Notes: I lifted the title from The Running Man. This story might go on for a while, I think.

The Best Men Don't Run For President, They Run For Their Lives

"Sir?"

Lex looked up from the massive desk--he'd been dozing. What had he been dreaming about? Something from long ago in Smallville; but now it was gone.. "Yes, Martina?"

"The Super Bowl champions are here," said the matronly woman who served as his personal assistant, and looked at him pityingly, knowing how he felt about these things. Oh no, he thought. No. Not another idiotic photo-op. I won't do another, not this time. I could cancel--pick up the red telephone hot-line, say I was having an urgent discussion with Moscow...

"Send them in," he said tiredly, and slowly stood up. No point in putting it off, really. Now, which team had won, anyway? Coast City? Gotham? He struggled to remember, and failed. The door opened and a train of burly men in suits poured into the Oval Office, along with their coach, a wizened Texan. The ubiquitous photographers followed in their wake.

The white-haired old football coach strode up to Lex and extended his hand, which Lex took; the man now pumped it eagerly, saying, "My boys and I are pleased as punch to meet you, Mr. President, and I mean that. Now I bet you didn't know that I coached for your pappy when he owned the Sharks--best owner a fella could ask for. Why, one time after a tough loss he came down to the locker room himself and..." Lex nodded as the man rattled on--he hoped the smile he was wearing didn't look too glazed.

Lex hated football--he sold the Sharks as soon as Lionel died. He had only ever paid attention to the sport once, for a single season, and that had been at the high-school level, the year that Clark Kent had led the Smallville Crows to the Kansas state championship. He still had film of him quarterbacking the team, somewhere in the library at the Luthor mansion. Film, not the digitized video which never did Clark justice, though he certainly had countless hours of that as well.

His father owned the Metropolis Sharks for some years, but his only fond memory of the Luthors' time as football-team owners was of the game he and Clark had watched together from the owner's box, early on in their friendship. They'd ridden to the stadium in Lex's limousine one Sunday afternoon in November; a chill was in the air, but they wouldn't feel it inside the domed stadium. "Football should be played out in the elements!" Clark had complained good-naturedly on the ride there... .

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The limousine had gotten snarled in traffic outside the stadium, and they were a little behind schedule. "Come on, come on--we're going to miss the kickoff!" Clark said with a look back at Lex, after bursting out of the elevator--he was hopping about agitatedly, and Lex couldn't help but laugh.

"All right," he said, and broke into a jog. They went down the corridor past the other luxury boxes until they came to Lionel Luthor's, and Lex opened the door. It was an opulent room, furnished for entertaining the high and mighty. Ordinarily when in use it was fully staffed by servers and bartenders, but not today, on Lex's orders. A table full of food and a fridge full of drinks had been provided, though. Clark ignored all this and ran to the viewing area. a bank of seats facing the field. The room could be sealed off from the stadium by a plexiglass partition; it wasn't, and the anticipatory noise from the crowd filled the room. Just as he got there, the Sharks' kicker drove the ball off a tee into the opposite end zone, where one of the Edge City Catamounts caught it and ran, only to be swarmed by Sharks tacklers at the eighteen-yard-line.

"Holy cow--this is awesome!" cried Clark. Lex ate a crab puff, then picked up a couple of sodas and brought them over to the seats. A packed, roaring stadium lay before them. Lex sat down.

"Lex, this is amazing; I know I already thanked you--"

"Really, Clark, you're welcome."

The crowd groaned as the home team were penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct following a shoving match involving a crowd of players. Clark turned and asked, "So, despite you bringing me here today, I get the idea that you aren't the world's biggest football fan--do you get what's going on here, the point of the game and all?"

Lex laughed. "That's an astute observation, Clark--I admit I have no real love for the gridiron. My father, though, has brought me along to a number of games here, usually when he was entertaining important clients or dignitaries. And he insisted I learn the game, if not actually play it. He said, 'Lex, Americans want leaders with the common touch, and there's nothing more common than football.'"

Clark frowned at that, and Lex added, "But that's my father's opinion. I'll keep an open mind, and perhaps you'll make a Sharks fan of me yet."

"Yeah, maybe. I suppose I'd better; it'll be your team someday."

The game marched on. Food and drink were consumed; conversation was engaged in, about Lana, and Lionel, and a little about football. ("A flea-flicker!" Clark had shouted delightedly as the Sharks ran a trick play, which then engendered a discussion of football terminology.) Toward the end of the half, with the score tied at seven apiece, Edge City punted. The Sharks' fastest man, who happened to be the fastest player in the league (Lionel himself had shaken his hand for the cameras at the press conference where the team had unveiled him as a high-priced free agent) caught the ball on the run, hurdled a tackler, picked up a block, and was gone, streaking down the sidelines with no one in front of him. Then something extraordinary happened, something Lex thought about for a long time afterwards.

He had been watching the player sprint toward the end zone--remarkable speed, really. Suddenly there was a blur and the next thing he knew he and Clark were on the floor, and the back of Lex's seat had been blown apart. "A sniper!" he said to Lex, looking shocked. "In the luxury box right across from us." Concrete extended two feet up the floor--they were safe for now. Lex, recovering his wits, reached into his jacket pocket for his cell-phone.

As it turned out, the gunman had fled after firing, not even waiting to see if he'd hit the target. He was soon picked up by stadium security (they would have picked him up, even without Lex's call--he had been running down the concourses when he crashed into a fully-loaded beer vendor, with whom he then got into a fistfight). Of course, they found out later that the man had been ruined by Lionel in some past deal, and sought revenge by murdering his son. Lex dryly commented to Clark that his father could start a blood feud in an empty room.

The game was unaffected (no one had even heard the shot), though the two missed most of the second half talking to the police, who had taped off the owner's box as a crime scene. On the ride home, Lex remarked, "Well, I don't know what to say--you've saved my life again, Clark. How on earth am I going to repay you now?"

He grinned. "No need--it's only good manners to push your host out of the path of a sniper's bullet, after he's been nice enough to invite you out to watch the big game."

"Well, you're certainly a well-mannered guest. But how did you do it? By all rights, I should have a bullet in me--the crowd was screaming, and everyone was watching the man racing down the field for a touchdown; everyone but you.."

Clark hesitated, then, "I saw something out of the corner of my eye, in the empty box, maybe a gleam off of the rifle. Then I just...had a feeling what it was. Call it a sixth sense."

He had looked uncomfortable for a moment, but then brightened. "You know, if you really want to repay me; you can come and watch the Super Bowl at the farm, with me and my dad."

"Done," he agreed with a laugh. He hadn't been able to make it, though. Something had called him away at the last minute, what was it? Oh yes, Lionel had ordered him to Metropolis to quell some LuthorCorp crisis, but when he got there, he found it wasn't really anything that required his personal attention.
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"...and both my wife and I voted for you last November--she's a great admirer of yours..." Was this old coot still talking? It wasn't supposed to be this way, being the most powerful man in the world. He should be in the situation room, viewing images from spy satellites and barking out orders to generals in far-off places. At the very least, he ought to be in a fraught cabinet meeting, working on some bold new piece of legislation to ram through Congress.

But that wasn't the case--it was almost never the case. Talking to a football team! He had tried to abolish these stupid wastes of time when he had taken office. From now on the Presidency would be all business, he told his people--cut out the fluff, and that's an order from your President. "But sir," they had mewled. The public wanted to see its leader shaking hands with hockey players and Girl Scouts--and he had to keep his approval rating up. An unpopular President couldn't get things done; just play the game, they said, do the necessary spadework that has to be done if you want to be an effective leader. And he had given in, after a brief show of resistance, he had made yet another compromise--where had his legendary strength of will gone? It must have ebbed away in the campaign--he had already had to make so many compromises, say so many stupid things he didn't actually believe in all through the primaries and the run-up to the election. It had taken too much out of him. He had what he had been working towards his whole life, though--he was at the pinnacle of power.

He even had the First Lady he had always dreamed about--the beautiful and popular Mrs Lana Luthor. Whatever the press wrote about him, she was their darling, and probably the most beloved woman in the country. But, oh, if they only knew...