heeeeA/N: Blue: Here's some more of the angst. I'd tell you to enjoy but....actually, you all do seem to be in to S & M cause you like the story. So, enjoy!
We definitely like the drama, and I’m still thankful that this story got chosen out of the poll.
I definitely like the Clark of this fic too. He’s such a dorky little dear.A/N Sabby: She's so witty. And I have nothing witty to say..uhm... Yeah, more of the actual likeable Clark for you. And no, this is not bizarro Clark. Just Clark as it should be.
Most of this chapter was actually quite amusing, but it started (and ended) on a sad note. Poor Chloe, it’s only inevitable before Lex finds himself another greedy socialite bride… but it’s probably going to take him a while to get over the LAST one’s bartrayal… let’s give him three weeks, shall we? *snort* will Chloe get over her heartbreak in time to smile at Lex’s next wedding?A part of her believed that he’d already started seeing someone else. But it was the irrational, fearful part of her and she knew that she was acting like a freak. So she hadn’t said anything.
Again… sad. It’s bad enough that there’s no Chlex love, but it seems like this was the end of a happy Chlex relationship of ANY kind, even a pure platonic one. What a crying tragedy!Their conversations had been forced. Neither one of them wanting to say the wrong thing. Instead of them being them, they were being Lex and Chloe Version 2.0 that discussed safe, pedestrian things.
She hated it and couldn’t live like that.
I giggled over this evidence of the paternal fondness Enrique has for Chloe. He must have been SO disappointed in Lex for not falling for her.Enrique had seemed happy to see her. It was the first time she’d been back at the Manor since she’d sprained Lex’s arm. He ushered her up to Lex’s office and the man himself strolled in a few minutes later.
LOL imagining the expression on Clark’s face as he desperately tries to cope with new and foreign concepts like flower arrangements, seating charts and planned menus. I can imagine him accepting all these jobs with a pained smile, saying ‘Not a problem, Lex!’… and then running home to cry to mom asking which flowers scream ‘give money to charity’.She thought about his face when he was describing how he’d been helping Lex and smiled to herself at how panicked her friend had been. He had tons of things to do and didn’t know where to start. She had to admit that Clark had been doing admirably well but it was too much for him to handle.
awww, I’m glad to see that Chloe was able to see (and appreciate) the ‘niceness’ behind Lex keeping her ‘out of the loop’. And I was LOL about the strange mixture of emotions she was feeling by his gesture. She was both sincerely touched, and seriously pissed off. Poor Lex! Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t! LOL!“I know that you were just trying to be nice or chivalrous or whatever by not asking me, but that’s stupid.” She looked over at him and waited for him to say something.
ROTFLMAO! He does raise ‘some’ good points. It would have been a real s**tty move for him to ask for her help fresh after breaking her heart… Chloe approaching him was really best way for her to get involved. She had to seriously WANT to help him before she started helping.What rankled more though was that she’d basically accused him of being an idiot for trying not to be an asshole. “Women,” he groused and downed his scotch. “Doesn’t matter what you do, it’s wrong either way. Try to be honest, you’re an asshole. Try to be nice, you’re an idiot. Try to marry them? They’ll end up trying to kill you or steal all your money. It’s a miracle this species is still procreating at the rate it is.”
Try to be honest, you’re an asshole! Try to be nice, you’re an idiot! ROTFLMAO! I LOVE that, and I feel over laughing at the exasperated, irritated (and slightly bemused and confused) look on Lex’s face as he started ranting.
Also a good point. Women are NOT evil, Lex just has really, REALLY bad and superficial taste in prospective brides. But I’m glad to see CHloe didn’t carry on the argument with the point that he IGNORES all the good, decent and trustworthy women (aka, herself) and goes for greedy whores and bimbos.“Oh,” she said, “don’t go blaming our sex. We all aren’t crazy psychopaths who either want to kill you or steal your money. Or both.” Just because he was attracted to that type of woman didn’t mean they were all like that.
Oh, EXCELLENT! I got the impression that they have been avoiding ‘delicate’ topics and tiptoeing on eggshells around each other. It was great to see Lex finally bringing out these issues into the open where they would be resolved properly.“I’m still your friend, right?” Lex nodded once as he glared at her for taking away his alcohol. “Then act like it.”
“We’ve been so weird with one another lately.” He looked like he wanted to say something. “And don’t you try to deny it. Maybe if we both stopped being so careful with one another, we could go back to the way that things were between us.”
Awwww, see! Issue resolved already. How about that? Talking about stuff that bothers you DOES help. Who would’ve thought?She knew that things would never be the same. She would always be the one who admitted she loved him and he would always be the one that shot her down. But they could be closer to what they had instead of this forced politeness.
Her voice softened. “I know why you did what you did and part of me gets it and appreciates it. And thanks you for it. But, you can’t protect me from everything. And you shouldn’t.”
LOL! Taking a page from Desiree’s book? I do think it’s cute that, even though he’s probably doing his best, and probably helping considerably, Clark still manages to irritate with his clueless dorkiness.Lex took the decanter back and put it down on the bar. He’d only needed one drink and he didn’t appreciate people getting all parenting about it when he was merely indulging every once in a while. Clark had gotten on his nerves to the point where Lex wanted to use the alcohol to douse him and set him on fire. Of course he hadn’t done so, but oh he’d fantasized about it.
Heh, he’s put some serious thought into this. LOL!“I’m not trying to protect you from everything,” he denied.
And he really wasn’t, that was a feat no one could accomplish, not even him. “If I tried that, you’d find your car out of commission every other day and there’d be people unobtrusively following you around whenever you feel the need to stick your nose in places where it might get cut off.”
He’s put some VERY serious thought into this! ROTFLOL!You would think that Chloe had grown up to be smarter than that, but you’d think wrong. Lex had hoped her interest would start to drift to less dangerous fields of journalism, but as the years passed, he’d resigned to hoping that she didn’t take an interest in foreign politics or warfare.
ROTFLMAO, he’s also translated some of his paranoid thoughts into actions. He’s actually put people on his payroll for the express purpose of keeping Chloe out of jail? Talk about true-blue, above and beyond the call of duty friendship. No wonder Chloe fell in love with this obsessively thoughtful man.There was something frustrating about getting semi-regular calls from Smallville Medical Center. But Lex wouldn’t deny that it came in handy to have a few nurses on his payroll so he’d at least be in the know. Then of course there were the two deputies and the new sheriff. He wondered if Chloe even suspected why she got away with breaking and entering nine out of ten times.
“And I’m surprised I haven’t,” she countered. There’d been a few times when things had happened that she knew Lex had a hand in. Leads that she’d followed just in time to see the police dragging the guy out in handcuffs. She hadn’t called Lex on these things, she knew that he was just trying to keep her alive. But that didn’t mean that it didn’t infuriate her.
And just as quickly, the laughter gets cut off to sobering thoughts. I’m quite impressed by Chloe’s independence and aversion to being controlled and ‘protected’ even to the extent that she will wholeheartedly accept tremendous emotional pain, because she believes it’s something that belongs to her.She could take care of herself in those matters. If it were possible, she was actually more in danger of pain in her personal life. Which Lex was now trying to shield her from as well. She wouldn’t stand for it here, though.
This he didn’t get to control.
Her pain belonged to her and she would work through it. She had to, she couldn’t just push it under the carpet. Plus, Lex wasn’t making it any easier being the way he was.
Awww, poor Lex… and also, unbelievably sweet Lex. He’s desperate for help, but if he had the ‘slightest’ indication that Chloe was not wholeheartedly adamant about assisting him, he would have refused her offer. Who says the guy is selfish and self-serving??!!Of course there was also the rest of the guest list to check for ex-bride relation and then inquire about the food preferences of the guests that had been invited to replace those missing. Lex had the niggling feeling he forgot something. But of course, as with all things you forgot, the harder you thought about it the further it slipped.
He could really use the help.
His eyes bored into Chloe’s trying to judge if she was likely to have a breakdown if she was actually confronted with the reality of the wedding gone bad. The worst thing was that he couldn’t tell if she was just putting on her brave face, because right now, she was still wearing her pissed off face.
*chuckles* It’s great to see that they seem to have gone back to their sharp, but friendly banter.“And don’t snoop or I’ll chop off your pretty little fingers and feed them to the dogs, got me?”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Chloe grumbled as she walked over to said laptop. Like Lex would ever keep anything important on hardware that she was in the same room with. When she opened the file in question, she whistled.
ROTFLMAO! I thought it was lovely, cute and adorable that Lex channelled his hope for a reconciliation into a snarky statement about feeding a friend to the dogs. Only Chlex could find this kind of banter soothing, familiar and reassuring.Lex glared at the woman behind his desk, then shook his head. It was useless to try and figure her out. If she thought she could handle this, then she probably could. And he realized that for the first time in a week, they’d spoken to each other like they did before. The last few days had been awkward. Much worse than that other time, he thought.
Maybe things would be okay if they just tried to act normal around each other. With that in mind, he made sure to speak loud enough to be heard as he left the room.
“Memo to self: Acquire big, rabid dogs that like to eat blondes for breakfast.”
LOL! I know it’s a Luthor wedding, but the size of that cake…??!! Mind boggling. I kept imagining Lex and Chloe as action figure sizes in contrast to the multi-tiered cake.Five minutes later they were both standing in front of an assembled six tiered wedding cake.
“I can’t believe I forgot about the cake.”
Lex stared at the arrangement in awe. It hadn’t looked that big when he’d seen it in the bakery. Or maybe he just hadn’t paid enough attention.
Sheesh! BlueSabby are playing a heavy-handed game of yo-yo with my emotions. I was feeling bemused, and then this part sank my emotions down to angst again.Chloe merely stared at the monstrosity that was Lex’s wedding cake. Or had been. She supposed without a wedding, it was just a cake.
It did look good but eating it made Chloe feel a little funny. She wasn’t sure why. Lex was already cutting into the cake but she didn’t feel hungry anymore. In fact, she felt almost sick.
Thus far, she hadn’t seen anything too weddingy. This definitely was. It unsettled her.
But she’d get past it. It wasn’t as if Lex would force her to eat it. “I’m not really all that hungry,” she said. “But,” she looked from him to the cake, “it is very beautiful and I’m sure it tastes amazing.”
Poor Chloe! The worst part is that she (kind of) brought this torment on herself. Not only falling hopelessly (emphasis on the hopeless) in love with Lex, but now helping him rearrange his wedding into a ball? Did she really believe that she could avoid all wedding references and paraphernalia altogether?
oh NO! And now Lex has turned into a clueless dimwit. In a certain way, I don’t blame him. He just thinks of this as ‘cake’, and doesn’t seem to connect it as a symbol of his halted marital bliss. It’s rather eerie how he has completely disconnected himself from feeling any kind of sentimentality when handling tangible reminders of his interrupted wedding.She looked a little reluctant to try the cake. Sure it was a little high on the fat and sugar, but that was nothing she had to worry about. Lex tried to stifle his evil grin as he turned and broke off a piece of cake and enjoyed the taste of cake, and sweet revenge so close at hand.
I guess a few days of desperately trying to re-coordinate and change the wedding into ‘charity auction’ helped sever the connection for him…?
Under normal circumstances, this would have been hilarious… especially the *snort* incongruous image of Lex being forced to ingest a Twinkie.He couldn’t count the number of times anymore that she’d made him ‘Just try’ this or ‘Give it a chance’ to that, shoving food in his mouth that had no business being there. She had even forced him into eating a Twinkies once.
“It does taste really good,” he commented as he stepped closer and broke off another piece.
“Try it,” he said with a smirk and popped the piece into her mouth just as she was about to protest.
His grin had to be enormous as he watched her stare at him with wide eyes, her mouth full of cake. “See, I told you it’s great.” It was the same line she always used when he ended up with something or other between his lips that he’d never thought of trying. “Don’t forget to chew.”
Ah, payback was a bitch, but she could be sweet.
As it is now, it’s like watching a train-wreck happen on front of your eyes *wince*
*sob* I’m actually feeling Chloe’s pain over here. Her hurt, bitterness and sense of loss is so palpable, it’s physically real enough to touch. She’s actually FEELING and experiencing what it ‘might’ have been like to have been beloved by Lex… to MARRY him, but she knows he’s just goofing around.She knew what he was doing. He was getting revenge for the Twinkies and other stuff that she’d forced him to eat over the years. He didn’t mean to do what he was doing, didn’t get the significance of cramming a piece of wedding cake in a woman’s mouth. But it still got to her. She didn’t like it.
Especially because he was grinning and relaxed and enjoying himself. Just the way he would have been had he been getting married. But she would never be his bride. Or his date. Or someone that he thought of romantically.
*wailing*
just… just gimme a minute here to r-recover, ok?
Oh NO! It wasn’t bad enough that he stuffed the wedding cake in her mouth. But he has to continue the motions of the ‘bridal tradition’ by playfully smearing it on her face, and THE gently wiping it away… while looking deep into her eyes no less.Chloe mechanically swallowed the sweet treat so as not to choke on it. Lex was going for another piece and she knew what he intended to do. “Lex, no,” she said, turning her head. The cake ended up on her cheek.
He started at the tone of her voice. It sounded almost like she was hurt or something. The smear of cake on her cheek looked a little ridiculous, but she seemed so far away from amusement that he couldn’t even laugh about it. Lex was just confused.
“What’s wrong? It’s not really bad, is it?” He’d been sure that vanilla was one of her favorites.
Lex reached out and wiped the cake from her cheek. She was acting all odd again and he had no clue what he’d done. “Are you okay?”
The IDIOT!!! Clark has been overthrown; all hail the new King of Cluelessness.
UGH! And he STILL didn’t get it!Lex heard the backdoor slam while he was still in the middle of the dining room with a confused frown on his face and a hand smeared in cake. He absently licked his fingers clean as he wondered what the hell had just happened to make her run like that.
*leaves to fetch a sledgehammer to pound some sense into the Luthor’s head*
*snort* I feel I should be offended by Clark’s statement, but it’s too cute. LOL!“I don’t know. Where do women go when they run away for no reason?”
Lex was miffed. He’d tried calling Chloe first, but she hadn’t answered her cell. After another twenty minutes, he’d been at the point where he didn’t know what to do. He was alone, confused and had about 200 pounds of cake to eat. So he’d called Clark. Which really proved just how confused he was.
“Usually,” Clark said sitting down next to Lex, “the bathroom. But I’m assuming you’ve checked all of them already.”
awww, I liked Clark’s observation about Chloe, and his reaction to Lex’s news. Clark didn’t fall into the clichéd ‘girls are unpredictable/weird’ mode of thinking… Instead he actually applied logic to the problem. Excellent.Lex continued to eat his cake. “What happened right before she ran out?” Chloe was a fairly obvious person. If you thought about the last thing you said to her, you could generally figure out where you’d fucked up.
LOL at the thought of Lex and Chloe bouncing off the walls while on a sugar high at the same time. Sounds dangerous!The cake was damn good, but it wasn’t any fun eating alone. Lex had hoped for some nice company and witty conversation with his best friend while they demolished as much of the sweet treat as physically possible. He wanted to see if he could get a sugar high. He wondered what Chloe was like on a sugar high.
Heh, that reminds me of a fic where they had gotten a high of a different variety together. I wonder if the results would have been the same with THIS high…?
I LOVED this part. Seriously one of my favourite bits from the update. I LOVED seeing the way in which Clark has truly matured and come into his own. He’s definitely not oblivious, self-centred, self-involved and self-obsessed anymore. AND he learned deductive lateral thinking from Chloe. Excellent!Chloe had taught Clark a few things. Sometimes, she told him, people’s words didn’t always tell you everything you needed to know. You have to listen and then extrapolate. That’s what he was doing now.
She’d gotten cake smeared on her face. Chloe wasn’t a two year old, she knew how to use utensils. So she hadn’t been using utensils. He looked at the table. There were plenty of forks on it.
A thought struck Clark. A horrible one.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream in horror at Lex’s obtuseness. CLARK got the significance of what happened, Enrique got it during the tail end of the conversation. And neither one of THOSE men have the experience of two weddings under their belts. Lex has… no excuse!!!“Lex, you didn’t feed Chloe cake, did you?” He was already feeling for his cell phone in his pocket. He vaguely saw Enrique come back into the room. “Smash it into her mouth, right?”
He noticed that both he and the butler were now looking intently at Lex.
Lex frowned. He could feel Enrique’s gaze coming from the side like a laser beam and Clark was looking at him like he’d done something horrible beyond all humanity. “I didn’t smash it into her mouth. I just got my revenge for all the times she’d make me try something, so I fed her a bit of the cake.”
They stared at him in horror. “What? It’s not like I made her eat something disgusting! It’s damn good cake and I know she likes vanilla and cream.”
It was satisfying to see Clark dumb-struck with horror, and Enrique giving a death-glare. It really helped drive in the impact of Lex’s stupidity.
Awww, I really liked this hint about how much Clark has grown. He’s really desperate to offer Chloe a shoulder to cry on. It’s about time she got someone who cared about her as much as she cares for others.“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” Clark muttered as he found Chloe’s number and then dialed it. “Pick up,” it rang once, “pick up,” two rings, “pick up the phone, Chloe.”
Lex was asking him what was wrong but he ignored him. He had to focus on Chloe now.
Double awwwww. Clark is not the only one who cares deeply for Chloe. Even Enrique is enraged and disgusted by how shabbily Lex has treated the lovely young woman.Enrique could not believe his employer. He knew the man was not well versed in romantic traditions but did he not watch films. “It is customary,” he said, watching as Lex turned towards him, “for the groom to feed his new bride a piece of cake.” He watched as Lex’s eyes went wide.
“I’m sure that that was what made her so upset.” The ‘you fool’ went unsaid but Enrique made sure that it was apparent by his tone.
He was fond of Ms. Sullivan and had lost a great deal of respect over the past year for his boss and his treatment of her.
erm… can we focus on someone other that YOU, Lex? Sheesh! He finds out he trod (and jumped, skipped and grinded his feet) into the broken shards of Chloe’s shattered heart… and now he’s wondering about how HE has lost a friendship.Lex felt like an idiot. He had totally forgotten about that tradition. Truth be told, he’d forgotten most of the details of his previous two marriages and that bit about the cake had gone completely unnoticed. There it was again, solid proof that this friendship was going to be over sooner rather than later.
Once again, it was so SATISFYING to see Enrique conveying such disgust for his employer’s callous, thoughtless behaviour. I don’t blame Lex completely… it’s not HIS fault he’s emotionally retarded, but I can see why Enrique would have been so angry at seeing someone as lovely and endearing as Chloe being trampled over by Lex’s klutziness.“Fuck, I didn’t even think about that,” he grumbled. “We were carrying on like we used to and I was just trying to get my revenge for the Twinkies.” Instead, he’d shoved the knife in deeper and turned it. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Apparently, his employer had done much to the young woman over the past year that he ‘didn’t mean.’ The man kept making excuses for his behavior towards Ms. Sullivan. Excuses that he directed at her, at himself and now at the outside world.
Holy CRAP! WYF??!!“But you did mean to kiss her at your birthday celebration last year, did you not?”
He’d walked in on it. Ms. Sullivan and his employer in what would have progressed to a most compromising situation, he was sure of it. He’d never regretted opening a door so much in his life. It had gone unsaid that he was not to speak of it. But he’d stayed quiet long enough, his job be damned.
And damned it was, he knew, when he saw Mr. Luthor’s face.
*sputter* Never mention it again??!! Is he kidding???!! He kissed the girl who has an extremely painful case of unrequited love for him, and he thinks that’s just… irrelevant??!! What. A. Moron!!!Clark was stunned. Chloe had never said anything about that. She hadn’t told anyone. Slowly, he looked at Lex. “You kissed her?” This changed things. It changed everything.
Lex slowly turned away from glaring at Enrique at Clark’s question. He was seething with anger for the man who’d just consciously and maliciously given away the secret that Lex and Chloe had kept for over a year now.
“It was an accident,” he told Clark as calmly as possible, “We decided never to mention it again.”
Now I suppose the big questions are… was Chloe in love with him when he kissed her? WHY did he kiss her? What kind of kiss? Was it a peck to the lips, or a full tongue-assault session? Did it end at a kiss??!!!
This was a horrible, HORRIBLE cliffhanger to leave us at, BlueSabby. You come right back here, young ladies, and FINISH what you started!!!
Bookmarks