Lian and Clark
I totally meant to post this over a week ago. My memory, it is not so good.

First part here.
Main index here.

VII.

It was a Thursday evening, and Lex was tired. He’d been putting out fires right and left all day, thanks a press leak about some abandoned LuthorCorp lab somewhere out in South Dakota. His father had been dead and buried for a year and a half, but Lex was still stuck cleaning up his messes.

All he wanted was to take off his shoes, make himself a drink, and watch a little mindless violence on the television. Tomorrow was going to be a big day, and he wanted to let of all of today’s stress and get a good night’s sleep.

When the elevator doors opened into his penthouse, however, Lex heard noise coming from the media room. Automatically he reached out, groping blindly along the wall for the alarm switch, fearing burglars. Or worse. Dear old Dad had made a lot of enemies in his day, and Lex had inherited them along with the family business.

Before he could hit the switch that would summon the cavalry, however, the tinny sounds resolved themselves into something a little more comprehensible. Not the random bumps and scuffles that came from a robbery in progress, but shouting, shouting in a Scottish accent. And swords.

Either he had a group of Gaelic midgets armed with antique weaponry stealing his TV, or someone was watching Braveheart in his media room.

Curiosity killed the cat, and all that. Lex followed the sound to its source.

Lian looked up from the TV when Lex came in. “Hey,” he said softly. “Long day at the office?”

Lex just stood there and stared at his brother, who was most emphatically not supposed to be there. “It’s Thursday,” he said dumbly.

Lian tilted his head. “Yeah, it is. Is Thursday the new Monday or something?”

“No, I mean- It’s Thursday. You’re moving in on Friday.”

“Nooo, I was moving in on Thursday,” Lian said slowly. “I’ve got campus orientation tomorrow; I’m not going to try and move on the same day. That’d be stupid.”

“But-“ He’d had plans. He’d already told Christine that he was taking Friday off, because he’d wanted to spend the whole day with Lian, setting up his room, going shopping for textbooks, taking him out to dinner. The whole nine yards. “Which room did you take?”

“Down at the end of the hall,” Lian said. He fumbled for the remote and his pause button, silencing the sounds of battle but leaving his face bathed in the reflected bluish light from the screen. “It’s right next to the bathroom, which is nice. Plus, I like the windows.”

Who wouldn’t, after a lifetime spent in a gloomy old castle? But Lex had wanted him in the room net to his. He’d had contractors in there weeks ago, tearing down the walls between two of the guest bedrooms to make a suite for his little brother. It had an attached bathroom, and plenty of windows. Lex had made sure of it.

And instead, Lian had picked a smaller room, as far from Lex as was possible.

“I see.” This was not going according to plan. It wasn’t even close. “I’m very sorry about this, Lian. I’d wanted to be here to help you settle in.”

Lian waved one hand with easy forgiveness. “Don’t worry about it. The movers were great, and Clark came by to help me unpack.”

“Clark,” Lex said flatly.

“Yeah, Clark,” Lian said with an eyeroll. “You know, my best friend for almost my entire life? I’m sure this is ringing a bell somewhere in there.”

“I know who Clark is,” Lex said irritably. It was hard to forget. Lian had threatened to expose some of Lex’s more embarrassing secrets if Lex tried to move him out of Smallville. Lian had said a lot of bullshit about changing schools and uprooting his life, but he knew Lian, Lian could survive anywhere. He’d known it was for Clark. “I just thought that he was going to Kansas State.”

Lian gave him a mild look that nonetheless managed to be more potent than the most intense of Christine’s glares. “Actually, he received a full-ride journalism scholarship to MetU for academic excellence,” Lian said reprovingly. “Anyway. He and Chloe moved into the dorms yesterday, so he came over to move furniture while Chloe got out textbooks. She doesn’t trust us in bookstores.”

Another part of his plan left in the dust. “It sounds like you’re all ready to start classes on Monday.”

“Yeah,” Lian grinned. “Should be pretty interesting. Lois is in my biology class. In wonder how long she’ll last before she lasts before she starts trying to copy my notes?”

Lex didn’t know Lois any better than he knew Lian’s other friends. He used to think that he didn’t need to know them, because he’d always assumed that Lian would leave them behind, just as Lex had done when he’d started LexCorp. He’d learned his error the hard way, though, and now there was an entire part of his brother’s life that was never going to be accessible to him.

Some of this must have been visible on his face, because Lian’s laughing smile softened to something like sympathy. “Hey. I know you wanted to welcome me to Metropolis and everything, but you know you don’t have to, right? I’ve been spending summers here my entire life; it’s not like it’s a foreign country.”

He knew that, but he’d thought- “I wanted things to be different,” he found himself saying.

Lian gave him a gentle smile. “Yeah, I know. And they will be. I wouldn’t have moved in if I didn’t want to be closer than we have been.” His expression turned serious. “But you’ve got to remember that the Kents have been like a second family to me. Clark and I were practically brothers by the time we were five. That’s not going to change just because we’re not in Smallville anymore.”

Lex ground his teeth. The subtext of that statement- “He’s a better brother than you-“ was no less clear to him for all that it had been unspoken. But he hadn’t been a good brother to Lian. He’d been too wrapped up in his father’s games to remember the littlest Luthor, tucked away in the rural hell of Smallville.

And so Clark had gotten there first.

“Okay,” he said.

Lian brightened visibly, obviously delighted at the idea of a cessation of hostilities. “Okay?”

“Yeah, I can deal with that,” Lex lied. It wasn’t like he could say anything else. He’d just have to grit his teeth and play nice, and not say anything nasty about the farmboy- not where Lian could hear him, anyway. “We’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, we will.” Lian gave him a last, lingering grin and then turned away, conversation apparently over, but Lex couldn’t bear to leave it like that. He liked his conversations to have a little more closure than this.

“What about dinner?” he blurted.

Lian raised an eyebrow and pointed at a stack of empty boxes and several crumb-covered plates, all in plain view on the coffee table. “Chloe brought pizza,” he said. “It was only an hour ago. I’m still pretty full.”

“Right.” He’d been so surprised to see Lian when he’d come in that he hadn’t paid much attention to his surroundings. “Well, I guess I’ll just head to bed.”

“Night,” Lian said absently, his thumb already on the button, the clash of swords filling the room.

~*~

Christine looked up in worry as Lex came storming into his office. “Mr. Luthor, sir,” she said, hurrying to prepare his usual cup of coffee. “I thought you were planning to be absent today?”

“Things did not go according to plan,” he growled, and kept going.

tbc.