Chapter Text
“You and Kal-El have reconciled,” Diana said, and Lex’s hand automatically went to his throat, even though the skin was already smooth, the bruise healed. How the Hell did she know? If she hadn’t been watching Batman’s inevitable security footage, then most likely the air filters hadn’t succeeded in removing the smell from the air of his office, which was just humiliating.
Who was he trying to kid? There was no way out of this titanic embarrassment but to face it down, just like he had all the times Superman had dragged him to jail or Lionel had tormented him in public.
Lex tried to turn casually, but he was aware that he was not completely successful. At least the Amazon was unlikely to judge him. He swallowed. Diana’s expression was pleasant and only slightly superior (which was fair, since she was). “Can I help you with something?”
Diana tilted her head. “I would know how Kal-El fares, from one who knew him well before his resurrection.”
“You knew him well,” Lex snapped before he could think better of it. Wonder Woman certainly had spent more time with Superman in the past few years than Lex had, even counting all the times when lawyers had been present. “What, are you worried he didn’t come back right?”
Unfortunately, she nodded. “Returns from the underworld are dangerous, Luthor. Even one who is pure of heart may bring … passengers. New-risen, he may be in great peril, and we must be wary.”
Lex was out of disbelief for this lifetime, so he only nodded. “I’ll bear that in mind. But, in all honesty, he seems just the same to me.” Except for the part where we fucked, he added mentally.
Well, damn. Diana’s explanation for Clark’s otherwise inexplicable behavior made a lot more sense than ‘he’s wanted me all along but never knew how to say it,’ no matter how much Lex would have liked to believe the latter.
“Out of curiosity,” Lex said, as Diana was turning to leave, “just how would you treat the presence of a … passenger?”
She paused, one hand on the door handle. “Ordinarily, there would be a purification ritual, bringing the one affected back to death’s threshold. Evil spirits could be returned to their planes, if the peril were great enough. But for Kal-El—”
Lex nodded. Getting an ordinary human to the point of death was tricky enough. There was no telling what it would take to put Superman in that position. Lex himself knew how to make Clark hurt with Kryptonite, and he had some testable theories about how to kill him, but to calibrate precisely enough to cause a near-death experience would be extremely difficult. “Well, it’s good that you have nothing to worry about, then,” he said.
Her lips twitched, but she didn’t call him on it, and then she’d closed the door and he was alone again.
Life, Lex reflected, was a giant conspiracy against him. He was Charlie Brown, bald head and all, and the cosmos arranged itself in the shape of Lucy to snatch the football of triumph away every time he got close.
Or perhaps a better metaphor: life was a box of chocolates, except that on inspection what Lex had received was carob. Even if it had seemed like chocolate when he had initially, blissfully, tasted it.
****
“I can’t believe I actually slept with you,” Clark said bitterly, straining against the Kryptonite manacles. Lex was fairly impressed that he was even conscious (though that was another piece of evidence for the ‘demonic passenger’ theory, since Clark on his own should have been passed out for at least two minutes). “I should have known.”
“Probably,” Lex agreed, checking the priceless antique volume at the side of the room to make sure he had the Aeolic down properly; it wasn’t a dialect in which he was fluent.
“If you’re using me to raise some unholy evil—” Clark warned, and Lex turned an annoyed eye on him.
“First of all, it was the Joker who wanted to make a pact with He Who Must Not Be Named. I want to rule the world, not dissolve it into unspeakable brain-melting horror. Second, if you had paid a minute of attention to our conversations back in Smallville, or for that matter to Diana’s extensive lecture series—it’s available on iTunes, you should really check it out—you’d recognize the Greek symbols surrounding you.”
Clark had stopped struggling.
“Then what is this?” he asked, almost as if he were listening.
Lex sighed. “It’s a ritual to rid you of the dark passenger you apparently acquired as part of your return from the underworld.”
“Return from the underworld?” Clark repeated, his green-tinged skin making his incredulity even more exaggerated. “L—Lex, I was in a paradeath state!”
“Don’t use words you don’t understand, it’s undignified,” Lex said absently, cursing the idiots at STAR Labs who’d given Clark delusions of scientific competence. “It’s possible you’re not even aware of what’s happening. But answer me this: Since you’ve been reanimated—”
“Still not a zombie—” Clark muttered, though frankly the Kryptonite glow wasn’t doing him any favors in that regard.
“—you’ve been behaving in extremely out-of-character ways. Why is that?”
Clark lifted his head as far off of the slab as he could and then banged it down a couple of times, eyes screwed shut in frustration. Because of his weakened state, the slab didn’t shatter. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, you know. If you’ve gone delusional, even I won’t be able to keep you out of Arkham—”
Lex held up fingers, to help Clark keep track. “You declined to assist with the earthquake in Hong Kong.”
“The government requested I stay away and their own superheroes had it under control! You know I don’t violate political boundaries unless there’s a real need!”
“You refused to give Lois Lane an interview.”
“That’s because she told me outright that the topic would be my apparently not-so-secret affair with billionaire Lex Luthor, which by the way is looking more and more like an ex-affair with every passing minute!”
Lex ignored the commentary, because he’d known from the minute Clark had touched him that they were on a timer.
“You refused to attend the Christmas party at the children’s ward at Metropolis General.”
“The Flash likes to go and so we swapped duty shifts. Lex,” Clark sighed, “this evidence is so bad it wouldn’t convince a Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist. Can we agree that what you’re really worried about is that I wouldn’t sleep with you if I were in my right mind?”
Lex paused in his candle-lighting. Put like that, it sounded a little self-undermining. “That in itself remains powerful evidence that something is amiss,” he pointed out.
“Guy who woke up in chains agrees.” Clark clanked them for emphasis. “On the other hand, you’ve been fighting on the side of good for upwards of a year, my friends practically locked us in a closet together, I’ve always kind of wondered what you’d be like, and—in a turn of events that will surprise no one who’s watched you walk across a room—you’re spectacular.” Lex noted, clinically, that a bright blush under Kryptonite poison was more of an apple-green. “Isn’t there some way you can test me without doing whatever painful and horrible thing you clearly have planned?”
The devil can cite scripture, but it wasn’t a ridiculous suggestion, so Lex gave it some thought. He flipped through the book of mysteries, translating on the fly, and indeed there was a spell of revelation written in the same hand as the ritual of banishment.
Clark didn’t react at all to the spell. His eyes should have flashed or his body should have arched up in pain, and even though the Kryptonite might have damped down some of that, the absence of reaction was worrisome.
It was empirical proof, to the extent that magic could be deemed empirical proof. Lex shook with indecision. He couldn’t guarantee Clark’s safety if he continued the cleansing ritual. But if he let a monster loose on humanity wearing Clark’s face, taking advantage of the trust they all had for Clark—
“Lex,” Clark said. His voice was fading already. Soon the choice might be taken away from Lex.
“You never talked to me like this before,” Lex said, still suspicious.
“Um, we were enemies through most of my twenties and a significant portion of my emotional and social development?” Clark managed.
Lex silently apologized to the teeming millions he was possibly condemning to horrible death, and went to blow the miniature charges that would release the Kryptonite manacles.
Minutes later, Clark shuddered as the last of the Kryptonite went back in its lead case. Lex, after a moment’s hesitation, offered him a hand off of the slab. Clark took it, ending up face to face with Lex. At which point, he vomited all over Lex.
“You deserved that,” he said while he was still wiping his mouth.
“The tie didn’t,” Lex pointed out, stripping until he was bare to the waist. Clark had mostly missed the pants, and the shoes could be cleaned.
Just then, the Flash burst into Lex’s supposedly secret chamber—God damn it!—and stopped in his tracks as he stared at the slab with its broken chains, Clark looming over Lex, and Lex’s half-dressed state. Lex deeply hoped that he hadn’t noticed the vomit, because the last thing Lex needed was a reputation as an emetophile.
“Right!” the Flash said brightly. “We’re gonna need you both at HQ, now-ish. I’ll just … wait outside.”
Clark and Lex regarded each other with dismay. “This isn’t over,” Clark warned, and for some reason it sounded different than all the other times he’d heard variations of that from Superman.
Lex swallowed and nodded.
“For one thing,” Clark added before Lex could escape to get himself clean, “next time I think we ought to see how you like being chained up.”