Disclaimer: I don't own any of this.
A/N: My own AU/futureverse is one where Lex knows everything and still wants Clark in spite of it all - himself included. This is just a glimpse into that world.
Most of my fics have their own soundtracks. This one's is "Fields Of Gold" by Sting.
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Fools
"All that glisters is not gold…"
The Merchant of Venice
The LuthorCorp helicopter spun up to speed and was soon airborne, rising above the Smallville plant and wheeling back towards Metropolis. Lex sat calmly in the glass-enclosed cabin, his hands still and empty in his lap as he soared over the endless cornfields. In the intense light of the setting sun, all the world was awash in a haze of gold.
He kept his eyes open.
The rush of air from the rotors made the fields below ripple, the movement spreading outwards in all directions like a concentric tide. Lex watched it and let it pull him back into memory, heard the droning of the locusts on a Kansas summer afternoon broken by low throaty laughter and the rustling of cornstalks.
Lex seldom came to Smallville anymore, but it was not out of fear of ghosts. He had never felt a need to lie about what had happened here, to pretend that he and Clark had never been … whatever they had been. There had been no name for it, there might never be – for he doubted anyone had ever blended the intimate and the invective as they had. Language had never been able to contain them, even then.
They had barely been able to contain each other.
That was Clark's strategy now: denial. In Superman's very public quest to free the citizens of Metropolis from the evils of Lex Luthor, he was careful to omit the fact that they had once been lovers. Well, if it mattered so much to him to keep it secret … Lex supposed he could see the point. People had a funny thing about their superheroes and supervillains. They were fine with repeated bitter struggles to the death; but lingering, tender sex in haylofts and cornfields made them uncomfortable.
For Lex's part, he made no effort to either reveal or conceal their history. It was an empirical fact to him, and he did not fear it. He left such weak emotions to Clark, who had always been so sentimental. He had done the leaving anyway; so let him carry the baggage – let him make all that strength useful.
It was freeing in a way, to have anything left to do with Clark that did not automatically involve deception. There was a peace and serenity in releasing the need to lie. Clark had called Lex a liar so many times ... he was such a hypocrite. At least Lex was candid in his dishonesty: he could look his transgressions in the eye. Clark refused to acknowledge his, and they trailed in his wake like cast-off children. That alone made Lex's blood boil: he believed in honor among thieves, for thieves know who and what they are. But for Clark to mouth about truth, justice? It was insupportable. Of course he had to be stopped.
And yet, as he soared over the gently undulating cornfields in the light of the setting sun, Lex also faced the part of him that was sad it had come to this. Before they had locked each other into this ridiculous cycle of mutual attempted murder, they had moved hand in hand and skin against skin among the fields of gold. God, they had been beautiful. Hopeless, yes, maybe even doomed; but it had not stopped them or diminished what they'd shared. Perhaps it had even made them burn all the brighter, as if in defiance of origin and destiny and overbearing fathers on Earth and beyond.
The pilot flew with great skill, letting the helicopter rise and fall gently with the constantly-shifting air currents. Lex felt the pull of the earth as gravity tried but failed to keep him grounded. The sensation was thrilling and familiar, the unexpected weightlessness that accompanied a heated kiss. Clark may have been younger, with his soft lush skin and his great fumbling hands; but Lex had been just as foolish. How many times had Clark laughed low in his throat, distracted him with another well-placed kiss and told him no, he only felt like they were floating? Clark could have told him wrong was right and he would have believed it … perhaps he had. But Lex knew damn well now that a man could fly, and he'd known it long before the tights and cape debuted.
How close he'd come, on those summer days in these cornfields, to the truth he'd sought so fruitlessly in his beloved friend's eyes. Clark had held his secret close, but he'd also betrayed it in countless ways: Lex had tasted it when they kissed, felt it flowing between their bodies like a current when they poured into each other. He'd just failed to recognize the true nature of what he was experiencing; he'd just given it a different name.
He'd mistaken power for love.
It was all right. Such things were beyond normal human comprehension. Of course Lex was not used to judging himself by normal human standards; but even he could hardly fault himself for this. The glory of Clark, bare to the waist in the warmth of the sun, would have been enough to dazzle even the most hardened supergenius even without the strengthening effects of UV rays. To this day Lex nurtured a pet theory that beauty was another of Superman's powers: the shy flash of Clark's smile, the profound depths of his eyes were disarming. Slip into them and it could be so easy to suspend reason, to believe their bearer as righteous and noble as he believed himself.
Lex had fought him even then. The rivalry between them had begun even before they were lovers; it was a natural byproduct of such a strong attraction, a perverse and contrary determination. Lex had sensed something unnatural at work in his burning need for Clark and had tried, really, to resist. He'd cloaked it in his frustration with Clark's refusal to tell him the truth; he had battled it with each test, each leading question, each increasingly-outrageous line of inquiry. But like all his investigations, Lex's struggle to keep his hands off of Clark had failed miserably.
He had told himself then that in that defeat lay rewards that eclipsed all others. Surrounded by Clark's body, his vision filled with Clark's face, Lex briefly lost the ability to conceive of a secret whose possession would not pale in comparison to what he'd gained in its stead. What secrets could matter if they were one? Nothing was worth more than this – nothing.
That thought process had only lasted as long as the afterglow. When Clark was any further than an urgent reach away, the need to know had once again eclipsed Lex's need to have. The strain and guilt had tortured him, but had not stopped him. Even Clark's simplest request – "Just love me, just let that be enough" – Lex had promised and then broken it.
He was not proud of that. But he did not deny it either. And in the end he had won – hadn't he? He'd gotten what he'd wanted. He knew Clark's secret. And in knowing, Lex understood at last: there had never been a way to have it all. They could only lie and be together, or be honest and be enemies … Well, at least he'd had the lie first. At least he had the memories to warm him, when the knowledge left him cold.
Travel by helicopter is one of the most graceful possible for mere mortals; Lex could easily imagine away the thin layers of glass and titanium that separated him from the open air of the rosy sky. Flying with Clark could not be any prettier than this; there was no reason to feel such a pang of longing. As the sun set all around him, Lex released that lie as well and let his hand move to his zipper. He watched the corn wave until the pressure of his own fingers forced him to close his eyes.
His last conscious thought was one of certainty: he wondered how often Clark let himself do this too, and what unexpected moments pushed him to it. His mind's eye briefly conjured the image of a Crows jersey emblazoned with a LuthorCorp logo, of Clark lifting it lovingly from a trunk in the hayloft and shedding his own shirt to slip it on …
But then the sun went down and Lex drifted alone in darkness.