Okay, so I'm reusing a joke here. Couldn't come up with anything else. Couldn't bring myself to believe that Pete would actually do something that sadistic to his best friend except under extreme circumstances. Though come to think of it, a best friend that Clueless is pretty extreme....
"Clark-bar! How's my main man hanging?" Pete slapped Clark across the back, a lighter slap than he would have given most people, more the way you'd hit a brick wall than a buddy. To protect your own hand.
Clark pretended to be startled. "Pete! What brings you to the big city?"
Pete shook his head. "Your rehearsal dinner's this weekend, or have you forgotten? Man, Lois is gonna kill you."
"No, I meant -- " Clark still flushed at the drop of a hat, which was one of the characteristics that separated him so thoroughly from his Superman persona. No one would ever believe an invulnerable alien could live in an almost permanent state of embarrassment at his own gaffes. "That's not until day after tomorrow. What are you doing here," he waved his hand vaguely around the news room, "now?"
"Didn't you hear? I'm running for Congress. Got a pretty good shot at it, too, if I do say so myself. Thought I'd get in some glad-handing time while I'm here."
"You always did. How's the home front?"
"And how did you get in here?" added a new voice, feminine and forceful.
"Oh, Lois, this is an old friend of mine. Smallville's mayor, Pete Ross."
"Oh!" Lois brightened considerably. "You're the one who uncovered the paper trail between LuthorCorp and the old mayor. Chloe told me all about it. Way to go, kid. Pleasure to meet you." She stuck out her hand, gave him a shake that would have broken the wrist on anyone less muscular than Pete, and moved off with a heel-clicking deliberation that sent copy-interns scurrying for cover.
Pete leaned back against the desk and smothered a laugh. "And ain't it just like Chloe not to tell her that it was Chloe who did most of the uncovering. I can see why you fell for her, Clark. It's a wonder she's not the one in the cape."
"Lois is a force of nature," Clark agreed with a smile. "Chloe was - well, Chloe and I will always be a part of each other's lives. Maybe it would have been different if we hadn't met until we were older. Honest, though, Chloe scared me, back when we were kids. She was so much faster on the uptake than I ever was. It was like always being on the defensive. I could never really open up to her, you know, here." Clark tapped his chest. "And by the time I did, it was - I'm not sure if she's ever forgiven me."
Pete made a scoffing sound. "Yeah, it might have been a little easier to get her to believe you weren't just blowing her off all the time if you'd told her what your problem was up front, instead of her finally having to find you locked half-dead in Lionel's back room. Waste your paranoia on your friends much, Clark? I had to practically tell you never to darken my doorway again to get you to be honest with your best bud since either of us could talk. How did Lois take it?"
Clark got the same expression he had as a twelve-year-old, glum and guilty and reticent. "I, um, I, haven't told her."
"WHAT!" Pete jumped to his feet, his weight-trained build looming over the cringing Clark like a jailer over a captive. "You WHAT?!?"
"Geez, turn it down," Clark muttered. The newsroom had gone dead silent, which, for a newsroom, was a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Pete turned it down, to a low and dangerous tone that raised the hair on the back of Clark's neck. "You are planning to marry a woman, to hopefully spend the rest of your life with her, and you haven't even told her who you are? WHAT you are?"
Clark put his hand up under his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "It's ... not easy, Pete."
"Oh, right." Pete's scorn was palpable. "Like it's going to be easy for HER. You sound like Lana. Everything is all about how it's going to affect YOU. Buy a vowel, Kent. You think Chloe was mad at you? All you ever did to her was run off and leave her at some stupid party or another, I forget which. What are you going to do when you're standing at the altar and some this-is-a-job-for emergency comes up?"
"Pete." Clark's whisper was pleading, painful. "What if ... what if she thinks of me ... differently ... when she finds out? We - we have such a great relationship.... No, scratch that. I love her, Pete. I love everything about her. Her fire, her rudeness, the way nothing ever slows her down. She's like Chloe in a lot of ways, except even deeper. She has so much passion. There aren't any shades of gray in Lois' world. That's something I ... not just something I can relate to. Something I can't live without."
Pete's expression was solid stone, his warm dark eyes as cold as it was possible for them to get. "And you were planning to keep from telling this woman you claim to love that you're not even human for, what, the rest of your life? Or did you think you could hide it, from a reporter of all people, when you're living with her? Or were you just counting on her to die handily like so many other people did when they became an inconvenience to you?"
Clark jerked as if he'd been shot with the entire arsenal of a battleship. His mouth fell open, working at trying to form a word, but no sound came out. His head moved in an uncertain motion, a frozen attempt at denial at such a suggestion, too far past shock for coherence.
"If she thinks differently of you, mister K," Pete said over his shoulder when he turned to leave, "It will be because you lied to her, and you didn't live up to her expectations -- as a man."
Clark didn't watch Pete leave because his superhumanly acute vision was blurred. Slowly, he lowered his head and buried his face in his hands, forcing himself not to breathe because he knew that if he did, it would come out a sob. The chaos of the newsroom muted to a buzz as even the newbie-est of interns exchanged worried glances. Yeah, Kent was a strange cookie, half the time johnny-on-the-spot and the other half nowhere to be found, but no one had ever seen anything faze him before, not even Perry's rants.
Clark wondered distantly if he were going to be sick. Even being trapped in Lionel's lab hadn't made him feel this helpless, his gut tied in knots from his own emotions, mental walls closing in on him that he couldn't break. He might lose Lois if he told her the truth. But Pete was right, of course; he would definitely lose her if he didn't. No choices, and no way out.
"Kent, love of my life and bane of my existence," Lois' voice cracked over him like a whip, "Would you quit moping about old times at Littleville and look over these damn pitiful excuses for story leads to see if there's anything I should bother chipping my nail polish on? Two muggings and a prostitution bust, oy vey. Where's Morgan Edge when you need to sink your teeth into something?" She strode off to Perry's office, presumably for another shouting match over being paired with a second-rate partner.
Clark dragged his hands down and forced his eyes to focus. He even felt a small involuntary smile trying to creep up. No doubt one of these days Lois would sink her teeth into Edge literally. He hoped her vaccinations were up to date.
He scanned the stories at a glance. The Coast Guard had cornered a pirate whaler, and were trying to figure out what to do about the international-waters claim. He didn't know what to do about it either, but it sounded like a good excuse to put on the suit and get some fresh air.
He stumbled away from the desk - the stumbling was another effective differentiation tactic, and not entirely feigned; his sense of balance was directly linked to the shifting gravitational tides that enabled him to fly blindfolded. Superman, of course, never stumbled, but that was because Superman was always concentrating on the task at hand. It was the difference between doing something out of habit and doing something on purpose. Clark Kent had habits. Superman didn't.
Thirty seconds later a colorful blur shot across the skyline, just short of the speed of sound. Clark made a mental note to write a column about improving window construction in the city. After all, the space shuttle inflicted a double sonic boom on central Florida on a regular basis, and no one there had any problems with it.
Problems. Superman hovered over the pirate whaler and Coast Guard vessel and debated the wisdom of just sinking the whaler and taking the crew home. Paul Watson and his Sea Shepherd crew had done it more than a few times, and they were international heroes for it. But could Superman get away with such an action?
Problems. How was he going to tell Lois? And when?
Pete Ross escorted himself past the first three layers of security in the LexCorp building with a series of tactics: ignoring the first, politicking the second, and knowing one of the third by name. Only Lex's private secretary, who was probably a meteor mutant and definitely one of the scariest women Pete had ever met, stopped him. "I'm sorry, sir, but unless you have an appointment, Mr. Luthor is not available."
He's probably watching the new Warrior Angel DVD, unless he's ripping somebody's heart out. "Please tell him it's Pete Ross, and that it concerns Clark Kent."
"One moment, sir." The woman kept a suspicious eye on him while she spoke practically subvocally into her headpiece. "It will be about half an hour, sir. If you'd care to return later...."
Ripping somebody's heart out, then. He'd've put the DVD on pause for something about Clark. "Thanks, I'll wait. I understand that Mr. Luthor is a busy man, but so am I. My I use my phone in here? Thank you."
It was, in fact, only twenty minutes before Lex himself opened the door. He was getting better at the ripping-people-to-shreds business. Pete checked automatically for signs of fangs and dripping blood. Dang, still no luck. He must have learned how to cover up his true nature from Angel.
"Mayor Ross," the tycoon said coolly. "I understand you have some information for me?"
Pete tilted his head, and Lex stepped back with a short gesture of invitation. Once the door was closed, Lex dropped the disinterested business facade. They had come to an understanding, of sorts, over the years, finding themselves cautiously wary of one another but on the same side of many issues. Not to mention their mutual interest in one very large issue. "Good to see you, Pete. I always wanted a friend in Congress. Brandy?"
"You own at least six senators that I know of. And besides, I haven't won the election yet. Yeah, thanks, but nothing fancy. I don't have your palate."
"I said a friend, not a lackey. You have about as much chance of losing the election as I do of putting on a red cape. And not to dishonor dear old dad, but I could care what vintage it is, so long as it doesn't give me heartburn. To a saner world. Though that may be a waste of a toast." They both took a sip, and Lex collapsed back into his overstuffed chair, where his big tabby cat -- Tisiphone, Pete remembered, the one who liked to ride with Lex in his cars, however weird THAT was, resumed grooming Lex's head with a loving tongue and an occasional baleful glance at Pete for interrupting her ministrations.
"So what has that-idiot-Clark done now?"
"You know he's getting married."
"To Lois Lane, of all the harpies in hell. Maybe because he's the only person she could think of that she wouldn't rather testify in court against. I can't wait to see what she's got on Wayne." Lex raised his glass. "To Mrs. Superman, may she finally have met her match." He drank. Pete didn't. "Though she probably still thinks of him as flannel-boy. I hope she knows just how much she's getting herself into."
Pete was quiet for a long second, long enough, thankfully, for Lex to swallow his brandy. "She doesn't."
Lex set his glass down, forewarned by his innately suspicious nature that had served him so well in business that something was going to make him want to throw it. "What?"
"She doesn't know that Clark is Superman. He hasn't told her."
Lex's bald head turned the color of red kryptonite. Tissy hissed and fluffed her tail. Lex's cats had their own personal issues with the alien claw-resistant cat-frustrater. "He WHAT?!"
"That was pretty much my reaction. I was too mad to rip him righteously, and besides, we were in the middle of the Planet's newsroom, and wouldn't THAT have made a headline. Chloe actually told me to send him a rock, so you can just imagine how pissed off she was."
"Help yourself to the stash," Lex said darkly. "I've got about fifty kilograms of the refined stuff, too, if you want to make a wedding present out of it. That -- that IDIOT! Does he not have a --" Lex sagged, anger draining slowly away, and Tissy licked his forehead worriedly. "No, of course he doesn't. He's not human. Just because he looks like us, was raised by us, doesn't mean he can ever be one of us. Things we take for granted, he'll never understand. And vice versa, I suppose. What I wouldn't give to get into his head, just for an hour...."
Pete's dark skin didn't look any noticeably paler, but his expression hid none of his discomfort. "I hope Chloe was just being over the top, and I hope you are too. We might have to be the bad guys at the speak-now-or-forever-hold-it part, if he doesn't come clean, but I don't think I could ... I mean, to really use it on...." He glanced at Tisiphone's emerald-studded collar, one of Lex's tackier bits of revenge on Clark for saddling him with the furry Furies in the first place ("That's not --" "No, but Clark thought it was for a second"), and swallowed. "You haven't seen what that stuff does to him. I had to. It made me sick just to watch."
Lex stared at him, levelly, no expression at all. "Pete, what would it take to make you kill your father?"
Pete did lose all the blood from his face then. "What? No -- not -- never!"
Lex turned his chair away. "I saw what Lionel did to Clark."
Pete let the implications of that seep past the barriers of I-will-not-believe-this that everyone erects in their minds, hoping that those barriers are never assaulted. No. He'd only had it second-hand from Chloe, and that in only broken pieces. Third-hand from the police. Never at all from the Kents. No.
"Lex...." Apologetic, appalled.
Lex turned back to him, shrugged, settling his mask like expensive clothing. "Call it icing on the cake. He raised me to be a Luthor. He should not have been surprised that, unlike the incompetent pretenders to the throne that you're taking on in Washington, family loyalty is not the first thing that runs in our blood." He leaned back, eyes closed, and only someone who knew him as well as Pete did could have caught the tiny muscle motions at temple and throat that revealed the pain of unwanted memories being ruthlessly shoved back into their dungeon.
"Um." Pete forced himself onto a different track with a combination of learned discipline and natural empathy that put people so at ease with him, and made him such an effective public speaker. "So, if we're not going to be making napkin rings for the rehearsal dinner out of something green, what's the next best way to get an alien's attention? I suppose I could smack him one." Pete spent an hour or two a day in the gym, and cheerfully let it be known that it was an open forum, so that any lobbyist who wanted to bother him was welcome to try to keep up with him. Not that fifty reps at five hundred pounds every other day would do him much good against Clark.
Lex's eyes flicked open, an expression sneaking onto his face that would have scared hell out of six billion people. "Something green," he said softly. "Now there's an idea I haven't used in awhile."
"Uh-oh. Do I even want to know?"
"Oh yes. You're going to be the one to deliver it."
* * * * * A/N: Tisiphone and her furry sisters (and their green-stone collars) are courtesy of LaCasta, who writes some of the funniest and also some of the darkest Smallville fanfic around, so go and read her stuff right now. There will be a test, and it will not be graded on the curve.
"Clark-bar! How's my main man hanging?" Pete slapped Clark across the back, a lighter slap than he would have given most people, more the way you'd hit a brick wall than a buddy. To protect your own hand.
Clark pretended to be startled. "Pete! What brings you to the big city?"
Pete shook his head. "Your rehearsal dinner's this weekend, or have you forgotten? Man, Lois is gonna kill you."
"No, I meant -- " Clark still flushed at the drop of a hat, which was one of the characteristics that separated him so thoroughly from his Superman persona. No one would ever believe an invulnerable alien could live in an almost permanent state of embarrassment at his own gaffes. "That's not until day after tomorrow. What are you doing here," he waved his hand vaguely around the news room, "now?"
"Didn't you hear? I'm running for Congress. Got a pretty good shot at it, too, if I do say so myself. Thought I'd get in some glad-handing time while I'm here."
"You always did. How's the home front?"
"And how did you get in here?" added a new voice, feminine and forceful.
"Oh, Lois, this is an old friend of mine. Smallville's mayor, Pete Ross."
"Oh!" Lois brightened considerably. "You're the one who uncovered the paper trail between LuthorCorp and the old mayor. Chloe told me all about it. Way to go, kid. Pleasure to meet you." She stuck out her hand, gave him a shake that would have broken the wrist on anyone less muscular than Pete, and moved off with a heel-clicking deliberation that sent copy-interns scurrying for cover.
Pete leaned back against the desk and smothered a laugh. "And ain't it just like Chloe not to tell her that it was Chloe who did most of the uncovering. I can see why you fell for her, Clark. It's a wonder she's not the one in the cape."
"Lois is a force of nature," Clark agreed with a smile. "Chloe was - well, Chloe and I will always be a part of each other's lives. Maybe it would have been different if we hadn't met until we were older. Honest, though, Chloe scared me, back when we were kids. She was so much faster on the uptake than I ever was. It was like always being on the defensive. I could never really open up to her, you know, here." Clark tapped his chest. "And by the time I did, it was - I'm not sure if she's ever forgiven me."
Pete made a scoffing sound. "Yeah, it might have been a little easier to get her to believe you weren't just blowing her off all the time if you'd told her what your problem was up front, instead of her finally having to find you locked half-dead in Lionel's back room. Waste your paranoia on your friends much, Clark? I had to practically tell you never to darken my doorway again to get you to be honest with your best bud since either of us could talk. How did Lois take it?"
Clark got the same expression he had as a twelve-year-old, glum and guilty and reticent. "I, um, I, haven't told her."
"WHAT!" Pete jumped to his feet, his weight-trained build looming over the cringing Clark like a jailer over a captive. "You WHAT?!?"
"Geez, turn it down," Clark muttered. The newsroom had gone dead silent, which, for a newsroom, was a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Pete turned it down, to a low and dangerous tone that raised the hair on the back of Clark's neck. "You are planning to marry a woman, to hopefully spend the rest of your life with her, and you haven't even told her who you are? WHAT you are?"
Clark put his hand up under his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "It's ... not easy, Pete."
"Oh, right." Pete's scorn was palpable. "Like it's going to be easy for HER. You sound like Lana. Everything is all about how it's going to affect YOU. Buy a vowel, Kent. You think Chloe was mad at you? All you ever did to her was run off and leave her at some stupid party or another, I forget which. What are you going to do when you're standing at the altar and some this-is-a-job-for emergency comes up?"
"Pete." Clark's whisper was pleading, painful. "What if ... what if she thinks of me ... differently ... when she finds out? We - we have such a great relationship.... No, scratch that. I love her, Pete. I love everything about her. Her fire, her rudeness, the way nothing ever slows her down. She's like Chloe in a lot of ways, except even deeper. She has so much passion. There aren't any shades of gray in Lois' world. That's something I ... not just something I can relate to. Something I can't live without."
Pete's expression was solid stone, his warm dark eyes as cold as it was possible for them to get. "And you were planning to keep from telling this woman you claim to love that you're not even human for, what, the rest of your life? Or did you think you could hide it, from a reporter of all people, when you're living with her? Or were you just counting on her to die handily like so many other people did when they became an inconvenience to you?"
Clark jerked as if he'd been shot with the entire arsenal of a battleship. His mouth fell open, working at trying to form a word, but no sound came out. His head moved in an uncertain motion, a frozen attempt at denial at such a suggestion, too far past shock for coherence.
"If she thinks differently of you, mister K," Pete said over his shoulder when he turned to leave, "It will be because you lied to her, and you didn't live up to her expectations -- as a man."
Clark didn't watch Pete leave because his superhumanly acute vision was blurred. Slowly, he lowered his head and buried his face in his hands, forcing himself not to breathe because he knew that if he did, it would come out a sob. The chaos of the newsroom muted to a buzz as even the newbie-est of interns exchanged worried glances. Yeah, Kent was a strange cookie, half the time johnny-on-the-spot and the other half nowhere to be found, but no one had ever seen anything faze him before, not even Perry's rants.
Clark wondered distantly if he were going to be sick. Even being trapped in Lionel's lab hadn't made him feel this helpless, his gut tied in knots from his own emotions, mental walls closing in on him that he couldn't break. He might lose Lois if he told her the truth. But Pete was right, of course; he would definitely lose her if he didn't. No choices, and no way out.
"Kent, love of my life and bane of my existence," Lois' voice cracked over him like a whip, "Would you quit moping about old times at Littleville and look over these damn pitiful excuses for story leads to see if there's anything I should bother chipping my nail polish on? Two muggings and a prostitution bust, oy vey. Where's Morgan Edge when you need to sink your teeth into something?" She strode off to Perry's office, presumably for another shouting match over being paired with a second-rate partner.
Clark dragged his hands down and forced his eyes to focus. He even felt a small involuntary smile trying to creep up. No doubt one of these days Lois would sink her teeth into Edge literally. He hoped her vaccinations were up to date.
He scanned the stories at a glance. The Coast Guard had cornered a pirate whaler, and were trying to figure out what to do about the international-waters claim. He didn't know what to do about it either, but it sounded like a good excuse to put on the suit and get some fresh air.
He stumbled away from the desk - the stumbling was another effective differentiation tactic, and not entirely feigned; his sense of balance was directly linked to the shifting gravitational tides that enabled him to fly blindfolded. Superman, of course, never stumbled, but that was because Superman was always concentrating on the task at hand. It was the difference between doing something out of habit and doing something on purpose. Clark Kent had habits. Superman didn't.
Thirty seconds later a colorful blur shot across the skyline, just short of the speed of sound. Clark made a mental note to write a column about improving window construction in the city. After all, the space shuttle inflicted a double sonic boom on central Florida on a regular basis, and no one there had any problems with it.
Problems. Superman hovered over the pirate whaler and Coast Guard vessel and debated the wisdom of just sinking the whaler and taking the crew home. Paul Watson and his Sea Shepherd crew had done it more than a few times, and they were international heroes for it. But could Superman get away with such an action?
Problems. How was he going to tell Lois? And when?
Pete Ross escorted himself past the first three layers of security in the LexCorp building with a series of tactics: ignoring the first, politicking the second, and knowing one of the third by name. Only Lex's private secretary, who was probably a meteor mutant and definitely one of the scariest women Pete had ever met, stopped him. "I'm sorry, sir, but unless you have an appointment, Mr. Luthor is not available."
He's probably watching the new Warrior Angel DVD, unless he's ripping somebody's heart out. "Please tell him it's Pete Ross, and that it concerns Clark Kent."
"One moment, sir." The woman kept a suspicious eye on him while she spoke practically subvocally into her headpiece. "It will be about half an hour, sir. If you'd care to return later...."
Ripping somebody's heart out, then. He'd've put the DVD on pause for something about Clark. "Thanks, I'll wait. I understand that Mr. Luthor is a busy man, but so am I. My I use my phone in here? Thank you."
It was, in fact, only twenty minutes before Lex himself opened the door. He was getting better at the ripping-people-to-shreds business. Pete checked automatically for signs of fangs and dripping blood. Dang, still no luck. He must have learned how to cover up his true nature from Angel.
"Mayor Ross," the tycoon said coolly. "I understand you have some information for me?"
Pete tilted his head, and Lex stepped back with a short gesture of invitation. Once the door was closed, Lex dropped the disinterested business facade. They had come to an understanding, of sorts, over the years, finding themselves cautiously wary of one another but on the same side of many issues. Not to mention their mutual interest in one very large issue. "Good to see you, Pete. I always wanted a friend in Congress. Brandy?"
"You own at least six senators that I know of. And besides, I haven't won the election yet. Yeah, thanks, but nothing fancy. I don't have your palate."
"I said a friend, not a lackey. You have about as much chance of losing the election as I do of putting on a red cape. And not to dishonor dear old dad, but I could care what vintage it is, so long as it doesn't give me heartburn. To a saner world. Though that may be a waste of a toast." They both took a sip, and Lex collapsed back into his overstuffed chair, where his big tabby cat -- Tisiphone, Pete remembered, the one who liked to ride with Lex in his cars, however weird THAT was, resumed grooming Lex's head with a loving tongue and an occasional baleful glance at Pete for interrupting her ministrations.
"So what has that-idiot-Clark done now?"
"You know he's getting married."
"To Lois Lane, of all the harpies in hell. Maybe because he's the only person she could think of that she wouldn't rather testify in court against. I can't wait to see what she's got on Wayne." Lex raised his glass. "To Mrs. Superman, may she finally have met her match." He drank. Pete didn't. "Though she probably still thinks of him as flannel-boy. I hope she knows just how much she's getting herself into."
Pete was quiet for a long second, long enough, thankfully, for Lex to swallow his brandy. "She doesn't."
Lex set his glass down, forewarned by his innately suspicious nature that had served him so well in business that something was going to make him want to throw it. "What?"
"She doesn't know that Clark is Superman. He hasn't told her."
Lex's bald head turned the color of red kryptonite. Tissy hissed and fluffed her tail. Lex's cats had their own personal issues with the alien claw-resistant cat-frustrater. "He WHAT?!"
"That was pretty much my reaction. I was too mad to rip him righteously, and besides, we were in the middle of the Planet's newsroom, and wouldn't THAT have made a headline. Chloe actually told me to send him a rock, so you can just imagine how pissed off she was."
"Help yourself to the stash," Lex said darkly. "I've got about fifty kilograms of the refined stuff, too, if you want to make a wedding present out of it. That -- that IDIOT! Does he not have a --" Lex sagged, anger draining slowly away, and Tissy licked his forehead worriedly. "No, of course he doesn't. He's not human. Just because he looks like us, was raised by us, doesn't mean he can ever be one of us. Things we take for granted, he'll never understand. And vice versa, I suppose. What I wouldn't give to get into his head, just for an hour...."
Pete's dark skin didn't look any noticeably paler, but his expression hid none of his discomfort. "I hope Chloe was just being over the top, and I hope you are too. We might have to be the bad guys at the speak-now-or-forever-hold-it part, if he doesn't come clean, but I don't think I could ... I mean, to really use it on...." He glanced at Tisiphone's emerald-studded collar, one of Lex's tackier bits of revenge on Clark for saddling him with the furry Furies in the first place ("That's not --" "No, but Clark thought it was for a second"), and swallowed. "You haven't seen what that stuff does to him. I had to. It made me sick just to watch."
Lex stared at him, levelly, no expression at all. "Pete, what would it take to make you kill your father?"
Pete did lose all the blood from his face then. "What? No -- not -- never!"
Lex turned his chair away. "I saw what Lionel did to Clark."
Pete let the implications of that seep past the barriers of I-will-not-believe-this that everyone erects in their minds, hoping that those barriers are never assaulted. No. He'd only had it second-hand from Chloe, and that in only broken pieces. Third-hand from the police. Never at all from the Kents. No.
"Lex...." Apologetic, appalled.
Lex turned back to him, shrugged, settling his mask like expensive clothing. "Call it icing on the cake. He raised me to be a Luthor. He should not have been surprised that, unlike the incompetent pretenders to the throne that you're taking on in Washington, family loyalty is not the first thing that runs in our blood." He leaned back, eyes closed, and only someone who knew him as well as Pete did could have caught the tiny muscle motions at temple and throat that revealed the pain of unwanted memories being ruthlessly shoved back into their dungeon.
"Um." Pete forced himself onto a different track with a combination of learned discipline and natural empathy that put people so at ease with him, and made him such an effective public speaker. "So, if we're not going to be making napkin rings for the rehearsal dinner out of something green, what's the next best way to get an alien's attention? I suppose I could smack him one." Pete spent an hour or two a day in the gym, and cheerfully let it be known that it was an open forum, so that any lobbyist who wanted to bother him was welcome to try to keep up with him. Not that fifty reps at five hundred pounds every other day would do him much good against Clark.
Lex's eyes flicked open, an expression sneaking onto his face that would have scared hell out of six billion people. "Something green," he said softly. "Now there's an idea I haven't used in awhile."
"Uh-oh. Do I even want to know?"
"Oh yes. You're going to be the one to deliver it."
* * * * * A/N: Tisiphone and her furry sisters (and their green-stone collars) are courtesy of LaCasta, who writes some of the funniest and also some of the darkest Smallville fanfic around, so go and read her stuff right now. There will be a test, and it will not be graded on the curve.