![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Useful Arts
Summary: Clark’s Kryptonian heritage, like Lex, is rich and powerful. And, like Lex, not entirely predictable. Thanks to Mary Ellen Curtin and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
corinna_5 for beta. Special thanks to geekturnedvamp, who said tough things in helpful ways – and also read this nearly as many times as I did. NC-17 for sex, violence, and climate change. No longer a WIP!
Read it in its entirety on my site.
Part One: Prior Art
I. Anticipation
Lex had long held the hypothesis, tested rigorously and never disconfirmed, that proximity to Smallville was inversely correlated with the chance of success of any given venture of his. Even meteor rock – "Kryptonite" – behaved better the further it was removed from that town, that cancer in the shape of a Norman Rockwell vision.
To Lex, Smallville would always smell like hypocrisy and defeat.
In any event, distance from Smallville was a desideratum of the highest order. Metropolis was too close, really, but LuthorCorp had such strong roots there that Lex hadn't quite managed to dig them up. Corporate headquarters had to stay there for PR and tax reasons. Lex had wrung so many concessions from the state and federal government not to move to a less environmentally challenged state that they were essentially subsidizing the entire agrochemical division. As the state’s biggest employer, his name was finally a political asset. And he could hardly move elsewhere without first having won an election in his home state.
With Smallville firmly in his rear-view mirror, Lex had done much better in recent years. Financially, LuthorCorp was thriving. Personally, he'd made People's Most Beautiful People list three years running and no one had tried to kill him in nearly eighteen months.
There remained work to be done, however, which kept Lex sitting in the office that had been his father's. He waited for Superman to arrive.
The message had been exquisitely composed – he could afford himself the praise, since he'd been writing it for years, using the ashes of the friendship to scrawl out an invitation.
Superman would tell himself he was dealing with a threat, but he'd come.
As Lex was opening yet another prospectus on bioremediation, instinct made him look up. Through the blue-tinted windows, he saw Superman floating above the balcony like some messenger from God, angel and rough beast all at once. His arms were folded disapprovingly across his chest. His costume was exactly as ridiculous as Lex remembered. Lex truly wondered why the right-wingers aghast at a half-glimpsed nipple put up with the barrage of images of a superhero who might as well be wearing only body paint. A picture of Superman could be used to label the muscles of the (in)human body.
Lex shook his head a fraction, then nodded to Superman as he hit a button on the desk, causing the center section of the glass wall to slide open. The Metropolis air was thick and hot even dozens of stories high; there was yet another tornado on the way. The year’s corn harvest had already been cut in half, Suicide Slum and half of Metropolis Central Park flattened, and this storm promised to be worse.
Sweatless, unflinching, outlined like a god descending against the bruised-purple sky, Superman floated forward as if on some invisible sliding dais.
"Thank you for coming," Lex said.
Superman frowned, like tectonic plates shifting.
"I have," Lex continued, "a proposal for you. As I'm sure you're aware, my first Senate run is going to begin in the next few months. I want Superman's noninterference and Clark Kent's endorsement." That was enough to get even Superman to gape, surprise making him look almost human. "I have something to offer in return," he said, finishing the introductory statements.
"You've got nothing that I want," Superman said, predictably.
Lex's blood thrummed with excitement. He hadn't left, and that meant he was negotiating, even if he didn't know it.
"Did you ever wonder why it never worked out for you and Lana? Or Chloe? Or Lori, or Lois, or any of the others?"
There – that expression wasn't Superman's at all. It was pure Clark Kent, fear and denial and moral outrage rolled into one self-righteous package, angry at Lex because Lex was making him lie.
Rather than see what possible nonsense Clark could produce, Lex kept talking. "Because I did wonder, and I investigated.
"Of course," he continued, leaning back in his chair, "it could just be your paranoia and justifiable sense of isolation from humanity that ruined things between you and every woman you thought you might love. But I really think you got beyond that, with Lori and Lois at least."
He had Clark now, had him by the throat, sick fascination on the alien’s face as he waited to hear more.
"No, it was more than that. You wondered what all the fuss was about sex, didn't you? Oh, you could feel the attraction of a heaving bosom and a well-turned ankle, but the truth of the matter was, it all seemed fairly ridiculous once you got past the hand-holding and longing stares, didn't it?"
"Why are you doing this?" Clark gritted out.
"Because I want to be President," Lex said.
Clark shook like a man trying to wake from a dream. "Maybe that makes sense to you –"
Lex gave the smallest smile in his repertoire. "Bear with me. I've developed a very special pharmaceutical. Like Kryptonian Viagra – it allows you to respond to a human sexually as you would have responded to a Kryptonian naturally. You can think of it as being like a pheromone." He could think of it that way, but he'd be wrong; Lex didn't imagine that further explanation would be constructive.
He reached into his desk drawer, noting Clark's look of fear despite the fact that Clark must have scanned for Kryptonite, and pulled out the jar. Its sapphire contents sloshed as he put it on his desk.
"You can have a regular life with Lois, if she'll still have you, or with someone else. I will give you a lifetime supply of this substance, which I call Phosita, in return for two things: Clark Kent's endorsement and your withdrawal from monitoring my non-scientific activities in either identity. I can tolerate your obsessive scrutiny of LuthorCorp labs, but I have auditors of my own and my stockholders much prefer that I use them instead of you.
"This is a risk-free offer. You try it once, then wait a few weeks to make sure there are no side effects. If it doesn't work, you owe me nothing. If it works but you don't think the deal is worth the costs of having me represent the good people of Kansas, you stop using it and owe me nothing. If you like it and want to keep using it, you agree to my terms."
Clark stared at him, as blank as if he'd been lobotomized. Lex thought this was a small victory, to have stunned Clark with his audacity. Finally, a response that wasn't calcified by years of contempt. These days Clark rarely even seemed disappointed when Lex did something underhanded. Which was fine with Lex, because he hated Clark's condescension almost as much as he detested Clark's hypocrisy on the subject of truth.
He considered whether he ought to say more, as in, Don't you deserve a little happiness in your life? If you're going to be Clark Kent at all – if you do anything but run around saving people from themselves – then shouldn't that life be bearable? Or is Clark Kent just a mask you wear to punish yourself for being an alien? Because if he is – good job.
No, there was such a thing as pushing too hard. Let the offer sell itself.
"You can think about it for a few days. I'll expect an answer at the end of the week."
He turned away from Clark, still holding the jar. The liquid inside was so fluorescently blue that it wouldn't have looked out of place on a Miami Vice set. Lex wondered whether he ought to have put it in a nicer decanter. He liked the security of a metal screw-top, though. And the mad-scientist panache was undeniable.
Superman's cape rustled as Clark paced across the floor.
Lex had spent several months analyzing fragments of an earlier cape. The latest one hadn't been torn in some time, despite the encounter with the Wizard’s enchanted version of Godzilla, so maybe Clark had improved the fabric. Lex considered possible methods of obtaining a sample. The patents on the fiber he'd developed based on the first cape had paid for the last half of the research on Phosita. (Of course, the shareholders thought the patents were responsible for a good fraction of LuthorCorp's stellar profits, but what the market didn't know couldn't hurt the stock.)
"What are you up to?" Superman's voice boomed from a few feet behind him. Lex thought he was lucky that Clark didn't think himself entitled to yell right in his ear.
Lex looked at the jar in his hand. "Do you think if you ask the question enough times you'll get a different answer?"
Clark snorted. Lex half-turned, enough to confirm that Clark was indeed standing with his feet spread and his arms folded, just as if he'd been die-cast for the Superfriends line of figurines. Lex sneered reflexively and put the jar on the slick metal surface of his desk, where it gleamed like a column of tropical ocean.
His computer screen informed him that twenty-two messages had survived Temperance’s culling and awaited his attention. Temperance was a good executive assistant; she respected Lex's need for information without being paralyzed by fear she'd keep something important from him.
The first message was from Tom Rollins. He wanted approval for –
The screen was obscured by sparks and smoke, which dissipated to reveal Clark's fist through the center. Lex blinked and looked up, folding his hands together. "You know, I appreciate it when you wait to destroy my property until I've done something to deserve it."
Clark withdrew his fist, shaking it slightly to dislodge the once-expensive electronics that had adhered to his skin. "I want you to answer my question." His face was dark with anger.
Lex had to admit, he'd been deliberately provocative. But it was so much fun. His life was chronically undersupplied with fun, and one of the reasons was standing right in the room. "Look, Superman," he said, keeping his eyes on the place the screen had been, "I told you what my motives are. I want power; you can help or hinder that quest for power; I have something that might convince you to go one way rather than the other. If you don't believe me, that's certainly your prerogative – not to mention your habit – but I think I've been both forthcoming and fair about my proposed terms."
When he looked up, Clark was gone. There weren't any additional holes in the walls, which Lex decided to count as a good sign.
****
"Let me ask you something," Lex said, speaking so close to David's ear that he jumped involuntarily and ended up squirming against Mercy's grip in a manner that must have been quite humiliating. "Did you think, when I said you'd regret betraying me, that I was simply expressing a hope? An abstract faith in justice in the world to come?"
David shook his head frantically, though whether he was negating Lex's specific questions or just wishing not to be in such deep trouble was unclear.
The intruder alert went off before Lex could inquire further. He turned as Mercy threw David back against the wall, freeing her hands, but when he saw that it was only Clark, he waved her off and she quickly resecured his ex-associate. "Mercy, will you wait with David for a few minutes?"
She hustled him out of the room, and Superman allowed them to go, which was something of a relief. He wasn't planning on hurting David – well, not badly -- and he'd feared interference. But plainly –
"I've been thinking about your proposal," Clark said.
Lex guessed that was an understatement – he'd bet LuthorCorp Tower that Clark had thought about nothing but Phosita since they'd parted last night. His face had that familiar tightness – jaw, cheekbones, eyes, as if his skin had shrunk – the only thing about Clark that wasn't larger than life. Lex used to see that look only when Clark was dealing directly with him or when he'd just come back from visiting his mother in Smallville. These days, though, it was uncommon to see Superman with a real smile, one with the bright eyes and raised brows Lex remembered. He'd taken the change as evidence that life's little indignities ground everyone down, including nominally invulnerable aliens. He'd also thought that maybe Clark was in the mood for a new path to happiness. Thus the offer.
“And what are your thoughts, Superman?” Lex turned his back on Clark and walked to his desk, sitting down. This was just another interaction with Clark Kent, Clark demanding something that Lex had the power to give.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
Lex smiled. “The eternal question. And by eternal I mean that you’ll be demanding I prove my bona fides when my bones are dust. I know I could never convince you of my worthiness, so you’ll just have to decide: Have I ever cheated on a deal? Aren’t there easier ways for me to poison you if that’s what I intend?”
“You’d want the satisfaction of getting me to volunteer to be poisoned,” Clark accused.
“I’m not my father. I take no satisfaction in tricking a man into complicity with his own destruction. And in this, at least, I consider you a man.”
Lex was telling the truth, because he’d learned how much easier it was. When people wanted to back out of a bargain with him, it was never because he’d failed to deliver on his promises. Oh, he never told the absolute truth – how could he or anyone, in a world sorely lacking in absolutes? – but he didn’t lie. He enjoyed convincing people that their own best interests lay in doing what he wanted them to do. Lying would be cheating and was likely to make people feel justified in betraying him (though they found it easy enough to create reasons for betrayal even so). He preferred betrayers who felt guilty about their actions, because those kind were easier to control.
None of that was likely to convince Clark, but the beauty of his position was that nothing could. Clark was going to have to make up his mind for himself, and Clark had proved himself hopelessly impulsive time and again. If he didn’t agree today, he’d be back later. Lex had only to wait and avoid saying something stupid. In the meantime, the research still got him a hefty tax break.
“What if it doesn’t work?” Clark asked. Lex could see the terrified 15-year-old kid he’d been, sure he’d never be anything but a freak. Lex had contributed to that certainty of isolation, he knew now. He hadn’t meant to do it at the time.
“As I told you, you can try it once, to make sure that it works and there are no unexpected side effects. If you don’t like it or don’t like it enough to maintain the deal, you can stop at any time.” It’s like the Columbia House mail-order club, he thought, but long practice kept him from even having to suppress a smile. “My only condition is that you don’t get to duplicate the formula and use it if you don’t stick with the deal. I can’t sue you for patent infringement, but I do rely on your sense of fair play.”
Clark’s frown stayed at its default level. Lex hoped – oh, who was he trying to fool? He’d never been able to control his interactions with Clark. The best he could hope for was to hang on and take no more damage than necessary.
He should have moved to Illinois. Beating an incumbent senator as a carpetbagger couldn’t be harder than this. Drug companies moved corporate headquarters; LuthorCorp could too.
“Okay,” Clark said, and Lex nearly fell out of his chair. “Do you need time to set up?”
Lex remembered to shake his head. “No – it’s right here.” He prepared to ask whether Clark was sure he wanted to do that, then realized that there were no circumstances under which asking would benefit him in any way.
He reached for the drawer that hid the safe, not moving so fast as to seem overhasty, but not slowly. When he removed the jar, Clark looked at it like it was either snake venom or manna from Heaven. Lex let him look.
At last, Clark reached out and took it. The curved glass looked smaller in Clark’s hands. Its blue clashed with the costume. But then he’d probably take it off to use Phosita. Lex couldn’t imagine Clark being attracted to someone who thought Superman was sexy.
“The dose is two milliliters. Apply it topically to any portion of the skin, though it will work fastest on mucous membranes. You can use it up to three times in a twenty-four hour period if you want to impress. I’ll expect to hear back from you soon.” Lex was already trying to get his mind back on the day’s schedule. The trouble with the paperless office was that there was very little to do with one’s hands that wasn’t obvious busywork.
“You think I’m just going to go off and – and find someone? Just like that?”
He smiled thinly up at Clark. “I can name at least four women who’d respond very favorably to a passionate appeal from you. And that’s without trading on your hero persona.”
Clark shook his head. “What if it’s poison?”
Lex’s hands clenched into fists on the desk. “It is not poison. It is not dangerous to anything except your precious composure. Do not waste my time, Superman – you make a worse Hamlet than Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
With a tiny nod, Clark did something that Lex should have expected: He opened the jar. Lex tensed; he was confident that Phosita would work as promised, but he had to be prepared for disaster. Clark dipped two fingertips into the jar, just skimming the surface. The thick liquid coated his skin, blue and glistening. There was a sharp smell – musk with a hint of mint, something Lex had added on a whim.
Lex watched as Clark’s eyes dilated and his nostrils flared. He even seemed to get bigger, taking up more space in the room. Clark stared at his hand as if it was new-grown from his arm, then shoved his fingers back into the jar as far as they’d go.
Lex swallowed.
He stood when Clark started around the desk, already tilting his head as Clark reached to smear the stuff in the hollow of his throat. The smell filled his nostrils, different somehow on his own skin than it had been in the lab.
Clark’s damp fingers stroked up the line of his jaw, over his cheek, behind his ears. “Take off your clothes,” Clark said.
Right, wouldn’t want to waste good Phosita ripping Lex’s clothes off, now that Clark’s fingers were stained with it.
He stripped quickly, tie and jacket and shirt crumpling to the floor as Clark reached for more and dragged his fingers across his own cheek with a sensuality that made Lex shudder in sympathetic arousal.
Clark instructed him how to get the costume off, a matter of hidden seams and tugging at just the right places.
When he ended up on his knees in front of Clark, helping him get the boots off, it was only natural to go with the position and take as much of Clark’s cock as he could. Clark ran his hands over Lex’s head as Lex sucked. Clark’s fingers were just tight enough to add a frisson of fear to the experience. Clark had enough control not to crush his skull in a moment of passion. He hoped Clark remembered that.
Mortal fear, it was no surprise at all to find, was an enormous turn-on. Lex jacked himself as Clark’s hands blessed his skin. Clark leaned forward, his weight threatening to throw Lex off balance until he adjusted, the angle changed so that he tilted his head and saw Clark.
Clark’s cheek was stained blue, like an ancient British warrior not quite washed clean of woad, and his mouth was open in a silent moan. No martyr on the cross was ever so beautiful.
He began to thrust, and Lex had to pay attention to avoid choking. One hand on Clark’s silky-hot hip, the other on his own cock, he let Clark use his mouth, following Clark’s rhythm through Clark’s orgasm and then his own, licking and sucking until Clark pushed him away and he sprawled back on the carpet, refusing to feel any shame.
Clark’s eyes were hot, gleaming golden as he looked down on Lex, and he was still hard.
Lex had to look into a dose that could produce a refractory period one of these days.
Clark dropped to his knees between Lex’s bent legs and reached into the jar again, using the Phosita to slick himself. The color should have been funny, but it wasn’t. Lex frowned; there was something –
Apparently that was all the prep work Clark was prepared to do. He pulled on Lex’s hips until Lex was open to him, legs in the air – God, the strength of him, holding Lex like he weighed nothing.
He hadn’t been fucked in years. The first thrust lit up every neuron in his brain.
Out on the plains where Smallville was, storms were visible for dozens of miles. Lex remembered lightning storms, watching strike after strike go jagged into the rich and yielding ground. The storms were constant nowadays, but this was something rare and strange, jolt after jolt, Clark’s face glowing with amazement and pleasure. He was shaking, consumed, unable even to raise his hands to touch Clark’s gleaming-idol skin.
Coming was like falling into the sun.
****
His head was caught in a vise, and the demons running it were cranking the grip tighter and tighter.
Lex opened his eyes and, true to cliché, realized how much smarter it would have been to have kept them closed. Shutting them now wasn't enough to get rid of the pain, like actual crystals shoved into his eyes.
He didn't recognize the messages the rest of his body was sending for a bit – it had been a long time since he'd been this wasted – then figured it out in enough time to lunge for his wastebasket, a few feet away on the floor.
After the first wave had passed, he realized that vomiting into a mahogany wastebasket was really no better than throwing up on the Berber carpet. Why did he have a mahogany wastebasket, anyway? Who exactly was that supposed to impress, the janitor? That question puzzled him until the next round began.
The bile was blue-tinged, which seemed a little odd – then again, he had swallowed some of the stuff. He took one hand off the edge of the wastebasket and touched his lips, remembering.
When the wastebasket stopped wavering in and out of his vision, he sat back on his haunches and stifled a pained sound, on the off chance he wasn't alone; he hadn't gotten much of a chance to look around yet.
He turned his head, stiff as the Tin Man before he'd been oiled, and saw Clark sprawled out about ten feet away, stretched out on his side, one arm thrown over his face. Just this once, Lex lacked even an aesthetic appreciation of the glorious alien form. Maybe when his stomach had settled it would return.
There was a shower in his executive washroom, but the thought of hot water threatened to make him sick again, so he just limped to the sink and splashed water on his face. Then he took a glob of toothpaste – no way he was sticking a toothbrush in his mouth right now – swished it around and spit, then rinsed. The taste of the water was so good that he filled the glass three times before he felt the need to stop. He took a piss, and that felt good too.
Extra clothes were in the cabinet by the door. Lex paused a moment to appreciate the advantages of wealth, and also to figure out how to put on pants without losing his still-shaky balance.
From the main room came the sound of a heavy body turning over and a thunk as it crashed into something else -- a side table, Lex guessed, based on where Clark had been lying.
"Mrrgh," Clark said as Lex returned. He had his hands pressed to his temples as if they were the only things holding his brain in. He was balled up with his forearms around his knees, obscuring many of his best features. Lex recognized the look on his face and hurried to grab the cape from its crumpled place by his desk. He just managed to spread it out over the carpet before Clark started to retch. Clark's bile, Lex noted, was purplish and thick.
Then Lex had to make a fast retreat to the washroom, because watching Clark had retriggered his own nausea.
After Lex heard nothing but Clark's miserable ragged breathing for several minutes, he risked returning to Clark's side. Kneeling carefully, he put a glass of water a few feet from Clark’s hand and folded the cape over to cover the mess and cut the smell.
His office was too big and well-ventilated to stink of sex, except in specific places. He could see blurred patches over on the glass wall where he'd been pressed against it as Clark fucked him, slow and inexorable, whispering words that usually would have choked a gently raised country boy with embarrassment. Lex had come on the glass, streaks obscuring the view of a corner of Metropolis Central Park, and Clark had laughed and told him that was what he did with the city anyway, used it like a cheap whore. Lex had managed the presence of mind to grunt out that if Metropolis wanted to be treated like an expensive whore she'd better raise her standards along with her prices -- and Clark had laughed again, sounding almost free, and turned him around and pushed him to his knees.
It hardly needed to be said that the experiment was a success. So much of a success that Clark most likely wouldn’t continue, which was exactly the kind of luck Lex had in this life. Of course if Clark would only wait to use Phosita until he was with his true love he wouldn’t be grabbing just anyone in his desire to fuck, but Lex couldn’t make that conversation go right even in his own head.
Instead, he waited for Clark to reach for the glass. When motor control was verified, Lex limped back to his desk and, as Clark took sloshing sips of water, wrote out a note explaining how to open the glass wall for easy exit. He didn’t sign it – even imagining what sort of salutation he might use was enough to make him want to grin, which meant wanting to throw up again.
By the time he escaped, he could hear Clark fumbling around for his clothes.
Summary: Clark’s Kryptonian heritage, like Lex, is rich and powerful. And, like Lex, not entirely predictable. Thanks to Mary Ellen Curtin and
corinna_5 for beta. Special thanks to geekturnedvamp, who said tough things in helpful ways – and also read this nearly as many times as I did. NC-17 for sex, violence, and climate change. No longer a WIP!Read it in its entirety on my site.
Part One: Prior Art
I. Anticipation
Lex had long held the hypothesis, tested rigorously and never disconfirmed, that proximity to Smallville was inversely correlated with the chance of success of any given venture of his. Even meteor rock – "Kryptonite" – behaved better the further it was removed from that town, that cancer in the shape of a Norman Rockwell vision.
To Lex, Smallville would always smell like hypocrisy and defeat.
In any event, distance from Smallville was a desideratum of the highest order. Metropolis was too close, really, but LuthorCorp had such strong roots there that Lex hadn't quite managed to dig them up. Corporate headquarters had to stay there for PR and tax reasons. Lex had wrung so many concessions from the state and federal government not to move to a less environmentally challenged state that they were essentially subsidizing the entire agrochemical division. As the state’s biggest employer, his name was finally a political asset. And he could hardly move elsewhere without first having won an election in his home state.
With Smallville firmly in his rear-view mirror, Lex had done much better in recent years. Financially, LuthorCorp was thriving. Personally, he'd made People's Most Beautiful People list three years running and no one had tried to kill him in nearly eighteen months.
There remained work to be done, however, which kept Lex sitting in the office that had been his father's. He waited for Superman to arrive.
The message had been exquisitely composed – he could afford himself the praise, since he'd been writing it for years, using the ashes of the friendship to scrawl out an invitation.
Superman would tell himself he was dealing with a threat, but he'd come.
As Lex was opening yet another prospectus on bioremediation, instinct made him look up. Through the blue-tinted windows, he saw Superman floating above the balcony like some messenger from God, angel and rough beast all at once. His arms were folded disapprovingly across his chest. His costume was exactly as ridiculous as Lex remembered. Lex truly wondered why the right-wingers aghast at a half-glimpsed nipple put up with the barrage of images of a superhero who might as well be wearing only body paint. A picture of Superman could be used to label the muscles of the (in)human body.
Lex shook his head a fraction, then nodded to Superman as he hit a button on the desk, causing the center section of the glass wall to slide open. The Metropolis air was thick and hot even dozens of stories high; there was yet another tornado on the way. The year’s corn harvest had already been cut in half, Suicide Slum and half of Metropolis Central Park flattened, and this storm promised to be worse.
Sweatless, unflinching, outlined like a god descending against the bruised-purple sky, Superman floated forward as if on some invisible sliding dais.
"Thank you for coming," Lex said.
Superman frowned, like tectonic plates shifting.
"I have," Lex continued, "a proposal for you. As I'm sure you're aware, my first Senate run is going to begin in the next few months. I want Superman's noninterference and Clark Kent's endorsement." That was enough to get even Superman to gape, surprise making him look almost human. "I have something to offer in return," he said, finishing the introductory statements.
"You've got nothing that I want," Superman said, predictably.
Lex's blood thrummed with excitement. He hadn't left, and that meant he was negotiating, even if he didn't know it.
"Did you ever wonder why it never worked out for you and Lana? Or Chloe? Or Lori, or Lois, or any of the others?"
There – that expression wasn't Superman's at all. It was pure Clark Kent, fear and denial and moral outrage rolled into one self-righteous package, angry at Lex because Lex was making him lie.
Rather than see what possible nonsense Clark could produce, Lex kept talking. "Because I did wonder, and I investigated.
"Of course," he continued, leaning back in his chair, "it could just be your paranoia and justifiable sense of isolation from humanity that ruined things between you and every woman you thought you might love. But I really think you got beyond that, with Lori and Lois at least."
He had Clark now, had him by the throat, sick fascination on the alien’s face as he waited to hear more.
"No, it was more than that. You wondered what all the fuss was about sex, didn't you? Oh, you could feel the attraction of a heaving bosom and a well-turned ankle, but the truth of the matter was, it all seemed fairly ridiculous once you got past the hand-holding and longing stares, didn't it?"
"Why are you doing this?" Clark gritted out.
"Because I want to be President," Lex said.
Clark shook like a man trying to wake from a dream. "Maybe that makes sense to you –"
Lex gave the smallest smile in his repertoire. "Bear with me. I've developed a very special pharmaceutical. Like Kryptonian Viagra – it allows you to respond to a human sexually as you would have responded to a Kryptonian naturally. You can think of it as being like a pheromone." He could think of it that way, but he'd be wrong; Lex didn't imagine that further explanation would be constructive.
He reached into his desk drawer, noting Clark's look of fear despite the fact that Clark must have scanned for Kryptonite, and pulled out the jar. Its sapphire contents sloshed as he put it on his desk.
"You can have a regular life with Lois, if she'll still have you, or with someone else. I will give you a lifetime supply of this substance, which I call Phosita, in return for two things: Clark Kent's endorsement and your withdrawal from monitoring my non-scientific activities in either identity. I can tolerate your obsessive scrutiny of LuthorCorp labs, but I have auditors of my own and my stockholders much prefer that I use them instead of you.
"This is a risk-free offer. You try it once, then wait a few weeks to make sure there are no side effects. If it doesn't work, you owe me nothing. If it works but you don't think the deal is worth the costs of having me represent the good people of Kansas, you stop using it and owe me nothing. If you like it and want to keep using it, you agree to my terms."
Clark stared at him, as blank as if he'd been lobotomized. Lex thought this was a small victory, to have stunned Clark with his audacity. Finally, a response that wasn't calcified by years of contempt. These days Clark rarely even seemed disappointed when Lex did something underhanded. Which was fine with Lex, because he hated Clark's condescension almost as much as he detested Clark's hypocrisy on the subject of truth.
He considered whether he ought to say more, as in, Don't you deserve a little happiness in your life? If you're going to be Clark Kent at all – if you do anything but run around saving people from themselves – then shouldn't that life be bearable? Or is Clark Kent just a mask you wear to punish yourself for being an alien? Because if he is – good job.
No, there was such a thing as pushing too hard. Let the offer sell itself.
"You can think about it for a few days. I'll expect an answer at the end of the week."
He turned away from Clark, still holding the jar. The liquid inside was so fluorescently blue that it wouldn't have looked out of place on a Miami Vice set. Lex wondered whether he ought to have put it in a nicer decanter. He liked the security of a metal screw-top, though. And the mad-scientist panache was undeniable.
Superman's cape rustled as Clark paced across the floor.
Lex had spent several months analyzing fragments of an earlier cape. The latest one hadn't been torn in some time, despite the encounter with the Wizard’s enchanted version of Godzilla, so maybe Clark had improved the fabric. Lex considered possible methods of obtaining a sample. The patents on the fiber he'd developed based on the first cape had paid for the last half of the research on Phosita. (Of course, the shareholders thought the patents were responsible for a good fraction of LuthorCorp's stellar profits, but what the market didn't know couldn't hurt the stock.)
"What are you up to?" Superman's voice boomed from a few feet behind him. Lex thought he was lucky that Clark didn't think himself entitled to yell right in his ear.
Lex looked at the jar in his hand. "Do you think if you ask the question enough times you'll get a different answer?"
Clark snorted. Lex half-turned, enough to confirm that Clark was indeed standing with his feet spread and his arms folded, just as if he'd been die-cast for the Superfriends line of figurines. Lex sneered reflexively and put the jar on the slick metal surface of his desk, where it gleamed like a column of tropical ocean.
His computer screen informed him that twenty-two messages had survived Temperance’s culling and awaited his attention. Temperance was a good executive assistant; she respected Lex's need for information without being paralyzed by fear she'd keep something important from him.
The first message was from Tom Rollins. He wanted approval for –
The screen was obscured by sparks and smoke, which dissipated to reveal Clark's fist through the center. Lex blinked and looked up, folding his hands together. "You know, I appreciate it when you wait to destroy my property until I've done something to deserve it."
Clark withdrew his fist, shaking it slightly to dislodge the once-expensive electronics that had adhered to his skin. "I want you to answer my question." His face was dark with anger.
Lex had to admit, he'd been deliberately provocative. But it was so much fun. His life was chronically undersupplied with fun, and one of the reasons was standing right in the room. "Look, Superman," he said, keeping his eyes on the place the screen had been, "I told you what my motives are. I want power; you can help or hinder that quest for power; I have something that might convince you to go one way rather than the other. If you don't believe me, that's certainly your prerogative – not to mention your habit – but I think I've been both forthcoming and fair about my proposed terms."
When he looked up, Clark was gone. There weren't any additional holes in the walls, which Lex decided to count as a good sign.
****
"Let me ask you something," Lex said, speaking so close to David's ear that he jumped involuntarily and ended up squirming against Mercy's grip in a manner that must have been quite humiliating. "Did you think, when I said you'd regret betraying me, that I was simply expressing a hope? An abstract faith in justice in the world to come?"
David shook his head frantically, though whether he was negating Lex's specific questions or just wishing not to be in such deep trouble was unclear.
The intruder alert went off before Lex could inquire further. He turned as Mercy threw David back against the wall, freeing her hands, but when he saw that it was only Clark, he waved her off and she quickly resecured his ex-associate. "Mercy, will you wait with David for a few minutes?"
She hustled him out of the room, and Superman allowed them to go, which was something of a relief. He wasn't planning on hurting David – well, not badly -- and he'd feared interference. But plainly –
"I've been thinking about your proposal," Clark said.
Lex guessed that was an understatement – he'd bet LuthorCorp Tower that Clark had thought about nothing but Phosita since they'd parted last night. His face had that familiar tightness – jaw, cheekbones, eyes, as if his skin had shrunk – the only thing about Clark that wasn't larger than life. Lex used to see that look only when Clark was dealing directly with him or when he'd just come back from visiting his mother in Smallville. These days, though, it was uncommon to see Superman with a real smile, one with the bright eyes and raised brows Lex remembered. He'd taken the change as evidence that life's little indignities ground everyone down, including nominally invulnerable aliens. He'd also thought that maybe Clark was in the mood for a new path to happiness. Thus the offer.
“And what are your thoughts, Superman?” Lex turned his back on Clark and walked to his desk, sitting down. This was just another interaction with Clark Kent, Clark demanding something that Lex had the power to give.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
Lex smiled. “The eternal question. And by eternal I mean that you’ll be demanding I prove my bona fides when my bones are dust. I know I could never convince you of my worthiness, so you’ll just have to decide: Have I ever cheated on a deal? Aren’t there easier ways for me to poison you if that’s what I intend?”
“You’d want the satisfaction of getting me to volunteer to be poisoned,” Clark accused.
“I’m not my father. I take no satisfaction in tricking a man into complicity with his own destruction. And in this, at least, I consider you a man.”
Lex was telling the truth, because he’d learned how much easier it was. When people wanted to back out of a bargain with him, it was never because he’d failed to deliver on his promises. Oh, he never told the absolute truth – how could he or anyone, in a world sorely lacking in absolutes? – but he didn’t lie. He enjoyed convincing people that their own best interests lay in doing what he wanted them to do. Lying would be cheating and was likely to make people feel justified in betraying him (though they found it easy enough to create reasons for betrayal even so). He preferred betrayers who felt guilty about their actions, because those kind were easier to control.
None of that was likely to convince Clark, but the beauty of his position was that nothing could. Clark was going to have to make up his mind for himself, and Clark had proved himself hopelessly impulsive time and again. If he didn’t agree today, he’d be back later. Lex had only to wait and avoid saying something stupid. In the meantime, the research still got him a hefty tax break.
“What if it doesn’t work?” Clark asked. Lex could see the terrified 15-year-old kid he’d been, sure he’d never be anything but a freak. Lex had contributed to that certainty of isolation, he knew now. He hadn’t meant to do it at the time.
“As I told you, you can try it once, to make sure that it works and there are no unexpected side effects. If you don’t like it or don’t like it enough to maintain the deal, you can stop at any time.” It’s like the Columbia House mail-order club, he thought, but long practice kept him from even having to suppress a smile. “My only condition is that you don’t get to duplicate the formula and use it if you don’t stick with the deal. I can’t sue you for patent infringement, but I do rely on your sense of fair play.”
Clark’s frown stayed at its default level. Lex hoped – oh, who was he trying to fool? He’d never been able to control his interactions with Clark. The best he could hope for was to hang on and take no more damage than necessary.
He should have moved to Illinois. Beating an incumbent senator as a carpetbagger couldn’t be harder than this. Drug companies moved corporate headquarters; LuthorCorp could too.
“Okay,” Clark said, and Lex nearly fell out of his chair. “Do you need time to set up?”
Lex remembered to shake his head. “No – it’s right here.” He prepared to ask whether Clark was sure he wanted to do that, then realized that there were no circumstances under which asking would benefit him in any way.
He reached for the drawer that hid the safe, not moving so fast as to seem overhasty, but not slowly. When he removed the jar, Clark looked at it like it was either snake venom or manna from Heaven. Lex let him look.
At last, Clark reached out and took it. The curved glass looked smaller in Clark’s hands. Its blue clashed with the costume. But then he’d probably take it off to use Phosita. Lex couldn’t imagine Clark being attracted to someone who thought Superman was sexy.
“The dose is two milliliters. Apply it topically to any portion of the skin, though it will work fastest on mucous membranes. You can use it up to three times in a twenty-four hour period if you want to impress. I’ll expect to hear back from you soon.” Lex was already trying to get his mind back on the day’s schedule. The trouble with the paperless office was that there was very little to do with one’s hands that wasn’t obvious busywork.
“You think I’m just going to go off and – and find someone? Just like that?”
He smiled thinly up at Clark. “I can name at least four women who’d respond very favorably to a passionate appeal from you. And that’s without trading on your hero persona.”
Clark shook his head. “What if it’s poison?”
Lex’s hands clenched into fists on the desk. “It is not poison. It is not dangerous to anything except your precious composure. Do not waste my time, Superman – you make a worse Hamlet than Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
With a tiny nod, Clark did something that Lex should have expected: He opened the jar. Lex tensed; he was confident that Phosita would work as promised, but he had to be prepared for disaster. Clark dipped two fingertips into the jar, just skimming the surface. The thick liquid coated his skin, blue and glistening. There was a sharp smell – musk with a hint of mint, something Lex had added on a whim.
Lex watched as Clark’s eyes dilated and his nostrils flared. He even seemed to get bigger, taking up more space in the room. Clark stared at his hand as if it was new-grown from his arm, then shoved his fingers back into the jar as far as they’d go.
Lex swallowed.
He stood when Clark started around the desk, already tilting his head as Clark reached to smear the stuff in the hollow of his throat. The smell filled his nostrils, different somehow on his own skin than it had been in the lab.
Clark’s damp fingers stroked up the line of his jaw, over his cheek, behind his ears. “Take off your clothes,” Clark said.
Right, wouldn’t want to waste good Phosita ripping Lex’s clothes off, now that Clark’s fingers were stained with it.
He stripped quickly, tie and jacket and shirt crumpling to the floor as Clark reached for more and dragged his fingers across his own cheek with a sensuality that made Lex shudder in sympathetic arousal.
Clark instructed him how to get the costume off, a matter of hidden seams and tugging at just the right places.
When he ended up on his knees in front of Clark, helping him get the boots off, it was only natural to go with the position and take as much of Clark’s cock as he could. Clark ran his hands over Lex’s head as Lex sucked. Clark’s fingers were just tight enough to add a frisson of fear to the experience. Clark had enough control not to crush his skull in a moment of passion. He hoped Clark remembered that.
Mortal fear, it was no surprise at all to find, was an enormous turn-on. Lex jacked himself as Clark’s hands blessed his skin. Clark leaned forward, his weight threatening to throw Lex off balance until he adjusted, the angle changed so that he tilted his head and saw Clark.
Clark’s cheek was stained blue, like an ancient British warrior not quite washed clean of woad, and his mouth was open in a silent moan. No martyr on the cross was ever so beautiful.
He began to thrust, and Lex had to pay attention to avoid choking. One hand on Clark’s silky-hot hip, the other on his own cock, he let Clark use his mouth, following Clark’s rhythm through Clark’s orgasm and then his own, licking and sucking until Clark pushed him away and he sprawled back on the carpet, refusing to feel any shame.
Clark’s eyes were hot, gleaming golden as he looked down on Lex, and he was still hard.
Lex had to look into a dose that could produce a refractory period one of these days.
Clark dropped to his knees between Lex’s bent legs and reached into the jar again, using the Phosita to slick himself. The color should have been funny, but it wasn’t. Lex frowned; there was something –
Apparently that was all the prep work Clark was prepared to do. He pulled on Lex’s hips until Lex was open to him, legs in the air – God, the strength of him, holding Lex like he weighed nothing.
He hadn’t been fucked in years. The first thrust lit up every neuron in his brain.
Out on the plains where Smallville was, storms were visible for dozens of miles. Lex remembered lightning storms, watching strike after strike go jagged into the rich and yielding ground. The storms were constant nowadays, but this was something rare and strange, jolt after jolt, Clark’s face glowing with amazement and pleasure. He was shaking, consumed, unable even to raise his hands to touch Clark’s gleaming-idol skin.
Coming was like falling into the sun.
****
His head was caught in a vise, and the demons running it were cranking the grip tighter and tighter.
Lex opened his eyes and, true to cliché, realized how much smarter it would have been to have kept them closed. Shutting them now wasn't enough to get rid of the pain, like actual crystals shoved into his eyes.
He didn't recognize the messages the rest of his body was sending for a bit – it had been a long time since he'd been this wasted – then figured it out in enough time to lunge for his wastebasket, a few feet away on the floor.
After the first wave had passed, he realized that vomiting into a mahogany wastebasket was really no better than throwing up on the Berber carpet. Why did he have a mahogany wastebasket, anyway? Who exactly was that supposed to impress, the janitor? That question puzzled him until the next round began.
The bile was blue-tinged, which seemed a little odd – then again, he had swallowed some of the stuff. He took one hand off the edge of the wastebasket and touched his lips, remembering.
When the wastebasket stopped wavering in and out of his vision, he sat back on his haunches and stifled a pained sound, on the off chance he wasn't alone; he hadn't gotten much of a chance to look around yet.
He turned his head, stiff as the Tin Man before he'd been oiled, and saw Clark sprawled out about ten feet away, stretched out on his side, one arm thrown over his face. Just this once, Lex lacked even an aesthetic appreciation of the glorious alien form. Maybe when his stomach had settled it would return.
There was a shower in his executive washroom, but the thought of hot water threatened to make him sick again, so he just limped to the sink and splashed water on his face. Then he took a glob of toothpaste – no way he was sticking a toothbrush in his mouth right now – swished it around and spit, then rinsed. The taste of the water was so good that he filled the glass three times before he felt the need to stop. He took a piss, and that felt good too.
Extra clothes were in the cabinet by the door. Lex paused a moment to appreciate the advantages of wealth, and also to figure out how to put on pants without losing his still-shaky balance.
From the main room came the sound of a heavy body turning over and a thunk as it crashed into something else -- a side table, Lex guessed, based on where Clark had been lying.
"Mrrgh," Clark said as Lex returned. He had his hands pressed to his temples as if they were the only things holding his brain in. He was balled up with his forearms around his knees, obscuring many of his best features. Lex recognized the look on his face and hurried to grab the cape from its crumpled place by his desk. He just managed to spread it out over the carpet before Clark started to retch. Clark's bile, Lex noted, was purplish and thick.
Then Lex had to make a fast retreat to the washroom, because watching Clark had retriggered his own nausea.
After Lex heard nothing but Clark's miserable ragged breathing for several minutes, he risked returning to Clark's side. Kneeling carefully, he put a glass of water a few feet from Clark’s hand and folded the cape over to cover the mess and cut the smell.
His office was too big and well-ventilated to stink of sex, except in specific places. He could see blurred patches over on the glass wall where he'd been pressed against it as Clark fucked him, slow and inexorable, whispering words that usually would have choked a gently raised country boy with embarrassment. Lex had come on the glass, streaks obscuring the view of a corner of Metropolis Central Park, and Clark had laughed and told him that was what he did with the city anyway, used it like a cheap whore. Lex had managed the presence of mind to grunt out that if Metropolis wanted to be treated like an expensive whore she'd better raise her standards along with her prices -- and Clark had laughed again, sounding almost free, and turned him around and pushed him to his knees.
It hardly needed to be said that the experiment was a success. So much of a success that Clark most likely wouldn’t continue, which was exactly the kind of luck Lex had in this life. Of course if Clark would only wait to use Phosita until he was with his true love he wouldn’t be grabbing just anyone in his desire to fuck, but Lex couldn’t make that conversation go right even in his own head.
Instead, he waited for Clark to reach for the glass. When motor control was verified, Lex limped back to his desk and, as Clark took sloshing sips of water, wrote out a note explaining how to open the glass wall for easy exit. He didn’t sign it – even imagining what sort of salutation he might use was enough to make him want to grin, which meant wanting to throw up again.
By the time he escaped, he could hear Clark fumbling around for his clothes.
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
God, that was convoluted. Anyway, it's nice to have this confirmed by someone as smart as Lex.
That being said, I could *not* believe that Clark/Superman would be stupid enough to put something into his body that Lex Luthor created. I know that betting on human stupidity pretty much always pays off. Hadn't realized it was true of Kryptonians, too...
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
And yay for finishing!
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
(Are you a one-a-day poster? I'm trying to decide how I should pace myself, since I prefer reading completed stories.)
From:
no subject
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Wonderful start. I was afraid that I'd have to wait awhile for the sex between them - happily I am wrong. As always, your Lex sees Clark/Superman through disillusioned eyes, but the love is still very much palpable. I love that he thinks the things that makes Superman so wonderful to others are ridiculous - the poses, the stern face, the crossed arms. The Boy Scout routine. lol. I loved that Clark went straight for Lex after applying the potion.
Can't to see how this plays out.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Lex truly wondered why the right-wingers aghast at a half-glimpsed nipple put up with the barrage of images of a superhero who might as well be wearing only body paint. A picture of Superman could be used to label the muscles of the (in)human body.
and
The liquid inside was so fluorescently blue that it wouldn't have looked out of place on a Miami Vice set. Lex wondered whether he ought to have put it in a nicer decanter. He liked the security of a metal screw-top, though. And the mad-scientist panache was undeniable.
Also, Clark hopped up on manufactured pheremones is pretty much the hottest thing ever. GUH.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Instead, he waited for Clark to reach for the glass. When motor control was verified, Lex limped back to his desk and, as Clark took sloshing sips of water, wrote out a note explaining how to open the glass wall for easy exit. He didn’t sign it – even imagining what sort of salutation he might use was enough to make him want to grin, which meant wanting to throw up again.
I think it's that little macabre bit of amusement at himself that gets me.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Your Lex is marvellous. I lol'd when he said: "It is not dangerous to anything except your precious composure." So long-suffering!
Also, the sex is HOT.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
my favorite moment was clark looking at his hand like it was newly grown. oooh.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Your uncanny ability to get inside Lex's head has convinced me that I'll wake up one day to find that you've taken over the world. Not that I'd complain -- and there is a presidential election coming up....
I am amusing myself by trying to predict where this story is going -- for the sheer pleasure of being proven wrong later.
So good!
From:
no subject
I love Lex so much. I don't think I have his ambitions, and I certainly lack his money. But I have fun imagining.
(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From: (Anonymous)
*melts*
I can't wait to read the next part, but I'm THRILLED beyond expressing to see you writing CLex again.
Wonderful premise and opening scene. Brilliant descriptions -- especially of the blue on Clark's face.
I feel so spoiled tonight. I didn't expect to find this.
Btw, this is Devin_Chain. So sorry for the anonymous post.
From:
Re: *melts*
From:
no subject
Phosita is so a good an idea Lex could think of, that I should have known it would turn out to be this bad. And if you named the Kryptonian Viagra after this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_having_ordinary_skill_in_the_art), then you officially won the internets!
From:
no subject
And that is in fact the source of Phosita's name.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
From:
no subject