Surrender to Love - Summer Lovin’ 2 (FR-13)
Surrender to Love - Summer Lovin’ 2 (FR-13)
Alt Title: Day 15 - Revived-Slayer Love
Author: mmooch
Summary: **The ‘Love Interest’ Part of the 2013 LiveJournal’s Twisted Shorts FaD** series. Two heroes in pain help each other heal.
Crossover: Smallville.
Characters: Buffy and Clark.
Rating: FR-13.
Word count: 2812.
Challenge: for the livejournal 2013 August Fic-a-Day Challenge.
Timeline: between seasons 1& 2 for BtVS; between seasons 2 & 3 for Smallville.
Warning: not that I can think of at the moment.
A/N: Let me know if you have any ideas for fandoms that you’d like Buffy paired with (especially female).
Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy. Smallville characters belong to DC Comics & WB. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.
Highway
As he sped away from Smallville, Clark momentarily considered hiding out in Metropolis, but then he realized that he needed to be further from his life than that. Given his abilities, he could get pretty much anywhere on either of the Americas. He wasn’t sure if he could run fast enough to run across the ocean - although maybe he could swim it. The point was moot since he didn’t feel like leaving the United States just yet.
Out of nowhere, the image of a cute, blonde girl popped up in his mind. No, it wasn’t his best friend, Chloe, but the girl who visited Nell and Lana last summer…Buffy Summers. She was fun, if a little shallow - and to be honest, he kind of wanted shallow at the moment. Of any female not named Lana Lang, she was the one who came closest to turning his interest.
Besides, Los Angeles sounded like it could be fun…just the place for an alien under the influence of red kryptonite. He was sure he could find her sooner or later.
~~~~~~
LA
Buffy sat on the beach, staring blankly at the ocean. She wished she could get rid of the memories of the Master’s lair. Since she became a Slayer less than a year ago, she wasn’t used to feeling as weak as he made her feel.
Then there were the dreams. The vivid, way-too-realistic-nightmarish dreams.
She was late in coming to the Hellmouth, so the Master had succeeded in escaping and had taken over Sunnydale by the time she got there. But the ‘she’ that arrived was a darker, less Buffy version. In fact, almost everyone was different.
Willow and Xander were sadistic monsters - which reinforced her resolve to stake them immediately if they were ever turned; Angel was a pathetic mess who was their plaything. Giles was pretty much the same, although he was attempting to be the Slayer since she wasn’t there. And there were a handful of students, some that she didn’t know, helping him out.
And the town…it got so bad they had a curfew of sundown. Which probably wouldn’t save the people for much longer once the Master’s assembly line for human beings was fully operational. She managed to kill him again, but not before he killed her in a way she couldn’t come back from with a little CPR.
Finally, there was the fact that the Master’s bones didn’t turn to dust like they were supposed to. That made him different, and in her opinion, different wasn’t good.
All of it made her long for the comparatively worry-free summer she had in Smallville, even with the strangeness that came with it. That different was totally of the good.
Thinking of Smallville caused Buffy fingered the necklace she had made once she got back from Kansas. So it was kind of copying Lana; at least her necklace wasn’t from the meteorite that killed her own parents - partially because her parents weren’t dead. Her necklace looked like a normal necklace, not a piece of rock on a chain. Whoever found this meteorite decided to melt it down and mold it to look like a regular gemstone.
A couple weeks later…
Buffy was about to go into the nightclub when she heard a scuffle in the alley. As much as she wanted to ignore it and have a normal night out, she knew that she’d feel guilty if it was a vamp attack and she didn’t save the person.
“What the hell are you?” the vampire complained, holding her bloody mouth.
Her intended victim replied in a semi-bored voice, “A little confused, but mostly annoyed. You should probably leave me alone now.”
Somewhere in the back of Buffy’s mind, that voice sounded slightly familiar, but she set that aside so she could quickly stake the vampire before it got away.
“Whoa! What did you do to-- Buffy?” the ‘victim’ exclaimed.
She looked around the dumpster and saw the last person she expected to see…and in clothes she never expected to see on him. “Clark?”
“Name’s Kal now,” he tersely replied.
“Okaaaay,” she drawled. “What are you doing in LA? Don’t tell me you got bit by the acting bug! Not that you aren’t hot enough to be an actor, but really?”
Kal smirked at her and said, “You think I’m hot?”
Buffy just rolled her eyes at him. “Yeah, like you didn’t already know that. I made a big enough fool of myself over you last summer.”
“I was the fool for not paying more attention to you,” he smoothly replied. “Let’s fix that by going inside and dancing. After that, you can tell me what you did to that girl who tried to bite me like a vampire.”
“Oh goody,” Buffy muttered, but allowed herself to be escorted inside.
~~~~~~
Later that night…
It wasn’t so much his look as his attitude that told Buffy something was definitely wrong with Clark/Kal/whatever he wanted to call himself now. If you looked up the definition of selfless, there’d be a picture of Clark next to it, and right above that, there’d be a picture of Kal next to selfish. Kal was totally driven by his own wants and desires. Fortunately, he had the attention span of an ant because by the time she left, he forgot to ask about the vampire.
If it wasn’t for the boy she sort of fell in love with the summer before, she would have walked out of the club and forgotten the jerk after he hit on the waitress in front of her. She needed to find out what happened in the past year to change him so much. Despite her kneejerk reaction to tell him off, Buffy gave him her dad’s number at the end of the night and told him to call.
Once she got there, she looked up the Kents’ phone number in her address book and debated whether she should call them or not. Kal’s reaction to any questions about his life in Smallville was met with hostility. On the other hand, they might be looking for him.
“Mrs. Kent?” she said once she heard the other woman’s voice on the line. “This is Buffy Summers. I’m not sure if you remember me from last summer?”
“Hello, Buffy,” Martha replied, disappointed again that it wasn’t Clark’s voice on the other end. “How are you doing?” She looked at the clock and realized how late it was. “Is anything wrong?”
“I’m fine and I’m also not sure,” Buffy answered. “This may sound like a strange question, but has something happened to Clark?”
“You’ve seen him? Is he okay?” Martha demanded desperately.
“Physically, he’s great,” Buffy assured her. “But he’s acting very weird. Oh, and he’s calling himself ‘Kal’ now. You’d think he would be able to come up with a better fake name.”
“That was his birth name,” Martha said before she knew what she was saying.
“Huh, I didn’t know he was adopted. Oh…did he just find that out? ‘Cause that would sort of make sense, I suppose. One of my friends found out she was adopted a year ago and insisted on finding her birth parents,” Buffy babbled.
“Clark’s always known.” Martha debated how much to confide in the girl she barely knew. The girl was sweet, if a bit flaky, from what she remembered of the previous year. But she sounded more grownup now…and she was trying to help Clark. Maybe just the edited version of what happened. “There was an accident. I was hurt and had a miscarriage, and Clark felt responsible for it. He decided that it would be safer for those he cared about if he left.”
Huh, he had issues almost as big as her own. Buffy chuckled wryly, but softly enough that it didn’t carry over the phone. They were dealing with their issues in the same way…badly. It was funny that she didn’t see it when it was just her, but seeing the same thing in Clark opened her eyes to the way she was acting.
“That’s tough,” she murmured when she realized that Mrs. Kent was waiting for a response. “What should I do? I know he’s in LA, but I don’t know where he’s staying. If I find out, do you want me to call you so you can come get him?”
Martha’s immediate answer was yes, but then she realized that wouldn’t help if Clark wasn’t ready to come home. And it wasn’t as if they could force him to come unless they were willing to use green kryptonite on him. “Just be his friend and don’t let him push you away,” she pleaded. “When he’s finished grieving, maybe then he’ll listen to reason and believe us when we say that we love him and want him home.”
Alright, that wasn’t the answer Buffy expected. Then again, knowing that he was super-strong and that his parents already knew it, they probably knew they couldn’t stop him from leaving again if they did manage to take him home. “Friend-girl, it is, then,” Buffy replied. “If you want to send him a letter or anything…for when he’s ready, you can send it to my dad’s place,” she added, reciting the address for the older woman.
“Thank you, Buffy,” Martha choked out emotionally, “Thank you for helping my son.”
A month later…
Buffy was about to head back to Sunnydale in a couple weeks and she was still worried about Clark/Kal. Although he had lost some of that bad boy attitude, he wasn’t to the point of being able to talk about Smallville yet.
On the plus side, trying to help him had actually helped her work through her issues with the Master…hopefully. She’d still feel better when Giles told her his bones had been cremated and soaked in holy water. That nightmare-world was way too vivid to risk anything Hellmouthy happening to bring it into reality.
It all came to a crashing halt when she caught Kal breaking into an ATM to steal cash. After thinking about it, though, she realized that she should have suspected something sooner. It wasn’t as if he would have a job to earn the money he freely spent, and it there was no way he got the money from his parents - even if they had it. It was possible that his friend Lex had given him some money before he died in a plane crash, but probably not likely.
That was not a fun update to share with Martha. After the second call, Buffy was told to call her Martha instead of Mrs. Kent.
“Is he wearing a red ring?” Martha asked.
Confused by the change of subject, Buffy said, “Yeah, so?”
“The people who made the ring used a process that affects Clark like a drug. I should have thought of that sooner. When we first found out about his reaction, we destroyed the ring and he returned to normal,” Martha explained without giving away the secret about kryptonite, and hoping that Buffy would buy that explanation.
Which she didn’t…not entirely. Why would it only affect Clark? But that was an issue for after he wasn’t committing criminal acts on a daily basis. “Sounds very Tolkienish. So I just have to drop the ring into the Fires of Mordor?” she quipped.
“You’ve read Lord of the Rings trilogy?” Martha couldn’t help but be a bit surprised.
“Eh, kind of. More like skimmed it,” Buffy admitted. “My cousin loved the series and insisted on talking about it whenever we got together, so I decided it would be easier to try and read it. She didn’t tell me it was as long as the encyclopedia. But back to Clark’s ring…I break it and he’s Clark again?”
“It isn’t as easy as it sounds,” Martha warned. “And I don’t know if the effects will wear off as fast as they did before since he’s been wearing it for so long.”
“Still worth a shot. Wish me luck,” Buffy said.
Worried that Buffy could be in danger from Kal if he found out what she was doing, Martha tried to stop her. “Buffy--” was all she got out before she heard Buffy say goodbye and hang up.
Buffy knew that Martha would try to talk her out of breaking the ring because of Kal’s strength and her apparent lack of it. She wasn’t sure if Slayer strength matched whatever gave him his strength, but she figured she could at least put in a good enough effort and at least break the ring.
Before Clark arrived to take her out, she decided to slip on her Kansas necklace for luck.
~~~~~~
Buffy’s driveway
Kal got out of the car that he purchased with stolen ATM money and walked up to the door of the only girl that kept his attention for longer than a couple hours. There was something about her that drew him. The tiny part of his brain that was still Clark saw the same look of pain in her eyes that lived in his own, but Kal refused to accept that as the reason for his attraction to her.
Buffy opened the door with a smile that made his heart flip a little. “Kal!” she greeted him warmly. “I was wondering if you would mind a little change in plans for tonight?” she asked with an adorable pout that made him lean down and give her a toe-curling kiss. When she pulled back, she quipped, “Is that a yes or your attempt to change my mind?”
“Whatever you want, Buffy,” he replied sincerely, almost sounding like the old Clark.
Knowing that she’d probably end up fighting him and wanting to limit the property damage or possible injuries to others, Buffy needed to take him to a remote location. “I was thinking about a picnic on a quiet, little beach?” More like deserted, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Sounds…intimate,” Kal commented with a bit of a leer. “Fine with me.”
~~~~~~
The beach
As they ate the dinner, Buffy checked for signs that they weren’t alone. When she assured herself they were, she grabbed his hand that had the red ring on it.
Assuming that something else was going on, Kal said, “You know, if you wanted for some alone time, I could have gotten us a hotel room.”
“I just want to say thank you for this summer, Kal,” Buffy replied, “And also for making this easier for me by being a pig.” With her other hand, she grabbed his wrist so she could force the ring off his finger.
When he realized what she was doing, Kal tried to pull away, not caring if he hurt her in the process. To his shock, he couldn’t. He felt weak - at least for him he felt weak. “What have you done to me?” he demanded.
“I’m saving you from this ring,” Buffy answered. “Not sure how a ring can drug you, but I was told to destroy it, so I’m going to do that.” She picked up a nearby stone and smashed it down on the stone; she would have the gold melted down later.
Since she was looking at the ring and not directly at Kal, she only a flash from the corner of her eyes. Then he grabbed his chest and cried out in pain.
“Kal, are you okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t think this would hurt you!” she exclaimed.
He fell on his back and started spasming. Panicked, Buffy ripped open his shirt in case she had to do CPR. God, wouldn’t that be ironic? She started her summer with needing CPR and might end it by doing giving it to somebody else. When the shirt was open, she was horrified at what she saw on his chest. Somebody or something had branded him.
The strange thing was that it was glowing…and disappearing? What the Hellmouth was going on here?
When he opened his eyes, he whispered hoarsely, “Buffy?”
Some instinct told her to answer with, “Clark? Is Kal gone now?” Holy crap, had he been possessed before?
“Not exactly,” Clark said with a wry chuckle. “He’s the part of me that does what he wants without worrying about the consequences.”
“Sounds like we have a lot to talk about,” Buffy suggested, flipping her hair out of her face. A piece of it was caught on her necklace and pulled it out of her shirt.
“That’s a pretty necklace,” Clark remarked, not quite up to talking about anything serious yet. “Not sure I’ve seen a stone that shade of blue before.”
Buffy wasn’t entirely surprised at his avoidance, so she let it happen. “That’s strange, seeing as how I got it from Kansas. It’s one of those meteorites from the shower years ago.”
She was shocked at the panicked look Clark gave her at that news.
A/N: Man, this went longer than I thought it would! I had to cut a flashback scene to get it under 3000 words. I’ve posted it as a bonus scene.
Alt Title: Day 15 - Revived-Slayer Love
Author: mmooch
Summary: **The ‘Love Interest’ Part of the 2013 LiveJournal’s Twisted Shorts FaD** series. Two heroes in pain help each other heal.
Crossover: Smallville.
Characters: Buffy and Clark.
Rating: FR-13.
Word count: 2812.
Challenge: for the livejournal 2013 August Fic-a-Day Challenge.
Timeline: between seasons 1& 2 for BtVS; between seasons 2 & 3 for Smallville.
Warning: not that I can think of at the moment.
A/N: Let me know if you have any ideas for fandoms that you’d like Buffy paired with (especially female).
Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy. Smallville characters belong to DC Comics & WB. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.
Highway
As he sped away from Smallville, Clark momentarily considered hiding out in Metropolis, but then he realized that he needed to be further from his life than that. Given his abilities, he could get pretty much anywhere on either of the Americas. He wasn’t sure if he could run fast enough to run across the ocean - although maybe he could swim it. The point was moot since he didn’t feel like leaving the United States just yet.
Out of nowhere, the image of a cute, blonde girl popped up in his mind. No, it wasn’t his best friend, Chloe, but the girl who visited Nell and Lana last summer…Buffy Summers. She was fun, if a little shallow - and to be honest, he kind of wanted shallow at the moment. Of any female not named Lana Lang, she was the one who came closest to turning his interest.
Besides, Los Angeles sounded like it could be fun…just the place for an alien under the influence of red kryptonite. He was sure he could find her sooner or later.
~~~~~~
LA
Buffy sat on the beach, staring blankly at the ocean. She wished she could get rid of the memories of the Master’s lair. Since she became a Slayer less than a year ago, she wasn’t used to feeling as weak as he made her feel.
Then there were the dreams. The vivid, way-too-realistic-nightmarish dreams.
She was late in coming to the Hellmouth, so the Master had succeeded in escaping and had taken over Sunnydale by the time she got there. But the ‘she’ that arrived was a darker, less Buffy version. In fact, almost everyone was different.
Willow and Xander were sadistic monsters - which reinforced her resolve to stake them immediately if they were ever turned; Angel was a pathetic mess who was their plaything. Giles was pretty much the same, although he was attempting to be the Slayer since she wasn’t there. And there were a handful of students, some that she didn’t know, helping him out.
And the town…it got so bad they had a curfew of sundown. Which probably wouldn’t save the people for much longer once the Master’s assembly line for human beings was fully operational. She managed to kill him again, but not before he killed her in a way she couldn’t come back from with a little CPR.
Finally, there was the fact that the Master’s bones didn’t turn to dust like they were supposed to. That made him different, and in her opinion, different wasn’t good.
All of it made her long for the comparatively worry-free summer she had in Smallville, even with the strangeness that came with it. That different was totally of the good.
Thinking of Smallville caused Buffy fingered the necklace she had made once she got back from Kansas. So it was kind of copying Lana; at least her necklace wasn’t from the meteorite that killed her own parents - partially because her parents weren’t dead. Her necklace looked like a normal necklace, not a piece of rock on a chain. Whoever found this meteorite decided to melt it down and mold it to look like a regular gemstone.
A couple weeks later…
Buffy was about to go into the nightclub when she heard a scuffle in the alley. As much as she wanted to ignore it and have a normal night out, she knew that she’d feel guilty if it was a vamp attack and she didn’t save the person.
“What the hell are you?” the vampire complained, holding her bloody mouth.
Her intended victim replied in a semi-bored voice, “A little confused, but mostly annoyed. You should probably leave me alone now.”
Somewhere in the back of Buffy’s mind, that voice sounded slightly familiar, but she set that aside so she could quickly stake the vampire before it got away.
“Whoa! What did you do to-- Buffy?” the ‘victim’ exclaimed.
She looked around the dumpster and saw the last person she expected to see…and in clothes she never expected to see on him. “Clark?”
“Name’s Kal now,” he tersely replied.
“Okaaaay,” she drawled. “What are you doing in LA? Don’t tell me you got bit by the acting bug! Not that you aren’t hot enough to be an actor, but really?”
Kal smirked at her and said, “You think I’m hot?”
Buffy just rolled her eyes at him. “Yeah, like you didn’t already know that. I made a big enough fool of myself over you last summer.”
“I was the fool for not paying more attention to you,” he smoothly replied. “Let’s fix that by going inside and dancing. After that, you can tell me what you did to that girl who tried to bite me like a vampire.”
“Oh goody,” Buffy muttered, but allowed herself to be escorted inside.
~~~~~~
Later that night…
It wasn’t so much his look as his attitude that told Buffy something was definitely wrong with Clark/Kal/whatever he wanted to call himself now. If you looked up the definition of selfless, there’d be a picture of Clark next to it, and right above that, there’d be a picture of Kal next to selfish. Kal was totally driven by his own wants and desires. Fortunately, he had the attention span of an ant because by the time she left, he forgot to ask about the vampire.
If it wasn’t for the boy she sort of fell in love with the summer before, she would have walked out of the club and forgotten the jerk after he hit on the waitress in front of her. She needed to find out what happened in the past year to change him so much. Despite her kneejerk reaction to tell him off, Buffy gave him her dad’s number at the end of the night and told him to call.
Once she got there, she looked up the Kents’ phone number in her address book and debated whether she should call them or not. Kal’s reaction to any questions about his life in Smallville was met with hostility. On the other hand, they might be looking for him.
“Mrs. Kent?” she said once she heard the other woman’s voice on the line. “This is Buffy Summers. I’m not sure if you remember me from last summer?”
“Hello, Buffy,” Martha replied, disappointed again that it wasn’t Clark’s voice on the other end. “How are you doing?” She looked at the clock and realized how late it was. “Is anything wrong?”
“I’m fine and I’m also not sure,” Buffy answered. “This may sound like a strange question, but has something happened to Clark?”
“You’ve seen him? Is he okay?” Martha demanded desperately.
“Physically, he’s great,” Buffy assured her. “But he’s acting very weird. Oh, and he’s calling himself ‘Kal’ now. You’d think he would be able to come up with a better fake name.”
“That was his birth name,” Martha said before she knew what she was saying.
“Huh, I didn’t know he was adopted. Oh…did he just find that out? ‘Cause that would sort of make sense, I suppose. One of my friends found out she was adopted a year ago and insisted on finding her birth parents,” Buffy babbled.
“Clark’s always known.” Martha debated how much to confide in the girl she barely knew. The girl was sweet, if a bit flaky, from what she remembered of the previous year. But she sounded more grownup now…and she was trying to help Clark. Maybe just the edited version of what happened. “There was an accident. I was hurt and had a miscarriage, and Clark felt responsible for it. He decided that it would be safer for those he cared about if he left.”
Huh, he had issues almost as big as her own. Buffy chuckled wryly, but softly enough that it didn’t carry over the phone. They were dealing with their issues in the same way…badly. It was funny that she didn’t see it when it was just her, but seeing the same thing in Clark opened her eyes to the way she was acting.
“That’s tough,” she murmured when she realized that Mrs. Kent was waiting for a response. “What should I do? I know he’s in LA, but I don’t know where he’s staying. If I find out, do you want me to call you so you can come get him?”
Martha’s immediate answer was yes, but then she realized that wouldn’t help if Clark wasn’t ready to come home. And it wasn’t as if they could force him to come unless they were willing to use green kryptonite on him. “Just be his friend and don’t let him push you away,” she pleaded. “When he’s finished grieving, maybe then he’ll listen to reason and believe us when we say that we love him and want him home.”
Alright, that wasn’t the answer Buffy expected. Then again, knowing that he was super-strong and that his parents already knew it, they probably knew they couldn’t stop him from leaving again if they did manage to take him home. “Friend-girl, it is, then,” Buffy replied. “If you want to send him a letter or anything…for when he’s ready, you can send it to my dad’s place,” she added, reciting the address for the older woman.
“Thank you, Buffy,” Martha choked out emotionally, “Thank you for helping my son.”
A month later…
Buffy was about to head back to Sunnydale in a couple weeks and she was still worried about Clark/Kal. Although he had lost some of that bad boy attitude, he wasn’t to the point of being able to talk about Smallville yet.
On the plus side, trying to help him had actually helped her work through her issues with the Master…hopefully. She’d still feel better when Giles told her his bones had been cremated and soaked in holy water. That nightmare-world was way too vivid to risk anything Hellmouthy happening to bring it into reality.
It all came to a crashing halt when she caught Kal breaking into an ATM to steal cash. After thinking about it, though, she realized that she should have suspected something sooner. It wasn’t as if he would have a job to earn the money he freely spent, and it there was no way he got the money from his parents - even if they had it. It was possible that his friend Lex had given him some money before he died in a plane crash, but probably not likely.
That was not a fun update to share with Martha. After the second call, Buffy was told to call her Martha instead of Mrs. Kent.
“Is he wearing a red ring?” Martha asked.
Confused by the change of subject, Buffy said, “Yeah, so?”
“The people who made the ring used a process that affects Clark like a drug. I should have thought of that sooner. When we first found out about his reaction, we destroyed the ring and he returned to normal,” Martha explained without giving away the secret about kryptonite, and hoping that Buffy would buy that explanation.
Which she didn’t…not entirely. Why would it only affect Clark? But that was an issue for after he wasn’t committing criminal acts on a daily basis. “Sounds very Tolkienish. So I just have to drop the ring into the Fires of Mordor?” she quipped.
“You’ve read Lord of the Rings trilogy?” Martha couldn’t help but be a bit surprised.
“Eh, kind of. More like skimmed it,” Buffy admitted. “My cousin loved the series and insisted on talking about it whenever we got together, so I decided it would be easier to try and read it. She didn’t tell me it was as long as the encyclopedia. But back to Clark’s ring…I break it and he’s Clark again?”
“It isn’t as easy as it sounds,” Martha warned. “And I don’t know if the effects will wear off as fast as they did before since he’s been wearing it for so long.”
“Still worth a shot. Wish me luck,” Buffy said.
Worried that Buffy could be in danger from Kal if he found out what she was doing, Martha tried to stop her. “Buffy--” was all she got out before she heard Buffy say goodbye and hang up.
Buffy knew that Martha would try to talk her out of breaking the ring because of Kal’s strength and her apparent lack of it. She wasn’t sure if Slayer strength matched whatever gave him his strength, but she figured she could at least put in a good enough effort and at least break the ring.
Before Clark arrived to take her out, she decided to slip on her Kansas necklace for luck.
~~~~~~
Buffy’s driveway
Kal got out of the car that he purchased with stolen ATM money and walked up to the door of the only girl that kept his attention for longer than a couple hours. There was something about her that drew him. The tiny part of his brain that was still Clark saw the same look of pain in her eyes that lived in his own, but Kal refused to accept that as the reason for his attraction to her.
Buffy opened the door with a smile that made his heart flip a little. “Kal!” she greeted him warmly. “I was wondering if you would mind a little change in plans for tonight?” she asked with an adorable pout that made him lean down and give her a toe-curling kiss. When she pulled back, she quipped, “Is that a yes or your attempt to change my mind?”
“Whatever you want, Buffy,” he replied sincerely, almost sounding like the old Clark.
Knowing that she’d probably end up fighting him and wanting to limit the property damage or possible injuries to others, Buffy needed to take him to a remote location. “I was thinking about a picnic on a quiet, little beach?” More like deserted, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Sounds…intimate,” Kal commented with a bit of a leer. “Fine with me.”
~~~~~~
The beach
As they ate the dinner, Buffy checked for signs that they weren’t alone. When she assured herself they were, she grabbed his hand that had the red ring on it.
Assuming that something else was going on, Kal said, “You know, if you wanted for some alone time, I could have gotten us a hotel room.”
“I just want to say thank you for this summer, Kal,” Buffy replied, “And also for making this easier for me by being a pig.” With her other hand, she grabbed his wrist so she could force the ring off his finger.
When he realized what she was doing, Kal tried to pull away, not caring if he hurt her in the process. To his shock, he couldn’t. He felt weak - at least for him he felt weak. “What have you done to me?” he demanded.
“I’m saving you from this ring,” Buffy answered. “Not sure how a ring can drug you, but I was told to destroy it, so I’m going to do that.” She picked up a nearby stone and smashed it down on the stone; she would have the gold melted down later.
Since she was looking at the ring and not directly at Kal, she only a flash from the corner of her eyes. Then he grabbed his chest and cried out in pain.
“Kal, are you okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t think this would hurt you!” she exclaimed.
He fell on his back and started spasming. Panicked, Buffy ripped open his shirt in case she had to do CPR. God, wouldn’t that be ironic? She started her summer with needing CPR and might end it by doing giving it to somebody else. When the shirt was open, she was horrified at what she saw on his chest. Somebody or something had branded him.
The strange thing was that it was glowing…and disappearing? What the Hellmouth was going on here?
When he opened his eyes, he whispered hoarsely, “Buffy?”
Some instinct told her to answer with, “Clark? Is Kal gone now?” Holy crap, had he been possessed before?
“Not exactly,” Clark said with a wry chuckle. “He’s the part of me that does what he wants without worrying about the consequences.”
“Sounds like we have a lot to talk about,” Buffy suggested, flipping her hair out of her face. A piece of it was caught on her necklace and pulled it out of her shirt.
“That’s a pretty necklace,” Clark remarked, not quite up to talking about anything serious yet. “Not sure I’ve seen a stone that shade of blue before.”
Buffy wasn’t entirely surprised at his avoidance, so she let it happen. “That’s strange, seeing as how I got it from Kansas. It’s one of those meteorites from the shower years ago.”
She was shocked at the panicked look Clark gave her at that news.
A/N: Man, this went longer than I thought it would! I had to cut a flashback scene to get it under 3000 words. I’ve posted it as a bonus scene.