Heaven Is Under Our Feet
Friends, acquaintances and sometimes even strangers often ask me how it happened. How Willy Krudski from the wrong side of Rawley, with the no-good father and the helpless mother, ended up with Lex Luthor, the Lex Luthor, no description needed.
I'm a writer now, officially, not just in my dreams and Finn's hopes. I've exceeded everyone's expectations, even my own, high as they grew once they got fed at Rawley Academy. So I do what writers do, I tell a story. For the women, I invent something romantic, throw in a moonlight setting and talk of poetry, with hints of underlying passion because even the most romantic of them really want to know about the sex. For the guys, who ask less obliquely but with more embarrassment, even though they're just as curious as the women, I talk of male bonding over football matches while Lex snickers in the background at the very idea.
As to how it really all started, well, it's taken years for me to learn the truth. Which might surprise you, because obviously I was there, and I've always known the when's and the where's, but I've only gradually learnt exactly why it was that I ended up in bed with Lex Luthor that night. And today, I've met the answer to who caused Lex to wind up with me.
I'm going to tell you what happened as though it's just a story, because it feels like that to me now. The Lex I met that day and the Will that I was back then don't exist anymore. But this is nonetheless the truth, not a story-teller's fabrication. Throw-away comments that I didn't forget, late night confessions when Lex thought I was asleep, my own memories, wedding photographs and old speech notes -- they all fit together so that finally I've been able to see that day through Lex's eyes.
Lex often woke up hard, always at that hour that was neither late nor early, an hour in the middle of nothing. It was a cold hour that his body didn't know how to handle, an unsubtle hour that didn't favor deep contemplation or rational thought. All his wealth and power, and he still couldn't eliminate 3 am from his life.
Sometimes he would turn onto his back and lie there, ignoring the weight of the sheets and comforter on his erection. He would refuse to think unsexy thoughts to will it away, but neither would he imagine Clark in any way. He would simply lie, still, until eventually his erection withered or he fell asleep again, still hard and aching.
Other nights, usually when work had been hell and his control sapped by alcohol, he would curl up and slide his hands into his pajama pants. He always wrapped his left hand around his cock, because he imagined that made it closer to the feel of Clark around him, while his right fingers strayed further, teasing his balls shyly, then further still, dipping inside him. His finger was never long enough to hit the right spot, not at that angle, but then he'd tell himself that Clark wouldn't get that right first time either. He would whisper encouragement, and come with Clark's name on his lips.
Other nights he was prepared. Like that night, when there was a body beside him to tame the ache, make it bearable.
It was a motel kind of thing, and Lex was fully aware of that. But he wouldn't use a motel, refused to sign in under some outrageous assumed name, wouldn't sleep or fuck on dirty sheets in a tacky seventies-styled room with cigarette burns on the acid brown carpet. His hands might be dirty, and sometimes they felt so begrimed that he couldn't understand how they still looked pink and manicured, but he wasn't going to acknowledge it. So there they were, sitting at a bar in the Hyatt Regency in Greenwich, Connecticut. A young CEO, and a serious looking young man with a shocking crop of freckles.
They'd met at a wedding, earlier that warm September day. The Calhoun wedding, with a handsome bridegroom, a shy, pretty, blonde bride, a sea of white marquees on the lawn of the Calhoun mansion and a dozen deals going on at the wedding breakfast, some discreet and some less so. The serious looking man was one Will Krudski, unknown to most present that day except as a roommate to the groom and now his best man.
He gave a good best man's speech, full of love and honor and hope, a romantic tale or two, plus the obligatory embarrassing story. The audience all laughed, genuine laughter as he was a good story-teller, as he told of the day the three of them (bride, groom and best man) had become friends: two boys bonding over the shared humiliation of being dumped half-naked and wet in the town square while the beautiful local girl mocked them with a smile.
It was a good speech, but Lex had seen through it, had seen the pain and jealousy underneath. Lex might not have been the only one, but he was almost certainly the only one to recognize where the jealousy had been aimed. Will hadn't been jealous of the groom, but of the bride.
As the day had worn on, and the deal making had petered out while the serious drinking had begun, Lex had joined Will on a bar stool and suggested they should find somewhere quieter to drink.
It wasn't great. They'd staggered up to their room, Lex taking most of Will's weight and undressing both of them. The sex had been quick and unmemorable, but Will had a vague humiliating memory that he'd cried afterwards and said far too much.
They'd been woken late the next morning by the maid coming in to clean. She'd backed out quickly, they'd laughed hard and discovered their hangovers.
That should have been the end of the story. They should have cleaned up, shaken hands and made muttered comments about 'if you're ever in Metropolis' and said goodbye. After all, Lex was obsessed with a dark-haired farm boy, and Will was still in love with his floppy-haired school friend. They weren't each other's type, that bald millionaire, and the sandy-haired nobody.
Instead they ended up drinking takeout coffee and eating fresh blueberry muffins on a quiet rocky outcrop on Greenwich Point. There was the scent of salt and hints of tar and sun-bleached wood, which even now made Lex feel nostalgic. They'd talked about Foucault and Sartre, Shakespeare as both comedian and king of tragedy, 42 as the answer to the riddle of the universe, the superiority of Wallensford Blue Mountain coffee beans over the Starbucks blend they were drinking and whether it was the New York skyline that they could see in the distance. After they'd exhausted all those topics, agreeing on some, disagreeing vociferously on others, they'd sat down on some rocks, incongruous in yesterday's black tie outfits, but comfortable in their silence.
And then they'd kissed. They'd both turned towards each other at the same time, and leaned in, and kissed. It had been startlingly sweet and simple. They'd both tasted of the same peppermint toothpaste and coffee, and after the kiss, they'd smiled at each other and continued to look out across the water. But now they'd moved that little bit closer so their shoulders brushed against each other with each breath of wind. They sat there most of the day, talking occasionally, more often silent.
They'd rebooked the hotel room for another night, and that time they weren't drunk.
There, now you have the real story of how Lex Luthor and Will Krudski came to meet. The falling in love part came later of course, though not that much later.
It was all back to front: drunken sex one night, followed by an almost chaste kiss on the waterfront the next day. Nothing like any of the tales I've told before.
But that was how it started, and the promises to meet up were kept, and it worked out, for both of us. I stopped chasing impossibilities and discovered that possibilities could be even better, and Lex left the small town where he'd been hurt so many times, most of all by a boy full of lies, and became the man he is now -- head of LexCorp, patron of the arts and sciences, philanthropist, and about to be husband of Will Krudski.
So, here we are, at a wedding again. The roommate and the ex-farm boy turned reporter are here as well, but neither Lex nor I have eyes for them. We're making our own story now.