“I would like a Snow Leopard cub… if it’s not too much to ask, of course.”
 
There are so many different animals he could have asked for, and yet he goes with the Snow Leopard for several reasons. The most obvious, at least as it pertains to his new ability, is that it’s a grab bag of decent enhancements. Better senses, stronger and faster body… all around, if he had access to a Snow Leopard, he could make himself superhuman in no time at all.
 
Of course, his father doesn’t know about said ability, so it shouldn’t be quite so obvious to Lex. But then, that’s the other reason he’s picking a Snow Leopard. It’s the sort of exotic option that rich people would call pedestrian and ‘vanilla’. It’s the sort of exotic option you’d get from Googling ‘coolest exotic pets’ and doing five minutes of searching. And that’s precisely what Lucien wants his father to think he did.
 
Putting his all into controlling his facial reactions again, hiding his true desire behind an earnest and vulnerable expression, Lucien is pretty sure his gambit works. He doesn’t have much to go off of, mind… but the ever so slight sneer he catches on his father’s face, and the judgment in Lucien’s eyes… yes, he thinks he pulls it off. A Snow Leopard Cub is ‘predictable’. And right now, after the day of surprises he’s given his father, ‘predictable’ is exactly how he wants to come across to the suspicious and highly paranoid Lex Luthor.
 
“… Hmph, very well. Expect it to arrive with the necessary supplies by the morning. Taking care of it will be your responsibility however.”
 
Tomorrow morning. An insane time table by the standards of any normal person, but then to be fair, not only was his father the furthest thing from normal around, but so was Lucien’s request. All in all, he knew he didn’t have room to complain. Besides, he was relatively used to Lex’s particular brand of insanity.
 
“Of course, father. I promise I won’t let you down.”
 
Narrowing his eyes, Lex hums for a moment before looking around the room.
 
“Until today, you have done nothing BUT let me down, Lucien. We shall see if this was a fluke or not in the coming weeks. For now… Mercy, return my son to his apartment.”
 
“Yes sir.”
 
Lucien’s wide eyed reaction as Lex spins on his heel and leaves the room is not feigned. Nor does he manage to catch himself in time to hide it either. It’s just… hearing his father call him ‘his son’ does things to Lucien that he can’t begin to describe. Pain mixes with yearning mixes with hatred, and at the end of it all, Lucien doesn’t know whether he’s happy to be acknowledged as Lex Luthor’s son for the first time in both of his lives, or if he’s pissed the hell off.
 
He's still stuck thinking about it and what today means even as he follows Mercy back to the car, slipping into the back of it without a word from the silent driver. Now, it’s not like they normally spent much time talking to one another on these very infrequent and rare car rides, but at the same time, there was definitely a different… note to it this time around. Mercy was upset with him, or at the very least she was giving him the silent treatment.
 
Still, Lucien doesn’t have much time to spare on worrying about whether she’s mad at him or not for pretending to be sick and feeble earlier that morning. He’s much more concerned with what will happen next with his father. Not to mention all of the other plans that he’s formulating in his head even now. He has eight years of foreknowledge to take advantage of here. The more he does so, the less useful his information will be, and that means he needs to plan things out and be very careful with his next steps.
 
… That said, he’s gained his father’s attention. That might not necessarily be a good thing. Perhaps the ‘smart’ choice would have been to continue acting the part of the feeble, sickly fool. With his abilities, he could have played up the act today and once again disappointed his father. Then, Lex wouldn’t have known anything and Lucien technically could have moved under the cover of relative anonymity.
 
In the end, he just couldn’t do it. Clearly he really was his father’s son, because he absolutely loathed the idea of feigning weakness any longer. Sure, he’d done his part to downplay his success where Lex was concerned, but there was a difference between being seen as slightly above average and being seen as complete and utter garbage.
 
Lucien was not garbage. He had never been garbage, it turned out. And honestly? He would do his level best to avoid being viewed as garbage by anyone ever again…
 
He-
 
The car door is suddenly pulled open, and Lucien blinks as he realizes he got so caught up in his own thoughts that he didn’t even realize that they’d arrived at their destination.
 
“We’re here.”
 
Mercy’s tone is as frigid as ever, even as she holds the door open for him. Which is why Lucien is actually surprised when she locks the car up behind them and follows him into his apartment building. He would have expected her to just drop him off and drive away, but instead she seems intent on walking him all the way to his door.
 
He doesn’t know what to say to her. Maybe he should apologize? When they finally reach his door and Lucien unlocks it and enters his apartment, he turns to do exactly that… only to yelp when Mercy grabs him by the collar and pushes him further into the apartment, stepping in after him. The door closes and locks shut behind her without the blonde ever taking her eyes off of him, and before Lucien can even react, his father’s bodyguard has pushed him up against his own apartment door, eyes narrowed into icy slits as she looks at him in silence for a moment.
 
“You told your father you woke up this morning feeling like a new man. And yet, when I came to pick you up this morning, you acted as frail as ever, using me as a crutch to help you to the car.”
 
Lucien’s breath hitches, and he blushes as Mercy glares him down.
 
“Now, I won’t insult either of our intelligences by asking whether you lied to me or your father. We both know you would never lie to Lex, which means I’m the one you managed to successfully deceive.”
 
She sounds quite cross with him. Lucien can’t help but feel bad. He’d abused her trust, and while he still felt a little resentment towards her for abandoning him in the future that never was, it wasn’t much. After all, he knew she was just doing her job in the end. When Lex cut him off at eighteen, he couldn’t exactly expect Mercy to keep in touch with him or anything like that.
 
“… More than that, I know why you lied to me too.”
 
Wait, what? Here, Lucien freezes in shock. She… knew?! How? How could she possibly know about his power? No, more than that… had she told his father yet? Was she going to- wait… no, seriously, how could she possibly know about his power when not even Lex had seemed to know what he was truly capable of?
 
Lucien’s moment of sheer panic turns into confusion as he looks into Mercy’s knowing eyes. Then, as if a switch has been flicked, the blonde suddenly smirks and looks down the length of his body… at his crotch.
 
“You’re a growing young man, aren’t you Lucien? A growing young man with… needs. I imagine if you did wake up this morning without the weakness that has assailed you all your life, you encountered some feelings that would have been… repressed by your sickly nature until now. And so you saw me… and you saw an opportunity to touch a woman, didn’t you?”
 
That was… so far from the case it wasn’t even funny. He wasn’t some kind of pervert like Mercy was painting him to be! Honestly, he hadn’t asked her to help him down to the car just so he could… cop a feel or something! He’d done it specifically because he needed a template to start with, a human body to exercise his powers over biology on. That was all!
 
Of course, it wasn’t like Lucien could tell HER that. Not without exposing himself to his father’s right-hand woman, which was… probably a bad idea. Seeing as he couldn’t possibly defend himself, Lucien was left floundering, mouth opening and closing like a goddamn fish as he just stares at Mercy, rendered truly speechless.
 
This in turn only seems to seal it in Mercy’s eyes, as her smirk turns into a wide, wicked grin.
 
“Honestly, I’m impressed Lucien. You got one over on me. I wouldn’t have thought it possible… but then, clearly both Lex and I have been underestimating you for quite some time now.”
 
She pauses for a moment, before tilting her head to the side.
 
“Now then. Are you ready to receive MY birthday present?”
 
It’s immediately obvious what she’s offering. Truth be told, Lucien only has to think about it for a second. On the one hand, his one true love is Death of the Endless. More of an obsession, really. He wants to make Death cum. Is that mad? Is that insane? Possibly, but then he is the son if Lex Luthor. So maybe a little madness, a little insanity, and a little bit of an obsession with a superpowered entity so far above him it’s not even funny isn’t out of the question.
 
That said, if he was ever going to make Death cum, he needed more experience. He couldn’t just expect to go to her the next time he died, whenever that was, and suddenly be better at something he hadn’t practiced, now could he?
 
… The more he thinks about it in that single second frozen in time, the more Lucien realizes he’s right. Call it what you will. Maybe it’s intuition, or maybe it’s some sort of connection he has with Death, but it’s like he can tell she’s not expecting him to stay celibate or ‘faithful’ or anything silly like that. She’s Death of the Endless for fuck’s sake, she’s not bound by such plebian mortal considerations as monogamy.
 
That said, Lucien was going to need a LOT of experience if he was going to have a single chance of one day impressing Death. And that experience… started today, with Mercy Graves.
 
“Y-Yes. I mean, ahem… yes, I’m ready.”
 
Mercy’s grin turns coy, and she abruptly lets go of him, turning and sashaying her hips all the way to the bedroom. Lucien follows after her as she leads him to his own bed, grabbing him and sitting him down on it once they’re both standing before it. Then, much to his shock and awe, Mercy drops to her knees before him, reaching for his pants. In just a few deft movements, the beautiful blonde has extracted his cock from its confines.
 
His dick isn’t anything special. Not too big, but also not too small. He hasn’t had time to augment it yet… if he’s even going to. That said, it’s the first step to accomplishing his dream, isn’t it? If he’s going to make Death of the Endless cum for him, he’s definitely going to need a super dick. Then again, he’ll need a lot more than just a super dick. He’ll need a super everything. He’ll need esoteric powers that reach beyond the mortal ken. He’ll need-
 
Ooooh. Oh yeah, that feels good. Lucien blushes, as Mercy licks along his engorged cockhead. He quickly grows to full mast in her grasp, as she strokes him up and down for a few moments while lapping at the tip of his dick. He doesn’t want to cum too soon though, so he reaches out with his power, slowing down his impending release. He’s not going to cum without deciding to cum.
 
Mercy, it becomes clear, is not expecting him to last long. In fact, after a few minutes, the blonde frowns and finally engulfs his cock in her mouth. At the same time, she grasps his balls for the first time, caressing and fondling them in a way that when combined with her tongue and mouth, would surely have brought him over the edge if he hadn’t been holding his own biological functions back.
 
Instead, Lucien just groans loudly in enjoyment, wanting to make it clear her efforts are at least having an effect. Mercy, seeing this, begins to bob up and down his cock even more, slurping and sucking at his dick like a woman possessed. Watching her, Lucien can’t help but smile. Technically, his father’s bodyguard is in control here. But in actuality, he’s in control. She just doesn’t know it. She has no clue that he’s the one who decides when they’re actually done here.
 
That said, he knows that just this much isn’t enough for Death. Even with complete control over his own biology, Lucien just knew that Death would override his senses, overwhelm his mental focus, and make him cum anyways, long before he could get her off. Death wouldn’t fall for such a simple trick, that was for sure. Though to Mercy’s credit, it wasn’t as though she had any way of knowing about his powers.
 
Eventually, he’ll have to cum. Setting a timer in his head, Lucien lets his mind wander for a moment. As he does so however, he finds himself coming back to the same thing, time and time again. That nanochip in his father’s head. What the fuck was it? What was it doing there? What did it mean?
 
“Glughk! Glughk! Glughk!”
 
Blinking, Lucien looks down to see that Mercy has gotten so desperate she’s taking him into her throat now, positively gagging him on her cock. Not that she LOOKS desperate as she stares up at him intensely, seeming peeved that he wasn’t paying her the proper attention she deserved. In apology, Lucien refocuses on his father’s bodyguard as she rests her hands on his legs and deep-throats his entire cock, burying her face in his crotch again and again.
 
And yet he continues to go back to that damn chip. It was weird, wasn’t it? Why would there be any sort of electronic device, no matter how small, in his father’s skull? Lex wouldn’t allow such a thing normally… so did that mean it was there against his will? And if it was, did that mean Lucien had a duty to report it?
 
No, more than that… if it was meant to be there, Mercy would probably know about it, wouldn’t she? Looking down at her, at his father’s right-hand woman, Lucien’s lips thin out. He could ask her… or he could keep it to himself.
 
After a moment of thought, he opens his mouth to speak.