AN: I would like to remind you that Chlexville is the same rating as
Smallville. I apologize for the last scene.
AAN: Chlexville has not been picked up for Season 3, so I am beginning to
wrap this up. Don't holler at any event that you deem inappropriate for the
season.
AAAN: I apologize for being (1) sappy (2) mushy (3) awfully yikes. The
title and the episode called for it. Again, please. Don't blame me if after
reading this you get itchy. Even I haven't forgiven myself yet.
Disclaimer: Seeing this makes it weird huh since I never write any. Needed
it here though. The gorgeous and heroic George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron, the
very hot Lord Alfred Tennyson, the errmmm weird Walt Whitman, the mucho
delicioso tragic figure of Christopher Marlowe and the sugary Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, and their respective words are not mine. But since they
have been dead and anthologized for longer than any of us has lived, their
poetry are considered public property. (Therefore I don't even need to
disclaim them... Pffft)
Chlexville
Season 2
Episode 5
NOCTURNES WHISPERED IN THE NIGHT
After Martha Kent left for the day to go back to her family. Lex faced his father down in the study. "There are a lot of things that I would suffer during your stay here, father. But this thing you have planned for Martha Kent I will not allow."
"You wound me, Lex. I happen to believe that the woman is capable of filling the position. She is a better assistant than all those Ivy League graduates you've been interviewing." His lips curved into a smirk. "Good schools can only do so much. Look at you."
"This is not a matter for your amusement, dad. I'm serious."
"What is with you and the people I choose to surround myself with, Lex? You will never be satisfied with my choices," Lionel told his son.
Lex shook his head. "If I were sure you only want her to work as your assistant I would have no problem. But I've seen you and women, dad. You never have a clear intent."
"You are the last person I expected to react to this, son. You've lived and breathed certain words since you learned to read. Don't you remember? 'I draw you close to me, you women. I cannot let you go, I would do you good. I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for others' sakes. Envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards. They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.'"
"You disgust me, father. You drove Victoria back to depression when you discarded her after using her."
"'I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable--but I love you. I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,'" Lionel continued. "I am amazed that you can tell me how badly I treat women when you yourself are no better. Why do you think little Victoria Hardwick chose me, Lex, aside from my obvious sexual superiority?"
"My relationship with the women I choose to see is none of your business."
"Then why should my relationships be any of yours?" Lionel returned. "I'll tell you why Victoria chose me. I showed her what you never would. She complained about you, you know. You were closed off. You made love to her but you made it clear that it was nothing but a convenient arrangement. I told her things you would never have been able to."
"Unlike you, dad, I reserve words that hold meaning until they are absolutely deserved. Victoria did not merit them."
Lex frowned when his father acknowledge his answer with a nod. "I know. Even in your brush with matrimonial hell, despite the fornicating frenzy you seemed to be in with that meteor freak, you never uttered the words."
Not needing to know what his father needed from him to make him deliver statement that almost reverberated with pride, Lex said a curt goodbye and started walking out of the room. In the background, his father's voice continued the lewd but very real lines, "Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself. In you I wrap a thousand onward years. On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America. The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls, artists, musicians, and singers. The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn. I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings. I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you
interpenetrate now."
Lex tightened his jaw at the drone of his father's voice. Despite the arrogant tone that Lionel used, Lex believed that if the words were true for the rest of his women, it was not for his mother. The only reason he never raised a hand to his father was his respect for the memory of Lillian, who did adore the man.
~~~
She had been informed that Mr Luthor was not in a very good mood tonight. Chloe made sure her steps were tentative and light as she walked into the dark room that held proofs of Lex's obsession. When they needed to speak in private, he usually asked her to meet her in this room. Nobody but he and Chloe had a key that would open the door.
The lights on the various pieces glowed eerily. She hugged her arms at the low temperature. Chloe looked around for Lex. When she spoke with him earlier, she told him about Lana's stalker's poetic tendencies. She had laughed it off. Now, alone in this darkness, she felt a slither of cold fear run up her spine. "Lex!" she called again.
She walked down the clear path running across the room. A switch flipped on, and she saw Lex's figure at the other end bathed in yellow light.
Lex smiled slowly in greeting, not moving to meet her. He watched her every movement-the way she brushed a lock of hair away from her face, the way her hips moved like honey, the way a grin spread on her face when she saw him smile. Lex etched her features in his mind. Crescent shadows were under each eye, formed by the play of light on her thick lashes. Her eyes sparkled brilliantly, putting to shame every light in the room. Her skin was bitten red by the cold, a natural blush that accented her cheekbones. He remained where he stood, taking all of her in.
"She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies. And all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes. Thus mellowed to that tender light which heaven to gaudy day denies," he whispered. Her eyebrow arched in silent question but he continued on, knowing she was too far to hear his words. "One shade the more, one ray the less, had half impaired the nameless grace-"
Chloe held up a hand to stop him. "Don't insult me, Lex," she said sharply, although with a hint of teasing in her eyes.
"I wasn't insulting you."
"You were going to tell me about my raven tresses. Don't describe me through a poem that Lord Byron wrote with Lana Lang in mind."
Lex chuckled and shook his head. "How did you even know? I wasn't even reciting it out loud."
"I can read your lips, Lex," she informed him. "And I would never have thought you would stoop to romantic poems. You're too proper and intellectual to recite poetry produced by overzealous artists in a fit of passion."
"Recollected in tranquility," he reminded her. "But you're right. I'm not a Byron man." He held up his hands, asking him to take them. Lex cleared his throat. "Come live with me," he told her, his voice caressing her almost physically, "and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove that valleys, groves, hills and fields, woods or steepy mountain yields."
Chloe grinned, knowing how much it took for Lex to recite Marlowe to her. She closed the distance between them and placed her hands on his palms. Chloe watched as his strong fingers closed over hers. "And we will sit upon the rocks seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, by shallow rivers to whose falls melodious birds sing madrigals."
Despite the fact that it was the corniest, most hackneyed poem in the entire history of world literature, hearing the proud and elitist Lex Luthor recite it for her sent tingles all over her body. Chloe bit back her smile. Of course he would never think of a pastoral heaven. Lex was skyscrapers and a fast-paced lifestyle rolled into one impressive figure of a man. This moment though, she allowed herself to be carried away by images of the two of them, breathing in the fragrance of wildflowers that did not come from a bottle, and watching birds and cattle from a screen larger than the widest television.
"And I," he promised huskily, "will make thee beds of roses." Chloe closed her eyes and saw him spreading her out on his bed, silk sheets covered by silkier petals. She grasped his shirt and pulled him down to her. She stopped his words with a lingering kiss.
"You can stop now," she told him. As much as she enjoyed hearing him, she would rather let him preserve his dignity. Who knew how he would react when he someday remembered that he recited that poem to her? He would never be able to look her in the eye again.
Lex shook his head when he pulled back. He cut to the end, "If these delights they mind may move, then live with me and by my love."
Chloe blinked away the stupid moisture in her eyes. "I am not jealous that Lana has a poet after her," she told him to hide her flush. "What possessed you to do that?"
"It just occurred to me," he said softly, "that I don't say it often enough."
Chloe touched his cheek. "But you do, Lex. You tell me you love me every time you look at me."
"You deserve the words too."
She promised herself she would not push Lex when he was already making an effort, but Chloe could not resist. "Why?"
"Because I realized how much my soul kept drawing back from emotions, hiding from what I truly felt by reciting pithy quotes from the most intellectual writers in history. All I succeeded was to keep what I think behind fancy lines. Now I thought I'd use fancy lines to show you how I really feel."
Chloe latched on to that part. Lex was not the only one who was skittish around the genuine emotions. "You do not want to spend your life looking at cattle with me."
"If that's what you want in a man, I'll buy a farm and be a farmer forever."
She scrunched her nose at the thought. "If I wanted that, I would have gone after Clark." He chuckled. "All right, all right! But at the time, I really believed that I could turn him away from farm life. I would never survive if I had to live in Smallville for the rest of my life. And you won't either. We're made to be somewhere so much better than a cowtown, Lex."
Lex cupped her face with both hands and pressed his lips on her forehead for the longest time. When her father moved them to Smallville, Lex knew that sooner or later, Chloe would leave that place. He had had fantasies of being the one to take his young friend away. "It's not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all western sands until I die."
It was a man's poem of restlessness and grandeur, of never giving up even when all odds were against him. Chloe, proving that they were of one soul since the beginning, surprised him by continuing, "Though much is taken, much abides. And though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven. That which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts." Lex nodded because she was right. He had never met anyone whose mind and heart worked on a level the same as his. "Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
When she finished, her words reverberated in his brain. He swept her up in his arms, his hands pushing her head towards him. Lex's pulse raced until he could see spots dancing at the dark back of his eyelids. He kissed her until he could not find his breath anymore.
"I adore you," he gasped. He kissed his way to her ears, peppering her jaw with light brushes of his lips. "Please," he whispered into her ear, "tell me again how you feel about me."
Chloe moaned as his kisses sent electric tingles shooting from her fingertips to her brain. She closed her eyes and reveled in the feeling of being cherished until she was senseless. His fingers made quick work of her blouse, gently pulling it off her shoulders. Her own hands rose to help him unclasp her bra. Chloe released a sigh when he cupped her breast and brought his own mouth to the pink areola. He licked to taste. Chloe's lips parted as she watched his mouth take her nipple into his own mouth. She stifled a scream when he started suckling on it. "Lex."
"Tell me, Chloe," he murmured, sending shockwaves as the sound sent tremors through the sensitive nerve endings of her breast.
They were standing right in the middle of the room, the dim lighting and the oddities he had accumulated the only witness to the affair that no one else knew. With the play of shadows on their bodies, their intertwined limbs could almost pass for the beginning of a sensual film-except they were saying words that would ill suit such movie.
"The-the face of all the world." Chloe sucked in her breath when his hand moved to the bare skin of her stomach, caressing further downwards. "The face of all the world is changed, I think, when first I heard the footsteps of your soul."
And when she met his eyes and saw the moisture that gathered in the blue depths, she knew that showing such vulnerability was worth it.
"Lex." She met his unwavering gaze. "Will you make love to me?" It was then that he blinked. She could see the uncertainty in his eyes. "I'm not too young. I'm sure I want this, Lex. I know that I won't feel this way about anyone else."
"Wouldn't you rather wait?" he asked her quietly. "You have your entire life ahead of you."
"No," she answered with firm determination. "I would rather you be my first, Lex, not some guy in college who I won't care about half as much as I love you, because I'm sure no one will ever compare." He took a deep breath. Chloe grabbed his hand and laid his palm on her left breast, at the point where her heart beat. "If you love me, you'll-"
Lex closed his eyes and allowed his heart to seek her lips. When their mouths fused in an open kiss, he picked her up and crossed the room, heading for the corridors and his bedroom.
After Martha Kent left for the day to go back to her family. Lex faced his father down in the study. "There are a lot of things that I would suffer during your stay here, father. But this thing you have planned for Martha Kent I will not allow."
"You wound me, Lex. I happen to believe that the woman is capable of filling the position. She is a better assistant than all those Ivy League graduates you've been interviewing." His lips curved into a smirk. "Good schools can only do so much. Look at you."
"This is not a matter for your amusement, dad. I'm serious."
"What is with you and the people I choose to surround myself with, Lex? You will never be satisfied with my choices," Lionel told his son.
Lex shook his head. "If I were sure you only want her to work as your assistant I would have no problem. But I've seen you and women, dad. You never have a clear intent."
"You are the last person I expected to react to this, son. You've lived and breathed certain words since you learned to read. Don't you remember? 'I draw you close to me, you women. I cannot let you go, I would do you good. I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for others' sakes. Envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards. They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.'"
"You disgust me, father. You drove Victoria back to depression when you discarded her after using her."
"'I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable--but I love you. I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,'" Lionel continued. "I am amazed that you can tell me how badly I treat women when you yourself are no better. Why do you think little Victoria Hardwick chose me, Lex, aside from my obvious sexual superiority?"
"My relationship with the women I choose to see is none of your business."
"Then why should my relationships be any of yours?" Lionel returned. "I'll tell you why Victoria chose me. I showed her what you never would. She complained about you, you know. You were closed off. You made love to her but you made it clear that it was nothing but a convenient arrangement. I told her things you would never have been able to."
"Unlike you, dad, I reserve words that hold meaning until they are absolutely deserved. Victoria did not merit them."
Lex frowned when his father acknowledge his answer with a nod. "I know. Even in your brush with matrimonial hell, despite the fornicating frenzy you seemed to be in with that meteor freak, you never uttered the words."
Not needing to know what his father needed from him to make him deliver statement that almost reverberated with pride, Lex said a curt goodbye and started walking out of the room. In the background, his father's voice continued the lewd but very real lines, "Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself. In you I wrap a thousand onward years. On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America. The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls, artists, musicians, and singers. The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn. I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings. I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you
interpenetrate now."
Lex tightened his jaw at the drone of his father's voice. Despite the arrogant tone that Lionel used, Lex believed that if the words were true for the rest of his women, it was not for his mother. The only reason he never raised a hand to his father was his respect for the memory of Lillian, who did adore the man.
~~~
She had been informed that Mr Luthor was not in a very good mood tonight. Chloe made sure her steps were tentative and light as she walked into the dark room that held proofs of Lex's obsession. When they needed to speak in private, he usually asked her to meet her in this room. Nobody but he and Chloe had a key that would open the door.
The lights on the various pieces glowed eerily. She hugged her arms at the low temperature. Chloe looked around for Lex. When she spoke with him earlier, she told him about Lana's stalker's poetic tendencies. She had laughed it off. Now, alone in this darkness, she felt a slither of cold fear run up her spine. "Lex!" she called again.
She walked down the clear path running across the room. A switch flipped on, and she saw Lex's figure at the other end bathed in yellow light.
Lex smiled slowly in greeting, not moving to meet her. He watched her every movement-the way she brushed a lock of hair away from her face, the way her hips moved like honey, the way a grin spread on her face when she saw him smile. Lex etched her features in his mind. Crescent shadows were under each eye, formed by the play of light on her thick lashes. Her eyes sparkled brilliantly, putting to shame every light in the room. Her skin was bitten red by the cold, a natural blush that accented her cheekbones. He remained where he stood, taking all of her in.
"She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies. And all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes. Thus mellowed to that tender light which heaven to gaudy day denies," he whispered. Her eyebrow arched in silent question but he continued on, knowing she was too far to hear his words. "One shade the more, one ray the less, had half impaired the nameless grace-"
Chloe held up a hand to stop him. "Don't insult me, Lex," she said sharply, although with a hint of teasing in her eyes.
"I wasn't insulting you."
"You were going to tell me about my raven tresses. Don't describe me through a poem that Lord Byron wrote with Lana Lang in mind."
Lex chuckled and shook his head. "How did you even know? I wasn't even reciting it out loud."
"I can read your lips, Lex," she informed him. "And I would never have thought you would stoop to romantic poems. You're too proper and intellectual to recite poetry produced by overzealous artists in a fit of passion."
"Recollected in tranquility," he reminded her. "But you're right. I'm not a Byron man." He held up his hands, asking him to take them. Lex cleared his throat. "Come live with me," he told her, his voice caressing her almost physically, "and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove that valleys, groves, hills and fields, woods or steepy mountain yields."
Chloe grinned, knowing how much it took for Lex to recite Marlowe to her. She closed the distance between them and placed her hands on his palms. Chloe watched as his strong fingers closed over hers. "And we will sit upon the rocks seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, by shallow rivers to whose falls melodious birds sing madrigals."
Despite the fact that it was the corniest, most hackneyed poem in the entire history of world literature, hearing the proud and elitist Lex Luthor recite it for her sent tingles all over her body. Chloe bit back her smile. Of course he would never think of a pastoral heaven. Lex was skyscrapers and a fast-paced lifestyle rolled into one impressive figure of a man. This moment though, she allowed herself to be carried away by images of the two of them, breathing in the fragrance of wildflowers that did not come from a bottle, and watching birds and cattle from a screen larger than the widest television.
"And I," he promised huskily, "will make thee beds of roses." Chloe closed her eyes and saw him spreading her out on his bed, silk sheets covered by silkier petals. She grasped his shirt and pulled him down to her. She stopped his words with a lingering kiss.
"You can stop now," she told him. As much as she enjoyed hearing him, she would rather let him preserve his dignity. Who knew how he would react when he someday remembered that he recited that poem to her? He would never be able to look her in the eye again.
Lex shook his head when he pulled back. He cut to the end, "If these delights they mind may move, then live with me and by my love."
Chloe blinked away the stupid moisture in her eyes. "I am not jealous that Lana has a poet after her," she told him to hide her flush. "What possessed you to do that?"
"It just occurred to me," he said softly, "that I don't say it often enough."
Chloe touched his cheek. "But you do, Lex. You tell me you love me every time you look at me."
"You deserve the words too."
She promised herself she would not push Lex when he was already making an effort, but Chloe could not resist. "Why?"
"Because I realized how much my soul kept drawing back from emotions, hiding from what I truly felt by reciting pithy quotes from the most intellectual writers in history. All I succeeded was to keep what I think behind fancy lines. Now I thought I'd use fancy lines to show you how I really feel."
Chloe latched on to that part. Lex was not the only one who was skittish around the genuine emotions. "You do not want to spend your life looking at cattle with me."
"If that's what you want in a man, I'll buy a farm and be a farmer forever."
She scrunched her nose at the thought. "If I wanted that, I would have gone after Clark." He chuckled. "All right, all right! But at the time, I really believed that I could turn him away from farm life. I would never survive if I had to live in Smallville for the rest of my life. And you won't either. We're made to be somewhere so much better than a cowtown, Lex."
Lex cupped her face with both hands and pressed his lips on her forehead for the longest time. When her father moved them to Smallville, Lex knew that sooner or later, Chloe would leave that place. He had had fantasies of being the one to take his young friend away. "It's not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all western sands until I die."
It was a man's poem of restlessness and grandeur, of never giving up even when all odds were against him. Chloe, proving that they were of one soul since the beginning, surprised him by continuing, "Though much is taken, much abides. And though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven. That which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts." Lex nodded because she was right. He had never met anyone whose mind and heart worked on a level the same as his. "Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
When she finished, her words reverberated in his brain. He swept her up in his arms, his hands pushing her head towards him. Lex's pulse raced until he could see spots dancing at the dark back of his eyelids. He kissed her until he could not find his breath anymore.
"I adore you," he gasped. He kissed his way to her ears, peppering her jaw with light brushes of his lips. "Please," he whispered into her ear, "tell me again how you feel about me."
Chloe moaned as his kisses sent electric tingles shooting from her fingertips to her brain. She closed her eyes and reveled in the feeling of being cherished until she was senseless. His fingers made quick work of her blouse, gently pulling it off her shoulders. Her own hands rose to help him unclasp her bra. Chloe released a sigh when he cupped her breast and brought his own mouth to the pink areola. He licked to taste. Chloe's lips parted as she watched his mouth take her nipple into his own mouth. She stifled a scream when he started suckling on it. "Lex."
"Tell me, Chloe," he murmured, sending shockwaves as the sound sent tremors through the sensitive nerve endings of her breast.
They were standing right in the middle of the room, the dim lighting and the oddities he had accumulated the only witness to the affair that no one else knew. With the play of shadows on their bodies, their intertwined limbs could almost pass for the beginning of a sensual film-except they were saying words that would ill suit such movie.
"The-the face of all the world." Chloe sucked in her breath when his hand moved to the bare skin of her stomach, caressing further downwards. "The face of all the world is changed, I think, when first I heard the footsteps of your soul."
And when she met his eyes and saw the moisture that gathered in the blue depths, she knew that showing such vulnerability was worth it.
"Lex." She met his unwavering gaze. "Will you make love to me?" It was then that he blinked. She could see the uncertainty in his eyes. "I'm not too young. I'm sure I want this, Lex. I know that I won't feel this way about anyone else."
"Wouldn't you rather wait?" he asked her quietly. "You have your entire life ahead of you."
"No," she answered with firm determination. "I would rather you be my first, Lex, not some guy in college who I won't care about half as much as I love you, because I'm sure no one will ever compare." He took a deep breath. Chloe grabbed his hand and laid his palm on her left breast, at the point where her heart beat. "If you love me, you'll-"
Lex closed his eyes and allowed his heart to seek her lips. When their mouths fused in an open kiss, he picked her up and crossed the room, heading for the corridors and his bedroom.