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Because I'm a crazy person, I signed up for the Lois and Clark cliche challenge, which involves using a plot from the show Lois & Clark (which I adored and wrote fanfic for in my head before I knew I could find it on the Internet). Anyway, it's done now, and I only have Yuletide and CJ's story to write before I can take a break.
My cliche prompt: Lois and Clark have a deal on their romantic getaway weekend -- Lois must avoid doing any work, and Clark must avoid running off to save the world.
Without further ado: Hideaway: SV, slash, NC-17.
Clark knew there was a problem when he found himself yelling at a ten-year-old girl for letting her little brother wander out in the street, where he was nearly hit by a runaway bus. She felt as bad as she possibly could before he started yelling; he knew that, even as he heard his voice rising.
It didn't make him feel any better when the boy he'd rescued kicked him in the shin, shouting, "You leave my sister alone!" But it did shut him up. When he backed away, they were hanging on to each other, both sobbing, and people were coming out on the street to see what all the fuss was about.
Shamefaced, he flew the bus driver to the hospital for treatment of his adult-onset epilepsy, then zipped back to the newsroom. He was able to listen to Lois and Perry berating him for his latest failures for nearly ten minutes before he got a signal from Batman about a supervillain bank robbery in Chicago. He babbled out an excuse about a neighbor's pet fish and hurried away.
Three states, two foreign countries, one feature story and approximately fifty-two snarks from Lois later, he managed to make it home long enough to put a pot of water on to boil for pasta and jump in the shower to get rid of the lingering odor of garbage (Barcelona, some sort of slime monster), but when he was toweling off, there was another League alert, which turned out to involve a giant ant and a warehouse full of canned peaches.
By the time he got back to the apartment, the water had boiled off and the bottom of the pot was a blackened mess.
Clark sighed and put in a call to Pizza Jack's.
They refused to deliver, because of all the times in the past he hadn't been there when the delivery guy arrived. Even though he always paid the next day, it wasn't worth the aggravation, the guy on the phone said. Clark said he'd do takeout; the guy hung up on him.
Clark X-rayed the fridge and saw only food that reminded him of the slime monster, plus a carton of orange juice that had solids floating in it like continents.
He slumped onto the couch – actually, onto the inch-thick layer of newspaper, junk mail and dirty clothes that protected the couch from any contact with the air – and put his head in his hands. Was it too late to drop in at the farm? Mom always had some leftovers – but she'd look at him so sadly.
His phone rang. Clark considered melting it, but then he'd just have to get a new one and that would take even more time. He flipped open the clamshell. "What?" he snarled.
"Temper, temper," a voice like purple silk said.
Clark pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it in dismay. It didn't blow up or turn green, so he gingerly brought it back to his ear.
"L -- Lex?"
"Come to the penthouse, now."
He was too tired and hungry to do more than snort. He had a whole monologue on untrustworthiness, but he couldn't be bothered to deliver it.
"Seriously. You have my word: I mean you and yours no harm. I just want to talk." When Clark didn't respond, Lex sighed and continued. "Also, as you know, my Kryptonite supply has been reduced to nearly nothing after that business with the moonbase, so I couldn't do anything if I wanted to. I've even put the ring away. So come over, Clark."
"If you think –"
"Come over or I'll do something you'll like even less," Lex promised. Clark shuddered involuntarily. Liar he might be, but Lex's threats were always based on a solid core of truth. Also, he'd never called Clark at home before, which in itself argued that investigation was required.
"Fine," Clark bit out and slammed the phone shut before Lex could say something snide about hurrying. He considered taking off the costume, which by the end of the day tended to ride up unpleasantly, but Lex's absolute, undiluted hatred for the clinging fabric and primary colors convinced him to keep it on.
A minute later, he was touching down on the Italian marble of Lex's terrace. The sliding glass doors were open. He X-rayed and saw nothing obviously dangerous to him, though of course there was a large lead-lined safe.
Lex was not in his study as Clark expected, but in a dining room further back into the penthouse.
Warily, Clark moved through the lavishly appointed rooms, noting the priceless artifacts plundered from around the world. One wall was full of pornographic Japanese woodblock prints, which made him blush and hurry on as soon as he figured out just what the folks with the topknots were doing.
Clark stepped into the dining room. Lex was at one end of a table big enough to seat twenty.
It was covered with pizza boxes.
"Wha – what is this?" Clark demanded as Lex looked up guilelessly.
"Pizza," Lex said. "Would you like Chinese instead? I've got that in the kitchen, but after your contretemps with Jack earlier I surmised that –"
The one thing Clark kind of liked about being Superman – other than the saving people – was that it was okay for him to grab Lex by the collar and hoist him off the ground, struggling for breath as his hands batted at Clark's wrists with no more strength than a kitten's paws.
"What are you up to?
Lex wheezed. "About – six – inches off the ground – I'd say."
Clark let go, sending Lex staggering back into his chair. He watched Lex grab on to the armrest with grim satisfaction.
"It's food," Lex said after he'd straightened his collar and tie. "You're obviously too hungry for rational conversation, and I have matters to discuss with you. It's not poisoned – other than with saturated fat and preservatives, but I can't imagine that bothers you any more than it does me. Have something to eat, and read this." He gestured at a report of some kind lying on top of one of the cardboard boxes.
The smell of cheese and meat – spinach and garlic, too -- *was* tempting. Clark's vision didn't reveal anything out of the ordinary on the pizza. Drugged takeout wasn't Lex's style, either – if Lex were to poison him, it would be with wine or some cunning spritz in his morning coffee at the *Planet* while his back was turned.
Cautiously, Clark opened the nearest box.
Pepperoni winked up at him cheekily.
Once he had the first slice in his hand, the outcome was inevitable. Pizza wasn't Mom's cooking, but – and he'd never admit this to another living soul – it was almost as good. Plus, he hadn't eaten in – well, it was hard to remember, what with all the natural and manmade disasters he'd been fighting over the last few days. He didn't need to eat, technically, but it was damned nice to have something in his stomach other than coffee.
Two pepperonis, one plain cheese, one eggplant, and one Hawaiian pizza later, he was relaxed enough to look at Lex's report.
Lex, when he glanced over, was paler than usual. Clark briefly wondered whether he was okay, then remembered that he didn't care.
The report, neatly bound and bearing a glossy cover, was entitled "Superhero Activity" in big red letters. Clark flipped it open as he bit into another slice of sausage.
The first few pages were graphs tracking League members' rescue work over the past year, broken down by hours worked, then lives saved, then miles traveled from site to site.
"I don't know what you think you're doing," Clark said, swallowing hastily. "Monitoring our –"
"Keep reading," Lex said. Clark thought about doing something to wipe the smug look off Lex's face, but first of all he'd have to put down the pizza, and second, nothing short of reconstructive surgery could have made Lex look less smug.
The next section of the report was comparative – little colored lines representing each superhero, featuring appropriate symbols, were on the graphs together.
Clark found a moment to marvel at the fact that Lex had a Justice League font with all the symbols. He himself wouldn’t have thought of using a little green dragon to represent J’onn.
As the red line with the "S" spiked up over the months since they'd formed the League, the others drifted down.
"That's not fair!" Clark said. "I'm stronger, faster –"
"Turn the page."
Clark scowled, but complied. The next graph was similar, the rise in his activity level and the decline in the others' less dramatic, but still clear. The caption said, "Effort adjusted for power differentials," and mouseprint footnotes set forth the algorithms used to compare speed, strength, ability to shrink, and so on.
Clark turned to the last page, which was graphless. Instead, sixty-point block letters yelled: "TAKE A VACATION."
He stared down at the page.
Lex could never leave well enough alone. "Sometimes, Clark, let it be a job for Wonder Woman, or Green Lantern."
To avoid conversation, Clark turned back to the front of the report, reviewing the statistics. Lex's intelligence was disturbingly good. Some of the incidents tracked were ones Clark would have sworn had remained unknown to ordinary humans. (Clark could hear Lex's sharp response clearly in his imagination: You've called me many things justly, Clark, but never ordinary.)
At some point, Lex must have brought out the Chinese food. Clark only noticed when he let a sesame noodle slip out of his chopsticks to splat across the report, its shape oddly like the black line tracing Batman's feats.
Lex sighed again, theatrically. "Admit it. I have a point. It doesn't matter when you drop food because you're overtired, but pretty soon it's going to be a bus or a giant robot, and I guarantee you'll feel a lot worse when that happens than if you let the world rotate on its own for a week and recharge."
At last, Clark looked up. Lex was the same as always, pale and smooth, a façade of relaxation not quite enough to conceal the underlying tension. He'd loosened his tie and unbuttoned the first button of his shirt while Clark ate. He was holding a crystal glass of some liquid that Clark had no doubt was expensive and alcoholic.
"Why are you doing this?"
Lex launched into an obviously prepared speech. "As one of your most likely targets, I'd prefer you to be rational and not as short-tempered as you've been of late. Not to mention that I do appreciate your hard work saving the planet from people and other entities who aren't me."
"You just want me out of the way so you can carry out one of your schemes," Clark accused. He knew that Lex would have a ready response, but it had to be said. It was like taking turns in checkers.
Lex pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. "I'm not proposing you vacation on Alpha Centauri, Clark – as much as I sometimes wish you would – just go somewhere quiet, with strict instructions to the rest of the League to leave you alone unless the planet is on fire." He looked up at Clark, and his unlined face, asking for belief, took Clark back to the office in Smallville, when Lex was still trying to do the right thing on occasion, in his twisty Lex way.
"How much mischief do you think I could get into with Batman watching my every move? Not to mention the lovely Ms. Lane," he said with the first real anger he'd shown. These days, Lex got angrier at Lois than he did at Clark – another sign that Lex had just given up on him.
Clark hesitated. Put like that – he *was* tired, in a way that sleep didn't help, when he had time to sleep. Even the sun had lost much of its glory for him of late. If they were able to reach him in case of emergency –
But this was Lex, who always had an ulterior motive, even – especially – when he claimed to speak as a friend.
Lex must have seen the refusal on his face. "What would it take for you to believe that I'm not trying to get you out of Metropolis for my own nefarious purposes?"
Clark had a few more dumplings while he pondered that. His weakness was always taking Lex seriously, even after all this time.
"If you were out of touch with the rest of the world too ..." he said experimentally.
"Ridiculous," Lex said immediately. "I run the world's largest multinational corporation –"
"And I'm the world's most powerful superhero," Clark said. "If it keeps turning without me, I *know* it will keep turning without you."
Lex stared at him, his mouth half open as if to make additional useless protests. Then he turned away, showing Clark his profile as he took a deep drink.
"Even the President takes vacations," Clark said, letting the challenge creep into his voice.
Lex looked over, assessing Clark's seriousness.
"If I do this," he said, "you have to take a real break too. No superhearing – if I can't take calls on my cell, you can't listen halfway across the world. No X-ray vision if I can't watch television. No flying if I'm stuck in a remote location. No –"
"I get it," Clark interrupted before he heard what Lex's equivalent of heat vision was.
"Fine," Lex said. "We'll leave tomorrow morning."
"Wait – we?"
Lex's eyes narrowed. "You don't trust me to keep my end of the bargain, do you? I know I don't trust you, not with all the seductions of heroism."
He had a point. Not about Clark being trustworthy, that was totally unfair, but about trusting Lex – okay, and maybe the trust issues went both ways.
"Where are *we* going?" Lex had planned his pitch to Clark, so he must have had a destination in mind.
"An island near the Virgin Islands," Lex said. "Privately owned. You – we – will be alone there."
"If there's an emergency –"
"Yes, yes," Lex held up his hand to forestall petty objections, "all bets are off. You'd better make clear to your superfriends that they should define 'emergency' *very* narrowly, or I'll unleash a surprise that will show them the real meaning of the word."
Strangely, this threat was comforting, in that it showed that Lex was still himself and not some replacement disinterestedly looking after Clark's welfare.
"If you're all done –" Clark looked down to see that he had indeed demolished the Chinese food – "I have some arrangements to make. You can pick me up tomorrow morning at nine here."
"Pick you up?" Clark echoed.
Lex smiled thinly, his scar like an exclamation point. "I'm not going to leave my enemies a record of a plane flight to an isolated location. Pack light – it's quite warm in the islands."
It didn't take Lex's brains to recognize that he'd been dismissed, which Lex emphasized by standing and turning to leave.
Clark watched him go, the curve of his head the same as when Lex had walked away years ago, the suit a darker shade, the steps never hesitating.
How did he get talked into taking a vacation with his worst enemy? Lex's logic had been persuasive – it always was, if you thought the ends justified the means, only this time the means didn't involve illegal experiments or financial shenanigans, only –
A beach?
Clark blinked, then realized that Lex Luthor's dining room was probably not the best place to figure out the nature of Lex's game. A flash of X-ray showed Lex in his office, typing rapidly while talking into a phone headset.
Okay, then.
Clark headed home to pack.
****
Lex didn't tap his foot, look at his watch, or in any visible way indicate that he'd been waiting for Clark. Somehow he managed to convey his annoyance at Clark's twenty-minute delay anyway. Maybe it was in the set of his shoulders.
"Sorry," Clark said, because he couldn't stop himself. "There was this thing –"
"Loose nukes in Russia, yes, I know," Lex said. He clenched his jaw, as if he'd wanted to say more. Instead he picked up his bag – surprisingly small, for such a clotheshorse – and handed it to Clark, who took it as gingerly as if he'd been handed a baby.
He decided that his best bet now was to pick up Lex and start flying in the direction of the Virgin Islands. Putting his arms around Lex was awkward, with the bags in his hands – and for other reasons – but he managed.
Lex smelled really good. Citrusy, a little musky, but clean. Clark thought that maybe it was just the contrast between Lex and the rescuees he usually carried like this, who tended to be smoky or bleeding or otherwise extremely distressed. A fair number of those who hadn’t already lost control of their bodily functions did so when they realized they were flying. Blessedly, that sort of reaction was getting less common as people got used to the idea of superheroes. Clark’s costume was invulnerable, but it took several washings to get out the smells.
Anyway, Lex wasn’t like that at all. Despite what Clark knew to be his deep-seated fear of heights, he relaxed against Clark’s body like a lounging cat – tiger, Clark corrected himself. They were flying standing straight up, not the most aerodynamic option but one that avoided leaving Lex's legs dangling down or, worse, carrying Lex in that awful honeymoon position that Lois so loved to mock. Lex's body was warm everywhere it pressed against his, making the chill of flying more noticeable. His composure was regal, as if being flown around by aliens was an ordinary method of transport.
Clark put his face forward and flew as rapidly as he dared. Once they reached the ocean, Lex stretched his neck enough to speak into Clark's ear. Clark managed not to drop Lex or crush the bags' handles as hot puffs of breath reeled off latitude and longitude.
The journey was kind of nice, Clark decided, if he didn't think about the company. The skies were clear. The ocean stretched underneath them like an infinite blanket, and the sun on his face made him feel a little less tired.
By the time he saw Lex's island, a small green circle with a bite taken out of it, ringed in white sand, Clark was almost hopeful.
There was one big building on the island, a bungalow the size of one of the McMansions in Metropolis's suburbs, and a few outbuildings. Clark reflexively went to X-ray, looking for people or other dangers.
Lex tapped on his cheek, not gently. How did he know? Clark wondered, but settled for frowning as they touched down on the wide deck in front of what looked like the main entrance. It faced a path heading into the tall, wavy trees leading to the cove Clark had seen on the way down, invisible now through the foliage.
Lex let him go immediately.
The door was unlocked. The bungalow/whatever was simply but no doubt expensively furnished. Clark carried their bags in past the large main living area – it would be petty to hand Lex's to him at this point – and discovered two identical bedrooms. In one, the open closet door revealed a plethora of Lex-looking clothes, which put a very different spin on Lex's light packing. Clark dropped the bag on the bed without comment and went into the other room, slinging his own bag onto a chair in the corner.
Now what?
Lex was standing in the doorway. "Why don't you take a nap?" he suggested.
My life could not get more bizarre, Clark thought. *Braniac* made more sense than Lex Luthor looking at him as if he were concerned for Clark's well-being, as if he hadn't tried to kill him with a Kryptonite-tipped javelin not two months ago.
Nevertheless, Lex knew how to make a proposition tempting – something about that didn't sound right, but whatever.
Clark nodded and Lex exhaled, his shoulders lifting just a fraction. "I'll be around," he said, which might have been a threat or a promise, and shut the door behind himself.
When Clark went to empty his bag into the enormous armoire, he discovered a number of T-shirts and shorts, all in his size. There were even swimsuits, everything from baggy surfer-type suits to a Speedo that couldn't possibly cover the essentials.
It was bright blue.
Clark closed the drawer and then shut the armoire's doors for good measure. He'd nap, he'd feel better, and Lex would not be making him feel so off-balance when he was well-rested. He shucked his suit and changed into one of his own well-worn T-shirts and a pair of boxers.
The sheets were softer than clouds – as he had reason to know – and much warmer. He was asleep as soon as he wrapped himself around one of the enormous fluffy pillows.
The sun was setting when he woke. He went to the window and opened the shutters, looking out at a view that reminded him of why he loved the Earth so well. Green trees, their fronds like feathers, were outlined against a sky painted in golds and pinks, luscious and fragile, light reflecting off clouds so that the entire horizon was like a field of flowers seen in softest focus. Above, the sky shaded to the bluest blue Clark had seen outside of Smallville, nothing like Metropolis's polluted skies. Stars peeked through the firmament, and Clark couldn't imagine that a single one of them hosted a better place to live.
With that, his stomach growled, and he laughed at his own romanticism.
Lex was in the main living area when he emerged, stretching and rubbing his stomach. Lex looked up from his book as Clark approached, his face neutral – in Lex's case, that was a gear, idling while he waited to leap from zero to sixty.
"How are you feeling?" Lex asked, marking his place with a thin gold bookmark and setting the book aside.
"Good," Clark said, determined not to be the one who broke their truce. "Have you looked at the sunset? I'm looking forward to six more days of that."
Something between annoyance and amusement flitted across Lex's face. "Five more days."
"What?"
"You've been asleep for nearly thirty-six hours," Lex said.
Clark's stomach chose to punctuate that revelation with a gurgle.
Amusement won out. Lex stood. "You should eat," he said. Clark followed him to the kitchen area, separated from the main living space by a long counter. Lex began taking ingredients out of cupboards. When he opened the refrigerator to get some tomatoes and green vegetables, Clark saw that it was nearly bursting with food.
Clark sat at the counter. Wordlessly, Lex put a plate of cheese and crackers in front of him, then put water on to boil and began chopping vegetables. Clark watched, fascinated, while he absorbed the snack. At some point, a glass of wine appeared by his elbow. He picked it up, more to have something to do with his hands than to drink it.
"Don't worry," Lex said at his hesitance. "I'm not wasting a fine vintage on you."
"I was just amazed you can cook."
A quick glance his way. "I try to get by with minimal staff. Fewer people try to kill me that way. It's meant a change in my eating habits."
Lex was wearing a white collarless linen shirt, khaki trousers, and loafers without socks. He looked younger, as if isolation had let him take off some of the invisible armor he wore against the tribulations of the world.
His sleeves were rolled up to reveal his forearms. It was so much more of Lex than Clark had seen that he might as well have been naked.
Or – maybe not really. Standing abruptly, Clark went back to the living area, sipping at his wine as he examined the place more carefully. The spare furniture was gorgeous, all dark wood and white cushions. Low bookshelves lined the wall opposite the kitchen area, filled with a mix of modern and classic books. Above the books, large windows offered a view of the lush darkness, probably more impressive during the day.
The shades weren't pulled closed, which was unusual for Lex. Whatever desire he possessed to see the world had been suppressed years ago in favor of protecting his privacy. And, Clark thought as he remembered Lex's statement about staffing, his security.
Clark glanced down at the book Lex had left on the gleaming coffee table. Proust, in French. "'Remembrance of Things Past,' hunh?" he said, looking over at Lex, who was now, bizarrely, sautéing the vegetables.
"The preferred translation these days is 'In Search of Lost Time,'" Lex said. "I like that better, don't you?"
Clark dropped his eyes and wished for the superpower of feeling comfortable in any situation. Unfortunately, Earth's yellow sun wasn't any help on that account.
"I did ultimately get those seven weeks back," Lex said abruptly, startling Clark into a wide-eyed stare. "I remember that you left me to be locked in Belle Reve."
"Lex –"
"I also remember that you came back. It makes a difference."
Clark stopped, his mouth hanging open, his mind blank. His heart was thumping like an avalanche, thrusting him back to that terrible time and the terrible choices he'd faced.
"Of course, you also did what you could to keep me from regaining those weeks, and that makes a difference too." There was a hiss as Lex dumped pasta and boiling water into a colander. Clark wanted nothing more than to reach out with his hearing to find someone in trouble so he could go fly, save someone, someone else –
"Dinner's ready," Lex said, his voice as smooth as marble.
Clark's stomach lacked the keen sense of being out of place that troubled his mind, so he went back to the counter and sat down as Lex served him an enormous bowl of spaghetti with vegetables and meat sauce.
"This looks really good," Clark said lamely.
"Why don't you taste it before passing judgment?" Lex asked, his tone so familiarly indulgent that Clark replied without thinking.
"I wanted to make sure that I could give you an honest compliment."
Lex was surprised into something that resembled a smile. With a twitch of his lips and a shrug of his shoulders, he ladled out a serving for himself, offered Clark some grated cheese, and began to eat.
Actually, the food was fine – a little light on the spices, in Clark's opinion, but hearty and satisfying.
"Good," he said between bites.
"Thank you." Lex took a large drink of wine. Closer to a gulp, really. Even Clark knew that was a crime against oenophilia. Evidently he wasn't the only one not perfectly at ease.
"Maybe this was –"
"Don't," Lex said, his tone cold enough to freeze vodka. "I'm not in the mood to spend another hour in your arms just now, and you're sure as hell not stranding me here."
They finished the meal in silence. When Lex left his dirty dish on the counter and poured himself four fingers of Scotch, Clark got up and began to wash the dishes. Eventually, Lex returned to his book, the decanter on the end table next to him. Clark explored the food stores and discovered a bag of DoubleStuf Oreos.
'You remembered' would have been a spectacularly stupid thing to say under the circumstances, so he didn't. But there was milk – fresh milk, God only knew from where and at what expense – and he thought that Lex was sneaking peeks at him as he ate his cookies and milk.
After, as he was putting his glass on the drying rack by the sink, he surprised himself by letting out a jaw-cracking yawn.
He looked around sheepishly and caught Lex in an expression more than usually difficult to interpret: reluctant indulgence combined with – longing? He blinked at Lex, confused.
"Go to bed, Clark," Lex said, but gently. "Tomorrow you might even be ready to spend some time on the beach."
Clark did wake before noon the next day, though it was a close thing and he lay in bed for a long time after, just enjoying the idea of having nothing to do. The sun was incandescent in the cloudless afternoon sky as he fixed himself sandwiches and considered wandering down to the beach. Lex wasn't in the living area, and the door to his bedroom was open, revealing that it was empty as well.
Where had he gotten to?
Reflexively, Clark scanned around and even under his feat, revealing a subterranean compound as large as the structure above, full of computers, communication equipment, and the kind of lab facilities that were as common around Lex as silk shirts.
"Damn!" he said, slamming his hand down against the counter hard enough to crack the marble. He'd believed Lex – he was Charlie Brown, constantly hoping that this time Lucy would let him kick the ball, constantly disappointed. After a while, you had to blame hapless Charlie, because Lucy clearly was a sociopath. Clark renewed his scan, letting his vision move out in waves like those caused by a pebble thrown in a pond.
He found Lex about two hundred feet from the bungalow, sitting in the shade, a book in his hand and a drink at his side.
Clark walked deliberately out to confront him.
"Lex," he said in Superman's voice.
Lex looked up at him over his purple-tinted sunglasses and closed the book. "Good afternoon, Clark."
"The deal was that you would stay away from your business and I'd stay away from mine."
"Yes, I recall. Your point?"
"There's a *bunker* under the house! With a laboratory! A Cray supercomputer!"
Lex stood up, his face tight with annoyance. "It's *my* island. Did you think it wouldn't be fully equipped? However, I haven't been to the lower levels – you're welcome to check the dust on the steps if you like – and I had no plans to do so. But you – there's no way you could know about the lab without using your powers. So who, exactly, is in the wrong here?"
Clark fumed, his hands fisted at his sides. "That doesn't count. I wasn't looking for work!"
"If I don't get to check my email or engage in any monitoring of the company I've left vulnerable, you sure as hell don't get to use superpowers." Lex was angry too, setting his shoulders back and otherwise projecting a puffed-up aggression.
The ridiculousness of the situation struck Clark with the force of a rockslide. Removed from all the distractions of home, they were still fighting.
"Okay," he said, mostly to see what would happen.
"I don't know what you expected –" Lex said, then paused. "Okay?" he repeated, in a more chastened tone.
"Okay. I get it. No telecommunications or buying stuff for you, no X-ray or lifting heavy things for me. If you ask me nicely I might open a stuck jar, but that's it." Clark was really enjoying the sensation of making Lex run after him, mentally speaking.
Lex shut his mouth in a line so tight it would have required a chisel to get open.
They stood like that, Lex in shade and Clark half in the sun, for long moments before Clark shrugged. "I’m going to look for something to read and go out to the beach," he said, hoping Lex would recognize that he was following Lex's suggestion from the previous night. Maybe Lex would even join him.
Lex nodded and sat down again, picking up his book as if it were a lead shield.
Clark meandered back to the house, wondering how he felt about all this. It wasn't like he could tell – his inability to read humans had *nothing* on his inability to fathom himself.
The bookshelves proved as varied as Clark could have expected. He picked the latest Stephen King – the man would not retire, and Clark respected that – before changing into one of the baggier swimsuits and heading towards the beach in the little cove he'd seen when they were flying in.
As he came out of the trees, the beauty of the pearl-white sand and the cobalt blue ocean struck him, but immediately thereafter he noticed the boat. Six men, pulling up to shore.
Further out on the water, he could see a small dot – a larger vessel, maybe a fishing trawler, clearly their mode of arrival.
They were all carrying guns.
Clark sighed, preparing to challenge them.
Then he remembered that he was on vacation.
He could take out these losers in a hot millisecond, but Lex had been so *mean* about Clark’s perfectly natural use of his powers.
Clark smiled to himself, watching the men drag the boat onto the sand. It might be fun to see Lex flail a little. He could always change his mind if things started to get hairy – superspeed would let him stop any bullets that went astray.
The men hadn't seen him yet, so he shrank back into the trees, hurrying at human speed to where Lex was ensconced.
Lex hadn't made much progress in his book.
"There are people landing on the shore. They've got guns, but they don't seem to be looking for us."
Lex stared hard at him, as if checking for a joke. "Well, round them up."
"Round them up?" Clark parroted innocently. He wasn’t sure he was fooling Lex, but it was fun either way.
"Or whatever you do with armed miscreants. Send them packing."
"I'm on vacation!" Clark protested. Refusing to act should have been difficult, but it sounded right, especially given the look of shock that his outburst put on Lex's face. "We just agreed that I'm not going to use my powers while we're here." He felt righteous, along with something a little more thrilling than righteousness. Yes, tangling Lex up in the very promises Lex had extracted from Clark was sweet.
"Circumstances have changed." Lex stood, the book slipping forgotten to his abandoned seat.
"I guess if you want to get rid of them, you'll have to do it yourself. Use your money, or talk your way out of this." Clark didn't smile smugly, but it was a near thing. Lex would cave in and call on his stormtroopers, and that meant that Clark would win.
Lex's face contorted into a snarl, then cleared. "No, I don't think so. As you pointed out, I'm -- *we’re* on vacation."
Clark considered that. He thought of the guns, and then of the beautiful well-stocked bungalow whose luxuries he wanted to experience for a few more days. "Look," he said, "we need to do something about these guys. Let's go take a look and see what we can do without – our normal patterns."
Lex raised his hands to rub at his eyes. "'What I Did on My Summer Vacation,' by Clark Kent and Lex Luthor."
Clark grinned just a little and looked at him through lowered brows. "Come on, it might be fun."
Lex didn't respond, but he did follow Clark back through the trees. Clark noticed that he avoided some of the vegetation that Clark just walked through, and guessed there was some poison-ivy-type plant around. "Can we use whatever it is you're trying not to touch?"
"Only if we want to kill them." Lex didn't look at Clark. "The manchineel is poisonous; the sap causes blindness and severe burns."
Okay then; no manchineel. It was always surprising to him how much more dangerous the world was than it looked, especially for humans.
The men were standing on the beach when Clark and Lex crept up on them, hiding in the (nonpoisonous) trees. Four of the strangers were unloading boxes, while the two others supervised. Clark's shoulder brushed against Lex as they got as close as possible without revealing themselves.
The sound of the men talking was almost loud enough to understand. Clark nearly kicked his hearing up a notch until he remembered. Their features were hard to make out at this distance, but Clark thought they were all in their mid-twenties to early thirties, five brunettes and one dirty blond. They were wearing what looked like combat pants and big boots, not ordinary sailor-gear.
Lex squinted out at the figures, dark against the bright sand. Clark noticed that the blond worker was wearing a Superman T-shirt – a bad bootleg, the colors all wrong, and dirty besides. He was miffed, if only because royalties from the authorized versions went to his favorite charities, but he didn’t think that pointing out the crime to Lex would be productive.
Lex nudged him, preparatory to whispering into his ear. "They're speaking Spanish – something about this being a good place to stash the stuff because it's not on any official map."
Clark made a mental note to lecture Lex about secret hideouts unknown to the government, later. "Stuff? What stuff?"
Lex's low tones turned acidic. "Drugs, gold, plutonium – the *McGuffin*, Clark! They know what it is, they aren't *narrating*. As long as it's not Kryptonite, it hardly matters." He subsided, staring intently at the two who weren't doing any heavy lifting. "They're going to send two men to look for a place further inland where they can leave the stuff. That means they'll find the house – it's not a big enough island that they could miss it. And the house has clearly been occupied within the last few hours."
Crouched as they were, tickled by stray leaves and branches, Clark felt a nostalgia for a time that had never been. It was like being on a stakeout with Lois, but also like investigating with Lex, back in Smallville, without all the lies and uncertainties.
Lex wasn't going to make any plans, so Clark would have to figure out what to do.
"Can you take the two of them out without killing them?" he asked.
Lex gaped at him. "Me?"
"It's a vacation, try something out of the ordinary," Clark suggested, keeping his voice soft.
Lex went back to watching the beach, shading his eyes with one hand.
"Probably," he said after another spate of observation. "I assume – never mind. What do you want me to do?"
The men on the beach were finishing up the unloading. One of the men who’d been moving the cargo lit cigarettes for himself and two of the others, while the fourth pulled out a bottle of Coke and drank it down in one long gulp. The two slightly better-dressed ones, who hadn’t tired themselves out with actual work, nonetheless sat down, keeping their firearms next to them.
As Clark had hoped, they dawdled before sending two of the minions to look for a hiding place for the McGuffin. The later it got, the better their chances of being able to do some of what they needed to do in darkness. But eventually, two scruffy men loped into the trees, each with an automatic pistol at his side.
Clark and Lex followed. Clark was interested in seeing what Lex could come up with to disable the men. Lex looked – good, in fact. His color was high, his eyes were bright, and he was vibrating with tension as he pushed past branches and vines, getting ahead of the two men, who didn't know how tight a deadline they were on.
The attack, when it came, was almost too fast for human eyes. Lex stepped behind the first man, tapped him on the shoulder, then socked him in the jaw as he turned. Before he'd collapsed to the ground, Lex was on the other one, grabbing him in a chokehold so precise that he lost consciousness in a few moments.
Lex confiscated their weapons and improvised bindings for them from strips of their own jackets, cut with one of the several knives he’d acquired in his pat-down of the men. He tied them to two trees, facing away from each other. Clark wanted to check on the knots – Lex didn't have a good history with definitively getting people out of the way; they tended to pop back up at awkward times instead. But it was Lex's job, so he didn't even use his X-ray vision to examine the men. He felt virtuous.
"What now, fearless leader?" Lex asked.
Clark swallowed. "I'll go check on the others, see if they're suspicious yet."
He hurried as fast as vacationing would allow to the edge of the beach. No movement there. It looked like the four remaining men were sitting around, telling ribald stories, if the self-congratulatory laughter was any indication.
When he returned to Lex and the captives, Lex was squatting in front of one of them, a fellow with a scar on his right cheek and a glare like a bolt of lightning. Lex was making extremely detailed threats in conversational Spanish. Their prisoner seemed impressed despite himself.
“Lex,” Clark chided. “Vacation, remember. That means no threats from you. If threatening becomes necessary, I will do it.” He hoped Lex wouldn’t know that he’d learned Spanish using the Fortress’s accelerated language matrix. Even so, *speaking* Spanish wasn’t a superpower, so he thought it would be fair.
Lex glanced over, assessing Clark’s seriousness, then smiled like a kid who’d been given a new bike – or in Lex’s case, maybe a new Lamborghini. “Right,” he said, turning back to the captive and beginning a rapid-fire lecture on how it was Very Bad to bring guns and treasure to strange islands.
Clark should have been offended, or outraged, or something appropriate to Superman. Apparently his moral compass was on vacation too. He stifled his laugh in his hand while Lex checked to see that the other prisoner was still unconscious.
My cliche prompt: Lois and Clark have a deal on their romantic getaway weekend -- Lois must avoid doing any work, and Clark must avoid running off to save the world.
Without further ado: Hideaway: SV, slash, NC-17.
Clark knew there was a problem when he found himself yelling at a ten-year-old girl for letting her little brother wander out in the street, where he was nearly hit by a runaway bus. She felt as bad as she possibly could before he started yelling; he knew that, even as he heard his voice rising.
It didn't make him feel any better when the boy he'd rescued kicked him in the shin, shouting, "You leave my sister alone!" But it did shut him up. When he backed away, they were hanging on to each other, both sobbing, and people were coming out on the street to see what all the fuss was about.
Shamefaced, he flew the bus driver to the hospital for treatment of his adult-onset epilepsy, then zipped back to the newsroom. He was able to listen to Lois and Perry berating him for his latest failures for nearly ten minutes before he got a signal from Batman about a supervillain bank robbery in Chicago. He babbled out an excuse about a neighbor's pet fish and hurried away.
Three states, two foreign countries, one feature story and approximately fifty-two snarks from Lois later, he managed to make it home long enough to put a pot of water on to boil for pasta and jump in the shower to get rid of the lingering odor of garbage (Barcelona, some sort of slime monster), but when he was toweling off, there was another League alert, which turned out to involve a giant ant and a warehouse full of canned peaches.
By the time he got back to the apartment, the water had boiled off and the bottom of the pot was a blackened mess.
Clark sighed and put in a call to Pizza Jack's.
They refused to deliver, because of all the times in the past he hadn't been there when the delivery guy arrived. Even though he always paid the next day, it wasn't worth the aggravation, the guy on the phone said. Clark said he'd do takeout; the guy hung up on him.
Clark X-rayed the fridge and saw only food that reminded him of the slime monster, plus a carton of orange juice that had solids floating in it like continents.
He slumped onto the couch – actually, onto the inch-thick layer of newspaper, junk mail and dirty clothes that protected the couch from any contact with the air – and put his head in his hands. Was it too late to drop in at the farm? Mom always had some leftovers – but she'd look at him so sadly.
His phone rang. Clark considered melting it, but then he'd just have to get a new one and that would take even more time. He flipped open the clamshell. "What?" he snarled.
"Temper, temper," a voice like purple silk said.
Clark pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it in dismay. It didn't blow up or turn green, so he gingerly brought it back to his ear.
"L -- Lex?"
"Come to the penthouse, now."
He was too tired and hungry to do more than snort. He had a whole monologue on untrustworthiness, but he couldn't be bothered to deliver it.
"Seriously. You have my word: I mean you and yours no harm. I just want to talk." When Clark didn't respond, Lex sighed and continued. "Also, as you know, my Kryptonite supply has been reduced to nearly nothing after that business with the moonbase, so I couldn't do anything if I wanted to. I've even put the ring away. So come over, Clark."
"If you think –"
"Come over or I'll do something you'll like even less," Lex promised. Clark shuddered involuntarily. Liar he might be, but Lex's threats were always based on a solid core of truth. Also, he'd never called Clark at home before, which in itself argued that investigation was required.
"Fine," Clark bit out and slammed the phone shut before Lex could say something snide about hurrying. He considered taking off the costume, which by the end of the day tended to ride up unpleasantly, but Lex's absolute, undiluted hatred for the clinging fabric and primary colors convinced him to keep it on.
A minute later, he was touching down on the Italian marble of Lex's terrace. The sliding glass doors were open. He X-rayed and saw nothing obviously dangerous to him, though of course there was a large lead-lined safe.
Lex was not in his study as Clark expected, but in a dining room further back into the penthouse.
Warily, Clark moved through the lavishly appointed rooms, noting the priceless artifacts plundered from around the world. One wall was full of pornographic Japanese woodblock prints, which made him blush and hurry on as soon as he figured out just what the folks with the topknots were doing.
Clark stepped into the dining room. Lex was at one end of a table big enough to seat twenty.
It was covered with pizza boxes.
"Wha – what is this?" Clark demanded as Lex looked up guilelessly.
"Pizza," Lex said. "Would you like Chinese instead? I've got that in the kitchen, but after your contretemps with Jack earlier I surmised that –"
The one thing Clark kind of liked about being Superman – other than the saving people – was that it was okay for him to grab Lex by the collar and hoist him off the ground, struggling for breath as his hands batted at Clark's wrists with no more strength than a kitten's paws.
"What are you up to?
Lex wheezed. "About – six – inches off the ground – I'd say."
Clark let go, sending Lex staggering back into his chair. He watched Lex grab on to the armrest with grim satisfaction.
"It's food," Lex said after he'd straightened his collar and tie. "You're obviously too hungry for rational conversation, and I have matters to discuss with you. It's not poisoned – other than with saturated fat and preservatives, but I can't imagine that bothers you any more than it does me. Have something to eat, and read this." He gestured at a report of some kind lying on top of one of the cardboard boxes.
The smell of cheese and meat – spinach and garlic, too -- *was* tempting. Clark's vision didn't reveal anything out of the ordinary on the pizza. Drugged takeout wasn't Lex's style, either – if Lex were to poison him, it would be with wine or some cunning spritz in his morning coffee at the *Planet* while his back was turned.
Cautiously, Clark opened the nearest box.
Pepperoni winked up at him cheekily.
Once he had the first slice in his hand, the outcome was inevitable. Pizza wasn't Mom's cooking, but – and he'd never admit this to another living soul – it was almost as good. Plus, he hadn't eaten in – well, it was hard to remember, what with all the natural and manmade disasters he'd been fighting over the last few days. He didn't need to eat, technically, but it was damned nice to have something in his stomach other than coffee.
Two pepperonis, one plain cheese, one eggplant, and one Hawaiian pizza later, he was relaxed enough to look at Lex's report.
Lex, when he glanced over, was paler than usual. Clark briefly wondered whether he was okay, then remembered that he didn't care.
The report, neatly bound and bearing a glossy cover, was entitled "Superhero Activity" in big red letters. Clark flipped it open as he bit into another slice of sausage.
The first few pages were graphs tracking League members' rescue work over the past year, broken down by hours worked, then lives saved, then miles traveled from site to site.
"I don't know what you think you're doing," Clark said, swallowing hastily. "Monitoring our –"
"Keep reading," Lex said. Clark thought about doing something to wipe the smug look off Lex's face, but first of all he'd have to put down the pizza, and second, nothing short of reconstructive surgery could have made Lex look less smug.
The next section of the report was comparative – little colored lines representing each superhero, featuring appropriate symbols, were on the graphs together.
Clark found a moment to marvel at the fact that Lex had a Justice League font with all the symbols. He himself wouldn’t have thought of using a little green dragon to represent J’onn.
As the red line with the "S" spiked up over the months since they'd formed the League, the others drifted down.
"That's not fair!" Clark said. "I'm stronger, faster –"
"Turn the page."
Clark scowled, but complied. The next graph was similar, the rise in his activity level and the decline in the others' less dramatic, but still clear. The caption said, "Effort adjusted for power differentials," and mouseprint footnotes set forth the algorithms used to compare speed, strength, ability to shrink, and so on.
Clark turned to the last page, which was graphless. Instead, sixty-point block letters yelled: "TAKE A VACATION."
He stared down at the page.
Lex could never leave well enough alone. "Sometimes, Clark, let it be a job for Wonder Woman, or Green Lantern."
To avoid conversation, Clark turned back to the front of the report, reviewing the statistics. Lex's intelligence was disturbingly good. Some of the incidents tracked were ones Clark would have sworn had remained unknown to ordinary humans. (Clark could hear Lex's sharp response clearly in his imagination: You've called me many things justly, Clark, but never ordinary.)
At some point, Lex must have brought out the Chinese food. Clark only noticed when he let a sesame noodle slip out of his chopsticks to splat across the report, its shape oddly like the black line tracing Batman's feats.
Lex sighed again, theatrically. "Admit it. I have a point. It doesn't matter when you drop food because you're overtired, but pretty soon it's going to be a bus or a giant robot, and I guarantee you'll feel a lot worse when that happens than if you let the world rotate on its own for a week and recharge."
At last, Clark looked up. Lex was the same as always, pale and smooth, a façade of relaxation not quite enough to conceal the underlying tension. He'd loosened his tie and unbuttoned the first button of his shirt while Clark ate. He was holding a crystal glass of some liquid that Clark had no doubt was expensive and alcoholic.
"Why are you doing this?"
Lex launched into an obviously prepared speech. "As one of your most likely targets, I'd prefer you to be rational and not as short-tempered as you've been of late. Not to mention that I do appreciate your hard work saving the planet from people and other entities who aren't me."
"You just want me out of the way so you can carry out one of your schemes," Clark accused. He knew that Lex would have a ready response, but it had to be said. It was like taking turns in checkers.
Lex pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. "I'm not proposing you vacation on Alpha Centauri, Clark – as much as I sometimes wish you would – just go somewhere quiet, with strict instructions to the rest of the League to leave you alone unless the planet is on fire." He looked up at Clark, and his unlined face, asking for belief, took Clark back to the office in Smallville, when Lex was still trying to do the right thing on occasion, in his twisty Lex way.
"How much mischief do you think I could get into with Batman watching my every move? Not to mention the lovely Ms. Lane," he said with the first real anger he'd shown. These days, Lex got angrier at Lois than he did at Clark – another sign that Lex had just given up on him.
Clark hesitated. Put like that – he *was* tired, in a way that sleep didn't help, when he had time to sleep. Even the sun had lost much of its glory for him of late. If they were able to reach him in case of emergency –
But this was Lex, who always had an ulterior motive, even – especially – when he claimed to speak as a friend.
Lex must have seen the refusal on his face. "What would it take for you to believe that I'm not trying to get you out of Metropolis for my own nefarious purposes?"
Clark had a few more dumplings while he pondered that. His weakness was always taking Lex seriously, even after all this time.
"If you were out of touch with the rest of the world too ..." he said experimentally.
"Ridiculous," Lex said immediately. "I run the world's largest multinational corporation –"
"And I'm the world's most powerful superhero," Clark said. "If it keeps turning without me, I *know* it will keep turning without you."
Lex stared at him, his mouth half open as if to make additional useless protests. Then he turned away, showing Clark his profile as he took a deep drink.
"Even the President takes vacations," Clark said, letting the challenge creep into his voice.
Lex looked over, assessing Clark's seriousness.
"If I do this," he said, "you have to take a real break too. No superhearing – if I can't take calls on my cell, you can't listen halfway across the world. No X-ray vision if I can't watch television. No flying if I'm stuck in a remote location. No –"
"I get it," Clark interrupted before he heard what Lex's equivalent of heat vision was.
"Fine," Lex said. "We'll leave tomorrow morning."
"Wait – we?"
Lex's eyes narrowed. "You don't trust me to keep my end of the bargain, do you? I know I don't trust you, not with all the seductions of heroism."
He had a point. Not about Clark being trustworthy, that was totally unfair, but about trusting Lex – okay, and maybe the trust issues went both ways.
"Where are *we* going?" Lex had planned his pitch to Clark, so he must have had a destination in mind.
"An island near the Virgin Islands," Lex said. "Privately owned. You – we – will be alone there."
"If there's an emergency –"
"Yes, yes," Lex held up his hand to forestall petty objections, "all bets are off. You'd better make clear to your superfriends that they should define 'emergency' *very* narrowly, or I'll unleash a surprise that will show them the real meaning of the word."
Strangely, this threat was comforting, in that it showed that Lex was still himself and not some replacement disinterestedly looking after Clark's welfare.
"If you're all done –" Clark looked down to see that he had indeed demolished the Chinese food – "I have some arrangements to make. You can pick me up tomorrow morning at nine here."
"Pick you up?" Clark echoed.
Lex smiled thinly, his scar like an exclamation point. "I'm not going to leave my enemies a record of a plane flight to an isolated location. Pack light – it's quite warm in the islands."
It didn't take Lex's brains to recognize that he'd been dismissed, which Lex emphasized by standing and turning to leave.
Clark watched him go, the curve of his head the same as when Lex had walked away years ago, the suit a darker shade, the steps never hesitating.
How did he get talked into taking a vacation with his worst enemy? Lex's logic had been persuasive – it always was, if you thought the ends justified the means, only this time the means didn't involve illegal experiments or financial shenanigans, only –
A beach?
Clark blinked, then realized that Lex Luthor's dining room was probably not the best place to figure out the nature of Lex's game. A flash of X-ray showed Lex in his office, typing rapidly while talking into a phone headset.
Okay, then.
Clark headed home to pack.
****
Lex didn't tap his foot, look at his watch, or in any visible way indicate that he'd been waiting for Clark. Somehow he managed to convey his annoyance at Clark's twenty-minute delay anyway. Maybe it was in the set of his shoulders.
"Sorry," Clark said, because he couldn't stop himself. "There was this thing –"
"Loose nukes in Russia, yes, I know," Lex said. He clenched his jaw, as if he'd wanted to say more. Instead he picked up his bag – surprisingly small, for such a clotheshorse – and handed it to Clark, who took it as gingerly as if he'd been handed a baby.
He decided that his best bet now was to pick up Lex and start flying in the direction of the Virgin Islands. Putting his arms around Lex was awkward, with the bags in his hands – and for other reasons – but he managed.
Lex smelled really good. Citrusy, a little musky, but clean. Clark thought that maybe it was just the contrast between Lex and the rescuees he usually carried like this, who tended to be smoky or bleeding or otherwise extremely distressed. A fair number of those who hadn’t already lost control of their bodily functions did so when they realized they were flying. Blessedly, that sort of reaction was getting less common as people got used to the idea of superheroes. Clark’s costume was invulnerable, but it took several washings to get out the smells.
Anyway, Lex wasn’t like that at all. Despite what Clark knew to be his deep-seated fear of heights, he relaxed against Clark’s body like a lounging cat – tiger, Clark corrected himself. They were flying standing straight up, not the most aerodynamic option but one that avoided leaving Lex's legs dangling down or, worse, carrying Lex in that awful honeymoon position that Lois so loved to mock. Lex's body was warm everywhere it pressed against his, making the chill of flying more noticeable. His composure was regal, as if being flown around by aliens was an ordinary method of transport.
Clark put his face forward and flew as rapidly as he dared. Once they reached the ocean, Lex stretched his neck enough to speak into Clark's ear. Clark managed not to drop Lex or crush the bags' handles as hot puffs of breath reeled off latitude and longitude.
The journey was kind of nice, Clark decided, if he didn't think about the company. The skies were clear. The ocean stretched underneath them like an infinite blanket, and the sun on his face made him feel a little less tired.
By the time he saw Lex's island, a small green circle with a bite taken out of it, ringed in white sand, Clark was almost hopeful.
There was one big building on the island, a bungalow the size of one of the McMansions in Metropolis's suburbs, and a few outbuildings. Clark reflexively went to X-ray, looking for people or other dangers.
Lex tapped on his cheek, not gently. How did he know? Clark wondered, but settled for frowning as they touched down on the wide deck in front of what looked like the main entrance. It faced a path heading into the tall, wavy trees leading to the cove Clark had seen on the way down, invisible now through the foliage.
Lex let him go immediately.
The door was unlocked. The bungalow/whatever was simply but no doubt expensively furnished. Clark carried their bags in past the large main living area – it would be petty to hand Lex's to him at this point – and discovered two identical bedrooms. In one, the open closet door revealed a plethora of Lex-looking clothes, which put a very different spin on Lex's light packing. Clark dropped the bag on the bed without comment and went into the other room, slinging his own bag onto a chair in the corner.
Now what?
Lex was standing in the doorway. "Why don't you take a nap?" he suggested.
My life could not get more bizarre, Clark thought. *Braniac* made more sense than Lex Luthor looking at him as if he were concerned for Clark's well-being, as if he hadn't tried to kill him with a Kryptonite-tipped javelin not two months ago.
Nevertheless, Lex knew how to make a proposition tempting – something about that didn't sound right, but whatever.
Clark nodded and Lex exhaled, his shoulders lifting just a fraction. "I'll be around," he said, which might have been a threat or a promise, and shut the door behind himself.
When Clark went to empty his bag into the enormous armoire, he discovered a number of T-shirts and shorts, all in his size. There were even swimsuits, everything from baggy surfer-type suits to a Speedo that couldn't possibly cover the essentials.
It was bright blue.
Clark closed the drawer and then shut the armoire's doors for good measure. He'd nap, he'd feel better, and Lex would not be making him feel so off-balance when he was well-rested. He shucked his suit and changed into one of his own well-worn T-shirts and a pair of boxers.
The sheets were softer than clouds – as he had reason to know – and much warmer. He was asleep as soon as he wrapped himself around one of the enormous fluffy pillows.
The sun was setting when he woke. He went to the window and opened the shutters, looking out at a view that reminded him of why he loved the Earth so well. Green trees, their fronds like feathers, were outlined against a sky painted in golds and pinks, luscious and fragile, light reflecting off clouds so that the entire horizon was like a field of flowers seen in softest focus. Above, the sky shaded to the bluest blue Clark had seen outside of Smallville, nothing like Metropolis's polluted skies. Stars peeked through the firmament, and Clark couldn't imagine that a single one of them hosted a better place to live.
With that, his stomach growled, and he laughed at his own romanticism.
Lex was in the main living area when he emerged, stretching and rubbing his stomach. Lex looked up from his book as Clark approached, his face neutral – in Lex's case, that was a gear, idling while he waited to leap from zero to sixty.
"How are you feeling?" Lex asked, marking his place with a thin gold bookmark and setting the book aside.
"Good," Clark said, determined not to be the one who broke their truce. "Have you looked at the sunset? I'm looking forward to six more days of that."
Something between annoyance and amusement flitted across Lex's face. "Five more days."
"What?"
"You've been asleep for nearly thirty-six hours," Lex said.
Clark's stomach chose to punctuate that revelation with a gurgle.
Amusement won out. Lex stood. "You should eat," he said. Clark followed him to the kitchen area, separated from the main living space by a long counter. Lex began taking ingredients out of cupboards. When he opened the refrigerator to get some tomatoes and green vegetables, Clark saw that it was nearly bursting with food.
Clark sat at the counter. Wordlessly, Lex put a plate of cheese and crackers in front of him, then put water on to boil and began chopping vegetables. Clark watched, fascinated, while he absorbed the snack. At some point, a glass of wine appeared by his elbow. He picked it up, more to have something to do with his hands than to drink it.
"Don't worry," Lex said at his hesitance. "I'm not wasting a fine vintage on you."
"I was just amazed you can cook."
A quick glance his way. "I try to get by with minimal staff. Fewer people try to kill me that way. It's meant a change in my eating habits."
Lex was wearing a white collarless linen shirt, khaki trousers, and loafers without socks. He looked younger, as if isolation had let him take off some of the invisible armor he wore against the tribulations of the world.
His sleeves were rolled up to reveal his forearms. It was so much more of Lex than Clark had seen that he might as well have been naked.
Or – maybe not really. Standing abruptly, Clark went back to the living area, sipping at his wine as he examined the place more carefully. The spare furniture was gorgeous, all dark wood and white cushions. Low bookshelves lined the wall opposite the kitchen area, filled with a mix of modern and classic books. Above the books, large windows offered a view of the lush darkness, probably more impressive during the day.
The shades weren't pulled closed, which was unusual for Lex. Whatever desire he possessed to see the world had been suppressed years ago in favor of protecting his privacy. And, Clark thought as he remembered Lex's statement about staffing, his security.
Clark glanced down at the book Lex had left on the gleaming coffee table. Proust, in French. "'Remembrance of Things Past,' hunh?" he said, looking over at Lex, who was now, bizarrely, sautéing the vegetables.
"The preferred translation these days is 'In Search of Lost Time,'" Lex said. "I like that better, don't you?"
Clark dropped his eyes and wished for the superpower of feeling comfortable in any situation. Unfortunately, Earth's yellow sun wasn't any help on that account.
"I did ultimately get those seven weeks back," Lex said abruptly, startling Clark into a wide-eyed stare. "I remember that you left me to be locked in Belle Reve."
"Lex –"
"I also remember that you came back. It makes a difference."
Clark stopped, his mouth hanging open, his mind blank. His heart was thumping like an avalanche, thrusting him back to that terrible time and the terrible choices he'd faced.
"Of course, you also did what you could to keep me from regaining those weeks, and that makes a difference too." There was a hiss as Lex dumped pasta and boiling water into a colander. Clark wanted nothing more than to reach out with his hearing to find someone in trouble so he could go fly, save someone, someone else –
"Dinner's ready," Lex said, his voice as smooth as marble.
Clark's stomach lacked the keen sense of being out of place that troubled his mind, so he went back to the counter and sat down as Lex served him an enormous bowl of spaghetti with vegetables and meat sauce.
"This looks really good," Clark said lamely.
"Why don't you taste it before passing judgment?" Lex asked, his tone so familiarly indulgent that Clark replied without thinking.
"I wanted to make sure that I could give you an honest compliment."
Lex was surprised into something that resembled a smile. With a twitch of his lips and a shrug of his shoulders, he ladled out a serving for himself, offered Clark some grated cheese, and began to eat.
Actually, the food was fine – a little light on the spices, in Clark's opinion, but hearty and satisfying.
"Good," he said between bites.
"Thank you." Lex took a large drink of wine. Closer to a gulp, really. Even Clark knew that was a crime against oenophilia. Evidently he wasn't the only one not perfectly at ease.
"Maybe this was –"
"Don't," Lex said, his tone cold enough to freeze vodka. "I'm not in the mood to spend another hour in your arms just now, and you're sure as hell not stranding me here."
They finished the meal in silence. When Lex left his dirty dish on the counter and poured himself four fingers of Scotch, Clark got up and began to wash the dishes. Eventually, Lex returned to his book, the decanter on the end table next to him. Clark explored the food stores and discovered a bag of DoubleStuf Oreos.
'You remembered' would have been a spectacularly stupid thing to say under the circumstances, so he didn't. But there was milk – fresh milk, God only knew from where and at what expense – and he thought that Lex was sneaking peeks at him as he ate his cookies and milk.
After, as he was putting his glass on the drying rack by the sink, he surprised himself by letting out a jaw-cracking yawn.
He looked around sheepishly and caught Lex in an expression more than usually difficult to interpret: reluctant indulgence combined with – longing? He blinked at Lex, confused.
"Go to bed, Clark," Lex said, but gently. "Tomorrow you might even be ready to spend some time on the beach."
Clark did wake before noon the next day, though it was a close thing and he lay in bed for a long time after, just enjoying the idea of having nothing to do. The sun was incandescent in the cloudless afternoon sky as he fixed himself sandwiches and considered wandering down to the beach. Lex wasn't in the living area, and the door to his bedroom was open, revealing that it was empty as well.
Where had he gotten to?
Reflexively, Clark scanned around and even under his feat, revealing a subterranean compound as large as the structure above, full of computers, communication equipment, and the kind of lab facilities that were as common around Lex as silk shirts.
"Damn!" he said, slamming his hand down against the counter hard enough to crack the marble. He'd believed Lex – he was Charlie Brown, constantly hoping that this time Lucy would let him kick the ball, constantly disappointed. After a while, you had to blame hapless Charlie, because Lucy clearly was a sociopath. Clark renewed his scan, letting his vision move out in waves like those caused by a pebble thrown in a pond.
He found Lex about two hundred feet from the bungalow, sitting in the shade, a book in his hand and a drink at his side.
Clark walked deliberately out to confront him.
"Lex," he said in Superman's voice.
Lex looked up at him over his purple-tinted sunglasses and closed the book. "Good afternoon, Clark."
"The deal was that you would stay away from your business and I'd stay away from mine."
"Yes, I recall. Your point?"
"There's a *bunker* under the house! With a laboratory! A Cray supercomputer!"
Lex stood up, his face tight with annoyance. "It's *my* island. Did you think it wouldn't be fully equipped? However, I haven't been to the lower levels – you're welcome to check the dust on the steps if you like – and I had no plans to do so. But you – there's no way you could know about the lab without using your powers. So who, exactly, is in the wrong here?"
Clark fumed, his hands fisted at his sides. "That doesn't count. I wasn't looking for work!"
"If I don't get to check my email or engage in any monitoring of the company I've left vulnerable, you sure as hell don't get to use superpowers." Lex was angry too, setting his shoulders back and otherwise projecting a puffed-up aggression.
The ridiculousness of the situation struck Clark with the force of a rockslide. Removed from all the distractions of home, they were still fighting.
"Okay," he said, mostly to see what would happen.
"I don't know what you expected –" Lex said, then paused. "Okay?" he repeated, in a more chastened tone.
"Okay. I get it. No telecommunications or buying stuff for you, no X-ray or lifting heavy things for me. If you ask me nicely I might open a stuck jar, but that's it." Clark was really enjoying the sensation of making Lex run after him, mentally speaking.
Lex shut his mouth in a line so tight it would have required a chisel to get open.
They stood like that, Lex in shade and Clark half in the sun, for long moments before Clark shrugged. "I’m going to look for something to read and go out to the beach," he said, hoping Lex would recognize that he was following Lex's suggestion from the previous night. Maybe Lex would even join him.
Lex nodded and sat down again, picking up his book as if it were a lead shield.
Clark meandered back to the house, wondering how he felt about all this. It wasn't like he could tell – his inability to read humans had *nothing* on his inability to fathom himself.
The bookshelves proved as varied as Clark could have expected. He picked the latest Stephen King – the man would not retire, and Clark respected that – before changing into one of the baggier swimsuits and heading towards the beach in the little cove he'd seen when they were flying in.
As he came out of the trees, the beauty of the pearl-white sand and the cobalt blue ocean struck him, but immediately thereafter he noticed the boat. Six men, pulling up to shore.
Further out on the water, he could see a small dot – a larger vessel, maybe a fishing trawler, clearly their mode of arrival.
They were all carrying guns.
Clark sighed, preparing to challenge them.
Then he remembered that he was on vacation.
He could take out these losers in a hot millisecond, but Lex had been so *mean* about Clark’s perfectly natural use of his powers.
Clark smiled to himself, watching the men drag the boat onto the sand. It might be fun to see Lex flail a little. He could always change his mind if things started to get hairy – superspeed would let him stop any bullets that went astray.
The men hadn't seen him yet, so he shrank back into the trees, hurrying at human speed to where Lex was ensconced.
Lex hadn't made much progress in his book.
"There are people landing on the shore. They've got guns, but they don't seem to be looking for us."
Lex stared hard at him, as if checking for a joke. "Well, round them up."
"Round them up?" Clark parroted innocently. He wasn’t sure he was fooling Lex, but it was fun either way.
"Or whatever you do with armed miscreants. Send them packing."
"I'm on vacation!" Clark protested. Refusing to act should have been difficult, but it sounded right, especially given the look of shock that his outburst put on Lex's face. "We just agreed that I'm not going to use my powers while we're here." He felt righteous, along with something a little more thrilling than righteousness. Yes, tangling Lex up in the very promises Lex had extracted from Clark was sweet.
"Circumstances have changed." Lex stood, the book slipping forgotten to his abandoned seat.
"I guess if you want to get rid of them, you'll have to do it yourself. Use your money, or talk your way out of this." Clark didn't smile smugly, but it was a near thing. Lex would cave in and call on his stormtroopers, and that meant that Clark would win.
Lex's face contorted into a snarl, then cleared. "No, I don't think so. As you pointed out, I'm -- *we’re* on vacation."
Clark considered that. He thought of the guns, and then of the beautiful well-stocked bungalow whose luxuries he wanted to experience for a few more days. "Look," he said, "we need to do something about these guys. Let's go take a look and see what we can do without – our normal patterns."
Lex raised his hands to rub at his eyes. "'What I Did on My Summer Vacation,' by Clark Kent and Lex Luthor."
Clark grinned just a little and looked at him through lowered brows. "Come on, it might be fun."
Lex didn't respond, but he did follow Clark back through the trees. Clark noticed that he avoided some of the vegetation that Clark just walked through, and guessed there was some poison-ivy-type plant around. "Can we use whatever it is you're trying not to touch?"
"Only if we want to kill them." Lex didn't look at Clark. "The manchineel is poisonous; the sap causes blindness and severe burns."
Okay then; no manchineel. It was always surprising to him how much more dangerous the world was than it looked, especially for humans.
The men were standing on the beach when Clark and Lex crept up on them, hiding in the (nonpoisonous) trees. Four of the strangers were unloading boxes, while the two others supervised. Clark's shoulder brushed against Lex as they got as close as possible without revealing themselves.
The sound of the men talking was almost loud enough to understand. Clark nearly kicked his hearing up a notch until he remembered. Their features were hard to make out at this distance, but Clark thought they were all in their mid-twenties to early thirties, five brunettes and one dirty blond. They were wearing what looked like combat pants and big boots, not ordinary sailor-gear.
Lex squinted out at the figures, dark against the bright sand. Clark noticed that the blond worker was wearing a Superman T-shirt – a bad bootleg, the colors all wrong, and dirty besides. He was miffed, if only because royalties from the authorized versions went to his favorite charities, but he didn’t think that pointing out the crime to Lex would be productive.
Lex nudged him, preparatory to whispering into his ear. "They're speaking Spanish – something about this being a good place to stash the stuff because it's not on any official map."
Clark made a mental note to lecture Lex about secret hideouts unknown to the government, later. "Stuff? What stuff?"
Lex's low tones turned acidic. "Drugs, gold, plutonium – the *McGuffin*, Clark! They know what it is, they aren't *narrating*. As long as it's not Kryptonite, it hardly matters." He subsided, staring intently at the two who weren't doing any heavy lifting. "They're going to send two men to look for a place further inland where they can leave the stuff. That means they'll find the house – it's not a big enough island that they could miss it. And the house has clearly been occupied within the last few hours."
Crouched as they were, tickled by stray leaves and branches, Clark felt a nostalgia for a time that had never been. It was like being on a stakeout with Lois, but also like investigating with Lex, back in Smallville, without all the lies and uncertainties.
Lex wasn't going to make any plans, so Clark would have to figure out what to do.
"Can you take the two of them out without killing them?" he asked.
Lex gaped at him. "Me?"
"It's a vacation, try something out of the ordinary," Clark suggested, keeping his voice soft.
Lex went back to watching the beach, shading his eyes with one hand.
"Probably," he said after another spate of observation. "I assume – never mind. What do you want me to do?"
The men on the beach were finishing up the unloading. One of the men who’d been moving the cargo lit cigarettes for himself and two of the others, while the fourth pulled out a bottle of Coke and drank it down in one long gulp. The two slightly better-dressed ones, who hadn’t tired themselves out with actual work, nonetheless sat down, keeping their firearms next to them.
As Clark had hoped, they dawdled before sending two of the minions to look for a hiding place for the McGuffin. The later it got, the better their chances of being able to do some of what they needed to do in darkness. But eventually, two scruffy men loped into the trees, each with an automatic pistol at his side.
Clark and Lex followed. Clark was interested in seeing what Lex could come up with to disable the men. Lex looked – good, in fact. His color was high, his eyes were bright, and he was vibrating with tension as he pushed past branches and vines, getting ahead of the two men, who didn't know how tight a deadline they were on.
The attack, when it came, was almost too fast for human eyes. Lex stepped behind the first man, tapped him on the shoulder, then socked him in the jaw as he turned. Before he'd collapsed to the ground, Lex was on the other one, grabbing him in a chokehold so precise that he lost consciousness in a few moments.
Lex confiscated their weapons and improvised bindings for them from strips of their own jackets, cut with one of the several knives he’d acquired in his pat-down of the men. He tied them to two trees, facing away from each other. Clark wanted to check on the knots – Lex didn't have a good history with definitively getting people out of the way; they tended to pop back up at awkward times instead. But it was Lex's job, so he didn't even use his X-ray vision to examine the men. He felt virtuous.
"What now, fearless leader?" Lex asked.
Clark swallowed. "I'll go check on the others, see if they're suspicious yet."
He hurried as fast as vacationing would allow to the edge of the beach. No movement there. It looked like the four remaining men were sitting around, telling ribald stories, if the self-congratulatory laughter was any indication.
When he returned to Lex and the captives, Lex was squatting in front of one of them, a fellow with a scar on his right cheek and a glare like a bolt of lightning. Lex was making extremely detailed threats in conversational Spanish. Their prisoner seemed impressed despite himself.
“Lex,” Clark chided. “Vacation, remember. That means no threats from you. If threatening becomes necessary, I will do it.” He hoped Lex wouldn’t know that he’d learned Spanish using the Fortress’s accelerated language matrix. Even so, *speaking* Spanish wasn’t a superpower, so he thought it would be fair.
Lex glanced over, assessing Clark’s seriousness, then smiled like a kid who’d been given a new bike – or in Lex’s case, maybe a new Lamborghini. “Right,” he said, turning back to the captive and beginning a rapid-fire lecture on how it was Very Bad to bring guns and treasure to strange islands.
Clark should have been offended, or outraged, or something appropriate to Superman. Apparently his moral compass was on vacation too. He stifled his laugh in his hand while Lex checked to see that the other prisoner was still unconscious.
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(there are such perfect lines, esp. in regard to clark's hunger and exhaustion...the seductiveness of food and sleep :-)
thanks!
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LOL! That's wonderful! I like the way that Clark's supposed to do the planning, too!
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Two pepperonis, one plain cheese, one eggplant, and one Hawaiian pizza later, he was relaxed enough to look at Lex's report.
Lex, when he glanced over, was paler than usual. Clark briefly wondered whether he was okay, then remembered that he didn't care.
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