Fic for monicaop
For: monicaop
From: simplytoopretty
Request: Chlark love, nc-17, romantic Kaloe
Type: Fic
Title: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
Rating: light nc-17
Warnings: None
Summary: She found him in Atlantis.
A/N: I hope it’s romantic enough. Thanks to vagrantdream for the beta.
"Fumbling Towards Ecstasy"
i.
She found him in Atlantis, a club just off of Davis Street. It was one of those clubs of the month, packed with scantily clad young people. Alcohol flowed abundantly, along with more illegal substances.
She was there just for fun, had snuck in with the help of some friends. She wasn’t searching for him, not at all, for reasons she kept to herself.
But then she spotted him, saw him across the bar. There he was, the little lost farm boy who apparently wasn’t so lost. He was clad in black, wearing a smug smile on his face, and she thought that he wasn’t the Clark she knew. She watched as he slammed back a shot, as the young men and women surrounding him cheered and chatted with him.
It wasn’t her intention to watch him, not to start and not to ever stop. Yet she watched, couldn’t help it, unable to tear her eyes away. There was the boy she loved, only he didn’t look like hers, didn’t look like the sweet boy she knew.
“What’s wrong with him?” she murmured to herself. Her friend glanced at her and asked a question. Chloe just shook her head, not wanting to say anything. Her friend left and then she was alone, to continue watching him.
Later, when she saw him leaving, she followed him out of the club. Warm summer air greeted her as she stepped outside. She scanned the area for him, but her eyes couldn’t locate him. It was like he had disappeared.
“Where did you go?” she whispered. She spun in a circle looking for him.
“Behind you.”
She spun hastily, nearly losing her balance in the high heels she wore. And there he was, glaring at her with red-tinged eyes. His hair was a mess of dark loose curls. His skin had an almost sallow tone to it, as if he wasn’t sleeping well. He looked vaguely like she imagined a cocaine addict would look, an addict she’d discovered.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, taking a step closer, trying to crowd her.
“What are you doing here?” Chloe retorted. “You’re supposed to be in Smallville, Clark.”
“I’ve erased Smallville from my past. I’m no longer that person.”
“Clark…”
He grabbed her, fingers digging into the flesh of her upper arms. Her arms were bare, and she suspected she would have green-purple bruises tomorrow morning. The evening air, soft and gentle, was a sharp contrast to the pain.
“That hurts,” she said, “let go.”
“I live here now. I party here. And it’s Kal now, not Clark.” His voice was low and heated. He was still glaring at her, his eyes still red-tinged and so dark, so very dark. Nothing like the light-hearted, open looks Clark had given her before, back in Smallville.
This isn’t Clark, a voice inside her head said. And she believed it because Clark would have never treated her like this, no matter how angry he might be.
Unpleased with the hold he had on her, she reached out with her hands and pushed against his chest, hoping to startle him into releasing her arms. It seemed to work because he did let go, but not before shaking her roughly.
“Don’t come back again,” he said in that low voice again. She could hear the threats in that tone, in his words.
Instead of replying, she just glared at him. She backed up, still glaring. Then she turned and walked away, refusing to give into the impulse to look over her shoulder and see if he was watching.
His words rang through her head as she walked towards her car. No threat had been made explicitly, they had contained a threat nevertheless. If she had been the cautious sort, she would have stayed away.
ii.
Three nights later she returned to the Atlantis. This time she didn’t have her friends with her. This time she was dressed even more scantily, in a denim miniskirt and a black lacy tank top.
Now that she knew what she was looking for, it wasn’t hard to spot Kal when he came in. She had taken to thinking of him as Kal. It was simpler to think of him as someone separate from Clark, although she realized he was still Clark. Clark gone crazy, for sure, but Clark nonetheless. Unless Clark had a dissociative personality disorder, he and Kal were one and the same.
Kal was easy to watch. She sat at the bar, sipping the Coke she had ordered from the bartender. She had been tempted to order something with alcohol, but she wanted to keep her wits about her. Plus, the last time she had consumed alcohol she had ended up losing her virginity to Jimmy Olsen, a boy who had never even called her afterwards. Alcohol was tainted in her mind consequently.
After about an hour she lost sight of him. She craned her neck, searching. His height usually made it easy to find him, but he was just gone. She slumped in her seat, and took a long sip from her Coke.
Then she felt someone’s hot breath on her neck. She didn’t have to turn to know who it was.
“I thought I told you to stay away,” Kal whispered, his voice close to her ear.
Hands on her shoulders prevented her from turning around. She sat there, held in place by Kal.
“I guess I don’t listen well. I especially don’t like being told what to do.”
He chuckled lightly. “I had forgotten your spunk. Silly me.”
“Hope I didn’t disappoint,” she retorted. The hands left her shoulders and she twisted around. Kal loomed over her, far taller than she was even on the high barstool she sat on. An amused smirk adorned his face, a far cry from the angry glare that had dominated it just three days ago.
“No, not at all.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good.” she said, slightly unsure of herself at this moment. His response had been unexpected, had caught her off guard. Now she floundered slightly, needing to regain her footing in this conversation, her control.
For an extended period of time neither said anything. She watched him and he watched her, and she felt as if he was studying her, analyzing her, weighing her- judging her, in other words. She forced herself to stay still, to not shift self-consciously under his gaze. She didn’t want to give him the self-satisfaction of knowing she was self-conscious under his scrutiny. To give him that would be to surrender some of her control, and she couldn’t do that.
Music pounded around them, all heavy bass and electric sounds. On the dance floor numerous couples danced, their bodies pressed closed together, undulating with the primal beat. It was chaos, pure and simple.
Kal broke the impasse between them. He held out a hand and said, “Dance?”
She stared at his hand. It was large, palm up and opened to hers. He was waiting for her hand. She knew she shouldn’t, knew there were a thousand reasons why she shouldn’t dance with him, a thousand reasons why she shouldn’t even be here.
There was Lana and the fact that Kal was really Clark and a runaway teenage boy. There were reasons related to her and the deal she had made. There were so many reasons why she shouldn’t.
She laid her hand on top of his.
iii.
Four nights after she had first seen him at Atlantis, Kal kissed her. Warm summer air caressed her skin like his lips caressed hers. When it happened, it stole her breath, made her almost weak in the knees. Almost weak because her knees didn’t buckle when his lips left hers. She caught her breath and then she kissed him, pressing her body close to his.
He responded eagerly, kissing her deeply, his tongue probing her mouth. Her tongue dueled with his as their hands explored the other’s body. His palms and fingertips felt soft against her skin.
She knew she shouldn’t be kissing him. She shouldn’t have come again to the club, but she had. It didn’t seem she could stay away, like that cat from the song, the cat that came back despite everything. She should have stayed away for all the reasons she knew, but she couldn’t. Despite the fact that she thought of him as a separate person from Clark, Kal was Clark, tied to the boy she loved.
“I’m dangerous,” Kal said after walking her to her car. He leaned against the red Bug as she locked the door.
But it wasn’t said as a warning, wasn’t offered as a reason why she should stay away. A statement of fact, that was what it was, and a statement of a reality she knew she’d have to accept if she came back again. The question of course was whether she could stand this new version of Clark, the one that called himself Kal, the one that wore all black clothing and smirked more than he smiled.
“I know,” she said, and she meant that she did want to see if she could handle it, this new version Clark who was and who wasn’t the Clark she had known in high school.
People said bad boys were attractive to good girls, and perhaps that was why she felt this attraction to this new Clark. That reason could have been coupled with her past feelings for Clark and how much she missed him. He was here, not quite himself, but yet with the same face, the same voice. His attitudes were different from what Clark had possessed back in Smallville, but then again she wasn’t the same person she had been just a few months ago.
In the end she supposed that people could change. People could and did change and Clark was no different. She had changed too, from the girl she had been in Smallville. Thinking of how she had changed in the past weeks made her uncomfortable, made her want to do something else.
So she did.
She moved closer to Kal, bodies brushing together. Then she kissed him, and it left her breathless. When she broke away from the kiss, she said, “I’ll see you around.”
She climbed into her car and drove away.
iv.
Their courtship wasn’t something out of Little House on the Prairie. No, it was gritty, real. It was nights at clubs, music pounding around them, the smell of sweat and booze littering the air. It was nights at his apartment, their bodies on his bed, their behavior far from what it had been back in Smallville.
There was nothing fairytale about them.
There were lies, numerous ones. There were the lies she told her father, Lana. There were the lies he told her, the lies about how he afforded his penthouse apartment, the lies about why he woke up in the middle of the night screaming and why only her arms around him could comfort him enough so that he could fall asleep again. There were the lies she told him about how she got her job for the Daily Planet. Lies told, lies received, lies believed and not believed.
Two weeks after she found him at Atlantis, she ended up in his bed. It was her second time having sex and she had no clue what time it was for Kal. He didn’t move like a virgin though, not like Jimmy had. As Kal parted her thighs, as he manipulated her clit, as he guided his cock into her wet entrance, it was clear that this wasn’t his first time. He was too confident, too at ease. His thrusts into her aching center were smooth and measured, not the erratic thrusts of a virgin boy.
And then afterwards they lay in his bed, their bodies pressed close together. The sheets were blue silk. It was dark out and the room was a shade of deep blue. Enough light from the streetlamps outside entered the shut blinds to provide illumination. She could look at his face and make out his features in the blue-silver light.
“Looks like I’ve corrupted you,” Kal commented idly. The fingers of his right hand were stroking her forearm.
His words made her sit up, made her pull away from him. She took some of the blue silk sheet with her, wrapping it around her chest to provide a façade of modesty.
“What?” he asked. Her head was turned away from him, but she could hear him sit up as well.
“I’m not as innocent or sweet as you think,” she said dully. She turned a bit so she was facing him, not allowing herself to take the coward’s option of telling him while facing the wall. “You know my job at the Daily Planet? I didn’t get it because of talent. I got it because I made a deal with Lionel Luthor. I would feed him information about Clark and I would get the column in return.”
Kal’s eyes were dark, hooded. “What have you told him?”
“Nothing he didn’t know. He’s been pushing me for more information.”
“Are you planning to deliver me on a silver platter? Is that why you kept coming back to the club? Is that why you’re here now in my bed?”
She shook her head, strangely calm despite the questions he was throwing at her. “No, I don’t plan to tell him anything. This,” she said, gesturing between him and her, “has nothing to do with Luthor. But I’m not sure what he knows and I’m not sure what he’s going to do if I don’t provide him the information.”
Kal didn’t say anything. His face was in shadows now, the light having changed slightly.
“So, you see, I’m just this petty girl who got scorned and made a deal with the devil because she was jealous. No one corrupted me.” She smiled sadly, ashamed of herself.
Her actions were her own fault. The guilt she felt was entirely because she had felt scorned when she knew she had no reason to be hurt. She had been the one to tell to Clark that they were better off as just friends. At the time, though, she had been hurt. Only with hindsight had she come to grips with how she truly had no justification for feeling that way.
Kal’s hands landed on her shoulders, drawing her from her thoughts. His hands massaged her shoulders, his touch hard enough to banish the tension but gentle enough to tell her what he couldn’t say.
“Don’t worry about Luthor,” he said. “I’ll deal with him. Just keep writing your column.”
“Kal…”
He pressed a kiss to the back of her neck. “I’ll deal with it. There’s nothing to worry about.”
He guided her until she was lying down once more. Her body rested on top of his. Their legs and arms were entangled. Her hands lay still against his chest while his hands traced patterns up and down her back. Her eyes closed and she drifted, her thoughts returning to where they had been earlier.
One lie was gone. One lie had been revealed, the truth uncovered.
There were still lies though. Lies she had told people about how she spent time. Lies Kal had told her. There were so many lies and she had to wonder if the lies wouldn’t be their downfall. Supposedly they had managed to weather the truth about how she had gotten her job, but still she worried. She worried more than she would have thought she would have. It shouldn’t have mattered to her what happened between her and Kal, but it did matter. Even if he was lying to her and even if he wasn’t the boy she had fallen in love with, it mattered.
And that told her something that she wasn’t yet quite ready to acknowledge, not even to herself.
v.
Lionel Luthor didn’t bother her again. She kept the column at the Daily Planet. She told more lies to her father and to Lana, avoided Martha Kent, and essentially became a resident of the Metropolis penthouse Kal somehow owned.
It had been early July when she had found Kal. By the time August began, they had been intimate for weeks. They didn’t talk of their feelings, although she had began to admit to herself that she felt more than just lust for Kal.
Her feelings had changed after she had told him the truth. She had told him the truth and he hadn’t judged her. He had just accepted her, flaws and all.
Just over a month after she had found him, he told her the truth about himself. Another lie uncovered, although this one was bigger than her lie had been. This lie was perhaps the biggest of them all.
It was just a regular morning. The penthouse was light with sunshine pouring in, the room filled the room with yellow-tones. She had been reading in the bed while Kal had been lounging besides her, drinking coffee. The night before he had awakened at around two in the morning, screaming her name. It had been hours until he had fallen back asleep. Her eyes hurt this morning as she read the headlines of the Daily Planet.
“I need to tell you something,” Kal said, breaking the silence that had descended more than an hour again.
She didn’t put down the newspaper. “What is it?”
“I’m an alien from outer space. My home planet, Krypton, blew up when I was just a baby. My parents sent me here so I would have a chance. The green and red meteor rocks are remnant of my home planet. They landed when I crashed to the Earth in the meteor shower of 1989. The green meteor rocks hurt me; the red meteor rocks allow me to be truly myself.”
Now she set down the newspaper. Now she turned and looked at him, her eyes likely wide and surprised.
“I have powers. I’m stronger and faster than humans. I can see through things. I can shoot fire from my eyes.”
She swallowed once, twice. That was the secret, the one she’d wanted to learn to badly. It was only right that now that she knew it, she didn’t know if she could believe it.
Then she said, “You’re serious.”
He shifted closer to her, nodding his head. “I am. And I need you to be able to handle that. I can’t hide my abilities any longer. The world is going to know and I want you by my side.”
“Oh…”
“Are you going to leave?” He paused, and then said, “I wouldn’t stop you. If you wanted to go, I would let you.” His voice had a nervous tinge and his eyes held a gleam of desperation, of fear. He had never said I love you, but the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes revealed him to her in a way that those three words never could have. She didn’t need the words, and she was okay with the words not being said.
In truth she hadn’t thought she would be okay with that. But she was. There was no pain when he didn’t say I love you to try to convince her to stay. It didn’t feel like a weight crushing her chest. It felt right, it reflected who they were, not who they had once been. Back in Smallville, when they had been different people, they would have needed those words to feel satisfied. But Smallville was the past and they were different, altered by time and decisions and, in Kal’s case, a red meteor rock.
Kal’s eyes dropped as he asked, “What’s going to happen?”
This time it was Chloe who shifted closer, until she was nearly in his lap. “I’m not leaving,” she said. “You couldn’t make me leave. I’ll be here at your side, your partner in everything.” She sat on her knees, her face nearly level with Kal’s. She pressed her lips to his, using touch to demonstrate her commitment.
Never once were words of love spoken. Yet all those things that underlined their actions- their choices, their trust in each other to accept the truths about their characters, spoke volumes. She had never imagined a relationship like this, although sometimes she’d let herself picture a relationship with Clark that would rival a fairytale. There would be obstacles to overcome, but then there would be the happily-ever-after.
She didn’t foresee a happily-ever-after with her and Kal. But that didn’t bother her, not like it would have once. It was merely life.
End.
From: simplytoopretty
Request: Chlark love, nc-17, romantic Kaloe
Type: Fic
Title: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
Rating: light nc-17
Warnings: None
Summary: She found him in Atlantis.
A/N: I hope it’s romantic enough. Thanks to vagrantdream for the beta.
"Fumbling Towards Ecstasy"
i.
She found him in Atlantis, a club just off of Davis Street. It was one of those clubs of the month, packed with scantily clad young people. Alcohol flowed abundantly, along with more illegal substances.
She was there just for fun, had snuck in with the help of some friends. She wasn’t searching for him, not at all, for reasons she kept to herself.
But then she spotted him, saw him across the bar. There he was, the little lost farm boy who apparently wasn’t so lost. He was clad in black, wearing a smug smile on his face, and she thought that he wasn’t the Clark she knew. She watched as he slammed back a shot, as the young men and women surrounding him cheered and chatted with him.
It wasn’t her intention to watch him, not to start and not to ever stop. Yet she watched, couldn’t help it, unable to tear her eyes away. There was the boy she loved, only he didn’t look like hers, didn’t look like the sweet boy she knew.
“What’s wrong with him?” she murmured to herself. Her friend glanced at her and asked a question. Chloe just shook her head, not wanting to say anything. Her friend left and then she was alone, to continue watching him.
Later, when she saw him leaving, she followed him out of the club. Warm summer air greeted her as she stepped outside. She scanned the area for him, but her eyes couldn’t locate him. It was like he had disappeared.
“Where did you go?” she whispered. She spun in a circle looking for him.
“Behind you.”
She spun hastily, nearly losing her balance in the high heels she wore. And there he was, glaring at her with red-tinged eyes. His hair was a mess of dark loose curls. His skin had an almost sallow tone to it, as if he wasn’t sleeping well. He looked vaguely like she imagined a cocaine addict would look, an addict she’d discovered.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, taking a step closer, trying to crowd her.
“What are you doing here?” Chloe retorted. “You’re supposed to be in Smallville, Clark.”
“I’ve erased Smallville from my past. I’m no longer that person.”
“Clark…”
He grabbed her, fingers digging into the flesh of her upper arms. Her arms were bare, and she suspected she would have green-purple bruises tomorrow morning. The evening air, soft and gentle, was a sharp contrast to the pain.
“That hurts,” she said, “let go.”
“I live here now. I party here. And it’s Kal now, not Clark.” His voice was low and heated. He was still glaring at her, his eyes still red-tinged and so dark, so very dark. Nothing like the light-hearted, open looks Clark had given her before, back in Smallville.
This isn’t Clark, a voice inside her head said. And she believed it because Clark would have never treated her like this, no matter how angry he might be.
Unpleased with the hold he had on her, she reached out with her hands and pushed against his chest, hoping to startle him into releasing her arms. It seemed to work because he did let go, but not before shaking her roughly.
“Don’t come back again,” he said in that low voice again. She could hear the threats in that tone, in his words.
Instead of replying, she just glared at him. She backed up, still glaring. Then she turned and walked away, refusing to give into the impulse to look over her shoulder and see if he was watching.
His words rang through her head as she walked towards her car. No threat had been made explicitly, they had contained a threat nevertheless. If she had been the cautious sort, she would have stayed away.
ii.
Three nights later she returned to the Atlantis. This time she didn’t have her friends with her. This time she was dressed even more scantily, in a denim miniskirt and a black lacy tank top.
Now that she knew what she was looking for, it wasn’t hard to spot Kal when he came in. She had taken to thinking of him as Kal. It was simpler to think of him as someone separate from Clark, although she realized he was still Clark. Clark gone crazy, for sure, but Clark nonetheless. Unless Clark had a dissociative personality disorder, he and Kal were one and the same.
Kal was easy to watch. She sat at the bar, sipping the Coke she had ordered from the bartender. She had been tempted to order something with alcohol, but she wanted to keep her wits about her. Plus, the last time she had consumed alcohol she had ended up losing her virginity to Jimmy Olsen, a boy who had never even called her afterwards. Alcohol was tainted in her mind consequently.
After about an hour she lost sight of him. She craned her neck, searching. His height usually made it easy to find him, but he was just gone. She slumped in her seat, and took a long sip from her Coke.
Then she felt someone’s hot breath on her neck. She didn’t have to turn to know who it was.
“I thought I told you to stay away,” Kal whispered, his voice close to her ear.
Hands on her shoulders prevented her from turning around. She sat there, held in place by Kal.
“I guess I don’t listen well. I especially don’t like being told what to do.”
He chuckled lightly. “I had forgotten your spunk. Silly me.”
“Hope I didn’t disappoint,” she retorted. The hands left her shoulders and she twisted around. Kal loomed over her, far taller than she was even on the high barstool she sat on. An amused smirk adorned his face, a far cry from the angry glare that had dominated it just three days ago.
“No, not at all.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good.” she said, slightly unsure of herself at this moment. His response had been unexpected, had caught her off guard. Now she floundered slightly, needing to regain her footing in this conversation, her control.
For an extended period of time neither said anything. She watched him and he watched her, and she felt as if he was studying her, analyzing her, weighing her- judging her, in other words. She forced herself to stay still, to not shift self-consciously under his gaze. She didn’t want to give him the self-satisfaction of knowing she was self-conscious under his scrutiny. To give him that would be to surrender some of her control, and she couldn’t do that.
Music pounded around them, all heavy bass and electric sounds. On the dance floor numerous couples danced, their bodies pressed closed together, undulating with the primal beat. It was chaos, pure and simple.
Kal broke the impasse between them. He held out a hand and said, “Dance?”
She stared at his hand. It was large, palm up and opened to hers. He was waiting for her hand. She knew she shouldn’t, knew there were a thousand reasons why she shouldn’t dance with him, a thousand reasons why she shouldn’t even be here.
There was Lana and the fact that Kal was really Clark and a runaway teenage boy. There were reasons related to her and the deal she had made. There were so many reasons why she shouldn’t.
She laid her hand on top of his.
iii.
Four nights after she had first seen him at Atlantis, Kal kissed her. Warm summer air caressed her skin like his lips caressed hers. When it happened, it stole her breath, made her almost weak in the knees. Almost weak because her knees didn’t buckle when his lips left hers. She caught her breath and then she kissed him, pressing her body close to his.
He responded eagerly, kissing her deeply, his tongue probing her mouth. Her tongue dueled with his as their hands explored the other’s body. His palms and fingertips felt soft against her skin.
She knew she shouldn’t be kissing him. She shouldn’t have come again to the club, but she had. It didn’t seem she could stay away, like that cat from the song, the cat that came back despite everything. She should have stayed away for all the reasons she knew, but she couldn’t. Despite the fact that she thought of him as a separate person from Clark, Kal was Clark, tied to the boy she loved.
“I’m dangerous,” Kal said after walking her to her car. He leaned against the red Bug as she locked the door.
But it wasn’t said as a warning, wasn’t offered as a reason why she should stay away. A statement of fact, that was what it was, and a statement of a reality she knew she’d have to accept if she came back again. The question of course was whether she could stand this new version of Clark, the one that called himself Kal, the one that wore all black clothing and smirked more than he smiled.
“I know,” she said, and she meant that she did want to see if she could handle it, this new version Clark who was and who wasn’t the Clark she had known in high school.
People said bad boys were attractive to good girls, and perhaps that was why she felt this attraction to this new Clark. That reason could have been coupled with her past feelings for Clark and how much she missed him. He was here, not quite himself, but yet with the same face, the same voice. His attitudes were different from what Clark had possessed back in Smallville, but then again she wasn’t the same person she had been just a few months ago.
In the end she supposed that people could change. People could and did change and Clark was no different. She had changed too, from the girl she had been in Smallville. Thinking of how she had changed in the past weeks made her uncomfortable, made her want to do something else.
So she did.
She moved closer to Kal, bodies brushing together. Then she kissed him, and it left her breathless. When she broke away from the kiss, she said, “I’ll see you around.”
She climbed into her car and drove away.
iv.
Their courtship wasn’t something out of Little House on the Prairie. No, it was gritty, real. It was nights at clubs, music pounding around them, the smell of sweat and booze littering the air. It was nights at his apartment, their bodies on his bed, their behavior far from what it had been back in Smallville.
There was nothing fairytale about them.
There were lies, numerous ones. There were the lies she told her father, Lana. There were the lies he told her, the lies about how he afforded his penthouse apartment, the lies about why he woke up in the middle of the night screaming and why only her arms around him could comfort him enough so that he could fall asleep again. There were the lies she told him about how she got her job for the Daily Planet. Lies told, lies received, lies believed and not believed.
Two weeks after she found him at Atlantis, she ended up in his bed. It was her second time having sex and she had no clue what time it was for Kal. He didn’t move like a virgin though, not like Jimmy had. As Kal parted her thighs, as he manipulated her clit, as he guided his cock into her wet entrance, it was clear that this wasn’t his first time. He was too confident, too at ease. His thrusts into her aching center were smooth and measured, not the erratic thrusts of a virgin boy.
And then afterwards they lay in his bed, their bodies pressed close together. The sheets were blue silk. It was dark out and the room was a shade of deep blue. Enough light from the streetlamps outside entered the shut blinds to provide illumination. She could look at his face and make out his features in the blue-silver light.
“Looks like I’ve corrupted you,” Kal commented idly. The fingers of his right hand were stroking her forearm.
His words made her sit up, made her pull away from him. She took some of the blue silk sheet with her, wrapping it around her chest to provide a façade of modesty.
“What?” he asked. Her head was turned away from him, but she could hear him sit up as well.
“I’m not as innocent or sweet as you think,” she said dully. She turned a bit so she was facing him, not allowing herself to take the coward’s option of telling him while facing the wall. “You know my job at the Daily Planet? I didn’t get it because of talent. I got it because I made a deal with Lionel Luthor. I would feed him information about Clark and I would get the column in return.”
Kal’s eyes were dark, hooded. “What have you told him?”
“Nothing he didn’t know. He’s been pushing me for more information.”
“Are you planning to deliver me on a silver platter? Is that why you kept coming back to the club? Is that why you’re here now in my bed?”
She shook her head, strangely calm despite the questions he was throwing at her. “No, I don’t plan to tell him anything. This,” she said, gesturing between him and her, “has nothing to do with Luthor. But I’m not sure what he knows and I’m not sure what he’s going to do if I don’t provide him the information.”
Kal didn’t say anything. His face was in shadows now, the light having changed slightly.
“So, you see, I’m just this petty girl who got scorned and made a deal with the devil because she was jealous. No one corrupted me.” She smiled sadly, ashamed of herself.
Her actions were her own fault. The guilt she felt was entirely because she had felt scorned when she knew she had no reason to be hurt. She had been the one to tell to Clark that they were better off as just friends. At the time, though, she had been hurt. Only with hindsight had she come to grips with how she truly had no justification for feeling that way.
Kal’s hands landed on her shoulders, drawing her from her thoughts. His hands massaged her shoulders, his touch hard enough to banish the tension but gentle enough to tell her what he couldn’t say.
“Don’t worry about Luthor,” he said. “I’ll deal with him. Just keep writing your column.”
“Kal…”
He pressed a kiss to the back of her neck. “I’ll deal with it. There’s nothing to worry about.”
He guided her until she was lying down once more. Her body rested on top of his. Their legs and arms were entangled. Her hands lay still against his chest while his hands traced patterns up and down her back. Her eyes closed and she drifted, her thoughts returning to where they had been earlier.
One lie was gone. One lie had been revealed, the truth uncovered.
There were still lies though. Lies she had told people about how she spent time. Lies Kal had told her. There were so many lies and she had to wonder if the lies wouldn’t be their downfall. Supposedly they had managed to weather the truth about how she had gotten her job, but still she worried. She worried more than she would have thought she would have. It shouldn’t have mattered to her what happened between her and Kal, but it did matter. Even if he was lying to her and even if he wasn’t the boy she had fallen in love with, it mattered.
And that told her something that she wasn’t yet quite ready to acknowledge, not even to herself.
v.
Lionel Luthor didn’t bother her again. She kept the column at the Daily Planet. She told more lies to her father and to Lana, avoided Martha Kent, and essentially became a resident of the Metropolis penthouse Kal somehow owned.
It had been early July when she had found Kal. By the time August began, they had been intimate for weeks. They didn’t talk of their feelings, although she had began to admit to herself that she felt more than just lust for Kal.
Her feelings had changed after she had told him the truth. She had told him the truth and he hadn’t judged her. He had just accepted her, flaws and all.
Just over a month after she had found him, he told her the truth about himself. Another lie uncovered, although this one was bigger than her lie had been. This lie was perhaps the biggest of them all.
It was just a regular morning. The penthouse was light with sunshine pouring in, the room filled the room with yellow-tones. She had been reading in the bed while Kal had been lounging besides her, drinking coffee. The night before he had awakened at around two in the morning, screaming her name. It had been hours until he had fallen back asleep. Her eyes hurt this morning as she read the headlines of the Daily Planet.
“I need to tell you something,” Kal said, breaking the silence that had descended more than an hour again.
She didn’t put down the newspaper. “What is it?”
“I’m an alien from outer space. My home planet, Krypton, blew up when I was just a baby. My parents sent me here so I would have a chance. The green and red meteor rocks are remnant of my home planet. They landed when I crashed to the Earth in the meteor shower of 1989. The green meteor rocks hurt me; the red meteor rocks allow me to be truly myself.”
Now she set down the newspaper. Now she turned and looked at him, her eyes likely wide and surprised.
“I have powers. I’m stronger and faster than humans. I can see through things. I can shoot fire from my eyes.”
She swallowed once, twice. That was the secret, the one she’d wanted to learn to badly. It was only right that now that she knew it, she didn’t know if she could believe it.
Then she said, “You’re serious.”
He shifted closer to her, nodding his head. “I am. And I need you to be able to handle that. I can’t hide my abilities any longer. The world is going to know and I want you by my side.”
“Oh…”
“Are you going to leave?” He paused, and then said, “I wouldn’t stop you. If you wanted to go, I would let you.” His voice had a nervous tinge and his eyes held a gleam of desperation, of fear. He had never said I love you, but the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes revealed him to her in a way that those three words never could have. She didn’t need the words, and she was okay with the words not being said.
In truth she hadn’t thought she would be okay with that. But she was. There was no pain when he didn’t say I love you to try to convince her to stay. It didn’t feel like a weight crushing her chest. It felt right, it reflected who they were, not who they had once been. Back in Smallville, when they had been different people, they would have needed those words to feel satisfied. But Smallville was the past and they were different, altered by time and decisions and, in Kal’s case, a red meteor rock.
Kal’s eyes dropped as he asked, “What’s going to happen?”
This time it was Chloe who shifted closer, until she was nearly in his lap. “I’m not leaving,” she said. “You couldn’t make me leave. I’ll be here at your side, your partner in everything.” She sat on her knees, her face nearly level with Kal’s. She pressed her lips to his, using touch to demonstrate her commitment.
Never once were words of love spoken. Yet all those things that underlined their actions- their choices, their trust in each other to accept the truths about their characters, spoke volumes. She had never imagined a relationship like this, although sometimes she’d let herself picture a relationship with Clark that would rival a fairytale. There would be obstacles to overcome, but then there would be the happily-ever-after.
She didn’t foresee a happily-ever-after with her and Kal. But that didn’t bother her, not like it would have once. It was merely life.
End.