Archive of Our Own ^beta

Lex is right, of course. That’s one of the top thirteen or so most annoying things about being best friends with him, but it’s not like Clark doesn’t have worse working against him on the friendship front. Still, Lex is right; he really needs to stop reading The Inquisitor. 

“I just can’t believe that they would make something like that up,” Clark huffs, throwing the paper down in disgust. A teeny puff of newsprint confetti snows out around it on impact, dusting the marble countertop in dingy gossip rag dandruff. 

Lex is helming his usual spot in front of the wet bar, decanting a serving of brandy into a deep bowled snifter with a precision that most professional bartenders would envy. Hell, most measuring cups, for that matter. 

Clark’s half tempted to tell him that the carpet is showing microscopic wear in that particular spot. Then again, Lex would probably just have the carpet redone. 

“Clark, people have been saying it for years.” The brandy gets an appraising gaze, the amber-gold light refracting back onto the cup of Lex’s palm and the thin, delicate stretch of his wrist. All the little rituals of connoisseurship that Clark’s 90% sure are what attracted Lex to drinking in the first place. “Every paper in town, including The Daily Planet’s society page, I’ll add, has speculated we’re sleeping together.”

The butter-soft leather of Lex’s couch doesn’t even have the decency to creak when Clark flops down onto it. 

“Yeah, and that’s tacky, but this is…” Jagged, directionless energy pools at all the places Clark is glued together; tingly almost-vibration in the hollows of his knees and the points of his elbows making it impossible to get comfortable. “They’re calling you a pedophile!”

Inspection finally passed, the liquor earns itself an all-expenses paid trip to Lex’s mouth. Honey-colored liquid stains his top lip for the moment it takes for Lex to lick it clean again. 

“Ephebophile, actually,” he corrects, nodding his approval to no one. Or possibly to the brandy—Lex has a weird, anthropomorphic relationship with his vices. 

“People from Smallville, Lex! People from Smallville are telling national newspapers that you’ve been… doing stuff… to me since I was a kid.”

Somewhere three timestreams over, there’s probably a younger, more naive version of Clark who’d think that the sigh Lex does a barely passable job of smothering into his glass was Lex commiserating with his drink over something like how callow Clark can be, how charmingly proletariat in his ignorance. 

Seeing as Clark’s known Lex for over a decade now, he’s absolutely positive of it. 

“I reiterate, teenager,” Lex emphasizes, leaning a hip into the hideously uncomfortable-looking, and hideously expensive metal and suede contraption the decorator had insisted was a chair. Clark’s still on the fence about that one; he’s never actually seen anybody sit in it. “And I will remind you that there’s only a six year age difference between us. You don’t have to make it sound like I lured you off the playground with the promise of candy.” 

“They’re the ones making it sound like that!”

“Which they have been for years . This can’t honestly surprise you.” Circling around the scary chair creature—Clark privately suspects that Lex doesn’t trust it any more than he does—Lex settles down, instead, on the edge of the redwood burl table in front of the sofa. 

Barefoot, sleeves rolled up, he shouldn’t be able to ride that superior, butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth thing that Clark’s personally seen drive competitors, gotcha-style reporters, and the occasional mistaken political pundit right up the wall (not to mention a fair number of supermodels right out of their panties, but that’s a whole other matter.) It’s really annoying.

Worse than annoying when he takes another sip, rolling it around on his tongue before swallowing, and says, “You don’t really think that my last name was the only reason your father hated me.”

It’s not actually anything like a kryptonite knife through the ribs, not after all of these years. More like the memory of one, raw-hewn and burning, weaving pain into all of the threads of his being. Dad had gotten a lot of things wrong, none more than when it came to Lex, but he’d been wrong out of love for his family, the drive to protect them, and Clark’s had a lot of time to reconcile that. 

Suddenly needing something to do with his hands, Clark shoves himself up off the couch. 

“I’m pretty sure it was more about him thinking you were going to vivisect me.”

Handling glassware hasn’t been a real challenge in ages, not even the delicate stemmed sort that Lex favors. Even if Clark does happen to be marginally less than calm just now. 

“That was not the only thing he was afraid of me doing to you, I assure you.”

No reason to chance it, though. 

Clark snags himself a heavy, cut-crystal tumbler and glugs out a few fingers of bourbon. In general he’s not a big drinker—it’s an expensive habit, and he’s never picked up much affinity for the taste—but bourbon, at least, feels like a decent middle ground between Lex’s brand of decadence and Clark’s Costco sensibilities. At least it’s made with corn. 

It’s all well and good for Lex not to care, but there is a difference. 

Metropolis has had its eyes on Lex his whole life. Watched him go from spoiled rich boy to club kid; the guy who deflowered debutants and screwed the sons of shipping magnates in hotel bathrooms; who—in a story Clark honestly can’t believe got past Lionel’s press people—ODed on heroin in the Caesar's Palace Emperor’s Suite when he was 17. To them, Lex getting shipped off to Smallville for a couple of years was an extended rehab stay. Showing up with some nobody hick kid in tow, dragging him to galas and museum openings and gourmet restaurants where Clark stuck out like a, well, like an alien… The words “barely-legal” and “boy toy” had been bandied about enough that Clark seriously considered dropping off thesauruses at all of the major publishers before his freshman year at MetU ended. 

But Smallville is different. People in Smallville knew them. Knew him . Lex may never have been the most popular guy in town—never mind that half the population would have been out in the cold if it weren’t for Lex keeping the plant up and running—but the Kents were respected, they were pillars of the community. That people could think that Clark… that his parents would have allowed...

“It’s just insulting! To both of us. I mean, A)-”

“We’re going to alphabetize this, are we?”

By the time Clark turns around, Lex has meandered over to prop himself up against the hearth. An impractical bit of stage dressing for a Metropolis penthouse, even if the architect did find a way to make the Baroque slab of marble fit in with the stark, clean lines Lex has sketched his adult life out in. 

Never let it be said that Lex Luthor gave an inch on drama. 

“They think that I don’t bring anything to the table besides…” Clark stumbles over the phrasing. He’s long since gotten over the realization that people's compulsive inability to notice him in high school was less about him being an undesirable lump of weirdo than with him not letting anybody actually see him. If nothing else, the frankly uncomfortable number of people that tried to climb him like a jungle gym in his college days was proof that he wasn’t physically repugnant or anything. It’s still strange to imagine people thinking of him that way, though. “You know.”

“That ass,” Lex enunciates crisply, sharing another sympathetic look with his glass. “Yes, apparently we’re going to alphabetize this.”

“And B) they think that you couldn’t possibly just, just like someone without an ulterior motive.”

“In fairness," Lex swirls the liquid in his glass with a thoughtful look, "I never actually have. And I did spend several years trying to worm my way into your Wranglers, so the accusation is not entirely without merit.”

Clark plops back down on the couch, hovering ever so slightly to avoid upsetting his bourbon. He doesn't know what Lex's carpet is made of but he's got a sneaking suspicion it's something that can't be Scotch-Guarded. 

“I can’t believe you’re going to defend-" Statistically, it only makes sense for Clark's brain to work faster than a human's. He can move faster than the speed of sound, so super-synapses are really the only way for him to run without randomly crashing through everything in his path. Somehow Lex has always managed to make him feel astonishingly slow on the uptake anyway. "Wait. Come again?”

At this, Lex actually deigns to look up.

“Clark," he blinks expressively. "Even you, the most oblivious man ever to walk the face of this hapless planet, could not possibly have missed the multiple years I spent attempting to seduce you.”

Glacially slow on the uptake, in fact.

“What?”

Lex shrugs away from the mantle, circling around the back of the couch to a piece of furniture that's more than passingly identifiable as a chair. He kicks one foot up to balance on his opposite knee, the pale, dainty arch of his foot looking strangely exposed in such an Ozymandias, King of the Boardroom posture. 

“Alright, seduce might be an overstatement," Lex allows. " Woo might be more appropriate.”

Glacially slow might actually be an insult to glaciers. Clark feels like he's forgotten the English language. Like Lex has started communicating in some kind of obscure verbal pictograms that he needs an advanced degree to decipher. Like... Like...

“Woo?”

Yes. Like, woo . 

There's a little curl at the corner of Lex's mouth that tends to show up when Clark talks about coupons or darning a hole in a sock; it's the sort of look that Mrs. McGarrey, at the end of Clark's hall, gets when her tabby drops a dead roach on the front mat and then rubs up against her legs; as if she finds it adorable, but also, it's putting her through hell. 

“After interacting with you for ten minutes I purchased you a—very fine, might I add—fully-outfitted, fresh off the assembly line, pickup truck.”

“Oh, please, like you’ve ever needed an excuse to buy something with an engine," Clark grouses. And yes, this, this is what it's like having brain cells. "And I saved your life! After you hit me with your car! ”

“Descending like a Raphaelite angel to raise me from the waters. I spent a good five years seething over the fact that I was unconscious for the mouth to mouth.”

Oops, no, he was wrong. No brain cells here. 

“You…" Words, Clark. Any words at all. "Seriously?”

Okay, possibly better words than that, but it's a start. 

“Clark," Lex is laughing, but in that on-the-inside way where it's just sort of seeping out around the edges, like the sun during an eclipse. "I exhausted the depths of my creativity trying to think up things to give you that you’d actually accept. I allowed you the run of my home, access to my cars, I would have happily purchased you a private island if I’d thought it would persuade you to wander around in front of me in a bathing suit. I practically begged to pay for your college education, not to mention the apartment.”

The glass in Clark's hand gives an ominous crack. Clark sets it down on the table before he can make a mess. 

“Wait, college?" College was... Well, he graduated four years ago, so there's a handy launch pad. "You were still… when I was in college?”

College, to which he'd received a somewhat suspiciously timed scholarship that Clark has never actually been able to track back to Lex. College, where he'd gotten one of the inaugural private suites in the Lillian Luthor Memorial Dormitory. College, when he'd gotten the internship, that got him the job at The Planet, that he's worked his ass off for and more than earned, but still was a lucky break. Unless, of course, it wasn't. 

College. 

“I apologize," Lex says. He sets aside his brandy, which makes two Things That Lex Luthor Doesn't Do in the span of as many seconds. "I wouldn’t have brought it up if I thought you didn’t know. I always assumed you weren’t interested, it never occurred to me that I was somehow being too subtle for you.”

“No, but." College. "When did you...I mean. If…" How many times had he slept over on Lex's couch in college? How many times had Clark stolen his attention for impromptu tutoring while Lex was busy planning world domination before age 30? How many times had he ignored the way Lex never complained about it? "If you were still attracted to me when I was in college, then when did you…stop being...”

“Clark.”

“Lex.”

And that's not the way to go, Clark can hear it in his own voice even before Lex's face goes prairie-flat. Blank in a way that Clark's only ever seen turned on other people. There are very few things in the world that Lex simply won't tolerate. Incompetence. Overripe bananas. Pity. 

In retrospect, Clark wishes he'd gone with the bananas. 

“It’s fine." Lex is up again, adding a far more generous portion to his glass. His voice is silken, press conference breezy, and maybe if Clark didn't know Lex better than anyone else in the world he wouldn't hear the brittle edge underneath it. "Honestly, it was largely pro forma by the time you graduated—I was long beyond expecting anything to happen.”

“Lex, I don’t-”

Glass makes contact with the bar top too hard, not shattering, but Clark can pick out hairline cracks where the stem meets the bowl. Lex is staring at the wall, shoulders taut and so still they've nearly come back around to shaking. He just stands there for a moment. Five. Clark can pick out both of their heartbeats in the silence, jarring off-tempo against each other. 

Then Lex is breathing deep, turning, and there's the Lex that Clark knows—the one maybe only Clark knows; honesty pulled out of him like a lost organ, bleeding it all over the Persian rugs.

“I wouldn’t exchange our friendship for anything," he says. "And I’m sorry I’ve made you uncomfortable.”

“No, don’t apolog-" Clark is already on his feet, the urge to fix-it-fix-it-fix-it splintering through him like lightning. Which of course means that's precisely the moment the ringing hits his ears. "Shit!”

“Mugging?” The note of hope in Lex’s voice does not belong anywhere near that question. 

“Bank robbery.”

Lex takes too big of a slug of brandy for how expensive the bottle must be. “And to think of all the unkind things I’ve said about bank robbers over the years.”

Clark huffs. He knows it's petulant, and unbecoming, and frankly not very heroic, all things considered. 

On the other hand, “Who even robs banks anymore? What is this, 1850?”

Lex is busy with another excessive swallow, which does not bode well for the general direction of the evening. It's almost never a good idea to leave Lex to his own devices when there are things left unsaid; Lex's devices have a disturbing tendency to come out literal, and frequently government-classified. He's the poster child for why you shouldn't drink and invent. 

On the other hand (the other other hand?) bank robbers. 

Damnit. 

“Clark, go." 

Lex waves him off, the massive glass doors to the picturesque, city-view balcony already sliding open in anticipation. Leaving him alone is definitely a bad idea. Of course, staying would require actually figuring out how to react to the idea that Lex has been interested in him for years, which, yeah, even thinking it kind of makes Clark's brain tilt sideways, not quite able to look at the concept head-on. 

There are really no good ideas to be had here. 

What there are, are bank robbers, and that at least is a problem Clark knows how to deal with. 

If the sigh Lex lets out as Clark takes off from the balcony sounds relieved, well, it's not exactly like Clark can disagree. 

***

Not often, but occasionally, Lex allows himself to think about what his life would have been like if he’d never met Clark. 

“Easier” is a word that immediately jumps to mind. Not easy, of course; Luthors aren’t built for ease, and Lex least of all. Still, there are a variety of complications he’d never have been forced to face if the last son of Krypton hadn’t fallen out of the sky and subsumed his future. 

Baldness, for one. 

Literally hundreds of attempts on his life. 

The wrecking ball of his father’s interest in the meteors, aliens, and associated sundry— not to mention the years worth of skirmishes born thereof. 

A decade of intense, lingering sexual frustration that Lex is honest enough, in the privacy of his own head, to acknowledge segued into a languishing unrequited love some time around Clark’s sophomore year of high school. 

On the other hand, he’d have never known Clark. His goodness, and his kindness, and his secrets. If nothing else, knowing Clark has proven that Lex is not his father’s son, in all the ways that count, and you really can’t put a price tag on that kind of peace of mind. 

Recreational surveillance isn’t a fetish he indulges much these days, but if channel 12 insists on broadcasting Superman footage to the greater Metropolis area, who is Lex to ignore it?

He gulps another mouthful of brandy, watching on mute as a harried-looking newscaster says something no doubt fawning against the backdrop of the First National Bank building. In the background, a group of black-clad robbers are being loaded into a police van. 

Just above them, the camera slowly zooms in on the hovering red and blue shape of Clark. 

Also Superman, but underneath the symbol, it’s Clark. 

Unexpectedly, Lex has had the opportunity to get up close and personal with a number of superpowered so-called heroes in the last few years, and he’s found that down to a one, they put on the masks to reveal their real selves. All except Clark. (And Diana, but that’s an entirely different eroticism.)

Clark bears the burden of Superman; Atlas, with the weight of the world on his shoulders. The moral compass, the compassion, the unwavering, sometimes supercilious sense of certainty—all of that Superman gets from Clark, but the bold colors, the brave speeches, being an icon, that’s the act, the necessity. That’s the way Clark’s found to be what people need, even if he’d personally rather have stuck with The Blur. (Fuck, but Lex does not miss that name.)

Lex has shaken hands with Superman plenty of times, stood beside him on podiums for charitable initiatives and taken photos with him at fundraisers. He knows how to play his part. But he only ever sees Clark. 

Sometimes, that feels like his superpower—seeing Clark Kent. Even when it flays him raw. 

Like, for example, now. 

He’d thought he’d beaten it back, honestly. Smothered it in its sleep years ago. All it took was one instant of “he hasn’t been saying no all this time, he didn’t know”, one possibility and it all came roaring back, Lazarus risen from the grave, on top of him before he could wrestle his traitor heart back under control. 

He did, of course. It’s his Olympic event, and he’s been practicing it for years. Clark probably hadn’t even seen it—a dozen kinds of specialty visions, but Clark’s always been good at overlooking this. 

Clearly. Painfully. 

Fuck it. In for a penny.

A few taps at the tablet that controls the entertainment system pulls up a handful of additional feeds to the screen—several cell phone video streams (LexCorp’s free wireless hotspots had proven to be such a treasure trove of piggybacked data), a couple of municipal security cameras, the satellite bounce from the the still-circling news chopper—giving him a full 360, technicolor view of Clark overseeing the proceedings like a disappointed god. 

Lex gives up on the glass and drags the whole decanter back to the television with him. After all, if he’s going to give in to a bit of light, news-enabled stalking this evening, why not surrender to another old vice? 

It’s been a long, long time since he had a good self-flagellating wallow in his stupid, hopeless affliction of affection. 

They can get past this. They’ve been doing it for years. The only difference is, now, Clark’s aware of it. Admittedly a massive pain in the ass of a hurdle, but not insurmountable. Clark’s perfect cocktail of empathy and martyr complex is going to make things brutally awkward for a few interactions, but then he’ll find something to distract himself. 

A new supervillain maybe. Or a natural disaster. 

Maybe Lex could get engaged again. Mercy would never forgive him, but it might be worth it.

Why is it tsunamis never strike when you really need them to? 

***

It’s not out of the ordinary for them to go a week or two without seeing each other face to face. Running a multinational conglomerate is actually pretty time consuming, regardless of how much Lex likes to foster the impression that he just dashes off million dollar business deals in his odd hours, and Clark, well. The job eats into the average reporter’s life enough as it is, and that’s without his side gig. 

It’s not like Lex is avoiding him out of the creeping, soul-sucking mortification of having confessed to being… attracted to Clark for ten years. In lust. Something. Clark’s not entirely clear, but it’s not like he can ask, and not just because he and Lex haven’t spoken in 12 days. 

So, they’ve both been busy. And maybe slightly uncomfortable, but not friendship-endingly uncomfortable or anything. So it’s not weird, or sad, or a passive aggressive cry for attention that Clark happens to be stringing the Metropolis Opera Society gala, which Lex happens to attend every year, because LexCorp donations have paid for at least half of the city’s performing arts centers and also because Lex is a giant, closet nerd. 

Admittedly, the kind of nerd who turns up to red carpet events with a Bolshoi prima ballerina hanging off his arm like a ruby-studded toothpick. 

A kind of obnoxious ruby-studded toothpick, if Clark’s being honest. 

“They cannot call this a martini,” she’s sneering through a borscht-thick accent when Clark finally catches a break between glad-handers to sidle up to them. Mercy shoots him a capital-L Look from her discreet post against a column six feet away then goes back to glaring her murderous intent at unfortunate partygoers. “It is not even worth my holding of it.”

Lex has impressively bad taste in women actually. 

Clark’s not sure if that says something about him or not, being a person that Lex also has a taste for. 

Which he is not thinking about. 

At all. 

Nope. 

“Miss Antonova?” Clark steps in just as it looks like she might actually drop her glass onto the floor to avoid holding it anymore. Lex’s eyes flash to him, light behind them sparking to life from the dull haze of schmoozing that was there just a second before. Clark does his best to keep the bright, fizzing thrill that echoes in his chest from making its way onto his face. “Clark Kent, Daily Planet . Any comments on the upcoming season?”

“No,” she clips, coldly.

“Lex? I know La Boheme ’s a favorite of yours, looking forward to the production?” And yeah, okay, it’s not any kind of secret that Clark Kent and Lex Luthor are friends, but Clark likes to keep the lines between his personal and professional lives clear. He almost never goes first-names with Lex when he’s on the clock, just like he doesn’t expect Lex to give him any special access or exclusives. 

And yet, here he is, talking like they hang out all the time—because they do—and ignoring whatever blandly enthusiastic response Lex is smirking into his recorder in favor of the way it makes Lex’s date twitch.

“Sounds interesting,” Clark says anyway, because it probably did. Most of the things Lex says are interesting, even if Clark’s not always entirely sure why. “I’ll look forward to it.”

Which seems to be about as much time as Miss Antonova ’s willing to go without being the center of attention. 

Her scarlet fingernails just barely dent Lex’s skin as she reaches up to grab him by the chin and physically force him to look back at her. Over her poised shoulder Clark can see Mercy’s hand twitch gunward. 

“ Alexander, there is no one interesting here, ” she says, this time in Russian. “ Let us leave before the puppy starts molesting your leg. ”

Having a bunch of languages beamed directly into his brain by an alien AI has always kind of felt like cheating, to Clark. It’s why he doesn’t put any of them on his resume under special skills. Still, when an opportunity presents itself, there’s really no reason not to use them, on occasion. 

“ I’ll try to contain myself. ” For the first time in the entire conversation, Antonova’s eyes actually focus on him as he gently pats Lex on the shoulder. “ He’ll never forgive me if I ruin the line of his tux. ”

A Siberian tundra worth of ice in her voice, she asks like an accusation, “You speak Russian?”

Clark plasters on his best cornfed, aw-shucks-ma’am smile. It’s a really good one, he has a lot of practice. 

“Or I fake it well.”

Once upon a time, Clark’s parents were worried about Lex being a bad influence on him, but honestly he’s picked up most of his interpersonal bad habits from Lois. In fairness, sometimes passive-aggression is just the right answer. 

Practically glowing with humor, Lex gently extricates himself from Antonova—ha!—hand distractingly warm on Clark’s shoulder blade through his suit jacket. 

“I have to make a few goodbyes,” he tells her placatingly. “Have them pull the car around, I’ll be out soon.”

The drink that, three minutes ago, Clark was pretty sure was destined for the floor looks in danger of ending up in Lex’s face instead, but Antonova manages to school herself with a furious little grumble and stomps away on her spindly heels. 

“Rude, Kent,” Lex scolds. It would be more convincing if somebody bothered to tell the smirk spreading his lips. 

Clark sniffs, “She started it. Besides, you liked it.”

“I did.”

He’s smiling in that way he has that makes it seem like the several hundred other people at the gala spontaneously evaporated; the private, real-Lex smile that smolders through Clark’s chest like a hot drink on a cold night, seeping through his blood until everything is sort of lax and cozy and…

See, this is the kind of thing it would have been helpful to notice at any point in the last ten years. 

It’s not like Clark had never considered… things. Everything about Lex, from the way that he stands to the suits that he wears is a 50-foot billboard advertisement for the concept of sex, and always has been. So, if Clark had spent a higher than average amount of time staring at Lex’s mouth during his formative years, or if Lex had happened to crop up in his thoughts in the middle of a little late-night stress relief, well, that wasn’t exactly abnormal. It had been the same thing with Lois, before the dating, and then the catastrophe of the breakup that had tanked his ability to maintain an erection while thinking about her ever again.

Oh.

Lex’s eyes catch the circles of Clark’s cufflinks, his fingers just after them. Thumb brushing over the whirl of Clark’s initials engraved into simple polished steel—his high school graduation present from Lex. No one looking at them would ever guess they started life as the roof of an unfortunate Porsche.

Again, literally any point in the last ten years. 

Fine, Clark is an idiot.

“What if…” Clark starts, surprised by how gritty his voice sounds. He clears his throat, tries again. “I’m pretty much done here. If you wanted, you could go drop your friend off and I could come over and… watch a movie or something.”

Clark can break the sound barrier without breaking a sweat, can lift ten-ton trucks like children’s toys. It takes a lot to make his heart beat faster, which goes zero-percent of the way to explaining why it’s racing now, just standing here waiting for Lex to agree to something that they’ve done a jillion times before.

Is this what it’s been like for Lex? This needless weight to something banal, gleaning subtext Clark had blindly stumbled his way through. How many times had Lex blown off possibilities, rearranged obligations for him while Clark had just accepted it as his due; a tithe of time from one of the busiest men in the world. 

“Clark.” Lex’s voice is leaden; not quite sharp, but something that shares a border with it. 

Embarrassed heat creeps up the back of Clark’s neck.

“What? It’s just, it’s been a while,” he shrugs, zooming past laid-back-cool at 100 mph with the brake lines cut. “I’ll even give you a free pass to put on one of the Warrior Angel movies.”

Lex releases the cuff of Clark’s shirt like it burned him. Clark hadn’t even noticed the lingering touch until it was gone, wrist strangely cold in its absence. 

“Don’t do this,” Lex says, adding to the gulf of space between them with one subtle step backward. From his peripheral vision, Clark sees Mercy disengage from the column and start her way over. 

It’s not inconspicuous, or nonchalant, or really any of the things Clark was hoping to come off as in this interaction, but desperate times and all that, so he just blurts, “Do you realize that you never actually gave me a chance to tell you how I feel?”

The underlying problem, of course, is that Clark has spent two weeks dwelling on exactly that issue and still hasn’t come up with an answer for what he feels, beyond the fact that not being able to call and hear Lex’s voice or drop in on him after patrol has felt like he’s walking around without all his limbs. 

Of course, that would only be a problem if Lex was actually planning on letting Clark finish the thought. 

“You missed a decade of vastly unsubtle signals. If your subconscious gets any more eloquent I may start to take it personally.” 

“Yeah, but I didn’t have all the information, then.”

An understated flex of Lex’s fingers pulls Mercy up short, falling into something that could pass for parade rest, if the parade in question involved a lot of stabbing people in the eye. A very smart cater-waiter who was passing with a tray of champagne flutes finds a convenient wall to flatten himself against. 

Clark’s never been entirely clear how much of the truth about him Mercy knows, but he’s in no hurry to leave her alone with a supply of kryptonite. 

All of which falls by the wayside when Lex retakes the briefly emptied space between them and more besides, close enough that their chests are almost brushing with each breath as he lowers his voice to say, “I realize that you’re the poster boy for subliminal messaging, but allow me to assure you: you’re not interested in me, Clark.” 

A rueful little smile quirks his lips. “I know that you mean well, but trying to make yourself feel something you don’t would be, by far, the cruelest thing you have ever done to me.”

And then, somehow, he’s even closer, and there are a lot of people here somewhere, possibly watching them have this not-at-all-normal-distance conversation, and Clark could not even begin to care because Lex is saying, “Yes, I’m in love with you,” like he’s explaining that the Earth is round; like this is some baseline, inalienable fact that’s not irretrievably reorganizing Clark’s understanding about the structure of his existence. “I’ve never seen any reason for that to be an impediment to our friendship.”

It’s true, Lex has always been supportive of Clark’s dating habits. Aggressively supportive, at times. There have been a few occasions where he actually felt like Lex was trying to pawn him off on somebody. And it sure as hell hasn’t stopped Lex from having an… active love life. Or continuing his trend of marrying homicidal maniacs. Technically that might be considered a form of self-sabotage, but also, Luthor. 

Yes, I’m in love with you .

So this is what an aneurysm feels like. 

“Go home,” Lex says, gently tugging Clark’s lapels into a more pleasing angle. “Go rescue some girl scouts, or put out a few wildfires, or, hell, go get laid. Stop fixating.” 

Several small universes worth of air rush in as Lex takes another step back, shrugs on charming billionaire philanthropist like a custom tailored jacket. 

Nothing but ease and friendly banter when he adds, “And call me next week, I’m holding you to that movie,” over his shoulder as he walks away.

Clark stares into the space where Lex was for a long, long time after the rumble of his car has pulled away. 

***

Lex isn’t fool enough to think Clark will drop it. Among his innumerable virtues, leaving well enough alone has never been one. Given the inevitable slew of pointed phonecalls from Martha that Lex has to field every year before he jets off to Seoul or Delhi or literally anywhere else he can wrangle a meeting over Thanksgiving, he has to assume it’s a learned trait. 

There was a time when, young and romantic, Lex had believed he could have it all. Experience has taught him otherwise. For everything you gain, there’s an equivalent loss, and Lex has become entirely too fond of the equilibrium of his life to mess around with it, despite what the clingy, residual fantasies of his post-pubescent id might suggest.  

At least one person in this friendship has to know when retreat is the better part of valor. 

If he keeps telling himself that long enough, he’s bound to start believing it. 

Suffice to say, he’s several nautical miles from shocked when, several days after their probably ill-advised and definitely ill-timed discussion at the opera, Clark interrupts their Warrior Angel rewatch with, “Okay, and I’m not going for anything here, but for argument’s sake, since you seem to be so convinced—why I couldn’t I be interested in you?”

Even prepared for it, a sharp slug of adrenaline still hits Lex in the gut, dread mixed with an inky, oil-slick pleasure. He’s familiar enough with his own masochistic tendencies to admit that he’s enjoying it, a little, Clark’s inability to stop thinking about him in a romantic context. It’s a sharp reversal of fortune, far too late and all too likely bound for disaster, but still satisfying in an ugly, vindictive way, like pressing on a bruise. 

Lex reaches for his glass without looking away from the screen. It’s a particular breed of unfair that Clark can look lovely even in the flickering blue light of a television, and there’s really no reason to add any temptations. 

“You’re not queer.”

It’s a good explanation, or a comforting one, at least. Something of a mantra Lex has chanted to himself as he’s watched Clark hummingbird flit from one beautiful girl to the next, longing crush to luckless love affair. 

It’s not personal. It’s not Lex . It’s just a misalignment of preference.

A very pretty illusion that crumples like paper as Clark hums, “Technically, the fact that I’m interested in humans at all is a whole interspecies situation, so I don’t know how much the gender thing matters.” 

He resituates himself with his back against the arm of the sofa, one knee bent up onto the cushions, artlessly opening a space between his legs that Lex is too practiced to glance at, no matter the magnetic pull of his eyes. “Also, we’ve never really gotten into details about the red-K summer, have we?”

There has never been this much silence inside of Lex’s head.

“You…”

Clark shifts uncomfortably, studied insouciance giving ground under the color in his cheeks.  

“It’s all… a little bit of a blur,” he admits, hand through his hair, on his knee, back in his hair again. A prime example of the shy farmboy routine that’s been hardwired into Lex’s libido for ages. “But, um, there are some… moments that stand out.”

Lex takes a second to breathe. To remind himself that having people disappeared would be wrong. To accept that any identifying CCTV footage from that many years ago has almost certainly been erased.

“We’ve all done things when we were high,” he says instead of demanding a detailed log of every interaction that may or may not have happened when Clark was seventeen fucking years old and Lex was chastely keeping his hands to himself.

That marble-hewn face flattens at him. 

“Really invalidating my sexual identity there, Lex.”

The temperature in the room appears to have shot up by several Kelvins. 

Also, it’s noticeably devoid of alcohol. Leaving the decanter on the bar was a strategic mistake.

“You’ve never soberly been attracted to a man,” slips out, only slightly strangled by his desert-dry throat.

“I’ve never soberly done anything about it.” Clark waggles a finger at him. “There’s a difference.”

He was wrong, the decanter wouldn’t be enough. There’s not enough alcohol in the world. In the galaxy.

The red-K summer had been mayhem. Back before Lex had earned his place among Clark’s circle of secret keepers, and the simmering resentments had kept him from searching for Clark as hard as he should have, writing it off as nascent teenaged rebellion. So he’d left him to wander Metropolis, alone and uninhibited. Only obviously not alone. Not nearly alone enough. Even after he’d come back everything had been awful and stilted, and then not long after Clark started hanging around with—

Lex presses his hands against the tops of his thighs to stop them from trembling.

“Who?”

Please, not Queen. 

Clark rolls his eyes, “It doesn’t matter.”

Literally anybody but Queen.

“Yes, it does. Who?”

Lex has endured Superman’s ongoing acquaintance with the Green Arrow, but he refuses to live in a world where Oliver Motherfucking Queen gets to walk around knowing what Clark looks like when he comes. Where he might have been the one—the first —

“What you mean is, why not you?”

He’s going to have to figure out how to hide a body from fucking Superman. And Batman. The whole terrible do-gooder gang, because the only alternative is throwing himself off the balcony and he’s reasonably sure Clark would just catch him, the bastard. 

“What I mean is: names, social security numbers, identifying features.”

He is, possibly, failing at appearing serene and unflappable. The trembling seems to be spreading up his arms.

No one has ever unraveled him quite like Clark. 

“It’s not that I never thought about it,” Clark says, evidently unaware of Lex actively dying three feet in front of him. “Have you seen yourself drink from a water bottle? I thought about it a lot. It’s just, you’re you . It was like thinking about, I don’t know, Angelina Jolie or something. It’s such an obvious thought to have that it doesn’t even register that it means anything.”

Thought about— He— What the absolute fucking fuck , Clark?

“I’m flattered,” he mutters tonelessly. 

Throwing himself off the balcony is sounding like a better and better idea. Even his inner masochist is no longer having fun.

“It really never crossed my mind that you…” Clark blatantly violates the Geneva Convention edicts against torture by licking his lips, ducking a bashful look at Lex from under his eyelids. “I mean, me. Me .”

Me , says the all-but-literal deity, descended from on high to protect the world with his benevolent heart and an ass you could bounce several rolls of quarters off of. 

It would sound marginally less deranged if Lex was the only person ever to notice that Clark is an ironically perfect specimen of the human form, but Lex has watched him pull stunning women with no apparent effort for years now. Obliviousness simply doesn’t begin to cover it. 

“I suppose your self-esteem issues are some kind of cosmic balance,” he hears himself say with a faint tinge of pride—at least he can speak like someone whose brain has not recently vacated the premises, all evidence to the contrary. “Godlike power, beauty, and confidence? You could conquer worlds.”

Clark self-consciously snags a handful of popcorn from the unattended bowl, slurring around the half-chewed kernels, “Eh, ruling the world sounds boring.”

This is— This is good. Familiar territory. Repartee has always been Lex’s salvation where Clark was concerned. Never underestimate the value of a sturdy shield. 

“Sometimes your lack of vision physically pains me.”

It could be his imagination, but he thinks he detects a hint of relief in the slump of Clark’s plaid-clad shoulders as he relaxes back against the sofa cushions. He carries the popcorn with him, bowl cradled protectively in his lap. 

“Anyway. My point is, your conclusions are based on incomplete data.” He’s facing forward now, all pretensions of open sprawl lost as he slants a sideways look in Lex’s direction. “I know how you feel about incomplete data.”

Evidently done with the nerve peeling portion of the evening, Clark focuses on the TV with unwavering attention. 

Trying to force his muscles to unknot, Lex scrubs his sweating palms against his thighs, sets his eyes back on the movie. He’s seen this dozens of times. He couldn’t tell what’s happening on screen right now to save his life. 

Clark noisily munches his way through another handful of popcorn.

At least one person in this friendship has to know when retreat is the better part of valor, Lex reminds himself. 

Nope, he has to know. 

“Not Queen, though?” he asks, ringingly loud across the quiet of the living room. 

The scandalized look on Clark’s  face says more than words possibly could. That doesn’t make it any less comforting when he scrunches his nose and says, “Ollie? Ugh, weird, no.”

***

There’s something about the farm that just clears Clark’s head. Since he started full-time at the Planet and Mom won her senate seat, they’ve mostly been leasing out the fields, but there’s always something that needs doing. Sometimes he thinks it would kill his dad to know that other people were working the land, but then again, the farm had more than half killed him in the first place; the worry, and the work, and never enough time to take care of himself. 

His father had always seemed so grown up; so wise, and certain, and solid. The older Clark gets, the more he has to wonder if that was real or if, underneath it all, Dad was confused and out of his depth sometimes too. It’s not really the kind of thing he knows how to ask about, but he mulls it over as he changes out the rusted lugs on the old tractor, hammers in some new posts for the hangdog fencerow on the back forty. 

For most of his teen years, it felt like he was just trying to survive this town—all of his ideas of adulthood focused on getting out and being… something else. He’d fallen into journalism by accident, and he loves it, really, but it was pure luck that he’d found it. Being Superman… well, some days it still feels like a fever dream. He hadn’t really thought about it at the time, but somewhere deep down he guesses he’d always hoped his life would turn out something like his parents’: something quiet, and unfussy, and filled with love. 

Quiet and unfussy were probably never in the cards, but he’s… he’s had a lot of love. 

Crash landed into his parents lives and they’d still doted on and protected him with every ounce of their beings. Lied, a lot, to all of the most important people in his life, and still wound up with friends who would—and often did—put themselves on the line for him any day of the week. He’d had Lana, Chloe, Lois, who all loved him in their own ways, even when things hadn’t worked out how he’d wanted. 

Lex. 

Lex, who has loved him with the most undisguised, unwavering devotion; has rewritten his own life to better suit Clark, risked more than most and lost plenty of it. And Clark has always seen it as love, taken it for granted, even, and still he’d missed the core of it, because that’s the way Lex is,—wearing all the things that can hurt him as armor, hidden in plain sight. 

So plain that he’d assumed Clark knew , and wasn’t that a kick in the teeth? That he’d thought Clark was aware of how he might be making Lex feel for years and just didn’t care. It’s only marginally worse than the fact that it all flew over his head completely. 

“Would you like to tell me about it?”

Clark has superhearing, so it shouldn’t, in theory, be possible to sneak up on him, but that has never seemed to matter where his mother was concerned. There’s a soft look on her face, half worried, half encouraging, when he turns around to find her standing on the edge of the porch. 

For a second, that old impulse to play it off kicks in, but then again, she did just catch him standing in the middle of the yard staring into space for who knows how long. 

Besides, he’s a full-grown man now. He doesn’t need to hide this kind of thing from her. 

“Did you and Dad think that Lex… I mean, that Lex and I…”

Yep, super manly. That’s great. 

Her eyebrows furrow, more lines forming around the purse of her lips than there used to be when she’d counsel him through his petty high school dramas, but it’s still the same look. 

“Is this about that article? Sweetheart, you can’t take any of that gossipy nonsense to heart.”

She’s in what she calls her “farm chic” today, a senate-worthy blouse on top of worn-in denim. He vaguely remembers her saying something about a video call earlier, but he’d been distracted. 

Yeah, okay, subtle thy name has not been Clark today. 

“No,” he shakes his head, then corrects, “I mean, sort of but not… It’s just.” 

All of the breath bursts out of Clark on a sigh he can feel in his bones. He flops down to sit on the top step of the porch. 

“I feel like I missed… some things. Some really important things. And I’m not really sure what to do about it now that, you know, I’m not missing them anymore.”

Mom’s knee pops quietly as she moves to sit down beside him. The shape of her seems too small to contain all of the things she is, so strangely dwarfed by Clark’s looming body.

“And these things made you wonder what your father and I thought of you and Lex,” she asks in a reasonable tone that means Clark’s probably not going to enjoy whatever comes next, but is also probably going to find it useful. 

All he can do is nod. 

The flower beds around the house have gone slightly fallow with inattention. There are a few errant sprigs of crab grass poking up through the slats of the porch stairs, fluttering softly in the latent breeze. 

“I think…” She takes in a long breath and lets it out slowly, “that what I think doesn’t matter much.” 

She’s smiling when he looks back at her, but there’s melancholy around the fringe of it. 

“I don’t know if your father and I always got things right, particularly about Lex,” she admits, “but we did our best to keep you safe, so that when the time came for you to choose what kind of life you wanted, you had all of the options we could give you.”

Her hand is warm when it lands on the back of his own, fragile seeming when he knows she’s anything but.  

“Some of those choices keep me up at night—I’m your mother, it’s my job to worry—” she cuts him off before he can react. She’s never tried to talk him out of being Superman, but he knows that running into danger, even if it’s to help people, wouldn't have been her ideal for him. “But I also couldn’t be more proud of the man you’ve become. And, I promise, there is nothing you could ever do to change that.”

Clark’s nearly 27 years old. Most of the people he grew up with have jobs and homes and kids of their own, and he really expected to be past the point in his life where he’d be crying on his mother’s porch, but here they are. 

“I think I’ve hurt him,” he confesses, eyes on the pea gravel, throat shrinking shut around the words. “I didn’t even know it. And he’s Lex, so he just let me. He didn’t even expect me not to. I’m scared I’m going to do it again, and he doesn’t even want to give me the chance, and if I get it wrong… I can’t… He’s Lex .”

I need him , he thinks, too sharp and sore to even make it past his tongue. 

His mother’s hand squeezes tight around his, fingers pressing into the soft pit of his palm. He could crush her on accident, but she’s never hesitated with him, not for a second.

“Some people make themselves easier to love than others.” She gives him a conspiratorial look, “believe me, I know. All you can do is be honest, sweetheart.”

The laugh that jolts out of him is a hiccupy little thing—to think, ten years on, that his mother would be advising him to be honest with Lex. Oh how the tables have turned. 

“Yeah.” The cuff of his sleeve is worn-soft, damp where he scrubs it across his eyes. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

The sun is long down by the time Clark makes his way out to the barn, phone in hand, the aftertaste of cherry pie still lingering on his tongue. He doesn’t feel lighter now, but he does feel more settled, the kind of certainty that comes over him sometimes with the League, when he just knows what he’s doing is right. 

He’s regretted plenty of things between him and Lex over the years, especially those early ones when the lies had almost destroyed everything. He’d never been more afraid than when he’d finally told Lex the truth, but he’s never, ever regretted it. It makes perfect sense that that’s still the right answer. 

The stairs to the loft still creak the way they used to, the old couch turned ghostly by a worn, rose-patterned sheet-turned-dropcloth. 

Lex picks up on the second ring, and that’s just like it used to be too.  

“Clark.” It’s a very Lex way to answer the phone, committing to nothing. He could just as easily be in the middle of a conference call as laying in bed. 

Better not to think about that last one. That’s not what this is about. Not yet, anyway.

“Hey, are you busy?”

The serious edge in Lex’s voice ratchets up a notch, “What happened?”

That’s really not the energy he was hoping to start this on, but the longer he wallows it around, the messier it’s going to come out. Better just to brazen his way through it.

“Nothing,” he says, aiming for reassuring. “I just. I need to say something, so just let me get it out, okay?”

The wary silence on the other end of the line was probably as much as he could have hoped for.  

“So, I realized recently that I…” Come on, Kent. “That there’s stuff I’ve been taking for granted. Stuff we haven’t talked about.”

“Clark.”

“No, seriously, shut up. This… this might be the most important thing about our whole relationship, and I’ve just assumed you knew it, but maybe you don’t, and you need to, okay?” 

Clark takes another breath, tries to rein in his rabbiting heart, continues, “So. You’re right. I do put too much stock in what other people want me to be. I think I do it less with you than with most people, but I still do it. So I get why you can’t trust what I’m thinking or feeling or whatever right now. Heck, I don’t even know if I can trust it myself. But, whatever else happens, whether or not anything ever happens, you need to know that I love you.” 

Phones are about as close as Clark gets to human-standard hearing. His ears can only pick up as much information as the technology can transmit, but he still catches the whisper of an inhale on the other end of the line, the way it stoppers like a corked bottle.

Brazen on, Clark, brazen on. 

“Platonic or romantic or whatever. You’re the other side of my coin, and that’s been true since, I don’t know. Maybe since before we ever met,” he smiles out of the hayloft window into the darkness, into the bated stillness on the other end of the phone. “Destiny, right? So everything else aside, I love you. I have always loved you. I will always love you. And I just needed you to know it.”

Outside, the crickets screech on, unaware of the bowstring moment. The stars seem particularly bright tonight. Clark doesn’t need a telescope to see them anymore, but he wouldn’t mind it, for nostalgia if nothing else. A handful of years and a whole lifetime away from the klutzy, self-conscious boy staring at a girl he could never hope to have from across the field. 

Now a klutzy-on-purpose, marginally less self-conscious man, maybe, just maybe, starting to figure out that what he wants has been in reach the whole time. 

“Well,” Lex says finally, all of the usual poise washed clean from his voice. “That was. I…”

“I know,” he interupts, because he does. 

Funny how it’s only after Lex has already told him that he realizes he didn’t need to hear it. A baseline, inalienable fact. 

Lex is quiet for another second, just one, the broken little boy that’s always been in there tidily folded back into Clark’s brilliant, funny, beautiful best friend. 

“Don’t Han Solo me, Kent, you don’t have the Wookie for it.”

He couldn’t hide the grin breaking across his face right now if he wanted to, and seeing as he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t bother to try, just lets the darkened fields and the sound of his voice have all of it.

“I don’t know, I think Batman’s at least as scary as a Wookie.”

Lex muses thoughtfully, “And appropriately animal-themed.”

“I guess if that’s the criteria, Hawkman is louder.”

“ Hawkman ,” a gusty sigh crackles across the line. “You’re all banned from developing your own aliases. The world cannot withstand another Noun-Man. Or Woman. Or Girl for that matter.”

“Super’s an adjective, actually,” he feels compelled to point out, even though it’s obvious Lex’s jag will not be derailed. Clark prefers it that way—Lex, warmed to the byzantine twists of a conversation, has always been one of his favorite things.  

“I’ve never understood your collective obsession with gender marking,” Lex is complaining, “I’ll at least give the Flash credit for committing to something unisex.”

Clark leans back and lets the wall take his weight, sinking into the sound and the rhythm, familiar as a heartbeat. 

“I’ll tell Green Arrow you approve.”

Somewhere in Metropolis, Lex reliably hisses, “Queen can pry approval from my cold dead hands.”

***

Lex couldn’t pinpoint the first time he realized he was in love with Clark. When the persistent urge to shove him up against the nearest flat surface and find out how far his pretty blushes extend transformed into the desire to brush the hair back from his face while he sleeps and listen to him wax poetic about his latest pet cause. 

It came over him like gravity, an orbit he fell into long before he noticed it; cosmic emotional entropy. It’s become an essential of his existence: the sun rises in the east, hair doesn’t grow on his body, he’s in love with Clark Kent. 

He wasn’t lying when he told Clark it had become pro forma—it’s been a long time since he’s dedicated any serious thought to it. For the last few days he’s barely thought about anything else. 

It’s becoming a problem. 

When he’s listening to the accountants drone on, all he can hear is Clark saying “I love you.” Giving a soundbite to CNN? There’s Clark’s voice purring fidelity in his head. Having dinner with Met U’s objectively gorgeous new associate professor of linguistics? I love you. I have always loved you. I will always love you.

He may, in fact, be losing his mind. 

Love is not the same as in love. He knows this. He’s bled on the pointy end of it for a very long time. The stupid, searing, all-consuming flare of hope where his heart used to be does not give a single shit. 

A craven, self-destructive creature he thought he’d vanquished years ago, it keeps rearing its head. He’s into men, he loves me, I could make him fall in love with me. I could give him things he never imagined, make him ache for me. I could have him. I could keep him. 

Lex’s most dangerous enemies have always been on the inside. 

“It’s the third ARGUS facility to get hit in the last six months,” Mercy says in conclusion. Lex couldn’t even hazard a guess at the subject. 

“Anything from our contacts at the D.O.D.?” he responds anyway. Lex got a degree in advanced biochem while maintaining a mid-tier narcotics addiction, he can fake it with the best of them.  

“Disavowed.”

“There’s a surprise.” His phone lights up with an alert from the private elevator, and the world, ever so briefly, stops spinning. 

Clark stares up at him from the screen, slumped against the back wall of the compartment, hands shoved into the pockets of his bargain bin jeans. The way that Lex’s pulse races is, frankly, embarrassing. 

“Keep an eye on it. If there’s any further action, we may need to step in.”

Mercy gives him an articulate glare, but she’s devoted enough to leave it at that. 

Clark startles when the elevator doors open to find her a foot in front of him, but he manages to skitter out of the way before she can run him over. 

Honestly, that woman is worth more than every other employee Lex has combined. 

“She’s the scariest person in the world, you know that?” Clark hitches a thumb at the closed elevator doors. 

He’s wearing a button down shirt, even though Lex knows he wears the costume to League meetings, which means he changed before coming over. It’s not entirely unusual for Superman to turn up at LexCorp; certainly not enough so that people would comment if the primary colors were seen around the building. Ipso facto, Clark has gone out of his way to wear a baby blue shirt that not only caters to Lex’s personal dress code but also sets off his eyes in a particularly pretty way. 

I could have him.

“I do.” Lex’s unruly mouth is trying desperately to beam. 

“I regularly deal with supervillains, I know scary,” Clark rambles. Rambles. For fuck’s sake, Lex feels like a schoolgirl. Five minutes and he’ll be giggling. His reputation may never recover. “She’s still leading the pack.”

“She’ll be pleased to know she’s polling ahead with her constituency.” 

He needs to financially crush someone to offset this ridiculousness. 

Flirting . With Clark . A thing he’d sworn never, ever to do again after the fiasco at his third wedding. 

Japan should be awake by now, there must be something he can hostilely takeover. 

There’s an awkward moment when Clark visibly tries to think of something to say, and then a more awkward one where he opts for, “Hi.”

I could keep him.

Lex manages to stifle a laugh, but amusement still leaks sloppily around the edges of, “Hello, Clark.”

This might actually be worse than the pining. At least then it was a solo humiliation.

“So,” Clark shoves his hands back in his pockets, takes them out again to scrub them on his thighs, fiddles with his belt loop in a way that on anyone else would be a flagrant attempt at drawing the eye to his cock but on Clark is just fidgeting. 

Probably. 

Dear fuck, what if it’s not?

I could make him ache for me.

“Drink?”

“God, yes.”

Lex’s office has gotten less homey over the years, particularly since the LexCorp residential tower went up next door and he lost the excuse of avoiding the commute. He’s not going to be winning any awards for work-life balance, but he hasn’t slept in his office in years. 

Still, alcohol can be a useful and, indeed, traditional part of any number of business deals, so the wet bar in the corner remains fully stocked, just in case. 

Pouring a healthy portion of scotch for himself and a lighter pour of bourbon for Clark, Lex generously proffers, “How was the masked meet and greet?”

There, normal conversation, no batted eyelashes or anything. 

Gratefully taking the cue, Clark perches on the edge of one of the guest chairs, looking, as ever, like he’s afraid it will buckle under his weight. 

“Batman’s worried about some kind of… assassin cult?”

“Batman’s worried?”

Suspicious? Yes. Psychotically obsessed? Sure. A nosy son of a bitch who should mind his own corporate backyard instead of poking around LexCorp’s business? Absolutely. But “worried” is not generally a word Lex would associate with Bruce. 

“Well, he mentioned it,” Clark shrugs. “Apparently they’ve been… active? Or something. His presentations are kind of light on the useful context parts.”

“He’s just protecting his secrets for the day Gotham decides to secede from the union. And good riddance.”

“They. Um,” Clark starts, obviously fighting the urge to defend a fellow cape, even when they all know that Gotham’s primary virtue is that it keeps its particular brand of nut job contained within the city limits. Lex has a full database of fallback plans prepared for the day that truism fails. 

“They have their own thing going on,” Clark lands on, finally. “How was your day?”

Lex situates himself, leaning against the edge of the desk, and if it happens to draw the eye to his cock, well, he’s not fidgeting, anyway. 

The fact that Clark’s eyes do, in fact, flit below the waist might actually crack the leaderboard on the top ten moments of Lex’s life. 

I could make him fall in love with me.

“Fine, thank you. I could fill you in on R&D’s latest if we’re off the record, Mr. Kent.”

Clark sticks his tongue out. It’s silly, and immature, and Lex hasn’t been this close to physically jumping him since Clark got a fucking driver’s licence. 

“There’s the sophisticated discourse I’ve grown accustomed to,” he forces himself to choke out instead.  

He’s halfway through an explanation of dev’s latest work on kinetic energy storage, which, in fairness, has largely devolved into a series of euphemisms about friction, when Clark stands up, fast enough that the chair skids a foot or so backward across the carpet. 

Heat pours off of him like Lex’s own private sun. 

Every molecule in Lex’s body stands at attention. 

“We, uh,” Clark breathes. It’s unreasonably sexy. “We haven’t really talked since… In a while.”

“I called you this morning,” Lex points out, because pedantry is a lifestyle, not a choice. 

“Yeah, but that was. You know,” Clark fumbles, “Work. I meant.”

“Something personal,” Lex suggests. He doesn’t have to stand in his own way, it’s just a habit. He can let himself have nice things. 

He loves me.

“Yes,” Clark agrees. Nicely. “I wasn’t sure if I… upset you, or anything. The last time we talked.”

Lex’s heart is jammed so far up his throat he’s nicking it with his molars. 

“Would you take it back, if it upset me?”

Clark’s eyebrows twitch, affronted.

“No, but.”

He loves me. He loves me. He loves me.

“But?”

Clark inhales, the shift of air cool on Lex’s lips, and in full defiance of the laws of space-time, he can see the next moment, and the next, and the one after, when it will be happening, when it will have happened. For better or worse, a decade of yearning and self recrimination and well-justified denial all down the drain, and if it fucks everything then so be it, because he’ll have Clark, for a second, or a year, or a lifetime, he’ll have had Clark. 

Naturally, this is the point where the building explodes. 

***

The uniform is more of a suggestion by now than anything that could reasonably be called a body covering. He should really stop off at the Fortress and change, or at least by his apartment building, assuming it’s still standing, and take the Clark Kent route. Perry’s bound to be in a tizzy, and Lois… 

Actually, probably better to avoid Lois until she stops wanting to kill him for nearly dying.

He’s got a couple of spare changes of clothes tucked away on strategic rooftops around the city, but it’s been almost 72 hours since he left Lex in the relatively safe hands of an apoplectic Mercy and he needs to lay eyes on him before dealing with anything as trivial as dignity or professional obligation. 

Ears tuned in for it, he can pick up the sound of Lex positively shredding underlings in five different languages across a satellite uplink well before he lands on the balcony of the residential tower. Next door, the corporate building already has a spiderweb of scaffolding covering the char and rubble that mars the first dozen stories. 

The automatic doors slide open as he steps up to them, moving so fast once he’s inside that the ash on his feet doesn’t even have a chance to settle on the pristine carpets. Lex is pacing behind the desk of his home office—because living within throwing distance of his actual office just hadn’t been close enough—dictating orders to a wall of screens. 

He’s obviously cleaned up since Clark last saw him; skin free of soot, white Oxford shirt only rumpled instead of torn and smoking. That might have been the only concession he’s made in the last three days, though, going by the circles under his eyes and the faint tremor in his clenched fist. Even metahuman healing can only beat back the need for food and sleep for so long. 

Slate blue eyes scrape across him like ice picks the second he slows down enough to hit the human visual spectrum. 

“Get it done,” Lex barks tonelessly, and then the screens, as one, go black.

Alive. Safe. 

Clark breathes for the first time since he reentered the atmosphere.

“You fucking idiot,” Lex seethes. 

Alright, not exactly the romantic leap into Clark’s arms he’d imagined, but still. Safe. Alive. 

“A dozen superassholes to whom kryptonite’s just a shiny rock, and you, personally, defuse a K-bomb? What is the point of having a caped crusader club if you don’t tap one of them in when literally your only weakness is involved?”

For the first time, Lex turns to fully face Clark, a dull, rusty splotch standing out in harsh relief against the white shoulder of his shirt. 

“There wasn’t time.” Alive, but maybe not safe. “Lex, you’re bleeding.”

Even for Clark, whose relationship with speed has long been a fuzzy-edged, theoretical thing, time seems to disappear between the door and his arms wrapped around Lex, cradling him, far too late to protect.

“I was lightly shot.” The hand of his uninjured arm flips indifferently, a world away from how he molds against Clark.

“Oh my God, Lex!”

Clark’s vision cycles through the spectrum, shifting through clothes and flesh and bone to follow the track of the wound from below Lex’s collarbone out through his back. 

“I’m fine. Through-and-through, hardly worth the stitches.”

An inch or two either way could have been his heart, lungs, spine. 

“This time next week there won’t even be a scar,” Lex adds, blithely.

An inch or two either way, a moment or two too late during the explosion, and this body could have been cold, empty. Clark could outrun a bullet in his sleep, breeze through a falling building, and still he almost lost this. 

Lex makes a soft, startled noise against his lips as Clark presses their mouths together, uncoordinated and off-center and fantastic. It’s not a sexy kiss, it’s not even a good kiss, but it’s the most important one of Clark’s life and it seems to go on forever even as it’s over far too soon. 

The warm fog of Lex’s breath is panting against his lips when he pulls back, even though he knows more than enough about Lex’s experiences to guess how bland a simple, closed-mouth kiss has to be by his standard. 

Still, his voice is thick, lust strangled, when he leans back in and murmurs, “From here on in, kryptonite is Wonder Woman’s job, do you understand me?”

He smells like an ashtray, which means either he sent Mercy out to buy him cigarettes (unlikely) or at some point Lois has been here and he’s stolen them from her, which would be worse. Lex and Lois have always gotten on like a house on fire: lots of screaming and people fleeing for safety. A furtive scan of the room doesn’t show the pack, which means Lex probably chainsmoked them all, possibly while carrying out a full-scale ground war against the League of Assassins by phone. 

He chases the taste of tobacco into Lex’s mouth, licks it off the back of his teeth. 

Pressed flush against each other, he’s suddenly aware of how much his uniform is not covering. Minutes ago, he’d been hovering in orbit, courtesy of Green Lantern’s ring, absorbing all of the raw sunlight he could stand to reknit torn and bruised skin and muscle, energy pouring through him roughshod. It means that Lex feels subtly cool against him now in all of the places their skin touches, as Lex’s hands roam along the length of his back, clutching at his shoulder blades like there’s any closer for them to get.

Maybe there is. 

Between Lex’s office and his bedroom, there’s enough time for Lex to gasp against Clark’s mouth, but not much else. 

“You know I hate that,” he says with a nip to Clark’s lips. The fact that he’s crawling backward onto the bed, fumbling with his shirt buttons at the same time kind of takes the sting out of it. “Fuck, you would wait until I have a bullet wound.”

Gut-punch guilt floods through Clark. 

“We can-”

“Don’t you dare,” Lex snaps, something slightly unhinged making a home in the corners of his eyes. With a final, wriggling effort, his arms come free of his sleeves. A neatly taped patch of gauze dabbled in russet spoils the smooth lines of his chest. “We’re doing this. Take that off.”

He jerks his chin at the tattered remains of Clark’s uniform, hands already busy unzipping his own slacks. Deep purple silk flashes at Clark from the V of Lex’s fly, and that’s something he’d really like to explore further at some point, but Lex is shoving the whole works down, shifting gingerly to kick them off without half of his usual grace, so the idea will have to wait. 

A moment of superspeed leaves the remainder of the uniform splashed vivid across the floor, duvet silken under his knees as he lifts Lex just enough to avoid putting any pressure on his injury. Lex allows it, which probably counts as a concession.

He’s so light in Clark’s arms, so smooth and pale and wonderful. So fragile, except for how he’s not—except for how he is . 

“Who shot you?” Clark asks as Lex’s long, lean legs wrap tight around his waist. The hard line of their dicks brush together, setting off a shower of sparking pleasure that tightens Clark’s stomach and makes it incredibly hard to concentrate.

“They’ve been terminated with extreme prejudice.”

He should be sickened, but there’s bitter vindication crunching between his teeth instead. Clark’s put himself out in the world as a symbol, made himself a target, but to come after Lex, to try and kill Lex… 

“Remind me to thank Mercy.”

Lex’s hand tangles in his hair, tugs him down until they’re mouth to mouth again, murmuring, “Later,” wetly around the shape of Clark’s tongue. He’s breathing in that deep, even way that’s only controlled because he’s clearly working at it, hips moving in a fluid, rocking tempo that sends shivers down Clark’s spine. 

Nimble fingers slip down to wrap around them both, a needy noise jarring loose from Clark’s throat as a knuckle catches along the head. 

Lex’s mouth skids along his cheekbone, damp smear of a whisper pressed into his skin between increasingly frantic kisses. “Don’t leave me, you can’t—”

“I love you,” Clark babbles back. He’s caught between the twin challenge of trying to avoid jostling Lex while also rocking into him, muscles tensing as they slide against each other, prickly, razor-edged bliss building in on itself. 

Lex is good with his hands, because of course he is, of course he would be, and some part of Clark has obviously known this all along because he’s not shocked in the least by the way every twist and curl of them makes him feel overheated inside of his skin, pleasure developing hooks that snag and drag at him at odd angles. 

It’s not going to last long, which is good—because this is stupid and risky and he’s supposed to be protecting Lex not making things worse—but also terrible, because then it will be over and rubbing against Lex’s body and tasting Lex’s skin and hearing his voice rattle increasingly unsteadily in his ear is basically the only thing Clark is interested in doing ever again.  

Practically writhing in his hold, Lex clutches at him, nuzzles, bites.

“—burn worlds for you,  give you anyt—don’t—fuck, Clark!”

His head tips back suddenly, the long column of his throat flexing as the rhythm of his hand goes erratic, liquid heat splashing against Clark’s skin. 

“I love you. I love you. I love you,” a benediction and a plea as Lex keeps working him, twitching with the aftershock when he doesn’t bother to let go of his own dick, relentless and sticky-slick and velvet and…

A whole different kind of explosion—a much better kind of explosion, this one exclusively on the backs of Clark’s eyelids, a deluge across freshly-grown nerves. 

God. 

God.

Gently as he can, he lays them back down on the bed, settling carefully along Lex’s side. There doesn’t appear to be any fresh blood staining the gauze, and a surreptitious peek with x-ray vision shows all of the stitches intact. 

Not that Lex appears to care. In fact, he looks like nothing short of the literal end of days might wipe the smug little smile off of his face. Glinting with sweat and come, every line of his body slack, and smooth, and lickable—Clark’s seen Lex in a lot of designer outfits, but this is definitely his best look. 

They could have been doing this for years . 

Some time when there’s not a major international crisis waiting in the wings, Clark’s going to take a minute to have some kind of breakdown over that. 

With a satisfied hum, Lex’s eyes blink open, indolently half hooded. Clark’s trying very hard to pay attention to that and not the way Lex’s fingers are playing through the come on his belly. He does, actually, have a lot of really important stuff that needs his attention, immediately if not sooner, and watching Lex be all wanton and debauched is not going to lead to any of those things getting done. 

“You love me.” Lex’s voice is blackened with satisfaction, curled into the shape of his smirk. It turns out to be highly infectious.

“You picked up on that, huh?”

If humans had the right kind of vocal cords to purr, Clark’s pretty sure Lex would be doing it. As it is, he just sort of hums, “The feeling is mutual, by the way.”

“Yeah, I’m kind of slow on the uptake, but I worked that out, too.” 

Lex’s eyes slip closed again, and Clark really, really, has to get up, no matter how good a quick cat nap next to his… title-to-be-determined would be. Any second now, he’s going to do it. Really. Getting up right now. 

“We need an orbital hub for emergencies, somewhere we can get you closer to the sun on short notice.” Lex’s voice jolts Clark out of the near doze he’d been creeping toward with all the tenderness of a cattle prod. “It’ll be useful. The League’s extra-Earth membership is increasing, and it never hurts to have an advance lookout point.”

As if he can’t see Clark staring at him like the crazy person he very clearly is, he carries on, “I’ve sketched out some basic schematics. Wayne Enterprises will have to be involved, because you know Wayne won’t set foot on it if he doesn’t vet the station personally, and there’s no way Queen’s going to let us build it without him too, the bitchy egomaniac.”

He looks wide awake, despite the unabated circles under his eyes. Clark loves this maniac, but he also hates him a teeny tiny bit. 

“Your pillowtalk needs work.”

Lex has the audacity to narrow his eyes at him.

“We exchanged endearments,” he says, defensively.

“Technically you said ‘the feeling is mutual’.”

One pale, implanted eyebrow wings up.

“Technically I told you I loved you weeks ago, you’re playing catching up.”

The thing is, it’s exactly the way they’ve always talked to each other, minus the slight change in subject matter and the noticeable—really noticeable; Lex has always been objectively hot, but now that Clark’s letting himself think about it, it’s kind of hard to think about anything else—lack of clothes. The ease that Clark had always thought was supposed to come between two people who loved each other, but never actually materialized in his own relationships. 

With the obvious exception. 

Carefully, Clark leans across him, bracing himself to avoid touching Lex’s chest. 

“The last of the great romantics, Lex Luthor.”

It’s funny, because it’s true.

“I designed you a space station,” Lex argues, hands automatically slotting onto Clark’s sides. 

Clark legitimately has to kiss him, it’s nothing close to optional. 

“Thanks,” he smiles, pecking one more to the give of Lex’s lips. “I love it.”

***

Lex refuses to open his eyes until his feet are firmly planted on the penthouse balcony. 

Rationally, he’s aware that being hand carried by an invulnerable alien with a reaction time just shy of light speed is as safe as air travel on planet Earth gets. Rationality doesn’t have a chance to weigh in over the shrieking of his hindbrain whenever he’s hurtling through the air hundreds of feet above the city with nothing but Clark to hold onto. Exposure therapy has proven wildly ineffective. 

At least Clark had agreed not to carry him bridal-style. Lex can only take so many indignities in one day. 

“I need to become president,” he pronounces, waving aside the floor-to-ceiling glass doors and making a beeline for the espresso machine gleaming in the corner of the kitchen. It’s probably seen more action than every other appliance in the room combined, refrigerator included. “Then I can force Gotham out without waiting for them to secede.”

Hot on his heels, Clark—wearing the Superman suit, but still, Clark—reaches around him, grabbing an apple from the bowl of fruit that had appeared on the counter last week without so much as a by-your-leave from Lex. He proffers it deliberately. 

“Definitely not how the presidency works. Also, you’re aware that the League of Assassins isn’t actually based in Gotham?”

Peevishly, Lex accepts the apple—evidently dating Clark came with some fine print about converting to the religion of farm-fresh produce—waiting impatiently as the espresso machine hisses its way to a triple shot. Spending the morning arguing with super-people warrants some chemical intervention. 

“No, but the reason they’ve taken an interest in the rest of us is .”

He’d managed to ram the Watchtower plans through the Justice League’s governing body—nevermind that most of the Leaguers wouldn’t know a gravity generator from a hole in the ground—but Bruce is coming back to him with notes . 

He’s taking notes from a man in rodent-themed fetish wear. 

He’s starting to empathize with this al Ghul lunatic. 

“You can’t blame Batman for all of this,” Clark says in that tone he uses to substitute inflection for a convincing argument. “It’d be like blaming me for Zod or Brainiac.”

There’s an argument to be made there, but Lex isn’t interested in debating metahuman chaos theory. That way lies madness and never getting laid again, at least not by Clark, which is the only form of getting laid he’s interested in.

Huh. Who knew that all it would take to make him monogamous was regular access to sex with Clark? 

Actually, that tracks. 

Choosing caffeine over any of the various excellent assertions he could make and certainly regret later, Lex plucks his cup out of the machine as the last mahogany drips dribble in, not waiting for it to cool before slugging the entire thing back in a couple of mouthfuls. 

Clark glowers disapprovingly. 

Lex takes a conciliatory bite of the apple. 

“I should head to the Planet,” Clark sighs, all the remaining Superman sluicing out of him as he hitches a hip against Lex’s marble countertops. “Perry’s got me working up something on the rebuilding efforts.”

The bombings had primarily been targeted at corporate interests, but, unlike LexCorp tower, most of the city’s high-rises hadn’t been built with an intimate knowledge of metahuman abilities in mind. The Metropolitan National Insurance collapse had taken out half a city block all by itself, and only that little because Clark had managed to get there in time to curtail the fall. 

The cleanup efforts have taken longer than Clark’s happy with, but still less time than it would in any city without a resident superpowered busybody spearheading things. Or LexCorp’s newly minted construction technology. He’s donated all of the 3D concrete printers and the portable laser-welding apparatuses for the revitalization efforts, obviously, but the patents are going to make a mint. 

“Any interesting prospects?” he asks around another bite of apple. It’s not bad, actually. He has a tendency to forget to eat unless he schedules meetings during meals. 

Which might explain the three lunch meetings with Clark Kent he’s had on his calendar this month. Hmm. 

“There are things in this city that can operate without your input,” Clark says, patronizingly. 

“I’ll remember that next time you rush off to nab a purse-snatcher.” 

Lex trashes the tooth-whittled core of the apple, leaning back against the peninsula opposite Clark. 

In the space of a second, the atmosphere gains several PSI, slipping from cheerfully relaxed to fizzing potential with nothing more than two steps of Clark’s feet. It puts them intimately close, energy crackling like static electricity between their bodies. Lex’s skin buzzes with it, mouth gone wet in a way that has nothing to do with fructose. 

“You busy tonight?”

Clark’s arms brace against the counter on either side of him, boxing him in. Lex’s palms itch with the urge to curl around his hips and pull him in those last few inches.

It’s only years of hard-won self-control that keep his voice steady. “I have a call with the Shanghai branch, but if you come by after patrol we could do a late dinner.”

For fuck’s sake, he’s getting hard. Lex has a sexual resume creative and varied enough to shame Caligula and he’s getting hard over his boyfriend standing there and looking at him. These are the indignities of his life now.

It’s so great. 

More great when Clark shows some compassion and finally leans in to kiss him; slow, and decadent, and not at all dirty, except for how it’s Clark and that automatically makes it the most erotic thing Lex has ever experienced. 

“Cool,” Clark says roughly when they break apart. 

“ Cool,” Lex mocks. The red and blue is annoyingly well-designed to prevent easy access to skin, but it does nothing to stop him from getting a handful of the ripe curve of Clark’s ass—a dozen Smallville-era fantasies come true in the space of a minute. “Bring some things, you can sleep over.”

Over the last few days, he’s begun quietly making in-roads for a campaign to get Clark to move in. A little fast, technically speaking, but Lex has decided to count their courtship as everything from the Porsche onward, which puts them absurdly behind schedule.

Also, he’s developed an unforeseen appetite for cuddling, and Clark sleeping at his own place is eating into his agenda. 

Somewhere, Lionel is rolling over in his grave. That would really be motivation enough all on its own.  

Lex tips his chin up for another kiss that Clark chivalrously grants. One, that turns into two, that turns into five minutes of making out in the kitchen like horny teenagers. 

The hazy, lust-addled look on Clark’s face when they disentangle is never not going to be flattering. 

The slicked-back Superman coif is frazzled, blotches of heat rising high on his cheeks. 

The suit Lex wore for the League meeting is a complete loss—Clark rarely meaningfully damages things in the heat of the moment, but dry cleaning is no match for the wrinkles super strong fingers can press into a cashmere-blend twill. 

Lex has idly been toying with a concept for an anti-ballistic weave that might help with that, if he can work out how to integrate it with natural fibers. 

Ideas for later. 

“Okay, I’m really going to go,” Clark says, gratifyingly breathless.

“Have a good day at work, honey,” Lex teases, both because it sounds flirtatious and unaffected, and because the zingy little thrill it sends through his belly is better than every drug he’s ever snorted. 

Clark makes an unidentifiable noise in the back of his throat, wavering for a moment before he appears to catch himself and start pasting the veneer of truth, justice, and the American way over Clark Kent, libidinous twenty-something. 

“See you later.”

“Later,” Lex agrees, indulgently. 

As usual, there’s the subtle blurring effect as Lex’s retinas try and fail to keep up with the movements of someone who’s no longer standing in front of him. He’s just considering making himself another coffee before changing for his 11:30 when, jarringly, Clark’s face is in front of him again. It’s not the sort of thing you ever actually get used to. 

“Love you,” Clark says, planting a quick, dry kiss on Lex’s lips, and then he’s gone once more. 

In the privacy of his own apartment, with no one around to see, Lex lets himself smile without a single scrap of control. 

“I love you too,” he says to the silence of the room. However far away he is by now, he knows Clark will hear it.