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Thread: Anyone's Game (NC-17 Chloe/Lucas; Chloe/Lex UST/Angst) - 25 Nov 2004

  1. #61
    ...!!!! Another update!!! Where have I BEEN?!?!?

    Great, great job. Love the Lex/Lionel interaction. Love that Lionel is feeling "pride" when it comes to Chloe now. And of course I love love LOVE that they've stopped "pretending."

    At least for a little while, anyway.

  2. #62
    scifichick774
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    Three Weeks Later…

    The first week he could understand. He’d even allowed her more time after he found out that Lucas moved to town and was pursuing a relationship with her. But a month? One month of complete avoidance; one month of not only pretending that they’d never dated, but of pretending that he didn’t exist at all. He’d been more than lenient, but now he realized that he’d let Chloe’s post breakup tantrum go on far too long.

    The deception to get into the Torch office to see her had been relatively easy to concoct; ‘thinking about donating money to the school, would like an article done on it if he decided to go through with it, etc.’ It was remarkable how very little it took to gain the school officials’ full support in winning Chloe back.

    Of course, they didn’t know that’s what they were doing, but that fact was currently irrelevant in Lex’s mind. The only thing that mattered now was getting to talk to Chloe again without his brother’s interference. He knew he could talk some sense into her if only he could get her alone.

    The bell rang, signaling the end of class, and Lex smirked to himself. Chloe would stop at her locker after leaving her math class and then she would come to the Torch office. The design was perfect in every way. Now he just had to wait.

    ~*~*~

    The problem with living in a small town was, Chloe realized, just that. It was small. Gossipy and closed-minded, most of the citizens of Smallville lacked any sort of ability to hold a decent conversation. She actually considered herself lucky on that count. Many citizens of Smallville had too many deep, dark secrets of their own to be stupid enough to go blabbing about anyone else’s.

    Unfortunately, the intellectual capacity of the people residing in the same town she did didn’t disqualify them for living there, and she was faced with running into almost each and every single one of those people on a regular basis just because of their relative proximity to one another.

    Looking at it that way, Chloe was surprised she hadn’t crossed paths with Lex before now. She owed Lucas for that. Shockingly ever thoughtful, he’d purchased a high-end espresso machine for his house so she could feed her caffeine addiction without either one of them having to step foot in the Talon again.

    Since the Talon was the only place – publicly – that Chloe risked running into Lex, she’d enjoyed blissful isolation from him, which helped do wonders in her effort to forget everything that had happened.

    It was a shame that one glimpse of the back of his head brought her memories back into her head and her heart all at once. She took a breath and pushed her shoulders back to straighten her posture. She could do this.

    “What are you doing here?”

    “Chloe,” Lex returned. “It’s good to see you. It’s been a while.”

    “Not long enough,” Chloe said curtly. “What are you doing here, Lex?”

    Lex shrugged and gave her a lazy grin, turning so he could continue facing her as she irritably swept past him and toward the computer on her desk. She wasn’t unaffected by his presence. That was a good sign. Now all he needed to do was use it to his advantage.

    “LuthorCorp just donated some money to help your school out of its budget crisis. Principal Reynolds thought ---”

    “I don’t care about your cover story,” Chloe interrupted. “What are you really doing here?”

    “I wanted to talk to you.”

    “We don’t have anything to talk about.”

    “I beg to differ,” Lex said. “You weren’t returning my calls and then you went and got your cell phone number changed. Add that to the fact that you’re never in the Talon anymore and some people might think you were avoiding me.”

    Some people should have taken the hint and left me alone by now.”

    “Chloe…”

    She cringed, but hid it well. She hated it when he said her name like that. It wasn’t quite as strung out and whiney like Clark’s got when he began to reprimand her for something, but the simultaneous pleading yet contrary sharp edge to his tone was unmistakable.

    Releasing a breath that was close to a sigh, she forced herself to make eye contact with him. “Don’t,” she warned him. “I have every right to be mad and stay mad at being made into a pawn in you and your father’s dysfunctional little power games. So, whatever you think you have to say – don’t.”

    Lex glanced down at the floor and then slowly raised his head so he could look at her from underneath his eyelashes. She was right, of course. She had every right to never speak to him again if she didn’t want to; but he’d realized that he might very well be in love with her, so he wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

    In a way, he was sorry to see it come to this because he wanted to be the man she used to think he was, the still dependable knight in tarnished armor. But he had no choice. He was a Luthor, which meant the only way he knew how to get what he wanted was to go after it with little to no regard for anyone else. He knew Chloe’s weaknesses and how to exploit them, and if that’s what it took to get her back then he wasn’t above doing so.

    The fact that she had come into the Torch office alone and not accompanied by Clark or Pete or even Lana was a fortuitous twist of fate indeed. It would make things that much easier, and at this point, Lex acknowledged that he needed all the help he could get.

    “I miss you,” he said quietly.

    ‘You do?’ was Chloe’s initial reaction; the hopeful voice inside her head bursting with a gush of glee. But the reaction was quelled almost immediately because the bitter darkness that so often consumed her nowadays was the emotion in charge and it wasn’t about to let her forget the reason why. “What am I supposed to say to that, Lex?”

    “Chloe…I made a mistake. I know I hurt you and I want to make up for it if you’ll let me.”

    He moved closer to her, but she seemed further away than ever. She refused to look at him, refused to try and his facial expressions and intonations to decide whether he was being sincere or not. It was painfully obvious that she’d already made that decision and something inside Lex’s soul broke because of it.

    The hurt caused him to give voice to the first petty, jealous thought that entered his mind and even as the words slipped off his tongue, he knew he’d regret them. “You forgave Clark. Why not me?”

    “Because you knew what you were doing,” Chloe replied.

    Hushed but succinct, her sentence was spoken with a cool cruelty that Lex had never heard her use before. He’d seen her become emotional, lose her temper, and raise her voice when she was passionately arguing a point, but this was something altogether different and it scared him.

    “I think you should leave now.”

    Lex frowned and slid his hands into the pockets of his slacks, cocking his head a little to the side to observe her. He’d treated Chloe horribly and he was paying for it, and though he acknowledged that, his stubbornness overruled it. She may have been able to neatly pushed aside the first weakness he brought up, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have more weapons in his arsenal. Feigning greater hurt than he felt with her dismissal, he looked away from her and absently fixed his gaze on something outside the window.

    “I broke up with Amanda.”

    “I assumed.”

    “I want to try again, Chloe.” He twisted his head just enough to glance at her and gauge her reaction. She was looking at the door. “I want to give our relationship a second chance.”

    “You never gave it a first chance, Lex,” Chloe said, trying to keep the bitterness she felt from coming out in her voice and failing. “Call me crazy, but I want more than that. I deserve more than that.”

    “And you think Lucas can give it to you?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer, forging full steam ahead into the rant he’d wanted to let out since Lucas first told him that he’d slept with her. “Are you honestly naïve enough to believe that he loves you? After everything you’ve been through?”

    A distinct stabbing pain knotted up at the bottom of Chloe’s throat as the lump of emotion swelled and made her unable to speak. Lex had shot right at the core of all of her insecurities and it had been a direct hit.

    I never loved you, Clark never loved you; your own mother never loved you. No one has ever loved you. No one *will* ever love you.

    “Open your eyes, Chloe. He’s just using you to get back at me and our father.”

    ‘That makes two of us,’ Chloe thought sardonically. She clenched her jaw and then mustered the courage to glare at him with fire in her eyes. It was his own fault that he kept pushing. He really should have known better. “Are you talking about you or Lucas?”

    Lex bristled at her comment, primarily because it was true. He hadn’t needed to seduce Chloe to gain her allegiance, but he’d wanted to be sure – and now he had nothing. His heart stopped for a second and he had to force himself back to his original train of thought before he let Chloe derail it completely.

    “Chloe…”

    “No,” Chloe said after pausing for a moment to get her voice in check. It was starting to shake like the rest of her body and she didn’t know how much longer she could handle being in the same room with him without giving into her mixed emotions one way or the other. She would kiss him or she would hit him; it was a draw, and the only other option was to step away from both. “Just get out. I don’t have anything else to say to you – or your dad.”

    ~*~*~*~

    She felt pathetic. Worse than pathetic if that was possible. She couldn’t believe she’d let Lex get to her like that. And now she found herself on Lucas’s front stoop, literally wiping her tears away in an effort not to look like as much of a loser as she apparently was.

    She hoped he was home. Scratch that, she thought, mentally amending the wish to be that he was not only home but not with anyone. Aside from Lucas’s comment about ‘not pretending anymore’, they’d never really discussed whether or not they were in a monogamous relationship; and from her limited previous experiences, even if they had talked about it, it didn’t necessarily mean anything.

    She took a breath and wiped at her eyes again. She may not love Lucas, but she didn’t have anyone else to talk to about this particular subject, and she knew she would end up hurting more if she didn’t let the pain out. She heard the deadbolt click open from the other side and the door pulled inward.

    “Chloe,” Lucas greeted in surprise, knowing that she was supposed to still be at school. His pleasant demeanor rapidly evaporated when he saw the look on her face and he narrowed his eyes in suspicious anger. “What happened?” Chloe shook her head to push back a fresh batch of tears and Lucas moved forward to embrace her. “Lex?”

    Chloe nodded against his shoulder, which she just barely reached. “He came to the Torch.” Lucas growled and tightened his grip on her. “I…” She sighed. “I didn’t handle it well.”

    ~~“You’re an intelligent young woman, Chloe… It’s a shame you let yourself be ruled by your emotions instead of your mind.”~~

    She closed her eyes as Lionel’s words echoed in her head. The problem was he was right and she knew it. But not anymore, she inwardly resolved. If she wanted the Luthors out of her life for good, she was going to need to do what they kept doing to her. She was going to need to strike back and hurt them.

    She pulled away from Lucas just enough to let him guide her into the house with his arm around her back. “I feel bad for bringing this up, but do you think your mom was serious when she offered to help get even with Lex and your dad?”

    “More than serious” Lucas answered. “Why? Did you come up with something besides my ‘grizzly deaths in a car accident’ idea?”

    “Yeah, I think so. It doesn’t involve murder ---”

    “Damn.”

    “But it is illegal and I don’t want to get you or your mom in trouble.”

    Lucas scoffed with a short laugh and pulled her to him again, resting his hands on her waist. “What’d you have in mind?”

    ~*~*~*~

    One Month Later…

    Internet café’s could be so useful, she thought with a wry smirk. If her online activities were tracked, the authorities would be led to a T-1 connection at Cyber Bytes in scenic downtown Middleton, Kansas. The four hour drive would definitely be worth the anonymity she’d gain for what she was about to pull off.

    She’d needed help getting to that point, of course. After the court papers finalizing Lucas as Rachel’s power of attorney, she had moved into one of the bedrooms at her son’s house and proceeded to help them put the finishing touches on the rough outline of a plan that Chloe had come up with.

    Find out which banks Lionel kept the bulk of his money hidden in, break into said banks’ computer systems to obtain pass-keys, and meet up with the contacts Rachel made when she was trying to start over after she had Lucas and Lionel mercilessly stole him away and dumped her to develop a disposable identity. The end result would hopefully be that they could use Lex and Lionel’s already instable relationship to turn them against each other and dole out the compensation for mistreatment that she, Lucas, and Rachel all readily deserved.

    So now, as far as anyone in Middleton knew, she was Amy Miller; a woman with shoulder length brown hair and a rental car in the café’s parking lot. Two hundred dollars had been a small price to pay for the fake identity and when everything was said and done, she’d be reimbursed several times over.

    Her hand lifted off the computer mouse and reached for her sadly lukewarm cup of coffee. She’d take the paper cup with her when she left so a DNA sample couldn’t be obtained from it should anyone catch onto her giant leap over the line of legality.

    This was the fourth and last transaction. The other bank transfers had gone smoothly with the pass keys Lucas managed to obtain, but this one was going far too slow for comfort. Unfortunately, she’d suspected that might be the case. The offshore financial institution in the Caribbean was the best protected and they’d had to jump through several hoops to just find out the personnel could override and establish new transactions without the customers’ specific say-so.

    She took a breath and then took another sip of coffee, making sure she kept her face down and her posture somewhat slouched so the video surveillance cameras wouldn’t see anything but her wig and the briefest glimpse of her profile like Lucas had recommended.

    ‘Come on, come on,’ she silently chanted, waiting for the transaction to finish.

    The longer it took, the better her chances were of getting tracked and caught. Panic started to make her palms sweat and her heart-rate speed up. Her eyes darted over to the door, but there was no one there. No barrage of police cars with their lights and sirens blaring, no FBI or FTC agents storming the place…she was safe for now. But for how much longer?

    Then the growing small blue bar on the monitor reached the end of its box and the computer’s speaker pinged, signaling the end of the transaction. She let out a breath of relief. They’d done it. They’d actually done it.

    She closed out the window and pressed the eject button on the cd-rom, removing the disc that contained all of the pass key information and everything that corresponded with them. Closing the disc drive again, she slipped the cd into her purse and slung the bag over her shoulder, remembering to grab her drink as she rose from her seat.

    Sunglasses in hand, she put them on and offered a tiny grin to the waiter who told her to have a nice day, and then she left the establishment. She’d done well, but she knew she couldn’t let herself become overconfident. One wrong move and she would be going to prison for a very long time. Now it was just a matter of waiting to see if she’d made that misstep she didn’t know about.

    In the meantime, however, watching Lionel go ballistic because Lex had emptied out several of his hidden accounts could prove to be quite entertaining.



    TBC

  3. #63
    Corrupted by the smut Janet's Avatar
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    Nice chapter! Thanks so much for updating, I really like this fic. Looking forward to more of the revenge plot, and seeing how it plays out.

    :biggrin:

  4. #64
    NS Full Member LaLa's Avatar
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    woa! great! the plot thickens! even if lex is a bastard an dchlexy goodness is out of this story: DAMN i love it! lol More please!

    xoxolaLa

  5. #65
    An Accused Heretic Senior Member Kit Merlot's Avatar
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    I adore this story!

    Chloe is so freakin' brilliant--Lex and Lionel won't know what hit them :biggrin:

    GO CHLOE
    KATHY

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  6. #66
    NS Senior Member Senior Member autumngold's Avatar
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    Go Chloe!! It broke my heart though when Lex approached her!! Poor baby!! Thanks for the update!! Can't wait for more!! :worship2: :chlexsign4: :worship2:

  7. #67
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    Poor Chloe. Revenge...ain't it sweet. Great story, I can't wait for the next chapter so hurry up please.

  8. #68
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    please up-date

  9. #69
    Corrupted by the smut Janet's Avatar
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    *gentle nudge*

    uppyeyes:

  10. #70
    starbright25
    Just a Guest!
    Is it wrong that I like Lucas better in this story, and that Lex is getting what he deserves? Please update again soon... I need to know what happens!

    :chlexsign2:

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