X Never Marks the Spot

Another quick JLU drabble, from a conversation with gnine. Slash.

( Yet Again )

This started out completely self-indulgent, because on occasion I like my boys bombed out of their skulls (see Ban in The Mickey) and Lex will do it to himself, which makes him more cooperative than most. Given how Lex drinks scotch like it's vodka*, he can't like being in his head terribly much. Except it went all horribly weirdly angsty on me and why can't I write fluff? I crave Clex fluff. And then I write this. Man.

* to quote Elliot on Scrubs, a couple eps ago.

Smallville: String Theory at 1 AM {3,146 words}
PG, Clex-ish angst, near-futurefic
Lex has vision, a reason for everything, and a lot to drink.

Read it on AO3

ETA: digitalwave did an absolutely lovely manip for this story (and it's sweet, too, not angsty!)

Beloved Enemy

Thank you so much! <3 Fanart makes my week!

You know you've been living in Japan too long when eggs and mayo over rice with a little soy sauce for brunch is delicious. (It so is!)

Got great feedback (thank you!) to the first part of this, so I'm gonna go ahead and put up the next. (After a decade of posting fic online, one would think I'd get over the butterflies in my stomach every time I start sharing a new story, but...) Hope y'all enjoy!

Smallville: All the Difference, 2/? {2,428 words}
PG, Clark/Lex, futurefic, AU (in a manner of speaking)
Lex Luthor wakes up in his own bed, in his own penthouse, infinitely far from home.

( Part 2: In which a Lex Luthor awakens unexpectedly alone, and makes some calls. )

Have you ever written the start of something, then abandoned it, only to find it years later and reread it and realize you have absolutely no memory of where it was supposed to go?

So I suddenly recalled I had a snippet of SV from back when I first got into the fandom, and I remembered, vaguely, the premise, but upon reading the story itself I can't for the life of me recall how I was planning to end it. I don't know why I never write endings down. I've done this enough times that one would think I'd at least scribble an outline, but no, I always think I'm going to finish it before I forget. And then I don't. Anyway, in the spirit of wip_amnesty (yeah, I know I'm a couple days late, sue me) here's the opening of an unfinished fic. The date for the file creation is January 17, 2002 (SV's first season) and while most of it was probably written sometime in the year after that (though before "Achilles' Heel", I'm pretty sure, as their themes are so similar I think I abandoned this to write that), it still was way before "Asylum" aired. I mention this because the basic plot is that Lionel subjects Lex to an "'accident" such that he loses most of his memory of Smallville, thus allowing him to become Lex Luthor of legend - because even in first season it was obvious that there was no way Lex wouldn't recognize Clark when Superman came out.

It's pretty dark, with a bit of NC-17 man-on-man smut (possibly the first I ever wrote) and Lex-being-evil. I believe it would have had a Clexy ending eventually (really, in my mind every SV fic ends, "And then they had sex, and lived happily ever after") but here there's just angst. And Superman strippers. Also a bit of awkward writing I didn't edit; my style has changed in the past five years. Though really not as much as I'd expect. I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad sign. I rather like the jarring quick-cuts here, I've been impatient with my overly prolix prose of late. (oo, triple word score, 'prolix' used in a sentence for the win!)

( Unfinished SV fic: Third )

I said it before, that I fell for Kaiba because he reminds me of Lex. Brilliant and deeply disturbed, casualties of their sadistic fathers' damage and their own ambitions. Kaiba is the more culpable of the two, having chosen his path rather than being born into it; ironic that he's the one to eventually rise above his darkness, while Lex is ultimately damned. Maybe it's because Lex is destiny's puppet victim, while Kaiba has always forged his own. Or maybe Lex just needs someone to shatter his heart.

Anyway. They're obviously a match made in some dark and deliciously twisted place.

I might've futzed with the YGO timeline; the story is set in the spring of '95, with Lex at 15 and Kaiba at 14 (for anyone flummoxed by imaging the real with the animated, please follow praiseofshadows's lead and picture Kaiba as played by Gackt). The idea is that Gozaburo sent Seto to an American boarding school for a semester to practice his English; Seto took the opportunity to learn some other valuable life skills from the school's expert. I'm not confident of the characterizations of either one of them, but hell, they're just kids here. Seriously fucked up kids.

Exchange Student {9,795 words}
NC-17 (Warnings for underaged sex and references to child abuse), Lex Luthor/Seto Kaiba
Sometimes broken edges can almost fit together. Lex meets a boy one semester at Excelsior.

Read it on AO3

So this is why I have issues ficcing in large fandoms--every idea I have, I become paranoid that someone else has written it already, and likely better than I ever could. What's one way around this? Why, to write an idea that everyone else has written before! In this spirit, I bring you Kryptonian pair-bonding Clex fic. Same great cliché taste, half the smut. Er. Though not for lack of trying. (And instantly I am paranoid that someone has written this variation before. I apologize, unknown writer whose idea I may have inadvertently pilfered!)

Warnings: There's an oblique reference to a relationship that might've been Lana, though I couldn't actually bring myself to type her name.
NC-17 action of the man-on-man kind. Set a bit after 6th season, in this vague indefinite I-haven't-actually-seen-any-6th-season-eps-except-the-premiere way.
Revoltingly sappy, relentlessly silly. What can I say? Clex brings out the worst in me.

"Mate or die. Um. Kinda."