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III. Limited Times
"Our deep-space sensors have picked something up beyond the Kuiper Belt," Rohit said.
Lex leaned forward.
"It's moving fast, headed into the system. With a few course corrections, it could impact on Earth, or the moon within three months."
"Course corrections?" Lex asked.
"From our readings --" Rohit hesitated, as if he didn't expect to be believed. He wasn’t local. “It's already made two."
"Is it one object or many? And do you have a size estimate?"
Rohit blinked. "Ah, we've only detected one body. It is very hard to say because of disagreements between our instruments – but the object could be big enough to cause an extinction-level event if it hit Earth, or to change the orbit of the moon."
Well, then. "Keep me informed as soon as you get any additional information, no matter how minor. I want daily updates, and I want you to send me all the conflicting readings. Is it
emitting any detectable signals?"
Rohit shook his head. "I’ll send you everything, Mr. Luthor. But should we alert the Justice League?"
Lex smiled and stood, bringing Rohit to his feet in reflexive, nervous politeness. "I'll take care of that should it become necessary," he said. "You've done a fine job. Please share my compliments with your team."
Rohit nodded vigorously and fled.
****
Lex put the empty tumbler down on the glass table. He wondered, not for the first time, whether he should stop drinking. It wasn't that his judgment was impaired or his liver imperiled – both were secure against alcohol's harms – but he did worry about public perception. He wasn't macho enough to pull off "hard-drinking." So when it came out, as it inevitably would, that Lex Luthor drank like a camel after ten days in the desert, he'd have a PR problem even Lakshmi, consummate publicist that she was, would have difficulty defusing.
He'd almost made the decision to shut his liquor cabinet for good when the security panel beeped and he hit the control to open the wall. Lex meant to keep looking at his laptop on the coffee table as if it were more important, but he found himself staring up at Clark, an even greater height gap than usual between them with Lex sitting on his low-slung couch.
Clark's eyes were dark, his brows lowered, his fists clenched as he scowled down at Lex, his lips parting as his breath came fast and uneven.
He was stunning.
Lex tried to determine what he'd done – he would have asked, but he didn't want Clark to tell yell about how he should obviously know. Clark might have found out about the dagger and the visit to the cave; the wall-entity had probably told him. It was hard to think with Clark so close, so big, primary colors searing his retinas, his whole body tight and shaking with the need to reach out –
"Get it," Clark snapped.
Lex stood, trying to keep his movements smooth. He couldn't take his eyes from Clark's face. His pulse drummed in his ears. He had forgotten how Clark was when he was furious, not just stern and disapproving. Lex refused to behave like a hypnotized snake. He forced himself to walk over to his desk, open the drawer, and press his hand to the biometric scanner. He could see Clark out of the corner of his eye, an enraged statue.
The safe hissed open, revealing his stash. Oddly, Lex found himself thinking about all his security precautions. On the one hand, no one but Clark (or those who would seduce him) could have any interest in Phosita. On the other, prospective thieves didn't know that. As a Luthor, he was a target and always would be. Security was vital even if all there was in the drawer safe was a bottle of Phosita and a pair of his father's cufflinks.
While he was contemplating his vulnerabilities, Clark had come up behind him. Clark reached into the safe and extracted the bottle, simultaneously using his other hand on Lex's back to push him down over the desk. Lex's hands flew out, barely keeping himself from breaking his nose against the reinforced metal.
He heard the crack of plastic from the bottle and hoped that Clark hadn't burst all the capsules. He wasn't looking forward to another overdose. He kept his hands on the desk, turning his head so his cheek pressed against the cold surface.
His belt buckle dug cruelly into his skin as Clark ripped belt and pants off together – the tongue scored his skin and he thought he might be bleeding. He'd been hard since he'd lifted his head to see Clark. The air was cool against his newly bared skin. His fingers twitched on the desk as he felt Clark break a capsule on the back of his neck, the liquid warming instantly against Clark's fingers.
Lex closed his eyes and bit his lip so as not to moan submission. He could feel Clark's touch moving his flesh over the knobs of his spine, not a massage and not an assault. When Clark's knees shoved his legs apart, he moved with relief. That feeling intensified when he heard Clark pull open the other desk drawer in a screech of metal, grabbing Lex's hand cream. He'd been more than a little afraid that Clark was going to fuck him dry.
Clark's hand left his neck. Lex stayed put, watching his breath fog the silvery metal of the desk. He could see his left hand, trembling slightly; he could feel his legs doing the same. The small sounds of the top of the jar unscrewing and Clark slicking himself boomed in his ears.
He was missing a meeting right now, he realized. It was a good thing he'd set up a system to ensure that he was never disturbed if the glass wall was opened until he personally emerged from the office.
He groaned when Clark pushed into him, thick as a log. "Shut up," Clark snapped. "Shut up and take it." Hurriedly, Lex shoved his wrist into his mouth.
“I should be working on a story now,” Clark said conversationally, though Lex was quite sure it would be a mistake to respond. His voice was steady while his hips pumped against Lex’s ass. “I should be doing cleanup in Miami, or firefighting in Jakarta. I should be talking to a witness or planning with the League or anything that isn’t this.” Lex was grateful Clark hadn’t mentioned his mother, since Lex wasn’t sure even he could have dealt with that during sex.
This wasn’t the plan, Lex thought. He was staring at a paperweight one of his suppliers had given him, a glass globe made to look like the Earth. From centimeters away, the exquisite detail was apparent – Lex was looking at the Great Wall of China.
Clark was still muttering, though Lex could no longer make out the words. His thrusts were sloppier, unpredictable, each one a hit of ecstasy that made Lex’s whole body jolt.
One final push drove him forward, his feet leaving the ground. His forehead collided painfully with the paperweight, which rolled off the desk. The sound it made was masked by Clark’s yell of orgasm.
Lex lay on the desk, panting, a little dazed, still very much aroused. Clark didn’t sound any more collected than Lex, his breathing as ragged as if he really were struggling for oxygen.
Clark pulled out and Lex immediately pushed himself over, heedless of the prospectuses he was mangling, so that Clark would see that he was still waiting for his happy ending.
Clark’s eyes obligingly swept over Lex’s body.
He used more of the hand cream, slicking his fingers before wrapping them around Lex’s cock, jerking him off with a steady rhythm that included a pulse of Clark’s thumb that felt fantastic. Clark looked over at the now-devastated jar of hand cream. “I bet that’s expensive,” he said in the old sneering tone.
“It costs a thousand dollars a jar,” Lex said, making it up just to see what would happen. He had no real theory about what was on Clark’s mind, and it was liberating to just observe without speculating.
“So am I worth a thousand-dollar fuck?” Clark’s tone was challenging, and his hand was viciously effective, but Lex still couldn’t help it: He burst into laughter, hard enough that his cock slid free of Clark’s grip. He curled into a ball on the desk, his stomach hurting, unable to stop.
“What?” Clark demanded, several times. His brows furrowed, his face darkened like a tornado sky, and Lex just kept laughing.
After at least a full minute, he managed enough control to start talking, which was good given that Clark looked ready to punch a hole in the wall. “Heh – conservatively speaking, you’re a three-hundred-million-dollar fuck.” That wasn’t even counting the opportunity costs of labs and personnel working on Phosita instead of human pharmaceuticals.
Clark looked confused, then embarrassed.
Lex laughed again, relaxed in a way he hadn't been in years. He shook his head, indulging himself and Clark, just like the old days. "The things that matter to you never cease to amaze me."
Clark looked at him sharply, perhaps searching for some mockery. There was none. Lex looked up at Clark, still looming over him, and was struck anew by how open Clark seemed, how vulnerable to others' unkindnesses, as if his impenetrable skin were compensated for with a defenseless ego.
They were locked into a weird gaze, not quite a staring contest. Lex imagined that Clark was wondering what made him tick, and thought that 'the bomb my father planted in me' would be an unfortunate answer, not least because Clark wouldn't be crazy to take him literally.
At last, Clark looked down and laughed a little. "Okay. I guess that was bad sex. I never really... got that far with other people when I was … myself." His expression was almost flirtatious, his eyelashes hiding all but a flash of green-blue eyes.
Lex smiled predatorily and enjoyed watching Clark's pupils dilate. "What makes you think we're done? Admittedly the ride's been bumpy, but it's not bad sex unless you leave wanting to forget it ever happened."
"So, uh," Clark said and planted his hands on either side of Lex, leaning in close, "what did you have in mind?"
Lex showed him.
****
The calculations had been performed, the simulations run again and again. He’d even gone back to the caves, though the Kryptonian machine there professed that its predictive power was no better than LuthorCorp’s most sophisticated models. All agreed: the range of likely outcomes from reforming the polar ice and reseeding the major ocean currents was far better for humanity than the range of likely outcomes under nonintervention scenarios. With all that human technology could do, even assuming a political will that had yet to materialize, Lex’s models showed a sustainable human population under two billion – and that was assuming that the dying accepted their fate without invading or nuking the potential survivors.
Yes, there was a chance that the best of humanity would survive if Lex restricted himself to conventional means. The escalating crises might even call forth noble and creative impulses. Those who made it through the crucible of the next decade would be strong – people his father would admire, people Lex might admire. Maybe the only people worthy of being saved were those who wouldn’t need saving.
But that was just evolution in action – mindless, uncaring, unconnected to anything beyond immediate survival. Lex remembered all the people in Smallville who’d been affected by meteor rocks. They were just like people elsewhere, only they’d drawn the wild card and it usually killed them. If the higher mind was for anything, it was for defying evolution, saving what nature on her own would cast aside. Fixing the broken legs, curing the heart conditions even when a woman had passed her prime reproductive years. Survival was evidence of survival, not of any other kind of merit.
Lex wasn’t about to let the natural results of other people’s mistakes destroy his world. Also, the world would owe him if he pulled this off.
That meant getting Clark to help, without letting Clark know he was helping, given that Clark would never go along with any of Lex’s grand plans, because they were grand and because they were Lex’s. An attempt to revise their deal would only make Clark suspicious. Clark had to believe it was his idea to bring Lex to the Fortress, and he had to leave Lex alone there for a few minutes.
It was a puzzle. And every day, while Lex worked on it, new storms rose like ghosts from the waters, and new deserts took bites out of once-fertile land.
****
The object hurtled closer. Deep-space sensors were limited; when Lex was running things, the defensive perimeter was going to be a hell of a lot further out than it was at present. For now he had to make do with a few LuthorCorp probes and hacked NASA data.
The mass could roughly be described as a planetoid. It seemed to be a remnant of a larger body, one that had come from deep space. Spectrum analysis suggested an exotic composition, including a concentration of metals on one part of the surface. It hadn’t made any further course corrections, but it was still on track to intersect with Earth’s orbit and possibly (probably, if Lex was being serious) with Earth itself.
The League would notice it soon, which might well be a good idea, but Lex needed to know for himself, and the League would just break it apart and hide the evidence from humanity.
At four weeks out, the planetoid changed direction again. Just a few degrees, just enough to increase the likelihood that it would hit Earth by another ten percent.
How did it know what to do? Rohit and his team still couldn’t detect any signals emanating from the thing.
Staring at the enhanced but still blurry images, electronic signals translated into black and white images, Lex looked for patterns on the shadings of the surface. There was a formation like the LuthorCorp L; there was a version of Superman’s symbol. There was something that could have been a smiley face, or a Hebrew letter.
Or a Martian canal, for all the good that imagination did.
The object was coming to Earth, but it wasn’t talking to Earth.
If the mountain won’t go to Mohammed –
He was on the phone instantly. “Rohit,” he said, though the voice on the other end was confused with sleep. “It’s not sending any signals, but what if it’s receiving them? Your team will have access to records of global signal traffic within the hour; start analyzing to see whether anything can be associated with the course corrections observed to date.”
In five hours, he had an answer.
And a location.
****
Later that week, Lex went to a fundraiser with a young woman of impeccable breeding and carriage, a rising star at the DA’s office. She was an ideal companion, photogenic and witty without showing any inclination to do more than sparkle by his side in public. He drove her home himself, and didn’t worry when she didn’t invite him up for coffee. She had a trial starting the next morning, and he respected ambition.
Clark came by the next night, glowering even more than usual. Lex figured it had something to do with the oncoming meteor-type object, until Clark folded his arms and glared at him. Pop quiz: What have I done this time? Lex wondered, and stood so that they could do this part of the dance.
“I’ll kill anyone you touch,” Clark said.
Lex was almost sure that a sane person would regard that as disturbing. Clark was staring at him, awaiting a response – a challenge.
“Yes,” Lex said and stepped close, so near that he could feel the heat Clark’s Kryptonian uniform couldn’t contain, the sun’s energy condensed and refined through alien skin.
Later, after they’d gotten up from the sweaty slippery pile of clothes they’d made – the cape was surprisingly comfortable to lie on – Lex wondered whether he should have told Clark it was the same with him. But then Clark might not have taken threats against potential lovers (Lois) as a confession of true emotion. He’d probably see it as Lex marking his territory, and too much like Lex’s breaches of ethics in other areas.
In any event, he thought as he drank a glass of water and watched Clark get dressed, he could hardly be sure what Clark meant. Was his apparent jealousy another biological impulse spurred by extended exposure to Phosita?
Not that it mattered why Clark would assert his dominion, or how Lex felt about it.
Lex’s own lab work suggested that his body was undergoing new cellular changes down to the DNA level. Lex’s treacherous body was no more able to resist Clark than his unruly mind.
The less scary explanation was Phosita; the more involved exposure to Clark himself, as if Clark’s physiology might be convincing Lex’s body to deviate further from human standard. If so, and if Clark ever went to bed with a fertile woman – well, Lex might live long enough to see a very different world.
He hoped to do so regardless.
****
What Rohit called the BFR (big fucking rock) got closer. Even though his people hadn’t cracked the communications signal yet Lex had a pretty good guess as to who was calling the thing towards Earth. It didn’t seem likely that a second alien race would have started its project of world domination in Smallville. He was almost ready to make his move, but that didn’t mean that he could ignore his other responsibilities.
"If I'm going to continue climate remediation on this scale, Senator, LuthorCorp needs protection from private lawsuits. Each project is bet-the-company, and I've got over one hundred and fifty going. We fend off lawsuits every day, but one day one is going to stick, and the costs will destroy our ability to continue the successful ones as well as our willingness to innovate."
"My constituents don't think much of this global warming business," Senator Macklin said, smiling as if to point out that he knew the truth even if the benighted souls who elected him didn't. "They tend to think all these storms and disasters are God's way of punishing sinners."
This was easy. "But those constituents also don't think much of trial lawyers," Lex pointed out. "Protection against lawsuits from bitter losers who hate to see a big company succeed is a good idea even if it's God who's putting these challenges in front of us and not a hundred years of overconsumption and waste. LuthorCorp is making products people want to buy and exercising dominion over the earth just as it's supposed to. Economic security is national security, so protecting LuthorCorp from lawsuits is in the national interest."
Lex wondered if anyone in the room really believed this. Maybe some of the aides; they were young. It would be so much easier when he could do this from inside the institution – there would still be votes to corral, but he’d have much more leverage. Instead, he was stuck giving this damned spiel again and again, varying only the amounts of environmentalism and populism.
"Our proposal requires new climate remediation technologies to be submitted to the appropriate federal agencies for safety evaluation. If the agency doesn't say no within thirty days, use of the technology can proceed, without fear of catastrophic liability." Lex was proud of this, not least because the submission requirements would be complicated and expensive enough that upstart companies would have trouble meeting them without partnering with a bigger player like LuthorCorp.
The Senator looked down at his notes. Reading them upside down, Lex could see that the most prominent figure was one the Senator had doodled himself, since it hadn't been mentioned in this meeting – it was the amount of money LuthorCorp had spent in Washington over the past year. There were over twenty countries who were members of the U.N. who didn't see that amount in GDP.
"I admit, you make a strong case. We'll see what we can do."
If this didn't work out, Lex's lobbyists were reasonably confident they could get the FDA to issue a rule that would amount to much the same thing, but it would only cover chemical and biological agents. They didn’t and couldn’t know that he needed more than that.
****
“How did you figure it out?” Clark asked him, lying back in Lex’s bed easily, as if it were long-established habit.
“Accumulation of evidence over time,” Lex said, “overwhelming the false leads and obfuscations you and my father put in my way.”
Clark looked confused, his brows drawing together with the old aggrieved petulance Lex so despised. Then his expression cleared and he shook his head. “No, I don’t mean how you figured out that – what I was. I mean how you figured out what a, a Kryptonian needed.”
“Ah.” Lex wondered how much Clark really wanted to know. “In part it was translating inscriptions left from various visits, which occasionally referred to the need for ‘like to awaken like,’ by which I understood that Kryptonians could slum with the locals, but only after some sort of same-species triggering event. In part it was analyzing biological materials, yours and those of the alien worms from the Kawatche caves, which also need exposure to each other to reach sexual maturity.” The translations had also been evidence that Kryptonians had been contemplating colonization for a while – averted only by the inconvenient explosion of their planet – but Clark didn’t need to know that, if he wasn’t already aware.
The real trick had been creating Phosita itself, since Lex’s usual tactic of adding Kryptonite to a reaction to improve it would have been counterproductive, to say the least.
Clark looked somewhat offended to be compared to an insect-analogue, but he didn’t complain. Instead, he stretched his arms up and closed his eyes, turning his head from side to side as he settled more firmly into the pillow.
Years ago, Lex would have considered himself entitled to an answer for an answer. At least, he would have tried to find out Clark’s present thoughts on their deal. But what was the point of asking anything, other than to hear the latest offended lie? Better to proceed as they were.
Superman would get a call sometime during the night – there was always another flood or fire, and Clark was the ultimate pinch hitter when local heroes wore out – but for now he was here, between Lex’s sheets, the scent of sex and Phosita heavy in the room.
Moments like this, Lex half expected to wake up back in Belle Reve.
****
In the end, the law was given a stupid name -- Climate Education and Research Success Keeping Industry Excellence Strong, or CLEAR SKIES – and passed by a voice vote. Lex's researchers submitted their technology lists to the feds, mostly the FDA, on a regular basis. He did get a call from the chair of the FCC asking about the list they'd received, and explained that, because these technologies used electrical signals, some of which might cause electromagnetic interference of the type the FCC regulated, LuthorCorp had determined that the FCC was the appropriate agency for CLEAR SKIES submission.
"Of course, Lex," Chairman Fennell said, as familiarly as if they really knew each other. "I just wanted to let you know I'm having my technical people take a look at the list, but I don't imagine there will be a problem."
Lex didn't either, since almost everything on the list was basic technology, unlikely to be dangerous or helpful in any way.
"There's just one thing," the chairman continued. "Climate moderation technology using knowledge retrieved from the Southwest Kansa Archeaological site? What is that, a computerized rain dance?"
The Kansa once had many dances, but Lex wasn't aware of a rain dance. "I try to encourage creativity in my researchers," Lex said. "We don't dismiss anything out of hand."
The chairman laughed. "Well, you're the one who's going to have some explaining to do to your shareholders if this gets out."
"I'm willing to take that chance," he said, putting as much relaxed confidence into his voice as he could. Let the chairman think it was a joke, a triviality, something like studying the medicinal uses of geese on behalf of goose-raising constituents.
They chatted for a few more minutes about media consolidation in the midwest, and then Fennell had to go to a meeting. Lex leaned back in his chair, ignoring the day's schedule printed out in front of him, and folded his hands together in thought.
No one was going to stop him from doing this, not unless he told Clark. It was all up to him.
"Our deep-space sensors have picked something up beyond the Kuiper Belt," Rohit said.
Lex leaned forward.
"It's moving fast, headed into the system. With a few course corrections, it could impact on Earth, or the moon within three months."
"Course corrections?" Lex asked.
"From our readings --" Rohit hesitated, as if he didn't expect to be believed. He wasn’t local. “It's already made two."
"Is it one object or many? And do you have a size estimate?"
Rohit blinked. "Ah, we've only detected one body. It is very hard to say because of disagreements between our instruments – but the object could be big enough to cause an extinction-level event if it hit Earth, or to change the orbit of the moon."
Well, then. "Keep me informed as soon as you get any additional information, no matter how minor. I want daily updates, and I want you to send me all the conflicting readings. Is it
emitting any detectable signals?"
Rohit shook his head. "I’ll send you everything, Mr. Luthor. But should we alert the Justice League?"
Lex smiled and stood, bringing Rohit to his feet in reflexive, nervous politeness. "I'll take care of that should it become necessary," he said. "You've done a fine job. Please share my compliments with your team."
Rohit nodded vigorously and fled.
****
Lex put the empty tumbler down on the glass table. He wondered, not for the first time, whether he should stop drinking. It wasn't that his judgment was impaired or his liver imperiled – both were secure against alcohol's harms – but he did worry about public perception. He wasn't macho enough to pull off "hard-drinking." So when it came out, as it inevitably would, that Lex Luthor drank like a camel after ten days in the desert, he'd have a PR problem even Lakshmi, consummate publicist that she was, would have difficulty defusing.
He'd almost made the decision to shut his liquor cabinet for good when the security panel beeped and he hit the control to open the wall. Lex meant to keep looking at his laptop on the coffee table as if it were more important, but he found himself staring up at Clark, an even greater height gap than usual between them with Lex sitting on his low-slung couch.
Clark's eyes were dark, his brows lowered, his fists clenched as he scowled down at Lex, his lips parting as his breath came fast and uneven.
He was stunning.
Lex tried to determine what he'd done – he would have asked, but he didn't want Clark to tell yell about how he should obviously know. Clark might have found out about the dagger and the visit to the cave; the wall-entity had probably told him. It was hard to think with Clark so close, so big, primary colors searing his retinas, his whole body tight and shaking with the need to reach out –
"Get it," Clark snapped.
Lex stood, trying to keep his movements smooth. He couldn't take his eyes from Clark's face. His pulse drummed in his ears. He had forgotten how Clark was when he was furious, not just stern and disapproving. Lex refused to behave like a hypnotized snake. He forced himself to walk over to his desk, open the drawer, and press his hand to the biometric scanner. He could see Clark out of the corner of his eye, an enraged statue.
The safe hissed open, revealing his stash. Oddly, Lex found himself thinking about all his security precautions. On the one hand, no one but Clark (or those who would seduce him) could have any interest in Phosita. On the other, prospective thieves didn't know that. As a Luthor, he was a target and always would be. Security was vital even if all there was in the drawer safe was a bottle of Phosita and a pair of his father's cufflinks.
While he was contemplating his vulnerabilities, Clark had come up behind him. Clark reached into the safe and extracted the bottle, simultaneously using his other hand on Lex's back to push him down over the desk. Lex's hands flew out, barely keeping himself from breaking his nose against the reinforced metal.
He heard the crack of plastic from the bottle and hoped that Clark hadn't burst all the capsules. He wasn't looking forward to another overdose. He kept his hands on the desk, turning his head so his cheek pressed against the cold surface.
His belt buckle dug cruelly into his skin as Clark ripped belt and pants off together – the tongue scored his skin and he thought he might be bleeding. He'd been hard since he'd lifted his head to see Clark. The air was cool against his newly bared skin. His fingers twitched on the desk as he felt Clark break a capsule on the back of his neck, the liquid warming instantly against Clark's fingers.
Lex closed his eyes and bit his lip so as not to moan submission. He could feel Clark's touch moving his flesh over the knobs of his spine, not a massage and not an assault. When Clark's knees shoved his legs apart, he moved with relief. That feeling intensified when he heard Clark pull open the other desk drawer in a screech of metal, grabbing Lex's hand cream. He'd been more than a little afraid that Clark was going to fuck him dry.
Clark's hand left his neck. Lex stayed put, watching his breath fog the silvery metal of the desk. He could see his left hand, trembling slightly; he could feel his legs doing the same. The small sounds of the top of the jar unscrewing and Clark slicking himself boomed in his ears.
He was missing a meeting right now, he realized. It was a good thing he'd set up a system to ensure that he was never disturbed if the glass wall was opened until he personally emerged from the office.
He groaned when Clark pushed into him, thick as a log. "Shut up," Clark snapped. "Shut up and take it." Hurriedly, Lex shoved his wrist into his mouth.
“I should be working on a story now,” Clark said conversationally, though Lex was quite sure it would be a mistake to respond. His voice was steady while his hips pumped against Lex’s ass. “I should be doing cleanup in Miami, or firefighting in Jakarta. I should be talking to a witness or planning with the League or anything that isn’t this.” Lex was grateful Clark hadn’t mentioned his mother, since Lex wasn’t sure even he could have dealt with that during sex.
This wasn’t the plan, Lex thought. He was staring at a paperweight one of his suppliers had given him, a glass globe made to look like the Earth. From centimeters away, the exquisite detail was apparent – Lex was looking at the Great Wall of China.
Clark was still muttering, though Lex could no longer make out the words. His thrusts were sloppier, unpredictable, each one a hit of ecstasy that made Lex’s whole body jolt.
One final push drove him forward, his feet leaving the ground. His forehead collided painfully with the paperweight, which rolled off the desk. The sound it made was masked by Clark’s yell of orgasm.
Lex lay on the desk, panting, a little dazed, still very much aroused. Clark didn’t sound any more collected than Lex, his breathing as ragged as if he really were struggling for oxygen.
Clark pulled out and Lex immediately pushed himself over, heedless of the prospectuses he was mangling, so that Clark would see that he was still waiting for his happy ending.
Clark’s eyes obligingly swept over Lex’s body.
He used more of the hand cream, slicking his fingers before wrapping them around Lex’s cock, jerking him off with a steady rhythm that included a pulse of Clark’s thumb that felt fantastic. Clark looked over at the now-devastated jar of hand cream. “I bet that’s expensive,” he said in the old sneering tone.
“It costs a thousand dollars a jar,” Lex said, making it up just to see what would happen. He had no real theory about what was on Clark’s mind, and it was liberating to just observe without speculating.
“So am I worth a thousand-dollar fuck?” Clark’s tone was challenging, and his hand was viciously effective, but Lex still couldn’t help it: He burst into laughter, hard enough that his cock slid free of Clark’s grip. He curled into a ball on the desk, his stomach hurting, unable to stop.
“What?” Clark demanded, several times. His brows furrowed, his face darkened like a tornado sky, and Lex just kept laughing.
After at least a full minute, he managed enough control to start talking, which was good given that Clark looked ready to punch a hole in the wall. “Heh – conservatively speaking, you’re a three-hundred-million-dollar fuck.” That wasn’t even counting the opportunity costs of labs and personnel working on Phosita instead of human pharmaceuticals.
Clark looked confused, then embarrassed.
Lex laughed again, relaxed in a way he hadn't been in years. He shook his head, indulging himself and Clark, just like the old days. "The things that matter to you never cease to amaze me."
Clark looked at him sharply, perhaps searching for some mockery. There was none. Lex looked up at Clark, still looming over him, and was struck anew by how open Clark seemed, how vulnerable to others' unkindnesses, as if his impenetrable skin were compensated for with a defenseless ego.
They were locked into a weird gaze, not quite a staring contest. Lex imagined that Clark was wondering what made him tick, and thought that 'the bomb my father planted in me' would be an unfortunate answer, not least because Clark wouldn't be crazy to take him literally.
At last, Clark looked down and laughed a little. "Okay. I guess that was bad sex. I never really... got that far with other people when I was … myself." His expression was almost flirtatious, his eyelashes hiding all but a flash of green-blue eyes.
Lex smiled predatorily and enjoyed watching Clark's pupils dilate. "What makes you think we're done? Admittedly the ride's been bumpy, but it's not bad sex unless you leave wanting to forget it ever happened."
"So, uh," Clark said and planted his hands on either side of Lex, leaning in close, "what did you have in mind?"
Lex showed him.
****
The calculations had been performed, the simulations run again and again. He’d even gone back to the caves, though the Kryptonian machine there professed that its predictive power was no better than LuthorCorp’s most sophisticated models. All agreed: the range of likely outcomes from reforming the polar ice and reseeding the major ocean currents was far better for humanity than the range of likely outcomes under nonintervention scenarios. With all that human technology could do, even assuming a political will that had yet to materialize, Lex’s models showed a sustainable human population under two billion – and that was assuming that the dying accepted their fate without invading or nuking the potential survivors.
Yes, there was a chance that the best of humanity would survive if Lex restricted himself to conventional means. The escalating crises might even call forth noble and creative impulses. Those who made it through the crucible of the next decade would be strong – people his father would admire, people Lex might admire. Maybe the only people worthy of being saved were those who wouldn’t need saving.
But that was just evolution in action – mindless, uncaring, unconnected to anything beyond immediate survival. Lex remembered all the people in Smallville who’d been affected by meteor rocks. They were just like people elsewhere, only they’d drawn the wild card and it usually killed them. If the higher mind was for anything, it was for defying evolution, saving what nature on her own would cast aside. Fixing the broken legs, curing the heart conditions even when a woman had passed her prime reproductive years. Survival was evidence of survival, not of any other kind of merit.
Lex wasn’t about to let the natural results of other people’s mistakes destroy his world. Also, the world would owe him if he pulled this off.
That meant getting Clark to help, without letting Clark know he was helping, given that Clark would never go along with any of Lex’s grand plans, because they were grand and because they were Lex’s. An attempt to revise their deal would only make Clark suspicious. Clark had to believe it was his idea to bring Lex to the Fortress, and he had to leave Lex alone there for a few minutes.
It was a puzzle. And every day, while Lex worked on it, new storms rose like ghosts from the waters, and new deserts took bites out of once-fertile land.
****
The object hurtled closer. Deep-space sensors were limited; when Lex was running things, the defensive perimeter was going to be a hell of a lot further out than it was at present. For now he had to make do with a few LuthorCorp probes and hacked NASA data.
The mass could roughly be described as a planetoid. It seemed to be a remnant of a larger body, one that had come from deep space. Spectrum analysis suggested an exotic composition, including a concentration of metals on one part of the surface. It hadn’t made any further course corrections, but it was still on track to intersect with Earth’s orbit and possibly (probably, if Lex was being serious) with Earth itself.
The League would notice it soon, which might well be a good idea, but Lex needed to know for himself, and the League would just break it apart and hide the evidence from humanity.
At four weeks out, the planetoid changed direction again. Just a few degrees, just enough to increase the likelihood that it would hit Earth by another ten percent.
How did it know what to do? Rohit and his team still couldn’t detect any signals emanating from the thing.
Staring at the enhanced but still blurry images, electronic signals translated into black and white images, Lex looked for patterns on the shadings of the surface. There was a formation like the LuthorCorp L; there was a version of Superman’s symbol. There was something that could have been a smiley face, or a Hebrew letter.
Or a Martian canal, for all the good that imagination did.
The object was coming to Earth, but it wasn’t talking to Earth.
If the mountain won’t go to Mohammed –
He was on the phone instantly. “Rohit,” he said, though the voice on the other end was confused with sleep. “It’s not sending any signals, but what if it’s receiving them? Your team will have access to records of global signal traffic within the hour; start analyzing to see whether anything can be associated with the course corrections observed to date.”
In five hours, he had an answer.
And a location.
****
Later that week, Lex went to a fundraiser with a young woman of impeccable breeding and carriage, a rising star at the DA’s office. She was an ideal companion, photogenic and witty without showing any inclination to do more than sparkle by his side in public. He drove her home himself, and didn’t worry when she didn’t invite him up for coffee. She had a trial starting the next morning, and he respected ambition.
Clark came by the next night, glowering even more than usual. Lex figured it had something to do with the oncoming meteor-type object, until Clark folded his arms and glared at him. Pop quiz: What have I done this time? Lex wondered, and stood so that they could do this part of the dance.
“I’ll kill anyone you touch,” Clark said.
Lex was almost sure that a sane person would regard that as disturbing. Clark was staring at him, awaiting a response – a challenge.
“Yes,” Lex said and stepped close, so near that he could feel the heat Clark’s Kryptonian uniform couldn’t contain, the sun’s energy condensed and refined through alien skin.
Later, after they’d gotten up from the sweaty slippery pile of clothes they’d made – the cape was surprisingly comfortable to lie on – Lex wondered whether he should have told Clark it was the same with him. But then Clark might not have taken threats against potential lovers (Lois) as a confession of true emotion. He’d probably see it as Lex marking his territory, and too much like Lex’s breaches of ethics in other areas.
In any event, he thought as he drank a glass of water and watched Clark get dressed, he could hardly be sure what Clark meant. Was his apparent jealousy another biological impulse spurred by extended exposure to Phosita?
Not that it mattered why Clark would assert his dominion, or how Lex felt about it.
Lex’s own lab work suggested that his body was undergoing new cellular changes down to the DNA level. Lex’s treacherous body was no more able to resist Clark than his unruly mind.
The less scary explanation was Phosita; the more involved exposure to Clark himself, as if Clark’s physiology might be convincing Lex’s body to deviate further from human standard. If so, and if Clark ever went to bed with a fertile woman – well, Lex might live long enough to see a very different world.
He hoped to do so regardless.
****
What Rohit called the BFR (big fucking rock) got closer. Even though his people hadn’t cracked the communications signal yet Lex had a pretty good guess as to who was calling the thing towards Earth. It didn’t seem likely that a second alien race would have started its project of world domination in Smallville. He was almost ready to make his move, but that didn’t mean that he could ignore his other responsibilities.
"If I'm going to continue climate remediation on this scale, Senator, LuthorCorp needs protection from private lawsuits. Each project is bet-the-company, and I've got over one hundred and fifty going. We fend off lawsuits every day, but one day one is going to stick, and the costs will destroy our ability to continue the successful ones as well as our willingness to innovate."
"My constituents don't think much of this global warming business," Senator Macklin said, smiling as if to point out that he knew the truth even if the benighted souls who elected him didn't. "They tend to think all these storms and disasters are God's way of punishing sinners."
This was easy. "But those constituents also don't think much of trial lawyers," Lex pointed out. "Protection against lawsuits from bitter losers who hate to see a big company succeed is a good idea even if it's God who's putting these challenges in front of us and not a hundred years of overconsumption and waste. LuthorCorp is making products people want to buy and exercising dominion over the earth just as it's supposed to. Economic security is national security, so protecting LuthorCorp from lawsuits is in the national interest."
Lex wondered if anyone in the room really believed this. Maybe some of the aides; they were young. It would be so much easier when he could do this from inside the institution – there would still be votes to corral, but he’d have much more leverage. Instead, he was stuck giving this damned spiel again and again, varying only the amounts of environmentalism and populism.
"Our proposal requires new climate remediation technologies to be submitted to the appropriate federal agencies for safety evaluation. If the agency doesn't say no within thirty days, use of the technology can proceed, without fear of catastrophic liability." Lex was proud of this, not least because the submission requirements would be complicated and expensive enough that upstart companies would have trouble meeting them without partnering with a bigger player like LuthorCorp.
The Senator looked down at his notes. Reading them upside down, Lex could see that the most prominent figure was one the Senator had doodled himself, since it hadn't been mentioned in this meeting – it was the amount of money LuthorCorp had spent in Washington over the past year. There were over twenty countries who were members of the U.N. who didn't see that amount in GDP.
"I admit, you make a strong case. We'll see what we can do."
If this didn't work out, Lex's lobbyists were reasonably confident they could get the FDA to issue a rule that would amount to much the same thing, but it would only cover chemical and biological agents. They didn’t and couldn’t know that he needed more than that.
****
“How did you figure it out?” Clark asked him, lying back in Lex’s bed easily, as if it were long-established habit.
“Accumulation of evidence over time,” Lex said, “overwhelming the false leads and obfuscations you and my father put in my way.”
Clark looked confused, his brows drawing together with the old aggrieved petulance Lex so despised. Then his expression cleared and he shook his head. “No, I don’t mean how you figured out that – what I was. I mean how you figured out what a, a Kryptonian needed.”
“Ah.” Lex wondered how much Clark really wanted to know. “In part it was translating inscriptions left from various visits, which occasionally referred to the need for ‘like to awaken like,’ by which I understood that Kryptonians could slum with the locals, but only after some sort of same-species triggering event. In part it was analyzing biological materials, yours and those of the alien worms from the Kawatche caves, which also need exposure to each other to reach sexual maturity.” The translations had also been evidence that Kryptonians had been contemplating colonization for a while – averted only by the inconvenient explosion of their planet – but Clark didn’t need to know that, if he wasn’t already aware.
The real trick had been creating Phosita itself, since Lex’s usual tactic of adding Kryptonite to a reaction to improve it would have been counterproductive, to say the least.
Clark looked somewhat offended to be compared to an insect-analogue, but he didn’t complain. Instead, he stretched his arms up and closed his eyes, turning his head from side to side as he settled more firmly into the pillow.
Years ago, Lex would have considered himself entitled to an answer for an answer. At least, he would have tried to find out Clark’s present thoughts on their deal. But what was the point of asking anything, other than to hear the latest offended lie? Better to proceed as they were.
Superman would get a call sometime during the night – there was always another flood or fire, and Clark was the ultimate pinch hitter when local heroes wore out – but for now he was here, between Lex’s sheets, the scent of sex and Phosita heavy in the room.
Moments like this, Lex half expected to wake up back in Belle Reve.
****
In the end, the law was given a stupid name -- Climate Education and Research Success Keeping Industry Excellence Strong, or CLEAR SKIES – and passed by a voice vote. Lex's researchers submitted their technology lists to the feds, mostly the FDA, on a regular basis. He did get a call from the chair of the FCC asking about the list they'd received, and explained that, because these technologies used electrical signals, some of which might cause electromagnetic interference of the type the FCC regulated, LuthorCorp had determined that the FCC was the appropriate agency for CLEAR SKIES submission.
"Of course, Lex," Chairman Fennell said, as familiarly as if they really knew each other. "I just wanted to let you know I'm having my technical people take a look at the list, but I don't imagine there will be a problem."
Lex didn't either, since almost everything on the list was basic technology, unlikely to be dangerous or helpful in any way.
"There's just one thing," the chairman continued. "Climate moderation technology using knowledge retrieved from the Southwest Kansa Archeaological site? What is that, a computerized rain dance?"
The Kansa once had many dances, but Lex wasn't aware of a rain dance. "I try to encourage creativity in my researchers," Lex said. "We don't dismiss anything out of hand."
The chairman laughed. "Well, you're the one who's going to have some explaining to do to your shareholders if this gets out."
"I'm willing to take that chance," he said, putting as much relaxed confidence into his voice as he could. Let the chairman think it was a joke, a triviality, something like studying the medicinal uses of geese on behalf of goose-raising constituents.
They chatted for a few more minutes about media consolidation in the midwest, and then Fennell had to go to a meeting. Lex leaned back in his chair, ignoring the day's schedule printed out in front of him, and folded his hands together in thought.
No one was going to stop him from doing this, not unless he told Clark. It was all up to him.
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I really loved this segment, btw: f the higher mind was for anything, it was for defying evolution, saving what nature on her own would cast aside. Fixing the broken legs, curing the heart conditions even when a woman had passed her prime reproductive years. Survival was evidence of survival, not of any other kind of merit. Lex wasn’t about to let the natural results of other people’s mistakes destroy his world. Also, the world would owe him if he pulled this off.
And this part may have temporarily whited out my brain: “I’ll kill anyone you touch,” Clark said.
Lex was almost sure that a sane person would regard that as disturbing. Probably a sane reader should regard that as disturbing too, rather than the hottest thing EVER, so, umm, I'll just excuse myself by saying you're just so brilliant at sucking the reader into Lex's POV that we can't help be carried along by Lex's desires here.
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It's the "almost" that gets me. Yes, Lex, I'm so glad you are theoretically aware of how a sane person would reason and react, though not with 100% certaintly.
Love the direction this chapter is heading towards; Clark is coming around. So far we've been so far in Lex's mind and planning, and all Clark has contributed are some opaque demonstrations of lust. But we've finally broken some through to some genuine emotion on Clark's part, though I find him still inscrutable.
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I think I said this elsewhere -- Lex has a blind spot the size of Saturn's eye when it comes to Clark. He's not that helpful a narrator in that way!
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I am really liking this story!
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Your writing of the combination of Lex thinking politics and economics and science and superhero tactics (with angsty mentions of his mental health and his father) reminded me to be immensely grateful for the SV fandom's gift of inducing brain orgasms. XD
And you make the dilemma of fangirling Lex here almost delicious. I'm torn at admiring or despising the way and scale he contemplates and pushes at ethical boundaries.
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I thought all day about the part I read yesterday. I especially couldn't get the sex out of my head -- during the Opening Day All College Meeting. I thank you for rescuing me from another meeting-of-doom.
This fic makes me feel all the old SV feelings again. I've missed them.
Devin_Chain
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Ah, SV, I still love your concept if not your execution.
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The thought of Clark all casually sprawled out in Lex's bed makes my thoughts white out. Pretty.
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I'm pretty sure Clark casually sprawled out in Lex's bed has the same effect on Lex.
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I also really like how morally ambiguous Lex is being about his business deals, Clark and the Big Fucking Rock. It's absolutely wonderfully in character!
*waiting for tomorrow*
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"Our proposal requires new climate remediation technologies to be submitted to the appropriate federal agencies for safety evaluation. If the agency doesn't say no within thirty days, use of the technology can proceed, without fear of catastrophic liability."
You're scaring me. Amend to 90 days and vaguely-worded mandates of follow-up studies post-launch, and I think this would have a decent chance of passage.
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That line made me shiver with glee.
Another amazing chapter! I can't WAIT for tomorrow now.
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i find this whole idea absurdly hot, especially Lex's comprehension of it, his obsession translated into the physical and like attracting like. just. GUH.
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But the bits that really hit me hardest were these:
“I’ll kill anyone you touch,” Clark said.
Lex’s own lab work suggested that his body was undergoing new cellular changes down to the DNA level. Lex’s treacherous body was no more able to resist Clark than his unruly mind.
Jealous, possessive Clark is so incredibly hot (when it's Lex he's possessive of, anyway), and who could resist the concept of Lex's DNA rewriting itself to allow him to truly mate with his chosen Kryptonian? *falls over, happily dead*
Once again, an awesome chapter! *runs like zombie to read more*
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