet from the ball he'd been almost curled up in on the floor, a knot of useless anger.

"Lex, settle down." Martha seemed to be thinking hard, listening to the other message in Bruce's words. "Jonathan, I'm not sure that's a good idea. You want to send him to Smallville to protect him. Give me your estimate on when he first comes home with a black eye?" She glanced at her husband with a challenging gaze.

"Dammit, I can deal with that, Martha! That's normal!"

Martha looked at him in incredulous surprise. "Jonathan! It's preferable to have him beaten up on a regular basis.... than return him to a place where things have.... returned under basic control? How long before people HERE step up from knocking him about to worse? Normal? Normal doesn't come into it! What's normal for us may not be right for our sons!"

Martha, when she raised her voice wasn't so much loud as intense. It was a sight to behold, seeing that sudden glimpse of strength flash to the surface.

It must've been a repeat of what had already been argued upstairs. Lex stayed standing, looking at Martha but edging closer to Bruce.

"And that.... dammit, it shouldn't happen and I won't stand to let it keep happening." Jonathan addressed her angrily

"You think I will?" Martha replied with equal fire staring him down. "We can't change what has happened. We can sure as hell make sure it doesn't happen again -- but the best way is to deal with the known situation. And we CAN do that.... I keep trying to tell you that Jonathan! We have the leverage at Excelsior to bring a subtle pressure to bear."

"We'll see," he muttered, leveling looks at both boys as he glance back from Martha as if acceding the point. "You can stay, Bruce, but there's going to be some rules."

Bruce looked shocked, as if the thought of staying had been the last thing he had expected. "Of course, Mr. Kent," he agreed almost eagerly.

A tiny frisson of relief seeped into Lex, but he waited for Jonathan to continue onwards with that 'but'.

"But, you and Lex aren't going to room together anymore since we can't trust you to actually sleep."

Bruce nodded slowly looking over at Lex. "Do you mean here, Mr. Kent?" he asked politely gesturing to the living room area. "Would you like me to sleep on the couch?"

Jonathan glanced at Lex, too, who continued to stand there like a deer in high headlights. "No, I'd rather you didn't. You can stay in Lex's room -- I'll move the extra bed to Clark's room and Lex can sleep there."

Clark at least would be pleased by that turn of events. Bruce nodded and looked at Lex. "Thank you, Mr. Kent," he said quietly.

He nodded tersely in reply, then moved back to get the coffee cups. "I'm not ready to think about things like condoms this early in the morning, Martha. You do it."

Martha nodded. "You move the bed, Jonathan, I'll talk to the boys," she said in a gentler tone. "Lex, honey, Bruce -- come and sit with me."

A fidget of motion, and Lex walked towards her, feet almost rolling as they carried him to sit down uneasily beside her. "So...."

Bruce matched the movement a little awkwardly on the other side of her and Martha looked at them.

"So.... you can relax, Lex, the worst you're likely to get now is a severe case of embarrassment." Martha said softly, and it soothed Lex a little. "You too, Bruce, I'm afraid. We just need to talk about this, and certain.... precautions that need to be taken. I think your father was expecting to have a few more years' grace before he had this talk with you," she gave a faint smile reaching a hand out to him to reassure him.

"Actually...." Lex glanced down at her hand for a moment, "I think my father would've expected me to learn through osmosis."

"Maybe. To be honest, Lex, Bruce.... I think it's the fact that you've both been abused that upset us the most. We see it as part of what we're here for, to protect you as much as we can. Both of us feel that we might have failed you by not being there to stop this from happening. The fact that you are so young to be doing this.... and technically.... illegal -- well as we said, it's a little late to pretend it hasn't happened already, so we'll accept that." Martha paused, marshalling her thoughts before continuing, "But not in this house. At Excelsior, we know we can't effectively prevent it. So... with this in mind, you WILL learn to take precautions, both of you. You'll both have a private test, and then you will both use condoms and have regular checks. If this is an activity that is rife through the system, there could be anything passed on. Have you been taught about this in detail yet?"

Lex shook his head. "I've read some, but...." Not much, and there hadn't been much in the way of a place for him to do research on it. And there were so many more interesting things to research. "No."

Bruce also shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Mrs. Kent," he murmured.

"Right then.... let me explain. Just ask questions if you need further information, okay?" Taking a deep breath, she began a very thorough run through of safe sex and why it was important, and what sexual diseases there were, what was normal, what wasn't. How they could get a girl pregnant if they slept with her, even at their age, and the dangers of HIV and not knowing what other people had. That a condom was absolutely necessary -- there was a detour then in what they were and how to put them on which made even Martha flush a little at the graphic detail. Even, rather gratuitously, the types of petroleum based lubricants that could render a condom useless, which was particularly relevant to them....

It was a stream of information that did more than just lecture -- it demonstrated that Martha really was interested in their safety and their health above and beyond being angry with them. Somewhere along the line she managed to draw Lex in closer, and Bruce too with that special knack she seemed to have developed over the years of dealing with Lex and Clark.

Lex's pale cheeks were flushed by the time she was done, somewhat embarrassed. He still felt a tug of fear, but there was more simple disquiet than fear left just then. "Okay. We.... okay. So we have to get tested...?"

"Yes, we'll arrange that at some point over the holidays," Martha reassured again. "Now is there anything about this you want to ask, either of you? About.... this whole situation?"

"What did you tell Clark...?" Lex finally asked, leaning a little nearer to her.

"Clark so far has been told nothing, just reassured that his brother does still love him," Martha said gently. "I think he knew what you were doing but didn't understand what it meant." She smiled a little. "He went very quiet when he realized he had gotten you into trouble."

"Not so much trouble," Lex sighed, then quickly mugged Martha in a tired hug. "Thank you."

"You're our son, Lex," Martha responded warmly. "Even if we seem a little angry, if we shout.... we love you and you'll always be our son. I told you a long while ago that we'd always listen, and there is no place for secrets in this family....we learned that the hard way haven't we?" She gently hugged and then kissed him. "I don't want you going back to bed worried or upset.... Either of you." She glanced at Bruce who was looking at them with an almost hungry shadow in his eyes and patted his arm gently as well.

"It's pretty late, now," Lex murmured. "Or, early." And it was his fault that they were up so damned early.... late on a Christmas Eve and morning. It wasn't the usual peaceful joyous moment and that was his fault. He hugged her for a moment more, than started to pull back to his own spot on the sofa.

"Should I bring Clark down?"

"And start Christmas early?" Martha smiled. "Or would you prefer a few hours of sleep? It's been a long night for us all."

"Maybe a few hours of sleep, if Clark can sleep. He was wound up earlier...." Lex stood finally, and moved to the kitchen. No sense on having the coffee pot going yet.

"Go to bed then, sweetheart," Martha replied. "He'll be happy if you're in his room.... and you'll be all right as well, Bruce?"

Bruce nodded again. The sort of interaction he had just witnessed probably seemed as fantastical and unreal as anything he had seen in any movie, Lex guessed. "Yes.... thank you."

"Good. Lex, help him with his case back upstairs and go get a little sleep," Martha said again.

"Maybe Clark's gift will go back to sleep, too." Lex moved to grab Bruce's heavy suitcase, giving his friend a slightly hopeful look as he started to the stairs. "Come on. I'll help you unpack real quick."

Bruce nodded again. "Thanks," he said to his friend following him, almost dazed into clumsiness as he followed him up the stairs.

Jonathan was just coming out of Clark's room, and Lex spared him a tense smile when he ducked back into his own room with Bruce's bag in his hands.

"You boys go to sleep, now. I've moved the bed into Clark's room for you, Lex."

"He's just helping me unpack, Mr. Kent," Bruce said. "And then he'll be straight in."

"You shouldn't have bothered packing, Bruce," Jonathan sighed, clapping him briefly on his shoulder before he moved to watch from a little ways down the hall.

Bruce looked at Lex as they went into his room leaving the door open. "I.... I still can't believe it,." he said in a low voice. "I thought they would throw me out for sure.... and...." He looked more shaken by these events than he had ever been by the intimidation and assaults at Excelsior.

The laughter Lex gave felt nerve-wrackingly raw for both of them. "I know. I know, and it hits me almost every day, Bruce."

"I didn't think people like Martha and Jonathan really.... existed." Bruce replied almost to himself. It was as if he had discovered a glimmer of wonder in an otherwise dead and lonely world, something precious worth preserving or protecting. "Don't screw this up Lex, not for me.... not for anyone. Don't screw up what you've got here."

"What makes you think I would?" Lex twisted, taking some of Bruce's sweaters and stuffing hem back in drawers.

"It's too easy to do for people like us," Bruce replied soberly. "How many of our group don't despise their parents? Plot against them? The power is consuming and you can get lost in it."

"My parents are dead, Bruce. There's nothing that I feel I have to wrest from the Kents. They just.... are. They're here for me, me and Clark." And if Lex pushed Bruce's clothes flat in the drawers with a little excess force, it was all right. He didn't like the almost accusation he was facing.

"I know." Bruce replied quietly, in a roughed voice even as he turned away to hang up clothes. "They are, aren't they? Always there for you. You might want to remember that and stop making them fight the memory of your real parents. Or else that is all you'll end up with just hollow memories." It was obvious he was referring to himself there and that there was more to his words than what he was saying.

And he'd hurt Martha with his comment about his father. Not Jonathan, but.... "It's hard," Lex murmured, patting clothes flat a little less forcefully. "I have so many memories about them, my parents, and no one.... There's just not much point in talking about them. And Clark still fits in better here than I do."

"Have they ever tried to make you forget them?" Bruce asked. "They would talk, and you know I would talk to you about them."

"I might.... take you up on that. If I talk about the good memories, I feel like I'm comparing them against the Kents. If I talk about the bad ones, I feel like I'm vilifying them. There's no in-between...." He shrugged, then twisted around to look at Bruce's back as he shuffled around in the closer. "I don't know. And if I talk to you, I feel like I'm whining. I am, aren't I?"

Bruce shook his head. "No Lex, you're not. You and I.... are naturally private. Who better to share with than someone who understands what it's like?"

"Mm." Lex slipped closer to Bruce, and embraced him lightly from behind. "I'd better go to bed before Dad comes to investigate. You okay?"

Bruce nodded, slowly. "Yes." He relaxed a little. "Yes, Lex.... I am. I'll see you tomorrow morning, and you can have your present."

"I think I already have," he husked quietly, pressing a kiss against the back of Bruce's neck, below the trimmed line of hair against his nape, and then he pulled back. Lex gave one last smile to Bruce, and then slipped out into the hallway.

Where Jonathan was watching, surreptitiously, as he made his way into Clark's room. Clark was semi-propped up in his bed, watching the door anxiously with his clear eyes darkened with concern. He relaxed a little as Lex came in, but still looked very anxious.

Lex closed the door behind him, and gave Clark a tired, tense smile. "You're still awake, Clark?"

"....yes...." It was said in a very small timorous voice as if uncertain of the possible reaction. If Lex had been scared of the reaction of Martha and Jonathan at him having done something wrong, then Clark seemed just as scared of Lex's reaction for getting him so much in trouble.

Lex passed by his 'own' bed, and passed quietly towards Clark's, perching on the edge of it. It hurt to see that fear and worry in his little brother's eyes, after he'd spent so much time -- all of his time, it felt like on some days -- trying to make him as happy as possible. "Everything is okay, Clark."

"I got you in trouble," Clark whispered. "I didn't mean to. I promise I won't ever again. Promise."

Lex shifted closer, looking at his brother's drawn expression with hurt in his own eyes. "No, it's okay. It worked out okay, Clark. You didn't get me into trouble, it's.... it's better this way. Bruce gets to stay, and Mom and Dad are going to help see that those people at the school don't hurt us anymore."

"You're still upset though," Clark said looking at him. "I know you are." For once he didn't automatically cling to his brother as if something needed to be sorted out between them before things were back to normal.

That was disconcerting for Lex. He was used to Clark's insistence on touching, used to saying through action what words tripped up at accomplishing for him. "Why do you say that?"

"I can tell." Clark looked at him again. "I...." He looked down a moment. "It's because.... I didn't want to share you and that's bad. It's wrong." The young boy had obviously been thinking a lot about it all day, and most of all during the night while decisions were being made all around him. "'m sorry, I know I was being selfish and I won't do it again and you don't have to spend all your time with me or anything because that's not fair and you have other friends and I'm lots younger and Pete's older brother says that no older brothers want to hang out with younger brothers.... and.... so I know I'm lucky that you do at all." His words came out all tumbled as if many rehearsed fragments had been welded together in one statement. He chewed his lip and took a deep breath obviously steeling himself "...So.... you don't have to, if you don't want to," he offered in a slightly quavering voice. "It's okay."

Meanderingly disjointed, but Lex nodded to what Clark had said, not immediately dismissing it. "You know why I like to hang out with you, Clark? Do you?" Clark shook his head. "Because I enjoy it," Lex said patiently. "Like when I first came here, and I read you stories, and started to play with you. It just felt right."

Clark looked at him, his own defensiveness gentling as he finally leaned into Lex, taking that as permission. "It does?"

"It does, and I can't explain it. Someday, you and I are going to do big things together. We're going to have a destiny, and that won't change no matter how many other people come or go in our lives." Lex shifted an arm, robe and flannel covered, and slid it over Clark's shoulders to hug him lightly.

That was enough to reignite the cling factor, as Clark smiled. "Yes," he replied snuggling into his brother's side, breathing in his scent.

"You wait until you're older, Clark, and you get a girlfriend or something." Lex rubbed his fingers over Clark's shoulder, and leaned back to recline comfortably on Clark's bed. "Just don't do what I did. It was really.... I wasn't thinking. I knew better."

Clark cuddled in. "Don't want a girlfriend," he said in a tone that indicated that girls were not exactly high on his list of things he particularly liked. "What was wrong with it?" he asked curiously, warm against Lex as they settled down.

"Well, nothing, and a lot." He ought to set a good example for Clark to follow and say there was a lot wrong with it, but just leaving it at that would've been a lie. "I'm young. I'm only thirteen, after all. People don't expect me to do things like that."

Clark tilted his head a little so he was resting on Lex's chest. "But no one expects you to do all the clever things you do and they're always really pleased about that and you doing that quicker an' stuff. That's stupid. If you're quicker at one thing then you're going to be about other things."

Lex's heart was thudding away in his chest slowly, a relaxed beat that was muffled by his clothes and skin. "I know. That's what I think, but. It's definitely not allowed in the house."

Clark shifted his head a little in a nod. "That's why you're in with me," he deduced. "Not with Bruce."

Heat rose to Lex's cheeks, but he nodded to Clark's words. "That's why. Dad didn't want there to be even the chance, that...."

"....you would....do that.... 'making love' thing Pete's brother told us about." It was becoming increasingly apparent that Pete's older brother had a lot to answer for. Clark yawned a little. "I thought 'cos you've never made love with me but you were with him that that meant you loved him better. I'm sorry.... Didn't know it was a different thing."

"It's not really making love. I mean, it can be. When it's perfect, it can be. Other times.... it's called fucking," Lex whispered as quietly as he could. "Which is a bad word that Mom yells at Dad for using when he can't get the tractor to work."

"It's to do with tractors as.... well?" Clark asked getting a little confused. He sounded like he was starting to get ambivalent ideas about why Jonathan and Lex spent a lot of time working on the tractor.

Lex laughed quietly, slitting his eyes open to look at the ceiling. There were tiny glow-in-the-dark flecks of paint decorating it, in a poor imitation of the night's sky, and if he squinted it was like there was no ceiling at all, just the sky stretched out above him. "No. It's just.... it's not love in the way you know it, Clark."

"Ah," Clark said and nodded. "That's why you said it was different."

"It's.... you'll understand when you're older. The feelings aren't there yet for you." He hugged Clark loosely, then closed his eyes again. "But right now? We should sleep. It is Christmas Eve. Morning."

"Sleep here?" Clark begged quietly, not wanting to move now, and feeling much better with Lex there.

"Sure. Are you okay now? I didn't mean to get you upset, it goes back to me not thinking."

"Was only upset 'cause you were upset," Clark said sleepily. "'s not your fault." He snuggled again pulling the covers over them both before falling silent a moment.

Lex cracked a tiny smile, not tinged with anything other than relief, and then let himself drift to sleep for the moment.

The tiny whisper of '...love you...' was probably something he'd imagined.

If Clark's ceiling hadn't been at least moderately interesting, Lex wasn't sure that he would've spent so much time lying still in the bed. Every so often his eyes darted left, to the clock on the dresser, and then back to what he could focus on Clark's face. Then to the ceiling again, restarting the pattern anew.

But when the red LCD on the clock turned to seven, Lex jostled his little brother gently. "Hey, Clark...."

Clark yawned a little, his hair all tousled from brushing against his brother as he curled into him in his sleep. Tired green eyes blinked over and smiled "What?" he asked sleepily.

"It's time to get up," Lex whispered, feeling a spark of conspiracy as he started to sit up with Clark still against him. "You know. Time to check stockings and under the tree?"

Clark blinked a moment and then his eyes opened wide. "It's Christmas!" he realized, as if it had totally slipped his mind. "Presents! You think Mom and Dad and the others are up?"

The others. It was just Bruce, but Lex chuckled quietly and nodded for Clark. "I bet they are. C'mon, let's go see?" Lex swung his legs over the edge of the bed, waiting for Clark to wake up more and run off with him.

He didn't have to wait long. Excitement seized Clark and he was up, and then sweeping Lex out of the door to thunder downstairs ,unable to wait a moment longer.

Martha obviously had not been back to bed after the incident in the middle of the night and that meant that Christmas was incredibly well organized and ready. The enormous Christmas breakfast was already working its magic on them all. Martha pulled the spicy, fruity pancakes from where they were warming in the oven, a Kent family Christmas tradition to serve first thing at breakfast.

There were signs that Jonathan had gone out despite it still being dark and was due back in moments, from the way Martha was serving up. She had an uncanny instinct for timing food to her husband's appearance. Or perhaps it was Jonathan who had the instinct. Lex still wasn't sure.

"Mom, do you want me to go get Bruce up?" Lex asked as he let go of Clark's hand as they neared the kitchen table. The idea of facing a good breakfast like that was guaranteed to calm frayed nerves, and Lex's were certainly still frayed. Jonathan's had to be, too.

"If you could, sweetheart," Martha asked. "Clark, can you get the milk out for me? And put the knives and forks out. This has to last you all through most of the day." She smiled at Lex and Clark who leapt into action happily enough. "Don't be long, your father will be back in any moment."

"Well, I'd better wake him up before Dad and Clark eat it all." Lex gave her an unsure smile as he turned away, hoping she'd just leave it at that and not feel a need to remind him to behave.

"Lex...." Martha said stopping him from going, and for a moment it looked like she was going to say something, but instead, she leant forward and gave him a soft peck of a kiss on the cheek. "Merry Christmas, sweetheart," she said, intending only reassurance, even as she scooped up Clark to give him a quick cuddle as well.

"Martha...." Lex smiled crookedly, paused jerkily on his way towards the steps. Bruce's words echoed in his mind, not to mess it up and let it be taken from him. "Thanks. And Merry Christmas."

She smiled and nodded slightly. It was a rather tentative reaching out to each other again, but it was a start. "Go on, go fetch Bruce -- don't want him to miss out." she said, and turned away as Clark tried to steal some of the pancakes. "Clark! Wait for everyone else! Stop that!"

Mundane things like that -- that Bruce said he should cherish or at least appreciate more. Or more clearly than he did at the moment; it might be easier to do once he worked his way around paralyzing embarrassment and could talk to them again without thinking about the condom lecture.

Lex jogged quietly up the steps, and knocked on his bedroom door a bit loudly.

There was a moment before the door opened. Bruce blinked and peered out, looking a little rumpled. He was used to staying up late and sleeping in late when he could and seven in the morning wasn't considered to be late under any circumstances. He probably hadn't even had time to muster his defenses properly and consequently his expression was a little more unguarded than usual as he smiled at Lex.

"Morning already?" he asked.

"And Clark's already downstairs engulfing pancakes," Lex smirked a little, looming near to Bruce. "So, mornin'. Had enough sleep?"

"Enough to manage," Bruce replied, noting that Lex was still in his pajamas. "Should I get dressed for breakfast or is it a come as you are event?" There was a near palpable pull between them when they were that close, tugging gently and being rather stoically resisted.

"Come as you are," Lex informed him solemnly. "Usually we only get dressed if there's something to be done on the farm that needs more than one hand involved in it."

Bruce raised his eyebrows and grinned. "For a brief moment, I totally misunderstood what you said," he said slyly as he stepped out to join his friend.

"Purposefully misunderstood," Lex countered, and he lifted a hand to grasp loosely onto Bruce's forearm. "I finally explained everything as best as I could to Clark, and he's okay again."

"Good. I wouldn't want to be the cause of any problems between you two," Bruce replied, accepting the touch as they moved together down the stairs. "I know how much he means to you."

"We'll see what you say about that when we one day take over the world." Lex let go of Bruce, and started back down the hallway, chuckling a little. "Then you'll be saying to yourself 'I should've caused problems between them'."

"I think the world would be in safe hands," Bruce said following. "And I think I've caused problems enough. I... dear god Lex, are we having dinner early or something?" he lowered his voice as he saw the feast set out before them even as the door opened and Jonathan came in.

"No, but eat up -- this is your meal for the day. I'm not going to let Martha near the stove again until tomorrow, because she deserves a day off from trying to feed us all," Jonathan said -- joked? Lex had to wonder there -- as he closed the storm door, and then the main door behind him, and stomped ice and crud off of his boots.

"It's too late, Christmas dinner is ready to roll for later as well," Martha said as she automatically moved over to Jonathan and kissed him, as was their usual ritual. The way she smiled and the look in her eyes sent out subtle signals about what else might have occurred last night after the boys had gone to bed. Martha believed in a direct approach to reconciliation, after all.

After the lecture on safe sex, Lex didn't want to think about it. It was a strange thought, stranger than thinking of his own parents having done that. "Clark hasn't peeked into any of his presents, has he?"

"Mom wouldn't let me," Clark said happily. "Not until after breakfast, but there's rustlings and noises!"

"There are? I wonder what that could be." Lex pulled out a chair for himself, smiling ever so slightly as he settled down beside his little brother. "Could it be.... no, never mind. It couldn't."

"Leeeeeeexx...." Clark tried wheedling. "Do you know what it is? Let's eat so we can open presents! I want to give you your present!" He was practically bouncing in his chair as the food started to circulate the table rapidly.

Lex grinned over at Bruce as he took his seat, too, and started to pick up his fork with concentrated slowness. "What's the rush, Clark?"

Clark looked at him with an expression that clearly said he knew that he was being wound up. "Presents!" he said again. "What else? We got good presents." He was desperate to see Lex's reaction to the special present that Martha had said could be from him as he helped so much. He'd been really impressed when it arrived and just knew Lex would love it.

Bruce chuckled a little. "Don't be cruel, Lex," he said snagging some pancakes for himself.

"It's not cruel. Clark just needs to learn a little patience," Jonathan chided. "Now, I expect you to be careful with whatever you get. Treating toys well is a sign of responsibility."

"Dad, he's never broken any of the things I've given him. Well, not many of them."

Clark looked sheepish at that. "The ball lasted over a year before I broke it," he said looking up from his food a moment. "And that was an accident." An accident involving Lex piloting the remote control and trying to keep it away from Clark as long as possible, until the young boy pounced on it a little too enthusiastically.

"I can make one better than that now. I could probably make something with legs," Lex offered thoughtfully. "The ball had a good life, and it shall be honored while it relaxes in the afterlife."

"Wow... legs... cool!" Clark even paused in eating to contemplate the possibility of something robotic with legs, like a big spider or a centipede or something.

"That would be an interesting project," Bruce agreed, rather surprisingly starting to enjoy his food. Like Lex, his appetite seemed to improve out here in the backwaters of Smallville. Perhaps it was the fact that they could both relax and not worry about being watched, or commented upon or have to be on guard all the time.

It could've been that the food was better, simpler; maybe it was better for that very simplicity. Both boys ate more than they did at Excelsior, and Lex started to ask Clark about colors and what particular metals he thought would be best for the little project. Quizzing, however gently, his little brother. It slowly eased up tension at the table, and when the newspaper came there were all sorts of things to distract from what had happened earlier that morning.

Martha looked over Jonathan's shoulder, maintaining a deliberate close proximity, reading the headlines. "Anything exciting?" she asked.

"Oh, just news," he replied, turning a page. "They've set the date for the farming expo in the summer."

"Not that you'll actually buy a new tractor," Lex jumped into the conversation from his talking with Clark.

Martha chuckled. "It would be like losing one of the family replacing that tractor," she murmured, teasing her husband lightly. "But then again.... some younger flashier model maybe just catch his eye and.... the older model will be traded in." She gave a mock sigh at that supposed possibility, even as Bruce looked at Lex and smiled a little himself, seeing quite how she was 'handling' Jonathan with the experience that bespoke long practice.

"I'll replace the tractor when you let go of the truck," Jonathan countered playfully.

"Now I know what to get them for their anniversary," Lex mock-whispered to Bruce.

Bruce chuckled lightly. "In matching colors maybe."

Martha slapped Jonathan lightly on the arm. "Nothing wrong with the truck!" she countered, and then glanced at the emptying plates. "You boys want me to cook up anymore? I've never know anything like your appetites.... just when I think I've got you all figured out, you get hungry on me."

"No, Mom, this'll keep me for hours," Lex grinned over at her. "So, is it time to go see what's under the tree yet?"

Clark looked about ready to bolt "Yes! Must be time!" he said excitedly, "Please, Mom?"

Martha smiled again and nodded. "Go on then... there's things there for all of you, and stockings for all three of you."

"Don't let your orange go rotten this year, Clark -- if you don't want to eat it, take it out of the toe," Lex called after his little brother, and he pushed away from the table, then grabbed Bruce's wrist to drag him along into the living room.

"'kay, Lex." Clark was already out there, rustling around in his stocking.

Bruce was a bit hesitant to know if there was some strange form of etiquette to undoing a Christmas stocking but after observing Clark a moment decided that there was a complete lack of etiquette and just followed their lead. In a very short space of time, the area around the couch was littered with wrapping paper and they had discovered a variety of cheap and cheerful toys, that no one would ever admit to buying for themselves but still wanted.

Getting three sets of the suction dart shooters had possibly been a bad move n Martha's part, Lex decided.

Jonathan crawled partially beneath the tree to plug it in, and the room was soon alight with a bright glow. That contrasted frighteningly with the foil on wrapping paper, the mess of ribbon and bows, and Lex diving behind the side of the sofa with a gleeful yell, wielding his dart gun.

Bruce had leapt over the other side and was busy stalking his friend even as Clark scrambled up onto the top of the sofa and fired at both of them. In a moment, the air seemed filled with the flying darts finding some rather erratic targets with a rubbery plunking noise.

Martha laughing slightly as she took in the nature of some of the injuries and the victims of crossfire. Jonathan really shouldn't have been crawling under the tree leaving himself quite so exposed. It was a scene worthy of one of Clark's cartoons.

"Hey, stop aiming for my head! They won't stick!" Lex growled at Clark with surprisingly little heat, before he turned and launched his last dart at Jonathan's behind.

Clark giggled and then as the last dart hit its target and managed to stay there on the material, his eyes widened and he giggled so much he nearly started hiccoughing. His chuckling was infectious, and before long, Bruce, who Lex usually marked a day on the calendar for if he smiled, was doubled over with silent laughter collapsed on the sofa, even as Martha approached trying not to laugh herself. The camera she had got out to capture the Christmas moment was duly used and Jonathan's posterior complete with quivering dart and laughter crippled spectators was preserved for... posterity.

Lex was the first to recover, scanning the room for spare bits of bright orange plastic that he dutifully gathered together into a pile. "Clark, I think you should open Santa's gift first."

Clark nodded and settled beside the large, very lightly wrapped box with conspicuous air holes that was marked from Santa. There were some more rustlings inside and he beamed happily. Too big to be a hamster, that was for sure. Carefully he undid it and opened up peering inside...

And found himself face to face with an animal that he couldn't identify, but it was larger than a hamster, covered in the sawdust it had been ruffling around in, and squeaked eagerly up at him. He looked like he'd been eating from the little bowl that was in there with him, and possibly swimming in the water dish. It was hard to tell.

"I think Santa got you a guinea pig, Clark," Lex observed sagely, leaning over his little brother's shoulder.

Clarks face was a picture as he reached in to stroke his new pet. "A guinea pig...." he said in tones of awe that would be more suited to commenting on one of the wonders of the world. "That's loads better than a hamster!"

The creature seemed friendly enough and Clark lifted him out to hold him close as he contemplated what he might call his new pet. "Gonna call him Heffy," he announced, choosing the name from Lex's stories about Alexander and Hephastion. Heffy had always been his verbal abbreviation for that historical figure and now he was immortalized in guinea pig form. The fact that 'Heffy' might have been a girl didn't even come into his consideration.

"Heffy's a good name, son, but I think we should figure out if Heffy's a he or a she," Jonathan declared, moving to sit down beside the boys. "Now, we expect you to be careful; guinea pigs are hardier than hamsters, and more affectionate. You wouldn't want Santa to regret having given you this, would you?"

Clark shook his head vigorously. "No, but where's Heffy going to live?" He looked suddenly a bit worried about that.

There was silence for a moment, as if none of them had considered it, and then Lex piped up, "Well, I guess you have to open up the gift I got you, right?"

Heffy sniffed at Lex inquisitively and then squeaked as he was taken from his comfortable place in Clark's arms and put back in the box for safe keeping as Clark reached for Lex's gift.

Almost right away, Jonathan picked Heffy up to check... double-check the gender. Lex remained beside Clark, grinning almost ear to ear as Clark opened up the big box.

It turned out to be a luxury home for a guinea pig, a sizeable hutch with corresponding parts and materials to assemble a substantial run for when the weather was not quite so snowy. Clark was even more impressed. "Wow, thanks Lex! You knew just what to get!"

"I had a talk with Santa," Lex murmured, mouth quirking as he glanced over to Martha. "Santa's smart that way."

Martha smiled and nodded. "Santa is very smart indeed. Maybe you should see what he's got you, Lex, and there's one there for the entire family from him, too.... that could use opening."

The fact that Lex had a lot of money, more money than they could even conceive of, meant that Martha always ended up exercising her ingenuity to get him not just something he could buy if he wanted it, but something he hadn't even thought that he might want. The top of the line laptop that opening his gift revealed, the size of a smallish brief case, was certainly a surprise had been something she'd considered might be necessary for Lex, and she certainly had the money allocated for it. After discussions with Jonathan, they had bought a companion PC for the home, both with modem access so that Clark and Lex could use email, and learn how computers worked as well. She had a pressing motive for this expense in the storm cellar -- all of them had to be as familiar with computers as possible to be able to solve the mystery of the ship, and she expected it to take years, but starting them young would help.

Besides, Lex would love it. Clark would love being able to write his brother when he wanted and know he would get it. Sometimes it was difficult to get through to him at Excelsior, but this would be like a lifeline, and she thought virtuously, there were all those educational possibilities the salesman had told her about.

Christmas always struck Lex as a time of year when people expressed themselves. Whether it was Martha's shopping talents, or Clark, or... or anyone. He chuckled a little at his own lack of eloquence, and smoothed a hand over the laptop's surface. "Wow. This.... I never expected something like this. Can I go plug it in? Or should I wait?"

Bruce's eyes had also lit up, promising a satisfying afternoon of computer related geekery ahead. Martha smiled, "After you've opened Clarks present. I can guarantee that you will get distracted once you get going and I think Clark might be a bit disappointed."

"Okay. I'll save all of this for later," Lex half-promised. He laid the laptop aside with an air of reverence, and then tossed Clark an expectant grin. "I wonder what it is...."

Clark seemed eager with the anticipation of Lex opening the present he had worked so hard on. "Open it Lex!" he encouraged, leaning forward.

Breath caught in Lex's throat as he pulled the tissue paper and packing away from what turned out to be a small statuette. There was one story where Warrior Angel was betrayed, and his best friend Devillicus had to save him, proving his worth and their connection that seemed to know no bounds. Lex liked Devillicus a lot, and the scene where he rescued the injured Warrior Angel had always been one of his most lingered over sections. It was just as it had felt from the books, and he held it in his fingers a long time, twisting and taking it in from every angle. "Clark.... This...." A piece of resin and paint seemed to hold a world of thought and emotion for Lex, and he wanted to laugh at himself for feeling so connected to that scene. To the intensity of being, having been saved, but it was still there whether he thought it was silly or not.

"You like it? I chose it as your favorite bit," Clark leaned forward. "They did it how I described, just like you described it to me."

"It's perfect, Clark, it...." Lex couldn't find the words to explain how he felt so connected to that perfect moment, but glanced up at Clark and hoped that his expression would say it for him. It was like his relationship with Clark; inexplicable, but undeniable.

Clark nodded looking serious and solemn a moment. "Good," he said knowing he didn't have to say any more and glancing over at his mother triumphantly.

Martha smiled, pleased at how all the effort had seemed to pay off. "It's a one off Lex, but they are going to be doing models now," she said quietly. "We'll have to find somewhere safe to put it."

"We'll put it in my room?" Lex suggested. "Or maybe the safe I keep in there. I'd never think of taking it to Excelsior with me."

"In your room, we'll get a display case for it," she said nodding. "Clark seems to like it too."

Clark nodded and looked at it again. Lex couldn't help but see the emotion in the piece and it entranced Clark just as it did Lex. It was as if someone had made the feeling he had real and in doing so demonstrated it could be real.

"It's beautiful. It.... it's just right. Bruce, come look at this." And that was almost an afterthought, adding anyone else to the moment between he and Clark.

Bruce leant over to see. "It's wonderful Lex," he murmured.

"Yeah, it is." Lex felt a little surprised at himself, but settled the statuette back into its protective packaging, before reaching over to hug Clark tight. "Thanks, Clark. It's perfect."

Clark grinned and returned the hug, even as Martha took another picture of that moment that would end up framed in all their rooms for a long time to come.