Separation (NC-17) Completed 2nd September 2014

[HotCrossedBunny]

A/N: Thanks for the reviews.

Chapter Twelve

The silver Aston Martin was nothing more than a blur as it raced through the streets of Metropolis performing at least a dozen illegal moves and almost hitting two teenagers, before coming to screeching halt only inches away from the solid oak doors of the city’s most elite private school.

Lex Luthor leapt from the vehicle and tore up the front steps, paying no heed to the security guards who were stationed on either side (positioned just below the gargoyles who glowered at visitors but whom Lilly had always found funny).

The doors were opened for him just in time to stop him trying to run through the solid wood head first as he raced into the main hallway.

There were other parents milling around but they had the sense to get the hell out of his way as he slammed shoulder first into the door which lead to the auditorium. The room was so excessively bright that it hurt his eyes but that didn’t stop him, he sprinted through the rows of other parents who were chatting and staring at the stage until he reached the very front and collapsed into a seat. “I made it? Right?”

“Yes”, Gabe agreed from where he was sitting, two seats down, on the other side of Chloe.

Lionel examined his watch meaningfully, “Just”.

“Behave”, Chloe warned him, reaching over Lex, to smack her father-in-law on the back of the hand. “Don’t worry you are on time”, she assured Lex.

“Thank God”, he breathed a sigh of relief, “I was sure that I was going to be late”.

“I find that being organised and having a schedule helps to avoid these sorts of terrible near misses”, Lionel put in sagely.

Chloe scowled at him and he shut up, as she reached out and gave her husband’s hand a consoling squeeze.

“I’m so sorry Chloe, I swear I don’t remember ever being told about it. I know that this isn’t a good start but I’ll …” Lex said in a hushed voice.

“Don’t worry about it”, she whispered back to him, making sure that only they two could hear. “What matters is that you are here. Besides, to tell you the truth, I don’t remember being told about it either”.

“What?”

“Keep your voice down”.

“Sorry”, he whispered, “what?”

“I had no idea that Lilly was putting on a play this afternoon and that we all had to be here, there was no letter home or anything. I never heard her say anything about it, I wouldn’t have forgotten that. I only found out when Lionel called me post therapy to double check what time he needed to be here this afternoon. I then called Dad who also claimed to have known all about it all along”.

“Is it really possible that both of us just forgot something that was so important to our daughter?” Le wondered and they traded speaking, suspicious looks. Their gazes then travelled to both of their fathers.

“No, they couldn’t”.

“They wouldn’t.”

Once again they stared at them hard for a few seconds to see that both of their fathers’ gazes were fixed straight ahead, their features schooled into perfect neutrality.

“But it’s not possible”, Chloe muttered, “Is it?”

“Shh, both of you; the show is starting”.

As if on cue, the lights dimmed, the audience hushed and the curtain ascended.

~*~

Three hours later the curtain descended again on a show which even as devoted parents they had to admit, had seemed a bit rushed. Although Lilly, of course, had been spectacular throughout.

Speaking of the little devil, a few seconds later she barrelled out, still in her dance tutu, and pounced on both of them.

“Hello Mommy. Hello Daddy. Did you see me dancing? Did you? Did you?” She clambered to know.

“Yes, sweetheart, we saw you. Very”, Lex searched for the right word, “energetic”.

“Yes, you jumped far higher than anyone else”, Chloe agreed as Lilly settled down on top of her Daddy and accepted congratulations from both of her adoring grandfathers.

The other parents and their progeny began to trickle out of the school and Chloe asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be going back to class now?” There were thirty minutes left of the school day.

“Oh no, they said just to take the kids home after the performance”, Lionel explained. Oddly enough he had been there even before Chloe and Gabe and so seemed to know quite a lot about the proceedings.

“Okay, well that is great”, Chloe beamed at her daughter.

“Yep”, Lilly agreed. “What do you want to do, Daddy?”

“Sweetheart”, Chloe started, “Daddy isn’t coming with us today remember, he is working hard all today so that he can visit us tomorrow and …” She broke off as she saw Lilly’s face crumple.

“But it is my special day”.

Lex opened his mouth to console her and tell her that of course he would do anything that she wanted when Lionel spoke up, declaring that he would head into the office and take care of anything Lex was supposed to have done.

Gabe exited the scene hot on his heels declaring that his held might be required.

Over the head of their daughter Lex and Chloe’s eyes met. Once again, they had been had.

~*~

Lillian Luthor owned her own phone. She had for as long as she could remember even though she didn’t strictly need one as she could always have just asked one of her eight bodyguards to make a call for her. The main reason why she had one was because her Daddy was always playing with his, which had meant that she had decided to play with it and somehow it had ended up in a glass of Ribena. Ever since then, she had had her own. Not that she remembered this as she had been barely a year and a half at the time.

Lillian Luthor knew how to use her own phone. She had been hanging upside down from her favourite tree before the start of school with one body guard holding her legs and two with their arms outstretched beneath her, as was her want, trying to think of how to get her parents together that evening when a thought occurred to her. She hadn’t got the faintest idea how to manage it.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She had plenty of ideas of how to do it. She just wasn’t sure that any of them would work out. The problem was a geographical one more than anything else. Whenever her parents were together they never wanted to separate and the more that they were together the less time it would take before they got back together properly, but she couldn’t force them together physically.

She supposed that she could always fall – if her bodyguards allowed it -, that would bring them together but she didn’t particularly want to crack her scull open so she relegated that to plan B. If she were putting on a performance or receiving an award or something of that ilk then she knew that they would both attend but she wasn’t so it was back to the self-harm idea.

Then it occurred to her.

She whipped out her cell phone and hit speed dial seven.

Lionel Luthor had been sitting in his office, preparing for his departure to foreign climes the following day so that his son could spend more time with his family when the documents he had been perusing were tossed from his desk in his anxiousness to get to his phone. Only one person had that ring tone.

“Lilly, what’s the matter?”

“I have a moral deelama”, she informed him without preamble. If anyone knew how to fix it, it would be her grandfather.

“You aren’t hurt?” He doubled checked, sinking back into his office chair.

“No, I’m not”, she agreed.

“Thank God”.

“But we have to be quick because the bell is going to go soon”, she spoke hurriedly. It was such a shame that the idea hadn’t come to her earlier.

“What is your moral dilemma?” Thankfully he spoke fluent Lilly and had worked out the meaning of delama.

“Lying is wrong”, she informed him solemnly.

“That is quite correct”, he agreed. Chloe had warned him that if she even suspected him (never mind caught him) teaching her daughter anything less than perfect morals that no one would ever find the body and Lionel, shrewd judge of character that he was, believed her.

“So, if I were to call up Mommy and Daddy and ask them if they have remembered that we are putting on a show this afternoon at school and they have to come to it, sit together and then take me home together so that they can get back together, then that would be a lie and I would go to hell?” She checked.

“I don’t think that you would go to hell, but yes, that would be very wrong”, he agreed, thinking that he detected where she was heading with this.

“But if somehow someone made it so that we did put on a show then that wouldn’t be lying?”

“No, that wouldn’t be lying at all. Especially if I am the one to call Mommy and Daddy”, when had it become normal for him to refer to his son as Daddy? “Then that would be absolutely fine”.

She gave a giggle of delight and sang, “I love you”, over the phone.

“I love you too”, he said, his heart swelling in the way that only she could, “now I think that I hear the bell in the background so you just get going off to call little Miss”, there, who said he couldn’t be strict? “And I’ll take care of everything. Tell me, are grandfathers invited?”

With an “of course”, she rang off and left Lionel with a great deal of quick planning to do.

~*~

Chloe towelled off her little imp and wrapped her up in her dressing gown before sending her off to put her pyjamas on and get into bed.

Once she was out of the room Chloe held her hand up to Lex expectantly and he pulled her up. “So”, she started with a glance after her daughter to check that she wasn’t listening, “what are we going to do about this?”

Lilly had got her own way, they had gone back to Gabe’s apartment and had a nice family evening together, although Lilly had pouted slightly when both of her parents had taken out her maths, reading and spelling books and sat down with her to do an hour of them before dinner.

“But we do those in the morning, I didn’t miss anything”, had been her complaint but this had been effectively silenced by one raised eyebrow from Daddy.

“I don’t know”, Lex admitted. “I didn’t want to say anything to her until we had talked about it but we haven’t had a chance until now”, they had spent the rest of the evening playing together.

“I agree””, Chloe said, “I wish that we could just ignore it but we can’t and we certainly can’t let her think that she has got away with it all night”.

“Yeah, and I’m not leaving you to tackle this alone”, Lex said. Leaving it until the following morning was not an option.

“So”, Chloe ran her hand through her hair as she looked around at the bathroom, hoping for inspiration.

“So”, Lex copied her reaction exactly. He loved being a father, he loved Lilly more than he had ever thought possible, but there were some times when he felt like a complete buffoon. Not to mention completely useless and terrified that he would make the wrong decision.

Chloe wore the same expression. In fact, she looked no more sure of what they were doing when they entered their daughter’s bedroom – it was thirty minutes before she normally settled in for her story – but fortunately Lex was capable of schooling his features just well enough that Chloe thought that she was the only one who could read the fact that his heart was breaking and was afraid that their child might misunderstand again and think that he had stopped caring about her.

“Are you all tucked up?” Lex asked, even though he could see that she was as he sat on the edge of her bed, Chloe on the other side and they both stared down at their baby.

“Yes Daddy”, she said in a small voice, apparently able to tell that something was wrong. She tried not to draw attention to the book that she had picked out and left on her pillow to be read to her.

“Would you like to tell me what happened today?” He inquired politely.

Lilly appeared to be thinking very carefully about her words and Chloe thought that she might be sick.

“I woke up”.

Lex didn’t say anything and Lilly looked over at Chloe who nodded her head to tell her to continue, “And I went to school, and we came home and now I’m in bed”. She got out hurriedly.

Chloe wasn’t sure whether to be angry or laugh.

She guessed that Lex wasn’t entirely sure either as he took her book at stared at it, turning it over and over again in his hands so that he had an excuse not to look at either of them.

“Perhaps you would be good enough to tell me more about the show”.

“The show”, she repeated her voice getting even smaller.

Both parents clinched their fists to keep from hugging her.

“Yes, namely how long you have been rehearsing for it etc”.

“Not that long”.

“Not that long?”

Chloe swallowed that wasn’t good. There was a fine line between avoidance and lying and she feared that her daughter was about to cross it at any second.

Lex fixed her with a piercing look and it all tumbled out of her. Chloe hated to see her daughter so upset but she was thankful that at least she hadn’t lied. She didn’t think that she could bear to punish her. She had been lucky, she had never had to so far, and thought that it might actually kill her.

“I see”, Lex said slowly, carefully, thoughtfully.

“I’m sorry Daddy, are you angry?” Fear rippled through her tone.

“No”.

“Disappointed?” It was more of a squeak this time.

“No”, Lex shook his head, “you could never disappoint me baby but I am not pleased. I know that this is not an easy situation for you sweetheart and Mommy and I are doing everything that we can to make it better but you can’t interfere with your education, you shouldn’t be calling Granddad in the middle of the school day without reason, you can’t change the curriculum of the other students to meet your will, and you shouldn’t be trying to manipulate us”.

“No Daddy”, she hung her head and sniffled.

“Both Mommy and I were very upset, we thought that we had somehow forgotten something very important to you and had to rearrange all of our day to go to your play just so that you could see me tonight”, Lex continued, trying to sound neutral whilst only a hair’s breadth away from snatching his little girl up into his arms.

Chloe wasn’t fairing much better. There was already evidence of a few trickling down her cheeks.

“Don’t think that I’m not grateful or that I don’t like spending time with you”, Lex said, as he decided that he couldn’t hold back any longer and pulled her out of her bed clothes and into his lap. He began to rock her back and forth and he continued, “because you are and always will be my number one priority but when you want something you have to be a big girl and ask us directly and we will see what we can do to accommodate you. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Daddy”.

“Okay, good girl”, he kissed her head, and then said reluctantly (he didn’t want to let her go), “now I think that Mommy needs you to go and give her a hug too”.

Lilly did so willingly, happy to know that everything was made up. After several minutes of cuddling she looked up at him thoughtfully, “I should really ask if there is anything that I want?”

“Of course”.

“I want you and Mommy to make up”.

Chloe and Lex traded more helpless, distressed looks and after a long conversation, cuddle and even longer story were finally ready to leave their daughter to sleep for that night.

“Night night sweetie”, Cloe kissed her forehead.

“Night night Princess”, Lex followed suit, “and just remember that I will be by every evening this week … to help you catch up with all of the work that you missed today”.





A/N: So, what do you think? Was Lionel right? Was Lilly right? Was Gabe invovled? Was Lex too strict about the homework? Anything else on your minds?

[HotCrossedBunny]

Edited: deleted. Posted wrong thing in wrong place.

[cbrunberg]

i enjoyed this chapter.it was wrong for lily to call lionel.but i did think it was cut that she wanted to help get her parents back together and that lionel wanted to help.

[HotCrossedBunny]

Cbrunberg: Thank-you. Yes, I agree about the Lilly thing although I'm not sure what else she could have done.

[HotCrossedBunny]

Chapter Thirteen

“Damn it, damn it, damn it”, Chloe swore as she hurried down the street, checking her watch every couple of seconds. There was no way that she was going to be on time.

“Great”, she thought to herself sarcastically, “we are both supposed to be trying to put our relationship back together and I am going to be late. What kind of example does that set?”

Chloe had barely got any sleep the night before but for once, not because she was thinking about Lex. She had been up until three o’clock in the morning finishing up her work and then Lilly had come to wake her up at five. She loved her daughter, and as much as she hated to admit it, Lex too but she really wished that they hadn’t both inherited the early bird gene. She blamed Lionel.

“Stupid Lionel”, she complained as she jogged up the last one hundred metres to the hotel – the fastest she could possibly move in the heels and skirt she was wearing – effectively putting paid to any hope that she wasn’t going to look like a complete and utter mess when she finally arrived.

The clock in the hotel’s foyer chimed the hour just as she slid to a halt in front of the office door. “I made it. Just”. She breathed.

“You made it”, a warm, rich voice agreed, kindly omitting the “just”.

She looked up to see Lex, reclining against the wall, two cups of coffee in his possession. As he extended one to her she croaked, “God bless you”.

After a couple of sips, accompanied by near orgasmic groans, she was able to examine at him properly and take in the fact that he looked very nearly as bad as she felt. Although, somehow, still unbelievably sexy. Damn him.

“Did Lilly put you really behind?” She asked, timidly.

Lex thought about lying to save her feelings but knew that that wouldn’t help their relationship so, instead, he answered honestly, “Yes”.

She winced.

“I had a lot of work to do even coming up to be semi-retirement and I am making time to come to these sessions. That plus the evening I am going to spend with Lilly tonight meant that yesterday was supposed to be pretty work heavy”.

“I’m sorry”.

“Don’t be, it was my choice and I know that you are in the same boat”.

She nodded. She was a writer of sorts and had gone back to work full time after she and Lex separated. Being effectively a single mother, moving house and having a career was no easy feat, especially not when she took a three hour chunk out of every morning for a therapy session.

There was silence for a few moments, neither of them sure what to say to that.

“It doesn’t matter though”, Chloe said with a shrug, “neither of like therapy but it is what we have to do in order to ensure our future. Everything will settle down, eventually”.

Lex grinned at her. He wanted to say something romantic, inspiring and poignant but one of the few times in his life, his oversized brain let him down. Finally, he opted for gesturing towards the door and asking, “Shall we?”

~*~

Chloe should have liked the therapist, she knew that she was helping them and that she was the best in the business but she just couldn’t feel comfortable enough with her. The woman’s ability to be so damned cheerful that morning however gave her a concrete reason for her dislike and distrust. Maybe she was a meteor freak.

“So”, the therapist clapped her hands together, “how are we both?”

“Fine”, they both replied, although the answer “tired” was written clearly across both of their faces.

“Good, so we should continue. I’m dying to hear what happened, clearly you both did get together in the end”.

“Clearly”, Chloe repeated the word, injecting as much sarcasm into it as humanly possible.

“Clearly”, Lex agreed with his wife.

~*~

Chloe drummed her fingers against the solid wood of her arm rest, the sound magnified in the marble cocoon. At any other point during her life she would probably have been delighted to get the chance to nose around the more private areas of Metropolis’ leading company but not today.

She looked around again, from the white marble floor, to the white marble walls, to the skylight above her; the only clue that they were on the top floor. She shivered a little in spite of the central air. As much as she hated to admit it, she was nervous.

Her eyes strayed back over to the giant silver sliding doors through which she had been shown almost (she checked her watch) three minutes ago. Three minutes ago, really? It had felt like much longer to her as her stomach flip flopped. At first she had been certain that she wasn’t even going to be allowed in.

For the last week, ever since the tense but silent, ride home with Lex she had been thinking about him. The fact that he cared about her meant the world to her, way more than the fact that she had made a fool out of herself in front of him, and she wanted to be with him whatever the cost but she knew that that would not be enough for Lex.

Finally everything had come together for her. All of those little looks that she caught him giving her when he thought that she wasn’t observing him, the touches and near hugs, the way that his voice sounded when he spoke to her. She had not been wrong about him.

She wondered whether it would hurt worse if she had been wrong.

Her heart had felt like it was breaking that night in the restaurant, but it felt bruising and broken now as well. After a week of not seeing him, not hearing from him, but thinking about him constantly and knowing that the reason that they weren’t together was not because they didn’t care about each other (more than that she was fairly sure, at least on her side) but because he was the man that she had always known him to be. A strong, careing, utterly loving and self-sacrificing fool.

So many times over the course of the previous seven days she had been on the verge of calling him, of telling him that actually he was wrong and none of the things that he had said were true and that … well, she didn’t know exactly what after that point. She supposed that it didn’t matter as he would have been able to tell that she was lying in less than a second and probably hung up on her after that – not that she would be able to blame him.

Kadie – who had enrolled, come to sit with them at lunch, and helped with making Max jealous – had become her confident in the matter and together they had planned out more than one crazy scheme to win him back only to realise very shortly afterwards that none of them would work. The problem was that none of their plans or the lies that she could tell (and would doubtless be found out) erased the fact that Lex was right.

Ever since Chloe had been a tot she had wanted to be an investigative journalist – Gabe blamed his mother for having let her watch His Girl Friday -, and that wasn’t an ambition that she was just going to go away. Especially not after all of the work that she had put in and all that she had sacrificed over the years to have even the merest shot of being where she wanted to be. She couldn’t be happy without achieving that aspiration.

She couldn’t be happy without the thrill of the chase, the joy of the discovery or her passion for writing. She couldn’t be happy being just being someone’s wife with nothing else to show for her life. She couldn’t be happy doing nothing with her days. But ever since she and dragged Lex back into her life she had realised something else, she couldn’t be happy being alone either. She couldn’t be happy without someone who was as intelligent as she was. She couldn’t be happy without someone who could challenge her. She couldn’t be happy without Lex.

The dilemma had been playing itself over and over in her head all week long until she thought that she would go crazy and had decided to go out and take a walk, to clear her head. It didn’t seem very likely, but it was the only thing that she could think of to stop herself climbing up the walls. As she pounded the pavements of Metropolis, her head well and truly occupied, her feet somehow led her to stand right outside the Lex Corp building.

She stared up at it, tall and imposing. Cold and unfeeling. She thought of Lex working there, every day for the rest of his life, a trophy wife on his arm and a few kids, falling back into the same patterns his father had created for him. He wouldn’t be happy. He would be miserable.

Before she even realised that she had made a decision, she was inside the building demanding to speak to Mr Luthor.

It was a testament to how well Lex had managed to keep her out of the papers that his staff looked at her and saw only a college student and almost showed her the door before she slammed her palms on the front desk and used the phrase she had never expected to hear coming from her lips. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Um, no Miss, I’m sorry I don’t”, the man behind the desk admitted.

“Well, isn’t that just typical”, Chloe huffed, “Lex is going to get an earful when I see him”.

The staff traded confused glances. Lex? No one called their boss Lex. But it could all just be a rouse.

“You put a man’s father in prison and you would think that he would bother to put you on the list for today”, she complained.

“You helped put Lionel Luthor behind bars”, the words were whispered with something akin to awe, they had all met and been intimidated by the head of the Luthor family. There had been a lot of media coverage at the time and if they stared really hard at Chloe then they could just about see the blurry images of the young woman who had helped in the case around that time and whose picture had appeared in several newspapers – ones which subsequently got brought up by Lex Corp and dismantled.

“Yes”, she continued her role of indignation. She wanted to see Lex and she wanted to see him now, “I would have thought that Lex would have put me on the list”.

“Did you have an appointment?”

“Yes!” She said confidently. In her mind, at least, the fact that Lex had no knowledge of the fact at she was coming did not make their appointment any less valid.

Their eyes scanned down a column of a day planner and for one terrible moment Chloe considered the possibility that Lex wasn’t in the office that day, that he had gone off somewhere else and she would never find him and …

“I’m terribly sorry Miss …”

“Sullivan”.

“Miss Sullivan, there appears to have been a terrible oversight on our part. I don’t know how it happened, but your name is not on the list for today. If you will give me a moment, I will just ring upstairs and someone will show you up”.

Chloe had not trusted her voice enough at that moment to utter a word, and so it was with only a polite nod that she had ended up upstairs, waiting for Lex, after a few summery security checks by guards she already knew.

She was just checking her watch again, only to discover that barely another thirty seconds had passed, when there was a noise like the slithering of a snake and Chloe turned her head just in time to see the silver doors parting to reveal Lex.

Chloe gasped his name. He looked awful. Pale, rumpled and there was the faintest smell of whiskey even from where she was sitting.

“Chloe”, he whispered blinking his eyes blearily. This had to be a dream, after seven days he must finally have relented and gone to sleep.

“What the fuck have you done to yourself?” Chloe demanded getting to her feet and stamping over to him, she grasped his chin in her hand and pulled it down so that she could stare into his eyes – for medical reasons rather than romantic ones.

This wasn’t a dream. He realised.

“Working. Drinking”, he spoke slowly, as if afraid that the words would slur if he did not, “a lot of drinking”.

Chloe huffed indignantly and then informed him that she had not come to discuss matters in the middle of his waiting room so he could take her to his office immediately. Lex did so, still looking dazed.

She hadn’t been up to his office since he had opened the new Lex Corp building and would have been surprised at just how light and airy it was, with large windows which covered two entire walls and had a breath taking view of Metropolis. She would have at least, had her breath not already been taken away by the stretch of alcohol and the sight of at least one hundred bottles of pure, neat and empty whiskey, tidily (verging on compulsively) lined up along the floor.

It was a mark of her devotion to him that she consented to close the door, find him a cool wash cloth and lay him down on the settee before she began to scream at him, many of her insults being punctuated by the sound of a bottle crashing its way down the trash shoot.

“Stupid. Ignorant. Inconsiderate. No good. Jack ass”, she finished up the initial part of her tirade as she finally succeeded in ridding the office of bottles of alcohol and opened two windows creating a slightly whirlwind effect which made them both shudder and did Lex’s head no favours.

She stormed off, out of his line of sight and Lex tried to rise calling out, “Please don’t leave. I know that I don’t deserve it, but please don’t leave. Not yet”.

Chloe’s reply was in far more strident tones. “I’m not leaving you idiot, I’m getting you another wash cloth”, she came back in and unceremoniously dumped the freezing cold dripping flannel over his face. It seemed to revive him even more than the first.

“Chloe, I …”

She used the flannel to mop him up a bit, even over the roar of the wind, he was still rather ripe.

“If you weren’t a freak you would be dead”.

“What?” His brain wasn’t working as well as if should have been.

“You”, she poked his in the chest. “If you weren’t a meteor freak then you would be dead by now. One hundred bottles of whiskey Lex. Really? One hundred bottles? One would have been too much, even over a week. And I don’t see evidence of any food. And those are the same clothes that you were wearing last Friday. Did you just come straight here to work and drink yourself into an early grave?”

“Alcohol can’t kill me”, he said, almost dazed, “nothing can. I’ll live to be one hundred”. The thought had never seemed as depressing as it did at that moment.

“You had bloody well better”, Chloe continued the process of trying to cool down his head. “What were you thinking?”

“I … I was thirsty. Wasn’t hungry or tired. Just very, very thirsty”. He said it so pitifully that Chloe stopped what she was doing to hug her beloved, smelly lump before pushing way from him again.

“Well that isn’t good enough”, She got to her feet.

“Chloe no”, he reached out his hand and tried to get up once again.

“Stay there you idiot, I’m just getting you some water”, she went over to his mini fridge and opened it, “Would you look at that, liquid other than liquor which can be drunk when you are thirst”, she said helping herself to the entire contents. She then made her way back over to him and proceeded to pour about three litres of water down his throat along with some aspirin she found in her purse.

“Now”, she informed him practically, “I am going to move a whole five meters away from you to order you a huge dinner to be ready as quickly as possible, I will then come back, you will eat it and then we are going to do something about the smell and then you had better prepare yourself because I am through being nice”.

Lex nodded, it was all that he could do. He hated feeling weak, powerless, needy, but the alcohol had had more of an effect on him than he was willing to admit and he was just so damned scared of losing Chloe.

He lay, reclined on the sofa, freezing cold water dripping around his face, into his eyes and ears from the flannels Chloe hadn’t even bothered to ring them out, aching to be with her. As much as his head hurt, as depressed as he was - sure as he was that Chloe was going to tell him that she just wanted to be friends (if he was lucky) and he was going to have to spend the rest of his life separated from her, watching her be happy with someone else, knowing that he would break his heart every day just for the chance that she could have the life that she deserved – he felt better just knowing that she was near.

His angel appeared once more, looking pissed off with two armfuls of food.

“Eat”. The order was given and he heaved himself up and obeyed.

It was a mark of his immune system that, by the time that they had both finished, he was feeling quite a lot better.

“Shower”, the next order was given and Lex acquiesced to that too, he was rather ripe. He made his way into the bathroom and winced at what he saw in the mirror. How had he let himself come to this? A freezing cold shower went a long way to reviving him also, and he immerged (five minutes later) if not fully himself then at least doing a much better impression of it than he had been before.

“So”, he stared into his office; it was back to how it always way, neat, clean, windows closed and odour free. He looked as he normally did too, on the surface at least. The only abnormal thing about the situation was the fact that Chloe was standing there, looking equal parts concerned, angry and upset. He wanted to run over to her, to hold her in his arms and beg her to be his but he remembered the reasons why he did not. He reasons that had kept nagging at him for at least eight months now and said only, “I guess that we need to talk”.

“Yes, I guess that we do”.

Something of the spark of genius followed by righteous indignation of her earlier moods had been quelled now. She felt very small and unimportant, standing as she was in the middle of one of the offices of the most important men in Metropolis.

Lex nodded and stretched out his arm, indicating that they should sit.

Chloe chose the chair so that she would not have to sit next to Lex on the sofa. She thought that that might be too much considering the circumstances. She needed to get out what she had come there to say.

“Lex I”, she began, trying out her voice and wondering how to start. She stared at her finger nails, as though they would somehow furnish her with new ideas. “I came here today because … well I don’t really know why. I didn’t mean to come here and disrupt your day, although now that I have seen how you were dealing with things I’m glad that I did”. Peevishness lent stridence to her tones and Lex almost smiled.

“But I digress”, Chloe pulled herself back on topic, “For one whole week I have thought about nothing but how to get you”, she admitted. “I have come up with hundreds of crazy schemes, I even considered lying to you and telling you that you were wrong and that I didn’t care about those things”, she chanced a gaze over at him, “other than the fact that that would be completely wrong, I thought that you would see through it”.

His expression confirmed her suspicions.

“I then tried lying to myself, but I didn’t think that either of us would believe that”.

Once again she found that she had been correct in her assessment.

“I have always wanted to be a journalist, and I am aware that if we date, even for a little while and it doesn’t work out then that will no longer be an option for me (at least not in politics). I also know that you can’t be seen with me in that way whilst I am still in college and that you need a date that you can take to events etc”.

Lex wished that he could deny it, but he could not.

“I don’t want to give up my education. Strike that, I won’t give up my education. And I am not going to resign myself to having no career”.

“I understand”. He did understand, he couldn’t expect her to give up everything just for him. He wouldn’t have allowed her to do it even if she had wanted to, or at least he hoped that he wouldn’t.

“I haven’t finished yet”, she took a deep breath. “But I’m not willing to lose you either”.

“You won’t lose me”, he close the gap between them so that he was keeling in front of her, holding both of her hands, “Chloe look at me. You will never lose me; I will always be here for you. We can remain friends, we can …”

“Break each other’s hearts continuously?”

He swallowed but couldn’t manage to make a sound.

“It would never work and you know it. We are both just trying to convince ourselves that there is some happy medium when we both know the truth, it is a relationship or nothing”.

“A relationship or nothing”, he repeated. He guessed that this was goodbye then, he studied her face intently trying to etch it deep into his memory so that he could hold onto it until the day that he died.

“And I have never been good at doing nothing”.

He did a double take which was almost comedic. “WHAT?”

“We are both going to be miserable and heartbroken without each other so we might as well be together and work through whatever comes at us. We already both in too deep to get out of this without any scars”, she paused and then added hesitantly, “or at least, I am”.

The look on Lex’s face told her that she wasn’t the only one, more eloquently than words ever could have. With was fortunate as Lex wasn’t sure if he was capable of uttering anything.

“We can’t date in public, fine we will do it in secret until I graduate. You need another date for parties, so you find one and then call me afterwards and tell me how it went. I don’t want to give up any potential future career well … that one is a bit more difficult but if I get a job before they know that we are together then we will know that I got it on my own merits and they can hardly fire me afterwards on account of who my boyfriend is”.

“Boyfriend?”

“Yes, I mean. If you want to be”.

Lex grinned. He had never wanted anything so much in his entire life. He had never been a boyfriend before. “Boyfriend”, he rolled the word around in his mouth. It had a nice ring to it. He tried it out, “I am Lex Luthor, Chloe Sullivan’s boyfriend”.

Chloe beamed, “and I am Chloe Sullivan, Lex Luthor’s girlfriend”. Wow, she bet that no other woman had ever uttered that phrase (or at least, not with Lex’s consent).

Exhausted, delighted and both stamping on the realistic voices in their heads which told them that there was absolutely no way that this was ever going to work and that they were both just kidding themselves, they sank onto the sofa in each other’s arms … and promptly fell asleep. It had been a hard week.

A/N: Anyone else forsee some problems?

[trckyrcky]

Oh wow, I haven't been back in while due to finals but I am so happy to see two new updates to this story. I am glad Lilly really wants Lex and Chloe to get back together.

[trinna]

Nice. More please.

[HotCrossedBunny]

Trinna: Will do.

Trckyrcky: I hope that they went well. Yes, she does.

*Hugs both of my beloved reviewers*

[HotCrossedBunny]

A/N: *To the tune of Bugsy Malone's "You give a little love and it all comes back to you"* You give a little review and it call comes back to you.

Chapter Fourteen

“Well, as a therapist I have to tell you that that wasn’t the best way to begin a relationship. But as a romantic I love it”.

The words rolled around in Chloe’s mind as she curled up on the sofa watching as Lilly and Lex put on a puppet show. They had had a pleasant evening together, and as Lilly had been such a good girl about doing the extra maths and science problems that Lex had set her he had offered that they could do her reading project as a puppet show (which they had researched while Chloe made dinner), but Chloe couldn’t help but worry that the therapist – as eccentric as she appeared to be – might have been right. They hadn’t had the best relationship to start with. You needed a strong foundation and as much as she loved Lex, the base of their relationship had never been the stongest.

~*~

It was a warm summer’s evening and the sunlight was streaming through large window of Chloe’s apartment, casting a perfect warm, almost ethereal, glow over the golden haired beauty. It really pissed her off. She was moody, depressed, and staring out of the window at the dome of the theatre where Lex was passing the evening in the distance. As such she felt that the weather should have reflected her dower mood.

It should have been pitching black with thunder and lightning. Or at the very least an over cast grey afternoon with rain trickling down against the glass to look like/symbolise tears. Just as she saw thinking this, she heard the sound of an ice-cream truck and looked down to see rosy cheeked children in brightly coloured shorts and t-shirts scampering to towards the van. This was getting ridiculous.

She heaved herself to her feet and gave the building an extra dirty look. She stretched and rolled her neck around giving her a chance to notice the large red marks on her legs from the heat of her sitting. “Just bloody brilliant”, she grumbled as she headed for the kitchen.

The brand new glossy fridge, which Chloe had fallen in love with when Teddy had brought it for them last week, generously supplied her with a delicious ice-cream of her very own to make her feel better and might have proved to be the one thing in the universe which was not subject to her ill-will, had she not made the mistake of checking how red her legs were and groaned. In the shiny silver reflection, she could see quite clearly that they were not only very badly marked, they were terribly chubby.

“I bet that she”, she spat the word out as if it were a cuss, “doesn’t get red marks on her thighs. Or have to worry about cellulite. Or have any body fat at all. Stupid bitch”, she harrumphed as she stomped back over to the window seat and continued to glower in Lex’s direction.

She checked her phone again. And again. And then threw it against the cushion on the other side of the window seat before scrambling over after it, checking that it was working and then kissing her baby better. She didn’t love it quite as much as her laptop, but it was a close second.

“You still love me, don’t you?” She addressed her pint of ice-cream as she settled onto her stomach and she opened it. She had to do something to make herself feel better.

She leant back against the wall as she swirled her spoon around her frozen yumminess. She wanted Lex, not ice-cream. She took a spoonful, okay, she wanted both of them … possibly together. The idea made her feel even warmer than before.

Then an image of Lex and that brunette together flittered through her mind. They were in bed. Caressing each other. Kissing each other. Licking ice-cream off …

She bit back a sob, slammed the lid back down on her frozen deliciousness (as much as possible seeing as her spoon was still wedged firmly in place) and put it on coffee table – having to lean so far to do so that she almost fell over. She was too wretched to play with her number one baby for the moment so she pulled herself forwards on her stomach and grabbed the remote control. Hopefully TV could cheer her up.

News report. News report. News report about Lex. She snorted. Kid’s show. Even worse kid’s show. The Taste. She liked cooking shows. They contained all of the accomplishment of cookery with none of the effort.

Chloe watched the people come … and most of them get rejected and tried to focus on their problems rather than her own. She would not look back over at the dome. She would not! With considerable effort she kept her eyes trained on the screen, but she could not stop her mind wandering.

She was being ridiculous and she knew it. She had not only agreed to this, she was the one who had suggested it. She remembered their conversation, Lex had asked since then at least a hundred times if she was really okay with him taking another woman to this theatre appointment and she had told him that it was fine. It had to be, she had to keep him. She knew that he cared about her, not that stupid, beautiful, tall … She needed to take her mind off this. She tried to focus on a happier time in her life.

~*~

Chloe had gone back home to Smallville for the half term holiday only a few days after Lex and she had come to their arrangement – she had planned to spend the holiday with her father and she didn’t want to disappoint him / she missed her Daddy / she needed to get some of her laundry done – but she hated being away from Lex.

It was her first morning back at home, her father had gone out to work just after breakfast, and she hadn’t bothered to get showered or dressed yet. It was almost lunchtime and she was still lying on her stomach on the soft carpet of their living room floor with her laptop out in front of her. She liked to write in this position, she always had, but it didn’t feel right anywhere but at home.

She had completed most of her school work already but she continued to plod her way through the outline for her final essay, her eyes flicking over to her email icon in the bottom right hand corner of her screen more often than they should. She still had no new messages. Her phone hadn’t rung either. Not that she had been expecting to hear from Lex that day. There was no reason why he should call her, he was at work after all so there was absolutely no reason why he should have and … and she was pathetic. She had only had a boyfriend for a few days and she was already incapable of thinking about anything else.

With a groan of complaint, she continued to perfect her plan and pondered writing it up that afternoon just so that she wouldn’t have to think about anything else. Then it happened, her phone finally rang.

“Hello”, she said, any hope of her not sounding overly eager dying in those two syllables.

“Hi Chloe”, Clark’s voice came over the phone.

“Oh, hello Clark”, she tried not to seem too disappointed. There was a time when she would have been delighted to receive a call from the burly farm boy. She had just grown up a lot since then.

“Hi”, he repeated his greeting, sounding a little unsure of himself. It wasn’t as cute as it used to be. “I just thought that I would call you. I mean, we haven’t seen much of each other since we started college and especially not since you and Lana stopped living together”.

She didn’t even think “Yeah, because you visit her rather than me”, so smitten was she with her new beau.

“I haven’t even seen your new place”.

“Well, we can arrange of meet up or something”, she offered gamely. There was no reason why she shouldn’t continue to have friends and relationships, just because they didn’t happen to be the people whose company she desired most to hear from.

“Yeah, that would be great”, she could actually hear him smiling. That was still sort of sweet. Like a little puppy dog. “I was wondering if we could meet sometime this week too, maybe even today. You are in town right? Smallville I mean? With your Dad”.

“Yep”, she agreed as she heard a noise at the front door, “just hang on one second, Dad said that he was expecting a package at some point this week. I think that it has just arrived”.

“Sure”.

“Oh my God!”

“Chloe, what’s the matter?” He asked, a vague whooshing sound coming through the phone as if he were suddenly travelling really fast in a car with the top down.

“Clark, calm down”, she said as she finally worked out that the sound meant that he was in the process of super-speeding his way over to her house. “It is just a messenger. Is it okay if I call you back later today, or tomorrow? I’m not sure, I think that my Dad might have plans for us”.

“Yeah, sure, no problem”.

Chloe hung up.

“Miss Sullivan?” The tall man in an expensive tailored suit enquired.

“Yes”.

“Here you are”, he handed her an enormous bouquet of blood red roses – dethorned –, the largest, softest teddy bear she had ever seen, and an expensive box of chocolates which she couldn’t manage to carry inside with the rest of her booty. She had make two trips into the living room – giving her teddy a little ruffle – and come back for the card that he gave her.

It was barely between her manicured fingers before she was ripping into it. Only one person could have sent her any of these things – even if they were all hopelessly clichéd, and in one case equally cute.

“My dearest Chloe,
I hope that these hopelessly clichéd tokens of my affection will be received in the spirit they was intended – mostly heartfelt with only a touch of irony - and that you will recognise this as a formal invitation to join me for lunch at the mansion today. Yes, this is officially a date and lunch because I couldn’t wait until dinner”.

Chloe giggled. Hugged herself. And then performed a dance which would have been humiliating if anyone else had been around to see it.

She was going out on a date with Lex Luthor … and he knew about it too!

She raced back out to her front door to see the man still standing there, a limo she hadn’t noticed before behind him. “Are you supposed to be taking me to the mansion?”

“Yes Miss”.

“Now?”

“Yes Miss”.

“Can you wait oh say thirty minutes for me to shower and get changed ect?”

“Yes Miss”.

“Would you like to come in and have some coffee while you wait?”

He gave her a smile, “No thank-you Miss”.

Chloe had pranced back inside and upstairs to get ready for what had to have been the best date in the entire history of dating. She had been met by Lex at the doorway, looking so handsome that even she could hardly believe it and been shown through into a room she had never seen before which had been decorated like a Parisian bistro.

Lex had looked almost nervous as he had pulled out her chair for her, he had joked, “I was going to fly us to Paris but then I thought that you would probably want to spend some time with your Dad”.

Chloe had giggled and told him that she loved what he had done. They had then proceeded to have a fairy-tale date, so perfect and magical that Chloe could hardly believe that she had been on it. Ending with the most perfect, sweetest kiss.

~*~

Chloe laid her head down on her arms and tried not to be too depressed as she remembered her first date with Lex. She wanted her Lex to be here with her now! She reached for chocolaty calorific comfort. For a few minutes this and Nigella’s voice soothed her. She was almost relaxing when she was jolted by a buzzing at the intercom.

“Meh!” She couldn’t be bothered to get up. It couldn’t be Lex (he was wrapped in the arms of a nymph), so why bother? She didn’t want to see anyone else.

It buzzed again.

Once again, she ignored it.

“Chloe”, a familiar voice called as the door opened, “are you home? I thought that you were … oh there you are”.

Chloe turned over to see Lex standing there, in her doorway, looking unbelievably handsome, in full evening wear, with two brown paper carrier bags in his hands.

“What are you doing here?” She asked pulling herself up, unable to help grinning at him.

“I managed to get out early so I thought that I would stop by”, he explained, closing the door behind him and crossing over to where she sat. “Why didn’t you answer the door? Are you okay?”

“Because I didn’t know that it was you and I didn’t want to see anyone else”, she explained, “I’m glad that you have a key”.

“I’m glad too”, Lex said leaning down to kiss her on the forehead. “Are you okay? You look a little flushed”.

“Um, yeah”, she wasn’t about to tell him that she had been moping around all afternoon, “I just got a little … hot”. She looked down at herself. Then back up at Lex’s cool, debonair form. Then back at herself. The contrast was horrific.

He was perfect and handsome, while she was in an oversized t-shirt which had used to belong to her Dad with short pyjama-shorts because of the heat, bare feet and her hair was in a messy phony tail. She brought her hand up to wipe her mouth just to check that she didn’t have any chocolate around her mouth.

“So I see”, he smirked as he rubbed his thumb against her lower lip to get the last trace of chocolate, “have you already eaten?”

“Only ice-cream”, she admitted, wondering what was inside the bags. She recognised the name of an expensive restaurant.

“Naughty girl”, he teased. “Do you have room for some proper food as well?

Always!” Her tummy could probably use something with some actual nutritional value as well.

“Ah my human dustbin”, he gave her messy head a playful ruffle, which destroyed what she was left of her pony-tail.

Chloe frowned.

“My adorable, loveable and entirely too damned sexy”, he gave her a squeeze, “human dustbin”.

“So”, Chloe started slowly, trying to sound casual as Lex started to lay out of the food on the coffee table, “how was your … afternoon?”

Lex sat down and looked up at her, giving her his full attention. “My afternoon, was fine thank-you. How was yours?”

“Good, I didn’t do much”, she admitted. “But, you went to the theatre.” She shouldn’t pry. She didn’t want to pry. She asked, “Was it a good production?”

“Probably, I don’t know”, he sounded casual. As if it had meant nothing to him. Maybe it hadn’t. “I didn’t actually see the play, I got an important call just as we were headed in”.

“Really?”

“Really”, his face was an impassive mask, “my secretary apparently felt the need to inform me of the exact time and that the take out I had ordered was ready and waiting at the Lex Corp building”.

“Which is on your way here”.

“Which is on the way here”, he agreed.

She sat down next to him, “What did you think of the new building? Was that nice at least?” She tried to examine the food, rather than him, but ended up with her eyes slanting back.

“It was fine”, he said, actually shrugging this time. “Not worth anywhere near the amount they spent on it”, it was on the tip of his tongue to say that he would take her there some time but then he remembered that he wouldn’t. Not for another two years at least. He hated this arrangement.

He looked at over at his girlfriend. His sweet, sexy girlfriend. His girlfriend who he couldn’t openly date. His girlfriend who would be flirting with other guys at MetU, who would hang out with guys who would put their arms around her. He wanted to scream. He wanted to pull her to him and shout that she was his. His. His. His and only his. But he knew that he couldn’t, they had a relationship only because they were together like this. They hadn’t even said that they loved each other, hadn’t even had sex yet. He couldn’t allow himself to get possessive and ruin everything.

“So you got the work you needed done?”

“Yeah”, he said almost absentmindedly as he stared at her. She wasn’t his, not really. She never would be. She was too good, too wonderful, too pure for him. He would love her always, she would be his heart but he couldn’t keep her, he knew that. She would find someone else, fall for them, have a perfect life, family, home, children without the hassles associated with the Luthors. And he loved her enough to let her. But he was so selfish that he was going to hold her for as long as humanly possible, which meant not talking about a lot of things.

“Then what?”

He was jerked out of his own thoughts and striving to keep his tone perfectly calm, without a hint of the panic that was rising up in him, he asked, “Is there something you want to ask or say, Chloe?”

“Yes, LOVE ME! LOVE ME! LOVE ME! LOVE ME! You’re mine, mine, mine and only mine. And I don’t want you to date anyone else even though I know that I said that I was okay with it. In fact, I don’t want you to even look at anyone else”. Chloe thought, but bit down hard on the inside of her mouth until she tasted blood to keep herself from uttering one syllable of that humiliating plea. If she did, she would lose him. A thought too terrible to be born.

“No”, she shook her head, “just making conversation”.

“Alright”, he pulled her over to him and kissed her forehead as he squeezed her.

He wanted to say something fantastic, that would solve all of their problems that would make her fall for him, but he couldn’t think of anything. So he just held her.

~*~

“So Mommy, what did you think? What did you think?” Lilly bounced over to her, puppet still firmly affixed to her hand.

“It was brilliant sweetie”, she gave her a hug and a kiss.

“Daddy was involved too”, Lilly pointed out pulling her mother up to her feet.

“Lilly I thought that we had a talk about not manipulating people”, Lex said, an edge of warning in his voice.

“I’m not manipulating”, Lilly turned her big eyes on him, “I was just pointing out facts”.

He tried to look stern but had to settle for an “Hmm”.

“You don’t want a hug and a kiss too?” Chloe inquired, trying to make a joke out of it.

“Well …” Lex said thoughtfully, “I guess that I wouldn’t mind”. He didn’t want to pressure her into anything that she didn’t feel ready for and … Oh God that felt good. Chloe had wrapped her slim, strong arms around his waist and squeezed as tightly as she could.

Chloe hid her face in his strong chest as an unbidden grin spread across her features as he returned the embrace. She breathed in his warm, familiar scent for a few seconds before she got her courage up. Her cheeks almost burning as she did so, she craned her neck back and rose up onto her toes.

Lex almost jumped out of his skin as she brushed her lips against his warm, smooth cheek, once, twice and then, on the lips.

“Ewww”, Lilly complained wiggling her way in between them, “on the cheek only please. I don’t want a little brother or sister!” Honestly, sometimes parents could be so irresponsible. Just going around kissing each other on the mouth once they were married. “Unless you’d get back together for a new baby”.

“Of course not”, Lex scooped her up and bounced her up and down a few times to quell the sad look which had in her eyes at the thought of a competitor. “We already have one perfect little angel, why would we want to have another one who would be inferior in every way?”

“Good point”, Lilly agreed.

“Come on you two”, Chloe wrapped an arm around both of them to rub their respective backs, “I know where there is some ice-cream with your names on it”.

“Is that so?” Lex played along.

“Yes Daddy, I wrote on them”, Lilly informed him cheerfully.

“You wrote on them?” He repeated with a warm laugh which made Chloe’s insides feel all warm and tingly.

“Yes”, Lilly agreed as she was carried through into Gabe’s kitchen.

“She did indeed, one for you, one for Granddad and one for Lilly”, Chloe explained.

“You get a whole one even though you are so little?” Lex inquired.

“I’m not little”, Lilly put her hands on her hips, her chin stuck out. Just like Chloe did.

“I’m sorry”, Lex kissed her forehead, “my mistake”.

“Yes”, Lilly agreed, her arms going back around her Daddy’s neck now that he had admitted her fault, “besides, it’s the only way that I will grow”.

“Good point. Wait, why doesn’t Mommy have an ice-cream?” He asked as he watched Chloe pulling them out of the freezer.

“Mommy doesn’t eat ice-cream or sweeties”, Lilly informed her in her patented ‘Daddy’s being silly’ voice.

“Mommy loves sweeties”.

“Nu-uh, Mommy never eats sweeties. Not ever”, she shook her head. It was true, for the entire last year Chloe hadn’t eaten sweeties and Lilly couldn’t remember every day occurrences from before that, only special occasions etc.

Lex stared over at Chloe with a furrowed brow, “Since when don’t you eat sweeties?”

“I’ve been trying to eat healthy for a while now”, she said, all of her attention apparently focused on finding the spoons which were right in front of her nose.

“How long Chloe?” Lex asked in the slow, clear manner which always got results. Lilly’s gaze ping ponged between her parents, she wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but she was fairly sure that Mommy was going to tell Daddy whatever it was that he wanted to know.

“Just over a year”, she said simply, her hands tightening around the spoons she had apparently finally found and was holding.

“Right”. His eyes were fixed on his wife. He knew that she had lost weight. He had known that something was wrong. Damn it. Why hadn’t he worked out what was going on before now? Feeling the tension creeping back into Lilly he tried to sound more jovial, “Well, then we will just have to remind Mommy how good ice-cream is and let her share ours, won’t we?”

“Yay ice-cream. Yay Mommy!” Lilly declared her support for this plan of action with enthusiasm.

They went back into the living room and Lilly wedged herself in between her parents in easy reach of all of the ice-cream. She pulled a face at the dark Venezuelan chocolate one which she was fairly sure Mommy had brought especially for Daddy, and opted for her own one. Lex consented, at her urging, to take a spoon full of her container of pink gunk but pulled a face, “Would you mind my asking what that is exactly?”

“It’s ice-cream Daddy”, she formed him. Sometimes he could be so silly.

He looked at Chloe.

“It’s ice-cream”, she informed him, “we made it ourselves didn’t we Lilly? And then we put it in a special pot Lilly drew on to make it look like premium brands. Would you like to tell Daddy how we made it?”

“Yes”, she was extremely proud of herself and her Daddy should know all about her achievement, “I took three frozen bananas out of the freezer and peeled them myself and then I put them in the blender, with frozen strawberries and soya milk and then Mommy turned it on and blended everything. It made a really loud noise but I wasn’t scared at all!”

“That is very impressive”, Lex nodded and extended his pot to Chloe, “You can share mine”.

“Really Lex, it’s fine. I ‘ve never been a big fan of yours anyway”. She smiled at him before realising that she had just admitted that she had gone out and brought it especially for him because she had had expectations of him.

“You’re quite right”, he placed both ice-cream containers on the table, popped their tops on and then stood up tossing Lilly over his shoulder and held out his hand to Chloe.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“The Luthors are going to get ice-cream”.

Chloe tried to protest but Lilly was squealing with delight and Lex had already succeeded in heaving his wife to her feet. “Lilly doesn’t even have shoes on, she is wearing slippers”, Chloe pointed to the woolly wolves which were sticking straight out behind her.

“Well, she isn’t going to have to put her feet on the ground”, Lex argued.

“Lex!”

“Fine”, he huffed and put Lilly back down, “Spoil sport”.

“Spoil sport”, Lilly repeated and Chloe gave Lex a dirty look which he ignored as he took out his phone and ordered ice-cream to be brought to them. Less than two minutes later, one of security guards that Lex had watching the place came to the door with the desert that had just been delivered.

“How on earth did you manage that?” Chloe gaped.

“Inexhaustible wealth”, Lex shrugged as Lilly wrested one of the pots from the bag of an exclusive ice-cream parlour out of the bag and got enough of the lid off to slip her strawberry tainted spoon in it. She took a mouthful of the decadent, sugar ladened chocolaty snickers and Nutella inspired ice-cream that Chloe had adored before and pulled a face.

“I don’t like it”, the baby declared with feeling and went back to her own. Honestly, the things that adults would eat if they weren’t properly supervised.

“That’s probably a good thing”, Chloe smiled down at her little angel, “it isn’t very good for you”. She breathed in deeply, as the smell wafted over to her.

“True”, Lex said, drawing out the word, “but it is so utterly delicious”. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t actually to his taste but he knew that she loved it and he had fond (extremely erotic) memories of licking it off her warm flesh. He swallowed. His daughter was in the room. In a slightly forced voice he said, “Come on Chloe, take a bite”. He scooped a huge wedge out onto a spoon and held it out for her.

“Lex …”

“Chloe …”

“Mommy … Daddy …” Lilly put in, just because she didn’t like being left out of anything.

“Fine”, Chloe moved to take the spoon from him but Lex wouldn’t let her, instead he just held it up to her lips. It smelled divine. She darted her tongue out to touch it, her first taste of sugar in over a year. “Oh my God”, she groaned opening her mouth for the spoon, sucking every morsel from it as the rich, velvety chocolaty taste exploded on her taste buds her reminding of her of everything she had been missing.

Lilly was about to offer to share hers with Mommy if she didn’t like hers when Chloe snatched the ice-cream and spoon from Lex and cramped several spoonful’s into her mouth at once.

“I think that she likes it”, Lex nudged Lilly as they all sat back down, Chloe was now blushing furiously.

“Why have you gone all pink, Mommy?”

“I … I haven’t”.

“Yes, you have!”

“No, I haven’t!”

“Yes, you ha…”

“I think that Mommy is just a little overwhelmed by all of the sugar, why don’t we just sit down quietly and relax and put on that movie we were going to watch”, Lex stepped in.

Lilly assented to this and as she was putting in the film – she could do it all by herself now, if given enough time – Lex leant over to Chloe, “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing”. She noticed his slip. It made her feel all warm and tingly.

His hand ran over her thigh and gave it a squeeze, Chloe groaned slightly at the contact after so long and moaned, “This is going to go straight to my thighs”.

“Good”, he whispered in her ear, keeping one eye on their daughter. “Chloe, just eat your ice-cream, it would do you good to gain back a few pounds and we will talk about all of this later”.

“Right”, Chloe said, taking another spoonful of sinfully delicious gorgeousness, mainly to avoid having to deal with Lex again. She managed quite well to avoid the conversation until they had tucked Lilly into bed that night and he caught her around the waist and pulled her into his arms, dropping a kiss on her head.

“We need to talk”.


A/N: Dun dun duh ... So, what did you think?

[trckyrcky]

Now why would Chloe wants to give up ice cream? She is already perfect and I hate it when people think they have to be a bony skeleton in order to be pretty.