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Essentials VIby C.M. Decarnin |
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Clark walked into Lex's office and stopped. Music was playing. Lex was turned mostly away from him, while the delicate orchestral sound swayed and filled the room, a piano tracing a melody so simple yet so haunting that it seemed as if he must have known it all his life; and yet nothing, in the combination of the perfect sounds, the spacious room's cathedral-like stained-glass light, and the sight of his lover, standing with closed eyes listening, had ever sounded so beautiful to him.
Something made Lex turn, and seeing Clark he smiled, and then reached out and stopped the music with a peculiar self-conscious look.
"What is that?" Clark asked, awed.
"Rudolf Serkin, playing the D minor piano concerto. Do you know Mozart?"
"Um, I saw Amadeus."
Lex smiled. "Poor Salieri. On his deathbed he swore he never harmed Mozart. And yet centuries later the myth rises up to haunt him. Some people are just doomed to be thought evil."
"Lex, it -- it's beautiful." He nodded toward where he knew the CD player was. "Why did you turn it off?"
Lex smiled a little painfully. "I suppose because it is beautiful. A little too soft for a Luthor."
Clark's heart softened and he looked into Lex's eyes compassionately. Lex laughed and threw up a defensive hand. "Don't turn those Clark eyes on me! I haven't got my Kevlar on."
Clark blushed a little. But he said stoutly, "You shouldn't have to turn your music off because of what someone else might think."
"Maybe you're right. I've spent my life teaching myself not to allow anyone to embarrass me. Perhaps the final test is actually to be boldly soft-hearted in front of God and everyone."
"Maybe," said Clark, not wanting him to shrug it off as a joke.
"My father pretty much poisoned music for me. He has a sensual side that somehow gives him excellent taste. There's hardly a great piece of classical music I didn't hear first through him. Fortunately there are some performers we can disagree on." The glimmer of ironic amusement in Lex's eye only made Clark feel more passionately protective.
"God he sucks!"
Lex looked taken aback for an instant.
Clark blurted on, "I hate how he made you live your whole life around him. Everything you do is about him and he won't let you stop!"
Lex stood with one hand touching the desk, still as always when he had no actual task at hand. "That --" He cleared his throat. "That pretty well sums it up."
"It's not normal."
"Clark --"
"It isn't, Lex! It's like he tries to -- like he's a vampire trying to -- make you into some -- robot of his!"
Lex forbore to comment on the mixed horror-movie symbolism, but just said, "Well, he's not going to. Don't worry."
"It's not fair."
"A lot of people would say it's not such a high price to pay for the way I live."
"They never met him." Clark wasn't done fuming but he could see Lex getting restless with the topic and backed off, just giving him a look that said he meant it, and always would. Then he thought of something and smiled widely. "I bet I could bring you some music your Dad never heard of."
Lex looked dubious. "You know my views on Altered Rock."
"No, I mean my Mom and Dad's stuff. Especially my Dad's. I grew up on Steve Earle and Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Nanci Griffith and Etta James."
"Etta James? Jonathan Kent? You're kidding."
"You haven't lived till you've seen my Mom and Dad dancing to 'Jump Into My Fire' in the barn when they think no one's looking."
"Oddly, I have no trouble picturing that. What does your mother listen to?"
"Oldies stations. But she had this bunch of reel-to-reel tapes from her Dad when I was a kid. West Side Story, Harry Belafonte, The Music Man. I know that stuff by heart."
"Reel-to-reel? And they still play?" Lex looked tickled, but under it almost scandalized at such flouting of the cutting edge.
"I don't know, she hasn't played them in years. Mom and Dad are outdoors working a lot, they don't really have all that much time to listen to music in the daytime. It was kind of cool though when Beetlejuice came out and I already knew all those Belafonte songs."
Lex waited a moment and then said, "You're not going to burst into song?" Clark just grinned. "You never learned to play an instrument?"
"No. No money for lessons, no time to practice."
"Not even when you were a child?"
"I was already doing a man's work by the time I was seven or eight. Dad trusted me and I loved getting to work beside him and Mom. If I'd really been interested in learning maybe I'd have managed to squeeze it in. But music is another one of those things that don't quite work at superspeed."
"Like sex."
And Clark was instantly before him, hands touching Lex's face, smiling, voice soft as a breath. "Exactly like sex."
"Nice seg --" Clark's plump lips interrupted him, muffling further words, his fingertips slipping down Lex's neck, his flannel- and denim-covered firmness up against him in a hundred places, moving and shifting, inciting Lex to serious need in under a minute.
"God that turns me on," Clark panted between kisses.
"What," Lex gasped out.
"You getting turned on."
Lex humped into him, overcome by the words.
"Yes!" Clark groaned. He turned Lex to butt against the desk, bent him back as with one arm he set everything breakable off to the far end at superspeed and brushed everything else onto the floor, and laid Lex out. "Is this strong enough to hold --"
"Yes," hissed Lex, and Clark laid himself on top of him. "Except we still have all our clothes --" There was a huge whoosh of air under and over him, and he was naked. Clark's hot skin blanketed him. "And the door --" In a whish the door was shut and he was willing to assume locked. "Not that I give a flying fuck," he finished passionately, wrapping his legs around Clark to prevent any further tourism. Clark bucked down against him.
"Good," gasped Clark, "because it's all made of glass." But he wriggled down through the circle of Lex's legs, made sure both doors were locked, and pushed the button that brought the concealed drapes scooting across the see-throughs. And was back lying on Lex before he could growl in complaint.
He growled anyway. "What, no mood music?"
"How about 'The Ride of the Valkyries'," Clark growled back warningly, and Lex totally shut up, as Clark's long cock plugged into him, slowly but none too gently with impatient little prods at unlubricated resistance. "Oh, damn," Clark gasped, but it wasn't at anything forgotten. He rocked against Lex, as Lex made little sharp whimpering sounds, taking him in, deep, tight, hot. His forearms on the desk, Clark arched back slightly, teeth set, eyes fallen closed to slits, a shudder taking all his body in Lex's limbs. Lex clutched and released, and shuddered himself, and lifted his loins straight up as Clark, slow, withdrew; unable to help himself, almost convulsive, nerves touched. His belly caved down then when Clark started back in, his arms dropped to the desk. Defenseless. He felt utterly helpless against it, unable even to say no because unable to speak, think, conceptualize, commandeered by hot hard teenager with hormones he could smell -- he felt Clark's fingers, suddenly, trail lightly under his back where he had arched up again. Wailing sharply, he threw his head back and started trying to corkscrew himself against Clark's cock, which kept on moving in and out regardless, driving Lex wild with its deliberate rhythm into his own uncontrolled maddened body. He started crying out. Clark speeded up infinitesimally, until he was slamming in at Lex's rhythm, then his right hand slipped between them and he gently milked Lex's cock, thumb on the upper side, fingers below, brushing Lex's belly, that convulsed at the touch. Clark's hand was like silk-covered steel, gentle yet adamant, even as Clark seemed to be in another world of oblivious arousal. Lex's writhing caused a moaning whimper to come out of Clark's mouth, broken and unbelieving.
"Lex. Lex --" Clark's body against him was so hot and so demanding, that the insides of Lex's thighs were damp with sweat, catching on Clark's skin as he thrust and tugging Lex's legs back and forth with every push. "Want --" Clark puffed down on him, breath full and warm. A little high-pitched sound came from his throat, and there was the anxiety of arousal in it when he curled lower and panted again, "Want!" and then, "So --" and "Much --!"
Lex's movements had grown slight and slow, enslaved to the touch of Clark's fingers on his shaft, his whole body rapt with passion. Eyes closed, choiring nerves and muscles readying. Hips wiggling down like a cat tensing for the pounce, punched by Clark's thrusts, quivering open so that he pressed his upper arms and shoulders into the desk and began crying, "Ah! Ah! Ah!" to excruciating short-circuits throughout hips and belly and brain. Rigidified, feeling Clark's thumb suddenly slide down to his testicles, move across both lingeringly, and then encircling his cock again ride up -- Clark's breath sucking in, his out-breath broken despairingly -- hand closing with pressure and thumb brushing up onto cockhead --
His cock spurted, fireworks over the length and breadth of Lex's kingdom, Clark going still, then humping side-to-side, in hard, while Lex wailed under his breath, Clark's thumb stroked down halfway and Lex's body spasmed, flopped helplessly in the celebration. Vast wings, emitting all light, spread from him, as he became the angel that had dwelt within. Feeling him come, Clark moaned with love, and orgasmed, sending spasmodic vibrations crisscrossing Lex's own, iridescing, clenching him again in talons of bliss. He grabbed at Clark, wanting him hot and close.
"Un, nnnn, nnng," Clark articulated, gathering Lex with both arms, and squeezing tight. Lex thrashed, thrashed out, clutched -- and collapsed, lolling in Clark's arms in utter, slothful satiation. Clark would take care of everything, he always did, would bring him his life-giving post-coital kiss -- ah, there it was, warm, breathy, young, Clark-tasting, promising him he could have this again, and again, and again, sex without end, amen, amen. Sex so phenomenal in its implications he had hardly dared to face it yet, sex that left him in a bliss-drenched charity with all the world, made him a new man, innocent, newborn, more in love with his Clark each time, molding more to what he was, feeling him like a template Lex was forming to, a blessed and ecstatic new direction of his own suddenly wonderful self.
His father had the power to hurt him.
But Clark had the power to heal him.
For the first time, Lex was learning to turn, like a sunflower, toward what was truly in his own best interest, instead of toward the poisoned sweets his father held out to him.
Power.
His father didn't know what power was.
Another in the series of gentle shocks that came after sex with Clark. As if he were absorbing sacred knowledge of good and evil from this glowing-damp warm skin, or that look in Clark Kent's eyes.
Pleasure could train as well as pain?
Lex grinned, hugging tighter, staring out at his father's world with cheeky impunity. In his mind hearing -- in Emma Kirkby soprano joy -- pure yet lyrical as a bird-trill, proclaiming the elation, "Resurrexit! Resurrexit! Resurrexit sicut dixit!" -- laughing at the sacrilegious thoughts that tumbled through him like a spilled basket of puppies.
Clark was getting limp and comfortable on him, lovely if not for the whole breathing thing. "Hey, Sleepy," he whispered. He patted Clark's cheek. "Clark." He liked to wake Clark gradually. It was also safest. "Honey. Sweetie-pie. Lambchop." A little mumbling moan. "All-beef patty?" And Clark actually laughed in his sleep and woke up, moving slightly, blinking. "Good thing you do know CPR," Lex wheezed, and Clark lifted up a little. Groaning. Lex observed cloyingly, "I think it's time for somebody's nap."
Stretching, Clark mumbled, "Curse you, Lex Luthor. You've stolen all my super-strength."
"The better to eat you up like a box of bon-bons, Little Red Flannel-Hood." Lex licked his chops salaciously. Clark's mouth caught him in mid-lick. Clark said something, unintelligible from tongue. "Hmp?"
"I said you're the sexiest person on earth." He nuzzled Lex's neck hotly.
"And you're the sexiest person from outer space. We have cornered the market on sexy."
"Too bad there is no market on sexy."
Lex smiled. "Aliens are so innocent."
Clark was clambering carefully off him, and, lying on his side, his beautiful head propped on one hand, let his eyes sweep down Lex's body. His hand followed, gently running down Lex's whole left flank. "God. You are so gorgeous." Lex lay there, soaking it in. Watching Clark's green eyes. "No one else was ever like you."
Lying basking in Clark's admiration, Lex finally murmurred thoughtfully, "This desk is actually pretty comfortable."
"What's on your agenda for today?" Clark's fingers were tracing lines down Lex's neck and shoulder.
Lex looked deep into the innocent love in Clark's eyes. "Make my boyfriend happy."
Surprise widened the outlines of black eyelashes around clear emerald irises. A smile overtook the initial touched expression, but not before Lex saw how nearly pathetic was the receipt of his words, the gift of his attentiveness. Clark really believed himself the lucky one, the fact Lex marveled most at every day.
Through a lazy, barely visible smile, Lex asked, "Want to hear something my father hates?"
"Does it mean we have to get up?"
"Depends on how limber you are. Push the top drawer button there." The remote dialer slid out at the back of the desk. "Hit the number six and the pound sign."
Clark did it and twisted back to Lex, who was lying, waiting, looking up at the ceiling. After a moment a bare, formal three chords of piano, like someone in an empty auditorium, broke the silence, and a woman started singing. It was a soprano voice, but without the somewhat harsh sounds Clark sometimes winced a little at in the snips of operatic and choir singing he had been exposed to; maybe, he thought after a moment, it was the tune, but the sweetness of the voice seemed to cling perfectly around the notes, trilling occasional R's like a birdsong. It was only a couple of minutes long, the simple piano the only instrumentation.
He looked down at Lex, who was watching him. "It's pretty," he said. "Is that what your father hates about it?"
"He doesn't feel her voice is strong enough. And -- well, yes, basically, it's too pretty. He calls the melody "pandering" and "obvious" and a lot of other stuff that means it irritates his preferences for adrenaline and high drama. I make a point to play it around him whenever possible."
"What is it?"
"'Ridente la calma'. It's about peace in a lover's soul." He gazed up at Clark and a smile very slowly spread over his face, like light coming up over the fields. Clark smiled back. Lex was so beautiful. There just wasn't any other word for it. He bent his forehead down against Lex's pectoral.
"So beautiful," he whispered.
"The song?"
"You."
"Mm." He turned as Lex moved, and saw him raising his head and looking down over himself. "I think the bold accents of dried mucus are especially effective."
Clark started giggling into Lex's armpit, and stretched his arm across him loosely, pushing close.
"Actually," Lex said with decision, "this desk is not all that comfortable. Once the endorphins have worn off." Clark made to pin him with a thigh, but Lex pushed up determinedly, slid closer to the edge, and looked back at him. Then down at the desktop. "Butt prints," he observed.
Still pulling at his hand, Clark promised, "I'll wipe them off before anyone can see."
"Wipe away the emblem of our love?"
"The love that dare not print its butt," Clark affirmed significantly. "It's bad enough we come in here and pull the drapes. Can you think of a single other reason for us to do that besides having sex?"
"Strip-pool," said Lex.
"Oh yes, that'll restore your reputation. He doesn't fuck teenage boys, he just plays games where they take off all their clothes."
Lex looked at him silently, and Clark sat up and put his arms around his lover's shoulders. "I'm sorry."
"It's just time, Clark. A matter of time. I know it seems like forever. But you'll look back in three or four years, and this will seem like just yesterday, it'll go so fast. We'll be able to be together."
"I already have so much more than any of my friends. None of them are even going steady."
He felt Lex smile against his shoulder.
"I have everything," Clark insisted in a low voice. "I've already found the person I'm going to love forever, and he loves me back."
"Think how they would envy you if they knew." The dry, light voice of looking at the world through Lex-colored glasses.
"If they knew, they would!" Clark burst out passionately, holding Lex tight. "If they knew you at all!" He felt Lex's warm hands on his back, stroking soothingly. But he did not feel soothed. "You're --" He choked in the impossibility of saying all that Lex was. "Funny. And smart. Not afraid. Of anything. Beautiful. And you know so much. And you --" He didn't know a word for it. "You go for things, you don't just sit and wait. You cut through bullshit like it wasn't even there. You're --" And there really was no word for the glorious creation that had somehow grown out of Lionel and meteors and Lillian and Julian dying, coldness and difference, isolation, anguish, guilt, spoliation. "You're you." And he held it all in his arms. "No one like you. Ever. Anywhere." His. "That you like me is like a miracle every day. You turned my weird life into Paradise."
Lex's head just lay against his shoulder, quiet, though his arms slid closed around Clark. He knew Lex had only sparse strategies for hearing praise. Finally he said, "All those things are pretty much what I feel about you, Clark."
"Too bad," Clark said determinedly. "I call dibs."
He felt Lex's smile again. And he hugged Clark closer. After a moment he volunteered, "Though, masculine. You forgot to mention how masculine I am."
Clark laughed as if through tears, though he didn't feel anywhere near crying. He nuzzled his lips against Lex's neck. "My he-man."
"Now that just sounded insincere."
"No," Clark protested. "Sometimes around you I get all girl-feelings."
"Oh really," Lex said, referring pointedly to fifteen minutes back in time.
"'Sometimes', I said. All --" His voice rose two soft octaves. "-- 'Save me! Save me!' or 'Take me, I'm yours!'" His voice fell down again to low breath. "It's reallll sexy."
"Yeah?" Lex sounded gratified, and trying to hide it.
"I have the hots for you day and freaking night, Lex."
"That much I knew."
"I just wish I could tell them. Everyone."
"Me too. Boring friends and relations to tears is one of the inalienable joys of being in love."
"They'd be excited for me."
Lex pulled away and looked into Clark's eyes, smilingly. "Yes. They would. Well, except I'm not sure 'excited' is the exact adjective for your father's reaction. You have good friends." He touched Clark's face; and Clark felt it down to his gut. "Someday you'll be able to tell them. But you know... it's never going to be easy, being with me. You'll be under scrutiny, because of who I am. We need to come up with ways to deal with that."
"Groucho Marx nose," Clark said promptly.
Lex started to grin, looking at him, and Clark could tell he was picturing it. "Damn. Why didn't I think of that? Since I was nine years old I haven't been able to go anywhere without being recognized by total strangers." The grin gradually fading to a look of remembrance. "I didn't look like everyone else. I couldn't blend in and disappear like other rich kids did." The slate-blue eyes challenged him. "You'll never be anonymous with me, Clark. And once the photographers get a look at you, they'll probably forget I even exist. It'll be Bianca Jagger all over again."
"Seriously: horn-rimmed glasses. Just give the idea a chance." Lex's patient half-smile just said they had years to iron out the details. "Also, you've never seen me in a feed cap."
"Because you don't sunburn."
"Exactly. That and the dork thing. But I used to wear them working outside when I was little, to look more like Mom and Dad. Private photos exist."
"Back up a minute. You wanted to look like your Mom?"
"I was six, Lex."
"By which age gender identity is well established. These 'girl-feelings' you mention --"
Clark laid one hand on Lex's genitals and with the other pushed him back down onto the desk.
"Don't even think about doing it twice without lubrication."
Clark looked surprised. "But you always say it's easier the second time."
"You want to fuck or not?"
With a whish Clark was at the couch end-table and back. He slid a lubed finger into Lex's cleft. Lex arched back, gasped. "Take me, I'm yours." But before Clark could position him more comfortably he complained, "Not on the desk. And the upholstery cleaning on the couch is getting conspicuous."
"I'm not sure you're really clear on the concept 'Take me, I'm yours', honey-bun."
"I'm spoiled. It's a sickness. You should feel sorry for me."
Clark rolled his eyes. Lifting Lex up, he let him wrap his arms and legs tight, then superspeeded the butt-prints off the desk using his briefs to buff with, picked up all their clothes and wedged them between their torsos, and whooshed up the stairs into Lex's bedroom. Pausing to lock the door. Dump the clothes. Whisk the bedclothes back. And lay Lex gently onto the powder-blue and rosy-red striped silken sheets.
And moaned, "Oh my god," as he slowly, slowly kneeled all the way up onto the bed and slowly straddled him. "You look like a centerfold." Worshipfully he genuflected and licked and kissed Lex's tender belly; grabbing him by the hips to hold him still so he could keep on tasting. Something bumped against his chin gently, and he tucked his head further under to greet Lex's cock with welcoming warm, wet licks and kissing. Settling in, he let the cock slide all the way into his mouth as he felt Lex's hands meet in his hair. He drew a straight line down the underside of the shaft with the tip of his tongue. Then he drew an L. It was a renewal of their ongoing research into communication with aliens during blowjobs.
Lex stretched and twisted. Clark traced a circle, and a V, gently keeping him prisoner.
"Uh! God -- Clark!" he gasped. "I was supposed to be making you happy."
"'mmm mmh," Clark replied reassuringly. He drew an E. Then he underlined the word three times.
"Fuck," Lex whispered between breaths. "Fuck!"
Clark wrote Y-O-U, and punctuated it with an exclamation point that started in Lex's slit and was dotted in his balls with a wiggling tongue-tip. Loins lunged up. Clark took the hint to get serious with his cocksucking. A few minutes later Lex was in throes on the colored silk, his every need being met, causing greedy thrusting for more, more, more, more -- Clark meeting each with the most gratifying sliding of lips and tongue he could contrive, till suddenly something tripped the delicate trigger, Lex's arch stayed arched, and in a moment he felt and tasted Lex's ecstasy. Single thrusts started with erratic pauses, as Clark breathed the scent of love-sweat and Lex, reveled in his flavor, cherished his moans and gasps and the ripple of his haunch-muscles cradled in Clark's strong fingers, and the balm to his vision of the lily shades of his lover's skin, against his own tan and the exotic sheets like the setting of a famous painting. He wanted to see him naked against every color and pattern in the world, one by one, to take in every nuance the flesh acquired. This, though... this; it was hard to imagine anything could be better.
The erection started to soften and Clark let it go. Lex huffed, "God in heaven!" and lay sprawled, drained. Succulent. Helpless. Protectable. The end result of bliss never lasted very long, but while it did it was one of his favorite Lexes. Limbs so lax and limp, breath heaving down exhaustedly to normal, making less and less of a hollow under his ribs with every respiration, eyes closed, mouth open, subtlest curves of happiness on the lips... He looked, Clark felt, as he should look so much more often, blessed and fulfilled, awash with peace.
A sliver's width of blue-slate appeared between his frail lids. "You're watching me again," Lex surmised.
"I'm feasting my eyes."
"Mm." His eyes closed, but it was obvious he was girding himself with awareness. He reached down and petted Clark's hand where it still lay on one delectable hip-bone. "You're such a good person."
"Glad you enjoyed it."
The slits glimmered again. But Lex didn't bother to say Clark was deliberately misconstruing him. The look was enough.
He thought about Lex getting dressed, the pulling on of a sock, the tucking in of a shirt, the way his light-colored suit jackets would flap open on one side with certain movements -- how his clothes expressed elegantly and exotically something intrinsic to the nature of Lex naked.
Maybe it was just what a good fit did for you. Maybe Lex's clothes' colors so perfectly alliterated with his body, replicas or shadows of the subtlest tones in his skin, eyes, mouth, in some mathematically determined way Clark couldn't even guess at -- a colorometer? -- that it suggested he was hardly dressed, however irreproachable his attire. There was always a palpable sense of his bare body, just under anything he wore.
Sometimes, he looked so good, like a present so beautifully wrapped you didn't want to open it, a dish so colorfully arranged it seemed a shame to eat. But the layers of Lex that didn't involve any clothing were more mysterious, delectable, and erotic still. Undoing them, feeling him shiver in his arms, hearing him confess devotion without words... it had become his passion, his vocation, his new astronomy. To locate his home in Lex's heart, instead of in the stars.
Yet... there was something about his man in business drag.
Maybe because for most their friendship it was the only way he'd ever seen him. It had got fetishized, a part of the entity that had so alternately stunned and heated him.
"I wish I could read your mind," Lex murmurred, his lazy gaze absorbed watching his face.
"Oh." Clark smiled. "I was only thinking how good you look, in clothes. Or not."
Laziness was the essence of Lex's smile. "With anyone else, I'd just assume that was a handy flattery."
"No really," Clark started earnestly, but Lex stretched up his arms and pulled him down to a shallowly tonguing kiss. Slick muscle playing between his lips turned every nerve in Clark's body to the 'on' position. To the point that he didn't feel like fucking, he felt like doing something beyond fucking. Physical, alert -- tackling and scrimmaging, chasing, pouncing, being pounced on--
That, of course, was out of the question. He'd always have to be careful when he played with Lex, and, really, he didn't dare. Rough-housing would just be asking for trouble. Even, say, protective gear like when you trained an attack-dog couldn't protect Lex's bones and soft tissues from his strength, plus, hey, really cutting down on the body contact that was the whole point...
And... he might easily lure Lex into a wrestle here in bed, but he didn't know what words would persuade his lover to leap out on him from behind a tree with a bloodcurdling shriek, or tumble over and over with him down the grassy slope behind the stables. There were ways in which twenty-two was totally old.
Oh well. Sex would just have to do, he supposed.
"How dare you giggle at my frenching technique?" Lex demanded indignantly, and in a trice had toppled and pinned Clark to the bed. "What? What?" He shook Clark's shoulders. "What are you laughing at?" But a grin had already taken his own mouth.
Clark captured him, but kept on laughing even as he kissed him over and over, and over and over.
Peace. In their laughter. Peace in a lover's heart. A beautiful gift, to be able to bring. To the wonderful, incredible, total, ultimate. Love. Love of his life.
End
1/25/04
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