Time Warp by Ellidyay (R/NC17)

[Blaire]

Chapter 16

"It's a classic." Chloe said, as she pushed the play button on Lex's VCR. "I shouldn't have to make a deal with you in order to get you to watch a movie with me. Come on, get in the Thanksgiving spirit."

"You're a classic. But I told you my conditions, and the contract is nonnegotiable." He said seriously, while pulling her into his lap. That was the one and only term of the contract: closeness. He fought a smile as she reached behind her and ran her short nails lightly over his bare scalp.

"You are a spoiled brat." Chloe laughed as he kissed her neck.

"Yes I am, now shut up and watch your movie."

"I can't believe this. You're bitching about watching the ultimate war movie. A heterosexual male is complaining about Apocalypse Now. That worries me, Lex. I never thought I'd have to question your sexuality again." Chloe said with a fake sigh.

"You wanting to watch it as much as you do makes me question your sexuality as well. You'll have to be a little more butch to play on that team," Lex murmured. He nibbled lightly on her ear as the trees on the screen caught fire and the Doors' "The End" played.

"I'll give you two good reasons. One, great plot and story. Two, young Martin Sheen. He makes the blood and guts everywhere much more palatable."

"You wound me. I'm not enough to hold your attention?"

He did something really interesting with his tongue at the base of her neck and she shivered. Ok, he had her full attention now.

"Y-yeah."

"Good," Lex smirked. He turned her head back towards him and kissed her.

About an hour into the movie, someone was started knocking on the door, a loud quick knock raps that managed to somehow carry over the volume of the movie. Lex was ignoring it. He had Chloe in his arms, his tongue in her mouth, and his hand was working its way up the smooth expanse of her stomach under her shirt. That was much more important than whoever was standing outside his door.

"Xan, I think you should open the door. It's getting annoying and we can pick this up later." Chloe said softly, gently pulling away.

"I swear to god, I'm going to kill whoever is on the other side of that door." Lex muttered as he opened the door. He slammed it shut as soon as he saw the person on the other side.

"Go the fuck away, Julian." He growled through the door. How dare that little shit come here? Hampton was his sanctuary damn it. How dare the Wonder Boy invade his haven?

"Please open the door Alex. I just want to talk to you. Please." A voice called. It had an air of maturity and intelligence, but was underlain with youthful nervousness.

"Lex, that is SO rude! I can't believe you did that to a guest!" Chloe said shoving Lex away pulling open the door.

Lex leaned against the wall by his window, glaring and seething. It was becoming more and more difficult for him to keep a tight reign on his emotions as his relationship with Chloe progressed. At the moment, he knew that his anger was plainly displayed across his face. His composure was broken, and he hated it.

A boy about who looked to be about 18 or 19 years old stood in the hallway. He had long dark brown hair and classical features. His eyes were a were the same shape and cloudy blue-gray as Lex's but he looked like Lionel Luthor must have when he was younger.

"Hi, I'm Chloe Sullivan. I'm really sorry Lex was such an ass. But he can't help himself most of the time. Its genetics." Chloe said shooting a glare at Lex and smiling at the other teen.

"I know. I grew up with the same handicap. I'm Julian Luthor. Nice to meet you." Julian said kissing the back of her hand in an old world manner.

"Luthor?" Chloe choked. No wonder he looked so much like Lionel, and no wonder Lex had had such a violent reaction to his appearance at the dorms. Anyone who looked that much like Lex's father would make him uncomfortable.

"What the fuck are you doing here Julian? How did you get here?" Lex growled.

"Always the grumpy one aren't you Alex? I just came for the holidays. I took a train and then a taxi. It's fairly simple to get from New Hampshire to Massachusetts. I got permission from Dad and the administration here, because I know you won't come home for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or New Year's, or spring break, or summer vacation. And since you are the only sibling I have left and Dad is a pain in the ass at Thanksgiving and Christmas time, I decided to keep you company. Not that I expected you to want me here, but still." Julian said with a shrug. His voice hid none of the pain and rejection he felt and his face was terribly honest despite all of its similarities the young man shared with his father physically.

"I think that'd be great. Lex didn't tell me he had a brother," Chloe said with a sad smile, which faded completely as she caught the furious look on Lex's face and the hurt in Julian's eyes.

"God, I wish I was surprised." Julian muttered, running a hand through his thick shoulder length hair. Lex snarled at the gesture.

Julian was shocked. His brother never took down his emotionless mask around anyone, especially himself and his father. The only person he'd ever seen get past it, aside from Lena, was that brunette girl he'd met a few years back.

"Why don't you just go back to New Hampshire?" Lex demanded, his voice filled with rage and tinged with something Chloe thought might have been jealousy.

"Because, unlike you my icy older brother, I want to have a connection and relationship with the members of my family. It's what most semi-normal, if slightly dysfunctional, people want. And you are what I have left of a family, Lex. Give me a chance for the next few weeks." Julian implored a little meekly.

"Go cozy up to our father, Wonder Boy. Chloe, I think you should go for now. Family matters."

"I'm not family to you?" Chloe asked in a deadly voice. After everything they'd been through together. After she'd sat beside him in the hospital and the talks where they had shared their inner thoughts and ESPECIALLY after having to meet his father.

"I think you knew what I meant, Chloe. I just don't want you to be here for this conversation. Believe me Chloe, you don't want to get involved with my brother." Lex said coldly, regaining his composure and control.

"Why not Xan? I like your brother."

"Everyone fucking likes him." Lex muttered angrily under his breath, his control slipping. Chloe shot him a baffled look.

"Look, it's not a problem. I'm staying in an empty room on the floor below this one. I just wanted to let you know I was here. And it was a pleasure to meet you, Chloe." He winked. "See you around." He said and quietly left the room.

"Xan? Are you alright?" Chloe asked, not touching him. He was angry, she had found it was best if she didn't touch people when they were angry.

"That little shit comes here and thinks he can build something. He's just like our father. I just need to figure out what he wants and get him as far away from here as possible."

"Xan, he's a teenager, just like us. Maybe he really does want to get to know the Lex that I know," Chloe protested.

"He's fourteen, and he knows what he's doing. He's been learning from our father since before he could talk." Lex snarled, facing the window.

Chloe was a little shocked by that. Julian was only fourteen? He looked and acted so much older than that. And she really had liked him. An honest kid, and she admired honesty. "He seemed really nice. I liked him, he-"

"Dammit, Chloe, of course you like him! Everyone likes Julian." Lex snarled, leaning his forehead against the cool glass plane. "He's the golden child, my mother's little angel, my father's little protégé! Star athlete since preschool, straight 'A' student four grades ahead of where he should be. A good kid who's still a virgin, never done drugs, never come home slobbering drunk, and has never been expelled. He's a fucking poster boy for Mensa and the National Honor Society, a shoe in for the freshman class of Harvard University next year. And I fucking hate him." He ground out not turning around.

"Xan! Jesus Xan, I didn't even know you had a brother, much less one who's as perfect as you say he is. I understand that you're jealous, believe me I know." Chloe said, remembering all the times she had wanted to rip Lana Lang's head off for being so perfect. She was a little shocked that he'd been so forthcoming about his feelings though. It wasn't like him, but then, he'd been surprising her quite a bit today.

"But you have a chance to get to know your brother. You missed out on that with your sister and mother, don't waste this chance. Because regret is one of the worst possible emotions a person can have. And you will regret it. You don't need to have that feeling when it comes to Julian, you already have enough that you hate yourself for." She said sternly. she really didn't want another weight on his shoulders. He had too much to carry already.

"How do you know?" He asked seriously. He was still so caught up in his anger that he didn't notice her moving closer to him.

"Haven't you learned yet that I know everything? Just try ok? No matter how sharp or conniving you think he is, remember that he's a lonely kid, just like you." Chloe said.

"I'm not lonely Chloe. I have you." Lex told her seriously, not turning to look at her.

Chloe stood behind him and wrapped her arms around him from behind. "Yes you do, and you always will. But you're still lonely when it comes to your family. And that's ok, but you don't have to be. Your brother took the effort to come here and you should put in the effort to get to know him."

"For you." He said quietly.

"For yourself, do it for yourself." She demanded resting her cheek on his back. Then she turned her head and planted a kiss between his shoulder blades.

"You are the most difficult female alive."

"Yeah, but you love me that way."

~*~*~

Julian rested his head against the door of his room and didn't bother to fight the tears. There was no one to see him, and no one to bother him about it, so he saw no reason to stop them.

It had hurt. God it had been utter agony to here the brother that he looked up to and admired talk about him like that.

Jules didn't understand it. Why did he hate him? What the hell was he supposed to fix? What was he supposed to change?

Silent tears turned into broken sobs and the boy slid to the floor. He knew his crying would accomplish nothing but for once he didn't have to face his father after an encounter with Lex and he could just let it all go. More of that unsettling freedom filled him as he ran out of tears.

[Blaire]

Chapter 17

"Tell me again, Sullivan, why you’re sitting at my table instead of off with your lover fucking in a broom closet?" Corinne demanded as she stared across the lunch table at the blonde. The ever-constant popping pink gum punctuated her sentence.

Chloe just rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Lex and I are not lovers yet, Delaney." She replied using her friend’s, yes somehow she and Corrine had managed to become actual friends, last name the same way she had used hers.

"How can you fucking stand it?" The punker, whose hair had changed from its typical blinding green to an equally bright shade of purple, asked curiously. "Better question, how can he stand it?"

"Self-discipline I guess." Chloe said with a shrug.

"Yeah, and lots of private time." Corinne said with a laugh.

"Oh my god, where did you get that mind? Did you pull it out of a gutter in downtown Boston and just shove it in your ears?"

"Nope, it’s a gift. And I use that gift…to well, make people happy." The purple-haired punker said, between gum pops.

"They have a name for that you know?" Chloe said, raising her eyebrows in what she hoped was a Lex-like fashion.

"Yeah, but I mean slut? It’s such an ugly word. And it’s not what I am. Ya know that don’t you Sullivan?" Corinne said asked, suddenly serious.

"Of course, but you are a LITTLE more loose that the average debutant."

"Its just an eccentricity. And eccentricity is way more amusing than normalcy. So, why are you here, Sullivan, and not spending the free period making out with Luthor in a broom closet or something?"

Chloe shrugged and sighed heavily. Lex had disappeared before 5th period and she had no idea where he was. She figured that he was probably burning his brother in effigy or something else to defuse his anger.

"Some family problems have come up, and I’m not going to push him about it for the time being." The blonde said, toying with the mush on her plate that posed as food.

"Meaning that your going to wait till Lover Boy to chills out and then you’re going to meddle right?" Corinne asked twirling a purple strand of hair casually around her finger.

Chloe laughed. "You are far to perceptive for comfort."

"It’s yet another of my many gifts. Look, mind if I talk to him? You know, I have the whole wisdom that comes with age thing and I’m not dating him at the moment. So I‘m more detached than you."

Chloe waved her fork at Corinne and sighed. "Sure. Go for it. But don’t blame me for what he does to you."

"I can handle Luthor. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, Sullivan."

~*~*~

Julian was sitting on the carpeted corridor, leaned against the wall on Alex’s floor, waiting and half heartedly reading. It was pathetic, but it was the best way he could think of the catch his brother. Even if Alex was sleeping in Chloe’s room, which he wouldn’t put past him, he’d have to come back for supplies some time.

He was rereading his old, worn-out copy of 1984 when a girl appeared at the end hallway, the popping of bubblegum heralding her approach. His breath caught as he watched her walk down the hall.

He’d never seen a girl that looked like her up close before. Her hair was neon purple, she had piercing all over her face, and black tattoos were visible where her socks didn‘t cover. And she somehow managed to make that school uniform look sexier than a thong bikini.

Julian’s heart nearly stopped beating as she came to a stop at Lex’s door. She knocked once, a strong, loud knock that scrapped her spiked bracelets against the wood.

"Luthor, I know you’re in there. Open the fucking door." She said casually.

Julian blinked up at her from his spot on the floor. Usually, those words would be delivered with anger behind them. But the girl spoke calmly and didn’t seem ruffled in the least.

"He’s not here."

The girl turned to find the source of the voice before and looked down at Julian. "And you would know this how exactly?"

"Because I’ve been waiting for him for over an hour and he’s still not here." Julian said with a shrug.

The girl tilted her head and stared at him. His heart sped up as he watched those eyes, clear and intelligent, study him.

She blew a large pink bubble, let it pop, and then said, "You’re Luthor’s family problem Sullivan was talking about, aren’t you?"

"Um….I’m not exactly sure, but I probably am."

She smiled at him and then leaned over to give him her hand, which was covered in various rings. As he took her hand to lift himself up, he felt his whole body just freeze.

She gave him an odd look. "You ok?"

"Yeah, I’m fine." Julian breathed, pulling himself to his feet. "I’m Julian by the way. Julian Luthor, I’m Lex’s little brother."

Corinne shook his hand once before letting it drop. "Corinne Delaney. Only child, thank god. So you’re the brother huh? How much younger are you then than Luthor? 10 months? A year?"

Julian shook his head and sighed. "Three years. And please, call me Julian, or Jules. Everyone does."

Corinne just blinked at him. The she shook herself and then did another inventory of Julian. The boy did not look or act 14. He looked 17 and sounded 22.

"Ok Jules, why pray tell has the unknown Luthor brother decided to grace the halls and dorms of Hampton with his presence?"

"Family shit. Lex hates me, I’m here to see if I can change that and fix whatever it is that I broke. I don’t like that my only sibling hates the air I breathe and the ground I walk on." Julian said with a sad shrug. He had no reason to lie to her. And she was so…so something that he couldn’t seem to control his thoughts or words around her.

The purple haired girl gave him a grin, one that sent his pulse through the roof, and said, "Luthor is a shit sometimes. Don’t worry. Miller, Sullivan and I will straighten the bastard out for ya. Until then, I guess, you’ll just have put up with me until the Hairless Wonder shows up."

And with that, Corinne leaned against the wall with a thump and slid quickly to the ground. She sat on the carpet with her legs stretched out in front of her and picked his book up off the floor.

"I read it when I was a year younger than you are now. Great book. What do you think of it?" Corinne asked waving 1984 at him.

"I read it for the first time when I was 7. It’s one of my favorites.”

Corinne gaped at the younger teen. And it took quite a bit to make Corinne Delaney gape. “Seven?”

Julian smiled at her. She was so pretty, he thought as he answered her shocked statement.

“Yeah, seven. I found it in the library of Dad’s house in Metropolis and it piqued my interest.”

“Are you some kind of child prodigy or something?”

Julian gave her a small smile that flashed just the smallest tinniest bit of straight, white teeth. He’d never worn braces and had been graced with a naturally stunning grin. “My dad likes the term genius better. Lex uses freak and my mom used to say I was gifted. I tend to go with clever.”

Damn, he was something else, Corinne thought. She’d never been impressed by a guy like she was by Julian Luthor. He had so much charisma that for the first time since she had been his age, she wanted to do more with him than just have sex. It was unsettling, and at the same time more than a little fantastic.

[Blaire]

Chapter 18

"Lex? What’s the problem? Why aren’t you in school?"

"I checked myself out for a goddamn personal day. When did you turn into the KGB, Sean?" Lex barked into his cell phone.

He’d been driving for over an hour and his anger had yet to diffuse on its own so he’d taken the situation in his own hands by calling one of his few real male friends. Lex wasn’t sure if Sean would be able to help, but at the very least he couldn’t make things any worse.

"Easy man. Please remember that you called me. I could be working on a client or making love to Ella if you hadn’t picked this very moment to call me on your way too expensive cell phone from your ridiculously opulent car. You're in the Jag, aren't you, Lex?" Sean laughed into his ear.

Lex didn't answer, but put his foot on the gas and sped the Jaguar up another good twenty miles per hour.

"I’ll take that as a yes. Man, what crawled up your ass and died?" Sean asked as he listened to the engine rev.

Lex sighed heavily and slowed the car down to the speed limit. He wasn’t in a death-defying mood really. It was more about release than escape. "Do you have siblings Sean?"

His friend laughed. "Yeah, three of them. But I thank god most of them only have a minimal presence in my life."

Lex didn’t answer and waited for Sean to continue.

"They were all older than me, way older. The youngest was ten years older than I am and the oldest had seventeen years on me. Cody’s a mama’s boy who lived at home with our parents until after I had gone to college. Zeke is an alcoholic do-nothing who lives off his unemployment check. And J.B. is a gay stockbroker married to a guy named Dwight. They adopted two kids from Somalia. So tell me Lex, what’s your family freak like?"

Lex smiled. He knew Sean was the right person to call. Wendy would have done, but he needed another guy to talk to.

"It’s my younger brother."

"Younger siblings are death. I know; I was one. But what makes Mini-Luthor so bad that you left a gorgeous five-foot-something blond with the hots for you all alone at a co-ed boarding school?" Sean asked in the same teasing voice he’d been using most of the phone call.

"He’s perfect," Lex growled angrily. The mere thought of Julian made his blood boil even though he was miles away from where his little brother by now.

"And your point is?"

"He’s everything I’m not and wish I were. You need more?" He asked, feeling even angrier. Sean was supposed to be sympathizing with him. That’s what friends did. Obviously, he had overestimated the tattoo artist’s value as a friend.

"Lex, everyone has a perfect relative. Every family has that single person who makes the pope look like Caligula. Just tell them to fuck off and get on with your sinful, imperfect life."

"If it was just that do you really think he would bother me so much?" Lex demanded.

Sean sighed, clearly exasperated. "Look man, I can’t read your fucking mind. If you have a problem, you have to tell me or your girlfriend or your therapist or someone. Because Professor Xavier does not exist and even if he did, I think you should know that I am not his love child. So, open your billion dollar mouth and tell me what the problem is or hang up and go back to your girlfriend, get laid, and unwind."

"He took something from me. I can’t get it back no matter how rich my family is or no matter how much power I attain. I can’t get what he took back." Lex said vaguely. It was close enough to the truth that he could get some semi-decent advice.


"Did he do it on purpose?" He asked seriously. Now that they were actually discussing the situation Sean let all the bullshit drop.

"I don’t know."

"That’s an unhelpful answer if I ever heard one but I’ll take what I can get. My advice, and whether you take it or not is this: talk to him. Get his side off the story, man, and then once you know the score, you can castrate him. My other piece of advice is to go home. Your woman is worried. I’ve been living with Ella long enough to know that when a man, just disappears without a word and there has been no fight a woman will worry."

Lex nodded even though the voice on the other side couldn’t see him. "Thanks Sean."

"Not a problem. That will be $69.95. No checks, cash or credit cards only. Thank you for using Sean’s Therapy Hotline."

Lex laughed, as he pulled his car off the road, which was nearly empty, and turned around. "Not a chance. I’d be getting a better deal if I called one of those psychic hotlines Dion Warwick is always promoting."

"Beware the psychics man. They’re all psychotic."

"I appreciate the warning. Now I’m going to let you return to whatever vice you were indulging in before my phone call interrupted."

"I was only watching Growing Pains, Lex. So don’t worry. You didn’t ruin anything monumental." Sean chirped.

"Good. I’m thrilled. Truly, the knowledge of your ability to survive missing a rerun is what keeps me going." Lex replied as he sped back towards Hampton.

"Anything for a friend, Lex. Anything for a friend."

~*~*~

If I were to say I’m unhappy about Julian’s arrival on my doorstep it would be one of the largest understatements ever spoken. I was, and am furious. Not just because of all the emotional bullshit his presence dredges up but also because Chloe had been so sexy at the moment. She’d been like cocaine and me in need of a fix. Being interrupted in the middle of said fix is not something that makes me cheerful.

But it’s more than that that makes me antsy when he’s around my girl. I don’t like him around the women I’m with. He’s so fucking innocent that he draws women like flies. On top of that he got blessed with the Luthor looks that skipped me over.

He doesn’t realize much of anything in regards to women. Although how he managed to stay pure with that nymphomaniac roommate of his, what’s his name Kite? Chai? Fly? It’s beyond me.

I didn’t even have a perverted roommate to corrupt me. I didn’t need it. By high school I was quite experienced with the wonders of sex and the joys of drugs. My father was less than thrilled to be sure.

And then, lets take a small look at his brain. The kid has been in Mensa since he was six. Funny, because when I was six I was confined to a hospital bed, nauseous, bald even then, skin and bones, slowly wasting away as cancer ate away at me from the inside out.

Call me shallow but I resent him for his childhood. I got sick when I was four years old. Four. I never got half the chances he had. He was running around the sprawling backyard of Luthor Estates in California when he was four. It’s not fair that he got to be an ordinary, or rather extraordinary, kid while I was sub par freak. And I hate him for it.

I hate him for a lot of things I probably shouldn’t. He has no real control over the fact that my father sees Jules as my replacement. He sees me as his spare son and his puppet. I’m not sure my dad even knows what love is. But whatever he has within him he saves for Julian.

And the Wonder Boy can’t help being perfect either. He can’t help that his IQ is up in the 170’s. He didn’t give himself the speed and endurance to be the star of the Warwick track team. Even though I still begrudge him for it.

But that’s not why I truly hate him. Not really. What I told Sean on the phone earlier is true. He took something I loved away from me.

I don’t know if it’s fair to blame him. But, through some sort of sick twisted survivor guilt, scapegoat complex, I do. His bullshit caused it. Whether or not he meant to do it, he was the cause and what happened to her is the effect. And now I’m left alone.

And after all of it, I’m supposed to hear him out. Chloe would want me to. Wendy would want me to, as I’m sure would Lena and Mom, if they were still around to make any decision as opposed to lying six feet underground in a pine box in the Metropolis City Cemetery.

But listening is not a skill taught to Luthors. Manipulation, self-control, the ability to exploit a weakness, lying, and getting away with murder are Luthor skills. And like any good Luthor, I excel in all of the above.

Which is why I sometimes wonder if Julian and another child were switched at birth. Julian doesn’t even use sarcasm for god’s sake! He’s so fucking sweet he makes my teeth rot in my skull with his very presence.

Although he does have the Luthor control: in spades. He hasn’t cracked in front of anyone since he was eight and Mom died. Since then the kid has put on a bigger act than all the theaters on Broadway combined.

So maybe he really is as sick as the rest of the family. It would be comforting if he was, but it still wouldn’t change my feeling towards him. If anything, it would probably make him more disgusting in my eyes. Because how anyone can turn out like him and share my DNA is beyond me.

[Blaire]

Chapter 19

Sometime in the late afternoon, after Corinne’s hasty exit and the end of classes for the day in the late afternoon, Chloe had reached a state of worried anger. It had been hours and Lex had yet to come back from his little disappearance to god knows where. The symptoms of not knowing where he was or when he was coming back, and the furious mood he’d been in did nothing do assuage her worries.

She tried in vain to work on her trigonometry, a subject she neither enjoyed nor excelled in. But after awhile she knew it was pointless.

The worry this minor episode caused led her thoughts to a bigger, scarier things. Like the reality that she would disappear one of these days.

She wasn’t a physics expert. Chloe had no idea how or why she landed in 1997, but the fact of the matter was that she had. Suddenly and without any power over the time and place in which she had landed.

And if she was logical, which was difficult in a situation like hers but still possible, she had to accept the fact that at any moment she could be pulled through another hole in time.

The thought was unsettling and Chloe chewed on the eraser of the pencil she was hold but not using it as she thought. After all, who could work on sign, cosign and tangent when one was contemplating their future in the past versus their future in the future.

She didn’t like the images, of what it would be like when she left, that kept randomly popping into her thoughts without her permission. They scared her.

Because she’d seen that hollow, dead look in Lex’s eyes when he talked about his sister and mother. Chloe had no desire to put that look in his eyes because of her.

What she really needed was for Wendy to get her Southern ass back up to Hampton before she went home. She figured that she could convince her friend of the truth if she showed her enough of the evidence she had stored in the bag under her bed.

She was tempted, time and again, to tell Lex. But while she knew that in a few years, after driving off a bridge and being accosted/kidnapped/threatened/robbed/stalked by a vast number of meteor mutants he would believe her, the Lex she knew at the moment was not the type to embrace the supernatural.

So what to do? She could try and change the past, which her presence there alone might do, or she could nothing. But she had no idea what had happened to Lex between his junior year and his arrival in Smallville.

But maybe she could use the books and documents she kept under bed to convince Wendy when she came back. She wasn’t exactly sure what it would take to convince her but she had to try because she was going to need an ally when she got home.

Home. Odd but she didn’t think of Smallville as home anymore. Home was here in Massachusetts with Lex and Corinne and, when she got back, Wendy. Granted she missed her father desperately. Sometimes at night she would stare at the ceiling and see his face in the tiny dots in the plaster. But that wasn’t where she belonged anymore.

And the prospect of going back to the future scared her. For the first time, she wished she’d been more of a girly girl and read more time travel romances. At least then she’d have a small idea of how to handle the situation.

All she knew was that when she returned to 2002, she’d be a good semester ahead of her classmates and that Lex would not be her Lex anymore. He’d be someone colder; more introverted with no friends save for Clark Kent. He’d have no real connections to anyone and a reputation for partying hard and using harder.

She wished she knew what it was that would change him so much. Because not knowing how to prevent it really got to her.

And this whole affair with Julian made her uneasy. That situation was just a landmine of pain for both of the Luthor sons. But at least Jules seemed like he was willing to brave the possible emotional injuries.

And she had a sinking suspicion that Lex was going to avoid confrontation as much as possible. It wasn’t in Lex’s nature to avoid a challenge but this whole issue with Julian wasn’t a challenge. It was a source of pain and jealousy to be avoided at all costs.

And she couldn’t blame him for that. But she’d be damned is she was going to let it stay like that.

Chloe simply refused to leave him alone, without any family connections, when her time came. It wasn’t just that she wanted him to at the very least be able to carry on a civil conversation; she also wanted to help him mend fences.

She’d need Corinne’s help of course, and she’d have to call Wendy. But before Chloe started working on a plan she needed him to come back. And while she waited, she really needed to finish her trig homework. Stupid numbers, she thought as she rummaged through her bag for a calculator.

~*~*~

Lex was tired, bone tired. It has been an incredibly long drive back to Hampton and it had given him too much time alone with his own thoughts. A hollow ache seeped from his chest outward making everything in his body hurt. He was so exhausted emotionally, when he tried to breathe deeply, his lungs seemed to get tight and constrict making it difficult to breathe.

He needed to see Chloe, to remind himself that she was real and solid. He opened the door of her room quietly and saw her, sprawled on her stomach on the floor, her skirt rumpled about her. Her knees were bent put and were swinging back and forth as she chewed on the eraser of her pencil and stared at her math book.

He wished he had a camera, to capture that image. But instead him engraved the image into his brain, dropped to the carpet behind her, and silently moved up so that he was lying on the floor next to her.

"What are you up to beautiful?"

Chloe snapped her head around and stared at him. She opened and close her mouth like a dying fish a few times before he kissed her.

Chloe lost herself in him for a few minutes before jerking away and slapping him. "What the hell Lex? Where have you been?"

"Well if that’s the welcome I get I’ll go else where." Lex said, rubbing his cheek.

"You worried me. What the hell were you thinking?" She demanded.

"I needed space." Lex said vaguely.

"You are such a man."

"Thank god. Like I want to be a woman. I have no desire to give birth or have a period or be an oversensitive creature ruled by emotion," Lex replied with a grin.

"Better than a cold, insensitive, being ruled by his sex drive."

He laughed and pulled her into a hug. It felt so good to be home. Odd, to think of Chloe’s dorm room as home but he felt more at ease at Hampton, with her than he ever had at the Luthor Manor or any of the other of his father’s properties.

"Seriously Xan, where did you go?"

He sighed. She wasn’t going to let it drop was she? "I went for a drive to clear my head. So you didn’t need to panic over me."

"I didn’t panic. As a general rule, I never panic." Which was completely true. She was used to crises and it took more than him going MIA to send her into a panic. No, he’d have to get kidnapped by a vampire or a soul-sucking demon or, you know, get hit by a big rig for her to panic. "I worried."

"About me," he said, grinning smugly.

"No, about that new panda at the Boston Zoo. Yes about you!"

"I’m flattered."

"Yeah well, be careful that pride doesn't cause your head doesn’t swell up and explode. I don’t want to clean up itty bitty pieces of brain and skull." She said sharply as she ran a hand over his scalp. "Cause you have such a nice head."

"Don’t worry, Chloe. I’ll take good care of my head and I’ll take care of myself."

Chloe nodded. "Lex?"

"Yes."

"What’s going on with Jules?"

She heard him sigh deeply and pull away from her. Both physically and emotionally, he distanced himself. She hated it when he did that.

"It’s just sibling rivalry, Chloe. I don’t want you sticking your nose in this. Because its my problem and I’ll sort this out myself. Can you let me do that?"

Chloe sighed but didn’t answer because she couldn’t truthfully say that she would. And unlike Clark, she didn’t like outright lying to someone she cared for or loved like she did for Lex.

"Let’s not talk about this anymore."

Chloe nodded. "But later, I want you to tell me what’s going on with you. I can see that you’re hurting."

"I’m not."

"And now you’re lying to me. Lex, you can talk to me. I won’t sell your secrets or divulge your fears."

It bothered her that he wouldn’t trust her with this when he trusted her with so many other things. She understood it but that didn’t make it any easier for her to deal with.

"Can you wait? Just, give me some time?"

Chloe sighed heavily. No, she thought. Time was the one thing she couldn’t give him. Because unlike most people, she didn’t have forever. All she had with him was this moment, on the carpet of a dormitory, with Lex.

[Blaire]

Chapter 20

This Thanksgiving was one of the best that Chloe had had since her mother got sick. She’d had a one great one with her father and the Kents, but this was right up there in the top three.

She had eaten Chinese food on the floor of her dorm room with Lex. They had gone with Chinese since Ching’s Chinese Cuisine was the only place open on Thanksgiving and also the only place willing to make a delivery out to Hampton.

She had tired desperately to convince Lex to invite his brother to eat with them. But he’d told her in no uncertain terms that Jules was not to come within ten feet of him on Thursday.

But, despite that little issue, it had been incredibly intimate and more fun than she’d had on Thanksgiving since she was about five. Only this year, the conversation was better.

She’d checked in on the younger Luthor later that evening and found he and Corinne laughing together in his room. Jules didn’t notice her but Corinne nodded and she slipped away without him noticing.

But Thanksgiving was the high point. For the next few weeks, things to steadily went steadily downhill.

Julian had once again taken to hanging out in and around Lex’s room, much to his brother’s annoyance. And once the younger teen had made it know that he was not going to move, Lex decided that he was no longer going to stay in his dorm room.

So Lex was now sharing a room with Pietro, the school drug dealer. It was not an arrangement that either Chloe or Wendy, when informed by telephone, was happy with.

Once the stalking tactic proved ineffective, Julian had taken to playing shadow, with Chloe’s help. She’d slipped Jules a copy of Lex’s class schedule one of the many afternoons she’d found him that he had camped out in front of the Lex’s door.

But that wasn’t working either, Chloe had realized, much to her dismay. Lex somehow managed to avoid Jules and still catch up with her in classes. She wasn’t sure exactly how he managed to do that, but it was definitely praise worthy maneuvering.

It was frustrating as hell for the "Get Lex to talk to Jules" squad. Chloe, who Jules came to in the halls between classes for advice on the situation, and a grudging Corinne were quickly running out of options.

"This is bullshit," Corinne declared at lunch, a full two weeks after Thanksgiving break. Jules had set foot in the cafeteria and before she and Chloe knew what was happening Lex had disappeared.

"Corinne its not-"

"Shove it Sullivan." Corinne interrupted, "This is fucking bullshit, you hear? Your boyfriend obviously doesn’t want to talk to the Brain. So why are we trying so damn hard?" She had taken to affectionately referring to Jules as "the Brain" and Julian didn’t seem to mind. In fact, as long as Corinne was talking to him, about him, or with him his troubles seemed minute.

"Because this needs to get fixed." Chloe argued.

"Are you his fucking therapist now? Cause unless you are, then it’s not your goddamn job to fix his family problems."

"I lo- care about him and this is hurting him."

Julian said nothing but smirked to himself. He’d liked Chloe since the moment he’d met her and over the past couple of weeks she’d grown on him even more. She got things done and wasn’t afraid to stick her nose in places where it might get broken when she wanted information. Coming from a scholarly perspective, he highly respected that about her. And besides, she loved his brother.

"Hey Sullivan, ask me if I give a shit," Corinne said drolly.

"I don’t have to, Delaney, because I know that you do. Plus, I think you get the same sick kick out of this as the rest of us," Chloe returned, quickly loosing patience. "We’re just not going at this the right way is all."

"Uh-huh." Corinne turned and looked Julian. "What have you got in your bag of tricks?"

Jules laughed and shook his head. "Lint and a few decaying moths. Strategy is Lex and Dad’s thing. I don’t usually play the combat games."

"Some help you are."

"Corinne!"

"What?"

Chloe just sighed and put her elbows on the table and her forehead in her hands. In that moment, she wished she were back in Smallville where her biggest challenge was figuring out where the latest mutant came from. It seemed so easy compared to this.

~*~*~

"Use the sitcom solution."

"What?"

Wendy’s voice sighed into her ear as if she were an agitated teacher about to explain a simple addition problem for the zillionth time to a slow-witted student. "Did you even have a TV in Smallville, Chloe?"

She laughed. "Yes Wendy, I had a TV. And believe it or not, we even had cable."

"Then I would assume that you’ve seen some sitcoms." Wendy said in that same explanatory yet impatient tone.

"Occasionally."

"Well, how does a conflict with a main character get resolved?"

Chloe said nothing. How the hell was she supposed to know? She didn’t pay that close attention to Will and Grace or Boy Meets World.


"Work with me Clo! You’re making this too difficult."

"Just tell me and then you wont have to keep aggravating yourself." Chloe chuckled.

"It gets fixed one of two ways. First, if it’s a guy and we’re lucky that Lex just happens to be male, you cut him off completely. No kissing, no hugging, no touching, nothing; at least nothing until he gets his shit together. And second, you lock the two warring parties in a small, enclosed space like a janitor’s closet or a storage locker until they work out their issues. One of those always works. Always."

Chloe rolled her eyes. That sounded to ridiculous to actually work in the real world. "You’re joking right?"

"No."

"Wendy."

She sighed again. "It will work, Chloe. I swear. You lock them in a broom closet and you let them working it out. And if for some reason it doesn’t work, you can tell Lex it was my idea."

"And the cutting off thing?"

Wendy laughed. "You’ll survive."

"Easy for you to say," Chloe muttered.

Wendy laughed again, harder this time. God, she wished she were back at Hampton. This whole thing would had to be quite the show.

~*~*~

Lex sighed as he headed to physics. This whole situation with Julian was getting more and more tense.

And he couldn’t make himself take Sean’s advice. Every time he got within a few feet of his brother, all he could see was his father’s face and all he could feel was years of rage all flooding through him at once.

And yesterday, Chloe had started avoiding him. She’d just looked at him with sad blue eyes and used a different route to get to her Spanish class than the one they took together. What was going on with her?

Lex was lost in thought until his legs went out from under him and he landed on his back, looking up at the ceiling. He almost laughed as he realized he’d never noticed that the ceiling was paneled before now. But the laughter died as a familiar face appeared above him and held out a hand.

"You ok, Alex?"

Lex ignored Julian’s hand and pushed himself off the floor, trying to shake whatever liquid he’d slipped in off his back.

"What are you doing here, Satan spawn?" Lex snarled.

The boy shrugged. "Wandering. I have nothing better to do. I walked down this hall, saw my older brother in a pool of kool-aide and decided to help."

Ever the good fucking Samaritan, Lex thought bitterly and looked down at the floor. Dear God, it was covered in a fruit-smelling, pinkish liquid. Dammit, it really was kool-aide

He touched the back of his head and it came away wet with the stuff and he cursed. He hadn’t fallen hard enough to hurt his back. But if he didn’t find something to clean the kool-aide up with, his head was going to be stickier than flypaper for the rest of the day.

"I don’t need your help," Lex spat as he walked down the hall towards the bathroom. He would stick his head under the faucet and try and get some of this gunk off before it dried and got sticky if necessary.

"Yeah, but you might want it or something," Julian insisted.

He let out a short, aggravated burst of air and turned to look at Julian as he reached for the door. He pushed the door open and ducked quickly inside.

And damn it, Julian followed him in.

"What exactly are you doing in here Alex?" Julian asked as the door slowly closed.

Lex looked around realized that he wasn’t in the men’s restroom at all. He was in the janitor’s closet that was right next-door.

Damn it, he’d been so distracted by the walking brain to the point that he’d gone in the wrong door.

He sighed. and spun around quickly, and made for the door. He would have left as well, if Julian leaned against it, forcing it shut.

"Alex, talk to me. Please?" Jules pleaded, trying to take advantage of the closed space.

Lex was getting angry, angrier than he had been since Jules had first showed up. Which was saying something given his usual level of control over his temper.

"Get out of my way you oversized freak before I knock you through the fucking wall. If I wanted to talk to you, although why on earth that particular desire would ever come over me is beyond me, I’ll let you know. Now move, Wonder Boy."

Julian said nothing and stepped to the side. He simply absorbed the verbal assault and filled it away, trying to detach it from his emotions. Years of practice was the only thing that made it possible. He looked up at his brother and decided that maybe he should just give out up.

Lex was fuming. As he ran his hand over his now sticky head, he was resisted the urge to curse a blue streak and reached for the doorknob instead.

"Well fuck." Lex muttered, trying the door once again, putting his weight behind it this time and jiggling the knob.

"What? What is it Alex?"

Lex looked at Julian. The irritation in his eyes had escalated to a simmering, powerful rage and Julian took an almost imperceptible step back. "The door won’t fucking open. We’re locked in."

[Blaire]

Chapter 21

Corinne ran her hands through her hair and straightened the messy purple strands. Well, that had gone well.

She hadn't been sure at first. Miller's plan seemed incredibly implausible, and was likely to get someone hurt. But when Sullivan had told her, she'd been intrigued. Plus, she had the skills necessary for the plan to work.

Chloe may have set the trap with the spilled punch, which had been a beautiful thing to watch in Corinne's opinion. But Corinne had gotten the master key and the permission to block off the hallway, a task, which had not been as easy and had required the bestowing a few favors on the younger members of the maintenance staff. Not the most fun she'd ever had, but not all that bad at all. And now no one would be in that hallway for a long time, thanks to her efforts.

While they'd planned to lock the boys in the bathroom until they worked out their shit, the janitor's closet worked just as well. And then when one of the Luthor brothers had pushed the door closed, it had made making their job that much easier.

"I can't believe this is going to work," Chloe whispered as banging began from behind the door. She was amazed that it had indeed gone off without a hitch.

Corinne laughed, "Me either Sullivan. Me fucking either."

"How long to you think this will take?" Chloe asked, looking at her watch quickly. The last period of the day didn't get out for another hour and then the main academic building didn't shut down until nine.

"I don't know. But I'm not hanging around all night, waiting for the violence to start," As much as she liked the kid, and she did, Julian treated her with more respect than anyone she'd ever met, she saw no reason to sit around a locked door for hours. "Come on Sullivan, we gotta get to class. We'll check in on them every few hours."

Chloe smiled. "This is gonna work," She said again.

"Yeah, if they don't fucking kill each other first."

"Maim, Corinne. I don't think it’ll escalate to homicide." She replied dryly as she and Corinne walked away from the voice of Lex yelling through the door. They’d come back in a while but at the moment, they had to get to class. Chloe for one, had an end of term test to take.

~*~*~

Lex slammed his fist against the metal door, over and over again. The sound reverberated through the small closet, shaking bottles of Windex and drain cleaner shaking in their spots on the rusty metal shelves.

"Hello? Is anyone out there?" Lex banged on the door again. Silence came from the other side. "Hello?" Nothing, Lex banged on the door again. He threw himself at the door, putting his weight into it. It didn’t even budge. "Let us the fuck out! Open the fucking door! COME ON! OPEN THE GODDAMN FUCKING DOOR!" Lex yelled, more for himself than the nonexistent person on the other side.

"Un-fucking-believable," Lex muttered, leaning with his back against the locked door. He sighed and slid down into a sitting position, somewhat defeated.

Julian watched the whole thing from where he stood in the middle of the small closet. He didn’t see any reason to repeat his brother’s performance since it was obvious that the door was not going to open and no one was going to come get them out in for the time being.

They both just stayed like that for a while. Lex rested his head against the door and closed his eyes, and Jules paced a little. But other than that, there was silence.

Until Julian realized that for the first time since the day he’d arrived, he had Lex in a situation where his brother couldn’t avoid him. This was the perfect opportunity to find out exactly what it was that made Lex treat him the way he did.

Jules wasn’t sure how to start. Corinne or Kai would have started it with a joke, or a crude observation. Lionel would open the conversation with a thinly veiled threat, and Lex would go with a sarcastic comment. But Julian wasn’t really up for any of those options. He liked honesty best.

"I wish you didn’t hate me, Alex."

At that Lex opened his eyes and lifted his head off the door. He didn’t argue but instead sighed and shook his head.

"Yeah well, if wishes were horses," Lex muttered.

Julian felt like Lex had slapped him. It was painful but he decided to keep going. The chance that he’d ever get to Lex corned and talking again was slim to none.

"I also wish I knew why you did," He said softly, looking down at his feet.

"I’m surprised that with a brain as oversized as yours you can’t just read my mind," Lex snapped. Julian was pushing him.

"You never used to be like this Alex."


Lex let out a low sound from the back of his throat. His control was slipping with every word Jules spoke.

"You used to be able to at least tolerate me, back when Mom and Lena were alive."

Lex’s hands were curled into fists. Lex curled his hands into fists, his fingernails digging in into the skin of his palms so hard they almost broke the skin.

Julian swallowed hard and fought back tears. The look on Lex’s face was one of powerful, barely harnessed rage. But at least he had a partial answer now. It stemmed from loosing their mother and sister.

"I miss them too, Alex. I miss Mom; and I really miss Lena."

Before Julian could blink, Lex was off the floor and launching himself at Julian. He pulled back his clenched fist and slammed it hard into Jules’s face.

Julian fell back on impact, landing on the dirty floor of the janitor’s closet, trying to catch himself. He failing miserably and Lex pinned him to the ground by straddling his little brother’s chest and grabbing him by the front of his shirt.

"Don’t you DARE talk about Lena! You have no fucking right to miss her! NONE! You killed her you little shit!" Lex snarled, shaking the boy beneath him.

Lex could remember everything. Julian had been eight at the time and incessant. Constantly working on one project or another, he’d always needed something. At the time, Lex had been busy trying to catch up with all the schoolwork he’d missed because of his mother’s illness and the numerous out-patient checkups at the hospital to make sure that he was indeed still in remission. Lionel had been elsewhere doing what (and who) God only knew but when he was around, there had been constant arguments between the corporate tycoon and his oldest child.

Lillian had been too busy dying to do much to make the situation better, so Lena, very mature at all of ten years old, had played peacekeeper and go between. She understood her big brother better than anyone and had a skill for convincing their father to go easy. She had also taken Julian under her wing. So when he’d asked her to go with one of the help to pick up something for a project he was working on, Lena hadn’t thought twice about saying yes.

But she’d never made it home. And with a sick sense of survivor guilt and a need to find a source for something so senseless, he had blamed Julian. Because after all, it was just another thing he could resent him for.

"You’ve either had or taken everything I wanted or needed. Everything I want to be but can’t, every thing I want to have but don’t, is what you embody. I hate you because you lived the life I should have had!" Lex yelled, shaking his brother after every word.

"You had a childhood that was free and healthy while my body ate itself up from the inside out. When you were born, I was dying! And even though you grew up watching me waste away and in constant pain from the rounds of medication, you never, ever appreciated what you had," Lex laughed morosely. "And what’s fucking worse, is that Lionel fucking loves you. That cold son of a bitch loves you and if he could, if it weren’t too much of a hassle, he’d just have me eliminated by now," His voice was suffused with jealousy and rage. He slammed Jules down into the floor for emphasis. "You got to be normal where it mattered, Wonder Boy. And in all other area’s you got to be exceptional, and I got to be a bald, out of place freak. You get to be sane. You get to be whole.

"And you want to know why I hate you? I hate you because you," His voice shook, "you took the only person other than myself that understood me away from me. And then you got on with your life without a fraction of the damage I have, without any remorse. I hate you! God, I hate you because you get to be happy.”

"And when it mattered, you got everything and I got nothing! NOTHING!" He shook him one last time and then Lex just collapsed.

Lex’s whole body was shuddering and he buried his face against Julian’s shoulder. Lex felt tears in his eyes as he trembled all the way to his bones. God, it hurt so much. So much that he could barely breath, barely think and couldn’t speak, wouldn’t speak. If he said anything else, the tiny scrap of self-control he had left would snap and he’d start to cry. And he wasn’t going to cry, not in front of Jules. But he couldn’t stop shaking, he had nothing left in his emotional reserves to hold onto.

"Alex?"

Julian had no idea what to do. He hadn’t seen his brother like this in so long, if ever. He had no clue how to respond. He tried to remember what their mother had done when Lex had been in pain, especially right after the meteor shower.

Tentatively, he lifted a hand and gently stroked Lex’s shaking back. He was careful and barely touched him afraid that at any moment Lex would explode at him again, only this time with pure rage instead of answers.

But Lex didn’t react to the touch. He was too busy trying to pull himself back together to get angry at something so small. And since Lex didn’t pull away, Jules didn’t stop stroking his hand ever so carefully down his brother's back.

"Thank you Alex," Jules said quietly. It had been hard to listen to Lex rant like that. And he hadn't killed Lena, no matter what Lex thought. He had worshiped his sister almost as much as he had looked up to Lex. "Thank you for telling me the truth."

Lex said, nothing, but the shaking had subsided. He was perched motionless with his face in the soft fabric of Julian’s shirt. It was undignified but he couldn’t seem to make himself move.

"I’m glad you told me. I," Jules sighed, "I get it now."

And he did. There was a lot of jealousy and pain and resentment and anger in Lex. He’d had nowhere to channel it but at Jules since most of it stemmed from his brother. But now, now that Jules understood it, he could start to make things better.

"Let me try to fix things, Alex. I can’t make it perfect, but I can try. Please, Alex, let me try."

Lex took a deep breath. "Don’t even bother." He said, but he didn’t lift his head. He could talk without breaking now, but he couldn’t lift his head or move anything but his lips to speak.

Jules chuckled but continued the movement of his hand on his older brother’s back. "I have to bother, Lex. I can’t seem to help myself. It's a character flaw."

"You do seem to have a lot of them." Lex said tiredly.

"Yeah, I do. Including stubbornness and single-mindedness. I want to fix this, Alex. I need to fix this with you."

"I don’t give a shit about what you need," Lex snapped.

"You need it too. I wouldn’t have a black eye if you didn’t because you wouldn't have cared enough to hit me," Jules replied calmly. He was beginning to lose feeling in his legs and his eye had swollen up so much he could hardly see out of it. But that was alright, because he was finally, for the first time in years, making headway with Lex.

"You don’t know what the fuck I need, Julian."

"Maybe." Jules conceded. "But you haven’t moved yet, Alex; you haven’t pulled away. So maybe you need me as much as I need you."

Lex said nothing to that. Because despite everything he was feeling, he couldn’t pull away. So MAYBE, just maybe, Julian was right. After all, the kid was a genius and being right was nothing new.

[Blaire]

Chapter 22

Chloe Sullivan

I can’t focus on my semester exam. It feels too early anyway, since we still have a few days until winter break.

How the hell was one supposed to focus on the Spanish preterit tense when the person, who one loves, is locked up in a janitor’s closet? Granted, I did the locking up, but sometimes you have to give out tough love.

And I do, love him that is. As stupid as it is to love someone like Lex Luthor, I can’t seem to help myself. It’s not like I can say, "Yes, I choose to love him,." It's more of a, "Dear God when did that happen? Why didn’t I stop it?"

Because he’s got something in him that I can’t resist. Charisma is the word for it. And underneath the charm, the Luthor name and money, the disinterested façade, and the cool control, he’s got substance, grit, humor, and courage. He has a brilliant mind and a good heart and honestly I don’t need more than that.

Which is not to say that he’s perfect. He’s not. He’s vain. He has a temper, a drug problem, and a lot of repressed rage. I’m not a shrink, but I know he’s got issues that I can’t and won’t, out of respect for him, touch on the ones I don’t even know about.

And that’s why Jules showing up is so great. It’s like a little surprise, a "Help your boyfriend sort out his shit" gift. And Jules was more than willing do all the work himself.

Jules is a great kid with more initiative than his brother. Even with that on his side, I have no idea exactly how this whole closet episode is going to end up, but I’m optimistic.

I never realized exactly how optimistic a person I was until I came here. I’ve always been open-minded and way too curious for my own good, but I didn’t realize that I was an optimist. And being surprised at yourself is more unnerving than being surprised at others. I know you really can’t get inside another person’s head, but you’re at least supposed to be in control of your own.

I’ve changed, a lot. Nothing to drastic, more of a lot of small changes, like the fact that I have gained the ability to let sleeping dogs lie instead of poking said dogs with sticks until I get what I want. Or the fact that I can just accept strange things, like my presence here in 1997, without needed to know the how and the why.

Not to mention self-reliance. Don’t get me wrong; I miss my dad so much it’s unreal sometimes. Yet spending all this time away from him has helped me to really grow up and break free. I’m my own boss, which is so much more work than I ever thought it would be.

And love. I thought, for years, that I was in love with Clark. Yeah, if that’s true love then this is insanity. Because I can see a future here, in this time. Even though I’m away from the people who I care for: my father, Clark, Pete, and even Lana. Nothing specific. But I can see the kind of life I would have, with Lex. It wouldn’t be easy, life never is, but it’d be a bright one.

I’m realistic though, on top of being an optimist. And the reality is, we’re together with an end date. Only he doesn’t know it. And when Lex finds out, it’s going to hurt him. I can’t elaborate more than that because you can never tell what Lex’s reaction is going to be. And I have no idea how or when I’m going to go, only that I will. It’s got to be a sixth sense or something because I’m sure of it.

So, like anyone who has half a brain, I’m preparing, myself and him. A difficult task when you’re dealing with others’ emotions. Not as easy to manipulate as a news scoop, I’ll tell you that.

And the risk involved is much greater. And putting them in that closet together definitely upped the stakes in the emotional gamble that I've taken with Lex and Jules.

What if I made it worse? What if someone gets hurt? And I’m not speaking metaphorically. I’m talking about Lex snapping and beating the living hell out of Jules, the way he attacked Donovan.

It could happen. It’s not completely outside the realm of possible. You get two explosive personalities in a small place for a long period of time and you tend to get explosive reactions.

But I’ve got a good feeling about it all. Jules wants to mend fences too badly to let Xan’s stubbornness get in the way. And if he gets past Xan’s defenses, with its antipersonnel fragmentation mines and phosphorous grenades, then Lex has one more person on his side.

Which is a good thing because the Lex I knew, the Lex in 2002, whose five years older and a thousand times colder than my Xan, has no one but Clark. Because that walking ass that is his biological father, that jerk doesn’t even deserve that title, does not count. He’d rather bring Lex to knees than give him a single kind word.

It makes me wonder what’s going to happen. Where will Wendy go? Where will Corinne go? Where will Jules go? What on Earth could isolate him like that?

I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Because the “what if’s” will kill you. And I already have enough to worry about without them.

~*~*~

Wendy Miller

They caved. Hallelujah, the parental units finally caved!

I’ve only been hacking at their defenses for months, but and the enemy has finally succumbed to my sheer persistence. Bout time too, I was running out of options.

But I won, so I’ll be back at Hampton before Christmas! Go me! I should consider law school. I’d make one hell of a lawyer.

I can’t wait to get back. Atlanta has been about as much fun as watching pro golf. On TV.

I like my hometown, really I do. But since I started Hampton when I was fourteen, I’ve sorta lost touch with the people I used to spend time with. Coming back has left me with no one to talk to.

And public school is ridiculous. True the lack of uniforms is nice, but everything else is absurd. None of the teachers seem to have an original thought in their heads. The classes are like a semester behind us and they are teaching by the test. I’m like a semester ahead of all the classes. And they teach by the state's standardized test, which is monotonous and pointless. Not to mention it’s become the female populous’ goal to pump me for info on Lex, the famous Luthor son. As if I need that.

Worse than public school is living at home. Dad is oppressive. It’s all about control with him. He wants to know where I am and what I’m doing all the time. Mom is no help. She’s a total pushover to Dad’s whims; or at least she had been until recently. She finally grew some guts and convinced him to let me go back.

Worse than Mom and Dad, is Nick. That jerk. It’s as if he has no life. He should be out, doing something with his degree, but instead he sulks around the house doing nothing.

Actually, if you want to get technical, he doesn’t do nothing. He hangs around and annoys the shit out of me. He likes to throw little taunts, invades my personal space and my privacy, sneaking through my things looking for and taking God knows what. He always had to be the first to answer the phone so he can catch Lex and Chloe before they can talk to me. Being all around nasty is his sick little form of entertainment.

It’s the times when he’s quiet or still that I don’t mind him. I can look over and pretend that Micky is still alive and that he’s going to come in at any moment and plop down next to Nick on the couch the way he used to.

Speaking of the ghost of Christmases past, Mick is the reason I stopped going home on holidays, or rather going home at all. I usually spend Christmas with Lex in Metropolis. We typically spend it avoiding Lionel and slamming our families behind their backs.

Or we did until that time when Lex’s brother Julian was 12 he heard us talking though. I hadn’t seen a look like that in a kid’s eyes before. It was like Lex had kneed him in the groin and punched him in the face simultaneously and then spit on him.

Wakes you up when you see that kind of pain so close to the surface. Lex hides it, buries it beneath layers of composure and distance. At least he used to.

Chloe’s influence is changing him and I say "Halleluiah!" He’s nowhere near perfect and he was too fucked up to begin with to ever get where he should be. But hey, progress not perfection.

But they are so good for each other. I’ve known that since they first met. They have a chemistry that makes the air crackle around them. Of course, they couldn’t see it. The ones in the midst of unresolved sexual tension never can, but I sure as hell could. And now they’re together, which is great.

And now, Julian is at Hampton. Double great. And what’s more, they’re actually going to go through with that harebrained scheme of mine. I can’t believe I actually told Chloe to do that and I doubt it’ll work but according to her, nothing else was working.

But I guess I’ll find out when I get home. Home. I should go pack because I leave tomorrow. God, I can’t wait!

~*~*~

Corinne Delaney

I genuinely like Jules. It’s rare for me to really like a guy, but that kid just gets under my fucking skin. The little shit.

And it doesn’t help that he’s an even six feet tall with a swimmer’s body, the biggest, brightest smile I’ve ever seen, and a brilliant mind. He’s eighteen physically, emotionally, and mentally. He’s eighteen in every way but the stupid fucking chronologically. And the fourteen year-old kid, that’s right Corinne he’s still just fourteen, don’t fucking forget it, he effects me like no guy has since I was thirteen.

Back then I was young and stupid. I thought love and sex was the same thing. Justin was older than me by a three years and turned out to be a dickwad. That story definitely lacked a fairytale ending, but I learned a shitload about myself.

However thanks to Justin the Asshole, I learned that I like sex. I learned, that I like being kissed, and that I love being touched by someone else. Especially when he knows what he's doing. I learned that you can do what you want when you’re in bed with a guy and in high school they’re usually compliant. I found the power it can give you, both over a man’s libido and over his secrets, and I also found it to be a great way to burn calories and get relaxed at the same time. It’s the best type of exercise and therapy, sexual release.

Of course, my mother didn’t help to teach me otherwise. She caught me fucking some random guy at our beach house the summer after freshman year and managed to give me a slurred reminder between Bloody Mary’s to use birth control. Yeah, she was real damn helpful.

Since then, I’ve been pretty much uninhibited when it comes to fucking and all things carnal. That in turn has earned me a larger reputation than the tattoos, piercing, or hair jobs combined ever could have.

And these bitchy little near-do-wells love to condescend. Fucking hypocrites. The guys through around words like "whore", "tramp", and "slut" then proceed to meet me in the gymnasium equipment room for a quickie.

They show an utter lack of respect for their fellow freaking man, which that is one of the reasons I can’t wait to get the hell out of New England. Yuppie assholes the lot of them.

But Jules, Jules treats me with respect. He looks into my goddamn face when I talk and actually listens to what the hell I have to say. And there is a look on his face when he’s around me that I’ve never seen before on anyone else.

He looks at me the way a little kid looks at a present on Christmas morning. Like he can’t wait to open it and see what’s inside. It’s fucking creepy, in a way that gives me this annoying little warm feeling deep in my chest.

I’ve caught him staring at me. Nothing new, people stare all the time. It goes with the territory of wearing the stuff I wear, I expect it. But they don’t stare at me as if they are trying to open my head and explore what’s inside.

If I’m honest with myself, I love it when he looks at me like that almost as much as I like the way he looks at me when I come into the same room he’s in. It’s like he was in the presence of a rock star or something. And it makes me feel all... warm and fucking fuzzy.

A fourteen-year-old kid has reduced me to that. How the hell did that happen? I have no idea. And I’m not so sure I want to figure it out.

So I’m just gonna act on it, soon. Not as soon as we let him and Luthor out of that closet but definitely soon.

Screw him being young. I was young my first time. And I know I’d be his first. The kid is as green as grass. And like he’d turn me down. Nobody’s turned me down. Ever. And why would Julian Luthor when he’s so clearly in love with me?

Shit. He’s in love with me. Jesus H. Christ, what am I supposed to do with that?

More important question: how do I keep from falling for the little brainiac? I’m not quite sure, but I’ll think of something. I usually can come up with some solution to shit like that.

Yeah. I can handle that. Yeah, no fucking problem. None.

[Blaire]

Chapter 23

"Ya’ll all rahght in theya?" A rasping voice asked.

Lex leapt to his feet and giggled jiggled the knob. Still locked. "No! We’re stuck. Let us out and I promise I’ll make it worth your while!" He usually didn't stoop to bribery as a first measure but he had been in that damm closet long enough to change his usual standards.

There was an indignant snort from the other side. "Now listen heya, boy, ya don’t need at buy meh off, ya rich lil’ shit. I jist came to letcha out and you’re sassing me. Fahne. Stay in theya."

The brothers heard the squeak of wheels and the jingle of keys as the janitor made to leave.

"Wait!" Jules, called, swallowing the pride Lex couldn’t seem to force down his throat. "We’re sorry! Come back!"

They’d been stuck in that damn closet for nearly four hours now and both of them were starting to get cabin fever. They hadn’t talked much since Lex’s explosion earlier. Though Lex would never admit it, Jules knew that they were both scared. The truce they had was new and fragile and easily shattered by a wrong word. The younger boy had not been willing to risk it.

"Ahll rahght. But ya’ll better show some manners. Ya weren’t raised in no barn and I know it."

There was another jingling of keys and a click as the door was unlocked. Lex gave a small sigh in relief. Finally, they were out.

On the other side of the door, as it swung open, stood their savior. He was a little man with bent arthritic hands, pale skin, which was covered with liver spots and wrinkles, and a Crimson Tide hat covering his thinning white hair. He wore a blue janitorial uniform with the name ‘Fred’ stitched into the right side.

Lex had never been so grateful to see a school staff member in his entire life.

"Accrodin’ ta what I heard, I was half ‘spected ya’ll ta have torn each other ta pieces." Fred said, rubbing his jaw with his hand. He looked them both over and noted the huge, swollen bruise around on Jules’ left eye.

"Made out fahne ‘ceptin’ the shinner." He lifted a gnarled finger and pointed at Jules’ black eye. "Best git yerself a stake fer that."

Jules smiled, and nodded. He was a nice guy. A little rough around the edges, but he seemed decent.

Lex on the other hand, didn’t notice the niceties, but did catch the fact that he had heard about there their situation from someone. He needed to know where Fred the Janitor had received his information.

"Whom exactly did you hear this from?"

"Two girls spoke ta me after class let out. Said I weren’t ta let yall out till you’d had some time to simmer. The blonde polite enough but a bit of a smart ass, but the other ‘un was a punk. Didn’t gimme no sass though, so I ‘pose she ain’t too bad."

Lex nodded. Julian recognized the cool as a cucumber look on his brother’s face from the business meetings of his father’s that he’d eavesdropped on. It was one of their father’s dad’s favorites, the seek and destroy look.

"Thank you." Lex said curtly.

Fred nodded, a hint of a smile in his eyes. The bald kid was ruffled. It was a nice thing to see in the richies, it took so damn much to phased them. The other kid was a class act though, obviously raised better than his pale friend.

"Thank you very much, Mr." Jules trailed off. "Fred."

"Dontcha worry you none. It weren’t nothin’. Needed a differ’nt broom anyway." He said with a smile, gesturing to the yellow handled broom in his hand.

"Well, thanks again." Jules said with a smile, noticing that Lex was already walking away. "Sorry about Lex."

"He looks a lil’ shook up. Don’t bother me. Ya richies aren’t usually big with the pleasantries. Don’t bother my ass none." Fred gave Jules a lopsided grin. "He’s getting’ away."

Jules’ head whipped around and he saw that Lex was already at the end of the hallway. He said thanks one more time and took off down the hall after him just before he turned down a different corridor.

"Alex?" He asked, not even winded when he caught up. Track was his forte and he was extremely grateful for that at the moment.

"Yeah?" Lex replied.

"Where are you going?"

"To talk to my girlfriend."

"About?"

"Things." He replied vaguely.

"Don’t get too mad at her, Alex. She was just trying to help." Jules told him.

"Oh she was, was she?" Lex and Julian had exited the school building now and were heading across the campus to the dorms. Lex had a look on his face Jules had only seen when he was talking to their father.

"Yeah, she was. She just wanted you to stop brooding. She was trying to help."

"That’s really enlightening Julian. Why don’t you stop now, and save me the effort of yelling at you."

Jules nodded and followed his older brother to Winchester Hall. Lex had already exploded once today. Jules wasn’t sure it if that would make him more or less volatile. But the stinging on and around his left eye made him lean toward more.

~*~*~

She was walking the length of the room, trying to memorize the "To be or not to be" speech from Hamlet for her semester exam when Lex should showed up. The slamming open of the door had made her drop her script in the middle of the soliloquy.

Chloe looked into his face and fought a gasp. She hadn’t seen that look on his face since she’d come to the past. She’d only caught him with that _expression once or twice back in the present and it wasn’t one she’d ever wanted directed at her. It was a look of rage not quite as powerful as the one he had directed at Donovan during her attack or his father during Lionel’s visit, but it was definitely in the same ballpark.

"Lex."

He glared at her. "Chloe."

For the first time in ages, Chloe was at a loss for words. She was clearly caught with both hands in the cookie jar. She swallowed.

"You crossed some lines today, Chloe."

"Lex-"

"Shut up. I just spent the last four hours of my life sitting on the floor of a janitors’ closet. I get to talk." He ground out.

Chloe was silent. She watched as he started to pace like a large cat in a small cage, collecting himself. Then he stopped and turned on her.

"How dare you?" He growled. He couldn’t seem to stand still but he didn’t take his eyes off her. "I didn't ask you to lock me in a rank little room for hours on end. I didn't say 'Oh please Chloe help me mend fences!' If I had wanted that, I would have fucking asked or done it myself!"

His growling tone had escalated to yelling now. If the situation had been different Chloe would have laughed at the fact that she could push Lex out of control. Not many people could manage that. But at the moment, he was busy raging at her.

"You had no right meddling like that! I didn't drive to Smallville, find your dad, and make you reconcile do did I? Fuck, I expected more from you than betrayal like that! And for him, Chloe! Why?"

Chloe gaped at him. Betrayal? He thought she had betrayed him? Didn’t he know that she had done that for him.

"Because you were being a stubborn jackass, Lex. For god’s sake, a 14-year-old had you practically on the run! There were clearly issues there. I wasn’t going to meddle but when your brother came to me, to us for help, we helped. It’s not my fault you are such a thickheaded asshole that you couldn’t sit down and have a damn conversation with a 14-year-old kid without a push. And it took a hard push at that. For Christ's sake, you moved in with the school drug dealer."

"Don’t go nitpicking at my friends, Chloe. Pietro is good guy."

Chloe crossed her arms over her chest. "Right. He’s the good drug dealer. Honest to God, Xan, it was effecting not just you and not just Jules but me too." She ran a hand through her hair and exhaled an aggravated breath.

"You should have sucked it up. This was none of your damn business!" Lex shot back.

"You made it my business! You made it my business when you started distancing yourself from me and moved into a place where you could fall back into drugs. It became my business when I could see your pain. I just wanted to help YOU. Not your brother; you! So fuck you, if you can’t see why I did it, you selfish prick. I was trying to help! I think it worked too or that janitor wouldn’t have let you out."

"You stuck your nose where it didn’t belong, Chloe. I don’t know if I can forgive you for that."

Chloe glared at him, trying not to let the hurt that last statement caused show. "Did it work though?" She asked him gently. "I can handle the whole unforgivable thing if it helped. Did you and Julian talk?"

Lex sighed. Damn her. She got to him, with her concern and caring even when he was angry. "Yes, your sick little plan worked. Are you satisfied?"

"No, but I’m glad it worked out. You needed it." She rubbed her hands up and down her arms and looked into his face. "I’m sorry you’re angry at me but I’m not sorry I did it. I’d do it again. I’d just have used a less stickier substance than Kool-Aide." She gave him a wide smile at that.

Chloe knew the second he caved. She saw it in his eyes and in his posture and in _expression on his face. She’d won, barely, and he would forgive her. She did a quick mental victory dance and waited.

"That was a bitch to get off." He said quietly. "I had to use some leftover Pinesol I found on the shelves."

She laughed and crossed the room to stand directly in front of him. "Not too unforgivable, right? Just a little unforgivable?"

He sighed and tucked a strand of blonde behind her ear. "Yeah, just a little unforgivable. Just, Jesus Chloe, don’t pull shit like that on me again. I don’t like being manipulated."

She nodded. She could understand that, after growing up in the Luthor household. "Next time I’ll tell you I’m locking you in a closet, so you won’t be surprised. Ok?"

He smiled at her then, the first smile since he’d come in days. In fact, it was the first since he had caught her lying on the floor working on her homework after his little escapade. "Yes, that would be fine."

Chloe smirked at him. "So, how’d it go? Either of you get hurt?"

Lex rolled his eyes at her, and grudgingly told her. But the smile that left his lips as he told her spoke, didn’t completely leave his eyes.

~*~*~

"You got fucking decked, Brain."

Jules smiled and tried not to bask to obviously in Corinne’s presence. He was sitting on her bed, in her dorm room. She was across from him, holding a baggie full of ice against his eye.

His depth perception was gone for the moment but he was so close he could smell her shampoo. He was getting pretty uncomfortable sitting that close to her. For all his brains and skills, he was still just fourteen and not in the best control of his body.

"Yeah, I noticed that."

"Got a mean left hook then, huh?" Corinne asked with a crooked grin.

"Yeah. He kinda caught me off guard. I could have taken him."

She smiled at him and readjusted the ice on his eye. "You don’t have to give me the tough guy shit. You’re a brain not a brawn. And all you need is a pair of horn rimmed glasses to finish off the effect."

"I am not a wimp." He argued, shifting uncomfortably. "I’m the captain the track team at Warwick. If he hadn’t surprised me-"

"Don’t defend your manhood to me." Corinne told him. "You don’t fucking need to. I’m just saying that I know you’d be way more happy happier in a library than on a football field or in a club or at a tattoo parlor. But ya got what you wanted done. That takes brass balls."

Another uncomfortable shift and another knowing smile. "Thanks."

Corinne pushed a stray strand of purple hand hair behind her ear with her free hand. Jules felt his heart skip a beat at the tiny gesture, another when she winked at him. "Don’t mention it, Jules." She said brightly. "Don’t fucking mention it."

[Blaire]

Chapter 24

The plane bounced slightly as it touched down on the runway causing Wendy to chuckle as the snobby businessman next to her spilled some overpriced bottled water on his jacket.

"Welcome to Boston’s Logan Airport. The local time is 3:45, and it’s currently 15 degrees Fahrenheit outside with clear skies." The stewardess said with counterfeit joviality, from the front of the plane. "We hope you enjoy your stay here in Boston, or wherever your final destination may be. Thank you for choosing Delta Airlines, please fly with us again soon."

Wendy’s smile broadened. Today, not even the airline employee’s false cheerfulness could annoy her. Not when she was so close to her goal.

She rose from her seat, scooting past the businessman with the wet jacket, and grabbed her carry-on bag from the overhead rack. It fell to fast and crashed into the guy’s head. It took all her self-control to bite back the smile that seemed to have been permanently etched into her face as she apologized and hurried out of the plane.

Wendy laughed out loud as she entered the terminal at Logan Airport. People stared at her oddly as she jumped into the air in celebration, practically giddy. She was home. Hallelujah, praise God, she was home.

She couldn’t seem to stop laughing as she grabbed her suitcases from baggage claim. Nor could she curb her grin as she hailed a taxi, slumming, as her father would have said.

She’d be back where she belonged soon. And then, maybe things would go back to normal, now that she was away from her overprotective parents and her obsessive, incessant, noxious brother, who had torn out her heart after his twin’s death.

Lex was here and Chloe was here and stability was here. Here was where her life was. And it was elevating to come back to it.

"Where to?"

She gave the taxi driver her widest beaming smile. "Hampton Prep."

~*~*~

Lex’s dorm or hers? Wendy wasn’t sure. Her friends could be at either and she had no way of knowing without ruining the element of surprise.

She dug into her pocket and pulled out a quarter she’d gotten as part of her change and tossed it into the air. Heads Lex’s room and tails hers, Wendy decided as she caught it. She smiled as an eagle looked up at her from the coin.

Her and Chloe’s room it was. Good thing, because her bags were starting to get heavy. And even if they weren’t there, at least she could drop off her stuff before she continued on her search.

~*~*~

Music from one of Chloe’s weird CDs filled the room. Lex had never heard of Jimmy Eat World, or Staind, or Garbage before. But her mixes made for good make out music so he wasn’t complaining. Especially not now when Chloe had managed to get Corinne and his brother out of their hair for the entire afternoon and he had Chloe straddling his lap with her tongue in his mouth.

He loved that he could just kiss her for hours and not have it get old. The relationships he’d been in before her, with the exception of Wendy, consisted of pleasantries and sex. With Victoria, who he hadn’t even seen around campus in months, thank god, there hadn’t even been any pleasantries. Just traded insults and empty meaningless fucking.

With Chloe it was different. With Chloe he wanted to waste hours just talking to her, or sitting next to her, or making out with her. Making love, because with Chloe that’s what it would be making love not just sex, to her was something he thought about often. And how could he not when she looked so amazing all the time and even holding her hand set him on fire, but it wasn’t necessary. Not really.

"Xan," Chloe breathed in between kisses. Lex shivered at the sound of his name on her lips and the feel of her fingernails scraping gently across the sensitive skin of his scalp.

Fuck it, he thought deliriously. Lex pulled away from her and yanked her Hampton sweater up over her head. Once it was off, he recaptured Chloe’s mouth and set to work on the buttons the went all the way down the front of her white shirt. He trusted Chloe to tell him when to stop; she had before. And he was sure she would again.

Once he had a few of the buttons undone, he pushed the material aside and began kissing the juncture where her neck and shoulder met. From there he moved on to the shoulder itself, with Chloe sighing happily and continued to run her fingers across his hairless head.

Lex still only had four buttons undone when the door opened and a voice said wryly. "Wow, clearly, you guys didn’t miss me all that much."

Lex and Chloe looked over at the voice with slightly glazed eyes. Chloe recovered first.

"Wendy?"

"Hey Chlo." Wendy grinned at her.

Chloe was up and off Lex in a heartbeat, catapulting herself at her friend. She hugged Wendy tightly as she babbled.

"What are you doing here? I thought you were in Atlanta! How’d you get here? Why didn’t you tell us you were coming? How was your trip?"

"Easy girl." Wendy laughed, hugging her friend again. "I’m here because my piece of crap public school is out for Christmas break. So I’m back to bless you all with my presence." She shot Lex a grin and a wink. "As to how I got here, they have this new-fangled contraption. It’s called a plane. You see it’s like a big metal bird that-"

"Flies through the air with the greatest of ease. Thank you for the lesson, teach." Lex said with a wide smile, the one that made Chloe’s heart skip a few beats and was rapidly becoming more and more common. "Welcome back, Wen. You’re asshole father didn’t give you too much shit did he?"

"Dad said I had stay in Atlanta until the end of the semester. He didn’t say which school, and while you two have a few days left. So, he couldn’t really argue."

"Crafty like a fox, Wen."

"But much more human shaped luckily."

"I missed you." Chloe chimed in.

Wendy smirked and nodded and gave her another quick hug. "Clearly, you were busy with other things so you only missed me in small doses." She laughed. "It’s a good thing I came in when I did. You two looked like you were having a little too much fun."

"Yeah, thanks for showing up without calling. Don’t know what we would have done with out you." Lex replied wryly, still not rising from his seat.

Chloe suddenly remembered that her shirt was hanging open and made a small, undignified squeak and pulled her shirt closed at the collar.

"Come on, Clo." Lex argued in a slightly plaintive tone. It wasn’t a whine, because Luthors even ones on the outs with their forbearers, did not whine. "I was loving the view."

"Love the view later, talk to our long lost friend now."

"So much for my evening," Lex muttered.

"You don’t love me anymore, Lex? I’m pretending to be hurt."

Chloe laughed at the mock pout on Wendy’s face. "What are you doing at Hampton? You need to be at Julliard."

"Yeah, but all the men there are either gay or…well they're too creative and usually too attractive to be available. Speaking of unavailable jailbait kinda way, how’s the boy who would be a freakin’ genius?"

"Jules? Not here." Lex said curtly.

Wendy nodded, but noticed that Lex’s tone was a little less harsh. But more important than that, he’d used Julian’s nickname. Wendy glanced at Chloe who gave her a smile and nodded.

"So, things are getting better between you and the kid?" she asked.

"Yeah." Again with the abrupt answers. At least they weren’t venom coated anymore. Ah well, baby steps.

"Where is he? I haven’t seen him in ages."

"He’s probably off with Corinne somewhere." Chloe chuckled. "Puppies are cute."

Lex and Wendy both blinked at her.

"Puppies? You know, puppy love? Never mind, you two are hopeless."

"I get it, but Corinne? Are we talking about Corinne Delaney? Tattoos, piercing out the wazoo, death by metal make up, green hair Corinne Delaney? The one you slept with sophomore year?"

"Her hair is purple now," Lex corrected with a smirk.

Wendy shook her head sending brown curls flying. "Whatever. But we are talking about the same Corinne right?"

"Right."

"I come back and it’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone."

"All that’s missing is Rod Sterling and the haunting theme music." Chloe mused, just enjoying the banter. It had been ages since the three of them had indulged in a full conversation. Granted, she felt a little bit like she was living in a Scoobie moment on Buffy, but that was only a mildly peculiar realization.

"Be lucky we’re not in To Serve Man. I’m simply glad I’m not being eaten by malevolent aliens." Lex observed coolly.

"Definitely."

"But just so I’m up to speed, you two are together. Donovan and the British bitch from Slutonia have been leaving you guys alone. Little Luthor One and Little Luthor Two have patched things up. And Julian has the hots for the campus goth. Right? Does anyone feel like we’ve moved from a demilitarized zone to Disney World?" Wendy asked.

"I liked the Twilight Zone analogy better." Lex said.

"Yeah, me too." Chloe agreed. "Put it the other way and it seems like the other shoe is just waiting to drop."

Wendy gave her a meaningful look and tried to meet her eyes. Chloe shrugged but refused to meet Wendy's gaze. Lex just shook his head and sighed.

"Quiet or you’ll jinx us."

"You’re superstitious now Xan?"

"No." Lex protested but he looked a little chagrined. "It’s just that Murphy’s Law acts up more when encouraged. I speak from experience."

"Fine no more jinxing. Just help me unpack." Wendy declared. "Lex, you’ll be doing the heavy lifting."

Chloe laughed as Lex mumbled something under his breath about annoying brats from the South. Things felt right again, really right, for the first time since Wendy had left earlier in the semester.

[Blaire]

Chapter 25

Chloe had never spent Christmas away from her family before and truthfully she was enjoying it a lot. The school had been attacked by the staff and was now filled with as many politically correct, vibrant yet mercifully non-tacky, decorations as possible. The result was an eyesore of Christmas, Hanukah, and Kwanzaa decorations which clashed horribly on the walls and ceiling.

But she liked it. She liked the overall feel of the mostly empty school. Several students were staying over the break that weren't in Chloe's circle of friends but that didn't bother or surprise her. The upper curst of society seemed to have a problem with the concept of family in general.

But her little makeshift family was there. She missed her dad, more than she had almost the entire time she'd been in 1997, but other than that everything was pretty good.

Everyone went their separate ways for the most part of the morning of Christmas Eve, getting their presents together, writing cards, or in Lex's case simply waiting for one of the security guards to buzz him with a package.

But by two-ish Wendy, Chloe and Lex were stretched out in the more spacious student lounge/recreation room and were well into the beginning of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Charlie Brown as looking for the perfect Christmas tree when the door opened again.

"Luthor! Can I have a sec with you please?" Corinne called as she entered the student lounge.

Lex blinked as the upper classman burst in, interrupting the conversation he’d been engaged in with Wendy and Chloe about the pros and cons of Charlie Brown's tree selection. He nodded but did not move from his spot on the rec room's aged couch. He was too comfortable what with his feet propped up on the opposite arm of the sofa and Chloe curled up on his chest. It was probably the most comfortable Christmas Eve he'd ever experienced.

"What about?"

"The state of affairs in Spain." Corinne drawled sarcastically. She blew a huge pink bubble with her ever-constant gum and popped it loudly, just to punctuate her annoyance. "It's none of their business, dumb fuck. So, crawl out from beneath Sullivan and get your ass out here. We need to have a fuckin' chit-chat."

Chloe chuckled as they both stood up. "Good luck."

"Thanks." He kissed her forehead quickly before following his friend out of the room and into the hallway.

Corinne was pacing. She looked almost nervous, a feeling Lex doubted anyone had ever seen on balls-of-steel Corinne Delaney.

"What is it?"

Blunt is good. Blunt worked for Luthor, both of them. Blunt had worked for her for years. So why was being blunt with Lex so fucking hard? It wasn't like she was trying to sleep with him.

She sighed. Bite the fuckin' bullet Delaney.

"I'm going to fuck your brother tonight."

Lex gaped at her, pole axed. He was frozen for a few moments before he regained his composure and ability to speak. "Come again?"

"Your brother. I'm gonna deflower him tonight. Christmas present and all. But it’s courtesy to give an ex-fuck a heads up before you do his brother. So, this is your heads up."

More obnoxious pink bubbles were blown and popped as she spoke. Lex noted through the haze of dismay and confusion how the bright pink of the gum seemed to go well with her purple hair.

"You know Julian is a minor right?"

"And you weren't?"

"There's a difference between fifteen and newly sixteen, and fourteen and eighteen. You know it's illegal."

"Jules is older than you in every way that counts." Corinne bit back. "He's got more smarts and class and looks than anyone I've met, older or younger. Chronological age just hasn't caught up time wise with the rest of him." She shot him a glare that would have stopped his pulse if looks could kill. "And since when did the Bad Boy of Hampton give a shit about the law."

Lex smirked at her. She'd succumbed to a real-live crush. He felt torn between pride and a strong desire to flat-out point and laugh.

"Since I stopped getting a rush from breaking it I suppose. Just…" Lex sighed and ran his hand over his smooth scalp in a characteristic gesture of agitation. "Try not too hurt the kid. He's got thin skin."

Corinne smiled slightly at that, the silver ring in the center of her bottom lip glinting as she did so.

"So you're starting to care for the Brain. That's cute."

Lex glared at her. "Just as long as you don't fuck him in my room and I don't have problem, clear?"

"As my mother's precious fuckin' crystal."

"Good."

"Have fun with Sullivan tonight. I'll be droppin' by the student lounge to grab him at about 10ish."

Lex rolled his eyes in disinterest. "Good luck. Be gentle, he's new to the game."

Corinne gave him the same shark's grin Lex remembered from their one brief encounter during his freshman year. "I know. I'm looking forward to it."

~*~*~

"So what did Corinne want?" Chloe asked, moving to make room on the couch for Lex.

"Hm? Nothing. Just to talk about next semester." Lex said roughly. He'd had a vivid and very disturbing image in his head of his brother and Corinne locked together in a way that was DEFINITELY illegal in the state of Massachusetts ever since the beginning of their little "chat".

"Mmhm. Mr. Luthor, I think you're lying." Chloe laughed.

"Chloe, how can you say that? Don't you trust me anymore? I'm cut to the quick." He said as he put a hand on his chest in mock hurt. “Besides, how do you know if I’m lying or not?”

"Your mouth was moving, Alex." Julian chimed in.

"Shut the hell up, Jules. I don't want to hear a WORD out of you. When'd you get here anyway?"

"Chill out, Alex. I got here a few minutes ago while you were talking to Cori." Julian told him with a shrug.

"Oh, Jules, she's Cori now?" Wendy jibed, chuckling at him.

A red blush spread across his face like wildfire. "Wendy."

”That is so cute.” She laughed.

The blush

~*~*~

"Presents?" The brunette asked, triumphantly holding up a black garbage bag that apparently held everyone's gifts. She must have procured them some time during dinner, which had consisted of Chinese take out that had cost more to deliver than the meal itself.

"Wendy." Lex said, slightly impatient.

Wendy grinned widely at Lex, Chloe, and Julian who were looking at her with wary eyes.

"Please? Can we please do presents? You guys want to, I know you do. Unless…" Wendy gave Chloe a meaningful look. "You're not the 'we must wait until first light Christmas morning' type are you?"

Chloe nodded. She was in fact the 'wait till first light type.' She'd been waking her father up at o-dark-thirty for as long as she could remember on Christmas mornings. But her dad wasn't here.

"I am, but I can make an exception this once. Since you asked me so very very nicely."

"Groovy."

"This 1997, right? We didn't just fall back in time to '65 did we? " Jules joked from his slightly distanced spot in one of the overly filled lounge chairs.

Lex rolled his eyes and Wendy laughed but Chloe schooled her face into a careful non-reaction.

"Keep it up, and you won't get any presents." Wendy warned, holding the bag of gifts tight to her chest like a slightly schizophrenic female version of Santa.

"I'm sorry Wendy. I'll be good. I promise." Jules said sincerely.

Wendy smiled and sat down on the floor.

"Who wants to go first?" She asked digging into the bag, though she didn't bother waiting for an answer

"Who died and made you St. Nick?" Chloe asked as her friend read the name written on the gift.

"Santa. I pushed him off the roof. He landed funny."

Lex let out a bark of laughter, shaking his head at his best friend. She was a nut. He'd missed her like crazy when she'd been in Georgia.

"So whose is that?"

Wendy looked back down at the present and smiled. "Mine."

"Books." Lex said from his spot on the couch.

"Gee, thanks for the surprise. I would never have guessed." Wendy joked, pushing her brown curls out of her face.

"He helps where he can." Chloe told her with a wide smile.

"I noticed."

"So Wendy, what is it?" Jules asked curiously, tipping his chair forward so he could see better.

"Lex, god, thank you." Wendy breathed, tracing the title of the book. "First edition David Copperfield."

"You only want me for my money."

She laughed, clutching the rare book to her chest. "Well you never disappoint." She smiled warmly at him. "Thanks, Lex. It’s fantastic."

"Yeah, yeah, enough." Lex said feeling thoroughly uncomfortable at the warmth in her eyes. He had a hard enough time accepting that kind of deep affection from Chloe in private let alone Wendy in front of his brother and girlfriend. "Who's next."

Wendy grabbed again and came out with an oblong package in green and silver wrapping paper. A wicked smile crossed her face, one that was mirrored on Chloe's.

"This if for Jules, from Chloe and me, I mean Chloe and I." Wendy corrected, tossing the present to Chloe who caught it deftly.

Chloe rose from her seat beside Lex and handed the gift to Jules, giving him a quick, tight hug. "Enjoy it, Jules." She told him seriously, and kissed his slightly rough cheek. "Merry Christmas."

Jules blushed and ripped through the paper, and gaped. "What the hell is it? Some sort of demonic yo-yo?"

Chloe laughed. "It's a Skip-It. You don't look exactly like the frolic in the daisy's type, so we got you a frolic promoting gift."

Jules turned the Skip-It over in his hands and studied it. A crease appeared between his eyes and a "what do I do with this crazy thing" expression crossed his classical features.

"You put it around you're ankle, swing it around, and jump over it. Jesus, Julian, you are a freak." Lex said blandly.

"Lex, Christmas! Be nice."

"Christmas Eve." Lex corrected with a grumble. "I've got another couple of hours till Christmas."

"True, but we've started it early, so try for me ok?" Chloe asked, petitioning him with bright, warm eyes. "I'll make sure you get a cookie later," she joked.

He sighed heavily and nodded holding out his hand to her. She returned to her spot on the couch beside him.

"Better be a really impressive cookie."

"Super special." She promised laughingly. "With green and red sprinkles, and frosting. The works. Scouts honor."

How did she do that? How did she get inside his head and his heart so thoroughly? He didn't usually bend or change because he was asked. But here he was, agreeing to make peace, yet again, because of the little blonde in his arms that was smiling in contentment and victory.

"Lex yours is next."

"Who's it from?" He asked, distracted. Chloe's eyes were so damn blue, and she was whispering something into his ear that he couldn't really understand about Ebenezer Scrooge and the Carol Kane version of the Ghost of Christmas present. He was getting very befuddled very quickly.

"It's from your girlfriend."

"Huh?"

"Here." Wendy scooted forward and slapped a small, tightly wrapped gift onto Lex's chest. "Enjoy."

"Go on, open it." Chloe said, sitting back on the couch so he could open his gift. "Please."

Lex sat up a little straighter. "What is it?"

"I'm not going to tell you! That defeats the purpose."

"But it cuts down on the suspense." Lex replied, causing his brother to chuckle.

Lex pealed the paper away quickly and stared at the small package in his hand.

"Playing cards?" What? He hadn’t expected or even wanted anything expensive, not from Chloe. He knew that whatever she would give him would have meaning, but he would like to at least understand it.

"You have to look at the cards, Xan."

He slid the cards out of their small case and quickly sifted through them. It was a trick deck, which contained all hearts like the deck Frank Sinatra used in that mind control movie The Manchurian Candidate. But he doubted it had anything to do with the movie. The message was much clearer than that.

Chloe smiled at him and winked. He swallowed hard, in what he hoped was a less than obvious way and pulled her roughly into his arms.

Her gift was emotional and corny and very obvious. It was a clear statement of what she was really giving him. Her heart.

"Thank you."

God, was that his voice? It was too scratchy to be his voice.

"It was yours to begin with. That's sorta like a certificate of ownership. Couldn't find a good symbolic warrantee though."

"That's ok. I'm not worried about returns."

She kissed him, once long and deep, earning them a giggle from Wendy and an uncomfortably cleared throat from Jules.

"Merry Christmas, Lex."

Wendy and Jules exchanged conspiring smiles as Chloe and Lex seemed to fade into their own little world.

"Here," Wendy said softly, not wanting to disrupt the kissing session that had broken out. "It’s from Lex I think."

Jules smiled as he rose from his chair and took the slim wrapped box. "Thanks."

Wendy watched as he made short work of the wrapping paper and opened the white box. A single tie-dyed shoelace sat on the bottom.

Jules lifted the string out of the box and held it up to the light to get a better look. He heard Wendy make a low angry sound in the back of her throat and suddenly Lex and Chloe were being broken apart and Lex was receiving a specialty Wendy Miller Death Glare.

"What?" Lex and Chloe blinked at her, both looking thoroughly confused and upset at being interruption.

"You gave your brother a shoelace for Christmas?" Wendy looked angry. She figured her anger was vicarious because Julian didn't seem to be upset.

"Wendy, don't get mad at him," Julian pleaded, trying to avoid a fight. He hated the fights that usually sprang up at Christmas time. "He must have had a reason."

"Did you?" Chloe asked. Her tone wasn't accusing, merely questioning and curious. Bless her, Lex thought, for not jumping to conclusions.

"Yes."

"What?" Wendy demanded, more composed than she had been a few minutes ago but still incensed.

Lex sighed and ran his hand over his head. "It's Lena's, Jules."

Jules blinked and looked down at the small tie-dyed shoelace in his hand. And in his minds eye he could see the pair of shoes they came from. White Keds sneakers that Lena had decided were too dull with plain white laces. She had used her allowance, which had been considerably smaller when they had been younger, and bought the laces especially for that pair of sneakers. She'd worn them so often the soles had given out. Only their mother's insistence had protected the Keds from Lionel and the garbage.

"Alex…"

Lex nodded once at his brother and then looked away. He wasn't big with the mushy words. That one explosion in the janitor's closet was about as much as he could give verbally for the next oh, ten years or so. But he could do this, unspoken forgiveness. It was the most he could manage.

Julian smiled widely at him, understanding. This was definitely the best present Alex could have given him. It meant possibility and hope. It meant that his brother was going to forgive him, even if his original motivation was irrational.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Wendy gave Chloe a befuddled look. "We missed something didn't we?"

Chloe shook her head. "It wasn't for us anyway. So don't worry about it."

~*~*~

Over the course of the next hour the rest of the gifts were doled out and conversation became more steady and fluid.

Lex received an autographed Metallica tour shirt from Wendy, along with a laughingly friendly taunt of the concert he had missed. He'd chuckled and thrown the cardboard box she had packed it in at her but had not given up the shirt.

The girls had received candles from Jules, who wasn't the best person on the planet when it came to dealing with girls, even friendly girls. But he'd done the best he could and the scented candles had earned him hugs for thoughtfulness.

Corinne arrived just as Chloe was opening her present from Lex. The goth lingered in the doorway as her friend opened the black fuzzy jewelry box. She smiled slightly at the mixed look of dismay and delight on Chloe's face as she lifted the necklace out of the box.

It was a pendant, with a good-sized yet elegant, green gem in the middle and small diamonds surrounding it. Lex kissed her hand once then put the necklace carefully around her neck.

Luthor really was a romantic, Corinne realized as she listened to him tell his girlfriend what the green stone was. It was a moldavite from the Czech Republic where a meteor or comet crashed to earth millions of years ago. She watched as he touched her right hip very gently and whispered something her ear and Sullivan started to cry.

The part of her that had once believed in Santa Clause and the tooth fairy wanted what she saw in Lex's eyes as he gently wiped away Chloe's tears. The part that occasionally flipped through dime romance novels in bookstores ached to have whatever it was that Luthor and Sullivan seemed to have found so young and so quickly.

She sighed heavily. Which seemed to be all it took catch Julian's attention. He looked over in her direction and gave her a glowing grin before rising and walking towards her.

"Merry Christmas," said Jules softly.

"Very merry." She said, summoning a reckless grin to cover her earlier emotional indulgence. "Come on, let’s go. I've got a present for you.”

"Really? What?"

~*~*~

"WHAT?!"

Corinne chuckled. He looked utterly terrified. "You heard me, Brain."

"B-b-but why? Why on earth would you want to…to…"

Corinne put a reassuring hand on his arm. "It's like in Risky Business, Jules. If you can't say it you can't do it. There are lots of reasons why I want to have sex with you."

Poor boy, she thought amusedly. His eyes were going to pop out of his head and roll across her dorm room floor if they got any wider.

"Why?"

"You don't own a mirror do you?"

Uh-oh. The deer in the headlights look was not a good one for him to be having right now.

"Julian, do you want me?" she asked carefully. He was about the same height as she was so she looked directly into his eyes as she asked him her question.

His mouth opened slightly, as if he were going to say something. Then he stopped, licked his lips and tried again.

"Yes."

"Then know that I'll take care of you. You don't have anything to worry about."

Jules’s head was buzzing. Corinne had basically offered herself up to him. It was like a dream come true. He'd get to hold her, and kiss her, and touch her, and love her. He was young but damned if he didn't recognize what he felt every time she entered the room. He was so in love with her. He couldn't turn her down, even if he wanted to. And he didn't.

"I don't want to disappoint you."

She smiled at him widely. "Don't fucking sweat it, Brain."

He nodded but couldn't stop his body from shaking. She wasn't even doing anything and he felt like he was going to fly apart at any moment.

Underneath her fingers, she could feel him trembling.

"Are you scared?" asked Corinne as she ran her hands up his arms and lightly over his chest and shoulders, feeling his body through the awful reindeer sweater that had apparently been given to him as a gag gift from a classmate back at his school.

"Who me?" He chuckled with false bravado. "Yeah. I'm terrified."

Her hands slid down the hem of the sweater and she slid them beneath the fabric. "Why?" The question was posed as she yanked the offensive winter garment up and over his head.

"I've never done this." Jules replied in a shaking voice. "I…"

Corinne pulled his t-shirt; an equally bad number with a snowman scholar-complete with horn-rimmed spectacles and a book, off next and threw it over her shoulder and into the depths of her room.

She ducked her head and very gently kissed his collarbone. The kid was young and she'd need to start slow, or as slow as the situation would permit.

"You've got nothing to be afraid of." She told him quietly. "I'll take care of you." She'd said those words just moments before but felt the need to reiterate.

He looked at her with warm dark eyes. "I trust you." He said rocking into her to complete the statement, throwing her off a balance.

"Good. Then get ready, Brain. I'm gonna rock your fucking world."

Jules tucked a strand of purple behind her ear and stroked her jaw with his thumb. "You already do."

Again with the lack of balance. She had to shut him up. She didn't know if she could handle any more of those sincere, softly spoken words. It wasn't likely, that she knew.

"Flattery will get you everywhere. Now shut up and kiss me."

And he did.

~*~*~

Corinne reached into one of the drawers in her nightstand and fished around for a few minutes. A little while later, she came up with a less than fresh looking pack of cigarettes.

Jules stared at her in confusion. "You smoke?"

"Only after sex." She told him, smirking around the Lady Slim between her lips. "Not too fond of smoking on a regular basis, stinks shit up. But I liked the cliché. So my policy is that any fuck that involves a particularly good orgasm deserves one. And what we did deserves at least two."

Jules gave her that amazingly bright smile that got into the parts of her heart she thought had been cauterized when the label of campus slut had been made official. He saw something in her that her own parents had never seen. A part of Corinne wondered vaguely if the other Luthor felt that same warmth and acceptance when Sullivan smiled at him. And the part of her that Jules's smile touched, the same part that had appreciated the affection that passed between Lex and Chloe earlier in the evening, hoped he did.

Jules ducked his head as he spoke, his face flushing pink with embarrassment. "So…it was really good for you? You don't have to lie."

"No. The chorus of 'Oh god, yes' and 'Don't stop, fuck Jules, don't ever stop' were my way of making you feel better." She took another long drag on her cigarette, exhaled and then smashed the white cylinder out viciously on the wood of her nightstand. "It was really fuckin' good. You made up for lack of experience in enthusiasm and sincerity. You have definite talent, Jules."

But Jules wasn't listening. He was watching her move. He loved the way her piercings reflected the light of the single lamp that sat on her desk. He loved the way her purple hair looked almost black in the dimness.

"You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen." Jules told her softly, as he reached out to touch her face. He traced her cheekbone, one of the few places on her face not peppered with rings and studs, with his thumb and just looked at her. "Thank you. You have no idea what you gave me means to me, Cori. No idea."

Corinne shrugged, trying to find the strength of will not pull away from his hand or panic. Not that she could go far without getting out of bed all together.

"First time’s a fuckin' big deal for almost everyone. I figured that shit wouldn't to be any different for you." Distance is good. Distance will keep it clinical.

She couldn't let him get attached, for her sake or his. He was too young, and too innocent despite what they had just done. He did not need to be fixing onto her, not at his age. She was the type who taught young men the ropes, not the kind they brought home to mom and dad. It was just who she was. It had never bothered her before now.

"It’s not that it was my first time, Corinne. It’s that my first time was with you." He told her seriously, resting his elbow on the pillow and his head on his hand.

Corinne wrapped the sheets tighter around her and looked extremely uncomfortable. There was that panic that had been waiting patiently earlier. It felt so damn good to hear him say that.

But this shouldn't be happening. She'd made a mistake. It was wrong on so many levels. It had to be wrong. Because what she was feeling couldn't be right.

"You're getting fucking warm and fuzzy on me, aren't you? Dammit, Jules…"

"I'll stop." He said softly, lying his head back down on the pillow but not looking away from her. "But…I care about you, Cori. I care a lot about you. More than I do about almost anyone else. And I thought I should tell you."

Corinne had a deer in the headlights look to her as she stared at him. "Are you going to tell me that you're in fucking love with me?"

"That depends."

"On?"

"On whether or not you would freak and kick me out of your room if I did."

"Holy fucking shit." Corinne muttered darkly, running a hand through her hair in agitation. Then she dropped back onto the pillow and rolled onto her back, staring hard at the ceiling.

"Why are you so scared?" Jules demanded.

"You're a kid Jules! A kid! You're fourteen goddamn years old! You may look twenty and act thirty but you are a fourteen-year-old kid! What we just did can get me arrested in some states. And no matter how smart you are, you are too young to know what love is." Corinne snapped, not rising or turning to look at him. She didn't know if she could have gotten it out if she'd been looking into his handsome open face.

"That is bullshit and you know it. I know what's in my own damn head a hell of a lot better than you do. And as far as love goes, I recognize it a hell of a lot better than you do."

[Blaire]

"We've known each other all of a month. I can't love you in a month." Denial, denial Delaney, she heard a small voice in the back of her mind taunt. It's not just a river in Egypt, my friend.

"And? Romeo and Juliet knew each other all of a night. I was blown away by you the first time I saw you."

"And they had the best ending, didn't they?" Corinne replied sarcastically. "Tragic heroine is not one of my life's aspiration thanks." Cause that's where this Graduate style affair was going, she realized. Hopefully it would end more like the Anne Bancroft movie and less like the Shakespearian play.

She shook herself. God, even her thought process was getting fucked up. They were works of fiction…this was real life damn it! And it wasn't so easy as just waxing poetry or showing up in time to stop a wedding. It was a hell of a lot more complicated than that.

"That's not the point. The point is having something or someone you loved enough to die for. Not the death itself."

"You are an idiot."

"It's Christmas, Corinne!" Julian rose from the bed and began pacing the length of her room wearing only his boxers, exasperated. "It's supposed to be a time about love. And I am 'in fucking love' with you. I'm the real fucking deal." He was quickly going from a little annoyed and very frustrated to full out furious and Corinne's cursing had rubbed off on him. "I am not going to break your heart or run away. I don't work that way. I'm straight foreword and young but I know myself. I've known myself since I was five. I grew up too damn fast, didn't get to be a real kid. Now you won't let me enjoy for one whole damn night of a perk that comes with being an adult."

"I'm a perk?" Corinne asked. For some reason, hearing Julian call her that hurt her more than all the times she'd been called a slut and a whore by others.

"No, Cori," He said, stopping in front of her. "Recognizing that what this is, is me loving you is a perk. You are a gift from a God I nearly rationalized out of existence." Jules sighed and pulled on his jeans and began to scan the room for his shirt.

Her breath caught in her throat. And for a few moments she couldn't speak. And when she did, it was probably not the smartest thing to say. "You're a poet on top of a genius huh, Brain?"

"Yeah, I guess." Ah, there was his shirt. How on earth did it get to the top of her bookshelf?

Corinne swallowed around the lump in her throat. She supposed that was pride and fear. But then, emotions weren't her strong point and never had been. But if he walked out that door…She didn't want to think about what it would mean to loose him. The very idea made her chest ache. "Don't leave."

Jules was trying to pull his shirt down; it had caught on the corner of a Latin textbook, refusing to look at her. "I should go." He said quietly.

Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry he chanted as he pulled on his long-sleeved shirt. Stay calm, Julian. You're a Luthor you can stay calm. She can't break you.

Don't cry, she thought desperately, you can do this. Just don't cry. Try, you fucking emotional retard. Try. "Stay, please."

He caved so fast his head spun. God, he would do almost anything for her. Anything except stop loving her.

"Alright."

He turned slowly to look at her, and sighed. She was so beautiful sitting there in bed, tousled and glowing. And…smiling at him.

"Thanks. Now take off that ugly-ass shirt and get back here." She said and held open her arms to him.

[Blaire]

Chapter 26 New Years Eve 1997

A piece of black fabric soared through the room and landed on Chloe's head distracting her from her computer work. She chuckled and picked up the dress, if it could even be called that, and studied it.

"Lex, what the hell is this?"

He was leaning against the door to her dorm room, smirking. One of those devious, 'I have a master plan for world domination' smirks that were most commonly employed by Disney villains.

"It's a dress," He told her, stating what he thought was clearly obvious.

She shook her head in dismay. "It's mesh held together with bands of nylon."

"Same thing." He replied seriously.

She fought the urge to laugh. "This is Corinne's, isn't it?"

God, he thought, she’s so hot when she’s being intuitive. "I asked Jules to steal one of her more interesting outfits and this is what he came up with."

Chloe twirled the dress around on her hand. "Any particular reason, or do you just have a thing for your brother's girlfriend's dresses?"

She stopped spinning the garment to give him a serious look. "You're not a closet transvestite are you? I can handle it if you are, I wouldn't dump you over that. But if you are, Xan, we're going to have to set some guidelines about my clothes. Because I don't share my lingerie."

The fact that she said it with a straight face, duly impressed Lex. "Only at a showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but don't worry I have my own corset."

He smirked at her narrowed eyes. She was studying him, trying to gauge how straightforward he was being.

"It's funny, because I actually believe you're telling me the truth on this."

He almost sighed. She knew him too well for her own good.

"Will you model it for me?" Chloe asked, batting her eyelashes at him suggestively. "I bet your legs would look *great* with fishnets and heals."

He laughed out loud at that. God love her, she was fantastic. He seemed to have adopted a permanent smile whenever she was around. And forget God, he loved her whether or not there was a supreme being involved or not.

He'd been dealing with that, or rather not dealing with it, for months. Since she had first kissed him, and possibly before. He'd been slammed in the face with it when Donovan had assaulted her. It was just easier to push it down when she wasn't in immediate, deadly danger. That didn't change the fact that the feeling was still there, waiting for him like some nasty bird of prey.

He'd decided on Christmas that he was going to tell her. When she'd given him that ridiculous deck of cards, he'd made his decision. He just hadn't realized he'd made the decision until a few short hours ago.

"Maybe later. But you need to get dressed."

Chloe held up the dress again, placing it over her face and staring at him through the gauzy fabric. "In this?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because it's New Year's Eve and we're going out."

"Oh, ok." She agreed then froze at the realization of what that meant. "Wait, you want me to wear this in public?"

~*~*~

"I will not wear this." Chloe mumbled as she looked at herself in the mirror of the first floor bathroom. There was no way hell she would go outside in this. *Especially* not in the middle of a New England winter. What the hell did Lex think she was, out her freaking mind?

"No shit, you won't wear that." Corinne snapped, as she entered the lavatory and caught sight of Chloe. "That is my fucking dress. Where the hell did you get that?"

"Um, one of the Luthor brothers filched it, I think. Lex wanted me to wear it." She shrugged. "If I do this I figure I can play the pity card and get him into his Dr. Frankenfurter costume some time in the near future."

"His legs look fucking great in fishnets." Corinne murmured, suddenly distracted by the mental image. She shook her head, sending her loose purple hair flying around her face as her mind screeched back on track.

"It had to be Jules." She breathed, and Chloe winced at the deadly look that spread across her friends face. "That little shit. He can sleep in his own room tonight. Nosy, kleptomaniac little fucker, I'll cut his fucking balls off if he ever takes my stuff again."

Chloe didn't hold back her laughter as Corinne went off on a tirade. She was just glad she wasn't the one that wrath was directed at. "Hey, Corinne?"

"What?!"

"Since you don't want me to wear this, I'll just take it off and give it back." Chloe said, all the while thanking a merciful god for providing a plausible excuse.

"Oh, no. If the Brain went to the trouble of fucking stealing it out of the back of my goddamn closet then you're going to wear the damn thing. And you're going to freeze your Kansas ass off for putting it on in the first place."

Chloe almost cursed. Damn it. And she would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for that meddling sadism Corinne employed.

"And since your fuck-buddy has decided that he wants you to play me for the night," She tossed Chloe her purse, which was nothing more than a smaller version of her typical black, punk and Goth symbol embossed cloth backpack. "The make-up that goes with the dress is in there."

"But, won't you need this?" Chloe asked, looking at the bag as if it might suddenly bite her.

"We're going to the same damn place, Sullivan. Jesus Christ, you think I'd miss out on New Year’s Eve at the Pravda if I've got to be stuck in this boring ass city? Hell no."

"The what?"

"The Pravda 116. It's the best Boston's got to offer. They throw this big fucking party on New Year's Eve that goes till the sun comes up. It's about as big as gets around here as far as shit to do on New Year's." She gave a nostalgic sigh. "I miss New York. Now there were some a-fucking-mazing parties."

Chloe was busy sorting through the multitude of oddly colored makeup supplies. She'd been a supplier to the lone Goth in Smallville but she'd never been into the style herself. She still wasn't. And despite her relatively good grasp on the arts of cosmetics, she was clueless as to what to do with some of the items.

"Corinne, what the hell do you need yellow lipstick for?"

"You weren't fucking, listening were you?"

Chloe puffed up with indignation, or as much as the barely-there dress would allow. "I was too listening…sorta."

Corinne sighed. "Give me the stuff. I'll do it for you."

Chloe looked at her skeptically. She'd seen Corinne's make up. She had no desire to come out of this looking like Brandon Lee in The Crow.

"Don't fuck around. Just give. It's time for a crash course in the value of glow in the dark yellow."

"Corinne," Chloe started in protest.

"Don't make me make you my bitch."

Chloe held out the bag.

~*~*~

Jules and Lex were less than comfortable under the deadly glare of the Winchester Hall security guard. The guard, a rather masculine looking woman, looked ready to kill both of them. Her glare made it apparent that their presence in the girl's dorm on her shift was an affront to her dignity.

"How long are they going to be?" Jules asked.

Lex rolled his eyes. Jules grated on his nerve. He would have left him if Wendy, and in her own blunt way Corinne, hadn't put up such a huge protest when he said he wanted to leave him behind. "I don't know."

"Prep takes time. Plus, we trade stories in the bathroom. And with you two as their significant others, it could be awhile."

Jules looked fascinated. "What sort of stories?"

Lex couldn’t help but roll his eyes yet again. Amazing. His kid brother had been in Corinne's clutches for a week and he still didn't have a clue.

"We need to get going." He muttered in attempt to halt the conversation between Wendy and his brother before he was faced with mental images he did not need following him all night.

"That works well, because Chloe and Morticia Addams are back." Wendy pointed out, gesturing towards the two women emerging from the hall.

Lex's jaw dropped at the site of his girlfriend in that dress. Forget the Pravda, he was ready to drag her up to her dorm room and do things to that curvy form that would make even the ever-so-jaded Corinne blush.

The dress really was what she had described earlier: two bands of a black nylon fabric covering the necessary areas and holding together three sections of fishnet-like mesh. The bottom third of the dress clung to her legs until just below her knee and the top segment was long-sleeved with a collar, which came up to just below the base of her throat. It would have been modest on a dress made of any other material. Her face was a study of dramatic shades of purples and blues that brought out her eyes and gave her an almost otherworldly beauty.

"Lex?"

A hand, Jules's or Wendy's he wasn't sure since he wasn't focusing on the hand, waved in front of his face but he was still frozen, staring at Chloe.

"Lex?"

"Damn," was all he could manage. All the blood that usually powered his higher brain functions had abandoned its post to power his lower extremities.

Wendy winked at Chloe, who was fidgeting under Lex's dazed scrutiny. "You did good kid," the brunette whispered and gave her a thumbs up.

"Damn."

"Alex, I think you've said that already."

"Damn."

Chloe was beaming. She felt like quoting Sally Fields at the Oscars with her little "you like me" spiel.

"Lex?"

He seemed to snap back into awareness at the sound of her voice. "Hm?"

"You are going to lend me your coat right? It's like 10 degrees outside, I'll become a Chloe-sicle."

Lex's eyes seemed to glaze for a moment at the idea of an actual Chloe-sicle. He shook it off quickly and walked over to her while he shrugged off his coat and when he reached her he wrapped it around her mesh-covered shoulders.

"You look amazing." He murmured before catching her mouth with his and kissing her, hard. He once again entertained the idea of hauling her up to her room and forgetting the whole club idea but nixed the idea when he heard a distinctly female throat being cleared.

Lex nodded and pulled back.

"Yeah, well my cross-dressing boyfriend has good taste. Although his transvestite and burgling tendencies worry me a little." She teased, snuggling into his coat as the group, with Wendy practically pulling them along, headed out of the dorm.


~*~*~

"You on the list?"

"Luthor."

The bouncer, a huge bald man of Mediterranean heritage, glanced quickly at the list then checked something off on his clipboard.

Chloe stood next to Lex, shivering. "If it's not heated in there, I'm g-g-going to k-k-kill you." She growled with chattering teeth.

"I'll help you hide the body." Wendy added as the bouncer continued to scan his list. "That's what friends do."

"Put away the proverbial butcher knife for a second, ok? We'll get inside in a moment, won't we?" Lex said confidently.

The bouncer nodded once and unhooked the velvet rope and let the group enter. A collective groan could be heard from crowd of people waiting in line.

Chloe had never actually been in an actual nightclub before. Sure, she'd driven past plenty of them in the car when she'd lived in Metropolis. But she'd moved to Smallville before high school and had never been able to go. Smallville had too many boring civilians and cracked-out monsters to be that much of a party town

But thank god, it was heated inside. Not overly so but enough to bring feeling racing back into her limbs with an acuteness that was almost pain. But at least she was warm again.

They didn't stay in the front section of the club, a well-lighted bar like area, very long. Instead they went straight through the double doors towards the back and emerged into a huge dim room. Strobe lights pulsed and music blared from surround sound speakers. A mass of bodies writhed and twisted on the dance floor. And the entire place seemed to glitter.

Jules took a deep reverent breath and shouted over the music. "Cool!"

Lex laughed. Chloe couldn't hear it over the noise but she could feel his body shaking slightly against her back.

She reached up and backward and pulled his head down to hers so she could speak directly in his ear. "Dance with me?"

He turned his face to the side and kissed her cheek quickly. "That's why we're here." He said, before grabbing her hand and pulling her with him out onto the dance floor.

"Hey Xan?" Chloe yelled to be heard over the pulsing techno beat.

"Yeah?"

"Think we can get them to play Time Warp?"

~*~*~

Wendy sighed and leaned against the bar, watching her friends dance. They looked like they were having a blast. Chloe and Lex were joined at the…hell she didn't have enough time to name every body part they were touching. Even Corinne, who was doing her best to look disinterested, was enjoying herself with the young scholar. She envied that they were out there on the floor, having such a fantastic time, just a little.

Wendy was all for dancing, just not without a partner. Which, at the moment, was a problem. At least until a drink, an odd blue concoction with a silver strip of tinsel on the side of the glass appeared in front of her.

She looked up questioningly at the bartender who pointed at the end of the bar. A man with red hair, or what would have been red if the lights didn't keep shifting, smiled at her and lifted a hand in a wave.

Ignoring the drink, she rose and walked towards the man. When she reached him, she held out a hand. He took it, placing a cool, soft hand that, thank god, lacked a wedding ring in hers and allowing himself to be drug unceremoniously onto the dance floor.

~*~*~

"All right, all right. Everyone out there who's a wild child, we got exactly five minutes to midnight. That's right ladies, you only have five minutes in which to ditch your husbands and find a new man," The DJ declared. "So, here's one for the lovers out there while we count down to '98."

A new song started, quieter than the last previous melodies. People could hear each other talking now and the tune seemed to calm down the crush of people who were out on the dance floor of the Pravda.

"I've never heard 'Isn't It Romantic' mixed quite this way before." Chloe murmured her head resting on Lex's shoulder as they swayed to digitally backed Ella Fitzgerald.

"New experiences are good for the soul." Lex replied, running a hand through her hair. His other arm was wrapped firmly around her waist, holding her to him.

"Then my soul must be in tip-top condition by now." She laughed. "I've experienced lots. Can you rebate these experiences for like, shopping sprees or something?"

"Not in the U.S. I think there's a place in Mexico where you can though."

"Well saddle up the ponies, caballero. Let's go. I want a burrito anyway." Chloe closed her eyes and smiled against his chest. She could stay like this forever, in Lex's arms.

"You're amazing. Did you know that?"

Chloe lifted her head and blinked up into serious blue eyes. When had the conversation turned serious on her? She was flattered and definitely feeling warm-fuzzies, but also…confused. "Xan?" She whispered as the song drew to a close.

"I thought you should know," He said softly, "How much you mean to me."

"All right, all right. T-minus one minute and counting to the big 9-8, party animals. Find your girl, find your guy, and get ready for the ball to drop!" The DJ declared to the milling crowd.

Lex ignored the voice and slid his hand under her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. "I love you, Chloe."

Bang, there it was. Out in the open, big as life and as totally sincere as only non-coital declarations could be. Lex Luthor loved her, Chloe Sullivan.

Why couldn't she talk? What had happened to her vocal cords? Why the hell weren't they working damn it? She needed to say something back. Something like "I love you too," or "I love you with everything in me," or maybe "take me home, right now." She wanted to tell him how much she felt and she wanted to cry she was so happy.

But she couldn't. The words seemed stuck in the back of her throat. And around her, the people were cheering and counting down to the New Year.

"Five! Four! Three! Two! One! HAPPY NEW YEAR!"

Chloe pulled Lex down and kissed him, long and hard and with everything, every feeling she had. She couldn't make her voice work but her lips and tongue were in perfect working condition, thank you very much.

They stayed melded together at the mouth until long after the pulsating dance music began again. And when they finally broke apart for air, she could talk again.

"I love you too."

And then he smiled, a huge smile that reached all the way to his bright blue eyes. And Chloe almost did start to cry.

"Xan," she said as she wiped the yellow lipstick, that had rubbed off of her, off his mouth, "Take me home."

She laughed at the look on his face. She would have compared it to winning the lottery if he hadn't already been rolling in more money than one person would ever need or use.

"You sure?"

"Yeah." Chloe swallowed, and nodded. She was utterly serious which was almost too hard to believe. "I am."

Gently, Lex weaved them through the crowd until they reached his brother and Corinne who were dancing in a way that could probably get them both arrested back in Kansas. Lex ignored their lewd motions and caught Corinne by the shoulder.

"What the fuck, Luthor?"

Lex grabbed her hand and pushed his keys into them. "We're leaving. Bring the Jag back in one piece or I'll kill you."

Corinne looked down at his keys cynically. "Luthor-"

"Don't leave Wendy here. And do not let Jules touch anything in my car. Clear?"

"Fuck, ok. Go, have fun or whatever." She winked at Chloe. "Wear a condom."

Chloe blushed. "Let's go."

Corinne and Jules smiled as they watched them leave.

Corinne laughed. "They are so gonna fuck. About goddamn time."

Jules nodded. On this, he was inclined to agree with her.

~*~*~

Lex's bedroom looked different than normal. Everything seemed more real, more vivid. It was like everything had come into sharp focus around her.

"Chloe?"

She turned quickly, hugging his coat around her. He stood in the middle of the room in a dress shirt and black slacks looking absolutely delicious. But his eyes were soft and warm.

"We don't have to do this if you don't want to, Chloe." Lex said softly, moving towards her like one would approach a scared wild animal: slowly and cautiously. "Don't think that we have to, that I need you to. If you're not ready, we won't."

Chloe smiled, warmed by the acceptance and love in his eyes and voice. "I am ready, Lex. Just go slow, and I'll figure it out as we go along." And then she let his coat slide off her body and onto the floor.

[Blaire]

Chapter 27- A Night Before and Mornings After

Lex looked at her like a kid on Christmas morning, like she was a gift he'd been wanting all year and couldn't bear to wait another second to open. And Lex was meticulous when it came to his presents, careful with the wrapping paper, anxious to see what was within but not destructively so.

Lex held out a hand to her. "Come here."

His voice was low and sultry and Chloe nodded as she took a few steps forward. He met her and took her hand in his, gently running his thumb over the back of her hand before pulling her into his arms.

He wrapped one arm around her waist and tipped her chin up with the other. "Chloe?"

"Yeah?"

"Very sure right?"

She smiled at him with false bravado. "Super sure." And she was sure. But she was also scared shitless.

"Demerits for bad alliteration." Lex chuckled as he lowered his mouth to hers.

He leaned down to kiss her while running his hands over her dress. It looked amazing on her, but there seemed to be no means of getting it off. Until he found the zipper that ran along the sole seem in the back. And Lex was an expert at zippers. With either fingers or teeth, he could get the little fuckers open in no time flat. But this time it wasn't a race. It was Chloe's first time, so slower was better.

Gradually, Lex worked the zipper all the way down from the base of her neck to her just below her hips. He was so distracted by her very presence, the smoothness of her skin beneath his fingertips, the sweet taste of her tongue dancing in his mouth that he didn't even notice as she worked the buttons of his shirt until he felt her hand snake under the fabric.

His shirt was off him in a matter of seconds. He’d had to let go of her so he could get the sleeves off, but had quickly returned to the task of getting Chloe's dress off.

Deciding enough was enough; Lex grabbed the shoulders of the dress and slid it down her arms until the long sleeves caught on Chloe's wrists. A gentle tug and the dress pooled around her waist.

He gaped at her, taking his time to fully appreciate the fact that Chloe had truly great breasts. They were full, high, soft looking, completely unfettered by a bra due to the nature of the dress, and just aching to be touched and kissed.

Chloe felt heat explode on her neck and blush spread up and down from that focal point as Lex stared at her. She swallowed hard as reality crashed down on her. She and Lex had made out countless times before, and he'd touched and fondled her breasts before as well. But never without her top on. He was seeing her for the first time. What if she looked stupid? Or he didn't like what he saw? Or-

"You blush all over." Lex noticed with smile. His fingers trailed down her neck, over her collarbone, until they rested on one of her breasts. "You are so damn beautiful, Chloe."

"Thank God." Chloe laughed, practically melting with relief. She wondered why she'd worried in the first place. She trusted Lex. He'd never laugh at her unless she wanted him to. He'd never turn her away unless she needed him too. She was safe with him.

"It's ok, Chloe." He told her warmly as his fingers caressed the bare skin of her breast gently, his thumb occasionally stroking over her nipple. "It's all right to be shy. This is big and new."

"Yeah," Chloe's hands stroked over his hairless chest and stomach. His skin was so smooth, smoother than hers. It reminded her of an infant's skin it was so soft. "Very big."

"And you're doing great." Lex encouraged. "And you're gorgeous, Chloe. So beautiful." He murmured before bending down and replacing gentle fingers with his mouth.

Chloe gasped at the wet heat of his mouth on her breast. His tongue traced odd and erratic patterns over her nipple and she shivered, glad that he knew what he was doing.

"Oh…" Chloe let out a shocked sigh as he bit her gently. "That's new."

She felt him breathe rapidly against her skin, and looked down at him. It was an odd perspective since what she mainly saw was the top of his hairless scalp, but if she leaned her head back and turned it just right she could see that he was smiling, chuckling against her skin.

"You're laughing at me." She mumbled, a little breathless as he turned his attention to her other breast.

She watched him simply shake his head in denial, and decided to accept that. After all, in a situation she could give him a little leeway.

Eventually, he pulled back from her and stood up. Lex smiled down at her and cupped the side of her face in his hand. His thumb gently traced her cheekbone.

"You stopped?" Chloe asked in confusion. She looked up at him, trying to understand why he'd left her. It had felt surprisingly good; she hadn't wanted him to stop.

"Yeah."

"Um, any reason?"

"Cause Chloe, it’s foreplay. From the Latin meaning to play before." Chloe stuck her tongue out at him. The sight not only made Lex laugh but also increased his already aching arousal. "This isn't the main event."

"So there's more." She observed.

"You're still wearing your dress, Chlo. Of course there's more."

"It's not my dress. You stole it from Corinne." She slid her hand down his chest and stomach to rest it rather tentatively on the waist of his pants.

Lex laughed again. "I know. Which is why we need to get it off you."

"You're lucky she didn't castrate you for taking it," Chloe mused as Lex eased the dress down her hips.

"So are you."

"Hardy har." Chloe shot back as the dress finally landed in a heap at her feet.

Lex put a finger on her lips. "Hush for a second. Just let me look at you."

Black panties. She was wearing black lace panties that clung low on her hips and just barely covered the comet tattoo on her hip. He felt his mouth go dry. Where in god's name had she dug those up?

Chloe shifted nervously under his scrutiny, suddenly unsure. He was staring at her like she'd grown a tumor or something. "They went well under the dress. Everything else I have is too bright." Chloe said in a rush, feeling ridiculous and insecure.

"No. I…they're great. I'm just surprised."

Chloe chuckled nervously. "What do you know, I surprised Lex Luthor."

Lex met her gaze. "You're constantly surprising me. I love that about you." He smirked. "I especially love it when the surprise involves black lacey underwear."

She grinned, feeling more confident but still vulnerable. This whole thing, while fascinating and sexy wasn't fair. And she said so. Chloe had always been one to speak her mind.

"You still have your pants on."

Lex lifted a single eyebrow and gave her a somewhat smug smile. But amusement and laughter danced in his eyes. "Keen observation, Chlo."

"So how is that fair when I'm nearly naked and you're," she waved a hand at him, "Not?"

"You can fix that." Lex replied simply.

"Is that a challenge, Mr. Luthor?"

He beamed, actually beamed, at her. "Do you want it to be one?"

"Well, seeing as I've always been a fan of a good challenge…”

He pulled her back into the circle of his arms and kissed her again. Chloe really loved kissing Lex. But kissing him and getting the top button of his pants undone turned out to be a lot more work than it should have been. And after a few failed attempts at multitasking, she broke from his mouth to focus on the task at hand.

"Gottcha!" Chloe hissed triumphantly as the button came free and she slid the zipper down, carefully. She'd seen There's Something About Mary. Those little buggers could be dangerous.

"Mission accomplished." Chloe declared, before pushing the slacks down over his hips.

Watching the fabric slide down his legs and land in a heap around Lex's feet, Chloe surveyed her boyfriend's choice of underwear and giggled.

"Joe Boxers? I have to say Xan, I was expecting silk." She feigned a long-suffering sigh. "Oh well. You can't have everything."

"They're comfortable Chlo," Lex sighed and shook his head in mock disappointment. "Picky, picky. But since they offend you so much, we'll have to fix it, won't we."

Chloe nodded as she swallowed and then said, with more confidence than she felt. "Off they go then."

He might have said something but it was drowned out by what was most definitely a bona fide caveman growl as Lex pounced. Chloe laughed as the two of them went falling onto his bed. The mattress didn't give nearly enough and they landed with a soft thump.

"Oomf." Chloe gasped as the wind was knocked out of her.

Sane Lex seemed to have reemerged for the moment and he looked down at her with concern in those gorgeous blue-gray eyes. "Did I hurt you?"

Chloe shook her head. "Nope. Just let me up for a second. I'm falling off the bed."

He did as she asked and she scrambled up to sit on the bed. Lex was about to pull her back into his arms when she held up a hand to stop him.

"Not with those on." She laughed. They were cute boxers but they needed to come off, sooner rather than later.

"Are they really that offensive, Chloe?"

"No. I just want to know what you look like naked."

Lex opened his mouth, closed it, swallowed, and started again. "Then I guess I should thank you for your honesty." And then, under her watching eyes, as he divested himself of the 'offensive' garment.

"Oh."

"Chloe?"

"Oh god."

"Chloe?"

"This just got very real." She mumbled.

Lex shook his head and moved slowly towards her, as if he expected her to bolt at any second. He sat next to her, close but careful not to touch her.

"It wasn't real before?"

"No…yes…I… it was more new before." Chloe said shakily. "Now it's like…five alarm, wake up and smell the coffee real."

"Are you all right?"

She nodded. "Just a little…" She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Scared."

Lex reached out and pulled her close to him. "That's understandable. Hell, that's normal. And if you're not ready, we'll stop right here, right now."

"What if I'm ready and scared?"

Lex smiled. "Then I'd say you've got at least one up on a lot of people. If you really are ready then I can promise that we'll take our time. There's no reason to rush this, Chloe."

"I am ready, Lex."

"But it's all right if you aren't."

"I know that. But I am. I'm just…this is a huge thing Lex. This is sex. You only have one first time."

"I know that. Do you trust me, Chloe?"

She nodded her head emphatically.

"Then trust that I'll stop if you ask me to and that I'll make this good for you if you don't."

"I do trust you, Xan. I love you."

He smiled warmly at her and stroked her jaw with a gentle hand. "That's good to know."

Chloe shut her eyes and let herself simply enjoy his touch. She took several more calming breaths and when she opened her eyes again she felt more together than she had since Lex had stripped her of her dress.

"You with me, Chloe?"

"Yep, I'm here." She turned her head and kissed his palm. "Hey Lex?"

"Hm?"

"You're bald everywhere."

For the very first time since she'd known him, Lex blushed. She watched as he ran his hand over his head in nervous agitation. "Yeah. Meteor radiation. I was a kid. If it grosses you out then we can-"

Chloe moved over him as he spoke and pushed him back onto the bed. "I think it's hot."

He gave her a somewhat confused look and then graced her with a megawatt smile that made him look very young. "You think so? No one's ever…liked that about me. It's just been one more thing that made me a…"

"If you say freak I'll have to slap you and that will kill the mood." God, her poor Xan. Not enough people saw how beautiful and strong he was. It just wasn't fair.

He gave her a sad disbelieving smile and Chloe shook her head at him. "You know I trust you. How 'bout you? Trust me?" she asked as she moved slowly down his body. She licked and kissed his hairless skin as she waited for an answer.

It took Lex quiet awhile to reply. He was a little distracted by the feel of her skin sliding against his, her lips kissing his body, her messy blonde hair tangled around his fingers. "God help me, you're the only one I trust anymore."

"Hm…" Chloe had made her way down past his hips and was sitting on his smooth legs. "You're way too coherent." A friend had once said if a man could get out a complete thought in bed, you weren't doing it right.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. Chloe repeated the mantra silently, hoping The Little Engine That Could wouldn't be offended. She lifted her right hand to her mouth and licked her palm as an older and wiser friend she'd met online not long after hitting puberty and curiosity, the same one who had told her the adage about coherency, had suggested.

Lex moaned at the sight. She looked down at him and chuckled. Ok, so that was a good move apparently.

Chloe leaned forward and carefully ran her finger over the head of his penis. When she heard him hiss she smiled and mentally patted herself on the back for her journalistic knowledge-seeking ways. It had definitely gotten her some good advice, she thought as another few tentative strokes over the head got her a buck and a low moan.

Encouraged by his response, she locked her legs around his and wrapped her hand around his shaft. She did her best to be careful, to apply enough pressure without squeezing too hard and hurting him. He groaned as she started to move her hand up and down and she looked up at his face.

"This ok?"

"Chloe…"

She smirked at that, knowing she was on the right track. She sped up a little and when her hand reached the top of his shaft she let her thumb brush over the head of his penis. His bucking moan heartened her and she tried for a faster speed but her strokes became somewhat erratic. A groaned "yes" egged her on and her other hand wandered his body, caressing exposed skin now slick with sweat.

"Chloe."

"Lex." She sighed back, caught up in her own power over him. That she could make him feel this good was a heady experience.

"God, Chloe stop!"

Chloe let go immediately and stared down at him in confusion. And hurt. "Did you not like it? I can do something else. I'm sorry."

Lex shook his head. "Too much. Liked it too much."

"Huh?" Chloe looked at him in confusion and then her eyes widened in understanding. "Oh."

"Yeah." Lex beckoned her upwards with a gentle tug on her hand. She complied readily, happy to be back by his side.

Lex held her for a minute, putting his fragmented brain back together. Once he could form a complete thought he kissed her and rolled her over so that he was on top.

"Your turn."

"My turn?"

He nodded and his hands snaked down to her hips. He slid his hands under the straps of her panties. "I want to see your tattoo, Chloe."

"Well it’s not going anywhere."

He nipped gently on her bottom lip. "Lift your hips."

She did as he asked and was actually surprised when he moved down her body and pulled her panties off.

Chloe sighed as she watched him fling them into the depths of his room. God save her, she'd never be able to find them if they landed in his mess of a closet. "They're gone now."

"I'll help you look later." Lex promised before planting a quick kiss on her tattooed hip. He outlined the image once with his fingers before tracing over the outer most line with the tip of his tongue. Chloe shivered.

"Since Sean gave you that damn tattoo, Chloe. That's how long I've wanted to do this." Lex told her as his fingers resumed their study of her inked skin.

"Feels good." Chloe mumbled. She didn't know that she could get that turned on just from the feel of his hand on her hip.

Lex moved back up her body and kissed her slowly. "This will feel better."

"Prove it." Chloe taunted.

"Leading me into temptation." Lex muttered against her neck as his hand slid between her thighs to touch her.

Chloe jumped slightly as his fingers touched her intimately. His touches were light and quick and shallow, not even really entering her. His hands were warm and his touch was …fuck, hot. She shifted her legs to give him better access and sighed.

A Luthor never lets an opportunity pass him by. This was one of the many things that had been drilled into Lex's head from a young age. This was the first time he'd ever truly seen the value in that policy. And since Lex was a Luthor, born and bred, he accepted her invitation and slid a single finger inside her and moved his thumb to rub her clitoris.

Chloe bucked her hips against his hand. "Holy shit."

"That good then?" Lex chuckled.

"Xan."

He dipped his head down and kissed her collarbone quickly. "More?" He asked. She shuddered again and let out a soft whimper in answer.

"Xan."

"I'll take that as a yes then." He whispered moving his kisses down to her breast to distract her as he added another finger.

Her low, throaty groan was his reply, and Lex grinned against her skin as she writhed underneath him.

Chloe's mind was hazy. She couldn't really see much aside from the blurry image of the rough ceiling above her. It was a just too much.

Two of Lex's long and, oh god, ridiculously talented fingers were moving quickly and smoothly in and out of her while his thumb manipulated her clit with a skill born of practice. But Chloe wasn't able to focus on exactly what he was doing. She was too busy being rocked by the sensations he was pulling from her, pleasure that echoed through her body and strained her muscles. He changed his speed slightly and Chloe bucked and groaned underneath him.

She heard Lex chuckle in her ear. But his laughter faded as he began to suck on the ear lobe near his lips. Combined with a well-timed movement of fingers and thumb Chloe rocked against his hand and gasped as she came.

It was like a small explosion starting at her center and spreading in sharp, beautiful spasms outward. She sighed heavily as her body shuddered and calmed.

Lex gently withdrew his fingers from her as he smiled down at her. She'd been gorgeous with her eyes shut tightly and her lips slightly parted. He was a little surprised though. He'd figured his fiery Chloe would be a screamer. Instead she's gotten one up on him again with a quiet but desperate passion that awed him.

"You ok?" He whispered, not wanting to break the quiet. The room, the bed, the atmosphere was peaceful, soothing. And Lex was struck with the ludicrous idea that if he spoke louder than a whisper that that peace would shatter and dissolve.

But Chloe was grinning at him with heavy-lidded eyes, clearly still recovering from her orgasm. "I'm so good," she whispered back and then leaned up for a kiss.

Lex's tongue coaxed hers gently. Their kiss was slow, gentle, warm, and full of love. Love. He'd never made love before. He had fucked, screwed, banged, had sex, and gotten laid countless times before but it seemed the old adage was true. Being with someone you loved made all the difference in the world.

"You ready?" Lex asked her in that same quiet voice.

She nodded in response and leaned up to kiss him again. If sex was even a fraction as good as what he'd just done then she had no objections what so ever.

"Hang on, one second." Lex got up off her and leaned toward the edge of the bed, pausing to look back at her. Her head lay on the pillow, her blonde hair messy around her face. One hand was palm up resting on the pillow near her face while the other was still clutching the sheets. Her breasts rose with every breath she took and she was giving him a Mona Lisa smile. "Don't move. Stay just like that."

Lex slid across the mattress and hung over the side of the bed. He ferreted around desperately under his bead, searching. He felt like cheering when his hand hit the box of condoms he kept there.

He rose with the foil wrapped package seconds later. She hadn't moved anything but her head, which had rolled on the pillow to better follow his movement.

She watched Lex intently as he tore the packaging open and covered himself with the condom, grateful he'd remembered. It sure as hell had slipped her mind.

"Chloe?" Lex asked as he lowered himself over her once again.

"Yeah?"

“Are you one hundred percent sure? You can’t take this back,” He warned. He didn’t want this to be a regret, something she’d looked back at and think ‘I wish I hadn’t’.

She reached up and ran her hand gently over his smooth, bald head. She wasn’t afraid of his differences, his freakishness, and his faults. She accepted all of him. “I am one hundred and fifty percent sure.” Her hand slid down his skull to the nape of his neck. “I love you, Xan.”

Lex had heard somewhere, a movie or a TV show, that if a man says ‘I love you’ before or during sex he was lying. Well, fuck them, he thought defiantly. He’d told her before; he was going to tell her again now, and later, when it was over. He was going to hold her tightly and tell her again. Get all his bases covered.

“I love you too, Chlo.”

He reclaimed her mouth with his. And then, carefully, so as not to hurt her, he entered her. He did his best to go slow, to not hurt her, to make her first time good, but she was so tight and so hot and so good he had to bite down painfully on his lower lip to keep himself grounded.

Chloe’s breathing quickened to a pant. It was alien, having him inside her. It was still good though, very good. But it was almost too much, how big he felt inside her. She was worried briefly that she’d rip in half. Her worry escalated as he slid farther into her and stopped.

But she looked up at him with questioning eyes. “Why did you stop?”

“This is going to hurt.” Lex said as he peppered kisses on her face. “I’m so sorry. I can’t not make it hurt. But, it’ll be all right.”

“I trust you.”

Lex thrust his hips forward quickly. Chloe gave a sharp cry of pain at the same time that Lex groaned in pleasure. But he was expecting this. She wasn’t the first virgin he’d ever been with. He knew to give her time. To be patient. In the end, it would be more than worth the momentary discomfort.

Despite her best efforts to hold up the illusion of strength, a tear slipped out of the corner of her eye and rolled down the side of her face. She turned her head, so he wouldn’t see, so he wouldn’t stop even though it hurt.

Lex’s heart broke as he watched her put on a brave face even as she cried. She was so tough. She made him so proud.

Gently, he wiped the tears that escaped the corners of her eyes away with his thumbs. He planted a gently peck on her lips as he tried to soothe her.

“You ok?”

She didn’t answer for a while. She just laid beneath him, breathing, adjusting to the feeling of him inside her. After a few minutes, during which time Lex was slowly going crazy, she answered him.

“I’m ok.” Chloe told him evenly.

“Sure?”

She laughed and he groaned as her muscles clenched around him. “XAN! Come on.” Chloe experimentally lifted her hips and Lex moaned, low and long and began to move.

[Blaire]

It was slow and soft. Neither of them was in that big a hurry. Instead of rushing head long into a wild climax, they gradually built up the pleasure between them. Kisses were smattered on every part of the body with reach. Hands roamed on skin, gliding on the fine sheen of sweat that coated their skin. His hand slid between their bodies to touch her and heighten her pleasure.

And when Chloe succumbed to her orgasm, after what seemed like an eternity of languid lovemaking, colors exploded behind her eyelids. She moaned softly as she thrashed beneath Lex. Her neck arched back and she gave a low whimper as her body shook with blissful spasms.

The contractions of her inner muscles around his penis trigged his own, much louder climax. He called her name as shudders wracked his body and he came.

A little later, when his brain was working again, Lex pulled out of her carefully, so as not to hurt her. He pulled off the used condom and tossed it into the nearby trashcan. With the last of his sapped energy, he moved slightly so he wouldn’t crush her and collapsed. His head rested on her chest where he could hear her heart beating beneath his ear.

“Lex?”

He smiled against her breast. “Yeah?”

“That was…amazing.” Chloe sighed and he felt her chest move beneath his head.

He chuckled. “Mm-hm.”

“Xan?”

“Hm?” He was tired and the fact that she had begun rhythmically running her fingertips up and down the back of his hairless scalp was lulling him further.

“Happy New Year.”

Lex kissed the side of her breast and sighed, content and truly happy for the first time in his recent memory. “Love you, Chloe.”

“Love you too, Xan.”

~*~*~

“Cori…”

“Say it again.”

“I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. Let me go now?”

“Let me go now what?”

“Ma’am.”

Corinne laughed and unlocked the fuzzy handcuffs from around his wrists. She loved messing with Jules’s head. He was so easy, so fun. Brilliant and a challenge, but refreshingly naïve. And responsive as all get out.

“Good boy.” She kissed him quickly, not giving him time to play with the silver hoop in her lip, something he’d grown very fond of very fast. Corinne stretched out on top of Julian, feeling a lot like a cat. “What did we learn from this?”

“That you are hideouslyhideously kinky and spend way too much of your parent’s money on sex toys?”

Corinne laughed and began kissing Jules’s chest. She liked that Julian could make her laugh. “The other fucking lesson, Brain.”

“Don’t steal your shit.” Jules recited with a wide smile.

She nipped his collarbone in approval. “Smart boy.”

“That’s what they tell me.” He buried his now free hand in her purple hair. He loved her hair. He didn’t know what was in it but it was always vivid and soft.

“Yeah, something about lame ass test scores and dumbfuck GPAs.” Corinne mumbled as she cuddled against his side. Shit. Cuddling. Non-sexual intimacy wasn’t something she was very comfortable with. Yet there she was, voluntarily cuddling with a 14-year-old boy. God, she was going to burn in hell. Ah well, at least she’d gotten in some good orgasms before hand.

“This is my best New Years so far.” Jules whispered in her hair. Dancing, drinking, and then some really, really creative sex with a woman he adored. If life could get better right that moment, he didn’t know how.

“And you have so damn many to go by.” Corinne rolled her eyes at him.

“I love you.”

Jules sighed as he felt her entire body tense up as he said the words. He was used to it by now. But that wasn’t going to stop him. In less than a week he was going back to New Hampshire. And he wanted to beat how he felt into Corinne’s thick head before he went back to school. Or rather, before he left school. He was graduating early. He only had to return to school and get his paperwork in order before heading off to Harvard for the spring semester.

“You don’t have to say it back.” He soothed. Sometimes he felt so much older than she was. She was wounded, a lot like Lex was wounded. He’d give anything to heal them. But he took what love he could get from both of them.

Corinne shrugged. She didn't love him. She loved fucking him, and she loved talking to him, but she didn’t love him. She didn't love anyone.

"Doesn't mean I will stop saying it though."

"Shut up Jules." Corinne mumbled, kissing his chest and moving to suck on one of his nipples.

"I love you." He gasped, shivering at the sensation. He wanted to cry when she lift her mouth from his body.

"Fuck me."

"Make love to you."

"Whatever."

Jules shook his head and rolled her over. He grabbed a fresh condom from the nightstand, covered himself and said once more, before entering her, "I love you."

~*~*~

Silence. Awkward silence. Long awkward silence. Long awkward silence after five, no six mind-blowing orgasms. Ok, so that was all right then. She could handle this.

Wendy mentally berated her self. How fucking stupid was this? A one-night-stand with someone who’s last name she didn’t even know, on New Years Eve? Jesus, she couldn’t even use a drunken haze as an excuse.

“So…” Wally, his name or so he’d told her, started. “You a Boston native?”

Wendy turned her head on the pillow and started at him. “Let’s not do this ok?”

He blinked at her. He had green eyes. Not greenish-blue or greenish-brown but really green eyes. She didn’t know if those green eyes needed corrective lenses but she did know how they looked half lidded and hazed with pleasure.

“Do what?”

“Awkward pillow talk. I liked the awkward silence more.” She told him frankly. She then decided to take a page from Corinne the Campus Slut’s book. “The sex was great but that’s all it was. Great sex.”

“You are a really cynical broad. I didn’t notice that earlier.” He noted.

“I am not cynical. But I am realistic.” Wendy’s sexual experience was limited and not all that fulfilling. “And besides, you don’t really know me anyway.”

She’s lost her virginity at the age of 15 to an 18-year-old college freshman she’d meant over the summer after her first year of high school. He’d been sweet and patient but inept and the whole thing had been less than satisfying. And he’d been less than committed. Since then she’d only been with two other boys. Both times, a let down, emotionally and physically. She just wasn’t expecting more from no last name Wally.

“I want you phone number.”

She laughed. “I like that you’re direct. But giving you my phone number could get you so arrested.”

A lone corner of his mouth quirked upward into a smirk. “Seriously?”

“I’m too young for you.”

“How young?”

“Too?”

“Seriously.” Wally pushed jovially.

“Seventeen.”

She watched as he gaped at her. “Seriously?”

“Is that your favorite word?”

“It’s climbing the charts,” He coughed.

Wendy eyed him clinically. He looked ready to swallow his tongue. “Do you have a last name?”

“West.” He choked out. “Wally West.”

“Miller. Now we know each other.” She chuckled. “Can you lend me twenty bucks?”

“Wha?” She was going too fast for him, and he was a master of all things quick, tapped right into the Speed Force itself. He was the Flash, goddamnit. No one was supposed to be able to run circles around him, not even mentally.

“I need a cab.”

"Wendy…I can give you a ride." Or a head examination, or something.

She sighed and rose from the bed, taking the comforter with her as she went. “Look, I appreciate it, I really do. But lets not pretend this is something it’s not. Just lend me some cab fair. I’ll pay you back.”

Wally studied her as she ferreted around his studio apartment, looking for her clothes. Seventeen. She was seventeen. Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle she didn’t act like a seventeen year old in bed, she didn’t talk like one with her razor sharp wit and intelligence, and she seemed pretty damn mature. But then, he was always jumping the gun. “When’s your birthday.”

“April.” He heard her reply. Wally did some fast math. Four months until she was legal. He wasn’t a patient guy by nature. He liked to go fast, for instantaneous results. Four months was a long time. And he didn’t know her that well. But…but last night she’d fit in his arms so perfectly at the Pravda. And after the party had winded down a little, they’d talked for hours at a little café that declared itself a 24 hour joint but actually shut its doors at three am.

“I want your phone number.”

She reentered his line of sight. Her clothes were rumpled and messy and her curly brown hair hung around her face. She looked like a Hollywood starlets with a Roman nose.

“You’re psychotic. Typically I find that attractive in a man but I do have limits when it comes to jail.”

Wally studied her, taking a quick inventory of her and liked what he saw. She was real, she was solid, she had a kick ass sense of humor, and she was probably the best lay he’d ever had. Of course he was nearly ten years her senior but hey, they’d work out the kinks eventually.

“I’m serious.”

Wendy was balanced on one foot as she struggled to pull on her knee high stocking. “Son of a bitch!” The delicate fabric had a large run going from heel to knee. “Damn it. What were you saying?”

“I want to call you.”

“Well, you can call me Wendy. Or Miller. Or my brother Nick’s favorite ‘Beak Face’ if you’re feeling suicidal.”

“I mean on the phone. Preferably at a later date, to arrange a get together for dinner. Or perhaps to discuss the weather or President Clinton.” Wendy eyed him warily. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he’d mentioned politics. Seriously bad move on a non-date. Nice one, Wally. He wondered if he were fast enough to physically kick himself in the ass.

Wendy looked at him in abject horror. “You’re not a Republican are you?” She shuddered. “I feel so unclean.”

“Wendy, I was just giving you an example.”

“You aren’t a Republican, right?”

“Wendy.” Wally grinned at her “No I’m not, but that’s not the point. The point is I want to get to know you. And once you walk through that door, I can’t do that unless you leave me a phone number.”

Wendy studied him. “You’re a stalker.”

“No, I’m a rapist. Give me your number.”

Wendy gave an unlady-like snort. “Oh yeah, real convincing argument. How bout…no.”

“How about you give me your phone number and I’ll give you your wallet.” Wally offered. Faster than sight, he shot out of bed, grabbed her discarded purse from where it lay by his front door and was back in bed before she had time to even realize he’d moved.

“How about if you don’t give me my goddamn purse, you’ll be bleeding so badly not even the entire cast of ER will be able to put your skinny Irish ass back together.” Wendy warned, stalking toward him in rumpled clothes and bare feet.

He laughed and waved her bag at her. “I’m of Scottish ancestry actually but good guess. It’s the hair right?”

“It’s the smarmy attitude and propensity towards strong but weird ass drinks.” She stood by the side of the bed, glaring at him. “Give me the bag you Duncan MacLeod wannabe asshole.”

He laughed at that, holding her purse over the side of the bed away from her. “You’re a sci-fi geek! That’s so hot.”

She leaned across the bed, over Wally to reach for her bag. He dropped it off the other side of the mattress and onto the floor and Wendy realized her mistake. He wrapped arms around her waist and pulled her on top of him.

“You melted when I kissed you last night.”

“Because you got me pissface drunk first.”

“You had one drink last night, Wendy.” One hand stayed securely locked around her waist as he moved the other in front of her face, holding up his index finger. “One.”

“Fine. But I did not melt.”

Wally smiled. Smugly. She wanted to slap that smug little grin right off his gorgeous face. “You melted. And I wonder…” He leaned up and Wendy was reminded that the only thing that covered him was a thin white bed sheet.

“What?”

“If you’ll melt again in the day.”

“I’m not the Wicked Witch of the West. I don’t melt.”

Wally leaned up quickly and caught her lips with his. And goddamn it, she melted. Her bones turned to liquid and she sank down onto him as her arms gave out on her.

“Give me your number.” He whispered when they broke apart. “I can wait till April. Can you?”

“April?”

Wally bit her bottom lip gently. He reached into his nightstand and grabbed for the small notepad and pen he kept there.

“Yeah. Give me your phone number, Wendy.” He quietly demanded, kissing in quick soft pecks.

She gave a heavy sigh. “Fine.”

Wally mentally cheered in triumph as she scribbled a number on the piece of paper. Four months. The Flash wasn’t typically a patient man, but for Wendy Miller, the smart, savvy, high school aged firecracker, he would wait.

~*~*~

Lex was staring up at the ceiling. His eyes studied every bump in the roof as his hand stroked Chloe's hair absently. He wondered how much damage it would cause if-

"What are you doing?" Chloe asked, burrowing deeper into his side.

"Waiting for the roof to fall on us and kill us both."

Chloe snorted. "Wow. How morbid of you."

"I've never had anything good happen that wasn't followed by something really, really shitty." Lex bent his neck to kiss the top of Chloe's head. "So I'm waiting for the roof to collapse."

"Or the foundation of the building could crumble and send us crashing down to the first floor in nothing up our birthday suits. OH! Or a rabid bird could fly in the window and infect us."

"Birds don’t get rabies, Chloe."

"Bird flu then." Chloe sighed. "You think you'd be grateful. I gave you, what I think, was really fantastic sex. And you're worrying. I'm insulted."

"Way to toot your own horn." Lex joked, tangling his hand in her messy blond hair.

Chloe snorted. "Speaking of horns, you could do with some more volume control. Why I do declare, Mr. Luthor you'll rouse the neighbors." She joked with a phony Southern accent.

"There are no neighbors. And I can't help it," He told her softly. "You drive me wild."

"That sounds like a line."

"I already have you in bed, Chlo. At this point I don't need lines."

"But they don’t hurt." She teased. She felt warm all over, safe and happy in Lex's arms under the covers.

Lex's hand trailed down to her neck and stroked her nape. It was a little ticklish and Chloe squirmed.

"What are you doing?

"Checking your tag, because you must have been made in heaven." He winked at her. "Baby."

Chloe burst out laughing. She laughed until she couldn't see straight, until she couldn't breathe. And Lex was laughing to. She felt blessed to hear it, because as beautiful as the sound was, it was so rare that it almost didn't exist.

"I'm going to marry you, Chloe." Lex said seriously, when they had calmed a little.

Chloe blinked up at him. "We're too young to be talking about this, Lex."

"Well, I am." He kissed the tip of her nose. "After college. I just thought I should let you know ahead of time."

Chloe's heart broke but she nodded. Lex's comment about the roof collapsing had hit to close to home for her so she’d tried to shrug it off. But she couldn’t shake this feeling of apprehension. Like the minutes were slipping away before she could really live them. And she was worried, terrified that she might not get much longer with Lex. But...

"Good to know.” She said, her voice hoarse with emotion. “With an offer like that, how can I not accept?"

"Love you so damn much, Chloe."

"Same here, Xan." She squeezed him, maybe a little too hard and buried her face in his warm skin.

~*~*~

“You wanted to see me, Mr. Luthor?”

Lionel looked up from his paperwork at the sound of the new voice in his office.

Well, the Sanders boy was looking better. Apparently the surgeons Darren had hired to fix his son’s nose and cheek bone had done a good job because if Lionel hadn’t know the damage his own son had done to the young man standing before him he would never have noticed the tiny suture scars.

“Yes, I did.”

“May I ask why, sir? And on New Year’s Day?”

Lionel nodded. He definitely approved of the young Sanders boy. He had the manners, etiquette, and skill Lex lacked and the ambition Julian seemed to have cast aside in favor of scholarly pursuits.

“You know of the relationship between my son and the young Miss Sullivan, do you not?”

Donovan tightened his hands into fists and clenched his teeth. Of course he knew. They’re relationship, was like a slap in the face, adding insult to injury.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“What about them, Mr. Luthor? It’s not as if I can do anything about it.”

Donovan swallowed hard at the sight of the shark’s smile that spread across Lionel’s face. He was one scary motherfucker, Donovan thought as he suddenly knew where Lex got the ferocity it had taken to damage his face as much as he had.

“You have…less than savory connections at Hampton. Contacts who would be willing to…get their hands dirty.”

Donovan simply nodded.

“I’m entrusting you with the assignment of…removing that blonde tart from Hampton.” Lionel cleared his throat once and gave him a meaningful look. “Permanently. I trust you to handle the details.”

Holy shit on a stick. Donovan shook his head slightly to clear it before searching Lionel’s face. Was he serious?

“Mr. Luthor, how permanent are we talking about here?”

“I simply want her gone from the campus and out of my son’s reach. I do not want to know the specifics.”

Apparently, Donovan had read him wrong. The guy was probably thinking more along the lines of a drug bust than a murder. Good, because he had no desire to waste twenty-five to life on anyone, not even the bald wonder and the kitten.

Lionel said nothing.

“Sure thing, Mr. Luthor. I know a guy.”

“Excellent.”

Donovan shivered. He wasn’t afraid of very much. His father’s high position in society gave him free reign to do pretty much whatever he wanted, including what Lionel was asking of him, if he chose to. And in this case, he chose to because Lionel Luthor reminded him of a combination of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons and the shark from Jaws. And you didn’t screw with that.

[Blaire]

Chapter 28 – The Beginning…

Butterflies would have been preferable for the nervous tension coiling in the pit of her stomach. She could sleep through butterflies, but not this. So instead she clung tightly to Lex’s sleeping form. His slow, even breathing helping to calm her. A little.

She smiled sadly to herself as Lex shifted in his sleep and pulled her closer to him. She heard him mumble something in his sleep that sounded vaguely like 'love' before settling again. The word warmed some of the worry away, but not all of it.

She'd been shadowed by a deep tension the last few weeks. It was like a cloud hovering over the beautiful things she'd found with Lex since their first night together. Over the past month, she'd constantly felt like eyes were watching her, like someone was following her. And it scared her.

But what scared her more was the feeling that time was running out. It was almost as if she could see it slipping through her fingers like sand. And she had a desperate need to tell someone, before there was no time left.

She was planning on letting Wendy know. She'd been thinking about it for the last few days and realized that Wendy made the most sense. Because while the Lex from her time, the one who had seen men walk through walls, fortune tells with accurate visions, and fat-sucking vampires, would believe her; her Lex would not. Her Lex was far more cynical when it came to the unbelievable and would probably be upset and hurt that she was trying to fool him. Wendy on the other had, would be the more likely believe her, even if the chances were slim. And even if she didn’t, she wouldn’t take the “lie” personally.

And then maybe she'd be able to relax and have more mornings like the first one she and Lex had had together. Mornings with laughter and kisses free of underlying tension and fear.

~*~*~

Chloe woke up freezing cold despite the warm body wrapped snuggly around her. Lex was still asleep, his arm wrapped around her waist in a viselike grip as if he were afraid she'd disappear while he was sleeping. So in order to pull the covers, which had somehow gotten kicked down around their legs during the course of a night filled with fits and bursts of both sleeping and sex, back over them she'd have to get really creative with her limbs.

Her back was arched in an effort to extend her arm and her foot, which had the edge of the blanket securely snagged, was reached back behind her. And that pretzel like shape was the one Lex saw when he eased awake.

"You should put outrageously flexible on your résumé. If I'd known you could do that last night, I would have been more creative." Lex teased. He leaned down and quickly pulled the covers over them both, much to Chloe's chagrin.

"I was cold." She said lamely.

"Yeah, I gathered that."

"You kick the covers."

He rested his forehead against hers. "I've never had that complaint before. It has been duly noted."

"Ye shall not kicketh the covers again, or I shalt kicketh thine ass.”

Lex groaned. "If the next line out of your mouth is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I'm throwing you out of bed. I don't care how sexy you are."

Chloe giggled. She'd only see that movie once, and it hadn't even been on her mind when she'd spoken. But now that he mentioned it, bits and pieces of the flick (which Pete had sat her down and made her to watch in freshman year) floated back. It was a memorable movie.

"Psst, Xan."

"Yeah?"

"Bless this thy hand grenade, that with it thou mayst blow thine father to tiny bits, in thy mercy."

"That's it." Lex laughed. "I don't care how sexy you look, out."

Chloe attempted to pout but as she was dealing with a case of chronic smiling that didn't pan out so well.

"Fine," Chloe feigned a longsuffering sigh. "Be that way." She climbed across him and rolled out of bed.

She smirked to herself when he caught her wrist. "I was joking Chloe. Come back to bed." Lex gave her arm a gently tug.

"Nope, you've irreparably scared my fragile little heart," she sniffed gently pulling out of his grasp. She moved across the room and pulled open one of his draws. After a few seconds of ferreting she found her prize and pulled his worn Metallica shirt over her head.

"You're not really leaving are you?" Lex sounded vulnerable in that moment almost scared. Chloe looked over her shoulder and sighed. People kept hurting her Lex; she wasn't going to contribute to that pain.

"I wasn't planning on it." She said, walking back to him and crawling under the covers. She snuggled into his side and he wrapped a strong arm around her waist, locking her to him. "But I do need to get a change of clothes from my room. You know, in the event that starvation drives us out and into the cafeteria in search of food."

Lex sighed. "Well, I suppose I could free you from captivity for a few minutes."

Chloe smiled and gave him a quick kiss. "I'll be back in half an hour. Stay here."

He laughed. "Bossy."

She kissed him quickly on the lips in reply and slid out of bed once more. This time she set about finding a pair of pants, finally finding a relatively clean pair of drawstring sweats in Lex's messy closet.

"Any luck finding your underwear?" Lex teased.

Chloe looked over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out at him as she pulled on his pants. "No. You know what, you can look for them while I'm gone." She chuckled as she grabbed Corinne's dress up off the ground.

"Why bother?"

Chloe smiled to herself as she picked up the last item of clothing she was going to need, Lex's coat, and slid into her shoes. "Love you,” she said warmly.

He smiled at her from his spot on the bed. She loved Lex's smile and paused in the doorway to look at him. "Love you too. Hurry back."

~*~*~

"OH MY GOD! MY EYES!"

Chloe slammed the door shut and pressed her palms into her eyes. Oh god, that image was going to be burned into her mind for the rest of her life. All though a part of her wondered if the body paint they were using was flavored or not.

"Chloe?"

Her response was more of a whimper than a word.

"You can come in now." Jules called through the door.

"No, it's fine. I just came to return Corinne's dress." Chloe mumbled, her eyes still shut tightly as she heard the door swing open.

"You shoulda fuckin' knocked Sullivan. Goddamn."

"I did knock."

"We're covered Chloe, you can open your eyes now," Julian said. He sounded embarrassed. Well, that made two of them.

"I need bleach. I'll never be clean again," Chloe muttered as she cautiously opened one eye just a bit. Both Corinne and Jules were dressed, all though Jules' clothes were sticking to his skin and he had streaks of green paint on his neck and face.

"Not a voyeur, huh Sullivan?"

Chloe shook her head. "Your dress."

Corinne looked at the scrap of black fabric in Chloe's hand and chuckled. "Worked for you then?" She asked as she took it from Chloe's pale hands.

"What?"

"You guys made with the hot monkey sex didn't you?"

"Does anyone else smell cigarettes?" Chloe said evasively.

"I had a few," Corinne said sharply, but refused to let Chloe wiggle out of telling her. "You did, didn't you? You guys fucked like bunnies. I can tell."

"Right. And, I'll just be going then."

Corinne winked at Chloe as she hedged towards the stairs. "Welcome to womanhood, Sullivan. Today you are a fountain pen."

Chloe chuckled to herself as she headed up the stairs to her floor. Behind her she heard Jules ask, "What did you mean by that, today she's a fountain pen?"

"Jules, you know for a genius, you're a real fuckin' dumb ass sometimes." Corinne sighed, before pulling him back into her room. She hadn't finished cleaning up all that messy, tasty body paint.~*~*~

Vaughn Reynolds watched the blonde trot across the school grounds towards the boy's dorms. He wrote down the time and noted the fact that she was carrying a bag, presumably full of clothes. Apparently, she and Luthor were finally fucking.

He'd gotten the call from Donovan early New Year's morning and and had since taken it upon himself to be Chloe's personal shadow. Something that was made much easier by the fact that he lived on the same floor as her boyfriend.

When he’d taken the job, Donovan had promised that he wouldn't be the one to get his hands dirty. Vaughn didn't mind the stalking; in fact Donovan's kitten was a hot little number so it was no hardship.

Besides Donovan had been his best friend since grade school. Plus the Sanders family had more influence than his own, and Donovan had gotten him out of more than one bind. The least he could do was play follow the leader with Chloe until Donovan had all the plans in order. D. could have done it himself now that he was back on campus but that would have been suspicious to baldy and his little fucktoy. And he had no desire to have a felony scandal touch him, at least not over this girl.

But enough was enough. It had been a month and Vaughn was getting bored. He was ready for Donovan to send his guy in, do whatever it was that he had planned, and be done. He was failing pre-calc because of all the sneaking around and if he had to deal with one more angry phone call from his banshee-like mother about his future and the "Reynolds reputation of academic excellence" he'd quit the whole damn project and be done with it.

~*~*~

Chloe collected her computer, her CD's, the books, and wallet that she hadn't used since arriving in the past and sat on her bed, waiting. Wendy's track practice, Chloe would never understand crazy people who liked to run in the freezing cold February weather, had ended fifteen minutes ago and she was due back to the dorm any minute.

In the meantime, she was trying to formulate a convincing argument. So far she had bupkis. After all what could she say? "Hey Wen, how was track practice? Heard from that guy Wally lately? And oh yeah, I'm from the future." Yeah, that'd go over like a ton of bricks. She still had nothing when Wendy entered the room.

"What are you doing here? You don't live here anymore." Wendy teased. The fact that the blond was wearing one of Lex's shirts instead of one of her own now that classes were over was proof enough.

"Well, I finally got my passport in order and decided to travel. So here I am."

"Good, because Corinne has been bothering me ever since Jules went off to college and you disappeared off to Land of Multiple Orgasms. Save me Chloe! The beast will eat me."

Chloe laughed. "You might not want to say that too loud. She has super hearing."

Wendy studied her friend carefully. She looked nervous, twitchy almost. Chloe was many things but twitchy was not usually one of them.

"Chlo, are you ok?"

"Uh…yeah."

"Lex didn't do something did he? I'll go kick his teeth in for you. Oh! Better, I'll call his dad."

"No, NO! It's fine. Lex is fine, good even. I just…you're not going to believe me."

Wendy crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow. "Oh, I'm not huh?"

"No you won’t."

"Ten buck says I'm a very open minded person and will."

Chloe shifted a little, swallowed hard and said, flat out, "I'm from the future."

And, much as she expected, Wendy laughed reminding Chloe of why it she’d choose to tell her about this and not Lex. Especially when Wendy stopped laughing and looked at Chloe like she was crazy.

"You're not joking. Are you?"

Chloe shook her head.

"Ok, then," Wendy muttered, digging around in her pocket. Chloe almost laughed aloud when her friend handed her a ten-dollar bill.

Chloe waved her off. "I'm not joking Wendy."

Chloe had snapped, Wendy was sure of it. She'd stuck a fork in an electric socket or had too many orgasms and had her brain fried. Because there was no way that any sane person could stand in front of her and tell her that they were from the future.

On her end, Wendy was not exactly sure how to handle the whole situation. Everything she'd ever heard about how to correctly hand the insane flew right out the window.

"Um, ok Chloe."

"Dammit," Chloe sighed, "I knew you wouldn't believe me. Gut instincts, Sullivan."

"Are you ok?"

Chloe sighed. "I'm fine." She said, struggling to find a way to convince Wendy. She spotted her wallet in the mess of things from her bag and got an idea. "I have proof, things from home."

Wendy remembered the first day she'd met Chloe. She'd been a frazzled runaway who'd been hit by a car. For the first time, Wendy seriously wondered what it had been that had sent Chloe running so far away from Kansas. The idea that maybe she’d been abused and something had brought the trauma back floated through her mind.

"Look, Chloe, you don't need to dredge up bad memories on my account. Let's say I believe you all right?"

"But you don't! And I need to you to, Wen."

Wendy rubbed her forehead with her hand. "Can you blame me? It's just so out there, Chlo. I mean, I love you girl, but this is just too nuts."

Chloe grabbed her wallet and handed it to her. "In there is my driver's license and homecoming picture from last year. Look at the dates Wendy. I'm not joking."

She fidgeted as Wendy dug through her wallet, pulling out her library card, her cash, her driver's license, a crumpled picture of her and Clark at homecoming and two tardy passes, examining each one in turn.

"You're shitting me, right Chlo?"

"No. I'm not."

"This picture says 2001 on the bottom. Your driver's license says it was issued in 2002. 2002? That's like, impossible. This is 1998. If you wanted to make a fake ID you could have picked a more convincing number." She scoffed, dumping everything back in Chloe's wallet and tossing it back to her.

"Wendy, its not fake." Chloe protested, doing her best to catch her wallet.

"Look, I have homework. I'll be in the library if you need me. Take a rest, Chlo. You're loosing it and I'm worried about you." Wendy chided, giving her best friend a strained smile.

"Wendy…" Chloe tried, as she flipped on her computer, frantically trying to think of something else she could show her friend to convince her, but Wendy cut her off.

“Look, I wish I could believe you. But this is bullshit. So just don’t insult my intelligence any further.”

“I’m not trying to insult you. I’m just trying to tell you. It’s important.”

Wendy snorted. “If it was so damn important, why didn’t you tell me earlier?” She was suddenly angry, upset at Chloe’s persistence with such a wild lie.

“Because I knew you’d react like you are right now!” Chloe shot back.

Wendy just shook her head. “Look, I’m not going to do this with you. You’re obviously under a lot of pressure right now, and I don’t want to fight with you. Maybe you shouldn’t go to classes tomorrow. Take the night off.”

“I’m not-“

"You. Rest. And don't go over to Lex's tonight. You need to wind down some. You'll snap under the strain." If she hadn't already, Wendy thought as she walked out of the room.

Chloe hung her head in defeat and fell back onto her bed. "Could have gone worse. She didn't call the loony bin." Yet, she couldn't help but wish it had gone better.

~*~*~

Vaughn liked photography. It was one of the few classes he got A’s in. He was lucky. The second youngest of six boys, there was no pressure on him to join the family business. He could live off his trust fund for the rest of his life, take pictures, and never have to worry about anything.

And he liked this job he was doing for Donovan because it required lots of pictures. Pictures of Chloe and her group of friends around campus, pictures of Chloe on the grounds with her freak friend with the great ass and the scary tatts, pictures of Chloe and her curly haired friend talking between classes, and (his personal favorite) voyeur shots of Chloe and Lex in bed.

He'd delivered the photos to Donovan two days ago. Of course, he'd kept a set himself. As an artist, he always kept a copy of his work.

He was snapping a picture of Chloe climbing out her six-story window on her way to her boyfriend’s when his phone rang. He clicked two more shots before he answered it.

"Hello?"

"Are we good to go tomorrow."

Vaughn chuckled. "Yeah. You're good."

"All right. I've got a guy."

"D. man, I don't want to here it. I'm not an accessory man. I'm just a photography enthusiast."

On the other end of the line, Donovan snorted. "All right. Thanks, Vaughn."

"We're square now right?"

"Yeah, Vaughn, we're square."

Vaughn didn't reply. He simply hung up the phone and took readjusted the focus of his camera.

~*~*~

Paul McGill held his breath as he eased the door open with gloved hands, then let it out in a rush of air when he found the room empty.

He began to wonder if Sanders was paying him enough for this. Breaking and entering wasn't his usual MO. He was more of a possession with intent to sell type of guy.

He supposed he should have asked for more, but five thousand bucks plus payment for any and all drugs he planted had seemed like a good offer at the time. Then again, his brother Philip had always said he'd never had a head for business.

Which was probably why he was rummaging around in a teenage girl's room at 2:30 in the afternoon, attempting to plant the drugs Donovan Sanders had paid him to plant on her person.

That did not erase all of Paul's problems though. Firstly, he was not a student at Hampton Prep. He'd dropped out of school years ago and could get busted just for trespassing. Secondly, how to get it on her person when this girl, Chloe, had no idea who he was and definitely wouldn't trust a grungy, 5'2" junkie in desperate need of a new fix.

Problem 1 had been easy to get around once Donovan had distracted a guard when he snuck in. Problem 2 was harder. Until Donovan had smacked him upside the head and said "Her clothes dumb ass. Hide it in her clothes."

Which was what Paul was doing now, riffling through a pile of clothes on a desk by the room's window. Problem 3 had arisen then when he'd realized that there were two girls living in this room. And these two girls attended a school where uniforms were mandatory and he couldn't figure out for the life of him which clothes belonged to which girl.

He was still looking for the right skirt to plant the plastic baggy with enough coke to please a Columbian cartel when the door opened. And she was standing there, in a plaid skirt that made her look like a character in a porno movie and a shocked expression on her face.

"What the fuck are you doing in my room?" Chloe demanded moving towards him, carefully. He looked skittish and wired and that made her nervous.

"Nothing."

"Wrong answer." Chloe said gently as she eased close enough to touch him, spotting the plastic bag in his hand and the white powder it contained. He was probably a junkie looking for something to steal to pay off his dealer. "Try again."

Paul panicked. He gave her a shove and ran for it. Or at least he started to make a run for it when he heard the shattering of glass, an utterly petrified scream, and a loud thud outside.

He rushed to the broken window and looked down. Holy Mary Mother of God, he'd killed her. Jesus Christ on the cross, he'd KILLED her. Terrified, he searched the room for a phone. His hands shaking in his gloves, he dialed 911.

"911, what is your emergency."

"A girl. She fell. Hampton Prep. Girls' dorm."

"Sir, if you would give me more information than that-"

But Paul didn't hear the operators other instructions. He was too busy running, down the stairs, out the back door, and into sunshine. He only slowed slightly when he ran past that girl, Chloe, lying on her back in her own blood on the grass.

By the time the sound of sirens reached Winchester Hall, Paul McGill was no longer on the Hampton Prep campus.