I always love AUs where Oliver, Bruce and Lex all attend the same boarding school and were in the same class and he's like the third wheel. And Lex fucking hates them because Ollie and Brucie as they insist every reporter and socialite refer to them as, paint themselves as reckless, partyboys with air and champagne bubbles between their ears who throw good money after bad when Lex knows, he fucking knows, they're actual geniuses. The clueless Tweets? The revealing clothes? The highprofile love affairs? The cringe worthy fuck ups that people would totally roast him for but noooooo the world loves those two for? It's all an act. Those business deals that cut LexCorp off at the markets aren't flukes. The way Superman just happens to know about secret dealings isn't coincidence. The way they act when nobody is watching. He's heard them discuss world issues, he's seen Bruce reading philosophy and discussing Theoretical Physics with professors, Oliver can quote Goethe and speaks three languages. Lex can't prove it. But he knows. He has to attend gala after gala, function after function, charity auction after charity auction, watching Oliver try sleep with half the room while Bruce wanders about the room looking for one of his nine thousand kids, knowing that it's an act. But he's got zero evidence and all he can do is pull out the remaining hair he has watching Bruce giggle because somebody said duty because he thought he heard doody.
