Chapter Text
It's not like he's a stranger to hearing his name mentioned in pitch meetings. Quite the opposite, actually. Lex Luthor, megalomaniac billionaire, owner of not one, not two, not three, not four, but five social media platforms, effectively creating a monopoly in the market that brought him before the senate — of course, Clark is used to his name wafting through the rooms of The Daily Planet in equal measure to burnt coffee. The same way he's used to hearing popcorn pop and couples argue and waves lap the dock from miles away while he's falling asleep in bed. Years ago, his father helped him tune into and out of his whispered voice when Clark's world turned into a cacophony of noise. After months of Lex making it clear he had no interest in knowing Clark anymore, Clark did what his father taught him. He practiced tuning out the name Lex Luthor.
Over the course of 10 years, he's become very good at it.
Very good at it.
But no amount of being good at it can prepare him for Perry looking him dead in the eye and saying: "Kent, I hear you and Luthor go way back."
Blue ink splatters both him and Deborah right next to him as he accidentally snaps it clean in half without thinking.
“What the—” Deb shrieks, pushing herself away from the boardroom table in her wheely chair. She glares at Clark like he took out a gun out and shot her and he quickly hides the two halves of the pen beneath his thigh so no one can inquire as to how he managed to split it perfectly in half.
“Deb, I’m — I’m so sorry,” he sputters.
“It’s a new blouse, Clark. It’s vintage.”
A new, vintage white blouse, he notes. Now boasting a ballpoint blue ink rorschach design smack dab in the center.
“Oh, please, Deb, I saw one just like it at Target,” Lois pipes up and even though Clark knows she's trying to mediate, as always, it's the complete wrong tact. He makes a face at her and Lois shakes her head at him like, What?
“If everyone is quite settled now," Perry booms. “Clark, can you confirm that you and Mr. Luthor were friends in high school?”
“How did you—?” Clark begins, but then looks at Lois across the table from him, whose eyes are conveniently scanning her notepad. She’d been on him for weeks after that senate hearing Lex got out of completely unscathed. He’ll talk to you, Lois had pushed him. You were buddies, weren’t you? What ever happened with that anyway?
Leave it alone, Lois, Clark told her. Apparently she took that to mean: take the issue up with Perry.
“I was in high school,” Clark says. “He wasn’t. And I wouldn’t say we were—”
Lois picks her head up and narrows her eyes at him. Oh, he was going to get her back for this. Jimmy would only be too happy to help — he still wanted to get back at Lois for the last prank she pulled on him.
“We were friends,” Clark continues. “A long time ago. We haven’t spoken in years.”
“It’s never occurred to you,” says Perry, “in all these meetings during which your colleagues have bemoaned the struggle of getting access to Lex Luthor that you might bring up the fact that you two were buddies back in the day?”
Clark opens his mouth, and closes it. Buddies. Buddies. “I—like I said. We haven't spoken in years. We were friends, but—" Clark blushes, feeling the eyes of his colleagues searing him. He imagines they're thinking, You? Friends with Lex Luthor? Fair enough. Once upon a time he'd thought exactly the same thing. "We had a few too many differences of opinion,” Clark says, looking down at his notepad.
“So do me and my wife,” Perry answers, without hesitation. “But she still picks up the phone if I call her. Say, I think, if I was friends with someone back in the day and hadn’t talked to them in a few years, and one day, out of the blue, they called me up — why, I think I’d be really curious about what they had to say.”
“He knows I’m with The Daily Planet,” Clark says, a last ditch effort to try and wriggle his way out of this bind Lois his gotten him into because it's starting to sound a lot like Perry wants him to call Lex, which is —
Well, it's just not happening. Clark sticks a finger into his collar, trying to loosen it away from his neck which is starting to burn with panic.
You love me. Lex Luthor.
Obviously, Clark. I don’t think anything has ever been more obvi—
"He doesn't speak to the press," Clark manages to say before his throat constricts completely.
“Well, Kent, I’m gonna tell you something you haven’t heard too often in reference to any of the ideas you’ve brought me thus far” Perry says, then smiles. “You’re on the story. So, figure out a way to get your old friend to answer your call.”
Clark’s sigh blows the papers spread along the table into a cyclone.
“You’ve got quite the lung capacity there, Kent.”
Perry moves on to the next story slated to be discussed and assigned, whether or not Tinder had an obligation to the public interest or individual privacy, when it came to releasing messages which proved allegations of sexual abuse on behalf of a candidate in the mayoral race.
Not that Clark could care. Not with his mind a million miles away, or, if not a million, then at least about 400, in Smallville, Kansas, where he first met Lex all those years ago. What had it been now? 10 years? They’d been estranged longer than they’d been acquainted.
Acquainted. Chloe always marveled about word choice and just how much and how little a word could reveal. Lois was always asking her, “What’s another word for x,” and if you bet who’d return an answer faster—Google or Chloe Sullivan—you’d undoubtedly lose your dollar. Clark was rarely looking to her for synonyms or antonyms because he wasn’t exactly the most prolific of writers. Perry was right that most of his ideas were getting shot down, but Clark had designed them that way. He didn’t have time to actually lead the investigation of a story, not when he had to worry about following up on leads in a different manner than The Daily Planet intended.
But to say that he and Lex were acquainted, well.
It certainly was one way of putting it.