CHLOE
What with all the events that has risen to bite me in the ass this evening, including how this traitorous cup of punch in my hand refuses to indulge in conversation, I guess it was only inevitable that I would end up a wallflower.
A wallflower in pink. And what REALLY bites is that I actually came here with a date. And I went through such pains for it, too.
Abandoned by Clark, Pete, Lex, Clark and punch alike. In that order. I sigh.
Okay, I know Clark's not totally lost on me yet. But having had much experience in these matters (those concerning Clark ditching me to present a strong plaid covered shoulder to Lana for her to cry on, in all her moments of grief), I'll have to say that if he hasn't ditched me yet, then he's progressing towards it.
He would have more luck finding me at this state. I have no intention of moving one inch from this buffet table. I have found my consolation: it is punch and it is food. How pathetic is that.
"Good to see how well you've acquainted yourself with that cup in your hand."
The voice in my ear jolts me physically out of wallflower mode. I whirl around, very inconveniently due to semi-full cup of punch in my hand (but when in shock you don't register things like these) and I find Lex Luthor in front of me in all his glory, yummy gray suit and all, amused smirk on his face.
Pink punch splatters over my hand and my dress but annoyingly, a drop doesn't touch him. He probably has a meteorite based imperfection repellant formula for situations such as these.
I yearn, crave, desire, NEED to say something witty in response but shock doesn't allow you to be witty. In fact, I forgot what it was he said to me in the first place.
Instead, I say the most unimaginative thing ever in the world: "What are you doing here?"
"Last time I checked we had a date," he replies.
He reaches out an arm behind me and for a giddy suspenseful moment I'm wondering if he's putting an arm around me and how the hell am I supposed to react to that and if I should put an arm around him too or push him off when he brings his arm back to his side and pops a piece of sausage into his mouth.
Maybe that was the snap I needed. Because suddenly, I remember something very important that I had to say to him that will not endure ignorance for a second longer.
"Yeah well last time I checked YOU DITCHED ME."
He winces visibly, probably not at the words I said but possibly due to the volume in which I said those words.
Which doesn't matter. I feel my own smirk coming on.
Hah. Eat THAT, Lex Luthor. Ditch me and suffer my wrath!
But he will remain the smooth operator until the end of his days and replies, "Something came up." Making that little vague excuse of a reason sound more convincing than Clark did.
But I wouldn't be a reporter if I didn't dig for the truth. "WHAT came up exactly?"
Not missing a beat, "An unavoidable situation that required my immediate attention."
"Which is?"
"Something that doesn't concern you," he replies archly, with a look on his face that tells me to drop the subject already. A look more easily defined as annoyed.
Dropping the subject (for now), I move to another pressing matter: "Why didn't you call me?"
He looks at me blankly.
"You've probably read the Handbook on Chivalrous Methods of Dating, Lex. You called to say you'll be late but you didn't call to tell me you couldn't make it at all. WHY?"
He exhales loudly. "Because it slipped my mind." Then as an afterthought, "I'm sorry."
Slipped his mind?? "What kind of a lousy excuse is THAT?"
"Chloe, would you please just believe that I had a very good and plausible excuse to miss our date this evening?"
"Then what are you doing here now?"
"The matter solved itself sooner than I anticipated, so as soon as it did I came over to see if there was a date I could still salvage."
The answer is a whole lot more charming than I expected, and remembering all too clearly that beyond my smart-ass attitude is a girl whose only experience with men is two meteorite-affected freaks who both tried to kill me, I'm hardly mentally equipped to handle a smooth man as this, whose intentions are not homicidal. I think.
Idly, he reaches out and tucks a (one of) wayward lock of hair behind my ear.
"Why?" I say dumbly.
He smirks. "Because I read the Handbook on Chivalrous Dating Methods."
I feel myself melting, even as he speaks. Luckily, I keep my mind in check with subtle reminders (wake up Chloe wake up Chloe) to my physical being to help me out of dire situations such as these when I'm a second away to losing myself totally and surrendering my body to him for his personal use.
Remembering myself, "You know I'm still very annoyed with you." (Way to go, Chloe. Couldn't sound like more of a dumb ass could you?)
He shrugs. "You're entitled to be annoyed with me." Then he looks at me (God he has nice eyes). "But I am sorry."
I hate that look. The smoldering gaze that brings forth all sorts of visions to the mind, including a very vivid one right now that involves me grabbing his collar and hauling him under the buffet table.
I shake my head to clear it. When that doesn't work, I grab a napkin and start wiping my punch spotted hand. When I feel some kind of common sense flying back into my brain, I glance at him.
He's looking at me with an odd expression on his face.
A really, REALLY odd expression on his face.
Or maybe it's not an odd expression, on anyone else's face. But since I associate Lex Luthor with dry smiles, smirks and glares, the expression seems so casual that it's like a friendly foreigner being lost in a very impolite country.
I mean, what IS that? Is that a smile?
And why is he watching me wipe my hand like it's the most extraordinary thing in the world?
The answer comes to me in a flash. A white, blinding, raging and indignant flash.
"Lex Luthor are you DRUNK?"
LEX
I blinked. That might not have been the smartest response in the world.
But in consideration to my sudden disability to utter a word, blinking was the only response I could muster. Somehow or other my usually extensive comprehension of the English language decided to fail me at a crucial moment, and I try to grasp the mechanics as I understand them.
This is easy for me. This has always been easy for me. I could smooth things over in a heartbeat. I've had enough practice with several angered clients to deem myself properly prepared for situations such as these.
However, I feel the defense mechanism rising up, a totally human and absolutely incorrect thing to do in times like these, "Me? Drunk? NO."
Way to go, Lex. There's an outstanding line of reasoning if ever I heard one.
In any case, were there any semblances of my formerly drunk state in my blood in the first place, it would have been wiped clean at the shock of her accusation. That should be a comfort to her, since my presence is most definitely not.
And I'm not drunk. Maybe slightly affected (surely the alcohol must have had some effect for me to actually come to this Godforsaken place) but certainly not drunk.
"Alright," Chloe says, exhaling slowly. "Walk in a straight line."
What does she think this is? A roadblock? "I don't think that's necessary, Chloe. I'm not drunk."
She leans forward and sniffs loudly. Something that could be considered as endearing if I was not holding in my alcohol-stained breath during the process. She snaps back with an indignant gasp before saying accusingly, "I smell alcohol on you!"
"That's because I drank some."
"You drank before you came here??"
No, I came here because I drank. But I'm not about to point that out to her. I decide to give her another reminder, "I'm twenty-one, Chloe. Trust me, it's legal."
She sighs loudly and throws her hands up in the air. "God, what a joke! Have a DATE, have TWO dates, have one DITCH me, have ANOTHER ditch me, have my hair RUINED, my DRESS ruined, have a date who's been DRINKING, have…" I lost her somewhere after that. As Clark has once explained to me, the Chloe Rant is a movement one can only grasp in excerpts, not fully comprehend.
Failing to see how my drinking three lousy shots of Scotch could effect her deeply enough for her to start ranting, I interrupt her, "Chloe. What's the problem?"
"It's the suckiest evening of my life." The girl obviously has no concern over my ego. "It's just everything on top of the other and I'm just so tired and I look like crap and it's just, not what I imagined everything to be."
I can feel her disappointment, but I've had distinctively worse disappointments in my life for me to feel absolute pity for her. But despite my being an asshole, I am attracted to her, and that allows a bit of commiseration. "Nothing usually is."
"I wanted tonight to be different," she says irritably. Teenagers.
Knowing that she'll just dismiss all attempts to soothe, I suggest, "If you're really sick of this place, why don't we go somewhere else?"
I remember all the seductive looks. I don't know if it's my looks, or my charm, or my personality, or my money, but every single time I've said that line to a woman, the outcomes are all similar. Shyly seductive, slyly seductive, or outright seductive, there's never been a girl to question my motive, in all due respect because there's no other motive to question. It's a cheesy line, but it's effective, and I love efficiency.
But I've never had a girl cross her arms and look at me with frank suspicion.
"Why?"
I'll just ignore that question. "We could get a cup of coffee and talk."
She narrows her eyes at me. "Talk?"
"Talk."
"Why?"
I cannot fathom how it is that I've managed to sell buildings at overcharged prices to cunning businessmen and yet I can't talk this girl into having coffee with me.
She looks at me expectantly.
"It seems like a better alternative than seeing you miserable here."
For a reason very unknown to me, she thinks hard about what I said. I watch her face screw up in what looks like intense concentration for a full minute before I see a spark in her eyes, and looking very satisfied at her decision, she turns to me.
"Actually that's a GREAT idea," she declares.
Now it's a great idea.
"I can interview you in absolute peace there."
Oh, fuck.
"But," she says.
Unlike the situation in her kitchen two days previous to this doomed evening, every single blood cell in my body seems to perk up at the sound of that 'but'. And I never perk up. "But?"
"This IS the Prom," she continues. Her face screws up at the memory of another fact, "And I'm supposed to be covering this for the paper."
"Two subjects for the paper in one night. Very ambitious."
"I try," she says grinning, at a very false attempt at modesty. Then seemingly remembering that she's supposed to be annoyed with me, she scowls at me. "Plus I haven't even danced yet. And where's Clark?"
I'm unsure as to whether it's irritation, envy, hurt or a little bit of everything that I feel at the mention of Clark's name, but it stings everywhere. I feel a raging temptation to remind her that I'm right in front of her, a willing body for her to dance with, so she doesn't have to be on the lookout for Clark all the fucking time.
Luckily, I don't yield to temptation. But bitterness allows me a bit of deception, "I haven't seen him." And then, with a slight curiosity to see her reaction, I add, "I'll dance with you."
She looks at me from head to toe in a manner that suggests that she's sizing up my dancing skills from my physique, and the doubtful look on her face suggests that the outcome looks disappointing.
"It's my favorite song," I add. Whatever this awful crap may be.
Her eyebrows shoot to the sky. "You like Mariah Carey?"
"Sure I do."
"Huh."
I am not the most patient man in the world. It's a rich boy's syndrome, the disability to be patient because there's never been a reason in your life to cause you to wait. I'm accustomed to getting things I want because I want it, and for all the wheeling and dealing I have gone through during my time as a businessman, I've only just appreciated the novelty of getting something I want because I worked hard for it.
In Chloe's case, I've tried hard enough. I would only go so far to demean myself and belittle my ego, particularly in the knowledge that I've never reduced myself to doing such things before. And I'm beginning to resent the fact that she has managed to take me as far as pretending that I like one of Mariah Carey's songs.
"Do you or do you not want to dance?" I ask shortly.
She tries my patience for another minute, pondering openly on the simple proposal I have given her, before she shrugs, "Just don't cramp my style."
"I wouldn't dream of it," I extend my hand out to her.
She takes my hand, and for all the shit that she's given me, I've started reveling at the feel of her small palm in mine. Dragging my eyes away from the hand in mine, I notice her observing me.
"Why Lex Luthor, I do believe you're nervous," she says in mock coyness, before she flashes a grin at me, momentarily knocking me off balance.
Nervous? I lead her towards the dance floor. Luthors don't get nervous. They get stressed; the predictable and every day kind of stress that can be taken away with a capsule of Valium or a round of pool or a very good book. Nervous? Rapid heartbeats, clammy hands and the disability to speak properly – those are normal people symptoms. My self-confidence doesn't allow me to be nervous and my whole blood system forbids the repulsive thought.
But when she slips an arm around my waist and entwines her fingers with mine, the fabric of her dress making slight contact with my stomach, feeling her closeness and feeling heady from the sensation, then I begin to realize that maybe I am, slightly, nervous.
It's a nice feeling.
What with all the events that has risen to bite me in the ass this evening, including how this traitorous cup of punch in my hand refuses to indulge in conversation, I guess it was only inevitable that I would end up a wallflower.
A wallflower in pink. And what REALLY bites is that I actually came here with a date. And I went through such pains for it, too.
Abandoned by Clark, Pete, Lex, Clark and punch alike. In that order. I sigh.
Okay, I know Clark's not totally lost on me yet. But having had much experience in these matters (those concerning Clark ditching me to present a strong plaid covered shoulder to Lana for her to cry on, in all her moments of grief), I'll have to say that if he hasn't ditched me yet, then he's progressing towards it.
He would have more luck finding me at this state. I have no intention of moving one inch from this buffet table. I have found my consolation: it is punch and it is food. How pathetic is that.
"Good to see how well you've acquainted yourself with that cup in your hand."
The voice in my ear jolts me physically out of wallflower mode. I whirl around, very inconveniently due to semi-full cup of punch in my hand (but when in shock you don't register things like these) and I find Lex Luthor in front of me in all his glory, yummy gray suit and all, amused smirk on his face.
Pink punch splatters over my hand and my dress but annoyingly, a drop doesn't touch him. He probably has a meteorite based imperfection repellant formula for situations such as these.
I yearn, crave, desire, NEED to say something witty in response but shock doesn't allow you to be witty. In fact, I forgot what it was he said to me in the first place.
Instead, I say the most unimaginative thing ever in the world: "What are you doing here?"
"Last time I checked we had a date," he replies.
He reaches out an arm behind me and for a giddy suspenseful moment I'm wondering if he's putting an arm around me and how the hell am I supposed to react to that and if I should put an arm around him too or push him off when he brings his arm back to his side and pops a piece of sausage into his mouth.
Maybe that was the snap I needed. Because suddenly, I remember something very important that I had to say to him that will not endure ignorance for a second longer.
"Yeah well last time I checked YOU DITCHED ME."
He winces visibly, probably not at the words I said but possibly due to the volume in which I said those words.
Which doesn't matter. I feel my own smirk coming on.
Hah. Eat THAT, Lex Luthor. Ditch me and suffer my wrath!
But he will remain the smooth operator until the end of his days and replies, "Something came up." Making that little vague excuse of a reason sound more convincing than Clark did.
But I wouldn't be a reporter if I didn't dig for the truth. "WHAT came up exactly?"
Not missing a beat, "An unavoidable situation that required my immediate attention."
"Which is?"
"Something that doesn't concern you," he replies archly, with a look on his face that tells me to drop the subject already. A look more easily defined as annoyed.
Dropping the subject (for now), I move to another pressing matter: "Why didn't you call me?"
He looks at me blankly.
"You've probably read the Handbook on Chivalrous Methods of Dating, Lex. You called to say you'll be late but you didn't call to tell me you couldn't make it at all. WHY?"
He exhales loudly. "Because it slipped my mind." Then as an afterthought, "I'm sorry."
Slipped his mind?? "What kind of a lousy excuse is THAT?"
"Chloe, would you please just believe that I had a very good and plausible excuse to miss our date this evening?"
"Then what are you doing here now?"
"The matter solved itself sooner than I anticipated, so as soon as it did I came over to see if there was a date I could still salvage."
The answer is a whole lot more charming than I expected, and remembering all too clearly that beyond my smart-ass attitude is a girl whose only experience with men is two meteorite-affected freaks who both tried to kill me, I'm hardly mentally equipped to handle a smooth man as this, whose intentions are not homicidal. I think.
Idly, he reaches out and tucks a (one of) wayward lock of hair behind my ear.
"Why?" I say dumbly.
He smirks. "Because I read the Handbook on Chivalrous Dating Methods."
I feel myself melting, even as he speaks. Luckily, I keep my mind in check with subtle reminders (wake up Chloe wake up Chloe) to my physical being to help me out of dire situations such as these when I'm a second away to losing myself totally and surrendering my body to him for his personal use.
Remembering myself, "You know I'm still very annoyed with you." (Way to go, Chloe. Couldn't sound like more of a dumb ass could you?)
He shrugs. "You're entitled to be annoyed with me." Then he looks at me (God he has nice eyes). "But I am sorry."
I hate that look. The smoldering gaze that brings forth all sorts of visions to the mind, including a very vivid one right now that involves me grabbing his collar and hauling him under the buffet table.
I shake my head to clear it. When that doesn't work, I grab a napkin and start wiping my punch spotted hand. When I feel some kind of common sense flying back into my brain, I glance at him.
He's looking at me with an odd expression on his face.
A really, REALLY odd expression on his face.
Or maybe it's not an odd expression, on anyone else's face. But since I associate Lex Luthor with dry smiles, smirks and glares, the expression seems so casual that it's like a friendly foreigner being lost in a very impolite country.
I mean, what IS that? Is that a smile?
And why is he watching me wipe my hand like it's the most extraordinary thing in the world?
The answer comes to me in a flash. A white, blinding, raging and indignant flash.
"Lex Luthor are you DRUNK?"
LEX
I blinked. That might not have been the smartest response in the world.
But in consideration to my sudden disability to utter a word, blinking was the only response I could muster. Somehow or other my usually extensive comprehension of the English language decided to fail me at a crucial moment, and I try to grasp the mechanics as I understand them.
This is easy for me. This has always been easy for me. I could smooth things over in a heartbeat. I've had enough practice with several angered clients to deem myself properly prepared for situations such as these.
However, I feel the defense mechanism rising up, a totally human and absolutely incorrect thing to do in times like these, "Me? Drunk? NO."
Way to go, Lex. There's an outstanding line of reasoning if ever I heard one.
In any case, were there any semblances of my formerly drunk state in my blood in the first place, it would have been wiped clean at the shock of her accusation. That should be a comfort to her, since my presence is most definitely not.
And I'm not drunk. Maybe slightly affected (surely the alcohol must have had some effect for me to actually come to this Godforsaken place) but certainly not drunk.
"Alright," Chloe says, exhaling slowly. "Walk in a straight line."
What does she think this is? A roadblock? "I don't think that's necessary, Chloe. I'm not drunk."
She leans forward and sniffs loudly. Something that could be considered as endearing if I was not holding in my alcohol-stained breath during the process. She snaps back with an indignant gasp before saying accusingly, "I smell alcohol on you!"
"That's because I drank some."
"You drank before you came here??"
No, I came here because I drank. But I'm not about to point that out to her. I decide to give her another reminder, "I'm twenty-one, Chloe. Trust me, it's legal."
She sighs loudly and throws her hands up in the air. "God, what a joke! Have a DATE, have TWO dates, have one DITCH me, have ANOTHER ditch me, have my hair RUINED, my DRESS ruined, have a date who's been DRINKING, have…" I lost her somewhere after that. As Clark has once explained to me, the Chloe Rant is a movement one can only grasp in excerpts, not fully comprehend.
Failing to see how my drinking three lousy shots of Scotch could effect her deeply enough for her to start ranting, I interrupt her, "Chloe. What's the problem?"
"It's the suckiest evening of my life." The girl obviously has no concern over my ego. "It's just everything on top of the other and I'm just so tired and I look like crap and it's just, not what I imagined everything to be."
I can feel her disappointment, but I've had distinctively worse disappointments in my life for me to feel absolute pity for her. But despite my being an asshole, I am attracted to her, and that allows a bit of commiseration. "Nothing usually is."
"I wanted tonight to be different," she says irritably. Teenagers.
Knowing that she'll just dismiss all attempts to soothe, I suggest, "If you're really sick of this place, why don't we go somewhere else?"
I remember all the seductive looks. I don't know if it's my looks, or my charm, or my personality, or my money, but every single time I've said that line to a woman, the outcomes are all similar. Shyly seductive, slyly seductive, or outright seductive, there's never been a girl to question my motive, in all due respect because there's no other motive to question. It's a cheesy line, but it's effective, and I love efficiency.
But I've never had a girl cross her arms and look at me with frank suspicion.
"Why?"
I'll just ignore that question. "We could get a cup of coffee and talk."
She narrows her eyes at me. "Talk?"
"Talk."
"Why?"
I cannot fathom how it is that I've managed to sell buildings at overcharged prices to cunning businessmen and yet I can't talk this girl into having coffee with me.
She looks at me expectantly.
"It seems like a better alternative than seeing you miserable here."
For a reason very unknown to me, she thinks hard about what I said. I watch her face screw up in what looks like intense concentration for a full minute before I see a spark in her eyes, and looking very satisfied at her decision, she turns to me.
"Actually that's a GREAT idea," she declares.
Now it's a great idea.
"I can interview you in absolute peace there."
Oh, fuck.
"But," she says.
Unlike the situation in her kitchen two days previous to this doomed evening, every single blood cell in my body seems to perk up at the sound of that 'but'. And I never perk up. "But?"
"This IS the Prom," she continues. Her face screws up at the memory of another fact, "And I'm supposed to be covering this for the paper."
"Two subjects for the paper in one night. Very ambitious."
"I try," she says grinning, at a very false attempt at modesty. Then seemingly remembering that she's supposed to be annoyed with me, she scowls at me. "Plus I haven't even danced yet. And where's Clark?"
I'm unsure as to whether it's irritation, envy, hurt or a little bit of everything that I feel at the mention of Clark's name, but it stings everywhere. I feel a raging temptation to remind her that I'm right in front of her, a willing body for her to dance with, so she doesn't have to be on the lookout for Clark all the fucking time.
Luckily, I don't yield to temptation. But bitterness allows me a bit of deception, "I haven't seen him." And then, with a slight curiosity to see her reaction, I add, "I'll dance with you."
She looks at me from head to toe in a manner that suggests that she's sizing up my dancing skills from my physique, and the doubtful look on her face suggests that the outcome looks disappointing.
"It's my favorite song," I add. Whatever this awful crap may be.
Her eyebrows shoot to the sky. "You like Mariah Carey?"
"Sure I do."
"Huh."
I am not the most patient man in the world. It's a rich boy's syndrome, the disability to be patient because there's never been a reason in your life to cause you to wait. I'm accustomed to getting things I want because I want it, and for all the wheeling and dealing I have gone through during my time as a businessman, I've only just appreciated the novelty of getting something I want because I worked hard for it.
In Chloe's case, I've tried hard enough. I would only go so far to demean myself and belittle my ego, particularly in the knowledge that I've never reduced myself to doing such things before. And I'm beginning to resent the fact that she has managed to take me as far as pretending that I like one of Mariah Carey's songs.
"Do you or do you not want to dance?" I ask shortly.
She tries my patience for another minute, pondering openly on the simple proposal I have given her, before she shrugs, "Just don't cramp my style."
"I wouldn't dream of it," I extend my hand out to her.
She takes my hand, and for all the shit that she's given me, I've started reveling at the feel of her small palm in mine. Dragging my eyes away from the hand in mine, I notice her observing me.
"Why Lex Luthor, I do believe you're nervous," she says in mock coyness, before she flashes a grin at me, momentarily knocking me off balance.
Nervous? I lead her towards the dance floor. Luthors don't get nervous. They get stressed; the predictable and every day kind of stress that can be taken away with a capsule of Valium or a round of pool or a very good book. Nervous? Rapid heartbeats, clammy hands and the disability to speak properly – those are normal people symptoms. My self-confidence doesn't allow me to be nervous and my whole blood system forbids the repulsive thought.
But when she slips an arm around my waist and entwines her fingers with mine, the fabric of her dress making slight contact with my stomach, feeling her closeness and feeling heady from the sensation, then I begin to realize that maybe I am, slightly, nervous.
It's a nice feeling.