IV.
The first time Conner woke up he fought the
respirator and hurt himself something awful between the gagging and
tugging and the nurses trying to hold him down--which made him scream
and got him sedated.
The second time Conner woke up, he almost started
it up all over again but Clark was at his bedside, holding Conner's hand
so hard Conner thought his hand would be broken. And Conner stared into
his mother's eyes the whole time he was awake, which must have only been
a few seconds because Clark didn't say anything, just stared at Conner
like the world was ending until Conner went back to sleep.
The third time Conner woke up he saw his dad crying
at his bedside so he closed his eyes because it made him want to
die--again, Conner thought, because he had died, hadn't he?--to watch
his dad's hands covering his face, shoulders shaking.
Conner knew--the same way he knew the sky was blue
and that Geoffrey shined and his mother and father loved him--that he
was fine, that there was nothing physically wrong with him that
ibuprofen and time couldn't heal. He could feel bruises, bleeding along
his pale, pale skin; he could feel the cuts knitting together with an
aching he liked to brush against cool hospital sheets. He felt a low
throb and a numb grayness and he could hear his blood rushing in his
ears.
Conner knew he could wake up, but it was hard to
fight the undertow of seeking fingers, the curling claws of dreams that
were chained to him, and when Conner slept he did it fitfully, waking up
in damp sheets, panting for oxygen, staring everywhere but at his
parents' expressions, watery and bruised, broken-hearted.
Conner dreamed.
Sometimes it was a hazy golden Smallville day, with
the sky a piercing blue over the distant treeline and the tattered
windmill circling lazily, clouds crawling across Conner's field of
vision. There was a cold wind, sweet and tart like apple cider and he
would lean over, press his head to Terry's shoulder, feel the knobby
bone of Terry's elbow and the warmth of his thigh and Conner would press
their hands together and close his eyes.
Sometimes it was Metropolis, slick with rain and
gilded in all its neon jewels, square and sheer and shaped like
reflected signs, like enormous ever-changing screens, advertising
electronics companies and displaying the weather. And Conner could hear
the sound of choppers overhead, traffic murmuring below, feel the oxygen
wrap all around him, suspended like Conner's mother must have felt when
he was flying--watching the city in a wash of lights. And then Conner
would hear Geoffrey say his name and look over his shoulder, feeling his
mouth tug up in a smile as he reached out for his friend's hand.
Most of the time, Conner dreamed of the field and
the jagged dig of rocks into his legs, his back, his arms. Conner
smelled the dirt, pungent with sleepy winter and the putrid scent of
last season's fertilizers and chemicals, the green afterimage of rows of
corn, the disaster in the air sharp and acrid. Conner tasted the blood
in his mouth and nausea rolled his stomach and he saw the blurry feet in
front of him, felt the rough hands on his shoulders, his face, cupping
his chin and stroking the backs of his knees, the insides of his thighs,
the arches of his feet, and each touch made him shake until he woke up,
tears soaking into his pillow and choking, mouth sealed tightly,
grinding his teeth so hard his jaw hurt.
The fourth time Conner woke up, Geoffrey was
there.
The light in the room was gray and watery and warm,
slanted across the sheets on the hospital bed, and Conner was on his
side, IVs still running into his arm--but Geoffrey was running his long
fingers between Conner's wrist and the naked curve of his elbow, where
needles were bruising translucent skin.
"It's okay," Geoffrey whispered, kissing Conner's
wrist, his mouth the only warm thing in the whole room. "I'll be here
when you wake up."
Geoffrey was there when Conner woke--every
time he woke, after that. Either at the bedside or in another corner of
the room, or hanging in the background, hair sticking up six ways from
Sunday and scribbling across what Conner recognized as his school
notebooks, absurdly cute and cow-printed, a throwback to an era where
people took their books to school wrapped in a leather strap. Conner's
parents drifted into and out of the room like ghosts.
Conner was grateful for the silence after the
deafening noise of the storm, and he sometimes wondered if he'd damaged
his hearing permanently, if the tornado had simply whited out all the
sounds around him.
Around the eighth or ninth time Conner woke up, he
tried to talk and a hollow rasp came out.
"Good morning," Geoffrey whispered, appearing
suddenly at Conner's side, his face pale and tired and so happy it made
Conner blink.
"Morning," Conner croaked. "What--" he started,
and stopped himself, swallowing hard, throat achingly dry for just a
second before Geoffrey shushed him, disappeared, and came back a moment
later with a cup in his hands.
Geoffrey's calloused fingers pressed at Conner's
mouth, cold ice sliding against his lips and Conner opened his mouth
gratefully, tasting salt on Geoffrey's skin as the water rolled down his
throat--a trickle of relief.
"First time I've ever seen you so quiet for so
long," Geoffrey said, voice still low, setting away the cup of ice chips
with a plastic thock against the bedside table.
"What are you doing?" Conner croaked.
And Geoffrey, who appeared neither surprised nor
distressed, only scowled and said, "English--we're doing British
poetry--T.S. Eliot."
Conner closed his eyes again, swallowing hard and
shaking his head.
"Eliot is American," he rasped.
"Apparently, there's some debate about that,"
Geoffrey said, and sat on the edge of Conner's bed, hand on Conner's
hip, and it was a safe, warm kind of touch, the kind that helped push
away the dreams a little, shoved them into dark corners on a warm day.
"You are what you're born into," Conner said by
rote, and blinked drowsily. "What poem?"
"Love song," Geoffrey answered, and his voice
dropped down to a whisper again. "Footmen for death and eating
peaches. Rolling up linen pants and walking on beaches."
"Mermaids singing," Conner said, dazed, slipping
back into the dark, "each to each."
Geoffrey smoothed a hand over Conner's forehead and
Conner leaned into the touch--starved for it, longing for something
other than the clinical lines of the hospital room. "They singing to
you?" Geoffrey asked, palm huge and warm on Conner's temple.
Conner shook his head faintly, words slurring as he
murmured, "Human voices, Geoffrey."
And the last thing he heard before he tipped over
into the black again was Geoffrey saying, "You're not going to drown,
Conner."
So Conner slept again, dreamless and deep like a
velvet ocean, tumbling down into the waves and looking upward to see the
glimmer of Geoffrey's smile like golden sun shimmering on the skin of
the sea.
The first time Conner spoke to his father after he
woke up, he said, "Hi, Dad," and Lex had come to him with trembling
hands, kissed Conner's cheeks and eyelids and brow, stroked Conner's
hair and touched his neck, his shoulders, rubbed Conner's hands and
touched all of his fingers. Lex murmured, "Oh, thank God, thank God,"
until Conner finally pulled his father into an awkward hug so he could
hide his red face in Lex's shoulder and mutter, "You don't believe in
God." Then Lex said:
"But I believe in
you."
It took another four days before Conner managed to
harass Lois into getting him a copy of the second-day, and when she
arrived with it clutched in wary hands, Conner jerked it out of Lois'
grasp and smoothed his hands over the familiar broadsheet, the text and
dropheds and color photos on the front page. He did it until his eyes
focused on an image of his father with his face in his hands, Clark bent
over him, standing in the shadow of a lobby, all cloaked in shadow.
There was a sheer arc of light, like the photographer had captured the
image through a window, but Conner could see the slouch in his dad's
shoulders, the tension in Clark's, their faces crushed and miserable.
Everything left of column A down the center was
making Conner a star, and he felt a doomed sense of realization that the
news cycle was going to eat this up--that he was going to be famous in
all the wrongs ways for a very long time.
His hands were kind of shaking but he pressed his
palms down into the newspaper on his lap long enough to find Lois'
byline: LOIS LANE, STAFF REPORTER under a headline that read LUTHOR HEIR
VICTIM OF HATE CRIME.
The story went like
this:
Conner Clark Luthor -- son of heartland business
baron Lex Luthor -- was hospitalized at Metropolis Mercy-Wade Hospital
Monday morning following an assault in Smallville Friday night.
Police reports obtained indicated that Luthor
had been at a local, Smallville High School party when five members of
the varsity football team and one member of the varsity cheerleading
squad spied Luthor and another football player embracing -- leading to a
struggle which left both Luthor and his beau unconscious.
Luthor spent the past several months in
Smallville after his father, Lex Luthor, was diagnosed with leukemia and
began undergoing treatment. Sources close to the family claim the move
was to ease family stress generated by the disease. Luthor was living
with Martha and Jonathan Kent -- parents of Clark Kent, Lex Luthor's
longtime partner.
Whitney Ross, an 18-year-old senior at
Smallville High School, contacted the police immediately, saying in her
911 call that somebody had been drugged and beaten -- but by the time
law enforcement arrived, Luthor had been whisked away by the football
players for a "scarecrowing," a Smallville tradition banned more than a
decade ago, where the victim is first stripped and then tied to a post
in a cornfield overnight.
Police arrived on the scene at Jonas Carter's
farm about an hour later after braving a freak tornado to find an entire
cornfield flattened, four unconscious football players and Ross
performing CPR on Conner Luthor, who was taken immediately to Smallville
Medical Center and then medivacced to Mercy-Wade several hours later.
Ross was kept overnight at Smallville Medical to be treated for shock
and assorted bruises and cuts garnered in the storm.
"I was horrified," Jonas said. "Things like
this -- I thought they didn't happen in this town anymore. I thought
we'd moved past that."
Police disagree.
"There're questions as to whether or not this
was premeditated," said Smallville Sheriff Gordon Hutchins during a
press conference Thursday morning. "There is not, however, any question
that this was a hate crime."
"It was an unconscionable act, and we will get
to the bottom of this."
Although Lex Luthor has yet to make a public
statement, doctors at Mercy-Wade said Luthor was in stable condition,
though they were unwilling to speculate on when he would be released and
did not reveal the nature of his injuries. Hospital officials added
that Luthor's companion would be transferred to Mercy-Wade later today.
Conner pasted a smile to his face and glanced at
Lois, who was peering at him from between her fingertips, hands splayed
out over her face and wincing.
"My beau," he said stupidly, because if he thought
about anything he'd throw up, and Lois looked like she was wearing her
tan Jimmy Choos, the ones she loved more than bylines.
"Your beau is under eighteen," Lois pointed
out.
"You and your ethics," Conner said, because in a
way, this was completely hilarious.
In the sterile language of news, everything seemed
less terrible. The article was well-sourced and calm, detached and
revealed nothing of what Conner imagined was high-pitched fury on Lois'
part as soon as the story broke, Perry White's resigned abuse of
painkillers as she'd started in on her tirade in front of his desk. And
sources close to the Luthor family were not described as deadly and
organized, knives glinting in their eyes. Only Lois could have done the
story--despite past conflicts of interest--Conner realized, because no
one would have spoken to anybody else. Lois was compromised, and that
was the only reason she had access at all.
"How is my beau, really?" Conner asked strangely,
and his mouth was dry.
Lois rubbed her temple. "He's about two floors
down."
Conner nodded, slowly. "Can I see him?" Conner
wanted to ask, why hasn't he been up here?
According to Lois' sources, who were Jeremy, the
omnisexual male nurse in trauma, and Helen, apparently Terry's
attending, Terrence Daniels had been transferred to Mercy-Wade after
Smallville kicked up a fit that its native son was caught swapping spit
with another boy. There were snide comments, a media circus, and
small-town hospitals unaccustomed to the attention had thrown up their
hands and ordered a helicopter. So Terry was two floors down from
Conner's room, recovering from three broken ribs and a broken wrist,
bruises and cuts all over and just hearing about it made Conner sick all
over again, felt himself nauseated like he was rocking on a boat.
It wasn't like Conner hadn't known--intellectually,
anyway--that Terry had been hurt. He'd been there, at least briefly,
when Walden had thrown the first punch. And for all of the bruises and
scrapes Conner had seen on Terry's pale skin, he gagged thinking about
Terry wearing all the same scars Conner did.
"I'm kind of tired," he whispered.
And Lois touched his face, said, "I thought you
might be."
On the sixth night Conner was in the hospital, he
crept out of his bed and pulled on Geoffrey's Metropolis Rocket's
sweatshirt--it smelled like ink from Geoffrey's technical pens and the
soap in the St. Ann's bathrooms and like Geoffrey's reassurances--and
toed his feet into the slippers Lois had brought him: Steve Madden, blue
terrycloth, embroidered with the words BAD NEWS wearing devil
horns--classic Lois. He pushed open his hospital room door and caught
Hope raising one beautifully curved eyebrow at him, and he looked at her
hopefully before her face softened and she nodded, pointing at her watch
and holding up one finger: one hour, Conner knew, from long experience
of conspiring with Hope throughout the years.
He got in the elevator at the end of the hall and
listened to the muzak echo in the hollow metal cube and felt colder and
more far away from home than he ever did in Smallville--before.
And when the metal doors opened like the teeth of a
metal jaw, he stepped out onto the trauma ward, tiptoed down the hall,
wandered around aimlessly like another gray ghost in pajama pants and
his scars, searched the corridors up and down until he saw room 3312 and
touched the handle, cold from the hospital's circulated air. After a
long time, he opened the door and saw Terry, his profile so familiar and
dear and framed by Metropolis' artificial light from the opened-blinds
in his room. He was alone and he was small in the bed and Conner felt
his chest cave in.
Conner said, "Hi," because he knew Terry wouldn't
be asleep either.
"Hey," Terry said, voice hoarse like he was just
relearning how to talk, too.
"You don't look so good, Terry," Conner sighed, and
shuffled toward the bed, grateful for the sweatshirt, for the smell of
Geoffrey's pens wrapped around him.
Terry reached over to stroke Conner's palm with his
thumb, saying, "You don't look so hot, either, Metropolis," and added, "Wanna
climb up?" because somehow they both knew this would be the last time
they would do this.
So Conner did, and he curled himself into Terry's
bruised and battered side, careful of his broken ribs and wrist, and he
reached up to knot his hands gently in Terry's dark hair, the soft,
sweet curls at the base of Terry's neck, where Conner had liked to drop
kisses, once upon a time. He breathed the smell of bleached hospital
sheets and listened to the papery rustle of Terry's hospital gown and
squeezed in closer, closing his eyes against the incandescent white.
Terry stroked his palm over Conner's hip, with the
intimate kindness of a lover and the wistful longing of a widow.
"My parents are transferring me to a school in
Metropolis," Terry said. "Finish out senior year here--MetU wants me to
play for them, I think."
"MetU has a crappy team," Conner muttered.
"Maybe I can fix it," Terry said brightly.
Conner thought that if anybody could do it, it was
Terry, who was disarming and smart when he wanted to be, fast and strong
and good at what he did. "Okay," Conner said, and added, "I think I'm
going back to St. Ann's."
Conner felt Terry's grin against his hair.
"Shut up," he said hotly.
"You know I love that
uniform," Terry said.
"Because you're a pervert," Conner hissed,
but without any heat. "I'm gonna have to do junior year all over
again."
Terry laughed at that. "Maybe you'll bag another
guy in Chemistry, then."
Conner was silent for a long time before he said,
"They said this was Smallville tradition."
Shrugging against him, Terry murmured, "I heard
about it. They haven't--hadn't done it in ages."
"Not many queers in Smallville," Conner said
quietly.
"Not anymore, anyway," Terry answered, and clutched
Conner a little more tightly. "I--did anything--they didn't. You're
okay though?" He pulled away, looked at Conner through a wince of pain
for his ribs, stroked Conner's cheeks and touched his hair and asked,
"They didn't?"
Conner's eyes went huge and scared for a minute
because he knew what Terry was asking and wanted to say,
"Almost--they--but I made a tornado," but he said instead, "No. I'm
fine. Really, here," and put Terry's hand on his chest, and they
listened to one another's heartbeats for a very long time.
"This is so fucked up," Terry finally said, and the
words were ripped out of him.
It was, and Conner had nothing smart to say to it,
so he just pulled himself close to Terry again and put his face in
Terry's neck.
The thing was--and it was the thing nobody and
neither of them were saying--the thing was that this would never work
again. They'd lost their rhythm, fallen out of step, fallen down, and
when they looked up and across at one another it was with the horror of
somebody who knew how it had felt to be broken down like that, to
bear all the braceleted bruises of victims.
Conner couldn't fix Terry and Terry couldn't fix
Conner and they couldn't be broken together, Conner knew--they weren't
those kind of people, but they could do this, for an hour at least,
before Hope would come down the stairs and quietly pull Conner from
Terry, untangle Conner's hands from Terry's hair and pull Terry's arm
from over Conner's narrow chest.
Before, Conner had thought he was all cried out,
like a parched desert in wintertime, still and dry, wearing intricate
cracks on his skin, across his face, but he was wrong because after Hope
all but pried him out of Terry's arms he heard Terry sob and by the time
he was back in his own room he was crying so hard he couldn't breathe.
The metaphor was wrong, Conner realized, because he
wasn't a desert frozen in geologic time but a deep and still lake, muted
by winter--but the ice was cracking and all the noises of a world coming
alive were drowning him in a cacophony. And Conner thought he saw
light, filtering dimly through the broken-up ice overhead, so close he
could reach his hand out to touch the ragged bottoms of it, and look
down to see blackened water and dead corn, a purple the color of the
sky.
He cried himself to sleep again and cried himself
awake and then Geoffrey was smoothing a hand over Conner's forehead,
smiling at him so brightly and with such an alien expression that Conner
didn't understand, lost his train of thought and forgot that he was
miserable.
"Good morning," Geoffrey said.
"You look happy," Conner said inanely.
And that was when Geoffrey laced their hands
together, fingers sliding together like old puzzle pieces--because
Conner had always known how to hold Geoffrey's hand--and said,
"Conner--your dad. He went into remission. The tests came in while you
were sleeping."
Conner was quiet for a long time until he realized
he was smiling and he had forgotten he could do that.
"It is a good morning, then," Conner said, talking
around the lump still in his throat and Geoffrey scrubbed at Conner's
cheeks, the swollen corners of Conner's eyes, with the corner of his
shirtsleeve.
Geoffrey pushed Conner's hair out of his eyes and
said, "Yeah, it is."
Eventually, Conner got out of the hospital.
Geoffrey drove him home and they reached the penthouse just in time to
hear the tail end of an argument that Clark and Conner's grandmother
were having in the kitchen, about selfishness and bad-parenting and
placing blame, about being cruel and being weak and being good enough
for the people who were good enough to love you. Conner and Geoffrey
looked at one another and went down the hall, around the corner, where
Geoffrey helped Conner climb into his bed--soft and crisp and luxurious
with clean sheets and soft pillows and thick blankets--and then sat at
the foot of it, reading Conner the "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,"
because, as Geoffrey told Conner, Conner was no coward, and he would eat
peaches, let their summer-sweet juice roll down his chin.
"What does that even mean?" Conner asked, drowsy.
"I have absolutely no idea," Geoffrey said
confidently.
Conner laughed, and he felt a little lighter, and
when he fell asleep, he saw Geoffrey climbing off of his bed, saw Lex
hovering in the doorway, looking more drawn than he had the last time
Conner had seen him, and Clark, a dark, hollow-eyed shadow in the
corner.
When he woke up, it was to a copy of the Daily
Planet set on his bedside table. It was several days old, and on
the front page, above the fold, there was an article from Clark Kent,
former Planet staff reporter, who talked about hate-crimes and
Smallville and being tied up to a cross overnight when he was fifteen
years old. Clark wrote about thinking he'd die either from humiliation
or cold and how it had changed him, changed the person he wanted to be.
Clark talked about being saved, being pulled off of his crucifix when
Lex Luthor drove past and unknotted all the ropes--set him free. He
talked about what it was like to get the phone call from the Smallville
Sheriff's office, about how he went catatonic, about sitting around and
not being able to say a word, about staring at Conner and feeling like
tearing the town apart, burning it to the ground. And then he talked
about hating himself, about hating Lex, because it had happened to Clark
and they had let it happen to their baby--Conner was still their
baby--and God knows how many other people, who would always remember it,
like the cold shine of a knife on their skin.
By the time Conner finished reading and looked up,
it was to Clark again, all shadows and lines in the doorway and Conner
finally got it, knew what he'd missed, and he said, "I'm really
sorry," and Clark choked as he said:
"I'm--we're really sorry, too."
Conner was, despite what sometimes felt like the
best efforts of his parents, a normal boy, and if he didn't get over it,
he got over not being over it.
Spring crept into the city like a thief and on
Conner's first day back at St. Ann's, he walked into his familiar, tenth
grade classroom to Eve Anthony's rolled-up skirt, flashing the long,
smooth curves of her thighs, her calves, her beautiful ankles. Julie's
shirt was opened to three buttons and her tie was a disaster. Garrison
was laying in the back of the room, a piece of ice from the science lab
across the hallway on his forehead, moaning obscenely.
Geoffrey was in the counselors office, a mandatory
meeting after all the school he had missed and after what was apparently
the biggest and most embarrassing fight ever in the history of time,
during which (a) Geoffrey and Eve broke up (b) Eve punched Geoffrey in
the left nipple, because she was that kind of evil bitch and (c)
Geoffrey actually threw his sketchbook at somebody--dozens of
half-finished sketches of a sleeping boy falling out.
Conner heard it from Randall who heard it from
Julie who was using Garrison for her carnal needs which Conner totally
didn't need to know but found out anyway because when you went to school
with the same fifteen people for your entire life, things like that
happened.
"It was a disaster," Randall said.
"Disaster is such a mild word for it," Julie
agreed, making a face.
Garrison, who had been the first one to flag down
Conner that morning, nodded. "It was like--you know--seeing the sheer
fury of God or something." He shuddered. "I mean, I thought Jules here
was bad when she was on her moon time."
Julie punched Garrison in the arm and said, "I
mean, you remember when Rebecca Hornby and Rob Kirk broke up a year
before us?" Conner nodded, because Rebecca Hornby had set Rob's car
on fire. "Well, Geoffrey and Eve didn't outdo them, but that was
only because Sister Hyacinth managed to separate them before Eve could
start weeping and accusing you guys of having illicit gay sex on the
side and pounding him with her history textbook."
Conner paled. "Uh, guys," he said.
Garrison waved his hand dismissively. "Please,
Conner, don't insult our intelligence."
"No, seriously," Conner insisted. "I don't know
where you guys got this idea, but."
Julie rolled her eyes. "Well, if you're not going
to be honest, then we're just not going to tell you about what Eve did
to Geoffrey's locker."
"Hey," Conner protested. "I just got like,
gay-bashed. Not two months ago."
"Oh my God," Randall said, "That's so old news.
How long are you going to keep bringing that up? Blah blah blah, I got
tied to a stake in a field. Blah blah blah, Randall's dad illegally cut
down a tropical rainforest and contributed to the extinction of two
protected species. It all gets so boring."
"Yeah, Conner," Julie said, but there was a twinkle
in her eyes. "Boring."
Conner stared at them for a minute before he broke out into a smile.
"You know what? I think you're right."
"I'm always right," Julie said charitably, and she
put her hand on his.
"Now--dish," Garrison demanded just as Geoffrey
burst into the room, shouting:
"That crazy bitch filled my locker with
extra small lubricated condoms!"
On May 16th, the five varsity football players and
one cheerleader were officially charged with conspiracy, kidnapping, and
assault. The media argued endlessly over whether their one million a
head bail was predicated on one of the victims being the son of Lex
Luthor or just for the cruelty of the crime--both sides had good points
but Conner didn't much pay attention to them.
Weeks ago, Lex Luthor had called the Smallville
Savings and Loan and reminded the entire town that he had a majority
stake. By May 18th, Smallville was a ghost town, all empty store-fronts
and repossessed houses, and if Martha and Jonathan Kent were angry or
felt betrayed by the turn of events, they kept their silence. The Ross'
moved, and Conner told them they should buy out the French boulangerie
near St. Ann's, since they were considerably nicer people than the
monolingual glarer who worked there. Whitney got accepted to UC Santa
Barbra and wrote encyclopedic emails about every detail of her
life--including all of the concerts she went to and how the White
Stripes had sweated on her. Conner kept them in a file on his laptop
called, "crazy son of a bitch."
May 20th, a public high school in Metropolis had
its graduation ceremony and Terry walked the stage to get his diploma.
No members of the media were present to capture the event because Conner
kept his mouth shut, through interviews and Barbra Walters' phone calls,
because it wouldn't help anything for both of them to be miserable under
the washed-out glare of a flashbulb. At least Conner had bodyguards.
Sometime after that, Conner went to Geoffrey's
house and kissed him against his bedroom door. Geoffrey had pushed
Conner's hands to the wall, held them palm to palm, and he kissed the
corners of Conner's mouth, the bow of Conner's upper lip, just like he
had the first time, when he was saying goodbye or good morning. This
time, Geoffrey kissed him hello.
"What are we doing?" Conner asked.
"I'm not really sure," Geoffrey answered. He
looked at the floor. "I--got a lot of lubricated condoms, though."
"I thought they were extra smalls," Conner said,
feeling the beginnings of hysterical laughter curling up in his belly,
because he was definitely too fucked up to do this yet, but he was glad
he was here, because Geoffrey would smile and kiss him and read him
poetry Geoffrey didn't understand, tell Conner to eat peaches and not
break Geoffrey's heart--and they were all things Conner would take
gladly, do gladly.
Geoffrey's eyes narrowed. "She ruins everything."
On May 22nd, Conner started seeing Dr. Willis, who
had coral-red walls and every single Brian Jacques book ever written
lining his built-in bookshelves. For the entire first hour-long
session, Conner read from Mattimeo, which was his favorite book,
and when Dr. Willis asked why Conner had chosen it, Conner said, "When I
was a kid, I did a book report on it. Geoffrey--my best friend--did
Go Jump in the Pool. He threw water at our class. I wasn't allowed
to bring my sword." Dr. Willis smiled at him and said, "Hour's up.
I'll see you next Friday."
June 1st, Conner realizes he hasn't had a nightmare
in a very long time, and that all the broken, cracked pieces of himself
are starting to make sense again, that he's not quite so fragmented
anymore.
On Conner's birthday, Lex gave him a t-shirt.
It was a fetching shade of fatigue green and the
annoying font spelled out "Keep Metropolis Weird." Conner held it in
his hands for a long time before he looked back up at his father, who
was looking back at him--a soft expression Conner hadn't seen for a very
long time on Lex's face.
Conner opened and closed his mouth a few times
before Lex sighed and pulled Conner into a hug, huge and worried and
tight, and Conner felt the way he had when the dragon had torn
Metropolis to shreds, left his father bleeding in a profile in front of
Conner's young eyes.
Lex had called Conner his miracle once, his
anodyne, his penicillin, his unexpected lifesaver, had held Conner's
face in his hands and kissed his brow, his eyelids, touched his hands
and shoulders and marveled at him--
The same way Conner had done to Lex when he'd
visited Conner after news of the remission. Conner had held his
father's face in his hands, touched his father's hands and his shoulders
and clutched him close, been astounded by him, because if Conner was
Lex's unexpected miracle, then Lex was Conner's sun, his skies, the
framework of the universe. Lex had always been there and Conner had to
believe Lex would always be there. Lex was Conner's father, his
teacher, his worst enemy and best friend--Lex was Conner's hero.
And when Conner finally managed to tear himself
away, he said, "I'm told these are really popular these days."
And Lex laughed, pressing a kiss to Conner's
forehead, and said, "Yeah. Nice shirt."
The End.
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