nature

Reccing Notes: gdfgirthdtdfhru!
Seriously. IMHO, the best characterized err.basement fic ever. With plot! just too amazing for words. paraxdisepink captures Chloe, slight snark, all the inner conflict the purity and desperation of their feelings. It is seriously. hot. As in, you might combust.

by paraxdisepink at her lj.
5,720 words, m/nc-17, eternal

She crawled around to face him. Her throat was burning.
She felt like Beauty locked in the Beast’s castle, standing at the top of stairs in a place dark and colorless compared to her apartment above. Her groceries were still on the table outside. Anyone who wandered in and saw them would know she was missing. She listened for footsteps in the Talon above, but it wasn’t like her friends would go into a frenzy searching for her the instant Persephone dropped her bridle. The past few weeks had taught her that much. Sure, Clarkwhooshed in whenever the ever-burdened superhero needed a healthy dose of blonde sidekick, but it was well-past his bedtime and even all-powerful aliens needed their beauty rest.

Chloe took a deep breath. Speaking of all-powerful aliens, she couldn’t ignore the eyes on her back forever, tugging at her like he’d tied a string between the two of them. That was stretching it. Maybe he’d been built to take down a fellow Kryptonian, but he didn’t have some magnetic hypnotic power that could draw her to him against his will. He wasn’t Dracula or Hades or the Phantom for crying out loud. She had the mysterious power here, apparently, one he honestly believed could challenge fate and save the world. Maybe he’d banked on the fact that she couldn’t refuse giving it a try or maybe he’d just gone off the deep end grasping at straws thanks to Clark and his eternal optimism. Whatever the case, she was the one taking the gamble here and the one who had everything to lose.

The thought hardly gave her the boost of courage she needed, but she set her bag down anyway beside the door, clenched her jaw and started back down the stairs to where Davis waited.

His shoulders sagged where he stood in the shadows, and thank God he didn’t look so otherworldly anymore, just tired. She hadn’t realized how frozen he’d been standing until he let out his breath and sank down on the stairs. It had to be terrifying, thinking the one person close to you would abandon you because of something you couldn’t help. Was that what she had intended to do in her hurry to warn Clark, cut herself off from him and cold-heartedly work to find a way to take out this threat to her best friend for good? Davis was what he was, but there were two sides of him. He was more than the kind paramedic who saved people and cooked her dinner – she’d found that out in a pretty quick succession of realities breaking apart like one glass shattering after another – but he was also more than a monster with a mission to kill.

He offered her his hand when she came down to him. His skin was still warm; Chloe thought it would be cold after coming back from the dead. She didn’t know what else to do but let him pull her down on the steps beside him. Silence settled over the two of them like a blanket when she let go of his hand, and she took her time studying the heap of stuff cluttering the basement around them. You’d think she would have noticed the moving truck bringing all this here, but maybe all of it wasn’t his or maybe Oliver had done it – he’d said something about having someone clean out Davis’ apartment. Who or how didn’t matter anymore though. Davis was here now and he couldn’t go anywhere else if what he said was true.

He wasn’t in any big hurry to talk, but she could hear him breathing beside her and she could feel him just a few inches from brushing her shoulder where they sat side-by-side, giving off heat and that brooding vibe that made Clark seem cheerful by comparison. After knowing Davis for months, she’d gotten used to his moody silences. She used to think he was a little too old for the emo thing, but now that the awful pieces had come together she had to give him credit for not being raving mad by now. How many people would continue to function after they’d been told it was their destiny to kill and destroy the world?

A part of her warned not to sympathize. Serial killers preyed on sympathy and sob stories weren’t excuses. But your average Jack the Ripper didn’t have a literal monster inside they couldn’t control. Davis was more like a Kryptonian time bomb struggling to deactivate the trigger, and he had destiny working against him. She remembered needing a personal bomb squad once, but she held herself away from him anyway so they didn’t touch. She closed her eyes and saw him in that Kryptonite cell again, revisited her own shock at what she’d done on instinct and that desperation to say a hundred things before it was too late. It’s like they said, when you couldn’t talk, you communicated. Funny how she couldn’t bring herself to speak now. It was easy to pour your heart out and forgive someone and beg forgiveness when you thought they were dying. But things weren’t washed away so easily when they rose from the grave invulnerable and were sitting right next to you. There were the murders, the threat to Clark, that red-eyed thing he’d turned into in that cell, and the fact that the guy beside her now wasn’t the guy she thought she knew. The Davis who saved lives and promised to always be there was a mask for something that should only exist in a nightmare, and now that the illusion had crumbled she had to make sense of what lay underneath.

“This thing you say I do,” she broke the silence. “How does it work?”

He lowered his head and stared at his hands clasped between his knees. He didn’t like talking about what he was, the other part of him. In fact, he looked a step away from crumbling himself, and the misery in his face made one thing clear between them: if he had any choice in all this he wouldn’t choose this thing with her now, whatever it was, or a life without the monster. He’d choose to die and stay that way. He’d already chosen death once rather than be with her. She couldn’t blame him – no one would want the nightmare he was in – but that didn’t make it any easier to stomach.

“I don’t know,” he shook his head. “It first happened that night in the ally with Jimmy. You . . . you touched me and stopped the beast inside from coming out. I was human again.”

He looked at her with some of the same amazement she remembered from that night. She had to be the world’s most clueless idiot. She’d heard him growling then and she’d seen something come over his face in the shadows. How could the queen of the weird and unexplained have thought Davis was just thankful to be rescued from a major head injury? But it was like she’d told Clark, she’d been in denial. No one as left out in the cold as she’d been lately wanted to face the fact there was something wrong the one person she could talk to. It didn’t matter anymore anyway. The truth was out now and the question was what to do about it.

Davis drew another breath. He seemed to want to talk now. Considering the secret he’d kept she couldn’t blame him for wanting to unburden himself. “The things I’ve done, Chloe . . .” he said, “I never thought any part of me would be capable of killing people. It’s like I was at war with the beast inside me and the only thing that made sense was hurting as few people as possible. I tried not to – I tried pills, whatever I thought could control it. I just . . .”

He trailed off. War was a good analogy, or an alarming one considering his “father” was the infamous General Zod. War had casualties – like Lex and Sebastian – and soldiers did what was ruthlessly necessary to stop a worse thing from happening. Or maybe Davis wasn’t the soldier fighting on the side of the good guys while his alter ego had a whole other operative. Maybe she was making excuses. Maybe he was the collaborator dancing with the Devil to save his own ass.

“Davis, I don’t think anyone can say what they’d have done in your position.” That was the truth, if nothing else. He’d said the monster inside was his true nature, but as he’d died he’d reverted back to Davis again. What did that mean and did it matter? Weren’t the good guys supposed to help someone who wanted help regardless? But that was Clark’s way, not hers. She prided herself on a more pragmatic way of doing things. But then why was she here?

Clark said they had to talk about what she’d done. But she had nothing for Clark on the subject beyond cold reasoning. He didn’t want to hear what the Davis she’d known had meant to her, that he’d been the only person she could lean on lately, and was it really Clark she owed the explanation? She remembered Davis’ face as he’d laid his hand against hers through the glass. He’d looked at peace, like he could rest now that his secret was out and she was still there. That wasn’t a brutal serial killer. That was a man who wanted to be seen as anything but, paying whatever price necessary to stop the thing inside him.

Chloe swallowed hard against the lump rising in her throat. She’d done enough mourning in the time since, what she hadn’t done is get the truth off her chest and better now while she had the chance than letting it gnaw at her for the rest of her life. “You know, Davis, no one’s life is worth putting the world at risk.” Hers wasn’t. She’d already told Clark that. “But seeing you die . . .”

Her voice cracked and something in him cracked right along with it. “I’m sorry.” His hand came to her back and he said it in the soft Davis voice, the one he used when he told her she could talk to him or that he’d always be there. A part of her wanted to snap at him not to touch her. He’d lied, let her think he was some knight in a blue uniform while he spent his free time killing people. She shouldn’t trust a word he said, let alone let him get this close. But the rest of her ran through the ways the murders weren’t his fault, and instead of seeing him as the monster she couldn’t help feeling the monster was taking him away from her and she wasn’t ready to let go yet.

Her head ended up on his shoulder, and old habits dying hard, his arm wrapped around her. She’d spent a lot of time in his arms lately, usually crying about being the universe’s perpetual soccer ball. She’d felt safe there, and despite everything she knew about him that feeling refused to disappear.

She shifted just enough to look at him. His face was only a few inches from hers practically screaming his lurid exposé of horrific violence, trauma, and loss. Loss, that was just it. She definitely felt like she’d lost something. Chloe bit her lip and swallowed again.

“So just when I’m starting to think I’ve found the right guy, he turns out to be this mass-murdering alien destroyer set to kill my best friend.”

She shouldn’t have said it out loud; his features fell and he looked away, and when his eyelids fluttered and he bit hard into lip she thought he would break down and cry. She couldn’t blame him, after all what was he really but another victim of the apocalyptic soap opera on Krypton? How many had there been now, counting the endless numbers of meteor freaks in Smallville and Metropolis?

But he wasn’t like them. He was a weapon and it was dangerous refusing to see him that way. She tried not to let herself be too aware of the warm arm around her. She could see that it wouldn’t be easy keeping a clear head staying down here with him.

She stayed in the basement with him that night, but she didn’t sleep. She told herself she couldn’t trust him that much yet, so she sat in the corner and tried to straighten some of the mess around her to avoid tripping in the dark. It wasn’t exactly the type of sleepover where you busted out the Ouija bored and gave each other makeovers, or played Truth or Dare so he could ask embarrassing questions such as “how many times have you faked an orgasm with Jimmy?” It wasn’t that type of sleepover at all. Davis crawled in the little cot piled with stuff and tried to rest while she sat and stared at nothing.

He actually fell asleep after an hour, and that gave her time to work out the details of how to keep this little arrangement from blowing up in her face. She had to keep him and Clark apart, that was the first priority, and if she told Clark he might be right about finding another way to avoid the apocalyptic Kryptonian showdown he would huff and puff and say she was playing with fire and making excuses to continue seeing Davis. As for Davis, she could trust him far enough to stay in the basement while she played Watchtower – he had no other choice – but what about –?

A crash echoed from outside. Someone shouted, and then running feet pounded on the sidewalk as whoever was out there tried to get away from the sound – or the thing responsible for the sound. Something heavy flew into the Talon building as though a tornado had kicked up in the middle of the night. Chloe went cold inside. She knew those sounds and there was only one tornado that chased lowlifes at this hour, Clark. Damn him. Why did he have to go red-and-blue-blurring here of all places?

She glanced at Davis. He was still asleep. With any luck this deadly pull toward her best friend didn’t work unless he was consciously aware of Clark’s presence. That wasn’t the only worry though. Her bag of groceries still lay on the table upstairs. If Clark came in and saw them, or gave the place one sweep of his x-ray vision . . .

Luck had apparently abandoned her a long time ago. Davis stirred and made a weak sound like something had gripped him from the inside. He bolted upright, and all of a sudden he was breathing hard, his hands white-knuckled where he balled them into fists and clutched at the blankets.

“Chloe . . .” His voice was rough, coming through clenched teeth. “It’s happening, Chloe. It wants to kill.” In the dark, she could see the muscles in his arms bulging where he wasn’t wearing his sweatshirt anymore. He was trying to hold on, trying to fight, as he must have that night in the alley with Jimmy, but from what he’d said fighting wouldn’t do any good unless she helped him.

“Clark’s outside,” she told Davis as she bolted up from her corner. Her first instinct was to run for the door and warn him. But the Destroyer inside Davis would come after her and Clark if she did and she was here to stand between the two of them and try this other way. If she could save Clark without the fight that would kill them both, if she could tame the thing inside Davis and save him too she had to take the chance.

She made her way to the bed. His face was paler than usual and when he turned to look at her his eyes were glaring red. They pleaded as his face contorted with pain and whatever rage the monster evidently felt. Everything about him pleaded for her to help him, even as he gnashed his teeth and turned his face away to hide the dark spots forming on his skin. His hands shook in the covers, and he braced himself as though knives were cutting through him from the inside.

He could kill her. Worse, if this didn’t work he could crash through the wall and kill Clark. What made him think anything she could do would be enough to stop him? She shouldn’t have trusted him. She couldn’t risk the world on his delusions. But she had no other choice now.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to sit behind him on the bed.
“Okay,” she sucked in a breath. She had to do this, somehow. She’d done it once before. Her hands settled on Davis’ shoulders and she could feel him straining, all rock hard muscle fighting with all his strength to keep the thing in. She could feel its strength too, bubbling under the surface like a force of nature that would stop at nothing to get out. His true nature, he’d said, but she didn’t believe it with the way he was fighting. And at the moment, well aware of its power and its hunger to destroy, she couldn’t blame Davis for doing whatever it took to send it back under the surface, for bringing it blood sacrifices to keep the monster sated in its labyrinth. The cost of letting it get hungry and tear its way out was too high. What did that make her? Theseus who slew the monster or Ariadne who helped him light the way?

She’d stopped it once, Chloe kept repeating to herself. She’d touched him, Davis had said. Her hands were sweating, but they tightened on his shoulders and she told herself she had to say something, something that would anchor Davis to her and keep the thing from overtaking him.

“Davis, you don’t want to do this.” Her voice sounded shrill and small and wasn’t steady enough to soothe anything, let alone a beast. She sucked in a breath and tried again. “You don’t want to hurt Clark.”

He shook his head that he didn’t. She knew he didn’t; he’d tried to warn Clark before he’d transformed in the cage. He made a heavy gulping sound as sweat beaded his forehead and he clenched his hands as though trying to hide something from her. This was agony for him, she could see that, and she was going to abandon him to it earlier and run to Clark. She crawled around to face him. Her throat was burning.

“Davis, look at me. You don’t want to hurt anyone. I know you. You help people.” She believed that, and as much as she tried she couldn’t really believe what he’d said about the murderer being his true nature when she’d seen so much evidence to the contrary. The person he’d been wasn’t a lie, the guy who cared for Bette and Oliver and brought her back to her fiancé despite his feelings for her, the guy who’d confessed he loved her. She didn’t want to lose that guy to this. She bit hard into her lip and choked out, “Davis, come back.”

The gray spots slowly dissolved into his soft fair skin and when he opened his eyes that he’d squeezed shut in pain they returned to their melting brown color. Her mouth fell open. A part of her had been afraid this claim that she calmed the monster was some desperate trick on his part to stay near her, but now that she’d seen it with her own eyes . . . Her touch was stronger than the most advanced alien science. Maybe she’d made the right choice to stay after all. For the first time, she felt that way. Maybe Davis was right too and there was something stronger out there than the Destroyer inside him. Wasn’t there supposed to be a god and wasn’t good supposed to be stronger than evil?

Davis was still breathing hard, and when the strain in him lessened he slumped against her shoulder. He was so heavy she had to put an arm around him to steady him. “I think it’s okay now,” she managed. She shouldn’t hold onto him like this, but she told herself she had to just in case Clark came back and she had to work her mysterious miracle again. A part of her knew Clark wouldn’t come back. One glimpse of the infamous Red-and-Blue Blur was usually enough to send his targets running.

Davis lifted his head from her shoulder once he caught his breath and turned to look at her, and just like the first time in the alley with Jimmy he had that stunned look on his face as though she were some kind of angel, only this time his eyes were wet.

Chloe should have gotten up at that moment, but she couldn’t. No one had ever gazed at her like she was their walking salvation before. He was transfixed, and for the first time she realized her heart was pounding and that she was breathing hard too. There was nothing like the adrenaline rush of a crisis averted, and this was one of the closest calls she’d ever face. She had to say something, break the spell before it led to . . . what?

“Any theories on what just happened?” It wasn’t her meteor ability. That worked by taking his pain into herself. There’d been no pain. Calming him hadn’t taken anything from her at all.

Davis didn’t lower his head in shame this time talking about what he was. The color of his eyes seemed to deepen and he looked as caught up in the rush as her. “Maybe whatever’s between us is enough to keep me human,” he breathed.

She shouldn’t let him talk like that or assume there was anything between them. As far as he knew she’d stayed to keep him and Clark from killing each other. But she couldn’t deny what she’d just seen with her own eyes and she couldn’t keep her fingers from brushing his face that she’d magically turned from white and distorted into handsome and chiseled again. So very, very handsome. Immortality had never looked so alluringly fragile.

Her mouth ended up on his and there was nothing reluctant about it. He made a sound like he was finally quenching a hunger he’d been dying of for a long time and she felt the urgency from him where the terror hadn’t quite let go His lips were soft – she remembered that from the first time he’d kissed her – and she hadn’t felt this kind of warmth in a long time. It should have scared her, letting him get this close, but he wasn’t part of the real world anymore where you had to think about consequences and moving too fast, and what they’d shared a moment ago threw them in intimate territory already. Going a little further didn’t seem to make a difference.

He pulled back to look at her, his fingertips hot where they’d tangled in her hair, and if he’d been amazed by what her touch had done before he was awe-struck now. He didn’t have to tell her he’d waited for this for a long time, and she didn’t have to ask if it was everything he’d hope for. His face told her it was everything and more.

“You had to have been sent to me,” he murmured in a thick voice, his eyes so fixed on hers there was no breaking his gaze. Chloe felt something warm flow through her. He believed this, a fact that had too much evidence behind it from him to ignore any longer. But he had to be grasping at straws by now, and who could trust the sanity of a man who knew eternal rest wasn’t an option? She’d been looking for a purpose since losing her job at the Planet. It couldn’t be this, saving one man. But if she saved him, she saved Clark and the world.

“I love you, Chloe,” Davis went on. “I don’t need you to love me back; I just need you to know how I feel.”

No. He needed her to know that he did feel. She had no doubt that he still wanted to find a way to end it all. Who needed the guilt of leaving someone behind the day he finally succeeded?

“Davis . . .” She didn’t know what she was going to say and he didn’t give her the chance anyway. His mouth found hers again and this time she was the one making soft sounds as the kiss steadily deepened and her lips parted under his.

He kissed her like he was trying to drink her in, and when the tip of her tongue pushed between his lips he shifted and lowered himself from the bed down onto his knees in front of her. He ended up between her thighs with his hands on either side of her, and his lips took their time straying from her mouth to her jaw and her neck. Chloe craned her head back. She hadn’t realized her hands had gripped his shirt, gathering it up in this sudden electric need for bare skin.

He stopped kissing her long enough for her to pull his shirt off, and when her hands ran over the muscles of his arms and his back with a curiosity she couldn’t help she knew just how many lines they were crossing. She should have put a stop to this, told him they couldn’t do this. She was here to help Clark, not fall under Davis’ seduction spell. But his hands were on the buttons of her shirt and the heat of his bare chest bled through the thin material. She wanted that heat. Worse, something was drawing her to it.

Davis had quick fingers. The buttons came undone and the shirt fell away. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath – laundry hadn’t been a priority these past few days – and she couldn’t help feeling vulnerable those eyes that swept over her and devoured. He didn’t say a word; his hands moved over her shoulders, down her arms, and felt huge and hot and strong when they reached her breasts. She let out a faint sound, arching into his touch, and then his mouth resumed its wonderful tingling slide over his skin. He sucked at the place where her neck met her shoulder, moved downward over her collarbone until his mouth settled on her breast. She tried not to jump at the wet heat of his tongue or the fingertips gliding down her back and slipping into the waistband of her pants. Her thighs slid a little further apart, and by the way he was touching her, tasting her skin like he worshipped her, she was pretty sure there wasn’t anywhere he wasn’t willing to put his mouth or his hands. She wasn’t ready to allow that, or maybe she was too impatient for that. Her lower body prickled with little stabs of anticipation and she didn’t need him to tenderly idolize her or coax her into this kicking boundaries aside one kiss at a time. She just needed to get closer.

Chloe pulled his head back up to hers and wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning all her weight into him. He drew her down into his lap, unbuttoning her pants with one hand as he turned the two of them around and pulled her with him all the way down to the floor.

She laid her head back on the ground, kicking the thin material off her legs as he crawled over her on all fours, the muscles of his bare arms bulging where his palms rested flat on the ground. He wasn’t touching her, but she could feel the want pulsing through him. It was there in his eyes. They shone with this powerful, predatory light that demanded, “give into me.” He’d always been . . . confrontational compared to certain other men in her life, and now that she couldn’t hide from what he wanted anymore she stared up at him like some helpless captive in a fairy tale, wondering what he was going to do now that he had her in his clutches. His face told her exactly what he was going to do, what Jimmy never could. He was going to make her beg one way or another for him to give her what she’d been running from all this time, and the worst thing was she was halfway there already.

She made a sound when his mouth came down on hers again, open and wet and grinding her head into the floor. It was almost rough, but not painful and not enough. Davis was crouched between her legs but she had to get him closer, get what she knew she’d wanted for a while now before she came to her senses.

Her hands went to his waist, unbuttoning his pants and tugging his zipper down. He was way past aroused, probably painfully, hard and pounding against her palm, and his self-control slipped when she pushed his jeans off his hips, dug her fingers into smooth, damp skin, and thrust her hips up to rub against him.

He was inside her a heartbeat later, and she couldn’t keep quiet then. Neither could he. Her body had to brace itself for the scalding shock and make room for him, and he threw his head back and made a sound in his throat like he’d caught fire. She dug her fingers into his forearms and held on tight when he started a rhythm. She didn’t care if she hurt him. A small part of her wanted to hurt him for not being what she thought he was – the perfect heroic guy who could make her forget about Clark and Jimmy and every other failure in her life. It wasn’t like she could really hurt him anyway in that muscular invulnerable body, not the way he’d crushed her. She clawed at him not to hold back and the friction between went from easy to deep and quick.

He wasn’t hurting her, just increasing the sharp ache inside her each time he pushed in. Maybe she wanted him to hurt her. It’d be easier that way. He was supposed to be the monster and she was supposed to be trapped here sacrificing herself for the good of the world. She wasn’t supposed to like this. She wasn’t supposed to wrap her legs around him, feel the sweat on her thighs, and stare up at him with her mouth open and dry on the verge of yelling something mortifying and totally unlike her such as “Come on, Davis! Fuck me stupid!” If he was too gentle she might have to face the fact that she did like it, that he was still Davis, the guy who held her when she cried, the guy she’d pulled the lever on but wasn’t ready to let go of.

It was as though he read the thought, or maybe something showed in her face. His movements slowed and his mouth melted with hers, perfectly tender now. He sank down on his elbows and her arms folded around him and his slid under her back gathering her close. Her breasts were crushed against the sticky heat of his chest and there was nothing but the closeness and the friction of warm sweat-damp skin. He wasn’t the captor from the story trying to force feelings into her; he just wanted to lose himself in her, hold onto something he believed was worth holding onto, and if she didn’t hold on to him too she was pretty sure she would fall apart right with him.

In that moment Clark didn’t matter, saving the world didn’t matter. Davis was bringing her dangerously close to the biggest climax of her life and all that mattered was that he didn’t stop.

When she came, the pleasure hit her like fireworks bursting deep inside her, one euphoric explosion after another. She closed her eyes and she couldn’t breathe and showers of sparks washed out everything behind her eyes. Her hands kept trying to cling but they were sweaty and slipping. He held her and kept going, like he was trying to wring every little drop of pleasure out of her already overloaded senses. He muttered her name in his soft velvet voice and then he was telling her not to move and he shook in her arms with such force she really was afraid he would break apart right there in her arms. Good thing he was indestructible.

He fell heavy and limp on top of her, his skin damp with sweat and his breath coming hard, just normal human weight and normal human exhaustion. Somewhere in his stupor he remembered that he was over six feet tall and all muscle and he eased off her, curling against her on the floor and staring at her with glazed dark eyes like she was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. He looked so calm, so hopeful. This is what he’d meant when he said stay with him. He’d been drowning in his own terror and pain all this time and he just wanted her to stop it.

Guilt crashed through the euphoric afterglow. They couldn’t have this, and the worst thing was none of the reasons were his fault. She wasn’t Beauty trapped in the dark castle with the monster desperate to break the curse; she was more like some idiotic Juliet who’d fallen for the wrong guy on the wrong side of Kryptonian Family Feud.

The unspoken laws of mistakes and one night stands didn’t have to kick in until the morning though. Chloe stayed where she was, let him curl closer and drape his arm over her. She closed her eyes with a soft sound when his mouth lazily descended on her neck, and before she knew it she was turning to face him, running her hands along his skin. Half her time here, half her in time in the real world. That's what it had to be now. No pomegranate seeds or spells necessary.


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