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.
Showing posts with label unresolved fic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unresolved fic. Show all posts
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
dusted in ash
Reccing Notes: This will make you hurt very much. About the beauty/beast aspect of Chloe/Davis and Davis being caught inside Doomsday, a cycle of rage and pain and brief moments of lucidity that he can never stop.
by restlessme at her livejournal
177 words, pg-13, doomsday
Cool hand brushes his face and he leans into the touch, craves the tough so much he could scream.
He gasps in breaths through lungs that are far unused to the actions.
The room darkens around him with quickening breaths that leave his mind spinning in dizzying circles
(like when he was younger and pretended it was just a game).
Heart beats with new blood, hot blood that burns his veins as he struggles to sit.
Fires bloom to life around him, edge closer but he feels no heat; no pain.
He's so unsure about what has happened, so confused as to what kind of monster he is.
Monster trapped deep inside him, monster making him think sick thoughts (he's not sure if it's the monster or him).
Cool hand brushes his face and he leans into the touch, craves the tough so much he could scream.
Would scream, does scream because the touch is so cooling it burns into his soul.
She sobs above him, tears stinging open cuts upon his face that stitch themselves back together.
His lips open, struggle to speak through vocal chords that were moments ago blackened by ash (dusted with age).
"Chloe", he gasps, eyes flashing red as she sadly smiles.
by restlessme at her livejournal
177 words, pg-13, doomsday
Cool hand brushes his face and he leans into the touch, craves the tough so much he could scream.
He gasps in breaths through lungs that are far unused to the actions.
The room darkens around him with quickening breaths that leave his mind spinning in dizzying circles
(like when he was younger and pretended it was just a game).
Heart beats with new blood, hot blood that burns his veins as he struggles to sit.
Fires bloom to life around him, edge closer but he feels no heat; no pain.
He's so unsure about what has happened, so confused as to what kind of monster he is.
Monster trapped deep inside him, monster making him think sick thoughts (he's not sure if it's the monster or him).
Cool hand brushes his face and he leans into the touch, craves the tough so much he could scream.
Would scream, does scream because the touch is so cooling it burns into his soul.
She sobs above him, tears stinging open cuts upon his face that stitch themselves back together.
His lips open, struggle to speak through vocal chords that were moments ago blackened by ash (dusted with age).
"Chloe", he gasps, eyes flashing red as she sadly smiles.
Monday, February 22, 2010
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.
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.)
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.)
Monday, January 25, 2010
long time coming
Reccing Notes: You know what I think is awesome? All that simmering emotion in the Abyss kiss. You know what else? Seeing Chloe examine her feelings about it HONESTLY-with a twist.
by keeperofthestars at squeeka quack
1158 words, pg/pg-13, abyss
There was nothing spontaneous about the kiss.
Save your soul…
There was nothing spontaneous about the kiss.
It didn’t just happen.
And as Davis touched her face, ran his thumb over the curve of her cheekbone, Chloe realized she knew that more clearly than she knew her own name. Staring up into his deep brown eyes, the blonde realized that this moment had been a long time coming.
From the first time she’d seen him, walking through a cloud of billowing smoke, to every time after, they’d been moving closer and closer to this point. Everything between them had been leading up to this moment.
Standing so close to him, breathing in his scent, Chloe realized that at that moment, she wanted nothing more than to press her lips against his. There were no thoughts of Jimmy, of their engagement or their impending nuptials.
There was just Davis Bloom.
Davis with his mysterious past. Davis who looked at her in a way her fiancé never did. Or ever could. Davis whom she had some sort of connection too. Whom she was drawn to despite her best efforts to erase him from her mind.
When he leaned forward, Chloe felt herself move as well. There was no hesitation, no second thoughts; there was just the promise of Davis’ lips finally, blissfully, against her own.
The distance between them was shorter than she’d thought, and before she knew it, their lips were pressed together. Her eyes had fallen shut as she desperately tried to take in everything she could before the inevitable happened.
His lips were firm against hers, but somehow, his kiss was still soft. And the hand that had stroked her cheek had slid around to the back of her neck. The tips of his fingers, slightly calloused, were like a soothing balm against her skin.
But most of all, Chloe was blown away by just how perfect, how right kissing Davis felt.
Never once had Jimmy kissed her like that, been able to make her feel like that.
And there it was - the inevitable.
Jimmy Olsen.
Reality had hit her all too soon. And the moment she thought of her fiancé, he was all she could think about. Behind her closed eyes, his face was the only thing she could see. Specifically, his sweet, kind face as he beamed at her proposal acceptance.
But no matter how much she loved Jimmy, because she really did, she didn’t love him the way she’d loved Clark. Didn’t love him the way she thought she could love Davis.
Despite her feelings, despite how Davis made her feel, this just wasn’t right. She couldn’t, wouldn’t do that to her fiancé.
Far too soon, she broke their kiss. From the look on his face, Chloe knew that the abruptness had shocked Davis. And the stunned look on his handsome features was almost too much for her to handle.
Instead of looking at him, Chloe stared at the ground as she pushed a few hairs out of her eyes. With her thoughts gathered, she lifted her eyes to his. “Ok, stop. Umh. This connection, Davis, it was, it was never this.” Unable to look at him, she turned away.
Even as the words had spilled out of her mouth, Chloe knew they were a lie.
Before you’re too far gone…
She should have just climbed on her bike then and there. She should have driven out of the alley as quickly as she possibly could.
But she didn’t.
She couldn’t.
“I understand.” Davis’ voice was hesitant, but it wasn’t apologetic. Chloe’s heart begged her to turn, to face him. But her mind told her no.
“But I am not ready to let you go.” The honesty, pure and simple, caused her to turn around. When she did, her eyes went directly to his. There was no shame, no embarrassment.
On his part.
Or hers.
“I will wait for as long as it takes.” As he spoke, Davis gently shook his head, as if to emphasize his words. And even though what he was saying touched her, it was the heartbreaking honesty in his eyes that held her captive. Looking into them, Chloe felt as if she could see the very depths of his soul.
She’d never once looked into Jimmy’s eyes like that.
And she was beginning to wonder if she ever would.
Or if she even wanted too.
“You know where to find me.” Davis didn’t wait for her to respond. Didn’t wait for her too acknowledge him in any way. Instead, he just turned and walked down the alleyway.
He’d just laid his heart on the table before her, and all Chloe could do was watch him walk away.
Before nothing can be done…
As Davis’ steps took him further and further down the alley, Chloe felt her heart begin to pound. With each beat, she felt the organ slam against her ribs. She couldn’t help but think that this was what dying of a broken heart must feel like.
The next thing she knew, her bright yellow helmet slipped from her grasp. Before it could hit the ground, before its plastic-y thud could echo through the alleyway, she was running.
Towards Davis.
Away from Jimmy.
Away from what was sure to be a safe and happy life.
There was no such guarantee with the man she was running towards. There was no real guarantee of anything with Davis Bloom. But the short kiss she’d shared with him felt more right than all of her fiancé’s kisses combined.
“Davis, I-” Her voice was desperate, pleading. And Chloe knew she’d said everything with those two words.
There was no going back.
When he turned around, Davis didn’t look surprised or relieved. No, his deep eyes were full of determination as he took the few steps that would close the distance between Chloe and himself.
The moment his hands were on her face, Chloe crushed her mouth against his, twisting the front of his jacket in her fists.
The kiss was painful. Vicious.
He was claiming her, marking her, as his own. And Chloe gave herself freely.
His fingers twisted through her short, blonde hair. Hers stayed balled up in his jacket, as if she were afraid to let him go. The moment, though harsh and unrelenting, was so fragile. Chloe felt, if she were to let him go, for a fraction of a second, that Davis would be gone. Forever. And now that she had him, she couldn’t lose him.
Jimmy was the furthest thing from her mind.
Jimmy. As soon as Chloe realized she wasn’t thinking of him, he was all she could think about.
Once again, the inevitable had some all too soon.
And just as quickly as her daydream, fantasy, whatever it was, had began, it was over.
There was no Davis. He was gone. Back to wherever he’d been before finding her in the alley way.
Her helmet was still in her hands, and she hadn’t moved an inch.
As she climbed onto her bike, Chloe’s chest began to tighten painfully. She tried to tell herself it was just heartburn. And not heartbreak. But as she revved the bike into gear and sped down the highway back to Smallville, to Jimmy, a few stray tears slid down her cheeks.
by keeperofthestars at squeeka quack
1158 words, pg/pg-13, abyss
There was nothing spontaneous about the kiss.
Save your soul…
There was nothing spontaneous about the kiss.
It didn’t just happen.
And as Davis touched her face, ran his thumb over the curve of her cheekbone, Chloe realized she knew that more clearly than she knew her own name. Staring up into his deep brown eyes, the blonde realized that this moment had been a long time coming.
From the first time she’d seen him, walking through a cloud of billowing smoke, to every time after, they’d been moving closer and closer to this point. Everything between them had been leading up to this moment.
Standing so close to him, breathing in his scent, Chloe realized that at that moment, she wanted nothing more than to press her lips against his. There were no thoughts of Jimmy, of their engagement or their impending nuptials.
There was just Davis Bloom.
Davis with his mysterious past. Davis who looked at her in a way her fiancé never did. Or ever could. Davis whom she had some sort of connection too. Whom she was drawn to despite her best efforts to erase him from her mind.
When he leaned forward, Chloe felt herself move as well. There was no hesitation, no second thoughts; there was just the promise of Davis’ lips finally, blissfully, against her own.
The distance between them was shorter than she’d thought, and before she knew it, their lips were pressed together. Her eyes had fallen shut as she desperately tried to take in everything she could before the inevitable happened.
His lips were firm against hers, but somehow, his kiss was still soft. And the hand that had stroked her cheek had slid around to the back of her neck. The tips of his fingers, slightly calloused, were like a soothing balm against her skin.
But most of all, Chloe was blown away by just how perfect, how right kissing Davis felt.
Never once had Jimmy kissed her like that, been able to make her feel like that.
And there it was - the inevitable.
Jimmy Olsen.
Reality had hit her all too soon. And the moment she thought of her fiancé, he was all she could think about. Behind her closed eyes, his face was the only thing she could see. Specifically, his sweet, kind face as he beamed at her proposal acceptance.
But no matter how much she loved Jimmy, because she really did, she didn’t love him the way she’d loved Clark. Didn’t love him the way she thought she could love Davis.
Despite her feelings, despite how Davis made her feel, this just wasn’t right. She couldn’t, wouldn’t do that to her fiancé.
Far too soon, she broke their kiss. From the look on his face, Chloe knew that the abruptness had shocked Davis. And the stunned look on his handsome features was almost too much for her to handle.
Instead of looking at him, Chloe stared at the ground as she pushed a few hairs out of her eyes. With her thoughts gathered, she lifted her eyes to his. “Ok, stop. Umh. This connection, Davis, it was, it was never this.” Unable to look at him, she turned away.
Even as the words had spilled out of her mouth, Chloe knew they were a lie.
Before you’re too far gone…
She should have just climbed on her bike then and there. She should have driven out of the alley as quickly as she possibly could.
But she didn’t.
She couldn’t.
“I understand.” Davis’ voice was hesitant, but it wasn’t apologetic. Chloe’s heart begged her to turn, to face him. But her mind told her no.
“But I am not ready to let you go.” The honesty, pure and simple, caused her to turn around. When she did, her eyes went directly to his. There was no shame, no embarrassment.
On his part.
Or hers.
“I will wait for as long as it takes.” As he spoke, Davis gently shook his head, as if to emphasize his words. And even though what he was saying touched her, it was the heartbreaking honesty in his eyes that held her captive. Looking into them, Chloe felt as if she could see the very depths of his soul.
She’d never once looked into Jimmy’s eyes like that.
And she was beginning to wonder if she ever would.
Or if she even wanted too.
“You know where to find me.” Davis didn’t wait for her to respond. Didn’t wait for her too acknowledge him in any way. Instead, he just turned and walked down the alleyway.
He’d just laid his heart on the table before her, and all Chloe could do was watch him walk away.
Before nothing can be done…
As Davis’ steps took him further and further down the alley, Chloe felt her heart begin to pound. With each beat, she felt the organ slam against her ribs. She couldn’t help but think that this was what dying of a broken heart must feel like.
The next thing she knew, her bright yellow helmet slipped from her grasp. Before it could hit the ground, before its plastic-y thud could echo through the alleyway, she was running.
Towards Davis.
Away from Jimmy.
Away from what was sure to be a safe and happy life.
There was no such guarantee with the man she was running towards. There was no real guarantee of anything with Davis Bloom. But the short kiss she’d shared with him felt more right than all of her fiancé’s kisses combined.
“Davis, I-” Her voice was desperate, pleading. And Chloe knew she’d said everything with those two words.
There was no going back.
When he turned around, Davis didn’t look surprised or relieved. No, his deep eyes were full of determination as he took the few steps that would close the distance between Chloe and himself.
The moment his hands were on her face, Chloe crushed her mouth against his, twisting the front of his jacket in her fists.
The kiss was painful. Vicious.
He was claiming her, marking her, as his own. And Chloe gave herself freely.
His fingers twisted through her short, blonde hair. Hers stayed balled up in his jacket, as if she were afraid to let him go. The moment, though harsh and unrelenting, was so fragile. Chloe felt, if she were to let him go, for a fraction of a second, that Davis would be gone. Forever. And now that she had him, she couldn’t lose him.
Jimmy was the furthest thing from her mind.
Jimmy. As soon as Chloe realized she wasn’t thinking of him, he was all she could think about.
Once again, the inevitable had some all too soon.
And just as quickly as her daydream, fantasy, whatever it was, had began, it was over.
There was no Davis. He was gone. Back to wherever he’d been before finding her in the alley way.
Her helmet was still in her hands, and she hadn’t moved an inch.
As she climbed onto her bike, Chloe’s chest began to tighten painfully. She tried to tell herself it was just heartburn. And not heartbreak. But as she revved the bike into gear and sped down the highway back to Smallville, to Jimmy, a few stray tears slid down her cheeks.
Monday, January 4, 2010
to feel (two drabblets)
Reccers Notes: Before there was Chloe and Davis on the show as we know them now, there were Chloom fans who saw the possibilities. These longing drabblets got me shipping before I ever took a look at Smallville (actually, when I was forsworn to never watch it). It may very well be the first step to addiction!
by iliana1 at her livejournal
385 words, pg, preseason.
She just knew that he made her feel.
He made her feel…
she searched for a word and came up with nothing. Words were trade, her currency, they always had been so the blank was more then disquieting. She just knew that he made her feel.
It was different from the way Clark slotted into her life, her soul. He was different. He had a way of looking at her as if she was something precious, to be admired and touched with awe and she wondered if that was how Lana had felt under Clark’s gaze.
Jimmy had never made her feel that way and the thought gnawed at her uncomfortably. Jimmy had never made her feel half of what she should for someone she was about to marry and she knew she had to end the farce soon. To cut him free and herself too.
There were only so many emotions she could juggle, only so many feelings she could feel and she wasn’t prepared to give up on the shades Davis brought to her life and she had never been able to give up on Clark. This though strengthened her resolve. Jimmy was better out of it. Out of the tangle of emotions she couldn’t govern and out of her life.
***
She looked up, pleasure brightening her eyes and colouring her cheeks and she wondered if she had heard right, “what?”
He looked up at her through dark lashes, large hands cradling his mug of coffee and his voice was low when he spoke.
“Safe,” he repeated. “You make me feel safe.” A wry smile pulled at his lips, “which is bizarre as I barely know you.”
“It’s not bizarre.” Her denial was more, far more vehement then she had intended and she checked herself. “It’s not bizarre,” she repeated in a whisper, wondering why the hell it was so important to convince him.
“Maybe not but it’s new.”
Their eyes met and she grinned brightly, blushing when he didn’t look away but tilted his head to look at her more closely.
“And how do I make you feel Chloe?”
She shook her head, “I don’t know.” It wasn’t a lie. He confused her and he must have sensed her hesitance because he laughed softly cutting through the tension.
He had let her off the hook. For now at least.
She adores and cherishes comments, I hear. ;)
by iliana1 at her livejournal
385 words, pg, preseason.
She just knew that he made her feel.
He made her feel…
she searched for a word and came up with nothing. Words were trade, her currency, they always had been so the blank was more then disquieting. She just knew that he made her feel.
It was different from the way Clark slotted into her life, her soul. He was different. He had a way of looking at her as if she was something precious, to be admired and touched with awe and she wondered if that was how Lana had felt under Clark’s gaze.
Jimmy had never made her feel that way and the thought gnawed at her uncomfortably. Jimmy had never made her feel half of what she should for someone she was about to marry and she knew she had to end the farce soon. To cut him free and herself too.
There were only so many emotions she could juggle, only so many feelings she could feel and she wasn’t prepared to give up on the shades Davis brought to her life and she had never been able to give up on Clark. This though strengthened her resolve. Jimmy was better out of it. Out of the tangle of emotions she couldn’t govern and out of her life.
***
She looked up, pleasure brightening her eyes and colouring her cheeks and she wondered if she had heard right, “what?”
He looked up at her through dark lashes, large hands cradling his mug of coffee and his voice was low when he spoke.
“Safe,” he repeated. “You make me feel safe.” A wry smile pulled at his lips, “which is bizarre as I barely know you.”
“It’s not bizarre.” Her denial was more, far more vehement then she had intended and she checked herself. “It’s not bizarre,” she repeated in a whisper, wondering why the hell it was so important to convince him.
“Maybe not but it’s new.”
Their eyes met and she grinned brightly, blushing when he didn’t look away but tilted his head to look at her more closely.
“And how do I make you feel Chloe?”
She shook her head, “I don’t know.” It wasn’t a lie. He confused her and he must have sensed her hesitance because he laughed softly cutting through the tension.
He had let her off the hook. For now at least.
She adores and cherishes comments, I hear. ;)
Monday, December 21, 2009
beyond recognition
Reccing Notes: So some fics can be amazingly, blatantly romantic. others are more like a look across a crowded room. This is one. So amazing because it shows the sort of beautiful unfulfilled quality of this ship. and I requested it. hee.
by keeper of stars at squeeka quack
1184 words, pg, hex
It was as if he were unconsciously drawn to the very essence of her being no matter what form she was in.
“Order up! Coffee black with a sausage and egg croissant,” a harassed sounding voice barked out of the moving deli’s tiny window. It couldn’t have been more obvious that the barker hated his job. It laced his voice and was firmly etched into the many wrinkles that lined his face.
As he reached up to grab his breakfast, Davis Bloom stuck a dollar in the white Styrofoam cup labeled “TIPS,” understanding what it was like to wish you could do something or be something else. He’d always loved being a paramedic but not anymore; now it seemed like a waste of time when the thing inside of him wreaked so much havoc and destruction of its own.
He’d thought about quitting and taking himself away from people altogether, but he hadn’t been able to. Davis knew it would be safer for everyone, but he just couldn’t do it. He felt as if the more people he saved or helped, the more he was atoning for his sins. Deep down, he knew that there was nothing he could do to feel fully forgiven, but he strived for absolution anyway. He had to. Because if he didn’t, if he freed himself of all guilt and blame, there was no telling what would happen.
So he’d worked to keep the beast under submission, placating it with the murders of petty criminals and then confessing to a priest as he begged for forgiveness. It had become a weekly routine, one he’d performed the night before.
After he’d dropped the dollar in the cup, the man in the van didn’t say thank you. Instead, he grunted as he set the steaming cup of coffee and sandwich on the little counter in front of Davis.
No, the grumpy server didn’t thank him, but his low huff was enough. Davis recognized the sound as gratitude for the buck. It wasn’t much, but Davis knew that it helped to make his job slightly less unbearable.
And that too was something he understood all too well.
He had his bright spots, his own equivalent of a dollar tip. There was the satisfaction of knowing he’d made a difference, that he’d helped to save someone’s life. And that was a feeling like no other.
And then… there was Chloe.
The brightest spot of all.
She didn’t really make Davis’s job better; she made his entire existence better.
There was just this indefinable quality about her that he couldn’t even begin to explain. She was good and kind, not to mention beautiful. But more than that, she’d always been there for him and believed in him even when Davis didn’t believe in himself. He would always be grateful to her for that. And while these were adequate descriptions, they couldn’t truly compare to how he felt about her. The only way he could possibly sum it up was to say that he loved her. And even then, that wasn’t nearly enough.
He knew that she was happily married to Jimmy and that there was no way they could be together. The last time he’d seen her, which incidentally was the first time since the wedding, he’d told her he was fine, that he was moving on. Both, of course, were lies, and he couldn’t help but feel like she knew that. Chloe had smiled and tried to show him how happy she was to hear it, but it was in her eyes. They both knew he was lying.
And he could live with that.
Would have to live with that.
Was living with that.
When the man behind the counter let out a gruff, “Next!” Davis grabbed his coffee and sandwich and moved out of the way of the slew of construction workers who were lining up behind him.
Once he was finally away from all of the men in their hardhats and flannel, Davis began to strip the waxy paper off of his croissant. Sandwich in one hand, steaming hot coffee in the other, it should have been an impossible task. But after years of practice and an impatient stomach, Davis had gotten it down to an art.
Gripping the bottom of the pastry in one hand, Davis used his teeth to pull back the top corner of the paper. The crinkling of the wrapper filled his ears, mingling with the sounds of early morning in Metropolis, traffic and people rushing past him on the sidewalk stating out their workday on their cell phones. It was a symphony of sound he’d come to know and love.
Davis was halfway to his rig and an inch away from taking his first bits of egg, sausage, and bread when he came to a sudden, unexpected halt, causing a woman to walk right into him.
A few people stopped and stared, and one man even barked at him for stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. But Davis couldn’t help it. He just couldn’t bring himself to move.
As if someone had called his name, Davis looked across the street.
The croissant long forgotten, Davis’ deep brown eyes found Lois instantly. But even though it was her body, it wasn’t Lois he was watching walk towards the entrance of The Daily Planet.
No, it was Chloe.
Davis couldn’t think of any way to explain it, but it was her. He was sure of it.
There was a drive behind her hurried steps that he’d come to associate with the blonde. And her hair was styled in a way that he’d seen many times, but never once on Lois. And that was to say nothing of the outfit she was wearing which looked as if it were meant for someone with a much smaller bust and much shorter legs.
But even though he noticed those things, they weren’t what made Davis recognize the woman across the street as Chloe Sullivan.
Somehow, in his heart, he just knew. It was as if he were unconsciously drawn to the very essence of her being no matter what form she was in.
Davis wanted to drop his food and charge across the street to her. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders so that he could find Chloe in the depths of Lois’ eyes. But his feet wouldn’t let him. He was glued to his spot on the sidewalk, frozen. By what, he didn’t know.
Abandoning all hope of moving, Davis wanted to call out, to yell out the blonde’s name as loudly as he possibly could to see if ‘Lois” would turn to him. But when he was finally able to make his mouth work, all that came out was a softly whispered ‘Chloe.’
She didn’t stop and turn toward him because of some connection they shared. Chloe didn’t even seem to know that he was standing across the street seeing her even though her body wasn’t there. Instead she’d pushed her way into the mass of people trying to get into the Planet building. And Davis couldn’t blame her. As much as he believed she had feelings for him, he also understood that she was married.
But he still wished that she would turn and look at him.
His breakfast long forgotten, Davis stood and watched the revolving doors of The Daily Planet long after Chloe had disappeared into them.
Leave her comments y'all.
by keeper of stars at squeeka quack
1184 words, pg, hex
It was as if he were unconsciously drawn to the very essence of her being no matter what form she was in.
“Order up! Coffee black with a sausage and egg croissant,” a harassed sounding voice barked out of the moving deli’s tiny window. It couldn’t have been more obvious that the barker hated his job. It laced his voice and was firmly etched into the many wrinkles that lined his face.
As he reached up to grab his breakfast, Davis Bloom stuck a dollar in the white Styrofoam cup labeled “TIPS,” understanding what it was like to wish you could do something or be something else. He’d always loved being a paramedic but not anymore; now it seemed like a waste of time when the thing inside of him wreaked so much havoc and destruction of its own.
He’d thought about quitting and taking himself away from people altogether, but he hadn’t been able to. Davis knew it would be safer for everyone, but he just couldn’t do it. He felt as if the more people he saved or helped, the more he was atoning for his sins. Deep down, he knew that there was nothing he could do to feel fully forgiven, but he strived for absolution anyway. He had to. Because if he didn’t, if he freed himself of all guilt and blame, there was no telling what would happen.
So he’d worked to keep the beast under submission, placating it with the murders of petty criminals and then confessing to a priest as he begged for forgiveness. It had become a weekly routine, one he’d performed the night before.
After he’d dropped the dollar in the cup, the man in the van didn’t say thank you. Instead, he grunted as he set the steaming cup of coffee and sandwich on the little counter in front of Davis.
No, the grumpy server didn’t thank him, but his low huff was enough. Davis recognized the sound as gratitude for the buck. It wasn’t much, but Davis knew that it helped to make his job slightly less unbearable.
And that too was something he understood all too well.
He had his bright spots, his own equivalent of a dollar tip. There was the satisfaction of knowing he’d made a difference, that he’d helped to save someone’s life. And that was a feeling like no other.
And then… there was Chloe.
The brightest spot of all.
She didn’t really make Davis’s job better; she made his entire existence better.
There was just this indefinable quality about her that he couldn’t even begin to explain. She was good and kind, not to mention beautiful. But more than that, she’d always been there for him and believed in him even when Davis didn’t believe in himself. He would always be grateful to her for that. And while these were adequate descriptions, they couldn’t truly compare to how he felt about her. The only way he could possibly sum it up was to say that he loved her. And even then, that wasn’t nearly enough.
He knew that she was happily married to Jimmy and that there was no way they could be together. The last time he’d seen her, which incidentally was the first time since the wedding, he’d told her he was fine, that he was moving on. Both, of course, were lies, and he couldn’t help but feel like she knew that. Chloe had smiled and tried to show him how happy she was to hear it, but it was in her eyes. They both knew he was lying.
And he could live with that.
Would have to live with that.
Was living with that.
When the man behind the counter let out a gruff, “Next!” Davis grabbed his coffee and sandwich and moved out of the way of the slew of construction workers who were lining up behind him.
Once he was finally away from all of the men in their hardhats and flannel, Davis began to strip the waxy paper off of his croissant. Sandwich in one hand, steaming hot coffee in the other, it should have been an impossible task. But after years of practice and an impatient stomach, Davis had gotten it down to an art.
Gripping the bottom of the pastry in one hand, Davis used his teeth to pull back the top corner of the paper. The crinkling of the wrapper filled his ears, mingling with the sounds of early morning in Metropolis, traffic and people rushing past him on the sidewalk stating out their workday on their cell phones. It was a symphony of sound he’d come to know and love.
Davis was halfway to his rig and an inch away from taking his first bits of egg, sausage, and bread when he came to a sudden, unexpected halt, causing a woman to walk right into him.
A few people stopped and stared, and one man even barked at him for stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. But Davis couldn’t help it. He just couldn’t bring himself to move.
As if someone had called his name, Davis looked across the street.
The croissant long forgotten, Davis’ deep brown eyes found Lois instantly. But even though it was her body, it wasn’t Lois he was watching walk towards the entrance of The Daily Planet.
No, it was Chloe.
Davis couldn’t think of any way to explain it, but it was her. He was sure of it.
There was a drive behind her hurried steps that he’d come to associate with the blonde. And her hair was styled in a way that he’d seen many times, but never once on Lois. And that was to say nothing of the outfit she was wearing which looked as if it were meant for someone with a much smaller bust and much shorter legs.
But even though he noticed those things, they weren’t what made Davis recognize the woman across the street as Chloe Sullivan.
Somehow, in his heart, he just knew. It was as if he were unconsciously drawn to the very essence of her being no matter what form she was in.
Davis wanted to drop his food and charge across the street to her. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders so that he could find Chloe in the depths of Lois’ eyes. But his feet wouldn’t let him. He was glued to his spot on the sidewalk, frozen. By what, he didn’t know.
Abandoning all hope of moving, Davis wanted to call out, to yell out the blonde’s name as loudly as he possibly could to see if ‘Lois” would turn to him. But when he was finally able to make his mouth work, all that came out was a softly whispered ‘Chloe.’
She didn’t stop and turn toward him because of some connection they shared. Chloe didn’t even seem to know that he was standing across the street seeing her even though her body wasn’t there. Instead she’d pushed her way into the mass of people trying to get into the Planet building. And Davis couldn’t blame her. As much as he believed she had feelings for him, he also understood that she was married.
But he still wished that she would turn and look at him.
His breakfast long forgotten, Davis stood and watched the revolving doors of The Daily Planet long after Chloe had disappeared into them.
Leave her comments y'all.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
careful now you don't belong
Reccing Notes: Another post-beast fic which I think beautifully and somewhat darkly captures Chloe and Davis's relationship on the run. What makes it more amazing is that she didn't watch Beast! O-0
by viennawaits at the vagina fest round two
(despite the title of the fest, no rating warning)
308 words, pg, beast
(If this isn't real then it is cruel. If it isn't real then she is alone and to blame for so much.)
In a motel room forty miles from Metropolis they make their first stop.
She pays for the room and keeps on smiling in case the clerk stops ignoring her, takes a moment to see who he's letting into his business; into his temporary homes.
He doesn't and her mouth aches.
•
It's you. It's you. It's you.
She has something close to faith when it comes to Davis and the promises he makes.
And even though she knows that this faith, this feeling may not be hers, Chloe gives herself over to it.
She can protect Clark and Davis. This doesn't have to be about choice.
•
They order pizza, extra cheese with green peppers, and Davis eats four slices before she can even get through her first.
"You're not hungry?" He is always concerned.
(If this isn't real then it is cruel. If it isn't real then she is alone and to blame for so much.)
"Not really." She smiles and her mouth still hurts, but he doesn't see that.
•
While watching some late night talk show, Davis presses close to her and she lets out a sigh, tries to catch some trace of him in the air and finds only cool dry air. Nothing.
"We should leave early." She moves her hand over his, pressing the tips of her fingers against his knuckles until his palms are flat against the bedspread.
(He feels real.)
"Just to make sure. We'll want to get further away before we," Davis is slow to kiss her until he is not.
He pulls her close and for awhile it is the most amazing thing. (Who could know what this is? Who could she ever share this with?) Her limbs feel stunned and almost she almost takes the next step (Except who could she ever share this with? She doesn't know) only to turn away.
"Davis." His frustration is a second presence in the room.
(The threat of a threat.)
"It's okay."
by viennawaits at the vagina fest round two
(despite the title of the fest, no rating warning)
308 words, pg, beast
(If this isn't real then it is cruel. If it isn't real then she is alone and to blame for so much.)
In a motel room forty miles from Metropolis they make their first stop.
She pays for the room and keeps on smiling in case the clerk stops ignoring her, takes a moment to see who he's letting into his business; into his temporary homes.
He doesn't and her mouth aches.
•
It's you. It's you. It's you.
She has something close to faith when it comes to Davis and the promises he makes.
And even though she knows that this faith, this feeling may not be hers, Chloe gives herself over to it.
She can protect Clark and Davis. This doesn't have to be about choice.
•
They order pizza, extra cheese with green peppers, and Davis eats four slices before she can even get through her first.
"You're not hungry?" He is always concerned.
(If this isn't real then it is cruel. If it isn't real then she is alone and to blame for so much.)
"Not really." She smiles and her mouth still hurts, but he doesn't see that.
•
While watching some late night talk show, Davis presses close to her and she lets out a sigh, tries to catch some trace of him in the air and finds only cool dry air. Nothing.
"We should leave early." She moves her hand over his, pressing the tips of her fingers against his knuckles until his palms are flat against the bedspread.
(He feels real.)
"Just to make sure. We'll want to get further away before we," Davis is slow to kiss her until he is not.
He pulls her close and for awhile it is the most amazing thing. (Who could know what this is? Who could she ever share this with?) Her limbs feel stunned and almost she almost takes the next step (Except who could she ever share this with? She doesn't know) only to turn away.
"Davis." His frustration is a second presence in the room.
(The threat of a threat.)
"It's okay."
Friday, September 11, 2009
with hands of gold and silver i still sin
Reccing Notes: Ever wonder why the wedding from hell went through, even with Chloe's strong feelings somewhere else? This drabble, written for my prebirthday by a very talented writer, may answer it.
250 words, pg, bride
by eklipsed at her livejournal
She felt she liked carrying him with her, inside her, in places that haven't been inhabited in a long time.
It started with memory loss and beautiful butterflies.
She couldn't help her bright smile.
It was easy because she didn’t have to lie about the answers to questions he never asked with his voice or eyes or suspicious movements.
She touched her fingers to her mouth, worn out by untruths and unfaithful feelings, they tingled with his ghostly lips as she tried to recall what he was to her.
It was something important, she knew.
It was a burden.
Like loving someone often is, he was her burden though he was lighter than Clark and even Jimmy, she felt she liked carrying him with her, inside her, in places that haven't been inhabited in a long time.
His broad chest grazing her shoulder and a light turning on, his hand grasping hers, his arms: nothing about him felt like a prison, or walls closing in, or a dead end.
With him she was safe. Her heart was safe and cared for and was his Northern Star; they complimented each other like that.
But she didn’t know him.
His eyes stared into hers with a plea she couldn’t possibly comprehend.
While parts were missing, huge chunks of time and friendship and important secrets, the very fact she couldn’t recall his face brought her breath in short gasps and her heart stuttered with panic.
Her gut felt hollow, and she didn’t quite understand why she was crying.
If she was getting married, if she was walking down the aisle, why wasn’t she walking towards the man she loved?
She couldn’t remember.
And yet, she did it anyway.
250 words, pg, bride
by eklipsed at her livejournal
She felt she liked carrying him with her, inside her, in places that haven't been inhabited in a long time.
It started with memory loss and beautiful butterflies.
She couldn't help her bright smile.
It was easy because she didn’t have to lie about the answers to questions he never asked with his voice or eyes or suspicious movements.
She touched her fingers to her mouth, worn out by untruths and unfaithful feelings, they tingled with his ghostly lips as she tried to recall what he was to her.
It was something important, she knew.
It was a burden.
Like loving someone often is, he was her burden though he was lighter than Clark and even Jimmy, she felt she liked carrying him with her, inside her, in places that haven't been inhabited in a long time.
His broad chest grazing her shoulder and a light turning on, his hand grasping hers, his arms: nothing about him felt like a prison, or walls closing in, or a dead end.
With him she was safe. Her heart was safe and cared for and was his Northern Star; they complimented each other like that.
But she didn’t know him.
His eyes stared into hers with a plea she couldn’t possibly comprehend.
While parts were missing, huge chunks of time and friendship and important secrets, the very fact she couldn’t recall his face brought her breath in short gasps and her heart stuttered with panic.
Her gut felt hollow, and she didn’t quite understand why she was crying.
If she was getting married, if she was walking down the aisle, why wasn’t she walking towards the man she loved?
She couldn’t remember.
And yet, she did it anyway.
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