No Darker Than Yours: Smallville

To be loved is nothing. I want to be preferred. -- Gide

LexCorp already had the most advanced cybernetics lab outside of MIT; Lex acted swiftly to take out the qualifier. He thought it was likely that Misaki Hayashi signed on out of pity more than for the money, but that didn't bother him.

They were able to get a prototype together within weeks. It was ugly, and the fingers were too big, Clark's size rather than Lex's, but people didn't recoil from it when Lex wore gloves and long sleeves.

He was surprised how much it hurt. The interface with the remaining nerves and muscles in his forearm was direct. It was like having a ring of twenty-gauge steel needles jammed in just above his wrist. His forearm looked like a metal gauntlet had half-melted into his flesh. He had to be careful not to pull any of the wires out; he healed small wounds fast enough these days that it was a hassle to put them back in.

After about a week of practice, he was able to roll a wheelchair, shake hands, and lift weights with tolerable precision. Holding small objects and performing other random tasks of the non-dominant hand were simple. Showering was an annoyance, because he had to put on an elbow-length glove, tied off with a rubber hose, to keep the mechanism from getting wet. By the end of the day he generally had a headache to match the constant grinding pain in his arm, which pulsed as if he were holding it in a garbage disposal.

Other people lived with more pain and fewer compensations. That knowledge didn't stop the self-pity, but it did help him push it aside for most of the day.

Lex refused painkillers for the hand, though he did accept local anesthetics for his slowly healing feet. It was a good thing that LexCorp's tower was a new, ADA-compliant building, because it was still so damned awkward to get around in a wheelchair that he couldn't imagine what it would have been like in the old, unmodified LuthorCorp tower.

That was almost the only good thing about LexCorp. In his absence, his subordinates had realigned themselves into several factions, and not everyone was happy to have him return.

Lex had expected as much. It had been one of the tortures that happened naturally, without extra effort by the Joker and his people, the knowledge that his empire was flaking away from him like paper in water.

The Roman Empire's size and longevity -- still an amazing achievement -- could be traced to the absence of fast communication or transportation. The emperor couldn't just call a provincial governor on the phone or drop by via Learjet for an inspection. After a man was appointed, he disappeared. So he had to be the best, the best trained, the most knowledgeable about Roman culture and governance, before he went.

Even with modern communications, the lesson still held true. Crippling subordinates to hold on to one's own power wasn't just insecure, it was self-defeating. Indeed, his people had mostly responded quite well to his death, rearranging responsibilities to keep the company afloat. Precisely because of their strong leadership abilities, though, it was hard for them to step back into their former roles. As De Gaulle had observed, the graveyards were full of indispensable men. Too bad De Gaulle hadn't provided any advice on what to do when the grave yielded back one of her robberies.

At least Clark's story in the Planet had been flattering. Clark changed all the "I"s to "we"s in his big speech, so that Lex sounded more like a leader and less like a megalomaniac. The story made his return to power a PR coup for the company, strengthening his position both within and without. It was nice of Clark; it made Lex worry.

All in all, he'd thought it best to retreat to Smallville to recover, reintegrating himself into LexCorp, bringing the important people out to meet him a few at a time. It was a weakness to need familiar surroundings in order to stay in control. But then he'd always been indulgent of his own weaknesses, and it was only temporary.

****

Two weeks into his exile, Bruce Wayne darkened his doorstep. Lex picked him up coming down the drive, following him from camera to camera until he reached the front hallway. With a few phone calls to security, Lex made sure that no human confronted him on his way in. Bruce headed unerringly towards Lex's office, stopping only once, in front of a room that used to be a little museum of obsession and now held only spiders and dust.

Our problem, Lex thought, is that we have an unerring eye for secrets, but we just can't figure out what they are. If we were worse, or better, at unearthing them we might not be so angry.

At least Lex himself might not be so angry. With Bruce, it was hard to tell.

Lex had tried hard to be flattered by Clark's interest in Bruce. Bruce was like Lex, with his own infinite loop. Bruce didn't have a room where a reconstruction of his parents' murders played on a computer screen, but it was imprinted on the inside of Bruce's eyelids, and he had a whole mansion to remind him.

Bruce was even better than Lex, not just a better man, but a better symbol. Clark's childhood killed and killed again as the Kryptonite did its work, and Bruce's childhood was all about witnessing death. Lex could easily see how his immense grief would lock into Clark's guilt like a hook into an eye, the way Lana Lang's had done.

The doors to his study swung open as if of their own accord. Bruce strode in, his beautifully tailored suit damp from a spat of rain. Bruce rarely bothered with coats, even though they were useful in making grand entrances. Lex thought it was half bravado, being strong enough to resist any element, and half that he wanted as much separation between himself and a certain caped crusader as possible. Moving carefully so as not to crush his remaining fingers, Lex folded his hands on top of his desk and looked up expectantly.

If there were such a thing as a comfortable uncomfortable silence, it reigned then.

"Lex," Bruce said at last.

Lex wanted to stand, to be a little closer to Bruce's height, but maybe it was better to be trapped in his wheelchair, with a hard physical reason he couldn't possibly compete with Bruce. "Hello, Bruce. What brings you all the way to this insignificant hamlet?"

He saw Bruce fight his own ingrained dumb-playboy blankness, sincerity emerging from him like a cicada shaking free of its dun shell. "I wanted to see that you were recovering."

Lex nodded. "Your concern is appreciated. Still, you could have called. I would have told you what you wanted to know."

Bruce half-turned, looking at the little Goya hidden in the shadows, a study for Saturn devouring his children.

When he spoke, he sounded as if each word filled his mouth with the taste of blood. "This was my fault. If I hadn't gone to Metropolis, you wouldn't have attracted his attention."

If you'd killed him instead of locking him in an asylum that might as well have been made of papier-mache, Lex thought, this wouldn't have happened. Wasn't that the real failure here? Then again, Lex knew all about not being able to take the final step against the most terrible of adversaries. He'd choked twice, first with his father and then with Clark.

Lex turned away from Bruce and looked out the window at shredding grey clouds and patches of sky as blue as Wayne blood. Bruce's presence was entirely ridiculous here, where the land was flat and clean and the buildings didn't challenge the sky; he stood out like a black bear in a kindergarten. Not that Lex was one to talk -- but at least the folk of Smallville were used to him.

"I'm not angry at you," he said at last. "I understand unintended consequences." The Joker's possessiveness of Batman and Gotham was like his own with Clark, and one thing Lex scorned to be was a hypocrite.

The whole thing could be summarized as a ploy to get Batman's attention. The Joker had been so insulted by being dealt with by another superhero that he orchestrated an elaborate scheme just to punish that superhero, and by extension Batman, because he'd almost surely known how Batman would absorb that guilt into his own. For a madman, the Joker was extremely psychologically astute -- and yes, Lex ought to know.

There should be some sort of law of conservation of guilt, Lex thought, so that it wouldn't increase by being shared among people who took responsibility, so that it couldn't be evaded by people who were actually responsible.

He was so tired.

When he turned back, Bruce was watching him steadily, his hands at his sides, waiting like a soldier.

“I told Clark that I didn’t trust you, or him.” Bruce said this with an expression closer to satisfaction than anything else Lex could recognize.

Lex nodded. He, by contrast, trusted Bruce’s behavior in most circumstances. (His version of implicit trust had a lot of qualifications and hedges.) He considered what he ought to say in return. Before his abduction, he’d thought that his anger could be assuaged with sufficient success -- over his father, over Clark, over the people who called him a freak and laughed at the things he valued. Now, though, he thought the anger wasn’t likely to go away.

Without knowing what he really wanted, he could neither lie to Bruce nor tell him the truth.

Bruce was watching, waiting for a better response, his blue eyes like Arctic ice.

“Clark and I are -- still finding our way around each other,” he said at last. “You’re a complicating factor, one I’d prefer to ignore for the time being. If you stick with the Kryptonite you have and make no attempts to acquire more, we can maintain the status quo.”

Bruce didn’t look happy with that. He probably saw a sword of Damocles hanging over his head, Clark the blade and Lex the hilt. But Bruce never looked happy when he was being relatively honest.

“Look, you’re never going to trust me to do the right thing as long as I’m alive, and I’m not going to die any time soon, so you need to decide what else is going to satisfy you.”

“Stay out of Gotham,” Bruce said immediately.

Lex was surprised into laughter, his living hand clenched on the arm of his wheelchair.

“I’ll take care of the Joker,” Bruce insisted. “I know I -- failed, so far.” It sounded as if the words had been forced out over razor blades. “You’ve got reason to want revenge. But I won't let that happen in my city.”

If it was your city, why the fuck did the Joker elude you for months? Lex wondered. Still, he wouldn’t get far in Gotham with the Batman standing in his way.

“The Joker and anyone he worked with are fair game if they leave the city,” he said. When the Joker inevitably broke out of Arkham, he could reconsider his side of the deal. “And you’ll actually communicate with the other do-gooders. Better coordination could have kept this from being such an enormous disaster.”

Bruce nodded sharply. Lex realized that he’d asked for too little. Bruce was probably grateful to have the Justice League around, where he could keep an eye on all the most powerful beings at once and learn their secrets. He just needed to pretend to be reluctant, to strengthen the image. Well, Lex was still exhausted and shaken; he could be excused a few failures to exploit his advantages.

“We both want a better world, you know,” he said, suddenly weary of the conversation.

“And you’re so sure you know how to build it.” The delivery managed to be affectless and derisive at once. Lex almost envied him his communication skills.

Bruce lacked ambition; he wanted time to roll backwards, and failing that, he wanted safety. But total safety could only be found in the silence of the graveyard, as Lex’s mother and Julian had both discovered.

“Power is a constant, Bruce. It can be neither created nor destroyed.”

Bruce shrugged, his elegant brown suit coat moving fluidly over his broad shoulders, so like Clark in size and shape but so different from Clark’s careful awkwardness. “It still matters who has the power and what it’s used to do.”

“I can’t argue with you there,” he admitted and put his hand out to touch his desk, wanting to feel something solid, something his.

Bruce gathered himself, a stillness settling on him as he prepared to say words Lex just knew he wouldn’t like. “Speaking of power, the records from Star Labs make fascinating reading.”

Lex forced out a mild, inquiring expression. “Really? I didn’t realize biology was your field.”

“I dabble,” he said, in a voice that was pure Batman.

Lex mentally ran through the list of names of the security consultants he was going to fire.

“You should be careful,” Bruce continued. “Illegal experiments make people nervous, and I know how much your image matters to you.”

He gritted his teeth. “Of course, if you’ve only got one shot in your arsenal, you also have to be careful when you use it.”

Bruce moved his mouth into a shape very like a smile. “I agree completely.”

“You know, Bruce -- and I mean this in the nicest possible way -- from now on, I wish you’d just stay in Gotham.”

The full-on glower was less impressive without the mask. Still, if he couldn’t control Batman, he could at least break through the apparent indifference.

Without further conversation, Bruce turned on his heel and left.

Lex closed his eyes, thinking about all the plans he’d had through the years. Destroying his father, gaining the adulation of millions, remaking the face of the earth itself. If he didn’t think he knew how to improve things, there would be no point to existing -- and that was just as true for the Batman.

Now that he'd escaped from that white room in Gotham -- inasmuch as he'd ever leave, which was a matter of some internal debate -- he was regaining his hope that existence did have meaning. At least, he was willing to make a version of Pascal's Wager on the possibility. If he was wrong, he wouldn't have wasted anything worth keeping.

He forced himself back to his desk, where mundane matters refused to resolve themselves just because he had conversations with superheroes.

****

Misaki had good news for him: The progress on the brain implant was steady. If they could get it working properly, so that it read patterns of neuronal activity indicating an intent to move a particular way, he could get rid of many of the wires and, it was to be hoped, a significant amount of the pain. Of course, it would require walking around with an electrode sticking out of his head, and he couldn't exactly keep it hidden under a mane of flowing hair, but nothing came for free.

Other facets of his existence were showing improvement, as well. The board was remembering what it was like to serve him, and most of the people he dealt with acted as if he'd never been gone. He was almost hesitant to go back to Metropolis, when having visitors come to Smallville as supplicants was working so well.

After reading the details of Misaki's latest advances, Lex turned to plans for expansion into California. With proper management and coordination, migrant workers could travel the country working on LexCorp farms year-round, with corresponding gains in productivity and profits.

Lex was just about to break for dinner when the gate guard buzzed to let him know Mercy had arrived with a man in tow.

He waited, unable to concentrate on the reports in front of him, his eyes roving over the eclectic art hung on the office walls. He'd always liked the one that looked like a starfield in royal blue, even if it wasn't old and manorial.

The office doors swung open. Mercy shoved the man and he stumbled in. His face was severely bruised, one eye swollen almost shut, but Lex still recognized him.

"What's his name?" he asked her. His voice sounded as featureless as poured concrete, which gave him a surge of pride that lasted until the man brought his chin up and snarled.

"John Thomas Collins," Mercy said.

Lex rolled his chair out from behind the desk, crossing the floor to get closer to Collins. If he could have stood, he would have gotten right in the man's face, but as it was he stayed back so he wouldn't have to crane his neck too far. The whirring of the wheelchair's electric motor was ominous in the silent room.

"You don't look as pretty as you did last time I saw you," Collins said, spitting the words out through obvious pain. Mercy liked to kick her targets in the ribs; she said it encouraged good behavior.

Lex smiled. Collins' bravado flickered for a second, then returned.

The question was, torture or swift death? Torture had the virtue of tit-for-tat, but the defect that the scales would never even out as far as Lex was concerned, so the attempt might just be setting himself up for disappointment. Swift death might be best; Lex would be left resentful, but one step closer to putting the whole mess behind him.

Collins knew he wasn't leaving the mansion. Lex could see the realization sinking in. It was in the way his shoulders twitched, the way his good eye darted around the room, looking for something that would let him get in a few good blows before he fell.

"I'd say your failure to beg for your life impressed me, if it did," Lex told him. "But I think you're just too stupid and too twisted to care. Mercy --"

She stepped closer, raising her hands preparatory to snapping Collins' neck.

There was a blur and a whoosh. Mercy was gone, the office doors were closed, and Clark was holding Collins' wrist like he was a recalcitrant schoolboy. The man was so big and bulky that Clark looked almost normal beside him -- normal if you discounted the tights and cape, of course.

"Superman," Lex said wearily. He was almost tempted to use Clark's real name, but he'd kept mum for years and he wasn't going to change just for the sake of a piece of shit like Collins.

"You were going to tell Mercy to kill him."

Lex raised his eyebrows at the obviousness of the statement.

"He's one of them, isn't he? One of the Joker's."

Lex swallowed. "If you're just going to repeat information I already know --"

"Two choices, Lex. First, I can take him to the police and you can leave him to the justice system." Collins sniggered. Clark spared him an annoyed look. "Shut up," he suggested. Lex didn't see him move, but Collins' whimper suggested that Clark had done something painful.

"As attractive as that proposition is, I'm going to have to ask what's behind door number two."

"I'll kill him for you."

Lex choked on air.

"You can have him dead," Clark continued, as matter-of-factly as if he were discussing the weather -- in fact, as a farm kid, he'd often sounded far more emotionally invested in the weather than he did now -- "but only if you use me to do it."

Jesus. Clark -- Clark was telling him to make Superman into a murderer. Stepping off that pedestal, if Lex asked it. Clark knew -- it was becoming embarrassingly clear that he knew better than Lex -- that Lex needed him to be the good one, the one who had uncrossable lines, so that Lex could cross them and feel assured that his ruthlessness was necessary. Lex needed balance, an immovable object to his irresistable force.

What happens to yin if yang lets go?

God, his obsession with myths and legends was fucking him hard here, what with Clark off the script, depriving Lex of the appropriate narrative models.

"You wouldn't," he said experimentally. Collins, at least, looked like he wanted to believe that, his expression truly terrified at last, a child's fear on the man-mountain's face.

"He was one of the ones who tortured you, wasn't he?"

Lex nodded without meaning to.

"Tell me."

Again, Lex found himself speaking without a plan. "I didn't get -- let's just say that after the first day, I wasn't exactly going to arouse lust in anybody short of Jeffrey Dahmer. But Mr. Collins here -- he liked watching them work. And at night, when everybody else had gone home, snug in their beds, he'd sit there, one hand in my fucking guts, and --" Saying it brought the sensation back, the pain only outpaced by the absolute humiliation, the violation making the endless brutal hospital tests when he was a kid seem like coddling. His hands, glistening --

In a way, Collins' presence was a blessing; it gave Lex the incentive he needed to shut the fuck up before he lost it. The artificial hand had compressed the metal arm of his chair into a twisted twig. He let go, deliberately, and looked only into Clark's eyes. "Yes, he was one of the ones who tortured me."

"And you think I wouldn't kill him?" For the first time ever, Lex could only see Superman, nothing of Clark at all. "I'd sleep like a baby. It's up to you."

Clark, on his side at last.

Clark, taking the step from policeman to executioner.

Everything he'd ever wanted, everything he'd ever feared.

"You're playing with high stakes," he said. Clark's stance relaxed even as he spoke, which pissed him off because it meant that Clark was still ahead of him.

"You're the one who requires life-or-death drama." And that, Lex thought, was at least a return to Clark's lies of old, because Clark got as much a charge out of it as he did.

He didn't need to ask what would happen if Collins had an unfortunate accident in the prison yard. This was his big chance, and if he blew it, Clark would be lost to him forever. Only the greatest of traumas had given him this opportunity, a nonrefundable, unalterable ticket good for this flight only.

"Just -- get him out of here. Before I change my mind."

Clark did, disappearing as fast as he'd arrived. Several minutes later, Mercy burst in, looking nearly miffed.

"Lex --" she said, clearly about to abase herself. She’d just begun to lose the tightness in her face, the circles under her eyes.

“Don’t worry about it. You know he’s not going to kill me; just stay focused on the ones who do want to. Good work on Collins, by the way.”

She nodded slightly, looking unconvinced.

****

There had come a day when Lex had realized that he could escape the torment by giving himself over to madness. He'd been hanging over that abyss for a long time. He could have let go, unclenched his fingers -- yes, ironic in retrospect -- and fallen, wind-borne, into something new and strange.

Three times he'd almost done it. No devil at his shoulder, tempting him, no scent of brimstone in the air under the blood, but three very bad days. He hadn't even begged for it to stop because he'd screamed his throat raw and probably couldn't have formed coherent pleas in any event.

Dissociation, he'd known, would be permanent, a suicide of mind if not body.

Twice he'd rejected the option, knowing -- not believing, because belief implied the possibility of doubt -- that Clark was going to come for him.

But one night, looking down at his chest, marked with a grid like he was being tested for allergies rather than for his response to various corrosives, the knowledge that Clark was on his way had lost its meaning. There had been only the now, the body, the knife. What he once thought, wanted, feared -- all irrelevant, because all depended on the existence of some person over time, and he'd been ripped from time's grasp. The pain was now was forever. Was this Lex Luthor? This thing, raw and seeping, no boundaries between it and the edges of the world? How could it be?

Whatever was left of him had decided to live in the pain. Not in hope, not in faith. Life, blind and seeking. There was no reason. He didn't refuse madness; there had been no "he" to do so. The madness had looked at what Lex had become, and in that stillness -- the heart of light, the silence -- it had slid away from him, indifferent. It had passed him by as if his disintegration had made him invisible.

Back in Smallville, his body had often gone on fighting past the point of hope or reason, and in the Joker's abbatoir it seemed that his mind had joined that blind struggle. Neither mind nor body seemed to have much connection with what Lex thought of as himself. His soul was separate, and didn't have any control over what mind or body did, which maybe was proof that he didn't have a soul.

After that, he had fought even when he didn't really want to, struggling hopelessly, ceaselessly, cutting himself open on the restraints before any of the minions could do it for him. On his next visit, the Joker had seen that Lex had traveled through some undiscovered country, and he'd been delighted. He'd wanted to know what had been the trigger, so much that he'd let Lex heal enough to talk.

When Lex had proved incapable of explaining to his satisfaction, the Joker had become truly inventive.

Ten days later, Clark had arrived.

****

Two days after Collins, Clark came back. He actually checked in with the guards at the gate this time, waiting patiently while they checked with Hope, whose emotionless mask was flawed only by the twitch of the muscle in her jaw when Lex told her to let Clark come to the office.

Lex had time to send a few last messages and put away the reports on the agricultural division’s five-year plan before Clark arrived.

When he pushed open the doors, even though he was dressed in crayon-bright colors, Lex couldn’t help but remember all the times he’d come that way before. Smiling, frowning, brooding, blushing, asking for something only Lex could do for him. Lex had always looked forward to that, to confirm he was good for Clark. It would have been normal to resent being used as a vending machine, a car for a smile, but Lex was used to pay-as-you-go relationships, and it was only money. Clark’s material wants had never been the problem. It was when the tickets and mortgages weren’t enough any more that things had gone sour.

He opened his mouth to ask what he’d done to deserve the visit, but Clark beat him to it.

"Lex. I’ve been thinking -- God, it seems like it’s all I think about, now that you’re back. I want to try again. I want to be your friend."

Lex blinked.

Well. That was -- abrupt. Classic Clark, and really, why fritter away precious minutes on pleasantries that wouldn’t be pleasant with all their history hanging over each word?

Clark looked so out of place in this opulently appointed room, each object with a pedigree and a certificate of authenticity. No longer wrapped in cheap flannel, he was hidden behind his artificial colors and his technologically distorted face, and even so he seemed more familiar than any of the antiques Lionel had bought.

Yet Lex remembered why he’d bowed out of this dance so many years ago. Clark’s moves were clumsy and tended to leave bruises, and Lex’s steps involved too much humiliation even for him.

"We've been down this road before, Clark, and let's just say it was a road paved with the very best intentions." He could live without Clark, he knew, but not with him always just out of reach, and that was what friendship meant to Clark.

"I was fifteen, Lex. Cut me some slack -- meeting you was like being pulled up to the major leagues to pitch against Sammy Sosa after only ever playing T-ball. And my parents didn't even let me play baseball."

"I'm not even going to touch that simile,” he said, buying time to figure out how to react. “Maybe you were too young -- I admit I put a lot of pressure on you -- but now we have that history. We can't start over."

"No, but maybe we can --"

Whatever they could do was lost in the howl of the perimeter alarms, loud as a tornado and twice as worrisome.

Lex hit a few buttons on the control panel by his desk and portions of the bookshelves slid aside. The screens they revealed showed different views of the mansion, interior and grounds both.

Men were converging on the mansion from all sides, pouring out from nowhere like a plague of ants. They must have been preparing for days, digging in just outside the grounds -- in the sky, helicopters were circling like vultures, doubtless waiting to disgorge more troops.

Clark was staring at the images, looking as surprised as Lex felt.

The cellphone wouldn't work, nor would his secure land line.

What the hell --

The answer came to him like a lightning strike.

While he was gone, certain people at LexCorp must have been concerned for the company's future, with its founding father gone. They would need to reassure their best customer that the firm was still a valuable partner. Therefore, they would have made deals with the government, extremely advantageous deals that Lex had always refused for reasons he had never bothered to explain to anyone else. He'd always assumed that he'd be in control, because he was arrogant and overconfident, and he'd certainly never thought that he'd come back after being gone, so he hadn't planned on what to do if the government came into a large supply of Kryptonite.

At least he had some generic plans.

The computer system was still working, though he couldn't count on it lasting much longer with the hackers the government must be employing against it. Quickly, he tapped in commands, setting timers and activating defenses.

All across the grounds, automatic sprinklers popped up and began to throw out arcs of liquid, glistening in the sunlight. There wasn't much at first, but it built up quickly, coating the ground. Some of the soldiers tried to dodge it, but others just ran through.

And fell down.

LexCorp's military contracts included one for the Mobility Denial System, a translucent goo with the friction coefficient of wet ice. A layer of the stuff would stop a man from walking, stop a wheel from turning, even turn a helicopter's landing into a death slide. That was the theory, anyway; this was going to be the largest-scale test yet.

It was almost enjoyable to watch trained killers get turned into re-enactors of the Three Stooges' slapstick as they struggled to stand, to get a grip on their gooey weapons, even to get on hands and knees while the MDS continued to pump out.

But there were dozens of them inside the mansion already, so all he'd done was limit the immediate threat.

His attention was drawn back into the room as Clark staggered, looking nauseated. "They have a lot of Kryptonite," he said. "Even with the new suit, I can feel it."

"I don't know how much they got from LexCorp," Lex said. "If it's the whole supply --" and if it was, heads would roll -- "it's something over eight tons."

"Eight tons?" Clark repeated.

"Now is not the time for recriminations. Get out of here," he told Clark. The order was pro forma; it was silly to suppose Clark would comply.

Nor did Clark bother to respond. Typical. Lex thought of saying that they were obviously here for Clark, and that if he left, they'd have no reason to harm anyone. But he wasn't sure that the claim would be correct. Some analyst might actually have noticed all those Superman-Luthor summits and concluded that Lex was a possible hostage. Lex hated the idea of being a mere tool to get someone else to behave. Even the Joker had done better by him in that way. He wasn't going to -- okay, so he was going to take it sitting down, but by God he was going to orchestrate some punishment for the insult.

Lex struggled to think.

"Do you know how to shoot a gun?"

"I grew up on a farm, Lex."

As if it had been a stupid question, as if Clark's superpowers hadn't made guns puny by comparison. But it sounded as if Jonathan Kent's traditionalism prevailed, which in this case was a good thing. Lex went to a cabinet on the side of the room and keyed in his code. The door popped open. He took out a shotgun and held it out to Clark.

"I'm not using that."

Fucking pacifist. The Kents should have called him Ferdinand, like that wimp bull in the kids' book, Lex thought as he dumped a box of shells into his lap and prepared to wheel himself out to defend his property.

The box disappeared, as did the gun. Lex looked up to see Clark bend the barrel into an L-shape. "You're not using that either. These are American soldiers."

Lex stared at him, wondering how he'd survived this far.

"What do you suggest we use? Sarcasm?"

"You're well-supplied, at least." Clark had folded his arms over his chest. Even with greenish veins popping out over his face and hands, he looked resolute. And the pose made his arms look amazing, no matter how annoying it was otherwise. "That goo can't be your only defense."

"Yes, I was planning on supplementing with a shotgun." If Mercy wasn't with them by now, she was unlikely to break through any time soon. She was under orders not to kill any federal agents, which was most likely cramping her style.

Clark looked towards the ceiling. "They've set up a perimeter, with air support. I won't be able to fly out without getting close enough to the Kryptonite to be vulnerable. And they're bringing it in, shrinking the globe."

Lex could see it in his mind, a glowing green force diagram.

Wait --

"Real globe or half globe? Can you tunnel out?"

Clark blinked and glanced down. "Yeah," he said, eyes widening in surprise.

Just goes to show it's a mistake to use half measures, Lex thought, and bit down on the quip.

"What are you waiting for?" he demanded.

"Could you be any more annoying? Don't answer that."

Clark stepped away from Lex. In the blink of an eye, the carpet was rolled up and left at the side of the room. He began to twirl. Blue and red blurred into a miniature tornado, which threw up a cloud of wood shavings and other debris. Lex raised his hand to shield his eyes, wondering why exactly Clark had bothered to protect the carpet.

As Clark sank into the floor, Lex saw the office doors begin to shake. The soldiers must have arrived, despite the gas and other assorted party favors in the halls. It was a bad day for the mansion's structural integrity, he thought with resignation, though he hoped that his own structural integrity would suffer no further insults in the near future.

Lex drew a deep breath, preparing to deal with whoever came through the door. He expected a lack of humor matched only by an absence of imagination; he could work with that.

Just as the door burst open, the tornado whirled back out of the hole in the floor, like a swarm of killer bees on speed. Lex felt himself being lifted and slung over Clark's shoulder.

He put his hands over his head; Clark was decent at keeping him from bouncing off the ragged edges of his newly created tunnel, but bits and pieces were still crumbling around him, and he was spattered with dirt and stone fragments.

Lex couldn't tell how far they went underground. They came up in a featureless cornfield. Clark paused to look around.

"They're too far away to track us," he said. "I want to take you to my Fortress until we figure out how to deal with this."

Lex nodded.

They were over an ocean before he realized that Clark had said "we."

****

The Fortress of Solitude was amazing. Electronic sentience -- quantum computing, maybe. It was able to fabricate a wheelchair for him almost instantaneously. Lex wanted to take it apart and see how it worked. Given how annoyed it seemed at his presence -- talking in Kryptonian to Clark until he ordered it to speak English, even -- he guessed that it could sense that desire in him.

After a recap of the situation, Lex requested some time to work. Clark, after a sharp Kryptonian exchange with the computer, headed up to the Justice League to talk to his colleagues.

Lex checked his cell and was pleased to see that it was working. Either Clark's computer was helping it out, or the advertising was really serious about worldwide coverage. He dialed Hubert Grossman.

"Mr. Luthor," Hubert answered on the first ring.

"How much Mineral X did you transfer to the government?" Lex asked.

He could just about hear Hubert blanch. "Half our -- half the supply."

"First, have the contracts emailed to me. Second, remind me to hold a meeting about absolute power, and why LexCorp should be the only entity that possesses it. Third, I'm going to need an extensive cleanup at the mansion in Smallville. And the DoD is going to be calling, in something of a huff. They don't get a refund."

Hubert sucked in a breath. "Yes, Mr. Luthor."

"And, Hubert?"

"Yes, Mr. Luthor?"

"I'm not angry. You all did the best you could with the information you had. But Mineral X is off the market now, and it's going to stay that way."

"They demanded -- we needed to reassure --"

It was almost disconcerting that he could get Hubert, of all people, this upset. Hubert was usually smoother than Sinatra, even when Lex was raging. Perhaps there was something special in his tone today. "I'm not angry, and there will be no reprisals. It's been a rough few months for us all. Just have a clean-up team at the mansion as soon as possible, and we'll say no more."

He hung up without waiting for confirmation. Hubert was a good man, and Lex didn't need to hear him squirm.

"Hey, computer," he said to the empty room. "I need to check my email."

****

Clark came back looking even more worried. Lex guessed that the League had been less than united in determining how to respond to the US military's desire to capture one of their own.

"The bad news is that the transfer of title of the Kryptonite is completely legal," Lex told him, wheeling his chair around so that he could face Clark. "And even if it weren't, all the government is legally obligated to do is pay LexCorp the fair market value. So our options are: steal it back, neutralize it somehow either physically or strategically, or negotiate a deal."

"The military wanted me to hunt people down and kill them," Clark said. "That's why I decided to form a nongovernmental organization in the first place."

"Were they bad people? Never mind," Lex said before Clark could start a lecture. "Stealing it back is risky, but it's more likely than not that Hope and Mercy can do it, especially with the entire payload being kept in the same place so it can overpower you."

"People would get hurt," Clark said.

He nodded. "Most likely. Second option: To neutralize it strategically, we'd need to have something to threaten the government with if you were harmed. Mutual assured destruction."

Clark just looked at him.

Lex sighed. "Right. To neutralize it physically, I'd need access to the remaining Kryptonite at LexCorp, and at least three months in the lab. I'd be lucky to succeed in that amount of time, unless you know something about its structure I don't."

The computer decided to jump in. "Kryptonian technology can neutralize small amounts of Kryptonite, but the energy requirements are prohibitive on a larger scale."

"Prohibitive?" Lex asked, perking up, already imagining the reactor he could build.

"In order to render four tons of Kryptonite harmless using the known method, the energy output of your sun for approximately three hundred years would be required."

Okay then. Regretfully, Lex pushed aside the idea of cold fusion for the moment.

Clark turned and leaned wearily against the wall, folding his arms in a way that looked more defensive than usual. "We tried negotiation. The President wants assurances that I won't give the League any further assistance or take any action in any foreign country without his permission and that I will aid the US to the best of my abilities in whatever capacity I'm asked to. I asked if the prohibition on going outside the US would include helping out when natural disasters struck, and he said yes."

Lex felt a headache coming on. "It sounds like you'd better take me back. Given a few days, I can get some Kryptonite samples and set up in one of my labs. They won't be able to find me." He didn't want to be a fugitive. He wanted to be a CEO, with minions rushing to do his bidding, a private chef delivering sushi any hour he wanted to eat it, and a wine cellar that was the envy of the French premier.

It was still better than being back under the Joker's control, he reminded himself. And playing with Kryptonite was as much fun as it was possible to have while clothed and sober, so it wouldn't be all bad.

"And I'm just supposed to stay here for three months, or however long it takes you?"

"I haven't heard any suggestions coming from your side of the room, Clark."

"Kal-El," the computer said.

"Yes?"

Lex looked around, wishing there were an avatar he could see. It creeped him out when voices came from the walls. It made him feel crazy, and he didn't like that.

"I could interface with Lex Luthor and create a virtual environment in which subjective time would flow orders of magnitude more quickly. Results could be expected much more quickly."

"Can you accurately simulate Kryptonite?" he asked.

"I believe so," it said, its tone managing to imply that he was silly to ask.

"Simulation only works if you understand the properties of the substance, and if you did there should be no need for --"

"Unless you comprehend the principles behind my quantum simulations, you should not make pronouncements of that nature."

Lex swallowed, feeling too much like Job getting told off by God. It still sounded unlikely to him, but the AI was correct that he was applying Earth science to what might as well be Kryptonian magic.

Clark was looking at him, worried.

A mind-meld with an alien entity that had evidenced a certain amount of hostility to him, not without reason -- Lex should be leery, too. But curiosity was his curse and his blessing. "I'm willing to try it, at least for a while," he said.

"You won't -- do anything to him," Clark said.

"The interface will require numerous biomechanical connections," the computer replied. Lex winced, thinking of his mechanical hand. Well, he was already a cyborg of sorts.

"No," Clark continued, "I mean, you won't try to alter his thoughts or his motivations. Will you."

Lex stared at Clark. "It can do that?"

Clark shrugged uncomfortably. "Remember the summer before my senior year of high school?"

"I think I was in a coma." Lex smiled, to indicate that he didn't blame Clark, which was almost true.

A muscle twitched at the corner of Clark's jaw. "Well, the computer was still in the caves. It -- tried to indoctrinate me. So I'd be ready to rule the world."

"This just gets more reassuring."

"If you will it, Kal-El, I will do nothing that will not facilitate the resolution of your current problem with Kryptonite."

Clark looked over at Lex; Lex looked back. "Is that good enough for you?"

"It is if you reword it. I don't need any extra motivation. I'd like to go home as much as you would."

"Okay," Clark said. "Link up with Lex, but don't do anything to change the way he thinks except make it faster."

"Very well," the computer said, and if it couldn't be annoyed, it was doing an excellent imitation. "Approach the console, Lex Luthor."

Lex turned back to the station he'd been using for email and related tasks. He closed his eyes, steeling himself for another assault on his person and psyche. He didn't expect the computer to make the experience pleasant.

"Closer."

He pushed the wheels half a turn, until he bumped up against the edge of the desk-protrusion. He missed being able to stand. He felt so much more out of control like this.

"Put your hands on the surface in front of you."

He could feel Clark's nervousness, thickening the air. "Clark, you'd better go -- get kittens out of trees, or whatever you do for fun. The computer will contact you as soon as we know anything."

"Okay," Clark said. Lex couldn't resist turning his head to watch the door swish closed, leaving him alone in this white featureless room, pristine as a clean room in a microchip factory.

He shivered.

"There may be some discomfort at first," the computer warned, as silver and white filaments crawled out of the desk like worms and writhed onto his hand and his forearms.

He fell into pain, like falling through a sheet of glass.

He shredded into tatters, screamed without voice, and reassembled in the same white room. All sensation was gone, as if his entire body had been replaced by prosthetics, a virtual Tin Man.

When he looked down, his hands both looked human, and his feet were encased in normal shoes rather than the sterile cages he'd been using.

Experimentally, Lex stood. He could feel pressure, and after a moment of disorientation some simulation of inner-ear balance kicked in, so he took a step away from the chair.

A door in the wall whooshed open. Clark had watched too much Star Trek, Lex thought.

"How would you have me configured, Lex Luthor? A log cabin, perhaps?"

Okay: Snark, acceptable; mind-reading, somewhat less so.

As if to emphasize its power, the computer made no comment. Lex walked through the door into a lab similar to one of his own.

"I have accessed LexCorp's files and made them available here."

Lex gritted his teeth and proceeded towards the glowing green mineral spread out across a tabletop like a galaxy of fatal stars.

"Let's get started," he said.

****

He had no sense of time, no cramps, no hunger, no tense neck or aching feet. Every time he thought about taking a break, the impulse disappeared, which ought to have worried him, but there was enough to worry about with the recalcitrant Kryptonite. It refused his attempts to master it, defeating every countermeasure he devised with contemptuous ease. He'd known for years that it responded to human thought. Its molecular structure was protean, and as his drive to destroy it intensified it seemed to respond in kind, bending and dodging his attacks like an aikido master.

Eventually, despair set in. "It's not going to work," he told the computer. "Let me out so Clark and I can consider alternatives."

The computer didn't respond. Lex looked around the shadowless lab.

"So it's like that," he said unnecessarily. "I should have known."

He returned to work, not from any hope of success but because he couldn't sit quiescent while there were still things to learn about Kryptonite. It was a marvel, a shifting, fractal construct that defied every rule of Earth physics and chemistry.

Lex composed a parody of Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" as he worked, wondering whether he would spend a thousand years inside the computer, or whether only minutes had passed. He should have asked how much faster time would run in here than outside.

He should have asked for a panic button.

After some time, he passed through despair to boredom, thence to what he imagined was Zen-like calm. Kryptonite had a subtle, elusive beauty, like an oil spill on seawater.

He could be happy like this, he realized at last. There were no other demands -- just this one impossible task, and he'd accepted his failure there -- there were no disappointed ex-friends or greedy would-be spouses. No Joker, with his laughter and his colors and his whispers of all the things that Lex was and could never be. No knives, no fires, no assassination attempts, no scurrilous editorials in the Planet, no sleep and thus no nightmares, no graves to visit and no sneers to ignore.

It was an island paradise, without the maggots and malaria, without wondering how he'd been betrayed and who'd betray him next. And when he talked to an empty room, there really was someone else listening.

Clark was a distant worry, the Fortress's problem now. Lex was making new strides in chemical analysis, Nobel-worthy discoveries shed like chaff as he played.

He set up the three-thousandth-odd particle bombardment. At this point he was varying speed and angle more for amusement than because the difference was likely to produce a new outcome. As he watched, he felt -- content. The closest analogue he could think of was the lassitude after sex with Desiree, his first and in many ways his best wife.

The Kryptonite fizzed and dissolved into orange-white sparkles.

"What the fuck!"

Immediately the experiment was replaced with a new sample. The computer, unheard for who-knew-how-many milliseconds, bleated, "Replicate the process."

Lex snarled and pressed the button to send the same particle streams.

Nothing happened.

"What --?" he said, bringing a hand up to rub at his temples. For a fraction of a heartbeat, the world went dark -- but then everything was the same, and he wondered if he'd imagined it.

"Additional power has been diverted to the emitter. Repeat the process," the computer suggested.

He did, and this time the Kryptonite flared and disappeared as if a Star Trek transporter had grabbed it.

"The Justice League has identified the location of the stored Kryptonite. Your controls now are targeted towards it."

Lex nodded and punched the button one more time. It was anticlimactic in the extreme, without even an image of the Kryptonite in its no doubt heavily guarded bunker. (Lex sincerely hoped that the government had been using lead shielding. Mutated soldiers, with training and access to weapons, would be even worse than regular mutants.)

"The operation was successful," the AI announced. "Prepare for disconnection --"

The world disintegrated around the edges, white to gray to black.

****

"Lex?"

He opened his eyes to Clark's concerned face, inches away. He was slumped in a chair, his neck aching slightly from having been at a bad angle. Automatically, he straightened and put his weight on his feet to stand --

He looked down.

"I had the Fortress help you heal while you were under," Clark said. Lex's gaze whipped to his right hand -- which was human again, just like in the simulation.

The technology that could work such miracles would revolutionize medicine, but Lex couldn't bring himself to care about that now.

"Thank you," he said as he tested his restored fingers, hearing the tremble in his voice, like being a kid again, so grateful for scraps that Clark threw him -- only this time, the gifts were valuable by anyone's standards.

"It's -- I wanted to do something for you. Since you pretty much just saved my ass."

He could feel the hard smoothness of the console in front of the chair, feel it with real skin and nerves, not computer-transmitted signals. "It was my pleasure."

When he looked at Clark again, Clark was smiling, still looking at Lex's restored hand. "You have nice hands," he said, then blushed, apple-bright.

"I never thought my favorite part of that sentence would be the plural."

Now Clark's smile was wryly lopsided as he looked up at Lex, his head tilted flirtatiously so that his eyes were only half-visible. "Life really hasn't turned out the way we expected, has it?"

Lex shrugged, moving muscles that were tight from inaction. "Expectation is a mistake. It leads to disappointment."

"And disappointment leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the Dark Side ... Wait," Clark said, and this was just plain teasing, nothing subtle about it, "I think I got my aphorisms mixed up."

Lex smiled a little, to show that he knew he'd been caught. "Care to give me a lift back to civilization?"

Clark's face fell, his lashes lowered to cover his shining eyes. "If that's what you want."

He swallowed. "Well, I wouldn't mind a guided tour of an alien artifact first. And then maybe a snack."

That restored the smile, the same careless-bright one he remembered from Smallville. The one he never saw any more, not even when he looked at pictures of Clark receiving yet another award for his journalism. Superman smiled, usually at children, but there was always something distant about it, and that wasn't Clark's face anyway. Lex had thought he'd remembered that smile, but seeing it again made clear that he'd forgotten how it could make even this cold white room blaze with sunlight.

"Come on, then," Clark said, extending his hand to Lex, who took it with bemusement, standing up on feet whose wholeness felt even more bizarre than his renewed hand. His first steps were a little wobbly, which might explain why Clark didn't let go for several seconds.

The Fortress of Solitude -- whose name Clark managed to say with a straight, unblushing face -- was enormous, full of galleries of lost Kryptonian culture and rooms of mysterious equipment that made Lex's hands long for a toolkit. The floor was slick and translucent; the air was chilly, but the gleaming walls were somehow insulated so that when he pressed his palm against one he felt only the promise of cold and not the ice itself. He couldn't stop touching as they went, whether it was the holograms of alien animals or just the blank hallway walls, using both his hands. Clark noticed, he was sure, but didn't comment.

He learned more than he could immediately process about Krypton, the House of El, and the decisions that had sent one baby boy off into the ether while the rest of the population died with their exploded planet. Lex had little hope that humanity, which couldn't even learn from its own history, was going to do better absorbing the lessons of another lost world, but knowledge was never worthless.

After the tour, Clark took him back to the room he'd worked in before, where the Fortress had set a table and prepared a meal. If it was synthesized, Lex didn't know and didn't much care, since the food was uniformly delicious. He ate nearly half as much as Clark, which was a sign of true hunger on his part, while Clark told him about his years struggling to master his Kryptonian heritage without succumbing to his father's schemes for world domination.

No wonder Clark had hated Lex's fights with Lionel so much.

Dessert and coffee came. Lex was sorry to reach the bottom of his cup, but he had to get back to the world sometime. Outside of the Fortress, Clark's priorities would diverge from his own, and they'd be back to the struggle -- one that Lex would inevitably win, he knew, but it still would sting to have Clark shouting out his accusing questions while Lex was just trying to make a recalcitrant world run better.

"You look -- sad," Clark said, interrupting his musings. Lex looked up, into eyes as open and apparently trusting as a puppy's. He felt a twinge of pain in his chest, then an insulating anger at Clark, for pretending that time could be rewound.

"I should really go home," he said.

Clark closed his eyes for a moment. He was so very beautiful, his mouth with its perfect bowed curves, his skin rose gold, every plane of his face a new dimension of perfection, like a temptation conjured up by Mephistopheles for Lex's Faust. If only there were some Devil with whom he could make a deal -- but Clark was on the side of the angels, and therefore as far away from Lex as he could get.

"Okay," he said, and opened his eyes, catching Lex staring. As Lex watched, Clark's eyes widened and his lips parted, just a little, not smiling but poised to speak. "No," he said after a moment. "It's not okay."

Lex stood up, pushing his chair back, and Clark did the same. He walked around the table so that there was nothing between them but the years.

"Clark --" he began.

"Shut up," Clark said, desperately. "For once, please -- shut up."

Clark's hands on his shoulders were bruisingly hard, but his lips were feather-soft. Lex leaned into the kiss, letting Clark hold him up, opening his mouth and tasting coffee and Clark, Clark's tongue moving in him like he was conducting an inspection preparatory to taking over completely.

Lex realized that his eyes were closed, but he couldn't bring himself to open them, in case this was one of Clark's experiments. His hands nonetheless came up to stroke across Clark's chest, the slippery fabric of his uniform featureless and frustrating, denying him access to that golden idol's skin he'd seen in too many surveillance tapes.

Clark broke the kiss, leaning his forehead against Lex's. Lex could feel Clark's breath, hot against his wet mouth. He could feel his own pulse hammering, his heart lurching to keep up with what was happening. He could feel his fingers clenching as they failed to get any purchase on Clark's body, the Superman costume resisting his every attempt.

"Look at me," Clark said. His voice wasn't Clark Kent's. It was commanding, devoid of nuance, painted in primary colors.

Lex refused to shake his head. He stood so still he could feel the slight air currents of the Fortress brushing past him.

"Lex," Clark whispered. "Lex, this really doesn't work without you. Look at me."

Slowly, Lex opened his eyes, seeing at first Clark's madder-rose lips, his straight nose, his raven's-feather lashes.

The fact that Clark's skin was pale and his eyes were strained with fear shouldn't have reassured him. Any more than he should still have wanted Clark after all these years. Lex had never been good with 'should.' "It's all right, Clark," he said, forcing the words through a throat that felt blocked with baling wire. He raised his hands to clasp Clark's cheeks, away from the hateful costume, warming himself with the heat of Clark's skin. Clark's hands circled his wrists, holding him lightly.

This time, Lex was the one to bring their lips together, brushing from side to side, feeling the energy between them build like static electricity. Eventually, another touch, no different from the others before it, ripped away his control like the last grain of sand triggering an avalanche. He was clawing at Clark's collar, hanging on like a man fighting not to be swept off a ship in the middle of a storm, and Clark was just as fierce, one hand tight on Lex's wrist as the other came up to clasp the back of his neck, swinging them around so that the back of Lex's thighs bumped against the table.

"Take it off," Lex pulled himself away long enough to demand. "Take that outfit off and let me touch you." He didn't give Clark a chance to respond, just took his mouth again, lost in the feel of skin on skin, tongues meeting and parting, the graze of teeth like the rocks on which sirens led sailors to shipwrecks. His thumb grazed across Clark's Adam's apple -- or whatever the equivalent was for someone whose ancestors were never expelled from Eden -- and found a pulse under the corner of Clark's jaw. It leapt in time with Lex's own.

Clark pushed him up until he was sitting on the table, his legs splayed to accommodate Clark rubbing up against him. Clark let him go long enough to do something that made the cape fall heavily to the ground, then pulled off his uniform top. The movement left his hair tousled, curls sticking up at odd angles. His eyes were heavy, darker than Lex had ever seen them. He couldn't look away, and was forced to rely on his hands to tell him about Clark's body, bulkier now than in the past, perfect curves that no mathematics could describe, skin like satin, smooth as water, hot and solid and completely there. More than Lex had let himself hope for in years.

At some point, Lex had lost his clothing too, the table cold against his naked back, almost uncomfortable where the knobs of his spine hit the clean white surface. Not that he cared, with Clark bearing down on him like he wanted to melt into Lex's skin.

His legs moved against Clark's, like being underwater, not quite close enough yet, with Clark still half-dressed. He pushed at the waistband of the suit, but it didn't want to move, didn't want to give him access to Clark.

Clark's hands smoothed down his sides, over his hips, his fingers kneading as if he planned to reform Lex into a better shape. Lex arched up, grinding into Clark, and Clark's big hands palmed his ass, making him grunt against Clark's mouth. Then he was off the table entirely, Clark holding him up effortlessly as he wrapped his arm around Clark's neck for balance.

When he landed on a bed, he wondered whether the AI enjoyed watching them as it provided for Clark's needs, but he was hardly one to complain about witnesses.

Clark licked and bit down his neck, over his chest, pressing Lex down into the mattress every time he made an effort to reciprocate, so Lex relaxed as best he could and let Clark explore, offering verbal encouragement where appropriate. His mind kept wanting to throw up barriers between himself and the experience; he struggled to just feel, his head tilted up at a nearly painful angle so that he could watch Clark work his way down. Mostly he could only see Clark's hair, and the occasional flash of mountain-green eyes as Clark looked up, but he couldn't have mistaken Clark for anyone else. He carded his hand through Clark's mussed hair, thick and soft as a cat's fur. When Clark tongued his navel, his hand clenched automatically, and Clark made an approving sound.

He seemed taken with the hollow of Lex's hip, running his tongue over Lex's skin again and again, ignoring Lex's feeble attempts to move him further down. His hands rested heavily on Lex's upper thighs, keeping them spread and pinned. Lex meant to call him a fucking tease, but the words wouldn't come out, only half-moans.

Finally, finally, Clark shifted a little, moving to lick his balls and the base of his cock, simultaneously letting go of Lex's left thigh and pushing a miraculously slick finger into him.

Lex screamed before he could stop himself; when he covered his mouth with his wrist to stop a repeat of the sound, Clark batted it away with a casual violence that made him even crazier. Now Clark wasn't holding him down at all, but he was still pinned between Clark's mouth and his finger -- fingers, as Clark added another, curling them up and jolting Lex with a wave of electric pleasure.

Clark trailed the tip of his tongue up Lex's cock, pausing at the tip until Lex craned his neck down to meet Clark's eyes -- they were glowing, Lex realized, and his mouth fell open as Clark licked the head once and then took sucked him down. Heat -- this was Clark! -- pressure driving him up, up, into that wet suction -- Clark! -- could kill him in an instant, rip him apart with a twitch of those long, knowing fingers -- after all this time, better than he'd ever imagined -- could tear his flesh from his bones with just his breath, but instead just sucking, sucking at him with what felt like vigor but had to be the most exquisite care -- "Clark!" he cried out, and came in pulses like lightning in a dark summer sky.

By the time he could tell that he was seeing the white ceiling and not afterimages of his own ecstasy, Clark was stretched out next to him on the bed, pressing salty kisses into his mouth, their sweat-damp skins brushing and parting with soft wet sounds.

"Can I fuck you?" Clark asked.

Lex wanted to laugh, but Clark's open, trusting expression made something twist in his chest, so instead he nodded, watching the molten colors in Clark's eyes with amazement.

Clark pushed his legs up so they could be face to face, looking to Lex to make sure that it was all right before he took his cock in hand to guide himself into Lex. The sight of Clark's big golden hand wrapped around his big thick cock was enough to make Lex's whole body tremble, even though he wasn't going to get hard again any time soon.

They both watched -- pressure, a throat-clenching moment of panic as Lex flashed on what this might mean, then the sensation wrenched him back into the present as Clark pushed inside, a slow inch and then another, then a smooth thrust until their bodies were locked together, Clark inside him as far as he could go.

Clark pulled back a fraction, then in again, staring down, concentrating the way Lex had always concentrated on Clark's mysteries. Lex wanted to watch, too, but his attention was caught by the flexing of Clark's muscles, his arms rippling like Michelangelo's Dying Slave, his flat stomach moving with every thrust. Lex's own sensations were almost irrelevant.

"Lex," Clark said softly. He looked up, and with his eyes locked to Clark's, suddenly he was fully present in his body again, feeling Clark's cock in his ass, feeling the slide of his legs along Clark's side, the brush of his heels against Clark's back.

"Lex," Clark said again. He pulled Clark into a kiss, clawing at his back, rocking up into him, wanting to be closer in any way possible. Clark's hands moved up, covering his ears, holding his head in an inescapable grip.

Clark was grinding into him, his hips making small circles that would have made Lex scream if he'd had the breath to do so. As it was, he hung on to Clark's shoulders, his hands slipping off and then returning to that slick skin as Clark fucked him. Fucked him slow and hard, sweat beading on his temples and dropping down on Lex's face, making the sound of their bodies meeting into something obscene and moist. When Clark pulled his mouth away from the kiss, Lex could only look up in awe, the bright white light surrounding Clark's head like a halo, Clark's eyes wide and shocked, his hair stuck in sweaty black spikes, his face gilded with sweat, panting with the effort of breathing life back into Lex, fucking it back into him.

"I never stopped wanting you," Clark said -- or maybe Lex did -- and his eyes closed as he thrust once more and came, roaring. Lex could feel him, inside and out, only him. Clark wasn't taking over every atom of Lex's being, because that had happened long ago, but he was reclaiming his territory, and Lex was eager for the restoration.

Eventually, Lex started to straighten his trembling legs, prompting Clark to pull off of him and roll over on his back, splaying one arm over Lex's chest and twining their legs together so that they wouldn't truly be parted. The arm felt as heavy as if it were made of gold.

He ought to be figuring out what came next --

“Stop thinking,” Clark said, his voice a satiated rumble.

Lex looked up at the featureless ceiling, white as clouds in sunlight, and let himself relax. Clark’s breathing beside him was loud and regular. It had been years since he’d shared a bed with anyone, preferring to be gone as soon as the sex was over.

He felt like he was floating, his body heavy yet buoyed by whatever power made Clark able to fly.

He’d been working so hard, so long -- even before he came to the Fortress to be Clark’s personal mad scientist -- that now that he was at rest, he couldn’t imagine wanting to start again. The most effort he was willing to make was to turn his head, so that he could see Clark’s profile, the only color in the room -- not that he needed the contrast to stand out.

When he moved, Clark looked over at him, still glowing like the corona of a star. "How do you feel?"

"You have to ask?" Lex smiled at him, then dragged a hand up to brush Clark's hair off his forehead, enjoying the contact even though he was almost too exhausted to move. "I could stay here forever."

"Mmm, good," Clark said, turning into Lex’s touch, his arm moving from Lex’s chest as he curled against Lex’s side. "Hit the light, will you? There's a button on your side."

Lex reluctantly turned away and saw the button on the wall. Weird, but there was no reason to expect that alien technology would follow human patterns. Not trusting his tired fingers with the task, he reached up and pushed with the palm of his hand, exhaling with satisfaction as the darkness fell.

The world exploded.

****

From night to searing light, from quiet to howling discord, from giddy floating to cramping ache -- the experience redefined pain, and given what Lex had been through in the past months, that was saying a lot.

He tried to scream for Clark, but his mouth didn't respond.

New novas exploded at his groin, his nose and throat -- catheters and tubes coming out, he realized, and retched as they slithered away like dying snakes. The convulsions left him slumped to one side, unable to straighten. Every muscle in his body screamed. Lex felt his eyes try to tear up, but they were too dry and only stung instead.

He was just coming disconnected from the computer.

There had been no victory with Clark, no reconciliation, nothing.

He'd been under the AI's spell all this time, wrapped in its clutches like a fly in a spider's web, getting his vitals sucked out. Tuned like a balky piece of equipment. All so he'd achieve the right mental state to manipulate the Kryptonite into annihilation.

The pain of his nerves coming back to life was spectacular: worse than the feeling of having a morning star shoved into his guts when he’d been poisoned, nearly as bad as being flayed because it was so random, impossible to brace against. If he'd had his hands around a pistol, Lex honestly couldn't have said that he wouldn't have shoved it in his mouth and pulled the trigger, just to end the agony.

As it was, his hands -- hand! Fuck, he'd forgotten -- flopped around as muscle fibers contracted and relaxed at random, his arms bumping against the now-quiescent console. He'd just been getting muscle tone back after the rescue, he recalled.

"How long --" he said, or meant to say, but the words turned into a wheeze that evolved into a choke. He got himself under control, disgusted to find that his mouth was crusted with dried saliva, and tried again. "How long was I out?"

The computer answered, which was a small mercy. "Just over seven days."

He could, he realized, smell himself.

"You lied to Clark. You said you wouldn't manipulate me."

"I said I would not change the way you thought. Nothing was said about context or emotions. It was necessary. You could not have produced the required affect yourself once you were aware that contentment was the necessary mental state."

It was true: the computer was the Devil. Maybe the Devil's lawyer. So now Lex was a stinking, pathetic mess in withdrawal from a pleasure as pure as any rat with an electrode in its head ever experienced.

He was glad the AI could no longer read his mind, now that the connection was severed. At least, he thought it was unable to do so. He'd have to make Clark check.

And later, there would be a reckoning.

"Kal-El approaches," it warned him. Which would have been nice, if he could have done anything but loll in his chair, wanting a drink and a bath and, hey, how does happiness sound?

He managed to twist his head towards the door when it whooshed open. Clark looked smug, as well he should with his most dangerous nemesis responsible for the destruction of his one real vulnerability.

"Lex!" he said happily. Then he got a good look at -- or possibly a good whiff of -- Lex and frowned.

"Water. Drink and shower," he clarified, looking at Clark's cheekbones rather than his eyes. His voice sounded like a stream trickling through a dry gulch, but Clark nodded in comprehension.

Clark strode over to him and picked him up like a bridegroom doing the threshold bit. That got old really fast, in Lex's considered opinion. His remaining clothes grated against his skin, the fabric trapped between him and Clark.

They went into the next room, which had been reconfigured into a palatial bathroom. At this point, the humiliation was as close to complete as made no difference, so Lex didn't protest as Clark put him on a tiled bench, unbuttoned his sweat-filthy shirt and pulled off his ruined pants and boxers -- another thing to curse the damned computer for, that it had destroyed fine Hong Kong tailoring when it stuck its tubes into his private places.

Clark blinked away and back, now holding a glass of water, which he held to Lex's lips as he knelt beside the bench.

Lex took a small sip, then a larger one when his stomach allowed it. A few gulps later, he let his head loll back against the cool porcelain-analogue.

"Thanks."

"I think that's my line," Clark said wryly. "Shower?"

Lex's sluggish neurons fired a warning. "I need to cover my feet and my hand." In the midst of the cacophony of bodily pain, the screech of his stump and the deep bass throbbing of his feet had been lost initially, but they were returning to the forefront of his attention.

"Oh. Right." Clark looked miserable. Lex wanted the energy to snort disdainfully; he settled for keeping his eyes open. "Hang on." This time his absence lasted long enough for Lex to take several deep breaths. He returned with what looked like genuine surgical tape and plastic bags. The gentleness -- Lex's mind hesitated on the word "reverence" -- with which he handled Lex's body made Lex want to curl up and hide.

He was going to have to depend on either Clark or his AI. But only one of them was going to survive the year if Lex had his way, so the choice was plain. "I can take care of this part myself," he said when Clark was finished.

"Right," Clark said, flushing. "The Fortress can get anything you need. I'll, uh, be outside."

"Can I get a showerhead with a flexible hose?" Lex asked the room when Clark had gone. Obligingly, a large, circular piece of wall detached and blossomed towards him like a metal sunflower. Lex managed to get a grip on it, and then to turn the water on.

Even a slow trickle felt like a scouring pad against his oversensitive skin. After a few minutes, though, his much-abused nerves began to confuse pain and pleasure. There was soap in a little depression in the wall near him, extruded while he wasn't looking. Lex used it as vigorously as he could, to wit, not very vigorously. He displayed all the manual dexterity of a Parkinson's patient with broken fingers, and counted himself lucky to do that well. When he'd come out of his post-meteor coma all those years ago, his hands had been like rubber; he was a little better at resurrection now.

When he was as clean as he was going to get, he turned the water off. Without needing to be asked, the Fortress made a dry space in the bench beside him, which then slid aside to disgorge a white terry robe. He noted with some amusement that it bore Superman's crest on the upper left.

So the infernal machine had its good points. He was still going to destroy it for colonizing his will -- all the more because it could fairly claim that it hadn't violated Clark's instructions, since it hadn't tampered with his motivations. Lex could forgive lies. Betrayal was only to be expected, whether from humans or aliens. Trickery was another matter. It smacked of his father and his devil's bargains; it made him complicit in his own exploitation.

"Could you tell Clark I'd like to see him?" he asked, politely. The computer might suspect his enmity, but there would be no evidence for it to report to Clark.

After a short pause, during which the entire room reconfigured itself into something more like a general living area, Clark returned.

"Have you heard from the government yet?" Lex asked, leaning forward as he stripped the plastic covering from his artificial hand.

"Yeah," Clark said, with a sudden, mischievous smile. "They're pretty upset. Something about an act of war. I said I wasn't interested in war; I just want to be left alone to help people."

"To be fair, Clark, you do a lot of property damage."

Clark grimaced. "So you've pointed out to the press. Repeatedly. At length. Listen, I've got no objection to working with cities on emergency response plans that get the bad guys as far away from population centers and important buildings as possible -- but that's not what these military jerks wanted me to do.

"Also, in my defense, the bad guys tend to choose places because of the people and property they can put at risk -- it's like blaming the firemen for the fire because they're always found together."

Lex thought that Clark was overlooking the way his cape operated as a red flag -- pun intended -- to villains looking to make names for themselves by taking on the Man of Steel. This, he was convinced, was why Metropolis's Rogue's Gallery resembled nothing so much as the lineup for WWF Raw, silly names and all. But they'd both stated their positions on the matter before, and he didn't want to fight at the moment.

"Regardless," he said, glad to have a problem outside his own skin as a distraction, "with their supply of Kryptonite depleted, wiser heads are likely to prevail. It's changed from a military to a political problem, which is to your advantage -- and mine, since it means I can go home and get back to running my company."

"Uh, about that."

Lex closed his eyes and turned his face away. Every time he thought he'd hit a new low, he discovered that he'd just bounced off a ledge on the way down. "Yes?"

"Nothing bad! Just, the computer's been emulating you, so nobody even knows you were gone. It's also prepared a bunch of patent applications based on the stuff you did while you were in the simulation."

Lex blinked. "Really." He was still going to dismantle the thing and piss on its pulverized circuits -- but maybe he'd wait a bit.

Clark looked at him with an expression altogether too smug.

"So what now?" Clark's face was as close to trusting as Lex could remember seeing it. As if he were interested in Lex's opinion.

Lex had forgotten how that made him itch, the expectation (or hope, anyway) that he'd be a Good Man and not a Bad one. He'd never liked to do things he wasn't competent at doing. He'd never even been fond of acknowledging the existence of such things.

He looked away, at the computer console. "Now we get in touch with the American government and see what happens."

The computer let him call his Pentagon contact, who quickly transferred the call several stars higher up. Eventually Lex reached General William Rogers, the man in charge of what the military liked to call Special Projects and everybody else just called "superheroes."

"Good afternoon, General," Lex said after checking the time in the Eastern seaboard. "I hope you're well."

"Let's cut the bullshit. You just destroyed material vital to national security. You betrayed your country."

This might be fun. "That assumes that Superman is an enemy of the American people, which has yet to be demonstrated. His actions suggest the contrary, even during the past week when his life was in danger from your 'material.' But," he barreled on over the general's outraged huff, "now isn't the time for speeches. We need to work out a way for you and your good men to go back to fighting the real threats."

"What are you offering?" the general asked warily.

Lex leaned back in his chair. "I'm authorized to grant the US priority access to the League --" he held up his hand to forestall Clark's protest, so there was only a rustle of cape -- "and exclusive updates on League activities worldwide. The League can't wait for your authorization -- metahuman threats happen too fast for that -- but it can consult and inform, providing you with an invaluable source of intelligence. And frankly, General, the League is far more popular globally than America is, or than it would be if it were commonly understood to be an American operation."

There was a pause. Lex expected the general was getting his superiors in the loop.

"You hate Superman," he said at last. "Why would you take his side against your own country?"

"What I feel about Superman is irrelevant," Lex said, though "inexplicable" was probably the better word. "If he and his teammates are treated well, he can be a tremendous force for peace. If he's mishandled, he might just decide that humans are too irrational to govern themselves, which has been my concern all along."

There was a long pause, and when the general spoke, he sounded like he didn't want to. "The Justice League has some advanced technology at its disposal. We'd want a technology transfer agreement as well."

"And I want to be President, but that's not going to happen today," Lex responded easily. "The League can agree in principle to discussions of what technology might be suitably shared, once some trust has been rebuilt. Say two years from now?"

Another pause. If Lex had read the general correctly, he was telling various people on his end to shut up and let him negotiate, because they damn sure weren't going to be in a better position in the foreseeable future.

"Six months."

"A year," Lex said, keeping most of the amusement out of his voice. "Consider it an anniversary gift."

"We need to be able to initiate contact."

"Naturally," Lex said. "The League takes sovereignty seriously when it doesn't get in the way of saving lives. I'm sure reasonable requests could be accommodated."

"Then I suppose we have an agreement," the general said. "The League has the United States' permission to operate within our territory and outside as long as the United States is kept advised on a priority basis and entitled to object to any operation on national security grounds."

Lex's lips quirked; given that the whole point was to allow the government to save face, he didn't think it would be useful to respond to the idea that the US could object to any operation with "So can I, or so can any man."

"In addition," Richards continued, "the League agrees to negotiate in good faith on technology transfers starting one year from today, and not to share technology with any other nation without first offering the United States the same technology."

Lex guessed that complimenting the general on his clever addition to the agreement would go over badly, and the League could afford to agree to that anyway. "Then we have a deal," he said.

Behind him, Clark sighed.

"You planned this," the general accused, sounding as if he'd just had an insight. "You planned this for years, pretending to oppose him so you could screw us over."

Lex smiled. There was a special pleasure in beating someone who remained ignorant even in defeat. "The League will be in touch about setting up a communications protocol."

"Are you happy being a traitor?"

He stopped smiling. "I wish you wouldn't call me that."

"What are you going to do, send Superman after me?"

"The Justice League doesn't make threats, General, but I do. Keep this attitude up and you'll find this conversation and all necessary background material distributed so widely you'll hear your voice on ESPN.

"Superman is more popular than God -- if you'd killed him, you might have survived, but you didn't, and if this gets out you won't be allowed to command a Boy Scout troop, let alone an army. Now suck it up, say 'Thank you, Mr. Luthor,' and get ready to shake Superman's hand for the cameras, or prepare to be responsible for the first ever successful impeachment and conviction of a president."

Silence.

Lex let him sit for a minute, long enough that he had to be considering just hanging up. "General?" He knew he sounded jovial.

"Thank you, Mr. Luthor," General Rogers said with remarkable evenness.

"Thank you, General. We'll talk again soon."

He cut the connection and leaned back in his chair.

"Wow."

That was a good start. Lex swiveled, looking up at Clark's wide eyes and parted lips. "Now you just have to get the League to go along. It should be easy -- every human is American, and how you managed to convince the world that you're not CIA tools is a mystery of its own, but they should all fall in line behind you."

No response. Clark was almost frozen, though Lex could see the rise and fall of his chest.

"What?"

Clark shook his head, like a big dog coming in out of the rain. "You're just -- really sexy when you're kicking someone's ass. I never had the chance to notice when you were trying to kill me." He smiled, cheerful and teasing.

Lex had never really expected to kill Clark; if he was worthy, he'd obviously survive whatever Lex threw at him.

It struck him that he was using his father's reasoning.

Maybe he didn't want to be attractive because he was threatening.

Lex relaxed his clenched hands -- or tried to; the artificial one stuck and then released with such a savage jolt that he made an involuntary noise.

"What is it?" Clark stepped closer and put his hand out, almost touching Lex's arm.

He fought back the grimace, relaxed the muscles in his back and shoulders, and looked up, wishing he could stand. "I'm fine," he said. "I'd like to go back now, Clark."

"I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable," Clark said, withdrawing his hand and putting on his Superman expression, detached and so judgment-free it was actually judgmental. On consideration, Lex thought that was the closest the real Clark had ever come to an apology. And -- uncomfortable? Lex reviewed the conversation -- right, smart and evil is sexy.

"You didn't," he said, because Clark hadn't, at least not in the way that he thought. "I would like to get back to the world. I'm sure the Fortress creates an excellent simulacrum of me --" from what Lex could tell, it was a lot more like him in its desire for control than Clark even knew -- "but I would feel more comfortable in familiar surroundings."

Clark nodded, looking much like the uncertain boy of yesteryear. "But -- can you do anything about Lex's hand?" he asked, ignoring Lex in favor of his computer.

"The interface can be redesigned so that it no longer causes nerve damage."

Lex winced to hear the problem described so bluntly. If his body weren't so freakish, the nerves wouldn't regenerate to be fried again, Prometheus-like. But then he'd be long dead, so he supposed that it was as fair a bargain as a Luthor could expect.

"Then do it," Clark said.

Before Lex got a chance to object, the console dissolved into a tangle of grasping tubes and wires, slithering up his arm like vines on a statue. "Wait," Lex snapped, to no avail. "I don't want your computer having continued access to my body. My left hand is going to know what my right hand is doing."

"The modifications can be autonomous," the computer said, as if it had any business offering an opinion.

"Okay, do that," Clark said.

He tolerated the reconnection. There was pressure, almost tickling, and cool metal circuitry pressing its fingerprints into him. He wriggled his arm just to make it hurt. The computer promptly clamped down on him to prevent further movement. Clark, meanwhile, was on the other side of the room now, talking softly -- to someone in the Justice League, judging by his cajoling tone.

When the mare's nest of tubing shriveled away, the artificial hand was smaller, the size of Lex's real hand, and the gauntlet had been shrunk and reformed into a silvery cuff covering where his wrist should have been, overlapping the ends of the long bones of his forearm. It looked real, not the uncanny near-humanity he'd feared the Fortress would stick him with.

It didn’t hurt.

He flexed experimentally, spread the fingers wide and then curled them in. "It's very good," he told Clark, who'd finished his conversation moments before.

"The pain is gone?" Clark asked anxiously, returning to Lex's side. He squinted at the hand, presumably using his broad-spectrum vision. Which, when Lex had figured it out, had explained in retrospect a number of Clark's dopier looks, though by no means all of them. What Clark hoped to see in the mechanism was an interesting question. Lex didn't know whether he could detect individual nerve impulses. It was one of the many, many mysteries of Clark's alien origins. Lex thought he could spend the rest of his life exploring Clark's physiology, and not even in an obscene way. The flying alone --

Clark had asked a question. "It feels remarkably lifelike," he said. His word choice could have been better; Clark winced. "Thank you," he added, to clarify his opinion.

"No problem," Clark said, practically shuffling his feet.

So they were back to awkward.

Lex supposed it was marginally better than homicidal.

"Shall we get going?" he prompted.

"Sure," Clark said. "Uh, there's kind of two ways of doing this. I call them 'sack of potatoes' and 'honeymoon.'" He said it without looking at Lex's face.

"'Sack of potatoes' sounds extremely undignified, but honeymoons have rarely gone well for me. What's your recommendation?" Lex thought his tone was reasonable, but Clark cringed fractionally anyway.

"'Sack of potatoes' probably is beneath your dignity," Clark agreed. "You, uh, might be more comfortable the other way."

"Well, then," Lex said, as reasonably as possible under the circumstances, "what are we waiting for?"

Clark used his superspeed to minimize the embarrassing process of getting Lex properly positioned. Lex found himself whipping through icy air, one cheek pressed against Clark's shoulder. Tears streamed from his exposed eye, forced out by the cold and the speed. He was held so that he couldn't see how far away they were from the ground, which on balance might have been a good idea.

He was flying. The enormity of it could only be grasped in short flashes.

Clark, now wearing his Superman guise, accelerated so fast that Lex could feel the gravities piling on like stacks of weight, and then they were simply rocketing through the sky like a definition of speed. Lex grinned, curling his arm around Clark's neck (ignoring the flash of false memory of doing the same thing in the computer simulation), and turned his face so he could see the cloud vistas in front of them.

****

He should have known Clark would take him to the mansion in Smallville. Clark stopped in the air a few yards from the perimeter, looking in with dismay. "Lex, it's kind of -- I forgot how much damage there was," he said, embarrassed. Up close, Lex could tell that he still flushed easily -- whatever alien technology he used to distort his features had no effect on the blood flow under his skin.

"It's all right," he said, his face still stiff from the chill of their passage. "If my bedroom is intact and the satellite connection is working, I'll stay here. The place is big enough that half of it could be under repair and I'd never notice." He did hope that most of the art had survived. Insurance money was fine, but it couldn't be contemplated and cherished in the same way.

Clark narrowed his eyes; Lex noticed how thick and long his lashes were, like an antique doll's, a houri's in an opium dream. "The bedroom is fine. And the satellite link is working. But -- there are people in your library. Oh God," he said, his eyes widening almost comically.

Lex didn't have to wait long.

"It's Bruce and Lois. They're talking." Clark paused and his voice filled with horror. "It's like a nightmare."

Lex couldn't help himself. He sniggered.

"Just for that," Clark said, "we're going to meet them like this." And in a blink, they were in the library, Lex in full helpless rescue victim pose.

"Put -- me -- down," he said, his voice pitched for Clark's ears alone. Bruce and Lane probably heard, though. It was that kind of day -- no, that kind of year -- no, lifetime.

Clark carefully, slowly walked over to a blue leather couch -- Lex was going to have to speak to whoever did the redecorating -- and lowered Lex until he was sitting almost normally, Clark still leaning over him with a solicitous air. He was facing Lane and Bruce; behind them he could see the railing, looking down over the remains of the office, which was covered with the yellow police tape that was almost as familiar to him as crystal decanters and ancient weapons.

Lex slung an arm across the back of the couch, arranged his legs in their most arrogant sprawl, and raised his eyebrows at the man and woman staring avidly at Clark.

"Can I help either of you?"

They looked at him like something stuck to the bottom of Superman's boot, and while Lex didn't disagree with the opinion, he nevertheless objected strongly to others who dared to hold it.

"We were -- " Lois Lane began.

"I was -- " Bruce said, then clearly remembered that he was not in costume and, understandably rattled by his lapse, switched to feckless playboy mode. "The lovely Ms. Lane and I wanted to see --"

Lex had to smile as Bruce struggled to finish that sentence in a plausible way.

"The government comes down on here like you're David Koresh and Saddam Hussein combined, and then total radio silence? I knew there'd been some major fuck-up. I wanted to make sure Superman was all right and that you haven't done something to warp his mind," Lois said. "I don't know what Bruce's deal is -- the two of you have some sort of billionaire boy's club, or what? Anyway, I'm here, give me the story."

"Are you sure you're feeling all right, Ms. Lane? Because if you think I'm going to give you any kind of assistance --"

"Oh come on," she said, striding over and plopping herself down on the couch next to him, their knees inches apart. "You gave Clark an interview and you hated him more than you ever had reason to hate me. It's my turn."

Lex was aware that his mouth had dropped open. Not much, but still. Evidently staying away from Lois Lane had been a wiser idea than he'd even known. He was aware of Clark, standing sternly over his shoulder, probably gloating.

He'd just stared down the US government. No way was some muckracker going to intimidate him, no matter how fucking scary she could make sheer determination look. Anyway, he needed to deal with Bruce. "Superman," he said, not turning to look back, making clear that he was supremely confident that Clark would do whatever he suggested, "why don't you take Ms. Lane down to the kitchens, get her some coffee and tell her the story as it ought to be reported? Bruce and I do have some business to discuss." Not that he knew what Bruce wanted to chat about, but it was all about the appearance of control.

Lane's eyes flicked upwards, fast as a switchblade. She frowned, but rose to be closer to Superman's level. "I'll decide how the story ought to be reported, thanks, but I'll be happy to hear your version of it first."

"What admirable commitment to the truth," Lex said, almost under his breath.

She rolled her eyes. "Like you'd recognize truth if it ripped off its clothes and danced the hootchie-cootchie in front of you. Come on," she said to Clark. "Like the man said, use that X-ray vision of yours to find me a cup of coffee."

In the doorway, when Clark was already out in the hallway, she paused and looked back. "Later for you," she warned, and Lex was nearly shocked to see that she was aiming for Bruce.

Who looked -- was that actual fear, or just a perfect simulacrum? And did it matter, in the end?

"The hootchie-cootchie," Lex repeated, caught between astonishment and relish, as the door slammed closed on her retreat.

"That woman is a menace," Bruce replied. "Why did your security let her in?"

"I could ask the same of you," Lex pointed out. "What did you need to say that couldn't have been said on a secure channel?"

"She said she was thinking of doing a feature on Gotham -- does she know?"

Lex guessed that he was talking about Clark/Superman. He was enjoying watching Bruce shake in his black leather boots far more than was nice.

He had rarely been so glad not to be nice.

"My guess is yes, but she doesn't admit that she knows even to herself. I call it Superman-induced multiple personality disorder. But unfortunately it's not a testable hypothesis. And the point of your visit?" he prodded.

Bruce shook his head, gathering his composure. "I needed to see how far the two of you have gone."

Lex brought his hands together, his elbows resting on his knees. It was a little odd not to be able to rest any weight on his feet, but he could pull off the pose regardless. "That's more than usually cryptic, even for you."

"You destroyed the one thing that can take him down, if he ever gets out of control."

He thought about that before replying. A man less controlled than Bruce would have paced while waiting for Lex to speak, or stepped closer to convey a sense of menace, but Bruce just stood there with his arms crossed over his chest. Lex could imagine him in full costume in the same pose, like a shadow over his features. It was a stance that improved in impressiveness with gauntlets and some sort of chest symbol.

"I didn't destroy all of it," he said, "and I won't. He understands that there has to be balance as well as you and I do."

"But under your control, not the government's."

Lex shrugged. "Of course. Not to mention the other bits and pieces you've got squirrelled away, so don't pretend you're now helpless."

Muscles shifted in Bruce's face, but the resulting expression was just as stony as the original. "Batman asked me to bring the communication device the government wants Superman to use. He's disabled the tracking chip and attached a device to spoof the location when it connects to the satellite network."

Lex was impressed despite himself, both by Bruce's technical facility and the completeness of his paranoia that he might be overheard. "I'll give it to Superman." He held out his hand. "What, you think I'm going to add spyware of my own? Either Superman would find it because he mistrusts me, or he'll tell me voluntarily, so I have no incentive to do that. Not to mention that I have plenty of sources in the military."

"I don't trust either of you."

"You keep saying that. In my own life, when I kept announcing that to the world, I was looking desperately for someone I could trust. You'll do better if you're aware of that -- you couldn't do worse than I did, anyway."

This revelation had the unexpected benefit of making Bruce even more uncomfortable, judging by how he stiffened as if the Gorgon had just flashed him.

"Come on," Lex said, and gestured with his open hand.

Slowly, Bruce removed what looked like an ordinary cellphone from his pocket. Lex had to lean forward to take it, and even at full extension almost fumbled it out of his fingers -- one of Bruce's little power games, but Lex's father had done worse every day before breakfast, so Lex didn't mind.

Bruce was staring hard at Lex's false hand, now braced on his upper thigh for balance. Lex wondered whether Bruce had on him any equipment sensitive enough to discern anything about the machinery. If so, Lex really had to talk to his own researchers about the importance of being ahead of the competition. Maybe he should incorporate a jamming chip into the hand.

It was almost funny, to be recovering from a trip to perfect happiness only to be confronted with Bruce. If the Kryptonian AI had needed to rely on Bruce to achieve the appropriate mental state, Clark would be dead now.

Of course, it had yet to be proven that Lex Luthor could survive happiness, either.

Lex closed his eyes and sighed. "We're a long way from making your worries of a world-conquering alliance materialize. And with you around to pester Clark, I doubt he'll fall headlong into any of my schemes."

Bruce made a noncommital noise. Lex supposed that was an encouraging sign.

When he opened his eyes again, Bruce was gone.

Lex allowed himself a small smile. With Lois Lane in the building, Lex couldn't blame Bruce for running.

****

Against all expectation, Clark returned without Lane. Lex didn't ask what he'd done to make her leave. "She's gone?" he asked. Clark nodded. "You looked?" And because Clark had worked with Lane for years, he did scan around. This time, when he nodded, Lex believed him.

Lex let his exhaustion show, slumping back into the couch and closing his eyes. "Any more surprises lurking around, or are we done for the day?"

He heard Clark's awkward steps towards him. "I didn't see anyone else. Uh -- should I take you upstairs? So you can get some rest?"

He nodded. He didn't open his eyes when Clark picked him up. The computer simulation had been incredible -- Clark even smelled the same.

In the bedroom, Lex refused to be awkward about the fact that Clark was lowering him onto his bed. He sat up, careful not to put any weight on his feet, and picked up the phone by the bedside. Clark began to retreat as he dialed Mercy's number.

"Stay," he said, putting the receiver against his shoulder to mute it. Clark stopped, his body rigid and uncomfortable.

Mercy answered immediately, her voice clear but still obviously wounded at losing him twice in such rapid succession. He assured her of his status and location and asked her to make sure that the repairs in his office were given the highest priority.

Clark stood frozen in his hero's suit, reminding Lex that ancient Greek statues of the gods were originally painted in the brightest colors; it was only time that bleached them white.

At the end of the conversation, she said, "I'm glad you're safe," in such a rush that it was a struggle to understand her, then hung up before he could process the statement.

It was wrong of him, he knew -- when had that ever stopped him? -- but he seriously hoped that Mercy wasn't developing a personality at this late date.

Stress could make people behave strangely, as he well knew.

Clark was still doing his impression of a mannequin, standing on the Oriental carpet like an enormous action figure.

"Can I offer you a drink?"

Clark twitched, setting the cape to fluttering, and shook his head. "No, thanks. I should really --"

Away from the AI, Lex felt more himself. He missed the sun-sweet happiness it had put in his head, but he could put it aside. Clark could always drive him to distraction, and distraction was certainly needed. "Please, sit." He patted the bed beside him, and received a wide-eyed stare in return.

"You said you wanted to try this friendship again. Having second thoughts already?"

Clark closed his eyes, perhaps praying for strength. Then he crossed the floor, flipping the cape carefully out as he sat so that it pooled on the bed behind him. Lex smiled a little at the evidence that Clark wasn't as ignorant of image as he wanted to seem.

The cape was even brighter up close, red like something out of a fairy tale -- myth blood.

Clark looked over his shoulder, following Lex's gaze. Against the carefully neutral colors of his bedspread, the cape looked unreal, as if Clark were an animated character in a live-action film.

"I know we don’t really have any catching up to do," he said, to start things off. "But if there are things you want to ask me -- or tell me -- I'd like to hear them."

The bed creaked as Clark shifted. His hands, framed by the blue of the suit as they rested on his thighs, were perfectly human.

"Friendship," he said at last. "It wasn't just that, was it?"

Lex shook his head. Fantasy was one thing -- having believed in the AI’s illusion was another. It was difficult to speak to Clark as if he’d never felt Clark’s naked skin against his own. He kept having to remind himself that the memory was just another lie. It was minimal comfort to know that Clark had felt the attraction too, once upon a time.

"So why didn't you -- why didn't we ever --?"

"Maybe because you can't do it if you can't say it?"

Clark rolled his eyes. “You know, I’m pretty sure I’ve fucked more people than you have at this point.”

That stung, but he’d deserved it. "By the time you were legal, I wasn't sure you liked me that much."

"I was your best friend!"

"Your point?"

Clark shifted, turning to face him, but Lex refused to meet his eyes. "You know, I really dislike your self-deprecating sense of humor at times. Anyway, it wasn't like you weren't used to sleeping with people you didn't trust."

Lex's lips twitched as he looked up. "Really, Clark. Surely you can grasp the idea that I didn't want that from you."

"But -- " he protested, wide savior's eyes looking at Lex with a disturbing combination of bewilderment and faith.

"I misused your friendship," Lex admitted. "I didn't really expect you to forgive me for investigating you. I expected the lies. I half wanted them, to remind me that no one could be trusted. I kept pushing, knowing it would drive you away -- which proved to me that you weren't really my friend after all. It's humbling to realize that one's psychology can be reduced to the most basic insecurities, but the truth is generally a lot uglier than I want it to be. There wasn't room in my life for honesty, and if we'd slept together, that would have been honest. It couldn't have been anything else."

Clark nodded, and Lex thought that he did understand, after all. Their bodies couldn't have lied when their mouths could barely sustain the pretense; touch would have exposed every artificial constraint they'd put on their interactions.

“And now?”

Lex tilted his head, as if looking at Clark from a slightly different angle would give him the insight he’d always lacked. “Now -- we discovered each other’s secrets a long time ago. Maybe that’s enough to justify a new start.”

“So you still -- I mean, I thought you probably still cared, because of the surveillance and everything,” he frowned briefly to indicate that Lex had tested his patience but was forgiven, “but I didn’t know what you were feeling.”

“What I felt when I watched you?” Clark was too close for this conversation, bright and real and only a few feet away. Clark’s nod forced him to continue. “You know what I wanted.” The carpet was thick wool, black flecked with white and purple, like river stones. The sin of pride, he recalled, was associated with the color purple, which though beside the point was a more comfortable thought than dealing with Clark right now.

Clark's hand on his upper arm challenged him to look over. And, like a Pavlov-trained dog, he turned to see.

Clark was smiling, a slow secretive expression that made La Joconde look blatant. “You’re the one who started me reading philosophy, stocking up quotes to tell people when I didn’t want to use my own words. There was this French guy who said, 'Jealousy is in some measure just and reasonable, since it merely aims at keeping something that belongs to us, whereas envy is a frenzy that cannot bear anything that belongs to others.'"

Lex stopped breathing as he tried to parse Clark's logic. From friendship to jealousy -- not that it had ever been a great distance, for Lex. "So," he said, as careful as he knew how to be, "should I be jealous or envious of Bruce?"

Clark's face lit up like a solar flare. He was the boy from the bridge again, shiny and new. "You should be jealous. You should be very, very jealous."

Hope, a great white bird spreading its wings, moved in him. "Good. That's -- good." He suspected that his expression was completely fatuous, but Clark wasn't going to call him on it.

If he was still in the AI’s simulation, he thought, he was going to rip it apart with his hands and teeth, and then cut his own wrists.

"Did you watch us, Lex?" Clark's tone held neither the ingenuousness of Clark Kent the reporter nor the utter righteousness of Superman. Lex swallowed, a habit he'd thought conquered.

"Answer me," Clark demanded, bringing his face close to Lex's. "Did you watch? You had to guess I knew about the cameras. Were you hoping I was performing for you?"

"You know I was." Lex didn't recognize his own voice, desire-broken.

"Wouldn't you rather have me in three dimensions?"

But wasn't that what Clark had always offered, shimmering in the distance, if he'd only behave himself according to Clark's standards? He'd hurtled towards that superior mirage too many times before, watching it recede as he sped up. "We're still not on the same side." He’d felt more secure when they were flying, defying nature’s law. This -- Clark -- refused to settle into a pattern again, refused to be something he could predict and use and brace himself against.

"We could be. I don’t want apologies; I want you to listen before you act, and I’ll do the same. That’s how it can work, if we’re serious about it."

It was the matter-of-factness of Clark's statement, more than anything else, that made Lex want to believe him. "And what do I get for that concession?" Lex's blood was thundering through his body; he had to fight to keep from swaying towards Clark.

Defeating Lex's self-control, Clark leaned forward, his eyes all the colors of Earth. "Do you want a list or a demonstration?"

"I want everything," Lex breathed. Clark's mouth was centimeters away.

Clark closed the last distance between them, and Lex learned to hate the AI all over again, for taking away his first time.

But the touch of Clark's lips was nothing like what the computer had imagined for him. There was warmth and pressure, lush never-chapped lips softer than any human's. Nothing was physically different from the illusion he'd had before. What was new was the sense of the world turning around them, as if this moment were a fulcrum, sending his life onto a new vector. He could feel every cell vibrating with Clark's. He reached up and twined his fingers in Clark's hair, which was thick and prickly to his human hand, softer to the machine. Clark opened his mouth and Lex shuddered, letting his head fall back as Clark's tongue invaded, explored, took him over.

"Fuck!" Clark yelped and pulled back, nearly losing his balance.

"What? What?" Lex pushed himself half upright, ignoring the protests from his feet, fully prepared to humiliate himself to keep Clark from leaving.

"I have to go deal with a big flood in Sri Lanka. Just got a message from the League," he explained as he stood up. "But I should be back in a few hours."

"I -- I'll be here," Lex promised.

In less than a heartbeat, Clark was sitting next to him again, breathing into his ear. "Just think about this while you wait: All the things you watched me do -- you haven't seen the first part of what I'm going to do for you."

Lex wasn't sure what expression was on his face, but it was satisfactory enough that Clark grinned victoriously and stood. It was a hell of an exit line, Lex had to admit.

"This is going to be a feature of our relationship, isn't it?" Lex asked the empty air.

And smiled.

End

Extra note: Lois's comment about Batman's comment gratefully appropriated from Livia.