Eight Crazy Nights 5: Smallville
for 
jakrar: Original ficlet: Smallville - Clex: Lex and Clark are exposed to something which not only induces amnesia but also body-switches them. Lionel takes ‘Lex’ back to the mansion to see how he can best use his son’s current vulnerability to his own advantage, while the Kents take ‘Clark’ back to the farm and tell him to stay home and away from outsiders until he’s himself again.
The nightmares were the worst part.
No, Lionel Luthor was the worst part, his constant, loudly expressed disappointment hurting even when his complaints seemed overblown and distant, like being punched through leather-the pain was diffused in a way, but still there.
Even after the nighttime fog had dissipated, Lex still felt like a stranger in his own skin. The only place he felt comfortable was on Clark’s farm-but it wasn’t Clark’s farm. It was the Kent farm, and the elder Kents clearly didn’t want him around infecting their son with his Luthorian decadence.
From what he’d read about his prior misadventures, he couldn’t say he blamed them. The person described, and sometimes photographed, in all those leering, insinuating articles didn’t seem like a person he wanted to be.
But coming to Smallville had helped him. He was almost certain of it. The people at the plant didn’t treat him like a pariah. They asked him for his help, and he tried his best; he’d stayed up to three and four in the morning studying all the safety manuals, and a few textbooks for the scientific details that seemed to have disappeared with the rest of his memories, and he was starting to get the hang of the fertilizer business. But they’d been patient with him even at the beginning, or what he remembered as the beginning. That wouldn’t have been true if he’d been a useless playboy keeping up his bad habits even away from the big city, he thought.
He couldn’t go back to the Kent farm. Not until-until things were better. Clark had kissed him. It had felt better than anything else, more real, more right, and that was why he had to stay away. Nothing about what he wanted to do with Clark was right. He thought he’d never felt anything for another man before, because the feelings were so raw and overwhelming, even more terrifyingly unfamiliar than the rest of this life. He knew he’d been with women-to his shame, there was video proving it online-but what he felt when he thought about Clark was entirely new.
He had to stay away, but Clark was the only one he could trust. No wonder the nightmares always featured Clark-nothing like the real person, full of distrust and accusations. In his sleep, Lex always knew that he’d earned Clark’s rejections.
His heart broke every time he thought about Clark’s abilities. What it must be like to be so young and afraid of exposure. Lex was a public freak; there was nothing to be done about that. But Clark-Clark had a chance, if he was willing to live with secrets.
Lex just couldn’t afford to be one of them.
Lex bided his time. He read everything he could find on his computer, and every file he could get his hands on about LuthorCorp. Lionel was rotten, and Lex was going to find out exactly how deep the rot went. It didn’t matter if the truth brought the whole company down. Lex was going to fix LuthorCorp, and get out from under Lionel.
And then, if Clark still wanted him, Lex would be there. He wouldn’t hide anything. He wouldn’t have to.
... and for
arysteia: I'm assuming Lex winning a hard-fought election on a left wing platform and proving billionaires don't have to be supervillains is too on the nose? ;-p (Note: There might be some supervillainy here, but it is well intentioned.)
His first act as president is to ask Congress to pass a moratorium on new development of fossil fuels. Though that doesn’t work out exactly as he wanted, he nonetheless manages to pull together the world's superheroes, other nations, and a few interstellar allies to beat back Imperiex. There's the small detail that he Pearl Harbors Topeka in the process, but come on, the book wasn’t called ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas?’ for nothing. He owes Kansas some payback, is all he’s saying, although he’s saying it to himself since other people can get so testy about casual dismissals of the death and suffering of thousands. Moderns are so soft. The Greeks would’ve understood Lex, he feels quite certain.
The next thing he does with his newfound popularity as the savior of America (and the rest of humanity, but that’s not what he emphasizes in his TV interviews) is to push through top-margin tax increases, including the end of special tax treatment for carried interest, as promised in his campaign. The carried interest bit is his favorite part. Lex hates hedge fund guys. Real Master of the Universe types, love to order people around and brag about how politically incorrect they are, which they think means it’s cool to demand sex from the subordinates of their choice. Think they’re better than everyone else just because they made some money, until you actually strand them on an island where they have to eat bugs to survive. Not that he’s done that to a hedgie just to compare his response to Lex’s own experience-well, not more than once-well, not that could be proved against him.
Point being, Lex respects the Bill Gates and Andrew Carnegies of the world, people who made things instead of just betting on how badly they could fuck up companies that actually made things. Even the old-style bankers, Rothschilds and Warburgs who decided which countries would get armies and which would not. They didn’t need to sell crappy mortgages to innocent buyers to make their money or take over companies and strip their pension plans bare to pay consulting fees. It’s just this new breed he doesn’t like, ticks on the belly of American prosperity. Possibly he has some left-over rage from the various assaults LexCorp and LuthorCorp suffered when the companies looked like tempting targets.
Makers and takers, an old slogan. Not entirely wrong, just wrongly directed, based on a deliberate confusion between makers and owners. Lex himself is perfectly willing to cut deals in which everyone goes away feeling fat and happy. He just needs to be on top, that’s all.
The other guy tried to convince people that Lex couldn’t be trusted, but Lex was used to that. It made for a nasty campaign, but in America, is there any other kind? Lex believed in science, including psychology, and Lex believed in microtargeting. In the event, that was enough to convince 51% of the electorate that Lex Luthor was the man for them, and that makes him the man for all of them.
If only all relationships could be managed by majority vote, Lex’s life would have been much easier.
Anyway, after the whole business with Imperiex and the frankly more annoying fight with Congress about taxes, Lex is ready to tackle some real problems. Global warming’s a done deal, so now it’s all about mitigation. Heat and retreat: not a promising slogan, but facts are facts. Think of it as a new New Deal, he tells people. We’re going to rebuild America, and yes, she’ll have a different shape when we’re done, but that is the arc of our history. I’ve put my skin in the game-when I was CEO, LexCorp invested billions in remediation technology, and it’s going on the market now.
Of course, Lex had to divest his holdings. But if he still has friends at the company-friends who know that to change its name would be very unwise-well, that’s only natural. LexCorp is even allowed to bid on government contracts. Lex appoints a woman who cordially hates him as the conflict of interest examiner, and doesn’t censor her reports (even the one time she uses it’s instead of its, he only sends it to her, circled, after public distribution-she’s incandescent, and he almost goes for the sheer thrill of the hate sex, but then she’d feel duty bound to quit and he needs her for another three years, so he regretfully just ducks the very nice vase she throws).
All in all, Lex is looking forward to the next term. After that, it might be time to start tinkering with the Constitution. The Twenty-Second was put in as a slap in the face to Roosevelt, and Lex feels a titan-to-titan sympathy with him: there’s a historical error in need of correction. And Lex is the one to do it.
After, that is, he deals with the unnameable chthonic tentacled things rising from the deep oceans with the melting methane.
Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of the Lincoln Bedroom.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
jakrar: Original ficlet: Smallville - Clex: Lex and Clark are exposed to something which not only induces amnesia but also body-switches them. Lionel takes ‘Lex’ back to the mansion to see how he can best use his son’s current vulnerability to his own advantage, while the Kents take ‘Clark’ back to the farm and tell him to stay home and away from outsiders until he’s himself again.
The nightmares were the worst part.
No, Lionel Luthor was the worst part, his constant, loudly expressed disappointment hurting even when his complaints seemed overblown and distant, like being punched through leather-the pain was diffused in a way, but still there.
Even after the nighttime fog had dissipated, Lex still felt like a stranger in his own skin. The only place he felt comfortable was on Clark’s farm-but it wasn’t Clark’s farm. It was the Kent farm, and the elder Kents clearly didn’t want him around infecting their son with his Luthorian decadence.
From what he’d read about his prior misadventures, he couldn’t say he blamed them. The person described, and sometimes photographed, in all those leering, insinuating articles didn’t seem like a person he wanted to be.
But coming to Smallville had helped him. He was almost certain of it. The people at the plant didn’t treat him like a pariah. They asked him for his help, and he tried his best; he’d stayed up to three and four in the morning studying all the safety manuals, and a few textbooks for the scientific details that seemed to have disappeared with the rest of his memories, and he was starting to get the hang of the fertilizer business. But they’d been patient with him even at the beginning, or what he remembered as the beginning. That wouldn’t have been true if he’d been a useless playboy keeping up his bad habits even away from the big city, he thought.
He couldn’t go back to the Kent farm. Not until-until things were better. Clark had kissed him. It had felt better than anything else, more real, more right, and that was why he had to stay away. Nothing about what he wanted to do with Clark was right. He thought he’d never felt anything for another man before, because the feelings were so raw and overwhelming, even more terrifyingly unfamiliar than the rest of this life. He knew he’d been with women-to his shame, there was video proving it online-but what he felt when he thought about Clark was entirely new.
He had to stay away, but Clark was the only one he could trust. No wonder the nightmares always featured Clark-nothing like the real person, full of distrust and accusations. In his sleep, Lex always knew that he’d earned Clark’s rejections.
His heart broke every time he thought about Clark’s abilities. What it must be like to be so young and afraid of exposure. Lex was a public freak; there was nothing to be done about that. But Clark-Clark had a chance, if he was willing to live with secrets.
Lex just couldn’t afford to be one of them.
Lex bided his time. He read everything he could find on his computer, and every file he could get his hands on about LuthorCorp. Lionel was rotten, and Lex was going to find out exactly how deep the rot went. It didn’t matter if the truth brought the whole company down. Lex was going to fix LuthorCorp, and get out from under Lionel.
And then, if Clark still wanted him, Lex would be there. He wouldn’t hide anything. He wouldn’t have to.
... and for
arysteia: I'm assuming Lex winning a hard-fought election on a left wing platform and proving billionaires don't have to be supervillains is too on the nose? ;-p (Note: There might be some supervillainy here, but it is well intentioned.)
His first act as president is to ask Congress to pass a moratorium on new development of fossil fuels. Though that doesn’t work out exactly as he wanted, he nonetheless manages to pull together the world's superheroes, other nations, and a few interstellar allies to beat back Imperiex. There's the small detail that he Pearl Harbors Topeka in the process, but come on, the book wasn’t called ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas?’ for nothing. He owes Kansas some payback, is all he’s saying, although he’s saying it to himself since other people can get so testy about casual dismissals of the death and suffering of thousands. Moderns are so soft. The Greeks would’ve understood Lex, he feels quite certain.
The next thing he does with his newfound popularity as the savior of America (and the rest of humanity, but that’s not what he emphasizes in his TV interviews) is to push through top-margin tax increases, including the end of special tax treatment for carried interest, as promised in his campaign. The carried interest bit is his favorite part. Lex hates hedge fund guys. Real Master of the Universe types, love to order people around and brag about how politically incorrect they are, which they think means it’s cool to demand sex from the subordinates of their choice. Think they’re better than everyone else just because they made some money, until you actually strand them on an island where they have to eat bugs to survive. Not that he’s done that to a hedgie just to compare his response to Lex’s own experience-well, not more than once-well, not that could be proved against him.
Point being, Lex respects the Bill Gates and Andrew Carnegies of the world, people who made things instead of just betting on how badly they could fuck up companies that actually made things. Even the old-style bankers, Rothschilds and Warburgs who decided which countries would get armies and which would not. They didn’t need to sell crappy mortgages to innocent buyers to make their money or take over companies and strip their pension plans bare to pay consulting fees. It’s just this new breed he doesn’t like, ticks on the belly of American prosperity. Possibly he has some left-over rage from the various assaults LexCorp and LuthorCorp suffered when the companies looked like tempting targets.
Makers and takers, an old slogan. Not entirely wrong, just wrongly directed, based on a deliberate confusion between makers and owners. Lex himself is perfectly willing to cut deals in which everyone goes away feeling fat and happy. He just needs to be on top, that’s all.
The other guy tried to convince people that Lex couldn’t be trusted, but Lex was used to that. It made for a nasty campaign, but in America, is there any other kind? Lex believed in science, including psychology, and Lex believed in microtargeting. In the event, that was enough to convince 51% of the electorate that Lex Luthor was the man for them, and that makes him the man for all of them.
If only all relationships could be managed by majority vote, Lex’s life would have been much easier.
Anyway, after the whole business with Imperiex and the frankly more annoying fight with Congress about taxes, Lex is ready to tackle some real problems. Global warming’s a done deal, so now it’s all about mitigation. Heat and retreat: not a promising slogan, but facts are facts. Think of it as a new New Deal, he tells people. We’re going to rebuild America, and yes, she’ll have a different shape when we’re done, but that is the arc of our history. I’ve put my skin in the game-when I was CEO, LexCorp invested billions in remediation technology, and it’s going on the market now.
Of course, Lex had to divest his holdings. But if he still has friends at the company-friends who know that to change its name would be very unwise-well, that’s only natural. LexCorp is even allowed to bid on government contracts. Lex appoints a woman who cordially hates him as the conflict of interest examiner, and doesn’t censor her reports (even the one time she uses it’s instead of its, he only sends it to her, circled, after public distribution-she’s incandescent, and he almost goes for the sheer thrill of the hate sex, but then she’d feel duty bound to quit and he needs her for another three years, so he regretfully just ducks the very nice vase she throws).
All in all, Lex is looking forward to the next term. After that, it might be time to start tinkering with the Constitution. The Twenty-Second was put in as a slap in the face to Roosevelt, and Lex feels a titan-to-titan sympathy with him: there’s a historical error in need of correction. And Lex is the one to do it.
After, that is, he deals with the unnameable chthonic tentacled things rising from the deep oceans with the melting methane.
Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of the Lincoln Bedroom.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.