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lilian_cho: Smallville, thief!Lex
You can read the whole thing here.
7.
He left Lex at his apartment with instructions to call when his reports were ready, and headed out to fight crime and ignore his problems. He zipped around the world for nearly forty-eight hours, stopping only to call in a few stories for Perry, until he was tired enough that he could sit down without wanting to fly out of his own skin.
Lex still hadn’t called. If Clark had been stronger, he would have stayed away. But he couldn’t help himself, so he touched down on Lex’s balcony – a familiar habit, now painful – and looked in.
Lex wasn't there. Instead, there was a DVD on his coffee table, labeled "For Superman."
Clark hurried in. He put the disc in the player, fumbled at high speed to figure out the nuclear-reactor-complicated remote, and played it.
Lionel Luthor’s face filled the screen, larger than life and four times as ugly, snarling enough to make Clark lean back reflexively. "Hello, Superman," he said jovially. "I have something for you to look at."
The camera panned down to the floor. At first Clark wasn't sure it was Lex – the face was almost unrecognizable, covered in blood, eyes swollen most of the way shut, nose plainly broken – but then he moved and Clark saw a flash of blue eyes in the midst of red. The homicidal intent there was as individual as DNA.
There was a crunch as the remote disintegrated in his hand.
"My men didn't mean to do so much damage, not yet anyway," Lionel continued, offscreen. "But you know Lex. He just won't – stay – down," punctuated by kicks that made Lex jerk. Clark could see bare, bruised and scratched shoulders, but nothing more.
"I told his employers that my foolish son had thrown in with you. He was always weak, you know, subject to emotional appeals over duty. They held out hope for him for a long time, but it’s recently become clear that his loyalties are, at best, divided.
“So this is what is going to happen. You're going to come here, to Plant 3 in Smallville, where we can talk in comfort and privacy about what you can do for LuthorCorp." He didn't bother to make any promises about Lex. On the floor, Lex was shaking his head, not to clear it but in violent negation. The mushy sounds out of his mouth were incomprehensible, but Clark understood them well enough: Don't.
In the corners of the frame, where Lex's body and the spatters of blood didn't obscure the view, Clark could see dark green lumps. The enhancements Lex had created for his suit couldn't protect him against a large amount of Kryptonite, only slightly delay the collapse.
He'd have to hope that would be enough.
Right as he was about to launch himself into the sky, his head cleared and he stopped moving.
What if this was a trap? Well, obviously it was a trap, but what if Lex was willing bait? What if Lex had told them about their fight, and the higher-ups had decided that Clark was no longer controllable?
If Lex had ever told him the truth, it was that he hated and distrusted his father. Lionel’s own blood was his testimony.
No, Lex hadn’t endorsed this move.
And that meant that Lex needed him. Everything else could be worked out later – if there was a later.
He flew back to Smallville, looking at the land below him as if for the first time. He’d only ever wanted to help people, to make his parents proud, to make all the loss he’d brought to Earth mean something. Affairs of state had never interested him. But Lex was right: the world made its own demands.
Too quickly, not quickly enough, he arrived at Plant 3.
Though Clark paused to scan before he went in, he didn't get much useful information. Underground, the building was lead-lined – that was new since high school. There were a number of armed guards around the perimeter. He zipped through and stood outside the door to the lower level, looking into the camera placed there.
He didn’t wait long. The man who opened the door waved Clark down the stairs with his gun. Clark didn't feel the sting of Kryptonite just yet, so the man following behind him didn't make him nervous.
The door that swung open, buffeting him with the familiar green pain, was another story.
Gritting his teeth, he stepped forward.
Kryptonite was embedded in the walls and the floor, scattered all around. Green light flared as he approached. He was not quite stumbling yet. Before his powers failed, he scanned Lex's naked body, which was lying like a bundle of sticks near the middle of the room. Lex was breathing shallowly; there was internal bleeding. He needed treatment or even his system was going to be overwhelmed.
Clark was having problems of his own. He struggled to stay upright, to stay in control.
There was one chair in the room, one with straps and buckles and other dangerous things. A nearby table, covered with implements, testified to what had been done to Lex and what might very well be about to happen to him. A generator hummed quietly just past Lex's still form.
"Superman," Lionel said, his voice full of satisfaction. "How nice of you to join us."
"Why are you doing this?" he asked, thankful that his voice wasn't yet wavering, though it was coming soon. “He’s your son.” He took a shuffling step towards the chair, bracing one hand on its back.
“He’s weak.” Lionel stepped closer, not within reach yet, still wary.
The Kryptonite was working on him. When he looked down, his hands were green-veined, monstrous.
"I expect that we'll lobotomize you – it shouldn't be that hard, with these rocks here, and you never did strike me as all that bright in the first place – and then learn whatever we can from your body." Now Lionel reached out, pushing Clark’s shoulder. He lost his grip on the chair, and when Lionel pushed again, he fell to the floor.
He closed his eyes and tried to gather his strength. It was clear that he was only going to get one shot at this. He could hear others entering the room – the butchers Lionel planned to use on him, no doubt. The Kryptonite was choking his veins, cramps in every muscle, bright green balls of pain hitting him just like the meteors striking the earth so many years ago.
A new pain, sharper, against his wrist. He turned his head and saw that Lex had managed to grab him – but there was something rough and painful in Lex's palm.
Kryptonite, he realized, just as he looked beyond Lex's hand on his wrist and saw Lex's other hand doing something to the generator.
Lightning, a seizure, like staring at the sun, like how it used to feel when, as a kid, he'd hang with his head off the bed until getting up made the world spin as the blood rushed back.
The only light in the room was from the Kryptonite.
But he wasn't feeling any pain. Lex had – Lex had recreated the incident Clark had told him about, with Eric Summers, and now Clark was just a human.
He jumped up, while Lionel and the others were still cursing and trying to figure out what happened, and punched Lionel in the head. He went down, and Clark followed him, slamming his head into the floor repeatedly, until emergency lights flickered.
Clark looked up. The others had fled, apparently unaware that Superman's sudden recovery was due to his extrahuman powers being gone. The lead-lined door was closed.
He ran to Lex's side. Underneath the blood, he could see Lex's skin pulsing with Kryptonite poisoning. He'd been in bad shape before he'd taken on Clark's vulnerability, and he didn't have Clark's insulated suit for even partial protection. "Lex," he said. "Lex, hang on."
Lex blinked up at him and smiled through his destroyed mouth. "'ood job," he said. "Knew you –" His eyes fluttered closed.
The door was locked. Clark pounded on it for about half a second before he thought to go to Lionel’s silent body and find the gun Lionel carried as a last line of defense. He shot at the lock, and when that didn't work, he shot out the hinges and kicked the door until it fell over.
He left the gun with the other instruments of destruction, picked up Lex, and carried him out. The hirelings from before had apparently decided that discretion was the sum total of valor in this particular instance, and he went unmolested.
Lex was limp, more like a roll of burlap than a living being in his arms. Distance from the Kryptonite made the black-green veins fade a bit, but they didn't go away.
Outside, just beyond the fence that circled the plant, it was a beautiful spring day, trees and flowers and singing birds. Clark looked at it all, the meaningless beauty, and staggered to a patch of grass where he could spread Lex's body out for the solar rays.
"I know you wanted to know what it was like to fly," he told Lex, needing to say something, "but this is going a little far even for you."
Lex didn't respond. When Clark put his fingers to Lex's wrist, he couldn't feel anything.
But that had to be fear numbing his fingers, and what did Clark know about taking a pulse anyway? He bent over Lex, trying to feel Lex's breath against his skin.
Nothing.
"Stop it," he said. "Lex, stop it right now." Even to himself, he didn't sound all that sane.
It had been years since he'd taken Red Cross training – he left that sort of thing to the doctors and paramedics to whom he brought rescuees. Shaking, he opened Lex's mouth and put his hands on Lex's chest, pushing as he breathed for Lex.
First he forgot his lack of strength and hardly pushed at all, then he overcompensated, leaning down on Lex like he was trying to pound a fencepost into the ground. Breath, breath, compression. It had to be fast, faster than once a second, he remembered, but it was so hard with these human hands and muscles.
Another breath, pinching Lex's nose closed, then back to the compressions.
His arms wouldn't cooperate, stupidly exhausted from carrying Lex up and out and then these frantic efforts. Something was falling on Lex's face – he was crying, like a little kid, and now he couldn't even breathe for Lex, useless, helpless.
Superman could take revenge, though Superman never would. Clark Kent couldn't, but right now he wanted nothing more than to burn the whole building to ash, and then continue on to every man in a dark suit who had ever answered to Lionel Luthor.
With a choking cough, Lex spasmed under his hands, almost flinging him off. Clark panted in time with him, relieved beyond measure. He hurried to prop Lex up and support his neck as Lex drew deep shuddering breaths. The blackish veins began to recede, and while the blood didn't disappear, Clark was confident that Lex was healing as fast as Kryptonian strength would allow.
Lex blinked up at him.
"What were you thinking!" As Clark said it, he knew it wasn't the ideal reaction but nothing else came immediately to mind.
Lex coughed experimentally, then struggled to sit, pushing Clark gently away. "Believe me, no one's more surprised than I am that it actually worked." He paused, turned his head, and spat out what Clark identified as several bloody, broken teeth. "And for the record: Ouch."
Clark had to laugh. He knew intimately how uncomfortable the rapid healing could be, though it was a darn sight better than the alternative.
"We need to get that Kryptonite out of the facility before my father reclaims it for another attempt," Lex said, then looked down at his nudity. "Clark, could I impose on you for the loan of your cape?"
Clark fumbled with the clasps holding the cape to the rest of the uniform. "Here."
Lex, who seemed to be recovering his equanimity along with his health, quickly fashioned himself something like a toga from the fire engine-red material.
One second he was standing up, settling the folds of the cape around himself, the next he was over by the now-deserted LuthorCorp building. Clark wondered briefly whether he was as annoying when he used his powers to get ahead, then decided that would be impossible. He hurried over to join Lex.
"They'll probably return as soon as they get a strike team together," Lex said. "Can you get the Kryptonite out of that room?"
Clark gave it some thought. "I'll need a pry bar and a lead box for you to carry it in. The whole floor is lined with lead – you can make a box out of that."
Lex nodded, then squinted at the building and put his fist through the wall, looking like a man rummaging through a cubbyhole. When he pulled his arm back, he was holidng a length of ribbed metal that had been part of the building. As Clark watched, oddly charmed, Lex pinched the top to flatten it and bent it slightly, presenting him with a workable pry bar.
Clark headed back inside, trusting that Lex hadn't done any damage to the building's structural integrity. The emergency lights were still flickering. He realized that it had been only minutes since Lex had taken his powers. Lex was adjusting well, he thought, then tried not to think about it as he trotted down the stairs.
Lionel was gone, doubtless through some bolthole. He ignored that problem for now.
Fighting monsters and natural disasters was often hard work, but it rarely required backache-inducing labor. Clark had rebuilt buildings and the like, but he'd always avoided pain from the repetitive, grinding motion required to dig chunks of rock out of concrete floors. For all that he occasionally longed for human frailty, he preferred to imagine it in a reporter’s life, not a construction worker’s. At least the bits in the walls were just embedded in plaster.
It was strange to handle Kryptonite without being sick. Up close, it was sort of pretty, black-tinged green faceted like quartz. The fragmented surfaces, smoothness interrupted by sharp corners, gleamed until he smudged them with his dusty fingers. He wondered if this body were capable of meteor mutation. They were cool in his hands, cool when he piled them in the center of the room. Such little things. It was hard to believe that they'd done so much damage, harder still to see past that to the fragments of a dead world.
He'd spent the last twelve years of his life trying to make up for all the harm his fellow travelers had done, first in Smallville and then expanding his range, saving people to atone for all the people he hadn't. Now, human again, understanding what had happened as he hadn't when Eric Summers had accidentally stolen his powers, he had the luxury of imagining what it would be like to stop. Just stop. Save the world the way everybody else had to, one small step at a time.
Then he thought about never flying again, and the prospect seemed less appealing.
At last all the Kryptonite was gathered. There was still dust and a few chips embedded in the floors, but it was the best he was going to do without specialized equipment. He went back into the hallway and found a large, makeshift lead box with thick seams still warm from heat vision. An extra piece waited a few feet away, propped against the stairs, to cap the box when he finished. Lex, observant as usual, had made the box so closely sized to the Kryptonite that Clark actually had to shove it in at the end. When he was done, he hauled the slab of lead over and, with the last of his strength, managed to plunk it down mostly on top of the box.
Lex came down the stairs at his yell and made Clark go upstairs – as lookout, he said; he'd had to set a couple of trees on fire to deter approaching snipers, so Clark had to make sure they weren't being approached again. Clark knew it was more to keep him from being struck by molten lead. Then they had to wait, because Lex couldn't figure out the freezing breath for a while (it was definitely one of the less explicable powers), so the warm lead wasn't set enough to move, and he also had to keep darting upstairs to scan around with broad-spectrum vision.
"It's cooled," Lex said at last, after prodding the box for what seemed like the fiftieth time.
"I'll get out of here – I can hitch a ride – and you take the Kryptonite somewhere safe."
Lex shook his head. "Did you notice you're dressed like Superman? Sit on top of the box and hang on."
Clark had a bad feeling about this endeavor, but he complied, sitting cross-legged on the uneven lead and gripping the still-slightly-warm seams on the sides for a measure of stability.
Lex picked him up and, after some stomach-jangling lurches, they flew.
Clark told himself he didn't feel inadequate just because Lex was using his powers less than an hour after acquiring them. He remembered how long it had taken him to get the heat vision under control, and the flying hadn't been consistent for – he gulped and tried not to think about it even as his fingers tightened on the box.
He couldn't see Lex's eyes, but the tight set of his jaw suggested that he was worried about his ability to sustain the performance too. Lex was flying steadily but without much grace, the box held in front of him so Clark was elevated.
By the time they got to the farmhouse, they were both exhausted, but Lex insisted on opening the box to get some Kryptonite and then splicing the power line to switch them back right away. “To avoid unnecessary temptation,” he said, and Clark didn’t argue, though he guessed that Lex had no thought that the temptation might be other than one-sided.
At least his mother was off visiting friends. Clark hadn’t the slightest idea how he was going to explain Lex to her, especially when Lex was just wearing his cape.
After a sufficient time to recover (and raid the refrigerator for pie), Clark flew them back to Metropolis, to Clark’s underused apartment. Lex left from there, and Clark didn’t ask where he was going.
Lex came into the newsroom two days later. Nobody dared to stop him on the way in, though Lois rose from her desk and started peppering him with questions, even physically interposing herself between him and Clark’s desk.
She looked pretty surprised when Clark was the one to move her out of the way. Maybe he shouldn’t have picked her up.
Clark and Lex stared at each other. Lex had never come to see him as Clark Kent – maybe a friendship between them could have been explained, but Lex had never been inclined to try, not with his father still monitoring every move.
“We’ll be in the conference room,” Clark said hastily, and dragged Lex away while Lois was still sputtering.
“My father did what he did with the full knowledge and consent of the government,” Lex said grimly as soon as the door closed.
Clark sagged into a chair. He’d suspected, but it was harder to hear it said as fact.
“They fear your independence. From their perspective, you don’t just have superpowers. You are a superpower, and one operating right in the middle of the homeland.”
“I wouldn’t –”
Lex held his hand up. “Don’t tell me.”
“What am I going to do?” He had been raised to be a patriot. Even now, he was sure it was just a matter of explaining things to the right people – but how to find the right people?
Lex sat down next to Clark, looking grim. “I have a few scenarios. In the short term, we need –”
“We?” Clark asked, bleakly. Lex had resisted his father because Lionel was evil, but now that he knew the source of the decision, it was back to duty for him. Clark couldn’t expect –
“I have the greatest respect for your abilities, Clark, but devious plotting is really something you should outsource, don’t you think?”
“Why?”
Lex looked up at him, confused.
“Why would you help me?”
Lex opened and closed his mouth. “Their plan is a mistake –”
“You don’t question orders. Not when they don’t give you the leeway to question.”
“I –”
“How do you feel about me?”
Lex looked at him as if he were speaking Kryptonian. "What does that have to do with anything?"
Lex probably had a better working knowledge of Kryptonian than of his own emotional landscape. Suddenly, a lot of things were making sense, and for once the surprises were pretty good ones. “Do you like me?”
“I really don’t see what that –” Lex leaned back, not looking at Clark’s face.
“Just answer me and we can get back to the devious plotting.”
Lex sighed and folded his hands on the conference table. "Clark," he said, "everyone likes you. You’re likeable."
Clark shook his head and leaned in closer. "Everyone else likes Superman. You think that power corrupts but you still trust me.
"But I thought I was just a job for you.”
Lex did look at him now, startled. “Your ego is really quite disproportionate to your attributes, you know.”
He refused to be deflected. "I wanted you to want me, Clark Kent, whether or not I had superpowers."
Lex shook his head, plainly befuddled. "But you do. It's part of who you are – whatever the physical separability, the psychological –"
"What would you do if I lost them for good?"
Lex's expression turned fierce. "I'd lock you up so you wouldn't run off and get yourself killed."
Clark nodded. "See, I didn't know that. I thought you'd give me a handshake and send me on my way."
Lex still seemed angry, and not a little confused. Clark decided to savor it – subtly, though. Anyway, he wasn't entirely sure how to proceed. Lex wasn't a flowers and chocolates guy – at least not unless the flowers were bound with concertina wire and the chocolates poisoned.
"What is this all about?"
"It's about you being more than just a spy, a tool, something people can use. It's about you being mine and me being yours. The sooner you admit that, the faster we can concentrate on the stuff that isn't certain, like how the heck we're going to get the government off our backs."
This appeal to reason – Lex-reason, anyway – had the intended effect. Lex shut up and thought. Clark could see his eyes moving rapidly under closed lids. The subject of happily ever after was far from settled, but he'd at least put the facts out there for Lex.
“For the sake of argument,” Lex said, “I’ll accept that. I need a place to work, now that I’ve lost my official privileges.”
Clark smiled, his heart soaring. “How would you like to take a vacation up north?”
lilian_cho: Smallville, thief!LexYou can read the whole thing here.
7.
He left Lex at his apartment with instructions to call when his reports were ready, and headed out to fight crime and ignore his problems. He zipped around the world for nearly forty-eight hours, stopping only to call in a few stories for Perry, until he was tired enough that he could sit down without wanting to fly out of his own skin.
Lex still hadn’t called. If Clark had been stronger, he would have stayed away. But he couldn’t help himself, so he touched down on Lex’s balcony – a familiar habit, now painful – and looked in.
Lex wasn't there. Instead, there was a DVD on his coffee table, labeled "For Superman."
Clark hurried in. He put the disc in the player, fumbled at high speed to figure out the nuclear-reactor-complicated remote, and played it.
Lionel Luthor’s face filled the screen, larger than life and four times as ugly, snarling enough to make Clark lean back reflexively. "Hello, Superman," he said jovially. "I have something for you to look at."
The camera panned down to the floor. At first Clark wasn't sure it was Lex – the face was almost unrecognizable, covered in blood, eyes swollen most of the way shut, nose plainly broken – but then he moved and Clark saw a flash of blue eyes in the midst of red. The homicidal intent there was as individual as DNA.
There was a crunch as the remote disintegrated in his hand.
"My men didn't mean to do so much damage, not yet anyway," Lionel continued, offscreen. "But you know Lex. He just won't – stay – down," punctuated by kicks that made Lex jerk. Clark could see bare, bruised and scratched shoulders, but nothing more.
"I told his employers that my foolish son had thrown in with you. He was always weak, you know, subject to emotional appeals over duty. They held out hope for him for a long time, but it’s recently become clear that his loyalties are, at best, divided.
“So this is what is going to happen. You're going to come here, to Plant 3 in Smallville, where we can talk in comfort and privacy about what you can do for LuthorCorp." He didn't bother to make any promises about Lex. On the floor, Lex was shaking his head, not to clear it but in violent negation. The mushy sounds out of his mouth were incomprehensible, but Clark understood them well enough: Don't.
In the corners of the frame, where Lex's body and the spatters of blood didn't obscure the view, Clark could see dark green lumps. The enhancements Lex had created for his suit couldn't protect him against a large amount of Kryptonite, only slightly delay the collapse.
He'd have to hope that would be enough.
Right as he was about to launch himself into the sky, his head cleared and he stopped moving.
What if this was a trap? Well, obviously it was a trap, but what if Lex was willing bait? What if Lex had told them about their fight, and the higher-ups had decided that Clark was no longer controllable?
If Lex had ever told him the truth, it was that he hated and distrusted his father. Lionel’s own blood was his testimony.
No, Lex hadn’t endorsed this move.
And that meant that Lex needed him. Everything else could be worked out later – if there was a later.
He flew back to Smallville, looking at the land below him as if for the first time. He’d only ever wanted to help people, to make his parents proud, to make all the loss he’d brought to Earth mean something. Affairs of state had never interested him. But Lex was right: the world made its own demands.
Too quickly, not quickly enough, he arrived at Plant 3.
Though Clark paused to scan before he went in, he didn't get much useful information. Underground, the building was lead-lined – that was new since high school. There were a number of armed guards around the perimeter. He zipped through and stood outside the door to the lower level, looking into the camera placed there.
He didn’t wait long. The man who opened the door waved Clark down the stairs with his gun. Clark didn't feel the sting of Kryptonite just yet, so the man following behind him didn't make him nervous.
The door that swung open, buffeting him with the familiar green pain, was another story.
Gritting his teeth, he stepped forward.
Kryptonite was embedded in the walls and the floor, scattered all around. Green light flared as he approached. He was not quite stumbling yet. Before his powers failed, he scanned Lex's naked body, which was lying like a bundle of sticks near the middle of the room. Lex was breathing shallowly; there was internal bleeding. He needed treatment or even his system was going to be overwhelmed.
Clark was having problems of his own. He struggled to stay upright, to stay in control.
There was one chair in the room, one with straps and buckles and other dangerous things. A nearby table, covered with implements, testified to what had been done to Lex and what might very well be about to happen to him. A generator hummed quietly just past Lex's still form.
"Superman," Lionel said, his voice full of satisfaction. "How nice of you to join us."
"Why are you doing this?" he asked, thankful that his voice wasn't yet wavering, though it was coming soon. “He’s your son.” He took a shuffling step towards the chair, bracing one hand on its back.
“He’s weak.” Lionel stepped closer, not within reach yet, still wary.
The Kryptonite was working on him. When he looked down, his hands were green-veined, monstrous.
"I expect that we'll lobotomize you – it shouldn't be that hard, with these rocks here, and you never did strike me as all that bright in the first place – and then learn whatever we can from your body." Now Lionel reached out, pushing Clark’s shoulder. He lost his grip on the chair, and when Lionel pushed again, he fell to the floor.
He closed his eyes and tried to gather his strength. It was clear that he was only going to get one shot at this. He could hear others entering the room – the butchers Lionel planned to use on him, no doubt. The Kryptonite was choking his veins, cramps in every muscle, bright green balls of pain hitting him just like the meteors striking the earth so many years ago.
A new pain, sharper, against his wrist. He turned his head and saw that Lex had managed to grab him – but there was something rough and painful in Lex's palm.
Kryptonite, he realized, just as he looked beyond Lex's hand on his wrist and saw Lex's other hand doing something to the generator.
Lightning, a seizure, like staring at the sun, like how it used to feel when, as a kid, he'd hang with his head off the bed until getting up made the world spin as the blood rushed back.
The only light in the room was from the Kryptonite.
But he wasn't feeling any pain. Lex had – Lex had recreated the incident Clark had told him about, with Eric Summers, and now Clark was just a human.
He jumped up, while Lionel and the others were still cursing and trying to figure out what happened, and punched Lionel in the head. He went down, and Clark followed him, slamming his head into the floor repeatedly, until emergency lights flickered.
Clark looked up. The others had fled, apparently unaware that Superman's sudden recovery was due to his extrahuman powers being gone. The lead-lined door was closed.
He ran to Lex's side. Underneath the blood, he could see Lex's skin pulsing with Kryptonite poisoning. He'd been in bad shape before he'd taken on Clark's vulnerability, and he didn't have Clark's insulated suit for even partial protection. "Lex," he said. "Lex, hang on."
Lex blinked up at him and smiled through his destroyed mouth. "'ood job," he said. "Knew you –" His eyes fluttered closed.
The door was locked. Clark pounded on it for about half a second before he thought to go to Lionel’s silent body and find the gun Lionel carried as a last line of defense. He shot at the lock, and when that didn't work, he shot out the hinges and kicked the door until it fell over.
He left the gun with the other instruments of destruction, picked up Lex, and carried him out. The hirelings from before had apparently decided that discretion was the sum total of valor in this particular instance, and he went unmolested.
Lex was limp, more like a roll of burlap than a living being in his arms. Distance from the Kryptonite made the black-green veins fade a bit, but they didn't go away.
Outside, just beyond the fence that circled the plant, it was a beautiful spring day, trees and flowers and singing birds. Clark looked at it all, the meaningless beauty, and staggered to a patch of grass where he could spread Lex's body out for the solar rays.
"I know you wanted to know what it was like to fly," he told Lex, needing to say something, "but this is going a little far even for you."
Lex didn't respond. When Clark put his fingers to Lex's wrist, he couldn't feel anything.
But that had to be fear numbing his fingers, and what did Clark know about taking a pulse anyway? He bent over Lex, trying to feel Lex's breath against his skin.
Nothing.
"Stop it," he said. "Lex, stop it right now." Even to himself, he didn't sound all that sane.
It had been years since he'd taken Red Cross training – he left that sort of thing to the doctors and paramedics to whom he brought rescuees. Shaking, he opened Lex's mouth and put his hands on Lex's chest, pushing as he breathed for Lex.
First he forgot his lack of strength and hardly pushed at all, then he overcompensated, leaning down on Lex like he was trying to pound a fencepost into the ground. Breath, breath, compression. It had to be fast, faster than once a second, he remembered, but it was so hard with these human hands and muscles.
Another breath, pinching Lex's nose closed, then back to the compressions.
His arms wouldn't cooperate, stupidly exhausted from carrying Lex up and out and then these frantic efforts. Something was falling on Lex's face – he was crying, like a little kid, and now he couldn't even breathe for Lex, useless, helpless.
Superman could take revenge, though Superman never would. Clark Kent couldn't, but right now he wanted nothing more than to burn the whole building to ash, and then continue on to every man in a dark suit who had ever answered to Lionel Luthor.
With a choking cough, Lex spasmed under his hands, almost flinging him off. Clark panted in time with him, relieved beyond measure. He hurried to prop Lex up and support his neck as Lex drew deep shuddering breaths. The blackish veins began to recede, and while the blood didn't disappear, Clark was confident that Lex was healing as fast as Kryptonian strength would allow.
Lex blinked up at him.
"What were you thinking!" As Clark said it, he knew it wasn't the ideal reaction but nothing else came immediately to mind.
Lex coughed experimentally, then struggled to sit, pushing Clark gently away. "Believe me, no one's more surprised than I am that it actually worked." He paused, turned his head, and spat out what Clark identified as several bloody, broken teeth. "And for the record: Ouch."
Clark had to laugh. He knew intimately how uncomfortable the rapid healing could be, though it was a darn sight better than the alternative.
"We need to get that Kryptonite out of the facility before my father reclaims it for another attempt," Lex said, then looked down at his nudity. "Clark, could I impose on you for the loan of your cape?"
Clark fumbled with the clasps holding the cape to the rest of the uniform. "Here."
Lex, who seemed to be recovering his equanimity along with his health, quickly fashioned himself something like a toga from the fire engine-red material.
One second he was standing up, settling the folds of the cape around himself, the next he was over by the now-deserted LuthorCorp building. Clark wondered briefly whether he was as annoying when he used his powers to get ahead, then decided that would be impossible. He hurried over to join Lex.
"They'll probably return as soon as they get a strike team together," Lex said. "Can you get the Kryptonite out of that room?"
Clark gave it some thought. "I'll need a pry bar and a lead box for you to carry it in. The whole floor is lined with lead – you can make a box out of that."
Lex nodded, then squinted at the building and put his fist through the wall, looking like a man rummaging through a cubbyhole. When he pulled his arm back, he was holidng a length of ribbed metal that had been part of the building. As Clark watched, oddly charmed, Lex pinched the top to flatten it and bent it slightly, presenting him with a workable pry bar.
Clark headed back inside, trusting that Lex hadn't done any damage to the building's structural integrity. The emergency lights were still flickering. He realized that it had been only minutes since Lex had taken his powers. Lex was adjusting well, he thought, then tried not to think about it as he trotted down the stairs.
Lionel was gone, doubtless through some bolthole. He ignored that problem for now.
Fighting monsters and natural disasters was often hard work, but it rarely required backache-inducing labor. Clark had rebuilt buildings and the like, but he'd always avoided pain from the repetitive, grinding motion required to dig chunks of rock out of concrete floors. For all that he occasionally longed for human frailty, he preferred to imagine it in a reporter’s life, not a construction worker’s. At least the bits in the walls were just embedded in plaster.
It was strange to handle Kryptonite without being sick. Up close, it was sort of pretty, black-tinged green faceted like quartz. The fragmented surfaces, smoothness interrupted by sharp corners, gleamed until he smudged them with his dusty fingers. He wondered if this body were capable of meteor mutation. They were cool in his hands, cool when he piled them in the center of the room. Such little things. It was hard to believe that they'd done so much damage, harder still to see past that to the fragments of a dead world.
He'd spent the last twelve years of his life trying to make up for all the harm his fellow travelers had done, first in Smallville and then expanding his range, saving people to atone for all the people he hadn't. Now, human again, understanding what had happened as he hadn't when Eric Summers had accidentally stolen his powers, he had the luxury of imagining what it would be like to stop. Just stop. Save the world the way everybody else had to, one small step at a time.
Then he thought about never flying again, and the prospect seemed less appealing.
At last all the Kryptonite was gathered. There was still dust and a few chips embedded in the floors, but it was the best he was going to do without specialized equipment. He went back into the hallway and found a large, makeshift lead box with thick seams still warm from heat vision. An extra piece waited a few feet away, propped against the stairs, to cap the box when he finished. Lex, observant as usual, had made the box so closely sized to the Kryptonite that Clark actually had to shove it in at the end. When he was done, he hauled the slab of lead over and, with the last of his strength, managed to plunk it down mostly on top of the box.
Lex came down the stairs at his yell and made Clark go upstairs – as lookout, he said; he'd had to set a couple of trees on fire to deter approaching snipers, so Clark had to make sure they weren't being approached again. Clark knew it was more to keep him from being struck by molten lead. Then they had to wait, because Lex couldn't figure out the freezing breath for a while (it was definitely one of the less explicable powers), so the warm lead wasn't set enough to move, and he also had to keep darting upstairs to scan around with broad-spectrum vision.
"It's cooled," Lex said at last, after prodding the box for what seemed like the fiftieth time.
"I'll get out of here – I can hitch a ride – and you take the Kryptonite somewhere safe."
Lex shook his head. "Did you notice you're dressed like Superman? Sit on top of the box and hang on."
Clark had a bad feeling about this endeavor, but he complied, sitting cross-legged on the uneven lead and gripping the still-slightly-warm seams on the sides for a measure of stability.
Lex picked him up and, after some stomach-jangling lurches, they flew.
Clark told himself he didn't feel inadequate just because Lex was using his powers less than an hour after acquiring them. He remembered how long it had taken him to get the heat vision under control, and the flying hadn't been consistent for – he gulped and tried not to think about it even as his fingers tightened on the box.
He couldn't see Lex's eyes, but the tight set of his jaw suggested that he was worried about his ability to sustain the performance too. Lex was flying steadily but without much grace, the box held in front of him so Clark was elevated.
By the time they got to the farmhouse, they were both exhausted, but Lex insisted on opening the box to get some Kryptonite and then splicing the power line to switch them back right away. “To avoid unnecessary temptation,” he said, and Clark didn’t argue, though he guessed that Lex had no thought that the temptation might be other than one-sided.
At least his mother was off visiting friends. Clark hadn’t the slightest idea how he was going to explain Lex to her, especially when Lex was just wearing his cape.
After a sufficient time to recover (and raid the refrigerator for pie), Clark flew them back to Metropolis, to Clark’s underused apartment. Lex left from there, and Clark didn’t ask where he was going.
Lex came into the newsroom two days later. Nobody dared to stop him on the way in, though Lois rose from her desk and started peppering him with questions, even physically interposing herself between him and Clark’s desk.
She looked pretty surprised when Clark was the one to move her out of the way. Maybe he shouldn’t have picked her up.
Clark and Lex stared at each other. Lex had never come to see him as Clark Kent – maybe a friendship between them could have been explained, but Lex had never been inclined to try, not with his father still monitoring every move.
“We’ll be in the conference room,” Clark said hastily, and dragged Lex away while Lois was still sputtering.
“My father did what he did with the full knowledge and consent of the government,” Lex said grimly as soon as the door closed.
Clark sagged into a chair. He’d suspected, but it was harder to hear it said as fact.
“They fear your independence. From their perspective, you don’t just have superpowers. You are a superpower, and one operating right in the middle of the homeland.”
“I wouldn’t –”
Lex held his hand up. “Don’t tell me.”
“What am I going to do?” He had been raised to be a patriot. Even now, he was sure it was just a matter of explaining things to the right people – but how to find the right people?
Lex sat down next to Clark, looking grim. “I have a few scenarios. In the short term, we need –”
“We?” Clark asked, bleakly. Lex had resisted his father because Lionel was evil, but now that he knew the source of the decision, it was back to duty for him. Clark couldn’t expect –
“I have the greatest respect for your abilities, Clark, but devious plotting is really something you should outsource, don’t you think?”
“Why?”
Lex looked up at him, confused.
“Why would you help me?”
Lex opened and closed his mouth. “Their plan is a mistake –”
“You don’t question orders. Not when they don’t give you the leeway to question.”
“I –”
“How do you feel about me?”
Lex looked at him as if he were speaking Kryptonian. "What does that have to do with anything?"
Lex probably had a better working knowledge of Kryptonian than of his own emotional landscape. Suddenly, a lot of things were making sense, and for once the surprises were pretty good ones. “Do you like me?”
“I really don’t see what that –” Lex leaned back, not looking at Clark’s face.
“Just answer me and we can get back to the devious plotting.”
Lex sighed and folded his hands on the conference table. "Clark," he said, "everyone likes you. You’re likeable."
Clark shook his head and leaned in closer. "Everyone else likes Superman. You think that power corrupts but you still trust me.
"But I thought I was just a job for you.”
Lex did look at him now, startled. “Your ego is really quite disproportionate to your attributes, you know.”
He refused to be deflected. "I wanted you to want me, Clark Kent, whether or not I had superpowers."
Lex shook his head, plainly befuddled. "But you do. It's part of who you are – whatever the physical separability, the psychological –"
"What would you do if I lost them for good?"
Lex's expression turned fierce. "I'd lock you up so you wouldn't run off and get yourself killed."
Clark nodded. "See, I didn't know that. I thought you'd give me a handshake and send me on my way."
Lex still seemed angry, and not a little confused. Clark decided to savor it – subtly, though. Anyway, he wasn't entirely sure how to proceed. Lex wasn't a flowers and chocolates guy – at least not unless the flowers were bound with concertina wire and the chocolates poisoned.
"What is this all about?"
"It's about you being more than just a spy, a tool, something people can use. It's about you being mine and me being yours. The sooner you admit that, the faster we can concentrate on the stuff that isn't certain, like how the heck we're going to get the government off our backs."
This appeal to reason – Lex-reason, anyway – had the intended effect. Lex shut up and thought. Clark could see his eyes moving rapidly under closed lids. The subject of happily ever after was far from settled, but he'd at least put the facts out there for Lex.
“For the sake of argument,” Lex said, “I’ll accept that. I need a place to work, now that I’ve lost my official privileges.”
Clark smiled, his heart soaring. “How would you like to take a vacation up north?”
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(You will be posting this all in one place so I can rec it, right?)
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Also, I'm glad you liked it!
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This story feels longer than it actually is. I feel like all sorts of things happened in the background that we don't even know about, there are SO MANY scenes that could be written in! I hope you plan to write some more in the future!
xoxoxo
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Good job:D
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clark asking if lex liked him was so sweet. i like your version of them both, very much.
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Thanks for reading!
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Lex and Clark are so cute when they are working together to save each other and the world!!
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For all that he occasionally longed for human frailty, he preferred to imagine it in a reporter’s life, not a construction worker’s.
Must bask one moment in Clark's cuteness. For he is damnably cute.
But not as cute as Lex's blatant confusion in their last exchange. I love that Clark is talking about feelings and Lex is strategizing about how to thwart the U.S. government and his father: they're both using different words and ideas, but it all means the same thing. I love that Clark, however, is the one to realize this:
Lex's expression turned fierce. "I'd lock you up so you wouldn't run off and get yourself killed."
-- that AND Lex is talking about how to confront the government: it's as close to a declaration of love as Clark is going to get and (YAY!!) Clark gets it. What surprises me a little is how Lex doesn't get it -- hello, betrayal of his rock-steady allegiance to his employer, does that not mean anything to him? But I guess Lex without meeting Clark at 21 grew up into a man who has no clue that he could fall in love.
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I love the turnaround you did with Lex, and the very natural way you brought out their feelings to one another - it's so often forced, but you didn't do that at all. It worked so well.
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Thank you so much for all of these though, these 8 days have been made brighter because I knew I had your fics to look forward to. I have finals right now and knowing one has something nice to look forward to makes a lot of difference. Also, this was all written wow impressively fast. So, thank you! You are awesome. (And I suck for not giving feedback on every single one of your posts but I really did like every single one!)
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That was a great AU!
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how FUN1
i actually didnt believe that Lionel was creeping out of the corners ;D
*rolls eyes* of course, that damn government and him works so great together, they are both good in betrayal!!
and lex is as always a sheer genius in everything except his own feelings, haha!
thanks a lot! and also , done reccing it!
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This AU is kickass and beyond cool, and I <3 this partnership very much!
Clark figuring out Lex's feelings is a Clark made of win!
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Clark is slow, but steady -- and this time he won the race!
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Sure, but where would I get that kind of money?
Except Lex has it!
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