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New Fic!
Title: Echo (2)
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: PGish
Unbetaed.
The previous installment can be found here. The first was for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tstar78 and this one is for seperis. Accordingly, a little angst crept in. *g*
Lex listened to ska and geek-rock obsessively when he went to college. He always wanted to bounce along to the song but was afraid that people would stop fearing him if he ever looked like he wasn't vaguely hating life. If he ever hinted that he was having fun.
Sometimes he'd allow himself a half-drunken smile because it didn't matter. Not when he was three, four, five sheets to the wind on a rough mix of rum and vodka and buzzing on so many spliffs his fingertips were stained yellow and black.
What he really wanted to do was jump out of the calculated sprawl, shake off the dumb bitches that always hung on his arm and bounce around the club. Just be a little crazy without worrying that he was going to crash a car or end up on the front page of the Daily Planet.
He'd gone through this brief phase, early in puberty, when all he listened to was Metallica. Not even new Metallica - just the old thrashy stuff that made no kind of sense either he or his father could discern. And even though it made his head ache and gave him too-real visions of himself, an axe and his Latin tutor, he kept it on constant loop.
His father hated it. Not because it was Satanic or rebellious or profane. His father was never so pedestrian. He hated it because it suggested some kind of deep flaw in his son - a terrifying lack of taste. Could it be genetic? Was it something Lillian had done to him, with her Grateful Dead jam records and insistence on running around barefoot on the lawn?
Lex loved the confusion that lingered at the corners of his father's eyes whenever he put on a record and cranked the volume until priceless antiques were falling from their shelves. Lionel understood that his son was rebelling, but he didn't understand why it had to be Metallica. Couldn't he at least rebel to Led Zeppelin?
But when Lex was a teenager, he'd listened to grunge. He'd insisted on putting up posters of Billy Corrigan, Curt Cobain and Perry Ferrell in his room, damn whatever his roomate that year had to say about it.
He'd gotten into a fight with... George? Who'd insisted that Lex was just a shirt-lifting nelly-bottom who spent his nights wanking it to the thought of some limp, Yankee, girly man flipping him over and shoving it up his ass. No mate, he'd insisted. He rather preferred to do the flipping himself.
When George decided he'd rather room with someone else, he went quietly and had his father throw quite a bit of money at the problem of a reassignment. George hadn't wanted to risk being flipped in the middle of the night, Lex remembered. Nor had he wanted to risk Lex taking his boots to George's ribs again.
Once could be passed off as falling off his horse, twice, sheer idiocy. Three times would clearly mean that the bald, American poofter was kicking his sorry arse regularly.
Lex had never been more pleased that his father's driver was a Smashing Pumpkins fan and amenable to teaching him how to fight, as long as Siamese Dream never stopped playing.
Grunge was fistfights that had his various school masters threatening and occasionally getting away with expulsion, and endless concerts all summer long that invariably lead to endless exchanges of oral favours while everyone popped speed and tweaked crystal. He didn't have a lot of memories from those long nights that stretched into long days and then sometimes weeks, but it probably wasn't important.
One circle jerk-come-bull session was like any other, no matter the crowd.
He did remember the concerts though. Sharp, rough guitar riffs that poured out of messy, dirty, angry boys that were so stunted by their hippy parents they could only express themselves with an instrument. The hollow screams of white kids from the suburbs.
He'd known they were hollow, even then, but so the fuck what? It sounded good and felt so damn good and at 15 and 16, nothing else really mattered. As long as he felt it was real, it didn't matter if he knew the opposite.
Grunge was not showering often enough and working hard to suppress the urge to jump into the nearest body of clean water and scrub until his skin puffed red.
Fast talking himself backstage when he felt like it.
Papering taxis with panels of Warrior Angel comics while being sucked off and sucking someone else off.
Breaking things, just because.
Grunge was being out of control like other kids were in of control and then going that much further.
Just because he could.
And sometimes it was almost something like innocent - a kind of barbarian childish innocence, to be sure, but sort of like purity and just simple. Fun.
"Fuck."
The special went to commercial, something about super-low-rise jeans and he thought Sketchers, but Lex just stared, pretty much uncomprehending. He caught the slogan and he noticed the skinny girl whose tiny, cutoff rugby shirt exposed 90% of her breasts - how could he not - but he wasn't entirely sure what was being sold. Neutrogena?
"Fuck."
One of his roommates, a tall, very thin boy named Harrison, who now weighed more than Lex could comfortably bench, had this theory. Harrison had been convinced that if one swore enough, when one found oneself in a really terrible no-win situation, then help would surely find one. He had flow charts and position papers to prove it, too.
Lex remembered that he used to set Harrison's flow charts on fire and blame the mysterious 'immolation' on pyrokinetic aliens. Harrison had been the kind of boy who wanted to believe in pyrokinetic aliens, so when it meant challenging Lex or going along with the story, he'd started making tinfoil hats.
Fuck. He decided that he was allowed a moment of, certainly not panic, extreme concern perhaps, in the privacy of his own home. After all, it wasn't everyday that one was outed on national, no make that international television. Lex was never more ready to forsake his millions and join up with the anti-globalization protesters. If he acted quickly, he could probably be picketing a meeting of some obscure international NGO by Thursday. Tear gassed by Friday. Jailed by Saturday. Would his father call in some favours, toss some money at the problem like George's and get him out?
Lionel could show up himself, wooly mane streaming behind him as he stalked into the station, booming out excerpts of arcane epic Greek poetry that Lex would surely have memorized. Lex could counter with something equally esoteric and very possibly inappropriate to the situation and after a round of unfathomable staring, the two could stalk off in opposite directions, leaving the police to nod sagaciously at each other, comforted that the rich just weren't like other people. No sir.
Lex wasn't without the ability to laugh at himself, or the absurdity of his position. It just became a little difficult to do so when he could all but *hear* his stock collapsing.
Ok, look at the situation objectively. Several million teenagers have just seen you, as a teenager, passionately kiss another male. Most of those teenagers have no idea who you are and would not likely care about the revelation if they did. Of course, if one or two viewers in say, Metropolis or Smallville did happen to recognize you, they might be moved to contact MTV or a local news outlet about it. MTV might not care - he was just another spoiled rich brat in a country that had more than a few, but a Kansas news outlet would know exactly what to do with the information.
Play it on-air and often.
Lex slid further down the couch, into a full sprawl, not really caring if his pants got wrinkled. No, dammit. He hoped they did get wrinkled. Served them right, the slim, conservative grey things that really wouldn't be enough to maintain his new image as a young, successful businessman. Instead of the pants, people would see his navel ring and quite a bit of mud.
The sudden ring of his cell was shriller than it should have been and Lex was suddenly struck that this of all nights, was not the one to drink a bottle of wine and while the night away watching trite, unchallenging TV programs.
He flung out an arm and grabbed the phone from its resting place atop the empty case of his TNG season one boxed set, hit talk and brought it to his ear without putting out anything essential or knocking any of the M&M's from their precarious perch in the pyramid he'd made. Lex had always been a coordinated drunk.
He didn't bother to look at the display.
"Davette," he said calmly.
"Lex! Do you know what Linda is talking about *right now*?"
"I haven't the faintest idea what your 13-year-old daughter is talking about, Davette, and I'd really like to keep it that way."
"Well too bad Lex, because this? This is important. This is essential for you to know. You understand Lex? That you need to know this right now, should have know about it before hand and why the FUCK didn't I know about this?"
"This conversation would make so much more sense if you would-"
"Don't patronize me! Don't you dare patronize me-"
"*I wasn't quite finished*." Davette halted mid-rant. "Stop," he said slowly. "Collect yourself and start from the beginning."
"Linda was watching MTV."
Lex couldn't help a tiny sigh. This fast. Of course, it being him, it would be this fast.
"You know what I'm talking about."
"Of course."
"Now why can't that Luthor near-omniscience extend to useful things, like knowing when to tell your PR staff things they need to know?"
"Davette." Lex didn't have to try to chill warning. He wasn't sure if it had always come to him so naturally - had there ever been a time when it was easier *not* to play the bastard?
He and Davette talked strategy and Lex told her as little as possible. Yes he'd slept with men. No he wasn't with a man right now. No he hadn't been with one for a long time. Davette had exactly enough sense not to question him about the details of his preferences and relationships, beyond "Is there anyone I *need* to know about?"
"No. There's no one." No one that mattered.
And then.
"Lex, I… was this some kind of teenage rebellion? Get on MTV kissing a pretty boy and piss off your dad?"
"Davette, I didn't know the cameras where *there*. I didn't even know MTV was covering the event."
"Well that's something… maybe we can-"
"No, I don't think we can."
"Oh, well, we'll come up with something Lex, don't worry." All the strident anger had drained from her voice, leaving something like motherly concern.
"You had better. I'm certainly paying you well enough," he said shortly. "I have other phone calls to make. We'll talk in the morning." He pulled the phone away from his ear and hit end. He tossed the phone onto the table, heard it slide into his candy pyramid and send the M&Ms skittering across the floor. The staff would love him for that.
And it had been such a good night. A nice bottle of wine, candy and mindless entertainment.
He blamed the Star Trek DVDs. Every time he watched them, something bad happened and every time it was something worse. Clearly they had some kind of connection to the divine, relaying to the fates that Lex Luthor was taking some time to relax and just enjoy himself, and wouldn't this be a great time to kick him in the balls. Metaphorically speaking of course. Star Trek had yet to arrange that particular treat.
He swung his legs off the couch and rested his elbows on his knees. His feet in their thin cotton socks were cold against the floor - the carpet seemed to have inched forward slightly in the last few hours. They curled away from the cold of his own volition, so he slid them forward, onto the carpet and crossed them at the ankles.
It wasn't as though people hadn't suspected him. *Suspected* him.
He leaned back, scrubbed his hands across his face.
They'd known. Some of them would have had to. But knowing and *knowing* were two very different things. There was good old George and all those *looks* and it wasn't as if he'd been particularly discreet. He was so used to being stared at that sometimes it was difficult to distinguish between stares, even when the causality should have been obvious.
Tomorrow, he was scheduled for a meeting with Gabe and another with Lana, in the evening. He didn't know which would be worse - walking into the plant, or getting out of his car in front of the Talon.
The kind of wan celebrity that wealth afforded meant that someone would always stare at him when he entered a room, sure that he knew something about Lex. Something intimate. Whether he wore silk or cotton. Whether he liked it on top or was fond of handcuffs. Armed with this pointed example of his youthful stupidity, they *would* know. And they would extrapolate in a million directions; all coming back to the incontrovertible proof that Lex Luthor really did like boys.
He'd stopped caring about the other stares years ago - after a certain point, one just accepts that people developing neck problems from the whiplash effort of watching one's every move, was normal. The cameras too, were normal and the constant concern that his bed partners would sell the story of their adventure to the papers.
The credits for something called "Becoming" started. Lex snatched the remote from the mess of candy and turned it off entirely. It was disgusting, really, how badly MTV had degraded. He thought he could remember actually enjoying its programming once - of course, that may have been a product of mixing intoxicants.
He'd been surprised to learn that Clark actually watched the station, though this being Smallville, MTV might actually seem like an excellent waste of time.
Clark. Was studying with his friends tonight at his house. Near a TV.
Music. He needed some music.
He padded over to the entertainment center and stared blankly at his racks of cds. He wasn't sure what a 22 year old, bisexual businessman was supposed to listen to. Surely it was a subject worthy of great deliberation and media coverage.
He chose something at random and popped it into the player. Found that Deftones was just fine.
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: PGish
Unbetaed.
The previous installment can be found here. The first was for
tstar78 and this one is for seperis. Accordingly, a little angst crept in. *g*Lex listened to ska and geek-rock obsessively when he went to college. He always wanted to bounce along to the song but was afraid that people would stop fearing him if he ever looked like he wasn't vaguely hating life. If he ever hinted that he was having fun.
Sometimes he'd allow himself a half-drunken smile because it didn't matter. Not when he was three, four, five sheets to the wind on a rough mix of rum and vodka and buzzing on so many spliffs his fingertips were stained yellow and black.
What he really wanted to do was jump out of the calculated sprawl, shake off the dumb bitches that always hung on his arm and bounce around the club. Just be a little crazy without worrying that he was going to crash a car or end up on the front page of the Daily Planet.
He'd gone through this brief phase, early in puberty, when all he listened to was Metallica. Not even new Metallica - just the old thrashy stuff that made no kind of sense either he or his father could discern. And even though it made his head ache and gave him too-real visions of himself, an axe and his Latin tutor, he kept it on constant loop.
His father hated it. Not because it was Satanic or rebellious or profane. His father was never so pedestrian. He hated it because it suggested some kind of deep flaw in his son - a terrifying lack of taste. Could it be genetic? Was it something Lillian had done to him, with her Grateful Dead jam records and insistence on running around barefoot on the lawn?
Lex loved the confusion that lingered at the corners of his father's eyes whenever he put on a record and cranked the volume until priceless antiques were falling from their shelves. Lionel understood that his son was rebelling, but he didn't understand why it had to be Metallica. Couldn't he at least rebel to Led Zeppelin?
But when Lex was a teenager, he'd listened to grunge. He'd insisted on putting up posters of Billy Corrigan, Curt Cobain and Perry Ferrell in his room, damn whatever his roomate that year had to say about it.
He'd gotten into a fight with... George? Who'd insisted that Lex was just a shirt-lifting nelly-bottom who spent his nights wanking it to the thought of some limp, Yankee, girly man flipping him over and shoving it up his ass. No mate, he'd insisted. He rather preferred to do the flipping himself.
When George decided he'd rather room with someone else, he went quietly and had his father throw quite a bit of money at the problem of a reassignment. George hadn't wanted to risk being flipped in the middle of the night, Lex remembered. Nor had he wanted to risk Lex taking his boots to George's ribs again.
Once could be passed off as falling off his horse, twice, sheer idiocy. Three times would clearly mean that the bald, American poofter was kicking his sorry arse regularly.
Lex had never been more pleased that his father's driver was a Smashing Pumpkins fan and amenable to teaching him how to fight, as long as Siamese Dream never stopped playing.
Grunge was fistfights that had his various school masters threatening and occasionally getting away with expulsion, and endless concerts all summer long that invariably lead to endless exchanges of oral favours while everyone popped speed and tweaked crystal. He didn't have a lot of memories from those long nights that stretched into long days and then sometimes weeks, but it probably wasn't important.
One circle jerk-come-bull session was like any other, no matter the crowd.
He did remember the concerts though. Sharp, rough guitar riffs that poured out of messy, dirty, angry boys that were so stunted by their hippy parents they could only express themselves with an instrument. The hollow screams of white kids from the suburbs.
He'd known they were hollow, even then, but so the fuck what? It sounded good and felt so damn good and at 15 and 16, nothing else really mattered. As long as he felt it was real, it didn't matter if he knew the opposite.
Grunge was not showering often enough and working hard to suppress the urge to jump into the nearest body of clean water and scrub until his skin puffed red.
Fast talking himself backstage when he felt like it.
Papering taxis with panels of Warrior Angel comics while being sucked off and sucking someone else off.
Breaking things, just because.
Grunge was being out of control like other kids were in of control and then going that much further.
Just because he could.
And sometimes it was almost something like innocent - a kind of barbarian childish innocence, to be sure, but sort of like purity and just simple. Fun.
"Fuck."
The special went to commercial, something about super-low-rise jeans and he thought Sketchers, but Lex just stared, pretty much uncomprehending. He caught the slogan and he noticed the skinny girl whose tiny, cutoff rugby shirt exposed 90% of her breasts - how could he not - but he wasn't entirely sure what was being sold. Neutrogena?
"Fuck."
One of his roommates, a tall, very thin boy named Harrison, who now weighed more than Lex could comfortably bench, had this theory. Harrison had been convinced that if one swore enough, when one found oneself in a really terrible no-win situation, then help would surely find one. He had flow charts and position papers to prove it, too.
Lex remembered that he used to set Harrison's flow charts on fire and blame the mysterious 'immolation' on pyrokinetic aliens. Harrison had been the kind of boy who wanted to believe in pyrokinetic aliens, so when it meant challenging Lex or going along with the story, he'd started making tinfoil hats.
Fuck. He decided that he was allowed a moment of, certainly not panic, extreme concern perhaps, in the privacy of his own home. After all, it wasn't everyday that one was outed on national, no make that international television. Lex was never more ready to forsake his millions and join up with the anti-globalization protesters. If he acted quickly, he could probably be picketing a meeting of some obscure international NGO by Thursday. Tear gassed by Friday. Jailed by Saturday. Would his father call in some favours, toss some money at the problem like George's and get him out?
Lionel could show up himself, wooly mane streaming behind him as he stalked into the station, booming out excerpts of arcane epic Greek poetry that Lex would surely have memorized. Lex could counter with something equally esoteric and very possibly inappropriate to the situation and after a round of unfathomable staring, the two could stalk off in opposite directions, leaving the police to nod sagaciously at each other, comforted that the rich just weren't like other people. No sir.
Lex wasn't without the ability to laugh at himself, or the absurdity of his position. It just became a little difficult to do so when he could all but *hear* his stock collapsing.
Ok, look at the situation objectively. Several million teenagers have just seen you, as a teenager, passionately kiss another male. Most of those teenagers have no idea who you are and would not likely care about the revelation if they did. Of course, if one or two viewers in say, Metropolis or Smallville did happen to recognize you, they might be moved to contact MTV or a local news outlet about it. MTV might not care - he was just another spoiled rich brat in a country that had more than a few, but a Kansas news outlet would know exactly what to do with the information.
Play it on-air and often.
Lex slid further down the couch, into a full sprawl, not really caring if his pants got wrinkled. No, dammit. He hoped they did get wrinkled. Served them right, the slim, conservative grey things that really wouldn't be enough to maintain his new image as a young, successful businessman. Instead of the pants, people would see his navel ring and quite a bit of mud.
The sudden ring of his cell was shriller than it should have been and Lex was suddenly struck that this of all nights, was not the one to drink a bottle of wine and while the night away watching trite, unchallenging TV programs.
He flung out an arm and grabbed the phone from its resting place atop the empty case of his TNG season one boxed set, hit talk and brought it to his ear without putting out anything essential or knocking any of the M&M's from their precarious perch in the pyramid he'd made. Lex had always been a coordinated drunk.
He didn't bother to look at the display.
"Davette," he said calmly.
"Lex! Do you know what Linda is talking about *right now*?"
"I haven't the faintest idea what your 13-year-old daughter is talking about, Davette, and I'd really like to keep it that way."
"Well too bad Lex, because this? This is important. This is essential for you to know. You understand Lex? That you need to know this right now, should have know about it before hand and why the FUCK didn't I know about this?"
"This conversation would make so much more sense if you would-"
"Don't patronize me! Don't you dare patronize me-"
"*I wasn't quite finished*." Davette halted mid-rant. "Stop," he said slowly. "Collect yourself and start from the beginning."
"Linda was watching MTV."
Lex couldn't help a tiny sigh. This fast. Of course, it being him, it would be this fast.
"You know what I'm talking about."
"Of course."
"Now why can't that Luthor near-omniscience extend to useful things, like knowing when to tell your PR staff things they need to know?"
"Davette." Lex didn't have to try to chill warning. He wasn't sure if it had always come to him so naturally - had there ever been a time when it was easier *not* to play the bastard?
He and Davette talked strategy and Lex told her as little as possible. Yes he'd slept with men. No he wasn't with a man right now. No he hadn't been with one for a long time. Davette had exactly enough sense not to question him about the details of his preferences and relationships, beyond "Is there anyone I *need* to know about?"
"No. There's no one." No one that mattered.
And then.
"Lex, I… was this some kind of teenage rebellion? Get on MTV kissing a pretty boy and piss off your dad?"
"Davette, I didn't know the cameras where *there*. I didn't even know MTV was covering the event."
"Well that's something… maybe we can-"
"No, I don't think we can."
"Oh, well, we'll come up with something Lex, don't worry." All the strident anger had drained from her voice, leaving something like motherly concern.
"You had better. I'm certainly paying you well enough," he said shortly. "I have other phone calls to make. We'll talk in the morning." He pulled the phone away from his ear and hit end. He tossed the phone onto the table, heard it slide into his candy pyramid and send the M&Ms skittering across the floor. The staff would love him for that.
And it had been such a good night. A nice bottle of wine, candy and mindless entertainment.
He blamed the Star Trek DVDs. Every time he watched them, something bad happened and every time it was something worse. Clearly they had some kind of connection to the divine, relaying to the fates that Lex Luthor was taking some time to relax and just enjoy himself, and wouldn't this be a great time to kick him in the balls. Metaphorically speaking of course. Star Trek had yet to arrange that particular treat.
He swung his legs off the couch and rested his elbows on his knees. His feet in their thin cotton socks were cold against the floor - the carpet seemed to have inched forward slightly in the last few hours. They curled away from the cold of his own volition, so he slid them forward, onto the carpet and crossed them at the ankles.
It wasn't as though people hadn't suspected him. *Suspected* him.
He leaned back, scrubbed his hands across his face.
They'd known. Some of them would have had to. But knowing and *knowing* were two very different things. There was good old George and all those *looks* and it wasn't as if he'd been particularly discreet. He was so used to being stared at that sometimes it was difficult to distinguish between stares, even when the causality should have been obvious.
Tomorrow, he was scheduled for a meeting with Gabe and another with Lana, in the evening. He didn't know which would be worse - walking into the plant, or getting out of his car in front of the Talon.
The kind of wan celebrity that wealth afforded meant that someone would always stare at him when he entered a room, sure that he knew something about Lex. Something intimate. Whether he wore silk or cotton. Whether he liked it on top or was fond of handcuffs. Armed with this pointed example of his youthful stupidity, they *would* know. And they would extrapolate in a million directions; all coming back to the incontrovertible proof that Lex Luthor really did like boys.
He'd stopped caring about the other stares years ago - after a certain point, one just accepts that people developing neck problems from the whiplash effort of watching one's every move, was normal. The cameras too, were normal and the constant concern that his bed partners would sell the story of their adventure to the papers.
The credits for something called "Becoming" started. Lex snatched the remote from the mess of candy and turned it off entirely. It was disgusting, really, how badly MTV had degraded. He thought he could remember actually enjoying its programming once - of course, that may have been a product of mixing intoxicants.
He'd been surprised to learn that Clark actually watched the station, though this being Smallville, MTV might actually seem like an excellent waste of time.
Clark. Was studying with his friends tonight at his house. Near a TV.
Music. He needed some music.
He padded over to the entertainment center and stared blankly at his racks of cds. He wasn't sure what a 22 year old, bisexual businessman was supposed to listen to. Surely it was a subject worthy of great deliberation and media coverage.
He chose something at random and popped it into the player. Found that Deftones was just fine.
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I really love it. I missed the first one while away and had double the fun catching up just now. I love how it keeps smacking me in the face - showing me how lazily dependant on cliche i've become. The little in-joke about Lex's past NOT including bondage clubs, and then the more recent 2nd installment with *gasp* Lex's first thought on being outed NOT being to worry that Clark won't like him anymore. These were human and in-character and funny, and so so good to read. I really enjoyed the 1st part's group interaction - we never get that and it's brilliant! In this one, you manage to take a character whose angsty moments have been done to death, reanimated, and beaten down again, and make something fresh and real with it.
Excellent story. So can I be the cliche-ridden reader and demand that you write more?
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And it is not finished. You see that, right? I hope?
Wait -- there's supposed to be more...? I make no promised but I do have vague ideas of future installments, so we'll see. My track record with posted WIPs is not good, so we'll refrain from calling Echo that, m'k?
I really enjoyed the 1st part's group interaction - we never get that
And it was so much fun to write! I think the next part *knocks on wood* will once again be with the Smallville Scoobies. The four of them play off of each other so nicely, but with all the Lana-love from the writers this year, we haven't seen what they can do. One relationship I'd really like to see them develop is Lana-Pete. I have a feeling that his tremendous lack of surface-angst would liven her up a little. And Chloe-Pete, hell, Pete-anyone. *g* Why keep around a good sidekick if you're not going to use him right?
I love how it keeps smacking me in the face - showing me how lazily dependant on cliche i've become.
I'm so glad that worked out. :) I think I've just gotten tired of all the bland melodrama and thought it might be fun to try something along the lines of how I'd like the show to function. It was a case of taking a step back and beating my own internalizations of fanon with the logic stick. Also, I just like smacking readers around. *innocent*
Thanks for your response.
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God, can I borrow that when you're done with it? Maybe we could market them to fandom as a whole...
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have finally decided to stop merely stalking good fanfic authors and say hi. yes, i like this story/series that much. hope you don't mind me adding you. :)
there are so many generic fanfic story categories, and this seems different from the bazillion PWPs populating this fandom. and i'm a sucker for excellent characterization and wording/style, which this has in spades. write more!
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