Everything In This World

By Viv

*~*~ Part Seventeen ~*~*

Chloe sighed pitifully.

She was standing outside the modest Metropolis Beagle offices, trying to not look like the entire world had crashed around her, cruelly leaving her alive and healthy to endure the worst pain imaginable to human kind.

The pain she was talking about, of course, was the pain of utter and humiliating failure.

She had gone into the interview with such high hopes and high shoes, and now clichéd as it was, her hopes and dreams had all been dashed in one fell swoop. It was true - the carrion bird of badness had swooped on her ambitious desire and outstretched dreams and had snatched it all away because it was a bad, bad bird and that's what it was supposed to do. And she had done nothing to fight off this bad predator of dreams - in fact, she had done the opposite.

Because Chloe could not deny the simple undeniable fact that she had aided the said carrion of disaster in the plundering of her dreams, her hopes and her desires.

She sighed heavily, shifting uncomfortably in her pumps which were now naturally making her feet sore. The injustice of suffering for her foray into high corporate fashion grated harshly on her psyche as she thought bitterly of the interview again, the event swirling obstinately around in
her mind.

Chloe let her satchel fall to the ground. It contained her portfolio and CV and even that article she had written for the Smallville Ledger last year, but that was going to be useless now. Her life was over now that her dreams had been so cruelly and horribly dashed.

Okay, so maybe she was being slightly melodramatic right now. Maybe not everything good in her life had been snatched away, but for the life of her Chloe just couldn't think of anything left in her life that could be labelled as good. There were many 'okay' things, some 'ho hum, chance of good', but nothing that could possibly counterbalance the interview of disastrous proportions that she had just endured.

Even the sun shone too brightly for her taste, making her squint as she tried to read her watch. A middle-aged couple and their faithful Lassie jogged past her on the street, giving her a cheery hello. Normally Chloe would have smiled back, or snarked to herself about how weird the whole friendly neighbour thing was given the fact that she was in Metropolis, snark capital of America, but she was definitely not in the mood right now. The entire world seemed to be too bright and cheery, deliberately underlining her complete and utter suckyness at anything that could possible be construed as a reporting career.

Great. She was now the butt of some cosmic non-joke. Disaster had been so swift to fall on Chloe that FedEx would have been proud to be its official courier.

Lex's car pulled up beside her forlorn figure on the street.

"Chloe." His bright expression fell when he saw her sagging frame and listless countenance. Of course, the tell tale kicking of her bag on the side of the street could also have had something to do with his acute perception. "What happened?"

"I suck, that's what happened." The driver was getting out of the car to open the door for her, but Chloe waved him impatiently away. It wasn't like she had lost all ability to function, and even though she would probably end up flipping fat-drenched burgers at Burger King due to her complete non-ability to behave properly at a job interview, she would like to know that she still retained the ability to open her own doors, complain and snark - the cornerstones of Chloe's universe.

She climbed awkwardly into the car, dragging her stuff in after her petulantly. She slammed the door in the startled driver's face while carefully avoiding Lex's penetrating gaze. She sank back onto the seat and crossed her arms - the universal sign of 'beware homicidal blonde, approach at own risk' to anyone with the passing intention of actually speaking to her.

Lex seemed unfazed by her obvious belligerence. "Okay." He signalled for the driver to take off. "In laymen's terms. What happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it." She huffed childishly. And she wasn't lying either - she really didn't. She didn't want anyone, least of all Lex, to know what a completely incompetent normal person she was, because normal people would have known how to behave at a job interview and would therefore not be in this position, facing the kind but inquiring face of her bald-headed friend slash potential love interest.

"Yes you do." Lex admonished her, sounding for all the world like a parent scolding a child. Which was a completely 'ew' image, considering the staggering amount of impure thoughts that she had had of Lex during the course of this conversation alone.

There - she had admitted it. She had impure thoughts about Lex. Which was totally beside the point at the moment, so she steered her mind clear of that jolting internal realisation to be dealt with at an agreed future time - like never.

"No, I don't." She turned away from him in a fit of pique.

Unfortunately, Lex was one of those irritating specimens of the human race who viewed non-answers as direct challenges which must be met. "What happened?" He asked more forcefully, probably unaware that he had incidentally placed a semi-comforting hand on her shoulder.

That undid her. Left to her own devices, locked within her shroud of prickly isolation she could have withstood Lex's attempts to unlock her secrets. But his touch? That warm, sensitive touch from those sensitive hands that just happened to send enormous waves of energy to the centre of her being? She didn't stand a chance.

Her cold facade melted visibly, and she sighed dramatically. "I bombed at the interview, okay?" She fixed her gaze to the streets rolling silently by. She didn't even have the energy to feel mortified and ashamed and a thousand other really lame adjectives, which under normal circumstances she definitely would have been feeling right now, given that it was Lex Luthor sitting next to her who could obviously hold down a job, since he was the head of an actual fertiliser plant. He had probably interviewed a million people in his time at his father's company, and he would be entirely too clear of the sheer volume of stupidity that Chloe must have had in abundance to have bombed so badly.

"What happened?" His voice softened as she leaned slightly into his touch. Chloe sighed again, suddenly feeling the weight of her predicament on her tiny shoulders.

His silence compelled her to speak. "Okay, you want the entire story? Lame exposition and absurd dialogue culminating in inevitable tragedy and all?"

"Will there be any sexual entendre?" He smirked, trying to lighten the mood.

It worked, because a small laugh escaped her despite her black mood.

The smile slowly slid off his face, replaced by a soft serious look that almost pleaded with her to continue. The intensity of his gaze was hypnotic and Chloe would have been the first to admit that she had possibly already fallen under that magnetic Luthor charm of his. His eyes seemed to be swallowing her up by the sheer power he focused through his gaze. "Tell me."

Their eyes locked as Chloe held on to her moment of hesitation, but a micro second later it was gone. In the end, she told him everything, unable to hold anything back while being assaulted by the sheer force of his gaze. It was definitely at times like these that she craved the ability to manipulate truth and lie just that little bit more naturally. If there was a school for that, Chloe would be there, no expenses spared.

"Okay, it started fine - great even. I managed to introduce myself with a modicum of smoothness without tripping over my highly overpriced pumps and smiling in the process. So far, so okay." She looked over at Lex, who nodded encouragingly. "And then they introduced themselves and everything was fine, you know? We were one big happy ... bunch of people." Chloe bounced agitatedly on her seat, before quickly flipping sideways, folding one of her legs under her in order to face Lex more squarely. "Then the questions started which were fine, okay, semi-bad but defensible in the right context, then really great, because they asked about my stance on capitalism in rural America which, let's face it, is basically my reason for living." She paused to take a breath, trying to gauge Lex's perplexed expression. "And then ..." She trailed off, as the basic human unwillingness to make herself look stupid threatened to swallow her resolve to recount the whole sorry tale again.

"And then?" Lex prompted, sensing her hesitation.

"And then ..." She put her head in her hands as she was forced to think about it, the thing that had almost certainly cost her the dream of a summer spent in the heated atmosphere of a real live newsroom. "And then ... Well, we got to talking about what I would be doing as a high school intern which started off pretty normal. You know, serving coffee to bad tempered reporters, running errands for editors and occasionally actually seeing what reporters really do?" Lex nodded animatedly, which Chloe took as permission to press the Chloe express full steam ahead. "And then, this guy, I think he said he was like a sub-editor of current affairs or something, he started asking me about what I thought of the state of the country."

Lex raised his brows expectantly. "So what did you say?"

"And, well - I monologued like I usually do. How we're totally ignoring the plight of the homeless, especially in the overcrowded cities, ignoring human rights issues in other countries, blah blah, we need more food to help relieve famine in the third world - you know, the basic tenets of every rebellious teenager in America? And then," Chloe took a deep breath, "it happened."

"What?" Lex leaned in, so that his face was only scant inches from hers.

Chloe looked down at her hands as they fiddled with the edge of her suit. "He started disagreeing with me. Firstly with the homeless, saying that they should get off their collective asses and get a job already. Then he said all this stuff about America needing to take care of itself first and everyone else should just go take care of their own problems and should just leave us alone and basically I got way too fired up and before I knew it I had called him an arrogant fat-lipped Nazi."

Lex's brows flew upwards, although Chloe could tell he was trying very hard not to laugh out loud. He hurriedly covered his fleeting smile with an infinitely more appropriate frown. "Oh."

"Yeah, exactly - oh." Chloe slumped back down onto the seat of the car, her shoulders slumping. She groaned aloud, her face in her hands. "My career in quality journalism is over. Maybe if I'm really lucky, I'll be able to wrangle a job one day as a janitor at the Metropolis Inquisitor because obviously I'll never work as an actual reporter."

Lex laid a calming hand over hers. Chloe couldn't tell whether the gesture had been deliberate, but then again, she really didn't care. "Chloe you need to calm down."

His honey smooth voice served its primary purpose in calming Chloe's somewhat frayed nerves. She sighed heavily. She had also found herself suddenly somewhat distracted by the gentle inflection in his voice - she had never really paid all that much attention to Lex's voice before because wow, how weird would that have been? But now ... she made a quick mental note to ask him when she was in a more saner mood whether he had ever attended voice modulation classes, because obviously such skilful manipulation of one's voice box could not be natural.

She had to pull her mind back onto the present. Lex's lips where moving, so he must have been saying something. " ... only the first of I'm sure many interviews you'll have in future. Besides with the exception of that one ... incident, it sounds like you did great. I don't know about you, but I don't know that many people who can even tell the difference between a noun and an adjective, and here you are talking about capitalism and homelessness and the plight of the third world."

He was trying so hard to make her feel better, which touched her inexplicably. It was nice to know that he really cared, not to mention the obvious boost to one's ego to know that Lex Luthor was making such a transparent attempt to alleviate her humble suffering. "I know." She said quietly, her gaze still fixed onto her hands now clenched tightly together on her knees. "But I just to think that I let my temper get the better of me. I mean no matter what he said I should've been able to keep my cool and not, you know, insult him by calling him that which I will never say again."

"Was he?" He asked at last, catching her reluctant gaze.

"Was he what?" She asked, puzzled.

"An arrogant, fat-lipped ... Nazi."

Chloe pondered it for a moment. "Well - yeah, maybe except for the Nazi part. I mean I wasn't too clued in on his political leanings and ... why are you laughing?" She asked indignantly as Lex burst into unrestrained laughter.

All she got in reply was more helpless laughter, crescendoeing in volume as he wrapped his arms around his aching sides for emphasis. When it appeared that he showed no signs of stopping, she crossed her arms and reclined back onto the seat, waiting for his obvious enjoyment to stop. Or to slow down at least. "Well it's good to know that you find my misfortunes so amusing Lex."

"I'm sorry." He gasped between peals of uncharacteristic laughter. "It's just ... the funniest thing I've ever heard. I'm sorry." He apologised again, vainly trying to cover his laughter by ducking his head. "Oh god, I haven't laughed like that since ... never."

Chloe did a double take. "What? Not really never, right? I mean, there must have been times ... when you were little Lex? Not often, maybe rarely, but ... not never right?" She trailed off hopefully.

Lex quietened down and looked at her sombrely, taking in the hopeful expression in her eyes and no doubt weighing her ability to understand his childhood through his jaded perspective. Chloe could almost see the repressed hurt and uncertainty and anger lingering behind his eyes and she wondered at that. Wondered at what his childhood must have been like for him to still have clung onto all that hurt and anger, to still have to shield himself from its effects.

She didn't know whether it was because she was getting to know him better or because he was starting to let his defences crumble around her. But she could tell that he was still deeply scarred from his childhood. He shook his head sadly, almost morosely. "No Chloe, I really mean never."

Her face fell. "Lex." She knew she probably sounded a lot like pouty-Clark, that face that Clark made whenever he had found something sad or strange about Chloe that he couldn't formulate into words. Chloe had never gotten that feeling, had never gotten why Clark couldn't articulate his sympathies with words and gestures and phrases like a normal person.

But now she knew. It was because he had felt too much, the way that Chloe was feeling too much right now. Saying Lex's name was all she could manage before she lapsed into silence, because she was frozen with a thousand conflicting instincts to hug and console and stick a very blunt object into the eye of the person who had made Lex feel this way, all at the same time.

His voice was filled with such rough honesty and raw emotion that it robbed her of all ability to enunciate anything that could remotely be construed as sympathy and understanding. She just hoped that it was enough that she was there, projecting said the sympathy and understanding and hoped that it permeated his consciousness somehow.

Her hand crept out to cover his, making him simultaneously smile and frown as he gazed at their entwined hands, her smaller one over his slender pale one. His expression became unreadable as he stared at it for a moment, a breathless moment when Chloe found herself alive with anticipation.

And then as if coming to an internal decision, he reached out slowly with his other hand and caressed the side of her cheek, running his slender fingers down the contours of her face and deliberately tracing the edge of her jaw. He tilted her face up almost absently before lightly brushing blond tendrils off her face and then -

He leaned in and kissed her.

His kiss ignited a thousand explosions within her as Chloe at last discovered what those overly sappy, moronic songs with cringe-worthy lyrics were all about. His mouth caressed hers with a gentleness that she would not have believed possible in a man, lightly nipping around the edges of her mouth before pressing more urgently, his tongue plundering hers with a passionate abandon that she would have been surprised at in Lex, if not for her complete lack of coherent thought at the moment. She savoured the feel of his lips against hers, the sensuous mouth pressed against hers that was triggering a thousand tiny eruptions of delight in the pit of her stomach. She savoured the feel of his arms around her as they wound around her neck and back and waist and caressed her hair and soon it seemed that his hands were everywhere at once, which Chloe didn't mind at all.

She couldn't breathe from the sheer volume of emotion as her senses were overloaded with a thousand exquisite sensations, all originating from the single, mind-blowing acceptance of one fact - that she was kissing Lex Luthor.

Finally she had to push him away, to ingest that annoying necessity of life called air.

They looked at each other for a full second, both painfully alive to the significance of what had just happened. Chloe was breathless and excited and exhilarated and possibly a thousand other raw emotions as well that she couldn't quite articulate within the confused confines of her brain, while Lex just looked completely stunned. For one crazy second Chloe was certain that he would apologise and say it was all an extremely bizarre misunderstanding caused by having bad mushrooms at lunch, but a longer examination of his shining eyes and heavy breathing was enough to convince her to stow away her doubt, because the sexy bald guy sitting right next to her wasn't going anywhere.

"Sir? We're here."

Almost as if she had been burned she sprang away from him, her cheeks flaming to a level that had not previously been attained before. She stole a quick glance at Lex who had obviously recovered his composure enough to look really annoyed at the driver's interruption.

Lex didn't even bother with a reply. He turned around, shut the door in the surprised driver's face and sat back down onto the seat again as Chloe did her best imitation of an anatomically correct statue, her gaze still and unmoving.

t was funny. The situation was funny, her complete and utter failure at the interview was funny, in fact - the entire day had been funny. She had traversed the lows of depression and the heights of exhilarated anticipation, only to have ended up stuck in a car with Lex experiencing the best thing that had ever happened to her full stop.

After all, it had easily been the best kiss of her very young though cynical life.

The entire thing was just - funny.

She suddenly exploded into laughter, a bright and infectious sound that startled Lex out of his rapidly disintegrating mood. He was so amazed by it that before the ridiculousness of the situation even registered in his brain he had also found himself reluctantly smiling too.

Chloe gasped between peals of unrestrained laughter. "How long do you think he'll stay out there?"

Lex shrugged coolly, the driver's physical and mental well-being obviously not in the top twenty on his list of priorities. He pulled her in towards him, his eyes glittering in the filtered light of the car. "Do we really want to be debating the moral justification of leaving my highly paid driver to stand out on the street while we continue this?" He asked coyly.

Chloe's gaze roved up and down Lex's lean frame, lingering on those lips that had ignited a fire of passion in her just moments before. "You're right." She said breathlessly, as the intense passion in his eyes threatened to consume her. "Shut up and kiss me."

It turned out that Lex was very good at taking orders, because he did just that.

(c) August 2002