Reccing Notes: What if Eternal hadn't had some kind of cathartic effect, what if Chloe was cautious and Davis was broken. Would that change anything at all?
by vagrantdream at her/my livejournal.
6892 words, r/nc-17, eternal and beast (kind of)
The danger didn’t just vanish because Davis had gone and died and snatched a piece of her and had never given it back.
(Say I come to you by circles.)
Chloe spends eight hours in the cot where she doesn’t fall asleep because fear and guilt churn like two twin monsters in her gut.
The clinch of theirs is more intimate than it ought to be and this isn’t ever something she would have felt comfortable with Jimmy doing or he’d ever have thought of.
Of course, Jimmy never had a monster inside him and he didn’t need the Chloe drug.
She still feels Davis’s arms gentle around her waist, the way he breathes, how underneath it all she feels far too safe. She tries to forget because she’s not Clark, not full of romantic fairy tales that will miraculously make everything right. The danger didn’t just vanish because Davis had gone and died and snatched a piece of her and had never given it back.
Pragmatism is sensibility.
It’s the only thing that will keep her from falling to pieces that she can’t put together.
Maybe this means something.
Maybe this is what she needs to believe.
In the morning, she takes Davis’s arms from around her and feels grateful that he hasn’t asked her to stay, not since the first night.
The calm lifts from his face and she’s aware of how stark and sick his skin looks. He might be endowed with a destructive alien DNA but living, waiting in this light is not good for him.
He only has her and she’s taking that too.
“I have to go to work for a few hours. I’ll be back.” She says.
It’s the pretext of a normal life and all that. A steady employment will keep Clark from stalking her for help or worrying.
“Okay.”
His eyes linger on her face, seeing and holding and suffocating her. ‘I’m yours.’ they seem to say even though he hasn’t said a word about that, not since she found out and he was begging her not to run.
He doesn’t need to open his mouth to say it in silence and in roars.
She tries not to look at him as she runs up the steps and out the door.
(Say the line that carries my name keeps me from knowing you)
Still, she knows when it’s time, feels it in every fiber of her being. It’s the hour, of course. 8:00 pm leaves her permanently unsettled.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have left at all, knowing what could come out of the apartment without her.
Doomsday. The Ultimate Destroyer.
It sounds like something out of a bad b movie, and no matter how much she should, she never uses the name. It horrifies her enough and the thought of it as part of that guy she knew changes nothing.
Davis needs her and of course she’s his voice to anchor him to the world. His hands had killed people, countless people, enough to terrify Clark several times over. It must horrify him to be alone with silence after that.
Part of him is still the guy who opened up to her with his fears all that time ago.
Love me. Lie to me. He never says as much, but she knows she won’t be able to try to make him forget, when she can’t. She can’t love him and the worst part is that it’s not all his fault.
He takes the blame anyway.
He wants her and that little fact is hard to bypass when she sleeps pressed up against him every night, but he actively avoids doing anything that would make her uncomfortable.
He doesn’t scare her as much as she does.
She can’t get too close.
She’s fallen in love with the guy who was meant to be a hero and he broke her heart. If she fell in love with the guy who was meant to tear the world apart she would just be asking for it.
(We are held where we call. We know something and are held to what we know.)
Davis needs her now.
Clark catches her halfway out of the Watchtower, almost running to her Beatle in her heels.
He’s big and blocking out the sun, insisting on knowing how she is doing on her own. His concern might have made her twinge a little before. Not now, not when he was coming at someone else’s behest, because suddenly Lois thought she was acting like a widow. Not now.
“She hasn’t seen me in a week.”
“I have, and I think I agree with her. Listen, it’s the MO. You’re running yourself ragged and shutting yourself off. It isn’t healthy.”
By the time she hops in the front seat he’s in the seat beside her all strapped in.
“Clark, any other time would be great. Not now, okay?”
“We need to talk.”
Clark follows her to her door and there’s not a damn thing she can do about it. Can he feel the pull, like Davis can, she wonders? Is he just that dense?
“Look, I know you’ve been hurting. Jimmy first and then that Davis…thing. What you did. Killing someone. ”
Killing someone? Killing a friend, with fantastic recuperative abilities and immortality to boot. Who was currently in her basement, while it got that need to kill the Kryptonian again, increasingly worse.
It was just about to bust a way out if she didn’t get the idiot off her doorstep.
No wait, hero.
And she should be thinking of how Clark might be torn apart. Not that this is her last chance. To keep him, not Clark.
A hysterical laugh wants to bubble up in her throat. Care to come in for tea, Clark? That’s what he wants to hear. The knuckle sandwich is on me.
“It shouldn’t have happened. Just because I’ve been busy doesn’t mean I don’t care. You have to let me in for me to help you.”
She expects any moment for a crash, the breaking beyond in the darkness.
He must be in so much pain.
“And what would you do, Clark? Tell me how it would have been if I’d listened? Maybe you could pull out the growing up with the Kents speech for good measure?”
The knot of fear is working its way into her voice but she can’t be too hysterical or he’d know. Maybe he wouldn’t.
“But killing someone…”
Measured. The best lies have a base in truth
“My friend, Clark. I killed my friend.”
After he died Davis got to be all she remembered, the man who saved people and who held her when she cried. Things are not so simple now, but the definition stays. She couldn’t cut the feeling out of it, no matter what.
“Maybe I don’t need your advice. Maybe I need to mourn. You have a world to save. Not me.”
He closes the door gently.
(Say I am a wine you know better than to drink.)
She doesn’t have time to hold her hand in front of the lever and breathe now.
She’s not only unsettled. She’s terrified because she doesn’t have memories of that, doesn’t know what to expect. Her perfectly sensible instinct tells her to run. It’s kept her alive with Lex and Linda.
But Davis will be there, a little bit of him. She’d stopped it before, but it doesn’t make the thought any easier. It could easily rend her limb from limb.
The last bulb has guttered out, and the Talon table crashes into her hip as she stumbles. This time, she feels him before she sees him and he’s not even touching her.
“Davis.” There’s no answer but that strange growling, It trying to push out of his skin.
She can see his shape on the ground, on his knees. This has happened to him before in the cage. In the cage before she’d killed him the first time.
“He’s gone.”
He’s just an outline in the dark, and the outline doesn’t look right at all.
Yet there are no red eyes to stiffen her and send her wheeling backwards.
It/he hugs her around the waist so that it feels her ribs will crack, while he’s on his knees like he were a small child. Her voice comes out too quiet and thin.
“It’s all fine. You’re fine Davis.”
She thinks she finds his shoulder through the torn cloth, a roughness and sharp sting. The blood trickles past her fingers, drying cold in the air.
He’s trying not to breathe, trying not to move because it hasn’t receded yet. Just one quick movement and that could be it for her.
He’s kneeling.
The whole idea is so much like a pilgrimage before the Virgin Mary that she wishes she could laugh. But she can’t, because she can feel the muscles in his cheek twisting and the tension going through him.
Minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. Too much longer that the last time.
How can this be enough for him?
I’m sorry he says to her,
“You didn’t hurt me.” she lies. She can feel his breath in warm scared puffs of air through the thin shirt, and wonders if he feels the shudder though her skin. Of course he does, he always does.
“Thank god.” She wonders if it’s just a colloquialism or he believes still. He’s been hit with more than any true-fiction conspiracy novel- learning about being a genetic form from another planet, meant to have no free will and a destiny that was the exact opposite of everything he’d tried to be. He wants to and it breaks her heart.
“Can’t lose you.” It’s stopped and he’s slow in letting go.
These days he doesn’t touch her unless she does first. One of the downsides of having flesh that can easily be pierced through by spikes, but not just that. He sees himself as tainted with the invisible blood on his hands. He'd scrubbed it off and then cooked her dinner once but now that she knows he won't forget it. It was all fine and dandy when he was the hero she wanted to believe in. She thinks maybe she hates him a little for that.
He'd lied and that had been her truth.
He hates himself more than she could though, and she wishes he'd let go. He didn’t have the choice of making it stop.
“Then I take it you missed me.” Her quip falls flat, in part because her voice is wobbling. It’s impossible, the pretence of this. She can’t lie; keep Davis and Clark apart forever, every minute of every second of every day. She’s not that strong, not that anything.
“I’m here now.” She says. She wonders why her, what he thinks he sees.
“You won’t lose me.” Oh, but she can lose him.
She can lose herself.
(She could drop to her knees on the asphalt and try to forget that she was thinking of him just then.
Not Clark. It wouldn’t work.
It would break her; one moment after another held back in a dam until they over spilled. If he leaned forward then; touched her lips with his; she thinks that she would have given him everything, all the crumbling bits of her that should have been running.
She could be one of those moths flying headlong into the light that’s too bright and too blinding and too warm.
I can’t save you, she would want to say. Only she wouldn’t say that when the constant pained look in his eyes was almost hopeful; and the tenderness in his face made her warm, not suffocated. Only she’d draw her hand across his cheek and leave a scarlet mark.
“I trust you. I care about you. I’m tired of being scared.” She’d trust he’d never try to hurt her.
He’d be warm and trembling under her hands, like there was too much that couldn’t be contained. And she’d feel it, trickling its way to her skin. He’d burn.
He’d give everything, take much more. His touch would mark her.)
As it is, he holds her a little too tight and it doesn’t feel like enough.
(Say this water doesn't pull but when you fall takes you altogether in. Say you are in.)
It is destiny, or DNA, or just the hateful actions of worse monsters than anything that they could’ve made him into.
He can’t help hurting her.
She’s covered in blood; she doesn’t know whose blood it is- Oliver’s, Jimmy’s, Clark’s or someone else’s. She couldn’t save them all.
There is smoke and dust and sirens with no one to back them up because anyone who has any sense has fled.
He isn’t merely red eyed, now, but decked at the center of armor and spikes. She wishes she could see something of Davis for one last time, but he’s suffering in something a hundred times worse than hell.
Maybe he can see around them and is struggling from wherever he’s trapped.
All she sees is those eyes, red and burning and for the first time not seeing her at all. It is only on a mission, following a preprogrammed genetic urge.
She should feel just little bloom of self justification now. She’d seen that this would happen, had safe guarded herself.
If she had let herself love him the way she wanted to this would have destroyed her.
(She had no illusions that being with her might have halted the monster taking over. She’s not some princess in a fairytale. She’s not that anything.)
She hadn’t taken the gamble on odds that she could never win. She did right.
She had to have done right.
Only, all she can think is that she lost anyway and that maybe if she had taken that chance, she’d have something more to remember of him.
It slices its way through the door like so much paper, bone spurs scratching on tile, impervious to the slippery carnage.
The fear should be there, and is, but she’s drowning in something that feels like despair.
Davis is gone. She realizes that she didn’t have to let herself love him for losing him to tear her apart.
This is the end. This time it won’t be enough.
Her vision blurs and she braces herself.
(Say the same thing that holds us holds us apart.)
She almost chokes in the air and her lashes stick together wetly. Darkness, blackness, comfort. For a second she thinks that this is death.
She still feels his breath even at the back of her neck, and that light bulb is still guttered out.
That wasn’t the way it happened at all.
Her hands go over his making sure. His skin is still too warm and he’s too encompassing but she leaves them there. He needed her. She needed…
It didn’t have to happen that way.
He learns about the dream. No particulars. Just that it had been a nightmare, and he knew he’d been in it. She doesn’t want him to feel guilty; but the perpetual self loathing is back on his face.
He still offers comfort the only way he knows how. He surrounds her.
This time she eases into his grip and holds on a little too tight. “I trust you.” She says. He returns the grip.
Ask me why. Please. Her defenses are in shambles right now, and she’s choked and needy enough to make the jump.
He just holds her, and then there are none.
(Say we belong to each other.)
Maybe her dream had a basis in truth.
Maybe It’s pull would grow with time so that he got absorbed and locked in its hold forever. And she lost him. Really lost him.
Again, to something that had a deeper hold on him than the grave.
Sensibility tells her that this is the way of things. Everything falls apart.
It was a warning.
One day what they have might not be enough.
It’s a useless one.
What would that change, really?
(Say we sit on some steps together, or a wall. Say something falls.)
That day, she comes home early with six halogen lights in the cramped trunk. She drags them down, one by one, and doesn’t need to ask him if he’d give a girl a hand. I can do that, he says and she says she wouldn’t want to sprain anything. All six end up rigged on the ceiling, banishing the otherworldly shadows and (she thinks) turning her hair a greenish tint.
He squints in the light, stretches up unknowingly revealing the strong, lean lines of his abdomen. She’s trying hard not to think of that now but he straightens the connections so meticulously that she just wants to watch him.
This isn’t gothic doom and gloom. It’s the real world. Anything could happen.
She tries to forget that this is Smallville.
“Now we celebrate.”
(There’s a table behind the coat hangers. The dust comes off easily. )
She’s ready to rail at him if he says he doesn’t need to eat one more time. He seems to catch onto her mood and doesn’t. The coffee is weak and the prepackaged tuna casserole isn’t quite warm but he’s sitting across from her so that she could brush his arm if she leaned all the way across the table and the dishware on her tiptoes.
He eats slowly and she wonders if he tastes it at all. He watches her eat mostly with a mixture of intensity and trying to look away politely and not succeeding. He’s confused, he must be and he won’t jump to conclusions because unlike before there’s no big honkin monster to mess with them.
Sure, maybe she just decided to share the closest to a romantic dinner she’s had in the past two years with the halogen lights. That had to be it.
She can see him, really see him. He’s still too pale but strangely beautiful and his face changes like the water from one emotion to another. He can do vulnerability and caring without needing to give a speech.
She still wants him to joke to keep her from turning into a sap, but he’s too busy swallowing her with his eyes.
She doesn’t know that singular cunning trick about eating to seduce. Maybe you were supposed to lick your fork a lot. She doesn’t want to end up looking like a hungry cat.
She does it the old fashioned way. Dig in, but not too fast. Close your mouth when you chew.
Anyway, it seems to work for him, if the way his eyes roam over her neck and try unsuccessfully to jump away is any indication. Never mind the fact that he still looks hungry.
Part of it is her fault, maybe. She figured if this was her being crazy she could go all out. Clingy green cloth. No sleeves, just straps the width of strings. Neckline dipping below the sternum. Lois had called it a boob shirt.
They may have gotten the lights up, but that was it. There is no heating down here. She hasn’t gotten cold because of him.
In hindsight, the shirt was not such a good idea. Goosebumps pebble her arms and she is not shivering, not a little. Not that much.
He puts his sweatshirt over her shoulders, anyway, and it smells like him.
(Say the language is dry and the wall is low. Say a word gets over the wall.)
She tells him about how she always used to ask pointless questions as a kid. It was part of a game. You told each other things. All truths you had to get off your chest.
A warm up round starts, she jokes, she thinks and pulls out a few embarrassingly horrific high school experiences. He doesn’t have many that would qualify as embarrassing, and more that would qualify as horrific. She sees him as he must have been, a scared kid with no one to pitch a seat in his corner, the one seen as damaged and sent to places that only would’ve damaged him more. Not even through her little venture into stalking would she have guessed the magnitude of it.
He looks at the shiny countertop, and avoids her eyes. He didn’t want to turn dinner into this.
“You can tell me anything.”
He wouldn’t ever try to unburden himself on the feelings of those necks snapping beneath his fingers, she thinks and the fear is back and this isn’t what she wanted either.
At least he’s looking at her again but it’s that look the first time she stopped it, like he sees her as some sort of angel. He’s not taking anything from her, just giving but still she wants to tell him that she can’t breathe. She has no defense against this.
“Just to seal the deal, I’ll tell you something. I still wish Clark hadn’t come by when you were cooking me dinner.”
It’s true, but she doesn’t know what she was doing then. Playing with emotional fire, maybe. She’d dressed up all the way down to her skin that night, but he doesn’t know that.
She knows what she’s doing now, she hopes.
A smile trembles at the corner of his mouth, but even that looks sad. “All of that, I forgot when I was with you.”
That-oh she knows that, how all that time he’d been doing anything, no matter how damaging to hold it back. It had worked, right up to the part he’d died. Then it had screwed with her and sent her sensibility running for the seven hills. That doesn’t change things as they stand.
“You were my only real shoulder, the guy who saved people and everything I needed.
I got used to playing robotic really well and I never had to tell myself what to feel with you.
I trusted no one else like you, with that.” In past tense, maybe not so good. She hadn’t said ‘How could you have let me trust you when you knew?’
He doesn’t look down, never looks down and the little bit of light in his eyes dulls painfully. “I’m so sorry.”
“That night could’ve been fun. We could have watched some horrible chick flick and I’d have fallen asleep on you-your shoulder. Really, it’s practically engrained in the human genome.”
“I would have been lying to you.”
This part horrifies her more than any other. Not the monster with the endless spiky protrusions, not the helpful emt who went after criminals but still people to keep it sated. (Oliver had a few fingers in the investigation and she knows what the corpses looked like, vertebrae twisted and cracked.)
He’d been the only one to give it to her straight since she met him. Bette, the blackouts, her past, Jimmy. It had made her guilty that this happened with no one else.
It had made her whole.
Only he hadn’t told her possibly the biggest secret of all. All because he couldn’t drag her into it.
So he’d come to visit, cooked her dinner, made her feel like herself again when he looked into her eyes and lied so convincingly that she’d have staked her world on it.
He could be lying now, sitting across the table looking into her eyes and lying if he wanted.
But what possible motive could he have for being crushed?
Logically, there’s the pity-trip-getting her to stay to be the med-dispenser or tearing down her walls so she gives in, but anyway it all comes down to her.
And her logic-brain has this way of shutting off when he’s around.
Animalistic roaring in an alley? Oh, that was just fear.
Enough with the thinking.
“Just tell me, in an ideal world, if it were different. You didn’t have to worry about any of this whole screwed up.... mess. What would have happened between us?”
“But it didn’t happen. There can’t be… a point to that now.”
This is the part where she should be swooning into his arms, flailing helplessly, overcome by manly passion.
What is she doing? Crossing her arms over her chest.
“Just answer. That’s the way it goes. If not you lose. Or I get cross at you. Or both.”
“We would’ve talked. You’d been going through a breakup. We would’ve eaten. You might have teased me about my cooking…”
“Don’t forget the guy hugs. I could’ve used the comfort.”
“Those were guy hugs?”
“Yep, an awfully friendly thing to do. Two years ago Clark might have done that, just the same. You know-except for the whole cooking thing.” And then Clark would’ve traded off Lana stories. And shared his horrors at hurting her when he got—excited.
“Clark never cooked me dinner. Or kissed me.”
(Well, Clark had never planted one on her unless she did it first. And after she did, he’d run away, eventually.)
If the mention of Clark’s name makes incisors start popping out, she fancies herself planting herself on Davis’s knee. Not that it would actually happen.
“…So just say in this hypothetical scenario that I was completely over Jimmy and I asked you to stay and we didn’t fall asleep watching a chick flick.”
Awkwa-rd moment.
“I would’ve shown you that he was wrong.”
“He said I didn’t trust him, so he walked away. What makes you so sure he was an idiot? Maybe he was saving himself pain.”
“You’re worth more than a little pain.”
“Yeah, because you love me, right?” She says it quick and joking and won’t think because the words won’t come out otherwise.
No pause. “I do.” He looks up, doesn’t blink and the attempt at levity falls flat. She’s never let him say to her since that time when she’d been running from him and it had been even more messed up than now.
“You’re not just saying that.” A statement. Not a question.
“Let’s say this is the hypothetical scenario.” She draws herself up, won’t break his gaze from across the countertop. “I’m asking you to show me.”
(Say a skin is like that and that what we have consumed gives us light and what is gone is the constellation that guides us.)
He doesn’t push the table over on his way to her, even if it looks like his muscles are having a fight of their own to keep from it. Even under the bright lights he stands out darkly, but this isn’t symbolic.
His eyes are the way she needs them to be.
He breathes and somewhere between then and now his mouth finds hers and his lips move against hers.
She had a thing about breath before doing this. She would have chewed four sticks of gum to banish the remnant tuna salad. It’s kind of easy to forget that she smells like fish when his lips are soft and not tentative in memorizing hers and all of him is close.
In imagination she’s been farther than this, sometimes, but it hadn’t prepared her, for here and now. She hadn’t ever thought it could be so deliberate. Before, the fantasies came in guilty snatches, unplanned moments when everything spiraled. They were sensible ways of dealing manufactured by her brain and over too soon.
This, now…isn’t. Can’t be taken back. She doesn’t care.
The kiss is heady and dizzying so she can’t be blamed for needing more. He makes a small sound and tilts her face and it feels deeper somehow.
She’s catching his words, swallowing them, learning them all over again.
They have so much to show each other and it could last for as long as they need, but it doesn’t because they are both too impatient. Not just her.
His fingers weave and fist through his sweatshirt where it’s draped on her back. She can’t tell herself she hasn’t been waiting for this.
The sweatshirt falls away onto the cement and slips under her foot when she moves closer, but she doesn’t fall because he’s there. His hands are large enough to swallow her arms and they don’t bruise. He’s everywhere, pressed close, and she’s aware of the way they seem to want to fit together. They need to and anything less is not enough.
She feels the shudder again, and of course he does. The throbbing had hurt then, it hurt now. She can hear his breath and she’s not alone in this.
She pushes against him so her knees bump his and he gets the message, clumsily yanking at the tablecloth and sending flimsy paper plates and empty Tupperware clattering to the floor. No magic tricks there.
“I liked that…bowl. What do you say you make it up to me?”
“I can do that.” He says and his voice is different, rougher than she's used to.
He hasn’t got a hair out of place since it’s so short and his shirt isn’t even wrinkled yet, but he’s still panting, still seeing and it’s still hard to breathe. His eyes are dark again, his face frightfully intense and this does not mean he’s some twisted kind of Heathcliff. He’s Davis now, just Davis, she tells herself. .
He can take anything or everything, all at once. But he just looks at her and it starts back up with the kissing, unexpectedly tender and so very focused. Looking. She’s just missing sleeves, for God’s sake, but she feels irrevocably exposed.
Helpless, too, because he’s heavy and she’s on her back and she has to crane her neck to get closer. She’s pinned against hard wood. No control, and she needs control.
She squirms and he supports himself with his arms so it lightens.
The air is cold and his mouth is anything but, sliding in an easy path over the skin above her shoulder blade and the thoughts scatter. The straps are off her shoulders now and she should be worried because this is so... shameless. Something that normal people do after dates and corny movies.
She could be thinking about DNA and destiny and inevitability and how this may be the only thing she has to remember. Normal, she wants normal.
It is a disturbingly easy feeling, his tongue sweeping easily against hers and his hands… She’s not a teenager, but here she is, playing tonsil hockey for all she’s worth.
She should stop with the thinking.
What’s more normal than a full blown make out session?
She’s going to go insane.
There are plenty of ways to be intimate, and maybe this is just another one. Soon he’s going to have enough data for a complete map.
Her shirt is on but it doesn’t matter when his palm is flat on the skin of her waist and then his mouth is there and the muscles clench involuntarily. Her skin is prickling, aware in every inch. It starts to burn as he trails up the underside of her breast and the tank top traps her before falling away. Part of her is warm at least.
She should tell him that she’s half naked and he’s not so this isn’t quite fair but she hasn’t got the voice for proper, articulated speech.
She tries to remember not to get too excited. Clark could hear her heartbeat if he listened in. But then, he has no place here.
It feels like torture but she wants him to keep on like this because when it’s over she can’t tell herself that this is only a rewind or what could have been in a world where there was no weird-ville, no sadistic alien scientists and no need to pretend.
This is what she thinks even when she holds on.
The only thing she has access to is his neck so she presses her lips there and his pulse hammers through her head.
He’s close enough that she doesn’t feel the cold much. Illogically, she’s sweating.
Somehow he doesn’t feel heavy enough now.
She kicks her heels off with a clatter to keep her feet flat on the wood and closes her eyes. Knee high stockings aren’t a barrier and she could make a joke about him having a thing for Catholic uniforms but his fingers are light and lulling. He still has calluses and she wonders how this can be if part of the destroyer’s nature is to heal. His nature. Maybe both of them are, Davis and It, fighting between themselves. Maybe this isn’t so doomed at all. He’d been human again after he died.
His weight pushes into her but her knees widen very slowly. His mouth still roves over hers and he’s warm and before she can think they are moving together.
The warmth and ache is like a drug and his arms shake on her shoulders.
She nudges him gently so she can see his face before she goes too far. He’s sweating, and his eyes have dilated so she can see the brown again but she doesn’t see him trying to distract himself with this. There is no ‘Lie to Me’ this time.
“This is all I have to give.” she says because she’s herself, as likely to cause pain as to save.
He’s been there.
If anything his eyes are warmer now. “You are everything.” He believes this.
Maybe he doesn’t need her to save him. Maybe he needs something to believe in.
Maybe she does too.
(Say we are in. Say my skin draws you. Say what we do with each other goes on.)
This is hurting him.
He’s no help staring at her like that, so she un-tucks the shirt briskly. She feels a little awed when his eyes still slide shut like he is on a high.
This doesn’t happen to her, but it apparently it just did.
The shirt used to be Jimmy’s, back in the days before he started swearing at her in e-mails. He was never coming back for it.
It stretches over Davis’s chest where she can see the muscle jolt at her touch.
His eyes are still closed so she makes an ineffectual effort to yank it over his head. It takes the two of them yanking in opposite directions and this moment is so out of the continuity of everything else that she knows it will be the one she thinks of first.
He isn’t shy touching her; pulling her in and he’s warm everywhere.
She presses her hand to his chest where it ended up and studies him. “I Tarzan, You Jane.” She mutters, aware she got them out of order.
(He seems to get the point of this and then she learns that he is literally warm everywhere.)
He sinks down to her and the sound that comes out of his mouth is like he’s really breathing for the first time since she saw him again.
She focuses on his face because she wants to scream at the sensation, feeling like she is going to break.
It’s quite a lot to take all at once.
But then he pulls away and she thinks the shock must have shown on her face. He’s still breathing deep and she understands what he’s doing.
She feels tensed for something but she reminds herself to relax and its better. He moves slowly at first but every moment soaks her senses in a miasma of heat and moisture and more aching than she thought possible.
It’s almost elemental, merciless and she anchors herself to the way his hands ground her and their eyes connect. It’s like nothing she’s used to. She used to consider the experience a success if she liked it at the time.
Now… Does she like it? Does she like breathing? Does she need it?
The circular motion feels good and maddening and not enough. She reaches for his shoulders for an outlet and when she presses her nails into his skin and they don’t leave marks. It’s such a silly thing, but she wishes she could. She bites her lip instead.
Then he’s pushing into her deeper so she can't think of anything but him, there and this isn’t enough and she murmurs than if she breaks her teeth biting into his shoulder he can pay for the dentures.
It’s like a rip current, one wave and another and then the next will rush past quick and pull her completely under.
Under, and then when she wakes up it’ll be done and the dream will be just that, a beautiful dream.
She doesn’t want it to end.
She’s trembling and trying to hold on to him, and somehow the rest of her gets that idea.
It just happens and his eyelids squeeze tight and maybe he is going to lose it right then. Only his head drops to her shoulder and he struggles to breathe deep.
Lana had told her once that she was afraid that Clark would break when he got excited. Here she is, with something she hasn’t had and maybe needed all this time and she doesn’t want to think of Clark and his tragedies.
Yet, she doesn’t want the power to break Davis.
She can’t give it back.
He moves still, and he's part of her, pulling her farther out into the water. Her neck jerks up and she arches and finds him. He is the center and all that’s left to do is let it crash over them both and hold on.
His forehead meets hers and his eyes are burning. She doesn’t let her eyes close because she needs it to be real.
It is that: terrifying and agonizing and beautiful. Then only beautiful.
(Say we struggle to get in and stay in and not ever leave).
Afterglow. She thinks that is a silly word, because they don’t look like glow sticks.
The truth is her brain is hazy, she feels sticky and the table is not really as smooth as it looks. She hopes she won’t have to pull splinters out.
He’s impossibly warm yet and she has to freeze her fingers to keep them from running down his face. The urge to hum is over whelming.
She thinks she may be happy.
It’s some time later but he’s still there and he holds her closer than he needs to. They are all but wrapped together, anyway. His fingers barely ghost across her back in small circles and she can feel his breath.
He doesn’t say anything and she’s okay with that. She needs to process so she won’t have a mini-freak-out.
Her mind is almost clear by now, like the clutter just burst out in the wake of everything else.
She’d just lain with Davis. Biblically. Not to save the world, to pacify it or to keep him attached to her. Because they’d needed it, she had.
She just conveniently forgot that that the other facet to Davis meant that she’d taken her pure motivations and stomped all over them. She wasn’t a free agent now.
Clark had nothing to do with it.
There should be two options on the table (and the pun isn’t funny). She could get up and leave before she can’t let go or wait for some divine revelation to hit her right between the eyes.
She makes it a point to keep her breathing slow and calm, like sleep. He can probably feel the change in her, as he always did even before she’d learned about the Kryptonian super abilities.
When she’d found him the first time, she didn’t run away right off. He’d killed people. He asked her to and she’d killed him. She didn’t think she could do it again.
It was nothing quantitatively measureable, a feeling that she couldn’t let go of. She’d paused before he said anything because she wanted to be given no other choice. If she’d been sensible everything would’ve fallen apart.
What’s the point in letting go now?
Maybe this is what they’ve got going for them. She doesn’t want to move.
Can’t.
His eyes don’t paralyze her but they are there and open and it’s that look again. She doesn’t ask him what he thinks he sees and just feels grateful that he does.
“I love you.”
He doesn’t add an expectant pause to the end of that sentence. “I just wanted you to know.”
She doesn't have to say anything. He'd give her everything and not ask for it back if that's what she wanted.
But one revelation deserves another and she's through with being scared.
“I’ve been thinking.”
He doesn’t say, ‘So?’ He’s waiting for her again.
“When you told me the truth I was so mad at you I---.”
“Hated me?”
“I did for a little while.”
“I would have hated me.” He bites his lip and doesn’t look away.
She won’t lie.
“I still would have helped you if you’d told me the whole truth.” He’d preferred to die than ask for her help. “Why didn’t you?”
“I couldn’t live with it. Knowing what I’d done and then pushing it on you. It wasn’t the way it should have been."
He wouldn't have pushed her into anything.
"I wanted to believe it it could all go away just like that. ”
“Nothing went away. You wouldn’t let me alone.
I’d have to talk to my best friend about what I did. I couldn’t cry like any normal person because I had to face that I might not have known you at all. I only remembered the ‘you’ part of it. I hated you for leaving me in the mess. I hated it the fact that everything we had was a lie.”
His face hurts to look at, and he looks about ready to cry.
“It wasn’t like that, not for me.”
“I know.” her palm is on his shoulder like before, and funny how fast things can change.
“And now, do you still?”
“I’m not big on the whole hate sex thing, you know. Besides if we didn’t have anything then I couldn’t have lost you. I wouldn't have been so scared of it.”
The wonder on his face forces out everything, and it feels like she’s really breathing.
(We rise where we fall.)
“Will you come with me?”
He asks her, and his voice wavers on the end of it. She can see everything in his eyes and the hope.
He can take all of her and he still seems to be in wonder that this can happen, that it can really be this simple.
This isn’t supposed to make her heart skip a beat.
It’s still there, the pull to hurt Clark and they are at the mercy of any moment her best friend decides to get over what she said.
Geographical distances make a difference to how bad it is.
This would have been the sensible reason, if she had relied on that.
Clark had just been out in the streets and when the change had come on worse she’d held on when Davis had looked like he was being ripped apart.
The cards have been stacked to fall for all their lives. Davis is always going to fight it. Clark won’t know.
She’s going to be there.
The future is one step after another, but she sees a clear path.
It looks real.
She thinks his hand could engulf hers and maybe it does.
“North, South, East or West. You've got it.”
He reaches for her and this is the truth.
(Say we are the same. Say we come to it simply again.)
Showing posts with label chloe.davis.basement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chloe.davis.basement. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
nature
Reccing Notes: gdfgirthdtdfhru!
Seriously. IMHO, the best characterized err.basement fic ever. With plot! just too amazing for words. paraxdisepink captures Chloe, slight snark, all the inner conflict the purity and desperation of their feelings. It is seriously. hot. As in, you might combust.
by paraxdisepink at her lj.
5,720 words, m/nc-17, eternal
She crawled around to face him. Her throat was burning.
She felt like Beauty locked in the Beast’s castle, standing at the top of stairs in a place dark and colorless compared to her apartment above. Her groceries were still on the table outside. Anyone who wandered in and saw them would know she was missing. She listened for footsteps in the Talon above, but it wasn’t like her friends would go into a frenzy searching for her the instant Persephone dropped her bridle. The past few weeks had taught her that much. Sure, Clarkwhooshed in whenever the ever-burdened superhero needed a healthy dose of blonde sidekick, but it was well-past his bedtime and even all-powerful aliens needed their beauty rest.
Chloe took a deep breath. Speaking of all-powerful aliens, she couldn’t ignore the eyes on her back forever, tugging at her like he’d tied a string between the two of them. That was stretching it. Maybe he’d been built to take down a fellow Kryptonian, but he didn’t have some magnetic hypnotic power that could draw her to him against his will. He wasn’t Dracula or Hades or the Phantom for crying out loud. She had the mysterious power here, apparently, one he honestly believed could challenge fate and save the world. Maybe he’d banked on the fact that she couldn’t refuse giving it a try or maybe he’d just gone off the deep end grasping at straws thanks to Clark and his eternal optimism. Whatever the case, she was the one taking the gamble here and the one who had everything to lose.
The thought hardly gave her the boost of courage she needed, but she set her bag down anyway beside the door, clenched her jaw and started back down the stairs to where Davis waited.
His shoulders sagged where he stood in the shadows, and thank God he didn’t look so otherworldly anymore, just tired. She hadn’t realized how frozen he’d been standing until he let out his breath and sank down on the stairs. It had to be terrifying, thinking the one person close to you would abandon you because of something you couldn’t help. Was that what she had intended to do in her hurry to warn Clark, cut herself off from him and cold-heartedly work to find a way to take out this threat to her best friend for good? Davis was what he was, but there were two sides of him. He was more than the kind paramedic who saved people and cooked her dinner – she’d found that out in a pretty quick succession of realities breaking apart like one glass shattering after another – but he was also more than a monster with a mission to kill.
He offered her his hand when she came down to him. His skin was still warm; Chloe thought it would be cold after coming back from the dead. She didn’t know what else to do but let him pull her down on the steps beside him. Silence settled over the two of them like a blanket when she let go of his hand, and she took her time studying the heap of stuff cluttering the basement around them. You’d think she would have noticed the moving truck bringing all this here, but maybe all of it wasn’t his or maybe Oliver had done it – he’d said something about having someone clean out Davis’ apartment. Who or how didn’t matter anymore though. Davis was here now and he couldn’t go anywhere else if what he said was true.
He wasn’t in any big hurry to talk, but she could hear him breathing beside her and she could feel him just a few inches from brushing her shoulder where they sat side-by-side, giving off heat and that brooding vibe that made Clark seem cheerful by comparison. After knowing Davis for months, she’d gotten used to his moody silences. She used to think he was a little too old for the emo thing, but now that the awful pieces had come together she had to give him credit for not being raving mad by now. How many people would continue to function after they’d been told it was their destiny to kill and destroy the world?
A part of her warned not to sympathize. Serial killers preyed on sympathy and sob stories weren’t excuses. But your average Jack the Ripper didn’t have a literal monster inside they couldn’t control. Davis was more like a Kryptonian time bomb struggling to deactivate the trigger, and he had destiny working against him. She remembered needing a personal bomb squad once, but she held herself away from him anyway so they didn’t touch. She closed her eyes and saw him in that Kryptonite cell again, revisited her own shock at what she’d done on instinct and that desperation to say a hundred things before it was too late. It’s like they said, when you couldn’t talk, you communicated. Funny how she couldn’t bring herself to speak now. It was easy to pour your heart out and forgive someone and beg forgiveness when you thought they were dying. But things weren’t washed away so easily when they rose from the grave invulnerable and were sitting right next to you. There were the murders, the threat to Clark, that red-eyed thing he’d turned into in that cell, and the fact that the guy beside her now wasn’t the guy she thought she knew. The Davis who saved lives and promised to always be there was a mask for something that should only exist in a nightmare, and now that the illusion had crumbled she had to make sense of what lay underneath.
“This thing you say I do,” she broke the silence. “How does it work?”
He lowered his head and stared at his hands clasped between his knees. He didn’t like talking about what he was, the other part of him. In fact, he looked a step away from crumbling himself, and the misery in his face made one thing clear between them: if he had any choice in all this he wouldn’t choose this thing with her now, whatever it was, or a life without the monster. He’d choose to die and stay that way. He’d already chosen death once rather than be with her. She couldn’t blame him – no one would want the nightmare he was in – but that didn’t make it any easier to stomach.
“I don’t know,” he shook his head. “It first happened that night in the ally with Jimmy. You . . . you touched me and stopped the beast inside from coming out. I was human again.”
He looked at her with some of the same amazement she remembered from that night. She had to be the world’s most clueless idiot. She’d heard him growling then and she’d seen something come over his face in the shadows. How could the queen of the weird and unexplained have thought Davis was just thankful to be rescued from a major head injury? But it was like she’d told Clark, she’d been in denial. No one as left out in the cold as she’d been lately wanted to face the fact there was something wrong the one person she could talk to. It didn’t matter anymore anyway. The truth was out now and the question was what to do about it.
Davis drew another breath. He seemed to want to talk now. Considering the secret he’d kept she couldn’t blame him for wanting to unburden himself. “The things I’ve done, Chloe . . .” he said, “I never thought any part of me would be capable of killing people. It’s like I was at war with the beast inside me and the only thing that made sense was hurting as few people as possible. I tried not to – I tried pills, whatever I thought could control it. I just . . .”
He trailed off. War was a good analogy, or an alarming one considering his “father” was the infamous General Zod. War had casualties – like Lex and Sebastian – and soldiers did what was ruthlessly necessary to stop a worse thing from happening. Or maybe Davis wasn’t the soldier fighting on the side of the good guys while his alter ego had a whole other operative. Maybe she was making excuses. Maybe he was the collaborator dancing with the Devil to save his own ass.
“Davis, I don’t think anyone can say what they’d have done in your position.” That was the truth, if nothing else. He’d said the monster inside was his true nature, but as he’d died he’d reverted back to Davis again. What did that mean and did it matter? Weren’t the good guys supposed to help someone who wanted help regardless? But that was Clark’s way, not hers. She prided herself on a more pragmatic way of doing things. But then why was she here?
Clark said they had to talk about what she’d done. But she had nothing for Clark on the subject beyond cold reasoning. He didn’t want to hear what the Davis she’d known had meant to her, that he’d been the only person she could lean on lately, and was it really Clark she owed the explanation? She remembered Davis’ face as he’d laid his hand against hers through the glass. He’d looked at peace, like he could rest now that his secret was out and she was still there. That wasn’t a brutal serial killer. That was a man who wanted to be seen as anything but, paying whatever price necessary to stop the thing inside him.
Chloe swallowed hard against the lump rising in her throat. She’d done enough mourning in the time since, what she hadn’t done is get the truth off her chest and better now while she had the chance than letting it gnaw at her for the rest of her life. “You know, Davis, no one’s life is worth putting the world at risk.” Hers wasn’t. She’d already told Clark that. “But seeing you die . . .”
Her voice cracked and something in him cracked right along with it. “I’m sorry.” His hand came to her back and he said it in the soft Davis voice, the one he used when he told her she could talk to him or that he’d always be there. A part of her wanted to snap at him not to touch her. He’d lied, let her think he was some knight in a blue uniform while he spent his free time killing people. She shouldn’t trust a word he said, let alone let him get this close. But the rest of her ran through the ways the murders weren’t his fault, and instead of seeing him as the monster she couldn’t help feeling the monster was taking him away from her and she wasn’t ready to let go yet.
Her head ended up on his shoulder, and old habits dying hard, his arm wrapped around her. She’d spent a lot of time in his arms lately, usually crying about being the universe’s perpetual soccer ball. She’d felt safe there, and despite everything she knew about him that feeling refused to disappear.
She shifted just enough to look at him. His face was only a few inches from hers practically screaming his lurid exposé of horrific violence, trauma, and loss. Loss, that was just it. She definitely felt like she’d lost something. Chloe bit her lip and swallowed again.
“So just when I’m starting to think I’ve found the right guy, he turns out to be this mass-murdering alien destroyer set to kill my best friend.”
She shouldn’t have said it out loud; his features fell and he looked away, and when his eyelids fluttered and he bit hard into lip she thought he would break down and cry. She couldn’t blame him, after all what was he really but another victim of the apocalyptic soap opera on Krypton? How many had there been now, counting the endless numbers of meteor freaks in Smallville and Metropolis?
But he wasn’t like them. He was a weapon and it was dangerous refusing to see him that way. She tried not to let herself be too aware of the warm arm around her. She could see that it wouldn’t be easy keeping a clear head staying down here with him.
She stayed in the basement with him that night, but she didn’t sleep. She told herself she couldn’t trust him that much yet, so she sat in the corner and tried to straighten some of the mess around her to avoid tripping in the dark. It wasn’t exactly the type of sleepover where you busted out the Ouija bored and gave each other makeovers, or played Truth or Dare so he could ask embarrassing questions such as “how many times have you faked an orgasm with Jimmy?” It wasn’t that type of sleepover at all. Davis crawled in the little cot piled with stuff and tried to rest while she sat and stared at nothing.
He actually fell asleep after an hour, and that gave her time to work out the details of how to keep this little arrangement from blowing up in her face. She had to keep him and Clark apart, that was the first priority, and if she told Clark he might be right about finding another way to avoid the apocalyptic Kryptonian showdown he would huff and puff and say she was playing with fire and making excuses to continue seeing Davis. As for Davis, she could trust him far enough to stay in the basement while she played Watchtower – he had no other choice – but what about –?
A crash echoed from outside. Someone shouted, and then running feet pounded on the sidewalk as whoever was out there tried to get away from the sound – or the thing responsible for the sound. Something heavy flew into the Talon building as though a tornado had kicked up in the middle of the night. Chloe went cold inside. She knew those sounds and there was only one tornado that chased lowlifes at this hour, Clark. Damn him. Why did he have to go red-and-blue-blurring here of all places?
She glanced at Davis. He was still asleep. With any luck this deadly pull toward her best friend didn’t work unless he was consciously aware of Clark’s presence. That wasn’t the only worry though. Her bag of groceries still lay on the table upstairs. If Clark came in and saw them, or gave the place one sweep of his x-ray vision . . .
Luck had apparently abandoned her a long time ago. Davis stirred and made a weak sound like something had gripped him from the inside. He bolted upright, and all of a sudden he was breathing hard, his hands white-knuckled where he balled them into fists and clutched at the blankets.
“Chloe . . .” His voice was rough, coming through clenched teeth. “It’s happening, Chloe. It wants to kill.” In the dark, she could see the muscles in his arms bulging where he wasn’t wearing his sweatshirt anymore. He was trying to hold on, trying to fight, as he must have that night in the alley with Jimmy, but from what he’d said fighting wouldn’t do any good unless she helped him.
“Clark’s outside,” she told Davis as she bolted up from her corner. Her first instinct was to run for the door and warn him. But the Destroyer inside Davis would come after her and Clark if she did and she was here to stand between the two of them and try this other way. If she could save Clark without the fight that would kill them both, if she could tame the thing inside Davis and save him too she had to take the chance.
She made her way to the bed. His face was paler than usual and when he turned to look at her his eyes were glaring red. They pleaded as his face contorted with pain and whatever rage the monster evidently felt. Everything about him pleaded for her to help him, even as he gnashed his teeth and turned his face away to hide the dark spots forming on his skin. His hands shook in the covers, and he braced himself as though knives were cutting through him from the inside.
He could kill her. Worse, if this didn’t work he could crash through the wall and kill Clark. What made him think anything she could do would be enough to stop him? She shouldn’t have trusted him. She couldn’t risk the world on his delusions. But she had no other choice now.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to sit behind him on the bed.
“Okay,” she sucked in a breath. She had to do this, somehow. She’d done it once before. Her hands settled on Davis’ shoulders and she could feel him straining, all rock hard muscle fighting with all his strength to keep the thing in. She could feel its strength too, bubbling under the surface like a force of nature that would stop at nothing to get out. His true nature, he’d said, but she didn’t believe it with the way he was fighting. And at the moment, well aware of its power and its hunger to destroy, she couldn’t blame Davis for doing whatever it took to send it back under the surface, for bringing it blood sacrifices to keep the monster sated in its labyrinth. The cost of letting it get hungry and tear its way out was too high. What did that make her? Theseus who slew the monster or Ariadne who helped him light the way?
She’d stopped it once, Chloe kept repeating to herself. She’d touched him, Davis had said. Her hands were sweating, but they tightened on his shoulders and she told herself she had to say something, something that would anchor Davis to her and keep the thing from overtaking him.
“Davis, you don’t want to do this.” Her voice sounded shrill and small and wasn’t steady enough to soothe anything, let alone a beast. She sucked in a breath and tried again. “You don’t want to hurt Clark.”
He shook his head that he didn’t. She knew he didn’t; he’d tried to warn Clark before he’d transformed in the cage. He made a heavy gulping sound as sweat beaded his forehead and he clenched his hands as though trying to hide something from her. This was agony for him, she could see that, and she was going to abandon him to it earlier and run to Clark. She crawled around to face him. Her throat was burning.
“Davis, look at me. You don’t want to hurt anyone. I know you. You help people.” She believed that, and as much as she tried she couldn’t really believe what he’d said about the murderer being his true nature when she’d seen so much evidence to the contrary. The person he’d been wasn’t a lie, the guy who cared for Bette and Oliver and brought her back to her fiancé despite his feelings for her, the guy who’d confessed he loved her. She didn’t want to lose that guy to this. She bit hard into her lip and choked out, “Davis, come back.”
The gray spots slowly dissolved into his soft fair skin and when he opened his eyes that he’d squeezed shut in pain they returned to their melting brown color. Her mouth fell open. A part of her had been afraid this claim that she calmed the monster was some desperate trick on his part to stay near her, but now that she’d seen it with her own eyes . . . Her touch was stronger than the most advanced alien science. Maybe she’d made the right choice to stay after all. For the first time, she felt that way. Maybe Davis was right too and there was something stronger out there than the Destroyer inside him. Wasn’t there supposed to be a god and wasn’t good supposed to be stronger than evil?
Davis was still breathing hard, and when the strain in him lessened he slumped against her shoulder. He was so heavy she had to put an arm around him to steady him. “I think it’s okay now,” she managed. She shouldn’t hold onto him like this, but she told herself she had to just in case Clark came back and she had to work her mysterious miracle again. A part of her knew Clark wouldn’t come back. One glimpse of the infamous Red-and-Blue Blur was usually enough to send his targets running.
Davis lifted his head from her shoulder once he caught his breath and turned to look at her, and just like the first time in the alley with Jimmy he had that stunned look on his face as though she were some kind of angel, only this time his eyes were wet.
Chloe should have gotten up at that moment, but she couldn’t. No one had ever gazed at her like she was their walking salvation before. He was transfixed, and for the first time she realized her heart was pounding and that she was breathing hard too. There was nothing like the adrenaline rush of a crisis averted, and this was one of the closest calls she’d ever face. She had to say something, break the spell before it led to . . . what?
“Any theories on what just happened?” It wasn’t her meteor ability. That worked by taking his pain into herself. There’d been no pain. Calming him hadn’t taken anything from her at all.
Davis didn’t lower his head in shame this time talking about what he was. The color of his eyes seemed to deepen and he looked as caught up in the rush as her. “Maybe whatever’s between us is enough to keep me human,” he breathed.
She shouldn’t let him talk like that or assume there was anything between them. As far as he knew she’d stayed to keep him and Clark from killing each other. But she couldn’t deny what she’d just seen with her own eyes and she couldn’t keep her fingers from brushing his face that she’d magically turned from white and distorted into handsome and chiseled again. So very, very handsome. Immortality had never looked so alluringly fragile.
Her mouth ended up on his and there was nothing reluctant about it. He made a sound like he was finally quenching a hunger he’d been dying of for a long time and she felt the urgency from him where the terror hadn’t quite let go His lips were soft – she remembered that from the first time he’d kissed her – and she hadn’t felt this kind of warmth in a long time. It should have scared her, letting him get this close, but he wasn’t part of the real world anymore where you had to think about consequences and moving too fast, and what they’d shared a moment ago threw them in intimate territory already. Going a little further didn’t seem to make a difference.
He pulled back to look at her, his fingertips hot where they’d tangled in her hair, and if he’d been amazed by what her touch had done before he was awe-struck now. He didn’t have to tell her he’d waited for this for a long time, and she didn’t have to ask if it was everything he’d hope for. His face told her it was everything and more.
“You had to have been sent to me,” he murmured in a thick voice, his eyes so fixed on hers there was no breaking his gaze. Chloe felt something warm flow through her. He believed this, a fact that had too much evidence behind it from him to ignore any longer. But he had to be grasping at straws by now, and who could trust the sanity of a man who knew eternal rest wasn’t an option? She’d been looking for a purpose since losing her job at the Planet. It couldn’t be this, saving one man. But if she saved him, she saved Clark and the world.
“I love you, Chloe,” Davis went on. “I don’t need you to love me back; I just need you to know how I feel.”
No. He needed her to know that he did feel. She had no doubt that he still wanted to find a way to end it all. Who needed the guilt of leaving someone behind the day he finally succeeded?
“Davis . . .” She didn’t know what she was going to say and he didn’t give her the chance anyway. His mouth found hers again and this time she was the one making soft sounds as the kiss steadily deepened and her lips parted under his.
He kissed her like he was trying to drink her in, and when the tip of her tongue pushed between his lips he shifted and lowered himself from the bed down onto his knees in front of her. He ended up between her thighs with his hands on either side of her, and his lips took their time straying from her mouth to her jaw and her neck. Chloe craned her head back. She hadn’t realized her hands had gripped his shirt, gathering it up in this sudden electric need for bare skin.
He stopped kissing her long enough for her to pull his shirt off, and when her hands ran over the muscles of his arms and his back with a curiosity she couldn’t help she knew just how many lines they were crossing. She should have put a stop to this, told him they couldn’t do this. She was here to help Clark, not fall under Davis’ seduction spell. But his hands were on the buttons of her shirt and the heat of his bare chest bled through the thin material. She wanted that heat. Worse, something was drawing her to it.
Davis had quick fingers. The buttons came undone and the shirt fell away. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath – laundry hadn’t been a priority these past few days – and she couldn’t help feeling vulnerable those eyes that swept over her and devoured. He didn’t say a word; his hands moved over her shoulders, down her arms, and felt huge and hot and strong when they reached her breasts. She let out a faint sound, arching into his touch, and then his mouth resumed its wonderful tingling slide over his skin. He sucked at the place where her neck met her shoulder, moved downward over her collarbone until his mouth settled on her breast. She tried not to jump at the wet heat of his tongue or the fingertips gliding down her back and slipping into the waistband of her pants. Her thighs slid a little further apart, and by the way he was touching her, tasting her skin like he worshipped her, she was pretty sure there wasn’t anywhere he wasn’t willing to put his mouth or his hands. She wasn’t ready to allow that, or maybe she was too impatient for that. Her lower body prickled with little stabs of anticipation and she didn’t need him to tenderly idolize her or coax her into this kicking boundaries aside one kiss at a time. She just needed to get closer.
Chloe pulled his head back up to hers and wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning all her weight into him. He drew her down into his lap, unbuttoning her pants with one hand as he turned the two of them around and pulled her with him all the way down to the floor.
She laid her head back on the ground, kicking the thin material off her legs as he crawled over her on all fours, the muscles of his bare arms bulging where his palms rested flat on the ground. He wasn’t touching her, but she could feel the want pulsing through him. It was there in his eyes. They shone with this powerful, predatory light that demanded, “give into me.” He’d always been . . . confrontational compared to certain other men in her life, and now that she couldn’t hide from what he wanted anymore she stared up at him like some helpless captive in a fairy tale, wondering what he was going to do now that he had her in his clutches. His face told her exactly what he was going to do, what Jimmy never could. He was going to make her beg one way or another for him to give her what she’d been running from all this time, and the worst thing was she was halfway there already.
She made a sound when his mouth came down on hers again, open and wet and grinding her head into the floor. It was almost rough, but not painful and not enough. Davis was crouched between her legs but she had to get him closer, get what she knew she’d wanted for a while now before she came to her senses.
Her hands went to his waist, unbuttoning his pants and tugging his zipper down. He was way past aroused, probably painfully, hard and pounding against her palm, and his self-control slipped when she pushed his jeans off his hips, dug her fingers into smooth, damp skin, and thrust her hips up to rub against him.
He was inside her a heartbeat later, and she couldn’t keep quiet then. Neither could he. Her body had to brace itself for the scalding shock and make room for him, and he threw his head back and made a sound in his throat like he’d caught fire. She dug her fingers into his forearms and held on tight when he started a rhythm. She didn’t care if she hurt him. A small part of her wanted to hurt him for not being what she thought he was – the perfect heroic guy who could make her forget about Clark and Jimmy and every other failure in her life. It wasn’t like she could really hurt him anyway in that muscular invulnerable body, not the way he’d crushed her. She clawed at him not to hold back and the friction between went from easy to deep and quick.
He wasn’t hurting her, just increasing the sharp ache inside her each time he pushed in. Maybe she wanted him to hurt her. It’d be easier that way. He was supposed to be the monster and she was supposed to be trapped here sacrificing herself for the good of the world. She wasn’t supposed to like this. She wasn’t supposed to wrap her legs around him, feel the sweat on her thighs, and stare up at him with her mouth open and dry on the verge of yelling something mortifying and totally unlike her such as “Come on, Davis! Fuck me stupid!” If he was too gentle she might have to face the fact that she did like it, that he was still Davis, the guy who held her when she cried, the guy she’d pulled the lever on but wasn’t ready to let go of.
It was as though he read the thought, or maybe something showed in her face. His movements slowed and his mouth melted with hers, perfectly tender now. He sank down on his elbows and her arms folded around him and his slid under her back gathering her close. Her breasts were crushed against the sticky heat of his chest and there was nothing but the closeness and the friction of warm sweat-damp skin. He wasn’t the captor from the story trying to force feelings into her; he just wanted to lose himself in her, hold onto something he believed was worth holding onto, and if she didn’t hold on to him too she was pretty sure she would fall apart right with him.
In that moment Clark didn’t matter, saving the world didn’t matter. Davis was bringing her dangerously close to the biggest climax of her life and all that mattered was that he didn’t stop.
When she came, the pleasure hit her like fireworks bursting deep inside her, one euphoric explosion after another. She closed her eyes and she couldn’t breathe and showers of sparks washed out everything behind her eyes. Her hands kept trying to cling but they were sweaty and slipping. He held her and kept going, like he was trying to wring every little drop of pleasure out of her already overloaded senses. He muttered her name in his soft velvet voice and then he was telling her not to move and he shook in her arms with such force she really was afraid he would break apart right there in her arms. Good thing he was indestructible.
He fell heavy and limp on top of her, his skin damp with sweat and his breath coming hard, just normal human weight and normal human exhaustion. Somewhere in his stupor he remembered that he was over six feet tall and all muscle and he eased off her, curling against her on the floor and staring at her with glazed dark eyes like she was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. He looked so calm, so hopeful. This is what he’d meant when he said stay with him. He’d been drowning in his own terror and pain all this time and he just wanted her to stop it.
Guilt crashed through the euphoric afterglow. They couldn’t have this, and the worst thing was none of the reasons were his fault. She wasn’t Beauty trapped in the dark castle with the monster desperate to break the curse; she was more like some idiotic Juliet who’d fallen for the wrong guy on the wrong side of Kryptonian Family Feud.
The unspoken laws of mistakes and one night stands didn’t have to kick in until the morning though. Chloe stayed where she was, let him curl closer and drape his arm over her. She closed her eyes with a soft sound when his mouth lazily descended on her neck, and before she knew it she was turning to face him, running her hands along his skin. Half her time here, half her in time in the real world. That's what it had to be now. No pomegranate seeds or spells necessary.
See? Isn't she awesomesauce? ^-^ Tell her so!
Seriously. IMHO, the best characterized err.basement fic ever. With plot! just too amazing for words. paraxdisepink captures Chloe, slight snark, all the inner conflict the purity and desperation of their feelings. It is seriously. hot. As in, you might combust.
by paraxdisepink at her lj.
5,720 words, m/nc-17, eternal
She crawled around to face him. Her throat was burning.
She felt like Beauty locked in the Beast’s castle, standing at the top of stairs in a place dark and colorless compared to her apartment above. Her groceries were still on the table outside. Anyone who wandered in and saw them would know she was missing. She listened for footsteps in the Talon above, but it wasn’t like her friends would go into a frenzy searching for her the instant Persephone dropped her bridle. The past few weeks had taught her that much. Sure, Clarkwhooshed in whenever the ever-burdened superhero needed a healthy dose of blonde sidekick, but it was well-past his bedtime and even all-powerful aliens needed their beauty rest.
Chloe took a deep breath. Speaking of all-powerful aliens, she couldn’t ignore the eyes on her back forever, tugging at her like he’d tied a string between the two of them. That was stretching it. Maybe he’d been built to take down a fellow Kryptonian, but he didn’t have some magnetic hypnotic power that could draw her to him against his will. He wasn’t Dracula or Hades or the Phantom for crying out loud. She had the mysterious power here, apparently, one he honestly believed could challenge fate and save the world. Maybe he’d banked on the fact that she couldn’t refuse giving it a try or maybe he’d just gone off the deep end grasping at straws thanks to Clark and his eternal optimism. Whatever the case, she was the one taking the gamble here and the one who had everything to lose.
The thought hardly gave her the boost of courage she needed, but she set her bag down anyway beside the door, clenched her jaw and started back down the stairs to where Davis waited.
His shoulders sagged where he stood in the shadows, and thank God he didn’t look so otherworldly anymore, just tired. She hadn’t realized how frozen he’d been standing until he let out his breath and sank down on the stairs. It had to be terrifying, thinking the one person close to you would abandon you because of something you couldn’t help. Was that what she had intended to do in her hurry to warn Clark, cut herself off from him and cold-heartedly work to find a way to take out this threat to her best friend for good? Davis was what he was, but there were two sides of him. He was more than the kind paramedic who saved people and cooked her dinner – she’d found that out in a pretty quick succession of realities breaking apart like one glass shattering after another – but he was also more than a monster with a mission to kill.
He offered her his hand when she came down to him. His skin was still warm; Chloe thought it would be cold after coming back from the dead. She didn’t know what else to do but let him pull her down on the steps beside him. Silence settled over the two of them like a blanket when she let go of his hand, and she took her time studying the heap of stuff cluttering the basement around them. You’d think she would have noticed the moving truck bringing all this here, but maybe all of it wasn’t his or maybe Oliver had done it – he’d said something about having someone clean out Davis’ apartment. Who or how didn’t matter anymore though. Davis was here now and he couldn’t go anywhere else if what he said was true.
He wasn’t in any big hurry to talk, but she could hear him breathing beside her and she could feel him just a few inches from brushing her shoulder where they sat side-by-side, giving off heat and that brooding vibe that made Clark seem cheerful by comparison. After knowing Davis for months, she’d gotten used to his moody silences. She used to think he was a little too old for the emo thing, but now that the awful pieces had come together she had to give him credit for not being raving mad by now. How many people would continue to function after they’d been told it was their destiny to kill and destroy the world?
A part of her warned not to sympathize. Serial killers preyed on sympathy and sob stories weren’t excuses. But your average Jack the Ripper didn’t have a literal monster inside they couldn’t control. Davis was more like a Kryptonian time bomb struggling to deactivate the trigger, and he had destiny working against him. She remembered needing a personal bomb squad once, but she held herself away from him anyway so they didn’t touch. She closed her eyes and saw him in that Kryptonite cell again, revisited her own shock at what she’d done on instinct and that desperation to say a hundred things before it was too late. It’s like they said, when you couldn’t talk, you communicated. Funny how she couldn’t bring herself to speak now. It was easy to pour your heart out and forgive someone and beg forgiveness when you thought they were dying. But things weren’t washed away so easily when they rose from the grave invulnerable and were sitting right next to you. There were the murders, the threat to Clark, that red-eyed thing he’d turned into in that cell, and the fact that the guy beside her now wasn’t the guy she thought she knew. The Davis who saved lives and promised to always be there was a mask for something that should only exist in a nightmare, and now that the illusion had crumbled she had to make sense of what lay underneath.
“This thing you say I do,” she broke the silence. “How does it work?”
He lowered his head and stared at his hands clasped between his knees. He didn’t like talking about what he was, the other part of him. In fact, he looked a step away from crumbling himself, and the misery in his face made one thing clear between them: if he had any choice in all this he wouldn’t choose this thing with her now, whatever it was, or a life without the monster. He’d choose to die and stay that way. He’d already chosen death once rather than be with her. She couldn’t blame him – no one would want the nightmare he was in – but that didn’t make it any easier to stomach.
“I don’t know,” he shook his head. “It first happened that night in the ally with Jimmy. You . . . you touched me and stopped the beast inside from coming out. I was human again.”
He looked at her with some of the same amazement she remembered from that night. She had to be the world’s most clueless idiot. She’d heard him growling then and she’d seen something come over his face in the shadows. How could the queen of the weird and unexplained have thought Davis was just thankful to be rescued from a major head injury? But it was like she’d told Clark, she’d been in denial. No one as left out in the cold as she’d been lately wanted to face the fact there was something wrong the one person she could talk to. It didn’t matter anymore anyway. The truth was out now and the question was what to do about it.
Davis drew another breath. He seemed to want to talk now. Considering the secret he’d kept she couldn’t blame him for wanting to unburden himself. “The things I’ve done, Chloe . . .” he said, “I never thought any part of me would be capable of killing people. It’s like I was at war with the beast inside me and the only thing that made sense was hurting as few people as possible. I tried not to – I tried pills, whatever I thought could control it. I just . . .”
He trailed off. War was a good analogy, or an alarming one considering his “father” was the infamous General Zod. War had casualties – like Lex and Sebastian – and soldiers did what was ruthlessly necessary to stop a worse thing from happening. Or maybe Davis wasn’t the soldier fighting on the side of the good guys while his alter ego had a whole other operative. Maybe she was making excuses. Maybe he was the collaborator dancing with the Devil to save his own ass.
“Davis, I don’t think anyone can say what they’d have done in your position.” That was the truth, if nothing else. He’d said the monster inside was his true nature, but as he’d died he’d reverted back to Davis again. What did that mean and did it matter? Weren’t the good guys supposed to help someone who wanted help regardless? But that was Clark’s way, not hers. She prided herself on a more pragmatic way of doing things. But then why was she here?
Clark said they had to talk about what she’d done. But she had nothing for Clark on the subject beyond cold reasoning. He didn’t want to hear what the Davis she’d known had meant to her, that he’d been the only person she could lean on lately, and was it really Clark she owed the explanation? She remembered Davis’ face as he’d laid his hand against hers through the glass. He’d looked at peace, like he could rest now that his secret was out and she was still there. That wasn’t a brutal serial killer. That was a man who wanted to be seen as anything but, paying whatever price necessary to stop the thing inside him.
Chloe swallowed hard against the lump rising in her throat. She’d done enough mourning in the time since, what she hadn’t done is get the truth off her chest and better now while she had the chance than letting it gnaw at her for the rest of her life. “You know, Davis, no one’s life is worth putting the world at risk.” Hers wasn’t. She’d already told Clark that. “But seeing you die . . .”
Her voice cracked and something in him cracked right along with it. “I’m sorry.” His hand came to her back and he said it in the soft Davis voice, the one he used when he told her she could talk to him or that he’d always be there. A part of her wanted to snap at him not to touch her. He’d lied, let her think he was some knight in a blue uniform while he spent his free time killing people. She shouldn’t trust a word he said, let alone let him get this close. But the rest of her ran through the ways the murders weren’t his fault, and instead of seeing him as the monster she couldn’t help feeling the monster was taking him away from her and she wasn’t ready to let go yet.
Her head ended up on his shoulder, and old habits dying hard, his arm wrapped around her. She’d spent a lot of time in his arms lately, usually crying about being the universe’s perpetual soccer ball. She’d felt safe there, and despite everything she knew about him that feeling refused to disappear.
She shifted just enough to look at him. His face was only a few inches from hers practically screaming his lurid exposé of horrific violence, trauma, and loss. Loss, that was just it. She definitely felt like she’d lost something. Chloe bit her lip and swallowed again.
“So just when I’m starting to think I’ve found the right guy, he turns out to be this mass-murdering alien destroyer set to kill my best friend.”
She shouldn’t have said it out loud; his features fell and he looked away, and when his eyelids fluttered and he bit hard into lip she thought he would break down and cry. She couldn’t blame him, after all what was he really but another victim of the apocalyptic soap opera on Krypton? How many had there been now, counting the endless numbers of meteor freaks in Smallville and Metropolis?
But he wasn’t like them. He was a weapon and it was dangerous refusing to see him that way. She tried not to let herself be too aware of the warm arm around her. She could see that it wouldn’t be easy keeping a clear head staying down here with him.
She stayed in the basement with him that night, but she didn’t sleep. She told herself she couldn’t trust him that much yet, so she sat in the corner and tried to straighten some of the mess around her to avoid tripping in the dark. It wasn’t exactly the type of sleepover where you busted out the Ouija bored and gave each other makeovers, or played Truth or Dare so he could ask embarrassing questions such as “how many times have you faked an orgasm with Jimmy?” It wasn’t that type of sleepover at all. Davis crawled in the little cot piled with stuff and tried to rest while she sat and stared at nothing.
He actually fell asleep after an hour, and that gave her time to work out the details of how to keep this little arrangement from blowing up in her face. She had to keep him and Clark apart, that was the first priority, and if she told Clark he might be right about finding another way to avoid the apocalyptic Kryptonian showdown he would huff and puff and say she was playing with fire and making excuses to continue seeing Davis. As for Davis, she could trust him far enough to stay in the basement while she played Watchtower – he had no other choice – but what about –?
A crash echoed from outside. Someone shouted, and then running feet pounded on the sidewalk as whoever was out there tried to get away from the sound – or the thing responsible for the sound. Something heavy flew into the Talon building as though a tornado had kicked up in the middle of the night. Chloe went cold inside. She knew those sounds and there was only one tornado that chased lowlifes at this hour, Clark. Damn him. Why did he have to go red-and-blue-blurring here of all places?
She glanced at Davis. He was still asleep. With any luck this deadly pull toward her best friend didn’t work unless he was consciously aware of Clark’s presence. That wasn’t the only worry though. Her bag of groceries still lay on the table upstairs. If Clark came in and saw them, or gave the place one sweep of his x-ray vision . . .
Luck had apparently abandoned her a long time ago. Davis stirred and made a weak sound like something had gripped him from the inside. He bolted upright, and all of a sudden he was breathing hard, his hands white-knuckled where he balled them into fists and clutched at the blankets.
“Chloe . . .” His voice was rough, coming through clenched teeth. “It’s happening, Chloe. It wants to kill.” In the dark, she could see the muscles in his arms bulging where he wasn’t wearing his sweatshirt anymore. He was trying to hold on, trying to fight, as he must have that night in the alley with Jimmy, but from what he’d said fighting wouldn’t do any good unless she helped him.
“Clark’s outside,” she told Davis as she bolted up from her corner. Her first instinct was to run for the door and warn him. But the Destroyer inside Davis would come after her and Clark if she did and she was here to stand between the two of them and try this other way. If she could save Clark without the fight that would kill them both, if she could tame the thing inside Davis and save him too she had to take the chance.
She made her way to the bed. His face was paler than usual and when he turned to look at her his eyes were glaring red. They pleaded as his face contorted with pain and whatever rage the monster evidently felt. Everything about him pleaded for her to help him, even as he gnashed his teeth and turned his face away to hide the dark spots forming on his skin. His hands shook in the covers, and he braced himself as though knives were cutting through him from the inside.
He could kill her. Worse, if this didn’t work he could crash through the wall and kill Clark. What made him think anything she could do would be enough to stop him? She shouldn’t have trusted him. She couldn’t risk the world on his delusions. But she had no other choice now.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to sit behind him on the bed.
“Okay,” she sucked in a breath. She had to do this, somehow. She’d done it once before. Her hands settled on Davis’ shoulders and she could feel him straining, all rock hard muscle fighting with all his strength to keep the thing in. She could feel its strength too, bubbling under the surface like a force of nature that would stop at nothing to get out. His true nature, he’d said, but she didn’t believe it with the way he was fighting. And at the moment, well aware of its power and its hunger to destroy, she couldn’t blame Davis for doing whatever it took to send it back under the surface, for bringing it blood sacrifices to keep the monster sated in its labyrinth. The cost of letting it get hungry and tear its way out was too high. What did that make her? Theseus who slew the monster or Ariadne who helped him light the way?
She’d stopped it once, Chloe kept repeating to herself. She’d touched him, Davis had said. Her hands were sweating, but they tightened on his shoulders and she told herself she had to say something, something that would anchor Davis to her and keep the thing from overtaking him.
“Davis, you don’t want to do this.” Her voice sounded shrill and small and wasn’t steady enough to soothe anything, let alone a beast. She sucked in a breath and tried again. “You don’t want to hurt Clark.”
He shook his head that he didn’t. She knew he didn’t; he’d tried to warn Clark before he’d transformed in the cage. He made a heavy gulping sound as sweat beaded his forehead and he clenched his hands as though trying to hide something from her. This was agony for him, she could see that, and she was going to abandon him to it earlier and run to Clark. She crawled around to face him. Her throat was burning.
“Davis, look at me. You don’t want to hurt anyone. I know you. You help people.” She believed that, and as much as she tried she couldn’t really believe what he’d said about the murderer being his true nature when she’d seen so much evidence to the contrary. The person he’d been wasn’t a lie, the guy who cared for Bette and Oliver and brought her back to her fiancé despite his feelings for her, the guy who’d confessed he loved her. She didn’t want to lose that guy to this. She bit hard into her lip and choked out, “Davis, come back.”
The gray spots slowly dissolved into his soft fair skin and when he opened his eyes that he’d squeezed shut in pain they returned to their melting brown color. Her mouth fell open. A part of her had been afraid this claim that she calmed the monster was some desperate trick on his part to stay near her, but now that she’d seen it with her own eyes . . . Her touch was stronger than the most advanced alien science. Maybe she’d made the right choice to stay after all. For the first time, she felt that way. Maybe Davis was right too and there was something stronger out there than the Destroyer inside him. Wasn’t there supposed to be a god and wasn’t good supposed to be stronger than evil?
Davis was still breathing hard, and when the strain in him lessened he slumped against her shoulder. He was so heavy she had to put an arm around him to steady him. “I think it’s okay now,” she managed. She shouldn’t hold onto him like this, but she told herself she had to just in case Clark came back and she had to work her mysterious miracle again. A part of her knew Clark wouldn’t come back. One glimpse of the infamous Red-and-Blue Blur was usually enough to send his targets running.
Davis lifted his head from her shoulder once he caught his breath and turned to look at her, and just like the first time in the alley with Jimmy he had that stunned look on his face as though she were some kind of angel, only this time his eyes were wet.
Chloe should have gotten up at that moment, but she couldn’t. No one had ever gazed at her like she was their walking salvation before. He was transfixed, and for the first time she realized her heart was pounding and that she was breathing hard too. There was nothing like the adrenaline rush of a crisis averted, and this was one of the closest calls she’d ever face. She had to say something, break the spell before it led to . . . what?
“Any theories on what just happened?” It wasn’t her meteor ability. That worked by taking his pain into herself. There’d been no pain. Calming him hadn’t taken anything from her at all.
Davis didn’t lower his head in shame this time talking about what he was. The color of his eyes seemed to deepen and he looked as caught up in the rush as her. “Maybe whatever’s between us is enough to keep me human,” he breathed.
She shouldn’t let him talk like that or assume there was anything between them. As far as he knew she’d stayed to keep him and Clark from killing each other. But she couldn’t deny what she’d just seen with her own eyes and she couldn’t keep her fingers from brushing his face that she’d magically turned from white and distorted into handsome and chiseled again. So very, very handsome. Immortality had never looked so alluringly fragile.
Her mouth ended up on his and there was nothing reluctant about it. He made a sound like he was finally quenching a hunger he’d been dying of for a long time and she felt the urgency from him where the terror hadn’t quite let go His lips were soft – she remembered that from the first time he’d kissed her – and she hadn’t felt this kind of warmth in a long time. It should have scared her, letting him get this close, but he wasn’t part of the real world anymore where you had to think about consequences and moving too fast, and what they’d shared a moment ago threw them in intimate territory already. Going a little further didn’t seem to make a difference.
He pulled back to look at her, his fingertips hot where they’d tangled in her hair, and if he’d been amazed by what her touch had done before he was awe-struck now. He didn’t have to tell her he’d waited for this for a long time, and she didn’t have to ask if it was everything he’d hope for. His face told her it was everything and more.
“You had to have been sent to me,” he murmured in a thick voice, his eyes so fixed on hers there was no breaking his gaze. Chloe felt something warm flow through her. He believed this, a fact that had too much evidence behind it from him to ignore any longer. But he had to be grasping at straws by now, and who could trust the sanity of a man who knew eternal rest wasn’t an option? She’d been looking for a purpose since losing her job at the Planet. It couldn’t be this, saving one man. But if she saved him, she saved Clark and the world.
“I love you, Chloe,” Davis went on. “I don’t need you to love me back; I just need you to know how I feel.”
No. He needed her to know that he did feel. She had no doubt that he still wanted to find a way to end it all. Who needed the guilt of leaving someone behind the day he finally succeeded?
“Davis . . .” She didn’t know what she was going to say and he didn’t give her the chance anyway. His mouth found hers again and this time she was the one making soft sounds as the kiss steadily deepened and her lips parted under his.
He kissed her like he was trying to drink her in, and when the tip of her tongue pushed between his lips he shifted and lowered himself from the bed down onto his knees in front of her. He ended up between her thighs with his hands on either side of her, and his lips took their time straying from her mouth to her jaw and her neck. Chloe craned her head back. She hadn’t realized her hands had gripped his shirt, gathering it up in this sudden electric need for bare skin.
He stopped kissing her long enough for her to pull his shirt off, and when her hands ran over the muscles of his arms and his back with a curiosity she couldn’t help she knew just how many lines they were crossing. She should have put a stop to this, told him they couldn’t do this. She was here to help Clark, not fall under Davis’ seduction spell. But his hands were on the buttons of her shirt and the heat of his bare chest bled through the thin material. She wanted that heat. Worse, something was drawing her to it.
Davis had quick fingers. The buttons came undone and the shirt fell away. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath – laundry hadn’t been a priority these past few days – and she couldn’t help feeling vulnerable those eyes that swept over her and devoured. He didn’t say a word; his hands moved over her shoulders, down her arms, and felt huge and hot and strong when they reached her breasts. She let out a faint sound, arching into his touch, and then his mouth resumed its wonderful tingling slide over his skin. He sucked at the place where her neck met her shoulder, moved downward over her collarbone until his mouth settled on her breast. She tried not to jump at the wet heat of his tongue or the fingertips gliding down her back and slipping into the waistband of her pants. Her thighs slid a little further apart, and by the way he was touching her, tasting her skin like he worshipped her, she was pretty sure there wasn’t anywhere he wasn’t willing to put his mouth or his hands. She wasn’t ready to allow that, or maybe she was too impatient for that. Her lower body prickled with little stabs of anticipation and she didn’t need him to tenderly idolize her or coax her into this kicking boundaries aside one kiss at a time. She just needed to get closer.
Chloe pulled his head back up to hers and wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning all her weight into him. He drew her down into his lap, unbuttoning her pants with one hand as he turned the two of them around and pulled her with him all the way down to the floor.
She laid her head back on the ground, kicking the thin material off her legs as he crawled over her on all fours, the muscles of his bare arms bulging where his palms rested flat on the ground. He wasn’t touching her, but she could feel the want pulsing through him. It was there in his eyes. They shone with this powerful, predatory light that demanded, “give into me.” He’d always been . . . confrontational compared to certain other men in her life, and now that she couldn’t hide from what he wanted anymore she stared up at him like some helpless captive in a fairy tale, wondering what he was going to do now that he had her in his clutches. His face told her exactly what he was going to do, what Jimmy never could. He was going to make her beg one way or another for him to give her what she’d been running from all this time, and the worst thing was she was halfway there already.
She made a sound when his mouth came down on hers again, open and wet and grinding her head into the floor. It was almost rough, but not painful and not enough. Davis was crouched between her legs but she had to get him closer, get what she knew she’d wanted for a while now before she came to her senses.
Her hands went to his waist, unbuttoning his pants and tugging his zipper down. He was way past aroused, probably painfully, hard and pounding against her palm, and his self-control slipped when she pushed his jeans off his hips, dug her fingers into smooth, damp skin, and thrust her hips up to rub against him.
He was inside her a heartbeat later, and she couldn’t keep quiet then. Neither could he. Her body had to brace itself for the scalding shock and make room for him, and he threw his head back and made a sound in his throat like he’d caught fire. She dug her fingers into his forearms and held on tight when he started a rhythm. She didn’t care if she hurt him. A small part of her wanted to hurt him for not being what she thought he was – the perfect heroic guy who could make her forget about Clark and Jimmy and every other failure in her life. It wasn’t like she could really hurt him anyway in that muscular invulnerable body, not the way he’d crushed her. She clawed at him not to hold back and the friction between went from easy to deep and quick.
He wasn’t hurting her, just increasing the sharp ache inside her each time he pushed in. Maybe she wanted him to hurt her. It’d be easier that way. He was supposed to be the monster and she was supposed to be trapped here sacrificing herself for the good of the world. She wasn’t supposed to like this. She wasn’t supposed to wrap her legs around him, feel the sweat on her thighs, and stare up at him with her mouth open and dry on the verge of yelling something mortifying and totally unlike her such as “Come on, Davis! Fuck me stupid!” If he was too gentle she might have to face the fact that she did like it, that he was still Davis, the guy who held her when she cried, the guy she’d pulled the lever on but wasn’t ready to let go of.
It was as though he read the thought, or maybe something showed in her face. His movements slowed and his mouth melted with hers, perfectly tender now. He sank down on his elbows and her arms folded around him and his slid under her back gathering her close. Her breasts were crushed against the sticky heat of his chest and there was nothing but the closeness and the friction of warm sweat-damp skin. He wasn’t the captor from the story trying to force feelings into her; he just wanted to lose himself in her, hold onto something he believed was worth holding onto, and if she didn’t hold on to him too she was pretty sure she would fall apart right with him.
In that moment Clark didn’t matter, saving the world didn’t matter. Davis was bringing her dangerously close to the biggest climax of her life and all that mattered was that he didn’t stop.
When she came, the pleasure hit her like fireworks bursting deep inside her, one euphoric explosion after another. She closed her eyes and she couldn’t breathe and showers of sparks washed out everything behind her eyes. Her hands kept trying to cling but they were sweaty and slipping. He held her and kept going, like he was trying to wring every little drop of pleasure out of her already overloaded senses. He muttered her name in his soft velvet voice and then he was telling her not to move and he shook in her arms with such force she really was afraid he would break apart right there in her arms. Good thing he was indestructible.
He fell heavy and limp on top of her, his skin damp with sweat and his breath coming hard, just normal human weight and normal human exhaustion. Somewhere in his stupor he remembered that he was over six feet tall and all muscle and he eased off her, curling against her on the floor and staring at her with glazed dark eyes like she was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. He looked so calm, so hopeful. This is what he’d meant when he said stay with him. He’d been drowning in his own terror and pain all this time and he just wanted her to stop it.
Guilt crashed through the euphoric afterglow. They couldn’t have this, and the worst thing was none of the reasons were his fault. She wasn’t Beauty trapped in the dark castle with the monster desperate to break the curse; she was more like some idiotic Juliet who’d fallen for the wrong guy on the wrong side of Kryptonian Family Feud.
The unspoken laws of mistakes and one night stands didn’t have to kick in until the morning though. Chloe stayed where she was, let him curl closer and drape his arm over her. She closed her eyes with a soft sound when his mouth lazily descended on her neck, and before she knew it she was turning to face him, running her hands along his skin. Half her time here, half her in time in the real world. That's what it had to be now. No pomegranate seeds or spells necessary.
See? Isn't she awesomesauce? ^-^ Tell her so!
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!
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. ^-^
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