Chapter Text
Early June, 2003
As he was escorted into the downtown Lisbon police station, Lex rolled his eyes at the officer’s ongoing tirade about the sorry state of the world and no-good American tourists. During the first run-through that had started sometime after pulling over and before being ordered to get out of the rented Maserati, Lex hadn’t been able to parse much of the cop’s quick, irate speech. It had been a while since he’d needed his Portuguese, after all. However, the policeman had kindly repeated himself several times so that by the time he was giving his name to the booker, the Luthor heir knew the public servant’s grievances backwards and forwards, and had learned several new profanities in the bargain.
“Então?” The officer stopped his monologue to glare a question at Lex. “Que dizes para si mesmo?”
Mister Luthor raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Advogado, por favor.”
The policeman set his jaw. It was the only thing, besides his name, that Lex had said during the entire procedure.
“Amanhã.”
Lex shrugged. An inefficient exit from police custody would piss off his father even more than his relapse into hedonism.
They led him to the main holding cell just behind the booking station. There was the apparently universal collection of drunks and thugs, a prostitute, and a dark-haired woman in an expensive-looking white and black club dress who was resting her head against her folded knees in a way that suggested she was trying to sleep. She was tall, slender and fit under the scant material of the dress, and in the harsh fluorescent light of the cells her skin was almost shockingly pale. When they opened the door, her head came up enough to look at him, and he saw piercingly blue eyes and elegant cheekbones through the veil of loose strands of coal-black hair.
He knew her immediately: Helen Wayne, scion of Gotham, only surviving member of her family and heir to not one but two fortunes that ran older and deeper than the empire Lionel Luthor had built. Lex smiled enough to show teeth. Tonight was turning out to be interesting.
Once they had locked him in and taken off the handcuffs, he turned nonchalantly and sauntered over to the emptiest section of bench. It was the space immediately next to Ms. Wayne.
He felt her gaze flick over him efficiently, taking in his fine wool trousers, custom-made Oxfords, Italian leather belt, and dime-a-dozen sleeveless undershirt.
“Where’s the rest of it?” she asked in a low, throaty voice that sounded a little the worse for a long night’s wear.
Crossing his legs casually, he leaned back, hands laced behind his head. “The car, I think.” He waggled his eyebrows at the officer standing guard. “It’s no fun if you know where all your clothes are.”
“Mmmm.” She didn’t say anything, and he couldn’t see most of her face between her knees and the fall of her hair, but he was pretty sure she smiled. “Busy night, then.”
“Why, Ms. Wayne, I’m just getting started.” He tried to put together her evening from her appearance and failed, intrigued. “And you?”
“Winding down, Mister Luthor.” She kept her eyes on him, studying him with a lazy intensity that suggested more was going on inside that lovely head than the society pages tended to imagine, and when her chin lifted a fraction more to give her a better view of him, he could see that the curve of her right cheek was vividly blue and purple with a fresh bruise. “Though it was a colorful experience. Lisbon men are very ... vigorous.”
He held her gaze steadily. “I see. I can only imagine he was trying to make up for deficiencies in other areas. Although,” he drawled, smirking, “he must not have been very good at that, either, if you’re the one in here.”
“He wasn’t. Neither were his friends.” She lifted her head enough that he could see the flash of teeth in her smile. “The police may have gotten around to them eventually. The paramedics were in the way, last I saw them.”
Which would explain, Lex thought to himself, the unoccupied bench and the distance the drunks are giving her.
“I applaud your skill and thoroughness, Ms. Wayne. What kind of training do you have? I’m partial to tae kwon do, myself.” She had to have some kind of formal education in the art, given her body type and the three or more grown men she’d incapacitated.
“Boxing. Aikido. Jiujitsu. Singlestick and fencing have their own pleasures.” There was a note of satisfaction in her voice at the topic, at just the idea, that he could hear even through the husk of her voice. “Do you fence, Mister Luthor?”
He grinned with genuine pleasure. “Since I was twelve. Glorious, isn’t it? Tactics and adrenaline all at once.” It was something he was good at, giving someone bits of the truth. Over time he could curate a nuanced, false image of himself made entirely of small honesties.
Her soft, molten chuckle was provocative in a way he wasn’t quite ready for, in spite of the dress she was wearing, but since she lowered her face back to her knees at that moment he was spared the fact that she might have seen it on his face. “Will you take a bet, Mister Luthor?”
“What sort of bet, Ms. Wayne? I’ve heard it’s good to know before jumping into these things.”
“If my lawyer gets us out of here first,” she said, her voice muted by her knees but still sly, “you buy me lunch and give me a fencing match. If yours gets us out first, I buy you dinner and you take me for a drive.”
Lex raised an eyebrow. “You assume I’d have mine get both of us out.”
“Of course you would.” She fixed him with those piercing blue eyes again, and it was like being a great deal more undressed than he already was. “Think it through.”
With a smirk he let his gaze wander down and back up. “Of course. You’re the most fun I’ve had in ages.” He nodded, extending his right hand. “I accept.”
She reached out and took his hand in her own, and he could feel the strength in those slender fingers when she gripped him. “Besides,” she said in that same mild, almost lazy tone, “you never pass up a chance to throw your weight around to impress a woman. Especially if it will piss off a few authority figures at the same time.”
His laugh reached every part of him, for once. “Beautiful, thorough, and you have my number. Luck is with me tonight.”
Turning to face the guard, he called out loudly while gesturing the man over. “Policial! Sim, você.” The guard looked annoyed. “Telefone. Agora.” Newlin would be cranky about the time, but a nice bonus should take care of that.
The police officer ostentatiously ignored him. Lex frowned and memorized the name and number on his ID tag. Something unfortunate would have to be arranged for the man.
Helen smirked. “Problem, Mister Luthor?”
His smile was dazzling. “A minor setback, Ms. Wayne.” His mouth twisted into a smirk. “Care to spar?”
“I don’t think we’re going to have that kind of time,” she told him, eyes dark with amusement.
He settled back against the wall. “In that case, Miss, I await the morning with bated breath.”
“Isn’t it morning yet?” She arched an eyebrow at him, smiling, and outside in the lobby there was a sudden muffled ruckus of voices in English and Portuguese. “I’ve lost track of the time.”
Outwardly uninterested in the noise, Lex shrugged. “Three-ish, last I saw. I was referring to the more traditional definition.”
“Mmm.” Her smile grew another notch. “Breakfast sounds lovely. Join me, whichever of us wins the bet.”
“I’d love to, Ms. Wayne, and I know just the place. Great pasteis de nata.” Listening intently to the new voices - an American and an interpreter - he resigned himself to losing the bet.
The door to the holding area snapped open, and two women and a man in the black suits and white shirts that said security in any language came through at a brisk walk with the station sergeant trailing after them. The leader of the group was as tall as Helen and more heavily built, her olive complexion and dark hair both striking in hawkish sort of way, and her fierce dark eyes settled on Helen with the focused intensity of a high-powered laser. “Miss Wayne,” she said, her voice absolutely unamused, “I am going to start putting you in armored vans that lock on the inside from now on.”
“We both know that isn’t going to happen, Capaldi.” Helen stretched slowly, the motion so elegantly feline that Lex found himself thinking of the tiger that had been part of his seventh birthday party, and glided to her feet with a graceful fluidity that told him a great deal about exactly how much martial arts training she must have had to move that way. “I’m just glad your little toy started working again.” She ran a fingertip around the elegant platinum-inlaid bracelet around her wrist that Lex noticed for the first time was made of brushed titanium. “I trust that Ethan is already about his work?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Capaldi’s eyes narrowed, and she gestured for her back-up to cover the entrances. The man and woman both went about it with hearteningly professional efficiency. “The sergeant here was about to let you out.”
“Tell Ethan I want this man released as well,” Helen said with a flick of her fingers toward Lex, “and his car returned from impound. Then the two of us will be going to breakfast.”
Capaldi turned and looked Lex over with hard, disapproving eyes. “At least let me run a background check on him first, ma’am.”
Lex gave her his best insolent smirk, smiling when her glare tightened noticeably.
“A background check on Lex Luthor? I can only imagine it would make interesting reading.” Helen grinned impertinently. “Arrange it. And Capaldi?”
“Ma’am?”
“Thank you,” Helen said, in a voice that was so gently personal that Lex understood entirely the flash of exasperated, intimate loyalty on the bodyguard’s face as Capaldi nodded, just once, and then dragged the sergeant back out to the front room with her.
Standing, Lex made a show of stretching. Nonchalantly drawing attention to his well-muscled arms always amused him. “I have got to get one of those. Is it proprietary tech?”
“Simple encrypted GPS tracker,” she replied. “Mounted inside the bracelet. I disabled it right after I ditched her people for the night. When I arrived at the station, I fixed it.”
Both the Wayne security people spared a look from their job to glare at her. Helen smiled back, undeterred, and suddenly Lex couldn’t stand the hours that lay between them and their first fencing match. “I needed the privacy,” Helen explained, smiling faintly and turning to look at him with those deep blue eyes that gathered even the harsh light of the fluorescents into themselves. “You understand.”
His own, paler eyes regarded her with recognition and admiration. “I understand.”
“I left my rental somewhere in the Alcântara district,” she said, and her lips curved up into a smile that at least said convincingly that it was just for him. “You’ll have to drive me to breakfast.”
The grin spread across Lex’s face slowly. “Ms. Wayne, I hope you like fast cars.”
“And fast men?” she grinned back, offering him her arm.
“You took the words out of my mouth.”