CHLOE

It's raining, again.

I know the weather should be the least of my problems, what with the beginning of the Lex Luthor diary looming over the horizon like an impending doom that will take place in about five minutes. But it's the very interview that's making me hate the rain. It's making my hair flip out weirdly.

And I really didn't want to start this interview looking like something the cat dragged in. For the sake of journalistic professionalism, you understand. No other reason at all.

To top it all off, I'm nervous. I would rather die than have Lex Luthor know this, but I am very, very nervous. When you're dealing with an enigma like Lex Luthor, and having to resort to other sly means to get an interview with him, means that he had no qualms in displaying his dislike over, one would have no choice but be nervous. Lex Luthor is as mysterious as all can get, and when you're a mystery, you're unpredictable. I might know what I have in store for him, but I have no idea what he has in store for me.

Something tells me that the week won't end up looking too pretty. In fact, as he so aptly put it, there may be no survivors.

I'm jumped out of this reverie by the sudden appearance of perfect white teeth.

"Hey, Chloe," Clark greets, sliding into the seat opposite mine. "Not disturbing you, am I?"

"Hey," I greet back, as usual ignoring that little excited thump in my heart reserved only for him. Hearts can be traitorous little organs. "No, but you have to go away in about five minutes."

"Have a hot date?" he grins.

I feel familiar bubbles of resentment surfacing. If he had a hot date, I wouldn't be grinning. I'd be consoling myself with ice-cream and Meg Ryan movies. "Nope, even better."

"I'll bite," he says. "What's even better than a hot date?"

"A hot interview with Lex Luthor," I reply, promptly.

"You're joking. Lex actually agreed to an interview?"

"More like a day-to-day diary in the life of Lex Luthor, that I'll be writing." The familiar broken heart feeling is quickly replaced with smugness. If I could get a piece on Lionel Luthor, I'd be absolutely set.

Clark looks less impressed and more shell-shocked.

"Oh go on, be impressed."

"Well, I am impressed," he says quickly. "How on earth did you manage that?"

Emotional blackmail. "Oh, some wheedling helped." I didn't want him to ruin my thunder by chastising me for the actions that procured that thunder. Besides, he'll find out from Lana soon enough.

Lana was actually very happy for me. Well, of course she'd be happy about anything if it stopped the Talon from being sued.

"Wheedling, huh?" Clark smiles.

I feel my ego being inflated to ten times the size of normal i.e. not very healthy. "Yes well, other than that, it was all professional journalism, you know."

"Professional journalism?" I heard echo in disbelief, very unfortunately not from Clark's mouth but from a spot somewhere to the right of me. I dare a peek. Lex Luthor stands there looking down at me with something that looks like distrust.

So no, scrap that. My hair flipping is not a bad way to start an interview. This is.

"Lex," I say weakly. "You're early."

He ignores me and looks at Clark instead. "Hey Clark."

"Hey Lex," he replies with a smile. "I was just about to leave. Don't want to interrupt the interview," he says, standing up.

"No, don't do that, Clark. You can stay," Lex says. I think I detect a pleading note in his voice.

He laughs. "No, I wouldn't want to be around when Chloe gets into reporter mode!" Clark is not helping me one bit. He stops suddenly and says, "Oh, hello."

I look at where he's looking at and find the other man whose lap I occupied yesterday standing behind Lex, two hands in his jeans pockets, his casual jeans and t-shirt look in striking contrast to Lex's casual look (which is never that casual).

Lex seems to remember him too. "Oh, sorry. Mike, this is Clark, remember I told you about him? Clark, Mike, an old college friend of mine."

As Clark and Mike shake hands, I can't help but feel resentful at the fact that Lex was not volunteering to introduce me. But then again, I don't think I'm the highest on Lex's Favorite People list at the present moment, or for any future moments for that matter.

Clark leaves, Mike and Lex settle in opposite me. I remember Lex introducing Mike as his old college buddy with some surprise. Frankly I was having doubts that Lex had any old friends at all – it's hard enough to retain a friendship without you being a heartless cow. Clark might be an exception, but then again he's the most patient and lenient guy I know, and I seriously doubt that there would be more of men like him in the world.

After ordering, we sit in silence. I'm still waiting for the obligatory introduction of Mike to me and me to Mike but it's not happening. Lex sits in resolute silence, and Mike seems contented with watching his fingernails grow.

Deciding to take matters into my own hands, and already losing half the steam I gathered for the Professional Journalist idea, I turn to Mike.

"Hi," I award Mike with a big-as-the-world-no-make-that-Jupiter smile, one that Lex Luthor would never be so fortunate enough to have directed at him. "I'm Chloe Sullivan."

"Mike," he grins at me, and I'm slightly knocked out by that grin. It didn't have the Clark Kent dazzling factor, but it was one helluva nice grin.

"Nice to meet you," I say, and for the interest of the interview, I add, "I'm sorry, I don't think I caught your last name. Mike what was that?"

"Mike nothing. Just Mike," he says, and grins again.

I stare at him.

"Just Mike?" I echo. "Seriously."

For some reason, Lex looks absurdly pleased.

"Riley. Mike Riley," he says, his tone still amiable, but he shoots a look at Lex, who smirks.

I mean, seriously. Just Mike? What is this, a teeny bopper movie?

"So anyway," I say, hoping to forget all of the awkward intros and go straight to the heart of the matter. "I thought we'd discuss how we're going to go about everything before we actually start."

Lex shrugs. "Shoot."

I pause and glance at Mike. For some reason I had imagined this to be just the two of us, at least for the actual discussion factor.

Lex seems to notice. "Mike is staying in Smallville with me for a week. He'll be around for a large part of the interview, diary, thing."

"Huh," I say, a bit bitter at the fact that he's addressing my masterpiece as a 'thing'. "Okay, fine."

"Not a problem, is it?" Mike asks.

"No, not at all. It's supposed to be a diary type thing so Lex is supposed to go about his every day activities, and I guess that includes you." But what bad timing. I wanted it to be all about Lex Luthor, without any shadow (albeit a cute one) following us around. "Which I'm sure suits you fine," I add to Lex, with just a tiny hint of sarcasm.

"I'm sure," he says, and smirks.

I try not to scowl and fail miserably. "Anyway, so the general thing would be that I follow you around. I'll be asking you questions along the way, but mostly I'll try to hide in the background. So I'd just be asking you to ignore me on the most part."

He gives me a look that says that ignoring me would be a hard thing to do.

"I'd probably be asking some of the people that you're with about you, their opinions of you and that sort of thing, and I'd be sitting in for any meetings that you might have during our time together…"

"No," he interrupts.

"No?"

"No," he says firmly. "No business meetings."

I breathe in deeply – a calming mantra that never worked on me before but I'm hoping for miracles now. "Lex, we made a deal…"

"This was not part of the deal. No business meetings."

"I won't be divulging anything that you actually say during the meetings…"

"Chloe," he cuts in, bluntly, "It's not that I don't trust you. It's just that I don't trust any reporter."

Which obviously puts me in my place. "Fine. No business meetings."

Instead of looking relieved, Lex looks surprised. Probably didn't count on me giving up the issue so quickly. Fact of the matter is I didn't think he'd allow me anyway, and it's a worthless cause to be fighting over when I can just try and sneak into the meetings. "Thank you."

"I'm sorry," Mike suddenly says. "Which newspaper is this for, anyway?"

"The Torch," I reply, promptly, with just a teeny little bit of pride. "Smallville High school paper."

"Very ambitious for a school paper," Mike says, with the look of someone who is impressed. My kind of look.

"We try," I say, with a failed attempt at modesty. I beam at him, as he smiles at me, and out of the corner of my eye Lex rolls his eyes heavenward. Which doesn't matter, because at the moment I'm thinking of other things. Namely, how this Mike character has got the charming smile factor down pat.

"I should definitely read it some day," he says. I swear I detect a flirtatious note to his voice, but being the big lump of insecure mess that I usually am all in result of being second-best to Lana for far too long, I decide that it's just my imagination.

Anyway, I'm not very good at flirting. I decide to discard the whole idea of that altogether and turn back to Lex. "Anyway! Where were we?"

Lex gives me a disgruntled look. "No business meetings."

"Right, business meetings, none of that," I glance at Mike who's still smiling at me and I look away, annoyingly flustered. "Yes and um- what was it? Right! No business meetings. So um, yeah. That's that. And uh- so I suppose you get the general gist of everything, right Lex?" He nods wearily. "So we'll just begin now, shall we?"

"As you please," Lex drawls. Then says, "Excuse me," and gets up and leaves before I could actually begin.

I don't know where he goes, restroom, Lana and Clark, whatever. It hardly matters, considering the whole idea of my professional journalism has gone awry the moment he decided not to introduce me to Mike. With that in mind, I turn to Mike. "I guess I'll start with you."

"By all means," he says, just as the waitress arrives and puts a cup of coffee in front of him, and another cup of coffee and a steak sandwich in front of the empty space that should have been occupied by Lex.

"So how long have you known Lex?" I ask, when the waitress leaves, making eye contact with him as a professional journalist does, and looking away when I realize that his smile is just making me more nervous.

"We were room mates in college," he says.

"You must be good friends." He nods, and says nothing else. "So what are you doing in Smallville?"

"Just visiting," he says. "Felt like getting away from Metropolis, so I thought I'd spend the week with Lex. See how he's doing. And all that."

I feel like I should be sticking to the Mike criteria of the interview so I could just not ask him again for the rest of the week, but another burning curiosity is getting the better of me. I lean forward eagerly, "So how was Lex in college?"

"Ambitious," Mike replies promptly. "But that's Lex."

"Ambitious? So he was studious?"

"Not particularly," Mike says. "I don't think that Lex believed that there was anything you could learn from school that you couldn't learn in the real world."

That isn't surprising. For one thing, Lex doesn't need to study to get a good job, he'd get the CEO position for LuthorCorp just as soon as his father retires (if he ever does), as easily as that (I think). And I somehow doubt that the proper business etiquette and rules as studied in University would actually apply at that corporation.

"Was he friendly or more of an outsider?"

"Well, lets put it this way," Mike says. "If he wasn't my room mate, I wouldn't even have spoken to him. He has his acquaintances, and that's that. He's a Luthor, he wouldn't need to try and make friends. Ass kissers come running a mile away."

"So do you think that Lex…"

"How's your hand?" Mike asks, cutting me off in mid-sentence. I'm beginning to see a likeness between the two already.

"It's fine, thanks. Oh, and thank you for taking me. I mean, I know it was Lex, but you were there, and… er, thanks."

He smiles warmly at me, and I smile back, hoping to look the cool and calm and collected female, but knowing that I'm blushing and looking constipated instead.

For the first time ever, I'm very thankful for the sudden re-appearance of Lex.

"Miss me?" he says, dryly.

"Well, you weren't gone long enough for that," Mike says, somewhat pointedly.

"I was just asking Mike some stuff about you," I tell him.

Lex glances at Mike before looking back down at his coffee. "Interesting," he says, tonelessly. He looks back at me, "So what happens now?"

"Well, nothing really," I tell him. "Just go about doing whatever. I'll ask questions when I need to. We can just act like it's not an interview, and just three people having coffee. Just continue like we're having a normal conversation."

"Just three people having a drink," Lex echoes. "And the lady gets to go home with me. I'm enjoying this already," he remarks, taking a bite of his sandwich.

The man is purposefully making this hard for me.

"We'll be here for a while," Lex says. "Then we'll go home. I actually don't have anything planned. How about you, Mike?"

"Hey man, I'm just following you around," Mike says, amiably.

It seems to be with some impatience that Lex says, "Okay."

"So, what do you usually do at home?" I ask.

Lex shrugs. "There's not too much going on in the Luthor household."

"Really?" I ask, disappointed in spite of myself. I had this idea that he had a secret basement somewhere where he feeds meteorite pebbles to unsuspecting rats. Of course, that's just my imagination getting ahead of me.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Lex says wryly.

At the back of my mind I'm aware that Lex is probably putting on this whole 'I'm boring' attitude just to piss me off, where as at the front of my mind I'm pretty sure that he's just trying to hide something else. But then again, I'm a reporter. I live for the controversies.

I decide to touch on a more sensitive topic. "So how's living with your Dad?"

Instead of answering, Lex takes a huge bite of his sandwich.

"It must be nice to get back with your father, be close again, spend some time together," I continue, dismissing the fact that he just ignored the first question.

Mike coughs.

Lex says, "Some men are easy to get along with, some you'd rather kill."

I stare at him. Although I'm well aware that Lionel Luthor may be on the top of everyone else's Murder List, I didn't think I'm expect it from his own son. Hate? Yes. Detest? Yes. Resent? Yes. But the way Lex puts it, it's as if he'd rather not acknowledge the fact that he has a father, who has turned blind and has taken up residence in his house.

"Well, he's your father, Lex," I tell him. "There has to be some similarity there somewhere."

"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."

The quote is instantly recognizable to me. "Salvador Dali," I reply. "His father was probably mad too."

Lex smiles at me just a little, but it uplifts me to no end. As if I just received the stamp of approval after a very long and hard obstacle course.

"Indeed," he says, nodding. And then as if to confirm that stamp of approval, he leans forward and asks, "So, Miss Sullivan, is there anything else you'd like to know about my domestic life?"

"Oh, plenty," I reply with a grin. "But we've got all week."