Sunset, Chapter 6

Clark/Chloe
Season 5, sequel/expansion to "Hypnotic"
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the WB and DC comics, not to me

Chloe kind of stood frozen for a moment. Then she relaxed against me and kissed me back. Her lips felt incredibly soft, and her warm, yielding body pressed against mine.

A memory flashed into my mind, a memory of the time she’d been under the influence of an alien parasite, and I’d been on red K. We’d kissed then, too. In fact, we’d made out pretty seriously, to the point where she’d actually stripped my shirt off.

She didn’t remember any of it, but I remembered it all with vivid clarity, and all of a sudden all I could think about was how it had felt to have her hands on my bare skin.

My eyes burned furiously. Other parts of me burned, too.

I thought about the way Simone and I had kissed after she’d hypnotized me. I’d slammed her right up against a chain link fence in the alley behind the Talon, next to a Dumpster. It had all seemed perfectly normal and logical at the time (and totally not my fault, by the way… I’d been under the influence of her pendant), but in retrospect, it seemed raunchy and tawdry.

Part of me thought about shoving Chloe up against a wall and kissing her for all she was worth, too, but I wanted to go slower with Chloe. I wanted to kiss her the right way, to make her feel cherished and special. She wasn’t just some anonymous girl I was using for cheap thrills, after all. She was Chloe.

The funny thing was, making out with Simone hadn’t made my heat vision flare up like this, even though we’d gotten a lot further around the bases than I cared to contemplate (and right here in this loft, my personal refuge, which was something I’d just as soon erase from my memory). Yeah, Simone was gorgeous, and seriously stacked, but she was also a murderer, and “seduction” wasn’t at all the right word for what she’d done to me. It was more like attempted rape, although like I said before, at the time I was kind of a zombie, which had made it impossible for me to protest.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that even though things had gotten pretty hot and heavy between me and Simone, psycho-bling-woman didn’t make my eyes burn, not even a little. Lana had made them burn a little, but I could definitely control the reaction.

But right now, with Chloe in my arms, my heat vision was getting seriously out of control. I couldn’t think of anything beyond the need to set a fire… and the need to kiss her.

Chlo’s lips parted, and the kiss got a little, well, deeper. She tasted good… sweet, and kind of like strawberries. I still hadn’t forgotten the taste of her mouth from the time we’d made out. That had been three years ago, but it wasn’t something I could ever forget. She tasted just as good now as she had then. In fact, I couldn't imagine anything ever tasting better.

She made this little sound deep in her throat, the sexiest little noise I’ve ever heard in my life, and I seriously thought I was going to set her on fire.

Honestly, it’s no wonder I don’t have much of a love life. I mean, let’s review the facts here. When I kiss Chloe, I find myself wanting to torch something, and if I actually made love to her I’m sort of afraid I’d break her.

Let’s face it, my abilities don’t make me great boyfriend material.

Maybe she was thinking along the same lines, because she suddenly yanked away from me. She was breathing hard, almost panting, which kind of pumped up my ego a bit. I'm well aware I'm not exactly a sex god, but it was nevertheless nice to realize I could make her gasp for breath just by kissing her.

But my ego promptly deflated at her next words. “Clark,” she said sharply. “Stop it, right now.”

I blinked hard, trying to get rid of the burning in my eyes. Didn’t work. I really needed to set a fire, but a barn isn’t the best place to do that. “Chloe…” I said, holding out a hand to her.

“Don’t Chloe me!” she snapped.

I glared at her, annoyed. "What is your problem?" I demanded. "Earlier you were mad at me because you thought I hadn't noticed you were a girl. Now you're mad because I did notice you're a girl. Any chance I could get some subtitles to explain what's going on in your head?"

She had the grace to look embarrassed. "I'm not really mad," she said in a softer tone. "It's just that... Well, do you really want Lana to hate me for the rest of her life?”

All of a sudden, the thoughts I’d had earlier in the evening came rushing back to me. I’d been worried that by breaking up with Lana, I might put Chloe in the middle. What I was doing now was worse, and likely to put Chloe in a much worse situation. If we got involved, she’d wind up lying to Lana, and if Lana figured out we were seeing each other, she’d assume our breakup was Chloe’s fault. And Chloe would be forced to choose one or the other of us-- her friend, or her "sister."

The thought made me go cold. I didn’t want to force Chloe to have to choose between us, because I wasn’t totally certain I was the one she’d choose.

“No,” I said softly. “I don’t want her to hate either of us.”

It was true. I might not want to spend the rest of my life with Lana—I might not even be sure I’d ever truly loved her—but that didn’t mean I wanted her to hate me, either. We’d been friends for a long time.

And I’d been friends with Chloe even longer. I didn’t want to do anything to put our friendship at risk.

“Well, if we…” She broke off, her blush visible even in the moonlight. “It’s too soon, Clark. We both know it. And Lana would be furious if she found out. She’d blame me for your breakup.”

I rubbed absently at my eyes. “You’re right, Chlo.”

“Anyway…” She looked at me for a long moment. “I want you to think about what you really want, Clark. Right now I’m afraid you’re in rebound mode, and I don’t want to get hurt.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Chloe. I’ve never wanted to hurt you.”

“I know," she said gently. "But you've hurt me before, because you're a doofus. Not your fault, I know... you were just born that way."

I smiled slightly. Doofus was a step up from big stupid jerk, anyway. "Are you saying being a doofus is one of my abilities?"

"One of your best," she agreed with a quirk of her lips. Then her face grew more solemn. "Seriously, Clark, spend a little time figuring out what you really want. There’s no hurry, okay? I’ll still be here when you make up your mind.”

I was pretty sure I already knew what I wanted, but Chloe was right. I’d been through a hell of a lot in the last couple of days, and I was a bit of a mess, emotionally speaking.

“Okay,” I said softly.

“Okay," she echoed in a gentle voice. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Turning, she went down the stairs.

I really wanted to run after her, grab her, and kiss her some more, but I forced myself to sit back down on the couch, listening to her heartbeat recede as she got into her car and drove away. My eyes were still burning, and I rubbed at them again, feeling frustrated and unhappy.

The thing was, I knew Chloe was right. I needed to step back a bit and let my feelings settle before I tried to make a go of another relationship. But eventually, I was pretty sure I was going to wind up going after Chloe, trying to transform our friendship into something stronger and more enduring.

After all, she’d always been the one to accept me for what I really was. My abilities didn’t freak her out, and what Perry White had one called my “hero complex” didn’t faze her. In fact, she often was right there beside me, helping me save people. She was an awesome girl, an amazing person, and it made me wonder why I’d never really let myself think of her as potential girlfriend material before.

The truth was, I’d been fixated on Lana for a long time. Being with Lana had always made me feel… normal. Maybe that was why I had clung to her so hard. But maybe it was time to face the fact that I wasn’t normal, at least by Earth standards.

I remembered what Chloe had said to me earlier in the evening: You have important things to do, Clark. You have a destiny.

Chloe was right. If I’d settled down with Lana, she wouldn’t have been happy when I did what I felt like I’d been born to do, saving people. Eventually I would have forced myself to become “normal,” in human terms, in order to please her. In fact, I’d spent years trying to make myself ordinary for her sake, because somewhere deep inside I knew she’d never truly accept me for what I was.

But my Kryptonian parents hadn’t sent me across the vast reaches of space, across billions of miles, to this planet just so I could become a farmer. Not that there's anything wrong with farming, not at all. It simply wasn't what I was meant to do with my life.

I was suddenly as certain of that as I'd ever been of anything.

A fragment of a poem I’d once read in high school slipped into my mind. For my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die.

My destiny wasn’t farming, or an average, commonplace life in a small Midwestern town. It was something beyond the mundane, beyond the ordinary. Something far beyond the sunset. And the woman I eventually chose to share my life with would have to accept that.

For the first time I realized that if any woman could come along with me on my journey, all the way to my destiny...

Chloe would be the one.

-The End-

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