TITLE: Final Stage

FANDOM: Smallville

PAIRING: Clark/Lex

NOTE: writers_choice: stage

Lex POV, futurefic

Just a stage.

Just a wooden platform before a set of seats, soon to be filled by a bloodthirsty hoard of journalists. And possibly Lois, who’s in a league of her own.

Nothing more.

Just the place where he announced his plans for LexCorp, his father’s death, his Presidency. He’s stood upon this simple deck a hundred times or more, and the flickering cameras have never fazed him, the furious questions never raised a sweat.

Yet he’s standing here as if the world will end if he steps onto that wood this one time.

Maybe it will.

It can’t be the height, he knows that. He got over that fear a long time ago, and if he hadn’t, midnight glides with a superhero certainly would’ve put an end to that. In fact, he loves heights, loves the feeling of watching everyone far below him, so small, so insignificant. Clark says that’s the hopeless conqueror in him, and he has to agree.

He doesn’t think it’s a fear of assassination, although he’d like a roof over his head – that’s more a case of sun safety than gun safety, because pale and alluring is always preferable to red and peeling. Or so Clark tells him, and he should know.

Besides, Clark will always be there, always show up just in time and, really, when has anything come close to killing him? He’s dodged death for years now and the scars were kissed away long ago. His supposed worst enemy shares his bed – and he’s thinking himself in circles, when he knows what’s really eating him, knows it like he knows every square inch of flawless alien skin that glows at his touch.

He’s going to lose the Presidency. Maybe even his Senate seat. LexCorp will fail at every hurdle and eventually fall, but that’s something he can live with, maybe even accept in time. No, it’s not his reputation, his power, his money that drives, though it once was all he had.

It’s the look of dismay in Clark’s eyes, the simple look that screams of failure, of his lover not being the man he promised, an almost-equal for the most powerful being on this planet.

That’s what will end them, and perhaps Clark will blame himself, and he could never be responsible for pain in those eyes, for the dissolving trust that he fought so hard for.

But the alternative is far graver, and somehow, he knows Clark wants this more than anything, wants truth. They’ve always been about lies, and somehow they stayed strong, got past them, confessed. To lie again would crumble the walls, and he’s so tired of lies.

The seconds tick by, and the seats fill with a surge, barely giving him time to think. A soft touch to his wrist lets him know Clark’s arrived, curious and confused but always there. He can’t look at him now though, and he strides forward onto the stage, relieved when the crowd falls silent.

“I’ve made many speeches from this stage, some good and some tragic. Yet I tell you now, I have never made a speech more important than this.”

He lets the echo fade, listens for Clark’s measured breaths, then continues.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce my best friend, my lover and soon-to-be husband, Clark Jerome Kent.”

At least the world ends in applause.