AUTHOR's BEGINNING NOTE: No, there's no precedence whatsoever for Chloe's
sudden hobby-come-plot-contrivance. But why the heck not? And yeah, I
caved in and redeemed Clark a little tiny bit. This chapter has a
significantly revised middle section upon the extremely helpful suggestions
of Tresca, Raincitygirl and queenofalostart. [emotional-drunk-voice]I
lurve you guys!![/emotional-drunk-voice]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
X.
"Clark? What are you doing here?" Pete eyed his best friend sitting patiently, hands folded, in Chloe's usual chair in the Torch office.
Clark stared at his lap, abashed. "I'm uh… I'm waiting for Chloe."
"Everything all right?" Pete raised his eyebrow quizzically.
"I… God, I think I totally messed up. With Chloe."
"Ahhh," Pete nodded, trying very hard indeed to mask how much he was dreading where this was potentially going. "Is that your tail between your legs, or are you just happy to see me?"
Clark glared at Pete in mock disgust. "You have issues."
Pete shrugged and laughed. "Man, oh, man. Clark Kent screwed up! This, I gotta hear about."
Clark sighed, pointedly ignoring his friend's unabashed snark. "Well, Chloe uncovered some pretty nasty facts about the charity that was behind Lana's food drive. And—"
"She tried to get the scoop, and you went ballistic on her for Lana's sake?"
Clark stopped mid-sentence and stared at Pete with wide-eyed shame-face. "Oh. She told you already, huh?"
"Nope. Haven't seen Chloe all afternoon. Just that you two are pretty predictable. No offense."
Clark shook his head, miserably contrite. "Man, you have no idea. I yelled at her. I *yelled* at her, Pete. In front of Lana and Whitney. And I called the Torch a stupid paper."
"Ouch," Pete said, and he mimed a physical wound to the heart. "That, my friend, was beyond harsh."
"I know."
"Chloe's sun rises and sets on this paper."
"Dude, I know."
"You should now be well into damage-control planning, I imagine."
"You know it. I was hoping to catch her here. I figured it was only a matter of time before she headed back here—"
"Actually, Clark, I don't think she'll be back today. She took off with Whitney, and I think he was on his way to Metropolis."
As Pete had fully expected, that news changed Clark's posture and expression quite radically. "Metropolis? She went to Metropolis with Whitney Fordman." He repeated it as though he could literally not believe it.
"That's what her dad said when I called her house—that she went to Metropolis with a friend." Pete shrugged nonchalantly. "I used my amazing powers of deductive reasoning to arrive at the conclusion that the 'friend' in question was Whitney Fordman."
"With *Whitney Fordman*?" Clark went on, ignoring him. "What *is* it with that guy? I can't get rid of him! How come every time I turn around, he's there?"
"Well, Clark, I hate to state the obvious, but Whitney is pretty irrelevant to this situation with Chloe."
The mounting anger easily dissipated under the weight of Pete's common sense, and Clark nodded again, calmer. "Yeah, you're right. It's just that ever since he and Chloe started getting chummy, it's like there's been this wedge between us."
"Yeah? Who put that wedge there? Her? Or…" Pete let that thought dangle meaningfully. He had absolutely no desire to get in the middle of this drama, but he certainly wasn't going to let Clark pass the buck so idly.
Clark considered his friend's word, and his expression shifted towards the conspiratorial. "It drives me crazy that she's so cool with him."
"Why? Are you jealous?"
"Of course I am!" Clark exclaimed, pacing now. "She's *my* friend, and he's a colossal jerk, and what the hell is she doing hanging around him?"
Pete pressed his lips together into a grim line as he considered his next words. "Yeah, Clark. Now you know how I feel about you and Lex."
"It's so not the same thing."
"I truly fail to see the difference."
"Lex would never treat anyone the way Whitney treats people!"
"The way he treats *you*, you mean," Pete corrected him. "Look… Whitney's not my favorite person either, but I think you're not giving Chloe enough credit here. If she's getting to know him, maybe Lana's right, and there really is a lot there we don't see. And Whitney's not exactly the life of the party, but he's got a reputation for being a pretty good friend."
"Keep in mind, Chloe is the world's worst judge of character when it comes to guys," Clark stated with grave authority.
It took a few seconds for Pete to stop gaping at Clark in disbelief. Then he snorted, and finally he burst into full-on laughter.
"Did I… miss something?" Clark asked tonelessly.
"Apparently you missed a—" Pete snickered uncontrollably-- "A *whole* lotta something!"
Clark stared at Pete as his friend continued with his fit of giggles.
"Man, you are such a geek!" Pete exclaimed, gasping for air. "Sometimes I think it's gotta be an act but--- bwahahahaha!"
Clark raised an eyebrow, Spock-like, at him in response.
"You really have no idea, do you?"
"Have no idea of what?"
"Clark!" Pete clapped his friend on the back in mock sympathy, an occasional stray chuckle still escaping him. "Clark, Clark, Clark."
"Pete—"
"Man, Chloe *likes* you."
"Er….."
"As in, more than a friend. As in, she wants to be your significant other. As in, she wants to be your number one." He sang the last part, Stylistics- style, and laughed at his own joke.
"Are you high? She does not." But his voice was doubtful, and he looked markedly more uncomfortable than he had just moments earlier.
"She does too, trust your boy Pete on this one."
"Has she actually told you this?"
"Oh, no. I mean, I've asked her about it, but I actually think her constant and overly vehement denials kind of add weight to what I'm saying here."
"Come on."
"Clark, I'm telling you, she likes you. Might even be in love with you. Don't tell me you had no idea."
Clark's expression confessed it all.
"Oh, man!" Pete said, renewing his laughter. "I can't believe it. This whole time I thought you were just playing dumb to preserve the friendship—but you weren't playing!"
"Gee, thanks," Clark said miserably. "I am so, so glad you and I got a chance to catch up, Pete. I now feel a hundred times stupider than I did before."
"Maybe she's hanging out with Whitney to make you jealous and finally notice her."
"But I…..don't really…."
"I know. You don't like her like that. You only have eyes for Lana."
"Well, yeah."
Pete rolled his eyes and sank into Chloe's now-unoccupied chair. "Man, you really are an ingrate. Chloe is… Chloe's awesome."
"I can't help what I feel."
"Nobody can," Pete said, and his cryptic tone made Clark look harder at him. "Just do me a favor, OK? Be gentle with Chloe's feelings. Real gentle. OK? Cause she may sometimes act like a bad ass, but she's not nearly as tough as she likes to think she is."
Clark sighed and nodded. "Who ever is?"
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Relax, Fordman, nothing in there will bite you," Chloe called behind her, her gaze sweeping up the exterior of the Metropolis Art Museum. She deftly skipped up the marble front steps as Whitney slinked cautiously behind her.
"This is an art museum, right?"
"Mmmhmm," she said, and waited for him to catch up. She laughed at his expression of sheer dread.
"I'm insane." Whitney nodded with feigned grim resignation. "I must be insane."
"Oh, come on, you've never been?"
"Yeah, a couple of months ago when Luthor was showing off all his Greek art," he answered, his dismay becoming more and more marked. "Gotta be honest… Places like these make me antsy."
"Antsy? How could you be antsy in an art museum?" There was a disbelieving twinkle in her eye. "It's so quiet and peaceful in there. And you're just surrounded by all these objects of beauty from all across the ages, and—" she halted at his amused expression. "What? You think I'm a big flake, don't you?"
"You really want an answer to that?"
"God, you're so ornery. You're like a grumpy old man… except you're not old." Chloe grabbed him by the elbow and literally dragged him the few remaining steps. "I promise this is a great place to unwind. My mom and I come here all the time when I visit her. Trust me. Have I ever steered you wrong before?" She blinked. "Don't answer that."
"Good call."
"Just *trust* me," she insisted. "You're about to get the Sullivan Crash Course on Art History."
"Great, it's like a field trip, only I actually don't have to be here."
"Are you coming, or are you just going to stand outside complaining all day?"
"Do I really have a choice?"
"Of course not."
They hit the High Renaissance painting room first. Much to Chloe's utter disgust, Whitney was entirely too impressed with the copious amounts of paintings of "naked chicks."
"Congratulations, Fordman, you've managed to make the entire Italian Renaissance totally sleazy," she rolled her eyes exasperatedly. "The point of creating these was not to provide the next few centuries of undersexed teenage boys with soft core porn."
"Undersexed?" he cried indignantly, making several fellow museum patrons stare in disapproval. He lowered his voice slightly and added, "What *ever*."
"Yeah 'whatever' is right, Fordman. Totally missing the point."
"There's a point to art? Well, whaddaya know."
"Just because you're from Smallville really and truly doesn't mean you have to be totally acultural, you know!" she exclaimed, then faltered, searching for words. "OK. The point was like… well, this French author once said…" Chloe cleared her throat as she began reciting from memory, suddenly swept up in her own words: "Art is not a study of positive reality; it is the seeking for ideal truth."
Whitney blinked, then nodded agreeably, his gaze fixed on a pair of naked seventeenth century wood nymphs. "Deep." But he caught her annoyance, and added, more sincerely, "No, really, I mean it. That's deep."
She gave him a pointedly doubtful look.
He sighed and rolled his eyes. "It's saying that lots of people think art's only any good if it looks realistic, but it's really trying to be better than reality." He gave her a sidelong, triumphant glance.
Chloe, for her part, was satisfied with his take on it. "Mmm. Maybe not better. Bigger. I dunno. Just… more." Chloe studied the painting in front of her contentedly. "People look at paintings like these and they think it's like a photograph. You know? A moment in time that got captured. But I sometimes feel like it's more like a conversation with the artist." She blushed a little at her own romanticism. "I guess that sounds pretty corny."
"Nah. I just didn't know you were into this stuff."
"Well, it's not like people are lining up to listen to me go on and on about this back in Smallville."
Whitney gave her a small, pleased smile. "Cool. What else is there here?"
Chloe relaxed and led Whitney through a few more galleries populated with Frida Kahlos, ancient Egyptian treasures, and obscure American impressionists. She knew enough about his parakeet-level attention span to not dawdle too long in any one section, and soon the peace and quiet majesty of the museum was considerably diffusing the tension of a painfully long day as they ambled from hall to hall.
It didn't take them long to wander over to the museum's current special exhibit. They had only spent a few moments quizzically analyzing the fragile yellowing paper behind the large glass cases, covered with the clumsy, convoluted black scribbles and sketches, before Whitney wrinkled his nose and frowned, excusing himself to the bathroom. Chloe shook her head after him and sighed. The boy really *was* a poster child for ADD—these pieces may not appear all that interesting, but they got a whole section of the museum in their honor, so Chloe felt sure they must be important. She fingered the glass case, peering closer, and wondered outloud, "I wonder what this is supposed to be?"
"They're mistakes." The melodically familiar voice behind her made her start. Chloe whirled around and smiled tentatively in recognition.
"Lex!"
Lex Luthor greeted Chloe with a warming smile. "Chloe, good to see you."
"Yeah, fancy meeting you here."
Lex's smile broadened. "I'm actually about to head home. I was in town for a business dinner and decided to swing by here and drop off a check I've been meaning to write for a while now."
"Oh, wow," Chloe raised her eyebrows, impressed. "I didn't know you were a patron of the museum."
Against her better wisdom, Lex Luthor had never really managed to intimidate her the way he seemed to intimidate most everyone else in Smallville. Maybe it was the way his entire demeanor changed, lit up and relaxed, in Clark's presence that made him seem so much more accessible to her. She knew just how he felt. She also suspected that Lex knew just how *she* felt… only she doubted Lex would ever consider her serious competition. There were a few times, though, when she had caught Lex staring at Clark surreptitiously that made her wonder if the intensity of her own feelings for Clark would even begin to compare to Lex's. It gave her pause, and frightened her a bit, so she preferred to stick to Lex's chosen relationship for them: quietly friendly competition.
"I've been a patron of this place for a few years. I had no idea you were an art aficionado, Miss Sullivan," Lex said breezily.
Chloe gave a self-effacing grin and shrugged. "I just like to come here and look at everything sometimes. It puts a lot into perspective."
Lex murmured to Chloe neutrally, "So what brings you here?"
Chloe searched for an apt explanation. She finally settled on, "Just hanging out. We were going to head home in a few minutes too, actually."
Lex's posture immediately gave a subtle change at the word "we". He studied Chloe closely. "Who's we?" he inquired casually.
She knew the name he was hoping to hear, and with awful realization, she also knew the reaction she'd get when she gave him the real answer. It was clear to everyone that Lex loathed Whitney, probably because if anyone was volumes more intensely protective of Clark than she was, it was Lex… and he knew better than anyone just how badly Whitney had treated Clark at the beginning of the semester.
"Um… a friend from school," she answered as naturally as she could.
Whitney picked that as the perfect moment to wander back into the exhibit hall, of course. His face hardened into a neutral expression the instant he saw Lex, and Lex stiffened considerably, giving Chloe a reappraising glance.
"Uh, hi, Mr. Luthor," Whitney said carefully. Lex gifted him with a cold smile, and scrutinized him just long enough to make Whitney begin to squirm.
"Wow," Lex drawled, examining Chloe's expression with great care. "I must admit I would have never pegged the two of you as friends. You seem to have so… little in common." The last sentence was uttered with restrained derision in Whitney's direction, but it was clear exactly what Lex meant. Whitney's cheeks flushed at the insinuation.
"Stranger things have happened," Chloe said brightly, hoping to scatter some of the thickly building tension—and hoping for once, Whitney was able to keep his mouth shut. For now, Whitney was standing with his hands shoved awkwardly into his pockets.
Seemingly satisfied, Lex waved to the glass case around which they'd been previously huddled. "What do you think of these? They're on loan from my father's private collection; they're da Vinci's mistakes."
"If they're mistakes, what are they doing in a museum?" Whitney blurted out, and was immediately made sorry by the steely, withering look Lex gave him.
The older man pointedly chose to respond only to Chloe. "Leonardo spent a lot of time in his studio just sketching whatever came to mind. He experimented a lot, and it didn't always turn out exactly the way he'd hoped. He also wasn't that great about finishing everything he started. Some of them were never meant to be seen—they were like rough drafts. Lucky for us, he was a pack rat and never threw anything away."
Chloe was fascinated. "So these are just a bunch of da Vinci's screw ups that he didn't even want?"
Lex nodded at her. "Kind of. Now, of course, they're very valuable. They reveal a genius in progress." At this, he grinned at her slyly, and she smiled back. "The contents of this case here, for example, are worth more than many of his individual paintings."
Chloe seemed pleased, and said cheerfully, "And the moral of the story is, just because something looks all screwed up doesn't mean it's not worth a lot anyway."
Lex regarded her benevolently. "It's too bad Clark never mentioned your affinity for art, Ms. Sullivan. I would have made sure to tell him to invite you to the Greek exhibit's opening last month."
Her smile faltered at the mention of Clark's name, and Lex responded with a smile that did not touch his eyes.
Whitney, for his part, shuffled his feet awkwardly and exaggeratedly checked his watch. "Oh, man. Will ya look at the time! We better start heading back soon if we're going to make your dad's curfew, Chloe."
"Ah," Lex said, nodding in Whitney's direction… but still not bothering to look at him. "A pleasure as always, Miss Sullivan. I'm sure we'll run into each other again."
"I'm sure," she agreed good-naturedly. She caught Whitney making a fast exit out of the corner of her eye, and, hurrying to follow him, she called over her shoulder to Lex: "It was good to see you again!"
The last thing she saw as she rounded the corridor's corner was Lex waving back vaguely, his expression unreadable.
"What's your rush, Fordman?" Chloe panted as she finally caught up with him outside, slightly out of breath.
Whitney smiled tightly. "That guy *hates my ass*."
"Ha! If anything, that's the part of you he hates *least*."
Whitney snorted. "That wasn't exactly pleasant for me."
"Well, you know he's a little… uh, well… attached to Clark," Chloe said, and paused, momentarily taken aback by the fact that Whitney had opened the truck's door for her. She was oddly touched by the gesture as she climbed in the passenger side.
"Attached. Is that your nice way of saying 'freakishly obsessed'?"
"Yep! But seriously, Lex is pretty cool once you get to know him."
"Think I'll pass, thanks."
Chloe sighed happily as they took off. "Sooo… what did you think of the museum? Wasn't that place cool? Do I know how to pick 'em, or what?"
Whitney did a quick self-check, and nodded slowly. "I've gotta admit. I feel a lot better. Tension migraine is gone, for one thing."
"Me too," Chloe admitted.
"Thanks, Sullivan," he said. "Turned out to be a good thing that you came along."
"I live to serve," she replied, but sounded considerably more tired than usual. She sighed, and said quietly, "I feel better too, I think. I'm actually not even that mad anymore that Clark said the Torch was stupid."
"*Clark* is stupid," Whitney muttered.
Chloe clicked her tongue at him. "Yeah, well, you're biased."
"So are you."
Chloe gave a small conceding smile, watching the darkened buildings one by one as they passed them. "Touche."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
AUTHORS NOTES:
OK, no snogging in this chapter like I previously promised. I swear on Lana's parents' graves that it'll be in the next chapter. These guys just sorta write themselves and they didn't feel like snogging in this one. Sorry!
And once again I must sing the highest praises of wookie1013, UberBeta Extraordinaire!!!! I swear I wish I had a wookie1013 inside my head all the time, so that I could sound smart and coherent all the damn time. .
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
X.
"Clark? What are you doing here?" Pete eyed his best friend sitting patiently, hands folded, in Chloe's usual chair in the Torch office.
Clark stared at his lap, abashed. "I'm uh… I'm waiting for Chloe."
"Everything all right?" Pete raised his eyebrow quizzically.
"I… God, I think I totally messed up. With Chloe."
"Ahhh," Pete nodded, trying very hard indeed to mask how much he was dreading where this was potentially going. "Is that your tail between your legs, or are you just happy to see me?"
Clark glared at Pete in mock disgust. "You have issues."
Pete shrugged and laughed. "Man, oh, man. Clark Kent screwed up! This, I gotta hear about."
Clark sighed, pointedly ignoring his friend's unabashed snark. "Well, Chloe uncovered some pretty nasty facts about the charity that was behind Lana's food drive. And—"
"She tried to get the scoop, and you went ballistic on her for Lana's sake?"
Clark stopped mid-sentence and stared at Pete with wide-eyed shame-face. "Oh. She told you already, huh?"
"Nope. Haven't seen Chloe all afternoon. Just that you two are pretty predictable. No offense."
Clark shook his head, miserably contrite. "Man, you have no idea. I yelled at her. I *yelled* at her, Pete. In front of Lana and Whitney. And I called the Torch a stupid paper."
"Ouch," Pete said, and he mimed a physical wound to the heart. "That, my friend, was beyond harsh."
"I know."
"Chloe's sun rises and sets on this paper."
"Dude, I know."
"You should now be well into damage-control planning, I imagine."
"You know it. I was hoping to catch her here. I figured it was only a matter of time before she headed back here—"
"Actually, Clark, I don't think she'll be back today. She took off with Whitney, and I think he was on his way to Metropolis."
As Pete had fully expected, that news changed Clark's posture and expression quite radically. "Metropolis? She went to Metropolis with Whitney Fordman." He repeated it as though he could literally not believe it.
"That's what her dad said when I called her house—that she went to Metropolis with a friend." Pete shrugged nonchalantly. "I used my amazing powers of deductive reasoning to arrive at the conclusion that the 'friend' in question was Whitney Fordman."
"With *Whitney Fordman*?" Clark went on, ignoring him. "What *is* it with that guy? I can't get rid of him! How come every time I turn around, he's there?"
"Well, Clark, I hate to state the obvious, but Whitney is pretty irrelevant to this situation with Chloe."
The mounting anger easily dissipated under the weight of Pete's common sense, and Clark nodded again, calmer. "Yeah, you're right. It's just that ever since he and Chloe started getting chummy, it's like there's been this wedge between us."
"Yeah? Who put that wedge there? Her? Or…" Pete let that thought dangle meaningfully. He had absolutely no desire to get in the middle of this drama, but he certainly wasn't going to let Clark pass the buck so idly.
Clark considered his friend's word, and his expression shifted towards the conspiratorial. "It drives me crazy that she's so cool with him."
"Why? Are you jealous?"
"Of course I am!" Clark exclaimed, pacing now. "She's *my* friend, and he's a colossal jerk, and what the hell is she doing hanging around him?"
Pete pressed his lips together into a grim line as he considered his next words. "Yeah, Clark. Now you know how I feel about you and Lex."
"It's so not the same thing."
"I truly fail to see the difference."
"Lex would never treat anyone the way Whitney treats people!"
"The way he treats *you*, you mean," Pete corrected him. "Look… Whitney's not my favorite person either, but I think you're not giving Chloe enough credit here. If she's getting to know him, maybe Lana's right, and there really is a lot there we don't see. And Whitney's not exactly the life of the party, but he's got a reputation for being a pretty good friend."
"Keep in mind, Chloe is the world's worst judge of character when it comes to guys," Clark stated with grave authority.
It took a few seconds for Pete to stop gaping at Clark in disbelief. Then he snorted, and finally he burst into full-on laughter.
"Did I… miss something?" Clark asked tonelessly.
"Apparently you missed a—" Pete snickered uncontrollably-- "A *whole* lotta something!"
Clark stared at Pete as his friend continued with his fit of giggles.
"Man, you are such a geek!" Pete exclaimed, gasping for air. "Sometimes I think it's gotta be an act but--- bwahahahaha!"
Clark raised an eyebrow, Spock-like, at him in response.
"You really have no idea, do you?"
"Have no idea of what?"
"Clark!" Pete clapped his friend on the back in mock sympathy, an occasional stray chuckle still escaping him. "Clark, Clark, Clark."
"Pete—"
"Man, Chloe *likes* you."
"Er….."
"As in, more than a friend. As in, she wants to be your significant other. As in, she wants to be your number one." He sang the last part, Stylistics- style, and laughed at his own joke.
"Are you high? She does not." But his voice was doubtful, and he looked markedly more uncomfortable than he had just moments earlier.
"She does too, trust your boy Pete on this one."
"Has she actually told you this?"
"Oh, no. I mean, I've asked her about it, but I actually think her constant and overly vehement denials kind of add weight to what I'm saying here."
"Come on."
"Clark, I'm telling you, she likes you. Might even be in love with you. Don't tell me you had no idea."
Clark's expression confessed it all.
"Oh, man!" Pete said, renewing his laughter. "I can't believe it. This whole time I thought you were just playing dumb to preserve the friendship—but you weren't playing!"
"Gee, thanks," Clark said miserably. "I am so, so glad you and I got a chance to catch up, Pete. I now feel a hundred times stupider than I did before."
"Maybe she's hanging out with Whitney to make you jealous and finally notice her."
"But I…..don't really…."
"I know. You don't like her like that. You only have eyes for Lana."
"Well, yeah."
Pete rolled his eyes and sank into Chloe's now-unoccupied chair. "Man, you really are an ingrate. Chloe is… Chloe's awesome."
"I can't help what I feel."
"Nobody can," Pete said, and his cryptic tone made Clark look harder at him. "Just do me a favor, OK? Be gentle with Chloe's feelings. Real gentle. OK? Cause she may sometimes act like a bad ass, but she's not nearly as tough as she likes to think she is."
Clark sighed and nodded. "Who ever is?"
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Relax, Fordman, nothing in there will bite you," Chloe called behind her, her gaze sweeping up the exterior of the Metropolis Art Museum. She deftly skipped up the marble front steps as Whitney slinked cautiously behind her.
"This is an art museum, right?"
"Mmmhmm," she said, and waited for him to catch up. She laughed at his expression of sheer dread.
"I'm insane." Whitney nodded with feigned grim resignation. "I must be insane."
"Oh, come on, you've never been?"
"Yeah, a couple of months ago when Luthor was showing off all his Greek art," he answered, his dismay becoming more and more marked. "Gotta be honest… Places like these make me antsy."
"Antsy? How could you be antsy in an art museum?" There was a disbelieving twinkle in her eye. "It's so quiet and peaceful in there. And you're just surrounded by all these objects of beauty from all across the ages, and—" she halted at his amused expression. "What? You think I'm a big flake, don't you?"
"You really want an answer to that?"
"God, you're so ornery. You're like a grumpy old man… except you're not old." Chloe grabbed him by the elbow and literally dragged him the few remaining steps. "I promise this is a great place to unwind. My mom and I come here all the time when I visit her. Trust me. Have I ever steered you wrong before?" She blinked. "Don't answer that."
"Good call."
"Just *trust* me," she insisted. "You're about to get the Sullivan Crash Course on Art History."
"Great, it's like a field trip, only I actually don't have to be here."
"Are you coming, or are you just going to stand outside complaining all day?"
"Do I really have a choice?"
"Of course not."
They hit the High Renaissance painting room first. Much to Chloe's utter disgust, Whitney was entirely too impressed with the copious amounts of paintings of "naked chicks."
"Congratulations, Fordman, you've managed to make the entire Italian Renaissance totally sleazy," she rolled her eyes exasperatedly. "The point of creating these was not to provide the next few centuries of undersexed teenage boys with soft core porn."
"Undersexed?" he cried indignantly, making several fellow museum patrons stare in disapproval. He lowered his voice slightly and added, "What *ever*."
"Yeah 'whatever' is right, Fordman. Totally missing the point."
"There's a point to art? Well, whaddaya know."
"Just because you're from Smallville really and truly doesn't mean you have to be totally acultural, you know!" she exclaimed, then faltered, searching for words. "OK. The point was like… well, this French author once said…" Chloe cleared her throat as she began reciting from memory, suddenly swept up in her own words: "Art is not a study of positive reality; it is the seeking for ideal truth."
Whitney blinked, then nodded agreeably, his gaze fixed on a pair of naked seventeenth century wood nymphs. "Deep." But he caught her annoyance, and added, more sincerely, "No, really, I mean it. That's deep."
She gave him a pointedly doubtful look.
He sighed and rolled his eyes. "It's saying that lots of people think art's only any good if it looks realistic, but it's really trying to be better than reality." He gave her a sidelong, triumphant glance.
Chloe, for her part, was satisfied with his take on it. "Mmm. Maybe not better. Bigger. I dunno. Just… more." Chloe studied the painting in front of her contentedly. "People look at paintings like these and they think it's like a photograph. You know? A moment in time that got captured. But I sometimes feel like it's more like a conversation with the artist." She blushed a little at her own romanticism. "I guess that sounds pretty corny."
"Nah. I just didn't know you were into this stuff."
"Well, it's not like people are lining up to listen to me go on and on about this back in Smallville."
Whitney gave her a small, pleased smile. "Cool. What else is there here?"
Chloe relaxed and led Whitney through a few more galleries populated with Frida Kahlos, ancient Egyptian treasures, and obscure American impressionists. She knew enough about his parakeet-level attention span to not dawdle too long in any one section, and soon the peace and quiet majesty of the museum was considerably diffusing the tension of a painfully long day as they ambled from hall to hall.
It didn't take them long to wander over to the museum's current special exhibit. They had only spent a few moments quizzically analyzing the fragile yellowing paper behind the large glass cases, covered with the clumsy, convoluted black scribbles and sketches, before Whitney wrinkled his nose and frowned, excusing himself to the bathroom. Chloe shook her head after him and sighed. The boy really *was* a poster child for ADD—these pieces may not appear all that interesting, but they got a whole section of the museum in their honor, so Chloe felt sure they must be important. She fingered the glass case, peering closer, and wondered outloud, "I wonder what this is supposed to be?"
"They're mistakes." The melodically familiar voice behind her made her start. Chloe whirled around and smiled tentatively in recognition.
"Lex!"
Lex Luthor greeted Chloe with a warming smile. "Chloe, good to see you."
"Yeah, fancy meeting you here."
Lex's smile broadened. "I'm actually about to head home. I was in town for a business dinner and decided to swing by here and drop off a check I've been meaning to write for a while now."
"Oh, wow," Chloe raised her eyebrows, impressed. "I didn't know you were a patron of the museum."
Against her better wisdom, Lex Luthor had never really managed to intimidate her the way he seemed to intimidate most everyone else in Smallville. Maybe it was the way his entire demeanor changed, lit up and relaxed, in Clark's presence that made him seem so much more accessible to her. She knew just how he felt. She also suspected that Lex knew just how *she* felt… only she doubted Lex would ever consider her serious competition. There were a few times, though, when she had caught Lex staring at Clark surreptitiously that made her wonder if the intensity of her own feelings for Clark would even begin to compare to Lex's. It gave her pause, and frightened her a bit, so she preferred to stick to Lex's chosen relationship for them: quietly friendly competition.
"I've been a patron of this place for a few years. I had no idea you were an art aficionado, Miss Sullivan," Lex said breezily.
Chloe gave a self-effacing grin and shrugged. "I just like to come here and look at everything sometimes. It puts a lot into perspective."
Lex murmured to Chloe neutrally, "So what brings you here?"
Chloe searched for an apt explanation. She finally settled on, "Just hanging out. We were going to head home in a few minutes too, actually."
Lex's posture immediately gave a subtle change at the word "we". He studied Chloe closely. "Who's we?" he inquired casually.
She knew the name he was hoping to hear, and with awful realization, she also knew the reaction she'd get when she gave him the real answer. It was clear to everyone that Lex loathed Whitney, probably because if anyone was volumes more intensely protective of Clark than she was, it was Lex… and he knew better than anyone just how badly Whitney had treated Clark at the beginning of the semester.
"Um… a friend from school," she answered as naturally as she could.
Whitney picked that as the perfect moment to wander back into the exhibit hall, of course. His face hardened into a neutral expression the instant he saw Lex, and Lex stiffened considerably, giving Chloe a reappraising glance.
"Uh, hi, Mr. Luthor," Whitney said carefully. Lex gifted him with a cold smile, and scrutinized him just long enough to make Whitney begin to squirm.
"Wow," Lex drawled, examining Chloe's expression with great care. "I must admit I would have never pegged the two of you as friends. You seem to have so… little in common." The last sentence was uttered with restrained derision in Whitney's direction, but it was clear exactly what Lex meant. Whitney's cheeks flushed at the insinuation.
"Stranger things have happened," Chloe said brightly, hoping to scatter some of the thickly building tension—and hoping for once, Whitney was able to keep his mouth shut. For now, Whitney was standing with his hands shoved awkwardly into his pockets.
Seemingly satisfied, Lex waved to the glass case around which they'd been previously huddled. "What do you think of these? They're on loan from my father's private collection; they're da Vinci's mistakes."
"If they're mistakes, what are they doing in a museum?" Whitney blurted out, and was immediately made sorry by the steely, withering look Lex gave him.
The older man pointedly chose to respond only to Chloe. "Leonardo spent a lot of time in his studio just sketching whatever came to mind. He experimented a lot, and it didn't always turn out exactly the way he'd hoped. He also wasn't that great about finishing everything he started. Some of them were never meant to be seen—they were like rough drafts. Lucky for us, he was a pack rat and never threw anything away."
Chloe was fascinated. "So these are just a bunch of da Vinci's screw ups that he didn't even want?"
Lex nodded at her. "Kind of. Now, of course, they're very valuable. They reveal a genius in progress." At this, he grinned at her slyly, and she smiled back. "The contents of this case here, for example, are worth more than many of his individual paintings."
Chloe seemed pleased, and said cheerfully, "And the moral of the story is, just because something looks all screwed up doesn't mean it's not worth a lot anyway."
Lex regarded her benevolently. "It's too bad Clark never mentioned your affinity for art, Ms. Sullivan. I would have made sure to tell him to invite you to the Greek exhibit's opening last month."
Her smile faltered at the mention of Clark's name, and Lex responded with a smile that did not touch his eyes.
Whitney, for his part, shuffled his feet awkwardly and exaggeratedly checked his watch. "Oh, man. Will ya look at the time! We better start heading back soon if we're going to make your dad's curfew, Chloe."
"Ah," Lex said, nodding in Whitney's direction… but still not bothering to look at him. "A pleasure as always, Miss Sullivan. I'm sure we'll run into each other again."
"I'm sure," she agreed good-naturedly. She caught Whitney making a fast exit out of the corner of her eye, and, hurrying to follow him, she called over her shoulder to Lex: "It was good to see you again!"
The last thing she saw as she rounded the corridor's corner was Lex waving back vaguely, his expression unreadable.
"What's your rush, Fordman?" Chloe panted as she finally caught up with him outside, slightly out of breath.
Whitney smiled tightly. "That guy *hates my ass*."
"Ha! If anything, that's the part of you he hates *least*."
Whitney snorted. "That wasn't exactly pleasant for me."
"Well, you know he's a little… uh, well… attached to Clark," Chloe said, and paused, momentarily taken aback by the fact that Whitney had opened the truck's door for her. She was oddly touched by the gesture as she climbed in the passenger side.
"Attached. Is that your nice way of saying 'freakishly obsessed'?"
"Yep! But seriously, Lex is pretty cool once you get to know him."
"Think I'll pass, thanks."
Chloe sighed happily as they took off. "Sooo… what did you think of the museum? Wasn't that place cool? Do I know how to pick 'em, or what?"
Whitney did a quick self-check, and nodded slowly. "I've gotta admit. I feel a lot better. Tension migraine is gone, for one thing."
"Me too," Chloe admitted.
"Thanks, Sullivan," he said. "Turned out to be a good thing that you came along."
"I live to serve," she replied, but sounded considerably more tired than usual. She sighed, and said quietly, "I feel better too, I think. I'm actually not even that mad anymore that Clark said the Torch was stupid."
"*Clark* is stupid," Whitney muttered.
Chloe clicked her tongue at him. "Yeah, well, you're biased."
"So are you."
Chloe gave a small conceding smile, watching the darkened buildings one by one as they passed them. "Touche."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
AUTHORS NOTES:
OK, no snogging in this chapter like I previously promised. I swear on Lana's parents' graves that it'll be in the next chapter. These guys just sorta write themselves and they didn't feel like snogging in this one. Sorry!
And once again I must sing the highest praises of wookie1013, UberBeta Extraordinaire!!!! I swear I wish I had a wookie1013 inside my head all the time, so that I could sound smart and coherent all the damn time. .