Lex opens his eyes on the ceiling of his room.
No, *not* his room, not quite. The sheets feel cool, like he hasn't been in them long, and Lex looks down, surprised to see himself half-dressed, unbuttoned silk shirt and unfastened pants, tie twisted around one reddened wrist and, strangely, fastened to the post of the bed. That's--different?
That's disturbingly strange, in fact, even for his life.
Sitting up, he picks the knot with his teeth, smelling dried come and blood in the fine weave, wincing at the free movement of blood again, stretching his fingers out to get circulation going again. There's blood under his nails and his back's begun to sting, and God, now he's feeling it. The kind of sex that fifteen through thirty-five spent serious time indulging in, before sex was as boring as everything else, and that, Lex thinks, says more about just how fucked up he is than anything else ever could.
Sliding out of the bed, Lex shivers, hands sliding to the buttons of his shirt and finding none. The room looks like his own, even if he isn't quite. His balance feels off--the body doesn't match the mind quite enough. Apparently, this one doesn't eat quite enough, thinner in some way Lex can feel more than see. He thinks he might be hungry.
A shower makes everything better, or at least, less weird. Showers are pretty much the one thing that life cannot fuck up. Hot water and soap, and Lex closes his eyes, pretending this is any morning in his life, the morning after, maybe, that at forty-five, he should fucking have gotten over already.
His hands linger on the lines of someone's fingernails on chest and stomach, though, bruised skin, pulled muscles reluctantly relaxing beneath the flow of hot water. He's way too old for this shit.
The clothes seem familiar, though, military precise rows, dry cleaning bags, sorted by color and type. He can close his eyes, reach for any two pieces of clothes, and they'll match. He's predictable like that.
"You're up early."
Lex doesn't have time to freeze at the sound of that voice so close to his ear; Clark always moves like water, but not even *sensing* him says some uncomfortable things, most of them about Clark himself. It takes a beat to relax, fighting down the reflexive surge of fear and anger, another body's instincts, but Clark doesn't seem to notice, nose against Lex's neck.
Even so, it's a lifetime's worth of control to stop the wince when sharp teeth sink into his bare shoulder.
The worst part is, this body doesn't even move. "Clark."
It's been a long time since he's shaped the name to the face of the man, hard consonants and flat vowels curving around his tongue, but it feels familiar. Familiar as the bloody lines on his body and the teeth on his skin, and the low hum of spiked pleasure. It's all going somewhere, but his mind's caught between two conflicting instincts, and only one set is his own.
Clark turns him around with effortless ease, and a blur of dark hair and swamp-green eyes are lost in the first hard kiss.
Lex sucks in a slow breath when Clark lets go, tasting blood. This Clark plays a little rough.
"Up way too early," Clark murmurs, and Lex opens his eyes.
Knowing and seeing are two different things. His body may have given him the clues, but not this kind, and the man who watches him from Clark's eyes is the one that matches those marks on his body, tracing his bare back with possessive fingers, smiling with slow heat, pushing him a half-step back with a puzzled expression but not quite letting go.
Lex has no idea why he just stands there. This body didn't come with an operating manual, after all.
"Something's wrong." It doesn't even pretend to be a question. Lex takes in the mess of dark hair, the exquisite cut of his jacket, the painful perfection of a beautiful man dressed by someone who knows clothes and knows all the things they can say. Clark--his Clark in a suit was Clark in flannel, awkward and uncomfortable, saying, ignore me. This Clark's never met awkward, and uncomfortable is for lesser people.
"Lex." Big hands rest on his shoulders, shaking him like a puppy. Lex blinks away the surprise, trying to hold his balance on unfamiliar feet. It's not easy. "What's wrong with you?"
Clark doesn't expect Lex's retreat, which is the only reason Lex can pull it off, disguising it as a reach into the closet for clean pants. The superfine material slides over his skin easily, and his hands even get to the fastenings before Clark's in front of him, and Lex is against the wall. It might be Superman in the room, not Clark, except Superman, in Lex's memory, never used his strength quite like this.
"Lex." The warning tightness of fingers in his shoulder will leave bruises. Clark would never have done that. Superman, either, even at his most righteously enraged, but this one hikes Lex up against the wall until his toes barely brush the floor. Surprise is the understatement of the century. "Don't fucking ignore me. What the hell is up with you?"
Lex takes a deep breath and fails. "I--had a bad night." It could be true, since he doesn't remember the last time he really slept, but the context of the Arctic is needed and Lex can't explain that without being reduced to explanations of relativity and how many impossible things there are in the universe that man has yet to touch. His mind's still not wrapped around it.
Also, explaining? Very stupid.
"You were sleeping okay when I left." But Clark lets him down, one hand freeing his shoulder to circle his bruised wrist. The marks are fading slowly, but Clark smiles as he raises it to his lips, brushing a soft kiss against the broken veins. Big knuckles graze his chin, and Lex is completely surprised by the urge to flinch. That, too, is new.
It's your mind, but that body, the AI had told him, and he hadn't considered body memory when he said yes. This body's remembering things that Lex's mind doesn't understand.
"We have a meeting this afternoon," Clark tells him, smiling now, dismissing everything else. Taking a step back, he glances through the closet, and the Clark of before never, ever would have studied the myriad shades of purple for that long. Nor with such interest. "The violet silk."
Lex is reaching for it before he even realizes he's doing it. It's an actual effort to freeze his hand inches away. Lex knows himself, down to the chromosomes that made him and the mutation that changed him. Whatever happened to this body, to this man, it can be summed up in the fact the hand that reaches for that shirt shakes, and that tells him everything.
"Lex?"
Lex closes his eyes. "I'll be down in a few minutes."
That seems to satisfy him; Clark leaves as silently as he came, and Lex listens to his nerves this time, that tell him when Clark's no longer in the room. Never out of sight or out of hearing, perhaps, but the overwhelming physical presence is gone and Lex can breathe again.
Breathe and pull away and turn around, take in the room again, looking for himself, or whatever passes for him here.
"This wasn't what I expected." He's talking to empty air. It's Belle Reve all over again, except this time, his voices are real and the world's compressed into this room, that man, and the mirror that shows Lex Luthor, billionaire and the most powerful man in the world, scared to death by a man he once thought he could kill.
Lex walks to the bed, looking at it. Blood-stained and messy with a night of sex, abraded wood and ripped sheets. The ache's almost gone, relegated to the periphery of his mind, and he heals fast, he always had. Lex shuts his eyes for a second, grounding himself.
This really isn't what he expected.
*****
The staff is invisible. Good staff is invisible, but Lex has lived in power all his life, and he knows the difference between good and the kind of fear that makes them move like ghosts. A flicker of a skirt or a starched shirt, coffee on the table without any visible means of transportation, and Clark, this indolent, reclining presence at the table.
There's no practical way to reconcile what he's seeing to what he knows, so he doesn't try. That way lies madness and drug overdoses. So Lex doesn't, pasting a smile on his face as he sits down.
The green eyes narrow as they take in the red shirt, but Lex just takes a cup of coffee, wondering if he really wants to read the paper neatly folded beside the plate of dry toast.
"You seem really--" Clark's frowning, and Lex thinks of those fingers, so casually wrapped around a mug of coffee, cutting blue lines into his right shoulder. If he wasn't left handed, he'd be having a really bad morning right now.
"I'm just tired. I didn't sleep well." Lex keeps his eyes on the paper. The front page for the Daily Planet is graced by Chloe, not Lois, and Lex feels the sparkle of the other memories. This could be a danger, the AI had explained. Getting lost in Now and forgetting Then. Losing the entire point of this exercise in insanity.
There is, Lex thinks, a good chance he's actually back in his old room at Belle Reve right now, screaming about the apocalypse while many a friendly, faceless doctor shoots him up. Even his metabolism hadn't known what to do with psychotropics. When Clark reaches across the table and Lex's body stiffens, he almost wishes that were true.
Enough monkeys typing brings you the entire works of Shakespeare. Enough universes and time, there's a Clark Kent who scares the shit out of Lex Luthor over breakfast. There's not a word in the English language to adequately describe this moment. When Clark simply picks up a bagel, Lex breathes again.
"Are you planning on coming this afternoon?" Clark asks, friendly and patient, like Lex staring determinedly into his coffee cup is completely the norm, and hell, maybe it is. He still takes it black, though; Lex thinks he might have started the slow nervous breakdown percolating in the back of his mind if he found out that his first coffee of the morning needed cream these days.
"Coming?" Somehow, though Clark's voice makes it sound dirty, he's almost sure Clark isn't referring to sex. The dark head bends, eyes narrowing thoughtfully, and Lex remembers that while Clark had always played the part of dense farmboy, the mind behind those eyes is frighteningly sharp. Ten times that now, the habit of suspicion written on his face. Lex watches him stands up, crossing the room with cool elegance, this grace that Clark could never have mastered, this ease inside his own skin, power barely leashed.
Power he likes to use, Lex thinks. He takes a drink of coffee, wondering if any of this is showing on his face. And if it's too early for alcohol.
"You haven't exactly been enthusiastic about this," Clark says in a voice that echoes with petulance, the dissatisfaction of someone who is used to getting their own way and can't imagine why anyone would want something different. It is, Lex thinks, a little too close to Lex in adolescence.
Or hell, Lex in middle age. Years of commanding obedience can do strange things to a person. Lex has few illusions about what he is, but he's not sure that he's ever looked quite like that.
"I have some--errands to run," Lex says, surprising himself. He gets the feeling this Lex spends as much time on errands as possible. Away from this overwhelming presence that makes the room feel claustrophobically tight and small.
Clark's mouth turns down in dissatisfaction. "Shopping again?"
"Spring trends wait for no man, even a super man." The words are coming out of his mouth without checking in at his head. A slip through of that other personality, edging into his consciousness, and Lex pushes it back. He's the son of Lionel Luthor--compartmentalization is in his blood. "Do you mind?"
Because he gets the feeling that Lex Luthor asks that a lot here. And the implication of *that* are going to have to wait. Forever, if possible.
Clark's frown deepens. "Whatever. Just be on time for once." Turning, all exquisite silk-wool blend and too pretty face, Clark walks out, but his presence lingers in ache in Lex's shoulder. Clark's not stupid, never has been, no matter how many dumb farmboy thoughts have crossed through in the recesses of his mind. And Lex doesn't feel it would be in his best interests to find out just what this Clark does when he's actively suspicious.
*****
Mercy and Hope are in the other car; Lex thinks that probably tells him everything he needs to know about status quo. He thought about driving himself, but he doesn't trust this world to be close enough for him to navigate. Getting lost isn't on the agenda--thinking *is*.
And thinking isn't something that goes on in that penthouse suite, Lex thinks.
"Where to, Mr. Luthor?" asks the driver from behind the glass. Lex stares at the intercom for a minute. Where to, indeed?
"Anywhere." And that's an order he's given before, on long nights, with a glass of scotch, wanting to be alone but not, riding through Metropolis like it's his personal demesne, which it mostly is, even if he shares it with Superman.
The driver here, too, seems to know his moods, going off without another word, and Lex shifts on the thick leather, leaning his head back into the seat. He should have found out more--at least, enough to not make any monumentally stupid mistakes that can happen when you jump universes on a whim, but *getting out* had been paramount. It was living with Lionel all over again, drugs and sex and rock and roll, or at least, sex, apparently.
The AI had been specific. To win, they needed to find the weakness. Their universe didn't stand a chance. Not with the best and brightest dead, not with Superman and half the Justice League gone, not with the world they've been left. So, this way. However the hell it's going on, with history and science reduced to mathematical equations and a chamber in the Fortress. Because he's just stupid enough to climb into an alien device and let himself be shuffled.
He really should have asked a few more questions before he agreed to do this.
Somehow, he'd grabbed a PDA off the dresser before making his great escape. Pulling it from one pocket, Lex glances down, pulling up the meeting for today. Genetic engineering. Other notes, his own code, but subtly different, cover the rest of the day. The rhythm feels off, but Lex can't quite put his finger on the dissonance--maybe the difference between this Lex and him, but he's not sure. The random Kryptonian symbols makes it that much more disconcerting. He knows enough to know he's reading the work of someone fundamentally more familiar with it. Slang? Maybe.
Maybe he should have tried to find out more from Clark.
Lex reaches for the intercom. "LexCorp Towers." Familiarity would be nice.
Lex thinks it through. Reflexive reactions hadn't been good. Neither had the compliance. None of this looks good, and he's half-tempted to start doing a history lesson, just to figure out how the hell they'd gotten to this point. The AI had said, things may be very different, with a gift for understatement that comes close to epic.
Glancing out the tinted windows, Lex watches the streets go by, an absorbing exercise when he needs to relax, less so now with the sheer lack. Oh, here and there a hurrying figure, coated and moving hastily.
Glancing at the sky like a rabbit watching for a hawk.
Working theory--here, Clark got over his savior complex in a big way.
When the driver stops, Lex gets himself out, pushing the PDA into the recesses of his coat pocket. "I'll call," he tells the driver, seeing Mercy and Hope, materializing behind him like the shadows they usually are.
"Sir?" Mercy tells him, a note of almost-question in her voice. Now that he's here, he's not sure what to do. The AI hadn't been clear on where he was supposed to find this information. Glancing up, he realizes he's right in front of LexCorp headquarters. Some people have comfort food--Lex has comfort places. LexCorp is hot chocolate, oatmeal cookies, and a warm blanket all at the same time. Though he notes, while he kept his security sharp, the men at his door are just on the edge of full time war. And that's an awfully big gun for someone working a civilian enterprise.
Do not tarry, the AI had said, and how the hell had it come up with that word? Don't wander, don't explore. The longer you're there, the more you will be affected by the one who is already in that skin. His body will be yours, and with time, his mind as well. I don't know the effects of pulling you out with the consciousness of the other in you. You have two days in relative time. Do not tarry.
Do not tarry, and find what you need.
LexCorp seems a good place to start.
*****
His passwords are the same, and if his staff seems more rabbit than usual, refusing to meet his eyes and watching the floor like they expect it to announce end times, Lex can deal with that. His secretary looks surprised, but she doesn't duck and run, which is more than he can say for some of the executives he's seen.
His office is an oasis of complete normality. Some things don't change. Lex is Lex anywhere and everywhere, and never more Lex than when behind a desk. Even the chair fits right, though he's feeling a little off wearing red.
The meeting is on genetics, and Lex skims it from habit, but it's not the information he's looking for. One world, one time, they defeated that thing, and even if the computer couldn't tell him which one, and Lex still doesn't understand *why*, it narrowed it down enough to make this feasible. And time in the Arctic stands still for him, so really, they have eternity if they need it.
Or as long as his sanity stays intact. The AI hadn't been really specific on what effect this kind of thing could have. Probably because no one sane would think this could possibly be a good idea.
"Hiding in your office?"
Lex is on his feet so fast he doesn't have time to think, wondering where the fear comes from, like he's caught doing--something. The woman at the door is tall, red-brown hair twisted into an elegant French knot, Lois' eyes staring at him with traces of old suspicion.
"Lois." Not on the Planet. The immaculate woman he knows isn't in this too-thin figure, still graceful as she crosses the room, but Lex's eyes catch the limp. Plain beige suit, like she's trying to blend into the scenery, and blending is a word that Lex hadn't known was in Lois' vocabulary. "Why--"
She shrugs, taking a seat, and Lex watches her warily. Like Clark, she was always pure energy unleashed, and it's disturbing to see her sitting so still. Like every part of her is as wrapped up in beige as her body. "You're up early."
This Lex is, apparently, not much for mornings. Lex isn't either, but that's never been a consideration in the business world. He hasn't slept past six, barring concussions, institutionalization, or a time zone lapse, in years.
"I wanted to get started early," Lex answers, wondering what she's doing here. That she was let in without being announced argues that she's either expected, or-- "Did Clark send you to watch me?"
Lois rolls her eyes. "Oh, now that's a shock, isn't it?" Head tilted, she studies him with clear dark eyes. "You do seem--different this morning. Didn't get your morning fuck?"
Jesus. "You can get the fuck out if that's all you have to do. I don't like being watched."
"It never bothered you before." And there's no mistaking the bitterness, or the underlying fear. Crossing her legs, Lois leans one elbow onto the arm of the chair. "Look, I don't like it any better than you do." Her body says it even better than her mouth.
Getting up, Lex circles the desk--and he doesn't like the way she shrinks a little in her chair. Lois Lane doesn't back down from anyone or anything. What is Clark, the question has been asked and answered, not completely, maybe, but he can live without the full view. But this--what is *he*?
The fading bruise on his shoulder makes him wonder. "Lois, I--" I'm sorry? What the *hell*? He's done things to her, to her family, to her friends--but that seems so much less frightening, so much less personal, than the things her body is telling him. The things his body is, just looking at her. Memories are pushing now--image shapes of a Lois he's never seen before. Flashes that start and stop too fast to grasp, but memory is more than the visual. It's sensory, in taste and smell and feeling, and the hand that touches her knows her, knows her skin and how soft it is, how fragile the bones are beneath, the way she smells, the way she feels. The way she whimpers through clenched teeth and refuses to scream, even when she should.
"What do you want?" she says, like she already knows.
Lex doesn't know. "Nothing." Pulling away, he leans back into the desk. "It was a bad night. I'm sorry."
The graceful eyebrow arch slowly, and Lex watches the soft mouth work slowly, like she's trying to force words out that won't come.
"A bad night," she says softly, and for a second, he sees the woman who makes his life a living hell on various occasions, sees the glow of the most brilliant woman he's ever met, ever wanted, and ever lost. Just a flash, gone with the intake of her breath.
"He's right. You're--" Long fingers twist together. "Lex, be careful. Ever since he started on that research, he's been--dissatisfied."
"The genetic research?" The notes alone are enough to make him want to split his attention a little--in his world, they're no where close to what they have here.
"Not just that." The implications are legion, but she just shrugs. "Just--watch it. I'm not up to another week waiting to see if you live or die because you pissed him off."
Jesus *Christ*. "I won't die."
Lois looks down. "But sometimes, you seem to want to."
There's no answer to that he can think to give. Swallowing thickly, Lex turns around, walking back to his chair, picking up a pen from the edge of the desk, just to give himself something to do. "How long are you staying?"
"He's worried about security," Lois says, and it's like she becomes a different person. "About you. After the last run-in with Ross."
Yes, that would figure. From one world to another, some things just shouldn't change. Pete Ross and family should be one of those things. "I can take care of myself."
Lois frowns, standing up. "I'll be on hand until the meeting. Just--try not to do anything stupid until then? If this gets off the ground, Clark will be way too involved trying to recreate his species to pay much attention to us." Her eyes say she hopes to God it does. Circling the desk, she leans over, brushing a surprisingly sweet kiss against his mouth. Just long enough for Lex to remember the taste of her--expensive lipstick, nicotine, soft lips and remember--
--remember her in bed, in his bed, in *their* bed but not, and the tightly closed eyes, bitten lips, tracks of tears and the way she shudders away every time he touches her.
She said: "You don't have to do this, Lex."
Fuck. It's too fast for him to stop, images and voices and--
He said: "We have to."
"I'd rather die."
"I won't do this alone. I can't."
The shattered pen cuts into his palm, enough to drag him out. Barely enough. That was too close.
"That's not me," he whispers, and Lois freezes, so close he can smell her. That scent all over her. Perfume and sweat and exhaustion, and Clark. Reaching up, he touches the line of her jaw, wondering if this is when he's going to start feeling this--really feeling it.
Academic exercise in world-changing is fact, created all new by the bruised look in her eyes when she looks at him.
"Lex." And there are a thousand things in her eyes, in her voice. She's Clark's whore and his, too, and he's not sure how it happened, but it had, it did, and she still can stand to come this close and let him touch her. Cares enough to warn him.
"What we do to you--"
She pulls away, so fast she's a blur. "Don't you fucking dare--not now. Not after all this time."
"Lois." I wanted you dead. You had Clark, you had yourself, and you loved me once and then stopped, but I never would have done this. Not to you. To anyone, but never, ever to you. "I--" This Lex knows things about her that he doesn't want, and it's hard to push it back, lock it down in the deepest part of his mind, but he manages, somehow. It's the danger, the AI says, and he can hear that voice now. His body will be yours, and with time, his mind as well.
He doesn't want this man, this life. "Go."
She nods, almost frantically, taking a slow step back, then another, like she doesn't dare turn her back on him. At the door, her hand fumbles the knob, staring at him like that day on the bed that never happened, he *did not do*, and slipping out. He thinks he can hear the fast click of her heels as she leaves.
Not far, he thinks, not if Clark's making her stay. But far enough to get away from him.
Lex stares at the screen of his computer. This isn't any more real than he allows it to be. It can't be. He needs one thing, and he's done here. Just one thing.
*****
This Lex drinks a lot.
It's not a hard hypothesis to form. A glance at the bar--a bar in his *office* for God's sake, complete with a dizzying array of glasses--is disturbingly well-stocked and recently, too. Hell, he wants a drink just on speculation.
He takes some comfort that his taste is as good as it always was. Two glasses later, he's finding his balance. Alcohol, like showers and LexCorp, is the oatmeal cookie of Lex's life.
The third glass makes life look a lot less terrifying, and Lex flickers through his computer with a much less freaked out head. Something he needs to find. Something to defeat the undefeatable, and somewhere, it's got to be here, even if they don't know it.
A few quick glances through the databases show a lot of unfamiliar technology--Kryptonian, Lex thinks. Makes sense with this Clark. None of the worries about technological advances far ahead of the human race. A weird feeling of deja vu when he sees the meteor mutant files, chased by the neatly documented experiments, open for almost anyone to see. There are a lot of them. And not all were accidents of a meteor shower or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It has his fingerprints all over it. As familiar as a signature, and Lex can't help looking, as much as he can't help breathing. Some of it seems familiar--this reaction documented there, this mutant here--but some isn't. Terms like 'radiation threshold' and 'susceptibility' and 'tolerance limits'. The names that scroll by aren't all familiar, but Lex suspects that they might be people that pissed him off at some point.
Or Clark.
So not what he fucking wants to think about right now.
Lex skims the pages, wondering if this is where he can find it. An immortal monster of metal that can reassemble itself. Kryptonite has no effect. Pretty much the greatest horror in human history, yadda yadda yadda, but everything has a weakness. Even Clark. So, that thing *should*.
"You know, this could start to annoy me."
Lex stops himself from flinching at the amused voice. Looking over the screen, he closes the window and leans back, pulling out his best smirk, one of the thousand ways he learned to annoy the shit out of Clark Kent.
The narrowed eyes show it works here, too. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Clark drops onto the edge of the desk, far too close. This Clark, like the other, has no concept of personal space. Except that Clark never used it as a weapon, height and weight and pure threat, leaning over enough to stare into Lex's eyes, amusement fading.
"You run out on me and come here? To do what? Drink yourself under the desk so you have an excuse to make a mess of the meeting this afternoon? You may not give a shit about the project, but I'll be damned if you're going to act like a brat just because you can."
"I wanted to get some work done."
Clark rolls his eyes. "Like you've bothered since you appointed Gabe." Now that, Lex doesn't like at all. Not work?
It makes him wonder what exactly he does in this place.
"Besides." And the drop in Clark's voice is all the warning he needs. Stomach tight, Lex watches the slow smile with a sinking feeling. "I missed you."
"*Didn't get your morning fuck?*"
Lex slows down his breathing, picking up his glass. "I'm not in the mood." Even as Clark's hand rubs over his shoulder, just a hair too hard, reminding Lex of all the strength in those fingers. He wonders if the Lex here has to be reminded a lot. Or if Clark just likes to do it.
"Maybe I don't care."
This is the memory of Lois, sitting awkwardly in that chair. This is the memory of Lois, in that bed. This is the memory of his own voice, the scratches in his back, the fingers too-hard on his shoulder. The way Clark looks at him; it's not even personal. Just Clark, wanting to fuck someone, and Lex is right here to do it. Like that's the only reason Lex has to exist.
Lois said, be careful. Be careful, because he's dissatisfied. Be careful, her face said, her body said, because she knew. She knew what happened when Clark Kent was dissatisfied.
"Maybe we could discuss exactly what you want to accomplish at this meeting?" His hands don't shake when he raises the glass to his mouth. It's probably the hardest thing he's ever done.
Clark rolls his eyes, leaning back, but sliding over to the middle of the desk. One foot catches the seat of Lex's chair, jerking him between his legs. Lex wonders what shows on his face--fear? Anger? Or just boredom? He would do anything, anything at all, not be in this room right now.
"And here I thought you'd lost interest in anything outside those bottles and your little lab projects," Clark croons, grinning down at Lex, achingly like the kid he once knew. "We're going to get this going. I'm tired of waiting. Your scientists are perfectly capable of starting the prototypes."
"Are you sure you want a world of people just like you?" It's a calculated risk--Clark just doesn't strike him as the sharing type.
Clark grins. "I knew you were more than just a pretty face." The big hand cuffs him, lightly for Clark, but enough to rock Lex in his chair. It doesn't hurt--much--but then again, it wasn't supposed to. A warning, Lex thinks. His dad was like that sometimes. "With careful--manipulation of the gene patterns, they won't be like me. No one will be. But they'll be my kind."
Great. Just what they need.
"After all, there are more worlds to conquer, and humans just aren't up to it." Clark smirks. "Present company excluded."
"I'm not human."
Clark laughs, and both big hands land on Lex's shoulders. "I wouldn't be with you if you were." Before Lex can think, Clark kisses him, not gentle at all, but it doesn't feel--bad. Maybe it's this body, that knows how this goes, that makes Lex relax into it, this body that makes him reach out, hands settling on big, warm thighs, makes him groan a little when Clark pulls him up, standing between those spread thighs, licking into his mouth like he's trying to fuck him with his tongue alone.
But it's not the body that makes him touch that flawless face, press himself closer, and he only wishes it was. It's a very young man in a very small town, who was rescued by a beautiful boy and fell in love for the very first time. A much older man who watched a super man die alone in a lonely field.
"Lex," Clark whispers into his mouth. Big hands are on the button of his pants, knuckles rubbing up and down his cock, somehow an arm around his waist, too, licking down his throat, pulling his shirt free, all just too-fast and too-hard, making Lex's breath catch and hard, so goddamn hard. And that's all him.
Seeing Lois had been--fracturing. But Lex could deal. Knowing Clark had become all the things Lex had ever feared of Superman--not a surprise. But feeling this--this, here, for this man, who wears Clark's face and Clark's perfect body, who's stripping him in broad daylight in his own office--that's something else. Lex isn't sure what to make of it, to make of himself, moaning into it, letting his pants fall at his ankles, bent over the desk like a hooker, with Clark's mouth on the back of his neck. So--so fucking *natural*, he knows this, this body knows this, knows how to relax and let Clark take, with one smooth thrust that he feels through his entire body. Big hand on his hip, holding him painfully tight against the desk his cock aching with the need to be touched, one hand on the back of his neck, holding him down, like there's some chance of him running away.
Like maybe the first time--
"*You've wanted this from me since I was fifteen years old. Don't fucking pretend you don't want it now.*"
Lex chokes on the way his mouth shapes no, even when he comes, so hard he feels it in his toes, eyes blacking out. Dear *God*.
"That was fast." Clark pulls out, too fast, and Lex hisses, but Clark's just turning him over, toeing Lex's pants onto the floor before both legs go over his shoulder, pushing back in hard enough to force out a groan. Lex grabs for the edge of the wood with both hands, trying to keep some level of control. Too sensitive still, but that doesn't seem to bother Clark, running a hand up his chest beneath his shirt. Clark watches him with eyes so dark they seem black, and Lex can't read anything in them. The slow, steady pressure isn't unpleasant, but it's been years since Lex bottomed for anyone, though apparently, this Lex is comfortable with it.
Comfortable with being used like this, on his own desk, an unlocked door, a wall between them and the secretary, Lois, anyone could walk in and see this, see them--
"Oh yeah," Clark whispers, licking a line over Lex's cheek. "So fucking *good* with you." Lex feels his hips pushed higher, and speed increasing, and Lex catches his breath, cock getting hard and hurting. It's way too soon to be this aroused, but Lex's body doesn't seem to worry about that. The ache in his shoulders spreads in this position, and Clark's sharp nails are cutting lines in his skin.
"You're so hot like this." Clark kisses him, messy and wet, biting his lip too hard. Lex tastes blood, making him even harder, and Clark seems to like that, reaching for his cock, jacking it roughly with one hand, other hand braced to keep Lex in place. "Knew it when I met you."
Lex closes his eyes. If he does that, he can almost pretend that the man inside him is someone he knows. Pretend this isn't happening at all, that he's not lying on this desk, swallowing his own blood, Clark's taste coating his mouth, filling him up, driving out reason. His body *knows* this, wants this.
"Used to whore yourself out for anyone."
And only Clark could make that sound hot, sound sexy, sound like something he's supposed to want.
"But not anymore, not anyone but me, Lex." And the last thrust *hurts*, a shock to his spine. His cock gets impossibly hard. "You learned that."
Lex opens his eyes. The other life drifts too close, and he doesn't want to see the memory that will illustrate those words.
"Come on," Clark whispers against his ear, vicious bite to the lobe, then the tender skin beneath. Marks for other people to see. "Come for me, Lex. You want it, you want to give it up for me, give up everything for me. Do it. Come. Do it, Lex."
It's a command that Lex's body gives up gladly, and through the haze, like falling into space, he feels Clark come with a bone-bending thrust, mouth against the side of his neck, panting into his skin.
It's a long time before Clark pulls out. Lex's thighs hurt from being pulled up so long, but coming down isn't any better. Clark straightens himself easily, grinning down at Lex like they did nothing more than discuss the myriad ways to clone Kryptonians. Reaching out to pull Lex up, kissing him, sucking on his lip enough to break the fragile scab. "I like how you look after I fuck you."
Stepping back, Clark reaches for the jacket he discarded at some point, still smiling, licking Lex's blood off his teeth. "I have some things to do. Get back to--" And the smile changes, becoming a smirk, eyes taking Lex in like a conqueror of a subjugated country, "--work."
Lex doesn't move for a long time after Clark leaves.
*****
Lois finds him after he's cleaned up in the bathroom in his office--he'd jump out the window before he left this office looking like he did. There was nothing to do about the bruises or the bloody lip or the change of clothes from the suspiciously full closet inside, in all the shades of bruises. Just deal with it, like he dealt with being prepubescent and bald, and like he dealt with being adult and hated. Let other people worry about how to act around him.
There's no pity, but he thinks that he might just break if she showed any. The dark eyes fix on him briefly, a flash of feeling that he can't identify, before she leans into the door, as far into the room as she'll come.
He doesn't blame her. He can smell Clark all over him, all over the desk, sex permeating the room.
"We'd better get some lunch before we go," she says, looking at the wall to his right. She doesn't want to be here, but she was told to watch, so watch she does, without seeing a thing.
"You don't have to--"
"I really do." The irony in her smile hurts, almost as much as it hurts to sit down. Lex nods shortly, grabbing his overcoat before locking down his computer and finishing off his seventh glass of brandy. He's not even close to drunk, and that is a tragedy. "I'm supposed to be his biographer, after all."
Lois follows him down to the limo, already waiting--probably the secretary called down. Lois slides in first, slipping unobtrusively to the other side of the car so naturally, Lex gets the feeling she avoids being in closed spaces with anyone if she can help it.
Sitting down gingerly--even supersoft leather and thick cushioning doesn't make a difference when you've been fucked hard enough to draw blood--Lex tries to think of something to say to her.
"You look tired," Lois says softly, from the miles of seat between them.
That's an understatement. If this is what this Lex deals with, no fucking wonder he gets up so late. Lex wants nothing more than bed right now--preferably his bed in his own world. Beds here, like desks, like this vehicle, aren't safe zones.
"Did Clark say anything?" Any conversation is better than the sick tangle of his thoughts.
"Just that you seemed out of sorts." Lois hesitates, like she's choosing her words carefully. And maybe she is. "If Clark wasn't so worried about this meeting--"
He just might notice something. In no universe does Clark Kent pass for a complete idiot, and this one comes across as a control freak of the first order. Too much time together, Clark's going to notice something's wrong. Lex can be a lot of things, but he's not sure he's ever going to crawl into a bed willingly with Clark again, and there's no way to play that down.
"Why is he worried?" Even to himself, his voice sounds bitter. Is this Lex ever bitter? Or is he too drunk and too fucked out to do anything but just go with it?
She shrugs. "The first tests weren't--good. Even with all the advances, we're years away from understanding what it is Clark wants us to do. Cloning an alien race isn't easy, and Clark's the only template we have. Especially with all the changes he wants." Leaning into the door, Lois stares out, like she's imagining something or someplace entirely different. "I keep thinking--it's so stupid...." She breaks off with an embarrassed laugh, mouth shutting tight.
"What?"
"It's just been a long month." Lois closes her eyes. "I was thinking of asking if I could go home for a little while."
Home. She put meaning in it, power, a yearning so strong even Lex could feel it. "Out of Metropolis?"
"Just for a little while. Maybe see Lucy." Her eyes turn down. "Just--away." Anywhere, she seems to imply. Home isn't a place, not really; it's a state of mind. And Metropolis would never be home to her, not to this Lois. "Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we had got away?"
Lex shuts his eyes tight. Got away.
"I was going to win a Pulitzer. Marry a man I loved. Grow old. Maybe have kids. I keep thinking about that recently, and--I just wonder sometimes, if we hadn't stopped for the night, if we'd just kept driving--" She laughs, like she's embarrassed. "But the world turned and times changed, didn't they?"
"If we hadn't stopped--" It'd been a truck stop, so close to the Canadian border. They'd been exhausted, and he'd run off the road three times. Chasing rumor of places there, with Kryptonite and lead. Places to live, to survive. Before--before-- "If we hadn't stopped--"
"He would have found us anyway," Lois whispers, and all the light goes out. "No matter where we went. You knew that. So did I. But it felt free for a little while, didn't it?"
Lex swallows hard. This isn't real, this isn't his world, and this isn't him, with this woman, in this place. It's just until he finds what he needs, and then he's gone, and this isn't real, it can't be real--
No more real than the blood on his tongue and his pants, the feeling of Clark inside him, and Lois' pain, the memories that aren't his and keep trying to be. They want to remember Lois with a gun in her hand, because she'd do anything not to go back. And Lex had pulled it from her and that had been--
"I'm sorry." He--the other he, the other Lex, who drinks too much and lives like this--hadn't been willing to let her go, any more than he'd been able to get away from Clark, not get away and mean it. He'd pried it from her hands and went home when Clark said to, took her back when she would have killed or died to be free. He'd broken her, not Clark.
It's not *him*. It's this Lex, not him. It's--
"I'm not hungry," Lex says as the driver slows, not quite able to face Lois, not knowing this. He wonders if his counterpart ever feels the same. "Just drive."
*****
Lex has no idea why he and Lois are here--it's a bunch of scientists, corporate suits, and a few people Lex assumes are public figures of some kind. It could be the President of the United States for all Lex knows or cares. If there's even one here.
He's not getting over the view of the desperately clean, desperately empty streets of Metropolis anytime soon.
Luckily, he's not expected to do much, another jarring moment that he can let pass because Lois is still as a statue beside him, and Lois has never been still, not since he met her. Bruised in places that show in her eyes every time she looks at him.
They all talk above his head, and it sinks in, slowly, that while he's CEO of LexCorp, he's not actually expected to act like one. Gabe gives the answers, asks the questions, not even a glance to see what Lex thinks. If Lex thinks at all. If they even think--
Christ, what *is* he to these people? Clark's fucktoy? Lex isn't
It's all genetics, experiments, failures, successes, success rates and quotes, the kind of science that Lex lives and breathes, but somehow, he keeps it off his face, just listening. Playing with the glass--he doesn't seem to be the only one in need of alcoholic courage, with the sheer number of glasses and bottles on the table. The only face he recognizes is Gabe, but a Gabe who lives in a kind of daily terror that's numbed him down to just going through the motions. Maybe praying it's enough, that he gets out of here okay. Clark going into a rage and killing everyone doesn't seem as unfamiliar a concept as it should be.
Another part of the other-Lex getting through. Lex reaches for the bottle and pours another glass, imagines sinking a knife into the man smirking at him across the table, like nothing else but this could be expected from Lex Luthor.
Lionel, Lex thinks a little distantly, would have razed his life into the ground, just for that smirk. This Lex Luthor, however, skimming just below his own thoughts, already has the man in one of those Kryptonite labs, and that Lex makes him smile across the table, slow and thoughtful. There are, Lex thinks, feeling nausea rise slow and sweet, a lot of things far worse than death. All of them were in those files in his office. Lex watches the man's eyes widen, turning quickly back to conference, to Clark, watching everyone with unconcealed boredom, waiting for them to tell him what he wanted to hear.
"That's all you have?" Clark snaps, bringing Lex back into the present, echoed by Lois' kick at his ankle. So. Something's happening. "Two years. You told me two years."
One of the scientists looks like he's seeing his own death in progress right in front of him. "The complexities of the genome--"
"You *said* you could do it!" Like an angry kid, denied a coveted toy, in the invulnerable body of a super strong man. Lex has nightmares that go like this, but they usually involve his father and a few hallucinogenics to really up the terror factor.
"We can!" The terrified desperation reminds Lex of a rabbit in front of a wolf. "We can, we will, we just need more time--"
"You've had plenty of time." Clark leans forward, pure menace, and Lex knows, like he knows his own name, that this man is dead and buried in Clark's mind already. And there's a good chance this entire room will have to watch it.
"Do it yourself."
Lex hears himself drawl out the words without a real idea why. This man's life means nothing to him. But it's there--maybe the feeling of Lionel in Clark that brings up every stupid adolescent and adult rebellion, before he learned less direct ways to retaliate.
The deathly silence is kind of fun, in that way that anything is fun when you realize you are just as crazy as you've always suspected. Lex can feel Lois' stillness beside him, her disbelief.
"What did you just say?" Defected rage with a new target, all focused on Lex. But Lionel could do it better than Clark--he could call on a childhood of emotional manipulation and an entire arsenal of emotional weapons, not just this physical threat. Cheap, tawdry, rough, not subtle, not at all what Lex is used to. Clark can kill him to shut him up, but that's all he can do.
"You think it can be done faster? Do it yourself." Leaning back in his chair, Lex grins over the rim of his glass. Everyone's watching him in fascination. Lex supposes someone committing suicide right in front of them is pretty damn interesting.
Clark looks like he can't believe the words coming out of Lex's mouth. It's just like meeting with Dad. What do they say about picking out a lover who reminds you of your father? Until now, Lex had thought it only applied to women.
"Everyone. Get out."
They leave. Like rats off a sinking ship, they don't run, but only because they don't want to be noticed. Lois doesn't move--either she thinks the order doesn't apply to her, or she's too shocked by Lex being an idiot to get up.
Slowly, making a show of it, like Lex needs it, Clark circles the table. One second, sitting with his glass, watching--the next, up against the wall, a strong hand wrapped around his throat.
It's all so fucking--*stupid*. He'd laugh if there was enough air.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" Clark whispers, hot breath against his cheek. "You think you have any clue what's going on? What we're trying to achieve?"
"You're going to kill him." Lois' voice is strong, just out of sight. He's going to black out soon. "Clark. Even he can't heal a crushed throat. And you don't want him dead."
For a second, Lex is almost sure Clark's going to test that. The steel fingers tighten, then loosen by degrees. Not enough to get a full breath, but enough so the possibility of strangulation becomes more unlikely. Passing out, however, is not.
"You little fucker." Like that, Clark drops him, going back to fall into a chair, arms crossed over his chest. When Jonathan used to lecture him, Clark would do just that, Lex remembers. With just that look on his face.
This Lex is *afraid* of this man. And has good reason. Rubbing his throat, he sees Lois take an aborted step toward him, then stop when he looks at her. In the name of God, don't get his attention.
"You." Clark gives Lois a slow once-over. The Clark in his world loved her to distraction. He never--he would *never*-- "Looking for a little visit to the penthouse?"
Lois stiffens, but her eyes stay fixed on the floor. "If that's what you want." Lex doesn't like the look on her face--he's not doing this Lois any favors, acting like this. She's not a superhealing mutant. She'll end up dead if Clark gets bored and decides to kill her.
Using the wall, Lex makes himself stand up. Residual swelling could still cut off his airway, but he doubts the damage will last long enough to come to that. Leaning back, he takes a slow breath, feeling Clark's eyes on him again. The speculative look isn't comforting, but then, this Clark's anything and everything but comforting.
"We're going home," he says, standing up and kicking the chair. Lex watches it hit the far wall and crack. Reminder that even a casual Clark is a danger to everyone around him. He understands. "You too, Lois. We should all have a nice little talk, don't you think?" His eyes slide up and down her again, and Lex wonders how she can stand there and take it, not even twitch. "It's been a while since you visited."
*****
Lois beats him to the brandy, while Clark leaves after a phone call that sends him out the door. He did stop to talk to security, which Lex thinks--and maybe he's reaching here--means that he and Lois can consider themselves under house arrest.
Lois unpockets her phone as she hands Lex a glass, not looking at him as she raises hers to her mouth and takes a long drink. The Lois he knew couldn't stand brandy. A complicated number is punched into the phone, then Lois sits down, frowning into the floor. A few long seconds pass, then she sighs, looking at her phone briefly before turning it off.
"Bad news?" Lex refills her empty glass. It looks like both he and Lois are becoming too close to the brandy bottle. Or have been for a long time. Too long, if she can drink like that, not even a wince when it goes down burning.
"Just Chloe, leaving a message to remind me how great her life is." The pretty mouth twists hard, a smile that twists her eyes as well. "How *The Planet* can't live without her and all of that." Lois tosses the phone onto the couch before taking another drink. "She's probably right. They live and breathe on her word. Being friends with the most powerful man in the world does have that effect."
That doesn't match the Chloe that Lex remembers at all. "She--" Chloe was all about the truth and all kinds of other idealistic nonsense. But he can't ask questions for answers he should already know. "I suppose that helps."
Lois grunts something that sounds like agreement, downing the rest of the brandy. She seems to debate before extending it. "More."
Lex looks at the decanter. "You sure--"
"I want to be so far from sober I won't care what he wants me to do." The stark pain is what moves him across the room, filling the glass with a hand that shakes. "You know."
Apparently, from the amount of alcohol he's already consumed today, he'd have to agree. This is how the other Lex gets through the day. Enough alcohol so even his metabolism can't keep up. It's kind of funny, in that way that he'll never be able to laugh about. "You could leave."
"And have him send you to fetch me back again?" On her feet and moving, those fast, graceful movements, that familiar smirk--*Lois*. "Where would I go? Everyone knows my face. Everyone knows what I--" She stops, drowning the words on her tongue with another drink. "When I leave, it'll be the last time, and then where would you be?"
"I can handle it."
"Yeah, you're doing a great job." Another drink. She wasn't going for a metaphor--she wants to be drunk. Before Clark gets back. So she won't care. Christ. "I--I understand, you know." Her step's a little unsteady as the alcohol hits her. "I mean." She sits down, and Lex watches her head fall back on the back of the couch. "It's been a long time, Lex. I--I don't--I get why you came back. Why you made us come back."
Jesus and God. No. "Lois--"
"I get it. It took a while, but--no one should be alone. Not--and it's hard. To want to leave. He--you know, when we met, he made me feel--sophisticated. So much older, so much wiser. I was so damn young, I didn't know--" She stops. "It's hard to leave, when I can see that in him still."
"He's not the same person." God, she wouldn't believe him if he told her just how different he is.
"Sometimes--it's so stupid." She stares up at the ceiling, and Lex's chest tightens at the smile on her face, so young. God, so fucking *young*, nineteen and brilliant and everything in the world in her eyes, but that was a thousand years ago here "He can be--and you. Both of you." Her smile fades. "I know why you couldn't really leave him then. I don't think I can now."
"You could."
Her head turns, slow as honey. "I don't know what I am without him anymore."
Lois never defined herself by anyone else. Lois was Lois was Lois, and this--this-- "You could get away. I--" God save him from stupidity, but he's in the right mood for it. The right universe. "I'll help you."
And God, the way she looks at him. He's never made a promise he didn't break. She knows that. "I still love you, Lex."
Christ. "Lois--"
"I hated you for years, but that never changed." There are tears in her eyes, and she stands up, unsteady, grabbing for the arm of the couch. Staring at him. "I love him, too. And I--" She stumbles, and Lex drops his glass, catching her before she can hit the floor. Too thin, too light, too-big eyes. "I wish you'd let me pull the trigger, Lex."
Lex sinks onto the floor, feeling her face against his chest. "I wish I had, too."
*****
He's Lex fucking Luthor. Genius, brilliant businessman, ruthless, powerful--and doing nothing. Watching her sleep, in the neatly made bed he'd woken up in this morning.
Clark still hasn't come home, and Lex can't find it in himself to be anything but utterly relieved.
Supervillian.
He remembers the first time the Justice League had called him that, laughing himself sick, because it was Clark's voice he could hear saying it. Clark, who drew his life in blacks and whites, like this, with him on one side and Lex on the other, an inseparable gulf between.
This, he thinks, is something that Clark would be able to label, so easily drawn blacks and whites. Clark would have--well, what would Clark have done, faced with a him like this? The Clark he'd met, that he'd watched grow up, that had been friend and enemy, reluctant ally and sometimes fantasy, couldn't have become this. Where, how, why, what the *fuck*--it was Jor-El's son, not Jonathan and Martha Kent's, except all those damn--all those little things that were Smallville Clark through and through.
Whatever had gone wrong here with Clark--and God knew, the list of possibilities was enormous--it had been astronomically bad.
"You went to bed early," comes the voice, and Lex stiffens without even thinking, rolling over to look at Clark. Jacket and shoes discarded, shirt unbuttoned, so fucking hot, even now, in this time, in this place. Sitting on the edge of the bed, a big hand lands on Lex's hip, caressing gently. "Tired?"
And like that, Smallville Clark all over again, sweet smile and messy hair. So gentle. Almost playful when he pushes Lex over, curling up beside him, big body warm against him. They'd never been this--but Lex had wanted it like he'd wanted few things in life before or since.
"I'm not mad," Clark says against his mouth, hand cupping his head, deceptively gentle. "Not anymore. You're having a bad day, right? That's why you acted like that."
That's why-- "Yeah," Lex whispers back. "Very bad."
Clark kisses him, playful and still sweet, almost chaste--a sixteen year old boy might have kissed like that. Clark draws back, still grinning--then the green eyes darken as they look over his shoulder and Lex knows the second Clark sees Lois, feels it in the hand tightening on his head. "What's she doing here?"
Mistake. If she'd been conscious, or he'd been thinking, he would have known that, she would have known that. He would have thought and left her on the couch, or found one of the other beds to put her in. Before Clark can move, Lex twists, rolling on top of him.
"She's waiting for you." Kissing Clark hard, getting teeth this time, the soft mood apparently ending. Clark's arms go around him, just a little too tight, like he needs the reminder that he's with someone who can rip him apart without a thought.
"I don't like her in my bed." A pause, an unspoken two words. Lex wonders how on earth he'd gotten Clark's obsession like this. If it was there when they were both kids, because God, would he have wanted to know about this. He kisses Clark again, imaging the boy he met, shy eyes and shy smile, the one who lived and died for his friends. Lex didn't understand it, but he'd never stopped respecting it.
Clark.
"I thought you wanted her," Lex murmurs against Clark's throat. Clark's arms loosen by degrees, giving Lex some flexibility in movement. "You know I want--that I--" That I love you. That this Lex probably does, and that woman does, too, because we've broken her and made her believe there's nothing else for her. And maybe there's not, not anymore.
Straddling Clark's waist, Lex sits up, looking down. Clark doesn't look angry anymore. Runs his knuckles over the bulge in the pants, just to see Clark hiss softly, one hand closing around his wrist.
"She tried to leave," Clark says softly, but his eyes are glazing as Lex pulls down the zipper, snapping the hooks on the pants open one handed. "You did, too. She helped you."
"But we haven't since." Some particularly virulent form of Stockholm Syndrome, maybe. The sickest kind. Or Lex's monumentally fucked up definition of love. Somehow, right now, nothing seems hotter than this, than the way Clark looks at him.
The hand on his wrist cuts off circulation, and Lex feels the bone begin to creak. "If you break my wrist, it's going to cut the night short."
Clark has to think about it--for a second, Lex thinks he can actually feel his bones giving, the white hot pain blinding, traveling toward a blackout like the darker edge of orgasm, but Clark finally loosens.
"You brought her for me." Clark's head tilts on the pillow, watching Lex through narrowed eyes.
"For you. Like the first time. Because you wanted her." Like a truck stop in Canada in a life he didn't live, just remembers. She lived because Lex couldn't live without her. Because Clark wanted her so badly. Because Lex is Lex, and the instinct to give Clark whatever he wants is still so strong. So much that even a bone bruised wrist doesn't stop him from leaning down for another kiss. "Just for you."
Clark growls something into his mouth, rolling him onto his back, pushing between his legs, cock rubbing against the wool of Lex's pants, and he's so hard beneath, he wants it *off*.
This is--other Lex in him. That sad bastard who drinks away his guilt and lives with being nothing but Clark's toy, it has to be. Other Lex that makes him whimper and twist and arch into each touch, shudder when Clark leaves the bloody marks of his teeth in his side, around his nipple, on his collar. Too-hard touches, establishing a possession that Lex never would have thought he'd want to claim.
Sitting back on his knees now to look at Lex, panting beneath him, with a bright smile and the clearest, most beautiful eyes in the world.
"Fuck her," Clark tells him, rubbing Lex's cock with one hand, distracting circles that make everything sound like holy writ, the best idea in creation. "Fuck her while I watch."
Lex turns his head, and Lois' open eyes stare back at him.
"*You don't have to do this, Lex.*"
But this isn't that Lois, who would have rather died. She stretches like a cat, eyes closing, going someplace else entirely when he kisses her. She tastes like brandy and old pain, the kind that never stops hurting, never scabs, never heals. Long fingers push his pants away, long legs wrap around his waist, and he's inside her before he even knows he's going to do it.
"Lex," she whispers, arching her back, and Lex chokes back the apology he wants to make.
He tells himself he would have stopped if she'd said no.
"Yes," Clark says, voice thick, stretching out beside them. Watching his face, watching *hers*. "Like that."
The silk of her skirt rubs against his hips with each thrust, and her shirt comes open at a touch. Clark kisses her, making her contract tight around him, blindingly good, her nails cutting into Lex's shoulder. Clark moves, still watching them like he's watching porn, like he paid for the show, hand casual on his own cock.
Lex doesn't know how long he can stand this, bracing himself on one arm over her, watching her face tighten and relax. Still drunk enough to lose herself in the moment, maybe forgetting, and sex is good for that, the best for that, and he can make her forget everything else. Touch her like he touched Lois in his own world, knowing all the tricks that made her hot, made her smile, made her gasp, and made her come.
"Oh." The hand on his ass drags him back--probably the entire point. Clark grins at him, nipping his shoulder before he's out of sight, but that hand stays, one finger working into his ass. "Clark."
"Just keep going." Clark's voice is rough in his ear, and a second finger pushes inside. Lex is caught between them--Lois' wet heat, Clark's big, agile fingers. Slick and fast, touching on that place that makes the world go dark Oh God.
"Oh *God*. Clark."
Clark eases in him this time--so different from the office, matching his rhythm with Lois, and it falls together so naturally Lex knows this has happened before. Lois' legs move to the bed, feet braced on the mattress, eyes closing, giving up to the purely physical. Clark's inside him so deeply he can't remember living any other way. "Clark. God."
"Yeah," Clark whispers, licking the back of his neck, under his ear, one arm going around his waist. "Just like that. Fuck, you feel good."
It seems to go on forever. Wet heat and hard fullness, one or the other, and he's trapped in sensation that never seems to end. Lois moans under him, almost shaking, so close to coming but never quite. So fucking close--just beyond reach, he can *feel* it. Clark murmurs into his skin, breath hot and becoming desperate, fucking into him harder, pushing him into Lois.
"Come," Clark whispers, and their bodies just *obey*.
Lois convulses, making a sound he's never heard anyone make, and the sudden tightness pushes him over, seeing stars and planets and galaxies all around him, feeling Clark still moving in him, pushing him farther. Lois hands are on his chest, but it's Clark, Clark whispering into his skin and thrusting hard enough for Lex to feel something tear, but he can't find it in himself to care, not when Clark stiffens, teeth in his shoulder, coming inside him.
They collapse in a tangled pile, and Lex feels Lois' tears on his neck and wonders what it means when you felt like this with someone like this. This good, this hot, this fucking *young*, like he hasn't been in decades.
Clark moves them, sliding down and pulling Lex against him, softening cock still in his ass, soothing hands on his skin. Lex doesn't hear what he says.
He's not sure it even matters.
*****
He's in LexCorp's offices before dawn--and the looks from security are enough to amuse the shit out of him, like they're seeing a hallucination of epic proportions. Clark had vanished sometime between exhausted slumber and the moment Lex woke up. Lois, too.
Lex can only hope she left alone, and in one piece.
Keying in his codes, Lex ignores his office, all the pretty trappings of power that don't mean anything here. He needs the core databases in the sublevels, and he suspects this Lex doesn't give a good shit about those, probably doesn't have access from that shiny office. If anyone would know anything about this, it would be in the computers here.
Or hell, if it comes to it, he'll hit google and start checking out the conspiracy theorists. It can't be any more insane than what he's lived through.
You're sure there's something here, Lex had asked the AI while it hooked him in. You're sure that I can find it?
I'm sure, it had said. What you need to know, what it takes to defeat it, will be where it was faced and defeated. Lex supposes an immoral Clark with a lot of time on his hands and a world at his feet could do a lot of things that even Lex and Superman and a world of superheroes combined couldn't figure out.
It's a little lowering, but not as lowering as the fact Lex can't make himself sit down and face the white pain that announces even superhealers need to take breaks. Jesus. No wonder he gets up late.
It's here. Somewhere. Record after record, keyword after keyword. Kryptonite is useless. Conventional weapons, various lasers, multiphase conductors, electricity, nuclear energy, plasmic energy--all tried, failed in a line of states up the center of the United States, leaving a trail of death that ended, at least temporarily, in Virginia. It'll be back, because they left room for a sequel, The Thing II, and this time, Lex wants to be ready.
"Shit."
"You're looking for something."
Lex doesn't look up. "Still following me?"
She doesn't answer, a quiet, pained presence in the doorway.
"What are you looking for? It's not like you can kill him. Or that you want to." Her voice is too soft to draw blood, just bruise. The other-Lex agrees. We wouldn't do that. We're not sure what we are without him. If we're anything at all.
Lex grits his teeth. No. No. "Believe it or not, I'm looking for something else. So if you'll--" If you'll leave. Guilt's is just as distracting as he'd always suspected it could be. Clark--his Clark--did guilt like a high school trend.
"Why?"
Lex's back hates leaning over like this--not to mention the vulnerability it implies. "This. A thing. That happened. I don't know what it was called, but it was a regenerating machine. Kryptonian origin. Resistant to Kryptonite." How much longer until the AI called him back? Two days in relative time. That gives him through today. Lex tries to imagine another twenty-four hours and shudders. Two days is too long. Way, way too fucking long. Or not long enough. "Christ. It happened, I know it did."
"Lex?" The door shuts with a soft click, and Lex lets himself look up. She's moving stiffly, but it doesn't look like any major injuries occurred. Clark must be in a good mood.
He usually is after nights like that, other-Lex's thoughts offer, bitterly amused. He's probably at the labs. Showing them incentives to being smarter.
"How the hell do you live like this?" It comes out before Lex can check it at his tongue--the question aimed at the other Lex, who just rolls over for all this. Lex can't imagine being a man who could do that, be this, to live wrapped up in a cloud of alcohol and helplessness. Of all the things he could be, could have been, this doesn't even come close.
"Who are you?"
Fuck. "Don't be any more crazy than usual." And that sounds like both of them, taking the battle to another field, distracting from the original question. "Go--do something."
She's close enough to breathe--a fresh shower and clean clothes, scraping herself clean of Clark and him. Close enough to touch, if he so much as moves. "You're different." When he looks up, the dark eyes widen, pupils swallowing the irises. "Two years ago. The last time you entered a lab. You don't remember?"
Easier if he consciously accessed this Lex, maybe--but so dangerous, even the AI hadn't recommended that, even if he was desperate. "I--killed it?"
She's staring at him. "You and Clark's pets. There wasn't anyone who could figure it out, even Clark. It hated him, somehow. It--didn't have a mind. You said--"
"That I'd be damned if I was bending over for anyone else." Yes, that sounds marginally like him. "What did I do?"
Lois's hands press into the surface of the desk. "You aren't Lex Luthor."
This is the wrong time to get curious. This is way beyond caring. Intellectually, he knows he's being stupid. "There's nothing wrong with me." And to prove it, he turns away from the wide eyes, fingers on the keyboard.
"He's going to figure it out." She isn't moving, just standing there, and he always forgets, somehow, that Lois really does have a genealogy crossed with bull terrier. It's a comfort that some things are the same, but this second isn't the moment he would have chosen to find out. "How did you get here--where are you from--"
"Really not a good time for explanations." She doesn't have any evidence. Clark won't listen to a word she says.
And like that, he's pushed back against the desk, Lois' hand buried in the collar of his shirt, and he's getting really beyond fucking tired of being hauled around like a rag doll.
Other Lex just grins. Have a brandy. You'll get used to it.
"Shut the fuck *up*." And he has no idea who he's saying that to. "Lois, back the fuck off."
She's so close he can breathe her in. "You would have thrown me into the wall before now. Tell me who you are."
Tell her, other Lex says. It's not like it makes a difference.
"One or five universes to the left," Lex grinds out. His back aches from the angle, he won't even think of his ass, and one knee is starting to bend in the wrong direction. Pushing her off, Lex watches her stumble, catching her feet from habit like a cat, or a woman used to being knocked around a lot. "And I wanted you dead there, so don't fucking push."
Strangely, she doesn't even smile. "That's how you got rid of it." Her voice cracks. "Pushed it out of our universe. I don't know where you put it, but that's how it was done."
Fuck. Lex doesn't want it just gone--he wants it *dead*. Twisted metal melting into the ground, salting the ground where it stands. Make the fall of Carthage look like amateur work. Lex closes his eyes. "I didn't destroy it."
"You didn't even know what it was." Her voice sounds hoarse. "How did you--"
"The Fortress. Another time." Lex opens his eyes. "You're going to tell him."
She doesn't bother to deny it, eyebrows going up. "I won't have a choice if he asks. But I won't volunteer the information, if that's--how long?"
"Two days. Less than a day left." Lex bites down on his lip, feeling the remains of the healing cut on his lip with his tongue. "He's not going to figure it out."
Lois shakes her head. "You--really aren't from around here. He'll--Jesus. Where are you from?" The curiosity is unmistakable. "Not like here."
"Not like here, no."
"He's going to know."
Lex pushes himself straighter. His father would be horrified by his son slumping like a common laborer after a hard day's manual work. "How? If you don't tell him--"
"He knows you. He *made* you."
Lex stiffens. "I only need to get through--"
"After yesterday--he's not stupid. He--" Lois' eyes go blank for a minute. "He knows something is wrong. And he's going to find out, because he can. He's--"
Not stupid, not dense, not short-sighted, not any of the things that he's always accused Clark of and never really believed. This Clark is honed and suspicious and Lex thinks, just maybe, that Lois might be right. "Lois, stop."
"You never come here anymore," she says, and Lex still can't wrap his mind around it. "He--he wants to own everything, you know that. He can't stand not knowing why. You won't want to tell him, but you will, you'll tell him because you have to. And then because you want to, because you can't imagine not wanting to be whatever he wants you to be."
Lois, other-Lex murmurs, knows. And you're me, and soon I'll be you, and it won't matter anymore.
The more time spent around Clark, Lex thinks, that will probably be true. "I need my laptop." A laptop, if not his. In this place, he seems to lack a certain work ethic. "Lois--"
"What do you think you're going to do?" She looks scared. "He'll come for us and he'll push and he'll ask, and if you can't be, if you aren't what he expects, what he made--he'll want to know why. And he'll figure out why. He worked those equations, he knows people can move between dimensions."
"He won't figure it out."
"You're crazy."
For years and years and years. "I'm getting out." He's Lex Fucking Luthor, in any time, in any place. "Less than twenty-four hours." That's too long, Lex feels it in his bones. Far, far too long.
"You think you can get out of the city without him knowing?"
When she puts it that way, no, he doesn't. "Where is he?"
"With the geneticists. He'll be there all day. But he'll come looking. People will see you leave. And they'll tell him where."
"Not if they aren't alive to tell." Lex can kill in cold blood. He doesn't like it, but that doesn't mean he can't do it if he has to. Just one fucking day. "If I--if this Lex ran, where would Clark think he'd go?"
Lois shakes her head. "He'd never believe it." Her head tilts, and Lex watches her eyes come alive. That had never meant good things, not in his world, and he can't think it's any better in this one. "If you run, he'll find me, and I'll tell, Lex, whether I want to or not." The look suggests that she won't want to, and that Clark will have to be very creative. This Clark, Lex thinks, seems like a very creative alien. The dark eyes light up. "He won't believe it, that you're running alone. But he'll believe it if I go."
Oh Jesus. "I don't want you dead." Mostly. Give or take a few bad exposes. "I can do this alone."
"You really can't. He'll--if he thinks we went together, he thinks we'll make for a border country. South America, maybe. It'll take even him a while to search the entire border for us." Buy time, she doesn't say. And we'll need every second.
Lex stares at her. "He--I'm *leaving*. The man who will be left in this body--"
"I'll take care of Lex," she says, slowly. "And I can take care of myself." Not noticeably, Lex thinks, but other-Lex only laughs. She's survived Clark for over a decade. Her instincts are a hundred times better than yours ever could be. "You--is it better? Where you are?" For a second, her eyes fill with something impossibly huge and hopeful.
Lex thinks of all the ways that it isn't--the devastation, the riots, the bodies, the living monster that will kill them all, for no better reason than that it can. He thinks of Clark's slow death, the bullets he put in people's heads, the deaths reported on the news. He thinks of Lois' body, and Clark's silent, terrible grief, hidden behind closed doors and badly-fitted glasses.
"You won a Pulitzer. You married a man you loved." He stops, throat closing on the words. "You had a life, and you were never afraid of anything."
Lois nods. "If we leave now, I know where we can go."
*****
"At the Planet?"
"Yeah." She drives, because he can't figure out how the hell this car *works*. Kryptonian technology, maybe, but Lex can't risk even trying to access any of other Lex to find out. Other Lex bleeds through all on his own quite nicely, so inviting more of him just seems like a bad idea.
Lois grins, fast and sharp, and Lex glimpses a reporter, immaculate suit and high heels, following him around with brayed questions. Lois, bulldog and implacable enemy, the kind you get to have once in a lifetime. Twice, if he counts Clark. But only if you're lucky.
It occurs to Lex that he's been luckier in his enemies than he ever was in his friends or lovers.
"Was I good?" She seems a little freer with every mile. Lex doesn't think of the way she fired her gun at the first security checkpoint. The body hadn't even had a chance to hit the ground before they were moving again. She took him very literally. No one is going to live to tell that they left the city.
He wants to ask why she even has a gun, but he doesn't.
"Amazing." And that's true enough. "I really, really hated you."
Her eyes dart sideways, almost laughing. "I was that good?"
"You were that good." And you had Clark, at least for a little while, and it wasn't the fucking that got to me. It was what you were to him, even after. Lex leans his head into the headrest of the little Ferrari. "Is this my car?"
"You almost never drive them anymore." How depressing. "You ran off the road one too many times, and Clark started to suspect passive aggressive deliberation." She shrugs, foot sinking deeper onto the gas. "In your world? You're that bad?"
Well, he'd thought so. But there are places here that even he hadn't ever thought to go. "Relatively speaking, I'm looking pretty good in comparison." In a fair universe, he'd be able to explain that to Clark. Time can be relative, and so can evil. Or whatever the hell Clark thinks he is. "But. I have an entire Justice League watching out for me." It's a nostalgic thought--what Lex wouldn't give to see Bruce looking at him with blank disapproval. "Can you tell me--Bruce Wayne--"
Lois' blank look says it all. If Bruce had been here, Clark had recognized real competition when he saw it in obsessive flesh and blood. "I--don't know. I could look it up when we get--"
"No." It's better not to know. Rubbing his eyes idly, Lex watches the landscape pass by. "He won't look in Smallville first?"
"He hates Smallville." Lois voice is flat. "So do you, for that matter. So no, he's not going to think that you'd go there." Her eyes are shadowed. "He won't believe you don't want to be caught."
"Right." Lex looks down at his wrapped wrist, the bruising underneath fading green already. "How did--do you know--" But how does anyone know? In some other universe, Lex Luthor might have been a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker. There's so much, and so little, that makes the difference between the man you are and the man you could have been. A fine line you can step over at any time. Whatever line Clark had crossed, Lex had crossed, too. And he's not sure he ever wants to know what pushed him over. Or how. "Never mind."
Lois' eyes are fixed on the road. "When I met him, he wasn't like that."
Lex wishes he'd shut his mouth before the question could be asked. His mind's creating timelines, trying to mark the places.
"But it was in him."
"It's in everyone," Lex murmurs. "Just sometimes, there's something to stop it--"
"Or someone. It's not just one thing," Lois says, and Lex sees her mouth thin, a tight white line. "We'll go the castle. It's been condemned for years."
That's probably the most cheering news that Lex has heard since he came here. "Really?"
Lois smirks. "Hate it there, too?"
"Beyond the language to adequately describe." God knows the number of times he's been tempted to send a team out there to raze it to the ground. Burn every overpriced antique, extravagant rug, and pretentious painting. Only Lionel Luthor would have-- "My father--" God, what the hell?
"He's comfortable." Lois' eyes fix on the road, but her hands are tight on the wheel. "Last time, he almost recognized you."
No. No. And no. "How much farther?" Anything but this. Anything.
"Forty-five minutes." Her foot presses down harder, and Lex watches the car slide into two hundred miles an hour. This must be what freedom feels like for her. "Make that thirty."
*****
It's dark, and cold, and bare of anything like furniture, and Lex thinks it's an improvement. It always felt like a tomb--now it looks more like one. Lex can't stand false advertising.
Lois looks around like she's never been here before. Maybe she hasn't been. He's not exactly inclined to ask. "When will he notice we're gone?"
"When he gets bored enough to want us around." Lois picks her way through cobwebs and broken stone floor, forehead creasing. "At least another hour or two. He really wants to make an impression on the lab techs."
Lex nods, looking around the billiards room with a sense of disbelief. There are no memories here, not from any time. Like those games with Clark never existed. Ask, his mind says. Find out more. Look inside and get the answers.
Lex clings to the memory of the pool table, the rich rugs, the stain glass window in his office, the painted ceilings, now nothing but peeling plaster and falling stone. Sunlight spills in from the poor repair. It would be a very, very special kind of irony to suddenly be killed by falling rock. Would he go back to where he came from, or would he die?
It's not something he wants to think about too hard.
"You lived here?" Lois asks, sounding a little disbelieving, and a little out of breath. "I mean, intellectually, I know that, but--"
"It's a fucking tomb. I know, trust me." The halls are marginally better, structure-wise, probably more due to good engineering than anything else. Upstairs would be a death trap, but Lex still feels this insane desire to look around. "Why don't I just have it razed?" It's the same question he could ask himself in his own world, and the answer's muddled, caught in the grey spaces of his mind.
Lois is a little ahead. "Maybe this wasn't such a great idea. We can't just sit around on bare rock--"
"It's surrounded by Kryptonite." Years of exposure made Lex sensitive to it--not like Superman, but a feeling, a tickle of some kind. It works on his nerves like an itch. "If I know me, and I do, I didn't throw everything out." At least he hoped. It might say a lot about both of them that being caught was becoming less worrisome than sitting around without furniture. "Storage here somewhere."
"You think?" She doesn't sound too certain. Neither is he.
"Not really, no, but--" Lex pushes a rotting doorway open, checking the footing, before motioning her forward. The huge kitchen was spread out before them, trapped forever in the early 00's, modern steel cut with stone and hideous, and expensive, tile. "Let's--have a seat. This is as good a place as any." A dusty table still takes up space by the granite counters. Lex watches Lois gingerly sit down, remembering belatedly that her night hadn't been any easier than his. "Are you--"
"I'm fine." She's pale, though, and Lex can see the way her hands shake. Reaction to stress, or a bout of insanity. Clark might kill them both. Or keep them both alive. When he finds them. And he will.
Lex is betting on Lois being right, that they can mark time, and he'll be out, leaving her and other-Lex here to face whatever comes after. And God, does he not want to think of after.
"Lois--" He's not sure what to say. He can't apologize, because he's not sorry. He can't be. He can't tell her that he can help her, because the man that lives in this skin can't even help himself. The curl of his body stops the word before she looks up.
"Just tired." Looking away, she closes her eyes, leaning down on the table. "It's--it's okay. I just need to rest."
Lex nods. He can give her that, at least.
*****
Smallville nights are as endless as Smallville days. And Clark can see in the dark just as well as he can in light--darkness doesn't guarantee safety, but it feels like it does.
And Lois is sleeping like the dead, awkward position and all. Lex thinks she might not have slept much last night. The idea that she doesn't sleep when she's in Clark's bed if she can help it crawls the edges of his mind, but he dismisses it. There's nothing he can do.
The wine cellar still exists, and Lex marvels at the fact that his counterpart stripped the furniture but left the alcohol to slowly rot.
The castle's an abandoned ghost--from what little Lex saw of the road to Smallville, the country isn't much better. Darkened, barren fields--too many years of Kryptonite, slowly poisoning the land, creeping inch by inch through the soil. Another world, his world, they'd taken steps to prevent it, contain it, destroy it. Here--Lex stops at a window, staring out into the dark, the treeless, grassless ground No one had stopped it.
Glass sprinkles the floor where windows caved; even the stained glass in his office is falling apart, bright slivers of blood red and autumn gold littering the floor. No desk, but the sagging bookshelves still line the walls, a few books forgotten, or hell, maybe the guy had picked up a serious hate for Nietzsche and Catullus.
If he closes his eyes, he can remember, though. Clark at fifteen and sixteen and seventeen in here, standing before his desk like the least supplicating supplicant in history. A man who changed his future, like a tornado and an island and a tiny padded cell.
This is marking time, and the AI said two days, but he woke up in this body, so God alone knows what time that means. It could mean in the next fifteen minutes. It could be six am, when he woke up that first morning. It could be anything in between.
"Do you remember when we met?"
Lex keeps his eyes closed. "I wonder if you do."
Clark laughs, and it's fifteen all over again. Jesus. He wonders what the other Lex hears when he listens to that voice, if this is the reason he can't make himself leave. "You used to say it was the most fucked up way to meet ever."
It's strange; he can feel Clark this time, even with silent movement, too fast--he's ready for that big hand to brush his shoulder, ready to control the instinctive need to recoil, and bites his lip against the bright slash of pain. Someone normal would have screamed when their collarbone broke.
Lex has been everything and anything but normal.
"Does it work?" Lex asks, tasting blood when he bites through his lip. "You just beat the shit out of people and they do what you want?"
"It's pretty effective." The hand moves, and Lex forces himself not to touch himself, check the damage. He knows the damage. And he knows he'll heal from it, like he heals from everything else.
"When I was fifteen, I used to get into fights." Lex thinks he can almost hear Clark behind him. "When you were fifteen, you tried to stop them. What changed?"
"Everything changes." It's a breath across his scalp. "You told me that yourself."
Slowly, Lex turns around. Clark is Clark, this Clark, too-glossy and too-perfect, this ruthlessly powerful man who'd learned to like power and the ways he could wield it. Lex thinks of all the ways he'd thought Superman could fall from grace and how wrong he was. The Clark he knew could never have become this thing, pacing across the floor with soundless feet, a living, breathing predator.
This thing, who touches him with deceptively gentle fingers, brushing across the line of his jaw, the bruises on his throat, marking out the places he owns on Lex's body, like it's his right, his property.
"Someone's going to kill you someday." Lex says, and the hand freezes, dangerously close to his throat. Bar none, this is the stupidest he's ever been. "I want to be the one that does it."
And Clark laughs.
A lunge, that sends searing heat through Lex's body, broken bones grinding into living muscle and flesh, a brutal kiss, before Clark pulls back, arms around Lex's waist, looking into his eyes.
"You can try. Right now."
The pain recedes, a surprise--but it's not just pain. Everything seems to be pulling back, like he's being steadily jerked down an endless tunnel. He has no idea what it felt like when the AI threw him in here, but this sure as hell better be the way he leaves, because otherwise, it's very probable he's going to die.
"Where did all this come from?" Clark croons in his ear. Too close. Arms too tight. Clark might be bored, finally. "Did you and Lois think you could get away?"
Lois. Christ. "Where--"
Lex feels his ribs begin to crack under the pressure. Still here enough for Lex to want to struggle, even if his reaction time is for shit. Could be blood loss. "I thought I'd talk to her. After."
It's hard to get enough air to breathe, and if this is the AI, it's being shitty with timing it like this. The other Lex is struggling to the surface of this thoughts--a million touches like this, meetings like this. No, Clark isn't going to kill him. Clark is going to hurt him. And Lois will sit by a hospital bed again and wait for this Lex to either live or die, because this man doesn't care if he does or doesn't. Because Clark can do this, time after time, day after day, knowing Lex can heal it.
"He saved my life," Lex whispers, surprised to hear his own voice, even more surprised by the words. Other-Lex, maybe, creeping into his body while the AI pulls Lex out. "I fell in love with him. You were just what I got when I couldn't have him."
Clark pauses, staring down with unreadable eyes. "Lex--" The last of the air. Anytime now, the fucking AI can do this.
"Someone will take you down like a dog in the street, you son of a bitch." Lex whispers, feeling blood bubble, the snap of his ribs. God dammit, do it do it do it, get me the fuck *out* of here-- "And it might not be me, but it'll be somebody, and I'll be there, too. And when you die--"
"I want you to remember me."
Clark's head jerks around, and Lex gets the blurred vision of Lois at the door, and does she really think a fucking *gun* will do it?
"You've got to be kidding me." Clark sounds like Lex feels. "What do you think you're going to do with that? Annoy me to death?"
"Was I happy, Lex?" Her eyes are fixed on Clark, and Lex thinks that no matter how much he's ever hated Superman or Clark, or Clark hated him, it's nothing to compared to this.
He can't talk, but he can nod, and Lois smiles--the too-bright, too-smart, too-fucking-annoying woman she had almost been.
"Stop *this* bullet, Clark."
Lex hears the gunshot, feels Clark jerk in surprise, and--God, the sink into his body, too fast for pain to register, or maybe that's the AI, it sure as hell better be. The fall to the floor ends with bright light and Lois' voice close to his ear.
"Thank you." Lex thinks he sees her smile.
Lex doesn't hear the second gunshot. The AI's voice drowns out everything but that light.