Title: The Unknown
Series: Finding Home.  Fifth in series.
Author: Christie
Email: tinamishi@yahoo.com
Archive: http://number14.org/precious
Genre: Smallville (Lex/Lana); established relationship, drama, angst
Rating: R (sexual situations, strong language)
Spoilers: General S1 & S2 (nothing overt)
Summary: Is Smallville ready for Lex and Lana? Are Lex and Lana ready
for each other?  Series sequel to Close Quarters.   
Disclaimer: Smallville was created by Millar & Gough.  This story is
non-profit.
Distribution: If you've got Close Quarters, by all means take this.

*

When things like this happened, they never happened to Lex.  They
happened to other people, sometimes people Lex cared about, and Lex
helped.  Lex arranged doctors and treatments and the best of everything
money could buy.  Lex stayed composed, walked in and out of hospital
waiting rooms in a suit; never sat, never got rumpled.  Lex offered a
pat on the back, or at most, a hug of condolence.  He offered gentle
words of support, he sent flowers.

It shouldn't be him sitting at someone's bedside, too weary with grief
and fear to stand.  It shouldn't be his Armani pants smudged with dirt,
especially at the knees where he'd knelt in the ditch, cradling Lana in
his arms.  There shouldn't be smears of blood on his shirt, Lana's
blood where it had seeped from the cuts on her head.  He was always an
outsider in a hospital, the person with strength and answers and
resources.

This shouldn't be him.  Except it was.  He knew he should get some
rest; get a shower, a cup of coffee.  But that would require standing
up and leaving Lana's bedside, which was something he just wasn't
prepared to do.  The nurse attending to Lana was nice enough; pretty,
in a Mrs. Kent sort of way.  She smiled sympathetically at him and made
suggestions, but knew when to just leave him alone.

Lex couldn't find it in himself to stand even when the first of a dozen
doctors he'd called in began to arrive from Metropolis.  He didn't
stand when one told him his ribs were severely bruised and ardently
suggested that he get x-rays to make sure they weren't cracked.  Sure,
shaking their hands and listening to their advice and thanking them for
coming would have been a nice gesture, but he was signing their fucking
checks, so what more did they need, really?

Of the calls he still needed to make, Lex started with the Kents. 
Martha Kent was the only person that he knew of that would actually
take it upon herself to be in charge; to make sure Nell, his father,
and the Talon were notified and that Lana's assignments were delivered
from school.  Martha Kent was the only one that would say she was sorry
and genuinely mean it.  Martha Kent wouldn't make him get up out of his
chair if he didn't want to, and Martha Kent just might bring him a cup
of coffee and a muffin.

Clark arrived with her, of course, but Lex was so far beyond Clark's
issues that he barely turned enough to look at him sideways.  Martha
had brought him some coffee (no muffin) and Lex told her in a voice
that sounded dead, even to his own ears, what had happened and what the
doctors had told him so far.

Martha was appropriately outraged and benevolent all at the same time. 
She told Lex how frightening it was for her when Jonathan was in a
coma, and Lex couldn't help but briefly glance at Clark.  Had he told
his mom everything, or was Mrs. Kent just remarkably astute?

Clark, for his part, didn't seem to have much to say.  He stood
sullenly on the other side of Lana's bed, alternating holding her hand
and stroking the top of it with his fingertips.  If he was trying to
pretend Lex wasn't there, he was doing a bang up job.  Once Martha left
the room to make phone calls, Lex had the altogether unfamiliar feeling
of being invisible.

He didn't bother watching Clark with Lana.  Instead, he closed his eyes
and concentrated on every sound in the room.  There would be nothing to
do but wait, the doctors said.  People in comas didn't always wake up. 
And if they did, they weren't always perfectly alright like they were
in the movies.  So Lex waited, and concentrated on accepting the fact
that there were some things in life he could not control.

There was no way to be certain how much time had passed before Clark
made a sound and roused Lex from his state of semi-consciousness.  The
very practical farmboy boots squeaked on the just-waxed hospital
floors.  Lex looked up enough to focus on Clark's jeans; idly wondering
if the dark stain on his left thigh was dirt or chocolate.

Clark cleared his throat, and Lex pulled his head all the way up,
blinking at the bluish glow of various monitors that ensconced the
room.

"What happened?"  Clark asked.  A question which Lex found
extraordinarily redundant because he distinctly remembered telling both
Clark and his mom what had happened the moment they stepped into the
room.

"Lana and I were driving home from the stables when a truck swerved
into our lane and hit us," he recited in monotone.

Clark nodded, but didn't really seem satisfied.  "What were you doing
at the stables at 10:30 at night?  Don't they close at sundown?"

First of all, Lex wanted to say, I'm Lex Luthor and they let me keep my
Goddamn horse out as long as I want.  But he didn't.  He shrugged.  "I
never read the rule book."

Sometimes, Clark seemed so much older than he was.  Sometimes, he
seemed exactly his age.  When he rolled his eyes, Lex was reminded that
-- oh yeah -- he didn't really need to explain himself to a
sixteen-year-old kid who lived on a farm.

"What's your point, Clark?" he said.  Did Clark really want him to say,
'well, gee, I was busy fucking Lana in the stable, which is why we got
a late start home.'  Had it been any other girl, Lex would have
considered it.  After all, the ability to change someone's entire
school of thought (and alternately their world) based on something you
have to say means you hold a certain modicum of power over them.  But
this was Lana, whom Lex, first and foremost, respected and loved.  He
would never betray her confidence, especially to Clark Kent.

Clark looked like he wanted to blurt out 'never mind' and hightail it
out of there.  But there was always that other side lurking in the boy,
the one that never failed to surprise Lex at the least opportune
moments.  Clark straightened his back and squared his shoulders,
looking back once at Lana, maybe for strength.

"The least you could do is slow down if you have Lana in the car," he
said.

Before Clark had even finished the sentence, Lex was compelled to
stand.  He couldn't hold back the wince as his ribs protested the
movement, but he forced himself erect until he was toe to toe with
Clark.  Looking into his eyes, Lex could swear it wasn't Clark at all
but Jonathan looking back at him.

There was probably some impudently clever retort that would send Clark
scurrying into the lobby to his mother.  Only Lex couldn't find it.  He
simply pursed his lips and said exactly what he felt at that very
moment.

"Fuck you, Clark."

***

Nell was a basket case, as Lex had come to expect Nell to be.  She'd
flitted in and out of the room like a nervous butterfly, alternately
fawning over Lana and yelling at every doctor she could find about what
they *weren't* doing for her niece.

Lex could kind of relate.  If he'd had more energy, he might be
threatening doctors left and right until they were pissing their pants
and wishing Lana would just wake up so they might have a shot at
keeping their jobs.  But it didn't seem productive that way, and Lex
was too fucking tired.  He wanted to curl himself around Lana in that
tiny hospital bed and hold her until he felt warm.

Only he couldn't curl himself at all, because whenever he moved, his
ribs seemed to fold into his body and crunch right into his stomach. 
After four hours of sitting, his butt had gone numb and Lex succumbed
to the pretty nurse when she asked him, one more time, if he was *sure*
he wouldn't get x-rayed.

His own personal physician, Dr. Huntington, adopted the I-told-you-so
tone when it turned out his ribs were cracked.  Lex ignored it and let
his torso be wrapped in a lame attempt to keep it relatively stable
while the ribs healed.  The other part of the diagnosis was a
prescription of Vicodin and a strict order for bed rest.  Lex made no
bones when he told Dr. Huntington that just wasn't going to happen.

He did, however, wash down two Vicodin with a fresh cup of coffee
before heading back to what he'd begun to refer to as the Waiting Room
in Hell.

He watched through the window that looked into Lana's room as Henry
Small visited; though it was more like Henry Small making the
obligatory stop in to see his not-really daughter who had no idea he
was there.  He was probably standing there wondering how long he had to
stand there before he could make his exit without looking like Jackass
of the Year.

Don't worry, Lex almost poked his head in to say.  I'm Jackass of the
Year.  I fucked your daughter in a barn before slamming the car into an
oncoming truck, rolling it into a ditch and putting her in that coma.

Instead, he shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned against the
wall, waiting for the painkillers to kick in.  Martha Kent asked him
how the x-rays went, and Lex almost laughed that his father hadn't even
looked up from the Wall Street Journal long enough to see that he was
alive and somewhat kicking.

Nell was blessedly absent, as was Clark.  The Waiting Room in Hell
could, for the moment, be upgraded to the Waiting Room in Purgatory.

***

In his dream, they were still riding.  It had been days, maybe weeks,
and he and Lana had started riding and just hadn't stopped.  Kansas
became Colorado, and Colorado became Utah and they were slowly, surely,
getting away.

Maybe they'd ride all the way to the edge of the Pacific Ocean.  Then
Lana would dismount and laugh, wiggling her toes as she felt the water.
 She'd tell him she'd never seen the ocean, and he'd describe the
Luthor beach house that no one ever stayed at anymore, not since his
mother died.

He'd take her there.  He'd run his businesses out of his home office
and they'd build their life on the beach.  She'd say, Lex, I'm bored. 
I'd like to open a coffee house in this little Starbucks-lacking town. 
He'd say, sure baby.  Whatever you want.

In his dream, Nell was not there.  But somehow, he heard her voice.  It
was screechy, the way it sounded when she was really upset; too upset
to remember to be classy.  Lex opened his eyes and was back in the
middle of the Waiting Room in Hell.

Nell was toe to toe with his dad.  Which would have been funny except
that he needed another dose of Vicodin to make it so.  Clark was
sitting to his left, still sullen.  He glanced up when Lex struggled to
stand, but made no move to help and looked back down again.

The chair's armrests were enough help on their own.  Fuckyouverymuch,
Clark, Lex wanted to say.  Briefly, he glanced through the window to
Lana's room.  The nurse was in there, setting yet another flower
arrangement on the window sill.  She glanced up as Lex stared, shaking
her head slowly as if to tell him, 'no change'.

Sighing, he turned his attention to his father and Lana's aunt.

"I did not allow this to happen," Lionel was saying, putting special
emphasis on the word 'allow'.  "Lex is a grown man, I don't ask about
his personal affairs."

Personal affairs in this room meant Lana.  Lex did not -- by any means
-- like his father even mentioning his 'personal affairs', much less,
well, this.  *This*.  Nell screeching like a banshee about Lex ruining
her previously perfect niece.

"Yes, Lex is a grown man," Nell was saying, somehow still not feeling
it necessary to lower her voice in the least.  "And Lana is a
sixteen-year-old child!  There is no excuse for the kind of behavior
that leads to…"  She fumbled for words, flipping her hand over and over
and over as if the perfect phrase was somewhere in the air if she could
just catch it.  "…this kind of situation!" she finished.

This kind of situation?  Certainly Lana Lang could never find herself
the victim of a car accident unless she was dating Lex Luthor.  Lex
almost mentioned this out loud, but wondered for a second if Nell
yelling at *him* was really a fair trade-off from the current situation
of Nell yelling at his dad.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and fingered the bottle of
painkillers.  The doctor had said two at a time, no more than eight in
a 24-hour period.  He wondered if two at a time washed down with half a
bottle of scotch was cheating.

Mrs. Kent stood and wedged herself between Lionel and Nell.  She spoke
in a calm, rational voice, the kind of voice Lex imagined she used on
Jonathan when he got all hot under the collar about something (namely:
the Luthors).

"Let's just remember what's important here," she said, mostly to Nell
because let's be honest -- what was important to Lionel Luthor was the
stock page of the Journal.  "We all need to stay strong for Lana.  It's
not really the time or the place to question her personal choices."

Somehow, that rubbed Lex the wrong way.  Personal choices, he supposed,
was a diplomatic way of saying she can date whoever she wants to date,
but it didn't come off that way.  It came off like, it was Lana's
personal choice to dye her hair green, or it was Lana's personal choice
to drop out of high school and become a prostitute.  Lex didn't figure
'personal choice' would precede a *good* choice.  It was Lana's
personal choice to join the Young Republicans in order to network
herself to prestigious businesses and secure an internship in college. 
Yeah, no one would call that a 'personal choice'.

Lex wondered where his old self had gone.  The one that was around not
two short days ago, the one that didn't give two shits whether or not
the entire state of Kansas knew of his and Lana's relationship, much
less what they thought about it.  

Had Clark really changed it all?  Clark's insistence that Lex wasn't
good enough for Lana Lang shouldn't have thrown him for such a loop. 
But it did.  Possibly because Lex had never had a friend before Clark
Kent; certainly never one that looked at him and saw a Good Person.

But that had all changed when Lex made the 'personal choice' to start
dating Lana.  And his Good Person status suddenly came with conditions;
fine print he hadn't bothered to read because he stupidly trusted that
Clark would actually believe in him.

Lex fingered the cap of the prescription bottle open and dry-swallowed
two more pills.  He ignored every set of eyes that had turned to him
(Clark's excluded) and walked into Lana's room to continue his vigil.

***

After a week, Clark had to admit -- at least to himself -- that he
might have been wrong about Lex.  Surely there was some meeting or deal
or crisis that needed Lex's supervision.  But he wasn't there.  He was
at the hospital, it seemed, 24 hours a day.  If he did sneak home to
shower or change, it was always when Clark wasn't around.

Clark had tried to skip most of his classes on Monday but was met with
a resounding lecture from his father that ended with something like,
"failing out of high school is not going to help Lana."

His dad had a way of making the obvious sound like grave pearls of
wisdom.

Clark wasn't sure how to approach Lex, so he continued to ignore him. 
The kids who visited Lana after school in a fairly steady stream either
said a simple hello (and called him Mr. Luthor) or ignored him as well.
 More than one seemed puzzled by his presence, but none said anything. 
At least, not to him.

By Friday, however, enough of them had talked to each other that the
school was buzzing with rumors about Lex and Lana.  Clark claimed
ignorance.  It wasn't as if Lex's haggard appearance from his
round-the-clock vigil didn't speak volumes in itself.

Clark could barely concentrate on anything and used his surreptitious
examination of Lex as a way to keep his mind off of Lana and the fact
that her condition had only improved marginally in seven days.  If he
sat down and was really and truly honest with himself, Clark had to
admit that he'd be willing to stand up as best man at Lex and Lana's
wedding if she would just wake up.

And there was nothing to do but wait.

For his part, Lex had seemed to wrap his mind around the waiting.  In
the beginning, he'd appeared too stricken to do much of anything.  As
mid-week approached, his injuries healed slightly and his grief morphed
into anger.  Several fights with his father (one ending in "don't ever
speak that way about Lana again") had finally sent the elder Luthor
back to Metropolis.  Lex seemed slightly more composed after Lionel had
gone, and a few cowering interns and one punched wall later, he'd
settled into what seemed like quiet acceptance.

Except Clark knew Lex too well to know he'd ever really accept this.

Sometimes they sat together in her room.  Usually on opposite sites of
the bed.  Sometimes Lex held her hand and bowed his head as if in
prayer.  Except Clark was pretty sure Lex didn't pray.  Sometimes a
doctor or nurse would talk to Lex about her condition.  They never said
anything that sounded very negative, but they never said anything
positive either.  Sometimes after the nurse or doctor would leave, Lex
would stand abruptly and leave too.  Clark would have thought he was
crying except he was pretty sure Lex didn't cry.

Clark wanted to talk to Lex badly.  The only other person that was
constantly around was Nell, and she gave Clark a headache.  Clark was
pretty sure he gave her a headache in return.  They avoided each other
mostly.

Clark was alone in Lana's room when Chloe came by, handed him coffee in
a white Styrofoam cup.  "It would have been from the Talon," she said,
pulling a chair up next to Clark's, "except the Talon closed
early…again."

She said 'again' as if this hadn't happened only once before, but that
it was becoming a regular occurrence.  Clark looked at her.  "Why is it
closing early?"

Chloe smirked and her eyes flitted to Lana's still form.  "Apparently,
the place can't run itself.  They can't cover all of Lana's shifts so
Lex tells them to just close."

Clark raised his eyebrows and turned to look through the big glass
window that faced the waiting area.  Nell was asleep on one of the
chairs and he could just make out Lex on his cell phone in the opposite
corner.

"Lex has pushed Lana month after month to do whatever she has to to
make sure that place turns a profit," Clark said, still gazing at the
back of Lex's head.  "I can't believe he'd just let it go this week."

Chloe turned and Clark felt her gaze follow his to Lex.  His shirt was
wrinkled and unbuttoned at the cuffs, pants creased over and over where
he'd sat and re-sat in them.

"He's bankrolling the Talon with his own money," Chloe reported.  As an
afterthought she added quietly, "Lex is letting a lot of things go this
week."  She smiled when Clark looked at her.  "You any closer to
admitting that maybe, just maybe, Lex Luthor has fallen in love with
our fair Lana?"

Clark eyed Chloe carefully.  Her expression was open, if not slightly
teasing.  Clark wondered briefly what she'd say if he said yes, he had
come to believe that Lex and Lana were in love -- but really, did he
have to *like* it?  Instead, he shrugged.  "I don't feel like I really
know Lex or Lana anymore," he said.

Chloe clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth.  "Don't be so
dramatic, Clark," she admonished.  "They're the same people, even if it
does seem like Wall of Weird material that Lex wouldn't scare Lana out
of her wits and Lana wouldn't drive Lex to the brink of insanity."

Clark looked sideways at his friend.  "They have a lot more in common
than you're giving them credit for, Chloe."

When Chloe laughed, her eyes sparkled and Clark couldn't help but smile
in return.  "Watch out, Clark," she warned in a mock ominous tone. 
"But it sounds like you're ready to join the Lex and Lana cheerleading
squad."

Clark shook his head and looked at Lana as she slept on.  "Let's not
get carried away," he said, reaching out to brush a finger down her
cheek.

At the contact, Lana sighed.  Clark blinked.  He paused, waiting, and
she was still.  He glanced at Chloe who only shrugged.  People in comas
sighed all the time.  Clark remembered a doctor telling Lex that people
in comas sighed and mumbled and responded to stimuli.  They took
direction.  They were everything but awake and fully alert.

This was how they graded comas.  Response equals good.  Silent sleep
(like death, Clark had thought) equals not so good.

Lana's coma had equaled not so good so the sigh seemed like it should
be a big deal.  Clark tried again, placing the tip of his finger at her
bandaged temple and drawing it down her cheek to her chin.  She sighed
again, and this time Chloe murmured an 'oh gosh' under her breath that
assured Clark he wasn't hallucinating.

Lana went still for another moment, then shifted.  Her hand reached out
blindly, and Clark quickly settled his palm into hers.  He could have
wept at how warm she felt.  How alive.  He brought her fingertips up to
his lips and kissed them.

"Lana?"

She sighed again and her eyes fluttered.  As she struggled to open
them, she pushed  a word off her lips. 

"Lex."

-end-
27 Dec 2002
Continued in Finding Home VI: The Obvious

=====
http://number14.org