"Everything In This World"
by Viv
*~*~ Part Twenty-Six ~*~*
Chloe looked up sharply, reaching forward to turn down the volume of her stereo. She thought she had just heard the sound of the door bell ringing. Either that or she had finally achieved a bizarre form of rapid ageing that made her hear imaginary bells ring in her ears.
She cocked her ear and listened carefully in the ensuing stillness.
She was right. She distinctly heard the sound of the front door being opened, followed by barely audible voices. She briefly thought that it was Clark or Lana coming for a quick fly-by before the algebra quiz tomorrow, before she recollected that they had arranged to have a little one-on-one coaching session at Lana's tonight. Which was the freakishly nice couple's way of plastering a 'do not disturb, macking in progress' sign on their foreheads.
Maybe it was Pete, coming in a blaze of caffeine induced panic to alternately drive Chloe crazy and commiserate with her on their mutual incompetence at all things math. They both had the lucky disadvantage of being equally sucky at algebra and calculus and other branches of math that they just happened to suck in, and despite the intense study session they had crammed in after school today with Clark, she knew that it would not be beyond the realm of possibility for Pete to be staring blankly at his notes right now, wishing for some big chunk of meteor rock to fall onto his house, thereby giving him an airtight excuse to get out of the quiz tomorrow.
She mentally shrugged. If it had been for her, her dad would have come up by now.
She dragged her attention back onto the open books in front of her. She stared down at her math notes, chewing hard on her pen as her forehead scrunched in concentration. She was an absolute dunce when it came to math, and she knew it. English and languages she could handle despite not being terribly interested in thee's and thou's and damsels in distress who couldn't move due to excessive corsets and riding side ways on horses. But math? Thank God she had Clark the farm boy math genius as her best friend, who she could always call up or message at some ungodly hour and actually get an intelligent sounding answer in reply.
She kind of really liked Clark that way.
Chloe smiled to herself. She had lately started to use another resource open to her - the nice, gorgeous, sexy-as-hell alternative in the form of Lex, who didn't actually mind answering inane questions on high school chemistry and biology and other ologies even though it probably lowered his opinion of her in his eyes, since she was almost as sucky at science as she was at math.
She frowned, making a mental note to ask him about that the next time she talked to him.
Chloe let out an explosive sigh of exasperation, loudly thumping the book closed in front of her. That was it. In addition to being mind-numbingly bored out of her not-so-large brain, she was growing curious as to what exactly was happening downstairs. She and her dad weren't exactly the heart of Smallville society, which was to say that they didn't really have visitors all that often.
She got up and stretched before making her way out of her room. Voices drifted through to her, so she carefully tip-toed towards the source of the conversation, not feeling any twinges of guilt whatsoever at eavesdropping on a potentially private conversation. She reasoned that reporters were exempt from that weird society rule which dictated that eavesdropping was necessarily bad and will land its perpetrator in front of the gates of Hell. Plus, a lot of times it was really interesting.
" ... can call me Lex when we're not at the Plant, Gabe."
Chloe swore to herself. She peered around the corner to make sure she wasn't having a really bad hallucination involving her dad and Lex having an intense conversation regarding her because God, how embarrassing and out-of-this-world awkward would that have been? It was bad enough that she was going out with her father's boss; it probably heaped a whole entire layer of weirdness on the cake of weird to think that Lex was probably the only person in the entire town that Chloe's dad would not have been happy for her to date, with the exception of the psycho drifter that was always hanging around Smallville's main streets.
Her father seemed to have this weird idea that Chloe was going to get hurt by Lex, judging solely of course by his well-known reputation of playboy-ism and of the untold amounts of wealth at his disposal, thereby making him an unsuitable candidate for his charmingly intelligent slash obsessive reporter-to-be daughter.
Because that made absolute sense. Never mind the undisputable fact that Lex, with his easy charm and out-of-this-world intelligence, could have had any woman he wanted on this side of the universe.
They had already had two explosive 'discussions' about the Lex issue in the last week, which had ended up with both of them drawing battle lines and walking away before anything *really* bad had been said. She and her dad were in many ways very dissimilar, since he was often so mild mannered and easy to please. But on explosive temper tantrums she and Gabe Sullivan were pretty much two very identical peas in a pod.
In the end they had come to a tacit stand-off, pending further developments. Chloe figured that as long as she was happy and nothing bad happened, her dad would eventually cool off and come around to her point of view. Which roughly translated in Chloe's mind to 'she'll get her own way eventually'.
It served to explain why she was feeling such a mounting tide of panic in her insides, threatening to swallow her whole. What could they possibly be talking about? Also, how long had she left them down there? And more importantly, why hadn't her dad come to get her?
Chloe swallowed. Curiosity got the better of her panic, and she cautiously peered around the corner to spy on the scene in front of her.
Her dad looked supremely uncomfortable, shifting his feet awkwardly on the spot. "Look, I might as well come right out and say it Mr Luth - ah, Lex." He corrected himself hastily as he continued more forcefully. "You may be my boss, and I may like working with you at the Plant, especially after how you saved everyone's jobs at the plant, but when it comes to my daughter - I just want you to know that if you do anything to hurt her, I'll come after you, boss or no boss. My little girl comes first."
"That's perfectly understandable Gabe." Lex replied pleasantly, in the same laid-back tone as he would have used if he had been conversing about the weather. "I wouldn't have expected otherwise."
Her dad looked slightly taken aback by Lex's pleasantness. He seemed to have expected a reprimand of something along the lines of 'go clean the bathrooms with a very small toothbrush for your insolence'. Chloe couldn't resist smirking into the shadows, silently doing mental cartwheels and intoning a 'go Lex' cheer inside her mind. Obviously her dad hadn't expected Lex to have been so understanding, or dare she say it, so human. Gabe Sullivan was usually quite good at judging characters, but like so many people in Smallville, he did have a certain blind spot when it came to the Luthors which granted, wasn't all that incomprehensible given their previous track record of shady buy outs and even shadier deals.
"Well, just so we understand each other ... Lex." Her father added quietly, his hand pressed thoughtfully under his chin.
Chloe wondered whether their verbal posturing was over, and whether it was safe enough for her to come out without getting hit by a random jibe. It seemed that between her dad, Lex and Pete, almost all the men in her life lately were given to manly displays of over protectiveness, which on reflection wasn't really an all that bad thing. It kind of felt nice actually, although Chloe was adamant that she would go to her grave before divulging that little piece of non-feminist information to any of them.
Her dad seemed satisfied with Lex's response, or more accurately, his relatively calm acceptance of the fact that he would physically disassemble Lex from limb to limb if he improbably caused Chloe to get hurt in any shape or form. Which she guessed in the inane world of machoistic pretensions qualified as a tacit understanding between civilised men. She wanted to snigger at that realisation, if not for the whole being touched by their concern warm and fuzzy that was spreading slowly throughout her being.
"So ... I suppose you're here to see Chloe?" Her dad asked Lex, sticking his hands in the pockets of the casual sweats he was currently decked out in.
"If that's all right with you Gabe." Lex smiled amiably, his stance completely relaxed. Chloe had to admire him for his coolness in the face of the older man's stern gaze. She wondered briefly whether he would show the same coolness in the face of a similar Chloe-onslaught, because there was bound to be one, given Chloe's not-so-icy temper.
"It's a school night, so she shouldn't be out too late." Her dad said crisply, his arms now crossed across his chest.
A barely perceptible smile tugged insistently at the corners of Lex's mouth as he nodded in acknowledgment. "I'm aware of that."
Chloe found the gist of the entire conversation surreal. Here she was, lurking around the corner in her own house listening to a conversation between her dad and Lex that could definitely have originated from Planet Weird, even if she hadn't taken into account of the fact that Lex was heir to one of America's largest corporate empires and her dad was the manager of Smallville Fertiliser Plant Number 3.
He looked hard at Lex, then apparently satisfied, shouted, "Chloe! Lex is here."
Chloe started from her semi-crouched position, almost toppling over due to the booming sound of her dad's voice and the slight cramp that she had developed in her legs from the tense eavesdropping she had just indulged in. Never let it be said that there were no consequences to eavesdropping into conversations between her dad and Lex. Cursing silently, she desperately call out, "Coming!"
She waited a few seconds before loudly opening her bed room door and stomping towards the sitting room. She found Lex and her dad in exactly the same positions that she had left them.
Chloe's eyes met Lex's across the room and she couldn't resist breaking out into an instantaneous grin, her eyes twinkling merrily in greeting. Clearly the Chloe smiling like an insane person phase of the relationship hadn't passed yet. "Hey." She said a little breathlessly.
Lex made his way across the room towards her, giving her a rare unguarded smile in return. He leaned forward and was clearly about to give her a kiss before collecting himself and somewhat awkwardly pulling away again. "Hi." He surreptitiously glanced at her dad, who tried valiantly to wipe the faint look of disapproval from his face. "I thought I'd just drop by after work to see you before I headed back home for dinner ."
Chloe frowned slightly, glancing at her watch. "It's 8 already. You haven't had dinner yet?"
"No."
She pondered whether to ask him to stay for dinner. Granted, it would have been awkward as hell listening to Lex and her dad make inanely small conversation for the sake of keeping the peace and pretending that they didn't prefer root canal without happy gas to having a dinner for three at the Sullivan household. But on the other hand, her dad might as well get used to fact that she and Lex were a thing, and if she wanted to invite Lex over for dinner, it should be okay.
But surprisingly, her dad beat her to the punch. He cleared his throat conspicuously. "I ah ..." Chloe could almost see him visibly rolling his eyes at the polite gesture that he now couldn't resist making, because Gabe Sullivan was a nice man who couldn't help himself. "Would you like to stay for dinner Lex?" He hurriedly added, "Of course, it's probably nothing like what you're used to. Just meatballs that Chloe whipped up and leftover Chinese from last night."
Chloe frowned. Well, if her dad insisted on putting in like that, what health-conscious billionaire-to-be would consider staying anyway, given the choice between a gourmet cooked meal in the comfort of his ancestral mansion and some highly suspicious meatball and sauce that Chloe had mildly improvised on and hence wasn't entirely sure was edible, and some even more suspicious leftover Chinese from their only sometimes functional fridge?
Lex's expression visibly perked up. "Chloe made meatballs?" He asked, not even bothering to hide the curiosity and mild amusement in his voice. "She ... actually cooked them?"
Her eyes squinted dangerously in Lex's direction. What was so funny about her making food? Granted, she hated cooking of any kind and was potentially lethal with several types of electrical appliances owing to her extreme klutziness, but still ... did he have to look like he was enjoying the biggest joke of the century at the thought of her cooking?
"Hey, I'm right here." She protested vehemently.
He placidly ignored her, an intense look of interest on his face. "You say she made them?" He asked her dad with a barely held in check twinkle in his eyes.
Her dad sighed in resignation, although Chloe saw a tiny smile forming at the edges of his mouth. Gabe Sullivan was someone who could always see the funny side to things. Unfortunately for Chloe, the funny side in this instant just happened to include her and her complete and utter culinary non-skill. Lex was going to be in for a surprise, to say the least. "I'll set another place for you." He said, walking away.
"Hey ..." Chloe trailed off as her dad disappeared towards the kitchen. Now that her dad and Lex seemed so eager to participate in the charade of sitting down to a small town, badly cooked family dinner, Chloe wasn't so sure she wanted to be there. Firstly, it was a thing of extreme weirdness trying to picture Lex Luthor, heir to the LuthorCorp billions, having meatballs at her house with his plant manager and his daughter, who Lex just happened to be dating. Secondly, it was weird picturing Lex having any kind of food at all without dastardly unpronounceable names like 'bouillabaisse' and 'escargot au vin', let alone hunkering down to a traditional American meal of leftover Chinese and meatballs. And thirdly - had she already mentioned the fact that he was here, in her house, willingly subjecting himself to her cooking?
Lex's clear voice cut like glass through her thoughts. "Relax Chloe." His eyes twinkled. "It's just dinner."
"You mean you're looking forward to ending up at Smallville General with food poisoning?" She asked incredulously, not caring that she was placing just a little too much emphasis on her absent cooking ability so that her extreme anxiety at having Lex and her dad in the same room during dinner wasn't as obvious by comparison. The more she thought about it, the more tetchy she got.
Lex and her dad, in the same room, in her house, equalled a potential disaster of gigantic proportions. It was an equation that even Chloe didn't have trouble figuring out. "Just looking after your health is all." She said lightly, her eyes downcast.
"It's weird." She finally admitted. "Scratch that, it's really weird. It's so weird that I'm considering it as an entry on the Wall of Weird."
Lex's eyes lit up in understanding. Reaching for her hand, he pulled her close towards him so that there was barely a sliver of empty space between them. Chloe was so close to him that she could feel his warmth breath tingling her skin. He tilted her chin up lightly so that he now looked piercingly into her eyes. "Do you want me to go?" He asked solemnly.
"No." She jumped in almost before he had finished asking the question, prompting slightly abashed laughter to escape both of them. She sighed somewhat morosely. "I'm not usually like this you know - all caring about whether people get along and stuff. But you and my dad are ... well, you know." She smiled self-consciously, suddenly feeling very young. "I just want everything to work out."
"It'll be okay." Lex said confidently, wrapping strong arms around her.
Chloe hugged him tightly back, taking comfort in the confidence that he was so strongly projecting. Say what she would about his less than stellar corporate reputation, but to Chloe, the whole knight in shining armour look really worked for him.
"Dinner's on the table Chloe." Her dad's voice drifted clearly from the kitchen, prompting Chloe to disentangle herself from Lex. Although Chloe was still worried to the nth degree about possible badness during dinner, she was absolutely famished from the desperate math cram session she had endured that afternoon.
She shrugged inwardly. If things turned from worse to worser between her dad and Lex she figured, she would deal with it then. No point crying over spilt milk, or in this case, no point in crying over it when it hadn't even been poured out from the carton yet.
She entwined her small hands in Lex's, drawing him into the kitchen with an enigmatic smile that shone from her face.
(c) September 2002