the devil makes us sin (clark/lois; luthor au)
Dark Ships Meme Prompt: Sick of You
Fandom: Smallville
Pairings: This is Lois-centric. AU Clark/AU Lois; mentions of AU Lois/AU Oliver, and AU Oliver/AU Chloe. Also mentions RW Clark.
Rating: PG mostly and some NC17 for swearing and sex.
Warning: sex, very dark I think
Summary: love or something like it - it’s not pretty, it’s not roses, it’s pretty much fucked up.
AN: So, I disliked that episode quite a bit. But I guess it’s sweet that I get to finally write some ‘dark’ Clois because of it. I think the show missed an opportunity with AU Clark and Lois, so this is my interpretation, still canon because he’s definitely screwing Tess on the side in the more present parts of this story because he can, but that’s whatever. This Lois is also darker. Another missed opportunity I feel --- but to me that whole world was a bit of a cesspool or everyone’s a darker version of themselves, and I wanted Lois to be included in that. It’s drabble-like, so the dots are there, some of them farther apart but I didn’t want to waste time explaining every little thing. It moves from the ‘present’ to telling what happened and back, hopefully not irritating or confusing. Thanks Jeph Loeb for some of your sweet Lois lines, I borrowed from Superman for all Seasons. Thanks for reading. This song (holla, misfits!) is pretty much what I listened to through half of this, listen to it after.
AN II: This is for Chris, who read this before and encouraged me to post!
Feedback: is better than AU Clark’s smirk.
the devil makes us sin
It's unfortunate that when we feel a storm,
we can roll ourselves over 'cause we're uncomfortable
Oh well the devil makes us sin
But we like it when we're spinning, in his grin.
-- Massive Attack, Paradise Circus
1.
She feels like a goddamn criminal.
It’s a cold night; she stuffs her hands into her coat pockets, fingers clenched and stares out at Metropolis. Maybe if she holds on to her palm she might not give in to the urge.
The ticklish buzz of her phone tucked away in her purse proves the decider. She dumps the bag on the ledge and rifles through it until she finds what she’s looking for. An old box; tattered and creased; the golden paper dulled with time and three cylindrical tubes, a little worse for wear and an old, $2 lighter that she can’t remember where she bought. She’s had them for over three years after all. She ignores the insistent phone vibration and grabs a cigarette.
“Okay, Lois, if you do this - you will hate yourself.”
The city is loud and insistent beneath her. She can see a lot from where she stands, and to her left, a couple of miles away, hidden by some monstrosity of a building is Watchtower. If Ollie could see her now, he’d probably be angry, disappointed - betrayed.
That’s only if he knew.
She chuckles humorlessly. “That’s right, Lane - if only he knew.”
But he doesn’t. And that’s fine because even if he did, knowing Ollie, he’d find a way to apologize, to make it about him and how he could fix it. He didn’t - couldn’t understand that maybe she just didn’t want to be fixed. Like that was even possible anymore. Or that he couldn’t fix her, he shouldn’t even want to try.
Stupid tears sting at the corners of her eyelids and she can feel her nose getting red from the pressure. She bites the inside of her mouth hard until she tastes blood, and nods. She lights the cigarette. She’s allowed to be weak - just this once.
-
It was over before it even began really. It went something like this.
2.
Her hands were shaking. It wasn’t every day that she found herself in a near-death situation; hanging by a fingernail, literally, off the edge of a building with a gun pointed at her skull. She huffed, scrambling in her bag for a cigarette. Who was she kidding? She found herself in deep shit every day of her life. But today, the terrain changed and everything changed from your every day journalist with an axe to grind and a story to print--- right into a science fiction movie.
Five minutes ago she’d been looking death in the eye. She’d slipped, unable to hold her own weight with one hand. She’d felt the heaviness of falling; watched the city careening above her in a blur of light and sound and air and everything. And then the jolting thud of a sudden stop.
She hadn’t registered any of the expected pain of her skull splitting open against a pavement. No, none of that, instead she felt two strong arms banding around her waist, and then the weightlessness of flight.
And then: “You can stop yelling now - I’ve got you.” The voice was deep and - impatient, testy even.
Her scream cut abruptly in her throat and turned to a gurgle as she looked around frantically, breathlessly; wiggled her legs and found nothing but air, and noticed the clouds mere inches from her fingertips; and finally the sharp-angled face staring down at her in a mixture of mild irritation and amusement. She’d had two choices then, either faint or scream. She chose the latter. “You’ve got me - but who’s got you?”
She shook the memory - no, delusion away and stuffed an unlit cigarette into her mouth, nearly biting through the stick. She snapped the lighter on, the heat from the small flame was real and present, something to tether her runaway brain.
Because where I come from, men don’t fly and they certainly don’t drop women on the roof of the Daily Planet in the middle of Metropolis without a scratch on their bodies and with a smile and a reminder to keep safe on city rooftops as if they were fireman from bad Lifetime movies or something -
“You know, ordinarily, when people get their lives saved - they say thanks.”
She yelped, and grabbed the cigarette from her gaping mouth. “Oh my god - what the-?”
He was real. This is real.
The man stood against the rooftop door, casual as anything, a smirk tugging at his mouth.
“I’m dreaming.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Not really.”
“How - how -is this possible - how did you -?” She wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking, but she kept spluttering. “You flew! I just flew - with you.”
The cigarette was burning away in her hand and her whole world was suffering from serious brain-freeze. So she did the best thing she could in the present situation and stuck it back in her mouth, took a deep calming drag and tried to work through it all in her head while ignoring the blatant evidence that she was going crazy.
“You know those are bad for your health.” There was a smile in his voice.
She puffed out in annoyance. “Wow, and super-flying dude apparently knows his Health Ed. What are you gonna do? Tell me to quit?” She was being catty and she didn’t really care. She was flustered and confused, and she never got flustered and confused.
“No.” He strolled toward her.
It took everything inside her not to flinch or step back from him - it, whatever he was. There was something predatory about the way he moved that made her feel cornered even though she had the length of the roof to run and jump. He stopped a few feet away from her and said, “Everyone needs their - vices, right? Their little secrets, besides -” His gaze intensified for a split second before he continued, “You have nothing to worry about for now - your lungs are clean.”
She choked on the cigarette smoke, the acrid taste caught up in the wrong pipe. “What - did you just?”
He pointed wryly to his face, and says, “X-ray vision.”
“Oh.” She clamped her mouth shut, and folded her hands across her front. A prickling of awareness through her - whether it was from the revelation of the super-vision as well as the flying or from the realization that he was gorgeous. Over six feet, build like a bulldozer and his face might literally stop traffic. Jeez, you need to get some Lois.
“Don’t worry. I won’t look - unless you ask me to.”
Was he flirting with her?
She rolled her eyes and snorted loudly. “Um, you realize that you just did right?”
He stilled, and then burst into laughter, full-bodied, as though she caught him unawares. “You’re right, I did, didn’t I?”
That’s what calmed her down. For some reason, the unconsciousness, the freedom in his head thrown back like that with his broad shoulders shaking, it made him less… super. He became in that moment just like any other guy. She stepped toward him until she was close enough to hold out her arm and touch his. Her eyes scuttled from his head to his feet, trying to figure him out - how he was even possible.
Okay, what are the rules, Lois?
She thought back to the editor on her first reporting job, peering at her from behind his desk. The guy had been a drunkard; paunch hanging over his belt; pasty, tired eyes. An old-school newspaperman who had a big name back in the day before the Luthors drove him out from Metropolis and made it impossible for him to get a job at any newspaper worth two shakes. But he’d still known what he was talking about and she’d learned everything she knew from him.
Believe none of what you hear, half of what you see, and everything you write.
But right here, right now - all those rules didn’t mean a damn thing. Because the man standing before her broke every single one she’d ever believed to be true.
Lois took the final step and laid her hand on his chest, just to see if he had a heart and if it was still beating. He did. And… maybe she did a little checking to see if it was as rock-hard as it looked. It was.
He glanced down at her hand and back to her face, his lips parted in surprise as if he wasn’t used to anyone getting so close - at least not without his permission.
“Who are you?”
3.
She sees him again at a banquet - a Luthor bash to be precise. She isn’t sure what the hell she was doing here. Somehow Ollie and Chloe managed to convince her to come with. She’d seen it as an opportunity to get a scoop - any scoop, so of course she’d said yes.
“Lois this is Clark Luthor, an old… friend.”
“Oh, Oliver - don’t be afraid to call it like it is.” He doesn’t pull his eyes away from her. “We hated each other at Excelsior.”
Oliver laughs.
Lois’ gaze is frozen on his face, two and two crash together. He notices and grabs a glass of champagne off a passing waiter. “Ms. Lane, no woman should go empty-handed tonight.”
Their hands brush when he hands it over and her breath freezes in her throat. He presses his fingers into her knuckles for a second and then pulls away. She blinks and injects a breezy coolness into her voice. “Thanks. Cheers, gentleman.”
-
When he kisses her the world stops, stops short on an inhalation. It’s a ridiculous thing to think, and it’s even more absurd seeing as he’s tangling his tongue with hers right then. But she can’t help it. She winds her arms around his shoulders and struggles to get closer; she’d be climbing all over him like a mountain face if she could. It’s hard to remember that they could be discovered any minute; that Chloe, Ollie, everyone’s outside - just a few feet away. A coat closet and the smell of mothballs mixed with old sweat isn’t the most private of places.
He pulls back, panting. “How did you know it was me?”
She smiles. “I don’t know - even without the slick-back hair and the outfit, you’re still you.”
His arms fall back from her waist and he steps away.
She moves to stand beside him. “And - you forget. You let me see your face - and fly with you - it’s kind of hard to miss the blaring sign posts after that.”
“You won’t tell anyone?” He seems almost scared - or maybe anxious is a better word and angry?
She’s a reporter. She’s probably the best the Planet will ever have. If there’s a scoop, she’ll break it. But not this one. “No, your secret life is safe with me.”
4.
“So, you realize that this is a serious conflict of interest for me, right?”
He dragged her closer so she slid on top of him, right against the thickening length. He held onto her hips roughly and she was sure he’d leave bruises - bruises that she’d have to explain away later. Not that she cared, not right then. “No conflict here - you’re just interviewing me, Metropolis’ most eligible bachelor and driving force behind Luthorcorp’s latest industrial coup.”
“Who I also happen to be sleeping with,” she said. She lowered her mouth to his chest to taste his skin, slick with their mingled sweat, salty, and wrapped her tongue her tongue around his nipple.
“Ha, but that’s not really front-page news, is it now?” He guided her onto his cock and they both held their breath at the feeling of it. He smiled at her and it struck her, not for the first time that he was ridiculously beautiful like this.
She used his chest for leverage and started to move slowly, tightening around him until he cursed. “No, Mr. Luthor - it’s not front-page news at all.” Anything else she had to say was smothered by the press of his lips on hers.
5.
“Ah, thank god I got here in time.” Lois said, panting slightly.
Chloe looked unimpressed, arms folded across her chest and chin raised. Times like these, Lois wondered who the older cousin actually was. “On time?” she looked at the time on her cell phone pointedly, “Lois, you’re late.”
“Only by ten minutes - jeez, are you sure you weren’t meant to be General Sam Lane’s daughter because I think you’re even more of a stickler for time than he is.”
“Very funny - it’s just a little scary being around here in the Slums by myself and…”
“All right, okay, enough with the guilt trip, sooner you stop talking - the sooner you can get home to Oliver,” she said the name all syrupy like she was talking about a baby.
Chloe grimaced and rolled her eyes. “Fine, hopefully this is the day we can get enough dirt to put Lionel Luthor behind bars forever.”
-
She didn’t think that anything could hurt like this. But pressing her hands against every wound she can find - there are too many; stuffing her shirt, her coat against Chloe’s heart and stomach; the blood soaking through until her hands grow slippery and wet. “Just - hold on, Chloe - hold on, honey, the ambulance will be here just now -”
Chloe’s fingers keep slipping out of her hands and landing like with a thud on the pavement, unmoving.
“No! No - please - Chloe, please don’t - please just wait, stay - don’t-”
Chloe’s eyes move sluggishly from staring sightlessly at the street lamp; the white-hot filament refracted; to looking at her. She thinks that maybe there’s a flicker or a smile or hand against her cheek; forgiveness. She looks again and there’s nothing but her cousin staring endlessly at some spot above her shoulder. Dead.
6.
“This is your fault!”
He looked up from his seat casually. There was a second, a hairsbreadth of a moment when she saw something pass over his eyes before he put the mask in place and stared at her coldly. He nodded at the flunky seated across from him and the subordinate clumsily gathered his papers. “What are you talking about, Lois?”
She hasn’t slept in days. She looks a mess, probably like a crazy woman with bags the size of Texas under her eyes and the smell of cigarettes stuck to her clothes - she always smokes when she’s like this.
“It was you. How could you do this - to people - your brother?” My cousin?
“There was nothing I could do.” There it is, simple, implacable---impenetrable as a mountain face.
“But you could’ve stopped it - I know you could’ve and you didn’t. You could stop it now.”
He shakes his head. “This doesn’t change anything.” And he means it. He’s cool. Cool as a cucumber. Dragging any sort of emotion, any real expression of anything is impossible. She’s not sure what she’s been doing and it steals her ability to move for a moment, she’s just trying to understand him - this person in front of her.
He stands up and walks around the desk. He runs a finger along her arm and says quietly, “This doesn’t have to change anything - between us.” His lips are on hers, cool and soft. She’s struck dumb and then it all rises like bile, burns in the back of her throat. She shoves him away and punches him in the nose, and feels her knuckle shatter from the force. She doesn’t scream or even whimper, just holds it in her uninjured hand.
“Don’t ever touch me again.”
7.
Chloe’s funeral: cold day in the middle of November and she’s holding hands with Oliver who’s crying silently behind his dark glasses and trying to be strong and stoic and all that other stuff men think they have to be in times like this. She looks out over the sea of headstones, leaf-bare trees and beyond she sees him standing solitary on a hill, simply watching. Her mouth drops open in shock and then in a blink, he’s gone.
8.
She’s not sure how this thing with Oliver started. He needed her, she needed him and it was like two marooned survivors of some disaster, with no one to hold onto but each other.
He made her laugh; they had the same sense of humor - really, they were the same person sometimes. Always ready with a quip or a joke to hide it all behind - he kept a picture of her cousin in his wallet and she pretended that she didn’t care when the new publisher came on board and it turned out to be him.
They were both pretty good liars when it came down to it. It was what it was, and at the end of the day, he was the best man she knew. And she didn’t deserve him.
9.
“Say it.” He grunts hotly by her ear.
She whimpers and shakes her head.
He wraps his hands around her wrists, and presses down hard until she feels the bite of pain. She arches into it. That, and the feel of his cock shunting in and out, filling her cu-nt until she can barely breathe, makes her crazy.
His shirt’s half-unbuttoned and his tie is twisted over his shoulder. She’s splayed out across his desk and scrunched up paper that she threw at his head when she walked in maybe seven minutes ago. Her skirt is shoved up her hips and her panties shredded and hanging off the back of his chair.
“Come on, Lois - say it.” There’s a menacing edge in his voice.
She moans when he hits a spot inside her at an angle that makes her toes curl in her pumps, and grabs his butt to draw him closer. And she’s close - so close she can taste it -
He stops.
“Nooo,” she wails, forgetting in her frustration and that there are ears just a few feet outside his door.
He’s hovering above her with a familiar smirk on his face, holding himself up by one hand while he keeps hers trapped. “If you don’t say it… this ends here and now.”
She can feel him, hard and thick inside her. He’s breathing heavily against her face even though she’s quite sure he doesn’t need it. So despite the coolness in his voice, she knows that he wants this -wants her more than he’ll ever be able or willing to say. And he hates that - always has. She figured it out long ago that that was the problem with them, with him and her, and why this thing would never work. She looks up into his eyes, deep green like sunlight through glass, and she can see it there for a second - it passes so fast that she thinks it might have been mirage.
Need.
She’s not stupid enough to call it love because people who love don’t do the kinds of things they’ve done, not to each other. But she saw it, that thing that lies between them like an old ghost; haunting them in broad daylight, always lurking over their shoulders and deep inside in places no one ever sees. She knows that it’s probably there, in her eyes, her shadow self - everything that he means to her.
She blinks.
“Fuck you,” she spits out, venomously. She knows perfectly how he works, that if she gave in, she’d be somehow less in his eyes - so she doesn’t.
There’s a flash of red; he’s angry, and then he cleanses himself of all outward expression and turns cold, hard eyes towards her. “That’ll have to do.”
He thrusts roughly, enough to hurt, and slips his hand in between them to flick at her nub. She digs her heels into the small of his back, bites her scream of pleasure down and comes hard. He follows pretty quickly, his movements rough and jerky above her. She’ll have bruises all over her thighs tomorrow not that he particularly cares.
When it’s over, and they’ve both caught their breath and clammy sweat clings to their skin like shame. He pulls out and turns away from her, starts to readjust his clothes, his zipper loud in the silence. She lays there, legs askew. The phone peals by her ear and she turns towards it, oddly fascinated by the repetitive sound and the way it trembles in its cradle.
“You better go. I have a meeting in ten minutes.” He strides into the bathroom on the left wall and she hears water gushing out the tap.
Her head hurts; she’ll probably have a migraine later and have to beg off one of Oliver’s society appearances tonight, something to do with a senatorial pledge party. She can see the back of his head in a mirror as he cleans himself up.
She wonders then how it’s possible to hate someone so much and yet be utterly incapable of walking away.
10.
“Look, Lane, I’m sorry ---story’s a no-go.” Ray threw the sheaves of paper on her desk and looked apologetically at her.
“Says who?”
“Big boss,” he pointed up at the ceiling, “I guess he’s decided to take a hands-on approach to things; guy wants every story that comes out of the bullpen to hit his desk first.”
He was talking to air by the end of his sentence, and the loud ping of the elevator going up made him shake his head, unsurprised and almost pitying.
-
“Miss Lane, you can’t go in there without an appointment!”
The door banged open and shook a painting on the wall. He looked up to face the virago standing before him and smiled welcomingly. “It’s all right, Julie, I’ll talk to Ms. Lane.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I wanted to be near to you.”
“Don’t lie - you wanted to have control of the Daily Planet so we don’t print those nasty little articles about you.”
He didn’t deny it.
“Look, however you feel about me, you can’t just sit there and block all my stories.”
“Wrong, I can do whatever I want --- I own this rag.” He folded his arms across his chest and smirked. It wasn’t a pleasant sort of smile but he didn’t do that sort of thing anymore. Of course, even then she had to steel herself not to react.
“You could always leave, you know. Quit. There are plenty of newspapers in the sea. Maybe you and Queen can go off to Star City or someplace else, and have fat, blond babies.” The sneer in his voice when he said Oliver’s name almost made her want to laugh.
“I won’t give you the satisfaction---you want me gone, you either find a legit reason to fire me or you kill me.” It’s a gauntlet, and she’d thrown it. He watched her quietly and she felt like he was measuring her, exposed like a bug under a microscope. She doesn’t let him see how it unsettles her.
“All of this and you’re still the same---not afraid of me at all.”
“You’ve got enough of the citizens of Metropolis cowering in their beds at night---Ultrablur or whatever you're going by now. You don’t need me to do it too.”
“You have no idea what I need, Lois.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure that must keep you up at night.”
He smiled indulgently and moved to stand in front of her, practically on top of her so she had to either step back or sit down but she stood her ground. He raised his hand to touch a lock of her hair. “I still want you, you know that.”
She jerked back. “Well you can’t have me; that ship sailed years ago. You let my cousin get killed. You kill people, Clark - when people are around you, they die. And you don’t even care. You use your brand of ‘justice’ as if it’s a fucking ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.”
-
He doesn’t really - care that is.
So when she lets him fuck her from behind against the door and muffles her moans by biting into her wrist, she has to wonder: what kind of person does it make her?
11.
When the Clark who isn’t the Clark she’s come to know speeds away from the DP roof, she staggers; finds herself oddly breathless and the steel pipe slips from her fingers to the ground with a clang.
She’s not sure what she saw in his eyes - it’s not like anything she’s felt before. Limitless, incomprehensible - love, light, something. And it wasn’t hers. She knew that but, for a second, it was in her grasp and she’d wanted to reach out and touch it, a helpless moth.
The wind picked up and she shivered, wrapped her arms around herself.
It was a long time before she headed back to the Ace of Clubs and Ollie.
12.
She’d come. She didn’t know why she came, it was a bad idea. She didn’t need to be told that. But who was she kidding; her life was practically a roadmap of bad ideas thrown together into some barely coherent map. Sometimes, she woke up in the middle of the night, Ollie’s arm thrown across her waist and the quiet breathing near the side of her face, everything the way it was supposed to be --- and all she wondered was how the hell she’d gotten there in the first the place.
She shook her head briskly. She’s here and there is no taking it back.
The room, all of it, glows a sickly green from the meteor rock embedded in the light bulbs. She stands by the door and looks at him, slouched in the center, tied to a steel chair, a prisoner. Also a criminal and a murderer --- and definitely not the man she knew years ago.
She steps forward and notices his head twitch and then fall to the side. His body is tense and strained, and she can hear him breathing heavily. The green cast to his skin, the veins in his arms outlined and almost seeming to move or burst underneath. He swings his face toward her and she sees his eyes. They don’t acknowledge her at first; don’t even seem to recognize who she is. He was in pain and she didn’t know whether to hit herself or hate herself for feeling something (bad, guilty, sad, whatever) at the thought.
He deserved this.
She knew that. But a small part of her didn’t like it.
“L-lane?” he grinds out her name.
She knows why she’s here. To see if she was going crazy - if her head was really just getting carried away because of one tiny moment with a man who wore this man’s face. A total stranger who made her remember, for a second, what was - or might have been with this Clark.
“What do you want?”
She moves to stand in front of him and looks. Really looks, tries to find something of the man she remembers and the one she thought she saw a few weeks ago.
He looks at her, green eyes darkened to nearly black; skin pulsing angrily with the agony he must be feeling.
And there’s nothing (has there ever been anything?).
She tilts her head, bites the inside of her cheek. “Goodbye Clark.”
13.
She imagines for a second while she stands on that rooftop that he’s there with her. They look out at the city together, standing side by side but as far away as two people can be from each other. And she does what she can’t do to the man she fell in love with right on this spot years ago; (she knows that now; it was love - it probably still is. She understands that) she walks away.
She stubs the cigarette out on the ledge and pops a breath mint - two for good measure so Ollie won’t figure out the taste. Her stomach churns like it always does when she smokes after a long hiatus. She’ll need some Pepto or something to calm it down.
She’ll go home, she’ll slip off her shoes at the door; she’ll come up behind Ollie and wrap her arms around him, kiss him in between the shoulder blades and thank someone that she has him, at least. He’ll smile, he’ll kiss her hand maybe and turn around. And they’ll look at each other and they’ll both know. It is what it is. And it’ll be fine, and she’ll be happy.
Nodding slowly, she looks around one last time and makes her way to the elevator.
fin