#uncle lex.

[gothamincarnate]

((ok but, jon teaching lex slang and stupid things like memes. the public catches jon and lex dabbing once. basically, meme team lex and jon.

[ @smallblueboyscout ]

There’s some viral video from someone’s phone, no audio. Superboy and Lex had rounded up some robbers and are milling around waiting for the police to show up. Maybe waiting  for another building to save. 

They’re talking and Lex keeps shaking his head. Superboy dabs, making supplicating gestures.

Is he gonna-- yes, he is. Lex Luthor in his blue-and-red Superman suit and cape fluttering in the breeze, does his best to dab, but has his head turned the wrong direction. Superboy shakes his head and shows him again, and Lex tries again with a shrug. Superboy jumps up and down and claps his hands. Lex does it again with his other arm. Always the showman, Lex puts his whole body into it, smiling along with Jon even while he’s making a fool of himself. 

The robbers that are tied up start laughing and Lex shoots them a glare. The video cuts off with the anonymous recorder laughing their ass off.

Lex tried to get it taken down out of embarrassment, but Jon honestly enjoyed it, and it’s a nice little memory. He ends up retweeting it to his Lexcorp twitter in a show of good faith.

[gothamincarnate]

[ @smallblueboyscout ]

-- HE WAS pulled from his fears by Jon running up, slamming into him with a tight hug. Lex laughed, trying to breathe-- “Jon, I’m not in my armor, try to be more careful.” He laughed, looked down and ruffled his adopted nephew’s hair. He wiped his own face, putting on a brave expression for him. “I told you it was going to be okay. And Clark’s writing about it, so I know he’ll handle it well in the paper.” The world wasn’t perfect now, but it was nicer than the one that he’d grown up in.

He pulled a battered pink-and-blue pride pin from his pocket, pinning it onto his suit. The one Jon had bought him, so many years ago.

[gothamincarnate]

[ @smallblueboyscout ]

-- “Look, Jon.” He sighed deeply, very deeply, and knelt down. Eye to eye with this overpowered, overtrusting kid. “You can’t be around him. He’s a bad guy. A literal bad guy.” He grimaced and forced himself to laugh, trying to focus on Jon’s safety and not his own guilt for setting some precedent. “Even when I was...  He has lines he crosses that I don’t.” 

He swallowed a knot in his throat, looking off to the side. “He would, and has, hurt kids before.”

[gothamincarnate]

[ @smallblueboyscout ]

-- “Uncle WHO?”

[gothamincarnate]

((YES LET LEX LEARN TO BE OK WITH MAKING A FOOL OF HIMSELF. also jon becoming a bit more of a show off for the public, part when hes in costume, and part when he and lex are just hanging out as uncle and nephew. hes not as bad as, say, conner, but jon starts trying to keep the cameras on him so he can act like a kid. also: jon acting like a kid. let him have fun. lex taking him to more kid based vacations. lex wearing a mickey mouse hat and getting a picture with goofy

[ @smallblueboyscout / @pseudcsuper ]

THIS IS THE CUTEST SHIT IVE EVER SEEN

[gothamincarnate]

"Uncle Lex...?" Jon had been sitting on the floor and working on homework before he had interrupted the quiet with the start of a question. He had a small frown on his face. "Why do people kill people? I know they /do/ kill people. But... why?"

Lex froze from doing his own paperwork, staring down at Jon. It was certainly a question he'd wrestled with since he'd first donned the cape and crest. He took a moment, then stood up and leaned against the front of the desk. His arms were folded and his gaze was flitting between Jon and the middle distance between as memories flitted by. "Because... They see no other choice to get what they want. Or self defense. Or because it's easy for us to..." He sighed, it was a pitiful and weathered sound. Dripping in guilt and frustration. "It's easy to dehumanize someone. To see them as an... Antithesis to your goals. Then, you stop seeing the enemy as a person. It's just... A thing, an animal, or even less." Nessecary sacrifices, hadn't he called them once? Just numbers, not souls or lives with families and jobs and hobbies. Just numbers in a war. "It's not right. But that's--" He shrugged, keeping that promise to himself that he wouldn't ignore his past or try to sanitize it. "That's why I did it. Because, I thought there was a danger I needed to stop. That I was the only one who could. It was simply... Numbers, statistics." Was it possible to hate your past self so much you cope by seeing him as a different person? But he couldn't, too easy to escape the consequences that way. So, he spoke bluntly. Both for his sake and Jon's. "It's frightfully easy to just... Ignore the details and just see... The shell, the... Well, the body." It helped when he wasn't getting his own hands dirty. The few times he did, however, he'd done the same. Seen them as a problem instead of a person. Just something disposable. A shrug, he grimaced and shook his head to clear the memories.