Author Notes: THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS!
Rating so far:  Mature Audiences

SIX:  Part 2 - Unmasked!

Harry watched as Dick started to remove Spider-man’s mask.  This was it.  This was the moment.  He’d fantasized about it, imagined himself with Spider-man helpless on the floor of his apartment or chained to the wall.  The scenario changed depending on his mood.  Sometimes Spider-man was naked except for the mask, and Harry wasn’t sure what that was about.  He tried not to analyse it too much, or the fact that the fantasy body had taken on the shape of Peter a lot more frequently since he’d accidentally walked in on Peter changing one day.  Considering the mess he was in, he was glad that Peter hadn’t come to the party.

Harry watched Dick struggle with the mask, tugging at it awkwardly.  Harry imagined Spider-man cowering at his feet.  He would walk around his helpless victim, letting him know who held all the power, letting him know what it felt like to be no more than an insignificant insect about to be squashed under someone else’s heel.

Spider-man would protest his innocence, beg him not to reveal his face, and his objections would fall on deaf ears.  Harry would tell him that this was for his father, this was for what had been taken from him, and he would press the cold steel tip of a knife against the red suit.

His hand would reach behind the spider’s head, grab the fabric, and look into the fear-filled eyes of ...

“Peter?”

Harry gasped as Dick pulled the mask from Spider-man’s face.  No, it couldn’t be.  Not Peter.  Harry blinked his eyes rapidly and looked again.  He knew his mouth had fallen open, but this was impossible.

“Harry, I’m sorry.”

Dick was looking back and forth between the two of them with interest.  “I take it you two know each other.”

“Peter Parker, I presume,” Clark ventured.  Spider-man nodded.

Well, Harry thought, that explained why Peter always got such fucking good pictures of the web-crawler.  Nothing like a little free publicity for yourself.  He seemed to recall that Clark had written an article or two on Superman.  Jeez, freedom of the press.  What a bunch of bullshit.

Harry was still looking at Peter with a mixture of anger and shock.  He was the last person that Harry had expected to see under the mask, although it kind of explained the nude fantasies in a weird way.  Maybe his subconscious was trying to tell him something.  He’d figure out what later.

“I’m sorry, Harry.  I wanted to tell you, and then, I just couldn’t.  I didn’t want you to hate me.”

“Too late.”

“I think I’m missing something,” Bruce said quietly, looking at the two men.

***

“They’re best friends,” Clark said.  He understood exactly how they were both feeling.  Hurt, betrayed, angry, relieved in a weird way, and probably more than a little turned-on.  Or maybe he was projecting his own experience.  “Or they were.”

“Are,”  Spider-man said firmly.

“Were,”  Harry countered.

“Harry, please.  You’ve been my best friend for years.  We’re roommates.”

The other men were watching the argument move back and forth across the room like a particularly agile ping-pong ball.

“You killed my father, Pete.  You killed my father!”

“It was an accident, Harry.”

“You came to the goddamn funeral.  You hugged me and told me you were sorry.”

“I am sorry.  I never wanted that to happen, no matter what he was doing.”

“What he was doing?  Who’s the one dressing up like an insect and flying around New York?”

“Spiders aren’t insects, they’re arachnids, and I don’t fly.  I swing.  And it was your father who decided to join the costume party and disintegrate several people at a public venue!”

“Enough!”  Clark’s voice cut through the air with more strength than he felt.  It actually felt good to yell at someone.  He sat up a little straighter and looked at Peter and Harry breathing hard and glaring at each other across the room.

“Whatever the truth is, the two of you will have to work it out.  But now’s not the time.  Right now you think you’re never going to recover from this, that your friendship will never be the same.  You’re looking at a lifetime of playing dress-up and hurling insults and gadgets at one another.  You don’t really want the other person dead, you just want them to hurt as much as they’ve hurt you.”

Clark was pleased to see both men flush and look away. Yeah, he knew this story a little too well.  Maybe he could save them a lot of time and trouble.  If they were still at the hotel, he probably would’ve suggested they just get a room.

“Believe it or not, Lex and I were there once.  The only thing that can save you is being honest with each other.  About everything.  That means you’re both going to have to hear things you don’t want to hear.  But if you really love your best friend--”

Peter and Harry both looked at him as if to say they didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about.  Clark almost laughed.

“--as much as I think you do, you’ll work it out.  Believe me, it’s a lot better to be friends than enemies.  And it’s a hell of a lot better to be lovers.”

Clark watched as both men turned bright red and opened their mouths as if to protest.  Clark silenced them with a look.

“It doesn’t matter which way you swing--”

Peter glared at him.

“--it matters what you do about it.  But right now, we need to be on the same team.  Somebody knows us, all of us, remarkably well, and he wants something.  If any of us are going to get out of here alive, we have to be able to trust each other, at least until we can escape.  Personal vendettas and bruised egos and broken friendships are going to have to wait.”

Clark paused to make sure that what he said was sinking in.  Harry and Peter both gave grudging nods and didn’t look at one another.

“Spider-man, tell us what you can do.”

***

Peter sighed.  Well, that had gone just as badly as he’d thought it was going to.  The saving grace, ironically, was Clark’s revelation that he and Lex had gone through something similar, and they seemed to have some kind of storybook romance.  Maybe Harry would eventually be able to forgive him.  Later.  When this ordeal was over.

“I’m Peter Parker, a photographer for the Daily Bugle.  And I’m Spider-man, obviously.  My abilities come from being bitten by a super-spider, so I’m able to climb walls, shoot web from my wrists, and I’m strong and fast.  I heal quickly, I’m very limber--”

Peter smiled at Dick, who returned the grin.  Peter went on with his list when Bruce glared at him menacingly.

“--and, um, I sometimes get a feeling before something’s going to happen.  I call it my spider-sense.”

“Cool!”  Dick said.  Bruce rolled his eyes.  Peter wondered if bats ate spiders.

“Any weaknesses?”  Bruce asked.  He hoped he was imagining the hopeful note in Bruce’s voice.

“I’m still human, so I can be hurt.  If I lose my focus, my powers tend to stop working.  It’s freaky, but they seem to work better when I believe I can do something.”

Peter looked up to see Clark nodding.  “The first few times I tried to fly, I either got stuck up there and couldn’t get down or I crashed as soon as I remembered where I was.  Lex kept babbling about Dumbo and magic feathers.  Eventually, I realized that if I didn’t believe it, it didn’t work.  Leaping off a building takes a lot of faith.”

Peter nodded back.  “And I guess my only other weakness is the people I care about.”  He shot a sideways glance at Harry, who was studiously ignoring him.  “Oh, and the fact that my boss likes banner headlines that paint me as a menace, but I’m learning to live with that.”

“Well,” Bruce began.  “All in all, we’ve got a lot of strengths and relatively few weaknesses other than the people we care about.  That’s not bad.  Superman’s the strongest of all of us, but with the Kryptonite--”

Clark looked apologetic.

“--we’re going to have to play to more than physical strengths.  They’ve managed to restrain each of us in a way that cuts off our abilities to use our assets, so escape at this juncture is likely not an option.”

“So, what do we do?”  Harry asked.  Peter was happy to see that he looked slightly less like he wanted to kill him, and more like he just wanted to get back to something resembling a normal life.

“We wait.”

***

Lex decided that he liked being dead.  All in all, it wasn’t as bad as he’d thought.  There were white lights all around him, his body felt warm and free of pain, and there was music playing in the background.  Of course, it sounded more like Bach than a choir of angels, but at least he wasn’t trudging through a raging inferno with someone poking a pitchfork at his back.  He was sure Jonathan Kent had wanted to do that to him more than once.  Lex smiled.

If he hadn’t ended up in Hell--and if he were honest, he figured it’d always been a toss up which way he’d go--then this must be Heaven, and that meant there was a chance he’d see Clark again sometime because Clark was definitely angel material.  He didn’t think being a Kryptonian would matter--he’d have to consult with God’s legal department about that one.  Except there probably weren’t any lawyers on this end of things.  Damn.  Oops--he was going to have to watch that now he supposed.  He figured they’d get him a guidebook or something.  A list of commandments.  Maybe a tour.  Being good didn’t come automatically, and he really didn’t want to fuck ... screw ... uh, mess things up now that they’d let him in.  He had a sneaking suspicion that someone up here had lost a bet and been forced to take him, but he wasn’t going to complain.  And he didn’t want to give them any reason to change their minds about him.

***

“How’s he doing?”

“He lost a lot of blood, but his body’s recovering nicely.  Probably five times the healing rate of a normal gunshot wound.  Possibly higher.”

“Good.  Make sure you’re recording all the data.  Who knows how long we’ll have the opportunity to study him like this.”

“Yes, Dr. Messina.”

***

“Clark?”

Clark turned his head towards Bruce.  He couldn’t remember when such a simple movement had been so difficult.  It had been years since he’d had to deal with being vulnerable physically.  He looked over to where Bruce was chained against the wall, Dick’s head resting awkwardly against his shoulder; Dick looked to be asleep.

“What?” Clark said quietly, meeting Bruce’s eyes.

“Have you ever been exposed to Kryptonite for this long?”

Clark didn’t even have to think about it.  “No,” he said.  “I’ve only ever dealt with short-term exposure. A few hours at most.  This is ... this is new.”  And uncomfortable, although he didn’t have to say it.  He suspected that fact was written all over his face.

Clark could feel the loss of his powers as if they were something completely tangible.  Essentially, he was just as human as anyone else in the room at the moment.  Probably more so than Spider-man.  He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about the idea.  Being super-powered was a huge part of his identity--not just the part that put on a cape and tried to save the world, but the part of him that needed his strength to survive every day.

“Any ideas?” Bruce said, and Clark couldn’t stop the look of surprise that leapt to his face.  Jeez, if Bruce was asking him for ideas, they were pretty much screwed.  Bruce was the idea man; Clark was the muscle--or at least that’s the way things had usually played out in the past.  Clark knew he wasn’t stupid, but Bruce and Lex just thought on an entirely different level from the rest of them.  Clark felt a twinge of panic as he thought about Lex.  He pushed it away and concentrated on Bruce.

“You’re asking me?  For ideas?  Not a good sign, Bruce,” Clark said, trying to grin and failing.  Miserably.  Bruce nodded a reluctant acknowledgment, and then there was silence.  Clark could see Bruce struggling with something, struggling to put something into words.

“He was still alive when they took him away,” Clark said softly.  He’d always known how close Bruce and Lex were, had known and accepted the relationship as one of the few good things in Lex’s childhood.  Bruce’s dark eyes flickered over him.  Nodded again.  Once.  Dark Knights apparently didn’t talk about their feelings.

“You still love him,” Clark said, the truth of it written on Bruce’s face.  He was surprised that he didn’t even feel angry about it.  He supposed he’d always known it was there, under the surface.  Everything with Bruce was buried somewhere.  An underground cavern.  A basement vault.  A ripple of feeling as deep as the earth’s core.

“It’s not like that.”

“It’s okay, Bruce.  I get it.”  Clark really did get it, although he knew Bruce wouldn’t necessarily see it that way.

Bruce closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall.  “I’ve known him almost all my life, Clark.  I shared a room with him for eight years.  It’s a long time.”

“I know.  He feels the same, you know,” Clark said.  Lex didn’t talk about it, didn’t say it, but it was always there in how he looked at Bruce, how he moved around him--an ease of motion that Lex just didn’t have with other people.  Oh sure, he always exuded elegance and grace, the way his hips swayed like the gentle rocking of a ship.  Lex had different movements around people he didn’t care about--seemingly effortless, constantly moving, but hips that swung in wider arcs, curves that circumvented contact and emotion rather than moving closer, wrapping around.  With Bruce, Lex moved in close, tight, let himself be touched, drawn in, protected.  Lex’s body flowed around Bruce like water over rock. The opportunities for that kind of contact were rare these days, but Clark knew it when he saw it--the moment at the party before everything went to hell--Lex’s desire to let someone in, let someone else be strong, let someone keep the world at bay for a second, a moment, a lifetime.

“No one who’s loved him has ever stopped,” Bruce said.  It was a simple statement of fact, not a declaration.  Clark could read it in his body language.  It was just the way the world worked with them.  There was nothing to be done about it.  Clark wondered what would have happened if he’d ever challenged Lex about it, pushed the issue, insisted on more distance there.  He didn’t think he would have liked the results.  Perhaps that’s why he’d never done it.  Never even thought about it--not seriously.  Maybe he didn’t want to know who Lex would choose.  A hint of uncertainty tugged at him, and suddenly his heart felt like the most vulnerable part of his body.

“He heals incredibly fast,” Bruce said, as if it were something Clark didn’t already know, hadn’t seen tested a thousand times in Smallville.  “It used to piss me off in high school.  I’d kick his ass in a training session, and he wouldn’t even be sore the next day.  I’d be walking around with bruises for the next week, and he’d be laughing.”

Clark grinned.  Yeah, Lex’s healing abilities were occasionally annoying, but it meant rough sex was never really a worry.  It occurred to him that Bruce knew that too, but Clark stopped his mind from going down that path.  Lex had had too few people in his life who really loved him, and Bruce was a good man.  A good friend to them both.  He wasn’t going to be jealous.  He wasn’t.  Not now.  Not when Lex was hurt and alone and possibly ... Clark refused to think about the possibilities.

“What do you think they plan to do with us?” Clark asked.  “It’s going to be hard for them to hide six people from the world. People will notice if we’re not around.”

At least he hoped so.  The world occasionally tended to take its heroes for granted.  But even if the world forgot, there were his parents.  Lois.  Their friends.  Alfred.  The Justice League.  Even Lionel, certainly, would question the disappearance of his only son.

Clark’s eyes narrowed at the thought.  What exactly was Lionel’s place in all of this?  Scarface had taunted Lex with the possibility of Lionel’s involvement, had seemed to know exactly how to push Lex into anger.  Of course, their animosity was hardly a secret, but still, there was something about this that had Lionel’s fingerprints on it.

“I honestly don’t know what they plan to do--” Bruce said, after a moment of silence.

The sound of a key turning in a lock caught their attention.  The heavy door to the room began to open with the creak of aged metal.  Dick stirred against Bruce’s chest.  Peter and Harry raised their heads, suddenly alert.

“--but I suspect we’re about to find out,” Bruce concluded grimly.

***

“Martha, would you put that phone down?  There’s nothing to worry about.”  Jonathan sighed and looked at his unopened copy of The Daily Planet longingly.  He laid it on the breakfast table.

“It’s not like Clark not to call when he said he would,” Martha said stubbornly.  “It’s not like Lex, either, for that matter.”

“It’s only just after eight in the morning.  They probably had a late night with that alumni thing in New York.”

“It doesn’t matter.  Clark said he would call first thing this morning and let me know how it went.  He was nervous yesterday afternoon when he called, and he said he had a bad feeling about things.  I know better than to ignore my son’s instincts, Jonathan, and you should too.”

Martha beat the muffin batter vigorously as she talked, and Jonathan sighed as the thought of warm, soft blueberry muffins floated out the window.  Even he knew that the muffins were not going to survive that sort of beating--he had nothing to look forward to except stiff, dense puck-like wonders that were going to be more blue than blueberry if she kept that up.

Jonathan eased himself out of his chair, and rescued the bowl from her hands.  Sure enough, the batter was already a uniform purply-blue.  He guided her gently to a chair and poured her a cup of coffee.

“Let me finish the muffins,” he said, knowing that she’d feel better later if she could blame him for their failure to resemble something edible.  He reached for the tins and started measuring out the batter.

“Jonathan, I’m worried,” she said.  “There’s no answer at the penthouse, no answer at their hotel.  Clark’s voice-mail at the Planet says he won’t be in until Monday, but that’s not unusual.  I think he forgets to update the message.”

“But he would never forget to call his mother?” Jonathan said, pushing the blue batter off the spoon with the tip of his finger, watching it thud heavily in the bottom of the pan.  Yeah, these muffins were probably going to have to be classified as potentially dangerous weapons.

“You’re doubting my intuition?” Martha asked archly, eyebrow raised like the peaked roof of the barn.  Christ, he knew that look.  He doubted very much that anything short of an immediate phone call from Clark could save him now.

“No, dear,” he started, and winced when he realized how that sounded.  He should’ve stayed out in the field with the cows and let Martha play telephone tag with the boys.

“Jonathan, he may be the strongest man on the planet, but he’s still my son.  When he says he’s going to call, he calls.  I know something’s wrong,” Martha said, and he could hear the note of fear in her voice.  He wiped his hands on the tea towel, and put his arms around her.

“Fine.  Keep phoning.  I’ll get that damn cell phone Lex gave us and see if his people have heard from him.  Fair enough?” he said.  Martha nodded against his shoulder.  He held her a little bit tighter.

If Clark had simply forgotten to call, he was going to have a nice long talk with that young man about needlessly upsetting his mother.  If it was something else ... Jonathan pushed the thought aside and went to find the second phone and the list of numbers for getting in touch with Lex in an emergency.

***

Lex opened his eyes and immediately regretted it.  He was staring up into a face that he was fairly certain nobody’s mother could love.  The scar-faced man was examining him; Lex felt rough fingers clasp his chin and move his head from side to side.  He glared and resisted the movement, frustrated at his own weakness when he found there was little he could do to prevent being man-handled.

“So you see, General Seine,” a woman in a white lab coat was saying, “his recovery is remarkable.  Even without enhancements.  His baseline recovery time is at least five times the normal, possibly higher.”

Lex couldn’t help it.  He snickered.  The two people stared at him with open amazement.

“Your name is General Sane?” Lex said, incredulously.  The man’s dark eyes narrowed at him menacingly.  The woman seemed to shift uncomfortably beside him; she tucked her clipboard against her chest like a shield.

“Seine,” she repeated, and this time her pronunciation was closer to ‘senn.’  “Like the river.  In France,” she said helpfully.  Lex continued to smirk.

“Are you sure it’s not In-sane?” Lex asked thoughtfully, and immediately regretted it when his chin was seized again in a powerful hand.

“I believe Mr. Luthor is feeling well enough to move to stage two of the experiments, doctor,” Scarface said coldly.

“But we haven’t received word from Thrall--”

“I am giving you word,” General Seine said, and Lex could see the scar cutting his face whiten around the edges.  It seemed to writhe like a particularly restless worm when he talked.  “In fact, I will be more than pleased to help.”

Lex couldn’t see what was happening.  He was still strapped to a lab table, and his range of movement was limited to turning his head.  He pushed against the straps, straining to see if he could loosen them at all.  Somehow he doubted that he wanted General Insane to help with whatever treatment they had planned for him.

Lex turned his head in time to see the general removing his weapon from its holster.  He held it up in front of Lex.

“I believe you recognize this.  SIG Sauer P225,” he said matter-of-factly, and Lex felt his blood run cold.  Images flashed through his head.  Standing nose to chin with this man, standing between him and Clark.  Clark writhing beneath a Kryptonite collar.  The red roaring in his ears as he heard his father mentioned, wondered why he wasn’t surprised that this hell was somehow connected to the man who had raised him.  Then a dull percussive sound, the hot flash of ripping flesh, blood spilling warm and red against his white shirt.  He had fallen, then; fallen into Clark’s arms, mumbled a half-hearted apology as he felt lips touch his ever so briefly.  The rest had been darkness mixed with moments of bright white light.  The sound of strangers and rhythmic beeps, the steady squeeze and release of a blood pressure sleeve on his arm, wires and pads jutting from his chest.

Lex heard the click of the doctor’s heels on a tile floor, heard her speak into what could only be an intercom.  “Please prep for immediate surgery.  Stage two.  I’ll be bringing him right down.”

He felt the cold muzzle of the gun pressed against his side, the opposite side to where the bullet had entered the first time.  Lex lost his ability to breathe.

“Please, don’t do this,” he said, and it sickened him a little to know he was begging.  All he wanted was to see Clark again.  To tell him he loved him.  Was that too much to ask for?  He felt the general push the gun tightly against his skin, his eyes never leaving Lex’s face.

“Where’s the fun in that?” the man murmured, and it wasn’t any stretch to believe this man was insane.  Lex heard the click of the doctor’s shoes again, wondered if he could count on her for rescue of any kind.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she murmured and put a hand over the gun.

Lex let out a shuddering sigh of relief.

“You’ll destroy his liver if you shoot him there.  Here,” she said, and adjusted the position of the gun lower down on Lex’s side.

Lex closed his eyes in horror, heard the shot at the same time that he felt the side of his body burst open.  He could feel his right hand growing wet as something warm ran over it and onto the floor.  The room echoed with the sound of laughter.

Somewhere far away, someone was screaming for Clark.

***

 TO BE CONTINUED ...

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