I.

Someone in Metropolis had decided that copyright infringement of hippies in Texas was justifiable and now every other person wandering around the city was wearing a "Keep Metropolis Weird" shirt. 

It was a pointless rabble-rousing because Metropolis had never been normal a day in its existence and Lex Luthor thoroughly disapproved of the entire campaign.  He'd gone so far as to smilingly make it a point to say that due to tax benefits provided to all small business owners in Metropolis, made possible by generosity and good budgeting, there were few conglomerates to speak of, and that the city was eclectic and alive and diverse.  Mostly, he just hated the obnoxious font that spelled out the message. 

However, the shirts did come in a very fetching shade of fatigue green, which was why Conner was shelling out eight dollars to buy one off of a street corner near city hall.  He'd take crap for it later that night, because his father would know he'd purchased it--of course Lex would know that Conner had purchased it--but it would be worth the minor victory of seeing his father roll his eyes every time Conner wore it thereafter.  Having shared living space with one of the ten most powerful men in the world for fifteen years and counting, Conner had learned the fine art of being content with small successes.

"I just need four minutes!"

Conner glanced up, folding his two dollars and shoving them into his pocket as he scanned the steps of the Howard J. Aycock building.  There was the usual smattering of battered-looking metro reporters from the local papers, and one nervous-looking kid who looked like he'd just fallen out of a two o'clock class at MetU, clutching a reporter's notebook and looking vaguely ill.

"How about three?  I talk very fast, Mr. Luthor."

And, there: Lois Lane.

She was wearing low, black leather heels with points that could gut a man and a pantsuit Conner had seen in the display window of one of the row stores on Harden Avenue.  Her hair was curlier than Conner had last seen it and she looked flushed, excited, too-thrilled to be covering a council-meeting, and too happy to be badgering Conner's dad.

The thought made Conner break out into a huge grin, turning away from the vendor and tugging the Keep Metropolis Weird tee over his gray, long-sleeved, St. Ann's Academy shirt with the fraying cuffs.  He shrugged on his messenger bag and tugged at his beltloops for a second, straightening his clothes out in a way that Geoffrey said was slightly gay.  (Conner generally disregarded any derisive comments Geoffrey made about Conner's vaguely homosexual tendencies, writing them off on either his upbringing or the fact that Geoffrey inhaled a lot of paint fumes.)  His dad said the outfit made him look like a work-study hipster, which always made Clark say that Conner's dad was an asshole.

Conner jogged up the street a little and stood on the sidewalk in front of the building, smirking as Lois walked down the steps backward, trying to shove a voice recorder in Lex's face, achieving only marginal success in either.  That was Conner's favorite thing about Lois: she was reckless.  Plus, she'd been his first girlfriend.

"I'm sorry to say I only have two and a half--and I think following me down the steps just concluded our time together for the afternoon, Ms. Lane," Conner's dad said, politely and totally infuriatingly, the same way he dismissed Conner's spirited appeal to be allowed to go to public high school.

Lois Lane scowled.  "Lex, come on.  You know this'll take you three seconds."  She rested her manicured hands on Conner's dad's chest and smiled sweetly.  "I'll make it worth your while."

Lex raised one dark auburn brow at her and said, "Lois?  Off the record?"

Her breath hitched, torn between juicy details and a byline.  "Yes?"

"I have enough Daily Planet t-shirts, mugs, travel mugs, mousepads, pens, and post-it pads to last me several lifetimes," Lex said wryly.  "In fact, I'd give serious consideration to having Clark brought up on official misconduct for blatantly looting Metropolis Communications' office supply coffers."

Lois started to glare and stopped three steps from the bottom of the enormous, granite stairway that led up to the Greek revival building, which Conner's dad always claimed had been designed during a particularly bad acid trip.

"Why, if I was his employer," Lex went on cheerfully, "I'd have him in stocks in the public square."

"You were always a little medieval," Lois muttered.

"Ah, your bias is showing, Ms. Lane," Conner's dad laughed, side-stepped her easily, and said over his shoulder, "I look forward to our next meeting."

Conner leaned against a brass elephant set out on the street as part of Metropolis' latest community revival project and smirked.  His mom always said that the expression creeped him out, reminding Clark entirely too much of Lex, but then Conner really couldn't do much to tone it down, as he had both nature and nurture working against any and all placid facial expressions: the combination of Lex's expressiveness and Clark's total inability to lie or fake it was really working against Conner's dream of being a hustler for a living.

His dad hit the sidewalk and acknowledged Conner with a tilt of his head.

"I think the kitschy hipster look went out of style a few months ago, Conner," he said.

Conner scowled.  "Dad, you've got to start being less cool.  It's beginning to embarrass me."

Lex laughed, and Conner swore he saw one of the reporters--one of the newer ones--raise his eyebrows in disbelief, like they'd never heard Lex Luthor laugh before, and it made Conner feel suddenly, unexpectedly proud to have caused it.

"Come on, I'll give you a ride home," Conner's dad said, and cocking his brow, added, "Nice shirt."

---

Conner had no great inclination to drive, a truth that alternately comforted and perplexed his father, and one which the Luthor household simply accepted.  Being a city-boy at heart--despite his grandfather's valiant efforts to indoctrinate him in the ways of pick-up trucks and "feeling the dirt under his nails"--Conner saw no reason to waste the effort involved in learning to drive when he'd been free and mobile since he was nine and figured out the Metropolis bus system.

So Lex always drove and Conner sat in the side seat, elbow hanging out of the window with the glass rolled down, letting the snapping, blue oxygen of fall pour into the windows and ruffle his hair.

"How was the meeting?" Conner asked over the roar of the city.

His dad, smirking behind his thousand-dollar sunglasses, said, "Predictably pointless.  If you ever aspire to political office, Conner, decide to start larger than city council.  It's mind numbing."

"It's important stuff," Conner argued.

Clark had spent a great deal of time explaining to Conner the import of local politics, while his father had spent a great deal of time explaining the import of manipulating local politics.  Years of warping left Conner civic-minded with a distinct streak of self-interest; he'd looked up the agenda for that week and the Kansas state senate was voting on the public works budget soon, which was not as boring as his father characterized it.

"It was a committee meeting," his father replied, laughing.  "Nothing gets decided in committee.  Things only toddle off to die in committee."

"Dad, did you just say 'toddle'?" Conner asked seriously.

They turned the corner, and the brick, eclectic charm of the city fell away to sheer walls of expensive buildings, multi-billion dollar investments, and the streets and sky seemed to turn gunmetal, as if they understood the wealth and power concentrated here.

"I'm not the one who calls Clark 'mom,'" his father shot back.

"I only did it once!" Conner argued, flushing and hoping desperately that his father didn't realize that Conner had pretty much resigned himself to thinking of Clark as his mom years ago and saw no hope of ever changing his pronouns around in order not to emasculate his mother.  And, when the thought passed through his mind, he despaired, observing that he'd just done it again.

His father appeared sympathetic.  "I understand.  Clark is very feminine."

The car whispered into an underground parking lot, and Conner glared as the engine purred to a stop, his father stroking the steering wheel like an attentive lover.

"How long are you going to hold that over my head?" Conner snapped.

Content that the car was placated, his father took off his driving gloves and folded them into the glove compartment, slipped out of the car like water, and locked it, making all the lights flicker and security systems beep before beaming over the low, sporty roof to say, "I'm sure your mother is flattered that you recognize what a woman she is."

Conner narrowed his eyes, stalking off to the elevator, saying over his shoulder, "Yeah?  Well, Your car looks like a ho.  And?  Its hood is flat."

As the elevator doors closed behind him, he heard a gasp of horror from his father.

Triumph, Conner thought.  Sometimes, it was just so easy.

---

His mom, who had really bizarre hours, was in the penthouse when Conner got there. 

Conner had now had a mother for four years, though they were fairly rocky ones. 

The first one was spent watching his mom and dad have epic battles the likes of which only children of very messy divorces knew.  The second one his dad kept having some sort of allergic reaction to there being another person in the house, somebody else Conner spoke to about his problems, the natural result of which led to more chaos and instability in the universe.  (The downside, Conner reflected glumly sometimes, when your mother was Superman and your father owned a fairly significant percentage of the world, was that when they fought, the entire galaxy felt it--literally.) 

The third year, they'd started sneaking around behind Conner's back. 

It'd been the subject of much speculation for both Conner and Geoffrey, and not until they'd conspired to set up a security camera did they realize that there were some things more horrifying than watching a sixty year old nun teach them the breaststroke--and that was watching Conner's parents making out. 

So far, he hadn't found the appropriate time to say, "Hey, Dad, Clark, I know that you're doing it.  You don't have to pretend anymore."  Some deeply selfish part of himself felt that he should never say it, and then they'd never, ever have to talk about sex, why Conner knew about sex, what his dad and his mom were doing when they were having sex, or when they did--which Conner hoped sincerely was "when we are far away." 

The point was despite the fact that Conner threatened to stab himself in the face a lot, he had no real desire to do it, but if he had to sit down and talk to his parents about their illicit sex life, he'd really have to die.  

At the moment, his mom was sitting in the living room, eating potato chips and watching Pride and Prejudice on the projection screen television.  Mr. Darcy was huge.  Clark didn't seem to mind. 

Conner dropped on the couch next to his mom, and sticking his hand in the bag of chips, he said, "Don't you work today?" 

Clark shrugged, and distracted, leaned over to drop a kiss to Conner's perpetually ruffled hair.  Conner had stopped accepting expressions of physical affection two years ago, so the fact that his dad still hugged him and kissed his temple and Clark still kissed the top of his head meant that he just didn't have the resources to enforce the law.  It was frustrating, but at least it was private.

"That's the good thing about news--sometimes, it just doesn't happen," Clark murmured, and pointed at the television.  "Why didn't anybody tell me that Jane Austen movies were this cool?"

"No clue," Conner replied.  He heard the elevator doors open to the apartment and craned his neck to say, "Hey, Dad.  Took you long enough."

"I had to comfort the car," his father said sarcastically, dropping his keys on the counter and walking over to the couch, contributing to Conner's unfortunate hair situation by ruffling it.  Conner saw out of the corner of his eye that his father's hand deftly swept the hair at Clark's temples, and that Clark closed his eyes at that.  It was only a second, but it felt very kind, and Conner was grateful for that.

Somewhere, in between Conner groaning and putting a pillow over his head to deafen the sounds of the yelling and the sullen silences that reigned the next day, Conner hadn't really noticed but Clark had effectively started living there.  He went home in the evenings but dropped by in the afternoons, and occasionally, Clark would pick him up from school or take him out for the weekend.  Slowly, so slowly Conner had stopped being surprised at Clark's being there, his mom had somehow started occupying space Conner had shared so long with just his father, and it was nice, it was comforting, it was as if it wasn't so lonely, anymore.

"She felt she wasn't good enough for me anymore.  I had to disabuse her of the idea," his father added, disappearing down the hallway toward his wing while pulling off his jacket.  And when he returned, Elizabeth was telling Mr. Darcy how she'd never marry him, and Clark was enraptured.

Lex scowled.  "I never should have bought that," he muttered.

Conner's dad said that about every movie Clark liked watching, but it never stopped him from obsessively ordering things from Amazon.com--two days ago, his dad had purchased the box-set of the Kill Bill movies, even though he had them individually.  Conner thought maybe it was a nervous tick, something to do with having a traumatic childhood or whatever.

"It's educational," Conner quipped, grinning at Clark's heartbroken face as Mr. Darcy left.

"It's rot," Lex said, but affectionately, and asked, "Half day?"

Conner sometimes suspected that it said a lot about him that his parents never thought that he was skipping class, only that school was let out early or that it was a vacation.  Sure, Conner enjoyed school to a fairly unnatural degree, but he liked to say that it was only because he liked how the nuns were so endearingly well-intentioned, and not because he was a nerd.  Plus, the fact that his best friend was there helped.

"The sprinklers went haywire.  They had the church van drop a bunch of us off downtown and the rest of the kids had to wait for their parents," Conner explained, stuffing some chips into his mouth. 

His father, though completely anal retentive about everything else had never seen it fit to be too concerned about Conner's eating habits, choosing instead to mutter about how if everything else bizarre about his son was genetic, then he probably got the metabolism, too.  That translated to Conner eating as much food as he wanted whenever he wanted and still having visible ribs, which distressed his grandmother and led to widespread guilt on the parts of his mom and dad, which was always fun.

"That school is seriously falling apart," his dad murmured thoughtfully.

"It's fine," Conner answered.  He narrowed his eyes.  "Stop giving the school money."

"I just figure maybe you'll spend less time in Saturday detention," his father shot back sarcastically.

"I," Conner said dramatically, "will never spend less time in Saturday detention.  And the nuns already think you're trying to bribe them."

"I am trying to bribe them," his dad said easily.  Clark started to say something that sounded vaguely like a reprimand but was too involved with the television to give it much attention.

"Stop being so obvious about it!" Conner whined.  "You're getting me into trouble."

The episode on the television ended with a crescendo, and Clark sighed, relaxing back into the couch like he was finally satisfied--seeing Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy at an impossible standstill, with Jane in London and Charlotte cheerfully and badly married.  Sometimes, it was really horrifying the amount of plot you could pick up from watching A&E specials with Clark.

"How's Dr. Liebhart?" Clark asked, turning around on the couch and grinning at Lex.

"Jewish," Lex deadpanned.  He looked at Conner and asked, "Are you heading out or is Geoffrey coming over today?"

Conner pushed off of the couch and started toward the kitchen, calling over his shoulder, "He's coming over."

"How're the party plans going?" his mom asked.

"Probably great," Conner admitted.  The problem wasn't going to be with the party itself, it was going to be with the fact that Geoffrey hated surprise parties.  "But I kind of get the feeling he's going to be wicked pissed with me when he finds out that I helped everybody plan this."

"He'll be so busy having a great time he won't even notice he's getting older," Clark assured him.

"That's what you think," Conner muttered, rifling around in the refrigerator until he found an orange.  "Geoffrey's deranged."

Geoffrey was the only person Conner knew who had started to agonize about his birthdays the day he turned eleven.  Nobody else spent their twelfth birthday party drinking punch like it was whiskey and moaning about how so much of his life had already passed--like fog or mist or other intangible, ephemeral things.  And since Conner was Geoffrey's best friend, he was honor-bound to humor Geoffrey the entire week before and the entire week after Geoffrey's birthday; the former of which left Geoffrey annoyed and irritable, the latter of which made him melancholy and fingerpainting vast canvases in black.

"I could spike the punch," Lex offered, wandering into the kitchen to grab one of his bottles of clear dirt water.

From the living room, Clark yelled, "I heard that!"

Lex rolled his eyes and Conner just sighed, continuing to peel the orange.

"He's probably a depressive drunk, too," Conner muttered.  "Maybe I can just give him a head injury."

"Happy birthday, here, have a concussion," Lex said, grinning.

Conner laughed and handed his father a quarter of the orange.  "You're joking but I'm not."

Conner loved oranges.  The year his father had gotten it into his mind that perhaps it would be a good, parental thing to take Conner to Disneyworld ("Disneyland is a cheap, Pacific coast backwater--we're going to Florida or bust."), Conner had gotten lost in an orange grove and spent half the day with migrant workers, speaking what little Spanish he knew and eating orange-red slices of fruit until he was sweet with it and sticky all over.  By the time Superman found him, Conner had picked up a far more elastic Spanish vocabulary which alternately scandalized and amused his father and a serious bias when it came to fruit.

"What are you getting him?" Lex asked, popping an orange slice into his mouth.

Conner shrugged.  "He has everything he wants," he said.  "And Mister Archer's buying him a new computer that's all tricked out with some serious graphic arts stuff, so that's off the list."

Lex looked thoughtful.

Conner grinned.  "Maybe I should buy him a hooker."

"I heard that!"

---

"You better not be doing anything for my birthday," Geoffrey warned.  He waved a knife for emphasis.

Conner rolled his eyes and continued to chop tomatoes.  "Everybody knows you hate your birthday.  Guam knows you hate your birthday.  Why would we celebrate something you loathe with the fiery passion of a thousand furious suns?"

Tenth grade at St. Ann's Academy for Children came with a host of indignities, not the least of which was home economics.  The school was exclusive enough so that children entered the school and continued on through their twelve years of primary education with the same fifteen to twenty-five odd children they'd met in kindergarten.  By the ninth grade, everybody already knew everybody else enough to know that nobody in their classes could cook; Conner had once tried to make instant macaroni and cheese on his own, but been thoroughly chastised by Mrs. Banner when she'd seen him lurking around the microwave.  He couldn't really blame her, considering during his younger, more irresponsible years, he'd been known to explode kitchen appliances for the hell of it.

That day, class A was tackling spaghetti and meatballs from scratch.  Conner had taken one look at the recipe and delegated meatballs to Geoffrey while he took to mangling tomatoes, which would all get cooked down anyway, so appearance was hardly paramount.  It wouldn't do, however, for their final meal to turn out as spaghetti and meatblobs, which if Conner was left to shape them was depressingly likely.

"I just don't like to be reminded that I'm inching ever closer to middle-age," Geoffrey muttered.  He poured some canola oil into a saucepan and set it on the range, turning the heat to high before he glanced at Conner, saying, "Sixteen is almost twenty."

Conner used every ounce of strength he had in his soul not to stab himself in the eye.  Instead, he cupped his hands around the last few stray cubes of tomato and dropped them into the already-bubbling pot.  It smelled good, like the bay leaf he'd dropped in there a few minutes ago, oregano, salt, and faintly of black pepper.  If he could ever convince Mrs. Banner to let him use the kitchen at home, he felt he might have a good thing going.

"And twenty is almost post-mortem," Conner deadpanned.

"So you see where I'm going with this," Geoffrey explained, and used a spoon to set the meatballs into the sizzling oil, the golden-brown smell filling their workstation.

"You're deranged," Conner said bitterly, glaring and stirring the sauce.

They were knocking elbows in front of the stovetop, but they were already used to doing that from ninth grade Biology, so it mostly only bothered Julie, who pointed out three times that if Geoffrey just angled his body or Conner moved a little they could avoid all that unnecessary bumping together.

"Next, they'll tell me I have prostate cancer," Geoffrey reported sadly.

"Okay," Conner said seriously, "I am very close to killing you with this spoon."

At the end of the period, Conner and Geoffrey found that theirs was one of the only meals that was edible, and so spent their lunch hour defending it from hungry bystanders, who wanted to know where in the hell they found freshly made pasta.

---

It was Thursday, which meant Geoffrey and Eve went off to one of the local after-school centers to provide hours of entertainment for bored children who were not artistically talented, despite Geoffrey's very best efforts to will them so.  Conner once offered to try and make them do it, but Geoffrey had given him a withering look and said, "You can't just control everybody with your mind, Conner.  I know that sounds retarded but with you--it's a distinct possibility."

Conner frowned at the memory.  So Geoffrey was right, it didn't mean he had to be such a jackass about it; Conner was only offering to help.

And anyway, it wasn't even guaranteed to work. 

Ever since that day at the Metropolis Museum of Art when he'd discovered Kryptonite, Geoffrey's heartbeat, and his mom's night-job, he'd spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to harness his telekinesis.  Ordinary fifteen-year-olds worried about getting a blowjob before their other friends and whether or not their clothes looked cool; Conner worried about keeping his temper in check so he wouldn't accidentally fling a car through the side of a building.  It hadn't happened yet, but that time he'd heard somebody from the Inquisitor calling his dad a filthy faggot had led to some pretty terrifying levitation, and only Clark's iron grip on his shoulder had brought him back to the moment soon enough that the armored truck had simply crashed the three feet back to asphalt.

The point was, it was Thursday evening, and his father had a determined expression on his face. His mom was out stalking the governor and Mrs. Banner had gone home for the night; there was no forthcoming rescue and Conner felt more than a little trapped.

"Dad, shouldn't I, you know, study for my SATs or something?" Conner asked, desperate.  Even the hideous Princeton Review crapfest that was Ten Real SATs seemed a better alternative than dealing with his father in full experimental glee.

"Conner, you're fifteen, more than old enough to learn to control your powers--"

"Power," Conner insisted.  "In the singular."

"--considering that it's volatile and is reactive to your moods I'd think you'd want to--"

"It doesn't even work all the time," Conner muttered sullenly.

"--be able to avoid hurting people with it," his father plowed on reasonably.

Conner rolled his eyes.  His dad had the best intentions, but Conner had more than a passing suspicion that Lex's investment in understanding Conner's powers were more than just for Conner's benefit.  He wasn't, despite Julie's not-so-affectionate nickname for him, a total moron, and he'd seen his father around experiments and test tubes enough to know that his dad looked at the whole thing like the best Christmas present ever.  Conner used to try to deflect his dad's attention to his mom's powers, which had led to a lot of uncomfortable snickering on his mom's part and his dad saying, "Conner, please don't be slow," which Conner figured meant "been there, done that" in Lex-ese.

"Come on, is this really necessary?" Conner asked.  He said the last word in his best bargaining voice, but his dad shot it down with his best You're Clearly Out Of Your Mind face, which trumped Conner's whining any day.

They were in Lex's office.  His father was still in his five thousand dollar suit but his one thousand dollar tie was loose around his neck, and he was talking with his hands, which was something Lex had picked up when Conner was in the sixth grade, and Lex's frustration had exceeded his considerable vocabulary.  Conner was wearing the detritus of his school uniform, and was rumpled, untucked, wrinkled, and poorly-kempt all around. 

"Clark told me about the armored car," his dad said evenly.

"Uh, that totally never happened," Conner said quickly, promising hideous fates for his mother in return his evil, narcing ways.  "Mom hallucinated it.  He was on the crack, Dad."

Lex cocked an eyebrow.  "One, you've really got to stop calling him that," he said gently, "and two, you're a terrible liar and prone to levitating things with your mind when you're angry.  I have a responsibility to society not to let this go unchecked."

"You just want me to do stupid human tricks," Conner muttered.

"That, too," Lex said smoothly, and stood up.  "Come on, I've got a machine that detects wavelengths somewhere around here."

"I hate you," Conner moaned, letting his face fall into his hands.  "I hate the whole world."

"That's very sad for you," his dad said, distracted and searching around his office.

Conner's power (singular) seemed to be the only thing left over that made him different.  All of the strength and speed that he had when he was younger had sputtered out of him, disappeared--by his fourteenth birthday, in the early stages of puberty, the last whispers of his mother's alien traits had disappeared.  What remained was an equally intriguing, much more difficult to master telekinesis, which had, in the early days, been cool, then terrifying, and now merely a chore.

For the next hour, Lex told Conner to focus on one of the Daily Planet mugs that they had laying around the house, telling him to try and move it one way or another.  From a ten foot distance, cardinal directions were easy for Conner, just a nudge one or two inches back and forth, left or right.  He had to be at least four feet closer before up and down came easily, and even then there was a little wobble, close calls, and the mug had fallen down and thudded on the lush carpet more than once.

"I suck at this," Conner moaned.

"It's not always going to be this hard," his dad reassured him, putting away his machinery and filing away the lab notebook where he kept all documentation of his and Conner's experiments.

"And if it is, I'm sure you'll just fix it for me," Conner said tartly, grinning.

There was a long pause before Conner caught his dad's expression, which was strangely detached.  Conner could read his father like a book, all the tiny ticks of punctuation, dashes and broader words and things jotted in the margins.  For so long the only person he really had to look at all the time was his father, and Conner had never really minded, because his father had a handsome face and bright, smart eyes, and a kind smile--at least for Conner.

He felt something in his chest contract, but before he could ask what was wrong, Lex said:

"That's a terrible philosophy," in a harsher tone than Conner had heard in years. 

Conner gaped for a second, but stammered, "I was just--"

"It's is not a joke, Conner," Lex snapped.  "I can't clean up your messes for the rest of your life."

His father looked seriously pissed, eyes grayer than blue and it made Conner feel small.

"Sorry," Conner said lamely.  "I didn't mean it that way."

Lex rubbed his face, and said after a moment, "I know."  He glanced over at Conner with a wane smile.  "I've had a long day.  I didn't mean to snap at you."

"Hey, that's what I'm here for," Conner said encouragingly.  "I can also provide a legitimate reason for you to be really angry with me, if you feel the urge one day.  I could burn down the library."

"I don't think that'll be necessary," Lex said.

"I could hit on a nun."

"Go to bed," Lex instructed, but he was grinning.

"Maybe I could streak during mass."

"Leave now."  Lex pointed at the door.

Conner smirked.

---

At half past two in the morning, Conner's cell phone started shrieking a slow version of REWRITE, which he'd thought was cool the last time he'd rewatched Full Metal Alchemist but was now reconsidering because it was deafening him.

"Oh my God, what now?" he moaned, flipping open the phone and pressing it to his ear.

"Conner, I've been thinking," Geoffrey said solemnly.

Conner flopped on his stomach in the tangled mess of his covers and planned Geoffrey's slow, agonizing death.  He kept his eyes closed and thought Vulcan Death Grip as hard as possible.

"I mean--I'm turning sixteen this year.  A lot of people die with they're sixteen," Geoffrey said.

"Yeah, especially when they call people at two thirty in the morning to moan about it," Conner supplied hoarsely.  "Seriously, Geoffrey, what have I ever done do you?  Did I pillage your village?  Did I rape your family's prized goat?  Why me?"

"I just wanted you to know that if anything happens to me, I want you to take care of my dad."

Conner opened his eyes to glare at the side of his nightstand, hair falling into his eyes.

"And if you have time, check in on Eve.  She might be a little upset," Geoffrey went on philosophically.  "She's a really good girl, Conner.  You should give her a chance."

"Geoffrey."

"I'm just saying.  She's nicer than she acts around you sometimes.  And when she calls you a moron, I'm pretty sure she's just joking.  Really--you'll like her.  You know.  After."

"Geoffrey," Conner said desperately, on the edge of hysterical laughter now.

"Also," Geoffrey said, ignoring Conner's tone, "I know that first time we cracked into my dad's liquor cabinet we made that stupid promise about our gay virginity, but in case I don't live long enough to pop your ass cherry--"

"Geoffrey Chaucer Archer," Conner said, enunciating every single syllable, "I swear to God, when I learn to kill people with my mind you are the very first one on the list."

"You really don't have to bother," Geoffrey said sadly.  "I'll probably be dead by then."

"I'm hanging up on you," Conner promised fiercely, completely awake, "right now."

There was a long pause.  "Hey, so I'll be at your place in forty minutes alright?"

"You better bring kugel," Conner ordered, and hung up.

---

Geoffrey was under the impression that his two-month-old relationship with Eve Anthony was a secret.  The only real secret was that everybody was taking pity on Geoffrey's naturally reticent personality and allowing him to keep up the act.  The day Geoffrey had first kissed her, Eve had all but posted fliers in every girl's bathroom declaring that Geoffrey was taken and everybody else had better step off or she'd strangle them with her school tie.

Conner tried not to take it personally that for the first since they'd met one another, Geoffrey was choosing somebody over Conner.  Intellectually, he understood it; in passing, in the hallway, when he saw Geoffrey leaning against Eve's locker and grinning at her, he still wanted to throw one of his gym shoes at her stupid, curly, shiny hair.

It didn't seem fair that of all the boys at St. Ann's, Eve would hijack Conner's best friend, but he was a mature, supportive friend, and he would not use his powers for evil.  Or something.

So as much as he wanted to beat Geoffrey with a tire iron for this entire past week, Conner had to admit he was a little bit gratified that it was nearly three in the morning, and Geoffrey was bearing kugel and headed toward Conner's house--not Eve's.  They were still best friends, Conner figured, just different now that Geoffrey had a girlfriend.

He yawned hugely and scrabbled at his hair--it really was getting long, but damned if he was going to admit his dad was right and get it cut--padding out into the hallway and toward the kitchen.  The third time he knocked into a wall, he just muttered under his breath, tugged the rainbow wristband off of his wrist, and tied what hair he could back in a high ponytail.  He looked like a total retard but it was his house and his best friend and--

There was light, diffuse and soft, smoothing along the lines of the wall, spilling out of the kitchen.  Conner frowned.

--and apparently his father, sitting at the kitchen counter, staring at a cabinet.

Conner paused, a hand on the wall, frowning at his dad's profile.  Lex looked pale, washed-out and more tired than usual.  The deep lavender circles under his eyes made him look old in the overhead light of the kitchen, and in Lex's long fingers, he loosely held a mug of what looked to be cold coffee.  Lex had neither his cell phone, his Palm Pilot, or his pager on the counter next to his still hands.

"Dad?" Conner asked quietly.

It seemed to break the moment, enough so that Conner saw his dad blink in surprise a second, before he turned to Conner.

"Conner," Lex said dumbly, and blinking, said, "Hey.  What's up?"

Conner's brow furrowed, and he opened his mouth to ask, "What the hell is going on with you?" but ended up saying, "Geoffrey's just having his annual freak-out."

It made his father laugh, and that seemed to lighten the atmosphere, and when Conner blinked and looked at Lex again, he was blue-eyed and smooth again, pale and well-composed, the guy who owned LexCorp and made Conner feel wanted and had the highest score on LexCorp's personal Counterstrike server.

"It's so out of character for him," Lex mused.  "He's usually so mellow."

"Well," Conner grumbled, stepping onto the freezing tile floor of the kitchen and wincing, "I think he gets all his freak yahoos out once a year, and I'm lucky bachelorette number one."

His father chuckled, and tightened his hand around the coffee cup, shoulders relaxing a little, eyes tracking Conner as he moved around the kitchen, first to the cabinets to pull out two dishes, and then the silver drawer to find some forks.

"So I see he's bringing kugel again," Lex said, amused.

"I'm no cheap date," Conner muttered darkly, and when his dad laughed, Conner added, "One day, I will cure him.  I swear to God.  If I have to lobotomize him, I don't care.  I would rather swab his freaking drool than listen to him tell me to take care of his girlfriend for him after he dies in some fiery accident."

"At least he's planning ahead," Lex said diplomatically, voice softer.  "Not a terrible thing."

Conner stared at his dad in horror, fingers frozen around the handle of the refrigerator door.

"You're condoning this behavior?" Conner asked.

"Well, if it gets me kugel from that place on Yeomen street," Lex said.

"Traitor," Conner hissed, and rooted around the refrigerator for Sunkist.  "I'll carry this wrong against me to my grave."

"Hm," his father said philosophically, and slid out off of the kitchen stool, saying distantly, "Save some for me and Clark for breakfast, okay?"

"Got it," Conner said, watching his father head back to his bedroom, not a little bit surprised.

It wasn't like the idea of Clark spending the night was such a foreign one.  The walls of the penthouse were very well soundproofed--thank God, Conner frequently reflected--but Clark wasn't exactly inconspicuous, and the "Oh, Clark dropped by for breakfast" excuse was probably the worst one in the history of time.  All in all, Conner was glad that his parents were getting along, or getting together, or getting laid, whatever they did when they weren't having huge arguments or sniping at one another over dinner.

But the fact of the matter was that Conner still had no idea when his dad and mom had started spending the night together again, and it was in no small part due to his dad's furious belief in discretion.  The fact that his dad had just said, "for me and Clark" was nearly a blatant admission that Clark was there, and that he would be there.

It gave Conner a weird pause, and he collated the information for the day and tried to make some sort of logical conclusion out of it, only to hear Geoffrey letting himself into the penthouse, saying, "So I saw Judy the she-male hooker again.  She says that the discount she offered you still stands," and his dad's weird behavior was the last of Conner's list of woes.

---

On Clark's thirty-fifth birthday, Lex had gotten him a waffle iron.

"What the hell is this?" Clark had asked.

"Happy birthday, honey," Lex had said indulgently, smirking.

"Awesome, waffles!" Conner had yelled, and rushed to the kitchen to plug it in while his parents scowled at one another.  A few minutes later, there'd been a small electrical fire, so Lex had ordered a new waffle iron for Clark and given Conner an hour lecture about his problems with arson.  However, once the new waffle iron arrived, Clark just brought it over to the penthouse and left it--in retrospect, Conner should have noted that as the first big clue that his parents were together, but at the time, he'd been suffering the not-insignificant self-involved angst of all eleven-year-olds and incapable of bothering.

It had turned out for the best after all, because even though Conner was no longer allowed to touch the waffle iron, Geoffrey was--and Geoffrey was very good at making Conner waffles.

"I'm surprised you didn't go to Eve's," Conner said, a little bit meaner than he'd intended to sound, but when he caught Geoffrey's mostly-amused expression, he figured that it was all right.

Geoffrey just poured milk and eggs and things into a bowl and stirred it with a big fork, saying mildly, "Weirdly, I don't think Mr. Martinez would appreciate it much if his daughter's boyfriend--who she isn't supposed to have--showed up at their doorstep--at an address I'm probably not supposed to know."

"You're way too zen about this," Conner complained.  "If my girlfriend denied my existence, I'd be pissed.  I mean, what's she got to be ashamed about?  You're not deformed or anything."

"Thanks," Geoffrey said dryly.

"I stand by my point," Conner insisted.

"And you're looking at this all wrong," Geoffrey said, grinning, pointing the batter-covered fork at Conner.  "Her family's Catholic.  Not Catholic like most Catholic people are--really Catholic.  She likes me enough to go behind her dad's back, right?  I think that's kind of nice."  He smirked.  "Kind of hot, actually, if you think about it, naughty little Catholic school--"

"Do not," Conner warned, flushing, "finish that line of thought."

"You're such a prude, Conner," Geoffrey chided, but gently.

"Which is something that you claim, I dispute, and we have decided not to argue over anymore because neither of us can throw a punch to save our lives," Conner finished, looking out the kitchen window and seeing night still cloaking the city in deep, midnight blues.

Conner had his own--what he felt were very good--reasons not to want to broach the subject of Eve and Geoffrey and what exactly constituted a hot girl, but mostly they revolved around the fact that he was starting to get the impression he'd never been and never would be interested in girls, period.  Also, the fact that he ended up surfing more gay than straight porn tipped the scales a little bit.  It was not, he thought strangely, too weird a concept; if sexuality were genetic, he was kind of a sure thing already.

It was something to be discussed at length--with somebody else, Conner decided, because if he could tell Geoffrey most everything, Conner figured that liking boys was a fair caveat.

"Also, I figured it's kind of tradition at this point," Geoffrey said brightly.  "I am realistic about my imminent mortality, and you tell me what a moron I am.  I bring pastries to placate your dad and we eat waffles."

"You're such a goddamn drama queen," Conner muttered into his forearm, watching Geoffrey putter around the kitchen through half-lidded eyes.  "Nobody else does this."

"You're really the last person on the earth who can call anybody a drama queen, Conner," Geoffrey shot back, stirring a bowlful of waffle batter.

"Full of shit," Conner murmured darkly.  "Full of vile and unending shit."

"Says you," Geoffrey snapped back.  He cast Conner a speculative expression.  "What would you do if I died?"

Conner lifted his head, giving Geoffrey his most poisonous expression.

"I'm serious," Geoffrey said darkly.  He set down the batter and looked at Conner with solemn eyes; it made Conner sit up straight in the kitchen stool.

"You're not going to die," Conner insisted.

There was no way of predicting it, but occasionally, Geoffrey went into a quiet, thoughtful mood, and the way he looked at Conner made Conner's stomach go into knots, made him feel flushed, made him wonder if maybe there wasn't something Geoffrey was keeping from him--a lot of somethings.  Mostly, it just made Conner nervous.

"That wasn't the question, though," Geoffrey replied, and Conner silently cursed Geoffrey's three week tenure in Lincoln-Douglas debate for turning him into an insurmountable verbal enemy.

Conner rolled his eyes and propped his head up on his palms, elbows on the countertop, watching Geoffrey spooning out batter onto a sizzling waffle iron, watching him not setting anything on fire, watching him be Geoffrey.  The same Geoffrey that Conner had known what felt like every day of his life, or most of what he remembered, at least; the Geoffrey Conner seemed to be able to get along with whether or not he was in a good mood, seemed to be able to fight with and be all right with and be upset with.  What would Conner do if Geoffrey died, Geoffrey asked, Conner thought hatefully.

"I'd laugh and dance on your grave," Conner finally snapped, scowling, "now make our freaking waffles and stop being such a jackass."

Geoffrey grinned, and the seriousness of the moment evaporated.

"That's what I figured," he said demurely, and made his freaking waffles.

---

At some point, they relocated to Conner's bedroom, where Conner laid on his bed and pretended to listen to Geoffrey talk about how many diseases to which he could fall victim now that he was sixteen, how teenaged death rates were skyrocketing due to cars, and how there were always freak accidents, too.  Then, Geoffrey started in on how much of his meager existence he'd already wasted and what would he do when he looked up one day and he was suddenly forty-five and had never made anything of himself.

Conner for the most part ate his waffle, and then drifted in and out of consciousness until he heard the shuffling sounds of human activity outside of his closed bedroom door.  He blinked three times, saw that sun was streaming in through his window, and that it was half past ten in the morning.  Also, Geoffrey was asleep, drooling on the foot of Conner's bed, body twisted into a weird L-shape to accommodate where Conner had passed out face-down in his pillows.  At some point, somebody had come in a thrown a blanket over them both. 

It'd be kind of sweet--if they didn't end up doing this every year the night before Geoffrey's birthday.

Conner picked his way around Geoffrey and out of bed, spent a good five minutes digging a piece of ground-in waffle out of his rug, and went to the bathroom.  When he stepped out, Geoffrey was sitting up in bed, cracking his neck, and grumbling, "We really have to stop doing that.  I'm going to end up crippled."

"'S your fault," Conner said hoarsely.

Geoffrey made an indistinct noise and rolled off of the bed, yawning hugely and trudging into Conner's bathroom, kicking the door shut behind him.

"At least you did it on a Friday this time," Conner muttered, and stumbled out into the hallway and toward the kitchen, where if he got there at just the right time, there would be coffee and no disapproving glances from the adults in the household.

The coffee argument was old.  Conner said that if he wanted to drink it, he didn't see any problems with drinking it; Lex said that the same argument could be made about alcohol or acid or blood, which was about the point where Conner and Clark both rolled their eyes and then it became a whole different argument altogether.  The first time Conner had tried to convince his father that drinking coffee was perfectly normal and fine for a then-twelve year old kid, he'd said, "But Lois does it!" which was the worst argument ever.  At least he hadn't followed it up with, "But Lois always lets me drink it when we hang out together!" which would have gotten him locked up in a high tower in a Scottish castle waiting for his prince(ss) charming.

But it was a Saturday morning, which in recent years meant his father slept in, his mother had slept over, and that Conner had the kitchen to himself, since Mrs. Banner had smirked and said that she felt the Luthor household could function just fine over the weekend without her German efficiency.

Aside from some hums and creaks of the penthouse, it seemed all quiet.

Conner grinned, reached around the organic, fairly-traded, shade-grown by small cooperative farmers Breakfast Blend coffee, grabbed the grey Tupperware container behind it, and tipped out some of the French roasted beans his dad had flown in once a week into the coffee grinder.  Conner figured that if his dad hid the stuff, then it was practically an engraved invitation for Conner to find it and pillage ruthlessly.  Whenever he said stuff like that out loud, his mom always muttered about how it wasn't his genes or anything. 

A few minutes later, the smell of fresh coffee was filling the penthouse, and it seemed to lure Geoffrey out of the bathroom.  He flopped down tousle-haired in yesterday's clothes and muttered something about orange juice into the kitchen counter.

"People on the edge of death don't need food," Conner said, mostly to be mean.

"I'll kill you," Geoffrey managed, but fell mostly-silent, making sad, desperate sounds.

Conner enjoyed nothing more than the rub Geoffrey's face in the fact that prior to noon, he was incapable of avoiding a parked bus.  A snotty voice in his head pointed out that it was also really cool that Eve definitely didn't know that about her little boyfriend.  The thought was a little jarring, so Conner shook his head and made up a bowl of Cheerios, stuck a spoon in it, and put it within easy reach of where Geoffrey had collapsed on the counter.

Conner then made himself some toast, poured a mug of coffee, stirred in some creamer, and had finished half of it before he narrowed his eyes at where Geoffrey seemed to have fallen asleep on the counter again.

"Geoffrey," he said, and when that garnered no response, Conner sighed and punched Geoffrey hard in the shoulder, which made his head shoot up, his eyes dart about wildly until they landed on the Cheerios, at which point Geoffrey fell upon the bowl like the ravenous teenaged boy he was and seemed to be at least somewhat awake.

There was a short silence before Conner said, "So I'm kind of worried about my dad."

Geoffrey swallowed and said, "Yeah?"

"A little, yeah," Conner mused.  "He's been looking really tired recently."

"Maybe that just means your mom and dad have been getting along real well," Geoffrey leered.

Conner threatened Geoffrey with his mug.  "I will seriously kill you with this."

Geoffrey cocked his eyebrow.  "Your dad's a CEO, Conner.  He's not going to be fresh as a daisy all the time, you know.  Have you been checking out the business section lately?"

"'Fresh as a daisy'?" Conner asked, a little bit horrified.

"I repeat: have you been checking out the business section lately?"

The guilty thought that flashed through Conner's mind must have flashed across his face at the same time, because Geoffrey said, "See, you don't even know what's really going on, and you're all paranoid already."  He smiled broadly.  "Go read the paper, call up the Wicked Witch of the West--"

"Lois is not the Wicked Witch of the West," Conner interrupted, frowning.

"--and bring me more Cheerios," Geoffrey finished.

"You know," Conner said, annoyed, "I'm thinking of rescinding the offer of my ass cherry."

"I'm heartbroken," Geoffrey deadpanned, holding out his cereal bowl expectantly.

"I don't think I want to know."

Conner whipped around to see Clark watching them from kitchen doorway, eyebrows nearly touching his hairline.  Conner felt all the blood in his body rush to his face immediately, and he had just enough time to scowl at Geoffrey, who looked nearly as red as Conner felt, before Clark said, "I'm going to pretend that I primped in the dining room mirror, and that I totally just missed that last part of the conversation, all right?"

Conner nodded furiously, trying to simultaneously will time to reverse as well as to banish the image of Clark primping.  "Yes, all right.  This is a fantastic plan."

"I am one hundred percent behind that, Mr. Kent," Geoffrey agreed.

Clark smirked, and clearing his throat, he said, "Good morning, Conner.  I see you're eating a wholesome, complete breakfast and--" Clark laughed "--stealing Lex's coffee again."

"I just wanted it more," Conner said, feeling the last, jittering remnants of embarrassment knock around his chest--not in the least alleviated by the speculative glance that his mom gave him, one that was lingering and thoughtful and not a little bit nervous.  Inside Conner's head, a voice that sounded a lot like his own shouted, "Shit!"

"Good morning, Geoffrey," Clark said, stepping into the kitchen and heading straight for the coffee.  Conner figured that the caffeine addiction was genetic, too.

"Morning, Mr. Kent," Geoffrey said.

"Excited about your birthday?" Clark asked innocently.  Conner nearly choked on his toast, and covered his laugh by coughing very loudly while Geoffrey scowled.

"Nearly peeing my pants," Geoffrey muttered darkly, and studying the expressions on Conner and Clark's faces, his frown deepened, and he said, "I don't see how everybody can be so happy about the yearly marker of your ever-burgeoning--"

"And I see Geoffrey's awake and aware of his age," Lex said, weary but amused, striding into the kitchen.  Conner was forced to cover his mouth this time around he was laughing so hard, and Geoffrey mouthed something that looked distinctly like, "I hate you" in Conner's general direction.

"Morning, Mr. Luthor," Geoffrey said resentfully at his still-empty cereal bowl. 

"I see we're as upbeat as usual about our slow shuffle off this mortal coil," Lex said pleasantly.

Conner narrowed his eyes at his parents for a moment before he realized what seemed so very off about the picture.  It was a Saturday morning, his mom and dad were both in their pajamas, lounging around the kitchen picking on Geoffrey--clearly unconcerned with what their impressionable, teenaged son thought of their already-questionable relationship.  Conner barely kept the triumphant smile from curling across his mouth.

"Oh yeah," Geoffrey muttered, "Hamlet has nothing on me."

"Good morning, Geoffrey," Lex said tolerantly, and smiled at Conner.  "Morning."

"Good morning," Conner chirped, and because he had a truly negligible amount of self-control, a wide, horrible smile spread across his face.  "So, I guess Clark got here extra early, huh?" he asked, wide-eyed and bland.

Clark and Lex both went blank for a second and Geoffrey respectfully became fascinated by a fern that was sitting next to the French doors in the breakfast area, basking in the morning sunshine on the balcony.  Conner, because he was their spawn, felt no such compunction, and continued to stare at his parents, both of whom were dressed in t-shirts and pajama pants and looked married, which would be a nice change of pace from their normal duck-and-cover sexual antics.  Conner was as open-minded as any test-tube baby made from the DNA of a man and a male alien could be, but everybody had their limits, and he could only handle his dad and mom having sex if they were going to be committed about it.

"Yeah, super early--" Clark started desperately.

"Clark stayed in the guest room last night, Conner," Lex interrupted gently, cocking his brow.  But even as he said it, Lex's hand was on Clark's elbow, and his fingers looked white and smooth against Clark's golden-brown skin.  Conner was fascinated by that contact: out in the open, nobody's big secret, more real--right in the middle of another lie.  "You can knock that idea right out of your wicked little mind."

Clark's face closed over, and Conner's grin fell.

Conner had harbored suspicions about his parents since before he'd met his mother face to face for the first time.  When he'd been nine, and started his noble quest to root out his genetic origins, he'd entertained--very briefly--the idea of his dad and mom getting married after Conner sorted everything out and they shook hands and agreed to play nice.  In retrospect, Conner admitted that it had been childish and the result of having watched the Lindsey Lohan version of The Parent Trap a truly obscene number of times.

But since Clark had become such a huge part of his life, Conner couldn't help but note how the circles under his father's eyes had lightened, that Lex tore himself away from work on Saturday mornings more and more frequently.  And, Conner noted most happily, how when his dad laughed, the ghosts that had been in his eyes seemed to have disappeared, fading into the black corona around his father's blue, blue irises.

Conner didn't kid himself that it was because his father's nearly-weekly trips to parent/teacher conferences had ended along with Conner's stupidly-adventurous streak.

Clark was funny and surprising; he knew everything there was to know about Metropolis local politics and business, and nothing about ancient Etruscans.  Clark laughed at Lex's nerd-jokes and knew to buy Conner's dad Warrior Angel memorabilia in mint condition so that it could be locked away in a glass case and stared at in admiration.  Clark knew Lex took two sugars and no cream in his strong, black coffee, and let himself get hustled at pool every time, even though Conner figured by now Clark probably knew better.  Clark worried that Conner didn't get to spend enough time with family and worried about the untoward influences of being around nuns all day, but he still came to Conner's school activities with a shy, hopeful grin on his face.  Clark took Conner to lame movies Lex wouldn't be caught dead watching, and when Conner wandered into the Daily Planet newsroom, Clark taught Conner the keystroke shortcuts in QuarkXPress and what a graf was, and they made up stupid headlines for important stories.

It was, Conner admitted, a little hurtful, in a distant, detached way to think that after all of these years, it'd taken somebody other than himself to make his father better, to put things right.  But in a very selectively Machiavellian way, Conner could focus on the larger issues at hand, because it was difficult to feel sullen and unimportant when your father smiled more, seemed to sleep better, looked at you with the sort of comfortable fondness that made Conner long for home whenever things weren't going his way.

Things had been better since Conner found Clark. 

"It'd--I mean, it'd be okay.  If you guys were going out, I mean," Conner said, half out of mostly-fruitless hope.

Lex looked placid.  "I understand what you're trying to do, Conner, but--"

"We're not," Clark interrupted softly, and smiled apologetically at Conner, lying through his big, white teeth.  He reached out a hand and dropped it onto Conner's mop of hair.  "We don't have to be together to be your mom and dad, you know."

Conner stared at them for a second, and tried not to seethe.  When that failed, he cleared his mind, and forced himself to say, "Yeah.  Hey, sorry.  I was just curious."

For a second, Conner thought his mom looked apologetic.

"Anyway," Lex said, "I called a board meeting--"

"On a Saturday?" Clark asked, narrow-eyed.

"--and it wouldn't do to be late for my own party," Lex finished, ignoring Conner's mom.  He smiled wanly at Conner and nodded at Geoffrey before he disappeared toward his bedroom again. 

A few awkward seconds later, Clark smiled and said, "I'm going to head out, too."

Two changes of clothes, some shuffling, and a pair of strangely distant goodbyes later, Conner was left alone with Geoffrey in the kitchen, trying to blow the window out of its frame because he had to direct his rage somewhere, and there wasn't really a profitable outlet anywhere near him.

His hands were tight around his coffee cup, and it seemed like a long time passed before he felt Geoffrey's hand on his wrist, fingers gentle.  It broke his concentration just enough so that he caught Geoffrey's eyes as they flickered down at the mug, and when Conner looked down, he noted that the coffee had boiled down to nothing, just a brown rim at the bottom of the cup--that was when he noticed the ceramic was hot.

Then, Conner dropped the mug to stare at his bright red palms, pain starting to register.

"Holy shit!" Geoffrey yelled, scrambled down from the kitchen stool, nearly leaped over the counter, grabbed Conner's hands by the wrists, and shoved him toward the sink, where Geoffrey made Conner hold his hands under a stream of cold water.

"Ow," Conner finally said, staring at his hands, which were starting to blister.  "Oh," he said again, eyes widening.  "Oh, ow!  Shit!  Ow!"

Geoffrey looked at him reproachfully, smoothing his thumb carefully over the curve of flesh where Conner's thumb met his palm in a way that technically should have been painful--considering the third-degree burns Conner had just managed to inflict on himself--but was actually kind of nice, in a thoroughly distressing way.

"You're such a moron," Geoffrey muttered under his breath, squinting at Conner's hands.

Conner just didn't have the strength of mind not to perve on his best friend and take his hand away like a good boy, so he sulked and watched the water roll off his palms, which were now mottled red and white and hideous.

"I can't believe they just lied to my face like that," Conner muttered, staring at the stainless steel of the sink and ignoring his hands.  "God, that really hurts."  Unsuccessfully.

Geoffrey's mask of irritation was starting to slip.  "Maybe we should go to the hospital."

"Hey, Doctor," Conner said, mock-happy, "my parents are lying to me about fucking--"

"Conner," Geoffrey said warningly, the same way he did every time he sensed that Conner was just working himself up for the sake of working himself up.  It was, aside from practical and well-intentioned, totally annoying.

Conner's shoulders slumped accordingly and he said, barely intelligible, "I'm just annoyed."

"I got that," Geoffrey said gently, and let go of Conner's hands, which led to Conner viciously quashing the tiny note of regret that resonated in his head.  "I'll clean up the broken pieces--you stay here and don't destroy anything with your mind," Geoffrey instructed, grinning.

Conner watched the water running over his hands and did the exact opposite.

---

Since the tides of Geoffrey's temporary emotional breakdown over his birthday were well-documented, Conner, Mr. Archer, and Eve had had planned around them.  It was pretty easy to keep Geoffrey distracted, considering the week leading up to his birthday he spent most of the time moping and surfing the web, looking up freak diseases that afflicted sixteen year olds and sighing at the accomplishments of other, younger people. 

So while Eve and Mr. Archer were decorating the third floor of the warm, narrow-roomed brownstone on Alston Avenue, Conner and Geoffrey were ten blocks and four cross-streets away at Metropolis General. 

"This is so humiliating," Conner muttered.  "I had plans, too." 

"I think this is pretty fitting, all things considered," Geoffrey said philosophically, leaning back against the medicine-green walls of the emergency room. 

Across the room, there was a mom scowling at her son, who had three fingers jammed into the mouth of a handheld vacuum, some people with profusely bleeding gashes, and one person who was squirming uncomfortably in his seat, but who aside from his nearly tomato-red face, seemed totally well.  Conner figured it was better not to know. 

"It's your birthday, I was going to do best friend stuff," Conner argued. 

"Conner," Geoffrey said reasonably, "on the day everybody I know officially marks my inching ever closer to death--" he made a broad hand motion "--is there really a better place to showcase what birthdays really are than a hospital?" 

"I would hit you," Conner promised, "but it would actually hurt me more than you." 

Geoffrey smirked, which was disturbingly cute, so Conner looked away and stared at the squirming, blushing guy, who seemed to be eyeing Geoffrey with abnormal interest.  Narrowing his eyes, Conner leaned to his left, until his and Geoffrey's arms were pressed together in what he hoped was a clear signal that people blushing and squirming in the ER weren't going to have anything to do with Conner's best friend.  The man gave Conner a once-over, rolled his eyes, and resumed fidgeting in his seat. 

Torn between feeling insulted and disgusted on Geoffrey's behalf, Conner said, "So you know all the doctor's going to do is clean this in the most painful way possible, right?" 

"And possibly some other things that they learned in school," Geoffrey said glancing at his watch. 

Conner looked, too, eyes widening as he realized that it was nearly two, which was when Eve had made a date to meet Geoffrey at a bookstore to keep him distracted while Conner went to pick up Geoffrey's birthday present. 

"You don't have to wait around," Conner said earnestly.  "Seriously--they're going to call me in any minute.  They'll ask me how I'm such a moron.  I'll say something about trying to make breakfast.  Go--you have a date with Eve, right?" 

Geoffrey gave him a strange look.  "How do you know that?" 

"She told me when I was curling her hair," Conner said sarcastically. 

He was doing a quick mental calculation: Geoffrey would be about ten, fifteen minutes late, but would arrive grinning and blushing and explaining how he'd had to schlep Conner to the ER.  Eve would smirk, and distract Geoffrey with the architecture section in CitiBooks until five.  (There'd probably be some inappropriate giggling and touching in there somewhere, but Conner found it was better for his blood pressure if he didn't think about it.)  At some point, Conner would to do that thing where he bought a present.  He was starting to debate the relative merits of writing "IOU YOU ANNOYING BASTARD" on a piece of cardboard and gift-wrapping it.  

"Go on.  You've been looking at your watch."  Conner grinned, self-deprecating.  "You know she'll have your balls for breakfast if you don't show up." 

Geoffrey made a face, but got up anyway.  "Are you sure you don't want me to stay?" Geoffrey asked uncertainly.  "Because I could just run outside and call her." 

"And get me lynched Monday?  No thanks," Conner laughed.  He waved Geoffrey off with one sore hand.  "Go on, get out of here." 

It took another five minutes of placating and bargaining and promises he'd get his hands looked at before Geoffrey finally managed to leave, and five more before Conner got called.  Predictably, a doctor who didn't look much older than Conner asked questions about how Conner had managed to burn himself so badly and proceeded to clean out the wound in as painful a way as possible.  Then, there was some goo and bandages.   

While Conner did not, actually, have third-degree burns, just a few really uncomfortable spots which required lancing, everybody was making a big deal out of it. 

"I should call your parents," Dr. Dougie said with all the uncertainty of a third year med student. 

Conner made a sincere face.  "I don't think that's a very good idea." 

The doctor frowned.  "You're underage, Mr. Luthor." 

"My dad's in a board meeting," Conner said, and figured there was about a fifty-fifty chance he was actually telling the truth.  "Nothing annoys LexCorp shareholders more than having their annual report held up because of something totally inane, you know." 

"LexCorp?" the doctor squeaked, and looked at Conner's chart again. 

By the time Conner was pounding the pavement, feet tapping the rusted stairs down into the nearest subway station, he had only an hour and a half left before Eve ushered Geoffrey back home and their entire class popped out from behind the furniture. 

It took him thirty minutes and four close calls to reach the build site.  There, he thanked Jesus ("Hay-SEUS--not--oh, nevermind.") the foreman who spoke perfect, Castilian Spanish--and who was horrified that Conner did not--for hanging around and letting him in, bolted into the main trailer/office, grabbed a gray and purple hardhat and a metal lunchbox and headed back toward Metropolis proper, checking his watch compulsively. 

It was four fifty-three when he finally hit the back steps of Geoffrey's brownstone, and by the time he got into the living room after depositing Geoffrey's gift on the kitchen table, Conner flopped down onto the ground, heaving for breath like a dying fish as all the lights in the room went out and Mr. Archer hushed everyone. 

Garrison, who seemed more lucid than usual, was sprawled out next to Conner on the carpet, whispered, "Hey, what happened to your hands?" just as Conner heard the high, lilting curl of Eve's laughter at the front door as it opened with a creak.

---

The party was, predictably, a disastrously good time.  Geoffrey spent the whole time mortified and trying to get five minutes alone with his father so he could strangle the man; everybody else had fun.  Class A was in full representation, which meant that Julie was directing, Garrison was making everybody in the room laugh, Randall was inspecting all of the food for whether or not it had any hydrogenated anything, and Conner was playing Metal Gear Solid with Mr. Archer. 

Normally, Conner would have one arm around Geoffrey's shoulders and be harassing him about how he always had such a dire outlook about everything, but today, Geoffrey had both arms around Eve, and Conner was beating the shit out of Major Raikov, despite potential later consequences.  As soon as Raikov was appropriately stuffed into a locker, Conner passed the controller back to Mr. Archer, who regarded him with a raised eyebrow, but didn't ask. 

"Anger management," Conner explained. 

Which made Mr. Archer grin, because Conner had said the same thing when he'd been convincing Mr. Archer to buy Geoffrey Grand Theft Auto 6.  "You're in a snit." 

Mr. Archer was the only person in the world who still talked like that, which also explained why Geoffrey said things like 'fresh as a daisy,' But Conner was determinedly not thinking about Geoffrey at the moment. 

"Yeah, well," Conner said evasively. 

"Sharing your best friend is a pretty rough deal," Mr. Archer said earnestly, which made Conner cast a sharp him a sharp expression.  "The first girlfriend is always hard, Conner." 

"It is totally freaky," Conner said hotly, "how you do that." 

"So how long have they been dating?" Mr. Archer asked casually, leaning back to peer through the doorway of the media room. 

Conner gave him a Look.  The thing about Mr. Archer was that he a Kansas Supreme Court Justice, and none of his questions ever really came out sounding casual.  On the one hand, it made otherwise potentially lame field trips to the courthouse seem cool--on the other, it made other, potentially cool fieldtrips to places that shouldn't have been politicized lame.  And then on the third, invisible hand, it made Mr. Archer really bad at faking subtlety. 

"About two months now," Conner said finally, taking pity. 

Mr. Archer glanced through the doorway into the family room again, where Geoffrey was letting Eve play with his fingers while everybody was gathered around the big screen TV that was showing Old School.  Conner tried not to think about how Eve was probably practically in Geoffrey's lap at this point, which may have been the whole idea behind the movie, anyway.  When Geoffrey had proposed which movie to watch, Conner had rolled his eyes and volunteered to distract Mr. Archer, which was why he was here, watching Snake sneak around a Russian military base and-- 

"Is--is that man grabbing me in the crotch?" Mr. Archer asked, horrified, hands frozen on the PS3 controller. 

Conner winced.  He'd forgotten about this part.  "Um.  Maybe he missed your hand?" he tried. 

Mr. Archer cocked an eyebrow.  "Right," he deadpanned. 

"Or maybe," Conner said, knowing that there was a reason Geoffrey couldn't lie worth shit, "that big, electric Russian guy is Major Raikov's boyfriend.  And maybe he's angry about us stealing Raikov's uniform and wearing his face and jamming his nude body into a locker." 

"I'd say that was warranted," Mr. Archer said philosophically. 

"Yeah, we're total jerks, really," Conner agreed. 

They watched The Boss come in and beat the living crap out of Snake on the screen, and after a few seconds of that, Mr. Archer said, flat out, "So how bad is this movie--if you volunteered to distract me this time?"

Conner winced again. 

"I've said it before and I'll say it again, Conner," Mr. Archer said, grinning, "they didn't let me become a judge because I was the dullest crayon in the box." 

"I'm starting to get that," Conner admitted, and added, "It's not that bad.  Just a lot of really misogynist humor and this hazing thing that goes really horribly wrong.  It involves penises and a rope and some rocks, so, yeah." 

This time, Mr. Archer winced.  "Glad I'm not there to see it." 

Conner thought about Geoffrey curling, blond hair, and Eve's white fingers, stroking through it. 

"Me, too," Conner muttered.

---

The party started to wrap itself up toward eleven, which was six more hours than Julie and Garrison had been in a room together of their own volition for years.  (Privately, Geoffrey and Conner had a running bet that those two were going to end up married.)  Their classmates all said their goodbyes and disappeared into the sleepy, October-blue night, and Conner, about to begin the traditional post-party clean-up and presentation of his gift, realized that Geoffrey was talking to his dad about taking Eve to a movie at the all-night theater. 

"Did you even get Geoff a gift?" Eve asked in what was probably a normal voice.  Conner thought it sounded like the agonized shrieking of a thousand wailing souls in hell--just how many sacrifices was he going to have to make so Geoffrey and Eve could slobber all over one another in private? 

"Please," Conner begged, "never call him that again--ever." 

Eve rolled her huge, deep-green eyes at Conner, which reminded him yet again how undeniably pretty she was, which only seemed to make him even more irritable.  "Honestly, Conner, Geoff doesn't mind it--why should you?"

"Because it's hideous," Conner retorted, feeling a flush in his cheeks.  They were standing on the sidewalk outside of the brownstone; Conner was--in theory--about to head home, and Eve was waiting for her date.  "Because it's hideous and unacceptable and wrong.  That's why." 

Eve arched one dark eyebrow.  "You're such a moron, Conner." 

"So you've told me," Conner said darkly, "many, many times in the past, Evelyn Agatha." 

One thing that Conner tended to forget about Eve was that even though she looked soft all over--and she did, which was one of the things that Geoffrey raved about--she was scary as shit and could totally kill Conner with her bare hands. 

Not that Conner was going to let on that he was afraid of her or anything, so when she got right in his face, eyes narrowed so that in the twilight all Conner could really see was a dark fringe of thick lashes, he put his pride to the sticking place and glared right back. 

"You know, Conner, I promised Geoffrey I'd try to get along with you--" 

"You're doing an awesome job," Conner ridiculed.  "I'm feeling all close to you, really." 

Technically, it was true--there couldn't have been more than two inches between their faces. 

"--But I think considering your truly awe-inspiring depths of stupidity--" 

"Don't be a bitch, Agatha," Conner snapped, "I'm still making the toast at your wedding as soon as you trick him into marrying you." 

"--I'd be more than forgiven for kicking you as hard as possible between the--" 

"Hey, are we all friends here?" 

Conner felt a tiny flicker of triumph when Eve jumped a foot in the air, eyes growing round in surprise, whipping around to see Geoffrey on the steps of the brownstone.  Conner waited half a beat before he leaned back, looking innocently at Geoffrey, who was frowning at him, one hand on Eve's wrist. 

"We're fine," Conner said, just as Eve yelled, "Conner's being a moron!" 

Geoffrey opened his mouth for a second, but shut it, and flashed Conner a pleading expression, which made Conner see red.  He took three deep breaths, and pasted the worst, most artificial smile he could dig up onto his face and said, "I'll just get out of here." 

"I'll talk to you on Monday," Geoffrey said, and it meant, "I'm really sorry." 

He gave Geoffrey a bland, blank look, and added, "If you want your gift, your dad can give it to you later." 

The expression of guilt that stole across Geoffrey's face at the mention of a gift felt really, really good, especially when Conner realized that Geoffrey had let go of Eve's wrist, but Conner just smiled, waved, and headed down the street before Geoffrey could say anything. 

It was not, Conner reflected later, his finest moment.

---

Nor, Conner thought darkly, was it his parents'. 

He'd gotten three steps out of the elevator and into the penthouse when he heard them, angry, tight voices drifting from the kitchen, where a shaft of orange light spilled through a doorway into the dining room.  From the foyer, Conner could only see the occasional flicker of a shadow when his mother or father moved across the kitchen floor, burnt sienna shapes, fuzzy on the walls and the floor. 

"I thought we were going to tell him."  Clark sounded hurt. 

Conner's eyebrows shot up to his hairline, and he tiptoed forward, around the ultramodern table and chairs, flattening himself against the wall shared by the kitchen and dining room, and peered around the corner just enough to see his mom and dad facing off in front of the sink. 

"Something came up," Conner's dad said tersely, loosening his tie and looking paler and thinner than Conner had seen him in a long time. 

Clark was still wearing his sneakers, which meant that either they'd just gotten in, or Clark was about to leave.  Conner was hoping perversely for the first one; even if it'd been ages since their last knock-down, drag-out fight, and even if Conner had been grateful for every single day that had passed without one, fighting was better than suffocating tension that fell over everything. 

"Thanks for discussing it with me before you changed your plans," Clark said sarcastically. 

"Let me remind you that you were starting to deny it, too--granted, poorly--when I came in." 

"I was making a joke," Clark contended. 

"I'm really not in the mood for this, Clark," Lex muttered. 

Clark scowled, and Conner winced.  This was not a good sign.  Mom was about to go whiny and self-righteous and Dad was about to hit full-scale bitter, which were not their best sides. 

"Sorry," Clark said tersely, "I was under the impression we were in a relationship--" 

Holy shit, was all Conner could think.  Holy crap.  It was like he could feel the nuclear fallout. 

"--but I see I've been presumptuous.  I guess just because--" 

"Don't, Clark," Lex warned. 

"--we fuck it's too much to hope that--" 

"I'm not the one who left!" Lex exploded, eyes blazing.   

It made Conner jump, but all things considered, nobody heard. 

All the blood drained out of Clark's face. 

"I'm not the one who leaves, Clark!" Lex yelled. 

Lex was red-faced and shaking, and Conner saw his mom taking two steps back. 

"I'm not the one who told lies and I'm not the one who put every single goddamn fucking thing ahead of making it work out the first time we tried to do this, okay, Clark?" 

Conner's eyes bulged.  The words 'last time we tried to do this' knocked around in his head and he slumped against the wall, turning to stare out across the room, feeling like somebody had just kicked him in the gut. 

"And it's gotten six hundred times more complicated," Lex went on, "and the very last thing I need to be doing is dragging Conner into something that I'm not sure about." 

"You're not 'sure' about?" Clark bellowed.  "What the hell are you saying?" 

Conner shoved away from the wall and bolted toward the door; as the elevator doors were closing, the last words he heard were his parents, desperate and angry and accusatory, saying was that this time around, it wasn't like it was all those years ago.

---

Normally, Conner would be halfway to Geoffrey's house already.  Normally, he'd already be there, because normally on Geoffrey's birthday Conner spent the night and they played video games until they were groggy enough to be philosophical. 

Today, he was standing in the West Gate-Tallaway subway station, staring at the map of the Metropolis subway system like he was new or something. 

What was more depressing was that he couldn't think of anywhere to go.  All of the coffee shops and bookstores he liked would either already be closed, or well on their way; going home was the last thing he wanted to do, so blowing off steam at CitiBooks until one in the morning would only do so much good when Jerryna the transsexual clerk kicked him out. 

His dad wouldn't be expecting him back until Sunday, so he had a free pass for one night out in Metropolis--and what was he doing?  Standing in the subway station feeling like a loser. 

Conner scowled at the subway map, with all its numbered lines, 1 going from Garden Row into Millionaire Mile, 4 from Halloway Mill into Paddington, edging around West Eden into--Advent Circle.  Where Lois lived. 

Conner hadn't, he realized with a sudden shock of guilt, talked to Lois in weeks.  Since school had started and Geoffrey found the allure of females stronger than his natural lameness, Conner felt like he'd been spending all of his free time either helping Geoffrey plan how to ask Eve out--or now, in retrospect, figure out how to convince his mom to run really fast around the Earth and turn back time so he could undo it and be spared the indignity of it all. 

Then again, Conner wasn't exactly enchanted with either of his parents at the moment, and he doubted negotiations would go well if he attempted it.  He'd learned over the years that trying to talk to his mom and dad while he was infuriated with them--which had, so far, only happened twice--was the most foolish and totally pointless experience ever.  His mother got standoffish and self-righteous, and was likely to turn on his Superman voice and lecture; his dad just cocked his eyebrow and had security escort him out of the room until Conner managed to keep a civil tongue in his head.  Neither of which were conducive to Conner getting his way. 

And upon further consideration, Conner should have been talking to Lois all these weeks, since she was his best and most reliable source of accurate information and provided the very best commentary on all of Conner's problems.  Ever since he'd turned twelve and she'd explained how though she loved him and would forever, it was probably best if they saw other people, she'd been his second best friend.  Had she been aware of the entire fiasco-in-progress that was Geoffrey and Eve's relationship, she would have had a few wise words and suggestions, Conner was nearly sure.  Hopefully, they wouldn't be her traditional, "Get him drunk and never tell your dad what happens afterwards," because all that had come of that was a wicked hangover and that thing about the ass cherry. 

The lady working night-shift at the information booth was giving him a look that bordered too close on "interest" for Conner's comfort, so he swiped his farecard and stepped through the turnstile just as a 4 train roared by.  Conner thanked God under his breath and scrambled on, throwing one worried look over his shoulder to find the lady in the booth looking disappointed as the train was pulling out of the station. 

Conner shuddered, and settled against the cold, molded plastic seats in the mostly-deserted compartment, grateful for the distance. 

Recently, more and more girls were looking at him funny.  The same way they'd been looking at Geoffrey funny since the second grade, when he used to smile and duck his head, blushing and running his hand through his golden curls.  Conner used to call him Goldilocks--but then Geoffrey had glued Conner's hands to his face, so the nickname had been retired, not that it wasn't still appropriate.  Now more than ever, Conner thought in annoyance. 

The point was, people were starting to look for looking's sake.  Then, there'd been that guy at the bagel shop who'd asked him if he wanted to take a walk through the park and thought he'd actually say 'yes,'--as if Conner hadn't gone to Catholic school his whole life and learned to fend off child molesters in the second grade. 

Conner sighed, and let his eyes slide shut, letting his head loll back so he felt the cold plexiglass of the window on his scalp.  Dark beneath his eyelids, he could still see the irritating, fluorescent glare of the overhead lighting, the occasional flashes of burnt orange, the passages of darkness, where something blinked.  And in his head, it was quiet and still the way it never was when he paid attention--the way it never was when he let himself notice things and react. 

He wasn't dumb enough to believe that everything had ever really been simple, but they'd been simpler before.  Before the telekinesis had started to manifest, before he'd realized that he probably liked guys more than girls, before he was smart enough to figure out that Clark wasn't just "really fond of Mrs. Banner's poached eggs." 

And now, even though he held his head above water pretty well on a normal basis, when he really thought about it, Conner always felt a crushing weight on his shoulders, a sort of exhaustion he didn't know what to do with. 

Conner opened his eyes slowly, hearing the recorded announcer's voice say, "Next stop, Advent Circle, with transfers to lines 2, 7, and 13." 

He shouldered his messenger bag and pulled his coat tighter around him, one hand catching onto a metal railing just as the train slowed to a stop.

---

Lois had a brick-faced walk-up with a wrought-iron fence that blocked off about two square feet of bright green weeds on either side of the steps.  She also had a flowerbox which always seemed to be blooming with violets, but was barren in one circular area on the left where Lois liked to smoke, leaning out of her window and snubbing cigarettes out into the potting soil. 

Conner had only ever seen it from the outside when he and Lois had gone out on dates--which Lex had never known about because of Conner's careful negotiations with Hope, who seemed far more supportive of Conner's romantic quests than Mercy ever was--and she'd let him walk her home.  When he'd gotten tall enough, she'd let him loop his arm with hers, and she'd kiss him on the cheek before she stepped inside and waved goodbye as the door swung shut. 

Lois, Conner thought with a wild grin, was perfect.  She was beautiful and funny and whip-smart, mean to just about everybody, plus she was smooth and well-moisturized.  She listened to Conner and perved out on Stone Phillips, who Conner had to agree was kind of smoking, despite contending that broadcast news was a cancer upon the world. 

The steps leading out the Advent Circle station were crappy, and more than one person had stubbed a toe on the bolts which stuck out and tripped others when they were clattering down in the mornings, rushing for their train.  Conner had taken them up and down enough that he knew them mostly from sense memory, even if he still ended up banging the head of his sneakers into the uneven edge of the topmost step. 

Emerging out of the subway and into Advent Circle was like stepping out into a different world--the whole thing was lit up like Las Vegas, bright with wine bars and nice restaurants, art galleries and all-night cafes.  And in between all of these were small apartment buildings, walk-ups like Lois' or tiny, ten unit places, where people still sat on their fire escapes and talked while smoking clove cigarettes.  There were jazz clubs and book stores and an organic food cooperative that Grandpa Jon drove crates of produce to, twice a week. 

Then there was that bead store next to GayMart USA. 

He was standing at her house--number 436, in faded, brass numbers on the door--when he realized it was pushing one in the morning and he had no idea if she was at home, whether she was still awake, or if there was company. 

Conner scowled at the idea of 'company,' since Lois had a penchant for dating total morons.  She said they were interesting, Conner said they were genetic throwbacks; it was a difference of opinion they couldn't seem to settle, and usually they resorted to making popcorn and watching Master and Commander again.  Lois had a crush on Stephen; Conner just liked the boat. 

He waffled a bit, standing on her front stoop, until he nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Lois stick her dark head out of her front window and say, "Conner, what the hell are you doing out there?" 

Her hair was up and she was wearing a black tank-top and Conner could see down the front of it since she was leaning over.  Lois was impressively endowed, but she had told him that she also had nice breasts, which was as important as size.  If nothing else, Conner had an aesthetic appreciation of the view. 

"Um," he said, eyes huge with surprise.  "I was--I didn't know if you were up.  Hi." 

Lois laughed, and glanced up and down the block, which was on one of the quieter cross streets. 

"You're lucky David's not here this weekend, Conner," she laughed, turning back to him. 

Conner scowled.  "You told him I was fifteen, right?  Like, last time?" 

Lois leaned back, face darkening into the shadows of her house, and she waved one arm, saying, "As if that would stop him--come on, let me unlock that door for you." 

When he stepped in, the apartment was mostly dark, and smelled like clovers and honey, which Conner knew was because Lois spent an obscene amount of money on air fresheners, given that she never really knew when her father might drop by for one of his surprise visits. 

"I've been trying to quit," she used to say. 

"You've been trying to quite since you were sixteen," Conner had argued, and flushed her cigarettes down the toilet. 

When Conner peeled off his coat and dropped it on a peg near the door, he looked up to see Lois grinning at him, wide and brassy and trademark Lane.  Closer up, Conner could see that she was wearing gray sweatpants, that her hair was a wreck, how she was barefoot and seemed to only have three of her ten toes painted-in--and she still looked gorgeous.  He sighed a little at her. 

"Hey stranger," Lois said, looking him up and down.  "You still look like you robbed a YMCA." 

"Beat up a homeless guy and everything," Conner said earnestly. 

"You're incorrigible," Lois said, pleased.  "What happened to your hands?" 

Conner glanced down at his bandaged palms.  "Burned 'em being a moron." 

"Classic," Lois commended, and asked, "What brings you to Casa de Lane?" 

Conner scowled.  "Geoffrey's a bitch," he muttered, and after a pause added, "also, there's some stuff about my dad which I probably shouldn't tell you about." 

"That just means it's juicy and I want to know," Lois retorted.  She cocked her head.  "Kind of late, though--do you need to hit home anytime soon?" 

Conner shook his head, pulling his messenger back over his shoulder and dropping it on the floor under his coat, stretching his arms over his head, he said, "Dad thinks I'm crashing at Geoffrey's."  At Lois' raised eyebrow, Conner put on his sweetest smile and asked, "I was kind of hoping you'd do me the honor of allowing me a night in your presence." 

Lois narrowed her eyes and pointed at him.  "It's creepy when you do that," she reported.  "It's creepy because that's your dad's personality on E." 

"What's E?" Conner asked. 

"Nothing," Lois said quickly, ruffled.  "Come on--bedroom it is, then." 

It was a nice apartment, all pink and tan and pale green, with a large, sleigh bed where Lois smoothed out a quilt she said her grandmother had made for her when she was going to college.  Conner kicked off his shoes, and when he climbed onto the bed, he nearly groaned, sinking into the pillowtop mattress with an exhalation, feeling all the tension that had knotted up in his shoulders.  He blinked his eyes open sleepily when he felt the mattress depress next to him, and saw Lois' thigh next to his face. 

"You have a nice bed," he mumbled. 

"You sound beat, sweetheart," Lois said, more nicely than most people in the world had ever heard her speak, Conner bet.  That was one of the many things he liked about her. 

Conner rolled over until he was on his stomach, and turned his face so he was looking at Lois, where she was lounged out beside him, propped up on her right side, hand cupping her face. 

He reached over and tugged until his face was pillowed on her arm, turning to nose into her shoulder.  Lois was soft, and she smelled like expensive perfume, the kind Conner got a whiff of occasionally when he was walking through his dad's office, soft and subtle and classic. 

"Hey," Lois asked gently, smoothing a hand over his hair.  "Are you all right?" 

"I think I had a fight with Geoffrey," Conner murmured. 

"Goldilocks is a bitch," Lois said instantly, which made Conner start to laugh helplessly, and he eventually pulled away enough to see Lois smiling down at him, hand still smoothing the hopeless curls on the back of his head.  "What did you guys fight about?" 

Conner sighed and leaned against Lois' shoulder. 

"So about two months ago, Geoffrey asked Eve out officially," Conner started. 

"Took him long enough," Lois muttered, and rearranged her legs on the bed so that they were both staring at her ceiling fan, which was spinning, hypnotically slow on the lowest setting.  Lois liked moving air in her rooms, she kept her windows open a crack even in the dead of winter, her ceiling fans going year-round.  "I still say you should charge him for all the whining you had to listen to while he was getting up the balls to do that." 

"He really wasn't that bad," Conner said diplomatically. 

"You don't have to defend your little boyfriend, Conner--I like you way better," Lois said soothingly, petting him gently.  "Go on, sweetie." 

Conner rolled his eyes dramatically.  "So ever since, it's been Eve, Eve, Eve, all the time, twenty-four hours a day.  Which--" Conner paused "--I mean, I get, because she's his girlfriend, right?  But then, tonight, his birthday, we're supposed to spend the night, he gets his present, and that's our thing, right?  It's tradition." 

"Tradition is important," Lois agreed pleasantly. 

"Right," Conner said, waving his hands, "and what does he do?  He ditches me, without any forward notice, to take Eve to the movies.  I mean, he doesn't even tell me first.  I have to overhear him telling his dad he'll be out late--what the hell is that?" 

Lois laughed, and Conner twisted around to watch her eyes shining as she said, "Conner, I'm going to break some really sad news to you, okay?" 

Conner narrowed his eyes, nothing good could possibly come of this. 

"Despite Geoffrey being very, very, very pretty," Lois said slowly, "he is actually a boy.  And as I have told you many, many times in the past--all men are bastards."  Conner opened his mouth to protest when Lois cut him off, saying, "Except for you, because I've raised you well." 

Conner turned to scowl at the ceiling fan again, feeling a little bit doomed and militant feminist. 

"I get that he likes her, you know?" he said after a beat. 

"You're a smart kid," Lois said approvingly.  "You get stuff like that." 

Conner let himself sulk a few more minutes before muttering, "Whatever.  All men are bastards." 

"I knew you'd see it my way," Lois crowed, delighted.  "Now," she said, leaning over him and pinning him with her gaze, "what's this about your dad?" 

Conner blinked his eyes hugely.  "I'm an orphan," he said seriously. 

Lois scowled.  "Conner," she said warningly. 

"My parents died in a freak weed-whacking accident when I was seven," he went on sorrowfully.  "I don't like to talk about it--every time I see crabgrass, I cry." 

Lois smothered him with a pillow, which meant Conner was forced to retaliate by tugging at the elastic of her sweatpants, which made Lois shriek and crush the pillow down on his head harder.  The end result was that they were sprawled out, heads at the foot of the bed, gasping for breath. 

"Okay," Lois compromised, "off the record." 

"This would be so much easier," Conner gasped, "if we didn't have to do that every single time before you agreed." 

"What's the fun in that?" Lois asked, and turned to grin at him.  "Spill." 

"My dad is in this weird relationship," Conner admitted.  He reached one hand up toward the ceiling, watching the blades spin through his spread-opened fingers, one eye squeezed shut, focusing on the pinpoints of light.  "And I know he's with this person, but he totally refuses to cop to it--and it's driving me totally crazy." 

"Is your father cheating on Clark?" Lois asked importantly, eyes flashing.  "I'll kill him!" 

"No!" Conner said urgently.  "No!  And I didn't say it was Clark!" 

Lois made a dismissive noise.  "Please, Conner, don't insult my intelligence.  Clark's emotions are a Dick and Jane book, okay?  Everybody can read, ages three and up." 

Conner damned his mother's transparency, because even if his dad didn't have any official family party lines about what not to say, Conner had enough common sense that certain pieces of information were kept private.  The fact that his father was sleeping with a man, the fact that said man was Conner's mother, etc. etc., that thing about the missiles that were mounted in the observatory. 

"The point is," Conner went on hurriedly, "they're just not admitting to being together.  Even though I know it's true--I mean, I live there, I can tell.  I'm not brain damaged or anything." 

Lois squirmed a little at that.  "Of course not," she said.  "I mean, okay, from their perspective, maybe they're not very committed about it yet.  Maybe they don't want you to get all invested in something that may not last.  That's pretty fair, right?" 

"Is Clark cheating on my dad?" Conner exploded, scrambling out of Lois' hold to glare down at her.  "I'll kill him!" 

Lois snorted.  "Clark couldn't cheat on anybody, he's not clever enough," she reassured him.  "Look, all I'm saying is that maybe they're not ready to tell you about it yet, okay?  Don't freak out about it.  It's not really your business and you're giving yourself ulcers for nothing." 

Conner made a disgruntled noise, and glared at Lois' aloe plant, which seemed to wilt a little under his scowl. 

"And besides," Lois added, "it's Saturday, David's not perving on your ass, and here we are, our very own sleepover while Goldilocks and his little bear are trekking through a thunderstorm." 

Frowning, Conner glanced out the window, and realized for the first time since stepping inside that it'd started pouring.  Rain slapped against the half-closed window and drizzled in a metal slither of sound down tin gutters, making the sidewalks slick and shine, puddling up in greasy black wells along the asphalt.  From the window, Advent Circle looked like the set of a film noir detective flick, like Dick Tracy and a girl Friday could show out up of anywhere, all curious reporter instincts like Lois on an adrenaline high. 

It suddenly seemed small and stupid to be so irritated.  Conner was curled up on Lois' bed, and should he lay back down, it was a fair bet that she'd start stroking his hair again.  At some point, they'd probably eat Fudge Rounds. 

"I hate it when you're reasonable," Conner muttered, flopping back down onto the bed. 

She laughed, and it bounced off the walls of the room.  Lois had a great laugh, it was booming and unafraid and warm, and Conner loved watching her when she laughed, her eyes crinkling shut and her curving, pink mouth opening. 

"Come on," she said, and her smile was light again, "you've had a long night." 

Conner blinked in surprise.  "Are we going to sleep?" 

Lois rolled her eyes.  "Not a chance."  She pointed at a row of DVDs that were on the shelf next to the bedroom television.  "Pick something to watch.  I'm going to go make some popcorn and grab my nail polish." 

Conner obeyed, picking through the collection for a bit before he came across a box set, and as he heard Lois padding back into the room, he turned to ask, "Hey, what's Queer As Folk about?"

---

"I like Michael better," Conner mumbled around the end of the nail file in his mouth. 

"You're out of your mind," Lois retorted, rearranging a few fingers. "Clearly, Justin is the hottest piece of ass ever." 

Brian had already seduced an unsuspecting and married client in the men's room before Lois had blinked, glanced at Conner's glazed expression, and reassessed her current company.  She'd paused the video and said, "Are you old enough to be watching this?" to which Conner had gurgled in reply and motioned rapidly toward the remote control.  She'd shrugged her shoulders and hit play.  It wasn't that Lois didn't have any concept of age-appropriate television, just that her moral dipstick hadn't given her any accurate readings since she'd gone to that one indie music club in Chapel Hill during college when she was supposed to be at a journalism seminar. 

"And what's wrong with Michael?" Conner protested, pulling the nail file out of his mouth and attacking Lois' ragged thumbnail.  He'd told her that if she was going to destroy her cuticles on purpose, he wasn't going to play manicurist, but then she'd smiled and stroked his neck, and Conner's personal dignity had flushed itself down the toilet. 

"What, aside from the fact that he's short, neurotic, and dorky?" Lois shot back. 

Conner scowled at the television, where Justin was being a filthy, blond slut.  He wasn't sure what bothered him more, the fact that Justin was so pretty or that Lois was right. 

"But he's Brian's best friend!" Conner argued.  "He's put up with him since high school!  That needs to count for something." 

"Okay," Lois said patiently, "I thought we agreed not to project here, Conner." 

He pointed the nail file at Lois.  "I am not projecting." 

"Whatever," Lois said dismissively, and added, "Hey!  Look, nudity!" 

Conner glazed over again, nail file going slack in his hands.  "Is this really what gay people do all the time?" he asked, watching Brian shove somebody into an alleyway. 

"God," Lois said, moaning around a Sno-ball, "I hope so."

---

Conner's hands were sore by the time he'd finished up Lois' manicure, so he'd let her rub sweet-smelling lotion into his palms until he was practically groaning from it.  By then, they'd finished the third episode of Queer as Folk and Conner was fighting for consciousness, and when Lois noted his drooping lids, she'd turned off the lights and the television and dragged him under the quilt, saying, "Come on, everything will be better in the morning." 

He'd nodded and curled up next to her, because Lois never lied to him. 

And sleep was soft, floating him upward and holding him suspended.  Conner had never slept very deeply, and sometimes, he surfaced enough to hear the sound of rain still tapping on the ground, rolling down the windowpanes, washing out Metropolis.  Mostly, he heard Lois' breathing, deep and even in her chest, which was warm next to his half-curled fist.

it was quiet and warm, and Conner didn't dream, because there was finally, finally silence.

---

Lois' telephone was shrill and shrieking and right next to Conner's ear, which was why he moaned and buried his face in his pillow as Lois reached over his shoulder, and fumbled with the handset, dragging the curly cord over Conner's shoulder.

Her voice was husky as she said, "Yeah, Lane--"

The shrieking in the phone was louder than the ringer and it made Conner's eyes snap open in horrified recognition.

"What the hell are you doing to my son?"

"OhGod," Lois said, eyes opening wide and scooting up in the bed.  "Lex?"

Conner just stared in horrified silence, frozen under the sheets.

"What have you done to him?  He's only fifteen!  I haven't given him the talk yet!"

Lois' eyes bulged, and she held the phone a little away from her ear, staring in blank horror at Conner, who tried very hard to suffocate himself with a pillow.  He didn't know what was worse, having his father bust in on his sleepover with a much older woman, or--actually, Conner figured it didn't get much worse than that.

"I--what are you talking about?" Lois shouted hotly.  "He just spent the night!"

"He's been there all night?" Conner heard his father yell.  "Oh my God!"

"Bad move, Lois," Conner muttered and covered his face with his hands.  Clearly, this was one of those situations that called for seppuku.  Lois never cooked but she had to own at least one knife.  Or, he could just use a pair of her Jimmy Choos, though she'd never forgive him for getting entrails on her shoes.

"Freak much, Lex?" Lois demanded, sitting up in bed, scowling into the air.  "We watched a movie!  He told me about his day!  Which, from what I hear, is more than he's been--"

"'Watched a movie'?" his dad bellowed, "What is that--code?"

"Yeah!" Lois yelled back, "For you're batshit insane!"

Conner had experienced many, many moments when the situation spiraled so far out of control that really, the only option was to look at it subjectively and laugh, because clearly, the universe was out to get him, and there was really nothing he could do about it anyway.

"Conner!  Can you hear me?  Are you still a virgin?" Lex said loudly through the line.

Lois took one look at his laughing face, slapped a hand over the receiver and hissed, "Conner Clark Luthor, if you say one word--"

"It--" Conner gasped, laughing so hard his stomach hurt, "it was really--" he wiped at his tears "--special, Dad.  She said I'm the prettiest Catholic schoolboy ever--"

"What?" Lex shrieked, nearing hysteria. 

"Conner, you little shit!" Lois said, dropping the phone and tackling him into the mattress, which made the springs squeak significantly, pushing his father that much closer to the very edge of sanity, Conner assumed.  Still, Lois was straddling his chest, shoving one of her purple throw pillows into his face and yelling for him to take it back, and his dad's disembodied voice yelling from the phone was really of lesser importance. 

"Don't deny our love," Conner yelled, gasping for breath as Lois started beating him in the face with the pillow, using her weight to hold him down. 

Lois let out a shrill scream that melted out into a laugh, and she said, "Conner, you asshole!" 

Conner let out of a huff of air and said, "Okay--now it's war," and reached for her wrists-- 

Which was when they both felt the blast of freezing wind in the room. 

"What the hell?" Lois asked, turning slowly, knees digging into Conner's ribcage.

From his vantage point, flat on his back in a rumpled bed, with Lois practically sitting in his lap, Conner had just enough time to register his mom's horrified face and a red cape waving behind a very familiar blue uniform.

---

The trip home was interesting. 

"I heard...yelling," Clark said vaguely. 

Conner nodded supportively.  "Dad was being loud," he answered meekly. 

"I heard the yelling in…Bolivia," Clark said, voice strange. 

"Well," Conner compromised, looking down over his mom's shoulder, at the city like an ocean of flickering lights, "you are super." 

There was a long pause, where the only sound was the wind shrieking past Conner's frozen ears.  Being flown around by Superman was undeniably cool, but altitudes were not necessarily temperate, and even with his very warm coat, Conner was feeling the chill, especially with his mom speeding toward West Eden like a proverbial bat out of hell. 

"Nothing happened?" Clark asked again, giving Conner his evil eye. 

When Lois had finally realized that the Man of Steel was staring while she was, essentially, mounting an underaged boy, she'd removed herself from the position so quickly she'd nearly fallen off of the bed.  The following explanations and hand motions made by both Lois and Conner would probably be very good comedic fodder, if both parties hadn't been convinced they were about to be lasered into oblivion. 

So now, three angry phone calls from Lex to Conner's cell phone to complain about Superman's customer service and threaten Conner's continued exposure to the outside world, Clark and Conner were on their way to the penthouse. 

Conner rolled his eyes.  "She gave me a manicure and we watched TV, seriously, Clark." 

Clark's narrowed eyes thinned to slits.  "This is Lois."  Pause.  "And you're a teenaged boy."

"Manicure, television," Conner said again, looking his mom in the eye. 

Clark's shoulders loosened, and Conner grinned: triumph. 

After a beat, Clark asked suspiciously, "She gave you a manicure?" 

"Yeah," Conner said eagerly, holding out a hand for Clark to inspect.  "Looks pretty good, huh?"

"Dear God," Clark muttered, and started dropping altitude, approaching the roof of the building, where Conner could see his father waiting, a poisonous expression on his darkened face.

---

There were accusations and shouting and a lot of pointing fingers once Conner and his mom touched down.  Then, Conner played his trump card and yelled about how he had come home, and found his parents fighting, which was why he'd left again.  Predictably, it threw his mom and dad for a loop, and Conner saw them looking stunned and silent before he huffed off to his room, shutting his door and throwing himself down in bed, feeling jittery all over, fingers itching to call somebody. 

He thought about the Rialto's midnight matinee, about Eve and Geoffrey, and about them exchanging fluids, and decided against calling anybody. 

But Lois was right, though, and by the time Conner woke up for the second time that day, everything seemed better.  Afternoon sunlight was golden and arcing all through his room, pouring through the enormous porthole window over his desk and making everything gleam. 

Later, in the shower, leaning against the tiled wall, Conner decided that it had been an extraordinarily uneven two days, with alternately awesome and truly horrible moments, and that on Monday, everything would look up--everything would be better. 

"It'll be fine," he told himself, and shut off the water.

---

It was raining Monday morning, the sort of downpour that had settled over Metropolis that Saturday night and lingered in sporadic drizzles throughout Sunday afternoon.  The tension that had blanketed the penthouse all throughout Sunday had not dissipated, and since he had inherited the passive-aggressiveness that his dad furiously denied, he'd spent Sunday at the Carmichael Library, going through old microfilm of Metropolis' newspaper of record. 

He'd snuck around looking for stuff about his dad's past before, he'd just never bothered to read the society pages, which meant he'd found a birth announcement, several articles that mentioned Lex Luthor offhand, and then an explosion of reporting after his dad had turned twenty-one and ambitious, or at least the paramour of many, many psychotic murderers.  Also, there were about a million car accidents, which may or may not have affected Conner's ambivalence toward driving, but definitely made him go home and clutch his dad's arm for an hour when he was ten. 

On Sunday, sulking and prickly and sleep-deprived, he'd gone straight for the lifestyle section, and looked on, horrified, as his dad dated what looked like every attractive woman in a four-state radius.  Lex wore good tuxedos and smooth suits and looked like a billion dollars, with a girl on his arm every time with dark hair, great skin, and wide, luminous eyes.  He had a thing for brunettes and curves, and Conner had tried not to read the sketchier stuff, because there was a limit to the things he could handle, and reading about public speculation on his father's sex life was one of those. 

When Conner had been about negative eleven years old, though, the pictures and articles stopped.  The society pages became preoccupied with somebody else for a change, and for months and months worth of microfilm, Conner had only seen blather about other people. 

It had made the sudden, renewed explosion of articles a dead shock, especially when it came with blurry photographs of a dark-haired man, seen laughing at Lex's side.  That photograph was like a still capture of Conner's many memories, an image stolen straight out of his head, where those profiles were as familiar as the Metropolitan streets and comforting as the 5 line, circuiting the city.  Those big, bright smiles that came through the pictures like light, as if the moment was porous, like it was about to come right off of the page. 

Which had gotten Conner kicked out of the library when he shouted, "Oh, no, you two bastards did not!" loudly enough that it echoed throughout the entire reference section. 

It had only deepened Conner's gloom for the evening, and by the time he'd gotten home, his dad was presumably at work--there wasn't a note anywhere--so he'd made a sandwich and stubbornly forced himself to watch hardcore porn for the rest of the night.  Partially to distract himself, partially because he knew that if his father knew, he'd just die. 

But because Conner was almost as much of a wuss as he was a moron, he'd stopped the video and turned off his computer monitor when he'd heard his dad's footsteps coming down the hall. 

"You're up late," Lex had said, voice soft, leaning in Conner's doorway. 

"You were out late," Conner had said back, because he know a level tone of voice would make that more damning than any amount of shouting he could do.  It was true, though.  Since Friday, Conner had barely seen his dad, whether by fate or friction or just because this whole weekend was supremely fucked up.  Conner was too tired to ask. 

The slump in Lex's shoulders had been exhausting just to watch, and Conner had turned sharply to his father, noted with renewed distress the dark circles under Lex's eyes, the pronounced paleness of his skin, the way he looked like he'd lost ten pounds in three days.  It made Conner jittery, scared, worried, because Lex had looked like that for three business crises to date, and Conner had hated it, every single minute.  If his dad was calling Saturday board meetings and pulling all-day office junkets Sundays and not answering Conner's phone calls, then Conner wanted to know what was wrong, and go into the office and do his father's Xeroxing for him, because at least that way, he could interrupt every few hours, and make his dad eat something. 

"I haven't been a very good parent a lot of times, Conner," Lex had said, tired-sounding, and after a pause, he'd started down the hallway, throwing over his shoulder, "I'm sorry I didn't say anything about Clark earlier." 

But by the time Conner gotten over the dumb shock and darted into the hall, the bedroom door had already closed with a 'snick' and Conner had only stared with his mouth agape. 

Which brought him to Monday, and rain, and Geoffrey looking hopeful and sorry in the hallway, when really all Conner wanted was a shot of that goddamn whiskey which had made him promise Geoffrey his ass cherry in the first place and to go to sleep for about a hundred years. 

"I loved your present," Geoffrey started brightly, eyes huge. 

Conner rifled through his locker, looking for his Algebra II book.  It was green.  He hated it. 

"Thanks," he said dully. 

"It was perfect," Geoffrey said.  "It must have taken a lot of planning." 

Conner usually got Geoffrey two gifts: one he came up with over the course of weeks and weeks and took a lot of organization to pull off, and one he picked up at a store to hand Geoffrey during the party.  It was tradition.  So while he told his mom and dad about not knowing what to buy Geoffrey, the whole week leading up to the big day, Conner was usually making last minute phone calls to architectural firms and asking weird questions or ordering stuff from the art store over the internet.  But this year, everything was about busting tradition to pieces, apparently, so Conner had foregone the face-value gift and had slapped the hard hat and the metal lunchbox with the ID tag in it he'd spent three weeks wheedling out of the site manager at LexCorp's latest building project onto the kitchen table and hadn't said a word. 

"I thought of it at the last minute," Conner said sourly. 

"Oh," Geoffrey said awkwardly.  "I--I went and visited on Sunday.  It was really neat--I mean, watching them put up the frame of the building like that." 

Conner finally found the Algebra book.  It was underneath his wadded-up gym pants.  He grabbed it and shoved it into his half-opened backpack, hanging from his shoulder by one strap.  There were students milling all around them, making the hallways claustrophobic, and it was moments like these that made Conner think that the school couldn't possibly be exclusive enough--not if there were that many people shoving around a small, contained space. 

"That's great," Conner said flatly.  "We're going to be late for class." 

"You're still mad," Geoffrey sighed. 

Conner turned around to stare at him, mouth opened to say that yes, yes he was, why, what a huge surprise that he'd be angry that his best friend ditched him.  But then he saw the mouth-shaped bruise on Geoffrey's collarbone, where his tie was loose enough that the white wingtip collar opened and let it peek out, damning and purple against Geoffrey's pale skin. 

"I--that's a hickey," he said stupidly. 

Geoffrey's eyes got huge, and he slapped his hand over the left side of his neck, which only made Conner's eyes bulge as he hissed, "Your collarbone, you moron!  How many do you have?" 

His mind suddenly filled with horrifying images of Geoffrey and Eve holed up in Geoffrey's bedroom, which was still decorated to look like a sailor's cabin because Geoffrey was a loser.  Conner tried not to claw at his eyes, but it was very hard, what with the thought of Eve flopping around horrifyingly naked and pawed at in Geoffrey's sheets, with all the little model boats in glass bottles shaking on his nightstand.  He covered his face with his hands instead.

"It's--um," Geoffrey stuttered, struggling with his tie, "look, I get that you're pissed." 

"Who says I'm pissed," Conner demanded, whipping up to glare at Geoffrey.  "I am not pissed.  I am a paragon of calm acceptance." 

Geoffrey winced.  Conner slammed his locker shut and started down the hall, and he felt several pairs of familiar eyes on him as he stalked toward classroom 103, people who knew him well enough to read the knot in his shoulders, to recognize the way that Geoffrey was shuffling behind him as a sign of Bad Things To Come. 

"You've been very patient," Geoffrey agreed. 

"I was, in fact," Conner continued, ducking into the classroom and stomping to his seat toward the back, "contacted by the Vatican last week and informed that though the traditional process to be sainted requires about a hundred years, they're giving me a rush job."  He turned to scowl at Geoffrey, who looked a little hamstrung.  "Who can be pissed when they're about to be sainted." 

"Apparently," Geoffrey snapped, eyes flashing, "you.  You're out of line, Conner." 

Conner threw his bookbag down on the ground and leaned over the desk.   

"Reassess this week and tell me if I'm out of line, or if you're out of line," Conner yelled. 

They glared at one another over their desks, pushed together into pairs and set into long aisles, the way it'd been since kindergarten, and listened to everybody in the classroom hold their breath. 

Sister Hyacinth, who was somehow still alive, shuffled into the room at that moment, though, and Conner spent the next hour ignoring Geoffrey and staring at his math book, watching all the numbers blur together in front of his tired eyes.  It was only at the end of the period that he realized there was a stack of photocopies in front of his face, and that the top line on them read, "PSATs FRIDAY--HOW TO PREPARE."  When Conner numbly took a copy for himself and passed the stack to Geoffrey, his best friend caught his wrist. 

Geoffrey looked at Conner hard, fingers tight around Conner's pulse-point, like he was trying to regulate Conner's wild heartbeat, shattering out of his chest. 

"I can't always pick you, Conner," Geoffrey said precisely. 

He didn't sound particularly sorry about it. 

"That's fine," Conner bit out, because it hurt a little to breathe at that exact moment, "I was getting sick of picking you anyway."

---

It turned out to be the worst five days of his life to date.  Clark was evasive on the phone and finally poured out a lame excuse about a First Amendment conference in New York City, disappearing into the proverbial ether.  He and Geoffrey were still passing one another arctic glances and being ridiculously polite, which made the nuns nervous and their classmates subdued, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop.  His father was basically absent the entire time, disappearing early in the morning and returning late into the night--if he came home at all.  Charity refused to patch Conner through and nobody in the offices had anything helpful at all to say about what the hell was happening.  Mrs. Banner, for all her best efforts and her sublime pumpkin pie, could do nothing to alleviate the situation. 

So when Conner found his father in the apartment Friday afternoon, weary and thin and sallow but smiling, he nearly cried with relief. 

"Hey," his dad said hoarsely.  "You look like you had a bad week."

"It ate shit," Conner said, not bothering to cover his language.  "Where've you been?" 

His dad shook his head, palms flat on the kitchen counter.  "Nowhere good," he said mildly.  "I hear you had your PSATs today." 

Conner sighed.  "I think I flunked them," he muttered. 

"We should toast to that," Lex said, weirdly upbeat, a little wild around the eyes.  He walked to the refrigerator, footsteps slow but even, saying, "How about this: I get orange soda and order pizza, you set up the Xbox, and we play until all four of our eyeballs fall out of their sockets." 

Conner dropped his backpack.  "For serious?" he breathed. 

"For serious," Lex said, smiling.  "It's been a while since I kicked your ass." 

"You wait here," Conner said urgently, grinning hugely, holding up his open hands in the 'stop' gesture, "I'll go get changed.  When I come back, we're going to be really unhealthy pop culture addicts together--and if you get really lucky, I might even let you win a game."

He heard his dad laughing all the way into his bedroom.  Conner thrashed around a little, looking for jeans and a tshirt and throwing a hoodie over all of it, and he was still tugging it on when he re-emerged into the living room to find the apartment silent and deserted. 

He'd only been gone five minutes, and it took that long for Conner to find Lex where he was passed out on the kitchen floor, body shaking and sweating with fever so high that Conner felt his skin burn all over again when he touched his fingers to his father's forehead.

---

Conner didn't remember dialing 911, or hitting the panic button in the apartment to null the security so that the EMS could come up the elevator.  He remembered running back to the kitchen floor and falling to his knees, digging ice out of the refrigerator and wrapping it in a dish towel, pressing it to his father's neck, his forehead, to his hands, which were hot and shaking.  Conner remembered saying, "Please, please, please," over and over again, watching his dad's face pale as death but his skin burning up, like he was immolating, inside out. 

When Conner heard the elevator open and Mercy and Hope rush into the room flanking an EMS crew, he started shouting, "Over here!" and then there was a flurry of hands, of bodies, but mostly Conner saw his dad, shaking on the gurney, being strapped in, his vitals measured while Hope kept one hand on Conner's shoulder, one eye on the elevator door, as if anything that could possibly happen to them now could be worse. 

"What's wrong?" Conner kept asking, but nobody had the time to answer any questions before he and the EMS crew jammed themselves into the elevator.  Mercy stayed to secure the penthouse, and Hope nodded and entered a security key, putting the building at high alert lockdown.  These were all familiar to Conner, from so many drills when he was younger--he just never thought he'd have to know them, remember them by sense as he did. 

His dad was still shaking in the gurney, eyes closed fitfully and tight, lids sweating and purpling and sick.  Conner didn't know what to do--this wasn't like last time.  Superman wouldn't come to save them, there was no green dragon, and if there was, it was somewhere inside, where nobody could aim and Conner couldn't see. 

Conner grabbed onto his father's hand, the few free fingers that weren't pressed down along with Lex's palms to the flat, cushioned surface of the gurney, and he tried not to listen to the medics and their gibberish, the big words that only made him more frightened with every extra syllable. 

"Dad, come on," Conner said desperately, seeing the numbers on the digital readout scale down.  "Dad, please wake up.  This isn't funny." 

And when the doors of the elevator opened it was to twenty armed guards in dark suits making a pathway in the lobby of the building, to twenty more making a pathway on the sidewalk, to the ambulance--to a pulsing ocean of no less than four news trucks, what felt like hundreds of people, and dozens of reporters, shoving at one another at the edges of the carefully constricted crowd, and Conner felt his throat close up in sheer, blind terror. 

He tightened his hand around his dad's and leaned in close to the gurney, ducking his head and rushing along with the creaking wheels, the shouting medics, his dad who was still sick and feverish and unmoving, skin clammy now.  He remembered the lessons, from long ago, about what to do when everything went wrong, because he was a Luthor--and sometimes, he forgot what that meant, and wasn't that just another gift his father gave him, the luxury of being ordinary--and that meant whatever went wrong went wrong on national television. 

"Duck your head, lose your pride, keep your nerve," his dad had said, only Conner stared at his father's face now, closed over and white, tilted now and shadowed as he was lifted up into the back of the ambulance, and he couldn't see a trace of the man who'd lectured him so minutes before his first public appearance.

He scrambled up into the back, but hesitated when he heard the shouting, and turned back just in time to see one of the guards shoved over by the crowd, the surge of people rushing forward, and his eyes must have grown enormous because he thought he saw a single breath of pity on the face of a channel 4 reporter before Hope grabbed him by his collar, jerked him into the ambulance, and they roared off into the city.

---

There was an equal-sized throng of people at Metropolis General but no security, and Conner felt their grabbing hands and microphones pressed against his arms, to the sides of his face, jabbing at him from every side, because Hope was only one person, and there were too many cameras around for her to use any of Mercy's trademarked tricks.  But Conner clung onto his father's hand, followed the jerking gurney and infuriated doctors through the crowd, shoved people away and yelled "No comment" like an old pro, and hoped, hoped, hoped that everything was all right, that everything would be fine, that tomorrow, the last memories of this would be the news reports.

---

"I don't understand," Conner said dumbly. 

Fifteen was a terrifying age, suspended between being a child and expected to act like an adult.  Nobody really knew what to do with fifteen year olds, least of all themselves, and Conner sometimes felt like an adult because he could get where he wanted to go on his own, but then felt like a moron when his dad told him to fill out his own forms and he had to triple-check his social security number.  He woke up hard like he had grown-up desires but panicked that one time some girl at a party tried to kiss him; his life was a huge question mark and Conner was a moron--an extraordinary moron, Eve said it every damn day. 

And he felt like he was going to throw up, felt the nausea rolling in his stomach and up his throat and through his skin, pouring off of him, making him as sick and sallow and pale as his father was, laying in a sterile hospital room in a private wing with Hope and Mercy guarding the doors. 

He couldn't breathe right, his head was pounding, and he thought he was going to fall down he was so weak in the knees.  But he was family, and nobody else could be there for this, Conner knew his father wouldn't stand for it. 

So Conner was doing the right thing, he was being the long end of fifteen, standing next to Lex's hospital bed and clutching one of the iron railings, wobbling back and forth and trying not to throw up or cry or faint, but he could barely keep his vision straight, he could barely keep his voice steady.  He didn't know whether his success was zero or marginal or pointless, anyway, but he was doing it, because his father expected it, expected exemplary performance. 

"I don't understand," he rasped out again. 

The doctor looked down at him, over his arching, Roman nose, and said gently, "Mr. Luthor, did your father tell you he'd begun undergoing treatment?" 

Conner stared at his dad's hand, which was laying still on the white sheets.  There was a heart monitor somewhere in the room, he could hear it beeping steadily. 

"I hadn't--" Conner started, voice like a high gasp, "I didn't know there was anything--" 

But there were signs, weren't there?  That there was something wrong?  Lex had been white and sickly and thinner than usual, short with Conner and angry at Clark and distressed--that was the word--his father had been distressed.  And Conner hadn't looked, or hadn't looked right, perhaps had never learned the language as well as he'd thought, never picked up the native tenses, the slight nuances, all the indications that there was something more there, something he should have been looking for. 

"He was at the office a lot," he finally whispered.  "He said he was at work.  I thought he was tired." 

The doctor sighed.  "He is, Mr. Luthor," he said softly.  "Your father is running a fever.  It should break overnight, and there won't be any permanent damage, but he's exhausted.  We'll have to keep him for a few days, to continue the chemotherapy and monitor his progress." 

Conner nodded, blinked, felt the lids of his eyes scrape against the lenses, realizing he'd been staring at his father's hand without blinking for a long time now. 

"How long?" Conner asked finally.  "I mean--how long has he been sick?" 

The doctor--Dr. Liebhart, Conner thought dully, the Dr. Liebhart who his father had been seeing, the one he said was giving him his physical--looked tired, nearly as tired as Conner thought he must look, small and scrawny and useless, bracing himself against his father's sickbed. 

"We've known for some time now," Dr. Liebhart admitted. 

Conner nodded again, it seemed to be the only thing he could do. 

"What is it?" he finally asked.  "I mean, what does he have?" 

Stupid to have waited so long, after all the flurry and fuss, to hear about side effects being fevers and doctors who were actually oncologists, to ask what his father had.  It should have been his first question.  If Conner were really an adult, he'd have known to ask it, if he knew what the hell he was doing, he'd have done it right. 

Dr. Liebhart rubbed the bridge of his nose, and looked a little bit incensed, or so Conner thought from the corner of his eyes.  He still couldn't look away from his father's still, white hand, which had been moving and alive and writing things, not very long ago.  How could I have missed this, Conner asked again, feeling a renewed lurch of nausea, how could I have not seen this? 

"It's called ALL--adult Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia," Dr. Liebhart said. 

"That's AALL," Conner said automatically, felt horrified, and whispered, "Sorry." 

"Not at all," Dr. Liebhart murmured, almost smiling, "it's good that you're staying sharp." 

"Yeah, I'm good at making stupid comments," Conner said, sitting down and putting his head on the edge of the mattress.  "What's ALL--I mean, what does it do, how does it happen?" 

"Well," Dr. Liebhart said, looking like he wanted to sit down, and wasn't sure what to do about that, "it's a cancer of the blood and bone marrow--" 

"Great," Conner interrupted hoarsely, talking into the mattress.  "Awesome, Dad, you just have to be a hardass, get cancer in something that's all through your damn body." 

"--and happens when too many stem cells develop into a certain type of white blood cell," the doctor continued smoothly.  "Lymphocytes, they're called.  With an overpopulation of them, there isn't enough room for healthy white cells or red cells.  If not treated quickly, ALL can worsen very fast, and can also spread to the brain and spinal cord--" 

Conner's head shot up at that.  So did the lamp, hovering in midair. 

"--however, we've taken care to conduct the proper tests and there's no indication of that in your father's case." 

This time, Conner slumped back into the chair, casting a wary expression at the lamp which had settled back to the surface of the nightstand before staring at his father's prone form, wrestling with something that was boiling in the pit of his stomach. 

"As to how it developed," Dr. Liebhart went on, "your father was exposed to a great deal of radiation when he was young.  As a result, he's always had an elevated white cell count and--" 

"The meteor shower," Conner breathed, covering his face with his hands.  "Oh, God." 

"Yes," Liebhart said, "the meteor shower.  There were initial concerns but no childhood leukemia developed.  I suppose the radiation is one of the influences that unfortunately caught up with him." 

Conner was quiet for a long time before he said, "Okay.  How do we fix this?" like it was scraped out of his throat, cut from his flesh. 

"We've already begun the first round of chemotherapy," Dr. Liebhart said sympathetically.  "The sickness, the pallor, are likely just side-effects from it.  Your father's been spending a lot of time here when he wasn't feeling up to going home." 

It made something Conner burst open, and he managed, "Can you please go away?" 

If the door opened and closed behind Dr. Liebhart, Conner couldn't hear.  He leaned over his father's bed, clutching at the sheets and sobbed, gasped for breath, wailed and keened like a mourner, and didn't know what to do, reached out and found nothing with his empty hands, and felt so young and small and helpless, as if he was behind the sheer wall of metal again, with his father on the other side, bleeding out, poisoned, and drowning in red.

---

Conner would have scars later, he supposed, but at the moment the cuts on his palms were red with new blood and aching. 

It was the worst of his little arsenal of failsafes, tricks he'd accumulated over the years.  They were nearly habit now, fallbacks that he tried not to let his father know about, lest he forbid Conner from exploiting them when everything got too noisy in his head.  It would always be easier to bite in the inside of his mouth than to learn how to control his wandering, wild mind; it would always be faster to stab the webbing between his thumb and first finger with a pencil.  When the sharp prick of pain wasn't enough to disrupt him, then really, the only option was to draw blood, and so Conner was, tiny red wells of it, dotting his palms--he'd regret it later, he wouldn't be able to hide it this time, and everybody would start to ask questions. 

In the seventh grade Geoffrey had once grabbed Conner's hand to drag him toward a particularly uninspiring exhibit full of hideous sackcloth onto which somebody had defecated (Geoffrey maintained that it was unbleached canvas and brown paint, and that Conner should stop being such a bastard about Geoffrey's attempts to give him a little culture), and frozen there, in the underground revolving exhibit of the Rodman Museum of Modern Art.  He'd frozen and then turned and then tugged Conner's hand to his face and turned it palm-up, and stared with a blank expression at the moon-shaped scab that was on the inside turn of Conner's wrist. 

That was the first time Conner had ever seen Geoffrey lose his temper, turn so red in the face Conner thought Geoffrey was going to explode.  Geoffrey had dragged him into the nearest restroom and shoved him into a stall--because despite all outward influences it was still Geoffrey who was the more discreet between the two of them--and slammed Conner against the door, growling, "What did you do?" 

In retrospect, not quite so young and terrified of his powers anymore, Conner saw that the red-moon scar on his wrist was frightening.  He must have known it at the time, too, for he'd gone out of his way to make certain his cuffs were buttoned, never to open his palms for his father to see.  It must have seemed like something else entirely--something that was much more sinister than an attempt to control his electric thoughts.  And Conner was sorry he worried Geoffrey, he'd said as much even then, shoved against the doorway with his heart shuddering. 

Now, there were eight, nine, ten cuts on his palms, red and welting, skin hurting and bleeding, blood smeared.  He hoped that nobody walked in anytime soon, before he had time to clean off his palms, before he had a chance to make himself look respectable again.  Most of all, he hoped his father didn't wake up to see this, as it would only upset him more, and that was the last-- 

It was a thought that stopped Conner in his tracks, froze his whirling doubts and concerns, made him suddenly forget the ocean of photographers and news vans outside the hospitals, the televisions mounted at every nurse station spooling out CNN on mute, with black ribbons at the bottom of the screen reading LEX LUTHOR HOSPITALIZED.

---

Once, many years ago, he'd seen the same thing, in this same hospital, on a different floor. 

Mrs. Banner had been there, then, and the crowd of press at the door had been impressive but much smaller, scattered to the four corners of a ravaged Metropolis, torn to pieces and still-burning, a disaster area.  Superman was missing, Conner knew, he'd seen the blood, the trail of it from where Superman had been thrown into the penthouse apartment, leading to a broken window.  Then, Conner had hoped that Superman was all right, that wherever he'd gone, it'd been safe and warm and clean, because Superman had saved them, Conner believed, no matter how much Lex said that when it came to savior, the only messiah was ones own desire to survive. 

Once, many years ago, Conner had been in a hospital room like this, and his palms had been bleeding then, too, wrapped in layers of white, gauzy bandage, and he was pleasantly fuzzy around the edges, shot full of drugs because everybody said he was in shock. 

His father had been sleeping then, too, his eyes closed and still, dreamless. 

The green monster--Conner never knew what it was, only that its wings were enormous and leathery, made a horrible noise against the wind, that its eyes were bright and yellow and that it had come for them --was dead though, draped in three pieces over the top of their building, body throwing the observatory into pieces of shattered glass, concrete broken in rocky chunks, the ceiling punched through from the sheer weight. 

But they were alive, and they would be fine, Conner believed that, because they were in a hospital now, and Conner could do his own saving, had been practicing his whole life for a moment like this. 

"Metropolis is too dependent on Superman, Conner," his father had said to him, when he'd been small and impressionable.  "He's just another person--like any of us.  He makes mistakes, he may not even always be around--we can't get too comfortable and forget how to save ourselves." 

And Conner had taken the lesson to heart, because his father was right, and it'd been cars and people and doctors and the citizens Metropolis who had pulled the city upright again after Superman had thrashed the monster into pieces.  It was people that made a city live, Conner knew, not luck or fate or any benevolent, superhuman being.  Conner believed in the persistence of life, of the desire for better things, in human equilibrium.

---

Conner would never intentionally upset his father--not under normal circumstances, not under most circumstances he could imagine.  It was foolish, and cruel besides.  His father was a good father, and even when he wasn't, he tried very hard to be.  Conner firmly believed in grading on effort, and even when he didn't love his father, he did, because the heart was a contrary creature. 

But Conner had always loathed secrets, though he had many to keep and contain his entire life, not by any fault of his own, but by circumstance, the trappings into which he'd been born.  He led a wildly privileged life, had received for his tenth birthday a twelve day trip around the world which he had taken with his father and his best friend and seen the edges of the Earth.  He rarely wanted for anything, and was always provided, like he lived a ceaseless harvest.

And still Conner thought privately and selfishly that plenty came with a certain weight, a heaviness which held him down, pressed into his skin and his shoulders and locked him in place.  It gave him an identity for which he could take no responsibility, as it was foreign and unknown to himself, just a face that the fourteenth floor Public Relations Office had generated for Conner's few and far between appearances for a curious crowd. 

So there, in the cold and ever-expanding hospital room, Conner felt as if he was looking at the hands of a stranger, smeared with very familiar blood, and it made it easier to be angry. 

It was one thing that his father didn't want to discuss his relationship with Clark, after all, Lois had been right--as she generally was--that maybe they weren't that serious, maybe it was some bizarre booty-call thing (which Conner really didn't want to think about), maybe it was something else entirely, but mostly, it wasn't his business.  Besides, as long as they were making each other happy, he found he didn't really care.  The Parent Trap was a movie for a reason. 

It was another that he'd lied about this, about being sick, as if Conner was still a baby and couldn't understand what cancer meant, what AL fucking L meant. 

Conner was out of words, and too tired to shape the thudding in his head into any sort of coherent thought, so he closed his eyes and fisted his hands and laid his head down on the edge of his father's bed. 

The last thing he saw before he slipped over the edge into black was gray light swimming outside the window as rain started to pour down in earnest, shrouding Metropolis in a cobwebbed veil.

---

In the aftermath of Metropolis burning before his eyes, his father had forced Conner to visit a nice lady, twice a week, for nearly a year.  She'd had a soft, pale green-colored office, and kept a vase of wheat stems on one of her many, orientally-carved bookshelves which lined the wall.  The floors were dark, rich wood, with deep rugs and large pillows, and she and Conner sat cross-legged there, facing one another.  Every week she started off their hour together with some new discovery she'd made, and in turn he told her one of her own.  It was pleasant and reasonably mundane.  She smiled at him kindly and she seemed to like him, though Conner was never really certain if that was genuine or simply out of professional respect. 

She'd asked him about his dreams, and he'd drawn her pictures, terrible ones, since he was four and never had Geoffrey's steady hand--and never would, about when he fell out of bed screaming and pouring sweat, watching the city crumble to pieces over and over again.  They'd been sketchy, waxy black from exuberant application of crayon, and around the fringes of falling buildings he'd haloed red and yellow and blue at the hearts of the flames, just as he remembered in vivid, echoing horror.

It was not, he had explained to her then, as well as he could in a four year old's words, that the memories plagued him by day.  Conner lived a very normal life, and when he was upset or discomfited by some memory--an empty lot undergoing construction where there'd once been a neighborhood, the barest snippet of a news report before his father firmly changed the station, a tiny shard of glass the cleaners had missed--he and his father talked about it, discussed at length how it had happened, and why it wouldn't again. 

Conner believed above all things in the sincerity of his father's best intentions, and knew that it was not so much his father's capability that created masterpieces, but his sheer want of doing so.  Lex had wanted Conner to lead an ordinary life, unplagued by the lacquered, suffocating expectation that Lex sometimes bitterly spoke of about his own childhood, and it'd been so.  Lex had wanted Conner to excel, and Conner had, because it pleased his father.  Lex generated miracles, lived up to his namesake, and Conner lived in awe of it all. 

So his father's explanations of the city's new fortifications, the defenses that had been put into place, the lessons the people of Metropolis had reaped from the experience had more than placated his four year old heart. 

What haunted him and drug him into the very darker corners of his mind, ones which the lady in the green room had helped him to organize and box, to put away into a comfortable, cool space in his head was not the fact that it could happen again--because Conner knew it wouldn't--it was simply that it had happened at all.

---

He woke up to the sound of shouting in the hallway, and an automatic lurch of nausea came, a heart-stopping fear that maybe somebody had made it all the way up to the oncology ward, reached their door, would burst in any moment and take photos, ask questions, push a microphone in his face.  Conner was afraid of reporters because he knew what it was like to want to know and be willing to do nearly anything to find out.

But when the door opened it was Mrs. Banner, hand tight around Clark's wrist, dragging him into the room through an ocean of security personnel and wary-eyed doctors.  The room was filled with a terrible racket for just a moment before the door fell shut and everything went silent, Mrs. Banner's hand dropping from Clark's. 

"Conner," she said urgently. 

Clark stared, red-eyed and silent. 

Conner fisted his hands in the white sheets of the bed again, and asked, with as little hostility in his voice as possible, "Did you know?" 

Clark kept staring, eyes wide and sinking and dark, heavy with something Conner felt would be reflected on his own face.  He watched, morbidly curious as Clark stepped away from Mrs. Banner and edged toward the bed, as if he were afraid the same way that Conner felt afraid. 

"He--I asked him why there were--" Clark started, and his voice seemed to drift away, float off into the quiet hum of the hospital room like Conner's rational thoughts, dismissed.  "He was always so busy, and he wouldn't tell me where he was going--I thought--" 

Conner turned back to his father on the bed, watched him and felt everything in his chest hollow out, echo with it, and suppressed the urge to run from the room, run as fast as he could, and never come back.  He felt too young and stupid to be standing there between his mother and father who was laying on a hospital bed, too young and stupid to be the bearer of bad news, but when Clark asked, "What's wrong?  They--they wouldn't tell me anything.  They wouldn't let me come up," Conner said, "He has acute lymphoblastic leukemia.  That's where he's been," as if his heart wasn't racing out of his chest, terrified and shaking like his hands would be if they weren't knotted in the sheets. 

Clark had always been one of the strongest people Conner had ever known, and watching Clark's knees give out on him, watching Mrs. Banner reach for his shoulder, grab his arm to hold him up made Conner's chest turn inside out. 

But today was all about inversion, Conner though wildly, because his father was laying comatose on a hospital bed, defeated by something as commonplace as cancer, and his mother was barely standing, eyes huge and red and frightened--frightened the way that Lex never let Conner see when he was younger, because children can know the contents of a parent's heart. 

And when he was much younger, Conner remembered asking his father if he was ever sad, and Lex's strong face smiling as he had regarded Conner with amused affection, saying, "If I was, Conner--I'd never let you see." 

But that, like many things, Conner was realizing, was a kind-hearted lie, and he felt dozens of them closing around him like the teeth of a trap, metal digging into soft flesh.

---

The thing was, Conner initially had no intention of starting a fight in his father's hospital room, not in the least because of the fact that there were reporters twelve deep around the building, or that there was security four deep around the ward.   

But also there was something frightening and simmering, just beneath the surface of skin holding it all inside.  He could feel the heavy crawl of something moving and struggling, and he knew that if there was an argument, it'd be one he could never take back, one during which he'd say things that he'd mean--and that was what made its possibility so dangerous.  He'd learned the fine and dangerous art of words from his father, who always spoke with an elegant reluctance, talking in beautiful circles but never really saying anything.  And he'd learned from his father also how words, unlike physical wounds, exist on a frictionless plane, and they return over and over again--so Conner has always been very careful. 

So Conner had continued to stare at the place where his cut-up hand was knotted in his father's white sheets, and didn't speak, listened to Clark breath from the other corner of the room where his mother was perched in a plastic chair, awkward and huge in the room. 

He was sore from sitting and the pain in his hand had lessened to a dull throb.  The swirling in his head had stilled to a slow, sickening sweep every few moments and Conner realized with a horror that he could time the distinct darkening and lightening of the room to it, from the motion of the gray clouds outside the window to the sunset that stained the room orange.  There was a perverse irony in all of this, in the place where Conner's unbridled abilities intersected with what seemed to be his control over the weather. 

So he just laid his head down and pressed his cheek over the back of his father's hand and stared at a wall, seeing Clark's profile out of the corner of his eye. 

"You should go home." 

It took him nearly a minute to process that. 

"Conner?" Clark asked, and when he realized Conner was blinking at him with a detached sort of amazement, he said again, "You should go home." 

It was stupid, but Conner hadn't thought of that.  He'd thought that he was so tired he could cry and that he was going to cry and that he couldn't do it--which only made him angrier and more frustrated and more grossly fifteen, which was becoming an ever more abominable age to be if one's father were to suddenly develop some sort of life-threatening cancer and decide not to tell anybody about it.   

Home sounded good, and home sounded warm--and Conner was sort of losing feeling in his fingers, but that happened, he supposed, when you bled a lot and never unclenched your hand.  But home, Conner remembered with a shock of discomfort, was out of sight, and what would Conner do if he couldn't watch over his father?  Lex had always watched over Conner, with the sort of benevolent omniscience of a father and mother and the world's best spy technology combined, and Conner, though he was a poor substitute, would like to try and do the same for his father. 

He shook his head, "I want to stay." 

Clark sighed and straightened in his chair, and Conner heard the creaking of the furniture and the cracking of Clark's back from a long time in the same place, the same position.  Conner wondered what his fingers would sound like when they finally uncurled from the sheet, when he finally let go.  Conner wondered above all when his father would finally wake up, because even if the doctor had reassured Conner over and over again that it was only exhaustion and medication taking their toll, Conner thought that the way his father's face was lined and pallid in the hospital light looked too much like dead.  The thought made his stomach roll because he hadn't even touched the possibility, not in a tangible sense, since he'd found Lex on the kitchen floor. 

Logically, Conner knew he must have been thinking it since the first moment, but the words had never crossed his mind.  Death was a huge thought, an intangible one because it was not a structured concept like medicine seemed to think, but the vast and surprising lack of something which had always been there, and Conner tried to imagine what it'd be like to be around but without the presence of his father, to exist in a world where his dad didn't. 

There was a logical flaw in that, some sort of breakdown in the laws of the universe, because it wouldn't work that way, how could it possibly?  What would Metropolis do?  What would LexCorp do?  What would the hundreds of thousands of employees in dozens of countries do?  What would Conner do?  He'd make a terrible orphan, and he'd miss his father so much that the suggestion of it trilled up his spine like claws and he felt his head go hot and furiously frightened for a moment before he felt Clark's hand on his shoulder, shaking him hard. 

"Close your eyes, Conner," Clark said, and his voice was terrible and still and firm.  He sounded more like Superman than Conner's mother, so Conner closed his eyes, and took a shuddering breath.  "Good," Clark said again.  "And now I want you to let out a deep breath, just feel everything in your chest unknot, okay?" 

He tried, and he tried very hard, but he knew there would be casualties, because the last time that Clark had to talk him down was the time he'd accidentally smashed all the glass in the conservatory, when he'd heard that his grandmother had been in a car accident. 

"Stop thinking," Clark instructed.  "Just listen to my voice, and let it go, okay?" 

So Conner did, seeing knots in his head, tangled, rotting rope and he picked at it with shaking fingers, hands still oozing blood from the cuts, and it made dark spots on the ropes, which he found appropriate as he pulled at them.  It took him one minute, two, onto four and five and six but he finally felt the pressure in his chest lessen, the weight on his neck disappear, and then he pulled apart the last two strings and heard a soft thud, felt the legs of his chair settle back onto the ground, before his eyes flew open in horror. 

All the furniture in the room was out of place, like everything had been tossed up and then landed, luckily on its feet on the right sides.  The machinery was not much better, and Clark was holding some of them in his arms like featherweights, carrying them with a sad, resigned expression on his face that said that Clark was as tired as Conner was. 

It took a full minute to process what had just happened. 

And then several things happened very quickly, in confusing succession. 

Conner said, "Oh, God," and jerked his hand away from the bed, as if he was afraid that by touching anything near his father he was going to do it again, let it all get out of control and float everything in the room to the ceiling, kill his dad, burn down the hospital, ruin his whole life. 

And then Clark gasped or hissed or something and rushed over in a way that only Superman could and jerked Conner's hand away from where it was clasped on his thigh, shaking, and stared in blank-faced horror at his palm, and all of its scarred-up, half-closed cuts.  Conner wanted to say how it wasn't as bad as it looked, but it looked really horrible, and not as bad was still terrible. 

"What did you do?" Clark asked, voice hushed and frightened. 

"It's nothing," Conner tried to say, and he didn't bother to pull his hand away, because Superman had been his mother long enough for Conner to know that it was useless.  "I just--I didn't want to do anything stupid," he babbled.  "It distracts me.  I know it's bad.  I never do it unless--" 

"Unless what?" Clark shouted, and Conner felt a flare of anger in his chest, separated it into four boxes, put it away in opposite corners and left them impotent and harmless there, apart like chemicals in storage. 

"Unless I have to!" Conner said back, humiliated and caught.  He'd never wanted anybody to see this, it was bad enough that Geoffrey had seen it, that it'd scared him and that he'd been so upset with Conner that he'd left bruises.  "I don't do it unless I have to, okay?" 

It seemed to rock Clark back--and it may have ended it there if Clark hadn't seen the blood stain on Lex's sheets, dark and messy and damning. 

That's how the fight started, Conner realized later.

---

He didn't, actually, remember what he said during the fight.  But he knew he ended up crying and screaming about on what grounds did Clark and Lex have to get angry with him about keeping secrets, about hurting himself, when all that they ever did was lie to him and think it would be okay.  Conner had a place, carefully set aside in the furthest back corner of his mind where he pushed all of the things in his head when the noise got too much, and he felt a roar of nausea as he realized all the doors in his head had unlocked, and the complex series of checks and balances, locks and ropes and pretend he used to separate his explosive thoughts had come undone. 

And he screamed at Clark's white face about how they'd been fucking--and Conner actually said the word fucking, here--for months and never said a word, about how they'd never mentioned that they'd been together before, about why was Conner never told anything, as if he didn't warrant the attention or hadn't earned the trust. 

But mostly Conner remembered screaming about how he was furious and fucked up and sick because his father was dying, he was dying, and nobody, nobody, could do anything about it at all.

---

It was inevitable that he would get kicked out of the hospital, because there was only so much any oncology ward with reporters hovering in the corners could bear, and so Conner was rushed through the heaving mass by doctors and nurses and Mrs. Banner, who clutched his shoulder tightly enough to hurt. And he wound down twisted stairwells and shuttered though the back hallways of the hospital until they burst out into the mid-dawn light, when the sky was gray and pink and deserted, cloudless and desolate.

He got home an hour later, and when he did, he crawled onto his father's bed, laid in the center of it and stared out the window at the morning, where the light was going golden and soaking into the edges of buildings--into Metropolis.

And then Conner's aching hands felt so empty and small that the only thing he could do was curl into a ball, draw himself in as tightly as possible, plunge his mind into black and cry and cry and cry.

---

At some point, Conner realized that his father had never bothered to have a locked liquor cabinet, and Jaegermeister, Conner found, did fantastically well for dulling his senses, and he woke up the morning afterward too fucked up to care. And this went on for the three days that Mrs. Banner drifted in and out of the penthouse like a ghost, and she must have seen--she must have seen him--nursing the bottle but she never stopped him. She was angry with him, he could tell, he'd known her all of his life, but she was also scared of him--had she seen the hospital room? God, Conner hoped she hadn't seen the hospital room--and that cut like a ragged edge, wore at him. He didn't blame her, he was scared of himself.

And when he woke up on the fourth day hung over and sick and stared at himself in the mirror, a disgusting mess and incapable of taking care of himself--much less his father--he threw up again.

It occurred to him somewhere in between wiping up his own puke and avoiding Mrs. Banner's pitying gaze that he didn't have the luxury of being normal anymore, that though it was earlier than expected, he was going to have to be an adult.

He tried calling Geoffrey three times, but he never managed to dial the last number, and so he dialed another number instead, and by mid-afternoon, the finest home care provider in Metropolis was showing Conner how to take care of a patient undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, how to deal with the side-effects of medications. He was also showing Conner some neat tricks to deal with the side-effects of Jaegermeister.

On the fifth day his father came home, and Conner was ready.

---

It was quiet, it was civil, and Conner said none of the things he'd said to Clark--who looked red-eyed and hollowed out at Lex's side, watching Conner like a hawk, waiting for the explosion that wouldn't be coming--but Conner kept his distance, didn't reach out like his shaking hands wanted to and latch onto his father's thin chest, to hold him close.

"I helped the nurse set up your stuff," he explained. "You don't have to do that at the office, you know? You'll be more comfortable here."

Lex looked at him, tired and sad and guilty. "Thank you, Conner."

"It's fine," Conner said shortly. "I learned how to give a shot."

He pulled down on his sleeve as he said this, and he noted that Clark noticed it, and didn't care if his mother x-rayed his clothes to see the needle marks from where he'd practiced all of Thursday, so hung over he could barely breathe.

His father looked like he was going to vomit. "Conner--"

"I've got to go to school," Conner interrupted, brisk and efficient. "I'll be home by three o'clock, though. I quit the literary magazine," he explained, "it'll free up more time in case you need me here." He checked his watch and didn't see any of the numbers. He'd be early and he'd have to see Geoffrey and Conner had no idea what to do.

But it was better than being inside the house, and so he left with a forced smile, and didn't look back when he felt the air move around Lex's seeking hand, reaching out to him.

He had made it all the way out to the nearest subway stop before he dropped down to a squat and forced himself to breathe normally, forcing air into his constricted lungs.

---

Conner had made it twenty-eight steps out of West Eden station before he had a total meltdown. 

When he looked up half an hour later, he was sitting in a dimly lit bathroom in the boulangerie six blocks away from campus, three cross streets away from the sprawling holdings of St. Ann's. Conner surveyed the room for any notable damage, put away a few items that had been tossed roughly around the room, and hoped that nobody would notice that he'd added another crack to the already lined glass. But after he washed his hands and splashed some cold water on his face and ventured out into the store again, the fortysomething French baker gave him a cup of hot tea with lemon and a pastry on the house, and forced him to sit by the window, where he inspected Conner warily. 

"I'm fine," Conner started, and the baker narrowed his eyes. 

"No, really!" Conner insisted, and took a large bite out of the pastry to prove it. "See?" he said through a mouthful of crumbs. 

The baker pointed at Conner's uniform, which was in worse condition than usual, and then motioned out the window to the left, where Conner would have walked to reach his school if he could possibly force himself to go. He swallowed the bite of pastry, which tasted like rancid sawdust. 

"It's closed today?" he tried. 

At that exact moment, three girls from two grades below rushed past, shrieking, "We're going to be so late!" their navy, pleated skirts flapping. 

"Okay, seriously, what the hell?" Conner said while the baker snorted, straightening and pointing to the doorway with a veiled sort of threat that made Conner pick up his backpack and surrender himself to the possibility that maybe there were things aside from forces of nature and his father which were utterly, painfully unavoidable. 

"Thanks for the pastry," he said sourly, and the baker said something French in reply that sounded hugely insulting, waving his big, brown hands at Conner and then the door. 

All in all, it took five more minutes for Conner to force himself out of the pastry shop, but when he stepped out onto the street he realized in quick succession that he was in no shape to go to school that day, that the last place he wanted to be was home, and that in front of him, standing at the steps of the West Eden subway station looking sallow and heartbroken and weary was Geoffrey.

---

The heart of the matter was a matter of the heart, Conner had known for a long time, and whether or not he was in love with Geoffrey as he was beginning to become afraid he was, he'd always loved Geoffrey, with a wild sort of protectiveness that made Conner feel like he could be dangerous long before he really was.

They'd met when they were barely children, just babies who'd learned to talk and sound out large words from their very smart fathers and very good teachers. They'd shared band-aids and stories and disjointed lives until they'd been able to outline them all in good, grammatically-sound English and found themselves best friends. They'd worn down one another's edges and hurt each other and Conner had, though he'd promised never, ever to tell anybody about it, helped Geoffrey measure his penis once because he'd been desperately curious and neither of them had been able to guesstimate--"It's a weird angle!" and "Oh my God, this is so wrong."--whether or not his dick had been the typical length while flaccid.

Over the years, Conner learned how to wipe Geoffrey's tears and tie his tie and Geoffrey learned how to make Conner's favorite waffles and how to distract Conner from the fact that his life was a bona fide freak show. They had a living history between them, and Conner knew enough about investment and capital and profits to know that their friendship was a struggling enterprise, that it needed more, always more from them, to grow to fit their relative ages.

It was hard and hurt and sometimes not worth the effort and agony and when Geoffrey jerked him around the corner and said, "Oh God, I've been so worried. I'm so sorry--I'm so so sorry, Conner," and pulled Conner into his chest, wrapped his long arms around Conner's shoulders, it felt like the world was shaking apart at Conner's feet.

But it was all right--Conner had put so much of himself into Geoffrey over their years that Geoffrey would know where to place all the mixed-up shards when Conner was done falling apart, with nothing out of place.

"I almost called you," Conner said awkwardly, words muffled into Geoffrey's shoulder. He couldn't get his fingers to release Geoffrey's shirt.

"I should have come over," Geoffrey said, quietly furious. "I didn't know what to say. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

Conner thought about Geoffrey pacing his small, crowded bedroom, still plastered with pictures of sailboats and dressed as it had been when Geoffrey was five and nearly smiled. But his father still had cancer and Conner was still losing his mind so he didn't, and just closed his eyes, breathed into Geoffrey's neck and said, "I don't think I can go to school today."

"You shouldn't even be here," Geoffrey murmured, finally pulling away enough so that he could peer at Conner's face, worried. "Are you okay? You look like shit."

"I feel like shit," Conner admitted, and made himself let go of Geoffrey's shirt, because the last thing he needed to add to his list of reasons this was a bad week was being strangled to death by Eve's school tie.

"Can we go somewhere?" he asked, feeling desperate and stupid. "I just--I don't want to deal with everybody today, you know?"

So Geoffrey made a face that meant his heart was breaking and took Conner to the art museum, where they looked at rotting wood panels ripped from the walls of medieval houses and Conner let Geoffrey explain to him why they were important.

"Art was expensive back then, prohibitive to most people," Geoffrey said, "let's not even talk about books. So the fact that these people had these panels in their house, and they show a love story instead of just a religious text means they valued it, and I'm telling you about it because--"

"This shit is just as ugly now as it was that time we were almost killed here," Conner complained, thinking that being shot by incompetent art thieves might be a welcome distraction to his very own personal Art History 101 lecture.

"--I love you," Geoffrey said, rapidly changing tracks, shocking Conner enough to make his breathing hitch a moment, "it means that I love you and that you're my best friend and I'm a moron. I'm a total fucking moron and I'm so sorry."

Conner swallowed hard around the ball lodged in his throat. He said, "Okay."

Geoffrey nodded solemnly. "Good."

"Okay," Conner croaked again. "I like you a lot, too, Geoffrey," he managed.

And later, when Geoffrey and Conner were waiting for Mercy to pick Conner up from Geoffrey's house, late in the afternoon when the sun was a melting red in the orange sky, Conner thought that if everything was going to go straight to hell, he was glad that Geoffrey would be there to see it all fall down with him.

"I should," Geoffrey said faintly as they watched Mercy's dark Benz roll up to the curb.

"What?" Conner asked distractedly, shouldering his backpack.

"I don't always pick you," Geoffrey murmured again, some of the words distorting around the sound of the doorbell, "maybe I should."

Conner thought about that all the way home.

---

But home smelled like sickness and Conner found his father sleeping feverishly, so he put away his things and spent the night at his bedside, checking his temperature and making frantic phone calls to Carl, who'd taught Conner how to give shots and not drink Jaegermeister ever again just to make sure his father was actually okay.

"But he's hot!" Conner whispered, agitated.

"How hot is he?" Carl asked patiently and then sighed when Conner set the phone down on the ground to tiptoe back into his father's room and check.

Conner touched his father's forehead again, very lightly, edged away from the bed and sneaked out of the room again, picking up the phone to admit, "Well, not--um, really at all. But--"

"No buts, Conner," Carl interrupted, affectionate if homicidal, "and I love you, kid, but my wife is gonna rip you a new one if you don't stop calling."

When Conner hung up the phone for the fifth and final time that night, it was half past one in the morning and he figured there was a sixty/forty chance that his father was actually awake and either humoring him or doing that thing where it was easier to fake it than to deal with a problem that appeared insurmountable at the moment. But Conner was nearly as good as his father when it came to calculated denial so Conner called Geoffrey, because he was allowed to do that again, and God, it felt so good to dial the last four numbers to Geoffrey's personal line.

Halfway through the first ring Geoffrey picked up.

"Hey," came Geoffrey's answer. He sounded totally awake. "What's up?"

Conner was silent for a moment, because all he heard was echoing reality in his head and he could barely stand the thought that if Geoffrey didn't fill up the space with his voice he'd have to sit in his huge empty apartment and think about his father.

"Tell me about art," Conner said.

"You hate art," Geoffrey reminded him gently. Conner could hear the sheets rustling and thought about Geoffrey's dark blue comforter bunched up around Geoffrey's feet, the way light fell into Geoffrey's bedroom in silver-blue stripes through the always-opened blinds.

Lex had always told Conner about the knowledge of the privileged in a snide, educational way that had infiltrated as a suggestion even very early in his childhood. His father spoke of the unspoken bonds that formed between two people when they shared what were not necessarily secrets, but honesty, candor, pieces of themselves. So Conner had learned to keep his father's secrets early, things about his girlfriends when Conner had been younger and things about his mother when he'd been older.

And Conner thought about Geoffrey's bedroom, about silver-blue stripes of light through always-opened blinds and realized with a sudden pang that Eve must know about it now, too, that it was no longer just Conner's privilege in knowledge--that they shared something Conner had never known would split two ways.

"Then tell me about Eve," he said, desperate.

It made Geoffrey laugh, wild and young and like somebody who had completely forgotten that the walls to the 1925 Brownstone in which he lived were paper-thin and that his father was right next door. Conner and Geoffrey had been banished to the cellar enough times for both of them to know when Mr. Archer was waking up at that exact moment.

"Wow--the one thing you hate more than art," Geoffrey said, a smile in his voice.

"I'm desperate, man," Conner snapped, irate.

"Then I'll tell you about art," Geoffrey settled.

Sometime in the sixth grade, Geoffrey had been so fed up by Conner's greater appreciation of the artist of Full Metal Alchemist than Monet that he'd started something called Better Living Through Stop Being Such An Uncultured Moron And Look At The Goddamn Painting, Conner, an enterprise of which Lex had wholeheartedly approved. So far, their only real success had been Conner's continued fascination with Chagall, both his famous works and his hundreds of scrawls and sketches, which had a discontinuous, emotional staccato which had captured Conner's attention.

"Do you remember when my mom died?" Geoffrey started, very carefully, because he had to know what dangerous ground he walked on, with Conner sitting in the hallway outside of Lex's room and talking about dead parents.

"Yes," Conner said woodenly.

Of course Conner remembered when Geoffrey's mother had died. It'd been the single most terrifying memory of his young life prior to this whole living nightmare.

Conner had never met Geoffrey's mother, they having only been friends several short months before she passed away after collapsing in a grocery store, her weak heart failing her after a lifetime of high blood pressure and the devastating effects of a turbulent pregnancy. Geoffrey had been six and Conner had been five and Geoffrey had stayed with the Luthors for nearly a week after her passing, Mr. Archer being too shattered to do much more than let his relatives force him to eat and not die along with her. And in those days Conner had seen Geoffrey, who was always smiling and easygoing and kind and funny disappear, crawl somewhere deep inside his own head and miss his mother terribly, yearn for her so much that even at five Conner had held Geoffrey's hand tightly when they'd gone onto the roof for things, afraid in the marrow of his bones that Geoffrey would try to fly and catch his mother's hand where she was probably waiting to steal Geoffrey away. Conner, because he'd never really felt loss, feared it immensely; it was uncharted territory, and there might be monsters.

"I remember it was going to be her birthday soon, and so I wanted to draw her a nice picture." Geoffrey paused to laugh, because it had been nine years and the deep, cruel cuts his mother's death had left on him had closed over, to scar tissue that Conner knew with a great intimacy, like the skin on the palm of his own hand, marked with half-moon scabs.

"My hands were really shaky back then, I couldn't draw a straight line to save my life, but I had this sixty-four color box of Crayola crayons, and I colored everything as carefully as I could. I couldn't wait to give it to her," Geoffrey said, with the affectionate tone of a boy who still loved his mother, as best as he could with his cobweb memories of her.

"So I didn't, and like, three weeks early, I slid it to her at breakfast and--"

There was a hitch of breath that knocked something loose in Conner's head, and it was probably a combination of desperation, boredom, and teenaged hormones that made Conner wonder what it would be like to draw that hitch of breath out of Geoffrey with his teeth.

"--Conner, her eyes just lit up, it didn't matter what I'd been trying to draw, she saw something completely different in it, and I don't know what, but she said she felt how hard I'd tried, and how much I cared about her, and that was the best gift of all."

When Conner had been young, he'd made his share of ugly artwork--far uglier than anything to which Geoffrey's natural-born talent could aspire despite his gross embellishment of his own past failures in art lab--macaroni glued onto sheets of paper, grotesque pots, construction paper tribal masks and one awful tempura painting of the ocean, which looked more like an ocean of blue vomit. His father had had all of it tastefully framed and put into various bathrooms in the penthouse, because no matter how much Conner was loved, Lex had the entire penthouse color-coordinated, and the neon green boogie man mask did not match the Chagall in the living room.

"That's why I love art," Geoffrey finished.

"Because your mom liked crap you drew when you were six?"

Conner heard the sound of motion behind his father's bedroom door, and had it been like any of the other extraordinarily rare occasions when his father had fallen ill and Conner had accordingly freaked out, he would have opened the door and scowled into the bedroom until his dad crawled meekly back into bed. But his hand froze on the wooden surface of the door and his fingers curled inward, nails scraping against the grain, too afraid to do anything.

The real problem would be talking to his father. Who had, Conner could not help adding, lied horribly about his illness, deceived his family who loved him, denied Conner the truth about his present and his past with Clark Kent, and put his childhood artwork in the bathroom.

"Because it tells more than just the picture," Geoffrey explained patiently. "I put everything I wanted to say but couldn't and didn't really know how to draw into some cruddy scrawls but the message got through. No long-distance charge or anything."

Conner wanted nothing more than to scream at his father, "I love you, I love you so much and you've broken my heart. I'm so scared for you and I'm too young to fix things. I don't know what to do but I'll try, please don't be sad that I'm angry with you--I'm just so scared," but he knew it'd come out all wrong, just like it'd come out all wrong with Clark at the hospital. He could draw a picture, but where his talent with verbs and adjectives was becoming enviable, he'd be reduced to scrawling a heart cracked in two with his clumsy hands, large, comical teardrops and a sun, peering from behind cartoonish gray clouds, because he wanted his father to know that there was hope, and that if Lex couldn't find it on his own, Conner would bring it to him--no matter the cost.

His father had taught him over the years the value of things, the price of gold and rubies and a good employee, the amazing worth of friends, and how to be generous, how to be grateful, to pay in platinum or silver or a pound of flesh for all of these things. Though Conner didn't know how to stop being angry, how to stop being fifteen, he knew how to strip himself to bone and give everything, everything he ever had or wanted or could to his father if it would help--and it had to, after all, Conner was Lex's miracle, his penicillin, his saving grace, and Conner would do it again, willfully, desperately, now.

"I kind of get that," Conner said hoarsely, which made Geoffrey sigh into the phone and whisper:

"I'm really worried about you."

"I'm fine," Conner lied.

"You're shipwrecked."

It made Conner smile. "Always with the sea metaphors. Your room looks like that for a reason."

"Yeah, and good thing you're the only one who sees it," Geoffrey laughed, rumbling and raspy. 

It flicked a wavering switch and Conner felt a lick of heat down his belly and under his skin, like all the times Geoffrey had put a hand on Conner's back in the change room before gym, his hands volcanic against Conner's ridged spine. Conner's mouth went suddenly dry, and he realized with a dumb horror that his problems were twofold, and that perving out on his best friend was no longer just an idle distraction. 

"I should go to sleep," Conner said, a little frightened by the sudden realization that perhaps when he said that Geoffrey was his best friend, he actually meant that he'd like to stick his hand down Geoffrey's pants and touch his special places. "Thanks for talking to me," he finished oddly. 

"Go," Geoffrey agreed. "Will I see you at school tomorrow?" 

"I don't know," Conner said honestly, shifting on the floor. 

"Okay," Geoffrey said gently. "Night, Conner." 

Conner heard footsteps, soft and fleshy, pad to the door, and wondered if his father was like him, one hand pressed to the wood and too afraid to push. 

"Good night, Geoffrey," Conner choked out, and hung up the phone. 

The footsteps padded away, and Conner sat in the hallway all night, watching the reflection of the sunrise in a Degas sketch, framed in heavy gold, which was on the wall in place of a very poor drawing Conner had done in the second grade which he'd titled in all capital letters MY FATHER AND ME AND HIS NEW CAR.

---

The last thing Conner wanted to think about was his father being ill, but that drove his ever-rumbling mind to the flashing, shaking images of Geoffrey he'd stored away, pictures of his best friend haloed in rose-gold at the end of a day, laughing and slapping Conner on the back, his tie flying over his shoulder.  It made him flush and it made him frightened, because for as long as he could be bothered to remember Geoffrey had been a piece of him, the keystone which balanced all the precarious, ridiculous things about himself and made it into one smooth, architecturally-sound curve.  To reshape it, to redesign it was suicide, and Conner didn't want to lose Geoffrey, not even the safe, beloved version in his own head. 

So Conner thought about his father being sick, and wondered where Clark had gone, and what he would do if his father died, because it was a thought that refused to leave him. 

Would they sell the penthouse?  Would he move into Clark's ratty, one-bedroom apartment on Underwood lane, where the closest Metro stop was nearly twenty minutes away by foot?  Conner loved the penthouse, had always lived there, was as familiar and comfortable calling the edge of Millionaire Mile his home as other people were comfortable working there day to day, and he'd hate it if he lost his father and the home where he and his father had lived, too. 

But mostly, Conner wondered what would happen then, with a perverse sort of horrified interest, like those third-person dreams where he had seen himself get killed, when he'd been having his loud, black nightmares after the green dragon had burst into his life. 

With Lex gone, Conner couldn't imagine anything else existing, either.  How could he possibly continue to go to school?  His father had died, and taken everything with him, sucked it down into the underworld to serve him in death as it had in life, and Conner had a passing belief that he'd willingly go, curl under the dark earth because it would be too hard--far, far too hard to outline a life without the familiar shape of his father in it; his hands would trip over the lines and the composition would be skewed. 

But that was all terrified speculation, and there was a part of Conner that was still disbelieving, incapable of incorporating the idea of his father not being fine into any possible construct of reality.  Lex would survive, Conner thought, privately and with not a little fear, as if voicing it out loud even in his head would strike it from possibility.  Lex would be fine and they'd all be fine and it could be as if it'd never happened.  His father and his mother and everybody in the world could keep their secrets for all Conner was concerned, but there would be life, and where there was life there was possibility, and perhaps one day, his parents would want to tell him everything--Conner would be ready to listen. 

And it was thoughts like those that chased through his head all the time, unendingly, without rest for the weary or time for sleep and it happened like that for days, until they melted into weeks and Conner forced himself to go to school again, even if he spent most of the time staring out a window and failing all of his classes.  Geoffrey had taken to doing his homework and forging his essays, making Conner eat and fixing his tie before class, to wearing that scared look on his face all the time, as if he was watching Conner disappear before his eyes.

---

It became, after a time, routine. 

He dreamt feverish, hazy things about Geoffrey and Geoffrey's hands or woke up shaking and crying from the black images of a funeral, and crawled outside his father's door, ear pressed against the wood, listening for breath. 

During the day, he went to classes and did remarkably poorly and then appeared at his father's side when there were radiation or chemotherapy sessions, listened attentively to the doctor's suggestions, warnings, and explanations, and made friends with all the nurses in oncology.  He became an overnight expert in ALL and spent a day taking notes off of government information sites about cancer treatments and side-effects.  He forced himself to be a walking encyclopedia on ways to lessen the suffering during treatment and made himself forget geometry and science and English to make room for more important things. 

"You've lost a lot of weight, Conner," Geoffrey said, pushing a pudding cup in front of Conner. 

"I'm getting plenty of food and rest," Conner said automatically, even though they both knew it was a total, filthy lie. 

Geoffrey seemed to be worn thin, too, and Conner had noticed, because he couldn't help noticing Geoffrey, it seemed, hadn't really been speaking to Eve recently, and that she'd been seen staring longingly from the other side of rooms.  The old Conner would have cracked a joke about trouble in paradise, the new Conner ate the pudding cup because he knew otherwise Geoffrey would harass him all afternoon, and the last thing Conner needed to do was think about how hot Geoffrey was when concerned. 

"Then why have you lost a lot of weight?" Geoffrey demanded. 

Conner sighed.  "I worry I'm not pretty enough for you, Geoffrey," he said, and once upon a time, that would have been less uncomfortably true. 

"Don't break my heart, Conner," Geoffrey warned. 

Conner closed his eyes and covered his face, whispering, "I'm trying, Geoffrey.  Oh my God, I'm trying."

---

Conner woke up at six o'clock in the morning to start laying out his father's medication and figure out what the hell to do about breakfast.  He and Mrs. Banner were in cahoots; she found strange things in Chinatown and on Reuben street, and if she was feeling Balkan went down to the one block framed by Warton, Martin, Chadwick, and Browne streets where Conner found the most bizarre food ever.  Lex was too old to effectively have aversion therapy, but Conner figured that of seven continents, 1.6 billion (and counting) people, and all the respective Weird Shit that they ate, he would be damned if he ruined Ty-Nant and peaches for his father. 

At half past six, when he could hear his father's breaths go unsteady, Conner scrubbed out one of the bathtubs, rinsed it twice to make sure any skin irritants were gone, and ran a tepid bath, setting a bar of pure Glycerin soap he's rinsed off by the tub.  There were newly washed towels--all that time spent in the laundry room was beginning to pay off--set by the bathtub and a note left on the back of the toilet saying: "Hey! Headed off for school.  Woke up late so can't hang out with you.  Left pills/food/mail on the counter.  Before you complain, give the stuff a try--it's Romanian." 

Conner got Mrs. Banner to drive him to school, because Lex didn't like anybody to be there when he was doing his early morning routine, and Conner didn't want Mercy to see the times he broke down and cried all the way to class. 

He was so tired he could feel it in his bones, ached the way he thought his father must, when he came back from his treatments exhausted and miserable and stubborn and angry.  His grades were hopeless and he was sleeping three or four hours a night, making up the difference with caffeine pills he'd been buying on the sly and tossing with double-espressos and Jolt Cola from the shop next to the boulangerie owned by the hostile French baker. 

It wasn't always going to be this bad, the doctors promised, it was only during rounds of chemo, only during rounds of radiation, only sometimes when they were adjusting the medication. 

Conner didn't really care about it being this bad--though sometimes it made the idea of flying off the roof and not yelling for help seem spectacularly attractive--Conner just hoped it didn't get worse. 

It was a manageable kind of miserable, and even at his very, very best, Conner was only a filthy rich fifteen year old.  He didn't have God on speed dial four. 

And over the years, Conner had realized, neither did his father.

---

After a while, Conner wondered where Clark was through all of this, and it turned out the answer to that question was "getting fired" and "breaking his lease" because on a Friday afternoon in early November about three weeks after the sky fell down on Conner's head, Clark was at the penthouse carrying several large boxes with one hand. 

Conner set down his backpack and stared.  "What are you doing?" he asked stupidly. 

He'd spent most of the day in the guidance office, listening to Father Greer offer to listen to him, but since Conner had been born contrary, he'd remained silent, and Father Greer had eventually given up, provided Conner with a mug of coffee, and they'd sat in companionable quiet for the rest of the day.  When the last bell had run, Father Greer had wished him a good weekend and seen him off, where Geoffrey was waiting for him at the carpool lane. 

The ride home had been surreal, with Geoffrey at the wheel of his father's car and Mr. Archer clutching a bottle of Xanax and the dashboard while they came to sudden stops at red lights.  It was Geoffrey's first week on road with his permit, and Conner had appropriately covered his eyes and curled up, praying for the best from the backseat.  Geoffrey, who seemed to have forgotten the dramatics from his birthday, was upbeat about his driving skills, even when both Conner and Mr. Archer threw themselves out of the car as soon as they reached Conner's street and nearly hugged the ground, unspeakably grateful to have survived. 

And Conner had walked around the building on shaky legs until he'd made it up the elevator and into his house, which smelled, suddenly, somehow, like his grandmother's apple pie and newspapers instead of medicine.  He'd turned the corner out of the foyer to find Clark there, looking ragged and dressed down.  His tie was loose and his shirt was untucked and he was covered in dust. 

"Your dad would probably be mad if I put up any Remy Zero posters, huh?" Clark asked, distracted, concentrating on several other boxes, half-opened on the ground and filled with what looked like the entire contents of his bedroom--clothing included.  Sometimes, the fact that Clark was, in fact, neither a mother nor a woman was profoundly underlined in Conner's life. 

"I think so, yes," Conner said oddly. 

It was the first time they'd really spoken to one another since Conner had gone ballistic at the hospital, and he still felt a little awkward about it, unable to meet Clark's eyes.  For days already, he'd agonized over what to say or how to apologize, though nothing he'd scripted in his head seemed to be appropriate, and they mostly ended with Clark saying, "I wish I'd never found a son like you," which wasn't exactly making Conner run for the phone. 

"Who's Remy Zero?" Conner asked, watching his mother. 

Clark pulled a face.  "Don't make me feel old, Conner." 

"Sorry," Conner said, and kicked the box closest to his feet.  There were pots in it--crappy pots with the bottoms burned out from when Clark attempted to recreate Kent family favorites.  "If you're finally going to move in," he said casually, "you could have done without bringing things you know Dad's just going to throw away anyway." 

Conner didn't really realize that Clark was moving in until he'd said it out loud himself, as the idea of his small, two-person existence suddenly becoming three had been overwhelming enough when he was in the fourth grade.  Now, he felt a resigned sort of acceptance pushing aside the jealous, tangible fear he'd kept to his chest all of these years. 

When he'd been young, the thought of having a mom had been all about himself, the possibility that having a mother meant dividing his father's attention had not settled into reality until later.  He'd never been wild about the idea of sharing his father, but he'd seen it when he was young and he saw it now and knew that his father was happier with Clark than without, and Conner had done all manner of stupid and ridiculous things in order to please Lex Luthor.  So he'd encouraged their relationship, dropped not-so-subtle hints that got him grounded and embarrassed his mother, who still blushed like a little kid. 

The mom he'd shouted horrible things at in a hospital room not too long ago, Conner winced. 

"The persistence of hope, Conner," Clark said lightly, and after a beat, murmured gently, "You can stop torturing yourself over it--I've said much worse to my parents in my lifetime." 

Conner looked up hopefully, and found Clark smiling, if weary, standing in front of him. 

"Are you really moving in?" Conner asked, feeling his heart thud. 

"Well, I broke the lease on my apartment," Clark muttered.   

Conner blinked.  "Oh," he said shyly. 

"Plus," Clark added ruefully, "I got fired, so I couldn't afford it anymore, anyway." 

He handed Conner a box filled with stuff Conner had seen on Clark's desk over the years, ugly paperweights and cheap ballpoint pens, a red, cordless mouse Conner had purchased him for his birthday last year.  It was heavy in his arms. 

Clark said, "Can you go put that in the guest room?" 

Conner shouted, "You what?" 

Clark sighed.  "It's not a big deal," he promised. 

"They fired you from the Daily Planet?" Conner said, aghast.  "For what?" 

"I'm going to assume for gross violation of the conflict of interest policy," Lex said, and when Conner turned around, Clark's desk in a box still clutched in his arms, he saw his father dressed in black slacks and a loose, long-sleeved gray shirt, leaning against the doorway to his study.  

He looked better than he had in days, a little rounder around the edges and less like he was going to sleep forever.  Conner knew his father had been sneaking around to work, but had hoped Lex would respect his own limits since Conner couldn't make him do it, and was gratified to see that he had.  But for all his new-again softness, Lex's eyes were hard.   

"Sorry, I tried to keep it from happening," Lex said, apology edged with a sharp edge, as if he was sorry, but more than that, he was mad. 

Clark grinned, wry.  "I appreciate the effort." 

"What violation?" Conner argued, whipping back and forth between his mother and father.  "He's never written anything about you!  You do the cops beat!  If he was doing business or city council I guess I could--" 

"Conner," Clark interrupted.  "It's not a big deal, okay?" 

Out of the corner of his eye, Conner saw his father walk, puzzled and mildly disgusted to the boxes Clark had dumped all over the floor.  Lex poked them with the same cautious curiosity that adventurers had for new and theretofore unknown life forms--given Clark's propensity for letting things sit in the fridge until they became sentient, it wasn't entirely out of the question that his father's reaction was correct. 

"You got fired!" Conner shouted, furious.  "That's a huge deal!  Those bastards!  They--they--!" 

"We write the news, we don't make the news," Clark said gently, putting a hand on Conner's shoulder.  "It's okay--really." 

Conner opened his mouth to ask, "Really, really really?" but his father beat him to it and said instead, "In that case, I'll have Mrs. Banner throw out these boxes of accumulated garbage." 

Clark looked up, startled, hand still on Conner's shoulder.  "Lex, those are my clothes." 

"Yes, and every member of the paparazzi and legitimate news alike will thank me for having them burnt," Lex said easily.  He looked at Conner and said, "What's in that box you're holding?"

Conner clutched the box close to his chest, because his father's persistent battle against kitsch and mismatched textiles sometimes felt like a personal vendetta.  Conner had tried to explain once that for some people, matching really wasn't all that important, at which point his father had just looked tragically saddened and said, "At least you have a school uniform." 

"It's stuff for my science project," Conner lied easily. 

Lex gave him a narrow-eyed look, but let it pass, turning back to Clark. 

"So you're staying?" 

"Unless you have any objections," Clark said demurely, but the way somebody who already knew the answer would, because he had already started unpacking his Smallville High School varsity football memorabilia on the coffee table. 

Lex smiled, tight and small, and said, "No," before he turned around and disappeared back into the study, where Conner heard the clacking of Lex's keyboard for a moment or two before his father's voice rang through the house intercom system saying: 

"Thanks to camera number forty-eight in the living room, I have successfully identified the box you're holding as Clark's ugly belongings instead of science project materials, please surrender them to the proper authorities and get Clark to Horton's to meet a personal shopper." 

"Crap," Conner said, swiveling his head to look for camera forty-eight, because the last time he'd checked, there'd only been forty-three. 

Clark just laughed.  "It's okay," he said, "I know you tried." 

It would be better like this, three instead of two.  Conner still felt the bearing weight of fear, but imagined that now, he did not have to live in a constant state of fear for his reckless mind, that he wouldn't blow up the building or tear up his own flesh.

---

But Conner could feel the building pressure of disaster in the back of his mind and he was too busy and too frightened to invest too much time in fixing it.  He spent little time sleeping and no time eating and felt himself start to snap under his own pressure.  He'd always needed to be more careful of himself than other people, but the effort was starting to grind down on him, wear him to the bone, and he could feel the uncomfortable scrape against his throat, along his spine. 

Having Clark there helped, but having Clark there meant having Clark there constantly, no longer the occasional, comforting presence to which Conner had become accustomed in the last years, and by the time Geoffrey hared off on his own to grieve for his mother, Conner was worn to his last, trembling nerve.  He woke up to hear voices in the penthouse talking without him, fell asleep to people who were concerned with other things, and realized with a huge, horrifying sort of weight that the visceral fear of being useless had be gruesomely realized, and no amount of scrubbing the tub would replace all the adult confidence that Clark had brought into the picture, having shouting matches with Lex and stealing his office supplies. 

Maybe he'd never really realized it before, but fifteen wasn't only helpless and stupid, it was a child, and he looked down at his own hands to find that they were small, thin, and smooth.  He couldn't move mountains, much less his father. 

So when on no particular night or morning he saw his mother stroking his father's back soothingly as Lex gagged into an emesis basin, Conner, instead of rushing to the bed and being no help at all, walked to the solarium and blew out every piece of glass in the room, drew up a nor'easter wind and destroyed everything, felt a blinding, agonizing power behind his eyes, and finally, finally let it free. 

Several hours later, he woke up to find his hands and knees bandaged, dark red spots seeping through anyway.  He'd been flat on his back in his bed, and Mrs. Banner had been sitting at his side.  The penthouse was quiet. 

"You were on your hands and knees in the glass," he'd hear Mrs. Banner tell him later, tearful and shaking, stroking his forehead with desperate tenderness.  "Oh, sweetheart." 

"Where's my father?  Where's my mom?" Conner croaked.  His throat hurt and his head hurt and something his chest hurt and he wanted his parents and needed them immediately. 

"Your dad's asleep," Mrs. Banner demurred.  "Clark's on the phone." 

"With who?" he asked groggily, feeling hollowed out, feeling exhausted.  "With who?"

And the only thing Mrs. Banner would say as she smoothed his hair was "Oh, sweetheart, oh, sweetheart," and "I'll miss you so much."

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