Cold
By: Arian

Disclaimer: don't own, don't profit, just like to play

***

Lex had stopped feeling hours ago. The ache in his arms as they stretched above his head and bore the weight of his body no longer fazed him. Neither did the icy-cold concrete floor against his bare feet and legs; legs that had long since given up trying to hold him upright. No, Lex didn't feel any of it anymore. Not even the blows that rained down on his bruised, beaten flesh or the opening of new wounds as the blade sliced across his skin.

When it had started to feel like the flesh of his arms was splitting, opening him wide to the whims of the men who held him, Lex had stopped feeling. Now his body was in ruins and his mind had retreated to a place where he was warm; he was in Clark's loft on a late spring day. Seated next to his best friend and curled into the curve of his shoulder as Clark's arm stretched across the couch behind him. They were laughing. Lex was happy.

The sound of screaming tore him from the warmth of his mind. He knew it wasn't him, couldn't be him, because his voice had given out long ago. Someone else was there. Someone else was raging. Lex brought his head up, neck aching, eyes blurred with sleep deprivation and tears he hadn't realized he'd been shedding. He saw the one thing he both longed for and feared to see. Clark. Clark was there. Clark, on his knees, arms pulled roughly behind him. Clark was making the gut-wrenching cries that filled his ears. He was trying to pull away from the men that held him. Lex's fuzzy mind took longer than it should have to realize that the glowing green stone around the neck of his best friend, his love, was what allowed his assailants to keep him down.

Someone was speaking over the screams. He could see the knife-wielding man's lips move as he shaped words Lex was sure he should probably try to listen too. Unable to hold his head up any longer, Lex let it drop down until his chin rested on his chest. A swift blow to his left ear brought it back up right away. Lex could make out words now. Brief snatches of sentences that held the answers to life or death. Alien, was one word he was able to pick out sluggishly. Abomination, freak, unworthy. The words that could only mean death flowed over him and filled him with a sense of intense longing. He wanted to hold Clark one last time, kiss him, and whisper in his ear just how much he loved him. When the speaker walked over to Clark and yanked his head back by his hair, Lex knew he would never have the chance.

The blade slid smoothly across Clark's jugular, opening the vein and releasing a flood of blood that shot away from his love's body in a manner that would have been comical if it were happening in a movie. Instead Lex watched as the life drained out of Clark and his body tumbled forward to the cold, cold floor. Clark shouldn't have to be cold, Lex thought. He's dying, he shouldn't have to lie on the floor like that. He must be so cold. That was as far as he got in his internal rambling as he felt the same knife glide across his own flesh. It wasn't long after that before Lex looked to Clark one last time before he let the darkness fold around him and take him away.

-end-