The Great Coupon Clip
By: Loopy
This story is set in early season 3. Chloe is still working for the Daily Planet. Lana and Clark are being mushy. Lex has returned from the island and Helen is gone. Lex and Chloe have not shared information on Lionel yet, but Lex is having therapy sessions. If this is out of whack with the timeline, please forgive me. I can't find season 3 box set, and don't want to be reading through transcripts just to write this little thing.
A/N: Okay, so I was browsing on the other day, when I came across this thread filled with things that Lex and Chloe would never say, but as I was reading them, I started to think up situations in which the characters would say those things without going OOCand voila! A story is born. This thing will be a few chapters long, I don't know how long yet. It's definitely Chlex, although I don't know if anything will actually happen between the characters yet. I am literally taking these random quotes and basing the plot around making the characters say these things... so don't expect anything too deep.
Storyline: Lex and Chloe are ordered to take a day off and end up running into one another at the Talon. A fic based on what the characters would never say.
Today's things the characters would never say but do:
Lex: "Dude"
Chloe: "I'm thinking of dying my hair and changing my name. Maybe to something with the initials L.L."
Lex Luthor was taking some time for himself today. Well, he was actually ordered to take some time for himself today, but he was quickly regretting taking said time alone outside of the comfort of his study.
On a whim, he had decided to spend his day lounging at the Talon, drinking coffee and reading anything that was not work related in hopes of relaxing a little bit. The moment he entered and purchased his coffee however, he knew what a mistake he had made.
Lex turned from the counter to scan the room for a table. The Talon was extremely busy and filled with teenagers loitering everywhere. He scowled a little in distaste. It was either this, or the Beanery, but seeing as he did own half of the Talon he couldn't very well go anywhere else in town.
Lana was, of course, working today as it was a Saturday, and a smitten Clark Kent was sitting at the counter making fawning over her. Lex had considered sticking around to make conversation with them, but they were too busy being mushy with one another to take much notice of him.
His eyes caught a familiar blonde head in the far corner on one of the sofas all alone. He looked around again for an empty table, but had no luck. He would either have to stand at the counter watching Clark and Lana make gooey eyes at one another, or go and join Chloe Sullivan whose current body language conveyed misery. Opting for the latter, Lex made his way through the crowd, juggling his coffee and newspaper, pushing a little when necessary, and being jostled by rowdy football players, but with his eyes firmly on the objective: the free seat next to Chloe.
He was almost there when one of the jocks pushed one of his fellow footballers directly into Lex, elbowing him hard in the ribs. Lex let out a grunt of pain and frustration.
"Watch where you're going dude." the jock said, without even looking around to see who he had hit.
Lex, who had miraculously managed to get through the assault without dropping his coffee or his copy of the Saturday Planet scowled even deeper.
"I'm sorry. Was I in your way? Dude?" Lex responded to the jock's wide back, drawing out the word dude so that it sounded like a cool and sophisticated insult. The jock turned with an exasperated sigh, probably imagining he was about to face Brian the AV nerd, or any other member of the 'not-a-jock squad' aka, a member of the uncool. When he looked around, however, he found himself face to face with Lex Luthor, prince of Smallville, and for a plebeian such as himself, that was rarely a good place to be.
The transformation on the moron jock's face was incredible. From a look of superiority and exasperation, was born the expression of regret and possibly a little bit of fear. Lex loved that look like he loved no other.
"I-I'm sorry Mr. Luthor. I hadn't noticed that it was you I had hit." The jock said.
"Well, maybe next time you run into someone, you could actually turn around and apologize." Lex replied in his most superior tone of voice. "It would save you the embarrassment of having to do it later." The jock turned a little red, but nodded his head. Clearly, as much as he hated being chastised by the local pariah, he did not want to be kicked out of his favourite hang out.
Lex dismissed the jock with a wave of his hand, and walked over to join Chloe on the sofa. She wore an amused look.
"He almost peed his pants." She observed as the jock turned back to his friends, whispered something, and the group moved away to the other end of the room, indiscriminately shoving anyone in their path.
"And yet he has learned nothing." Lex responded with a sigh as the jock actually did hit Brian the AV nerd, causing him to spill his hot chocolate all down his front. Lex shook his head.
"I don't actually know if any of them have the capacity to learn anything." Chloe replied dryly. Lex smiled appreciatively at her comment and leaned back into his seat more comfortably.
"You have to try though." Lex said with a grin.
"I guess you do." She agreed. "Is that today's mission? Educating the masses? Or do you have something more worthwhile up your sleeve?" Lex contemplated her for a moment before deciding that she wasn't trying to weasel an interview out of him. She seemed far too pre-occupied for that today.
"Therapist prescribed day off." He replied. "Apparently I'm a workaholic."
"Well the first step is admitting you have a problem." Lex smiled at her response. Chloe Sullivan was certainly one of the only people in town who could take allusions to his mental health with a smile and a joke. Perhaps that was the reason why he felt at ease joking about it himself. He wouldn't even think of mentioning his therapy sessions to Clark or Lana, for example, who would give him the supposedly comforting pity eyes.
"And what exactly does one do on a therapist prescribed day off?" She inquired.
"Well, one has a coffee and relaxes with a newspaper, while enjoying the company of charming young women of course. The idea is that I will be less tense and paranoid apparently." he responded, only a hint of bitterness colouring his words. He raised his coffee to his lips and took a sip, studying the small smile on Chloe's lips, and the way that her eyes were drawn away from him after a few moments of silence. She was obviously just as pre-occupied now as she had seen when he first spotted her. He turned her gaze to see what she was looking at, and was not at all surprised to see that it was none other than the Clark and Lana show.
"Penny for your thoughts." he enquired ironically, his right eyebrow cocked in that inquisitively superior way that he had.
"I'm thinking of dying my hair and changing my name." she replied miserably. "maybe to something with the initials L.L." The remark was honest and humourless, showing a newer, more bitter side to the plucky girl-reporter that Lex knew. He was suddenly, and inexplicably, uncomfortable with Chloe's show of self-deprecation. He was even a little irritated, in fact. He watched Chloe, as she longingly watched Clark brush a stray strand of hair out of Lana's face after she rang up a customer.
Lex leaned forward to catch Chloe's eye.
"I think blonde is really just your colour." He said kindly. "Although brunette admittedly does have some attractive qualities, blonde really has the ability to… draw attention."
"What if I don't want to draw attention?" she asked.
"I thought that was exactly what you wanted." He turned his eyes meaningfully to Clark, whose eyes never left Lana Lang as she continued to make coffee and ring customers up at the till. Lex looked back at her, to find her studying him rather than Clark, and felt his mission was accomplished. Chloe blushed a little at having been such an open book, and hastily changed the subject.
"I'm taking a day off too." She said with a grin. "father-prescribed day off that is. Apparently I too am a member of workaholics anonymous. He's afraid I may get an ulcer." He was grateful that they had moved on from the circle of angst that was the Chloe-Clark-Lana triangle. Lex liked Chloe, but there was only so much teen drama that he could take at once. After awhile it caused him severe intellectual indigestion, perhaps the reason he had never spent more than 30 minutes at a time talking to Lana. Ever.
"And what exactly does one do on a father prescribed day off?" He questioned, just as she had questioned him earlier. She responded in kind.
"Well, one has a coffee and relaxes with a pile of newspapers" she gestured to the stack at her feet that he had not noticed until now, "while enjoying the company of charming young businessmen of course. The idea is that I will be less crabby and paranoid apparently. Plus it gives me a chance to work on the great coupon clip."
"The great coupon clip?" Lex asked. Chloe nodded her head and gestured back to the stack of papers.
"These are from the past week. They have all sorts of fliers in them. It's a game we play between me, dad and Lana." She put her coffee down on the end table next to her, and picked up one of the newspapers. She grabbed the fliers from inside the paper, and discarded the rest on the seat between herself and Lex. She showed him the flier.
Lex had to admit that he was intrigued - although that could just be because he had never really read a flier in his entire life.
"Sunday is shopping day, so the game is scored on Sunday mornings. Each person has a week in which they must collect as many good coupons as possible. The coupons MUST be for something that everyone in the household can make use of, although they don't necessarily have to want the item for it to be valid." Lex nodded his head in understanding.
"Right, so then a coupon for diapers would be useless, and therefore doesn't count." he said, gesturing to the $5 bulk diapers coupon on the front of the flier in Chloe's lap. She smiled up at him, pleased that he was interested in her competition, and she had seemingly forgotten her previous brooding. Lex felt much better, and smiled as she continued to explain the rules.
"The coupon tally is taken on Sunday morning. Each coupon for less than a dollar off receives 1 point, anything more than a dollar off is worth 3 points. The winner is the person with the most points." She finished.
"What happens in the event of a duplicated coupon?" He asked. "What if Gabe or Lana reads the same flier as you and gets the same coupon, for example?" He said, genuinely interested now. He hadn't expected her to have a good answer to this one, would probably say that it was just a game and it didn't matter if they duplicated coupons, but knew he was wrong when he met her eyes. There was a strange spark evident there. The Great Coupon Clip was nothing if not a competition, and competition, even the idea of competition, seemed to drive Chloe Sullivan. Of course she would have all the rules down to the minutest detail, and he could only assume that she was the one who wrote the rules, and most often won the game.
"Should a coupon be duplicated," she said, as if reading from an official regulations book, "then the points will be decided by a simple game of rock, paper, scissors, which is always to be played as best 2 out of 3. No exceptions."
"And the prize?" Lex found himself being drawn in by her enthusiasm, wanting to know more and more about this game as the seconds passed. Chloe gave him a devilish grin.
"Chocolate cake of course." She said with that gleam in her eye. "The most sinfully delicious chocolate cake in all of Smallville." When Lex cocked his eyebrow questioningly, she continued.
"Randolph's on Tracy Street has this ultra rich cake that comes in these little single serving sizes. The chocolate rush is so good after eating one of these bad boys that you'll be feeling it for hours afterwards, and only the weekly winner gets to have one."
She continued on describing the cake in detail: "…layers of the smoothest fudge icing, that starts melting the second it hits your tongue…"
Her tone of voice was deep and reverent. He could almost picture her describing a lover rather than a dessert, her innocent words coming off as erotic. Out of nowhere, he imagined running his tongue along the smoothest fudge icing, that starts melting the second it hits, as he licked it from Chloe's warm and wanton body.
The idea of it was thrilling, but had come right out of left field. Chloe Sullivan was just a high school girl. She was a friend of a friend. She had rarely featured in any of his sexual fantasies, only once or twice at night while he was sleeping, but certainly not daydreaming in the middle of the Talon as she went on and on in an indecent voice about chocolate. It struck him that he was probably giving her bedroom eyes right now, and blinked quickly, shaking any thought of Chloe Sullivan and chocolate cake right out of his head.
"…and one lonely little cherry on top." She finished with a sigh of desire. If Lex didn't know better, he would assume that Chloe actually was trying to seduce him right there on the couch in a coffee shop. He blinked again, just in case, before making direct eye contact with her.
"And the loser?" he asked in a neutral voice, as if he hadn't just imagined her sighing under him as he devoured melting chocolate from her warm skin.
Chloe snapped right out of her chocolate induced haze and replied with slight distaste: "The loser has to go and buy the necessities at the grocers." Lex nodded his head in understanding. He slid the flier off of Chloe's lap and scanned the front page.
"And how many coupons do you have so far this week?" He inquired. It seemed suddenly important that she win that cake. She shook her head, as if disappointed with herself.
"None." He gave her a slightly disbelieving look. As unimportant a contest as it was, Chloe Sullivan was not the type of girl to just slack off on anything. She seemed to read his mind.
"It's not that I've been procrastinating or anything." She said defensively, grabbing another flier from the pile, ready to prove her work ethic. "I have been really busy lately. It's almost midterms and I'm doing a full course load, I'm writing for the Planet on a weekly basis, and then there's the Torch. I used to be editor and half the staff. Now I AM the staff." she grumbled, turning her eyes to glare again at Clark, who was now Lana-less and heading towards them through the crowd.
Well that's that for today. I do have more ideas brewing, and more fun things that the characters would never say coming up.
Please please review this. I really want to know what people think.
Loops