Out of the Darkness, Chapter 4

Clark/Chloe
Season 5, missing scenes from "Vengeance"
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the WB and DC Comics, not to me.
Author's Note: This story is somewhat more explicit than my other stories. If you don't like explicit sexual description, don't read it. No relation to my other Chlark stories.

“What the hell is your problem?”

Chloe sounds pissed, and he doesn’t blame her. Being shoved up against a wall and screwed isn’t exactly a dream come true for most girls. At her tone, his shoulders go more rigid than before.

“I just think we need to get going,” he says, zipping up his jeans. He carefully doesn't turn around to face her. “This is a bad area of town to be hanging around in.”

“I think maybe we should talk.”

He growls under his breath. Typical woman, always wanting to talk after sex. And Chloe's never met any situation that didn't make her want to talk, anyway. “I don’t feel much like talking.”

He can hear the light rasp of material as she shoves her skirt down, then hears her shoes against the pavement as she stalks toward him. She grabs him by the arm and tries to yank him around. She can’t, of course, any more than she could yank the Daily Planet building around, so she strides around him instead and glares up into his eyes.

“Fine,” she says shortly. “Don’t talk. But quit treating me like a whore, damn it.”

He blinks. “A what?”

“Like I’m some girl you just handed a fifty dollar bill!” she snaps.

“Chloe…” He trails off. Her eyes are practically shooting sparks, and he realizes she’s pretty damned mad with him. He has to fight the urge to cringe. For a small, slender woman, she can really intimidate the hell out of him sometimes.

“Look,” he says softly, “I’m sorry I made love to you in an alley, all right? I just—“

“That is not the problem here. I'm not upset about that. But don’t ever—“ She whacks a hand against his chest, which probably hurts her more than it hurts him. “Ever. Have sex with me and turn your back on me again. Ever.”

He isn’t really planning on having sex with her again, but he figures it’s probably best not to say so right now. Women always say they want honesty from a guy, but that’s probably a little more honesty than the situation calls for.

“I’m sorry,” he says instead, humbly. “I didn’t mean to insult you. I just thought you might be upset with me because, well, this isn’t exactly a romantic setting.” He still feels like he used her, too, but that’s a discussion for another time.

“You and your damned guilt,” she says, exasperated. “You worry too much, Clark. You big moron, did it ever occur to you that if I didn’t want to do it here, I wouldn’t have kissed you here?”

“Well…” He trails off, tilts his head, and becomes aware they’re not alone. Stealthy shadows are moving toward them through the darkness of the alley. Ordinarily he’d have heard the foosteps sooner, but he’s been pretty wrapped up in this discussion. Or maybe he’s still a little tranquilized by post-orgasm hormones. Either way, the shadows are practically on top of them.

He reaches out, grabs Chloe, and pulls her protectively against his chest.

There are eight guys, all almost as big as he is, all dressed in dark clothes, and they’re all carrying guns in their hands. They fan out in a loose semi-circle around Clark and Chloe.

“Well, well,” says one, whom Clark immediately recognizes as the leader. He’s got that swagger that says he’s the alpha wolf. “She sounds like a good piece of ass, man. You mind if we give her a try?”

Clark’s a little embarrassed to realize they had an audience. Then again, if he's going to go around having sex in alleys, he probably can’t expect a whole hell of a lot of privacy. But hearing Chloe referred to that way pisses him off, and anger flashes through him. “Go to hell.”

“Be nice,” the leader says chidingly. “You can’t expect to keep her all to yourself. This is Suicide Slum, man. We share all the goods here.”

Clark feels rage building in him again, and he doesn’t try to fight it this time. He can feel his lips draw back in a feral snarl. “Leave her alone,” he growls. “She belongs to me."

The men don't seem to appreciate his tone, because the guns all come up at once. His instincts tell him to charge the guys, because he knows the bullets won’t hurt him, but he doesn’t have much chance of getting Chloe past eight freaking guns without getting her shot in the process. Not only does he have to worry about the bullets, but possible ricochets off the brick walls, and even off himself.

He can't get Chloe past those guns without running too much risk of her being hurt. But he can't take on the guys in a fight, either, because even he's not fast enough to disarm eight men instantaneously. If he makes a single mistake, Chloe might pay for it with her life.

He can only think of one thing to do. He bends his knees, yanks Chloe tightly against his chest, and jumps straight up.

He hears Chloe’s startled shriek as they sail upward through the darkness, the wind whistling in their ears, but before she can finish her scream they’ve landed on a roof. He flexes his knees again, instinctively absorbing the shock of his feet slamming into concrete and balancing himself, and then puts her down. She staggers, then looks around, her eyes widening.

“Oh… my… God,” she says, holding a hand to her throat. “You didn’t tell me you could fly, Clark.”

“That wasn’t flying,” he answers. “It was jumping.”

“Jumping?” She takes a step closer to the edge of the roof and stares at the lit windows in the building across the street. “This must be a five-story building, Clark! That’s not jumping!”

“It’s jumping,” he says, shrugging. “With style.”

They just watched Toy Story together a couple of weeks ago, and her mouth curves in reluctant amusement at his reference to the movie. “That’s one hell of a big jump, Clark. Are you sure you can’t fly?”

“I can’t fly,” he says firmly, with more certainty than he really feels. He’s never tried to jump this far, although he’s been practicing in the Fortress, and the fact that he jumped so high with such ease has him kind of freaked out. The truth is that it did feel kind of like flying.

But he can’t fly. He knows that.

She stares at him for a minute, then shrugs and drops the subject. “I guess we’re safe here, anyway. They probably have no idea what happened to us.”

Considering he went into superspeed at the same time he jumped, that’s most likely true. As far as the thugs are concerned, he probably appeared to vanish into thin air. They certainly won’t be looking for him and Chloe on top of a five-story building.

He takes a deep breath as some of the adrenaline that’s flooded him fades. “I’m sorry,” he says, aware that it’s probably the fourth or fifth time he’s said that tonight. “I almost got you killed, Chlo.”

She turns around from her stunned perusal of the other buildings and stares at him, looking puzzled. “How do you figure?”

“I wasn’t paying attention down there. I knew it was a bad section of town, and instead of keeping my eyes open I was…”

“Looking at me,” she says softly. “That’s okay, Clark. Kind of flattering, really.”

He’d been so focused on her he hadn’t heard anything around him, which is not at all like him. Considering his superhearing abilities, it’s not usually possible for anyone to sneak up on him like that. Obviously making love to Chloe really did a number on his brain.

In more ways than one, maybe. He remembers what he said to the leader of the thugs: She belongs to me. Which was a crazy thing to say, but at that moment he’d felt totally protective of her. He always defended his friends, but this feeling had been more powerful. More intense.

As if she really was his somehow.

The idea makes him edgy and uncomfortable, and he turns away from her. “It was stupid,” he snaps. “I’m lucky you weren’t hurt.”

He can hear her exasperated sigh. “And here we go again with the guilt thing.”

Her snarky tone grates on his already raw nerves, and he spins back around so quickly he’s surprised he doesn’t cause a sonic boom. “I could have gotten you killed, damn it!” he yells, his voice a lot louder than he intended.

She doesn't flinch at his display of temper. “You didn’t get me killed, Clark. You saved me.”

“I saved you from a bunch of guys who never would have been a threat to you if I hadn’t suggested this stupid plan,” he says angrily. “And then gotten… distracted.”

He thinks back to earlier this evening, when he was imagining himself doing to Chloe exactly what those guys wanted to do to her, and a hot flood of shame washes over him. He remembers thinking he liked being the aggressor, not the protector, but now he realizes that where Chloe is concerned, he always wants to be the one to protect her. He never wants to see her be hurt by anyone.

Not even him.

“I could have gotten you killed,” he repeats, dropping his voice a bit. “Just like I got my dad killed.”

“Clark.” She takes a step nearer to him and looks up at him, her eyes earnest. The cool night wind whips her blonde hair around her face. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“I should have been able to save him,” he says, his voice breaking a bit. “I should have been able to figure out… something…”

“No.” She reaches out and slides her fingers into his. “You can’t save everyone, Clark.”

Maybe she’s right. But all he knows is that he feels like a total and abject failure for his inability to save his dad, and for the way his mom almost got her throat cut tonight. The knowledge that Chloe could have been hurt just now only adds to the weight of the guilt.

But he did save her. That’s something, at least. Something to alleviate the guilt a bit.

His fingers tighten around hers, and he looks down into her face. She's beautiful, so beautiful it makes his chest tighten with a strange kind of longing. Not a longing just for sex, but for something else, something deeper and more meaningful. Something he can't possibly have with her. Because she's not his, and she doesn't belong to him.

But right now, he very much wants to imagine that she does.

Read Chapter 5 here.