Author: FalseEyelashes
Rating: R (sex, language, adult themes)
Category: drama, angst, romance (it's dark, kids)
Spoilers: Futurefic, and I really haven't seen much Smallville, so a lot of this (most of this) is just a product of my imagination.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Drop the lawsuit.
Summary: Lex likes to read the news. He likes to know the facts. He likes that he knows that in the past decade 500 journalists have been murdered for seeking out the truth. He likes to wonder if, someday, Chloe will be among that statistic, and if maybe, someday, he’ll be the one holding the smoking gun.
Author's Note: Alrighty...this is my first Chloe/Lex fanfic, as well as my first real post here. This story, I really don't even know how it came about. Another confession: I hardly even watch this show. I'm barely a fan. But when I did manage to catch an episode or two, both Lex and Chloe caught my attention. It's the chemistry. And I am a giant chemistry-whore. As well as a feedback-whore (hint, hint). That said, please, do read, I hope you enjoy, and that's it! Thanks!
. .
Celluloid Heroes
. .
(When all the world was very young, and mountain magic heavy hung, the supermen would walk in file,
guardians of a loveless isle,
And gloomy browed with super-fear their tragic endless lives could heave nor sigh in solemn,
perverse serenity, wondrous beings chained to life.
Strange games they would play then, no death for the perfect men.
Life rolls into one for them,
So softly
a supergod cries.)
“The Supermen” David Bowie
. .
Buying a one-way plane ticket is a bit like buying your own coffin.
You know you’re not getting out of this one with any easy kind of grace.
Chloe thought that at every airport, at every baggage claim, with every buckle of her seatbelt and every assurance her tray was in its proper upright position.
She took note of the exits, the escape contingencies. But she knew. She knew they weren’t really real.
She played this game across three continents.
(You hope you’re not getting out of this one.)
She tried to box herself inside the lines drawn on a map, so perfect and neat on paper, little more than an illusion, an oasis, a cause for war in reality.
She dodged missiles and drug cartels, militants and police alike, and seemed to grow a little bolder with every successive stamp of her passport.
This is her boldest move of all.
The plane slides up and off the runway, into a dark night sky, the red-eye flight, an impulse choice. To Metropolis.
Home.
No, you’re not getting out of this one.
And this time she kind of might actually believe it.
. .
1.
(Veronica Guerin – Irish. Investigated Irish drug trade. Shot five times.)
. .
The business man sitting next to her opens his newspaper with an impatient rustle, his elbow bumping hers on the shared armrest. Her arm jerks and she spills her drink, not enough for anyone to notice, enough to make her irritable. Businessmen in business class. Always all the same.
“Can you believe this guy?” He cocks his head in the direction of the open paper.
She’s not feeling friendly. She’s not feeling friendly and she hates these people, these perky people, who try and make friends on airplanes, the bus, at the goddamn grocery store. But she looks anyway. She doesn’t read the words on the page. She doesn’t need to. There, his supercilious mug taking up half a page, appropriately black and white and gray. Lex Luthor.
She snorts, recognizes the words “Daily Planet” across the header. “Very few can, and even fewer should.” She realizes immediately how personal her candor sounds. It must be the alcohol; yes, it has to be the alcohol talking.
“You know Lex Luthor?”
She thinks of stained glass and tries to swallow the image away.
“Knew,” she corrects, taking a larger sip, rattling the ice around at the bottom of her empty cup, praying Betty or Betsy or Barbie or Bambi or whatever the fucking flight attendant’s name is can hear it and bring her the whole damn bottle for her to down.
“You knew Lex Luthor?”
“Yes.” She thought she had made this much clear.
“What was he like?”
“Just like the rest of us.” He levels her with an expectant gaze. She is growing tired of this man, his strange hero worship of Lex Luthor. It reminds her of Smallville. And she hasn’t been reminded of that in four years. (That might be a lie). “Wanting what he couldn’t have.”
“And what was that?”
She laughs, and the stained glass and hardwood desk are in her thoughts again. “You mean other than a conscience?”
. .
Nothing felt right. Nothing felt right as Chloe had walked off the plane and placed slightly tipsy feet on American soil for the first time in four years.
She hates flying. She hates that she needed the sweating, wide-lipped glass (read: cheap plastic cup) of gin and tonic, that she needed three of them to get her through the flight. Red eye, they don’t lie, and the fucker next to her didn’t know or mind his manners.
She imagines she should clarify. She doesn’t hate flying.
She hates returning.
She told her liason at the Nigerian embassy that she was going home. He had smiled at the word, home, and asked her where that meant. She had told him, and he had chuckled.
“No one goes to Metropolis these days unless they’re looking for death. And I guarantee you, they’ll find it there.”
She just smiled. And said she didn’t mind flying into the sun. He just shook his head. And said good-bye.
. .
She wakes up feeling foggy-headed, fuzzy-brained, swearing she must have swallowed cotton balls. But bleary-eyed she can see she left the mini-bar open from last night (early morning) and wonders when AA is going to come calling, asking if it’s really necessary for her to meet inebriation in order to find sleep. She already knows what she’d tell them. Try scrapping plans twenty-odd years in the making and spend four years working from the bottom to the top, bottom to the top, new city, new country, new continent, like a sick little cycle all its own, for the simple reason that staying too long in one place leaves her a little dizzy.
It doesn’t make much sense.
She pushes off the covers, feeling stale. The curtains flutter as the heat kicks on, parting just enough to see out the glass. The view leaves much to be desired. All she sees is brick and steel and dead windows, black and empty, waiting to be lit. A leaf floats on the wind, whipping past the window, then another, caught on the pane, and then gone.
If she weren’t mistaken she would say this city might be dead.
After a quick shower, complete with miniature shampoo and tiny, slippery bar of soap, she makes her way to the lobby. Chloe loves little more than free continental breakfasts and bad hotel coffee.
Sitting, she picks up a paper, doesn’t look at the name, the names she knows are there. Instead she reads the headline, and chuckles to herself. She could have sworn he was still in Gotham, Seattle, Beijing, Hell.
“Luthor Returns to Metropolis”
“I’ll be damned,” she mutters. “I’ll be goddamned.”
. .
2.
(Jill Dando – British. Conflict with London’s criminal underworld. Shot in the head outside her home.)
. .
The drops of rain are increasing their tempo, and the bottom hem of Chloe’s pants is already soaked. She knew she shouldn’t have worn flats. She knew she shouldn’t be here.
Grainy tint, film noir. She wishes she had a fedora. The streets are slick with rain and detritus. Grimy. And she knows they call this the better part of town.
The LuthorCorp building rises to the left, just out of her periphery. She doesn’t need to look to know it’s there. It follows behind her, just out of view, follows like the sun, and she doubts she ever found shade in the boroughs of Amsterdam, the alleys of Paris or the canals of Venice.
A raindrop slides down the tip of her nose.
She remembers a man who looked a like a boy, looked young and hopeful and idealistic (the way everyone should be when discussing all that's left to come)when he told her that Metropolis was the future.
If this is the future, she’s not sure she wants to see how much farther it can fall.
She continues to walk, quickly, efficiently, her shoes making sharp, clicking noises as they meet the cracked concrete, and the rain slips down, more energy this time.
Blindly reaching around into her bag, she discovers her umbrella is a dozen or so blocks back, sitting pretty in her hotel closet.
“Fuck,” she mutters, and the rain grows steadier, stronger towards an all out downpour.
Wrenching a folded newspaper from her bag, she holds it over her head and walks faster, faster, head down, and she can guarantee you that her mascara is dripping down her cheeks.
A litany of profanity works its way through her head, and just as she is hitting her stride in her silent tirade against the city of Metropolis and its corresponding weather, her body meets something solid, something warm. Something strangely familiar.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, looking up, her coat soaked through, realizing not only is it a full-fledged monsoon, but that she is no longer getting wet. A black umbrella blocks her view of the sky, gray with rain and something more, keeping her slightly dry. A black umbrella held up in the air by none other than Lex Luthor.
There is a sharp intake of breath, and she thinks it must be him. Her own jaw is slack with shock.
“Of all the gin joints…” he mutters, ironic grin, empty eyes.
And she just chuckles, drops the newspaper down to her side. “Clichéd, Lex. Far too clichéd.”
. .
He takes her to get coffee, and she really doesn’t think her day was supposed to go like this.
They sit across from each other and she blatantly studies the lines of his face.
She would never admit it, but she had missed the days back in Smallville. She missed this easy antagonism and the fact they somehow shared a common ground based on moral ambiguity. She still carries her same disrespect for privacy laws and personal space. But he, Lex, spiraled downward and his once slight semblance of emotion and compassion was eclipsed by a solid front and fast-spreading reputation as a sociopath. Chloe always had a thing for the editorials.
He has changed. She knows this much is true. He still carries himself the same way, slick, smooth, still charismatic, but where there once was solely youth, it’s now accompanied by a darker, dangerous, sinister edge. She thinks it suits him. She doesn’t know if she likes that.
They drink their coffee, black, hot, exchanging the civilities the situation requires of them. She is fine and he is fine and work is going really well for the both of them, thanks for asking.
“You didn’t come to the funeral.” It jars her a little, but she hides it behind a gulp of coffee, still a bit too hot. He says it so offhand, almost as though he is speaking of a LuthorCorp charity event or a missed dinner among friends. He sits there, still, no excess movement to betray any internal misgivings.
She doesn’t need to ask who it is he is talking about.
“No. I didn’t get word of it until a week after.” He nods.
“You were in Morocco.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t come back after you heard.”
“No.” She takes a calm, controlled sip of coffee, dabs the corners of her mouth with a white napkin. “There was a rumor Syria was involved in the arms market. Illegally.”
“And were they?”
“You already know that answer.” Loaded language, and he smiles, and it is the first she has seen this entire meeting she would ever classify as real, as genuine, as having some shred or intention of emotion other than the desire to draw fear or blood.
“Do you think…” She starts again. “Do you think the two of you would still be together if she hadn’t died?”
He clears his throat. “Lana and I were a done deal long before she died. So, no, I don’t think we would be.”
“Did you love her?”
“For a little.” It is so clinical it frightens her. The entire exchange between them: rapid-fire, incessant, no time or room to think, breathe.
He once had called it verbal judo. Now, she thinks, now it’s slightly more akin to a machine gun battle, firing off shots, not caring if they hit or miss, knowing the majority of them will find their intended target, and sooner or later, one or the other will fall over dead, hollowed out. And holy.
For whatever reason, she imagines it will be her.
. .
He doesn’t remember what he said. Whatever it was, she found the humor in it. He just smiles politely.
She laughs, and it’s not as he remembered. Rather, instead, she laughs low and husky, sardonic, cigarette smoke curling around the rough edges. The Chloe he knew wouldn’t have known what to with a smoke and the light. Instead, he can picture her stamping the whole damn pack under her foot, mid-tirade, vehemently proclaiming the horrors of yellow teeth, receding gums and delivery on death’s doorstep. But now she laughs, dark circles under eyes in a hollow face and he thinks time has not been good to Chloe but neither has he and he thinks and she laughs and Virginia Slims and emphysema fog up his mind and he decides (in that moment) that Chloe, a cigarette and abject desperation might just be the most erotic imagery he can muster.
(You’ve come a long way, baby. Don’t let it go up in smoke.)
She hasn’t changed a bit. Still an angry spit-fire, a paradoxical, cynical optimist. He wonders how it is possible she still believes in humanity and justice and that somewhere there is the truth and somehow they can all be good.
That might be a lie. She looks tired and worn and thinner than she once did. But it’s in her eyes, it’s in her eyes, and maybe it’s a lie, maybe she’s a stranger, but Lex will believe what he wants. He always does.
He knows he looks the same as the last day he saw her. More lines along the eyes, the jaw. But she looks like the world, the city, maybe Metropolis itself has crashed down upon her head and she’s just trying to keep on standing tall.
He’ll tell you the world punishes believers for their faith. That they don’t live long enough to see the truth behind it all. That the world is an ugly place and the gray area in the middle never survives for long.
Clark chose white and he chose black and Chloe still tightropes down the middle, refusing to fall on either side. She’ll just plummet straight down, and he hopes that he’ll be there to watch.
He takes a sip of coffee. And wonders where and when.
. .
“You left, right after graduation.”
She looks up, curious. His face still reads the same, blank and bordering on bored.
“Yeah. I was in London for a little while. Then the Mid-East. Did the Israel-Palestine beat for a little. I was in Africa for a little over two weeks. Hated it.” The blankness and disinterest on his face is irritating her. “But I’m sure you already know all of this. If you were really that curious your team of superspys would collect everything down to my eating, drinking and fucking habits for you.”
He quirks an eyebrow. He likes the way the word “fuck” rolls off her tongue. Likes it a little too much. He chooses to ignore it. “Look at you, Chloe. A walking cliché. Covering the war-torn regions and the disaster of genocide. Impressive.”
“Sure beats the slick city streets and the melodrama of patricide.”
He smirks. “Lois really didn’t do the subject justice. And lucky for me, the jury seemed to have the same opinion.” He waits a beat, basks in the heat of the glare she is attempting to suppress in vain. “But really, Chloe, I thought you’d hit the tabloids before the various US embassies around the world.”
“Funny. I knew if I ever saw you again you’d say something like that.”
“Replace ‘if’ and ‘ever’ with ‘when’ and then you’ll have a true statement.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? You knew we’d meet up again?”
And he just smiles and she wonders, why, how, he manages to make it look so painful and easy at the same time. “You didn’t?” He clears his throat. Leans back in his chair, slow sip of coffee. “So, you went globe-trotting to find more examples to pin to your Wall of Weird?”
“No. I left….” She pauses and then resumes. “I needed to find something real.”
“And what did you find?”
“More of the same.”
“So you came back to Metropolis, tail between your legs?”
She gathers her stuff together, quietly, not answering. Rising slowly, she looks down at the Lex, seated still, never quite a gentleman.
“ ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.’”
“Oscar Wilde?” She likes that he puts a question mark at the end. It’s not necessary. They both know he’s right. She nods.
“Thanks for the coffee.”
The bell jingles as she steps back out into the rain.
. .
Lex Luthor returns to his office, returns, and proceeds to scour the records, the online periodicals, the databases his last name allows him to enter. He learns the life expectancies of nosy reporters and can’t figure out if that’s fear or relief coursing through him.
He kind of thinks it’s neither.
. .
3.
(Jean Dominique – Haitian. Spoke out against successive dictators. Shot four times in the chest.)
. .
Lex Luthor once believed that every man needs a mirror reflecting back to show him all the ways he can, or could, be a better man.
Lex liked this idea. Once. He befriended Clark Kent and imagined that maybe, maybe, if he used his intelligence, his strength, his guile for good he’d be a bit like the naïve farmboy. Quiet and content, unsuspecting and innocent. Perfect. And loved.
It didn’t last long.
He found another glass to gaze in.
Her name was Chloe. And somehow she landed on the heads side of the coin while he took the tails. He would call them two of a kind if the idea of saying it aloud didn’t bring along the eye-roll and strange rush of shame. And a clench in his gut he refuses to name.
It would be a lie to say he hasn’t thought of her in the last four years. It would be a lie, but Lex says it anyway.
. .
Chloe doesn’t sleep well that night.
She sits on her bed (half-made) with a cup of lukewarm, mediocre cappuccino, room service style.
She shouldn’t have come here.
Her pants hang on the chair by the window, the bottom half of them drying in the air. She takes a deep breath, and a deeper sip.
She used to sometimes mindlessly fantasize about him (Lex) fucking her, fucking her over his desk. Papers everywhere, the facts, the truths, the lies scattered at their feet as he beat out a frantic rhythm of in and out, in and out, until everything exploded and was far, far away.
It’s been a good while since that particular scene surfaced in her head, but there it is again.
She tells herself she can’t sleep because of the caffeine. And empties the rest of the mug in a gulp, a hurry, pretending she’s not imagining how hardwood would feel under her forearms or his hands upon her hips.
. .
He was always intrinsically fascinated by Chloe’s Wall of Weird. He liked the idea behind it. Cataloging and collecting that which captivated you, put it on display to wonder and worry.
Lex Luthor always had the strangest of hobbies.
It started with one file, one article, and then it became another, and another on top of that until he had a stack several inches high.
Third drawer, bottom right hand side. A paper trail, a graveyard of fallen pens. He reads about them, alcohol fuzzy, collecting the stories of their rise, their accomplishments and the blaze of bullets or incendiary blasts that wiped them from this earth.
As he reads, reads of these dead reporters, he imagines that they are her. That they are Chloe and with each turning of the page, each headline of a new article she dies once again, her smirk only to pop up for more with the flick of his wrist and the rustle of paper.
Halfway through the stack, he comes against his hand, picturing her, tired eyes in the coffee shop and bitter bark of a laugh. He comes, picturing her in the bottom of his drawer and he on top of it all.
It kind of feels like freedom.
. .
4.
(Jake Gingle – American. Shot at Illinois Central train station. Owed $100,000 to Al Capone.)
. .
She spends her day meeting old associates, getting the scoop on the reporting field in Metropolis.
Four years down the pike and Lois Lane and Clark Kent are on everyone’s lips but her own. She doesn’t like it much.
A final once-over in the mirror, and she decides she’s done. Slips her room key in her purse (tiny, black) and slams the door behind her.
She can’t remember the last time she went to a club. She’s guessing Europe (Paris?), which is probably right.
She walks in, forgets the club name immediately, and automatically knows no, no, she should not have come here. Not tonight.
Black and purple and black and purple, and there is just something about this place that screams trouble.
She orders a drink and tries to get lost in the crowd. Half a drink later, she realizes she is heading closer to found than lost.
She spots him across the floor, in that odd, hazy, almost freeze-frame kind of way. The parting of the seas, and there he is. She should be surprised that he’s here. She’s really not.
She takes a sip, dully noting the lack of burn, the liquid sliding cool and easy down her throat. She thinks, she knows, as he moves forward, she needs another, a double, larger gulps and faster swallows.
. .
They sit, a high rise table; her feet can’t touch the ground. She sees the looks the others give them, give him, and for a second, she wonders what they think.
“Why didn’t you kiss me that day?” His words bring her back to him, back to him and a part of her just wants to smack him. He asks the question in such a clinical, impersonal manner, and she wonders if he was always this good.
“What are you talking about?”
“Why. Didn’t you. Kiss me. That day.” There aren’t even question marks on the end of his staccato statements.
“When?” she whispers.
“Graduation. The last time we were all together. Why didn’t you kiss me the day you graduated from Met U? Why didn’t you kiss me the day before you left for the next four years?”
She feels strangely defiant, knowing he has called her on something she doesn’t care to think of. Something she herself doesn’t quite understand.
“Why would I have?”
“Because you wanted to.”
“But I didn’t.”
“But you did. You were never very good at hiding your emotions, Chloe. Seems like you haven’t gotten much better at it either.”
“Fuck you.”
He chuckles. “So we’ve gone from kissing to fucking? Nice segue.”
She is silent for a second, tracing her finger along the rim of her glass. Her second. Or her third. Doesn’t really matter. “I didn’t kiss you because I didn’t love you.”
A part of her wanted him to flinch, react, sting from her words. He doesn’t move a muscle. All tense coiled strength hidden beneath tailored clothes and an arrogant façade.
But she catches it. That small tic at the corner of his jaw, the way his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, hard. Hard. Everything about Lex Luthor is hard, hard, cold and impassive.
“No,” and he says it the way a snake would hiss, dangerous, arching, ready to strike, “that was always reserved for Clark.”
She looks away. Disappointment. Yes, it is disappointment that floods her body, and a strange wash of nostalgia.
“You know,” she confides, for no other reason than spite, “he told me he loved me that night. It was after all the graduation parties. He drank too much beer and I drank too much tequila, and we were alone, and he told me he loved me. I waited eight fucking years to hear that. He told me he loved me, we fucked, and the next morning instead of showing up for my first day at The Daily Planet I bought a plane ticket and flew to London, worked at a pub for a week until the Times hired me, and quit after six months of covering the crime beat.”
He furrows his brow, and she feels a sort of triumph.
“Why?”
“Because I could. Because I didn’t want it anymore. Any of it. I was tired of being disenchanted.”
. .
He doesn’t remember when they moved to the couches. He doesn’t remember moving there, but likes the feeling of the plush fabric beneath his fingers.
Chloe sits there next to him, drunker, slouched low in her seat.
“Do you ever wonder…” She speaks softly, and he leans in closer to hear, closer, maybe a little too close. “Do you ever wonder what happens after the stories end? After the credits roll, and all the problems of the world are temporarily resolved, and the screen just… fades to black. What do you think happens next? Everything just settles into some kind of domestic tranquility, the man marries the woman, she pumps out some babies, and they all live happily ever after in suburbia with minivans and soccer teams?”
He chuckles, rumbles lowly, and she leans in closer as well.
“I think…I think that it all just becomes more of the same. It either deteriotates, the easily solved dissolving, or it gets marginally better, which is, usually, unlikely.” He swallows, his throat dry. And she waits. “Or it all just stagnates. And the heroes and heroines get bored. And realize that it’s life, not a fable, and suddenly they’re not the heroes or the heroines they once thought they were. And they all just keep on, marching forward.”
He pauses. Leaning back in his seat, polishing off the rest of the whiskey in his glass, enjoying the corresponding buzz. “You came back for the wedding,” he states, already knowing the answer.
“Of course not.”
He kisses her. There is no segue, no prelude. He placed his glass on the table before them, leaned forward, her jaw in his hands, and kissed her.
She kisses back, all tongue and teeth, and no, she hasn’t fucking changed at all. Always able to spot a challenge, always there to step up and prove her might. Her arm winds around his neck, stranglehold, and she mewls a little, and it’s all starting to feel a little too right.
One hand slides along her back, their mouths parting, heavy breaths, shaky fingers, his earlobe between her teeth, and he wonders if she heard him moan.
“I’m not going to fuck you,” she whispers, slurred, yet deliberate.
And he grins, all sharp teeth, baring fangs. “I’m not going to make you.”
One final nip, and she’s gone.
. .
5.
(Veronika Cherkasova – Belarus. Wrote about illegal arms trade between Belarus and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Stabbed to death 20 times in her apartment.)
. .
Her hangover lasted all day.
She lost a day to BBC and the softness of the sheets on her bed. (She can’t remember the last time she stayed in bed past three.)
National Geographic called asking if she’d do a piece about Kenya for them. Freelance. She laughed and told them in so many words to go fuck themselves.
Chloe Sullivan doesn’t do human interest, doesn’t do aboriginal tribes or the clusters of people time and progress seemingly forgot. It’s all about the sting, the coup, the corruption and the intrigue.
But she liked the sound of it. Chloe Sullivan. Freelance.
Free. Lance.
Free to hack away.
. .
They’ve always gotten on like an arsonist’s wet dream. A trashcan stuffed with dirty rags, recycled news and decaying family histories left to burn, burn, burn.
She knew. She knew with that polite knock on her door that the flames were licking at her heels.
Their relationship, their friendship, if you could even call it that, had always been little more than a giant mindfuck. It makes sense to raise the stakes to the physical realm.
He (Lex) had stepped inside, all cool demeanor and careful, crisp shirt and tie and pressed slacks.
She just looks at him, all silent, not really waiting. If Lex Luthor did awkward, this would be it. Hands stuffed in pockets, back rigidly straight.
“What – ”
She doesn’t finish.
He has her in his arms in two seconds, hands under her shirt in even less, tongue in her mouth and hips against her own.
Her breath comes in short, frantic pants, hands clinging to his shirt, pulling it, wrinkling it, delighting in the thought of Lex, a rumpled mess. Pace picking up, a strange tempo beating in her chest, and she can feel him, feel him against her.
She decides this is insane, that this is just madness, nothing short of madness. She has Lex Luthor in her hotel room, Jesus, she almost called it home, but he is here, she has him here and they aren’t even near the goddamn bed, they’re in the fucking kitchenette, and, fuck, they’re never going to make it to the bed, and he’s Lex and she’s Chloe and this is madness and she wonders if Lana is rolling in her freshly dug grave, if Clark’s superhuman senses are prickling, if he’s watching through the walls, if Lois already fucking knows this and plans on running this, front page, morning after, because this is Lex Luthor, Lex Luthor’s cock in her hand and Lex Luthor grunting in her ear and she wants to tell him that she is comparing the two of them in her mind, Clark and Lex, Lex and Clark, that she is comparing the two of them, and he is ahead, he, Lex, is ahead by leaps and bounds, and she wants to tell him this and she kind of wants to tell him lots of things, but settles on his name, instead, as he, yes, as he finds that spot right above her hipbone, and she kind of wishes they were doing this in his office, back in Smallville, back six years ago, back when she needed him, needed this, that they were fucking in the mansion, that they did this the summer she hid and he was there, that she fucked him that first day she met him because lust, lust just isn’t supposed to feel like this, because this is Lex and he’s rolling on a condom now and –
Oh.
This. This is Lex Luthor.
(Breathe in, breathe out.)
“Fuck, Chloe...” Slowly, her mind recalls that these, these are the first words he has spoken to her all night.
Shaky breath as she inhales.
He is still within her, and she wishes he would just move. His breath tickles her ear, makes her buck her hips a little, just a little, more than enough, and he groans again, the breath heavy in her ear, and she tries to keep her hips in place, stop this strange cycle and (finally) his hips start to move, and she thinks she just whimpered.
She dimly wonders as the back of her head connects with the cupboard behind her if he fucks all his girls like this. She doubts it. The way his hands are moving and his hips are thrusting, a rough, irregular rhythm, sharp gasps and quickening pulse, she doubts it. Casanova is supposed to be a bit more polished, all gloss and moves and words slipped right out of a porno. But he, Lex, is savage, frightening, untamed. Her eyes catch his, and Jesus Christ. She has to look away. He can’t fuck them all like this, and as she moans, the sound catching in the back of her throat, she refuses to wonder why she is the exception to that rule, refuses, her eyes finding his, and it’s over, panting in his ear as she comes, hard, fast and earnest.
Sweaty hands slip down his back and she doesn’t remember taking off his shirt.
He comes, her name on his lips, as exhaustion threads its way through her body, limp, limp, sliding into him, the counter’s edge scratching her bare back, and she didn’t realize her body could fit any tighter against his. With him still inside her, they stand there. She can’t seem to get her breath to slow. It relieves her that he can’t seem to either.
An obnoxious electronic melody breaks the silence of the room. Her phone keeps ringing, and she swears to fucking God they both hold each other a little tighter, his fingers biting into her hips, her head burying deeper into the crook of his neck. Silence descends once again, there is a beat, and he is pulling away. Condom in the trashcan, clothes up off the floor.
He leaves. And she can’t remember if he said good-bye.
. .
6.
(Vladislav Listyev – Russian. Television’s “voice of democracy.” Shot outside his apartment.)
. .
He had told himself that this wasn’t going to happen again. Told himself, as the soles of his Italian leather shoes slapped the cracked pavement, told himself, as he walked instead of drove, he would never do this again.
Lex Luthor is many things.
The elevator had closed, and the only word he could think of to describe himself in the quiet, solitary confinement, his own visage and frame reflecting back in the mirrored door, was “disheveled.” He felt painfully off, off his balance, his axis, and his shoulders slumped, the frown lines appeared across his lax face.
Lex Luthor was a fucking mess.
He had watched the numbers light as he climbed, and with each and every passing floor he thought, he told himself, this will never happen again. This can’t happen again.
Lex Luthor can be many things. But above all, he has always been a flawless liar.
A day later, a day later and there is still rain and Chloe has her head pressed against the cool glass window in his penthouse, dozens upon dozens upon dozens of floors above the ground below. Arms crossed, silent, watching the evening sky melt from gray to black, gray to black. Tomorrow it will be blue. It’s a day late, and Lex, Lex Luthor will never be a dollar short.
She hasn’t said anything. Either has he.
. .
Fifteen minutes later and she’s up against the door to his bedroom.
“When was the last time you got laid?”
She gasps a little as the zipper slides down her jeans, a breathy laugh. “You mean other than last night?” One hand sliding her pants down, the other toying with her nipple. “Egypt.” Deep breath. “He was…an oil man. Tall and lazy and he had the biggest…” and he hardens a little more with the hitch in her breath and his fingers find their way inside her panties, “…Southern drawl.”
He chuckles into her ear and he wonders why they’re such masochists, such sadists. Why, here, clothes torn off each other, they use anecdotes of past lovers as an aggressive, angry foreplay.
They both have enough tact to skip over the ones that hurt the most. Clark. Lana. Lana. Clark.
. .
Through it all, the past six years, the past three days, Lex has learned things about Chloe he thought he would never get a chance to know, things he never knew he wondered. He learned that she drinks coffee in quick gulps as opposed to the leisurely sips he once envisioned her taking, reading The Washington Post instead of The New York Times (never The Daily Planet). She harbors a strange obsession, rather a romantic affliction, for Russian literature and carries a copy of The Brothers Karamazov everywhere she goes. He honestly expected Sylvia Plath or Jane Austen, maybe even Virginia Woolf. He learned in a flash that went straight to his cock that Chloe really is a natural blonde and that she is strangely monosyllabic while in bed, her vast vocabulary diminished to little more than animalistic grunts and his name, falling off the peak of a gasp, a catch in the back of her throat. He learned that she tastes like absinthe, absinthe all the time, all hot burn and illicit thrill, with that dim reminder in the back of his mind that this is going to hurt like fucking hell come tomorrow morning. He had wished she tasted like coffee, black coffee, strong and energizing, a comforting heat. Instead, she is bitter and green, addictive, dangerous, sweet, smart, overpowering – green, green, green. And in retrospect, it makes sense. Her taste matches her eyes. He really shouldn’t have expected anything less. Not from her.
He also learned he never quite knows what to expect from her. Now is no exception.
They lay in his bed, covers pushed to the foot of the bed, a light sheet barely covering them, the pillows on the floor. He thinks it should be more awkward than this. They lay there, scarcely touching, and it’s odd and almost cold because short minutes ago there was hardly a part, a stretch of his skin, that hadn’t been rubbing up against her own.
The silence should bother him.
She breaks it, like a thief in the night, a cat burglar, disturbing the peace, with you oblivious to her presence until she is there in the room with you, the noose around your neck and you swear you might be looking into the eyes of God.
“Why Lana?” Her tone bothers him more than the words. He has been waiting for this, unconsciously, he has been waiting. But her tone. He hadn’t expected this. So quiet, so wounded, so naked and he had forgotten people can sometimes be this bare.
“And why not you?” He isn’t as snide as he thought he would be. Instead, each word comes out measured, carefully calculated and harnessed.
She doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t like it.
“Am I why you left?” He had to ask. He has been wondering this for the last four years, shamefully so.
“No. Yes. A part of it. You were just another disappointment to add to an already lengthy list.”
“How so?” And he is genuinely curious, but not surprised.
“I thought you were a better man. But you’re not.” Bluntness, bluntness, frank and honest, and fuck, people still sometimes talk like this, feel like this.
“No. I guess not.” It’s not a surrender, no, just an agreement, an admission. There really is no point in arguing. Lying.
“But I thought I was a better person, too.” She whispers it, the hurt in her words. And he realizes he doesn’t know this woman like he thought he did, or maybe just the opposite is true.
“Why Lana?” There is a strange hint of desperation and Lex doesn’t bother trying to come up with excuses.
“Because it was easy. Because she was Clark’s. Because it was simple.
Because I thought it would save me.”
She makes a sound, a sound that sounds akin to a choked sob, repressed rage, something, something she is trying to strangle and he really hopes she succeeds.
She turns her head, looks out the window. There are no lights inside the room to reflect back on the dark panes of glass. Just Metropolis, just Metropolis, alit against the night sky.
“You would have been the death of me,” he whispers.
There is an ache in his chest. He tries to swallow it down. He’d call it nervousness, but almost forgets what anxiety feels like. He’d call it fear, but he thought he had trained himself well enough against it and thinks it cowardly to admit otherwise.
She looks younger here, tucked in his sheets, sheets that cost him the equivalent of a semester of her college education. And he should know. He paid for it. Or rather, her scholarship, surreptitiously from LuthorCorp, paid for it. She never needs to know this. He is never going to tell her.
She moves, pauses, and then sits up, her skin gray in the moonlight of his room. He stares at her back, bare, the curve of her spine, the slouch of her shoulders.
And it’s still there, that solid ache. Maybe it is regret; maybe it’s an apology, a prayer, some stray remnants of hope. Maybe it is something more.
“I love you.” His voice catches on the third word, the phrase rusty with disuse and misuse. He doesn’t know why he said it. He doesn’t know why, despite the involuntary huskiness of a whisper, the words echo in the room, a goddamn proverbial shot in the dark.
She drops her head and snorts. Lifts her head, straightens her shoulders, stares up and out the window.
“ ‘They are in Love. Fuck the War,’” she quotes, a mere whisper.
He doesn’t ask her what she means. Isn’t sure if it’s acceptance or denial, mockery or acquiescence. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t admit that he can’t recognize the quote or who the man is behind the words. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t know if this is her way of saying I love you, too or a gentle, cruel slap in the face, rejection.
It doesn’t matter. He’s lying again. He knows exactly what she means.
. .
7.
(Libero Badaro – Died 1830 in Sao Paulo. “A liberal dies, but freedom does not.”)
. .
“ ‘"There's nothing sillier in the world, I say, than being a devil in despair.’” She stands in the door to his office, hip cocked, arms crossed.
He chuckles, strangely appreciatively, and looks up at her, standing in his doorway.
“ ‘Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven,’” he retorts, the venom lacking in his words.
She steps forward into his office, and he could fucking swear they’ve wandered back in time, and the stained glass windows are shining down upon them both, upon them both inside a castle in the middle of nowhere, a nowhere that the world had come to rotate around and it was left to the two of them to try and make sense of again.
“And is this hell?”
He doesn’t ask her where she is referring to. She might mean this office, she might mean this life. He takes it to mean Metropolis because he knows, he knows that she believes it to be so.
“No. Not yet. For now, it’s mine.”
She stands there, stock still, in front of the bookshelves. All hard, leather-bound. Economic equataions and delusions, every coup d’etat and military show of strength. He’s done his homework.
“And what of Superman?” He can almost see the smile in her eyes, Mona Lisa’s fucking smile. Do you know what I know? Have you seen what I’ve seen?
“Superman is just an idealistic farmboy with a penchant for flannel.” He makes a sour face as he watches the amusement slip away. “He could at least wear a fucking mask.”
She turns, back to him, running her finger along the spines of the books, reverently, distracted. And when she speaks, they are not her words, and she circles back around slowly, moving ever closer to his desk.
“ ‘For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbours - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth.
“And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.’”
Chloe doesn’t want blue spandex or a man who can stop the world on a dime. He knows this.
“Who said that?”
She doesn’t want a red billowing cape, muscle and brawn charging off into the galaxy, saving Timmy from the goddamn well and giving Lassie the day off. She’s telling him this.
“Ayn Rand.”
High-rise buildings that climb, steel upon steel upon steel, tiny glowing windows, a chessboard to the sky. Cars and pollution, white-collar crime and dirty newspaper print.
“Atlas Shrugged. Never would have thought, Chloe. The whistleblower harboring a secret love for big business.”
Boardroom meetings and illicit exchanges. Weapons programs, his office stationary, pencils bit down to the stub of a pink eraser. Numbers words miscalculations misinterpretations – he knows what makes Chloe’s world go round.
“I have my moments,” she says softly. She clears her throat, looks away, and then back again. Unwavering eye contact, and he’s not going to back down first. Green and blue and blue and green and he wonders why the poets never tried to conquer this, why they never pulled the two colors together into some kind of beautiful metaphor to describe an inch of the mile of its importance.
“I’m leaving.”
“I figured as much.”
Silence.
“Can…” He doesn’t even finish it. Doesn’t even know what he is asking. Can she wait? Can he come with her? Can he love her?
Can she stay?
She shakes her head slightly. “No,” she whispers. “Not yet.”
. .
8.
(Dele Giwa – Nigerian. Was planning a social revolution. Killed by a mail bomb.)
. .
“Team is in place. Target’s in view.”
Glass of scotch in hand, Lex gazes downward, the third drawer locked shut, and wonders if he could do it, if, come tomorrow morning, he would ever be able to turn the key and open it and place the last of it in there.
“Take the shot.” It’s on the tip of his tongue, on his tongue, and he can end this, take her from this world, save her the way Lana could never, ever dare for him.
He sits there, phone to ear, silent. He can hear the man on the other end breathing, heavy, waiting. He can still hear it in his mind. A gunshot. Followed by another, just to be sure. He knows how these men operate. And he has been hearing the echoes of gunshots for the last four days.
His elbows on the edge of his desk, he cradles his head between his fingers and finally exhales. He feels a shudder race down his back, can feel the lump forming in his throat, regret, regret, regret thumping through his head.
Tonight, Metropolis is alight, with disease and gas-fueled fires. Tonight is the start of something new, quite possibly the start of the end.
Something explodes and the windows shudder, his desk shakes a little.
He just can’t afford to look into a mirror tomorrow morning and see her smiling back. He can’t afford to, and tomorrow, tomorrow is a day late and maybe then he’ll be a dollar short, maybe, maybe…
The November rain turns to snow, falling gently from the air, no breeze to blow it about, mixing with the ash and the descent of unfulfilled destinies.
And he will climb higher and she will keep taking the floor out from under him until he’s gone to far, no foundation to hold him, and he topples over, falling heavy to the ground; or, she will pull too hard, too fast, too risky and the entire structure will fall down around her pretty head.
“Where is she going?” he asks softly.
“Moscow.” A clipped answer, a little confusion. He smiles, genuinely smiles, the edges curling up in some sort of acidic joy.
“Is she on the plane?”
“Affirmative.”
He can picture Chloe, and a frame slides down off his wall as another neighboring explosion rocks the foundation of the building. He can picture her face, lips drawn, eyes on fire. Shaking her head. Words falling from her lips. You fucker. I should have seen this coming.
“That will be all.”
“Sir?”
Another explosion and the descent of a building illuminates the wall of windows behind him.
“That. Will be all.”
No, no, he thinks. They will just meet up in the middle, like always. And he’ll fuck blondes instead of brunettes; she’ll chase down every lead that directs her just shy of anything stained with the name “Luthor,” until suddenly she’s only fighting his competitors and the brunettes and the blondes and the redheads do nothing for him anymore. They’ll both change their ways, subtle, silent, slow.
Rebirth.
“It’s what people do,” Lionel had always said. “They level themselves; decimate their world. And it’s in the midst of the ruins you are finally free to build yourself into greatness.”
He might be cloaked in black, heavy hooded, and she might be absorbed in gray and fog and ambiguity. But she’ll be back. She’ll be back.
And he’ll be waiting.
Tonight the world falls down. Buildings left to rubble, chaos in its wake. Tonight the world falls down, and LuthorCorp is left standing tall.
Together they’ll do what Superman never really could do on his own. Save the world, if only for each other.
. .
(I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show, a fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes. Because celluloid heroes never feel any pain. And celluloid heroes
never really die. )
“Celluloid Heroes” The Kinks
. .
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