extenuating circumstances

Reccing Notes: OMG, you have to read this. It will melt your brain and break your heart all at once, for both Chloe and Davis and the situation they're in. So true to character, so beautiful and so painful. Not your average watchtherating. The emotions are so wound up in it that they can't be disentangled no matter what.

by morwen_perdhil at her livejournal
1619 words, nc-17, stiletto

Even now he’d let her go if she were to command it, and save all condemnation for himself.

Door. Lock. Key. Opened and closed. Locked and double locked and barred behind her. The residue of the dried blood she’d scrubbed from her hands with cold water in a soapless gas station restroom — well away from where she’d dumped the bags because Chloe Sullivan wasn’t that kind of stupid — prickled in the tiny creases of her hands. She thought of her mother. It wasn’t the same. She wasn’t. She couldn’t see the blood.

But.

The heavy charnel stench — blood, bowel, bone — was gone. Under the acrid chemical tang of bleach she couldn’t detect even the merest trace. She guessed Davis must have had a lot of practice by now. And nice, polite house guests cleaned up after themselves, and he was nothing if not nice and polite. Really. Perfect for her in every possible way.

Except.

Water running in the bathroom was white noise. She dropped her bag and keys onto the floor. Unbuttoned and shrugged off her coat to join them, then stepped out of her shoes and set bare white feet against the cool wood. Under clothes that were not clotted with congealed blood her skin prickled as her hands did. It was only in her mind, but later she’d make Davis burn every stitch anyway.

Under her hand the knob turned freely and beyond the air was dense with steam and the scent of her soap and shampoo. Davis was a dim shape glimpsed through the patterned clear plastic of the shower curtain. The shape stilled as she pushed the door shut behind her. Through the curtain, her own figure must appear equally distorted.

“You were right.”

Under the rush of water, there might have been an indrawn breath. She couldn’t be certain.

“I shouldn’t have. I can’t. Do that. Never again.”

A word from him at last. Just one. Her name. She hated him for thinking he still had the right to make those two syllables have so many layers of meaning.

Against her skin, the feeling of clothes that only looked clean was unbearable. She pulled her shirt over her head in one smooth motion, dropped it onto the tiles, unhooked her bra, let it follow. Unfastened her trousers, pushed them down and then her underpants — plain white and sensible and not what she might have chosen had she known this particular inevitability was to occur tonight.

Davis hadn’t spoken again, nor moved. He was leaving it all on her. Would he use that to salve his conscience later, as if her virtue, or such of it as remained, were capable of adding or subtracting any weight from that balance?

Curtain, drawn aside by her hand. The stark beauty of him, seen earlier in its blood-daubed completeness, now glistening only with clean water. Dark eyes alive with terror and wanting. More. That part hadn’t been a lie. She stepped through and pulled the flimsy barrier shut behind her. On her skin, the water felt hotter than she liked.

“You don’t have to —”

Her lips and tongue stopped the rest of whatever noble speech he’d had in mind, even at this late hour, but a distant part of her admired him for the futile attempt. With bare feet she had to stand on her tiptoes to kiss him. She nipped at his lower lip, pressing her body to his, wet closeness, and knew the battle won — easily enough done when one side wanted to lose. Hot slide of his tongue against hers and the play of the muscles of his shoulders and back beneath her hands and his cock pressed hard against the softness of her belly, and this wasn’t anything like Jimmy or even like she’d imagined it might be with Clark — and only maybe a little bit like the shameful heat of the fantasies she’d once had about being another man’s dark queen. Although not even in dreams had she deluded herself she could ever have held any control over that one.

Davis pulled back a bit, cupped her face with powerful, gentle hands. In his eyes her mirrored image was silver-pale and luminous, not dark, not dark at all. In her own, was he seeing reflected the outer semblance of the man?

Or.

Chloe squeezed her eyes shut. It was easier, then, to glide a hand down from his shoulder to his chest, over the ridged muscles below, feeling them quiver beneath her touch, lower, to close her hand around him. Well. But still human enough, as was the pained rasp of his breathing as he thrust into her wet grip, pushed her backward until she was trapped between him and the chill of the tiles. She put her arms around his neck, slid a foot up the back of his leg, let him take his cue to lift her up the wall until she could wrap her legs around his lean hips. She’d always known this part of them would be easy.

He bent his head to bite his way down the uninjured side of her throat, gently at first, then less so as she whimpered and tried to dig her nails into his skin, applying enough force when he reached the place neck joined shoulder that she at least would be marked later. Dark pleasure pooled lower, against the now almost unbearable pressure of him on the sensitive flesh between her legs, making her body tremble as it hadn’t even when she’d been a virgin. Too late she knew she had been wrong about this being easy, had urged him on far too quickly, slow stretching burn worsened by her own reflexive tension. She pressed her face into his neck, feeling the strength of his pulse, how it hammered under his skin because of her. He stilled, now fully within her, harsh breaths hot against her ear. Even now he’d let her go if she were to command it, and save all condemnation for himself. No. She bit down on her lip, a dart of distracting pain, and gave an experimental roll of her hips.

His stillness broke then, again, and when he moved in her this time it was smoother and she tightened the clasp of her legs around him until he was hers completely, deep, his body pressing and rubbing against her — there, exactly there. She hadn’t heard herself make a sound, but she must have because he did it again, just right, oh and again and then it was easy after all. No worry that she might be doing it wrong, that he might be wishing she were someone else, that she’d take too long and he’d get tired or annoyed — just the overwhelming force of this connection made flesh at last.

Her head fell back against the wall, and she opened her eyes just enough to see Davis watching her, the brown of his irises almost swallowed up by dilated blackness, but free from any hint of red. A quicksilver flash of thought — here, inside her, now, was probably the furthest Davis had ever been from that other part of him. Only she had this power, to control it, to control him, to make him need her, to look at her with such reverential intensity. Only she — and that long-denied part of her, the one that didn’t hate that, not even after the horrors of this night, gave her a final, violent push into the blessedly mindless, shuddering pleasure she’d been seeking.

When she began returning to herself, gasping, arms and legs quivering, the only thing holding her up was Davis, inside her, arms strong around her, face pressed against the side of hers. She turned her head until her mouth found his, tightening the grip of her inner muscles until he moaned into her mouth and thrust into her hard, making aftershocks shiver up her spine. Harder, until it was nearly to the point of tipping back into pain, and then one final time it did, and his hands were clutching at her hard enough to bruise and she could feel the pulse of him in the center of her and the sounds he made, face buried in her neck, were something like sobs.

For the second time this night, back up against the wall, she found herself waiting for Davis to come back to her. The first time, for all its terror, she hadn’t just handed him the key to wounding her worse than the beast ever could. Her hands had been idly stroking the back of his neck, and she forced herself to stop, to set them against his shoulders and push away until he pulled out of her and set her down onto her own two feet again. She crossed her arms over her breasts, an instinctive defense.

The fear and vulnerability of earlier were back in his eyes, but not as much as that other thing. More than before. The soft part of her, the one that wanted to answer with the same, she pushed down ruthlessly. She raised her hand, cupping it around the strong line of his jaw. The barest flicker of a memory, gone before she could capture it. He leaned into her touch.

“Is there anything you wouldn’t do for me?”

“No.” Utter certainty.

Right answer. And wrong. She still knew that much.

But.

She pulled her hand away. A small jerk of her head in the direction of the bathroom door.

“Then get out.”

Hurt flashed over Davis’s face, then settled slowly into patient understanding. “Chloe, you know we need to...”

“The only thing I know right now is that you need to get out of this room.”

She turned away, setting her face into the water’s spray and reaching blindly for the shampoo. Not until she heard the click of the door latching behind him did she allow herself to sink to the floor.

there's more to it, so there's a chance for happy hopeful waaayy on into the future as per my sources but...still!. tell morwen what you think!(or if you want more times 1000) ^-~