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Lex sighed, slumped back in his chair, and slowly rocked his glass in a slow circle, watching the tiny bit of Scotch left inside swirl hypnotically. What a fucking snore *this* was turning out to be. Hardly a proper welcome back to Metropolis. He'd spent the last three years running a waste-processing plant for his dad in the sticks of Texas, and frankly, watching a cow get blow-dried before its big appearance at the local livestock show was a hell of a lot more interesting than watching all his old friends lie around Chad Barlow's dad's penthouse and get slowly wasted. Not that Chad and Teddy and Jack and Trip had ever really been 'friends' of Lex's. Just people who knew where the fun was, people to have around to keep the silence away while you bounced from bar to bar so you didn't have to go home and face the silence there, either.
Christ, Lex thought to himself. This must be what it's like to get out of jail. Everything was different, but everything was sickeningly the same. Lex had spent three years working, trying his damndest to make Fertilizer Plant #5 a viable, working part of the LuthorCorp empire, while Chad, Teddy, Jack and Trip had done a lot of Jello shots, fucked their way through a couple of Met U sororities, and seemingly never come to a decision about whether or not it was pretentious to pronounce it "Thibet" instead of "Tibet." It was like they were all stuck in time. Lex felt old.
There was a faint chime outside the penthouse door. Chad grinned, leaning over to punch Lex's arm with slightly more machismo than was really necessary or appreciated. "Lex! Your surprise is here."
"If you've forgotten *again* that I hate pepperoni and sausage on the same pizza, I'm not going to be surprised," Lex grumbled. Trip laughed and whacked him on the back of the head. Lex vowed to find new friends. Tomorrow. How hard could it be?
"Ta-da!" Chad announced, and Lex looked up wearily, then blinked.
The girl in the doorway was pretty, a bottle-blonde with shiny black pants and a red blouse with the tails knotted under her breasts, exposing her soft little belly. Trip and Teddy whistled and hooted at her. "All right! The party's here!"
The girl's face was hard as she glanced around the room. "I don't do parties."
"Well, you're here," Chad said slowly, throwing his arm around her shoulder. "So you might as well stay. Don't worry." He reached over to toy at the knot in her blouse. "We'll make it worth your time."
"Like hell!" The girl pushed his hand away, ducking out from under Chad's arm and heading for the door. Lex sighed, let his head fall back against the couch and made disbelieving faces at the ceiling. Chad was slotted to step into his father's shoes at the most prestigious law firm in Metropolis in a couple of years, and he couldn't even manage to complete an effective contract negotiation with a hooker. Sad, really.
"Get your hands off me!" the girl yelped, and Lex sat up. Chad had grabbed the girl's wrist before she could walk out, and it looked like it hurt.
"Oh, come on, Chad!" Lex snapped. He fished his cellphone from his pocket and flicked it open. "Why don't I just call the fucking Inquisitor right now! For Christ's sake!"
Chad glared at Lex and let the girl's wrist go. As she turned away, he lashed out, ripped her purse off her shoulder and snapped it open. "You're not walking out of here with my money, bitch."
"Hey! You fucker, give me that!" The girl stood there, glaring, as Chad rifled through her things. Lex closed his eyes and tried to remember what Miss Manners dictated in these situations. He was just about to stand up when the girl closed her eyes and screamed, "CLARK!"
"Pepper!" a loud shout came from the hallway, and then the door banged and jerked in its frame, slamming open. A tall, muscled, *pissed* looking guy stalked in, eyes hard and nostrils flared in fury, reaching Pepper's side in about two strides. He was wearing blue jeans and a black t-shirt with the arms ripped off, had dark hair and looked less like a pimp than a bouncer at some trendy gay dance club. He positioned himself in front of the girl protectively.
"I think you want to give that back," he told Chad, looking sharply at Pepper's purse.
"Who the fuck are you?" Chad shot back, obviously thinking that a couple of years of football at Met U gave him the skills necessary to take out some six-foot, feral street kid who probably had a knife or some shit like that. Actually, that was probably the shooters talking, Lex thought, and sighed.
He crossed to Chad's side and grabbed the purse out of his hands. "Would you just--!" He held it out to Pepper, and she took it. Miss Manners would be proud, he thought. "Sorry."
"What are *you* sorry for?" she sniped, checking through it quickly.
"Well, mainly I'm sorry he's a dick," Lex said, jerking a thumb at Chad. "This *was* supposed to be my party, and you are really beautiful."
Pepper looked up sharply, and Lex put as much charm as he could into his smile. Finally she smiled crookedly, fished a business card out of her purse, and offered it to him. Lex glanced at her pimp cautiously before he took it, and was startled to see him break into a wide, almost friendly, grin.
"I do birthdays, bachelor parties and bar mitzvahs." Pepper said, licking her lips. "Call me sometime." She walked out, followed by her pimp.
*
Lex threw the business card into the trash when he got home. Then he thought better of it, fished it out of the wastebasket, set it on fire and washed the ashes down the sink instead. No sense just *handing* his dad this kind of ammunition, after all.
He jerked off that night imagining Pepper going down on him while the pimp just watched, standing in the corner of the room and rubbing his hand helplessly over the bulge in his jeans. It was a surprisingly effective fantasy. Under the eyeliner and the too-tight T-shirt, the kid-- he *had* to be at least a couple of years younger than Lex-- had looked weirdly, well. Wholesome.
*
Three weeks later and Lex was re-considering the appeal of livestock shows. Hell, he was beginning to empathize with the cows, considering the way his father had been trotting him out and showing him off at every boring business function since his triumphant return to Metropolis. "Triumphant return" was his father's phrase, of course. Privately, Lex thought a more accurate description would be "knuckling under" or maybe "coming to heel." He was the perfect Stepford son, at least as far as Metropolis and his father was concerned, and if he had other plans for the future, that was no one's business but his own.
Two more hours, he told himself, shaking hands with a round of city councilmen and women. Two more hours of this pat, slick chatter and he could go *home* and... well. Stare at the wall and pretend he wasn't really *there*, either. No place he'd ever lived with his father had ever quite been a home, and the townhouse was no exception.
He glanced across the room, spotted a familiar face as his gaze tracked across the crowd, then did a double-take. It was the pimp from Chad's party, dressed as a *waiter* for some inexplicable reason, a white napkin over his arm and a tray of champagne flutes balanced in one hand. He was wearing thick, ugly-looking glasses, and at first Lex thought it was a different person entirely, someone who just bore a resemblance to the bristling pimp who'd burst into Chad's penthouse. But then he turned to offer a glass of champagne to two society ladies, and his profile was exactly the same. Clark, that was his name, Lex remembered. *Clark*.
Lex grinned and watched him for a minute more, then quickly glanced around the room, wondering which of the ladies present was a professional. Surely not the Mayor's date. Surely not his *father's* date-- Lex squinched his eyes shut, trying not to imagine his father having sex with Pepper. Oh, god. Even thinking about his father having *imaginary* sex with someone he'd jerked off to was just too gross, maybe even grosser because it was a disturbingly plausible concept. He shook his head again, and headed over to get a glass of champagne.
Clark spotted him coming and flinched adorably. Lex headed straight for him, picked a glass of champagne off his tray and raised it in a toast. "I admire a man with a decent work ethic."
"Thanks," Clark said nervously, glancing around the room.
"Satisfy my curiosity," Lex said, "which one of the ladies in the room are you chaperoning tonight?"
"What?" Clark blinked at him through the thick, ugly glasses.
"You can tell me," Lex said. "Is it Councilman Hizzoner's date?"
"What? *Oh*," Clark said, and Lex couldn't help but grin-- the kid was actually *blushing*. "Oh, no, it's not. I'm not-- I'm *working* here. As a waiter. I mean, really."
He was so earnest he had to be lying. "Seriously," Lex said. "It's not the redhead over in the corner, is it? The one with the long-haired guy. Come on, you can tell me-- that's my dad."
Clark stared at him. "Seriously. I'm-- I'm working. I'm a college student. I have a couple of jobs."
Lex liked to think he was quick to pick up on even complicated concepts, and this one was dawning, albeit slowly. "You're a... college student."
"Yeah," Clark insisted.
"You have a couple of jobs." Lex repeated.
Clark nodded energetically.
"Including being a *pimp*?" Lex said, and Clark's eyes went huge, and he nearly dropped his tray.
"*Shhh*!"
Of course, the loud shushing drew more eyes than Lex's low-voiced comment had. Lex smiled. "You want to get out of here?"
"Look," Clark said, drawing himself up, and Lex stepped in a little closer.
"You intrigue me, Clark," he said. Clark's eyes widened, panicked, and Lex grinned reassuringly. "I'd just like to talk to you. Really. Rich people are easily bored, haven't you learned that by now?"
He knew he had Clark when the tray of champagne glasses dipped. An obvious tell. "I'm working!" Clark finally said. "I can't just-- I mean, I don't know why you'd want to talk to me. I'm not that interesting."
"I can pay for your time. I think you're familiar with the concept." Lex turned towards the door. "As for your relative interest, why don't you let me be the judge of that?"
He started walking, and grinned to himself as he heard Clark's footsteps fall in behind his.
"Five hundred up front," Clark said in his ear as they headed for the door. "Cash. And pie."
Lex blinked at him as they stepped out into the chill Metropolis night, sure he'd misheard. "Pardon me?"
"Five hundred dollars is 'cause I'm gonna lose my job," Clark said, glancing back inside with slight reluctance. He looked back at Lex and grinned. "The asking price for an evening in my company is pie. Non-negotiable."
Lex stared at him. Clark looked up at the night sky and took a deep breath, as if he hadn't quite been able to breathe inside. After a moment, he looked back over at Lex. "There's an ATM on the corner."
*
Lex sat in the booth in the greasy spoon Clark had directed the limo driver to take them to, and watched the kid eat pie. He'd left his suit jacket and bow tie in the car, unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a tight white wifebeater, and was currently rolling the sleeves up to his elbows, carefully. "It's not mine," he told Lex, "it belongs to the catering company."
"Hm," Lex said, watching him, and Clark grinned suddenly.
"You know, I don't even know your name--" He glanced up as the waitress came over.
"Nothing for me, thanks," Lex said. There were... spots on the side of the coffee urn that he couldn't quite identify. Safer not to indulge. He glanced over at Clark, but the waitress was already scribbling something on her pad.
"The usual?" she croaked, and Clark nodded, aiming the same big grin at her. The waitress was old enough to be his grandmother, and she looked like she'd had a rough day, hell, a rough *life*, but she beamed right back at him, apparently only just restraining herself from petting him on the head before heading back towards the kitchen.
"Lex," Lex said. "Short for Alexander."
"So, Lex, short for Alexander." Clark said, then seemingly couldn't think of anything else to say. He drummed his fingers on the table, then smiled brightly. "So, thanks for sticking up for Pepper that one time. I really don't like to, you know. Get rough with people. But she kind of had a bad feeling about that guy. Um, no offense--"
"Don't worry about it. He's not a friend," Lex said. "Just somebody I know. And if Pepper knew he was slime right off the bat, she's too smart to be a hooker."
"Sex worker!" Clark said instantly, looking reproving. He flinched guiltily as the grandmotherly-looking waitress returned. She slid a full-sized plate with four pieces of pie down in front of him, and a large glass of milk. *Milk*. Lex stared. He was really almost sure he wasn't high.
"What?" Clark said, around a really amazing mouthful of pie. He chewed and forced another forkful into his mouth, resembling nothing so much as an ill-fed pet scarfing any scrap of food left on the floor.
"I suppose I just didn't expect a pimp to drink *milk*," Lex said.
Clark choked on a mouthful of pie. Lex refused to feel bad about it. The only wonder was that he hadn't choked before. He blocked his mouth with the back of his hand, swallowed, then spluttered, "I'm not a--!"
Lex raised his eyebrows. "You're not?"
"I *told* you, I'm a student! And-- and mainly I'm a short-order cook! I work at Fuller's on Fifth Street!"
"And how does that work out to bodyguarding for hook-- for *sex workers* on the side?" Lex asked, correcting himself before Clark could give him the big eyes again.
Clark sighed, glancing out the window into the night. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, seeminly annoyed when his glasses got in the way, and pulled them off, letting them fall casually onto the table. He looked back at Lex, his eyes clear and hard. "I was walking home one night and I saw this guy..." He frowned. "He was trying to drag a girl into his car. I-- I scared him off, and she asked me to walk her home, so I said okay."
"Well, of *course* you did," Lex said. "Where exactly are you from? Not Metropolis."
"No, Smallville," Clark said, as if he didn't see what possible relevance it had to the story. "Anyway, that was Zandra, she's one of my friends now, and she said that guy had been hanging around the street for a while, and the cops just weren't going to do anything about it! So after I got off work the next night I hung around for a couple of hours just in case he showed up again..." He blushed suddenly, circling his finger on the table.
"What were you wearing?" Lex asked, trying to make it sound innocent.
"Jeans, and, y'know, a t-shirt, and... Zandra let me stand behind her most of the night," Clark said. Lex nodded sympathetically. "Anyway, I um-- That guy stopped coming around for some reason." He looked down, concentrating deeply on forking some more pie into his mouth. "And I made friends with some of the girls, you know, and they..." He shrugged.
"So, you're not a pimp," Lex said.
"Right," Clark said, drinking deeply from his glass of milk. He licked his lips when he was done and Lex curled his toes inside his shoes. He smiled.
"You just... what, make sure they get paid?"
"Sure, sometimes."
"And if Chad had tried to get rough with Pepper...."
"I'd have kicked his ass." Clark said immediately, then quite obviously realized that confession didn't really help his case. "Um."
"And in return, the ladies of the evening give you...?" Lex gestured widely.
"Nothing!" Clark said. "I mean, I don't *make* them... but sometimes they, uh. Sometimes they..."
"What?" Lex tried to look accepting and non-judgemental.
"Sometimes they buy me pie," Clark confessed.
Lex just looked at him. "Please tell me that's a ridiculous euphemism for some deviant sexual behavior I've mysteriously not heard of yet."
"If it is, you know, you promised to do it for me." Clark grinned across the table at him.
Lex lowered his voice ever so slightly. "Please *do* tell me that's a ridiculous euphemism for some deviant sexual--"
"It's not!" Clark said quickly. "It's pie! Just pie."
"Uh-huh," Lex said, and after a moment Clark grinned and kicked him under the table. Lex laughed.
Well, well, he thought. Mild-mannered student by day, super pimp daddy by night.
He *had* thought it was time for some more interesting friends.
Looked like he'd found at least one.
[end]