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Section 1
Patrolling was risky. Specifically, it put Bruce Wayne at risk. His presence in Metropolis along with Batman's invited correlation.
The Batman knew it, but he went out hunting anyway. He needed – he needed to see that Gotham wasn't the only sink of human misery on the face of the planet, that things were bad even amongst the glitter and polish of Metropolis.
He stopped four muggings and sent a pimp to the very hospital that would have taken his girl if the Batman hadn't shown up.
He waited in the shadows for Superman to appear.
Superman didn't.
Superman wasn't as big a fan of the night. Didn't need concealment. In fact, it was better for him if everyone saw his total arrogant invulnerability, bright as one of those poison butterflies whose colors warned the world: touch me and die. There was no man behind the mask. There wasn't even a mask. Superman was the real thing, needing no myth, the kind of hero the Batman could never hope to be.
In the morning, all he had was the stink of Metropolis's back alleys on him – it had been a hot, rotten summer – and a blurred picture in the *Inquisitor* asking "Is Batman Here?" Back in Gotham, the Joker had robbed a bank.
****
Bruce rose as the tall man in the elegant gray suit approached his table. If he didn’t miss his guess, the suit was made by the same Hong Kong tailors who made Lex’s. “Mr. Grossman?” He held out his hand. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”
Grossman’ grip was firm, businesslike. “It’s my pleasure, Mr. Wayne.”
They sat.
“So why did you call me, Mr. Wayne?”
Bruce didn't offer his Christian name. “I’m trying to find out some information about Lex Luthor.”
“And you thought I’d know it?” Grossman raised his eyebrows. His blue eyes sparkled with interest, and some merriment.
“You are the only member of the former LuthorCorp board to remain on the LexCorp board,” Bruce pointed out.
Grossman smiled wryly and looked down at his plate, shaking out his napkin and putting it on his lap. “Thus you conclude that I must know something of value.”
“I want to know why Clark Kent and Lois Lane are the only people in this town allowed to criticize Lex Luthor.” There was no particular reason to conceal his hand; Lex already knew, and Grossman might not care if Bruce wasn’t trying to get confidential corporate information.
“I do have something to tell you, Mr. Wayne, but it’s probably not what you want to hear. Do you know what I did the morning before the first meeting with my new CEO?”
Bruce clenched a fist underneath the table. “No, what?”
“I shaved off my beard. Not just for the obvious reason. Alexander the Great was clean-shaven, an anomaly at the time, and his circle imitated him.”
This fellow was perfect for Luthor. “You’re saying you cast your lot in with him.”
Grossman looked almost disappointed. “No, not entirely.”
The waiter chose that moment to come up. Grossman didn’t look at the menu. “I’ll have the market salad and the steak, medium rare.”
“The same, but rare.”
The waiter disappeared as if a magician had whisked him away.
“Then what is that story supposed to tell me?”
Grossman leaned over the table, his eyes hot. “I cast my lot, as you put it, with Mr. Luthor because he’s going to succeed. And he’s going to succeed because people like me follow him. The age of the individual is over, Mr. Wayne, if it ever existed. Da Vinci was a genius, but without an Industrial Revolution behind him, he left only sketchbooks and grand dreams. The great man who operates in isolation from the rest of the world, who holds himself apart and above, is the true enemy of progress. Mr. Luthor understands this.”
Grossman was clearly speaking about Superman, but he could have well have been lecturing the Batman.
The salads arrived. They spent a few minutes eating in silence.
“That’s an interesting philosophy, but I’m not sure what it has to do with my question.”
Grossman speared a yellow pear tomato and popped it into his mouth. “People can say or write anything they like about Mr. Luthor. Ms. Lane and Mr. Kent simply disagree with the majority of people about the value of his various endeavors. Time will, no doubt, prove them in error.”
Silence fell again.
Their plates were whisked away and replaced by the entrees. Bruce’s steak was so rare that it could have fed a vampire bat. Pink, fatty juices pooled on his plate as he cut and ate. The silence didn't bother him. It was almost as good as being alone, if unhelpful.
“You know, Alexander the Great was responsible for his father’s assassination,” he said as he finished eating.
“That’s one interpretation,” Grossman said. “Others say it was his mother, or even that the assassin was one of the king’s cast-off lovers. History is tricky business, Mr. Wayne." He pushed his plate away and looked up, smiling. “I’m afraid I can’t stay for dessert.”
Luthor’s man stood, and Bruce emulated him. With a friendly handshake, a smile, and a proffered business card, Grossman left.
Bruce caught the waiter’s eye and gestured for the check. The waiter, an attractive young man with dark hair that was just a little too short, hurried over. “Oh, no, Mr. Wayne. Mr. Luthor’s instructions were quite clear that you were his guest.”
Bruce smiled. Did Lex think him that stupid, that in need of overt reminders that Lex knew everything Bruce was doing?
So far, Lex was right. Bruce wasn't learning anything useful.
****
"Thank you for seeing me, Principal Reynolds," Bruce said, shaking the man's hand.
"It's been a long time, Mr. Wayne," Reynolds replied, resuming his seat behind his solid wood desk. His voice was heavy with age, his hair almost pure white against his dark skin. The man Bruce had known was swaddled in sagging flesh. But there was still steel there, underneath.
"What brings you to Smallville?" Reynolds' desk was covered with papers and knickknacks. Glass apples, marble squares with logos from teachers' organizations, brass pen sets.
Bruce looked at him. "I suspect the same thing that brought you."
"Luthors." It was a sigh, a curse, a confession. "Lionel Luthor had me fired from Excelsior. I made a new life – and years later, he came back, threatening to take it all away if I didn't come here. Smallville. Do you know that there are still people here who tell me that I'm a credit to my race?"
Bruce wanted to ask why Reynolds had complied with Luthor's demand, but it might shame him and make him stop talking. "What did he want you to do here?"
Reynolds had a look that said 'Your stupidity makes me weep for the future.' He used it. Bruce was amused to find that it worked slightly better on him now than it had when he was an invincible teenager.
"He wanted me to keep an eye on Clark Kent. I wasn't entitled to an explanation, of course, but it was obvious the first day Lex Luthor drove up with the boy in his car. Dropping him off late, the boy practically glowing – and he was always in the center of whatever trouble there was, and there was a lot of trouble. Fights, murders, fires – Clark Kent would have been in jail ten times over if it hadn't been for his relationship with Luthor."
That was hard to reconcile with his image of Clark; harder to reconcile with the image of Clark he wanted to have.
"Why are you interested?" Reynolds asked, steepling his hands on the desk in front of him.
Standard playboy dilettantism wouldn't cut it with Reynolds; this was a bit over the top for a casual interest. "I still keep a hand in the family business, and Lex Luthor has been making some moves in my direction. I'm trying to figure out what happened to him after I lost touch with him all those years ago. Know your enemy and all that."
"Chloe Sullivan had a number of interviews with him."
"Chloe Sullivan, the reporter?"
"One of our most prominent graduates," Reynolds said with no apparent irony. "She learned her muckraking skills right here."
"I'm interested both in the content of those interviews and in the fact that they occurred at all. I didn't know he'd ever given a voluntary interview."
"It was because she was close to Clark Kent, and so was Luthor," Reynolds said. "Best friends, they called it, and no one dared to say any different because Luthor could make your life very difficult in this town, on a whim even, and there was nothing whimsical about Lex Luthor and Clark Kent."
"Luthor and Kent don't seem very close now."
Reynolds snorted. "Did you really expect Lex Luthor to maintain an interest in anyone over the long term? Yes, by the end they were apart. But Lionel was convinced there was something special about Clark Kent. He had me give him access to the Torch computers – that's our newspaper," he said at Bruce's inquiring look, pride creeping into his voice – "so he could read everything Chloe Sullivan wrote about. She was obsessed with the strange things that happen in this town, most of which ended up in Clark Kent's lap one way or another."
Bruce remembered how hard it was to find out anything about Smallville. "Do you have any copies of the school paper from those days?"
Reynolds leaned back in his chair. "We should."
"I don't want to be another Lex Luthor to you," Bruce said. "But I would be very grateful if you'd let me see those stories. And if there's anything I can do for your school, I'd be happy to contribute."
"This is a LexCorp town," Reynolds said. "Your money's more trouble than it's worth. I'm going to get one of Luthor's stormtroopers here as it is, asking why you were here. Asking nicely, at first, then not so nicely. Just so you know, I'm going to tell the truth."
"I wouldn't expect anything else," Bruce replied, defensive despite himself.
Reynolds stood up, bracing himself on the arms of his chair. "Follow me," he said.
Bruce did, down hallways like something out of *The Brady Bunch*. Clean-scrubbed white faces, bright red-and-yellow school spirit banners, and posters for the Spring Fling and the prayer group. None of these kids would last a day at Gotham West, nor an hour at Gotham East.
The principal didn't bother to knock on the door labeled 'Torch' in six-inch-high letters. He pushed it open and Bruce followed him inside. There were multiple computers and high-speed printers; Bruce resolved to double his donations to the Greater Gotham PTA.
"Ms. Jenkins," Reynolds barked, startling a young woman out of her trance-like contemplation of her screen. She jumped and would have fallen out of her chair had Bruce not hurried to catch her shoulders. He let her go instantly, mumbling an apology as she looked up at him in surprise.
There were a series of framed articles along one wall, some from the *Torch* and others from the *Metropolis Inquisitor*; Bruce saw that the latter bore Chloe Sullivan's byline. There were no articles by Clark Kent on the wall.
"I need to look at the archives for 2001 through 2005," Reynolds told the girl.
She frowned, thinking. "Those aren't on disk, we don't have electronic copies until starting in 2006 – the older ones should be in the file cabinets." She waved a hand at the back of the room, where a row of cabinets – big, heavy dinosaurs – stood, half buried under stacks of loose papers and covered with sedimented layers of bumper stickers mostly concerned with quirky humor and radio stations.
Bruce let Reynolds go first. He started at the top left, while Bruce went right on the theory that the most recent pre-electronic editions would be stored there. He found file folders crammed with lunchroom menus from 2002 and 2005, others with football and swim team schedules, advertisements for local businesses, but no actual editions of the paper. Nearby, Reynolds was opening and shutting drawers with increasing agitation. He would have lost his composure entirely, Bruce thought, were it not for the girl watching him with fascination.
"They're not here," Reynolds said at last, unnecessarily.
Bruce couldn't find it in himself to be surprised. He could talk to Chloe Sullivan, and hope that her memory hadn't been revised the way the Torch's archives had been. But that was dangerous, bringing in another person who might be loyal to Clark or Luthor or both, and a reporter at that. She might even have been the one to destroy the records.
He was opening his mouth to tell Reynolds that it was all right when his beeper went off, meaning that the Bat Signal was flashing.
"I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm going to have to leave. Please let me know if there's anything I can do for the school."
He left Reynolds standing in the back of the office, clearly wanting to curse but unwilling to do so. His wireless hand-held computer brought him the latest news from the *Gotham Gazette*'s home page; the Joker was out again. A toy hunt being held to celebrate the opening of the Wayne Memorial Park had been infiltrated – instead of ordinary toys, the Joker had substituted his surprises, from the merely startling to the deadly. Almost fifty families were being held hostage by his goons.
There was no way Bruce could get there in time, even if he had a jet in the Smallville High parking lot.
He'd decided long ago that his pride should never stand in the way of saving lives. He entered the number Superman had given him to call the Justice League; the connection was scrambled and he'd just have to hope the security on his end was good enough to avoid being tracked either by outsiders or by the League.
"Gotham needs help," he said to the deep-voiced man who answered. He explained the situation.
"Hang on," the man said. There was a pause; Bruce had time to consider the surreality of superheroes putting people on hold. "All right," the man said at last, "Superman has been informed and he will arrive in minutes. Shall I tell him to look for you?"
"He won't see me," Bruce said, which should imply that he was still in Gotham. It made him look like more of a weakling, but it concealed the other, more troubling weakness that had separated him from his city.
The car he'd rented had a television in the back. He went to CNN and found that they'd developed a "Joker Crisis" logo in purple and green. They didn't have any live footage, just an old picture from Arkham and a picture of the park entrance, surrounded with police cruisers and waiting ambulances.
Then they began to receive a feed from a hovering helicopter. Bruce could see the Joker's gaudy minions, circling around the families. There were at least three people lying on the ground, curled and broken.
A blur swept through the park, making the hostages disappear one after the other. Then, as the henchmen started to waver, Superman came for them as well, depositing them among the police – as a hasty switch to another camera feed revealed. Finally, Superman appeared in front of the park with the Joker, grasping him by the scruff of the neck.
"Where's the flying rodent?" the Joker asked, his mad eyes reaching for Bruce through the television. He twisted around, looking up at Superman. "No fair – no fair! I didn't want to play with you! You offend my eyes, you primary-colored freak!"
Superman frowned down at the Joker, whose colors did in fact clash badly with the superhero’s costume.
"You took away my toys!" he continued to complain.
"And I'll do it again if I need to," Superman said, with the air of an aggrieved teacher. "Here you are," he told the police officers who'd gingerly moved towards them. "I really feel that prison would be more appropriate for this man. Even if he is mentally ill, surely he can be treated in a place where he can also pay for his crimes."
The Joker, not one for a moral debate, made a loud raspberry as Superman released him into the officers' custody.
Bruce, frustrated, headed back to Metropolis, driving as fast as human engineering would allow.
He would stay one more night, give Lex another try in the morning. He would go out to the Suicide Slums and beat up on some Metropolis criminals. Not that it would even the scales, but it would be better than nothing.
The Joker's tricks were a rebuke to him for leaving his city.
As it happened, he was able to do Superman a small favor that night. Tuning in to the police frequencies, he heard a report that some clown – literally, a clown, makeup and red rubber nose and floppy shoes – was terrorizing a high-end restaurant. Bruce was in the area, so he came in the back and went through the kitchen, where pots abandoned in the staff's mad rush away were boiling over. Through the crack in the double doors, he could see the clown collecting valuables from the well-dressed men and women frozen at the tables.
"Excuse me," a loud, commanding voice came, causing everyone but Bruce to look towards the front of the restaurant. "You're not being very funny."
The clown snarled at Superman, the painted red ring of smile around his lips making the grimace hard to see. "Clowns aren't really supposed to be funny. They're supposed to be scary." He started to swing something – a lasso? No, a sort of bolo, with a rock at the end. Every time it neared Superman, it flared neon green.
Bruce pushed open the doors and stalked towards them. One woman turned her head to him; her jaw dropped, but Bruce raised a finger to his lips and she quickly looked away.
"Are you scared?" the clown asked, advancing as Superman fell back. The look on his face was fascinating: a kind of resigned agony, as if he had a lot of prior experience with the rocks but hadn't built up any resistance to them.
Bruce slipped out a Batarang and sent it hurtling towards the bolo, clipping the rope so that the rock continued forwards and smacked into his waiting hand. He immediately put it into an insulated sample case on his utility belt. "Need any help?" he asked as the flabbergasted clown and an equally surprised Superman turned towards him.
"Thanks," Superman said, annoyingly sincere.
"I can take it from here," the Batman offered, stepping forward and slapping flexicuffs on the clown before he could reveal any more weapons in his arsenal.
Superman considered. "There's a hurricane off of Key West – if you wouldn't mind?"
The Batman nodded. It was a good excuse for Superman not to hang around where he was at risk from the rock – meteorite -- and he very much wanted to ask the clown a few questions.
As he patted the dismayed criminal down, taking away knotted scarves with razors in them, uninflated balloons, and a squeaky horn, he whispered his take on the man's situation into his ear. By the time the Batman was convinced that the clown had no more tricks up his puffy, polka-dotted sleeves, he was extremely anxious to talk.
"Where did you get that rock?"
The clown couldn't help a pleased smirk. "Lex Luthor has a big stash. Word on the street is that Superman's allergic, so I thought I'd give it a try. At Star Labs, there was a party for the staff's kids the other day; I came in, slipped out during the Clown Car trick, and grabbed some that was just sitting on some guy's desk. Stupid, leaving it out like that, like they wanted someone to take it."
Now *there* was a disturbing possibility. The Batman hoped that Luthor had merely hired a sloppy researcher; he'd check to see whether anyone had been fired over the incident.
The police arrived, and the Batman departed.
****
His secretary relayed the message that Lex wanted to see him. "At your earliest convenience, of course," she repeated, and Bruce could hear Lex's supercilious tones even in her dry recitation.
One last try at Luthor might be fruitful, now that he knew that the soil of the little town he'd left was fertilized with secrets. With so much hidden, something had to come to the surface eventually.
The trip to LexCorp was familiar to him by now. The LexCorp logo seemed to be everywhere, from the headlines on the *Planet* at the newsstands he passed to the commercials playing on the televisions in the window of a Best Buy to the signs noting that Luthor had paid to clean the streets. Metropolis was a fully branded, cyber-enabled, solar-charged, twenty-first-century city, and if Luthor was its genius, Superman was its avatar.
He needed to soak into darkness, back in a city that let him be an icon as well.
The bodyguard’s scan for weapons was perfunctory this time. Bruce could only assume that this was pursuant to Lex’s direct orders.
The man himself was waiting in his office, working at a tablet computer, when Bruce came in. He didn’t get out of his seat.
“How’s Clark?”
“Fine,” Bruce said, letting Lex take that however he wanted. “I’ll tell him you asked.”
Lex smiled; Bruce had hoped for a twitch, but he was obviously well-prepared to discuss Clark Kent. “So you’re still on speaking terms. I wasn’t sure you would be.”
Lex stood and crossed the floor to the wet bar near the window. He poured himself a glass of something amber from a decanter faceted like a diamond. He didn’t offer Bruce a drink, just took a sip with the distracted air of a man performing a task so rote as to require no conscious thought.
Bruce could have waited Lex out – God knew the man liked to run his mouth – but he was anxious to return to Gotham. He’d been too long away from its dark places. “Why did you want to see me?”
“I just wanted to wish you farewell,” Lex said. “That, and say ‘I told you so.’”
Bruce stepped forwards, closing half the distance between them. “You have no idea about me.” Unfortunately, this was only half strategic, designed to make Luthor’s pride kick in so he’d reveal himself; the other half was actual angry posturing.
“Really? Because I think you’re scared.” Lex drifted closer. “You’ve realized that your fascination has led you out of your cave and left it unguarded. You’re worried that any person could have that sort of influence over you.” Closer still. “You’re upset that he doesn’t even seem to care that he has that power.” They were almost touching now, close enough that Bruce could almost feel Lex’s breath. “You’re afraid that you’d have to change to have a relationship with him, or with anyone – but more than that, you’re afraid that he might make you *want* to change.
“Still think I have no idea?” He stared into Bruce’s eyes, unblinking.
Bruce’s heart rate was increasing and his mouth was dry; he felt blindsided. He’d expected Lex Luthor, not some psychoanalyst. Even if Lex wasn’t quite right, he was freakishly close. "You’re a bastard," he said, because Lex knew he didn’t want to hear this.
"If I had a million dollars for everyone who ever called me a bad name – Oh, wait." Lex grinned. "I do."
Abruptly, he turned away from Bruce and went to the floor-to-ceiling window that gave him a view of most of the city, including the globe of the *Daily Planet*.
"The thing is, you’re too isolated, so afraid of connection that anyone who gets through even a fraction of your defenses seems to have the power to destroy you. Get a friend, Bruce. Or get a dog. You won't last another year like this."
"Now you’ve really lost me." Even if it was uncomfortable, Lex was revealing himself in his analysis of Bruce, and Bruce had learned to tolerate discomfort.
Lex sighed and leaned against the glass in an impressive display of confidence in its strength. "All you see is an endless line of victims, or people waiting to be victims. If you want to stay human, you've got to find someone specific to remind you."
"Have you told that to Superman?"
Lex's eyes were hard, like marble under seawater. "He's not human."
They stared at each other in silence, until Lex spoke again. "I sometimes envy you, you know."
Bruce willed himself to raise an eyebrow.
"You get to put the mask on and take it off. Sometimes you get to be Bruce Wayne, and then you're not. It's not the same as being Lex Luthor twenty-four hours a day."
He hadn't thought Lex would get that explicit. Though it was becoming clear that there were a lot of things he hadn't understood about Lex. "What makes you think Bruce Wayne's not the mask?"
Lex's smile was as thin as a garrote. "I never said I thought that."
Bruce was keyed up, adrenalin fizzing through his body like champagne bubbles, making him want to hit things. He didn't want to be vulnerable in front of Lex, especially when he could sense Lex's own vulnerability but not quite see the way to tap into it, not without committing himself to a closer tie to Clark Kent than he really wanted to risk.
Though there was always the obvious –
"Does it bother you, thinking about me and Clark? You and I have so much in common, after all; isn't it a little frustrating that he'd go after me instead?"
Lex only froze for half a heartbeat, his pupils contracting and widening as if he'd been hit by strobe lights. Then his face was serene, his posture more relaxed than before. "If you're inclined to think of yourself as a mere substitute, I won't fight you. But wouldn't you rather be with someone who wants you for yourself?" He paused, then continued, each word as sharp as if it had been cut out with scissors, "Of course, that would require you to know who you were, so maybe that's not an option."
Bruce stepped closer, almost up against the glass himself. The answer to the mystery was here; he'd have it out of Lex one way or another.
“Nice view,” he said, not looking away from Lex. “If you’re not afraid of heights.”
Lex’s eyes were the blue-gray of the old marble that made up half Gotham’s civic buildings, ancient and modern all at once. This close, he could see the little wrinkles around Lex’s eyes, the only thing that said that Lex was older than his early twenties.
“What do you want, Bruce?” The question was deceptively soft, inviting a confidence.
Bruce wasn’t going to ask about Clark, of course, but he leaned in, so they were only centimeters apart. He could smell the scotch on Lex’s breath.
Lex closed the gap between them, his teeth sharp on Bruce’s lip. Bruce was surprised Lex had gone beyond teasing, for the first time – in school, the two of them had traveled in very different circles, and Bruce hadn’t yet realized that he needed a dissolute image, so he wouldn’t have responded to Lex’s overtures had they been made.
Lex kissed like he’d gotten a Ph.D. in sex and was lecturing on the topic.
The secret was here, he knew it.
Bruce told himself that he wasn’t making excuses as he kissed Lex back, shoving him against the cool glass hard enough to make clear that he wasn’t just going along with Lex’s desires.
“Come upstairs,” Lex said into his mouth, pushing free so that he could turn around and start walking towards a side door.
Bruce wiped his wet lips, watching Lex’s hips make promises – every inch the politician, Lex was, though Bruce rather thought Lex could deliver on these pledges. He was slightly shorter than Clark, less broad through the shoulders, but Bruce remembered from boxing the other day that his body was no less well-formed.
Lex reached the door and opened it, revealing a staircase. He looked back over his shoulder, waiting for Bruce to decide. His eyes gleamed, probably with mischief rather than arousal – possibly they were the same thing to him.
He followed.
“Upstairs” turned out to be a fully furnished apartment, though they went quickly through the living room. Bruce caught glimpses of a kitchen and a study before they were in the bedroom, which was dominated by a Caravaggio saint and, underneath it, a bed big enough to accommodate a harem.
This time, when Lex unbuttoned Bruce’s shirt, he kept going, pushing it off Bruce’s shoulders, pausing only to rub his fingers over the most visible scars. He made similarly short work of Bruce’s belt and pants, sliding the elastic waist of his boxers over his hips with a caress that felt both precisely calculated and entirely casual. When Bruce was naked, Lex stepped back to contemplate him. Bruce endured the scrutiny; even the most attentive eye couldn’t see past the trappings and the suits of Bruce Wayne’s persona.
Lex opened his mouth; Bruce shook his head, and miraculously Lex stayed silent. “Take off your clothes,” Bruce commanded. Lex smiled and stripped, revealing a body as pale and well-formed as a classical statue, without even the bruises remaining from their boxing match that should have been there. With that evidence, it was no surprise that Bruce couldn’t see any bullet scars, despite Lex’s claim to have been shot before. Like Bruce, Lex’s body wasn’t going to tell his secrets to anyone.
They stared at one another in silence that should have been uncomfortable, thick with challenge, until Bruce decided that he’d lose nothing by making a move and stepped forward, pushing Lex back until he hit the bed and fell back on it.
Lex smiled closemouthed up at him, propping himself up on his elbows, his flat stomach rippling as he waited for Bruce’s next action.
“Turn over,” he said. If Lex had any qualms about turning his back on Bruce, he didn’t show them, just rolled over with lazy grace. Naked, his slenderness was revealed to be deceptive, long lean muscles testifying to usually-hidden strength. The baldness made his body into one smooth, uninterrupted line, from the crown of his head down to his feet. His half-hard cock was visible between his legs.
There were condoms and several bottles of lube in the drawer of the bedside table. Bruce chose one of each at random and didn’t bother with any more foreplay, just planted his knees on the bed between Lex’s legs and shoved inside hard enough to make Lex gasp.
He was tight, tighter than he had any right to be – unless that was part of his healing, too? – glove-tight, strong enough to set his own pace, taking Bruce along with him like a runaway horse.
Bruce struggled for control over his pumping hips. He couldn’t lose the plot now, no matter how good this felt.
"He's got a magnificent ass, you know," Bruce said and squeezed Lex’s to emphasize his point. His thumbs slid along the tight curves of muscle, somehow warmer than he'd expected.
He bent over, biting at the skin of Lex’s back, then moving up so that he could speak directly into Lex’s ear. "Do you want to fuck him, Lex? Or do you want to be him?"
There was no answer. Lex was rolling underneath him like a stormy sea. The heat between them was like a cloudless August day in Gotham, when the city baked in a concrete-and-marble oven of its own devising. Heat so great it built mirages in Bruce's eyes. His hands, clenched on Lex's hips, blurred in his vision. Lex was cursing him, wobbling as he tried to rest his weight on one arm to free the other to help himself out. Bruce used one hand to shove at Lex's upper arm so that the attempt failed, and Lex pitched forward, his protest muffled by his thousand-dollar pillows.
Bruce was close now, his hand resting between Lex's shoulder blades, the smooth sweat-dampened skin there marred only by the red marks of Bruce's teeth, already fading. There was just something about fucking a metahuman, someone who might be able to kill you a little more easily than the average villain. The bruises healing as if shown in time-lapse photography made him even harder, made his hand clench and scratch new lines down Lex's back just to see.
He'd bitten Clark too, he realized, hard, as if he could somehow own –
But there hadn't been any marks at all.
Clark Kent is Superman, he realized, and went up in white-hot flame. He was molten metal, blank golden ecstasy, scattered over the universe and coalescing into the heart of a star.
Eventually, he became aware that Lex was pushing at him, scrabbling for enough room to move. He pulled back just enough to let Lex roll away. Lex was talking, but Bruce couldn't possibly listen when he was too transfixed by his revelation.
It was amazing, really, that he'd been oblivious so long. Kent and Superman both had that ambiguous relationship with Luthor, that crusading goodness – the history of Smallville, with its meteor-and-something-else strike – Kent's lateness and harmless self-presentation, an almost impossible act for such a big man. Bruce should have seen how deliberate it was. The *glasses*, for God's sake.
What sort of alien technology, he wondered, was required to distort Superman's appearance so that their resemblance was reduced to similar runway-quality good looks?
More to the point – what did Luthor get out of allowing Kent to maintain the fiction? Because there was no way under Heaven Luthor didn't know. He'd spent four years in Smallville with the proto-Superman – which explained a lot about why he'd survived what by all accounts had been a war zone in which he'd been a major target of opportunity.
The knowledge also meant that Luthor's hints about Batman were probably based on actual information, since Luthor had to be acknowledged as an experienced cape-chaser. But most salient of all, Bruce had far more power than he'd thought, not just over Superman. What might Luthor give him in return for silence?
Bruce returned his attention to the present. Lex was sprawled on the bed, taking up more space than Bruce would have guessed possible.
"Thank you," he said, because he wasn't free of the desire to mess with Lex's head.
Lex raised a hand from the bed in acknowledgement, then let it fall. "Likewise, I'm sure."
"I didn't hurt your ribs, did I?"
Lex snorted into the sheets.
Bruce rolled off the bed and began gathering his clothes. "By the way, Lex," he said as he pulled on his pants, "you and I aren't the only ones with secrets. You might want to consider that before you go around spreading your innuendoes."
There was a second of silence during which the temperature of the room seemed to plummet to air-freezing lows. Then Lex sprang off the bed, facing Bruce with the savagery of a tiger, careless of his nudity and of Bruce's tensed muscles.
"Make one move against him -- *think* about moving against him – and I will kill you, raze Gotham, and salt the earth where it stood."
Luthor's vehemence almost made him reconsider. "I thought he was your enemy."
"He is," Luthor said, with what seemed like complete sincerity. "But whatever the proverb says, it's not an equation where you can be on my side because you're not on his. He's *my* enemy. That makes him mine, and that makes you a trespasser." He drew a breath. "And trespassers sometimes get shot."
It was the wrong threat to use with him. Bruce's hands twitched, closing on air. "You should be more careful. Even he couldn’t protect you if I decided to take you down."
Luthor smiled, slow and vicious. "You could try."
But Luthor must have known this was a possible outcome as soon as Bruce had come to Metropolis. Bruce would have made a contingency plan under like circumstances, and he couldn't gamble that Luthor was less cautious.
"Don't make me decide you're an imminent danger," he warned, backing away so that he could reach his shirt and shoes.
Luthor had recovered enough composure to adopt a casual smirk, more suited to a conqueror in a boardroom than a naked man in a bedroom. "Likewise, I'm sure."
On that note, Bruce left.
Not all problems were solved in the first attempt – he could vary his stratagems until success was his. As the Joker would say, there was more than one way to skin a bat.
He got the hell out of Kansas.
End Part I
Patrolling was risky. Specifically, it put Bruce Wayne at risk. His presence in Metropolis along with Batman's invited correlation.
The Batman knew it, but he went out hunting anyway. He needed – he needed to see that Gotham wasn't the only sink of human misery on the face of the planet, that things were bad even amongst the glitter and polish of Metropolis.
He stopped four muggings and sent a pimp to the very hospital that would have taken his girl if the Batman hadn't shown up.
He waited in the shadows for Superman to appear.
Superman didn't.
Superman wasn't as big a fan of the night. Didn't need concealment. In fact, it was better for him if everyone saw his total arrogant invulnerability, bright as one of those poison butterflies whose colors warned the world: touch me and die. There was no man behind the mask. There wasn't even a mask. Superman was the real thing, needing no myth, the kind of hero the Batman could never hope to be.
In the morning, all he had was the stink of Metropolis's back alleys on him – it had been a hot, rotten summer – and a blurred picture in the *Inquisitor* asking "Is Batman Here?" Back in Gotham, the Joker had robbed a bank.
****
Bruce rose as the tall man in the elegant gray suit approached his table. If he didn’t miss his guess, the suit was made by the same Hong Kong tailors who made Lex’s. “Mr. Grossman?” He held out his hand. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”
Grossman’ grip was firm, businesslike. “It’s my pleasure, Mr. Wayne.”
They sat.
“So why did you call me, Mr. Wayne?”
Bruce didn't offer his Christian name. “I’m trying to find out some information about Lex Luthor.”
“And you thought I’d know it?” Grossman raised his eyebrows. His blue eyes sparkled with interest, and some merriment.
“You are the only member of the former LuthorCorp board to remain on the LexCorp board,” Bruce pointed out.
Grossman smiled wryly and looked down at his plate, shaking out his napkin and putting it on his lap. “Thus you conclude that I must know something of value.”
“I want to know why Clark Kent and Lois Lane are the only people in this town allowed to criticize Lex Luthor.” There was no particular reason to conceal his hand; Lex already knew, and Grossman might not care if Bruce wasn’t trying to get confidential corporate information.
“I do have something to tell you, Mr. Wayne, but it’s probably not what you want to hear. Do you know what I did the morning before the first meeting with my new CEO?”
Bruce clenched a fist underneath the table. “No, what?”
“I shaved off my beard. Not just for the obvious reason. Alexander the Great was clean-shaven, an anomaly at the time, and his circle imitated him.”
This fellow was perfect for Luthor. “You’re saying you cast your lot in with him.”
Grossman looked almost disappointed. “No, not entirely.”
The waiter chose that moment to come up. Grossman didn’t look at the menu. “I’ll have the market salad and the steak, medium rare.”
“The same, but rare.”
The waiter disappeared as if a magician had whisked him away.
“Then what is that story supposed to tell me?”
Grossman leaned over the table, his eyes hot. “I cast my lot, as you put it, with Mr. Luthor because he’s going to succeed. And he’s going to succeed because people like me follow him. The age of the individual is over, Mr. Wayne, if it ever existed. Da Vinci was a genius, but without an Industrial Revolution behind him, he left only sketchbooks and grand dreams. The great man who operates in isolation from the rest of the world, who holds himself apart and above, is the true enemy of progress. Mr. Luthor understands this.”
Grossman was clearly speaking about Superman, but he could have well have been lecturing the Batman.
The salads arrived. They spent a few minutes eating in silence.
“That’s an interesting philosophy, but I’m not sure what it has to do with my question.”
Grossman speared a yellow pear tomato and popped it into his mouth. “People can say or write anything they like about Mr. Luthor. Ms. Lane and Mr. Kent simply disagree with the majority of people about the value of his various endeavors. Time will, no doubt, prove them in error.”
Silence fell again.
Their plates were whisked away and replaced by the entrees. Bruce’s steak was so rare that it could have fed a vampire bat. Pink, fatty juices pooled on his plate as he cut and ate. The silence didn't bother him. It was almost as good as being alone, if unhelpful.
“You know, Alexander the Great was responsible for his father’s assassination,” he said as he finished eating.
“That’s one interpretation,” Grossman said. “Others say it was his mother, or even that the assassin was one of the king’s cast-off lovers. History is tricky business, Mr. Wayne." He pushed his plate away and looked up, smiling. “I’m afraid I can’t stay for dessert.”
Luthor’s man stood, and Bruce emulated him. With a friendly handshake, a smile, and a proffered business card, Grossman left.
Bruce caught the waiter’s eye and gestured for the check. The waiter, an attractive young man with dark hair that was just a little too short, hurried over. “Oh, no, Mr. Wayne. Mr. Luthor’s instructions were quite clear that you were his guest.”
Bruce smiled. Did Lex think him that stupid, that in need of overt reminders that Lex knew everything Bruce was doing?
So far, Lex was right. Bruce wasn't learning anything useful.
****
"Thank you for seeing me, Principal Reynolds," Bruce said, shaking the man's hand.
"It's been a long time, Mr. Wayne," Reynolds replied, resuming his seat behind his solid wood desk. His voice was heavy with age, his hair almost pure white against his dark skin. The man Bruce had known was swaddled in sagging flesh. But there was still steel there, underneath.
"What brings you to Smallville?" Reynolds' desk was covered with papers and knickknacks. Glass apples, marble squares with logos from teachers' organizations, brass pen sets.
Bruce looked at him. "I suspect the same thing that brought you."
"Luthors." It was a sigh, a curse, a confession. "Lionel Luthor had me fired from Excelsior. I made a new life – and years later, he came back, threatening to take it all away if I didn't come here. Smallville. Do you know that there are still people here who tell me that I'm a credit to my race?"
Bruce wanted to ask why Reynolds had complied with Luthor's demand, but it might shame him and make him stop talking. "What did he want you to do here?"
Reynolds had a look that said 'Your stupidity makes me weep for the future.' He used it. Bruce was amused to find that it worked slightly better on him now than it had when he was an invincible teenager.
"He wanted me to keep an eye on Clark Kent. I wasn't entitled to an explanation, of course, but it was obvious the first day Lex Luthor drove up with the boy in his car. Dropping him off late, the boy practically glowing – and he was always in the center of whatever trouble there was, and there was a lot of trouble. Fights, murders, fires – Clark Kent would have been in jail ten times over if it hadn't been for his relationship with Luthor."
That was hard to reconcile with his image of Clark; harder to reconcile with the image of Clark he wanted to have.
"Why are you interested?" Reynolds asked, steepling his hands on the desk in front of him.
Standard playboy dilettantism wouldn't cut it with Reynolds; this was a bit over the top for a casual interest. "I still keep a hand in the family business, and Lex Luthor has been making some moves in my direction. I'm trying to figure out what happened to him after I lost touch with him all those years ago. Know your enemy and all that."
"Chloe Sullivan had a number of interviews with him."
"Chloe Sullivan, the reporter?"
"One of our most prominent graduates," Reynolds said with no apparent irony. "She learned her muckraking skills right here."
"I'm interested both in the content of those interviews and in the fact that they occurred at all. I didn't know he'd ever given a voluntary interview."
"It was because she was close to Clark Kent, and so was Luthor," Reynolds said. "Best friends, they called it, and no one dared to say any different because Luthor could make your life very difficult in this town, on a whim even, and there was nothing whimsical about Lex Luthor and Clark Kent."
"Luthor and Kent don't seem very close now."
Reynolds snorted. "Did you really expect Lex Luthor to maintain an interest in anyone over the long term? Yes, by the end they were apart. But Lionel was convinced there was something special about Clark Kent. He had me give him access to the Torch computers – that's our newspaper," he said at Bruce's inquiring look, pride creeping into his voice – "so he could read everything Chloe Sullivan wrote about. She was obsessed with the strange things that happen in this town, most of which ended up in Clark Kent's lap one way or another."
Bruce remembered how hard it was to find out anything about Smallville. "Do you have any copies of the school paper from those days?"
Reynolds leaned back in his chair. "We should."
"I don't want to be another Lex Luthor to you," Bruce said. "But I would be very grateful if you'd let me see those stories. And if there's anything I can do for your school, I'd be happy to contribute."
"This is a LexCorp town," Reynolds said. "Your money's more trouble than it's worth. I'm going to get one of Luthor's stormtroopers here as it is, asking why you were here. Asking nicely, at first, then not so nicely. Just so you know, I'm going to tell the truth."
"I wouldn't expect anything else," Bruce replied, defensive despite himself.
Reynolds stood up, bracing himself on the arms of his chair. "Follow me," he said.
Bruce did, down hallways like something out of *The Brady Bunch*. Clean-scrubbed white faces, bright red-and-yellow school spirit banners, and posters for the Spring Fling and the prayer group. None of these kids would last a day at Gotham West, nor an hour at Gotham East.
The principal didn't bother to knock on the door labeled 'Torch' in six-inch-high letters. He pushed it open and Bruce followed him inside. There were multiple computers and high-speed printers; Bruce resolved to double his donations to the Greater Gotham PTA.
"Ms. Jenkins," Reynolds barked, startling a young woman out of her trance-like contemplation of her screen. She jumped and would have fallen out of her chair had Bruce not hurried to catch her shoulders. He let her go instantly, mumbling an apology as she looked up at him in surprise.
There were a series of framed articles along one wall, some from the *Torch* and others from the *Metropolis Inquisitor*; Bruce saw that the latter bore Chloe Sullivan's byline. There were no articles by Clark Kent on the wall.
"I need to look at the archives for 2001 through 2005," Reynolds told the girl.
She frowned, thinking. "Those aren't on disk, we don't have electronic copies until starting in 2006 – the older ones should be in the file cabinets." She waved a hand at the back of the room, where a row of cabinets – big, heavy dinosaurs – stood, half buried under stacks of loose papers and covered with sedimented layers of bumper stickers mostly concerned with quirky humor and radio stations.
Bruce let Reynolds go first. He started at the top left, while Bruce went right on the theory that the most recent pre-electronic editions would be stored there. He found file folders crammed with lunchroom menus from 2002 and 2005, others with football and swim team schedules, advertisements for local businesses, but no actual editions of the paper. Nearby, Reynolds was opening and shutting drawers with increasing agitation. He would have lost his composure entirely, Bruce thought, were it not for the girl watching him with fascination.
"They're not here," Reynolds said at last, unnecessarily.
Bruce couldn't find it in himself to be surprised. He could talk to Chloe Sullivan, and hope that her memory hadn't been revised the way the Torch's archives had been. But that was dangerous, bringing in another person who might be loyal to Clark or Luthor or both, and a reporter at that. She might even have been the one to destroy the records.
He was opening his mouth to tell Reynolds that it was all right when his beeper went off, meaning that the Bat Signal was flashing.
"I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm going to have to leave. Please let me know if there's anything I can do for the school."
He left Reynolds standing in the back of the office, clearly wanting to curse but unwilling to do so. His wireless hand-held computer brought him the latest news from the *Gotham Gazette*'s home page; the Joker was out again. A toy hunt being held to celebrate the opening of the Wayne Memorial Park had been infiltrated – instead of ordinary toys, the Joker had substituted his surprises, from the merely startling to the deadly. Almost fifty families were being held hostage by his goons.
There was no way Bruce could get there in time, even if he had a jet in the Smallville High parking lot.
He'd decided long ago that his pride should never stand in the way of saving lives. He entered the number Superman had given him to call the Justice League; the connection was scrambled and he'd just have to hope the security on his end was good enough to avoid being tracked either by outsiders or by the League.
"Gotham needs help," he said to the deep-voiced man who answered. He explained the situation.
"Hang on," the man said. There was a pause; Bruce had time to consider the surreality of superheroes putting people on hold. "All right," the man said at last, "Superman has been informed and he will arrive in minutes. Shall I tell him to look for you?"
"He won't see me," Bruce said, which should imply that he was still in Gotham. It made him look like more of a weakling, but it concealed the other, more troubling weakness that had separated him from his city.
The car he'd rented had a television in the back. He went to CNN and found that they'd developed a "Joker Crisis" logo in purple and green. They didn't have any live footage, just an old picture from Arkham and a picture of the park entrance, surrounded with police cruisers and waiting ambulances.
Then they began to receive a feed from a hovering helicopter. Bruce could see the Joker's gaudy minions, circling around the families. There were at least three people lying on the ground, curled and broken.
A blur swept through the park, making the hostages disappear one after the other. Then, as the henchmen started to waver, Superman came for them as well, depositing them among the police – as a hasty switch to another camera feed revealed. Finally, Superman appeared in front of the park with the Joker, grasping him by the scruff of the neck.
"Where's the flying rodent?" the Joker asked, his mad eyes reaching for Bruce through the television. He twisted around, looking up at Superman. "No fair – no fair! I didn't want to play with you! You offend my eyes, you primary-colored freak!"
Superman frowned down at the Joker, whose colors did in fact clash badly with the superhero’s costume.
"You took away my toys!" he continued to complain.
"And I'll do it again if I need to," Superman said, with the air of an aggrieved teacher. "Here you are," he told the police officers who'd gingerly moved towards them. "I really feel that prison would be more appropriate for this man. Even if he is mentally ill, surely he can be treated in a place where he can also pay for his crimes."
The Joker, not one for a moral debate, made a loud raspberry as Superman released him into the officers' custody.
Bruce, frustrated, headed back to Metropolis, driving as fast as human engineering would allow.
He would stay one more night, give Lex another try in the morning. He would go out to the Suicide Slums and beat up on some Metropolis criminals. Not that it would even the scales, but it would be better than nothing.
The Joker's tricks were a rebuke to him for leaving his city.
As it happened, he was able to do Superman a small favor that night. Tuning in to the police frequencies, he heard a report that some clown – literally, a clown, makeup and red rubber nose and floppy shoes – was terrorizing a high-end restaurant. Bruce was in the area, so he came in the back and went through the kitchen, where pots abandoned in the staff's mad rush away were boiling over. Through the crack in the double doors, he could see the clown collecting valuables from the well-dressed men and women frozen at the tables.
"Excuse me," a loud, commanding voice came, causing everyone but Bruce to look towards the front of the restaurant. "You're not being very funny."
The clown snarled at Superman, the painted red ring of smile around his lips making the grimace hard to see. "Clowns aren't really supposed to be funny. They're supposed to be scary." He started to swing something – a lasso? No, a sort of bolo, with a rock at the end. Every time it neared Superman, it flared neon green.
Bruce pushed open the doors and stalked towards them. One woman turned her head to him; her jaw dropped, but Bruce raised a finger to his lips and she quickly looked away.
"Are you scared?" the clown asked, advancing as Superman fell back. The look on his face was fascinating: a kind of resigned agony, as if he had a lot of prior experience with the rocks but hadn't built up any resistance to them.
Bruce slipped out a Batarang and sent it hurtling towards the bolo, clipping the rope so that the rock continued forwards and smacked into his waiting hand. He immediately put it into an insulated sample case on his utility belt. "Need any help?" he asked as the flabbergasted clown and an equally surprised Superman turned towards him.
"Thanks," Superman said, annoyingly sincere.
"I can take it from here," the Batman offered, stepping forward and slapping flexicuffs on the clown before he could reveal any more weapons in his arsenal.
Superman considered. "There's a hurricane off of Key West – if you wouldn't mind?"
The Batman nodded. It was a good excuse for Superman not to hang around where he was at risk from the rock – meteorite -- and he very much wanted to ask the clown a few questions.
As he patted the dismayed criminal down, taking away knotted scarves with razors in them, uninflated balloons, and a squeaky horn, he whispered his take on the man's situation into his ear. By the time the Batman was convinced that the clown had no more tricks up his puffy, polka-dotted sleeves, he was extremely anxious to talk.
"Where did you get that rock?"
The clown couldn't help a pleased smirk. "Lex Luthor has a big stash. Word on the street is that Superman's allergic, so I thought I'd give it a try. At Star Labs, there was a party for the staff's kids the other day; I came in, slipped out during the Clown Car trick, and grabbed some that was just sitting on some guy's desk. Stupid, leaving it out like that, like they wanted someone to take it."
Now *there* was a disturbing possibility. The Batman hoped that Luthor had merely hired a sloppy researcher; he'd check to see whether anyone had been fired over the incident.
The police arrived, and the Batman departed.
****
His secretary relayed the message that Lex wanted to see him. "At your earliest convenience, of course," she repeated, and Bruce could hear Lex's supercilious tones even in her dry recitation.
One last try at Luthor might be fruitful, now that he knew that the soil of the little town he'd left was fertilized with secrets. With so much hidden, something had to come to the surface eventually.
The trip to LexCorp was familiar to him by now. The LexCorp logo seemed to be everywhere, from the headlines on the *Planet* at the newsstands he passed to the commercials playing on the televisions in the window of a Best Buy to the signs noting that Luthor had paid to clean the streets. Metropolis was a fully branded, cyber-enabled, solar-charged, twenty-first-century city, and if Luthor was its genius, Superman was its avatar.
He needed to soak into darkness, back in a city that let him be an icon as well.
The bodyguard’s scan for weapons was perfunctory this time. Bruce could only assume that this was pursuant to Lex’s direct orders.
The man himself was waiting in his office, working at a tablet computer, when Bruce came in. He didn’t get out of his seat.
“How’s Clark?”
“Fine,” Bruce said, letting Lex take that however he wanted. “I’ll tell him you asked.”
Lex smiled; Bruce had hoped for a twitch, but he was obviously well-prepared to discuss Clark Kent. “So you’re still on speaking terms. I wasn’t sure you would be.”
Lex stood and crossed the floor to the wet bar near the window. He poured himself a glass of something amber from a decanter faceted like a diamond. He didn’t offer Bruce a drink, just took a sip with the distracted air of a man performing a task so rote as to require no conscious thought.
Bruce could have waited Lex out – God knew the man liked to run his mouth – but he was anxious to return to Gotham. He’d been too long away from its dark places. “Why did you want to see me?”
“I just wanted to wish you farewell,” Lex said. “That, and say ‘I told you so.’”
Bruce stepped forwards, closing half the distance between them. “You have no idea about me.” Unfortunately, this was only half strategic, designed to make Luthor’s pride kick in so he’d reveal himself; the other half was actual angry posturing.
“Really? Because I think you’re scared.” Lex drifted closer. “You’ve realized that your fascination has led you out of your cave and left it unguarded. You’re worried that any person could have that sort of influence over you.” Closer still. “You’re upset that he doesn’t even seem to care that he has that power.” They were almost touching now, close enough that Bruce could almost feel Lex’s breath. “You’re afraid that you’d have to change to have a relationship with him, or with anyone – but more than that, you’re afraid that he might make you *want* to change.
“Still think I have no idea?” He stared into Bruce’s eyes, unblinking.
Bruce’s heart rate was increasing and his mouth was dry; he felt blindsided. He’d expected Lex Luthor, not some psychoanalyst. Even if Lex wasn’t quite right, he was freakishly close. "You’re a bastard," he said, because Lex knew he didn’t want to hear this.
"If I had a million dollars for everyone who ever called me a bad name – Oh, wait." Lex grinned. "I do."
Abruptly, he turned away from Bruce and went to the floor-to-ceiling window that gave him a view of most of the city, including the globe of the *Daily Planet*.
"The thing is, you’re too isolated, so afraid of connection that anyone who gets through even a fraction of your defenses seems to have the power to destroy you. Get a friend, Bruce. Or get a dog. You won't last another year like this."
"Now you’ve really lost me." Even if it was uncomfortable, Lex was revealing himself in his analysis of Bruce, and Bruce had learned to tolerate discomfort.
Lex sighed and leaned against the glass in an impressive display of confidence in its strength. "All you see is an endless line of victims, or people waiting to be victims. If you want to stay human, you've got to find someone specific to remind you."
"Have you told that to Superman?"
Lex's eyes were hard, like marble under seawater. "He's not human."
They stared at each other in silence, until Lex spoke again. "I sometimes envy you, you know."
Bruce willed himself to raise an eyebrow.
"You get to put the mask on and take it off. Sometimes you get to be Bruce Wayne, and then you're not. It's not the same as being Lex Luthor twenty-four hours a day."
He hadn't thought Lex would get that explicit. Though it was becoming clear that there were a lot of things he hadn't understood about Lex. "What makes you think Bruce Wayne's not the mask?"
Lex's smile was as thin as a garrote. "I never said I thought that."
Bruce was keyed up, adrenalin fizzing through his body like champagne bubbles, making him want to hit things. He didn't want to be vulnerable in front of Lex, especially when he could sense Lex's own vulnerability but not quite see the way to tap into it, not without committing himself to a closer tie to Clark Kent than he really wanted to risk.
Though there was always the obvious –
"Does it bother you, thinking about me and Clark? You and I have so much in common, after all; isn't it a little frustrating that he'd go after me instead?"
Lex only froze for half a heartbeat, his pupils contracting and widening as if he'd been hit by strobe lights. Then his face was serene, his posture more relaxed than before. "If you're inclined to think of yourself as a mere substitute, I won't fight you. But wouldn't you rather be with someone who wants you for yourself?" He paused, then continued, each word as sharp as if it had been cut out with scissors, "Of course, that would require you to know who you were, so maybe that's not an option."
Bruce stepped closer, almost up against the glass himself. The answer to the mystery was here; he'd have it out of Lex one way or another.
“Nice view,” he said, not looking away from Lex. “If you’re not afraid of heights.”
Lex’s eyes were the blue-gray of the old marble that made up half Gotham’s civic buildings, ancient and modern all at once. This close, he could see the little wrinkles around Lex’s eyes, the only thing that said that Lex was older than his early twenties.
“What do you want, Bruce?” The question was deceptively soft, inviting a confidence.
Bruce wasn’t going to ask about Clark, of course, but he leaned in, so they were only centimeters apart. He could smell the scotch on Lex’s breath.
Lex closed the gap between them, his teeth sharp on Bruce’s lip. Bruce was surprised Lex had gone beyond teasing, for the first time – in school, the two of them had traveled in very different circles, and Bruce hadn’t yet realized that he needed a dissolute image, so he wouldn’t have responded to Lex’s overtures had they been made.
Lex kissed like he’d gotten a Ph.D. in sex and was lecturing on the topic.
The secret was here, he knew it.
Bruce told himself that he wasn’t making excuses as he kissed Lex back, shoving him against the cool glass hard enough to make clear that he wasn’t just going along with Lex’s desires.
“Come upstairs,” Lex said into his mouth, pushing free so that he could turn around and start walking towards a side door.
Bruce wiped his wet lips, watching Lex’s hips make promises – every inch the politician, Lex was, though Bruce rather thought Lex could deliver on these pledges. He was slightly shorter than Clark, less broad through the shoulders, but Bruce remembered from boxing the other day that his body was no less well-formed.
Lex reached the door and opened it, revealing a staircase. He looked back over his shoulder, waiting for Bruce to decide. His eyes gleamed, probably with mischief rather than arousal – possibly they were the same thing to him.
He followed.
“Upstairs” turned out to be a fully furnished apartment, though they went quickly through the living room. Bruce caught glimpses of a kitchen and a study before they were in the bedroom, which was dominated by a Caravaggio saint and, underneath it, a bed big enough to accommodate a harem.
This time, when Lex unbuttoned Bruce’s shirt, he kept going, pushing it off Bruce’s shoulders, pausing only to rub his fingers over the most visible scars. He made similarly short work of Bruce’s belt and pants, sliding the elastic waist of his boxers over his hips with a caress that felt both precisely calculated and entirely casual. When Bruce was naked, Lex stepped back to contemplate him. Bruce endured the scrutiny; even the most attentive eye couldn’t see past the trappings and the suits of Bruce Wayne’s persona.
Lex opened his mouth; Bruce shook his head, and miraculously Lex stayed silent. “Take off your clothes,” Bruce commanded. Lex smiled and stripped, revealing a body as pale and well-formed as a classical statue, without even the bruises remaining from their boxing match that should have been there. With that evidence, it was no surprise that Bruce couldn’t see any bullet scars, despite Lex’s claim to have been shot before. Like Bruce, Lex’s body wasn’t going to tell his secrets to anyone.
They stared at one another in silence that should have been uncomfortable, thick with challenge, until Bruce decided that he’d lose nothing by making a move and stepped forward, pushing Lex back until he hit the bed and fell back on it.
Lex smiled closemouthed up at him, propping himself up on his elbows, his flat stomach rippling as he waited for Bruce’s next action.
“Turn over,” he said. If Lex had any qualms about turning his back on Bruce, he didn’t show them, just rolled over with lazy grace. Naked, his slenderness was revealed to be deceptive, long lean muscles testifying to usually-hidden strength. The baldness made his body into one smooth, uninterrupted line, from the crown of his head down to his feet. His half-hard cock was visible between his legs.
There were condoms and several bottles of lube in the drawer of the bedside table. Bruce chose one of each at random and didn’t bother with any more foreplay, just planted his knees on the bed between Lex’s legs and shoved inside hard enough to make Lex gasp.
He was tight, tighter than he had any right to be – unless that was part of his healing, too? – glove-tight, strong enough to set his own pace, taking Bruce along with him like a runaway horse.
Bruce struggled for control over his pumping hips. He couldn’t lose the plot now, no matter how good this felt.
"He's got a magnificent ass, you know," Bruce said and squeezed Lex’s to emphasize his point. His thumbs slid along the tight curves of muscle, somehow warmer than he'd expected.
He bent over, biting at the skin of Lex’s back, then moving up so that he could speak directly into Lex’s ear. "Do you want to fuck him, Lex? Or do you want to be him?"
There was no answer. Lex was rolling underneath him like a stormy sea. The heat between them was like a cloudless August day in Gotham, when the city baked in a concrete-and-marble oven of its own devising. Heat so great it built mirages in Bruce's eyes. His hands, clenched on Lex's hips, blurred in his vision. Lex was cursing him, wobbling as he tried to rest his weight on one arm to free the other to help himself out. Bruce used one hand to shove at Lex's upper arm so that the attempt failed, and Lex pitched forward, his protest muffled by his thousand-dollar pillows.
Bruce was close now, his hand resting between Lex's shoulder blades, the smooth sweat-dampened skin there marred only by the red marks of Bruce's teeth, already fading. There was just something about fucking a metahuman, someone who might be able to kill you a little more easily than the average villain. The bruises healing as if shown in time-lapse photography made him even harder, made his hand clench and scratch new lines down Lex's back just to see.
He'd bitten Clark too, he realized, hard, as if he could somehow own –
But there hadn't been any marks at all.
Clark Kent is Superman, he realized, and went up in white-hot flame. He was molten metal, blank golden ecstasy, scattered over the universe and coalescing into the heart of a star.
Eventually, he became aware that Lex was pushing at him, scrabbling for enough room to move. He pulled back just enough to let Lex roll away. Lex was talking, but Bruce couldn't possibly listen when he was too transfixed by his revelation.
It was amazing, really, that he'd been oblivious so long. Kent and Superman both had that ambiguous relationship with Luthor, that crusading goodness – the history of Smallville, with its meteor-and-something-else strike – Kent's lateness and harmless self-presentation, an almost impossible act for such a big man. Bruce should have seen how deliberate it was. The *glasses*, for God's sake.
What sort of alien technology, he wondered, was required to distort Superman's appearance so that their resemblance was reduced to similar runway-quality good looks?
More to the point – what did Luthor get out of allowing Kent to maintain the fiction? Because there was no way under Heaven Luthor didn't know. He'd spent four years in Smallville with the proto-Superman – which explained a lot about why he'd survived what by all accounts had been a war zone in which he'd been a major target of opportunity.
The knowledge also meant that Luthor's hints about Batman were probably based on actual information, since Luthor had to be acknowledged as an experienced cape-chaser. But most salient of all, Bruce had far more power than he'd thought, not just over Superman. What might Luthor give him in return for silence?
Bruce returned his attention to the present. Lex was sprawled on the bed, taking up more space than Bruce would have guessed possible.
"Thank you," he said, because he wasn't free of the desire to mess with Lex's head.
Lex raised a hand from the bed in acknowledgement, then let it fall. "Likewise, I'm sure."
"I didn't hurt your ribs, did I?"
Lex snorted into the sheets.
Bruce rolled off the bed and began gathering his clothes. "By the way, Lex," he said as he pulled on his pants, "you and I aren't the only ones with secrets. You might want to consider that before you go around spreading your innuendoes."
There was a second of silence during which the temperature of the room seemed to plummet to air-freezing lows. Then Lex sprang off the bed, facing Bruce with the savagery of a tiger, careless of his nudity and of Bruce's tensed muscles.
"Make one move against him -- *think* about moving against him – and I will kill you, raze Gotham, and salt the earth where it stood."
Luthor's vehemence almost made him reconsider. "I thought he was your enemy."
"He is," Luthor said, with what seemed like complete sincerity. "But whatever the proverb says, it's not an equation where you can be on my side because you're not on his. He's *my* enemy. That makes him mine, and that makes you a trespasser." He drew a breath. "And trespassers sometimes get shot."
It was the wrong threat to use with him. Bruce's hands twitched, closing on air. "You should be more careful. Even he couldn’t protect you if I decided to take you down."
Luthor smiled, slow and vicious. "You could try."
But Luthor must have known this was a possible outcome as soon as Bruce had come to Metropolis. Bruce would have made a contingency plan under like circumstances, and he couldn't gamble that Luthor was less cautious.
"Don't make me decide you're an imminent danger," he warned, backing away so that he could reach his shirt and shoes.
Luthor had recovered enough composure to adopt a casual smirk, more suited to a conqueror in a boardroom than a naked man in a bedroom. "Likewise, I'm sure."
On that note, Bruce left.
Not all problems were solved in the first attempt – he could vary his stratagems until success was his. As the Joker would say, there was more than one way to skin a bat.
He got the hell out of Kansas.
End Part I
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I think my favorite line in this one was: "There was just something about fucking a metahuman." Not only is it extremely cool, but it implies that Bruce has had experience along those lines. Interesting, especially since he hadn't figured out Superman's secret identity yet when he thought it...
Batman using his batarang with such incrredible precision puts me in mind of Daredevil and his billy club. It's really a great comic and I recommend it to you.
Keep up the good work!
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Thanks for the comments!
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He was eventually driven to a complete reconsideration of his life and his approach to crime-fighting. Daredevil disappeared from the crimefighting scene for awhile.
Turns out his mother was... well, I don't want to ruin it for you. But it's worth a look, believe me.
Also, in the past couple of years, Daredevil's secret became public. He was outed, taken to court, all sorts of bad stuff. He eventually declared himself the new Kingpin, which did not speak wonders for his sanity. Some of his fellow crimefighters were a touch worried. GREAT story line.
At one point a virtual army comes after him so he calls in reinforcements. Spider-Man, Iron Fist and Luke Cage rally around. After the carnage is over with they have a truly magificent snark exchange. The story arc was worth it if only for that.
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The outing storyline is by Bendis and Alex Maleev (*gorgeous* art), and is collected starting with "Daredevil vol 5: Out".
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The one minor nit I'd pick is that I can't imagine death-haunted Bruce missing the dedication of a Wayne Memorial Park. Make it Kane Memorial, or Schuster, considering who stops the clown, perhaps?
I like also the way that Lex's telling Bruce to get a pet seems to lead inevitably to Bruce taking in Dick Grayson (whose comics-canonical hero-worship of Supes takes on a whole new layer in this 'verse...)
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I guess this comment is all about the sense of anticipation and suspense you've created. There are also a baker's dozen of brilliant lines I could quote, and one, I think, is my favorite:
Lex kissed like he’d gotten a Ph.D. in sex and was lecturing on the topic.
This plus the scene where Lex touches Bruce for the first time, unbuttoning his shirt and then rebuttoning it.
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i'm saving full fb for the full story, but this seems like a perfect summary for everything we've seen of lex and clark on SV so far:
"Best friends, they called it, and no one dared to say any different because Luthor could make your life very difficult in this town, on a whim even, and there was nothing whimsical about Lex Luthor and Clark Kent."
because they are so deadly serious about everything, even if nothing's going on.
thanks so much for such an enjoyable, detailed escape.