empty roads (part one)

Reccing Notes: Okay, so something truer to the Chloe/Davis dynamic around Beast than beast itself, as per Eternal. IMHO. How to put this in genre, angst/fluff/really awesome character interaction? Just trust me. ;)

2418 words, pg-13, beast and eternal
by somethingmore28 at ff.n


He isn’t this giant question mark, a puzzle to be solved; he lays out all the pieces, leaves a trail of bread crumbs in his path.
Jelly filled doughnuts are her favorite, the kind with vanilla icing and sprinkles. She never told him that. There are a lot of things she doesn’t have to tell him. So many tidbits of her personality that just fall into place around him. As a child her mother would hold Chloe in her arms and rub gentle circles into her back. When she was upset or crying it was the only thing that ever soothed her. Davis came by one night after Jimmy torpedoed out of her life. She remembers the way he looked at her, something akin to reverence, much more so to pain. Somehow he knew the exact spot.

They are a few states beyond nowhere. After awhile it becomes easy to lose track, and much easier to disappear. Somehow she imagined there would be banter of some sort, that he would try to make light conversation. Instead there are hours of silence with him barely even looking at her and with every mile the knuckles on the steering wheel just seem to get whiter. Once she thought it was because he was turning, and put her hand on his shoulder, it was one of the few times he looked at her.

“I’m fine.” He practically forced out.

They find the small cabin in the woods, a safe house of sorts Lana told her about, because of course in their messed up lives they would eventually need a place to hide out. It’s not too shabby, wouldn’t quite go far enough to say quaint. There is one bedroom, and once the food is put away Davis is asleep on the couch. She’s not entirely sure he needs it, but he sleeps anyways, maybe it’s to give her a reprieve, maybe to get some space in their now space-less lives. Either way she is grateful.

She grabs a blanket and walks out onto the porch, leaves the door slightly ajar. It’s one of those old fashioned porch swings, the kind the Kent’s have. She really doesn’t have the energy for nostalgia. Instead she just curls up on the chipped wood and tries to remember easy. She’d told him once that everything between them was easy. Maybe she jinxed it, broke the spell once it was said out loud. No she thinks, it isn’t magic, it’s just some cruel twist of Kryptonian destiny and her doomed love life.

Chloe has trouble discerning what is real. What is Davis, what is the beast, what part of them is Kryptonian programming, decides to go back to remembering easy. But all she remembers is this.

“This is completely unnecessary, but very much appreciated. I should warn you though I go through these pretty quickly.”

Davis smiles at her that dimpled boyish grin. She really can’t help but smile back. The box of doughnuts lies on the table in front of them, Chloe happily bites into hers.

“I guess it’s my way of apologizing for yesterday, I kind of got sidetracked at work.” He hopes his face doesn’t falter as the lies slip through his teeth.

“Oh this more than makes up for it, besides, saving lives gives you some leeway.” She laughs, it’s genuine, and he wants to record it to memory. “I swear it’s like all my friends suffer from a hero complex. It’s going to rub off on me, one day you’ll see me donning a cape and saving the world.”

The smile on his face looks more like a cringe and she resists the urge to brush it way. He does that thing again, gets all contemplative and looks down at his hands.

“I’m not a hero.” There is a graveyard of bodies, blood in all of his clothing and a monster inside of him.

She tilts her head to the side to get a better look at his face, he does this from time to time too, pulls away like it’s a sin to be around her.

Her voice is gentle, she’s not sure why. “You save people,” it’s a reflex really, to put her hand over his, at least it gets him to look up. It’s way too cheesy to tell him he’s saved her. She wishes he wouldn’t look at her like that, no one looks at anyone like that, the feeling behind those eyes are just inconceivable.

Maybe it’s also a reflex that he doesn’t let go of her hands. It doesn’t bother her; in fact it just feels nice. Besides his expression softens, the muscles in his body seem less tense. And she thought Clark carried the weight of the world.

Why does he let the words spill out around her, he’s about to do it again.

“That’s not why I do it. Well not why I started anyways.”

She moves a bit closer and gives him the floor, lets him move at his own pace. He’s so honest sometimes it scares her, she’s so used to denial and doubt. His body leans into the couch now; his head falls back and turns to her.

“When I was 12 I was in a car accident.”

She squeezes his hand, another reflex she thinks, it’s not like she needs proof he’s okay when she’s sitting right next to him.

“A woman pulled me out of the car, she was this complete stranger. But she held me until the ambulance got there. I was pretty out of it but I still remember her trying to comfort me. For those few minutes of panic and terror she’s all I remember. It’s like she was all there was left in the world, the only thing to hold onto. For a few minutes her voice and her presence were everything.”

This feels all too familiar.

“My whole life I wanted to be something more than just a pay check or a bottle opener. Even if just for a moment, to be someone’s everything.”

If there was ever anything between them, any walls she’s built they dissipate, the way imaginary things sometimes do.

“The wanting to save people part didn’t come till much later.”

They are so close she can smell his breath; it’s coffee and doughnuts and something distinctly Davis. He isn’t this giant question mark, a puzzle to be solved; he lays out all the pieces, leaves a trail of bread crumbs in his path. They sit like this for some time, exchange a few pointless words, mostly they just take each other in. It feels wrong she tells herself, what’s one more lie in a lifetime?

“They’re going to go stale.”

“Huh?”

The index finger, still underneath her palm points towards the box of doughnuts. Right, she thinks, things go stale in reality.

“Can’t have that happen can we?” Another almost smile. She grabs a doughnut with her free hand, knows that eventually she should extricate her other hand from his. The jelly leaves a trail along her lips, and she licks it off. He’s slightly tense again, a different kind of apprehension in his eyes.

And suddenly he’s reaching out to her, suddenly she’s leaning in. A smile erupts from his lips as he wipes the excess jelly off the side of her mouth with his thumb. She should feel embarrassed, but just feels something else entirely as he sucks the jelly off his own thumb.

“Thanks,” she’s sheepish as she tries to regain her composure. He leans in and takes a bite from her doughnut.

“You’re welcome.” They laugh. It gets easier to breathe.

It’s one of the memories she’s been pushing away for weeks now. It’s easy for her to think that saving Davis is a mere consequence of saving Clark Kent, sacrificing herself for the world. That everything she did for him was out of necessity, that she never really had a choice. But it’s a lie riddled in the truth wrapped in sincerity and guilt and everything she’s not willing to admit.

Chloe Sullivan decided to save Davis Bloome long before that basement in the talon.

There’s a stirring at the door, she turns to find Davis leaning against it, arms across his chest like he’s set on something. She looks down and realizes she’s still holding the chocolate heart in her hands. There’s distance between them, and this is weird for her. It isn’t the physical distance that she has tried to maintain for “boundary issues.” It’s a different kind of distance. She pulls her legs closer to her body, silently offering him the seat next to her.

He glances at the seat, and she can see him struggling with something. She likes to think she can read him, but then again he has lied to her one too many times. He keeps his distance.

His terse voice cuts through the silence, it would have been a relief had it not been for the words that came out.

“We have to go back to Smallville.”

Panic. “What are you talking about, we can’t go back. There’s a reason we left Davis.”

There’s a resolute look in his eyes and it scares her more than she’s willing to admit.

“It’s easier here. Being around you, away from Smallville. It makes me feel like myself again, like Davis Bloome and not just this ... thing. You don’t understand what it was like, I felt like I was suffocating there, like it was trying to squeeze the humanity out of me anytime you weren’t there.“

The blanket gets pushed to the ground as she confronts him, fear, panic and confusion are not a lovely combination. “All the more reason we shouldn’t go back, you’re not making any sense.”

He steps away from her and it’s something she isn’t used to, throws her a little. It’s like he needs to be as far as he can without really leaving her. “This isn’t going to work, I can’t be glued to you forever.”

Forever, it lingers there. Her mortality and his eternity will cross paths eventually.

“We’ll deal with that when we get there,” the urge to reach out to him is consuming her.

“And what about the mean time. Chloe you deserve more than this, more than being chained to me and throwing out mutilated corpses. You deserve a life, without all of this.”

Without you she thinks, how much easier it would all be if he didn’t exist. The thought is immediately erased, like it always is. The panic doesn’t stop, just keeps pushing its way to the surface.

“I asked you to leave with me Davis, this is my idea.” It’s not a lie she thinks.

“I know you’re not doing this for me, I’m not as delusional as you think.”

“I would do anything for you.” Had she really said that?

“The phantom zone, whatever it is, if it can keep me away from this world than it’s the best option.” He can’t even look at her when the words come out, just turns away from her, the same steely expression on his face.

It’s spilling out now, the panic, overflows, breaches the meniscus. “No Davis you don’t know what you’re talking about. The phantom zone isn’t some closet sized prison cell, its forever. And without me doomsday will take over. The minute you enter that place Davis Bloome ceases to exist.”

The muscles in his body are so tense, and she knows her touch can make it all go away. His face is rigid, unwilling, “It’s not much of a price to pay.”

It’s too much. Like being kicked in the gut over and over again, new bruises meeting the old. She wants to fight back.

“We should go to the fortress alone, I don’t know if I can control myself with Clark around.” He’s facing her again.

It catches him off guard, the way she rams her fists into his chest, he stumbles onto the ground taking her with him. She can hear him screaming at her to stop, knows that he only cares about her getting hurt. Her face is burning with tears, body shaking with the force of her emotions, rage, pain, confusion, everything. Davis gets a hold of her wrists, pins them together over his chest.

“Chloe you’re going to hurt yourself, you need to stop.”

It’s consuming, the pain that is eating away at her. Defeated, her body goes limp and now she’s lying on top of Davis struggling to breathe. He’s doing it again, rubbing her back in a way that feels way too intimate, like he knows her in all the right ways.

There are words being spoken, they don’t quite register and she lets them sink into the world around her. It’s bizarre that as her sobbing subsides she can hear the rhythmic beating of his heart and it feels like a part of her, like she could set her watch to it.

They lie there in a silence that can’t be characterized as comfortable. Nothing about them is comfortable. Everything about them is hard and impossible and all the words in between. But the truth is she doesn’t want comfort, her life is beyond assurance and empty promises. She has seen too much, done too much she can never take back and somehow this moment beyond comfort is enough. He is enough. It’s the scariest thing in the world and yet she breathes a little easier.

The sky gains a few shades of night, scattered pinpricks of bleeding stars and the only time she knows falls in tempo with his heart beat. His fingers graze the small of her back, hers fumble with the bottom edges of his shirt. Pretty soon it will be too dark to see much of anything and the thought of being cloaked in darkness feels too much like home.

“I’m not crazy.” Maybe it’s from the insecurities she harbors from her mother’s (albeit meteor induced) insanity; maybe it’s to convince herself, either way it must be said.

She can feel him tip his chin forehead, “I’m an alien sent to earth as genetic batter designed to be the world’s ultimate destroyer. I’m not exactly making judgments. Well that’s not true; I’m actually kind of judging you for not being crazy.”

There’s a hint of a smile on his lips, she doesn’t look up, can just feel it in the way his body shifts.

He reaches over till he can grab a hold of the blanket long left neglected on the ground and pulls it over their intertwined bodies. It takes a while for her to face him, what she finds is her reflection in his eyes. There is a calm in the lines of his face, and when she lets her fingers run the length of it, from temple to chin his eyes flicker closed.

“You’re all I have left too you know.”

A heart beat later, eyes still closed and words barely above a whisper. “Chloe, you are all I ever had.”