SV/SGA Crossover: Lost Weekend
Title: Lost Weekend
Fandom: SV/SGA
Pairing: Lex/John
Rating: NC-17
Summary: "You okay?" Apparently this is why he's still hanging around, and it's just Lex's luck. Another boy scout.
Note: There's a companion piece to this, Shore Leave, which I also just posted. It probably works better to read this one first. Much love and thanks to the brilliant moonlash_cc for suggesting this idea over brunch one Sunday. And big thanks, also, to the intrepid barely_bean for doing double beta reading duty.
***
Lost Weekend
By Lenore
The third day of pain pills and Scotch, the edgy feeling from Level Three still under his skin, and Lex is more awake than the world, the sun a mere smudge of pink in the eastern sky. He stands at the window, looking out, affectedly casual, because the servants come and go, and who knows which of them is taking mental notes, reporting back to his father. Any spy Lionel would count on reads body language as surely as they eavesdrop on conversations. Lex contemplates the countryside, which is no less treacherous, the almost womanly curve of the land, black crosshatched trees, a delicate mist rising up from the pond, not nearly as innocuous as it seems.
Even by farm standards it's an unreasonable hour, so Lex waits to make the call.
Mrs. Kent picks up on the second ring. "Oh, you just caught him," her voice comes over the line all domestic sunshine. "Here he is."
She hands over the phone, and Clark says brightly, "Hey, Lex." Then his tone dips lower with concern, "How are you feeling?"
"Better, thanks." Lex may end up on the wrong end of a grudge too often, but he never stays hurt for long. He doesn't like to consider the implications, what it means that nothing seems to leave a mark on him in any permanent sense. "I was wondering if you'd like to swing by after school, maybe play some pool."
He'll have to reschedule at least one conference call and stay up most of the night to finish the work he'll be putting off, but it's not as if he's been sleeping anyway.
"Um," Clark says slowly. Yes is always quick and enthusiastic. "I promised my dad I'd help him with the fence, and mom says it's been too long since we've had a real family dinner. But…you could join us?"
"That's all right, Clark. I wouldn't want to impose."
He hesitates. "Another time?"
Not insisting isn't like Clark, and Lex wonders how long Jonathan Kent waited before he delivered the predictable lecture, if they even made it home from the plant before, See why you can't trust Luthors, son? See how they lie? How they hide things?
Lex puts a false smile into his voice. "Sure, Clark. Anytime. Have a good day."
"Lex?" Clark catches him just before he hangs up.
"Yes?"
"I just wanted to say-- in case no one else does. You were really brave that day. I was proud of you."
It's humbling that a teenager's awkward praise can make the warmth flare in his chest. "I'm pretty sure being the hero is your forte, not mine, Clark, but thank you."
On the way to the factory, Lex puts the manufacturer's claim of the world's fastest car to the test. Tempting the fates makes him feel perversely safe. The worst shit always seems to come when he never would have predicted it.
At work, it's clear that Clark's generous opinion of him isn't shared by his employees. He passes blank-faced people in the corridors, with their obligatory deference and their small-town suspicion even sharper than it was before. He won't hear their whispering of course, but he'll know it's there, Do you think he knew? How could he not know? He wonders sometimes why he wants any part of this, why he contorts himself to try to fit here.
His assistant Wanda smiles nervously as he passes her desk. "Morning, Mr. Luthor."
He nods, and she follows him into his office.
"You've got that conference call with the suppliers at three. I just wanted to remind you."
It's funny, really, that Wanda in her Sunday-school blouse with its Peter Pan collar gives him the idea for how to take the edge off. "Put the call through to my cell. I need to go to Metropolis this afternoon."
He plows through the morning with its paperwork and neatly ruled columns of numbers and the forced appearance of everything back to normal. It's a relief when he can finally walk away from the crap factory, get behind the wheel and turn the car toward his own personal Lethe. The layers of heartland peel back as he drives, replaced with progress and grime and blaring billboards, the commercial cynicism oddly comforting in its straightforwardness. He starts to feel lighter by degrees, in his natural element now, like a sea creature returned to the deep.
Lionel is in Tokyo, so there's nothing to avoid at LuthorCorp headquarters. It's the end of the day, but people snap to attention when he comes through the door, a live wire of corporate dedication. He heads up to the executive floor, eyes on him, some envious, some hungry. It means something to be Lex Luthor here.
He smiles at the pretty redhead sitting outside his office. "No need to stay late, Gretchen. I'm just going to catch up on a few things."
He works until it's appropriately late, changes at the penthouse into something more club-worthy, and heads to the successor of Club Zero, a place known ironically enough as Club Doom.
"Mr. Luthor. Welcome," the bouncer greets him at the VIP entrance.
Lex has a drink, then another. Someone offers him coke, but adrenaline has always been his drug of choice, and his benefactor deflates a little at the shake of his head. There was that time I did blow with Lex Luthor, a story he won't get to tell. Although maybe he will anyway. Luthors are as much fiction as fact
He looks around, picks out a woman, big eyes, small skirt, only a thin gloss of city on her, someone he can dazzle, besmirch. She loops her arms around his neck and blinks up at him as they dance, and Lex smiles down, so easy to melt what's already pliable. He traces patterns along the bare skin at her waist, Greek letters, the equation for acceleration, and enjoys her little shivers. He guides her toward the edge of the dance floor, then off it, and over into the darkness. Before she can wonder what he's doing, he has her backed against a wall, her tiny skirt pushed up around her hips.
"Oh," she murmurs as if dazed.
He kisses her, no build up, just possession, and pushes two fingers into her pussy, hard and fast and no warning. This time her "oh" is louder, more startled and surprisingly demanding. He wiggles his thumb in coaxing circles, and her eyes go wide. When she comes, she bites her lip until it's a sharp pink, the blood beautifully close to the surface.
"Enjoy your evening," he says against her ear and leaves her there, chest heaving, the wall holding her up.
A refresher course in why it's good to be him, and he's pleasantly hard now, ready to start looking for the evening's main attraction. A transsexual hooker he knows from other clubs tilts her head in invitation, and he dances over, catches her around the waist, twirls and dips her.
She smiles slyly. "Should I be worried you're going to play the gentleman tonight?"
He slides his hand beneath her flimsy blouse, pushes the fabric away to expose her breast, making her nipple stand up with a quick flick of his fingers.
"I'm not looking to buy," Lex tells her, "but consider this free advertising."
The answering laugh is startlingly masculine. "Honey, I'm going to raise my rates for sure after this."
Lex presses their bodies together, but he's not really paying attention to the close swelter of their hips, too busy sifting through the crowd. There are eyes on him from every angle; the gaze that leaves bruises is the one he's come for. He kisses the hooker, open-mouthed and lewd, and she presses his hand to her tit.
"Have fun." She winks with a flicker of silver eye shadow, a sendoff in glitter.
He leaves by the back door to the alley, knowing his prey will follow. His pants have inched down his hips to a strategically precarious resting place, his shirt open, a welcoming warmth of sweat on his chest. He's ready, and he knows he'll have company soon, a perverted sixth sense that tells him when the guy slides off the barstool, pushes through the crowd, takes the battered doorknob in the palm of his hand.
There's a conveniently shadowy place in the far corner, and he waits there, amid the broken glass and trampled garbage, the perfect spot to blot out everything he'll never have.
***
The music is too loud, or maybe it's just that John doesn’t like it very much, strident industrial shit that makes his teeth hurt. He dearly wishes for Lynyrd Skynyrd and beer that isn't quite so European and expensive. This is the last time I let Mitch talk me into bullshit I don't want to do. John's lost count of how many times he's made this same big declaration. If you weren't such a pussy, Dex always says after one of these Mitch-instigated misadventures.
Come on, Shep. It'll be fun. My sister'll put us up, and we can check out this Metropolis night life she's always bragging about.
John didn't have a compelling reason not to go. There was no one he needed to say goodbye to, no family, and his friends were all shipping out with him.
"You've got to live it up your last weekend stateside," Mitch coaxed. "There's not going to be fuck all to do in Kabul, God knows."
John used to know how to have fun--he keeps reminding himself of this--but he feels comically out of place here, his jeans and black T-shirt a lie on his military skin. There's a part of him already gearing down, moving ahead, getting ready for what his life will be in a matter of days, a simple matrix of mission and survival. Strobe lights and kids with glitter on their faces, the high, bright laughter of people trying too hard to have a good time…it's so unconnected to him he feels like he's intruding on something.
He nurses his beer, a little warmer now than he likes it. All around him, people are hooking up, which is the point, after all. There's a woman eyeing him from the other end of the bar, has been all night, a light in her eyes like a welcome sign. John's pretty sure if he got her somewhere remotely private she'd be all over him, no hoops, not even the usual niceties, "do you come here often" and "what do you do for a living." But he's already got dust in the back of his throat, his muscles tensed for the hard life, the relentlessness of bare necessity. There's no comfort now in anything too soft.
He's seriously considering ducking out, maybe taking a walk around the city, getting some air before heading back to Mitch's sister's apartment to crash on the couch. She gave them both keys. "Just in case," she said, with a boys-will-be-boys smile.
His instincts catch on something just as he's settling his tab. He looks, and there's the carnal curve of a back, bare head, leather riding low on provocative hips, pale peek of skin at waist and chest. The man--or boy, he doesn't wear his age obviously--bends his head, kisses the swell of breast of the pretty drag queen he's dancing with. His sensuality lends him a certain softness, but it's only on the surface, and John is instantly, startlingly hard.
It's not this man that has John's soldier voice going off in his head, however, but someone watching him. He scans the crowd methodically, the same skills of threat assessment he uses out in the field. He zeroes in on the target, a big, shaggy-haired guy, sneering and hungry. John does what he does, observes without being noticed. The bare-headed man heads outside. Not long afterwards the target is on the move, and so is John.
***
The guy Lex picked out to fuck him must not do this very often. He certainly doesn't have the instinct for stealth, standing squarely in a pool of light, giving himself away. Lex takes note of the vicious mouth, nervous eyes, beefy hands clenching and unclenching. He's one of those, Lex thinks. A tough guy who doesn't want to want men, and can't help himself, and somebody has to pay for that. Lex smiles at the serendipity of their finding each other. There's no more eager sacrificial lamb than he is tonight.
The man squeezes Lex's wrists too hard, hisses "faggot!" as he forces him up against the brick.
"Mmm. Quite," Lex agrees amenably.
"Sick fucker."
Lex enjoys the irony of the guy saying this as he's pushing down his pants. He wiggles his naked ass, and the guy clamps down on his wrists again, even harder. Lex can feel his erection, hot through the fabric of his pants, pressed urgently against his bare skin. The guy instinctively rocks his hips, and it's going to be just the way Lex wants it, quick and so brutal he'll feel it for days, without any good intentions that will only betray him in the end.
"You're just begging for it, aren't you?" The guy breathes harshly against Lex's neck. "Is this your thing? Getting straight guys to fuck you?"
Lex laughs dryly. "Because rubbing your hard-on against my ass is so spotlessly heterosexual."
"Bitch!" The guy forces two fingers into Lex's ass, no warning, a violent mirror of Lex with that girl earlier in the evening. There's no lube, and it's been a while since he's done this, and his body lights up in anticipation of being hurtfully alive. The tough guy unzips his pants, and his dick trails slickly across Lex's cheek. Lex closes his eyes, digs his fingers into the crumbling mortar, scrapes his cheek against the rough wall, waiting to be cleaved open, the futile yearning for heroes burned out of him.
It doesn't come, though. There's an efficient blur of punches, and then the guy who was supposed to be fucking him is staring up from the ground, surprised and sullen. Another man, tall with messy hair and a disciplined way of moving, darts a quick, concerned glance at Lex, then directs a flint-hard stare down at the guy among the grime and the used cigarette butts.
"Get your own," the tough guy says, ridiculously like a spoiled child.
"Get out of here," the other man answers quietly. He has some kind of twang to his accent that Lex can't quite place, but beneath it is bedrock, someone used to giving orders and having them obeyed. The guy scrabbles up from the ground and takes a step, and the messy-haired man doesn't budge, as non-negotiable as a wall. Common sense ultimately triumphs over horniness, the tough guy not so tough anymore. He legs it down the alley, not even glancing back. The other man shifts his weight awkwardly, looking elsewhere as Lex pulls up his pants.
"You okay?"
Apparently this is why he's still hanging around, and it's just Lex's luck. Another boy scout.
He lifts an eyebrow. "With your preventing me from getting laid?"
The man's jaw drops so far, so fast it's comical. "You mean-- you wanted that?"
Lex shrugs. "I'm open to a range of experiences."
"Equal opportunity for assholes, huh?" the man says dryly. "You really should be more careful. That guy pinged my radar hard."
"That sounds interesting." Lex moves closer. "Pinging you, I mean."
This might end in the back of a hand across his face, but he really doesn't think so, and it wouldn't stop him anyway. He came here for something, and he's not one to leave empty-handed. Something desperate darts through the other man's eyes, and Lex recognizes it, a feeling like being trapped in too cramped a space. Lex has it all the time in Smallville. So he does what seems only logical. He kisses him.
The man stiffens at the first touch, like he's programmed for denial, and Lex enjoys that, because when the man does relent, mouth opening, arms going around Lex's waist, it's that much hotter.
"What was that for?" the man asks, voice a rasp, when the kiss finally ends.
"Just expressing my gratitude."
"Not necessary," his tone is clipped.
"But what if I want to?" He leans in again, and the man pulls back, and Lex regroups. "A drink then."
The man glances toward the building. "It's not really my kind of--"
"Not there. I know a place."
There's a flicker across the man's face when probably shouldn't loses out to what the hell. "Just a drink."
"Whatever you say." Lex's smile is half promise, half challenge.
***
In the car, they exchange names, and John watches Metropolis whiz by out the passenger side window, thinking alternately so this is what it feels like to ride in a Ferrari and what the hell am I doing here? He's never understood people who get off on being used. There's too much hurt that's unavoidable for the voluntary kind to do anything but turn his stomach. Still, that doesn't keep him from being aware of Lex's scent in the close confines of the front seat, warmth and some kind of expensive cologne and the salt of his sweat. It doesn't stop him from figuring the angles, if he can get those leather pants open, his head into Lex's lap without ending up on the late news, "Deadly car accident, blowjob eyed as cause." He wonders fleetingly if recklessness is contagious.
Lex gives him half-glances out of the side of his eye, and finally John asks, "What?"
"You don't know who I am," he says it matter-of-factly.
"Should I?"
Lex shrugs. "People sometimes do."
John rounds up excuses, not much TV or anything else for that matter in the places he's been these past few years, but Lex doesn't seem to care. If anything, he's oddly pleased.
When they pull up outside a hotel, John bolts up straight in his seat, shoulders tensing. "What the hell--"
"Calm down," Lex says. "My company keeps a suite here for entertaining business associates. There's a fully stocked bar."
"Your company?" John asks incredulously.
Lex laughs, and it's not until they're heading inside that John sees the name on the awning, Luthor Grand Hotel, and puts it together. He's always thought turning heads was just an expression, but it's like something out of a commercial the way everyone stops and stares at Lex.
The woman behind the desk calls out, "Good evening, Mr. Luthor," the bedroom in her voice at odds with the navy crispness of her uniform.
Lex nods and gives her a determinedly public smile, and John knows to a certainty, He's fucked her.
He's painfully conscious of people watching as they cross the lobby, and he wants to tell them, "It's just a drink." In the elevator, there's a camera in the ceiling, and John feels unreasonably paranoid, glancing up at it more than once.
"If there were more to this than a nightcap," Lex says with a sly smile, "I'd buy that tape. Nobody would ever ask or tell."
John has too many reactions at once: could you really do that? and there isn't any more to it, remember? and how did you know?
Lex anticipates one of his questions, "Military bearing. Always a dead giveaway."
In the suite, champagne and strawberries are waiting. Lex pours, lifts his flute. "To serendipity."
John downs his glass, but feels the need to make it clear, "You can cut the seduction bullshit. I'm not one of your women."
Lex gives John a long, speculative look. "No. You're certainly not."
He lays a driveby kiss on John, quick, soft play of tongue, and slides away before John has time to react. "Have a seat," he says like a good host.
They drink their champagne, and the suite seems too quiet. Lex doesn't talk, doesn't make any attempt to hide his curiosity, studying John openly. John is about ready to call it a night when Lex surprises him, "Don't you ever get tired of denying yourself what you want?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," John says, his automatic response.
Lex kisses away the lie, hand stroking his thigh, drifting toward his cock. John's been hard since that first touch in the alley, maybe since he first noticed Lex on the dance floor.
He breaks away, breathing hard, and goes on the counter-offensive, an old habit, "Okay, here's a question for you. What you were doing tonight…what do you get out of letting someone use you like that?"
A corner of Lex's mouth turns up in amusement. "You can't tell me you don't understand the rush of putting yourself on the line. Isn't that how you feel when you're out flying jets?"
"Helicopters. And how the hell do you know that?" The clairvoyant routine is seriously starting to piss him off.
"You've got that certain flyboy something." He downs the rest of his champagne, head tilting back. "And to finish answering your question, you have your way of defying gravity. I have mine."
He gets up, strips off his shirt, heads toward the bedroom. "Are you coming?"
John tells himself he's only following to say that he's leaving, but then there's Lex by the huge, satin-covered bed, peeling himself out of his leather pants. Beautiful round ass, and the rest of him so fiercely thin, and when he turns, his cock is curving out from his body, just begging to be touched.
He watches John speculatively. "I think caution is something you do. Not what you are."
Sometimes you have to give up one sort of freedom to get another, that's how John has always rationalized the compromise he makes to do what he loves best. Right now, though, it seems like an uneasy bargain. He takes a step, and then gravity takes over. He falls into Lex, hands and mouth and body, and Lex meets his urgency, kiss for kiss, touch for touch. Whatever lingering doubts John has from that scene in the alley are chased away when Lex falls to his knees, opens John's pants and licks a hot stripe up his cock that momentarily blacks out entire regions of his brain.
"Jesus." His hands shake as he cups Lex's head, fingers fluttering against soft skin.
Lex smiles against his cock, does some inventive work with his tongue, as if he's trying to see how many times he can make John call out to the Lord, pulling off only once, briefly, to warn him, "Don't come. I want you to fuck me."
"Not helping," John mutters, teeth clenched.
He manages to rein himself in, and Lex rewards him with his throat. John thrusts, and Lex lets him, happily accommodating until the critical moment when he abruptly pulls off. John adds "too fucking good a judge of body language" to his estimation of Lex's skills and makes a loud, unhappy noise at the thwarted orgasm. Lex is actually smiling, smug bastard, as he moves him over to the bed. They tumble onto the satiny coverlet, bodies skidding, a mess of elbows and legs, hands flying over clothing, frantic to get to skin.
Lex tries to take charge again, an obvious control freak. That makes two of them, and John's the one with the military training. He feints and dodges until he has Lex naked and panting and under him. He holds Lex's pale wrists above his head in one hand, grip gentle because he still has an afterimage of that other man brutally squeezing delicate bone, and it's not as if Lex is fighting.
Lex looks up at him thoughtfully, and John kisses him. "You really should treat yourself better."
He doesn't even realize he's said it until Lex smiles, and he doesn't know why he's running off at the mouth about stuff that's none of his business. Talking has never been his thing, in bed, or anywhere else.
Lex moves his body inquisitively against John's, apparently not minding. "I traded up tonight. Give me credit for that."
John feels credit should take the form of a blowjob, and he knows he's doing something right when hot little noises start to stream out of Lex. John spends so much time pretending that when he does give in to his truth it's a fresh surprise, how good this is, how much he loves the feel of a cock on his tongue.
Lex twists his fists in the bedspread and opens his legs wider. John doesn't bother to ask if there's stuff in the bedside drawer, he just reaches for it. His hands shake as he rips into a foil wrapper, pours slick stuff. It's been so long, and he fucking needs this, and the preparation is shoddier than it probably should be.
It's not as if Lex exactly inspires patience with his, "Just do it. Fuck me."
John slides home in one thrust, so tight, so good he sees stars when he squeezes his eyes shut. He gulps down a shaky breath and thrusts, and Lex moans, long and low, from the back of his throat. This blurred by pleasure, it's hard for John to remember why he ever denies himself this. It feels so elemental, so logical, the right answer to life's best problem.
When he comes, it's like being washed away from himself and onto some far shore. Afterwards he stares up at the ceiling, comfortably empty the way being sated always makes him feel, hand on his belly, rising and falling with every breath.
"Don't you ever get tired of hiding what you are?" Lex's voice comes to him dreamily.
Under other circumstances, John would be quick to take offense, but now it just makes him wonder. He turns his head on the pillow, sees an answering spark of curiosity in Lex, and something else too. Recognition, he thinks, and then he gets it. He's not the only one here with a false storefront.
"Some things are worth the sacrifice." He knows it's true when he hears the print of his voice on it.
Lex is quiet for a moment. "I suppose you're right. Getting what you want, for instance." And then they're kissing again.
By the time the second round of sex winds down, the small hand is in the small numbers on the bedside clock, and John is comfortably sore, another thing he'd managed to forget, the pleasure of being turned inside out. Lex sprawls next to him, and usually John can't get his pants back on fast enough once the fucking is over, but there's nothing usual about any of this.
Still, Lex doesn't seem the type who enjoys waking up to the night before. Everything about this set up, the porno bed and champagne and the drawer full of condoms, it all screams, "Fuck and get out."
He braces his hand, pushes himself up. "I should probably--"
Lex proves he's nothing if not full of surprises, winding an arm around John's waist. "We've got the night."
It turns into the entire weekend, and then Lex calling the office on Monday to say he'll be late. They spend the stolen time getting croissant crumbs in the sheets and having one last fuck goodbye. Lex has to floor the Ferrari to get John to the airport on time.
"You could stay," Lex says as John is getting out of the car.
John smiles and wishes it weren't too public here for a kiss. "No, I couldn't."
He has to run for his gate, and when he catches sight of Mitch, he hopes the stiff-legged way he's moving doesn't give too much away.
It's not until he's back on base, packing up his gear that he finds the black jeweler's box at the bottom of his bag and a note on cream-colored stationery edged in violet.
Let me know if those sacrifices ever stop being worth it. --LL
P.S. If I were treating you like one of my women, there would be two of these.
John palms the earring, the cold brilliance of the stone strangely hot on his skin, or maybe he's just projecting the giver onto the gift.
It's incongruous to think of a diamond going into battle with him. He could leave it with the rest of his stuff in storage, but finally tucks it away in his bag. A good luck charm can't hurt where he's going. If it's also a reminder of everything he pretends away, no one else will be the wiser.
***