ethrosdemon ||| Smallville

Ennui
by ethrosdemon

Email: naturallycalm@yahoo.com
Spoiler: none
Rating: PG
Summary: Lex has a suckarific day.
Dedication: Zahra, my platypus of love, and Lar for betaing.
Improv 5: frost, stand, violet, pity
Comments: Sorry about the title. Couldn't think of anything.


Lex's eyes strain to remain focused on the report in front of him. "…The average yield of all entries at a test site provides an indication of overall production conditions at that location (see Table 1). Satisfactory data were obtained from all nine test sites in 2001…" He scans the page for Table 1, instead finds Table 3, and his interest fades to nonexistent.

He swivels in the high-backed, leather chair, and gazes out into the abysmally over-cast, late afternoon sky. The report, and all of its fellows, whispers to him from the desk, but there's always midnight for that. At the moment, he doesn't feel like fighting off his mood. The elements appear to be in concert with him, and Lex feels some satisfaction that he can lull himself into a funk with nature following his emotional whims.

A whim took him into town at lunch. Bustling Saturday afternoon in a farming community, surrounded by people who shop to break the tedium of backbreaking labor and isolation. Lex feels some sympathy for that, his work not that of bleeding hands and muscle strain, but still exhausting and often singular, solitary, lonely. He's never passed as much time with only himself for monotony breaking than he has in Smallville. Always another body in the house in Metropolis, another non-servant body: his father's pulsating presence, bored fellow scions, bedmates, and random individuals he took a shine to.

Out of his car, and about to set the alarm, he took a minute and watched the life of his exile pass by him. Smallville is his father's perfectly shaped punishment. So few chances at immersion, constant status and arms-length stance from the general population, Lex found himself standing with an invisible buffer around him as what appeared to be half the town shuffled past on the sidewalk. The violet lenses of his glasses reflected back the odd head bob or frosty smile as he leaned against his car and re-evaluated lunch at the Beanery.

He was suddenly not ready for conversation. For an invasion of the glittering camaraderie of Clark and his friends. To sit so close to what is the very definition of the youth he flung behind him, chased after, doesn't quite grasp. Clark and his homespun ways, always offering a smile or a genuine remark. Except when he wasn't, when it was pretence and covering for something ephemeral and unnamed.

And Lex didn't want to cope with that today. With someone else's issues and sphere of influence. He rounded his car and hoped he hadn't been spotted mired in self-pity and doubt over having coffee and a sandwich with a group of teens. The exuberance and levity of Clark's inner circle seem too incomprehensible, too burdening, sometimes. Like today.

Lex's always been discomfited by youth. His has been spent alternately striving to prove his worth with maturity beyond his years and, conversely, tumbling headlong into being the epitome of youthful abandon. All of it lived sharply aware of his behavior and its effect on others. Too self-aware to enjoy more than fleeting, drugfully blessed, disjointed seconds.

The hours since his misspent lunch break have follow one upon the other in creeping units of deepening day. He's picked the most tedious and detail-oriented tasks to keep his mind busy. To stave off real thought. Until now, when the grey of the sky seems to sit right on his chest, and he just gives in to the bitter taint to his thoughts. Watches the clouds drop and strain to meet the fertile expanse of the ground. The whole world feels heavy and shoving down, pressing up, at the square of his office.

Alone often means this. Riveting on some abstract ideal and picking away until he's sure he's already fucked himself up, squandered some unknown chance, feinted left instead of right. Genius, morality, death, honor, youth; all bring their own flavor of regret and longing after answers. Answers he constructs for himself on the flip-side of these flogging sessions. When nothing stands between he and the infinite, glory, and immorality. Those come just as arbitrarily.

He wants to fling himself out of his seat, take the night off, walk off or indulge his mood in the oppression of barometric weight, but the inertia of his destiny is stronger than his sentiment. There's work to be done still, reports and end of quarter reviews, and he wasted almost two hours at the peak of the day. The rollers of his chair shush against the acrylic matt as he wheels back around and focuses on black figures on white paper, shutting out the grey.



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