instinctual

Reccing Notes: This is a happier offshoot to my tragic Chlarkoom fic Square One.
So. death. is a tight corner that Chloe's found herself in, but all she can think is that she would have come with Davis either way. Funny realizations you get sometimes. A different look at Neutron from Injustice. Chlavis and light Clex.

by vagrantdream at her/my journal (with explanatory notes. ;) )
10167 words, m/nc-17, injustice and bride (only by mention).


The fear pushes itself so back in her throat so far she doesn’t know if she’ll find it again.

---
Freedom then, lies only in our innate human capacity to choose different sorts of bondage.
-Sri Madhava
---

“So I’m going to die strapped to a chair, in the middle of nowhere, and you won’t even let me say goodbye to my husband? Why—why are you…?” Chloe Walker’s eyes tear beautifully, just like another kidnapping victim’s.

The blonde young woman looks terrified, and Thomas Martin, now Neutron, reminds himself that this is necessary. She’s lying. She’s harboring a monster. And if he wants to keep his life, this is his job.

“Again, Miss Sullivan, I think you know why I have to do this.” The restraints are tight enough, now, and she doesn’t look terrified of them so much as for someone.

“I know. Davis Bloome. He’s going to kill people. You’re protecting him.”

She watches him with expressive eyes, peering at him, almost. Too compassionate eyes, like the eyes of the first woman who took him off the streets.
How could someone like that fall this deep? He knows the streets- petty thieves, extortionists, an enforcer or two. Serial killers, that’s a whole other beef. Dark and handsome, sometimes, excellent liars. Boyfriend probably.

“That makes you every bit as dangerous as him.”

She’s lovely. A lot of them had been, but never like her. Dangerous. He knows his duty.
He’s always been the one to do it; although sometimes it feels like a switch flips on him and they just -go. A speedy death. This has to be God’s work; he has to remind himself, not believing.
He hopes she doesn’t scream.

“No. No. You don’t. You don’t understand; I’m protecting you.” She thinks she is. There’s the first bit of honesty he’s heard from her. But there is something else there.

“He’s a killer, miss. If you let this end for him, you’d be protecting me--us. You’re protecting him.”

“No. I can stop this. I can save him. I’m the only on who can.” Tom’s heard this line before.

“No, you can’t.” She’s trying to convince him or herself and her eyes are already tearing up. It’s definitely an emotional thing.

“Davis wouldn’t hurt a fly! He’s got this genetic--, but he’s with me and…” Maybe she loves him and convinces herself she can change him. Maybe she has a martyr complex. It all ends the same.

If things are like he’s been told, he only has moments before this ‘husband’ of hers finds them. Tom can’t fight that. She needs to give him something on his location so he can call backup.

“The Cornfield Killer sets his sight on bigger prey than flies.” Electricity crackles from his fingers into her and she‘s trying to muffle a yell. Tom wants to look away.

He’s only had this power for hereabouts of a year and it doesn’t make him feel like a god. It makes him feel helpless, like if he didn’t need protection for the things he did he wouldn’t be hurting people.

“Where is he?” He asks Chloe again, and this time it nearly burns him, just that---tingling. Zap.

The white meteor-blocking plasti-cuffs bite into her pale skin and when she twists them around red drips down one of her wrists. He really doesn’t like doing this.

But it is as if she doesn’t even notice it when the flood of it opens up. She hits her head against the chair, but Chloe is somewhere else.



Chloe thinks she had just gone out for a moment. Davis wanted to give her space. It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.

This man is no policeman. Or maybe he is but…
He’d looked like a clean cut rookie—polite, a little flirty, reminded her of a toned down Davis, so she hadn’t really suspected the ticket. She had been driving pretty fast.

She’d signed her fake name trembling on the ticket and kept thinking that she needed to be with Davis or someone else could get hurt.
Now. Too much time. She has to be back.

The guy is slim, good-natured looking, short, young. He’s not the type she would’ve pegged for torture. Maybe he’d lived on the streets alone young, but then Davis had that same saving people complex. He’d turned out alright, before the thorny alter ego destroyed most of that life too. It can still do that with everyone else’s.

Chloe briefly considers confiding, begging but her teeth can hardly pry themselves apart for the agony.

“A little bit of overkill, don’t you think?” She gets out before the thirteenth and fourteenth shock.

“I know about you. That’s the only way for you to stay dead.”

She can’t not scream.

Of course, his handlers-Tess. They’d want to kill her. By the nature of her very existence Chloe defies everything they hope to accomplish.



There’s not enough time for a proper interrogation. Thomas is on a schedule. An hour and no information. Kill her. We’ll get the location.
Maybe a higher voltage will hurt less, end it faster. Thomas hasn’t had long to practice.

“Don’t do this…Tom, right? Don’t do this.”

“I’m sorry.” He says and he means it. She’s a pretty woman. Reliable. With spirit and life and fierce loyalty behind her eyes. Every time he finds a woman like that, she always ends up dead.

He’s been warned about this. Her voice is small, “I don’t want to die.” Tom remembers propping down the window, thinking for a split second he’d like to ask her out, then, the license. She was the target. He would have to kill her.

She is just compassionate. The fault is with the killer not her. If she could have compassion for a killer like that, then maybe she could forgive him for killing her once. Maybe he isn’t so hopeless after all.

“After it all blows over, I’ll try and let you out of these.” He whispers, hand relaxing the steady flow of electricity. “The guy, whatever he’s done, will face Justice.” The boss has an enforcer, some great man who can do the job. Not that it’s Tom’s to ask questions. He does the dirty work.

He lives a brief moment, imagining what life would be like on the run. A guy in need of redemption, and her. “You heal. You’ll live again.”

She isn’t screaming now, but her eyes are watering. “You’ll be able to live free.” She doesn’t look comforted.



Free, free, isn’t that what Chloe wanted? Before the excuse that she was running away. It was the only way that made any sense. She could tame Davis.

Maybe she’d been trapped, a little resentful.
Clark couldn’t save her because he’d die. She couldn’t force Davis into a living hell. She would give her life to keeping them apart.

Now she’s clear of all responsibility or choice either way and she won’t let this little escape of hers go. All she can think is that without Davis, the looks, the pushy tender looks and the infuriating way he won’t just grab her or let her go unless she makes some…sign… or the saving him, her world is a whole lot dimmer.

“No. I’m afraid. Just leave me here.” She tries to appeal in the good Samaritan in the man—just an average Joe, sweet enough to care about a girl who’s scared. “You’ve protected me enough. They’ll find him, and I’ll be safe.”

Davis has this…thing that makes it so he knows where she is. He’d found her in the middle of a random street before. He’ll find her.

“You need to go and help your people find him.” She nods, trying, but he’s peering at her, razor-jawed face lighting up with knowledge.

“He’s coming for you.”
Chloe’s hands are sweating, or maybe that’s just the blood. She goes from tiny and scared, to some sort of---mad prophet.

“Yes. He is. I can feel it. Now will you go?”

Tom thinks he’s acting crazy. She’s working against him. She doesn’t want to be freed.
He should shock her completely senseless and move on out before he gets sliced up into little bits. He doesn’t need forgiveness. He’s killed people before her and will kill people after.

“I won’t leave you alone.” He murmurs, finally. Maybe she can be the one to forgive him.



“Go!” Chloe knows It-in-Davis wouldn’t hurt her. Even in his monstrous form, he’d thrown the thug off her, and though the other had ended up in pieces, and It could have come back for seconds (she’d been feet away) it had gone back to its little hole-like an obedient dog.

But It-in-Davis has no love for anyone who is not her. She can’t watch anyone else turned to piecemeal. So she spills the ugly truth- Davis is terrified of losing her and it will be hell for everyone else, with his will or not.
This guy’s a kid- he’s never had blood on his hands, not like that. What would he know?

“Are you slow? He will kill you. Leave!”



She believes this and somehow the panic leeches into Tom. The chip in his wrist burns. An hour and then you will kill her. Hours up. What is he even doing this for?
Compassion? Forgiveness? The fear hurts.

Tom is new to this power thing and the energy leaps out. This is happening again. He can’t control it anymore.



Chloe knows that it will kill her. She can smell her hair singing and her skin reddening, cracking, drying; wanting to curl up on itself. She can’t even count time, it goes on that long.

She has a dizzied impression of his panic before Tom’s body hits the ground. There’s no infuriated roaring, just the minute woosh of air that makes her think of Clark, but it’s Davis. He’s here.

Her eyes work like she’s seeing through a bending mirage. Davis looks like…well…Davis this time, but his eyes are two little specks of red marble, like they’re lit up from the inside.

Davis is there, suddenly, throwing the other back onto the wall, crouching like a predator, hands wrapped around the other man’s windpipe. He could have snapped it in a second, but this is not merciful.
She can see the electricity spiking into his skin. It’s as if this-Davis’s is avenging something he has already lost. Or maybe he’s just too fixated to care.

This is not how any fairytale should go. The beast, this not-Davis is going to kill the guy. It can’t happen. She won’t be able to do this…if he does. Davis is the one who saves people. He cares about others. Not just her.

The man’s unconscious now. He might not feel it. Any minute his neck will snap.
She’s not going to last much longer. Her cells can’t heal themselves.

“Please, I’m afraid.” She wants to say, but she just looks up and locks eyes with this red-eyed him.

He’s half a room away but the effect is almost like hypnotism. She doesn’t see him move but he’s there, hands heavy on her cracking skin.

She screams and he startles at first, like a wild animal starting to regain its senses. Some part of him knows she’s in pain and she’s barely thinking enough to ground him.

She must make him understand…something…yes. She must get free. She can only heal if he gets her free.
She tries to wiggle her wrists and the skin flakes off, loose white. Tears gather in the corner of her eyes.

He loosens up but the red eyes are unfocused, instinctive, kind of animal. Watching her for cues.
Chloe doesn’t have a plan. Sure he has super strength. Davis can’t break the bonds without breaking her wrists. If he has heat vision like Clark, he hasn’t been able to learn to use it.

She can’t close her eyes. She’s got to think, not of the red, red skin but she mustn’t close her eyes. She can’t fall asleep.

He’s instinct and if she doesn’t keep him occupied and stay alive, the others are going to die. He’s here, anyway, though, and she has a chance too. She feels guilt thinking it. Maybe this is better than losing him.

Instinct. Animals get out of traps easily.

Davis lowers his head, and for a second she feels teeth, tearing through the plastic and a little of her. Then the restrains fall away, it all burns and her skin glows white, and she slams her eyes closed. He doesn’t even move.

His breath is thick, heavy with purpose, not quite human. What is he doing?

Chloe thinks he’s going to bite at her neck, like an animal marks a mate. She won’t fight that now.

It-in-Davis’s tongue is abrasive sandpaper, tearing, tearing, revealing clear epidermis under mottled flesh. The agony of healing races in its wake.

---

Chloe is conscious of a few things when she comes to the land of the living again. She isn’t covered with second degree burns for one. The noon heat is making sweat trickle down her neck
Mostly Davis’s head on her neck.

Of course they sleep close together; she can imitate his sleep breathing patterns from memory. This is a bit more intimate.
His breath stirs skin in its path and she shuts her eyes tight.

Dangerous, but then at least now she’s not dyingdying and he’s not lost into the monster. With him it’s desperate. She’s the only thing he has. But then, he chose her.

“Chloe. It worked.” Of course it did, despite the little ashy remnants on some of her, she feels good as new.
It’s unconscious, she swears it, but when his hands slip over her shoulders and she thinks he’d going to squeeze her into whey, she thinks of how easily it could get out of control.

The second thing Davis says after he can pull off her long enough to speak is sorry. He hasn’t seen the other guy yet. She presses his head tighter into her shoulder so he won’t. He didn’t want to do this and practically all of him is dedicated to holding on to her, holding out against the darkness. Maybe the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

“You saved my life.” She says. His hands linger on her chin, probing for injury and he looks her in the eyes, still. His are a little dazed, but he remembers it all. It’s an imprint, like a sort of autopilot.

It should be unbelievably awkward; both of them slumped over each other, this way. It’s not, surprisingly not; but then what is normal for the rest of the world doesn’t count for much with them. They are in a small garage with people on their trail. They have to get out.

That almost benign-policeman, agent, whoever he said he was or wasn’t, is lying on the floor there. The second body to add to their count if he’s dead. If he’s dead….

Chloe knows it isn’t simple, this isn’t clean now. What she is with Davis-what they are together is destructive too. She’s blending into him in the same way he’s blending into her. Even now, she’s seeing things differently.

She might save him. She might not be able to.
The idea that he might be lost to her is more than terror, it’s just… wrong. Save Clark and the world- that might never pull through. She would be going with Davis either way.

He remembers everything he did. And that body.
Chloe doesn’t know what she says, fingers loosening their hold on the back of his head, barely. Ready to speak. “His name was Thomas.”

Davis doesn’t untangle himself from the mess and run for the hills. He’s not like…He’s not one to panic. She thinks if he had a medic-pack still he would go racing for it.

“The construct said I couldn’t help hurting everyone. I won’t let it be you.”
She just watches him blur, hunch onto the ground, head spinning from the ramifications. His eyes are too dark not to be his now. For once she can’t tell what he’s thinking

It is Davis who checks if the man? still has a pulse, his fingers still covered with light char. He releases a breath across the room and she pulls herself up on doddering, suddenly weightless legs.
He didn’t kill anyone today.

---

So it’s simple. They leave.

Chloe can see all four directions from where they stand. No landmarks. Nothing familiar.
Davis—whatever went on--- hadn’t brought a car. He had used his other abilities under moments of intense emotion. Without that, they were a little bit lost.

He looks so, dramatic waving his arms about in the air at the side of the road. She clutches her stomach, looks right up, and realizes she’s just laughed here, with him for the first time in weeks.

What was this? They are in trouble. They have no car. They have to get out of here. They’re not dead. She can’t stop smiling.

He looks at her with a nascent fear of a serious coughing fit, but then he seems to get that too. His expression goes all soft, like those times she catches him watching her mornings and he doesn’t try and lessen it now.

The fear pushes itself so back in her throat so far she doesn’t know if she’ll find it again. She really wants to touch him.

---

They hitchhike a few miles and Chloe, this crazy alternaverse part of her that woke to Davis’s eyes, is a bit miffed that she can’t use the Claudette Colbert hitchhiker’s thumb.
Davis has done this before, so they’re all taken care of.

They rent a car at the next hub of civilization they find. Their last stop doesn’t matter anymore. That’s jumping right back into the fire. It’s not like they had much packed anyway, and she’s got their IDs.

On the four hundredth mile she stops the car because they’ve run enough anyway.

They are in what had been a trailer park maybe in the seventies. Now there is precious little communing with nature and a whole lot of rotting wood and beer cans.

Davis isn’t dozing, but Chloe didn’t really expect him to. He sits ramrod in the seat and there might be a question in his eyes. Chloe isn’t the one with super keen senses.

Davis doesn’t have to transform, even less when it’s just the both of them, but she’s going to take that time off just to let him…what…be close to her, was that what he said?

She could have planned it a little better, she thinks, hand loosening up on the brake. At least some food. They haven’t eaten more than trail mix granolas since the start of this mess.

“I thought we might get in a few breaths here.” She says. At least the stars look good from here.

“Chloe, I’m guessing this isn’t just an extended field trip.” Oh, is he worrying again?

“We have to talk.” she says. They’ve already shared practically all of the unimportant details on the road. What does Davis remember? Oh that was a close one. Or the first time, it was like he was gaining control. Her healing is empathic so maybe…just… it’s not all that doomed. If she could just take the pain on...

They’ve talked about all they were supposed to talk about. Davis’s eyes still terrify her.
Chloe can go back on her word or stupidly throw down her last defense, ‘I just want to save you.’ The giddiness falls to the riptide of fear.

“Let’s talk.” Davis reaches over and unclasps her seat belt and his hands linger in the empty air, over her, heating her insides.

“…Outside, right.” She doesn’t move.

“Hey. Are you sure you’re okay?” His eyes linger, and she has a phantom memory of too close touch. Of course he wants-needs something solid.

Chloe brightens her smile automatically, holding up their last bottle of water. “Only one caffeine loaded mocha could make it better.”

She’s supposed to mastermind this little escape of theirs, keep them on path.
“I suppose the caffeine might help keep the ‘me part of me’ awake.”

“So I’ll share.”

She leans over his seat, noticing how he’s not so much conversing as searching for clues in her. She has been pretty snarled as of late.

The yellow car lights bring out the warmer tints in his eyes, the bruised red of his mouth. Like an old fairytale vampire, an abomination, he’ll drain you dry and you’ll die. You can live forever in a moment. She licks her lips. Oh, they stare at your neck, just like that.

Oh no, he doesn’t want to talk, he doesn’t just want that and she has a sudden thought that he will lock all the car doors on them. He should.

“We’re in mocha country now.” He swallows and looks away just in time. “We’ll get you one.” Is he unnerved?

She’s crazy, trying to seduce him all at once without retreating from her shell. He’s so scared of losing her that it’s a danger to half the world. She might be starting something she doesn’t know how to end.

Chloe breaks out of her trance when he fumbles the door behind him open, still looking at her.
“We should get on out there.”

Water. One sip, two. Clears the head.
She is the assured one of them again, scooting back on the nose of the car. It’s dark, like a hearse, the hearse she could have been loaded in.

A third sip, maybe she should offer him some. Would that count as seducing?
He’s just sitting there so carefully, white against black. He must know a lot about camping on car hoods.
Perhaps the comparison doesn’t escape him either, over there on his side at a distance that would nearly be called respectful. Nearly.
Davis is scared to death of losing her, but for the first time that fear hasn’t killed anybody.

She takes her time pointing up to a star constellation-Persephone. It’s a lovely story, really, especially when he tells it, that romantic in him. Chloe nearly jabs him in an invulnerable eye when he makes the space between them—less respectful.

“Sorry.”
He wants to hold her and he’s actually going to ask? It’s about being close. They both came close to losing that today.

You can-- may, she says, absurdly afraid he will be hesitant and gentle. He’s heavy and his arms are rough and little trembles of tension go through him like fault lines through the earth.
She loosens her hands and puts them down on his back. He literally could crush her. Emotionally, physically, in another sense of the word if there is one she can’t think of at the moment. She’s not so sure she’d mind getting crushed.

But after a little while Davis shifts them side by side a little. Her lungs are profoundly grateful. He doesn’t let go of her.
“I lied. It wasn’t quite like a dream.” he says.

“What was?” Oh, the whole animalistic liberator moment.

“I knew I had to do it, somehow. I don’t really understand it.” His voice is a little rueful. “Maybe Kryptonians have their …behaviors. Instincts. I wished I could have asked Clark but...”
Licking to get healing to speed up, like a wolf? It’s kind of awkward. He wouldn’t know that one.

“Second time we’ve cheated death. I’m starting to value alien –whatever you do-- right on up there with feminine intuition.”

“Thanks.” he whispers, squeezing her again and it’s about being alive.
She tries to get her lungs to work properly and pokes her nose against his shoulder. He’s sweating. Oh yeah, she’s alive.

They are on the hood of the car, in a place that is far too ugly to be make-out point, but that has to be in about 99% of male fantasies. Woman. Car. Woman on a Car. Then again, Davis is not like any guy Chloe’s ever met. He’s hugging her right now, getting still and content when her nails are pressing into his neck a little. What other interpretation is there than that he just wants to be close to her?

It doesn’t keep her from noticing the friction between them, something… Is he going to take care of that? She doesn’t ask because it would sound dirty, and they are both being emotional.

He probably doesn’t notice the discomfort of the situation, but he moves just a little bit and she holds the arch and shifts her hands lower on his back. His eyes widen a little, but he quickly dismisses it under the pure Virgin Mary image he’s painted of her. His hand is still on her leg.

Well with the rush of adrenaline where there’s only two people. She can do anything then, won’t think twice. She moves her knee out of his way and knocks the water over her skirt. On purpose.

He does, finally loosen his fingers then. “I’m sorry, you’re all wet.” Davis says, and she really bites her tongue. He pats the gray cotton cloth down with his jacket, fumbling. Exactly what is too private to dry off?

“We don’t need that. I thought Bonny and Clyde don’t have room for embarrassment. Even when they didn’t kill people.”

“So we’re Bonny and Clyde and Hades and Persephone now?” Something almost passes over his face when he stops at his initial mopping. Come on, a few more conclusions, Davis, you can get closer.

“Oh, so he’s catching on.” She can’t bring herself to laugh at him now.
Hard to get, it’s practically a rule.

“So now….?”

“So, now. Here.” she says. “Us.” Don’t make me say anything else.

The bottle of water’s worth saving, but she’s damnably fixated on his face. So-purely….whatever he does, not weighed with the world, at least this moment. He’s got to understand the timing. They’ve made it. Someday she’s going to die. She heals from fatal injuries, not age. He might as well live forever.

“It has to be what you want. It’s not anonymous, and I can’t let go easy.” Davis gets to the crumpled plastic bottle first, hands loose, ready to catch hold of more than that. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do here. “I have to…know.”

She closes her hand around the bottle in his, and tosses it on the poor, thirsty patch of grass. “You see, I have this Clark syndrome…”

Chloe Sullivan isn’t really afraid of being a slut. In her dreams she isn’t shy. She isn’t shy with him at all. But if she grabs Davis Bloome, it would be the same as…giving the ‘a okay’ to that dream with Clark’s ribboned torso hanging from the rafters.
She’s aware that this sounds about five, pathetic princess in the tower. Please, kiss me. I need you but I won’t do it first.

But if Davis makes the first move (again)…if he makes the first move...then…she’s clear of the betrayal of needing this. How many kinds of messed up is that?

He turns away, and it half hurts that she expected it. Had she expected not to hurt him? She wants to be loved on her terms, and they are understandably shitty for someone who wants anything real.

He clenches his free hand into a fist over his knees. “Chloe. I don’t think…” It sounds tight, forceful, painful. All or nothing. Admit it or not. He’s never been half-assed about anything. “Why?”

She looks down and looks at their hands tangled, squeezes. “I’ve always needed this…connection, I guess. I haven’t ever been more terrified I’d lose you.”
That sounds wonderful. No ‘I love you’. Just, ‘I’m codependent on you.’ Read between the lines. It’s always like that. No wonder he’s not answering.

Maybe he’d rather just have a friend. Maybe she can make it enough for her. It’s about time she learned. “Just so you know. It’s okay. We can---get on the road again. We’ve ta--”

Then his mouth is on hers and the rest of the air leaves her throat in a stutter. He’s warm and he tastes like trailmix and thick summer air and freedom. This is the second time they’ve reallyreally done this and she touches his cheek. The guilt is glancing and then gone. She needs air and breathes him in instead, muffles the small, pathetic sigh of relief when he doesn’t stop.

He presses her so tight and so high on the windshield that the raindrops chill. The closed hand, then the open one both clench behind his neck and he raises himself off her a little, so that her fingers itch for warm…shirt…again. Oh no. He’s not stopping; he’d better not stop

“Like this?” He asks, throwing the twisted bottle cap behind them.

---

That was as good place as any, shielded by trees and skeletons of looming wood. Maybe it smelled a little… moldy and she was all ashy, but when embroiled in love stories of intergalactic proportions you couldn’t be picky, right Chloe?

That was a first, at least for her, with her ironed and plain dating rules. Metal was cold on a bare back, she was interested to know, but not so bad when you were getting touched everywhere.

Davis was lingering on the bases on a wet car, over abandoned railroad tracks. A random passerby could come by, sometime, but she hardly could have seen it if they did.

The first time she’d arched into the glass, he’d slowed down and she thought he was teasing her. Then, no, it was torture. He was in tune to everything else. He was not actually red-eyed this time, but instinct told her that he could not not get the signals. Startling a few dozen birds. Yeah.

She’d been getting a few signals herself. Opening the top three buttons of the shirt was just asking for it. She’d groped unashamedly for keys he didn’t have and he chuckled-low and she wanted to hear it again.
But when she actually started to kiss him any lower he got all waitwait. He had no trouble getting closer though. That was kind of her problem.

They’d been starting out well, and the first time, he’d well, kind of started out what they were going to do, they were perfectly decent. His hands were gentle and his body was hard and she could feel the persistent scratch of the zipper between them.

Here? he’d said, kind of amazed that yes, reallyreally nownow on a car. He just had to start her off, and it was not like he was giving her slow down signals either. It hurt.
Her skin was itching, like she’d climbed into a new skin that knew his touch that much better.

No one would come around.
Probably. Okay. Maybe. That wasn’t too convincing, was it?
He said they needed to make this first time--- special. Somewhere else. Probably with candles. Yes, he was a romantic.

She could have pushed, but he looked so---optimistic. “Okay. Romance me.” She said. She wanted something more with him.
“Okay?” He’d smiled then, slow and he hadn’t lost that one. He’d done this for her, and now she was proving something for him. She was giving something maybe. Her forever. Or maybe just as long as she could hold on.

Even now, the slow, deft turn of the wheel in his hands, the car, always just within the speed limit
One wouldn’t think he is affected. She knows the little signs though.

“So we’re really doing this.”

“Yeah, my map says bypass the cul-de-sac, just two miles from here.”
Her hand tightens on his thigh, but he doesn’t swerve. He cricks his neck and his eyes get all dark and his pinky…almost twitches. They’re really going to do this.
---

I’ll wait for you. Code for, I’ll stare a hole through the door (he could with that vision of his) and try and keep from chewing the furniture. That’s what he’d said, anyhow.

Her fingers fumble on the card lock, and this one won’t just give her the green light. Davis voice fills her mind like some sort of imprint and she’s on the wrong side of the door. Again. Red light. This is most definitely not the Ritz Carlton.

There are people and she can’t just say, ‘open up, Davis’. They need five whole minutes of subterfuge and creeping about because they can’t, even this far away, risk being seen together. The long arm of Luthorcorp hangs over them.

One, two swipes, a tentative knock later and it seems to fly back as if by magic, so fast she’s afraid it will go spinning off its hinges. She does go spinning, at least she thinks she does and stops, smack against the rain wet jacket of his, face against his throat.

Davis hauls her against the door and not-quite lunges for her mouth, and hands next to her ears, Chloe has no time to prepare for the harshness of it, the tenderness on speed. She pulls back and opens her mouth to, say what, hello? set up ground rules? and he takes advantage of that too. His mouth is soft and heated and she can taste toothpaste when he reels in on her.

Her head bumps into the brick wall, and it’s much raspier than glass. His hands are slippery and clean, making a sliding sound against the wall next to her head. In and of itself, it’s not much, but she tears the top three buttons off his shirt. It’s a little scary, being so very easy like this. She’s made the choice, hasn’t she?

She makes a swallowing noise in her throat and smiles up at the intense look to his face. She has to do the buttons herself.
The door’s open still. Uh oh. Woman with dentures. Getting an eyeful.

“Slam me against the door, big boy.”

“I thought I did.” He murmurs, blinking fast, moving his hands and then nodding politely out the door.

“Hate to break it to you, but that was the wall.”
Davis pushes her. Gently. Doesn’t kiss her like that again.

Chloe can just see the wheels turning in his head- Tiny, blonde and extremely breakable. Of course he’ll try and protect her. She’s not the stereotype. This is okay.
She takes the advantage of the lapse to drop her things.

“Never trust those room keys.” When she snatches a glance up at his face he’s looking a little vulnerable again. “Don’t tell me, withdrawal pangs.” He’s scenting her, but he’s not red eyed.

“Four minutes and I almost went nuts. So much for control.” If Davis were a normal guy he would be shrugging or waggling his eyebrows. But he’s not so this is suddenly up for over analysis, like he needs her to tell him if he’s a danger to her.
Of course. He could literally break this place to bits around them, break her to bits.

“I came up here like a tornado. You should have seen the receptionist’s face when I introduced myself as Mrs. Walker. I think she would have tried to pay you a visit, so she’s lucky she didn’t get mauled…”

(She had a terrible dye job anyway, not that Chloe would ever notice that.) Chloe admits to a little bit of perverse glee at not being that smashing-assed guy’s old mother.

“I only maul you.” he says, and it’s not happy-go-lucky. They are getting into something big. Too late to turn back now.

“Good to know. I don’t share.” Davis turns the knob behind her. Her key is on the floor. She should get that. Later. For right now, holding him is good. He was actually scared, too.

“You thought I’d get kidnapped, right?” Days on the road make even her paranoid. Not his fault. He kisses her forehead. It’s sweet. Hopefully he doesn’t think she’s actually his old mother.

“Furniture’s intact, anyway.” She quips. “I want…” Don’t say it, don’t say the words. “Start again? Or is this just a spectator sport?”

His hands wrestle the concealing jacket hood away from her dulled hair for a second. He must be over it, but he’s not. He’s very careful about it all now-conscious where his hands go and that they drop the jacket very slowly behind her when they kiss. She follows, tilts on her tiptoes to get closer, eternally grateful for heels just because they get half the job done.

I want.
He’s touching her face, and it hurts, not in the skin-is-singeing-off-way, but like one of those moments that you need and can’t stand to have because it’s perfect. Maybe she could ask for a repeat tomorrow and he could just touch her like this all day, wouldn’t that be nice?

She likes wild and uncontrolled, but this is like the first time. Chloe’s half struck still, awed by how content she feels. Maybe that was them cramming as much life as possible into moment; this is just letting it unfold.

They’re in front of the bed now. She might have just slept with one guy ever before the quickie divorce, but she’s been married. She knows what goes on.
A made bed, the sheets just slightly pulled back. This generally means ‘Stop, turn the tv off, close your eyes and go get your business done, roll over, go to sleep, don’t snore; he has a long day tomorrow.’

This. Davis. It is her suspended reality and normal rules don’t apply.
She doesn’t even really hurry her hands, just because she’s too busy letting him do whatever he does. The floor is carpeted. Fat droplets, one two, a third slide off of her slowly opening shirt and make her cold. He’s warm enough for the both of them. He watches her hands, watches the pads of her fingers as if she’s giving him something. She’ll do the rest like that just as long as he doesn’t stop.

It can take forever, but it doesn’t. His jacket, gone, no shirt, no more buttons to violate and he won’t just watch until that time comes. He follows her hands, won’t release her eyes; holds them to him, on him, caged and captive. Let them linger. She is choosing her cage. He’s biting her neck.

His back flexes when her hands are free and when he kisses her deep enough her fingers try to draw lines on him. His draw the straps of her bra down along her sides and she watches them go. A flimsy bit of cloth won’t make her feel any less fragile. She knows what he wants.

Davis touches her and whispers things, not darlingpetbird. Just simple things, hardly even words. Secrets that she will keep.
Something real. That’s what he wants. He wants it with her, she’s never been quite sure why. But he trusts her choices, so she trusts his, and maybe that can be enough.

He lowers his mouth to one breast, careful like she’s china, but the rest of him is unmoving, like he won’t let them separate ever again. It feels like all the nerves just want to jump out of her, follow the warmth he leaves. She clenches her hands and closes her eyes as his hands trail around, like a hug, comforting.

When he starts to kiss her again, she peels off the skirt with shaky fingers- her last skin, cold and clammy and gone. Realizes he’s doing the same.

She turns his belt into as much of a wad as she can with leather, throws that too. Davis is watching her, eyes very- staring and dark and devouring. He’s had literally months to build that up. If he’d just get to the tackling for goodness sake…

“So, Mr. Walker.” She says, and pecks him on the chin. This is her signal, green light. This is the climax of their story, if he wants it to be. She would be twisting her hands in her nightgown if she had one. It’s still vaguely scary.

She’s on her side in two seconds; noticing stupid details like he’s not wearing his shoes and that the bed has a metal frame, exactly the kind that Kryptonians twist like play dough.

He kisses her less than chastely and by the time he’s through she’s ever conscious of the red spots on her cheeks. He curls around her and messes with the straight ends of her hair, breaks up the tension. He should just do it already. Maybe he doesn’t want her to think when he does.

“So you think Mrs. Walker sounds old? What about Sullivan? Lensherr?” Why is he asking, just to feel normal?
His hands are agonizingly slow, tickling until she shakes her hair out like a dog, flicking drops onto his nose. “Too obvious.”

“Smith? Jones?” he keeps going.

“Terrible. Everyone uses those names to have affairs.”

“And this isn’t one.” He kisses her shoulder, breath running by her ear and she would accuse him of being self satisfied if he didn’t sound so very amazed.

“Just us, Davis. No pseudonyms.”

His hands won’t stop with the tickling but at least on her neck she can feel their weight, smoothing errant hair. Her skin burns. “What about…”

No more names, she’s going to say, but he’s suddenly there, so very warm and her breath just leaves her in a violent whoosh. That’s what he was trying for; taking the pressure off.
She squirms underneath him, wanting to laugh. Not one perception has changed but he is inside her. Just like that, one moment to the next. Not scary. Just like he wanted her to feel.

She squeezes him with her knees until his breath halts and he draws her against him. It surprises her, the way it happens. His arms quiver around her and the rest of him does, a little deeper, but it’s as if he’s too busy holding her to notice anything else. That. There.

She kisses him hurriedly, trying to get him to feel it too, and he rocks a little harder so she twists her fingers around the limp pillow. Just a little more. Just a little.
He tilts his head back, freezes right there, and she swallows back a yell. Being that close almost hurts. He could be…. The light is green, she tells him.

His face is hazy, his eyes bright and terribly serious.

“I want to love you.” he says, as if that’s an excuse for torturing her.
His hands loiter so she bites at his neck like a ferret in a trap, but his eyes slam shut and he keeps being so careful. She leans her head into his cheek, overwhelmed by the heat coming off him. He makes it unbearable and she lowers her hands to do it herself. His follow and draw them back up to his mouth. She covers it.

“Oh, I get it. Full romance mode.” He looks innocent. Kind of. No one can look quite innocent during precisely this kind of sex. “You’re not going to let me out of here for the next five hours, are you?”

“No rush.” He whispers, doesn’t interrupt his careful touching even to ease the pressure. She squeezes her fingers over his shoulders and realizes the air smells like vanilla.

Romance he calls it. It wouldn’t be so bad, would it, to slow down? This has never happened to her before.
His mouth traces her shoulder, her clavicle and he’s just torn the pillow under her head in half with his hand. Her skin hums, flushing red under his gaze. He holds his arms still, propping himself up, when she tries to get to them. He still looks into her like she’s the beginning and end, but he always knows.

“I don’t want to get out of here until at least seven hours.” she says, with minimal guilt. Maybe she will die, but it would be a way to go.

He needs something real. Emotional solidity. He has feelings for her and however much she wants him, whatever she will let him do... There’s more.

“We’ll cuddle and then I’m going to ask you about every single thing you’ve never told anyone. We’ll never run out of things to say. I’ll tell you my half now to keep from going crazy.”

“Anything.”
His hands continue to have a life of their , tracing the tremors in her shoulders and her neck as she speaks.

“You know what I thought when I first saw you? You were exactly what I’d wanted from Clark.”

“Persistent…with a spiny alter ego that can tear barns to the ground.” Did she really hate her life all that much? He doesn’t ask.

“You looked at me first. I was you know…never quite the first choice kind of girl. And then I thought when you didn’t look away, ever, that I’d just made you up. You shouldn’t have taken so long. I wanted to be able to do things with you, be easy, sit talk about nothing and maybe tag alone after you got off your shift. Let you say it.”
He looks up at her then, convincing her, like all those other times, that it was not her fault. This was the secret. It was still wrong. “You weren’t ready.” he says. She could have been.

“High school Chloe would have jumped you like a ton of bricks. But I’d learned to run. You could have destroyed that habit, you know. I told myself I couldn’t live with that. But you already had. Jimmy was wrong, and I knew I had to marry him that night. I wanted you to come back, explain, something, fight with me. I couldn’t have talked to anyone else.
Some part of me was telling me I had to and there was no fighting it. I could have opened my mouth a half dozen times, but I didn’t. I was sure I was meant to be happy, that there was something wrong with me because I felt empty.
Destiny. That supercomputer took my life. ”

“The beast. The wedding? I thought you wanted me to stay away. Oh, Chloe.” He rests his chin on her shoulder and she shivers. There was so much he didn’t know.

“He had to get his Ultimate Destroyer to him somehow. Let a girl finish.
I took my ring off once, before the wedding. I knocked at your door and knocked and knocked. I waited two hours and by then I was sure I was lying to myself.”

“I should have been there.”
He is still moving in her just by breathing, but he is tense. She doesn’t want this to stop being easy again. They were doing so well.

He laughs because it’s horrible, almost hoarse.
“I’d just put body parts in a dumpster. I wanted to get away; I should have wanted you to forget me. You were the only one I trusted.”
She runs a hand across his back, trying to sooth, as if it’s just her between him and the monster again.

“By the time I got your messages, and you apologized, I was sure. I put on my wedding dress and I walked down that aisle I kept wondering what I could have done if you had been there. I was being honest before. I wanted you to be there. I wanted…” you to be standing there. Wanted. Wanted. Oh she wanted him to do that. Maybe he didn’t even notice it, but she wanted to bruise.

“I’m sorry.” It had just turned a man into pulp, so that kind of explains it. It still helps, she doesn’t know why. His voice is thick, but he isn’t stopping now and she can’t hold out on just a shiver.

“Don’t be. We’re just… like a comedy….error. You’re here now.”
Maybe this is the way the floodgates open. Maybe she won’t have to think more. Maybe she won’t be able to talk. But her tongue is loose; like he’s a wine she’s had too much of.

“When Jimmy kissed me and I imagined it was you, and then it was sure I was insane.”

“Chloe?”

“It’s true. You know.”
She presses a clumsy kiss to his cheek and presses her hand over his hair, digs her nails in as the tempo changes. It’s a different sensation, feeling him get needier, right in her. The way his hips grind against hers, still steady somehow and his hands try to be careful. Kryptonian-Human.

Like they can be the same person, like two completely disparate things can possibly be, fill one space. She hold on to what she feels from him, the staggering heat coiling somewhere in her; turning itself out like a string of words, making her move and making her blind.

Somewhere far off, she hears the sound of metal on wood under them, like drumbeats to an ancient dance. She takes his hands and they cushion the onslaught and magnify it. He’s every single one of her needfears personified.

And this. This is it, she thinks. He should know. She can’t speak really, but it’s all clear in her head. She wanted to be with him, she wanted to talk after it all blew over and when he needed her that was the way she could.

It’s fine. It’s all fine. He says and that’s enough for it to swamp her. Fine. Fine. Yes. She can’t breathe, she can’t see, but she burrows into the ache, into him and he fills the empty spots in her mind.

He’s blinking, trying to watch her eyes and it hurts to see him like this. It hurts to want everything and know you will always want it. His hand winds around her back, for once perfectly still. Iron, but not painful.

She realizes she’s crying and she can’t just shut up. It’s good she didn’t get to her wedding night; she might have called his name like this.

“Chloe. I know. Chloe.”
One hand is in her hair, drawing her up and she’s wound up in it all, this. Her voice is young and naïve again, and then it is some woman’s cry- breaking, shattering out of the quiet. She’s in freefall, but that can’t be, she’s lying right next to him, held tight. He’s so close.

She needs to watch. She forces her eyes open just as his nose brushes hers. He doesn’t kiss her; he’s trying hard just to breathe. He fills up the entire world, his voice isn’t quite human, like the metal, like the deep sound you hear from a door opening in front of you.

His face is dizzying and his hands seem to want to shake her into consciousness. He’s speaking, words, syllables, a garbled language she can’t understand anymore when he lets go. Yesyesyes to whatever that means.

Davis won’t run away and he’s falling apart right inside her and she can’t be the one to hold together. She folds into him, feels herself fall with his arms over her. She doesn’t hold together. Who said she needed to?

---

Chloe can’t speak for all of five minutes, drifting pleasantly in and out of consciousness between his softly shifting chest and an awkwardly folded blanket. He pats it down over where they tangle and she catches his fingers, fitting, for all their size, just perfectly in hers.

“Morning Mrs. W-Chloe.” That’s all fine and dandy, but she didn’t sleep a wink.

Davis’s smile looks softer, at peace; maybe it’s her seeing differently now. Questions are always in her throat, but right now, she’s content to be.

There is no need to suddenly scramble away in fear that she’ll lose herself. No time to make things clear between them, make sure attached doesn’t become deadly for them both. No time to think of the choice she’s made.
This has to be a suspended reality. It’s all too perfect.

Then again, she needs her voice when housecleaning comes a-knocking. Of course, she didn’t remember the ‘do not disturb sign’, and that noise of theirs would have been considered more than a minor disturbance.

---

Seven hours. Huh. She is naïve. They don’t get that long.
Destiny strikes them in the worst of ways. Agony tears through her again, making her twist away from him.

She can’t fight it any more than she can fight blood profaning anything good and pure, or death. It’s a curse, a shared curse, and he can fight all he wants, but he can’t keep her from it. She finally leaves him because she has to go get tampons.

He has no reason to whine, really. It’s just down the stairs. Nevertheless, she finds him, cross-legged on the bed, looking for the closest supermarket. Chocolate treats PMS; it’s a medically ascertained fact, he says. It hurts, but the butterflies in her stomach distract her by doing the Macarena. She should be running away, but why isn’t she?

She sits gingerly behind him and puts her head between his shoulder blades. She’s not going to snap at him. He makes her happy with his mussed hair and the dollop of shaving cream on his cheek. She’s pretty sure that this is what it’s like to love somebody

She’s always known to count the phases of the moon. It’s full and she’s like a wolf, she says. It is not slutty to mention an article she read in Cosmogirl. Maybe a little.
It still hurts, and he could help her with that. It might get messy. He flirts until she knocks them both off the bed. Then he agrees about the wolf part.


---

They still run, hotel to hotel, room to room. It’s not scary. It feels like they are like they are running for something. Like they might even get there before their clock runs out.

And still, they make a life. Davis finds a traveling job over the border nearly as easily as he found his before. Save people, that’s what he’s always wanted to do, but then it’s harder when you’ve seen something in you rip them apart.
Chloe watches him try. Each new memory they make is meant to be a step away from that. He doesn’t ever forget the old ones. She rides in the back of his ambulance like a scapulary to ward off evil-or just what is. He haws to save people and she can’t be touching him every minute. But it doesn’t get worse.

In Argentina, she notices that he hasn’t had an attack in a whole day. And the only thing constant has been, well… First, she suggests endorphins, but he runs once in a while and that’s not it either. She tests it. Resists temptation for a day and just manages to keep it all from falling apart.

Her mind starts whirring with things Kryptonian, and she has an inkling. Davis couldn’t explain what he’d been saying that night. Instinct. Passion. They make things blurry.

Chloe remembers a few talks with Clark on Kryptonian bonding rituals, just to assuage her curiosity. Clark thought he was meant to be with Lana, even her, and that nearly surprises her. It used to nearly kill her to think of sex and him in the same quarter hour, once. But she talks to him from a scrambled anonymous pay phone and it all comes into perspective.
It’s not something Davis had to learn.

So you think you’re happy now. So you stay with him. Then you die, Chloe. What happens then?
Clark can help them, of course. Black Kryptonite. Something twinges at her and she pushes down the phone before he finishes. Maybe not Kryptonian instinct, but she’s learned to trust herself.

---

“So like I said…We’re bonded on top of that other bond. It explains why being close to me holds it back and being with me keeps you tall, dark and un-spiny.”

Clark would have rather she’d not even known about him-anything about him or Davis or Krypton- than this. After all he’d done to keep her safe. Those were his words. What did you do? Clark, she asked, and he hadn’t answered. He said he’d look for her, didn’t he always? He just never heard her.
She doesn’t have to sacrifice herself for him. She can , right or wrong for herself.

Either way, she’ll always love her best friend in her way. She can’t let him find them. She’ll keep herself posted on his whereabouts, and on him the rest of her life. Anything else is far too risky.

“Is that scary? You’re not….”Davis scans her face, looking for the fear again, and surprisingly it does not materialize. “I’m still dangerous.”

There’s still danger, there’s always danger. If he suddenly chose not to be…what was that Clark said? ‘abnormally attached to her’, people could die.
And she has to keep herself from dying, old age with a guy who pretty much has eternal life ahead of him for hell on earth to happen. And she must keep Clark away, that’s a given.
She won’t ever be a bored housewife again. That’s for sure.

“It’s not like it has to be a final solution, and we’ll keep looking.”
She has Dr. Hamilton’s contact number, right on the top of her latest inside scoop. She will make him listen; and if he doesn’t want to see Davis…
She’s Chloe Sullivan.

“We can go back whenever you need to.” Davis tells her quietly. This-her life, him. Weigh that against what she had. She strongly suspects that they won’t go back.

“We can find another cure. Later.” She puts down her magazine with deliberate fingers and waits. She has him. The rest can go on a waiting list. She doesn’t have to be a hero right now.
It’s been twelve hours.

“Come here. Please, Chloe.” Davis whispers, eyes squeezing shut so tight that she knows he’s teasing. Oh, he looks distressed. Poor baby.

She settles into his hold, the barest of and at that moment Chloe feels free. So terribly free.

---

Being heroic isn’t a destiny. It’s something they -monsters, saviors, servants- must day to day.

Davis Walker wakes up mornings and learns what it is like to see blood again, to close wounds up with his hands, even if afterward he feels his stomach roil with nausea. It is there; ever present, pounding on the walls of the box he puts it into. A little loose anger, a little rage and It will tear him off like a vestment. And yet…
At night he goes to a small anonymous apartment, hearing the click of a laptop keys, soon quiet. It is not the only animal inside him and sometimes he almost thinks Chloe should lock the door on him. She does, right behind him. In those moments he absorbs, senses. She has light hands, and her voice, once so careful with words becomes different, almost raw. Everything else sputters into silence.
He still doesn’t know exactly what he is, although Chloe acquires bits of convoluted Kryptonian history as if they will define him. They do not, but sometimes he thinks it is not what you are, but what you know.
What pulls you through.
Miracle. Instinct. Moderating Influence. Abnormal Attachment. Love. Sword of Damocles. It goes by many names.
Davis, just Davis, has a home.

Chloe Walker lives gloriously. Their small apartment becomes a hub, all strung with wires and connections and contacts. Is she looking for a cure or eternal life? She never can quite decide.
Davis goes out in the mornings, comes back at nights and yet she does not feel quite, quite lonely. He always comes back to her. He is always with her.
She takes up her words again, learns about the past, makes several discoveries on Kryptonian biology that might earn the Nobel prize (or not) were they public knowledge.
She is not under Tiffany Lamps; she is running, scrounging for stories on mobs and mafias, feeling her heart beat in her chest.
With Davis in the half-light, in silence or with alien words she cannot quite decipher anymore, she is not afraid to hear it pound.

A quarter of a world away, a receptionist at the ‘Buenas Risas’ hotel scans the throngs of people for a handsome face. She doodles on her notepad, the same face over and over again. David? Walker. Walker. Nice guy, he was, for all his brusqueness. Aesthetic, like one of those Greek statues she wanted to take home with her and…nevermind.
Married. They’re always married, but do they have to be so…disruptive? Margie doesn’t flirt with the good-looking ones anymore, just doodles and doodles even when they ask her when she gets off for coffee break.
That is, until one has the foresight to carry Pygmalion under his arm.

Half a world away, a man called Thomas takes the cloth.
He awakes alone, in the ashy darkness, no one’s tool. He takes a knife, the thick carving knife that he’d always had to carry on each mission and digs the chip from the back of his skull.
They say he is mad, raving about this mystery woman. She is not real at all, they say. No more real than the boss who told him to kill or the monstrous killer he was sent to stop.
He knows better, but little by little he pretends to forget. They let him go. He changes his name.
He takes a rosary and says prayers to every angel he hears of. And then he understands that maybe she was just his angel. He mourns for her like a solid, tangible person and hopes to God that she exists somewhere.
She would be glad. He’s freeing the world from the ravages of sin. Why else would he have emerged unscathed from the claws of a demon?

The man who was to be called Superman never stops looking. First it is the cities, then the small obscure corners until the obsession will swallow him whole.
But Chloe will not be found. I am happy, she said that last time. I love you, you lunkhead. Once in a while, he gets a cryptic message. A friend, a complete stranger, words of encouragement that only she would know. He’s ready to beg before he realizes that they do not know either.
He saves the lives of hundreds in his home town, hundreds in Metropolis alone. But the city is unfriendly, the Planet corrupt, all marked with reminders of betrayal. All marked with friends found and let go of, even those who slip from his tight grasp. He thinks perhaps they defined him even as he did them. He is nothing without that. And yet he exists.
Luthorcorps shifts its focus to Smallville again, ready to buy out ever last farmer, and it’s personal. “Whoever you are, I won’t let you do this.”

Clark swears he sees a ghost. “You thought I would leave you to this?” Lex asks. “Apologies for the clone… There was a defective shipment.”
It’s war on the home turf. Clark stands stiff, straight and angry and feels alive. It’s impossible to say which side wins. But Clark Kent lives on the farmland, remembers that somehow, he is human too. Time passes and one day he is happy there.