Chapter Text
Lex Luthor sat in the high-backed leather chair of his private study, the room silent save for the faint, rhythmic ticking of a vintage clock and the distant hum of Metropolis. He wasn't working. He wasn't plotting a corporate takeover or a global catastrophe. Instead, he was merely... thinking. His steepled fingers rested against his chin, gaze fixed in the middle distance. For a man whose intellect functioned like a high-speed processor, he was incapable of ignoring a glitch in the data—and lately, the most glaring anomaly in Metropolis was Superman himself.
The inconsistency gnawed at him, not because he cared for the alien’s well-being, but because Lex loathed a variable he couldn't categorize. For years, their relationship had functioned on a predictable rhythm—the comfortable, mechanical pulse of righteous loathing. Lex knew exactly how to navigate an adversary who despised him, yet this recent behavior was a jarring departure from those established patterns. It wasn't that the Man of Steel had simply changed; it was that he had, inexplicably, become... skittish.
The evidence was undeniable. Lex had cataloged the anomalies of their recent interactions: the slight, involuntary flinch that occurred whenever Lex leaned too close during their usual verbal sparring. The aversion of the eyes—a sudden, frantic interest in the floor or the horizon, as if Lex’s presence was suddenly too much to bear. It was a staggering departure from the creature who had once stood inches from Lex’s face, lecturing him with the moral fortitude of a thousand suns, utterly unshaken.
The sudden shift was, frankly, insulting. It was an itch Lex couldn’t scratch, a riddle that refused to align with any known psychological profile. It was a personal affront to his intellect; Lex Luthor did not allow anomalies to persist in his city, and the idea that the Man of Steel possessed a secret—a vulnerability—that escaped his perception was intolerable. He would find the root of this glitch; he would dismantle this new behavior until the gears were exposed.
He shifted in his chair, sifting through the data of recent weeks until one specific memory stood out in stark relief. It was the most glaring inconsistency of them all—the moment the pattern had finally coalesced into something he could no longer dismiss as mere coincidence.
It had been an evening of exquisite, calculated indulgence. The penthouse was bathed in the soft amber spill of hand-blown glass sconces, their dim light playing across the expensive sandalwood-scented air and the quiet hum of a city Lex owned in every way that mattered.
Intellect was a magnificent tool, but Lex found that even the most finely tuned machine required a release. He had long ago curated his own brand of indulgence: a preference for a very particular, malleable type. His latest conquest—a delightful, mousy creature whose name had already slipped through the cracks of Lex’s crowded mind—settled firmly in his lap like a warm, living blanket, the man was a study in soft textures. A mess of dark curls brushed against Lex's temple, while a pair of thick-rimmed glasses sat abandoned on the side table. Lex, in a rare display of physical leisure, had his face nestled comfortably against the man's chest, listening to the steady, rhythmic thrum of a human heart. Meanwhile, Lex’s hand was engaged in some highly productive, stress-relieving research on the firm contours of the man's posterior.
The mood was, in a word, sublime. It was the sort of peace that only a man with no equals—and a very comfortable lap—could truly appreciate.
That was, until a sonic boom tore through the easy silence, followed immediately by the agonizing shriek of several square feet of bulletproof glass disintegrating. A sudden, violent gust of wind—cold and smelling of the upper atmosphere—invaded the room, scattering Lex’s research notes like confetti.
Superman, a veritable ball of blue-and-red fury, stood framed in the gaping maw where the window had been, his cape snapping behind him like a thunderclap.
Lex didn't jump; he didn't have the temperament for it. Instead, he slowly lifted his face from the man’s chest. With an expression of bored annoyance, merely raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at the hovering god.
"Really, Superman? My view? And must you always make such an entrance? It's terribly uncivilized. I pay a fortune in glass insurance owing entirely to your lack of boundaries."
But Superman wasn’t glaring; he wasn't even winding up for a righteous one-liner. He was… gaping. His eyes, usually sharp and focused with the weight of absolute authority, were wide and darting. They flitted from Lex’s face to the disheveled man still lounging in his lap, and then down to Lex’s hand—which was still hovering in that telltale, intimate space.
Only then did Lex gently nudge the nameless, trembling intern aside. The man scrambled for his glasses in a frantic haste, his disheveled curls bouncing as he practically fled the room. Superman’s gaze followed the man out, then snapped back to Lex, and a look spread across his chiseled face that Lex had never quite seen before.
With a sudden, jerky movement—uncharacteristically clumsy for the Man of Steel—Superman spun in the air and vanished back through the shattered opening without a word. He hadn't even bothered to state his business, let alone deliver the usual righteous interrogation he'd intended for whatever imaginary crisis or "suspicious activity" had supposedly prompted him to invade Lex’s private sanctum in the first place.
Lex was left, for a rare moment in his life, utterly bewildered. A single, slow blink was the only sign that his mind was struggling to process the sheer absurdity of the circumstances.
His eyes drifted to the empty doorway where his tryst had just vanished. Lex was no stranger to the hero’s dramatic interventions, but to have his evening derailed for what amounted to a silent, wide-eyed home invasion was a tedious waste of his time.
Lex leaned back in his seat, his mind sifting through the standard explanations. Could it be that the alien was simply a closeted prude? That he was so offended by a little mid-week debauchery that his delicate sensibilities short-circuited at the mere sight of flagrant impropriety?
Perhaps it was a matter of some archaic Kryptonian taboo—a rigid cultural hang-up where intimacy was forbidden outside of some cold, clinical life-pairing ceremony? Or was it something as pedestrian as a small-minded bias—the hero being truly so "human" as to rigidly adhere to the same banal, heteronormative sensibilities of a backward century?
Lex dismissed the ideas as quickly as they formed. None of it fit. If Superman were merely offended or protecting his brand, he would have lectured Lex; he would have stayed to deliver a sermon on morality before flying off with his chin held high. He wouldn’t have fled. He wouldn’t have been so… unraveled.
The word hung in the quiet of the study, a stubborn loose thread that Lex refused to leave alone. He remained motionless, his eyes narrowed as if the air itself were a screen displaying a high-definition recording of the event. He began to replay the scene, searching for the logic he had missed, until he paused on the alien's face. How his jaw had gone slack, his brow pulled tight in a jagged line of distress. His lips were parted, as if he had forgotten how to breathe. It wasn’t the heat of a sun about to go supernova, nor the cold, detached mask of a judge. It was the expression of someone whose entire world had just suffered a silent, catastrophic shift. That piercing gaze hadn't been fixated on the intern out of moral outrage; rather, it had been pinned—with a raw, desperate intensity—on the intimacy of the moment.
The imaginary screen flickered and died as Lex allowed the memory to dissolve. The tension in his own shoulders finally dissolved as the conclusion clicked into place with a terrifying, absolute clarity. It was the one variable Lex had never bothered to calculate, simply because it was so beneath his notice.
He leaned back in the plush leather of his chair, a low, incredulous chuckle vibrating in his chest. Every tactical hesitation Lex had obsessively logged—the uncharacteristic retreats, the pathetic refusal to look him in the eye—snapped into a singular, humiliating pattern. The Man of Steel had a crush. Isn’t that adorable? He shook his head, the sheer absurdity of it almost offensive to his intellect. He had spent billions on interdimensional research and high-yield weaponry—calculating for a god—only to find that the ultimate variable was a schoolboy’s infatuation.
If Superman was truly harboring a subconscious—perhaps even unwelcome—attraction to his designated nemesis, then Lex had just found the ultimate backdoor.
The solution was far simpler than he could have imagined. Why bother with the crude theater of death traps or the expensive rarity of Kryptonite-laced missiles, when a simple invitation could bring a God to his knees?
The opportunity to test his theory arrived three days later. Superman did not crash through the glass this time; he hovered outside the newly replaced window with a cautious stillness, waiting for a nod before entering. He was here—ostensibly—on official business regarding a malfunctioning LexCorp satellite.
Lex didn't remain behind the safety of his desk. Instead, he sat on the edge of it, settling into a pose of languid, feline entitlement. His legs were crossed, the expensive charcoal wool of his suit straining just enough to be noticed. His gaze stalked the line of the hero’s shoulders and the tense column of his throat, tracking the frenetic pulse at his jugular and the shallow, uneven rhythm of his chest while the hero began a stiff, rehearsed briefing.
"The satellite’s propulsion has failed, Lex," Superman began, his voice steady, his eyes fixed firmly on the holographic display.
He went on about debris fields and orbital decay, the dry engineering data pouring out of him like a shield intended to keep the silence at bay. He was trying too hard—performing the role of the diligent Hero with a rigid over-compensation that only confirmed Lex’s suspicion.
Lex didn't listen to a word of it. He had heard enough to confirm the diagnosis, and the repetitive drone of technical jargon was beginning to feel like a slow-acting sedative. It was a tiresome, uninspired performance; Lex found the hero's attempt to hide behind orbital mechanics personally insulting to his attention span.
"You know, Superman," Lex interjected, his voice cutting through the lecture with the crisp finality of a theater critic ending a bad play.
He slid off the desk and began to close the distance. As he approached, he saw the telltale tightening of the Kryptonian's shoulders—a tension that peaked just as Superman instinctively took a half-step back, his heels clicking sharply against the marble in a retreat he likely wasn't even conscious of.
A faint, smirk touched Lex’s lips. Predictable, he thought, his internal processor humming with the thrill of a proven hypothesis. The data is never wrong.
He didn't stop until he was well within the alien’s personal bubble, close enough that he could smell the ozone and the scent of sun-baked wind that always clung to the suit.
"You’re looking rather… vibrant today," Lex said, his voice dropping to a low, intimate register. "Have you been spending more time in the yellow sun? Or is it just the way this lighting hits your shoulders?"
Lex let his gaze linger on the S-shield, then dragged it upward. He paused at Superman’s mouth—noting, purely from a structural standpoint, that the hero’s lips were quite well-formed. It was a bothersome waste of such symmetry, considering that mouth seemed designed primarily to spout cloying, Hallmark-card platitudes.
Superman’s brain visibly short-circuited. He blinked once. Twice. "Lex?" he managed, his voice hitting a register that defied Lex’s meticulous profiling—it wasn't the strained gasp of physical exertion or the jagged breath of a man in mourning. It was a soft, breathless hitch. One that felt dangerously personal.
"I'm… I’m talking about the satellite," he managed, his focus flickering.
"Are you? How droll." Lex reached out, his fingers hovering just a fraction of an inch from the blue spandex of Superman’s arm. He didn't touch; he simply let his hand linger there, a steady, mocking presence against the hero's sudden, rigid stillness. "I was thinking, perhaps you’d care to discuss it over dinner? My chef makes a beef bourguignon that even a... man of your refined palate would appreciate. Consider it a negotiation of terms."
Superman froze, his train of thought flickering and dying as a series of naked, uncoordinated emotions played across his features like a poorly calibrated monitor. For a fleeting heartbeat, a spark of something vulnerable rose to the surface—a flicker of hope so raw it was almost pathetic—the kind of eye-rolling, relentless sincerity Lex found personally offensive—before it was buried under a wave of stiff, over-acted disbelief.
Lex watched the display with a quiet, clinical amusement, his own expression smoothed into something utterly unreadable as Superman’s lower lip caught briefly between his teeth, his expression twisting into a palpable, agonizing indecision. It was comically easy to track the internal war being waged behind those blue eyes; He was an open book, and Lex found himself thoroughly entertained by the simplicity of the script.
Slowly, the disbelief began to yield. The tension in Superman's jaw didn't quite vanish, but it softened into a look of cautious, desperate inquiry—"Dinner?" he stammered, the words barely finding their way out. "With–with you? In a restaurant?"
Lex stifled a smirk of profound self-satisfaction, smoothing his features back into a mask of polite indifference. It was a truly remarkable lack of dignity for a god. The alien’s entire physiology had practically pivoted from defensive to eager in the span of a single heartbeat. Lex could have sworn that if the hero had a tail, the air in the room would be turbulent from the wagging.
"I have a private balcony. Very secluded. No paparazzi. Just us." Lex lowered his voice to a conspiratorial silk. "Unless you're afraid of me, Superman? I assure you, I’m a proper gentleman; I don't bed my date on the very first night."
"That’s—that’s not what I was thinking!" Superman blurted out, the defensive words tripping over each other as the last of his cautious restraint dissolved in the face of a feverish, deepening glow that made his skin look several degrees too hot. He looked desperately toward the window, his cape giving a small, sharp billow as he hovered just an inch off the floor—a nervous, involuntary twitch of power that betrayed his flustered distress. Realizing he was literally floating in panic, his shoulders finally slumped. He drifted back down to the carpet, his breathing evening out as he tried to reclaim a shred of his dignity.
He took a steadying breath, trying to iron out the tremor in his hands. He didn't look Lex in the eye—he couldn't, not while the heat was still receding from his neck—but the decision had already been made in the silence.
"Fine. Dinner," he managed, his voice dropping an octave as he attempted to summon a ghost of his usual authority. He finally looked up, his gaze flickering with a mix of lingering suspicion and—that same stubborn, quiet hope that Lex could never quite seem to extinguish. "But… no Kryptonite," the hero added, trying to ground the moment in their usual rules. "And no… no smiling like that."
Lex tilted his head with faux innocence, his eyes shining with a dark satisfaction. "Like what?"
"Like you’re… like you're eating the canary," Superman mumbled, finally dropping his eyes.
"Well then, I shall endeavor to keep my appetite in check," Lex purred, his tongue tracing the back of his teeth for a fleeting, idle second.
Superman’s jaw tightened. He didn't look up, but Lex could see the visible effort it took for the hero to drag himself back to the safety of the script. When he spoke again, his voice was forced into a flat, brittle professionalism that didn't quite mask the tremor in his hands. "The time, Lex. What time?"
Lex tracked the slight, desperate tension in his jaw with a flicker of dark amusement. It was a valiant effort at a poker face; Lex was almost impressed by the sheer willpower it took for the hero to keep from turning as red as his own cape once more.
"Eight," Lex replied smoothly, his expression showing none of his inner pique. "Shall I have my driver pick you up? Or would you prefer to arrive on your own... steam?"
"No, I can... I'll just be there," Superman managed, his voice dropping to a low, hesitant murmur as he reluctantly raised his gaze to meet Lex’s.
Lex didn't pull back. Instead, he took a step forward, reclaiming the air Superman was trying to breathe. He couldn't resist one final attempt to crack that mask of boring professionalism.
"Perfect," Lex murmured, the word vibrating in the small, charged space between them. "Tonight, then. Don't be late, Superman. I’m sure you can imagine I have very little patience for those who can't keep a schedule—"
Lex reached up, his fingers lingering for a fraction of a second too long as he brushed an invisible speck of dust from Superman’s shoulder, right at the edge of the S-shield.
"—and a rather creative way of correcting them," he finished, the final word pulled thin with a dark, melodic promise.
At the contact, Superman’s entire frame jolted, then went unnervingly still. He didn't pull away; he simply froze in place, his eyes stayed fixed on Lex, but the pupils blew wide, practically eclipsing the iris in a daze of total, uncomprehending shock. The steady rise and fall of his chest ceasing entirely as his brain scrambled to categorize the exact type of—unimaginable—punishment Lex had in mind.
Lex didn't move. He let the silence stretch, his eyebrows lofted in a look of mild, clinical concern—as if he were merely checking the fine print of a contract rather than waiting for Superman to recover from the blow.
Superman’s lungs finally expanded in a sharp, desperate lungful of air, as if he were surfacing from underwater.
"I—I won't be late," he choked out, his voice cracking slightly as the fog in his head cleared just enough to trigger a frantic need for escape. "I need to—I have to go now. There's a... a volcano. In South America. Probably."
He scrambled backward in the air, his cape tangling briefly around his shins before he seemed to think better of flying altogether. With a jerky, uncoordinated movement, he dropped the remaining inch to the floor. The dizzying realization of what he’d just conceded to seemed to ground him more effectively than any lead-lined room ever could. He didn't fly out; instead, he turned and walked—a heavy, earthbound stride—toward the office door. His head was bowed, his gaze fixed firmly on his own boots as they squeaked rhythmically against the polished marble—the only sound in a silence so absolute it felt pointed. In his flustered stupor, he misjudged the threshold entirely, his broad shoulder thudding against the heavy mahogany doorframe with a dull, heavy whump.
"Sorry," he muttered to the inanimate wood, his voice thick with embarrassment before he vanished into the hallway.
Lex’s eyebrows climbed nearly to the top of his smooth scalp. "Good heavens," he whispered to the empty room. He had just witnessed a specimen that could fly through the heart of a sun navigate a doorway with all the grace of a newborn giraffe.
Lex retreated into the center of his office, his mind whirring in a state of quiet, incredulous wonder. He had expected a reaction, certainly—a blush, perhaps a momentary stutter—but this was a total system failure. The god was malfunctioning. It was a staggering revelation; after years of scouring the galaxy for a physical weakness, Lex had discovered that the Man of Steel’s true Achilles' heel was simply a well-tailored suit and a few suggestive words.
The data was as absurd as it was improbable, and Lex couldn't seem to turn it off. The image of the heavy swallow bobbing in Superman’s throat, the way the skin of his jawline looked deceptively soft, and that breathless hitch in his voice kept looping in his head. He ignored the fact that his pulse was reacting to the data. It was purely physiological, he told himself—a simple spike in cortisol—even when his mind was already busy predicting that the god would be even more breathtakingly reactive once pinned to a mattress.
Lex cleared his throat, the sound sharp and deliberate in the quiet office as he forced his focus back to the logistics of the evening. This dinner was the ignition phase—the single most critical component of his grand design. By leaning into this absurd, romantic tension, Lex would finally set the machinery of his victory in motion. He would have the hero exactly where he wanted him—distracted, vulnerable, and utterly pliable. It was a masterpiece of psychological warfare, more precise than any weapon he’d ever designed.
I am going to destroy him, Lex thought, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his features. I’m going to ruin his reputation, dismantle his moral compass, and then...
His mind trailed off, the internal monologue stuttering.
He retrieved his tablet from the desk, pulling up the evening’s curated menu with a sharp swipe. He bypassed the wine list entirely; he didn't need the alien intoxicated to find him pliable. Instead, his focus snagged on the dessert course.
Did the Kryptonian have a sweet tooth? Was there a specific chemical reward in that alien brain triggered by refined sugars? Lex found himself obsessing over the variable. After a moment of intense deliberation, he tapped the screen with a decisive flick, ordering three distinct desserts—ranging from a sharp, tart lemon curd to a heavy, decadent chocolate ganache.
It was a matter of thoroughness. He had to establish a baseline for the subject's threshold for sensory pleasure; to leave such a significant biological metric unrecorded would be the height of scientific negligence.
This would undoubtedly be the most rewarding experiment he’d ever conducted. His thumb hovered over the confirm button, his heart rate climbing—a purely anticipatory cardiovascular response to the sheer scale of the upcoming conquest.