2012 Pitch-Hit for Fruitbat00! Recompense and Revenge
Clexmas Note: Due to circumstances beyond control (an unrecoverable corrupted file), Fruitbat didn't get a gift last year. So this year, one of our Clexmas Elves has graciously stepped in to give an extra one. So Happy Clexmas, Fruitbat, and thanks for being so understanding last year!
Title: Recompense and Revenge
From: To Be Revealed! Josephina_X
For: Fruitbat00
Type: Fic, 4800
Rating: G
Warnings: bondage and dub con (sort of)
Summary: Everyone thinks Clark has come in contact with red-K. Has he? Or has he just finally figured out who and what he wants, regardless of what everyone else thinks, and decided to go get it...
Request: (see summary ^^) angst, action, drama, h/c, bondage, dub con, RedK Clark, Possessive Clark and/or Lex, Snarky or Sneaky Lex. Pissed off Lex is always fun *g* As long as there is a happy ending for the boys.-:
Giftee Notes: A super-belated pinch-hit for fruitbat00 for Clexmas 2012! (...ah, well, it's the thought that counts, right? :) So, um, crack!fic. For fruitbat00. Yes. *coughs*. This is set post-series Smallville, with a general idea or two taken from the comics.
Recompense and Revenge
"Well, he's finally done it this time," Chloe said tersely as she tried to concentrate enough to pull up the Watchtower feeds on her cellphone in real-time. It was a little difficult to type properly while trying to keep up a hard-and-fast pounding-in-the-floor-tiles sprint.
"Who and what?" Oliver asked, keeping pace with her and barely breathing hard, the loveable jerk. Which turned out to be a good thing when they hit a slick patch -- she had her hands full of phone, and Oliver ended up with his hands full of her.
So instead of them both ending up on the floor, they both mostly kept their feet and, thanks to Oliver, just skidded shoulder-first into the far wall and hitting hard enough to knock the breath out of them both. (Too bad Oliver wasn't much padding, thought Chloe, though those abs and pecs were good for other things.)
They both took a moment to catch their breath. ...Well, more like a half-minute, not that it mattered anymore -- it was just another thirty seconds far too late.
"Luthor's finally gone too far," she informed him, then grimaced as she stumbled and Oliver hauled her upright against his very, very firm chest. She turned the video screen of her smartphone towards him. "Superman just hit the Penthouse level of LexCorp Towers at something like Mach 3. And they're going to be spending a lot of time sifting through the rubble."
"Shit," Oliver said quietly. And yeah, that was about right. Their worst-case scenario, come to life: their best friend had finally snapped, and now they were going to have to take him down. Hopefully there'd be something salvageable of him left, but Chloe wasn't counting on it. Clark wasn't like Oliver.
"We've got to get to Watchtower and coordinate with J'onn to--" Chloe grabbed Oliver's arm to pull him along, then stopped at his lack of motion. Then her eyes narrowed. Why is my husband looking so guilty?
"Ollie, what's going on?" Chloe asked, suddenly suspicious. "What aren't you telling..." she trailed off, her eyes going wide.
Then she gritted her teeth and hauled off and punched him in the shoulder, hard. "You idiot!" she yelled at him."You knew?!? You sonofa--!"
Oliver winced away. "I didn't!" he protested. "Not really! I just thought--" He grabbed at Chloe's arms and held them tightly but carefully, stopping her wild swings at him. "Chloe, I swear, I didn't know he was homicidal! I just thought--"
"You thought what?" she ground out, getting in his face. "You thought what, Ollie?"
Oliver took a deep breath in, visibly steeling himself.
"I thought he could use the downtime," her husband told her, eyes pleading.
Chloe paled.
Oh god, she thought. Because of course there was a worse than worst-case scenario.
She wrenched herself out of his grip and took off at a dead run, ignoring Oliver's yells behind her.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When Chloe made it to the Metropolis Watchtower, she smoothly joined up with Lois, who was already there and pinging the signal tracer on Clark's belt.
"Ollie said he thought Clark 'needed the downtime,'" Chloe seethed. "Please tell me you didn't see this coming, Lois."
Lois heaved a sigh. "He didn't take any Red from the bunch we found two weeks ago," she told Chloe. "I checked."
Chloe's frown deepened. "Great. So either he took some before it was signed in..."
"...or he wasn't on any." Lois finished for her. She had her own worried frown going. "Smallville's been a little restless lately, but I didn't think it was that bad." She shook her head, and bit her lip. "I mean, it's not like Luthor hasn't had it coming for a long time--"
"--but it'd be better if Clark wasn't the one doing it," Chloe sighed, nodding in agreement.
"No kidding," Lois said. "But if he is on the Red..." Lois muttered, her eyes narrowing as the satellite map finally pulled up a location on him.
"Well, you never know," Chloe put out there, playing devil's advocate. "Maybe it was Intergang, or something. Aerosolized red-K dust to go along with their green-K bullets, maybe?"
"That doesn't really explain this," Lois said in a tone that promised violence, and Chloe blinked.
Then Lois pulled up the audio feed on his belt.
They heard what sounded like some very pleased and ecstatic groans, sounds that were being made by a very familiar voice.
They both paled, and exchanged glances.
...That couldn't be what it sounds like, could it?
Then Chloe pulled up the camera feeds she'd set up at that location a couple years ago, as a just-in-case.
Oh, god. It gets worse.
They both looked on in horror at both Clark and the man he was with, audio in-sync with the video they were watching.
And the man he was with was Lex Luthor.
"Well, I guess that answers one question," Lois said flatly. "Not homicidal. Suicidal." She turned away and grabbed her purse. She needed to get over there, pronto.
"...maybe he's not on the Red?" Chloe said, her eyes glued to the screen at the figurative trainwreck-in-progress, and feeling a little sick to her stomach.
"Oh, he'd better be on the Red!" Lois called over her shoulder as she stomped away, slamming the button for the elevator to the underground garage.
That thought just made Chloe feel even more ill, because according to Clark's mom, the Red just stripped away his inhibitions.
Which would mean that what he was doing was what he really wanted to do...
Chloe swallowed hard, then bolted for the nearest toilet.
She blamed it on the morning sickness later.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"I'm gonna kill him," Lois muttered to herself, as she slammed the door to her car. She'd had an hour-twenty to get a good mantra going, and a full head of steam along with it. "I'm gonna kill him, I'm gonna kill him, I'm gonna kill him."
Assuming Luthor didn't finish killing him first, except Lois was first in line for that, thank-you-very-much.
Unless Luthor was responsible for this mess -- not that she'd have put it past him, given how his 'plans' usually ended up turning out these days -- in which case she'd be doing the same thing, just killing a different 'him.'
She stomped her way up the crumbling stone stairway and into the ivy-covered still-pretty-wrecked-after-the-explosion old Smallvillian Luthor mansion.
She stomped her way down the entrance hall and into the library, and took up a very angry-Superman stance: head up, chin jutting out strongly, feet planted, hands on her hips. (Also ow, because she was still clenching her car keys in her hand. This was coming out of someone's hide.)
Luthor stared at her balefully from across the room, from the chair in which he was sitting, Clark's head in his lap.
"Get him the hell off of me," he said with a dull anger, and his eyes had that shocky blank look that generally promised violence once he was out of the current situation he was in and had had some time to fully process it.
"Mmmmm," Clark groaned happily from where he was kneeling at Lex's side. His arms were wrapped around Luthor's torso, and his head was firmly planted in Lex's lap. He rubbed his cheek slightly against Lex's thighs, and barely slitted open his eyes.
"Oh, hiii Lo-is!" he said dreamily, before letting his eyes fall closed again.
"Mmmmm," he repeated with a relaxed smile, as Lex continued to pet him on the head in a jerky, repetitive motion.
Lois stared at this for awhile.
...Nope, it wasn't any better seeing it in person.
She stomped over to the two of them and resituated herself, glaring down at the two of them.
They both kept doing what they were doing.
Lois caved first, because the glaring was getting her nowhere.
"Superman, let go of him," she said tersely.
"No," came the dreamy, half-petulant reply.
Luthor slowly turned his head to look up at her, but didn't stop his petting.
"Superman, let go of him right now," she said.
"No." He snuggled a little deeper into Luthor's lap.
Right.
Lois turned to Luthor and gave him a look.
Luthor narrowed his eyes at her, then twisted his head away abruptly.
He clenched his jaw and stopped petting Clark-as-Superman, letting his hand fall down to dangle at his side, rather than lie still on the Hero's head.
Clark stirred in his lap. His smile dropped away, and his eyes blinked open.
And then he straightened and shoved himself upwards abruptly -- kneeling in the air, eyes level with Luthor's own, cape flowing behind him.
He planted his hands on either side of Luthor's legs, the chair creaking dangerously where his fingers clenched around the side of the seat.
He leaned forward, eyes-sharp, fully-focused on the man in front of him to the exclusion of everything and everyone else.
And he demanded, nose-to-nose with said Luthor: "Keep petting."
Luthor stared back into Superman's eyes with a total lack of expression.
Luthor raised his hand up.
And started petting Clark mechanically on top of his head again.
Clark's eyes rolled up and his eyelids fluttered down.
He gave out a soft, happy sigh and slowly drifted downwards, until his knees hit the floor with a soft thump and he practically melted all across the businessman's lap.
He murmured some incoherent happy nonsense into Luthor's stomach, snuggled in a little closer, and wrapped his arms around Luthor's waist again.
Luthor kept up his mechanical petting, glaring off into the distance expressionlessly, and was blatantly trying very hard not to pay attention to Clark's clearly very-unwelcome intrusion into his personal space.
Lois stared down at this.
She crossed her arms, and turned back to Luthor.
He was sitting ramrod straight in the chair, and his suit might've been well-fitted to him and carefully cut to mask his body language, but this close up she could easily tell that his shoulders were clenched up tighter than a steel drum.
Somehow, she got the impression that maybe Luthor might have tried stopping at least once or twice already.
Great.
Lois opened her mouth to--
"This is all your fault," Luthor said flatly, overriding her.
"--Excuse me?!?"
Luthor kept staring off into the distance, kept on petting Clark, even though he clearly didn't want to be doing either of those two things at all.
"Apparently," he bit out, "you are a flirt." Lois stared at him. "And are not giving him what he needs, in the shower or otherwise." Lois choked a little. "And so it apparently falls to me," Luthor said mock-lightly, then his jaw clenched, "his nemesis," Lois winced, "to supply what he is not getting elsewhere."
Lois stood there and stared at him.
Then she clenched her jaw. Yup. Trust Luthor to muck up his own dumbass plans on his own, just not enough to get himself jailed for it.
"I knew it," she said testily. "You gave him red-K!"
Annoyingly, Luthor's response to her perfectly justifiable accusation was to turn his head and stare up at her like she had two heads, as though neither one had a functioning thought process between them. (He was still damn good at nonverbal insults despite the memory loss, and she bristled despite herself, feeling more than a little offended at the unspoken implication.)
"Don't be ridiculous, Lane," he orated pointedly in her general direction as he turned away from her again. "I've heard what that material does to Superman. I don't want him within a hundred miles of the... stuff..." he trailed off, then looked down at Clark, eyes widening.
Lois, undeterred, said, "You know about the Kryptonite from Intergang."
Luthor barely stopped short of rolling his eyes at her. "Of course I do!" he sneered up. "It isn't as though the League told me about it ...even if I did ask nicely," he ended more quietly in almost a grumble.
"Keep petting," they both heard Clark said flatly from where his face was buried in Luthor's stomach.
Luthor twitched, then resumed the petting. Neither of them had realized that he'd stopped.
"It's still your fault," Lois insisted.
Luthor looked up at her, thoroughly unamused.
"I'm not the one who set up a bomb in my Penthouse this afternoon," he informed her dryly. "And I certainly wouldn't have tugged at this idiot's hair in irritation, trying to get his attention, if I'd thought that doing so would result in this," he gestured downwards with his free hand, looking thoroughly disgusted. "I was only attempting to get him to set me down someplace within the city limits, instead of several hundred miles away in the middle of nowhere like last time," he added testily.
Lois stared down at him.
"If the League's going to let him run about grabbing people out of immediate harm's way," Luthor added caustically, "then they ought to plaster him with some sort of warning label." He paused. "Or at least make him wear some sort of hat." And Lois didn't' know how he did it, but Luthor somehow made it sound like somebody needed to sue them for negligence, or something.
Lois stared down at him.
"Or you ought to make sure that you don't let him leave the Fortress in the morning without a good thorough petting to go with him," Lex continued heatedly, "because, reportedly, whatever hair-washing regime that you're doing with him in the shower clearly isn't cutting it."
Lois stared down at him.
Luthor glared back at her, hatefully.
Lois contemplated just leaving him there, because Luthor clearly was being punished by having to do this far more than any other threats or acts of violence in the last year combined, and Clark seemed okay for the moment even if he obviously was under the influence of something. (Lois was putting bets on that magic champagne from Chloe and Oliver's bachelor/ette party over the Red, at this point. Clark was far too cheerful about everything, and didn't seem nearly flighty or pervy enough for it to be the Red.)
Sure, Clark was going to be embarrassed to hell and back over this later, assuming he remembered it -- and probably even more embarrassed if he didn't -- but it'd have to wear off at some point, and frankly for his behavior today Lois felt that he really deserved it. It wasn't like she had to help them out; that was the League's schtick. She could just turn around and walk away. And it would probably serve the two of them right if she did.
She smirked down at the two of them at the last bloody-minded thought, and Luthor seemed to have picked up on her readiness to leave, because his expression evened out again, to one that -- if she didn't know any better -- almost looked defeated.
Her smirk died an ugly death. Oh no, you bastard, you wouldn't dare--!
And then he sighed and said, with bitter resignation, and a cadence better-suited to a rather different plea that most of the fine citizens of Metropolis made at one time or another:
"Lois Lane, help."
Lois stared at him, then glared at him, then closed her eyes and rubbed at the bridge of her nose, trying to ignore the burgeoning headache that she was getting handed to her on a silver platter.
And then he said, "Please."
Lois ran a hand over her face.
Rrgh.
There was a long pause, during which Lois kept her eyes firmly shut, because god help her if Luthor got it into his head to attempt making puppy-dog eyes at her. She'd probably have to set somebody on fire (...preferably him, sometime when Clark wasn't attached).
She eventually cracked open her eyes again. Luthor was not making puppy-dog eyes at her.
They were more like blank, soul-sucking pools of hopelessness and death and destruction. It was fucking creepy, even for a resurrected clone-person-monster-amalgamate-whatever-the-hell-he-was, and she really didn't want to see them ever again.
"...Fine!" she gritted out, throwing up her hands at the two of them and getting out her cellphone.
~*~*~*~*~*~
It took three League members, several large chunks of Kryptonite, and an honest-to-god crowbar from the trunk of Chloe's car to get Superman off of Lex Luthor, and another several chunks of Kryptonite and three more League members to subdue him enough to keep him off of Lex.
Superman pouted back at Lex as he was dragged away by the shoulders, thoroughly trussed up in ropes, chains, duct tape, and whatever else the Leaguers had managed to cobble together on-hand for the extraction, in order to properly restrain him. (And Lex honestly couldn't blame them for some of the very unprofessional whatever-else, because most of them had been sporting multiple bruises by the end of it.)
Lex really didn't like the looks the rest of the Leaguers were giving him -- certainly not any more than the looks he was getting from Superman, which were truly unnerving and setting him very much on edge.
Lex straightened his cuffs and tried to ignore the rumpled lines of his suit and the repetitive facial tic he seemed to have developed over the duration of his enforced stay. He took a moment to violently kick over the uncomfortable rickety old chair he'd been stuck in for the last three hours, and then kick it again across the room for good measure.
He glared around at his surroundings. 'Ancient family mansion,' indeed. He was having the structure torn down first-thing; its mere existence was thoroughly offending him, and he'd have done it that much sooner if he'd been aware that the damn thing had even existed to be torn down. The place was an eyesore and a blight on the landscape, to boot.
After pacing about, and kicking the chair around until it splintered, and kicking at some of the rubble after that, and ranting about all of these things to himself for a bit, he finally reached some semblance of calm again... or at least less of a froth at the mouth -- Lex was taking what he could get today, because it was shaping up to be one of those days.
He eventually let Otis usher him out of the crumbling structure, out to the limo, and back to the city.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex Luthor looked out over his city from his high-rise hotel room, from a standing position -- he would never dismiss the luxury of being able to stand up whenever he wanted to ever again -- and glared out over the Metropolis skyline, the city laid out before him.
"Otis," he told his faithful assistant. "Do you know, I think I learned something today."
Otis blinked at him. "You know who bombed the Penthouse?"
Lex blinked, then clenched his jaw and pursed his lips sourly. "No." He'd need to get on that, though. Measures would need to be taken.
"Oh. Um, what did you learn, sir?"
Lex took a deep breath, in through his mouth, and let it out through his nose.
"I learned," he began ponderously, carefully tasting each word as he formed it and let it escape from his mouth, "why I hate Superman so much."
"You did?"
"Yes."
"Why?" asked Otis.
Lex clenched his jaw, and crossed his arms. His fingers dug into his biceps.
He glared out the window at the cityscape, as if it suddenly offended him.
"Because," he said. "Superman has very nice hair."
"Um," said Otis.
"And I do not."
"...Well, sir," Otis said after a pause. "You do look pretty nice without it."
Lex turned and looked at him incredulously.
"I mean, most people can't pull off bald, and--"
"That is not the point!" Lex hissed out.
"It isn't?" Otis asked, clearly thoroughly confused.
"No!" Lex told him. "It is not!"
Otis blinked, then stood there, waiting patiently for enlightenment from his boss.
"I have no hair," Lex informed him. "Petting doesn't feel right without hair. Thus," he said, turning away from the window and starting to pace, "while Superman was apparently petted by me before, I could not receive the same from him. Our former relationship pre-memory loss was clearly one-sided!" He came to a stop by the far corner. "Therefore, this is why I have always hated him and he is now my nemesis."
"Oh. Um. Are you sure?" Otis asked him doubtfully.
"Completely," Lex replied without any reservation whatsoever. "And being my nemesis, I should get revenge for all this one-sided nonsense." He strode away from Otis, back towards the bedrooms. "Send a memo to the research division. I want them to get started on a Kryptonite-powered laser system immediately."
"Uh, yes sir," Otis said, sounding a little worried. Lex ignored it.
Instead, he got a small, triumphant smile. Because Intergang might be a bit ahead of him in the weapons-development-against-particular-Kryptonian-menaces game, but he didn't have to let that stand for very much longer. Not once he put his own people on it. He wouldn't be caught flat-footed in this, not again. The tables would turn, soon enough. And as for all those previous pettings he couldn't remember, for which he must have received nothing in return, well...
We'll just see about that, he thought to himself. Oh, we'll see. He began to smirk. We'll see who comes out on top now.
He slammed the bedroom door behind him and turned and fell backwards onto the bed, staring up at something only he could see, plans-within-plans forming behind his eyes.
I shall have my satisfaction, he grinned up at the ceiling maniacally, one way or the other!
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Gah!" Lex said, ducking down and away abruptly. He swiveled in his work chair (which was very comfortable, thank you, unlike other chairs that he would never, ever mention again) and stared, then glared up at the Kryptonian menace who was currently hovering at his elbow right next to his chair.
"What are you-- STOP PETTING ME!!" Lex demanded, batting at the top of his head to make Superman stop it, "Stop it right now!!"
Superman had the audacity to both stop and then pout at him.
Lex glared up at him with significantly more bloody-ended violence on his mind, then slowly slid a hand towards the drawer at his left.
"I don't know how you got out--" he informed Superman primly.
"The League said I was all better," Superman reported dutifully, and Lex had to grit his teeth to stop himself from huffing out a few choice words and getting sidetracked, because clearly he was not.
"--and I don't know how you got in here--" Lex continued as though he had not been rudely interrupted, then had to interrupt himself when Superman's gaze slid towards the doorway.
"--OTIS!" Lex yelled out in displeased shock and lept to his feet, as he saw his personal assistant retract his head from the slightly-open gap and pull the door closed quickly, beating a fast retreat from his very angry boss.
"Traitor," Lex seethed, leaning forward with his hands pressed against the top of his desk, staring after the man who had let the alien in. Well, fine. He'd have a talk with Otis later. A very thorough talk about how one does not let one's boss's alien nemeses into one's boss's office during normal business hours without at least paging him first. A very thorough and loud and angry talk.
...Well, at least he was standing now, instead of caught in his chair. Lord knew what the alien might try to do to him next if he remained seated.
Not that Superman couldn't just shove him back down into said chair.
He turned back to said alien, about to give him an earful.
The alien did not oblige, instead opting to speak out of turn before Lex could get a word in edgewise. "He's not a traitor; he told me you were mad that I didn't pet you back."
"Did he leave out the part where I told him that petting doesn't feel right without any hair?" Lex said darkly.
"...No?"
Lex looked up at him in pure annoyance, then pushed off of the desk.
"I didn't think you were right about that part," Superman admitted, crossing his arms.
Well, at least he sounded a little sorry about it. Not that it mattered.
"I shall have my revenge," Lex declared, drawing himself up to his full height in the face of someone still slightly taller than himself, even when not floating.
Superman made a face. "Huh? Why?"
"Because I demand recompense!" Lex retorted. "We had a completely one-sided relationship!" He folded his arms in front of him, too, just because he could. "It doesn't matter if I still can't remember it -- you took advantage of me back then," Lex unfolded one arm enough to poke a finger at Superman's chest, "and you did it again yesterday. I refuse to be ill-used by you, ever again," he said firmly. "And I don't see why you can't just get that Lane woman to pet you, if you need it so much."
"It's not the same when she does it; you do it better," Superman said matter-of-factly, but then he got a sharp-eyed look. It was, in fact, very similar to the sharp-eyed look Lex had gotten yesterday, right before he'd gotten flown off to that little town in the middle of nowhere, and Lex had to force himself not to take a hurried step backwards in the face of it. It was incredibly, disturbingly similar, except that this time Superman's irises weren't looking nearly so red.
Actually, as a point of reference, they weren't looking very red at all. So Superman was probably actually telling the truth -- he wasn't and shouldn't still be drugged anymore. Probably.
Unfortunately, knowing that wasn't exactly making standing up to that sharp-eyed look of his any easier on Lex.
Lex swallowed hard and brought his chin up slightly, trying hard not to think about what had happened the last time he'd been this close to a chair and this Kryptonian, because if he did he'd probably bolt... and get grabbed and not get away again, like last time. And that just wouldn't do.
He started creeping a hand towards that drawer again, because he had a good-sized chunk of Kryptonite in it now -- the green version of it -- and he wasn't about to suffer a repeat of yesterday. Not if he could--
"It's not the petting, though, right?" Superman interrupted suddenly, apparently done with his thinking, and he was very, very sharp-eyed now. He took a step forward, loomed over Lex, and continued with, "It's the recompense part that you're mad about, right?" and Lex blanked out for a moment.
"...Yes?" said Lex, stopping in place. Then he frowned, because he felt rather justifiably at this point that any sort of agreement with him would be letting the alien off too easily. "You owe me, though."
"You're right, I do," said Superman, brightly enough.
Lex frowned a little more, because that had been far too easy.
"And I don't trust you not to take advantage of me, with all these demands you keep making," Lex added cautiously.
"Right," Superman said, eyes gleaming. "You should get the things you want first."
"...Yes," Lex said uneasily. "It's only fair."
"Okay!"
"...Okay?" Lex said, feeling a little confused, because when exactly had the world decided to start sliding out from under him at a tilt?
"Uh huh!" Superman said, all but bouncing on his toes and looking very, very chipper. Very suspiciously so.
Lex stared up at him, wondering what he was missing.
Superman grinned at him, looking disturbingly ready to do... something. That was probably going to be even more disturbing. Than yesterday.
And then the alien reached for his head with both hands.
Lex's eyes widened.
He froze up for only a second, but a second was a second too long.
And then Superman's hands were on him.
Lex tensed up to grab at him, but it was too late! The alien had him in his clutches again, and--
...he sighed and practically collapsed into his chair.
Superman moved with him.
And shortly thereafter Lex had his head pillowed in his arms, face-down on top of his desk groaning.
"Is this okay?" he was asked, and the hands stilled.
"--Don't stop!!" Lex demanded and ahhhhhh they started up again.
Superman was moving his fingers in little circles of pressure, like some kind of massage, moving slowly all across his head, and it felt soooooo gooooood.
"Mmmmmmmm," Lex breathed out, then groaned again in pure pleasure as Superman's hands moved further down, working at slowly loosening up some of the tension in his neck.
"So, if I do this then, would that be okay?" he was asked. "I could do this as recompense, and you pet me in return?"
"Yes, fine, okay," Lex muttered half-coherently, vaguely annoyed at how he was apparently expected to have to talk while important massaging was going on. "Whatever you want, just keep doing that," he mumbled out.
"Okay," Superman grinned happily, and he kept on doing that.
~*~*~*~*~*~
END
Title: Recompense and Revenge
From: To Be Revealed! Josephina_X
For: Fruitbat00
Type: Fic, 4800
Rating: G
Warnings: bondage and dub con (sort of)
Summary: Everyone thinks Clark has come in contact with red-K. Has he? Or has he just finally figured out who and what he wants, regardless of what everyone else thinks, and decided to go get it...
Request: (see summary ^^) angst, action, drama, h/c, bondage, dub con, RedK Clark, Possessive Clark and/or Lex, Snarky or Sneaky Lex. Pissed off Lex is always fun *g* As long as there is a happy ending for the boys.-:
Giftee Notes: A super-belated pinch-hit for fruitbat00 for Clexmas 2012! (...ah, well, it's the thought that counts, right? :) So, um, crack!fic. For fruitbat00. Yes. *coughs*. This is set post-series Smallville, with a general idea or two taken from the comics.
Recompense and Revenge
"Well, he's finally done it this time," Chloe said tersely as she tried to concentrate enough to pull up the Watchtower feeds on her cellphone in real-time. It was a little difficult to type properly while trying to keep up a hard-and-fast pounding-in-the-floor-tiles sprint.
"Who and what?" Oliver asked, keeping pace with her and barely breathing hard, the loveable jerk. Which turned out to be a good thing when they hit a slick patch -- she had her hands full of phone, and Oliver ended up with his hands full of her.
So instead of them both ending up on the floor, they both mostly kept their feet and, thanks to Oliver, just skidded shoulder-first into the far wall and hitting hard enough to knock the breath out of them both. (Too bad Oliver wasn't much padding, thought Chloe, though those abs and pecs were good for other things.)
They both took a moment to catch their breath. ...Well, more like a half-minute, not that it mattered anymore -- it was just another thirty seconds far too late.
"Luthor's finally gone too far," she informed him, then grimaced as she stumbled and Oliver hauled her upright against his very, very firm chest. She turned the video screen of her smartphone towards him. "Superman just hit the Penthouse level of LexCorp Towers at something like Mach 3. And they're going to be spending a lot of time sifting through the rubble."
"Shit," Oliver said quietly. And yeah, that was about right. Their worst-case scenario, come to life: their best friend had finally snapped, and now they were going to have to take him down. Hopefully there'd be something salvageable of him left, but Chloe wasn't counting on it. Clark wasn't like Oliver.
"We've got to get to Watchtower and coordinate with J'onn to--" Chloe grabbed Oliver's arm to pull him along, then stopped at his lack of motion. Then her eyes narrowed. Why is my husband looking so guilty?
"Ollie, what's going on?" Chloe asked, suddenly suspicious. "What aren't you telling..." she trailed off, her eyes going wide.
Then she gritted her teeth and hauled off and punched him in the shoulder, hard. "You idiot!" she yelled at him."You knew?!? You sonofa--!"
Oliver winced away. "I didn't!" he protested. "Not really! I just thought--" He grabbed at Chloe's arms and held them tightly but carefully, stopping her wild swings at him. "Chloe, I swear, I didn't know he was homicidal! I just thought--"
"You thought what?" she ground out, getting in his face. "You thought what, Ollie?"
Oliver took a deep breath in, visibly steeling himself.
"I thought he could use the downtime," her husband told her, eyes pleading.
Chloe paled.
Oh god, she thought. Because of course there was a worse than worst-case scenario.
She wrenched herself out of his grip and took off at a dead run, ignoring Oliver's yells behind her.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When Chloe made it to the Metropolis Watchtower, she smoothly joined up with Lois, who was already there and pinging the signal tracer on Clark's belt.
"Ollie said he thought Clark 'needed the downtime,'" Chloe seethed. "Please tell me you didn't see this coming, Lois."
Lois heaved a sigh. "He didn't take any Red from the bunch we found two weeks ago," she told Chloe. "I checked."
Chloe's frown deepened. "Great. So either he took some before it was signed in..."
"...or he wasn't on any." Lois finished for her. She had her own worried frown going. "Smallville's been a little restless lately, but I didn't think it was that bad." She shook her head, and bit her lip. "I mean, it's not like Luthor hasn't had it coming for a long time--"
"--but it'd be better if Clark wasn't the one doing it," Chloe sighed, nodding in agreement.
"No kidding," Lois said. "But if he is on the Red..." Lois muttered, her eyes narrowing as the satellite map finally pulled up a location on him.
"Well, you never know," Chloe put out there, playing devil's advocate. "Maybe it was Intergang, or something. Aerosolized red-K dust to go along with their green-K bullets, maybe?"
"That doesn't really explain this," Lois said in a tone that promised violence, and Chloe blinked.
Then Lois pulled up the audio feed on his belt.
They heard what sounded like some very pleased and ecstatic groans, sounds that were being made by a very familiar voice.
They both paled, and exchanged glances.
...That couldn't be what it sounds like, could it?
Then Chloe pulled up the camera feeds she'd set up at that location a couple years ago, as a just-in-case.
Oh, god. It gets worse.
They both looked on in horror at both Clark and the man he was with, audio in-sync with the video they were watching.
And the man he was with was Lex Luthor.
"Well, I guess that answers one question," Lois said flatly. "Not homicidal. Suicidal." She turned away and grabbed her purse. She needed to get over there, pronto.
"...maybe he's not on the Red?" Chloe said, her eyes glued to the screen at the figurative trainwreck-in-progress, and feeling a little sick to her stomach.
"Oh, he'd better be on the Red!" Lois called over her shoulder as she stomped away, slamming the button for the elevator to the underground garage.
That thought just made Chloe feel even more ill, because according to Clark's mom, the Red just stripped away his inhibitions.
Which would mean that what he was doing was what he really wanted to do...
Chloe swallowed hard, then bolted for the nearest toilet.
She blamed it on the morning sickness later.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"I'm gonna kill him," Lois muttered to herself, as she slammed the door to her car. She'd had an hour-twenty to get a good mantra going, and a full head of steam along with it. "I'm gonna kill him, I'm gonna kill him, I'm gonna kill him."
Assuming Luthor didn't finish killing him first, except Lois was first in line for that, thank-you-very-much.
Unless Luthor was responsible for this mess -- not that she'd have put it past him, given how his 'plans' usually ended up turning out these days -- in which case she'd be doing the same thing, just killing a different 'him.'
She stomped her way up the crumbling stone stairway and into the ivy-covered still-pretty-wrecked-after-the-explosion old Smallvillian Luthor mansion.
She stomped her way down the entrance hall and into the library, and took up a very angry-Superman stance: head up, chin jutting out strongly, feet planted, hands on her hips. (Also ow, because she was still clenching her car keys in her hand. This was coming out of someone's hide.)
Luthor stared at her balefully from across the room, from the chair in which he was sitting, Clark's head in his lap.
"Get him the hell off of me," he said with a dull anger, and his eyes had that shocky blank look that generally promised violence once he was out of the current situation he was in and had had some time to fully process it.
"Mmmmm," Clark groaned happily from where he was kneeling at Lex's side. His arms were wrapped around Luthor's torso, and his head was firmly planted in Lex's lap. He rubbed his cheek slightly against Lex's thighs, and barely slitted open his eyes.
"Oh, hiii Lo-is!" he said dreamily, before letting his eyes fall closed again.
"Mmmmm," he repeated with a relaxed smile, as Lex continued to pet him on the head in a jerky, repetitive motion.
Lois stared at this for awhile.
...Nope, it wasn't any better seeing it in person.
She stomped over to the two of them and resituated herself, glaring down at the two of them.
They both kept doing what they were doing.
Lois caved first, because the glaring was getting her nowhere.
"Superman, let go of him," she said tersely.
"No," came the dreamy, half-petulant reply.
Luthor slowly turned his head to look up at her, but didn't stop his petting.
"Superman, let go of him right now," she said.
"No." He snuggled a little deeper into Luthor's lap.
Right.
Lois turned to Luthor and gave him a look.
Luthor narrowed his eyes at her, then twisted his head away abruptly.
He clenched his jaw and stopped petting Clark-as-Superman, letting his hand fall down to dangle at his side, rather than lie still on the Hero's head.
Clark stirred in his lap. His smile dropped away, and his eyes blinked open.
And then he straightened and shoved himself upwards abruptly -- kneeling in the air, eyes level with Luthor's own, cape flowing behind him.
He planted his hands on either side of Luthor's legs, the chair creaking dangerously where his fingers clenched around the side of the seat.
He leaned forward, eyes-sharp, fully-focused on the man in front of him to the exclusion of everything and everyone else.
And he demanded, nose-to-nose with said Luthor: "Keep petting."
Luthor stared back into Superman's eyes with a total lack of expression.
Luthor raised his hand up.
And started petting Clark mechanically on top of his head again.
Clark's eyes rolled up and his eyelids fluttered down.
He gave out a soft, happy sigh and slowly drifted downwards, until his knees hit the floor with a soft thump and he practically melted all across the businessman's lap.
He murmured some incoherent happy nonsense into Luthor's stomach, snuggled in a little closer, and wrapped his arms around Luthor's waist again.
Luthor kept up his mechanical petting, glaring off into the distance expressionlessly, and was blatantly trying very hard not to pay attention to Clark's clearly very-unwelcome intrusion into his personal space.
Lois stared down at this.
She crossed her arms, and turned back to Luthor.
He was sitting ramrod straight in the chair, and his suit might've been well-fitted to him and carefully cut to mask his body language, but this close up she could easily tell that his shoulders were clenched up tighter than a steel drum.
Somehow, she got the impression that maybe Luthor might have tried stopping at least once or twice already.
Great.
Lois opened her mouth to--
"This is all your fault," Luthor said flatly, overriding her.
"--Excuse me?!?"
Luthor kept staring off into the distance, kept on petting Clark, even though he clearly didn't want to be doing either of those two things at all.
"Apparently," he bit out, "you are a flirt." Lois stared at him. "And are not giving him what he needs, in the shower or otherwise." Lois choked a little. "And so it apparently falls to me," Luthor said mock-lightly, then his jaw clenched, "his nemesis," Lois winced, "to supply what he is not getting elsewhere."
Lois stood there and stared at him.
Then she clenched her jaw. Yup. Trust Luthor to muck up his own dumbass plans on his own, just not enough to get himself jailed for it.
"I knew it," she said testily. "You gave him red-K!"
Annoyingly, Luthor's response to her perfectly justifiable accusation was to turn his head and stare up at her like she had two heads, as though neither one had a functioning thought process between them. (He was still damn good at nonverbal insults despite the memory loss, and she bristled despite herself, feeling more than a little offended at the unspoken implication.)
"Don't be ridiculous, Lane," he orated pointedly in her general direction as he turned away from her again. "I've heard what that material does to Superman. I don't want him within a hundred miles of the... stuff..." he trailed off, then looked down at Clark, eyes widening.
Lois, undeterred, said, "You know about the Kryptonite from Intergang."
Luthor barely stopped short of rolling his eyes at her. "Of course I do!" he sneered up. "It isn't as though the League told me about it ...even if I did ask nicely," he ended more quietly in almost a grumble.
"Keep petting," they both heard Clark said flatly from where his face was buried in Luthor's stomach.
Luthor twitched, then resumed the petting. Neither of them had realized that he'd stopped.
"It's still your fault," Lois insisted.
Luthor looked up at her, thoroughly unamused.
"I'm not the one who set up a bomb in my Penthouse this afternoon," he informed her dryly. "And I certainly wouldn't have tugged at this idiot's hair in irritation, trying to get his attention, if I'd thought that doing so would result in this," he gestured downwards with his free hand, looking thoroughly disgusted. "I was only attempting to get him to set me down someplace within the city limits, instead of several hundred miles away in the middle of nowhere like last time," he added testily.
Lois stared down at him.
"If the League's going to let him run about grabbing people out of immediate harm's way," Luthor added caustically, "then they ought to plaster him with some sort of warning label." He paused. "Or at least make him wear some sort of hat." And Lois didn't' know how he did it, but Luthor somehow made it sound like somebody needed to sue them for negligence, or something.
Lois stared down at him.
"Or you ought to make sure that you don't let him leave the Fortress in the morning without a good thorough petting to go with him," Lex continued heatedly, "because, reportedly, whatever hair-washing regime that you're doing with him in the shower clearly isn't cutting it."
Lois stared down at him.
Luthor glared back at her, hatefully.
Lois contemplated just leaving him there, because Luthor clearly was being punished by having to do this far more than any other threats or acts of violence in the last year combined, and Clark seemed okay for the moment even if he obviously was under the influence of something. (Lois was putting bets on that magic champagne from Chloe and Oliver's bachelor/ette party over the Red, at this point. Clark was far too cheerful about everything, and didn't seem nearly flighty or pervy enough for it to be the Red.)
Sure, Clark was going to be embarrassed to hell and back over this later, assuming he remembered it -- and probably even more embarrassed if he didn't -- but it'd have to wear off at some point, and frankly for his behavior today Lois felt that he really deserved it. It wasn't like she had to help them out; that was the League's schtick. She could just turn around and walk away. And it would probably serve the two of them right if she did.
She smirked down at the two of them at the last bloody-minded thought, and Luthor seemed to have picked up on her readiness to leave, because his expression evened out again, to one that -- if she didn't know any better -- almost looked defeated.
Her smirk died an ugly death. Oh no, you bastard, you wouldn't dare--!
And then he sighed and said, with bitter resignation, and a cadence better-suited to a rather different plea that most of the fine citizens of Metropolis made at one time or another:
"Lois Lane, help."
Lois stared at him, then glared at him, then closed her eyes and rubbed at the bridge of her nose, trying to ignore the burgeoning headache that she was getting handed to her on a silver platter.
And then he said, "Please."
Lois ran a hand over her face.
Rrgh.
There was a long pause, during which Lois kept her eyes firmly shut, because god help her if Luthor got it into his head to attempt making puppy-dog eyes at her. She'd probably have to set somebody on fire (...preferably him, sometime when Clark wasn't attached).
She eventually cracked open her eyes again. Luthor was not making puppy-dog eyes at her.
They were more like blank, soul-sucking pools of hopelessness and death and destruction. It was fucking creepy, even for a resurrected clone-person-monster-amalgamate-whatever-the-hell-he-was, and she really didn't want to see them ever again.
"...Fine!" she gritted out, throwing up her hands at the two of them and getting out her cellphone.
~*~*~*~*~*~
It took three League members, several large chunks of Kryptonite, and an honest-to-god crowbar from the trunk of Chloe's car to get Superman off of Lex Luthor, and another several chunks of Kryptonite and three more League members to subdue him enough to keep him off of Lex.
Superman pouted back at Lex as he was dragged away by the shoulders, thoroughly trussed up in ropes, chains, duct tape, and whatever else the Leaguers had managed to cobble together on-hand for the extraction, in order to properly restrain him. (And Lex honestly couldn't blame them for some of the very unprofessional whatever-else, because most of them had been sporting multiple bruises by the end of it.)
Lex really didn't like the looks the rest of the Leaguers were giving him -- certainly not any more than the looks he was getting from Superman, which were truly unnerving and setting him very much on edge.
Lex straightened his cuffs and tried to ignore the rumpled lines of his suit and the repetitive facial tic he seemed to have developed over the duration of his enforced stay. He took a moment to violently kick over the uncomfortable rickety old chair he'd been stuck in for the last three hours, and then kick it again across the room for good measure.
He glared around at his surroundings. 'Ancient family mansion,' indeed. He was having the structure torn down first-thing; its mere existence was thoroughly offending him, and he'd have done it that much sooner if he'd been aware that the damn thing had even existed to be torn down. The place was an eyesore and a blight on the landscape, to boot.
After pacing about, and kicking the chair around until it splintered, and kicking at some of the rubble after that, and ranting about all of these things to himself for a bit, he finally reached some semblance of calm again... or at least less of a froth at the mouth -- Lex was taking what he could get today, because it was shaping up to be one of those days.
He eventually let Otis usher him out of the crumbling structure, out to the limo, and back to the city.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex Luthor looked out over his city from his high-rise hotel room, from a standing position -- he would never dismiss the luxury of being able to stand up whenever he wanted to ever again -- and glared out over the Metropolis skyline, the city laid out before him.
"Otis," he told his faithful assistant. "Do you know, I think I learned something today."
Otis blinked at him. "You know who bombed the Penthouse?"
Lex blinked, then clenched his jaw and pursed his lips sourly. "No." He'd need to get on that, though. Measures would need to be taken.
"Oh. Um, what did you learn, sir?"
Lex took a deep breath, in through his mouth, and let it out through his nose.
"I learned," he began ponderously, carefully tasting each word as he formed it and let it escape from his mouth, "why I hate Superman so much."
"You did?"
"Yes."
"Why?" asked Otis.
Lex clenched his jaw, and crossed his arms. His fingers dug into his biceps.
He glared out the window at the cityscape, as if it suddenly offended him.
"Because," he said. "Superman has very nice hair."
"Um," said Otis.
"And I do not."
"...Well, sir," Otis said after a pause. "You do look pretty nice without it."
Lex turned and looked at him incredulously.
"I mean, most people can't pull off bald, and--"
"That is not the point!" Lex hissed out.
"It isn't?" Otis asked, clearly thoroughly confused.
"No!" Lex told him. "It is not!"
Otis blinked, then stood there, waiting patiently for enlightenment from his boss.
"I have no hair," Lex informed him. "Petting doesn't feel right without hair. Thus," he said, turning away from the window and starting to pace, "while Superman was apparently petted by me before, I could not receive the same from him. Our former relationship pre-memory loss was clearly one-sided!" He came to a stop by the far corner. "Therefore, this is why I have always hated him and he is now my nemesis."
"Oh. Um. Are you sure?" Otis asked him doubtfully.
"Completely," Lex replied without any reservation whatsoever. "And being my nemesis, I should get revenge for all this one-sided nonsense." He strode away from Otis, back towards the bedrooms. "Send a memo to the research division. I want them to get started on a Kryptonite-powered laser system immediately."
"Uh, yes sir," Otis said, sounding a little worried. Lex ignored it.
Instead, he got a small, triumphant smile. Because Intergang might be a bit ahead of him in the weapons-development-against-particular-Kryptonian-menaces game, but he didn't have to let that stand for very much longer. Not once he put his own people on it. He wouldn't be caught flat-footed in this, not again. The tables would turn, soon enough. And as for all those previous pettings he couldn't remember, for which he must have received nothing in return, well...
We'll just see about that, he thought to himself. Oh, we'll see. He began to smirk. We'll see who comes out on top now.
He slammed the bedroom door behind him and turned and fell backwards onto the bed, staring up at something only he could see, plans-within-plans forming behind his eyes.
I shall have my satisfaction, he grinned up at the ceiling maniacally, one way or the other!
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Gah!" Lex said, ducking down and away abruptly. He swiveled in his work chair (which was very comfortable, thank you, unlike other chairs that he would never, ever mention again) and stared, then glared up at the Kryptonian menace who was currently hovering at his elbow right next to his chair.
"What are you-- STOP PETTING ME!!" Lex demanded, batting at the top of his head to make Superman stop it, "Stop it right now!!"
Superman had the audacity to both stop and then pout at him.
Lex glared up at him with significantly more bloody-ended violence on his mind, then slowly slid a hand towards the drawer at his left.
"I don't know how you got out--" he informed Superman primly.
"The League said I was all better," Superman reported dutifully, and Lex had to grit his teeth to stop himself from huffing out a few choice words and getting sidetracked, because clearly he was not.
"--and I don't know how you got in here--" Lex continued as though he had not been rudely interrupted, then had to interrupt himself when Superman's gaze slid towards the doorway.
"--OTIS!" Lex yelled out in displeased shock and lept to his feet, as he saw his personal assistant retract his head from the slightly-open gap and pull the door closed quickly, beating a fast retreat from his very angry boss.
"Traitor," Lex seethed, leaning forward with his hands pressed against the top of his desk, staring after the man who had let the alien in. Well, fine. He'd have a talk with Otis later. A very thorough talk about how one does not let one's boss's alien nemeses into one's boss's office during normal business hours without at least paging him first. A very thorough and loud and angry talk.
...Well, at least he was standing now, instead of caught in his chair. Lord knew what the alien might try to do to him next if he remained seated.
Not that Superman couldn't just shove him back down into said chair.
He turned back to said alien, about to give him an earful.
The alien did not oblige, instead opting to speak out of turn before Lex could get a word in edgewise. "He's not a traitor; he told me you were mad that I didn't pet you back."
"Did he leave out the part where I told him that petting doesn't feel right without any hair?" Lex said darkly.
"...No?"
Lex looked up at him in pure annoyance, then pushed off of the desk.
"I didn't think you were right about that part," Superman admitted, crossing his arms.
Well, at least he sounded a little sorry about it. Not that it mattered.
"I shall have my revenge," Lex declared, drawing himself up to his full height in the face of someone still slightly taller than himself, even when not floating.
Superman made a face. "Huh? Why?"
"Because I demand recompense!" Lex retorted. "We had a completely one-sided relationship!" He folded his arms in front of him, too, just because he could. "It doesn't matter if I still can't remember it -- you took advantage of me back then," Lex unfolded one arm enough to poke a finger at Superman's chest, "and you did it again yesterday. I refuse to be ill-used by you, ever again," he said firmly. "And I don't see why you can't just get that Lane woman to pet you, if you need it so much."
"It's not the same when she does it; you do it better," Superman said matter-of-factly, but then he got a sharp-eyed look. It was, in fact, very similar to the sharp-eyed look Lex had gotten yesterday, right before he'd gotten flown off to that little town in the middle of nowhere, and Lex had to force himself not to take a hurried step backwards in the face of it. It was incredibly, disturbingly similar, except that this time Superman's irises weren't looking nearly so red.
Actually, as a point of reference, they weren't looking very red at all. So Superman was probably actually telling the truth -- he wasn't and shouldn't still be drugged anymore. Probably.
Unfortunately, knowing that wasn't exactly making standing up to that sharp-eyed look of his any easier on Lex.
Lex swallowed hard and brought his chin up slightly, trying hard not to think about what had happened the last time he'd been this close to a chair and this Kryptonian, because if he did he'd probably bolt... and get grabbed and not get away again, like last time. And that just wouldn't do.
He started creeping a hand towards that drawer again, because he had a good-sized chunk of Kryptonite in it now -- the green version of it -- and he wasn't about to suffer a repeat of yesterday. Not if he could--
"It's not the petting, though, right?" Superman interrupted suddenly, apparently done with his thinking, and he was very, very sharp-eyed now. He took a step forward, loomed over Lex, and continued with, "It's the recompense part that you're mad about, right?" and Lex blanked out for a moment.
"...Yes?" said Lex, stopping in place. Then he frowned, because he felt rather justifiably at this point that any sort of agreement with him would be letting the alien off too easily. "You owe me, though."
"You're right, I do," said Superman, brightly enough.
Lex frowned a little more, because that had been far too easy.
"And I don't trust you not to take advantage of me, with all these demands you keep making," Lex added cautiously.
"Right," Superman said, eyes gleaming. "You should get the things you want first."
"...Yes," Lex said uneasily. "It's only fair."
"Okay!"
"...Okay?" Lex said, feeling a little confused, because when exactly had the world decided to start sliding out from under him at a tilt?
"Uh huh!" Superman said, all but bouncing on his toes and looking very, very chipper. Very suspiciously so.
Lex stared up at him, wondering what he was missing.
Superman grinned at him, looking disturbingly ready to do... something. That was probably going to be even more disturbing. Than yesterday.
And then the alien reached for his head with both hands.
Lex's eyes widened.
He froze up for only a second, but a second was a second too long.
And then Superman's hands were on him.
Lex tensed up to grab at him, but it was too late! The alien had him in his clutches again, and--
...he sighed and practically collapsed into his chair.
Superman moved with him.
And shortly thereafter Lex had his head pillowed in his arms, face-down on top of his desk groaning.
"Is this okay?" he was asked, and the hands stilled.
"--Don't stop!!" Lex demanded and ahhhhhh they started up again.
Superman was moving his fingers in little circles of pressure, like some kind of massage, moving slowly all across his head, and it felt soooooo gooooood.
"Mmmmmmmm," Lex breathed out, then groaned again in pure pleasure as Superman's hands moved further down, working at slowly loosening up some of the tension in his neck.
"So, if I do this then, would that be okay?" he was asked. "I could do this as recompense, and you pet me in return?"
"Yes, fine, okay," Lex muttered half-coherently, vaguely annoyed at how he was apparently expected to have to talk while important massaging was going on. "Whatever you want, just keep doing that," he mumbled out.
"Okay," Superman grinned happily, and he kept on doing that.
~*~*~*~*~*~
END