June
10th April 2005, 21:58
Places We Have Been
NC-17/Angst
Disclaimer: Smallville and all related elements © Tollin-Robbins Productions and Warner Bros. Television, All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction, no infringement is intended, no profit is being made.
Spoilers: Everything just to be safe.
Summary: ‘He lets Chloe heal a part of him no one else has ever been able to even touch.’ Set way into the future, Chlex, with hints of Lois/Clark and Pete/Lana. Lindsay and Claire are a figment of my warped imagination.
Authors Note: This was written to get my muse back into shape so it would let me get back to “Everything” and “Missing Pieces”. This will be three parts or so, each one longer than what you usually see from me. The first part is strictly Lex POV, the second part Chloe POV, and the third part will just tie everything together. This is more centered around the characters (their thoughts, emotions, inner demons) than the Chlex, but trust me the Chlex is there.
Everyone is used or referenced throughout. The first part, which is Lex’s POV, contains a lot of Lex/Lillian/Lionel, which I guess my muse felt there simply wasn’t enough of. Lucas is used in the way I see him in the future, I tried to explain it the best I could, but if you have questions (on anything) feel free to ask.
Part I:
When Lex Luthor isn’t outrunning his life he’s getting run over by it.
Many would say Lex is a mystery, indefinable. In all actuality he’s an open book, most people just never want to take the time to read it.
He fucks women because it’s fun, because it makes him feel powerful and in control. Brunettes are his choice of poison, but ever since his days in good old Smallville, USA he’s enjoyed a blonde here and there too. Although it doesn’t escape him that none of them seemed to have the ability to measure up.
He used to take drugs to forget and drink to feel numb. The drinking is still a daily ritual but his days of doing lines in the back of some swanky, over priced club are over. Ruining your liver is far better than destroying your brain, in his rationalized, well thought out opinion, and to this day he sneaks a cigarette every once in a while when he has a sporadic craving. They’re few and far between, but addictions (of every kind) never really go away.
Lex lies because it’s easier than the truth, and really, just because that was the Luthor way. Telling the truth is an act saved for those he cares for and since that list is pretty much nonexistent nine times out of ten he doesn’t have to bother with it. He cares too little about the things he should and too much about the things he shouldn’t. One day he’ll be able to tell you why you should vote for him for President but he won’t be able to tell you why he’s the better choice.
Is it because he is a better man? Probably not. Standing next to him would probably make anyone look like a damn Saint. He’s killed men with his bare hands, ordered the execution of others with a mere flick of a wrist. He doesn’t think about it as much anymore, his impending future, the darkness that future is bound to hold, but it’s still there, lurking beneath the surface. Itching for a chance to make itself known.
It stings less than it used to, but the bite is still there sometimes, licking at his skin in the darkness of lonely nights when his bones are too tired to fuck the nameless brunette next to him in his satin sheets that some would say are as black as his soul.
Women love him for his money and while years ago he would have cared, today it rolls off his shoulders just as easy as his Armani jackets. He doesn’t love them at all so really, it’s only fair. If they’re okay with meaningless fucking in exchange for fast cars and nice jewelry, than who is he to comment?
Most women preferred to be Lex Luthor’s whore than significant other anyway. He knew how to treat the former, but the latter was foreign territory.
He stopped sending the diamond earrings as compensation around the same time he figured out the action held too much resemblance of his father, and now he just leaves without another thought. Less callous some would say, but for him it just makes him look like more of the cold bastard he really is.
Funny thing was his entire life he’d been trying not to become his father, and yet each day little parts of him seem to make themselves known that makes the two more and more alike.
And finally one day he woke up, looked in the mirror, and realized that in spite of all his attempts, destiny would eventually catch up with him.
Lex couldn’t outrun this forever. He would become his father.
* * *
Lionel Luthor and his two sons meet once a month on Sunday for brunch, a habit that started somewhere between the first heart attack and the mild stroke that had followed. Lucas and Lex oblige because he’s still their father even if the term was used in the loosest sense of the meaning. Age was finally beginning to catch up with the elder Luthor, and despite the full head of hair he still possessed it seemed to get grayer in-between visits, and the worry lines that used to cease his forehead occasionally had become permanent fixtures on his still handsome face.
By all rights a man who has suffered three heart attacks, a stroke, and a bout with liver cancer would have left this word a long time ago. But, in perfect Luthor fashion, Lionel just simply refused to die.
Some days Lucas will bring his wife and daughter to their monthly gatherings, and Lex will look on, watching as he sees a side of his brother that he had once thought he would someday see in himself. Lex Luthor and Lucas Dunlevy were brother’s, sure, but the effects of having Lionel Luthor as your only parent were clearer than day to anyone who cared to take a deeper look.
Lucas was bright and young, smiled carelessly with a wife and daughter, who looked at him adoringly, on his arm. Lex was still young by most standards, stunningly handsome with classic elegance, but alone with everything he could ever truly need, void of the only things he’d ever wanted. Still, after all these years, the love of a father is something he’s never known.
It’s the only thing in Lex’s life that bothers him more now than it used to. Foolishly Lex had made himself believe that his father’s love for his mother had somehow made up for the fact that Lionel had never loved him. Day after day Lex had let that childish notion lure him to sleep, comfort him in the place inside him that was emptied the day his mother died, in the place right next to it that was abandoned by his father.
Years later he finally came to terms with the idea that maybe Lionel Luthor had never loved his wife at all. That maybe Lionel Luthor just wasn’t capable of loving anything.
It was okay, Lex thought, he still loved his mother enough for the both of them.
* * *
Chloe Sullivan hadn’t walked back into his life, she’d strolled leisurely, but the effect was still the same.
Lex meets her again years after Smallville and years after both their relationships with Clark Kent had pretty much came to an end. She was older by then, had a wicked smile that tells of amount of wisdom and experience that didn’t match her young age, and for some reason, that Lex couldn’t explain, he found her irresistible.
They had fucked first of course and became friends afterwards.
The Sullivan-Luthor alliance was always up for speculation. Women would sneer and make crude comments of mistresses and whores under their breath when Chloe would walk by. Men would look at Lex knowingly and grin.
Were they friends? Lovers? Two people who occasionally slept together? The answer was yes, to all of the above, but slowly, over time, it had become more than that. Somewhere along the way, Chloe had become Lex Luthor’s best friend.
Friends were a luxury he’d never had, and when he was lucky enough to find one he’d always done something that had them running in the opposite direction. Lex has given Chloe numerous chances for possible exits, reasons to leave more times then he can count- fought with her, yelled at her, insulted her. She knows that he is not a saint, knows of his spotty past and the dim future ahead of him. She knows about LuthorCorp’s less than honest business.
Lex knows that on his particularly bad days she looks at him and sees the resemblance between him and his father- and yet she’s still there. Still with him in the ways that count. Still his friend.
Most days it didn’t even surprise him, Chloe Sullivan was extraordinary in ways no one would ever understand.
“So is she living here now or something?” Lucas asks one day as he flips through his brothers mail, stopping on something that probably had her name on it.
“Her stuff is all over the place if that’s what you mean,” Lex replied coolly, swiping the mail out of Lucas’s hands. Low fat yogurt in the fridge, her stuff in the guest bedroom, her clothes mixed with his in the laundry pile- Chloe had been invading his home and life long before she’d ever officially moved in.
Chloe was still a reporter, only know she was chasing Pulitzer winning stories all over the world, instead of asking him for interviews. He’d offered to let her stay with him saying it was pointless to have her pay for an apartment when she wasn’t there half the time anyway. A selfless action, Chloe had called it with that smile of hers, but really he’d only done it because he liked having her near. There was some sort of comfort he found in her presence that he had once known but had long since forgotten. That he hadn’t felt since his mother.
Their arrangement works for the both of them. He sees other women and she sees other men. Neither are waiting for the other, even though on some of his particularly bad days he lets himself admit he misses her when she’s gone. Chloe knows who he is, knows not to expect romantic dinners and sweet nothings and he doesn’t expect anything from her. They’re friends before anything else, and as unhealthy as it is, he’d rather take the relationship like it is now- rather than not have it all.
Her good nature and natural ability to light up the room balances out his tendency to be antisocial and revert to bouts of seclusion when worst came to worst. He envies the relationships she stills has with Lana and Pete after all these years, the way she’ll call Lois before she leaves on assignment and the moment she gets back. None of them approve of the arrangement between the two, but Chloe takes it in stride, defends it while she does her best to defend him. Her faith, however misplaced it may be, makes him smile and his chest tighten abruptly.
There was something about Chloe that changed him, made him softer around the edges when she was around. He had refused to notice it of course, but Lucas never failed to point it out- he was, after all, the only person who dared. She wasn’t an angel by any means, screwed around just as much as him, used people, hurt people, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not.
Chloe is his equal in all the ways that matter, and sometimes on the nights she returns from jetting across the globe after the story of the moment, she will crawl into bed with him. Sometimes he’ll screw her, and sometimes she’ll screw him, but most of the time they’ll just sleep.
She doesn’t ask who’s occupied his bed in her absence, she just changes the sheets.
* * *
The twenty-fifth anniversary of Lillian Luthor’s death sneaks up on the son and husband she left behind and hits them hard. The day usually starts the same way each year for Lex: the ritual trip to her grave, the couple glasses of scotch that followed, and then to work. To forget, to ease his mind, the heaviness in his heart. This year he’d woken up too late, had a board meeting too early, traffic had been horrendous. He put off the visit with his mother until later that night, tomorrow at the latest.
As the morning dwindled on he started to think maybe he just wouldn’t go at all, he’d forgo it this year.
The call from Lucas had came around noon, he’d taken surprise at the urgency in his voice, the worry in his tone. Lucas’s jagged edges had lessened considerably over the years, had a soft side to him now that if the people opposite him in the board room knew about, it would cause that “cross me and you die” tactic he used to become useless. Yet, he hardly ever worried unless it was about his family, and despite the slight wave of boredom that washed through him, Lex had only been partly concerned when he found out the worry had been for their father.
“He’s in the piano room having a drink,” Lucas says, and there’s a pause and Lex isn’t sure but he swears he can hear the sounds of Beethoven echo in the background, “And I don’t think it’s his first one either.”
Lionel had gotten more health conscious since he had spent the earlier part of his early sixties in the hospital. Lex had it on pretty good authority that he drank green tea, took vitamins and the crystal decanters that adorned Lionel’s private home office mostly went untouched.
Lex finds his father bent over a piano, two bottles of scotch on the bench next to him, on empty and the other well on the way of getting there. The tumbler is long since gone, smashed to the floor, and Lex watches as his father stops his furious pounding of the ivory keys to take a swig from the bottle. His fingers return soon enough, Schubert this time, complicated and angry as Lionel rushes the pace, hit’s the wrong notes a couple of times, but presses on.
“This is a little depressing,” Lex says, voice passive, face emotionless as he throws open one of the drawn curtains, “even for you, Dad.” A heavy stream of sunlight bounces through the room, over the marble floors and black as night piano.
Lionel hit’s a couple more bad notes, and finally stops abruptly, takes another long drink from his bottle, looks straight ahead. “Close it,” he says, tone as cold as ice.
Lex ignores him, makes his way over to the piano and takes the bottles away. He’ll leave the broken tumbler for the help, but for now, in a rare act of kindness, Lex decides he’d save his father from further humiliation and stop this before he drinks himself into an early grave. Lex gets his stubbornness from his father and he knows this is going to be no easy fight, doesn’t really know why he’s bothering.
Lionel is morose, his face looks worn and his hair is grayer than Lex ever remembered it being. He doesn’t look as full of life as he usually does, he looks… heartbroken almost. His eyes are red from the alcohol or maybe it’s from grief, he’s not sure, and Lex comes up beside him, closes the piano top and watches as his father leans foreword and rests his head against it.
Luthors, by rule, never show emotion, not even about this, not even on this one day a year. “Get over it, Alexander,” Lionel had told him the day of her funeral, “You’ll never get anywhere in this world if you don’t.” That thinking had gotten the both of them far in life, helped them let go of the past, but the funny thing about the past was it always caught up with you eventually.
The sunlight from the floor-to-ceiling windows sparkles off of something on his father’s left hand, and it’s then that Lex catches sight of the wedding band adorning his father‘s hand, on the finger that every day before had been bare. Lionel turns his head, looks towards his son, his face so emotional, more vulnerable than Lex could ever remember him being. Lionel had been making an effort to be a better father, a good grandfather, and this right here, him being so open, so broken should spark something in Lex. Make him feel something.
The ache in his chest he woke up with that morning was still there, but other than there is nothing. Some things just can never be mended, and both of them know it is damn near impossible to repair a relationship that was never really there in the first place.
“I scared Claire away,” Lionel breaks the silence, his voice was genuine enough and Lex remembers Lucas telling him about how he’d yelled at his granddaughter, reduced her to tears earlier that day. “I just… I-”
Lionel looks pathetic, stricken with emotion, and for some reason Lex couldn’t find reason to gloat at this rare moment of vulnerability.
“I know,” Lex cuts in when his father failed to continue, couldn’t find the words.
Claire invoked something in Lionel that he hadn’t had with Lex or Lucas, never had the chance to have with Julian. Claire Dunlevy had been the apple of her grandfather’s eye, he adored her, and no one had any doubt that he would do anything in the world for her. Until now, that is.
Now, she had a dark head of hair, and haunting, piercing eyes, and maybe it’s their minds playing tricks on them, or maybe it’s some cruel trick of fate, but now when Lionel looked at Claire his eyes were hollow, his usual stoic face torn. Claire, at the tender age of seven, bore such a scary resemblance to Lillian Luthor that Lionel couldn’t even bare to look at her.
So it was then, Lex decided, that maybe he didn’t deserve the privilege of being the only one of them to love Lillian Luthor, maybe he didn’t have to love her enough for the both of them. He still would of course, and it was with that thought that he reached out for his father, and surprisingly, Lionel didn’t object when his son helped him to his room.
He ends up picking up the shattered glass on the floor and sent the help home so his father could stew in peace when he woke up. Or drink alone if that’s what he wanted. He drove home afterwards, fighting tears that burned his eyes and he refused to let fall. And when he came to the turn that would take him to his mother, he kept going straight and couldn’t help but look back.
The sun is setting by the time he makes it back to the penthouse, he calls the office on his cell phone as he pulls in to the garage, tells them he won’t be in until morning. He’s the boss and no one argues, and even though he didn’t see her car in the space next to his, he still checks the apartment for Chloe. She’s not there, and as he passes the bar in the living room he pauses, but ultimately keeps walking, collapses on the couch and pulls at his tie uncomfortably. It’s too hot for him, and he knows Chloe bumped up the thermostat before she left.
Lex leans his head back against the couch, closes his eyes, and waits. He’s just not sure for what.
* * *
He attacks her the moment he sees her. Pushes her forcefully against the wall, claims her mouth for his own, and sighs deeply. He can feel the grunt of surprise and he swallows it, feels her shock in the rigid stance she took, feels her start to give in, her mouth open against his, her fingers clutch at his shirt. He just feels her, all of her, and as lovely as it is, he wants more. Needs more. He’s exhausted, physically and emotionally, but he needs this. He needs to feel this connection with her, needs to get lost in her.
Their kisses are ravenous and hungry, desperate and she’s fighting him for control every step of the way. She tastes like cigarettes and brandy, and Lex swallows the bitter taste, focuses on her hands cupping his face, his lips against hers, his body pinning her against the wall. He claws at the black satin of her dress, pushes it up then hastily moves to the plunging v neck. Slips his hand inside, urgently and rather clumsily fondled her breast.
It got the desired effect, she writhed and moaned against him, grinding her hips against his deliciously. He deepened their kiss, brought a hand to her face, as hers moved to un tuck his shirt, and held her face in a bruising grip, pushed into her forcefully.
Everything about his movements radiated need, want, urgency, and he knew sooner or later she would retreat, pull away from him. And she did, far too soon for his liking, tore from their kiss, gasping for breath, slid her lovely hands against the smooth skin of his back. It was a movement that usually held comfort, easiness, but now it just put him on edge.
“Can we do this every time I come home?” she rasped good naturedly, moving her hands to his sides, trailing her fingers up and down a couple of times until he shivered in response.
He said nothing, bent down to claim her lips, but she moved, and he merely nipped at her bottom lip harshly, forcefully, saw her wince and did it again.
“What’s going on?”
Not wanting to ruin the moment-which was dangerously close to happening- he smiled as lightly as he could, “nothing,” he mumbled brushing his lips against hers, more gently this time, lovingly and not at all urgent.
“Don’t lie to me,” she moved away from his lips, leans her head back against the wall, looks into his eyes. It’s obvious she sees something there she doesn’t like, and scrunches her nose. “What’s going on?” she presses again, more quietly, more carefully.
He sighs so deeply Lex knows she can feel it, they’re so close, Chloe sandwiched tightly between him and the wall and he can feel her ribs against his as he leans his forehead against hers. Looks into her eyes, “I need this,” he tells her, his voice husky with emotion, “Please, Chloe,” she narrows her eyes in concern, raises her hands to cup his face tenderly. When he speaks again his voice is choking, cracks embarrassingly, “I need this.”
Her beautiful face looks confused for a moment, like she wants to ask something, and she actually opens her mouth to do so, but shuts it abruptly. And he waits, would never dream of forcing something on her she didn’t want even though it was pretty clear she wanted this. And when she nods hesitantly, and then once more with certainty he lets the breath he didn’t know he was holding in out and kisses her. Slowly at first, leisurely, then more franticly, just as heatedly as he had been before.
And then the franticness began again, the urgency consumed him.
Fingers are clawing at her hips so hard he is positive she’ll come away with bruises, her moves his body away from her a mere fraction as their mouths tangled hungrily, her fingers fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. His coat and tie had been gone since before she got home, and he’s glad, because it’s less of a hassle to get the shirt over his shoulders.
Her hands run up his arms, over his shoulders, hug him closely as his tears lace and satin, her dress getting pushed up around her hips, her panties torn and fallen to the floor. His fingers tease the inside of her thighs, caress her too forcefully to be pleasurable before pulling away and reaching for the purse she’d dropped when he’d attacked her. Shoves it in her direction as he worked hurriedly to rid himself of his pants.
Chloe dumps the belongings of her purse out all over the floor in her haste to find the foil packet, kicks her shoes off in the process. Lex waits for her to find it, watching as she places it between her teeth and moves to the zipper of her dress.
“Leave it,” he grounds out, running his hands over her sides as he pushed her once again against the wall, she actually does groan in protest this time and if he weren’t so far gone he’d care, try to soothe her. But he needs this, needs her, and without thought he takes the foil packet from between her teeth and tears it open, slides it on in one stroke and returns back to her.
Cups the luscious curves of her ass and waits for her legs to go around him- which they do- almost immediately. He pushes the dress up forcefully, actually hears the fabric rip this time, and doesn’t wait, pushes right through, doesn’t ask if she’s ready- honestly doesn’t care if she’s not. He watches her face closely and doesn’t wait for her to get comfortable, just immediately starts to move, hears the gasp of surprise, sees the wince of pain. Feels the nails digging into his shoulders roughly.
Lex refuses to kiss her, fears he may not be able to breathe if he does, so he nibbles on her neck, sinks his teeth in harshly and he hears her grunt and moan at the same time. And Chloe takes it, all of it, all of him, gives him this. Leans her head back and closes her eyes as he pounds into her relentlessly, as he searched for a solution he’d never find. Not this way.
He’s not gentle, no gentlemen, even though she deserves him to be. Later he’ll feel guilty about this. About using her for her body, for release, using her like he uses the various women he’s been with throughout the years, in her absences.
“Are you alright?” he asks slowly, the leisure in which he says the words a stark contrast to the constant movement of his body against hers.
She nods once again, refuses to look him in the eye, “It’s just been a while.”
She’s lying of course, but he doesn’t care, just gives in and kisses her, slides a hand between them and applies pressure on her sensitized nub. He’s going to come with or without her, but he still wants to try, wants to give her something. Her hips move in guided movements at first, then to their own accord, and Lex can feel her start to respond, her orgasm start to slowly build. He knew her, had done this enough times with her to know the signs.
Lex’s teeth chatter, as loud as the pounding in his chest, he drives further, faster, harder continues to work his fingers against her, as his other hand grips her hips, guiding them to the movement he needs. “Are you-”
“Yeah,” she rasped, pulling him closer, the friction making them both moan simultaneously, “Yeah, yeah,” she repeats jerking her body in rhythm with his.
Her muscles start to flutter around him, grip him, making the sensations inside him intensify, start him down that same path. It pushes him to the point where if he had control to begin with he would have lost it. And then finally he was gone, came with a jerk and long, guttural moan that somewhat resembled her name. Miraculously she followed quickly, her own release not as strong as his, as strong as it could be.
But Chloe says nothing, just rests her head against his shoulder, her hot breath tickling his skin. After a long while he pulls away, slowly untangles himself from her, lowers her shaky legs to the floor. Watches Chloe take shaky hands and wipe the sweat from her neck, brush hair from her face.
“I’m sorry about your dress,” he says honestly, bashful, ashamed -just like he knew he would be- of using her like he did.
Chloe looks down at herself, adjusts the hem accordingly. It’s far past salvageable, ripped too badly for repair, wrinkled from being bunched around her hips. She shrugs, smiles shakily at him, “It was Lois’s.”
Somehow they make it to his room, and while she changes out of her tainted dress he changes the sheets, crawls beneath them and waits for her to join him. She does, crawls in next to him, into him, asks again, with as little pressure in her tone as possible, what was wrong.
And Lex tells her. Everything. Tells him about his mother, his father, and she understands, ignores his apologizes, doesn’t let him try to soothe the marks on her hips that were beginning to bruise, the bite mark on her neck that would keep her in sweaters and turtle necks for at least a week.
Instead she holds him close, her hand over his heart, and finally falls into a restless sleep, and he follows suit easier than he imagined he would. He lets Chloe heal a part of him no one else has ever been able to even touch.
*
He wakes the next morning with sore muscles and a clear head in an empty bed.
It takes him a few moments before he realizes there should be someone next to him. The smell of coffee lingers in the air and he’s shocked that she’s awake (she is never up before him) and even more shocked when he goes looking for her and finds her in her room. Packing.
The dress from last night is off to the side, and he wonders what exactly she’s going to tell Lois, what Lois will end up telling Clark.
“Morning.”
Chloe pauses in the midst of folding a shirt of some kind, sets it inside the suitcase and turns to face him. “I can only imagine how bad this looks,” she says, and he swears she’s beautiful when she’s not even trying.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m leaving,” she says, turning and folding a few more items and placing them into her suitcase, “on an assignment, I didn’t know how to tell you,” she pauses for a moment, “I’ve barely seen you since I’ve been back, and it just never seemed like a good time.”
“Is this because of last night?” Lex thinks it might be, but knows she’ll deny it anyway.
“Of course not. Why would it be?” another speculative glance is thrown over her shoulder, “I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, you know the drill.”
He does, and he accepts it, says nothing more. It’s her job, and he doesn’t have a say in it either way. She’ll leave that night, slip out while he’s at the office, and he’ll adjust, maybe get a phone call if he’s lucky. It’s more than he should ask for, he’s pretty sure her father doesn’t even hear about these trips, reporting on the stories that are so gritty no one wants, until they are over.
Chloe drives him to the cemetery later that morning, wait’s a few feet behind him as he lays the handpicked flowers at the foot of his mother’s grave, right next to the single red rose that already laid there. Doesn’t question who put it there, just knows.
Lex wouldn’t have came unless Chloe had made him, and he’s glad he did, feels the cool wind of the early morning rush around them, chilling him to the bone. He pressed a kiss to his fingers and trials them over the curves and edges of the letters of her name, closes his eyes and silently says what he always does: I love you. I miss you. I’m trying so hard for you. Believes she hears them. Hopes she knew then without him having to say them.
Chloe’s touch on his shoulder is soft and comforting, and as he stands his hand slides easily into hers, fingers intertwining as they walked back towards the car. He looks back, tries, even after all these years, not to be so broken without her.
As he pulls out onto the lone road that runs through the cemetery, the voice on the radio sings: “Now it seems to me/ Some fine things have been laid upon your table/ but you only want the ones you can’t get…” he watches the cemetery disappear in the rearview mirror and ignores the ache in his chest. “Your pain and your hunger, they’re driving you home/ And freedom, oh freedom/ that’s just some people talkin’/ Your prison is walking through this world all alone…”
Lex laughs mirthlessly.
* * *
Two weeks turn into two months, which slowly turns into three then six, and Lex stops going home with random women, stops going home with women at all. Does exactly what he said he would never do- he waits for her.
Lucas stops bringing Lindsay and Claire to the Sunday afternoon brunches for a while even though Lionel had apologized profusely for his behavior. Still spoils Claire against Lindsay’s wishes not to, as Lucas looked on. That day is never talked about between Lionel and his sons, and Lex decides he likes it better that way. Finds it easier to ignore his fathers biting comments than it had been.
“Lindsay’s pregnant,” Lucas tells Lex one Sunday as they sit in one of the dinning rooms of Lionel’s house that is really just too big for one person. Lionel had been felling less than stellar these days and spends more of their Sundays laying down then with them, but the sentiment is still there, and Lucas and Lex still come. “She didn’t want to say anything until we made it through the first couple of months, but I had to tell someone.”
Lucas looks proud, happy, bursting to the brim with joy. Lex smiles a real smile for his brother, doesn’t object when Lucas pulls him into a hug, does the macho manly thing and slaps him on the back a couple of times. The situation warrants it and Lex follows suit.
“She’s been listening to classical music all the time now, Bach and Beethoven- says it’s intellectually stimulating for the baby- and now all Claire talks about is learning how to the piano,” Lucas smiles brightly, “We thought maybe you could teach her a little bit, you know like ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ until she tires of it and moves on to dance class or something.”
Lex laughs, doesn’t bother to tell Lucas that she probably wouldn’t grow out of it. She was a Luthor- may have the a different last name, but she was still a Luthor- and piano playing was in their blood. His parents played, his grandparents played, and he’s pretty sure if he ever has children they’ll play too.
For the life him, in that moment, he can’t remember if Chloe plays the piano or not.
Lex hasn’t touched a piano in years. Still remembered how to play, but really just had no desire for it. His mother had taught him how to play, used to sit him down in her lap at the piano and let him rest his fingers over hers as they glided over the keys. After she’d died he’d stopped practicing because his father played, because it wasn’t as fun without those lazy Sunday afternoons when he’d play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata for her over and over because she never tired of hearing it.
“I don’t really play anymore,” Lex tells him and wonders if his father has touched a piano lately too. Figures the answer is probably no.
He offers more congratulations to Lucas, and when he returns to the empty penthouse he lingers in the living room where the grand piano sat stiffly, unused in the corner by the windows that towered above Metropolis. His feet carry him towards it by their own accord, and he lifts up the top as he sits down on the bench. It’s the same piano he’d learned to play on, a classic, and Lex bet’s the keys are probably made out of real ivory. Nothing but the best for a Luthor.
His fingers pause over the keys for a moment, press down tentatively at first, then with more sureness. He refuses to play Beethoven, plays Schubert instead, like his father had. It takes him more than a few more measures than it used to of to find his groove, but he does, hits a bad note here and there when his mind can’t keep up with his fingers.
Decides maybe he’d teach Claire after all.
As long as they steered away from the Beethoven.
* * *
Chloe stops going on long term assignments when Gabe’s health starts to fail. Starts spending more time in Seattle with her father than in Metropolis, stops working all together. When she fucks Lex after those visits, she’s always needy and frantic, clawing at his shoulders, his hips, holding him in a death grip- like she never wants to let go. Afterwards she’ll pull away from him, retreat to the other side of the bed. When he wakes in the middle of the night most times she’s not even there.
After she returns from one of the last visits she takes with her father, Lex finds her in the living room nursing a glass of scotch and a cigarette. He hates the habit, takes every chance to tell her so, but he lets it slide this time. She’s stronger than most, always cool and clam, not irrational like she had been when she was younger. The news of the cancer shocks even him, and the way she says inoperable, so coolly, so collected, it makes him shiver.
He doesn’t remember her crying, not once.
That night when he wakes to an empty bed and smells the rancidness of her cigarettes he crawls out of bed despite the aching muscles in his shoulders. He finds her wrapped in one of the sheets from his bed, cigarette between her lips, sitting at the piano. He’s not sure why, but it’s fitting almost, and he smiles when she stubs out the half smoked cigarette at the sight of him.
Her fingers flow over the keys with little ease, she looks uncomfortable, stiff, like she can’t remember the notes. An unfamiliar melody fills the air, it’s not classical, something modern maybe, he decides, but he can’t place it.
“I didn’t know you played,” he says, taking a seat next to her on the bench.
“I’m horrible,” she shrugs and stops playing. “I was better when I was younger.” Silence passes between him, and Lex doesn’t really know what to say, wants to do something to make this better, make her feel better, but can’t decide what it is he’s suppose to do. “I’m going to have to go for a little while, to Seattle,” she tells him quietly.
Lex places a small kiss on her bare shoulder, she smells like cigarettes, scotch and them. “Okay.”
Another silence and slowly she begins to lean into him, “I don’t know if I can do this,” he can hear her swallow the lump in her throat. Her voice thick with emotion, raspy from the cigarettes and lack of sleep. "I'm not even sure I can survive this."
“You will,” he tells her with an amount of conviction he wishes someone would have used when he was younger, when he needed it. “I know you, Chloe, you will.”
“Are you going to be here when I get back?” She sounds worried, uncertain, and he kisses her shoulder again, and then her forehead lovingly.
Says honestly: “I’m going to be there every step of the way.”
She doesn’t cry, even though he can see the tears in her eyes, hear the resignation in her sigh. She just simply rests her head against his shoulder and breathes deeply.
“Will you play me something?”
“What do you want to hear?”
“Anything,” she shrugs, “Something, I don’t care.”
His fingers only pause briefly before they start to flow easily, the sounds of Beehtohven’s Midnight Sonata fill the stiff air of the Metropolis penthouse. Lex doesn’t really register that’s what he’s playing until the third or fourth measure.
When he does he turns his head and watches Chloe smile blindly at him, a true smile, bright and beautiful. He thinks of his mother then, smiling that way up at him as he played for her all those years ago. Too many years ago. He thinks of her, and the ache doesn’t hurt as much, really doesn’t hurt at all.
Lex smiles back.
Usually, when Lex is busy outrunning his life he’s getting run over by it.
Sometimes, he thinks, it’s just nice to know someone was there, next to him, along for the ride.
End Part I
NC-17/Angst
Disclaimer: Smallville and all related elements © Tollin-Robbins Productions and Warner Bros. Television, All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction, no infringement is intended, no profit is being made.
Spoilers: Everything just to be safe.
Summary: ‘He lets Chloe heal a part of him no one else has ever been able to even touch.’ Set way into the future, Chlex, with hints of Lois/Clark and Pete/Lana. Lindsay and Claire are a figment of my warped imagination.
Authors Note: This was written to get my muse back into shape so it would let me get back to “Everything” and “Missing Pieces”. This will be three parts or so, each one longer than what you usually see from me. The first part is strictly Lex POV, the second part Chloe POV, and the third part will just tie everything together. This is more centered around the characters (their thoughts, emotions, inner demons) than the Chlex, but trust me the Chlex is there.
Everyone is used or referenced throughout. The first part, which is Lex’s POV, contains a lot of Lex/Lillian/Lionel, which I guess my muse felt there simply wasn’t enough of. Lucas is used in the way I see him in the future, I tried to explain it the best I could, but if you have questions (on anything) feel free to ask.
Part I:
When Lex Luthor isn’t outrunning his life he’s getting run over by it.
Many would say Lex is a mystery, indefinable. In all actuality he’s an open book, most people just never want to take the time to read it.
He fucks women because it’s fun, because it makes him feel powerful and in control. Brunettes are his choice of poison, but ever since his days in good old Smallville, USA he’s enjoyed a blonde here and there too. Although it doesn’t escape him that none of them seemed to have the ability to measure up.
He used to take drugs to forget and drink to feel numb. The drinking is still a daily ritual but his days of doing lines in the back of some swanky, over priced club are over. Ruining your liver is far better than destroying your brain, in his rationalized, well thought out opinion, and to this day he sneaks a cigarette every once in a while when he has a sporadic craving. They’re few and far between, but addictions (of every kind) never really go away.
Lex lies because it’s easier than the truth, and really, just because that was the Luthor way. Telling the truth is an act saved for those he cares for and since that list is pretty much nonexistent nine times out of ten he doesn’t have to bother with it. He cares too little about the things he should and too much about the things he shouldn’t. One day he’ll be able to tell you why you should vote for him for President but he won’t be able to tell you why he’s the better choice.
Is it because he is a better man? Probably not. Standing next to him would probably make anyone look like a damn Saint. He’s killed men with his bare hands, ordered the execution of others with a mere flick of a wrist. He doesn’t think about it as much anymore, his impending future, the darkness that future is bound to hold, but it’s still there, lurking beneath the surface. Itching for a chance to make itself known.
It stings less than it used to, but the bite is still there sometimes, licking at his skin in the darkness of lonely nights when his bones are too tired to fuck the nameless brunette next to him in his satin sheets that some would say are as black as his soul.
Women love him for his money and while years ago he would have cared, today it rolls off his shoulders just as easy as his Armani jackets. He doesn’t love them at all so really, it’s only fair. If they’re okay with meaningless fucking in exchange for fast cars and nice jewelry, than who is he to comment?
Most women preferred to be Lex Luthor’s whore than significant other anyway. He knew how to treat the former, but the latter was foreign territory.
He stopped sending the diamond earrings as compensation around the same time he figured out the action held too much resemblance of his father, and now he just leaves without another thought. Less callous some would say, but for him it just makes him look like more of the cold bastard he really is.
Funny thing was his entire life he’d been trying not to become his father, and yet each day little parts of him seem to make themselves known that makes the two more and more alike.
And finally one day he woke up, looked in the mirror, and realized that in spite of all his attempts, destiny would eventually catch up with him.
Lex couldn’t outrun this forever. He would become his father.
* * *
Lionel Luthor and his two sons meet once a month on Sunday for brunch, a habit that started somewhere between the first heart attack and the mild stroke that had followed. Lucas and Lex oblige because he’s still their father even if the term was used in the loosest sense of the meaning. Age was finally beginning to catch up with the elder Luthor, and despite the full head of hair he still possessed it seemed to get grayer in-between visits, and the worry lines that used to cease his forehead occasionally had become permanent fixtures on his still handsome face.
By all rights a man who has suffered three heart attacks, a stroke, and a bout with liver cancer would have left this word a long time ago. But, in perfect Luthor fashion, Lionel just simply refused to die.
Some days Lucas will bring his wife and daughter to their monthly gatherings, and Lex will look on, watching as he sees a side of his brother that he had once thought he would someday see in himself. Lex Luthor and Lucas Dunlevy were brother’s, sure, but the effects of having Lionel Luthor as your only parent were clearer than day to anyone who cared to take a deeper look.
Lucas was bright and young, smiled carelessly with a wife and daughter, who looked at him adoringly, on his arm. Lex was still young by most standards, stunningly handsome with classic elegance, but alone with everything he could ever truly need, void of the only things he’d ever wanted. Still, after all these years, the love of a father is something he’s never known.
It’s the only thing in Lex’s life that bothers him more now than it used to. Foolishly Lex had made himself believe that his father’s love for his mother had somehow made up for the fact that Lionel had never loved him. Day after day Lex had let that childish notion lure him to sleep, comfort him in the place inside him that was emptied the day his mother died, in the place right next to it that was abandoned by his father.
Years later he finally came to terms with the idea that maybe Lionel Luthor had never loved his wife at all. That maybe Lionel Luthor just wasn’t capable of loving anything.
It was okay, Lex thought, he still loved his mother enough for the both of them.
* * *
Chloe Sullivan hadn’t walked back into his life, she’d strolled leisurely, but the effect was still the same.
Lex meets her again years after Smallville and years after both their relationships with Clark Kent had pretty much came to an end. She was older by then, had a wicked smile that tells of amount of wisdom and experience that didn’t match her young age, and for some reason, that Lex couldn’t explain, he found her irresistible.
They had fucked first of course and became friends afterwards.
The Sullivan-Luthor alliance was always up for speculation. Women would sneer and make crude comments of mistresses and whores under their breath when Chloe would walk by. Men would look at Lex knowingly and grin.
Were they friends? Lovers? Two people who occasionally slept together? The answer was yes, to all of the above, but slowly, over time, it had become more than that. Somewhere along the way, Chloe had become Lex Luthor’s best friend.
Friends were a luxury he’d never had, and when he was lucky enough to find one he’d always done something that had them running in the opposite direction. Lex has given Chloe numerous chances for possible exits, reasons to leave more times then he can count- fought with her, yelled at her, insulted her. She knows that he is not a saint, knows of his spotty past and the dim future ahead of him. She knows about LuthorCorp’s less than honest business.
Lex knows that on his particularly bad days she looks at him and sees the resemblance between him and his father- and yet she’s still there. Still with him in the ways that count. Still his friend.
Most days it didn’t even surprise him, Chloe Sullivan was extraordinary in ways no one would ever understand.
“So is she living here now or something?” Lucas asks one day as he flips through his brothers mail, stopping on something that probably had her name on it.
“Her stuff is all over the place if that’s what you mean,” Lex replied coolly, swiping the mail out of Lucas’s hands. Low fat yogurt in the fridge, her stuff in the guest bedroom, her clothes mixed with his in the laundry pile- Chloe had been invading his home and life long before she’d ever officially moved in.
Chloe was still a reporter, only know she was chasing Pulitzer winning stories all over the world, instead of asking him for interviews. He’d offered to let her stay with him saying it was pointless to have her pay for an apartment when she wasn’t there half the time anyway. A selfless action, Chloe had called it with that smile of hers, but really he’d only done it because he liked having her near. There was some sort of comfort he found in her presence that he had once known but had long since forgotten. That he hadn’t felt since his mother.
Their arrangement works for the both of them. He sees other women and she sees other men. Neither are waiting for the other, even though on some of his particularly bad days he lets himself admit he misses her when she’s gone. Chloe knows who he is, knows not to expect romantic dinners and sweet nothings and he doesn’t expect anything from her. They’re friends before anything else, and as unhealthy as it is, he’d rather take the relationship like it is now- rather than not have it all.
Her good nature and natural ability to light up the room balances out his tendency to be antisocial and revert to bouts of seclusion when worst came to worst. He envies the relationships she stills has with Lana and Pete after all these years, the way she’ll call Lois before she leaves on assignment and the moment she gets back. None of them approve of the arrangement between the two, but Chloe takes it in stride, defends it while she does her best to defend him. Her faith, however misplaced it may be, makes him smile and his chest tighten abruptly.
There was something about Chloe that changed him, made him softer around the edges when she was around. He had refused to notice it of course, but Lucas never failed to point it out- he was, after all, the only person who dared. She wasn’t an angel by any means, screwed around just as much as him, used people, hurt people, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not.
Chloe is his equal in all the ways that matter, and sometimes on the nights she returns from jetting across the globe after the story of the moment, she will crawl into bed with him. Sometimes he’ll screw her, and sometimes she’ll screw him, but most of the time they’ll just sleep.
She doesn’t ask who’s occupied his bed in her absence, she just changes the sheets.
* * *
The twenty-fifth anniversary of Lillian Luthor’s death sneaks up on the son and husband she left behind and hits them hard. The day usually starts the same way each year for Lex: the ritual trip to her grave, the couple glasses of scotch that followed, and then to work. To forget, to ease his mind, the heaviness in his heart. This year he’d woken up too late, had a board meeting too early, traffic had been horrendous. He put off the visit with his mother until later that night, tomorrow at the latest.
As the morning dwindled on he started to think maybe he just wouldn’t go at all, he’d forgo it this year.
The call from Lucas had came around noon, he’d taken surprise at the urgency in his voice, the worry in his tone. Lucas’s jagged edges had lessened considerably over the years, had a soft side to him now that if the people opposite him in the board room knew about, it would cause that “cross me and you die” tactic he used to become useless. Yet, he hardly ever worried unless it was about his family, and despite the slight wave of boredom that washed through him, Lex had only been partly concerned when he found out the worry had been for their father.
“He’s in the piano room having a drink,” Lucas says, and there’s a pause and Lex isn’t sure but he swears he can hear the sounds of Beethoven echo in the background, “And I don’t think it’s his first one either.”
Lionel had gotten more health conscious since he had spent the earlier part of his early sixties in the hospital. Lex had it on pretty good authority that he drank green tea, took vitamins and the crystal decanters that adorned Lionel’s private home office mostly went untouched.
Lex finds his father bent over a piano, two bottles of scotch on the bench next to him, on empty and the other well on the way of getting there. The tumbler is long since gone, smashed to the floor, and Lex watches as his father stops his furious pounding of the ivory keys to take a swig from the bottle. His fingers return soon enough, Schubert this time, complicated and angry as Lionel rushes the pace, hit’s the wrong notes a couple of times, but presses on.
“This is a little depressing,” Lex says, voice passive, face emotionless as he throws open one of the drawn curtains, “even for you, Dad.” A heavy stream of sunlight bounces through the room, over the marble floors and black as night piano.
Lionel hit’s a couple more bad notes, and finally stops abruptly, takes another long drink from his bottle, looks straight ahead. “Close it,” he says, tone as cold as ice.
Lex ignores him, makes his way over to the piano and takes the bottles away. He’ll leave the broken tumbler for the help, but for now, in a rare act of kindness, Lex decides he’d save his father from further humiliation and stop this before he drinks himself into an early grave. Lex gets his stubbornness from his father and he knows this is going to be no easy fight, doesn’t really know why he’s bothering.
Lionel is morose, his face looks worn and his hair is grayer than Lex ever remembered it being. He doesn’t look as full of life as he usually does, he looks… heartbroken almost. His eyes are red from the alcohol or maybe it’s from grief, he’s not sure, and Lex comes up beside him, closes the piano top and watches as his father leans foreword and rests his head against it.
Luthors, by rule, never show emotion, not even about this, not even on this one day a year. “Get over it, Alexander,” Lionel had told him the day of her funeral, “You’ll never get anywhere in this world if you don’t.” That thinking had gotten the both of them far in life, helped them let go of the past, but the funny thing about the past was it always caught up with you eventually.
The sunlight from the floor-to-ceiling windows sparkles off of something on his father’s left hand, and it’s then that Lex catches sight of the wedding band adorning his father‘s hand, on the finger that every day before had been bare. Lionel turns his head, looks towards his son, his face so emotional, more vulnerable than Lex could ever remember him being. Lionel had been making an effort to be a better father, a good grandfather, and this right here, him being so open, so broken should spark something in Lex. Make him feel something.
The ache in his chest he woke up with that morning was still there, but other than there is nothing. Some things just can never be mended, and both of them know it is damn near impossible to repair a relationship that was never really there in the first place.
“I scared Claire away,” Lionel breaks the silence, his voice was genuine enough and Lex remembers Lucas telling him about how he’d yelled at his granddaughter, reduced her to tears earlier that day. “I just… I-”
Lionel looks pathetic, stricken with emotion, and for some reason Lex couldn’t find reason to gloat at this rare moment of vulnerability.
“I know,” Lex cuts in when his father failed to continue, couldn’t find the words.
Claire invoked something in Lionel that he hadn’t had with Lex or Lucas, never had the chance to have with Julian. Claire Dunlevy had been the apple of her grandfather’s eye, he adored her, and no one had any doubt that he would do anything in the world for her. Until now, that is.
Now, she had a dark head of hair, and haunting, piercing eyes, and maybe it’s their minds playing tricks on them, or maybe it’s some cruel trick of fate, but now when Lionel looked at Claire his eyes were hollow, his usual stoic face torn. Claire, at the tender age of seven, bore such a scary resemblance to Lillian Luthor that Lionel couldn’t even bare to look at her.
So it was then, Lex decided, that maybe he didn’t deserve the privilege of being the only one of them to love Lillian Luthor, maybe he didn’t have to love her enough for the both of them. He still would of course, and it was with that thought that he reached out for his father, and surprisingly, Lionel didn’t object when his son helped him to his room.
He ends up picking up the shattered glass on the floor and sent the help home so his father could stew in peace when he woke up. Or drink alone if that’s what he wanted. He drove home afterwards, fighting tears that burned his eyes and he refused to let fall. And when he came to the turn that would take him to his mother, he kept going straight and couldn’t help but look back.
The sun is setting by the time he makes it back to the penthouse, he calls the office on his cell phone as he pulls in to the garage, tells them he won’t be in until morning. He’s the boss and no one argues, and even though he didn’t see her car in the space next to his, he still checks the apartment for Chloe. She’s not there, and as he passes the bar in the living room he pauses, but ultimately keeps walking, collapses on the couch and pulls at his tie uncomfortably. It’s too hot for him, and he knows Chloe bumped up the thermostat before she left.
Lex leans his head back against the couch, closes his eyes, and waits. He’s just not sure for what.
* * *
He attacks her the moment he sees her. Pushes her forcefully against the wall, claims her mouth for his own, and sighs deeply. He can feel the grunt of surprise and he swallows it, feels her shock in the rigid stance she took, feels her start to give in, her mouth open against his, her fingers clutch at his shirt. He just feels her, all of her, and as lovely as it is, he wants more. Needs more. He’s exhausted, physically and emotionally, but he needs this. He needs to feel this connection with her, needs to get lost in her.
Their kisses are ravenous and hungry, desperate and she’s fighting him for control every step of the way. She tastes like cigarettes and brandy, and Lex swallows the bitter taste, focuses on her hands cupping his face, his lips against hers, his body pinning her against the wall. He claws at the black satin of her dress, pushes it up then hastily moves to the plunging v neck. Slips his hand inside, urgently and rather clumsily fondled her breast.
It got the desired effect, she writhed and moaned against him, grinding her hips against his deliciously. He deepened their kiss, brought a hand to her face, as hers moved to un tuck his shirt, and held her face in a bruising grip, pushed into her forcefully.
Everything about his movements radiated need, want, urgency, and he knew sooner or later she would retreat, pull away from him. And she did, far too soon for his liking, tore from their kiss, gasping for breath, slid her lovely hands against the smooth skin of his back. It was a movement that usually held comfort, easiness, but now it just put him on edge.
“Can we do this every time I come home?” she rasped good naturedly, moving her hands to his sides, trailing her fingers up and down a couple of times until he shivered in response.
He said nothing, bent down to claim her lips, but she moved, and he merely nipped at her bottom lip harshly, forcefully, saw her wince and did it again.
“What’s going on?”
Not wanting to ruin the moment-which was dangerously close to happening- he smiled as lightly as he could, “nothing,” he mumbled brushing his lips against hers, more gently this time, lovingly and not at all urgent.
“Don’t lie to me,” she moved away from his lips, leans her head back against the wall, looks into his eyes. It’s obvious she sees something there she doesn’t like, and scrunches her nose. “What’s going on?” she presses again, more quietly, more carefully.
He sighs so deeply Lex knows she can feel it, they’re so close, Chloe sandwiched tightly between him and the wall and he can feel her ribs against his as he leans his forehead against hers. Looks into her eyes, “I need this,” he tells her, his voice husky with emotion, “Please, Chloe,” she narrows her eyes in concern, raises her hands to cup his face tenderly. When he speaks again his voice is choking, cracks embarrassingly, “I need this.”
Her beautiful face looks confused for a moment, like she wants to ask something, and she actually opens her mouth to do so, but shuts it abruptly. And he waits, would never dream of forcing something on her she didn’t want even though it was pretty clear she wanted this. And when she nods hesitantly, and then once more with certainty he lets the breath he didn’t know he was holding in out and kisses her. Slowly at first, leisurely, then more franticly, just as heatedly as he had been before.
And then the franticness began again, the urgency consumed him.
Fingers are clawing at her hips so hard he is positive she’ll come away with bruises, her moves his body away from her a mere fraction as their mouths tangled hungrily, her fingers fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. His coat and tie had been gone since before she got home, and he’s glad, because it’s less of a hassle to get the shirt over his shoulders.
Her hands run up his arms, over his shoulders, hug him closely as his tears lace and satin, her dress getting pushed up around her hips, her panties torn and fallen to the floor. His fingers tease the inside of her thighs, caress her too forcefully to be pleasurable before pulling away and reaching for the purse she’d dropped when he’d attacked her. Shoves it in her direction as he worked hurriedly to rid himself of his pants.
Chloe dumps the belongings of her purse out all over the floor in her haste to find the foil packet, kicks her shoes off in the process. Lex waits for her to find it, watching as she places it between her teeth and moves to the zipper of her dress.
“Leave it,” he grounds out, running his hands over her sides as he pushed her once again against the wall, she actually does groan in protest this time and if he weren’t so far gone he’d care, try to soothe her. But he needs this, needs her, and without thought he takes the foil packet from between her teeth and tears it open, slides it on in one stroke and returns back to her.
Cups the luscious curves of her ass and waits for her legs to go around him- which they do- almost immediately. He pushes the dress up forcefully, actually hears the fabric rip this time, and doesn’t wait, pushes right through, doesn’t ask if she’s ready- honestly doesn’t care if she’s not. He watches her face closely and doesn’t wait for her to get comfortable, just immediately starts to move, hears the gasp of surprise, sees the wince of pain. Feels the nails digging into his shoulders roughly.
Lex refuses to kiss her, fears he may not be able to breathe if he does, so he nibbles on her neck, sinks his teeth in harshly and he hears her grunt and moan at the same time. And Chloe takes it, all of it, all of him, gives him this. Leans her head back and closes her eyes as he pounds into her relentlessly, as he searched for a solution he’d never find. Not this way.
He’s not gentle, no gentlemen, even though she deserves him to be. Later he’ll feel guilty about this. About using her for her body, for release, using her like he uses the various women he’s been with throughout the years, in her absences.
“Are you alright?” he asks slowly, the leisure in which he says the words a stark contrast to the constant movement of his body against hers.
She nods once again, refuses to look him in the eye, “It’s just been a while.”
She’s lying of course, but he doesn’t care, just gives in and kisses her, slides a hand between them and applies pressure on her sensitized nub. He’s going to come with or without her, but he still wants to try, wants to give her something. Her hips move in guided movements at first, then to their own accord, and Lex can feel her start to respond, her orgasm start to slowly build. He knew her, had done this enough times with her to know the signs.
Lex’s teeth chatter, as loud as the pounding in his chest, he drives further, faster, harder continues to work his fingers against her, as his other hand grips her hips, guiding them to the movement he needs. “Are you-”
“Yeah,” she rasped, pulling him closer, the friction making them both moan simultaneously, “Yeah, yeah,” she repeats jerking her body in rhythm with his.
Her muscles start to flutter around him, grip him, making the sensations inside him intensify, start him down that same path. It pushes him to the point where if he had control to begin with he would have lost it. And then finally he was gone, came with a jerk and long, guttural moan that somewhat resembled her name. Miraculously she followed quickly, her own release not as strong as his, as strong as it could be.
But Chloe says nothing, just rests her head against his shoulder, her hot breath tickling his skin. After a long while he pulls away, slowly untangles himself from her, lowers her shaky legs to the floor. Watches Chloe take shaky hands and wipe the sweat from her neck, brush hair from her face.
“I’m sorry about your dress,” he says honestly, bashful, ashamed -just like he knew he would be- of using her like he did.
Chloe looks down at herself, adjusts the hem accordingly. It’s far past salvageable, ripped too badly for repair, wrinkled from being bunched around her hips. She shrugs, smiles shakily at him, “It was Lois’s.”
Somehow they make it to his room, and while she changes out of her tainted dress he changes the sheets, crawls beneath them and waits for her to join him. She does, crawls in next to him, into him, asks again, with as little pressure in her tone as possible, what was wrong.
And Lex tells her. Everything. Tells him about his mother, his father, and she understands, ignores his apologizes, doesn’t let him try to soothe the marks on her hips that were beginning to bruise, the bite mark on her neck that would keep her in sweaters and turtle necks for at least a week.
Instead she holds him close, her hand over his heart, and finally falls into a restless sleep, and he follows suit easier than he imagined he would. He lets Chloe heal a part of him no one else has ever been able to even touch.
*
He wakes the next morning with sore muscles and a clear head in an empty bed.
It takes him a few moments before he realizes there should be someone next to him. The smell of coffee lingers in the air and he’s shocked that she’s awake (she is never up before him) and even more shocked when he goes looking for her and finds her in her room. Packing.
The dress from last night is off to the side, and he wonders what exactly she’s going to tell Lois, what Lois will end up telling Clark.
“Morning.”
Chloe pauses in the midst of folding a shirt of some kind, sets it inside the suitcase and turns to face him. “I can only imagine how bad this looks,” she says, and he swears she’s beautiful when she’s not even trying.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m leaving,” she says, turning and folding a few more items and placing them into her suitcase, “on an assignment, I didn’t know how to tell you,” she pauses for a moment, “I’ve barely seen you since I’ve been back, and it just never seemed like a good time.”
“Is this because of last night?” Lex thinks it might be, but knows she’ll deny it anyway.
“Of course not. Why would it be?” another speculative glance is thrown over her shoulder, “I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, you know the drill.”
He does, and he accepts it, says nothing more. It’s her job, and he doesn’t have a say in it either way. She’ll leave that night, slip out while he’s at the office, and he’ll adjust, maybe get a phone call if he’s lucky. It’s more than he should ask for, he’s pretty sure her father doesn’t even hear about these trips, reporting on the stories that are so gritty no one wants, until they are over.
Chloe drives him to the cemetery later that morning, wait’s a few feet behind him as he lays the handpicked flowers at the foot of his mother’s grave, right next to the single red rose that already laid there. Doesn’t question who put it there, just knows.
Lex wouldn’t have came unless Chloe had made him, and he’s glad he did, feels the cool wind of the early morning rush around them, chilling him to the bone. He pressed a kiss to his fingers and trials them over the curves and edges of the letters of her name, closes his eyes and silently says what he always does: I love you. I miss you. I’m trying so hard for you. Believes she hears them. Hopes she knew then without him having to say them.
Chloe’s touch on his shoulder is soft and comforting, and as he stands his hand slides easily into hers, fingers intertwining as they walked back towards the car. He looks back, tries, even after all these years, not to be so broken without her.
As he pulls out onto the lone road that runs through the cemetery, the voice on the radio sings: “Now it seems to me/ Some fine things have been laid upon your table/ but you only want the ones you can’t get…” he watches the cemetery disappear in the rearview mirror and ignores the ache in his chest. “Your pain and your hunger, they’re driving you home/ And freedom, oh freedom/ that’s just some people talkin’/ Your prison is walking through this world all alone…”
Lex laughs mirthlessly.
* * *
Two weeks turn into two months, which slowly turns into three then six, and Lex stops going home with random women, stops going home with women at all. Does exactly what he said he would never do- he waits for her.
Lucas stops bringing Lindsay and Claire to the Sunday afternoon brunches for a while even though Lionel had apologized profusely for his behavior. Still spoils Claire against Lindsay’s wishes not to, as Lucas looked on. That day is never talked about between Lionel and his sons, and Lex decides he likes it better that way. Finds it easier to ignore his fathers biting comments than it had been.
“Lindsay’s pregnant,” Lucas tells Lex one Sunday as they sit in one of the dinning rooms of Lionel’s house that is really just too big for one person. Lionel had been felling less than stellar these days and spends more of their Sundays laying down then with them, but the sentiment is still there, and Lucas and Lex still come. “She didn’t want to say anything until we made it through the first couple of months, but I had to tell someone.”
Lucas looks proud, happy, bursting to the brim with joy. Lex smiles a real smile for his brother, doesn’t object when Lucas pulls him into a hug, does the macho manly thing and slaps him on the back a couple of times. The situation warrants it and Lex follows suit.
“She’s been listening to classical music all the time now, Bach and Beethoven- says it’s intellectually stimulating for the baby- and now all Claire talks about is learning how to the piano,” Lucas smiles brightly, “We thought maybe you could teach her a little bit, you know like ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ until she tires of it and moves on to dance class or something.”
Lex laughs, doesn’t bother to tell Lucas that she probably wouldn’t grow out of it. She was a Luthor- may have the a different last name, but she was still a Luthor- and piano playing was in their blood. His parents played, his grandparents played, and he’s pretty sure if he ever has children they’ll play too.
For the life him, in that moment, he can’t remember if Chloe plays the piano or not.
Lex hasn’t touched a piano in years. Still remembered how to play, but really just had no desire for it. His mother had taught him how to play, used to sit him down in her lap at the piano and let him rest his fingers over hers as they glided over the keys. After she’d died he’d stopped practicing because his father played, because it wasn’t as fun without those lazy Sunday afternoons when he’d play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata for her over and over because she never tired of hearing it.
“I don’t really play anymore,” Lex tells him and wonders if his father has touched a piano lately too. Figures the answer is probably no.
He offers more congratulations to Lucas, and when he returns to the empty penthouse he lingers in the living room where the grand piano sat stiffly, unused in the corner by the windows that towered above Metropolis. His feet carry him towards it by their own accord, and he lifts up the top as he sits down on the bench. It’s the same piano he’d learned to play on, a classic, and Lex bet’s the keys are probably made out of real ivory. Nothing but the best for a Luthor.
His fingers pause over the keys for a moment, press down tentatively at first, then with more sureness. He refuses to play Beethoven, plays Schubert instead, like his father had. It takes him more than a few more measures than it used to of to find his groove, but he does, hits a bad note here and there when his mind can’t keep up with his fingers.
Decides maybe he’d teach Claire after all.
As long as they steered away from the Beethoven.
* * *
Chloe stops going on long term assignments when Gabe’s health starts to fail. Starts spending more time in Seattle with her father than in Metropolis, stops working all together. When she fucks Lex after those visits, she’s always needy and frantic, clawing at his shoulders, his hips, holding him in a death grip- like she never wants to let go. Afterwards she’ll pull away from him, retreat to the other side of the bed. When he wakes in the middle of the night most times she’s not even there.
After she returns from one of the last visits she takes with her father, Lex finds her in the living room nursing a glass of scotch and a cigarette. He hates the habit, takes every chance to tell her so, but he lets it slide this time. She’s stronger than most, always cool and clam, not irrational like she had been when she was younger. The news of the cancer shocks even him, and the way she says inoperable, so coolly, so collected, it makes him shiver.
He doesn’t remember her crying, not once.
That night when he wakes to an empty bed and smells the rancidness of her cigarettes he crawls out of bed despite the aching muscles in his shoulders. He finds her wrapped in one of the sheets from his bed, cigarette between her lips, sitting at the piano. He’s not sure why, but it’s fitting almost, and he smiles when she stubs out the half smoked cigarette at the sight of him.
Her fingers flow over the keys with little ease, she looks uncomfortable, stiff, like she can’t remember the notes. An unfamiliar melody fills the air, it’s not classical, something modern maybe, he decides, but he can’t place it.
“I didn’t know you played,” he says, taking a seat next to her on the bench.
“I’m horrible,” she shrugs and stops playing. “I was better when I was younger.” Silence passes between him, and Lex doesn’t really know what to say, wants to do something to make this better, make her feel better, but can’t decide what it is he’s suppose to do. “I’m going to have to go for a little while, to Seattle,” she tells him quietly.
Lex places a small kiss on her bare shoulder, she smells like cigarettes, scotch and them. “Okay.”
Another silence and slowly she begins to lean into him, “I don’t know if I can do this,” he can hear her swallow the lump in her throat. Her voice thick with emotion, raspy from the cigarettes and lack of sleep. "I'm not even sure I can survive this."
“You will,” he tells her with an amount of conviction he wishes someone would have used when he was younger, when he needed it. “I know you, Chloe, you will.”
“Are you going to be here when I get back?” She sounds worried, uncertain, and he kisses her shoulder again, and then her forehead lovingly.
Says honestly: “I’m going to be there every step of the way.”
She doesn’t cry, even though he can see the tears in her eyes, hear the resignation in her sigh. She just simply rests her head against his shoulder and breathes deeply.
“Will you play me something?”
“What do you want to hear?”
“Anything,” she shrugs, “Something, I don’t care.”
His fingers only pause briefly before they start to flow easily, the sounds of Beehtohven’s Midnight Sonata fill the stiff air of the Metropolis penthouse. Lex doesn’t really register that’s what he’s playing until the third or fourth measure.
When he does he turns his head and watches Chloe smile blindly at him, a true smile, bright and beautiful. He thinks of his mother then, smiling that way up at him as he played for her all those years ago. Too many years ago. He thinks of her, and the ache doesn’t hurt as much, really doesn’t hurt at all.
Lex smiles back.
Usually, when Lex is busy outrunning his life he’s getting run over by it.
Sometimes, he thinks, it’s just nice to know someone was there, next to him, along for the ride.
End Part I