Eight Crazy Nights: one (SV, Fringe)
Thanks to pinkfinity for the dreidel!
This years prompts are going to wipe me out, I can tell.
svmadelyn: sequel to last year’s story in which, in the aftermath of Doomsday killing Clark, Lex steps in and helps the Justice League when Wonder Woman asks. Clark/Lex, PG.
“Lex Luthor is a liar!” Clark reiterated. “Lex Luthor lies! It even alliterates! Why am I the only one who remembers this?”
Wonder Woman’s face grew even more still, and the Flash stopped vibrating long enough to frown. Possibly Clark shouldn’t have mentioned memory, since the working theory among the otherwise sensible superheroes of the Justice League was apparently that his death and resurrection had somehow given him selective amnesia. (Batman, of course, accepted Clark’s side of the story immediately; so, point for the erratic superhero.) He’d just spent half an hour listening to them theorize that the reason that he was denying his passionate relationship with Lex was that he’d traumatically forgotten. For some reason, this appealed to them more than the idea that he was actually Lex’s mortal enemy, which Clark considered far more Occam’s Razor-like.
“Look,” Clark said, because he’d found that explaining the right thing to do often worked if you did it enough times, and maybe that worked with explaining the truth as well, though admittedly he was less experienced there, “if Lex used my-death-as an opportunity to rehabilitate himself, and if he’s really been doing everything you say, then it’s only because he’s got a longer game in mind. It’s the Big Lie-claim something so outrageous that everyone thinks that it has to be true.” He looked around the table, forcing each of them to meet his eyes in turn (skipping Batman, not just because Batman didn’t need convincing; trying to stare Batman down meant letting the abyss look back into you, and that was not on his agenda today), trying to transfer his bone-deep knowledge of Lex Luthor’s treachery to them by sheer conviction.
“He denied it,” Diana said abruptly.
“What?”
She met his gaze without hesitation. “He first pretended that there had been nothing between you other than hate. I believe he thought you’d prefer to let your secret die with you. At the time, I thought he misjudged you.”
Clark wanted to squirm. He didn’t deserve that look of disappointment, he reminded himself.
“Let me get this straight,” he said, feeling a bit like an ordinary Smallville citizen listening to some of the more ridiculous explanations that had been bandied about for the havoc that meteor freaks had wreaked. “You went to Lex, told him you knew we were lovers, he said it wasn’t true, and you kept going?”
John’s hands were fisted on the table, as they’d been through much of the discussion. “None of us denies that Luthor’s an excellent liar,” he said, and Clark recognized the grudging respect on his face. Of course, John would dislike almost everything about Lex even without Lex’s history of going after the League, but beating back Darkseid would’ve earned Lex a lot of credit with him anyway.
Clark had read the reports, watched the video. He knew what Lex had done. That one battle had gone a long way to balance the scales, at least if Lex would ever acknowledge that he had something for which to atone.
“Okay,” Clark said, needing to regroup. “Let’s accept that Lex has behaved himself in my absence. But let’s also accept that, for whatever reason, my knowledge of Lex is only as my enemy.” He didn’t keep the twinge off his face, because that was and always would be untrue; the friendship had soured-Lex had poisoned it (and if Clark had ever wanted more, then he really needed to let go of that, because it would only trip him up with Lex now)--but denying its existence was a mistake. Clark could tell from the way Batman shifted in his seat that he, at least, had marked the lie. “So, what do we do about it?”
“Uh,” Flash said. “I don’t think we do anything, man. I mean, it’s cool if you’re into that and all, but-”
“What Flash is saying,” J’onn said, as gently as one could interrupt Flash, “is that this is a conversation for you and Lex.”
Clark sighed. He knew how that one went. Recriminations and yelling and a feeling like acid indigestion in his chest. He’d tried to avoid direct contact in the past few years, but J’onn was right: he needed to confront Lex and hear for himself whatever fairytale Lex had concocted about his beneficient goals. “Fine,” he conceded, already imagining how he’d take out the various security measures so that he could catch Lex in his penthouse. “I’ll go back to Metropolis as soon as I’ve finished looking at the reports from the last six months.”
Diana tilted her head, forehead wrinkled as if she was surprised that Clark still hadn’t managed to catch up. “He is here, in the Watchtower,” she said mildly. “He declined to be present when you first began to react to solar radiation, but he does have a workspace next to the control room, and he has been waiting.”
****
Clark stopped outside Lex’s office-office! the world had officially gone topsy-turvy while Clark had been dead-and took a moment to compose himself.
Naturally, the door slid open before he was done.
Lex didn’t say anything, just rose from his seat behind a transparent aluminum desk. There was nothing on the desk but a decanter and a glass, both half-full. He didn’t make any move to close the distance between them.
“So, I guess all it took to make a hero out of you was for me to die,” Clark said. It made a sick kind of sense, actually, the remaining good in Lex only able to be expressed once he wasn’t reacting automatically to the years of enmity between them, Clark the symbol of everything with which he refused to compromise.
Lex breathed out once, all tense shoulders and somehow looking down on Clark despite being several-make that many--inches shorter. “That appears to be the case.”
“It’s going to be pretty embarrassing for you when you admit the truth.” Clark folded his arms. If Lex was forced to confess with Clark standing right there, then they’d have to believe him. It’d make a nice change of pace from Lex’s countless suave denials and offloading of responsibility on minor flunkies. And with all the ways Lex had let the League into LexCorp’s day-to-day operations, it would be almost impossible for Lex to resume his shenanigans-at least for a couple of years. This colossal mistake had an upside, after all.
Lex quickly downed his drink and poured himself another. “I never claimed to be anything other than what I was. You’ve got no reason to take this out on me. This is your so-called friends’ fault.”
“Batman never believed you!” Clark protested, because he felt that it was important to establish that Lex hadn’t fooled everyone.
Lex somehow managed to roll his eyes without moving a muscle. “Batman is a paranoid control freak who’d spy on the sun to make sure it doesn’t secretly plan to conquer the Earth if he could, and believe me when I say I know whereof I speak. If he’d credibly pretended to trust me, he’d have worried the rest of the League so much they never would have worked with me. I’m actually surprised he didn’t figure that out. More than that, I’m wondering about his endgame. God only knows what he’s planning for you, now that he knows that death has no dominion where you’re concerned.”
Clark shook his head, because Lex wasn’t wrong, but that wasn’t Clark’s priority. “What are you planning to do now?”
Lex examined the empty glass in his hand, then refilled it. “Sadly, alcohol poisoning is out of the question, but I’m working on a pretty good buzz. Then I’m going to go back to Metropolis and get laid.”
“What?”
Lex clutched his drink like it was a child’s teddy bear. “Do you even have any idea how hard it is to convince a person with a minimal sense of discretion and self-preservation to have sex when it’s evident you’re being protectively monitored by the Justice League?” His voice rose and his words sped up. Clark stared, kind of fascinated; it was almost like being a kid back in the mansion again, Lex on one of his lecture jags. “Aside from the fact that, let’s face it, getting involved with a metahuman with a seat at the big table is like signing up for active combat duty, that group of judgmental busybodies has scared off anyone I found remotely attractive, and they’d have staged an intervention if I’d tried a professional. Now that you’re back and you can publicly renounce me or whatever it is that you feel the need to do to assuage your sense of outrage, I can at least get back to my preferred form of recreation.”
And yeah, Clark had seen that, too, back in the Smallville days. Lex had never been shy about showing off how he kissed, how he touched, how he put his hands on a person. Girl. Woman. Whatever. Wait a second-“You only like women,” he said, outraged all over again at how his friends had misread the situation.
Lex picked up the decanter, examined it as if considering whether to drink straight from there, then shrugged and topped off his glass. “At this point I’m hard pressed to say that I like anyone, Superman. But, not that it makes any difference to you, that’s not in fact an axis along which I discriminate. And I suppose it would be futile to remind you once more that this isn’t about me, it’s about the delusions of metahumans, which, frankly, gives me little confidence in their ability to make the right decisions to save the world on a routine basis.” Lex wasn’t slurring his words, not exactly, but they were running together with somewhat more dispatch than his usual seductive tones, which had always reminded Clark a little bit of the rough thrill of a cat’s tongue.
Clark shook his head, because his thoughts were going weird places. It was the situation: returning from the dead and finding himself the proud possessor of a grieving lover would have discombobulated anyone, he was sure. Also, Lex had sex with guys? “Then how come you never made a move on me?” he asked, realizing too late that, while he sounded just the right amount of ticked-off for a standard Lex encounter, he was using just the wrong words.
Lex’s mouth dropped open for what seemed like an eternity. Clark briefly wished that the Phantom Zone would explode, or maybe that Granny Goodness would drop in for a little chat.
“Clark,” he said, and then stopped to take a couple of gulps of alcohol. “I gave you a truck, fireworks, concert tickets, a high school football team, and other inducements too varied to list. I did everything short of stick my hand down your pants, and don’t think it wasn’t a close thing.”
Now it was Clark’s turn to gape. Lex had-but Clark had been-and why hadn’t he said-no, Clark knew the dozen reasons for that, but still-
He took a step forward at last, and Lex twitched around the eyes. Then Clark shoved the desk out of his way-he heard it embed into the wall-and Lex really flinched that time.
“Then why don’t you try it now?”
Lex’s gaze dropped below Clark’s waist, and Clark would have bet the Fortress that was involuntary.
“What makes you think I still want to?” Lex said at last. Clark wasn’t going to mention that his voice was shaking.
“Because you never stop feeling anything, Lex,” he said, and he really hoped he didn’t sound condescending. “You just make it more complicated.”
Lex’s throat worked. Clark watched, fascinated, as Lex flushed all the way up his head.
“Does that clown costume even come off?” Lex asked.
Clark allowed him the jab. He was pretty scared too. “You’re the genius. Come find out.”
Much, much later, Lex sat upright with a jolt, waking Clark. “Goddamnit,” he said, sounding outraged enough that Clark reflexively looked around for Kryptonite, and guns.
“What?” Clark considered rubbing his hand down Lex’s spine, then did it. Lex twisted away for a second, then harrumphed and settled back into the caress.
“Your idiot friends were right,” Lex complained.
“Wow,” Clark said, “I’m devastated by that. I should really give them a stern lecture.”
Lex sneered, but in a reasonably good-natured way.
“While you’re up,” Clark suggested, his hands moving to more interesting places.
“Fine,” Lex said, long-suffering and totally adorable, and by his disgruntled expression, he knew it. “But first, a bed. This cape might be invulnerable, but it’s far from soft.”
Clark bit his lip and nodded, mostly because he knew that would only aggravate Lex further.
Sure enough: “Shut up,” Lex snarled.
So, on the whole, there was something to be said for coming back to life only to find himself involved in a passionate affair with his arch-enemy.
runpunkrun: Fringe, Olivia/Peter, in the noir au with the cell phones. All audiences.
Peter has to be careful, with only half a heart. (And all of it yours, he never says, because that’s just mush; even so, there’s something very much like that in his eyes, and it never fails to make Olivia’s own heart ache when she sees it.) Once past the intrigue with Walter Bishop, though, Peter finds it easy to be careful, especially with Olivia around as a compelling example of how to do it the other way.
He invents for her, because Walter taught him many things and only a few are too tainted to use: bananas whose brown spots bloom only in the shape of valentine hearts, no matter how they’re bruised. Shoes that grow or shrink in height depending on her mood (which works less well when other people are wearing copies; the computer chip inside is perhaps too specifically calibrated). Pens that write what you meant to say-the Boston police department orders ten cases for suspects to write their confessions, then throws them all away when one cop too many uses one to write his report and makes the front page of the Globe. Chess-playing dirigibles: the chessboard spans four states.
Olivia goes out into the world and finds more lost souls in need of care. One day she brings home a little girl. Peter never asks for Ella’s story. He’s heard enough of sadness, seen enough of children’s nightmares. Peter doesn’t need to know who Ella was. Peter thinks: She’s here and Olivia loves her and she has the great good sense to love Olivia back, fierce and foremost, so sometimes it’s like she’s competing with Peter for Olivia’s regard. Except that Peter, being the grownup, knows that sometimes, in the best cases, love can stretch like taffy, wrapping around everyone. Hearts may have to be divided, but love-the love they have, the love they toss between them like red hots at the ballgame-love can come in through the cracks.
They go out dancing, and when they come back, after midnight, Peter pays the sitter while Olivia sneaks into Ella’s room to watch over her undisturbed dreams.
This is how they live: happily, ever after.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
This years prompts are going to wipe me out, I can tell.
svmadelyn: sequel to last year’s story in which, in the aftermath of Doomsday killing Clark, Lex steps in and helps the Justice League when Wonder Woman asks. Clark/Lex, PG.
“Lex Luthor is a liar!” Clark reiterated. “Lex Luthor lies! It even alliterates! Why am I the only one who remembers this?”
Wonder Woman’s face grew even more still, and the Flash stopped vibrating long enough to frown. Possibly Clark shouldn’t have mentioned memory, since the working theory among the otherwise sensible superheroes of the Justice League was apparently that his death and resurrection had somehow given him selective amnesia. (Batman, of course, accepted Clark’s side of the story immediately; so, point for the erratic superhero.) He’d just spent half an hour listening to them theorize that the reason that he was denying his passionate relationship with Lex was that he’d traumatically forgotten. For some reason, this appealed to them more than the idea that he was actually Lex’s mortal enemy, which Clark considered far more Occam’s Razor-like.
“Look,” Clark said, because he’d found that explaining the right thing to do often worked if you did it enough times, and maybe that worked with explaining the truth as well, though admittedly he was less experienced there, “if Lex used my-death-as an opportunity to rehabilitate himself, and if he’s really been doing everything you say, then it’s only because he’s got a longer game in mind. It’s the Big Lie-claim something so outrageous that everyone thinks that it has to be true.” He looked around the table, forcing each of them to meet his eyes in turn (skipping Batman, not just because Batman didn’t need convincing; trying to stare Batman down meant letting the abyss look back into you, and that was not on his agenda today), trying to transfer his bone-deep knowledge of Lex Luthor’s treachery to them by sheer conviction.
“He denied it,” Diana said abruptly.
“What?”
She met his gaze without hesitation. “He first pretended that there had been nothing between you other than hate. I believe he thought you’d prefer to let your secret die with you. At the time, I thought he misjudged you.”
Clark wanted to squirm. He didn’t deserve that look of disappointment, he reminded himself.
“Let me get this straight,” he said, feeling a bit like an ordinary Smallville citizen listening to some of the more ridiculous explanations that had been bandied about for the havoc that meteor freaks had wreaked. “You went to Lex, told him you knew we were lovers, he said it wasn’t true, and you kept going?”
John’s hands were fisted on the table, as they’d been through much of the discussion. “None of us denies that Luthor’s an excellent liar,” he said, and Clark recognized the grudging respect on his face. Of course, John would dislike almost everything about Lex even without Lex’s history of going after the League, but beating back Darkseid would’ve earned Lex a lot of credit with him anyway.
Clark had read the reports, watched the video. He knew what Lex had done. That one battle had gone a long way to balance the scales, at least if Lex would ever acknowledge that he had something for which to atone.
“Okay,” Clark said, needing to regroup. “Let’s accept that Lex has behaved himself in my absence. But let’s also accept that, for whatever reason, my knowledge of Lex is only as my enemy.” He didn’t keep the twinge off his face, because that was and always would be untrue; the friendship had soured-Lex had poisoned it (and if Clark had ever wanted more, then he really needed to let go of that, because it would only trip him up with Lex now)--but denying its existence was a mistake. Clark could tell from the way Batman shifted in his seat that he, at least, had marked the lie. “So, what do we do about it?”
“Uh,” Flash said. “I don’t think we do anything, man. I mean, it’s cool if you’re into that and all, but-”
“What Flash is saying,” J’onn said, as gently as one could interrupt Flash, “is that this is a conversation for you and Lex.”
Clark sighed. He knew how that one went. Recriminations and yelling and a feeling like acid indigestion in his chest. He’d tried to avoid direct contact in the past few years, but J’onn was right: he needed to confront Lex and hear for himself whatever fairytale Lex had concocted about his beneficient goals. “Fine,” he conceded, already imagining how he’d take out the various security measures so that he could catch Lex in his penthouse. “I’ll go back to Metropolis as soon as I’ve finished looking at the reports from the last six months.”
Diana tilted her head, forehead wrinkled as if she was surprised that Clark still hadn’t managed to catch up. “He is here, in the Watchtower,” she said mildly. “He declined to be present when you first began to react to solar radiation, but he does have a workspace next to the control room, and he has been waiting.”
****
Clark stopped outside Lex’s office-office! the world had officially gone topsy-turvy while Clark had been dead-and took a moment to compose himself.
Naturally, the door slid open before he was done.
Lex didn’t say anything, just rose from his seat behind a transparent aluminum desk. There was nothing on the desk but a decanter and a glass, both half-full. He didn’t make any move to close the distance between them.
“So, I guess all it took to make a hero out of you was for me to die,” Clark said. It made a sick kind of sense, actually, the remaining good in Lex only able to be expressed once he wasn’t reacting automatically to the years of enmity between them, Clark the symbol of everything with which he refused to compromise.
Lex breathed out once, all tense shoulders and somehow looking down on Clark despite being several-make that many--inches shorter. “That appears to be the case.”
“It’s going to be pretty embarrassing for you when you admit the truth.” Clark folded his arms. If Lex was forced to confess with Clark standing right there, then they’d have to believe him. It’d make a nice change of pace from Lex’s countless suave denials and offloading of responsibility on minor flunkies. And with all the ways Lex had let the League into LexCorp’s day-to-day operations, it would be almost impossible for Lex to resume his shenanigans-at least for a couple of years. This colossal mistake had an upside, after all.
Lex quickly downed his drink and poured himself another. “I never claimed to be anything other than what I was. You’ve got no reason to take this out on me. This is your so-called friends’ fault.”
“Batman never believed you!” Clark protested, because he felt that it was important to establish that Lex hadn’t fooled everyone.
Lex somehow managed to roll his eyes without moving a muscle. “Batman is a paranoid control freak who’d spy on the sun to make sure it doesn’t secretly plan to conquer the Earth if he could, and believe me when I say I know whereof I speak. If he’d credibly pretended to trust me, he’d have worried the rest of the League so much they never would have worked with me. I’m actually surprised he didn’t figure that out. More than that, I’m wondering about his endgame. God only knows what he’s planning for you, now that he knows that death has no dominion where you’re concerned.”
Clark shook his head, because Lex wasn’t wrong, but that wasn’t Clark’s priority. “What are you planning to do now?”
Lex examined the empty glass in his hand, then refilled it. “Sadly, alcohol poisoning is out of the question, but I’m working on a pretty good buzz. Then I’m going to go back to Metropolis and get laid.”
“What?”
Lex clutched his drink like it was a child’s teddy bear. “Do you even have any idea how hard it is to convince a person with a minimal sense of discretion and self-preservation to have sex when it’s evident you’re being protectively monitored by the Justice League?” His voice rose and his words sped up. Clark stared, kind of fascinated; it was almost like being a kid back in the mansion again, Lex on one of his lecture jags. “Aside from the fact that, let’s face it, getting involved with a metahuman with a seat at the big table is like signing up for active combat duty, that group of judgmental busybodies has scared off anyone I found remotely attractive, and they’d have staged an intervention if I’d tried a professional. Now that you’re back and you can publicly renounce me or whatever it is that you feel the need to do to assuage your sense of outrage, I can at least get back to my preferred form of recreation.”
And yeah, Clark had seen that, too, back in the Smallville days. Lex had never been shy about showing off how he kissed, how he touched, how he put his hands on a person. Girl. Woman. Whatever. Wait a second-“You only like women,” he said, outraged all over again at how his friends had misread the situation.
Lex picked up the decanter, examined it as if considering whether to drink straight from there, then shrugged and topped off his glass. “At this point I’m hard pressed to say that I like anyone, Superman. But, not that it makes any difference to you, that’s not in fact an axis along which I discriminate. And I suppose it would be futile to remind you once more that this isn’t about me, it’s about the delusions of metahumans, which, frankly, gives me little confidence in their ability to make the right decisions to save the world on a routine basis.” Lex wasn’t slurring his words, not exactly, but they were running together with somewhat more dispatch than his usual seductive tones, which had always reminded Clark a little bit of the rough thrill of a cat’s tongue.
Clark shook his head, because his thoughts were going weird places. It was the situation: returning from the dead and finding himself the proud possessor of a grieving lover would have discombobulated anyone, he was sure. Also, Lex had sex with guys? “Then how come you never made a move on me?” he asked, realizing too late that, while he sounded just the right amount of ticked-off for a standard Lex encounter, he was using just the wrong words.
Lex’s mouth dropped open for what seemed like an eternity. Clark briefly wished that the Phantom Zone would explode, or maybe that Granny Goodness would drop in for a little chat.
“Clark,” he said, and then stopped to take a couple of gulps of alcohol. “I gave you a truck, fireworks, concert tickets, a high school football team, and other inducements too varied to list. I did everything short of stick my hand down your pants, and don’t think it wasn’t a close thing.”
Now it was Clark’s turn to gape. Lex had-but Clark had been-and why hadn’t he said-no, Clark knew the dozen reasons for that, but still-
He took a step forward at last, and Lex twitched around the eyes. Then Clark shoved the desk out of his way-he heard it embed into the wall-and Lex really flinched that time.
“Then why don’t you try it now?”
Lex’s gaze dropped below Clark’s waist, and Clark would have bet the Fortress that was involuntary.
“What makes you think I still want to?” Lex said at last. Clark wasn’t going to mention that his voice was shaking.
“Because you never stop feeling anything, Lex,” he said, and he really hoped he didn’t sound condescending. “You just make it more complicated.”
Lex’s throat worked. Clark watched, fascinated, as Lex flushed all the way up his head.
“Does that clown costume even come off?” Lex asked.
Clark allowed him the jab. He was pretty scared too. “You’re the genius. Come find out.”
Much, much later, Lex sat upright with a jolt, waking Clark. “Goddamnit,” he said, sounding outraged enough that Clark reflexively looked around for Kryptonite, and guns.
“What?” Clark considered rubbing his hand down Lex’s spine, then did it. Lex twisted away for a second, then harrumphed and settled back into the caress.
“Your idiot friends were right,” Lex complained.
“Wow,” Clark said, “I’m devastated by that. I should really give them a stern lecture.”
Lex sneered, but in a reasonably good-natured way.
“While you’re up,” Clark suggested, his hands moving to more interesting places.
“Fine,” Lex said, long-suffering and totally adorable, and by his disgruntled expression, he knew it. “But first, a bed. This cape might be invulnerable, but it’s far from soft.”
Clark bit his lip and nodded, mostly because he knew that would only aggravate Lex further.
Sure enough: “Shut up,” Lex snarled.
So, on the whole, there was something to be said for coming back to life only to find himself involved in a passionate affair with his arch-enemy.
runpunkrun: Fringe, Olivia/Peter, in the noir au with the cell phones. All audiences.
Peter has to be careful, with only half a heart. (And all of it yours, he never says, because that’s just mush; even so, there’s something very much like that in his eyes, and it never fails to make Olivia’s own heart ache when she sees it.) Once past the intrigue with Walter Bishop, though, Peter finds it easy to be careful, especially with Olivia around as a compelling example of how to do it the other way.
He invents for her, because Walter taught him many things and only a few are too tainted to use: bananas whose brown spots bloom only in the shape of valentine hearts, no matter how they’re bruised. Shoes that grow or shrink in height depending on her mood (which works less well when other people are wearing copies; the computer chip inside is perhaps too specifically calibrated). Pens that write what you meant to say-the Boston police department orders ten cases for suspects to write their confessions, then throws them all away when one cop too many uses one to write his report and makes the front page of the Globe. Chess-playing dirigibles: the chessboard spans four states.
Olivia goes out into the world and finds more lost souls in need of care. One day she brings home a little girl. Peter never asks for Ella’s story. He’s heard enough of sadness, seen enough of children’s nightmares. Peter doesn’t need to know who Ella was. Peter thinks: She’s here and Olivia loves her and she has the great good sense to love Olivia back, fierce and foremost, so sometimes it’s like she’s competing with Peter for Olivia’s regard. Except that Peter, being the grownup, knows that sometimes, in the best cases, love can stretch like taffy, wrapping around everyone. Hearts may have to be divided, but love-the love they have, the love they toss between them like red hots at the ballgame-love can come in through the cracks.
They go out dancing, and when they come back, after midnight, Peter pays the sitter while Olivia sneaks into Ella’s room to watch over her undisturbed dreams.
This is how they live: happily, ever after.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.