Six Scary Stories Of Clark's And Lex's First Date
Clark was seventeen, and past the age of consent when he decided it was time for he and Lex to have their first official date. No more hanging out at the castle waiting for Lex to make a move, or discussing their latest female conquests in the privacy of his barn. It was time to shit, or get off the pot.
At worst, Lex could say no, tell him those looks were just his way of being friendly, and that he really had loved Helen or Desiree or any of the other unsuitable women who had been a part of his life for some short time.
Clark didn't think that was all that likely, since most of Lex's dates tried to harm him in some way. Financially or bodily, it became clear that Lex did not belong with a woman. Whether he belonged with a secretly alien teenaged boy was another question entirely, but Clark hoped Lex was willing to find out.
Clark tossed and turned in his sleep, his subconscious throwing pictures at him of how horribly things could go. His parents reactions to his revelation surely wouldn't go as badly as this:
"I'm not completely unobservant, Clark. You've been walking around in a daze. This morning you planted the cows and milked the corn!" Martha admonished him, once she and Lionel stopped making out. It was true, dream Clark could see black and white legs waving in the air.
"Your mother said I couldn't kill Lex, but she didn't say I couldn't wound him a little. Dance for me, Luthor boy!" Jonathan said, taking aim at Lex's highly polished shoes. Clark woke up screaming from that one.
Maybe he wouldn't tell them he was asking Lex out until it was all over. What they didn't know, wouldn't kill him.
As Clark was trying to wash the dark chocolate ganache that had spilled all over his one good dress shirt, he thought "that was awful."
As Lex was nursing his broken fingers‹the ones Clark had squeezed much too hard in his embarrassment over being observed on their date‹he thought "what a horrible night."
Even so, neither of them could wait to do it again, except this time would be better. Surely they had gotten the bad karma out of the way.
Clark and Lex's daughter Ella was thirteen, and as witty and beautiful as her birth mother, Chloe. She had Chloe's vibrant smile, and Lex's red hair or at least the red hair he'd had as a child. He and Clark adored her beyond distraction. Lex thought she was as loving and good as Clark. Clark knew she was as brilliant and principled as Lex.
Right now, she was sitting yoga style on the TV room floor, waiting for Lex to tell her her favorite story again.
"So, you and Daddy were at the Talon, right?"
"That's right, sweetheart. This is back when your Aunt Lana was running it, and still going to high school."
"And you guys used to hang out there with all his friends. And everyone thought you'd been doing it all along."
Eyebrow raise. "Doing it?"
"Dating, I mean." She didn't, really, and of course Lex knew it.
"But we weren't. We were just very good friends. Your dad rescued me, you know." Lex smiled at the memory. What should have been a painful recollection was really only the beginning of their story.
"I know. Bridge. Car. Bale of wire. Yadayadayada." Lex still found it amazing that the whole life or death rescue story didn't interest her as much as their ridiculous first date. He guessed it was because Superman was so much a part of their lives that it didn't seem all that fascinating.
"He wasn't Superman then, though. So we were both astounded."
"Hee! Daddy was always super. He just didn't know it yet." Ella laughed. She loved being in on the big secret. Lex and Clark trusted her not to tell anyone, and she hadn't. It was almost like being treated as an adult.
"So, anyway. Your father was just seventeen, and my very best friend. He was brave, and smart, and good. All words I would never have used to describe myself back then."
"But Daddy would. He always says you were a better man than you thought."
"He would, you're right. But he was the brave one, because he did something I couldn't do."
"What?" Ella knew, but she settled down to hear the familiar words again.
"He took the risk to ask me out on a date. That was something you just didn' t do in Kansas back then."
"And you said yes." Ella prompted.
"Not at first. I reminded him he was a high school student, and I was a business man, and told him he didn't know what he was getting into."
"And Daddy just laughed in your face, and told you he knew exactly what he was doing, and he'd been planning it for months."
"Who's telling the story, me or you?" Lex teasingly chastised her.
"I'm sorry. Go on."
"So Clark came to see me at the castle one day. This was just a little while after I'd come back to Smallville after Helen tried to kill me. I was still pretty sore from the plane crash, and Clark had been having a pretty hard time himself.
"What did he say?" Lex and Clark had never told her the more unpleasant details of that summer.
"He said he was tired of waiting for me to make a move. We both knew I was never going to be happy with any of the women I'd been dating, or even engaged to. I believe his exact words were 'shit or get off the pot'."
"Daddy said shit? Wow."
"He probably washed his own mouth out with soap, afterwards, but yes." Lex loved that Clark was usually such a gentleman. It made those times when they were alone together, and Clark could let go, so much hotter.
"So the date itselfŠ"
"I'll never forget it. And God Forbid your first date is anything like it."
"Dad!" Ella blushed.
"Sweetheart, you're a beautiful, intelligent girl. Believe me, you'll have lots of dates. And Superman will have to screen every one of them."
"Cute, Dad. But no way." Ella was just glad Clark could only see through things, not read minds. "What happened on the date itself?"
"Well, we were at the Talon, which seemed like a good idea, because it was safe, and familiar. But Lana had decided to try out a new menu. And she was a really bad cook."
"That's why Uncle Pete does most of the cooking, right?"
"Yes. Anyway, she got this blackened salmon dish out of a Martha Stewart magazine. Only it was very black on the outside, and nearly raw on the inside."
"Eww." Ella wrinkled her nose.
"Eww, indeed. And besides breaking two fingers that night, I came home with a horrible case of food poisoning."
"Broken fingers?"
"Yes, your father grabbed my hand when he saw his parents coming in to eat dinner. They insisted on playing chaperone. We were just lucky they didn't sit at our table."
"Oh my God. That was Grampa's idea, right? Grandma Martha would never do that on her own."
"Yes. Back then he really didn't like me. Or trust me, for that matter."
"He loves you now, though."
"Yes, a lot of that is because of you, sweetheart." Jonathan had turned into an old softie, wherever his granddaughter was concerned.
"Was that the only bad stuff that happened?" Ella asked.
"Well, no, not quite. There was dessert, which might have been delicious, if Lana hadn't spilled it all on Clark's only good shirt." The chocolate never did wash out. "And finally, " Lex finished, "there was the coffee cup the ceramic coffee cup that your father bit through when Pete and Chloe came up to us and asked us if we were celebrating our anniversary."
"Oh my God!" Ella laughed. "So what did you say?"
"I told them it was our first date, and very likely our last, if everyone didn 't leave us alone."
"Did they?"
"Yes, and after that, everything was all right. We even laughed about it. We decided it wasn't really a first date, after all, because we wanted there to be a second date. With that kind of a beginning, there probably wouldn't have been."
When they talked about in later years, Clark Kent and Lex Luthor agreed. They had had the worst first date in history. It was a wonder they were still together, but more than five decades together had proven the strength of their bond, despite any number of spanners being thrown in the works.
President Luthor told the story of that date at Superman's 50th Anniversary dinner, the gory details leading to a more meaningful talk of overcoming obstacles in favor of shared goals. His speech was both humorous, and dignified, as befits a world leader.
The citizens of Metropolis gave Supes a gold watch, with his S insignia in gemstones. Luckily, none of them were Kryptonite. Lex had worked hard to find and destroy nearly all of it, except for a minute amount of Red K "The good stuff" that he and Clark used under well-controlled circumstances.
He only wore the watch to official occasions, telling Lex in private "They could have spent this money on safe housing, so I wouldn't have to rescue some of these people."
Lex gave him a vintage "Smallville Talon" mug, with a bite sized chunk taken out of the rim. He'd saved it for more than fifty-five years. It was as precious to him as the Napoleon coin watch his mother had given him before she died, and the pictures of his baby granddaughter, Josephine
It was by far Clark's favorite gift from Lex. He loved seeing signs of Lex's sentimental side. He kept it on his desk, where it held the pencils he liked to chew on, but rarely used for writing.
If anyone from the distant future had looked at the fortress of solitude Superman kept at the North Pole, they would have found a collection of alien artifacts that scientists would take years to explain. They would also have found a chipped ceramic mug, from a long gone coffeehouse in a small Kansas town. It was Superman's fondest possession, no longer filled with pencils, but with the ashes of his great‹and only‹love.