Everything In This World

By Viv

*~*~ Part Twenty-Five ~*~*

"So how much are your promises worth these days Chloe?"

Chloe, contentedly and securely enveloped in Lex's strong arms as they walked towards his car, expelled an exasperated sigh at the familiar voice behind her.

Damn it. In all the Lex, Clark and Lana vortex of confusion, she had completely forgotten to call Pete. She hadn't even checked her messages yet.

Had she promised that she would call him as soon as she got back? It had completely slipped her mind, reminding Chloe of the single undeniable fact that she was indeed, a very, very bad person whose promises were worth absolutely nothing, even in places that didn't have currency.

"Pete." She turned around, subtly shaking Lex's arms off her. "What are you doing here?" She was suddenly acutely conscious of Pete's antagonism towards the Luthors, and now that Lex was here and more importantly, with her, well - Chloe knew that it didn't take a genius to figure out that in Pete's universe, she had just committed a cardinal sin for which her soul would most probably be eternally damned.

He ignored her question. Pete's normally smiling countenance was gloomy and dark in the dim light, his eyes narrowed in heightened suspicion. Through her rapidly plummeting mood, Chloe had to admit that she hadn't seen him sound so annoyed with her for a very long time, not since she had tricked him out of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich by betting that Clark could stand on his head for more than ten minutes back in eighth grade.

Chloe forced a smile, hoping that she could somehow bulldoze through Pete's obviously not-so-bright mood. "Hi Pete." She said brightly, her eyes darting furtively over his face.

Pete was unfazed by her forced cheer, crossing his arms as he stopped to survey the scene in front of him. He carefully took in Chloe, dressed up in her casual yet (she hoped) sexy way, took in the fact that she was standing so close to Lex that they could be mistaken for being joined at the hip by the denture crowd and finally, taking in Lex's slightly possessive posture beside her.

His eyes narrowed. Behind her, Chloe sensed Lex tense in apprehension, and she had to force down a groan. The entire tension-filled atmosphere reeked of a B-grade western, and not even a cult one at that.

"Pete, I was going to call you." She sighed, hoping that her admission would dispel some of the murderous intent in her friend's eyes. "I got back really late last night ... and all this stuff happened and ... I've been really busy today doing Clark and Lana repairs and ..." She sighed again in resignation. "You got me. I'm a bad friend, okay? I'm a bad, bad person whose promises are worth zilch and you should never trust me again."

Pete softened at her obvious distress. A little of the tenseness seemed to drain out of him, leaving him looking just really hurt and betrayed. Chloe thought that she preferred the angry-as-hell Pete to the hurt looking Pete any day. That way, they could have had a screaming match, call it a draw and walk away relatively unscathed. This openly hurt Pete was all badness.

"Chloe ..." He glanced at Lex, who seemed resolute in planting himself in semi-harm's way. Not that Chloe thought for a moment that Pete was capable of physically hurting Lex - at least, not right now, but she definitely didn't want any unpleasantness to go down between two of the most important people in her life. That would spell disaster with a capital Suck.

"Chloe," Pete continued, eyeing Lex as if he was a particularly ugly variety of insect, "you know I'm not like that. It would've been nice if you had called, that's all. Instead of running into you lojacked to a Luthor and all."

Chloe ignored the last barb. Pete deserved to have his free snark at her expense - for the time being at least.

"I'm sorry I didn't call Pete." She said, after she had paused to nervously gauge the upcoming Lex and Pete gladiatorial battle for supremacy. "It was thoughtless and ... completely uncool."

Pete nodded, his attention fixed on Lex beside her, who was peering coolly back at Pete in return. There seemed to be some sort of stand-off between the two, and Chloe fancied that they were communicating subconsciously in the lame style of alpha males.

Chloe made a quick mental note to herself to beat up the next guy who displayed such Neanderthalism in front of her. It was the 21st century after all, and women had earned the right to club men senseless for being stupid.

Finally Chloe had to speak up. She was freezing to death, between the weather and the coldness of the looks shooting between Pete and Lex. She would just have to accept the fact that there wasn't going to be any bonding taking place between them tonight. "Okay, let's not -"

Chloe was interrupted by a loud whistle that erupted into the air near them. All three of them whirled around, looking for the direction of the noise.

Chloe rolled her eyes in genuine exasperation. As if cold Lex and frozen Pete weren't enough for her considerable talents to handle, a group of jocks had materialised across the street from them, flanked by their more-than-slightly drunk girlfriends. It was nothing that Chloe normally couldn't handle, but more upsetting was the fact that it was the same group of football idiots that had stared so rudely at her back at the Talon.

"Great." She muttered under her breath. Even a non-genius like her knew where this was heading.

"Hey Sullivan." The head jock, whose name escaped her back at the coffee house and continued to escape her now, stepped arrogantly out of the comfort of his admiring pack and taunted them. "You looking for some action?" He jeered.

Chloe sneered but made no reply, suppressing the instinct to hurl a very heavy object in his direction. Violence wasn't going to solve anything - except maybe for his errant stupidity.

He stepped closer and this time, both Lex and Pete stepped forward, blocking her from view.

"Brian, you're drunk man. Back off." Pete said in the deadly quiet.

"What are you going to do, bench warmer?" Brian the jock taunted Pete. "Beat me up?. 'Cause I got to tell ya, you ain't much to look at. I'm thinking I can take you easy."

"Just try it." Pete gritted his teeth, his eyes flashing in the darkness.

Chloe opened her mouth to say something, but Lex beat her to it. "Look, Brian is it?" The jock nodded drunkenly, starting to totter. "It's going to be better for all of us if you just went home with your friends and cool down, okay?"

Brian sneered, pointing a drunken finger at Lex. "I know who you are, Luthor." He stared menacingly down at them as the rest of his buddies crowded about him. "You think you own this town." He switched his attention back onto Chloe. "You might even own a dumb blonde or two, but one day you're going to get yours."

Chloe placed a restraining hand on Lex. Amazingly, Lex's eyes had widened in barely checked anger, and he actually looked in danger of losing the cool control he had always been able to display in front of her.

She smiled, rolling her eyes airily. "You think? That's a novel idea."

"Watch it slut." The rest of his group sniggered, egging him on. "How else could you get Mr Luthor here with you if you weren't putting out?"

Chloe gaped open-mouthed, but try as she might, she couldn't force her voice to function.

That was it. The metaphorical gloves were coming off now that he had just called her - she didn't even want to say it within the confines of her brain.

Pete looked like he was about to bust a blood vessel, and Chloe could see Lex's Adam's apple bobbing frantically in a last ditch effort to restrain his temper. Chloe knew that she had to do something before they all ended up at the hospital, or at the local lock-up, because either way if she didn't do something now, there was going to be one massive fight of the horrible kind.

She stepped out from the shadows behind Pete and Lex, throwing both of them a warning look. "Don't even think about it." She whispered as she stepped past them.

"Look, jock strap." She sneered bitingly at Brian, disdain clearly etched on her face. "I'd bother to verbal judo with you, except for the fact that I only do it with people that I like. And also, I've got better things to do with my Saturday night than teach a brainless jock how to string enough words together to form a proper insult. Now," Chloe said snidely, glancing at the girls crowded behind Brian, "take your circus 'hos and crawl back to the barely primordial soup you call home, and next time, when you decide to venture out into the world where nobody gives a shit about anything you do, just think how pleasant the world would be if you actually understood it."

And that was it. Chloe had said what she had wanted to say, and consequences be damned.

Brian was staring bug-eyed at her, trying to form a coherent sentence but not really succeeding. Without deigning to wait for a reaction from him or any of his cohorts, Chloe held her head up higher and walked away, tugging the clearly flabbergasted forms of Lex and Pete after her with sheer force of will.

Chloe finally turned around when the trio rounded the corner, poking her head around the side of the building to check that the horrible hounds of jockdom had disbanded, or at the very least, had been left floundering by the sheer magnificence of her snarky rant.

Satisfied that all was well - which was to say that they weren't being pursued by a pack of rabid teenage jocks thirsting for murder and mayhem, Chloe let out an explosive sigh of relief. It had been touch and go there with the whole Lex losing control and Pete looking like he couldn't care less whether he committed murder or not thing. All in all, she thought the situation had turned out rather well, even if she did say so herself.

She spun around to say just that, only to be confronted by the darkly unimpressed expressions on both Lex and Pete's faces. In fact, over and above the unimpressed vibe that she was now intensely receiving, Lex actually looked slightly angry. Which was a completely new feeling for Chloe to be confronted with, given all the Lex-love she had been the lucky recipient of lately.

Lex glared at her, hands on his hips and his anger barely held in check. "Chloe, what the hell were you thinking?" Her hazel eyes widened at being addressed in such a tone. She opened her mouth to protest, but nothing would come out.

She was just that surprised.

Chloe resisted the urge to flinch from his flinty gaze. She turned appealingly to Pete, who had unwittingly mirrored Lex's stance, hands on hips and looking like a dark storm cloud had taken residence on his face. She would have found their manly posturing funny, if not for the whole Lex and Pete being deadly angry at her thing.

"She wasn't thinking at all, were you Chloe?"

"What?" She protested, wanting to shrink from their twin glares. "I handled the situation, didn't I?" She looked from Lex to Pete who remained stonily silent. They made an interesting tableau, Lex's marble smooth skin and lean frame contrasting with Pete's milky dark skin and smaller build as they wore identical expressions of disapproval and exasperation. "What, I was supposed to stand by while you two were jock-handled by a bunch of drunken lunatics in the middle of the street?"

"Yes." Lex said simply, his words crisp in the cool night air. "Instead of putting yourself out there to be a target for those ... drunken lunatics." His eyes shot daggers at her.

"Yeah, plus Brian Kingston is a first class jerk, and I would have beat the crap out of him." Pete continued, his eyes steely in the darkness.

Chloe looked from Lex to Pete, then back again. "Ha." She half-shouted melodramatically, crossing her arms in defence. "You guys are just ticked off because I damaged your manly studly-ness by stepping in and actually defending myself. Did you not hear what that arrogant jerk called me?" She faced both of them, who both managed to look distinctly resigned to her tirade. "So, I exercised my 21st century right by standing up for myself. Obviously that makes me a raving lunatic who completely deserves to get committed because God forbid, we don't want to unleash a girl on the world who can actually take care of herself."

She chanced a glance towards Lex and Pete, who seemed to have suddenly come to some sort of strange, manly understanding between them. Chloe felt like a kid who had been caught red-handed with the entire contents of a very large and very well-stocked cookie jar, and was now waiting on her punishment. This was so unfair. She knew that they were having manly hysterics because they cared deeply about her, but really - couldn't they get it into their thick skulls that she could take care of herself?

Maybe they were developing Clark's strange mental condition of not actually having a clue.

"Chloe." Lex said at last, coming forward and taking both of her small hands into his, squeezing them gently. His concerned blue eyes looked deeply into hers, while Pete resolutely kept his gaze plastered onto the side walk in front of him. "I just don't want you to get hurt." He cleared his throat uncomfortably, rolling his eyes as he turned to glance at Pete. "We don't want you to get hurt."

"That's right Chlo." Pete broke out into a patented smile, complete with dazzling pearly whites. "I don't want you haunting my ass and asking me why I didn't stop you pulling the all kinds of wacky you just pulled." He sighed, running his hands through his head. "Well, I better get going. Veronica's a-waiting." He grinned infectiously at the thought of his waiting coffee date, before it faded a little as he took in the sight of Lex's tight grasp on Chloe's hands. He looked penetratingly at Lex, who returned his look with a steely gaze of his own.

Pete was the first one to break eye contact. "Yeah well ... I'll see you guys later then." With a small wave he turned around and quickly disappeared from sight.

Chloe looked down at her feet, unwilling to meet Lex's gaze. In a way, she was scared by the force of emotions that were so obviously driving both of them into behaving in ways that weren't quite normal. Almost, but not quite normal. She felt breathless and out of control, and a whole lot scared.

Lex tilted her head up towards him, forcing Chloe to meet his intense, penetrating gaze. His beautiful blue eyes glittered with naked emotion, knocking all the remaining breath out of Chloe with its unfettered rawness.

"Don't ever do that to me again Chloe." His voice had descended into one of husky determination, although Chloe couldn't really be sure whether that was entirely due to an excess of manly studlyness on Lex's part, and not to any overriding relief that they had reached a sort of understanding between them. "I need you all in one piece."

The exposed expression on his face spoke volumes for the way he felt about her. There was nothing Chloe could say to such a powerful statement of fact, so she didn't even try to reply.

(c) September 2002