Reccing Notes: It's ending. noooo! There is no sudden lightswitch, or magic fix. We are presented with a compelling and heartbreaking journey with Chloe and Davis as the cancer worsens.
Despite her allergy to happyhappy endings, it won't break your heart completely. Maybe only threequarters of the way. There is some hope.
by xxamlaxx at her livejournal
3625 words, m/nc-17(for one scene), beast
She’s heard that death is not an end, only another beginning, but her death is quite literally the end, to everything.
----
“Please Chloe.” Davis squeezes her hand, brings it to his cheek and holds it against his skin, against the stubble forming on his jaw. Davis hasn’t shaved in three days, hasn’t slept in two, hasn’t done much more than fret and worry and hurt and somehow, in some sympathetic, miserable way, she blames herself for all of this. For hurting him, for the cells inside her brain that mutate to poison in the space inside her skull.
“Okay.” She sighs, gives in, lets the resistance fall way to consent, but the only thing she can feel is the throbbing inside her skull, pulsing with every beat of her heart. Her biological clock is ticking, losing days, minutes, seconds, three weeks to get out of South America and now at best she has three months before she leaves Davis alone in the world he is destined to destroy.
“Mr. Washington, I discussed this with you over the phone.” This doctor is a woman, five feet and nine inches tall in heels. “I can’t begin chemotherapy for your wife. You don’t even have an official record of her diagnoses.”
“We were on our honeymoon in South America; we went to a small, poor clinic. Please.” Davis takes her hand again, his eyes gleam wetly. “We just got married.”
“Alright.” Dr. Dilan sighs and leaves the room, returns a few minutes later, carrying an IV. “This is going to be unofficial; I could lose my license for this.” She extends her arm, and winces when a stainless steel needle pierces her skin. “Are you sure you want me to start it? If the tumors are as bad as they seem, it isn’t going to make much of a difference, and the side effects…”
“I’m a paramedic.” Davis starts the IV drip himself, hands the doctor a wad of cash Chloe doesn’t remember seeing.
Hours later, Davis holds her hair back while she knees in front of a toilet in a small motel in Texas and retches until her entire body burns and there’s nothing left in her stomach but bile and air.
----
She finds herself fading in and out of existence, periods of time where the world is only blurs of color, snatches of conversation, the coolness of porcelain gripped between her fingers, hot bile in her throat. Every three days Davis bribes another doctor, in another state, holds her free hand while IV’s and drugs are injected in her arm, course through her blood and poison her.
She loses her first clumps of hair in run down hotel fifteen hours from the Kansas state lines, stares at the strands of blonde clutched in her fingers and laughs until she cries. By the time they drive into Metropolis, she’s as bald as Lex, and a doctor at the run down clinic in the worst part off the city they can find tells her he’s never seen so many large brain tumors in a patient’s head before.
“I want to see Clark.” It’s the first day in a long time she feels like herself, like who she was before, before Brainiac and Doomsday, when Clark was Kal-El and Davis was only Davis.
“Are you sure?” Davis moves to support her when she stands, steadies her with hands on her hips as she sways, dizzy and sick and nauseous all at once.
“Two and a half months Davis, if we’re lucky.” Time has never been her friend but now it’s her mortal enemy. Time laughs and teases, holds its eternity in her face like a shiny toy that will never be hers. Time is and will always be and she is nothing more than a small, insignificant blip that will fade shortly before mankind does, before the world sinks into permanent darkness that Time will document and disregard. “Chemo isn’t working; Clark is just about the only chance I have.” Something inside her twists blackly, because the logical part of her brain that hasn’t transformed into malignant goo knows that Clark has saved her more times than he can count but now his strength and abilities are useless. She is doomed just as Davis is, cursed in a different way, cursed to end the world with the end of her life while he is cursed to end it with the continuation of his. Antipodes and antithesis and yet somehow so interconnected she can’t tell where Davis’ life and her life separate.
“We’ll go tomorrow.” Davis tries to guide her to bed, to sit, to rest, to simply be, be with him.
“No.” She shakes her head, and everything goes blurry, a swirl of shapes, vicious, sharp pounding in her head, a ringing in her ears; the sound of chirping birds, singing, singing of her impending death. She remembers her first day of kindergarten and the class parakeet, Tweeters, a bright green and gray bird that ate seeds from the palm of her hand and stood on her fingertips. The day her mother left she went to school that day and opened the door to the parakeet’s cage, watched him fly off into the sky and wished that he could find her mom and bring her back to her, clutched in his tiny talons. “We’re going right now.”
“It’s nine thirty.” Davis points to the hotel alarm clock.
“Then it’s nine thirty, get in the car, or I’m going to drive it myself.”
Davis grabs the keys off the nightstand.
----
“Chloe?” Clark hugs her, crushes her against his chest, strong arms and firm muscle, familiar and foreign in one moment. He holds her as though she’ll float away if she doesn’t, as though she isn’t something completely tangible, a shell of herself filled with helium, a ghost flickering between visible and invisible, whole and broken.
“Hi Clark.” She says, and the words escape her mouth as a sigh, a hopeless, dejected, guilty utterance. Clark hasn’t changed since she left, however long ago that was. She can’t remember anymore, time and life are one endless stretch of road behind her, and she’s too focused on the giant chasm visible in her very distant future to look back.
“What happened to you?” Her clothes hang off her bones; she’s drowning in fabric, two sizes too thin and twenty pounds underweight. He glares at Davis, who stands solemnly behind her on the porch, lips pressed together in a thin line.
“Brain tumors, ironic isn’t it? You save my brain from Brainiac and then I get cancer.” She laughs, a bitter sound, something hollow in her throat, sharp where a piece of her sanity breaks loose, cracks and crumbles, broken courage at her feet.
“Oh no.” Clark pulls her to him again, squeezes her so tight, squeezes her like he thinks he can squeeze the cancer out of her with one embrace. “Don’t worry; you’re going to be fine. I’m going to call Oliver and he’ll call the best doctors in the world and you’re going to be fine.”
“After half a dozen rounds of chemo, I’m beginning to think that modern medicine is useless.”
“Don’t say that Chloe. I’ll fix you, I promise, I always do.” Something sparkles in his eyes, something blue and desperate and needy and suddenly the world is just a bit more painful. He loves her and he’s only recently come to terms with it. She wants to laugh again, because she’s always wanted him to look at her like that and now she feels nothing, not even a brief flutter of excitement in her belly. All she feels is pity and sadness and fresh guilt.
“I think pulling Brainiac out of my brain is what caused this.” She says to break the silence, to break that look, that tears her heart into pieces she doesn’t want to have to put back together. She gave up loving him when she was young and naive, when everything in her world was Clark and she was just so damn grateful to be needed, to be special to someone.
“I’ll go to the fortress right now, maybe there’s something there.” Clark kisses her forehead, but self-hatred and blame are heavy in the corners of his mouth.
A rush of wind, and Davis guides her back to the car.
----
Her brain is dying. Scrambling itself into a mass of goo and cells and thoughts. She forgets things, chunks of time, finds herself staring at the wall, Davis’ face so close to hers his breath mists warmly across her cheeks, soothing her with words, stroking the curves of her jaw.
She looks into the mirror early one morning and the face that stares back isn’t hers. It’s the face of a stranger, pale, gaunt, large, sunken green eyes. That isn’t her, isn’t Chloe. It’s someone dying, someone wearing her skin, or her wearing someone else’s skin, living just beneath a stranger’s epidermis. It’s only a game of dress up and pretend like after her mother left and she spent hours in her closet, standing in her mom’s high heeled shoes.
She’s just a little girl in her Mommy’s shoes and she laughs, throws back her head and laughs, primal and giddy. She looks down but her feet are bare, she’s lost Mommy’s shoes and lost her hair but she has to have hair. Has to have it somewhere, she doesn’t see scissors so it has to be there somewhere, has to exist because hair can’t just not exist, not the hair on her head that is just like the hair Mommy has. Mommy’s hair is so long and so pretty and Mommy lets her braid it sometimes and then Mommy does her hair too. She needs to find her hair because it’s like Mommy’s and Mommy is gone so now it’s all she has.
She digs her nails into her scalp, into the fake baldness. Her hair is there underneath; she can feel it, feel it through her nails that aren’t long like Mommy’s or as pretty because Mommy says she’ll spill the polish all over the floor. She presses her fingers in and scrapes, has to find her hair, needs to find her hair, it’s there, it can’t not be there but then her fingers are covered in red. Nail polish on her head and Mommy was right, she spilled it because she isn’t big enough but she still has to find her hair. She scrapes again and digs and the fake baldness doesn’t go away.
It’s Clark who finds her afterwards, bald and bloodied on the bathroom floor.
----
“Chloe.” Clark smells like desperation when he visits her late one Sunday afternoon. It’s possibly her last Sunday, if the timeframe is correct, if her life span can truly be calculated by a doctor with a fuzzy MRI and a frown deeply etched into the corners of his mouth. “I’ve done everything I can think of but…” Clark crumples, shatters like a piece of glass, molds into her, big arms sliding around her waist, burying his face in the crook of her neck like a child. His breath moves hot across her skin, a heated tickle, and Davis watches from the kitchen, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, fingers smelling like grease and salt and soap.
“It’s okay Clark.” It is okay, it’s natural, it’s nearing the end of the cycle of birth and life and death, it’s the candle of her life burning down to the wick, just a misshapen puddle of wax hardening in the darkness. She’s accepted her own mortality, lets it settle hot and sour in her stomach, but the guilt rises in her throat like bile, bubbles up and pops. Davis is going to destroy the world and it is entirely her fault, because her brain is weak, her cells malignant, everything inside her skull is mush and outside she’s nothing more than a withered shell of herself with bandages around her scalp.
“No Chloe, it’s not, I’m supposed to save you. I’m supposed to save you.”
“You can’t save everyone Clark.” He can’t save her, no one can; the pain inside her head and in her soul tells her so. “It’s almost six; you should get to work before Lois sends out a search party for you.” She touches his forehead, his nose, the collar of his shirt, feels skin and cotton.
“I’ll come back to see you tomorrow. Bye Chloe.” Clark kisses her cheek, and she knows there won’t be a tomorrow. This is the way her world ends and it is surprisingly anticlimactic. But after her world comes the world and the old Chloe inside her, the one who loves fresh brewed coffee and warming her skin in the sun won’t let it end.
“I won’t give up Chloe.” Davis settles beside her on the couch, hands damp with dishwater, redolent of strong smelling orange soap.
“I know you won’t Davis.”
“How are you feeling?” He lays the back of his hand on her forehead, presses his fingers lightly into her throat, checking her lymph glands.
“Fine.”
What she doesn’t tell him is that she hasn’t been able to see more than blurry shapes and shades of grey for weeks.
----
Everything she’s capable of seeing is bathed in faint, early morning light when she wakes, flexes her muscles beneath the covers, wriggles her toes just to be sure she’s still alive.
“You’re awake.” Davis sticks his head out of the bathroom, a bleary outline, white shaving cream on the lower half of his face.
“You’re…naked?” She thinks he smiles at her, and she assumes the flash of movement she can see is Davis bringing the razor down his chin.
“I’m wearing pants.” He laughs, a warm, soothing sound, low in the hollow of his throat. “I had to go to the store; they usually frown on naked grocery shopping.”
“The store?” For the last…however many months it’s been, all the days, every headache, each day of dread and responsibility, Davis was never able to leave her. And now, now that he is going to have to leave her, his reason for needing her has gone away.
“Yeah, I…I can go outside without you.” She knows she should smile, should be happy, happy for him, but a part of her twists blackly, because it’s easier to believe her death has an impact, some kind of noble, last ditch effort to try and save the world, rather than the knowledge that once she’s gone she’s only going to sink into oblivion, gone from memory as her flesh and bones are slowly eaten deep inside the earth. “I think it knows Chloe.” Davis rushes to her then, sits on the edge of the mattress, shaving cream dripping off his skin, a splotch of foamy white landing on the back of her hand.
“Knows what Davis?” She manages to find his face, to cup it, fingers sliding slick through shaving cream.
“That it might only have to wait a little while longer before there’s nothing left that can stop it.” Davis nuzzles his cheeks against the palms of her hands, shaving cream dripping off in plops that splatter across the blankets. “And once it can’t be stopped Chloe, I pray to God that I don’t come back.” She’s heard that death is not an end, only another beginning, but her death is quite literally the end, to everything.
“So this is the way the world ends huh?” She breathes into him, across his mouth, onto his skin, kisses him in an awkward movement, touching mouths in one, hesitant press of flesh and certainty. He tastes like shaving cream, saliva, and toothpaste, sour and bitter in his mouth, on his tongue, tasting strongly of desperation and hopelessness, acceptance of what he’s always tried to resist. Davis believes in God and the Devil, heaven and hell, and she can’t imagine what it feels like to be your own Devil, trapped in your own personal hell.
“It seems that way. I’m gonna go finish shaving.” Davis kisses the center of her palm, the sheets rustle as he begins to stand.
“Don’t. Say with me.” She reaches for him, misses, fists her hands in the comforter instead.
“Okay.” He stretches out beside her, smears shaving cream on the pillows. “Are you feeling sick?” She shakes her head; the tumors inside her skull seem to throb from it, aching from the tip of her head down to her toes.
“Not at the moment.” She trails her hand down his chest, over the planes of warm, smooth muscle, touching him softly under his third rib, where he’s ticklish.
“Chloe, no.” He pushes her hand gently away, shakes his head, his face blurring in and out of focus, from color to grey.
“What? You can’t sleep with a girl without hair? You are so shallow.” She teases, tickling him again, walking her fingers along his ribcage, down and down and down until he inhales sharply, draws his hips backwards and shivers.
“Chloe, I can’t, you’re sick.” Davis treats her like she’s glass, cracked and fragile, crumbling and shattering under his touch.
“I’ll be fine. Maybe you’ll heal me.”
“I don’t think my penis can cure cancer.” Davis puts cautious hands on her bare stomach, slides them slowly to her thighs, kneads his fingers in gently.
“You never know until you try.”
“No Chloe.” Davis leans in close and kisses her, remnant shaving cream rubbing off on her jaw, on her flesh as he slides down and kisses all of her, licking a long, clean line down her abdomen. He sucks on her hipbone, hot tongue swiping over skin, lapping at it, like he’s trying to memorize the taste of her, even though he won’t be able to remember her once she’s gone. “I don’t want to hurt you.” His words are muffled against her, absorbed into her, and his fingers curl into the waistband of her panties, but he pulls them down half heartedly. “I love you Chloe.” He kisses the insides of her thighs, grips them with his hands, pushes his fingers so deeply into the muscle it almost hurts, could almost leave bruises if he isn’t careful.
“I love you too.” She does, she thinks she’s probably loved him longer than she can remember, before she left everything for him, before her brain was damaged, before death augmented inside her skull, spread its poison to her cells and tissues. The problem is that she loves him, loves him so damn much that dying is about more than the world, it’s about Davis, about leaving him alone in a world he’s always had to be alone in. “I love you.” She curls her fingers into his short hair, runs them across his scalp, moaning breathlessly when he goes down on her, short, sensuous strokes of his tongue against her. For the briefest of moments, nothing in the world seems to matter except the motions of his mouth, her thighs clamped tightly around his head, the unsteady, shuddering gasps of her inhalations. IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou is a steady mantra in her head, on her lips and she groans it again and again and again until her thigh muscles tense one last time before going slack. “You want some help with that?” She asks as Davis undoes his zipper, slides up her body to press his face into her throat, thrusts himself slow and steady against her leg. He mouths words into her skin, prays into her, comes sticky on the inside of her right thigh. “Great” She laughs, wiping shaving cream from her chin. “Now I need a shower.”
“What do you want to do today?” Davis questions after their shower, after she’s clean and scrubbed, after another failed attempt to wash the cancer off her.
“I have something I want to show you.” She tries to tie her shoelaces, but her fingers tremble and she can’t remember what comes after the first criss-cross of the laces. “Somewhere I want us to go.”
“Okay, do you wanna tell me where?”
“It’s a surprise.” She fumbles blindly in the drawer beside her dresser, closes her hand around the smooth, eight sided metal. “Just follow my directions okay?”
“Chloe….why are we here?” She feels Davis shaking, his hand tightening around hers, squeezing it like he’s afraid she’s going to float away if he lets go.
“You trust me right?” She can’t see his uneasy smile, but she can see the bobbing of his head, hear the certainty in his voice when he answers, honest and consenting all at once.
Snowflakes fall softly around her, bitterly cold, melting quickly on her face.
She barely manages to find the crystal and insert it, but the panicked whine Davis makes and the rush of air are her confirmation. It hurts to breath, to speak, and the icy air makes her lungs crackle.
“Chloe, please, don’t make me go in there. You said I didn’t have to go in there. You didn’t let Clark put me in the Phantom Zone.” Davis falls to his knees, wraps his arms around her legs, hides his face against her.
“Don’t make me go in there Chloe; I need to stay with you. You’re not going to die alone Chloe. I’m going to be there, and I’ll hold your hand and cry like a baby. I’m going to bury you and you’re going to have the biggest funeral anyone has ever seen. Jimmy isn’t going to be invited and you’ll be up in heaven with the angels watching, with your parents, with everyone you love who’s gone away, and then when it takes over I’ll be there with you too.”
His tears mingle salty in her mouth when she kisses him, sucks in his sadness, his heartbreak, the acceptance of the inevitable, tastes his fear and his love and gives her own right back.
“You’re not going in there alone Davis. I’m going too. We’ll be there together, forever, and I will never die and you will never be Doomsday.”
“Okay, okay.” His voice breaks, cracks into a half sob that he swallows down. “Lord in heaven, hear my prayers…” He smoothes a cross into his forehead.
“Ready?”
Davis takes her hand, and they leave the world together while the arctic wind blows snow across their footprints.
Showing posts with label malignant drabble series. Show all posts
Showing posts with label malignant drabble series. Show all posts
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
malignant drabble series part 3
Reccing Notes: This part will break your heart after part 2. It's hot too. And Davis is proactive, just like I love in the show. And I'm going to say it. theirloveissopure.
by xxamlaxx at her livejournal
1033 words, m/nc-17, beast
"We're going to fix this."
---
“I didn’t transform the entire time we were apart, isn’t that great?!” Davis beams at her from the driver’s seat, bright, white smile plastered to his face, painted deep into his facial muscles.
“It’s fantastic Davis.” She pops another pill, rolls it around on her tongue, crushes it into bitter powder between her teeth. “I told you leaving the country would make things easier.”
“It has Chloe.” Davis switches on the radio; every song is in Spanish. “Do you want to stop at a hotel for the night or keep driving?” He asks as city lights become small orbs of yellow in the distance, stretched in front of and behind them. “This is the last area with hotels for another eight hours.”
“Let’s stop.” The throbbing behind her eyes has resumed its cruel game, intensifies and augments, mocking her, because now she knows what it is, what is occurring inside her skull. Five hours since her diagnoses and she thinks she can feel her neurons mutating, growing back in malignant clusters of cells; biological poison building beneath layers of meninges.
“Are you feeling alright Chloe? You aren’t yourself.” Davis stops the car, reaches over to touch her face, brushes his thumbs across the dark circles beneath her eyes.
“It’s nothing.” She waves away his concern, pushes his hands from her cheeks.
“I don’t believe you.” Davis sighs in one long exhalation of breath, one rise and fall of his chest. “Something is different about you. You seem preoccupied. I’m happy Chloe, I can’t remember a time when I’ve been this happy, but if you aren’t happy, then let me know now, because I don’t want to put my feelings above yours.” Soft and vulnerable, wide brown eyes, pursed lips; exposed and raw and open. Davis is the epitome of altruism, the embodiment of the struggle between good and evil, the true nature of man and his inner conflictions. He deserves more than she can give him, more than her pitiful, damaged brain cells can give him.
“Davis, don’t worry about me.” Her seat belt unbuckles with a click. “You’re the one with real problems.” She slides into his lap in one movement, over the arm rests between them, her back against the steering wheel; proximity and heated breath on her face, misting warmly across her skin.
“Chloe..” A barely audible whisper, soft and disbelieving.
“Shhh.” Her fingers curl around the nape of his neck, palm flat against the flesh, and one smooth tug brings their mouths together. Davis inhales in surprise, sucks the air from her mouth, her lungs, her body, draws out a bit of her, the life, love, impending death and perpetual sickness. His tongue pushes into her mouth after a moment of hesitation, brief concern, lazy and wet and hot against hers, excited explorations, gliding along her teeth.
Her free hand works its way between them, trails down his chest, slips beneath the waistband of his jeans. The button of his pants is undone by her fingers, his belt torn away with a flick of her wrist. His shirt is soon to follow, her clothing too, until everything is bare skin and warmth, her thighs on either side of his hips, knees pressing into the upholstery of his seat. Then she sinks down, settles onto him, listens to him breathe, watches him run his fingers along the pale skin of her chest, pull at the black lace of her bra. Davis clutches her, holds her tight, tips his head back against the seat. It ends when Davis shudders, when every muscle in her body tenses and ripples, gives way to ecstasy, so blindingly intense and hot she can do little more than press her forehead to Davis’ shoulder and pant and pant and pant while she slowly comes down from the unbelievable high.
“Once we’re inside” She kisses his collarbone, drags her lips over it, tastes salt and sweat and his skin. “There’s something I need to talk with you about.”
----
“What was it you needed to tell me?” Davis yawns hours later, one long, lean expanse of muscle and bare skin, sprawled out on his stomach and watching her. She wrings water from her damp hair, wipes away clear droplets from her stomach, from her legs, from between her breasts.
“Davis.” She sighs, slumps down beside him, smiling when he walks his fingers up her thighs, presses a warm, wet kiss to her hip.
“If you’re worried I might be pregnant, it’s okay, I’m on the pill.” Davis makes her laugh, lightens the hot weight of dread in the pit of her abdomen.
“Funny.” She places a palm flat on his back, presses it deep into his shoulder blade, feels heat and skin and muscle relaxing beneath her fingertips. “It’s serious.”
“Are you okay?” Concern glistens in his brown eyes as he pushes himself up on his elbows, leans in and rests his forehead on the small of her back. His breath mists hotly over her skin, raises goose bumps on her flesh.
“No. No I’m not.” And then he’s sitting up, staring intently into her eyes, his hands heavy over the back of hers.
“Are you unhappy? I told you…” She silences him with a finger against his lips, brushes her thumb over them.
“You know how I haven’t been feeling well?” Davis nods, reaches up and cups her face, presses his fingers gently into her temples. “I had an MRI today at the hospital while you were collecting medical supplies. I have a brain tumor, sort of.”
“How…how can you sort of have a brain tumor?” Davis swallows thickly, and she can almost hear a piece of his soul crack and shatter.
“Removing Brainiac did something to my brain, destroyed the cells. Now they’re growing back malignant.”
“How long do you have?” He finally asks, eyes glistening.
“Three to four months.”
She lets Davis cling to her, bury his face in her shoulder, hold her so tightly she almost can’t breathe. It’s heat and skin on skin, his mouth on her collarbone, her throat, her jaw.
“Get packed.” He says after a long, long time, when she’s half asleep, fingers absently stroking the soft skin at the nape of his neck.
“Why?”
“We’re going back to Metropolis.” Davis pulls her into a hug, until she’s flat against his chest. “We’re going to fix this.”
by xxamlaxx at her livejournal
1033 words, m/nc-17, beast
"We're going to fix this."
---
“I didn’t transform the entire time we were apart, isn’t that great?!” Davis beams at her from the driver’s seat, bright, white smile plastered to his face, painted deep into his facial muscles.
“It’s fantastic Davis.” She pops another pill, rolls it around on her tongue, crushes it into bitter powder between her teeth. “I told you leaving the country would make things easier.”
“It has Chloe.” Davis switches on the radio; every song is in Spanish. “Do you want to stop at a hotel for the night or keep driving?” He asks as city lights become small orbs of yellow in the distance, stretched in front of and behind them. “This is the last area with hotels for another eight hours.”
“Let’s stop.” The throbbing behind her eyes has resumed its cruel game, intensifies and augments, mocking her, because now she knows what it is, what is occurring inside her skull. Five hours since her diagnoses and she thinks she can feel her neurons mutating, growing back in malignant clusters of cells; biological poison building beneath layers of meninges.
“Are you feeling alright Chloe? You aren’t yourself.” Davis stops the car, reaches over to touch her face, brushes his thumbs across the dark circles beneath her eyes.
“It’s nothing.” She waves away his concern, pushes his hands from her cheeks.
“I don’t believe you.” Davis sighs in one long exhalation of breath, one rise and fall of his chest. “Something is different about you. You seem preoccupied. I’m happy Chloe, I can’t remember a time when I’ve been this happy, but if you aren’t happy, then let me know now, because I don’t want to put my feelings above yours.” Soft and vulnerable, wide brown eyes, pursed lips; exposed and raw and open. Davis is the epitome of altruism, the embodiment of the struggle between good and evil, the true nature of man and his inner conflictions. He deserves more than she can give him, more than her pitiful, damaged brain cells can give him.
“Davis, don’t worry about me.” Her seat belt unbuckles with a click. “You’re the one with real problems.” She slides into his lap in one movement, over the arm rests between them, her back against the steering wheel; proximity and heated breath on her face, misting warmly across her skin.
“Chloe..” A barely audible whisper, soft and disbelieving.
“Shhh.” Her fingers curl around the nape of his neck, palm flat against the flesh, and one smooth tug brings their mouths together. Davis inhales in surprise, sucks the air from her mouth, her lungs, her body, draws out a bit of her, the life, love, impending death and perpetual sickness. His tongue pushes into her mouth after a moment of hesitation, brief concern, lazy and wet and hot against hers, excited explorations, gliding along her teeth.
Her free hand works its way between them, trails down his chest, slips beneath the waistband of his jeans. The button of his pants is undone by her fingers, his belt torn away with a flick of her wrist. His shirt is soon to follow, her clothing too, until everything is bare skin and warmth, her thighs on either side of his hips, knees pressing into the upholstery of his seat. Then she sinks down, settles onto him, listens to him breathe, watches him run his fingers along the pale skin of her chest, pull at the black lace of her bra. Davis clutches her, holds her tight, tips his head back against the seat. It ends when Davis shudders, when every muscle in her body tenses and ripples, gives way to ecstasy, so blindingly intense and hot she can do little more than press her forehead to Davis’ shoulder and pant and pant and pant while she slowly comes down from the unbelievable high.
“Once we’re inside” She kisses his collarbone, drags her lips over it, tastes salt and sweat and his skin. “There’s something I need to talk with you about.”
----
“What was it you needed to tell me?” Davis yawns hours later, one long, lean expanse of muscle and bare skin, sprawled out on his stomach and watching her. She wrings water from her damp hair, wipes away clear droplets from her stomach, from her legs, from between her breasts.
“Davis.” She sighs, slumps down beside him, smiling when he walks his fingers up her thighs, presses a warm, wet kiss to her hip.
“If you’re worried I might be pregnant, it’s okay, I’m on the pill.” Davis makes her laugh, lightens the hot weight of dread in the pit of her abdomen.
“Funny.” She places a palm flat on his back, presses it deep into his shoulder blade, feels heat and skin and muscle relaxing beneath her fingertips. “It’s serious.”
“Are you okay?” Concern glistens in his brown eyes as he pushes himself up on his elbows, leans in and rests his forehead on the small of her back. His breath mists hotly over her skin, raises goose bumps on her flesh.
“No. No I’m not.” And then he’s sitting up, staring intently into her eyes, his hands heavy over the back of hers.
“Are you unhappy? I told you…” She silences him with a finger against his lips, brushes her thumb over them.
“You know how I haven’t been feeling well?” Davis nods, reaches up and cups her face, presses his fingers gently into her temples. “I had an MRI today at the hospital while you were collecting medical supplies. I have a brain tumor, sort of.”
“How…how can you sort of have a brain tumor?” Davis swallows thickly, and she can almost hear a piece of his soul crack and shatter.
“Removing Brainiac did something to my brain, destroyed the cells. Now they’re growing back malignant.”
“How long do you have?” He finally asks, eyes glistening.
“Three to four months.”
She lets Davis cling to her, bury his face in her shoulder, hold her so tightly she almost can’t breathe. It’s heat and skin on skin, his mouth on her collarbone, her throat, her jaw.
“Get packed.” He says after a long, long time, when she’s half asleep, fingers absently stroking the soft skin at the nape of his neck.
“Why?”
“We’re going back to Metropolis.” Davis pulls her into a hug, until she’s flat against his chest. “We’re going to fix this.”
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
malignant drabble series part 2
Reccing Notes: Chloe discovers that not all is well with her at all, just when her life with Davis starts to come together. Just lovely and amazing and very true, not just to the characters, but to the situation. Ow!
by xxamlaxx at her livejournal
1648 words, pg-13, beast
Fear is visible in the lines of his mouth, the smooth skin on his cheeks, the pursing of his lips. “I haven’t been with other people in weeks Chloe.”
---
“I don’t think we should do this.” Davis presses his hands flat against the mud wall of their hut, flattens himself into a corner, fingers curling into the adobe, like he’s trying to grip it, like he’s trying to dig in and hold on tight.
“Davis, we need food. I can’t leave you alone, and we can’t live off grass and the occasional potato.” She tugs at his t-shirt, gently rubs her palm against his back; soothes and encourages, calms and quiets.
“I’m afraid.” He whispers, soft and urgent, dark eyes squeezed shut. Fear is visible in the lines of his mouth, the smooth skin on his cheeks, the pursing of his lips. “I haven’t been with other people in weeks Chloe.”
“You’ll be fine. You’re with me, remember?” His hand is a warm, soft weight in hers; strong, flexible fingers interlocking with hers. Davis swallows and nods, scoots closer to her, until their hips are close to touching. The bright, yellow sunlight sends stabs of pain through her skull, makes her eyes tear up and water. “I’ll buy you a mango.” She walks her fingers up his arm, feels his biceps relax beneath her fingertips.
Davis holds her hand so tightly it hurts. They walk side by side down the dusty dirt path, over foot and hoof indentations deep in the dried mud. Their neighbor’s houses stand solemnly in a long line of adobe walls and rusty tin roofs. Children laugh and run the single street, all bare feet and giggles. A little girl with big brown eyes and pink ribbons in her dark hair trips and stumbles, falls onto her right arm hard. She hears a thud of a body hitting dirt and then the child is crying, cradling her limp arm as tears drip down her cheeks onto the ground. Chloe blinks once and then Davis’ hand is gone and he is crouched beside the five year old, examining her arm.
“You’re alright, it’s not broken.” Davis frowns when the little girl only stares up at him, wide, unblinking brown eyes glistening wetly. “Estas bien.” He says finally, picking a flower and tucking it behind her ear.
“Gracias Señor.” She stands on tiptoes to kiss Davis’ cheek, then hides her face in her hands and runs away.
“That was very sweet of you Davis.” She smiles at him, taking his hand once more. “Should I be jealous of your new girlfriend?”
“I only have eyes for you Chloe.”
Davis leans in to kiss her, and for the first time, she doesn’t pull away.
---
“I want to go into the city today.” The pain inside her head has become unbearable, excruciating agony that persists every minute of the day, even in the warm, humid blackness of the night, while mosquitos buzz and hum in the air around her. “To a hospital.”
“Why?” Davis peeks out from behind the sheet dangling from the ceiling in the corner of their hut, his hair and the skin of his face glistening with water. “Are you feeling sick?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a lack of medical supplies around here. And considering you’re a paramedic, I thought you could buy what you’d need to treat people around here.” It’s the truth and a lie and a half fabrication. She wants a doctor, MRI’s and CAT scans, x-rays and pictures of everything inside her head. “If you want to, of course, altruism has always been your defining characteristic after all.”
“That’s a great idea.” Davis beams at her, teeth and dimples, then pulls his head back out of sight and she can hear the soft trickling of water as he bathes, pours a bucket full of clear stream water over his body. “We’ll leave in an hour.”
The car jolts and bounces over the unpaved dirt road. Eight long hours of twists and turns, curves and bends, paths through vegetation, low hanging branches scraping over the car, stray leaves landing on the windshield. She sleeps, but it is light and fitful, wracked with pain as her continuous headache causes pain behind her eyelids. When she opens her eyes the sun is setting purple and pink behind the mountains, casting faint light on cracked concrete.
The hospital is little more than dirty linoleum floors and plastic orange chairs, coughing and crying children, fever flushed faces and dark skin. Davis leaves to speak with the hospital chairman, she sneaks off into an exam room, settles herself onto the thin mattress stuffed with straw.
“Hello. I am doctor Esteban. Perdoneme porfavor. My English is not so good. What is your problem?” He speaks slowly, in heavily accented English, holds a stethescope in his hands that was made in the 1970’s.
“I’ve had a headache for over two weeks. I think I need an MRI. My nose has been bleeding on and off for a week as well.”
“We no have MRI. Only X-ray. You need to go to capital.”
“Thank you.” She sighs, in pain and defeat.
“Here.” He holds out a plastic bottle, inside are white, oval capsules. “Morphine. Even if you go to capital, all they can treat is pain.”
“Are you saying I have a brain tumor?”
“Sí. You have symptoms, but go to capital for diagnoses.”
Davis proudly shows her a cardboard box filled with bandages and antibiotics when she slips back into the waiting room, pops one pill into her mouth and chews, tastes chalky bitterness.
She smiles at him, and mentions that the doctor said there are far more supplies available for them in the hospital in Santiago.
---
Santiago is different. As the mountains shrink in the distance, expanse of green trees and blue sky disappearing behind them, the land shifts and transforms. The streets are paved, painted, divided evenly and there are telephone lines along the highway, train tracks, fast food restaurants with signs written in Spanish. With the decrease in altitude comes an increase in technology, modernity. By the time they enter the city limits it’s like their little mud walled hut near a stream doesn’t exist, is nothing more than an agrarian fantasy.
Painted houses and concrete apartment buildings sit near the street, separated from the asphalt by a long line of sidewalk. Children are playing soccer in the street, kicking a bright white and black ball, wearing tennis shoes and sneakers, clean white socks and jeans. The ball rolls in front of their car and before she can scream, before she can even think a little boy in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt darts after it. Her heart is hot in her throat, beating fast and hard and erratic, bringing fresh blood into her head and it hurts so bad…
Davis slams his foot down on the brake. The rubber tires screech, a piercing sound, leaving long, black lines that curl along the pavement. The car comes to an abrupt stop, inches from the young boy who is staring at them with wide brown eyes, soccer ball clutched in his small hands, holding it close to his chest. After a moment he waves and runs off, back to where his friends are sitting on the curb, waiting for their car to pass before their game can resume. The scene is heavy with childhood innocence, youthfulness. It reminds her of playing in the fields with Clark and Pete, weaving in-between tall stalks of golden corn.
“Are you coming in with me or do you want to stay in the car?” Davis pulls into the hospital parking lot, opens his door.
“I have to use the bathroom. I’ll meet you in the lobby.” She leans over, kisses his cheek, smells the homemade soap their neighbor makes for them.
“Good morning Señorita Sullivan.” The doctor is a middle aged man with a dark mustache. “You want an MRI?”
‘Yes. I’ve been having headaches; I have a note from another doctor.” She hands him the tiny piece of white folded paper. He reads the message slowly; she opens her bottle of morphine and pops another pill, chews and chews and swallows. Two days of driving and her supply of medication is already a quarter gone, her mouth tastes perpetually of bitterness and metal.
“Follow me please.” She dozes off in the MRI, falls asleep to the loud hum of machinery and when she wakes Dr. Vasquez’s mouth is one firm press of lips, one thin, grim line.
“It’s not good, is it?” She knows and she’s expecting it, can feel everything that’s wrong inside her head, the pain and the confusion, the wrongness of it all.
“No. It is very strange; I have never seen this before.” He takes a deep breath, releases it in a slow exhalation, breathes out nervousness and pity. “Much of your brain is a tumor. Usually a tumor grows out of the brain, but yours…ah, como se dice…Yours is tumor. It is like part of your brain was damaged and removed, like the cells were ripped apart and now they are growing back as cancer.” He shakes his head, puts a warm, friendly hand on her shoulder. “I am sorry. We can do chemo and radiation, but it will give you extra month at most.”
“How long do I have?” She swallows hard, swallows down worry and grief. When she dies, so does the human side of Davis.
“Three months, maybe four.”
“Thank you.” She stands up to leave, is overcome by a sudden rush of dizziness. Everything sways and blurs and spins, dwindles in and out of focus.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. My other doctor gave me a bottle of these; can I get an extra to take home with me?” She rattles her morphine, tucks the bottle back into her pocket.
“Of course. Usually I would not, because they are addicting, but it does not matter much with you.”
“No, no it doesn’t.”
Davis has two cardboard boxes of supplies in his arms when she meets him in the waiting room of the hospital.
“You were in the bathroom a long time, are you okay?”
“Fine, I decided to look around, waiting for you can get boring, believe it or not.”
“Let’s go.”
---
by xxamlaxx at her livejournal
1648 words, pg-13, beast
Fear is visible in the lines of his mouth, the smooth skin on his cheeks, the pursing of his lips. “I haven’t been with other people in weeks Chloe.”
---
“I don’t think we should do this.” Davis presses his hands flat against the mud wall of their hut, flattens himself into a corner, fingers curling into the adobe, like he’s trying to grip it, like he’s trying to dig in and hold on tight.
“Davis, we need food. I can’t leave you alone, and we can’t live off grass and the occasional potato.” She tugs at his t-shirt, gently rubs her palm against his back; soothes and encourages, calms and quiets.
“I’m afraid.” He whispers, soft and urgent, dark eyes squeezed shut. Fear is visible in the lines of his mouth, the smooth skin on his cheeks, the pursing of his lips. “I haven’t been with other people in weeks Chloe.”
“You’ll be fine. You’re with me, remember?” His hand is a warm, soft weight in hers; strong, flexible fingers interlocking with hers. Davis swallows and nods, scoots closer to her, until their hips are close to touching. The bright, yellow sunlight sends stabs of pain through her skull, makes her eyes tear up and water. “I’ll buy you a mango.” She walks her fingers up his arm, feels his biceps relax beneath her fingertips.
Davis holds her hand so tightly it hurts. They walk side by side down the dusty dirt path, over foot and hoof indentations deep in the dried mud. Their neighbor’s houses stand solemnly in a long line of adobe walls and rusty tin roofs. Children laugh and run the single street, all bare feet and giggles. A little girl with big brown eyes and pink ribbons in her dark hair trips and stumbles, falls onto her right arm hard. She hears a thud of a body hitting dirt and then the child is crying, cradling her limp arm as tears drip down her cheeks onto the ground. Chloe blinks once and then Davis’ hand is gone and he is crouched beside the five year old, examining her arm.
“You’re alright, it’s not broken.” Davis frowns when the little girl only stares up at him, wide, unblinking brown eyes glistening wetly. “Estas bien.” He says finally, picking a flower and tucking it behind her ear.
“Gracias Señor.” She stands on tiptoes to kiss Davis’ cheek, then hides her face in her hands and runs away.
“That was very sweet of you Davis.” She smiles at him, taking his hand once more. “Should I be jealous of your new girlfriend?”
“I only have eyes for you Chloe.”
Davis leans in to kiss her, and for the first time, she doesn’t pull away.
---
“I want to go into the city today.” The pain inside her head has become unbearable, excruciating agony that persists every minute of the day, even in the warm, humid blackness of the night, while mosquitos buzz and hum in the air around her. “To a hospital.”
“Why?” Davis peeks out from behind the sheet dangling from the ceiling in the corner of their hut, his hair and the skin of his face glistening with water. “Are you feeling sick?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a lack of medical supplies around here. And considering you’re a paramedic, I thought you could buy what you’d need to treat people around here.” It’s the truth and a lie and a half fabrication. She wants a doctor, MRI’s and CAT scans, x-rays and pictures of everything inside her head. “If you want to, of course, altruism has always been your defining characteristic after all.”
“That’s a great idea.” Davis beams at her, teeth and dimples, then pulls his head back out of sight and she can hear the soft trickling of water as he bathes, pours a bucket full of clear stream water over his body. “We’ll leave in an hour.”
The car jolts and bounces over the unpaved dirt road. Eight long hours of twists and turns, curves and bends, paths through vegetation, low hanging branches scraping over the car, stray leaves landing on the windshield. She sleeps, but it is light and fitful, wracked with pain as her continuous headache causes pain behind her eyelids. When she opens her eyes the sun is setting purple and pink behind the mountains, casting faint light on cracked concrete.
The hospital is little more than dirty linoleum floors and plastic orange chairs, coughing and crying children, fever flushed faces and dark skin. Davis leaves to speak with the hospital chairman, she sneaks off into an exam room, settles herself onto the thin mattress stuffed with straw.
“Hello. I am doctor Esteban. Perdoneme porfavor. My English is not so good. What is your problem?” He speaks slowly, in heavily accented English, holds a stethescope in his hands that was made in the 1970’s.
“I’ve had a headache for over two weeks. I think I need an MRI. My nose has been bleeding on and off for a week as well.”
“We no have MRI. Only X-ray. You need to go to capital.”
“Thank you.” She sighs, in pain and defeat.
“Here.” He holds out a plastic bottle, inside are white, oval capsules. “Morphine. Even if you go to capital, all they can treat is pain.”
“Are you saying I have a brain tumor?”
“Sí. You have symptoms, but go to capital for diagnoses.”
Davis proudly shows her a cardboard box filled with bandages and antibiotics when she slips back into the waiting room, pops one pill into her mouth and chews, tastes chalky bitterness.
She smiles at him, and mentions that the doctor said there are far more supplies available for them in the hospital in Santiago.
---
Santiago is different. As the mountains shrink in the distance, expanse of green trees and blue sky disappearing behind them, the land shifts and transforms. The streets are paved, painted, divided evenly and there are telephone lines along the highway, train tracks, fast food restaurants with signs written in Spanish. With the decrease in altitude comes an increase in technology, modernity. By the time they enter the city limits it’s like their little mud walled hut near a stream doesn’t exist, is nothing more than an agrarian fantasy.
Painted houses and concrete apartment buildings sit near the street, separated from the asphalt by a long line of sidewalk. Children are playing soccer in the street, kicking a bright white and black ball, wearing tennis shoes and sneakers, clean white socks and jeans. The ball rolls in front of their car and before she can scream, before she can even think a little boy in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt darts after it. Her heart is hot in her throat, beating fast and hard and erratic, bringing fresh blood into her head and it hurts so bad…
Davis slams his foot down on the brake. The rubber tires screech, a piercing sound, leaving long, black lines that curl along the pavement. The car comes to an abrupt stop, inches from the young boy who is staring at them with wide brown eyes, soccer ball clutched in his small hands, holding it close to his chest. After a moment he waves and runs off, back to where his friends are sitting on the curb, waiting for their car to pass before their game can resume. The scene is heavy with childhood innocence, youthfulness. It reminds her of playing in the fields with Clark and Pete, weaving in-between tall stalks of golden corn.
“Are you coming in with me or do you want to stay in the car?” Davis pulls into the hospital parking lot, opens his door.
“I have to use the bathroom. I’ll meet you in the lobby.” She leans over, kisses his cheek, smells the homemade soap their neighbor makes for them.
“Good morning Señorita Sullivan.” The doctor is a middle aged man with a dark mustache. “You want an MRI?”
‘Yes. I’ve been having headaches; I have a note from another doctor.” She hands him the tiny piece of white folded paper. He reads the message slowly; she opens her bottle of morphine and pops another pill, chews and chews and swallows. Two days of driving and her supply of medication is already a quarter gone, her mouth tastes perpetually of bitterness and metal.
“Follow me please.” She dozes off in the MRI, falls asleep to the loud hum of machinery and when she wakes Dr. Vasquez’s mouth is one firm press of lips, one thin, grim line.
“It’s not good, is it?” She knows and she’s expecting it, can feel everything that’s wrong inside her head, the pain and the confusion, the wrongness of it all.
“No. It is very strange; I have never seen this before.” He takes a deep breath, releases it in a slow exhalation, breathes out nervousness and pity. “Much of your brain is a tumor. Usually a tumor grows out of the brain, but yours…ah, como se dice…Yours is tumor. It is like part of your brain was damaged and removed, like the cells were ripped apart and now they are growing back as cancer.” He shakes his head, puts a warm, friendly hand on her shoulder. “I am sorry. We can do chemo and radiation, but it will give you extra month at most.”
“How long do I have?” She swallows hard, swallows down worry and grief. When she dies, so does the human side of Davis.
“Three months, maybe four.”
“Thank you.” She stands up to leave, is overcome by a sudden rush of dizziness. Everything sways and blurs and spins, dwindles in and out of focus.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. My other doctor gave me a bottle of these; can I get an extra to take home with me?” She rattles her morphine, tucks the bottle back into her pocket.
“Of course. Usually I would not, because they are addicting, but it does not matter much with you.”
“No, no it doesn’t.”
Davis has two cardboard boxes of supplies in his arms when she meets him in the waiting room of the hospital.
“You were in the bathroom a long time, are you okay?”
“Fine, I decided to look around, waiting for you can get boring, believe it or not.”
“Let’s go.”
---
Sunday, May 3, 2009
malignant drabble series part 1
Reccing Notes: Can I say chloomroadtripfic? It's right there with chloe's chlark angst(you can feel it and ouch!), but this is so, so sweet. No really, xxamlaxx writes Chloe and Davis like you won't believe. I would have loved the second part as a postscript to the ep. but there is a twist and poor davis! poor chloe!(the reason for the title) read part 2!
by xxamlaxx at her livejournal
1410 words, g, beast
She rents them a room in a small motel on the outskirts of Mexico City.
----
Chloe learns the world for Davis has never changed. To him existence is desolate loneliness, miles of road ahead and behind him, but not a single soul on earth who remembers his face, the dimple in his chin and the lines in the corners of his mouth. His knuckles are white in the darkness; skin stretched tightly over bone as he grips the steering wheel, jaw rigid and solemn. The car trembles and shakes and bounces, while the pavement beneath its tires morphs into dirt, rabbit holes and piles of sand.
“Are you sure we can get through?” Davis breaks the silence, exhales in one long, slow breathe, dims the headlights and eases his foot from the gas pedal.
“One hundred dollars American? We can get through.” She assures him, and the miles of chain link fence before them stretches out for miles along the vast expanse of quiet, yellow desert. The night air smells like dust and dryness, cigarette smoke and beer as she rolls down her window, holds a crisp one hundred dollar bill between her fingers. “We’re on our honeymoon but our passports won’t be ready for another three weeks.”
“No passport. Yes.” The man’s face is hidden in the shadows when he takes the money from her hand. He marks something on a sheet of paper and snaps a picture, cuts two Polaroid’s and pastes. “Bienvenidos Mr. and Mrs. Washington.”
Davis drives through the open space in the fence, presses the pedal to the floor with his weight.
---
She rents them a room in a small motel on the outskirts of Mexico City. The plaster walls are cracked and crumbling, with paint that peels in long, dingy white flakes, sprinkling onto the dark blue carpet floor like snow.
The television reception is all blurs and static, low murmurs in Spanish. The lights flicker and fade, surge and finally die, until the only light filters through the dirt streaked window. Davis yawns and stretches in the afternoon sunlight, shrugs his shirt off and slides beneath the patchwork quilt sewn by work hardened hands.
“Come to bed Chloe.” Davis pulls the blankets up to his shoulders, pats the empty space beside him on the mattress.
“In a minute.” Cloudy water sputters from the faucet, slows to a lukewarm trickle. Blood is slowly pounding against the inside of her skull, an augmenting ache, pressure behind her eyes. She splashes water on her face, lets the droplets trickle to her collar while she dry swallows an Advil, chews the chalky pill and swallows.
“Thank you for all of this.” Davis wants to curl around her, reaches a hand out to brush the side of her hip instead. His fingers are warm through the denim of her jeans, but the pain inside her head is unbearable, throbbing and stinging.
Too many hours of driving and too much stress, too little time for goodbyes. Clark’s face is burned onto her eyelids, stares at her in shock and awe and betrayal when she closes her eyes. He begs her for the proclamation of loyalty she can never give, because as much as she wants to stand by his side for eternity, Davis needs her to keep up, keep him from falling into the declivity of murder, when his humanity gives way to instinct and destruction.
“You must miss your friends.”
“You’re my friend now Davis.”
Davis will never be Clark, but he spoons up against her back in his sleep, a long, heated line of cloth covered muscle, and his warmth almost chases away her headache.
---
“Where should we go?” Davis asks around a mouthful of a greasy taco purchased from a tiny wooden shack that functions as both a house and restaurant.
“Somewhere away from people.” She unfolds the map from the glove compartment, smoothes out wrinkles in the paper, spreads it flat against the dashboard.
“Remote part of the rainforest in Brazil?” Davis sucks green salsa off his thumb; a low hum of happiness and pleasure in his throat.
“My Portuguese is lousy.” She tries to picture a home under the canopy of green leaves, bright exotic flowers but the vision in her mind is interrupted by a fresh stab of pain in her forehead, one that ripples through her brain.
“You okay?” Davis opens a bottle of water, holds it out to her; extends the modicum of comfort he has to offer.
“It’s just a headache.” The bottle of aspirin beneath her seat is nearly empty. Five days and two lonely, white pills rattle against the plastic sides. She rolls one white oval between her fingertips, swallows it down with a mouthful of lukewarm water.
“Swine Flu?” He suggests, smiling, cheeks bulging with food and humor. Davis acts like he never has before, relaxed and jocose, smiling bright and white. He has her to himself and she pretends the flicker of green possession in his eyes hasn’t grown, isn’t more prominent, hasn’t completely consumed his gaze. Davis claims love and Clark warns obsession, but the former and the latter are so deeply meshed, intertwined and mixed that she doesn’t know what Davis feels and doesn’t want to know. This is all for Clark and she repeats the mantra late at night, when she wakes and can feel his eyes on her in the silver moonlight, when his fingers brush back strands of her hair while she feigns sleep, when he presses close in his dreams.
“Funny.” She thinks of Clark and the piglet he raised the summer they were fourteen, but those times are gone and now her memories are going to be of Davis. “There’s a town thirty miles down the road, we should make it there before the car runs out of gas.”
“Lie back, take a nap, it’ll get rid of your headache.”
The pain in her head persists; it has since her last conversation with Clark.
---
Davis buys them a little house in a village in Chile. Over three weeks of driving on dusty, unpaved roads, full of bumps and holes and rocks. Their shack has one window, without a pane of glass, just an open square that lets in golden sunlight and buzzing insects. The floor is dirt and nights it rains the water seeps in from beneath the door and in the morning she walks barefoot in mud, makes coffee by boiling water in while mud squishes cool and sticky between her toes. They don’t have a proper bathroom; just a metal tub in the corner of what she supposes is their living room and a cracked mirror on the wall, streaked and filthy with ribbons of fractures.
“Hmm, what’re you doing?” Davis murmurs as she slips from bed, tiptoes silently across the dusty ground, steps on a patch of grass sprouting near the bathtub.
“Just getting some water.” She puts on the pair of sandals their neighbor made for her, walks out the door, waits until Davis settles back down on the mattress, pulls the blankets up over his head. Then she creeps back inside, slaps at the tickle on her calf; the mosquito crawling on her skin. Five days in the four mud walls and rusty tin roof covered over with soil and leaves.
It isn’t the future she’d imagined; mosquitoes buzzing in the air, in the heat and moisture, beads of sweat perpetually forming on her skin. Davis’ t-shirt is too hot for her skin and she shrugs it off, free because Davis is asleep and night is the only time that belongs to her, when she can wallow in her misery and her happiness and the vicissitudes of her own life. Even in the blackness and the dearth of moonlight the ache behind her eyes persists, has never truly dissipated. It just hurts, lightning strikes of agony inside her skull cavity. She’s beginning to think it’s more than stress, that this is her punishment for leaving, that the hurt inside her head is the same ache of betrayal that Clark is feeling somewhere in Smallville.
Something hot is on her skin, above her lips and she moves to the broken mirror, wipes dust from the cracked pane of glass. Blood is seeping from her nostrils, black in the dim, dim light of the moon and stars. Suddenly she knows it can’t be psychological and something inside her head is very, very wrong. For all the promises she’s made and all she’s supposed to do, there is no chance now that she is going to outlive Davis Bloome; the world is seemingly destined for destruction.
She watches the red trickle over her mouth and wonders if Davis can even die.
by xxamlaxx at her livejournal
1410 words, g, beast
She rents them a room in a small motel on the outskirts of Mexico City.
----
Chloe learns the world for Davis has never changed. To him existence is desolate loneliness, miles of road ahead and behind him, but not a single soul on earth who remembers his face, the dimple in his chin and the lines in the corners of his mouth. His knuckles are white in the darkness; skin stretched tightly over bone as he grips the steering wheel, jaw rigid and solemn. The car trembles and shakes and bounces, while the pavement beneath its tires morphs into dirt, rabbit holes and piles of sand.
“Are you sure we can get through?” Davis breaks the silence, exhales in one long, slow breathe, dims the headlights and eases his foot from the gas pedal.
“One hundred dollars American? We can get through.” She assures him, and the miles of chain link fence before them stretches out for miles along the vast expanse of quiet, yellow desert. The night air smells like dust and dryness, cigarette smoke and beer as she rolls down her window, holds a crisp one hundred dollar bill between her fingers. “We’re on our honeymoon but our passports won’t be ready for another three weeks.”
“No passport. Yes.” The man’s face is hidden in the shadows when he takes the money from her hand. He marks something on a sheet of paper and snaps a picture, cuts two Polaroid’s and pastes. “Bienvenidos Mr. and Mrs. Washington.”
Davis drives through the open space in the fence, presses the pedal to the floor with his weight.
---
She rents them a room in a small motel on the outskirts of Mexico City. The plaster walls are cracked and crumbling, with paint that peels in long, dingy white flakes, sprinkling onto the dark blue carpet floor like snow.
The television reception is all blurs and static, low murmurs in Spanish. The lights flicker and fade, surge and finally die, until the only light filters through the dirt streaked window. Davis yawns and stretches in the afternoon sunlight, shrugs his shirt off and slides beneath the patchwork quilt sewn by work hardened hands.
“Come to bed Chloe.” Davis pulls the blankets up to his shoulders, pats the empty space beside him on the mattress.
“In a minute.” Cloudy water sputters from the faucet, slows to a lukewarm trickle. Blood is slowly pounding against the inside of her skull, an augmenting ache, pressure behind her eyes. She splashes water on her face, lets the droplets trickle to her collar while she dry swallows an Advil, chews the chalky pill and swallows.
“Thank you for all of this.” Davis wants to curl around her, reaches a hand out to brush the side of her hip instead. His fingers are warm through the denim of her jeans, but the pain inside her head is unbearable, throbbing and stinging.
Too many hours of driving and too much stress, too little time for goodbyes. Clark’s face is burned onto her eyelids, stares at her in shock and awe and betrayal when she closes her eyes. He begs her for the proclamation of loyalty she can never give, because as much as she wants to stand by his side for eternity, Davis needs her to keep up, keep him from falling into the declivity of murder, when his humanity gives way to instinct and destruction.
“You must miss your friends.”
“You’re my friend now Davis.”
Davis will never be Clark, but he spoons up against her back in his sleep, a long, heated line of cloth covered muscle, and his warmth almost chases away her headache.
---
“Where should we go?” Davis asks around a mouthful of a greasy taco purchased from a tiny wooden shack that functions as both a house and restaurant.
“Somewhere away from people.” She unfolds the map from the glove compartment, smoothes out wrinkles in the paper, spreads it flat against the dashboard.
“Remote part of the rainforest in Brazil?” Davis sucks green salsa off his thumb; a low hum of happiness and pleasure in his throat.
“My Portuguese is lousy.” She tries to picture a home under the canopy of green leaves, bright exotic flowers but the vision in her mind is interrupted by a fresh stab of pain in her forehead, one that ripples through her brain.
“You okay?” Davis opens a bottle of water, holds it out to her; extends the modicum of comfort he has to offer.
“It’s just a headache.” The bottle of aspirin beneath her seat is nearly empty. Five days and two lonely, white pills rattle against the plastic sides. She rolls one white oval between her fingertips, swallows it down with a mouthful of lukewarm water.
“Swine Flu?” He suggests, smiling, cheeks bulging with food and humor. Davis acts like he never has before, relaxed and jocose, smiling bright and white. He has her to himself and she pretends the flicker of green possession in his eyes hasn’t grown, isn’t more prominent, hasn’t completely consumed his gaze. Davis claims love and Clark warns obsession, but the former and the latter are so deeply meshed, intertwined and mixed that she doesn’t know what Davis feels and doesn’t want to know. This is all for Clark and she repeats the mantra late at night, when she wakes and can feel his eyes on her in the silver moonlight, when his fingers brush back strands of her hair while she feigns sleep, when he presses close in his dreams.
“Funny.” She thinks of Clark and the piglet he raised the summer they were fourteen, but those times are gone and now her memories are going to be of Davis. “There’s a town thirty miles down the road, we should make it there before the car runs out of gas.”
“Lie back, take a nap, it’ll get rid of your headache.”
The pain in her head persists; it has since her last conversation with Clark.
---
Davis buys them a little house in a village in Chile. Over three weeks of driving on dusty, unpaved roads, full of bumps and holes and rocks. Their shack has one window, without a pane of glass, just an open square that lets in golden sunlight and buzzing insects. The floor is dirt and nights it rains the water seeps in from beneath the door and in the morning she walks barefoot in mud, makes coffee by boiling water in while mud squishes cool and sticky between her toes. They don’t have a proper bathroom; just a metal tub in the corner of what she supposes is their living room and a cracked mirror on the wall, streaked and filthy with ribbons of fractures.
“Hmm, what’re you doing?” Davis murmurs as she slips from bed, tiptoes silently across the dusty ground, steps on a patch of grass sprouting near the bathtub.
“Just getting some water.” She puts on the pair of sandals their neighbor made for her, walks out the door, waits until Davis settles back down on the mattress, pulls the blankets up over his head. Then she creeps back inside, slaps at the tickle on her calf; the mosquito crawling on her skin. Five days in the four mud walls and rusty tin roof covered over with soil and leaves.
It isn’t the future she’d imagined; mosquitoes buzzing in the air, in the heat and moisture, beads of sweat perpetually forming on her skin. Davis’ t-shirt is too hot for her skin and she shrugs it off, free because Davis is asleep and night is the only time that belongs to her, when she can wallow in her misery and her happiness and the vicissitudes of her own life. Even in the blackness and the dearth of moonlight the ache behind her eyes persists, has never truly dissipated. It just hurts, lightning strikes of agony inside her skull cavity. She’s beginning to think it’s more than stress, that this is her punishment for leaving, that the hurt inside her head is the same ache of betrayal that Clark is feeling somewhere in Smallville.
Something hot is on her skin, above her lips and she moves to the broken mirror, wipes dust from the cracked pane of glass. Blood is seeping from her nostrils, black in the dim, dim light of the moon and stars. Suddenly she knows it can’t be psychological and something inside her head is very, very wrong. For all the promises she’s made and all she’s supposed to do, there is no chance now that she is going to outlive Davis Bloome; the world is seemingly destined for destruction.
She watches the red trickle over her mouth and wonders if Davis can even die.
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