Fly with Clark Kent
Take Superman in your mouth and swallow.
Clark Kent is always aware. His skin itches with sound; he feels pins and needles in his flesh with every glance that he receives. Touch him, and it's like a baby's eyelash across his skin, soft and dainty and new. Touch him, and he's hit. Punch him in the stomach, man to man, beast to beast. Touch him, and he's frustrated.
Tension. He's got a clenched jaw, ready for anything. Smile and show teeth. Grimace and show teeth. Sling an insult at an opponent, because, really, it doesn't matter. He'll always win, and he gets careless enough that he'll let someone touch him. Doesn't matter.
His eyes are open and watching everything (knowing everything). That necklace is new today, and maybe Clark sees it glittering in the sun. He sees that pistol, too, in the bag, and there's nothing in that building that worth taking today, not worth a life anyway. Got to figure that out. His eyes are open.
Scared or happy means nothing. He listens to heartbeats like crickets playing in morning twilight. He can't read minds, but it doesn't really matter, does it? Clark hears the thud thud thud of life breaking chests open. Arousal, adrenaline, it's all the same to this guy.
Man on a bike behind him; kid running somewhere in the park to his left. He breathes in his surrounding: the sight past his jaws; the smell on his tongue; the touch and feel of everything in his lungs, reaching out and playing with his bloodstream. His heart beats more madly, and damned if he can't feel it anymore.
It's the sun that does it. Got to black out the sun all over the world to get anywhere with him. They did that once, but look what happened. Took too many years for the earth to remember how to live again, and (sometimes) it's too much to consider. Ain't no better place to go yet, and the sun can't die for anybody in this damn system.
But Clark -- oh, Clark, it can't die for you either. Drink this orange juice (concentrate, so it's got the pulp, mind you; they think you'll forget it was frozen that way) and watch the roll of this life. Feel your tongue fill up your mouth until it must smooth the top flat. Glide like the waves of the river; dance with the wind the fields of wheat. Drink of the river and eat of the wheat, Clark Kent, and be strong.
Your adoptive home will provide you with everything the land of your birth could not. This is your destiny, this water flowing down you and this darkness behind every closed lid. The sun will shine forever here; Clark knows how to keep it that way: fly, fly into the East, until the East is your home and your motive.
Remember to breath, Clark Kent, when you stand too suddenly and the world falls from under you like a moving sidewalk at an airport. The world whips round him and has its own slow self to content with. Too much time lost, too much time to pass yet. Stand still with the sidewalk and let it take you to your destination.
Think of someone. Suck on a cigarette in the airport bathroom. It's not like Clark can get cancer, or maybe even die. Except -- you are in the mountains of the highest ranges. You cannot breath for the thinness of the air and the chill of the wind -- it does not touch you but it enters through your lips, your tongue, your breath, till it becomes your bloodstream. Those are good smokes.
You would be called a cowboy if your spaceship had landed farther west. Instead, you are a farm boy, and Lois Lane stretches her hand out and says: Smallvile; young; inexperienced; boy. He feels her words and tastes her being and wishes with every bit of heart left beating that she will only notice his strength.
There is no blue sky. She points it out -- oh the sky, look at how wonderful and dark it is today, like the color of your eyes (said shyly; even she can be demure, he notices with surprise). But he looks too far, and the colors come crashing toward him until there is no blue left, only reds. Thousands of shades of reds threaten to overwhelm him.
Sex with Lois feels good, but it smells bad. Lex's hands on him, touching his shoulder, offering him another cigarette -- yeah, that feels nice and tastes soft, and the smell isn't so overpowering. Smoke the reds, they're the best kind. Smooth and soft, and they take you flying too.
Fly with Clark Kent. Limited availability on this bitch-ass offer.
Some days he dips his fingertips into an ash trash and smells. Recall Lex's hands, and then you will understand why. Smoke the last of the cigarette from the ash tray. This isn't the tray of some poor ass high school student, smoked down to the filter. These are long butts. Throw away so much tobacco because he can get more whenever he wants. Reds, too.
Clark Kent looked eighteen from the time he was twelve, but he certainly didn't act an adult until well in his twenties, lying in Lex Luthor's bed, smoking a cigarette. Smoke like Clark Kent; feel hands on your thighs; fingers splay across bones; his stomach muscles tense. This is the life.
Reds stay in your mouth. Clark feels the dust and ash and truth sandblasted across his tonsils. Inhale deep and exhale and come, and wow, this red is motherfucking amazing, Lex's mouth warm and moist against his own. Shotgun a shot, borrow his smoke, why don't you? Clark Kent doesn't care.
It's all in his head. Gotta smoke. Must inhale it until you are flying again.
Lois is small and almost fragile, and she makes these soft little murmurs. Restrained with him, because she's afraid, afraid of the strength he offers, all that he knows how to offer her. He can't be Lucy, always needing her help. He can't be Chloe, because even he cannot channel the dead. Clark knows this shit; he has learned it until it is burned on his throat like the reds. Lex takes him into himself selfishly, and there is a vacuum in space and time. Everything becomes meaningless. Smoking Clark Kent.
Can you be happy? He's not sad; he's content enough. There's no depression, but there is a recession. You can't always be flying, you know. He walks and watches the red sky above him out of the corner of his eye. Yellow suns don't exist if you try hard enough to remember your infancy played out somewhere past that big ball of gas out there.
Lois is nothing like Chloe. Chloe fought for his strength, told him to go harder harder harder, because there were stars. In her eyes, he watched nebulas form and supernovas continue (forever and ever, it seemed). She was there for the thrill of the ride, like a roller coaster of terrifying highs and lows.
His own life is that. Clark reaches the top, and somebody lives. That's good, and he feels nice and superior to the rest of the world, and Lois reaches down between her legs and says, wait, wait, slow down, I'm not there yet, please, Clark oh Clark.
Did you kill Chloe Sullivan? She wasn't enough to hold him, and there were explosions, and stars were born and dead, and there was a casket with a pretty young blonde in it. The newspapers talk about her in empty obituaries splashed across the front pages. Why is Chloe so much more important murdered than living?
That's a low on the stupid coaster, and Lex is below. Inhale, swallow, and know that this is the truth in everything. Smoke on his lips under a red sky.
That's how it goes until you find Lana Lang, and there's a bottom that Lois can't understand, will not see properly as reasonable. It is -- it is so reasonable. Can't destroy her like he destroyed Chloe, and he can't keep fucking Lex Luthor in his mansion after Superman is almost killed (by grief; by kryptonite; by something even he doesn't understand). Lois will not see the Luthor, but she sees his old love, his old falsity, and she bursts.
No, Clark, no. Why, Clark, why? And does he stop? Does he ever have an answer for her? Of course not. He's Superman, and he'll take a girl away from all danger if she only asks. Chloe didn't understand that, didn't call out help. Didn't need him, or so she thought. Superman was a figure to her like it can never be to him. Bad call on her part.
Smoke until you choke, then when he's gone, find the butts and gasp filter. This is the real reason behind it all, and Clark takes her into the sky as reparation. His strength is the only way to fix this whole mess. And Lois sighs into his shoulder, "Oh Clark," and they marry on a New England beach, facing the West like it's their only way out of this life.
Half smoked cigarette on the floor of his bathroom, and he picks it up and flushes it down the toilet.