Everything In This World

By Viv

Author's Notes:

A entirely insufficient thank you to my beta Filly - without her pointing the way to a deeper Chlex bond, this chapter and subsequent chapters would never have been born.

Also a huge wonderful thanks to everyone who has been kind enough to leave reviews here. I appreciate each and every one, and they all encourage me to keep on writing - especially when I feel like I'm a talentless hack who has no business posting things up for people to read. So thanks! ;-)

*~*~ Part Thirty-Three ~*~*

Chloe's eyes flittered open, blinking hazily in the darkness around her.

It took her a moment for her confused mind to catch on to why her bed felt so luxuriously soft and silky, and why she had this uncomfortable gnawing sensation that she was being closely watched for no sane person reason at all.

She was mystified when she realised that this was not in fact, her bed, the telltale rustle of the silky sheets swishing underneath her and the dusky colour of the fabric alerting her to that fact almost as soon as her had mind caught up to the rest of her body.

Mystified was okay, but she was both excited and slightly horrified when she realised that the uncomfortable sensation of being watched was not in actuality a sensation at all, but in fact reality, because right at this moment she was being hawkishly scrutinised by Lex's haunted pale blue orbs, glittering in the pearly light of the moon.

A sharp intake of breath was the only sign that Chloe betrayed of her surprise. The events of the night were coming back to her now, including the dramatic yet extremely enjoyable explanation of why exactly she found herself in Lex's bed, staring half-dreamily into his murky blue eyes.

"Hey." She greeted him quietly, almost afraid to break the crystal silence of his contemplation. She stared curiously back at him, uncomfortably aware of her nakedness underneath the thin coverlet that was draped over her body.

Lex kissed her gently in reply before drawing closer to her, his hand creeping underneath the sheets to rest on her warm skin. He allowed it to rest there, all the while looking deeply into her eyes. To Chloe, it felt like he was trying to communicate something about his feelings at the moment, feelings that welled so profoundly deep within him that he couldn't articulate into words.

Or maybe she was just being overly emotional and sentimental due to the tiny but significant fact that she had just experienced one of the more romantic yet earth-shatteringly significant moments of her life.

"So ..." Chloe said, again breaking the crystal silence.

"So." Lex echoed, in an equally serious tone.

"What happens now?" She shifted so that she could prop her head up on her elbow. "Besides the me sneaking back into my house before my dad notices I've been out the whole night thing. He's mellow, but he's not that mellow."

Lex chuckled in appreciation. "You missed the sneaking in without getting caught part. I don't want to see you grounded until the next millennium on my account."

"Not to mention the blindingly obvious question of what the hell you would do without me."

Lex gently brushed away messy blond tendrils off her face. "Go crazy. And probably feel incredibly lonely." He smiled a little awkwardly at his admission before leaning back away from her, allowing his body to sink more comfortably onto the four poster bed.

Chloe's forehead creased into a frown and she bit her lip in a whirl of conflicted emotions. She found the whole Lex showing his real feelings part of their relationship slightly wacky and a lot more scary than she had ever imagined. Not that she was going to shrink from the responsibility of being there for Lex - she hoped she was a better person than that.

It would just take some getting used to.

"No you wouldn't." She joked, trying to lighten the serious curve of his mouth. "Although, who else but me could drive you insane with my, let's face it, occasionally wacky theories about life, the universe and everything?"

"Who else?" He echoed, an unreadable expression in his eyes. Chloe remained silent as she contemplated the intense set of his handsome features, half-hidden in the shadows of the large, spaciously appointed room. She was suddenly struck by the awesome realisation that getting to know Lex - the real Lex - would entail a whole lot more than just making him smile and spending time doing stuff with him. There was a whole other Lex lurking underneath the comfortable veneer of the reformed Metropolis playboy and confident billionaire-to-be, and for all her investigative abilities that she hoped she possessed, Chloe was only just now scratching the polished surface of Lex.

Chloe was glad for the darkness that hid her undoubtedly unsettled expression as she drew herself against him, nestling into the familiar confines of his frame.

She sighed, smiling into his chest. She knew that she would have to get home soon, but she didn't want to leave just yet. It was almost magical the way that she was lying here with Lex now, naked as the day she was born, yet feeling so completely comfortable about it. It felt like the most natural thing to do.

She sighed again contentedly, acutely aware of the regularity of the heart that pounded against her chest. She tilted her head up slightly to catch him looking unshrinkingly down at her, his eyes dark azure in the moonlight.

"What?" She asked him gently, almost afraid to snap him out of the raw emotional state he seemed to be in. He had been so quiet, so gentle - in short, so unLex-like, that it was beginning to spook her a little. Chloe liked twists and labyrinths as much as the next reporter, but even this was beginning to tax her a little more than she thought necessary.

"Nothing." Lex shrugged imperceptibly, breaking their intense eye contact as he looked heavenwards. "I just worry ... you don't know what you're getting into with me, that's all."

"I know." She said simply, as her gaze shifted to his bared shoulder gleaming pearly in the dim light. "At least, I want to know." Chloe's thought express was interrupted as her eyes caught sight of something that made her instinctively jerk her head up. "What's this?" She asked abruptly.

She didn't know how she had missed it before. It gleamed pale and large in the moonlit room, a scar that marred the marble-like smoothness of his skin. She wondered fleetingly whether his heart looked like that, a seemingly flawless thing that on closer inspection was marred by emotional scars that only he could feel.

Chloe reached out and gingerly traced the contours of the scar over his skin, watching as his jaw tensed in anxiety. After an interminable silence he spoke, his voice husky with emotion. "A knife wound." Off Chloe's startled look he elaborated. "Did Clark tell you about Club Zero?"

Chloe sank back slightly on the bed, propping her head up with her hand so that she could look at him more fully. "I know some of it. I helped Clark try to find you after ... well, that guy kidnapped you. But he never told me what happened. He said," she swallowed. "he said that he didn't feel comfortable telling me stuff that you hadn't even wanted him to know. About your past."

Lex nodded as a ghost of a smile flittered over his face. "He's the Fort Knox of secrets." He mumbled to himself as Chloe looked on. She was acutely aware that this was something that Lex didn't share easily with anybody, and she didn't want to be too pushy about it. "There are many things in my past that I'm not exactly proud of Chloe." He began, his voice ringing in the deathly quiet of the room. "Most of those things I can live with. But Club Zero ... " His voice shook, forcing to him take a deep breath before continuing. "There was a girl, Amanda. She was engaged to this jerk -"

" - the guy who kidnapped you." Chloe interrupted quietly.

"Right. He was cheating on her and I thought - I don't know what I thought, but I brought her to Zero one night just so she could see that he was cheating on her. He'd been cheating on her for a while you see." He smiled cuttingly.

"Sounds like you were just being a good friend. I don't see anything wrong with that."

"But I wasn't being a good friend. I liked her and frankly, I hated the guy. I thought it was a good way to break them up." He sighed as he sat venomously up. Chloe managed to glimpse the half-regretful, half-resentful set of his jaw before he dipped his head, running a hand through his scalp in agitation.

She stared at his exposed back, marvelling at the smoothness of his skin before biting her lip in confusion. Her eyes traced the outline of his taut muscles, noting the sudden tension against the smooth outline on his skin. She was beginning to reassess her previous, though perhaps mistaken, impression that Lex was the epitome of coolness and calmness under pressure. While he had always been that way in her presence, she had never really entertained the remote possibility that he may not be like that underneath all the trappings of his self-confidence and wealth.

Chloe was suddenly reminded of Lana and the night she had met the ex-cheerleader at the graveyard. Chloe had realised that night that it had been entirely too easy to mistake Lana as the happy, vivacious ex-fairy princess, simply because she had played that part so well to the rest of the world. Had Chloe been mistaken about Lex in the same way? To the outside world, Lex was the all powerful, all conquering larger than Smallville individual who knew exactly what to do in almost every situation. But was that what the real Lex was like?

"Last year I found out that she'd killed herself." He continued after a while, breaking Chloe out of her thoughts. "I didn't even know. I'd wanted to help her so much, to make up for what happened. I thought staying away was the best thing I could do. But even when I'm trying to do something right it ends up ... I end up hurting people anyway." He finished brokenly.

"Hey." Chloe reached out but refrained from touching him at the last minute. She felt like an intruder in his private pain and while she wanted to be there for him, she sensed that it would have been too much for one night for her to put herself into the vortex of his inner turmoil. "But all the things in your past ... they kind of make you the person you are today, don't you think? I mean, without doing and going through all that stuff, you wouldn't be here. I mean you'd be here but it wouldn't be you being here. It'd be a different you, you know?" She smiled abashedly. "And I think in that convoluted sentence there was an original thought or two in there."

"You're right." He looked slightly taken aback, and Chloe hardly dared to think that she had seen something about Lex had he hadn't. Chalk one up to the sometimes insecure high school girl with a penchant for over analysing anything and everything except herself. "I wouldn't be me."

"And I don't want to come off sounding too self-centred or anything, but I kind of like the you that you are now. Scar and shady past and questionable choice of club names to frequent and all." She smiled impishly, hoping to lighten the mood a little.

He laughed loudly, his eyes sparkling in sudden animation. To Chloe the room suddenly felt inexplicably lighter, although that may have been due to the growing pre-dawn light. Sensing that they had passed some sort of couply milestone, she sank happily against him, unashamedly absorbing the delightful feeling of being in Lex's arms.

(c) October 2002