#lexbat

Featherlight touches were more than enough to wake Bruce. He’d never been the heaviest sleeper, even on his most comfortable nights in. Rain pattered against the window, its steady rhythm matching the patterns Lex drew over his arm behind him, and he wasn’t upset for a moment that his sleep was interrupted by such a quiet and well-meaning touch.

He deduced they weren’t random strokes. They were even each time, the same length up and down his arm.

“What are you doing?” Bruce mumbled, not realizing he was smiling until he could hear it in his own voice.

When Lex halted, Bruce made a point of shifting back against him.

“Sorry I woke you.”

“You’re fine. It’s nice.” He craned his head back, turning over just enough to meet his eyes in the moonlight.

The sky was full of it, sparing a beam for his bedroom to cut over Bruce’s shoulder to Lex’s face.

“You didn’t answer my question though.”

That same face turned down, and he hid it in Bruce’s shoulder with a huff. As if against his better judgment, Lex said, “I’m thinking about your scars.”

Bruce settled against the pillow again, his hands curling in front of him above the blankets. “You’ve never asked about them before.”

“No, but I’ve wondered… how did you get them?”

“A lot of places.” He rolled over to face Lex, pulling the other’s hand to rest over his hip. He traced with Lex’s hand up his back to where the skin turned rough. “Fell through an old building. Needed fifteen stitches.”

Lex hissed through his teeth, though Bruce caught his smile. “And my favorite one on your arm?”

The star-shaped mark was from a spear. Of course, that would be hard to explain to anyone who didn’t know he was Batman. “My father took me fishing once when I was little. I wound the line back farther than he told me to, and I ripped it through my arm.”

“You sound like you were a handful even then.”

Bruce laughed a bit louder than they’d been whispering while Lex pulled his hand around his flank, splaying his warm hand over his ribs.

“Then there’s this one here. This is from your fall, too?” He ran his fingers over the stripe.

“No, uh, not exactly.”

“I have one just like it. Straight cut, surgical- probably for a broken rib.”

“Yeah, actually. It’s from Aikido training.”

Hand stilling, Lex looked to him for a moment as if waiting to see if he was joking. “When you were a teenager?”

“During my gap year, actually,” he said, and Lex didn’t have to know that was a bit of an overstatement. “Master threw me down too hard, ribs took the brunt of it.” He also didn’t have to know who that master was.

“Now, I don’t believe that.” Lex pulled himself up onto his elbow, hand having returned to rest on the bed between them.

“You think I’m lying about breaking my ribs? That aikido isn’t effective enough to do it?” 

“It’s not that I don’t believe a person could get slammed by another person hard enough to break a rib, just that that may be the most normal way to do so and I can’t imagine anything happening to you the normal way.”

Bruce chuckled, his smile turning into a smirk. “Okay. Well, how’d you break your ribs?”

Lex pursed his lips. “I didn’t break my ribs.”

“Your fencing instructor then?”

“I never got hurt in fencing, actually. Biggest scare was when my helmet wasn’t on all the way and it got knocked off, but that was all.” He lowered himself back down to the bed with his arm now curled under his temple.

Bruce’s smile fell, and they both let the silence take over the room.

“Was it your father?” he dared to ask, and the lack of answer served him just as well while the raindrops continued beating against the window. “I’m sorry.”

“No need. I was the one asking about scars.” He sucked in a breath. “It was stupid- it was always something stupid- and I think even he realized he took it too far when I had trouble breathing later that night. Not enough to apologize, of course, but I got a few days out of school.”

He reached out, and Bruce took his hand. He could feel Lex’s fingers tracing his own. The breaks could be mapped out there as well, and Bruce wondered how long it had been since he’d slept with someone trying to read him this thoroughly. The intent in Lex’s eyes was just as visible in that dim room as it was when Bruce was speaking to him. Perhaps, in his own way, Lex considered Bruce was always speaking to him.

He lowered his gaze from Lex’s face to his rising and falling chest, catching when he took a shaky breath, and soothing it when he pressed himself against him.

“Are you ready to go back to sleep?” he asked.

“Not really,” Lex confessed, voice uncertain as he buried his face into the crook of Bruce’s neck and laid his arm over his other shoulder.

“Okay.”

“You can if you’d like, though.”

Still quiet, he let himself chuckle against Lex’s neck, pressing a kiss there and rubbing his thumb up and down the other man’s upper back.

He shouldn’t have worn white with his condition. Lex knew better one week into dealing with the disease, but it had slipped his mind for whatever reason until a handful of bloody, pink Peruvian lilies petals fluttered from his lips right before the final speech of the expo.

Mercy dutifully arranged his mic on the ruined dress shirt to cover the speckle of blood placed there, a job she wouldn’t normally be in charge of  if he could trust anyone else with this embarrassing truth.

She raised a hand to her ear-piece. “Three minutes. Are you ready, sir?”

Are you okay?

He knew that’s what she wanted to ask.

“You know, Mercy,” he began, head tilting to instead gaze at the sliver of light from the other side of the curtain, “it’s widely theorized that Julius Caesar truly died of hanahaki.”

She tilted her head. “Oh?”

He’d never believed it himself. The emperor slept around too frequently for Lex to believe he wasn’t open enough with his feelings to avoid such an embarrassing fate. Still, he continued, “The idea was most likely popularized on the man’s pride. The flowers are a symptom, after all. It’s the pride that kills the patient.”

She looked as though she wanted to ask something. Instead, she tightened her lips and held her hands behind her back.

“I’m ready, Mercy.”

---

The speech went well. The flowers remained nestled in his lungs, though his voice was clear and crisp. Advancements had been made in the twenty-first century for hanahaki. There was of course the surgery to remove the flowers, though it would also remove emotion from the affected person. More than never being able to love again, passion would disappear. What kind of inventor of the future lived his life without passion? It wasn’t a way to live. Medications with light herbicide could keep them at bay without killing the bulb, but they were poison. Lex opted to prolong his torment rather than down the pills as quickly as he could. It would be just his luck that a non-obtrusive cure would be found the day after he’d passed.

It wasn’t fair, he reasoned, that a man who so rarely found attachment would be damned by one of the few he’d fostered.

He was sure that the two doctors who he’d allowed to assess his condition were just grateful he’d grown to acceptance so quickly. Not without the initial stages, of course. He’d threatened them, offered them both as much money as they would ever need so long as they cured his body without neutering who he was-

The only thing he hadn’t allowed himself in front of the doctors or even in private was to cry.

He’d remain strong until the last blossom caught and the last thorn clawed its way through his lungs. This wouldn’t break Lex Luthor, who the world would see die tragically and mysteriously. His body would be placed into an ornate coffin after an “extensive” autopsy that would come back negative for anything else.

Perhaps hundreds or thousands of years later, his prideful face would be more correctly theorized as a victim of this humiliation. Either way, he wouldn’t allow them to know for sure. That would be his final ace should nothing else work.

That was far from even being plan B, though. Going into his second week when the flowers were getting bigger- the tiny petals turning into long stalks of rosemary and true, orange lilies of the larger variety- he briefly considered hiring a surgeon to simply trim back the larger plants or remove some of the dead blossoms that already broke off of the main bulb. This was a stupid idea he never followed through on. The last thing he wanted was for this disease to take anything from him, and repeated, difficult surgeries on a tender area such as his lungs was not an attempt he’d make lightly.

Instead, he opted to cut back on public appearances, knowing that he couldn’t stop going entirely.

Of course the one he would go to that week would be one of the few Bruce Wayne didn’t stand up.

So he stood there, immovable and quiet, watching the other man out of his peripherals and clearing his throat as if it would help to keep the buds at bay. He tried to not appear as a total statue, laughing when everyone else in the circle he was in did so, smiling and nodding along to some story about how one of their toddlers had tried to give their cat a bath in the toilet.

When did all of his friends have kids? Should he have had kids already?

He absently reached out for a flute of champagne when the waiter neared, dropping it when a coughing fit over took him and effectively doing the opposite of keeping up appearances.

“You okay, Lex?”

He looked up at that voice, seeing Wayne already leaning down to where Lex had almost slid to his knees from the force of his cough.

“Yeah, I’m f-” he cleared his throat once more, swallowing against the rosemary that scraped up his throat.

Wayne helped him up, his hand warm around his bicep before Lex pushed him away and straightened his lapels. “Sorry about that,” he apologized to no one in particular. “Maybe that’s a sign I’ve had my fill for tonight.”

THe few that had taken notice of him were quick to dismiss him with empty smiles and return to their conversation, though Wayne was still there.

Eager blue eyes scanned Lex from head to toe- and that’s how he felt: Scanned. It was like Bruce Wayne was seeing more than the physical, that he’d somehow gained the kryptonian ability to see the flowers nestled deep inside his chest.

“Let me help you to the lobby.”

Before the hand could return to his arm, Mercy had appeared, gently steering him away as if he were a drunkard.

“I’ll take it from here, Mr. Wayne,” she said with a smile.

“I’ll be fine, Bruce. You just enjoy your own party for once.”

He didn’t look convinced, even when he smiled with this mouth and not his eyes, waving the two of them off without even a reminder to pick up their goody bags.

---

With that humiliation behind him, Lex had the rest of the week to consider other treatments to slow its progression.

“I’m dividing the assets between you and Lena for the most part,” he told Mercy as he studied the makeup of the plant cells, finding where they were merged with his own organ tissue. More than that, they were blended together. Interesting. “She’s to get my untaxed properties and any clean money not already tied to LexCorp and the investors. I’m leaving everything else, including the company, to you.”

She nodded. “What should I tell the lawyers before they speak with you?”

“What do you mean? I’m making a will, not asking them to go to the moon. They do this every day.”

“I know,” she said, “but some may have questions about the timing.”

He slammed his fist down on the counter and pulled his goggles up to look back at her. “Tell them I’m one of the richest men in the world, and whatever time I’d like to get my affairs in order isn’t too soon.”

“Understood, sir.”

He flew out of his seat with a sneer, the force causing it to shoot back with a loud screech against the tile.

“You think you could handle this better?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, but you didn’t have to, did you? You think I’m irrational.”

She lightly grimaced, forcing her eyes to remain on her tablet. “You’re behaving that way, yes.”

He laughed only to double over and grab the desk when a rough cough overtook him. She stood to help, frozen in place by Lex’s raised hand.

“Don’t touch me! I’m behaving quite rationally. I am dying.”

“You don’t have to be. You’ve faced rejection before. Your father rejected you, the sister you want to leave everything to rejected you- even romantically, Lois Lane has been quite public in saying she doesn’t want you. Who could it be that you would turn yourself into knots and become this? What person could make you act like- like such a mess?”

“Eno- he-ick!” He folded a hand over his mouth and tried to sit down, missing the chair and instead clattering into a ball on the floor.

He didn’t move to stop Mercy as she calmly crossed the room to kneel at his side, focusing on evicting the plant from his lungs. His eyes were wet, though the tears were not born of emotion. They pricked at his eyes in time with the stabbing pain in his throat as he pulled out two crumpled, blue roses complete with a trail of thorns down either of their stems.

They were brilliant. Unnatural, and yet he held them in his hands. Organic blue roses not born in a botany lab but from his own body. They were not white roses dyed by his throat, but deep blue blossoms tinged with red.

She tucked some of the herbicide pills into his hand- one more than his regular dosage- and stalked to the elevator. “I’ll make the call. You only have to ask.”

Whether she meant to a surgeon or the object of his suffering she didn’t specify before the doors closed behind her.

Luthor swallowed the pills dry.

---

It was a magical disease, so it was only a matter of time before he’d try Kryptonite radiation. If Superman was affected by magic normally, perhaps Kryptonians and such a magical disease were connected.

He was expecting the shipment in the morning. For the quiet night, he took some time to himself on his balcony. Of course even in that low moment, some people couldn’t help but want to take him lower.

“Luthor.”

He turned with an exaggerated sigh, anger bubbling as he felt a vibration at the back of his throat from where a leaf fluttered just at the edge of his tongue. He tugged on his tie as he cleared his throat, hoping to appear that he was doing it to annoy the alien hovering over his long-cold fire pit than anything more genuine.

“Superman,” he said, glad when the name came out clearly without obstruction, “whatever could I help you with?”

“I’m here to help you, actually,” he said. “Figured I’d save you from having to report a late delivery.”

His eyes widened. “What?”

“Don’t play dumb with me. I received word that a shipment of kryptonite was on its way to a lab in Metropolis for disease study- a branch specifically funded entirely by Lexcorp. I suppose you could say they lost their cargo.”

There was a moment when he didn’t know how to respond. He wanted to get angry. He wanted to throw a smooth stone at this Goliath and finally see him fall, but he’d thrown stones before and it hadn’t worked out.

That was fine, he wasn’t a religious man anyway.

He blinked his weary eyes. “I hate you.”

Superman smiled and shrugged with his still-crossed shoulders.

Lex nodded slowly, tilting his head and barely hanging on when a laugh finally bubbled from his throat. It was a weak thing, horrible notes flooding the air between them as his eyes squinted shut before he could see the revulsion come over Superman’s chiseled face.

The disgust subsided as something new took over, and Lex allowed Superman to help him down into one of the chairs.

“Are you-?”

The laughter stopped and the smile faded. “The kryptonite wasn’t for you, you oaf. It was for me!”

Superman’s eyes widened and he looked Lex over. This time, he was scanned.

“Oh.”

Superman again floated back- above it all, as he always was- though his expression was weighed down with something else. There was confusion, though Lex knew there wasn’t anything in that situation that the x-ray vision couldn’t parse out for him.

He thought he’d hear “I’m sorry” or perhaps questions about how long he had- what he’d tried, maybe the confusion was more linked to what the kryptonite was for.

Instead, Superman left.

His greatest nemesis was dying because he couldn’t admit feelings of unrequited love like some stupid teenager, and the only thing the alien paragon could say was, “Oh.”

---

Lex curled over in his bed, arms framed around his face and raised onto his knees as if the slight angle was going to encourage the flowers interrupting his sleep to finally empty from his throat.

His eyes flicked over to the cellphone on the bedside table.

One call could end this.

He hacked and hacked, pushing himself up only to slam a fist against his own chest and retching from the effort.

It would all be over with just three words, but Lex Luthor wasn’t the kind of man to only be met halfway. All or nothing. This life with his emotions and his fantasies- private and revered- were to remain intact.

One call could end this, and yet the phone remained untouched.

---

He didn’t think anything would come of the balcony discovery. Superman was cruel in many ways, in Lex Luthor’s own opinion, but kicking a dog when he was down?

Then he was alerted by his secretary that a reporter from the Daily Planet wanted to speak with him.

He allowed the reporter through, ready to see one of Superman’s buddies from the paper ready to press him about his disease and ask all of those questions the hero had spared him almost three nights before.

Of course one of the last ones he wanted to see was Lois Lane, her hands gently clasping the top of her purse as she was escorted inside.

Lex waved her escort- Mercy- away with a slow nod to confirm he’d be fine.

“Lois Lane,” he said, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”

She shifted her weight from one foot to another, eyes on the edge of his desk before raising over his torso.

“We have a mutual friend,” she began, “and you know that. So, I’d like to cut to the chase.”

“You want an exclusive interview with the first man to die of hanahaki in the last decade?”

“I don’t want you to die, Lex. Let’s just get this over with.”

He stilled at that, brow still heavy over his glaring eyes. Slowly, it lifted with the wave of realization flooding him, his head turning to the side.

“Ah that’s adorable, Ms. Lane. Please leave.”

“Lex, don’t do this. Come on, I wouldn’t call us friends, but I really don’t want you to die. Let’s have one moment here. You can check my bag- no recorders, no private laughs-”

“It’s not you.”

She stopped, mouth open slightly as she blinked at him.

“What?”

“It’s not you. Now get out.”

She didn’t do that, in fact, she stepped closer, laying her palms flat on the desk as she leaned over him. “Then who is it, Lex? I only came here because Superman told me what happened.”

“And why would he do that?”

“Obviously to torment you. Why do you think he told me? He thought what I thought: That me coming down here and forcing you to stop being stupid was the only way to save your life. Now tell me who it is so that I can get them down here.”

“You don’t even know them.”

“Ha! Try me, Lex. I’ve got every celebrity on the east coast in my address book and every one of them in Metropolis on speed dial. They live in another country? I’ll get my sources together. Another planet? I’ll throw you out that window so you can talk to Superman again.”

“Get out of here, Lois.”

“All you have to do is say ‘I wanna live!’”

He finally looked up from his papers he was absently sorting without really reading any of them to finally meet Lois’ glare.

“I do want to live, but I don’t love you, Lois Lane. You can leave knowing you did more than I deserve. If this were just about living, I’d have my bulb removed without a second thought. Do you think I like dying? That I’m doing this to get back at you? To get back at Superman?”

He stood up quickly, forcing her  back as he pulled out the tiny trash can from under his desk and whipped it on the floor beside her to spill bloody tissues out among the rows of pink, orange, and blue petals.

She didn’t shake as she looked up from the basket to him.

“Are they dead?”

“No.”

“Then you have no excuse. This doesn’t have to ‘just’ be about living. Whoever it is, they can’t have a reaction that would be so terrible that dying would be better.”

“Do you know how deeply one must feel for their bulb to start growing, Ms. Lane? You must know romantic feelings aren’t the only ones that start the sprout. Hatred and fear will do it just the same, but those aren’t the ones we talk about because they can be solved with time. The only way to really put the ones born of love to rest is to confess. That’s the only way to get rid of them, because either the feeling is mutual or it can never be and either way that’s enough to get them to stop burning.

“I was smitten with you once before. You have your husband now. Children have crushes, and people are infatuated with celebrities that may never know them- why don’t flowers bloom for them?”

She deflated where she stood. “I know it’s more than just wanting to be with someone. Whatever you feel, though- whatever the worst case scenario is for telling them- how is dying any better?”

“I’m not going down without a fight,” Lex said, “but I will be going out on my own terms.”

She stood taller. “I always thought you were a smart man. I never respected you, but I never thought I’d overestimate you. Thanks for proving me wrong.” 

She stalked out of the room, leaving him alone to stoop at his desk’s side to gather the flowers back into the waste bin.

---

Lex had wanted the night to end with a bang. He’d prepared a grand fireworks show to punctuate the last event he may ever oversee, though the guests would only see a big party.

The last thing he wanted was for those canisters to be replaced with Joker gas that flooded the attendees. The many who couldn’t get somewhere safe at the outdoor event were only saved by Batgirl, who reversed the air conditioning units on the roof to pull the gas off of it into a safe filtration system presumably set up beforehand that an engineer would only find three days later when they came into reverse the reversal.

That didn’t fix the issue of the Joker showing up to take in Lex himself while Harley emerged to keep Mercy busy. He fought back against the clown’s goons who held his arms down as they boarded a helicopter.

“Oh, Lexi-million, baby-” Joker sighed, “you should know better than to leave me hanging. Ghosting the Joker’s a good way to become a ghost yourself!” He shrieked with laughter as the helicopter lifted off the roof, Lex falling back against the wall of muscle behind him.

He’d been a bit too busy to even think about his… other interests. Never did he think he’d end up getting picked off by the Joker of all the villains he’d dealt with. He started coughing, as if the humiliation wasn’t already deep enough, and he hacked just enough to feel a leaf on the back of his tongue just before a meaty hand closed around his mouth.

“Woah there, open his mouth,” the Joker said, shrinking down against the seat and rising up against it as if it would allow him to see better through his grunt’s hand.

When it was removed, Lex forced his lips closed and tried to swallow the stem, coughs upshing open his lips once or twice before he managed to keep it shut through the rest of the fit. All the while he was leaning left and right to dodge the hands reaching for his face. Finally one arm locked over his chest while the other pushed into either side of his jaw, locking it open and baring his mouth to the Joker who once again hollered with laughter.

“Oh baby- is this what that was all about?” He twiddled his fingers and forced them inside, Lex gasping and wincing as the stem was forced up a little bit by the Joker’s fingers. “Don’t worry, Lexi- Just washed them!” He finally pulled out a bud with a satisfied noise and gestured for the grunt to release him.

He did, Lex falling to the floor with his forehead pressed to the trembling platform as his breath rasped beyond the plant and blood trickled down his tongue.

Another rose vine, this one with only a bud on it.

“Oo hoo, pretty! I do love flowers, Lex, but you shouldn’t have! Here, let me return the favor.”

He was grabbed by the collar, and the Joker turned him around to squirt him in the face with the flower over his breast pocket. He floundered in panic before realizing it really was just water. Blinking the drops away, he opened his eyes just in time to see a pair of legs swoop into the room and kick the two grunts out of the chopper.

Batman stood at the other end of the cabin, glaring at the Joker who laughed and backed against the opposite seat next to Lex rather than the one the grunts had previously been sitting in. He again wrenched Lex off of the floor by his jacket, pointing the barrel of a gun at his head.

“Stop right there, Batsy. You may have a problem with killing supervillains, but we both know I don’t.”

“It’s over, Joker,” Batman said, stalking just a bit closer in the already small space.

The Joker laughed, his arm coming under Lex’s chin. “I have to say that, for once, I agree.” He pulled the hammer down on the gun.

In that split second, Lex realized that this might be it. He may have gone through all of this, all of this belly-aching about how unfair it all was. How he shouldn’t have to sink or drown- how swimming should have always been an option but it never was.

With the Joker’s finger on the trigger and Batman stalking closer with a claim to save him, Lex still couldn’t comprehend if admitting his feelings and avoiding all of this would have been a less infuriating way to go. In that moment, he went through his grief all over again.

When the anger overtook him, there was only one thought going through his mind: He wanted to kill that fucking clown.

He shoved the hand up, the shot deafening him for just a moment as he pinned the joker down and wrestled with him like a mad man. He ignored the increasing fluttering in his throat, splattering blood over the Joker’s maddening face, the bright red more obvious on his white face and against the locks of green hair that Lex pulled and yanked at amidst beating him to the ground.

The Joker only needed one good kick to shoot him off, stumbling just as he made it to the edge and his hand a hair too late to catch on the handle above the open door. He fell, and Batman leapt after him, bundling him into his cape and firing something from his hand- a grappling gun- to swing them from under the Joker’s helicopter to land a bit further back.

Batjet. Or maybe Batplane with how slow it was going. The sound of the wind was cut off when a glass dome came over them, Batman having laid him in the passenger’s seat but still kneeling over him.

“Are you okay?”

Lex stared up at him for a moment. He considered yelling at him, but just like with Superman, he didn’t really have it in him.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding, Luthor.”

He wiped at the corner of his mouth with his fist and turned to the side. “Shouldn’t you catch the Joker?”

“The Coast Guard will fish him out by tomorrow.”

Any questions of what that meant were answered with a bang as Batman rolled back over the consul to expertly pilot the plane through the debris of what was once the Joker’s helicopter.

“You could kill him one of these days doing that,” he said, not because he cared but because it was something to say.

Batman only said, “I won’t, though.”

He reclined against the chair, passively watching the clouds through the dome. He only moved when he noticed Batman was handing him something- a box of tissues.

He dabbed at his mouth, only to find no more blood there.

“Your eyes are wet.”

They were. His entire face was wet from the eyes down. A lifetime of near-death experiences, and this was what finally brought him to shock and tears. Too tired to even feel sad, yet here he was crying in the Batplane.

Batman only said, “From the Joker’s spray, probably.”

“Probably,” Lex agreed, though he knew it wasn’t true, and he knew that Batman knew it wasn’t true.

A tickle in his throat brought him to sit forward, the tissue raised to his mouth as he started coughing again, mouth swelling around the head of a marigold that he crumpled into the tissue and threw at the floor before sitting back with his arms crossed.

Silence filled the plane.

“Who is it?”

“Someone I haven’t really talked to in a long time, and someone I don’t want to bother,” Lex said.

“How long has it been going on?”

“This is my fourth week.”

Batman didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t have to, most hanahaki patients didn’t last more than a month.

“I can call them, or a surgeon. However long it’s been, whatever you’ve done, I’m sure they wouldn’t want you to die.”

“But they won’t reciprocate.”

“The feelings don’t have to be reciprocated. You just have to get closure.”

“I know that. That’s why confessing won’t solve anything. I’m obsessive, I know that. I’m prideful, and greedy. I want what I want, and nothing stops that. I can’t just stop wanting someone the way that I want them.”

“Then you’ll have to learn to try, or you’ll die literally choking on your pride. If even I don’t want you to die, whoever it is probably doesn’t want to see you go down either.”

“Don’t you get it? Confessing won’t keep me alive if they don’t reciprocate. I’d just be bothering them over nothing.”

Batman stilled, inclining his head toward Lex. “You’re protecting them. You don’t want them to think they didn’t do whatever it took to save you.”

Instead of confirming or denying outright, Lex settled against his seat. “They’ve been through enough.”

The plane began to land, though the area was too quiet to be on Lexcorp tower. A hospital, probably- it would have to be somewhere else with a landing pad. With the plane off, Batman asked, “Who is it?”

And without anything left to lose, Lex let out a final, ruined sigh.

“Bruce Wayne.”

He could hear Batman moving in the other seat, Lex’s eyes still locked on the dome and his head still turned to the side.

“He devotes so much of his time to others in such genuine ways. He lost everything and only wants to give everything back, I just… I know he doesn’t care for me in the same way. I don’t really know when it started, but I know when it started getting bad, and at that point, I couldn’t think of anyone else.”

Another bout of silence claimed them, and Lex wondered why Batman wasn’t just opening the dome and telling him to head home.

“I don’t think reciprocation is something Bruce Wayne is ready for,” Batman said. “Not just for you, but for anyone. But I still think he’d be touched that you’d worked yourself up so much over this that you would rather spill yourself out to a total stranger just because you think it’s been too long to say anything. It takes two people to grow distant, after all. Not just your fault.”

“Whoever said anything about being distant?” Lex snapped, turning around only to freeze. Everything was cold- too cold for a late night in July on the east coast- and Bruce Wayne’s placid face had trapped him in that plane seat better than any buckle or even the dome above him could.

“We should have talked sooner,” Bruce said, fingers fumbling with the edges of his cowl before leaving it back with his cape.

It took a rough cough to let Lex know he’d been holding his breath, sputtering and coughing over his chair all over the floor, which he suddenly felt terrible about after having thrown down that tissue. He also felt silly for feeling terrible while he was choking on flowers brewing in his own lungs over the man so calmly looking down at him with fucking bat drawing emblazoned over his chest.

This time, he allowed Bruce’s hand to come over his back, the warmth steadying him as more carnations and roses and lilies big and small pooled to the floor, accented with the herbs and even a small branch he knew was from some actual tree instead of the bushes and bulbs.

“Feel better?” Bruce asked when he was done coughing, now just staring down with blood pooling in the corners of his mouth.

He did feel better- he felt lighter. That was it, one last-hurrah like a fruit tree drowning in the weight of its produce when it reached the end of its life. He felt free of the weight, though his branches were snapped and tears were still sticking to his face and his mouth still tasted of copper.

“You know everything- you and Superman-”

“Easy, Lex.”

“No!” He shoved him off. “I- I can’t- You’re Batman.”

“Not that anyone will believe you without proof.”

“I’m not interested in anyone else! You were Batman this whole time. You weren’t dodging my deals, you… you just hated me as a villain.”

Bruce’s face remained level.

“But you cared enough to tell me- to risk it all just to save me.”

“No one deserves to die like that. Least of all you.”

“But you have to know what I’ve done! You have to know the truth about me, and-”

“And I still don’t think you deserved to die, and I still ran to Metropolis to save you when I found out the Joker was going to kill you. I don’t want you to die, and I’m not talking to you now just to laugh you out. I don’t want to lose you again, Lex.”

He stood up a bit in his seat, eyes trailing down to the flowers that sat as evidence of feelings he couldn’t believe he’d ever held for a man he obviously never even knew.

Feelings he might still…

“Let me out of here.”

Batman returned the cowl to his head and raised the dome.

“My schedule is clear this weekend,” he said as he stumbled out of the plane and adjusted his tie. “If you… if you meant what you said.”

“I’ll let Bruce Wayne know.”

The dome closed and the plane took off with the silence only the Batplane was capable of, Lex standing alone on the hospital roof.

The first time it happened, Lex thought he’d imagined it.

They were in the elevator up to his penthouse when Bruce’s arm had snaked around the back of his neck to drag him closer into a deep kiss. He smiled, of course. It was hard to do anything else with Bruce’s hand searching along the side of his torso, fingers gripping his suit to pull him impossibly closer while backing him against the elevator wall. He flipped them around, pushing Bruce’s arms up by the shoulders to hold his wrists over his head.

An inaudible gasp was felt in Lex’s mouth, Bruce’s lips opening wider just from the pressure on his wrists. It was so small, not enough for him to bet anything on it. So he didn’t, allowing the elevator doors to open so that they could continue on a proper bed.

==

The second time it happened, Lex forced himself to believe he’d imagined it.

There just wasn’t the time when he’d found Bruce, in his cowl and all, incapacitated in the back of the bank. What was supposed to be an easy job for the batman- a routine penguin smash and grab- had turned sour when the birdbrain had turned sleep gas on him. Dick had been the one to call, busy trailing the Penguin on the other side of the town and in need of someone to pick Batman up. 

Apparently, even Lex Luthor- still new to being on this side of Batman’s world- was better than the Penguin’s goons coming back to pick him up. Or worse, the police with their curious fingers and prying eyes.

He wasn’t just knocked out, but also tied up. Lex had come without even a driver to help smuggle the woozy and bound bat to his car. With the police on their way and the bank hostages just having cleared out, he didn’t assume he had the luxury of time to untie him first.

As he bundled him into the car, he’d pulled on the ropes on his wrist to tug him inside, halting only when he heard Bruce’s breath hitch and a low, “Lex…” in a voice too familiar for the situation they were in.

He felt his face grow hot at the voice, spurred back into action by the trill of sirens coming down the road. He’d rather ignore it then than have to explain to the police why Lex Luthor was kidnapping Batman.

==

The third time, he’d had enough, intentionally pulling Bruce’s arms to the side by his shirt while he was pulling it over his head. Thus he’d effectively trapped Bruce’s hands against the bed with his torso crossed over Lex’s and his knees on either side of his thigh. Body taught over his lap, he saw Bruce’s back flex and roll as if testing the “bonds” before a pleased sigh left him.

“Why not just say you like being tied up?” Lex asked, carding his free hand over the shell of Bruce’s ear and under his chin. “I’m sure it’d be a lot more enjoyable. You’d just have to ask.”

Bruce kept his hands trapped by the shirt. “Where did you get that idea from?”

Lex’s eyes narrowed and he tugged on the shirt, surprised when Bruce’s face remained neutral yet curious.

“I should have guessed you’d trained yourself to keep it under wraps,” he said, reaching a hand down to grab Bruce’s ass and pull him further up onto the bed. “It’d probably be a little inconvenient if you got hard whenever some hacky villain so much as tied you to a chair.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you don’t.” He twisted the shirt around Bruce’s wrist next, pulling his arms a bit more taught. Glad he still wasn’t trying to get out, he continued, “Which is still a shame, by the way. Think of all the fun we could have if you were into something like that.”

Bruce smirked, lowering his head and looking up at Lex from under lidded eyes. “Have you done anything like this before?”

“Not often,” he admitted, “but I’m a quick study. And you know me,” his hand stroked up Bruce’s hip to rest on the front of his slacks where he could work the button with his thumb, “control is kind of my thing.”

Bruce tried to twist around to see what he was doing, though he still didn’t pull his hands out of the shirt. It would have been easy to tug his hands free or to turn onto his back and slide out, so when he just shifted around Lex’s leg and allowed his pants to come undone, Lex took it as a sweet victory.

He continued to tug on the front of Bruce’s pants while leaning down to suck and nip at his neck, his grip still firm on the shirt and his wrists. Lips against his throat, he could almost taste when Bruce’s pulse sped up. This close, every airy gasp was heard under each smack of his lips against Bruce’s skin. His hand dipped further into Bruce’s pants, stroking firmly against the underside of his still-clothed cock while working down his slacks.

“I was joking about the hacky villains,” Lex said against his neck, “but do you ever actually think about where you might have gotten this fortunate problem from? Maybe this is how you should be. Batman’s natural state.”

Bruce offered a heated laugh. “You returning to your life of crime, Luthor?” he asked, and pressed his crotch further into Lex’s hand.

“Who said I ever left?” He raised Bruce a bit with his knee to hold him closer as he leant forward to hiss into his ear. “What if I said I’ve been playing you for a fool, Batman? Leading you here so that I can defile the symbol of Justice once and for all?”

Bruce gasped and lolled his head to the side, mouth open and waiting for Lex to claim it. So he did, pulling back just to watch Bruce struggle to chase him with his body still awkwardly pulled over Lex’s lap.

His tongue was the last thing to leave his “victim’s” mouth.

“We need to figure this out. Can’t have my little escape artist trying to pull one over on me.” He removed his hand from Bruce’s pants to tug at the already-loosened tie around his own neck. In one movement, Lex had him on his side with his hand pulled down. Carefully he peeled away the shirt to instead fix around his back with the tie. “There we go, Batman. Let’s see the fabled hero get out of this one.”

He pulled back on the makeshift handle while his other hand moved to be flush with Bruce’s throat, bringing him onto his knees on the edge of the bed.

“Much better, right? Makes it easier to toss you around.”

“Is that what you wanted to do, Luthor? Is this your idea of ‘defiling justice?’”

“Shame we don’t have a gag.” He settled for pulling Bruce’s hands up his back just enough that shoulders protested the stretch. “Guess I’ll have to be inventive as always. More than one way to keep someone’s mouth occupied.”

There was no way he could have imagined the glassy look that shaded Bruce’s eyes, arousal unfocusing them under his fluttering eyelids.

Bruce’s protests ended there, his body growing pliant as Lex rested him back with his legs still tucked under him so that he was folded back over the edge of the bed.

He held him down with a hand on his chest, the hand previously on his bonds moving to his own crotch where he adjusted his dick in his pants to emphasize the outline of its length against his leg. Bruce sucked his lip into his mouth inches away as Lex slowly unzipped his fly. He held his cock over those lips for a moment before bringing it down to just lay over Bruce's stretched jaw, covering one of those blue eyes from his own perspective and bringing himself to smile.

Bruce’s lips twitched open when he circled them with the tip of his cock, wetting them before pulling back. He waited for the desperation to overtake him, watching Bruce flex off of the bed where he was still half-upside down to trace the head of Lex’s dick with his tongue. Only then did he ease his way inside, meeting Bruce’s gaze until his eyes disappeared with the bow of his neck.

He thrusted gently at first, feeling the curve of his cock round down the other man’s throat while Bruce carefully hummed and breathed, each thrust bringing out a new sensation. He tested how best to make Bruce’s breath hitch, pressing gently at first on his shoulders and then firmly. All the while, he relished in the wet noises, pulling back out all the way just to hear Bruce take a deep, shaky breath just hair too late to cover the rich moan that had been vibrating around his cock.

“I think this form of torture just became a lot less effective, if a lot more interesting.” He slapped his dick against Bruce’s cheek and held it there while watching his rising chest, leaning over his body to hold his hips before he reinserted himself. 

Only when he was sure he was back inside did he really fuck Bruce’s mouth. He snapped his hips quickly and minded himself just enough so that he wasn’t meeting his hips against Bruce’s face. That did nothing to stop the momentum of his quick thrusts. They were still deep enough to reenter his throat each time, finding the tightness past his soft mouth. When he had a pattern going, he shimmied Bruce’s pants down to his thighs and laid his palm flat under his waistband so that he could spread his fingers over his happy trail until he fully choked on Lex’s dick with a cough. Instead of pulling out, he pushed in just a bit further and held his dick in his throat for just a moment before finally giving him enough room by sliding back, his hand moving up Bruce’s body to instead knead at the underside of his chest.

There he soothed him through his coughing and ragged breathing.

He’d been a sight before. Now he was just a spectacle.

Bruce Wayne with his eyes narrowed in a way only Batman’s villains had ever seen, yet his mouth was fucked pink. His lips were wet with spit and his eyes with tears. Lex leaned back just enough to swipe his right lashes so that a few beads would rest on his thumb that he slowly pulled to the tip of his teeth. His tongue darted out to lick them off. All the while, he maintained that stare.

“Come on, Luthor,” Bruce said, his voice deepening in his ruined throat, “I thought control was your thing.”

Lex didn’t say anything as he moved his dark hand down the back of Bruce’s hair. He carded his fingers through it before twisting them into a fist and suddenly wrenching Bruce onto his stomach once more. His other hand found the tie, using it as a handle to orient Bruce’s body so that Lex could straddle the closest leg under where his pants kept him from moving them too far apart.

“It is,” he hissed into his ear before biting harshly on the soft skin below it on his neck.

Bruce couldn’t contain his surprised keen. Lex held his head there with his neck as he continued to kiss and suck at the spot, the hand in his hair moving down the side of his body to instead tweak at Bruce’s nipple. He continued to play with it until it pebbled in his fingers. Only then did he skim his hand lower to finally grab a handful of Bruce’s ass through his pants.

The raw power of the body under him was so exciting. Danger was marked in every scar that littered his arms and back. The threat was not that he’d earned them but rather that he’d survived them.

He’d been through explosions and bullets, knives and fangs- yet here he was powerless under Lex’s weight and soon to be speared on his cock.

He’d already been fighting a chuckle at the thought, a battle he lost when his fingers found Bruce’s hole.

“Showing up with your pretty hole already plugged? Who’s idea was that?”

“My husband,” Bruce croaked.

That answer was surprising for the scene, but Lex could definitely work that in.

“If I was your husband, I’d do a lot more than have you lock up your slutty holes to keep you to myself. No use for a door when it doesn’t have a key.”

Bruce bucked when he started working out the plug, pulling out the first section of the plug all by himself with a start. It must have left him rattled, for he stayed as still as he could while trembling on the bed so that Lex could coax the other two segments out a bit slower.

“There we go. I’ll lock you up properly after this.” He rubbed circles around the worked hole. “You’ll never even think about that husband again. I’ll lock myself into you for hours so you’ll never be able to forget the shape. You’ll never be able to find anyone who fits as well as me.”

The moan that left Bruce was a bit too honest, echoey and sweet where he punctuated it with a short breath before finally dropping his head as Lex entered him with three fingers at once.

In addition to being stretched out, Bruce also had plenty of lube inside of him. Briefly, Lex wondered when he’d had the time to do this at all. He hadn’t beaten Lex back to the penthouse.

Before he left work that day? 

Oh, the thought of Bruce working himself with a plug in his office- stifling moans with the back of his hand or even nervously crouching behind his desk if someone were to walk in unannounced-

He had to get inside of this man yesterday.

He adjusted them with one hand on Bruce’s hands and the other still in his ass, pulling him up a bit as he settled against him.

When he pushed himself inside, it was done slowly but all in one go, not stopping as Bruce tried to roll his hips and cried, raising in pitch until he was fully situated inside. He pulled back on Bruce’s hands as one might hold a horse’s reins, forcing his head and shoulders off of the bed and back with them.

Slowly at first, he set him back down as he pulled out, and pulled him back up when he thrusted inside. He continued, increasing the pace until achingly slow turned to something more routine. When he started getting faster, he moved his entire body forward, sheathing himself in Bruce and pinning his shoulders down to the bed with his hips still raised in the air. He kept him there and gave a few more shallow thrusts before pressing him down with his hips again.

Then he returned to the slower pace, pulling Bruce from the bed gently by the side of his chin with the hand not on the ropes  until he could see the wet pillowcase fall from between his teeth and his torso was turned partially on his side

“I’d say someone will rescue you soon,” he said, “but I don’t think you’ll be useful for anything else when I’m done.”

His hand slowly curled around Bruce’s jaw, the gesture oddly sweet even as Bruce’s eyes finally glazed over and his hair bounced with each brutal thrust.

Lex moved down to his collar bones, stroking them too for a moment, and then to his chest. He circled his nipple and rolled it between his fingers. The hand still on the ropes moved down to thumb between the cleft of his ass at where they met, pulling his entrance just wide enough so that it could accommodate Lex’s thumb in addition to his cock at the same time he finally tugged.

Bruce inhaled, face locking into a beautiful, silent orgasm as he finally spilled over the sheets. He only finally made noise at the end of it, silence cracking with a gasp and a sigh. His face still twitched with each thrust as he was fucked through it, Lex’s hands moving instead to his hips so that they could hold him close when he released inside of his large and unusually loud partner.

He remained inside as he laid down beside him, only pulling out when Bruce attempted to turn over.

“One moment,” he whispered, pulling on the side of the knotted tie so that it spun out into his hands. “Don’t want you to pull your shoulder.”

Bruce may not have been listening, but wrapped his arms around Lex’s shoulders as soon as they were free. He smiled and let himself be held, rubbing at one of the warm wrists where it was patterned with imprints from the tie.

When he finally returned to himself, Bruce said, “That was good.”

“I told you it would be.”

He stroked a hand down Bruce’s shoulder blades just so that his fingernails would lightly trace his spine and rested his palm over his waist.

“Now that I’ve finally tortured that secret out of you, I’m happy to take the time to plan something more… creative.”

The noise Bruce made was agreement enough, though he said, “If that was a lack of creativity, I don’t know if I’d survive it.”

He laughed and tucked his nose into Bruce’s hair. “As long as you don’t tell your husband of yours, I think we’ll both make it out just fine.”

“That was… I don’t actually know what that was.”