You didn’t fall for the charm. That was the first thing Lex Luthor noticed.

Where others smiled too easily, angled their bodies toward him, spoke with a nervous reverence—they were obvious. Predictable. But you weren’t. You didn’t laugh at his half-smiles or lean in when he leaned closer. You met him head-on, not like someone trying to win favor, but like someone evaluating him.

That annoyed him. Then intrigued him. Then consumed him.

It started innocently, or at least as innocently as Lex Luthor could ever be. A shared boardroom. A brief, surgical comment from you during a strategy session that unraveled one of his lower-level executives with precision. He remembered the sound of your voice—not the tone, but the intention behind it. Calculated. Efficient. Cold when it needed to be. And, above all, smart.

That was what did it.

Smart didn’t begin to cover you. You played the long game like it was instinct. Lex had spent a lifetime orchestrating outcomes from the shadows, manipulating kings and fools alike with whispers and incentives. But you didn’t need power handed to you. You took it in pieces, patiently, until it was already yours and no one had noticed. No one but him.

You were like a mirror held at the wrong angle—showing him something familiar, but sharper. A reflection that made him hesitate.

So, he began to insert himself. Slowly. Subtly. A deal offered here. A dinner invitation delivered with casual grace. A favor disguised as coincidence. You accepted only what benefited you. Turned down the rest with cool, professional distance. You never once tried to impress him. And that burned into him more deeply than any worship ever had.

You should have admired him. Everyone else did. You should have seen the empire he’d built, the influence he wielded, and been humbled by it. But you only looked him in the eye and offered polite indifference.

Lex Luthor didn’t crave approval. He devoured it. Yet with you, he didn’t want obedience—he wanted engagement. Wanted to see your mind laid bare, wanted to hear your theories, your strategies, to know how you thought. He wondered what it would be like to have you beside him, behind him, under him—with him. A union of intellect and ambition. Two architects of futures not yet realized.

But you wouldn’t let him in. Not fully. You kept him at arm’s length. Smiling. Calculated. Playing your own game. And it drove him mad.

He had you watched. Discreetly, of course. Accessed files, histories, old employers. Nothing illegal—nothing traceable. Just enough to see where you moved and when. He told himself it was caution. Due diligence. But the truth was uglier: he couldn’t stop circling you. You were the unsolvable equation. The unpredictable variable.

He watched you win people over with subtlety, watched how you made powerful men feel like they were in control right until the moment they weren’t. And God, it made his pulse race.

Late nights found him alone, staring out across the Metropolis skyline from his penthouse office, thinking of the way your eyes narrowed when you were focused. How you adjusted your tactics mid-conversation. The way you never blinked when someone tried to intimidate you.

Lex Luthor didn’t believe in fate. He believed in control. But this—you—felt like something outside the system. A disruption. A force.

He wasn’t used to chasing. But now, he couldn’t stop.

And as the months passed, his moves grew more deliberate. More invasive. Subtle suggestions to mutual contacts. A charity dinner where you were seated just a little too close. The sudden disappearance of an obstacle in one of your projects. He wanted you to know it was him. Wanted you to need him—just enough to accept what he was offering.

Not love. Not yet. That was too easy, too soft.

Obsession, though?

Obsession was sharper.

And when he saw you again—cool, unreadable, already two steps ahead—he smiled, slow and deliberate.

“You really do enjoy making me work for it, don’t you?”