Puzzles
by zahra

Email: frans_angel@hotmail.com
Feedback: I need it like I need booze
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: They're obviously not mine or there would be no nasty beard issues.
Dedication: To her most supreme Satanic worshipfulness, Kassie. All you have to do is tell me how high to jump.
Summary: Everything starts somewhere.
Improv #3: plastic, calendar, gloss, end

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Lex got his first Rubik's Cube when he was seven.

He's never been one for nostalgia, but all the same he can't help picking it up and studying it intently. For some reason he still has it with him and for the life of him he's not sure why. It's dusty and old, and has been at the bottom of his footlocker since he first got shipped off to Surrey eleven years ago. A foot locker that he still takes with him when he travels - pieces of the past forever in the present - now, in Smallville, and hiding under the bed right next to that misplaced Ferragamo loafer.

He can still remember the demonstration his father gave him. The way that the plastic cube rotated around and around in his Lionel's hands like an orbiting planet. The flash of Lionel's rings, wedding and signet, melding together with the primary colors. Long, white fingers transforming what was once a solid block into a myriad of colors. It was fascinating. Compelling. It was complex like his dad. Like the way that Lex wanted to be, like the way he prays he's not. The way he might wind up being.

He doubts his father intended for the puzzle to become a metaphor for his life, and how Lex sees himself, but that's just the icing on the proverbial cake. Point in fact, the cube wasn't meant as a toy or a present but as an aptitude test. Something to gage his mental capabilities. To gather exactly how good at problem solving he was because training never starts too early. He can see this now.

He didn't know it then.

It took him weeks to solve it. Nights spent pouring over it, flinging it against the wall in frustration and crying invisible tears. Just to please Lionel. Too proud to admit defeat, to say that he couldn't do it, even then. But not too proud to ask his mother for assistance.

His father said that was cheating and took it away.

When the calendar rolled forward to his next birthday, he got the cube back. A second chance to prove whatever an eight year-old scion needs to prove.

This time Lex didn't ask for help. Instead he spent hours on end manipulating the cube, and trying to coerce it into doing what he wanted it to, but glossy squares of sticker-covered plastic don't recognize the surname of 'Luthor'.

Eventually, he managed to make it work, every color in its place. Every row aligned just so, except for those two squares that weren't where they belonged. One red and one white. Almost patriotic. And to give credit where it's due, Lex _did_ try. But sometimes you have to think out side the box - so, Lex peeled the stickers off and put them where they belonged.

When he presented it to his father, Lionel studied it intently for several seconds. Running his ghostly fingers over each square separately, painstakingly slow, before peeling off the errant stickers and offering them to Lex.

That afternoon, Lex had had Hilde take him to the FAO Schwartz in downtown where he bought himself three Rubik's Cubes, two deluxe Rubik's Cubes and his first chess set.

For his ninth birthday, Lex knew what was coming ahead of time. The minute he opened the box and saw the bane of his existence, he simply smiled at his father, sat back down, and completed the square in four minutes and 38 seconds. At least that managed to get a nod out of the old man.

After that day he never touched another Rubik's Cube - until now - but it has managed to become a motivational aspect in his life. A silent example in his desire to decipher the complex. To emulate it. Perhaps because it reminds him so much of his father.

He has to give credit to Lionel for instilling this perverse desire in him. His need to solve complex puzzles, like Clark. But even more so to _be_ the ultimate complex puzzle. To think of himself at the dodecahedron version of a Rubik's Cube. Something that is nigh on impossible to figure out.

And to a certain extent he has had tremendous success because to the outside world, Lex is nothing, if not complex. Mistrusted, to be avoided at all costs, and strange, but, even that has a certain complexity about it. Because to Lex the most important part is that everyone _think_ he's complex, that he not be predictable. That everyone else take a step back, before they take one forward. That they hesitate and prepare to fail before they even attempt to understand. And most do fall into this group but there are a few that don't, and there are at least two that know the truth - whether he wishes them to or not.

Lex isn't complex. Lex is very simple. Dysfunctional, and certainly Freud's flesh and blood wet dream, but underneath all the armor and protective coating, very simple. Still only twenty-one. Still a boy. Still harboring a need to emulate Lionel the Redoubtable while seeking his approval. Still young enough to believe that maybe he can be happy in the end.

He has basic needs ///power/// and wants ///respect/// and desires ///Clark///, but he simply hides them better than most. The complex Lex is less of an actuality and more of a projection, and somewhere in the back of his mind he knows this. Knows that there is a very good reason that he aced Social, Behavioral and Abnormal Psychology without blinking.

But nothing lasts forever and on some level Lex knows this. Knows that some day the charade might end, but what he has now is enough. Secure in the power of his influence, the way that he manages to intrigue people. Manipulate them. Have them do what he wants and think it was their own idea -- the sign of a true alpha. Much like his father.

He promotes a facade of him being the Luthor fuck up just to keep everyone at bay, and it has worked, for a very long time, even _he_ is beginning to believe his own press. The spoiled rich kid who also happens to be a bottom. The bald freak who can have anyone, anywhere, anytime. The elusive enigma who makes a point of doing everything he can just to prove how unpredictable he is. It's all so - simple.

So predictable.

It's all shock without the shock value and it all smacks far too much of his father. The one man who he wants to be and never wants to be. His desire to destroy him for the way that he can see through Lex. And that may be exactly what has Lex fiddling with a toy he hasn't touched in eleven years. The realization that maybe he isn't as complex as he would have himself believe. That maybe neither one of them are. That they're less complex and much more one-dimensional. That at the end of the day, they are the same and want the same things. It's less of a fear of being boring and more of a fear of being found out

That like this Rubik's Cube, if someone fiddles with him long enough, they'll be able to figure him out too.

-finis-