Lex followed the sound of voices to the library.  He was relieved when he saw that Clark hadn’t left the castle.  Instead, Martha and Clark were sitting side-by-side on the sofa, Clark’s head cradled in his hands as he cried, Martha’s arm looped tightly around his shoulder. 

Lex didn’t even hesitate.  He crossed the room and kneeled down in front of Clark, pulling the younger man’s hands away from his face.  “Stop this right now.  You didn’t rape me, damn it!  And you weren’t yourself last night.”

“That’s no excuse for taking you against your will, Lex,” Clark said quietly.

“Stop being so melodramatic, Clark,” Lex stated softly. 

Clark’s watery green eyes finally rose to meet Lex’s.  “Look, I don’t remember everything about last night, but I do remember you telling me to stop quite a few times, and I didn’t fucking listen to you.”

Lex glanced warily at Clark’s parents, before sighing and focusing his attention back on the young man in front of him.  Although he hated the idea that the Kents would be listening, he knew that unless he reassured Clark now, he might lose his friend forever. 

“I wanted it as much as you did.”  Seeing Clark’s look of disbelief, Lex offered Clark a reassuring smile.  “Yes, at the beginning, I asked you to stop, but only because I didn’t think you were in your right mind enough to know what or who you wanted, and I didn’t want you to do anything that you would regret later.  I’m not going to lie to you, Clark.  It wasn’t the most perfect of experiences, but first times rarely are.”

For a moment, there was a spark of hope in Clark’s eyes.  “You really wanted me too?  You’ve never said anything; never once in all these years did you even give me the slightest indication that you were interested in me that way.  I thought I was the only one…  I never told anyone…”

“Clark, I was twenty-one years old when we met.  I may be a lot of things, but a child molester isn’t one of them,” Lex replied wryly.

He wasn’t prepared at all for the next onslaught of Clark’s tears.  “So we really had a chance, and I completely ruined it.”

“You haven’t ruined anything,” Lex offered, his hand reaching up slowly to caress Clark’s face.  His thumb gently brushed away the tears from Clark’s cheek.  “My only regret about last night was that your first time, our first time, had to happen that way.  You deserved so much better than that.”  Lex laced the fingers of his other hand into Clark’s and squeezed the young man’s hand gently.  “I never had any idea that you were attracted to me.  If anything, since you graduated high school, we’ve drifted further and further apart.  I wasn’t even sure if you still wanted to be my friend, much less my lover.”

“I’m so sorry.  I just couldn’t stand being around you, watching you with woman after woman on your arm.  It just hurt too much.”

“They were all just poor imitations of you, Clark.  I think I’ve loved you since the day you saved my life at the bridge.”

Lex heard both Martha and Jonathan gasp in surprise at his declaration, but Lex’s sole focus was on Clark.  He could see the emerald orbs coming alive more and more, hope and relief replacing the fear and anxiety that had been there before.  “I love you so much, Lex.” 

Lex leaned forward and brushed his lips against Clark’s in the briefest of kisses, not willing to chance his apparent luck by thus far avoiding the business end of Jonathan’s shotgun. 

As much as he hated to, Lex knew that he had to change the subject slightly, and find out what Clark had been dosed with.  “I don’t know what you were given last night, but you were flying as high as I ever did in my Club Zero days.  What do you remember?”

“I remember driving up to the party late.  I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it, but Conner, one of the guys in one of my classes, offered to drive me.  He said that he and his friend were heading over to Granville anyway.  Once we got here, I invited them to come in and have a drink at the party.  They decided to stay, I guess.  Later on, Conner cornered me and asked to see your Warrior Angel collection, so I brought him in here.  I think he handed me a drink, but after that, I’m not sure of anything.”

“He laced your drink with something.  I saw him just as he was tipping the vial into your glass, but I couldn’t stop you in time before you drank it.  It must have been some kind of truth serum, because he asked you what your secret was.”

“He what?” Martha whispered.

“It’s all right,” Lex said reassuringly, nodding to Martha before returning his gaze to Clark.  “Your secrets are still safe.  You managed to divert him by telling him your secret feelings for me instead of your other secrets.”

All Clark could focus on was the fact that Lex was stating with absolute certainty that he knew Clark had secrets.  Usually, Lex had accepted Clark’s lies about his abilities at face value.  Clark’s gaze shifted from one parent to another as he tried to figure out a way to answer Lex’s statement without lying to Lex yet again.  “Lex, I don’t… I mean…”

As soon as Clark started stumbling on his words, Lex stood stiffly and walked to the bar, pouring himself a drink.  “Clark, please don’t insult my intelligence,” he bit out, not caring that Martha and Jonathan would be privy to his outburst.  “I know you don’t trust me, but I’ve known for years that you’re different.  Unfortunately, I’m afraid your friend Conner knows that as well.  I’m pretty sure that what he drugged you with was some liquid form of the red meteor rock.  I know that it somehow taps into your baser desires and wants.”

Jonathan shared a look with Martha, both of them obviously coming to the same conclusion, that considering Lex’s declarations, and the way he had handled the situation thus far, that they could trust Lex with at least part of the truth about Clark.  “I doubt he knows much.  If he did, the front page of the paper would have been a story about how fast Clark can run, his heat vision, or his invulnerability, not a picture of the two of you kissing, and an accompanying article speculating on how young Clark had been the first time you two got together.”

Clark and Lex both looked at Jonathan, their eyes wide with disbelief that the Kent patriarch had just willingly outed information on Clark’s abilities in front of Lex.  There were a few moments of tense silence before Jonathan cleared his throat, pulled the newspaper from his jacket pocket, and passed it to Clark.  “I think you should see this.  That’s how we knew where Clark was.”

Lex perched on the edge of the sofa next to Clark.  A huge picture of them passionately kissing dominated the entire top half of the front page, and the accompanying article suggested that Clark and Lex’s relationship had begun when Clark was underage.  “Oh shit.  Lex, this is going to hurt your business.  If the LexCorp board thinks that we were together when I was underage…”

“I couldn’t give a damn about my business, you’re the only thing that’s important here.  If they even had an inkling of where you’re from… of who…”

Sudden understanding dawned in Clark’s eyes.  “You know, don’t you?  You know everything.  Not just some speculation about my abilities, but you know.”

“I…” Lex stammered.

“How long?” Clark demanded.

Lex sighed deeply, stood from his position next to Clark, and began pacing the room.  He knew that his only chance to keep Clark in his life now was with total honesty.  “Since I saw you through that portal in the cave.  Well, at least until Chloe slammed my head into the wall.  Up until that day, I thought that you were only a meteor mutant, like the rest of us, but when I realized the gravity of the secret you’d been keeping…  I destroyed every scrap of evidence I had on you.  I knew that the green meteor rocks affected you, so I started the clean up of Smallville, excavating all the rock I could find.  I knew if you ever found out about it you would think that I was amassing it to use against you, but I just couldn’t let you be hurt, not when I could do something to prevent it.” 

Silence dominated the room for several minutes, and Lex hardened himself to the expected denials and recriminations.  He was therefore shocked when the next thing he heard was Jonathan Kent’s voice, in a quiet, understanding tone.  “It’s called kryptonite.  We think that it’s pieces of Clark’s destroyed home planet that traveled with his ship to Earth.”

Lex whipped around in shock just as Clark stammered out a question.  “D-Dad?  What are you…?”

“Clark, I may be stubborn, but even a fool could see that Lex is telling nothing but the truth right now.  I should have believed you long ago when you said you trusted him, and I think we’re going to need his help if we’re going to get out of this one.  That Conner kid obviously knows something.”

Lex tried to school away the grin that stole across his face at the sign of obvious trust from the Kent patriarch.  He glanced up to meet Clark’s eyes, and found them shining with tears again.  “I wanted to tell you so long ago, but I made a promise.”

“It’s all right, Clark, and we can talk about it all later, much later.  Right now, I think we need to focus on your dad’s concerns.  First off, we need to make sure that it was the red meteor r-, I mean red kryptonite, that he drugged you with.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“By analyzing the traces that are left in the glass you drank from.  If I remember right, I stowed it in my jacket pocket.  It should still be upstairs.”