Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/157327.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Smallville
  Relationship:
      Ian_Randall/Ian_Randall
  Character:
      Ian_Randall
  Additional Tags:
      Clone_Sex, Masturbation
  Stats:
      Published: 2003-02-20 Words: 1973
****** Same ******
by Elektra_Pendragon_(elekdragon)
Summary
     The first time Ian became two people, and how he becomes one again.
     Spoilers for Dichotic.
Gleaming, wet, sticky with gore and fluid and bloody mucus, skin scarred in a
soft-flesh way, wrinkled and red and ugly.
That's how he SHOULD look, like any newborn thing. Regardless of what the laws
of nature, physics, logics and sanity would have said about the impossibility
of a single person splitting into two beings. Worms can regenerate into two
beings when cut in half, but a human is not a worm. They just can't do that.
Not without some kind of...
But Ian didn't believe in magic. He couldn't. Not even when he saw himself,
naked and unruffled and clear like a mirror image. Only alive. An identical
twin.
Except he's an only child.
Some part of his brain still sane told him that he should be dead, injured,
MARKED somehow by this separation. Never taking his eyes off the other, Ian
bent and twisted his arms, fingers reaching out behind himself to find the
point of exit, the gaping wound that would show how this creature was born out
of his body. He could remember pain, such pain, and anger--he was dying, and he
had been so close to getting OUT. He needed OUT...
There was no wound. He couldn't even feel the water-trickle of blood. His skin
was smooth, as smooth as the other who was also feeling his own back,
suspicious eyes locked on similar, suspicious eyes. Moving out of sync, their
hands dropped from their backs. Ian raised one, reaching out, wanting to know.
His chest. Warm and solid and completely his own. Same freckles, only seen from
a different angle, in a way he had never been able to see himself before.
Living, breathing, in front of his own face. The hand that came up to rest on
his own was his own hand--no. Same hand, but not his own. Same right hand on
right hand digging nails into same chest.
"This can't be happening..."
"I needed to get out..."
Twin whispers, both carrying such sadness, longing, pain...wonderment. Same
voice and mind, only two different thoughts.
'When this happens in movies, they always do the exact same thing.'
"This isn't like the movies," the other commented, his nails cutting little
crescent marks on Ian's hand even as his own untrimmed nails ripped into his
chest.
"Stop doing that."
"Stop what?" Exasperated. Angry, almost.
"Stop reading my mind." Angry too, at this imposter who can't even get the
twin-thing right.
"I'm not. This is my mind."
"MY BODY." Their voices commingled, just enough out of phase to make the two
words echo discordantly.
Ian released his painfully clutching fist and jerked his hand back, ripping it
out of the other's grasp. He barely noted the pain as his nails ripped long
gashes over the back of his hand, tapering down to bruises before the fingers
finally fell away. Ian's nails were reddened--he had meant to cut them earlier,
but he had gotten too busy studying--blood already drying and becoming sticky.
Impulsively, he stuck one finger into his mouth, sucking on the nail as he
would suck on a small paper cut.
My blood. My taste.
Ian's mind moved back to a childhood memory, a time when everything was an
experiment, even life. A friend, his name unimportant, fell off his bike. There
had been so much blood from such a tiny wound on his knee. Ian had tasted it,
as he had often tasted his own, and could feel how it was different. The taste,
though similar, was not identical. Different tastes, different people.
Same taste. Same person?
More fingers, licking away traces, finding them all tasting the same, sucking
away the blood until he could taste his skin, and wondering if that, too, were
the same.
The other watched, and, with panic in his own eyes, he asked, "The...same?"
Body...mind...memories...everything.
Unable to voice his own thoughts--swimming and insane and utterly IMPOSSIBLE as
they were--Ian held out his hand, offering the blood. The other bent forward,
taking the hand in his own, briefly inspecting the clean and gleaming fingers
before darting his tongue over the blood dribbling down Ian's wrist.
Just a small taste, turned over his tongue and compared to memory and reason.
The other lifted a hand to his chest to catch the little bit of escaped blood
from his own small, frown-shaped wounds. The other licked up his blood,
comparing it to the first. The other. His own. Warm eyes turned cold as the
conclusion was reached.
The same.
Near to panic, the other bent his head and again licked the blood from Ian's
skin, smacking it against his lips as if it were a fine cream or some other
tasty treat. And again. And again. He showed the same panic Ian had felt--still
felt--as he cleaned around the wounds, lapping at the flesh until it was
orange-pink streaked, then rouged, then clean. Still he tasted, using his lips
to drag softly over the skin, his entire tongue flat against Ian's hand, as
though he could slurp up the taste and prove it different by will and
repetition alone.
He stopped short of sucking the actual wounds. His lips dragged over the jagged
edges, following them to Ian's fingers. The touch was soft, almost ticklish. He
was incredibly careful to keep from causing extra pain, even in his studious
explorations.
"Your skin," spoken into Ian's fingers, "tastes just like mine."
And they'd moved way beyond surreal as Ian bent close, and lifted his hand with
the other's mouth still absently tasting the webby flesh between fingers. The
flesh was wet and gleaming and reddened by the spilled and supped blood, the
saliva of the other's mouth. Ian tasted, and he tasted his own flesh, his own
spit, his own blood--unable to tell what was his and what was left by the
other.
Ian hardly realized it as his lips met his lips, and his tongue touched his
own. Lapping, crossing at perpendicular angles, the rasp of rough surface to
rough surface where there was more spit and blood and His Own Taste.
Like kissing himself, only he was kissing another. Another who was just like
him. Not a twin, not quite a clone but HIM--all of him. His--their?--mind ached
with the thought; they puzzled around the impossible and improbable and insane.
It was a dream, like a dream he wouldn't want to remember in the morning. Not
when kissing himself was like wiring his braces to a battery--jolting straight
from his mouth down to the core of his spine, energy splintering off to make
the tips of his fingers and toes tingle and his skin itch and jump beneath a
static charge.
The press of their bodies together just made the static cloud around them burst
into action, crackling over Ian's skin until he could feel them BOTH, feel the
sensation of two bodies as well as one, of two chests meeting at once and one
chest meeting another. His thoughts splintered off, jagged and aching as
neurons and mental pathways tried to reconnect themselves, bring everything
back together.
The sensation of another cock against his own, of his own against...another?
Like masturbation, but not. It was better as the solid grind of two bodies hit
just RIGHT for a blinding burst of Oh Yes and Perfection and MORE.
Ian felt an impossible need to be close, closer, to squeeze together so hard
for...for...for that friction. Ian reached out blindly, meshing mouth to mouth
with a painful clack of teeth. Hands wrapped around the other's back, crushing
him as he was crushed. So close, they were breathing the same breath, skin so
close it was the same.
And then this incredible pain that wasn't pain, this feeling of GIVE in his
body, of opening and connecting and being filled and entered and breached and
lain open like an autopsy, skin and blood and cock bursting as his body UN-
split.
Ian's arms closed in around his chest, hugging himself hard as his knees
buckled, sending him to the floor. He rolled onto his side gasping and
hyperventilating from the overwhelming feel of it all. Everything doubled in
his vision, like he was looking through a camera that was looking through a
camera aimed in some crazy angle at an abstract painting. His thoughts were
gibberish, nothing, painful as they pulled and squeezed and too much within too
small a space. He was going to scream, if he could remember what a scream was.
His skin moved and shifted as he hugged his chest so hard.
And then things settled. Clicked into place. Thoughts reorganized. His mind was
his own.
Ian blinked, his vision clearing. He closed them, taking a sustained breath
deep into his lungs until they were filled to pain. He felt outwards, not with
his hands but with his mind. His body felt... Thick. Heavy. Full, like he'd
just eaten a huge Thanksgiving meal, only that fullness was everywhere. His
thoughts...
His thoughts were his own, but not.
Ian became aware that at one point in his recent memory, things seemed to
have...shifted. Memories overlapped, like two frames of film, only taken from
opposing angles. He could see himself, and he could see himself. He could see
his bed behind him, and he could see his desk behind him, though the two pieces
of furniture were on opposite sides of the room. And his thoughts... They were
different, but the same. Like he had been given the opportunity to relive the
same moment--his estimation of the situation just slightly different each time-
-before both experiences were tossed back together into his head.
It was...
Impossible. A dream. Too much studying. He could only pull himself in so many
directions before something would give. He had a psychotic break. A moment of
insanity.
Ian thought he'd feel more pain, pain all over, as he tried to stand. His hand
ached when he put pressure on it, pushing himself upright. He stretched,
feeling out his body to check for other injuries. He felt a sting on his chest,
a short burst of pain when he moved a certain way.
Looking down, he saw five marks on his chest. Left side. Like someone had taken
their right hand and DUG their fingers into his chest. The nails of his right
hand were not only slightly bloody, but had bits of flesh, as though he had
been the one who raked his fingers over the back of his hand.
His right hand. His right hand's nails. It was impossible for him to do that
injury to himself. Impossible.
Ian turned his head and looked at his reflection in the mirror. His skin was
ashy, his eyes dark circles surrounded by bruises. His stomach and thighs were
spotted with semen.
He carefully walked over to his bed, falling on the mattress before he could
fall on the floor again. He swallowed hard, his mind replaying the doubled
memories, endlessly trying to make sense of the strangeness in his head, like
tonguing a canker inside his cheek. Worrying at the wrongness until he could
figure out how to make it right.
Somehow...somehow he had...cloned himself. Not just a twin, but himself. With
the same memories and thoughts and body as he had, only diverging where they
had split. And then he had
/kissed...groped...came.../
made himself re-integrate the clone.
Panic left. His mind eased into something more familiar: that comforting itch
of curiosity and the overwhelming need to resolve a difficult puzzle.
He needed to figure out how to do it again. Learn what caused it, what made it
stop. How far he could take it.
Ian had always wanted a brother.
 
THE END
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