Fic: And Lo, The Stubborn Shall Inherit The Clark (2/4, complete)
For the clexmas Bingo! Challenge
Shape: Individual Fill (to-be Blackout, eventually, we hope)
Prompts: Costumes (yes, it contains others, but this was the original prompt)
Title: And Lo, The Stubborn Shall Inherit The Clark
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: pre-Clex
Rating: R (to be safe)
Spoilers: general for early seasons, with a dash of in-joke or two for later-season madness :)
Word count: >11,300 total
Summary: Bunnies, drive-by-shootings, and guy chick flicks, Smallville-style. Also, scheming!Lana! (nooooooo! …wait, um, nm. We might be ok with this after all.)
Warnings: Un-beta'd. Except by the bunnies and redheads. Who only sometimes talk back, maybe.
Author's Note: Rating for sexual inclinations, and some language. Wacky timeline, story occurs sometime mid-season 2 (post-2x09, prior to 2x10 (and 2x13)) -- please assume 'events' from ‘real-life’ occurred earlier in the SVU:) Oh sweet brevity, why dost thou elude me so? No additional author’s notes at the end of the fic! Holy camoley!
Installments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Related sillyfic version of this work: Inheriting Clark -- The Happy Bunny Version!
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
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Part 1
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Lex swallowed hard.
Well, to say that that had not been a harrowing experience would be a lie. And no doubt the worst was yet to come.
He stiffly made his way down the stairs of the entrance, and tried to think through the shock.
Lana had let go of his arm once he’d been inside, and he’d surveyed the very crowded main room as they’d both made their way to the counter. But when he’d turned to go, that was when Martha Kent descended, with a goddess-like radiance in red, red, red, with a Gothic white face and ruby lipstick. In fact, he was fairly sure that that was the exact moment that things began to go horribly sideways and crooked and backwards.
Mrs. Kent had taken one look at him, nodded once, shared a silent look with Lana, then smiled, gently put a hand on his shoulder, and promptly steered him into the back room of the Talon.
She and Lana had had half his clothes off before he’d even realized what they were doing.
Of course, he’d panicked a bit, and at Mrs. Kent’s verbal direction simply grabbed what they handed him, and backed quickly into an alcove behind some very solid, shielding shelving to change. He hadn’t questioned it, or even realized what sort of outfit he’d changed into, until after he’d finished and dazedly come out from behind the shelving again. He wasn’t quite sure how Martha’d done it, but she’d managed to hit just the right words and tone that the Metropolis boy in him just did as he was told and changed in the ‘booth’ quickly, efficiently, and completely without thought. Maybe it had been something leftover from her own Metropolis girl days now long-past, or perhaps it was a maternal thing. Either way, it had been highly effective. He’d been impressed despite himself, once his mind's capacity for independent thought had caught back up with him.
But being so deftly maneuvered into something he hadn’t meant to do wasn’t going to stop him from bringing it all to a halt, especially after she’d gently touched his shoulder with one hand, guided him over to a stool and sat him down, then explained to him that they weren’t done yet and that makeup was next. But when he took a breath, fully intending to gracefully extricate himself from the situation, he made the fatal error of looking up into her eyes and found himself unable to say no. She was too matter-of-fact, too efficient and calmly sure, and he’d felt nothing but 9 years old again and patently unable to do anything except sit there with his eyes half-shuttered while the two ladies went at it with white stage makeup, glittery bright mascara, and bold pinks and blues, not moving or fidgeting even when they’d added a wig -- he hated wigs -- and a hat on top.
After which, Martha gave him the once-over, apparently deemed him worthy to associate with lesser mortals again, and shooed him back into the main area, leaving Lana to clean up. He’d been fairly stunned to see his pale reflection in the window glass -- he barely recognized himself. And, having finally gotten a good look at himself for the first time, he nearly turned tail and fled back into the storeroom then and there, Luthor pride about running away from anything be damned. But he had had no time in which to enact his reaction -- Martha was gone and then back again in a flash, barring the way while handing over an elaborate tray so full of goodies that he could barely balance it with one hand, along with a small folding card table to carry under his other arm.
Once duly prepared, she had politely but firmly informed him in a questioning tone that brooked no argument that he would be standing and taking tea with The White Rabbit outside and directing passerby to come indoors for other light refreshments, if it pleased him to do so. Then she sent him on his way.
Oh, and told him to ‘have fun’ with an imperial knowing smile. Very important, that last bit.
So here he was, standing stiffly like a fool in front of his White Rabbit, wondering when Clark was going to start laughing so he could get angry, slam down the table and the snacks, and storm away so he could finally do what he really wanted to do right now, which was just disappear into a back alley somewhere, sink into the ground, and die of embarrassment as a small puddle of horrified Luthor-boy. Which was an old concept for him, and admittedly one he’d thought he’d grown out of, but apparently today was just full of surprises.
Except Clark wasn’t really on the same page of the afternoon's program with him, because he wasn’t laughing like he was supposed to. He seemed stuck at goggling at him instead. How very uncooperative of him.
Maybe at some point he’d move on to gawking and making some noise. In the meantime, Lex tried his very best and managed to get out, without sounding strangled or completely sarcastic, “We’ve been gifted with a tea service from Her Majesty.” And as far as he was concerned, that was exactly what had happened. He never would have thought it, but Lionel didn’t hold a candle to Martha’s command presence... when she decided to use it, she could be downright regal... if she wanted to be.
“Oh.” Clark replied, and startled into motion. “Um, here, let me, uh, help you with--“ He took the table from Lex, unfolded it carefully, and gently set it down, having trouble tearing his gaze away from Lex for any length of time while doing so. Lex lowered and slid the full-to-overflowing tray of goodies onto the flat surface with a nearly audible sigh of relief, caught somewhere between extreme tension and watery-limbed weakness.
Within moments, Clark had poured and handed Lex a cup of tea on a saucer. They had lovely yellow roses on.
Lex decided that staying with his bunnified friend a little longer could make no noted difference at this point, already having been out in the open on the sidewalk of Main Street for an extended duration. He was finding the experience surreal -- incredibly, somehow he was not being pointed and jeered at by the crowds in the streets, well past the time to have been noticed and recognized by all and sundry. He slid behind the table to stand next to Clark, and sipped at his tea while trying to center himself. Hmmm, orange Darjeeling. Not bad. ...And that wasn’t a hysterical attempt to break from reality by focusing on the little things at all, oh no, not at all.
He straightened slightly, closed his eyes, took in a long deep breath, and blew it out slowly, forcing himself to relax the cable-taut tension in his shoulders. Right. He was Lex Luthor. He could be calm. This was nothing. He was standing out on the street next to his best friend enjoying some tea on a perfectly lovely day. What did it matter that he was dressed like... some odd species of impoverished Victorian male? He looked good in anything --fine. He looked fine, in anything. He was fine-looking in anything. He made suits look good. He could make this look good. No, better: it looked good because he was wearing it. It didn’t matter that this… travesty of a brown coat with mismatched plaid vest, striped trousers, and assorted ribbons was what he happened to be wearing at the moment. It didn’t matter that he was standing out here in these monstrosities while his nice, comfortable shoes were indoors. It didn’t matter that he had a teased out bright red wig atop his head that could have put his own hair, lost to the meteors long ago, to shame, or that he had an unbelievably large top hat settled upon that. It certainly didn’t bother him that he’d been manhandled and stripped half-naked against his will not five minutes ago by Clark’s unrequited crush and Clark’s mother of all people, oh no. And the makeup? Pfft. He’d worn a fine veneer of glitter and lipstick and eyeshadow on the club scene before. This was just a little bit more than that to which he had already become acclimated, merely slathered on by deft female hands...
He gave up. Even he had limits.
Meanwhile, the little boy deep inside that usually got the brunt of his repression, and thus also tended to be blatantly ignored with prejudice, curled up in a ball and cried, wanting to know why the nice red-haired lady was being so mean, making him dress up like a hobo clown and then shoving him out onto the street so people would laugh at him. Sweets and tea didn’t make up for it -- he was really confused and hurt.
Yet still, Lex felt stubbornly determined not to leave until he’d gotten his photo of Clark. He wasn’t about to give up after already having gone through all this.
It must be true love.
“Um. Are you ok?” his love asked of him.
Lex opened his eyes again, turned slightly, and blinked.
Clark was standing there, looking at him. But he wasn’t wearing the bunny head. Lex glanced down and realized Clark had it cradled under his arm, with a bite-sized scone in the other hand. “You’re not eating anything and, uh, you’re kind of twitching a little...” Clark elaborated with a concerned-sounding tone, frowning slightly. Lex looked down at the table and back up at him. “The peach scones with clotted cream are pretty good,” Clark added, trying to be helpful.
Then they both jumped slightly as a car roared past, then skidded to a halt with a screeching of tires halfway down the street into the just-opened curbside parking space. Ah, and now his day was complete, because mixed in with that noise had been the unmistakable sound of a high speed shutter going off and loud laughter. Someone was playing paparazzi today, and they even sounded to be fairly good at it.
Chloe and Pete fairly stumbled out of the car, Pete’s grumbling audible from where they were standing and probably due to Chloe’s mishandling of his car. She shortly joined him on the curb, then let out a yell and thumped him in the arm, hard, and grabbed the camera away from him. Lex and Clark exchanged a glance, then watched the unmistakable gestures of an experienced photographer deftly removing the lens cap from a camera. Lex stifled a cough. Then Chloe and Pete glanced up, grinned at them, and started to head over. It seemed that there would be no reprieve for him, after all. Perhaps he should have bolted while he'd still had the chance.
Clark looked over at them, down at the bunny head he’d removed along with his anonymity, back to Lex, down at the bunny head again, grimaced slightly, then looked levelly at the scone in his hand. “Worth it,” he muttered, before popping the scone in his mouth and chewing casually away.
Well, maybe it was for Clark. As for himself, somehow Lex doubted the scones were good enough to offset Chloe’s reporter nagging, the subsequent pictures in the paper that would appear in every rag this side of the Mississippi, and the inevitable chewing out he was likely to receive from his father for a Luthor looking like this out in public. Whatever ‘this’ was. Lex tried to steel himself against the inevitable, but pasting on a very weak, rather thin smile was the best he could manage at this point.
“Wow Clark, nice bunny suit, you silly farmb-- ohmiGOD!” Chloe’s sarcasm ended in a high pitched squeal, apparently after finally getting a good look at Lex. Here we go. “Oh my god. You-- I have to take a picture of you two. Can I take a picture? I have to-- Hold on--“ Lex’s smile got thinner and wider, and was slowly tending towards maniacal...
“Erm, Chlo--“ Clark started to mumble around the crumbs. He swallowed in a hurry, glanced down at Lex, then smiled weakly at his reporter friend. “You shouldn’t--"
Flash! Too late. “Awesome, thanks! You know, Clark is your biggest fan,” she grinned, and winked at Clark. “C’mon Pete!” And Clark’s other male friend trailed along after her, half-whispered as an aside with a genuine smile, “Cool hat, man,” and... was the look he gave Lex slightly impressed?
What the hell?
He heard Chloe’s voice echo down the stairs to them before they were cut off by the closing door. “I can’t believe Lex actually got Johnny Depp to--!”
Lex blinked. Then he calmly set his teacup down very slowly and just so on the top of the table, and turned to look up at Clark. “Johnny Depp?” he inquired mildly.
“Uh, yeah, he’s the actor who plays the Mad Hatter that you’re-- ...dressed up as. Leeex,” Clark chided. “I thought you said you were going to go see that movie!”
Oh. The name had been vaguely familiar for a reason. Mr. Depp was that actor, the one Clark gushed over. He felt his lips start to pull off his teeth in a twisted snarl and fought to keep his face neutral. Lex had decided to never see one of his films with Clark, either in the theater or on video recording during one of their movie nights, because watching Clark heterosexually drool over another man who was not him was really not his idea of a good time. Frankly, he’d rather have his teeth pulled without a narcotic numbing agent. So far, he had done a laudable job of managing to find excuses to not see the films in the theater, and had avoided the potential of a movie night viewing simply by not purchasing the DVDs, but he belatedly remembered having promised Clark in a moment of insanity that he would go see the man’s newest movie, which was... ah, a remake of Alice in Wonderland. He hadn’t yet, though, for reasons that he felt were obvious and well-justified, and he wasn’t planning on doing so anytime soon. “I’ve been busy.”
Clark obviously wasn’t buying it, and his disappointment showed. But then he glanced over at the entrance to the Talon and pulled a face. “I can’t believe Chloe confused you for him. You don’t really look anything at all alike.” He paused, then his eyes got wide and he turned to face him directly. “--I mean, you look much better! --In that!” Clark hurriedly amended in a rush, twice, then turned a bright red.
Lex blinked. He’d never seen someone blush so hard that the tips of their ears turned red. Clark continued to stammer vaguely incoherently, looking anywhere but at him. Lex’s previous train of thought came to a screeching halt, then derailed entirely, as he watched his young friend with growing astonishment. Finally, after playing with the bunny head in his hands for a moment in an absently nervous way, Clark must have remembered that he was holding it because he promptly put it back on to hide his face, at least a little.
Amazing. It was like a choir of angels was singing in his ears. Lex wished he had known before now that Johnny Depp movies were the Smallville equivalent of the gay guy’s chick flick. He might have to revise his stance on the banned videos somewhat. And apparently Clark thought he was better-looking in Victorian drag than his favorite movie star idol? Suddenly he felt much better about his change of outerwear, as though a heavy lead weight had lifted from his insides.
“Well, I for one am glad that she mistakenly recognized me, Clark,” he responded slowly.
Clark winced. He knew Lex didn’t like ending up as news or in the paper. “I’ll get a copy from her tomorrow and delete the original before she figures it out. ...Um, if you still want a picture of me in the suit, I mean.”
“Yes.” Oh yes Clark, I do. I would like a memorial to this moment of revelations, absolutely.
“Ok.”
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Part 3