When a knock came on the door at about eight at night, Lex didn't bother wasting energy pretending to wonder who it could be. The list of people who were allowed past security without first getting approval from Lex was exceedingly short, and of those, only two were prone to stopping by without calling ahead or being invited – not that Lex, to his surprise, minded. He also knew it couldn't be Conner because in the two months since Lex had met the boy, he had, as promised, started to learn to fly, and now insisted on coming up almost exclusively by the balcony, in order to practice.

"Clark," said Lex opening the door, but the greeting died in his mouth as he took in the man in front of him. There wasn't anything concrete about Clark's stance or expression that Lex could place as being different, but something about him seemed lost.

"It's official," said Clark, taking his hand out of his pocket and holding it out, palm-up, in front of him. In the center lay a glittering diamond ring.

"I don't have any pie," Lex said nonsensically. But he just wasn't good at this comforting thing. All he knew about it was what he had been able to extrapolate from watching Clark and Conner, chiefly that it involved lots of hugging and feeding the distressed person comfort food. And Clark, Lex knew, had a particular fondness for pie. But Lex didn't have any pie.

Why the hell had Clark come to Lex for comforting anyway?

Clark let out a startled burst of laughter in response to Lex's comment. "That's okay. I actually know a diner nearby that sells some amazing apple pie. Their pumpkin is pretty good too."

A diner? That distinctly did not sound like a place Lex wanted to go to. "Right now?" Lex said, not wanting to say "no" exactly.

"If you don't want to…" said Clark, sinking back in on himself again.

Crap. "Just let me grab my coat," said Lex, and Clark beamed at him. It was at a dimmer level than normal, but all things considered, it probably still counted.

Lex got a coat out of the hall closet, and then paused in front of the row of his keys hanging up on the wall. "Which car did you want to take?" That was a good thing to do, right? Driving around in one of his sports cars always made Lex feel better at any rate.

"It really isn't that far," Clark said. "We can just walk."

Lex looked down at his shoes, which served his purposes just fine, but weren't exactly made for walking, so to speak. Grimaced. Sighed. "Alright, let's go."

Clark was distressingly silent on the elevator ride down to the ground floor. Lex tried to come up with something to say, but anything about the break-up seemed prying, and anything else seemed like he was trying to ignore Clark's problem.

Luckily, Clark finally spoke up when they stepped outside the building, saving Lex from having to decide if it was less helpful to say something inappropriate or to not say anything at all. "She didn't cry," Clark said. "I mean, her eyes weren't the driest I've ever seen them, but she didn't cry. I was kind of surprised."

"You were expecting Lois Lane to cry?" Lex asked. Not that he had ever talked to the woman, that he could remember, outside of press conferences or other reporter-type situations, but it still didn't sound like something she would do.

Clark laughed again, just a little chuckle. Lex was willing to consider it a personal victory. "She doesn't seem like the type, does she? The thing about Lois is she's pretty tough on the outside, and it's not just a front or a way of protecting herself; that's really who she is. But if you dig in deep enough she's got this… soft nougat-y center. Actually," Clark said, sounding somewhat surprised by the revelation, "she's kind of like you."

"I'm sorry, did you just claim have a 'soft nougat-y center?'"

"Yup," agreed Clark. "Like a Snickers. Or a Three Musketeers bar."

"I am not a damn candy bar," Lex protested.

"I'm pretty sure you are," Clark countered. "And I would know."

"Would you?" Lex said. And the words were right, but the tone was all wrong. Plaintive and needy and he was supposed to be helping Clark dammit, not dredging up his own amnesia-related identity issues.

"Yeah, I would," said Clark, his voice soft. "I know you don't remember, but we were friends – best friends, for years and years and you're still you. In fact, and don't take this the wrong way, I kind of think losing your memories has been good for you. You've been more yourself lately than you have been in a long time."

That was just… shockingly tactless, and telling Lex not to take it the wrong way was more or less an invitation to do exactly that. But Lex knew Clark meant well – he always meant well no matter how deep into his mouth he managed to shove his foot – and Lex would be lying if he said he didn't, to a certain extent at least, understand what Clark was trying to say.

"If Lois really is like me," Lex said, handily avoiding the discussion of who a person really is without their memories for, hopefully, ever, "then she isn't going to cry in front of you. She'll wait until later, after you've left and when she's somewhere she feels secure."

"Is that when you would cry?" said Clark in a light teasing tone, bumping Lex's shoulder with his.

"I would throw things and yell, but I assume the principle is the same," Lex corrected.

"That does sound more like you," agreed Clark. "Though, since you mentioned it, Lois did say she was going to stay with Chloe this weekend."

"And your ex-fiancée told you her weekend plans because…?" Lex asked. It didn't seem like normal break-up behavior.

"Well, technically we're still living together. Just until I find a place," said Clark, and he at least had the decency to look sheepish about it. Because that was a really bad idea.

"How could you possibly think that would work out?"

"By sleeping on the couch and spending as little time in the apartment as much as possible?" Clark suggested. "Don't be surprised if you see a lot more of me in the coming months. But seriously, I know it's not a great idea." Lex scoffed. "Okay, so it's a bad idea, but it really wasn't that bad a breakup, and Lois and I have to get along anyway, since we still work together. Plus I can't stay with my mom because people might wonder how Clark Kent is living in D.C. and working in Metropolis, and it's not like I have anywhere else I can stay." The last of this was said with a quick glance at Lex and then a duck of Clark's head. Strange that Clark would be so bashful about his own shortage of friends when Clark was the only thing resembling a friend that Lex had to speak of.

It was on the tip of Lex's tongue to offer his place up to Clark to stay in until he found somewhere else, or to just invite Clark and Conner to just move in. That way everybody won, right? But then, from what Lex had gathered from Clark about why their friendship had ended in the first place, as unhelpfully vague as Clark had been about the matter, one of the huge problems between the two of them had been Lex's obsessive behavior. And since Lex wasn't sure whether or not asking your friend of only two months, well two months from Lex's perspective at least, to move in with you was obsessive behavior, it seemed better to err on the safe side. So he bit his tongue and didn't say anything; no matter how much homier the penthouse had felt since Clark and Conner had started stopping by at random.

"I guess not," Lex said in response to Clark's statement.

"Mmm," Clark hummed in agreement, and then he gestured at the doorway they were just about to walk past. "Here it is."

The diner was a quaint little place tucked in between a bookstore and a boutique that appeared to only sell socks. It was all done up fifties style and, Lex was gratified to note as Clark led them to the corner booth, was kept clean and fairly well-maintained. The same could not be said for their waitress, however. She was wearing a uniform that matched the décor, which she completed with beehive hairdo, press-on nails that might be more appropriately termed talons, and far too much make-up that didn't do much to hide the fact she almost looked old enough to remember the originals that this diner was based off of.

"Hello dears," she said in a thick Southern drawl, which just had to be affected because it was too cliché not to be. "What can I get y'all?"

Clark held up a hand to turn down the proffered menus. "I'll have a slice of apple pie, a slice of pumpkin and a glass of milk and he'll-"

"I'll just have a coffee," Lex interrupted.

"- and a slice of apple pie for him as well," Clark said.

"Coming right up," the waitress said, ignoring Lex's protestations that he really didn't want any pie. Then she, quite literally, sashayed off. Lex wasn't sure whether he should be impressed by that or disturbed, and he ended up deciding to just repress the memory of her swaying hips as deeply as possible before turning back to berate Clark.

"We're here to get you pie, not me," he hissed.

"But Lex, what good is comfort pie if there's nobody to eat it with me?" Clark said all big eyes and teasing voice.

"I'm not eating any pie," Lex insisted. "I don't even like desert."

"C'mon, it's just one piece," Clark said.

Lex crossed his arms and glared at Clark. Clark grinned back at him.

In short order, the waitress returned with their food, setting it down in front of them before turning to Clark and saying, "Now you make sure you friend here eats all his food up. He's looking a little skinny."

"Will do, ma'am," Clark assured her. "See Lex, now you have to eat the pie; our waitress thinks you're too skinny." Lex raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. "Okay, how about this? You try one bite and then if you don't like it, I'll eat the rest of it, deal?"

Lex sighed. "Fine." He stabbed the pie with a little more viciousness than entirely necessary and took a bite. It was good… really good.

Clark must have read Lex's capitulation in his face, because he smiled and said, "See? I told you it was amazing."

"You know, you're awfully chipper for someone who just broke up with his fiancée," said Lex, a little sour.

"That's because I have you here to distract me," Clark replied sweetly, before digging into his food in earnest.

One thing that Lex had learned about Clark, was that he took eating, of both food in general and pie in particular, as very serious business. That meant that once he started eating, it really was more trouble than it was worth to try to get any sort of dialogue going until he finished his food. It also mean that by the time Lex was halfway through with his food, Clark had already finished both his slices and was licking the fork clean – which was definitely a mental image that Lex would be revisiting later tonight.

"Hey, Lex?" Clark said, putting his fork down. Lex, mouth full of food, hummed in acknowledgement. "Thanks for, you know, being here, distracting me. I didn't really have any one else I could go to with all this. I don't particularly like talking to my mom about this kind of thing, and Chloe is Lois's cousin, so she's out, and Oliver-"

"-is the cousin's husband," Lex suggested.

Clark blinked. "Oh, yeah I guess that would be a problem too. No what I was going to say was that he was Lois's ex."

"Oliver married his ex-girlfriend's cousin?" Lex exclaimed. "I knew he was a skeazy bastard,"

Clark cracked up. Lex raised an eyebrow and waited for Clark to calm down a bit before asking, "Is this another one of your 'some things never change' moments?"

"You know me all too well," Clark replied brightly. "Which actually gets at the other thing I wanted to say to you."

"What's that?" asked Lex.

"Just that I missed this, us hanging out together, and I'm really glad we're friends again," Clark told him with a beatific smile, his green shining with sincerity.

"Oh." Well. Lex poked at his pie with his fork. "Me too."

AN: Sequel is "The Way We All Became..." (Story ID: 8772309)