Martha was drunk. In fact, she was very drunk, to an extent that she didn't even remember the last time she'd been quite so intoxicated. She normally kept herself to one beer with Jonathan during the football games in the fall, and, at most, two glasses of wine over dinner for special occasions; they'd always tried to set a good example for Clark with regards to such things as drinking and drugs. She giggled to herself remembering the little hashish den that had been her dorm room in college before she met Jonathan. She wasn't sure that Jonathan even knew about that.

But here she was, more drunk than she could ever remember being, and she couldn't really recall if that was a bad thing or a good thing. She'd heard plenty of stories of people going out into the snowstorms with bottles of wine, never to return, found in the spring thawing under a tree, still clutching their bottle. It apparently made freezing to death a little more pleasant if nothing else.

And given the circumstances, she thought she deserved a little 'pleasant'.

It had started out as a normal day. She'd woken up, kissed Jonathan good morning, then fixed his breakfast as he did the chores out in the barn. The main difference from every other morning for the last twenty five years of her life had been that Clark wasn't there, having gone back to Metropolis earlier in the week to begin his second semester at Met U. She had enjoyed having her baby home for Christmas, but she knew that he had been eager to get back to his new life in the city.

Martha had fed Jonathan his usual breakfast of eggs, bacon and coffee. She made a box lunch for him then trundled him off into the new compact car, sending him on his way to the three day Lowell County Organic Farming Convention being sponsored by LexCorp. It was just another example, in her mind, of how Lex was not like his father in so many ways that counted.

Still, she couldn't forget Lex's obsession with her son, and the room that he'd built to house the research he had done on Clark. Martha knew that Lex could be a danger to Clark; that he knew too much, but she had kept her mouth shut when the two had become friends again. Wasn't there some old saying about holding one's friends close, and one's enemies closer? Hadn't Clark told her that?

So, Jonathan was at the convention and Martha was left to do just a few chores around the farm, then deliver produce to some outlying homes, including the Luthor estate--what used to be Clark's old route. Again, just a typical day--the meteorologists were calling for snow, but that wasn't until the evening hours.

They'd been wrong. Martha had just left her first stop when it started to flurry, and by the time she'd reached the next house, the snow was falling fairly heavily. She considered going home, but only had four more stops to make and they were all in the direction of the farm, but on the back roads winding toward Luthor mansion, the windshield wipers could no longer keep the snow from blocking her view, and what had started out as swirling, lovely flakes, was now a screaming wall of white.

Martha had no choice but to stop the truck and wait.

For a long time, she didn't panic or worry. The truck had a little gas left in the tank, not as much as she'd like, just a smidgeon over empty, but still she felt there was plenty of time to sit with the heater turned on high and wait to be found. Eight hours later, when the night had descended, and she couldn't see anything but white snow swirling madly around her, the heater finally gave out, and she started to panic. She tried to open the car door, but the snow had grown so deep, that it was wedged shut; she started to feel like she couldn't breath.

Just when she was about to completely break down, seeing her life pass before her eyes, shaking with a bone deep cold that she had never imagined possible, black gloved hands clearing the snow from the driver's window startled her into screaming. Then she began to whisper, "Oh, thank you, God, thank you, thank you," as she struggled to roll down the frozen shut window.

Finally getting it more than half-way open, she saw Lex peering in, his blue eyes watery from the icy wind, his cheeks red, and his nose brilliant from the cold.

"We've got to get you out of here," Lex said urgently, reaching in the window, and trying to urge her to crawl through. "There's a cabin, just about half a mile from here, we've got to get you someplace warm."

Martha nodded, abandoning her purse and other belongings to force herself through the open window. The snow reached about half-way up the door of the trunk, and Lex was carefully crouching on the bank of it as helped to pull her through. It was a tight squeeze, and there was a moment when she was afraid that her hips might get stuck, but Lex tugged on her, muttering apologies, until she came free. He took of his coat, revealing that he had another thinner one on underneath, and wrapped it around her shoulders.

Martha took it gratefully; Lex's body-heat had warmed the wool and she pulled it tightly around her. "How did you find me? How did you know?"

Lex grasped her arm, urging her to follow him. As they forced their way through deep drifts of snow, Lex spoke urgently, his voice harsh from the weather, "I happened to be in town today, and when you didn't show with the delivery--" He broke off when she stumbled, holding her up and driving her forward. "--I got worried. I called the farm, but there wasn't an answer. I went on instinct. And I'm glad that I did."

Martha nodded. "I can't thank you enough, Lex."

"Thank me when you're safe and warm."

Martha's teeth chattered together so hard that she feared they might break, and her feet were completely numb from the cold. It was hard to walk through the snow with no sense of how her foot would land with each step, and she fell more than once despite Lex's hold on her arm. She'd never been so cold and fear started to set in. The world around them was white, and the wind nearly knocked her down, gusting ice cold shards into her face when she was forced to walk into it, and drenching her hair when she walked with the storm at her back.

She didn't know how far they had to go, but Lex kept saying, "We're almost there. Almost there. Just a little bit more." And she was starting not to believe him. They'd been 'almost there' for forever, and she was so tired that she couldn't believe that even one more step was inside of her. So tired, and so cold.

Martha was convinced that she couldn't go on, and she began to slow down. "I can't--Lex, I can't make it. You go on."

Lex jerked her arm. "Come on. You're going to be just fine. Think about Clark--what would he want you to do?"

She pushed ahead, although a small voice of resignation played in the back of her mind. Clark didn't need her anymore; he was grown now, could make it on his own. Jonathan needed her, but sometimes she resented that. She couldn't say she was unhappy, but she couldn't say she was happy either. She'd married a farmer, so it was ridiculous to be disappointed that a farmer is what she'd got. But sometimes she just got so tired, and she missed the hope she'd had when she was young, so sure that the world world would bring her something beautiful. And it had--it'd brought her Clark. But he didn't need her now, and it would be so easy to let go, to stop walking, just to rest for a minute. Just a small rest--

"Come on. There it is. Don't you see it?" Lex was pointing at something in the whiteness, but Martha didn't see anything at all.

She shook her head, but Lex dragged her onward, and she kept walking, trudging. The future had never scared her so much as it scared her now. Clark was on his own and making his own choices. She couldn't protect him, and she couldn't make his choices for him anymore. There were so many mornings that she woke up from nightmares of his future--and the worst ones didn't necessarily include dissection tables. The worst were that he lived alone, forever locked in his secret. Or that he told the world and became isolated eternally. Or that he gave in to the El imperitives inside of him, and became a ruler, a dictator, and went insane from the power of it.

"Here!" Lex's voice was full of relief.

Martha, half-delirious, leaned against the side of something rough and solid. The cabin that Lex had been searching for was already covered in deep snow, but the door opened without too much trouble, and she stumbled inside, relieved to be out of the torturous wind and blinding white. She took deep breaths, rubbing her arms and looking around through burning eyes.

It was a small cabin, one-room with no kitchen and no bathroom in sight. There was no furniture at all, no stove, and, worst of all, no fireplace. Lex cursed softly under his breath beside her as he took in their shelter.

"Kids come here," he said in explanation.

That's when Martha noticed the used condoms littering the floor, the beer cans piled in the corners, and the porn magazines in tatters on the ground. Lex moved away from her side, letting go of her arm, and she was glad to find that she could still stand, even though her legs were so tired that she felt like they would give out at any moment. She noticed that Lex was going moving toward a dark pile in the right-hand corner, and he rummaged there for a moment, finally turning around holding two blankets and a bottle of bourbon.

"These will have to do," he said, coming over and draping one musty-smelling blanket over her shoulder. Martha pulled it tightly under her chin and closed her eyes. She was so tired. When she opened them again, Lex had cleared a spot of the floor of condoms and refuse. She settled down beside him, knees drawn to her chest, and shaking so hard that it hurt.

"Don't fall asleep," he said, scooting closer. "Come on, we need to keep each other warm. I didn't see any matches, but we've got this bourbon to help cut the chill. But we have to be careful--we can't fall asleep."

Martha moved closer to him and they sat together in silence, shivering violently for what seemed like an hour. Finally Lex opened the bottle of liquor and took a large swallow, he passed the bottle her way and Martha hesitated for only a moment before taking a drink herself.

That had been hours ago and now both she and Lex were ripped, well, she was ripped and Lex had decided to go back to the trunk to get some matches she thought were in the glove box. It had been a long time, though, and Martha was getting worried, so she took another swig from the bottle, sighing at the burn down her esophagus, warming her from the inside.

She'd relieved herself just outside of the cabin because there were no facilities inside, and had been scared to see that the storm hadn't abated much. Martha glared at the bottle in her hand, realizing that it had been stupid to let Lex go back out into the storm, and that if they'd been sober, then they would have been aware of that.

Martha pushed the bottle aside, thinking that if she continued to hold it there wouldn't be any for Lex when he returned; she shoved down the voice that taunted her with the word 'if'. She shivered and shuddered, but not as violently as before. She had no idea how much effect the alcohol had on her perception of cold, but she didn't feel so terribly chilled, although her feet were still quite numb.

In the past several hours she'd grown to know her son's friend better than she ever had before; he'd opened up to her about his mother, her mental instability and his brother's death. Martha was certain that he'd never told anyone those things before, not even Clark. Lex had gotten teary eyed talking about his brother, and Martha had comforted him, holding his head to her chest and running her fingers over his smooth scalp. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard when she remembered the soft feel of his skin, and the hard line of his shoulders.

Loud scuffling outside the cabin brought her back to reality and she struggled to her feet, pulled the door open, and nearly screamed at the sight of Lex--blue, shivering, eyes glassy, and his breathing shallow. She grabbed his arm, forced him through the cabin door, and could barely hear his whisper, "The matchbox was empty. I'm sorry."

She clucked, saying, "It's okay, Lex. It's okay. Let's get you warm." But he didn't hear her and she barely got him down to the floor before he passed out, his eyes rolling back in his head and his mouth hanging open. Martha panicked. Her heart beat wildly in her chest, and she started to yell for Clark, but stopped after she'd called his name three times. It was no use--

Martha might have been a city girl, but her mother had put her through the Girl Scouts like all of her friends, and the lessons learned in youth sometimes reappear at just the right moment. Martha stripped off her clothes, rolling her sweater into a pillow for Lex's head, then proceeded to strip Lex as well. She couldn't remember if it was okay to leave one's underwear on, so she ripped them off, too. After they were both naked, she crawled on top of Lex, covering as much of his body with hers as she possibly could, then wrapped them both in the two grungy blankets, draping their clothes over them for additional warmth.

It was like cuddling a corpse. Lex's body was like ice, and the startling chill of it was the only way that Martha even knew that she had managed to garner some body heat for herself during her time in the cabin. She reached blindly for the bottle, uncapped it again, and attempted to pour some into Lex's mouth, hoping that the alcohol would warm or wake him. She tried to be careful; she didn't want to choke her unconscious companion, but she accidentally spilled bourbon down his cheeks, and some dribbled over his chin, pooling in the hollow of this throat.

Martha watched Lex's face, slapping gently at his cheeks, trying to wake him up, but took consolation in the fact that he was definitely breathing. The idea that he might die terrified her, and she took another long swallow from the bourbon to try to calm down. Studying his immobile face, she tried to remember the rest of the lessons she'd had in hypothermia, and finally remembered the importance of friction.

She massaged her hands up and down Lex's arms, and moved her body against his, her breasts rubbing against Lex's chest in a sensual manner that made her nipples hard. She buried her face in the crook of his neck and rutted her body viciously against his, drumming up heat between them, and as she moved, the world seemed to rock with her. She closed her eyes when the room began to sway and she could smell the woodsy-sweet smell of the liquor on his neck, then taste it in her mouth along with the salt of skin when she licked it out of the hollow of his throat.

Lex smelled like ozone from the storm, liquor from the bourbon, and a masculine scent of his own. He smelled comforting, and Martha took deep breaths of warmth rising from his skin as she continued to move against him. Lex's body was hard under hers, with long muscles that rose and fell in gorgeous lines along his arms, shoulders, and thighs. His stomach was taut and strong, she could feel the hardness of it catching and rubbing at her clit as she moved.

In the back of her mind a voice nagged at her that this was becoming sexual, but she pushed it away, focusing only the friction and the whirl of the world around her. She could feel the frozen air around them, burning her lungs with every breath, and she could imagine the coldness like a monster that was creeping in through the gap under the door, crawling over the floor, ready to pounce on them, ready to kill them both. So, she moved with more determination, imagining that with every flex of her hips, every chafe of her breasts on Lex's chest, she held the cold at bay and kept them safe.

Lex moaned beneath her, a long, low sound that held a note in it that Martha purposely ignored. She felt him stir slightly, as though he might try to buck her off, but then his hands were on her back, rubbing and massaging, moving up to her shoulders and down to her ass, then back again. Martha kept her eyes closed, and her head turned away from Lex's face. She didn't know if he was entirely awake, but neither of them spoke, just rocked together and stroking one another's skin in an urgent search for heat-giving friction.

Martha felt the residual burn of the bourbon in her stomach, and she could still taste it in her mouth, mixed with the taste of Lex's skin, and the way the world seemed to be swirling as if this was all a dream led her to turn her face toward Lex and to kiss his neck, just under his jaw. She felt his gasp as a small bump in the unreality that spun around her, recognized the velvet slide of his cock hardening and rising up the inside of her thigh to rest against her ass.

She felt some push from her consciousness toward resistance, but Lex's hands smoothing over her skin, running down her side, and sliding up between their bodies to cup her breasts led her back toward the place where her swelling clitoris, and her wet pussy were instrumental in saving them both from the shadowy, deathly clutches of the cold.

When Lex grasped her hips and lifted her slightly, Martha didn't stop moving, and when she felt the head of Lex's penis press against her entrance, she pushed back and sighed as it slid inside. Thick, warm, hard, and filling--Martha wriggled against it, feeling the rush of Lex's gasp against her hair, then she pulled the blankets more tightly around them, moving up and down on Lex's shaft, enjoying the pull along her vaginal walls, and moaning when the angle allowed her clit to be stimulated.

One of Lex's hands wrapped in her hair, and the other held her hips steady as he began to thrust up beneath her. Martha, keeping her eyes closed, shifted up and back, letting her head fall back and riding Lex's cock in earnest. She moved fiercely when the cold air seeped in between them from the small distance between their chests, and gasped in surprise when Lex clasped one of her breasts, ducked his head down and sucked on the nipple, biting lightly with his teeth. The icy cold air stung the wet skin when he pulled away and moved to the other, bringing Martha into a sense of the moment. She opened her eyes and looked into Lex's dazed blue gaze, then shut them again pushing on toward completion.

The orgasm was stunning, ripping through her body like a small tornado, leading her to cry out with the pleasure of it, something she hadn't done with Jonathan in years. Lex's own release seemed equally intense--he cursed and shook beneath her when he suddenly grasped her hips, pulled him off of his cock, and spurted his come in the space between them.

Martha shivered in the aftermath, rolled to the side, and Lex used his underwear to clean the come from his stomach, and from her thighs. She didn't meet his eyes, and he said nothing either, finally reaching for the bourbon, taking a drink, and passing the bottle her way. She filled her throat three times, then pushed it away.

Lex handed her the pair of white panties she'd been wearing, and she slid them on, managing to keep the thoughts turned off in her mind, but only barely. The feelings of shame and humiliation were already swelling within her, and Martha knew what sort of self-recrimination wasn't far behind.

She finally managed a glance at Lex and found him rubbing his hands over his face, appearing traumatized, and worried.

"Lex..."

He looked at her and forced a small smile. "It was a mistake. The result of circumstances beyond our control. We won't think about it."

Martha nodded, pulled her bra and shirt on, slid her jeans over her hips, and pulled one of the blankets up tight under her chin. She shivered, and Lex slid closer. "It's okay, Mrs. Kent. It won't happen again. We still need to be close, though. For warmth."

Martha realized that Lex was blaming himself, but she didn't know how to set the record straight. Didn't know how to let him know that she had been the one to--

Several hours passed in silence, then they began to whisper to one another, just small things, questions about Clark's childhood, Lex's school years, Martha's first date, and it seemed as though perhaps it could be forgotten, at least until they were rescued--or dead.

Martha fell asleep in Lex's arms, both of them curled on their sides in the spoon position. She felt something hot on her arm, then heard a familiar voice saying, "Mom? Mama?" She peeled her eyes open and Clark knelt beside her, his hot hand on her cheek. "Mama? Are you okay?"

When she nodded, she was pulled into a tight embrace, her son's hot breath against her neck reassuring and proof of how very cold she still was. Then he pulled away, "Lex? Lex, tell me you're all right." His voice was urgent, and Martha rolled up to a sitting position.

Lex still lay on his side, his lips rather blue and his eyes glassy, but he smiled and shoved up. "I'm okay."

Clark reached around her and pulled Lex into a hug. Martha frowned as her son's hands seemed to map his best friend, starting with his scalp, then sliding over his body as though checking for injury. "I was so worried. God, so worried."

"We're okay, Clark," Lex whispered, again.

Clark clutched him close, and Martha scooted out of the way, noting the way that Clark pulled Lex flush against him, holding him by one hip to keep him in place. Lex's eyes were shut as he submitted to the embrace, then raised his arms to reciprocate it.

That was something that Martha had not learned in her time alone with Lex--there was more to his friendship with her son than either boy had ever let on. Martha blushed furiously remembering what she'd done, but catching Lex's eye on her, she pushed it away, understanding that what had happened was best forgotten for everyone's sake.

A week later, Martha stood in the kitchen drinking cocoa, looking out the window and trying to forget hard muscle beneath her, and the smooth slide of Lex's cock in her pussy. Clark and Lex were in the barn--she was tempted to go out with the excuse of bringing cocoa, but part of her feared what she might find between her son and the man who had ever so briefly, and utterly improperly, been her lover.

So she stayed inside and nursed her hot chocolate. Some things in life have to be forgotten in order to move ahead, or to return to where one was before. The sound of Jonathan's heavy boots as he stomped off snow on the kitchen porch brought her firmly into the present. There was no room for regrets here.

THE END