SUMMARY:  Smallville, Lex.  What's my motivation?

ARCHIVE:  Please.  Wherever you like, and as often as possible.



Reasons For Being, by Mercutio (mercutio@europa.com)


He doesn't have to go into work most days.

He has a perfectly competent plant manager in Gabe Sullivan, and
Lex knows it.  Oh, the man isn't up to his father's standards --
not someone who can or should be trusted with the big picture of
how to keep 400 employees from being laid off for no particular
reason other than that Lionel Luther is feeling sadistic -- but
good at what he does, nonetheless.

If he hadn't been, Lex would've made sure he was the first person
laid off.  Or demoted, at least.  Maybe it's knowing Clark Kent
that's made him soft, or maybe it's just that Lex will do almost
anything to avoid pleasing his father.

But no, Sullivan is competent, and so Lex isn't really needed at
the plant.

He goes to work most days anyway, even though he has to invent
things for himself to do.  He spent a week playing auditor after
the level three debacle, investigating all the various departments
and divisions, finding out what they did, checking for
discrepancies in their policies and procedures.  That hadn't made
most of his employees very happy.  Nearly everyone had something to
hide, even if it was only evidence of their own incompetence and
not biological experimentation on human test subjects.  Lex hadn't
found anything noteworthy, although it had been a good education in
what really went on in the plant.  And amusing.  The documentation
division had been almost pathetically grateful that someone seemed
to care about what they were doing.

But surprise inspections and cost-cutting measures aside, there
just isn't much to do.

And so Lex is staying home today.  If 'home' was a word that could
be applied to the building he lived in.  Curled up in his blankets,
awake and not wanting to be, staring at the pillow.

No reason to get up.  Nowhere to go.  Very little reason to do
anything, really.  Old regrets popped to the surface of his mind
one by one before he suppressed them, and wasn't he awfully young
to have old regrets?  If his father weren't Lionel Luthor, if he
weren't exiled to Smallville... he could do things.  Lex wasn't
sure what, given that he'd tried nearly everything and become jaded
of it -- all before hitting legal drinking age -- but *something*. 
And if his father weren't Lionel Luthor, and if he were poor, then
he would *have* to do something.

But as it is, there's no reason not to hide under the blankets and
wonder just when his life came down to marking time.

A rap at the door.  "Mr. Luthor?"

"What?" Lex asked irritably.  Couldn't they tell he was sulking in
here?

"Your produce delivery is here, sir."

He doesn't care about produce.  In point of fact, even if he ate
every meal at the mansion, a single man living alone would have
difficulty justifying a weekly produce order.  Lex suspects his
cook takes the excess home with her, as he has no live-in staff to
consume it.  But he keeps ordering it, because it means something
will happen.  It means Clark will come over.

He gets out of bed.  "I'll be right down."


-the end-