Advent Calendar Dec 13: A Smallville Christmas (Conner+Lex)
Title: A Smallville Christmas
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing/Characters: Conner+Lex
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
Spoilers/Warnings: General for entire series. Unbeta'd.
Word count: >3700 (er, got a bit long -- sorry about that!)
Summary: Conner and Lex celebrate Christmas, Smallville-style.
Author's Notes: Part of the smallearth Advent Calendar - DEC 13
Prompt: Christmas Decorations
Conner grimaced as he struggled to get his hands in front of him. He wasn't sure how badly off he was, but he was afraid of what would happen if he couldn't fight his way out of the restraints at his wrists and ankles. He finally got his legs through his arms, reached up, and ripped off the blindfold as he got his legs under him.
Then he paused in a confused crouch as he glanced around, not seeing any guards or minions around to kick or leap away from. He was in the middle of a rather brightly-lit room in front of a fireplace with a blazing wood fire. Turning and craning his head around, he saw a couch, coffee table, chairs and table in an attached dining room, realized that he was in someone's house... and frowned at the vague familiarity of the setting. He could swear that he'd never seen a living room like this before, but...
"If you promise to behave, I'll be happy to remove those."
Conner nearly jumped out of his boots. He spun in place and stood abruptly, then almost fell over as he began to take a step back and only stayed upright through some fancy twisting and luck. He glared at Lex Luthor, who was casually holding the security swipe keycard for the restraints -- assuming Luthor wasn't screwing with him, anyway.
"You're not going to get away with this, Luthor!" Conner declared, straightening to his full height of about a head shorter than the original source of his DNA, then had to cover a wince because that really sounded way too much like a judgmental Superman, and was not what he'd been going for exactly, especially when he was stuck at a clear disadvantage in this sort of situation. ...Whatever this was.
Luthor just stood where he was behind the couch, patiently waiting. His expression of slight amusement didn't change one iota.
Conner shifted uneasily in place after awhile when Luthor didn't do anything evil (other than stand where he was -- could breathing be evil?) and no guards or Kryptonite or death squads materialized. He strained his hearing and realized that he didn't really hear anybody in the vicinity. When he realized that Batman and Robin weren't going to be coming to his rescue anytime soon, and probably not anybody else in the League given the last comm he'd gotten right before he'd been shanghaied, Conner mumbled, "Um, ok, maybe you will get away with it."
Luthor grinned. "I certainly hope so. 'Tis the season, and all that." Conner stared. "Don't you think that having one of my schemes come through would be a wonderful Christmas present to myself?"
"But your schemes work almost all the time!" Conner protested. Lois complained about it all the time -- how Luthor got away with all sorts of things that she couldn't write him up on, and Superman couldn't always stop. ...Ok, so maybe he didn't get away with the big things -- but still! The bad guys winning? That definitely wasn't a Christmas thing -- even Luthor should know that!
"Ah, but this one is a fun scheme. That's completely different!" Luthor said, waving it away and moving around the side of the couch. He folded down onto it gracefully, cocking his head and watching Conner carefully as if he were an interesting... something.
"What do you want?" Conner asked, despairing, and he hoped he didn't sound nearly as desperate as he thought he did. "Where are the owners, anyway?" he added, getting a sinking feeling. Luthor hadn't disenfranchised them, had he? Or had them tied up and dumped outside in the cold? He saw snow outside the window. Or were they squatting, with the family who lived here about to come home and walk in on whatever this was?
Luthor just smirked and made a vague gesture.
Conner blinked at him. "Wait, you own this house?" It didn't seem very Luthor-y. He thought. It kind of looked almost... home-y. Not all expensive and stuff.
"I own many houses," Luthor dissembled, picking away an invisible bit of lint from his coatsleeve. He was in Badass-Black tonight -- the black trenchcoat, black leather gloves, lavender button-down shirt, dark dressy-but-serviceable boots: the works. When he glanced up and saw Conner's expression, his lips twisted and he added, "Yes, I own this property. Obtained fairly, above-board and all that," he ended as if it was an afterthought.
Huh. A direct answer. Weird.
"So, will you behave if I set you free? Yes or no?" Luthor asked again, tapping the keycard against the back of the couch.
Conner didn't really want to promise 'good behavior' without knowing what he was getting into, especially since it was so open-ended, but Luthor was acting so... un-Luthor-y. Maybe he should try and play along and see what happened? Besides, two could play at the vague implications game. He held out his hands towards Luthor, wrist-up, and didn't say anything.
Luthor smirked at him and Conner realized that he knew exactly how little Conner was promising, or not promising, on purpose. He felt a thread on unease when it was followed by a nod of approval of all things (he didn't want a villain's approval for anything, especially not from Luthor!), but Luthor still turned the card sideways and pressed a thumb against the center of it, and it 'beep'ed quietly. The cuffs at his wrists and feet snapped open with a click and fell to the floor.
"...I thought that was a swipe card?" Conner said finally, rubbing at his wrists absently.
"Appearances can be deceiving," Luthor smirked. Yeah, and if Conner had jumped him and managed to get it away from him, he'd have been busy trying to swipe a card that needed the right fingerprint to work while Luthor regrouped. Argh. Some days the dude really made his head hurt.
"Ok, so, why did you kidnap me and dump me here, anyway?!" Conner asked finally, because darnit, his curiosity was getting the better of him.
"You were avoiding me!"
"Wait, what?" Conner said. "I always avoid you! --How is this different all of a sudden?"
Luthor looked at him blankly. "Superman didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what?" Conner said with growing exasperation.
"It's my turn."
Conner stared at him. "Your turn." Luthor nodded. "For what?" he asked with a growing suspicion.
"Superman had you last year. This year you stay with me," Luthor said, crossing his legs and looking up at Conner evenly.
"For Christmas." Luthor added slowly, sounding annoyed when Conner didn't say anything and still didn't seem to be getting it.
"Um," said Conner. Where was his super-intelligence today, anyway? Had it gone on Winter Break or something? He really needed his brain right now to deal with this!
"...You mean for spending the Christmas holiday with you, right?" Conner said nervously. "And not, like, as a present of an alien-human hybrid mutant person for a whole year to play with and maybe trick into walking into your labs and stuff and --ohmygod stop that, I am not giving you ideas!" he ended hotly as Luthor raised both eyebrows and affected surprise, like that was the greatest idea ever, when it totally wasn't, and as if the thought had never crossed his mind, which it totally had.
"Don't be ridiculous Conner, I can do that any day. Besides, why should I work to get you into one of my labs unwillingly and have to worry about the League kicking in the door and trashing the place when you're more than happy to walk into Tess's labs and do whatever I'd want and more?" Luthor tossed out casually, to Conner's horror -- because Luthor didn't have access to Tess's data on him -- he couldn't! ...Could he? Oh god! Somebody was gonna be in so much trouble! What the hell?!? That was totally not cool!
--And the tests and stuff he did weren't totally invasive or anything, they weren't! He was fine with them! Luthor would want to do evil horrible stuff to him, totally messed up stuff way past what the scientists asked him to do that he didn't do, right? Luthor had to be totally lying about that... right? Tess would say something if the lab techs were telling him to do things like that, wouldn't she? He... he didn't really feel all that uncomfortable with the stuff they usually had him do and the questions he answered... he didn't! Luthor was just messing with him!
Conner wrapped his arms around himself self-consciously, while Luthor smirked and rose to his feet, then headed over to the door. Conner trailed behind him at a good distance, and caught the heavy winter coat that got flung at him. "Uh, what are we doing?" Conner asked, then kicked himself for the 'we' -- he hadn't agreed to anything, he hadn't!
"Getting a Christmas tree," Luthor explained calmly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "Can't have Christmas without a tree!" he said brightly, clapping his hands together and rubbing them. Which was really disconcerting because he usually got that exact same look when he was making nefarious plans, too... not that Conner was happy about how he'd ended up finding that out...
Conner bit his lip, torn and more than a little worried. Well, if it was gonna be something nefarious, Conner had better be there to stop him and all that. Superman couldn't -- Clark was off-planet at the moment.
Conner glanced back over his shoulder as they were going out the front door, and had a sudden realization as he got a good look at the room from a different angle. "This is the Kent farm!" he declared, startled.
"Not anymore," Luthor said far too smoothly for Conner's comfort. Conner glared. "Clark sold it, remember?" Luthor reminded him. "If you have a problem with that, take it up with him --and his mother, who gifted the deed to him in the first place." Conner's eyes narrowed further.
"'Ma didn't want him to sell it!" Conner shot back.
"Oh no, of course not," Luthor snorted. "She just wanted him to run a farm that he couldn't work the land on to support without raising questions, nor could pay the property taxes for on a reporter's salary while living in an apartment in Metropolis when she ought to have known that he'd moved there with Lois some several months past," Luthor pointed out in a practical manner, almost derisively.
Conner grumbled under his breath as Luthor locked the door behind them. He already didn't like this -- getting kidnapped and argued at and losing was not agreeing with him. Was the whole next week-and-a-half going to be like this? Was he really going to have to spend all of Christmas with a Luthor? In Smallville? This was going to be a disaster.
He was proved right twenty minutes later as they were fleeing the herd of brightly-glowing-green pine trees that were chasing them across the Fordman's parking lot.
Argh.
He hoped Young Justice showed up soon to save him.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Unfortunately, Young Justice did not show up to save him.
Luthor ended up saving him.
Apparently he was packing a death ray gun after all. Those poor man-eating trees never stood a chance.
And then Conner had had to tromp through the woods with him and cut down a tree with a tiny hand-saw -- a saw, not even an axe! -- while Luthor lectured on at him about tactical retreats and how one should make sure that flammable monsters were properly insulated in a large area of blacktop-and-concrete or similar if one were going to burn them down so that one did not burn down the entire town. Because apparently that was bad manners, but being all boring musing aloud about what sorts of changes to plant-DNA must have been mutated to allow such quick locomotion without sacrificing the structural integrity of the plant cells was totally fine.
...Ok, so it was a one-sided discussion on mutated DNA and totally not boring at all, because that was totally Conner's thing, but there was no way that Conner would ever admit that. Or join in a conversation with a clearly villainous-type like Luthor on the subject.
Sometimes being a good guy against the forces of evil sucked. Especially when evil was really up on the whole cutting-edge DNA-research thing and willing to share a debate or two and god he was totally never going to survive Christmas at this rate. He was going to end up evil and wearing black all the time and everything (not just his t-shirt -- that was just a fashion statement) and bombing kittens and spending TV-time brushing up his evil laugh or something, and it was totally possible that this was Luthor's Evil Plan all along. Because Luthor did things like that.
It totally wasn't fair. Why did Conner being really smart mean that Luthor was even smarter and all super-sneaky and awesome at the planning? Evil planning. Ok, all planning -- since Tim had told him that apparently Luthor had been making it a point to piss off his foster-dad and screw with Wayne Industries after he found out Bruce was Batman. That just couldn't be all Lionel's horrible Evil Influence.
But -- thank god for small miracles -- apparently Luthor was perfectly content to walk back through the snow in silence as they made their way back to the homestead. It was a little weird, watching Luthor stare open-eyed at the Christmas lights strung up on all the houses they passed on their slow journey, side-by-side, dragging the felled tree through the snow down the sidewalk.
They finally got it back and there was a bit of a struggle at first, getting the tree up onto the porch and all the snow brushed off. They managed to get it through the door easily enough, but they had to pause in their efforts to move the couch and coffee table back against the wall and unpack their newly-purchased Christmas tree stand for the tree. (Thankfully, they'd bought it and the saw inside Fordman's before the Tree Incident outside; Conner doubted they would've sold it to them after destroying their stock and ruining their business for the night. Despite the fact that they'd saved lives fighting the things out before anybody got hurt. Sometimes being a hero-in-training sucked. Conner bet that Superman would've gotten a 'thank-you' instead of getting run off.)
The house itself seemed pretty sparsely furnished and decorated, and Conner wondered when Luthor had bought it. The attic was totally packed with a lot of personal-looking stuff, though. When Conner pointed this incongruity out, Luthor shrugged at him as he hefted a box of what turned out to be Christmas ornaments and walked them down the pull-down stairs to pass them off to Conner.
"Yes, you'd think that the previous owners would have taken the majority of their belongings with them when they all-but-fled town but, alas, they did not," Luthor said with a sorrow-filled voice that also contained a very liberal amount of condescension and snark. "Apparently Smallville just does not agree with some people, can you imagine that?" he ended with a trademark smirk before re-ascending.
Conner rolled his eyes as he set the box down at the top of the stairs and climbed up the stairs to poke his head up through the opening. "Oh yeah, who knew?" came the sarcastic rejoinder. "Apparently some people like their trees stationary, and their chickens only a foot-high and without pointy teeth and not purple!" he shot back.
"I know! And purple is a real improvement!" Luthor enthused, pawing through another box. "You don't even need to dye the feathers! You'd think someone would take advantage of that, but no. No imagination," he ended, shaking his head ruefully at those poor previous owners. "It amazes me how some people just have no business sense." He frowned at a box of fancy tablecloths and passed that over to Conner as well, along with another box of ornaments.
Conner superspeeded the two boxes down to the staircase, then popped back up to grab a box of tree lights that he spotted by its really creative markings in thick black marker: "X-Mas Lights!!!"
Luthor followed him back down and pushed the folding staircase back into the ceiling. He grabbed one box before Conner superspeeded the rest downstairs and was left in the dust. He didn't seem to mind and just followed Conner down at a sedate pace. --Man, Conner just could not win tonight! Not even a fist shaking, or an angry "You will stop this behavior at once!" or... well, anything! Conner couldn't even get a glare or a veiled threat out of him!
"Ok, seriously, are you on drugs or something? Or, like, from a Mirror-Box Earth or something?" Because Luthor was being almost... nice. Like, normal-person nice. Well, except for the kidnapping. Conner had stayed, and if that was what actually what Luthor really wanted... maybe if he threatened to run off he could get a rise out of Luthor?
Luthor frowned at him. "Not that I'm aware of. I've been fairly careful about my exposure to toxins and where my food comes from, and I think I would have noticed if I'd fallen between worlds. Why?"
"Dude, seriously? This is just way too weird for words. You aren't being all, you know, you!"
Luthor raised an eyebrow. "I'm not?"
"No, you aren't!"
"How do you know?" Luthor said way-too-casually, turning away and messing with the lights -- trying to untangle them, it looked like. He even managed to make it not look nefarious, and he always always always looked nefarious when messing with anything electronic! Did someone break reality or something when Conner wasn't looking?
"Ok, I'll bite -- what makes you think I don't know you?" Conner said, folding his arms and glaring at Luthor's back from the floor by the tree.
"You don't have my memories anymore."
"So?"
"So, exactly how much time have you spent with me?" Luthor asked evenly, as if he didn't know, probably down to the second.
"Plenty! Too much!" Conner shot back angrily.
"No, Conner, not when you and your little friends are trying to foil my supposedly-evil plans and all that. How much time have you spent with me?" Lex asked quietly.
Conner started to retort, then stopped short. Because. He actually couldn't think of a time. Except maybe today.
But that was only because he'd been kidnapped, anyway! He hadn't wanted to! He avoided Luthor every chance he got!
Er...
...but Luthor was totally evil and doing all sorts of horrible things! And Conner was... at an impressionable age and shouldn't be spending time with a villain, so there!
And he totally was not going to feel guilty about this. "I know enough," he grumbled. "Tess told me--"
"--All sorts of horrible things about me and my daily-dealings, and I'm sure Lois is happy to fill your head with all sorts of tales of my wild and nefarious goings-on whenever she's not remembering to be completely 'weirded out' by your ignoble status as 'Luthor's love child with Clark,' yes-yes," Luthor waved off like it was nothing.
"You kidnapped me!" Conner fell back on. He wasn't liking the way this was going. He was pretty sure this was, like, almost a guilt trip or something.
"It's not kidnapping when you are my own son!" Luthor retorted, turning and glaring at Conner, perfectly irate, back rigid, hands claws hooked in the forgotten lights.
Conner gulped and sat back, eyes wide. Luthor seemed to get ahold of himself, took a deep breath and let it out.
"You are my son," Lex stated, staring him right in the eyes. "I don't care what Clark says about your relation to him. I don't care what Tess or Lois or anyone else says about your relation to me." He turned back to the tangle of lights. "Get used to the idea," he grated out lowly.
Conner sat where he was and shivered awhile. He really wanted to get up and run away, because Luthor really scared the hell out of him sometimes, but this was even worse than that time with the rabid cyborg-wolves. And Luthor hadn't even needed Kryptonite -- just words.
"Can... can I help?" Conner asked, then kicked himself because that hadn't been what he'd wanted to ask. He'd wanted to ask if he could go. Because he was pretty sure if he just up and left right now without some sort of 'permission' that Luthor would spend the rest of the month making miserable the life of every hero within his reach (and maybe even their families, too). And Luthor's reach at this point extended somewhat off-planet. (So that definitely included Conner, too, because he hadn't gotten the flying thing down yet and Tim hadn't gotten that spaceship he was working on operational yet.)
But before he could take it back, Luthor turned around and stared at him. Just stared. He looked... about as shocked as Conner felt freaked at the moment. But he quickly glanced down at the lights and then turned, scooped the whole mess up, and pulled it around, offering it to him.
Conner took a deep breath, then looked down at the huge tangled mess. Then blinked at it and almost laughed despite himself. It was just one big balled-up mess.
"Um," Conner said.
"It's not as though it's glued together," Luthor muttered, setting it down in front of the both of them and going back to working on it.
Yeah, right. It might as well be. Totally. Impossible. Mess. They'd have better luck going out and trying to buy some new lights from the store. Even Fordman's. It wasn't as if Luthor couldn't afford to grab a few sets.
Why was Luthor even trying?
Well, Conner was pretty good at spatial visualization and orientation. And his "dad" wasn't really getting anywhere. If Conner didn't help out, Luthor would probably pitch a fit and do something involving nuclear launch codes or something out of frustration, so... yeah.
For the good of the world, Conner would help untangle these lights.
It took a lot less time than he'd thought it would. They got them on the tree pretty easily.
By the time they got through the tinsel and most of the ornaments, Conner was relaxed and smiling.
And even if he didn't realize it himself, Lex noticed it for him.
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing/Characters: Conner+Lex
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
Spoilers/Warnings: General for entire series. Unbeta'd.
Word count: >3700 (er, got a bit long -- sorry about that!)
Summary: Conner and Lex celebrate Christmas, Smallville-style.
Author's Notes: Part of the smallearth Advent Calendar - DEC 13
Prompt: Christmas Decorations
Conner grimaced as he struggled to get his hands in front of him. He wasn't sure how badly off he was, but he was afraid of what would happen if he couldn't fight his way out of the restraints at his wrists and ankles. He finally got his legs through his arms, reached up, and ripped off the blindfold as he got his legs under him.
Then he paused in a confused crouch as he glanced around, not seeing any guards or minions around to kick or leap away from. He was in the middle of a rather brightly-lit room in front of a fireplace with a blazing wood fire. Turning and craning his head around, he saw a couch, coffee table, chairs and table in an attached dining room, realized that he was in someone's house... and frowned at the vague familiarity of the setting. He could swear that he'd never seen a living room like this before, but...
"If you promise to behave, I'll be happy to remove those."
Conner nearly jumped out of his boots. He spun in place and stood abruptly, then almost fell over as he began to take a step back and only stayed upright through some fancy twisting and luck. He glared at Lex Luthor, who was casually holding the security swipe keycard for the restraints -- assuming Luthor wasn't screwing with him, anyway.
"You're not going to get away with this, Luthor!" Conner declared, straightening to his full height of about a head shorter than the original source of his DNA, then had to cover a wince because that really sounded way too much like a judgmental Superman, and was not what he'd been going for exactly, especially when he was stuck at a clear disadvantage in this sort of situation. ...Whatever this was.
Luthor just stood where he was behind the couch, patiently waiting. His expression of slight amusement didn't change one iota.
Conner shifted uneasily in place after awhile when Luthor didn't do anything evil (other than stand where he was -- could breathing be evil?) and no guards or Kryptonite or death squads materialized. He strained his hearing and realized that he didn't really hear anybody in the vicinity. When he realized that Batman and Robin weren't going to be coming to his rescue anytime soon, and probably not anybody else in the League given the last comm he'd gotten right before he'd been shanghaied, Conner mumbled, "Um, ok, maybe you will get away with it."
Luthor grinned. "I certainly hope so. 'Tis the season, and all that." Conner stared. "Don't you think that having one of my schemes come through would be a wonderful Christmas present to myself?"
"But your schemes work almost all the time!" Conner protested. Lois complained about it all the time -- how Luthor got away with all sorts of things that she couldn't write him up on, and Superman couldn't always stop. ...Ok, so maybe he didn't get away with the big things -- but still! The bad guys winning? That definitely wasn't a Christmas thing -- even Luthor should know that!
"Ah, but this one is a fun scheme. That's completely different!" Luthor said, waving it away and moving around the side of the couch. He folded down onto it gracefully, cocking his head and watching Conner carefully as if he were an interesting... something.
"What do you want?" Conner asked, despairing, and he hoped he didn't sound nearly as desperate as he thought he did. "Where are the owners, anyway?" he added, getting a sinking feeling. Luthor hadn't disenfranchised them, had he? Or had them tied up and dumped outside in the cold? He saw snow outside the window. Or were they squatting, with the family who lived here about to come home and walk in on whatever this was?
Luthor just smirked and made a vague gesture.
Conner blinked at him. "Wait, you own this house?" It didn't seem very Luthor-y. He thought. It kind of looked almost... home-y. Not all expensive and stuff.
"I own many houses," Luthor dissembled, picking away an invisible bit of lint from his coatsleeve. He was in Badass-Black tonight -- the black trenchcoat, black leather gloves, lavender button-down shirt, dark dressy-but-serviceable boots: the works. When he glanced up and saw Conner's expression, his lips twisted and he added, "Yes, I own this property. Obtained fairly, above-board and all that," he ended as if it was an afterthought.
Huh. A direct answer. Weird.
"So, will you behave if I set you free? Yes or no?" Luthor asked again, tapping the keycard against the back of the couch.
Conner didn't really want to promise 'good behavior' without knowing what he was getting into, especially since it was so open-ended, but Luthor was acting so... un-Luthor-y. Maybe he should try and play along and see what happened? Besides, two could play at the vague implications game. He held out his hands towards Luthor, wrist-up, and didn't say anything.
Luthor smirked at him and Conner realized that he knew exactly how little Conner was promising, or not promising, on purpose. He felt a thread on unease when it was followed by a nod of approval of all things (he didn't want a villain's approval for anything, especially not from Luthor!), but Luthor still turned the card sideways and pressed a thumb against the center of it, and it 'beep'ed quietly. The cuffs at his wrists and feet snapped open with a click and fell to the floor.
"...I thought that was a swipe card?" Conner said finally, rubbing at his wrists absently.
"Appearances can be deceiving," Luthor smirked. Yeah, and if Conner had jumped him and managed to get it away from him, he'd have been busy trying to swipe a card that needed the right fingerprint to work while Luthor regrouped. Argh. Some days the dude really made his head hurt.
"Ok, so, why did you kidnap me and dump me here, anyway?!" Conner asked finally, because darnit, his curiosity was getting the better of him.
"You were avoiding me!"
"Wait, what?" Conner said. "I always avoid you! --How is this different all of a sudden?"
Luthor looked at him blankly. "Superman didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what?" Conner said with growing exasperation.
"It's my turn."
Conner stared at him. "Your turn." Luthor nodded. "For what?" he asked with a growing suspicion.
"Superman had you last year. This year you stay with me," Luthor said, crossing his legs and looking up at Conner evenly.
"For Christmas." Luthor added slowly, sounding annoyed when Conner didn't say anything and still didn't seem to be getting it.
"Um," said Conner. Where was his super-intelligence today, anyway? Had it gone on Winter Break or something? He really needed his brain right now to deal with this!
"...You mean for spending the Christmas holiday with you, right?" Conner said nervously. "And not, like, as a present of an alien-human hybrid mutant person for a whole year to play with and maybe trick into walking into your labs and stuff and --ohmygod stop that, I am not giving you ideas!" he ended hotly as Luthor raised both eyebrows and affected surprise, like that was the greatest idea ever, when it totally wasn't, and as if the thought had never crossed his mind, which it totally had.
"Don't be ridiculous Conner, I can do that any day. Besides, why should I work to get you into one of my labs unwillingly and have to worry about the League kicking in the door and trashing the place when you're more than happy to walk into Tess's labs and do whatever I'd want and more?" Luthor tossed out casually, to Conner's horror -- because Luthor didn't have access to Tess's data on him -- he couldn't! ...Could he? Oh god! Somebody was gonna be in so much trouble! What the hell?!? That was totally not cool!
--And the tests and stuff he did weren't totally invasive or anything, they weren't! He was fine with them! Luthor would want to do evil horrible stuff to him, totally messed up stuff way past what the scientists asked him to do that he didn't do, right? Luthor had to be totally lying about that... right? Tess would say something if the lab techs were telling him to do things like that, wouldn't she? He... he didn't really feel all that uncomfortable with the stuff they usually had him do and the questions he answered... he didn't! Luthor was just messing with him!
Conner wrapped his arms around himself self-consciously, while Luthor smirked and rose to his feet, then headed over to the door. Conner trailed behind him at a good distance, and caught the heavy winter coat that got flung at him. "Uh, what are we doing?" Conner asked, then kicked himself for the 'we' -- he hadn't agreed to anything, he hadn't!
"Getting a Christmas tree," Luthor explained calmly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "Can't have Christmas without a tree!" he said brightly, clapping his hands together and rubbing them. Which was really disconcerting because he usually got that exact same look when he was making nefarious plans, too... not that Conner was happy about how he'd ended up finding that out...
Conner bit his lip, torn and more than a little worried. Well, if it was gonna be something nefarious, Conner had better be there to stop him and all that. Superman couldn't -- Clark was off-planet at the moment.
Conner glanced back over his shoulder as they were going out the front door, and had a sudden realization as he got a good look at the room from a different angle. "This is the Kent farm!" he declared, startled.
"Not anymore," Luthor said far too smoothly for Conner's comfort. Conner glared. "Clark sold it, remember?" Luthor reminded him. "If you have a problem with that, take it up with him --and his mother, who gifted the deed to him in the first place." Conner's eyes narrowed further.
"'Ma didn't want him to sell it!" Conner shot back.
"Oh no, of course not," Luthor snorted. "She just wanted him to run a farm that he couldn't work the land on to support without raising questions, nor could pay the property taxes for on a reporter's salary while living in an apartment in Metropolis when she ought to have known that he'd moved there with Lois some several months past," Luthor pointed out in a practical manner, almost derisively.
Conner grumbled under his breath as Luthor locked the door behind them. He already didn't like this -- getting kidnapped and argued at and losing was not agreeing with him. Was the whole next week-and-a-half going to be like this? Was he really going to have to spend all of Christmas with a Luthor? In Smallville? This was going to be a disaster.
He was proved right twenty minutes later as they were fleeing the herd of brightly-glowing-green pine trees that were chasing them across the Fordman's parking lot.
Argh.
He hoped Young Justice showed up soon to save him.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Unfortunately, Young Justice did not show up to save him.
Luthor ended up saving him.
Apparently he was packing a death ray gun after all. Those poor man-eating trees never stood a chance.
And then Conner had had to tromp through the woods with him and cut down a tree with a tiny hand-saw -- a saw, not even an axe! -- while Luthor lectured on at him about tactical retreats and how one should make sure that flammable monsters were properly insulated in a large area of blacktop-and-concrete or similar if one were going to burn them down so that one did not burn down the entire town. Because apparently that was bad manners, but being all boring musing aloud about what sorts of changes to plant-DNA must have been mutated to allow such quick locomotion without sacrificing the structural integrity of the plant cells was totally fine.
...Ok, so it was a one-sided discussion on mutated DNA and totally not boring at all, because that was totally Conner's thing, but there was no way that Conner would ever admit that. Or join in a conversation with a clearly villainous-type like Luthor on the subject.
Sometimes being a good guy against the forces of evil sucked. Especially when evil was really up on the whole cutting-edge DNA-research thing and willing to share a debate or two and god he was totally never going to survive Christmas at this rate. He was going to end up evil and wearing black all the time and everything (not just his t-shirt -- that was just a fashion statement) and bombing kittens and spending TV-time brushing up his evil laugh or something, and it was totally possible that this was Luthor's Evil Plan all along. Because Luthor did things like that.
It totally wasn't fair. Why did Conner being really smart mean that Luthor was even smarter and all super-sneaky and awesome at the planning? Evil planning. Ok, all planning -- since Tim had told him that apparently Luthor had been making it a point to piss off his foster-dad and screw with Wayne Industries after he found out Bruce was Batman. That just couldn't be all Lionel's horrible Evil Influence.
But -- thank god for small miracles -- apparently Luthor was perfectly content to walk back through the snow in silence as they made their way back to the homestead. It was a little weird, watching Luthor stare open-eyed at the Christmas lights strung up on all the houses they passed on their slow journey, side-by-side, dragging the felled tree through the snow down the sidewalk.
They finally got it back and there was a bit of a struggle at first, getting the tree up onto the porch and all the snow brushed off. They managed to get it through the door easily enough, but they had to pause in their efforts to move the couch and coffee table back against the wall and unpack their newly-purchased Christmas tree stand for the tree. (Thankfully, they'd bought it and the saw inside Fordman's before the Tree Incident outside; Conner doubted they would've sold it to them after destroying their stock and ruining their business for the night. Despite the fact that they'd saved lives fighting the things out before anybody got hurt. Sometimes being a hero-in-training sucked. Conner bet that Superman would've gotten a 'thank-you' instead of getting run off.)
The house itself seemed pretty sparsely furnished and decorated, and Conner wondered when Luthor had bought it. The attic was totally packed with a lot of personal-looking stuff, though. When Conner pointed this incongruity out, Luthor shrugged at him as he hefted a box of what turned out to be Christmas ornaments and walked them down the pull-down stairs to pass them off to Conner.
"Yes, you'd think that the previous owners would have taken the majority of their belongings with them when they all-but-fled town but, alas, they did not," Luthor said with a sorrow-filled voice that also contained a very liberal amount of condescension and snark. "Apparently Smallville just does not agree with some people, can you imagine that?" he ended with a trademark smirk before re-ascending.
Conner rolled his eyes as he set the box down at the top of the stairs and climbed up the stairs to poke his head up through the opening. "Oh yeah, who knew?" came the sarcastic rejoinder. "Apparently some people like their trees stationary, and their chickens only a foot-high and without pointy teeth and not purple!" he shot back.
"I know! And purple is a real improvement!" Luthor enthused, pawing through another box. "You don't even need to dye the feathers! You'd think someone would take advantage of that, but no. No imagination," he ended, shaking his head ruefully at those poor previous owners. "It amazes me how some people just have no business sense." He frowned at a box of fancy tablecloths and passed that over to Conner as well, along with another box of ornaments.
Conner superspeeded the two boxes down to the staircase, then popped back up to grab a box of tree lights that he spotted by its really creative markings in thick black marker: "X-Mas Lights!!!"
Luthor followed him back down and pushed the folding staircase back into the ceiling. He grabbed one box before Conner superspeeded the rest downstairs and was left in the dust. He didn't seem to mind and just followed Conner down at a sedate pace. --Man, Conner just could not win tonight! Not even a fist shaking, or an angry "You will stop this behavior at once!" or... well, anything! Conner couldn't even get a glare or a veiled threat out of him!
"Ok, seriously, are you on drugs or something? Or, like, from a Mirror-Box Earth or something?" Because Luthor was being almost... nice. Like, normal-person nice. Well, except for the kidnapping. Conner had stayed, and if that was what actually what Luthor really wanted... maybe if he threatened to run off he could get a rise out of Luthor?
Luthor frowned at him. "Not that I'm aware of. I've been fairly careful about my exposure to toxins and where my food comes from, and I think I would have noticed if I'd fallen between worlds. Why?"
"Dude, seriously? This is just way too weird for words. You aren't being all, you know, you!"
Luthor raised an eyebrow. "I'm not?"
"No, you aren't!"
"How do you know?" Luthor said way-too-casually, turning away and messing with the lights -- trying to untangle them, it looked like. He even managed to make it not look nefarious, and he always always always looked nefarious when messing with anything electronic! Did someone break reality or something when Conner wasn't looking?
"Ok, I'll bite -- what makes you think I don't know you?" Conner said, folding his arms and glaring at Luthor's back from the floor by the tree.
"You don't have my memories anymore."
"So?"
"So, exactly how much time have you spent with me?" Luthor asked evenly, as if he didn't know, probably down to the second.
"Plenty! Too much!" Conner shot back angrily.
"No, Conner, not when you and your little friends are trying to foil my supposedly-evil plans and all that. How much time have you spent with me?" Lex asked quietly.
Conner started to retort, then stopped short. Because. He actually couldn't think of a time. Except maybe today.
But that was only because he'd been kidnapped, anyway! He hadn't wanted to! He avoided Luthor every chance he got!
Er...
...but Luthor was totally evil and doing all sorts of horrible things! And Conner was... at an impressionable age and shouldn't be spending time with a villain, so there!
And he totally was not going to feel guilty about this. "I know enough," he grumbled. "Tess told me--"
"--All sorts of horrible things about me and my daily-dealings, and I'm sure Lois is happy to fill your head with all sorts of tales of my wild and nefarious goings-on whenever she's not remembering to be completely 'weirded out' by your ignoble status as 'Luthor's love child with Clark,' yes-yes," Luthor waved off like it was nothing.
"You kidnapped me!" Conner fell back on. He wasn't liking the way this was going. He was pretty sure this was, like, almost a guilt trip or something.
"It's not kidnapping when you are my own son!" Luthor retorted, turning and glaring at Conner, perfectly irate, back rigid, hands claws hooked in the forgotten lights.
Conner gulped and sat back, eyes wide. Luthor seemed to get ahold of himself, took a deep breath and let it out.
"You are my son," Lex stated, staring him right in the eyes. "I don't care what Clark says about your relation to him. I don't care what Tess or Lois or anyone else says about your relation to me." He turned back to the tangle of lights. "Get used to the idea," he grated out lowly.
Conner sat where he was and shivered awhile. He really wanted to get up and run away, because Luthor really scared the hell out of him sometimes, but this was even worse than that time with the rabid cyborg-wolves. And Luthor hadn't even needed Kryptonite -- just words.
"Can... can I help?" Conner asked, then kicked himself because that hadn't been what he'd wanted to ask. He'd wanted to ask if he could go. Because he was pretty sure if he just up and left right now without some sort of 'permission' that Luthor would spend the rest of the month making miserable the life of every hero within his reach (and maybe even their families, too). And Luthor's reach at this point extended somewhat off-planet. (So that definitely included Conner, too, because he hadn't gotten the flying thing down yet and Tim hadn't gotten that spaceship he was working on operational yet.)
But before he could take it back, Luthor turned around and stared at him. Just stared. He looked... about as shocked as Conner felt freaked at the moment. But he quickly glanced down at the lights and then turned, scooped the whole mess up, and pulled it around, offering it to him.
Conner took a deep breath, then looked down at the huge tangled mess. Then blinked at it and almost laughed despite himself. It was just one big balled-up mess.
"Um," Conner said.
"It's not as though it's glued together," Luthor muttered, setting it down in front of the both of them and going back to working on it.
Yeah, right. It might as well be. Totally. Impossible. Mess. They'd have better luck going out and trying to buy some new lights from the store. Even Fordman's. It wasn't as if Luthor couldn't afford to grab a few sets.
Why was Luthor even trying?
Well, Conner was pretty good at spatial visualization and orientation. And his "dad" wasn't really getting anywhere. If Conner didn't help out, Luthor would probably pitch a fit and do something involving nuclear launch codes or something out of frustration, so... yeah.
For the good of the world, Conner would help untangle these lights.
It took a lot less time than he'd thought it would. They got them on the tree pretty easily.
By the time they got through the tinsel and most of the ornaments, Conner was relaxed and smiling.
And even if he didn't realize it himself, Lex noticed it for him.