Title: Where No Man Etc. Etc.

Author: Gigi Sinclair

Fandom: Smallville/Star Trek Enterprise crossover

Feedback: Yes! Yes! Oh God, yes!

Rating: R

Disclaimer: The Enterprisers are Paramount's. Smallville belongs to the WB. The deep-seated psychological disorder needed to combine the two, though, that's all mine. Although I'm sure I'm not the first person to think Malcolm Reed and Lex would make the perfect couple.

Summary: It's crossover fun as the Enterprisers arrive in our favourite Kansas cornfield.

Parody Alert: Love 'em all (especially Captain Archer and Trip Tucker, holders of the Clex Award for Lingering Looks and Rampant Subtext) but not even I can take them completely seriously.

Where No Man Etc. Etc.

By Gigi Sinclair

At first, Malcolm Reed thought he was dead. Not that this was, in itself, a bad thing. Apart from regular explosions and the occasional trip to the decontamination chamber with the Vulcan Venus, Sub-commander T'Pol, his life was largely free of magic. What was space travel, after all, but an awful lot of time spent in awfully close quarters with an awful lot of people you would normally go out of your way to avoid. No, Malcolm was annoyed not by his death, but by the timing of it. It figured he would die two days before

he was scheduled to go on shore leave.

"Malcolm?" Malcolm opened his eyes, hoping for paradise but expecting hell. He found himself lying on the floor of the shuttlepod, a bleeding Captain Archer standing over him. Hell it was, then. "Malcolm, I think I'm injured." What a surprise. It seemed like hardly a week went by when Captain Archer wasn't hurt by something, usually a pissed-off alien. They all seemed to get pissed-off when they were around Archer. Malcolm couldn't blame them. He had to live with the man. "Are you OK?"

"I guess so." Malcolm sat up. "What happened?" Captain Archer furrowed his brow in concentration as he used all of his extensive Starfleet education to theorize:

"I think we crashed."

Even with this helpful hypothesis, it took a moment for things to come back to Malcolm. But come back they did. Going slowly stir-crazy waiting for his shore leave, he'd jumped at the chance to go on an asteroid-charting mission with the captain. He'd even been a little flattered that Archer had asked him along. So many people thought he was only useful when it came to blowing things up. (Or, in the case of the chief engineer, only useful when it came to blowing things, period.) Within five minutes of leaving the shuttle bay, however, it was obvious that Captain Archer also saw Malcolm as a relationship counsellor. And the relationship he wanted counselled was the one Archer had with his "best friend", Commander Charles "Trip" Tucker.

"It's not that I mind him spending time with his engineering buddies," the captain pouted, "but a little consideration would be nice. I mean, when that Xyrillian bitch knocked him up, I went to every one of his damn Lamaze classes. And I got the cook to make him peanut butter and pickle sandwiches." It had continued like this for hours, even after Malcolm saw some kind of temporal anomaly on the sensors.

An anomaly, Malcolm remembered, that he had made no effort to avoid when the shuttle began to get sucked into it. At the time, death had seemed preferable to listening to Archer complain about the way his "friend" looked at Ensign Sato. It was certainly preferable to telling the Captain that Trip put his hand on Malcolm's ass every time they leaned over the power couplings.

"Where are we, Malcolm?"

"I don't know, sir." Malcolm tried, and failed, to keep a soupcon of respect in his voice.

"Surely you can find out." Archer eyed the instrument pad with all the understanding of a chimpanzee reading the 'Wall Street Journal.' "There must be some kind of map on there somewhere." Perhaps, but Malcolm didn't have a clue where it was. "Come on, Malcolm," Archer insisted.

"Dammit, Jon, I'm a weapons officer, not a helmsman." He didn't know where that had come from, but it shut Archer up. For all of four seconds.

"One of us should get out and reconnoitre." Then, just in case Malcolm should interpret this as an offer, Archer grabbed his leg and winced. "I think my...ah...leg is...ouch...broken..."

"I'll go."

"Thanks." Archer smiled, miraculously cured. "Of course, if Trip were here..." He'd feel up anything that looked sentient and freak out if he saw anything resembling an insect, Malcolm finished silently.

Before leaving the shuttle, Malcolm armed himself with two phase pistols and a miniature Klingon scimitar, and strapped a Bowie knife to his calf. Although English by birth, he'd spent a long time surrounded by Americans and other hostile species, and knew better than to go anywhere unarmed.

They seemed to have crashed in a field. It was dark, but the stars were clearly visible. If there had been time, Malcolm would have reflected moodily on his childhood dreams and aspirations. However, since he was more immediately concerned with being attacked by new yet amazingly human-like aliens and/or being poisoned by a noxious atmosphere, he decided to give the reminiscing a miss this time.

One of his pistols drawn, Malcolm walked away from the shuttle. Gingerly, he touched one of the nearby plants. It looked like corn, but Malcolm had learned that things were rarely what they seemed. Jonathan Archer, for example, looked very much like a Starfleet captain. Malcolm crunched through the stalks (inadvertently making three concentric crop circles which, when discovered, caused great interest and minor celebrity for one Cletus Hibbitt of Smallville, Kansas) until he reached a path. He followed that, ever alert for aliens, until he reached the main road, from which he could see an enormous house. What the hell, Malcolm thought. He had to find out where he was, and if he was captured by hostile forces, at least he'd have the pleasure of giving up the captain, as well.

It took about ten minutes to reach the house. Bracing himself to find inhabitants that were scaly, hairy, ridged or some combination of the three, he was nearly at the front door when a human-looking boy flounced out, directly into him.

"Who are you?" The boy looked at him suspiciously. Malcolm looked suspiciously back. Apart from unnaturally red cheeks, he looked like a regular, human young man. Which of course could mean only one thing. Shape-shifters.

"That depends. Who are you?" The boy went from looking suspicious to looking guilty.

"I'm delivering the produce."

"And I'm an encyclopedia salesman." It was meant to be sarcastic, but the boy seemed to accept it, as if it was natural for salesmen and delivery boys to be roaming around in the middle of the night. So they were not only shape-shifters, Malcolm ascertained, but nocturnal shape-shifters. "Where am I?" The boy wiped his nose on the sleeve of his flannel shirt.

"This is Lex Luthor's house." An alien name if Malcolm had ever heard one.

"Is he your leader?"

"No!" The boy scowled. "He's a jerk."

"Is that the name of your species?" Malcolm hated first contacts. He waited for the boy-shaped alien to explain another tribe was exploiting the Jerks of this planet. This, of course, would mean that Malcolm and the captain, ignorant of all local history and customs, would have to interfere on the oppressed group's behalf, imposing their ideas of justice and changing this society to conform to their human values. Malcolm sometimes wondered why Starfleet didn't just adopt brown shirts and armbands and be done with it.

"Are you a friend of Whitney's?" The boy asked, leaving Malcolm to assume this was the name of the oppressive leader. "Cause I should tell you, the only reason I didn't sue every one of you morons when you hung me in that field is because Lex told me he liked it, and since I really don't care what Lex likes anymore..."

"What planet am I on?" Malcolm interrupted. It was a skill he'd picked up working with Trip Tucker, who talked constantly unless his mouth was otherwise occupied. As it frequently was.

"What?" The boy's expression changed again, from annoyed to frightened. "It's Earth, of course." He tried to sound nonchalant, but Malcolm could tell he was shocked. He wasn't the only one.

"Earth?" Of all the black holes in the entire universe, they'd gone through one that sent them back to Earth. The odds against it had to be astronomical. It seemed almost as unlikely as encountering a different humanoid species every week, usually around 8 PM on Tuesdays.

"Why?" The boy narrowed his eyes. "Did you think you were somewhere else?"

"Whereabouts on Earth are we?"

"America. Kansas." Malcolm sighed, had a couple of snarky thoughts about the Wizard of Oz, and said:

"Does Lex Luthor have a phone?"

"Of course."

"Thank you." Malcolm hoped the Starfleet AAA had a branch in Kansas.

"Wait a second." The boy looked at him. "Are you something to do with Victoria?" Strange question, but Malcolm answered, with his version of a gracious smile.

"No, I've never been to British Columbia. Or Australia."

The boy disappeared, and Malcolm rang the doorbell. A bizarre-looking man in Chinese silk pyjamas answered it. Malcolm had never known why there was so much interest in extra-terrestrial life. There were more than enough weirdoes on Earth to keep everyone entertained.

"Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Luthor. I'm Lieutenant Malcolm Reed of Starfleet, and I need to use your phone."

"One moment." The man left Malcolm in the hall. Malcolm glanced around uncomfortably. It reminded him of his grandmother's house. There was the same strange, musty smell, reminiscent of old money and cheap furniture polish. The weirdo in the Chinese pyjamas came back a few minutes later and said, as if he was conferring a great honour on Malcolm:

"Mr. Luthor will see you in the study."

Despite what the red-cheeked boy had told him, Malcolm almost went back to his original alien planet theory when he saw Lex Luthor. The man looked more extra-terrestrial than most of the aliens they came across who, if Malcolm was honest, tended to look like poorly paid actors in varying amounts of latex. Just to increase the strangeness factor, Lex Luthor was holding a pool cue in one hand, a water bottle in the other, and there was a cigar smouldering in a nearby ashtray. God, Malcolm thought, and I thought

my fixation with huge cannons was symbolic.

"Mr. Reed. Welcome. You're not from around here," was the first thing Lex said. Malcolm had to agree. "And you're English."

"Yes." Again, there was no denying it. Lex smiled and sucked on his water bottle until Malcolm had to look away. His eyes landed on a painting of Cleopatra's Needle.

"I went to Eton," Lex informed him.

"Hm." Malcolm glanced at Lex, who had put down the bottle and was fellating the cigar. Shifting uncomfortably, Malcolm kept talking. It was against his nature to talk about himself, but at the moment, it seemed safer than silence. "I would have liked to go there." Lex put down the cigar and produced a banana from somewhere in his desk. Malcolm coughed and tried not to notice that Lex had taken nearly the entire banana into his mouth without choking. "We couldn't afford it."

"My father could have sent a hundred kids to Eton." Lex swallowed hard and Malcolm developed a sudden fascination with the floorboards. "Of course, he would never have offered."

"My father wouldn't have accepted, anyway." Malcolm's discomfort was suddenly tinged with angry resentment, the feeling he always had when he thought about Admiral Reed. As he had always been forced to refer to his father.

"Bastard," Malcolm blurted, at the same moment Lex said the same thing. Malcolm raised his eyes to see Lex looking at him with interest. Real interest, not the kind people on the "Enterprise" faked when they felt bad about ignoring him, or when, as in the captain's case, they thought they could score points with Trip by organizing a surprise birthday party for Malcolm.

"Sit down, Malcolm." It was said lightly, but Malcolm obeyed the suggestion more promptly than any order ever barked by the captain. He sat on the leather couch and Lex came around to join him. "I don't meet many interesting people out here. Not ones that aren't trying to kill me, anyway." Malcolm cleared his throat.

"What about the produce boy?" Lex shrugged.

"He's a good kid. But he doesn't understand what it's like to be an outcast. To have people only come to you when they want something. To feel like..."

"Your father ruined your life and you'll never get away from that." Malcolm heard himself saying.

"That you'll never be accepted, wherever you go," Lex continued.

"That you're doomed to unhappiness forever..."

"But you're scared of what you might do if you ever let yourself lose hope." Lex put a hand on Malcolm's shoulder and, for once, Malcolm didn't flinch at someone else's touch. "The hell with Clark, Malcolm. Where have you been all my life?"

Malcolm had been kissed by men before. There were still relatively few women in Starfleet and they were quickly snapped up by the he-men of the organization, leaving men like Malcolm to seek next-best-thing sexual release with each other. And then there was Trip, who cornered him in the shower, the gym and the armoury every chance he got. Malcolm couldn't even charge him with sexual harassment, because that would mean telling the captain, who would say Malcolm must have asked for it, and then probably kill him. But none of these past experiences had prepared him for Lex.

Far to soon for Malcolm's liking, Lex broke the kiss and lay a hand on Malcolm's cheek.

"Malcolm," he whispered, smiling. "It's been a long road, getting from there to here. It's been a long time, but my time is finally near. And I will see my dreams come alive at last. I will touch the sky."

"And they're not going to hold me down no more, no they're not going to change my mind." Lex squeezed Malcolm's hand.

"Cause I've got faith of the heart."

"I'm going where my heart will take me." Malcolm blinked back tears.

"I've got faith to believe." Malcolm nodded.

"I can do anything."

"Somebody save me!"

Malcolm jumped up. The Chinese pyjama guy had brought Captain Archer to the door, where the captain was standing, blood gushing from a wound in his head. "Malcolm, you've got to help me."

"What happened?" Malcolm asked, although it scarcely mattered. Captain Archer could find a way to get injured in an empty room with rubber walls.

"I was looking for extra blankets and I hit my head on the corner of the cupboard." Lex, clearly concerned, went over to the captain, who immediately addressed him in the loud, clear tone high-ranking Starfleet officers reserved for foreigners, the elderly, aliens and imbeciles.

"We come in peace." Archer's smile had more in common with Jack Nicholson than Mother Theresa. "I am Captain Jonathan Archer of the Starfleet vessel 'Enterprise.'"

"Starfleet?" Lex looked blank. Malcolm swore to himself. Of course, he should have expected it. Malcolm Reed wasn't allowed to find a nice, sensible guy who happened to live in his own dimension.

"Yes." Archer nodded exaggeratedly. "Star-fleet." Lex stared at him.

"Is that head wound worse than it looks or something?"

"We should get you to the hospital, Captain." Malcolm bottled his disappointment, like he always did. There was a whole wine cellar of it, ageing until the time was right to open it up, which would probably be the day when Malcolm was standing on the top of a clock tower with a few machine guns and a grenade launcher.

"No way." Archer looked aghast. "God knows what kind of primitive medical techniques these people use. I don't want to be leeched."

"Enrique is certified in first aid," Lext put in. "And I have plenty of spare rooms if you wanted to stay the night." He snapped his fingers and Enrique appeared at his side. Archer was unconvinced.

"I don't know..." Lex wasn't prepared to accept that as an answer.

"Take him to the yellow bedroom, Enrique." As Enrique manhandled Archer out of the room, Malcolm pretended not to notice his captain's discomfort. Malcolm had already saved his life five times this month. He was sure Archer could survive a trip to the yellow bedroom on his own. When Enrique and the captain had gone, Lex asked:

"Is he crazy?"

"Not really." Not officially, anyway.

"So I guess you've got something to tell me."

"You wouldn't believe it." Lex sighed.

"Try me."

The biggest surprise to Malcolm was that they hadn't travelled to another dimension-he knew all about that thanks to the comic books he'd one accused Trip of reading---but through time. Lex, they figured out together, wasn't confused because Starfleet didn't exist, but because it didn't exist yet. The second biggest surprise was that Lex seemed to accept this remarkably easily.

"It's nothing, he said, when Malcolm mentioned this. "Really. Compared to some of the stuff I've seen since I got here, it's practically boring." Lex looked at him. "But not entirely boring. As long as the age difference doesn't bother you."

"Does it bother you?" Lex was old enough to be Malcolm's great-grandfather, but physically, Malcolm was a good ten years older than Lex. I bet, Malcolm thought, that's an issue Dear Abby never had to deal with.

"Not at all. Actually," Lex's smile made Malcolm feel all fuzzy inside, like he was obliterating alien ships or something. "I kind of have a thing for younger men."

Sex, for Malcolm, had always been about fitting in, about making other people happy, rather than enjoying himself. As Admiral Reed had once told Captain Archer, Malcolm had been brought up to take what he was given and never ask for anything else. Lex, on the other hand, had apparently been brought up to bypass the asking and just take what he wanted. It was fortunate, and quite enjoyable for all concerned, that what Lex took coincided exactly with what Malcolm had always wanted.

The next morning, Lex and Malcolm got up early to go fencing. Malcolm hadn't fenced since he was at Starfleet Academy in San Francisco (why it was located there and not, say, in New York or Washington DC was a bit of a mystery, but Malcolm thought it likely had something to do with Starfleet's naval ancestry. Indeed, "In the Navy" had been Starfleet Academy's unofficial anthem for fifty years.) He soon managed to get back in the swing of things. An hour later, they were both exhausted.

"I need a shower," Lex sheathed his epee and put away his "Pocket Guide to Phallic Symbols."

"Me, too." Malcolm agreed, getting a smirk from Lex.

"There's not much hot water in this old place."

"That's OK." Malcolm could use a cold shower, a need which only increased when Lex deadpanned:

"So we'd better go in together."

They were heading in that general direction, pausing occasionally to nuzzle each other and curse their fathers, when they ran into the produce delivery boy.

"Clark." Lex didn't look surprised. Nor did he remove his arm from Malcolm's waist. "What brings you here?" Clark turned even redder.

"I came to talk about last night. But you're obviously busy."

"Yes I am, Clark." Clark gave Malcolm a poisonous look which, had it come from an alien, would have made Malcolm reach for his phaser. Out of habit, Malcolm reached anyway, only to remember his phasers and all his other weapons were scattered, along with his uniform jumpsuit and his regulation blue underwear, across Lex's bedroom floor. The boy sulkily headed for the door. When he reached the stairs, he turned back to stare at them.

"You know, Lex, I never thought you'd have much use for encyclopedias."

"They're more useful than boxes of produce." Lex replied smoothly, without missing a beat. Clark stood looking hurt, which put him in the ideal position to catch Jonathan Archer when the captain appeared at the top of the stairs, said "Good morning, Malcolm", tripped on the carpet, and came barrelling down head first.

The captain ended up with his arms around Clark's neck and Clark's hands on his hips. Their eyes locked and Malcolm could have sworn he heard violins and the trilling of bluebirds.

"Hi." Clark spoke first. "I'm Clark." Archer stood up and put out a hand.

"Jonathan Archer. Pleasure to meet you."

"That's my dad's name." Clark smiled. Archer lowered his eyes in a way that Malcolm found more frightening than flirtatious.

"I'm sure I'm nothing like your father."

"I hope not." Before Malcolm could retrieve his epee and cut the sexual tension, Archer continued:

"Do you save people often?"

"Why? Do you need a lot of saving?"

"Yes." Clark giggled. Malcolm decided not to tell him Archer was being serious. Another couple of hours and the kid would find out for himself.

***

"We have to go back, you know." Malcolm rolled over and looked at Lex who asked, quite reasonably:

"Why?"

"Because the 'Enterprise' will be looking for the captain." Malcolm and Lex hadn't seen him in three days, ever since he and Clark had gone to "look at Clark's telescope." Malcolm guessed this was some sort of Kansas euphemism.

"So?"

"Lex."

"You don't even know if you can go back. I always thought black holes were one-way streets."

"When have you ever paid attention to one-way streets?" Malcolm had never seen a 20th century car, except in museums, but three days with Lex had shown him exactly why they'd been banned as unsafe in 2077.

"I don't want to lose you, Malcolm."

"I don't want to go." Malcolm had spent his life looking for someone like Lex. He was perfect. He even liked weapons almost as much as Malcolm did. But it wasn't right. "But we don't belong here."

"Neither do I." Lex sat up. "Look, Malcolm, when I first came here, I was in a car accident."

"You don't say."

"Clark saved me."

"So he makes a habit of it."

"But he shouldn't have been able to. I should have died. So I don't belong here any more than you do."

"That's different."

"How?" Malcolm couldn't explain it. The last three days had been the happiest of his life. And there was something wrong about that.

"I'm going back to the shuttle." Lex sighed.

"Then I guess I'll come with you."

"So this is what we've got to look forward to?" Lex kicked the shuttlepod's "Made in the USA" sticker. "Domestic crap? I expected something Japanese, at least. Or German."

"I don't know how to start it." Malcolm looked at the instrument panel, which stared back at him coldly. "I barely know how to fly it."

"Let me see." Lex bent over to peer under the panel, giving Malcolm a better view than he'd ever seen from the bridge of the "Enterprise." Lex fiddled for a moment, then the lights came on and, supercilious as always, the computer asked Malcolm for the co-ordinates of his destination.

"How did you do that?" Malcolm tried to sound impressed rather than disappointed.

"A misspent youth does have certain advantages. And it saves carrying around thirty sets of car keys."

"Great." Malcolm forced a smile. "Now we just have to get the captain."

"But I don't want to go back."

"The ship will be looking for us." Archer's response was identical to Lex's.

"So what?"

"What about your lifelong dream of being a starship captain?" A dream Archer harped on regularly, when he wasn't meddling in other cultures or complaining about Trip.

"Fuck that. I want to stay with Clark."

"You're old enough to be his father."

"But not really. Isn't it great?"

"What about Trip?" Archer frowned a little.

"He gets it on with every alien we meet. I think I deserve a turn." Malcolm had hoped it wouldn't come to this. But Archer didn't seem about to change his mind, so Malcolm brought out the heavy artillery.

"What about your dog?"

"Porthos?"

"Yes." Malcolm grimaced. The entire ship knew the captain's dog. There were few crewmembers who hadn't come across a "Porthos surprise" in the turbo-lift or a yellow stain on the hall carpet. The women in the crew thought it was sweet the captain had been unable to leave his dog behind. The men thought he should have brought a useful pet, like a parrot or a prostitute.

"Trip will look after him." Archer didn't sound entirely convinced.

"Trip doesn't like him."

"He does, they just haven't connected yet."

"But he won't give him cheese."

"Cheese is bad for him anyway." The captain was clearly wavering. Malcolm moved in for the kill.

"But Porthos loves it, doesn't he? Do you want him to spend the rest of his life cheese-less, wondering whatever happened to you, never knowing the man he trusted dumped him for a hundred-year-old teenager from Kansas?" Captain Archer drew himself up to his full height.

"Mr. Reed, prepare the shuttle. We leave at 2300 hours." It would almost have been authoritarian, if the captain hadn't been wearing a pair of Clark's jeans and an open flannel shirt, and if there hadn't been a small haystack's worth of straw in his disarranged hair.

Clark and Lex came to the field to see them off. Clark cried, sobbing into the shoulder of the captain's newly donned uniform. Lex and Malcolm just looked at each other.

"I think you're making a mistake." Lex held up a plastic folder. "I've prepared a two-hundred page document detailing how great we would be together." Malcolm flicked through the colour-printed pages, glancing at bar graphs with titles like "Malcolm, Clark and Victoria, a Comparative Study" and bulleted paragraphs with headers like "Comprehensive Analysis of the Formulaic Relationship Between Emotional Satisfaction and Number of Orgasms Achieved." Malcolm choked back tears.

"Don't make this harder than it already is, Lex."

"I love you, Malcolm." It was stated simply, almost clinically, but they were still the words Malcolm had waited a lifetime to hear. And he panicked.

"I've got to go. Come on, Captain." He dragged Archer away from his weeping teenage lover. Malcolm didn't allow himself to look back as he hot wired the shuttle and took off into the sky. The captain, on the other hand, waved out the window, promising to write.

They almost made it into orbit before Malcolm regretted leaving. He kept on regretting it all the way back through the black hole, which was apparently a two-lane highway after all. By the time the shuttle docked with the "Enterprise", Malcolm was convinced he'd made the biggest mistake in the history of mankind. And that included whoever had invented Styrofoam.

Trip and Sub-commander T'Pol were waiting in the shuttle bay when they arrived.

"Kiss mah grits, Johnny, where the hell you been, boy?" The chief engineer exclaimed, in his distinctively stereotypical patois.

"It would have been logical of you to send a communiqué if circumstances dictated a deviation from the established mission schedule," T'Pol agreed.

"Sorry. We just got sidetracked by heaven," was the captain's succinct answer. For once, Malcolm agreed with him.

The crewmembers were all suitably pleased to see Malcolm and the captain back, but it didn't take long for things to return to normal. Within a few days, Malcolm was back to his usual routine of eating alone, sleeping alone and repressing his emotions until they could explode over the next alien who looked at him cross-eyed. One afternoon, about a week after leaving Smallville, the captain called Malcolm into his ready room.

"Have a seat, Malcolm." Malcolm sat down, looking at the photo of the captain and Trip Archer kept on his desk. They were on a beach somewhere, and the chief engineer was wearing one of his favoured, not-quite-heterosexual Hawaiian-print shirts. "I've got to get back there." So did Malcolm. He thought about it all the time, even when he was in the armoury, which usually took up his whole attention. But that made no difference.

"Sir, it's impossible..."

"Hear me out." Archer took a deep breath. "I've been thinking." Ah, Malcolm thought. So that explained the especially pained look on the captain's face. "Our mission, if I read the poster right, is to explore the universe, making first contact with alien species."

"Yes," Malcolm couldn't deny it.

"Well, the people in Smallville have never seen us before."

"No..."

"And you don't get much more alien than Kansas." Malcolm thought about it.

"It would be wrong not to fulfil the mission Starfleet gave us."

"What captain would I be if I did that?"

"An incompetent one."

"And I'm far from incompetent."

"Very far, captain." For once. Archer hit the comm button.

"Sub-commander T'Pol, set a course for the nearest black hole. Commander Tucker, full speed ahead."

"I'm giving her all I got, captain. I can't give any more." Archer smiled in a new way. He almost looked intelligent.

"That's what you said last night, Commander. It wasn't satisfactory then and it isn't acceptable now."

The residents of Smallville were leery, at first, of the "alternative community" that appeared out of nowhere and set up on Old MacDonald's back forty. Smallville parents, visions of Jonestown and Waco dancing in their heads, forbade their adolescents from associating with the jumpsuit-wearing strangers. Suspicions only increased, especially in Jonathan Kent's mind, when it was revealed that one of the men had moved into Luthor Manor. Still, anyone who took Lex away from Clark was a friend of the Kents, and one day, Jonathan asked Martha to make a banana loaf for him to take to the new neighbours. Expecting to find weirdoes in flowing robes sitting around meditating, Jonathan was pleasantly surprised to find a man in a Confederate-flag T-shirt chopping wood and swearing like a sailor. By the time Jonathan left, two hours later, he had a new best friend, and Trip Tucker was the first real Southerner to join the Smallville Civil War Recreation Society.

Once it was known that Jonathan Kent, hardly the most open-minded of men, had made friends with the strangers, and that Clark Kent spent practically every waking moment and a few not so wakeful ones in the company of the community's leader, Smallville welcomed them with open arms. Sub-commander T'Pol, in between filing her weekly reports on the meteor-induced mutants of the town, enlightened Lana as to the illogic of being dependent on males and they organized Smallville's first Take Back the Night march. They were joined by Ensign Hoshi Sato and Chloe Sullivan's Society for Competent Women Treated Like Secretaries by the Men Around Them (the SCWTLSMAT), and by Travis Mayweather and Pete's support group for token minority characters with an insultingly tiny number of lines. Trip and Jonathan Kent got on like a house on fire, until Jonathan found Trip groping Martha behind the barn. After a lot of shouting and some shotgun-related threats, they all decided it would be better if they loved each other, and Jonathan, Martha and Trip settled into a menage a trois. Smallville was scandalized, until it became obvious that Trip and Jonathan were both much more pleasant to be around when they were regularly having hot three-way sex.

When he turned eighteen, Clark and Archer had a commitment ceremony, which his father grudgingly attended with his two partners. Clark and Archer moved into their own home, where they bred beagles and Clark saved his partner's life at least three times a week. And Malcolm and Lex used Malcolm's weapons expertise and Lex's general intelligence to found the multinational, slightly crooked Fuck Our Dads Inc., which eventually made Lex the president of the United States and Malcolm the most influential English-educated man in Washington since Henry Kissinger. Although, thanks to Lex and his "Comprehensive Guide to Subject A (Alexander Luthor's) Sexual Preference as They Related to Subject B (Malcolm Reed)", Malcolm never needed to use power as an aphrodisiac.

END