title: Pygmalion
author: newtypeshadow
notes: A Smallville AU based on the story of Pygmalion and his statue.
When his mother died she left him a statue, a fortune, and a father with feral eyes. The last he endured and learned from as best he could, unprotected and alone, bald and ostracized, and only thirteen years old—too young and innocent by far to play his father's funicular games of venom and fire. But he did learn, because Lex Luthor was too bright not to. He learned until he thought he knew more than his father, until he thought his leash had changed hands. Then he raged, and did many things—foolish things, dark things. And in his childhood bed, hooked up to a respirator while his father shouted at private doctor after doctor, Lex realized he knew very little of the intricacies of his father and the world. It was his twenty-first birthday.
Two days later he was on his feet again, body healed and unmarked but for the scar on his lip and the fatigue in his stride. Lawyers were in his father's office waiting for him. His mother's trust fund was signatures away. A statue now stood in the bedroom of his own Metropolis penthouse.
Lex loved the statue, though he couldn't say exactly why. It was a naked man, perhaps in his early twenties, with short, soft curly hair, high cheekbones. He had a strong jaw to match his corded muscles and good proportions, and seemed strangely innocent despite his determined stance. Lex had never seen anything closer to perfection.
The statue by at his bedside soon became the standard by which Lex measured all others. He tumbled the fairer sex and found them wanting; the firmer sex he found lacking. He took to taking business and office work to his bedroom so he could sit against the headboard and feel the stone man peering over his shoulder, curious and at times disapproving of Lex's cutthroat methods. He introduced it to science fiction, mythology, history, and cartoonsevery night he could he slid a movie or DVD into the home entertainment center opposite his bed to show his statue something else about the world outside Lex's bedroom. When he left in the mornings, Lex would open the curtains and push and pull the statue so he could face Metropolis, East or West. When he returned to the penthouse, Lex could almost hear the statue whispering about his day, about the lives of the people fifty stories below; the stone man cared deeply about them, Lex soon came to realize.
And the statue loved sunlight. The day Lex expended the energy to move his statue all the way to the edge of the West bedroom window before leaving, he returned to find the rosy marble skin flushed and warm, as though it were flesh. The stone eyes had a blue cast, and Lex thought the man's mouth might have curved up into a smile. Clark loved the sun setting over Metropolis, and sunlight made him positively glow.
That was the day Lex learned his name, and afterwards, unless there was a pressing need to dash out of the penthouse as soon as he woke, Lex moved Clark right up to one of the windows before leaving for work.
Clark appreciated it greatly. He seemed more relaxed during movies, more confident about what he knew. He quipped during Star Trek and the cheesy B-movies in Lex's collection; he asked about Greek mythology, the significance of the name Alexander Joseph Luthor in history and in Metropolis; he didn't like most of the people Lex brought home, and made comments and critiques that were hard pressed to ignore, though only Lex heard them. Eventually Lex stopped bringing people home, or sleeping in their beds—he was really too busy, and he knew Clark was right about them anyway. Besides, having one's unsurpassably gorgeous best friend standing over one's bed in Avenging Angel mode while one is trying to have meaningless sex puts a damper on things. By the time Lex Luthor was twenty-three it was just those glowing stone eyes and Lex's hand. Taking in Clark's chiseled features and cock nestled between stone thighs, Lex found he didn't mind.
Two months after his father died, Lex closed his bedroom curtains, kissed Clark's still, stone lips, curled at the statue's feet, and cried until no more tears slid down his face, until even the most vivid memories of the manipulative man-lion who had so dominated his life evoked nothing more than the idle thought that Lex should not feel so numb. That night he called his secretary and had her clear his schedule for the following day. He slept cocooned in blankets, his head poking out only as far as his eyes could see Clark's face. He woke still holding Clark's large hand.
On his twenty-sixth birthday Lex blew out his candles with a heartfelt, half-formed wish for Clark. Hope, Mercy, Chastity, and Bruce stood around him; as the last candle flickered out, Lex looked down the hallway and met Clark's still eyes. He thought they might have shifted, but climbing into bed that night Clark was still stone, his lips still hard, and the sun's warmth was no longer with him.
Bruce called a week later. "Put him on the roof." He wouldn't say why or who suggested it, but when Lex told Clark his qualms, his friend surprised him by agreeing with the mysterious order. So Lex put Clark out on the balcony, and from there got him onto the roof with Hope and Mercy's aid. He didn't sleep a wink that night, even though Clark's voice carried into his room, soft reassurances cradling the lonely billionaire, warming him better than the down comforter pulled to his shoulders. The young CEO checked on him before work; his skin was golden in the rising sun.
When Lex returned at seven o'clock that evening, the statue was gone. Bruce made himself unavailable after the news carried that the young Luthor was in a rage, and for the second night in a row the bald man didn't sleep. After he put aside his search for the missing statue he watched movies in his bedroom, zombie-like, trying to fool himself into hearing Clark's hypnotic voice over his shoulder, just as he used to.
Two days later he had to return to work. People stayed out of his way; Mr. Luthor was more volatile than ever. He spent a late night playing catch-up and got home around midnight, fully intending to drink himself to sleep; his body never suffered from hangovers, thanks to his metabolism, but a numbing buzz would help him relax. When he left the elevator, however, Mercy told him there was an intruder, the balcony his or her likely point of entry. They found no one in the penthouse, though, and it didn't seem that anything was missing. Regardless, Lex nearly saw red. It had not been his day for four days in a row.
There was no one in his room when Lex stepped into his bathroom and got ready for bed, resolutely preparing himself to sleep without Clark at his bedside for yet another night.
He needn't have made the attempt. When he opened the bathroom door, steam slithering out into the cooler air of his room, Clark was sprawled on his bed, covers pooled about his waist, sleeping softly curled around Lex's pillow. He made a soft sound of contentment as Lex slid under the sheets beside him, then promptly released the pillow and wrapped his deliciously warm, naked body around Lex.
"Where did you go?" Lex asked, lips moving against Clark's golden collarbone, bald head nestled into the crook of a flesh-and-blood neck.
Clark mumbled something nonsensical about Antarctica, parents, and talking crystals, and Lex fell asleep with a smile on his once-again peaceful face.