Sympathy, Tenderness (PG) - Part 1, 'Always With You' series
Title: Sympathy, Tenderness
Author: Not An Addict
Rating: PG
Category: Songfic, Friendship/Angst
Pairing: Chloe/Lex
Spoilers: none
Summary: Part One of the ‘Always With You’ songfic series. The beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘Smallville’ or ‘Jekyll & Hyde’, much to my everlasting sadness. I’m just borrowing them for a while, and I’ll return them eventually, more or less intact.
Author’s Note: This was originally intended to be a part of the Summer Songfic Challenge on TBT, but as that project kind of fell through I’m posting these elsewhere. Now, songfics really aren’t my thing, and I got a really interesting idea here that can’t be summed up in just one fic. My solution? Cheat. ^_^ Although the fics in this series can stand alone (I hope), they’re meant to be read as a series. That said, feel free to pick and choose which ones you’ll read if you don’t wanna go through six whole fics. For added enjoyment I recommend that you listen to the corresponding song while you read. I hope you enjoy! And please leave a review—they make me feel pretty. ^_^
It was another one of those days, the kind of day that Chloe seemed to be having far too often recently. She sat with her body slumped in the corner of the booth, an elbow propped on the faded Formica table as she stared into her cup of coffee. She knew that her posture seemed to echo with defeat, but she just couldn’t bring herself to care; or perhaps it was just that she wanted so much for someone else to care. With weary eyes she glanced towards the counter, towards her friends. As one their gazes suddenly fixed on something, anything rather than her, with the kind of sudden unfocussed attention that comes with pretending not to stare at someone. Tears pricked at the backs of her eyes at their refusal to look at her. But she was too weary even for tears.
It wasn’t as though she had been out of line with what she had said to Clark. She knew that every word she had said was completely warranted, and she knew that deep down Clark knew it too. But true to form he had managed to turn the blame back around to settle squarely on her shoulders, and Chloe could feel the weight of it pressing her farther down into the vinyl-covered seat. Of course, her so-called friends had all immediately sided with Clark, unable to understand why Chloe was so upset when he had been, after all, just trying to help. Her gaze returned to her rapidly cooling coffee and she curled into herself even more, trying to ward off the chill.
“Chloe.” She marked it as a sign of her deteriorating mental capacity that she, the girl heading of to college in a month with a full journalism scholarship due to her keen powers of observation, had failed to notice Lex Luthor walking into this small-town coffee shop. He gestured to the booth’s second bench. “May I join you?”
She nodded dully and watched silently as Lex settled himself into the seat across from her. His cup of coffee, unlike her own, was filled to capacity with fresh, fragrant, life-giving coffee. As she watched, he slid the cup towards her. She shot him a questioning look and Lex nodded towards the coffee, gesturing for her to take it. With a small smile of thanks Chloe let her hands wrap around the thick stoneware. Perhaps the heat of the coffee would be able to warm her. When that didn’t do the trick she lifted it to her lips, closing her eyes against the steam bathing her face before she took a long, slow sip. The cup returned to the table, settling with a small click. Chloe’s eyes met Lex’s and she sat, unable to speak as he watched her for a moment, two, three, seeing past the defenses she had made a half-hearted effort to erect. He nodded slightly, apparently reaching some kind of conclusion.
“What’s wrong?”
Chloe couldn’t help a small, wry grin. Others might beat around the bush, start with a neutral subject to test the waters, but you could always count on Lex to get straight to the point. He was nothing if not efficient; also, she had a suspicion that he had realized that it was much more difficult to avoid a direct question than it was to avoid a subject someone tried to steer you towards. But Chloe knew something most people forgot about in such a situation—she knew how to avoid directly.
“It’s nothing.” Lex’s eyebrow arched.
“No, of course not. That’s why you’re sitting here alone while your friends avoid you. Because of nothing.” When Chloe didn’t speak, Lex sat back a bit, considering. “This feels like a fight kind of nothing. And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it was with Clark.” Again, Chloe’s silence seemed to be all the answer that Lex needed. His eyes locked on hers again, measuring what he saw there. “Was it about Lana?” Chloe set her jaw at his assumption, but couldn’t seem to move from her defensive posture.
“No.” She almost winced at the weakness in her voice, but couldn’t do anything about that, either. “It was about David.” Lex’s eyebrow raised again, and a small smirk curled at his lips when she didn’t volunteer any additional information.
“And who is David?” Chloe shrugged dispassionately.
“A guy I was dating.”
“Was? And why did you and Clark have a fight about this?” Chloe looked up at him again and saw that he had leaned forward again, his forearms resting casually on the table. Her eyes drifted to her fingers toying with her coffee cup before she answered.
“Because Clark didn’t want me dating him—he thought he was Wall of Weird material.”
“And was he?”
Chloe shot him a small, humorless smile.
“Aren’t they always?”
Lex nodded thoughtfully. “And this led to the fight with Clark . . . how, exactly?”
“Because the first chance he got, he was lecturing me about how much danger I had put myself into.” Her eyes met his again, filled with hurt and just the tiniest hint of shame. “So I . . . I kind of blew up at him. I told him that he couldn’t expect me to listen to his ‘friendly advice’ when he didn’t act like my friend ninety percent of the time. That the only time he ever seemed to pay attention to me was when he needed something done, or when another guy actually showed an interest in me.” She took a deep breath and looked back at her hands. “I told him that if he doesn’t want me, then he should stop acting threatened by any guy who does.” Her head shook in self-recrimination. “I wasn’t even that angry with Clark. It doesn’t make what I said any less true, but I probably shouldn’t have taken my feelings out on him. I just . . . I was really hoping that someone normal was finally interested in me.”
Chloe shivered as the cold swept over her again. She couldn’t believe that she had just said all of that. She and Lex had never been close, and she was sure that he didn’t want to be saddled with the burden of teenage angst. So the last thing she expected was to feel the sudden warmth of his hand closing over hers on the table. Her eyes flew up to his face and she sat, shocked at what she saw there.
Sympathy, tenderness,
Warm as the Summer,
Offer me their embrace.
The blank, emotionless Luthor mask was gone, and Lex’s features were softened in sympathy and understanding. Chloe could only blink at the change it made; Lex smirked slightly and Chloe could suddenly breathe again at that small sign of the Lex she was familiar with.
“I know how it is, Chloe, to want something normal. To want to push away all of the excess until all that’s left is something safe and boring and predictable. Hell, I even got married to try and find it. Unfortunately . . .” He smiled sadly, lost for a moment in his own memories. “Sometimes life doesn’t always give us what we have planned.”
His hand squeezed hers, and Chloe suddenly felt the warmth she had been seeking seep into her, chasing away the chill that had settled so deep she had thought that she would never be rid of it. Their eyes met again and Lex offered another smile, his momentary sadness past.
“You, Chloe Sullivan, are too good for normal.”
Friendliness, gentleness,
Strangers to my life,
They are there in his face.
It occurred to her—somewhere in the back of her mind where her thoughts were not centered solely on how small her hand felt held in Lex’s larger one—that Clark had never bothered to do this with her. Never sat down and asked her what was wrong; never tried to understand exactly why she was so upset; never managed to make her feel better by telling her exactly what she needed to hear. Perhaps because she herself didn’t know exactly what she needed. And another part of her wondered how Lex had known.
When she had sat down that evening, Chloe had had every intention of spending her night trying to talk herself out of the well of despair she had fallen into. She hadn’t realized that she was so tired of pulling herself out that she simply couldn’t care enough to do it this time. She had needed someone else to help her; and while Clark Kent could make a career out of saving damsels in distress, he never seemed to be available for her truly difficult problems. The ones so massive that she couldn’t even bring herself to admit to them out loud. He was one of her best friends, but he couldn’t see when she so desperately needed his help.
Instead, Lex Luthor had been the one to sit, the one to make her feel as if she truly did matter.
Goodness and sweetness
And kindness
Abound in this place
It certainly wasn’t the kind of thing that one expected of a Luthor. In the business world they were known as ruthless, take-no-prisoners adversaries. General opinion around town seemed to be that although Lex Luthor had done a lot of good for the town, he was still not to be entirely trusted. No matter how much good he did, how many declarations he made about only wanting the best for Smallville, people would still talk of the devil quoting Scripture to suit his own needs. And while she was now rather embarrassed to admit it, Chloe had always come dangerously close to agreeing with them. Now those sentiments seemed less like healthy caution and more like an unwarranted betrayal.
Lex Luthor was a man whose name could already, at his young age, strike fear into the hearts of the business community. Yet he had taken the time to sit down with Chloe Sullivan, aspiring reporter in a crappy coffeehouse, and given her a small glimmer of hope. He had bought her coffee, had taken her hand when none of her other friends would so much as glance in her direction. And he had done it all, not because there was anything in it for him, but because it was what Chloe had needed at that particular moment—for someone to look at her and tell her that she deserved better than normal.
I am in love
With the things
That I see in his face –
There had been so many times when she had longed for the things that she could now see in Lex’s face. Sympathy; understanding; and more than anything, the gentle warmth of acceptance. Now that she had finally found them, she could only think that she would be devastated at the thought of letting them go.
As the words ‘letting go’ ran through her brain, she realized that she was still holding on to Lex’s hand. A swift blush ran over her face and her eyes darted from his face to their hands and back again. Another surge of comforting warmth spread through her when Lex merely smiled, making no attempt to remove his hand. If anything, his fingers tightened slightly over hers. The smile she gave him was not her usual, blinding one; Chloe wasn’t sure what it looked like, but she felt it as it crept across her face, filled with all of the warmth and understanding that Lex had given her.
“Did you drive here?”
Chloe shook her head. “My car’s in the shop.”
Lex relinquished his hold and stood, offering her his hand once more.
“Let me drive you home.”
Chloe nodded and let Lex help her up. His hand moved to the small of her back as he walked her to his car, and Chloe couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so safe. Her friends, along with most of the Talon, watched them leave with wide-eyed stares, but neither noticed. For in the memory etched onto Chloe’s brain, she and Lex were the only ones in existence.
It's a memory I know
Time will never erase...
END PART ONE
