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Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6
The Fortress of Solitude was amazing. Electronic sentience – quantum computing, maybe. It was able to fabricate a wheelchair for him almost instantaneously. Lex wanted to take it apart and see how it worked. Given how annoyed it seemed at his presence – talking in Kryptonian to Clark until he ordered it to speak English, even – he guessed that it could sense that desire in him.
After a recap of the situation, Lex requested some time to work. Clark, after a sharp Kryptonian exchange with the computer, headed up to the Justice League to talk to his colleagues.
Lex checked his cell and was pleased to see that it was working. Either Clark's computer was helping it out, or the advertising was really serious about worldwide coverage. He dialed Hubert Grossman.
"Mr. Luthor," Hubert answered on the first ring.
"How much Mineral X did you transfer to the government?" Lex asked.
He could just about hear Hubert blanch. "Half our – half the supply."
"First, have the contracts emailed to me. Second, remind me to hold a meeting about absolute power, and why LexCorp should be the only entity that possesses it. Third, I'm going to need an extensive cleanup at the mansion in Smallville. And the DoD is going to be calling, in something of a huff. They don't get a refund."
Hubert sucked in a breath. "Yes, Mr. Luthor."
"And, Hubert?"
"Yes, Mr. Luthor?"
"I'm not angry. You all did the best you could with the information you had. But Mineral X is off the market now, and it's going to stay that way."
"They demanded – we needed to reassure –"
It was almost disconcerting that he could get Hubert, of all people, this upset. Hubert was usually smoother than Sinatra, even when Lex was raging. Perhaps there was something special in his tone today. "I'm not angry, and there will be no reprisals. It's been a rough few months for us all. Just have a clean-up team at the mansion as soon as possible, and we'll say no more."
He hung up without waiting for confirmation. Hubert was a good man, and Lex didn't need to hear him squirm.
"Hey, computer," he said to the empty room. "I need to check my email."
****
Clark came back looking even more worried. Lex guessed that the League had been less than united in determining how to respond to the US military's desire to capture one of their own.
"The bad news is that the transfer of title of the Kryptonite is completely legal," Lex told him, wheeling his chair around so that he could face Clark. "And even if it weren't, all the government is legally obligated to do is pay LexCorp the fair market value. So our options are: steal it back, neutralize it somehow either physically or strategically, or negotiate a deal."
"The military wanted me to hunt people down and kill them," Clark said. "That's why I decided to form a nongovernmental organization in the first place."
"Were they bad people? Never mind," Lex said before Clark could start a lecture. "Stealing it back is risky, but it's more likely than not that Hope and Mercy can do it, especially with the entire payload being kept in the same place so it can overpower you."
"People would get hurt," Clark said.
He nodded. "Most likely. Second option: To neutralize it strategically, we'd need to have something to threaten the government with if you were harmed. Mutual assured destruction."
Clark just looked at him.
Lex sighed. "Right. To neutralize it physically, I'd need access to the remaining Kryptonite at LexCorp, and at least three months in the lab. I'd be lucky to succeed in that amount of time, unless you know something about its structure I don't."
The computer decided to jump in. "Kryptonian technology can neutralize small amounts of Kryptonite, but the energy requirements are prohibitive on a larger scale."
"Prohibitive?" Lex asked, perking up, already imagining the reactor he could build.
"In order to render eight tons of Kryptonite harmless using the known method, the energy output of your sun for approximately three hundred years would be required."
Okay then. Regretfully, Lex pushed aside the idea of cold fusion for the moment.
Clark turned and leaned wearily against the wall, folding his arms in a way that looked more defensive than usual. "We tried negotiation. The President wants assurances that I won't give the League any further assistance or take any action in any foreign country without his permission and that I will aid the US to the best of my abilities in whatever capacity I'm asked to. I asked if the prohibition on going outside the US would include helping out when natural disasters struck, and he said yes."
Lex felt a headache coming on. "It sounds like you'd better take me back. Given a few days, I can get some Kryptonite samples and set up in one of my labs. They won't be able to find me." He didn't want to be a fugitive. He wanted to be a CEO, with minions rushing to do his bidding, a private chef delivering sushi any hour he wanted to eat it, and a wine cellar that was the envy of the French premier.
It was still better than being back under the Joker's control, he reminded himself. And playing with Kryptonite was as much fun as it was possible to have while clothed and sober, so it wouldn't be all bad.
"And I'm just supposed to stay here for three months, or however long it takes you?"
"I haven't heard any suggestions coming from your side of the room, Clark."
"Kal-El," the computer said.
"Yes?"
Lex looked around, wishing there were an avatar he could see. It creeped him out when voices came from the walls. It made him feel crazy, and he didn't like that.
"I could interface with Lex Luthor and create a virtual environment in which subjective time would flow orders of magnitude more quickly. Results could be expected much more quickly."
"Can you accurately simulate Kryptonite?" he asked.
"I believe so," it said, its tone managing to imply that he was silly to ask.
"Simulation only works if you understand the properties of the substance, and if you did there should be no need for –"
"Unless you comprehend the principles behind my quantum simulations, you should not make pronouncements of that nature."
Lex swallowed, feeling too much like Job getting told off by God. It still sounded unlikely to him, but the AI was correct that he was applying Earth science to what might as well be Kryptonian magic.
Clark was looking at him, worried.
A mind-meld with an alien entity that had evidenced a certain amount of hostility to him, not without reason – Lex should be leery, too. But curiosity was his curse and his blessing. "I'm willing to try it, at least for a while," he said.
"You won't – do anything to him," Clark said.
"The interface will require numerous biomechanical connections," the computer replied. Lex winced, thinking of his mechanical hand. Well, he was already a cyborg of sorts.
"No," Clark continued, "I mean, you won't try to alter his thoughts or his motivations. Will you."
Lex stared at Clark. "It can do that?"
Clark shrugged uncomfortably. "Remember the summer before my senior year of high school?"
"I think I was in a coma." Lex smiled, to indicate that he didn't blame Clark, which was almost true.
A muscle twitched at the corner of Clark's jaw. "Well, the computer was still in the caves. It – tried to indoctrinate me. So I'd be ready to rule the world."
"This just gets more reassuring."
"If you will it, Kal-El, I will do nothing that will not facilitate the resolution of your current problem with Kryptonite."
Clark looked over at Lex; Lex looked back. "Is that good enough for you?"
"It is if you reword it. I don't need any extra motivation. I'd like to go home as much as you would."
"Okay," Clark said. "Link up with Lex, but don't do anything to change the way he thinks except make it faster."
"Very well," the computer said, and if it couldn't be annoyed, it was doing an excellent imitation. "Approach the console, Lex Luthor."
Lex turned back to the station he'd been using for email and related tasks. He closed his eyes, steeling himself for another assault on his person and psyche. He didn't expect the computer to make the experience pleasant.
"Closer."
He pushed the wheels half a turn, until he bumped up against the edge of the desk-protrusion. He missed being able to stand. He felt so much more out of control like this.
"Put your hands on the surface in front of you."
He could *feel* Clark's nervousness, thickening the air. "Clark, you'd better go – get kittens out of trees, or whatever you do for fun. The computer will contact you as soon as we know anything."
"Okay," Clark said. Lex couldn't resist turning his head to watch the door swish closed, leaving him alone in this white featureless room, pristine as a clean room in a microchip factory.
He shivered.
"There may be some discomfort at first," the computer warned, as silver and white filaments crawled out of the desk like worms and writhed onto his hand and his forearms.
He fell into pain, like falling through a sheet of glass.
He shredded into tatters, screamed without voice, and reassembled in the same white room. All sensation was gone, as if his entire body had been replaced by prosthetics, a virtual Tin Man.
When he looked down, his hands both looked human, and his feet were encased in normal shoes rather than the sterile cages he'd been using.
Experimentally, Lex stood. He could feel pressure, and after a moment of disorientation some simulation of inner-ear balance kicked in, so he took a step away from the chair.
A door in the wall whooshed open. Clark had watched too much Star Trek, Lex thought.
"How would you have me configured, Lex Luthor? A log cabin, perhaps?"
Okay: Snark, acceptable; mind-reading, somewhat less so.
As if to emphasize its power, the computer made no comment. Lex walked through the door into a lab similar to one of his own.
"I have accessed LexCorp's files and made them available here."
Lex gritted his teeth and proceeded towards the glowing green mineral spread out across a tabletop like a galaxy of fatal stars.
"Let's get started," he said.
****
He had no sense of time, no cramps, no hunger, no tense neck or aching feet. Every time he thought about taking a break, the impulse disappeared, which ought to have worried him, but there was enough to worry about with the recalcitrant Kryptonite. It refused his attempts to master it, defeating every countermeasure he devised with contemptuous ease. He'd known for years that it responded to human thought. Its molecular structure was protean, and as his drive to destroy it intensified it seemed to respond in kind, bending and dodging his attacks like an aikido master.
Eventually, despair set in. "It's not going to work," he told the computer. "Let me out so Clark and I can consider alternatives."
The computer didn't respond. Lex looked around the shadowless lab.
"So it's like that," he said unnecessarily. "I should have known."
He returned to work, not from any hope of success but because he couldn't sit quiescent while there were still things to learn about Kryptonite. It was a marvel, a shifting, fractal construct that defied every rule of Earth physics and chemistry.
Lex composed a parody of Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" as he worked, wondering whether he would spend a thousand years inside the computer, or whether only minutes had passed. He should have asked how much faster time would run in here than outside.
He should have asked for a panic button.
After some time, he passed through despair to boredom, thence to what he imagined was Zen-like calm. Kryptonite had a subtle, elusive beauty, like an oil spill on seawater.
He could be happy like this, he realized at last. There were no other demands – just this one impossible task, and he'd accepted his failure there – there were no disappointed ex-friends or greedy would-be spouses. No Joker, with his laughter and his colors and his whispers of all the things that Lex was and could never be. No knives, no fires, no assassination attempts, no scurrilous editorials in the *Planet*, no sleep and thus no nightmares, no graves to visit and no sneers to ignore.
It was an island paradise, without the maggots and malaria, without wondering how he'd been betrayed and who'd betray him next. And when he talked to an empty room, there really was someone else listening.
Clark was a distant worry, the Fortress's problem now. Lex was making new strides in chemical analysis, Nobel-worthy discoveries shed like chaff as he played.
He set up the three-thousandth-odd particle bombardment. At this point he was varying speed and angle more for amusement than because the difference was likely to produce a new outcome. As he watched, he felt – content. The closest analogue he could think of was the lassitude after sex with Desiree, his first and in many ways his best wife.
The Kryptonite fizzed and dissolved into orange-white sparkles.
"What the fuck!"
Immediately the experiment was replaced with a new sample. The computer, unheard for who-knew-how-many milliseconds, bleated, "Replicate the process."
Lex snarled and pressed the button to send the same particle streams.
Nothing happened.
"What --?" he said, bringing a hand up to rub at his temples. For a fraction of a heartbeat, the world went dark – but then everything was the same, and he wondered if he'd imagined it.
"Additional power has been diverted to the emitter. Repeat the process," the computer suggested.
He did, and this time the Kryptonite flared and disappeared as if a Star Trek transporter had grabbed it.
"The Justice League has identified the location of the stored Kryptonite. Your controls now are targeted towards it."
Lex nodded and punched the button one more time. It was anticlimactic in the extreme, without even an image of the Kryptonite in its no doubt heavily guarded bunker. (Lex sincerely hoped that the government had been using lead shielding. Mutated soldiers, with training and access to weapons, would be even worse than regular mutants.)
"The operation was successful," the AI announced. "Prepare for disconnection –"
The world disintegrated around the edges, white to gray to black.
****
"Lex?"
He opened his eyes to Clark's concerned face, inches away. He was slumped in a chair, his neck aching slightly from having been at a bad angle. Automatically, he straightened and put his weight on his feet to stand –
He looked down.
"I had the Fortress help you heal while you were under," Clark said. Lex's gaze whipped to his right hand – which was human again, just like in the simulation.
The technology that could work such miracles would revolutionize medicine, but Lex couldn't bring himself to care about that now.
"Thank you," he said as he tested his restored fingers, hearing the tremble in his voice, like being a kid again, so grateful for scraps that Clark threw him – only this time, the gifts were valuable by anyone's standards.
"It's – I wanted to do something for you. Since you pretty much just saved my ass."
He could feel the hard smoothness of the console in front of the chair, feel it with real skin and nerves, not computer-transmitted signals. "It was my pleasure."
When he looked at Clark again, Clark was smiling, still looking at Lex's restored hand. "You have nice hands," he said, then blushed, apple-bright.
"I never thought my favorite part of that sentence would be the plural."
Now Clark's smile was wryly lopsided as he looked up at Lex, his head tilted flirtatiously so that his eyes were only half-visible. "Life really hasn't turned out the way we expected, has it?"
Lex shrugged, moving muscles that were tight from inaction. "Expectation is a mistake. It leads to disappointment."
"And disappointment leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the Dark Side ... Wait," Clark said, and this was just plain teasing, nothing subtle about it, "I think I got my aphorisms mixed up."
Lex smiled a little, to show that he knew he'd been caught. "Care to give me a lift back to civilization?"
Clark's face fell, his lashes lowered to cover his shining eyes. "If that's what you want."
He swallowed. "Well, I wouldn't mind a guided tour of an alien artifact first. And then maybe a snack."
That restored the smile, the same careless-bright one he remembered from Smallville. The one he never saw any more, not even when he looked at pictures of Clark receiving yet another award for his journalism. Superman smiled, usually at children, but there was always something distant about it, and that wasn't Clark's face anyway. Lex had thought he'd remembered that smile, but seeing it again made clear that he'd forgotten how it could make even this cold white room blaze with sunlight.
"Come on, then," Clark said, extending his hand to Lex, who took it with bemusement, standing up on feet whose wholeness felt even more bizarre than his renewed hand. His first steps were a little wobbly, which might explain why Clark didn't let go for several seconds.
The Fortress of Solitude – whose name Clark managed to say with a straight, unblushing face – was enormous, full of galleries of lost Kryptonian culture and rooms of mysterious equipment that made Lex's hands long for a toolkit. The floor was slick and translucent; the air was chilly, but the gleaming walls were somehow insulated so that when he pressed his palm against one he felt only the promise of cold and not the ice itself. He couldn't stop touching as they went, whether it was the holograms of alien animals or just the blank hallway walls, using both his hands. Clark noticed, he was sure, but didn't comment.
He learned more than he could immediately process about Krypton, the House of El, and the decisions that had sent one baby boy off into the ether while the rest of the population died with their exploded planet. Lex had little hope that humanity, which couldn't even learn from its own history, was going to do better absorbing the lessons of another lost world, but knowledge was never worthless.
After the tour, Clark took him back to the room he'd worked in before, where the Fortress had set a table and prepared a meal. If it was synthesized, Lex didn't know and didn't much care, since the food was uniformly delicious. He ate nearly half as much as Clark, which was a sign of true hunger on his part, while Clark told him about his years struggling to master his Kryptonian heritage without succumbing to his father's schemes for world domination.
No wonder Clark had hated Lex's fights with Lionel so much.
Dessert and coffee came. Lex was sorry to reach the bottom of his cup, but he had to get back to the world sometime. Outside of the Fortress, Clark's priorities would diverge from his own, and they'd be back to the struggle – one that Lex would inevitably win, he knew, but it still would sting to have Clark shouting out his accusing questions while Lex was just trying to make a recalcitrant world run better.
"You look – sad," Clark said, interrupting his musings. Lex looked up, into eyes as open and apparently trusting as a puppy's. He felt a twinge of pain in his chest, then an insulating anger at Clark, for pretending that time could be rewound.
"I should really go home," he said.
Clark closed his eyes for a moment. He was so very beautiful, his mouth with its perfect bowed curves, his skin rose gold, every plane of his face a new dimension of perfection, like a temptation conjured up by Mephistopheles for Lex's Faust. If only there were some Devil with whom he could make a deal – but Clark was on the side of the angels, and therefore as far away from Lex as he could get.
"Okay," he said, and opened his eyes, catching Lex staring. As Lex watched, Clark's eyes widened and his lips parted, just a little, not smiling but poised to speak. "No," he said after a moment. "It's not okay."
Lex stood up, pushing his chair back, and Clark did the same. He walked around the table so that there was nothing between them but the years.
"Clark –" he began.
"Shut up," Clark said, desperately. "For once, please – shut up."
Clark's hands on his shoulders were bruisingly hard, but his lips were feather-soft. Lex leaned into the kiss, letting Clark hold him up, opening his mouth and tasting coffee and Clark, Clark's tongue moving in him like he was conducting an inspection preparatory to taking over completely.
Lex realized that his eyes were closed, but he couldn't bring himself to open them, in case this was one of Clark's experiments. His hands nonetheless came up to stroke across Clark's chest, the slippery fabric of his uniform featureless and frustrating, denying him access to that golden idol's skin he'd seen in too many surveillance tapes.
Clark broke the kiss, leaning his forehead against Lex's. Lex could feel Clark's breath, hot against his wet mouth. He could feel his own pulse hammering, his heart lurching to keep up with what was happening. He could feel his fingers clenching as they failed to get any purchase on Clark's body, the Superman costume resisting his every attempt.
"Look at me," Clark said. His voice wasn't Clark Kent's. It was commanding, devoid of nuance, painted in primary colors.
Lex refused to shake his head. He stood so still he could feel the slight air currents of the Fortress brushing past him.
"Lex," Clark whispered. "Lex, this really doesn't work without you. Look at me."
Slowly, Lex opened his eyes, seeing at first Clark's madder-rose lips, his straight nose, his raven's-feather lashes.
The fact that Clark's skin was pale and his eyes were strained with fear shouldn't have reassured him. Any more than he should still have wanted Clark after all these years. Lex had never been good with 'should.' "It's all right, Clark," he said, forcing the words through a throat that felt blocked with baling wire. He raised his hands to clasp Clark's cheeks, away from the hateful costume, warming himself with the heat of Clark's skin. Clark's hands circled his wrists, holding him lightly.
This time, Lex was the one to bring their lips together, brushing from side to side, feeling the energy between them build like static electricity. Eventually, another touch, no different from the others before it, ripped away his control like the last grain of sand triggering an avalanche. He was clawing at Clark's collar, hanging on like a man fighting not to be swept off a ship in the middle of a storm, and Clark was just as fierce, one hand tight on Lex's wrist as the other came up to clasp the back of his neck, swinging them around so that the back of Lex's thighs bumped against the table.
"Take it off," Lex pulled himself away long enough to demand. "Take that outfit off and let me touch you." He didn't give Clark a chance to respond, just took his mouth again, lost in the feel of skin on skin, tongues meeting and parting, the graze of teeth like the rocks on which sirens led sailors to shipwrecks. His thumb grazed across Clark's Adam's apple – or whatever the equivalent was for someone whose ancestors were never expelled from Eden – and found a pulse under the corner of Clark's jaw. It leapt in time with Lex's own.
Clark pushed him up until he was sitting on the table, his legs splayed to accommodate Clark rubbing up against him. Clark let him go long enough to do something that made the cape fall heavily to the ground, then pulled off his uniform top. The movement left his hair tousled, curls sticking up at odd angles. His eyes were heavy, darker than Lex had ever seen them. He couldn't look away, and was forced to rely on his hands to tell him about Clark's body, bulkier now than in the past, perfect curves that no mathematics could describe, skin like satin, smooth as water, hot and solid and completely *there*. More than Lex had let himself hope for in years.
At some point, Lex had lost his clothing too, the table cold against his naked back, almost uncomfortable where the knobs of his spine hit the clean white surface. Not that he cared, with Clark bearing down on him like he wanted to melt into Lex's skin.
His legs moved against Clark's, like being underwater, not quite close enough yet, with Clark still half-dressed. He pushed at the waistband of the suit, but it didn't want to move, didn't want to give him access to Clark.
Clark's hands smoothed down his sides, over his hips, his fingers kneading as if he planned to reform Lex into a better shape. Lex arched up, grinding into Clark, and Clark's big hands palmed his ass, making him grunt against Clark's mouth. Then he was off the table entirely, Clark holding him up effortlessly as he wrapped his arm around Clark's neck for balance.
When he landed on a bed, he wondered whether the AI enjoyed watching them as it provided for Clark's needs, but he was hardly one to complain about witnesses.
Clark licked and bit down his neck, over his chest, pressing Lex down into the mattress every time he made an effort to reciprocate, so Lex relaxed as best he could and let Clark explore, offering verbal encouragement where appropriate. His mind kept wanting to throw up barriers between himself and the experience; he struggled to just feel, his head tilted up at a nearly painful angle so that he could watch Clark work his way down. Mostly he could only see Clark's hair, and the occasional flash of mountain-green eyes as Clark looked up, but he couldn't have mistaken Clark for anyone else. He carded his hand through Clark's mussed hair, thick and soft as a cat's fur. When Clark tongued his navel, his hand clenched automatically, and Clark made an approving sound.
He seemed taken with the hollow of Lex's hip, running his tongue over Lex's skin again and again, ignoring Lex's feeble attempts to move him further down. His hands rested heavily on Lex's upper thighs, keeping them spread and pinned. Lex meant to call him a fucking tease, but the words wouldn't come out, only half-moans.
Finally, finally, Clark shifted a little, moving to lick his balls and the base of his cock, simultaneously letting go of Lex's left thigh and pushing a miraculously slick finger into him.
Lex screamed before he could stop himself; when he covered his mouth with his wrist to stop a repeat of the sound, Clark batted it away with a casual violence that made him even crazier. Now Clark wasn't holding him down at all, but he was still pinned between Clark's mouth and his finger – fingers, as Clark added another, curling them up and jolting Lex with a wave of electric pleasure.
Clark trailed the tip of his tongue up Lex's cock, pausing at the tip until Lex craned his neck down to meet Clark's eyes – they were *glowing*, Lex realized, and his mouth fell open as Clark licked the head once and then took sucked him down. Heat – this was *Clark*! – pressure driving him up, up, into that wet suction -- *Clark*! – could kill him in an instant, rip him apart with a twitch of those long, knowing fingers – after all this time, better than he'd ever imagined – could tear his flesh from his bones with just his breath, but instead just sucking, sucking at him with what felt like vigor but had to be the most exquisite care – "Clark!" he cried out, and came in pulses like lightning in a dark summer sky.
By the time he could tell that he was seeing the white ceiling and not afterimages of his own ecstasy, Clark was stretched out next to him on the bed, pressing salty kisses into his mouth, their sweat-damp skins brushing and parting with soft wet sounds.
"Can I fuck you?" Clark asked.
Lex wanted to laugh, but Clark's open, trusting expression made something twist in his chest, so instead he nodded, watching the molten colors in Clark's eyes with amazement.
Clark pushed his legs up so they could be face to face, looking to Lex to make sure that it was all right before he took his cock in hand to guide himself into Lex. The sight of Clark's big golden hand wrapped around his big thick cock was enough to make Lex's whole body tremble, even though he wasn't going to get hard again any time soon.
They both watched – pressure, a throat-clenching moment of panic as Lex flashed on what this might mean, then the sensation wrenched him back into the present as Clark pushed inside, a slow inch and then another, then a smooth thrust until their bodies were locked together, Clark inside him as far as he could go.
Clark pulled back a fraction, then in again, staring down, concentrating the way Lex had always concentrated on Clark's mysteries. Lex wanted to watch, too, but his attention was caught by the flexing of Clark's muscles, his arms rippling like Michelangelo's Dying Slave, his flat stomach moving with every thrust. Lex's own sensations were almost irrelevant.
"Lex," Clark said softly. He looked up, and with his eyes locked to Clark's, suddenly he was fully present in his body again, feeling Clark's cock in his ass, feeling the slide of his legs along Clark's side, the brush of his heels against Clark's back.
"Lex," Clark said again. He pulled Clark into a kiss, clawing at his back, rocking up into him, wanting to be closer in any way possible. Clark's hands moved up, covering his ears, holding his head in an inescapable grip.
Clark was grinding into him, his hips making small circles that would have made Lex scream if he'd had the breath to do so. As it was, he hung on to Clark's shoulders, his hands slipping off and then returning to that slick skin as Clark fucked him. Fucked him slow and hard, sweat beading on his temples and dropping down on Lex's face, making the sound of their bodies meeting into something obscene and moist. When Clark pulled his mouth away from the kiss, Lex could only look up in awe, the bright white light surrounding Clark's head like a halo, Clark's eyes wide and shocked, his hair stuck in sweaty black spikes, his face gilded with sweat, panting with the effort of breathing life back into Lex, fucking it back into him.
"I never stopped wanting you," Clark said – or maybe Lex did – and his eyes closed as he thrust once more and came, roaring. Lex could feel him, inside and out, only him. Clark wasn't taking over every atom of Lex's being, because that had happened long ago, but he was reclaiming his territory, and Lex was eager for the restoration.
Eventually, Lex started to straighten his trembling legs, prompting Clark to pull off of him and roll over on his back, splaying one arm over Lex's chest and twining their legs together so that they wouldn't truly be parted. The arm felt as heavy as if it were made of gold.
He ought to be figuring out what came next –
“Stop thinking,” Clark said, his voice a satiated rumble.
Lex looked up at the featureless ceiling, white as clouds in sunlight, and let himself relax. Clark’s breathing beside him was loud and regular. It had been years since he’d shared a bed with anyone, preferring to be gone as soon as the sex was over.
He felt like he was floating, his body heavy yet buoyed by whatever power made Clark able to fly.
He’d been working so hard, so long – even before he came to the Fortress to be Clark’s personal mad scientist – that now that he was at rest, he couldn’t imagine wanting to start again. The most effort he was willing to make was to turn his head, so that he could see Clark’s profile, the only color in the room – not that he needed the contrast to stand out.
When he moved, Clark looked over at him, still glowing like the corona of a star. "How do you feel?"
"You have to ask?" Lex smiled at him, then dragged a hand up to brush Clark's hair off his forehead, enjoying the contact even though he was almost too exhausted to move. "I could stay here forever."
"Mmm, good," Clark said, turning into Lex’s touch, his arm moving from Lex’s chest as he curled against Lex’s side. "Hit the light, will you? There's a button on your side."
Lex reluctantly turned away and saw the button on the wall. Weird, but there was no reason to expect that alien technology would follow human patterns. Not trusting his tired fingers with the task, he reached up and pushed with the palm of his hand, exhaling with satisfaction as the darkness fell.
The world exploded.
****
Have a good night!
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6
The Fortress of Solitude was amazing. Electronic sentience – quantum computing, maybe. It was able to fabricate a wheelchair for him almost instantaneously. Lex wanted to take it apart and see how it worked. Given how annoyed it seemed at his presence – talking in Kryptonian to Clark until he ordered it to speak English, even – he guessed that it could sense that desire in him.
After a recap of the situation, Lex requested some time to work. Clark, after a sharp Kryptonian exchange with the computer, headed up to the Justice League to talk to his colleagues.
Lex checked his cell and was pleased to see that it was working. Either Clark's computer was helping it out, or the advertising was really serious about worldwide coverage. He dialed Hubert Grossman.
"Mr. Luthor," Hubert answered on the first ring.
"How much Mineral X did you transfer to the government?" Lex asked.
He could just about hear Hubert blanch. "Half our – half the supply."
"First, have the contracts emailed to me. Second, remind me to hold a meeting about absolute power, and why LexCorp should be the only entity that possesses it. Third, I'm going to need an extensive cleanup at the mansion in Smallville. And the DoD is going to be calling, in something of a huff. They don't get a refund."
Hubert sucked in a breath. "Yes, Mr. Luthor."
"And, Hubert?"
"Yes, Mr. Luthor?"
"I'm not angry. You all did the best you could with the information you had. But Mineral X is off the market now, and it's going to stay that way."
"They demanded – we needed to reassure –"
It was almost disconcerting that he could get Hubert, of all people, this upset. Hubert was usually smoother than Sinatra, even when Lex was raging. Perhaps there was something special in his tone today. "I'm not angry, and there will be no reprisals. It's been a rough few months for us all. Just have a clean-up team at the mansion as soon as possible, and we'll say no more."
He hung up without waiting for confirmation. Hubert was a good man, and Lex didn't need to hear him squirm.
"Hey, computer," he said to the empty room. "I need to check my email."
****
Clark came back looking even more worried. Lex guessed that the League had been less than united in determining how to respond to the US military's desire to capture one of their own.
"The bad news is that the transfer of title of the Kryptonite is completely legal," Lex told him, wheeling his chair around so that he could face Clark. "And even if it weren't, all the government is legally obligated to do is pay LexCorp the fair market value. So our options are: steal it back, neutralize it somehow either physically or strategically, or negotiate a deal."
"The military wanted me to hunt people down and kill them," Clark said. "That's why I decided to form a nongovernmental organization in the first place."
"Were they bad people? Never mind," Lex said before Clark could start a lecture. "Stealing it back is risky, but it's more likely than not that Hope and Mercy can do it, especially with the entire payload being kept in the same place so it can overpower you."
"People would get hurt," Clark said.
He nodded. "Most likely. Second option: To neutralize it strategically, we'd need to have something to threaten the government with if you were harmed. Mutual assured destruction."
Clark just looked at him.
Lex sighed. "Right. To neutralize it physically, I'd need access to the remaining Kryptonite at LexCorp, and at least three months in the lab. I'd be lucky to succeed in that amount of time, unless you know something about its structure I don't."
The computer decided to jump in. "Kryptonian technology can neutralize small amounts of Kryptonite, but the energy requirements are prohibitive on a larger scale."
"Prohibitive?" Lex asked, perking up, already imagining the reactor he could build.
"In order to render eight tons of Kryptonite harmless using the known method, the energy output of your sun for approximately three hundred years would be required."
Okay then. Regretfully, Lex pushed aside the idea of cold fusion for the moment.
Clark turned and leaned wearily against the wall, folding his arms in a way that looked more defensive than usual. "We tried negotiation. The President wants assurances that I won't give the League any further assistance or take any action in any foreign country without his permission and that I will aid the US to the best of my abilities in whatever capacity I'm asked to. I asked if the prohibition on going outside the US would include helping out when natural disasters struck, and he said yes."
Lex felt a headache coming on. "It sounds like you'd better take me back. Given a few days, I can get some Kryptonite samples and set up in one of my labs. They won't be able to find me." He didn't want to be a fugitive. He wanted to be a CEO, with minions rushing to do his bidding, a private chef delivering sushi any hour he wanted to eat it, and a wine cellar that was the envy of the French premier.
It was still better than being back under the Joker's control, he reminded himself. And playing with Kryptonite was as much fun as it was possible to have while clothed and sober, so it wouldn't be all bad.
"And I'm just supposed to stay here for three months, or however long it takes you?"
"I haven't heard any suggestions coming from your side of the room, Clark."
"Kal-El," the computer said.
"Yes?"
Lex looked around, wishing there were an avatar he could see. It creeped him out when voices came from the walls. It made him feel crazy, and he didn't like that.
"I could interface with Lex Luthor and create a virtual environment in which subjective time would flow orders of magnitude more quickly. Results could be expected much more quickly."
"Can you accurately simulate Kryptonite?" he asked.
"I believe so," it said, its tone managing to imply that he was silly to ask.
"Simulation only works if you understand the properties of the substance, and if you did there should be no need for –"
"Unless you comprehend the principles behind my quantum simulations, you should not make pronouncements of that nature."
Lex swallowed, feeling too much like Job getting told off by God. It still sounded unlikely to him, but the AI was correct that he was applying Earth science to what might as well be Kryptonian magic.
Clark was looking at him, worried.
A mind-meld with an alien entity that had evidenced a certain amount of hostility to him, not without reason – Lex should be leery, too. But curiosity was his curse and his blessing. "I'm willing to try it, at least for a while," he said.
"You won't – do anything to him," Clark said.
"The interface will require numerous biomechanical connections," the computer replied. Lex winced, thinking of his mechanical hand. Well, he was already a cyborg of sorts.
"No," Clark continued, "I mean, you won't try to alter his thoughts or his motivations. Will you."
Lex stared at Clark. "It can do that?"
Clark shrugged uncomfortably. "Remember the summer before my senior year of high school?"
"I think I was in a coma." Lex smiled, to indicate that he didn't blame Clark, which was almost true.
A muscle twitched at the corner of Clark's jaw. "Well, the computer was still in the caves. It – tried to indoctrinate me. So I'd be ready to rule the world."
"This just gets more reassuring."
"If you will it, Kal-El, I will do nothing that will not facilitate the resolution of your current problem with Kryptonite."
Clark looked over at Lex; Lex looked back. "Is that good enough for you?"
"It is if you reword it. I don't need any extra motivation. I'd like to go home as much as you would."
"Okay," Clark said. "Link up with Lex, but don't do anything to change the way he thinks except make it faster."
"Very well," the computer said, and if it couldn't be annoyed, it was doing an excellent imitation. "Approach the console, Lex Luthor."
Lex turned back to the station he'd been using for email and related tasks. He closed his eyes, steeling himself for another assault on his person and psyche. He didn't expect the computer to make the experience pleasant.
"Closer."
He pushed the wheels half a turn, until he bumped up against the edge of the desk-protrusion. He missed being able to stand. He felt so much more out of control like this.
"Put your hands on the surface in front of you."
He could *feel* Clark's nervousness, thickening the air. "Clark, you'd better go – get kittens out of trees, or whatever you do for fun. The computer will contact you as soon as we know anything."
"Okay," Clark said. Lex couldn't resist turning his head to watch the door swish closed, leaving him alone in this white featureless room, pristine as a clean room in a microchip factory.
He shivered.
"There may be some discomfort at first," the computer warned, as silver and white filaments crawled out of the desk like worms and writhed onto his hand and his forearms.
He fell into pain, like falling through a sheet of glass.
He shredded into tatters, screamed without voice, and reassembled in the same white room. All sensation was gone, as if his entire body had been replaced by prosthetics, a virtual Tin Man.
When he looked down, his hands both looked human, and his feet were encased in normal shoes rather than the sterile cages he'd been using.
Experimentally, Lex stood. He could feel pressure, and after a moment of disorientation some simulation of inner-ear balance kicked in, so he took a step away from the chair.
A door in the wall whooshed open. Clark had watched too much Star Trek, Lex thought.
"How would you have me configured, Lex Luthor? A log cabin, perhaps?"
Okay: Snark, acceptable; mind-reading, somewhat less so.
As if to emphasize its power, the computer made no comment. Lex walked through the door into a lab similar to one of his own.
"I have accessed LexCorp's files and made them available here."
Lex gritted his teeth and proceeded towards the glowing green mineral spread out across a tabletop like a galaxy of fatal stars.
"Let's get started," he said.
****
He had no sense of time, no cramps, no hunger, no tense neck or aching feet. Every time he thought about taking a break, the impulse disappeared, which ought to have worried him, but there was enough to worry about with the recalcitrant Kryptonite. It refused his attempts to master it, defeating every countermeasure he devised with contemptuous ease. He'd known for years that it responded to human thought. Its molecular structure was protean, and as his drive to destroy it intensified it seemed to respond in kind, bending and dodging his attacks like an aikido master.
Eventually, despair set in. "It's not going to work," he told the computer. "Let me out so Clark and I can consider alternatives."
The computer didn't respond. Lex looked around the shadowless lab.
"So it's like that," he said unnecessarily. "I should have known."
He returned to work, not from any hope of success but because he couldn't sit quiescent while there were still things to learn about Kryptonite. It was a marvel, a shifting, fractal construct that defied every rule of Earth physics and chemistry.
Lex composed a parody of Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" as he worked, wondering whether he would spend a thousand years inside the computer, or whether only minutes had passed. He should have asked how much faster time would run in here than outside.
He should have asked for a panic button.
After some time, he passed through despair to boredom, thence to what he imagined was Zen-like calm. Kryptonite had a subtle, elusive beauty, like an oil spill on seawater.
He could be happy like this, he realized at last. There were no other demands – just this one impossible task, and he'd accepted his failure there – there were no disappointed ex-friends or greedy would-be spouses. No Joker, with his laughter and his colors and his whispers of all the things that Lex was and could never be. No knives, no fires, no assassination attempts, no scurrilous editorials in the *Planet*, no sleep and thus no nightmares, no graves to visit and no sneers to ignore.
It was an island paradise, without the maggots and malaria, without wondering how he'd been betrayed and who'd betray him next. And when he talked to an empty room, there really was someone else listening.
Clark was a distant worry, the Fortress's problem now. Lex was making new strides in chemical analysis, Nobel-worthy discoveries shed like chaff as he played.
He set up the three-thousandth-odd particle bombardment. At this point he was varying speed and angle more for amusement than because the difference was likely to produce a new outcome. As he watched, he felt – content. The closest analogue he could think of was the lassitude after sex with Desiree, his first and in many ways his best wife.
The Kryptonite fizzed and dissolved into orange-white sparkles.
"What the fuck!"
Immediately the experiment was replaced with a new sample. The computer, unheard for who-knew-how-many milliseconds, bleated, "Replicate the process."
Lex snarled and pressed the button to send the same particle streams.
Nothing happened.
"What --?" he said, bringing a hand up to rub at his temples. For a fraction of a heartbeat, the world went dark – but then everything was the same, and he wondered if he'd imagined it.
"Additional power has been diverted to the emitter. Repeat the process," the computer suggested.
He did, and this time the Kryptonite flared and disappeared as if a Star Trek transporter had grabbed it.
"The Justice League has identified the location of the stored Kryptonite. Your controls now are targeted towards it."
Lex nodded and punched the button one more time. It was anticlimactic in the extreme, without even an image of the Kryptonite in its no doubt heavily guarded bunker. (Lex sincerely hoped that the government had been using lead shielding. Mutated soldiers, with training and access to weapons, would be even worse than regular mutants.)
"The operation was successful," the AI announced. "Prepare for disconnection –"
The world disintegrated around the edges, white to gray to black.
****
"Lex?"
He opened his eyes to Clark's concerned face, inches away. He was slumped in a chair, his neck aching slightly from having been at a bad angle. Automatically, he straightened and put his weight on his feet to stand –
He looked down.
"I had the Fortress help you heal while you were under," Clark said. Lex's gaze whipped to his right hand – which was human again, just like in the simulation.
The technology that could work such miracles would revolutionize medicine, but Lex couldn't bring himself to care about that now.
"Thank you," he said as he tested his restored fingers, hearing the tremble in his voice, like being a kid again, so grateful for scraps that Clark threw him – only this time, the gifts were valuable by anyone's standards.
"It's – I wanted to do something for you. Since you pretty much just saved my ass."
He could feel the hard smoothness of the console in front of the chair, feel it with real skin and nerves, not computer-transmitted signals. "It was my pleasure."
When he looked at Clark again, Clark was smiling, still looking at Lex's restored hand. "You have nice hands," he said, then blushed, apple-bright.
"I never thought my favorite part of that sentence would be the plural."
Now Clark's smile was wryly lopsided as he looked up at Lex, his head tilted flirtatiously so that his eyes were only half-visible. "Life really hasn't turned out the way we expected, has it?"
Lex shrugged, moving muscles that were tight from inaction. "Expectation is a mistake. It leads to disappointment."
"And disappointment leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the Dark Side ... Wait," Clark said, and this was just plain teasing, nothing subtle about it, "I think I got my aphorisms mixed up."
Lex smiled a little, to show that he knew he'd been caught. "Care to give me a lift back to civilization?"
Clark's face fell, his lashes lowered to cover his shining eyes. "If that's what you want."
He swallowed. "Well, I wouldn't mind a guided tour of an alien artifact first. And then maybe a snack."
That restored the smile, the same careless-bright one he remembered from Smallville. The one he never saw any more, not even when he looked at pictures of Clark receiving yet another award for his journalism. Superman smiled, usually at children, but there was always something distant about it, and that wasn't Clark's face anyway. Lex had thought he'd remembered that smile, but seeing it again made clear that he'd forgotten how it could make even this cold white room blaze with sunlight.
"Come on, then," Clark said, extending his hand to Lex, who took it with bemusement, standing up on feet whose wholeness felt even more bizarre than his renewed hand. His first steps were a little wobbly, which might explain why Clark didn't let go for several seconds.
The Fortress of Solitude – whose name Clark managed to say with a straight, unblushing face – was enormous, full of galleries of lost Kryptonian culture and rooms of mysterious equipment that made Lex's hands long for a toolkit. The floor was slick and translucent; the air was chilly, but the gleaming walls were somehow insulated so that when he pressed his palm against one he felt only the promise of cold and not the ice itself. He couldn't stop touching as they went, whether it was the holograms of alien animals or just the blank hallway walls, using both his hands. Clark noticed, he was sure, but didn't comment.
He learned more than he could immediately process about Krypton, the House of El, and the decisions that had sent one baby boy off into the ether while the rest of the population died with their exploded planet. Lex had little hope that humanity, which couldn't even learn from its own history, was going to do better absorbing the lessons of another lost world, but knowledge was never worthless.
After the tour, Clark took him back to the room he'd worked in before, where the Fortress had set a table and prepared a meal. If it was synthesized, Lex didn't know and didn't much care, since the food was uniformly delicious. He ate nearly half as much as Clark, which was a sign of true hunger on his part, while Clark told him about his years struggling to master his Kryptonian heritage without succumbing to his father's schemes for world domination.
No wonder Clark had hated Lex's fights with Lionel so much.
Dessert and coffee came. Lex was sorry to reach the bottom of his cup, but he had to get back to the world sometime. Outside of the Fortress, Clark's priorities would diverge from his own, and they'd be back to the struggle – one that Lex would inevitably win, he knew, but it still would sting to have Clark shouting out his accusing questions while Lex was just trying to make a recalcitrant world run better.
"You look – sad," Clark said, interrupting his musings. Lex looked up, into eyes as open and apparently trusting as a puppy's. He felt a twinge of pain in his chest, then an insulating anger at Clark, for pretending that time could be rewound.
"I should really go home," he said.
Clark closed his eyes for a moment. He was so very beautiful, his mouth with its perfect bowed curves, his skin rose gold, every plane of his face a new dimension of perfection, like a temptation conjured up by Mephistopheles for Lex's Faust. If only there were some Devil with whom he could make a deal – but Clark was on the side of the angels, and therefore as far away from Lex as he could get.
"Okay," he said, and opened his eyes, catching Lex staring. As Lex watched, Clark's eyes widened and his lips parted, just a little, not smiling but poised to speak. "No," he said after a moment. "It's not okay."
Lex stood up, pushing his chair back, and Clark did the same. He walked around the table so that there was nothing between them but the years.
"Clark –" he began.
"Shut up," Clark said, desperately. "For once, please – shut up."
Clark's hands on his shoulders were bruisingly hard, but his lips were feather-soft. Lex leaned into the kiss, letting Clark hold him up, opening his mouth and tasting coffee and Clark, Clark's tongue moving in him like he was conducting an inspection preparatory to taking over completely.
Lex realized that his eyes were closed, but he couldn't bring himself to open them, in case this was one of Clark's experiments. His hands nonetheless came up to stroke across Clark's chest, the slippery fabric of his uniform featureless and frustrating, denying him access to that golden idol's skin he'd seen in too many surveillance tapes.
Clark broke the kiss, leaning his forehead against Lex's. Lex could feel Clark's breath, hot against his wet mouth. He could feel his own pulse hammering, his heart lurching to keep up with what was happening. He could feel his fingers clenching as they failed to get any purchase on Clark's body, the Superman costume resisting his every attempt.
"Look at me," Clark said. His voice wasn't Clark Kent's. It was commanding, devoid of nuance, painted in primary colors.
Lex refused to shake his head. He stood so still he could feel the slight air currents of the Fortress brushing past him.
"Lex," Clark whispered. "Lex, this really doesn't work without you. Look at me."
Slowly, Lex opened his eyes, seeing at first Clark's madder-rose lips, his straight nose, his raven's-feather lashes.
The fact that Clark's skin was pale and his eyes were strained with fear shouldn't have reassured him. Any more than he should still have wanted Clark after all these years. Lex had never been good with 'should.' "It's all right, Clark," he said, forcing the words through a throat that felt blocked with baling wire. He raised his hands to clasp Clark's cheeks, away from the hateful costume, warming himself with the heat of Clark's skin. Clark's hands circled his wrists, holding him lightly.
This time, Lex was the one to bring their lips together, brushing from side to side, feeling the energy between them build like static electricity. Eventually, another touch, no different from the others before it, ripped away his control like the last grain of sand triggering an avalanche. He was clawing at Clark's collar, hanging on like a man fighting not to be swept off a ship in the middle of a storm, and Clark was just as fierce, one hand tight on Lex's wrist as the other came up to clasp the back of his neck, swinging them around so that the back of Lex's thighs bumped against the table.
"Take it off," Lex pulled himself away long enough to demand. "Take that outfit off and let me touch you." He didn't give Clark a chance to respond, just took his mouth again, lost in the feel of skin on skin, tongues meeting and parting, the graze of teeth like the rocks on which sirens led sailors to shipwrecks. His thumb grazed across Clark's Adam's apple – or whatever the equivalent was for someone whose ancestors were never expelled from Eden – and found a pulse under the corner of Clark's jaw. It leapt in time with Lex's own.
Clark pushed him up until he was sitting on the table, his legs splayed to accommodate Clark rubbing up against him. Clark let him go long enough to do something that made the cape fall heavily to the ground, then pulled off his uniform top. The movement left his hair tousled, curls sticking up at odd angles. His eyes were heavy, darker than Lex had ever seen them. He couldn't look away, and was forced to rely on his hands to tell him about Clark's body, bulkier now than in the past, perfect curves that no mathematics could describe, skin like satin, smooth as water, hot and solid and completely *there*. More than Lex had let himself hope for in years.
At some point, Lex had lost his clothing too, the table cold against his naked back, almost uncomfortable where the knobs of his spine hit the clean white surface. Not that he cared, with Clark bearing down on him like he wanted to melt into Lex's skin.
His legs moved against Clark's, like being underwater, not quite close enough yet, with Clark still half-dressed. He pushed at the waistband of the suit, but it didn't want to move, didn't want to give him access to Clark.
Clark's hands smoothed down his sides, over his hips, his fingers kneading as if he planned to reform Lex into a better shape. Lex arched up, grinding into Clark, and Clark's big hands palmed his ass, making him grunt against Clark's mouth. Then he was off the table entirely, Clark holding him up effortlessly as he wrapped his arm around Clark's neck for balance.
When he landed on a bed, he wondered whether the AI enjoyed watching them as it provided for Clark's needs, but he was hardly one to complain about witnesses.
Clark licked and bit down his neck, over his chest, pressing Lex down into the mattress every time he made an effort to reciprocate, so Lex relaxed as best he could and let Clark explore, offering verbal encouragement where appropriate. His mind kept wanting to throw up barriers between himself and the experience; he struggled to just feel, his head tilted up at a nearly painful angle so that he could watch Clark work his way down. Mostly he could only see Clark's hair, and the occasional flash of mountain-green eyes as Clark looked up, but he couldn't have mistaken Clark for anyone else. He carded his hand through Clark's mussed hair, thick and soft as a cat's fur. When Clark tongued his navel, his hand clenched automatically, and Clark made an approving sound.
He seemed taken with the hollow of Lex's hip, running his tongue over Lex's skin again and again, ignoring Lex's feeble attempts to move him further down. His hands rested heavily on Lex's upper thighs, keeping them spread and pinned. Lex meant to call him a fucking tease, but the words wouldn't come out, only half-moans.
Finally, finally, Clark shifted a little, moving to lick his balls and the base of his cock, simultaneously letting go of Lex's left thigh and pushing a miraculously slick finger into him.
Lex screamed before he could stop himself; when he covered his mouth with his wrist to stop a repeat of the sound, Clark batted it away with a casual violence that made him even crazier. Now Clark wasn't holding him down at all, but he was still pinned between Clark's mouth and his finger – fingers, as Clark added another, curling them up and jolting Lex with a wave of electric pleasure.
Clark trailed the tip of his tongue up Lex's cock, pausing at the tip until Lex craned his neck down to meet Clark's eyes – they were *glowing*, Lex realized, and his mouth fell open as Clark licked the head once and then took sucked him down. Heat – this was *Clark*! – pressure driving him up, up, into that wet suction -- *Clark*! – could kill him in an instant, rip him apart with a twitch of those long, knowing fingers – after all this time, better than he'd ever imagined – could tear his flesh from his bones with just his breath, but instead just sucking, sucking at him with what felt like vigor but had to be the most exquisite care – "Clark!" he cried out, and came in pulses like lightning in a dark summer sky.
By the time he could tell that he was seeing the white ceiling and not afterimages of his own ecstasy, Clark was stretched out next to him on the bed, pressing salty kisses into his mouth, their sweat-damp skins brushing and parting with soft wet sounds.
"Can I fuck you?" Clark asked.
Lex wanted to laugh, but Clark's open, trusting expression made something twist in his chest, so instead he nodded, watching the molten colors in Clark's eyes with amazement.
Clark pushed his legs up so they could be face to face, looking to Lex to make sure that it was all right before he took his cock in hand to guide himself into Lex. The sight of Clark's big golden hand wrapped around his big thick cock was enough to make Lex's whole body tremble, even though he wasn't going to get hard again any time soon.
They both watched – pressure, a throat-clenching moment of panic as Lex flashed on what this might mean, then the sensation wrenched him back into the present as Clark pushed inside, a slow inch and then another, then a smooth thrust until their bodies were locked together, Clark inside him as far as he could go.
Clark pulled back a fraction, then in again, staring down, concentrating the way Lex had always concentrated on Clark's mysteries. Lex wanted to watch, too, but his attention was caught by the flexing of Clark's muscles, his arms rippling like Michelangelo's Dying Slave, his flat stomach moving with every thrust. Lex's own sensations were almost irrelevant.
"Lex," Clark said softly. He looked up, and with his eyes locked to Clark's, suddenly he was fully present in his body again, feeling Clark's cock in his ass, feeling the slide of his legs along Clark's side, the brush of his heels against Clark's back.
"Lex," Clark said again. He pulled Clark into a kiss, clawing at his back, rocking up into him, wanting to be closer in any way possible. Clark's hands moved up, covering his ears, holding his head in an inescapable grip.
Clark was grinding into him, his hips making small circles that would have made Lex scream if he'd had the breath to do so. As it was, he hung on to Clark's shoulders, his hands slipping off and then returning to that slick skin as Clark fucked him. Fucked him slow and hard, sweat beading on his temples and dropping down on Lex's face, making the sound of their bodies meeting into something obscene and moist. When Clark pulled his mouth away from the kiss, Lex could only look up in awe, the bright white light surrounding Clark's head like a halo, Clark's eyes wide and shocked, his hair stuck in sweaty black spikes, his face gilded with sweat, panting with the effort of breathing life back into Lex, fucking it back into him.
"I never stopped wanting you," Clark said – or maybe Lex did – and his eyes closed as he thrust once more and came, roaring. Lex could feel him, inside and out, only him. Clark wasn't taking over every atom of Lex's being, because that had happened long ago, but he was reclaiming his territory, and Lex was eager for the restoration.
Eventually, Lex started to straighten his trembling legs, prompting Clark to pull off of him and roll over on his back, splaying one arm over Lex's chest and twining their legs together so that they wouldn't truly be parted. The arm felt as heavy as if it were made of gold.
He ought to be figuring out what came next –
“Stop thinking,” Clark said, his voice a satiated rumble.
Lex looked up at the featureless ceiling, white as clouds in sunlight, and let himself relax. Clark’s breathing beside him was loud and regular. It had been years since he’d shared a bed with anyone, preferring to be gone as soon as the sex was over.
He felt like he was floating, his body heavy yet buoyed by whatever power made Clark able to fly.
He’d been working so hard, so long – even before he came to the Fortress to be Clark’s personal mad scientist – that now that he was at rest, he couldn’t imagine wanting to start again. The most effort he was willing to make was to turn his head, so that he could see Clark’s profile, the only color in the room – not that he needed the contrast to stand out.
When he moved, Clark looked over at him, still glowing like the corona of a star. "How do you feel?"
"You have to ask?" Lex smiled at him, then dragged a hand up to brush Clark's hair off his forehead, enjoying the contact even though he was almost too exhausted to move. "I could stay here forever."
"Mmm, good," Clark said, turning into Lex’s touch, his arm moving from Lex’s chest as he curled against Lex’s side. "Hit the light, will you? There's a button on your side."
Lex reluctantly turned away and saw the button on the wall. Weird, but there was no reason to expect that alien technology would follow human patterns. Not trusting his tired fingers with the task, he reached up and pushed with the palm of his hand, exhaling with satisfaction as the darkness fell.
The world exploded.
****
Have a good night!
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Having so much fun!
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So lovely, and such a gorgeous cliffie, and I'm so happy that this isn't a WiP but a PiP because I don't know how long I could wait for the last part. I love how this is unfolding and this scene between them was so fantastic.
Mmmmmm. Thanks for that.
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Argh! *almost bursting with anticipation*
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Egads, that was my first thought.
But no. It would be too, too cruel...
[whimpers]
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It's entirely too painful to contemplate -- Lex is getting jerked around like a poor rag doll!
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Oh, I agree. It was rivkat I wasn't sure of :)
I'm totally on board with your theory, too. Knowing that K is an elusive thing affected by human thought, seeing that an accepting and content Lex could destroy a sample when a frustrated Lex could not (so very Trekian), it's easy to believe that a blissed out Lex could destroy a whole lot big bunch of it.
The more I think about it, the sadder I am that I'm right.
Me, too!! It makes sense, though. I was surprised that Lex would emerge from the meld completely healed. Now, of course, I suspect that he won't. My last 'shippy, woobie hope is that (as speculated below), Clark is in the computer with him.
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Heh.
It reminds me of the S2 West Wing episode that I just rewatched, where Leo tells CJ and Josh he's hiring Republican Ainsley Hayes out in the hallway because, he says, he didn't want CJ to yell. CJ screams, "Why the hell did you think I wouldn't yell in the hallway?"
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Heh.
[Cries.]
Although, invoking CJ Cregg?
[Friends you immediately.]
[Cries.]
[Runs off to refresh your lj for the hundredth time tonight.]
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Clark wasn't taking over every atom of Lex's being, because that had happened long ago, but he was reclaiming his territory, and Lex was eager for the restoration.
I love the above. The whole sex scene was beautiful.
I'm sure I'll by lying awake tonight pondering scenarios for "the world exploded." Evil! ;-> Another excellent chapter.
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I think that I'm going to have to pretend for now that the cliffhanger doesn't exist. How else will I get through the next 24 hours?!?
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That is truly evil. Did the AI notice what made the first piece of Kryptonite disappear, and feed Lex the information to get his brainwaves right?
Gah!!!
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This fic rocks so hard. It's killed me several times over.
*Love* the Bruce/Clark/Lex dynamic you've created here. The characterizations are just exquisite, and the transitions between the different narratives are seamless.
I've managed to devour the first 7 sections in one night, and the only thing I dislike about it is knowing there's only one section left and then it will be over. *tear*
Thank you so much for sharing this. I've just friended you; I hope you don't mind. :)
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That was so, so beautiful. You know. If it wasn't all in Lex's head. Though--maybe Clark told the AI to let him inside there too and it was real, and it was still inside Lex's head though.
*bites lip* *breathing hitches up*
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Great part, enjoyed the sex (virtual or real, *G*).
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This was some cruel Fortress simulation, wasn't it? I knew things were going too well. :/
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Despite that, this was a wonderful section and I'm looking forward to reading the conclusion.
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Sorry. That was fantastic, and then the last line, and now I'm grinning like a maniac. Thank you!
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YAY CLARK! WOOOOOO!
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