Lex sat at the table, inking the picture in front of him. He picked it up and held it away from him. He thought that he was getting better at it. Who was he kidding; it sucked. Rhone had these great drawings and ideas and he just scribbled on them.
She had left the room a few minuets ago and he had noticed that her voice was no longer coming from the adjacent room. He was starting to think that he should go and find her.
The object of his thoughts walked through the door. She had her laptop case in one hand. He looked at her expectantly.
"I just have to get something from work – base," she corrected herself.
Lex smiled at her correction. He really liked being a part of this, a part of – her life. "If you want the internet…" he started.
"Not really," she said honestly.
He really didn't know how she expected to get documents on her computer without some kind of Internet connection. He watched her get out her laptop on the other side of where she had been sitting. She turned it on and while it was booting up, went into her bag again. She pulled out a small piece of curved metal with a wire coming from it. He tilted his head as he tried to make out what it was.
She wondered if it was all right for him to see this. Surely, the general populace had an inkling that things of this sort existed. She plugged in the device and began fanning out the small curved piece of metal.
It was a satellite receiver. It was blatant when it was fanned out. Lex wondered if she had any other gadgets around. While standing, she clicked a few things with her mouse and arranged the receiver.
Then she sat down beside Lex once more and started to arrange the comic book supplies that she would need. "I like the idea you laid out here," Lex gestured to the paper he had been looking at before.
"It's long," she said both to herself and to Lex. Lex nodded softly in agreement. Rhone moved to place the paper back into the portfolio.
Lex shook his head, "How can you do that?"
She paused and looked at him, "Do what?"
"Just toss an idea that you put so much into," Lex clarified.
"For one, I'm not just tossing it. I might use it somewhere else, or change it and use it somewhere else. It just isn't going to work in what we are doing," she said. "And two, I didn't put that much into it. It's a sketch and some notes; it took me less than ten minutes," she expounded.
"But coming up with the idea…" he started.
"Took me about five seconds," she said. She really didn't understand what he was driving at.
"All of that took you five seconds?" he said, slightly disbelieving her.
She held out her hands in a gesture that said she didn't know what the big deal was. You think of something and either it goes into the final piece or it winds up on the cutting room floor. It wasn't like he could take it personally; it wasn't like it was his idea being scrapped.
He remembered when they first started working on this two days ago. She bull shitted the entire idea in about ten seconds. He wondered what it was like to just have ideas pouring out of you, creative and good ideas. Maybe it just takes practice. Maybe she was just talented. He was definitely leaning toward the latter.
She interrupted his thoughts, "It isn't a subplot." He looked up at her as she was brining the paper closer to her again. "It's a plot," she emphasized the word "a." She clarified, "It's a sequel." She didn't realize what she was doing when she was envisioning it, but when she looked at it… Was it intentional, a reason for them to work on something else together?
"I think that that is a good idea," Lex said, implying that they should make a sequel. It would be a reason to – collaborate again.
"We really don't have the time," she pointed out. Was that regret she felt?
Lex felt that now familiar tight feeling in his chest. He looked at her and was about to say something but he heard a cold, flat, male voice. It said, "Incoming files." He looked to her computer; he had forgotten about it until it – spoke.
She reached over and turned the volume down on her computer somewhat. She slowly turned to Lex. "I've been thinking," she began.
Lex slightly tilted his head and raised an eyebrow, implying that he was interested in knowing what she had been thinking.
"You should hold on to this," she gestured to what they had worked on together.
At first, Lex was pleased, but it immediately began to fade. If he had everything that they had worked on, she wouldn't have a single memento of their time together. Would she forget him? Of course she would, she saved the world on a regular basis. She definitely had other things on her mind. After a moment his looked changed to one of determination, "We're partners."
A faint smile found its way to her lips. As she leaned back into her chair and looked at the ceiling, she said, "But your partner can't be famous. Not even 'comic book' famous, and now you know why."
Lex hadn't had a chance to actually make some of the obvious connections about their interactions. He remembered their conversation in the library when she said that fame was not an option. If people recognized her, that would be – dangerous. Any sort of undercover work would be out of the question and fans would try to hunt her down. He understood enough about her job to recognize that it would require complete anonymity.
He thought about the kind of person that she was; fame really didn't suit her anyway. However, she was beautiful enough to be famous. He had fame, or at least recognition, and was less than pleased with what it had gotten him: hordes of intolerable women, slanderous and insinuating stories, people posing as friends, often having to pretend to be something you are not.
She saw that he was thinking about something. She looked at him and said, "Who in the hell would want to be famous anyway?"
He looked at her with a smirk, "A lot of people do."
"True heroes don't need gratitude," she said.
He could tell by the way that she said it that she was quoting someone. He was quite well read, but could not place it. That was odd.
He was about to ask her who said it when she leaned over and hit a few buttons on her laptop. He watched her lean closer to it, get up, and scoot over to the chair next to the one she was in to sit in front of the glowing screen.
Lex stole a glance at the monitor, but quickly looked down at what he was working on. He didn't want her to think that he was the equivalent of a nosey child. …He couldn't read the text from that far away anyway.
Rhone looked at Lex. He could have looked at what she was doing. There weren't any names in it. She always just looked at an abbreviated version; the whole name and history thing was Griff's department. She grazed through the four files he had sent her and was displeased. Normally, Griff could take an order and fulfill it quite well.
With a set jaw, she took out her phone again and dialed a number.
The outside line beeped. He knew it would. He looked at it for a moment and it beeped again.
After a moment he heard a voice from behind him, "Griff, I could hire a trained monkey in army fatigues to answer that if you don't think you can handle it."
"Yeah, but then I would have to watch it use sign language to tell people that you abuse it sexually," Griffin replied. An empty water bottle connected with the back of his head with a hollow 'thunk.'
"Only if it was a chimp, got body and brains in one sweet package. And I see a lot of movies, they let you dress them up in human clothes – sexy human clothes," the other man said.
"You're sick, Awol," Griff looked back at the man that had thrown the water bottle.
"Hey, you're the one that got me thinking about alluring primates," Awol pointed out as he looked at the ceiling and twirled in his chair.
Griffin chuckled to himself. Well, it's now or never, he thought. He picked up the receiver, "Speedy Joe's Pizza Delivery."
"Griff, what is this shit that you sent me?" the flat voice of Rhone Chade was in his right ear.
"Applicants," Griffin answered. He knew she wasn't mad, she never really was. Not nearly as often as she could be anyway. Or maybe she was and she was just really good at hiding her emotions.
"I worry when I leave and you cannot fulfill a simple request," she didn't like referring to what she asked them to do as orders.
"You? Worry? Rhone Chade, I do believe the billionaire is turning you soft," he teased.
"I told you that I wanted a woman," she said. He could tell that she was directing the conversation away from things that compromise her reputation – if that were possible.
He leaned over his work station and talked softly into the receiver, "I know, but… Let's just be honest, Rhone, women like you sure as hell don't grow on trees."
"Is that a compliment?" she asked.
"Why don't you ask Lex?" he couldn't help it. He just had to tease her about it; it was just too damn fun.
"I like the marksman. If not him, then the pilot," she decided not to dignify that last remark with a comment.
"Agreed, but the marksman won't say no. No one ever does," he brought up the files on a computer screen in front of him. It took a certain – breed of person to do this line of work. They knew what that breed was; what to look for – no one ever said no.
"I want him there when I get back," she said as she hung up the phone.
Griff set the phone down and pondered his EX-O. She was a great leader, a natural at – well, everything they had taught her. And she was only getting better…
He didn't mind admitting that she was his best friend, even though they technically weren't supposed to have friends. Because he was in that unique position, he knew that she needed something. There was a part of her soul that had always been vacant. Recently, he realized that she didn't need something – she needed someone. He really didn't want to see her so – alone. Could he believe that Lex Luthor, son of questionable business and personal practices Lionel Luthor, had even the remotest possibility of filling that void? Weren't there any nice unaffiliated guys in this world? He smiled when he realized that the answer to his last question was no.