Author: LCA
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or anything affiliated to Smallville. I own a couch...and...WAIT!!!...the 20 cents I just found underneath the couch! Things are looking up!!!!
A/N: New chapter up. woo-hoo! This chapter is going to develop the Chlex aspect a tad more. Mmmmmmmmm, Lex....o, sorry, what? Must have dazed off...Um, where was I? Oh, right. Just a warning: language will be used in this chapter, but it IS PG-13 so....come on. You have been warned.
To the reviewers:
THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!! I love reviews and I love to hear the little voice say "You've Got Mail" and you have filled my life with both! You don't know how happy that makes me! YAY!!!!!!!!
Stay With Me
* * *
Clark shouldered his way through the masses, trying to get to his locker so he could grab his stuff and get home. All he wanted to do was climb up to the loft and stare at the sky for a few hours. Maybe after that he could begin to process what was happening and deal with society.
Maybe not.
Most likely not.
Clark had made it to his locker and was half way out the door, starting to think that he was actually going to get out home free when...
"Hey, Clark!"
Turning, Clark prepared himself to deal with Chloe. There she stood, in all of her analytical glory; hands on hips and eyebrows raised.
"Now I KNOW you didn't think that you could get away with skipping school and not taking me along, right?"
Clark's response was a brilliant silence and a scuffle of his shoe. With an impatient roll of her eyes, Chloe walked to him. She noticed his cheek and immediately her annoyance was replaced with concern.
"Geez, Clark, what happened? Get in a fight with an alley cat or something? That has to hurt!"
He just gave her a one-shouldered shrug and returned to his retreat back to the parking lot. The soft tread of footsteps behind him let him know that she was following him. His shoulder's tightened subconsciously.
Chloe chose to continue the conversation, despite Clark's obvious lack of participation. "Look, you need to talk about it. It's not possible for you to be 'fine' or for 'nothing' to be wrong, so don't even try those one worded answers on me."
Silence.
"Clark, you're going to have to face me sooner or later. You're going to have to face the world sooner or later. Shutting yourself off is not going to help at all. And you know what? This whole guilt trip is getting really old. Lana's dead and there's nothing you could have done about it, so why don't you just let it g-"
Clark stopped in his tracks so fast that Chloe ran into him. He turned around in the blink of an eye and gripped her arms so tight he heard her suck in her breath from pain. She looked at him with fear in her eyes, and as much as it killed him to see it, Clark was beyond being polite now.
"Is that what you think, Chloe? Is that what you tell yourself at night? That Lana's death was unpreventable and therefore none of us are to blame? God, how selfish can you get. You know, if there's anyone I blame, it's you. You were supposed to hang out with her that night. Where the hell were you?"
He paused for a breath. She started to answer but he cut her off first.
"No, let me tell you where you were. You were in the office. Some big scoop came your way and you just had to follow up. You put your work ahead of you friends. But hey, no big deal, you're Chloe Sullivan, and work ALWAYS comes first to you. So while you're off interviewing Lex, getting your big, important story, Lana's waiting outside of the Talon. For a half- hour, that's what was in the police report. She waited a half-hour before she gave up and started to walk home. That's when..........and she didn't even stand a chance, had no way of knowing what was happening to her..."
Clark whirled around, fighting the tears that kept trying to get out. He felt a soft hand on his back. Impossibly, this only infuriated him more, but he was past words by now and could only concentrate on not crying. Not in front of her. Not in front of anyone.
Her voice came to him, small, comforting.
"Clark, I don't pretend to think that I'm innocent in this. I see Lana's blood on my hands all day, and I wash them tell the crack and chafe but I can't get the damned spot out. There's no excuse for what happened. For what I did. But as soon as the interview was done, I had Lex drive me to the Talon. I missed her by minutes. And it's all on me; I know that. But there was nothing anyone could have done once he had honed in on her. There was nothing..."
She let her voice trail off, and Clark was glad. Glad he didn't have to listen to anymore lies about how everyone had tried to help Lana. How everyone had just been minutes away from saving her.
In a span of "just minutes" his entire future had been turned into ash.
His voice cut like steel.
"We don't know if there's nothing anyone could have done because no one tried. No one stepped in when they heard her screaming for help. I know Lana; I know she would have screamed so hard that all of main street could have heard her. As far as I'm concerned everyone is to blame for her death. This whole fucking town failed Lana, and they failed me. YOU failed Lana, and YOU failed me."
He kept his back to her so he didn't have to see her shocked expression. It wasn't HIS fault. She was the one who wanted him to open up; hoped she was happy with what she got.
"It's hard for me to look at you right now, because I'm filled with so much hate it's only a matter of time before I lash out at someone, and I would rather it not be you because somewhere, deep down, I know that I must care for you. However, I'm finding it incredibly hard to remember that. You mean nothing to me right now. Just leave me alone, Chloe. Leave me alone like you left Lana alone."
Before she could respond, Clark was in his truck and peeling out of the parking lot. He just wanted to get away from everything, any way possible.
***
If Chloe Sullivan liked one thing about herself, it was her pride. Take away her friends, her house, her family, and (God forbid) her newspaper, and she would still look you in the eyes and have some smart comment. Or so she had always thought. She had lived through some times that definitely did not merit a frolic through the meadow, but she never cried.
Never.
Because only weak people cried. Only people who couldn't handle life cried; and if you couldn't handle the heat than get out of the kitchen.
Still, somehow no matter how hard she tried to tell herself these things right now, she could feel the hot salt pour from her eyes and trail down her cheeks, and she had to face the truth.
She was crying. The No-Nonsense Reporter Extraordinaire of Smallville High was crying in the middle of the parking lot.
No, not crying.
She was sobbing.
And she didn't care who saw her, because her best friend, the guy she had always dreamed of being more than best friends with, had just told her that he wouldn't shed a tear if she turned up dead tomorrow.
Maybe she should turn up dead somewhere. Perhaps that would cause Clark to care for her. Sure as hell worked for Lana.
With a gasp she realized what she had just thought, and the sobs came harder now, her chest having to heave to get enough air. And inside that chest she could feel her heart breaking.
***
Off in the distance the tardy bell rang. A group of druggies made their way back to the building, having declared themselves adequately high. All of the students in that building were settling down into their seats, maybe starting a note to a friend that they had just finished saying goodbye to in the hall.
A teacher stepped to the front and called attention. The students groaned and took out their textbooks while the teacher called attendance.
Only two absences that day.
Kent and Sullivan.
***
Crying, as it turns out, is a lot like Pringles: once you pop, you just can't stop.
Chloe had cried in the parking lot for a good 15 minutes after second period had started. Then she had cried in the car, thanking whatever supernatural being was up there that no one drove on the roads at 9:30 in the morning. Then she cried as she fumbled with the keys, trying to get into her house. She stumbled up the stairs, clawed into a tank top and pajama bottoms, and threw herself onto the bed.
She cried, she sobbed, she wept, she whimpered. Harder than the night Lana had died; harder than the night her mother had left.
And through it all, she kept seeing his face. His burning eyes; his clenched jaw.
Chloe could never be called an optimist, but something in her had always believed that no one could truly hate another person. Sure there was room for strong dislike, maybe even a loathe here and there, but not true hatred. She had been proven wrong today.
Now she sat, reduced to half-mindedly watching some stupid soap opera about a girl named Sheridan that couldn't seem to decide which brother she loved more. Having only watched half of one episode, it was still painfully obvious whom she would choose: Luis Lopez-Fitzsomethingorother, although all of the pouting and lip biting was entertaining.
"Just choose the hot one and get it over with," Chloe shouted at the screen as Sheridan look at Luis, then Antonio, then Luis again, then the camera as it zoomed out and went to commercials.
Rolling her eyes, Chloe pushed herself up to raid the fridge before the show started again. Before she could get to the kitchen, there was a knock on the door.
Opening it, she was surprised to see Lex standing there. He, on the other hand, didn't look surprised to see her at home on a school day. If anything he looked pissed. Breezing past her, he took a seat on the couch.
"Please, let yourself in," Chloe muttered. It didn't have any affect on him, and she knew it wouldn't. Closing the door, she returned to the armchair she had previously been occupying.
"Well..."
Lex said it as though she were the one that had some explaining to do. As though SHE were the one that had showed up at HIS door and interrupted HIS perfectly legitimate pity party.
"Well? What does that mean?"
Chloe was torn between trading insults with Lex and watching the show, which had just come back on.
"What do you think it means? Well, why weren't you at school? Well, why haven't you called me back? Well, where do we stand after that kiss? "
Now Chloe had no problem deciding what to focus on. She stared at Lex incredulously
"Excuse me, how did you know I wasn't at school? Have you been following me?"
"Don't flatter yourself, Ms. Sullivan. I was simply driving by and noticed your car in the driveway. Figured we were past due for a heart to heart."
"Oh, uh-huh..."
Chloe's eyes found themselves being drawn back towards the screen where Antonio was making some random threat at Luis.
"Are you sick or something?"
"What do you care?"
"It's just that you seem rather dressed down." Lex guffawed.
Sheepishly Chloe looked down at her pale yellow tank and dancing Twinkie pajama pants.
'There's nothing to feel embarrassed about. You don't have to look good for Lex.' She told herself, but her cheeks still flared.
"If you have to know...Clark and I had a fight. It really upset me, so I skipped."
Lex's smile faded and he honestly looked concerned. He got off of the couch and sat down on the arm of her lazy-boy.
"Do you want to talk about it?" His voice could almost pass for sympathetic.
Chloe turned from the screen as commercials once again blared. Looking up she was startled to see Lex's ice blue eyes that close to her. She could smell his cologne, which reminded her faintly of her mother's spice rack. His arm was just barely around her shoulders, keeping him balanced on the edge of the chair.
Memories of his lips came back to her. They had been so soft and gentle; nothing like she had pictured kissing him would be like. She had always assumed he was a rough kisser, that he would push and prod too much for her taste. Her cheeks flushed a little more with each passing second.
"Well?"
Oh, right, he had asked a question.
"No," she managed to breath. "No I don't want to talk about Clark."
"Then do you want to talk about us?"
"No."
"Then what do you want to talk about."
The way his lips moved when he talked mesmerized her. Chloe knew she was staring at them obscenely, but they were so...pretty...
She paused to wonder if she was a terrible person. Not more than a half hour ago, she had been crying like the world was ending over a farm boy, and now could hardly catch a breath talking to this city slicker.
Chloe knew she should tell him that they couldn't be more than friends. She should explain that Clark had her heart, and probably would for quite awhile. Her mouth opened to say the words, but as soon as her lips parted, Lox's descended upon them.
In the three hours that Chloe had sulked, she had rather affectively managed to numb herself. It was the slow kind of numb that invaded the body after crying which didn't make you feel good or bad. It didn't make you feel at all. But now, her whole world exploded into feeling again. She could feel her heart pounding, feel her breath catch, but mostly she felt Lex.
His chest under her hands, his nose as it tapped at her cheek, his lips...
If Chloe had thought herself mesmerized by his lips while they were talking, she was raptured by them now.
The kiss went on and on, and could continue to do so forever as far as Chloe was concerned. When they finally did pull apart, Chloe just looked up at him breathlessly.
"Well..." Lex said, searching her eyes to make sure she was ok with what had just happened.
"Well, well." Chloe answered with a grin, pulling him closer.
They shared another kiss, harder than the last one.
Chloe pulled apart suddenly.
"My show! I have to know who she picks!"
Lex smiled and reached for the remote. With a forceful click, he turned the TV off and threw the remote to the other side of the room.
"She picks the guy she was meant to be with."
With another grin, Chloe pulled him to her again and closed her eyes tight.
Clark, who?
***
a/n: Well, what do you think? Sorry it's taken to so long but speech really does take up SO much time. It ends this Saturday, so I should be able to update (don't quote me on this) once a week after this weekend. I'll try. So, anyways, you should review! No really, you should!
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or anything affiliated to Smallville. I own a couch...and...WAIT!!!...the 20 cents I just found underneath the couch! Things are looking up!!!!
A/N: New chapter up. woo-hoo! This chapter is going to develop the Chlex aspect a tad more. Mmmmmmmmm, Lex....o, sorry, what? Must have dazed off...Um, where was I? Oh, right. Just a warning: language will be used in this chapter, but it IS PG-13 so....come on. You have been warned.
To the reviewers:
THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!! I love reviews and I love to hear the little voice say "You've Got Mail" and you have filled my life with both! You don't know how happy that makes me! YAY!!!!!!!!
Stay With Me
* * *
Clark shouldered his way through the masses, trying to get to his locker so he could grab his stuff and get home. All he wanted to do was climb up to the loft and stare at the sky for a few hours. Maybe after that he could begin to process what was happening and deal with society.
Maybe not.
Most likely not.
Clark had made it to his locker and was half way out the door, starting to think that he was actually going to get out home free when...
"Hey, Clark!"
Turning, Clark prepared himself to deal with Chloe. There she stood, in all of her analytical glory; hands on hips and eyebrows raised.
"Now I KNOW you didn't think that you could get away with skipping school and not taking me along, right?"
Clark's response was a brilliant silence and a scuffle of his shoe. With an impatient roll of her eyes, Chloe walked to him. She noticed his cheek and immediately her annoyance was replaced with concern.
"Geez, Clark, what happened? Get in a fight with an alley cat or something? That has to hurt!"
He just gave her a one-shouldered shrug and returned to his retreat back to the parking lot. The soft tread of footsteps behind him let him know that she was following him. His shoulder's tightened subconsciously.
Chloe chose to continue the conversation, despite Clark's obvious lack of participation. "Look, you need to talk about it. It's not possible for you to be 'fine' or for 'nothing' to be wrong, so don't even try those one worded answers on me."
Silence.
"Clark, you're going to have to face me sooner or later. You're going to have to face the world sooner or later. Shutting yourself off is not going to help at all. And you know what? This whole guilt trip is getting really old. Lana's dead and there's nothing you could have done about it, so why don't you just let it g-"
Clark stopped in his tracks so fast that Chloe ran into him. He turned around in the blink of an eye and gripped her arms so tight he heard her suck in her breath from pain. She looked at him with fear in her eyes, and as much as it killed him to see it, Clark was beyond being polite now.
"Is that what you think, Chloe? Is that what you tell yourself at night? That Lana's death was unpreventable and therefore none of us are to blame? God, how selfish can you get. You know, if there's anyone I blame, it's you. You were supposed to hang out with her that night. Where the hell were you?"
He paused for a breath. She started to answer but he cut her off first.
"No, let me tell you where you were. You were in the office. Some big scoop came your way and you just had to follow up. You put your work ahead of you friends. But hey, no big deal, you're Chloe Sullivan, and work ALWAYS comes first to you. So while you're off interviewing Lex, getting your big, important story, Lana's waiting outside of the Talon. For a half- hour, that's what was in the police report. She waited a half-hour before she gave up and started to walk home. That's when..........and she didn't even stand a chance, had no way of knowing what was happening to her..."
Clark whirled around, fighting the tears that kept trying to get out. He felt a soft hand on his back. Impossibly, this only infuriated him more, but he was past words by now and could only concentrate on not crying. Not in front of her. Not in front of anyone.
Her voice came to him, small, comforting.
"Clark, I don't pretend to think that I'm innocent in this. I see Lana's blood on my hands all day, and I wash them tell the crack and chafe but I can't get the damned spot out. There's no excuse for what happened. For what I did. But as soon as the interview was done, I had Lex drive me to the Talon. I missed her by minutes. And it's all on me; I know that. But there was nothing anyone could have done once he had honed in on her. There was nothing..."
She let her voice trail off, and Clark was glad. Glad he didn't have to listen to anymore lies about how everyone had tried to help Lana. How everyone had just been minutes away from saving her.
In a span of "just minutes" his entire future had been turned into ash.
His voice cut like steel.
"We don't know if there's nothing anyone could have done because no one tried. No one stepped in when they heard her screaming for help. I know Lana; I know she would have screamed so hard that all of main street could have heard her. As far as I'm concerned everyone is to blame for her death. This whole fucking town failed Lana, and they failed me. YOU failed Lana, and YOU failed me."
He kept his back to her so he didn't have to see her shocked expression. It wasn't HIS fault. She was the one who wanted him to open up; hoped she was happy with what she got.
"It's hard for me to look at you right now, because I'm filled with so much hate it's only a matter of time before I lash out at someone, and I would rather it not be you because somewhere, deep down, I know that I must care for you. However, I'm finding it incredibly hard to remember that. You mean nothing to me right now. Just leave me alone, Chloe. Leave me alone like you left Lana alone."
Before she could respond, Clark was in his truck and peeling out of the parking lot. He just wanted to get away from everything, any way possible.
***
If Chloe Sullivan liked one thing about herself, it was her pride. Take away her friends, her house, her family, and (God forbid) her newspaper, and she would still look you in the eyes and have some smart comment. Or so she had always thought. She had lived through some times that definitely did not merit a frolic through the meadow, but she never cried.
Never.
Because only weak people cried. Only people who couldn't handle life cried; and if you couldn't handle the heat than get out of the kitchen.
Still, somehow no matter how hard she tried to tell herself these things right now, she could feel the hot salt pour from her eyes and trail down her cheeks, and she had to face the truth.
She was crying. The No-Nonsense Reporter Extraordinaire of Smallville High was crying in the middle of the parking lot.
No, not crying.
She was sobbing.
And she didn't care who saw her, because her best friend, the guy she had always dreamed of being more than best friends with, had just told her that he wouldn't shed a tear if she turned up dead tomorrow.
Maybe she should turn up dead somewhere. Perhaps that would cause Clark to care for her. Sure as hell worked for Lana.
With a gasp she realized what she had just thought, and the sobs came harder now, her chest having to heave to get enough air. And inside that chest she could feel her heart breaking.
***
Off in the distance the tardy bell rang. A group of druggies made their way back to the building, having declared themselves adequately high. All of the students in that building were settling down into their seats, maybe starting a note to a friend that they had just finished saying goodbye to in the hall.
A teacher stepped to the front and called attention. The students groaned and took out their textbooks while the teacher called attendance.
Only two absences that day.
Kent and Sullivan.
***
Crying, as it turns out, is a lot like Pringles: once you pop, you just can't stop.
Chloe had cried in the parking lot for a good 15 minutes after second period had started. Then she had cried in the car, thanking whatever supernatural being was up there that no one drove on the roads at 9:30 in the morning. Then she cried as she fumbled with the keys, trying to get into her house. She stumbled up the stairs, clawed into a tank top and pajama bottoms, and threw herself onto the bed.
She cried, she sobbed, she wept, she whimpered. Harder than the night Lana had died; harder than the night her mother had left.
And through it all, she kept seeing his face. His burning eyes; his clenched jaw.
Chloe could never be called an optimist, but something in her had always believed that no one could truly hate another person. Sure there was room for strong dislike, maybe even a loathe here and there, but not true hatred. She had been proven wrong today.
Now she sat, reduced to half-mindedly watching some stupid soap opera about a girl named Sheridan that couldn't seem to decide which brother she loved more. Having only watched half of one episode, it was still painfully obvious whom she would choose: Luis Lopez-Fitzsomethingorother, although all of the pouting and lip biting was entertaining.
"Just choose the hot one and get it over with," Chloe shouted at the screen as Sheridan look at Luis, then Antonio, then Luis again, then the camera as it zoomed out and went to commercials.
Rolling her eyes, Chloe pushed herself up to raid the fridge before the show started again. Before she could get to the kitchen, there was a knock on the door.
Opening it, she was surprised to see Lex standing there. He, on the other hand, didn't look surprised to see her at home on a school day. If anything he looked pissed. Breezing past her, he took a seat on the couch.
"Please, let yourself in," Chloe muttered. It didn't have any affect on him, and she knew it wouldn't. Closing the door, she returned to the armchair she had previously been occupying.
"Well..."
Lex said it as though she were the one that had some explaining to do. As though SHE were the one that had showed up at HIS door and interrupted HIS perfectly legitimate pity party.
"Well? What does that mean?"
Chloe was torn between trading insults with Lex and watching the show, which had just come back on.
"What do you think it means? Well, why weren't you at school? Well, why haven't you called me back? Well, where do we stand after that kiss? "
Now Chloe had no problem deciding what to focus on. She stared at Lex incredulously
"Excuse me, how did you know I wasn't at school? Have you been following me?"
"Don't flatter yourself, Ms. Sullivan. I was simply driving by and noticed your car in the driveway. Figured we were past due for a heart to heart."
"Oh, uh-huh..."
Chloe's eyes found themselves being drawn back towards the screen where Antonio was making some random threat at Luis.
"Are you sick or something?"
"What do you care?"
"It's just that you seem rather dressed down." Lex guffawed.
Sheepishly Chloe looked down at her pale yellow tank and dancing Twinkie pajama pants.
'There's nothing to feel embarrassed about. You don't have to look good for Lex.' She told herself, but her cheeks still flared.
"If you have to know...Clark and I had a fight. It really upset me, so I skipped."
Lex's smile faded and he honestly looked concerned. He got off of the couch and sat down on the arm of her lazy-boy.
"Do you want to talk about it?" His voice could almost pass for sympathetic.
Chloe turned from the screen as commercials once again blared. Looking up she was startled to see Lex's ice blue eyes that close to her. She could smell his cologne, which reminded her faintly of her mother's spice rack. His arm was just barely around her shoulders, keeping him balanced on the edge of the chair.
Memories of his lips came back to her. They had been so soft and gentle; nothing like she had pictured kissing him would be like. She had always assumed he was a rough kisser, that he would push and prod too much for her taste. Her cheeks flushed a little more with each passing second.
"Well?"
Oh, right, he had asked a question.
"No," she managed to breath. "No I don't want to talk about Clark."
"Then do you want to talk about us?"
"No."
"Then what do you want to talk about."
The way his lips moved when he talked mesmerized her. Chloe knew she was staring at them obscenely, but they were so...pretty...
She paused to wonder if she was a terrible person. Not more than a half hour ago, she had been crying like the world was ending over a farm boy, and now could hardly catch a breath talking to this city slicker.
Chloe knew she should tell him that they couldn't be more than friends. She should explain that Clark had her heart, and probably would for quite awhile. Her mouth opened to say the words, but as soon as her lips parted, Lox's descended upon them.
In the three hours that Chloe had sulked, she had rather affectively managed to numb herself. It was the slow kind of numb that invaded the body after crying which didn't make you feel good or bad. It didn't make you feel at all. But now, her whole world exploded into feeling again. She could feel her heart pounding, feel her breath catch, but mostly she felt Lex.
His chest under her hands, his nose as it tapped at her cheek, his lips...
If Chloe had thought herself mesmerized by his lips while they were talking, she was raptured by them now.
The kiss went on and on, and could continue to do so forever as far as Chloe was concerned. When they finally did pull apart, Chloe just looked up at him breathlessly.
"Well..." Lex said, searching her eyes to make sure she was ok with what had just happened.
"Well, well." Chloe answered with a grin, pulling him closer.
They shared another kiss, harder than the last one.
Chloe pulled apart suddenly.
"My show! I have to know who she picks!"
Lex smiled and reached for the remote. With a forceful click, he turned the TV off and threw the remote to the other side of the room.
"She picks the guy she was meant to be with."
With another grin, Chloe pulled him to her again and closed her eyes tight.
Clark, who?
***
a/n: Well, what do you think? Sorry it's taken to so long but speech really does take up SO much time. It ends this Saturday, so I should be able to update (don't quote me on this) once a week after this weekend. I'll try. So, anyways, you should review! No really, you should!