We Are Who We Have Always Been
Author: Cy Panache
Rating: R (for non explicit sexuality)
Category: Angst/Romance
Spoilers/Timeline: Set in Season 5 pre-'Lexmas', but it will move around with flashbacks.
Disclaimer: Someone else's sandbox. I just play here because other people have all the best toys.
Summary: She's never been unbiased when it comes to him. That's her problem. As Chloe lets Lex take her out one last time, we get glimpses of what brought them here.
Author's note: This fic jumps time a lot. I will try to make it all as clear as possible.
- + - + - + - + -
"A person isn't who they are during the last conversation you had with them - they're who they've been throughout your whole relationship."
-- Rainer Marie Rilke
-----
Chapter 1
Present
He finds her in the rundown coffee shop that has, up until now, functioned as her safe-haven. Three miles from the MetU campus and four from the basement of the Daily Planet it is her escape, her refuge from the shiny, plastic world of Metropolis, from corporate coffee and Lana Lang and sometimes because she turns off her cell even from Clark Kent. Here she's just Chloe, no last name, no history, no loyalties or duties or insurmountable secrets, just the girl who likes the owner's lethally strong turkish coffee and his wife's pastries.
Leave it to Lex Luthor to take that away.
Damn and she'd liked this coffee. Savoring what might be her last cup, she makes a mental note to avoid paying with a card when she finds a new place.
He doesn't wait for an invitation (he knows it isn't coming), just tosses down a file folder like a gauntlet, its contents spilling across the linoleum of the table in silent accusation.
It only takes her a glance to know what she's looking at . . . Every single piece of email correspondence she's had with his father over the last four months.
"Did you really think I wouldn't find out?"
Slowly, carefully, she sets down the little demitasse cup, and touches his name on one of the emails scattered before her. "Honestly, I didn't think it would take you this long."
It's the truth and he knows it. She'd wanted him to know, wanted him to see it, watch it happen, to have this visible, tangible evidence of her hatred. Of the poisonous seed inside her that she's trying to cultivate with everything she has, to make it flourish and grow until its strangled everything else, all the other emotions that it seems won't die on their own.
If he can touch her hate, it must be real.
But its not that simple, it has never been that simple between them, and she can feel him watching her, coming to his own decisions, and when he opens his mouth she knows what he'll say. Its the same question he always asks. The one that started everything between them a year and a half ago as he took in the marks on her skin, the full import of his father's wrath and his own powerlessness.
"Do you hate me yet?"
There's only one answer to the question. The one she always gives. The one she'd first whispered in a teasing effort to lighten the mood as his hands skimmed the flesh of her abdomen, seeking something like solace or absolution. She's deadly serious now.
"I'm working on it."
She is. She is working on it. And she gets a little closer every day. As she works with Clark, as she collects scraps of vitriol from his father, weaves lies and truth together into a cloak for her heart, it always bring her one step closer.
But she's not there yet.
Which is why, when he takes a seat across from her, the silk and wool of his pants brushing against her calf as their legs tangle under the too-small table, she doesn't pull away. His hands come up to slide the paper emails out from under hers, deliberately trailing his fingers over her skin as he does.
Something goes alight inside her, and she has to clench her hands into fists to keep from reaching back.
He hasn't touched her in months, not since he dragged her to the caves, left bruises on her arms and fresh scars on her heart. And even in the Yukon with all her new injuries, new pain, she'd known which parts belonged to Lex, almost mourned their loss when they finally faded. She wonders what he'll give her to remember him by this time.
Because he seemingly knows where her thoughts have strayed, he turns her hand over, swipes his thumb along the interior of her wrist. Once, twice, three times. The touch sends something shooting through her, something that makes her want to forget the past year, forget all the reasons why she ended this.
Her fist uncurls. Lex smiles.
It was a test. And she failed.
But when she looks up there's something hot and desperate in his gaze, and she realizes her failure is a matter of perspective.
"You should give me the opportunity to respond. Any unbiased journalist would."
She's never been unbiased when it comes to him. That's her problem.
"What did you have in mind?"
-------
June 3rd, 2004
The first time he touches her, its in the too-small upstairs bathroom of the safe-house, her father asleep on the couch in the living room. It has all the makings of something dirty, tawdry. But it doesn't feel that way.
If anything it feels like something frighteningly close to grace.
She slips in without permission, startling the hell out of him, and when she throws the lock behind her, he nearly swallows his tongue.
"Chl- Wha?"
"I thought I'd give you a chance to look. You've been trying not to all night, but . . ." she shrugs, "I just thought I'd give you a chance."
He could protest, tell her he wasn't. Lie. But he owes her more than that. So he looks, long and hard, takes in everything from the tiny cuts on her forehead, the bruise on her cheek, the scrapes on her neck. Things that happened to her that he couldn't prevent. So much pain and death, on someone so alive. He doesn't think he could hate his father more right now if he tried.
Something awful tries to claw its way up in his throat, comes out in a strangled sound that he can't even give a name. And then Chloe is taking his hand, pressing it to the flesh of her collarbone. "He didn't break me. I'm not broken."
He doesn't know whether she's saying it for his benefit or her own.
It doesn't matter. He needs to believe it. But he can't, not quite yet, needs more proof, more reassurance. Unconsciously his hand sweeps along her throat, down the skin of her chest, until it encounters the first button holding her shirt together. Suddenly realizing what he's doing, he starts to jerk away, but then her hand is covering his, holding it to her breastbone, and her eyes are telling him its okay, she understands.
She doesn't, can't possibly, except her other hand is coming up to his chest, resting just beside the bump of the permanent IV line, and he realizes maybe she does.
The buttons come undone with agonizing slowness. He can't remember the last time he's been nervous about undressing a woman, but then he's always known what he was doing before. He doesn't know anything right now, doesn't know what he'll find, doesn't know if he's taking or giving, if he's conducting his penance or compounding his sin.
And then it's all a moot question because the shirt has slipped from her shoulders and he can see everything—the abrasions on her stomach from where someone must have pressed her down to shield her from the brunt of the blast, the burn marks trailing like fingers around the sides of her waist—all the places his father marked her, all the wounds she wouldn't carry if he hadn't brought them upon her.
"Do you hate me, yet?" He's deadly serious about the question, because truly how could she not? He'd made her a promise to protect her, to wrap her in cotton and keep her safe, and instead he's given her this.
But Chloe just laughs, like its an absurd thought, like she can't think of any reason why she would. "I'm working on it."
The words are enough to undo him, the thought that anyone might believe that in the emotional spectrum its hating him that takes work, and he's kissing her before he even knows what he's doing.
She's citrus and black licorice, sunshine sweetness and biting spice. He's never tasted anything like it and he doesn't want to stop.
Lex is vaguely aware that he's supposed to the responsible adult in this, but she's whimpering against his mouth, tiny mewls of desire, and its all he can do to tear himself away, to rasp her name against the skin of her neck in a way that's as much plea as protest.
When her fingers start fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, the responsible adult leaves the room, chased by want and need, and he spins them around, pressing her against the sink, remembering her wounds, too late, when she sucks in a hiss of pain.
But her hands are fisting in his shirt even as she does, yanking him closer before he can pull away. "It's okay. You can't hurt me. It's okay."
God, he wishes that were true.
Still, the reassurance is enough to keep him going, to want to be closer, feel more of her. Test the limits of her belief in his safety. He hoists her up on the edge of the sink, groaning at the feel of her lace covered breasts on his chest. She instinctively wraps hers legs around his waist, and he tightens his arms around her, and suddenly they're counterweights, both so off-kilter they can't stay up on their own, but together they might just keep each other balanced.
He doesn't usually talk to women during sex, there's rarely anything he wants to say, and none of it would be real. Now suddenly, he wants to say everything but he's choking on the truth of it. So in the end he's just as silent as he always is.
And yet everything is different, transformed, in this tiny bathroom with this too-young woman (girl), with too much wisdom, and too much life, and not the slightest ounce of sense (just look at the choice she's making right now). He becomes a different person as he runs his fingers along her sex, reveling in how wet she is, in the physical proof that he can bring her something other than pain. She leans back in his grasp, closes her eyes and gives herself over, trusting he won't let her fall, trusting he'll take care of her.
And he will. This time he vows he will.
---------
Present
She lets him lead her out of the coffee shop to where his Porsche is parked half a block down. It's the silver one, shiny and ultra-conspicuous and before she can protest, point out her little red VW bug is just around the corner, he turns and jerks her hand, pulling her into his arms.
His mouth is hot and hungry, devouring her, and begging for more. God, she'd forgotten how good he tastes, how he makes her feel—beautiful and desirable and powerful—feelings she'll spend the rest of her life trying to replace with shallow facsimiles. If she's not careful she could get lost in him, in this all over again, could forget all the things she knows he's done to Clark, the sins and transgressions she's collected from Lionel. No sane person would do this.
But the permanence of her sanity has always been a question mark.
Which is why she's pressed up against the door of Lex's Porsche in a highly public street, in the middle a well-publicized state senate campaign, half-hoping he intends to fuck her before this day is out. "Lex . . ." she pulls away, and he shifts his focus to the spot behind her ear, so she just barely manages to complete the thought in a breathy moan, "not here."
His fingers flex convulsively against her hips, pulling her closer in retaliation. "Afraid someone will see?"
The words are a mocking derisive sneer, a taunt. Because yes that's exactly what she's afraid of, that she'll be seen, photographed and turned into a headline. That Clark will read it, that her father will know, and it will all come crumbling down and then what will have been the point of everything? But she'll never say that.
"You're the one running for office. This would make a nice scandal."
"Don't care."
The sad thing is . . . he doesn't. For all his duplicity, for all his guarded emotions and self-control, Lex has always been unflinchingly direct about her, about them, about his desire to shout her name from rooftops and engage in public worship. It's life and her that's always interfered.
And suddenly she knows. This is his response. His revenge. He wants to take her out, court discovery, claim her just once.
Turning her head, she captures his lips again, lets her hands scrabble on his shoulders and tries not to think about the fact she's deliberately flirting with disaster.
Maybe after everything, this is the least she can do.
- + - + - + - + -