TITLE: Heaven Perfectly
AUTHOR: Nymph Du Pave
FANDOM: Smallville
PAIRING: Chloe Sullivan/Lex Luthor
RATING: R
WARNING: There are a few sexually disturbing images.
SUMMARY: A first person-present tense, dark portrayal of Chloe as she
yearns for something to believe in, something to be happy about.
DISCLAIMER: The WB, DC Comics, MillarGoughInk, Tolin, Robbins, and
Davola own this wonderful show. I have been borrowing the characters for
a while, using them in my own evil ways, but they've withstood the pressure
to currupt and follow me into my little world. All will return in
good time and in good spirits, with the exception of Lex, who will be broody
and moody to get back to the world in which he cannot have Clark.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: A little strange. Authors are always forcing their
readers into and around so much. You can't see the exact mindset,
I know, but if you get to know the author through their works, then you
can tell when their life has taken another interesting turn. This
one wasn't screaming at me, or even begging me. It wasn't tantalizing
me with a plot twist, or intriguing me with a certain character flaw.
It just came out. I felt like I had to write, and this is what wrote
itself. I didn't have much to do with this one, it just pushed itself
through the keyboard.
FEEDBACK: Please, if this is not typically the POV and/or tense you
prefer, try it out. Taste a little and maybe I will have done a good
enough job here. If so, drop me a line?
AUTHOR'S EMAIL: nymph_du_pave@hotmail.com
Heaven Perfectly
by Nymph Du Pave
"That's it. I'm getting the hell out of Dodge."
He rolled his eyes at me. The bastard.
"I hate it when people say that." I threw an empty candy wrapper at him. He actually tried to duck. From slow flying paper. "No, really. It's just stupid."
"You're stupid," I whispered, not bothering to look up at him. I was only joking, but I couldn't look at him for some reason.
"What's with you today, Chloe?"
I pulled the satin sheet up around my breasts and settled back against the heavy goosedown pillow. It was getting cold in my room and my nipples were becoming uncomfortably hard.
"Oh, come on," he complained. "I like seeing them."
I breathed in. "Lang's a freak."
A sigh.
"Well, she is."
He drops down and covers his head with his pillow.
"Lex!" I whine. I want him to listen to me. I always listen to him.
"I can still hear you."
"You're waiting to sufficate."
"Supposed to be one of the least painful ways to die."
I thump him on his bare ass and giggle at the loud smack it makes. Startled by both the noise and the sting, he jerks and falls off my bed.
I bury my laughter in the heavily insulated pillow and feel him climbing back in. His feet are already cold.
"What if Lana and Gabe heard that?"
My laughter stops and I turn to him. His eyes are full of worry for me, not for him, and I'm sick and tired of those eyes. Not the beautiful orbs themselves, but the worry and sadness in them. He can't take me places, out with him. So he takes other women on dates, dates that mean nothing to him, are purely for show but... I can't help but wonder when my time will run out. When the odds are finally put to the test and some bombshell with a brain steals a man that is not even technically mine.
His hand caresses my face and his lips meet my forehead briefly. Well, not publically technially mine. But he is mine.
"What's wrong, sunshine?"
I smile a little, knowing the name is not for my Herbal Essence hued hair. It's for the grins that used to be more frequent. "Stupid Lana is what's wrong."
This time his eyes are compassionate and I know to continue.
Even so I look down at my chewed away nailtips. "Her obsessive-compulsive cleaning act is getting on my nerves. At first it was just here and there. Her room. The kitchen. Our bathroom. Now that she's more comfortable with the house it's everywhere. I've even noticed her looking at my fucking room. Like the clothes in the corner and the papers on my desk bother her prettly little sensitive nature."
"I wonder if she got this from Nell."
If not, it's easy to see why Nell let her live here without much of a fight. "My father's room is more tidy than usual."
His eyebrows raise and I can tell he understands that she has crossed a line that you just do not cross. Gabe Sullivan is my father - hence the last name - and he is not there to make up for the lack of a stable father figure in her Seventeen-meets-Dawson's Creek life.
"She's not supposed to be better than me," I whisper. My lips begin to tremble and my eyes water and spill almost instantly. It is only now that I realize how tender I am about the subject.
"Oh, god, Chlo." He pulls me near, but I don't return the embrace. It would just be an empty gesture right now. I need something more than to be held.
"She's not better, sweetie."
"She is to him."
"No, no. She's just different. It's just nice I'm sure to have someone clean."
"And cook and get the mail and have plenty of her own money and own her own business at such a young age-"
"Say the word and it's vacated." He gives me a wicked grin. I know he's just kidding but the hurt, petty side of me wants to know if he'd do it for me. I need to mean that much to someone right now. I just need to. With Clark and Pete and my father... If I don't find something to believe in, something other than uncovering truth behind tons of bullshit, I might crack. People need something real in their lives. Something real and good and solid.
Lex told me that once. I wonder if he still sees me as his even as I crack before his beautiful, piercing eyes.
"You don't understand, Lex-"
"Yeah, I d-"
"She's just like my mother."
There was a silence. It was the silence that I'd expected but was praying would not come. The silence wherein Lex would realize that I was right. That, in my father's eyes, Lana was better. Easier for him to connect to and find a piece of humanity in. He'd always wanted me to be like Delilah. And I never was even the slightest bit like her.
Now he had his own little confidant, a carbon copy of the woman he used to adore.
I'm sobbing now. This is the time where I wish Lex would hold me, but I believe he understands that he is out of his league here. "They bond like crazy. Over little things. She does her homework while he reads the paper, or cooks. He does his paperwork while she cooks. He likes to be around her. It's nothing sexual. Just the perfect father-daughter bond."
"Chloe."
"I don't need to be here, Lex."
"Chlo-"
"I don't want to be here."
+_+_+_+_+
I walk in school alone now. Separate from Lana, Clark and Pete. I see the sadness in Clark's eyes when he looks at me, the confusion and hurt in Pete's. The oblivion in Lana's. She really wouldn't miss me if I was gone. So long as I didn't take my father with me.
Her father. And now bonding with H. Small. She's got two.
I miss Lex.
I spend my time hurrying through classes to get to the Torch and do my work there. I lose myself in the stories and articles and research. It's something I pray I will never find myself without. The ability to find the truth. To decipher, to wade through the muck to find the golden ostrich egg. I love it.
Clark of course is the one thing I will never understand. My one failure as a journalist. I once let my emotions get the better of my guts, but that no longer bothers me. He's a private mystery, a story I will never publish, but still hope to get to the bottom of. Clark the Farmboy is not so much a part of my life now. Clark the Deception is, but it's no longer as my heart and my future. And as much as that sometimes hurts, it's also freeing. And the pain is starting to dull. With every kiss from Lex, with every admission that he cares, that we're something special, my heart lets go of Clark a little more and clings onto the hope that there could be a future that I'm not entirely aware of. Somewhere out there.
Look at me, and I will show you where to go. If you don't see, I will tell you the way. If you don't hear my words, I will reach for your hand. If you can't feel my touch then I will lead you with my heart. You are never lost my little one, and your love is all I desire.
I finish typing the words I was not really even aware were pouring through my fingertips. I stare at them and wonder what they mean to me. Who is this? Is it Lex? Is it God.
I laugh at that.
I think that I've had a little too much of the Torch and my self-pity for today.
I grab my coat and purse and backpack, smiling at the contents. Finance Math and Chemistry Honors. All of my night classes and summer classes and work-at-home credits have paid off. Since 7th grade and now, 10th grade, I will graduate early. A sophomore taking senior classes and with two credits left in the middle of the school year and...
And only Lex knows. Pete occasionally seems intrigued and impressed but then something happens with Clark and it takes his mind elsewhere. Clark himself has showed no signs of recognizing how far along I am. Lang's brain is so bleached, so twisted and tangled that she has no idea just how intelligent I am. She's busy taking sophomore honors classes and, because she does not see me there, she assumes I am of a lower caliber. I even tried once to correct her misunderstanding of Geometric equations. She looked up at me with those burnt pie-crust brown eyes and her faded lip-gloss smug smile. She needed another coating of the stuff.
"I'm pretty sure I've got it, Chloe." Her voice holds that tone of sweet, self-congratulatory tolerance, and 'well aren't you sweet for trying to help, but really, Mommy's working'.
I just nod, leave the kitchen. I hurry to my little Echo and drive straight to Lex's. We've been friends for months, and just as of lately, his body has become more intriguing to me. I can feel that this is a mutual thing, a same sense, and things are more intimate. Nothing physical yet, but I have this calming knowledge that it will someday get there, that things will be synchronized. Beneath the silhouette of 'real life' I will have something integral. Or at least non-partisan. I might even think of him before me.
Once I reach the gym I pick up the phone and dial out to the house. Sam picks up after the third ring and I calmly ask him if he wouldn't mind fetching Lex, I'll be in the gym.
I play Ana's Song, turning the volume up to an ungodly level of decibels and shed my clothes until I am in my underwear. It hits me that Lex will come in and see this...
But I'm dulled, desensitized to the point where I don't give a god-damn what he sees and doesn't. It suddenly feels as if he's seen a lot more than my naked body and I can't help but wonder if I'm catching drafts from the future me.
There is a blur and my arms burn. I am lost to time, wind, air, water... Everything is gone, it's me and the bag and Lana's fucking perfect little life. Her god-damned pretty face, the gorgeous body...
I hate admitting to myself, but I have masturbated to thoughts of fucking that face. Sitting on top of it and just letting go. Of undressing her, tying her up and making her do things. I've pictured Clark doing things to her, of her on her knees in the barn, sucking him off. Of him backdooring her, him even raping her. Sometimes it was him and a few other people.
I'm not stupid. I didn't scare or confuse myself enough to start buying and renting books on psychology, or seek the help of a mental professional. I understand that, as twisted as they are, these are merely urges for power. To have her image dirtied and mine proclaimed. They become sexual fantasies because the power I gain through them is so incredibly strong that it acts as an intense aphrodisiac.
My world is still a blur and I'm still lost. I reach the point where I am more than just fighting with the punching bag, I'm taking out everything I've got on the on the damned leather. And yet nothing is releasing from my system. If anything, I'm getting worse.
Finally exhausting myself, I fall to the ground gasping. I look up at the clock and am stunned to find I have been here for an hour. I had that much adrenaline? That much rage?
I look around in stunned awe and there, in front of the gym's two barred windows, sits Lex, left leg crossed over his right, watching me.
At first I am filled with sweet surprise, then his worried expression hits and I duck my face. I do not want him to see what a pathetic excuse for a soul I have left to bare. I have hate and no way to release it. Not enough love and so, so much fear.
After all, isn't that what hate stems from? The root of all hate, I've found, is fear.
Lex stands and turns off the CD player. I don't even hear the song until the silence rings all too loudly, thumping horribly in my ears. I want to grab my ears, but then the pain is so fitting.
Lex walks over to me and sits on the floor. His face is right in front of mine and I am disgusted by the image I present. Sweaty. Chunky. In underwear that has been dirtied and soiled by my perspiration. The sudden touch of his fingertips on my bare, sweaty arm is too much to bare.
I rip myself away and find myself falling backward from the slouched position. My head cracks hard on the floor. "I'm disgusting," I mutter.
"You're my shooting star, Chloe," I hear him say right before I pass
out. "Don't quit on me just yet."
+_+_+_+_+
"I want to leave."
He stops tonguing my belly-button. "What? I just got here."
"I didn't mean going your house, Lex."
Understanding dawns soon enough in his clear blue eyes and at the same time that I'm glad life's taught him it's better to be quick and clever, understanding all, I feel bad for always throwing everything at him. But it's a test. I want to be me around him. If I can't, I've got to go.
"To leave."
"Yes. Now. Or tomorrow." It's been three days since I've finished up my classes. A sophomore midway throuh her year and she's already graduated. My father would be so proud. If only he knew.
I didn't feel like telling him. I didn't really care about his reaction anymore.
"Chloe, I want you to really think about this."
Without saying another word, I stand and walk towards his closet. Lex, not acting like himself at all, gets up and follows me. When I pull the doors open to reveal two suitcases he wraps his arms around me.
Packing is not thinking about it, I expect him to say. Truthfully, it's the exact opposite.
Instead, he seems to be waiting for me to say something. Or maybe he's thinking. I stay quiet.
"How long have they been packed, Chlo?" His voice is strangley subdued.
I take a deep breath."Most of it has been packed for a month and a half. The little one has been packed since I was fourteen and tried to run away. Back to Metropolis on a train." I laugh. It had been a truly romantic dream.
"I'm not just another attempt am I?" There is a strain to his words, a worry that I pick up on. I turn within the circle of his arms. "Tell me I mean more to you than easy escape."
I search his wounded eyes and cannot believe that he thinks the only real reason I've been with him is because it would be easy to get out of Smallville. I decide to tell him.
"Remember I told you when my mother left us."
"Yes."
"Well, she had a lot of priceless antiques and pantings and such from her family. They were rich. My father sold thm all, something he never thought he would do, ever. He loved some of those paintings. And the couch... Well, the frame of that thing alone was worth a good three thousand."
Lex stayed quiet.
"Anyway, he used most of the money to buy this house outright, himself that old classic car, and me my Echo just recently. Most of it he put into two savings accounts. One for him and one for me."
"How much do-"
"Thirty-five thousand dollars. And there is no age requirement. It's mine to do with as I please. He's trusted me completely. And I've only spent two thousand in the last several years."
"Computer and camera equipment."
"Right. And a waredrobe that wasn't all girly and of my mother's pick."
Lex runs his fingers through my hair. "You could have left anytime you really wanted to."
"I couldn't leave my father," I say heading back to my bedroom. "I couldn't be my mother and just up and leave him completely alone for no reason. At least my mother was leaving me."
"As you'll be leaving Lana."
"And she's so desperate for a father figure, even when she's got the real thing back, that-"
"She'll never leave."
I nod, ignoring the sting in my eyes. "I don't like being replaced. If that's what it takes though..." I look up at Lex, desperate for him to understand. "I love my father, I do. I just can't stay here, especially now... With Lana."
He sits on the bed with me. "I know, sunshine."
"I'll write him... And maybe visit him from time to time. But I gotta get out."
"Okay."
I caress his smooth, loving face. He puts up with so very much from me. Why, I might never understand. "I just never thought I'd be leaving with anybody. Particularly someone that I love."
It's the first time that either of us has said it and it shows on his face. I felt that, if I was going to run away with him he should know what he was getting into.
His lips form the most beautiful grin that I've ever seen. "Aww, Chlo."
I feel one hand on the small of my back, the other cupping my cheek and he's pushing me down onto the bed. "You have no idea... God, I... I love you, too."
My stomach explodes with warmth, the warmth of our first kiss, and I blush. I knew it, but then again, I'd known Clark and everything turned out wrong there.
"Lex." Just saying the name aloud now... it means something different. Something special. And we love each other. He's my other belief. I don't have to fear the cold again.
And neither does he.
His lips explore the skin of my neck and simoultaeously tell me the
story of how he never thought he'd ever hear those words. I know
that we both will fully appreciate the love we've discovered.
+_+_+_+_+
I'm driving his restored two-door '55 Chevy. Blue, like the sky, warm like his skin and comfy like my heart.
"I've never even been in the passenger seat."
I grin. I told him that, to drive crosscountry with the windows open, you had to have hair. It was supposed to whip around.
"This is prejeduce, you know."
"Really."
"Uh-huh. If I had hair like Clark-"
"I would so not be dating you. No boy should have better hair than his girlfriend."
"You would have dated him." He's so smug sometimes.
"I wasn't in my right mind."
"Ahhh."
"It wasn't meant to be."
He slides over the leather, no constraint of a seatbelt to hold him back. "I know that much."
His hand slips from my knee, up the inside of my thigh. I take a deep breath and the sweet scent of honeysuckle overwhelms me. I've always thought that honeysuckle would litter the feilds of heaven.
That's where I must be now.
The End