Chapter One
Bruce's flat was nice. It was in one of those blocks in Westminster where only the very rich could afford to live, and they even had their own private parks. For an apartment it was actually quite large. Chloe had her own room, and though it wasn't nearly as big as her room in the mansion, it was larger than her hotel room in Paris.
Tastefully decorated, screaming English, and with a nice view of the park behind the building, she was happy to hang out in the room all day. But she didn't. Though Bruce Wayne had money to rival even Lex's fortune, it became quickly obvious that he didn't enjoy the benefits of extreme wealth as much as his friend. While the Luthor's kept a variety of paid help, Bruce had only a butler in Gotham, and none in London. He did hire a maid service to come in every five days or so though. Not that Chloe minded, she'd never been entirely comfortable having various servants around at all times, but she was surprised to walk into the kitchen and find Bruce cooking up a storm.
"What are you doing?" she asked him stupidly before she got a chance to phrase it better.
He cocked an eyebrow. "Cooking?" he replied, as if questioning her intelligence.
"Right, of course," she shook her head. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean...I didn't realize you rich boys knew how to cook."
"Some of us do," he grinned and began to slice a red pepper into strips. She smirked.
"Can I help?"
Bruce nodded and used his knife to point at a pot on the stove. "Can you stir that? It's the salad dressing, it needs to be stirred constantly once it starts to boil," he told her. "Burns easy."
Chloe walked over to the stove and began to stir the contents; it looked like some kind of vinegar and herb dressing. "Where's Lex?" she asked him, peering intently into the pot.
"He's on the phone with Metropolis," Bruce finished the peppers and set to work on grinding a few raspberries with a mortar and pestle. "He got a call just after we got back, apparently there was a problem with...something or other. He didn't really say."
"Wonder why?" she snarked, knowing that Lex wouldn't share business information with anyone, let alone someone from a rival company. Bruce smirked back, echoing her thoughts.
They finished the cooking at the same time that Lex finished his phone call. He found them in the kitchen, pouring the now-cooled raspberry vinaigrette over the salad Bruce had prepared.
"Sorry," Lex told them. "That took longer than I thought. I had actually planned on helping."
"Helping?" Chloe snorted. "All he let me do was stir. I don't think he has much faith in my culinary skills."
Lex smirked at her and leaned against the counter. "He's smarter than I thought then," he returned. Chloe stuck her tongue out at him.
"Okay children," Bruce finished tossing the salad and nudged Chloe out of the way to retrieve a roaster from the oven. Lex and Chloe watched in amusement as he donned a pair of oven mitts and proceeded to add several various herbs to whatever was in the roaster, a completely serious expression on his face.
"Hey Martha Stewart?" Chloe cut in. "What else can I do?"
"Set the table," Bruce smirked. "Get Luthor to show you where the cutlery goes." Chloe glared at him.
"How about up your as—"Lex coughed loudly and drowned out her words. Bruce's smirk turned into a grin.
"Feisty," he nodded in approval before turning to Lex. "I like her." Lex gave Bruce a rather tight smile before leading Chloe into the dining room.
She followed him around the table, placing plates and glasses in the spots he had placed the silverware. "Is everything okay?" Chloe asked him tentatively. "Back home?"
"Fine," Lex told her, seemingly very concentrated on the forks he was arranging.
"Okay," she bit her lip. "It's just...you've been acting kind of different. Ever since we got here."
He gave her a look that clearly said, "Drop it". She sighed and uncharacteristically bit her tongue, not wanting to start another fight on this trip.
Lex woke up bright and early the next morning. He'd promised to do one of those campy bus tours with Chloe – the red double-decker buses with no roof. When he made his way into the kitchen he was surprised to find Chloe sitting at the island, nursing a large cup of coffee.
"Morning," she chirped. From the speed at which her leg was bouncing around, he guessed that she'd had at least three cups already.
"You're up early," he remarked, and poured a cup of the questionable looking beverage. He tasted it and almost gagged; Chloe had made it.
"Couldn't sleep," she confessed. "I'm sorry about the coffee."
"That's okay," he added two sugars to the tar that she liked to refer to as coffee and handed her the mug. "This is England; I'll make some tea."
"Still up for that tour," she asked him eagerly.
Lex struggled not to scowl at the idea of spending the morning stuck on a bus watching Bruce ogle Chloe. He shrugged instead and tried not to be suckered in by the pleading look in her eyes.
"Bruce left thirty minutes ago," she added, sensing his reluctance. "Said he'd be gone all day."
Lex only took a second to think about it this time. "Okay," he agreed and poured some boiling water into a new mug.
She rolled her eyes. "For a guy who you're supposed to be friends with," she moved on to the second mug. "You don't really seem to like him very much."
Lex smirked slightly and sat down across from her. "It's a complicated relationship," Lex told her evasively. His friendship with Bruce Wayne was really more of an acquaintance that they both kept up for business reasons. They didn't really like each other. Lex had phoned Bruce from Paris as a courtesy, keeping friendly with a good business connection. Bruce had invited Lex and Chloe to stay with him for the exact same reasons, although he seemed to take a liking to Chloe.
"Sure you don't want to vague that up a little?" she teased. "Anyways, he left us a key. What time do you want to go?"
"Whenever you're ready," he appreciated her not pushing the Bruce- issue any further.
"I'm ready now," she gulped back the last of her coffee and grinned at him. Lex smiled warmly at her for a moment before finishing his tea.
"Let's go," he set his mug down and grabbed the key off of the counter. She had her purse ready to go, beside her stool, and was at the door in a second. He double-checked to make sure he had his wallet and then followed her out.
While he locked the deadbolt Chloe rocked back and forth on her heels, gnawing on her bottom lip. "Hey Lex?" she finally spit out.
"What?" he tried not to snap at her, the fidgeting becoming rather annoying. She calmed herself and looked up at him seriously.
"Do you know Prince William?" she asked him, not a trace of a smile on her face.
He raised his eyebrows slightly. "No, I don't," he told her.
"Damn."
Chloe loved London. The city was classic enough to satisfy Lex's aristocratic personality but also eclectic enough for Chloe to enjoy. They did the bus tour and Chloe got some excellent pictures of Big Ben, Parliament, Tower Bridge, the Tower of London and the London Eye.
It was summer so they were able to get inside the gates at Buckingham Palace. Chloe had to quell the urge to snoop around inside the Palace; Prince William probably wasn't in there anyways. They had lunch at a pub near Victoria Station. "Now what?" Chloe asked Lex as they were leaving the small pub. She took a seat on a nearby bench and waited for him to join her. "We could go to the Tower and see the Crown Jewels...or maybe the British Museum."
Lex shook his head. "The British Museum could take the whole day," he told her.
"Tower of London then?" she asked him. He shrugged.
"Or we could go shopping," he smirked. She perked up slightly at the idea of getting a cool new outfit, London style.
"Where?"
"It's big," Chloe remarked, staring up at the large Harrods building in front of them. On the sidewalks, people swarmed around them, making their ways into the various stores.
"It's a tourist attraction too," Lex told her. "So you're killing two—"
"Don't finish that analogy," she grimaced. "I like birds. Let's go in." Leg nodded and they entered through the large doors. She looked around at the signs and various escalators. "So they sell..."
"Everything," Lex finished. "Souvenirs, make-up, clothing, grand pianos...just about everything."
"I love it already," she flashed him a mega-watt smile and began to make her way over to the women's clothing. Lex followed her easily. Spotting a selection on funky blazers she made a beeline over to them.
"I'm going to look around," Lex told her, clearly not anticipating the fashion parade she was bound to hold for herself. "I'll find you in a while."
"Try to restrain yourself," she teased him as he made his way to the floor with the men's clothes. Lex rolled his eyes at her. She laughed silently and abandoned the jackets; for some reason wearing various St. Pepper-ish outfits didn't feel like her style anymore.
She browsed through the rest of the clothes, finding several outfits that almost made her cry upon seeing the price tags. No matter what Lex had told her, she was pretty sure that he wouldn't love it if she racked her credit card up on a whole new wardrobe.
She avoided the shoes completely and found the perfume displays. She tentatively sniffed the demos, hoping to find a nice souvenir for Lana or Mrs. Kent. After about twenty minutes of sniffing, Chloe selected three different bottles of perfume, two gifts and one for herself. She paid at a nearby register – with money she'd taken out of her account earlier that day – and then continued on to the next floor.
Lex was right about the store selling everything. She found hand painted carousel horses, a variety of electronics, and even the pianos that he had mentioned. Deciding that most of those things were a little too rich for her blood, she began to search for Lex.
She found him perusing over the men's shoes, his arms laden with at least seven bags. "Didn't you find anything you like?" he asked her, noting that she only carried one bag.
She quirked an eyebrow and looked pointedly at the bags that he was holding. "Lot's of stuff, but I didn't buy all of it," she reached out and grabbed three of the bags, because it was starting to look like he would fall over. "Is this you restraining yourself?"
"Yes," he smirked.
"I'd love to see you go wild then," she muttered, hiking the bags up onto her shoulders.
"I doubt that," he put down the shoes he'd been looking at and leaned against the display. "Bruce called my cell when you were gone. Apparently he's meeting some associates tonight at a club in Soho. Do you want to go?"
"Really?" she grinned. "Will they let me in?"
"You're seventeen," Lex reminded her. "You can do anything here...except rent a car." Chloe nodded eagerly.
"Okay," she told him.
"You'd better go buy something to wear," he smirked.
"Here?"
"No, I'll bring you somewhere else," he led her out of the store and hailed them a taxi. They climbed in, grateful to unload the bags somewhere. "I have to go back to to the flat. I'm expecting an important call from Metropolis."
"Sure," she nodded. She'd been curious to try out the Underground, but he had insisted on taking taxi's everywhere. The driver pulled the car over in front of a store and Lex nodded towards it.
"You should be able to find something here," he told her. "Can you find your way back to the flat?"
"Yes Lex," she rolled her eyes. "I'm not a child." He smirked.
"Okay, I'll see you later," he opened the door for her and she left her bag in the car with him. She grabbed her purse and climbed out of the car, looking up at the store in front of her. There were mannequins in the windows wearing technicolor leggings and silver halters. "Chloe," Lex rolled down the window. "Tell them that you're going to Pandemonium. They'll know what you should wear."
"Okay," she gave him a little wave and walked into the store. There was no bell above the door but the sales girl seemed to hear her come in anyways. Chloe looked around for a few minutes, checking out a rack of halter-tops with a large red reduced sign over them.
"May I help you find something?" a voice asked her. Chloe turned around to the sales girl hopefully, noting that she had really cute hair, and almost asking where she'd gotten it done.
"I hope so," she smiled at the girl. "I'm supposed to get an outfit to where to this club tonight."
"Okay," the girl smiled back. "What kind of club is it? Do you know the name?"
"It's called Pandemonium," Chloe told her. The girl's eyes brightened and her smile widened. "What?"
"You're going to Pandemonium?" she repeated in her lithe accent.
"Yeah, have you ever been there?" Chloe asked her curiously. "I'm not too sure what I should wear."
"I've never been," the girl told her. "It's quite posh...you won't find anything up here." She led her away from the reduced halters towards the back of the store to the racks of chained leather skirts and funkier looking tops. "My name is Emma by the way," the girl said.
"Chloe," she returned, fingering a silver tube top as they walked by. "So this place is fancy?"
"Not fancy," Emma clarified with a grin. "It's expensive; for the tragically wealthy. You have to know someone to even get near the door."
"Sounds about right," Chloe sighed. Of course Lex and Bruce would be hanging out at one of the most exclusive clubs in the city.
"Who are you going with?" Emma asked her, flipping through a rack of skirts. "What size?"
"My friend...actually I live with him," Chloe tried to decide how to describe Lex Luthor. "Oh, I'm a four."
"American four?" Emma asked. Chloe nodded and she grabbed several skirts off of the rack. "That's a six here then...so is he your boyfriend?"
"No!" she protested, more defensively than she would have liked. "He's just...it's complicated. He's older though, a bit out of my league anyways."
"No one is out of your league unless you allow them to be," Emma told her and led her over to some shirts.
"Do I need this much stuff?" Chloe asked her skeptically, beginning to think that the girl was just after a high commission.
"No, but you have to try on everything if you want to impress anyone at Pandemonium," Emma grabbed a magazine off or the counter by her cash register. She handed it to Chloe; it was a tabloid. "They get heaps of photos of the celebrities that go. You'd better have a spectacular outfit, in case you wind up in Star."
Chloe looked down at the two-page spread of various celebrities (some she knew and some she'd never heard of) with various captions about their activities. At least half of them were given thumbs down for their choice of clothing.
"I guess you don't want to end up the next Paris Hilton," Chloe closed the magazine.
"Right," Emma hung a large pile of clothes in a dressing room. "Start with those."
Chloe nodded and gulped slightly, but she closed the door and began to strip off her clothes anyways.
TBC....
A/N: Hello all! It's time for another author's note, you lucky people you. ;0) So, thanks to everyone for the sympathies about the annoying computer problems. I'm bringing it in tomorrow and it has to go to factory to get the hardware fixed (remind me to NEVER buy anything from CDC again!). The bad news is that this will put a dent in my normally stellar updating schedule (coughyeah rightcough), so I apologize now. Good news is that since I can't type, I have been working on Episode 6 the old fashioned way - pen and a lot of paper. I won't tell you what happens in 4.06...because where's the fun in that, but I will give you a few tiny spoilers. Okay? Ready...
-Clark will be back next ep...
-Back to Smallville for our favorite couple...
-An angsty ending to Episode 6 and most of Episode 7
-Back to school in Episode 7 (which is kindof late in the series, I know)
-Pete will pop up in Episode 6
-Some future episode titles are (because hints are fun but right out telling you sucks for me):
4.06 - Agendas
4.07 - Coronation
4.08 - Celebration
And that's all folks! Thanks for the reviews! Oh yeah, Pandemonium isn't a real club (that I know of) it's just a name that I got from Paradise Lost. It's Satan's palace in Hell...figured it sounded like a good place for a bunch of rich brats looking to have a good time.
