"Mercy," Lex asked, not looking up from his friendship plan book, "how feasible do you think it would be to make giant artificially intelligent robots that can transform into cars or other types of motor vehicles?"

"Boss," Mercy protested, "I'm on my muffin break."

Lex looked up, seeing Mercy taking a bite off of a lemon poppy seed muffin, with what looked like a blueberry wrapper in front of her, and glanced at the clock. It was indeed time for Mercy's snack break. "Sorry, I'll ask again in ten."

Mercy heaved a heavy sigh – really she was so much more melodramatic when she was on break – and said, "This is getting a bit ridiculous, Boss."

Lex looked up at her sharply. Mercy, in addition to being highly capable, was an unswervingly loyal bodyguard-cum-chauffer-cum-personal assistant. There was a reason he trusted her with Clark's identity, after all. Usually she could be counted on to unquestioningly fill out any request Lex had for her, no matter how strange. A lot of people probably would have objected to being sent to Norway to collect a baby troll and then being told to sneak said troll into a bathroom at the office building of a major newspaper, but not Mercy. To date the only time she registered her opinion, unasked at any rate, was when she believed he had gotten himself caught up in some sort of mental trap that was keeping him from seeing the obvious. So if she was protesting, it really was in his best interests to sit up and pay attention.

"What makes you say that?" He didn't see what was so ridiculous about recreating various works of fiction in an attempt to regain Clark's friendship.

Mercy pursed her lips, as though thinking of the best way to phrase it. "It's the same thing you always do Boss. You do things really big and set your standard too high."

"Are you saying that trying to be friends with Clark is setting my standards too high?" Lex asked disbelievingly. After all, Mercy was the one that had suggested that he try to rekindle their friendship in the first place. She claimed she had because it was the perfect solution to a number of his problems – Superman sticking his nose into Lex's business, Lex's son wanting nothing to do with him, and Lex lacking any sort of companionship outside his bodyguard and business acquaintances – but Lex suspected that at least part of the reason was she was tired of listening to him alternatively complaining about Superman and reminiscing about Clark.

"No, just that trying to force yourselves straight into a legendary friendship by recreating movies is overkill, Boss. You should just ask him if he wants to grab a cup of coffee or something."

"But we have coffee together every other week, and that hasn't made us friends," Lex pointed out.

"No, that hasn't made you friends," Mercy agreed and there was something really weird about her emphasis. "But why would it Boss? You're getting together to talk about your kids. I'm saying you should ask him to get together to hang out as friends."

"But we aren't friends, not yet," Lex argued. "And he's not going to agree to hang out as friends until after we are. That's why I have this plan book in the first place."

"If you say so, Boss," Mercy agreed. "But it can't hurt to ask."

Clearly Mercy didn't know Clark as well as Lex did. On the other hand, even if they weren't friends, things had been a lot more amiable between them of late. It probably wouldn't hurt too much to ask. Plus it would make Mercy happy if he did.

"Besides," Mercy continued, "if he says no you can always fall back on the giant robots. The Fortress AI would probably make a good basis for Megatron."

Lex considered that, took a quick note of it in his friendship plan book, then pulled out his phone. Might as well get this over with.

Lex wasn't surprised when Clark said he "wouldn't be able to make it," when Lex asked him if he wanted to grab a friendly cup of coffee later that afternoon. Lex was, in fact, more than ready to interpret "wouldn't be able to make it" as "don't want to spend any time with you," and go back to trying to figure out how to make an evil AI without letting it get out of hand.

Lex was significantly more surprised when Clark then suffixed his refusal with a suggestion the two of them get together on the following Friday instead and have a movie night. Lois, he continued, already had plans with Chloe to take Diana out and continue giving her lessons on how to be "a modern American woman," and Martha could take Lara and Conner for the night, as she had been bothering Clark – and Lex too come to think of it – lately about getting some time with her grandkids.

Lex had been too stunned to do anything but agree. So really, Mercy's smug smile was probably justified. Lex cut off the last minute of her muffin break anyway.

"Clark," Lex began just a little hesitantly. They had just finished watching the first two Lord of the Rings movies – Clark's choice – and now Clark was trying to sell Lex on the virtues of staying up all night to watch the last one. Things had been going surprisingly well so far; the two of them were talkers during movies, or rather Lex was a talker and Clark had learned to adapt in years past, and Lex had been worried that their discussion on Middle Earth would devolve into a shouting match. It hadn't though. They hadn't stayed completely on topic, but when they had strayed it, was about Conner and Lara, or Lex's vaguely defined plans to delegate more of his work so he could spend more time at home with Lara and maybe go back and finish grad school, or Clark's relationship with Lois (and that he talked about her more like a woman he was in love with than a goddess he was worshipping up on a pedestal was a huge point in her favor), or whether Chloe could take down an artificially shrunken adult troll as easily as she had a baby, or out of Oliver Queen and Bruce Wayne who was ripping off of who, and other innocuous things like that. Really, Lex should have just been happy with how smoothly things were going and not pushed his luck.

But then, he'd hardly be Lex Luthor if he didn't.

Suppressing the urge to run his hand over his head, he really was trying to get rid of that nervous tick, Lex asked the question that had been bothering him: "Are we friends now?"

Clark looked at him with a mixture of confusion and surprise, and Lex damned himself thrice over for asking and undoubtedly setting his friendship plan back months.

At least, he started to damn himself until Clark spoke. "We've been friends for a while now, Lex."

"We have?" Lex echoed, and now he sounded like the confused one.

"Of course we have," Clark said with an amused smile. "Do you think I would agree to reenact-"

"Recreate," Lex corrected. He put way too much effort into his plans to have them be called mere reenactments.

"Recreate," Clark acquiesced with a roll of his eyes, "movies and TV shows with just anyone who asked?"

"I hardly think I'm 'just anyone,'" Lex sniffed. Even if he hadn't thought the two of them were friends, it wasn't as though Lex believed that Clark equated him with some random person off the street.

"Right," Clark agreed. "You aren't just anyone. You're my friend."

"When did this happen?" Lex demanded. And why hadn't anyone told him?

"I don't know, a while ago," Clark shrugged. "I wasn't exactly keeping track." Lex gave him a displeased look – that was not an adequate answer – and Clark tried again:

"Okay, well you kidnapped me and I promised I'd think about being your friend again. So I did. And as I was thinking about it, I realized that a lot of the bad things that LexCorp, or I guess LuthorCorp back then, used to do, you weren't doing anymore."

It was at this point that Lex decided that discretion was the better part of valor and therefore quite valiantly did not mention that a lot of those projects that Clark used to object to actually got cut by Tess while Lex was dead. And since they were all huge money draws whose profit was typically in the form of protecting the human race from the impending alien invasion, and Clark had proven himself willing and able to stop said invasions for free, it really hadn't been fiscally responsible to restart them. Better to spend that money on things that could recoup the losses from some of Tess's poor business choices – like those two giant towers that had luckily been destroyed by someone, Lex suspected Clark, but he hadn't asked one way or the other, before they could be used to give superpowers to a group of alien invaders, and why had Lex picked Tess to replace him again?

And of course there was the money that Lex had redirected to the projects geared toward the purpose of stopping Clark in case Clark's morality was ever externally compromised. Which Lex would have assumed would fit under the umbrella of "bad things."

"Of course I wasn't happy about all the anti-Superman plans," Clark continued, showing an uncanny knack for reading Lex's mind. "But when I thought about it, I don't complain that Chloe and Mom keep a couple of pieces of Kryptonite stashed away, just in case. And Lois won't keep Kryptonite, but she and I have contingency plans in place in case I ever get infected by Red K, or hypnotized, or mind controlled by magic, or brain washed by Jor-El, or replaced by an evil self from an alternate dimension, or any of that kind of stuff again." Jesus Christ, exactly how many ways were there to suborn Clark? "So I realized it was maybe a little unfair to just assume you had nefarious purposes for what you were doing, especially since the one time you actually did kidnap me, all you did was cuff me up with Blue K and try to make me be your friend again."

"And while I was thinking about all that, the thing with the volcano happened…" Clark thought about that for a second before clarifying, "The first thing with the volcano. The second thing I'm still kind of mad at you about, but we already discussed that." The second thing being the time when Lex had tried to inspire family bonding by recreating The Incredibles, after which Clark had pull Lex aside and explained, that while Lara was a very sweet girl and Clark was looking forward to getting to know her, it was in no way appropriate to procreate with someone without their knowledge or consent. "Anyways, the thing with the volcano happened and it occurred to me later that it was actually really similar to part of the Lord of the Rings. And then there was the thing with the troll which was a lot like Harry Potter. I realized you must have been doing it because I made that comment about learning social skills from pop culture and it just… I don't know, reminded me of you."

"I reminded you of myself," Lex repeated flatly.

"Yeah," Clark agreed. "Like back in freshman year when you found out that I had a crush on Lana, so you made it your mission to hook the two of us up. Or that time when you found out that I was having a party at my house before even I knew, and arranged for fireworks. Extremely elaborate and over-the-top, and not a little obsessive, but no real motive besides being a good friend. It was really…" and here Clark paused and Lex got the distinct impression that he was searching for a word that wasn't "sweet" or "endearing" or anything else that Lex would have been obliged to be upset over, "…nice, and I decided to give you another chance."

So they had been friends since Plan D and Clark hadn't said anything? "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know I needed to," Clark said, sounding a bit confused, "Friendship is one of those things that kind of just happen and are understood; you don't decide you're going to be friends with someone and then declare it to them at the next available opportunity."

Lex raised his eyebrows and waited. He could tell the exact second Clark remembered their second meeting – well, technically third, but Lex didn't normally count the time the two of them had been three and unconscious, respectively – by the faint flush that stole across his face. "Okay, so maybe you do. Uh… I'm sorry?" Clark said with a winning smile.

Really, Lex couldn't be too mad. He had gotten what he wanted after all, even if he ended up putting a lot of effort into unnecessary friendship plans. Actually… "Why did you let me go through with all those friendship plans, if we were already friends?"

"Those were friendship plans? I just thought that recreating movies and books and stuff was our thing," Clark told him.

"Our thing?" Lex repeated. What was that supposed to mean?

"Our thing. Like how Lois has this one friend from back when she was a kid who lives about a five hour drive from Metropolis now, and whenever they get together they play capture the flag – hardcore capture the flag – and then go out for pizza and drinks."

Oh. Their thing. Lex liked the sound of that; something for just him and Clark and nobody else, unless he and Clark asked them to join.

"I've been meaning to ask you, actually," Clark said. "Do you think I could choose the next one we do?"

Lex smiled. "You start the movie, and I'll go get the plan book."

The sequel to this story is "Contingency Plans" (Story ID: 9054719)