Sometimes, you become a pen pal with someone, and you kind of fall in love with them? A little? Just from the words they write? And then you finally meet them in person and it turns out they're an utterly insufferable asshole, but unfortunately also hot. And it's too late to do anything about it because the two of you are the only geniuses who can save the world, so you spend years working in close quarters under unimaginable stress with only each other to take it out on. And then it turns out that in order to save the world, the two of you are going to have to merge minds with each other and a monster - and it'll probably kill you, because you're obviously not compatible, but then it turns out you two are compatible? Like super compatible? Like soulmates compatible? And you save the world together and everything is amazing.

But then one of you drifts away, and it hurts, but there's no reason that needs to be a reason, until years go by and then you discover that maybe you were also compatible with the monster and the "girlfriend" you thought he had left you for was actually a monster brain in a jar and the "drifting away" was a bit literal and his mind has been completely taken over by the monster and also he's going to destroy the world if you don't stop them - stop him, this time - and it has to be you, because you're the only one who can get through to him even a little. And you do, you save the world, but you haven't saved him yet, because he's tied up in a basement cell with the monster still wrapped around his brain - and the story ends there because they didn't get funding for a third movie.

Luckily there's fanfic. (Most of it goes AU after the first movie but there's a fair amount where you save him after the second, too.) This is just a tiny sampler of it.

• ich hasse dich (3418 words) by que_sera
  Fandom: Pacific Rim (2013)
  Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb, Raleigh Becket/Mako Mori
  Additional Tags: Secret Relationship, POV Outsider, Foreign Language, Deutsch | German
  
  Having a second language in common is useful sometimes.



• How to Train Your Kaiju (21753 words) by psikeval
  Chapters: 6/6
  Fandom: Pacific Rim (2013)
  Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
  
  The one where they adopt a baby kaiju!



• i bring scientists (you bring a rockstar) (14102 words) by pseudoanalytics
  Chapters: 1/1
  Fandom: Pacific Rim (Movies)
  Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
  Characters: Newton Geiszler, Hermann Gottlieb, Amara Namani, Vik Malikova, Ou-Yang Jinhai, Ilya (Pacific Rim), Suresh (Pacific Rim), Tendo Choi, Hannibal Chau, Mako Mori, Raleigh Becket
  Additional Tags: Team as Family, Found Family Dynamics, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Mission Fic, Ghost Drifting, Post Recovery Newt, K-Science (Pacific Rim), Getting Together, First Kiss, Making Out, fluff with plot, Jurassic Park References, Domestic Fluff, Kidnapping
  
  Telling them that he was getting along with Newt was supposed to be an unmissable signal that he was only speaking under duress, Hermann is not sure why it's not working.

Ah, Clark Kent/Lex Luthor: the pairing for which the term "Foeyay" was coined.

I feel like I must have always shipped Clark and his arch-nemesis at least a little bit, because that's what I do, but Lex wasn't really there in the limited Superman comics I had access to before the internet, so I didn't really know much about it until Smallville. Smallville is a fandom I have kind of a weird relationship with? It was the (non-Harry Potter) fandom that was huge at the time that I was just starting to admit that maybe I wasn't monofannish after all. So I read a ton of it! But it's got the distinction of being probably the first fandom I ever read a ton in where I didn't feel any real emotional connection to either the canon or the fandom community? I just read a ton of fic, because, look, there was a lot of quality Clark/Lex fic! And, you know, foeyay! Lots of foeyay.

But canon was, like, bad. Like even for someone who was measuring it against, like, Buffy and Highlander, it just, wasn't very good. And at the time I still had the false belief that I had to engage with canon in some way if I wanted to be in a fandom. I still can't tell you anything much about the plot of Smallville other than that Lex moved to Smallville and had a ton of both sexual and ethical tension with teenage Clark, who spent a lot of time shirtless in cornfields (I'm honestly not sure there *was* much more to it?) As such my canon for them is really more Superman: Birthright, the DCU graphic novel they put out around that time in order to capitalize on Smallville.

Also this vid, which after ten years of encountering it every con-txt has basically overwritten anything I may have once known of Smallville canon. It covers the basics right?

And looking back at recs list from the time period I must have been reading it heavily, everything looks vaguely familiar but nothing really stands out.

So here are the only three Clark/Lex fics I could find back in my old bookmarks by authors not already accounted for. 2005-2009 me says they are good?

• The Butterfly Effect (11648 words) by The Spike
  Fandom: Smallville
  Rating: Mature
  Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
  Relationships: Clark/Lex
  Additional Tags: Drama
  
  Lex gives himself the power to see the future.



• The Rules of Blue (7607 words) by Thamiris
  Chapters: 1/1
  Fandom: Smallville
  Rating: Explicit
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Clark Kent/Lex Luthor, Clex
  Characters: Clark Kent, Lex Luthor
  Additional Tags: Slash, Romance, Comedy, Future-fic
  
  Lex didn't have sex with Clark Kent.



• Conflicts of Interest (54768 words) by rageprufrock
  Fandom: Smallville
  Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Series: Part 1 of Conflicts of Interest
  
  Lex has a kid. (With Clark) (Them having a kid together is still comics canon btw)