Junkyard Dogs.
Generally speaking, Lucas didn't think about life too much. Trying to stay alive, sure, he thought about that all the time. But life in general, or life, meaning of- nah, it was all a big waste of time to him. Things were the way they were, why bother fucking around with it?
It was a philosophy that stood him in surprisingly good stead throughout his young life. When both Lex and Lionel had approached him about fucking the other one over, he didn't think about how shocking it was. With Lionel, he was mostly thinking about what a skeezy bastard the other man was, and with Lex he was mostly focused on getting the hell out of the alley. In the end he'd liked Lex better than Lionel, so he'd thrown his lot in with his brother instead of his father with the same lack of forethought that he'd use when throwing the dice.
So when young Clark Kent showed up in one of the pricier clubs in Edge City with brand new clothes and a brand new attitude, Lucas didn't think too much about what had caused the change. He just grinned, admired the view, and offered the man a drink.
"Sure," Clark said, cool as anything, and downed the shot that Lucas ordered him like it was water. "I can't believe Lex lets you stay here, after what happened."
"Lex doesn't let me do much of anything, these days," Lucas said. "Seeing as he's dead, and all."
Clark turned away from him sharply, his hair bristling out at the ends and brushing against the back of his neck. It was a good look on him. Made you want to run your hands through it. Or grab onto it while he sucked your cock through those pretty, pretty lips.
"I don't want to talk about it," Clark snapped, and from that Lucas figured out that Clark was a mite upset about Lex being dead. Oh, right, weren't they best friends or something? Figured.
"Fine," he said agreeably. "We can talk about you, Clark. And your bad new self."
"It's Kal," Clark said absently. "And no, we can't."
Lucas considered that for a few seconds. Should he argue about it? Did he even care?
Not really, he decided. Clark was different- different name and everything. Fine by him. Clark was even more fun to look at now than he was back in Smallville when he was wearing that godawful flannel, plus he looked a lot more ready to party, so Lucas figured that all around, this was probably a good thing.
"Kal, then," he said. And Kal looked over at him with something like gratitude in those angry green eyes- shit, he was gorgeous- all because he didn't argue. Man, he could definitely have some fun with this. "You got a place to stay?"
"Nah," Kal said. "But I've never had trouble finding one."
Lucas didn't doubt that at all. Who wouldn't want to fuck someone who looked like Kal? "Stay with me," he offered. Casual, like he didn't have any ulterior motives. Like he wasn't even the kind of person who had ulterior motives.
From the sharp look Kal gave him, Lucas figured that his innocent act came off more "I'm so stupid I don't even know what the word ulterior means," but then again he never was good at innocent. Either way, Kal saw right through him.
"Sure."
And he still said yes. Yeah, Lucas could definitely have some fun with this.
They didn't fuck for the first few days. Lucas thought about pushing the issue when Kal headed for the couch and took off his boots, but the fine-lined tension and angry twitches that Kal was giving off, combined with some of the more interesting tidbits that Daddy Dearest had shared with him when he still thought that Lucas trusted him, was enough to get him to back off.
Instead they went clubbing. Gambling too, because Lucas was pretty sure that he'd go into withdrawal or some shit if he didn't bet on something at least every other day, and Kal joined him. Turned out that Kal was killer at poker, so after the first night Lucas didn't bother to try and cheat, didn't even bother to play, just sat back and bet on his companion because it was easy money since Kal always won.
It was actually the fifth night of Kal's stay that they had sex, and it wouldn't have happened if Lucas hadn't had a couple too many beers and gotten up in the middle of the night to take a piss.
He didn't turn the lights on because he was hoping not to wake Kal, who seemed like the sort of person to get pissy if someone fucked with his sleep. He didn't need the lights on anyway, since his apartment was on the fifteenth floor and there was enough ambient light from the city that the place wasn't anywhere near pitch black. He navigated his living room easily, even with a couple too many beers in him, and didn't bump into anything and wake up his guest.
On the way back, though, he made a hell of a lot more noise. In his defense, he figured that anyone would have shouted like that if they'd walked out of their bathroom to find someone floating above their couch.
"Holy fuck!"
Kal fell and hit the couch with a crash, flailing in a way that later would be extremely funny to Lucas, but at the time was just another part of his overall shock. Kal cursed a blue streak as he fought his way out of the wreckage of the furniture, and when he got to his feet he was wearing only a pair of black jeans and a seriously fucked-up brand on his chest.
"What the fuck, Lucas?" he snarled, getting right up in his face, but Lucas was too shocked to have the good sense to back down.
"You were fucking floating, man!"
Kal sighed and lost some of his lightning-fast temper, which Lucas had learned to be pretty fucking wary of in the last four days. "Shit. I thought I stopped doing that last year."
Lucas was pretty sure his eyes were wider than saucers. He'd read that in a book once, and he couldn't really remember what size saucers were supposed to be, but at the moment he figured that they couldn't possibly be wider than his eyes right now. "You've done this before?"
Kal sighed again and flopped down hard into a nearby armchair, which creaked alarmingly under the abuse. "Yeah."
Lucas just stared at him. "What the hell are you, anyway?"
And Kal stared straight back at him and said, "Alien. Got a problem with it?"
And Lucas, who'd probably never had a bigger shock in a life that was pretty much just one shock after another, just said the first thing that came to mind. "Fuck, no. It's hot."
And Kal laughed, this deep belly laugh that Lucas hadn't heard even when Kal was actually Clark Kent, and reached out one long arm to drag him down into his lap and one hell of a kiss.
When Lucas pulled away, panting, he said, "Man, we humans need to breathe, you know?"
"I'll keep that in mind," Kal whispered, his eyes dark and hot, and ripped his shirt off before kissing him again.
It was an extremely satisfied Lucas Luthor who dragged Kal out the next night. Kal didn't want to go- he wanted to stay in and fuck, and while it was tempting, Lucas had the itch to go out and show off. He managed to temporarily forget that showing off was what usually got him in trouble, because hey, he was going out with a superpowered alien. Nothing was going to touch them tonight.
And nothing really did. Edge City had a few pits of sin where anything, absolutely anything, went, and they hit them all. Nobody so much as raised an eyebrow about a couple of pretty boys rubbing against each other in the midst of a mass of writing bodies, and they took full advantage of the fact. So much so that they barely made it out to the alley before they fucked, Kal pounding into him hard, and Lucas unable to do anything more than moan like a bitch and take it till he bit down on the unyielding flesh of Kal's shoulder and came.
Afterwards they went back to the apartment and lazed around the kitchen, drinking beer and talking, mostly about Kal's powers. Lucas had heard hints of extrapolations that Lionel had made, but nothing concrete, and the curiosity that he'd been assured was completely genetic was coming to the surface in a pretty big way.
"I mean, obviously you're invincible, and you float in your sleep, but what the hell else can you do? There's no way that's it."
"I can move faster than you can see," Kal said, grinning with amusement at Lucas' enthusiastic curiosity. "Lift some really heavy stuff. Float, though not when I'm awake. Set things on fire with my eyes. See through solid objects."
"Shit, you've got X-ray vision?" Lucas demanded. "No fucking wonder you're so good at poker! You can see through the cards!"
"Yeah," Kal said. "I'll never starve, that's for damn sure."
"No fucking kidding," Lucas muttered. "So when did you find out that you were an alien?"
Kal gave him a rueful look. "Would you believe it if I told you the day that Lex and I met?"
"No shit?" Lucas demanded.
"No shit."
"So how did you two meet? Big bro never would tell me."
"He hit me with his car," Kal said. "Sixty miles an hour straight off a bridge. Kinda freaked me out, and my Dad ended up showing me my spaceship."
"Fuck," Lucas breathed. "You have a spaceship?"
"Not anymore," Kal said. "I kinda blew it up."
"The fuck you do that for?" Lucas demanded. "Come on, Kal, you had a fucking spaceship! What the fuck could be cooler than that?"
Kal pointed at the ropy brand that was visible under the tight t-shirt that strained across his chest. "It gave me this. And tried to get me to rule the world. Figured it'd be safer without, you know?"
"Oh," Lucas said. "Okay, ix-nay the spaceship then."
"Thank you," Kal said, and grabbed another beer.
They were happily going through several cartons of something-or-other (Lucas had just ordered a bunch of random numbers, since he liked everything on the menu and Kal could eat fucking anything and be happy with it) when it first hit. Kal doubled over the table, clutching at his chest as his rice went everywhere, and then lurched back away from the table, clumsy hands ripping at his shirt. On his chest the brand was fucking glowing, and it obviously hurt like fuck-all, the way Clark was moaning. Lucas knew his happy moans pretty intimately, and these were not happy moans.
Kal grabbed for his ring of all things, yanked it off. Lucas was about to yell at him- how the fuck was that gonna help, anyway?- but then the glow started fading, and Kal flopped back into the chair, panting loudly.
"Shit, Kal," Lucas said. "What the fuck is up with your brand and that ring, anyway?"
And Kal looked up at him and… blushed. No other word for it, his cheeks just lit up like he was some kid, or like…
Like he was Clark Kent again, like whatever had changed him the first time had just ended. And Lucas, who'd always been smarter than people gave him credit for, put two and two together to get mother-fucking UFO.
"Clark," he said. "It's the ring, isn't it? Changing you?"
"Can you please not talk?" Clark said, ducking his head so that he didn't have to look Lucas in the eye. "In a minute I can put this ring back on but until then I think I'm gonna explode from embarrassment."
Lucas was dying to ask questions, but he subsided agreeably enough and after a tense minute Clark slid the ring back onto his finger. Red immediately branched out along the veins in his arm and traveled up his shoulder, causing him to clench his fist and arch his neck a little, until it reached his eyes. They glowed bright red briefly and then went back to ordinary green, and then the red was gone and Kal was just Kal, and not Clark Kent.
"So," Lucas said. "The ring?"
"Consider it an un-inhibitor," Kal said. "Scar reacts weird to it sometimes."
"Huh," Lucas said. "That's pretty cool, actually." Kal shot him a rancorous look, and Lucas hastened to add, "Not the scar thing. The way that ring works."
"It's a nice way of dealing with a fucked-up life," Kal said. "When I'm wearing it, I just don't care."
Lucas said nothing. For the most part, Kal was right, but… Not always. He knew that Kal cared about things. He knew that Kal missed home, though he'd probably lose his temper and start snarling if Lucas mentioned. He also knew that Kal missed Lex, but then again, Lucas tried pretty hard not to mention Lex much at all, anymore. Kal always got this faraway look in his eyes when Lucas did, and maybe it was selfish but Lucas wanted him here while he had him here, and talking about Lex took him away for a while.
Somehow, the original "a couple of days" turned into a week and Kal was still there, making money for him at the poker tables in a different gambling hall every night and going clubbing with him and stumbling home at four in the morning even though Kal was perfectly sober and fucking like bunnies in Lucas' oversized bed. Lucas was still waking up at two to find Kal wrapped around him like a clinging vine and ordering Chinese takeout for dinner and watching old movies before another round of fucking before cleaning up and going out to do it all over again.
A week turned into two weeks turned into a month and Kal was still there. And Lucas was happy, unreasonably happy and he smiled when he saw Kal come stumbling sleepily into the living room when he woke up Saturday morning for cartoons that were still a habit even after however long he'd been Kal rather than Clark. Lucas didn't love him and never would, didn't even know what love was (except somewhere in the back of his head where lived the knowledge that if Lex asked him to, he would follow Lex into the fucking grave, because Lex was his brother and could make everything right if he wasn't dead, but most of the time Lucas wasn't aware of this place, so to him it didn't count) but he did care about Kal. Had fun with him, didn't get bored after a couple of days like he'd thought. Liked having him around.
Oh, he knew it wouldn't last forever. If it lasted out the summer he'd be hella surprised. Kal didn't belong here, didn't belong in Edge City with it's pretty surface and degradation underneath; he belonged to the bright lights and shine of Metropolis, where even the sin was clean, and eventually back to the green and corn of Smallville. Lucas knew this. He also didn't see any reason not to enjoy Kal while he had him.
And Lucas could do that. He'd lived a life where gift given had conditions attached to it, and it wasn't hard to learn the conditions that Kal came with. Don't say anything when Kal's attention was caught by a bald man on the street. Don't say anything when his expression closed off at the sight of a silver Porsche outside one of their clubs. Pretend not to notice the way he'd sit out on the balcony sometimes, staring towards Metropolis and Smallville and everything that was home to him, and never think about who Kal was thinking about in those moments. Because he already knew, and Kal's strange, quiet grief was private. Lucas didn't see any point in intruding. Besides, he could understand. He had his own grief when it came to Lex, and it wasn't something he could even understand, much less name to someone as complicated as Kal.
Lucas had seen Kal drink enough to flatten the crew of a small ship, and then walk away like he hadn't touched a drop. He was pretty fucking sure that Kal couldn't get drunk, which was pretty sad, if you asked him.
Kal obviously agreed with him, because when Lucas came home from an afternoon at the races he didn't find Kal asleep where he'd left him. No, Kal was sprawled out on the couch, a bottle of vodka in one hand and- Lucas counted twice just to make sure that he was right- sixteen empty bottles lined up on the coffee table next to him.
"I take it this is not a good day," Lucas said, kicking off his shoes and dumping his coat over the post. "And where the hell did you buy seventeen bottles of vodka? The guy must have thought that you were having the mother of all parties."
"He did," Kal said. "And it was twenty. There's three more in the kitchen that I haven't gotten to yet."
"Oh, well that makes everything make sense," Lucas said, and crossed the room. He glanced at the couch, realized that Kal was taking up every available inch, and then just shrugged and sat down on his stomach.
"Hey," Kal said, but he didn't really sound upset. He just sounded morose. Really fucking morose, actually. Downright maudlin.
And you know, he never realized just how many weird-ass words he picked up from his brother's emails until now, when Lex was gone and there were no more emails but there was Kal who, sometimes, when he wasn't paying attention, kinda talked like Lex.
"What's going on?" he said, letting the worry show in his voice. Worry was pretty new to him, honestly. He hadn't worried about anyone in a long time, hadn't ever really cared about anyone before Kal- except for his brother. Who was gone, and he still grieved about it even though honestly he hadn't known Lex that long, just a few days of plotting to fuck over Daddy Dearest and then a couple months of emails that were pretty much one-sided. Kal had known Lex a lot longer, cared about him a lot more. Which was what this whole drinking thing was about.
"They declared him officially dead today," Kal said. "Apparently the official waiting period is up." He grimaced, drained the last few inches in the bottle in one long swallow, then brought up his hand to wipe his mouth clean. "It was only a formality anyway."
Yeah, that's what Lucas had thought this was about. He wanted to say something comforting, but he didn't really have any comfort in him to give. "When's the funeral?" he asked instead.
"Two weeks," Kal said. "Lionel wants to give people 'time to prepare for the shock of his final rest,'" he added bitterly. "Bastard."
"No argument from me there," Lucas said. "You're going." It wasn't a question.
"Yeah," Kal said.
"When do you leave?" he asked, like it didn't matter.
"Tomorrow," Kal said. He turned his head and favored Lucas with something like a smile. "I know that's not what you want to hear."
"No," Lucas said. "But it doesn't matter. I knew you'd be leaving."
"You could come with me," Kal offered. "Be fun to raise some hell in Metropolis, don't you think?"
"Nah," Lucas said, shaking his head regretfully. "I can't just walk onto Lionel's target range like that. It's asking to get myself killed."
"You're right," Kal said. "I probably shouldn't either. But I have to. I have to go to his funeral."
And everything in Kal's life centered around the loss of Lex, Lucas thought. Just like everything in Clark Kent's life had centered around the presence of Lex. Some people were just like a force of nature, and Lex Luthor was one of them. To that, Lucas could personally attest.
Lucas just nodded and shifted till he was lying down on top of Kal. "Well," he said, his voice totally casual, like he wasn't going to miss Kal when he was gone. "If this is your last night, then we've gotta make the best of it, right?"
"Absolutely," Kal agreed, and he gave just the faintest ghost of a smile before yanking Lucas down into a brutally hard kiss.
Kal was packing his duffel full of clothes when Lucas woke up the next morning. Lucas didn't say anything, just sat up in bed with his fingers laced across his stomach and watched him carefully fold and put away layers of jeans and shirts.
When he was done he grabbed it and left the bedroom, and Lucas slipped out of bed and padded after him in just his soft cotton sleep pants. Kal stopped in the hall and pulled on his leather coat and shades and stood there looking entirely too much like the man that Lucas had stumbled across in the club two months ago, before time and familiarity and sex and secrets, both hidden and not, had turned him into something more.
"Got a minute to spare for a goodbye?" he asked, because he couldn't just let Kal walk out the door in silence. Those two months had been worth more than just that, and even Kal, who was pretty much a giant prick a lot of the time, would have to know that.
Kal smiled at him, unexpectedly. "'Course," he said, and wrapped one huge hand over the smooth skin of Lucas' left hip to pull him closer. "You know me better than that."
"Sure," he tried to say, but Kal's mouth cut him off. Kal's tongue said hello and goodbye all at once, and it was the deepest and most passionate kiss that Kal had ever given him out of the many, many kisses they'd had during the many, many times they'd fucked. This was one for the records books, Lucas thought. This one left them all in the dust.
And then Kal pulled away. "That was goodbye," he said, and Lucas dragged his eyes open just in time to see Kal pull of the ring and become Clark Kent again, blushing and awkward. "And this is something else," Clark said, looking determined as hell, and leaned down to kiss him again.
It was a relatively chaste kiss, as kisses went. Barely any tongue. But it was Clark kissing him, the stranger from Smallville who had things like morals instead of the cheerful sociopath who'd shared his apartment and large chunks of his life for the last two months, and that is what made the difference.
When it was over Clark pulled him close and wrapped his arms around him in an honest-to-God hug. Lucas wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but he tentatively hugged back, and Clark let his forehead drop down to rest against Lucas'. "Thank you," he whispered, his breath fluttering against Lucas' eyelashes, and then Clark was gone, duffel and all, and the door blew shut behind him with the wind of his passing.
Lucas stared at his front door, and then went into the kitchen to get a drink.
He spent the next couple of weeks watching the newspapers. Kal made quite a stir in Metropolis, though no one knew it was him. Lucas worried a little about how out there he was getting- he'd never been this bad, not when he was in Edge City. It was like Kal was asking the world to fuck with him, daring them to realize how dangerous and unbalanced he was. Daring them to try and figure out how to kill him, because Lucas knew, somewhere in his heart, that Kal didn't really want to live without Lex.
He saw footage of the funeral, though. There was plenty out there, tons of reporters with cameras, and Lucas recorded it all and went over it with a fine-toothed comb. He knew that Kal had to be on there somewhere, that Kal had to have showed up. If Kal showed up, then maybe there was hope, maybe he wasn't hell-bent on destroying himself like Lucas thought.
Finally, on a third run-through of CNN's tape, he spotted him. Just for a few moments, but Lucas paused the image and ran it through an enhancer he'd stolen for this very purpose just to get a good look at him.
Kal stood at the back, dressed in a somber blue button-down and his usual black jeans. The ubiquitous shades and jacket were gone, though, and he was holding a single white rose that lay on the ground in the frame after he'd disappeared faster than the eye could see. Lucas saw that chick from Smallville- Lana, was it?- run towards the spot where he'd been, but she never did see that white rose, and Lucas wondered if she'd understood why he was there at all.
But Kal had been there. Kal had been there and dressed well and brought a rose. There was hope for him yet.
Lucas was content.