Lucas: Who ordered pineapple?

Lionel: I did

Lucas: WHY

Lionel: Because I can.

Chloe: YOU

Lionel: Yes *eats slice*

Lionel: Lionel Luthor likes Hawaiian. You can quote me on that

Paul freaking Wesley!

“I agreed to a profile,” Lex tells Lucas. “The first interview was today.”

“A profile,” Lucas says, as their waiter places two ramekins — olives, olive oil —  down between them, along with a wicker basket of crusty bread. “The horror.”

Lex rolls his eyes and tears a piece of bread from the loaf, then spoons some olives onto his plate. He pops one into his mouth and chews around the pit. “The last interview I agreed to was in 2002 and it was a hatchet job.”

“Why’d you agree to this one then?”

Lex accidentally bites down too hard on the pit between his molars remembering Clark, sitting in his office, his thighs splayed out, almost too large for the seat. The top button of his shirt was undone, leaving just a glimpse of the hollow of his neck, and Lex scarcely remembered how to breathe. Which was fine because Clark didn't notice. Clark was wide-eyed, staring all around his office, everywhere but at Lex, like he couldn't make the math work. But neither could Lex. Because Clark Kent had called him again. Clark Kent had shown up to his office, waited patiently for an entire hour to see him, while Lex had been trying to figure a way out of letting him upstairs, ignoring everything his COO was telling him because sir, Clark Kent is downstairs? had been rattling around in his brain since Grace quietly announced it to him before Gable walked in. 

Baseball. He was talking to Ron about baseball. Bellowing that fucking laugh. Had he always laughed like that? Had it always made Lex hard? Had he always been that handsome? Had his eyes always been that green? Had he always — no, he hadn’t always smelled like that. Like firewood and leather and clove. This was another new thing. Like the coffee. Lex had already started compiling a list. 

Lucas snaps two fingers. “You there, Lex?”

“What did you ask me again?”

“The profile?”

Ah yes, the profile. Why did he agree to it?

Because that green-eyed fucking walking marble statue sat in the chair across from him and asked him, looking like he always had— 

So fucking earnest. 

He dared anyone to say no to an earnest Clark Kent. Regardless of whether or not they used to go to bed with him. 

“I used to… I was involved. With the person writing it.”

“When?”

“A long time ago. 10 years ago.”

“How involved?”

The brain protects itself. This is what the therapist told him. He’d gone to her because of night terrors, because of a string of nights where he woke up and walked into the guest room in his penthouse, only to find his mother leaning over a crib, golden red curls cascading down her back. It happened the same every time. She would look back at Lex, tears in her eyes, the tracks of them staining her cheeks, and she would smile. She would say, he'll be alright now.

Julian. He’d spent almost his entire life thinking that he’d smothered him, out of jealousy. Because he’d wanted the love of his father and mother fully, without having to share. 

Explain to me how my brain was protecting me by convincing me I killed my baby brother. 

Your psyche deemed it more acceptable than the truth: that your mother did it. 

The brain protects itself, which is why, he assumes, he can’t actually remember being with Clark. Because remembering being with Clark means remembering that day, in his office, when Clark got down on his knees begging Lex to stop what he was doing and Lex was cruel in return. Because it was all he knew how to be. Because his father was dead and the last thing he’d ever said to Lex was a threat. Against him, against Clark. Because Clark was taught how to love purely, without reservation, and that’s how he loved Lex — and Lex hated him for that. He wanted to hurt Clark for that. He promised Jonathan he would never hurt Clark, would never do anything to put him in harm’s way but it was an impossible promise because he was the one who made it. Being with Lex was harm’s way. 

Being with that Lex, he reminds himself, trying to take his therapist’s words to heart. This Lex. That Lex. Parts therapy, she called it. 

“Well, I’ll be damned Lex,” Lucas says. “You loved her.”