grazing complications

Reccing Notes: Sometimes there's nothing better (or hotter) than getting it all out in the open. And in this- with Chloe and Davis's frustrations spilling over after leaving Smallville together, inversely shows how much they need each other and just how right they are together.

by lust_4sorrow at her livejournal

1023 words, pg-13, post-beast

Neither Davis nor Chloe understands how the wall has formed or how they’ve gotten here. They are simply aware of the way words won’t stop leaving their lips and the pain that’s seeping in their skin, touching their bones and hearts.They’re fighting.

They’re arguing, two forms standing tensely in front of one another in a dully decorated motel room. Davis’ hands are curled into fists by his sides and Chloe’s throat is going sore from all the yelling she’s done. The paths taken, actions done, words spoken have all fused into a wall in their minds that appears in the worst of moments, a wall so strong and unfortunate that it pulses as it takes in their current state. Neither Davis nor Chloe understands how the wall has formed or how they’ve gotten here. They are simply aware of the way words won’t stop leaving their lips and the pain that’s seeping in their skin, touching their bones and hearts.

Green eyes glaring at every inch of the motel room, Chloe yells, barely thinking, just letting the anger in the air embrace her, “I hate this room and this stupid little town!”

Davis’ eyes darken, his knuckles going white. “You think I like being here? You think I like these people or the fact that I can barely leave this fucking room because someone might recognize me? Do you think that I like being trapped?!”

Hearing him curse makes her wince, but she doesn’t relent. She takes sight of his shaking fists and doesn’t frighten. In the back of her frazzled mind she knows he won’t hurt her-not physically. Looking at the old flowery wallpaper of the room, another brick settles atop the wall in her brain, the cement cultivated by angry determination. “You’re not the only who feels trapped Davis. Do you have any idea how much I despise not having a home, being on the run like some sort of animal!”

The word animal makes him flinch and his fists uncurl as he steps closer to her and a growl escapes him. His eyes begin to grow wild while her eyes begin to reflect some guilt, some thought outside of hatred. Either way, she steps closer to him, her set jaw a challenge. Davis jaw twitches, his chest heaves but his eyes are their dark, dark brown. They both know he won’t hurt her- not physically, never physically.

He snarls, speaks through gritted teeth, “No one said you had to be here. It was your decision to run, this was your idea. We’re here because of you.”

Chloe blinks rapidly, his words making her throat ache. She swallows it down like a bitter pill, ignores the voice in her head that says he’s right. She steps closer to him and focuses on keeping her voice strong.

“No…we’re here because you’re an alien who just happens to have the ability to turn into a monster! We’re here because you couldn’t stop killing!” She reminds him of his past digressions and her eyes fill with tears when his chin slightly quivers. Her hands suddenly settle atop his heaving chest, fingers curling into fists. He glances down- as if in shame-, lets his lips part before raising his hands and grabbing her wrists. His fingers close around her wrists tightly but not tight enough to leave a bruise. The subconscious tenderness makes her chest clench with guilt.

“If my being a monster bothers you so much, then go call Clark. I’m sure your best friend wouldn’t mind saving you from me,” he says, voice soft but immensely pained. Chloe’s lips quiver at the sound of it and she gasps when he releases her wrists and turns away, his back facing her. She steps back, arms curling around her middle, her back shaking as she watches his back remain tense. How…how could…how could she? How could they?

She shakes her head desperately, mentally kicking the wall until it crumbles and lets a river of sorrow flow down her cheek. Chloe turns and pulls the door open, then runs. She runs down the hall, runs, runs, runs passed the five year old girls playing with dolls. She runs until the hallway meets a wall and her chest is rising and falling rapidly. She leans against the wall, feels an idle tear slip down her cheek. Her eyes close, her teeth bite into her lip. She takes deep soothing breaths, feels the need for Davis’ arms around her.

& & &

Two hours later her back is still against the wall, her knees touching her chest as she wraps her arms around them. She lifts her face from her knees, opens her eyes and for the first time, notices the charm bracelet hanging limply on her wrist. She touches it with her fingers, eyes the little coffee mug charm hanging down the chain. An agonized chuckle escapes her and suddenly she’s rising and running back to the motel room. She gets there in a matter of seconds, stops when she’s about to collide with the door. Hands shaky, she lifts one, and makes a fist but doesn’t move it. She bites her lip nervously, eyes filling with tears when she hears movement behind the door. Her fist shakes and she hears him move again. She sniffles and suddenly she hears Davis’ palm hit the door and the mix of a growl and whimper.

“Davis-“ she whispers. The door opens and she falls easily into his arms, her fist opening up so that she can cup his cheek. His strong arms wrap around her waist, pull her to his broad chest, rock them back and forth. She shakes her head, their forehead pressing together.

“I’m sorry, so sorry. I-

“Shh. I’m sorry too. We shouldn’t have…I didn’t-

“I know.” They interrupt each other, arms tightening around each other, eyes closing at the comforting feeling.

“Davis…”

“Shh, we’ll figure out something. It’s okay-

“I’m sorry-

“Me too, me too.” They whisper desperately against the other’s lips, fingertips tracing from cheeks to collar bones to hips then back up to lips. They both aware that they need to think things over, that they’ll have to leave this town soon but right now Davis is running his hands through Chloe’s hair the way she loves and she’s running her hands down his back the way he needs and nothing…nothing else matters.

with the end of the world in your eyes

Reccing Notes:I've read possibly all the Beast fanfics there are for Chlavis, and none, I think may have touched me quite as much as this. There's the fact that there is Doomsday inside Davis, and that's horrible and ugly and so are the deaths it causes, but then there's the fact that Davis doesn't want to let it hurt Clark, no more than Chloe does, and Davis himself (the man who wanted his whole life to save people, build a real life with Chloe) might be the ultimate victim of this story.

by autumn_whispers at her livejournal
2121 words, r, injustice

The hand he rests against her jaw is sticky with blood but firm. “Look at me,” he says and when she does his lips are soft on hers, eyes wide and warm.

Her mouth yields under the pressure, opens up to him. He delves deep, desperation cloying the taste of him. She feels the slick underside of his mouth against her tongue and the beast shifting, yowling inside its human prison.It’s easier than Chloe expects, to fall into this new life and adjust to another living person breathing beside her, a bed away.

Motels become familiar; Smallville a strange, waning memory.

-

She calls Clark from Mexico City inside a run down Internet café, the payphone handle sticky in her hands. She watches Davis pace outside the shop with his hands in his pockets, shoulders tense and unsure. He seems lost in the flurry of people moving about their day, eyes sliding between the bodies rushing past.

He is careful not to look to the café.

To her.

Chloe watches him until the line rings in her ear, bright and insistent. There is a small bubble of relief when it goes to voicemail. It’s easiest when she doesn’t have to fight against Clark’s pleadings or Oliver’s sharp disapproval.

“Stop trying to find us,” she says after the beep, voice strong and sure. “I’m safe…we’re safe. Please stop looking. You’re making it worse,” she tells them.

She knows they listen to her messages together. It's easy to imagine them, hunched over Clark’s desk in the bullpen, shoulders pressed together to listen, to formulate their next plan.

“I know what I’m doing. I’ve made my decision,” she tells them, careful to keep the uncertainty she knows they’re looking for from her voice. She hangs up without saying goodbye, afraid of the tremble building in her voice and the doubt leaking through.

The sun is bright, white hot against her eyes when she finds Davis in the street. The stiff line of his shoulders soften when she falls in step beside him, the worry on his brow easing. When he takes her hand in his she flexes her fingers around the rough edges of his skin, feels his gentle squeeze in return and breathes out.

-

Clark stares at the Metropolis skyline, streets dark below, and waits. Minutes pass before the elevator door dings and slides noiselessly open. He can see Oliver’s distorted reflection in the windows moving towards him.

“Any word?”

“Just another message,” Clark says and turns to face him. Oliver shifts under the intensity of his gaze. “You?”

“They dumped their passports after they crossed the border. They’ll have new ones by now.” He sighs and Clark stiffens as the expression on Oliver’s face shifts. “Chloe’s…Clark, she’s very good at this. Part of her job as Watchtower was getting us fake papers, helping us move through South America and Europe. She has access to people who can help her disappear.”

“We’ll find her. Find them,” Clark says and the blind determination in his voice makes Oliver look away.

-

Chloe can’t tell if he’s sleeping or not, but his rhythmic breathing is better than the rickety fan that rattles above them. The room is too hot, her skin feels slick with sweat and the mattress is lumpy under her back. She’s a thousand miles away from Smallville and from any comfort or familiarity. She feels alone. Feels scared. Mostly she just feels like crying but Davis is only a few feet away, lying on his own bed.

Her throat burns with her swallowed sobs and she blinks rapidly, tears hot against her skin. After a few seconds when the tightness in her chest dissolves she breathes out in the silence, an unsteady sound that lingers between them. She stares at the shadows playing out on the walls and waits for sleep.

Across the room he shifts, clothes and sheets rustling. “Chloe,” he says, quiet and careful, giving her the chance to pretend she’s asleep. Her answer is noncommittal, a sound low in her throat as she turns over to face him. She can see the edge of his shadow as he sits on the bed. She knows he can see her perfectly in the dark.

“They think I kidnapped you,” he says and for a moment Chloe doesn’t understand. She stares uncomprehending. “The papers…they’re saying I took you, with me. When I disappeared.”

“Lois,” Chloe says, bolts up in the bed. Her hand is halfway to the cheap cell phone before she remembers, struggling with the knowledge that she can’t call her. Not with Clark and Tess looking so closely for them. Not with all they have at stake. She pulls her hands back towards her, cradles them against the light cotton of her pajama bottoms.

“It wasn’t supposed to go like this,” she says finally and the tremble in her voice betrays the resolve she’s trying to bring to the surface again. Lois probably thinks she’s dead or worse, and Chloe feels herself crumbling under the weight of all the courage and certainty that lead her here. It wasn’t meant to go like this.

“I’m sorry,” Davis says, suddenly beside her. “I’m so sorry,” he breathes into her hair and Chloe holds onto him, fingers tight and fearful. The skin of his bare shoulder is smooth and cool against her fevered skin. Her breath hitches, mouth gulping air as his hands move across her back, gentle and soothing.

“It’s ok,” he lies and Chloe prays for strength.

-

“You have to tell her,” Oliver says, face soft as he watches Lois sleeping at her desk. She looks pale and worn out under the weight of Chloe’s disappearance.

“I know. I just…I need more time,” Clark says. He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t look at Oliver either.

“This is killing her Clark. You have to tell her about Chloe, about the truth and Davis. If you won’t, I will,” he threatens.

“Ok,” Clark says, breathes out, “Ok.”

He’s told her once before about his secret, he can tell her again. It’ll be easier this time. He knows her response and knows she’ll accept him whole and actual. The hand he lays on her shoulder is gentle, hesitant but she wakes instantly, Chloe’s name on her lips before her vision clears and she sighs, disappointed. Her gaze flickers between him and Oliver searching, desperate.

“Any news?”

“Lois,” Clark starts before looking back at Oliver. “I have to tell you something.”

-

They don’t talk much during the day and even then it’s only for necessity. Davis drives and Chloe sleeps. Days and counties blend into each other, her whole world boils down to sleeping and eating, moving from the car to another bed. Davis never asks her drive, never gets sleepy or tired but each night he lays down on the other bed in their hotel room, closes his eyes and doesn’t move until the next morning.

-

Clark looks at Lois, face flushed but alive, the line of her back sharp as she bends over the map and talks quietly into her phone. She’s writing something down, her words quick and short. After a moment she snaps the phone shut, carefully placing another push pin into the map. “They’re in Columbia,” she announces and the hope simmering in her eyes is enough to renew the straggling optimism inside Clark. It’s been almost a month without word from Chloe or any of Oliver’s sources.

“One of my contacts said someone matching their description passed through one of the border check points about an hour ago. “

“The jets ready,” Oliver tells them.

“It’s faster if I go on my own,” Clark says. “I’ll bring her back safe,” he promises Lois.

“You better,” she threatens but it’s only a halfhearted warning and the smile she gives him is forced, laden with worry.

-

Chloe dreams about Clark, body lain broken and bloody, at her feet like a prize. The snow is red and Doom looms over her, face a horrible mask of rage. She wakes up to Davis’s face, his hands on her shoulder, shaking her into consciousness. The tendons on his neck strain against his skin and, even in the dark, she can see the red tinge to his eyes.

“He’s close,” Davis chokes out and Chloe’s up in an instant, throwing their belongings into their bags and rushing out after Davis. She’s still in her pajamas when they get into the car, barefoot.

-

“She’s never going to give up, you now that, right?” Oliver asks and for a moment Clark isn’t sure if he’s talking about Lois or Chloe. “Maybe,” Oliver starts, hesitantly, “you should just let her go. She doesn’t want to be rescued.”

“I can’t,” Clark says desperately. He’s lost so much over the years but he can’t lose Chloe. She’s been his only constant, the one fixed point in his life.

“You have other responsibilities,” Oliver cuts in, surprised by the edge in his own voice. “Metropolis is falling apart under your struggle and Lois needs you to be strong. I’ll keep looking but you need to pull it together. You need to be the man Lois thinks you are.”

“I know,” Clark says, but he isn’t looking at Oliver. He’s starring at the sunset, left wondering if Chloe’s watching the same one, a thousand miles away, hoping she’s safe and praying Oliver is right.

-

Tess’s men catch up to them in Peru. Chloe is alone, unprepared and out-numbered. She’s on her knees, mouth bloody when she hears the men behind her scream. Chloe knows without looking that Davis has come for her, despite her plea for him not to. There is nothing she can do now and it grates, this helpless. It is all she can do to wait, eyes closed until the sound of men dying fades and there is only the stillness of the night.

When she opens her eyes it takes every part of her not to pull away from the creature in front of her. The thing extends its hand towards her, the first real human gesture Chloe has seen. She accepts numbly and allows herself to be pulled up from the dirty floor, guided away. She does not struggle, just concentrates on the gentle pressure of jagged bones and flesh pressing against her palm. The careful way it holds her hand.

When they stop at the mouth of the alley she feels it shudder beside her, skin and bones shifting, melting away. When she looks again it’s just Davis before her, alive but bloody. Human. His eyes are vast, endless with guilt and shame. Chloe feels the beast stirring inside his fragile human chest even now, waiting. It does this for her, gives her Davis, broken and empty, a shell of himself because it is easier.

“Chloe,” he breathes, and she turns away from him. “I didn’t,” he starts and she closes her eyes against the images of the torn bodies behind them in the dirty alley. She doesn’t want to remember this, remember him changing and shifting under the need to protect them, but the images feel like they’re seared against the underside of her eyelids.

“We have to- we have to go,” she tells him thickly, swallowing down the hysteria she feels building.

The hand he rests against her jaw is sticky with blood but firm. “Look at me,” he says and when she does his lips are soft on hers, eyes wide and warm. Her mouth yields under the pressure, opens up to him. He delves deep, desperation cloying the taste of him. She feels the slick underside of his mouth against her tongue and the beast shifting, yowling inside its human prison.

“Tell me to stop,” he says and the desperation in his voice stills her long enough to let him kiss her again. She pushes against his naked chest, his skin slick with blood and sweat but her hands fall away, ghosting over him. He slips a knee between her legs and shoves them apart. She falls forward into him and he grunts, rubs his thigh against her.

“Not here,” she says and he breaks away from her, breathing labored and the expression on his face pained. “We have to leave, Clark-”

“Clark,” Davis repeats, voice dark. He shakes himself, shoulders stiff and jaw clenched. After a moment he relaxes into her and she gives him this moment, to hold her against him and breathe her in. To remember why he’s running.

“Come on,” she says finally, hand settling in his for the walk back to the hotel room, to the stolen jeep and their journey farther south.

the flip side of hellfire

Reccing Notes: Hopeless after his resurrection in Eternal, Davis makes the one sacrifice he has left. His own personal hell for Clark and the world. Chloe follows him to the Phantom Zone, and their chances of survival start trickling down. Written because I wanted to see Chloe pushed to an unreasonable extreme for having to give Davis up over and over. Also, there needs to be more phantom zone pronz.

by vagrantdream at her/my livejournal

2871 words, nc-17, eternal/beast

"I'm not going to spend my life missing you, you know."

Davis held her eyes over the crackling air of the fortress. It seemed to her that the black crystal was still, poised over the portal that would take him to hell.



When she'd been with Davis she had always been moving. When she met him she took slow, tentative steps to something that called to her; the guilt was rust in her mouth. Then she'd broken into a run , a blank slate and the comforting heat of him. he'd brought her back. When he'd told her he'd wait her feet were standing still but the bottom had fallen out of her world.

Then, the crisis point- the equivalent of nuclear devastation under his skin and headlines that screamed cornfield killer. She chased after him in betrayal and sparks of the last love she had left. They'd run away together if that was what it came down to.

Chloe had never said the right words, not that she'd missed him, what she felt. Davis had tried return the equilibrium to her world, change it to the way is was before he'd turned it. He'd bring Jimmy back to her on drug recovery but Chloe had seen the ugliness underneath. As his last magic trick-he was going to disappear.

"Don't." She said.

"This way the world can have Clark." You can have Clark, his eyes said; he'd known that Clark had taken front and center if not for who he was but what he did. So Davis was leaving to a vapid wasteland, the only place she could never get him back.

"I'll have nothing." It struck Chloe that she'd always wanted her own Kryptonian hero and he was doing it the only way he could. He didn't even know.

"I'm sorry. I won't take another life"

"I'm giving you mine."

"What if I don't want it?" The lie was the set of his shoulders, the way the man who looked the world head on could not look at her face.

"It's yours. I feel something."

Chloe knew that an honest admission of what he felt would be too much for him. He moved and before she knew it she was swung into his grasp. She held his eyes-bewildered heat and hope as his thumb traced her cheek. He closed his eyes first as the red maw swirled around them . She closed a fist over his. Davis kissed her and it was too passionate, deep and full of a thousand promises that would never be fulfilled.

"I want you." She said, but her wanting had never changed the world.

Davis took a step back and his mouth formed a true smile again, that kind she could never stay away from. "Good to know I hadn't completely lost it."

"I'm not going to spend my life missing you, you know." Chloe told him; she was going to live.

She reached out a hand and brushed his sleeve; his eyes flickered. When they fell into the other world together, she thought maybe she could find her equilibrium.



Chloe struck the sand of the phantom zone with paralyzing impact in her side. Davis had shielded her from the brunt of the impact, but even then her body ached like she had landed on hot steel. Davis's face pressed against her shoulder and she felt the muscles work against her skin.

"You stayed with me." he whispered. There was fear, the soft rush of breath like you heard in a romance movie. He was heavy on her and she shivered. “Don’t move.” He whispered into her neck. She fantasized about this very situation, but his tone was all wrong, wary. Chloe touched at his face, feeling the tension coiled up in him. He was hearing something she could not.

Clinging to Davis, she heard nothing more threatening than shifting sands before it struck. Chloe had considered the Phantom Zone a place for wraiths, hostile ghosts, not living, hungry predators for too long.

Something slimy and razor-sharp wound over her ankle and yanked. It whip-lashed her and by extension Davis into the air. Chloe landed in a rolling heap, freezing when she wasn’t holding onto him anymore. She was the aperitif. Chloe dangled upside down in the air before the gaping hole of a mouth, rows and rows of needle-like teeth and vaguely she heard Davis yelling for her. It had her too tight. She gasped in a breath and smelled the ripe, rotting fragrance of decaying blood. She struck out blindly, blood painfully rushing to her brain. The eyes.

Chloe was plucked from the air like a doll, skin rasping. She had half a mind to kick out but she recognized the raspiness. Davis was half-transformed, his skin warring on warped black and his eyes red. He deposited her on the ground softly. A whip of sound took him from her sight, but she heard it roar out of him. There were wet, slicing noises- the impact of thick bony plates on muscled, fleshy tentacles. The tide turned as Doomsday was crushed into that maw of a mouth, let out a howl. Chloe had never been so afraid. She forced herself to limp up because she could be a distraction.

She heard the gurgle as Doomsday tore its claws through its belly at the last moment. The tentacled creature fell with a nauseating impact, and the red eyes that held hers over the carcass looked-almost- protective.





Doomsday must have taken her miles, to a decently sized cave free of tentacled monsters. It stopped short of the opening, as if knowing it’s sized would crumble the cave and kill her if it tried to find comfort for itself. The red sun beat down on it, lighting black scales to dirty orange parts of its side crusty black. Was it…bleeding?

Chloe crawled forward, dragging her leg behind her and laid a hand on it’s side. Her fingers came away sticky and it made a little hissing sound, scrabbling back a few steps. She used to touch Davis like this and it had helped him turn back.

“Thank you. Hold still. I’m going to help you.” It wasn’t sentient in the same way Davis was, but it understood survival, could hear the soothing tone to her voice and stopped scrabbling away. Chloe had to get half out of the cave to reach the looming form. It collapsed into the sand with a thump.




Davis must have woken up about an hour later. The horrific silence of this place and his jerkily breathing body made it seem like years. Davis was sentient though; the very first thing he did was pull out of her clinging grip to assess the situation and reset her ankle. His eyes were terrified and betrayed and loving; Chloe almost wished another tentacled monster appeared just to banish the awkwardness.

“You’re hurt.”

“So are you.” She indicated the black blood mixing with his own, starker on his bare skin and the muscle there. Down girl.

Davis knew how to deal with his own injuries, but she prodded at the uninjured skin. There were three claw-marked gauges tainted with oozing black venom right under his pectoral. The blood was more jarring on Davis and Chloe could see how it cut through to the muscle.

“I’ll be fine.” Davis insisted, moving closer to the light at the cave mouth, dazed from the venom. Chloe wrapped an arm around him and pulled him back. His body was complacent and his eyes didn’t look in the shape to argue with her.

“The sun is red here so Kryptonians won’t heal. You'd be better off here.”

“Straight from the mouth of the professor of Kryptonian history, M.D.” Davis’s was sweating thickly; it was probably some sort of paralyzing drug but he was lifting an eyebrow, making an effort to smile and set her at ease.

Unwillingly, Chloe felt the corner of her mouth curl up into a smile. “That’s P.H.D, actually. You need to let me suck the venom out.”

His eyes widened for a fraction of a second only. He wasn’t Clark. He knew they couldn’t mop ineffectually at it and expect the poison to go away. “Come on, Davis.”

“Be careful.”

Davis held still when she pressed her lips to his chest and sucked. It didn’t feel awkward or unnatural at all. His skin was much hotter than hers, a raspy smattering of hair and skin sensitive enough to goose-bump as soon as her mouth touched him. Vaguely, Chloe wondered what his skin tasted like. She couldn’t find out like this.

She had to be extra careful not to swallow a drop because the poison would kill her in seconds. His head tilted back when she started drawing on his blood. His breaths shifted to quick and she should have been thinking about how much pain instead of how beautiful his eyes looked when they slammed shut. His hand found purchase on her waist and pulled at her top, fingers shaking.

Chloe froze as his fingers touched her skin and tried not to move much when she spat out the poison into the sand. Her mouth was numb. He was hurt, shaking against her, barely moving otherwise. She had him for the rest of her life but she didn’t know if that amounted to much more than a day for either of them.




Davis had barely said a word since he woke, but he was starting to recover his speech. She’d been curled up next to him for nearly three hours before he finally whispered.

“Why did you do it?”

She clenched her fist and loosened it. It was hard to be mad at him. Davis had been trying to save her all along, saved her from getting turned into a yet another afterthought and she didn’t even know if he was going to heal.

“Because I’m selfish and stupid enough to be in love with you. I can’t watch you go into hell alone, and I don’t want that guy I care about to disappear because no one, not even him will make an effort to make things right.”

Davis looked at her, one of his tender, searching looks. By the end of it she wanted to shift her eyes down. “I want to spend my life with you. And if it’s just you, that’s fine too.”

His lips parted. “I don’t think it’s that long.”

Chloe straightened. “You’re not making it any longer by fantasizing about sending me back so you can get back to what you really want and invite more of those things to lunch on you. I get it.”

“I just didn’t want you to give your life up for me, Chloe. It’s not worth it.”

There was his problem. The blackouts and the blood and death had messed him up into seeing himself as nothing more than a shell unworthy of feelings from anyone. If it had been her he would have been the first one to speak on her behalf.

“Stop talking.”

“You’re the only one to ever love me.” His eyes were wet, like when he’d said it to her the first time. “I didn’t want you to suffer for it.” Davis crawled back from her a little further.

“I chose it, so deal.” If she reached an arm out she could get him to hold her again. She wouldn’t. She wasn’t sorry. She was just feeling cold. Desert nights were even colder here than in real deserts.

“I didn’t mean it that way. I do want you here.” he said very softly. “You’re the only one.” He kept looking at her and got closer, probably to get his jacket. Chloe ignored him and sat up to wipe the poison taste from her mouth again, only to close her eyes at he licked softly at her chaffed ankle. She hadn’t expected him to return the favor. He kissed her knee and up her thigh. She held her hands stiff because they were coated in red and she was angry and she wanted nothing more than to slide them into his hair.

When he kissed her mouth the response was automatic, wanting and squirming and not having to manipulate him into not dying. His mouth was parching and hot and flush on hers, (somehow even warmer than the rest of him) and his hands were on her face like he was holding her so she wouldn’t get away. If he wanted to play it like that- Chloe scratched at his neck and he shifted her down. No doubt about his intentions now.

There was sex that was about lust, sex that was about anger, sex that was about yearning and soft feelings and this was neither and all of them. He bit at her mouth to be let in, warm humid, living heat and Chloe sucked on his tongue. His mouth fumbled under her jaw line before his mouth teased wetly between her breasts and trailed down her abdomen. White-hot heat started to spike through her. Davis dragged himself up her like some sort of animal and she knew he smelled it.

Chloe raised herself to her knees and tore at her jacket, missing the warmth but counting on him to be the heat. If she didn’t deal with the clothes he would and this was the only pair she would have for a long time. She let them drop. Her forehead slouched into his shoulder and he pressed between her legs with sudden electric pressure, hesitated and watched her eyes and seeing some invisible thing, pushed his cock inside. Chloe’s eyes watered, he was in her rough and so deep it ached.

She’d wondered sometimes, how it would be, if it would hurt. She couldn’t connect it with the vague stirrings with Jimmy that vanished as soon as he rolled over. Davis seemed like too much passion, too much for her too handle. Maybe she’d been right. Davis pulled her forward, palms huge against her face and he was just hard inside her, not doing anything at all. Chloe felt like some part of her displaced and left only room for him. She started it, aligning them to kiss him better, shifting her hips against his.

His hands closed over them and he kissed her roughly, pausing to push her into a cold, rasping wall. Chloe wanted to let him know it was uncomfortable but he’d dropped his head into her shoulder, pulsing and hot and doing something at last. Chloe’s eyes fixed on the ominous cave mouth and closed and she could have sworn she saw sparks.

Davis's skin thrummed over hers, her hands tried unsuccessfully to sooth the blood dripping from the reopened cut in his side and clawed at his ass instead. Davis hissed a slow breath from between his teeth and rolled her against the wall- clutching at her shoulders, elbows, her hips like he couldn’t get close enough.

In any other place, it could have been rationalized as an effort to save one or both of them. It was out of their hands now. His hands wrapped and fisted in her hair, his mouth at buried itself against her throat, almost as if he was trying to forget about everything that surrounded them. Davis hated not being able to save her from what he saw as his punishment; he took his and his evil alien parent’s responsibilities upon himself, that’s just how he was. Chloe understood. He rocked a little more violently and what she needed to say parched and cracked in her throat with a small orgasmic sound. She was drenched in heat and the blood roared in her ears.

The pleasure was like plummeting; complete freefall, waiting for another impact. It was coming, quivering through her overtaxed nerve endings again and Davis notched his head into her shoulder. She bit into her lip and drew blood and she couldn’t taste the venom anymore so she licked at his neck and his skin tasted like salt. Black closed over the sides of her vision, but she felt him tossing and quivering and his hands stroking over her knee when he spilled into her. Then her knees went.

Her arguments about his culpability issues were temporarily halted by her inability to string two sentences together. Davis carried her to the corner and she curled around his arm, steering clear of the injured parts. She was warmed by the erratic sound of his heart and him but she was sticky and cold. She groped for her jacket and curled the arm of it around him.

“I don’t deserve you.” He said softly, tracing at her nose with a blunt finger. “Because of you I have a reason to go on.” He rolled over and looked at her with earnest eyes. “I’ll take care of you.” Chloe nudged his shoulder and his hands seemed to develop a will of their own. “I’ll get to know the terrain. You can explain the phantoms, we can catalog the species and learn which to avoid, I’ll learn to control the beast…”

Chloe breathed in the scent of his skin and felt her ankle prickle under his roving, curious weight. She could see it already-he’d catch her things to eat with his hands and come home naked and they’d probably die of acute sexual exhaustion.

Davis pulled her hands over her head and kissed her wrists. They had a lot a time to make up for, and she’d almost forgotten what they had been arguing about. But she took advantage of the last moment to make her point.

“I’m still not sorry I came.”

your placid fears

Reccing Notes: Chloe doesn't know what she wants, but he understands anyway.

I really don't have words for how this girl writes angst.

The connection between Chloe and Davis melded with the destiny that hangs over Davis; this is what epic is made of. This is a variation of beast I would have given my two front teeth to see (!!). Chloe and Davis at their most electric, all in the microcosm of one tortured kiss.

by lust-4sorrow at her livejournal
528 words, pg-13, beast

“I’m not a good man,” he murmurs at her. The words hurt her more than loud screeching.
He’s kissing her.

His lips are subtle against hers but all she feels is his lips and the words he sprouts from them. The words that seem to rip the secrets inside her to shreds. She feels his usual hesitance, the yearning for the pretence of proper man that lies there.

Chloe presses her forehead to his, the force meant to give Davis a message she isn’t fully sure she’s even thinking. He seems to understand it anyway, gasping out a breath and tightening a hand around her hip for a fraction of second before his usual mental battle pulls him away.

She shifts her position, trails her nose down his soft cheek as if to soothe it. Grasping the bottom of his dark –always dark- shirt, she pulls them closer together. She’ll later tell him that the closeness well unfamiliar for the simply sake of humility.

Yet he’ll see it –he’s always looking for something in those gazes- , spot the lie from a mile, or perhaps only a few steps away and grasp onto it’s implication. His chest is almost flush to hers but it’s not enough, never enough. Closing her lips, searing them into a thin, tense line Chloe keeps the desperate sound rising from her gut at bay. Davis’ eyebrow is furrowed, a line of unfortunate emotions marring his forehead.

“Davis-

“I’m not a good man,” he murmurs at her. The words hurt her more than loud screeching.

With a sigh, Chloe lets her breathing placate the concern and push it back directly underneath the surface. She supposes that will always be a problem. Closing her hand into a fist, she finds strength in the cotton –so much simplicity atop such complexity- covering him. With a pattern of tug, sigh, tug, sigh, gaze, tug, sigh, tug; he’s leaning in again, surrendering.

His lips are harsher this time, the press of them sure to leave her own lips swollen. Her insides throb with the promise of this. She cups his cheeks, occasionally touching his closed eyelids with her fingertips, marveling at the heat radiating from them. She stops the kiss for a moment –only once, never again- as if to put an end to the heat of his gaze that glares no longer.

Quickly enough she’s kissing him again, feeling the fire of his dark eyes turn into deeps imprints of his hands around her hips and anywhere else she needs them except for around the fragments of her almost electronic heart.

He’s lifting her up effortlessly and she wants to squeal but finds that the air around them is far too heady for her to comply. His knees seem to buckle under the weight of his want, need and he murmurs in a tone so pained it’s almost a whimper.

“I may- I- I’ll hurt you Chloe,” she shakes her head in denial of this. They’re both aware of her stubbornness.

She kisses him until his kryptonian induced fears are far away. To perhaps terminate her own she asks him tenderly not to break her heart. When he begins breaking the world instead, she laughs at the irony.

darkness covers, we find shelter

Reccing Notes: This fic covers the (longer) gap of time between beast and whatever happened afterwards. Chloe and Davis are away from Smallville and living together for a year and as Davis's spiraling control over Doomsday gets worse, somewhere there, he and Chloe are in love.

It's heartbreaking, but it's affirming and the ambiguity of the ending lets you fill in the gaps as you will.

by falsemurmur at wings_for_craft

3120 words, pg-13, beast

She kissed him in the darkness, but in the daylight it was too easy to see the goosebumps on her skin from his touch.


“Let’s leave Smallville.”



Chloe and Davis run away. Far away. They erase Smallville from their maps, not wanting to be found.


-¤-




Wherever they go, they’re just the blond and the dark haired but pale man.

Davis tells her, “I’m okay. You don’t have to sit around with me all day.” (It’s almost painstaking to tell her this. But it’s obligatory--the good guy in him tells him so.)

She shrugs, smiles. “I’m okay, too. I like it here.”

They sit in a dusty motel, the noise of traffic blowing through the cracks of the windows. A shopping mall down the block, a park across the street, a café down the north road. Just minutes from Chloe, from average civilization, but Chloe sits on the stained mattress just inches from Davis, talking about anything that doesn’t remind either of them of home (or in Davis’ case, the lack of any home).

It’s just the first week though, Davis reminds himself. The first week of anything is the toughest.



.


Chloe makes a phone call to Clark.

Davis knows it’s necessary. For her, anyway, it’s necessary. He also knows it’s necessary for her to have a life that isn’t just about him, but any slip away she takes, his heart involuntary sheds a fraction.

She smiles at him--not the most sincere smile, but she smiles. He feels intact. Okay, he remembers. He knows she’s there when he needs her.


This is what the first month is like for the most part.


.



The solitary life is infuriating. Chloe isn’t herself. So Davis gets mad. Davis blacks out. He blames her.

And then he’s sorry.

“It’s not your fault,” he says in puffs, shivering against the dark.

She only rubs his arms.

“I…I’m angry. I want you to be happy. And because you’re not, I yell. But I’m mad at myself. Know that.”

Chloe pulls her hands from his arms. She tilts her head at him and smirks.

“Hey, I made a decision. Yeah, it’s hard to get used to this. To being away from Smallville. From Clark, Lois, Jimmy too. But what’s life if not change? Just constant change.”

Chloe possesses a rare courage. The sort where she has the capacity to say what everyone is thinking, but no one dare speak. She hadn’t spoken one word of Jimmy to him since before she’d left Smallville, hadn’t said the word “missed”--but she said it now. And though the mention or thought of her husband tends to surge rage in him, in this context, it is necessary.

He kisses her then. And she kisses him back.

This is progress for him.

-¤-




Six months after crossing Smallville off their map, Chloe and Davis pretend a dingy apartment in New Jersey is perfect.

Davis sleeps on the sofa bed of the living room-slash-kitchen-area, and Chloe sleeps in the room with a curtain for a door.

It’s laughable, so Chloe laughs after the first night, and soon Davis is laughing too. Kansas was small, as were the houses on occasion, but the rooms were always home. This apartment was the exact opposite, but it was remote and quiet enough to not allow for disturbances. The neighbors were sparse, and mostly working people who couldn’t be around to ask questions. To inquire, or to refer to Davis and Chloe as a couple.

(The terminology was too complicated for Chloe. She kissed him in the darkness, but in the daylight it was too easy to see the goosebumps on her skin from his touch.)



.


Chloe was a trained reporter once upon a time, and a watchtower to superheroes, and now she serves hot plates to ordinary people.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a waitress,” she snaps at him when he slides her a brochure for a local magazine department.

“I’m just trying to help, Chloe.”

Chloe stares up at him, then down at her cereal bowl. She rounds her eyes, scanning the bare apartment and the old-fashioned tinted windows.

“This isn’t permanent, Davis. You know that we won’t stay here forever, that we can’t stand out anywhere we go. You know this better than me. And I get it--you worry that I feel stuck or trapped. But stop worrying. However I feel, or I don’t, that’s something I have to take care of. That’s my responsibility, not yours. So stop trying to make me, this normal. We’re not a normal couple, having breakfast before we head off to work. We’re two people, trying to stay alive, trying to keep people alive.”

“But I care about you, Chloe! I want to know how you feel and…and if you feel trapped.”

She sighs. She lowers her head, and a sound escapes her mouth. But she only stands up, grabs her purse, and says, “I’ll see you later.”


.



The phone in the apartment rings for the first time in the two months they’ve been there. Immediately, he knows something is wrong.

“Hello,” he says into the phone. There’s a strong pause, but he keeps the phone fastened to his hand, a lump strong in his throat.

“Davis, grab the money we’ve saved and get out. Take the 4:15 out to Connecticut.”

The phone clicks--his yells of “Chloe--Chlo!” were obsolete.

He grabs the money, and though she had told him to only get that, he grabs her emergency bag, throws in a couple of his shirts, and heads for the door when he hears steps feet from the door.

“Chloe, I know you’re in there!”

It’s none other than Lois Lane, and Davis feels a wave of fury.

He knows Clark could have found them long ago, but Chloe’s “I don’t want you to find us” must have subdued his search. But of course no such thing would pacify Chloe’s cousin.

He looks at the window. He slings the bag over his shoulder, pulls the window up, and doesn’t even take a breath when jumping down two levels.

His heels break, and a couple stares at him in awe when his bones crack back into place, and he stands up. He doesn’t look at them, despite their staring. He runs, runs impossibly fast.

At the train station, he pulls out a fake identification, buys a one way ticket to Connecticut, and he does something he’d only do for Chloe--he prays, prays she’s on the train, or at least that she’ll be in Connecticut.

On the train, he looks over every face twice. When he finds Chloe, he doesn’t have to do a double-take. He breathes “Thank God” and she hears it, but doesn’t acknowledge it.

He sits down beside her, asks “are you okay? Did she see you?”, but she only says in a murmur “I’m okay”.

She’s silent the rest of the way, and so is he.

-¤-




They reach their destination, Chloe picks out an inn, and they room together. She doesn’t ask for two beds, although she usually does.

When in the room, she tosses him a passport--a fake passport, that is.

“We’re going to Canada. First into Ontario, and east from there.”

“Alright.”

Chloe scrambles around the bag Davis brought, looking for nothing in particular. She stops suddenly, but still looks at the contents of the bag, her eyes stuck.

“I saw her. She went into the restaurant. I told the manager I felt sick and was going home. He said okay, it’s a slow day anyway. I went outside. And I just…stood there for a minute. I looked at her. I stared at her. Half of me hoped she saw me and would chase me. I saw her find the manager, and talk to him. Lois probably got the address from him. But she could have seen me right then and there. Still, I turned around, I ran off. I called you. I could have just as easily not called you. I could have stayed there, waiting until she came back outside, and see me. I could have let her yell at me. Then take me home. But I didn’t. I ran away. Again.”

Davis feels his heart pounding in his chest. Afraid. Scared. He is scared. Sure, she’s here now. But she could have another moment, any second, she could have a moment where wants to go home.

“If I’m trapped, it’s because I want to be trapped. You need me and…I’m not even sure if you want me because I can…save you, or because I‘m me. And I don’t need you, I don’t need this. And this definitely isn’t the life I want. But I want to be here.”

Davis looks over at her, to see her looking at him.

“I want you here,” he says.

Chloe walks over to him. She wraps her arms around his shoulders. And then he feels the burn of her tears.

“I’ve betrayed everyone I love, everyone who loves me. I turned my back on the girl who fell in love with and married Jimmy.”

He holds her firmly. “But you want to be here.”

He feels her nod.

(He feels empowered. He knows it’s wrong to feel this when she’s breaking, but she’s also building something--building a place where she accepts that the blacks and whites of life have no place in reality. )

They share the bed that night, but they only sleep.

He doesn’t black out this night.

-¤-




They don’t stay in Canada long. They remain in Russia for even a shorter period. It’s when they ride through Australia that they agree that it’s not a bad place at all.

They rent a flat in the middle of Albany, looking over a narrow street. It’s a two bedroom flat.

They’ve been sleeping together since Ontario (some weeks after that night they got to Canada--it was a normal night, and Davis knew she was frustrated more than anything, but she was hurting too hard for him to push her away then of all times) but she still wanted a two bedroom place.

Davis gets work at a bread shop and Chloe at a tech factory.



.



There are nights when Chloe can feel the walls shake. They’re only subtle vibrations, but they send her on alert.

“Davis, Davis, stay with me,” she whispers.

She clasps his head with her hands, tries to hold onto his eyes. He hasn’t blacked out in months, but he’s had close calls. He’ll always have close calls. This is something she’s accepted. But she won’t tell him, because he’ll then realize that in that aspect, she’s given up hope.

“Stay with me,” she says even more harshly.

His teeth clench, and his eyes blink rapidly.

Chloe kneels on his bed, and pulls his heavy frame to her. “Davis,” she says close to his ear.

He stops shaking gradually, and she finally feels him holding onto her.

She pulls back and smiles, relief spread over her eyes.

“Thank you,” he tells her.

His room is dark. She can’t even spot his shadow, but her own shadow lingers by the bedpost.

She kisses him, like she kissed him the night she got Clark’s phone call when in Quebec and he told her that Jimmy had filed for an uncontested divorce. She had hung up with a civil “thanks for telling me”, despite feeling like she had been given up on. But she didn’t really have a husband anymore--she hadn’t been a wife for too long now. So she kissed Davis, because she was just a girl alone with a boy who wanted her, needed her. She was alone with someone she chose not only to save her best friend, but also because he made her feel something she hadn’t known existed. (She doesn’t have a word for it, she only knew that Davis made her feel.)



.


She climbs into his bed on the nights when guilt isn’t weighing on her shoulders.

She used to kiss him hard when anger rose in her chest. But weeks passed, and he would make her laugh, he would make her forget they were living in a foreign land. He began kissing her softly on the cheek on his way out the door. He began buying her small insignificant treats and leaving them on the coffee table, or on the kitchen counters. She forgot this wasn’t normal, and when she remembered it wasn’t normal, she realized she was hurting him when she kissed him because someone from her past was pressing on her heart.

So she crashes on her bed when she’s spinning from madness and sadness, reeling from remorse. And when she’s done with tripping away from the world, she walks back into his world and falls into his pattern.

They do their best to keep the darkness outside his door.



.


“A picnic. At night. We’re not doing this with candles, right? There are a dozen trees around us,” Chloe says, a chuckle ringing through.

“Right, and girls are the romantic ones,” Davis muses.

“I’m just being practical,” Chloe shrugs, whilst jabbing his shoulder.

He sighs and shakes his head. “I brought a lamp,” he explains, taking out and lighting an encased lamp.

Chloe smiles widely at him, and sits back, looking at the stars overhead. The stars overhead never left her, and she never left them. It was the closest thing she had to home--in every corny sense of the connection.

“So, you want to start off with a sandwich, or pasta?”

Chloe cocks her head at him, squinting. “What kind of buffet is that?”

“I did what I could!” he yelps, laying out the simple sandwiches next to a Tupperware of pasta.

“Pasta first. We’ll save the best for last.”

“Sandwich rates over Italian pasta in your universe?”

“Oh, like it doesn’t in yours.”

Davis laughs, but nods. “You know me too well,” he murmurs. Chloe quiets, but keeps a tight smile on her face. She waits as he takes out the plates, and serves pasta on their respective plates, and places forks on them. He hands it to her, and she softly says “thank you”. She sits upright, and takes a bite.

“It’s good,” she says after one forkful.

“Thanks,” he says.

There’s a quiet tension, but Chloe doesn’t verbally acknowledge it. This is the epitome of a first date, but the thing is that they’ve been running from Smallville for close to 14 months now. The thing is that they have shared kisses, a bed for several months now. The thing is that they have sex now and then. The thing is that he treats her like his girlfriend, she lets him treat her so, and sometimes he is her boyfriend. The thing is, in all that time, with all their experiences, and with all the loud moments, with all the good quiet moments, they have never been on a date.

This isn’t a date either. She will not call it as such. For all the feelings she has for him, and as real as their situation is, the flat in Albany and the jobs are all pretend. And so too much of it is pretend to allow for something as real as a date.

The plates are empty and the sandwiches are gone soon enough. They lie on a blanket, inches between them, talking about nothing important. Minute facts that are interesting and vital to others, but irrelevant to them. Softened memories of their travels. Casual talk of work.

And then Davis seems to have fallen asleep.

Chloe blinks a slow blink. She breathes in a deep breath, exhales gradually. It’s peaceful and the numbing “You can’t do this forever” conscience dies. In another blink, Davis twitches beside her.

She can’t do this forever.


-¤-




The black outs come back. Stronger than before.

She had gotten used to the close calls, but there was a piece of hope that believed that the close calls were as bad as it was ever going to get again.

Davis told her he loved her one day. She was never able to say it back. She didn’t know why, she was just not able to say it. Maybe it was because love was a cursed word on her lips. Maybe it was because she wasn’t sure what she felt.




She never says she loved Davis for the simple fact that she may have been in love with him, but she didn’t love him. The inverse of loving a man but not being in love with him.






He fights her when she says they have to go back. It’s getting too dangerous for him. It’s too hard to control that foreign part of him. He refuses.



When he hurts her, that’s when he sees the foreign part of him is more Davis than that other thing. He says “let’s go back”.



.


They make a lot of stops, just the two of them. No public transportation.

Any time of day is dangerous. At any sign, Chloe stops for however long it may take. She tries to bring him back, no matter how dangerous he gets. Sometimes she succeeds. When she doesn’t, she still sticks around.

Some days, he wishes she wouldn’t. But he’s thankful.


.



They reach Mexico, but that’s as far as they get alone.

Clark gets to them, and everything is a blur afterward.

From Clark dashing them to his farm in Smallville, to the chains on Davis’ wrists. From Davis’ escape, to his capture and death.



Chloe Sullivan has a hand in it all. There’s blood on her hands in every metaphorical way possible. In a lot of literal ways too.


-¤-





She buries Davis. Clark joins her, but she tells him she can do it alone. It’s not his fault, it’s hers.

(Besides, Clark didn’t know Davis. Only Chloe knew Davis. And Davis was the only one who knew what Chloe was capable of, of what she had done in that year plus months away from home: things not Clark, not Lois, not Oliver could possibly imagine. What Jimmy wouldn’t have wanted of her.)

livewire

Reccing Notes: Okay, I've tortured you with depressing for the new year, Thea. Thankfully for you, nonky's been on a roll. Only a little angsty this time. In this short emotionally gripping fic, those walls of Jericho do come down.

by nonky at her livejournal
370 words, nc-17, beast

Both of them were worried they would get lost in what they felt and surface to find they'd used up everything too quickly.

The bed and breakfast they checked into was fashionably rustic, and there was no television in the room. Chloe and Davis settled in as well as they could, each taking a side of the bed and sticking to it.

She was no longer sure she soothed him, and he seemed absolutely terrified of her. They were taking a break until one of them had the nerve to start a serious talk. Every time she touched him, The Beast settled, and something in Davis coiled tighter. Every caring gesture he made to somehow make up for the loss of all her debatable normality made Chloe want to grind on his lap.

They had to be close. It wasn't a matter of choice anymore. Both of them were worried they would get lost in what they felt and surface to find they'd used up everything too quickly. For all she knew, Chloe would live forever next to Davis, a perpetual guardian for all of humanity. She hated how wonderful that sounded.

They leaned over their careful gap for the goodnight kiss that was their only safe sex, and Chloe shivered. Davis put his hands up to her arms and rubbed, raising static over her sweater. She broke their chaste kiss for a second. The tingling energy over her skin was spreading, overtaking nerves. He was already holding her.

The atmosphere around them was crackling with electricity by the time she thought to pull away, and it was too late. Davis smoothed her limbs flat to the bed and stripped her. He wetted most of her body with his mouth and the sweat from his hands. Night kept going in excruciating surges of arcing passion. She came like a slavering madwoman convulsing with electroshock, bucking him high. She came to; singed, still pinned, still filled, still getting fucked because Davis never really had to stop. He slipped from her, rolled them over, and Chloe rasped her fingers through his hair as he moved in her again. She kept her eyes on the sparks that flew up.

If she met his eyes again she'd be lost. Her trembling chin moved to intercept his mouth, and his gaze was the only thing there was.

sight

Reccing Notes: In case you don't know already. I love this verse. I reallyrealy do. One of the beast things to come out of beast. it's beautiful because it stays true to the realtionshipp, but then fates not cutting them any breaks. (And I was having such fun with Davis and his sweet undercurrents and sexy-ish thoughts. Dang it, then the plot had to intrude!)

by nonky at her livejournal
1367 words, pg-13 (a much better Beast- her verse)

He was fairly stricken with anxiety about it. When the lights were out and he was barely touching her, letting her sleep, her scent was the anchor for his humanity.

He knew how she smelled, of course, and might have been absorbing details like that into his DNA; pushing out alien killing machine know-how.

“'Paba free' is good,” she said. “But 'all natural ingredients' isn't always better.”

Chloe taught him things all the time, most of the information slipping away soon after she finished speaking. He listened intently, because she was interesting no matter what she said or did. The words held so much emotion he was distracted. One whole level of his being was thrown just picking up on the range of feelings she expressed in short, factual sentences. She commanded tones of her voice like symphonies of gentle mockery, sweet loving kindness, and fearless protective instincts.

Eyes brimming with love is real, Davis mused, brimming and overflowing with love for me. Only everything she is does that.

She picked up another bottle of shampoo, because the out-of-state mom and pop drugstore didn't have her brand. Davis was entrusted with deciding what her hair would smell like. He was fairly stricken with anxiety about it. When the lights were out and he was barely touching her, letting her sleep, her scent was the anchor for his humanity.

He knew how she smelled, of course, and might have been absorbing details like that into his DNA; pushing out alien killing machine know-how. Chloe had been all over him, and he remembered each second like the gold nugget of living it was. Those moments in the car and cheap hotels were as far from shame as he could imagine himself at his present point. He couldn't talk about that in front of the nicely greying couple behind the counter, though, who glanced over periodically and met their customers' eyes to give them the opportunity to ask for help.

Besides, if Chloe smelled like arousal, sweat and contentment all the time, he would have to get himself chemically castrated before they maimed each other.

“Okay, these three,” Chloe proclaimed, lining up the bottles in her arms. “They're basically the same, good stuff for hair, so locate my essence.”

With a flirtatious pat of encouragement, Davis' entire world strolled away to give him privacy to deliberate. He flicked open the top of the first bottle, and glanced over his shoulder at her. Chloe was within their safe zone. If he put his arm out and she did the same, they would touch. It was late at night, they were moving again, and he worried about random loss. He was watching for Clark or his allies to take her, but a stray bullet in a robbery could do the job. Davis drove very cautiously, he worried over diner kitchen cleanliness, and he tried not to obsess over her human vulnerabilities.

She stretched for a tall shelf, and her neck was bared for a moment. The Beast purred appreciation, and Davis sighed.

He was getting over some of his horror about his alien body. It could shield her in a building collapse, deflecting lethal shrapnel and glass. Davis would not wish his fate on anyone, but it eased his mind to think he didn't have to worry about leaving Chloe. He could sacrifice himself for her as many times as she was in danger. She didn't like to talk about it. Her face told him her calm in life-or-death situations was the result of practice more than temperament. The Beast didn't like talking about it, either, so Davis tried to live with the vague dread.

He wrinkled his nose at the heavy perfumes rising from the three selections. He was used to the muted shower scents dissipated by steam. The kiwi was too much, the strawberry was okay, but the third - called Snow and Honey - was blissful. It made him shiver as he sniffed, but then a wave of warm sweetness blanketed him. Davis put the other two back and carried the winner to Chloe.

“This one is you,” he said certainly. “At least, it's the closest imitator to how good you smell. Nothing could ever match.”

Her cheeks went pink as she took the bottle, and Davis leaned down to kiss them. She ducked away playfully.

“They're looking at us,” she mumbled. “Come on, we're in the Bible belt. No kissing.”

“No kissing in the Bible belt,” he asked, chuckling, but pulling his black baseball cap down just in case. “Wow, that's strict. I thought they'd have more of population problem though, if there's no kissing. Besides, they're not looking at us, they think we're cute.”

Not even in his childhood had anyone ever thought him cute. The social services people and doctors called him 'healthy' or 'advanced in his development'. Prospective foster parents sometimes commented on his good posture and manners, but his wounded silence dissuaded all of them from wanting him. Once he started growing, thin and strong, cute wasn't the word to match his serious nature. A few elderly patients had called him sweet, but that was because they were grateful to him. Davis tried to be pleasant and helpful, but he couldn't remember ever having unforced joy until he met Chloe.

Cute, he thought, mulling it over as he let her go. We're cute together. Most of it is her, of course, but I don't ruin the picture.

“A few more things,” Chloe said, still blushing prettily. “I know we haven't gone that far tonight. We'll make it up with quick lunch stop and then I can drive for a while.”

“I'm not tired,” Davis told her. “What do you need?”

“Shower gel, and snacks. One of these nights we're going to end up somewhere without an all-night restaurant that delivers.”

They drove evenings and nights, into the early hours of the morning. They were farther from Kansas, but still being careful. Chloe had explained that distance wasn't a problem for Clark if he was really looking for them. Davis seemed rather awed by his fellow Kryptonian's powers, but not envious. He had thought himself normal but flawed for most of his life. He likely wouldn't feel better about himself if he thought of his alien origins made him exceptional. What Clark professed to want would mean giving up all the entitlement he'd been raised to believe was his, and Davis was without that arrogance.

She touched his chest and he curled down toward her. It was nice to do something normal with him, but she suddenly wanted privacy. He didn't protect his feelings at all, and Chloe didn't like having everyone else staring at the frank longing in his touch. She'd never been able to tease him, or joke around, so she couldn't say if he'd take it well or be hurt. Her sense of humour wasn't razor sharp anymore.

She'd seen him covered in blood, caked in it so thick it didn't drip but rather slid in sheets down his naked flesh. There was little to joke about after that.

Chloe unwound from Davis' arms and located the shower gel, hefting the huge bottle. He took it from her and held her hand as they went to another aisle.

“Industrial sized,” he said. “You expect to be doing some mud-wrestling?”

“It's one hundred and forty showers, for one person; so seventy combined showers,” Chloe told him, grabbing a box for his approval. “Good?”

He nodded. The idea of months of showers with her was the best proposition he'd ever heard – easily surpassing the time she begged to go home with him because he was all she knew and trusted. Davis thought about the tiny shower kit in the car, bought in a hurry before they left Kansas. She hadn't bothered stocking up because they just didn't know how far they would get. He had recognized her coaxing as fake confidence, but it hadn't seemed right to pick at her for it. She was trying to help him.

Chloe believed now, honestly. She saw the happy ending.

“Great,” he said deeply, kissing her. “Perfect taste.”

They paid for their stuff and Davis picked up the shopping bag. He nodded to the woman who served them, then took Chloe's hand for the walk through the parking lot. She smiled at him as the door swung shut behind them.

Two minutes later, the man behind the counter joined his wife and picked up the telephone grimly.




This fic verse needs moar comments. So, comment? ;)

somewhere between perdition and salvation

Reccing Notes: I've always thought SPN and Smallville were sister fandoms, in a way, with their possible apocalypses and supernatural happenings lurking underneath the normal guise of the world. I was just waiting for a fic to prove it.
In this fic, xxlammxx beautifully ties the interconnected journeys of Chloe and Davis and Castiel and (Dean) the Winchester brothers together. Sam and Dean begin to track a very in love 'werewolf' and the woman protecting him. The rest is history.
As a tiny sidenote, there are some mentions of Dean/Castiel slash, if that's not your thing and you don't want to be converted. :p

by xxamlaxx at her livejournal
1663 words, pg-13, beast

Davis fills up her life, expands into it, until her each and every single thought revolves around him and even those that don’t somehow contort and curl and tangle themselves so tightly around Davis she is never sure if they were ever independent thoughts at all.

Chloe finds that the world is both strangely empty without Clark and amazingly preoccupied with Davis. Davis is warm, lean muscle beside her in bed, a soft considerate mien in the driver’s seat of the car, hands clenched tightly around the steering wheel, brown eyes locked on the vast expanse of highway ahead of them. Davis fills up her life, expands into it, until her each and every single thought revolves around him and even those that don’t somehow contort and curl and tangle themselves so tightly around Davis she is never sure if they were ever independent thoughts at all.

-

Fourteen hotels in two weeks and the days are beginning to blur together. Dirty motel floors and streaked bathroom mirrors are blended, one long, long swirl of hours and minutes and seconds. Hotel sheets smell like cheap detergent and fabric softener, floral and synthetic and scratchy, occasionally stained with coffee and food and semen. Late nights she lies awake in bed, Davis curled up against her side, one of his arms around her waist and she stares up at the ceiling, rests one of her hands over the back of his and watches the fan blades rotate above her in slow circles; the low hum of electricity in the darkness.

“Hmm, why are you awake?” Davis slurs, rests his cheek on her bare abdomen, his breath a heated tickle across her skin.

“You know, the occasional insomnia.” She runs her fingers through his hair, traces patterns across his scalp, soothes him back to sleep.

-

Two strange men check into the cheap motel on the outskirts of Idaho. One is tall, taller than Clark, lean with longer than normal brown hair and brown eyes. The other is shorter, handsome, a face and body of sex and sin, but his green eyes are haunted and broken, like he’s not completely whole and he can’t understand why. She watches them both and pushes Davis into their room and shuts the door, smiles at them when they pass her in the hallway. The tall guy is on his phone and doesn’t give her a second glance but the other gives her one quick once over, flashes a grin and a wink and stuffs his hands in his pockets.

-

She begins to think they’re being followed when they cross the border into California. The same two men from Idaho pull into the parking lot of a rundown hotel in Los Angeles. They’re in a black Chevy Impala, all perfectly waxed black metal, well maintained and so kickass. This time they deliberately avoid her, pretend that she isn’t there and Davis growls low in the back of his throat, it growls and she kisses his cheek and trails a hand down his side to calm him.

At three in the morning she can’t sleep and worry is consuming her brain. The air conditioner is loud and blaring, blows icy air throughout the room and she slips out the door, into the warm, stale night air of downtown Los Angeles, smells exhaust and oil on the pavement, can hear silence and engines and the screeching of tires far in the distance. She leans against the railing of the second story and stares down into the parking lot, the mostly deserted square of cracked gray concrete and fading paint. The shorter, better looking man is standing by his car, talking loudly and angrily, shouting at someone she can’t see.

She hears the name “Cas” once but when she scans the parking lot he is the only man there.

-

“Hello miss, could we have a minute of your time please?” The two men confront her in San Francisco, they’re both wearing suits now and they flash golden badges. She nods and moves over to make room for them at the table, carefully texts underneath the table top to Davis who is across the room, within eyesight, always in eyesight, and tells him to stay where he is.

“Of course, what can I do for you?” She smiles, is so good at smiling now, can look happy when inside she’s screaming and drowning and dying.

“We’re with the FBI, I’m agent Walker.” The man with the broken green eyes who talks to someone named Cas when he’s alone lets her examine his badge. Relief flashes quickly through her body, spikes her blood, because she was worrying about Oliver and Clark and hoards of Tess’ minions but instead it’s nothing more than the federal government. “We’re looking for Davis Bloome, he’s suspected in dozens of gruesome murders. There have been reported sightings of you two together.” She can see Davis just over Agent Walker’s shoulder, right in the corner of the room, beside a tall green plant and a cracked pinball machine.

“Look, we understand if you two are involved, and you’re protecting him because you love him, but he’s dangerous.” The taller of the two speaks, sounds distracted, continues to glance down at his cell phone, as though he’s waiting for it to ring.

“I’m not with him voluntarily. He’s stalking me; I’m trying to escape him. If I see him, you’ll be the first I call.” She lies, mendacities flowing from her lungs like air as she accepts the stiff rectangular piece of paper with their numbers.

They leave and she and Davis are on the road again before Agent Walker can order a cup of coffee.

-

“You’re not really from the FBI.” She announces, tries to be glib as she and Davis back into a corner. The two men are holding large silver knives and loading silver bullets into guns. She doesn’t quite know what they think Davis is but she does know that they are very, very wrong and if they don’t leave soon their blood will be a red splatter on the walls, their bones embedded deep in concrete. “And I’m assuming you didn’t tell me your real names.”

“You’re a smart one sweetheart. My name’s Dean, step away from the werewolf before he hurts you.” Dean, the one with the haunted green eyes and imaginary friend extends his hand to her, a gentle, soft expression on his face.

“Werewolf, you think I’m a werewolf?” Davis laughs, laughs and laughs and laughs and she’s laughing too, laughing until her sides ache because Davis is far worse than an oversized canine from horror stories and cheesy Hollywood movies. Davis is Doomsday, Davis can kill and destroy like no other creature on Earth, he can bring about the apocalypse with one transformation and Dean and the tall man have no idea what they’re up against. “I’m not a werewolf, I’m something worse. Please leave, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Don’t worry buddy, you won’t be hurting us.” The taller man plunges a long, silver stake into Davis’ shoulder. Davis winces and roars and blood rushes red down his shirt, soaks into the cotton of his t-shirt, pools on the floor and then he reaches up and pulls it out and the hole heals itself up immediately.

“I told you. I’m so sorry.” Davis’ eyes flash red and there’s nothing she can do. She can’t stop it now. She squeezes her eyes shut tightly, wants it to be over, but suddenly there is a bright, bright flash of white and she has to open them, looks up to see a man with dark hair and a tan trench coat standing in front of Dean who sits bleeding on the floor, the taller man, whose name she thinks is Sam, crouched beside him, a hand over the deep gash in Dean’s chest, trying to hold the blood in. The light hurts her eyes, makes them sting and water, and Doomsday begins to melt away and soon enough Davis is standing barefoot and naked in the deserted, boarded up building. In the blinding light she makes out the faint outline of wings, beautiful, shimmering white feathers and then Davis is on his knees. “Oh Angel of the Lord, forgive me for my sins…” Davis prays, rubs the sign of the cross into his forehead over and over and over again.

“God does not blame you Davis. He has decided to answer your prayers.”

The angel touches Davis’ forehead with two fingers and the world is enveloped in that holy white light.

-

“I’m not the beast any longer?” Davis stares at his hands, his feet, runs his hands over his chest, every inch of his skin, like he can’t quite believe that he is completely free.

“No. God has freed you from your darker half and banished it to hell.” The angel, Castiel is solemn, lays a hand on Davis’ shoulder. “Go and live your life.” Outside the sun has set and the moon hangs low and silver in the pitch black sky. “You have never lost faith in God.”

Davis sleeps like the dead that night, sprawled out on his stomach, on the opposite side of the bed for the first time. Now Davis doesn’t need to touch her, can be away from her. Davis showers alone in the bathroom, doesn’t need her on the other side of the curtain or beneath the hot water with him. She slips out of bed and kisses his naked shoulder blade, retreats outside into the frosty night air, staring out at the Ocean, smelling salt and sand and seaweed.

“It’s pretty damn cool that you can exercise friggin’ aliens Cas.” Dean and Castiel are sitting side by side on the hood of the Impala, illuminated by the glow from the moon. She hides in a sliver of darkness and watches, motionless and breathing shallow.

“The Lord can do anything Dean. If one only has faith.”

“You keep telling me that Cas, but I still don’t believe you.”

“God has great plans for you Dean Winchester. When will you accept your destiny?”

“I don’t want to talk about God Cas.” Dean sighs, leans against the back window of the Impala.

“I know.”

Castiel kisses Dean, slow and sweet, and she returns to the comfort of her room and Davis, presses herself up against his chest, tucks her head into the notch between his neck and shoulder.

time bomb

Reccing Notes: A Beast deleted scene ficlet. Because this quote-

When you died in that cage, it felt like the meteor rock was a killing a part of me.

-needed it. Chloe knows this Davis, still. She'll find him a cure; but first she has to walk away. but...
A twist on 'obsessive' Davis. I hope.

by vagrantdream at her/my journal
9691 words, nc-17, beast

(He won’t ever know. They can go on like this. It’s all downhill from here.)
Her muscles tense at the first heavy step behind her, wanting to crunch into a small ball behind the stairs.

I’d do anything for you; won’t you just let me have this? Us? (The conversation is over before it begins.)
The answer is in the vaguely dangerous (panicked?) look in Davis’s eyes. Where she sees freedom for them both, he sees a cage away from her.

No doctors. Chloe gives in-just smiling, and wishes for the other Davis, the one she could talk to, not the tortured fixated stranger of the past month. His eyes go from dark and searching to tentative again and the quirk to his mouth doesn’t completely reach his eyes. He reminds her of the little boy he must have been sometimes, looking for approval. Anything she can bring herself to give.

His gaze teeters against hers for a moment. What would it take for him to kiss her like this, she wonders?
There in Davis’s eyes. She thought she saw the old him for a minute. She should go.

“I’ll see you later then?” Chloe pushes her smile quickly under the tension again and hopes he doesn’t notice.

“Okay. See you.” Davis is already turning away, hand at his jaw again-eyes trapped in that cycle of worry and fear all over again. As if he’s trying too hard not to make her uncomfortable.

She can honor this-stalemate between them. Only. Chloe’s halfway to taking a step up those stairs, when she realizes she doesn’t believe like he does.

Chloe Sullivan has come to know Murphy’s law far better than anyone has the right to. Maybe she’d married the one guy that never made her heart pound, but that was the way life went eventually.

Years back, when Clark kissed her and wanted to talk about ‘them’, she had to hide behind the first guy she saw. Clark was one of those guys. He would always love Lana, no matter what he wanted to think. She wasn’t going to open herself up to that kind of hurt again. She would date (Jimmy). She’d watch Clark fall for Lana all over again. She just had to be ready for cleanup, after.

Her attraction for the ‘weird’ hadn’t ended there. When she had it together enough to set a wedding date, Davis had to appear out of the smoke and ash. He’d locked eyes with her, not at Lana or Lois. There was a connection between them, he’d said. And what stung the most is that she’d as much as told him that herself. He was, in every way, hers, a more dangerous version of Clark.

She had Braniac and he had the Ultimate Destroyer, and when they had to wake up to it all- a resentful ‘husband’, a collapsed barn, a few hundred bodies in a field later… it had become the truth.
Serial killer or not, blurry photographs in a police folder or not-she was the one pressing her hand against his and feeling that long-neglected part of her wither as Davis’s hand slid from the glass.

Maybe she is enough to calm the murderous thing inside him. Maybe whatever she has with him is enough that leaving Smallville won’t destroy all of that Chloe Sullivan. Maybe that is the one thing that went right. They are hiding under those assumptions. But what are the odds that that will hold together?
One in a billion is generous. The longer they don’t search for a cure, the longer Davis trusts just this thing between them… the greater the chances that it won’t be enough.

Their clock is ticking. With no bomb squad, no backup-this is hers to deal with. Problems used to be good things-once upon a time-hell-even fun with Braniac’s considerable abilities to back her up. But there is that part of her- that part of her that died with him once, that can’t take the chance again. Will Davis take that too?

Davis doesn’t even notice. Maybe his world will just become her, eventually. What else could she have expected really? Davis thinks she is his cure. His whole cure.
And with the knowledge of what he could do otherwise Chloe doesn’t completely blame him.

Clark made a seemingly irrelevant comparison. He could have been Davis if he had been found by someone else in that field. Davis was born with the Destroyer in his DNA and Clark could do anything with his abilities that he wanted.
But Clark had parents… And who hadn’t loved him at one point in time? Davis had been alone and shut himself off for most of his life because of that darkness he could never fully see in himself. He just has her to love. Of course he won’t want to take a chance with that either.

The ironic part, of course, is now that he has her admission, now that he has her, he’s become a stranger. One who needs her, but won’t be honest with himself. This Davis just watches her from a corner as if she’s his definition. Too closely- as if he’ll lose control of it all if she goes, or if their roles make the barest shift. She’s the stupid martyr; he’s the beast. He did love her, once. She knows this. It’s not just obsession, even now, but this screwed up situation leaves room for little else.

Chloe walks gingerly up the steps, all of the DNA that she can think to retrieve in a used water bottle in her purse. It should be enough for Dr. Hamilton to work with- to analyze, to slow, to something. Dr. Hamilton is not Oliver. Davis doesn’t need to know.
There is no reason to feel guilty for it.

(She wants normal. She wants normal so much she could scream it out. She wants normal with him. That’s the worst part.)

Normal isn’t staying awake all night, leaning tentatively against that wall on a guy’s cot, not being able to give him consolation for being alive and falling asleep just when the sun should be rising. Normal isn’t blood on your hands and sloshing in garbage bags as you know who saved you. As you know what saved you. Normal isn’t saying everything that you feel out loud and trying to convince yourself it’s for your best friend just so you can banish the guilt.

(It’s not a lie. It’s a half-truth, and that’s the worst kind.) Chloe Sullivan loves Clark Kent; she’s loved him since he was about five and looked around the classroom with great big blue eyes. Whatever form that takes, he’s shaped her. And she will leave him behind.
Davis is the one she is clinging to now. That piece of her she can’t let go of. No amount of revision will change that.

But she walks up the steps and away. He’s going to let her go. It’s become a habit with both of them. Davis l-feels whatever he does, tries to protect her tender feelings and she treads on eggshells, just not to set that other part of him off.

She remembers the first night Davis came back. Back to life, that is. When this all started. It was easy to remember the bodies then, and the hurting part of her went under lock and key.

He couldn’t ever die. He had no hope left. Nothing but the very flimsy strength of the great intangible between them both.
His eyes had pled for her to say anything honestly. Chloe hadn’t; locked them both behind that door and sat two feet away from him on the cot, hands clenched on her knees until almost morning. Until somehow her head had settled on his shoulder.
She’d dreamed of burying bodies with him in that field that night. Then the car exploded around him and she shrieked and scarred her hands on the heated glass.

Chloe had brought lunch down when she woke up, looked across at him for the first time, to his intrusive eyes and sweaty clenched hands. He’d locked himself here. He wasn’t her enemy. He couldn’t be more.
She handed him a fork, tried on a smile and her eyes watered. They didn’t talk about anything important.

Davis didn’t know then; she could lie as well as he could. Maybe he had. Maybe he had been more streetwise than she thought from the start. Maybe after one lie it’s impossible to believe the truth. That would break anyone, eventually.

Either way, she hasn’t changed the game. The truth hasn’t changed a thing. She is safe. Chloe closes her eyes, her hand on the veranda and propels herself forward.
He won’t ever know. They can go on like this. It’s all downhill from here.

Her muscles tense at the first heavy step behind her, wanting to crunch into a small ball behind the stairs. The man with the fake name of AJ and the body in ribbons never ran. But this is Davis.

Striding. Efficient. Not like at all like It. Aggressive? Maybe he heard the crinkle of the bottle.
He won’t snap. No matter what-that isn’t him.
She’s always on tenterhooks. Chloe turns slowly, no reason to let him think she is afraid. Paranoia and guilt, that’s all. Maybe he wants to say goodbye again.

“Davis? What is it?”

He looks childlike- innocent down here. A consequence of the dim light wanning his skin more than it should be- the light that had painted him a surrealist portrait of white and red. They should be irreconcilable, the helpless victim of nature and the accomplice of it.

Chloe, he always repeats now, like he needs to say her name aloud to ground himself.

Half-concealed not-guilt burns her cheeks. Chloe looks down and it doesn’t show. Her gaze lingers on his fingers trapping her hand over the flimsy metal veranda, lingers on hers always gravitating to his. He doesn’t look threatening, then he never had to her. The rest of them are a different case entirely.

Chloe forces her eyes down to his-dark and absent the conviction-never the fear, catching the tail end of what he’s saying. “You don’t want to forget this.” He says.
Her gun is loose in his other hand, butt out. It was the first precaution she took after that little attack. Plenty of people would want to kill the devil’s advocate if they knew. The safety’s always on. She hasn’t fired it since Dark Thursday.
By now leaving, she gives him his opening.

“Is it safe for you out there?” Out in Metropolis, for someone less streetwise than he? She’d been doing this for years before there was a knife at her throat. One step above him, just slightly at the height advantage-Chloe feels easy to break.
“I wish I could do more to protect you.” He whispers. If he hadn’t wanted to protect her, they could be harmlessly in love and running away. Or she could have died, stabbed in the throat.
He’d protected her already, once.

“Davis… whoever comes. No repeat performances.”
(She doesn’t like to think that she tainted him, but with her, it had been the first time he hadn’t had even deceptive control of what he’d done since he’d known what he was capable of.)

Davis doesn’t answer and she waits. Promise.

“Yes.” He says, but he doesn’t want to say it.

“There’s no reason to worry. I won’t let them get to you.” She will fire point blank before anyone else crosses the threshold to the basement.
Chloe slides her hand over the handle to where his fingers cradle the inactive trigger. Steadies it in her palm and eases it away from him. He looks down at the wood steps. They will never be free of invisible evidence of blood.

“I wish I could go with you.” he says. “Out there.” Different arguments bubble in her throat. You’d be recognized. She’d told him that.

“It’s just, every time you walk out that door, I just keep thinking that this will be the last time I see you.”
The old Davis would have acknowledged the personal stalker tendencies in that. This one…

“Any biological aspects to this I should know about?” She asks.

“I feel less and less like myself.” Chloe doubts he means a subtle change of character. What next, this-Davis starts to vanish into a Beast that puts its head on her lap and rampages through the few competent superheroes left in Metropolis?
“-when you’re not here to remind me.” comes as an afterthought. She knows what he really meant.
He knows. This makes a small part of her less alone and a bigger part sure that she’ll make the right choice when she walks on out to get him that help.

“We’ll be fine.” She says. That assurance has always been empty.

He doesn’t say anything more, but actions speak louder than words. There’s no aggression to him like this, eyebrows crinkling painfully. He knows she doesn’t think so even in this incarnation.

“In case we’re not.” Davis knows how to speak the words gently enough that she doesn’t want to run. He invades what’s left of her space and pressing his lips to hers, brief and hard. She has no time to react. When it ends her throat feels dry and empty.
“I love you. I won’t stop.” He doesn’t look down, eyes level with hers. He’d said it before. Then he had nothing to lose. Now she thinks she does. Maybe she is getting a do-over.

“Davis-what is this?”

“I--” he bites his lip, and as inappropriately drawn to the fullness she sees there, she listens. “Must have rehearsed this a dozen times. It didn’t come out right. Braniac. Getting away. None of this matters like knowing what we feel, now. That’s what I count on, not anything else. Even if the-road ends here.”
Another one of the signs. Chloe can’t be amused because he looks so sincere.

He might have said that before (dozens of times), but he’s never completely closed the space, the last two steps vanishing in a moment. Chloe feels the gun tumbling from her fingers and falling heavy on the first step, tumbling through the gap. Doesn’t follow it with her gaze.

“I thought what happened, destroyed everything but… there’s something here still. It’s not going to change. Some part of you…I feel it.” His eyes are level with hers, drift to her lips when she wets them. She’d never thought she’d see that half smile again. Chloe scrubs her hand across her mouth in an unconscious protection. A parody of thought.

Davis does a forgotten thing. He touches her. His fingers run along her hand in the gentlest of contacts, pulling it away from her lips. He outlines them as if he had time at all, his thumb lingering on the lower one. Davis had always been tactile, though pdas hadn’t been his way of life.
He’d kissed her something like that the first time, one bitter fiancé ago and she’d stood alone in that alley, going hot and cold in guilt. Chloe knows for certain that she won’t be getting her little mission done for the next two hours, even if it’s just because she’s gone to lock herself in her closet to hyperventilate. He actually wants her. Now.
She can’t breathe.

“Davis…” Whatever signal pathways her hormones are activating between her legs, the lowest common denominator is it’s not all that simple. When was the last time she’d taken the pill? A year ago?
He draws his hand away. Hers wavers on his shoulder in a gesture that should be friendly, but just isn’t. We’ve talked about this. I don’t want to talk about it any more.

“Tell me it’s just me.” Davis’s voice is a little deeper than she’s used to hearing. Nerves? “I’ll stop.” He murmurs, lips tracing lightly at the pulse of her neck. Her heart feels like it’s going to rattle out of her chest. That has always been the answer.

The second kiss is gentler, somehow more passionate. He draws her down, warmth scalding on the surface of her lips. The ragged ends of her nails catch in his jacket. She can’t feel her feet on the step anymore, and she realizes he’s picked her up with as much effort as it would take her to pull a book from a shelf. Her arms wrap around his neck instinctively. She’s always been afraid of falling far.

One step. Another. Unsteady. He walks them down the steps backwards, the human way and she’s still astonished at the speed. She laughs breathlessly as he stops halfway down, tracing the irregular bumps of the vertebrae in his neck with shell-shocked fingers. This part of him is so human it seems like a lie to call him anything else.

They’re not moving anymore, but her hands do that for her, throwing his jacket to the floor with the dull slap of fabric. He pulls her to him lips sliding to hers sweet and so deep her hands go still. This makes no sense in context. She wants this.
His hand fists in her hair, unsettling the fuchsia collar at her neck. Chloe feels a surge of white-hot lust, a need for more of the same and oblivion from it all. She kicks the sensible heels off her feet as his palm reaches her back and loosens the belt to her jacket. It flutters to the floor and she steals a breath. She doesn’t have Kryptonian lungs. Maybe this is just another of her fantasies.

Davis stops long enough so she can stand, rubbing her legs together, suddenly cold without him. She’d thought he would take her to what they’d called his bed for so long. It would mean something.
Instead, her bare feet curl on the rug at the center of the room and the barest fission of unease returns to her. When she’d come down here she’d dropped her key in a pool of blood. Had to cover it up somehow. The rug mirrors its origin, scarlet and black lines. Like he’s supposed to mirror what he was made to be.

“We don’t have to do this here, right?” she whispers, breaking the silence with her secret panic. No, not here all of places, a symbol of what she was willing to do. Had Davis consciously chosen it? Had that other side of him?

“Where would be better? We’ll go there.”
It’s his look that changes things- it must be that. Desperate and loving and out of control. She looks at him, at the unfriendly gray cot where she’d let him sit lonely until morning. That’s not what she wants either.

“Nowhere.” For Whom the Bell Tolls; Mr. Kent and after him Clark hated it. It is all shades of gray.

Chloe takes a step forward and kisses Davis like she would have if she hadn’t ever been running. It’s simple, declarative intent and she runs her hands along his arms as if she can pet him into some comfort again.
When he pulls away his voice is rough and hands curl around her wrists. “You’ve got to tell me. I don’t want to make this one of the memories you need to forget.”

It’s a stunning realization, the very simplest one. If she had choose to keep this memory, or let the uglier ones go. She’d keep this.

Chloe lifts her hands to his face, traces the familiar lines blind. Remembers or imagines the blood. Maybe she can let go.
“Forget that. You were never one of them.” He was never a memory, but the force around which they congregated and twisted into something more-into this her. Chloe wonders if that’s a complete truth or the farthest from the lie she knows.

He kisses her palm, watching, and his eyes remind her of another him.
“We’ll take it slow.” (Memories, this may be the best one in a while.) She feels light.

He frees her hands and she slides them past the sensible gray shirt, not wanting to bunch it just because he is easier to feel.

“That sounds fine to me. But are you sure?”
Her skin feels the contrast, smooth heat and neutral grey roughness, the muscled planes of his chest where his breath halts in and out. The she can’t stop it.
Chloe wonders just how much work it would take to get that shirt off. Do Kryptonians have to be so ungodly beautiful? Or literally hot to the touch? He shuts his eyes, and tenses a little, a sound growling in the back of his throat. Not too slow, then.
She is actually more willing to bet he’s up for super speed. She doesn’t stop there, can’t until her hand curves gently around the source of all that warmth.

“Absolutely certain?”

Davis is definitely feeling urgent and she is more than a little warm as to where. Is this too fast? She can’t bring herself to feel guilt, not when his eyelashes brush shut like that, and it is because of her, before she tried to get him that way.

“Chloe...” His voice sounds choked and he seems tense to knock them both over. Some feeling tingles up her spine as his breath stops.

For someone with a pretty non-existent sex life (even when it existed) it’s a signal. She’s 25% terrified (What if he’s perfect and something is just wrong with her?); 75% down with screwing risks because the passage of time for them is the biggest risk of all.

“I just wanted to show you. We don’t have to do it all.” He swallows when she draws her hand back. “I want you.”
She doesn’t answer in words, doesn’t take the step back that it would take to pull off her clothes properly. Ditto. He watches so closely that she thinks his world would hang on this moment if he had any more in it than her.

The trembling in her hands as she slides off her slacks isn’t manufactured. She has old habits, coaching and playacting, and it’s good just to let those go. He’s still holding her and she hasn’t looked away. The remnants of shame wake in her even as he closes the slice of space between them, breath warm and quick. Out of control and wholly hers. Is this the way she wanted him? Is she pulling the strings right?
His arm trails at her side, fingers closed tight. There is only relief at the respite from loneliness. This part is real. She can be lover or prey. No difference.

Davis pushes against her, first tentatively then needily, his body a weight she can’t move anymore than one of the concrete walls around them. Unless she says the word. Chloe leans her forehead against his shoulder, her fingers tracing at the V where she can feel his blood? pound..

His hands cradle her back; the jacket pools under her bare legs like a dress. Davis’s eyes run down the trail the cloth has taken down her thighs, linger on this new territory before dropping prudently to the bright scarlet under her feet. They burn more luminous and darker in this light; she can’t make out the smile in her distorted reflection. It’s there.

She is stripped of guises, still somehow clothed. Not much, a short black shirt she’d never have worn if she was at her old job again, peddling amazing lies at Tess Mercer’s Planet.

“Oh yes.” She says.
He pulls to her, onto him, and she has no balance, one arm over his back. He smothers her mouth and his hands stray down spine, lingering and rubbing at the small cold spots and making her gasp and arch into him.

In the urgency, Chloe’s stranglehold on the handbag over her shoulder is loosened by his careful fingers. Davis’s hand falls against her purse, the few life changing cells in that water bottle, like it wouldn’t have if she had been able to walk away. She stiffens, mouth flush against his. Breath loud in her ears. One is going to be more important.

“Chloe, hey. Are you..? You’re not sure.”
A tiny absent part of her likes that his breath is rough. Davis holds her by the shoulders, squinting in that way that tries to see and is cute without trying. He is less sure than her fantasies.

He’s let the purse fall now. She should go finish that, come back when they have a chance.

What she says is, “Maybe we could slow down.”
She closes her eyes, lets it go at the gentle, deliberate brush of lips at the corner of her mouth. Familiar, but she’d been dreaming of doing it before. She can’t not let him in again. He’s trying to make this work.

Minutes later she is tugging down on his hand, overcome by gentleness more cathartically than force.
The thick weave of the rug presses patterns into her knees. She leans into his shoulder, completely in his arms, bare knees pressing roughly over his clothed ones. This doesn’t hurt him.

Chloe slides the shirt away for something-even ground-and this doesn’t mean she’s going fast. He swallows, highlighting the spot above his collarbone to her searching eyes. Muscle tenses under her fingertips and his skin looks painfully white instead of reddened and painted over by blood. Half of it makes her hurt, that even now he can be beautiful. That he can still look at her this way after he’s been locked in darkness with only a few old articles of hers for company.

She doesn’t know what she’s doing; it’s been instinct for her, once stroking his back through his shirt in and alley to comfort him and wanting more after she hadn’t even thought before tazering Jimmy in the back. She rearranges her fingers, just brushing over his nipple, the air suddenly hot and thick when he hardens all over. Pain. Somehow just what she wanted.
Davis makes an uncontrolled sound in the back of his throat like she is pulling something painful out of him. He shifts over her, settles her back steady on the red red rug. Her skin feels warmer than the thick cotton or—anything has the right to make her. She digs her fingers into his knee. What had she planned for now, a slow teasing seduction, or this?

Big firm hands knot the cloth under her and pull it away before she can think. A conjurer’s trick. Her hair spills out from under the shirt over her forehead and eyes. He hasn’t said much and there is the question he won’t ask. She shivers a little, distracted at the slow lustful? movement of his hand against her knee and the stillness in his eyes. Stutters out the answer like so much air.

“You matter to me.” More than she’ll tell him. Now. This will always be more than just releasing the tension he creates by his very existence.

Chloe does want to make this about something more than biological ticking clocks and the slow crumbling of her barriers. In case they get nothing more. She kisses the slightest asymmetrical line of his forehead, pleasant warmth curdling in the pit of her stomach. Absent of speech, his lips just brush against her skin. Just a careful exhale of breath as she kisses his cheek, forehead, eyebrow, jaw. Not tense now, not set, not hard with fear. This should transcend words. He’s seen her lies, knows them as intimately as she’s trying to learn him now.

Her mind is abuzz with snippets of words and a—tender kind of pain. Something is moving under his skin, and for once it is not darkness. Her greatest tragedy is she feels she can change him, not just the human part that held onto her, felt guilt and hated himself enough that when she killed him he saw her as his savior. To her Davis will always be the centerpiece; and his ‘true nature’ the flawed camouflage that tries to push out of his skin.

His mouth tilts her head back, harder now, a tease of moisture. Careful, careful teeth across sensitized epidermis. She cranes her neck back, the rough imprint of cloth across naked skin. A sign of submission and a fire racing through her skin.
This wouldn’t be so bad, would it? If they don’t go to the doctor, they can still exist. He’ll trust her and they can run together, half a world away where Clark can find them in moments. Where Clark will find them in moments.

Think now. Stop now. Think.
Chloe nudges her head against Davis, skin tingling and protesting when touch tapers to just feeling his heat over her. Her mouth opens to say something, maybe when he talks she can think less. All that comes out is a murmur. She bites into her lip, not the best idea now or the best because his fingers are gentle and there and suddenly she isn’t abusing it any more. She whispers she won’t break and they can have this and they’ll get away; she half believes. It’s his eyes. His damnable eyes always asking.

“I just can’t stop thinking.” She breathes. She wants to so much.

Chloe tells herself she has a modicum of control, still. The ability to show him, to make him react, to cut him free. She rubs her knee against his back, skin on skin and his fingers glide there, knee to thigh and so close that she wants to move and go very still. Feel.

“Worried?”
Davis whispers and for someone with Kryptonian strength she can barely feel him. Her skin prickles in the wake of the not-quite touch. She’s more worried he’ll stop.

“No. I’m—what do you mean?”
His tone isn’t (intended to be) dark and seductive, just hesitating-matter of fact and she realized he’s not talking about now but disappearing to the rest of the world. Why does he always have to know the questions to ask?

“There are just a lot of loose ends.”
And danger, don’t forget the danger associated with going to Metropolis’s underbelly without the help of the contacts she can rely on. She is going to erase her identity, remove the paper trail that tied Chloe Sullivan to whoever she has become now

“Maybe I can help you.” Davis volunteers, hopeful. Oh, he’d make it easy somehow. He’d make it so easy she’d forget to think straight. His thumb is drawing circles on the inside of her knee and he only has to touch her a little more.
Chloe should be thinking on the mountain of lies she’ll invariably construct.

“Davis, unless you can charm my Beatle off a bridge along with a suicide note about your death, no.”
(It is a good enough plan, if cheesy. Clark is as subtle as a brick.) If she tears her eyes up and tells Clark it was all to protect him he’ll never stop coming after them. If Davis could change her that much, then isn’t dying is the same?
So, she’ll have to hurt Lois and about everyone else who knows her until the real solution and she can have both parts of her life. She only hopes she can hold onto Davis then.

“What?” Davis closes his eyes and the floodgates of that expression open up again. She’s no angel.

(From a distant viewpoint Chloe understands this. She’s setting up herself with him in opposition to everything she has been able to hold onto until now. Maybe forever. And for a guy who literally glowed vulnerability when she believed he couldn’t be a killer…)

“Why?” he asks.

“Clark had to take me home after... I was pretty broken up after you died on me.”

“I won’t do it again.” Davis’s voice is thick with the emotion. Conviction.

“The best way is let me take care of you.”
Davis doesn’t want a guardian. He wants to be with her. And he’d proven himself perfectly capable of taking care of her in the past.

Chloe draws a small pattern on his shoulder, catching his gaze again. “And if you want--- you can come with me, out of here for a while. Just us.” Maybe the dark underbelly of Metropolis will be enough to hide them both for a little while. He won’t have to go mad with panic about the danger she’s in. Won’t have to leave this place and transverse the streets all on his own.

Chloe leans up and rubs a hand across his chest, cups his jaw. It’s quivering and his eyes are so open. When did they get from decidedly not-talking to getaway plans?

“I want to make you happy.” He whispers.
But somewhere in the interim he’s started believing that he can only do that if he hides away in some dark hole to wait for his destiny. It felt harder for her, hand against that glass and Clark had told her what the Kryptonite must have felt like for him like burning at one layer and then another layer of successive skin, leaving a quivering mass of nerves and cells and rawness under the guise of a latticework of black veins.
Why does the thought still hurt?

She lunges up for his mouth, just to make it easy, misses and hits his eyelid. He catches the hint enough that she’s flat on her back seconds later. The drench of cold at just the thought of him and death melts away under bold fingers. He kisses her again, erratic and it’s punctuated with reassuring murmurs.
He won’t let it hurt anyone else. They’ll find a place. He’ll always love her. And oh, he will do everything. She can just let go, let go and they are going to be so happy. A little single-minded, but he’s here isn’t he?

He just moved and he is heavy and she’s got to thank whoever the Kryptonians worship for making them. All he has to do was shift like that… She digs his hands into his hair and clenches her legs unevenly around his waist.
We’ll make it, he says, and part of her asks how that idealistic thought is connected to him making her like this.

“Davis. We will.” And when the heat of the moment passes… what then? Clark is still some savior of humankind and Davis is so right there. (Chloe Sullivan loves feelings when she can deal. But right now. Oh. Oh.)

“Yes. I-Yes. Please, shut up, Davis.”

In her haze of mounting something she realizes he is wearing jeans and they’re tighter and he’s not up to doing this the proper way now. She doesn’t move because doing that means she has to lose contact. This is not the time for this and it is and she just needs to touch all of him or as much as she possibly can.

Somewhere this got much messier, and his tongue in her mouth and he tastes like-what does anyone taste like really- and when her tongue skims along his teeth he gives that back. He’s breathing (she can taste it) harder than she thought was possible, breathing like he’ll never stop.

Davis braces his hands on the rope-like tassels on the carpet. They just fall away like they were never attached at all. Maybe something else would work better. She would suggest the hard floor but there is a chance his nails would gauge the concrete and Clark would be suspicious enough about her disappearance without some concrete proof of ‘the other Kryptonian’. She relocates his hands to close around each other. He can’t break his own bones.

She drops a hand to bring him closer, circles her hand too slow to be deft really and he starts to really move into and out of her grip. This is new. He doesn’t say anything, but she can read him now more than ever and she doesn’t see just blind pleasure there. She’s not a role to him-but herself. She can swear that when they are not looking at each other it all goes still. His eyes are a still place, piercing and wondering and grounding as when she first looked at him. Davis saw her and maybe he still does. She can’t move. When she loses her concentration her hand closes around empty air. He is moving in her. She can feel cloth against her, but it’s him.

Then there is just the sound of his roughening breathing and the soapy, clean male scent of him under all those clothes. Her soap, she brought it down that first night, thick with the scent from showering when she told herself she just had to think about him and Clark and her choices for that night. She’d tentatively hugged him and when he’d relaxed enough, she’d packed most of her bath things down here in the creaky shower. He’d found this one.

She feels fulfilled, somehow, at a detail no one else will ever know but her. He could just let it go right now, before she reaches orgasm and she’d like it. No one will have him just like this. Then he starts to hit something really good and she thinks she might just die if she doesn’t. She arches up, half sitting, into his lap and he is perfect…
Then he does go still, a (polite) oath stuttering out of him. His knees take a hit on the carpet. Her head spins and Chloe feels completely out of it.

He’s not moving. She’s not quite dead, but everything throbs, the shadow of a bruise.

“I am so sorry.” He says, shifts away from her, on his hands and knees on the carpet. He fumbles, not looking at her and she can’t talk. Everything aches terribly and without him it’s just freezing.

“Sorry. I can’t.” He says.

“It’s okay.” Maybe all males are the same. “This has happened to me before. It’s no biggie.”
Then awkwardly. “Davis-Did you…”
Did you come already, she was going to ask. Davis had turned away and she couldn’t tell. That question irritated Jimmy even after he had agreed to work on what was missing in their relationship. What they could anyway. Something is to be said for when for a girl who is too honest. She’d never talked about it after that.

Davis, mouth open, takes a look at her, disheveled and comforting. His shoulders start to shake, just a little before he schools them into a reassuring smile. Kisses her again. And-oh hello.

“No, Chloe, I had to get the…” Condom. Oh great. Now she just volunteered information about that little part of her life.

“Condom?”

Chloe shakes her head. Part of it is being somewhat questionably protected, what are hormone things to…whatever he is. But she needs to feel all of him in her. Consuming. Close. Dangerous. No barriers, not now.

She watches him, watches his fingers, not exactly as assured as he had been holding an oxygen mask or holding people still when she’d gone to meet him on his on hours. Unsteady, more like when she’d watched him clean the blood off the floors without meeting his eyes. Why is it always blood?

He has to smile at her, has to brush the hair out of her face like she’s something special before settling over her again. She almost resents it. She can’t feel so heavy or grave-not when he looks free like this. Maybe her honesty goes a long way, too.

“You’re ---beautiful.” Like another memory. “And Chloe, I promise. You’ll know.”
She could be caught here forever, kissing him, mouth tasting his smile. The fly of his jeans catches in the cotton, frail lace she wears. Then his hand brushes that down, closes against her hip. He thrusts shallow, desperate too, rubs slick against her thigh, her last preparation. His eyes are reddening with unbearable heat, an attempt at control. So this is how it happens. A jolt, warm and there so very perfect and she’s never needed anything quite like for this to be real.

It’s a swift, almost predatory movement and he enters her easily. It doesn’t hurt like she thought it would, maybe because the threat of him is something she’s tries to pull in. Smooth and rock-solid and unpredictable and oh so like she couldn’t have imagined before he came into her life. Chloe holds his shoulders for leverage and starts to move against him, moves him in her with a shuttering breath. She’s been ready for what seems like forever.

It’s his forehead against hers, fingers stumbling patterns across her skin. His body moving against hers, completely hers, for the first time and she feels a clenching in the core of her. His knees hook over hers and his smile burns away to an expression that could be agony.

Davis rocks and pushes hard, holds her tight to him. Loosens enough that she has time to show him where, eyes watering and locked on his. There and again, that’s it. He doesn’t ask, doesn’t break her out of the solid rush of the sensation because he has to know. He slams a little farther in; moving past a particularly sensitive bunch of nerves and a moan builds in her throat. She throbs, uncomfortably intense so she needs to find out.
She tugs him forward, arms all the way around him, struggles with her grip until he is deeper, more prominent, blocking out everything else. ‘Yes, there’ spills past her lips anyway. This bold isn’t her, but is now, trying to possible give him more access and why didn’t she cheerlead so she could do splits? Something about this seems to spurn him on.

Chloe whispers oh over and over and she’s never felt this moving her into something mindless. She wouldn’t be able to stay still if she was strapped down. She sucks in a thick breath, finds the small smile in Davis’s eyes again and slings a tight leg over his hip. A few flyaway strands of his hair slap his forehead when he forces his eyes completely open to meet hers.

There’s something breath-stopping about it. He’s getting close. Instead of saying something like ‘oh fuck’ his fingers thread through her own. Clasp. With his strength, he could grind her bones to powder in the throes of passion. She squeezes more and doesn’t let go.

His breath has sped so that it’s echoing down here. She sounds like she’s dying. Clark won’t hear, but if he was standing right in the room she wouldn’t notice.
Davis wants something else. He throws his head back a little, on his hands and knees for seconds to get it together. Then rolls her to her side gently, without moving out of her. It’s a good thing because she’s lost touch with the surroundings. Her focus is narrowed to him and how long it takes him to settle her down. Start the rhythm again.

She looks up at him, the roof, the cobwebs in the corner, blinking up like a stunned thing. The light is stronger here. This is better for him, his face tells her. The better to see you with.

“I love this.” Not yet I love you. So close.
She trails a hand along the swallow in his throat. His hand slides between her neck and the floor, and keeps it from hurting just trying to reach him. Reach him she does, bites into his shoulder at the pleasure of having him inside her, warm and good and real when he gets frantic again.

He moves her and her back is finally free in the open air. Chloe’s at a loss of what to do with control. She presses her knuckles on the ground by his head, holds his grip, tries to pick it up where he left off. Nothing has changed and he’s still here and before she knows any self-consciousness has flown right out of her head. If only the thoughts could do that.

Harder, she whispers, voice thick, hoping she hasn’t set her set herself up for that many more consequences. She’s human and he’s so intense. She’s never going to let him go even after she’s through with getting him cured even if he can’t trust in the truth of this again. It could be easy. So… easy... She’d just have to give it up. Just leave it behind.

She shoves at Davis a little, warmed even then by the way he pulls her to his chest to smooth her landing under him. Sweat trickles down her collarbone. Her spine feels bruised against the hard weave, but it’s less than nothing to her now.

If he’s scared she can’t see it. He pushes out anything but the heat inside her, inside her… and his eyes are a holding hers, even now, when it’s a struggle not to break into a flurry of blinks and hide. She’s looked for him- and in this violentmadcrazytrance, clenching tight, being moved- there can be no one else but him.

She comes hard, feels it everywhere at once, like being thrown from midair and here begins the descent to Earth. She shudders, claws at his back, trying to find some sort of hold onto reality. Even the light is so black now. Chloe can’t see, but touches his sweat and blood under her fingernails and his skin is closing up already anyway. The pleasure swamps her so she clings more fiercely- hears her voice climb an octave, and she didn't know she was making a sound. He- she’s not thinking words now- breathes hard against her ear; he feels that. If he were anyone else he’d have marks on him like he was wrestling with an angry lynx.

So he sinks onto her and she only draws blood in the places she already hasn’t. She’s a willing captive, trapped by thick warmth in his eyes. Free now and she doesn’t have to tell him not to hold back because this is the farthest from holding back he could be.

It’s too much, too much, but she can’t just stop feeling it now. Davis’s eyes blur on her and his free hand fists on itself because it’d break the tassels, the concrete and (her). His other hand is in hers and the pressure is not more than she can take.

The sound in her ears is blown out and everything is ringing out in a distracting tintinnabulation. She wonders if she’ll ever pry her nails out of his skin. She could settle for just breathing. When he doesn’t stop she thinks she never will again.

Release is approaching for him too. She hopes it’s soon and that it never ends because she doesn’t know if it’ll happen again. When Davis does she knows, his fingers tightening almost imperceptivity in her own. His lips hit hers and her eyes can’t focus on what his look like. There’s a dart of pain almost as strong as the pleasure had been.

Then she feels him shake, spilling himself into her. Alien DNA and she doesn’t know how long ago she took the protection but they’re going to do this and if she ends up pregnant with deadly babies she’s too far gone to think of it now. She still can’t hear Davis make a sound, feels the warm pressure of his lips on the side of her face and his mouth forming words. She can’t make the appropriate response.

The pain is ebbing and it gets better because my god is he warm, and something about the residual pleasure starts to offset the pain into something softer but no less powerful. She doesn’t stop, grinds closer into the slow staccato of him. Feels completely relaxed. Safe. Protected. Wonderful.

The exhale of breath is the first thing she hears, sticking in her throat and then leaving her. She feels like she rode out some wave and just barely managed to bob up again. His heartbeat hasn’t calmed much, either, but she loosens her fingers from his hand, tries to rub it into calmness.

Dark lashes flutter open to hers, and Davis catches her looking the instant she starts. His eyes still consume her, but she’s seen everything cresting in them. The hunger for that again frightens her.

The endorphins are still swimming in the back of her head. Chloe hopes her smile doesn’t look medicated. That was good for me, was it good for you?
Then on impulse, she kisses his neck. Davis groans a little, head sinking back down again. His fingers brush softly against her back. Ow.

“We should have been more careful.” He whispers, all medical concern. She feels like she can’t hide in more ways than one.

She’d been more than eager to have it all. To push at his boundaries and be pushed back. In the moment, being like that hadn’t seemed odd to her at all, not with how he felt, but in hindsight she’d been demanding and more than a little manic in getting what she wanted. She hadn’t intended to make him feel inhuman again.

Davis shakes his head before the thought materializes.

“It’s not you. I really needed you.” He says, doesn’t whisper it out now. “I always do.”
Chloe honestly doesn’t know how to answer.

Realizing, he tugs at her hair. Davis blows out a long breath, a comically exaggerated whine.
“But when I said you’d know, I still wanted to last more than a minute. You could’ve tried not to thwart me.”
Chloe settles down again, mumbling. “We didn’t agree I wasn’t going to push you.”

He still wants to get her and her bruises off the floor. Chloe wants nothing more than to curl up, lips at his neck and hold him for a while where she doesn’t have to think, doesn’t have to do anything at all.

Davis puts a shaky hand on the floor and lifts himself out of her, the dazedly open look not out of his eyes. She wants to squeeze at him, lifts a limp hand to his face. When he stays still she clings to his shoulders, slippery and shining like they had been wet with blood. Makes it so he has to move them both like one fused piece.

She can smell what they just did and this is so beautifully messy. So much more than she thought. So much more of a sacrilege. At least the hateful, coarse nature of the carpet had its use.
Davis doesn’t slip, swings her up into his arms, puts her down his threadbare gray sheet. She shifts back so he can fit too, at least for the few hours before she leaves again.

Davis slips down on her, taking off his shoes and she is perversely scared that he is going to start this up another way and no oh she can’t take it. This is the first time ever… He settles over her, head against her chest, black lace sticking to his cheek. Somehow the clasp has come undone.

Chloe blows out air through her mouth, quirking up to look at his face. Sees a little of the old Davis peeking through, the affectionate tilt of an eyebrow and the smile he can’t cover with his hand.
He’ll listen.

“Davis, I’ve got to tell you something….”
Well. It isn’t exactly a fantasy. As close to him as she feels right now, she can’t tie it all up with a bow.
Davis, I’ve got to tell you something. I want you to go for the treatment.

The decision to be with him and her yearning to stop the thing in him are two separate things. Yet, Chloe’s the first to admit that the timing looks suspect. She’d only started to come onto him when he got close. What would that look like, whoring herself off to distract him so she could get what she really wanted? He just had to get into her space.
(Chloe remembers feeling violated by Clark that way by just a couple of words in front of a table of crowded people. It’s that much uglier when you let it go all the way.) It can break you.

Chloe doesn’t say it. Doesn’t want to ruin this for Davis- not when he’s free of the tension and fear and helplessness for once. He’ll find out later. The purse is four yards away, hidden from his sight. In a few hours maybe Dr. Hamilton will still be waiting.

“You’ve got me. This is easy.” Chloe says, her voice comes back, strong. “We’re doing this every night whether you want to or not.”
He presses his mouth deep into her shoulder, as if to communicate that won’t be a problem. (If he can still trust her after all this.)

Davis picks, picks at the lace and here they are, nothing between them but one thing. The biggest thing.
She knows what Lois would say. Boyfriend problems, seduce it out of him. Half of Chloe jumps at the challenge, the other part of her reminds her that he deserves better.

Later, Chloe stretches under him, back aching from the stiffness of the floor. It is an alien feeling-the tickling weight of his head between her breasts, his ribcage moving in and out in exhausted breath. Maybe it is a testament to them. Maybe he will sleep unlike all those other times, pacing in the basement, afraid. In the silence she starts to feel alone again.

Chloe runs her fingers through the back of his hair, hands shaking. It’s not like she chooses to. It’s not like she’s ever been able to choose where she loves, however much she’s wanted to.
She bites back a laugh because all she’s really done is exacerbated the situation, proved that she wants him more than anything she’s ever wanted in her life. No need to sound bipolar.

Chloe doesn’t hear much out of him an hour later, a soft, unintelligible murmur when she shifts out from under him.
Even as she’s half out of bed, his arm stretches across the tiny space, fingers lingering on her cheek. She wants nothing more than to stay with him and whatever he feels. Logic tells her even that will be gone unless she’s willing to take the preventive measures.

She kisses him on the forehead and goes to pick up her clothes. On the cot, Davis breathes out, hand rubbing the space she left behind.

“Do you have to go now?” He slurs, voice thick with sleep.

She tries to hide the fact that she wants to go tense as a board. After a moments thought she climbs back in next to him, jacket over her knees, trying hard not to blush at the gently possessive way he leans her close, breathes out relief. She can have this a little longer.

“I can get ready.” He says.
Chloe’s not going to go to the dangerous underground where she needs to be protected. Yet, she all but said he could come.

She should tell him the truth. But she doesn’t want to destroy the illusion of happiness just yet. She has to.
“I’m going to the—”

“To see the doctor.” He responds, even before looking at the contents of the purse she’s just upended.

She hadn’t counted on this. He’d heard everything, the crinkle of the bottle and the drop pauses in her admittedly rampant emotions.

“What did you say?” She hears his smooth, too-deep intake of breath. She can’t tell what he’s thinking.

“The hearing. It’s something I’m starting to get.”

“You didn’t say anything.” Her voice is not as steady as his, she pulls back, disentangles herself. Just minutes ago she was worrying she’d betrayed him.

“Chloe, can you honestly say you wanted me to?”
She can’t.

“Is that why you followed me?” She looks deep into his eyes, scans them and the twist of his mouth, not sure what that means.

“No.” he whispers. “I just--- needed to know. I know you want to save me.”

That’s enough for her, maybe it is for him. She lets his arm come around her again, ever conscious that he hasn’t said a word about it either way. Davis doesn’t let her go and he doesn’t want to leave her or this place. He can stop her as easily as she can blink.

“Please listen, Davis. He can help.” She’s got to try, the unspoken argument already on her lips. She needs this more than he does.

“You said yourself, it’s getting harder, it doesn’t matter how you feel. How can we have this if we’re not even sure how long it’ll last?” Chloe blinks fast. If only it was just the exhaustion of just having to say so much. She knows how it was like to lose him in a moment and it must be worse watching him gradually disappear.

“I won’t leave you again.” He says, voice carefully neutral. “Don’t take the DNA.” Chloe’s heart plummets.

“I want to live with you and die with you and I can’t do it like this.” She says finally. She can’t. She will, but…
What can she really do, beg and plead until it falls on deaf ears, make him when he’d promise her anything? Would it even matter? She can love him but she can’t change him, isn’t that the old adage?
At least think about it a little before you break my heart.

“No, Chloe.”

“I see.” She says, deceptively soft, looks back down at Davis’s hand, on her like a shackle. She feels frail again.

His fingers move up, stroke her cheek, intimate as a kiss. She tells herself to just look away but she can’t. Or won’t.
Davis’s eyes don’t look obsessive. She sees all of him, all of him that’s she’s ever known there and she can’t regret falling in deeper by the second. Not when she has that.

“I mean you might want to take the subject in person.” Davis whispers, nudging his forehead against hers. “We’ll go see him if it means that much. I want this, too.”

She kisses him over the forgotten water bottle and realizes she never wanted to leave.

Murphy’s law tells Chloe that everything falls apart. What it never says is that if you have the courage to bring them back together, the pieces fit again.







[Years later, when being together doesn’t necessarily mean blood soaked floors and bloody bits of Clark, they start up Isis again. Clark still hasn’t completely forgiven her for the suicide note. He’ll get over it.

Davis is exactly himself, counseling kids and better that her at it. Who else could claim to have beat out the Universes Ultimate destructive being with a little help from science? It’s not a lonely existence at all- a little crowded at their shared room; and there will always be an excess of love there. Moreso now than ever.

Emil Hamilton drops by once in a while, now the world’s only doctor with a mastery of Kryptonian genetic code. It’s a regular occurrence.

Chloe rubs a hand over one of her looser work shirts, already getting tight. This is her bi-weekly checkup. Everything is in order, he says. No deadly monster babies. Just two perfectly normal ones showing up on the sonogram. (Davis had gone pale at the news, a reflex born of expecting something dark to spring out of him. Then he’d seen them- just two small 3d images and his eyes had just glowed.)

“You made the right choice.” Emil says out of the blue. “If you hadn’t brought him in, I would have looked at the cells and given up hope.”

Emil delivers that compliment that same way he delivered their test results. Deadpan.
“Your husband is right. You really are quite remarkable.”

A smile quirks over the side of Chloe’s mouth. If only he’d known it was Davis’s idea. ]