Arthur Curry felt great apprehension now that he found that his favor to Diana involved him so much more deeply in the affairs of people on land.
"Why couldn't Mister Wayne accompany you?" he asked with disdain, uncomfortably adjusting the collar of his shirt. Central City, far inland, miles away from the sea, was the last place he thought his partnership with Diana Prince and Bruce Wayne would bring him, and yet here he was.
"Neither Bruce Wayne nor Batman has the luxury of anonymity," Diana replied, wrapping her long coat more tightly around her as they walked down the street towards Central City's municipal center, where the forensics department of the Police Department had temporarily located to a basement room of the courthouse. "We need to find Mister Allen and convince him to join us."
"To join and and Mister Wayne. Like you convinced me," Arthur said, crossing his arms over himself as he kept up with Diana's proud, buoyant strides. Diana, however, seemed focused intently on finding their destination rather than listening to anyone else, and this was precisely the way Arthur Curry remembered this woman - this deity. Diana Prince was the entire reason for his willingness to be part of whatever this was, because if she considered it a cause worth fighting for, he had no reason to doubt its worthiness. Even if he hated land, and cars, and roads, she was honorable enough that he was unwilling to go back on his word to assist her in any way he was able.
Diana and Arthur entered the main foyer of the courthouse - a modern building of glass and steel where the sun poured in from all sides - and walked toward the information desk.
"Excuse me," Diana said, gently leaning an arm on the counter to gain the attention of the older woman at the desk, who looked up at Diana through thick-rimmed glasses. "We're looking for a Mister Allen in the Forensics Unit?"
"You'll need to go through security like everyone else, sweetheart," the old woman said, gesturing toward the lines leading through the metal detectors. "You and your... rugged friend, here."
Diana couldn't suppress a slight smirk and a glance over her shoulder at very blatantly admiring comment directed towards Arthur, who looked visibly surprised. "Of course. Thank you, ma'am," Diana said with a gracious incline of her head. "Arthur -"
"SIR!"
The older woman behind the desk suddenly was distracted from them, getting to her feet and pointing a finger at a man who swept past the security desk with a large back slung over his shoulder. The man, dressed unseasonably in a large, heavy, fur-lined coat, pushed his way to the front of the line as the older woman hobbled in his direction. Immediately alerted that something was amiss, Arthur and Diana shared a glance before slinking off to one side behind a square support pillar in case their assistance in the situation was needed. Just as they were able to get into aan adequate hiding position, the man shrugged off the bag on his shoulder and brandished a weapon that neither of them had seen before - there was no time to wonder what its function was. The man fired off a few shots - but rather than drawing blood, encased the security guards and those in their immediate vicinity in a case of clear, solid ice.
"Bring me the Flash," he said with a snarl, but the chaos that now erupted drowned him out until he raised his weapon and froze yet another wave of bystanders trying to escape around him, but all were able-bodied men. The women and few children in the crowd, in their haste, were perhaps grazed but never the target of his fire. He then fired another long volley of shots at the revolving doors, freezing them solid so no one stood a chance of escaping. "No one leaves until the Flash faces me!"
The Flash was what the young man they sought called himself, Diana realized as her brow furrowed in thought as she quickly attempted to process the moment that was developing around them. So many instant people were in danger, trapped in the ice. Her hand shook as she reached inside of her coat to retrieve something, but Arthur's hand quickly closed around her wrist, shaking his head. "We don't need to intervene," he said in a low whisper. "This is not our fight -"
"If this is not your fight, then you are no better than Bruce," Diana said in a near-hiss, and before Arthur could speak any further advice against helping the humans against this attacker, she had cast aside her coat and now brandished her weapon - the Lasso of Truth - whirling it over her head before casting it to loop around the barrel of the man's weapon. With one hard yank, she disarmed him, sending the weapon skidding to the ground. The man in the large coat whirled to face her direction, and she drew herself up to full height, staring him down defiantly. With his teeth bared in a snarl, the man reached for another weapon holstered at his waist, but before he could brandish this in Diana's direction, a bright red blur and a rushing, whirring noise passed between them, and the man was knocked aside, his other weapons cast away out of his reach. Another bright red blur, and suddenly, a man in a red bodysuit with a mask that covered his face stopped in front of Diana, staring between her and the man in the parka. For only a millisecond, the glance was exchange - the speedster in the bright red suit, the Amazon in armor, the sea King trapped on land.
"Little help, guys?" the man in the suit said rapidly with a point glance at the lasso in her hand. Instantly catching the speedster's hint, Diana raised the lasso and whirled it over her head again, casting the loop over the man in the coat while again, the speedster seemed to disappear into a blur, darting around the room. Arthur, while his abilities were limited on land when separated from his weapons, still had his strength and made his way to the frozen doors. With a few mighty kicks, the ice that had encased the hinges had broken and the door was again able to move - as it did, they realized that the police had already arrived on the scene.
It seemed that the speedster generated a great deal of heat as well, and as the blur whizzed around the room, the people who had been hit with the beams of ice came unfrozen just as a rush of men in uniform flooded the scene. The first move was to apprehend the man in the parka, which freed up Diana and the lasso so that she could be the first to slip away, followed quickly by Arthur who had already been near the door. It was easy enough, as the police were more busy apprehending the suspect and tending to the victims to spare much thought on these vigilantes. Diana and Arthur slipped off to the nearest side alley, where Arthur handed Diana back her coat.
"I always come prepared," she said matter-of-factly, catching Arthur's expression of annoyance that she had intervened against his advice. The thoughts running through his head were clear - I should've known better than to try and order an Amazon around. "The one in red, he was the one we came to find -"
"Who are you?"
The blur again had appeared, joining them in the alleyway and staring back and forth between them. He hesitantly reached up and removed his mask, revealing his young face and raising his eyebrows questioningly.
"The question is, Barry Allen," Arthur spoke up first - the yooung man seemed to flinch at the fact that they knew his name, "who was that man in there?"
"Cold. He goes by Captain Cold," he said with a shrug. "I got him locked up a while back, he didn't appreciate it. Probably because she stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving sister and - no, wait," he chuckled, raising his hand for pause. "I read that last part in a book somewhere."
Diana and Arthur looked at one another with blank, slightly confused expressions, and Barry cleared his throat, grimacing.
"Tough crowd," he muttered, reaching up and scratching the back of his neck. "Listen, you haven't even answered my question. Where did you come from?"
"Do you remember the monster of Metropolis? Months ago?" Diana brought up gently. At this, Barry's shoulders drooped and his expression softened. He crossed his arms over himself.
"Of course I do. The one that... that killed Superman. The whole world knows about that," Barry replied. "It was Superman," he added feebly. "I couldn't believe it."
"There are more enemies drawing near. Enemies that are even worse than Doomsday," Diana explained, her expression growing grave. "And if we're going to stand a chance against them, we cannot do it alone -"
"Who is we?" Barry insisted. "I've never seen either of you in Central City before, what are you doing here? I'm the only one like me here."
"My name is Diana Prince. This is Arthur Curry," she said, raising a hand to placate Barry as she eased into her explanation. "We acquired intelligence from LexCorp's encrypted database, and he had been looking for us. For others like us. But now we need to come together on our own or there is no hope for anyone."
Barry exhalled in surprise. People were looking for him? They knew who he was? He barely knew who he was. By day, he was a junior forensice scientist who was always late and got everything wrong. By night, he was a vigilante in a red suit that fought petty crime in Central City. Now, all of a sudden, he was supposed to be some kind of hero and save the world from something worse than the monster that killed Superman?
Well, he though to himself, he had been antsy for a sense of purpose lately - and if he had been looking for some kind of a sign to point him towards it, this had to be what he was waiting for. After a moment's pause, he let out a breath and nodded. "What do you need me to do?" he asked. "I - I live here, in Central City, I can't just -"
"We just need you come with us to speak with someone. With Bruce Wayne," Diana said pointedly. "You'll be able to go about your life however you need to - but we need the assurance that when the time comes to fight, you will fight alongside us."
"Bruce Wayne?" Barry asked incredulously. He realized that perhaps he should have been more outraged at the idea of fighting alongside these strangers - a woman who wore armor under a trenchcoat and a man decked out in warrior tattoos. But... Bruce Wayne! What would a bigshot like that from Gotham want from a small-town wannabe forensic scientist from Central City?
"The Bruce Wayne? Millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne? Is he going to send a private jet or something? Because I would be so down for that," he laughed in disbelief, shaking his head and again scratching the back of his neck. Barry could hardly wrap his head around the idea that he was being asked to be some kind of hero. "Wow. Wow."
"We've got a long drive ahead of us, Mister Allen," Arthur said, gently scratching at his chin and rolling his shoulders. Diana could tell that he was growing tired of being so far inland and as such, humored him by not interrupting. "It's a long way back to Gotham and I don't think dawdling is helping us any."
"Well," Barry said, looking down at himself with a slight chuckle. "I can't go on a roadtrip in this get-up. I live at twelve-oh-one Fairchild Road. Meet me in front of my apartment in ten?" he asked. "And - I call shotgun."
And in another blur and a rush of air, he was gone again. Arthur let out a small groan and glanced at Diana with an irked eyebrow, shaking his head.
"I know," Diana said begrudgingly, glancing off into the direction where the younger man had disappeared to. "He's going to need a lot of work."
Claire knew that this was as good as dipping your toe into a bear trap to see if it actually worked. She knew she could very well be walking into something she couldn't easily get herself out of - but the suggestion of going back to her apartment to pick up some of her things the morning after the dinner overlooking Metropolis Bay had come so quickly, refusing would have been suspicious in and of itself.
She was just going to have to cross her fingers that a certain vigilante wasn't waiting at her doorstep in broad daylight.
The previous night, Claire had agreed that she'd had a little too much wine and shouldn't drive home, and acquiesced to the suggestion of staying in the guest suite. True to his word, Lex had not initiated any funny business and had even offered to bring Claire to her shift at the clinic in Gotham the next morning, though she felt reasonably certain that he simply had other plans and needed a cover, as always. Now, they were at her dingy old apartment building, and Claire couldn't help but feel some level of shame for her living conditions, which were normal by downtown standards, but a far cry from the accommodations of Luthor Mansion.
But here Lex Luthor was, sitting on her couch, spreading out his arms and propping his feet up on her coffee table. He stretched and reached over for the remote control to her TV, turning on the screen and casually browsing through channels as though he lived here.
"Take your time," he said with a dismissive gesture that left Claire momentarily confused - she rolled her eyes gently before heading into the bedroom to pack a bag of things.
It came as a relief to confirm that no one else was around in the apartment. With the luck of the draw that she'd had in recent days, Claire would not have been surprised if she'd walked right into Batman sitting in her apartment waiting for her. For now, though, she had a reprieve. She started loading some of the easiest items into the overnight bag she kept in her closet - her scrubs, underwear, jeans, and the easier objects to pack. Shoes. Socks. Just the basics. After all, this certainly couldn't be a longterm solution. In time, she'd find her own way out of this - staying at Luthor Mansion was simply a short term fix until she was able to determine what that was.
She changed into a fresh pair of scrubs and ran a brush through her hair a few times before tying it back into a ponytail, so at least she looked a little less unkempt. And it hit her in that moment as she looked at herself in the mirror that for all intents and purposes, she was moving in with Lex Luthor. Her mother's nagging voice briefly crossed her mind - you make all the wrong decisions, Claire. Just think about your future, Claire. Don't end up like your father - you have to think things through!
Claire gave her head a hard shake as though she could dispel the thoughts and picked her bag up off of the ground, walking back out into the living room to find that Lex was no longer sitting on the couch - apparently having gotten bored, Lex had gotten up and found his way into her pantry and fished out the bag of Sour Patch Kids in her stash of study snacks and was now perusing the photos that lined her mantelpiece over the fireplace that didn't even work. By the looks of things, he'd already eaten at least a handful.
"Well, this one's just heartwarming. A real Kodak moment," Lex said, plucking one picture frame from the mantel as though he were holding it up for display. The photo was slightly faded, but still clearly showed a young Claire of about five or six years old, dressed in a cowgirl outfit while her father carried her on his shoulders. Her mother, she remembered, had been the one who took the picture. They had been a family. Life had been different then. Lex glanced down at the photograph with an emotion that for once, Claire was not sure she could identify. His brow furrowed, but his expression betrayed neither anger nor contempt. There was, perhaps, a child-like confusion to his face.
"You put him on a pedestal, don't you? Your father, I mean?" Lex said, turning the photo towards him so he could look at it more closely, and Claire felt eerily chilled by this new line of questioning. "Surely he couldn't have been as perfect as -"
"My father was far from a perfect man, but he was a good father," Claire interrupted quickly, walking over and gently taking the picture out of Lex's hands, but instead of placing it back over the fireplace, she tucked it away into the bag she had packed. "He did one extraordinarily good thing in his life and he paid dearly for it. We paid dearly for it," she added before shaking her head. "But he was a good father."
An imperfect man but a good father. The concept admittedly confused Lex - his father had been, by anyone's standards, a superlatively good man. He was a philanthropist, a business who put Metropolis to work and made it the shining city on a hill that it had always aspired to be. Lex Luthor Senior had been Metropolis's first hero, before there had been a Superman. Lex Luthor Sr. had been a very good, near-perfect man, by unanimous decision, but what he was as a father made Lex's hands curl into fists at his sides.
"Are you alright?"
The question was what aagain yanked Lex back to Earth the way Claire had a way of doing. She was asking him if he was alright? The confusion that accompanied the realization again disarmed him, and he felt his fists relax again. He raised the bag of candies and gave it a shake, hunting around for the one he'd be most satisfied by. "I'm just spectacular, Claire," he said, disarmingly convincing as he managed to fish out one of the blue candies. He popped it into his mouth and, as was his custom, licked his fingertips afterwards - it was a shame to waste, after all.
He held back an expression of glee at the realization that now, Claire had been the one who couldn't help but stare - it had not even been an intentional action, and yet it had played perfectly into his plans for her.
"That's enough dawdling, I think," Lex pointed out, giving the top of the bag of candies an overdramatic twist to seal it, and then pocketing it altogether. "If we're going to get you to Gotham in rush hour traffic, then we are on a tight schedule."
"You really didn't have to do this, you know," Claire piped in hesitantly, though she had to move quickly as Lex was already making a beeline for the front door. She hurried along behind him and locked the door, following him down the hallway towards the elevator. "I could've driven myself, you have an appointment with Doctor Cavendish this afternoon -"
"I can move it if I need to," Lex said, impatiently tapping at the button for the elevator, though his nonchalance gained a roll of Claire's eyes. Just as the elevator doors slid open and he placed his hand on the side of the door to let Claire through first, he added, "I'll let him know that I had to prioritize someone far more important."
Claire turned around with every intention to ask what that was supposed to mean as the elevator doors closed, but before she could do so, Lex had almost stealthily closed the space between them and without warning, finally followed through on his actions from the night before, pressing his lips hungrily to hers.
In her surprise, Claire lost her grip on her overnight bag and allowed it to drop with a gentle thud to the ground. Lex slowly but authoritatively guided her backwards so her back was against the wall, bracing himself against it with one forearm while the other arm snaked around her waist. He smirked against her lips at the realization that she was reciprocating, her hands grazing over his chest before crossing at the wrists behind his neck. Gaining a burst of audacity from her receptiveness, he slightly relaxed the arm supporting his weight so that his body gently pressed against hers, slightly holding her against the wall. In response, he felt her body give an involuntary roll underneath him that caused him to inhale sharply - the sudden tensing of his own body caused his teeth to graze gently against her lower lip, just as the sound of a small chime signaled the elevator coming to a stop.
"Looks like this is our floor," Lex smirked, pulling back and straightening out the front of his shirt, proudly regarding the flush in her cheeks as he separated from her. He gave a brief staccato of a laugh and reached out to pick Claire's bag up from the ground for her before casually turning on his heel and leaving the elevator. Claire took a brief moment to process what had just happened, rubbing her lips together and tasting the lingering trace of sugar from Lex's lips - proof that she hadn't imagined what had happened just now. She shook her head to regain her bearings before hurrying out of the elevator before the doors closed on her.
Lex admittedly was slightly amused by how flustered Claire was as they got back into the car - she kept her gaze directly forward, never looking at him as they made their way down the highway to Metropolis. He relished the idea that it would be in the back of her mind, distracting her all day. He would be on her mind the entire day. But even more deeply, he had a sense of unsureness. It was meant as a power play - as a means of showing he could get into her head, because it was what he needed to do. She had seen him vulnerable, and and he simply could not stop until the tables were turned - until he was the one in the position of seeing her more vulnerable. But even more than this, he admitted to himself that he would not have bothered with it in quite this way if there wasn't something about her that he very much wanted to keep for his own.
A/N
I always begin with this, but thank you, thank you, thank you for your feedback! There was a little frustration last chapter that there was no Lex/Claire kiss, but I saved it for here, because I feel like the element of surprise was a much better fit. I'll try to keep this short and get more chapters written! Also, just as fair notice, I wanted to say that right now, my Barry Allen has taken on more of the GrantGustin!Flash personality, just because I have no familiarity with Ezra Miller or what they plan on doing with him. So, just a heads up!
As always, I appreciate hearing from each and every one of you, so please feel free to reach out by review or message to let me know what you think so far, and what you'd like to see happen. Also, I have some fun extra material that I might be posting on my fanfic Tumblr soon so, stay tuned!
Next chapter, Claire gets an unexpected visitor at the Gotham Free Clinic, and Barry gets a chance to prove his mettle.
Until next time, cheers!