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Mae near-staggered into her apartment, worn out by the day’s work. Early that morning she’d had to go help Clark with a beast of a typhoon in the Philippine Sea, and then she’d rushed back home to arrive in time for an unmissable luncheon with the Vice President, and then Lana had called asking her if she could please help them find this stray calf, and then on the way back she’d stopped a variety of assaults and muggings, delivering the would-be victims home herself.
So Mae could be forgiven for not immediately noticing that she was not alone when she entered.
“Fancy seeing you here, love.”
Mae stilled.
“What,” Lex Luthor said, standing in her apartment, “no hello for me?”
“Get out.”
“I don’t think I will,” Lex said casually. “This building is under my name, after all. I have every right to be here.”
She clenched her fists. “Don’t you have puppies to kick? Dreams to crush? If you insist on staying, I can’t promise that you won’t come to bodily harm.”
Lex laughed. “You? You wouldn’t kill me, love. I know you share the same pesky morals as your self-righteous counterpart.”
“Really,” Mae said flatly.
He raised an arrogant eyebrow and opened that cutting mouth, probably about to deliver yet another sharp-edged quip—
—but he never got to say it because between one second and the next she’d tossed her bag and keys to the counter, and snatched him up by the collar and zipped out the apartment windows to hover in mid-air.
Lex made a series of choked noises, scrabbling for a handhold. Mae, still thrumming with anger, was tempted to let him keep dangling in the air with only her hand to hold him up until his button-down inevitably ripped from his weight and then he’d fall, go hurtling towards the pavement, red hair streaming like so many banners in the wind—
And Lex was laughing.
It was a harsh, hacking noise, but it was a laugh all the same. Mae let out an involuntary hiss, readjusted her grip to be more secure. “Something funny?”
“I was just thinking, love,” he said through gasped breaths, “about how gorgeous you look when you’re contemplating murder.”
Her features shuttered. “What.”
“And as I suspected, love, you do care,” he continued, as if he hadn’t even heard her speak. “For a moment there I’d thought that you had already moved past what we had—maybe even forgotten it, what with how you’ve been acting lately. But I must be wrong, because you’re dragging me out of windows,” he said, delighted.
“Lex,” Mae said, “there is something deeply wrong with you.”
“And there’s my name.” Lex lifted his chin, triumphant. “Let go, I dare you.”
Mae thrummed with anger; at him, for his terrible audacity, and at herself, for forgetting. “You think I won’t, Luthor?”
“I know you won’t.” He quirked a smile. “And I could always yell for your... cousin. Think he’d like that?”
Mae—Mae wanted to punch him in the face.
“No, he wouldn’t,” she near-snarled.
So: just to wipe the smile off his face, she flung Lex back in through the windows, his body hurtling through flimsy glass and splintered wood. He yelped pitifully throughout it all, and when he lay sprawled on the ground amidst the glittering glass, his eyes were closed and he was wincing. From somewhere the coppery scent of blood, tinging the air, just enough for her superhuman senses to pick up.
Mae alighted on the windowsill, and crouched. If she looked through him with her x-ray vision, Mae wondered, how many broken bones would she find? And how many more until it was enough to answer for the deep, abiding hurt of his betrayal?
Lex’s features were still scrunched up in pain when he spoke. “For the record, love, sex is the only thing I like rough.”
She had to actively suppress the supernatural heat of her vision. “Get out.”
Lex sighed laboriously. “I can’t damn well move.”
“I don’t care. Get out, Luthor, or I swear I’ll do worse.”
Lex groaned, but fished around in his pockets for a phone, wincing every time his body jostled. When he finished making whatever call he’d made, he sighed and knocked his head back against the ground. His red hair spilled out like a halo, a match to the mellow brown of her wooden floors.
Mae scowled fiercely. He had no right to look like—like he belonged in her apartment.
“When will your cronies be here?”
“Patience, love.”
“I have no patience for the likes of you.”
He cracked open an eye. “I’ve no chance of forgiveness, then?”
What kind of—! “None,” Mae said, aghast. “What sort of delusions are you nursing?”
Lex waved a hand. “The corporate type. Say, how would you feel about roses?”
“I am allergic to roses.”
“Ah, yes.” A beat. “What about an orphanage?”
Mae stared at him, bewildered. “Are you high?”
“I am in perfect possession of my mental faculties,” Lex said. “No. I am not high. Would you prefer a soup kitchen?”
“What?”
“Isn’t that what you goody-two-shoes superheroes like? Help a man out here, love. I’m trying to win back your favor.”
“You’re a—a fucking idiot if you think you can win back my favor after cloning me without my consent!”
Lex opened his eyes fully. “Who taught you how to swear?” he said, amused.
“None of your business,” Mae snapped, flushing hot with embarrassment.
“It used to be,” he said, softer.
“No longer,” Mae said, chin high. “And whose fault is that?”
Lex made a vague, hedging noise, and averted his eyes.
“You won’t even afford me the decency of admitting it,” Mae said, disgusted.
“For what it’s worth, I didn’t court you just to clone you.”
When she looked at him, his stare was steadfastly fixed onto the ceiling.
“Really?”
“No,” he admitted. “I also did it so I had something to dangle over Superman. Or someone, as it were.”
Mae sucked in a sharp breath. “You,” she bit out, heat gathering in the corners of her eyes, “are not helping your case at all.”
“I’m being honest! I was told that open and honest communication was the key to a healthy relationship!”
“No one wants a healthy relationship with a fucking asshole who pretended to be their own son and then proceeded to clone their partner in an attempt for world domination! Tell your goons to hurry up, because if you’re still in my face a minute more, Lex, I will throw you out the window myself, Superman be damned!”
Lex nodded. “Soup kitchen, then.”
Mae hopped off the windowsill, advancing, and Lex must have seen the murder in her eyes, for he seemed to find some previously neglected reserve of strength and scrambled back on his hands, half-rising.
“I’ve overstayed my welcome, it seems. Until next time—”
Someone kicked down her door, and his henchmen promptly flooded her apartment. Faster than she’d thought he could, Lex hauled himself up to his feet, slinging an arm around one of the men.
“Out, out,” Lex barked, and they closed ranks around him, darting nervous glances back at her as they did.
The last of them filed out the ruins of her doorway. Seeing his red hair diminish in the distance, she was seized with a sudden impulse—yelled, “And I’m moving out, effective now! Good luck getting my next address, Luthor!”
Lex twisted back. “I won’t need it, love, but it is appreciated! The soup kitchen will be done in a week.”
Mae picked up the broken door and slammed it back into place, wishing she had license to kill.