Where is she going? Lex wondered as he picked up one of his favorite issues of Warrior Angel off the shelf. Did she do things like this all the time? He wasn't normally the type of guy that liked surprises.
But then, he hadn't been acting very normal since he met her. It was just so comforting having someone that he had things in common with. He was relaxed when she was there. She was funny, smart, kind, honest, wise, independent -- beautiful. When did she become beautiful?
He had taken her comment a little too seriously. What did he expect her to say? …What did he want her to say? He paused at that question, disturbed. They hadn't even known each other a week. He sat on one of the long plush couches in the middle of the room and put his feet up on the small table in front of him. He was never remotely angry with her; he just wanted her to -- to what?
Rhone was looking through some of the things in her trunk and putting a few of them to the side. She realized that she had more things in there than she should. She had kind of made it her goal to own as few things as possible, or at least be attached to as few things as possible.
The greatest enemy is the one with nothing to lose. She touched the artist's tube that had been on her back the entire evening. She knew she didn't need it with him. What? You always need it, she told herself. I thought I wasn't supposed to need anything…
She walked to the passenger's seat of her car and put the tube inside. She shut the door quickly as to not change her mind.
She walked back to her open trunk. She picked up a square portfolio that was about two feet across. She had put all the things she needed for the stage of comic book production she was on in it. She slung it around her shoulder. She always liked the way it felt, lighter. Rhone grabbed a stack of comic books she had gathered before she shut the trunk.
Rhone silently walked through the door and stopped. She paused and looked at Lex for a moment. He hadn't noticed that she had returned. She was trained to be stealthy after all.
The dark brown couch he was sitting on made him look even more pale than usual. He had his feet up on a short table in front of him. That must his be his idea of relaxation, elevating your feet. His right arm was resting on the arm of the couch, supporting the hand he had on his chin in a thoughtful position.
His left hand was holding a Warrior Angel comic book. The comic book was tilted slightly away from him. He wasn't reading it. He was thinking about something. Rhone took a silent step back when she realized she was thinking about something as well… She wondered if anyone ever told him he was beautiful.
What was she thinking? It was impossible -- they were impossible. She had thought about it before and she knew that they were from two different worlds. Not that he would ever be interested. He was witty, sophisticated, intelligent, secretly caring, graceful, and gorgeous… They hardly knew each other. Not to mention she was -- not normal and she certainly couldn't tell him the truth.
She quietly walked over to him, portfolio over her shoulder and holding the stack of comic books. She walked right next to his legs, between the couch and the table. She watched him come back to reality. He looked up at her, "I didn't hear you come back." He noticed that her artist's tube was gone and now she had a portfolio. He smiled slightly.
She reached for the top of the comic book he was holding and lightly pulled it out of his hand. His smile widened.
She closed the comic and looked at it. Then she looked at Lex and lightly tossed the Warrior Angel comic book onto the table. She held out her stack of comic books inches from his hand. She set her portfolio on the table next to the discarded Warrior Angel.
He took the stack of comics out of her hand, still looking at her. She turned and walked over to the shelves and resumed looking for whatever it was she was looking for. He looked in his hand and started to flip through the comic books. They looked professional. "I always thought that underground comics were scribbled on sleazy bar napkins," he said as he was looking through them a second time.
"Well, then, Mr. Luthor, you thought wrong," she looked at him with a smirk. "Cheap technology has greatly influenced the publishing world," she continued. He returned her smirk and looked down again.
She noticed he was putting them in some kind of order. She had given him a small, unfinished series of three and about five or six single books. He must be separating and putting the series in order.
His inquisitive nature got the best of him, "What are you looking for?"
"I…" she said with a pause, "am looking for anything with a heroine."
"You won't find any," Lex said immediately.
She turned to face him, "And why is that?"
"I don't own any," he said looking down at the comic books in his hand.
She nodded. "You don't think that a woman can be hero?" she asked as she picked a comic off the shelf and began to walk toward the couch he was on.
He sensed something in her voice. She wasn't looking for an argument about gender equality; she genuinely wanted to know. The only two women he ever trusted or loved failed him. All the other women he had ever been involved with were either gold diggers or power hungry. They used him -- not that he didn't use them in return. It was usually a symbiotic relationship that he often initiated. However, it didn't help his opinion of women on the whole. "I never said that," he said.