Author's Note: Big massive thanks to my betas: edie22, wubba, cyb, bonibaru! Much much needed help from yall and I send you each your own chocolate-covered Clex to enjoy ;) (the creamy filling is quite yummy, I hear..) (oh and thanks also to wook, havenstar, and tara for the beta offers. I am an impatient monkey and am putting it up. Big *hugs* to yall though for putting up with me ;) ) Any remaining mistakes are clearly my own. This is still kind of a WIP as I'm thinking about toying with the ending a bit.

Special Powers
by tresca

It really was a shame that he had lost his powers this morning.

Sure, he had always wanted to be normal.

And yeah, this would mean not having to lie to his friends or hide his abilities.

Plus, maybe Dad wouldn’t make him do as many chores around the farm since he wasn’t super-powered anymore (yeah right, keep dreaming Clark).

But he couldn’t seem to concentrate on any of that now.

He hung up the phone, his heart beating fast, and all he could do was silently mouth the four-letter curse word his mother never let him use.

Why today? Of all days? Why did he have to lose his powers the day that Lex had apparently lost his mind?

There was no other explanation for his best friend having called him up just now to say what he had said.

His really sexy best friend.

His really sexy best friend that he wanted to kiss and lick and suck all over until he had thoroughly ravished him.

His really sexy best friend who had just called him up in the middle of the day and said:

I’m lying naked in my bed right now and you have twenty minutes to get here before I start putting my clothes back on.

Naked.

Lex.

Naked Lex.

Twenty minutes.

Clark glanced at his watch.

Oh Fuck! (whoops, sorry Mom) Nineteen minutes now, nearing on eighteen. And what the hell was he still doing just standing here?

Grabbing the keys to the pick-up truck (Mom and Dad had taken the car to town), Clark ran outside. Right into the huge thunderstorm which had decided that the middle of March was now monsoon season. In Kansas. Completely unaware of the pelting raindrops that were thoroughly soaking his white t-shirt and dark blue (and getting darker by the second) Levis, Clark stumbled down the porch steps.

Scrambling into the truck, he thrust the key in and proceeded to flood the engine and stall it. He breathed deeply and heard his Mom’s voice in the back of his mind…

Patience Clark. Patience. Clutch down, then start the car, and…

"YES!" he shouted to no one as the engine roared to life. Clark grinned brightly at the steering wheel, grasping it tightly in his hands and slammed his foot onto the gas. The truck lurched a few inches, but the back wheels caught a bit on the mud that had started to swirl on the ground from the pounding rain. Clark felt the truck skid a bit and then come to a stop again.

Using that sparkly four letter word again, he tried flooring the gas, but he could feel the tires spinning uselessly in the mud. Clark hit the dashboard in frustration and found yet another reason why losing his powers today was NOT a good thing at ALL. Shaking his now-injured hand a bit to try to clear the pain, Clark glanced at his watch again. He only had fifteen minutes!

Fifteen minutes before all that smooth, porcelain skin would be covered up, hidden from his sight, (well, except that one time he had used his x-ray vision when Lex wasn’t watching him and then he had turned around and Clark had seen that nice tight…). Dammit! Now is NOT the time to daydream Clark! If you get your act together you can have the real thing…

Pushing his wet hair out of his eyes, Clark climbed out of the truck and squatted down behind it to try to see how to fix the problem. He knew he wasn’t strong enough today to lift the back end out of the mud, but dammit if he wasn’t going to try it anyway. Maybe his powers had suddenly returned…

Clark tried to get a good grip under the tail-gate of the truck, but the damn sky was still trying to kill him through extreme Chinese water torture. Finally finding a place to hold it, he bent his knees and lifted.

No. Not lifting.

Very much not lifting.

Not lifting so much that his face was turning the color of his favorite flannel shirt and he had sweat pouring down his back. Despite the torrential downpour.

Wait. There! He moved it an inch. Didn’t he?

Oh. Apparently that wasn’t movement from the truck. That was his arms giving out.

Because now he was lying flat on his back in the mud.

Growling and cursing, Clark restrained himself from flinging mud at the truck. Because with his luck today, it would only end up turning around and smacking him in the face.

Flat on his back was NOT where he wanted to be.

Well, maybe it was. But it involved less mud and more NakedLex.

He would just have to run there. It wouldn’t be at superspeed, but he was still kind of strong, right? He could make it. The NakedLex sighting depended on it.

Picking himself up off the ground, Clark ran towards the manor. He refused to even look at his watch anymore, fearing the little digital numbers on it. They would mock him in their little glowy way. Counting down the seconds until he had lost his opportunity.

As he rounded the corner around Old Man Riley’s field, Clark tripped over something and face-planted right into the sea of corn stalks. Gasping a bit for breath, he clambered up and winced as he put weight down on his newly-twisted ankle. Clark counted to ten, gritted his teeth, and tried again. His ankle throbbed a little bit with dull pain almost like when he had been caught in the Coach’s sauna with the meteor rocks. Under his breath, Clark tried to talk himself away from the pain. (Lex. Naked Lex. On his bed. Maybe he has silk sheets. Black ones. White naked Lex. Black silky sheets. Waiting. Lex. Naked.).

It was enough to get him going again and once he had started running he was able to put the pain in the back of his mind. That is until he came to a screeching halt outside of the manor.

At the gate. The big black gate. With steel bars. The ones that he would have bent easily out of the way, any other fucking day of his life. It was almost enough to make him cry. He looked at his watch and saw that he still had a minute left. And yet, here he stood, thwarted by Lex’s useless security system which had not kept out Mutants or Pete or psycho doppelgangers from Lex’s past. No, the people who wanted to kill him could walk freely in and out like this was Grand Central Station.

Shaking in frustration and pain, Clark slumped against the gate door.

And nearly fell over when it just swung open under his weight. What the hell? No wonder everyone could just attack Lex. Why did the idiot have a security gate if he was just going to keep it open so that any Tom, Dick, or MeteorHarry could waltz right into the place unannounced? And now Lex was up there and naked and what if…

Oh. Wait. Lex was naked. Lex. Was. NAKED. And waiting for him.

And he only had 30 seconds left.

Clark ran up the driveway, and pushed open the front door (which was also conveniently open, Thank you Lex) and raced up the stairs.

He threw open the bedroom door to find… Lex putting his clothes back on? Why? What? Who?? WHAT?!

Actually, Lex had been putting his clothes back on, but now he had stopped and was looking at Clark with open-mouthed shock.

"Clark? What the hell happened to you?"

"No. Clothes!" Clark growled.

Lex blinked. He glanced down like he only just realized he had been pulling up his pants. "I just thought you weren’t coming and well, I thought maybe I had read this wrong and.." he trailed off.

"OFF!" Clark shouted. That wasn’t the right answer but he didn’t care. He had been promised NAKED LEX! And he was getting it, DAMMIT!

"Oh. Right." Lex started to take the pants off again. He glanced down at the growing puddle of mud and rainwater on the carpet and then at Clark’s expression again "But what happened, why do you have mud all over and why didn’t you.."

Clark clamped a muddy hand over Lex’s mouth. "Later," he whispered.

And then he leaned down to kiss Lex.

Because he had made it, even without his powers.

And for that, he deserved to have Naked Lex flat on his back.

Just as promised.