Superman flew away from the wreckage of Lex Luthor's latest illicit genetics lab, Luthor himself held firmly in his arms. Instead of taking him to the police station as he obviously expected, he flew them out of Metropolis altogether, to a small farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. He set down roughly and opened the unlocked front door, forcefully ushering Lex inside.

Superman stood in the homey kitchen of the cottage, acid frustration slowly eating away at him, dissolving the Superman persona from the inside out. His voice dripped with it as he turned to Lex and said, "Experimenting on unwilling human subjects is the last straw, Luthor. You've ignored my warnings. Having you arrested has scarcely inconvenienced you, and even the destruction of millions of dollars in illegal facilities barely slows you down anymore."

"So, what are you going to do, Superman? Spank me?" said Lex, voice icy and arrogant.

Superman let a tiny ghost of a smirk flit over his stern countenance as he replied thoughtfully, "That's an idea." If nothing else, perhaps it would make Lex wonder a little more about just exactly what forms of persuasion Superman would resort to in the future.

Lex gave a condescending wave of his hand and said, "You wouldn't dare."

His eyes grew a little wider as Superman took a step towards him, saying, "Wouldn't I? My mother always said a good bare-bottomed spanking would cure even the most spoiled brat, and I think it's about time to put that to the test."

Superman made his move while Lex was still processing this, expression stunned. He grabbed Lex and swiftly stripped him, Armani suit jacket tossed over a chair, Italian leather shoes ending up in the hallway, fine woolen slacks pooling to wrinkle hopelessly on the bedroom floor. Boxer-briefs sliding off his smooth legs, tossed carelessly aside to slide down behind the dresser, leaving him in nothing but his dress shirt. Superman explained in an even, reasonable tone, "I do believe I am, in fact, going to spank you."

Before Lex even had a chance to protest, let alone struggle, Superman sat down on the edge of the bed, Lex lying face-down over his spandex-clad lap. He allowed himself a wry chuckle at the sight, causing Lex to thrash about and glare resentfully. Superman made sure his grip was firm, holding Lex's torso down with one hand as he raised the other high. He let his smirk fully manifest on normally blank features as he said, "This will hurt me more than it will hurt you, Lex," and brought his hand down with a resounding smack.

Lex, of course, didn't make a sound, although a red imprint of Superman's hand was already developing on his perfectly-formed left cheek. Superman took a moment to admire the view before bringing his hand down again, this time on the right side. Lex twitched, but managed to maintain his indignant silence. A second handprint came up as the first began to fade, palm bright red, fingers fading out to creamy white.

Lex's ass was begging for his touch, and Superman struck again to keep himself from tracing the red afterimages with gentle caresses. He delivered a smack right across the dark cleft that was beckoning him to explore, tantalizing him with mental images of the opening waiting for his touch. Of Lex gasping in pleasure instead of writhing in pain, Superman's cock buried deep in the waiting heat. He slid Lex a little further down his lap and spanked him again, and again.

"Do you think you'll learn this time, Lex?" he asked, administering another quick swats before Lex could reply. He wondered if perhaps the over-the-lap idea wasn't one of his best as he tried to hide his growing fascination with Lex's ass, while still keeping Lex firmly in his grip.

He swatted Lex again and again, always mindful of his strength, watching as the pale skin grew pink, then red. Eventually Lex began emitting a series of undignified squeaks and whimpers, fighting against Superman's grip in earnest. "You could have had a great destiny, Lex, but you chose to waste your future being just like your father," he said, his voice breaking from his usual deep Superman baritone, revealing some part of the man inside.

"Cl-Clark?" Lex said, barely choking the words out through a throat full of unnamed emotions.

Superman closed his eyes, letting his hand rest on the high curve of Lex's left buttock, feeling the warmth rising off it. "Why, Lex?" he asked, feeling the superhero crumbling around him as the betrayals of the past rose up through his chest to strangle him.

This time, when Lex tried to wrench himself free, Clark let him. Sad blue eyes met gray ones like storm clouds, anger and fear warring against guilt, and hope. "Why?" Clark repeated, running a hand through his hair to muss it, leaving the brightly colored spandex as the lone remnant of Superman.

Lex's own smooth businessman facade was long gone, torn down by shock and intimate humiliation. "Why not?" he said bitterly, hissing the words through lips thinned by anger, "Truth, justice and the American way never got me anywhere. Especially not truth."

Clark blushed, but refused to let shame drop his gaze. "And what would that truth have cost me?" he asked blankly.

It was Lex who looked away, tugging at his shirt as if to cover his past. "If I'd had your trust, I might have lived up to it," he said softly, voice full of unspoken regrets.

"Well, you know everything now," said Clark, challenging, "What more do you want?"

Lex turned again, eyes traveling up over the outfit that was only revealing when Clark was stripped of Superman's innate dignity and goodness, resting on the prominent bulge beneath the gaudy yellow belt. A grin broke over his face as he said, "I believe I owe you a spanking."

"Lex!" said Clark, exasperated. "I'm serious, here."

"Well, Clark, that's the deal. You want me to waste millions of dollars going legit, then you have to provide me with more incentive than, 'It's the right thing to do'." Lex's grin had gone feral, and his nakedness no longer seemed vulnerable at all; instead, each inch of flesh seemed to violate Clark's eyes, creeping hotly into his brain.

"You... you want to..."

"Spank you. Among other things," said Lex, stalking into Clark's personal space. Lex's intention was poking out from under his shirttails, leaving Clark with no doubt that he was sincere on at least one count. The real question was, if Clark gave him what they both wanted, would Lex really change, really deviate from the vicious, dog-eat-dog destiny he'd been bred to fulfill?

"Do you love me?" Clark asked suddenly, pulling Lex off-balance and back into his lap, this time straddling Clark, knees on the edge of the bed.

Lex looked away, angry once more as he snapped, "What kind of a question is that?"

"It's the only important one. I love you, after all. I just never knew where Lex ended and the Luthor began, and I knew I could only trust one of you."

Lex's eyes grew wide, meeting Clark's with startling clarity. "You love me?"

"Of course, Lex. Why else do you think I've been such a pain in the ass?" said Clark, squeezing the sore portion of Lex's anatomy demonstratively.

"You know," Lex said casually while his hands tried to find a way into the costume, "This has got to be just about the strangest conversation I've ever had."

Clark reached up and undid the hidden clasps, then made gratuitous use of his super powers to strip out of the costume and resettle Lex on his now-bare lap in a fraction of a second. Lex started when his thighs touched down, sliding silkily against Clark's crisp leg hair. "I'd say it's about par for the course, with us," Clark replied evenly.

He slid his hands up Lex's chest and began working on the remaining buttons, fingers trembling unaccountably. He managed to part the fine linen after long moments of careful toil, revealing the smooth planes of Lex's chest. Lex allowed Clark to push the shirt off his arms and onto the floor, then brought his hands up to tangle in Clark's hair. He tilted Clark's head up and to the side, lowering his mouth by slow inches until their breath mingled, one breathing in the very same air the other had just exhaled.

"I've always loved you, so which of us is really the fool?" whispered Lex. Clark whimpered, surging up to close the gap between their mouths, his hands following mysterious patterns as they drifted over Lex's skin. Lex's hands tightened, and his kiss was vicious, lips devouring, tongue stabbing at Clark's mouth.

Clark tried to pay attention to Lex's reactions as he explored the body he'd been dreaming about since high school, but Lex's kisses were distracting, and his hands even more so. Instead of exploring as Clark's had, he pinched and twisted at Clark's nipples with studied cruelty, as if testing his limits, and growled when he found none. Fingernails raked ineffectively down Clark's chest, then rough hands found his balls and squeezed.

The burst of pleasure made Clark cry out, the almost-pain riding it like cinnamon floating on a cappuccino, barely there yet making all the difference. "I'm going to make you beg, Superman," said Lex, sliding backwards off his lap and pushing him down, helpless.

"C-Clark," he gasped out as Lex grabbed his balls again, tugging them hard enough to make his vision sparkle.

"What, am I not good enough for Superman after all these years?" Lex asked, voice cracking, fear and hurt leaking out through the anger.

Another vicious tug and squeeze made Clark whimper, a part of him regretting he could feel no real pain, but he sat up and captured Lex's face in his hands anyway, forcing their gazes together. "He's not good enough for you, Lex. He's not real, he doesn't deserve this."

The kiss that followed was deep and possessive, with a tender edge that undid Clark completely. He limply allowed Lex to push him back down and roll him over until his knees were at the very edge of the bed, head laying on folded arms, spread out for Lex like an offering. He felt himself blushing, his whole chest turning pink this time as he realized that no one had seen him like this before, no one had touched him in the places Lex was about to go.

A shudder ran through his body as Lex tugged on his balls again, then ran questing fingers through the dense fur at the base of his cock. Almost too gentle, Lex's thumbs slipped down around the taut tendons where his legs met his hips, then up around his balls and over his perineum. Clark shivered again as cool air washed over his ass, teasing at the entrance as Lex asked, "What should I do to you, Clark?"

Clark couldn't think anymore, and felt it grossly unfair that Lex was expecting him to remember the English language this close to losing his virginity. "Guh... uh-anything. Lex, please!"

Lex chuckled, thumbs climbing higher to circle and press at Clark's opening. Clark moaned low in his throat, ending in an undignified yelp when Lex's tongue swiped once over his hole. "I'll take it you liked that?" said Lex rhetorically, and Clark could only whimper and moan as he was opened with tongue and thumbs, spread until he felt that Lex was trying to crawl bodily inside instead of just fucking him.

"Please!" Clark said again, barely aware that he'd spoken at all. It seemed like he'd been waiting forever for Lex to figure this out, to take what he'd been silently offering all these years. Of course, thought Clark in a moment of unexpected clarity, perhaps what he'd really needed to do all along was offer it a little more loudly.

Fortunately for them both, Lex didn't seem inclined to make Clark suffer nearly as much as he'd expected. A few more deep thrusts of his tongue and one very harsh tug on Clark's balls, and he pulled away, only to confuse Clark once again by saying, "Lube?"

"G-huh?" Clark replied intelligently, his whole being focused on the absence of anything in his ass.

"Do you have anything I can use as a lubricant?" Lex swatted him lightly on the ass as if to underscore his point.

Clark tried to pummel his brain into enough shape to mentally inventory the house's sparse contents. Lex began to clarify, saying, "You know, something..." Clark took a deep breath to steady himself, then sped into the kitchen for some vegetable oil, leaving the open bottle in Lex's hand before resuming his supplicant pose. "...slippery?" finished Lex, startled.

"Will that work?" he asked, looking back at Lex over his shoulder.

"Uh, yes," said Lex, shaking his head, a small bemused smile on his face. "This whole lover-with-superpowers thing takes a bit of getting used to."

He splashed oil over his fingers and cock, slicking himself before giving Clark the most teasingly cursory probe. His face grew still and serious as he positioned himself to push inside, all his masks falling away as he buried himself inside Clark, moving with excruciatingly slow care. Once again Clark felt a strange sense of loss that he wouldn't feel the pain a normal man might, no burn to the incredible stretching feeling, just tingling pleasure and a strange fullness.

By the time they were fully joined, Lex's eyes had fallen shut, and Clark's head dropped back down to his arms. So, this was sex, he thought incongruously as his skin began to prickle, his muscles to quiver with something like weakness. Lex moved and hit something inside him, sensation radiating out from the point of contact to make his limbs twitch like the time he was struck by lightning. He gasped, and Lex let out a strangled moan.

Something clicked then, and they began to move together, Lex thrusting in as Clark pushed back, then both pulled away until only the head was left inside. Time stretched out and ran together, each thrust its own little universe of new sensation, each one blurring into the next. Something twisted inside him, so much more than anything he'd felt by himself that he was almost reluctant to consider it might be the same thing until it broke over him, when he stopped considering at all.

When the veil of white sparks lifted from his vision, leaving him sated in comforting darkness, he felt Lex still pounding into him. The rhythm was gone completely, Clark unable to marshal even enough strength to meet the rough, ragged thrusts. He could only lie there, a vessel for Lex's lust as it poured into and over him, bright bursts of something he didn't have a name for, and probably never would.

Lex pulled out carefully, stepping back just enough to disengage them, hands idly caressing Clark's upturned ass, dipping into the small of his back. Clark realized he was sticky with sweat and come, and he'd made a mess on the antique quilt, and he was grinning like an idiot. He rolled over tiredly, scooting up the bed as he pulled Lex down to land in a tangle of joyful laughter.

"I can't believe Superman spanked me, and it got me the only thing I've ever really wanted," said Lex, face bright with things his eyes had always kept hidden.

Clark kissed him soundly, just because he could, before replying, "Well, it was your idea."

They both dissolved back into laughter, tacitly agreeing to ignore the edge of hysteria. When the giggles finally died down, they snuggled down under the blankets, Lex drifting into a comfortable half-doze.

Clark held him close, knowing that things wouldn't ever again be as simple as they were in this moment. He let the rest of the world recede, instead treasuring the peace they'd found while he could. He couldn't really expect Lex's entire outlook to change overnight; he knew there was still conflict ahead, but he had a hope that someday they'd be arguing over the TV remote instead of business ethics.

Love might not solve all their problems, but it was a damned good start.