- Chapter 16 - Momentum -
Walking back into the Luthor manor, facing the mahogany door, and stepping over the threshold again was harder than Chloe had thought it would be. After the last year, when she'd been so comfortable dropping by that she didn't even ring the bell anymore, the austereness had worn off. Then her last visit ended on a distinctly sour note. She came by, dropping vague hints about Clark's secrets, and left wondering if she'd ever be invited back in.
Clark rang the bell, a deep resonating chime, and the housekeeper, Allison, answered. While he had no trouble following the housekeeper in, Chloe hesitated. It was her idea to come to Lex, but it wasn't his job to help. He wasn't a public servant, and being a billionaire didn't obligate him to the world. But Lex always made it easy, natural. It was his own fault if she kept coming to him. If he started saying no, she'd leave him alone.
Clark stuck his head out the door, and arched an eyebrow at her. "Are we going to do this or not?"
"Sorry," Chloe said. She shook off the melancholy doubts that had frozen her outside and moved forward. "I was just thinking."
Stepping inside, they left mundane muggy Kansas behind and were enveloped in a cool air that had nothing to do with temperature. Their footsteps echoed off the marble floors, obliterating the cavernous church-like silence. Chloe wished she'd worn sneakers like Clark instead of the moderately stylish clogs she'd picked up in Metropolis. Their cuteness in no way made up for cacophony they were inflicting now.
Everything seemed pretty much the same, Chloe noted absently. Lex hadn't redecorated over the summer anyway. Allison opened the door to Lex's private office, shared a word with her employer, and slipped away. Chloe knew the open door was an invitation and this time she didn't hesitate to move forward. If Lex was still angry with her, she might as well get the waiting over with.
The Lex that smiled broadly and rose to greet them bore no resemblance to the cool aristocrat that dismissed Chloe in May. This was the coconspirator and companion who had helped her on her mad-goose-chase to locate Clark. Chloe came forward to shake hands, still a touch hesitant, but Lex turned the handshake into a hug, enveloping her in his clean expensive-aftershave scent. "You've been a stranger too long, Chloe," Lex said. "Smallville hasn't been the same without its teenage crusader."
"It's good to see you too, Lex," Chloe said. She was more than a little shocked at enthusiastic hug. It was almost too much, almost fake, this cuddly warm welcome. Didn't he remember the summer or her inability to tell him the whole truth? Lex never seemed the type to forgive, forget, and move on.
Lex finally pulled back and headed over to Clark, but Clark didn't seem up for a companionable hug, or handshake for that matter. His arms were crossed over his chest and he wasn't smiling even a little. Was that jealousy pricking at her friend? Maybe she mistook the look before at the hospital, but the way he was looking at Lex now was positively green.
"We came to get some advice, maybe some help dealing with a new mutant in town," Clark said. He could hear the angry tenor in his own voice and he tried to calm himself down. It wasn't like Chloe belonged to him. She could hug whoever she wanted as long as she wanted, but Lex was too handsome and rich and suave. She could hug anyone but Lex, and it would be okay...or more okay anyway. "Chloe seems to think you're the only adult in town who will both believe us and be able to do anything about the situation."
"Why don't you tell me what's going on," Lex prompted. "I'll see what I can do."
Legs folded tightly to her chest, Allison Flutey leaned against her bedroom door. It was a nice door, solid oak. She painted it red when they first moved in, red for luck and passion and life. Her mother had been horrified. In her mother's world, doors were supposed to be white or taupe or gray. Red doors were improper and indecent.
Red doors were perfect.
Allison loved her red door and her green bedroom and the crimson flower-print comforter she slept under with her husband. She loved him too, Doug. He was a string-bean of a man, a bookworm, a kind man. He tried so hard to protect her, and wouldn't she have done the same for him? Digging her fingers into the thick cream colored carpet, Allison slid down the side of the door until her face was nestled into the smooth synthetic fibers. Was Doug still outside the door, waiting for her to unlock it and let him in? Allison didn't call Doug's name or offer to unlock the door. She wanted to sleep, to crawl into her bed and leave the world behind for a few short hours.
It took a lot of effort to shake off the lethargy binding her to the floor and rise to her feet, but Allison managed it. She stood over her bed, a sanctuary, a place to rest, a prison. Once upon a time she went to sleep, and didn't wake up, not for a long long time. Her awakening hadn't been a miracle like the papers reported. Rather it was a curse, a crime against nature, a terrible mutation. Could you even call what she had become human anymore? She was a parasite now, a parasite of humanity, a tapeworm of the mind.
She imagined Howie in that bed sleeping like the dead, no tubes or monitors. Howie wasn't sleeping anymore. He wasn't even the living dead anymore. She killed him, finished the job she started years earlier.
Allison turned to her closet.
There was a box on the top shelf, a shoe box emblazoned with Nike's emblem, but there weren't sneakers inside. Allison fumbled with the box and its heavy contents having to rise to the tips of her toes just to get her fingertips under it. Box in hand, Allison returned to her bed and climbed in. The covers cocooned around her like a linen womb. She was facing the door, her improper indecent...perfect red door.
She opened the shoe box.
"Are you okay?" Chloe asked.
Clark was slouched low in a high-backed leather chair in Lex's study. He cut his eyes at Chloe and shrugged. Was he okay? Not really. Lex asked the kiddies to stay behind while he handled the big bad mutant, and Chloe thought that was a good idea. Who did Chloe turn to when she had a problem? Lex. She claimed that she didn't really trust him, but was she out there making sure he handled Mrs. Flutey in a reasonable and ethical manner? No, she was satisfied to sit back and wait.
"Right, well, you could at least talk to me. What's eating you anyway?" Chloe asked. "Did you want to be there to face Flutey?"
"It seems like we should be there. You must trust Lex more than you let on if you're willing to let him handle this whole situation himself," Clark said. He didn't like the petulant note in his voice, or the feelings he couldn't stop feeling that put it there. "I thought you didn't trust him."
"I don't trust him, completely," Chloe said. "But if I were tagging along so would you, and you need to stay away from that woman."
"We're protecting what brains I have left? We're being cautious." Clark couldn't look Chloe in the eye. Being careful and cautious was suffocating him. He was tired of being cautious, tired of being friends. Was this the right time to address his feelings? Probably not, but right times were impossible to find sometimes. Clark felt brave and frustrated and jealous. If he didn't let this out, he was going to spontaneously combust. "Chloe." He rolled out of the chair and approached close enough to touch his friend, his sunshine. "I want..." God, why did words always fail him when he really needed them? His mouth had gone so dry, and his heart was thudding rapidly. "Can I kiss you?"
How many times had Chloe imagined this moment, the moment when Clark would notice her, kiss her, love her? How many times had she fantasized about her chiseled, sensitive, alien best friend? Now that she was in the moment, the reality, she couldn't seem to speak. It couldn't be real. Maybe this was just another fantasy?
"I'm sorry," Clark murmured. His heart seemed to be cramping and dying in the silence from Chloe. They were friends. Friends didn't kiss. Was his mistake going to ruin things? Was he going to lose his best friend to the uncomfortable silence that she didn't seem to be able to fill? "Can you forget what I said? It was stupid. I know we're friends, just friends."
Chloe, a snarky girl, a girl who knew how to wield words, dropped all pretense toward articulation. She'd hurt Clark with her silence, and he was turning away, but she didn't want him to turn away. She wanted the kiss he had offered. So Chloe took it. She rose up on the tips of her toes, grabbed Clark by his shirt-collar and dove in. Chloe tossed caution and fear to the wind. She staked her claim at long last. Chloe wanted this alien boy. She was ready.
At first Clark didn't know what to do. Chloe basically took a running go, scaled him and kissed him. It was his first kiss, a wet awkward warm thing that melted into fire. Chloe was his. This fit. The fire of the kiss was running through him, down his arms, into his fingertips...behind his eyes.
His instincts were the only thing that saved Chloe. Clark turned away before the fire behind his eyes erupted into a path of flaming destruction. Blinking past the afterimage of redness, he was greeted to a wall of flame where his eyes had ignited Lex's wall. Even knowing that it was coming, that heat vision was on the short list of growing pains he had to endure, Clark was completely shocked. Another second and he could have melted Chloe's face off. Nausea swept over him at the thought, and Clark dropped to his knees retching.
"Oh my God," Chloe gasped. She stumbled backwards and almost fell. "I think you're heat vision turned on."
Blue lights flashed on Elm Street, casting the middle-class cookie-cutter homes in the bizarre shadows. Lex stood amongst the small throng of residents sticking out like a sore thumb, an Armani suit amongst beer guts and bathrobes. There wasn't a good reason for him to linger and gawk. One of his security men had picked up the story off the police band. Clark and Chloe's mutant, Flutey, was dead, likely suicide.
He hadn't been particularly shocked when Chloe and Clark strolled into his office spouting information about some new mutant. It was what Chloe did, hunt mutants and write about them. What he hadn't expected was blatant hostility and jealousy from Clark, and all over a little hug. Lex couldn't contain a sardonic smile. Things really had changed. Clark wasn't pining for Lana Lang. The new Clark liked blonds. Personally, Lex thought the kid was trading up.
The lovebirds were destined to have a rocky relationship if half of Lex's theories were accurate. He was fairly certain that Clark was some form of mutant, and dating a reporter could be a strain for a man with secrets. Then again, Chloe knew something about Clark's secrets. She knew enough to drop vague hints before blowing town for the summer. The way she'd dangled secrets in front of him without sharing still rankled Lex, but he wasn't about to let that rancor show.
You caught more flies with honey than vinegar after all.
A shooting star lit up the night sky over central Kansas, burning a path through the star fields for a few short seconds before it disappeared. Unlike your typical shooting star, this wasn't a tiny bit of space junk burning away in the atmosphere. This was a ship whose cloaking technology was a little slow to kick in.
Unlike the first time she visited Earth, the Eradicator wasn't choosing a site based on century-old calculations of potential life-pod trajectories. Today she was steering her ship with purpose. Without stirring a single tassel of corn, she swept through the unending agricultural landscape finally landing neatly between some antiquated aboriginal farm equipment in the Kent's barn.
The barn was Clark's sanctuary within the sanctuary of his home, and she hoped to find him there tonight. Emotions were building inside her like insane viruses, excitement, pride, accomplishment. Kal-El was going to be pleased when she showed him her project, her farm.
And Clark? Clark was rather easy to sway when you put your mind to it.
