happiness (bleed verse)

Reccing Notes: You know what's better than amazing 'canon'? Amazing writing that stays true to itself, for more than one installment. Paraxdisepink did this with Bleed. In the followup she stays true to Davis dealing with the post-traumatic stress of sorts post Doomsday-monster and beyond in his relationship with Chloe. It makes the happy moments all the better
(It is also BURNING HOT . I do not lie.)


by paraxdisepink at her livejournal
4403 words, nc-17, (who cares about episode?) ic! future fic

She was pretty sure there was some kind of prohibition against looks like that in the workplace.

*

Chloe had dreamed of having her own office at the The Daily Planet for as long as she could remember, but dreaming wasn’t the same as actually having one. It didn’t exactly sparkle with Tiffany lamps or overlook Gotham City like the one in her fantasies, but that didn’t matter. It was perfect and more importantly free of Luthorcorp strings, and now that she had her foot in a much bigger door, so to speak, that extravagant childhood fantasy no longer seemed so out of reach.

That didn’t make her feel any better about what she’d done to earn her newfound sixty-four square feet of personal space – mainly, put the man she loved through a rewind of the most horrifying experience of his life in order to have the world’s only exclusive interview with the “Cornfield Killer” handy with her job application. The public was so ready to eat up the lurid details Chloe wondered if she should have tried her hand at a novel instead. Most people heard the reports of mutilated bodies, saw the pictures of the Blur fighting Doomsday, and accepted that Davis was either a scapegoat to cover-up some Luthorcorp animal experiment or that the whole monster was thing was a hoax or a string of animal maulings spun out of proportion. For those people, the story Davis told was as good as fiction. A human couldn’t kill in a manner consistent with the reported evidence, not when many of the bodies had been clawed open or had perished of injuries that defied normal human strength, and as far as the world knew Davis Bloome was as human anyone else now that his formerly ever-evolving DNA showed up perfectly normal in tests again.

The truth of how he’d really been victimized couldn’t come out any more than Clark’s secret could. The dangerous animal in him had been stopped. Zod had been stopped. Sometimes justice was better served quietly. Davis hadn’t stomached the lying easily, but he understood the need for it and after having his face plastered on the front page for weeks even if he couldn’t tell the whole truth he needed the world to know who he was – the man who saved lives for a living and was proud of it, the man who never imagined hurting anyone, the man made into something that couldn’t be further from what he wanted to be. That man hadn’t exaggerated when he said he was “messed up” these days. He used to talk about the monster inside him all the time with both optimism that love and God would save him and toward the end broken acceptance, but now it was different. He had fought the emotion welling up in him when he tried to put into words the nightmare of waking up near torn bodies covered in blood and when he couldn’t anymore after painting as clear a picture as he could he shied away from her attempts to pull him against her and let him sob his heart out if he needed to. He told her it was better if he went back to his place for the night, alone. Chloe let him go, on one hand feeling closer to him now that he let her see the real despair that had lain under the faith and romanticism and attempts to be cheerful during that time, on the other . . . She’d read a book about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and how it didn’t set in until after the trauma was over and the victim felt safe again . . .

He was definitely moody. Part of him wanted to prove he wasn’t a burden and a total headcase and the rest of him didn’t know how to cope. Some nights he said it wasn’t a good idea if he came over “like this,” some nights he curled up so close and just held her as though he feared he’d turn back into Doomsday if they weren’t touching. Some nights they didn’t sleep at all and he brought the meaning of “eager to please” to whole new levels.

Fortunately, for the sake of job performance on her first day back, last night wasn’t one of those marathon nights. Davis had worked the late shift all week and she hadn’t seen much of him. Fortunate for her job, less fortunate for the home life.

Davis didn’t get off work until five and she had a story to concentrate on in the meantime. Tess Mercer’s death didn’t make corruption at Luthorcorp any less headline-worthy. There was a whole mess of it hiding under the proverbial rock waiting for the diligent reporter to uncover – chemical experiments, human research victims, illegal dealings. The human research was closest to her heart – she had a mother to avenge – and a few searches mixed in with a healthy dose of Watchtower intel gave her a nice exposé on another round of intentional meteor rock poisoning.

The sun set outside her window and everyone had gone home by the time she applied her beloved Inverted Pyramid to the key facts. It was one of those days when the computer pulled you into another dimension and you glanced at the clock amazed at how quickly time had passed. Chloe hadn’t looked at the clock since Lois had brought her a welcome back sandwich at lunch, complete with a quip about her last story on the Blur and how “Dimples” had killed him when it came to the front page spot. She didn’t know how not funny that was.

Chloe injected another paragraph of damning evidence and slid out of her heeled shoes under desk. It was her office. She could do that. She couldn’t do anything about her butt getting flatter each moment she sat in the chair though, unless she wanted to try one of those kneeling things.

“You know if I were the bad guys I think I’d start running already,” a velvety and definitely amused male voice said from directly above her.

Chloe gave a start, turned, and saw a big hand resting on the tall back of her chair. She looked up. Davis was leaning over her, stroking his chin with one hand while he watched her type in complete fascination. Was it after five already? His light blue uniform shirt didn’t look so crisp after another twelve hour shift. In fact, it wasn’t even tucked into his pants anymore.

“Okay, here’s an idea,” Chloe pushed the keyboard aside and turned in her chair. “How about you work on making a sound when you walk into a room? What did you do? Teleport in here?”

She expected him to hang his head and apologize for startling her, but to her surprise the corner of his mouth turned up and he said, “You could always put a bell on me.” Chloe blinked. This was a new mood. Dare she ask where? His dark eyes went back to the screen and with that same rapt look on his face he read, “’Luthorcorp doctors conceal their experiments under a pretense of –‘”

Chloe put a hand up between them, cutting him off before her face turned bright red. “Okay, first rule of the office, no reading aloud. It’s embarrassing.”

He cocked his head and winked at her, his expression both amused and adoring. “I’m sorry.” He looked like he wanted to laugh. He looked . . . hyper, as though he’d start shifting from foot-to-foot at any moment. Chloe stared at him. Who was this man and what had he done with the brooding Davis she was used to? He hadn’t started self-medicating his depression with drugs in the ambulance, had he? “I’ve never seen you in action before,” he said after a moment. “It’s amazing.”

She smiled. That depended on what kind of “action” he meant. There definitely hadn’t been action of any kind between the two of them this past week.

Chloe got out of her chair and came around to face him. He caught her hand and didn’t bother hiding the way his eyes swept over her fitted suit and bare feet. It was like the first day she’d met him; he’d liked what he saw and who she was and had flirted shamelessly. She didn’t think she’d see that Davis again.

“Enjoy it while you can,” she stood on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his cheek. “Those doctors are going to launch a headhunt for me when they read what I’ve uncovered.”

Davis wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her against him like a dance. “I won’t let them hurt you,” he promised in a thick voice very close to a whisper.

She swallowed. His gallantry was so innocent and heartfelt she didn’t want to remember the last time he’d saved her from mortal danger, but with the familiar sturdy heat of his body against hers there was no thinking back that far. She looked up, right into his dark eyes that were doing their best to melt her on the spot. She was pretty sure there was some kind of prohibition against looks like that in the workplace.

“Davis . . .” Chloe put her hand on his chest to get a little space between them, or maybe to smooth a wrinkle in his shirt from napping in the ambulance between calls.

He didn’t let her go and he didn’t pull his eyes away. This was different. He wasn’t into PDAs and didn’t touch her unless they were alone, which they were. Sort of. He noticed her confusion and explained, “You look happy here, like you’re where you belong.”

Her face colored and she glanced over her shoulder at the story-in-progress on the computer screen. Lois and Clark had tried to get her back at the Planet for months. She’d brushed them off and here she was. “Feels like I never left,” she admitted, biting into her lip. “I guess it’s uniquely satisfying exposing the bad guys with a keyboard.”

Dark lashes fluttered and Davis bent his head closer to hers. “As long as you’re satisfied . . .” His voice dropped a little lower and he pushed her hair back from her face with his free hand. A twinge of excitement shot through her. To call that tone and the very intense look in his eyes suggestive would be an understatement. It was as though he’d forgotten where they were and his focus had narrowed to nothing but her. She toyed with the top button of his shirt where she could feel the heat from him and the hard muscle of his chest beneath.

“Well some of that’s still your job,” she murmured back too lowly for anyone but him to hear. Her face went hot as she said it. The place was empty, but it was still the Planet. Talking like that here was like Davis talking like that in a church. But given the way his eyes lit up he might not have cared if this were a church. His hand curled under her jaw, tilting her face up. Her eyes fell closed on instinct and a thrill coursed through her when his mouth came down on hers. Her lips opened under the softness of his and she stretched up to get closer. It was more than an “I haven’t seen you all day” kiss. It was hungry, a little too hungry for their present locale. Chloe broke away from him. When she talked about him satisfying her she didn’t mean now.

“Davis . . .” They had two apartments between them. Hers was closer. She could pop her story on a flash drive and they could do this at home. She needed a break anyway. But whatever had gotten into him this evening didn’t let her finish her sentence and didn’t want to hear about waiting. His mouth latched right back onto hers and he tugged her a little closer, a certain well-loved part of his anatomy already stiff and impatient against her thigh. Prickles of heat spiked between her legs. She was used to him hard against her, inside her, the weight of his muscular body on top of hers, white and naked. But this . . . He was usually quiet too – a faint groan here, an expression of total pleasure washing over his face there, a full-body shudder – but she’d learned how to make him yell pretty loud when she wanted him to.

Her hand strayed from his chest down the hard muscle of his body. She’d only meant to tease, pet him a little and promise more later, but he made such a small, desperate sound when her palm brushed the pounding flesh between his legs that her hand developed a mind of its own. It slipped under the blue cotton of his shirt, unfastened his belt and the button on his pants, and the zipper, and when it curled around the warm length of him his whole body tightened as though he were being touched there for the first time in his life and he was instantly harder than he’d been a minute ago. How could a girl stop when her touch did that to him? She’d learned a few things during the time they’d been together, thanks to Google – maybe in an ideal relationship partners were supposed to tell each other what they liked, but if she asked him he’d just say anything she did was enough and that wasn’t any fun. One of these days, she’d have him all figured out. There had to be a deep, dark fantasy in him somewhere that didn’t involve paying horribly for what Doomsday had done.

She squeezed at him, pulled back enough to watch his eyes flutter shut and his lips part when her thumb brushed across him. He looked helpless, dependent. It felt wrong to find that beautiful.

“You might want to stop, Chloe,” he whispered after a moment. He wasn’t kissing her anymore, just holding her against his hip and rubbing his cheek against hers and breathing hard. “I’m gonna . . .”

Wow. This wasn’t like him at all. When it came to throbbing hard-ons Davis was the most patient guy on the planet, full of slow kisses and prolonged foreplay. But there was this urgent energy in him today, this thing he seemed to have to get out. Then again, maybe this was exactly the post-Doomsday him in a nutshell, if he wanted her to stop.

She didn’t stop. Her fingers glided over him with a little more pressure and she murmured against his cheek, “When is that a bad thing?”

He let out a weak sound, angled his head, and kissed a spot behind her ear that drew a shiver. “When it’s not with you.” The fingers cupping her jaw gently guided her mouth to his again and he slid his tongue inside, just in case she didn’t catch his meaning. Her free hand curled into his hip and pushed him the few steps back into the wall, and everything from her thighs to the pit of her stomach was tingling.

A whoosh of air lashed against her very flushed cheek, and out of that minor windstorm another male voice stammered. “Chloe, I thought –“

Clark. The fire in her skin of a moment ago became a vastly different kind of heat and Chloe thought it would sear her alive. She tried to image how she looked, shoving Davis against a wall in her office, her hand down his pants while he nuzzled her neck and teetered on the edge of orgasm. The poor guy made a sound of actual pain when she snatched her hand away, he’d been so close. Clark really had to work on his timing.

“Clark . . .” He was just as mortified as her when she turned around to face him. A small stack of papers had fluttered to the ground at his feet and he dropped down to pick them up in order to avoid looking at her. He had to know she and Davis had sex on a regular basis, but he was so . . . Clark he may as well have been a child walking in on his parents.

“I thought . . .” he faltered, concentrating very hard on gathering the papers he must have brought in. “Nevermind.” He shot up from his knees and ran out of there in a blur as fast as his speed could carry him.

Chloe closed the door, desperately wishing Clark hadn’t destroyed the Legion ring so she could go back and do that in the first place. She stared at the ceiling and then at the floor where Clark had been, anything but the wall, lest she spontaneously combust on the spot from utter and complete embarrassment.

Davis had his back to her, his chin in one hand. The fact that he was holding his pants up with the other sort of ruined the effect. “I’m sorry,” he said. Could he stop pacing? He reminded her of a caged animal when he did that. “I shouldn’t have . . .” Here came the guilt and the self-hatred. She wanted the other Davis back, the one who was literally throbbing with urgency a moment ago. Her skin tingled all over again, and not all of it from mortification. “I just . . . seeing you in your element . . .”

Chloe drew a deep breath and took a step toward him. “We can go home . . .” Her voice came out a little strangled. Poor Clark. Poor Davis. His shoulders were hunched.

“Yeah . . .” He nodded, turning around to face her. “Home.” Did he have to look so ashamed? She was the one who shoved her hand down his pants, the one who’d stroked him toward climax with the door open. The one who . . .

Her fingers found the door handle, her thumb turning the lock ninety degrees. It was just so he could zip himself up in private, or rather so she could do it for him. He looked so uncomfortable she had to make him feel better somehow.

His hands went to her waist as though to communicate that touching him like that would be a bad idea, but when hers went to his shoulders they didn’t push her back. He bowed his head like a bad puppy, but his eyes still made shy contact with hers under his thick dark lashes. If a gaze could play footsie . . . “I love you,” he said in his huskiest voice, explanation and apology and justification all at once.

Her fingertips brushed the sides of his neck, teasing where his pulse still beat strong. They moved up and stroked the angular line of his jaw. “Davis . . .” She was supposed to say she loved him too, but what came out of her mouth was, “Hurry up.”

She didn’t have to tell him twice. He lifted her off the ground and her thighs went around his waist, her weight pressing against his groin where he supported her with one hand from underneath, the heat of his palm burning her skin through the thin fabric of her skirt. Chloe rubbed against him on purpose, soaked up the strangled sound he made, and found herself hastily deposited on the empty side of her desk, the smooth wood cold against the bare backs of her thighs where her skirt had ridden up.

The chill didn’t last long. It melted the instant his body pressed between her legs, his impatient cock and the cotton tails of shirt tickling the inside of her thigh. Her hands were on his lower back, keeping him close, and when he leaned down and captured her mouth again they went lower, clawing at his ass and pulling his hips and the scalding length of him to her.

His mouth slipped from hers, went back to her neck and bit down without teeth. “I love you,” he murmured again in a voice so thick she couldn’t breathe right. That was the Catholic in him, the part that had to let whoever was up there know this was more than satisfying a physical desire, but the hand that wandered down under her skirt couldn’t get any more carnal. “I want you,” he went on in that same breathy voice. “I don’t care how or where we are.”

Chloe spread her hands behind her and leaned back. As deep as their feelings for each other went, there was something thrillingly pornographic about sitting on her desk in a business suit in her own office at one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world and watching him, in his disheveled uniform, pull her black lace panties off her and toss them to the floor. It was like fulfilling a naughty secretary and fireman stripper fantasy all in one. His mouth went back to hers, grinding hard and she bit into his lower lip to keep from crying out when he guided himself to her. Her thighs spread wider. He didn’t have to take this slow; she was ready. He went completely still when he slid in all the way, a look of relief coming into his face at the wet sensation of her surrounding him. She dug her fingers into his ribs. He was so overcome he’d forgotten what she said about hurrying.

“Davis . . .” He was one with her like he was supposed to be, but she wanted more, her nerve endings begged for more. He got the idea and sprang into motion, thrusting once and then again. Her head fell back, but it wasn’t good enough for him. His hands went to her shoulders and he eased her down flat on her back on the tabletop. Her heels instinctively balanced on the edge of the desk, and her mouth opened with a half-formed cry when that pulled him in deeper. He squeezed his eyes shut and surged forward, bracing his hands on the wood and leaning over her. That gave him the leverage he needed to throw himself into the strange urgency that had come over him today.

It wasn’t rough or too hard, just good. So good. His labored breathing stung her neck where she tipped her head back and he bent his head and mouthed at the tops of her breasts where her blouse dipped low. She dug her fingers into his back. Sometimes he was just so perfect. He thrust harder, not kissing or licking the sweat from her skin anymore, just staring down at her with wild dark eyes and very red lips. Her short hair spilled over the edge of the desk she’d thrown her head back so far. Her back arched. She was close, he was close, and she could care less whether anyone walked in now.

She lay there totally limp when she came back to her senses and when he finished spilling sticky inside her his arms could barely hold him up on the desk. But he managed to stand up straight when the shudders subsided, flushed and raggedly drawing in air. She grabbed onto his arms and let him pull her up with him a moment later. Her head fell on his shoulder and he was rubbing her back – sore from being pressed into the wood. They stayed like that for a minute just breathing together, until he picked her up again and took the few steps backward to her computer chair.

She settled in his lap when he sank down into it, smoothing the wrinkles in his shirt and tucking him back into his pants. She was fastening his belt when she said, “You know, as much as I appreciate this kind of welcome back present, I’m curious. What’s gotten into you today?”

He leaned his head against the back of her chair, drained and ready for a nap, but he ran a hand through her hair and smiled at her. “I don’t know. I guess seeing you happy here makes me feel like I’ve done something other than ruin your life for once.”

“Davis . . .” Her fingers walked in the gap of his uniform shirt, scratching lightly through the white undershirt beneath. He’d opened up a can of worms for himself with that story. She hoped he knew that. But he hadn’t ruined her life. He deserved to be saved and when you loved someone you didn’t give up on them.

He took the hint and didn’t sink into the usual gloom about the murders and the people he hurt, just stroked her bare knee with his free hand and went on. “And I delivered a baby today,” he said.

Chloe shook her head. “Well that’s got to be a job perk, looking up other women’s skirts.”

The corner of his mouth curved up and he looked away in a manner one could only call modest – not about the babies, but because there might have been a note of jealousy in her voice. “Come on, Chloe, the only skirt I’m interested in looking up is yours.”

Her heart melted a little. He was the only guy in the world who would say that and mean it.

But she looked at him suspiciously in the next moment, her hand pausing on his chest. “This isn’t one of those sudden interest in creating life after seeing how precious it is things, is it?”

The brief look of terror flashing across his face was so reassuringly normal and male that her hand went back to petting him through his shirt. “No, no,” he said, very seriously. “I’m not ready for that. It’s just . . . It was the first time since everything happened. It felt good to help bring life into the world instead of taking it away.”

So this was the mysterious mood? He was happy and had stopped hating himself long enough to go after what he wanted? The sad thing about it was delivering babies and helping her get her job back was just him being him. She could have told him that, but she didn’t yet. If he was happy, better to keep this going and keep him from thinking before reminders of less pleasant things let his darker moods catch up with him.

She put her foot on the ground and scooted the two of them closer to the desk, sliding her feet into her shoes and grabbing her flash drive. They definitely couldn’t keep this going here. They had two apartments, a car, a back alley behind the Planet building . . . She grinned and saved her Luthorcorp story.


She says it's not Shakespeare. Tell her differently! XD