FIC: No One Noticed the Cat (1/7)
Title: No One Noticed the Cat
Pairing: Clex
Rating: PG13
Warning: Violence
Includes: temporary mpreg, temporary character deaths
Summary: Clark gets Lex a pet cat… that's not quite a cat.
Author’s Notes:
1. Continuity Post S3 finale.
2. This is a help_haiti fic for tallihensia, who has been awfully patient to get this.
3. The Bennu bird serves as the Egyptian correlation to the phoenix, and is pictured as a heron. This relates to reinforce the Greek --> Egyptian name shift.
Thanks to cheerful_earl and herohunter for the betas. :D
“Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”
Anatole France
Part One
Superman dropped to his knees in the middle of the broken street. This trip had been almost too much, even for a devoted group of super-powered fighters. It was bad enough that the people here were entirely resistant to dealing with metahumans-- their world had suffered a planet-wide war between metahumans and ‘normals,’ and thus the few people left were not eager to help-- When they had seen what Superman could do, they’d practically lit the stakes right then and there.
He touched his communicator lightly. “Did you find it, J’onn?”
“We are close, Kal-El.”
“Well. Pick it up. I’d like to be home for dinner,” he drawled. He didn’t have anyone to come home to besides his cramped, lonely apartment. Still, they’d been gone on this fruitless search long enough, and who knew when the world would need its heroes back? The remaining Leaguers could handle themselves, but not indefinitely, should the worst occur.
Superman straightened up as he looked around. Metropolis, but not Metropolis. A shell of a city. This infinite realities thing really creeped him out sometimes. He hadn’t visited another universe for the first time until he was twenty-one years old, but it seemed that when he’d hit his late twenties, people were crossing over all the time. It never got any less surreal.
During that initial trip, he’d fallen into a world where his other self had apparently dropped out of college (how he’d managed to flunk out of Kansas A&M when he’d been doing complicated mathematics in his head since he was seven, he wasn’t sure) and was working the farm while Lana Lang spied on Lex and conducted experiments on unsuspecting metahumans. He’d spent most of his time trying to convince people he wasn’t a Bizarro and helping that reality’s Lex and Chloe fight off incoming alien threats. It had been nice to be on the same side with Lex again. When he had finally gotten home, Clark sat down with an academic advisor to collect all the credits he’d accrued during his travels to finish his degree at Metropolis University.
“The Green Machine needs to hurry up.”
Superman blinked as The Flash appeared in front of him. “He and Batman are sure that they’re closing in on the Key.” “Keys,” Flash lamented with a little roll of his shoulders. “Always where you look for them last.”
Superman’s lips twisted to the side.
“I know. I’m hilarious, right?” Flash grinned and bounced around on his heels. “You think they have tacos in this world?”
“Possibly. I’m not sure I would eat anything here, though.”
“Like being in the underworld,” Flash said, looking up at the sky. The guy was bored, clearly, and he bobbed his head from side to side. “I love tacos... So, if we don’t find our keys, is the world going to end?”
“It’s not so much that we need to find it, but that we need to make sure that none of the supervillains find it. They could use it to do a lot of damage. Currently, you need special conditions to end up in an alternate dimension, but with the Key, you could open them up and go wherever you wanted. In the wrong hands, and I think there are a lot of wrong hands, some lunatic could just collide them all together. It would be the end of everything.”
“I knew that,” Flash replied a bit quieter.
Superman sometimes forgot that Wally was younger than the rest of the League, and he had the tendency, as did most of the JLA, to underestimate and lecture to him.
“Sorry. I get in the habit of making big speeches when the League needs someone the press likes to give answers.” Superman turned to the younger man and put a hand on his shoulder. “When I get boring, you’ll have to tell me. I’m used to people indulging me.”
The Flash’s grin was wide and good-natured. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t ever let anyone tell ya you’re a self-righteous blowhard!”
Superman laughed heartily. Partially because it was The Flash. Partially because they both knew where the truth lay in the statement, as much as it did when Flash teased Batman about being a loner, or disturbingly obsessive. The criticism was never coming from a malicious place, or he wouldn’t be Flash. Superman, when he was out of the suit, could look on himself and see how easy it would be to get wrapped up in people’s high esteem of him.
With a tilt of his head, Superman caught a tiny, pitiful sound. He held up a finger before Flash could say anything else and walked through the burned out city, looking for the origin of that sound. Flash followed behind him, being as quiet as was possible for him to be.
It was then that Superman heard the plaintive cry once again. It sounded... almost like a tiny little baby, but not quite.
“Is that a kid?” Flash asked.
Superman actually jumped at the sudden noise.
Flash held up his hands. “I come in peace, big guy.”
“Just be quiet for a moment,” Superman ordered. He was a bit annoyed, but mostly with himself.
He lifted into the air, scanning the inside of the building as he ascended. The cry came again, and he went into the building
“Ya find anything?” Flash hollered from the ground.
Superman walked down the hallway until he reached where the cries were unmistakably coming from. The room was a complete mess. It looked like it had been affected by the earthquake that had decimated the Metropolis here a year prior.
“Is someone there? I’m here to help.” Superman flipped his x-ray on again and made a pass over the room. He frowned as he saw a little basket on the other side of an overturned table. “There you are.”
He crouched down before the basket and reached inside.
His little crier was small, and soft. And covered in silky fur.
“You’re a cat,” Superman stated in disbelief. It was almost beyond logic that anything could survive in this city, let alone a young, tiny animal. The cat’s fur was white from her muzzle down her belly, but there was a dark brown inverted ‘V” over her eyes, and her ears and tail were just as dark. The back of her head and most of her back were almost caramel-colored, and her eyes were a bright, alert blue. “I wonder what you’re doing here. C’mere, cutie.”
The cat made another cry as he picked it up and pulled it to his chest. It promptly let out a thunderous purr.
“Well, you sound grateful. I’m glad you’re friendly.” He walked out of the place, taking the cat with him.
“What’d ya find... in there?” Flash asked as Superman reappeared. He sounded a bit worried now, so Superman touched down in front of him with a smile.
“Not a kid, that’s for sure.”
“Oh, hey!” Flash reached forward to scratch the little cat’s head. “You’re a kitty!”
Superman stared at him.
“What? Are you gonna keep him?”
“It’s not my cat. She probably belongs to someone here.”
Flash shrugged. “You really think the little guy’s owners are around? Or alive? If I were alive, and I lived here without powers, I’d get my ass outta Dodge.”
“Point.”
Superman heard Batman just before he appeared behind them silently, a particular skill of his.
“What did you find?” Batman said in his rough, gravelly voice. It did no good to get Bruce to break character when it was just them. Superman had tried. Oh, how he had tried.
“Just an abandoned pet.” Superman held the cat out, and she mewed at Batman.
Batman took the cat from Superman and held her up, scrutinizing her slowly as she hung from his hands.
“Myeeh!” she complained in a squeaky meow.
“What are you doing with it?” Batman asked.
“It was crying. I came to get it.” Superman shrugged. “It’s just a little cat. Why are you interrogating it?”
“You of all people should know that things aren’t what they seem in alternate realities.” Batman was now locked in a staring contest with the cat, who was now flattening its ears back.
Superman pursed his lips and reached forward. “Give me the cat.”
“You should have it tested if you choose to bring it back,” Batman instructed. He gave Superman a knowing look as he handed over the animal like it might secretly be a bomb.
“Relax. It’s a kitty!” Flash put in cheerfully. Batman and Superman looked at one another.
Before Superman and Batman could discuss the serious matter of the cat any further, their communicators beeped. Batman touched his first and growled, “Find it?”
“We have the Key,” J’onn informed them. “Gather everyone and head back to the Watchtower.”
Finally. The cat meowed again curiously, and Superman avoided the look Batman was surely giving him as he tucked the small animal under his cape.
***
The founding members of the Justice League stood around the large, shining key that was rotating in a secured stasis chamber. The top was ornate, bejeweled. It gave off a faint lavender glow. It might have been the most rich object from that universe.
“Shiny.” Flash frowned at the Key. “Really, seriously shiny.”
“Yeah. So we found it. I’m still not certain we should keep in here,” Superman said.
“We’re aware that you think we should keep it at the Fortress, Kal.” Wonder Woman turned to him and crossed her arms. “But I am not comfortable keeping such a dangerous object in a place guarded solely by an AI that has been known to strip you of your powers, turn you into a female, and lock you in a block of ice.”
“Gold Heron fixed the AI a long time ago,” Superman protested. “Fine. Okay. I’m outvoted, but I’ve given my objections.”
“Noted,” J’onn stated. He looked up at the Key seriously. “Head home. The mission has been long. We should recuperate for the missions to come.”
After saying his goodbyes to each of the Leaguers, Superman headed back toward the medical bay where he had left the cat. He really should have left it in the other dimension, but they didn’t have the time to go hunting for a better home for her. He wasn’t about to leave a defenseless animal in that husk of a city.
Soon he was flying home with a frightened cat tucked under his arm. She didn’t stop meowing, one pitiful little cry after the other, until he touched down on the balcony.
A light was on deep inside, although most of the apartment was already dark. He assumed that Lex had already gone to bed and locked the doors. The clock in the kitchen told him that it was around 3:05am.
Sliding the door shut behind him, Superman dropped the cat onto the pristine tiled floor and let her explore as he slipped out of his costume piece by piece. When Clark headed for the bedroom, she followed him closely, her keen eyes taking in their surroundings and flashing in the dark.
A flicker of light down the hallway caught his eye, and Clark stopped for a moment, wondering what was going on. Lex never kept lights on. If Clark wasn’t around, he closed their drapes tight so the morning light wouldn’t bother him. Clark lifted the cat into his arms and gave her a little scratch on the head as he approached. Her purring seemed to echo through the hallway. Once in the bedroom, Clark’s heart warmed.
In the space in front of the bed, Lex was waiting, surrounded by half-melted candles. (Clark stilled the worried voice in the back of his head that panicked about Lex getting caught in a fire.) There was a basket beside him, and the room smelled lovely. Lex himself was wearing very little. It was obviously a scene prepared for Clark, but Lex had fallen asleep waiting for him to come home.
Clark set the cat on the bed, then picked Lex up to put him there as well.
“Mmph.” Lex yawned widely. “Happy Anniversary.”
Clark’s insides turned to ice water. Their anniversary. They’d been together a year now, ever since the day Lex had been injured by Brainiac. He’d come to Clark, so repentant and honest for once. Clark had lifted the smaller man gently off his feet and kissed him until he was breathless and his lips flushed and pouty.
It had been the best day of Clark’s life. And he’d spent the entire damn day of their anniversary in another universe looking for a stupid key. What a heel.
“Oh, Lex...” Clark looked back at the remains of what should have been a beautiful evening for them. And a small gesture, too. So hard for Lex.
“Don’t worry about it. I thought you might not get home in time. The world comes first.” Lex rubbed his eyes with the back of his fingers and accepted the blanket Clark was pulling over him.
“I um...”
“If you tell me that you forgot, I’m kicking you out of-”
“Meow!”
Lex jumped. Now startled awake, he looked at the cat kneading against his leg.
“You got me a cat,” Lex said. He blinked at her, then reached over to pet her soft head gently.
“Um...” Clark was a bad boy, but... “Yeah. Well, I found her, but she’s so friendly...”
“She is friendly,” Lex remarked. He held his hand out and she rubbed her head against it. “She almost pets herself. She’s sweet, Clark. Thank you.”
“I didn’t know if you liked animals.” Clark blew out the candles, deciding to clean up the mess before Lex got up the next morning, and then crawling onto the bed with Lex and their new pet.
“I don’t like dogs. I’m not opposed to animals entirely.” Lex picked her up and held her to his chest. “Actually, I quite like cats. Some cats,” he amended.
“Good.” Clark grinned and wrapped his arm around Lex’s shoulders, pulling him closer. “Happy Anniversary.”
Clark was rewarded with a happy kiss.
****
When Lex woke the next morning, he looked around himself, momentarily confused as to where he was and who was in bed with him. He looked up as he heard a little meow. Seeing his new pet, he put the disorientation aside to touch her lovely fur.
“Hey, beautiful.” Lex ran a hand down her back, then closed his fingers gently over her large fluffy tail. “Did I forget about you? Must have been out of my mind.”
He looked over at Clark, who was sprawled over the bed, snoring softly. Lex touched Clark’s soft, black curls before getting out of bed and to fetch a pair of pajama bottoms.
On his way to the kitchen, the cat followed him closely, watching him with her preternaturally intelligent eyes.
“You have something to say? You really are a beautiful cat, my dear. I wonder what we should call you?” Walking up to the counter, Lex reached up into the cabinet almost automatically. His hands grabbed a container of cat food, and he padded over to a little dish in the corner. “Here you go,” he said as he poured some kibble into the dish.
Lex paused, standing in the middle of his kitchen, once again slightly disoriented. He shook his head and put the cat food back, not wondering how he had cat food on hand when he’d just gotten the animal the night before.
The night before. The night of his and Clark’s anniversary. A sense of contentment warmed Lex’s chest as he sighed. They’d been together for a year now. It was hard to believe that a year had gone by so fast. It seemed like only yesterday that Clark had come to him, apologized for all the times he’d roughed Lex up or accused him of things he didn’t do, and then lifted Lex off of his feet and kissed him until he was breathless and his lips flushed and pouty.
Lex reached into his pantry for the flour and began to make some pancakes for Clark. His man had a big appetite.
A few minutes later, Lex was frowning at the pan as though it were doing something wrong. Acrid smoke filled the air. How could anyone burn something on the outside while the batter on the inside was uncooked?
“This is terrible. I should have learned to cook...” Lex muttered. He scratched the back of his head then put some bacon in the other pan. He couldn’t mess that one up, surely.
The grease from the pan popped and burned Lex’s hand. “Ow! Fucking bacon!”
Clark entered the kitchen with a grin on his face. “Smells good.”
“I’m a pitiful housewife,” Lex said apologetically, turning to face Clark with a crooked smile.
“I don’t think so. Everything looks fine to me.”
Clark went up to the stove and breathed in. Beside the oven was a plate of golden brown pancakes and a pile of eggs, both scrambled and sunny side up. He wrapped his arms around Lex’s waist from behind and kissed the back of his head.
“You’re wonderful.”
“I... surprise myself,” Lex muttered. He pulled the bacon off the burner and turned his head to give Clark a kiss. He let Clark take the picture perfect breakfast to the table.
“What did you have planned for today?” Clark asked, heaping some eggs onto his plate, then taking a generous handful of bacon.
“I thought I would go into the office, sit in on the board meeting today, then review the special division research projects. If I have time, I might go down to my lab to work on that Kryptonite ray I’ve been plotting.”
Clark laughed and reached over to squeeze his hand. “And where’s this office of yours?”
Lex quieted and looked at his uneaten pancake. “In the LexCorp towers.”
“You’re adorable. I’ll be at The Daily Planet most of the day, unless there’s an emergency.”
“As per usual.” Lex shrugged. “I’ll probably go grocery shopping and get the car checked out. Pay the bills. Exciting stuff.”
“Hm. Not very exciting. Do you want to make up for what I missed last night?” Clark offered.
“Maybe. Let me know if you’ll be late again.” Lex gave up on his pancake and pushed it aside.
Clark gulped down his milk, wiped his mouth, then got up to press a kiss to Lex’s cheek. “You should eat something. Don’t go all day without, okay? I don’t want you getting sick.”
“That’s impossible.” Lex looked up at Clark and creased his eyes slightly. “I don’t get sick.”
Clark kissed his nose, then zipped around the kitchen to clean up. “I need to get to work. Give me a call, when you’re not busy?”
“Yeah, ditto.”
There was something both new and routine about putting the food away. Lex rubbed the back of his head. He took a glass over to the ice and water dispenser on the refrigerator, filled it, and then walked to the den. Their new cat followed him curiously.
“You don’t want to follow me. I’m going to vacuum,” Lex told the cat. She merely meowed at him in reply. “I don’t know why I don’t have someone here to do this for me.”
Lex opened the hall closet and pulled out the vacuum.
“Let me take that, sir.”
Lex turned his head, then nodded to the butler who was reaching for the vacuum cleaner. “Ah, thank you, Gary.”
“Not at all, sir. I will attend to the groceries after I do a bit of cleaning. If you have additional items that you and Master Kent require, the list is on the refrigerator.”
Without a moment to wonder why he’d gone to clean at all if they had a butler there to do it, Lex headed for his office.
“I need to name you,” Lex informed the cat. “Isis is a little too obvious, really. There are other Egyptian deities to consider. Sekhmet has the head of a lion. Bast is the protector of domestic cats, and her city was Bubastis. Then of course, there’s Mau, who is the personification of Ra-- that’s the all-father of creation for the Egyptian world. Mau, by the way, was also the Egyptian term for cat. You don’t look like an Egyptian Mau, though.”
Lex walked over to his desk and sat down. “You look more like a ragdoll breed to me.”
“Mew!”
“Indeed.” Lex picked her up and set the cat in his lap. At another meow, Lex chuckled. “Mau, it is.”
After opening his laptop, Lex started to check his email, sighing as he stroked a hand over Mau’s shiny coat. “I feel like a supervillain, petting a cat at my desk. How funny.”
It wasn’t long before Lex found himself bored. “If I don’t have a job and we have a butler to do the chores, why don’t I at least have a lab? What am I doing with my life?”
The purple cell phone on the desk rang, and Lex answered it quickly, grateful for the distraction.
“Hello? Yes, well, I did plan on coming in, Pritchard. Yes, I’ll be right there. I can’t wait to see the results of last night’s work.”
Setting Mau on the floor despite her protests, Lex stood and went to get properly dressed.
“Gary,” he called once he got off the phone. “I’m going into the lab!”
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.
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Pairing: Clex
Rating: PG13
Warning: Violence
Includes: temporary mpreg, temporary character deaths
Summary: Clark gets Lex a pet cat… that's not quite a cat.
Author’s Notes:
1. Continuity Post S3 finale.
2. This is a help_haiti fic for tallihensia, who has been awfully patient to get this.
3. The Bennu bird serves as the Egyptian correlation to the phoenix, and is pictured as a heron. This relates to reinforce the Greek --> Egyptian name shift.
Thanks to cheerful_earl and herohunter for the betas. :D
“Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”
Anatole France
Part One
Superman dropped to his knees in the middle of the broken street. This trip had been almost too much, even for a devoted group of super-powered fighters. It was bad enough that the people here were entirely resistant to dealing with metahumans-- their world had suffered a planet-wide war between metahumans and ‘normals,’ and thus the few people left were not eager to help-- When they had seen what Superman could do, they’d practically lit the stakes right then and there.
He touched his communicator lightly. “Did you find it, J’onn?”
“We are close, Kal-El.”
“Well. Pick it up. I’d like to be home for dinner,” he drawled. He didn’t have anyone to come home to besides his cramped, lonely apartment. Still, they’d been gone on this fruitless search long enough, and who knew when the world would need its heroes back? The remaining Leaguers could handle themselves, but not indefinitely, should the worst occur.
Superman straightened up as he looked around. Metropolis, but not Metropolis. A shell of a city. This infinite realities thing really creeped him out sometimes. He hadn’t visited another universe for the first time until he was twenty-one years old, but it seemed that when he’d hit his late twenties, people were crossing over all the time. It never got any less surreal.
During that initial trip, he’d fallen into a world where his other self had apparently dropped out of college (how he’d managed to flunk out of Kansas A&M when he’d been doing complicated mathematics in his head since he was seven, he wasn’t sure) and was working the farm while Lana Lang spied on Lex and conducted experiments on unsuspecting metahumans. He’d spent most of his time trying to convince people he wasn’t a Bizarro and helping that reality’s Lex and Chloe fight off incoming alien threats. It had been nice to be on the same side with Lex again. When he had finally gotten home, Clark sat down with an academic advisor to collect all the credits he’d accrued during his travels to finish his degree at Metropolis University.
“The Green Machine needs to hurry up.”
Superman blinked as The Flash appeared in front of him. “He and Batman are sure that they’re closing in on the Key.” “Keys,” Flash lamented with a little roll of his shoulders. “Always where you look for them last.”
Superman’s lips twisted to the side.
“I know. I’m hilarious, right?” Flash grinned and bounced around on his heels. “You think they have tacos in this world?”
“Possibly. I’m not sure I would eat anything here, though.”
“Like being in the underworld,” Flash said, looking up at the sky. The guy was bored, clearly, and he bobbed his head from side to side. “I love tacos... So, if we don’t find our keys, is the world going to end?”
“It’s not so much that we need to find it, but that we need to make sure that none of the supervillains find it. They could use it to do a lot of damage. Currently, you need special conditions to end up in an alternate dimension, but with the Key, you could open them up and go wherever you wanted. In the wrong hands, and I think there are a lot of wrong hands, some lunatic could just collide them all together. It would be the end of everything.”
“I knew that,” Flash replied a bit quieter.
Superman sometimes forgot that Wally was younger than the rest of the League, and he had the tendency, as did most of the JLA, to underestimate and lecture to him.
“Sorry. I get in the habit of making big speeches when the League needs someone the press likes to give answers.” Superman turned to the younger man and put a hand on his shoulder. “When I get boring, you’ll have to tell me. I’m used to people indulging me.”
The Flash’s grin was wide and good-natured. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t ever let anyone tell ya you’re a self-righteous blowhard!”
Superman laughed heartily. Partially because it was The Flash. Partially because they both knew where the truth lay in the statement, as much as it did when Flash teased Batman about being a loner, or disturbingly obsessive. The criticism was never coming from a malicious place, or he wouldn’t be Flash. Superman, when he was out of the suit, could look on himself and see how easy it would be to get wrapped up in people’s high esteem of him.
With a tilt of his head, Superman caught a tiny, pitiful sound. He held up a finger before Flash could say anything else and walked through the burned out city, looking for the origin of that sound. Flash followed behind him, being as quiet as was possible for him to be.
It was then that Superman heard the plaintive cry once again. It sounded... almost like a tiny little baby, but not quite.
“Is that a kid?” Flash asked.
Superman actually jumped at the sudden noise.
Flash held up his hands. “I come in peace, big guy.”
“Just be quiet for a moment,” Superman ordered. He was a bit annoyed, but mostly with himself.
He lifted into the air, scanning the inside of the building as he ascended. The cry came again, and he went into the building
“Ya find anything?” Flash hollered from the ground.
Superman walked down the hallway until he reached where the cries were unmistakably coming from. The room was a complete mess. It looked like it had been affected by the earthquake that had decimated the Metropolis here a year prior.
“Is someone there? I’m here to help.” Superman flipped his x-ray on again and made a pass over the room. He frowned as he saw a little basket on the other side of an overturned table. “There you are.”
He crouched down before the basket and reached inside.
His little crier was small, and soft. And covered in silky fur.
“You’re a cat,” Superman stated in disbelief. It was almost beyond logic that anything could survive in this city, let alone a young, tiny animal. The cat’s fur was white from her muzzle down her belly, but there was a dark brown inverted ‘V” over her eyes, and her ears and tail were just as dark. The back of her head and most of her back were almost caramel-colored, and her eyes were a bright, alert blue. “I wonder what you’re doing here. C’mere, cutie.”
The cat made another cry as he picked it up and pulled it to his chest. It promptly let out a thunderous purr.
“Well, you sound grateful. I’m glad you’re friendly.” He walked out of the place, taking the cat with him.
“What’d ya find... in there?” Flash asked as Superman reappeared. He sounded a bit worried now, so Superman touched down in front of him with a smile.
“Not a kid, that’s for sure.”
“Oh, hey!” Flash reached forward to scratch the little cat’s head. “You’re a kitty!”
Superman stared at him.
“What? Are you gonna keep him?”
“It’s not my cat. She probably belongs to someone here.”
Flash shrugged. “You really think the little guy’s owners are around? Or alive? If I were alive, and I lived here without powers, I’d get my ass outta Dodge.”
“Point.”
Superman heard Batman just before he appeared behind them silently, a particular skill of his.
“What did you find?” Batman said in his rough, gravelly voice. It did no good to get Bruce to break character when it was just them. Superman had tried. Oh, how he had tried.
“Just an abandoned pet.” Superman held the cat out, and she mewed at Batman.
Batman took the cat from Superman and held her up, scrutinizing her slowly as she hung from his hands.
“Myeeh!” she complained in a squeaky meow.
“What are you doing with it?” Batman asked.
“It was crying. I came to get it.” Superman shrugged. “It’s just a little cat. Why are you interrogating it?”
“You of all people should know that things aren’t what they seem in alternate realities.” Batman was now locked in a staring contest with the cat, who was now flattening its ears back.
Superman pursed his lips and reached forward. “Give me the cat.”
“You should have it tested if you choose to bring it back,” Batman instructed. He gave Superman a knowing look as he handed over the animal like it might secretly be a bomb.
“Relax. It’s a kitty!” Flash put in cheerfully. Batman and Superman looked at one another.
Before Superman and Batman could discuss the serious matter of the cat any further, their communicators beeped. Batman touched his first and growled, “Find it?”
“We have the Key,” J’onn informed them. “Gather everyone and head back to the Watchtower.”
Finally. The cat meowed again curiously, and Superman avoided the look Batman was surely giving him as he tucked the small animal under his cape.
***
The founding members of the Justice League stood around the large, shining key that was rotating in a secured stasis chamber. The top was ornate, bejeweled. It gave off a faint lavender glow. It might have been the most rich object from that universe.
“Shiny.” Flash frowned at the Key. “Really, seriously shiny.”
“Yeah. So we found it. I’m still not certain we should keep in here,” Superman said.
“We’re aware that you think we should keep it at the Fortress, Kal.” Wonder Woman turned to him and crossed her arms. “But I am not comfortable keeping such a dangerous object in a place guarded solely by an AI that has been known to strip you of your powers, turn you into a female, and lock you in a block of ice.”
“Gold Heron fixed the AI a long time ago,” Superman protested. “Fine. Okay. I’m outvoted, but I’ve given my objections.”
“Noted,” J’onn stated. He looked up at the Key seriously. “Head home. The mission has been long. We should recuperate for the missions to come.”
After saying his goodbyes to each of the Leaguers, Superman headed back toward the medical bay where he had left the cat. He really should have left it in the other dimension, but they didn’t have the time to go hunting for a better home for her. He wasn’t about to leave a defenseless animal in that husk of a city.
Soon he was flying home with a frightened cat tucked under his arm. She didn’t stop meowing, one pitiful little cry after the other, until he touched down on the balcony.
A light was on deep inside, although most of the apartment was already dark. He assumed that Lex had already gone to bed and locked the doors. The clock in the kitchen told him that it was around 3:05am.
Sliding the door shut behind him, Superman dropped the cat onto the pristine tiled floor and let her explore as he slipped out of his costume piece by piece. When Clark headed for the bedroom, she followed him closely, her keen eyes taking in their surroundings and flashing in the dark.
A flicker of light down the hallway caught his eye, and Clark stopped for a moment, wondering what was going on. Lex never kept lights on. If Clark wasn’t around, he closed their drapes tight so the morning light wouldn’t bother him. Clark lifted the cat into his arms and gave her a little scratch on the head as he approached. Her purring seemed to echo through the hallway. Once in the bedroom, Clark’s heart warmed.
In the space in front of the bed, Lex was waiting, surrounded by half-melted candles. (Clark stilled the worried voice in the back of his head that panicked about Lex getting caught in a fire.) There was a basket beside him, and the room smelled lovely. Lex himself was wearing very little. It was obviously a scene prepared for Clark, but Lex had fallen asleep waiting for him to come home.
Clark set the cat on the bed, then picked Lex up to put him there as well.
“Mmph.” Lex yawned widely. “Happy Anniversary.”
Clark’s insides turned to ice water. Their anniversary. They’d been together a year now, ever since the day Lex had been injured by Brainiac. He’d come to Clark, so repentant and honest for once. Clark had lifted the smaller man gently off his feet and kissed him until he was breathless and his lips flushed and pouty.
It had been the best day of Clark’s life. And he’d spent the entire damn day of their anniversary in another universe looking for a stupid key. What a heel.
“Oh, Lex...” Clark looked back at the remains of what should have been a beautiful evening for them. And a small gesture, too. So hard for Lex.
“Don’t worry about it. I thought you might not get home in time. The world comes first.” Lex rubbed his eyes with the back of his fingers and accepted the blanket Clark was pulling over him.
“I um...”
“If you tell me that you forgot, I’m kicking you out of-”
“Meow!”
Lex jumped. Now startled awake, he looked at the cat kneading against his leg.
“You got me a cat,” Lex said. He blinked at her, then reached over to pet her soft head gently.
“Um...” Clark was a bad boy, but... “Yeah. Well, I found her, but she’s so friendly...”
“She is friendly,” Lex remarked. He held his hand out and she rubbed her head against it. “She almost pets herself. She’s sweet, Clark. Thank you.”
“I didn’t know if you liked animals.” Clark blew out the candles, deciding to clean up the mess before Lex got up the next morning, and then crawling onto the bed with Lex and their new pet.
“I don’t like dogs. I’m not opposed to animals entirely.” Lex picked her up and held her to his chest. “Actually, I quite like cats. Some cats,” he amended.
“Good.” Clark grinned and wrapped his arm around Lex’s shoulders, pulling him closer. “Happy Anniversary.”
Clark was rewarded with a happy kiss.
****
When Lex woke the next morning, he looked around himself, momentarily confused as to where he was and who was in bed with him. He looked up as he heard a little meow. Seeing his new pet, he put the disorientation aside to touch her lovely fur.
“Hey, beautiful.” Lex ran a hand down her back, then closed his fingers gently over her large fluffy tail. “Did I forget about you? Must have been out of my mind.”
He looked over at Clark, who was sprawled over the bed, snoring softly. Lex touched Clark’s soft, black curls before getting out of bed and to fetch a pair of pajama bottoms.
On his way to the kitchen, the cat followed him closely, watching him with her preternaturally intelligent eyes.
“You have something to say? You really are a beautiful cat, my dear. I wonder what we should call you?” Walking up to the counter, Lex reached up into the cabinet almost automatically. His hands grabbed a container of cat food, and he padded over to a little dish in the corner. “Here you go,” he said as he poured some kibble into the dish.
Lex paused, standing in the middle of his kitchen, once again slightly disoriented. He shook his head and put the cat food back, not wondering how he had cat food on hand when he’d just gotten the animal the night before.
The night before. The night of his and Clark’s anniversary. A sense of contentment warmed Lex’s chest as he sighed. They’d been together for a year now. It was hard to believe that a year had gone by so fast. It seemed like only yesterday that Clark had come to him, apologized for all the times he’d roughed Lex up or accused him of things he didn’t do, and then lifted Lex off of his feet and kissed him until he was breathless and his lips flushed and pouty.
Lex reached into his pantry for the flour and began to make some pancakes for Clark. His man had a big appetite.
A few minutes later, Lex was frowning at the pan as though it were doing something wrong. Acrid smoke filled the air. How could anyone burn something on the outside while the batter on the inside was uncooked?
“This is terrible. I should have learned to cook...” Lex muttered. He scratched the back of his head then put some bacon in the other pan. He couldn’t mess that one up, surely.
The grease from the pan popped and burned Lex’s hand. “Ow! Fucking bacon!”
Clark entered the kitchen with a grin on his face. “Smells good.”
“I’m a pitiful housewife,” Lex said apologetically, turning to face Clark with a crooked smile.
“I don’t think so. Everything looks fine to me.”
Clark went up to the stove and breathed in. Beside the oven was a plate of golden brown pancakes and a pile of eggs, both scrambled and sunny side up. He wrapped his arms around Lex’s waist from behind and kissed the back of his head.
“You’re wonderful.”
“I... surprise myself,” Lex muttered. He pulled the bacon off the burner and turned his head to give Clark a kiss. He let Clark take the picture perfect breakfast to the table.
“What did you have planned for today?” Clark asked, heaping some eggs onto his plate, then taking a generous handful of bacon.
“I thought I would go into the office, sit in on the board meeting today, then review the special division research projects. If I have time, I might go down to my lab to work on that Kryptonite ray I’ve been plotting.”
Clark laughed and reached over to squeeze his hand. “And where’s this office of yours?”
Lex quieted and looked at his uneaten pancake. “In the LexCorp towers.”
“You’re adorable. I’ll be at The Daily Planet most of the day, unless there’s an emergency.”
“As per usual.” Lex shrugged. “I’ll probably go grocery shopping and get the car checked out. Pay the bills. Exciting stuff.”
“Hm. Not very exciting. Do you want to make up for what I missed last night?” Clark offered.
“Maybe. Let me know if you’ll be late again.” Lex gave up on his pancake and pushed it aside.
Clark gulped down his milk, wiped his mouth, then got up to press a kiss to Lex’s cheek. “You should eat something. Don’t go all day without, okay? I don’t want you getting sick.”
“That’s impossible.” Lex looked up at Clark and creased his eyes slightly. “I don’t get sick.”
Clark kissed his nose, then zipped around the kitchen to clean up. “I need to get to work. Give me a call, when you’re not busy?”
“Yeah, ditto.”
There was something both new and routine about putting the food away. Lex rubbed the back of his head. He took a glass over to the ice and water dispenser on the refrigerator, filled it, and then walked to the den. Their new cat followed him curiously.
“You don’t want to follow me. I’m going to vacuum,” Lex told the cat. She merely meowed at him in reply. “I don’t know why I don’t have someone here to do this for me.”
Lex opened the hall closet and pulled out the vacuum.
“Let me take that, sir.”
Lex turned his head, then nodded to the butler who was reaching for the vacuum cleaner. “Ah, thank you, Gary.”
“Not at all, sir. I will attend to the groceries after I do a bit of cleaning. If you have additional items that you and Master Kent require, the list is on the refrigerator.”
Without a moment to wonder why he’d gone to clean at all if they had a butler there to do it, Lex headed for his office.
“I need to name you,” Lex informed the cat. “Isis is a little too obvious, really. There are other Egyptian deities to consider. Sekhmet has the head of a lion. Bast is the protector of domestic cats, and her city was Bubastis. Then of course, there’s Mau, who is the personification of Ra-- that’s the all-father of creation for the Egyptian world. Mau, by the way, was also the Egyptian term for cat. You don’t look like an Egyptian Mau, though.”
Lex walked over to his desk and sat down. “You look more like a ragdoll breed to me.”
“Mew!”
“Indeed.” Lex picked her up and set the cat in his lap. At another meow, Lex chuckled. “Mau, it is.”
After opening his laptop, Lex started to check his email, sighing as he stroked a hand over Mau’s shiny coat. “I feel like a supervillain, petting a cat at my desk. How funny.”
It wasn’t long before Lex found himself bored. “If I don’t have a job and we have a butler to do the chores, why don’t I at least have a lab? What am I doing with my life?”
The purple cell phone on the desk rang, and Lex answered it quickly, grateful for the distraction.
“Hello? Yes, well, I did plan on coming in, Pritchard. Yes, I’ll be right there. I can’t wait to see the results of last night’s work.”
Setting Mau on the floor despite her protests, Lex stood and went to get properly dressed.
“Gary,” he called once he got off the phone. “I’m going into the lab!”
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