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“Hello,” Savage says, and Clark has always been a good hand at reading other people: there's a weight to the touch that settles on his shoulders that sings of longing, and despite knowing damn well whom he's looking at, pity lances through him anyway; he has to bite his tongue to keep from saying hello right back.
-
Savage's house feels like a museum, every which wall towering overhead and filled to the brim with trinkets from worlds long gone, each of them indexed by date and geographic location upon discovery. The ladders can be programmed to approach whatever receptacle Clark wants to examine, and even given all the time offered to him by the end of the world, he thinks it might be another several thousand years until he's seen every single one.
In the middle of the night, though, he finds himself sorting through the lower shelves with a kind of detached curiosity. It's all interesting, but none of it is pertinent—none of it can help him get home.
He can't sleep, so once he's lost interest in the relics, he takes the time to walk from room to room. The house is well-kept in some places and almost frenetically messy in others, like there are times when Savage can't do anything but clean and then times when all he can think to do is throw things violently on the ground. There's art on the walls—self-restored Vermeers and winding dead landscapes that could only have been painted by the hand of Savage himself. There are musical instruments from every culture and country, on stands and in cases, each recently polished.
It's odd to think of Vandal Savage as a man afflicted with loneliness. He'd known Savage to be a solitary figure in general, alone but not lonely. Clark himself usually tends towards the opposite, always accompanied but sometimes finding himself adrift.
He squats by an old classical guitar propped up on a stand by a corner, plucking his fingers absently along the length of a string. The small tone that emerges seems to echo in the house, the most recent in what must be a thousand laments for the world both of them have accidentally left behind.
-
He wishes he could be more surprised when Savage kisses him, but he wasn't born yesterday. Savage looks at him like he's an oasis in a long stretch of desert, taking every opportunity to furtively brush the very tips of his fingers over Clark in passing to make sure he isn't just a fever dream or a mirage. He's done well to politely ignore it, trying to keep Savage's focus on helping him, but he supposes it was only a matter of time.
So he waits out the warmth of Savage's mouth. He doesn't know what else there is to do. He's already beaten the crap out of the guy once, and that felt as futile as punching the ground beneath his feet. He knows he's still stronger than Savage, but maybe the same hopelessness that darkens Savage's eyes is what weighs down Clark's own arms, keeps Clark from pushing him away.
Eventually Savage pulls away, with a deep, lingering breath.
“My apologies,” he says at last, his tone level. He runs a hand through his hair. “The years seem to have taken a toll on my manners.”
Clark looks away, but even without super-senses he can tell that Savage is practically vibrating in his pressed suit.
“It's alright,” Clark says slowly. “I understand. But for your sake and mine, we need to focus.”
Savage's eyes are deep, deep black, like all the holes he's carved in the world. “Focus,” he repeats. “Of course.”
-
While Savage scans regions both near and far for energy sources, Clark busies himself with helping out with home improvement where he can. He's not sure why he does it, considering the fact that if their efforts work, this world won't even exist—but he needs to keep his hands busy when his analytical mind isn't up to snuff, and anyway Savage doesn't seem compelled to stop him.
He likes to take care of the gardens manually, the way his mom taught him, tilling the alien fields with careful hands. The memories are distracting, but in a nice way, warming him as well as the red sun on his back. Also, keeping some distance between himself and Savage is probably for the best at this point.
Then there's a day he spends entirely in the field, and as the sun rolls its way to the other end of the too-close sky, Savage steps out of the house and meanders into the lawns. He's got a towel and a glass of water.
“Oh,” Clark says, rubbing sweat off his forehead with the heel of his raw palm and accepting both gratefully. “Thanks.”
“It's the least I could do,” Savage says.
As Clark tips the glass into his mouth, he becomes acutely aware of the fact that Savage is watching him again. Guilt tugs at him, inexplicable, irrepressible. He knows Superman attracts a fair number of possible paramours—he's always had genetics on his side—but it's another thing entirely to be getting that look from the guy who destroyed the solar system. And the last man on Earth. And the villain who murdered everyone he ever knew.
But it's quiet out here, and every minute Clark has spent here uprooting alien vegetables with his bare hands, he knows somewhere secret in his mind that he's been preparing for the worst. He's been preparing for the worst from the beginning. He can't give up hope, he never has in his life, but in the throes of these overwhelming odds he finds himself reaching far back in his memory for his father's voice: A Kent makes do.
He's not sure he likes it, but he's made up his mind before he even reaches the bottom of the glass.
He trails after Savage into the house, drops the towel on the floor, and backs him up against a wall.
Savage glances from side to side at Clark's scarred arms. Something ripples in the inky black pools of his eyes, and then it's just like that day, his very skin unsteady under his clothes. “Superman,” Savage says at length. “I'm not sure this is a good idea.”
“Me neither,” Clark admits.
“I think I'd find it hard to let you go afterwards,” Savage says. “I'm a changed man now, but in many respects still very much the same.”
Clark rolls his eyes. “As if it would be a question of letting me,” he says, and then they're kissing, Savage's hands fisted in the front of his loose tunic, his mouth wet and devouring. Within seconds Savage is rutting up against him, making small animal sounds in his throat, and Clark realizes too late that this situation is already well out of hand.
“Thirty thousand years,” Savage is saying, his hands winding their hungry way onto Clark's skin, tracing every dimple and divot of muscle. “I'm going to take you apart—”
And he means it, every word, eighty thousand years of something well-learned but long caged coalescing in the space of literal hours. Savage fucks him until he can't breathe, until every part of his body is drawn taut and tingling; he licks and bites every inch of him, his mouth lingering sweet and hot on the pulse points on the insides of his thighs; he swallows down Clark's cock with the ease of practice and the lust of millennia. He drags Clark gasping and flailing to the edge of orgasm dozens upon dozens of times, only to pull away at the last second, to subject him to some new tortuous pleasure, until Clark is drenched with sweat and trembling like a leaf head to toe, unable to speak, unable to breathe.
And then, as day starts to break outside, Clark's body aching with the strain of coming more times then his current powerless body really should allow, Savage stares down at him, more than a little deranged, his hair long loose and his body absolutely filthy at this point—and then he swings his leg over Clark's lap, starts riding him again, and Clark uses his dwindling reserves of strength to sit up, to heft Savage on his lap, fuck into him like he means it.
He doesn't, but he wonders if someday he might.
Savage makes another primal, guttural sound, and then his orgasm is slamming into them both. He comes so hard that thin white ropes of it spatter over Clark's already-stained chest, his collarbone, the underside of his chin. He kisses Clark, then, more teeth than anything, his hands roving over Clark's chest, and there's come everywhere, and when he grips Clark's jaw and accidentally-on-purpose smears some over his face—Clark snarls, but it's too late, he's done for. His last orgasm hits him like a fist in the gut. He remembers heaving Savage off of him, but after that he pretty much blacks out.
-
He's roused the next day by the smell of coffee and cooked meat. He feels like someone's tied anvils to his wrists and ankles, so when Savage sets a tray down on the nightstand, all he can do is blink at it, bleary-eyed and bewildered.
“Good morning,” Savage says cheerfully. He's tidied up and dressed in a bathrobe, the open collar of which does nothing hide the dark purpling marks cradling his throat and what Clark can glimpse of his chest. “Well, actually, it's late afternoon.”
Clark presses a hand to his face, then pulls it away with detached horror at the touch of something sticky in his beard.
“I don't mind if you sleep all day, but if your body is basically human for the time being, I might advise against it. You'll get a hell of a headache otherwise.”
After a moment Clark flattens his hands against the mattress and hoists himself up with a grunt. His muscles all seem to protest in unison; it's all he can do not to simply collapse back against the bed.
“I'm getting closer to tracking that energy source,” Savage adds. “It won't be long now.”
“Good,” he rasps. “Thank you.” His voice is rough, his throat parched. He reaches over for the coffee and looks at Savage over the top of the mug: the proud hard arch of his brow, the sheer overwhelming sanity on his face. He wishes he could be more surprised or dismayed with himself, but honestly, he's a pragmatist at heart. Sleeping with Savage may not have been inevitable, but the deed is done, and in his book why not is basically as good as yes please.
“I was thinking,” Savage says. He's playing his fingers along the bruises on his neck in a way that makes Clark's throat dry up all over again. “If you do end up going back, you should tell me all about this sometime. Wouldn't that be a hoot?”
Clark cuts him a narrow look.
“I mean, I would probably try to use it against you somehow,” Savage admits. “But still, no matter what age I am, I could use a good joke.”
-
He doesn't kiss Savage when he leaves, because it'd be inappropriate. This was the only time and place. They're both too old not to know better.
This world shouldn't have existed; it doesn't need a goodbye.
-
The Justice League arrests Vandal Savage on a Tuesday. He's sentenced by the United Nations on a Friday, and he's in a maximum-security prison not long after, his hands bound by steel gauntlets that spark electricity when he brings them too close to his face.
Superman can always visit the prison without need for an ID. The guards bow their heads in respect as he passes, but they still linger just outside the door when he asks for privacy. He finds he doesn't mind, mostly because he's not sure what he came here to say.
“Well, if it isn't my burden and mankind's boon,” Savage purrs when Clark steps into view. “What more have you to say to me, Superman?”
Clark takes a deep, imperceptible breath. “I wanted to see how you were doing. And to tell you we tore up your gravity machine and some of its key chemical components to keep the annihilation of humanity at bay.”
“Annihilation of…” Savage trails off. Then a smile splits his face. “Humanity? All of humanity?” At Clark's silence he starts to laugh, thin guffaws that could only come from the near-empty belly of a prisoner. “You wouldn't say that unless I was on the verge of defeating you all.”
He thinks of the Savage he'd known, pointing at gaping holes in the ground as if they were graves only he could see. “I wouldn't say it unless I saw a future where you were alone.”
Confusion flickers over Savage's from behind the glass, then mutiny. Looking into his murderous face has always been, one way or another, like looking at an old friend. “How naïve,” he says, dragging himself to his feet. “If you only looked into my past and present as well, you would know the hallmark of this life is solitude.”
“It doesn't have to be like that,” Clark says. “For anyone. Even you.”
Savage grins. “For fifty thousand years I've lived,” he says, “and for most of that time I've had the power of speech. It takes exceptional hubris to think there's any combination of words you could utter, soothing or otherwise, that I haven't heard in some fashion before.”
There are a thousand things Clark considers telling him, including the fact that well before he'd been hurled into the future, he's considered his own mortality at length and hadn't liked what he found. Maybe he'll live until the sun burns out for good. He doesn't actually know. It was just you and me in that future, he could say, and it could be like that again eventually. He could also talk about a promise he hadn't made and yet somehow still feels obliged to keep.
“I can still surprise you,” Clark says at last. “Give me time.”
Savage tips his head to the side, his teeth bared like an animal's. “Time, Superman, is the one thing I have in abundance.”
Clark turns away and leaves, the thick security doors reeling shut behind him. He turns one ear to the prison cell and hears, from behind layers upon layers of concrete and steel, the sound of Vandal Savage sitting back down to sort through his memories in peace. If the house in the future is anything to go by, his process in doing so is painfully categorical, well-indexed, and spirals on strictly according to his wishes.
Clark wishes he could be so lucky.