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THEN…
Lex Luthor never wanted to be a hero.
Oh, he wanted to be seen as a hero, and he wanted to feel like a hero, but Lex knew what actually being a hero meant. He hadn't studied the classics for nothing. Lex knew that the real hero always dies at the end. Which just made loving one and somehow becoming one, even harder.
When Superman died, Lex shouldn't have been shocked. He had known it was coming from the moment Clark Kent pulled him out of a river and he'd been halfway in love before the water dried on his skin. He'd known Clark was a hero, his hero, and Lex had known, even then, what happened to heroes. For many many years, right up until that point, Lex had even intended to bring about the demise himself; perhaps to just to get it over with.
Still, there he found himself, twenty years later watching city workmen haul rubble while the vultures of the press circled the pit where Superman had died.
Lex had spent so long threatening to kill Superman. Testing his limits. Trying to find a failsafe. He really shouldn't be surprised that some alien god had beaten him to it. He really shouldn't have been crying on a Thursday afternoon in the middle of Metropolis. Luthors did not cry. Yet still, there he found himself, Superman dead and a planet in mourning.
The Metropolis City monument was going to be glorious. Because that's what the public wanted, that's what Superman had meant to them. They wanted to see their hero immortalised even in death. 50 foot high in black marble at the very center of Centennial Park. Lex would be able to see the face of it from his penthouse. He already knew it. Ignominious. Unavoidable.
Lex also knew there was going to be a far smaller tomb in a Smallville graveyard. Probably under the maple tree, near Clark’s father. Maybe there would be a few forgiven loans and maybe Lex would even pay for a new library with the name Kent above the door. Because that's what Clark would have liked, even if he never would have accepted it from Lex in life. It was small. Nothing in the scheme of things, but while Lex knew he could not buy a clean conscience he was still going to try.
That was where it all started to fall apart for Lex Luthor, really. Standing there contemplating ways to memorialise a man he'd loved and an alien he'd hated. With Superman dead, Lex remembered why Clark Kent had mattered. It didn't make sense. These things so seldom do.
LATER…
It had been a long day. Even longer than usual and an even tougher night.
Lex wasn't sure when he'd ended up with a regular patrol slot on the JL roster, he certainly hadn't meant to agree to it.
The first few times had been a necessity. His city was in trouble, and without Superman floating around rescuing kittens out of trees, other dangers had risen back out of the dark. Lex already knew a woman who knew a man who controlled the Metropolis drug trade. Lex simply had people smugglers killed, so really organised crime wasn't a problem in Metropolis like it was in Gotham. Not even with Superman gone.
Unfortunately, there were other things Lex hadn't planned for, or couldn't plan for, that happened too. Floods, toxic gas leaks, and psychopaths like Toyman and the Joker who did the destruction thing for fun, not profit. Lex could control profit, but he couldn't control that kind of malicious fun (not yet at least). He hadn't realised how much Superman could be used for, until he wasn't around volunteering to do it anyway.
So, when worst came to worst, Lex had donned his Warsuit and gone out flying with his former (and occasionally current) enemies in defence of Metropolis. Even Mercy and Hope couldn't be everywhere at once. At first he had enjoyed the accomplishment, the rush of it and the adulation afterwards. Somehow, Lex ended up looking after Metropolis in Clark's aching absence.
After two years, however, it was getting dull. To say the least. Frustrating at best.
The Justice League hadn't wanted to trust him. Hadn't wanted any of his help. Wally West had called Lex's powers, and his Warsuit, ill gotten gains and generally been a hypocritical asshole considering the whole JL were part-funded by Queen Industries, biggest DOD contractor after Lex himself, and Wayne Enterprises - which was a bit obvious for Bruce and was probably some kind of triple-cross mind game.
The simple truth was: it was just a matter of supply and demand, the market needed more superheroes and Lex in a Luthortech Warsuit was close enough. So he supplied. They needed help and he was there, despite himself. In the end, the world needed a new hero and so Lex had supplied. Filling a gap in the manpower they were sorely missing in this brave new world—maybe he'd even proven himself, just a little. Most of the time he regretted it, but he also did not know how to stop. He had tried and failed too many times to replace himself in replacing Clark.
In death Clark had finally achieved what Lex never could, he'd made Lex Luthor a hero.
Thus Lex found himself at a loss after what had been a tough night in a string of tough nights. Lex did what he always did when he was feeling melancholy. He got a little self-destructive.
Superman's death had given Lex a whole new set of hobbies he didn't need. Along with one very morbid version of an old one: stalking Superman and trying to solve the mystery of Clark Kent. An obsession so old it felt like part of him. Felt like there wasn't much else left of Lex Luthor other than his obsession with Clark Kent. Even dead, Clark controlled him.
When Lex felt really bad, he went to the top of LexCorp Tower, to a chamber only he could access. Lex was feeling really bad that night, so he went up to the top of his Tower, and he watched Superman's corpse. He indulged himself in longing for things he couldn't have had even when the alien breathed. Things he couldn't have had even when Clark called him a friend. It burned in his chest. But it least it felt like something.
Of course, Lex had stolen the body. That went without saying. He paid an awful lot of money to own every city cleanup crew in Metropolis and something like this was exactly why he did it.
At first, he'd even lied to himself and to Mercy, he'd said he wanted to cut it up. Find out what made the alien tick. Thankfully, even Lex wasn't that cruel to himself. Watching Clark die had been hard enough. No matter what knowledge it bought him, he couldn't quite raise the Kryptonite scalpel.
No, in the end, Lex had done something even worse to himself instead. He had laid Clark out in state. A glass coffin, like something from a fairy tale. A glass coffin under a glass dome, under as much summer sun as Metropolis could provide.
Even now, two years later, Clark was as still beautiful as the day he had died. As beautiful as the day Lex first hit him with that goddamn Porsche. Unchanged, untouched by something so mortal as decay or time. He was pale though, too pale, and naked, and the gash in his side had never healed. But it had stopped bleeding when his heart stopped beating. Even the last traces of blood didn't rot. Clotted, and bruised, and something almost human if you didn't know he'd been dead for years. He wasn't human. He'd never been human. He'd always been Clark. It had been two years, and his blood had barely stopped flowing.
Still, sometimes when Lex visited the tomb—less and less these days but still too often—he imagined it was healing. Slowly. Changing. That his skin had more colour. That his eyes moved under frozen lids.
When he really wanted to hurt himself, Lex let himself hope.
NOW…
When Clark woke up, he was naked and he was trapped. And Lex Luthor was sprawled in an elegant steel chair next to him, black-out drunk and snoring softly.
Clark maybe panicked. Just a bit.
He smashed the cage, which really was only glass, and he roared like some comic book monster.
Luthor startled awake, staring at him like he’d never seen him before. Shocked and hopeful and terrifyingly human.
“What did you do to me?” Clark demanded, pressing a hand to the quickly healing gash on his side. Had Luthor been harvesting him? Surely even Lex wasn’t that far gone?
“Waited,” said Lex. “I waited for you.”
Clark lowered himself to the ground, only now realising he was floating, menacingly naked.
“Why?” Clark asked.
“Someone had to.”
“What happened to me?”
“Doomsday. You died, a little over two years ago now. The world mourned.”
Lex was shaking, fists clenched. He was wearing some kind of hellish mash-up of a Warsuit and Clark’s own uniform. The sun was rising behind him like a cryptic kind of halo.
“Why are you here?” Clark asked.
“Sometimes I like to torture myself, pretend you’ll wake up if I just pump you with enough sunlight and hope.”
“But I did wake up?”
“Did you?”
“I’m pretty sure I’m real, Lex.”
“So am I most of the time. It’s horrible. Then I really do wake up and it’s so much worse. I really didn’t think I drank that much last night.”
Clark reached out, Lex let him. Clark brushed his cheek, something close to a caress.
“I’m real.”
Lex stood up, putting them toe to toe, closer than was ever appropriate but not the closest they’re ever been. Not by a long shot.
“You’re wearing my symbol?” Clark said, hopeful despite the evidence.
“It’s a long story. You can have it back.”
Clark bent just enough to kiss Lex, softly on the lips. Lex barely responded, stood there, hand on Clark’s chest, above his heart. Breath held and fingers trembling.
“Are you sure you’re real?” Lex asked, at last.
“No. Not yet. Let me have this,” Clark said.
“You can have anything you want if you stay alive.”
“I’ll try.”
Lex pulled Clark back down to his level and kissed him back this time, years of animosity, months of loss, decades of heartache, all pushed into one desperate kiss. Clark opened to it, took it all in. Enemies, friends, lovers, everything in between, melted down to one moment of rebirth and retribution all brought to life between them. They kissed like a prayer, saying things with their bodies which no words could cover, begging for nameless needy things with lips and tongue. Hot and deep and just a little like coming home.
The world could wait one more night for Superman. Because Lex Luthor wouldn’t.
THE END