Chapter Text
“-and oh man, that out? I was on the edge of my seat!” Jimmy gestures excitedly. Clark winces as the disposable coffee cup in Jimmy’s hand makes an alarming sloshing sound. “Could you believe that?”
“No. No I could not,” Clark says. He has no idea what they’re talking about.
“And then, and then! It was so close at the end, and -” Jimmy gestures again, and Clark sees the balance of the cup tilt too far. Jimmy’s going to pour his coffee all over himself. That coffee is very hot. Not hot enough to send someone to the hospital, but hot enough to hurt.
Clark calculates the necessary force, then sucks in a rapid, powerful breath to get the cup to tilt away from Jimmy, and then, at a little faster than average human speed, starts standing and reaching.
“Jimmy, the coffee-”
The cup spills on Clark’s hand, down his arm. Which is not actually what he meant to have happen. He meant to tilt the cup enough that it wouldn’t spill on Jimmy, not have it pour down on him instead. Some of it gets on his desk, but the top of Clark’s desk has stayed pretty clear of stuff since he figured out that Lois wasn’t going to stop treating his desk like a second chair, so that’s not a big deal. What’s a bigger deal is that now he’s going to have to act like Jimmy’s coffee hurt him, which is not fair to Jimmy, at all. But the coffee is still steaming, and if Clark doesn’t react to it... Clark flinches and lets out what experience has taught him is a decent approximation of a pained yelp.
“Oh fuck!” Jimmy says, deforming the coffee cup in his haste to yank it away from Clark. “Fuck! I’m so sorry!”
“It’s not your fault,” Clark says, biting his lower lip hard enough to turn it white. “I’m just going to go… wash this.”
“Shit, are you burned? Do you need an icepack?”
“I think if I run cold water over it, I’ll be fine.” People are staring. He didn’t want this.
“I’ll clean off your desk. Shit, C.K., I am so sorry.”
“It’s really not your fault. Stuff happens.” It is very very difficult to strike the correct balance between ‘acting reasonably pained’ and ‘not sending Jimmy on a horrible guilt trip that he in no way deserves.’ Clark would prefer to err on the side of not sending Jimmy on a guilt trip. “I’ll just…”
“Yeah! Yeah, go.” Jimmy drops his coffee in Lois’s waste bin as he runs to the breakroom - presumably for napkins. Clark cradles his arm and tries not to think too much about how many people are looking at him or how red his face probably is right now.
Today is off to a great start.
Clark manages to rinse most of the coffee out of his shirtsleeve, but he knows the smell is going to linger and bug him all day. He also scratches his arm and hand, irritating his skin until he actually looks like a human who’s had a hot liquid spilled on them. Then he leaves the bathroom, hoping that in the time it’s taken to make himself presentable something more interesting than ‘newbie journalist gets coffee all over his arm’ has occurred and no one will look at him ever again.
Something more interesting has happened. It’s ‘Perry wants to chew out newbie journalist for blowing off interviews with Lex Luthor.’ And everyone is looking at them.
“- don’t know how you do it, Kent, but that won’t matter if you don’t actually follow up! Lex Luthor, man! If he’s not news, what is?”
“Union disputes at Metropolis General Hospital?” Clark says before he can stop himself. He knows Perry wasn’t looking for an answer. He knows. And most people, Perry included, don’t like it when Clark answers their rhetorical questions. But Clark has been covering the union disputes, and he hasn’t had time to meet with Luthor, and quite frankly, he doesn’t want to meet with Luthor anyway. He doesn’t like seeing what Luthor’s become. Plus, he can’t think of any good reason why Luthor would want to see him, now, after all this time, and that not knowing makes him nervous.
“You can take an hour off of that and go talk to the man, for Chrissakes, Kent! The unions will still be in dispute when you get back!” Perry turns to Lois’s desk. “Lane! You make sure this kid gets over to Lexcorp! Do an interview of your own in case he doesn’t follow through again.”
“You got it, chief,” Lois says. “Let’s go, Kent.”
~x~
So Clark used to have.
Kind of.
A thing with Lex Luthor.
It was a long time ago, before Lex Luthor was the Lex Luthor of today. He was just a kid, living under the shadow of his father’s last name, smart enough that no one really knew what to make of him. Clark could relate to the last part. They talked about history and world events and science fiction. Lex talked about fusion and fission and clean energy and Clark listened, and Clark talked about dromaeosaurs and pterodactyls and the Mesozoic and Lex listened. They took turns driving the Kents’ tractor down the fields in the short time between bringing in the harvest and the beginning of the winter chill. They laid on the roof of the Kents’ house at night with a thermos of cider between them, taking turns pointing out constellations and making up new ones. They held hands, sometimes.
It all went south before the word ‘boyfriends’ ever got tossed around, but Clark had thought about it, a few times. Before. And now he’s thinking about it again. Funny how meeting someone from a long time ago can bring back all those what-ifs and could-have-beens. He’s half-hoping Luthor wants to talk with him, Lex to Clark, and maybe they can talk about what happened and clear things up and maybe Luthor will stop… whatever this is, this thing he’s started doing, where he sabotages spacecraft and blows up his own warehouses and causes missiles to misfire and almost hit schools. Allegedly does those things. Whatever.
But Clark knows that’s probably not what this is about, and even if it is, it’s not like Luthor will talk about all that with Lois present, and Clark can’t tell Lois to go away, because ‘I kind of sort of almost dated Lex Luthor once, so please let us have a private conversation’ is not a thing he wants to say.
Lois shows the person at the desk their press passes, then leads the way to the elevator. Clark is not dragging his feet. He’s just. Walking slowly. The marble floor is very shiny, it could be deceptively slippery.
“Sometime this year, Smallville!” Lois calls, and Clark picks up the pace.
The elevator up is very fast. It’s only a few seconds after the doors close that they open again, somewhere near the top floor. Luthor is standing before the grand windows of his office with his back to them. Posing. Making a statement. He always was better at doing body language than Clark.
Clark can’t help thinking about how less than two months ago he’d come in those windows as Superman to accuse Luthor of sabotaging the shuttle launch and Luthor had laughed at him.
“Lane and Kent,” Luthor says. He hasn’t turned around. “I don’t recall inviting you, Miss Lane.”
“It seemed like a two-person job. One of us could interview you, and the other one could interview your ego,” Lois replies. Clark winces.
“My ego appreciates the consideration,” Luthor says, and finally turns. Clark can feel his heartbeat quicken. Lex didn’t recognize him as Superman, but that was before he’d seen Clark all grown up. Will his disguise… will this… can it hold? “You must be Mr. Kent. Miss Lane and I are already acquainted.”
Already-? “Hello, Lex. It’s been a while.”
Lex raises his eyebrows slightly, lips barely twisting in a disdainful frown. “A lifetime, I believe. We haven’t met in person, have we?”
“Smallville?” Clark tries. “Around nine years ago?”
“I’ve never heard of Smallville, Mr. Kent, though I must admire your consistency in making false conjectures about my life.”
“Wha-”
“First, your story on the warehouse explosion. You insinuated that I would, for some unfathomable reason, damage my own property and risk the lives of my employees. You didn’t even manage to come up with a motive for my alleged actions.”
“I -”
“And then you implied that I somehow caused the missile misfire earlier this month, despite having nothing to do with the equipment involved.” Lex walks up to his desk, taps a few keys on a panel. “I’m not angry, though. Just frustrated that you would waste time slandering me when such a big story has quite literally dropped from the sky. It seems... irresponsible.”
“Lois is the one who writes the Superman stories,” Clark says. He’s surprised that Lex actually lets him finish the sentence. He also has no idea why Lex is pretending not to know him. He heard Lex’s heart rate, saw the thousand indescribable things in his electrical field that indicate when people are lying. Lex knows Clark. Remembers him. He’s just pretending not to. Clark doesn’t try to call Lex on it. He also does not say ‘it’s not slander if it’s true,’ because his sense of self-preservation has apparently finally kicked in.
“The Daily Planet is a big paper, Lex. We can cover Superman and your questionable business practices at the same time,” Lois adds, because Lois doesn’t let things like ‘self-preservation’ stop her from saying what’s on her mind. Clark could lay roses at her feet and swear fealty to her right now.
“Your ‘coverage’ of Superman is sadly lacking,” Lex says. “Allow me to enlighten you.”
He presses a button, and the room spins away around them. Images, holograms, replace it, as Lex talks about astrobiology and life on other worlds. Clark remembers the basics, the driving curiosity and belief, from conversations that he and Lex had back in Smallville. But the rest… the technologies that LexCorp, that Lex has created, those are new. Amazing, really. Clark would be enjoying the show a whole lot more if he didn’t have a creeping suspicion about where it’s going.
Lois interrupts Lex’s monologue, asks what this has to do with the Planet and Superman. Lex presses another button.
It’s him. Clark. Clark-as-Superman. Looping images, video feeds, of him flying, using heat vision, lifting rubble and debris. Clark recognizes several scenes as being from when he first responded to the warehouse explosion, and a few high-quality videos from when he diverted the missile. Clark feels his hairs raise, phantom chills prickling along his skin. Could this be what it was about? Had Lex blown up one of his own warehouses and sent a missile off-course to… to gather data on Superman?
“Superman displays a far greater range of powers than any of the other metahumans who have emerged in the past decade,” Lex says. “It’s not simply that he is an enhanced human. He is more than that. He is fundamentally, biologically alien. And this-” Lex presses another button, “-is his home.”
Clark has to remind himself to breathe. To keep his face neutral. This is… it’s…
Not a perfect replica of Krypton. But close, so close to the images he’s seen in the ship’s databanks. The red sun, especially. Lex is right.
That’s his home.
Lex is still talking. Clark tries to refocus, catches the word ‘proof.’ What kind of proof? How could Lex… was Clark wrong? Did Lex figure him out after all? Of course, arrogant, shortsighted to think that he could stand in front of Lex and go unrecognized. That’s what this is all about. The interview requests were just to draw Clark out, get him into Lex’s office. And now Lex is going to reveal him. To Lois, and probably the world.
“And why should it matter if he is an alien?” Lois asks.
For the second time in under a minute, Clark is so disoriented that he forgets the rhythm of inhale, exhale and has to consciously force himself to keep breathing.
Lois is a champion of human rights. Between her life experiences and her sterling morals, of course she is. But he - Superman - isn’t human. And… that doesn’t change anything, for her? Her heart rate picked up a little, but he’s not sensing any kind of fear or revulsion, just some frustration and curiosity. Standard Lois feelings, really.
“It’s simple, Miss Lane,” Lex says, yanking Clark away from the happy discovery that Lois is somehow an even better person than he’d thought. “Superman is an alien, so what is he doing on this miserable, backwater planet? He’s travelled unfathomable distances to - what? Dress in primary colors and help firefighters? That can’t be his main goal. He wants our trust, and I intend to find out why.”
Clark can’t take this… this mood whiplash. “What proof do you have?” he demands. “If you can prove Superman’s an alien, prove it.”
“In time. For now, think of what this means. We are not alone in the universe - and there’s so much to learn.”
Luthor presses a third button.
It’s Superman again. Laid out on a medical table. Being vivisected.
Clark would scream if he wasn’t frozen with shock. But all he can do is watch as one of the holographic doctors pulls a length of intestine out of Superman’s abdomen. Raises a scalpel.
“We’re leaving,” Lois snaps, and grabs Clark’s wrist. He stumbles along behind her, an uncoordinated, discombobulated balloon in a gale-force wind, tethered to the ground only by the points where her skin touches his. She yanks him into the elevator, and it slides easily down to the ground floor. Then Lois guides him, gentler this time, out to the parking lot and her car.
“What the fuck,” Lois says. “What the fuck was that, the absolute fucking… Agh!”
Clark can’t respond. Can’t move. Can’t hardly breathe.
Lex wants to cut him up.
He had thought, before, about telling Lex where he came from. About the spaceship, and about the powers that were still just starting to develop. About how Lex was right, humans were not alone in the universe. Clark thought Lex’s quest for alien life was about him wanting people to relate to, people who would understand not fitting in with humanity. But had… all this time, had he just been looking for something new to stick in specimen jars, to cube and dice and scan and disassemble? If Clark had told Lex, back in Smallville, would Clark have been stuck in a laboratory like his parents feared?
“Kent. Hey. You with me?” Lois asks.
Clark can’t answer. His cheeks feel wet. Is he crying?
“Come on, let’s get you in the car. We’ll go to lunch, okay?”
It’s too early for lunch. But Clark bends, moves, folds himself into the seat under Lois’s guidance, lets her strap the seatbelt around him. Stares out the window as Lois pulls out of the parking lot and drives, going and going, office buildings and cars and pedestrians bending around them in a meaningless smear of color and sound.
He can’t even be sure if Lex recognized him or not. Would Lex have let him get away if he knew Clark was Superman? Is Lex just toying with him?
Clark doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything.