Chapter Text
Clark cannot take his eyes off of the man in front of him. He has seen a lot of impossible things, done a lot of impossible things but none of that really compares to meeting Santa Claus.
The real, actual Santa Claus. Kris Kringle, in the snowy-bearded, ruddy-cheeked, red-suited flesh.
Granted, the man is different than he might have expected. Sadder, down on his luck, and world weary but after the night Clark has had, there is no denying that this is him.
Not even the chime of his cell phone ringer going off can distract him from taking it all in. Not even when the new text alert becomes his ringtone, meaning that someone is trying to call him. Whoever it is can wait. How often do you get to meet Santa? The real one?
“Do you need to get that?” Santa asks.
Clark blinks. “What? No. You were saying something about delivering all of the toys in one night. How do you do that? I mean, I have superspeed but is it some kind of magic? Or alien technology?”
“What are you, a reporter?” Santa narrows a gimlet eye at him. Clark opens his mouth to assure him that, no he’s just curious, when Santa waves him off. “Nah, don’t worry about it. I do it same as in the stories. Big sled, eight tiny reindeer, the works. Are you sure you don’t need to answer that?”
Clark scowls down at the phone in his pocket and sighs. “Let me just check.”
It’s a message from Chloe, followed by a missed call and a second text.
Lex was shot earlier tonight in Edge City
As of 11:15 my contact at Met Gen isn’t sure he’s going to make it. Thought you would want to know
Two simple messages, bluntly stated like a news item from the AP coming in over the wire. They hit Clark like a gut punch, if such a thing was actually capable of making him double over in pain.
“Bad news?” asks Santa.
Clark has to clear his throat a little before he speaks. He isn’t sure if the words will come out the first time he tries. “My—uh, my friend. He’s been hurt, pretty badly from the sound of it. They don’t know if he’s going to be okay.”
“Friend, huh? Is that what you’re calling it these days?”
“What?” The question is thick in his throat.
“Is that really what you want to call the guy running a cutthroat campaign against your father?”
Clark stares at the man, dumbstruck. Already tonight, Santa has revealed a bit of seeming omnipotence, perhaps some truth to the idea that he knows when you’re sleeping and when you’re awake. Maybe that’s what makes his chest feel tight. Not the thought that Lex is dying somewhere in Metropolis and Clark might never get the chance—there are so many things he never got a chance to do or say. So many things that the two of them never got the chance to work out. No matter how hopeless it seemed at times, there was always some part of Clark that thought maybe, that hoped maybe…
Damn, now he really is going to cry in front of Santa.
There is an argument to be made that there isn’t any shame in crying in front of Santa. Apparently, he sees all, knows all, and knew you even as a little kid. Chloe would say he is a victim of toxic masculinity, passed down to him by generations of emotionally repressed forefathers. On the other hand, Pete would say he is being a girl before Clark would punch him in the arm and tattle on him to his sister. Point being, Clark really doesn’t want to cry in front of Santa Claus.
“I care about him,” Clark manages to get out. “Sure, we’ve had our differences but he doesn’t deserve to die.”
Saying it out loud brings the worst bout of pain yet. Like it might make it real, opening up the possibility to the universe. Lex was shot. Lex could die. All of the fights they ever had could be over for good unless some manner of luck or divine intervention decides to weigh in Clark’s favor.
“He was my best friend.” Full stop, end of sentence. The words choke Clark by the time they finish coming out. Because Clark has never known anyone like Lex. Never felt so deeply connected to someone so fast, the way he did with Lex. Speaking about things like destiny after their first meeting should have been laughable and yet it wasn’t. Destiny simply felt right.
Except somewhere along the way the two of them ruined everything. Clark’s secrets got in the way of that connection and Lex’s obsessive interest pushed him too far. What should have lasted forever will now do so only as a wound, a scar that Clark will carry with him centered around what could have been.
“I couldn’t tell him about me,” Clark explains. He wipes away a few tears that have broken free of his iron control and figures that, if he is going to cry in front of Santa, he might as well tell him why. “He wanted to know so badly, about all of the weird things that have happened over the last few years, about all of the strange things he knows that I can do. And I just couldn’t tell him.”
“Because you thought he would hurt you.” Santa nods like he understands. But he doesn’t, not really and Clark has to correct him.
“No,” he says sharply. “He wouldn’t. God knows that he’s more than capable, if he wanted to but no. I don’t think he would hurt me. Strap me to a lab table and dissect me.” The thought makes Clark shiver, picturing Lex standing above him with a cold, distant expression on his face. Or worse, his eyes alight with a curious fire, eager to take him apart with kryptonite-tipped steel and find out what makes him tick. “He is—was my friend. And I know that despite appearances lately, there is good in him.”
Which feels strange to say to Santa Claus, mythical arbiter of naughty and nice. But it’s true, Clark knows it is.
“So what is it then? What holds you back?”
Clark shakes his head. “I have never told anyone my secret. People know but only because they figured it out for themselves. And it has only ever put them in danger.” He takes a deep breath. “I was afraid. I am afraid. For him, for me, for the people I love. I couldn’t do it.”
“And now?”
Santa isn’t exactly the sympathetic ear Clark might have expected him to be. Honestly, Clark can’t picture him as one of those mall Santas that parents take their kids to see for pictures so that they can sit in his lap and tell him what they want for Christmas. Or perhaps he can picture it, but as one of the more grizzled Santas that has been at it for a few years too long. Perhaps that’s even true.
This Santa is blunt and tired and he cuts right to the heart of the matter even when Clark isn’t sure that he wants him to. What does Clark feel about Lex and his secret and the ruin of their friendship? About the same now as he always feels.
“I miss him so much,” says Clark. His heart aches. He didn’t really know that was something it could do. He has hurt before, wanted before, but not like this. The pain sitting like a stone inside his chest is a kind of throbbing grief. Mourning something that hasn’t quite died yet. “I wish there was some way to fix it.”
Santa sighs, loud and obnoxious. “You wish it, huh?”
Clark tilts his head at him. “Uh, yeah?”
“If you had one Christmas wish because you helped an old man remember what it’s all for, that’s what you’d spend it on?”
It takes Clark a second to understand what Santa Claus is saying to him but only because it’s so fantastical. Once he gets it, he is on board completely. “You mean you could do it?”
“It wouldn’t be my first choice of Christmas wish but seeing as he means so much to you.” Santa looks off into the distance, canting his head to the side like he is thinking. Then he huffs a laugh. “Yeah, I think this could work. Wouldn’t be the first vision of his future he’s had tonight but it’ll be a whole lot better than the one he cooked up himself.”
“You’re going to Christmas Carol him?” Clark asks. “Lex isn’t Scrooge.”
Santa shakes his head. “Not far off the way he’s going, is he? No, I’m going to show Lex Luthor a different path than the one he is on. A perfectly possible future, so long as he wises up.”
“Can I see it? The future that you show him.”
Santa shrugs. “Sure, but as a silent witness. You’ll see everything but you won’t be able to interfere. And what he does with this vision when it’s all over is entirely up to him. Understand?”
Clark nods.
“Alright, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Lex comes to awareness slowly. He is perfectly comfortable, lying in a bed that feels like his own. His face rests against a silk pillow case that smells like him. The sheets against his skin are high threadcount cotton, soft and light and warm. They feel expensive and familiar.
Home. He must be home.
His limbs shift restlessly against the sheets as his dream comes back to him in fits and starts. Lana, his father, his mother, the future. His heartbeat quickens, remembering the panic, the betrayal, the hurt. He opens his eyes a little to white daylight behind curtains and is about to throw back the blankets when an alarm clock goes off on his side of the bed.
The chime is an unfamiliar one and that realization cuts right through his panic, sharpening it into something more immediate. His eyes fly open to take in his surroundings but before he gets too far, a groan sounds from behind him on the bed and a strong arm tightens around his waist.
“Did you set the alarm clock by accident?” a groggy voice murmurs in his ear. Lex knows that voice, he knows this arm.
Lex reaches up to fumble at the alarm clock and put some distance between himself and that embrace. Beyond the nightstand, Lex squints into a highrise view of the Metropolis skyline, bright in the early morning. Where is he? But there is no time to answer that before steeling himself once the alarm dies away. He rolls over to face a sleepy Clark Kent, sprawled shirtless in his bed.
Clark smiles up at him. “I filed my last story with Perry last night so we could sleep in. Don’t tell me you’re going to try to work this morning.”
The scattered sunlight hits his irises just right to turn his eyes the most gorgeous shade of green and blue. He is a vision. A big cat, sated and content in the early morning, pleased just to be looking at Lex. Bedroom eyes that Lex knew deep down somewhere that Clark possessed but never dreamed might be turned on him someday.
A dream. This must be another dream. The thought occurs to Lex as Clark reaches out and pulls Lex in by the waist, manuevering them so that Lex is half on top of Clark and oh, they’re not wearing pants.
Lex is straddling one of Clark’s legs. He can feel Clark’s hard length against his thigh, matching his own interest despite the strangeness of how they came to be here. This is nothing like the last dream he woke from, despite the warm early morning light and the tangled sheets. This is pure indulgence, more happiness than Lex’s psyche is usually willing to tease him with.
“Did you want to go back to sleep?” Clark asks as he runs big hands down Lex’s side. Hot as hell and funny too. A half-smile lifts the corner of Clark’s mouth as he feels Lex’s hips twitch against him involuntarily. Lex isn’t sure he’s ever been this aroused in his life.
His mind is reeling, thrown between all that he has right in front of him and a vision of a life lived nobly, where none of that honesty and integrity was able to protect the ones he loved. A half-lived life in which he cast aside all of his ambitions for mundanity and still couldn’t manage something resembling a happily ever after. And now this.
“God no,” Lex breathes, because he is nothing if not adaptable. Quick thinking, ready to seize the moment and exploit a situation for all it’s worth. So what if this is a particularly intense, immersive dream? Lex has wanted this for years and if this is how he is going to get it, so be it.
Lex presses up and forward to close the distance between them. Clark’s hands naturally shift lower to palm his ass, his thighs, like they belong there. His lips, his tongue, his hands, they move with a confidence and certainty that Lex’s Clark does not possess yet and despite how much Lex has fantasized about Clark’s inexperience, he also appreciates the advantages of a man that knows what he is doing.
They rock together, slow and lazy but heating up fast, Lex’s hips grinding against Clark, Clark kneading the muscle of Lex’s flank, firm and possessive. Lex licks into Clark’s mouth and Clark responds in kind, opening up, making these small, sleepy and pleased little sounds that go straight to Lex’s cock. Clark moves against him like these are parts in a dance. Like he knows Lex, knows what he likes, knows what he wants from him. And while Lex would love to discover Clark for the first time, trailblaze that virgin territory, there is something heady about having the ground already paved for him. Like slipping into a warm bath or a well-tailored suit, enveloped in absolute perfection.
Clark turns his face to the side and Lex takes the opportunity to explore lower. Following the sharp line of his chin and the slight bit of stubble there to the hinge of his jaw, Lex sucks the sensitive skin just below his ear before mouthing the lobe with a hint of teeth to make Clark moan. “Mmph, do you want—“ Clark takes a breath before continuing. “Do you want to fuck me? I should still be—nngh, ah yes. I should still be good from last night.”
He makes an aborted motion towards the nightstand and Lex takes the hint. Lex is back with the bottle of lube before Clark can miss him, kneeling between Clark’s spread legs. He slicks his hand before pressing his fingers to Clark’s hole, exploring gently. He strokes the furl of him there and there is a little give, not loose and well-fucked but ready for another round and Lex wants to give that to him so badly.
Clark arches his back a little to give him better access. Lex hikes Clark’s legs up onto his hips and begins opening him up. Not too much—he honestly isn’t sure he could take the sights and sounds of Clark being teased without coming long before Clark did. He gets two fingers inside Clark’s slick, tight heat, working them both in and out past the second knuckle and scissoring them a little before deciding that is more than enough. He has to be inside Clark now. The best time would have been moments after Clark said the word fuck and the second best time is now.
Lex can feel his breath hitch as he enters Clark, pressing in slow and inexorable. Reaching up, Clark pulls their upper bodies together as though there is any closer for them to be. Like they’ve done this before, a hundred times before, Clark relaxes and lets go of a long, low breath. His heart feels like it is pounding in Lex’s veins.
Fully seated inside Clark, Lex groans, mouth falling open. It’s been too long since he has done this and to have it be Clark. Beautiful, gorgeous, insatiable Clark, who bites at Lex’s lower lip and gives him a quick kick to the back of his thigh, a not-so-subtle signal to get moving. Lex is having his entire world rocked but to Clark this languid, early morning wake up is taking too long. He never was one for patience. Lex can only hope that in some version of reality where he gets to keep this—yeah, right—some version of himself gets to tie Clark down on a nightly basis and open him up slow and sweetly, until this man is a trembling puddle of need. Because that is what Clark is making him feel, liquid and molten and hardly up to giving Clark the fucking that he deserves.
Pulling back a little, Lex experimentally rolls his hips forward, teasing out the pressure on his cock, feeling each and every subtle response from Clark. The way he tenses around him, the stutter in his breath, all of it becomes the center of Lex’s entire world. The soft groan Clark lets out as Lex shunts forward again and again, flirting with his prostate, makes Lex bit his lip to keep from echoing it.
“Lex,” Clark whines. The get on with it goes unsaid but heard loud and clear.
How can Lex do anything but obey? He picks up the pace in increments, still a little leery of going too far too fast despite Clark’s encouragement. But before he knows it, he is pounding into Clark with enough force to push him a little up the bed with each thrust. Sweat forms in all the places their bodies touch, sticking them skin to skin. Lex pants into the bare inches between their faces, the air damp and hot, Clark’s mouth parted to take it all in.
His arms and legs are wrapped around Lex, reaching for him, grasping at him, spurring him on. He rocks his hips in instinctive little movements in time with Lex.
When Lex takes Clark in hand, the long hard length of him thick and solid and gorgeous, red and weeping at the tip, Clark cries out. One stroke and then two in the midst of everything else and Clark is coming, not a moment too soon. Lex takes one look at Clark’s face broken open in pleasure—eyes pressed closed with dark lashes fanned across his cheekbones, full lips parted in a cry, hair a gorgeous mess—and spills over immediately.
Lex doesn’t think there is a reasonable person in existence who wouldn’t forgive him for thinking, Lana who?
Clark kisses him through the aftershocks, when the muscles in his limbs go liquid and Lex collapses onto him, Clark is there to hold him. He slides out and everything is warm and slick, satisfied and wonderful. Lex could fall asleep like this, wrapped in Clark’s arms, and it would be the best dream Lex has had in years.
Then Clark rolls them both over so that his weight is bearing down on Lex, warm and solid and heavy, pinning him in place. Maybe Lex should be more upset about the sudden change in position, about feeling small in Clark’s arms, but he can’t bring himself to muster up the indignation. He feels too good, too right, with Clark on top of him.
“Mmph, did you set the alarm on purpose last night?” Clark asks between kisses. “You know I love it when you schedule sex.”
Clark smiles, laughing at him, before he bites down a little on Lex’s bottom lip and scatters any thoughts that Lex was able to gather. He would do that, wouldn’t he? Pencil it in between meetings, clear his schedule. Helen would have hated it, she would have thought it was impersonal, not spontaneous enough but Clark, this Clark finds it funny. Endearing maybe, though Lex isn’t sure that anyone has ever thought of him that way.
Lex threads his fingers through Clark’s hair to hide his non-answer. Kissing Clark is addictive, Lex’s whole body alight with the sparkling joy, want, disbelief.
They stay like that even as they move into the shower to clean up. The whole endeavor is long and indulgent, neither of them really able to keep their hands away for long. Clark, because he seems tremendously loved up and insatiable with it and Lex, because he finds his hands and his lips, his tongue and teeth and every square inch of bare skin, hungry for Clark. Now that he has him, he isn’t sure what he is going to do without him. Something deep in his gut was starving for him and is only now being fed.
The bathroom is thick with steam by the time they’re finished. Clark heads off to get changed while Lex slips on a pair of loose sleep pants and tries to get his bearings. He places both hands firmly on the cool marble countertop, sleek and elegant, stylishly designed like everything else he has seen so far. A penthouse apartment in the middle of downtown Metropolis, the shared home of some version of Lex Luthor and Clark Kent.
A second dream, on top of the dizzying one he already had. Only this one is already so different from the last.
He screws his eyes up tight. What is happening to him?
The last dream felt fully realized. An entire future world in which he defied his destiny, ignored his birthright by sacrificing his ambitions and settled down with a nice girl only to have everything taken away from him. Lex learned his lesson and learned it well. He always was a quick study.
So what the hell is this?
He would call it a dream only Lex’s dreams are never this good. Never this complete and immersive and never this nice. Perhaps he is dead this time, the bullet did its work and killed him, though Lex has strongly suspected for some time now that when he dies, any afterlife he enters will not be as sweet as this.
Clark’s head leans in through the bathroom door. “Hey, I’m going to go grab breakfast. Do you want to take care of the coffee?”
Of all the things Lex has to puzzle over, he refuses to let breakfast be one—where is Clark going? Why don’t they have breakfast here? Or get something sent up?
“Sure,” Lex says. Clark grins and then he’s gone, vanished almost instantaneously in the blink of an eye.
Lex pads out of the bathroom on socked feet, making his way to the kitchen on sheer instinct. Clark is nowhere to be found, with not even the sound of a closed door or an elevator to mark his departure.
He finds a phone plugged into a charger on an end table, a sleeker black rectangle with fewer buttons than the one he currently possesses. It lights up in his hand, prompting him for the password, four digits.
Lex isn’t the best at passwords. His personal devices are a mess of shoddy encryption that would be the bane of his IT department were they ever to find out. That’s why he prefers other methods of keeping his data safe. Physical means like armored guards and high-tech safes and very few people who know where the bodies are buried.
Which means he has a guess for what the password to this phone might be, based on the everything that has happened to him in this dream so far. If he’s right, everything his father has ever said about Lex being sentimental and therefore weak will be unequivocally proven.
Lex keys in the four digits of Clark’s birthday and the home screen blinks open.
Right then. After a moment to figure out the unfamiliar configuration, Lex finds an inbox full of emails that mean very little to him at first glance, mostly work related from people he doesn’t know about projects he also knows nothing about. He moves on to find an application with photos, not overly full but containing a few snapshots of a life lived. Lex finds himself drawn to one of Clark sleeping with his mouth open on a couch not too far from where Lex stands now, his head hanging at an ache-inducing angle, but sweet and domestic nonetheless.
There is another of Clark walking into the barn at the Kent farm, facing away from the camera, likely not knowing it was being taken. He’s wearing his dad’s tan jacket and smiling a little, his face in profile, like he is in the middle of saying something as he looks off at something in one of the fields. He looks indefinably older. Lex had vaguely registered the fact while they were in bed together but is only really able to verify it now. Something in the set of his jaw, stronger and more firmly, confidently set. His shoulders too are broader than Lex remembers them. But on top of that is something that goes beyond the physical because Clark has always been as big as Jonathan Kent for as long as Lex has known him. And yet the jacket fits when set on Clark’s shoulders there, rather than the look of a kid playing at dress up the way it might be if Lex’s Clark were to put it on now.
Lex gives himself a mental shake, knowing he has spent far too long with this one photo. He has time yet before Clark returns with breakfast but he also doesn’t know how long it will take to procure coffee from a kitchen he hasn’t seen yet.
The last thing he checks is the calendar. Today is, predictably it seems from his last incredibly life-like dream hallucination, December 24th in the far-off year of 2015. Clark was right this morning, his schedule is light for the day. An appointment at the Metropolis Food Bank at eleven, followed by a LexCorp Christmas lunch in Smallville of all places at two and then Christmas Eve at the Kents. It seems that no matter how strange his vision of the future, he isn’t getting out of that family party.
He closes his eyes and shakes his head at himself at a memory of that party from his last vision. It had been nice...nice enough at least, in the moment.
At the very least, it had been nice to feel like part of a family. To have the love and respect of the Kents, something he has wanted for years and would have done anything for once upon a time. So what, if the only way to get it was to completely divorce himself from almost every scrap of identity he had to his name? His career, his drive, his ambition. Get rid of all of those things and marry the girl of Clark’s dreams and then maybe, maybe he could get Jonathan Kent to pat him on the back and tell him he is proud of him.
Yeah, fat chance of that. Lex learned the lesson his subconscious was trying to teach him and he learned it well. There will be no straying from the path he is on. Lex does not want to leave it.
The kitchen is a spacious room, partially closed off from a dining room and living space beyond. In addition to a large marble island at the center, there is a big farmhouse style oak table and chairs beneath wide windows. It would be utterly out of place in any room designed for Lex and yet, here it fits. There are flowers in a vase at the center, on top of a handmade quilted mat. It’s somewhat… homey, and so Clark that it hurts.
Lex wrestles with the big copper espresso machine until it finally submits to his will. He almost doesn’t get the cup underneath it in time for the hiss of hot coffee to come jetting out but one or two lessons at the back of his mind about the machines in the Talon come to his rescue at the last second. He fixes the drinks entirely on instinct, a cappuccino with crystals of sugar visible on top of the foam for Clark and a double shot of espresso with a splash of milk for himself.
A sound like a rush of air and when Lex turns around, Clark is standing on the other side of the kitchen island with a paper bag full of bakery boxes. As he unloads his haul, Lex takes note of the name on the boxes, a bakery in San Francisco famous for artisan breads. He’s sampled their goods once or twice, liaising with Silicon Valley. At least, that’s what Lex knows about it in real life. In this dream or imagined future, perhaps they’ve expanded to Metropolis.
“Sorry that took so long,” Clark says. He looks especially pretty, his hair a little windswept, a faint spot of color high on his cheeks. “There was a line.”
Lex only just finished putting their coffee together. An elevator ride down a hundred floors and up again would take at least that long. But then, this is a dream, no matter how real this might feel. Things here don’t have to abide by real world logic. Lex needs to stop picking at the loose edges in this fantasy and simply enjoy it before it unravels around him.
“No worries,” he murmurs and hands Clark a cup. The look on Clark’s face is sweet as sunshine in spring and Lex has just enough experience with the honeymoon phase to see the kiss coming before it lands. The fact that it comes from Clark is still enough to take him by surprise but he tilts his head and leans into it and schools his face into something pleasant when it’s over.
They break into the box of baked goods soon after. Lex isn’t big on breakfast but the morning buns from this bakery are killer and of course, there are some in the box along with enough almond croissants, pain au chocolat, and scones to feed another three people. Clark takes a pain au jambon and like some kind of heathen, warms it up in the microwave.
Clark catches Lex staring—Lex can’t help it, and no, it isn’t just about the microwave thing. Watching Clark move, relaxed and casual, is novel and breathtaking. Lex will get used to it eventually, he’ll make sure of it, but for now Clark is a thing of beauty and Lex plans on looking his fill. “What? You know heat vision can’t do this kind of thing.”
Heat vision? No idea. “You could put it in the oven and then you wouldn’t ruin fine pastry by letting it get soggy in the middle.”
Clark’s nose wrinkles. “Takes too long.”
Lex smirks around a sip of coffee and then pulls away a piece of morning bun.
“Merry Christmas, by the way,” says Clark. “I know we’ve been up for ages but I didn’t get a chance to say it.”
“It isn’t Christmas yet.” For as little as Lex understands about his current situation, he feels pretty confident that it’s only the twenty-fourth.
“No, but you like Christmas Eve better.”
Which is true and it feels strange that Clark knows that. He isn’t sure that it’s ever come up between him and the Clark that he knows. Beyond everything that happened in bed between them this morning and the shower afterward, the pastries, the photos, the pieces of both of them blended so completely in the apartment around them. This vision of their relationship goes so far beyond their friendship even at its best. Clark knows him and apparently that isn’t too much of a stretch. Lex knew Clark’s birthday, knew how he liked his coffee, and so far fits seamlessly into the life they have together here. Lex knows Clark too.
Ugh. This is far too much of a mindfuck after everything Lex has already been through tonight. Why can’t he wake up in the hospital lying in pain or else get it over with and die already? This is a dream, none of this matters. Screw overanalyzing the situation—he needs to either wake up or convince Clark to fuck him. He needs to get his priorities straight.
First step in that agenda is sidling into Clark’s space, relishing how Clark opens up, shifts back against the countertop before wrapping his arm around him automatically to allow him in. “Any chance of cancelling our plans for today and going back to bed?”
Clark wants to, Lex can see it in his eyes when he meets them dead on. He can read it in the way they stand so close together in this big kitchen, the way that Clark leans in and presses their foreheads together. He wants to give in, likes that Lex suggested it.
He kisses Lex slowly and sweetly and for a moment, Lex thinks he has him.
But then Clark pulls back. “If you wanted more than that, you should have penciled it in your schedule. I wouldn’t miss our plans today for the world and neither would you.”
Right. A food pantry, the old Smallville Plant, and his parents’ house. So much better than having sex with him.
“Come on,” Clark says. “You’d better get dressed.”
The closet is a room just off of the bedroom Lex woke up in. Lex wanders in and takes note of the full racks of every necessary garment arranged in neatly organized sections, including a floor-to-ceiling set of drawers in the corner that are slightly more disorganized than the rest. The corner of a flannel shirt peeks out of one overstuffed drawer.
The collection is a little intimidating, even by Lex’s standards. He supposes a decade of changing fashions and shopping will do that. He runs his hands along the suit jackets hanging from the nearest rack, wondering how he is going to decide from all of this what he should wear. His father instilled in him a long time ago, the importance of maintaining appearances. A particularly painful lesson when one of the most defining features of his appearance was so completely beyond his control.
In his circuit around the room, Lex spies a strange garment on a hanger in a back corner of the closet: a bodysuit in lurid blue, yellow, and red, like something Warrior Angel might wear in the comic books. Skin-tight from the looks of it and garishly designed. Lex can only hope that it is some holdover from a Halloween costume for Clark and not some roleplay accessory gone wrong. He supposes Clark would probably fill the suit out nicely if he ever had the confidence to put it on but Lex really hopes he isn’t about to discover some new kink.
After surveying the wardrobe in its entirety, Lex is still more than a little intimidated by the task ahead of him. What do you wear to a corporate luncheon and a family Christmas party? And then he spots it, hanging beside a full length mirror, one outfit already set out apart from the rest.
A dove gray suit, freshly pressed. The staff must have had it made ready for him. Beside it is a navy blue wool overcoat. Definitely his style, but not a color he tends to favor. It matches the dark brown loafers shined and sitting neatly on the floor. Well, that makes the decision for him at least.
Lex buttons his cuffs and shrugs the jacket on before stepping in front of the floor length mirror. His reflection is neat, slightly dressed down from his usual attire but perhaps perfectly suited to the day’s festivities. He will just have to trust himself or whoever’s job it is to lay out his clothes for him.
The overcoat is a welcome weight across his shoulders, perfectly tailored across his back and through his hips. He spies a red and white plaid scarf from a rack in the corner and loops that around his neck too before appraising the final result in the mirror once more.
When he saw Clark’s picture earlier, he thought that Clark looked older. Not dramatically so, but like an image coming into slightly sharper focus, the lines drawn more boldly, more stridently than before. The same might be said of Lex now. The version of himself that looks back at him is ten years older but still the same man. His cheekbones a little sharper, the lines on his face a little deeper. His shoulders and upper arms are slightly broader too, like his body finally figured out how to gain muscle though thankfully, he will never approach Clark’s bulk.
With one last sweeping look from bottom to top, Lex decides he looks acceptable. Then his gaze snags on a man standing behind him dressed in bright red and white.
Fuck, he should have expected something like this.
“Who are you supposed to be?” Lex asks, because this is his coma-induced psychosis. He can be an asshole if he wants.
“The Easter Bunny.”
“Cute. Are you here to tell me I’d be better off dead or is that line reserved for those related by blood?” Lex fixes his tie in the mirror, beneath the scarf and the overcoat, trying to convince himself it isn’t a nervous tick. He just can’t bear the thought of looking at this man over his shoulder through the mirror. The thought of looking up and seeing Santa Claus is a little too much fantasy for his mind to bear.
“Christ, you’re a piece of work.” That earns him Lex's eyes, snapping to him because Lex can’t quite believe he really heard that. From Santa Claus. “You’re lucky you’ve got a good kid looking out for you. Let’s just say it’s been a while since you made the nice list.”
Lex bristles at that and then feels ridiculous for it, fighting all the while to keep his expression neutral. “What do you want?”
“This isn’t about what I want. I’m here on behalf of a friend.”
“A friend with an interest in me?”
“Aren’t you a smart one? Yeah, he did me a favor and then told me his Christmas wish. Just so happens that he wished to help you out.”
None of which really makes any sense at all to Lex, so he files that away to deal with later or never, if he has any say in the matter. But he can’t help poking at it a little. “Someone wished for you to show me a future where Clark and I are in a relationship?”
“Not exactly, that’s just a bonus for you. Aren’t you lucky he’s good in bed?”
Lex barks a harsh laugh at that, completely taken aback. “He’s fucking fantastic, yeah.”
“Just remember this isn’t all fun and games. You’re here for a reason. Put that big brain of yours to work and learn something while you’re here. Got it? You’ve got a friend out there that wants more for you than the path you’ve set your sights on.”
“You don’t know anything about me.” The defense is automatic. It feels good, sharp and quick. And true, because there isn’t anyone in the world that truly knows him. He’s better off that way, safer. He made up his mind in the silence of his own head and heart and he is determined now. Lex is going to take whatever happily ever after he can snatch from fate’s cold hands and he is going to do it with every ounce of power at his control.
Santa rolls his eyes at him. “I know all about you, Alexander. I know all about the dream you just had. I know all about the decision you think you’ve made. I know what you were doing in Edge City when you were shot in the street and I know about the labs you think are so secret.”
With each declaration, he takes a step forward. The low and steady intensity with which he delivers each one, coming from Santa Claus, is enough to shake even Lex’s firm resolve and force him to take a step back. His shoulder blades hit the mirror and there is nowhere else for him to go. He looks down into Santa’s face and blinks wide eyes at him.
“I know that when you were nine years old, you wished for a Game Boy for Christmas but your father didn’t like videogames. He thought they were a waste of time. When you were ten you wished for the new collector’s volume of Warrior Angel comics but your father gave you Marcus Aurelius instead. By the time you were eleven, you gave up on wishing for things at all.”
Lex focuses on his breathing, in and out, slow and controlled. His father likes to tell him he is ruled by his emotions. Lex has worked very hard to make sure that isn’t true. He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek to hold back every nasty thing he wants to say to Santa Claus.
“None of that means anything,” is what Lex settles for instead. “All of this is happening inside my head. You’re not real.”
Santa laughs at him and lets up on backing Lex into a corner. This is the Santa Claus Lex might have expected from popular culture. The look is right, red suit and white beard, but this is no jolly old elf. He is jaded somehow, blunt and brusque. Caustic, with little holiday spirit to be found in him.
“I’m as real as you want me to be. I’ll tell you what kid, you stick around in this vision, live out a day in this world, and if you see anything you like, you let me know.”
Lex narrows his eyes. “Been there, done that. I’ve already had my vision of Christmas-future, thanks.”
“Yeah, and what a nightmare that was.”
“Excuse me?”
Santa grins at him. “You don’t really think that’s the future you want, do you? Wife, picket fence, house in the suburbs, two point five kids, middle class income? Come on, if that was your brain trying to help you make a decision about what to do, it gave you that vision because you had already made your choice. You were making it easy on yourself to do the wrong thing. And you know it’s the wrong thing, that’s why you’re agonizing over it.”
Lex’s jaw works, mouth falling open and then closed tight again, over fury that can’t seem to work itself into words. Because that’s—not entirely untrue. And God, it is extremely strange to be called out on that kind of elliptical thinking inside of his own head.
Santa places a hand on his upper arm and though Lex flinches back, Santa keeps it where it is. He gestures at the room around them. “If you rethink the path you’re on, the path you’ve chosen, all of this could be yours. Including the man waiting for you out there.”
Which is so ridiculous that Lex actually laughs. It bubbles up with a hysterical edge that this on top of everything else is too much for him to believe. “Clark isn’t gay,” he gasps out amidst his laughter. “And even if he was, he wouldn’t be interested in me. If we’re talking wish fulfilment and selfish fantasies this is what that looks like.”
Because Lex has had this dream before, or something like it. How could he not? Late at night and feeling self-indulgent, catching himself watching Clark’s eyes, his lips, the way he moves. Nothing more than a fantasy, not something he would ever act on because it simply isn’t possible. Clark is straight and even if he wasn’t, he’s small town conventional enough not to look to closely at anything resembling a homosexual thought. Not to mention, Lex and the various unsavory whispers around town about him and what his tendencies might be haven’t exactly been subtle. If Clark were interested, there were plenty of chances for him to make a move and he didn’t. Imagining alternative futures where he still might is delusional and cruel.
The look that Santa gives him is quiet and pitying. “Who do you think wished for me to help you?”
A question that rattles Lex so much that he turns away from Santa and misses the moment he disappears. Lex turns back to find himself alone in the closet, entirely set adrift.
This isn’t real. A conversation with Santa Claus should prove that. And yet Lex has no way of getting out of here, no real way of rationalizing what the hell he is doing here beyond the slow destabilization of his mental faculties as he lies in the street dying of a gunshot wound. He doesn’t have much choice other than to play along.
The idea of entertaining anything that Santa Claus said is ridiculous but as Lex goes through the motions of the rest of setting himself to rights again, his mind can’t help but play with the hypotheticals like a cat with a ball of yarn. Moving beyond the idea that Clark might, in any universe, have romantic feelings for him—definitely an impossibility—the idea that present day, real Clark, might have enough fondness left over for him after everything to have any good will left for Lex is…
Well, it might not be as impossible as the gay thing—or the idea of Clark ever acting on the gay thing because there’s always a chance that Clark could feel that way but he would never act on those feelings even if he did—but the idea of Clark wishing Lex well is unlikely at the very least.
A Christmas miracle, maybe.
Lex takes a deep breath to collect himself. He stands in front of the mirror, perfectly dressed, hands on autopilot as he tucks and straightens until he has to tell himself to stop.
He has no choice but to play along. When taking into account all of the possible harm: death, insanity, a broken heart; and his options: play along or disappoint imaginary Clark; the decision is simple.
Lex gathers himself together and sets off to find Clark.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Clark asks, standing near the front entrance of the apartment. All dressed and ready to go; his jacket on but open revealing a festive red and green flannel underneath, handknit scarf and hat charmingly in place. He looks like something out of a Hallmark movie, or what Lex imagines one of those might look like, adorable and incredibly hot all at once.
“What?” Lex has no idea what he might be talking about.
“The thick envelope you’ve been hiding in your desk drawer?” When Lex gives him a blank look, Clark laughs a little. “The desk drawer you lined in lead and told me not to touch or else you’d line it in kryptonite instead?”
Kryptonite? Lex files that away as something to learn more about later. He’s shown enough uncharacteristic confusion already. Clark must be referring to the desk in the office he must have around here somewhere so Lex heads off in a new unexplored direction of the apartment and takes a look.
The desk is slightly more substantial than the one he keeps at the mansion. It has the same clean lines as the rest of the apartment, the glass and steel that Lex has shaped his life in. The slim drawer just beneath the desk top isn’t locked. It slides open easily and reveals, just as Clark said, a thick envelope with Merry Christmas, Clark written in his handwriting across the smooth surface.
It’s an ordinary manilla envelope with the usual metal clasp. Hardly an adequate Christmas present for someone like Clark who obviously means the world to this version of Lex but maybe the contents represent something bigger than a handful of papers. The deed to something. Some kind of project in development that Clark might care about. With Clark waiting, gifts in hand by the door, Lex doesn’t exactly have time to investigate. He tucks it under one arm and vows to peek inside as soon as he gets a moment alone.
He hastens back to Clark at the elevator doors. “Ready?” Clark asks.
No, definitely not. But then, when has Lex ever let that stop him? “Of course.”
Clark tosses him the keys to a Porsche and presses the button on the elevator while Lex braces himself for whatever this day has in store.
One Christmas Eve on the arm of Clark Kent. How bad could it be?