Title: Here's To You, Lex Luthor
Author: Christie
Email: tinamishi@yahoo.com
Rating: R for disturbing themes, language
Genre: Smallville; Clark/Lex
Summary: Lex has emotional issues. Big ones. Post-Jitters.
Disclaimer: The characters in Smallville do not belong to me. sniff Distribution: List archvies. Anyone else, ask.

Dedication: To Lar. Your fault, your fault, your fault.

*

The girl was there when he got back to the place he had the arrogance to call a home. Repressed anger bubbled to the surface and Lex once again pushed it down. He often wondered where all the emotion he held back went. Did it seep out while he was driving? Was that why we drove so recklessly? Did he take it out on the LuthorCorp employees? On his obsenely large staff?

Or was it all just...there? Years of it. Pushed further and further down into his soul, marinating there until he was plauged with it. One day, anger would consume him, swallow him whole. Lex was as sure of that as he was of anything.

He tried to remember her name. Mandy? Mindy? Hell. Leila? Didn't matter. He wouldn't have to call her by name. Even if he didn't end up demanding she leave, conversation would be sparse. It wasn't like dinner at Smallville's finest dining establishment and a stopover at the Kent farm meant he was making some sort of commitment. Girls like her were groupies for guys like him. He knew her from back.

Back when -- he couldn't really remember. She wasn't really still in his mansion because she wanted to reminisce anyway.

Not that it mattered. All he could think about was Clark. The way Clark's parents had embraced him; crying, joyful to see him alive. The way his own father betrayed him, then besmirched his actions as unnecessary, stupid and falsely heroic.

It didn't matter what Lex did, or didn't do. His father would never be pleased, and he had long since stopped trying.

Now there was only one person's approval Lex craved. He thought he'd opened his eyes on an angel the day Clark pulled him from the icy water and saved his life the first time. Afterward, Lex knew their destinies lay intertwined. And he spent a good part of each week making sure Clark knew it too.

He hadn't meant to fall so hard for the kid.

Mandy or Mindy or Leila - it was fucking Leila - stood, long slender fingers holding a brandy snifter. The amber liquid swirled insdie, as lazy as her stride toward him. She lowered her eyelashes and regarded him with what most men would call bedroom eyes.

"Lex..."

She wasn't interested in hearing about his day - that he'd saved a bunch of kids and his plant had almost exploded. Her lithe body pressing fully against him assured him of that. Lex wanted to shove her out the door. Not only was she still at his place when she should have left hours ago, she was drinking his 25 year old bottle of Mont Blanc brandy.

"That fucking alcohol is older than I am."

He hadn't meant to, but it slipped, and Lex ripped the already loosened tie from around his head, glaring at her to show he wasn't sorry. The girls always left while he was at work. What made this one so fucking special?

She ignored his comment about the brandy and reached her other arm up, lacing it around the back of his head. It smarted, and Lex winced, snapping the snifter from the girl's hand and downing the liquid in one gulp. It wasn't dignified, but he was way past dignified tonight.

Clark had saved his life again. And Lex owed him, big time.

Tossing the glass aside, momentarily thankful it landed with a dull thud on the impossibly thick carpet of his study, Lex shrugged her hand off of his sore neck and gripped the slender body firmly to him.

Her lips weren't nearly as full as Clark's, probably not as soft either, but closing his eyes it was easy for Lex to pretend.

Lex was good at pretending, he did it every day of his fucking life.

His bedroom wasn't far from his study, just down the hall at the end of the wing, in fact, but Lex rarely made it in there and this was no exception. The fire was almost dying out when they fell to the carpet in front of it; Lex figured half an hour at most of weak orange half-light until the entire room was dark and there would be no looking; only hands and lips and flesh and hard muscle.

See how easy it was to pretend?

When blunt teeth traveled downward, biting in places most are embarrassed to talk about, Lex let the cloud in his mind descend over his eyes. Things got fuzzy, blurred almost to the point of indistinction. It was good enough for him. Now there was just a head full of thick, dark locks between his legs, and his mind went places that would make Clark blush.

When the fire winked out completely, he ground out Clark's name, between clenched teeth and curtained eyes and a spinning head. Fingers threaded into the mass of dark hair and tugged -- several curses and blasphems and repetitions of the farmboy's name until the mouth finally released, pulled away.

Lex grasped at nothing.

"Who the hell is Clark?"

Bitch.

Lex opened his eyes. She was standing, clothes arranged perfectly as if she hadn't just been sucking him off in an indecorous heap on the floor of his study. Lex was the one left undignified, heaving chest still in recuperation mode, shirt unbuttoned but not completely off, pants and shorts only down to his ankles, shoes still in place.

"Fuck, Leila."

Couldn't care less if that was actually her name.

"Who the hell is Clark?!"

The high was gone, and all that was left was a buzzing in his head; way in the back, where he'd been pistol whipped. He needed more of that brandy. Instead, he fumbled for his pants, pulled them back up to his waist but didn't bother buttoning either them or his shirt. How fucking venerable can you act once you called someone else's name after getting a blow job from a girl who really was nothing but a free whore?

The brandy was still open on his desk - all that perfectly aged alcohol just evaporating into the air. What a waste. Lex swigged from the bottle -- something he was pretty sure he'd never done in his entire life -- and turned his back on the girl.

"Leave," he ordered, with the same detatched precision he used when firing perfectly good employees ("I'm sorry, but management is restructuring."). He ignored her indignant gasp, unladylike curse ("fuck off, Lex Luthor!") and finally the click of her heels as she passed through the study doors and onto the marbled floor beyond.

Lex looked out the massive windows behind his desk. The curtains were still drawn back, inky nothingness beyond with a big, starry blanket tucked across the sky. This was fucking Smallville, not Metropolis where you couldn't see a star with a high-powered telescope.

His own reflection smirked back at him in the glass and he held the bottle up, saluting the complete absence of dignity.

Here's to you.

-end

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