Title: The Weeks

Author: Anonymous

Email: Anonymous

Rating: PG-13

Challenge: How can anything be so small

Notes: Thanks to my girls, you know who you are

Summary: Lex and Clark get a small surprise . . . to say the least

“Mr. Luthor!” Diggory Peabody yelled through the rubble and loose, sparking wires. The laboratory was in ruins and the moans and groans of injured people were thick in the smoky air.

“Diggs?” Lex called out with a cough. He was covered in shimmering green powder and tiny shards.

Mr. Peabody ran to his employer and carefully helped him up. “Are you alright sir?”

Lex coughed, his breath putting out green. “Shit,” he swore. “Jessup!” He bellowed, calling to Dr. Mortimer Jessup, the head of the project.

“He’s out cold, Mr. Luthor,” one of the technicians said, tending to the unconscious scientist. Lex, with the help of Mr. Peabody, made his way into the shower and decontamination room as the cleanup team ran in, neutralizing the green dust that was settling everywhere.

“What the fuck happened?” Lex demanded as he stripped off his suit under the warm stream of water and a suspension of thick, white barium sulfate.

“I think he sneezed,” Mr. Peabody answered, recalling the sequence of events back through his mind.

“Sneezed?” Lex asked, finally down to nothing, the concentration rinsing the dust away. Hissing, he looked down to his stomach. Low on his torso, just above his hipbone was a small, bleeding cut. He aimed the hose to the scratch, rinsing it clean, never noticing the few green specks that disappeared within his body. “Motherfucker sneezed?” He asked again, turning off the shower of barium sulfate and washing it all off under clean water.

Mr. Peabody nodded, “From what we could see on the deck, it looked like a sneeze. Then his hand kinda jumped and he hit the particle stream and everything—”

“Yeah,” Lex replied, drying himself off and grabbing a pair of clean scrubs, “I was there for the explosive finale, Diggs.”

“Sorry sir.”

“Have them clean this mess up, now,” he ordered, tossing Mr. Peabody his towel and storming out. He cursed all the way up from level 33.1 to his office. The lab would take weeks to restructure and the nuclear accelerator would have to be completely rebuilt.

“Mr. Luthor?” Tessa, his assistant, gawked at her employer’s dress and slightly silvery appearance as he passed her desk and moved into his office.

“No calls!” He barked, entering his sanctum and slamming the doors behind him. His fast and angry steps were checked by the vision of sweeping red and blue standing at his window. The figure was silhouetted by the setting sun and struck quite an image with his arms folded across his chest and his face set in a stern grimace.

“Are you okay?” The figure asked.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Lex warned with clear irritation, but it was mainly aimed at himself.

“I heard the explosion.”

“Spying on me, Superman?” Lex asked, moving to his drink cart.

“When are you going to let this obsession go, Lex?” Superman walked quickly up to him and set the drink he’d poured back down on the glass cart.

Lex stepped back as if he’d been burned, “Stay away from me,” he warned.

“Lex—”

“Clark, I mean it. Two minutes ago I was covered in kryptonite powder, I’m not sure I got all of it off.”

Clark smirked, “Is that why you’re all silvery?”

Lex pouted, “It’s the barium.”

Rolling his eyes, Clark said with a grin, “You wouldn’t have left the decontamination room if you really didn’t think you got all of it off.”

He was irritated that Clark was so accustomed to his flares of OCD. “Jessup sneezed,” he mumbled.

“Sneezed?” And Clark couldn’t contain his chuckle.

Lex turned away, “Go ahead, laugh. Forty million dollar lab—gone, nuclear particle accelerator—destroyed, a kryptonite Chernobyl sixty-three stories down. Why? Because Dr. Sniffles forgot to pop a Dayquil.”

Putting an arm across Lex’s shoulders, Clark led him over to the soft leather couch in the corner. “You know what mom would say?”

“I need to hire better personnel?”

Clark grinned, “She said that a long time ago.”

“I hate you.”

“You love me.” Smiling, Clark sat him down, “She’d say it’s a sign. It’s a sign that you can’t and shouldn’t make it your responsibility to destroy all of the kryptonite on Earth—”

“As long as it’s out there, you’re vulnerable,” Lex cut him off, not intent on hearing anymore of Clark’s warnings.

“And what if something worse than getting dusted by kryptonite happens?” Clark asked, moving behind Lex to ease the tension in his neck. “I understand that you want to keep me safe but putting yourself and all those people in danger isn’t the answer.”

Lex melted into Clark’s firm and nimble fingers. He’d heard all of this long ago and many times. He understood his concerns but the fact remained that he would gladly risk his life if it meant keeping Clark out of harm’s way. He recalled the event, only three years earlier, when a mafia boss heard a rumor about Superman and little green rocks. It wasn’t too hard to find kryptonite back then, before Lex started to stockpile and destroy it. The boss had his personal side revolver outfitted with crude kryptonite bullets, just in case the rumors were true. A month later, when Clark had interrupted a drug buy on the docks, he felt two slugs enter his back and he fell into the bay. He’d nearly died. Since then it had become Lex’s focus to collect all the fragments of Krypton that had crash-landed on Earth and destroy them. The only way that he’d found successful after three years of R&D had been complete nuclear fission. His original plan of buying a small island in the middle of the arctic sea, loading it with kryptonite and then hitting it with a nuclear bomb had been rejected by Clark . . . for good reason. And so now, small batches were incinerated at LuthorCorp locations all over Kansas. It was tedious work, but it was worth it.

He brought up his hand, clasping Clark’s in his; their matching gold bands clinked against one another. “Let me do this for you. I . . . I have to do this.”

Hearing the rare tone of helplessness in his voice, Clark leaned over and kissed the side of Lex’s jaw. “Please be careful?”

Lex nodded and leaned his head onto Clark’s hand. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, “Well, the rest of my day is ruined. Time to pack it in.”

Clark’s arms embraced him, wrapped him, his cape brushing against the polished floor. “The day’s not over yet,” he whispered, his long fingers stroking Lex’s collar bone.

Grinning, Lex reached behind him and with careful movement of his fingers, he sent shivers up Clark’s body. “Shouldn’t you be patrolling?” He teased, his hand slipping between warm leather and hot flesh. Clark gasped in his ear and moved into his palm, his own hands lowering. Reaching the waistband of the scrubs, Clark’s hand brushed against the nearly healed wound and Lex hissed but his pain was erased as Clark enveloped him. “I should blow up labs more often,” he murmured, Clark’s hands making him throb.

“Forty million dollars is a big price for something you get for free,” Clark moaned into his ear.

“It’s cheap compared to this,” Lex whispered, his hips bucking. He quickly pulled away and turned around, leaning over Clark with serious intent in his features.

Breathing hard, Clark panted, “Here?”

With a nod, Lex smiled, “And right now.”

6 Weeks Later

“Kent! Where’s that article?!” Perry White shouted from the door of his glass-windowed office. Clark pinched the bridge of his nose, his glasses shifting up on his face. There’d been a dull throb that had begun chewing away at him just before sunrise and now, well after noon, it had built into something of a monster clanging cymbals between his ears. His stomach was cramping and the back of his neck was tight and pained. Everyone on the floor noticed the change but they were too worried to really call attention to it. Clark usually existed as the brightest light in the newsroom acting as a force of calm and happiness everyday. No matter how gray the world seemed to be outside, no matter what sort of horrors they’d have to relate each week, Clark was always there to brighten the day.

This day was different. He’d seemed to move in a sort of fog all morning. Now, with Perry calling out to him from across the room, everyone turned to Clark, not trying to disguise their concern. He’d always been the fastest and sharpest among them but now it was like he didn’t even seem to hear his editor’s words.

“Smallville!” Lois snapped between her teeth, poking Clark with the eraser end of a pencil from the desk opposite him. “Aren’t you done yet?” She asked, throwing a worried glance to Perry. That was the sort of question no one had to ask Clark.

“What?” He asked, looking up to her but not seeming to actually see her.

“Are you okay?” She asked, looking at his flushed and damp skin. “You look like you got into some bad shrimp.”

“I’m fine,” he breathed, knowing it wasn’t at all true. Something was very wrong and he had to get home.

“Bullshit you’re fine. Dump the file on the network and I’ll finish it. Go get some Pepto or something,” she advised. Clark wanted to pause at the idea of having Lois anywhere near his article. He’d almost finished cleaning it up and he was sure she’d tinker around with it so much it would be barely readable. Reluctantly, he dropped the article on the shared drive and pushed up from the desk.

“Kent!” Perry called him just as he got to his feet. “In my office, now!”

Clark knew he was being watched by everyone in the busy newsroom as he trudged to Perry’s office. Standing up and moving caused his head to spin and he felt dizzy but he entered the office without groan or complaint. Closing the door behind him, Perry’s usual ‘take no prisoners, yeah I’m badass’ façade melted away into deep paternal concern.

“Kid, talk to me? You look awful.”

“I think it might be a bug,” Clark said, having to hold onto the back of a chair to steady himself. The idea of passing out in the middle of the Daily Planet scared him like nothing else could at that moment. He had an image of his glasses falling off and one of the otherwise observant reporters realizing he bore a striking resemblance to Superman.

“What? Wifey can’t afford a decent cook?” He joked, using his nickname for Lex.

With a sigh Clark countered, “Might be all the stale doughnuts you try to pass off as food.”

Perry chuckled, “Okay, listen, I’d rather you not walk around here like the living dead. You’re captain of the team and everyone’s eyes are on you and not on the ball.”

“I’m sorry Chief—”

“Ah, it’s not your fault. I’m not blaming you, just saying how it is. Listen, Lane can pull double duty. You go home and sleep off whatever the hell this is, okay?”

Clark nodded, eager to go and figure out what was wrong. “Thanks Perry,” he said with a grateful smile. Turning, he left the office and Perry’s bad-ass mask returned,

“Go home, Kent!” He bellowed.

“Guess I’m pinch-hitting,” Lois said, furiously typing away with two fingers. Clark mentally kissed his article goodbye. With a non-committal shrug, he started to shuffle through the papers on his desk when everything became dark and blurred. “Smallville?” He heard Lois call out to him but the world was suddenly off its axis. He was going to fall. He knew he was going to fall. He took a small step back from the desk, let out a shallow breath and felt his knees buckle from under him.

---

Clark’s eyes opened a few minutes later to take in a crowd the size of the entire reporting staff hovering all around him. There was a wet paper towel on his forehead, someone was fanning his face, there was a bottle of water being pressed to his lips and he heard Lois Lane cursing like a sailor at the top of her voice,

“Can you all back the fuck up for Christ’s sake?! He needs his goddamn air!” She looked like she was ready to start kicking asses and taking names so they took a collective step back.

“Lois?” Clark garbled, letting the water she offered him fall into his dry mouth. His glasses were still on his face and no one was chattering about ‘Superman’ so he figured his secret was still safe. “What happened?” He asked, feeling weak and more fragile than he’d ever felt in his entire life.

“You got hit with a fainting spell,” she said, her normally acerbic tone was replaced by the tenderness he’d come to know was under the thick skin. “I checked for a corset, just in case,” she winked and he knew she was trying to make him feel better.

“I fainted?” Clark asked while she and Perry helped him to his feet and into his chair. Someone handed him a bottle of juice.

She brushed his hair back from his face. “Yep Scarlett, you dropped like a rock.”

Perry kept fanning him with yesterday’s copy and started to say, “We called—”

“Clark!” A voice was heard from across the room. Everyone turned to the elevator bank as Lex Luthor and his four-man security entourage walked in on the floor. Everyone peeled back like waves on the Red Sea as the owner quickly made his way to Clark’s desk. With just a look, Lex asked all the frantic questions that he just couldn’t verbalize and with another look, Clark told him he had no answers. “How do you feel?” Lex asked, bending down to eye level and touching his face, searching his gaze.

“I need to get home,” was the only reply Clark could give him. Leaning on Lex for support, they left the eerily quiet newsroom. Telling his men to take the next lift down, Lex and Clark entered the express elevator.

“Talk to me,” Lex said, terrified at the fact that he was holding up most of Clark’s weight.

“I don’t know. I got dizzy—”

“You never get dizzy.”

“I know,” Clark said and to Lex, he looked so scared. A sharp pang of pain flared in his lower stomach and he gasped, desperately gripping onto Lex with weak fingers.

“Clark?!”

“Take me home, Lex,” he quietly pleaded, fighting to stay on his feet. “Please take me home.”

---

Clark bit his lip as the Kryptonian-metal tipped syringe entered his arm and pierced his vein. J’onn J’onzz drew up on the plunger and withdrew a few cubic centimeters of blood. He’d told Clark and Lex that the A.I. in the fortress would analyze the blood within a few moments and they would know, definitively, what exactly was affecting Clark.

“Theories?” Lex had asked when J’onn first arrived after receiving Clark’s call.

J’onn shrugged, “With symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, stomach pain, headaches . . . it could be any number of things affecting his . . . gastrointestinal system.” Clark could hear how reluctantly J’onn had said it and he knew he was thinking something in particular.

“J’onn?”

The older man smiled but it was false. “I won’t say anything that will alarm you, Kal-El. I’ll take the blood and then we can be sure.” Now the vial was full and he was withdrawing the syringe. “Just a few minutes,” he reassured them before exiting through the penthouse’s tall French doors and taking off over the midday city.

“There was something he wasn’t saying,” Lex said, pacing back and forth before the grand, king-sized bed.

“You know how J’onn is,” Clark quietly said, lying down. Silent and grave was J’onn’s modus.

Lex stopped his pacing and stood at the foot of the bed. He gripped the footboard until his knuckles turned ashen white. “Tell me you’re going to be okay?” Lex asked, his voice small. He’d tried being the stronger one for Clark. It was an out of place feeling. Clark had always had the dominant role in their relationship and through their marriage. It was something Lex simply needed in his life, the release into someone else whom he could absolutely and completely trust. He gave himself over to Clark and he didn’t mind. In every other aspect of his life he was in control, he had to be, but with Clark, he could allow himself to be coddled, to be comforted. Now he had to be strong for him, like that night three years ago when he’d pulled his bleeding body from the bay. That was a horrible time and he never wanted a repeat of that moment. Never. Now Clark was lying on their bed, fragile, weak and it was driving him insane. He had to find someway to fix this.

“Lex—” Clark said, extending his hand. Lex immediately came around and took it in his. “I’ll be fine,” he assured him with a smile. He’d had to pull that smile and that assurance from somewhere very deep inside of him because the pain shaking through him was so bad. “Okay?” He asked, pulling every bit of energy he had through and brightening his face.

Letting out a shuddering breath, Lex closed his eyes and held Clark’s hand against his chest. Time crawled slowly by. There came a whoosh four minutes later and they turned to see J’onn’s return. His face was split between gravity, confusion and elation. It was the confusion and elation that perplexed the pair the most. He turned to Lex and simply asked, “How quickly can you get sonogram equipment up here?”

Clark and Lex looked to one another, lost.

20 Minutes Later

“Alright, to preface this, because it will come as a shock, a slight history lesson is needed,” J’onn began once the equipment had been set up.

Lex chewed on his nails.

“A history lesson?” Clark asked as J’onn lifted his shirt and exposed the skin of his abdomen.

“Kryptonian and Martian history. Human history by extension.” Clark and Lex looked to one another having no idea what J’onn was talking about. J’onn went on, “As you both know, the Martian race was asexual, meaning that we self-procreate. Within our bodies we self-fertilize and produce genetically identical offspring. Kryptonians and humans, by contrast, are not self-replicating.”

“We know that, J’onn,” Clark said as ultrasound gel was liberally applied to his lower abdomen.

“But, and this is important, Kryptonians desired to be self-replicating.”

“What?” Lex asked, most of his nails destroyed.

“This is what interested them with Martians in the first place and why our two planets interacted so closely. Our technological advances were essentially on par and thus we traded information. Over the course of about a hundred thousand years, Kryptonian scientists worked on genetically altering the very makeup of their species to allow for self-replication. They were . . . egoist, to say it kindly and somewhat insulted by our comparison of their genetic identicalness to our more primitive neighbors on nearby Earth.”

Clark’s brow drew sharply together, “Wait, Kryptonians and humans—”

“Were once the same race. It’s not so unheard of really given the basic structure and building blocks of the universe that two species, so far apart, would develop along the same genetic lines. Once, quite sometime ago, even Martians and humans were akin to one another. Of course, that was before humans could really be called human but that’s another issue. Back then, both species had a double helix genetic model, hydrogen bonds linking both strands. Through gene manipulation, the helix was broken and restructured to allow another strand forming a triple helix. This allows an extra set of genetic information to apply. On a chromosomal level this forms a polyploidy. Where in human cells you have diploids—one set of chromosomes per parent, either XX or XY, in Kryptonians you would now have XYA, where A is the combination of the parents’ third chromosomal pair. A wildcard, so to say. It held information of both X and Y. There was simply an amino difference that would determine sexes. If the amino of A was Y determinate, then the child would appear male—”

Clark blanched, “Appear male?”

J’onn nodded, “Yes, and if the amino of A was X determinate, then the child would appear female. Where a human egg cell and sperm cell are monoploid, a Kryptonian egg and sperm cell are diploid. This is why, from that point on, Kryptonian and humans were no longer genetically compatible. A Kryptonian egg would have to be fertilized by diploid sperm.”

“Um, okay,” Lex muttered, still not sure what this had to do with Clark.

“But,” J’onn continued, “A triple-helix and polyploidy cell structure isn’t enough for self-fertilization. Martians have a double-double helix, four strands of DNA. Kryptonians were only half-way through their development before the planet was destroyed.”

Clark looked away. He may not have truly understood the science behind it, but he had known, for a long time that he would never have children. Having a reminder now, when he was feeling so ill and awful was chipping away at the resolve he’d been trying to present for Lex. “But what does it all mean, J’onn? Why am I sick?”

J’onn smiled, turning on the machine. “The extra chromosomal number for beings at our level of genetic complexity is required for self-fertilization but the three strands are enough for the proper internal structures to be present and functioning. A Kryptonian female has sperm-producing testes near her ovum and Kryptonian males have small, but functioning, ovaries and a uterus just behind the prostate.”

“Wait, what?” Clark asked, quickly sitting up on his elbows, finally having some clue as to what the hell J’onn had been building up to.

With a nod, J’onn said, “Both males and females experienced monthly cycles, males of course, to a lesser degree. But, as a Kryptonian on Earth, Clark, your body never felt the pain of menstruation and you never would have bled—”

“Hold on—” Lex began, taking in all the equipment and accessing the story and putting it all together. “How is that even—” his head was spinning. “I—but—you said that humans and Kryptonians—”

“Yes, I know, but somehow, someway, your sperm was able to fertilize an egg. Not only that, it was a diploid. Now, given Clark’s invulnerability on Earth, under the yellow sun, his eggs would have been likewise invulnerable. The only thing I know of that could have broken through that invulnerability and caused the kind of mutation where your sperm would have become a diploid—”

“Kryptonite,” Lex breathed, sitting down. He had to sit down and when he found himself sitting on Clark’s legs he quickly got up and began absently pacing. Clark’s face had completely fallen and he felt another wave of dizziness and nausea sweep over him.

“The reason you’ve been ill—” J’onn began but Clark groaned,

“Morning sickness?”

“Essentially. It’s a bit worse though since your body is producing progesterone, estrogen, hCG and a number of other hormones that you’ve never really encountered at such levels during your life. Your ovaries were essentially in stasis on Earth. Your entire biochemistry is out of sorts and your body is trying to figure everything out.”

J’onn placed the wand on Clark’s stomach and a moment later, they heard the steady thump-thump of Clark’s heartbeat . . . and just under it, smaller, more rapid, was the thump-thump-thump of something else. His body weakened and he was forced off his elbows. Lex came around to the other side of the bed and stared at the grainy image. It was small and didn’t even look like anything but the heartbeat was strong and clear.

That was a heartbeat. Clark listened to it, his eyes staring up at the ceiling. That was a second heartbeat inside of him. “That’s—” he began, his breath coming short. “That’s not possible—” He couldn’t help the confused smile that spread across his face. “This is impossible.” He felt the bed dip and soon Lex was curled up by his side. He turned to him and he whispered, “That’s a . . . baby.” He felt Lex kiss his forehead and when he pulled away, there was a bright smile on his face. Clark had only seen Lex look that happy a handful of times in his life. “There’s a baby inside of me,” he said, feeling equally helpless and happy at the same time.

J’onn analyzed the image. “By the size of it, I’d say the embryo is about six weeks along.”

It was at this point that Lex was barely hearing a single word. “Oh my God . . .” he breathed. “Oh my God—” He was going to be a dad in the strangest most impossible way ever. He and Clark were going to be parents. This was the closest thing to a miracle as he’d ever allow himself to believe—

“The sneeze,” he said with awe. Six weeks, the explosion, the sunset in his office. He could barely contain his laughter.

“Lex?” Clark called out to him, terrified that something had broken in Lex’s mind when he felt lips on his. Lex was kissing him and it was the softest most tender kiss he’d ever felt. It tingled through him and in that moment he was breathless and happy and confused and scared and terrified all at once. Breaking the kiss he gasped, “This is insane.”

Lex beamed, “Then pretty on par with the rest of our lives.” He touched Clark’s lips, trailing them. His eyes searched his, blue staring into deep green and he could swear he’d never felt like this in his entire life. “I love you,” he said, leaning in and kissing him again.

Clark melted into it, allowing it to wash away all his doubts, even if only for a moment. Everything was changing, their life together was changing. He was going to be a . . . “Oh—” he said, his eyes wide, pulling away from Lex. He quickly sat up; the wand pulling away from his stomach and the sounds of the hearts beating was silenced. “I’m gonna be a mom,” Clark said, his eyes wide, his hands gripping his gel covered stomach. “Oh my God, I’m gonna be a mom. No, I can’t be a mom. I’m a man. I can’t have a baby inside of me!” He was starting to hyperventilate. His head was spinning and he was getting dizzy.

“Clark, calm down,” Lex said, holding onto his shoulders.

“No, this isn’t—” he gasped, his eyes closing. He leaned his head against the headboard. “—happening.”

“Clark!” Lex said, shaking his shoulders just a little. Clark’s mouth shut and he stared up into Lex’s eyes with a completely frightened look on his face. “It is happening,” he said, instantly asserting himself and realizing their dynamic was changing. He would have to be the comforter now, he would have to be the one giving assurances. Clark was pregnant. As astonishing and strange as it was, it was the truth and now Lex would have to step up to the responsibility of seeing Clark through this. “It’s happening, and you can do this.”

Shaking his head, Clark’s eyes misted over. “No, Lex, I can’t—”

He stroked his cheek, brushing away the tears. “You can. I believe in you, Clark.”

And it was at those words that Clark felt himself relaxing. He didn’t really understand why, but Lex’s faith in him forced him to focus. He took a few deep breaths. “Okay,” he said, his voice small. “Okay.”

Everything was going to be different from here on.

Clark looked down to his stomach and imagined that under his skin, a life was growing and thriving. His baby . . . oh God, he had a baby.

“J’onn?” Clark said, moving his hands. J’onn smiled and replaced the wand to Clark’s abdomen, the heartbeats returning to the room. Clark looked to the monitor for the first time. It was just a dot on the screen. “How can anything be so small?” He murmured. Lex kissed his forehead. Something came to Clark a moment later and he frowned, “But, J’onn . . . how—” he couldn’t say it as one image came to him and sent a chill through him.

Reading his thoughts, J’onn shook his head, “Oh, nothing like that,” he chuckled. “There’s enough metal at the fortress for me to fashion more than just syringes.”

“What are you two talking about?” Lex asked.

J’onn nodded, “Definitely a Caesarian.”

Clark gulped.

---

That night, after Lex had finally fallen asleep, Clark quietly crawled out of bed and made his way into the hall bathroom. He avoided the master bathroom, not wanting to wake Lex and deeply desiring some time alone. It was . . . Clark wasn’t sure, but it was a power Lex held over people when he was happy. He was generally so stern and serious during most of his days that when he finally smiled or laughed, you realized how rare and precious the occurrence was. It tempered your own temper and no matter how you were feeling before, you were drawn into his elation.

But now, finally alone to his own thoughts, Clark allowed reality to truly sink in. Carefully undressing he stood before the full-length mirror that hung behind the door. Other than the changes in his coloring he looked totally and completely the same. It was a disturbing feeling that soon his belly would expand and distort his shape. He turned to the side and took in his profile, his hands resting on his flat, muscled stomach.

“I know you can’t hear me,” he quietly began. “But maybe you can feel how scared I am.”

He looked away from the mirror. J’onn had warned him to take it easy for the next few days as his body regulated the hormonal flow. After that, he should be back to normal granted his definition of normal had greatly changed.

He’d always wanted to be a dad, like his own father. Watching his dad take care of the family through good times and bad, learning from the lessons he’d taught him, accepting his good advice—all of this had left Clark with a great desire to be that to someone else, to be someone’s father. Now . . . now that role belonged to Lex. He couldn’t imagine taking that away from him and he was just so, so happy. Lex had always wanted the opportunity to right the wrongs he’d suffered at the hands of his own father. Of course, nothing really stopped them both from fathering their child but something deep inside of him told him that place no longer belonged to him. He was a mother, biologically. What did it really mean? Motherhood had always implied womanhood but he was lost on how he’d now come to redefine it.

He knew he should be happy, he should be ecstatic, but he didn’t know how he’d fit into his own child’s life and standing in the bathroom he felt so alone and detached that nothing was really connecting. He was going to have a baby. That was first and most disturbing. Everything secondary was just another attack on his sanity.

He looked back into the mirror and touched his stomach again. “I’m your mom . . . but I don’t know what that means.”

10 Weeks Later

“Good morning!” Lex brightly said, walking into the kitchen. Clark was seated at the table, that morning’s Daily Planet in his hands. Clark was rarely seen with the paper as he tended to read through it, cover to cover in only a matter of moments. Today was different as he seemed to wade through it, reading and re-reading paragraphs over and over again. He looked up to Lex, his movements slow. He smiled but it was missing a spark. Lex kissed the crown of Clark’s head and tried to move through the morning as if everything was normal. “You didn’t wake me up,” Lex accused, picking up the bottle of orange juice.

“I—” he shrugged. “I don’t know. Sorry,” he said, his words seemed disjointed from his thoughts.

“Clark?”

“Lethargy is to be expected,” Clark said, quoting J’onn.

“I know, but—”

“It’ll go away. I have to patrol tonight,” Clark said, shaking his head and brushing away Lex’s concerns.

“You should stay home and rest.”

“I can’t,” Clark said. He started to fold up the paper but he was struggling with it.

Lex reached over and took it from him. “You can barely focus. I want you to stay home.”

“I can’t,” Clark said again, his words tight. He picked up his briefcase and got up from the table. He reached the door when Lex stood up and called out over his shoulder,

“Being Superman isn’t more important than your health.”

Clark grit his teeth and said, “I have responsibilities—”

“To who Clark? Strangers or to the baby inside of you?”

He shook his head, never turning back to Lex, “I can’t make that choice; I won’t—”

“You will. Sooner or later you’re gonna have to—”

Clark reached out to the door; his palm pressed against the wood as he squeezed his eyes shut. He took a deep breath and clenched his fist, his nails marking deep gouges into it. “These were never choices I thought I’d have to make,” he said quietly. “I can’t just stop what I do.” He turned around and hopelessly shrugged his shoulders. “It’s who I am,” he took a stilting breath; “It’s all I have left.”

Lex shook his head, walking up to him, his hand going to his jaw, “No, Clark,” he said his face twisted in shock and disbelief. “Clark, what are you talking about?”

Lips trembling, Clark glanced away. “What do you see when you look at me?”

“The man I love.”

“But see, you said man. Lex, I’m a man and I’m gonna be a mom. Does that make sense?”

“Clark, its how you were born—”

He shook his head, “But it’s not how I was raised. I never wanted to have sonograms or morning sickness. I wanted parenthood to be about coaching my son’s little league and taking my girl to ballet practice but everything’s different—”

“It doesn’t have to be—”

“You said it yourself, Lex. It’s how I was born. This is how I was made. I have a responsibility to be something to someone and I don’t know what that is and it scares me.”

Lex wrapped him up in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been in a daze this whole time and I realize that the truth of the matter is if I was in your shoes, I don’t know how I’d deal with it. Yes, you’re going to be a mother but that doesn’t have to change who you are. You’re a wonderful person Clark and that’s all you have to be and our child will be blessed.” He pulled away, holding Clark by his arms. “Listen to me, okay? If I grew up with you as my dad, my mom, whatever, I know my childhood would have been the envy of every other kid on Earth. That’s a fact. It’s who you are, not how you’re defined, that’ll make our child love you so much.”

Clark leaned his head against Lex’s shoulder and whispered, “I’m scared—”

“But you’ll get through it. You’ll figure it out. You always do,” he said quietly.

With a sigh, Clark asked, “When?”

“Well,” Lex smiled, “Hopefully in the next twenty-four weeks.”

And as much as he tried not to, Clark laughed.

---

That morning, he realized Lex was right. He’d soon have to make a choice whether he wanted to or not. He would start growing a bulge then a bump and not too long from then he’d look like a really dedicated Shark’s fan that drank just a little too much beer and ate one too many hotdogs. Soon he’d be sequestered to his home and reluctantly babied and pampered by Lex. He really wished he could look forward to the rest and the attention but all it did was twist his insides upside down. He didn’t want to be locked up for months, even if it was only at home. He wanted to do his job, he wanted to be free to work and investigate and help people. He didn’t want to worry or stress about everything that would be going on in the world while he was lying down, staring at the ceiling. It was a bad . . . a bad . . . feeling—

“Smallville?” Lois asked, watching Clark quickly rise from his desk and hurry from the newsroom. Fast on his heels, she stopped short of following him straight into the men’s room. Moments later she heard him retching. “Clark?” She quietly called out. All she heard in return was a flush. Hesitating only a second longer than she wanted to, Lois opened the men’s room door and entered with her eyes closed. “Okay,” she said, easing her way in, her arms stretched out in front of her. “If this is someone’s spank fantasy, get your jollies off now and get the hell out—”

“There’s no one else in here, Lois,” Clark weakly said from some point ahead and below her. She opened her eyes to see him on the tiled ground. His face was flushed, his eyes were unfocused and he was shaking. With his knees up and his arms hugging his legs, he looked like he was just trying to keep himself together.

“Clark—” She said, rushing over to him and leaning down next to him. She touched his damp forehead and felt how warm he was.

With chattering teeth, Clark whispered, “It hurts so much.”

“Dude, salmonella again?” She asked. She got up and wet a few paper towels. Lois’ view of Clark as the little/big brother she never wanted but had hadn’t changed over the years. No, in fact the sentiment had only grown stronger and watching Clark in pain was one of the hardest things for her to deal with. She wiped his brow and got his eyes to focus on her, “Smallville?”

He smiled through the fading pain, “I’m okay.”

“Sure?”

With a deep breath he said, “Yeah.”

Helping him up to his feet, she guided him to the sink. “Wash your face, clean up and I’ll get you . . . uh, tea?”

He held her hand and said a quiet, “Thank you,” as she retreated back out of the restroom. Bending down to the sink, splashing some water on his face, Clark felt the residual ache inside of him. Raising his shirt, he looked down to his stomach. Still muscled, still flat. Everything seemed perfectly normal from the outside . . . but it wasn’t supposed to be, was it? At four months there should have been something but there was nothing. He didn’t know if he should have been worried or not.

---

“A religious sabbatical to Tibet?” Clark asked, flying over Madrid as it was being kissed by the rising sun. The communicator that was specially woven into the internal bio-framework of his suit sent his voice across the Atlantic Ocean and into his husband’s communicator. His suit, designed by the Brain Interactive Construct when he was reprogrammed five years earlier, looked like fabric to the human eye but it was actually a special Kryptonian alloy, much like the material that the Construct itself was made of. The suit had no seams and no apparent entry point which baffled the curious observer. Expanding from a small bio-mechanoid patch on Clark’s middle back it surrounded his entire body the instant his mind activated it. It moved with him, shared all his strengths and weaknesses. Clark knew that when he did start to show, the suit would grow with him. He just also knew he’d have to be fairly quick during rescues in the next few months and use the cover of his cape to his best advantage. “Lex, I’m a Methodist.”

“Well,” Lex said, walking through the penthouse and shutting off all the lights. “You’re also one of the most peaceful people I know—”

“How can you say that? I fight everyday,” Clark reminded him.

Heading out onto the balcony to wait for Clark, Lex said, “We’re not really going to call the action of tapping a gunman on the head and rendering him unconscious ‘fighting’ are we?” Clark rolled his eyes, flying away from the sun and heading towards nighttime over America. “So,” Lex continued, “If my impression of you is as number one tree-hugger than I can only imagine how you present yourself to your colleagues. I don’t think it’s a stretch of the imagination.” He opened the French doors and exited into the warm breeze of a Metropolitan summer’s night. “Besides, the Dalai Lama owes you for getting him out of exile.”

Clark’s mouth dropped open, “I’m not asking Tenzin to lie for me—”

“Not lie so much as karma. You helped him with China; he’ll help you with a descent alibi—”

“Just—okay, let me just get this straight: you want me to ask the Dalai Lama to lie?”

“You’re really focused on the word lie.”

“And what about Bruce? He visits Tibet every fall.”

Lex frowned, “You’re not telling Bruce about the baby?”

Clark bit his lip. “Well, it’s not like I was planning on a League baby shower—” Clark’s voice was cut off as a sharp cramp in his stomach bloomed under his skin.

Not hearing the pain in Clark’s voice, Lex went on, “They’ll have to know eventually.”

Pain subsiding, Clark breathed carefully and said, “Eventually isn’t right now.”

“You think they won’t understand? J’onn could explain it—”

“I’d much rather not have a slideshow of the Kryptonian reproductive system, okay?”

“Alright, maybe not everyone and Bruce is kinda of . . . Bruce. But what about Diana? It’s not like the Themysciran reproductive process isn’t as . . . different. They carve their children out of dirt.”

Another pang and he dipped lower in the sky, just over New York. “No,” he whispered. “Diana’s understanding but she’s still an Amazon.”

Lex hummed. “True.”

“And—” his breathing was getting short and everything was getting cold. “—Tibet is not—” He gasped, gripping his stomach. The pain was sharp and white hot.

“Clark?” Lex called out to him, panic rising.

“Lex—” he struggled to breathe, his vision darkening just as the Metropolis skyline came into view. His breaths rapid and shallow, Clark fought to make it home before he fell. It was like that day, ten weeks ago in the newsroom when he knew he was going to fall. He’d stepped away from his desk to avoid hitting it and now, the situation was the same. He looked down to the bay and for a split second he considered allowing himself to fall into the river but as another sharp ache resounded through him, something he’d never felt before, something he’d never imagined he could feel, flashed through him—it was a deep primal instinct to protect his body, if only for his child. It was a maternal instinct and even as the pain was crushing him inside out, something of an unhappy smile spread across his face. He’d waited weeks for it to happen and now it finally had.

Lex saw Clark struggling across the night sky, dipping dangerously as if at mercy to the winds. “Talk to me,” Lex begged, watching him get closer and closer.

Another sharp pang and Clark’s teeth were chattering. He was going to fall before he reached the balcony. He looked down and saw the still busy and active city below him. If he dropped now, he’d take a city street with him. “The . . . Gallery,” he panted, reaching the nearest building and landing hard on the gravel roof.

The Metropolitan National Gallery. Lex raced out of the penthouse. “Clark?” He said, the drop of the elevator turning his stomach. “Come on, talk to me,” he pleaded.

“I—” he gasped, curling over onto his stomach. He held his knees tight and squeezed his eyes shut against the pain. “Lex—” he mumbled, his voice faint.

“Clark!” Lex shouted. Legs pumping, Lex sped across the busy boulevard still dressed in his dark silk pajamas and bare feet.

“Something’s wrong,” he garbled. He felt so cold and he was sweating so much. He reached behind him to pull his cape up, hoping to wrap it around him when his hand scraped against the gravel and he felt how wet and sticky it was. Bringing his hand to his face, peering through hazy vision, Clark saw blood on his hands. He saw his blood on his hand. “No,” he wheezed, “Oh God please.” Tears were rolling down his face. “Lex,” he whispered. “Lex, the baby. The baby—” His eyes rolled and he passed out.

Lex reached the gallery, his heart resounding in his ears. As a LuthorCorp holding, Lex ran into the building, past security and into the elevator bank with only a few curious stares but no interruption. He never needed to carry ID or to explain himself in the city. Like Superman, everyone knew Lex Luthor’s face. “Clark?” He said, panting, his hands gripping the polished brass double doors of the antiquated elevator. There was no reply. “Clark!” He shouted, his anger flaring as he kicked in the wall, watching floors creep slowly by. He looked to the communicator in his hands and was about the crush it when he shook his head and dialed in J’onn’s access code.

“Yes?” Was the reply he received moments later.

“J’onn,” his voice was shaking. “Clark’s in trouble. He’s on the roof—on the roof of—Goddamnit! The Metropolitan National Gallery!” There was a whoosh of air on the line. The elevator finally opened and he ran up to the staircase that led to the roof-access door. With three dedicated kicks, the door’s old locks broke and it swung out on its hinges. He thought he’d stop breathing right then as he saw Clark near the retaining wall, crumpled and laying so still, a plume of red cape fanning out behind him. He hurried over to him, dropping to his knees and hovering over him. In the light of the roof’s safety lamps, Clark’s skin looked translucent. He was so pale. His lips weren’t their usual bright red but were instead a sick blue. Touching his damp forehead, Lex felt his ice-cold skin. “Clark, please?” he begged, his face contorting. He moved to hold him up in his arms when his hands touched the graveled ground beneath him. With something stronger than horror, Lex felt the cold wet of the stone. He looked down at what he’d thought had been the red of Clark’s cape. They were in the middle of a pool of Clark’s blood.

“No,” he whispered, staring at his hands. “No,” he choked out, gripping onto Clark’s shoulders and holding him near. “You promised,” he quietly said, his eyes unfocused. “You said you were gonna be alright.” His vision blurred with tears. “Clark—”

“Alexander,” a powerful voice was carried on a strong breeze and Lex looked up to the glowing red eyes of J’onn J’onzz.

“Help him,” he desperately said.

J’onn dropped down beside them and he quickly looked Clark over. It had nearly been four weeks since he’d last seen Kal-El. He touched Clark’s abdomen with a distinct frown. He shot a gaze to the eastern horizon then up to the sky itself. It was as if something was dawning on him. “Damn it,” he said, taking Clark from Lex’s arms and bundling him up. “I’m taking him to the fortress,” was all J’onn said as he leapt up into the air and shot away across the night sky.

Lex was left all alone on the roof, a wide puddle of blood under him.

Moments passed.

He moved in a haze, making his way off the roof, back down the stairs, into the old elevator and out through the lobby. This time he elicited more than curious indifference; his silk pajamas were spotted and stained in blood. He moved absently to the security desk, the guards there rushing to him and buzzing around asking something or something or whatever people ask when they were worried or concerned. His shaking hand pulled up the telephone at the desk and he dialed the LuthorCorp security office.

“Diggs?” He said, his voice soft and strained. Mr. Diggory Peabody, working that night within his role as head of LuthorCorp security, answered the call in his deceptively nebbish way. Mr. Peabody had been Force Recon not too long ago and his voice and manner betrayed his skill and command. “I need—” Lex accepted the cup of water handed to him by the gallery security officers. “I need cleanup on the roof of the gallery. Protocol 5A,” he didn’t have to explain another word, reading off the cleanup protocol he’d instilled after Clark’s fateful night by the bay. He hung up and gave an empty, hollow smile to the men still hovering around him. In all their concerns, they could see Lex hadn’t been injured. They knew, from the passing one-sided conversation, the roof would be off-limits for quite some time. And so, as Lex wandered, barefoot still, out into the city’s summer’s night, yet another story was added to his legacy—yet another peg added to his infamy.

He wandered out of the gallery, the night still fresh and sweet but the smell of blood was thick and hovered around him. He leaned against the nearest wall, just trying to breathe through it. More stares . . . more whispers . . . one brave soul who asked if he were alright but the question resounded through him like the clanging of a belfry and he was off—running again through the streets of the city, the need to rid himself of the sickly sweet metallic scent of blood was pulling at him and pushing him hard, fast. No, he wasn’t alright. He wasn’t. Bare feet stomped on unforgiving concrete, lungs pushed to pain and beyond but he ran, fast and without break until he was in his own home once again, in his empty bedroom and then under the burning hot stream of the shower. He peeled off his wet clothes and he scrubbed himself red until no trace of Clark’s blood was left on him. It was strange, he wonderingly thought; how was it, that only now, with the prospect of losing Clark becoming so palpable and real, did he consider all that Clark was trying to tell him that morning? This entire series of events was, to Lex, another addition, as Clark had been, to his family of none but to Clark, it changed his entire life, how he defined himself, who he knew he was and Lex just didn’t understand it until tonight. Reality had been a dream of getting everything he’d ever wanted without seeing what was going on with Clark. This was reality, he’d woken this night and the dream was over.

How could he now reconcile everything inside of him? How could he be faced with the prospect that at the end of the night, his child or both would die? It was never something he’d ever thought he’d have to consider and like the choices Clark had been reluctant to make, Lex finally understood.

With pained, red skin, he stepped out of the shower and stepped over his ruined pajamas. Throwing a robe over his shoulders, he exited the bathroom to see Clark lying asleep on their bed. Lex’s mouth went instantly dry as the image of J’onn J’onzz stepped into his line of sight.

“J’onn—” Lex whispered, his body moving stiffly to the side, along the wall, afraid he’d spoil something just by disturbing the air.

“I had to move quickly,” J’onn began, not turning to him as he set up what Lex finally recognized as monitors and pumps and other hospital paraphernalia. “Please reimburse Metropolis General Hospital for these instruments,” he asked as the sounds of two heartbeats filled the air, both clear, both healthy and strong. Lex leaned against the wall and tried to catch his breath as a sob rattled through him. “I was under a deadly assumption,” J’onn continued, still tending to Clark. “—taking for granted that a Kryptonian on Earth would react to pregnancy the same as a Kryptonian on Krypton. It is, apparently, a fallacy.” Finally turning to Lex he said, “His body would not grow with the fetus. Throughout the child’s growth it was pushing and shifting but Clark’s body was not expanding and so tonight, everything came to a critical point as one invulnerable being grew within another invulnerable being. As with most pregnancies where a critical decision must be made, Clark’s body protected the child.” J’onn sighed, looking back to Clark. “The hemorrhage would have killed him if you hadn’t called when you did.”

“How is he?” Lex quietly asked, his stomach in tight knots.

“I stopped the bleeding and the A.I. altered his UV receptivity.”

Moving up from his spot on the wall, Lex approached the bed on shaking legs. Moving past J’onn he asked, “What does that—” and his voice was cut off as he looked down to the bandage on Clark’s pale stomach. The white gauze was spotted with red blood and under it was the clear rise of a pregnancy bump.

“The way his skin absorbs the sun’s rays is changed. His body cannot absorb it at the levels he’s used to and essentially, it removes his abilities.”

Hesitantly, Lex passed his hand over Clark’s hand, their rings touching. “You took away his powers?”

J’onn placed his hand on Lex’s shoulder. Quietly he said, “Kal-El regained consciousness for a brief moment, just as the A.I. and I had agreed on an alternate mode of action. We were going to terminate the pregnancy when he made it very clear that was not an option—”

“I can’t make that choice; I won’t—”

“You will. Sooner or later you’re gonna have to—”

“—He told the A.I. to take his powers. He knew it was the only way to save his son.”

Lex allowed himself to drop to the bed, his eyes wide, “Son?” The sobs had become tears; sooner had come before later and Clark had finally made his choice.

20 Weeks Later

Being pampered and babied wasn’t the worst thing on his list of things he hated most. In fact, his pre-pregnancy stance on that was vastly different than his current outlook. Of course, he had all the standard complaints and issues associated with pregnancy. That compounded with the fact that he no longer had his powers made the passing five months filled with new experiences and sensations. He felt things differently, more acutely—the bed, the chill of the floor as winter crept up, the warmth of the fireplace as Lex added more wood. Everything was different and oddly . . . better.

Now returned to the little town that changed both their lives, Clark and Lex were spending the last months of the pregnancy on the Kent farm. It had been years since the land had been worked. There existed only them, day in and day out as Clark’s stomach grew larger.

When, a few months ago, the baby kicked for the first time, Clark had no idea what the sensation was. He’d been feeling so many new things inside his body that at first, the feeling of a little foot pressing against him wasn’t what came to his mind. Indigestion was the first candidate. He’d grown addicted to spicy foods and Tums was his constant bedfellow. Pickled radishes, Indian and Japanese curry, anything flavored with habaneros and scotch bonnet peppers were his cravings. When he realized that the pressure inside him wasn’t an angry aftereffect of lunch his face fell.

“Oh!” He exclaimed when he felt the little foot and arms pushing against his skin. A slow, warm smile crept over his face and he felt tingly all over. He reached for the nearest chair and sat down, just touching the sporadic lumps that pressed from within. “Hey,” he whispered, his cheeks burning from the power of his smile. “There you are.”

“Who?” Lex asked, jogging down the stairs.

Clark extended his hand and caught Lex by the wrist, just as he was reaching in the refrigerator. “Clark? What’s—” Clark placed Lex’s hand on his stomach and Lex felt the kick-push of his son. “Ohh,” Lex instantly went to his knees and placed his cheek against the small indentation. “Hi,” he said, beaming. “I’m your daddy.” At that moment, he couldn’t begin to describe or define the emotion inside of him. His son was moving.

Clark brushed his fingers down Lex’s other cheek and said to the baby inside of him, “And I’m,” happy sigh, “your mom.”

Now, four weeks to Clark’s due date, they sat across from the roiling fire, the chill of January kept at bay. They flipped through a baby name book making choices and narrowing down a very long list.

“Thomas?” Clark said, pinching his face. “Hmm, no.”

“But I think it’s a nice name,” Lex said, frowning.

“How about Michael?” Clark brightened. “It’s very strong.”

Lex shook his head, “He’d be a Mikey.”

Clark shrugged, “Thomas would be a Tommy.”

“Are we dead set on biblical names? I still vote for Connor.”

“And I still say we’re not naming him Connor.”

A decision was not made. Before bed that night, they lay together, staring up at the ceiling. Compared to the rest of his 6’4” frame, Clark’s stomach wasn’t glaringly large, just out of place on someone of his frame. He could walk through town with his coat on and no one would be able to tell the difference. Now, Lex’s hand rested on his stomach and he absently caressed the bare skin.

“What are you thinking about?” He asked Clark, the strong winds of a winter storm blowing past the window.

With a sigh Clark said, “My dad. How,” he smiled, “how none of this would make sense to him but he’d be the best Grandpa ever.” He touched Lex’s hand. “Can you picture it? All the things he’d do, the things he’d buy. The stories he’d tell . . .” His voice trailed off. “He wasn’t supposed to miss this.”

Kissing his cheek, Lex quietly said, “He’s not missing any of it.”

The smile returned to Clark’s face, “I love you.”

Lex nuzzled against his neck and purred, “I love you too.”

---

“Hello?!” A shrill voice was heard from downstairs and Clark and Lex’s eyes instantly snapped open at the recognition of it.

“Oh my God—”

“Lois!”

Lex jumped out of bed and ran to the window. “Yeah, her Rambler’s outside.”

“I know you’re here! Clark!” She screamed, her footfalls heard on the staircase.

“She can’t see me like this!” Clark whispered a scream as he scrambled out of bed, tossed on his glasses and waddled over to the coat rack. He grabbed his parka and threw it over his pajamas just as the bedroom door was thrown open.

“This doesn’t look like Tibet!” Lois accused, stalking over to him.

“I just—” he began but she shook her head, wagging her finger at him.

“Just because you’re married to the owner doesn’t mean you can just take a five-month long vacation!”

Clark tried to camouflage his stomach with a towel and some super fussy folding. “I have to put this in the hamper,” he said, side-stepping her.

She grabbed his arm, “I’m thinking you’re halfway around the world and here you are! You could have called, you know!” She turned on Lex, “And as for you—”

Lex gave her a cool smile as Clark quietly retreated, “Still the owner, Lois,” he reminded her.

Her mouth closed and her eyes narrowed, “I suddenly have very few things to say to you.”

Clark exited into the hallway and was halfway to the bathroom when he felt warmth running down his leg. “Oh no—”

“Clark!” Lois’s voice was behind him. He dropped the towel to the floor and started to scrub it back and forth, his back to her.

“Lex,” he called out over her. “The ceiling’s leaking again!”

“Huh?” Lex said, coming up behind Lois.

Clark looked over his shoulder to them with a frozen smile, “Can you call J’onn?” He hinted.

“Who’s John?” Lois asked.

Lex looked to the spill Clark was mopping up and then to his face and it all clicked. “Um, the . . . plumber . . . technically,” he said, taking Lois by the arm. “I’ll make us some coffee. It must have been a long ride from the city.”

She squinted at him, “Hey, you’re acting awfully nice. What’s going on?”

“I’ll be right down,” Clark called out to them both as they disappeared down the staircase. He stepped over the towel and duck walked into the bathroom. He expected pain but there wasn’t any. No contractions or anything. He wasn’t going to take it lightly as he had last time. Something was wrong. He paced back and forth over the pink and tan tiles when J’onn J’onzz appeared by his side.

“Kal-El?” He asked.

“Uhh, I think my water broke,” Clark said, sinking down to sit on the toilet seat.

J’onn frowned, bending over him, “It’s too early.”

“I know.”

“What happened?”

“Clark!” The shrill voice returned and the heavy, quick sound of feet up the stairs resonated through the house.

J’onn sighed, “You weren’t to be stressed,” he reminded.

“She just showed up,” he said with a tiny shrug, his bottom lip poking out.

“Clark!” Lois called out, throwing open the bathroom door to find it empty. “What the—” She went through every room on the floor and still, he wasn’t there. “Lex!” She called out, barreling down the stairs but the kitchen was empty, the backdoor was open and a few snowflakes blew in on the glossy wood floor. “What the hell?!”

---

Lex paced over the icy floor of the fortress, an isolated rush of warmth protecting him from the cavern’s subzero temperatures. He knew J’onn was fast and accurate but this was still unbearable. Clark had been in a separate chamber of the fortress for almost half an hour. He was the father, wasn’t he? He should have been able to—a small wail filled the cold air and Lex forgot everything he’d been thinking as he rushed into the chamber. Clark was seated up on a stone table, his face bright and his smile wide. In his arms he held onto a small bundle of crying blue flannel.

“Lex—” Clark said, calling him over. His powers had been returned to him. There was no lingering pain, there was no sensitivity. He was whole and happy with his baby in his arms. He never looked so beautiful to Lex’s eyes. “—come and say hi to our son,” he said, looking absolutely iridescent. Lex took a few long steps to him and kissed him long and soft on his lips. Clark had always been the one thing in his life that had saved him from himself, the one person who’d ever truly and completely made him happy and now, he’d done it again. Somehow, he’d done it again.

Finally taking his courage, he looked down to the small, calming child in Clark’s hands. He was red and pruny and nothing like a baby from the diaper commercials but he was magnificent and the most precious thing he’d ever seen.

“He has hair,” was the first thing Lex could say, his tongue otherwise completely silenced.

“That’s all you have to say?” Clark laughed, leaning his head on Lex’s shoulder. “He has hair?”

“Beautiful black hair,” Lex said, running his hands through Clark’s hair. “Like his mom.”

Clark smiled, the title feeling so right that he was totally warmed. “And his dad’s blue eyes.”

Lex hummed, “The books say most babies are born with blue eyes.”

“Well, to steal a phrase from Rhett Butler, his eyes will stay blue.”

Lex felt giddy as the baby started to coo. “That’s what we’ll call him! Bonnie Blue Luthor.”

“No.”

“Rhett?”

“No.”

“Well, Clark’s already taken.