Keep Me Here
-Prologue-
I have gone to find myself. If I get back, before I return, KEEP ME HERE.
-Attribution Uncertain (Mike Curtiz, Andrea Pusillo, and John Barr have all been credited for it before)
Lex was an observant man. He had to be. Information was the most valuable resource in the war he waged daily. He knew Chloe's voice well enough to pick it out in a crowd. He knew the rhythm and cadence of her speech. He had noted Chloe's voice tended to jump up a few octaves when she was nervous; she literally chirped, a rapid fire of high toned words with a hint of fluttering, both in pitch and in the movement of her hands. He knew that when she was trying to comfort someone, her voice dropped slightly in pitch, still light, even airy, compared to many, but enough to show her seriousness to anyone who knew her. He knew she didn't drop her voice to the low, breathy purring that so many woman choose when being seductive. For one thing, it didn't fit her at all. For another, she knew as well as any of the not inconsiderable number of people she'd charmed over the years that her wide smile and earnest attentiveness won her more interest, attention, and regard than any attempt to play the temptress would. So when her reply to his half angry, half bewildered accusation came, he found himself caught off guard, something he'd worked hard to ensure was a rarity.
But then, that had always been what he'd found compelling about Chloe Sullivan. She had the ability to surprise him, unexpected strengths and weaknesses surfacing from the depths beneath her seemingly guileless eyes. She was naive enough to be trusting, even innocent at times, yet at the same time guarded. She expressed a cynical view of the world that drove her to push hard in her endeavors without seeming to sap her strength with despair. She had hope that she could make some small corner of the world brighter, however corrupt it was.
In some deeply buried party of him, he almost hated her, certainly resented her. Because he recognized, somehow, despite all the cheer and smiles and happy pastel colors of her pixie-bohemian fashion sense, that she was, at her core, broken in a way that only people like them could understand. And yet while he was lost in the abyss, Chloe Sullivan still had the one thing Lex could never muster however hard he tried. Faith.
Faith, Hope, and Love, St. Paul had said. Lex was adrift in the darkness, floating ever further from all those things, clinging tenuously to what few ideals he didn't quite believe but still thought worthy. And she was not only firmly grounded in what Lex longed for but could not touch, but was entirely determined to pull him back into the light, by whatever means necessarily.
Because when you stripped her to the raw, Chloe Sullivan had, at the bottom of her soul, a ruthless streak that even he found a little frightening to contemplate.
"I never imagined that you could be such an utter bastard" He'd hissed at her, his careful control slipping away almost before he even realized it.
And she'd smiled that infuriating, condescending, thin lipped half smile that was just wrong, wrong, wrong on her face however attractive he had found it on Helen's; before leaning into him to whisper in his ear. "Coming from you Lex," she breathed huskily, with just the right hint of salacious flirtation, "that sounds rather like a complement."
She'd copied Helen's mannerisms perfectly, and despite himself, Lex felt a shiver go down his spine. He felt at once angry, impressed, and just a little bit shocked. Not to mention the stirrings of arousal that one sentence shouldn't have been able to bring on so quickly or forcefully. He'd never even considered the girl in a sexual context before that day, not seriously, anyway.
It took all his self control to suppress instinct and desire, denying the urge to pin her to the wall and force his tongue down her throat right then and there.
Instead, he took a deep breath to steady himself, and more importantly buy another critical second to come up with a counter in this suddenly far more cutthroat match of verbal judo.
"You really weren't kidding," he said, taking a half step back to give her the look-over; not a leer but rather the quick examination of a man looking at a woman as a woman, "when you said that you would use any means necessary." It was a measured response, stepping away from the raw emotion and sensuality of their previous exchange, but not so far as to remove their banter from any hint of innuendo. That would, after all, ruin the fun.
"I may not always be able to fully back them," she told him, this time with the hinting-at-secrets grin that was so much more natural on her, "but I never make empty threats." She matched his withdraw, letting their conversation fall into the playful tone they were used to, while still keeping that heretofore unrevealed hint of sexuality.
Oh, yes, this little vacation promised to be interesting indeed.
~~~
A/N: Not being all that, erm, experienced with flirtation myself, I'm not sure if I managed to hint at the right things at the right places, but hopefully the emotional gist of that came across. Already have chapters one and two basically planned. Probably won't work on it until after finals though.
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