what it’s like to be a luthor
clark kent x fem!luthor!reader
original ask <3 ao3
summary: having the last name doesn’t make you a luthor. you did everything you could to be nothing like your family, and it got you clark. but when your brother’s heart is twisted enough to destroy your one light in life, it seems maybe your efforts won’t be enough to keep you in clark’s favor. (based on 3x22, “Covenant”)
word count: 4.4k
contains: angst & make-up. lex lies and destroys everything (sorry lex i love you). clark and reader fight. misery all around. flashbacks, anxiety & fear, annoyingly philosophical musings. clark and reader make up and kiss bc yes. *no use of y/n
a/n: this request was so fun to write. usually i struggle with angst for clark bc he’s so kind and i don’t like him angry. but i think it works well for this and i really had fun writing it. hope you enjoy, anon :)
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Clark never got angry.
This was new, it was the first time, and you feared for everything that you held dear. Including him.
Just watching the way his hands curled around Lex’s lapels in a deadly clutch was enough to make you tremble. The gnashing of his canines in hungry accusations and threats felt like you were seconds away from being devoured. The rumbling bass in his growl seemed loud enough to shake the very ground you walked on.
“You told me you stopped investigating me!”
“I did.”
“You did? Then what is this?!”
“I understand how you can think all this is about you. But, in fact, it's about me-”
“More lies!”
The illuminated screens around the room, beacons of betrayal in pitch-black, glitched at the sheer force of Clark shoving your brother into the wall. Lex’s face contorted in pain. Clark dropped his palms, fingers flexing, huffing in sheer rage as he stormed around the lair in circles, seeing himself everywhere. Precious pieces of his life, proof that Lex was so close to uncovering his secret, turned him purple in the face.
Lex groaned and slumped against the wall.“There's so much of my own life I can't explain. I've survived countless brushes with death, and it all started with this car crash!” Lex entreated, “If I'm guilty of anything, it's that I've inherited my father's eccentric curiosity for the unexplained!”
You cringed. The concept of Lex twisting his own guilt into some kind of cloaked strength, as he always has, painting himself as some knight in battered armor, doing what’s right even if it isn’t best… that was his game. He was so good at it that he had everyone fooled. Even you. You hated how you trusted him, and how you understood his desire to be loved. You had it, too. It’s impossible to stand against it sometimes. But this was an entirely different level of deception, and it proved that the Lex you knew as a kid must have died long ago. This was a selfishness you could never fathom. Yet here you were anyway, the bait between two men seething over it.
You had to consider what would be the cost of coming clean. Of telling Lex what Clark never could, but confided in you, out of love and intimacy. You knew that Lex cared for him once, before this obsession controlled him. What would the consequence be to tell your only brother that his best friend never trusted him? That he was the worse Luthor? Would it fix anything, or make him stop? And would Clark lose his trust in you, which was so precariously procured to begin with? Would they both turn on you?
Clark whipped around, chest heaving and eyes dark. “You've inherited his dishonesty.”
A red bruise started to turn on Lex’s neck where Clark’s alien thumbs gripped the skin. A shaky palm came up to rub the marks as he pushed off the wall and snapped, “Clark, look me in the eye and tell me you don't have any hidden places of your own where you keep your deep, dark secrets.”
You couldn’t speak up now. You’d lose them both, and you knew it. It wasn’t your choice anyway. Only Clark knew what was best.
A silence fell, and Clark’s twitching jaw stilled. His hand brushed across a screen, grazing a photograph of him at fourteen. Not knowing what was ahead of him, or who he was. So innocent and forever perverted in this twisted, voyeuristic room in the house of his closest friend and his lover.
“Ever since I've met you, I've been defending you, making excuses for you to people like Pete, like my parents. Telling them, "You can trust Lex Luthor. He's a good guy. He's nothing like his father." I was wrong.”
You shivered in the corner, shrouded in darkness, only your silhouette outlined by a shifting image of Clark and his parents. The thing Lex never had. Then, Clark’s eyes sunk into your skin like claws.
“Did you know?”
Tears flooded your eyes. Being inside this room, submerged in your brother’s psychosis, sowed the seeds of helplessness which were born into your bones, being the only surviving female Luthor, and the only one who kept this small world stitched together. You were trapped inside a chamber which sat just beneath your bedroom, unknowingly the single thread to sever you from Clark forever.
“No,” you whispered, though the words felt as though they ripped through your throat in a scream. “I didn’t– Lex never– I don’t have all the keys, and there’s so many rooms I still can’t go in, even Dad won’t let me–”
Clark spat. “Did you know?”
Your heart sunk to the soles of your feet. He didn’t believe you.
Clark always believed you.
“No, I didn’t, I swear! I would’ve never let him do this if I knew! Clark, please,” you begged, taking a step closer to curl your fingers around his wrist.
Clark tore himself back as if you were kryptonite in the flesh. A scowl crossed his so-often-soft expression towards you. “Don't touch me.”
A soft sob escaped you. “Clark!”
“You knew he was still watching me. I bet he used you to find things out about me, didn’t he? What did you tell him?”
“Nothing! What’s there to tell?” You croaked, and you knew your allegiance to his lie fell on deaf ears. No repentant attempt at trying to prove you weren’t a mole could save this. “Clark, you know I’d never do anything to hurt you! I love you!”
“You used me,” he lamented, “You both used me.”
You saw words flashing in what blue was left in his eyes. You could only imagine what he was thinking. Something like, You’re just like Lex. You’re just like your father. I could never love a Luthor. I could never love you.
He booked it toward the door like a bull in a china shop, a stray blow landing on Lex’s shoulder, knocking him back again. You flinched and stepped back, and Clark paused, looking at you. His anger paled. You thought he might hurt you, didn’t you? You were afraid of him. And he gave you every reason to be.
He knew where you stood in this family. Before he ever realized how his heart clung to yours, you told him how Lionel sent you to different schools. Your father kept you from Lex and the graces of Luthorian life which would’ve afforded you deep connection, or any honest, familial integrity. A healthy childhood. A full life. But the Luthors weren’t a family, they were a dynasty. They were a capital-hungry, greed-seeking, violence-starved conglomerate who used their own as bait to seize powers which would never be theirs, the chase of which apocalyptically destroyed them every time.
You never shared in that ambition. You abhorred your name. You shrunk under the scrutinizing glares of the world who watched you from infancy, who picked apart your appearance and interests, called you the black sheep, made you the freak-child of the family. Turned your grades over to the public to expose your experimental theses in occult literature and called you a ‘bewitched tycoon’. Splattered the images from your twenty-first birthday on the front page of the Inquisitor, private photographs taken on Lex’s cell phone of you at your worst and most inebriated, so people could point and laugh. Photos which he sold to ensure a crucial design for him at the time: he asked for your allegiance in tracking Clark via your relationship, the likes of which you refused. After that stunt he pulled where he had that reporter tail Clark, you knew you had to force him. You had berated him into swearing he’d give up his crusade upon the Kents. He sold your photos out of spite, had the reporter who made the deal thrown into Belle Reve, and you found out the truth at Chloe’s deskside. Lex clearly did not live up to his promise, and he would sacrifice you to get what he wanted. You knew that now, like you hadn’t before.
Part of you wanted to call for security and get Lex help. It looked like Clark had broken his shoulder. He never did have a good enough handle on things when he was upset. But the sickness churning inside you, sour and vile as a breaking green wave, made you turn on your heels and chase after the only family you had. For all you know, Lex would credit you with this freakish Kent shrine. You were Clark’s girlfriend, after all. You could be a crazy ex with just a little fancy footwork. But the man you loved was about to expel you from his arms forever, and if that happened, you’d have nowhere to go. You certainly wouldn’t stay here, not after this. So you ran, crying out down the hall in choked sobs.
“Clark! Clark, Please! Please-”
“Don’t,” he snapped, just as his hand jerked the front doors open. “Just… I need time.”
And he was gone. You just stood there, shaking, tears spilling into your hands. You didn’t make note of how long. At some point, Lex tried to leave a comforting pat on your shoulder, but you shrieked and ripped yourself from him, swearing some kind of threat upon his life you’d never mean. And you stayed there when he left, when the mansion security deserted you, and you wondered why it was you who had to suffer this kind of loss. Whatever loss Lex felt was bad, but it wasn’t yours. He had Dad even in his cruelty. He had a home he could count on. Still it wasn't enough.
His obsession with Clark made him a monster. Your love for him made you a victim.
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Clark was afraid of you when he first laid eyes on how you walked into the room. The grandiosity of pushing both doors wide, parting the seas for yourself, so customized to the power you wielded in just a heel alone; Lex stormed, you floated. You had a sensitivity to your surroundings. The door handle never left your palm. You scoped the room instead of beelining for something to get your hands on. And most importantly, you said hello.
You had the grace, regality, and tone of a Luthor, which Clark had learned to take at face value. There was something about you folk that was so disarming at first, and he learned the hard way that he had to silence his instinctive trust before he made a real opinion on another. He watched you skeptically as you came into Lex’s study, in a sweater that felt less Smallville-Christmas and more skiing-in-the-Swiss-Alps. Your hair still had flecks of snow scattered in it, like powdered sugar on your head, and the backpack hanging off your shoulder– leather, and probably more expensive than Mrs. Kent's wedding ring– slipped to your palm as you gracefully placed it on the floor.
“Look who it is,” Lex chirped, eyes roving up from the shot he was about to land in his and Clark’s game of pool, but never moving. He’d sink it moments later. “Clark, meet my baby sister.”
When you saw Clark, you had no fear at all. Something about his presence had a buzz to it, a droning stillness that sucked the anxiety out of a room. There was no feeling but peace when Clark was nearby. You’d soon discover you were not the only one who felt it.
“Hi,” you extended your hand, pulling off a glove to reveal smooth, black-polished nails. “Nice to meet a friend of Lex’s.”
Clark shook it like it was a test. “Hi.”
“Baby sis here is gonna be moving back home– isn’t that right, Fuzz?”
Your cheeks flushed a bit, stomach twisting.
Clark tilted his head. “Fuzz?”
“...Fuzzy. Like a black sheep,” you muttered.
“You don’t look all that odd to me.”
Very carefully, like you had decided against all odds, you smiled. “Well, you don’t know me yet, do you?”
It was then that Clark knew he was in trouble. To this day, he can’t tell you why. He just got a feeling. It sent a chill down his spine, in more ways than one.
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When you told Clark you loved him, he was more afraid than the day he met you.
“It’s dangerous,” he warned, his hands defying the nice-guy decree to slip under your skirt.
“You’re the least dangerous guy I know,” you panted, neck tilting back to make a wider path for his lips.
You’d kept your hands off him for so long. Lex ordered you to. But it had been nearly eight months of this– lingering glances, brushing knuckles, laughing too loud at jokes. Spending the nights when it was all too much on his bed, with him on the couch. His mother cooking you meals. His best friends taking you under their wing. Three times Lex almost got you killed, and Clark miraculously pulled you from the edge with a second to spare. You wanted this so badly. You wanted something real. Just one person who made it feel like there was enough air to breathe. His air, in fact, was plentiful, and you took half in while the rest ghosted over your throat.
“That’s not true,” Clark swore. “There’s things you don’t know about me.”
Your hands pushed his flat to your thighs, halting their rise, and you took a shaky breath, gathering yourself.
“Then tell me whatever it is. I can handle it,” you insisted. “We… we can’t… do this if you’re not completely honest with me, Clark. I refuse to let you take something I can’t take back.”
Clark rested his forehead to yours. “I know. I know. I’m sorry. I usually don’t do this, I just…”
Your eyes flitted over his face cautiously, watching every minute twitch. He was fighting himself.
“I don’t either,” you whispered, “But Clark, I think I’m in love with you. I– no, I know I’m in love with you. And I need you to trust me.”
You’d never felt hands so soft, not even his. This was a whole new piece of him which he clearly never allowed himself to share. His thumbs traced the spot where your cheeks hollowed when he opened the hinge of your jaw. You were given a kiss so soft it made mush of your insides.
“I love you, too,” he confessed, “I’ll tell you. Promise you won’t get scared, and I’ll tell you everything.”
“You know I’m not afraid of you, Clark. What are you hiding?” You hummed, wiping the smeared lipstick from the corner of your mouth. “Well, I’m not… I’m not from around here.”
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The day Clark found out that Lex had been spying on him (the first time), he came to you with trembling hands.
“He swore he stopped looking into me. Did he ever mention anything to you?”
You frowned, massaging the stress headache you felt already on the move. “No. Fuck, I told him to leave you alone. He said he would.”
“He had a reporter on my tail.”
You groaned in mortification, gazing up at him like it was your own fault. “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to him. I– I don’t know why he’s doing this.”
The difference was, he wasn’t angry then.
“It’s okay, honey. I just figured if maybe you saw something out of the ordinary, I could jog your memory,” he sighed softly, brushing some hair back from your face. “But I guess you know that pretty little head well enough, huh?”
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You wouldn’t have come to the barn if Clark hadn’t called.
It’s been almost two weeks since Clark discovered Lex’s secret chamber. Eleven days, twenty hours, and fourteen minutes exactly. You counted the fifteenth as you stood outside the Kent Farm barn, debating whether or not you should step inside. If this was your last moment with Clark, you weren't sure you could handle the confrontation.
He called you earlier that morning, asking if he woke you from sleep, which he didn’t, because you hadn’t slept since he burst out of your house.
“I want to see you,” he said. “Talk about… what happened.”
“You do?” you asked, because you figured he would never speak to you again, and you were going to allow it. You knew Clark didn’t respond to constant badgering, and certainly not begging. Clark made his own terms.
“Yes. Just… come by tonight. To the barn. I’ll wait up for you.”
Very slowly, you pushed the barn door open, eliciting a loud creak that gave you away on the spot. Clark’s head peeked over the banister overlooking the whole structure from the loft, his original Fortress. You gazed up, face a bit sullen and eyes greyer than ever. The long peacoat, a barely-worn Christmas gift, something from a New York boutique, felt so out of place in a world of warmth like his. Almost as out of place as you.
Clark came down the steps gently, as if he knew you’d spook at the first sign of anger. He was wearing a flannel you’d bought him from your first trip to the secondhand store. As corny as it sounds, you truly hadn’t been to one. Your father raised you in Ralph Lauren dresses. It was green, a color he never wears. You told him it looked like it glowed against his silk-brown hair.
“Hi.” He spoke in a breath.
He was how you remembered him, and you felt so useless for thinking it. Could you really not go two weeks without seeing a man? Everything you taught yourself, the self-sufficiency, the feminism to combat your patriarchal cage, it all begged you not to fall at his feet and kiss them. But this wasn’t just any man. This was the one person who made you feel wanted in the whole universe. And these days alone, without him…
“Hi,” you whispered.
Clark’s eyes fell on you with instant guilt. You were disheveled. You never had a hair out of place, but here you stood, tresses uncombed and mascara smudged from your eye to your temple, like you dragged yourself across a pillow. Like tears had caused the migration. You weren't yourself, whom he loved so much.
“How are you?” He frowned.
You couldn’t muster an answer. You were too close to tears.
Clark stepped a bit closer, and you stared at the floor, seeing how the loose hay was smothered beneath your shoes. Pinned under your foot. Is that how he felt, loving a Luthor?
“I…”
Without looking up, your voice moaned low, like a ghost. “I’m so sorry.”
His hands were so soft, just like the first time, when they reached out to lift your face. He found nothing but waterfalls in the path his thumbs took across your cheeks.
“I’m the one who’s sorry,” he murmured. “I let myself be so consumed by the way Lex made me feel that I lashed out on you. You didn’t deserve that.”
“He’s my family,” you winced, “I know you don’t trust me anymore. I expected it. It’s in my blood.”
Clark might have cried if he wasn’t so intent on making you keep your eyes on him. “You know that’s not true. You’re nothing like them. I didn’t mean the things I said, baby, the way I accused you… I’ve never felt rage like that before… I didn’t mean it at all. Please, honey, look at me,”
“I swear I didn’t know… I swear I didn’t!”
You disassembled into a quiet fit, not knowing what else to do. The caution of his touch wasn’t yet enough to prove that he didn’t want you. You’d convinced yourself you lost him the second he pulled away from you at the mansion, like you’d infect him with that hungry touch of your brother. But he hadn't recoiled yet. He combed your knotted hair from your face, trying to work one out with his finger. A step closer. His flannel greener.
“I know. I never should’ve lost my temper on you. I’m so sorry, I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life.”
You leaned forward and planted your forehead on the mass of his chest, leaning against him like he was a wall. You sobbed as he got the knots out of your hair, clutching the old fabric like a lifeline. When breath came sparse, his hands finally smoothed down your back, and he drew you in the last few inches. “Shh. Breathe. You’re not breathing.”
“I broke it all!” You blurted, throat raw with anger and remorse. “I took a bat to everything– all the columns and the photos and the files, I deleted them, and I ripped all the wires, and I took his Kryptonite and I broke it all and I took the drives, he has nothing, nothing, I promise, I protected you!”
His lungs pressed tight as you rambled, trying to tell him every ounce of destruction you rendered inside that cold house. “Baby, why would you do that? They’ll be so angry, you could put yourself in serious danger!” he grimaced.
You lifted your head, a helpless spark in your eye. Wiping harshly at your skin, furthering the shadows, you shattered at the potential consequences. “I don’t care! He lied to me, he lied to you, he would have used me without knowing it if I let him keep it all. They can’t have you, I won’t let them, they can kill me for all I care!”
There were moments he saw the Luthor in you. Your intellect, your short smile. The ferocity and passion with which you protected what was yours. He was seeing it now. But the difference was, where Lex’s roar came from a place without love, yours rumbled through it, louder for it. You possessed a love so deep that even Clark, even Mr. Morally Upstanding, could excuse such a sacrifice. A few broken screens was nothing, as long as you still loved him.
He watched as you rocked back and forth on your feet, half-turning, half-returning, not knowing what to do with yourself. You were so angry you were starting to look like him.
“Baby,” he entreated, “Honey, stop. Stop. C’mere.” He reached for you, pulling you by the belt of your coat. “Calm down. I’m not angry.”
“I’m sorry,”
“Don’t be sorry. You protected me,” he melted, slipping his arms under yours. He pressed his words into the space of your neck. “I made this mess and you cleaned it up. I should be thanking you.”
It was enough to kill you, truly. You clung to him, just in case, and having cried yourself dry, your throat bobbed in phantoms. “I’d do anything for you, Clark. I won’t ever let Lex get that close again. I mean it.”
“To you, or to me?”
You shivered softly. Clark might’ve wondered why you looked like a wreck, but it was no mystery to Lionel or Lex Luthor, or the mansion staff. After you smashed Lex’s toys, you packed up every last piece of your life and shoved it in a rental car, and you moved yourself into the Smallville Inn. You paid for everything on a separate card which, since eighteen, you’d been siphoning money out of your trust fund to. Lionel probably knew now, but it didn’t matter. That money was yours at eighteen, and it’s yours now, even if lying about it was wrong. And you’ll use it ‘til it’s gone.
“Both. I left.”
Clark pulled back in shock. “What do you mean, you left?”
“I took my shit and left.”
“Where have you been staying?”
“The inn,” you sighed, pinching the bridge of your nose.
Clark had rarely looked at you like you’d accomplished something he didn’t think you capable of. He felt you could do anything, and when you did, he was pleasantly proven right. But he never quite entertained the thought that you’d take your last name out of the game entirely. He clutched your hands and exhaled, “Baby…”
“It’s fine. They know not to follow me. At least, not for now.”
“You should’ve called me.”
“I didn’t think you’d answer.”
He couldn’t take the look that crossed you then. How could he hurt you so bad?
Clark curled around you like a snake and muttered a thousand apologies, speckled millions of kisses, passed his hands ceaselessly through your greasy hair, begging you to forgive him, promising he’d never talk to you like that, treat you that way, ever again. And you cried and caressed him right back, swearing ‘til the day you died that nobody in his family would ever betray you again, they’d never come close enough to call his name, and that you would do everything in your power to be the girl he loves, not the Luthor princess you’re expected to be.
“I don’t know how you could love me after what I did.”
“I could ask you the same thing,” you rasped.
Clark swayed you on your feet for a moment, relieved at the familiar shape of you against him. He would never jeopardize losing what mattered most to him again. These days without you were the reminder that life without you in it was simply unacceptable.
“Stay here,” he whispered. “With me. I’ll get your stuff. I can protect you.”
“Clark–”
“I love you,” he urged, “And I won’t lose you again. Just stay. Forever.”
Forever. For him, that meant longer than the human life span, but for you… it really was forever. And you’d give it to him without hesitation. Being a Luthor might have terrified you in the way of knowing how close you held your enemies, but it also afforded you the wisdom to know that nothing fake can last. Your father, your brother, everything they ever swore to you was false, and they wouldn’t live to see you trust them again. To trick you, to lie, was to forfeit keeping you. But Clark’s refusal of you, that wasn’t a lie. If he said he lost love, then it would’ve been. But to distance himself was an honest moment of anger and confusion. True to the man he is- so as not to hurt you more, he kept his distance until he could treat you right. That honesty is the only reason you could stand here now, and trust his promise. You’d sacrifice forever for something as real as that. You’d never find it anywhere else.
So, what was the harm in giving him forever? It was a good investment. As a Luthor, you would know.
“Okay.”
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