I think I know
Another lonely exile when I see one
And you appear to be one ~ Aimee Mann, "Ray"
"One of my father's chauffeurs was an ex Navy SEAL..." ~ Lex Luthor, "Precipice"
When Lex walked through the door, his father’s secretary looked up from her computer screen and greeted him with a dazzling smile.
"Lex," she said, "it’s good to see you! I guess it feels pretty great to be home for the summer, huh?"
She was a redhead with a pale, perfect complexion, her resemblance to his mother just strong enough to be unsettling without being too glaringly obvious. She’d been with Lionel for less than a year, and if he wasn’t fucking her already, it was only a matter of time. Lex hated it when she tried to act like his friend.
"Yeah," he said, twisting his lips into an answering smile, "it’s not bad. Is my dad in?"
"He’ll be here any minute, Lex. You go on in and wait in his office, if you like."
"Okay. Thanks, Sandra." He was going to leave it at that, but then it struck him that he might as well play the charade to the best of his ability. "It’s good to see you, too," he added, using his warmest, most charming tone of voice.
She positively beamed at him as he turned away.
Lionel’s office felt the way it always did, cold and inhospitable, the air thick with the ghost of his father’s presence. Lex by-passed the desk and crossed to the window, loosening his school uniform tie and stuffing it in the pocket of his jacket as he watched the city spread out beneath him. Sunlight reflected up to him from the panes of innumerable windows, glittered off the rooftops of the cars that moved in an endless stream through the streets below.
Metropolis in summertime.
Home.
His heart beat faster at the thought, pounding with a mixture of excitement and dread.
It was a relief to get out of Excelsior, away from the classmates who made his life hell, but they certainly weren’t the only ones who enjoyed tormenting him. And at the moment Lionel had every reason to be angry with him. Still, he had missed Metropolis, missed the ceaseless flow of the city and everything she had to offer. As long as his father didn’t lock him up for the duration, he was going to have his share of fun this summer. Besides, it wasn’t as if Lionel would want to spend a lot of father-son quality time with him; he would have better things to do. As would Lex, of course.
When he heard the double doors to the office swing open, he turned around to see Lionel sweep through them, and, God, he was in more trouble than he’d thought, because his father was smiling – one of those grins that were easily mistaken for signs of warmth and affection, but which made chills run up Lex’s spine. He had to consciously remind himself not to take a step backwards.
"Son!" Lionel said. "It’s good to have you home, and in one piece, at that. Why don’t you sit down?"
A wide sweep of his arm at the chairs in front of his desk, and Lex took a seat, leaning back and doing his best to look at ease. You didn’t show fear with Lionel Luthor, especially not if you happened to be his son.
"Hi, dad," he said. "How are you doing?"
Lionel sat down in his own chair, elbows on the armrests, fingers steepled together.
"Splendid, son, splendid. I’ve just signed the contract for taking over Wang Industries, which will be a great asset to us, as I’m sure you’re aware. And then there’s the new research facility we’re building in Edge City. We’re looking at an excellent year for LuthorCorp, not a cloud on my horizon. But wait… There is one thing, isn’t there?"
"Dad, I’m sorry about that. I..."
"Don’t apologize, Lex. Apologies are for weaker men than you or I. But then, of course, so is spending the night in a holding cell in Nowhere, Kansas. If you want to ignore school curfew, get drunk out of your mind and wrap the Porsche I gave you round the nearest tree, then, by all means, go ahead. But I would have thought you’d have the sense to call me before allowing some backwater sheriff’s deputy to test you for drugs and take your fingerprints as if you were a common criminal. Before the police report was leaked to the local press. Do you have any idea how many strings I had to pull to make this go away? How much it cost me to keep the story from the front page of every tabloid in the country? You’re growing up, Lex; you need to start behaving the way it behooves a Luthor."
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask whether that meant he should start fucking every redhead he laid eyes on, but that would have been suicidal. He wanted this to be over with, not turn it into a full-blown row.
"I’ve learnt my lesson, dad," he said, trying to sound as honest as he could. "No more drunk driving."
"Let’s amend that to no more driving, period, son."
Oh, fuck. He’d been afraid of something like this.
"What do you...?"
Lionel held up a silencing finger and pressed a button on his intercom, speaking into the microphone.
"You can send him in now, Sandra."
Lex raised a questioning eyebrow, but it was clear that Lionel wouldn’t explain himself until he was good and ready. Which left the option of shifting in his chair so he could see the man who entered.
To his surprise, he recognized him as the driver who had picked him up at Excelsior, though he based that identification more on the uniform the man was wearing than on his looks. He’d been brought up not to take notice of servants, and he rarely did. Generally, there was no reason to.
The driver came up to the desk and stopped level with Lex’s chair, standing with his hands clasped behind his back, much like a soldier at ease. He was a large man of perhaps a few and thirty, tall and broad-shouldered, with short brown hair. His face might well be called handsome, but in a rough, unpolished way, his features painted with strong, broad strokes rather than delicate lines. At the moment, it showed only blank politeness.
"Mr. Luthor," he said, nodding first at Lionel, then at Lex, including them both in the greeting.
"Lex," Lionel said, "this is Ray Connors. For as long as you’re in Metropolis, Ray will be your driver. Unless he is driving you, you are not going anywhere. If, at the end of the summer vacation, I hear that you’ve conducted yourself in a responsible manner, I might decide to give you a new car to wreck."
"You’re giving me a watchdog?" It was hard to keep the right amount of nonchalance in his voice.
"If that’s how you like to put it. Oh, and there’s an added bonus. Ray, would you tell my son what you did before you became a chauffeur?"
"I was a Navy SEAL, Mr. Luthor. Twelve years of service, all told."
Lionel gave another one of those predator’s grins
"So you see, Lex, not only is Ray highly qualified to protect you from many of the outer threats that the heir to a multinational corporation might have to face, he is also fully capable of keeping you out of any trouble you might feel like causing yourself. On the whole, I think this is an excellent solution to your transportation problem. Don’t you?"
Lex could feel resentment rising inside him like a hot tide, but losing his temper now wouldn’t get him anywhere. All he could do at the moment was agree.
"Yes, dad," he said.
If he couldn’t find a way to get around it, this was like being locked up for the summer. But then he had always been good at overcoming obstacles. He wouldn’t take this lying down.
The first few days went better than he would have thought. There were plenty of things for him to do in Metropolis that even his father couldn't object to, and, to begin with, Lex amused himself with those. He'd been half expecting Ray to be under orders to follow him around wherever he went, but the driver stayed with the car while Lex shopped for designer clothes, visited the exhibition on Mediaeval warfare at the history museum or spent hours browsing comic book stores. Beyond the usual greetings and instructions, they didn't speak, and as far as Lex could tell, Ray didn't pay closer attention to him than any of the other chauffeurs he'd had in his life. Once or twice, he thought he felt the man's eyes on him when his back was turned, as he was getting into the car or walking away from it, but he couldn't swear to it, and he never saw anything on Ray's face other than the detached politeness that was appropriate for a domestic. He could almost learn to appreciate the benefits of having his own personal driver permanently on call.
Except that he was getting restless.
Lionel appeared to have decided that having dinner with his son was a fatherly thing to do, and surprisingly came home from the office in time for that event every night. His topics of conversation at the table ranged from the intricacies of high finance to Greco-Roman mythology, but every discussion served the same purpose - illustrating what Lex ought to aspire to, and pointing out how very short he fell of the mark. With Lionel, any question, no matter how innocent it seemed, was likely to be a carefully laid trap, designed to lure Lex into some new minefield of humiliation. The watchfulness and presence of mind it took for him to keep up with his father enough not to be completely annihilated was wearing him down, and he desperately felt the need to get away, to let go. To lose himself in something mindless and meaningless that would allow him to forget what his life was really like. The penthouse felt like a luxurious, air-conditioned cage, and each day the bars seemed to close in on him a little bit more. He needed to break out.
His opportunity came a week into the holidays, when his father went to Edge City for the opening of the new research center. The event was the kind of ridiculous ribbon-cutting that usually took Lionel three minutes, sweeping in and out in the LuthorCorp helicopter like some Deus Ex Machina in one of the Greek plays he was so fond of quoting, but this time he was staying away over night, dining with business associates. Lex rather suspected that there was a long-legged redhead involved, but he wasn't about to complain. Instead, he got planning.
It was past eleven that night when he left the apartment, not in the elevator to the manned lobby, but by the back stairs. The climb from the fiftieth floor took even longer than he would have thought, but the taxi he had called was still waiting when he slipped out the side entrance, slightly out of breath. As they took off down the street, he congratulated himself on making a clean escape.
The line of hopefuls waiting to get into Club Nexus was as long as ever, but Lex strolled past them, nodding at the doorman who pushed the door open for him without a word. Behind him, he heard the usual murmur rise and fall, the name Luthor whispered in annoyance, envy, awe, as familiar on the lips of these people as the name of God on the tongue of a believer.
Inside, the music throbbed like a speeding heartbeat, loud and all-consuming, drowning out the sound of the people dancing and talking, making it seem as though they floated noiselessly in a sea of pulsing light. The club was crowded, thick with moving bodies, sensory impressions pushing in on him from all sides. When he opened himself and allowed them to wash through him, they swept everything else away.
He made his way around the edge of the dance floor until he reached the staircase that led to the VIP room above. Another bouncer there, another casual nod granting him entrance. This was his element, and he moved through it without resistance.
The people he was looking for were sitting in their usual place by the railing that overlooked the floor below, and he had barely made it up the stairs when they caught sight of him.
"Hey, look who's out on good behavior! Lex, man, it's good to see you."
Lex smiled, putting his hand out to be shaken.
"Since when do you know anything about good behavior, Nate? How are you?"
"Same old, and then some. Broke my leg skiing in St. Moritz and only got out of the cast last week. But then, those European nurses... Almost made it worth it, you know?"
"I can imagine," Lex said, sliding into the booth next to Nate, greeting a few other acquaintances with handshakes and nods.
Nate was of course Nathaniel Peterson III, heir to Peterson Industries. He was supposed to be learning the ropes of the family business with the goal of taking over the helm when his father retired, but between clubbing in Metropolis and vacationing in all the most expensive resorts, it was doubtful whether he had time over for anything else. He knew everyone who was anyone in the Metropolis in-crowd, and, more often than not, he could be found right here at The Nexus, surrounded by the kind of people who had money enough to earn his attention. Lex wouldn't call him a friend, but they belonged to similar species.
"Hey, Brenda!" Nate called to the waitress. "Double vodka lemon for Mr. Luthor. And keep them coming. After surviving another year at Excelsior, you need to wash down the dust, man. Is old Mr. Harley still doing those horrid history lectures? I thought I'd die of boredom every time."
"He's still at it," Lex said. "Though he does have his points from time to time. I thought his lessons on the French revolution were rather insightful."
"Yeah, but then you never were quite like other people," Nate said, leaning back a little to give Brenda the room to put Lex’s drink on the table. She should have carded him, of course, but everyone here knew exactly how young Lex was and acted as though they had no idea. Another privilege of being a Luthor.
"One of a kind," Lex said, raising his glass with an ironic inclination of his head. The burn of the vodka down his throat made the truth of that statement feel less of a curse.
"I’d drink to that, Lex," a familiar voice said behind him, "if you boys aren’t too stingy to buy a couple of lonely girls a drink."
"Quick, Nate," Lex said in a stage-whisper, "order the woman her drinks. We wouldn’t want to break her streak. Hi, Dana, how are you?"
It was an old joke, one about the stupidity of men when faced with female charms. Dana claimed that though the limit on her credit card was higher than most people’s yearly salary, she had never paid for a drink in her life. Which, when you looked at her, didn’t sound all that implausible. Among the hazy memories from Nate’s Christmas party, Lex held a clear image of lying flat on the bathroom floor with Dana naked on top of him, her blonde hair falling around his face as she bent to kiss him. They had both been flying at the time, and he didn’t remember much else, but he had the sense to count himself lucky for the experience.
"Still celebrating acing my finals," she said. "That much useless knowledge must be thoroughly expunged with mind-altering substances. Jordan and I..." She stopped herself, glancing from Lex to the girl standing next to her, a brunette with the long-limbed, near-anorectic body of a runway model. "I’m sorry, you two haven’t met, have you? Lex, this is Jordan, a friend of mine from college. Jordan, meet Lex Luthor, one of a kind."
"Hi," the girl said, flashing him a brilliant smile. "It’s great to finally get to meet you. Dana’s told me all about you."
She was beautiful, but as much as Dana’s bearing spoke of generations of wealth and breeding, of debutante balls and Swiss finishing schools, everything about Jordan spelled noveau riche. There was no faking being born to privilege, even if you happened to look good in Dolce & Gabbana.
"You shouldn’t believe everything you hear," Lex said, letting a drop of honey fall into his voice and giving her the quirk of his lips he had been told was an enigmatic smile. "I have been known to surprise."
"Well, then," she said, sitting down next to him, so close that he could smell the mixture of summer sweat and expensive perfume on her skin. "I guess I will have to learn from personal experience."
The night was shaping up nicely.
A few vodkas later, he was dancing with her. Heavy beat of the music vibrating inside his bones, tingling in his fingertips when he grasped her naked waist, guiding her close. Hips against hips, swaying, grinding, her breasts brushing his chest through layers of fabric as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Heat radiating from her body, from a hundred bodies moving around them, from the alcohol in his blood. He was floating on it, riding the heatwave, the pure physicality of it a liberating, dizzying rush.
Jordan's hands stroked the back of his neck, travelled over the bare skin of his scalp. A sensual, intimate caress, equal parts arousing and nauseating, making his fingers dig into her back. She pressed her cheek to his, and beneath the steady baseline throbbing in his head, he felt rather than heard the words her mouth formed against his ear.
"You feel incredible. Is it really true that you have no hair anywhere?"
Lex almost laughed out loud at that; would have, if her tongue hadn't begun to tease his earlobe, sending shivers down his spine. Older girls who came on to him were always after the same things - either they wanted to fuck a billionaire, or they wanted to fuck a freak. He usually had them pegged in one category or the other within an hour of catching their eye. They were so easy to read it was ridiculous, but his cock didn't care in the least.
"Do you want to find out?" he said, angling his hips so that his growing erection pressed into her thigh, underlining his message.
"Yes," she said, the word a shaky exhalation against the curve of his throat. "Show me."
"Then come on."
He took her by the hand and led her from the dance floor, past the bathrooms in the back, through the door marked "Employees Only", past the kitchen and the storage room, out into the alley behind the club.
It was a clear summer night, the air refreshing in his lungs but not cool against his skin. When the door clicked shut, he could no longer hear the music, but he could feel the rhythm through the soles of his feet. Apart from a few dumpsters, the alley was empty.
He turned to Jordan, tugged on her hand to bring her closer. She came eagerly, tilting her head to brush their lips together. Out here, he could smell the liquor on her breath, and her kisses tasted of oranges and the sharp tang of tequila. She moaned when he slid his hand down to cup her ass.
He lost track of time, then, and of details, until he felt the brick wall rough against his back and saw her drop to her knees in front of him. Hollow, metallic sounds as she undid his belt and his zipper, and then her hands were on him, fondling his balls, stroking the hairless skin at the base of his cock.
"God," she said, and he cold hear her voice waver at what he guessed was the thought of her own perversion. "So smooth."
He wanted to laugh again, but the noise he made when her tongue slid along the length of his shaft was more a sob than anything else. When she took him in, he bit his lip to keep quiet.
Afterwards, when she had wiped the dust from her designer pants and he was buckling his belt with hands that still trembled from orgasm, she leaned in for another kiss.
"You want to continue this at my place?" she said. "It's a bit more comfortable, and I've got this neighbour who sells really first-class coke. We could have a lot of fun."
He was just about to answer when a voice from somewhere down the alley beat him to it.
"Tempting as I'm sure that sounds, Miss, I'm afraid Mr. Luthor will have to decline. He and I need to have a little talk."
Jordan pulled back abruptly and they both spun around to see the speaker, though Lex knew who it must be before his eyes fell on the man standing among the shadows a few feet away.
"Ray?" he said. "What are you doing here?"
"The job your father is paying me to do. When the maid called down and said you were going out, I made the mistake of waiting for you by the main entrance. Then I was lucky enough to see your cab drive by and followed it here. The doorman wouldn't let me in, of course, so I decided I'd stretch my legs while I waited. And here we are. I think it would be best for both of us if you let me drive you back home, now."
For a moment, Lex considered just turning his back on the man and walking away with Jordan, but if his father heard about that... The fact was that Lionel had hit on the perfect means of controlling him. The only thing that had made the last few months at Excelsior beareable was that he'd had a car, a way to escape whenever the other boys had pushed him to the limit of what he could take without losing his mind. If his father took that away from him, he didn't know how he'd survive. He couldn't afford to screw this up.
"Lex?" Jordan said. "Who is this guy? What...?"
"It's okay," Lex said, not taking his eyes off Ray. "He works for my father. You go back inside and I'll talk to you soon, all right?"
She muttered something angry that he didn't catch, but she obeyed, as he had expected her to. It was an order, not a request, and few people in Metropolis failed to do what he told them to.
"So where is the car?" he asked when she was gone, slipping his hands in his pockets and setting off down the alley, striding past the driver without changing his pace.
"Around the corner," Ray said, falling into step effortlessly, leading the way.
The limousine was parked in a sidestreet, a place virtually as deserted as the alley. When they reached it, Lex waited for Ray to open the door for him, but instead, the chauffeur removed his uniform cap and placed it on the roof of the car, dragging his fingers through his hair.
"You realize," he said, "that what I saw back there is exactly the kind of thing your father has hired me to prevent? If a papparazzi had caught you - or worse, a cop - you would have been in serious trouble and I would have been out of a job. Though it seems to me you're in enough trouble as it is."
Lex felt anger inside him, but he couldn't allow himself to let it out. What he needed was a way to win Ray over, to convince him that Lionel didn't have to be told about this. And, of course, he had strategies that had worked in the past, that might work here, if he was lucky. It was worth a shot.
Letting his limbs become liquid, his movements slow and deliberate, he closed the space between himself and Ray. His lips curved into a smile of coyness and suggestion, and he looked up through lowered lashes, his gaze half innocent, half promising. There were teachers at Excelsior who had bent over backwards to cover for his absences and late arrivals because of a look like that, and a few fellow students who had risked expulsion on his behalf for less. It had rarely failed to get him what he wanted.
"You know, Ray," he said, raising his hand to finger the buttons on the driver's jacket, "there's no reason why my father would have to find out about any of this. It could be our secret."
He didn't see Ray's hand move until it was already closing around his wrist, pulling it away from his chest. The grip was hard, harder than any servant should dare to touch him, and Lex's chin snapped up in an automatic response of scalding arrogance, his mouth opening to tell the man off. Then their eyes met, and for the first time, he saw Ray.
On an abstract level, he had registered the man's size, but now every fiber in his body was acutely aware of it; of the pure massive strength in those wide shoulders, of how fragile his own wrist was in that huge hand. A soldier's hand, he suddenly remembered, a hand that had killed. The thought sent a shudder up the length of his spine, but he didn't try to pull away.
There was a look in Ray's eyes, something deep and powerful that made Lex's heart beat faster as they stared at each other. A pain, a determination...raw emotions steeped in steel, restrained but there, sharper than knives and more deadly. It was as though the face he had seen for the last week had been a mask, and this was the person behind it, different, so very different, from what he'd expected.
When he spoke, Ray's voice was low and rough, a warning note in it that made something that could have been fear coil in the pit of Lex's stomach.
"I'm not one of your little boarding school pals," he said. "If you want to play that game with me, you'd better make damn sure you're ready to take it. Understand?"
"Perfectly," Lex said, and the controlled haughtiness in his own voice surprised him. He pulled his arm towards him calmly, and Ray let go without resistance, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against the car.
"If you really don't want your father to know what you're up to..." he said.
Lex rubbed his wrist absently, but his eyes never left Ray's face. On the street beside them he heard a car pass, a coughing sound from its engine as the gears shifted, but it felt distant, not in the same reality as the two of them.
"I'm listening," he said.
"I didn't leave the SEALs and move back to Metropolis to become a glorified babysitter. This job pays well and I might need the money, but I've got business of my own to take care of. There may be times when I have to make unscheduled stops, when there are phonecalls I need to take or when I'm late picking you up. You won't ask any questions and you won't tell your dad or anyone else. In return, I keep quiet about whatever you get up to."
"I stay out of your business, you stay out of mine? I can live with that."
"Good," Ray said. He straightened himself and retrieved his cap from the roof of the car, then leaned over and opened the back door. "Where to, Mr. Luthor?"
His voice was polite and expressionless once more, as though nothing remarkable had passed between them. Lex matched it with a show of nonchalance.
"Home, Ray," he said, stepping into the limousine and sinking back against the leather seat as the door slammed shut behind him.
It looked as though he would be able to get through the summer much easier than he'd thought, and he smiled at his good fortune. It also seemed as though there was a lot more to his designated driver than met the eye. He was going to enjoy finding out what it was.
