Author: Nicola
Email: nicola@iridescentglow.com
Title: Impressionist
Rating: PG
Classification: Lex POV -- Lex/Lana
Disclaimer: Not mine
Feedback: Loved and adored: send it to nicola@iridescentglow.com
Summary: Attraction is an art which Lex can teach Lana
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My mother used to paint. One of her many therapists recommended art as a form of release. She used to tell me that although the world outside always remains uncontrollable, your canvas is a form to be dominated, manipulated, controlled. She loved the Impressionist stuff; beguiling pictures which dissolved if you got too close: elaborate and lavish, like all her tastes.
From where I stand, Lana could be the subject of such a painting. Hair a casual swirl of black paint; skin a wash of delicate white, lips reduced to the tiniest smudge of cadmium red. She sits in a nineteenth century Mahogany chair which my mother bought in an auction shortly before she died. Her gaze is directed out the tall, lead-rimmed window; the delicate fold of the velvet curtain and the creeping vines of ivy fragmenting her view of the grounds. Her posture is china-doll perfect; straightened back shaded with rigidity -- she's uncomfortable, but she hides it well. Her hands grasp a beaker too extravagant for its clear contents. ("Water. Just water, thanks Lex." Smile. Shy half-glance away.)
She could be an Impressionist painting, but she's not: she's a blank canvas.
She is innocence: purity I can barely even conceive of. I was born soiled; I was born a Luthor. I was never taught darkness or deceit; they are simply in my nature. My genes spun the web of nefariousness inside my head.
Lana is cleanliness which I can paint jaded. I can colour darkness into her wide eyes. I can teach her the rules of my world. I can teach her to play feelings like the strings of a harp. I can teach her to spin secrets into circles as we dance a little deeper into the art of attraction.
I wonder, what impression will my hands leave around her heart?
My plans for Lana are elaborate; her portrait will be lavish when painted with my fingertips. From far away, her static form, locked onto my canvas, will be a vision of perfect beauty. Up close, her perfection will splinter into thousands of tiny dots.