burned beyond recognition

Reccing Notes: Taking a break from medieval epic!fic to bring you...an epic fic. Post-eternal, into Beast, deals with that whole span of time after Davis leaves the basement. (It's never been done before. I know, okay. ;) )
And in character thinky Chloe. Something the show never really had the courage to explore.

by nonky at her livejournal
4511 words, m/nc-17, beast

"We knew this would hurt."It seems like I've been here before, Chloe Sullivan thought over the dry strike of the bolt sliding past the crack in the basement doors. Down in the underworld with a monster of my own free will. All we need now is for the power to go out and lightening to shatter the gloom.

She always tried to be confident in her choices when they mattered, because she needed to set an example for Clark and Lois. They were ditherers, hopelessly stuck on trying to figure out all the ways things could turn before they did something. Chloe had to be the one to actually do something, and she'd learned not to bother with all the possibilities. The possibilities were infinite, but inside her head she was infinite, too.

Her purse was shoved up her bent arm to hang as she went over the particulars; practical issues first. The social, philosophical, legal, spiritual and personal could wait. Her hand went to the bolt and opened it with a clack, echoed as Davis took a frantic step and spoke a low moan.

“Please.”

None of this was his fault. Every action he'd been able to choose for himself was good and altruistic. She blinked hard and answered softly. “I just bought groceries. I'm going to get the bag, okay?”

She needed a few seconds to breathe before she could back down there and sit with a serial killer. She needed something normal, like the rye bread and turkey she'd been looking forward to only a few minutes ago. Better yet, she needed ice cream even though her mouth was too dry to eat anything.

She let her arm fall and the purse slid to sit on the top step. That probably wasn't enough to make Davis feel better, so she turned and sank down to sit next to it. Her boots pulled off slowly, her heart racing as she waited for anything to happen. But Davis didn't move, she didn't move, and when her feet were bare, Chloe stood up and walked into The Talon. She glanced around as she hurried back to the table. She hauled the bag up so hard the edge ripped, so she hugged it to her chest as she went back. Oddly enough, when she'd closed and bolted the door she felt safer.

Davis was standing where she'd left him, his face blatantly open and needy. Chloe gave him as much of a smile as she had, and set the groceries down. He looked at her bare feet and blinked. “Your feet are going to be cold,” he ventured hoarsely.

She put the bag down on the table and looked toward the makeshift bedroom he'd put together. “I don't wear shoes at home. Can I borrow some socks?”

He kept his vulnerable face pointed at her, even as he moved to the cot and pulled socks out of his backpack. Chloe had been displaced once, too, trotted underground to a tiny house on the outskirts of Smallville to see if Lex's protection outlasted his father's will to be free. She hadn't been entirely innocent, but she hadn't been a killer. At the time, she hadn't known she was a meteor freak. She had yet to be possessed and trapped inside her own body, her will defunct as she struggled impotently.

Dealing with damaged men who possessed too much power over everyone they encountered should be rather natural. She should know better than to fall for the old 'you make me a better man' line. That was how nice girls ended up locked in basements multiple times with known killers. Chloe glanced around at the old movie posters and wondered why she didn't just move far away.

Davis came back with a pair of socks far too big for her, extending them way out from his body. Even as he yearned toward her, he stopped himself from approaching too closely. He was trembling.

“Davis, you're shaking,” she said evenly. “Are you sick?”

She had turned on the liquefied Kryptonite and watched him scream. His eyes had gone blood red and she still hadn't been able to see the shadowy monster in him. Most of what she'd seen past the human skin of Davis Bloome was incredibly human suffering. When he was himself he was intrinsically, almost intimidatingly honest. For all the horror of his beast, it was patently honest. He was a truer being than anyone. He'd been raised by no one, influenced by no community. He'd been willing to die to protect a world in which he'd never found a home.

“No, I'm fine,” he lied eagerly. “I feel much better now that you're here.”

She had to take the socks and put them on now that she'd asked for them. They traded places at a careful distance and Chloe sank onto the cot with a little sigh. Neither of them could look as her toes disappeared into the too-big socks. She stood up with a little bounce of overwrought pep.

“You need some dinner. Let me make you a sandwich. I have, uh, turkey on rye. You have to be hungry living on soda crackers and bottled water.”

He hurried around the small space with the same open expression, his face nearly glowing with the drain of anxiety. She had shown up and he simply relaxed. There would be no fighting or moralizing – he was just glad to see her. Chloe didn't even remember how long it had been since someone had that reaction to her presence. She took the napkins for plates and put together simple sandwiches with dull plastic knives. It was only after she'd spread mayonnaise on his that she thought to ask him if he liked it. He just nodded happily, and she realized he wasn't going to complain. If a mob threw open the doors and tried to kill him; he was a killer and deserved it. If the sky fell down; everyone knew that happened in Smallville. If she left; he wasn't really a man to begin with, let alone a prospective dinner date. He tried and failed and that was the end of his expectations.

But he was alive, and no more suicidal than she felt. They were living some kind of Travis Bickle morality play, but they had ideas of what to do. They had a way to get through the night.

Davis ate like the slapdash meal was something special, and she picked at her own sandwich. He seemed to count out everything from the number of times he chewed to the sips of milk he took between bites. There had been a foster kid in her fifth grade class who did the same thing. She had wanted to ask if it had anything to do with knowing there was no dinner that night, but hadn't known how. Davis had been in need of a good meal many times, so now she knew. Starvation followed you.

Chloe waited until he was finished and pulled out the container of ice cream, feeling a new wave of shame rise in her cheeks. She had killed him a day ago. She didn't deserve ice cream. Davis just looked at her with warm gratitude, stood up to get two plastic spoons, and handed one to her insistently.

“I can't eat dessert unless you do,” he told her. “Please? I know you threw away most of your sandwich wrapped in the napkin.”

He looked at her. He paid attention with his eyes and his intellect. He noticed her more than she noticed him, and not just to court the same kind of regard from her. If she never turned toward him again, Davis would see her just the same.

“I went to sleep last night . . . thinking I'd killed you, and when I woke up this morning I realized I'd done more than that,” she said quietly. “I gave up on you. I took an easy way out when you offered it to me. I've never given up on anyone like that, and there's no excuse.”

He put the spoons down. The row of movie seats shifted as he sat down next to her. His hand moved toward her clenched together fists, hesitated, dropped toward her leg, then he just folded up the arm between them. Davis set his chin on the crown of her head, coaxing her arms to his heartbeat.

“You didn't kill me. You were trying to save me. You did the best you could,” Davis said calmly. “I was desperate and you helped me even though it was terrible for you. Clark wanted to help, but he just made things worse. You did something to end my suffering.”

A thick feeling in her throat made her swallow hard. “But I failed.”

“Your intention,” he said huskily, “Was to save me. You were thinking of me like no one else ever has.”

She needed a better word than trust for the credit he wanted her to take from his reassurance. Trust wasn't that impregnable and flawlessly shining with hope. You couldn't feel trust flowing out of somebody else's skin into your own. You couldn't feel it fall from his words and sink into the top of your head.

Davis leaned them forward, took one hand off Chloe, and plucked the top off the ice cream. He shaved a curl of it into a spoon and brought it to his mouth. The sugary scent triggered a tiny amount of hunger, and she sighed.

He fed her the next spoonful, lowering it to her face and waiting for her to open her mouth. The cold plastic soothed the indents where she'd been biting her lips unconsciously. A strand of blond flicked into view and Davis pushed it back as he fed her again.

“I heard ice cream makes girls better,” he joked. “Now I know it works.”

Chloe tipped her face up, sneered at him mildly and gave him a little belly punch. “What about you? You seem to be feeling better, too.”

Davis gave her the container of ice cream, and she had to use two hands to his one big palm to hold it steady. Brown, brown, brown eyes fixed on her, and he rested his head on the arm draped behind her. She wondered how his square, defined features could look so much like a boy after a long, busy day at the circus. He was tired but so content. Any frightening moments were forgotten. He had burned off all the ragged energy in his body, and now he could sleep.

He was alive, so maybe she could sleep, too. Or maybe she had less reason to shut her eyes than she'd ever had before – not counting watching the back of a certain unnamed son of Krypton. She was very small next to their Kryptonian problems, and she could only stretch so far. She wouldn't fool her mundane human self into believing she could be everything to him. She was enough, for now, and that was enough for her until she could work on her life.

It was plenty that Davis was obsessed with her; making it a mutual feeling would make her too in love to protect him. He looked hungry again, a different kind of hunger and one that wouldn't be sated easily. She'd longed to be somebody's favourite, their absolute necessity. She'd willed Clark's killer into existence.

Like all her most ridiculous ideas, it wouldn't leave her alone. Chloe knew her wishes didn't bend reality, but she felt like it was some ironic twist just for her and Clark. The man of her dreams was half monster, and that monster was Clark's worse nightmare. It killed humans because it wasn't from Earth. It didn't feel anything for anyone.

She wasn't even going to tell herself she wasn't in love with Davis Bloome, because that had been the easy part. They'd had a gradual fall into a deep, deep hole, and there was something with red eyes in there with them. It didn't want to hurt her, but it would slice through the bones of anyone who tried to put her back on solid ground.

Davis had a rather tight grip on her, anyway, and it was more than needing her to calm himself. She knew he had tried to keep away for her safety. She hadn't been running away screaming at any point – even knowing their friendship would bother Jimmy. Some crazy day of the last year, she'd chosen Davis. He was better for her than Jimmy – stronger and able to dominate her attention in a way Jimmy never would. But he was a part of a greater whole that felt like the end of the world.

She didn't want to betray anyone, but no one else in her life had faith in her. Davis was the only one. She knew that was love blinding him, but it was really her intention to do her best. Fuck Clark and his two ancestral homes, standing above everyone and crossing his arms petulantly. Fuck Oliver's rapidly degenerating moral superiority.

As she saw it, the most important thing she had in common with Davis was that she didn't have much more to lose except her bid to help him. She would quiet the Beast and find a home for this dear, solemn man who kissed her tears even as his own eyes were filling up. Maybe she'd stay there with him.

Chloe took the remaining groceries upstairs and put them away, her chest aching. She shut down Isis for the week and sat in the basement, for most of the next day. He slept, looking like he'd never been able to rest before. She faked working, but really drilled herself on her choices, pushing at the weak spots.

She'd known it was right even before she had to wake him from a nightmare and hold him. Brainiac might have calculated their meeting, but it hadn't understood the results. She'd use that underestimation for all it could be worth.



Davis didn't mind the basement. He was used to being more active, so he paced a lot, but he had Chloe and entertainment. She'd brought books and a portable DVD player for him. They ate meals together. She sat with him sometimes when he was falling asleep, and it helped. The dreams took hours to fight back through the calm of Chloe's gentle glances over to his bed.

There wasn't much adjustment to be made. He'd known her very well, and they were in tune. He couldn't go outside, and she tried not to be gone too long. He'd had to call her down a few times in the middle of the day, but once The Talon closed she usually arrived on her own. Burden though he was, Davis never found any resentment or irritation in her eyes. He could swim in the sympathy there, wrap himself in pity. It didn't matter – his pride had fallen in five minute battles every time he saw her. Anything was better than the tiny moments of spotting her at the hospital. She'd always been on her way to another man. The one time she'd really wanted him, he'd had to admit her impairment and return her home.

Davis couldn't ignore his empathy for the man lucky enough to have Chloe and think he'd be keeping her. He couldn't imagine losing her after feeling that security. He couldn't even think of a way to get over it. The sickening fear that she was only temporary for him didn't stop him from weaving complex fantasies.

He started obsessing about how the outside world would see them, if he wasn't a presumably dead serial killer plastered on front page news and she wasn't a freshly divorced respectable humanitarian. Davis thought about what other people would see if he and Chloe could just appear somewhere new and start over with the world. He thought he could probably be more impressive and confident, because he felt very insecure even in the span between words as they talked. He stood in the bathroom and watched his face as he thought of Chloe, and it made him look weak, sad, petulant and sometimes bitter. He was sure he could do better if he just maintained his calm.

Devoted worked, and it spoke volumes, which saved him embarrassing or scaring her with hugely emotional confessions. She likely knew it all, but if he said it she had to rebuke it – because this whole thing was crazy, and in her circle of friends it was wrong.

The cheating would be simple compared to the betrayal. He'd known that, too. The rival wasn't Jimmy, not really, and the rivalry wasn't romantic anyway. Chloe and Clark had history. She had the reporter firmly placed in a friend slot, but her engagement obviously disturbed him. Clark didn't want to have Chloe all to himself, but the idea of not being her top priority seared him. He wasn't man enough to be in love with her, but he felt it deeply.

The difference, Davis thought, was that he wanted to connect with Chloe, and only a mutual desire would feel satisfying. Clark wanted to connect to Chloe, to keep her around and nearby, but he wasn't thinking about her side of the arrangement.

The point was less about what had gone on as what could go on if the fantasy of a new start came true. Looking at Chloe with other people had shown him how he wanted to be seen with her. He wanted not to loom over her, but to lean easily down to meet her. He wanted every time he touched her to look gentle but substantial. He wanted people to look and not wonder how they could be together. He wanted to be assumed to be her boyfriend. He wanted people to sense a bond between them that put them a little apart from everyone else. They would need all the protection they could get.



It seemed The Beast had a tolerance even to her presence, and had been pushing further up Davis' throat whenever her back was turned. Chloe couldn't imagine it as a physical sensation other than choking from inside out. She hauled him back to the basement and tried not to yell because he would never believe it was not his fault – blaming him didn't seem fair.

She shouldn't have blurted her plan in the panic, but it needed to be said while they were both able to hear it. Her heart beat so fast, entirely for him. She'd never considered one moment where The Beast might hurt her. It had its chance and she was left without a scratch. She had wondered a time or two if it was The Beast that loved her instead of Davis. She was not sure what to do with that idea except blame it on Clark and Lana's endless perfect non-existent love.

Her love was real. It was love for Clark and Lois and the regular joe citizens of Metropolis she couldn't name. It was also love for Davis, and she was content he was worth loving. His love for her – beautiful and glittering as it was – didn't need to reward her. If the end of his suffering was the disappearance of his long, searching looks in her direction, she would be happy he'd found self-sufficiency.

It was genuine when she reached for him, holding his hands and letting him feel her shake. It was her impulse to lean in and kiss him, making him release a sigh that echoed like she wounded him. They sighed together, utterly tragic.

“Davis,” she whispered, mouthing his name more than putting a sound to it. Her palms rubbed up and down his chest, seething with the urge to rip through to his skin. Chloe closed her eyes and wished hard, trembling.

“Chloe,” he groaned. His hands left her body, stopped holding her back and pulled her in. They held her face and stroked with his thumbs. She couldn't breathe, couldn't even think about anything except kissing.

Davis was drilling his tongue into her mouth, sucking and bending around her. His hands roamed her hips and hesitated. Chloe tipped up to her toes and he was grabbing her ass. Painful arousal started throbbing between her legs. She rubbed up on him. There was a bed, somewhere. There was the floor or a wall. Anything would do. If she had to, she could float.

He tried to fight her, but she was Chloe. She overpowered him with no effort and he wanted to please her. He wanted to make something easy for her again. There had to be another side to the terror and guilt, and if it was a tumultuous joining he could do that. He could cut out another bit of his heart and gift it to her.

The decision was made with noises and caresses, his body finally orienting them toward the corner of the basement he called a bedroom. They got rougher with each other as clothes came off. He couldn't make his hands understand they had to be gentle. They wanted to melt her to him, just press harder because she didn't for one second demur. He kept grabbing, correcting, then grabbing again.

She liked his fingers digging in, liked that he needed her uncompromisingly. He would be ashamed to hurt her, but there wasn't room for it between them. He was bigger than judgment or sanity.

It took a very long nervous time to get them both on the cot, naked, underneath a blanket because he knew she was cold even if she didn't complain. Chloe kissed him softly, her hands roaming his back until she held on at his waist. Davis nudged her open, paused, and took a deep breath. He wasn't going to scare her, He longed for intimacy but he didn't need to force it. It would build as she grew comfortable. He couldn't take it without it being given – wouldn't do that to her anyway.

Her head tipped back on the cold, thin pillow and Chloe shut her eyes. She didn't expect pain but she knew it was going to hurt somehow. The situation alone hurt and she was inviting more misery with every moment she kept drawing nearer to Davis. Her legs opened around him, tried and failed to prop on the bed. She curled them behind his back and he moaned, nuzzling her neck rather innocently. She was all he wanted, and she found herself intimidated by that need to be held.

He pushed in, his chest heaving with exertion she knew he was holding back for her sake. Tensing her muscles was an impulse she couldn't fight off. He wasn't being rough, but she was practically in tears.

“Chloe,” he whispered, raising his head to look at her. She bit her lip and tried to urge him on with her hands. “No, I'm hurting you. I'm sorry, I'll go.”

Her face twisted and she was definitely crying, but she held on to him and looked into his eyes. “You're not hurting me. I don't want to stop. It hurts, but we knew that, didn't we? We knew this would hurt,” she told him.

He looked nervous but he continued the slow, tender thrust. It sank into her easily, his cock smooth and warm and his body trembling. They both shivered as he held all the way in. She blinked at him and found a smile that made him slump down into her arms and squeeze her hard.

Clark had asked her how she knew it wasn't Brainiac's programming making her attracted to Davis. The short answer was that she knew. The long answer was that she felt such a mutual wave of longing, affection and love for him that it was utterly beyond Brainiac's capabilities to fake. She could almost believe they had gone to bed a million times before, held each other once a day at least for years of her life. He was entrenched the second she looked up to see him. He delighted her soul before she knew his name.

“I love you,” he said, and she pretended not to hear. She couldn't say it back.

Chloe turned her mouth to kiss along his neck, and he drew back to hover over her. She wished he could be less haunted and anxious about her. She was there, they were both together for whatever happened. She couldn't think of anything else.

“Davis.” Soft, trying to be comforting, trying to say just enough without leading him on. It was the only word left.

He nodded, moving steadily as they knitted their mouths and wrestled softly to lead the kiss. He moaned when she brought her hands up to cup his head. Anyone who could turn away from this would be the worst kind of heretic.

Home, he was home, and it was a real place, not just a foster kid's dream. He moved in her and felt the strength of her body respond, sending his muscles to go faster. Her blond hair gleamed like an angel's halo. She lifted up to him and he could only wonder at the generousity. She pulled her mouth away and started gasping, her hips ending every lift with a flick to the side.

She had once called it willpower to reject him, and now Chloe knew it was cowardice. She felt the cot shake and rock under them. Her leg bent higher, up to his chest, and Davis held it tenderly. He looked down into her eyes and used the new angle. His hand slipped under her head, much more comfortable than the pillow.

The emotions just slipped through her fingers and Chloe quivered as he moved, hitting exactly right inside her and outside. Her hands covered the vulnerable curve of his neck. Davis closed his eyes, moving with gentle strength. She arched and pulled on him, but he was nearly gone. She was nearly gone. All that remained was to admit it.

She loved him, wanted to step into his personal hell and make it their home. She loved him too much to play fair and be left behind.

“Run away with me, Davis,” Chloe whispered, pecking at his jaw as he struggled to find his conscience. “I'll be your home if you'll just let me save you.”

He was filled with fire, filled with it like religion promised and never delivered. Filled with her. Davis nodded, and felt Chloe jerk her hips up to him. Her hands around his neck tightened, nails digging in. She moaned, long and low, pleasure stretching her cheeks sharp. He caught her mouth and thrust into her body frantically.

Dizzying pressure let go, leaving him grinding as he emptied into her. Chloe twitched her leg and he let it down. He put his face on her damp neck and soaked in grace.

“Did you mean it,” she asked. “You'll come with me.”

He wasn't really sure there was anywhere else except wherever Chloe was. He traced her collarbone and nodded. “We'll go wherever you want, Chloe. Anywhere.”

They left with cheeks still reddened, and bodies aching with the incongruent desires to rest up and to fall back into the cot. Chloe's hand rested next to his, calming him as they drove past cars full of people who knew his face. He never doubted her. There was no room left.


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