A Summer Of Broken Hearts

Part I: A Summer of Broken Hearts

This was written for the Rhiannonhero Summer Title Challenge

Rating: R but will turn NC-17
Discalmer: Smallville belongs to DC comics and WB. This is non-profit entertainment. No infringement is intended so please don't sue me

Thanks to Rose7 for all her time and beta efforts. A big thank-you to Skuf also, for going through all of this and correcting my comma and grammar errors. Any remaining mistakes are my own. Please feel free to point them out.

4

“Clark, honey, are you okay?” Martha started to get up from her place next to her husband at the dining table when Clark entered the kitchen.

“It’s alright, mom. I just want to get a cup of coffee before I sit with you.” Clark fixed his coffee in the uncomfortable silence and then joined his parents at the table.

“Clark, what…” Jonathan began, obviously still angry over their earlier exchange.

“Dad, wait. Please don’t say anything. I should have come to you and mom before things got this...well…out of control. I guess I thought everything would just blow over and life would go back to normal.” Clark raised his eyes from his coffee cup to look at his parents. His mother looked pale and drawn, and his father looked tired.

“I knew about Lex before you did. The rumours, I mean – and I have to tell you that I didn’t appreciate your manipulations with regard to my friendship with him.” Clark saw his parents exchange a quick glance. “Maybe I should have refused to go along with the restrictions, and told you what I knew then as well, but I know how unreasonable the two of you can get on the subject of Lex, and I just wanted to avoid a scene.”

“Honey, we just…” Martha’s tone was pleading and she looked hurt when Clark cut her off.

“Stop, mom. I know you meant well. I know you want to protect me, but I am NOT a child anymore. I am also, by no stretch of the imagination, a normal teenager. I am able to judge a person’s character for myself. I don’t seem to be burdened with prejudices that most humans have, and I think that makes me fairer at times than you.” Clark took a small sip from the cup in his hands before he continued. “In this case, I think you and dad have to ask yourselves if you would have reacted the same way had the rumours been about Pete Ross; if you would have been so quick to accept vicious gossip as fact.” Clark shook his head slightly and leaned back in his chair as he looked directly at his father. “You and mom have to take off the rose-coloured glasses and see things as they are. I am never going to be able to have friendships or even a girlfriend the way boys my age do. I mean, look at what I did to Lana after the tornado. I took the truth and twisted it into a lie to protect myself. Worse than that, I basically questioned her mental state…do you think I can ever have a relationship with someone when that’s how I abuse them?”

“Clark, you can’t…”

“What, Dad, be honest?” Clark interrupted his father angrily. “You’re right, I can’t. I also can’t expect my friends to accept my lies, and believe me, they don’t. The irony is that friends are the ones that get closest to you, so they keep trying. They continue looking for answers to the discrepancies that are blaringly abundant in my life. In return I give them lies, and they know it – yet they continue to question, waiting for the moment I will open up to them, not knowing that that day will never come. Do you have any idea how it makes me feel not only to make those lies come out of my mouth, but to see the betrayal in the eyes of the person I lie to?” Clark turned his eyes to his coffee cup, ashamed that he was responsible for the troubled, sad faces before him. He knew though that he had to burst his parents’ bubble and force them to see him clearly. They needed to stop behaving as though they were raising just another teenage boy who happened to have super abilities.

“Dad, I know you have issues with the Luthors, but they are YOUR issues not mine. You need to accept that Lex is my best friend; he’s important to me in ways that I don’t really have words to explain.” At this, Clark could see a muscle in his father’s jaw start to twitch, and hoped that his father would continue to listen without exploding. “Look,” Clark continued in a calm, but firm tone, “I don’t care if the rumours about Lex are true or not; they have no bearing on our friendship. I need both of you to accept that.”

“Can I say something now, honey?” Martha reached across the table to squeeze Clark’s hand.

“Sure, mom. I just wanted to get that all out without stopping to argue over every detail.”

“Your father and I do understand how hard it is for you, never being able to completely open up to those you care about. I wish there was some way we could relieve you of the burden so that you could live your life like a normal boy, but we can’t. As far as Lex is concerned, you’re right. We should have talked to you about what we heard, but we were hoping it would blow over, too. Your father and I just didn’t want the gossip to turn into speculation about the nature of your friendship with him.” Martha looked over at her husband, who sat quietly listening, knowing the effort it took for him to hold his tongue where Lex was concerned. However, mother’s intuition told her things were going to get worse before they got better. She sighed and turned back to Clark. “Parents make mistakes, honey. I’m sorry we hurt you by not being direct about it, but there’s more to this whole situation than meets the eye, isn’t there?” Her heart sank just a little as she saw the truth of that flash in her son’s eyes.

“Clark,” Jonathan broke his silence, concern evident in his voice. “Is there something else wrong here, is there another problem?”

“Yes,” Clark said as he ran a finger around the rim of his coffee cup, avoiding his Parents’ eyes. “There have been…changes… maybe more like new developments over the past several months.”

“Changes? What kind of changes?” Jonathan was now fully alert and upright in his seat, all traces of anger replaced with fatherly concern.

Clark looked up into the heavily lined eyes of the father who loved him and was dedicated to protecting his son at any cost. “Alien changes dad, and before you ask, no, it’s not a new ability. I can’t really explain it, because I don’t have the words to. I can only give you an idea of how it affects me.” Clark paused a moment to get control of his thoughts and push down the panic that always seemed to assail him when he thought about having to try and put this foreign, elusive thing into human terms. “It started with the sleep disturbances. I told you about that. During the extra waking hours, my body just started to vibrate with…I don’t know…like nervous energy. But it’s in my head too, a kind of restless shifting of some sort.” Clark ran a hand through his hair as he tried to think of words that would help his parents grasp what was going on inside him. There must be some kind of analogy that came close, some reference that would make it seem less inconceivable. He must have been quiet for some time when he heard his father’s voice.

“…new thoughts?”

“Huh?”

“I asked you if you were aware of any kind of new thoughts, ones that, you know, weren’t there before,” said Jonathan for the second time.

Clark shook his head. “No, it’s more like sound or some odd type of shifting vibration. It doesn’t seem to have a purpose, though it does somehow feel familiar; like I should know what it is, but I don’t. It’s always followed by this flow of something like…maybe adrenaline. Whatever it is, my body becomes restless and agitated. In the beginning I tried speed-running for hours to try and wear myself out, but that didn’t do anything to stop the energy thumping in my body.”

“Does it stop during the day son? Are there patterns to when it comes and goes?” Jonathan asked without realising how close he was coming to dangerous territory.

“Not really,” Clark skated around the question. “In the beginning it was odd and a bit overwhelming, but manageable. Over time it seems to get worse, like it’s accumulative. I become edgy and a bit panicked. I don’t tolerate the company of people too well when it gets bad; I feel cornered…like I need to flee.” Clark saw the sudden realization in his father’s eyes.

“Which is why a party with a group of your friends would do more harm than good.” Jonathan reached out and placed his hand on Clark’s shoulder. “Son, why didn’t you just tell us?”

“It’s not easy to talk about, Dad, not even now. Anyway, there is nothing you can do to help me with this. Now you know about it, and you just have to let me deal with it,” Clark said in a tone he hoped was full of confidence while his brain screamed ‘just don’t ask how I’m going to deal with it dad, just don’t ask’.

“This must be really frustrating for you, Clark, trying to explain it to us, especially since there isn’t much we can do to help you,” Martha said as she looked directly into her son’s eyes. “Of course, if there was anything, anyway we could find to make this easier for you…I mean nothing is more important than getting you through this, right?”

Oh Jesus, she knows. Clark had no idea how, but his mother had made the connection. Uh uh, no way. No matter how much she was leading him, he was not biting.

“I’ll be okay, Mom, really.” No way we’re going there Mom, no friggin’ way.

“Sweetheart, I know that in the last few weeks you’ve started wandering the house and grounds at night again. You’ve become withdrawn and nervous; really a shadow of the boy you were at the end of the school year.”

“Martha, Clark just finished telling us that this is how the new changes affect him.”

“The changes aren’t that new, are they, Clark? It was bad for a few months early in the year, but then the symptoms began to fade a bit, didn’t they? It seems as though they re-surfaced just around the time you stopped seeing Le…”

“Mom! Please!” Clark bellowed as he jumped up out of his chair, which went crashing to the floor.

A bewildered Jonathan, and a Martha who just had her suspicions validated, remained alone as Clark sped out of the kitchen.