Cold Comfort

[thisislexluthor]

Who: Bruce Wayne, Lex Luthor
Where: Wayne Manor
What: "Maybe there's a God above, and all I ever learned from love was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you. And it's not a cry you can hear at night, it's not somebody who's seen the light, it's a cold and its a broken Hallelujah." --Rufus Wainwright, Hallelujah

He shouldn't be here.

It was five in

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[thisislexluthor]

Lex followed Bruce into the manor, the sound of his footsteps echoing lightly on the floor. It was warmer inside, and the soft hum of the house around him was comforting. The penthouse was quiet, state of the art sound-dampening technology keeping any errant noises from breaking his concentration. Most of the time, Lex appreciated that. But when he was already teetering close to some terrible edge, and Kitty and Two-face were silent and sleeping...the penthouse was not a good place for him to be.

Bruce led him towards a small sitting room overlooking the grounds, then turned to face him. Lex's eyes were drawn towards the bruise on his face, shattered capillaries and blood, dark blue in the dim light. Clark had never bruised. He'd come home bloody, beaten, but he always healed too fast for bruises to ever really form. It had fascinated Lex; he could remember tracing his fingers over healing pink skin where only hours before there had been a bloody gash.

He instantly regretted thinking it.

The memories of Clark, bright and perfect in the sun, hit Lex with what felt like the force of a tidal wave. It choked him, a feeling not unlike panic rising up in him. Clark was gone, Clark was never coming back. No one had ever come back, and even if Clark did, Lex could be dead by then. Clark would live forever, but Lex was just human, just a man and now that the one person who had always promised to save him was gone--

Bruce opened his mouth, probably to say something, but Lex couldn't stand still any longer. He crossed the space between them in an instant and kissed Bruce hard, sinking against him like Bruce was the only thing holding him up.

[mastahwayne]

For several long moments, Bruce was too stunned to do anything at all. Unfortunately, Lex seemed to take Bruce's lack of response as -- well, not encouragement, but at least it wasn't an instant rejection. Bruce suspected that Lex didn't particularly care at the moment. Regaining control of his limbs, Bruce brought his hands up to Lex's shoulders and held onto them, pulling back lightly.

"Lex... I don't want this. You don't want it, either."

Lex looked completely lost for a moment, and Bruce realized that he must have looked much the same way. It was the first time, for as long as he could remember, that kissing Lex hadn't felt like pressing his lips to a hot stove.

[thisislexluthor]

Yes, that feeling was definitely panic, and Lex grabbed Bruce's shirt and shoved him backwards against the wall.

"I do!" he hissed, kissing Bruce again. "You do! Don't-"

Lex wasn't even sure what he was planning to say. Instead, he just tore at Bruce's shirt, trying desperately to stave off what was going to be a truly fantastic panic attack. Bruce's skin was soft and familiar under his fingers, but it was the wrong skin. The scars marring his chest shouldn't have been there, the heartbeat stronger, the skin warmer. Everything was all wrong, but that had never stopped Lex before.

[mastahwayne]

Bruce, determined not to panic, ducked under Lex's arms the second he could get free, and slipped behind him. As Lex turned to paw at him some more, Bruce grabbed one of his arms and twisted it back, taking advantage of the burst of Lex's pain to grab his other one. Knowing how tired he really was, Bruce lessened his grip to a manageable amount and leaned forward minutely to speak calmly in Lex's ear.

"Listen, Lex. I'm not prepared to be your replacement this time. Last time this happened, it was because both of us were desperate and lonely, but not this time. I'm sorry," he said, redoubling his grip as Lex made a valiant attempt to pull away and go back to molesting him. "I know what you're going through, Lex. Don't you dare forget that."

It was then that his grip was broken, and he had to duck under Lex's arms again.

"I'm not going to do this with you," he insisted, making to trip Lex around the knees and missing.

[thisislexluthor]

"You bastard!" Lex shouted, shaking. He shoved Bruce backwards, and in some remote corner of his mind, knew that Bruce was letting him win. Lex had many talents, but 'the ability to beat Batman in a fistfight' was not one of them. Not even close. He shoved Bruce again, practically pouncing on him, and they both fell backwards onto the floor.

The resulting banging noise probably woke up Alfred, but Lex didn't care. He wanted to hit Bruce, to fuck him, to scrape away at him until he didn't feel like he was about to explode. Until he didn't feel like something was crawling inside of him, waiting to get out. He wanted to burn the world down around them.

"You bastard," Lex said again, murmuring it this time. He was straddling Bruce, clutching a handful of his shirt, and the sheer wrongness of everything that was happening, everything that had happened, finally overwhelmed him.

To Lex's absolute horror, he began to cry.

[mastahwayne]

Bruce's whole body was tense, and he was ready at any moment to propel Lex off of him and onto the floor, but he couldn't really justify hurting him after he started crying. He firmly uncurled Lex's fist from his shirt and shifted them inch-by-inch until he was sitting and Lex was half kneeling on the floor and half lying on Bruce.

After a few seconds of wavering and patting Lex awkwardly on the back, Bruce sighed, rolled his eyes, and pulled Lex into his arms. It appeared that Lex had temporarily lost the will to fight him, which was a welcome relief.

"Lex..." he started, not quite sure what he would say. He let that hang between them for a few moments before continuing. "I'm here for you. As a friend."

[thisislexluthor]

"He's gone, Bruce," Lex gasped out. It had been years since he'd been this upset, shaken in a way he couldn't push, work, or drink away. Everything reminded him of Clark, and everything made him feel guilty.

"He's gone, and it's my fault. None of this would have happened if it weren't for me."

[mastahwayne]

"I know that's what you think right now," Bruce said, although he privately thought that Lex was mostly right. "It'll get better. I-- you're going to stop blaming yourself. I know you will."

Bruce was silently cursing himself for allowing this to happen. Not Superman dying -- that clearly wasn't his fault -- but Lex sitting here, half on his lap, and crying on his shoulder. He was terrible at comfort and he could think of nothing to do. It would have been easier to just have sex.

"You can't think this is all your fault. You're just torturing yourself for nothing."

[thisislexluthor]

Lex was strongly tempted to say something about Bruce's parents, but he resisted. He was getting better at that.

"I should have thought of something," he said instead. "There were a dozen different things that I could have done, if I had just thought about it instead of doing what he said. God, since when did I ever listen to what Clark said?"

And now you'll never talk to him again, hissed a nasty little voice inside of Lex that may have been his conscience.

"I have no idea what to do now. It's like he was--" Lex sighed, frustrated, because he didn't even have words for what Clark had been. Enemy. Best friend. Lover. Punchingbag. Savior. It was all too jumbled together, and Lex had never been able to sort it out before.

[mastahwayne]

"You've... you've got to move on, Lex," but the words sounded hollow even to him. He felt stupid giving advice that he knew he had never followed and probably would never follow, but he had no other ideas on what to say or do. He was still hugging Lex, and he felt that letting go with no particular warning could be more harmful than helpful.

"We should get up. We can go to the kitchen and I'll get you something to drink," he said, and then added, "Something non-alcoholic."

[thisislexluthor]

"Coming from the undisputed master of never letting anything go, I'm not sure how sound that advice is," Lex murmured against Bruce's shoulder. But he got up anyway, sticking close to Bruce even as the other man managed to extract himself from Lex's grip.

While Bruce rummaged through the fridge, Lex leaned against the counter, staring at the marble tiles. Numbly, he asked, "Is this how you felt when your parents died?"

[mastahwayne]

Bruce paused, hand on the orange juice, and his fingers tightened until he was nearly piercing the carton. He took several moments to breathe before trusting himself to answer.

"Quite possibly. I can't really decide how strongly you're feeling your emotions. It might be even worse for you than that was for me."

Hands shaking, Bruce poured them both a glass of the orange juice, not bothering to ask Lex if that's what he wanted. He handed it to him and then sat on one of the fashionably modern chairs. Almost all interest in comforting Lex was gone, but it wasn't really Lex's fault.

"You'll get through this, Lex. And in the meantime, I'm sure you'll busy yourself with progressively insaner ideas to try to get him out. And who knows? One might actually work."

[thisislexluthor]

"Touchy as ever," remarked Lex, without venom. He took a sip of orange juice, wincing a little at the burst of flavor. "I only asked because by the time I knew you well enough to ask, you'd stopped talking about it. To anyone." He traced his fingers along the patterns of the counter idly, feeling wrung out and exhausted. His face felt tight and a little itchy, the way it usually did after crying.

"I may know more about Kryptonian technology than any other human, but that's not enough," he sighed after a moment. "Jor-El has no reason to help or trust me, and it's not like there's some other source I can go to for information. Unless I want to turn on that damn portal again, which I don't."

[mastahwayne]

Bruce contemplated his fingers, thinking over what he was going to say. It was absurd to suggest that he knew any more about Kryptonion technology than Lex did, but he felt rather useless with no words of comfort and no way to help whatsoever. And it wasn't as if he didn't care at all about what had happened to Superman, but he couldn't afford to be as sensitive to death as he was as a child.

"I could help," he suggested, frowning even at his own words. "I mean, you know far more about it, being crazily obsessed... But it's not as if I'm completely ignorant."

[thisislexluthor]

"I wouldn't even know where to start," Lex said, rubbing his eyes more harshly than neccesary. "Reverse engineering the Phantom Zone ray would mean taking it apart, and I might never be able to put it back together, alien technology being what it is. And if that happened, I'd lose the only link there is to the Phantom Zone. And I don't even know if-"

Lex sighed and looked down, feeling like he was being crushed. "I loved him, Bruce. I've loved him since the first moment I saw him. But it's never enough."

[mastahwayne]

Resisting the urge to sigh, Bruce drained his glass and stood up again, quite afraid, as he wondered what to do, that his new motto might become "When in doubt, hug!" if he continued to try to offer physical and platonic comfort. He had always been good at using his body instead of his words, and this was really testing his abilities.

"I know. I know you did. And I don't think there's anything I can say to fix it. But -- I do know how you feel, Lex, and I don't think anything anybody said ever fixed it for me either."