Reccing Notes: Continuation to Starry Night. h20sprincess loved it, and she wrote the first story! It's the angsty culmination of Chloe's relationships with Davis and Clark, when she finally learns about Doomsday. And she doesn't react the way Clark might have expected. It kinda breaks your heart.
by ellie06 at her livejournal.
989 words, pg, alternate universe
“Yes. Still. Always.”
“You knew.”
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie to me!”
He towers behind her, his anger crackling the air and she wants to laugh for all the affect his rage has on her. As if Clark Kent has any right to his righteous indignation.
She brushes a stray hair away from Ollie’s face, careful to avoid the bandages. Like the others, he hasn’t awoken since his fight with Davi-
No.
Doomsday.
If she is going to do this, she needs to remember who she is dealing with now.
She turns away to collect her things only to be blocked in. It seems she has more than one confrontation to face tonight.
“I didn’t know. I wish I did. And please, before you continue, take a moment to examine the rampant hypocrisy in that statement.”
Her aim is true and she sees some of the anger drain away. But he doesn’t move, only continues to stare down at her, silently demanding an explanation he has no rights to.
“What do you want from me Clark? Some sort of magic explanation that will make everything better? Make it right?”
“I want you to tell me the truth!”
His face colors, reflecting an array of emotions he can hardly explain. But she still knows him better than himself. And she understands the real question beneath his ridiculous outrage.
If it wasn’t so tragic, she’d laugh at the irony. They haven’t spoken in months, each for their own reasons. For her, it is because she finally understood the difference between worth the wait and waiting to be worthwhile.
So now…now, they’re surrounded by their friends, battered and broken, hooked up to life support machines and it has finally comes down to this.
“Ask me what you really want to know, Clark.”
He is silent and the silence stretches, defining the space between them.
“Do I love him?”
Her answer is swift. And sharp.
“Yes. Still. Always.”
His face crumples and it’s humbling for her know that she ever had this much power over him. But there is no satisfaction in this. She has been a casualty of her own heart for far too long to relish his grief.
Gently, she brushes by him and he allows her to pass. He never really had a choice.
As she leaves the room, she pauses to answer the only question he should have asked.
“What will you do?”
Her answer is swift. And sharp.
“What you never could.”
************************************************************************
Between her resources at Isis and as Watchtower, finding Doomsday would have been a relatively easy endeavor. He wasn’t exactly subtle when making his presence known. But for the first time in her life, she doesn’t need any of her usual tricks to find what she’s after. She already knows where he will be.
Sometimes, it all comes back to the beginning.
The empty road stretches away from her and she hears before she sees him. It’s the sounds of metal grinding and tearing. The sounds of footfalls so violent, her car shakes even from miles away. The sounds of screaming.
She maneuvers the car as far it can go through the debris, stopping only when the shattered glass on the pavement punctures a tire.
Stepping out, she carefully picks her path towards him. Having had his fill of destruction, she has caught him in a rare moment of stillness. His back faces her, his shoulders heaving. She wonders if he is contemplating the devastation he has wrought, the lives he has destroyed. She wonders if he is even capable of thought anymore.
She hasn’t been back here since that day with the little boy and his mother. There was a death that day. Hers. But it was also the start of something so beautiful it forever marks this spot as a place of solace and hope. It should be disconcerting, even disturbing, this connection, but she never was the conventional sort. Beauty and tragedy have shaped her soul in equal parts, it’s no wonder they’ve long intertwined.
Sensing her presence behind him, a growl erupts and he whirls to face her. He is savagery personified, monstrous hate contained only by naked flesh and twisted bones that spike towards the sky in defiance.
She should be afraid, terrified really. But somehow the mindlessness of the monster calms her and strengthens her resolve. There is nothing of the man she loves in this…thing. Now, there is only Doomsday.
And only she has the power to kill the only man who ever loved her. Loved her with such grace and careless abandon. The only man who ever loved her first.
She braces herself against the concrete, holds out her hands in defense as he charges towards her with rage. All she can hope is to bear the impact long enough to use her power.
But in typical fashion, he surprises her. His roaring onslaught halts suddenly, only a few inches from her and he stares with confused wonder at her outreached hand. She follows his gaze to the glittering diamond on her finger. For a moment, probably the last they will ever share, they are caught together. Something stirs. A memory of their first time.
Standing in the kitchen, she washes the dishes angrily, trying to distract herself from his silence as he watches from a corner. Waiting.
They had argued. About what, she can’t recall. All she can remember is what happens next. How he approaches her from behind, cradling her body with his and silently absorbing her trembling until her anger washes away like so much running water.
The air in the room is still, almost expectant. A long moment passes before he speaks.
“I’m sorry.”
He breathes heavily into her hair, so she almost misses his whisper.
“I love you.”
It is his first and she presses against him.
“Do you love me?”
She responds and it is effortless.
“Yes.”
He smiles into her cheek.
“Still?”
“Always.”
She reaches out and takes his hand. Their eyes meet and there is a despair in his that will haunt whatever of her life will come hereafter. So she will give him the only peace her gift will allow.
Do you love me?
Yes. Still.
“Always.”
The light is blinding. And for once, she feels no pain.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
something stronger
Reccing Notes: I found this on ff.n, which we LJers sometimes playfully call 'the pit'. I said playfully, y'all.
Anyway. I found this. I love it. Its gorgeous and think-y.
What I love about this is that the author really delves into Chloe's thoughts.
(And she was nice enough to let me post it here and to say madness kinda was a push in writing it. *overflow of squee*) That's it, I'll gladly write 24/7 if it inspires more stuff like this. ;)
by somethingmore28 at ff.n
2459 words, r/nc-17, eternal
She wishes she can look up and see the beast, but knows that all she will see is Davis.
Run, she thinks hopelessly, but it screams for her to stay. It, the monster in her she wonders briefly. Brainiac? But he's gone and she's free from his control. No, it's her, every part, from her broken heart, to her crumbling world, that aches for him.
The lock in place, her resolution set in, one stolen breath before descending the stairs, eyes downcast. She isn’t ready to face him, not without a mask of anger or sacrifice.
She wishes she can look up and see the beast, but knows that all she will see is Davis.
“It’s never the changes you want that change everything.” Where did she read that from?
She is his something stronger. Nothing can feel farther from the truth.
Things feel like they're falling, and she's standing in the middle of it all, unable to do anything but look away. And so she does. She looks away, closes her eyes and lets her body do the thinking as she leans her head onto his chest.
“Chloe?” Pulse racing, fingers aching to find her embrace, and somehow he controls it, not the beast, but the man.
“It’s okay,” her voice cooes into his shirt, warm breath pulling him in further.
Strong arms come to rest around her waist, hesitant at first but as the tears fall and tiny fingers grab desperately at his shirt, all pretense of boundary slip away. All that remains is Chloe, in his arms, crying for everything she can't undo, can’t talk away with her never-ending words.
He surrounds her, arms so tight she can barely move without feeling every niche of his body in the process. Words don't hold much meaning when there is nothing to say, nothing to change the unmitigated circumstance of this pairing.
10 minutes, half an hour, who knows? The tears become subdued, uneven breaths of Davis’s scent. Warm, she is too warm. This isn’t how it is supposed to feel. Where is all the guilt, the despair? How can she find so much solace in his arms, in the presence of his beating heart?
A sigh, lies aren't as convenient when you are facing the truth.
There is slight pressure against his torso as Chloe pulls away, instinct tells him to hold her tighter, and he lets her go.
“I’m tired,” is all she says, all she can fathom to say. A slight nod of the head and she turns away to take off her jacket and scarf.
Look away, he thinks, somehow this simple, everyday action feels intimate. Look away. He doesn't, allows himself this simple victory.
Davis watches as her gentle fingers undo the buttons running the length of her jacket, pulling it off her shoulders and placing it on the hook on the wall. The skin of her back peeks out from under her top as she lifts her arms. He wonders briefly if she knows how tempting she is as she unravels the scarf from her neck, exposing the neckline of her green sweater, the gentle lines of her collarbone almost begging to be kissed.
Turning back to him, a started expression settles briefly over her features before the blood rises to her cheeks. He looks away clearly having embarrassed her with his blatant staring; thanking God that she cant’t read his thoughts. A moment of silence and he snaps out of it.
“Take the cot, I brought a sleeping bag.”
Arms wrapping securely around her shoulders, Chloe takes a tentative seat on the cot. It’s isn’t exactly the picture of comfort but she will survive. That’s all it really comes down to in her life these days, survival.
Davis picks up the sleeping bag, single-handedly lifting an iron cabinet with ease as he rolls it across the floor. Chloe has seen Clark use his powers in far more impressive ways but the simple act of lifting a cabinet that she can barely budge still manages to temporarily shock her.
Davis faces her, once again finding her surprised.
“When did you start having powers?” disbelief mixed with slight fear.
“Oh,” he stares down at the cabinet, “This is fairly recent.”
Another silence, it threatens to swallow them whole.
“The floors really cold,” she blurts out.
It's his turn at surprise, “It doesn’t really bother me.”
“Right,” slight swelling of her bottom lip as she bites into it.
Davis doesn’t allow himself to register the thinly veiled invitation, only continues to look at her. That’s when he sees it, the fear in her eyes, in her tense posture, her clamping fingers. He can’t hate himself more even if he tries. A few paced strides and he's crouching down on one knee, coming down to her level, no need to be looming over her as he tries to placate her.
She looks up, confused, vulnerable, always beautiful. His hand finds its way on top of hers, comfort he tells himself, loosening the grip.
“I won’t hurt you Chloe; I’ll do everything in my power to make sure of that. I hate doing this to–“
“It’s not that,” she cuts him off, “I know you didn’t choose this, I’m not afraid of you,” avidly avoiding eye contact.
Davis doesn’t think, just uses his free hand to tilt her chin upwards, “What is it?”
Eyes, green, thoughtful, afraid, he wants to drown in them.
His hand still holds her chin; Chloe has no other choice but to look at him. “I don’t know what I’m a afraid of. I don’t know what to feel.” Her hand cradles his cheek, there’s so much emotion in his face, and it feels like she can touch it.
“Davis I can’t lose Clark, the world, they need him.” Pause. There’s more, way too much more.
“And I ..."
"Need him too." Disappointment? Pain?
"... need you.” Could it really be that simple?
All the restraint he is physically capable of goes into not devouring her into his arms. No boundaries, her forehead against his, their breath mingling, so close her lashes are dancing along his skin. So close he can close the gap between them and make the world go away.
Take me. Soft lips on breaking reserve and it all threatens to come crashing down. Calloused fingers, golden hair, perfect skin. Heat. Tracing her jaw line with his thumb, eyes closed, heavy breathing. Fingers grasping his collar, determined, doubt trickling away. Was there ever any? Force, her lips taking his. It tastes like everything, the air in his lungs. She lets him in, slip of the tongue along his upper lip. Nothing ever felt quite this good. More heat. Hands intertwine around his neck, fumbling mouths embracing each other, pressed together like they’re all that’s left of the world.
Breaking contact, there’s an imminent need to breathe.
Chloe looks up; he’s watching her with those broken eyes and she knows what it is she’s really afraid of.
“I could lose myself in you. And I can’t let that happen.”
Davis holds his breath, doesn’t quite know why, but can feel it coming, the end of something.
Hands once again caress his cheek, warm lips meet his ear. Blood pumping, heart racing, there’s so much heat.
“But I want too.”
He can make her forget reason with that look, the one that doesn’t quite seem possible. The one mixed with so much longing, like he's saved it all for her, or maybe she’s the first, the only.
Jimmy ?
It's built up so much. She wants it to come crashing down, on top of her, inside of her, everywhere.
She can see the faint outline of a protest in his eyes, but its weak, silences it with her index finger brushing along his lips. They part slightly at her touch.
Will he ever stop looking at her like that? Oh god, she hopes not.
Glances back at the tiny cot, bites her lip, and pulls her body along it's length. Is it surprise in his eyes, she doesn`t know, all she sees is desire and something stronger. Knees slightly bent, propped up on her elbows, shes waiting for him to finish her.
He swallows hard, takes her in, every inch, wonders briefly if this is a dream. There she is, the object of his, is there even a word, and giving herself over so completely to him. All he has to do is take, feels like that’s all he ever does with her.
"Chloe if this is out of some misplaced sense of guilt …"
A small smile, against all reason, "Trust me, I’m not that noble."
It isn't like her, to be like this. It isn't like her to so openly expose her heart like this. Losing Davis in that tank has taken something from her. And replaced it with this, this understanding that she's never, never wanted anything the way she wants him. Not even Clark, and definately not Jimmy.
Her hands reach the buttons on her sweater, how she manages to undo all of them without trembling, she has no idea. It's on the ground now, along with any doubt she's harbored. It will never be butterflies with him, it will always be stronger. It will never be light with him, the dark has too much power over them.
"It's not always about where you heart is, it's about what you've done and what you're going to do."
Her heart is with her best friend, her family, the world she will always protect. That world just happens to include him.
"There aren't enough prayers in this world to give me redemption."
Maybe there will be no redemption, no way back into the light. Maybe this is all she can ever give him, not salvation, but something stronger.
Chloe faintly remembers wedding vows, bowties and perfect smiles, a life that can be sunshine and puppy dog eyes. She remembers security and logic, remembers fading photos of love.
It’s all there. And she’s here, on this decrepit cot, transfixed by him and the pain she wants to tear away. Movement on his part is minimal, but there’s an inferno in his eyes.
It’s too much. Bold fingers find their way to the buttons on her jeans; she takes her time. An impromptu strip tease? An act of seduction? But it’s not sexual; it’s out of necessary, like she’s painting him a picture. Maybe she can make it last forever.
Eyes follow the trail of denim down her hips, linger between her legs, graze her thighs and find the concrete below. Davis swallows hard, everything he’s ever wanted feels like torture. She’s lying on the bed clad in nothing but underwear and a camisole. The distance between him and any sense of strength is shrinking, or maybe it’s just waiting for him on that bed.
Chloe has faced mutant meteor freaks, alien invasions, apocalypse one too many times, and somehow the last minute is becoming the most terrifying of her life. Eyes fall shut as her head hits the pillow, shallow breathing, heart racing, she doesn’t have to wait long.
There is no reason, no good deed to reward. He doesn’t deserve this after the lies he’s told, the lives he’s taken. There’s only need, to be with her, apart of her, something to hold him together, keep him from imploding. And so he finds himself on top of her, between her, wanting nothing more than to be inside of her.
It’s like she’s awoken something in him, he’s alive in a way that transcends any of his jubilant smiles or witty remarks. The mouth taking hers isn’t gentle or rough, it’s loving and hungry and feels way too right. The hands peeling the shirt off his torso aren’t small or fragile, they’re taking all of him in, feeding off of his fire.
That’s what it feels like, they're burning. The inferno in his eyes has taken over them both, and their desire is the fuel.
Slight fumbling with the belt buckle, but it doesn’t take long for his jeans to find their way to the floor. His lips give hers a reprieve and follows her jaw line to her neck, trailing kisses down to her collarbone. Fingers cling to his back, there isn’t much room to feel anything but him, and she’s perfectly fine with that. The camisole, delicate and pretty, looks like a tattered rag in his fingers. The slightest hint of a smile, and it’s back to searing desire and discarded clothing.
Skin to skin doesn’t even feel like enough.
The noises she’s making don’t sound normal, but then again nothing about this pairing quite is. She doesn’t bother masking the guttural moan that escapes her lips as he mouths her breasts, wonders briefly if she can even draw blood from the lines she’s drawing into his back.
One hand reaches down and grasps the flimsy material between her thighs, (Another throaty moan) pulls it off hastily, does the same with his own. And now there’s nothing left, no barriers, nothing between them but skin and flesh and whatever it is he’s made of.
There’s a moment, eyes ask silent permission, her lips take his, so light, and he moves into her. He’s filling her, body and mind and that desperate abyss her life is becoming. It will never be enough.
His hold on her is unlike anything, and she hooks her legs around his waist hoping to make it stronger. He sinks deeper, time is torture and she could eat it up. It’s not slow, not erratic, it’s urgent, a two way street.
Its building, their release. And now it doesn’t feel like he’ll implode, just feels like they’ll explode. He movies faster, breathes out her name every so often, she just pulls him in tighter.
Mouths make contact again, an inseparable mass of salty skin and broken kisses. Hips once rocking in unison, become disjointed, uncontrolled, pulling them further and further from circumstance and closer together.
He breaks their fervent kissing, pulls away until he can watch her, completely and irrevocably exposed. Her brain isn’t capable of hiding anything, and she knows her eyes say everything her mind couldn’t voice. Look away, but she can’t. A final brush against her lips and it all comes apart, breaking through them with the weight of the world.
Pleasure ripples through her in waves, and she rides them out until the weight of him burrows into her, a strangled Chloe barely escaping his lips. She’s never felt more sated, like she wants to spill over. No that’s a lie; she wants to keep it all.
Davis’s head is buried in the crook of her neck, breathing into moist skin like he’s sustaining her. It lingers in the air, the consequence of their free fall. But the future lies at standstill, gets added to their pile of clothing on the floor and the only truth right now is the gravity of their bodies, drawing them together.
Tonight they are quiet, sleep is the only answer. Tomorrow however, is another question and as Chloe watches the peace that’s fallen over Davis’s tortured features, she knows all too well what her answer will be.
But maybe there is something stronger out there than my need to kill.
And now she knows there is.
Drop the love y'all, you *know* you want to!
Anyway. I found this. I love it. Its gorgeous and think-y.
What I love about this is that the author really delves into Chloe's thoughts.
(And she was nice enough to let me post it here and to say madness kinda was a push in writing it. *overflow of squee*) That's it, I'll gladly write 24/7 if it inspires more stuff like this. ;)
by somethingmore28 at ff.n
2459 words, r/nc-17, eternal
She wishes she can look up and see the beast, but knows that all she will see is Davis.
Run, she thinks hopelessly, but it screams for her to stay. It, the monster in her she wonders briefly. Brainiac? But he's gone and she's free from his control. No, it's her, every part, from her broken heart, to her crumbling world, that aches for him.
The lock in place, her resolution set in, one stolen breath before descending the stairs, eyes downcast. She isn’t ready to face him, not without a mask of anger or sacrifice.
She wishes she can look up and see the beast, but knows that all she will see is Davis.
“It’s never the changes you want that change everything.” Where did she read that from?
She is his something stronger. Nothing can feel farther from the truth.
Things feel like they're falling, and she's standing in the middle of it all, unable to do anything but look away. And so she does. She looks away, closes her eyes and lets her body do the thinking as she leans her head onto his chest.
“Chloe?” Pulse racing, fingers aching to find her embrace, and somehow he controls it, not the beast, but the man.
“It’s okay,” her voice cooes into his shirt, warm breath pulling him in further.
Strong arms come to rest around her waist, hesitant at first but as the tears fall and tiny fingers grab desperately at his shirt, all pretense of boundary slip away. All that remains is Chloe, in his arms, crying for everything she can't undo, can’t talk away with her never-ending words.
He surrounds her, arms so tight she can barely move without feeling every niche of his body in the process. Words don't hold much meaning when there is nothing to say, nothing to change the unmitigated circumstance of this pairing.
10 minutes, half an hour, who knows? The tears become subdued, uneven breaths of Davis’s scent. Warm, she is too warm. This isn’t how it is supposed to feel. Where is all the guilt, the despair? How can she find so much solace in his arms, in the presence of his beating heart?
A sigh, lies aren't as convenient when you are facing the truth.
There is slight pressure against his torso as Chloe pulls away, instinct tells him to hold her tighter, and he lets her go.
“I’m tired,” is all she says, all she can fathom to say. A slight nod of the head and she turns away to take off her jacket and scarf.
Look away, he thinks, somehow this simple, everyday action feels intimate. Look away. He doesn't, allows himself this simple victory.
Davis watches as her gentle fingers undo the buttons running the length of her jacket, pulling it off her shoulders and placing it on the hook on the wall. The skin of her back peeks out from under her top as she lifts her arms. He wonders briefly if she knows how tempting she is as she unravels the scarf from her neck, exposing the neckline of her green sweater, the gentle lines of her collarbone almost begging to be kissed.
Turning back to him, a started expression settles briefly over her features before the blood rises to her cheeks. He looks away clearly having embarrassed her with his blatant staring; thanking God that she cant’t read his thoughts. A moment of silence and he snaps out of it.
“Take the cot, I brought a sleeping bag.”
Arms wrapping securely around her shoulders, Chloe takes a tentative seat on the cot. It’s isn’t exactly the picture of comfort but she will survive. That’s all it really comes down to in her life these days, survival.
Davis picks up the sleeping bag, single-handedly lifting an iron cabinet with ease as he rolls it across the floor. Chloe has seen Clark use his powers in far more impressive ways but the simple act of lifting a cabinet that she can barely budge still manages to temporarily shock her.
Davis faces her, once again finding her surprised.
“When did you start having powers?” disbelief mixed with slight fear.
“Oh,” he stares down at the cabinet, “This is fairly recent.”
Another silence, it threatens to swallow them whole.
“The floors really cold,” she blurts out.
It's his turn at surprise, “It doesn’t really bother me.”
“Right,” slight swelling of her bottom lip as she bites into it.
Davis doesn’t allow himself to register the thinly veiled invitation, only continues to look at her. That’s when he sees it, the fear in her eyes, in her tense posture, her clamping fingers. He can’t hate himself more even if he tries. A few paced strides and he's crouching down on one knee, coming down to her level, no need to be looming over her as he tries to placate her.
She looks up, confused, vulnerable, always beautiful. His hand finds its way on top of hers, comfort he tells himself, loosening the grip.
“I won’t hurt you Chloe; I’ll do everything in my power to make sure of that. I hate doing this to–“
“It’s not that,” she cuts him off, “I know you didn’t choose this, I’m not afraid of you,” avidly avoiding eye contact.
Davis doesn’t think, just uses his free hand to tilt her chin upwards, “What is it?”
Eyes, green, thoughtful, afraid, he wants to drown in them.
His hand still holds her chin; Chloe has no other choice but to look at him. “I don’t know what I’m a afraid of. I don’t know what to feel.” Her hand cradles his cheek, there’s so much emotion in his face, and it feels like she can touch it.
“Davis I can’t lose Clark, the world, they need him.” Pause. There’s more, way too much more.
“And I ..."
"Need him too." Disappointment? Pain?
"... need you.” Could it really be that simple?
All the restraint he is physically capable of goes into not devouring her into his arms. No boundaries, her forehead against his, their breath mingling, so close her lashes are dancing along his skin. So close he can close the gap between them and make the world go away.
Take me. Soft lips on breaking reserve and it all threatens to come crashing down. Calloused fingers, golden hair, perfect skin. Heat. Tracing her jaw line with his thumb, eyes closed, heavy breathing. Fingers grasping his collar, determined, doubt trickling away. Was there ever any? Force, her lips taking his. It tastes like everything, the air in his lungs. She lets him in, slip of the tongue along his upper lip. Nothing ever felt quite this good. More heat. Hands intertwine around his neck, fumbling mouths embracing each other, pressed together like they’re all that’s left of the world.
Breaking contact, there’s an imminent need to breathe.
Chloe looks up; he’s watching her with those broken eyes and she knows what it is she’s really afraid of.
“I could lose myself in you. And I can’t let that happen.”
Davis holds his breath, doesn’t quite know why, but can feel it coming, the end of something.
Hands once again caress his cheek, warm lips meet his ear. Blood pumping, heart racing, there’s so much heat.
“But I want too.”
He can make her forget reason with that look, the one that doesn’t quite seem possible. The one mixed with so much longing, like he's saved it all for her, or maybe she’s the first, the only.
Jimmy ?
It's built up so much. She wants it to come crashing down, on top of her, inside of her, everywhere.
She can see the faint outline of a protest in his eyes, but its weak, silences it with her index finger brushing along his lips. They part slightly at her touch.
Will he ever stop looking at her like that? Oh god, she hopes not.
Glances back at the tiny cot, bites her lip, and pulls her body along it's length. Is it surprise in his eyes, she doesn`t know, all she sees is desire and something stronger. Knees slightly bent, propped up on her elbows, shes waiting for him to finish her.
He swallows hard, takes her in, every inch, wonders briefly if this is a dream. There she is, the object of his, is there even a word, and giving herself over so completely to him. All he has to do is take, feels like that’s all he ever does with her.
"Chloe if this is out of some misplaced sense of guilt …"
A small smile, against all reason, "Trust me, I’m not that noble."
It isn't like her, to be like this. It isn't like her to so openly expose her heart like this. Losing Davis in that tank has taken something from her. And replaced it with this, this understanding that she's never, never wanted anything the way she wants him. Not even Clark, and definately not Jimmy.
Her hands reach the buttons on her sweater, how she manages to undo all of them without trembling, she has no idea. It's on the ground now, along with any doubt she's harbored. It will never be butterflies with him, it will always be stronger. It will never be light with him, the dark has too much power over them.
"It's not always about where you heart is, it's about what you've done and what you're going to do."
Her heart is with her best friend, her family, the world she will always protect. That world just happens to include him.
"There aren't enough prayers in this world to give me redemption."
Maybe there will be no redemption, no way back into the light. Maybe this is all she can ever give him, not salvation, but something stronger.
Chloe faintly remembers wedding vows, bowties and perfect smiles, a life that can be sunshine and puppy dog eyes. She remembers security and logic, remembers fading photos of love.
It’s all there. And she’s here, on this decrepit cot, transfixed by him and the pain she wants to tear away. Movement on his part is minimal, but there’s an inferno in his eyes.
It’s too much. Bold fingers find their way to the buttons on her jeans; she takes her time. An impromptu strip tease? An act of seduction? But it’s not sexual; it’s out of necessary, like she’s painting him a picture. Maybe she can make it last forever.
Eyes follow the trail of denim down her hips, linger between her legs, graze her thighs and find the concrete below. Davis swallows hard, everything he’s ever wanted feels like torture. She’s lying on the bed clad in nothing but underwear and a camisole. The distance between him and any sense of strength is shrinking, or maybe it’s just waiting for him on that bed.
Chloe has faced mutant meteor freaks, alien invasions, apocalypse one too many times, and somehow the last minute is becoming the most terrifying of her life. Eyes fall shut as her head hits the pillow, shallow breathing, heart racing, she doesn’t have to wait long.
There is no reason, no good deed to reward. He doesn’t deserve this after the lies he’s told, the lives he’s taken. There’s only need, to be with her, apart of her, something to hold him together, keep him from imploding. And so he finds himself on top of her, between her, wanting nothing more than to be inside of her.
It’s like she’s awoken something in him, he’s alive in a way that transcends any of his jubilant smiles or witty remarks. The mouth taking hers isn’t gentle or rough, it’s loving and hungry and feels way too right. The hands peeling the shirt off his torso aren’t small or fragile, they’re taking all of him in, feeding off of his fire.
That’s what it feels like, they're burning. The inferno in his eyes has taken over them both, and their desire is the fuel.
Slight fumbling with the belt buckle, but it doesn’t take long for his jeans to find their way to the floor. His lips give hers a reprieve and follows her jaw line to her neck, trailing kisses down to her collarbone. Fingers cling to his back, there isn’t much room to feel anything but him, and she’s perfectly fine with that. The camisole, delicate and pretty, looks like a tattered rag in his fingers. The slightest hint of a smile, and it’s back to searing desire and discarded clothing.
Skin to skin doesn’t even feel like enough.
The noises she’s making don’t sound normal, but then again nothing about this pairing quite is. She doesn’t bother masking the guttural moan that escapes her lips as he mouths her breasts, wonders briefly if she can even draw blood from the lines she’s drawing into his back.
One hand reaches down and grasps the flimsy material between her thighs, (Another throaty moan) pulls it off hastily, does the same with his own. And now there’s nothing left, no barriers, nothing between them but skin and flesh and whatever it is he’s made of.
There’s a moment, eyes ask silent permission, her lips take his, so light, and he moves into her. He’s filling her, body and mind and that desperate abyss her life is becoming. It will never be enough.
His hold on her is unlike anything, and she hooks her legs around his waist hoping to make it stronger. He sinks deeper, time is torture and she could eat it up. It’s not slow, not erratic, it’s urgent, a two way street.
Its building, their release. And now it doesn’t feel like he’ll implode, just feels like they’ll explode. He movies faster, breathes out her name every so often, she just pulls him in tighter.
Mouths make contact again, an inseparable mass of salty skin and broken kisses. Hips once rocking in unison, become disjointed, uncontrolled, pulling them further and further from circumstance and closer together.
He breaks their fervent kissing, pulls away until he can watch her, completely and irrevocably exposed. Her brain isn’t capable of hiding anything, and she knows her eyes say everything her mind couldn’t voice. Look away, but she can’t. A final brush against her lips and it all comes apart, breaking through them with the weight of the world.
Pleasure ripples through her in waves, and she rides them out until the weight of him burrows into her, a strangled Chloe barely escaping his lips. She’s never felt more sated, like she wants to spill over. No that’s a lie; she wants to keep it all.
Davis’s head is buried in the crook of her neck, breathing into moist skin like he’s sustaining her. It lingers in the air, the consequence of their free fall. But the future lies at standstill, gets added to their pile of clothing on the floor and the only truth right now is the gravity of their bodies, drawing them together.
Tonight they are quiet, sleep is the only answer. Tomorrow however, is another question and as Chloe watches the peace that’s fallen over Davis’s tortured features, she knows all too well what her answer will be.
But maybe there is something stronger out there than my need to kill.
And now she knows there is.
Drop the love y'all, you *know* you want to!
Saturday, April 11, 2009
when you wish upon a fishnet stocking
Reccing Notes: Her snark.is.the.best.ever. Also, don't tell me you didn't want to see this continuation to Hex. with Davis. and Willow references. Lets just say Zatanna's spell goes out of control. Everyone starts getting their wishes granted. Including Davis.
also, madmartrigan!
by seriousfic
2603 words, pg-13, hex
“I’m married to Davis Bloome and he wants to impregnate me!”
Chloe woke up, put on her slippers, and went to her mirror. Still Chloe. She’d never been so grateful for being a blonde. Even with her marriage in shambles, Brainiac was gone, Lex was gone, and things were finally back to as normal as they were liable to get.
Her iPhone rang.
Chloe sighed. Well, it had been nice while it lasted. “Hello?” she answered.
“Lois?”
“No, Chloe.”
“Oh, good, you switched back.”
“Zatanna!”
“Right in one! Just calling to say sorry again for swapping our your body.”
“That’s okay. It was actually a little fun. Construction workers whistled at me unironically.”
“Good for you. Hey, as long as I’ve got you on the line, have you noticed anything odd lately?”
“Like what?”
Davis walked by Chloe’s bedroom door, wearing nothing but a towel. On his shoulder. Chloe dropped the phone. “Hey honeybunches of oats, shower time. You in?”
Chloe mutely shook her head.
“Right, phone call. Left some bacon for you on the counter. Bon appetite.”
He walked off.
Chloe put the phone back to her ear. “Zatanna, there’s a naked man in my apartment.”
“Is he cute?”
“Not really my point.”
Chloe had to sit down. She was just noticing all the pictures of her and Davis together, and the bed big enough for two, and the handcuffs on her headboard. Which she really didn’t want to think about.
“Listen, it’s not my fault. I was working on a spell to increase my powers—“
“Increase your powers? You grant wishes!”
“But these would be big wishes, like world peace, an end to world hunger, a fourth season of Veronica Mars.”
“I did like that show.” Chloe noticed the wedding ring on her finger. It had a pretty big diamond. “So what went wrong?”
“It backfired! Went back and gave new wishes to everyone I… helped. You remember the man who wanted to speak dead languages?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s a Viking now.”
“Oh. Not in the Minnesota way, I suppose.”
“So, were you wishing for anything at 3AM last night?”
Davis stepped in front of her door again, wearing nothing but a towel—thankfully around his waist—and lots of moisture. “Want it while its clean?”
Chloe tried to hang onto the phone. “It’s a very important call.”
“Okay. But I hear it’s very hard to get pregnant without,” his eyebrows weaved up and down.
Chloe followed his eyebrows until a call on the house-phone pulled him away. She jammed the phone to her ear again. “We’re trying to get pregnant!”
“We are?” Zatanna asked.
“I’m married to Davis Bloome and he wants to impregnate me!”
“Is he cute?”
“That’s not the point!”
“That’s not a no.”
“Alright! He’s got a stomach like he’s smuggling paint rollers, are you happy?”
“I was looking for something more in the realm of penis. Is it bigger than a breadbox?”
“Will that help break the spell?”
“Oh, right, the spell. Listen, he’s under a love spell, so it would be unethical to,” Chloe pictured Zatanna’s eyebrows weaving up and down, “got it?”
“No yankee his wankee, got it.”
“Also, try to keep anyone else from making wishes. The magic is wild, there’s no telling what it could do. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“Will you be riding a magical beast?”
“Greyhound.”
***
Chloe went to the Daily Planet, where an intern was waiting for her with coffee and a bagel. As this happened even when she wasn’t bewitched, Chloe wondered about the frequency of her trips to the Daily Planet. She didn’t correct the intern’s assumption that she was an employee, though. It was a damn good cup of joe.
“Clark! Did you make any wishes at 3 AM last night?”
Lois looked up from her workstation to the blonde standing between her and Clark. “What, is Zatanna back to her old tricks? What would that make you, Jimmy? In my cousin’s body?”
“No, I’m Chloe.”
Lois leaned past her to see Clark. “Then I suppose Lex is inside you!”
“No, he’s still Clark.”
“Then… who am I?”
“You’re Lois.”
“Oh, right, that explains the unironic whistling I’ve been getting from construction workers.”
Clark stood up. “To answer your question, Chloe, I was watching Wild Things and… no, that was at 2:30. Darn. Then T2 came on and I wished my best friend was alive to watch it with me.”
Lex walked up. Chloe squeaked and stomped on his foot.
“Chloe! I also wished he wasn’t evil!”
“Oh. Sorry.”
Lex hopped up and down on one foot. “You’re lucky I’m not evil.”
Chloe frantically marshaled her blonde power. “Listen, so long as you’re all here, I have to warn you not to wish for anything. Zatanna’s spell is out of control and there’s no telling what could happen.”
A man at the next desk over jumped up, shouting “I just won the lotto! A million bucks!”
“That could just as easily have been a billion boy-deers,” Chloe said defensively.
“Yes!” shouted a man at the next next desk over, “The state approved a new wildlife preserve! A million bucks, safe from toxic waste!”
“What’s so great about wildlife preserves?” Chloe asked.
“My penis is 15-inches long!”
“It’s not the size that counts, it’s what you do with it!” Chloe shouted back. “Lex, have you been wishing?!”
“What makes you say that, Miss Sullivan?”
“You didn’t have an afro before.”
“I’ll thank you to call her Sylvia.” Lex ran a hand through his perm. “My precious.”
***
By the time Zatanna arrived at the bus station, it was raining jelly beans and the front page of the Daily Planet was nude pictures of Christian Bale. She got off the bus to find Chloe and Lois waiting for her. “Good thing I made worrywoad one of the spell components, so no real harm can be done.”
“It’s raining jelly beans! They kinda sting!” Lois said. “I think one of them broke the skin.”
“Was it licorine?”
“Obviously.”
“Excuse me, I’m a little married over here!” Chloe said.
“Relax,” Zatanna said. “If I can take care of Barack Obama’s marriage, I can take care of yours.”
“But Obama is married.”
“Exactly. To a woman.” Zatanna winked.
***
Chloe walked into her apartment, Zatanna at her side. The magician thought it’d help her to reverse the wishes if she found the first one. They found Davis reclining on the bearskin rug in front of a raging fire, George Michael’s Careless Whisper playing on the stereo. He was wearing nothing but whipped cream.
“I don’t have a stereo,” Chloe said. “Or a bearskin rug. Or a fireplace. Or whipped cream anymore, I guess.”
“Chloe, thought you might come home early, wondered if you might like a snack.”
“Chloe, you cannot have sex with him,” Zatanna said.
“You can stay,” Davis said.
“Chloe, you have got to have sex with him.”
“Zatanna! How would you like it if Davis used a wish to make wild monkey love to you?” There was a long pause. “Don’t think about it! That’s my wish-husband you’re fantasizing about!”
“Wish?”
“It’s a long story,” Chloe said.
“Magic is real,” Zatanna said.
“So whatever I wish could come true. Hmm…” Davis rubbed his chin.
“Don’t even think it!”
“But I could bring about world peace! End world hunger! Bring back Veronica Mars for a fourth season!”
“My wishes aren’t powerful enough to do that,” Zatanna said.
“Oh,” Davis said, crestfallen. “Then I suppose I couldn’t wish myself into—“ Davis suddenly disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“Davis!” Chloe cried.
Davis stepped out of the smoke, wearing armor and holding a sword. “Who the hell is Davis? I am the greatest swordsman who ever lived.”
They stared at him in conusion.
“Madmartigan!”
They kept staring.
“From the 1988 hit Willow?”
“Didn’t that movie flop?” Zatanna asked.
Davis reached for his sword.
“But I hear it did great overseas.”
Chloe thought about the way Davis had looked at her that morning. It’d been so warm, loving, like she was the only other thing in the world to him. The polar opposite of the hurried glances Clark gave her before speeding off. No, it was like—how he always looked at her, minus the twitchiness that she guessed came from wanting her approval. Se realized with a treacherous blush that she missed that look, now that he was staring at her like a stranger. “Isn’t he supposed to be my wish-husband?”
“Hahaha!” Davis laughed, his helmet’s horsehair flying back. “All fair maidens dream of being wed to Madmartigan, but my heart is well-armored against all attacks.” He put his arm around Zatanna. “But… maybe with someone like you I could let down my guard and share my awful burden. It’s… it’s hard being the greatest swordsman in the world. Tough making friends.”
Zatanna threw glowing dust in his face.
”Davis!” Chloe yelled. “If you hurt him, I will heal the shit out of you!”
“Relax, it’s just a little love spell.”
Davis straightened, staring at Chloe. “An angel! Oh, spirits, let me be worthy of hearing your messenger’s name!”
Chloe gave Zatanna a look.
“You were complaining he didn’t love you anymore.”
“That was an observation, not an invitation to give him a spell roofie!”
“A spell?” Davis asked. “Yes, a spell to light the darkest corners of my soul with blessed light! Please, tell me your name, beauty of beauties! Don’t let me suffer in ignorance any longer!”
Chloe’s mouth was hanging open. No one had ever talked to her like that. Well, except for that time Clark had drunk-dialed Lana and gotten the wrong number. She probably shouldn’t have kept it on her voice-mail for so long. Or specifically erased the parts where he called her Lana.
“She’s Chloe,” Zatanna introduced.
“Yes, of course, that makes perfect sense! What else could my love be named? I love you, Chloe, I love everything about you! I love that blouse. Did you get it on sale?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Your savvy trickster’s mind arouses me like a minx!”
“Isn’t a minx a kind of animal?” Zatanna asked.
“Shut up, Zatanna,” Chloe said.
Davis looked deep into her eyes, taking hold of her arms in a classic clinch. “Chloe, I’m the greatest swordsman who ever lived.” He tapped his blade. “But this isn’t the sword.” He looked over at Zatanna to make sure she was keeping up. “The sword is my—“
A hatted shadow fell across them. “Let her go!”
Chloe looked up. It was a man, wearing a beat-up leather jacket and a similarly battered fedora.
“Olsen!” Davis spat.
“You can call me Dr. Olsen.” He tipped his hat to Chloe. “And you can call me Indy.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“That depends on how reasonable we’re all willing to be. All I want is the girl!”
“She’s more girl than a peck like you can handle!”
“Don’t call me a peck, I’m not short, I’m average!”
“The hat doesn’t count!”
“Says you!” Jimmy threw out his whip, catching a rafter, and swung down.
Davis stepped out of the way. Jimmy hit the wall.
“Peck!” Davis insulted. “Peck-peck-peck-peck-peck-peck!”
Jimmy got up, looking more Kingdom of the Crystal Skull than Raiders of the Lost Ark.
“Jimmy, seriously, what are you doing?” Chloe demanded.
“I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go.”
Davis unsheathed his sword, twirling it in a series of expert flourishes.
Jimmy wearily drew his gun and shot Davis. The bullet ricocheted off his armor and hit Zatanna’s top hat.
“That does it!” Zatanna yelled. “You want to fight, you can do it like the Greeks of old!”
“Which ones, Hellenistic or Classical?” Jimmy asked.
“You know the ones I mean! Thgif! Thgif! Thgif!”
***
Lex strutted down the streets of Metropolis, Stayin’ Alive blasting through his iPod and the wind in his afro. No longer did he have cause to envy his father’s luscious mane, his friend Clark’s ebon tresses, or Chloe’s sassy blonde ‘do. Now, he had the power. Now, he had hair. He'd even garnered some unironic whistles from lady construction workers.
He saw Tess walking down the street and sidled up to her, running his pick through his afro one last time. “Tess, you’re looking lovely as ever. How’s business?”
“It’s… it’s so big…” She forced herself to look down at his face. “I mean, good, Ollie and I had a merger, I mean!, our companies had a merger. In bed.”
“Sounds nice. I hope he was long enough. I hear he’s cut his hair short. Some men don’t have the protein to get their hair thick and soft, with a bit of a curl.”
“Don’t torture me, Lex! Let me touch it. You don’t know how much product Ollie uses!”
“I want my company back.”
“I’ll do it!”
“And I want you to mix some colors in with Ollie’s whites so all his laundry comes out pink.”
“Anything!”
“And I want you to wear flannel again when we make love.”
“But Lex, it itches.”
“Too bad, I was going to let you put my hair in braids.”
“Damn you. Done!”
As Tess touched the magnificent burnished bronze of Lex’s afro, she thought about how silly it was that so many people were using their wishes for such frivolous uses. Her spies were reporting people becoming James Bond, Han Solo, and Xena (and Perry White really didn’t have the legs for that outfit). Why would someone want to be a pop culture icon when they could wish for money or fame or… or…
Lex looked up as a now pink-haired Tess sang boldly “Jem is truly outrageous, truly-truly-truly outrageous!”
That was when Chloe and Zatanna arrived.
“Is that Tess Mercer dressed as Jem?” Chloe asked. “Who would want to be Jem?”
“Yeah,” Zatanna answered morosely. “Who would ever want that?”
“This has gone on long enough, Zatanna, someone could get hurt!”
“You’re right. Hguone htiw eht sehsiw!
Tess stopped singing and Lex’s hair fell out.
“Hey!”
“Oh, alright, Eniagor!”
Lex grew a mullet. He patted it. “It’ll have to do. Quick, Tess, to the Lex Salon!”
“You could’ve done that all along?” Chloe asked.
“I know, I know, but it’d be wrong to put the toupee people out of business.”
“I mean undoing the wishes!”
“A girl can’t be curious?”
Chloe’s phone rang. She answered it. “Hey, it’s Davis. Why am I naked with Jimmy in a full nelson? Besides the obvious reason, I mean. Of causing him pain. And what happened to all my whipped cream, I was just at the store?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll explain later.”
“Over dinner?”
“Why not?”
“You did the right thing!”
***
“Another crisis averted,” Chloe said, checking her hair in the mirror of a switched-off computer monitor.
“Just in time too.” Clark typed another paragraph of his article. “Someone wished for Lois to ride me like a pony. With sugar cubes when I was a good horsey.”
“People can be so perverted,” Lois said, looking around. “It’s too bad we’ll never figure out who that sicko was. Never ever. Speaking of completely unrelated subjects, Chloe! I hear you have a hot date! After all, you’ve always wanted Madmartigan to fall in love with you, ever since that story you wrote in fourth grade…”
Chloe looked up from touching up her make-up. “Hey! Princess Amber Valeria was an entirely original creation, not in any way a surrogate for me! And besides, he’s not Madmartigan anymore. The spell left absolutely no side effects.”
***
Davis felt it rising in him again. The power, the confidence, the thrill. He couldn’t hold it back any longer. With three words, he let himself transform.
“I…
“feel…
“BETTER!”
also, madmartrigan!
by seriousfic
2603 words, pg-13, hex
“I’m married to Davis Bloome and he wants to impregnate me!”
Chloe woke up, put on her slippers, and went to her mirror. Still Chloe. She’d never been so grateful for being a blonde. Even with her marriage in shambles, Brainiac was gone, Lex was gone, and things were finally back to as normal as they were liable to get.
Her iPhone rang.
Chloe sighed. Well, it had been nice while it lasted. “Hello?” she answered.
“Lois?”
“No, Chloe.”
“Oh, good, you switched back.”
“Zatanna!”
“Right in one! Just calling to say sorry again for swapping our your body.”
“That’s okay. It was actually a little fun. Construction workers whistled at me unironically.”
“Good for you. Hey, as long as I’ve got you on the line, have you noticed anything odd lately?”
“Like what?”
Davis walked by Chloe’s bedroom door, wearing nothing but a towel. On his shoulder. Chloe dropped the phone. “Hey honeybunches of oats, shower time. You in?”
Chloe mutely shook her head.
“Right, phone call. Left some bacon for you on the counter. Bon appetite.”
He walked off.
Chloe put the phone back to her ear. “Zatanna, there’s a naked man in my apartment.”
“Is he cute?”
“Not really my point.”
Chloe had to sit down. She was just noticing all the pictures of her and Davis together, and the bed big enough for two, and the handcuffs on her headboard. Which she really didn’t want to think about.
“Listen, it’s not my fault. I was working on a spell to increase my powers—“
“Increase your powers? You grant wishes!”
“But these would be big wishes, like world peace, an end to world hunger, a fourth season of Veronica Mars.”
“I did like that show.” Chloe noticed the wedding ring on her finger. It had a pretty big diamond. “So what went wrong?”
“It backfired! Went back and gave new wishes to everyone I… helped. You remember the man who wanted to speak dead languages?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s a Viking now.”
“Oh. Not in the Minnesota way, I suppose.”
“So, were you wishing for anything at 3AM last night?”
Davis stepped in front of her door again, wearing nothing but a towel—thankfully around his waist—and lots of moisture. “Want it while its clean?”
Chloe tried to hang onto the phone. “It’s a very important call.”
“Okay. But I hear it’s very hard to get pregnant without,” his eyebrows weaved up and down.
Chloe followed his eyebrows until a call on the house-phone pulled him away. She jammed the phone to her ear again. “We’re trying to get pregnant!”
“We are?” Zatanna asked.
“I’m married to Davis Bloome and he wants to impregnate me!”
“Is he cute?”
“That’s not the point!”
“That’s not a no.”
“Alright! He’s got a stomach like he’s smuggling paint rollers, are you happy?”
“I was looking for something more in the realm of penis. Is it bigger than a breadbox?”
“Will that help break the spell?”
“Oh, right, the spell. Listen, he’s under a love spell, so it would be unethical to,” Chloe pictured Zatanna’s eyebrows weaving up and down, “got it?”
“No yankee his wankee, got it.”
“Also, try to keep anyone else from making wishes. The magic is wild, there’s no telling what it could do. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“Will you be riding a magical beast?”
“Greyhound.”
***
Chloe went to the Daily Planet, where an intern was waiting for her with coffee and a bagel. As this happened even when she wasn’t bewitched, Chloe wondered about the frequency of her trips to the Daily Planet. She didn’t correct the intern’s assumption that she was an employee, though. It was a damn good cup of joe.
“Clark! Did you make any wishes at 3 AM last night?”
Lois looked up from her workstation to the blonde standing between her and Clark. “What, is Zatanna back to her old tricks? What would that make you, Jimmy? In my cousin’s body?”
“No, I’m Chloe.”
Lois leaned past her to see Clark. “Then I suppose Lex is inside you!”
“No, he’s still Clark.”
“Then… who am I?”
“You’re Lois.”
“Oh, right, that explains the unironic whistling I’ve been getting from construction workers.”
Clark stood up. “To answer your question, Chloe, I was watching Wild Things and… no, that was at 2:30. Darn. Then T2 came on and I wished my best friend was alive to watch it with me.”
Lex walked up. Chloe squeaked and stomped on his foot.
“Chloe! I also wished he wasn’t evil!”
“Oh. Sorry.”
Lex hopped up and down on one foot. “You’re lucky I’m not evil.”
Chloe frantically marshaled her blonde power. “Listen, so long as you’re all here, I have to warn you not to wish for anything. Zatanna’s spell is out of control and there’s no telling what could happen.”
A man at the next desk over jumped up, shouting “I just won the lotto! A million bucks!”
“That could just as easily have been a billion boy-deers,” Chloe said defensively.
“Yes!” shouted a man at the next next desk over, “The state approved a new wildlife preserve! A million bucks, safe from toxic waste!”
“What’s so great about wildlife preserves?” Chloe asked.
“My penis is 15-inches long!”
“It’s not the size that counts, it’s what you do with it!” Chloe shouted back. “Lex, have you been wishing?!”
“What makes you say that, Miss Sullivan?”
“You didn’t have an afro before.”
“I’ll thank you to call her Sylvia.” Lex ran a hand through his perm. “My precious.”
***
By the time Zatanna arrived at the bus station, it was raining jelly beans and the front page of the Daily Planet was nude pictures of Christian Bale. She got off the bus to find Chloe and Lois waiting for her. “Good thing I made worrywoad one of the spell components, so no real harm can be done.”
“It’s raining jelly beans! They kinda sting!” Lois said. “I think one of them broke the skin.”
“Was it licorine?”
“Obviously.”
“Excuse me, I’m a little married over here!” Chloe said.
“Relax,” Zatanna said. “If I can take care of Barack Obama’s marriage, I can take care of yours.”
“But Obama is married.”
“Exactly. To a woman.” Zatanna winked.
***
Chloe walked into her apartment, Zatanna at her side. The magician thought it’d help her to reverse the wishes if she found the first one. They found Davis reclining on the bearskin rug in front of a raging fire, George Michael’s Careless Whisper playing on the stereo. He was wearing nothing but whipped cream.
“I don’t have a stereo,” Chloe said. “Or a bearskin rug. Or a fireplace. Or whipped cream anymore, I guess.”
“Chloe, thought you might come home early, wondered if you might like a snack.”
“Chloe, you cannot have sex with him,” Zatanna said.
“You can stay,” Davis said.
“Chloe, you have got to have sex with him.”
“Zatanna! How would you like it if Davis used a wish to make wild monkey love to you?” There was a long pause. “Don’t think about it! That’s my wish-husband you’re fantasizing about!”
“Wish?”
“It’s a long story,” Chloe said.
“Magic is real,” Zatanna said.
“So whatever I wish could come true. Hmm…” Davis rubbed his chin.
“Don’t even think it!”
“But I could bring about world peace! End world hunger! Bring back Veronica Mars for a fourth season!”
“My wishes aren’t powerful enough to do that,” Zatanna said.
“Oh,” Davis said, crestfallen. “Then I suppose I couldn’t wish myself into—“ Davis suddenly disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“Davis!” Chloe cried.
Davis stepped out of the smoke, wearing armor and holding a sword. “Who the hell is Davis? I am the greatest swordsman who ever lived.”
They stared at him in conusion.
“Madmartigan!”
They kept staring.
“From the 1988 hit Willow?”
“Didn’t that movie flop?” Zatanna asked.
Davis reached for his sword.
“But I hear it did great overseas.”
Chloe thought about the way Davis had looked at her that morning. It’d been so warm, loving, like she was the only other thing in the world to him. The polar opposite of the hurried glances Clark gave her before speeding off. No, it was like—how he always looked at her, minus the twitchiness that she guessed came from wanting her approval. Se realized with a treacherous blush that she missed that look, now that he was staring at her like a stranger. “Isn’t he supposed to be my wish-husband?”
“Hahaha!” Davis laughed, his helmet’s horsehair flying back. “All fair maidens dream of being wed to Madmartigan, but my heart is well-armored against all attacks.” He put his arm around Zatanna. “But… maybe with someone like you I could let down my guard and share my awful burden. It’s… it’s hard being the greatest swordsman in the world. Tough making friends.”
Zatanna threw glowing dust in his face.
”Davis!” Chloe yelled. “If you hurt him, I will heal the shit out of you!”
“Relax, it’s just a little love spell.”
Davis straightened, staring at Chloe. “An angel! Oh, spirits, let me be worthy of hearing your messenger’s name!”
Chloe gave Zatanna a look.
“You were complaining he didn’t love you anymore.”
“That was an observation, not an invitation to give him a spell roofie!”
“A spell?” Davis asked. “Yes, a spell to light the darkest corners of my soul with blessed light! Please, tell me your name, beauty of beauties! Don’t let me suffer in ignorance any longer!”
Chloe’s mouth was hanging open. No one had ever talked to her like that. Well, except for that time Clark had drunk-dialed Lana and gotten the wrong number. She probably shouldn’t have kept it on her voice-mail for so long. Or specifically erased the parts where he called her Lana.
“She’s Chloe,” Zatanna introduced.
“Yes, of course, that makes perfect sense! What else could my love be named? I love you, Chloe, I love everything about you! I love that blouse. Did you get it on sale?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Your savvy trickster’s mind arouses me like a minx!”
“Isn’t a minx a kind of animal?” Zatanna asked.
“Shut up, Zatanna,” Chloe said.
Davis looked deep into her eyes, taking hold of her arms in a classic clinch. “Chloe, I’m the greatest swordsman who ever lived.” He tapped his blade. “But this isn’t the sword.” He looked over at Zatanna to make sure she was keeping up. “The sword is my—“
A hatted shadow fell across them. “Let her go!”
Chloe looked up. It was a man, wearing a beat-up leather jacket and a similarly battered fedora.
“Olsen!” Davis spat.
“You can call me Dr. Olsen.” He tipped his hat to Chloe. “And you can call me Indy.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“That depends on how reasonable we’re all willing to be. All I want is the girl!”
“She’s more girl than a peck like you can handle!”
“Don’t call me a peck, I’m not short, I’m average!”
“The hat doesn’t count!”
“Says you!” Jimmy threw out his whip, catching a rafter, and swung down.
Davis stepped out of the way. Jimmy hit the wall.
“Peck!” Davis insulted. “Peck-peck-peck-peck-peck-peck!”
Jimmy got up, looking more Kingdom of the Crystal Skull than Raiders of the Lost Ark.
“Jimmy, seriously, what are you doing?” Chloe demanded.
“I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go.”
Davis unsheathed his sword, twirling it in a series of expert flourishes.
Jimmy wearily drew his gun and shot Davis. The bullet ricocheted off his armor and hit Zatanna’s top hat.
“That does it!” Zatanna yelled. “You want to fight, you can do it like the Greeks of old!”
“Which ones, Hellenistic or Classical?” Jimmy asked.
“You know the ones I mean! Thgif! Thgif! Thgif!”
***
Lex strutted down the streets of Metropolis, Stayin’ Alive blasting through his iPod and the wind in his afro. No longer did he have cause to envy his father’s luscious mane, his friend Clark’s ebon tresses, or Chloe’s sassy blonde ‘do. Now, he had the power. Now, he had hair. He'd even garnered some unironic whistles from lady construction workers.
He saw Tess walking down the street and sidled up to her, running his pick through his afro one last time. “Tess, you’re looking lovely as ever. How’s business?”
“It’s… it’s so big…” She forced herself to look down at his face. “I mean, good, Ollie and I had a merger, I mean!, our companies had a merger. In bed.”
“Sounds nice. I hope he was long enough. I hear he’s cut his hair short. Some men don’t have the protein to get their hair thick and soft, with a bit of a curl.”
“Don’t torture me, Lex! Let me touch it. You don’t know how much product Ollie uses!”
“I want my company back.”
“I’ll do it!”
“And I want you to mix some colors in with Ollie’s whites so all his laundry comes out pink.”
“Anything!”
“And I want you to wear flannel again when we make love.”
“But Lex, it itches.”
“Too bad, I was going to let you put my hair in braids.”
“Damn you. Done!”
As Tess touched the magnificent burnished bronze of Lex’s afro, she thought about how silly it was that so many people were using their wishes for such frivolous uses. Her spies were reporting people becoming James Bond, Han Solo, and Xena (and Perry White really didn’t have the legs for that outfit). Why would someone want to be a pop culture icon when they could wish for money or fame or… or…
Lex looked up as a now pink-haired Tess sang boldly “Jem is truly outrageous, truly-truly-truly outrageous!”
That was when Chloe and Zatanna arrived.
“Is that Tess Mercer dressed as Jem?” Chloe asked. “Who would want to be Jem?”
“Yeah,” Zatanna answered morosely. “Who would ever want that?”
“This has gone on long enough, Zatanna, someone could get hurt!”
“You’re right. Hguone htiw eht sehsiw!
Tess stopped singing and Lex’s hair fell out.
“Hey!”
“Oh, alright, Eniagor!”
Lex grew a mullet. He patted it. “It’ll have to do. Quick, Tess, to the Lex Salon!”
“You could’ve done that all along?” Chloe asked.
“I know, I know, but it’d be wrong to put the toupee people out of business.”
“I mean undoing the wishes!”
“A girl can’t be curious?”
Chloe’s phone rang. She answered it. “Hey, it’s Davis. Why am I naked with Jimmy in a full nelson? Besides the obvious reason, I mean. Of causing him pain. And what happened to all my whipped cream, I was just at the store?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll explain later.”
“Over dinner?”
“Why not?”
“You did the right thing!”
***
“Another crisis averted,” Chloe said, checking her hair in the mirror of a switched-off computer monitor.
“Just in time too.” Clark typed another paragraph of his article. “Someone wished for Lois to ride me like a pony. With sugar cubes when I was a good horsey.”
“People can be so perverted,” Lois said, looking around. “It’s too bad we’ll never figure out who that sicko was. Never ever. Speaking of completely unrelated subjects, Chloe! I hear you have a hot date! After all, you’ve always wanted Madmartigan to fall in love with you, ever since that story you wrote in fourth grade…”
Chloe looked up from touching up her make-up. “Hey! Princess Amber Valeria was an entirely original creation, not in any way a surrogate for me! And besides, he’s not Madmartigan anymore. The spell left absolutely no side effects.”
***
Davis felt it rising in him again. The power, the confidence, the thrill. He couldn’t hold it back any longer. With three words, he let himself transform.
“I…
“feel…
“BETTER!”
Friday, April 10, 2009
starry night
Reccers Notes: Before there was Chloe and Davis on the show as we know them now, there were Chloom fans who saw the possibilities.
This is a pre-show spec that delves into Chloe's psyche post s7 and the almost dysfunctional friendship with Clark. Also, her first meeting with Davis Bloome, a different purpose she finds for her life and ... a scene I wished I woulda seen on the show.
Oh. I better just let you read.
by h20sprincess at her archive- filling the silence.
She's got tons of awesome stuff, check it out and leave her much love!
2160 words, pg-13, alternate universe
It doesn’t start the way these things should.
It doesn’t start the way these things should.
She’s reckless, driven to panic at the tiny body crumpled in the road. She can hear the sirens, knows she’ll be caught, but the boy is so little, and his mother’s desperate wail tears at her soul.
When she wakes, she’s not in a morgue. She makes out simple, mission style furniture in the murky light filtering through drawn blinds. It’s not Clark’s sun-dappled farm, and the hint of aftershave she smells isn’t Jimmy’s.
She slips quietly out of a comfortable bed. Spotting her sweater on the door, she wraps it around herself. The post-death chill is always hard to break.
When he coughs from the corner she practically jumps out of her skin. He’s standing immediately, holding his hands up in a placating gesture.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
She remembers who she is, what she’s survived, and straightens even as her brows knit with the need to know. “Who are you?”
“I’m D…Davis. My name’s Davis.”
“Where am I?”
“My apartment.” He steps forward and she reaches for the doorknob, ready to bolt. He stills at the gesture.
“Why am I in your apartment?” She grinds, as evenly as she can manage. She was undoubtedly dead when he brought her here and tucked her in, so this might just be a brand of crazy she hasn’t encountered yet.
“You were…you were dead. We pulled up, and I saw the light.”
Her eyes go wide.
“I saw what you did.”
“No…you must be-“
“That little boy didn’t have a scratch on him. Everyone on the scene, save his mother, knew he was dead. Then that light, and you were, instead.”
“But why-“
“You took a chance on him. I had to take a chance on you. It was…a miracle.” The awe in his eyes reminds her a little of Jimmy.
Her lips thin to a tight line. “Please,” she begs. “You can’t tell anyone what you saw.”
He blinks, obviously surprised, but his answer is surprisingly firm. “Never.”
She stands her ground as he takes a tentative step toward her.
“I’m sorry I scared you.” Another step, and he pauses at the warning in her eyes. “I didn’t know what else to do when I saw what happened. I had to get you out of there.”
Something about the way he accepted her gift makes the hair on her neck prickle uncomfortably. She tilts her head suspiciously.
“But you didn’t know I would come back. How could you?”
“You’re right, I didn’t. But I’d just witnessed one miracle. It didn’t seem like too much of a stretch to hope for a second. I couldn’t just abandon you.” He runs a hand through hair the color of midnight. “I’m a paramedic. I deal with the worst of pain and death every day. You can’t know how much I needed something like you.”
She recoils. “I’m not some sideshow freak, Mr. Davis.”
His laugh catches her off guard. “Davis is my first name, though I’d prefer if you didn’t call me Mr. Bloom, and I never said you were a freak. When I first saw you, I thought you were an angel.”
She scoffs at that. “Believe me, I’m no angel.”
“Well, you’re not a freak, either.” He reaches out tentatively and cradles her cheek. It only strikes her later that she should have been uncomfortable, rather than strangely warm, at the uninvited familiarity.
Her only excuse is that he’s looking at her with dark, solemn eyes that somehow remind her of her best friend. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Later, when Clark asks why the Daily Planet basement is abuzz with rumors of an angelic intervention near her new apartment, she’s strangely reluctant to share. It doesn’t make sense, but somehow the intimacy of that one moment feels like a betrayal.
He frowns at her vague dismissal of the topic, but even with Lois riding him to help her land her first published story, she doubts he’ll chase this lead. He has enough going on with his own hero work.
Of course she’s wrong.
Three weeks later, she finds Clark waiting outside her apartment when she arrives just before dawn. His nostrils flare as he takes in the dark circles under her eyes, but she’s really too tired to care.
She’s never answered to him, but this might be the first time she’s completely disregarded his feelings on a topic. It’s an oddly heady sensation.
“Where’ve you been?”
She brushes past him into the apartment. “I wasn’t aware I had a curfew, Clark.”
He squints.
Her voice is raspy. So what? Dying three times a night will do that to a girl.
She drops her purse and keys by the phone and flops onto the couch, sinking deep in the worn cushions. God, she’s never felt such bone-deep weariness.
Clark’s voice breaks the illusion of privacy. “Where have you been, Chloe?”
She can’t contain a slight giggle at hearing his condescending “Kara voice” aimed at her. She rolls her neck, letting out a satisfied sigh as some of the tension flows out of her shoulders with a pop. Her answer is simple.
“Out.”
“Out, where?” The disbelief is almost tangible.
“Here and there.” She knows he’s not letting this go and she’s so tired. “I tagged along with a friend at work.”
“What friend?” Long strides and now he’s facing her.
She opens her eyes, offering what she hopes will pass as an ironic grin and burying the bitterness as deeply as she knows how. “Shockingly, I do have friends outside The Planet, Clark.”
She scoots up and tucks her feet beneath her. “Don’t get me wrong, I love helping Ollie and the gang, but I’m pretty sure someone is going to wonder how I pay for this place if I don’t find a job eventually. The Inquisitor isn’t quite my style.”
He has the decency to look guilty, and Chloe knows she’s won.
“I’m heading over to the Watchtower at one. Is there something I can help you with before I go in?”
“No, I…uh. It can wait.”
“Okay.” She says around a yawn. “Can you lock the door on your way out?”
There’s a beat. “Sure, Chloe. I’ll see you later.”
As the door clicks shut, she wonders where Clark goes with all his unanswered questions these days. He hasn’t come to her much since he returned.
There’s no joy in twisting the knife of guilt, but she’s not ready to share her budding relationship. So many of her previous attempts at love have been borne of a need to show Clark that he doesn’t define her.
This time, she wants to prove it to herself.
Maybe it’s not forever, but Davis knows what it’s like to choose others’ needs over his own and he likes her for all of who she is. Clark never quite managed either completely.
They haven’t been intimate yet, but she feels closer to him than she ever did to Jimmy. They’ve spent almost every night together since she woke in his bedroom the first time, whether she tags along with him to work or not, and she can talk to him about things she’s never shared with anyone.
When he told her what he knew of his parents’ deaths, of the way he always felt like the odd man out in the foster homes he finished out his rocky childhood in, they cried together. She loves that he took all that pain and loneliness, and turned it into something beautiful.
He’s a survivor, just like her. She needs to be that right now.
When they make love the first time, it’s beneath a canopy of stars. He is dark and beautiful, and when he whispers his love into her skin, she can’t help the tears that slip past her defenses.
He is strong and powerful, caring and true, but she’s not blind. Secrets have been her life since she learned they existed, and his scare him.
She’s patient.
Chloe’s dreams have shattered around her, and she has to remake herself in a new image. She can’t be the girl she was, never leaving a story unexplored. Besides, she thinks, Davis helped her find a new calling. He’s earned the right to tell her when he’s ready.
She’s saved almost forty lives since that day in the road, and finally feels like she’s gained some control over her gifts. They take less from her every time, and the back of an ambulance is a much safer place when you glow.
She hasn’t sacrificed her Watchtower duties. Vic greets her at the door to “Isis” with a grim look, and the lightness that lingered after a night off with Davis falls away.
“What’s the matter?”
“We have a problem.”
Oh God. “Don’t tell me Lex is back.”
“No, but whoever this is seems to be even more dangerous.”
Their research leads them along a path of destruction through the urban warehouse district over the last few months, piecing together what they can of the pattern. The attacks are poorly scheduled, but rarely seem to happen at night. Every eyewitness account describes the same thing, a hulking mass of spikes and glittering eyes as black as midnight. The police have no leads.
She uses the contacts she has left to ensure Lois and Clark get the story.
Davis is on-call the next night, so she’s placing their standard take-out order at Dragon Palace and saving the last of her research when Clark blows in - literally. He grins and pulls the phone from her hand.
“Edward? It’s Clark. Cancel Miss Sullivan’s order. We’ll be right over.”
She’s still gaping in shock when he pulls a bouquet of wildflowers from behind his back. It’s too much.
“Clark! What do you think you’re doing?”
Maybe it comes out a little harsher than she intended, because he looks like she just kicked his puppy. In her defense, it’s been a while since he barged into her life. They’ve both been too busy for social calls.
“We just got slated for page one, and I owe it all to you. Can’t I take my favorite news hound out to dinner to say thanks?”
He’s looking at her with pleading eyes, and for the first time, they remind her of someone else.
It’s time.
“I can’t, Clark. I have plans.”
The incredulous tilt of his head makes her want to slap a little. “With who?”
“With Davis. He’s a…friend.”
Clark blinks and speaks slowly. “What kind of friend?”
She purses her lips at his practiced confusion. “The kind I date, Clark.”
“You have a boyfriend? What happened to Jimmy?”
“You work with Jimmy every day. You can’t tell me he hasn’t told you.”
For reasons beyond understanding, Clark looks stricken. She didn’t know he and Jimmy had grown so close.
There isn’t much else to say, so she starts gathering her things. He follows.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shrugs. “You were busy. Besides, I didn’t want to jinx anything before it really went anywhere.”
“Do I at least get to meet the guy?”
She can’t help but roll her eyes. “I already have a dad, Clark. I don’t need a spare.”
“You’re still my best friend, Chloe.”
She manages to contain a chuckle. Yeah, he’s the BFF that got her arrested and didn’t spend enough time with her to notice that she’s had a serious boyfriend for over two months. That definitely gives him the right to sign off on her newest beau.
“Look, I haven’t exactly mentioned you to him. I didn’t want to scare him away.” She puts a hand on his arm to comfort him, and he just stares at the spot where their skin meets.
There’s more to say, but her phone rings. It’s Davis, and she turns to give herself the illusion of privacy.
“Hey, beautiful.” God, just his voice makes her shiver.
“Hey you.”
“You’re late.”
“I know. I’m on my way.”
“Actually, I’m glad I got the chance to surprise you, for once. Go to the window.”
He stands in all his tuxedoed glory before a black limousine.
“You’re crazy, you know.” Her voice is soft, and she fights tears. She’s never felt this important to anyone.
“I know. Crazy for you.” He pauses, his voice thick with emotion. “Come down?”
“Of course.” She snatches her purse and shoots Clark an apologetic look before sweeping out of the office and taking the stairs to the first floor.
When she exits the building, breathless from her rushed descent, she almost falls over. He’s on one knee, and the ring is far from plastic. Even in the dark, the diamond practically glows.
“Chloe Ann Sullivan, I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you.” He’s practically whispering and they’re standing on a busy street in downtown Metropolis, but his voice is all she hears. “You’re the most giving person I have ever met, and if I can’t spend the rest of my life with you, I’m lost. Will you marry me?”
She lets the tears flow unchecked, nodding when her voice fails her. Slipping the ring on her finger, Davis sweeps her into the most mind-blowing kiss of her life.
When he holds the limousine door open for her, Chloe glances up at the window. She can’t be sure in the darkness, but she could swear Clark is watching her. It sends a chill up her spine.
Davis follows her gaze. “Do you need to lock up?” He squints, and tilts his head.
“Nope. I left a friend up there. They’ll take care of things.”
continued in Always.
This is a pre-show spec that delves into Chloe's psyche post s7 and the almost dysfunctional friendship with Clark. Also, her first meeting with Davis Bloome, a different purpose she finds for her life and ... a scene I wished I woulda seen on the show.
Oh. I better just let you read.
by h20sprincess at her archive- filling the silence.
She's got tons of awesome stuff, check it out and leave her much love!
2160 words, pg-13, alternate universe
It doesn’t start the way these things should.
It doesn’t start the way these things should.
She’s reckless, driven to panic at the tiny body crumpled in the road. She can hear the sirens, knows she’ll be caught, but the boy is so little, and his mother’s desperate wail tears at her soul.
When she wakes, she’s not in a morgue. She makes out simple, mission style furniture in the murky light filtering through drawn blinds. It’s not Clark’s sun-dappled farm, and the hint of aftershave she smells isn’t Jimmy’s.
She slips quietly out of a comfortable bed. Spotting her sweater on the door, she wraps it around herself. The post-death chill is always hard to break.
When he coughs from the corner she practically jumps out of her skin. He’s standing immediately, holding his hands up in a placating gesture.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
She remembers who she is, what she’s survived, and straightens even as her brows knit with the need to know. “Who are you?”
“I’m D…Davis. My name’s Davis.”
“Where am I?”
“My apartment.” He steps forward and she reaches for the doorknob, ready to bolt. He stills at the gesture.
“Why am I in your apartment?” She grinds, as evenly as she can manage. She was undoubtedly dead when he brought her here and tucked her in, so this might just be a brand of crazy she hasn’t encountered yet.
“You were…you were dead. We pulled up, and I saw the light.”
Her eyes go wide.
“I saw what you did.”
“No…you must be-“
“That little boy didn’t have a scratch on him. Everyone on the scene, save his mother, knew he was dead. Then that light, and you were, instead.”
“But why-“
“You took a chance on him. I had to take a chance on you. It was…a miracle.” The awe in his eyes reminds her a little of Jimmy.
Her lips thin to a tight line. “Please,” she begs. “You can’t tell anyone what you saw.”
He blinks, obviously surprised, but his answer is surprisingly firm. “Never.”
She stands her ground as he takes a tentative step toward her.
“I’m sorry I scared you.” Another step, and he pauses at the warning in her eyes. “I didn’t know what else to do when I saw what happened. I had to get you out of there.”
Something about the way he accepted her gift makes the hair on her neck prickle uncomfortably. She tilts her head suspiciously.
“But you didn’t know I would come back. How could you?”
“You’re right, I didn’t. But I’d just witnessed one miracle. It didn’t seem like too much of a stretch to hope for a second. I couldn’t just abandon you.” He runs a hand through hair the color of midnight. “I’m a paramedic. I deal with the worst of pain and death every day. You can’t know how much I needed something like you.”
She recoils. “I’m not some sideshow freak, Mr. Davis.”
His laugh catches her off guard. “Davis is my first name, though I’d prefer if you didn’t call me Mr. Bloom, and I never said you were a freak. When I first saw you, I thought you were an angel.”
She scoffs at that. “Believe me, I’m no angel.”
“Well, you’re not a freak, either.” He reaches out tentatively and cradles her cheek. It only strikes her later that she should have been uncomfortable, rather than strangely warm, at the uninvited familiarity.
Her only excuse is that he’s looking at her with dark, solemn eyes that somehow remind her of her best friend. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Later, when Clark asks why the Daily Planet basement is abuzz with rumors of an angelic intervention near her new apartment, she’s strangely reluctant to share. It doesn’t make sense, but somehow the intimacy of that one moment feels like a betrayal.
He frowns at her vague dismissal of the topic, but even with Lois riding him to help her land her first published story, she doubts he’ll chase this lead. He has enough going on with his own hero work.
Of course she’s wrong.
Three weeks later, she finds Clark waiting outside her apartment when she arrives just before dawn. His nostrils flare as he takes in the dark circles under her eyes, but she’s really too tired to care.
She’s never answered to him, but this might be the first time she’s completely disregarded his feelings on a topic. It’s an oddly heady sensation.
“Where’ve you been?”
She brushes past him into the apartment. “I wasn’t aware I had a curfew, Clark.”
He squints.
Her voice is raspy. So what? Dying three times a night will do that to a girl.
She drops her purse and keys by the phone and flops onto the couch, sinking deep in the worn cushions. God, she’s never felt such bone-deep weariness.
Clark’s voice breaks the illusion of privacy. “Where have you been, Chloe?”
She can’t contain a slight giggle at hearing his condescending “Kara voice” aimed at her. She rolls her neck, letting out a satisfied sigh as some of the tension flows out of her shoulders with a pop. Her answer is simple.
“Out.”
“Out, where?” The disbelief is almost tangible.
“Here and there.” She knows he’s not letting this go and she’s so tired. “I tagged along with a friend at work.”
“What friend?” Long strides and now he’s facing her.
She opens her eyes, offering what she hopes will pass as an ironic grin and burying the bitterness as deeply as she knows how. “Shockingly, I do have friends outside The Planet, Clark.”
She scoots up and tucks her feet beneath her. “Don’t get me wrong, I love helping Ollie and the gang, but I’m pretty sure someone is going to wonder how I pay for this place if I don’t find a job eventually. The Inquisitor isn’t quite my style.”
He has the decency to look guilty, and Chloe knows she’s won.
“I’m heading over to the Watchtower at one. Is there something I can help you with before I go in?”
“No, I…uh. It can wait.”
“Okay.” She says around a yawn. “Can you lock the door on your way out?”
There’s a beat. “Sure, Chloe. I’ll see you later.”
As the door clicks shut, she wonders where Clark goes with all his unanswered questions these days. He hasn’t come to her much since he returned.
There’s no joy in twisting the knife of guilt, but she’s not ready to share her budding relationship. So many of her previous attempts at love have been borne of a need to show Clark that he doesn’t define her.
This time, she wants to prove it to herself.
Maybe it’s not forever, but Davis knows what it’s like to choose others’ needs over his own and he likes her for all of who she is. Clark never quite managed either completely.
They haven’t been intimate yet, but she feels closer to him than she ever did to Jimmy. They’ve spent almost every night together since she woke in his bedroom the first time, whether she tags along with him to work or not, and she can talk to him about things she’s never shared with anyone.
When he told her what he knew of his parents’ deaths, of the way he always felt like the odd man out in the foster homes he finished out his rocky childhood in, they cried together. She loves that he took all that pain and loneliness, and turned it into something beautiful.
He’s a survivor, just like her. She needs to be that right now.
When they make love the first time, it’s beneath a canopy of stars. He is dark and beautiful, and when he whispers his love into her skin, she can’t help the tears that slip past her defenses.
He is strong and powerful, caring and true, but she’s not blind. Secrets have been her life since she learned they existed, and his scare him.
She’s patient.
Chloe’s dreams have shattered around her, and she has to remake herself in a new image. She can’t be the girl she was, never leaving a story unexplored. Besides, she thinks, Davis helped her find a new calling. He’s earned the right to tell her when he’s ready.
She’s saved almost forty lives since that day in the road, and finally feels like she’s gained some control over her gifts. They take less from her every time, and the back of an ambulance is a much safer place when you glow.
She hasn’t sacrificed her Watchtower duties. Vic greets her at the door to “Isis” with a grim look, and the lightness that lingered after a night off with Davis falls away.
“What’s the matter?”
“We have a problem.”
Oh God. “Don’t tell me Lex is back.”
“No, but whoever this is seems to be even more dangerous.”
Their research leads them along a path of destruction through the urban warehouse district over the last few months, piecing together what they can of the pattern. The attacks are poorly scheduled, but rarely seem to happen at night. Every eyewitness account describes the same thing, a hulking mass of spikes and glittering eyes as black as midnight. The police have no leads.
She uses the contacts she has left to ensure Lois and Clark get the story.
Davis is on-call the next night, so she’s placing their standard take-out order at Dragon Palace and saving the last of her research when Clark blows in - literally. He grins and pulls the phone from her hand.
“Edward? It’s Clark. Cancel Miss Sullivan’s order. We’ll be right over.”
She’s still gaping in shock when he pulls a bouquet of wildflowers from behind his back. It’s too much.
“Clark! What do you think you’re doing?”
Maybe it comes out a little harsher than she intended, because he looks like she just kicked his puppy. In her defense, it’s been a while since he barged into her life. They’ve both been too busy for social calls.
“We just got slated for page one, and I owe it all to you. Can’t I take my favorite news hound out to dinner to say thanks?”
He’s looking at her with pleading eyes, and for the first time, they remind her of someone else.
It’s time.
“I can’t, Clark. I have plans.”
The incredulous tilt of his head makes her want to slap a little. “With who?”
“With Davis. He’s a…friend.”
Clark blinks and speaks slowly. “What kind of friend?”
She purses her lips at his practiced confusion. “The kind I date, Clark.”
“You have a boyfriend? What happened to Jimmy?”
“You work with Jimmy every day. You can’t tell me he hasn’t told you.”
For reasons beyond understanding, Clark looks stricken. She didn’t know he and Jimmy had grown so close.
There isn’t much else to say, so she starts gathering her things. He follows.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shrugs. “You were busy. Besides, I didn’t want to jinx anything before it really went anywhere.”
“Do I at least get to meet the guy?”
She can’t help but roll her eyes. “I already have a dad, Clark. I don’t need a spare.”
“You’re still my best friend, Chloe.”
She manages to contain a chuckle. Yeah, he’s the BFF that got her arrested and didn’t spend enough time with her to notice that she’s had a serious boyfriend for over two months. That definitely gives him the right to sign off on her newest beau.
“Look, I haven’t exactly mentioned you to him. I didn’t want to scare him away.” She puts a hand on his arm to comfort him, and he just stares at the spot where their skin meets.
There’s more to say, but her phone rings. It’s Davis, and she turns to give herself the illusion of privacy.
“Hey, beautiful.” God, just his voice makes her shiver.
“Hey you.”
“You’re late.”
“I know. I’m on my way.”
“Actually, I’m glad I got the chance to surprise you, for once. Go to the window.”
He stands in all his tuxedoed glory before a black limousine.
“You’re crazy, you know.” Her voice is soft, and she fights tears. She’s never felt this important to anyone.
“I know. Crazy for you.” He pauses, his voice thick with emotion. “Come down?”
“Of course.” She snatches her purse and shoots Clark an apologetic look before sweeping out of the office and taking the stairs to the first floor.
When she exits the building, breathless from her rushed descent, she almost falls over. He’s on one knee, and the ring is far from plastic. Even in the dark, the diamond practically glows.
“Chloe Ann Sullivan, I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you.” He’s practically whispering and they’re standing on a busy street in downtown Metropolis, but his voice is all she hears. “You’re the most giving person I have ever met, and if I can’t spend the rest of my life with you, I’m lost. Will you marry me?”
She lets the tears flow unchecked, nodding when her voice fails her. Slipping the ring on her finger, Davis sweeps her into the most mind-blowing kiss of her life.
When he holds the limousine door open for her, Chloe glances up at the window. She can’t be sure in the darkness, but she could swear Clark is watching her. It sends a chill up her spine.
Davis follows her gaze. “Do you need to lock up?” He squints, and tilts his head.
“Nope. I left a friend up there. They’ll take care of things.”
continued in Always.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
madness
Reccing Notes: Chloe. Davis. Eternal. basement. + Chloe thinking a lot. Done after much laborious work to satisfy myself. Now I'll even Rec it to you.
A continuation of Eternal where Chloe realizes that death *does*change everything. Possibly not in the way you're thinking.
by vagrantdream at her/my livejournal.
4631 words, r/nc-17, eternal
It’s ironic, the perfect little martyrdom that gives her the chance to jump off the cliff feet first.
"You can't change your fate." "Why not?"
Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin
It’s true that nothing ever changes, not for her.
She’s undefined, forever watching everything play out, recording it neatly in her mind.
Clark is destined, someday to become that great hero. Just as Davis…is…was to become his adversary. Only he didn’t; wouldn’t; had left her human; had looked at her and almost smiled as the Kryptonite burned his skin.
She’d grabbed hold of the lever, and pulled.
She’d killed him.
She’d done the right thing, she tells herself over and over.
The world is safe and a little part of her doesn’t want to believe, thinks that maybe this is one of those stupid dreams she gets every once in a while, like when she wakes up in a world where Lex is President or she’s become her mother. (She won’t wake up soon, dial the first number on her cell, listen to his voice and laugh at how absurd she is.) She keeps seeing Davis’s face.
---------
Her only picture of Saegath is still in the fire where Clark poked it in. The flames flicker their way easily around it, curl the edges. He’s left by now, and she’s grateful he chose to philosophize, didn’t ask her what about Davis. She blathered on about safety and the world and protecting him. It made it all that easier to shut down.
---------
She pulls things out of the refrigerator, lets the half empty Tupperware container sit on the table untouched. Leftovers, he’d said to call them.
He would have come by.
She remembers a social anthropology class she took on a whim once; that it was a custom in the South, to mourn like this. She pushes a fork into the cold vegetables; thinks it would be freeing to let tears and salt mingle together.
Acceptance.
She’s not ready for that.
So she does a stupid thing, replays the entire dinner start to finish in her mind.
She must have said something about not knowing Jimmy even as he listened, watching as he cut himself on the slip of a knife. She remembers the something behind the look in his eyes. If only she’d been able to ask him then, maybe…
Maybe is a big word.
---------
Later, she finds herself walking her way through the produce section, piling leafy and green things into her cart, avoiding the onions.
She knows she’s going to go in as Watchtower for a few more hours tonight. Tomorrow, she’ll seek out Clark, even if he doesn’t need her source as an archiving index. She had been so convinced they wouldn’t fall back into their old pattern. She could have had her own life, somebody to talk with, only now…
Clark is familiar, unchanging, solid. He could make her forget.
She can be remarkable at self deception when she wants to be.
---------
She’s not so remarkable that she’d conjure him alive in the Talon basement. Solid, immortal? and un-ghostlike.
He’d lost his chance to be free.
He’s far stronger than Clark now, and destiny, destiny tells her that no matter what he’ll have to try and kill her best friend eventually.
There’s something about her that seems to calm the---murderer---inside of him, he says.
Only she’s never been that girl. Lana, maybe she’d believe, but she’s not some idealized image of sweetness and light. She’s always been simply Chloe Sullivan, friend. Chloe Sullivan, sometimes girl-friend and the worst mistake of someone’s life.
So much has changed since she met him.
---------
“Will you stay with me?”
It’s not much of a choice really, but she knows, knows the look on his face as she walks up the steps. Her expression has shut down somewhere along the line because she needs to think she’s doing this for the right reason. The door, Clark and out there. She has to face it.
It’s the single easiest and hardest choice of her life.
She could be pressed into the wall, heroic; saving the world because that’s what she has learned to do. Only that isn’t the reason at all.
It’s ironic, the perfect little martyrdom that gives her the chance to jump off the cliff feet first.
One step, after another, away and to the door where she doesn’t look at his face, doesn’t see the wreckage there.
This is the sound of her future, a bolt sliding into place.
-------
His eyes swallow her whole, burn her like Clark’s cocked heat vision never did. He thought she was going to leave.
What to say? Welcome back to the land of the living? I missed you? Yes.
She says nothing. Her tongue seems to stick at the back of her throat and she can’t trust herself, not right now, needs distance before she does something really stupid like burst into tears.
He looks the same to her, a dark shirt, street clothes. She wonders where he got them, doesn’t want to ask.
She walks back to cot, brushes past him solid and broken.
“This should do.”
They’d talked as friends did, connected and he’d listened and become her shoulder. She’d flirted with the idea that they could have something more. Before now, before she’d learned about the darkness of it all, before she yelled he lied, before they circled around that desk and he’d asked her the one thing she couldn’t do. The thing she did.
He swallows, his mouth works. “Thank you.” He doesn’t say anything else, not ‘you must really love me’, not even ‘why?’ (He’d always asked, but it’s not right now.) Helping someone can be just that. She’s staying in a dark room with this when she could be running.
“It’s not much of a sacrifice.” She says. Only this moment is finding her cracks and re-breaking them all over again. It hurts to be in the same room and miss him so.
She can imagine what Clark must have seen, outlines of skeletons underlying wheat and dirt. Davis was doomed to this no matter what he did, and he’d tried. He died for it.
She hastily fluffs the pillows, watches as they kick up clouds of dust she can’t see in the half light.
He takes the leftover bedding and starts to set up something on the floor, crouches like a man who hadn’t been dead earlier. He’s not saying anything, just instinctually moves toward it, is going to lie there curled up not to make her uncomfortable.
Over a yard away.
She tries to think she’d been terrified of him for all of one minute, legacies of it fresh on her mind. She remembered thinking that his hands could have choked the life out of someone before he tried to keep her from leaving. He’d been gentle and murderers weren’t gentle. She’s been fooled before.
Maybe she’s stupid, should be running now. Now all she can think of is his hands and the catch in his throat. ‘I love you’ still hangs there.
She sees Davis the man, her friend, not the vigilante killer with the hundreds of bodies.
He looks weary.
“Don’t do that. We don’t know what could be scurrying down there.”
“I can’t die, Chloe. I’m pretty sure one rat or a dozen won’t kill me.” He doesn’t fight her anyway.
She pulls the bedclothes out of a gentle grip, notices how he instinctively tries to prolong the contact even through cloth. His eyes are slightly red rimmed the way they were before. He said he couldn’t live with himself.
“How’ve you been holding up?”
“It made sure I healed already. It was barely a day, this time.”
“Keep talking. For a guy who’s been dead you look very good. But that’s not what it’s about, is it?”
“How can you do that?”
“Do what?”
“You’re here, in the dark with me and you ask me how I’m holding up.”
“Stop changing the subject. What about the dying?” The Kryptonite had been everywhere in that cage, Clark had yelled out, and Davis had hadn’t made a sound. She knows too well exactly what Kryptonite is.
“It didn’t last. And it wasn’t so bad.”
“Liar. It hurt.” Understatement.
“There’s not enough pain to make up for what I’ve done.”
“Now I feel like I’m in the middle of Ivanhoe.”
“You saw that field. There must be more. The thing is I don’t know. I always wanted to make myself believe that I wasn’t hurting people. This has been going on for years. Ever since I landed, I guess.”
“You remembered something?”
“In that cage, right before…the first time it happened.”
“If somehow, I managed to hold it back, save thousands of people, it won’t be enough. There were hundreds of people in that cornfield. I tried to redirect as though I could control it so it wouldn’t get out.”
“You went vigilante.”
“Junkies, drug dealers…Chloe, they didn’t deserve to die.
You know what I did? I went to a confessional, convinced myself that I could be doing good. And deep down, I knew. If I died like that a thousand times, it would be less than I deserved.”
“That wasn’t you.” She doesn’t know how it was created, as a genetic experiment joined to the ship for some vendetta against the House of El. It’s a worse punishment for him; trapped inside a monster that’s the exact opposite than everything he’s tried to be.
“It never should have been.”
“You couldn’t have stopped it.”
“That’s the thing, maybe I could’ve. With you it never happened. If I had been stronger…”
“Davis, you could hardly convince yourself to be in love with the entire planet for God’s sake.” There. She’s acknowledged it, and he’s not avoiding her eyes. There’s a lot there, pain and that something that’s always made her feel hot and cold at once, but he’s not pushing it. His chuckle is hollow; nothing like a chuckle should sound like.
“I can’t convince myself of very much these days.”
Clark said something like that the first time Lana had left him, the first time he’d discovered that he could hurt people he cared about. “You don’t deserve to hear this.”
“I need to. That’s what friends do. Remember Jimmy?”
“That was before, this. If it hadn’t been for me…”
If it hadn’t been for him she might not have learned how little she trusted the man she’d told herself she’d spend her life with. He was at the center of it all, but he held her together.
And now, he’s letting it all catch up to him. He can hurt as much as she does. Monsters don’t hurt, don’t feel guilt. He’s alive. She’s here, isn’t she?
She closes her hand over his sleeve, gingerly shakes it. Wonders if maybe the phantom pain lingers in the back of his mind, knows it’s not near to what he’s putting himself through.
“You were willing to give up your life. That means something.” If it had gone according to plan, he wouldn’t be here, now. She’d be a floor up, still trying to tell herself she did right.
“I came back.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you died.” She can’t define what that means, what she felt that moment. She hopes the words mean something to him.
“You died.”
She doesn’t know how this works, how her arms somehow slide their way over his shoulders, dig into street rough material and her breaths come out choppy.
It’s all too much. Finding him, losing him, finding him again.
He holds her, gently, not too tight, like she’ll shatter, but his pulse hammers by her ear. Things never change.
They always end up like this.
------
There is no movement except for her breathing as it she gets it to obey. He’s not quite as tall as Clark and her cheek reaches his shoulder and settles there.
She’s been in this position for innumerable times.
It’s could be easy enough. She just has to scrub at her eyes, a little. Her face never gets red when she cries.
It’s time to pull back and give a watery smile, now. She says something about her inner drama queen before she runs out of words.
It’s there, suffocating her still. She needs it to stop.
He’s going to stay and listen to her cry.
He doesn’t say anything, merely gathers her against him again, eyes shut, apparently oblivious to the havoc her nails are wreaking on the threading of his remaining shirt. He’s as desperate to hold on as she is.
‘Will you stay with me?’ had sounded so very overt, but it wasn’t. He’s being her shoulder again and she wants him to push her into telling him why even though she has no answer.
It terrifies her.
She could compartmentalize before it gets out of hand. She’s always fallen hard, thrown herself into things that eluded her, and then told herself she needed things she didn’t. Clark, she thinks. He knows. Jimmy. He knows that too.
Conscious choice or not, it happens with their eyes shut and he startles at the sensation.
It’s a second of paralysis where his breathing is shallow and his hands ball up behind her back. Then his mouth opens under hers, instinctive and soft, and so, so careful that she forgets this is a cliff and she’s a lemming jumping off.
She thinks he shouldn’t feel this warm.
He doesn’t take it much farther but she knows she’s not going to sleep in her neat little corner, alone. He leaves a trail of fire everywhere he touches and she bends toward him because it hurts, feels empty if he doesn’t.
Scattered bits of thoughts press upon her about how this isn’t like her, and how it doesn’t fit with her role, her little life in that corner room, and the sidekick and the red and blue blur’s best friend. Is she betraying him now? Maybe He’ll see it that way. But the fact that Davis wasn’t there and there was nothing obliterates everything else.
Need hurts almost as much as the empty ache and she can’t seem to control herself, buries her nails in cloth, shuts her eyes and pulls.
‘Stop’, she’d said before.
He doesn’t feel her up, barely brushes her jaw with his lips before he pulls back this time. She’s grateful he doesn’t stop touching her, even for a little while.
She keeps his fingers on the bare skin of her shoulder, tangles them and feels a strange tingling to her core. Can she really be doing this?
“Chloe, what…” He breathes hard, in and out, and his fingers are unsteady in the perfectly human way. “I’ve torn your world upside down. You don’t need to…”
His face is stripped, no charm, no masks. Fear.
She was never scared unless she had something to lose. She sees it with astonishing clarity, what this means. Maybe this is what it looks like from the outside, her needing to purge herself of him, this.
It makes some part of her ache.
It’s not obligation, or some twisted way of obscuring pain. “This is about me, too.” He wants to believe her.
She won’t go all philosophical; tell him how death changes things.
She settles for “I need to know you’re alive.”
This feels like taking advantage, knowing how he feels and not saying anything back because she doesn’t know what it means. It gathers this wordless churning in her gut until she buries her head in his neck. She can feel him swallow.
“Hey, I normally don’t before the first date either.” She says.
Jimmy she’d wanted in that same curious way she’d wanted to be liked for something other than a best bud. She hadn’t needed so much she’d wanted to be sick of it.
She’s only gone out with Davis once, if it could have been called that, in her apartment. They’d talked. That could have ended like a date. She doesn’t know.
Maybe they’ve been dating in some manner since they first met, when she told him those little things she never told anyone else. Maybe they’ve been going this way all this time.
She’s not Persephone, he’s not holding out pomegranate seeds, and this is a natural part of who they are. She wants him to be able to let go, forget.
“You can cook me dinner afterwards and you’ve got a deal.”
She sees for a half second, exactly what she needed.
He kisses her very slowly this time and she can hear him breathe. She suspects he’s holding back because of the painful lightness of his touch through the baggy dress shirt, under it. Maybe he’s just a romantic.
She’ll give him that.
She doesn’t make a move to remove it, feels ridiculously turned on by the fact that he can get it open without sending the little pearl buttons skittering to the floor. Slight stubble rasps against her neck, her collarbone, the strap of the sensible jog bra before he returns to her mouth again.
There’s no cloth for her fingers to bunch in only shifting, warm muscle. He’s just skimming the surface, sending ripples where she wasn’t aware they could reach. The churning in her stomach is moving lower and she wants him to get so close she forgets about little physical foibles like skin.
No other recourse, she hooks her leg around his, drags him closer and they’re clothed and oh god.
His breathing is staggered.
The wall would be fine. Only there’s a Bronte poster that her eyes keep falling into. The greatest tragedy, Cathy married the mistake.
“Bed.” It’s all she can to link her arms around his neck before she lands.
His eyes are almost black. He’s steady, surrounding and safe in a way that she hasn’t known before. Not like she imagined Clark would be, once upon a time. Different.
He’s also dangerous, this is, and the reality of what they are going to do suddenly crashes in on her. She stops the impatient wriggling without thinking. Her body protests it sorely.
She can’t feel his weight yet, because he’s been watching her this entire time. His eyes linger on her face and almost frighten her. She’s never been someone’s world before.
They stay there awhile until she can force her eyes to snap open.
She trusts him.
His fingers trail softly across her cheek, comfort now. He smells clean and masculine. He is saying something. Something about how he’d stop, he’d promise and if anything started to hurt…
“Davis, I’m no virgin sacrifice.” They’re sharing breathing room. “You know why. I talk too mu--” This need isn’t quite so basic.
He’s back to going slow again, trying to be soothing and not quite succeeding.
Various articles of clothing litter about them and his palm glides large and warm up from her knee, thumb hooks around the last barrier and pushes it aside.
They’ve never been here before.
“Is this okay?”
It is dark yet, the shadows don’t hide his face completely, the raw need. She draws a hand carefully up his arm ad swallows. Maybe this, the dark is her form of self-punishment. She wishes this could be in a bed with clean sheets and she could be able to look at him, really look at him.
“It will be, you...” Her voice doesn’t sound like her own, breathy, like the wind is being forced out of her lungs. There’s no going back from this so she might as well go out with a bang.
She leans forward and licks him.
He makes a sound against her mouth and she pulls him closer, forgets about the fear. Then he’s everywhere over and around and through her and she forgets to breathe for a moment.
He’s even more careful now than before, kissing her face like one blind and so full of something that transfixes her. He let’s out a shaky breath as he holds her.
She can be in control of this if she needs to. Her mind is drugged with the warmth and unyielding pressure and the need for so much more.
She’s not backed into a corner so she can only pull on his shoulders weakly.
It’s slick and easy and close to unbearable, when she can feel how much he’s holding in. He’s prolonging these moments in her because he doesn’t know if this will be the last time.
A memory. He needs a memory.
She wants to give him that.
Her memories come together in jumbles- terror and too many tears, his eyes closing, and her hand on the lever. He’s alive now, but it plays in an endless loop. She feels raw again.
It gets to be too much.
She needs feeling, needs him to drive all thought from her mind. She can’t control her unsynchronized almost slamming movements, what must be the equivalent of very rough sex in human terms. She’s going to give herself bruises.
Underneath the pleasure on his face there’s something else. A lot of pain. He needs to know she’s safe.
She’s got to slow down.
They even out. He kisses her again, moves over her, murmurs endearments and her name and things he doesn’t even realize he says. She keeps her bossy needs for closeness to gentle touches. She lets her eyes fall closed, feels pushed to the edge and kept there.
He’s the farthest from a monster with her.
And the thoughts trickle in on her again.
He said he’d known that when he was around her it got pushed back. If he was the monster around her she could have ended up torn to bits in that alley. He didn’t have to die. He’d still tried to end it.
The revelation hits her like a punch in the gut, and not even the feeling of him pushes it away.
He can sense the shifting in her mood; pulls off, doesn’t smother her. Harsh breaths tickle her throat and his eyes are concern and worry.
“Why did you do it?” He knows what she’s saying before she spells it out, like always. It’s the noble, heroic sacrifice and dying and leaving her all alone.
It’s that same look. He’s not going to lie. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to be screaming in a second, so you better tell me now.”
Damn thinking. Damn it. Damn him, like everyone else, making that choice for her.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I’d killed people.”
“I could have helped you.”
“When I found you, you were terrified and rightly so. You should hate me.”
“I don’t.”
“If I had walked right up to you and asked you to save me it would have been a life of slavery, and you don’t deserve that.” It’s there in the subtext. She might have hated him eventually.
“You could have lived.”
“I meant what I told you, but I wasn’t going to use that. That’s just how it works.”
“Oh. About wanting to die?”
That’s not it. “…loving you.”
“Oh. Oh.”
He could have told her still, and then she would have done something. Not this, but something. He put the world and what he thought she wanted ahead of him. If he hadn’t then he wouldn’t have been the Davis she---fell--cared for.
Where did that come from?
“When I did that it felt like a killed myself a little bit. I won’t be able to take it again.” Her face feels wet and she feels little and tired. Maybe she wouldn’t have known. Maybe they wouldn’t have been here.
Maybe.
The way the words transform his face should be out of place. So many years on his own. He’s not shutting himself off from her.
She feels something well up, only not so urgent, just the need to be close.
Her hair falls messily around him, light on dark and he moves through her in slow burn. Their palms fit together and there’s no glass between them this time.
She has the word for it now, thinks she knows what she felt.
It was hope.
It lasts and for that time she realizes she’s never felt as incredibly close to anyone in her whole life. But no matter how gentle he is, he gets deeper, pressure builds until there’s nothing but clutching and jerking and warmth and the terrible concentration on his face.
The sobs she makes don’t matter, not the dark, not tomorrow. Now.
It feels right, perfectly natural. His mouth slides quietly over hers and then the fluttering starts deep takes hold of her thoughts and squeezes them all out but one.
Tears always meant something.
Black dances in front of her eyes in strange patterns and everything clenches and convalesces so hard she thinks she may just pass out.
Love. Maybe she’s always known.
Aftershocks hit her right about the time he goes still and warmth overtakes her again. He leans closer to kiss her again, sedately. Some of her hair has tangled against his ear and she smiles into his mouth.
This could be just a little late for both of them now; but its not.
“Stay.” She says.
-----
She doesn’t know if dawn has broken yet. There are no windows, there’s no natural light to track the passage of time. She thinks it must be about 9 a.m.
Clark will be calling and she doesn’t need to give him an excuse to drop by. If they meet again--. Just, desperate measures.
Davis sleeps like a kid does, with one arm dangling off the edge of the bed and another holding her close to his side like a life sized teddy bear. He doesn’t snore, not exactly, but makes a tiny huffing sound when she attempts to nudge free.
She manages after three attempts.
He’s so deeply asleep that he just nudges into the warm space she’s left behind.
She can’t believe it but feels enormously self satisfied. Kryptonian. She’s worn him out.
The satisfaction fades because she doesn’t know what that will mean for her when she tries to stand.
She’s pleasantly sore but the entire lower half of her body moves like a plank. They’re close, but they’re not the same. She’s very human.
And what? She’s loved. She’s happy.
This is most certainly going to happen again. She has a lifetime for this
She’s going to die.
And after that, she can’t be there to hold onto Davis. It has a chance again. Oh, he’ll fight, she knows. There will still be Clark, his purpose. Years will pass and one day he will be lost in the melee.
She’s human. Not some goddess.
Just human, now.
Probably.
Not quite
Maybe.
There’s a chance, however slim, that Braniac hasn’t burned out her meteor power.
She needs to know.
-----
She finds the one butcher’s knife in the Talon basement by trial and error, stashed in the armory with the baseball bats. She’s not going to do anything melodramatic or dangerous like stab herself in the chest. She’s not going to take that risk.
Instead, she finds a spot on her arm away from a vein and makes the cut long and shallow. She’d forgotten how much it stung.
Her blood flows sluggishly over the old towel.
She closes her eyes and waits to feel the almost-forgotten sensation of flesh knitting itself together.
And of course this is the exact moment he chooses to show up
The broken horror in his face makes her mute for a second. This does look melodramatic.
“No. No.”
He presses the towel expertly into her arm, holds it above shoulder level, and scrambles for another with his free hand. The stinging is gone and replaced by the realization that she hasn’t told him, not really. All relationships face this, but theirs just has the added factor of his ultimate destroyer and her intimacy issues. He can’t possibly know more than she tells him.
He’d said she’d loved her, and she’d never said it back. She’d gotten all weepy. She’d left him in bed while she sliced her arm open.
He says he’ll never touch her again if she’ll just live. It hurts.
“This isn’t what it looks like. I should have told you but it’s not like we got the chance.
Remember, I knew all about meteor powers? The counseling came from a special place.”
She needs him to listen because doesn’t ever want to ever see him look this destroyed again.
“For goodness sake, Davis. I’m not pulling the Frankenstein’s bride routine. Watch.”
She manages to get his hands away long enough to scrub the towel over the wound.
Clean. Perfectly clean.
“It appears you’re stuck with me.” There’s nothing but his face, incredulous and wide open; his throat as he swallows. She thinks that he’s beautiful.
Brain on. She’s not going to stumble now. “I think I neglected to mention that I loved you.” Her voice cracks only a little and then disappears altogether.
The bloody towel leaves a stain on his side but it doesn’t matter.
Things change.
--
Endnotes: Due kudos go to Alanis Morrisette for her song Madness. It's all angsty and conflicted and tragically lovely. It got me into the frame of mind for Chloe in this. Also Onegin because. well. Onegin!
Drop the love if you wanna. Or a quibble. a word? is love. ^-^
A continuation of Eternal where Chloe realizes that death *does*change everything. Possibly not in the way you're thinking.
by vagrantdream at her/my livejournal.
4631 words, r/nc-17, eternal
It’s ironic, the perfect little martyrdom that gives her the chance to jump off the cliff feet first.
"You can't change your fate." "Why not?"
Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin
It’s true that nothing ever changes, not for her.
She’s undefined, forever watching everything play out, recording it neatly in her mind.
Clark is destined, someday to become that great hero. Just as Davis…is…was to become his adversary. Only he didn’t; wouldn’t; had left her human; had looked at her and almost smiled as the Kryptonite burned his skin.
She’d grabbed hold of the lever, and pulled.
She’d killed him.
She’d done the right thing, she tells herself over and over.
The world is safe and a little part of her doesn’t want to believe, thinks that maybe this is one of those stupid dreams she gets every once in a while, like when she wakes up in a world where Lex is President or she’s become her mother. (She won’t wake up soon, dial the first number on her cell, listen to his voice and laugh at how absurd she is.) She keeps seeing Davis’s face.
---------
Her only picture of Saegath is still in the fire where Clark poked it in. The flames flicker their way easily around it, curl the edges. He’s left by now, and she’s grateful he chose to philosophize, didn’t ask her what about Davis. She blathered on about safety and the world and protecting him. It made it all that easier to shut down.
---------
She pulls things out of the refrigerator, lets the half empty Tupperware container sit on the table untouched. Leftovers, he’d said to call them.
He would have come by.
She remembers a social anthropology class she took on a whim once; that it was a custom in the South, to mourn like this. She pushes a fork into the cold vegetables; thinks it would be freeing to let tears and salt mingle together.
Acceptance.
She’s not ready for that.
So she does a stupid thing, replays the entire dinner start to finish in her mind.
She must have said something about not knowing Jimmy even as he listened, watching as he cut himself on the slip of a knife. She remembers the something behind the look in his eyes. If only she’d been able to ask him then, maybe…
Maybe is a big word.
---------
Later, she finds herself walking her way through the produce section, piling leafy and green things into her cart, avoiding the onions.
She knows she’s going to go in as Watchtower for a few more hours tonight. Tomorrow, she’ll seek out Clark, even if he doesn’t need her source as an archiving index. She had been so convinced they wouldn’t fall back into their old pattern. She could have had her own life, somebody to talk with, only now…
Clark is familiar, unchanging, solid. He could make her forget.
She can be remarkable at self deception when she wants to be.
---------
She’s not so remarkable that she’d conjure him alive in the Talon basement. Solid, immortal? and un-ghostlike.
He’d lost his chance to be free.
He’s far stronger than Clark now, and destiny, destiny tells her that no matter what he’ll have to try and kill her best friend eventually.
There’s something about her that seems to calm the---murderer---inside of him, he says.
Only she’s never been that girl. Lana, maybe she’d believe, but she’s not some idealized image of sweetness and light. She’s always been simply Chloe Sullivan, friend. Chloe Sullivan, sometimes girl-friend and the worst mistake of someone’s life.
So much has changed since she met him.
---------
“Will you stay with me?”
It’s not much of a choice really, but she knows, knows the look on his face as she walks up the steps. Her expression has shut down somewhere along the line because she needs to think she’s doing this for the right reason. The door, Clark and out there. She has to face it.
It’s the single easiest and hardest choice of her life.
She could be pressed into the wall, heroic; saving the world because that’s what she has learned to do. Only that isn’t the reason at all.
It’s ironic, the perfect little martyrdom that gives her the chance to jump off the cliff feet first.
One step, after another, away and to the door where she doesn’t look at his face, doesn’t see the wreckage there.
This is the sound of her future, a bolt sliding into place.
-------
His eyes swallow her whole, burn her like Clark’s cocked heat vision never did. He thought she was going to leave.
What to say? Welcome back to the land of the living? I missed you? Yes.
She says nothing. Her tongue seems to stick at the back of her throat and she can’t trust herself, not right now, needs distance before she does something really stupid like burst into tears.
He looks the same to her, a dark shirt, street clothes. She wonders where he got them, doesn’t want to ask.
She walks back to cot, brushes past him solid and broken.
“This should do.”
They’d talked as friends did, connected and he’d listened and become her shoulder. She’d flirted with the idea that they could have something more. Before now, before she’d learned about the darkness of it all, before she yelled he lied, before they circled around that desk and he’d asked her the one thing she couldn’t do. The thing she did.
He swallows, his mouth works. “Thank you.” He doesn’t say anything else, not ‘you must really love me’, not even ‘why?’ (He’d always asked, but it’s not right now.) Helping someone can be just that. She’s staying in a dark room with this when she could be running.
“It’s not much of a sacrifice.” She says. Only this moment is finding her cracks and re-breaking them all over again. It hurts to be in the same room and miss him so.
She can imagine what Clark must have seen, outlines of skeletons underlying wheat and dirt. Davis was doomed to this no matter what he did, and he’d tried. He died for it.
She hastily fluffs the pillows, watches as they kick up clouds of dust she can’t see in the half light.
He takes the leftover bedding and starts to set up something on the floor, crouches like a man who hadn’t been dead earlier. He’s not saying anything, just instinctually moves toward it, is going to lie there curled up not to make her uncomfortable.
Over a yard away.
She tries to think she’d been terrified of him for all of one minute, legacies of it fresh on her mind. She remembered thinking that his hands could have choked the life out of someone before he tried to keep her from leaving. He’d been gentle and murderers weren’t gentle. She’s been fooled before.
Maybe she’s stupid, should be running now. Now all she can think of is his hands and the catch in his throat. ‘I love you’ still hangs there.
She sees Davis the man, her friend, not the vigilante killer with the hundreds of bodies.
He looks weary.
“Don’t do that. We don’t know what could be scurrying down there.”
“I can’t die, Chloe. I’m pretty sure one rat or a dozen won’t kill me.” He doesn’t fight her anyway.
She pulls the bedclothes out of a gentle grip, notices how he instinctively tries to prolong the contact even through cloth. His eyes are slightly red rimmed the way they were before. He said he couldn’t live with himself.
“How’ve you been holding up?”
“It made sure I healed already. It was barely a day, this time.”
“Keep talking. For a guy who’s been dead you look very good. But that’s not what it’s about, is it?”
“How can you do that?”
“Do what?”
“You’re here, in the dark with me and you ask me how I’m holding up.”
“Stop changing the subject. What about the dying?” The Kryptonite had been everywhere in that cage, Clark had yelled out, and Davis had hadn’t made a sound. She knows too well exactly what Kryptonite is.
“It didn’t last. And it wasn’t so bad.”
“Liar. It hurt.” Understatement.
“There’s not enough pain to make up for what I’ve done.”
“Now I feel like I’m in the middle of Ivanhoe.”
“You saw that field. There must be more. The thing is I don’t know. I always wanted to make myself believe that I wasn’t hurting people. This has been going on for years. Ever since I landed, I guess.”
“You remembered something?”
“In that cage, right before…the first time it happened.”
“If somehow, I managed to hold it back, save thousands of people, it won’t be enough. There were hundreds of people in that cornfield. I tried to redirect as though I could control it so it wouldn’t get out.”
“You went vigilante.”
“Junkies, drug dealers…Chloe, they didn’t deserve to die.
You know what I did? I went to a confessional, convinced myself that I could be doing good. And deep down, I knew. If I died like that a thousand times, it would be less than I deserved.”
“That wasn’t you.” She doesn’t know how it was created, as a genetic experiment joined to the ship for some vendetta against the House of El. It’s a worse punishment for him; trapped inside a monster that’s the exact opposite than everything he’s tried to be.
“It never should have been.”
“You couldn’t have stopped it.”
“That’s the thing, maybe I could’ve. With you it never happened. If I had been stronger…”
“Davis, you could hardly convince yourself to be in love with the entire planet for God’s sake.” There. She’s acknowledged it, and he’s not avoiding her eyes. There’s a lot there, pain and that something that’s always made her feel hot and cold at once, but he’s not pushing it. His chuckle is hollow; nothing like a chuckle should sound like.
“I can’t convince myself of very much these days.”
Clark said something like that the first time Lana had left him, the first time he’d discovered that he could hurt people he cared about. “You don’t deserve to hear this.”
“I need to. That’s what friends do. Remember Jimmy?”
“That was before, this. If it hadn’t been for me…”
If it hadn’t been for him she might not have learned how little she trusted the man she’d told herself she’d spend her life with. He was at the center of it all, but he held her together.
And now, he’s letting it all catch up to him. He can hurt as much as she does. Monsters don’t hurt, don’t feel guilt. He’s alive. She’s here, isn’t she?
She closes her hand over his sleeve, gingerly shakes it. Wonders if maybe the phantom pain lingers in the back of his mind, knows it’s not near to what he’s putting himself through.
“You were willing to give up your life. That means something.” If it had gone according to plan, he wouldn’t be here, now. She’d be a floor up, still trying to tell herself she did right.
“I came back.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you died.” She can’t define what that means, what she felt that moment. She hopes the words mean something to him.
“You died.”
She doesn’t know how this works, how her arms somehow slide their way over his shoulders, dig into street rough material and her breaths come out choppy.
It’s all too much. Finding him, losing him, finding him again.
He holds her, gently, not too tight, like she’ll shatter, but his pulse hammers by her ear. Things never change.
They always end up like this.
------
There is no movement except for her breathing as it she gets it to obey. He’s not quite as tall as Clark and her cheek reaches his shoulder and settles there.
She’s been in this position for innumerable times.
It’s could be easy enough. She just has to scrub at her eyes, a little. Her face never gets red when she cries.
It’s time to pull back and give a watery smile, now. She says something about her inner drama queen before she runs out of words.
It’s there, suffocating her still. She needs it to stop.
He’s going to stay and listen to her cry.
He doesn’t say anything, merely gathers her against him again, eyes shut, apparently oblivious to the havoc her nails are wreaking on the threading of his remaining shirt. He’s as desperate to hold on as she is.
‘Will you stay with me?’ had sounded so very overt, but it wasn’t. He’s being her shoulder again and she wants him to push her into telling him why even though she has no answer.
It terrifies her.
She could compartmentalize before it gets out of hand. She’s always fallen hard, thrown herself into things that eluded her, and then told herself she needed things she didn’t. Clark, she thinks. He knows. Jimmy. He knows that too.
Conscious choice or not, it happens with their eyes shut and he startles at the sensation.
It’s a second of paralysis where his breathing is shallow and his hands ball up behind her back. Then his mouth opens under hers, instinctive and soft, and so, so careful that she forgets this is a cliff and she’s a lemming jumping off.
She thinks he shouldn’t feel this warm.
He doesn’t take it much farther but she knows she’s not going to sleep in her neat little corner, alone. He leaves a trail of fire everywhere he touches and she bends toward him because it hurts, feels empty if he doesn’t.
Scattered bits of thoughts press upon her about how this isn’t like her, and how it doesn’t fit with her role, her little life in that corner room, and the sidekick and the red and blue blur’s best friend. Is she betraying him now? Maybe He’ll see it that way. But the fact that Davis wasn’t there and there was nothing obliterates everything else.
Need hurts almost as much as the empty ache and she can’t seem to control herself, buries her nails in cloth, shuts her eyes and pulls.
‘Stop’, she’d said before.
He doesn’t feel her up, barely brushes her jaw with his lips before he pulls back this time. She’s grateful he doesn’t stop touching her, even for a little while.
She keeps his fingers on the bare skin of her shoulder, tangles them and feels a strange tingling to her core. Can she really be doing this?
“Chloe, what…” He breathes hard, in and out, and his fingers are unsteady in the perfectly human way. “I’ve torn your world upside down. You don’t need to…”
His face is stripped, no charm, no masks. Fear.
She was never scared unless she had something to lose. She sees it with astonishing clarity, what this means. Maybe this is what it looks like from the outside, her needing to purge herself of him, this.
It makes some part of her ache.
It’s not obligation, or some twisted way of obscuring pain. “This is about me, too.” He wants to believe her.
She won’t go all philosophical; tell him how death changes things.
She settles for “I need to know you’re alive.”
This feels like taking advantage, knowing how he feels and not saying anything back because she doesn’t know what it means. It gathers this wordless churning in her gut until she buries her head in his neck. She can feel him swallow.
“Hey, I normally don’t before the first date either.” She says.
Jimmy she’d wanted in that same curious way she’d wanted to be liked for something other than a best bud. She hadn’t needed so much she’d wanted to be sick of it.
She’s only gone out with Davis once, if it could have been called that, in her apartment. They’d talked. That could have ended like a date. She doesn’t know.
Maybe they’ve been dating in some manner since they first met, when she told him those little things she never told anyone else. Maybe they’ve been going this way all this time.
She’s not Persephone, he’s not holding out pomegranate seeds, and this is a natural part of who they are. She wants him to be able to let go, forget.
“You can cook me dinner afterwards and you’ve got a deal.”
She sees for a half second, exactly what she needed.
He kisses her very slowly this time and she can hear him breathe. She suspects he’s holding back because of the painful lightness of his touch through the baggy dress shirt, under it. Maybe he’s just a romantic.
She’ll give him that.
She doesn’t make a move to remove it, feels ridiculously turned on by the fact that he can get it open without sending the little pearl buttons skittering to the floor. Slight stubble rasps against her neck, her collarbone, the strap of the sensible jog bra before he returns to her mouth again.
There’s no cloth for her fingers to bunch in only shifting, warm muscle. He’s just skimming the surface, sending ripples where she wasn’t aware they could reach. The churning in her stomach is moving lower and she wants him to get so close she forgets about little physical foibles like skin.
No other recourse, she hooks her leg around his, drags him closer and they’re clothed and oh god.
His breathing is staggered.
The wall would be fine. Only there’s a Bronte poster that her eyes keep falling into. The greatest tragedy, Cathy married the mistake.
“Bed.” It’s all she can to link her arms around his neck before she lands.
His eyes are almost black. He’s steady, surrounding and safe in a way that she hasn’t known before. Not like she imagined Clark would be, once upon a time. Different.
He’s also dangerous, this is, and the reality of what they are going to do suddenly crashes in on her. She stops the impatient wriggling without thinking. Her body protests it sorely.
She can’t feel his weight yet, because he’s been watching her this entire time. His eyes linger on her face and almost frighten her. She’s never been someone’s world before.
They stay there awhile until she can force her eyes to snap open.
She trusts him.
His fingers trail softly across her cheek, comfort now. He smells clean and masculine. He is saying something. Something about how he’d stop, he’d promise and if anything started to hurt…
“Davis, I’m no virgin sacrifice.” They’re sharing breathing room. “You know why. I talk too mu--” This need isn’t quite so basic.
He’s back to going slow again, trying to be soothing and not quite succeeding.
Various articles of clothing litter about them and his palm glides large and warm up from her knee, thumb hooks around the last barrier and pushes it aside.
They’ve never been here before.
“Is this okay?”
It is dark yet, the shadows don’t hide his face completely, the raw need. She draws a hand carefully up his arm ad swallows. Maybe this, the dark is her form of self-punishment. She wishes this could be in a bed with clean sheets and she could be able to look at him, really look at him.
“It will be, you...” Her voice doesn’t sound like her own, breathy, like the wind is being forced out of her lungs. There’s no going back from this so she might as well go out with a bang.
She leans forward and licks him.
He makes a sound against her mouth and she pulls him closer, forgets about the fear. Then he’s everywhere over and around and through her and she forgets to breathe for a moment.
He’s even more careful now than before, kissing her face like one blind and so full of something that transfixes her. He let’s out a shaky breath as he holds her.
She can be in control of this if she needs to. Her mind is drugged with the warmth and unyielding pressure and the need for so much more.
She’s not backed into a corner so she can only pull on his shoulders weakly.
It’s slick and easy and close to unbearable, when she can feel how much he’s holding in. He’s prolonging these moments in her because he doesn’t know if this will be the last time.
A memory. He needs a memory.
She wants to give him that.
Her memories come together in jumbles- terror and too many tears, his eyes closing, and her hand on the lever. He’s alive now, but it plays in an endless loop. She feels raw again.
It gets to be too much.
She needs feeling, needs him to drive all thought from her mind. She can’t control her unsynchronized almost slamming movements, what must be the equivalent of very rough sex in human terms. She’s going to give herself bruises.
Underneath the pleasure on his face there’s something else. A lot of pain. He needs to know she’s safe.
She’s got to slow down.
They even out. He kisses her again, moves over her, murmurs endearments and her name and things he doesn’t even realize he says. She keeps her bossy needs for closeness to gentle touches. She lets her eyes fall closed, feels pushed to the edge and kept there.
He’s the farthest from a monster with her.
And the thoughts trickle in on her again.
He said he’d known that when he was around her it got pushed back. If he was the monster around her she could have ended up torn to bits in that alley. He didn’t have to die. He’d still tried to end it.
The revelation hits her like a punch in the gut, and not even the feeling of him pushes it away.
He can sense the shifting in her mood; pulls off, doesn’t smother her. Harsh breaths tickle her throat and his eyes are concern and worry.
“Why did you do it?” He knows what she’s saying before she spells it out, like always. It’s the noble, heroic sacrifice and dying and leaving her all alone.
It’s that same look. He’s not going to lie. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to be screaming in a second, so you better tell me now.”
Damn thinking. Damn it. Damn him, like everyone else, making that choice for her.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I’d killed people.”
“I could have helped you.”
“When I found you, you were terrified and rightly so. You should hate me.”
“I don’t.”
“If I had walked right up to you and asked you to save me it would have been a life of slavery, and you don’t deserve that.” It’s there in the subtext. She might have hated him eventually.
“You could have lived.”
“I meant what I told you, but I wasn’t going to use that. That’s just how it works.”
“Oh. About wanting to die?”
That’s not it. “…loving you.”
“Oh. Oh.”
He could have told her still, and then she would have done something. Not this, but something. He put the world and what he thought she wanted ahead of him. If he hadn’t then he wouldn’t have been the Davis she---fell--cared for.
Where did that come from?
“When I did that it felt like a killed myself a little bit. I won’t be able to take it again.” Her face feels wet and she feels little and tired. Maybe she wouldn’t have known. Maybe they wouldn’t have been here.
Maybe.
The way the words transform his face should be out of place. So many years on his own. He’s not shutting himself off from her.
She feels something well up, only not so urgent, just the need to be close.
Her hair falls messily around him, light on dark and he moves through her in slow burn. Their palms fit together and there’s no glass between them this time.
She has the word for it now, thinks she knows what she felt.
It was hope.
It lasts and for that time she realizes she’s never felt as incredibly close to anyone in her whole life. But no matter how gentle he is, he gets deeper, pressure builds until there’s nothing but clutching and jerking and warmth and the terrible concentration on his face.
The sobs she makes don’t matter, not the dark, not tomorrow. Now.
It feels right, perfectly natural. His mouth slides quietly over hers and then the fluttering starts deep takes hold of her thoughts and squeezes them all out but one.
Tears always meant something.
Black dances in front of her eyes in strange patterns and everything clenches and convalesces so hard she thinks she may just pass out.
Love. Maybe she’s always known.
Aftershocks hit her right about the time he goes still and warmth overtakes her again. He leans closer to kiss her again, sedately. Some of her hair has tangled against his ear and she smiles into his mouth.
This could be just a little late for both of them now; but its not.
“Stay.” She says.
-----
She doesn’t know if dawn has broken yet. There are no windows, there’s no natural light to track the passage of time. She thinks it must be about 9 a.m.
Clark will be calling and she doesn’t need to give him an excuse to drop by. If they meet again--. Just, desperate measures.
Davis sleeps like a kid does, with one arm dangling off the edge of the bed and another holding her close to his side like a life sized teddy bear. He doesn’t snore, not exactly, but makes a tiny huffing sound when she attempts to nudge free.
She manages after three attempts.
He’s so deeply asleep that he just nudges into the warm space she’s left behind.
She can’t believe it but feels enormously self satisfied. Kryptonian. She’s worn him out.
The satisfaction fades because she doesn’t know what that will mean for her when she tries to stand.
She’s pleasantly sore but the entire lower half of her body moves like a plank. They’re close, but they’re not the same. She’s very human.
And what? She’s loved. She’s happy.
This is most certainly going to happen again. She has a lifetime for this
She’s going to die.
And after that, she can’t be there to hold onto Davis. It has a chance again. Oh, he’ll fight, she knows. There will still be Clark, his purpose. Years will pass and one day he will be lost in the melee.
She’s human. Not some goddess.
Just human, now.
Probably.
Not quite
Maybe.
There’s a chance, however slim, that Braniac hasn’t burned out her meteor power.
She needs to know.
-----
She finds the one butcher’s knife in the Talon basement by trial and error, stashed in the armory with the baseball bats. She’s not going to do anything melodramatic or dangerous like stab herself in the chest. She’s not going to take that risk.
Instead, she finds a spot on her arm away from a vein and makes the cut long and shallow. She’d forgotten how much it stung.
Her blood flows sluggishly over the old towel.
She closes her eyes and waits to feel the almost-forgotten sensation of flesh knitting itself together.
And of course this is the exact moment he chooses to show up
The broken horror in his face makes her mute for a second. This does look melodramatic.
“No. No.”
He presses the towel expertly into her arm, holds it above shoulder level, and scrambles for another with his free hand. The stinging is gone and replaced by the realization that she hasn’t told him, not really. All relationships face this, but theirs just has the added factor of his ultimate destroyer and her intimacy issues. He can’t possibly know more than she tells him.
He’d said she’d loved her, and she’d never said it back. She’d gotten all weepy. She’d left him in bed while she sliced her arm open.
He says he’ll never touch her again if she’ll just live. It hurts.
“This isn’t what it looks like. I should have told you but it’s not like we got the chance.
Remember, I knew all about meteor powers? The counseling came from a special place.”
She needs him to listen because doesn’t ever want to ever see him look this destroyed again.
“For goodness sake, Davis. I’m not pulling the Frankenstein’s bride routine. Watch.”
She manages to get his hands away long enough to scrub the towel over the wound.
Clean. Perfectly clean.
“It appears you’re stuck with me.” There’s nothing but his face, incredulous and wide open; his throat as he swallows. She thinks that he’s beautiful.
Brain on. She’s not going to stumble now. “I think I neglected to mention that I loved you.” Her voice cracks only a little and then disappears altogether.
The bloody towel leaves a stain on his side but it doesn’t matter.
Things change.
--
Endnotes: Due kudos go to Alanis Morrisette for her song Madness. It's all angsty and conflicted and tragically lovely. It got me into the frame of mind for Chloe in this. Also Onegin because. well. Onegin!
Drop the love if you wanna. Or a quibble. a word? is love. ^-^
Saturday, April 4, 2009
two in a wreck
Reccing Notes: Hex. with Davis. Chloe's wish changes, with near painful consequences.
cracky? snarky? angsty? It is an amalgum.
4895 words, r/nc-17, hex
You wanted this. Zattanna had said.
Two of us in one wreck can surely stand a better chance than each on our own.
A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen
Jimmy had called her Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale!
Florence Nightingale, in a world where she could have easily been Elizabeth Blackwell. Except of course, that she had no job; and she’d been dumped.
She felt self-righteous and wronged and the worst bit of all, she didn’t even have a talk show to let it out on. If she called Clark he’d get back to Lana or Lois getting drunk and kissing him again, and then…
No. Just no.
This had been meant to be happily ever after. Save your best friend, get fired. Counsel people, have them turn into psycho-murderers. Protect the one person who was there for you from getting his brains clobbered out, get an oral annulment. Either the world was screwed up or she was.
Probably both.
Now it was really quiet, when with Jimmy it used to be a game of baseball, or a conversation about digital cameras littered with 80s references. Apparently that was all out the window.
Jimmy didn’t need her. Never did.
They weren’t the one true thing. She hadn’t been his world, not in the way Clark had been hers. They’d been comfortable. Right. Good friends, maybe. Easy? No comment.
If they were going to crumble two weeks after the wedding and the ICU, why had he asked? For that matter, why had she accepted? They could have just kept the plastic rings on, shaken hands on it…
She’d ended up like this a hundred times before, always a failed date that ended in a homicide attempt or the 2021st time Clark proved to her that he didn’t need her.
She looked into the mirror, at her red nose and the smile-that-tried to-be-a-smile and failed miserably. Her voice sounded reedy when she told herself she was going to be heroic again.
--------
Maybe she could find something to do, something that would not be the colossal failure that Isis was. At the hospital, maybe. Davis had given her suggestions before, she told herself. She had to know how he was, after everything.
It’s not like she was sewing the letter ‘A’ in scarlet on her blouse. He was a friend that couldn’t help the unwitting role he’d played. It would have been him, or Clark, or somebody else.
She dialed once, twice, a third time. His apartment phone, because that’s where that’s where she would have gone after someone attempted to kill her. She got redirected to the main desk, where someone asked if she wanted to fill the vacancy.
Strange, yes, but maybe he’d moved in case Jimmy brought a bulldozer next time.
(Davis had told her about the blackouts, scared to death. He’d howled. He’d begged her to run in the alley in that same tone of voice. And she’d touched him, then nothing.)
There were no fairytales.
Jimmy was on meds. Davis could’ve been disoriented. Davis would have had to have lied, back there in the hospital room.
No.
Even if the crazy theory was true then he’d have to stay close, very close. She found Davis in the downpour across the street from the Talon window.
He almost jumped that time. “Chloe?” He kept looking at her mouth and she wondered if maybe she’d forgotten to get the Ben and Jerry’s off it.
He nodded, shook his head a few apartments behind him.
“I brought some meds for one of my patients down here and…”
“I know what they say about taking your job seriously, but that is above and beyond the call of duty.” She neglected to mention that the last few apartments were still under construction.
“Come on in, for God’s sake.”
He stood in the doorway and dripped water stains onto the rug, didn’t come in, and that did make sense in the context of things. “Come in. Jimmy’s gone off to…somewhere…to find his calling. I think he discovered his inner street fighter.” Still. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. He has a secret and loyalty complex, and the meds. And I have too high of an attractive friend ratio. It’s about a noisy as the tomb of the dead in here and I could use the company.”
She was temporarily distracted when a fat droplet of water slid down his eyebrow, off his eyelash, down his neck…
She meant he was dripping, thoroughly dripping, like he was about to get pneumonia or at least a very, very bad cold with wheezing.
He wasn’t shivering. Shock. He might be critical. If she was Florence Nightingale, she was a very bad one. Her stomach wasn’t supposed to do cartwheels. She seized firm hold of his sleeve and yanked him in, slammed the door.
“Chloe, is this okay?” Oh, she remembered high school. Always leave a shoe in the door when you were with a boy lest you got tempted to. ahem.
She’d grown up. Really.
“Of course it is. I like being with you. You need to get dry. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that. ”
She could have declared him in dire need of chicken soup if he hadn’t let out a whoosh of air like she had hit him. “but, it’s not just that now.”
Then said he had to tell her something. Last time he’d said that, he’d been telling her not to get married. Maybe he was going to ask her to get annulment papers and…
“It’s a beast.” He said.
“Come again?”
-------
He had been turned into a great big party crasher, after Braniac had sagely decided that she was what he needed to drive Doomsday crazy and be his Bride of…
Nuts. All of it. Like one of those teen melodramas that ran in theaters right next to Twilight. It was not like he could prove it without tearing her roof off.
“This is all because of me, isn’t it?”
It all came together like a ruinous puzzle. There was nothing to say and her mouth opened and closed like a fishes, twice. Then she closed it again.
He was telling the truth.
--------
“So, let me get this straight, I touch you and then it goes away?”
She wasn’t looking at him she tested the idea, couldn’t. Held one of his big, slightly too warm palms between her fingers and thought that he was still there. If not for that It could crush her, breaking this already tiny human life of hers into tinier, bite sized bits.
The idea that she’d been used as a trigger for his darker side, and was now the walking sedative to hold it back was perfect, twisted irony.
The red and blue blur and the destroyer with a man trapped inside. She told herself that this way; she could keep them both safe.
--------
It was nothing like an excuse to pet him.
She learned to recognize the signs and hold a hand carefully over his shoulder over a layer of fabric. Murmur reassurances that she didn’t think she believed anymore, until the darkness drew away and Clark lived for one more day.
----------
They didn’t talk much. She hated it more than a little, the way this great gaping hole had swallowed her connection to the man who she could talk to, really talk to. She hated it even as her mind spit out recriminations that she wouldn’t ever, ever say. I fell apart, I trusted you, you held me together and you lied.
He’d told the truth when it counted. But that exact moment, when she was scared to death it was her, throwing Jimmy into the danger zone of the weird and the weirder, it was. Davis and she. The comfort of the moment, the warmth of being safe twisted into something destructive and chaotic.
----------
(What never added to her angst was the fear that maybe this was all she was to him now, a convenience to keep the monster at bay. She’d lived her life as a convenience, but he’d given and given and never expected anything in return.
Words. Words could lie easily. His face couldn’t.)
---------
She never knew how big a part of her had been invested in the easiness before.
It appeared, weeks later in packing the things in Jimmy’s room, preparing for a new phase of life. She needed a purpose. She needed a man, or in this case, a husband like a fish needed a bicycle.
It didn’t matter how frustrated she felt.
She had the sudden urge to kick the Dummies Guide to the Kama Sutra straight across the room. Or… never mind… Instead, she muttered to herself.
“I didn’t trust him. That’s why he left.”
Davis helped with the packing of course, watched as she put the things in boxes to be sent to the new address. “I’m sorry, Chloe.” He said.
“He would’ve left anyway.”
“But not like that. I put you in that position.”
“Don’t feel so bad. I wasn’t exactly taking preventive measures. We all trust who we will, I suppose.”
It came naturally, that.
“It wasn’t right.”
“I was just so scared that he’d… I couldn’t think.
I think I could’ve guessed it, eventually. You howled so loud you could have given King Kong a run for the money.”
He watched her as if he expected her to send something flying at his head, as if he would take it and everything else. She chuckled because her deadpan delivery was losing its touch.
He loosened up, and for once didn’t say ‘I’m sorry’ five times consecutively that next half hour. It almost felt easy.
Oh, she wasn’t ready to jump off of the deep end, trust again, just that same way.
They were friends, though, and wasn’t that the way everything started?
---------
He saw himself as the monster. Sometimes she thought he only ate because she made the food, set it squarely between them on the tiny table. He never told her details of what happened, but it was there, on his face sometimes. The sight of an overturned dumpster, broken glass, red...
She stopped cooking Italian.
---------
She’d grown used to it, the touch. His skin was warmer than a normal, like Clark’s and not, his grip reminding her of security and forgetfulness.
Davis was all that Clark was and he wasn’t. He was her friend. And he wasn’t.
From her experience friends did do this. Talk. Care. (once in a while, if they remembered to and they weren’t busy saving the world.)
Friends didn’t get caught up in it, didn’t look at you like you were the world.
She was married. She wasn’t leading him on. She couldn’t control the way she looked back, what he saw, what he felt, holding too close. Anything.
Sometimes, she wondered what it would be like to kiss him again before trying to forget the look on his face.
She couldn’t have stopped it if she wanted to.
---------
They never locked the doors, because they couldn’t keep things like that between them.
It was that howl again, and she wondered how it had slipped past her last time.
9 A.M. She’d overslept and he was going to go through it again. She flung herself against the door layered in at least three of the teddies that Lois had helpfully swapped for her favorite sweats in the wardrobe. The shirts would slip awkwardly off of the shoulder at the worst moments.
Shoulders, arms….refreshingly human. All of him conspicuously missing any spikes. His head was tilted up and he was in pain, but …not that kind.
“Oh.”
Her sleeve was sopped with shampoo from her headlong rush.
“Oh.” She forced herself to put it gently at the side of the stall. She was a married woman. She was not thinking of that.
“It’s not like I haven’t seen it all before.”
But she really, really hadn’t.
“I’m going…I’m going to…get coffee.”
--------
Maybe she fooled herself, but it held together somehow. It had to. She wasn’t Florence Nightingale. She was selfish, wanted to hold on to this one thing that was utterly hers. She couldn’t live without a purpose. And somewhere, somehow, he’d become it.
-------
Davis went to church once or twice, one of those old gothic places that weren’t nearly large or dark enough to be a cathedral. They held hands in the pew and a few children giggled, made kissy faces.
She thought his hand tightened, a little. He went into one of those confessionals and she thought that she could go, too. Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been four years since my last confession.
She could’ve done that, only she couldn’t help what she wanted, sometimes.
--------
She always knew she’d discover the major downside to making 21st birthday pacts with her cousin. She and Lois had planned their respective birthday’s years ago, when she had dreams of tearing open the underground corruption in the city and Lois had wanted to be a taxi driver. Lois, being Lois, had made the reservations in advance in something way more posh than the Talon.
Chloe gets a wake up call at six a.m. to meet her there.
She makes her best effort with a green and blue froth concoction of a dress that could have been worn to a modern ballet. The nylon snags, but there’s no helping it now. She’s going to be ridiculously happy. Then she’s coming home.
The restaurant is dark, lit with dim lamps so that they can barely see their way around.
Things at the planet have changed overnight and now these people are the movers and shakers of Lois’s world. There are a few familiar faces- Lois, Oliver (with Clark’s present, the Tales of the Weird and Unexplained), Perry White... Chloe wonders suddenly when Tess Mercer had become ‘her’ friend.
She gets a cupcake, a comment on the sweet release of death, and then Lois is out of there, onto her next mission.
Davis receives the obligatory glares from Oliver, none from Lois; and somehow gets trapped in the corner. She thinks those look an awful lot like permanent markers the girls are shoving into his hands. (She sometimes wishes she’d watched Battlestar Galactica.)
There’s no time to think of that because Oliver is already dragging her away. “I have to talk to you.”
“If it’s about the Lex thing, this is not the time.”
“Of course not. I just wanted to know how my favorite sidekick was.” A gin tonic with an Olive. Of course.
“How many of those babies did you drink Oliver?”
“That’s not important. Listen, I need your help for this secret mis—”
Tess comes over smiling in a Lex way, with a bottle of Pinot Grigio (Vintage 1924 and slightly moldy).
“--how do you feel about opera? In Carmen, there’s this dancer who’s a spy and her husband runs away. You should cheer up. Don’t plunge a dagger into your heart. It’s not that bad, Chloe. I’m here for you.”
Chloe thinks she nods in all the appropriate places before he disappears. She hopes she can find her way through the aged, dancing execs to find Davis and maybe get the heck away.
Only Oliver gets back first, brings over a woman with heavily made up eyes and a look like a Tarot card. She is taller than Chloe by almost half a foot, wearing boots and a shirt. Nothing much more than fishnet stockings, really.
“So I hear you’ve had a bad day.?”
“Not really.” She had been just fine.
“Let’s see what we can do about that.” The woman says.
Chloe keeps thinking that the people are like walls and she isn’t where she should be.
Birthday. Remember. She’s going to be ridiculously happy.
It only happens once in a lifetime.
“Make a wish. Any wish.” the large cupcake holds steady and the candle flame wavers in front of her.
She waits the appropriate time and blows on the candle. The smoke twists and she wheezes. The woman’s caught up with Oliver again.
Some kind of magic.
Clark calls to wish her a happy birthday with a voice that sounds that far off. He has super speed and she is grateful that he always has more important things to do now.
The reception clears up only at the mention of Davis.
“How could you invite him? The guys obviously got eyes for you, and he’s the reason your marriage broke up. It’s a given that maybe the serial killer thing was a bit much, but…”
There was no obvious with Clark.
“He’s my friend and deserves to be here as much as you or anyone else. Jimmy thought you had eyes for me for God’s sake.”
“What about Jimmy?”
“I don’t know where— ”
“--You could have invited him. He likes bullfighting very much so he might even say something nice to you.”
“He’s--what?”
“Sorry, Chloe--can’t talk now. Call waiting. Lois needs my help in Mexico with the president of the Tequila council.”
--------
Two more times around, she really doesn’t understand what Oliver’s getting at. She creeps her way back to the corner, finds Davis sitting there, looking at her. Not that there’s anything unusual about that at all, but his eyes...
Too many people, no wonder.
She gets into the seat next to him behind the potted plant. “We’re getting out of here soon.” She pats his shoulder in the most appropriate way possible, just in case It is getting antsy again. He doesn’t let her move her hand, holds onto it like a vise for a few seconds before letting go.
“You’re so beautiful.” The champagne makes her lightheaded and giddy and ridiculously touched.
“Thanks, that’s….nice.” Actually, a bit more than that. It’s been a long time since anyone has said anything like it, in just that way. It’s been even longer since anyone looked like they meant it.
He looks high. Did super beings even sweat? Clark only used to when there was kryptonite.
“You okay though? You don’t look too good.” She touches his forehead. He leans into the touch and she lets herself enjoy it for the moment until pulls her off balance onto him, turns it into something else entirely. His lips are warm (nothing like Clark) and she can’t or won’t pull away this time. It’s natural and its good and she feels like her IQ has gone for a hike.
(Married! Separated!
Florence Nightingale. Gloria Steinem.
It isn’t working.)
She doesn’t know what lead to this. On some level, maybe but why now? She can feel his thumb moving gently through the strap of the dress at the place where skin meets cloth. She wonders if he knows how strong he is, if this is why he handles her like she will crumble. His hands are heavy on her shoulders and she wants there to be bruises come morning, wants to be able to feel before the inevitable happens and they go back to their world and nothing.
(This isn’t easy like she thought. Its no transgression, it’s an abyss and she’s teetering. He’s waiting for her to hold out her hand, jump off. This is her tether to reality.)
She remembers a time when he was almost blatant. Then this had come along and he looked and nothing. They’re pressed together so close that she will have bruises; right now it feels like he wants to push her farther into the dark. The plants are kind of big.
She thinks this until he leans his head back, tries to breathe. “I’m sorry.” His eyes look almost drugged, and he hasn’t touched anything since they arrived.
“Davis?” she shakes him on the other shoulder and he makes the sound again. “If you do it again...”
“Do what?”
“-that... I won’t be able to stop myself. Something’s happening.”
“Come on.”
He doesn’t stumble exactly, follows her, fingers trembling as they brush her hand. She keeps her hand clamped firmly about his wrist; catches Zatanna at the doorway.
“What did you do?”
“I just make it happen, sweetie. At that very moment you wanted …”
“I don’t. Do you hear me, I don’t.”
She’s gone.
Chloe doesn’t know what excuse she makes exactly. Something to do with Gabe and Dinner. She doesn’t particularly care if someone sees that they leave together.
------
He looks ill and wild, but she’d anything but relieved when he locks himself in the bathroom.
“This is stupid. Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure I can help you control it.”
He doesn’t answer.
“I swear; I’m going to come in.”
She knows how to make lock picks as a legacy of Bart. She finds a paperclip, just the right size and that’s all it takes.
He’s in the corner, in the shower behind a nearly transparent pane. Still. Not speaking.
The water is running loudly and she can still hear him breathe behind the dark gray pane. She can’t get used to the fact that there are no goose bumps on his arms even though he’s curled around himself. That defense mechanism she’s seen often enough.
“Talk to me.”
“I crossed the line. I’m sorry.” This is easy, now he’s going to retreat into his appropriate friend corner and she can be Joan of Ark again. Joan of Ark died.
“Because of something that was my fault. I had some champagne.” (all of two sips) “and I wasn’t exactly fighting you.”
She can keep talking. Sensible reporter voice.
He’d sounded like he was dying.
“If you aren’t coming out, I’m going to have to come in and get you.
She slips a hand to turn off the water, almost shrieks as it lands all over her back. “That’s freezing.”
“I don’t feel it.”
He’s like Clark, of course not.
“But apparently you do feel something. Does it hurt?” She knows it does, because the prickly gray spots are coming over his skin again.
She touches him before it goes any farther. She’s hardly Chyna, so there’s no way she’s going to lever him out.
“Stop it. You know –a friend was like that once. If rocks fell out of the sky it was his fault. If someone failed a final it was his fault, if L-someone’s hair got cut it was his fault …”
“He wasn’t like this. If I lose control, you die.”
“Point is; I don’t. Remember? Let’s get you out of here.” He listens to that. “And the other thing is fine. We’re friends—we cut each other breaks. So lean on me.”
It’s less literal and more figurative. She can’t exactly offer him her shoulder even if he looks like he’s about to get a major case of the shakes because well, he’s naked and…under the influence.
“Now why mustn’t I touch you? I mean; we’ve got one thing going for us, never mind that it’s completely crazy. It works.”
She unclenches his fingers from around the pane. He could shatter the thing. His eyes slip shut.
“So that doesn’t hurt, now. That’s fine.
You are going to drink something hot, I’ll fix macaroni and we sleep. Or you sleep; whatever.” She sounds like a mother hen.
She pats his shoulder, careful to let go quick enough. “I feel almost cheated. No protests?”
He goes non-verbal, and she’s pretty sure he’s worse now.
Is that rumbling? “Do anything you want.” He’s grabbed onto the knob next to the pane and it comes right off.
“I can’t believe that’s a turn on. I’m starting to think you won’t get better until…” And his eyes snap open and maybe that’s not the conscious response she was aiming for.
“Maybe it’s like pon farr. You know duel to the death or... It’s an alien thing, just ask doctor Spock. We can fix that.”
“I can’t let you do this because you pity me.” The way he swallows makes a little pattern over his collarbone.
“Well, I’m frustrated.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be. It’s your fault.
Besides, I care about you. A lot. I don’t want to see you hurt.” She could have said that to anybody, really, but he’s the first person to hold his breath when she does it. She wonders if he can count the times anyone’s ever said something like that to him.
He sounds a little raw. “And I need you…I’m sorry, Chloe.” She moves forward a little closer, lets her cheek rest against his neck.
She could be brave, do something really crazy, but she remembers that she’s got words and that’s all she’s got, and not even they come out the way she wants. He’s got to be brave for her.
She keeps her hand there and doesn’t move it, lets him move it for her. Closer, right over the beat.
Then, it’s not like a mauling, not really. It’s the pressure of his lips, eager, but anything but fumbling. This has only happened twice and he knows her too well. It gets hard to breathe, hard to reason and the tile is cold. He’s so warm.
She’s got to be a little twisted. She enjoys the almost animalistic sounds he makes, how desperate it all is, doesn’t feel pathetic because her breathing is all out of whack and she’s trying to get him closer.
Her extra hand finds purchase on the wall even as she’s lifted up. Her hair is messy and wet, blinds her so she can only see his features through it. She can let herself feel. “Davis, listen to me. I’m doing this too.” Those are his eyes, minus the fact that they’re not trying to avoid her appearance so she won’t be discomfited.
You wanted this. she’d said.
She’s no Virgin Mary. “I’ve done this.” She chokes out, mostly for her own benefit.
With only one man. Only one.
Teeth scrape very gently against her neck, and the folds of the dress drape uselessly around her, knot in his fingers, tear.
She can’t be in control now. Thin sheer material is like wearing nothing, just sticking everywhere and she’s not invulnerable to cold.
(This can be just what she needs right now, but its not just. It doesn’t have to mean any more, but it does.)
She can’t unfeel this, can’t stop from moving against him, trying to memorize the details.
This is all almost chaste, the way his lips linger on her breastbone. That is not meant to be an erogenous zone.
The tingling on her skin builds with soreness, nylon feels chafing.
A warm hand slides up her knee feels through the rip. Deepens it, sends a strange bolt of something though her. The loose touch changes, becomes more directed. And she wants… wants…
She buckles against the corner of the glass, doesn’t try to be quiet because she needs him to see just what this might do, wants to see him as it begins.
His arms hook underneath her knees, lift her up with no effort at all. It’s cinematic to be spun around and kissed just for a few seconds. But there’s open air everywhere behind her and her legs instinctively clamp tighter around his waist. She could fall.
He’s close now. Not close enough. She grabs on for dear life, tighter than a tourniquet, tries to blot out all other thoughts. The kiss is gentle and soft and the intensity of it burns. Maybe this is for all of the times they’ve kept to those lines, drawn them in the sand. Maybe this is who they are.
She want's to freeze this moment, because she may never have it again.
There are practically no barriers at all, and she can feel his hands in the indentations on her back, ribs and spine and bone. She’s free to touch where she pleases, runs her hands along his arms with a drugged fascination; takes it farther. Watches as he holds his breath.
It should be ridiculous that he feels fragile to her. They are learning each other now as if they have time.
Like everything, it’s pushed aside when a heavier sensation builds and pulls her down. She pulls him in with a messy choked sound.
The shower tile is cold and hard, and water sticks to her sin like vapor. She exhales from the shock of the warmth and the cold, his voice telling her that she’s everything and the world and Chloe.
He moves into her quietly, watches her eyes, looks as if another bit of him is cracking. They move together, irregular fumbling, eager and needy. They adjust.
She hasn’t got her feet on the ground. She could fall, but it would be into him. The angle is different that anything she’s ever felt; gravity pushes her down to him.
Soon enough she’s straining for closeness. Her breathing picks up quickens with his, whatever’s between them. Her body struggles to hold him inside, pulls itself taunt. His name comes disjointedly from her lips, heavy, basic and complex.
She can’t stop the shuddering once it begins, feels it move through them both, but he keeps on. The second time hits her on the heels of the first and she thinks that maybe the human body’s not meant to take this.
The blackness starts at the edge of her vision and she bites into his shoulder slightly, trying to keep it together because they need this.
He whispers her name just once into her skin and then he’s shaking too, still pulling her closer, not letting go. They must be breaking the laws or destiny, or gravity or sanity.
It’s all too much. Or too little.
“I love you.” He says, and quite suddenly she can’t breathe. Her lips part and something strangled comes out.
Just this moment. Just this second.
She’s not going to forget it as long as she lives.
Her legs won’t hold her to make her way out, but he does, wraps his arms around her waist even as the coverlet is soaked in sweat and them.
---------
She wakes up to her phone ringing in her bag, the sounds of ‘I get knocked down’ blearing too cheerfully from her cell. Maybe it’s Clark, passing on one of Jimmy’s birthday messages after some very tactful editing, or Lois calling to complain about the greasy hair of the pilot.
Somehow during the past hour, Davis has ended up with one leg slung over hers, half-trapping her. She’s warm now, feels his breath calm and easy by her ear. He’s sleeping and he’s never...
She's going to get used to this.
She closes her eyes again, burrows closer and hopes she can get used to that same opening riff for the next hour.
She really loves being a feminist.
----------
Endnotes: A Doll's House, because the dratted husband reminds me of Jimmy, only he uses less four letter words.
Leave comments, if you want. ^-^
cracky? snarky? angsty? It is an amalgum.
4895 words, r/nc-17, hex
You wanted this. Zattanna had said.
Two of us in one wreck can surely stand a better chance than each on our own.
A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen
Jimmy had called her Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale!
Florence Nightingale, in a world where she could have easily been Elizabeth Blackwell. Except of course, that she had no job; and she’d been dumped.
She felt self-righteous and wronged and the worst bit of all, she didn’t even have a talk show to let it out on. If she called Clark he’d get back to Lana or Lois getting drunk and kissing him again, and then…
No. Just no.
This had been meant to be happily ever after. Save your best friend, get fired. Counsel people, have them turn into psycho-murderers. Protect the one person who was there for you from getting his brains clobbered out, get an oral annulment. Either the world was screwed up or she was.
Probably both.
Now it was really quiet, when with Jimmy it used to be a game of baseball, or a conversation about digital cameras littered with 80s references. Apparently that was all out the window.
Jimmy didn’t need her. Never did.
They weren’t the one true thing. She hadn’t been his world, not in the way Clark had been hers. They’d been comfortable. Right. Good friends, maybe. Easy? No comment.
If they were going to crumble two weeks after the wedding and the ICU, why had he asked? For that matter, why had she accepted? They could have just kept the plastic rings on, shaken hands on it…
She’d ended up like this a hundred times before, always a failed date that ended in a homicide attempt or the 2021st time Clark proved to her that he didn’t need her.
She looked into the mirror, at her red nose and the smile-that-tried to-be-a-smile and failed miserably. Her voice sounded reedy when she told herself she was going to be heroic again.
--------
Maybe she could find something to do, something that would not be the colossal failure that Isis was. At the hospital, maybe. Davis had given her suggestions before, she told herself. She had to know how he was, after everything.
It’s not like she was sewing the letter ‘A’ in scarlet on her blouse. He was a friend that couldn’t help the unwitting role he’d played. It would have been him, or Clark, or somebody else.
She dialed once, twice, a third time. His apartment phone, because that’s where that’s where she would have gone after someone attempted to kill her. She got redirected to the main desk, where someone asked if she wanted to fill the vacancy.
Strange, yes, but maybe he’d moved in case Jimmy brought a bulldozer next time.
(Davis had told her about the blackouts, scared to death. He’d howled. He’d begged her to run in the alley in that same tone of voice. And she’d touched him, then nothing.)
There were no fairytales.
Jimmy was on meds. Davis could’ve been disoriented. Davis would have had to have lied, back there in the hospital room.
No.
Even if the crazy theory was true then he’d have to stay close, very close. She found Davis in the downpour across the street from the Talon window.
He almost jumped that time. “Chloe?” He kept looking at her mouth and she wondered if maybe she’d forgotten to get the Ben and Jerry’s off it.
He nodded, shook his head a few apartments behind him.
“I brought some meds for one of my patients down here and…”
“I know what they say about taking your job seriously, but that is above and beyond the call of duty.” She neglected to mention that the last few apartments were still under construction.
“Come on in, for God’s sake.”
He stood in the doorway and dripped water stains onto the rug, didn’t come in, and that did make sense in the context of things. “Come in. Jimmy’s gone off to…somewhere…to find his calling. I think he discovered his inner street fighter.” Still. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. He has a secret and loyalty complex, and the meds. And I have too high of an attractive friend ratio. It’s about a noisy as the tomb of the dead in here and I could use the company.”
She was temporarily distracted when a fat droplet of water slid down his eyebrow, off his eyelash, down his neck…
She meant he was dripping, thoroughly dripping, like he was about to get pneumonia or at least a very, very bad cold with wheezing.
He wasn’t shivering. Shock. He might be critical. If she was Florence Nightingale, she was a very bad one. Her stomach wasn’t supposed to do cartwheels. She seized firm hold of his sleeve and yanked him in, slammed the door.
“Chloe, is this okay?” Oh, she remembered high school. Always leave a shoe in the door when you were with a boy lest you got tempted to. ahem.
She’d grown up. Really.
“Of course it is. I like being with you. You need to get dry. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that. ”
She could have declared him in dire need of chicken soup if he hadn’t let out a whoosh of air like she had hit him. “but, it’s not just that now.”
Then said he had to tell her something. Last time he’d said that, he’d been telling her not to get married. Maybe he was going to ask her to get annulment papers and…
“It’s a beast.” He said.
“Come again?”
-------
He had been turned into a great big party crasher, after Braniac had sagely decided that she was what he needed to drive Doomsday crazy and be his Bride of…
Nuts. All of it. Like one of those teen melodramas that ran in theaters right next to Twilight. It was not like he could prove it without tearing her roof off.
“This is all because of me, isn’t it?”
It all came together like a ruinous puzzle. There was nothing to say and her mouth opened and closed like a fishes, twice. Then she closed it again.
He was telling the truth.
--------
“So, let me get this straight, I touch you and then it goes away?”
She wasn’t looking at him she tested the idea, couldn’t. Held one of his big, slightly too warm palms between her fingers and thought that he was still there. If not for that It could crush her, breaking this already tiny human life of hers into tinier, bite sized bits.
The idea that she’d been used as a trigger for his darker side, and was now the walking sedative to hold it back was perfect, twisted irony.
The red and blue blur and the destroyer with a man trapped inside. She told herself that this way; she could keep them both safe.
--------
It was nothing like an excuse to pet him.
She learned to recognize the signs and hold a hand carefully over his shoulder over a layer of fabric. Murmur reassurances that she didn’t think she believed anymore, until the darkness drew away and Clark lived for one more day.
----------
They didn’t talk much. She hated it more than a little, the way this great gaping hole had swallowed her connection to the man who she could talk to, really talk to. She hated it even as her mind spit out recriminations that she wouldn’t ever, ever say. I fell apart, I trusted you, you held me together and you lied.
He’d told the truth when it counted. But that exact moment, when she was scared to death it was her, throwing Jimmy into the danger zone of the weird and the weirder, it was. Davis and she. The comfort of the moment, the warmth of being safe twisted into something destructive and chaotic.
----------
(What never added to her angst was the fear that maybe this was all she was to him now, a convenience to keep the monster at bay. She’d lived her life as a convenience, but he’d given and given and never expected anything in return.
Words. Words could lie easily. His face couldn’t.)
---------
She never knew how big a part of her had been invested in the easiness before.
It appeared, weeks later in packing the things in Jimmy’s room, preparing for a new phase of life. She needed a purpose. She needed a man, or in this case, a husband like a fish needed a bicycle.
It didn’t matter how frustrated she felt.
She had the sudden urge to kick the Dummies Guide to the Kama Sutra straight across the room. Or… never mind… Instead, she muttered to herself.
“I didn’t trust him. That’s why he left.”
Davis helped with the packing of course, watched as she put the things in boxes to be sent to the new address. “I’m sorry, Chloe.” He said.
“He would’ve left anyway.”
“But not like that. I put you in that position.”
“Don’t feel so bad. I wasn’t exactly taking preventive measures. We all trust who we will, I suppose.”
It came naturally, that.
“It wasn’t right.”
“I was just so scared that he’d… I couldn’t think.
I think I could’ve guessed it, eventually. You howled so loud you could have given King Kong a run for the money.”
He watched her as if he expected her to send something flying at his head, as if he would take it and everything else. She chuckled because her deadpan delivery was losing its touch.
He loosened up, and for once didn’t say ‘I’m sorry’ five times consecutively that next half hour. It almost felt easy.
Oh, she wasn’t ready to jump off of the deep end, trust again, just that same way.
They were friends, though, and wasn’t that the way everything started?
---------
He saw himself as the monster. Sometimes she thought he only ate because she made the food, set it squarely between them on the tiny table. He never told her details of what happened, but it was there, on his face sometimes. The sight of an overturned dumpster, broken glass, red...
She stopped cooking Italian.
---------
She’d grown used to it, the touch. His skin was warmer than a normal, like Clark’s and not, his grip reminding her of security and forgetfulness.
Davis was all that Clark was and he wasn’t. He was her friend. And he wasn’t.
From her experience friends did do this. Talk. Care. (once in a while, if they remembered to and they weren’t busy saving the world.)
Friends didn’t get caught up in it, didn’t look at you like you were the world.
She was married. She wasn’t leading him on. She couldn’t control the way she looked back, what he saw, what he felt, holding too close. Anything.
Sometimes, she wondered what it would be like to kiss him again before trying to forget the look on his face.
She couldn’t have stopped it if she wanted to.
---------
They never locked the doors, because they couldn’t keep things like that between them.
It was that howl again, and she wondered how it had slipped past her last time.
9 A.M. She’d overslept and he was going to go through it again. She flung herself against the door layered in at least three of the teddies that Lois had helpfully swapped for her favorite sweats in the wardrobe. The shirts would slip awkwardly off of the shoulder at the worst moments.
Shoulders, arms….refreshingly human. All of him conspicuously missing any spikes. His head was tilted up and he was in pain, but …not that kind.
“Oh.”
Her sleeve was sopped with shampoo from her headlong rush.
“Oh.” She forced herself to put it gently at the side of the stall. She was a married woman. She was not thinking of that.
“It’s not like I haven’t seen it all before.”
But she really, really hadn’t.
“I’m going…I’m going to…get coffee.”
--------
Maybe she fooled herself, but it held together somehow. It had to. She wasn’t Florence Nightingale. She was selfish, wanted to hold on to this one thing that was utterly hers. She couldn’t live without a purpose. And somewhere, somehow, he’d become it.
-------
Davis went to church once or twice, one of those old gothic places that weren’t nearly large or dark enough to be a cathedral. They held hands in the pew and a few children giggled, made kissy faces.
She thought his hand tightened, a little. He went into one of those confessionals and she thought that she could go, too. Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been four years since my last confession.
She could’ve done that, only she couldn’t help what she wanted, sometimes.
--------
She always knew she’d discover the major downside to making 21st birthday pacts with her cousin. She and Lois had planned their respective birthday’s years ago, when she had dreams of tearing open the underground corruption in the city and Lois had wanted to be a taxi driver. Lois, being Lois, had made the reservations in advance in something way more posh than the Talon.
Chloe gets a wake up call at six a.m. to meet her there.
She makes her best effort with a green and blue froth concoction of a dress that could have been worn to a modern ballet. The nylon snags, but there’s no helping it now. She’s going to be ridiculously happy. Then she’s coming home.
The restaurant is dark, lit with dim lamps so that they can barely see their way around.
Things at the planet have changed overnight and now these people are the movers and shakers of Lois’s world. There are a few familiar faces- Lois, Oliver (with Clark’s present, the Tales of the Weird and Unexplained), Perry White... Chloe wonders suddenly when Tess Mercer had become ‘her’ friend.
She gets a cupcake, a comment on the sweet release of death, and then Lois is out of there, onto her next mission.
Davis receives the obligatory glares from Oliver, none from Lois; and somehow gets trapped in the corner. She thinks those look an awful lot like permanent markers the girls are shoving into his hands. (She sometimes wishes she’d watched Battlestar Galactica.)
There’s no time to think of that because Oliver is already dragging her away. “I have to talk to you.”
“If it’s about the Lex thing, this is not the time.”
“Of course not. I just wanted to know how my favorite sidekick was.” A gin tonic with an Olive. Of course.
“How many of those babies did you drink Oliver?”
“That’s not important. Listen, I need your help for this secret mis—”
Tess comes over smiling in a Lex way, with a bottle of Pinot Grigio (Vintage 1924 and slightly moldy).
“--how do you feel about opera? In Carmen, there’s this dancer who’s a spy and her husband runs away. You should cheer up. Don’t plunge a dagger into your heart. It’s not that bad, Chloe. I’m here for you.”
Chloe thinks she nods in all the appropriate places before he disappears. She hopes she can find her way through the aged, dancing execs to find Davis and maybe get the heck away.
Only Oliver gets back first, brings over a woman with heavily made up eyes and a look like a Tarot card. She is taller than Chloe by almost half a foot, wearing boots and a shirt. Nothing much more than fishnet stockings, really.
“So I hear you’ve had a bad day.?”
“Not really.” She had been just fine.
“Let’s see what we can do about that.” The woman says.
Chloe keeps thinking that the people are like walls and she isn’t where she should be.
Birthday. Remember. She’s going to be ridiculously happy.
It only happens once in a lifetime.
“Make a wish. Any wish.” the large cupcake holds steady and the candle flame wavers in front of her.
She waits the appropriate time and blows on the candle. The smoke twists and she wheezes. The woman’s caught up with Oliver again.
Some kind of magic.
Clark calls to wish her a happy birthday with a voice that sounds that far off. He has super speed and she is grateful that he always has more important things to do now.
The reception clears up only at the mention of Davis.
“How could you invite him? The guys obviously got eyes for you, and he’s the reason your marriage broke up. It’s a given that maybe the serial killer thing was a bit much, but…”
There was no obvious with Clark.
“He’s my friend and deserves to be here as much as you or anyone else. Jimmy thought you had eyes for me for God’s sake.”
“What about Jimmy?”
“I don’t know where— ”
“--You could have invited him. He likes bullfighting very much so he might even say something nice to you.”
“He’s--what?”
“Sorry, Chloe--can’t talk now. Call waiting. Lois needs my help in Mexico with the president of the Tequila council.”
--------
Two more times around, she really doesn’t understand what Oliver’s getting at. She creeps her way back to the corner, finds Davis sitting there, looking at her. Not that there’s anything unusual about that at all, but his eyes...
Too many people, no wonder.
She gets into the seat next to him behind the potted plant. “We’re getting out of here soon.” She pats his shoulder in the most appropriate way possible, just in case It is getting antsy again. He doesn’t let her move her hand, holds onto it like a vise for a few seconds before letting go.
“You’re so beautiful.” The champagne makes her lightheaded and giddy and ridiculously touched.
“Thanks, that’s….nice.” Actually, a bit more than that. It’s been a long time since anyone has said anything like it, in just that way. It’s been even longer since anyone looked like they meant it.
He looks high. Did super beings even sweat? Clark only used to when there was kryptonite.
“You okay though? You don’t look too good.” She touches his forehead. He leans into the touch and she lets herself enjoy it for the moment until pulls her off balance onto him, turns it into something else entirely. His lips are warm (nothing like Clark) and she can’t or won’t pull away this time. It’s natural and its good and she feels like her IQ has gone for a hike.
(Married! Separated!
Florence Nightingale. Gloria Steinem.
It isn’t working.)
She doesn’t know what lead to this. On some level, maybe but why now? She can feel his thumb moving gently through the strap of the dress at the place where skin meets cloth. She wonders if he knows how strong he is, if this is why he handles her like she will crumble. His hands are heavy on her shoulders and she wants there to be bruises come morning, wants to be able to feel before the inevitable happens and they go back to their world and nothing.
(This isn’t easy like she thought. Its no transgression, it’s an abyss and she’s teetering. He’s waiting for her to hold out her hand, jump off. This is her tether to reality.)
She remembers a time when he was almost blatant. Then this had come along and he looked and nothing. They’re pressed together so close that she will have bruises; right now it feels like he wants to push her farther into the dark. The plants are kind of big.
She thinks this until he leans his head back, tries to breathe. “I’m sorry.” His eyes look almost drugged, and he hasn’t touched anything since they arrived.
“Davis?” she shakes him on the other shoulder and he makes the sound again. “If you do it again...”
“Do what?”
“-that... I won’t be able to stop myself. Something’s happening.”
“Come on.”
He doesn’t stumble exactly, follows her, fingers trembling as they brush her hand. She keeps her hand clamped firmly about his wrist; catches Zatanna at the doorway.
“What did you do?”
“I just make it happen, sweetie. At that very moment you wanted …”
“I don’t. Do you hear me, I don’t.”
She’s gone.
Chloe doesn’t know what excuse she makes exactly. Something to do with Gabe and Dinner. She doesn’t particularly care if someone sees that they leave together.
------
He looks ill and wild, but she’d anything but relieved when he locks himself in the bathroom.
“This is stupid. Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure I can help you control it.”
He doesn’t answer.
“I swear; I’m going to come in.”
She knows how to make lock picks as a legacy of Bart. She finds a paperclip, just the right size and that’s all it takes.
He’s in the corner, in the shower behind a nearly transparent pane. Still. Not speaking.
The water is running loudly and she can still hear him breathe behind the dark gray pane. She can’t get used to the fact that there are no goose bumps on his arms even though he’s curled around himself. That defense mechanism she’s seen often enough.
“Talk to me.”
“I crossed the line. I’m sorry.” This is easy, now he’s going to retreat into his appropriate friend corner and she can be Joan of Ark again. Joan of Ark died.
“Because of something that was my fault. I had some champagne.” (all of two sips) “and I wasn’t exactly fighting you.”
She can keep talking. Sensible reporter voice.
He’d sounded like he was dying.
“If you aren’t coming out, I’m going to have to come in and get you.
She slips a hand to turn off the water, almost shrieks as it lands all over her back. “That’s freezing.”
“I don’t feel it.”
He’s like Clark, of course not.
“But apparently you do feel something. Does it hurt?” She knows it does, because the prickly gray spots are coming over his skin again.
She touches him before it goes any farther. She’s hardly Chyna, so there’s no way she’s going to lever him out.
“Stop it. You know –a friend was like that once. If rocks fell out of the sky it was his fault. If someone failed a final it was his fault, if L-someone’s hair got cut it was his fault …”
“He wasn’t like this. If I lose control, you die.”
“Point is; I don’t. Remember? Let’s get you out of here.” He listens to that. “And the other thing is fine. We’re friends—we cut each other breaks. So lean on me.”
It’s less literal and more figurative. She can’t exactly offer him her shoulder even if he looks like he’s about to get a major case of the shakes because well, he’s naked and…under the influence.
“Now why mustn’t I touch you? I mean; we’ve got one thing going for us, never mind that it’s completely crazy. It works.”
She unclenches his fingers from around the pane. He could shatter the thing. His eyes slip shut.
“So that doesn’t hurt, now. That’s fine.
You are going to drink something hot, I’ll fix macaroni and we sleep. Or you sleep; whatever.” She sounds like a mother hen.
She pats his shoulder, careful to let go quick enough. “I feel almost cheated. No protests?”
He goes non-verbal, and she’s pretty sure he’s worse now.
Is that rumbling? “Do anything you want.” He’s grabbed onto the knob next to the pane and it comes right off.
“I can’t believe that’s a turn on. I’m starting to think you won’t get better until…” And his eyes snap open and maybe that’s not the conscious response she was aiming for.
“Maybe it’s like pon farr. You know duel to the death or... It’s an alien thing, just ask doctor Spock. We can fix that.”
“I can’t let you do this because you pity me.” The way he swallows makes a little pattern over his collarbone.
“Well, I’m frustrated.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be. It’s your fault.
Besides, I care about you. A lot. I don’t want to see you hurt.” She could have said that to anybody, really, but he’s the first person to hold his breath when she does it. She wonders if he can count the times anyone’s ever said something like that to him.
He sounds a little raw. “And I need you…I’m sorry, Chloe.” She moves forward a little closer, lets her cheek rest against his neck.
She could be brave, do something really crazy, but she remembers that she’s got words and that’s all she’s got, and not even they come out the way she wants. He’s got to be brave for her.
She keeps her hand there and doesn’t move it, lets him move it for her. Closer, right over the beat.
Then, it’s not like a mauling, not really. It’s the pressure of his lips, eager, but anything but fumbling. This has only happened twice and he knows her too well. It gets hard to breathe, hard to reason and the tile is cold. He’s so warm.
She’s got to be a little twisted. She enjoys the almost animalistic sounds he makes, how desperate it all is, doesn’t feel pathetic because her breathing is all out of whack and she’s trying to get him closer.
Her extra hand finds purchase on the wall even as she’s lifted up. Her hair is messy and wet, blinds her so she can only see his features through it. She can let herself feel. “Davis, listen to me. I’m doing this too.” Those are his eyes, minus the fact that they’re not trying to avoid her appearance so she won’t be discomfited.
You wanted this. she’d said.
She’s no Virgin Mary. “I’ve done this.” She chokes out, mostly for her own benefit.
With only one man. Only one.
Teeth scrape very gently against her neck, and the folds of the dress drape uselessly around her, knot in his fingers, tear.
She can’t be in control now. Thin sheer material is like wearing nothing, just sticking everywhere and she’s not invulnerable to cold.
(This can be just what she needs right now, but its not just. It doesn’t have to mean any more, but it does.)
She can’t unfeel this, can’t stop from moving against him, trying to memorize the details.
This is all almost chaste, the way his lips linger on her breastbone. That is not meant to be an erogenous zone.
The tingling on her skin builds with soreness, nylon feels chafing.
A warm hand slides up her knee feels through the rip. Deepens it, sends a strange bolt of something though her. The loose touch changes, becomes more directed. And she wants… wants…
She buckles against the corner of the glass, doesn’t try to be quiet because she needs him to see just what this might do, wants to see him as it begins.
His arms hook underneath her knees, lift her up with no effort at all. It’s cinematic to be spun around and kissed just for a few seconds. But there’s open air everywhere behind her and her legs instinctively clamp tighter around his waist. She could fall.
He’s close now. Not close enough. She grabs on for dear life, tighter than a tourniquet, tries to blot out all other thoughts. The kiss is gentle and soft and the intensity of it burns. Maybe this is for all of the times they’ve kept to those lines, drawn them in the sand. Maybe this is who they are.
She want's to freeze this moment, because she may never have it again.
There are practically no barriers at all, and she can feel his hands in the indentations on her back, ribs and spine and bone. She’s free to touch where she pleases, runs her hands along his arms with a drugged fascination; takes it farther. Watches as he holds his breath.
It should be ridiculous that he feels fragile to her. They are learning each other now as if they have time.
Like everything, it’s pushed aside when a heavier sensation builds and pulls her down. She pulls him in with a messy choked sound.
The shower tile is cold and hard, and water sticks to her sin like vapor. She exhales from the shock of the warmth and the cold, his voice telling her that she’s everything and the world and Chloe.
He moves into her quietly, watches her eyes, looks as if another bit of him is cracking. They move together, irregular fumbling, eager and needy. They adjust.
She hasn’t got her feet on the ground. She could fall, but it would be into him. The angle is different that anything she’s ever felt; gravity pushes her down to him.
Soon enough she’s straining for closeness. Her breathing picks up quickens with his, whatever’s between them. Her body struggles to hold him inside, pulls itself taunt. His name comes disjointedly from her lips, heavy, basic and complex.
She can’t stop the shuddering once it begins, feels it move through them both, but he keeps on. The second time hits her on the heels of the first and she thinks that maybe the human body’s not meant to take this.
The blackness starts at the edge of her vision and she bites into his shoulder slightly, trying to keep it together because they need this.
He whispers her name just once into her skin and then he’s shaking too, still pulling her closer, not letting go. They must be breaking the laws or destiny, or gravity or sanity.
It’s all too much. Or too little.
“I love you.” He says, and quite suddenly she can’t breathe. Her lips part and something strangled comes out.
Just this moment. Just this second.
She’s not going to forget it as long as she lives.
Her legs won’t hold her to make her way out, but he does, wraps his arms around her waist even as the coverlet is soaked in sweat and them.
---------
She wakes up to her phone ringing in her bag, the sounds of ‘I get knocked down’ blearing too cheerfully from her cell. Maybe it’s Clark, passing on one of Jimmy’s birthday messages after some very tactful editing, or Lois calling to complain about the greasy hair of the pilot.
Somehow during the past hour, Davis has ended up with one leg slung over hers, half-trapping her. She’s warm now, feels his breath calm and easy by her ear. He’s sleeping and he’s never...
She's going to get used to this.
She closes her eyes again, burrows closer and hopes she can get used to that same opening riff for the next hour.
She really loves being a feminist.
----------
Endnotes: A Doll's House, because the dratted husband reminds me of Jimmy, only he uses less four letter words.
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