Wow! That was a great update. I loved that Lex said he loved her first. The fact that he didn't realize it until he said it was just so in character for this story.
Susan S
Wow! That was a great update. I loved that Lex said he loved her first. The fact that he didn't realize it until he said it was just so in character for this story.
Susan S
Wow, great update. Post more soon, this is a great fic! :worship2::worship2:
:chlexsign4:
Aww that was so sweet. He said I love you .
Hope :chlexsign2:
"Everyone seems normal until you get to know them. "
Please let Chloe tell Lex she loves him too!! Please!! Thank you for this beautiful update!! I can't wait for more!! Please update soon!! :yay: :chlexsign3: :yay:
The car was still rolling with a gentle hum of motor and wheels through clean wind, and they were both breathing hard and the world didn’t stop turning.
But Chloe thought it might have shifted on its axis a little.
And I like how you were realistic about the stress getting to them, and about their first argument and Chloe's slightly over-the-top but still understandable worries that she might turn out just like Lex's other wives.
Brilliant job as usual, and please update soon!
AH!!!!!!!!! 3;!!!!!!!!! 3;!!!!!!!!! 3;!!!!!!!!! 3;!!!!!!!!! 3;
LORD THANK YOU!!!!!
i'm so happy he said it!!! here i am at 3:00 in the morning and i'm doing a happy jig in my chair!!!!
that was wonderful!
I really love this story and this was a great chapter.
More soon please?
Kezz....x.x.x.
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What a great chapter! Love the snippet of smut you doled out.
Your portrayal of Chloe in her self-recriminations are perfect. There are just times when you say and do wrong things to your significant other that you can't help but find yourself so lowly to the point of believing your partner hates you. Then you produce a deluge of tears because of it. I'm glad that your Lex told Chloe that he loves her....done a perfect job in reassuring her.
Please more soon! :yay:
Amazing. I am so glad that you updated this story. This is so great. I think your description of Chloe is right on. She tends to speak first and think later. I think her outburst makes sense, and so does Lex's response. He wants to take care of everyone he cares about. Please keep writing. Update soon...:
:chlexsign2:
Survival - NC-17
NC-17 Fanfiction
Post-Episode for Covenant (Season 3 Finale)
SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers abound, up to the current episode in U.S./Canadian release. Possible AU, but I won't know how far off-track I'm going until the fall, Season 4 premiere.
Disclaimer: Smallville, the characters therein, and all affiliated copyrighted materials are owned by the WB. This is a work of fanfiction not intended for profit or infringement, only for the pleasure of fans of the series.
A/N: Seems to be a good time for updates considering I’ve hit a rich vein of inspiration lately. Fair warning, this is a chapter that starts kind of fluffy and happy and gets heavier. Hopefully I've managed to keep it from flattening you.
Chapter Thirteen
When the car stopped at the airport Chloe and Lex were sitting up again. He had wiped off her smeared eye makeup and she had shyly thanked him, as if the words he had spoken had made them much younger people. They were holding hands, lightly and chastely, like the friends they had only just realized they were.
A friend watched you shaking apart and held you together with their arms, legs and whole body, even when you fought and raged at them just for being there, even when you punished them for not being who you wanted. They let you rant and go crazy if you needed it, then they took their cues from you to never mention it again. They didn’t get offended if you wished sometimes to trade them for another person you had lost, or if you blamed them for coming up short. When you were finished shaking you could push them away for a while until you called them back again, and they would let you do both without judgment.
Lex had never had that kind of friend until it was far too late for him to really believe it was possible. He had learned to grieve without support beyond his father’s achingly rare overtures. His pain was a bone set wrong in a twisted limb, useable but embued with a constant tenderness that made his emotions more difficult to use than other peoples’. Much like a father with an old football injury who couldn’t play catch with his children, feeling love hurt Lex to the point of his near inability to do so.
He held Chloe’s hand in his and simply felt. It was her left, and her wedding rings shifted between their joined fingers, reminding him that she wasn’t going anywhere.
He thought back to the days before Smallville, days when he hadn’t known a creature like her existed. Back to the early days of living in the small town, when Chloe hadn’t inspired much of a reaction beyond mild interest. It all seemed inconceivable now.
She made him alive like being outside on the coldest day of winter, looking into a warm house where he was welcome - air cold enough to hurt as he breathed it, but a sense of the complete absence of that pain very soon. He was feeling the rush of joy as pain eased and lessened. It still hurt, but there was hope contained in it, a promise of better times.
She’s bringing out the inner Byron no one could have suspected I had, Lex thought humourously. He chuckled and jarred Chloe from her reverie beside him, smiling as she met his gaze.
She smiled back and he could see the same dazed-drunk relief he felt on her face. Chloe looked down and watched his fingers toy with hers, exhilarated.
It doesn’t matter, she thought, none of this matters. It can be wonderful, it can hurt like hell, but life doesn’t ever stop for him or me or anyone. Here and now is as good as it can be if I just let it happen.
She leaned into her husband, finally giving up all the reservations she had been collecting in the back of her mind. They might not stay married, they might not even see another day, but they could help each other today. For the first time she let it really sink in that Lex was a person she needed to give her hope.
“Thank you.” She looked at him and enjoyed the warm optimism between them. He nodded happily, wrapping an arm over her shoulder. His eyes were extra blue, cheerful and light. He looked his age for once, scarcely older than she.
“I needed that a lot,” she continued. His hands cupped hers and she traced his wedding band with the pad of her thumb.
She thought about it, dug around in her feelings, but she didn’t find love for him. There was lust, attraction, an intense affection that could only be inspired by being loved, but she wasn’t certain she returned it. If so it would be a first for her, and Chloe didn’t want to add another lie to his life.
Lex kissed her, gently and without demands, trying to convey his contentment. As he pulled back, Chloe relaxed. There were strings that held them together, but it was a voluntary bond without any of the strangulation of the relationship she had attempted with Clark.
“You don’t have to thank me, Chloe.” He turned to look out the window. The car was parked behind the cover of a small hanger, next to the helicopter that ferried him to work in Metropolis occasionally. He turned back to Chloe to find her looking at him uncertainly.
She chewed her lower lip. “Do you still want to go to Gotham for the weekend?”
Lex shrugged, elegantly. “I have no plans that can’t be canceled. My main concern was avoiding reporters for a while. Is there somewhere else you’d rather go?”
She echoed his shrug, but met his eyes. “Smallville. I think . . . I want to visit my dad.”
Gabe Sullivan’s remains had been buried in a cemetery in Smallville, next to an empty grave that was supposed to be his daughter’s. The matching marble stones had shone slickly during the short graveside service, and though Lex tried to play the role of the sole mourner with equal attention to both father and daughter he had been unable to tear his eyes away from Chloe’s plot. He had known she would need his sympathy and attention far more than Gabe would ever need anything again.
He hesitated. “Are you sure? You remember that there’s also . . . “ His words stopped as he contemplated the gentlest way to remind her that visiting Gabe’s grave would also be looking at her own.
“I’m ready, Lex. I’ll be okay now.” She put her hand over his heart and pressed down slightly, feeling his pulse. It was slightly fast, a small slip from the eternal calm he had always projected. He was worried about her and it restored safety to her world.
Strong, he wondered to himself, how did she get so strong?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++
Chloe had always related to the world through words, almost effortlessly.
She remembered the large print books from her childhood well enough to recite some of them. She knew the date her mother had left because she had looked at that block on the calendar for a long time, memorizing it with a precocious recognition that everything had just changed for her family.
Her triumphs in print were fond memories on paper imaginings, first essays from classes, then bylines in the Torch, the Ledger, the Inquisitor and the Daily Planet. Her biggest stumble was a folder of printed pages outlining the damning information she had given to Lionel, her redemption a similar folder collecting evidence against the man and given to his son.
The latest additions to this mental archive were the death certificates proclaiming the Sullivan family dead and the marriage certificate that had resurrected her as someone new.
As she held Lex’s hand in the cemetery, Chloe wondered if she hadn’t pushed too hard for this moment. He was holding her tightly enough that she couldn’t move forward unless he let her, maybe keeping her at a safe distance from the gravestones. She could read the names clearly, but not the dates etched in smaller script or the brief memorial messages.
They were both dressed in black in the still morning, with an underlying intention. Eddie had suggested a graveside visit would be best done in morning to avoid any reporters, so they had gone to bed early after returning to the mansion. Lex had silently held Chloe most of the night while she slept, and dressed in a dark suit as she showered. Chloe had put on a black sweater and slacks, although her clothing hadn’t mattered. She knew he thought this was some kind of ceremony for her and didn’t try to explain differently, but for her it was really just a visit.
“Are you okay?” He whispered it to her and she nodded. Chloe pulled against his hand and Lex let her go reluctantly.
A dozen steps and she was standing between the two graves, Lex two steps behind her and hovering. She read the words on her stone first, but they meant nothing because she was still standing.
Chloe Abigail Sullivan, 1987 - 2004, Beloved Quirky Daughter.
She cracked a smile, acknowledging this gift from Lex. Her father had called her that when she would display the odd tendencies of her personality. It had summed her up beautifully to his unwilling coworkers when they were suffering through yet another proud father anecdote about her. No doubt Lex had heard a number of them over the years.
Lex watched as she disregarded her own grave and turned entirely to look at her father’s. He had ordered both stones and he knew they were the same colour, but Gabe’s seemed a deeper black.
She took her time reading the second stone, and he forced himself to stay where he was. He pushed the guilt he was feeling viciously away. Today wasn’t about him.
Gabriel William Sullivan, 1962 - 2004, Wonderfully Punny Father.
Her father had prided himself on the relentlessly unfunny jokes he spouted. They were mostly bad puns that had made his language-savvy daughter cringe, but they always made her laugh, too. He had delighted in thinking up new ones to ambush her with at breakfast, sending her fleeing to school to escape.
She would later realize that those new puns appeared on mornings when she was dreading something about her upcoming day, whether it was her friends, nearly empty Torch pages to fill or the knowledge that Lionel Luthor would be stopping by. On that morning the only thing that struck her was the fact that she would never hear another of her father’s puns again.
Lex knew she was crying before the tears fell and he was wrapped around her from behind in seconds. She sobbed in silence as he anchored her, both keeping their blurry vision on Gabe Sullivan’s grave. Long minutes passed and Lex physically felt the aching grief in her torso press into his own heart.
Her breath heaved out one last sob as Chloe finally dropped her eyes from her father’s resting place. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, feeling Lex do the same. His arms slackened marginally to let her step to his left and take his hand.
“Hi Daddy,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”
Chloe had known she was ready to see this patch of grass without dying herself when Lex had told her he loved her. Until he had said it there had been no one who did, so she couldn’t let her father go. Now that there was someone alive who cared for her it was alright to say goodbye.
Lex watched a gentle smile cross Chloe’s face, the same one he had seen her use on Gabe when she picked him up at work. Her hand held his, but there was none of the desperation in her that he felt at his mother’s grave. Her grief was a striking contrast.
“I brought Lex, too. Don’t worry though, next time I’ll get him to wear jeans so this doesn’t feel quite so much like a business meeting. Maybe if we’re married long enough I’ll convert him to shorts.” Chloe squeezed his hand to soften the joke. “So I’m sure you can see everything from up there, but I wanted to make sure you know I’m okay. Lex is taking care of me.”
Hell, Lex thought, she’s taking care of both of us and I’m just here to write the cheques. She’s amazing.
Chloe had stopped and seemed to be choking on tears again, so he pulled her close.
”She’s driving me insane, Gabe, stark raving mad. I’d be worried if it wasn’t a place I’ve been so many times before.” He said it without questioning whether his father-in-law could hear them. Sometimes saying something without having anyone hear it was fine.
“You were painting clowns before you ever married me,” Chloe retorted.
He grinned. “Before you the clowns didn’t tell me to burn things.”
“Sure, sure, blame the wife.”
They snarked at each other and to Gabe, smiling and laughing. Chloe was glad Lex could understand her so well. The loss of her father was tragic, would always be, and they both would need to cope with it eventually. But the initial steps were behind them. No apologies to this patch of ground and shiny stone because they knew Gabe Sullivan would never blame them for his death. No fetishizing this as a place to loose their emotions because they were a part of them to cope with every day.
Her father wouldn’t want to be an albatross around her neck or Lex’s, and Chloe would make sure that wasn’t how he was remembered. She would set things right and when it was safe she and Lex could take their futures back.
The end of things was a blessing. It changed a life from an incomprehensible mass of time into good, bad and neutral days that meant more than just watching it pass. It made people, places and things precious while they lasted. It carried the blessings of infinite new starts, and opening the door when opportunity knocked was most assuredly something every Luthor knew how to do.
Her soul is senstive like a finely made tuning fork. It vibrates and resonates with every little hint of trauma, evil and monstrosity that might be humming in the air, and channels it into expressions of fiction... or recomended websites - somethingeasy
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