![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Part 1
SUPERPOWER COUPLE? was Newsweek's headline, independently arrived at by six other papers and magazines. Five more omitted the question mark. The Economist went with a caricature, Superman's cape wrapped around Lex, except that they always drew the cape as the American flag, and they had Lex in the pose of the Statue of Liberty, which made him look like some sort of fashion-challenged Roman potentate with a crown on his bald head. And those were the good ones.
The first press conference was precisely as excruciating as Lex had expected. After some internal debate in the campaign, they'd decided on the line that Lex had left it to Superman to characterize the relationship, because it was his heritage and his choice. And they'd had a new set of suits made so that the bracelet was exposed—no hiding for Lex Luthor—but the color of the metal was close enough to that of the fabric that anyone inclined to do so could see it as one blended entity.
Here was a thing he never expected to think, but: Thank God for the People reporter. Once she asked how they'd met, and Lex had explained that Superman had saved his life, the political questions ended and then it was pure gossip time. How long had they known each other? ("Several years," give or take a decade, "but I'm always learning something new.") When had the relationship changed? ("I'm not going to answer that" was a lot better than "two days ago.") What drew him to Superman? ("You're joking, surely"; the laughter was more than polite.)
"Is Superman going to campaign for you?" the Tribune reporter asked. Lex had called on her when he sensed that he needed to get back to substance.
Lex shook his head. "I haven't discussed it with him, but I don't have any reason to think his noninterference policy has changed." Actually—and he could just see the Weekly Standard article on this already—Superman had not been born in America. An act of Congress a couple of years back (sponsored, of course, by Senator Kent) had conferred American citizenship on him, after Lane's first set of interviews, but Lex's lawyers had told him then that the question of whether a nonhuman could even be a citizen was at best an open one. Superman campaigning for him openly might not just be a PR issue; it could be a campaign finance law violation. Fortunately it was a moot point, because Superman wasn't going to offer an encouraging word.
And even if Superman's citizenship became a campaign issue, he'd already be so much closer to victory that there was no point in worrying about it now. He nodded at the reporter, allowing her a followup.
"Are you concerned that if he's around you too much you won't be able to escape the gay marriage issue?"
Lex shrugged easily and held his hands out. "Ms. Hansen, I went through the Ritual of Rao with Superman. Since I don't have a working time machine, I expect most people are going to know. But he's got a career of his own and I'd prefer to keep it that way."
The question with Lois Lane was always whether to call on her early or late. Early, and she set the tone; late, and she could ask a question that erased everything that had come before. Today, he'd gone with late. "Ms. Lane."
"Are you going to reveal Superman's secret identity? We don't know what kinds of conflicts of interest you might have. Or if someone else finds out, you'd be subject to blackmail. Is that really a vulnerability we want a potential president to have?"
Lex didn't bother looking at her. He looked right into the cameras. "I think you've confused Superman with some of our other guardian angels. Superman doesn't wear a mask."
"He's never denied living a separate life," she called out.
Lex wanted to say: 'He's also never denied being a cocker spaniel.' There was no point putting ideas in people's heads, though. "Kal has kept his private life private. But you, and every other reporter in the Western Hemisphere, have had him under scrutiny from the moment he caught that runaway airplane. There's an extensive, even grossly excessive, public record of who he is. Not many of us can say the same." He wanted to ball his hands into fists; he wanted to tell them that if they hadn't found anything yet they weren't going to. But if there was anything that he'd learned from the line of annoyances running from Roger Nixon to Lois Lane, it was that provoking the press was a terrible idea no matter how satisfying it might feel in the moment.
****
Well, that kind of backfired.
Lex had 100% name recognition, more valuable than gold and harder to move than negative opinions. He was still behind in the polls, but Clinton-behind, not McCain-behind.
Clark had grown up with preachers on the radio talking about gay marriage like it was the apocalypse up close and personal. But it turned out that Kansas was pretty much as conservative as it got on the gay thing. Most of the people who wouldn't vote for Lex wouldn't have voted for him anyway. And because the Ritual of Rao wasn't the same thing as a wedding, plenty of people thought their relationship was kind of like a civil union, which was boring and not so obviously against anybody's religion. Over half of the population lived in states that recognized gay marriage or domestic partnership; the nation's capital had even legalized gay marriage a few years back.
The bracelets of Rao became a minor fashion trend, worn by teenagers in love with controversy and hipsters who had decided that they were somehow ironic. Some of the bracelets came with little Superman logos, enameled red and yellow. Clark found an entire warehouse full of them and thought about setting it on fire, but settled for running a story about the dodgy overseas production conditions and traces of lead in the paint.
Lots of the commentary suggested that Lex's election was just the next inevitable frontier in gay rights. The conservatives who talked about interspecies mixing like it was miscegenation just made the rest of the critics look bad. Apparently Clark really was that popular.
Jon Stewart riffed on Lex every night, and worse he spent a lot of time making jokes about what Clark presumably liked to do in bed. Even the non-sexual jokes were worrisome, because they were all about making Lex seem harmless, which Clark could have told him was like making a volcano sound like a sun-warmed piece of rock suitable for picnicking. But no, he got: "We've had a black president, a Mormon, a woman and a Jew. Maybe it's time to knock down that last barrier in modern times and elect a bald man."
Lex shook up his consultants and started going after independents who were tired of the culture wars. And they were listening. Lex always could sound like the most reasonable person in the room, as long as he'd had a chance to think about what he wanted to say.
Bruce frowned constantly. Clark asked him, as a personal favor, not to fund anti-gay groups as a way to take Lex down. Bruce called him a child and asked whether he thought there'd be no price for his rash decision. But, in his capacity as Clark Kent, he checked and didn't find Wayne money going to any of the usual suspects, which was a small relief.
Also, Clark was having an astonishing amount of sex.
This was something that he tried not to think much about when it wasn't happening—his uniform was really really tight, for one thing. And Clark Kent needed to be paying attention to what was going on around him or Lois would whack him on the arm, which always made her curse and shake her hand.
It wasn't like he hadn't known that Lex would be embarrassingly, outrageously good at sex. He'd seen Lex walk. And bend over. And touch things. And lean on—whatever, Lex was an Olympic-quality sexual gymnast, this was news to precisely no one.
The funny thing was that Clark could fall asleep in Lex's bed and not wake up terrified of what Lex was going to do to him, or make him do. He wanted to blame it on the Ritual of Rao. But the Ritual only made him obey. That, Clark had confirmed with the Fortress, which also said that it was irreversible. Apparently if Clark had known what he was doing he could have negotiated some constraints on the obedience, which would have been incorporated into the vows—the whole thing really was more like a marriage, crossbred with a contract, than Clark had known—but since he hadn't, the only thing holding Lex back was his inability to imagine that Clark might follow orders. Thanks a lot, Kryptonian culture, Clark thought. Too bad that particular wrinkle hadn't been part of his whirlwind tour of his heritage.
Fortunately, Lex's usually clever imagination seemed to have failed him when it came to exploiting the Ritual. Mostly, they just had sex, and occasionally fought about some story in the Planet or a sketchy Luthorian business venture.
One night, Lex stopped stroking his back and rolled out of bed, pulling his pants off of the floor. "Where are you going?" Clark asked, sleepy and satiated.
Lex stopped and ran his hand over the back of his head. "If I'm going to get the new testing facility approved this year, I need to finish this report." Clark knew that there'd be more to it: Lex probably had someone who needed to be bribed or intimidated as well. He'd have to look into it tomorrow.
"Come back to bed," Clark said. Even if Lex hadn't been able to cut him off with a single order, Clark didn't want to fight. "Just until I fall asleep."
Lex stood there like one of the statues in the mansion. Clark started to wake up, because if Lex was going to get mad Clark definitely needed all his brain cells in full working order. But then Lex sighed and dropped the pants. "I suppose it's not a particularly high priority."
****
Sonny Boswell had been the Mayor of Metropolis "since Hector was a pup," the line he unrolled on anyone unfortunate to be in a room with him for more than five minutes. One of these days, Lex was going to get around to having him recalled and replaced.
Boswell stood as Lex entered and crossed over to where Lex had stopped just inside the door. He was holding a manila envelope, sealed and unmarked.
"You asked for a meeting, Mr. Mayor?" Boswell was going to ask for some LuthorCorp donation, and Lex would have to go along for the publicity value, but he'd negotiate some sort of abatement, and everyone would go home with a burnished public image and an unchanged balance sheet. Boring.
Boswell smiled, reminding Lex of a remora. "I wanted to do this in person. And I wasn't sure the ordinary folks we use could get past your security."
"Excuse me?" Lex asked.
Boswell shoved the envelope at him, as if he were going to slap Lex in the chest with it. Lex grabbed it out of the mayor's hands purely in defense of his own dignity.
"Congratulations, Lex," Boswell said. "You've been served." He darted past Lex and out the door. Lex examined the people left in the room—various mayoral functionaries, most so trivial that he didn't even know their names. He turned on his heel and left, already dialing his lawyers.
The envelope gave him a papercut, which was just typical. Inside was a lawsuit—not his first by a long shot, but the first in a long time naming him as an individual defendant and not LuthorCorp.
Metropolis was suing him for compensation for damage caused by Superman's various activities over the years, on the theory that as Superman's spouse his assets were Superman's.
A lesser man would have said something like 'I don't believe this,' but Lex's threshold for belief was, like the rest of him, strongly influenced by his experiences in Smallville.
"Anne," he said to the partner who'd answered his call, "get over to my office. Bring a family law expert."
There was a shocked silence on the other end.
"I'm not getting divorced," he said when he realized the problem.
"Of course not," Anne said tartly, as if she'd never thought differently. That was why he paid her as much per hour as his masseuse: you could shock her, but you couldn't get her to show shock. "You should know, a post-nup is going to be a devil—"
"That's not what I want either," he said, deciding that it was legitimate to be peeved. "Just—get over there. And call Paul and tell him you won't be home for the next few days."
****
Lex, naturally, picked the newest and prettiest anchor in Metropolis for his first sit-down hometown interview since Clark's bombshell. Prettiest, because, well, Lex; newest because he hadn't had time to sleep with her and leave her resentful.
Or so Clark reasoned, anyway.
Her name was Kayleigh. Someone named Kal-El probably shouldn't have found that annoying, but at least he had a good excuse. As far as he knew, Kayleigh had been born and bred in Kansas.
"What's your response to getting sued by the city of Metropolis?" she asked, after a few warmup softballs.
Lex spread his hands and shrugged. "Well, first, I'd like to think that it's not the city, but the mayor, who's suing. Mayor Boswell and I have butted heads before, and it's certainly an excellent way for him to raise his political profile. But I think most Metropolis citizens prefer having Superman around to not having him."
"But, Lex, in the past you yourself have expressed concern about the amount of property damage Superman causes while he's doing all his noble deeds."
Lex managed to look modestly self-effacing, even though he should have been—well, Clark didn't know what he wanted, but it had to be something other than what Lex was delivering, which was relaxed comfort while he hung Clark out to dry. "I'm deeply impressed with how Kal—that is, Superman—has improved his record in avoiding collateral damage as he saves hundreds and even thousands of lives, which is of course always his primary goal."
"But you're refusing to compensate Metropolis businesses for that collateral damage when it does, unfortunately, occur."
Lex leaned forward, hands on his knees. "Over forty percent of that collateral damage, I should point out, has occurred on LuthorCorp property. I'm far from indifferent to the costs. I also recognize the benefits Superman has brought to Metropolis. In any event, it's true that I don't believe that I personally ought to pay for that other sixty percent. Kansas doesn't recognize any relationship between two men as having any legal effect. I don't see how the state can tell me on the one hand I'm not married and on the other I am, as long as that hand is picking my pocket."
"So you don't feel responsible for the damage Superman causes?" Kayleigh prodded.
Lex smiled. "Most spouses take suggestions, not orders. And most spouses don't have superpowers."
Clark just knew that Lex had an internal commentary track running, and that it was not nice either to Clark or to the interviewer. Who was leaning forward, and even if she wasn't flashing her cleavage to the entire audience, he could tell that Lex was getting a good view, even if Lex wasn't obvious about looking.
"And what is your view about federal recognition of same-sex marriage?"
Lex widened his smile, easy as if he weren't about two millimeters from a tantrum that would have left the studio in fragments. "As I've said numerous times in the past few years, I believe marriage is a religious matter. I support civil unions between consenting adults."
Clark frowned. There were all kinds of things wrong with that answer, but it seemed to be working. Of course it would; it had undoubtedly been focus-tested to perfection.
Later, he asked Lex about it, because he did have the opportunity—Lex wasn't throwing him out before he could pose an entire question. At least, if he managed to pose a question before they started having sex; they ate up a shocking number of hours that way.
Lex shook his head. "The state has no business determining who can marry. Any more than it has any business determining what counts as an unconscionable contract term. Private parties, private decisions."
Clark took the bait, even as he knew he was supposed to do so. "The government has to protect people! There just need to be rules about what kind of interventions are okay."
And they were off. The argument lasted through dinner, turned into yelling while Lex was trying to drink his cognac, quieted down when Lex shoved Clark back onto the couch and dropped to his knees, and resumed between rounds two and three. Then Clark needed his rest too much to continue, so they tabled (or more precisely, bedded) the issue.
Maybe Clark enjoyed debating political philosophy with Lex, a little, now that he had the knowledge and experience to hold his own. He didn't need to confess that to anyone, though.
****
"Why are you investing so much money in extra-durable building materials?" the business reporter for the Times asked him.
Lex opened his mouth, then closed it while he thought. "Given the threats faced by major cities in the twenty-first century, disaster-resistant construction is one of the best investments we can make in homeland security, and LuthorCorp's technical expertise has already made substantial improvements in the technology."
"But it will take decades to recoup that investment," the reporter pointed out.
Lex shrugged. "It depends on whether you factor in the insurance savings, along with the decreased chances of total loss of one of our key facilities. And one of the virtues of owning a controlling interest is that LuthorCorp can make decisions for the long-term, instead of the next-quarter mentality that has brought so much economic pain to this country."
He finished the rest of the interview in a haze. Fortunately the business side was easier than breathing, and the questions were relatively technical ones, unlikely to make scandal even if he screwed one up.
The problem was that he didn't know why he'd invested so much in extra-durable building materials. He'd just walked into his office one morning, called a meeting, and made it happen.
Lex didn't like not understanding his motivations. It led to misjudgments and mortal danger, not to mention the occasional humiliation.
He'd done it the morning after Clark had sighed and moaned about the football stadium he'd destroyed in his latest battle with the Toyman. Lex hadn't even bothered making Clark's monologue into a conversation, because they both knew it was the Toyman's direct fault even if Clark's presence was what had drawn the crazy to Metropolis, and none of the relevant underlying facts were going to change. At last, probably just to get his attention, Clark had started in on how LuthorCorp should be doing something to protect the people and properties of Metropolis.
Clark had told him to make buildings stronger, and Lex had started work on it immediately.
It hadn't been calculated, not consciously. Was he wooing his sort-of-husband? No, he dismissed that possibility.
He was doing it because he'd never considered not doing Clark's bidding.
He looked at the bracelet around his wrist, the metal dull and apparently quiescent under the office lights. Nice, simple alien ritual involving nice, simple alien artifacts. But words were powerful, and he'd said some of the most powerful ones of all to Clark.
Well, he thought, use unproven technology, get surprising results.
So, he had an impulse to obey Clark. He'd cancel the building project immediately, except that really would be a PR and financial disaster, so that would be a mistake. Unless, of course, that was a rationalization designed to keep him under Clark's control, compelled to obey.
Clark had shown no signs of understanding his power, and Lex couldn't afford to let him find out, so he couldn't attempt to provoke a test. He'd just have to be wary and ready to fight Clark's next demands. Though possibly he should simply avoid Clark, to minimize the chance of accidental exposure of his weakness.
Just like the fucking Kryptonians to hard-wire loyalty into their relationships. He should have known: nothing about them suggested much sympathy for free will.
Lex stiffened as the next set of implications occurred to him.
Clark had said some powerful words to Lex, too. Though there was surely some sort of fail-safe to protect either party from telling the other 'don't give me orders,' the Ritual of Rao could have given him the same type of influence over Clark that Clark had over him.
It elegantly explained the single most anomalous feature of his recent dealings with Clark. He remembered the first time with diamond-edged clarity: he'd ordered Clark to perform his conjugal duties. And Clark had done so, despite the array of unchanged facts, commitments, and past events that made a relationship between them more ludicrous than any costume the Justice League had yet to approve.
He'd let himself think, because he wanted to believe it, that Clark had always felt the same electricity between them as Lex had. That Clark had just been looking for an excuse, and that they were engaging in a mutually satisfactory exchange in the knowledge that there was very little left that either of them could do to hurt the other.
Lex was not a nice man. He'd had plenty of sex with people who, if they'd ruled the world, would never have come near him. He'd been the aggressor with some of them. But they'd all determined that the costs of not having sex with him outweighed the costs of having sex. They'd all had the capacity to get up and walk away in the middle of the action, as long as they were willing to accept the consequences. That wasn't the line that everyone would draw, but it was, he thought, an important one, and it was his own.
Clark was the only person he'd ever fucked who couldn't change his mind.
Lex didn't realize he was going to vomit until he was leaning over the toilet, reliving lunch and breakfast and, near as he could tell, last night's dinner as well.
****
"I'm going to be busy all night on this deal with Japan," Lex said distractedly the moment Clark stepped into his office. "You should probably—" He stopped, which was just weird, and Clark checked him out automatically, looking for elevated temperature or altered brain readings or anything out of the ordinary, but nothing showed up in broad-spectrum vision. "I'll be busy," he repeated (weirder). "If you like, you can have Lien make you some dinner." He swiveled in his chair, dismissing Clark.
Clark stood there like a complete moron for maybe half a minute before he understood that this wasn't one of Lex's games. There wasn't a whisper of invitation in Lex's pose.
He opened his mouth to ask if Lex was sure, but that was even more stupid than gaping at Lex. "Okay," he said. "I guess I'll head up to the Tower."
Lex nodded automatically. When Clark looked back from a mile away, he was absorbed in reading the report on his screen. Oddly, it was in French, something about nuclear power plants in Russia, and Lex didn't even have his fingers on the keyboard.
But then an undersea alarm went off—Arthur's kingdom was under attack by an army raised by Black Manta—and Clark turned his attention to more pressing matters.
****
Lex had three problems, each in the way of solving the others, each time-sensitive. First, there was his ability to coerce Clark. He was under no illusions that he'd resist abusing it forever. Second, there was Clark's reciprocal ability to influence him. Clark was not devious, but he wouldn't remain ignorant forever, and attempts to keep him in the dark by avoiding activities to which he'd object would also eventually trigger his suspicions. And third, last and least and in the end responsible for the other two, there was the damned election. The irony was: he was going to win it, too, unless something shocking occurred in the next month. Like Clark ordering him to withdraw from the race.
He suspected that there was some failsafe involved that prevented him from telling Clark not to give him any orders, and vice versa, but that was just logic and not actual Kryptonian knowledge. In the absence of such a provision, like the fairytale rule against wishing for more wishes, there'd be too much potential for exploitation. Kryptonians overall didn't seem like the type of people who appreciated being vulnerable, as much as they liked to see it in others.
Lex had chosen the Ritual of Rao because it had been described, rather poetically he'd thought, in the materials he'd kept from Clark's Arctic palace. But the description was limited to its establishment. He had no idea how, if at all, it could be dissolved.
It was possible that his father had been right about his inability to account for unexpected consequences.
He'd attempted to take a sample of the metal with a monofilament. He'd applied concentrated heat and concentrated cold, looking for softening or brittling, and only managed to give himself frostbite and third-degree burns on successive days. He'd subjected the bracelet to X-rays and next-generation MRIs (and getting the machine to function with the metal inside it had been a technical challenge even for him, by which he meant that he'd destroyed three labs and a dozen machines before he'd conceded that there was no discernable internal structure inside the bracelet; at least there was a new patent out of it).
Just in case, he'd tried speaking "I divorce you" out loud three times. Then he'd upped the repetitions to seven and switched to Kryptonian. Sadly, what worked for certain Earth cultures had no effect on the Kryptonian device. Maybe his translation had been off. The word he'd used in his experiment was more like "sever" than "divorce," for which he'd found no exact cognate. And that failure to have the concept was, perhaps, the source of his problem. Kryptonian marriages, from what he could decipher, seemed generally to end with the death of one party. Sometimes, the materials suggested, one spouse would hasten the day of that death, and apparently spousal homicide was not frowned upon on Krypton as it was on Earth.
Maybe there was some sort of aura emanating from Kryptonite that explained why all Lex's spouses had attempted to kill him.
No-fault divorce would have been a lot simpler, but also a lot less satisfying. Lex actually had the feeling that he would have gotten along fine on Krypton.
He pushed the problem aside to let his unconscious mull it over and turned to his daily press digest. After some internal debate, he clicked on the video clip from The View. "Why hasn't Lex Luthor's homosexuality been a bigger issue in the presidential campaign?" Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked the camera, smiling with teeth so white he suspected her of having internal floodlights installed.
Whoopi Goldberg grinned with the kind of tension Lex himself felt. "Actually, we've heard pretty detailed confirmation that he's bisexual, you know."
Hasselbeck frowned prettily. "Well, the American people don't care, they just don't want to hear about homosexual behavior in the White House."
"Speak for yourself," Whoopi rejoined, which made the others giggle or frown.
Katie Couric intervened: "I think if Bill Clinton taught us anything, it's that in the end the American people don't want to hear about what their presidents get up to in the bedroom—gay, straight, whatever."
"Is it relevant to job performance, that's all I want to know," Amy Robach said.
Lex closed the window, as reassured as he was going to get.
****
The thing was, it was unfair of Lex to cut him off. Clark didn't even know what he'd done. He would have thought his general track record of lying and investigating and foiling Lex's plans would have prevented Lex from wanting him in the first place. But since clearly none of that had been an insurmountable barrier, Clark was at a loss to explain why he'd been as sex-free as a monk on Prozac for the past month. Sure, that had been life pre-Lex, but that thought didn't improve his mood any.
Maybe Lex had just—gotten bored. It wasn't like Lex was used to long-term relationships, and maybe that wasn't just because all his wives and fiancees tried to kill him. Maybe the wives and fiancees were just getting out ahead of the inevitable.
Clark glared at the members of the Black Hat Gang. Several cringed. He realized that his eyes were glowing and made an effort to calm himself. The criminals didn't look particularly reassured, but Clark was overall okay with that.
He couldn't just go to Lex and ask, he realized as he delivered the miscreants to police custody, zipping back and forth between the bank they'd tried to rob and the jailhouse. Humiliation factor aside, Lex would think he was entering into some sort of negotiation. Clark didn't have anything he could afford to give, if the orgasms weren't doing it any more, and even if that hadn't been true he wasn't sure the bracelet would distinguish between a request from Lex and an order from Lex.
But—
Clark could live without the sex. That was a demonstrated fact, over many years. And yet—
Lex was so warm after, even though his skin usually felt cool. They'd lie in bed, the sheets damp and rumpled, sometimes torn (Clark was pretty sure Lex had new ones bought each night), and they'd breathe. No accusations or insinuations, no demands or threats. It was almost like hanging out back in the barn in Smallville, when he'd been just a kid—well, except with the addition of afterglow, and that was hard to count as some sort of deterioration in the situation.
Wally was yammering in his ear, he realized, asking him if he was done or if he wanted to bust some more walls into rubble.
"Sorry," he said into the comm link, meaning the rubble and his inattention. "I'm going off line for a while, okay?"
"Conjugal visit, eh?" Wally said, the leer almost visible through the connection—"Ow," he continued immediately, as if Hawkgirl had smacked him in the back of the head. "Sounds like a great idea, big guy! You work some of that tension out, you'll be back to fighting form in no time!"
Clark wasn't sure what was worse, the fact that Flash had noticed that he wasn't in perfect condition or the fact that Bruce hadn't yet said a word about it.
He clenched his jaw. He was going to have to deal with Lex, that was obvious. Problem was, he didn't have a model for doing that other than storming in with an accusation, and "You haven't slept with me in weeks!" was both pathetic and self-evident. Clark couldn't even expect a denial, so the whole formula for their interactions (pre-marriage, anyway) would be wrecked.
Back in the beginning, he'd come to the mansion just to hang out, because the world was brighter with Lex in it, sharper-edged. His blood had pumped faster through his veins. He'd been flushed and nervous and at the same time stronger and smarter in Lex's presence, like Lex's own galactic personality made Clark more himself in response.
In retrospect, he might have had a little bit of a crush on Lex.
At the time, he'd thought that nausea was the leading indicator of true love, so he hadn't figured it out. Now, he needed to make Lex remember those early days, when they both thought the other one was perfect. Or, well, he needed to make Lex remember. Clark couldn't afford any more memories than he already had.
****
The last thing Lex expected to find in his apartment was Clark.
Well, no. The last thing Lex expected to find in his apartment was his father, resurrected from the dead and declaring sincerely that all was forgiven. (Not that Lex entirely ruled this scenario out. He just considered it highly improbable. And really, most of that was from the 'sincerely' part.) Regardless, Clark's presence was unlikely, though the crossed arms and the glower helped convince Lex that he wasn't hallucinating again.
"Clark," he said, as neutrally as he could. It was truly insupportable to have his usual conversation openers like 'what can I do for you?' taken off the table, given that Clark was likely to answer and then Lex would be stuck obeying him.
"You know what," Clark said, "I'm tired of talking."
Which was even more ridiculous than usual, given that they'd barely said ten words to each other in the past month. But before he could blink, the world blurred and his skin chilled with the rapid transit into the bedroom, plus the sudden nudity.
"Stay put," Clark instructed him. Lex considered this while determining that he was laid out like a virgin sacrifice on the bed. The trip had been a bit disorienting. And then—Lex would have tried to suppress the noise he made if he could have processed the relevant input, but the human body wasn't meant to react to being caressed over every inch at superspeed. Clark was still moving so fast that it seemed like he had ten thousand hands, and a hundred thousand tongues, all moving on Lex, so fast that Lex thought maybe he was outstripping the speed at which Lex's neurons could fire. So fast the wetness on his skin didn't get any time to cool down, just slick heat everywhere, like he was being swallowed whole.
Lex's own groans seemed like they'd been slowed down in contrast, thick and distorted in his ears. Clark's hot hands covered him, cupped his ankle and ran up his calf and stroked under his balls and traced the outline of his biceps; his tongue tickled the back of Lex's knee and circled his navel and traced his jawline.
He thrashed, or tried to, but Clark wanted him in place, and Lex had never, never gotten off on bondage before, but he was underwater here, full fathom five. And then the orgasm hit him, supernova, every muscle seizing. If they were fucking in superspeed, then he'd lasted years, relatively speaking, so he wouldn't have felt embarrassed even if he'd had the coherence to work up a full-fledged emotion.
Clark had the presence of mind to slow down enough not to do Lex any damage when he pressed inside. At some point Lex was going to be grateful for that, but with Clark back at normal speed it seemed a more pressing matter to dig his heels into Clark's back and squeeze his biceps and bite at the curves of his collarbone and the tendons of his neck. Lex didn't understand why Clark even had muscles given the superstrength, or why Clark's bulletproof skin gave under the pressure of his fingers like a human's instead of resisting like a statue's, but right now he almost didn't care.
Clark grimaced, his eyes closed and his hair in little sweaty curls fanned over his forehead. Every thrust sent a buzz through Lex's entire body, toes to fingertips. Lex turned his head to one side and then the other, folding himself up further and clamping his jaw shut in case some idiotic portion of his psyche tried to get any words out.
When Clark came, it was with a roar that shattered the glass of the Art Deco mirror on the wall above the headboard. Lex managed to put his hands over his head before any fragments fell on him. Clark looked up and spent a moment with a hilariously confused expression that reminded Lex of the results of many, many innuendoes he'd used back in Smallville.
Then, most likely because he didn't want to waste the time cleaning up all the fragments covering the sheets, he moved them to one of the guest bedrooms and started all over again.
****
Clark hadn't managed to discuss anything with Lex, but he sure felt an awful lot better. He noted that Lex gave all his interviews the next day standing, which he kind of wanted to feel bad about but actually didn't, not even a little. Lex was a fast healer, and maybe he'd know better than to cut Clark off for no reason at all in the future. If Clark was bound to Lex, he might as well be getting the few benefits that the connection allowed him, after all.
And then the pictures showed up. Apparently, Lex's security had not been as thorough with the guest bedrooms as with Lex's own.
The motion-activated camera got fifteen frames per second, which meant that there was an animated version, but it was jerky enough that it really made more sense to look at the stills.
"Holy mother of fuck," Lois said, staring at her monitor, while Clark had to concentrate really hard on not actually sinking through the floor—or in his case, burrowing, but it was basically the same thing—and on not setting anything on fire with his eyes.
Maybe God has it in for Kryptonians, Clark thought. Maybe in his past life he was worse than Zod. Or maybe he was just that stupid, to think that he could use sex to solve his problems and not get Lex even angrier at him.
The reaction to the pictures was predictable: cue outrage on all sides. Lex's opponents decried the intrusion and subtly dug at Lex's lifestyle. The "independent" commentators weren't that subtle. Lex had no comment on his private life, though his chief spokesperson did, at the end of that first press conference, suggest that this kind of intrusion was likely to happen when people were too concerned with what went on in other people's bedrooms. Of course Lois, sitting next to Clark, jabbed him with her pen, scowled at the now-broken pen, and whispered, "When they look like those two, anybody'd be interested in what goes on in their bedroom." Which just went to show that 'no comment' was always the best policy for Lex, and Lex seemed to realize that.
So much for the 'sex it out' plan for relationship repair. Maybe that only worked for people who weren't being stalked by half of the entire journalistic profession.
****
Jon Stewart mugged for the camera and said that pictures of Superman and Lex Luthor having sex commanded a $5 million price, but that the American people would gladly pay the same amount to not see pictures of the other candidates' sex lives. "And one thing we know: a president has to be able to take anything the world dishes out and keep coming back for more. Inexhaustibly. Insatiably, if you will. I believe we've now seen that Lex Luthor is more than up to the challenge."
Lex picked up a priceless Greek statuette and wondered how many particles of worthless Greek dust it would create if he threw it through the screen. But no, he wasn't that boy any more, pouring out his aggression on the material world when it was people who hurt him. Or aliens.
Moving with exaggerated slowness, Lex set the reprieved statuette back down.
It was somewhat unfair to blame Clark, not that he was going to let that detain him long. The original command must have been percolating back in Clark's mind all this time, eventually boiling over when Lex hadn't given him any opportunity to perform his conjugal duties. Evasion had failed, and Lex had always known that he didn't have the fortitude to order Clark outright to keep his dick in his pants even if it wouldn't have signaled to Clark that something very strange was going on.
At least the pictures were going to keep Clark away while Lex figured out what to do, or, as Clark might have said, sulked.
Oddly, the polls had barely moved at all. If anything, he'd gained support. The very bravest of his advisers had suggested that many people were a little confused by the fact that Superman played both pitcher and catcher. But mostly the public seemed to take the pictures as confirmation of preexisting beliefs.
He didn't want to spend his term—terms, thank you—on lifestyle issues. Obama got to be more than the first black president; Lex could fight past this.
But right now, with Clark staying ensconced in the Watchtower except to superspeed into Lex's bedroom for his nightly fix, Lex was having a hard time remembering why he wanted so much to sit in that office and solve other people's problems.
Part 3
SUPERPOWER COUPLE? was Newsweek's headline, independently arrived at by six other papers and magazines. Five more omitted the question mark. The Economist went with a caricature, Superman's cape wrapped around Lex, except that they always drew the cape as the American flag, and they had Lex in the pose of the Statue of Liberty, which made him look like some sort of fashion-challenged Roman potentate with a crown on his bald head. And those were the good ones.
The first press conference was precisely as excruciating as Lex had expected. After some internal debate in the campaign, they'd decided on the line that Lex had left it to Superman to characterize the relationship, because it was his heritage and his choice. And they'd had a new set of suits made so that the bracelet was exposed—no hiding for Lex Luthor—but the color of the metal was close enough to that of the fabric that anyone inclined to do so could see it as one blended entity.
Here was a thing he never expected to think, but: Thank God for the People reporter. Once she asked how they'd met, and Lex had explained that Superman had saved his life, the political questions ended and then it was pure gossip time. How long had they known each other? ("Several years," give or take a decade, "but I'm always learning something new.") When had the relationship changed? ("I'm not going to answer that" was a lot better than "two days ago.") What drew him to Superman? ("You're joking, surely"; the laughter was more than polite.)
"Is Superman going to campaign for you?" the Tribune reporter asked. Lex had called on her when he sensed that he needed to get back to substance.
Lex shook his head. "I haven't discussed it with him, but I don't have any reason to think his noninterference policy has changed." Actually—and he could just see the Weekly Standard article on this already—Superman had not been born in America. An act of Congress a couple of years back (sponsored, of course, by Senator Kent) had conferred American citizenship on him, after Lane's first set of interviews, but Lex's lawyers had told him then that the question of whether a nonhuman could even be a citizen was at best an open one. Superman campaigning for him openly might not just be a PR issue; it could be a campaign finance law violation. Fortunately it was a moot point, because Superman wasn't going to offer an encouraging word.
And even if Superman's citizenship became a campaign issue, he'd already be so much closer to victory that there was no point in worrying about it now. He nodded at the reporter, allowing her a followup.
"Are you concerned that if he's around you too much you won't be able to escape the gay marriage issue?"
Lex shrugged easily and held his hands out. "Ms. Hansen, I went through the Ritual of Rao with Superman. Since I don't have a working time machine, I expect most people are going to know. But he's got a career of his own and I'd prefer to keep it that way."
The question with Lois Lane was always whether to call on her early or late. Early, and she set the tone; late, and she could ask a question that erased everything that had come before. Today, he'd gone with late. "Ms. Lane."
"Are you going to reveal Superman's secret identity? We don't know what kinds of conflicts of interest you might have. Or if someone else finds out, you'd be subject to blackmail. Is that really a vulnerability we want a potential president to have?"
Lex didn't bother looking at her. He looked right into the cameras. "I think you've confused Superman with some of our other guardian angels. Superman doesn't wear a mask."
"He's never denied living a separate life," she called out.
Lex wanted to say: 'He's also never denied being a cocker spaniel.' There was no point putting ideas in people's heads, though. "Kal has kept his private life private. But you, and every other reporter in the Western Hemisphere, have had him under scrutiny from the moment he caught that runaway airplane. There's an extensive, even grossly excessive, public record of who he is. Not many of us can say the same." He wanted to ball his hands into fists; he wanted to tell them that if they hadn't found anything yet they weren't going to. But if there was anything that he'd learned from the line of annoyances running from Roger Nixon to Lois Lane, it was that provoking the press was a terrible idea no matter how satisfying it might feel in the moment.
****
Well, that kind of backfired.
Lex had 100% name recognition, more valuable than gold and harder to move than negative opinions. He was still behind in the polls, but Clinton-behind, not McCain-behind.
Clark had grown up with preachers on the radio talking about gay marriage like it was the apocalypse up close and personal. But it turned out that Kansas was pretty much as conservative as it got on the gay thing. Most of the people who wouldn't vote for Lex wouldn't have voted for him anyway. And because the Ritual of Rao wasn't the same thing as a wedding, plenty of people thought their relationship was kind of like a civil union, which was boring and not so obviously against anybody's religion. Over half of the population lived in states that recognized gay marriage or domestic partnership; the nation's capital had even legalized gay marriage a few years back.
The bracelets of Rao became a minor fashion trend, worn by teenagers in love with controversy and hipsters who had decided that they were somehow ironic. Some of the bracelets came with little Superman logos, enameled red and yellow. Clark found an entire warehouse full of them and thought about setting it on fire, but settled for running a story about the dodgy overseas production conditions and traces of lead in the paint.
Lots of the commentary suggested that Lex's election was just the next inevitable frontier in gay rights. The conservatives who talked about interspecies mixing like it was miscegenation just made the rest of the critics look bad. Apparently Clark really was that popular.
Jon Stewart riffed on Lex every night, and worse he spent a lot of time making jokes about what Clark presumably liked to do in bed. Even the non-sexual jokes were worrisome, because they were all about making Lex seem harmless, which Clark could have told him was like making a volcano sound like a sun-warmed piece of rock suitable for picnicking. But no, he got: "We've had a black president, a Mormon, a woman and a Jew. Maybe it's time to knock down that last barrier in modern times and elect a bald man."
Lex shook up his consultants and started going after independents who were tired of the culture wars. And they were listening. Lex always could sound like the most reasonable person in the room, as long as he'd had a chance to think about what he wanted to say.
Bruce frowned constantly. Clark asked him, as a personal favor, not to fund anti-gay groups as a way to take Lex down. Bruce called him a child and asked whether he thought there'd be no price for his rash decision. But, in his capacity as Clark Kent, he checked and didn't find Wayne money going to any of the usual suspects, which was a small relief.
Also, Clark was having an astonishing amount of sex.
This was something that he tried not to think much about when it wasn't happening—his uniform was really really tight, for one thing. And Clark Kent needed to be paying attention to what was going on around him or Lois would whack him on the arm, which always made her curse and shake her hand.
It wasn't like he hadn't known that Lex would be embarrassingly, outrageously good at sex. He'd seen Lex walk. And bend over. And touch things. And lean on—whatever, Lex was an Olympic-quality sexual gymnast, this was news to precisely no one.
The funny thing was that Clark could fall asleep in Lex's bed and not wake up terrified of what Lex was going to do to him, or make him do. He wanted to blame it on the Ritual of Rao. But the Ritual only made him obey. That, Clark had confirmed with the Fortress, which also said that it was irreversible. Apparently if Clark had known what he was doing he could have negotiated some constraints on the obedience, which would have been incorporated into the vows—the whole thing really was more like a marriage, crossbred with a contract, than Clark had known—but since he hadn't, the only thing holding Lex back was his inability to imagine that Clark might follow orders. Thanks a lot, Kryptonian culture, Clark thought. Too bad that particular wrinkle hadn't been part of his whirlwind tour of his heritage.
Fortunately, Lex's usually clever imagination seemed to have failed him when it came to exploiting the Ritual. Mostly, they just had sex, and occasionally fought about some story in the Planet or a sketchy Luthorian business venture.
One night, Lex stopped stroking his back and rolled out of bed, pulling his pants off of the floor. "Where are you going?" Clark asked, sleepy and satiated.
Lex stopped and ran his hand over the back of his head. "If I'm going to get the new testing facility approved this year, I need to finish this report." Clark knew that there'd be more to it: Lex probably had someone who needed to be bribed or intimidated as well. He'd have to look into it tomorrow.
"Come back to bed," Clark said. Even if Lex hadn't been able to cut him off with a single order, Clark didn't want to fight. "Just until I fall asleep."
Lex stood there like one of the statues in the mansion. Clark started to wake up, because if Lex was going to get mad Clark definitely needed all his brain cells in full working order. But then Lex sighed and dropped the pants. "I suppose it's not a particularly high priority."
****
Sonny Boswell had been the Mayor of Metropolis "since Hector was a pup," the line he unrolled on anyone unfortunate to be in a room with him for more than five minutes. One of these days, Lex was going to get around to having him recalled and replaced.
Boswell stood as Lex entered and crossed over to where Lex had stopped just inside the door. He was holding a manila envelope, sealed and unmarked.
"You asked for a meeting, Mr. Mayor?" Boswell was going to ask for some LuthorCorp donation, and Lex would have to go along for the publicity value, but he'd negotiate some sort of abatement, and everyone would go home with a burnished public image and an unchanged balance sheet. Boring.
Boswell smiled, reminding Lex of a remora. "I wanted to do this in person. And I wasn't sure the ordinary folks we use could get past your security."
"Excuse me?" Lex asked.
Boswell shoved the envelope at him, as if he were going to slap Lex in the chest with it. Lex grabbed it out of the mayor's hands purely in defense of his own dignity.
"Congratulations, Lex," Boswell said. "You've been served." He darted past Lex and out the door. Lex examined the people left in the room—various mayoral functionaries, most so trivial that he didn't even know their names. He turned on his heel and left, already dialing his lawyers.
The envelope gave him a papercut, which was just typical. Inside was a lawsuit—not his first by a long shot, but the first in a long time naming him as an individual defendant and not LuthorCorp.
Metropolis was suing him for compensation for damage caused by Superman's various activities over the years, on the theory that as Superman's spouse his assets were Superman's.
A lesser man would have said something like 'I don't believe this,' but Lex's threshold for belief was, like the rest of him, strongly influenced by his experiences in Smallville.
"Anne," he said to the partner who'd answered his call, "get over to my office. Bring a family law expert."
There was a shocked silence on the other end.
"I'm not getting divorced," he said when he realized the problem.
"Of course not," Anne said tartly, as if she'd never thought differently. That was why he paid her as much per hour as his masseuse: you could shock her, but you couldn't get her to show shock. "You should know, a post-nup is going to be a devil—"
"That's not what I want either," he said, deciding that it was legitimate to be peeved. "Just—get over there. And call Paul and tell him you won't be home for the next few days."
****
Lex, naturally, picked the newest and prettiest anchor in Metropolis for his first sit-down hometown interview since Clark's bombshell. Prettiest, because, well, Lex; newest because he hadn't had time to sleep with her and leave her resentful.
Or so Clark reasoned, anyway.
Her name was Kayleigh. Someone named Kal-El probably shouldn't have found that annoying, but at least he had a good excuse. As far as he knew, Kayleigh had been born and bred in Kansas.
"What's your response to getting sued by the city of Metropolis?" she asked, after a few warmup softballs.
Lex spread his hands and shrugged. "Well, first, I'd like to think that it's not the city, but the mayor, who's suing. Mayor Boswell and I have butted heads before, and it's certainly an excellent way for him to raise his political profile. But I think most Metropolis citizens prefer having Superman around to not having him."
"But, Lex, in the past you yourself have expressed concern about the amount of property damage Superman causes while he's doing all his noble deeds."
Lex managed to look modestly self-effacing, even though he should have been—well, Clark didn't know what he wanted, but it had to be something other than what Lex was delivering, which was relaxed comfort while he hung Clark out to dry. "I'm deeply impressed with how Kal—that is, Superman—has improved his record in avoiding collateral damage as he saves hundreds and even thousands of lives, which is of course always his primary goal."
"But you're refusing to compensate Metropolis businesses for that collateral damage when it does, unfortunately, occur."
Lex leaned forward, hands on his knees. "Over forty percent of that collateral damage, I should point out, has occurred on LuthorCorp property. I'm far from indifferent to the costs. I also recognize the benefits Superman has brought to Metropolis. In any event, it's true that I don't believe that I personally ought to pay for that other sixty percent. Kansas doesn't recognize any relationship between two men as having any legal effect. I don't see how the state can tell me on the one hand I'm not married and on the other I am, as long as that hand is picking my pocket."
"So you don't feel responsible for the damage Superman causes?" Kayleigh prodded.
Lex smiled. "Most spouses take suggestions, not orders. And most spouses don't have superpowers."
Clark just knew that Lex had an internal commentary track running, and that it was not nice either to Clark or to the interviewer. Who was leaning forward, and even if she wasn't flashing her cleavage to the entire audience, he could tell that Lex was getting a good view, even if Lex wasn't obvious about looking.
"And what is your view about federal recognition of same-sex marriage?"
Lex widened his smile, easy as if he weren't about two millimeters from a tantrum that would have left the studio in fragments. "As I've said numerous times in the past few years, I believe marriage is a religious matter. I support civil unions between consenting adults."
Clark frowned. There were all kinds of things wrong with that answer, but it seemed to be working. Of course it would; it had undoubtedly been focus-tested to perfection.
Later, he asked Lex about it, because he did have the opportunity—Lex wasn't throwing him out before he could pose an entire question. At least, if he managed to pose a question before they started having sex; they ate up a shocking number of hours that way.
Lex shook his head. "The state has no business determining who can marry. Any more than it has any business determining what counts as an unconscionable contract term. Private parties, private decisions."
Clark took the bait, even as he knew he was supposed to do so. "The government has to protect people! There just need to be rules about what kind of interventions are okay."
And they were off. The argument lasted through dinner, turned into yelling while Lex was trying to drink his cognac, quieted down when Lex shoved Clark back onto the couch and dropped to his knees, and resumed between rounds two and three. Then Clark needed his rest too much to continue, so they tabled (or more precisely, bedded) the issue.
Maybe Clark enjoyed debating political philosophy with Lex, a little, now that he had the knowledge and experience to hold his own. He didn't need to confess that to anyone, though.
****
"Why are you investing so much money in extra-durable building materials?" the business reporter for the Times asked him.
Lex opened his mouth, then closed it while he thought. "Given the threats faced by major cities in the twenty-first century, disaster-resistant construction is one of the best investments we can make in homeland security, and LuthorCorp's technical expertise has already made substantial improvements in the technology."
"But it will take decades to recoup that investment," the reporter pointed out.
Lex shrugged. "It depends on whether you factor in the insurance savings, along with the decreased chances of total loss of one of our key facilities. And one of the virtues of owning a controlling interest is that LuthorCorp can make decisions for the long-term, instead of the next-quarter mentality that has brought so much economic pain to this country."
He finished the rest of the interview in a haze. Fortunately the business side was easier than breathing, and the questions were relatively technical ones, unlikely to make scandal even if he screwed one up.
The problem was that he didn't know why he'd invested so much in extra-durable building materials. He'd just walked into his office one morning, called a meeting, and made it happen.
Lex didn't like not understanding his motivations. It led to misjudgments and mortal danger, not to mention the occasional humiliation.
He'd done it the morning after Clark had sighed and moaned about the football stadium he'd destroyed in his latest battle with the Toyman. Lex hadn't even bothered making Clark's monologue into a conversation, because they both knew it was the Toyman's direct fault even if Clark's presence was what had drawn the crazy to Metropolis, and none of the relevant underlying facts were going to change. At last, probably just to get his attention, Clark had started in on how LuthorCorp should be doing something to protect the people and properties of Metropolis.
Clark had told him to make buildings stronger, and Lex had started work on it immediately.
It hadn't been calculated, not consciously. Was he wooing his sort-of-husband? No, he dismissed that possibility.
He was doing it because he'd never considered not doing Clark's bidding.
He looked at the bracelet around his wrist, the metal dull and apparently quiescent under the office lights. Nice, simple alien ritual involving nice, simple alien artifacts. But words were powerful, and he'd said some of the most powerful ones of all to Clark.
Well, he thought, use unproven technology, get surprising results.
So, he had an impulse to obey Clark. He'd cancel the building project immediately, except that really would be a PR and financial disaster, so that would be a mistake. Unless, of course, that was a rationalization designed to keep him under Clark's control, compelled to obey.
Clark had shown no signs of understanding his power, and Lex couldn't afford to let him find out, so he couldn't attempt to provoke a test. He'd just have to be wary and ready to fight Clark's next demands. Though possibly he should simply avoid Clark, to minimize the chance of accidental exposure of his weakness.
Just like the fucking Kryptonians to hard-wire loyalty into their relationships. He should have known: nothing about them suggested much sympathy for free will.
Lex stiffened as the next set of implications occurred to him.
Clark had said some powerful words to Lex, too. Though there was surely some sort of fail-safe to protect either party from telling the other 'don't give me orders,' the Ritual of Rao could have given him the same type of influence over Clark that Clark had over him.
It elegantly explained the single most anomalous feature of his recent dealings with Clark. He remembered the first time with diamond-edged clarity: he'd ordered Clark to perform his conjugal duties. And Clark had done so, despite the array of unchanged facts, commitments, and past events that made a relationship between them more ludicrous than any costume the Justice League had yet to approve.
He'd let himself think, because he wanted to believe it, that Clark had always felt the same electricity between them as Lex had. That Clark had just been looking for an excuse, and that they were engaging in a mutually satisfactory exchange in the knowledge that there was very little left that either of them could do to hurt the other.
Lex was not a nice man. He'd had plenty of sex with people who, if they'd ruled the world, would never have come near him. He'd been the aggressor with some of them. But they'd all determined that the costs of not having sex with him outweighed the costs of having sex. They'd all had the capacity to get up and walk away in the middle of the action, as long as they were willing to accept the consequences. That wasn't the line that everyone would draw, but it was, he thought, an important one, and it was his own.
Clark was the only person he'd ever fucked who couldn't change his mind.
Lex didn't realize he was going to vomit until he was leaning over the toilet, reliving lunch and breakfast and, near as he could tell, last night's dinner as well.
****
"I'm going to be busy all night on this deal with Japan," Lex said distractedly the moment Clark stepped into his office. "You should probably—" He stopped, which was just weird, and Clark checked him out automatically, looking for elevated temperature or altered brain readings or anything out of the ordinary, but nothing showed up in broad-spectrum vision. "I'll be busy," he repeated (weirder). "If you like, you can have Lien make you some dinner." He swiveled in his chair, dismissing Clark.
Clark stood there like a complete moron for maybe half a minute before he understood that this wasn't one of Lex's games. There wasn't a whisper of invitation in Lex's pose.
He opened his mouth to ask if Lex was sure, but that was even more stupid than gaping at Lex. "Okay," he said. "I guess I'll head up to the Tower."
Lex nodded automatically. When Clark looked back from a mile away, he was absorbed in reading the report on his screen. Oddly, it was in French, something about nuclear power plants in Russia, and Lex didn't even have his fingers on the keyboard.
But then an undersea alarm went off—Arthur's kingdom was under attack by an army raised by Black Manta—and Clark turned his attention to more pressing matters.
****
Lex had three problems, each in the way of solving the others, each time-sensitive. First, there was his ability to coerce Clark. He was under no illusions that he'd resist abusing it forever. Second, there was Clark's reciprocal ability to influence him. Clark was not devious, but he wouldn't remain ignorant forever, and attempts to keep him in the dark by avoiding activities to which he'd object would also eventually trigger his suspicions. And third, last and least and in the end responsible for the other two, there was the damned election. The irony was: he was going to win it, too, unless something shocking occurred in the next month. Like Clark ordering him to withdraw from the race.
He suspected that there was some failsafe involved that prevented him from telling Clark not to give him any orders, and vice versa, but that was just logic and not actual Kryptonian knowledge. In the absence of such a provision, like the fairytale rule against wishing for more wishes, there'd be too much potential for exploitation. Kryptonians overall didn't seem like the type of people who appreciated being vulnerable, as much as they liked to see it in others.
Lex had chosen the Ritual of Rao because it had been described, rather poetically he'd thought, in the materials he'd kept from Clark's Arctic palace. But the description was limited to its establishment. He had no idea how, if at all, it could be dissolved.
It was possible that his father had been right about his inability to account for unexpected consequences.
He'd attempted to take a sample of the metal with a monofilament. He'd applied concentrated heat and concentrated cold, looking for softening or brittling, and only managed to give himself frostbite and third-degree burns on successive days. He'd subjected the bracelet to X-rays and next-generation MRIs (and getting the machine to function with the metal inside it had been a technical challenge even for him, by which he meant that he'd destroyed three labs and a dozen machines before he'd conceded that there was no discernable internal structure inside the bracelet; at least there was a new patent out of it).
Just in case, he'd tried speaking "I divorce you" out loud three times. Then he'd upped the repetitions to seven and switched to Kryptonian. Sadly, what worked for certain Earth cultures had no effect on the Kryptonian device. Maybe his translation had been off. The word he'd used in his experiment was more like "sever" than "divorce," for which he'd found no exact cognate. And that failure to have the concept was, perhaps, the source of his problem. Kryptonian marriages, from what he could decipher, seemed generally to end with the death of one party. Sometimes, the materials suggested, one spouse would hasten the day of that death, and apparently spousal homicide was not frowned upon on Krypton as it was on Earth.
Maybe there was some sort of aura emanating from Kryptonite that explained why all Lex's spouses had attempted to kill him.
No-fault divorce would have been a lot simpler, but also a lot less satisfying. Lex actually had the feeling that he would have gotten along fine on Krypton.
He pushed the problem aside to let his unconscious mull it over and turned to his daily press digest. After some internal debate, he clicked on the video clip from The View. "Why hasn't Lex Luthor's homosexuality been a bigger issue in the presidential campaign?" Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked the camera, smiling with teeth so white he suspected her of having internal floodlights installed.
Whoopi Goldberg grinned with the kind of tension Lex himself felt. "Actually, we've heard pretty detailed confirmation that he's bisexual, you know."
Hasselbeck frowned prettily. "Well, the American people don't care, they just don't want to hear about homosexual behavior in the White House."
"Speak for yourself," Whoopi rejoined, which made the others giggle or frown.
Katie Couric intervened: "I think if Bill Clinton taught us anything, it's that in the end the American people don't want to hear about what their presidents get up to in the bedroom—gay, straight, whatever."
"Is it relevant to job performance, that's all I want to know," Amy Robach said.
Lex closed the window, as reassured as he was going to get.
****
The thing was, it was unfair of Lex to cut him off. Clark didn't even know what he'd done. He would have thought his general track record of lying and investigating and foiling Lex's plans would have prevented Lex from wanting him in the first place. But since clearly none of that had been an insurmountable barrier, Clark was at a loss to explain why he'd been as sex-free as a monk on Prozac for the past month. Sure, that had been life pre-Lex, but that thought didn't improve his mood any.
Maybe Lex had just—gotten bored. It wasn't like Lex was used to long-term relationships, and maybe that wasn't just because all his wives and fiancees tried to kill him. Maybe the wives and fiancees were just getting out ahead of the inevitable.
Clark glared at the members of the Black Hat Gang. Several cringed. He realized that his eyes were glowing and made an effort to calm himself. The criminals didn't look particularly reassured, but Clark was overall okay with that.
He couldn't just go to Lex and ask, he realized as he delivered the miscreants to police custody, zipping back and forth between the bank they'd tried to rob and the jailhouse. Humiliation factor aside, Lex would think he was entering into some sort of negotiation. Clark didn't have anything he could afford to give, if the orgasms weren't doing it any more, and even if that hadn't been true he wasn't sure the bracelet would distinguish between a request from Lex and an order from Lex.
But—
Clark could live without the sex. That was a demonstrated fact, over many years. And yet—
Lex was so warm after, even though his skin usually felt cool. They'd lie in bed, the sheets damp and rumpled, sometimes torn (Clark was pretty sure Lex had new ones bought each night), and they'd breathe. No accusations or insinuations, no demands or threats. It was almost like hanging out back in the barn in Smallville, when he'd been just a kid—well, except with the addition of afterglow, and that was hard to count as some sort of deterioration in the situation.
Wally was yammering in his ear, he realized, asking him if he was done or if he wanted to bust some more walls into rubble.
"Sorry," he said into the comm link, meaning the rubble and his inattention. "I'm going off line for a while, okay?"
"Conjugal visit, eh?" Wally said, the leer almost visible through the connection—"Ow," he continued immediately, as if Hawkgirl had smacked him in the back of the head. "Sounds like a great idea, big guy! You work some of that tension out, you'll be back to fighting form in no time!"
Clark wasn't sure what was worse, the fact that Flash had noticed that he wasn't in perfect condition or the fact that Bruce hadn't yet said a word about it.
He clenched his jaw. He was going to have to deal with Lex, that was obvious. Problem was, he didn't have a model for doing that other than storming in with an accusation, and "You haven't slept with me in weeks!" was both pathetic and self-evident. Clark couldn't even expect a denial, so the whole formula for their interactions (pre-marriage, anyway) would be wrecked.
Back in the beginning, he'd come to the mansion just to hang out, because the world was brighter with Lex in it, sharper-edged. His blood had pumped faster through his veins. He'd been flushed and nervous and at the same time stronger and smarter in Lex's presence, like Lex's own galactic personality made Clark more himself in response.
In retrospect, he might have had a little bit of a crush on Lex.
At the time, he'd thought that nausea was the leading indicator of true love, so he hadn't figured it out. Now, he needed to make Lex remember those early days, when they both thought the other one was perfect. Or, well, he needed to make Lex remember. Clark couldn't afford any more memories than he already had.
****
The last thing Lex expected to find in his apartment was Clark.
Well, no. The last thing Lex expected to find in his apartment was his father, resurrected from the dead and declaring sincerely that all was forgiven. (Not that Lex entirely ruled this scenario out. He just considered it highly improbable. And really, most of that was from the 'sincerely' part.) Regardless, Clark's presence was unlikely, though the crossed arms and the glower helped convince Lex that he wasn't hallucinating again.
"Clark," he said, as neutrally as he could. It was truly insupportable to have his usual conversation openers like 'what can I do for you?' taken off the table, given that Clark was likely to answer and then Lex would be stuck obeying him.
"You know what," Clark said, "I'm tired of talking."
Which was even more ridiculous than usual, given that they'd barely said ten words to each other in the past month. But before he could blink, the world blurred and his skin chilled with the rapid transit into the bedroom, plus the sudden nudity.
"Stay put," Clark instructed him. Lex considered this while determining that he was laid out like a virgin sacrifice on the bed. The trip had been a bit disorienting. And then—Lex would have tried to suppress the noise he made if he could have processed the relevant input, but the human body wasn't meant to react to being caressed over every inch at superspeed. Clark was still moving so fast that it seemed like he had ten thousand hands, and a hundred thousand tongues, all moving on Lex, so fast that Lex thought maybe he was outstripping the speed at which Lex's neurons could fire. So fast the wetness on his skin didn't get any time to cool down, just slick heat everywhere, like he was being swallowed whole.
Lex's own groans seemed like they'd been slowed down in contrast, thick and distorted in his ears. Clark's hot hands covered him, cupped his ankle and ran up his calf and stroked under his balls and traced the outline of his biceps; his tongue tickled the back of Lex's knee and circled his navel and traced his jawline.
He thrashed, or tried to, but Clark wanted him in place, and Lex had never, never gotten off on bondage before, but he was underwater here, full fathom five. And then the orgasm hit him, supernova, every muscle seizing. If they were fucking in superspeed, then he'd lasted years, relatively speaking, so he wouldn't have felt embarrassed even if he'd had the coherence to work up a full-fledged emotion.
Clark had the presence of mind to slow down enough not to do Lex any damage when he pressed inside. At some point Lex was going to be grateful for that, but with Clark back at normal speed it seemed a more pressing matter to dig his heels into Clark's back and squeeze his biceps and bite at the curves of his collarbone and the tendons of his neck. Lex didn't understand why Clark even had muscles given the superstrength, or why Clark's bulletproof skin gave under the pressure of his fingers like a human's instead of resisting like a statue's, but right now he almost didn't care.
Clark grimaced, his eyes closed and his hair in little sweaty curls fanned over his forehead. Every thrust sent a buzz through Lex's entire body, toes to fingertips. Lex turned his head to one side and then the other, folding himself up further and clamping his jaw shut in case some idiotic portion of his psyche tried to get any words out.
When Clark came, it was with a roar that shattered the glass of the Art Deco mirror on the wall above the headboard. Lex managed to put his hands over his head before any fragments fell on him. Clark looked up and spent a moment with a hilariously confused expression that reminded Lex of the results of many, many innuendoes he'd used back in Smallville.
Then, most likely because he didn't want to waste the time cleaning up all the fragments covering the sheets, he moved them to one of the guest bedrooms and started all over again.
****
Clark hadn't managed to discuss anything with Lex, but he sure felt an awful lot better. He noted that Lex gave all his interviews the next day standing, which he kind of wanted to feel bad about but actually didn't, not even a little. Lex was a fast healer, and maybe he'd know better than to cut Clark off for no reason at all in the future. If Clark was bound to Lex, he might as well be getting the few benefits that the connection allowed him, after all.
And then the pictures showed up. Apparently, Lex's security had not been as thorough with the guest bedrooms as with Lex's own.
The motion-activated camera got fifteen frames per second, which meant that there was an animated version, but it was jerky enough that it really made more sense to look at the stills.
"Holy mother of fuck," Lois said, staring at her monitor, while Clark had to concentrate really hard on not actually sinking through the floor—or in his case, burrowing, but it was basically the same thing—and on not setting anything on fire with his eyes.
Maybe God has it in for Kryptonians, Clark thought. Maybe in his past life he was worse than Zod. Or maybe he was just that stupid, to think that he could use sex to solve his problems and not get Lex even angrier at him.
The reaction to the pictures was predictable: cue outrage on all sides. Lex's opponents decried the intrusion and subtly dug at Lex's lifestyle. The "independent" commentators weren't that subtle. Lex had no comment on his private life, though his chief spokesperson did, at the end of that first press conference, suggest that this kind of intrusion was likely to happen when people were too concerned with what went on in other people's bedrooms. Of course Lois, sitting next to Clark, jabbed him with her pen, scowled at the now-broken pen, and whispered, "When they look like those two, anybody'd be interested in what goes on in their bedroom." Which just went to show that 'no comment' was always the best policy for Lex, and Lex seemed to realize that.
So much for the 'sex it out' plan for relationship repair. Maybe that only worked for people who weren't being stalked by half of the entire journalistic profession.
****
Jon Stewart mugged for the camera and said that pictures of Superman and Lex Luthor having sex commanded a $5 million price, but that the American people would gladly pay the same amount to not see pictures of the other candidates' sex lives. "And one thing we know: a president has to be able to take anything the world dishes out and keep coming back for more. Inexhaustibly. Insatiably, if you will. I believe we've now seen that Lex Luthor is more than up to the challenge."
Lex picked up a priceless Greek statuette and wondered how many particles of worthless Greek dust it would create if he threw it through the screen. But no, he wasn't that boy any more, pouring out his aggression on the material world when it was people who hurt him. Or aliens.
Moving with exaggerated slowness, Lex set the reprieved statuette back down.
It was somewhat unfair to blame Clark, not that he was going to let that detain him long. The original command must have been percolating back in Clark's mind all this time, eventually boiling over when Lex hadn't given him any opportunity to perform his conjugal duties. Evasion had failed, and Lex had always known that he didn't have the fortitude to order Clark outright to keep his dick in his pants even if it wouldn't have signaled to Clark that something very strange was going on.
At least the pictures were going to keep Clark away while Lex figured out what to do, or, as Clark might have said, sulked.
Oddly, the polls had barely moved at all. If anything, he'd gained support. The very bravest of his advisers had suggested that many people were a little confused by the fact that Superman played both pitcher and catcher. But mostly the public seemed to take the pictures as confirmation of preexisting beliefs.
He didn't want to spend his term—terms, thank you—on lifestyle issues. Obama got to be more than the first black president; Lex could fight past this.
But right now, with Clark staying ensconced in the Watchtower except to superspeed into Lex's bedroom for his nightly fix, Lex was having a hard time remembering why he wanted so much to sit in that office and solve other people's problems.
Part 3
Tags: