Everything In This World
By Viv
*~*~ Part Sixteen ~*~*
"When did you say your interview was again?" Lex asked curiously.
They were finally at Metropolis - the shining beacon of hope in Chloe's eyes, at least as far as her ambition to become a reporter was concerned. The skyscrapers looked tall and pristine in the late morning sunlight as her eyes travelled up, taking in the polished glass facades rolling past her at a comfortable pace. Vendors stood on the side walk selling hot dogs, and newspaper stands were littered about at comfortable distances to office buildings. Here and there patches of green caught her eyes as Lex drove past various parks and recreational areas, which were still heavily populated despite the time of day.
Chloe sighed in appreciation. Home sweet city. She could almost smell the frenzied pace of this vast city that she had once called home.
She turned to find Lex staring quizzically at her.
"What?" She asked.
"Nothing." He replied as his attention returned to the road. "I asked you when your interview was about five minutes ago."
"Sorry." She apologised sheepishly, rummaging through her bag to dig out the letter that had come from the Metropolis Beagle the week before. She quickly scanned its contents, the words that she had probably read a few thousand times before. "It's at 2." Her heart gave a little nervous leap as she tucked the letter safely away again. "When do you have to do ... whatever it was you had to do?"
Lex grinned, obviously enjoying her naive enthusiasm. "Meeting with my dad's drones. Shouldn't take more than ... a few minutes." He estimated casually. "Of course, the subsequent interrogation by my father is likely to take a little longer."
Chloe looked sharply at him, scrutinising his deliberate expression. "Do you always talk about your dad that way?"
"What do you mean?" Lex asked in a deliberately off-hand manner.
"You know." Chloe decided to employ her reporter-in-training skills. After all, if she was going to become a good reporter, she might as well start honing her skills now. "You always talk about him like he doesn't mean anything to you."
Lex smiled enigmatically, keeping his eyes pealed to the road ahead of them. "Maybe he doesn't. Or maybe I don't mean anything to him."
Chloe was appalled. "Do you really think that?"
"I'm not sure." He shrugged, and while he was careful to conceal his pain at those thoughts, Chloe saw the tension in his shoulders and the tautness of his jaw. "I try not to think about it too much."
There was nothing much that Chloe could say to that. She could have offered simple words of consolation, but that would have been lying and that was totally not her style. It was bad. To not even be sure about whether you meant anything to your father - Chloe simply couldn't fathom what that would feel like. Her dad could get stubborn and clingy at times, giving her the third degree about where she was going and what she was doing with her time outside of school, but she knew that was only because he cared about her so much.
What must it be like for Lex, she wondered, to have to make an appointment to see his own father? Pity rose up inside her which she valiantly tried to conceal. She could just imagine his reaction if he knew that a high school girl was feeling pity for Lex Luthor.
"Don't feel too bad." He said, startling Chloe so much that she almost jumped out of her skin even if it was physically possible. Could he read her mind or something? "I've got more money than I can spend, more people than I can count to do my bidding and best of all - I've got great friends. I can't complain." He grinned roguishly.
His smile was infectious. "I'm glad."
"Since your interview isn't until 2, what say we drop by my apartment, freshen up and have some lunch? Then I could drive you to your interview, go to my meeting and hopefully if all goes according to plan, I could pick you up afterward. Save you the walk."
Chloe was completely taken by surprise. Even the wacky mind that had spawned the Wall of Weird was taken completely unprepared by Lex's generosity and his attention to such small details. It touched her to think that he had thought about her enough to be so solicitous of her comfort. It also made her somewhat uncomfortable. "That'd be great."
Chloe sank back onto her seat, enjoying the soft leathery comfort against her skin.
Lex soon pulled up to the front of an impressive looking building, the polished facade and newly refurbished art-deco ornaments imposing in its style and grandeur. It seemed to be an eclectic yet elegant mix of the old and the new, as if proclaiming itself the residence of Metropolis' social elites, the home of business tycoons and socialites. Chloe couldn't help staring at it in wonder. The cynical part of her noted that it was the bastion of social repression, capitalist greed and elitist sentimentality, but the still-naive part of her was sufficiently impressed by its elegance and style to be awed by its impressive magnificence. Of course, it also helped that it was probably the tallest building in Metropolis.
Chloe had often passed buildings like this when she had been living in the city, but she had never paused to take in their magnificence. It had never occurred to her to do so largely because of the tiny logical assumption that she probably would never have discovered what lay behind such buildings. Never that was, before she had known Lex.
Lex coughed politely, interrupting her gawking. "It's all right, the valet will take care of it for us."
Marginally embarrassed that she had to be told to get out of the car, Chloe blushed and quickly hoisted her bag over her shoulder and got out. A cool breeze greeted her as she made her way to the entrance of the building behind Lex.
The doorman nodded politely to Lex as he let them in, leaving Chloe with the distinct impression that she had just entered Lex-land - the land where Lex Luthor was the king of everybody, except for Luthor the Senior and God.
"And how are you today Charlie?" Lex asked as they walked past, motioning for Chloe to proceed first.
"Fine thanks Mr Luthor. How about you?" The youthful looking man actually seemed giddy at the thought of Lex knowing his name.
Lex smiled charmingly. "Couldn't be better." Lex steered her past the double doors and through the lobby. Chloe was glad he was there to propel her along; she felt sure that left to her own devices, she would have kissed her cynical, sassy image goodbye by spending an embarrassing amount of time just gawking at the marble floor and the obnoxiously opulent grandeur around her. And this was only the foyer.
She had obviously left her cynicism somewhere inside the murky confines of her room, because she was officially in awe of this place. Evil capitalist bastion and all.
"So you like the place?" Lex smirked at her still open astonishment at the decor of the building. Chloe knew that to him, this was normal. She began to truly appreciate just how different the world that he grew up in was to hers, and to every other normal person on the face of the developed world.
"Yeah." She said airily, even though her behaviour suggested otherwise. "It's ah, nice."
He chuckled at her understatement as they got into the elevator. Lex took out his security card, swiped it and punched the button for the top floor. Chloe's eyes widened in further astonishment, although in retrospect a few seconds later, she didn't know why. The Luthors were one of the richest families in America; it made sense that they would have secured the Penthouse of one of the most exclusive buildings in Metropolis. Chloe gulped inwardly. As tough and as cynical as she was, it was only now that she began to appreciate just how much power and prestige Lex Luthor had in the big wide world outside Smallville.
Had she just repeatedly insulted him in the car that morning?
Get a grip Chloe, she chastised herself. She was working herself into a state that could only be described in the confused confines of her mind as escalating madness. Lex was rich beyond belief, powerful and self-assured and probably a thousand other very powerful adjectives that she couldn't be bothered to dredge out of her mind at the moment. But he was still a person, and right now, she would probably even call him a friend. And as a friend, he was entitled to the full range of Chloe behaviour, because she was Chloe, kind of irreverent and quirky and as she liked to think, witty. And maybe also straightforward and sincere, and honest. In short, she should treat him like any other friend.
"Wow." She breathed, as the doors opened to reveal - and she couldn't emphasise this enough - the biggest apartment she had ever seen. Open delight registered on her face as Chloe took in her surroundings.
Actually, 'apartment' was probably a criminal understatement in describing this opulent magnificence around her. The luxurious appointment of the decor approached more of the 'palatial abode' class, if not for the fact that Lex's penthouse was located on top of a building and not on grounds that would have been given its own zip code. Double marble staircases wound their way up on each side of the room while gold sconces lined the walls on either side of her. Bright sunlight streamed in through the ceiling as Chloe craned her neck up to see a magnificent dome of frosted glass; the rich billionaire version of a skylight. Beyond the tastefully decorated foyer, Chloe glimpsed several closed doors and incredibly, two corridors stretching almost into infinity.
Chloe blinked incredulously. The apartment was opulent, grand and self-indulgent. It actually reminded her of Lex.
Finally she recovered her senses enough to remark dryly, "So restraint isn't really in your vocabulary huh?"
Lex laughed. "Don't worry, I'm not really like all this." He gestured to the apartment almost lazily. "It's partly for appearances. When I entertain Metropolis society at a tastefully exclusive cocktail party, this is what they see. It makes them suitably intimidated."
"I get that." She said faintly. She seemed to be indulging in a few understatements this morning.
He ushered her still stunned presence onward. "Would you like a tour?" She nodded mutely as he began showing her around.
Lex's palatial apartment (this is how she would be referring to it hereafter in the stunned silences of her mind) was on a scale north of what Chloe would call a very large house. In fact, she was sure that her house, Clark's and Lana's could fit into the apartment with some (maybe several) rooms to spare. Surely this was just a little excessive, even for obscenely rich people standards?
She gathered that as much when he informed her that the standard apartment in the building was only about a quarter of the floor, while his apartment took up two whole floors.
"Oh, er - right." Chloe nodded slightly, like she could really a comprehend vastness of riches on that scale. The apartment she had grown up in was minuscule in comparison, so she stopped trying to compare it. She was just going to breathe and smile. That was what she was going to concentrate on at the moment. She would leave girlish exclamations when she was back in her comfort zone, a little place she liked to call the real world.
They continued. He showed her the kitchen, an industrial monstrosity of black granite, dark mahogany and silver that resembled something which would normally only be found in an extremely well-equipped restaurant; the bathroom, which looked pleasant and airy enough to Chloe that she wouldn't mind actually living in there; the main living area, which contained
several works of art which Chloe felt sure would be worth more than her entire house; and a myriad of other rooms that even Lex didn't know what they were used for.
They walked upstairs and turned right into an open area that she loosely called a landing. Try as she might, there was no other way for Chloe to describe it. She seemed to have lost her descriptive edge, blunted by the unmitigated lavishness of everything around her. It was kind of like being in Disneyland, except without the Disney characters and the constant parades and floats.
They walked on, past a sumptuously appointed room with yet more works of art, priceless treasures and strange things made of glass and therefore extremely breakable. Finally they reached a set of closed double doors of dark mahogany. "And, " Lex smiled, taking in the slightly dazed look in Chloe's eyes, " ... this is my sanctuary."
It seemed to be a suite of rooms. Chloe stepped through the doors, trying to shake the uncomfortable feeling that Lex was gauging her reaction to something. She noticed immediately that the feel of the suite was completely different to the feel of the rest of the apartment. Instead of the cold, haughty disdain that the rest of the apartment projected to its onlooker, the suite seemed like it strained to please, with its rich, warm hues, rugs and its generally muted style. To Chloe, it seemed more real, maybe due to the fact that it looked more lived in than the rest of the apartment.
Newspapers and magazines were scattered over all over the glass coffee table, but that was the only discernible mess that she could see. A giant flat screen plasma TV stood at one end of the room, flanked by four enormous floor to ceiling speakers and a very impressive looking stereo system, along with enough electronic equipment to make any red blooded American proud. Short of the non-mess, it looked like a bachelor pad - albeit an extremely well-equipped one.
"This is where you really live?" She guessed, though she retained enough of her reporter's instincts to know that she was right.
"It's less ... obnoxious than the rest of the apartment." Chloe nodded vehemently in agreement. Lex looked around. "Well, that's the end of the grand tour. Hungry?"
Chloe nodded decisively. "At the risk of making myself sound like a pig - hell yes."
"How about pizza? I know a great place about a block from here."
"Cool." Chloe looked down at her comfortably fitting jeans, white t-shirt and slightly zany black and green stripped jacket and sighed ruefully. "Just - I need to get changed first. I can't wear this to the interview."
Lex raised his brows that told her that he plainly agreed with her. "I wasn't going to say anything."
Giving him a murderous glance of reproof, she followed his directions to the nearest bathroom. Less opulent than the one downstairs, possibly due to the lack of discernible marble, it still managed to take Chloe's breath away. Which she reflected was still pretty wacky - had Chloe turned into a country bumpkin enough to have her breath taken away by the mere sight of a bathroom?
Lex openly stared at her in amazement when she came out again, his arms crossed over his chest. "Chloe Sullivan, you look like a real professional. I might even be tempted to do business with you."
"Er, thanks. I think." She mentally shook her head at the suggestive lilt to his voice. There was one and a half hours left until her interview; it would probably be a good idea for her to shake all thoughts of Lex doing business with her out of her head until after the interview. The images that immediately popped into her head at that thought made her feel several lifetimes' worth of embarrassment.
"There isn't anything wrong with this picture is there? I mean, anything that screams 'don't hire me, I'm a freak'?" Chloe looked down at the her one and only outfit that had been suitable for an occasion such as this - a black pants suit that she had purchased on one of her rare shopping expeditions to Metropolis.
She had thoughtfully teamed it with a blood red shirt - thoughtful in that she had spent a better part of a week deciding on the outfit - and a pair of marginally high pumps that didn't threaten to set off the over-50 alarm and which allowed her to not tip over from her giddy new height.
It was at times like these that she realised that an actual live-in mother would have been a huge help; as it was, she had to rely entirely on her dad, who wasn't exactly a stylish trail blazer in the world of corporate fashion. Maybe he would have qualified for swanky fertiliser plant manager wear, coming this spring to a fertiliser store near you.
"You look great." Lex said, and Chloe had to admit that he actually sounded genuine. Not that she believed him or anything, since her current neuroses were tensed up to a point where she felt increasingly jumpy and basically, she knew that would start talking really fast soon. Luckily she hadn't had too many cups of coffee to bolster her increasingly nervous energy - another dose would have sent her flying out of Lex's luxuriously appointed apartment, landing on the hard concrete below and bouncing off it like a giant Chloe-balloon. All of which she carefully concealed from Lex, because she definitely did not want to expose him to that particular Chloe character trait just yet.
She almost laughed out loud. She was talking about showing him her traits, as if she was trusting him and he was becoming her friend and wow, was she actually having an entire conversation with herself inside her head?
"You ready to go?" Lex was eyeing her suspiciously and Chloe knew that if he had known what was actually going on inside her head at this point, he would probably have delivered her to the Metropolis Institution for the Mentally Deranged - not that there was such an institution, but Chloe could picture one being set up especially for her by Lex. How sweet.
"Yeah." She said brightly. Even to her own ears, her cheerfulness seemed too turbo-charged. Okay, she was officially nervous as hell now.
"Relax Chloe, you'll do fine." He laid a reassuring hand over hers, one that threatened to burn her with its scorching warmth. Or maybe that was just Chloe's over-taxed senses working overtime again. She couldn't really tell any more. She was definitely working herself up into one giant ball of tightly checked energy. "Once we get some food into you, you'll feel much better."
"Okay." Chloe agreed, although she had a fleeting mental image of her throwing up the said food. Whoever had said that nervousness was just a pleasant tingly sensation akin to butterflies flying in one's stomach clearly hadn't thought of Chloe's digestive processes.
She noted incidentally that she had also lost her ability to articulate any word that was more than one syllable long. How nice, considering her upcoming interview and all.
Chloe felt a lot better once they had made it outside though. She took deep, calming breaths as a fresh breeze blew over her, a soothing balm to her overreaching senses. After a few more breaths, she felt ready to tackle the difficult task of talking and forming actual coherent sentences.
"Thanks for ... well, not really letting me freak out. I don't know why I'm so nervous." She began, as they walked down the street. Chloe threw a glance at him as he smiled mysteriously at her. He was being suspiciously quiet, and on reflection, that had the effect of unsettling her even more than her upcoming job interview. "I mean, it's not like my entire future as serious journalist depends on this one interview. There'll be plenty of other opportunities for me. I mean, I'm young, I can afford to completely bomb in this interview and totally crash and burn and did you know that I'm not wearing any underwear?"
There was a long pause. Lex roused himself as he realised that he was actually supposed to participate in the conversation. "I'm sorry, I wasn't listening." He sighed.
"And?" Chloe looked at the blank expression on his face expectantly. "Why weren't you listening?"
"It wasn't because you were boring me, by the way."
She snorted. "Good to know." She smirked and caught his eye. The obvious gesture made him smile.
He sighed again, a distinctly un-Lex-like sound. "I was just thinking about how I'm going to deal with my father today." Chloe remained silent, prompting him with the sympathy in her eyes. "In many ways, his ... disability has made him more reliant on me, at least in the day to day running of LuthorCorp." The crunching of their footfalls were the only sounds as they walked silently along.
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Chloe asked, although she really didn't have a clue what she was talking about. As enigmatic as Lex was, she had in the last few weeks learned to watch for small signs that gave clues as to what he was really thinking. But now, when it came to his father, she found that he was completely closed off. She quickly realised that his feelings towards his father were probably his most closely guarded secret ... and possibly the reason why he thought it so necessary to protect his real emotions from almost everyone around him.
It made her sad to think of the younger Lex, the one that had grown up weary of his father. The younger Lex that had built up his defences so that he could reach out to his father without getting too hurt when he was inevitably rejected.
"Well it's made him give me more responsibility, something that I don't think he enjoys doing too much." Lex pursed his lips, obviously unwilling to divulge any more information. Chloe was torn between wanting to hug him and keep on prying for more information. She found his layers fascinating, and knowing more about his relationship with his father was just one more layer that she wished she knew about him. Lex was like a very interesting variety of onion, hopefully one that didn't make her cry because Chloe hated onions, although of course that wasn't really the point. "It's such a battle with him, you know?" He cocked his head before suddenly recollecting who he was talking to. "What am I talking about? Of course you don't."
She shook her head sadly. He was right. She had no idea what it had been like for him - what it was like for him now. Once again she found herself counting her lucky stars that her dad was so dad-like.
Chloe had the sudden urge to comfort him - a crazy and wacky idea if ever she had one, the idea of Lex needing any comfort from her, that is. Despite feeling marginally ridiculous about herself, she reached out to him, hoping that she could somehow lift his suddenly flagging spirits up a little with that crazy thing she liked to call the human touch. Or in this case, the Chloe-touch, but without the rising sexual connotations that were travelling at light speed through her head.
Lex smiled sadly as if sensing her sympathy, gently smoothing his hand over hers. He seemed comforted. At least, Chloe hoped it was comfort and not a poorly hidden desire to laugh at her naive tendencies.
Why did being with Lex prompt so many conflicting emotions within her? She felt sad and happy and exhilarated and maternal all at the same time, which was a pretty insane mix of emotions, especially with the intensity she was feeling them right now.
A second later the brief touch was gone. This time, Chloe could almost see the iron mask of neutrality descend over Lex's facade again.
"Here it is." He declared.
Chloe blinked, surprised to realise that they were already there. She guessed that time really flew when she was engrossed in the examination of her extremely rich, mysterious and enigmatic friend slash maybe love interest if not for the whole he's her dad's boss thing.
They were outside a pleasant looking restaurant on the corner of the block. Red awnings hung over the open wooden doors with pot plants and sconces elegantly flanking the double doors along the side. Corporate refugees from the nearby business district were already filling up the modestly sized restaurant.
The outside eating area was paved with cobblestone, while red roses and yellow and white tulips flourished all along the side of the street, making Chloe involuntarily think of European bars, Italian maestros and somewhat bizarrely, of Venetian gondolas despite a lack of discernible waterways. Which was probably not the actual image that the restaurant owners wanted to portray, although knowing Metropolis, she couldn't really be sure.
All in all, it looked like a traditional Pizzeria, except with a lot more money and possibly with a lot more fauna.
A delicious aroma of freshly baked bread and pizza wafted through to her senses. Her stomach rumbled. Okay, she was officially starving and in desperate need of nourishment.
Lex chuckled. "Hungry I take it?" She blushed for the umpteenth time that day, cursing her unruly and outspoken stomach. The more time she spent with Lex, the more her pretensions and necessary image inflators were being stripped away from her, which she found disconcerting on a very large scale. She felt vulnerable and naked as her own emotional layers were being steadily stripped away and it scared her.
It scared her because even though she knew that Lex was digging deeper into Chloe's very well-fortified inner being, stripping her of all the thousand innate defences that she had rigged to protect herself, she was excited and exhilarated and a thousand other things that were whirling around inside her at the moment. Her mind seemed to suddenly come ablaze at the very thought of Lex wanting to know her better - to know the true Chloe better. Somehow, that made her feel good.
Her entire body shook with the realisation. Either that, or she was hungrier than she thought.
In a surprisingly steady voice she said, "When do we eat?" First she would get some food, secondly she would deal with the interview. And then, she would deal with the impending Lex related issues that her mind was only just beginning to accept.
***
"Time?"
"1:15." He reached over the table and placed his hand over her watch, obstructing it from her view.
"Hey." Chloe protested, trying to dislodge his arm. She thought she had seen it tick over to 1:16. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Preserving your sanity." He grinned impishly at her and Chloe had to restrain herself from throwing several freshly baked bread rolls in his direction. "The driver will be here in 15 minutes, and we'll drive you to your interview. Besides," he glanced down at her lazily, "I've never had lunch with a woman whose attention wasn't fully on me."
"Well you learn something new everyday." She grinned cheekily, enjoying her new-found confidence with Lex. There was much to be said for spending an entire morning in the company of a rich, strangely sexy bald guy. "And as fascinating as I find you Lex - I have this little thing that's going to take place in about 44 minutes and 20 seconds and it just happens to rank a little bit higher than enjoying the famous Luthor company. Sorry."
"Your loss." He sipped his wine almost sensually, which almost provoked Chloe to grab the entire bottle of red whatever vintage it was and pour it all over his crisp midnight blue shirt. Did he have to do everything so elegantly, so crisply? She was staring at Lex Luthor's mouth for goodness sakes, and although she could probably get away with blaming her overextended nerves for that little lapse, she wasn't entirely comfortable with her increasing propensity to stare at Lex full stop, for obvious and sane person reasons.
She took a deep breath. She needed to calm down - big time. Her mind was awhirl with suddenly intrusive emotions which was so not the thing she needed 43 minutes and 15 seconds away from the most exciting opportunity of her admittedly young and naive life.
"Time?" She asked deliberately, ignoring the murderously exasperated expression in his eyes.
(c) August 2002