Lex awoke to the quiet, the comfortable and the familiar. He was still in his dress shirt, but someone had stripped his bottom half down to his boxers. He was wearing his sleeping socks.
It took the same number of steps for him to get to his curtained window, the same span of hand to throw it open, and he was heartened to find the same skyline greeting him. He exchanged socks for his slippers and found the same robe waiting in its usual place.
He walked out to find the place devoid of people and noise, as always. He walked into his kitchen and saw Mercy having breakfast on the kitchen island, guns in pieces and cleaning apparatuses all over the place. Also as always. She seemed oblivious to his coming and going. She might actually be ignoring him, but that's not unusual, so he went to the sideboard for coffee instead.
When he found his usual mug sitting next to the coffee machine, he was ready to chalk last night to a bizarre nightmare. Possibly induced by some bad shellfish he thought he ate for lunch.
He used to be afraid of being a creature of habit; it only gave more ammunition for stalkers and psychos alike. But at the moment, routine helped him put back his life to rights.
His morning papers were where he would usually find them, next to his coffee. He never took any solids over his morning reading, but he welcomed the plate of croissants that sat on the newspaper stack all the same.
Mercy's sharp eyes tracked him all the way up to where the kitchen branched out to the den, Lex could feel her gaze boring into his back. He usually felt odd, but he had never called her out for it. She had saved his life many times because of it. The den was also quiet, and he rounded the back of the couch to get to his coffee table, eyes darting around to locate the TV's remote control. The Senate's new bill must've garnered a lot of interesting noise by now.
He knew he left it on the couch the last time, and he was fairly sure no one had moved it yet. But whether it was there where he left it, he would never find out, because he was too busy staring at Clark and Hope curled around each other like two puppies in a basket, deeply asleep.
No great crash happened, no coffee spilled all over Aubussons, no flying papers, not even a sound as Mercy intercepted everything and laid porcelain and pastries on the coffee table. "Let them sleep in," Mercy said in what was actually more of a stage whisper. "Kent just got back, and Hope was upset."
Lex looked at Mercy incredulously, eyeing her as though she's grown a second head. Mercy sighed as she sat on the floor alongside Hope's side of the couch. "I really thought you've grown out of this Houdini act of yours," she remarked, as she reached around Hope's curled body to unclip a gun from her waist. "I still can't figure out know why I let you convince me otherwise." She began to methodically dismantle the small weapon, eyes never leaving Lex. "You should've told us you're leaving Barbados early, instead of scarpering off like you're still a fugitive."
Was he being told off? Wasn't he the boss here? Shouldn't his employees be less forward than this? So either he was still having a nightmare, or he was still stuck in a different dimension where Lex Luthor was apparently a pushover.
Thankfully, it seemed, a pushover with a lot of toys and money. If Lex were ever to figure out a way home, he would need access to LexCorp mainframes. So far, there were many similarities between here and his own reality, thus he was fairly certain that the Lex Luthor of this timeline might have toyed with the idea of time travel, or interdimensional travel.
Although, Lex wasn't prepared to believe that it was this reality that triggered the mess he's currently in. He simply refused to believe it. Perhaps, his own project malfunctioned in a good way, and prompted this shift. Perhaps a frequency here managed to connect with the frequency back in his own labs. Either way, it had been a while since Lex was this keyed up with the research possibilities.
"She has ten more minutes," Lex declared, in what he hoped would be terse enough. "We have a lot of work to do today."
Mercy didn't reply, for all the world looking engrossed at her task cleaning Hope's handgun.
Lex had to make an effort not to repeat himself. He wasn't a parrot, goddamnit. He was used to his whims being carried out even without him asking. What's wrong with this place?
The shower here had better pressure than his usual one. A good morning shower was really hard to come by these days and it was almost enough incentive for him not to think about going back.
Emerging happy and toasty out of the shower, he found Clark not only awake but puttering around the room, changing the sheets on his bed. Was Clark his domestic helper?
"You're going in to work today," Clark said, not a question but a statement of fact. Lex kept quiet, more interested in Clark lifting his 200-lbs mattress like it was a flannel sleeping bag. "I think you should stay home," Clark continued, clearly not expecting Lex to reply. "Let Mercy and Hope sleep off their jet-lag or something." Perfect hospital corners, then the rest of Lex's bedding. "Not that they'll be sleeping anytime soon, not after that stunt you pulled." Finally, a quilt joined everything else on the bed. Lex had never seen the quilt before, and he didn't really care to know the answer if he asked.
"I don't have to explain myself to you," Lex said, hunting for his watch. He was surprised to see a familiar box sitting on a familiar dresser. He stared at it, like it had eyes and legs and would run away with the dish and the spoon. He snorted at the silliness of his own thought, looked down and saw a big hand flipping the box's lid open.
"I know," Clark's breath against his cheek, Clark's voice in his ears and his body warm against Lex's back. This was an entirely alien experience that Lex just stood there like he had grown roots. His watch was there-but whether it was his watch or just the same watch from this dimension, he didn't know. He wondered what things he kept when he shifted; he wondered what sanity he had left.
"We know that," Clark repeated, retrieving the watch from inside box with one hand and cradling Lex's wrist with his other hand. Warm fingers turned Lex's hand this way and that way, slowly, carefully. The watch's cool back against his skin a counterpoint to the fever left behind by Clark's little touches. A final tap on the watch's face and Clark released him. "But I still worry."
Lex closed his eyes for a moment, released breath he didn't know he was holding. When he turned around again, Clark was already walking out from with a handful of old bed sheets. "If you're still going to work..." an afterthought, Clark fidgeting by the door."Stop by the Lab?"
"What for?" Lex asked, intrigued that this Clark didn't seem agitated by the fact that Lex came complete with labs.
"Lilian needs help setting up. He's going to restart his experiments and who better to help him but you?" Clark smiled. "When's the last time the both of you played Evil Genius together?" When's the last time Lex was the recipient of Clark's solar-rivaling smile? He had forgotten that Clark could be like this, had forgotten many things that most of them were beginning to feel like myth than reality.
Mercy and Hope passed outside of the door behind Clark. Hope had a piece of croissant between her teeth and a few big boxes in her hands, Mercy with something he couldn't see clearly, blocked by Clark's big frame.
Lex thought about LexCorp mainframes and time travel. He thought about his own projects and wondered whether the same projects were being run here. He still had to find out what's this Barbados claptrap everyone's been harping on about.
He looked down at his prosthetic hand and wondered whether the Lex here lost his the same way he had. He wondered where the Lex of this reality was. He looked out to a city so familiar it was actually something very different. He remembered now that he hadn't had his coffee, hadn't read his papers. He wondered whether Hope had eaten all his croissants.
Lex had a million questions, but he realized that answers could wait.