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4.
After that, he couldn’t get Lex Luthor out of his head. If he tried, he could hear Lex’s heartbeat, anywhere in the city, like a metronome. He tracked it because he could, because he couldn’t not. He listened to Lex work out and type and go to clubs. When Lex started making extensive efforts on behalf of one Miss Yelena Petrova, he tried to tune it out, but his powers had slipped out of control just like he was a teenager again.
And when he heard gunshots go off right by Lex, he stood up without a word to Lois and rushed out.
By the time he arrived on the scene, Lex was hurrying down a poorly-lit street in the Russian section of town. Clark zipped out, grabbed him, and pulled him into an alleyway.
Lex stank of perfume and sex. Clark couldn't bear to look at him – but then he couldn't bear to look away, so his gaze jounced around as if he were watching a tennis match visible only in X-ray.
Lex looked back at him coolly, even though his pants weren’t fastened. Somehow he'd managed to get down the side of the building – his hands were scraped raw and the front of his pants were gray with dirt. Now he was waiting, Clark could only assume, for some explanation of why Clark had been standing there.
Up in the penthouse half a block away, Mr. Petrov was shouting at his tearful daughter. Apparently Lex had left her asleep on her bed, broke into her father’s study, downloaded the hard drive there – Clark scanned, and found a device concealed in Lex’s cufflinks – and exited via the exterior walls when the father unexpectedly returned home.
After a few deep breaths, Lex shook his shoulders like a horse dislodging a pesky fly. "Is there something you need, Kal?"
Not an unreasonable question.
"And is there any way we could discuss whatever it is elsewhere?" Yes, Petrov was calling on his henchgoons; they'd probably be pouring out of the building any second now. Clark sighed, picked Lex up and zipped them both back to Lex's apartment. Up close, the smell was worse, an enforced intimacy Clark hated.
When Lex was on his feet again, Clark stepped back and tried to keep his senses from overwhelming him. “We should do something for your hands,” he said, because he didn’t want Lex to play the sympathy card.
“No need,” Lex said, holding them up for inspection: they were still dirty, but the scrapes were gone.
“How did --?”
“I’m a meteor mutant,” he said easily. “It’s a not inconsiderable advantage in my job, though a bullet will still ruin my day.”
Clark stared at him.
“And no, my father doesn’t know, which is the only reason I’m not locked up in one of his labs. So maybe I had other reasons than altruism to seek out a powerful institution that could offer me some protection from him. I hope that you’re not too disappointed in me.”
Clark should have known that the baldness wasn’t the end of it. Meteor mutation explained a lot, explained too much: from the apparently casual amorality (a flash on one of Chloe’s graphs correlating meteor exposure with sociopathic tendences) to the powerful attraction (Lana, Desiree, poor lost Alicia).
He needed to know just what Lex was. "Is there anything you won't do for a mission?"
He watched as Lex consulted his inner moral compass, which Clark would have sworn spun as freely as if it were sitting on a magnet.
"I wouldn't have anything to do with my father," Lex said at last. "But that's just because it would inevitably go bad and fail to accomplish the mission objective. You might not think that counts."
For some reason, Lex's considered response infuriated Clark. He wasn't sure what he'd hoped to hear, but he knew he hadn't liked the answer.
"So you'd kill."
Lex nodded slowly. "I have."
"An innocent?"
Lex's mouth twitched. "Not by my standards. Probably not even by yours."
"You'd lie, you'd steal, you'd betray a trust –"
"What is this about, Kal?" Lex looked up at him through fair lashes, a scrim hiding the truth from him.
"You'd seduce – that girl, she's not responsible for what her father does –"
"I really don't think fucking me was a hardship," Lex protested. Clark's hands clenched into fists, which he hid by crossing his arms over his chest.
"But you didn't want her. You just wanted inside that building. You used your body like a – a –"
"Prostitute?" Lex suggested, shrugging. "People sell their skills every day. I use mine for the greater good of the country. That girl had a price for letting me into her father's place, and I paid it."
Clark's mouth moved without any involvement from his brain. "What if that was my price?"
Lex blinked at him as he wished, desperately, for a convenient tsunami to take him away from the appalling thing he'd just said. He should say something, explain – but how could he?
He stood there, gaping like a fish, until Lex shook his head fractionally, stepped forward so that he was an arm's length away, then dropped to his knees.
And now coherent thought was out of the question, since lightning bolts plus Kryptonite had nothing on Lex Luthor, on his knees inches away from Clark's cock.
"I would never want you to be displeased with our arrangement," Lex said as Clark's brain did an excellent imitation of a virus- and spyware-laden PC, refusing to respond to any commands. "After all," Lex continued, indulging in his regrettable penchant for talking too damn much, "it's in my interest to keep you completely satisfied."
Then he put his hand on Clark's crotch, and complete mental breakdown arrived.
When perception returned, Clark was stretched out on Lex's couch and Lex was pressed against him from chest to thigh. Terminal embarrassment would have been logical, but Clark didn't have time for that. Lex was whispering in his ear, and it sounded important.
"You're going to have to help me with the costume. I don't know how to get you out of it." He shifted off Clark, going to his knees beside the couch, giving Clark some room to move.
Eventually, Clark processed this information. He would have ripped the fabric apart if only the damn AI hadn't made the uniform as near to indestructible as Kryptonian technology could get. His body felt like it was immersed in a solar flare, photons exploding against his skin like meteors in atmosphere. Desperately, he fumbled with the belt, pushing the uniform off his hips, unembarrassed when his cock sprang free only because he lacked the emotional capacity for anything but arousal at the moment.
Lex's hand touched his waist first, the cool of his skin a shock in contrast to the inferno of Clark's own body. Clark groaned as Lex dragged fingers and palm across Clark's skin, picking up traces of Clark's sweat as he went. Lex had raised himself away from Clark, enough so that Clark could watch Lex watching himself touch Clark. Lex's face was smooth, unrevealing. He could have been reviewing a briefing book instead of moving his fingers through Clark's pubic hair and around the base of his cock.
Clark's mouth fell open. His eyes wanted to droop closed, but the rest of him was too interested in watching what was happening. Lex's hand moved slowly up, almost experimentally, his eyes narrowing with interest as he reached the foreskin and watched it stretch and wrinkle under his touch. Clark clenched his fists and fought the heat vision for the first time in years.
It felt as if he was breathing in time with his heartbeat, helpless pants. Lex swiped the pad of his thumb over the red, leaking cockhead; Clark ground his teeth. He had a brief flash of how he must look – tomato-faced, chest heaving, helpless.
Swift as a hawk taking a rabbit, Lex bent and sucked Clark into his mouth. The lightning-strike of sensation made Clark groan again. He couldn't see Lex's face from this angle, only the top of his head. Lex's tongue dragged against him, pulling at his skin. Lex pulled back then took Clark deeper. Suction, contrasted then with the feel of Lex's fingers wrapped around the base of his cock. Lex's lips bumped up against his fingers; he pulled away just long enough to jack Clark once, wetting his hand, and then his mouth descended again.
All the blood in Clark's body was rushing away from his limbs.
He hadn't been with another person in – years, really. Clark Kent had never been any more willing to hook up with strangers than Superman, and once people got to know Clark Kent, or at least know his propensity for running off at inconvenient moments, they tended to lose the initial attraction. So college had been relatively lonely, and professional life had left him entirely without intimate contact.
Maybe that was why Lex's touch seemed to coat him like napalm, burning across his skin. He wanted Lex on him forever. They could fly to the Fortress – put a collar on Lex, chain him to one of the crystal pillars – he groaned out loud at the image.
Lex made a soft amused sound. Clark struggled to sit up, tearing at the top of the uniform, pulling it and the still-attached cape over his head and tossing it to the floor. Lex watched unblinkingly, his eyes traveling over Clark’s torso as if he were evaluating the terrain for a possible mission even as his mouth continued to move. Clark pulled away so that he could get the tights and boots off.
Clark was naked, hard, vulnerable in every way but the physical. Lex was fully dressed – Lex was still working, Clark realized, doing his job no less than he'd done with that poor Russian girl.
He could damn well do more to serve his country. "Take off your clothes. I want to fuck you." It was amazing how much his hard-on helped those sentences come out without stammering.
Lex looked at Clark, face betraying none of the amusement he must have been feeling. He nodded once, rising gracefully from his crouch on the floor. His hand went to his tie, tugging it loose, then casting it aside – Clark had to wonder why he'd worn a tie to seduce a mafioso's daughter; he would have stood out like a pillar of fire in the kinds of clubs she was likely to frequent. But then Lex would stand out even in a McDonald's uniform flipping burgers – Clark's line of thought terminated abruptly when Lex, seeming to sense his distraction, quickly shed his shirt, the thick expensive fabric crumpling to the floor with far less grace and fluidity than the man who'd been wearing it.
Lex unbuckled his belt. Clark watched his hands move rather than stare at his chest, almost afraid of his own reaction. Sex – with another person – with a guy who thought he was supposed to be James Bond – okay, sure, plenty of people fantasized about Superman, but sexual prowess wasn't part of his skill set like Lex's.
Focusing on the hands helped – strong, long-fingered, veins on the back like an echo of the ones elsewhere on his body. Lex dropped his trousers and stepped out of them, naked now.
Clark tood a deep breath -- smooth, flesh as perfect as God must have created Adam's – and smelled the sex from Lex's earlier dalliance.
Lex was opening his mouth to say something. Clark didn't want to know what kind of condescension his gape-jawed observation had provoked, and in any event he had other priorities. "In the shower."
Lex closed his mouth with no sign of pique. Clark found himself annoyed at Lex's ability to read him, and knew it was unfair. So now he was horny and guilty, and mad about that too. But it didn't matter so much once Lex turned around, the muscles of his ass and legs working as he walked away. Clark rose from the couch, kicking away the pieces of his uniform, and followed, caught as surely as a meteor in Earth's gravitational field.
By the time he entered the apartment-sized bathroom, Lex was already in the pebbled-glass shower stall, a pale blur behind the blued glass. The sound of the water rushing down helped to push away Clark's disordered thoughts.
Clark pulled the door open and stepped inside, not crowding Lex because the space could have accommodated a football team (and possibly had, he thought before clamping down on speculation). The wall tiles were cobalt, like an ocean's dream of itself. The water was warm, shading towards hot. Lex was holding a bottle of something amber in one hand and a sort of scrub brush with a sponge on the end in the other. He squeezed a dollop of gel, the musky scent rising immediately, onto the sponge and held it up. "Shall I wash your back?"
It would never have occurred to Clark, but the suggestion sounded good. He nodded and turned around.
He'd forgotten what it was like to be touched so erotically by another person. Like they had all the time in the world, like he was something worth exploring slowly. The sponge was soft and scratchy by turns, stimulating every nerve it passed over, tracing the muscles of his back, then his arms, up to his neck and down to his thighs. There was a pause, the sponge clattered to the tile floor, and then Lex was using his hands, slick with gel, massaging the backs of Clark's legs as he knelt behind him.
The humid air filled Clark's lungs, heavy and lulling. He was still aroused almost to the point of pain, but it didn't matter. The water sheeted down, the huge showerhead diffusing the spray so it was almost like being caught in a summer storm. Lex's hands were warmer than the water, moving against the flow, making Clark's legs tremble as he braced his hands and forearms against the slick warm glass of the shower wall.
At last, Lex's hands slowed until he was simply gripping the backs of Clark's thighs, burbbing his thumbs against the skin there, just grazing Clark's ass. Clark's splayed fingers squeaked against the glass as he struggled to control himself.
When his control snapped, he spun around, surprising Lex into sitting back on his heels. Lex was half-hard. The water coating him seemed to make him softer and smoother at once, pale and silken against the dark blue of the wall. His eyes were open and unblinking despite the flow.
Slowly, Lex rose to his feet, his eyes never leaving Clark's. He gestured at the shower gel in invitation.
Clark lost pieces of the next few minutes, erased from his usually photographic memory – a cruel instance of sensory overload. The waterlogged air was a constant – then his fingers breaching Lex, whose shoulders tensed and relaxed. Muscles flexing in his back, runnels of water sliding down his skin at different rates as the slope changed. He watched the water touch Lex all over at once, feeling the same on his own skin. Lex spread his legs further, leaning forward, and Clark took this as an offer impossible to refuse.
Sinking into Lex felt more like drowning than anything he'd ever experienced. His breath came shallowly, as if his lungs had shrunk. Lex flowed around him, drew him in, until Clark was pressed against him, his chest against Lex's back, skin squeaking as they pressed so close that the water couldn't come between them.
He was making noise, grunts that rose above the patter of the falling water, his mouth hanging open as if that would help. Lex was almost silent, breathing a little fast, shifting when Clark pulled him back, not quite balanced. Clark liked the feeling of holding Lex up, embedding himself inside Lex, showing off his strength. He moved faster, forcing an acknowledging sigh out of Lex, pushing him up on his toes.
Clark dropped his hands to Lex's hips, holding him in place. He could barely breathe, hot water and hot air and Lex's body driving out his own consciousness. Lex moved with each thrust, following him for once. Clark watched Lex's fingers slide over the wall tiles, clenching into fists as Clark moved faster.
He came like he was the million drops of water filling the air.
Eventually, Lex shut off the water, even though it was still warm, and Clark pulled away, sliding to the wet floor in exhaustion, back against the side wall. Lex paused, then turned and knelt down beside him, eyes roving from Clark's bent knees to his torso, up to his face. Lex's expression flickered from meaningless neutrality to concern. "How are you feeling?" he asked. Clark had the sense that Lex hadn't asked exactly the question on his mind.
"I'm good," he said, for lack of anything more accurate.
End part 4
Petrellis
The police officer was on the phone, working his magic – Peter’s magic too, now, though he could tell that it was going to be one of those abilities that just didn’t master all that easily. At least this one was unlikely to cause a holocaust if he screwed it up. Anyway, that left him and Nathan to kick their heels and wait.
“Where’s your car?” he asked Nathan, figuring that they’d drive to the press conference – in lieu of giving away the punchline before the show started.
Nathan smiled at him: my little brother, always a step behind. “I didn’t bring a car, Peter.”
Oh. Oh. He swallowed, and imagined it. He guessed if Nathan could fly, it didn’t defy any more natural laws for him to carry another two hundred pounds down to Texas.
“So, what, you take just anybody flying these days?”
Nathan, amazingly, looked away, and he might have even gone a shade pink. “When you’re in danger, yes, I do.”
Chuck Versus the Sound of Thunder
“I’m gonna kill you for this,” Casey said out of the side of his mouth.
“It’s not my fault this guy only passes state secrets at his men’s drumming circle!” Chuck said back, in similar fashion. “Also, smile! We’re supposed to be enjoying this!”
Casey did something with his face. “You’re doing it wrong!” Chuck told him, but then the door opened and he had to paste a grin on his own face.
“Chuck Bartowski?” state-secret-selling guy asked. “You look just like your MySpace picture! And this must be your friend John.”
“Must be,” Casey agreed, and did the shark’s-teeth thing again as he slung his arm around Chuck’s shoulders.
“Hey guys,” Awesome said from behind them. “I found the best parking spot! Hi, I’m Devon,” he said, shaking hands. “Chuck told me about your group, and I thought it sounded awesome!”
As Devon and the traitor guy headed into the house, Chuck held back. “I have a MySpace page?” he asked Casey, wounded.
“Deep cover,” Casey said and smirked. “Also, handy rule of covert operations: Don’t tell the civilians about them!”
Chuck winced, because he really should have known better than to tell Awesome about a men’s drumming circle. Awesome was the poster boy for ‘Secure in My Masculinity’ magazine. Or he would have been, if there had been a magazine like that. Which there probably couldn’t be, because buying it would inherently, he thought, indicate insecurity.
Casey grabbed his arm and started dragging him inside.
It was going to be one of those days.
X-Files/Heroes
In his time as a prosecutor, Nathan had worked with many FBI agents. Never one as short as this one, though. Also, usually there’d been some amount of mutual deference based on their respective specialties.
“What did you say your interest was, again?” he asked. It hadn’t been worth it to keep her out of Peter’s apartment – he didn’t like having company, but Peter had never refused entry to any stray that came by, so she wasn’t disturbing some museum. And it was a little bit enjoyable to watch her suppress her discomfort as she moved old newspapers off of a chair so that she could sit across from him.
He had, of course, taken the couch. It was comfortable, even when he was sitting up.
“My division investigates – unusual – cases. Here, your miraculous recovery.” She placed a folder on the table. “These pictures of you after the accident are quite disturbing, Mr. Petrelli. And yet here you are, as handsome as the day you were elected.”
He raised an eyebrow at her, deciding that she wasn’t trying to flirt. Last year, he would have been happy to play along with innuendo, and she would actually have been perfect – good-looking, from out of town, someone with plenty to lose.
“I have excellent plastic surgeons,” he told her.
“Surgeons,” she said, flipping the folder open past the photos, to his charts, “who none of them will admit to having performed any surgery on you. Surgeons who say you refused cosmetic treatment. How were you healed, Mr. Petrelli?”
“‘Healed’?” he repeated. “You make it sound – religious.”
She stared at him, nothing like a smile on her face. He noticed that she was wearing a small cross on a necklace. “Not in the slightest. Your ‘accident’ was never adequately explained. Were you targeted? Was this your reward for keeping silent about something you found out? Is that why you resigned your post?”
“Agent Scully,” he said with perfect honesty, “I don’t have any idea what you’re getting at.”
She frowned at him. “All I want is to find out the truth.”
“The truth is,” he said, “my brother is dead. And I don’t know what to do.” He hadn’t meant to say that, but he kept his eyes on her; no use in wasting it.
“If you decide,” she said, rising, “you can always call me. There are things that the government tries to hide, things that people deserve to know.” She gathered her papers together, still watching him through lowered eyes.
Nathan grunted and didn’t get to his feet. He was suddenly exhausted, and it was going to take him some time to work up the energy to get himself a drink.
She stopped at the door and turned back. “Your brother,” she said. “No matter what, he wouldn’t have wanted you to stop. Whatever or whoever did this to you, to him, the only thing you can do to honor his memory is to fight.”
“You don’t know a thing about my brother,” he said reflexively.
“No, I don’t,” she admitted. “But I know about being left behind.”
The door blotted her out. Nathan put his head in his hands, hoping the world would stop moving underneath him. He knew it wouldn’t work. But he wasn’t ready to try anything different.
Smallville
Lex’s fourth wedding was in the Metropolis Cathedral, so many thousands of white candles burning that even the cool marble couldn’t stave off the heat. At Lex’s first wedding, Clark had been bothered by the temperature. That wasn’t true any more.
Clark told himself he was equally unbothered by the rest of the ceremony. Lex was looking for something he’d never find, an imagined perfection he’d only destroy with his paranoia and his infinite demands for disclosure.
He only watched Lex on the honeymoon because he knew that this one would turn on him just as quickly as the others, and knowingly letting someone be hurt – even Lex – was almost as bad as hurting him directly.
Afterwards, when he was proved absolutely right, he followed Lex back to the cathedral. Lex was lighting another candle, this one squat and yellowish, anonymous among the others memorializing the dead.
“She was a Catholic, you know,” Lex said without moving.
“She seems to have been unclear about a pretty important commandment!” Clark replied before he thought it through. But Lex’s shoulders were relaxing a little, and he was turning towards Clark. “Why?” Clark asked him, before the moment passed. “Why do you keep … marrying these women?”
Lex shrugged. “I’ve got to do something with them.”
Clark stepped closer. “No, you don’t.”
Lex looked up at him, and the candles were nothing to the heat of his eyes. “Why not?”
“Because – because you should stop getting married.”
Lex raised his chin and breathed in. This was his cue to say something cutting, to highlight Clark’s naivete, but he didn’t.
“You should stop getting married,” Clark repeated, and Lex’s mouth began to curl in a smile.
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And the XF/Heroes crossover makes me hanker hard for a longer Nathan/Dana story.
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I kind of like the idea of Nathan and Scully fighting crime. She would never, ever believe the flying, no matter how many times she saw it. She'd keep checking for wires.
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Oh my freaking whoa. Her voice just came flooding back to me, this was so, so wonderful. They crashed into each other perfectly, both of them with that brittle reserve just starting to show the cracks, oh man. I have to tell you, I've been your keening, wheening little fangirl ever since I read Shibboleth and Vix Te Agnovi wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy back in the day, and I cannot tell you how giddy I am to have a little piece of X-Over X-Verse of yours, of my very own.
Now I will stop drooling and being creepy. Thank you so, so much, and a very happy Hanukkah to you and yours. *glomp*
(Edited for proper icon!)
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I love Clark being a hero in some ways and yet not at all a hero in others.
Thank you!
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This is great. Also great: Chuck telling Casey that he's "doing it wrong." Hee!
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Oh, poor Clark!
And he's had his way with Lex, but only part of Lex, who's still working... brr.
-S.
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And he's DOING IT WRONG. *breaks something laughing*
Awesome (heh) title, too.
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wow, that is a very strong image. i have felt like that! sad to say, not because of sex. we won't discuss menopause. *g*
someone above commented on clark's perception of lex's opacity. i get strong visuals of lex's face in reading these short chapters, and that's very welcome. guess i have a thing for lex's face, whether open or opaque. :)
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So true. ggg. Nathan flying Matt around this season was just too funny.
I haven't read SV in a long time. Reading your ficlets was a breath of fresh air and a reminder just how sexy Clark and Lex are.
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Lex was almost silent, breathing a little fast, shifting when Clark pulled him back, not quite balanced. Clark liked the feeling of holding Lex up, embedding himself inside Lex, showing off his strength. He moved faster, forcing an acknowledging sigh out of Lex, pushing him up on his toes.
Love the idea of Clark guiltily relishing being in charge and "owning" Lex. Sexy!
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nit:
burbbing his thumbs against the skin there
I *think* you meant "rubbing".*g*
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