* * *

Intervention: Lex

* * *

"I love him," said Lex. "Do you know what that means?"

"Oh, yes," said Otto impatiently. He wasn't in a mood to be trifled with. "Zat is all very vell, but you can't flink such vords around vith Clark. He takes them seriously. He is not the type who vill get married at zer drop of zer hat--"

"You don't," said Lex. His voice was like ice. Otto shut up.

"I love him," Lex said again, face hard as flint. "I'll fuck him and I'll fuck him up, but I'll never let him go and he won't want me to. I'll give him everything he wants, except freedom from me -- but he'll never want that. Nothing is like this, Otto. Blood? It's nothing to this. So tell me, what are you afraid of? That Clark won't marry some nice girl and settle to a life of mundanity? He'll be great with me. I won't let him be anything less than what he can be."

But Otto was used to this sort of thing by now.

"You are such a romantic," he said despairingly. "Do you think Clark is ready for vat you say? He vants to be human. He vants to be normal."

"He wants me," said Lex, and there was something both vicious and loving in his triumph.

"The two are mutually exclusive," said Otto.

"So he'll have to make a choice," said Lex. He seemed pretty sure what choice Clark would make.

The sad thing was, Otto was too.

But he couldn't not say something. Lex was a friend. A weird, abrasive friend who could do with lots more cocoa and singalongs than he was consenting to, but still, a friend. Otto had an obligation.

It took all his courage to force the words out.

"I don't vant you to get hurt," he said, hoping Lex would understand. That he'd known people like Clark before: beautiful and earnest and in love with the world. That loving him wholly came naturally, because he had that effect on people, but you could never quite own him; there was something other about him, something he allowed no-one to touch. That he was lying.

He couldn't say any of that, because the words would not come and Clark was already there, standing at the door with hope shining in his face like a beacon. But Lex was looking at him, his face -- not softer, but clearer, as if a bright light had been cast upon it. The lines of his face were harsher, the shadows in it darker. His eyes were hard with a terrible concentration.

"Too late," said Lex to Otto. He pushed away from the table and went to Clark.

"Damn," said Otto to the uncaring world.

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